Age fourteen. Maria sits on the bathroom floor, a cigarette in her hand. It's the middle of the night, and she knows she'll be able to hear anyone coming on the off chance someone else wakes and comes here, or near enough to smell the smoke. So far, of the many sleepless nights she had done this, it had only happened twice. Both times just other kids, thankfully – one of whom complained quietly of the smell, but having concealed herself to the limited extent she could, neither cared or was curious enough to try to see who the culprit was.
Despite her typical brashness, Maria is very good at concealing herself when she needs to be. Her ability to do so is limited in the bathroom. If one of the caretakers walked in, she'd be caught for certain. But she knows how to listen for footsteps and how to pull her feet up while hiding in a stall so no one could see it was her. She used to hide all the time, when she was little. Nowadays, she does it out of convenience – when she wants to grab something without being caught, mostly. It'd be a pain in the ass to find another place to smoke (again), and lectures are just plain irritating, so she chooses to hide when smoking, too. But she doesn't do it out of fear.
She doesn't let anyone scare her anymore. Not even if, secretly, they do. When other kids make the mistake of trying to hit or otherwise bully her, she doesn't cower or wonder if their words are true. She hits and yells right back at them. And Maria Torres can pack a punch when she wants to. It doesn't make her the most popular kid, to say the least, but it does protect her from helplessness. She's not little anymore, and she has vowed never to let herself be put in that type of situation again.
Tonight is one of the ones in which she's had nightmares of when she used to be helpless like that. It's not uncommon for her to experience insomnia, anyway. There's always been a part of her that's unable to ever quite relax, although she doesn't realize it. Always slightly on alert. She's daydreamed for her whole life of being a superhero, whose strength and bravery she always admired and envied, unaware of how those traits already existed within her. The older she's grown, the more she's tried to push that dream away. It's stupid, right? She's just some screwed up teenager, she thinks.
Just some screwed up teenager. As she thinks this, words begin to sound from her memory: cruelties and coldness imparted on a little girl who didn't always know yet that not everything a parent spoke was truth. She tries to focus on the taste of smoke. It's a distraction; her attempt at grounding herself in the present that still starts to slip away from time to time, even during her waking hours.
She's shaking as a flashback hits her – not without warning, but still just as frightening in the moment. It happens with an intensity she usually doesn't experience outside of her nightmares anymore, and it leaves her holding back tears.
"Damn it!" She forgets to restrain her voice, doesn't feel like she cares, as she brings her fist to collide hard with the wall. It's then that she realizes she's still holding her cigarette.
The stupid, ineffectual cigarette that didn't save her after all.
Somehow betrayed, she hurls the cigarette into the trash – then the rest of the pack and the lighter, too. The stupid pieces of shit that hadn't done anything to protect her from the one thing she still feels helpless against. She's angry at them – not really at them, no, but they're the available target. When her tears threaten too hard and nearly spill over, she kicks the garbage bin hard. She expects it to rattle against the wall and to get some satisfaction from it.
She doesn't expect it to hit the wall so hard it topples to the other side.
She doesn't expect that the large pile of paper towels in it is rapidly being consumed by flame.
Fire spills out. It's an image she won't ever be able to forget.
Maria turns and she runs. The orphanage is full of old, wooden floors. If the fire gets to the hallway, they're screwed. She's going to alert one of the caretakers in the hopes that they'll know how to put it out, but she's stopped as a loud sound begins to blare through the halls.
BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.
She knows for a fact there was no smoke detector in the bathroom, having worried before that a cigarette might set one off.
And suddenly, she could have sworn it felt like the world was ending. There's a stampede of kids of all ages running toward the doors as the other side of the hallway burned. She feels frozen in place as she stares at it until one of the caretakers notices her.
"What are you doing? Come on, we have to get out!" The other is partly trying to keep the kids calm and checking for safety, and partly doing a headcount, trying to make sure everyone is accounted for. After Maria begins to move toward the door as well, she rushes over and assists the first caretaker.
