Growing Pains (Part 2)

Schiller was standing beside the hospital bed, on which lay a patient without arms, still unconscious. Dr. Connors adjusted the equipment and then said, "The drug the military injected them with was not perfect; it may have damaged their nervous system."

He sighed and said, "It's still uncertain whether he'll wake up."

Was he your former comrade-in-arms?

"No, I never saw him on the battlefield, but he was also my comrade-in-arms. We both went to the battlefield with the same belief."

Stark stood silently on the other side of the hospital bed. He was very sensitive to other people's emotions, but he always felt that Connors was very calm, as calm as the sea before a storm.

Stark wondered if he were in that situation, would he stop at nothing to take revenge on those who had brought him this pain and anger?

Stark never imagined that one day he would stand in his opponent's shoes and think from their perspective.

This perspective greatly shocked him, because he realized that even if he were in the shoes of the so-called bad people he once thought they were, he wouldn't be able to do any better.

This was something Stark had never anticipated. He had always thought he was invincible, but now he realized that his arrogance might have been built on the vacuum created for him by others.

During this time, he personally experienced the difficulties of dealing with everything on his own without Pepper's care or Obadiah's protection.

On the one hand, he struggled to learn how to take care of himself, and on the other hand, he had to painstakingly navigate between various forces. Those cunning methods that he once loathed were now things he had to learn and use, whether he wanted to or not.

It was only at this moment that Stark realized that perhaps he had been living in a cradle all along. He had lived for so many years, and perhaps only recently had he stepped out of his swaddling clothes and begun to stumble and walk into the real world.

Schiller asked, "What do you plan to do? Although Robert is dead, not all the Tartarus officers have disappeared. They still firmly believe in their super-soldier theory, and once they discover that the information about Project: Desperate Measures has been leaked, they will do everything they can to wipe them out."

"After all, if the information you possess is exposed, it will be enough to shake the prestige of the entire military system. Even officers who are not from the Tartarus faction will not allow such a thing to happen."

"I've been prepared for this for a long time," Connors said. "I was prepared to be mute."

"What do you think I'd do? Avoid the military and try every means to release this information?" Connors shook his head and said, "I knew it was pointless."

"Those people always have a way of making ordinary people believe what they should believe, and erasing everything that ordinary people shouldn't believe. Even if I have a way of making some people believe it's true, people are forgetful."

"Just like we have experienced before, when we went to the battlefield, everyone applauded and cheered for us, calling us heroes, but when we came back, the cold looks and discrimination we suffered were no better because of the glory of the past."

"We only disappeared from this society for a short time, and they forgot about us. Forgetting is a terrible thing; it can turn white into black and erase all the deep sins of the past."

"I will keep waiting. I have been waiting for a long time, and I am not afraid to wait even longer."

"I will wait until they can no longer erase my name from history before I reveal all this."

Connors spoke calmly, but everyone could sense a power in his voice—perhaps the culmination of anger, or the gathering of the flames of revenge.

Late at night, just as Schiller was getting ready for bed, he received a call from Stark said, "I need to schedule a two-hour therapy session now."

Do you want me to yell at you again?

"I'm serious, I will pay the consultation fee."

"You also have to pay the consultation fee for last time."

Stark was speechless. He stomped his foot and said, "I'm on your roof right now. If you don't come up, I'll have Jarvis activate the emergency wake-up procedure."

After a while, Schiller stood on the edge of the rooftop, with Stark standing next to him in his mech suit. Schiller asked, "Has anyone ever told you that whenever you run out in your mech suit in the middle of the night without sleeping, it's like having the words 'I'm a stray dog that nobody wants' written all over your face?"

"I'll say it again, I'm paying for therapy, not to be scolded."

"Then I'll say it again: other people won't get scolded because they won't ask a Doctor to give them two hours of therapy at two in the morning."

"I will pay you overtime pay, any amount is fine."

"It seems that you can only use this mecha suit and the fact that you are rich to cover up your current state of great insecurity."

Stark remained silent.

"Every time you come to see me in your mech suit, it's like you're telling me that your situation is difficult and that you need more money."

"No wonder you always raise prices."

