He missed the light. But darkness was necessary to induce terror, shadows to make the planes of his face frightening under the mask, to make the place under the folds of his cloak look deep, a place you could get lost in and never find your way out.

So easy to become a creature of the night, something mythical and terrifying.

In the sunlight he was tall, broad-shouldered, a big, imposing man, a handsome man. But in the sunlight the costume was a joke.

Jokes.

Once tears always seemed to be waiting behind his eyes, needing to be stopped, needing to be overcome with brutal discipline. But by this time there was no risk of tears.

The suit covered him utterly, and he wondered if he had flesh or bone or blood under it anymore.

They passed each other on the street, the two pale men, and made note of each other, the way celebrities do on the sunset strip, the way serial killers do on the corridor in front of their cells, the way vampires do, coming out of the Raven.

The man walking east was perhaps more remarkable. His hair was green. That wasn't unheard of in those days, there were punks and there were little old ladies with pastel tints. The angular, grinning face under it, that made it clown hair. He wore clown clothes too, an unfortunate purple seersucker, with a tragic green tie and matching spats.

The other man was nearly a foot shorter, at six feet, and merely blond, his hair savagely short. His features were sensual and brutal and he had somewhere found a black leather trenchcoat in his size.

There was something each recognized in the other, and, dangerously, they smiled over their shoulders.

Natalie Lambert had one good dress, and it was too short for a ball. Despite being a doctor, Natalie Lambert was not rich; most of her patients, being dead, didn't pay.

Her favorite patient, however, was both dead (arguably) and exceedingly rich. And Nick, in one of the rare moments when he demonstrated that he had actually learned something about people in his eight hundred years, had bought her a dress. It was hopelessly expensive, black and long, cut low across her shoulders. She could see his eyes watching her neck as they danced.

Charity balls. Who was this Dr. Lambert who came to charity balls?

This was a policeman's ball, of course, the hall split down the middle, all cops and their dates on one side, all the people who the ball was really for, the people who brought the money, on the other.

Nat could see Don and Myra Schanke sitting at one of the side tables. Myra's dress was old but pretty. She suddenly felt embarrassed to be wearing Nick's expensive gift.

She had come because Nick asked her to. He'd been asking her out on dates lately. Movies, balls, one disastrous hockey game. No more evenings in, watching old movies on his huge television, cuddling on the couch. Things had changed. He had said her Valentines Day drunk didn't bother him, but since then he was like a highschool boyfriend, attentive and distant at the same time. She missed having pillow fights.

Details can build suspense or create boredom. There are the details of the dances, of the things Nick whispered to Natalie (beautiful things, but not so beautiful as the things lost to her), of the wise way Myra watched them, driving Don Schanke crazy with that expression of hers that said she saw more that he did.

There are the details of the way the Joker gathered up his gang, the way they spilled from alleyways and storefronts to follow him (think of rats, think of a garish pied piper), the doors he opened and the guns his men used. There are the names of the people who died as the Joker and his men entered the ball.

There is the exact pitch of his laughter.

There is the pattern of lines on LaCroix's face as he stood on a sixteenth storey window ledge, watching with purely voyeuristic interest as a bat transformed into a man.

Skip the details, pass them by, they're only mating habits and eating habits, facts and figures.

Things only get interesting when you get to the myths.

Instinct landed Nick on the floor with Natalie underneath him as machine guns fired across the hall. "Stay down. Get to Schanke." An urgent whisper into her hair. He wouldn't fully realize until later how instinctive was the way he kissed the diamond of skin exposed by the cutout design low on the back of her dress. Janette had picked out the dress, expert and amused, flicking away his suggestions.

He stood, looked around, wondered if he could convince Schanke he was wearing a bulletproof vest under his tuxedo if he took direct machine gun fire in front of such an audience. Probably not. He'd just have to be careful.

Gunfire stopped, but the laughter died more slowly. A high mad voice called out, "Welcome to the pig's ball."

He was tall and terribly thin, not skeleton thin, but starving refugee thin, victim thin, a haunted helpless sick thin. A skeleton would have been still and pitiful; he was all movement and malevolence, manic desperate life.

He was on the news from time to time, escaping and being returned to asylums, endlessly. The Joker.

