Hello. So, about half the comments so far have been pointing out spelling/grammar mistakes. Thanks for pointing those out. Last chapter had some... silly mistakes. At one point I put 'genital' instead of 'gentle.' XD Yep. Not sure if that was just me being special or auto correct gone wrong. Either way, I don't mind when you point out stuff like that. As long as you're nice about it, I like it. It helps me as an author.

Now, this is a mega chapter. I won't be updating for a week, so this one is uber long. If I did it right, this will hit your feels too.

~Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I was home for a week no more than before my firefighter friend paid me a visit again, around mid day. I hadn't been talking to others much due to my... lesser self esteem, and for a week the only other people I conversed with where mom and dad. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to see him.

He stood in the doorway with his hands behind his back, standing politely, and asked if my parents were home. I said no, they were at work.

"What the fuck do you want?"

He didn't answer and stepped in and admired the place. He complemented the house for small talk. I shrugged. He said he was just checking up on me, making sure I was doing okay. I was doing fine and told him so.

"Okay."

Then he continued. "I brought you something."

"Oh?"

"Yep. So you don't suffocate yourself." He gave his famous lopsided smile and pulled a gas mask out from behind his back. "Breathing is important ya know."

"Why?"

His smile dissolved into a shit-eating smirk. "Well, you need to breath because you need air, which is what you breath in-"

"Not that you smart ass."

He laughed. I like his laugh.

"Why give me this?"

"Well, us firemen wear them so we can breath. I figured you could use one for when you face smoke and toxic gasses."

I just stared at him.

"Burning shit often gives off tons of toxic gasses."

"I know that! But... Thank you. Thank you a lot." I still didn't understand why he cared enough to give it to me. It made me feel funny, and I was never good with feelings.

I looked down at the gas mask. It was black, covered the entire face with goggles for eye holes, and worn straps held it to your head. Till this day I don't know what make it was, or what year, but I liked it.

"Yep. Anytime." He smiled again. Sometimes it bugged me how charming he acted. I then did something I would never do for anyone else. I invited him to stay. He said he'd be delighted too and made himself at home.

For the next few hours we sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed some coffee. We talked about the randomest things, all the while the gas mask sat on the kitchen table. At three o'clock he left, and I put the gas mask in the shed so my parents wouldn't see it. It was a good day.

...

Next week, on the same day, he came back again. It was on my seventeenth birthday, but I don't think he realized it. Just luck.

"Let's go grab some grub."

"Why?"

"I don't know, just cause? Are you allergic to food or something? Lets go, I'll pay."

"Okay."

And so he drove us to a dinner. And we sat at a booth and ordered a couple of burgers. And it was weird. Everyone was staring and he didn't give a single fuck, he just hummed a tune and ignored them.

He didn't care about the way the waitress cringed every time she saw the right half of his face, or the left half of mine. He pretended not to notice how the kids a few tables down had their eyes glued to us, or the old couple across the dinner who weren't even making an attempt at not staring.

God did I hate the starting. It made my skin itch and my insides bubble with the need to give them something real to stare at.

My friend simply ignored it. I did my best to follow his lead, but dear god there are little things I hate more that being looked at like that. I know I imagining it twice as worse than it really was, but it made my breath hitch and scars tingle. Then the tingling developed into a dull burn.

"...You okay?"

"Fucking awesome." Not sure if I said that or just thought it.

He put down his burger and he dropped the happy nonchalant tone in his voice. "Are. You. Okay?"

I felt sick and I didn't even know why. Colors seemed to just blend together and words stopped making sense.

"I'll go pay the bill and we can get out of here."

He left to pay the bill. And I'm not crazy, or, at least I wasn't crazy, but in the corner of my vision I swear that god damn greasy man from when I was fifteen standing and staring. He wasn't. I knew he wasn't. It felt like he was.

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. Literally. Everything was just blurs in my vision.

Eventually I found myself laying on my couch with the firefighter sitting in the chair next to me, sweating like a pig.

