The catastrophic night has ended.
At dawn, Gotham is at its most radiant. The clouds have not yet obscured the sky, so a bright, eye-piercing red sun hangs on the horizon, like a heart starting to beat anew.
Batman took the Scarecrow and Penguin Man to the Gotham Police Department while Peter was responsible for bringing back the people in the underground freezer of Brude Haven.
Before Peter left, Jason who was still in the cage stopped him. Peter looked back at him and said, "I'm sorry, but you can't get out just yet. The symbiont needs time to heal your body."
"Get that thing out." Jason said in a hoarse voice: "I don't need it to…"
"That's Batman's order." Peter shook his head and replied, "He hopes the symbiont can heal your wounds but doesn't trust alien life to roam outside of the cage. So you'll have to stay here until it's done healing."
"As you can see, I have no power to change his decision. Also, I don't have the key to the cage. The symbiont will provide you with all the energy you need, so you won't feel hungry or thirsty. Maybe after a good night's sleep, it will all be over."
"Batman's lapdog, huh?" Jason stared at Peter and said: "You'd do anything he tells you to, would you kill for him?"
"I don't kill people." Peter turned his head back, adjusting the equipment on his wrist, and replied: "Usually, I don't argue with him. There's no point. I do what he tells me to."
Jason's lips were tightly pressed together and turned pale. He shook the bars of the cage energetically, watching Peter about to walk away. He finally took a deep breath and lowered his head, asking softly.
"Has Batman changed because of me?"
"I don't know. He was the same when I first met him."
"Did he ask you to cut open Penguin Man's body, to poison him?"
"You sound a bit surprised, but as far as I know, Mr. Oswald is no saint. It's not until you see the coffin that you shed a tear. Under these circumstances, no one has the right to accuse Batman of being too extreme."
Jason was taken aback. He thought, I accuse Batman of being too extreme? Since I met Batman, I have not spent a day without blaming him for not being extreme enough.
"Have you ever seen a person on the brink of a mental breakdown?" Peter finally completely turned around, standing in front of the cage, looking at Jason and asked: "Have you visited a mental institution?"
Jason slowly shook his head, but continued to stare defiantly at Peter: "You can't convince me, kid. For Batman, you are the newcomer and you don't have any ideologies that could impress me."
"I'm simply describing a fact." Peter lowered his head, seeming to recall something and hesitated, apparently not wanting to say anything more.
Jason stared at him, his attitude irritated him. He said: "Do you think there's something I can't accept after all this? I spent a year under the Joker's torture. Could anything be worse?"
"If I told you the Joker wasn't actually serious about torturing you, how would you feel?"
Jason's hand gripping the bars bulged with veins. Peter, with the same expression, continued: "His real opponent has always been Batman, not you. You're just a means of torturing Batman."
"Of course, you'll think I'm showing off." Peter slowly licked his lips, easing his tension, but he continued: "One day, purely out of curiosity, I ventured into an abyss of thoughts."
Peter started to become more animated as he spoke, first he shrugged, then extended his hands palm up, indicating that he wasn't hiding anything.
"You can think of it as part of the Joker. This is the main reason why I actively connected with Batman."
Jason was drawn into his words, realizing that Peter was telling him that the appearance of this young man named Peter Parker in this world was not a coincidence, that it all might still be related to the Joker.
"But, he's not the Joker, not entirely... I don't know what he is, perhaps human, perhaps not."
Jason was puzzled by Peter's jumbled speech. He finally lost his patience and smacked the bars, demanding: "What are you trying to say?"
Peter pressed his lips together and replied: "Death is not the best revenge, but you have the power to turn it into a gift."
"What?"
"Have you ever seen a person on the brink of a mental breakdown?"
Jason finally realized that Peter wouldn't stop until he gets an answer, so he slowly shook his head.
"I've seen madmen." He answered: "Evil, brutal, indifferent, irrational."
"No, I'm not talking about those people." Peter refuted, "Those are just sick-minded bad seeds - no matter how crazy they are, they don't deserve sympathy. I'm talking about humans who are completely broken mentally."
Jason stared at him, having a bad premonition. Peter placed his hand on the table next to him, his knuckles slightly white from gripping, he licked his lips repeatedly, then said.
"I saw a piece of Shiller's memory there. Maybe he showed it to me, or maybe he left it there for everyone to see."
"What?"
"A child died; he was the doctor's patient, a very pitiful child born with a congenital heart disease. Very unfortunate, yet also fortunate. His parents allowed him to receive treatment in time."
