met·a·noi·a (English)
2. change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.

When she respawned for the eighth time that day, it was Sniper, hovering by the cliffs near mid, that commented on it. "All right, mate?"

"Huh?"

"Watched you comin' back out to the field about ten times now. Bad day?"

Pyro blinked, distracted by her own thoughts even while he was speaking. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess," she said, nodding to get the idea across.

"Bad day yesterday too, eh?"

What was he-oh. Spy. She shrugged. Sniper chuckled, more to himself than anything. "Man looked like a wet cat when you got through with 'im. G'wan, it's alright. We all get bad days. Have Demo tell you about the time Scout put itchin' powder in his eyepatch."

"Yeah," she mumbled, trotting off toward the fighting. All she'd gleaned from the exchange was the name Scout, and the way it made her stomach bottom out.

From the moment she had opened her eyes that morning, her talk with Heavy had weighed her down her like an anchor. Even so, maybe she needed an anchor. She tied her thoughts to it, steadying them as much as she could, and slowly charted a course.

By the time the workday ended, she would die and respawn another five times, but she would also have a plan.

But first things first. Small steps. When her hair caught in her mask filter as she took it off in her room, she studied it for a second, and then got the scissors.

Snip, snip, snip. Pyro shook hair off the blades. Snip, snip, snip. A sharp knife would probably be more efficient, but she didn't have one and neither did the canteen. There had been a cleaver almost as big as her head hanging from one wall, but that sort of seemed like overdoing things, and it was rusty anyway. What she did have were dull scissors, though she wasn't sure when or how they had gotten into her room.

Another lock of hair fell into the bowl, joining the sloppy ponytail she had already lopped off. A few more haphazard cuts, and she put the scissors down to scrub her fingers through the scant few inches that remained on her head. She looked down at the bowl for a moment, then reached for the book of matches that lay a few feet away. Ten seconds later and she sat cross-legged, chin in hands, watching the tiny blaze.

The acrid stench of burnt hair filled the room. Pyro wrinkled her nose, but made no move to put out the fire. By the time the flames died the room was rank with it. She studied the ashes, then pushed the bowl aside and pulled her mask back on. She tugged at it here and there, getting used to the fit without anything running down the back of her neck anymore. Her hair had gotten so long in just a few years. The extra room in her mask she'd taken back from it made it easier to breathe, and she found she didn't even mind the rank air.

She felt better already.

"Where's the fire, lad?"

Pyro pulled up short in the snow as Demoman spoke to her, shifting her scarf to better cover the gap in her suit's collar. The wind was sighing, and it was already past dark. The faint lights on the outside of the base didn't do much, especially not with tinted lenses-she hadn't even noticed him until he spoke. The mask filter fell open at her touch. "Nowhere yet. What are you doing out here?"

She realized she hadn't even needed to ask right after she said it. Two familiar bottles hung from his hands, and snow clung to their brown surfaces. "Jus' chillin' a few o'these for the night," he said, brandishing them. "Someone's got to celebrate the new year. What're you doin' yourself? That'd be the Christmas stuff ye got in town, aye?"

Pyro glanced down at the crate she was balancing on her hip, the one from Miut that had lain under her bed for a week while she tried to figure out what to do with its contents. "Yeah. Where's the shooting range?"

"The—? Oh! Aye, the old barn? That-a-way," he said, pointing somewhere off into the darkness. Very helpful. "Why?"

"I just wanted to see it. Thanks."

Demo nodded and left it at that. They parted ways, and after perhaps five minutes the sparse trees around the base opened up entirely, and there stood the barn.

It was an antique, dilapidated thing, painted a deep blue that was flaking off in massive chunks to reveal gray wood beneath. The roof had gaping holes, sunken by heavy snow. A handful of rusted-out farm implements leaned up against the sagging walls. The whole thing was even worse off than Heavy had said yesterday, and Pyro had not been able to stop thinking about it ever since. The distraction had gotten her killed on the field more than once.

She made her way up to the threshold and hesitated. This idea, like most of the ones she had, was probably terrible. But at least, she thought as she stepped inside, it might terrible in the right direction this time.

Within it was remarkably dry, if not any warmer. Some sawhorses sat near the center, bullet casings riddling the floor at their feet, with more stacked on one another in the vestiges of a stall nearby. Hay bales stood in frozen bundles in the lofts on either side. Two aging support beams held up the ceiling in the middle of it all. Yes, this would do very well, even if the snow and ice that had drifted in through the broken windows and holes in the roof might be a hindrance. The itch in her fingers got worse as she set down the crate and kicked off the lid.