"You okay?"

"Yep."

"What happened...?"

"Don't know, but I feel better now."

"No, really, what happened. Do I need to take you to a doctor?"

I told him that I simply panicked and lost control. As similar as we could be at times, he never had that kind of problem. I hated feeling weird, even weird compared to the arsonist/firefighter with half a face.

He made some coffee, stayed for another hour and left before my parents came home and I had to go to work.

~Genius is initiative on fire.

~Holbrook Jackson

My friend visited me once a week. It was scheduled. Sometimes he'd pick me up from work too, we'd grab dinner or something like that. I liked it, though till this day I don't know if it was supposed to be some sort of romantic thing, or a brother/sister relationship. Sometimes I thought he was gay, but I couldn't be sure.

I didn't love him, at least, I don't think I did. I don't think I ever could, I don't know if I'm capable of loving anybody. He didn't know what to call our relationship either, so we didn't call it anything.

One day he picked me up from work and told me we were going to Windom, a town not all that far away, a few hours at most.

He said something like: "They have this textile factory, and I've gone there a few times to scope out the factory, it'll burn like crazy. You gotta go." Yep. The firefighter only did this sort of thing every several months to reduce the chance of getting caught. I didn't know whether to be honored or not that he invited me.

And thus I went, but I told him we needed to stop by my house first to grab some things.

I told my parents some phony half-assed excuse as to where I was going, they stopped caring by that point because they knew if they said no I would do it anyway.

I went to the shed and motioned for him to follow, more for the purpose of showing off my workshop than anything else. He followed like a lost puppy.

He marveled at it, and it made me proud. Then I showed him my flamethrower. He marveled at that too. I let him hold it even, but I made sure his hands were clean and that he held it properly.

He gave it back to me and walked around the shed, eyeing all the unfinished projects and blueprints lining the walls. "More flamethrower plans?"

"Kinda, they'll never get done. They all have some flaw that I can't work out."

"Okay. Um, could I take a few?"

The one eyebrow I had raised. "Why?"

"I don't know, they look cool, I could hang them on the walls in my apartment or something."

That sounded fucking stupid. "If you want." I handed him the blueprints for the heavy and heavier-burning one with a dragon shaped nozzle and the one that would be built out of mostly lawn mower parts.

I grabbed my flamethrower and the gas mask and we left. He shoved the stupid blueprints in his glove box and I put my stuff in back, he had his own gas mask, a couple gallons of gasoline and a fire axe back there.

"Let's go."

...

The textile factory burnt well. The gas mask worked well. The flamethrower worked fantastically. We didn't stay long enough to see the flames spread to anymore than 1/6 of the factory, but if we waited any longer we could've been seen. The fireman was really shaky. Shaky enough that I had to drive home, but before he left, he walked up to the nearest tree and pinned a piece of paper to it.

"What are you doing?"

"It's my trademark. So they know the same guy starts all of the fires." The fire behind us roared.

"That's silly. What the hell is on the paper?" I pushed him out of the way to see what it was. A stylized 19 sat in the middle.

"It's my nineteenth fire. Real fire." He explained. Only 19?

I huffed before telling him quietly. "Having a trademark is... fucking stupid. You tell me all the time to make precautions so I don't get caught, but you do this."

"Yeah, I do." He replied defensively. He seemed a bit annoyed.

"That's just fucking stupid."

"God, do you have to curse so much?"

"Yeah, I do." I sent him a challenging glare.

He waved me off and stormed over to the car. I kicked him out of the front seat because he hands were shaking too much to even put the key in the ignition. I started the car (I also made sure the headlights were off) and took side roads till we were a safe distance away.

For most of the ride, the car was silent.

"How many people do you think we just killed." It was a question but he didn't ask it like one. His attitude, which was usually happy go lucky was now completely serious whereas I felt full of adrenaline and rush.

Sure, a nagging feeling solidified in my stomach at the thought of someone else dying at my hand, but I felt to content to even care at the moment.

