fallen
i see you as a victim of your own virtue. you have given your life to humanity, and thus the world praises you. your virtue must be so large now. so convincing, it is the mockery of natural instinct to preserve the species. a noble cause. but i mourn your one mistake, and that is Batman. your failure lies in losing your Self by creating a fiction and then becoming it. they love you, Bruce–right now they do. how can they not? you are better than a God; you intercepted the rhetoric. you materialized an ideal in a world of words and immaterial gods. you are the illusion of Batman built upon the illusion of purpose and certainty. you live for the world. but how, Bruce? all you have done is inventively reinforce the same story; in the name of morality, of good and evil. i see you selfless, and defined by the world, caught in a tragic dependency from the moment you wore the costume and became an icon for order. you gave them Batman; they expect it now. and what have you now but fear? is your function really to protect the species, or to avoid the potential disappointment and scorn of the world? you, Batman, are the symptom of an ideology. your good and their good are as much of a lie as their God. if you reject the fiction you entered, the world will lean closer to the stage to hear the word. if you disillusion them now, you will become their next evil. remember, first there was the word, then there was God. it’s all lies, Bruce, all lies. you are Batman. and in pursuit of Truth and goodness for all, you lost the one thing you can be sure of.
