Better Living Through Plastic Explosives
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the occasional case of pyromania has a therapeutic benefit.
Fiona Glenanne creates her first (But absolutely not, under no circumstances, her last) bang on her fifth Guy Fawkes Day, the fireworks make little Fiona clap her chubby hands with glee. Then, despite her mother's compressed lips, one of her older brothers hands the small girl a lit firework and tells her to toss it up in the air. She does and it is magnificent. There is a shower of blue sparks that light up the sky, illuminating her little corner of the city in light, if only for a few moments, and all she can think is 'I made that happen'. Sure her brother lit the fuse and somebody else built and designed it, but she, Fiona Glenanne, tossed that firework into the sky and made the explosion happen. She extends her hands and demands another. The next few Guy Fawkes Days evolve into a massive competition between her and her brothers over who can set off the best, biggest, most, loudest explosions. After her sister dies a friend of her father's gives her a pile of tennis balls filled with nitrogen and takes her to an abandon lot on the outskirts of the city. She throws hem in the sky and screams as they explode. She signs up with the IRA the next day and they teach her how to make bigger, better explosions, and suddenly the world is her oyster.
Bangs and booms fill her head and the world is ablaze around her.
She holds her hand up to the sky, her fingers forming a V.
Guy Fawkes was always a man after her own heart.
(Remember, remember the fifth of November/Gunpowder, treason and plot./I see no reason/Why gunpowder treason/Should ever be forgot.)
Anyone who asks Tony Stark about the sixty-five times the fire department has made calls to his home he would mumble something about 'for Science'. Anyone who asked Pepper Potts about those same sixty-five calls, she would shake her head and mutter about 'Daddy issues' and 'Driving the last therapist insane'.
Therapist Number One said 'Tony Stark suffers from acute pyromania due to deeply seeded desires to dominate his surroundings.'
Therapist Number Two claimed 'Mister Stark is obsessed with gaining his father's approval, to the point that he attempts to mimic his father's war experience the best way he knows how.'
Therapist Number Three simply tossed up his hands and declared defeat.
Therapist Four, Five and Six prescribed a boatload of pills, for themselves.
Therapist Seven slept with Mr Stark and lost her licence.
Number Eight committed himself to an asylum.
Number Nine spends their sessions sobbing in his chair. (The insurance company stopped trying after that.)
Mostly though, Tony just like watching things burn. He has control over everything, but he has no control over the fire and he loves it.
The Doctor, on occasion, despite his title, likes to watch as punishment is carried out. Sometimes he wonders if he is too kind, too generous, too merciful. And some times he gives in to these desires and let's the rest of the universe know that This World Is Protected. Sometimes they need to face the consequences and if these little instances align with his own pain and suffering, well, that's just a coincidence. He tells his companions he doesn't believe in coincidences but Rule Number One is and always will be The Doctor Lies. Who he's lying to is always up for debate.
But still, for all his heroism, sometimes it feels good to let things burn.
She sticks her fingers in the fire once, when she is little. She sits and watches it each night, fascinated by the way it consumes each log, gnawing at the wood until they become little piles of ash. Her sisters tell her not to touch, but her sisters tell her many things and this creature brings her joy, so why would it hurt her?
It does though, and Lydia learns her first lesson; everyone will hurt you if you give them the chance.
James thinks explosions are an interesting punctuation point to his life. They mark incidents, little and large, which most people who are reading his file will pause over. It's not always big and fiery, sometimes it's as symbolic as an ancient building crumbling into an ever greedy sea.
Practically, they're useful for covering up things the Service doesn't want found. But philosophically, they mark the beginning of an assignment and the end of an identity. The way lives are incinerated with the striking of a match.
The psychologists would tell him it's unhealthy, and they're not wrong, they're just not right either. It's not as if he runs around setting even more things on fire than usual. He just likes to observe, whenever possible, the results.
It's good to remind himself, on occasion, that since she left ('Died.' they tell him. 'Left.' he says.), he can still feel something.
Edmund Reid likes fire. He can't explain it. By all logical conclusions he should hate it, or at least suffer from a crippling case of pyrophobia. But he doesn't.
He likes the occasional blaze, likes the way the orange tongues lick at whatever's in their path. He likes the way it changes this godforsaken town, this town where new things are invented and the world changes a billion times over, yet everything stays completely the same. Despite his and the department's best efforts, no matter how many thieves and killers they haul off every day, new ones flood in to take the empty spots on the roster.
But fire, fire changes the world order. Fire shakes things up a little. Fire puts the power in the hands of the people, gives them the choice to help, flee, loot, beg, con, kill. Fire is the great equalizer, it strips back our flesh until all you can see are bones and it leaves everyone equally broken.
He does not love the carnage but he loves the results.
Fire.
It fascinates her, the way it rages through a location, devastating the living and leaving her realm rich with new 'blood'. It thrills her, the way it snarls and consumes, eating everything around it, gorging itself like a fat pig.
She is so very old.
She watches as the world spins and the stars change. The world changes, everything changes, but fire, it is a constant, its actions predictably wild. It gives so little but takes so much.
She is the only one of her siblings invested in fire, if does not affect them the way it does her, and she is conscious of that because is sets her apart. She does not care.
She is endless.
Violet is an anomaly.
She knows this and always has. She is anomalously smart, rich, beautiful. But also, despite the incredible pile of terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad situations she has been put in, she does not suffer from and major psychological traumas, she is, in that respect, completely normal. And that's what makes her strange. She knows Klaus and Sunny both suffer from a variety of things that now involve heavy medication and several stays in the psyche ward of the local hospital.
Violet is fine. She is stable and rounded. She travels too much and she has three glasses of wine at supper when two would have sufficed. But these are not things that are commented on in the Baudelaire's social circle.
The only real sign of unrest is the slightly manic gleam one does occasionally see in her eyes, late at night after the aforementioned wine has been consumed and she sits in front of the fire, leaning forward slightly towards the hearth, the orange light flickering across her face.
Violet Baudelaire is broken.