Chapter 512: Confession in a Dream Tonight (Part 2)

When people's consciousness sinks into dreams, it is often difficult to realize when they fall asleep. Steve is the same. When the sound of the rain gradually stops, he opens his eyes again and arrives at a somewhat familiar place.

He squinted his eyes, blocked the light with his hands, stood up, and looked around the environment. He found that this seemed to be a somewhat old laboratory.

Even if Steve is not a scientific researcher, he can see that this laboratory should not be a product after the 21st century. Although the equipment here is very advanced from the perspective of the last century, it can't cover up the slightly narrow layout here and the traces of friction on the long-used experimental table.

Suddenly, Steve found something that he was very familiar with. It was a laboratory table. The reason why this thing was familiar to him was that there was a dent on the cabinet door that he had repaired himself.

At that time, Howard made the vibranium shield for him. Neither of them had used this weapon before, and they didn't realize its lethality. Steve took the shield and threw it out directly. The shield hit the opposite wall with a "clang" sound, and when it bounced back, it cut the rope of the chandelier with a "whoosh".

With a "snap", the chandelier fell to the ground. Steve instinctively dodged backwards. With a "bang", the cabinet door of the laboratory table behind him was dented by him. Howard was furious, and Steve could only repair the cabinet door that he had damaged overnight.

Bypassing this laboratory table, many familiar things appeared in front of him, including the parts of the floating car that Howard often boasted to him, various models piled in the corner of the room, and even the Playboy poster that had been half peeled off on the wall...

Steve seemed to see that his old friend Howard was busy in front of the laboratory table, while he was sitting at the table behind, eating a hamburger voraciously.

At that time, they were all very busy. Howard was busy providing various logistical weapons, while he was busy fighting the enemy.

Recalling the scene in his mind, Steve sat down next to the small table against the wall. He could even smell the aroma of the burger.

"Sizzle", the sound of the wrapping paper being torn off rang in his ears. He turned his head and saw Stark instead of Howard who had finally finished his work and started eating.

Stark was holding a cheeseburger in his hand. The cheeseburger that had just been torn off the wrapping paper was full of aroma. Stark turned his head and saw Steve swallowing his saliva. He changed his burger to another hand and said, "Don't look at it. There is no food here."

"Is this your conscious world?" Steve asked.

"Yes." Stark answered while eating, "You must enter my dream first before you can travel in the dream."

"I'm sorry, Tony..." Steve lowered his head, his tone full of sadness.

When you are really in this room full of details and memories, someone's death is no longer a cold sentence or a notice. Every detail here will make Steve realize that Howard once existed in this world alive, leaving countless traces here, and his life came to an abrupt end at a certain time, and the traces here have never been updated.

When Steve saw all this, he realized that Howard's death had caused much more harm to Stark than he imagined, because Stark, like his father, was a super genius, and their memory was many times stronger than that of ordinary people. Therefore, he did not have the best medicine for healing wounds for ordinary people - forgetting.

At least, in this dream space, Stark kept all the details of his time with Howard, and now all of this was presented to Steve.

Stark walked over and sat down opposite the small table. The other stool opposite the table seemed shorter, obviously for children to sit on, and the now very tall Stark sat on the small stool, which looked a little funny.

Steve and Stark sat with their backs against the wall at the two ends of the table, one taller than the other, like a scale.

Steve turned his head and saw Stark sinking deeper than him. He knew that if this was really a scale, then Stark was heavier than him because he was carrying the death of his father.

Only when you see a person sinking down and falling before your eyes, you will know that death and separation are the unbearable weights in life.

"I let you into my conscious world not to hear your apology." Stark said, he took a deep breath, and seemed to have made a decision that consumed his courage. He said:

"I have read a lot of books on psychology, and I have done a lot of analysis. I think this should help your condition."

Stark looked up and saw the flashing lights of the laboratory opposite through the glass. He said:

"The era that belonged to you and him has passed and will never come back. Many people you know are gone, and everything you once had is lost."

"You desperately want to find someone to prove that you once existed, but your existence itself is the evidence that they once existed."

"You and your memories, the time you spent with Howard in your mind, are another form of his existence, and the most solid souvenir left after his death."

"Therefore, I should thank you, because you can live forever, but I can't, so until I die, I can see traces of his existence in you..."

Steve couldn't control his tears anymore, and his blue eyes shattered into a vast ocean, with the light shining like pearls between the tides.

The two were silent for a while, and Tony stood up first. He said:

"When Professor X built the Glorious Alliance base in his dream, he marked our dreams at that base to make it easier to pull us over every night, so we can follow his mark to the Glorious Alliance base."

"And after arriving at the Glorious Alliance base, we can find Schiller's dream marked by Professor X inside the base."

Seeing that Steve was still sitting silently in the chair, Stark didn't intend to explain anymore. He closed his eyes, began to liberate his consciousness, and looked for the possible path.

Silently, the walls of the room faded, the light became brighter, the tiles were laid, the sofa fell from the sky, and in the blink of an eye, they came to the reception room of the base.

Stark breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Fortunately, thanks to magic, I only need to provide ideas and navigation. This is all too stream of consciousness."