"Don't know." I shrugged. Couldn't have been many, if any, the place had been closed. Then again, that was my logic for the racetrack and someone roasted in there.

The whole idea of someone dying in there messed with him a lot less than it messed with me. I realized we were more different than I thought. Yet when I looked over at him, he was smiling. Fucking smiling.

We agreed that we wouldn't start fires together anymore, and it was a whole two weeks before I saw him again.

...

One nice thing about his trademark was, it always made some town's newspaper, sometimes even the channel ten news. I was always able to tell when a fire was his.

~It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

~John Green

I'm not sure if I ever loved my parents. I felt a connection to them, sure, but love might be too big of a word to use. I definitely didn't love my mother when she left.

The worst thing is, I think I'm the one who drove her out. My father and I watched as she packed her bag and simply left. She didn't need us. I suppose we didn't need her either but we definitely wanted her.

I came home that day in a police car, I'd gotten in a fight and sent two to the hospital. I wasn't proud of it, but like always it took a few minutes for the feelings and guilt to sink in. The cops thought I was a boy at first and told my parents that their son was in a fight and beat two people half to death.

My defense was that they started it.

My dad defended me. He only needed to here the story once and insert two little words; Hate Crime. He said the other kids signaled me out due to my ethnicity (which was complete bull shit but I didn't say so). His logic was solid and his days in law school did us well, the police left after only a few minutes with their tails between their legs. No one wants to deal with a hate crime, I was let off the hook.

Then my mom exploded.

Before she left she told us that I was an unruly child destined for nothing but prison and my dad wasn't half the man he pretended to be because he didn't do anything about it. She slung insults that would look bad on my lips, let alone her own.

She left. It didn't seem real.

She left and it was, in all reality, my fault.

I felt the damn greasy man laughing behind me, breathing on my ear, daring myself to remind her that I was human. Daring to remind her that I bled red and cried just like her, that I felt emotions too.

And I would've ran after her to prove it, but I didn't think I could. My eyes were dry. I acted calm, and though I'd just been in one hell of a gang fight I had nothing more than bruises and a black eye.

After thirty minutes I fully realized what really just happened and fell apart.

My father did too, but he didn't come out of his room. It's for the best, I mean, I didn't want to see him cry.

Middle of the night I snuck out and lit the hills on fire. It was the only way I could think of to handle the emotions, emotions that I really didn't know how to handle. I'd come to accept that I probably didn't love my mother but I'd never thought that she didn't love me.

...

That week when my friend the firefighter came to visit, I couldn't do anything but cry. I didn't cry often, rarely ever, but I feel that if I had done it more I wouldn't have been such a monster.

I was the first person to call myself a monster.

"God-" Won't say his name- "I'm a monster." I sobbed out.

He sighed. "Yeah, well, if you're a monster I probably am too."

That didn't help. As similar as we acted at times, it always fell through that we were very different people.

"I don't care if you're a monster." He pulled me into one of those awkward one armed hugs and ruffled my hair in a big brotherly way. "I also don't care what you look like, that your mother is a bitch, or that you have a slight tendency to curse excessively." He hummed his favorite tune and we spent the rest of the hour in silence.

It bugged me how he didn't deny my statement, but I got over it with the help of my job and my workshop keeping me busy. It soon became just another thought in the back of my head waiting to resurface.

...

I was sitting with my father outside, feeding the fire pit. I'd started using it daily again. My father even through a couple of family photos into it. I watched several pictures of my mother go up in smoke.

My dad called to me. He asked me to never leave him because he wouldn't be able to handle it.

I agreed. And that's why on my eighteenth birthday I didn't move out. I had enough money for it for sure, but it wouldn't feel right.

...

The day I turned eighteen my friend took me out for several drinks. I got quite drunk. At the time, the drinking age was only eighteen in New York, though in a few years it would change. My friend drove me home too, wishing me a happy birthday and telling me to take care.

It was a good day.

