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Chapter 139: The Bat Event (End)

"You mean, the arc reactor in Mr. Stark's chest is...?" Peter looked at Yinsen and said.

"Peter, you're smart..." Yinsen put his arm around Peter's shoulder and turned to him. "Even if you just think about it for a moment, you should understand how dangerous it is to have an energy source that works on this principle embedded in your body."

Peter said with great concern, "What should we do then? Can't we develop something else to replace that thing?"

"Of course, Tony is a genius. If he really sets his mind to something, he can definitely succeed. But what if he doesn't want to?" Yinsen said.

"How could he not want to? This is about his own life..." Peter stopped himself as he finished speaking, and Yinsen said, "You must have noticed that Tony's attitude is somewhat negative now. He always thinks about dying like a hero, instead of considering how to live well."

Peter thought about Tony flying towards Stark Tower without hesitation, no matter how he tried to persuade him to stop. This attitude, besides being heroic, did have the taste of rushing towards death.

Peter sighed, sat down on a chair, and put one arm on the table. "I heard from Dr. Schiller about what Tony has been through lately. Honestly, it's really sad."

"What do you think I should do?" Peter spread his hands and said, "I want to help him, but I may not be of much help in the technical aspect."

"Stark doesn't need anyone to help him in the technical aspect. I think you can try to persuade him," Yinsen said, leaning against the lab table next to Peter. "Don't you see? Stark treats you differently. We are his friends, but there are some things he never listens to friends about, but you might be different."

After Yinsen left, Peter was left alone in the laboratory and he was lost in thought. He began to recall all the moments he spent with Stark.

In the beginning, at the top of the New York Stark Tower, Stark told him about his experiences in Afghanistan. Even back then, when they were still strangers, Stark told Peter that becoming a hero would be painful.

It wasn't until later that Peter realized that Stark wasn't the type of person to complain about pain easily. Peter could imagine how it must have felt to have a reactor embedded in his chest, no matter how powerful it was, to drive the mechanical armor. It couldn't have been easy for the owner of that body to bear.

The laboratory was dimly lit, with only the lights of the instruments intermingling on the ground. Spider-Man wasn't immune to fatigue, and in such an environment, Peter, who had been in combat all day, felt tired and sleepy.

In a daze, he seemed to see Stark sitting on the ground in front of him, leaning against the lab table with a model of a reactor in his hand.

Peter remembered asking Stark about the model that had been sitting on his desk all the time. Stark remained silent for a long time but eventually said only one name - Howard.

Peter had vaguely heard of this name from others, such as when Steve told him that Howard was his old comrade-in-arms and was also a genius, but he also lived a dissolute life. Natasha seemed to have mentioned the name too, but she never said anything good about him. Nick also mentioned Stark's father in passing, but he didn't say anything that left a deep impression on Peter.

Just like his father, Peter thought, all he ever heard from Uncle Ben and Aunt May were just a name and some vague descriptions.

"Father," Peter thought, the word seemed so distant to him.

Peter's drowsiness grew thicker and thicker, as if he was in a dream. He saw Stark put down the model and then close his eyes, as if he were asleep.

On every such late night, in the deserted laboratory of Stark Tower, Iron Man would also suffer.

He always said that Howard was not the person he should think of when he was in pain, but on every such late night, who Iron Man thought of, nobody knew.

In Peter's deeper dreams, he dreamed that Stark became his father.

In this dream, there were no advanced equipment or luxurious surroundings of Stark Industries, no extravagance of a wealthy home that Peter couldn't imagine.

His childhood was still trapped in that old house, where memories were still half-worn clothes, toys that didn't fill a box, and storybooks that had been crumpled.

But the only difference was that he had a father, a father who dismantled those toy cars with him and used building blocks to create various machines.

Together, they turned marbles into planets and laid out the solar system on some old floors. The light of the sunset shone on these somewhat crude toys, and the tall Stark and young Peter, their eyes fixed on the glass beads on the floor, seemed to have the entire universe.

The appearance of the two began to change. Peter saw that Stark turned into Howard, while he himself turned into a young Stark.

Howard gently flicked the marbles, and the mysteries of countless universes were recounted from his mouth. The light from those glass balls began to shine brighter and brighter, becoming more and more dazzling.

Peter saw a father and son holding hands above the Earth. They controlled all the planets in the solar system. Even the sun obeyed the father's command to reduce its brightness, and the planets continued to rotate, with countless lights twinkling.

Mars, Venus, Jupiter...

Those profound knowledge that was difficult for a child to understand echoed in the silent universe.

Before Peter's consciousness fell into darkness, the last image he remembered was when Stark handed him the first generation of the Spider-Man suit. Stark's face mask lifted up, and those brown eyes, under the sunlight, were as thick as melting honey.

Peter was sure he saw two completely different emotions in those eyes, the world-weary of a father, and the innocence of a child.

The night grew deeper, and Stark lay on the bed. He was indeed very tired, but his biological clock, which had been staying up late for years, kept him from falling asleep now.

Just as he felt uncomfortable and wanted to turn over, he heard the doorknob move slightly. He turned his head with difficulty and saw the door open a small gap. The light outside poured in, and Peter squeezed in through the crack in the door, then gently closed it.

As soon as Peter turned around, he saw Stark's slightly shiny eyes staring at him. He seemed to be taken aback and then said awkwardly, "Um... Mr. Stark, are you still not asleep? I thought..."

"Why did you come over now? Don't you go to bed?" Stark interrupted.

"I... I have a little insomnia, just can't fall asleep. Um, actually, I already fell asleep, but I just woke up suddenly..."

"Has anyone ever told you that when you lie, you always mix up your words?"

