Growing Pains (Part 2)

Schiller stood beside a hospital bed. Lying on it was a patient with no arms, still unconscious. Dr. Connors adjusted the instruments and said, "The drug the military injected them with was incomplete. It likely damaged their nervous systems."

He sighed. "Whether he’ll wake up is still uncertain."

"Was he once your comrade-in-arms?"

"No. I never saw him on the battlefield, but he was still my comrade. We both went to war holding the same conviction."

Stark stood silently on the other side of the bed. He was sensitive to other people’s emotions, yet he felt that Connors was remarkably calm—calm like the sea before a storm.

Stark wondered, if it were him, would he stop at nothing to take revenge on those who had caused him such pain and fury?

Stark had never imagined that one day, he would stand in his opponents’ shoes and try to understand them.

That perspective shook him deeply, because he realized that the people he had once considered villains might not have done any worse than he would have in their place.

Stark had never expected this. He had always believed himself capable of anything, but now he realized that his arrogance might have been built upon the vacuum others had created around him.

Recently, he had experienced firsthand how difficult it was to handle everything alone without Pepper’s care and Obadiah’s protection.

On one hand, he struggled to learn how to take care of himself. On the other, he had to painstakingly maneuver among various factions. He had to learn the devious methods he once despised, whether he wanted to or not, and use them whether he liked it or not.

Only then did Stark realize that perhaps he had been living in a cradle all this time. After all these years, he might only recently have stepped out of his swaddling clothes and begun to face the real world on unsteady feet.

Schiller asked, "What do you plan to do? Robert may be dead, but the officers from Tartarus’s faction haven’t all disappeared. They still firmly believe in their super-soldier theory, and once they discover that the Project: Desperate Measures files have leaked, they’ll do everything they can to silence everyone involved."

"After all, if the materials you possess were exposed, they would be enough to shake the prestige of the entire military establishment. Even officers outside Tartarus’s faction wouldn’t allow that to happen."

"I made preparations a long time ago," Connors said. "I was prepared to become a mute."

"What did you think I would do? Avoid the military and find some way to release these files?" Connors shook his head. "I understood long ago that it would be useless."

"Those people always find ways to make ordinary people believe what they want them to believe, and erase everything they don’t want them to believe. Even if I could convince some people that it was true, people are forgetful."

"Just like what happened to us. When we went to war, everyone applauded and cheered for us, calling us heroes. But when we returned, the cold looks and discrimination we suffered did not improve because of that past glory."

"We disappeared from society for only a short while, and they forgot us. Forgetting is a terrifying thing. It can turn white into black, and erase every grave sin of the past."

"I will keep waiting. I’ve already waited a long time, and I’m not afraid to wait even longer."

"I’ll wait until they can no longer erase my name from history. Then I’ll expose all of it."

Connors’s tone was calm, but everyone could sense the force within it. Perhaps it was anger settling into silence, and the gathering flames of revenge.

Late that night, just as Schiller was about to go to bed, he received a call from Stark. Stark said, "I’d like to book two hours of therapy right now."

"Do you want me to curse you out again?"

"I’m serious. I’ll pay the consultation fee."

"You still owe me for last time."

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

A little later, Schiller stood at the edge of the rooftop. Stark stood beside him in his armor, and Schiller asked, "Has anyone ever told you that whenever you put on your armor and run around in the middle of the night instead of sleeping, it’s like you have a giant sentence written across your face—’I’m a stray dog nobody wants’?"

"I’ll say it again: I paid for therapy, not to be insulted."

"Then I’ll say it again: other people don’t get insulted because they don’t demand two hours of therapy from their psychologist at two in the morning."

"I’ll pay overtime. Any amount."

"It seems you can only use that suit of armor and the fact that you’re rich to cover up how insecure you actually feel right now."

Stark fell silent.

"Every time you come to see me wearing armor, it’s like you’re telling me your situation is a real mess, so I should charge extra."

"No wonder you raise your prices every time."

Stark hesitated, but still opened his faceplate. "Do you think… do you think I should do something? I mean… about Connors and all that. I don’t like that military project either. 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 turned my tower into a complete mess?"