The next day my mother came back. She claimed she came back to wish me a happy birthday and that she was only there was a week.

She never told me happy birthday once, in fact, she even questioned when I was going to move out. Luckily Dad moved in there and said I didn't have to, that he didn't want me too. That made me feel nice because we both knew that if moved out my mother might've moved back in.

I wanted to tell that bitch to get the hell out of my house. Dad didn't.

She questioned if I was ever going to get married, or if I would let my hair grow out, or if I would go to law school like my father. I told her to fuck off, and when we butted heads, my father even took my side. It was a good feeling while it lasted.

The day after that my friend picked me up from work. We went out for dinner and I told him the situation. He just laughed and told me to give that bitch hell.

I intended too, and dear god did I ever, I would take it all back if I could.

...

That night my mother and father were asleep. I was watching the fire pit. It seemed like any day. I built the fire up a bit more.

And I was stupid.

Really stupid.

I swear I saw something moving at the other end of the property, something tall and man shaped. I went over there to investigate. Truth be told, whatever it was I don't remember well, and it was probably just a hallucination, seeing as I had those from time to time.

Dear god, whatever happened next I don't really know but I thought I was chasing something, someone, off my property. I really did! When I turned back around and realized nothing was there, the yard was on fire. The grass near the fire pit had caught.

And it was spreading fast. I sprinted back, completely ignoring my supposed limp and I erupted into the shed, searching for a fire extinguisher. I knew I had one, probably a couple but my head had blanked and I found nothing.

The smoke grew too great to see anything out of, so I put on the gas mask. As soon as flames started to nip at the sides of the shed I got the hell out of there, (I even grabbed my flamethrower before I left so it wouldn't melt in the fire.) I had enough flammables/explosives in there to blow it to kingdom come.

I was about twelve steps out of the shed and running to get my parents out of the house when it blew up.

The blast knocked the gas mask off my face, the flamethrower out of my hands, and me to the ground. I landed in fire. It took me several seconds to get up. It hurt like fucking Christ. Burns always do, and I landed on my side. My whole left arm left fried, my leg seemed mostly okay, my jeans protected me well, but my face tingled with a feeling that told me it would hurt like hell in a minute when the shock wore off.

More burns. Even more.

I put the mask back on (for breathing purposes,) and grabbed the flamethrower, which I later ditched in the bushes by the front door. The house was on fire. Everything was on fire. I feared it. It felt like I was sizzling away in the heat.

Adrenaline pulled me up the stairs and I burst through my parents door. My mother lay in one bed while my father in the other, both of them unconscious. Probably from smoke, they were likely slowly suffocating without knowing about it or being able to do anything about it.

And once again, it was my fault.

My father wasn't a heavy man. Neither was my mother. I could've carried either of them, but not both. I don't know why I chose my mother. I slung her over my shoulder and turned around without thinking twice about it.

On the way out I fell down twice, and the second time I fell it was so hard to get back up. I knew that If I didn't my mother and I would die, my father could already be dead, but if I died I wouldn't be able to get him out anyway.

I took of the gas mask and strapped it to my mother, who may or may not have been breathing. Blood drizzled out of the filter, my blood. As soon as I saw that I realized how much my face hurt. I didn't want to get up. I blanked out and next thing I knew I was coughing and carrying my mother out the door. I tossed her down in the dirt driveway, nearly on the street. My bad leg felt like it was about to fall off.

And I had to sit down. I was too weak to walk back in and save my father. I was a weakling. I wasn't a dragon.

My breath wheezed. Breathing was hard. Every time I blinked and opened my eyes more of the house was on fire. My mother started waking up. At first it was just a fit of coughing, but within a minute she was awake. She tore the bloody mask off her face and with fear filled eyes looked at me. She didn't look past the new trauma on my face before collapsing in on herself and grossly sob.

I almost didn't notice when the firetruck came. Someone down the road must've seen the smoke and called the fire department, good thing too. Sirens brought me back to reality. The truck pulled up behind us. Men ran about. They screamed directions at each other.

