Jake digests my statement for a while, mulling over it in his
calculating brain, probably trying to figure out everything I mean without
actually asking.
"Why did you get married? It couldn't have been easy for you, being Batman and all." Any moron would say I married Lydia because I knocked her up. But Lydia and I knew that wasn't true. She never would have let me drag her to the courthouse if it was.
"Because Lydia understood everything. She knew just how I felt even before I felt it. She knew me better than anyone." There's no way I could have married anyone else and still managed to be Batman for such a long time.
Stubborn, hot-headed, and intolerant of weakness Lydia might have been, but she never asked anything more of you than you should have to give.
"Lydia died of a disease called Sense Dehabilitation Syndrome. Do you know what that is?" Jake nods.
"It means that after losing the superficial senses that she swore she didn't need, she slowly went blind, deaf, and lost all feeling in her body. The night she died, she had already gone blind and had lost half of her nervous system. Imagine the kind of hell that would be, unable to see anything around you, unable to even feel the bed you're laying in, and then slowly going into complete nothing when you stop hearing your own breathing." For Lydia it was ten times the hell because she hated the weakness that she couldn't control.
Jake stares, not on the edge of his seat just yet, but getting there.
"Now imagine the only person you have, your own husband, leaving you to go into that complete nothing alone." I finish miserably, dropping my head into my hands.
It was my final sin because of Batman. I won't make another.
"But her death wasn't because of Batman." Jake murmurs.
"The fact that she died alone was." I growl. "I went out, ran around the city, stopped a couple of purse snatchers, foiled a couple of convenient store holdups, instead of staying with her when she needed me to."
I can just hear Wayne's acerbic reply: We all have to make sacrifices.
"If she was as understanding as you say, she would have known that you needed to go out there. That other people needed you. You didn't sacrifice her to save strangers. She probably could have kept you. She sacrificed you." Ah, kid doesn't know. Kid doesn't feel that pounding in your head, that feeling of obligation when you're sitting in Wayne's house, in Wayne's chair, your wife in Wayne's bed, your children being supported by Wayne's millions, that feeling that makes you drop everything else to do what he wanted you to do. Nothing could have kept me.
"Do you know what I do for a living?" Jake narrows his eyes for a second, confused by the sudden change of subject.
"Everyone knows what you do. You're the head of Wayne-Powers International."
"That's right. You know how I ended up with that cushy job?" The kid nods, as if he's finally got it.
"You inherited it." I glance around me, taking in once again the opulence of Wayne Manor, the fact that barely anything in this house actually belongs to me in the true sense of the word.
And then I feel guilty. How could I not be grateful for this? I was willing enough to take it back when I was 17, living with my mom, my little brother, and my pregnant girlfriend. I jumped all over the idea that I'd never have to worry about money, a home, a job, anything for the rest of my life except for Batman.
But then again, that's probably how Wayne wanted it. I wouldn't have anything else to concern me but the primary thing: Batman.
"What would you have done if you didn't inherit all this?" Jake asks.
Like I know. I've never had a chance to wonder before.
"I don't know."
"Then why are you upset about it? You didn't have any plans for your future." When you're around people who are young, you feel younger. You act younger, you think younger, and you remember better what it was like when you were younger. When you're around older people, all you can think about is how old you are.
But when you're around younger people, sometimes you pick up their impatience and temper too.
"That's not the point." I snap. "The point is that I shouldn't have had my future decided for me. Even if I didn't know what I was going to do, I should have had to figure it out on my own. I shouldn't have had everything thought out and planned already, so I wouldn't have to do any kind of thinking for myself." Years of bitterness, years of dragging myself to the corporate world I hate comes to the surface until I feel like I could hate Wayne for leaving it to me.
Jake runs a hand through his hair and smirks.
"For someone who's supposed to be the protector of a city, you sure aren't thinking. No one held a gun to your head. No one forced you to take over all this. If you didn't want to handle any of it, all you had to do was turn it down. Why should you have to control something you don't want to control?" This kid is about the bluntest and direct psychologist I've ever met.
"Wayne worked hard to get everything he did, even if I didn't. What the hell kind of person would I be if I just let his company get corrupted, his house sold to someone else, just forget I ever met him? If I didn't do it, who else would?" Jake raises an eyebrow.
