Hi everyone! This is my first fanfiction, so please don't hate on me if there are issues within the story. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this.
Fire. M'gann hated fire. Growing up as a martian, she had been taught to hate fire, until the idea was so impounded in her head she could not escape its grasp if she tried. "Fire is evil," her teachers said. "If touched, it will only bring pain." She had listened to them, and soon her hatred of fire turned into fear.
When she arrived on earth, she had her first experience with fire. The cage Red Volcano made around her left her weak and breathless. Pain seemed to erupt in her whole being. All she could focus on was the burning encompassing her. Black seeped into her vision, making it blurry and unreliable. The feeling of total and complete helplessness brought to memory times as a white martian on Mars. Her fear of fire increased, and as oblivion softly pulled her into its grasp, she resolved to never go near such a burning devil of her own free will.
As time passed, she was able to suppress her fear of fire. She witnessed its effects on her time after time, but always managed to survive. Only when she felt fire in her lover's mind, did she feel the fear again, beckoning her and calling her to submit to its darker impulses. She knew she had been abusing her powers, but she convinced herself it was for good. Her conscience begged her to stop, screamed at her that she was wrong, but she squelched its cries and continued with her actions.
She remembered the argument with Conner, watched him as she suggested for him to sleep. The fire raged and burned in his mind, but she was determined to put it out. Her teachers said fire was evil, so getting rid of his would help him, right? She reached out with her mind to touch it, to drain it dry of the thoughts that kept it burning. Only, something wrong happened, and the fire became a blazing inferno, threatening to destroy her. Conner angrily reached for her hand, his eyes wide with anger. That day, her fear of fire turned once more into hatred.
The next time she experienced fire, it was within herself. She had destroyed Kaldur's mind and ruined Nightwing's plan. It was her fault if they failed to stop the Light because she had been too blind to see the error of her ways. She could clearly see the fire burning within her, twisting and turning her into something else entirely, something evil. There was only one way to stop a fire: let it die. So, when she was in Kaldur's mind, and Tula started pummeling her, she let her mind go, thinking death was the only way to stop the fire once and for all.
But then, Artemis grabbed her, reached for her hand and put it on top of Kaldur's. Her friend's voice penetrated through her thoughts, and she saw another type of fire, the fire of passion. She wondered why she had never seen it before, and instantly thought of all the other times she had seen it but not recognized its power. It was a type of passionate fire that drove her friends to sacrifice everything for the sake of justice, to put their lives on the line for strangers time and again. For the first time in her life, she realized all fire wasn't evil. It was not to be feared or hated. It was to be molded into a type of fire that would bring life. She put her other hand on top of Kaldur's, and for the first time in her life, she felt truly at peace.