Chapter 1837: Journey of a Madman (Part 50)

Stark took a cigarette out of the cigarette box with slightly trembling hands and wanted to light it with the campfire, but accidentally made the fire too big and almost burned his hand.

Schiller directly took the cigarette from his hand, shook it to extinguish the fire, re-lit it with the charcoal that still had residual heat beside it, and handed it to Stark.

"Don't you smoke?"

"I don't need cigarettes to relieve anxiety."

"I am not..."

Stark found that once he refuted Schiller, Schiller would take on a standard perfunctory posture. Next was "yes, yes, yes, okay, okay, okay." They had never had any debate between them.

Stark took a puff of the cigarette and choked a few times. He saw Schiller using a stone to knock the pattern on the metal badge he had just thrown into the fire until it was invisible.

Schiller tilted his head, half of his face illuminated by the campfire, and the other half sinking into the shadows. Stark felt that this scene was the best description of Schiller.

Half like a killer, half like a child. The focused attitude when he did anything made it easy for people to associate with the posture when he killed people—equally calm, natural, and carrying a kind of bloody terror born from immature malice.

Stark felt that he was a bit scared by his own imagination. He took another puff of the cigarette, successfully swallowed the smoke this time, and the stimulation of nicotine made him a bit clearer.

"Why do you want to grind it off?" Stark asked about what Schiller was doing. He had already ground the pattern on the metal badge until it was invisible.

"They aren't the same kind of people," Schiller said: "The locals probably won't like this group of mercenaries. Can't let them know we have dealt with them."

Stark suddenly remembered Erik again. He thought and said: "What if they find out?"

Schiller's hand stopped. He turned back, threw the iron piece back into the fire, stared at the campfire, and said: "A series of human experiment plans of the military can be called all-encompassing. For some reason, they seem to want to use the exhaustion method to get the best answer for human body modification. Therefore, the experimental materials cover humans of all age groups."

Stark's hand clenched instantly. He heard Schiller's implication. It was not only answering Stark's question about whether they didn't even let go of autistic children, but also talking about the relationship between the locals and the mercenaries.

If the mercenaries were doing dirty work for the military, then the human experiment materials they kidnapped from the locals probably didn't just kidnap adults. And taking away the young of a tribe was an irreconcilable hatred in any era.

Erik was probably afraid precisely because he knew this, so he fled in a hurry. Stark thought, he knew he couldn't fall into the hands of the locals, because he was also a member of the mercenaries doing dirty work for the military.

However, Erik did save himself in the first attack. Even if he abandoned himself and fled later, it was just one less meaningless sacrifice. Shouldn't he feel happy?

Erik had no reason to stay. They met by chance. The other party had already risked his life to save himself once. How could he ask for more?

But the more Stark thought about it, the more he felt it wasn't right. He felt chaotic in his heart. The stimulating effect brought by nicotine made him more talkative, and he desperately wanted to chat with someone about this.

Finally, he decided not to care that Schiller was a psychologist and was determined to open this topic. So he said: "Do you know? Before I came here, someone also saved me once."

"Why say 'also'?"

Stark found that the topic couldn't go on again, because if he answered Schiller's question, they would return to the topic of whether Schiller saved him or not.

Stark decided to ignore Schiller's question and talk about his own. He said while smoking: "He is called Erik, a mercenary. The pattern on his armband is the same as the one on this badge. They might belong to the same mercenary group."

"On the way to the inspection site, my car was attacked by artillery fire. I was almost blown to death. It was he who saved me."

Stark said slowly about his previous experience, and then he spread his hands and emphasized: "There is no one in this world who must save anyone, right? Not to mention risking one's life on the battlefield."

"I know I shouldn't ask for more. I should feel happy for his successful escape. I really... I really feel that way..."

"Although you don't like psychologists, psychologists usually like patients like you very much." Schiller opened his mouth. Stark stared at him, not knowing what he meant, and then he heard Schiller continue: "The longer you speak against your will, the higher the total price obtained by charging by the hour. Judging by your stubbornness, supporting five psychologists is not a problem."

"That's just how I think." Stark stressed with his neck stiff: "Then what do you want me to think? Cry and complain that he abandoned me? Or curse him for being a coward?"

"The only reason you didn't do that is because you have morals. It is morals that bind your thoughts, making you feel that you can't resent your savior."

"Your meaning is that I am naturally a bad person who will resent my savior for not doing enough?"

"What do you think your negative emotions are now?" Schiller adjusted his sitting posture and sat cross-legged opposite Stark, asking.

Stark opened his mouth, but didn't say anything. After a while, he lowered his eyelashes, shook his head, and said: "I don't know. I can't dishonestly say that I am very happy now, or that I am only worried about my own situation. I do have some negative emotions that are hard to explain."

"That's called disappointment."

Stark looked up at Schiller.