Then he said a little incredulously: "So, what kind of monsters can travel freely in dreams?"

"Is this a transit station?" Steve finally asked.

"Yes, let me find out if there are any signs leading to other people's dreams..." Stark closed his eyes, tried to concentrate, and began to feel the structure of this dream. After a while, he raised his eyebrows and said, "Found it."

But then he frowned again, opened his eyes, looked at the air, as if scanning something, and said: "... What are these?"

"What's wrong?" Steve walked up and asked.

"I found some paths that seem to be connected to other places..."

"Isn't that great? We can go straight there."

"The problem is, there are no road signs."

Stark sighed and said, "Professor X may have other ways to distinguish these paths. After all, I don't know what the principle of mutants' psychic abilities is, but I can't see where these paths lead to anyway."

"Are there many paths? Can't we try them one by one?"

"It can be..." After Stark finished speaking, he paused and said, "Let's try the first one first."

"Whoosh", they returned to Stark's dream space. Stark shook his head and said, "It seems that we are unlucky."

When they returned to the reception room of the Glorious Alliance, Stark chose the second path again, and after disappearing again, they appeared in a museum.

As soon as Stark landed, he saw a gun in the display cabinet in front of him. After he walked over, he found that it was an old rifle, a little too shabby, and it was even difficult to judge what model it was just by appearance.

He looked down and saw the introduction column on the display stand:

"Bode Smith, 18 years old, from a farm in Michigan, loves sweets, his biggest wish is to take his mother to New York, and he can't let go of the newly issued guns..."

At first, Stark didn't realize what this introduction had to do with the gun inside, until he saw some blood on the bottom of the gun in the light of the display cabinet.

He paused with his finger on the display stand introduction panel, and took another step forward. There was another display stand with a tattered notebook inside. The introduction panel read:

"David Petrov, a very good engineer, alcoholic but with a loud voice, likes to hum Soviet songs while repairing tanks..."

Further ahead, there are many display cabinets, filled with all kinds of junk, key rings, belts, glasses, towels and even thermometers everywhere. At least in the real world, there will never be a museum with these things.

But each of them corresponds to a person's name, as well as some messy and unsystematic records, which are often only one or two sentences, which may be what they like to eat, who is in their family, and what their biggest wish is.

Turning a corner, Stark saw that Steve was standing at the end of another row of display cabinets, staring at the things in the display cabinets. After he walked over, he found that there was a pair of gloves inside, with very slender fingers, which did not look like they were worn by men.

Stark moved his eyes down and saw a name written on the introduction panel of the display cabinet - "Peggy Carter".

"...At that time, we sat on the steps in front of the garage and chatted. She said that her dream since childhood was to be an artist, but few people in that era would support a girl to work independently."

"I said I would draw a picture for her, but she didn't believe it because I didn't look like someone who could afford brushes and paints, and the army didn't have those things, so I went to burn a piece of charcoal and drew her repairing the tank."

"She was very surprised. I could see that she wanted the painting very much, but she didn't have the money to buy it, so she threw me a pair of her gloves. When I saw her expression, I knew I was fascinated..."

Steve put his fingers on the glass of the display cabinet, then he raised his head and looked at the rows of display cabinets. He said: "Maybe many people think that I After seeing Peggy for the last time, I should have been extremely sad..."

"But in fact, apart from the initial sadness about death and separation, I even felt a little relieved. She had many children and grandchildren, and was very happy. She was lying quietly on the hospital bed, and was able to see her former lover before she died. This was already very happy. "

"And more people..." Steve turned his head to look at the objects in the glass display cabinets and said, "I can't even remember how they died, but in my memory, among the owners of the relics, less than one in a thousand died of natural causes. "

"Some were hit by bullets and died. Some died of treatment, some were pierced by shrapnel in the chest, some suffered from dysentery, and some were frozen to death. I was not there when they died, but I just sent a message from afar..."

Steve looked up at the museum and said:

"Tony, I must apologize for this, for my impulsive behavior of defending Bucky, but I am not defending myself, but when I heard the news of Howard's death, I felt not sadness, but numbness. "

"I have heard too much such news. On a certain day of a certain year, someone who met me on a certain battlefield died. "

"They may have been Lying in a trench with me, maybe exchanging bullets with me, lighting cigarettes for each other, maybe even covering my back and saving my life, but when they died, nothing was left. "

Steve took a deep breath, raised his head and looked at the display case above, and said:

"Maybe you are right, that era is over and will never come back."

"My existence. Is the evidence that they once lived and contributed to the peace of this world. Maybe, this is the last mercy of the world to an old soldier..."

Stark closed his eyes, and he felt that the edge of his eyelashes was wet.

Death and separation are no longer unbearable burdens in life, and the man in front of him has also endured them, and endured them thousands of times.

Stark's sigh slowly dissipated in the dream space. In the center of the museum corridor full of display cases, the faint shadow under the lamp divided the corridor into two halves, with Steve standing at one end and Stark standing at the other.

None of them heard it. With a rumbling sound, one end of the originally tilted scale fell down, and the scale regained its balance. Iron Man and Captain America stood on the same line again.

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