With a slightly trembling hand, Stark pulled a cigarette from the pack. He tried to light it with a nearby fire, but the flame flared up unexpectedly, almost burning his hand.
Shiller promptly took the cigarette from his hand, shook away the flame, and lit the cigarette again with some still-warm charcoal nearby. He then handed it back to Stark.
"Aren't you going to smoke?"
"I don't need cigarettes to alleviate anxiety."
"I wasn't implying…"
Stark realized that anytime he disagreed with Shiller, Shiller would resort to an air of barely concealed indifference. What followed was always "yes, yes, yes, sure, sure, sure," effectively shutting down any possibility of a debate between them.
Stark took a drag from the cigarette and coughed a few times. He noticed Shiller, by the fire, using a stone to hammer away the emblem on a metal badge he had just thrown into the fire.
Shiller's face was half lit by the glowing flames, the other half obscured in shadow. Stark thought that the scene aptly mirrored Shiller's character.
Half killer, half child, his air of single-minded focus reminiscent of the cold-blooded composure he displayed when killing. It carried an undercurrent of horrific bloodshed, born of juvenile malice.
The thought startled Stark, and he took another drag from the cigarette, managing to swallow the smoke this time. The nicotine helped clear his mind a bit.
"Why are you grinding it away?" Stark asked, referring to what Shiller was doing. Most of the emblem on the metal badge was now barely visible.
"They're not one of us," Shiller replied. "The locals probably won't take kindly to this bunch of mercenaries. We can't let them know we've interacted with them."
Stark suddenly thought of Erik. He pondered for a moment then asked, "What would happen if they found out?"
Shiller paused and threw the metal piece back into the fire. He stared at the fire as he said, "The military's series of human experimentation projects are quite diverse. For some reason, they seem to be trying to find the best result for human modifications through the Exhaustion Method. Consequently, their experimental subjects cover every age group in the human race."
Stark's hand instinctively clenched up. He understood what Shiller was trying to say. Shiller was answering both Stark's question about why they didn't spare even children with autism and about the relationship between the locals and the mercenaries.
If mercenaries did the dirty work for the military, and if they kidnapped locals to be used in human experiments, possibly not only adults but also children, it could evoke irreconcilable hatred in any era.
Perhaps that was exactly why Erik had run away in such a panic. Stark thought, Erik knew he couldn't allow himself to be caught by the locals, as he was part of the mercenaries doing the military's dirty work.
But Erik had indeed saved him during the first assault. Even if Erik had abandoned him later, that just meant one less needless sacrifice, wasn't that reason to be happy?
Erik had no obligation to stick around. They were mere strangers who had crossed paths. Erik had already risked his life to save him once. How could he demand more?
However, the more Stark thought about it, the more unsettled he felt. His heart was a mess. The excitement caused by the nicotine gave him an itch for conversation, an urgent need to talk to someone about this.
In the end, he decided to forget about the fact that Shiller was a psychologist and opted to broach the topic by saying, "You know, before coming here, someone else had also saved my life."
"Why use the word 'also'?"
Stark realized the conversation was hitting a dead end again. If he answered Shiller's question, they would be pulled back to the debate about whether Shiller had saved him or not.
Stark decided to ignore Shiller's question and continue with his narrative. He took another drag off his cigarette and went on, "His name was Erik, a mercenary. The emblem on his sleeve was the same as the one on this badge. They probably belong to the same mercenary group."
"When I was on my way to the inspection site, my car was assaulted by artillery fire. It was Erik who saved me from nearly being blown up."
Stark slowly recounted his experience, emphasizing with hands spread wide, "Nobody in this world is obliged to save anyone else, right? Especially not at the risk of one's life in a war zone."
"I know I shouldn't ask for more. I should be happy for his successful escape. I truly... I truly feel this way…"
"Even though you don't like psychologists, we typically enjoy working with patients like you," Shiller interjected. Stark stared at him, unsure of what he meant, until Shiller explained, "The longer you deny your true feelings, the higher the total fee we earn from sessional charges. Given how stubborn you are, you could easily support five psychologists."
"That's how I feel." Stark adamantly responded. "So, how should I feel? Should I tearfully complain about him abandoning me? Or call him a coward?"
"The only reason you haven't done this is that you're a moral person. Your morals are restricting your thoughts, making you feel like you shouldn't blame the person who saved your life."
"So you're saying I'm naturally a bad person resentful of my savior for not doing enough?"
"What do you think your negative feelings are right now?" Shiller adjusted himself into a cross-legged position opposite Stark and asked.
Stark opened his mouth but said nothing. After a moment, he lowered his eyes, shook his head, and said, "I don't know. I can't pretend to be happy right now or say that I'm just worried about my predicament. I definitely have some unexplainable negative feelings."
"That's called loss."
