It's never the actual death that hurts anymore. Most pain is selfish pain
anyways. Pain that YOU'VE lost the person, pain that YOU'LL never see them
again. Very rarely is it over the fact that THEY'VE lost their life,
THEY'VE been cheated out of spending time with you.
What kills is the loneliness. The knowledge that they're gone, and you're completely alone. Wayne Manor, because of its inherent emptiness even when it's filled with people, makes you feel that 100 times worse.
You can methodically and mechanically make the arrangements, watch the men pull the sheet over her head, watch the people who barely knew her kneel down by her coffin as if they did, watch the coffin get lowered into the ground, and walk away without shedding a tear.
But there's no way you can wander around Wayne Manor, feeling how completely alone you are now that she's gone.
I sit here, after the funeral, after wishing I could run screaming back to Lydia's grave, dig frantically with my hands, somehow conjure life back into her dead body, and I have plenty of time to think.
It all goes by so casually that it's like it never happened. Lydia Meraviglia McGinnis died and was buried as if it all happened in 10 minutes. In reality it's been about a week, but who bothers to look at the time when this has been happening so regularly?
Everyone argues that you have your daughters. Well. Isn't that grand? Isn't that just so fortunate?
Everyone argues, nobody understands. Nobody understands like Lydia did that I'm always alone. I can be with hundreds of people, and yet I'm my own entity, in my own world, a world that is populated by me only.
I'm alone because I'm Batman.
I spent too much time at Wayne-Powers. Who gives a damn about the corporate bureaucracy? Who cares if the many documents are shredded and the toxic waste is dumped into the clean harbors of Gotham? Apparently I did.
I got sucked into that vacuum because I'm Batman.
I get up. I don't care where my feet take me. I'm slowly dawning on a realization that seems crazy, that Terry McGinnis would never believe, but that this new nameless being I've become knows that the realization will kill Terry McGinnis for good. And the being doesn't care, wants Terry to die.
I missed lives being created, people being shaped, my own children's childhood and my wife's subsequent downfall because I was Batman. The perception I'm supposed to have gained was nowhere when I failed to see how fighting affected my son day in and day out. The skills I'm supposed to have learned haven't gotten me anywhere.
I left Lydia to die so I could go save a couple strangers.
I feel reason, logic, and normal mentality slowly leaving my body in a great release that's both a relief and a shock.
I find myself back down in the cave. Every great moment of my life, it's led me down into this collection of woes and deep-throated revenge. That's just about the only thing that's ever come into or out of this place. Classic unanswered cries for revenge.
As quickly and swiftly as Lydia left me, I feel my rage slowly being assigned to the one thing that I've managed to keep it away from for years.
Batman.
It starts slowly, like correct revenge does. I take a batarang and toss it haphazardly. It crashes into one of Wayne's many display cases. Those cases drive me crazy. Why would you immortalize this? Treat it like it's some kind of eternal conquest, that'll keep going on and on and being remembered as long as people live?
How long did he expect this cycle of slow death and insanity to go on?
The breaking glass cuts through both the silence and the tension in my body. I pick up some conveniently shaped stalactite. Feeling it in my hands makes me feel like some caveman with an animal instinct he can't control.
What the hell. I've become little more than a common predator anyways.
I begin smashing the computers, destroying the monuments, crushing decades of achievement in mere seconds.
I expect myself to have some kind of out of body experience, to not know what I'm doing, to feel like I'm not in control of myself. Maybe then later on, if I come to, I can justify it to myself.
But I don't. I'm in completely control of myself. I might not know who I am anymore, but whoever I am I'm making every swing consciously. And somewhere, in some little spot in the back of my mind, I've convinced myself that I'm not going to come to, that this state of cold emotionless stone is going to be me forever.
Electrical components fly every where as I pound mercilessly into the machinery.
How could he do this to me? Leave me in the throes of responsibility and obligation?
How could Wayne just drop this world on my shoulders?
How could he just pass this curse onto me?
I find that I've broken or destroyed nearly every piece of equipment in the cave and search around wildly for something else to take revenge on.
I see the suit lying on the table. I grab it.
I'll destroy it. I'll kill it like it's killed me and everything I love.
I fall to my knees. My fingers rip apart the material; savagely tear away fabric from circuit. The suit lies in pieces before me.
I'm done. Done forever.
I get up, heaving and running fingers through my graying hair, as if my body's just realized the superhuman destruction I've inflicted and it's rushing to catch up.
I quit, Wayne. I quit, like I should have done years ago, like I should have done the moment you were gone, the moment my son died. Like all the times you told me to quit, even though deep down in your little Bat-heart you knew that I wouldn't, were paralyzed with fear when I almost did because it meant that you would have to quit too.