"Exactly."
Well. Touché.
We both sit in silence for a moment.
"You wouldn't have suffered silently this long to quit now." Jake sneers, mocking me.
"You don't know the half of it." I say blandly.
"So what's the rest of it? What about your son?" My son. It's been so long since I had one that the memory of him seems like I dreamed it. It borders on that edge of a dream, when you wake up and you don't know if what you just saw was a memory of something real or a figment of your imagination.
"My son died." I reply simply. The only way I can talk about Ben is to keep it simple, honest, and to the point.
"How?"
"He jumped off a building." The word 'jumped' sticks in my throat and comes out hoarse. Jake pauses before continuing.
"Why?"
"Because he saw me smack Lydia over a fight about him and decided to do something about it." The more plainly I state it, the more shocking the facts become. And the longer Jake sits in silence before going on.
"Why were you fighting over him?" Because in my stupidity and my inexperience and my desperation for my son to love me I let him be Robin without teaching him the pitfalls of such a life and making him feel all the more inadequate that he couldn't measure up out there and then blamed it on his mother thus driving him to kill himself.
It all blends together in my head in one long connected regret.
"He wanted to be Robin. I let him. Lydia got in the way one night and we argued about it." I stop.
"Have you ever felt like all you wanted was to measure up to your father, Jake?" Jake shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
"I told you. I don't talk to my father."
"Why not?"
"I'm an orphan." Immediately I sense the hostility in him, the anger that he is one, and immediately I recognize all too late exactly what's wandered in to talk to me about Batman:
Another revenge-seeking youth.
"So that's it. Your parents are dead, gone, killed, whatever by some criminal that you know and no one else does. Cops won't believe you; friends won't help you, no family to go to. So you come to me, hoping I'll do something about it, right?" Jake shakes his head.
"That's not it. I don't give a damn if my parents are alive or dead. I'm an orphan, not a wronged child." I should have known that those are the only types that are attracted to Batman. Troubled kids are the only people that can possibly fall into this line of work.
I refuse to do what Wayne did. Just collect more and more of them until they all learn the truth and hate me for it.
"Forget it, kid. I'm not helping you. You're not getting into the cave, and I'll be damned if you're going anywhere near a suit. No one's getting into that life. Not while I'm alive." Jake sighs, aggravated.
"You aren't getting it. I'm not bent on revenge! I have no parents. I'm an orphan. They weren't murdered in front of me or anything. I'm not ruined for life. I just never had any and I never wanted any and I could care less about what happened to them. And why won't you let anyone live that life? What is so horrible about it anyways?" Even worse. A kid with no family or home that sees his home in being Batman.
"Haven't you listened to a word I've said? Being Batman will consume your entire life! You can't have a life outside of it! It becomes your existence, your only reason for living. You practically forget who you are and become just another person to wear the suit!"
"You had a life. I thought Batman wasn't allowed to have that."
"He's not. I broke the rules and I should have realized that you can't have both." My problem was that I already had one the moment I became Batman. I should have abandoned one of them. I practically did, but I abandoned the wrong one.
"I don't want to be Batman, Mr. McGinnis. I have no inclination to put myself what you've put yourself through." Jake says firmly.
"Then you agree with me that it's no kind of life for anyone."
"No, I don't. It was a good enough life for you for a very long time. It was a good enough life for everyone before you."
"It was good enough for Wayne because he didn't have anything else. I did. He shouldn't have let me do it. And I shouldn't have let my son." I don't realize that there's tears going down my face until I feel them splash onto my hands.
"Batman needed his Robin, "I continue, ignoring my weeping. "And I ignored him most of his life until Batman needed him, and then I just let him go out there, endanger his life. I knew all he wanted was to live up to my expectations, and I still let him to try to live up to them when I knew he would either do it or die trying. Then I hit my wife because I was upset that she wouldn't let Robin fight just like Batman did, and he died because of it." Even to this day I'm convinced that I didn't smack Lydia. I couldn't have. Batman did it.
I didn't shove my son out there. He admired Batman. Batman made him want to go out there.
I didn't leave my wife when she was dying, or miss every significant event in my children's lives. I had to go be Batman.
