"You, were you Mr. Clown before?"

Spider-Man looked at the familiar smile and asked a little uncertainly, but at the same time he was also wary, because it seemed that the Joker was using a much stronger body than him, and judging by the way he dressed, he was more like a member of the Kids Gang, and they were not easy to mess with.

"Of course, I am." The smiling boy nodded and said, "How could I miss the Batman's game invitation?" Looks like you're not doing well, boy. ”

Spider-Man rubbed his stomach and sat on the ground, he hadn't eaten anything today, the feeling of emptiness in his stomach was gradually turning into a burning pain, and the weakness of his limbs made it impossible for him to stand properly anymore.

"I don't know what's going on with this city, it's worse than the streets I saw in the Bronx full of homeless people." Spider-Man rubbed his face with his hand and said, "The order brought by the gangsters is really terrible, no one cares about the weak, everything is left to fend for itself......"

"But what would you think if I told you that this was actually the best of times in Gotham?" The clown asked, leaning against a telephone pole.

"What do you mean?" Spider-Man is a little lost.

"This is the time when the gangster order still exists." The clown looked down and played with his fingers and said: "There are often fires in the streets, but there are no large-scale bombings and robberies, adults are dying all the time, but soon someone will take his place, and many children will starve to death if they don't have enough to eat, but there will always be strong ones who survive and become members of the gang." ”

"Isn't that bad enough?" Spider-Man asked.

"It's not enough." The clown shook his head and said, "The worst thing is that the gangs are also gone, and then it is the age of the madmen, when everything is ten thousand times worse than you think." ”

"What will happen then?" Spider-Man swallowed and said.

"Maniacs are unscrupulous in making bombings, because no one can punish them, and adults can kill another adult because they are in a bad mood, because they know that the police are useless, that children will be bought and sold at will, that there is no freedom and no self-will, that they are just raw materials for something, and that they will never have the opportunity to form any small groups and have no power to fight back."

"It's crazy." Spider-Man clenched his fists, stared at the Joker and said, "And you're one of the crazy ones." ”

"No, I'm just the product of madness." The Joker looked Spider-Man in the eye and said, "It's Batman who created the madness." ”

"You're always slandering him." Spider-Man took a deep breath and said, "I know the world is very bad, but if you say that he doesn't save the world or is worse than you, then this is complete nonsense, and you can't clear your name with any of Batman's actions." ”

"I'm just stating a fact to you." The Joker walked over, put the bag of bread he was carrying in front of Spider-Man and said, "You know what? It was Batman who put an end to the gangster order in Falcone. ”

"Is he here?" Spider-Man didn't even look at the bag of bread, just stared at the Joker with his head up and asked.

"Of course, maybe we can witness history again." The clown smiled again and said the longest thing he had said today.

"Just now, the dilemma that reality gives you shows its sinister nature for the first time, and Batman experienced the consequences twenty years ago."

"If you don't end the gangster era, these children like you will always live under the oppression of violence and terror, and similar tragedies will happen one after another, but if you end the gangster era, the final order will be completely destroyed, and the city will completely fall into the abyss."

"The Batman I know chose the latter."

Spider-Man stared at the Joker stunned, waiting for his answer at the end of the sentence, and that was exactly as he expected, the Joker said.

"For you, for the first time he wanted to be a superhero, he met you in the dark corner of the street."

Spider-Man let go of his clenched fist, and he sat on the ground staring at the bread that the Joker threw at him, while the Joker crouched on the ground, propped his hand on one cheek and said, "You think Batman can't deal with me and criminals like me in this city because he's not determined enough, or he's found the wrong way." ”

"But the ridiculous thing about reality is that there is no right path at all, and heroes just have the courage to face the consequences of their own consequences after choosing the wrong one, and the madness of Batman is that he is just an ordinary person who has been as powerless as you are now for decades, and he thinks he has a choice in front of reality, but he doesn't."

"So why do I say that he is a madman, why should he bear the consequences of a choice that has no right answer at all, why is he so arrogant that he thinks he can atone for the darkness that this reality brings to everyone, why does he just refuse to admit that what I say is true, give up vigilance and repentance, and really laugh?"

The Joker stood up, walked up to Spider-Man, held his face with both hands, and pressed the corners of Spider-Man's mouth to push up, making Spider-Man show a fake smile.

"Do you feel responsible for the death of your companion?"

Spider-Man froze, then shuddered.