Peter lowered his head sadly and said, "I knew it, I've never been good at lying since I was a kid."

"So why are you here? If it's about some experiment, we can talk about it tomorrow morning," replied Stark, rolling over to face away from Peter, indicating that he was going to sleep.

Peter lowered his head and didn't turn on the light. He walked to the chair next to the hospital bed and sat down. He remained silent for a long time, so long that he thought Stark had fallen asleep.

Then, almost involuntarily, he spoke up, "Mr. Stark, can you tell me about your father?"

Stark remained silent and didn't respond. Peter felt like he was being too intrusive, but he continued, "I don't mean any offense, but... you know, I've never met my father. Whenever others hear about my background, they stop talking about their parents to me, even Gwen... it's the same."

Stark's figure on the hospital bed moved slightly, and he heard Peter say, "Well, actually, I just had a dream, and that's why I can't sleep. I dreamt about my father, or maybe not really him, after all, I've never seen him, right?"

In the end, after a long silence, Stark sighed and turned back, staring straight at the ceiling. "Howard was a drunkard, drunk on rotten liquor every day."

"He would curse everything when he was drunk, he was a rude bastard. The most common thing he would say to me when he was sober was, 'You don't understand anything.'"

"Of course, I didn't understand anything at that time. I was only a few years old."

"I was naturally interested in cars and liked tinkering with metal parts. But whenever I made something, he would never praise me, he would just call it a pile of rotten junk."

"Alcohol burned out his prideful mind," Stark snorted and said, "So much so that he didn't come up with any decent inventions in the final stages of his life."

"Look at me now! Stark Industries is better than ever before, and I've come up with more inventions that can change the world!"

"He was wrong, so wrong. Tony Stark Jr. isn't the one who knows nothing. It's Howard Stark..."

Looking at the silent Peter, Stark turned his face and said, "You didn't hear the story you wanted, did you? What did you think you would hear? That we had a deep father-son bond, or that he taught me everything and guided me in invention from a young age?"

Stark lowered his eyelids, and when he half-closed his eyes, his long eyelashes always cast a thick shadow on his brown eyes.

Peter lowered his head and crossed his hands over his chin, then said, "Before this, I never dreamed of my father, nor did I remember him, because I never met him. There's no part of my memory that's related to him, and I never even dreamed of him."

Stark glanced at him and then said, "Well, maybe there were some good times, maybe... a long time ago, so long ago that I can barely remember, I remember we stood together at the lab table, I don't remember exactly what we did, but there was that time..."

Stark turned his head to look at Peter, but he didn't see any sadness on Peter's face. The boy's still-boyish eyes and eyebrows didn't contain the loneliness and sadness he had imagined.

Stark thought that perhaps this was normal. Peter had been like this for more than a decade, and in his life, his uncle had played the role of a father, but perhaps only in part.

Ben Parker was an ordinary person, and he did his best to give Peter his best qualities, which were strength and kindness.

But Peter was a genius, and Stark understood this better than anyone. Geniuses needed resonance and the exchange of ideas with worthy opponents, and the collision of sparks of thought.

When Peter and Stark locked eyes, they both thought to themselves that this really confirmed the saying that geniuses are forever lonely.

Stark saw Peter's gaze fall on the reactor in his chest, so he lay his head flat and continued to stare at the ceiling, watching the various shapes left by the fleeting light outside the window.

"If the problem with this reactor isn't solved, you'll die, won't you?" Peter asked him. "That's what Yinsen told me."

"They're always making a fuss, but really, I don't have any problems, I..."

"Do you know how I felt when I saw a vision of your death in my Spider-Sense?" Peter interrupted him.

Stark heard a slight tremble in his voice.

"...The laboratory equipment at Stark Tower is very advanced, and I love the environment and the gorgeous decorations here. I've never lived in such a nice place before."

"But more importantly, no one has ever taught me the knowledge and experimental methods for making equipment, and no one has ever assembled parts with me on a lab table and then experimented with the finished products together..."

"When my Spider-Sense told me that all of this was about to end, I simply couldn't accept it..." Peter's trailing voice was very low, and the final syllable fell to the ground, almost crumbling.

Stark closed his eyes, and his Adam's apple trembled as he said, "What do you want me to say? Let me tell you, maybe all of this will be over in one year and three months."

In StarkDark's vision, he began to recall the days that had long since passed and searched for the elusive fragments in his memory.

He remembered the good times he had with Howard.

On this evening, as he stumbled to gather these fragments of memories from the cracks, Stark finally admitted that he missed Howard.

Tonight, his pain was stronger than any other night, so this longing was also stronger.

Howard was not the person he should think of when he was in pain because those good times would never come again, and his father was already dead.

It wasn't until now that Stark realized that when he became a father from a son, he felt that any father would rather live a long life than have his child remember him on a painful night, so that those good times would never end.

Stark felt that his survival instinct had never been so strong before - he didn't want to become Howard, the person he hated the most. He didn't want to let his children be reminded all their lives that those good times had passed and would never come back because of a sudden death.

So his children could only be forced to forget, tearing apart the happiest and most glorious days of their lives and burying them in the farthest corners of their memories, denying their existence.

On this silent night, no one saw Stark, who was asleep, his aging hands clinging tightly to the bed railings, like he was holding the model in the deep of the night.

No one knew that in Peter's next dream, he saw the unfamiliar night sky again, and the lingering memories became clear in his dream. He heard two gunshots and saw a scattered string of pearl necklaces.

In his hazy dream, it seemed like the previous dream had returned. Peter saw another world, another father and son holding hands, slowly walking towards the universe.

He saw behind the black tide, perhaps even the bat himself couldn't find those good times.