I'm not sure what you'd find preferable. Battler discovered the truth, yes, and he didn't think it was worth sharing. That's not hiding from the truth; quite the contrary, he was taking all the responsibility for knowing it onto himself. He wasn't hiding from the truth, he was just hiding the truth.
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"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -Vaarsuvius, Order of the Stick