"How beautifully you dance, my dear!" The Joker had swept up a woman in a white dress and was waltzing her around the room. There was blood all over her back, making the material stick to her. The Joker dipped her low, humming to himself, then let her drop (retching sounds, gasps, percussion of thudding corpse... not quite Merry-Go-Round-Broken-Down, but it would do, as he would do and do and do), distracted by a blond woman in a green dress.

"Sweetie, how phallic can you get? Honestly!"

The woman just stared, watching his gloved hand move nearer and nearer to her snake-headed torque necklace. Did she see bloodstains on the purple linen? He touched the necklace and she shrieked, a hopeless little sound that deflated to a whine when he simply tore it away.

Nick was still looking for escape routes, advantages. He saw Cohen (imperial and solemn in a long red beaded dress) standing in front of a seated man with a shellshocked expression, probably her husband. Their eyes met, searched each other for hope. Finally she shook her head. Help had to come from outside.

"I just thought I'd drop in." The Joker was playing with the necklace. "Every party needs entertainment. Party games."

Handsome, but weren't heros always handsome? Gilgamesh had been handsome; now there was living proof that not everyone who got immortality deserved it. Handsome, and strong and brave and boorish and stupid. Enkidu had been ugly, and charming, and utterly deserving of his vampire life... but not a hero.

The Batman. Such a hero, so very handsome.

Will Shaxbeard had been a master of tipping heros over the precipice, finding their tragic flaws. LaCroix felt he had a similar talent.

Such broad shoulders, not as broad as they seemed in the suit, but that was his myth, wasn't it? Larger than life.

No, larger than death, larger than some great tragic death that was haunting the man who wore the bat suit.

Enough watching. Time for an interview.

Don Schanke realized that the reason he couldn't see anything that crazed Bozo imitator was doing was because there was a blond man standing between him and the freak with the green hair at all times. Whichever way the Joker moved, Nick was moving to be between him and the table where Don sat with Myra and Natalie.

Which was all very thoughtful, except that the Joker seemed to be the only one of the terrorists who wasn't holding a gun.

"First let's play spin the bottle." The Joker was saying. Schanke saw only the spray of champagne as he popped the cork off an unopened bottle with his fingers.

"What do you want from us?"

Schanke winced. It was Cohen. God, she had more balls than a buffalo. Couldn't she see this guy had gone through batshit and come out the other side?

"Want? I want to meet my fairy prince, I want to find good black pumps in my size, I want to learn to do the hokey pokey." He crossed the distance to her in three steps, his legs extending like a heron's. "Let's play spin the bottle, just us two. Say it: Me love you long time, GI Say it!"

Cohen winced, but stayed cool. "I'm sure if you give us a telephone we can get started on negotiating a deal; hokey pokey lessons included."

"What's your name, cherry-blossom?" He was very close to her now.

She half smiled, wearing the face she used for rookies and full detectives who should know better. "Captain Cohen."

Why wouldn't Nick move? What was on the maniac's face? "Your first name. What your love-slaves call you."

Cohen's smile stretched just a bit more, like she'd been waiting all year to spring this one. "Captain."

Great, a double act.

Myra's nails scratched hard against the back of his hand. He turned, saw the worry lines creeping, clawing around her eyes. He wanted to pull her down to the floor and cover her and hold her until this was all over and they could go home and watch Jennie sleep. And then he saw what she had been seeing. Natalie. While everyone else was watching to Joker, the coroner had reached the nearest fire alarm.

The Joker started to say something, but the throbbing whine of the alarm cut him off dead. Nat had already hit the deck as gunfire destroyed the alarm pull and splintered the wall around it.

That mad falsetto cut even above the alarm. "Doc-tah, doc-tah, there's this strange ringing in my ears." Nick had frozen, staring, and Schanke was allowed to see the Joker step forward, holding one hand to his head as he beckoned to Natalie with the other. One of the men with guns hauled her to her feet by the arm and pulled her to the Joker.

"Oh won't you marry me Bi-i-ill" He grabbed a man from the group of people crowding against the wall and kissed him resoundingly. "I got the wedding bell blu-u-ues!" The man went flying back into the frightened knot of party-goers.

The Joker grinned and swept Natalie up; pale arms sticking out from the ends of his sleeves as he dragged her into a tango. "Plan B, kiddies." He called out. "Party crashers. And ooh turn it dow-wow-wown, you'll wake my par-ents."