Stark hesitated for a moment, then opened his visor and said, "Do you think I should do something? I mean... about what Connors did, I also disapprove of the military's plan. As a hero of justice, shouldn't I teach those inhuman demons a lesson?"

"If you want to help Connors, just say so."

"I don't want to help him. Why would I want to help that big lizard who made a mess of my building?"

"I just want to uphold justice. I think anyone who saw that plan would want to do the same, right?"

"You can admit that Connors' actions have shocked you quite a bit. You never thought that someone would continue to wait in this darkness, to wait for a day of light that may never come."

"You find that his way of upholding justice seems different from yours. In this world, upholding justice doesn't mean putting on a suit of iron and going around beating up criminals."

"You actually feel bad about it."

"Okay, I admit it..." Stark sighed softly, closed his eyes, and said, "I can't imagine what kind of belief he had that kept him buried in developing those drugs. Didn't he feel desperate when he was alone in the lab? Didn't he feel helpless?"

"When I faced that pressure, even though I have a genius brain, even though I have the entire Stark Industries and the most money in the world, I still felt that it was really hard to endure. No one was there for you, you were fighting alone, and you didn't know when it would end."

Stark's Adam's apple bobbed. He said, "From the time Connors learned about the plan to the time he developed the Lizard Serum, there must have been at least several years, right? Has he been living like this the whole time? Has he not gone mad living in this environment?"

Stark had experienced this kind of despair. Obadiah was unconscious, Pepper was busy trying to save the situation, and Stark spent those days and nights alone in the laboratory. Loneliness was like a black tide pouring out of the Abyss. Stark could only numb himself with alcohol so that he wouldn't think about when his lonely boat would finally drift to shore.

But he knew that Dr. Connors had been drifting like this for several years. Compared to Stark, who still had some hope, Dr. Connors didn't even have a boat. He had been drifting in the storm for countless days and nights, clinging to a rotting plank, knowing that this sea might not have a shore, but still refusing to give up.

Because Stark had experienced it himself, he knew how unbearable that loneliness was, and he realized that no amount of wisdom could create a cure for such suffering. He also had no sense of superiority and no reason to despise those who struggled in such suffering.

"I think you always consider yourself Peter's elder, and you are in terms of age, but perhaps there are some other aspects that don't."

"What does this mean? I am his elder, and I was the one who went to his school to invite his parents a couple of days ago."

"I mean, perhaps in some ways you should learn from him."

"Learn from him? That idiot?" Stark scoffed. "What do I have to learn? Learn how he beat up a foul-mouthed bastard and then cowered? If it were me, Daddy Stark would definitely teach that trash a lesson..."

"I mentioned Peter because there's another name you'd rather not hear."

Stark opened his mouth and said, "I'll go ask Peter. You don't need to give me the other suggestion, or I'll dock my pay."

After saying that, he snapped the mask off his armor shut and flew away. Schiller shook his head.

He thought that the growth process of these superheroes was like a rich scroll slowly unfolding before his eyes.

When he personally participated in the process, he realized that these people were indeed superheroes, but they were also ordinary people. Peter, Stark, Spider-Man, and Iron Man were all like that.

Their transformation cannot be shown in just one or two scenes or a few lines of dialogue in a comic. Their growing pains are like a tangled mess, impossible to unravel or explain.

Their emotional ups and downs, their wavering and resolute moments, are filled with complex and bizarre thoughts, just like the subtle changes that the brains of ordinary people bring to them, countless in number.

This also made Schiller realize that the moving stories, heroic sacrifices, and unwavering beliefs he had seen in movies and comics were not things he was born with.

These superheroes are like pieces of steel that have been forged through countless hammer blows. Schiller could see the process of their creation, and the sound and vibration of each strike, each burst of flame from the intense collision, were like fuel to keep his soul alive, providing him with more excitement than a mundane life.

Until one day, the heroes' hearts turned into shining gold, and these trials and tribulations were written into legendary stories.

If readers of these stories see the glorious and great side of the heroes, then Schiller, a reader deeply immersed in the stories, preferred to record the growing pains of these small and trivial heroes.

Record their joys and sorrows, their ups and downs as ordinary people, so that one day, after those stories are forgotten, the traces of heroes who are not heroes will still remain in this world.

The answer remains: greatness originates from the ordinary and will ultimately return to the ordinary.