Don't Believe Everything You Read On the Internet

Chapter 50

              Joker lay on the ground, continuously sobbing as the Bat Family looked at him with guilt and sympathy. All of them knew that they would have to tell Joker the truth about Bruce and Batman, but no one wanted to be the person to tell him. Still, he can't stay heartbroken like this. Besides, Batman would lose boyfriend and his job if Joker continued to believe he was dead. Bruce took a deep breath and walked up to Joker slowly.

               "Joker, uh, I need to tell you something about Batman," Bruce told Joker.

           "What? Do you have his will or something?" Joker asked, tears still spilling out of his eyes.

           "No, I just wanted to say that... Batman isn't necessarily gone."

          "Well, his body is technically laying on the ground."

          "I'm trying to say that Batman isn't as dead as you think."

           "How the hell would you know?"

           "Because, I, um, he's right here," Bruce told Joker while pointing towards himself, specifically his chest. Joker's eyes went from filled with sorrow to filled with anger.

               "Are you seriously pulling that whole 'Batman will live on in our hearts' crap? This isn't a freaking Disney movie, you know," Joker said, lowering his eyebrows.

                "No no, what I meant was that-"

                 "BRUCE IS  BATMAN FOR GOD SAKE!" Barbara yelled, not being able to stand all of this nervousness going on. Joker's anger flushed away as he was suddenly filled with new information. He was 70% sure that Barbara was lying, but something in his gut was putting two and two together. Something about Bruce and Batman being the same person just made sense, but it still felt wrong for some reason. Joker still needed more proof, though.

                "So, how long have you been Batman, exactly? Is it like a monarchy or something where it's just passed down through the family?" Joker asked Bruce, still a bit hesitant on the recent development.

                "Actually, I've always been Batman. I'm the one you've been fighting all of these years, Joker," Bruce told Joker.

                "How are you not super old, then?"

              "The same reason that you aren't."

              "Why haven't you told me this beforehand?"

              "You were a criminal beforehand."

              "Yeah, but not when we were dating!"

             "You just placed a gas tank in my home."

            "Well, we were going through a rough spot."

             "So, does this change anything for you?"

              "I still love you. Now I know that your great personality is attached to a beautiful man."

           "I'm so glad you understand."

           "Well, it makes a lot of sense, almost too much sense. It's just that now a lot of my life's problems are solved, so I don't know what I need to solve."

           "I know what you mean. This relationship has been really messy, so being at a happy spot is so out of the ordinary. The only problem that I can think of now is that my house is literally uninhabitable."