Concept: inspired by @bluerosefox and they're work about danny demanding the jokers soul. I wanted to write the joker and Danny's interactions too.
Danny groaned as the next set of paperwork was slipped onto his desk.
He would slip on his own banana peel and fall down the stairs.
Gothem would celebrate that night with alcohol and music. The ghost zone would brace itself for the trial...
Honestly it was bound to happen. It wasn't that danny was surprised. But it would be a long drawn out case. When a human dies they become more of what they are after all.
It's like their souls are condensed to make up their ghostly form. As if their passions were their hearts.
For some that was amazing. Fiery passion can be useful in all sorts of situations, but for joker this would be a nightmare come true.
The ghost looked at him his eyes worried, almost teary.
"Should I alarm the Gothamites of the infinite realms."
Danny thought for a minute, let out a low hum, and thought some more.
He knew what he could do in theory.
If he was to judge the jokers soul in the room that he dies in, the ghost zone would be free from his wrath.
But if the joker defeated him in combat he shuddered at what that monster would do with all the power in the afterlife.
He didn't really think joker could take him down, but knowing others thought the same for him and his predecessor....
So Danny was left with one option.
"Call my knights," he commanded
The fright knight was captain. Head of the army and keeper of the soul shredder.
Danny only needed to borrow it, but when he explained the predicament the ghost dropped to his knees, the metal clang sound echoed through the office. The fright knight began to speak,
"You wish to spare me from looking into the eyes of evil, and I thank you my liege. But I can not and shall not send you alone to your second death."
Danny told him to rise to get off the dirty floor, but he continued.
"As captain of the guards my liege is only under my obligation to the knights under me."
Danny remembered the conversation that made that a possibility. That changed the priority of obligation completely and totally, hopefully for once and for all.
Danny hid a small smile and told him to get of the floor again
It didn't take long to find joker amoung the living. He was surrounded by weeping souls unable to move on.
Danny clutched his scale. A gift from clockwork, to a "good and fair king to continue to strive to be better."
Clockwork had, in the end taken up the role of advisor. As such he stood by Danny's right side, his captain to the left.
When they entered the room he was already dead.
The soul of the man was laughing hysterically.
He got louder when he spotted them.
Danny sighed and despite the noise tried to read him his rights.
He argued with each and every one in nonsensical logic.
The third time Danny slapped him across his ghostly face, leaving frostbite and cold crystals on his white cheek.
"I am not batman, I am death. I will not play as he does, I am the ghost king, death himself."
After the rights were read Danny peared into his soul, sticky and tar like, it made him feel ill. He put on the extra gauntlet brought and separated the dead from his deeds.
It felt like lifting a semi, and weighed him down about a foot.
The joker cackled with pride. Danny wondered if he didn't understand the gravity of the situation, or if he didn't care.
Then with the other hand he did the same to himself.
Both sets of deeds were set on the scale at the same time. Danny barely caught the peice of his own ghostly form.
The scale broke the table on its way down, jokers sludgelike, corrupted deeds stuck to it. The scale hadn't twitched once to the other side.
The knights went to pick up the piece of soul and put it back. It took three of them.
Danny put his deeds back were they belonged.
When everything was dead and done, joker was declared guilty and chained down, something he escaped out the window and around the block to avoid.
Danny took out the soul shredder.
It wasn't the fright knights job to play executioner.
Then the joker was blindfolded, he made this difficult via attempted biting, but once it was done, it was done.
Danny didn't ask for a last word.
He took the sword and swung as he had been taught. And as the jokers very soul was torn, the bells rang in Gotham for the first time in Years.
