After Martha left, Bruce looked up at the second-floor window. The moment Batman's gaze met his, Bruce smiled.
Batman drew the curtains, settled back into his recliner, and continued reading Sherlock Holmes. He had reached the exciting part of A Study in Scarlet, where Holmes was examining the two pills, one poisonous and one harmless. His method of testing them was to feed them to a puppy.
Thank God there were no animal protection laws in that era, Batman mused aimlessly. Otherwise, Holmes would have had to experiment on people, since there were still no human protection organizations. Yet that was precisely an important reason for humanity's technological progress.
Thoughts like this often surfaced in Batman's mind. They sounded like bizarre Hell jokes, but Batman knew they were merely the sounds of his other side endlessly battering against its cage and leaking through.
He knew better than anyone that, just as Bruce had said, the line separating him from those lunatics was not very clear. Or rather, there had never been any line at all. It was not even a matter of two sides of the same coin—they were exactly alike.
To some extent, the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Wayne had saved Batman. They had completely cut off the possibility of him growing into a completely unrestrained psychopath amid privileged circumstances. The flames of vengeance had overwhelmed those mad parts of him and pushed him entirely to the opposite side of criminals, allowing him to become the Dark Knight.
For revenge, Batman had used his immense willpower to completely suppress the negative entity that coexisted with his extraordinary intelligence. But that thing was Batman himself; the seal was never absolute. Thus, Batman could often hear certain noises or feel thoughts and emotions influenced by that negative entity, usually dark