It's all Batman's fault.
"Why did you get married? It couldn't have been easy for you, being Batman and all." Any moron would say I married Lydia because I knocked her up. But Lydia and I knew that wasn't true. She never would have let me drag her to the courthouse if it was.
"Because Lydia understood everything. She knew just how I felt even before I felt it. She knew me better than anyone." There's no way I could have married anyone else and still managed to be Batman for such a long time.
Stubborn, hot-headed, and intolerant of weakness Lydia might have been, but she never asked anything more of you than you should have to give.
"Lydia died of a disease called Sense Dehabilitation Syndrome. Do you know what that is?" Jake nods.
"It means that after losing the superficial senses that she swore she didn't need, she slowly went blind, deaf, and lost all feeling in her body. The night she died, she had already gone blind and had lost half of her nervous system. Imagine the kind of hell that would be, unable to see anything around you, unable to even feel the bed you're laying in, and then slowly going into complete nothing when you stop hearing your own breathing." For Lydia it was ten times the hell because she hated the weakness that she couldn't control.
Jake stares, not on the edge of his seat just yet, but getting there.
"Now imagine the only person you have, your own husband, leaving you to go into that complete nothing alone." I finish miserably, dropping my head into my hands.
It was my final sin because of Batman. I won't make another.
"But her death wasn't because of Batman." Jake murmurs.
"The fact that she died alone was." I growl. "I went out, ran around the city, stopped a couple of purse snatchers, foiled a couple of convenient store holdups, instead of staying with her when she needed me to."
I can just hear Wayne's acerbic reply: We all have to make sacrifices.
"If she was as understanding as you say, she would have known that you needed to go out there. That other people needed you. You didn't sacrifice her to save strangers. She probably could have kept you. She sacrificed you." Ah, kid doesn't know. Kid doesn't feel that pounding in your head, that feeling of obligation when you're sitting in Wayne's house, in Wayne's chair, your wife in Wayne's bed, your children being supported by Wayne's millions, that feeling that makes you drop everything else to do what he wanted you to do. Nothing could have kept me.
"Do you know what I do for a living?" Jake narrows his eyes for a second, confused by the sudden change of subject.
"Everyone knows what you do. You're the head of Wayne-Powers International."
"That's right. You know how I ended up with that cushy job?" The kid nods, as if he's finally got it.
"You inherited it." I glance around me, taking in once again the opulence of Wayne Manor, the fact that barely anything in this house actually belongs to me in the true sense of the word.
And then I feel guilty. How could I not be grateful for this? I was willing enough to take it back when I was 17, living with my mom, my little brother, and my pregnant girlfriend. I jumped all over the idea that I'd never have to worry about money, a home, a job, anything for the rest of my life except for Batman.
But then again, that's probably how Wayne wanted it. I wouldn't have anything else to concern me but the primary thing: Batman.
"What would you have done if you didn't inherit all this?" Jake asks.
Like I know. I've never had a chance to wonder before.
"I don't know."
"Then why are you upset about it? You didn't have any plans for your future." When you're around people who are young, you feel younger. You act younger, you think younger, and you remember better what it was like when you were younger. When you're around older people, all you can think about is how old you are.
But when you're around younger people, sometimes you pick up their impatience and temper too.
"That's not the point." I snap. "The point is that I shouldn't have had my future decided for me. Even if I didn't know what I was going to do, I should have had to figure it out on my own. I shouldn't have had everything thought out and planned already, so I wouldn't have to do any kind of thinking for myself." Years of bitterness, years of dragging myself to the corporate world I hate comes to the surface until I feel like I could hate Wayne for leaving it to me.
Jake runs a hand through his hair and smirks.
"For someone who's supposed to be the protector of a city, you sure aren't thinking. No one held a gun to your head. No one forced you to take over all this. If you didn't want to handle any of it, all you had to do was turn it down. Why should you have to control something you don't want to control?" This kid is about the bluntest and direct psychologist I've ever met.
"Wayne worked hard to get everything he did, even if I didn't. What the hell kind of person would I be if I just let his company get corrupted, his house sold to someone else, just forget I ever met him? If I didn't do it, who else would?" Jake raises an eyebrow.