First things first. The flashlight she had borrowed from the garage lay on top of everything. It came on with a reassuring click, and she clipped it to her shoulder strap. When she leaned over the crate again it lit the whole thing up. A dozen technicolor packages cased in plastic gleamed at her. She exhaled, taking one—a narrow blue-and-gold box made of cheap cardboard—and turned it over in her hands. It was funny how you couldn't get away from some things. She didn't need to be able to read the lettering to know the box said BLAZING GLORY.

It disappeared into her ammo pouch, and the rest of the fireworks came out onto the floor, neatly arranged by size and color. An uncomfortable sense of déjà vu swept through her, but she carried on.

The harder part was dragging the sawhorses into the best positions. It had been so long since she had properly done anything like this that she found herself doing more second-guessing than not. In the end, she decided as she pulled the final four into a square in the middle of the structure, it probably didn't matter that much, as long as she could be sure the middle would catch fire.

She scattered some of the frozen hay that had been on the floor in the center of the sawhorses, not sure how useful it would be, and spread the newspaper still sitting in the crate over it just in case. The fireworks were next, ringing the square. Miki had not been certain if they would so much as light. According to her they had been sitting in the general store for years. Even if they didn't, Pyro couldn't have left them behind. This was as good a place to make us of them as any.

Looked at what she had built, she chewed at her lip, fidgeting with the flare gun she had hung on her belt before she left. She glanced over her shoulder at the crate, and turned to get the final piece.

Carefully, reverently even, she lifted the crate up and put it in the center of the pyre. For a few seconds she gazed down into it, pulling herself together. "…Sorry about this," she said at last. Her own voice was unfamiliar to her with its gentleness.

The thing in the crate said nothing, of course. Flamethrowers didn't talk. All the same, she felt she owed Shark the apology. They had been together a long time—too long, even. It had become so much a part of her and her past that it would do well as an effigy. She touched its gas pump handle, its full propane tank, and let her fingers rest on it a few seconds before backing away.

The anticipation was getting to be too much. Her hands trembled. She took one last look at the interior of the barn, now a carefully-designed fire trap, and went back to the door.

Outside, nothing had changed. The wind blew gently, and a light snow fell. Pyro took a deep breath, looking out over the emptiness, and clicked off the flashlight. She could still make out the base from here. Maybe the team would see. Maybe they wouldn't. Either way, Heavy had been confident no one would miss the barn if she needed to see something burn that badly. (She did, she assured him. She really did.)

Pyro turned her back on the snow and unhooked the flare gun from her belt. Her confidence grew as she took aim at the hay in the lofts. First one, then the other. When both had begun to blossom into bright flashes of gold and orange, hissing with smoke from the frost but still burning well enough, she allowed herself a smile.

Sniper was squinting through the window when Dell came into the canteen that night. Neither paid the other any mind as Dell helped himself to whatever sort of coffee his teammate had going this late. It was anyone's guess whether or not it would be good, or even caffeinated, but he suspected it would work well enough as a placebo. He just needed something to get him through the night. The project he had thrown himself into to distract himself from ... well, from everything, really—was nearly done.

A sip told him it would do. Stale, though. Could do with something to cover that up. "Hey, where's the sugar?"

"Huh? Oh, hell if I know," said Sniper. "Say, c'mere, lookit this an' tell me if I been drinkin' outta the wrong jars again."

Dell wrinkled his nose, glancing down at the coffee. He set it down on the counter and joined Sniper at the small window just above the sink. "What'm I lookin' at, then?"

"Right there. Just behind them little trees, see it?"

"Huh. Yeah. Real bright. What is it?"

"Seems like a fire to me. A right big one."

They looked at one another. Dell felt his patience thinning as he waited for the inevitable question. He must have shown it, too, because in another moment Sniper turned and said, "I'll go ask if anyone's seen Pyro."

Dell watched him go, threw back a gulp of his crap coffee, and directed his narrowed eyes back out the window.

It was a fire, all right. It was a hell of a fire. Dell had never seen anything like it, not even in the oil fields, not even when they'd set the hills aflame to clear the land back home. It was the dark and the cold that did it. This fire rose high into the night, tearing at the black winter sky as if to consume it. The snow around it served only to make it look fiercer, rawer, more furious.

He and the rest of the team got there in time to hear a terrible snapping noise. Part of the roof fell in. The small black figure standing in front of the barn, staring up at the blaze, seemed to shiver. "It is Pyro, yes?" Medic said from beside Dell, squinting.

"Who else would it be?" Dell said. "Big damn fire like that, who else."