Maria starts to hurry, everyone else now quite a ways ahead of her, when she stops. The assumption was that everyone should be there, but she can hear crying. Not help me shouting, but a terrified, speechless, trapped crying that could barely be heard over the ever increasing crackle of flames. They're coming closer and closer, and she should run away.
She does run. But it isn't to the doors. It's back, trying to find a way through the flames without her clothes catching fire. It's to an area practically surrounded in flames and with heavy smoke that feels suffocating. She lifts the top of her shirt to cover her nose and mouth as best as she can, holding it in place until she sees the source of the crying.
Rose. The little girl looks up at her, wide eyes pleading for rescue, but saying nothing.
She fears the amount of smoke she might inhale if she tried to speak, but her intentions should be obvious, she thinks.
Rose is trapped, and she has no idea how to get to her. But somehow, acting on pure instinct and adrenaline, she manages, lifting the girl up and running again toward the doors. On her way out, she hears something like an explosion not far from where Rose had been sitting. She doesn't dare look back.
Maria carries her all the way until they get outside, crossing the street to where the other kids and the caretakers were. She puts her down, then, as both of them start to cough.
"Are you two okay?!" one of the caretakers questions. They had done a headcount once outside and noticed the two of them missing, and had been praying the fire fighters would arrive in time to save them if they were trapped.
"I'm fine-" Maria manages, catching her breath made harder by the continuous adrenaline making her heart pound incessantly and forcing her toward shallow breaths.
"She saved me…" Rose says, not having moved from the spot Maria had put her down. She clings to Maria, even as she coughs and trembles.
The fire trucks and ambulances arrive shortly after. A paramedic comes over to assess for injuries – of which, other than their minor smoke inhalation, there are none – and ask whether everybody is outside. They are, so all that can be done is wait and hope the fire fighters can contain it enough to stop it from spreading even further.
Some kids cry or hide behind the caretakers. Others stare, unable to stop fixating on it as their home burns. For many, it's the only home, or only caring home, they have ever known. This is true of Maria as well, though she can't exactly say she felt completely safe there. Or that she trusted he caretakers... at all. But she looks around at the other kids, most of who are terrified, devastated… and it hits her hard, right in the gut, that this is all her fault.
Her legs want to give out under her, but she runs again – this time a short distance away into the grass – before collapsing to her hands and knees and vomiting on the ground.
Her fault.
It's completely her fault.
She tells herself she has no right to feel devastated by any of this.
It's more than a decade later the next time she smells cigarettes – really smells them. Even just walking past people smoking, she finds herself holding her breath until she's far enough away. Ever since that incident, just the memory of their taste disgusts her, even back when her body craved them still. She can't stand them.
But she's just started at Resurgam, and is introduced to a doctor walking around with a cigarette never leaving his mouth. The smell hits her like a brick wall, and nausea washes over her. She's never been one to force smiles, but right now, she does.
"—Yeah. Nice to meet you, too." She shakes his hand and doesn't look him in the eye.
The Chief must have noticed her tension and slight paling, though. After Gabe has wandered off, she asks with genuine concern, "Are you allergic to cigarettes? Asthma?"
She shakes her head, regretting the action immediately as it makes her realize she's become lightheaded. "It's fine. It's nothing."
Esha knows otherwise, but it won't be for several months that she'll feel she knows Maria well enough to call her on things like this. This time, she makes a single comment but lets it go. "Well… if it does start to bother you, feel free to tell him off, 'kay?"
Maria smiles just a little. She won't do it, because she doesn't want to talk about it. Besides, she knows it's not something she can avoid forever. Now that she's really, actually an EMT, she knows she'll have to deal with all kinds of smoke. Maybe not cigarettes, but flames are a certainty. But… she appreciates it. "Okay."
It takes her a week to stop avoiding Gabe, and it takes her another week and a half to get used to the smell of cigarettes.
Months later, they've become friends. She happens to go out to the roof when he's there, smoking as usual of course, and he offers her a cigarette.
She just shakes her head and looks into the sky.
The sun is setting, leaving it the color of embers.