It's over. Batman and I have murdered each other.
What kills is the loneliness. The knowledge that they're gone, and you're completely alone. Wayne Manor, because of its inherent emptiness even when it's filled with people, makes you feel that 100 times worse.
You can methodically and mechanically make the arrangements, watch the men pull the sheet over her head, watch the people who barely knew her kneel down by her coffin as if they did, watch the coffin get lowered into the ground, and walk away without shedding a tear.
But there's no way you can wander around Wayne Manor, feeling how completely alone you are now that she's gone.
I sit here, after the funeral, after wishing I could run screaming back to Lydia's grave, dig frantically with my hands, somehow conjure life back into her dead body, and I have plenty of time to think.
It all goes by so casually that it's like it never happened. Lydia Meraviglia McGinnis died and was buried as if it all happened in 10 minutes. In reality it's been about a week, but who bothers to look at the time when this has been happening so regularly?
Everyone argues that you have your daughters. Well. Isn't that grand? Isn't that just so fortunate?
Everyone argues, nobody understands. Nobody understands like Lydia did that I'm always alone. I can be with hundreds of people, and yet I'm my own entity, in my own world, a world that is populated by me only.
I'm alone because I'm Batman.
I spent too much time at Wayne-Powers. Who gives a damn about the corporate bureaucracy? Who cares if the many documents are shredded and the toxic waste is dumped into the clean harbors of Gotham? Apparently I did.
I got sucked into that vacuum because I'm Batman.
I get up. I don't care where my feet take me. I'm slowly dawning on a realization that seems crazy, that Terry McGinnis would never believe, but that this new nameless being I've become knows that the realization will kill Terry McGinnis for good. And the being doesn't care, wants Terry to die.
I missed lives being created, people being shaped, my own children's childhood and my wife's subsequent downfall because I was Batman. The perception I'm supposed to have gained was nowhere when I failed to see how fighting affected my son day in and day out. The skills I'm supposed to have learned haven't gotten me anywhere.
I left Lydia to die so I could go save a couple strangers.
I feel reason, logic, and normal mentality slowly leaving my body in a great release that's both a relief and a shock.
I find myself back down in the cave. Every great moment of my life, it's led me down into this collection of woes and deep-throated revenge. That's just about the only thing that's ever come into or out of this place. Classic unanswered cries for revenge.
As quickly and swiftly as Lydia left me, I feel my rage slowly being assigned to the one thing that I've managed to keep it away from for years.
Batman.
It starts slowly, like correct revenge does. I take a batarang and toss it haphazardly. It crashes into one of Wayne's many display cases. Those cases drive me crazy. Why would you immortalize this? Treat it like it's some kind of eternal conquest, that'll keep going on and on and being remembered as long as people live?
How long did he expect this cycle of slow death and insanity to go on?
The breaking glass cuts through both the silence and the tension in my body. I pick up some conveniently shaped stalactite. Feeling it in my hands makes me feel like some caveman with an animal instinct he can't control.
What the hell. I've become little more than a common predator anyways.
I begin smashing the computers, destroying the monuments, crushing decades of achievement in mere seconds.
I expect myself to have some kind of out of body experience, to not know what I'm doing, to feel like I'm not in control of myself. Maybe then later on, if I come to, I can justify it to myself.
But I don't. I'm in completely control of myself. I might not know who I am anymore, but whoever I am I'm making every swing consciously. And somewhere, in some little spot in the back of my mind, I've convinced myself that I'm not going to come to, that this state of cold emotionless stone is going to be me forever.
Electrical components fly every where as I pound mercilessly into the machinery.
How could he do this to me? Leave me in the throes of responsibility and obligation?
How could Wayne just drop this world on my shoulders?
How could he just pass this curse onto me?
I find that I've broken or destroyed nearly every piece of equipment in the cave and search around wildly for something else to take revenge on.
I see the suit lying on the table. I grab it.
I'll destroy it. I'll kill it like it's killed me and everything I love.
I fall to my knees. My fingers rip apart the material; savagely tear away fabric from circuit. The suit lies in pieces before me.
I'm done. Done forever.
I get up, heaving and running fingers through my graying hair, as if my body's just realized the superhuman destruction I've inflicted and it's rushing to catch up.
I quit, Wayne. I quit, like I should have done years ago, like I should have done the moment you were gone, the moment my son died. Like all the times you told me to quit, even though deep down in your little Bat-heart you knew that I wouldn't, were paralyzed with fear when I almost did because it meant that you would have to quit too.
It's over. Batman and I have murdered each other.