The Joker's corpse was jostled, and the smile on that deathly pale face seemed to widen, as if he had seen Bruce being beaten by his father.
Batwoman, already affected by Joker Toxin, was even more confused now. Was everything an illusion? Was this not really his father? Was everything around him fake?
But the pain in his jaw proved that it was all real, and Thomas really had hit him for no apparent reason.
Why?
He struggled back to his feet, still covered in bottles of multicolored medicine, yet the madness in his heart seemed to have faded considerably with his father's punches.
Thomas folded his arms and looked at him coldly. "Get up, Bruce. How could you bully Alfred like this?"
"Well, Master Thomas, it's not quite what it looks like." Alfred grabbed one of Thomas's arms, but for the moment, he had no way to explain the tangled history between the Joker and Batwoman.
How could Thomas not know about the entanglement between Batwoman and the Joker?
On his Timeline, a thug had beaten Bruce to death in an alley. Thomas had then brutally beaten the robber to death with his fists, becoming Batwoman from that day onward.
But Martha had suffered too great a shock that night as well, and she became the Joker.
Thomas's entanglement with her had lasted a long time, until one day, Joker Martha used the same pistol that had killed their son to kill herself.
Those two trigger pulls had both taken away people precious to Thomas, which was why he always kept that pistol at his side.
For every Batwoman, the Joker was someone special.
"Open your eyes and take a look, Bruce. Your fiancée is already dead!" Thomas pointed behind him at the operating table, where the Joker still