Stark pulled a cigarette out of the cigarette case with a slightly trembling hand and tried to light it on the campfire, but accidentally made the fire so big that it almost burned his hand.

Schiller took the cigarette from his hand, shook it off to extinguish the fire, re-lit it with charcoal with residual warmth next to it, and handed it to Stark.

"Aren't you pumping?"

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

"I'm not ......"

Stark found that once he refuted Schiller, Schiller would come up with a standard perfunctory gesture, followed by "yes, yes, yes, good", and there was never a single debate between them.

Stark took a puff of his cigarette and coughed a few times, and he saw that Schiller was next to the fire and knocked out the pattern on the metal badge that had just been thrown into the fire with a stone.

With Schiller's head tilted, half of his face illuminated by the campfire and the other half in shadows, Stark thought the scene was a perfect description of Schiller's person.

Half like a killer, half like a child, his focused attitude when doing anything is not difficult to remind people of his posture when he kills, equally calm and natural, with a kind of bloody horror born of immature malice.

Stark felt a little frightened by his own imagination, and he took another puff of his cigarette, this time swallowing the smoke successfully, the nicotine stimulation making him slightly more sober.

"Why are you grinding it off?" Stark asked what Schiller was doing, and he was almost invisible to the pattern on the metal badge.

"They're not all the way." Schiller spoke: "I'm afraid the locals won't like this group of mercenaries, and we can't let them know that we dealt with them. ”

Stark suddenly remembered Eric again, and he pondered, "What if we let them know?" ”

Schiller's hand paused, he turned back and threw the piece of iron back into the fire, stared at the bonfire, and said: "The military's series of human experiments can be called all-encompassing, for some reason, they seem to want to use exhaustive methods to come up with the best answer to human modification, so the experimental raw materials cover humans of all ages." ”

Stark's hands clenched instantly, and he could hear what Schiller meant, both in response to Stark's question that they didn't even let go of autistic children, and about the relationship between the locals and the mercenaries.

If mercenaries do the dirty work for the military, then they kidnap locals for human experimentation, and I am afraid that it is not only an adult who is kidnapped, but taking away the cubs of a group is a common hatred in any era.

Eric probably knew this and fled in a hurry, Stark thought, knowing that he couldn't fall into the hands of the locals, as he was also one of the mercenaries who did the dirty work for the military.

However, Eric did save himself in the first attack, and even if he later left himself and fled, it would be just one less senseless victim, and he should be happy, shouldn't he?

Eric didn't have any reason to stay, they met in the water, 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 that it was not a good feeling, and he felt that his heart was numb, and the excitement of nicotine made him more talkative, and he was eager to talk to someone about it.

Eventually, he decided to start the topic despite Schiller's being a psychiatrist, so he said, "You know what? Someone saved me once before I came here. ”

"Why do you say 'also'?"

Stark found that the conversation could not go on again, because if Schiller's question was answered, they would return to the topic of whether Schiller had saved him or not.

Stark decided to ignore Schiller's question and speak to himself, smoking a cigarette and saying, "His name is Eric, he's a mercenary, and the pattern on his armband is the same as the one on this badge, and they probably belong to the same mercenary group." ”

"On the way to the inspection site, my car was hit by artillery fire, and I was almost killed, but he saved me."

Stark slowly talked about his previous experience, and then he spread his hands and emphasized, "No one in this world has to save anyone, right?" Not to mention risking one's life on the battlefield. ”

"I knew I shouldn't have asked for more, I should have been happy for his successful escape, I do...... That's exactly what I think......"

"You don't like psychiatrists, but psychologists usually like patients like you." Schiller opened his mouth to speak, Stark stared at him, not knowing what he meant, and then he heard Schiller continue: "The longer you are duplicitous, the higher the total price you will get by the hour, and judging by the hardness of your mouth, it will not be a problem to feed five psychiatrists." ”

"That's what I thought." Stark stiffened his neck and emphasized, "Then what do you want me to think?" Crying and complaining that he abandoned me? Or call him a coward? ”

"The only reason you didn't do this is because you have morality, and it's morality that restricts your thinking and makes you feel like you can't blame your savior."

"You mean I'm a bad guy by nature who resent my life-saver for not doing enough?"

"What do you think your negative emotions are right now?" Schiller adjusted his sitting position and asked cross-legged across from Stark.

Stark opened his mouth, but said nothing, and after a while, he lowered his eyelashes and shook his head, saying, "I don't know, I can't be dishonest and say that I'm happy right now, or just worried about my situation, I do have some negative emotions that are difficult to explain." ”

"That's called loss."

