I'm not telling you what to do. If you don't want anyone to know? I'll keep your secret. If you ever decide to tell anyone else, you gotta do it when you're ready.

But what I'm trying to say is just that there are other people here that understand dealing with that kind of hate and fear - and the hurt that comes from it. If you need us, if you ever want to open up and get support for all that, we're here.

[He gives him a gentle smile.]

And you're not an idiot for doing the right thing. I have this friend back home who gets treated awfully. The press and the public hates him. They twist everything he does to make it look like it's evil, when all the other heroes know he's one of the best of us. Nobody listens to us when we say he's a good guy, either.

Even despite all that, he knows the score - he knows that what he does is what makes him who he is. When I was new at the hero thing, he told me: "with great power comes great responsibility."

By now, one year in, I'd bet my bucket that you already know some people get power and use it selfishly - or even sadistically. And you don't. You use it to protect people, even when they're ungrateful. What you do, especially when no one gives you credit for it, that says more about you than anything anyone else could ever say about you.