Gotham felt different that night.

Not quieter—Gotham was never quiet—but wrong. Like a note just slightly off-key, humming beneath the city’s usual chorus of sirens and distant shouts. Batman noticed it the moment his boots hit the rooftop gravel.

Year two had sharpened his instincts into something almost feral. He didn’t need evidence yet—just the feeling was enough to keep him tense, cape shifting in the wind as he scanned the alley below.

Then he saw it.

Another him.

The figure moved with precision—clean, efficient, brutal. A man in a dark cowl, cape snapping behind him as he dropped into a cluster of armed men. The fight was over in seconds. Faster than Bruce would’ve done it. Harder, too. One of the thugs didn’t get back up.

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

That’s not me.

He descended without a sound, landing behind the stranger just as the last criminal fled. “You’re sloppy,” Bruce said, voice low, controlled. “And you kill.”

The other Batman turned slowly.

For a moment, neither moved. The resemblance was uncanny—not just the suit, but the stance, the weight of presence. But where Bruce was controlled fury, this man radiated something colder. Something heavier.

“You’re young,” the stranger replied. His voice was deeper, rougher—older. “And naïve.”

Before Bruce could respond, laughter split the alley.

High-pitched. Sharp. Wrong.

Both Batmen turned.

She stood atop a fire escape, illuminated by flickering neon—a woman in smeared makeup, her red smile stretched too wide, eyes glinting with something manic and painfully familiar. Joker tilted her head, studying them like a child inspecting broken toys.

“Oh, this is delicious,” she giggled. “Two bats for the price of one? I must be dreaming—or finally gone completely mad!”

Bruce’s stomach dropped. Something about her—her posture, the cadence of her voice—hit too close to something buried deep.

The older Batman stepped forward slightly. “Stay back,” he warned Bruce, though his focus never left her. “She’s dangerous.”

Bruce almost snapped back—I know how dangerous Joker is—but the words caught in his throat.

Because this wasn’t the Joker.

Not exactly.

And somehow… neither of them knew that.

“Who are you?” Bruce demanded, shifting into a defensive stance. His eyes flicked between them—mirror and madness. “Both of you.”

The older man hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. “Someone who learned what happens when you don’t go far enough.”

The woman clapped slowly, delighted. “Oh, Thomas, don’t be boring.”

The name hit like a gunshot.

Bruce froze.

The older Batman did too.

And for the first time, uncertainty cracked through the hardened mask of the man behind the cowl.

“…What did you say?” Bruce asked, voice quieter now.

But the woman only grinned wider, leaning over the railing, eyes locked onto Bruce with unsettling intensity.

“Oops,” she sang. “Did I spoil the surprise?”