Summary: Margaret is a badass and deserves some recognition.


The soft cooing noise that came from her chest brought her back to reality, making her look down to the big golden eyes that seemed to take on her face as if it was some kind of art piece that held all the answers to existence. Babies had the power to make you feel like you were the most interesting person in the world, even if you only had to make a weird face to have them laugh until turning red.

Her baby, though? He made her feel that there was still hope. That no matter what came her way there was still a reason to keep fighting, even when those gorgeous golden eyes made her want to cry her eyes out over what could have been but never was.

Those golden eyes that looked at her with so much awe and love that, for just a second, she could imagine that it was him looking at her.

She could feel her eyes sting, forcing her to blink away the tears and rub them with maybe too much force.

The smoke was getting irritating.

"Ma'm, please, stay away from the fire."

A man in a firefighter uniform appeared at her side and tried to grab her arm. Still a bit out of it, and with fear gripping her bones in a death grip, she swung the metal baseball bat until it pointed to the firefighter's chest.

"Don't you dare fucking touch him."

Her baby squirmed in the sling and tiny hands came up making grabby motions. She carefully held them in her free hand and kissed them, eyes still daring the stranger to take a step in her direction.

The man screamed while throwing up blood and teeth. The bat swung again and the body stopped moving.

"Ma'm, I have no intentions of touching your baby" The stranger lifted his hands in a surrender motion, voice calm and kind. He kept his eyes on hers, ignoring the squirming baby attached to her chest. He was intelligent, she would give him that. "But it's not safe for the both of you to be this close to the flames" The man pointed behind him, where an ambulance had just parked and paramedics were coming out of it like rats out of a sewer. "They can tend to you both right there, and they won't touch him either."

She resisted the urge to scoff, knowing that her beautiful boy was probably as comfortable as a cat in a box, if him opening and closing his toothless mouth with an adorable smile as if he could taste the flames told her something.

With the bat still pointing at the firefighter, she patted her baby's back through the sling and started walking towards the paramedics, who where now looking at her like she had just come out of a fucking horror movie.

The woman looked up, eyes wide in horror and gun forgotten at her back when those hands grabbed her head and thumbs squeezed.

Wiping the hand still holding the bat in her pajama pants, the paramedics led her towards the back of one of the ambulances, that was facing the yellow and red lights of the flames, and started fretting around her with pale faces and shaking hands.

Weren't they supposed to be familiar with blood?

Yes, but not with people bathed in it.

She ignored all the voices asking her questions and hands looking for wounds to tend to, both in her and her baby, that looked at all those people around them like they were aliens speaking a foreign tongue. They would find none; she had made sure of that.

The muffed crying that came from the closet could be heard over the thumping noise that came from the living room. A whole in the wall and a splatter of blood forgotten to tend to the desperate cries.

"Ma'm, please, I need you to let go of the baby to make sure he is alright."

Two hands grabbed the sling and tried to slip inside it. The baseball bat swung and hit the door of the ambulance, making the hands let go of the baby and stumble back. The woman had to be caught by two other paramedics to avoid ending up on the ground.

She patted her baby's back, as if wanting to erase the medic's touch, and spoke.

"The blood is not mine."

"Ma'm, please, put the bat down and let's talk, alright? This must be really stress-"

"I said" She raised her voice to the point her throat protested, but she swallowed the need to cough and wash away the effects of the smoke and kept looking down on the people in front of her. "The blood is not mine. Touch my baby again and the same won't be said about you"

The gunshots made her head throb, but she didn't stop until no more bullets came out through the cannon. She hit until the hands around her neck fell to the ground and there was no more squirming underneath her.

"Miss, you need to understand-"

"Margaret!"

All eyes snapped back to the new voice, a man with white hair and a military uniform coming out of a black van, followed by a dozen armed soldiers.

Barnes went to approach her, but when he noticed the house and the flames he stopped in his tracks and looked at the burning building as if it were the doors of Hell.

The soldiers scattered around, pressuring the firefighters to put an end to the fire. The screaming had ceased a long time ago. They would only find burnt flesh and melted iron.

Margaret looked down to her baby. He had lost all interest in the people around him and was trying to grab a fistful of her hair to play with. She smiled and kissed his nose. Duncan laughed.

Later that night, Barnes would stay silent while filling in the papers for a new possition at a public school two states away, eyes avoiding her until she took her leave.

When putting Duncan to sleep, Margaret looked thought the window of her car, the only survivor of the fire, and smiled.

Belloc's fire was not the only one to burn.


Author's note: A little gift for the long wait, so you get two for the price of one :3