Chapter Text
“Repeat that?”
Tim’s stomach plummeted the first time it was said, so he really needed Bruce to say it again. Dick had joined them for dinner for once, and they were in the middle of recounting interesting stories when Bruce got a call and took it in the other room. When he returned, his face became the kind of still playing every emotion and none at the same time. It was the same one he had when he confirmed Jason was alive and running around as a crime lord. A ‘wind taken out of his sails’ kind of vibe. He was still holding his phone as he spoke to them, not sure what to do with it.
“Joker’s dead.”
“How?” Dick rose from his chair while Tim felt stapled to his. Was this real? “He was supposed to be locked up under medical observation in Arkham. How is he dead?”
“What… what killed him?” It seemed impossible. Joker was more a force of nature, the bad side of it, than a person. Not that anyone would mourn the madman, but to suddenly die out of the blue just seemed unlikely.
“Uhm… medical error, supposedly.” Bruce shook his head to clear it, grasping at the idea as well. Something else started clicking as he spoke. “They’re still looking into it, but it seems the team working on Joker accidentally gave him an overdose of his standard medication. Caused a series of aneurysms, and no one could act fast enough to save him.”
“His brain exploded?” Dick’s oversimplification painted an image Tim didn’t like. Bruce gave him a small glare. “All the trouble that guy gave us, and the way he goes out is his brain deciding it had enough.”
“Medical error is a serious problem,” Bruce insisted. “If it happened to Joker, it could happen to anyone. They’re going to look further into it, make sure it was an accident and not an assassination. I… I think we should look into it too.”
“That’s… probably a good idea,” Tim concluded, holding back his own feelings. No love was lost with Joker’s death, but a crime was indeed a crime. Medical error… well, no one was going to sue over Joker dying, but they might lose their license or job. Hopefully it was an error. Hopefully. The ones who gave him the pills because of a miscommunication shouldn’t go to jail over this. He pushed out of his seat and decided to get to work. “I’ll look into the computer records. Maybe there’s something wrong with the system’s code, and it’s no one’s fault.”
“Are we sure it’s Joker who’s dead and not some look-alike?” Dick had to bring it up because it really did seem impossible that Joker died.
“There will be an autopsy to confirm,” Bruce informed him. “And, should all results remain conclusive, the body will be cremated.”
“Brain explodes and barbecue. You know what? I’m gonna go find Jason and invite him to the celebration.”
“Dick -”
Tim didn’t hear the rest, already rushing to the Batcave and the computer before the two could start figuring out what to do themselves. Likely Batman would be there for the autopsy, and Nightwing would go looking for Red Hood to share the good news if he could. Robin though…
Robin had to check if it was his fault.
Thing was, two months ago, Tim was brainstorming with his team on ways to keep bad guys in jail, and an idea came out of Bart that was just… way too convenient. “It’s a shame they keep leaving the hospital. What if they just kept finding things wrong with them or kept them from getting out of bed? Then they couldn’t be bad guys!”
“Like how?” Conner waved a chip around as he spoke, not believing it for one second. “They keep breaking their legs or something?”
“I dunno! I don’t know what they do in hospitals!”
Most of them didn’t, having healing factors or invulnerability, which got Tim thinking. Hospitals needed to constantly verify if their information was correct. At shift changes, they gave reports to the next one taking their patient. Computers were used to chart details not always covered in the hand-off and where orders were given and confirmed. If even one detail was off or erased without any communication between them, errors occurred. People had their medication doubled. They’re given the wrong amount for their weight and age. Timing was everything with dosages. An order can fall to the side. A single missing or misspelled word can change the outcome of a patient’s treatment. The difference of a decimal point or a 0 not being there was phantasmal. A single computer programming error could keep an inpatient under sedation forever.
So Tim made an error.
A single programming error linked to Joker that made a decimal point disappear and reappear at random. It was just supposed to incapacitate him, not kill him! Why didn’t the nurses talk to each other? The doctors? Anyone! Literally anyone looking at Joker’s electronic file could have found this error, thought it was odd, and said something was off.
Maybe someone had seen it. Maybe they didn’t care.
Finding the reports and the notes on Arkham’s database, Tim could only come to one conclusion: if he hadn’t made that coding ‘error’ on their systems, no one would have had an excuse to OD Joker’s medication. There would be a full investigation, a deep dive into the system’s coding, and more interviews than anyone could imagine. They would get to the bottom of Joker’s death, even if most of the world just wanted it to happen.
But Dick had a point. They had to know it was really Joker who died and not some bystander. If it were anyone other than Joker…
Tim shivered at the possibility he was responsible for anyone’s death, even that monster. Hopefully it was just that monster. Just him.
He covered his tracks well. It was barely any coding changes either. It wouldn’t happen again. He wasn’t messing with any medical coding again for the rest of his life.
Honestly, it was a little funny how easy it was to kill the Joker.