Only then did he realize that all the words the clown said were just to unload his defenses, and the final sentence was a sharp sword, piercing his heart straight through.

The Joker left, retracting his sword gracefully like a swordsman, but Spider-Man followed his heartbeat and heard the hollow in his heart from the empty beat of his heart, "Why should I be responsible?" ”

He is no longer the mighty Spider-Man, but a child who is wounded, hungry, and can't even guarantee the safety of his own life, and he is facing a problem that countless adults in this city can't solve, and it is a problem that heroes can only repent of their defeat, and if he says that he is not responsible, who can blame him?

His weakness will be his best reason to retreat, that is the retreat that Spider-Man, a superhero has never had, he tried his best, fate makes people, reality is cruel, this will be the best excuse for him to let himself go.

What can you do if you don't let yourself go?

Spider-Man thinks of Batman as described by the Joker, who makes his choice in a real-life dilemma, and then spends the next twenty years facing the consequences of that choice and doing everything he can to redeem it.

But he actually doesn't have the slightest need to embarrass himself so much, because no matter how he chooses, it's wrong, he's not even a hero with superpowers, why don't he accept his weakness with peace of mind, and give up the meaningless responsibility imposed on him by the absurdity of reality to let himself smile with relief?

The touch of the Joker's fingers was still on Spider-Man's face, and he just had to follow the force and raise the corners of his mouth, smile and sigh when he felt sorry for being that girl, and he could leave those sadness and heaviness behind and start a new life.

Why not? Spider-Man thought with his eyes closed, and he stood up, grabbed the bag of bread, and staggered back to the house.

"Why did you kill Falcone in the first place?"

In a corner of the abandoned factory, a little boy chewed a mouth full of bread and asked another, bigger child vaguely, while the black-haired boy just sat silently, without any expression on his face, serious like a statue.

"I didn't kill Falcone."

"But you didn't save him either." The boy wiped the crumbs of bread from his mouth and said, "Dick told me that you actually knew that Maroni was going to do it, and that you had the power to stop him." ”

"I don't need to stop him, it's two gangsters who are full of evil and are fighting among themselves, and I don't need to save either of them." The dark-haired boy's tone was straight and devoid of any emotion, not like he was chatting, more like he was being interrogated.

"Right? That's what you do. The little boy with the bread shrugged his shoulders and said, "The gangs are gone, and the worse ones are coming, and you are completely self-inflicted." ”

The little boy picked up the water bottle next to him, poured a few sips of water, stood up and sat down opposite the black-haired boy and said, "If you hadn't killed Falcone, well, well, if you had saved him, the gangster situation would have been maintained, and everything would not have been so bad, so why were you so impulsive in the first place?" ”

"You think I was on the spur of the moment?"

The little boy looked to the side and said, "That's not what I mean, but you probably didn't think about the consequences, seriously, Batman, do you regret it?" ”

"I don't regret the death of a gang leader, Damian, never."

"You're changing the subject again." Damian looked at the boy across from him and said, "What I'm asking is if you regret breaking the order of the gangsters and bringing Gotham into an even worse era." ”

"How do you judge whether an era is bad or not?"

Damian rubbed his face and said, "Anyway, the Gotham I saw in another universe is much better than yours, you often say that seeing is believing, I have seen it, and naturally your Gotham is worse in comparison." ”

"Did you really see it?" Batman's tone remained unwavering, but he stood up and turned to walk outside the building.

"Hey, wait, where are you going?"

"You don't have to follow me." Batman turned to Damian and said, "Because this city out there is what you call a better time, and you want to make your hometown like this, so you can live here alone." ”

"Of course I can!" Damian raised his tone with some anger and said, "You were angry that your mistake was exposed, right?" Batman, you'll always be like this, you can't listen to the right advice! ”

Batman didn't say anything, and disappeared at the staircase in silence, Damian took a deep breath, clenched his fists, got up from the ground and ran to the window, shouting to Batman who was walking alone into the sunset: "I will correct your mistakes!! ”

Batman didn't look back.

At the same time, in the back kitchen of a certain restaurant, Bruce quickly opened the door of the cabinet under the stove, and groped through the dark cabinet with his hands that had just finished brushing the plates full of foam.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he took out the thing he was holding in his hand, and a smug smile appeared on his face.

And what glittered in the light was a small silver spoon with a delicate vine pattern.

(End of chapter)