"A person's image in your eyes is composed of his behavior. That mercenary saved you, so you think he is a hero who is willing to help others and risk his life to save people."

"In your eyes, heroes have the responsibility to save others, so when he abandoned you and fled later, you felt he broke the hero image in your heart. You realized that he is not a hero, but just an ordinary person who fears death."

"From a moral point of view, there is no problem with what he did. Fearing death is human instinct. Protecting oneself in an extreme environment is a decision anyone would make."

"But you have something higher than morals, and that is the expectation of heroism. From a legal and moral point of view, he didn't betray you, but he made your expectation of a hero fall through. Your emotions were hurt."

Stark felt that Schiller had completely spoken out what he was thinking in his heart. But precisely because of this, he felt the psychologist was terrifying. He pursed his lips, instinctively put on a defensive posture, and didn't make any evaluation of Schiller's remarks.

"But this is not the first time your expectation of a hero has fallen through. Usually, people will project a superman image far higher than the secular moral realm onto their parents for the first time, thinking they are omnipotent heroes."

"But with growth, this expectation will always fall through. It's just a matter of degree. Some people just realize that their parents are also ordinary people who toil. Some small-citizen wisdom that doesn't conform to the law is just a necessary skill for them to survive, and then gradually accept and learn everything, becoming the next generation of ordinary people."

"But if the contrast is too great and expectations fall through too much, people will also form corresponding post-traumatic stress disorders."

"The manifestation of this post-traumatic stress disorder is that they no longer think there are heroes in this world, think that most people are hypocrites like the person who let their expectations fall through, and thus become completely disappointed in human nature and society."

"But if they still have a glimmer of hope, they will always want to find a real hero to prove that they are not fools who were deceived, but just entrusted to the wrong person. From this, a hero complex is born."

"People with this complex are keen on creating gods, projecting their fantasies about heroes onto others, and inevitably feel incomparable disappointment when seeing the other party's not-heroic side, and may even develop into resentment."

"It's not resentment that the other party is not heroic enough. In essence, it's resentment that the other party let their hope fall through again."

"Enough."

Stark stood up, threw the cigarette butt into the campfire, moved his steps slowly, and said: "I'm tired, I'm going to sleep."

Schiller looked at his back and said: "The hero expectation projected onto the mercenary fell through, so you projected the same expectation onto me again."

Stark's steps paused.

"Perhaps you didn't notice it yourself. During the time we spent together, you kept emphasizing that my behavior saved you, that I was giving you selfless dedication, that I was as powerful, friendly, and meticulous as a hero."

"And every time I point out that this is just your fantasy and not a fact, you are obviously avoiding the topic. You don't want to talk about interests, you only want to talk about complexes and doctrines."

"A dreamer with heroism, a child who would rather be a child for the sake of heroic fantasy or who has never stopped fantasizing because he has never walked out of his youth—this is you, Tony Stark."

Stark sat on the edge of the emergency bed. He could feel the wetness in his eye sockets. He saw Schiller kneeling by the campfire, his body very straight, looking at him with very calm eyes.

Schiller's face was still half in the light and half in the darkness, but this time it was more like a convergence of compassion and empathy, using reason to analyze emotions and using emotions to influence reason.

At this moment, he felt a kind of rational charm, which calmed down some of his intensely churning emotions very well.

So Stark didn't fall asleep. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at Schiller with some fatigue and asked: "Then, my good doctor, how do you think this disease should be cured?"

"This is not a disease. You can understand it as a kind of inertial thinking." Schiller fiddled with the metal badge iron piece that had been hammered out of shape, saying: "Before a person makes a move to betray or hurt you, you believe wholeheartedly that he is a hero. And when you find he is not, this is what hurts your feelings first."

"This is actually an avoidance-type way of thinking. Giving a person a definition and framework, thinking he is like this, and then ignoring everything strange, getting along with him according to the same mode, and pinning everything on the possibility that he is indeed a hero."

"You can't escape, Tony." Schiller looked up at Stark and said: "Don't continue to spin in the frustration of your youth. Look at what you really want behind the heroic fantasy brought by personality regression."

Stark had asked himself this question countless times—what on earth did he want? Saving, or being saved?

Or rather, waiting for a hero, or becoming a hero?

Stark looked at Schiller and saw moist water light flickering in his eyes, which made his gray pupils look like silver sand flowing down from the Milky Way.

This made Stark remember every night when he stood alone in front of his bedroom door as a child, waiting for the first great hero in his life to return.

But since then, he had never waited for him again. Accompanying him was only such gentle and lonely moonlight.

In this night's dream, Stark heard his own voice as a child again.

"Want to become a great hero like Dad."

"But Dad is no longer a great hero."

Suddenly, Stark saw the gaze of his childhood self looking at him across the infinite years, and he heard himself say:

"Then go be a new great hero." ===== CHAPTER 1838 =====