Schanke realized that it almost was funny, the helpless, frightened expression on Nick's face as they danced and the alarm rang and rang.

He stood in the middle of the hotel room, not quite sure where he was going. The costume was folded in its case now, but it was still on him, he was still the Batman. But when wasn't he, these days? Bruce Wayne was a mask he put on when he had to make airline reservations. One airline reservation. One hotel room.

Toronto was a very American city, seen from four storeys up, easy to swing from building to building here. Not low buildings that seemed to rumble and sway when you hit them, like Mexico City. Not spiderwebbings of metal fire escapes and outside staircases to crash into, like London.

The Joker was in Toronto. So he was here too. There was something in him, the voice of a reasonable man, that said to leave him. Go on with your own life and leave him be. He's not worth it.

And then he saw the man standing on the balcony rail.

"Ooh, finally. I hate those alarm clocks, don't you?"

Nat's head was throbbing, but at least the fire trucks, the ambulances, would be coming. She'd got a message out. They danced on and on and on. He was so tall her shoes only brushed the ground as he swung her around the floor. She couldn't even stumble to keep up, but just let the steel strength of those skinny arms carry her. His bony chest against her face smelled of mint and popcorn and sweat and straw and the musk of leather, circus tent smells.

The Joker's idea of humor while the alarm was still ringing had been hitting random people over the head with the butt of a revolver (how he'd leered at her as he pulled it from his pocket) and yelling "Just five more minutes, ma."

Cohen was still trying to get his attention, but he ignored her except to occasionally poke his tongue out at her.

His hand on Nat's back was very long and thin, the fingers sharp and bony.

"So tell me all about myself. Have I ever told you how attractive I am to you?"

"You're the Joker."

"Tell me more." His eyes were blue. Just the same color as Nick's. Or were they green? God she felt so dizzy.

"You're a murderer and a thief." Don't lie, keep surprising him. Cohen had the right idea, but Nat couldn't think of a single funny thing to say.

"Right-o. Do you think I should kill you, or steal something from you?" He performed a slow bump and grind against her, giggling.

"Sorry, I have a boyfriend."

"Really?" Nearly violet now, those eyes, and shifting towards red. A gun rang out; someone had got out of line. She didn't dare look. "Where is he?"

Wrong tack to take. Keep the bastard laughing. "Kill me, he'll be the one who bullets won't stop." Good, that was better.

"I should talk to him. We've got a common interest."

"What?"

"He's rich. I'm--" he twirled her around, "--fascinated by rich people."

"What makes you think he's rich?"

"Darling, that dress isn't you. Come on, where's the sugar daddy who bought it for you, huh?"

Damn Nick and Nick's dress. "I..."

"Oops." His shove spilled her to the floor. His shoe (where does one find purple leather dress shoes in a size 15 narrow?) contacted sharply with her side and she bit down on a cry.

He walked away. "Kill her." an aside, over his shoulder, practically parenthetical.

Laughing again. It seemed he was always laughing at the young, trying to help them see the joke. Like Nickolas, this one couldn't seem to grasp that philosophers were, at heart, comedians whose jokes weren't funny. He had heard someone say that, when he was studying radio . . . who? He had laughed until black-red tears ran from his eyes.

The Batman stared at him. Good eyes, if a little too deep set; but he was considering things from a different perspective. For fifty or sixty years, those eyes would be fine to look into, to watch, seeing what they saw. But after a few centuries they would retreat utterly, peering out from shadows under the strong brows. He had learned his lesson with Nickolas; certainly those sad, half squinting eyes had seemed perilously beautiful in the middle ages, but now . . . they were tired, they showed Nickolas' age. Janette's eyes, though, those were perfect, shipwreck blue forever.

He balanced on the rail and watched the Batman watching him.

"What are you doing here?" Deep voice, that was always nice.

"Watching you. I was fascinated."

"Why?" trying to determine how much LaCroix had seen. How dull. Very well then.

"You can turn into a bat. I myself... cannot." He took the step off the rail, letting wind rake across his face as he fell, turned, rose. He hovered in the cool night air; let the moon pick out the color of his eyes, were they blue or yellow or red? Some color of ice and flame, let the moon decide.

"What are you?" Not a sliver of awe in the voice. Interesting. Disappointing.