They had all stopped a respectful distance away. Pyro, on the other hand, would have been flattened if the barn chose to collapse toward her. What the hell did she think she was doing, Dell wondered.

Beside him, Scout kicked at the snow, squinting ahead. "Who said he could freakin' do that? It don't belong to him, now ain't nobody can use it, this is bull—"

Another part of the roof caved in. A moment later there was a vast boom, and then a high-pitched shriek split their ears, making the whole team—except Pyro—flinch. A huge series of snaps and pops could be heard under the roar of the fire, and then something shot up out of the building. It went straight into the air, whirling as it went, and at first Dell thought it was a flare. That notion died the moment it exploded. It bloomed into a magnificent display of light, sparks billowing out among the ash and smoke in a dozen different colors. The first was followed by a second and a third, and then you couldn't hear the fire for the fireworks.

"Where'd he get those?" someone said. Dell looked around for the speaker. He did not find him. What he saw instead was Scout with his eyes locked on the rainbow of light and his teeth grit.

Another bang went off and Scout jumped a good deal harder than Dell would have thought. His eyes cut from the show to Pyro, and then he noticed Dell watching him. "What?" he snapped. "You got somethin' to say, spit it out, what?"

"…Can't say as I do."

"Yeah? Good," Scout said, gaze jerking back up to the inferno as if he could not help himself, "...Good. Have fun with your dumb New Year's crap, it's too cold, I'm goin' inside."

He turned and began to walk away. When a particularly loud explosion rocked the air, he broke into a jog.

A few minutes later, with one last hard stare at Pyro's silhouette, Dell followed suit.

Under her mask, Pyro's cheeks were wet.

She was not sure when she had begun crying. Stopping didn't feel like an option at this point. Some part of her had gone up with the smoke from the barn, more of herself than she had been prepared to give, but she felt lighter for it.

It was unlike any blaze she had set before, and she could feel the difference in her bones. Arsonist she may have become, but before BLU, before the fireworks, she had never burned anything for any other reason than the joy of seeing the Fire again. Having a purpose and meaning in the flames changed them. The ecstasy was still there, yes, the thrill that soothed the itch in her hands and quieted the static in her brain, but there was something new and strange behind it.

Before her, the Fire ate up the barn as gladly and easily as it had eaten up her shed, her house, her friend. The fireworks rocketing out of its collapsing form were nothing compared to the memories, but they were close enough. This was the best she could do to recreate that July night.

Back then, she had run. She would not run again.

At some point the team had shown up behind her, standing well back from the blaze. She had barely noticed them when they arrived, and by the time all four walls had collapsed into a black and smoldering pile she had forgotten they were there at all. It didn't matter. The fire wasn't for them, anyway.

She had forgotten most everything else, too. Her hands and feet were numb from the cold, and she was shivering even though her suit still felt warm from the flames, and her knees ached from standing. How long had she been here? How long had the Fire been burning? Long enough, apparently, that when she looked over her shoulder again the eight men behind her had dwindled to one.

Heavy lifted his hand when she nodded to him. A moment later he was beside her, at the edge of the remains of the barn. He looked over the smoking remains with a grave expression. "It is done?"

Pyro swayed on her legs and pulled off her mask. The snow was still falling, gentle, mixed in with ash and shrinking flames, and there was no more wind. The whole world was breathed easy. "Yeah, just about."

"Are you feeling better?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

"The fireworks, I did not expect."

She snorted, swiping at her wet eyes. Not much to be done, there, not while she was still outside. The tears would probably freeze on her eyelashes.

Tucking her mask under her arm, she grabbed the box in her ammo pouch. She shook it open and pulled one of the sticks out, metal and blue powder. "Here," she said, handing it to Heavy. "Have you ever lit a sparkler?"

He blinked down at her before taking it. "Not in many years," he said, spinning it between his fingers.

"Me either."

"Where did you find these?"

"That town down the mountain. Kind—kind of felt like I was supposed to get them, I guess." Pyro got one of her own, and knelt before the still-burning remnants of the front wall. She put the tip of the sparkler to the flame and it lit after a few seconds, sputtering and hissing. Something stirred in her heart as she watched it. In the corner of her eye she could see Heavy mimic her. When her first one burnt out, she grabbed another and lit it the same way. "It's New Year's Eve, right?" she asked. "January first tomorrow?"

If Heavy looked at her, she didn't notice. "It is."

"Don't people make resolutions then?"

"In America? I think so."

"Do they do something different in Russia?"

"We wish for good luck."

Huh. "Then maybe I'll do that instead." The sparkler danced. Pyro twirled it between her fingers, nodding slowly. "Yeah. I could use some of that."