Stark looked up at Schiller.

"The image of a person in your eyes is made by his actions, and when that mercenary saves you, you think that he is a helpful hero who is willing to risk his life to save people."

"In your eyes, the hero has the responsibility to save others, so when he later abandoned you and ran away, you felt that he broke the image of the hero in your mind, and you realized that he was not a hero, but just an ordinary person who was greedy for life and afraid of death."

"Morally speaking, there is no problem with what he does, it is human instinct to be afraid of death, and it is a decision that anyone will make to protect himself in an extreme environment."

"But you have something higher than morality, and that is the expectation of heroism, legally and morally, he did not betray you, but he disappointed your expectations of heroes, and your emotions were hurt."

Stark felt that Schiller had completely said what he was thinking, but because of this, he felt that the psychiatrist was terrifying, he pursed his lips, instinctively put on a defensive posture, and did not make any comments on Schiller's remarks.

"But this is not the first time that your expectations of heroes have been disappointed, and usually, for the first time, people project a superhuman image far above the realm of worldly morality on their own bodies, thinking that they are omnipotent heroes."

"But with growing up, this expectation will always be disappointed, but to different degrees, some people just realize that their parents are actually ordinary people who work hard, and the wisdom of some small citizens who are not in line with the law is just a necessary skill for them to live, and then gradually accept and learn everything to become the next generation of ordinary people."

"But if the contrast between the front and back is too great, and the expectations are too disappointed, people will also form corresponding traumatic stress disorder."

"The manifestation of this traumatic stress disorder is that they no longer think that there are heroes in this world, that the vast majority of people are hypocrites like the person who disappointed their expectations, and that they are completely disillusioned with humanity 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 have been deceived, but have just been wrongly paid, and thus, a hero complex is born."

"People with this kind of complex are keen to create gods, project their fantasies about heroes on others, and inevitably feel unparalleled loss when they see the other party's not heroic side, and even develop into resentment."

"It's not that you resent the other party for not being heroic enough, it's essentially that you resented the other party for letting your hopes fall through again."

"That's enough."

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

Schiller looked at his back and said, "The heroic expectations projected on the mercenaries have been disappointed, and you have projected the same expectations on me." ”

Stark's footsteps stopped.

"Maybe you didn't notice it yourself, but during the time we were together, you kept emphasizing that my actions saved you, that I was selfless for you, that I was as strong, 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 the gains and losses, you just want to talk about complexes and doctrines."

"A dreamer with heroic feelings, a man who would rather be a kid for the sake of heroic fantasies or never stop fantasizing because he never came out of his teenage years, this is you, Tony Stark."

Stark sat down on the edge of the emergency bed, he could feel the moistness in his eyes, and he saw Schiller kneeling by the campfire, his body straight, looking at him with a calm look.

Schiller's face is still half in the light and half in the darkness, but this time it is more like a fusion of compassion and empathy, using reason to analyze feelings and influencing reason with feelings.

At this moment, he felt a rational charm, which was a good soothing for some of his fierce churning emotions.

So Stark didn't fall asleep, he sat on the edge of the bed, stared at Schiller a little tiredly, and asked, "So, my good doctor, how do you think this disease should be cured?" ”

"It's not a disease, you can understand it as a habitual thinking." Schiller fiddled with the hammered metal badge in his hand and said, "Before a man betrays or hurts you, you believe with all your heart that he is a hero, and when you find out that he is not, the first thing that hurts your feelings is your feelings." ”

"It's really an escapist way of thinking, giving a definition and a framework to a person who he is, and then ignoring all the oddities and getting along with him according to the same pattern, pinning everything on the possibility that he is indeed a hero."

"You can't run away, Tony." Schiller looked up at Stark and said, "Don't continue to spin around in the frustration of your youth, and see what you want behind the heroic fantasies brought about by the regression of personality." ”

Stark had asked himself this question countless times – what exactly did he want? To save, or to be saved?

Or rather, to wait for a hero, or to become a hero?

Stark looked at Schiller and saw a warm glint of water in his eyes, which made his gray eyes look like silver sand flowing down a river of heaven.

It reminded Stark of standing alone in front of his bedroom door as a child, waiting for the first big hero of his life to come back every night.

But since then he has never waited, and all that accompanies him is the gentle and lonely moonlight.

In this night's dream, Stark heard his own childhood voice again.

"To be a big hero like Dad."

"But Dad is no longer a big hero."

Suddenly, Stark saw his young self staring at him through the infinite years, and he heard himself say:

"Then be the new big hero."

(End of chapter)