Chapter 1872: The Madman's Journey (Fifty)

Chapter 1846 The Journey of a Madman (Fifty)

Stark took a cigarette from the cigarette box with a slightly trembling hand and tried to light it with the bonfire, but accidentally made the fire too big and almost burned his hand.

Schiller took the cigarette from his hand, shook it to put out the fire, and re-lit it with the charcoal next to him with residual heat, and handed it to Stark.

"Don't you smoke?"

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

"I'm not..."

Stark found that once he refuted Schiller, Schiller would take a standard perfunctory attitude, and then "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes", and there has never been any debate between them.

Stark took a puff of cigarette and coughed a few times. He saw Schiller using a stone to knock off the pattern on the metal badge that had just been thrown into the fire next to the fire.

Schiller tilted his head, half of his face was illuminated by the bonfire, and the other half was in the shadow. Stark felt that this scene was the best description of Schiller.

Half like a killer, half like a child, his focused attitude when doing anything makes it easy to associate it with his posture when killing people, which is also calm and natural, with a bloody horror born out of childish malice.

Stark felt a little scared by his own imagination. He took another puff of cigarette and successfully swallowed the smoke this time. The stimulation of nicotine made him a little more sober.

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

"They are not the same kind of people." Schiller said, "The locals may not like these mercenaries. We can't let them know that we have dealt with them."

Stark suddenly thought of Eric again. He thought, "What if they knew?"

Schiller paused, turned back and threw the iron sheet back into the fire, stared at the campfire and said, "The military's series of human experiment plans can be said to be all-encompassing. For some reason, they seem to want to use exhaustive methods to get the best answer to human transformation, so the experimental materials cover humans of all ages."

Stark's hands clenched instantly. He heard Schiller's implication, which was to answer Stark's question that they did not even let go of children with autism, and also to talk about the relationship between the locals and the mercenaries.

If the mercenaries are doing dirty work for the military, then they kidnapped the locals as human experiment materials, probably not only kidnapping adults, but also taking away the cubs of a tribe is an irreconcilable hatred in any era.

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

However, Eric did save him in the first attack. Even if he abandoned him and ran away later, it would only save one unnecessary victim. He should be happy, right?

Eric had no reason to stay. They met by chance, and the other party had risked his life to save him once. How could he ask for more?

But the more Stark thought about it, the more he felt uncomfortable. He felt confused. The excitement brought by nicotine made him more talkative and he wanted to talk to someone about this matter urgently.

In the end, he decided to open this topic regardless of Schiller being a psychologist, so he said: "Do you know? Someone saved me once before I came here."

"Why say 'also'?"

Stark found that the topic could not 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 things. He said while smoking a cigarette: "His name is Eric, he is a mercenary. The pattern on his armband is the same as the one on this badge. They may 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. 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 his life on the battlefield."

"I know I shouldn't ask for more. I should be happy for his successful escape. I do... I do think so..."

"Although you don't like psychology, Doctor, but psychiatrists usually like patients like you. "Schiller said, Stark stared at him, not knowing what he meant, and then he heard Schiller continue: "The longer you say one thing and mean another, the higher the total price you get by billing by the hour. Judging from your stubbornness, it is not a problem to support five psychiatrists."

"That's what I think." Stark emphasized with his neck stiff: "Then what do you want me to think? Cry and complain that he abandoned me? Or call him a coward?"

"The only reason you didn't do this is that you have morals, and it is morality that constrains your thoughts and makes you feel that you can't blame your savior."

"You mean I am born a bad person who will resent my savior for not doing enough?"

"What do you think your negative emotions are?" Schiller adjusted his sitting position and sat cross-legged opposite Stark and asked.

Stark opened his mouth but said nothing. After a while, he lowered his eyelashes and shook his head and said, "I don't know. I can't be dishonest and say that I am very happy now, or that I am only worried about my situation. I do have some inexplicable negative emotions."

"That's called loss."

Stark looked up at Schiller.

