"Daddy! Daddy! where are you going?"

He was just a small boy. Maybe around four years old at the time.

"Daddy's just got a job to do right now, okay?" he pats the boy's head. "tell your mother I should be back by dinner."

"Are you donna go fight more bad guys?" the boy begins punching the air as his father puts his officer cap on.

"You could say that. We've got another shoplifter down on Mason"

"Go get him, daddy!"

"I will"

...

That would be the last time I ever spoke to Father.

I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could help that small boy see it.

That Father... was a hero.

And that heroes... don't get happy endings.

I am Ike Gunderson.

Father died eleven years ago. Leaving Mother to do her best to raise me on her own.

I called him selfish. He should have stayed with me. Selfish father. Why couldn't you just live a little longer? Why couldn't you be there for me? Don't you think I wanted it too? The terrible puns? Baseball practice? All the other boys have it! So why don't I? Why am I the only one to whom the "fatherless" joke applies?

"Why aren't you here?"

But I knew the reason. Father was a hero. And sometimes, heroes have to put themselves aside for the greater good. I know that. I know that because that's what he taught me. I remember what he'd said in the letter he'd left to me in his will. "Being a hero is a thankless job, son." he would say "because it's not something we are to be rewarded for. It's our responsibility, as those who were born with strength, to protect those who weren't"

Those were the laws I based my life upon. I hated him. I hated him for dying. But I understood that this was the price. The price of nobility, heroism.

I keep looking back at that small boy. I wish he knew. Heroes in real life aren't like the ones in those cartoons. They are tragic, selfless beings. True heroes...

They are the ones who don't get to have their happy endings.