Stark looked up at Shiller.
"A person's image in your eyes is built by their actions. The mercenary saved you, so you saw him as a hero - someone willing to risk his life to save others."
"In your eyes, a hero has a duty to save others, so when he later abandoned you and ran away, you felt he broke your image of a hero. You realized he wasn't a hero, but just an ordinary person afraid of death."
"Morally speaking, there's nothing wrong with what he did. Fear of death is a human instinct. Preserving oneself in extreme environments is a decision anyone would make."
"But you hold something higher than morality, and that is the expectation of heroism. From a legal and moral point of view, he did not betray you, but he let your hopes for a hero fall through, hurting your emotions."
Stark felt that Shiller had completely voiced his inner thoughts. Because of this, he found psychologists terrifying. He pursed his lips and instinctively adopted a defensive stance, not offering any comment on Shiller's remarks.
"But this isn't the first time your expectation for a hero failed. People generally first project the image of a superhuman far beyond ordinary moral norms onto their parents, thinking they are invincible heroes."
"But as they grow up, these expectations always fail. It's just a matter of degree. Some simply realize that their parents are, in fact, ordinary people struggling with their lives, that the wisdom of some small townspeople not aligned with the law is just a necessary skill for survival. They gradually accept and learn all of this to become ordinary members of the next generation."
"But if the disparities are too great, and many expectations fail, people can develop relevant trauma stress disorders."
"The manifestation of this trauma stress disorder is that they no longer believe there are heroes in this world. They think that most people are hypocrites, just like the ones who disappointed them, hence their complete disappointment with human nature and society."
"However, if they still have a glimmer of hope, they will want to find a real hero to prove that they are not fools who've been deceived, but simply trusted the wrong person. Thus, a hero complex is born."
"People with this complex are keen on idolizing heroes, projecting their fantasies about heroes onto others, and inevitably when they see the un-heroic side of these people, they feel an unparalleled sense of loss, which can even turn into hatred."
"It's not a grudge for them being less than heroic. Essentially, they're angry because they let their hopes fall through again."
"Enough."
Stark stood, throwing the cigarette butt in his hand into the bonfire, and slowly moved, saying, "I'm tired, I need to sleep."
Watching Stark's back, Shiller said, "After your hope in the mercenary hero failed, you projected the same expectations on me."
Stark's pace came to a halt.
"Perhaps you haven't noticed, but in the time we've been together, you've constantly stressed how my actions saved you, how I selflessly gave to you. I was strong, friendly, and meticulous like a hero."
"And every time I pointed out that this was just your fantasy and not reality, you avoided the topic. You didn't want to discuss gains and losses, only feelings and ideals."
"A heroically idealistic daydreamer, a man who'd rather remain a child or never stop imagining because he's never moved past adolescence. That's you, Tony Stark."
Stark sat down on the emergency bed, feeling the moisture in his eye sockets. Shiller, kneeling by the bonfire, sat up straight, his gaze calm.
Shiller's face remained half in the light and half in the dark, but this time it looked more like a blend of sympathy and empathy, using reason to analyze feelings, and feelings to impact reason.
At that moment, he felt the charm of reason, which soothed his turbulent emotions well.
So Stark didn't fall asleep straight away. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking somewhat tired and asked Shiller, "So, my good doctor, how do you think this 'illness' should be treated?"
"This is not an illness. You can regard it as a habitual way of thinking." Shiller fiddled with the metal badge in his hand, already hammered beyond recognition, and said, "You fully believe a person is a hero before they betray or hurt you. When you discover that they are not, the first thing to get hurt are your feelings."
"This is actually a form of escapist thinking, assigning a person an image and a framework, thinking that they are just that, and ignoring all their oddness. You interact with them following the same pattern, pinning all your hopes on the possibility that they genuinely are a hero."
"You can't run away, Tony." Shiller lifted his head to look at Stark and said, "Don't continue wallowing in the disappointments of your youth. Look clearly behind the hero fantasy brought by regressive personality and ask what you really want."
Stark had asked himself this question countless times — what does he truly want? To save, or to be saved?
Or more precisely, to wait for a hero or to become a hero?
Stark looked at Shiller, and in his eyes he saw a gentle, twinkling waterlight, that made his gray eyes look like rivers of silver sand flowing from the Milky Way.
This made Stark recall the nights when he was a child, standing alone at the doorstep of his bedroom, waiting for the first great hero of his life to return.
But he never waited again after that. The only thing that accompanied him was the moonlight, so mild and lonely.
In his dreams that night, Stark heard the voice of his child self again.
"To become a great hero just like Dad."
"But Dad is no longer a great hero."
In an instant, Stark saw the gaze of his childhood self piercing through infinite time to look at him, and he heard himself saying:
"Then become a new great hero."