Imagine you are Jack Drake. You have a good life. You have a job you love, a son you love, and a wife you love— even if you're fighting right now. Your trip is almost over, just one more stop in Haiti and you can go home and focus on your family. Tim is going into high school, after all— he's going to need his parents around more often!
But everything goes horribly wrong. You're kidnapped and tortured and you're sure you're both going to die and god, what's going to happen to Tim? You're losing consciousness fast as the heat of the flames sets in and all you can think about is your son, alone in Gotham, waiting for parents that can never come back.
Then Batman shows up. He takes down your captors and frees you both and it's all over, thank god. You're crying and laughing and so relieved, and you finally take your first sip of water in days, and then suddenly your head is spinning. You see Janet hit the ground next to you and Batman is yelling something but you can't hear over the sound of screaming— your own, you realize distantly— and you're so confused because it was over. Janet was right next to you but now she's on the ground and her chest isn't moving and batman is yelling— there's so much noise and you want to do something, you want to help — but you can't make yourself move and you're falling falling falling and all you can think is at least Batman is here, at least he can do something, he can save Janet, he can—
You wake up in a hospital bed. Your son is slumped over in the chair next to you and for a moment, everything is okay because at least he is safe, but then the doctors come in and everything comes crashing down. You've been in a coma for months, you're completely paralyzed from the waist down, and Janet is dead. Despite everything you survived together, your wife is dead. You don't understand why it wasn't you. She was better in every way— it should be her here to comfort Tim, not you. Why should you live and she die? Why did Batman save you when he should've saved her? He was supposed to save her— why didn't he save her? You don't think you can ever forgive him for failing to save her.
Eventually you get out of the hospital, and you begin catching up on what you missed. Tim tells you he was staying with your neighbor, Bruce Wayne, while you were in a coma, and the next time you see the man you nearly sob from gratitude. You don't know what you would've done if anything had happened to Tim because you weren't there, but Bruce stepped in to take care of him when you couldn't, and you'll never forget that.
Piece by piece, you rebuild your life. You regain use of your legs with the help of your physical therapist, Dana, and she opens your eyes to a world of love after loss. She doesn't replace Janet— no one ever could— but it's a little easier to face the day knowing you're not alone anymore. Plus, it's good to have her support with Tim. He's entered his rebellious teenager phase, and you need all the help you can get. As much trouble as he is though, you love him to death and just want him to stay safe. You're terrified by every night he's out late, by every call from his school, by every unexplained disappearance from family time. You don't know what he's mixed up in but you pray that whatever it is, he's staying safe. You can't lose him, too. He's all you have left of her.
One night, the fear is too great to ignore. He's been out every night this week doing god knows what, and you will never forgive yourself if something happens to him when you could've stopped it. So you search his room. You know it's wrong, but you're too scared to care. You're desperate to find something to explain what's been going on, but part of you is also praying you'll come up empty handed— that there's nothing there to find, that you've been imagining it, that Tim is safe after all— but that's not what happens. There's a false back in your son's closet and blood all over Bruce Wayne's hands.
You read the journal you find— the "war journal" as Tim calls it— and every page makes you sicker and sicker as your son outlines the "training" that Batman— Bruce— put him through. The danger he put him in. Your blood is boiling and your mind is at screaming— how could you have trusted that man so easily with your son? You didn't know anything about him, how could you have been so blindly grateful to a man who would knowingly send your son to war every night? You have to do something, you have to stop him. You refuse to lose any more of your family to misplaced trust in Batman. You grab your gun, tell Dana you're picking up Tim, and drive to Wayne Manor.
You tell Bruce you know everything and he has the audacity to stand there and deny it. He lies to you and expects you to believe it like you're an idiot and it only makes you angrier. Your son's life is on the line and he doesn't even respect you enough to own up to it? You press your gun to his jaw and tell him to give your son back and for a brief moment you see true fear in his eyes, and all you can think is good. He should be afraid. He should know what it's like to feel the fear that you live with every day of your life because your wife is dead and your sixteen year old son has been groomed into a goddamn soldier and it's all Batman's fault. It's all Bruce's fault. He deserves to feel that fear and so much more, and you are so goddamn tempted to pull that fucking trigger but you never get the chance.
Of course you never get the chance, he's Batman. You were never going to win against him, but you had to try anyway. You had to try anyway because you love your son and you'll be damned if you don't do everything you can to protect him, even if you know you're going to fail. And after all the fighting, screaming, and negotiating is over, Batman— (Bruce?) seems to almost understand that. That doesn't stop you from getting Tim as far away from that man as possible, but it makes you think.
It makes you think about Tim's journal, and the moments of quiet joy in between the horror. It makes you think about the man who stood by your son during his mother's funeral. It makes you think about the fierce protectiveness the newspapers describe seeing in Batman. It makes you think about the nine cracked ribs in Janet's autopsy that the coroner attributed to strenuous CPR, and the fact that there were never any medical personnel on the scene.
It doesn't make it easy to watch as Gotham is burning down around you, knowing that you allowed your son to join the fight, but it makes it easier to trust that Bruce won't rest until he brings Tim back alive.
And he does. He brings your son back to you night after night, and you start to think that maybe he did deserve the trust you gave him back then, and he might just be worthy of that same trust now.
You let yourself think of him as more than the monster you assumed him to be, and you start to see Bruce's passion for charity, his dedication to justice, and his fierce love for Tim.
You're sure that if you'd met differently, you would've been friends, and part of you even thinks that over time you might still be able to, but you never get the chance to find out.
Someone is killing the families of heroes. You know that you are next. You use your last monents to call your son and tell him that you love him, that your death is not his fault, no matter what happens, and that he should never question his identity as a hero. Just before you hang up, you speak your last words: "Tell Bruce to take care of you."
You die on your living room floor, murdered for your proximity to Batman.
You weren't even close. You might've been, in a different world, but you will never know. You will never know what might've happened if you'd had more time together.
All you know is that your son won't be alone, because after everything, Bruce is the one you trust with the one thing left on earth that matters to you. He is the one you trust with your son, and he is the one you trust with your heart.
and that's why you should vote jackbat.
