Ellington Feint could not imagine either Lemony Snicket or Kit Snicket starting a fire.
She was overlooking many factors.
The Volunteer Fire Department fought fires, both literally and figuratively, but since generations ago they knew that fire could be useful as a solution for many problems.
Ellington learned a bit about it the day Kit told her about her childhood home. She had seen the ruins. It was a huge place. It belonged to a wealthy family, a family of firefighters. It burned down to ashes, no wall left standing.
She supposed, by the way Kit spoke, that such a thing was not uncommon in their organization. When the fires in the city started, a few wealthy properties suffered.
She knew VFD started fires sometimes, but on the rare occasions she thought of it, she thought of VFD as some faceless, invisible force. She didn't think of the fact that these actions were ordered and done by people. She didn't think they could be done by volunteers she knew.
Kit Snicket had a rebellious phase that started when she got back to VFD after her escape with Ellington. She was never a model volunteer or a model apprentice in her youth. Getting her superior's approval was so hard and so tiring, and she was always compared to Jacques, who was just so perfect and did everything so well and never messed up, and to her parents, who were heroes and legends and examples to everyone, and even to Lemony, who learned to read at two and was top of his class despite his young age and subversive ideas. Near them, Kit could never be anything but average at best, and a disappointment, usually. After spending some time away from the organization, something in her snapped. She was done with trying and failing to meet the expectations that came with the name Snicket. She wanted to find her own path.
She dated Olaf. Her main reason was, of course, that she loved him. He was charming and a brilliant actor, he always managed to make Kit laugh, he didn't care about perfection and didn't care that Kit wasn't perfect, he didn't give a shit about her brothers' achievements. He loved Kit as she was, flaws and all. And she loved him in the same way.
She had to admit - to herself, not to him - that it gave her some pleasure that her brothers disapproved of Olaf and of their relationship so much. It only made her more open about it, more willing to make out with him in places where everyone could see.
Even before becoming a notorious villain and arsonist, Olaf already had a very undesirable trait in a firefighter, no matter how unusual firefighters the volunteers were: he was a pyromaniac. He was fascinated by fire, and one of his hobbies was burning random junk just to see how different materials reacted. He kept it a secret from his organization, but not from his girlfriend.
Kit had been shocked at first and a little scared. Olaf assured her that it was safe, it didn't hurt anyone, and he wasn't wrong. But Kit, like all her associates, was taught since she was little that fire meant destruction, danger, death. It was hard not to feel uneasy, but it also gave her a thrill of doing something wrong, something forbidden. So, she accompanied him in his hobby, though she never shared his fascination for the fire itself.
One day, Olaf offered Kit a match. The moment she lit it, she panicked, and messed up, and ended up with a burn on her hand, between her thumb and her index finger. As Olaf held her hand under cold water, mumbling apologies (something unusual to him), Kit started laughing. It was messy, but she did it. She, a volunteer firefighter, started a fire.
From then on, Kit Snicket started many other small, harmless but unnecessary fires with her boyfriend. They drank wine as they watched shit burn, until they were both laughing at nothing, and they made out there, in his backyard, and his skin tasted of smoke under her lips.
And every day, Kit felt less and less like the Snicket she was expected to be and more... more someone else, she wasn't sure who, but she hoped it was herself.
But, out of the relative safety of Olaf's arms and backyard, there were other fires, big and harmful, literal and metaphorical, that killed and destroyed, that had already divided their organization and that would soon bring war.
The fire of passion between the young couple started dying as they started disagreeing on important matters. Kit realized her rebellion was only superficial: she wore torn clothes and cursed and dated a guy her brothers hated, but she mostly still believed what she was taught to believe. Olaf, however, despite being taught the exact same things, had his own reasons to not believe them anymore. Still, the two tried to avoid the unavoidable for as long as they could. They pretended they didn't see they were becoming different people. Kit pretended she still felt safe in Olaf's arms. Their relationship ended as many things in their organization did: in fire. A fire and a secret. The fire sealed Olaf's choice of what side he would stand on, the secret he kept until his death as a last act for the woman he once loved. The fire broke much more in Kit than just her heart, and the secret would keep her awake many nights, because as the two watched the fire burn, she also held matches in her hands.