"I just want to uphold justice. Anyone who saw that project would want to do the same, wouldn’t they?"

"You can admit that Connors’s actions shocked you deeply. You never imagined that someone would choose to keep waiting in that kind of darkness, waiting for a day of light that might never come."

"You realized that his way of upholding justice seems different from yours. Justice isn’t only about putting on an iron shell and making a spectacle of beating up criminals."

"You can’t bear to see him suffer."

"All right, I admit it…" Stark sighed softly and closed his eyes. "I can’t imagine what kind of conviction he must have had to keep his head down and develop those drugs. When he was alone in the laboratory, didn’t he feel despair? Didn’t he feel helpless?"

"When I was facing that pressure, even with a genius brain, even with all of Stark Industries and more money than anyone else in the world, I still felt… it was really hard to endure. No one is with you. You fight alone, and you don’t know when it will end."

Stark’s Adam’s apple bobbed. "From the time Connors learned of that project to the time he developed the lizard serum, it must have taken at least several years, right? Did he just keep living like that? Living in that environment all that time without going insane?"

Stark had experienced that kind of despair. Obadiah lay unconscious, Pepper was busy trying to turn the tide, and during those days and nights Stark spent alone in the laboratory, loneliness was like a black tide pouring forth from the Abyss. Stark could only use alcohol to numb himself so he would not think about when his little boat might finally reach shore.

But he knew that Dr. Connors had drifted like that for years. Compared with Stark, who still had some hope to cling to, Dr. Connors did not even have a boat. He clung to a rotting plank and drifted through countless days and nights of wind and storm, knowing full well that this sea might have no shore, yet still refusing to give up.

Because Stark had experienced it, he knew how unbearable that loneliness was. He also realized that no amount of intelligence could produce a cure for such suffering. He no longer felt any superiority that allowed him to look down on someone struggling desperately amid such pain.

"I think you’ve always claimed to be Peter’s elder. In terms of age, you certainly are, but perhaps not in every respect."

"What does that mean? I am his elder. I even went to his school’s parent-teacher meeting a couple of days ago."

"I mean that perhaps, in some ways, you need to learn from him too."

"Learn from him? That dumb kid?" Stark curled his lip. "What could I possibly learn from him? Learn how to tremble with fear after punching some foul-mouthed bastard? If it were me, Daddy Stark would make that trash understand the consequences…"

"I mentioned Peter because there’s another name you’d like to hear even less."

Stark opened his mouth, then said, "I’ll go ask Peter. As for that other suggestion, don’t bother giving it, or I’ll dock your pay."

With that, he snapped his helmet shut and flew away. Schiller shook his head.

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

Only after personally taking part in that process did he realize that these people truly were superheroes, but they were also ordinary people. Peter and Stark alike, Spider-Man and Iron Man alike.

Their transformations could not be shown through one or two comic panels or a few lines of dialogue. Their growing pains were like a tangled knot, impossible to sort out and impossible to fully explain.

The rise and fall of their thoughts, the changes in their feelings, every moment of doubt and every moment of resolve, were filled with complex and strange thoughts—countless subtle shifts, just like those brought by every ordinary human mind.

It also made Schiller understand that the moving stories, heroic sacrifices, and steadfast convictions he had once seen in films and comics had not been born that way.

These superheroes were like steel forged through countless hammer blows. Schiller could see the process of their forging. Every ringing impact and shudder, every spark thrown up by violent collision, was like fuel poured into a soul to keep it alive, giving him more stimulation than an ordinary life ever could.

Until one day, the hearts of heroes became glittering gold, and those countless hammer blows were written into legendary tales.

If the people who read those stories saw the heroes’ radiant and magnificent sides, then Schiller, a reader deeply immersed in the story, preferred to record these small and trivial growing pains of heroes.

He wanted to record their laughter and anger, their sorrow and joy, their meetings and partings as ordinary people, until one day, after the stories sung of them had been forgotten, this world would still retain traces of heroes who were not heroes.

It would retain the answer that greatness was born from the ordinary, and would ultimately return to it.