"I do not surprise you?" Mortals were a cowardly lot, it was usually so easy to be something that frightened them, a creature of the night.

"You're hardly the only one who can fly. I've met Superman." Oh but that smile could last the centuries, it came from such a deep place, through so many shadows.

"Have you? Indulge me a question. They say he is invincible... unpuncturable. Is it true?"

"We aren't exactly close. But yes, as far as I know, he's invincible."

"Pity." He let the moon touch his fangs. Melodrama; such a fools word for living passionately. "Why did you come to Toronto?"

"The Joker decided to relocate across the border."

"The . . . ? Oh, yes, of course. Your nemesis. I saw him on the street I believe. Such a distasteful sense of fashion."

"Where is he?" Urgency, obsession. Utterly charming.

"Visiting a dear friend of mine." LaCroix saw the change in mood, the bare start of a lunge, and raised his hands, spreading the fingers soothingly. "You needn't worry; my friend is like you... dedicated to bringing fear to those who bring fear. A policeman in fact. However he, unlike you, also cannot turn into a bat."

Go or stay, stay or go? So easy to bait, this one. Such a temptation.

The problem with the girl with the eyes and the hair was that she simply didn't believe she was going to die, but oh yes, the time had come for all good girls (and girls who wore dresses like that too) to lay down their (gold, their green mantles, or else their maidenheads) lives for " . . . entertainment! Step right up step right up, spill some blood and win a prize!"

How easy to entertain, policemen, the lowest common denominator. "Keep it for yourself, give it to your date. You've got it... fr-ee-dom." The gun was shiny and phallic as a Christmas toy (Jolly old Saint Nickolas, crucified in a Japanese mall. Culture shock, friends and neighbors. Culture shock. It took three weeks before anybody had the nerve to explain to the decorating committee the mistake that had been made) and he held it out to them, friendly as the neighborhood dope peddler.

They had pushed her in the corner (nothing rhymes with corner, except maybe coroner) and she stood there, pale and open as a dear in his headlights. (Deer. Dear. Deer.)

"You heard me, gentles and ladyfolk. Shoot the dolly, win your freedom. Who's first?"

They wouldn't do it, of course, and she'd die anyway, but they'd feel so much better about it if they hadn't done it. "Look at her, she's crying now . . . females, always with the waterworks."

"Come on now, don't be shy! Step right up, step raaht up!" Like a carnival barker. Like a mad dog barking.

Consider for a moment how much you know, compared to how much everyone else knows. For example, LaCroix had no idea that the name of the man whose blood he was considering drinking was named Bruce Wayne. The Joker knew this, but he also knew that it wasn't important. Bruce was just a fairly silly macho name. Batman, that was who he was.

For example, Nick did not know that the Batman was in town, talking to LaCroix. Nor did he know what Bruce Wayne's parents had looked like as they died. The Batman could have told you every detail, picking out details from that perfect snapshot in his photographic memory, down to the stripes on the tie and the run in her stocking.

For example the Batman didn't know, and probably wouldn't have cared, that he was having a conversation with a man who had, as a boy, once thrown stones at Boudicea's bodyguard. Actually, only LaCroix knew that.

For example, the Joker had no idea there was a vampire watching him, preparing to kill him. He would have been delighted.

You and I know all these things. Details, bedtime stories. We know the whole mythos. They only know the myths.

Batman was a big, tall man. Well, he could fake that. In the thirteenth century he had been one of the tallest men he knew. LaCroix must have been a giant to his Roman contemporaries.

Batman wore a cape. Where was that trenchcoat? Moving too quickly to be noticed, he found it folded over the back of a chair.

No one ever saw Batman's face. He turned up the collar.

According to some people, Batman could fly. That was the easy part.

This would work. This had to work.

Nick felt fangs against his lips as he let the creature inside peek out of his suddenly strange eyes.

Speed. Flying straight up.

Darkness. Ripping away the power cords to the overhead lights. Not total blackout, but dark enough that no one would recognize him. Please let no one recognize him.

Surprise. "Hello Joker."

"Batman."

"Batman?."

"Batman!"

They believed. Bullets thrashed him this way and that, it hurt. It didn't kill but it hurt.

And suddenly a hundred people in tuxedos and evening gowns turned into cops. Machine guns were wrested away from thugs caught unawares, staring at the man, the Batman, who hovered over them, rocked by their bullets, but still alive, still flying.

