Title: Fire
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, drama, adventure, some friendship
Characters: Well… it's pretty easy to figure it out. I don't need to say it, I don't think.
Pairing(s): None.
Summary: 'He stops and stares, gazing at the fiery, broiling destruction that, without fail, trails in his wake. He can't do anything. Can't run. Can't hide. Can't feel. The emptiness has torn a hole inside of him, left a devastating dark pit in his heart. There's nothing left. It's his fault. His fault that they are gone.' (For the EF wiki contest)
Warnings: Well… death. Lots of it. And angst. Be prepared for angst.
Notes: This is for the EF wiki contest, and the prompt is "Loneliness". So… yeah, the character is alone. There's no happy ending, but there is one at the same time—it depends on how you look at it. Anyway, enjoy!
He stops and stares, gazing at the fiery, broiling destruction that, without fail, trails in his wake.
He can't do anything.
Can't run.
Can't hide.
Can't feel.
The emptiness has torn a hole inside of him, left a devastating dark pit in his heart. There's nothing left.
It's his fault.
His fault that they are gone.
He should have known, that he couldn't control it and that it would only leave the world crumbling, bring it down to its knees.
He didn't mean to.
He slams his palm into the brick wall beside him—not out of frustration, but of the memory of it, and because of the fact that he can't actually recall what that is like, to be angry—helplessly watching it crumble under his burning touch.
He's always hated the cold, but he can't sense anything but heat. Not anymore. Not since…
No. He shuts down the thought. He's not going to think about… them. There are no tears left to shed, no emotions left to be expressed.
Turning on his heel, he marches down the scorched street, not paying attention to the sparks that fly from his feet and ignite on contact with the ground as he walks.
These things don't bother him.
Not anymore.
They haven't for a while.
He remembers the day his life, his world, collapsed. Just an ordinary day. Just sitting with… with him, his best friend, once again laughing at how opposite they were. Just like they always had. He hadn't even noticed the sparks leaking from his fingers until the carpet caught on fire. It was then that he tried to extinguish it, but his panic and pure fear was too strong, throwing him off-kilter.
Within moments, the people he cared most about, his team, his family… they were all gone. No extent of the opposite of fire could stop it.
He was all that was left.
And just minutes later, his building shattered, sending glass and steel and other building materials plummeting to the ground.
He instantly killed hundreds—in the building, on the street. The explosion tore a hole in the city.
And even then, as if that wasn't enough, the fire did not stop. It kept going, consuming and devouring anything and everything in its path—except for him. Fire hadn't hurt him for a long time.
But it hurt everyone else.
There was nothing he could do to stop it.
He tried everything: coaxing it back into his hands, submerging himself in water to cut off the creation of the fire itself.
Nothing worked.
Nothing.
He stopped trying. Instead of trying to force the sparks down, he let them out. No use left in trying to stop it.
And so as he wandered, he brought a burning, scything terror to every person left.
Children and adults alike ran when they saw the boy shrouded in fire. Light-seeking creatures shriveled and died when they got too close, the heat too unbearable.
But he made his way.
Made his way back, to the city he'd turned into hell.
And so now, here he stands, not in the place where it all began—because that had been destroyed long before he'd torn the world apart—but the place where the fright and fire originated.
As he kneels in the ashes of his old home, Davenport Tower, he wishes he could feel cold. Feel anything but heat. Life seems too… empty without it.
"I am so sorry, my friends."
He has never heard emptier words in his life.
So he stands, sighs, brushes the ashes uselessly from his scorched, already ash-stained clothes.
Casting one last look over his shoulder, he sees just a few familiar mementos from his friends.
Two shattered capsules, resting sideways on the ground—the supposedly unbreakable material yielding under his accidental fury.
He knows what Chase would say: "I told you that space rock was sketchy! Look where it got us!"
He almost misses the older boy.
He knows what Bree would say, too, hears her voice in his head: "You can't let one slip-up stop you from doing what you were meant to do! You have an opportunity, a gift, you can't give it up!" Her voice softens—or, at least, he imagines it does. "I made that mistake once. Don't do what I did."
He wishes he could believe her now.
His eyes land on something else, something that he almost didn't see because it blended in so well with the ash: a gray lightning bolt. He recognizes it. It's one of the emblems from Skylar's boots. The ones from her superhero costume. He knows how hard it was for her, letting her past go, so he'd persuaded her to bring her suit with her when they moved in. Just so she wouldn't feel like she'd given her life up.
Now he wishes he could feel guilt. He only has a faint memory of that, too.
He knows she'd reprimand him. "You're a superhero now. You have to learn from your mistakes pick yourself up when you fall down. It doesn't matter why you fell down in the first place, as long as you can get yourself back up."
Though he agrees with her, he doubts he can every fully pick himself back up after… everything.
And… there's nothing from the last person. Possibly the person he cared most about.
It's a cruel twist of fate.
His best friend didn't have many personal keepsakes. After the whole incident with Mighty Med Hospital's explosion, they'd packed the bare essentials and nothing else. His best friend hadn't brought anything expect for the necessities. He was always like that.
But then he sees something, sticking up from a pile of ash. Hesitantly, he pulls it out.
It's a photograph.
And it's him and his best friend. No one else. Just them, smiling at the camera.
A twist in his gut forces his fingers to open and let the picture flutter to the scorched ground. He can't. He can't face their happy expressions, the life in their eyes, the youth, because it seems like it was years and years ago…
Because if only he could feel…
"It wasn't your fault, Kaz," Oliver would tell him. "You didn't mean to. I could have stopped it from going out of control, but I didn't. It's not your fault."
But it is.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out again, not sure if it's ash or tears—wow, he hasn't felt those in quite a long time—clogging his vision. He goes with ash, because he still doesn't feel.
He can't bring himself to pick up anymore of the surviving mementos.
He can't.
So he walks away, fire trailing behind him, spilling off of him as sparks fly from his feet.
Alone.
He doesn't look back.
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