"The operation was very successful; it was foreseeable that as long as he kept doing the same follow-up operations in the coming years, he would grow into a healthy child."
"But things didn't go that way." Peter shook his head and said, "His parents abandoned him."
Jason was unconsciously drawn in; he looked at Peter and asked: "Why?"
"Irrational, right?" A trace of anger appeared in Peter's tone, but it quickly disappeared, he said: "I have long realized that everyone's love is limited, especially limited for some people."
"In a peaceful and affluent situation, they do not stingy to make kind decisions. Kindness itself upholds their reputation and brings them benefits."
"But once situations change, not even that they are being threatened, but just when kindness no longer brings them enough benefits, they will make completely opposite choices."
Jason understood him. He's always been very clever, even more so than Batman when it comes to understanding and empathizing with others.
Or he should be like this, because he is not a wealthy young master. He was born in the bottom of Gotham, and for a long time, he was mingled in the most chaotic and evil areas of this city."
The kindness he has seen is limited, but he has witnessed countless moments when people abandon their kindness."
"That's it, the parents of this child gave up the treatment." Peter blinked and said, "They still had the means to continue, but they just chose not to."
"Doctors usually feel angry, right? They usually feel sad, helpless, disappointed in human nature. Watching a life they saved with all their strength fade away because of others' indifference is a very bad feeling."
"But this doctor is somewhat special." Peter rubbed the edge of the table with his finger and said, "This is the first time he perceives society and mankind in this way."
"He didn't feel saddened or helpless, he was just very curious. He wanted to know if they can be so indifferent under any circumstances. So, he conducted an experiment using his professional knowledge."
"Or maybe not professional, at least… he didn't study the part about professional ethics."
Peter's narrative was too obscure, and it took Jason a while to understand what he was saying. He asked, "You've seen this doctor's memories, what he did to that couple, right?"
Peter nodded and said: "I won't tell you what I saw. I won't speak it to anyone, but I can describe to you what happened to those parents."
"Did they have a mental breakdown?"
"Yes, and entirely due to external influence. The way to achieve this, it's much simpler than you imagined, almost effortless."
Peter took a deep breath, mentally prepared himself again, and then started to describe what he saw."
"At first, they would tear their clothes off with exaggerated movements, hit the wall with their shoulders or heads, pick their skin with their nails until it became bloody, reaching their fingers into any crevice of the other's body, just to tear off one of their organs."
"In the second stage, they start to become confused, not making loud noises like screams anymore, but sit in the same spot crying for more than twenty hours, maintaining a very awkward, very uncomfortable posture, not moving. If someone pulls them, they will react as if they have been attacked and let out screams and cries not humanly possible."
"Then they start to have hallucinations, constantly running away or waving their limbs with enough force to hurt themselves, towards the empty air, the hard walls, or anything else that hinders their movements."
"They regain the ability to speak again, but their speech is utterly illogical, mumbling about the same sentence over and over, or describing their hallucinations in a discordant tone, or mumbling about some period of their lives, saying it intermittently for several hours."
"Lastly, they start to become like helpless infants, losing all the abilities that a social person should have. They interpret everything in front of them as diffractive yet equal, blurring the recognition of all objects."
"They completely lose their sense of shame and morality, losing all the teachings social training has given them, they are totally unaware of what they are doing, they explore anything relying on their instincts. They have neither smell nor taste, they can see but do not recognise, they can remember but do not understand."
Peter's tone had already gone uncontrollably shaky, Jason could hear that he was trying hard to suppress his fear. Because he too felt the same way, he couldn't imagine what could torture a human into this state.
"What scares me the most," Peter took a deep breath before saying.
"When I saw such a person jumping from a high building, turning into a blossoming flower of blood, I sincerely wanted to thank God, thank him for his mercy, and praise his benevolence."
Pores all stood up, cold sweat ran down his hairline like a waterfall, Jason could almost hear the sound of his blood congealing in his veins, and it left him feeling as if he had fallen into an ice cave.
"So..." Peter took a step forward and was just a cage away from Jason. He said, "Please don't complain that anyone is not cruel enough, please, the world really does not need any more cruelty. Someone unseen has already made humanity suffer from this kind of torture beyond the bottom line."
"If you think not killing is the bottom line, then if something infuriates you into crossing the line one day, you would only be giving them a quick end."
"But if your bottom line is to kill or be killed, then sooner or later you will meet someone whom you think death is not enough to atone for their sins."
Peter took two steps back, shook his head and said: "Then you will start walking down this path——death is not the best revenge, you have the power to turn it into a gift."