He Was My Greatest Enemy, Until Amnesia Made Him My Lover

The chemical stench was a familiar perfume, a toxic miasma that clung to the air and burned the back of my throat even through the cowl’s filtration system. Fire licked at the skeletal remains of the gantries overhead, casting dancing, hellish light onto the churning surface of the river below. The water was a sickly, iridescent green, poison and filth swirling in a slow vortex where the main vat had ruptured. And in the center of it, a splash of purple and a shock of white skin.

I descended on the grapple line, my boots hitting the slick concrete bank with a heavy thud. He was floating face down, his garish suit jacket fanned out around him like a bruised lily pad. There was no laughter, no taunt echoing across the water, only the crackle of flames and the groaning protest of twisted metal. The silence was more unnerving than any of his threats.

Wading into the corrosive water, I felt the familiar burn as it seeped into the seams of my suit. The cold was immediate and shocking. I reached him, my gloved hands turning him over. His face was a mess of blood and chemical burns, one side of his head horrifically swollen. His eyes were closed, the usual manic energy absent, leaving behind a slack, empty vessel. He was unconscious, but a faint, ragged breath escaped his lips. Alive. He was always, impossibly, alive.

Hoisting his dead weight over my shoulder was a practiced motion, a grim ritual we had performed too many times. His body was limp, pliant in a way I had never felt before. He was just a man. A broken, bleeding man I was pulling from a grave he had dug for himself. The thought was a dangerous one, and I pushed it away, focusing only on the mechanics of the rescue. Get him to the bank. Get him to help. It was the rule. My only rule.

Hours later, the smell of antiseptic had replaced the chemical fire. I sat in a sterile waiting room, the cheap suit I kept for these occasions feeling stiff and foreign against my skin. Bruce Wayne, concerned philanthropist, was waiting for news on an unidentified John Doe pulled from the river near ACE Chemicals. The nurses gave me sympathetic looks.

A doctor, a tired-looking woman with exhaustion etched around her eyes, finally approached me. “Mr. Wayne? Thank you for staying. We’ve stabilized him.”

I stood, my posture straight, my expression carefully neutral. “And?”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” she said, flipping through a chart. “He sustained multiple injuries in the explosion, but the most significant is the head trauma. A severe concussion, swelling of the brain… we won’t know the full extent of the damage until he wakes up.” She paused, her gaze meeting mine. “Physically, he’ll recover. But his brain activity… Mr. Wayne, based on our initial scans, he’s suffering from profound retrograde amnesia. It’s possible he won’t remember anything. His name, his life… who he is. It could all be gone.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute. Gone. The Joker, without the madness. Without the history. Without the obsession. The doctor was still speaking, explaining prognoses and potential therapies, but the sound faded into a low hum. All I could see in my mind was his slack face, the terrifying emptiness where a universe of chaos used to be. A blank canvas. An awful, terrifyingly blank canvas. And I was the only one left who knew what had been painted on it.

The weeks that followed were a disquieting void. Reports from Arkham were filtered through liaisons and doctors, all clinical and detached. ‘Patient is calm.’ ‘Patient is compliant.’ ‘No signs of previous… personality.’ Each update felt like a report from another planet. I kept my distance, letting the system run its course, letting the man—the patient—settle into his new, empty reality. But the silence from Arkham was a growing weight, a vacuum I knew I had to fill myself.

The Wayne Foundation’s new outreach program for the asylum’s long-term residents was the perfect cover. It was a lie that was almost true; I did want to help, but my focus was singular. Walking down the bleached-white corridors of the medical wing, the air thick with the smell of disinfectant and quiet despair, I felt a familiar tension coil in my gut. Dr. Arkham himself escorted me, his voice a low drone of gratitude for my philanthropy. I barely heard him. My eyes were fixed on the reinforced door at the end of the hall.