Myra and Schanke, safe. Cohen and her husband, safe.

Of course, the Joker had taken Natalie with him when he escaped. How else could things have gone?

That's the way myths work, there is winning the battle, and then there is winning the war.

There has to be an endgame.

(The roof or the alley? The alley would be more realistic, but the roof would offer more chances for extravagance.)

Listen. Voices, struggle sounds, Nat's heartbeat. From the alley.

(Ah Natalie, always dragging us back to pragmatics. Some heroine.)

"It's tall, dark, can fly, and bullets won't stop it." The Joker, endless descant over Natalie's gasping, Natalie's fear. "What is it?"

The Joker could comfortably hold Natalie in front of him with the gun pressed to her temple. Try it sometime; see how tall you have to be for that to work well.

"I'll give you a clue. It's not the Batman."

Nick stepped where the Joker could see him. How could human eyes be as large as Natalie's? She looked like a Japanese cartoon.

His own eyes must be glowing now, brimstone green. He stared at the Joker and let the full force of his will move between them. "I am the Batman."

(Heartbeat thumping of horsemen riding to war, the battlecry cry of a madman sounds out over it, odd and frenzied.)

A man named Friedrich Nietzsche is often quoted at times like this. You know what I mean. When Nick looked into the Joker's eyes, the Joker's eyes looked back into his.

Deus ex machina. A necessary evil; even I am not ready to look behind that curtain yet. Perhaps another time.

So, enter the Batman. Enter LaCroix.

Hell, enter Captain Cohen and the whole Toronto PD. But slowly, slowly.

Slow enough to miss Natalie, catching Nick as he slumped into the shadows. Slow enough to miss the quick grinning shape that was LaCroix. Slow enough to miss the Batman grabbing the Joker's towering body only after it had already started to fall. (How could he be paler than before?)

The Police Captain, a handsome woman in a red dress, smiled at him as they wrapped the Joker up in a straight jacket and hauled him away. "I've heard of you, Batman, but I never believed it. You saved a lot of lives tonight."

Chattering voices: "I saw it. Bullets bounced right off him. He can fly!"

Well, it wasn't as though people hadn't said that about him before. So the Batman had saved more lives. Did it really matter whose body had been inside the bat this time?

He saw a shape moving away across the sky. And behind him, two pairs of running feet, one with the quick and uneven clack-clack of high-heeled shoes.

And, as the Joker was driven away, laughter.

"Nick! Nat! There you are!" Schanke looked as though the smile might split his face. Myra hugged both of them, giving Nick a look that said she had maybe seen more than most people. He had snatched an extra trenchcoat from the caddy, to hide the shredded state of his tuxedo. The other coat had gone into a dumpster in the alley.

Ambulances and needless fire trucks were pulling away.

"I, um, followed Batman in time to see him save Nat."

"So for once you weren't first on the scene." Schanke teased.

"Yeah." He was grinning. He caught Nat's eye and they both collapsed into laughter.

"Yeah, this whole night has been a great joke. I though the Joker and the Captain were ready to open for the Buttonville Revue for a while there."

Myra leaned into him, yawning theatrically. "Don, we'd better get home."

"Yeah." He kissed the top of her head. "Yeah."

LaCroix would have liked to speak to the Joker. When one has talked to half of a person, one wishes to talk to the other half. And he suspected they might have things to say to each other. (And he had a certain respect for any man who could make Nickolas shut up, even if only for a moment.)

Had it been a mistake, pulling Nickolas from the fire yet again? Sometimes the reasonable side of him decided it would be better to abandon the boy, get on with his own life.

He sighed. Probably. Probably. But what the boy had done this night was fascinating, almost inspired. So the Batman didn't need the man inside the suit anymore. That was the way of myths, eventually they left their realities behind like discarded shells.

(Consider walking on the beach. Do you reach down and pick up the scuttling, striving, living being, or do you admire only the perfect and ocean-cleansed abandoned shell? Hold it to your ear and you can hear the echoes of the emptiness inside.)

He had shrugged his way out of a few myths in his time, left them behind for others to try to fit into. The whole thing was a wonderful joke, really.

But it did make one wonder about the myth of the bat.

Leather flapping, eyes glowing into the dark, he flew away.