"The image of a person in your eyes is formed by his behavior. The mercenary saved you, so you think he is a helpful hero who is willing to risk his life to save people."

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

"From a moral point of view, there is nothing wrong with what he did. Fear of death is human instinct. In extreme circumstances, protecting oneself is a decision that anyone would make."

"But you have something higher than morality, that is, the expectation of heroism. From a legal and moral point of view, he did not betray you, but he made your expectations of heroes go down, and your emotions were hurt."

Stark felt that Schiller had completely expressed his inner thoughts, but because of this, he felt that the psychologist was terrifying. He pursed his lips and instinctively took a defensive posture, without making any comments on Schiller's remarks.

"But this is not the first time that your expectations of heroes have been dashed. Usually, for the first time, people will project a superman image far above the secular moral realm onto their parents, thinking that they are omnipotent heroes."

"But as they grow up, this expectation will always be dashed, just to different degrees. Some people just realize that their parents are actually ordinary people who work hard, and some of the wisdom of the petty citizens that is not in line with the law is just a necessary skill for them to survive, and then gradually accept and learn everything, becoming ordinary people of the next generation."

"But if the contrast between the past and the present is too great, and expectations are dashed too much, people will also develop corresponding post-traumatic stress disorder."

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

"But if he As long as there is still 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 just wrongly given to others. Thus, a hero complex is born. "

"People with this complex are keen on creating gods, projecting their fantasies of heroes on others, and inevitably feel incomparable loss when they see that the other party is not heroic enough, and even develop into resentment."

"It's not resentment that the other party is not heroic enough, but essentially resentment that the other party has once again let their hopes fall through."

"Enough."

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

Schiller looked at his back and said: "The heroic expectations projected on the mercenaries have failed, and you project the same expectations on me again."

Stark's footsteps paused.

"Perhaps you haven't noticed that during the time we've been together, you've been constantly emphasizing that my actions saved you, that I've been selflessly giving to you, that I'm as strong, friendly, and thoughtful as a hero."

"And every time I point out that this is just your fantasy and not the truth, you're obviously avoiding the topic. You don't want to talk about gains and losses, you only want to talk about complexes and ideologies."

"A visionary with heroic sentiments, a person who would rather be a child for heroic fantasies or never stops fantasizing because he has never stepped out of his teenage years, this is you, Tony Stark."

Stark sat down by the emergency bed, he could feel his eyes moistening, he saw Schiller kneeling by the campfire, his body straight, looking at him calmly.

Schiller's face was still half in the light and half in the dark, but this time it was more like a fusion of sympathy and empathy, using reason to analyze feelings and using feelings to influence reason.

At this moment he felt a kind of rational charm, which soothed some of his violent emotions.

So Stark didn't fall asleep right away. He sat by the bed, stared at Schiller wearily and asked, "So, my good doctor, how do you think this disease should be treated?"

"This is not a disease. You can think of it as a kind of inertial thinking." Schiller fiddled with the metal badge that had been hammered beyond recognition, and said, "Before a person betrays or hurts you, you wholeheartedly believe that he is a hero, and when you find out that he is not, the first thing that is hurt is your feelings."

"This is actually an escapist way of thinking. Give a person a definition and framework, think that he is like this, and then ignore all the weird places, get along with him in the same way, and pin 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 revolve in the frustration of your youth. See clearly what you want behind the heroic fantasy brought about by personality regression."

Stark has asked himself this question countless times-what does he want? Save, or be saved?

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

Stark looked at Schiller and saw the warm and shimmering water in his eyes, which made his gray eyes look like silver sand flowing down the Milky Way.

This reminded Stark of the night when he stood alone in front of the bedroom door when he was young, waiting for the first great hero in his life to come back every night.

But since then, he has never waited for it again, and he has only been accompanied by such a gentle and lonely moonlight.

In this dream, Stark heard his childhood voice again.

"I want to be a hero like my dad."

"But my dad is no longer a hero."

Suddenly, Stark saw his childhood self looking at him through countless years, and he heard himself say:

"Then be a new hero."