He led me into a small, private room. It was furnished simply with a bed, a small table, and a single chair. A large, barred window looked out onto a manicured but empty courtyard. And sitting in the chair, staring out that window, was him.

He wasn’t wearing purple. He was dressed in standard-issue Arkham whites, the fabric clean and stark against his pale skin. They had shaved his head; the shocking green was gone, leaving only pale scalp that made his acid-bleached skin look even more unnatural. The scars framing his mouth were the only recognizable landmarks on this new terrain. They were a permanent, ghastly smile on a face that was utterly devoid of humor. His posture was still, his hands resting calmly in his lap. He looked… placid. Sane. The sight was more horrifying than any of his rampages.

He turned his head as we entered, his eyes landing on me. They were the same eyes, yet they were entirely different. The manic, predatory light was gone. In its place was a quiet, intelligent curiosity. There was a weariness in them, a deep-seated confusion.

“We have a visitor for you,” Dr. Arkham said, his tone gentle.

The man stood, his movements measured. He was thinner than I remembered, the absence of his usual swagger making him seem smaller. He offered a hand, a gesture so normal, so mundane, it sent a shock through my system. I took it automatically. His grip was firm, his skin cool.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, his voice a low baritone, completely stripped of the high, frantic pitch I knew so well. It was the voice of a stranger. “They tell me my name is John. I’m not sure if that’s right, but it’s all I’ve got.” He gave a small, self-deprecating shrug. “I don’t remember much. Just… colors sometimes. Flashes of green. And purple. It gives me a headache.” He looked at me, his gaze direct and searching. “I’m sorry. You’re the first person I’ve met from… outside. It’s nice to see a new face.”

Dr. Arkham gave me a pointedly optimistic look before murmuring something about giving us some privacy. The heavy door clicked shut behind him, leaving me alone in the room with the ghost of my greatest enemy. The silence that fell was thick and heavy.

“Bruce Wayne,” I said, my voice sounding hollow in the small space. “My foundation is hoping to improve the facilities here.”

John’s eyes—clear, intelligent, and unnervingly focused—never left my face. He gestured to the other chair, and I sat, feeling like I was willingly stepping into a cage. He didn’t sit back down. Instead, he paced slowly, a thoughtful, contained energy replacing the manic explosions I was used to.

“A philanthropist,” he mused, the word rolling off his tongue as if he were tasting it. “That must be a strange occupation. Deciding who is worthy of your charity.” His gaze was piercing, analytical. “Do you find many worthy people inside a place like this, Mr. Wayne?”

The question was sharp, cutting through the pretense of my visit. This wasn't the rambling of a broken mind. This was the same brilliant, incisive intellect, just aimed in a different direction. “I believe everyone deserves a chance at help,” I answered, the words feeling like a weak defense.

He stopped pacing and stood before me, his scarred smile a stark, static feature on his otherwise expressive face. “Help,” he repeated softly. “I think I need it. The doctors try, but they ask questions I can’t answer. They want to know who I was.” His hands clenched into loose fists at his sides. “But all I have is this… feeling. A constant, nagging feeling that I’m missing something. Not just a memory, like forgetting where you left your keys. It’s bigger. It feels like the main character has been ripped out of my story, and I’m just the empty pages left behind.”

He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. The proximity was unsettling, his scent clean and antiseptic, nothing like the sulfur and cheap cologne I associated with him. “When you walked in, it was the first time that feeling lessened. Just for a second. It was like the noise in my head went quiet.” His eyes searched mine desperately, as if I held the missing pages in my pocket. “Why is that, Bruce Wayne? Why does looking at you feel like… coming home to a place I’ve never been?”

My heart hammered against my ribs. He was looking at me with absolute, unadulterated trust. The trust of a lost man reaching for the first and only hand offered to him. And it was my hand. I was his only visitor, his only link to a world he couldn't remember. The responsibility of it was a physical weight, pressing down, threatening to suffocate me. He was a blank canvas, and I was the only one holding the brush.