"Exactly."
Well. Touché.
We both sit in silence for a moment.
"You wouldn't have suffered silently this long to quit now." Jake sneers, mocking me.
"You don't know the half of it." I say blandly.
"So what's the rest of it? What about your son?" My son. It's been so long since I had one that the memory of him seems like I dreamed it. It borders on that edge of a dream, when you wake up and you don't know if what you just saw was a memory of something real or a figment of your imagination.
"My son died." I reply simply. The only way I can talk about Ben is to keep it simple, honest, and to the point.
"How?"
"He jumped off a building." The word 'jumped' sticks in my throat and comes out hoarse. Jake pauses before continuing.
"Why?"
"Because he saw me smack Lydia over a fight about him and decided to do something about it." The more plainly I state it, the more shocking the facts become. And the longer Jake sits in silence before going on.
"Why were you fighting over him?" Because in my stupidity and my inexperience and my desperation for my son to love me I let him be Robin without teaching him the pitfalls of such a life and making him feel all the more inadequate that he couldn't measure up out there and then blamed it on his mother thus driving him to kill himself.
It all blends together in my head in one long connected regret.
"He wanted to be Robin. I let him. Lydia got in the way one night and we argued about it." I stop.
"Have you ever felt like all you wanted was to measure up to your father, Jake?" Jake shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
"I told you. I don't talk to my father."
"Why not?"
"I'm an orphan." Immediately I sense the hostility in him, the anger that he is one, and immediately I recognize all too late exactly what's wandered in to talk to me about Batman:
Another revenge-seeking youth.
"So that's it. Your parents are dead, gone, killed, whatever by some criminal that you know and no one else does. Cops won't believe you; friends won't help you, no family to go to. So you come to me, hoping I'll do something about it, right?" Jake shakes his head.
"That's not it. I don't give a damn if my parents are alive or dead. I'm an orphan, not a wronged child." I should have known that those are the only types that are attracted to Batman. Troubled kids are the only people that can possibly fall into this line of work.
I refuse to do what Wayne did. Just collect more and more of them until they all learn the truth and hate me for it.
"Forget it, kid. I'm not helping you. You're not getting into the cave, and I'll be damned if you're going anywhere near a suit. No one's getting into that life. Not while I'm alive." Jake sighs, aggravated.
"You aren't getting it. I'm not bent on revenge! I have no parents. I'm an orphan. They weren't murdered in front of me or anything. I'm not ruined for life. I just never had any and I never wanted any and I could care less about what happened to them. And why won't you let anyone live that life? What is so horrible about it anyways?" Even worse. A kid with no family or home that sees his home in being Batman.
"Haven't you listened to a word I've said? Being Batman will consume your entire life! You can't have a life outside of it! It becomes your existence, your only reason for living. You practically forget who you are and become just another person to wear the suit!"
"You had a life. I thought Batman wasn't allowed to have that."
"He's not. I broke the rules and I should have realized that you can't have both." My problem was that I already had one the moment I became Batman. I should have abandoned one of them. I practically did, but I abandoned the wrong one.
"I don't want to be Batman, Mr. McGinnis. I have no inclination to put myself what you've put yourself through." Jake says firmly.
"Then you agree with me that it's no kind of life for anyone."
"No, I don't. It was a good enough life for you for a very long time. It was a good enough life for everyone before you."
"It was good enough for Wayne because he didn't have anything else. I did. He shouldn't have let me do it. And I shouldn't have let my son." I don't realize that there's tears going down my face until I feel them splash onto my hands.
"Batman needed his Robin, "I continue, ignoring my weeping. "And I ignored him most of his life until Batman needed him, and then I just let him go out there, endanger his life. I knew all he wanted was to live up to my expectations, and I still let him to try to live up to them when I knew he would either do it or die trying. Then I hit my wife because I was upset that she wouldn't let Robin fight just like Batman did, and he died because of it." Even to this day I'm convinced that I didn't smack Lydia. I couldn't have. Batman did it.
I didn't shove my son out there. He admired Batman. Batman made him want to go out there.
I didn't leave my wife when she was dying, or miss every significant event in my children's lives. I had to go be Batman.
It's all Batman's fault.