It may seemed insane - maybe it was. But asking Black Seven to be a part of the family was the only reasonable reaction on his behavior. Of course, Damian had a different opinion.

"Have you gone insane?!" He yelled at me as I told him about the news. "You wanna add a psychopath to our family of heroes?" Damian almost lost his voice of screaming. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Language, young man." I sat in front of the computer, searching for a particular photo. "And it's not insane at all. In fact, I think it's the best idea to save him. And this city."

Damian gave me a confused look. "What do you mean, 'save him and this city'?" I heard Alfred bringing tea and turned around on the revolving chair.

"Black Seven may be a psychotic murderer." I took one of the teacups and some sugar. "Yet, he has an incredible mind. The way he talks. There's definitely some sanity left in him. But..." I took a sip from the herb tea and leaned back, feeling a slight hint of fear causing my back getting goosebumps.

"But what, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked and picked up Damian's empty teacup.

I stared at my reflection in the green tea, the waves of me moving it made my face look like smiling. "But he also has tendencies. Scary, dark tendencies. A personality only one maniac had." I swirled the tea again and finished drinking it, handing the teacup to Alfred.

Damian, usually very quick about a response, remained quiet and just stared at the computer screen.

"I don't see a similarity, Master Bruce. Are you sure about your assumption?" Acted asked and I pointed at the two pictures on the big screen showing Black Seven and Joker. "Listen to this."

When I was at his hideout - or whatever the heck this was - I recorded his voice, hoping to find out who Black Seven really was by analyzing the sound of his voice and trying to match it with a person the computer would've came up with - so far, sadly, without success.

I dragged two lines to the pictures, one containg the sound of Joker's laughter, the other one the way Black Seven sounded when he laughed. "You tell me there isn't a similarly." By clicking the first line, we heard Joker manically laughing at a joke he thought was funny...well, it wasn't. Not a little damn bit.

"Damn, that's scary." Damian still stared at the screen and I clicked the other voice recording. Now we heard Black Seven's crazy laughter. And it was more similar to the Joker's than I thought.

Damian's eyes widened and he shrug. "Wow. That really sounds like the lunatic."

"And now look what happens when I tell the computer to find connections." The screen said 'MATCH' the second I entered the infos about each one's behavior and data I had so far.

Alfred stared at me, confused and scared at the same time. "But there's something else. Look at their faces." He pointed at the photos and I followed his look.

I suddenly had a bad feeling about all of this and dragged the photo of Black Seven over the photo of Joker - and couldn't believe what I saw.

The space between their eyes, the angle of their cheekbones and their jawlines...exactly the same! "What the f--" I stopped myself from cursing as I remembered my son was here.

Not able to take my eyes off the screen, I almost missed Damian's words. "But Black Seven's face is a bit more rounded, not as slim and long as the Joker's. Also, his nose is smaller. The matches could be a coincidence."

"True." I admitted but wasn't too sure about my own confidence. "But we can't be sure. Joker knew this guy, the Dollmaker, this insane freak creates new humans from different bodies. What if he found the Joker after he was shot dead and made Black Seven out of him? That'd explain why this new guy fights and talks like the Joker but isn't completely like him."

I immediately stood up and pulled my mask over my face. "Alfred, call Nightwing, I want to meet him at the Dollmaker's."

"But father, Black Seven isn't as much as the Joker. He saved us, don't you remember?" Damian stopped me and I sighed. "Yes, but do you remember why he had to? Because he beat all of you with a damn crowbar and captured you and Catwoman to get to me." I pointed at Joker's face on the computer screen. "He, too, did these kinda things. He, too, used cards in fights. I can't let all of these horrible things happen to Gotham again."

Without saying anything else or trying to reconsider my decision, I jumped into the Batmobile and drove off, aware of the fact that the Dollmaker wanted nothing more than making one of his sick human dolls out if me. And he was more than once too close to succeed.

♦♦

'Damnit, damnit, damnit!' I held my left upper arm as I reached the theater. "If I only had anesthetics!" Every bone in my body felt like they were crushed and glued together.

The skin on my left cheek was sore as well as each of my bullet wounds but this was nothing compared to the pain in my stomach.

"Neva gonna go there again!" I walked upstairs into a room, far back in the shorter hallway and opened the door before turning on the lights.

"But gotta miss ta lil, crazy voice in mah head." I closed the door behind me and sat down on a chair, wincing at the pain I felt in my head. Everybody would if their skull was sawed in half and stitched up again.

'Let's see. What do I start with?' This room was full of different chemicals I used to mix up to create either a paralytic gas, a muscle relaxer or one of the healing liquids I didn't even have names for.

I was just about to get a bit of the cardiotoxin I kept in one of the special fridges right beside the iron desk I worked on as my right hand cramped. "Goddamn ta freakin' Dollmaker!" I groaned with my jaws pressed together. "Fuckin' maniac!"

Honestly, I had not the foggiest idea about what exactly happened back at his house, I just remembered his creepy look as he gave me some shot and from there on, I only had some memories about him and the woman who I didn't know laughing as they cut my body up, the sound of a saw cutting through my skull and the look of my guts as he took some, as he said, samples. If I wasn't already insane, I would've been by now.

"I didn't sign up fo' this!" Was the only sentence I yelled over and over again back there. The pure pain was a bit harder than getting my first tattoo. 'Aaah, memories!'

But since then, the voice in my head was gone - luckily. I didn't even have visible scars and only the pain - as well as the blurred memories - reminded me of the past day.

I didn't know why I was there, though. But I promised my other half to help him and he said I had to do that visit. While the Dollmaker said he needed the samples of my bones and stuff to get something running. Whatever the hell he meant by that.