One fireman with a painted mask knelt down in front of me.

"Oh thank god you're safe!" He exclaimed and pulled me into a bone crushing hug, my aching face squished against his rubber coat. I made a muffled sound that sounded almost like a sob but he probably took it as a hello.

He didn't ask how it happened, because we both already knew. I just hope he knew it was an accident. My mom didn't ask who he was, she was still in too much shock. The other firemen centered hoses on the house.

My friend gently grabbed my face and turned it so he could see the new trauma. "The paramedics will be here soon, for both of you." My mother still didn't look at us.

He pulled me to my feet. "It'll be okay." He gave one of his famous lopsided smiles.

"私の父はそ-" I cut myself off as soon as I realized I was speaking the wrong language and tried again. "My father is in there."

His eyes went wide and my mother let out another pathetic sob. Tears streamed down my one eye, the other one's tear ducts had melted shut. The firefighter placed a kiss on my forehead.

"I'll get 'em." He promised.

He yelled to the others, and another firefighter of whom I can't name tended to my mother and I. Two men, including my friend, entered the house. I don't think I breathed for two straight minutes, and though I never really believed in a god but I was praying.

'Please.' Nothing happened.

'Please.' More nothing.

'Please be safe.'

And then the house collapsed. Firefighters all around yelled, but I didn't hear any words. Both my mother and I let out a wail of despair.

The house was a pile of burning rubble.

And it was my fault.

The only people in the world that might've loved me, and the only one's I might've loved back, were just crushed. It felt like my chest, more like my heart, had been compressed into a tiny little ball and then swallowed.

I put my hand on my mother's shoulder as the firefighters continued trying to put out the fire and dig through the rubble. The fireman that was with us ran to help the others.

"...Mom." I wanted her to turn around and look at me. I wanted her to see me being human, to see me crying, bleeding the same she color she does, to realize this was a mistake (which human make a lot of) and not on purpose. I wanted her to hug me too. I wanted her to stop the pain, both in my head, on my face and scattered all over my body. I wanted her to love me.

"Get." If I had a gun I would've sent a bullet through my brain.

"Mom..."

"Get."

I took one last look at the house, and bent down to take the gas mask. I put it over my face. It rubbed against the burn painfully but I didn't bother to adjust it.

"Get." She repeated.

I left while the firemen were still busy.

I just started walking, more like limping, away. I didn't have a set direction, but when I was probably a hundred feet from what was my house, I bent down, and remembered the most useless of conversations.

"It's my trademark. So they know the same guy starts all of the fires."

"That's silly. What the hell is on the paper?" I pushed him out of the way to see what it was. A stylized 19 sat in the middle.

"It's my nineteenth fire. Real fire." He explained.

I huffed before telling him quietly. "Having a trademark is... fucking stupid. You tell me all the time to make precautions so I don't get caught, but you do this."

"Yeah, I do." He seemed a bit annoyed.

"That's just fucking stupid."

I got the whole trademark thing. At least, I thought I did. It more for you than anyone else. It was so you remembered the fires, and if you forgot, someone else was keeping a running tally for you, because they knew which ones were yours. Or that could not be it at all. Either way, I bent down and with my own blood dripping out of the mask and covering my arm, I wrote a twenty-four.

I'm not sure if it was my twenty-fourth fire or his twenty-fourth fire. I'm not sure of which tally I was using.

They'd find the number, I told myself. I walked off the road and the opposite direction of the town, so of course I didn't get to see the slow-as-fuck police or the late ambulance showing up, but I heard them.

As a kid I always wanted to feel like a dragon. Now all I wanted was to feel human.

That was long an a lot happened. Any good? Did it hit any feels? Well, for three chapters now I've been promising RED coming in, but I just keep adding more and more till the point where it won't fit. It'll be in next chapter but don't take my word for it because I've lied to many times. Have a nice day and thanks for all the support.

Please leave me a review, and have a fucking fantastic day. :D