That was the last time Kit Snicket flirted with the now called fire-starting side, in any sense. She still believed in what VFD stood for, despite knowing not all people on her side had noble intentions, and even those who did sometimes made mistakes. But even so, Kit still carried matches with her everywhere. Because after breaking up with Olaf, she started smoking.
It was a bad habit, bad for her health, not to mention ugly. She was not proud of it. Kit knew no one could judge her for it, many others of her associates had also picked the habit at one point or another, but she still kept it a secret. She was a Snicket, she had to set an example. She wouldn't hear the end of it if Jacques found out. And there was Lemony, her baby brother who was not a baby anymore (though he would always be in her eyes), who had always looked up to her, who thought Olaf had tricked her during their whole relationship, who thought her incapable of doing anything wrong. She couldn't let him down. She couldn't be a bad example for him.
Kit only smoked when she was alone, at home or at a hiding place. She started using perfume to conceal the smoke scent. It was only another disguise, another secret among the many she already hid from so many people. It was nothing new to her.
Kit chose to stand for what she believed, to fight in the firefighting side, despite knowing how flawed it was. She did noble things for it, but she also did things not so much. There were times she had no choice. There were times she followed orders. There were times she decided that the consequences of a wicked action would be less terrible than the consequences of doing nothing. Sometimes she was simply wrong. Everyone goes through this in their lives.
Kit stopped smoking after she started a friendship, that turned into a romance, with a man who accepted her as she was but also inspired her to be better. Fortunately, she was completely rid of the addiction by the time she was pregnant.
Kit would never have the chance to meet her baby, but during her whole pregnancy, she wished the child would never know that their mother started more fires than she put out.
Lemony Snicket was a volunteer since before he could remember, though he would not admit it to anyone, not even to himself. Different from his siblings, he was much less willing to blindly follow orders. That caused all sort of trouble. He was careless plotting the theft of an object that belonged to a woman that was prone to resentment and revenge. He was too loud about his opinions and ideas which made him many enemies. And he was since a young age disappointed and suspecting of authorities, which made him believe he should do justice with his own hands.
Before 13, he had already committed a murder. Before 20, he had committed a few more. Before 25, he was also guilty of theft, robbery, fraud, and being a general nuisance. But not of arson.
Fire was a difficult matter for him in his youth. Certainly a result of his education. It was not a fear, simply a wish to stay away. Anyone who knew him could testify on that when the accusations came, but after all the trouble he had caused and knowing all the trouble such action could cause, no one did.
Running from his enemies and from the law, in solitude again, Lemony had to take drastic measures to not be caught and to stay alive. That included burning all evidence, all proofs, all traces of him being in certain places and doing certain things. These fires would feature in his nightmares, later joined by fires that took his loved ones and that little by little destroyed his whole world. But at the time they were necessary, and he didn't hesitate to start them.
Lemony never knew that Kit smoked, and she never learned that during his solitude, he also picked the habit. At first, he felt as ashamed as she did. But he had much more to be ashamed of, so the feeling soon left him. He always had the cigarettes with him, but he didn't always smoke. Sometimes, he just lit one and watched it slowly being consumed, just like life as he knew it had been consumed by one or another type of fire. Sometimes - many times - he would press the lit tip against his skin, the burning feeling already familiar. He would imagine the feeling spreading through all his body, wondering if that was how they felt, how she felt right before dying. Thinking that it should have been him instead. Wishing it had been him instead.
Lemony had not one, but two additions: to smoking and to burning himself. And he had no wish to get rid of either. A well-read man like him was aware of how bad the two were for him, he knew the smoke was destroying his lungs from the inside, and he saw the scars quickly multiplying. But at that point, he barely cared if he lived or died. The only useful thing he was able to do was writing his books, and he doubted that was even useful anymore. His world was only loss and grief and missing things and people who would never come back.
Until he received a note in a business card from a 10 years-old girl. Only then he found a new reason to live.