Updated as of September- October 2022 to make it only one part instead of two.

Answers to reviews

Cerys
Boo this whole lot were flipping stupid.
Answer
You must be very bored dear. Otherwise I guess you wouldn't take the time to read a story you didn't like to then leave a hateful comment on it. But you're so lucky that there are a lot of more fun things to do. How about watching paint dry or the grass growing? Or trying to count the hairs on your head? I hope you find something to then. And I do hope so because I love you.

I finished the last of the stories that was near their endings before the last chapter of this so I haven't finished any of stories now. I have however put up a oneshot for when calls the heart, and started two new stories called "You are the best thing (that's ever been mine)" for Tracy Beaker returns, and "only a hero could save us now" for the dumping ground. So… check them out if you want. I do know I really like the starts and ideas I have for these stories.

I went back and read Marco's first chapter and I guess it sort of made sense. But I also found it sort of strange. And lately I've found out that sometimes children (or people, mostly children) might dissociative identity disorder where they basically really think they're another person. Anyway, such disorders actually might think they're another person and Marco "only" dresses up. But I was wondering about why which meant that something terrible have happened to him and this is what I ended up with…

Karl looks like Cole Sprouse, grandpa Paul is portrayed by David Thewlis. Marco's dad is portrayed by Darren Criss and his mum by Shelley Hennig.

Marco Maloney

Paul and Mary Daniel had always dreamed about having a big family with many kids and grandkids. But in the end. That wasn't quite the way it worked out…

"See you again tomorrow…" Their only child and daughter, Angela Maloney stood in the door to the house she lived in with her husband Matteo, and three children Marco, Rosie and Bruno. "…Can you wave? Oh, can you wave Bruno." She took the hand of the twin boy in hers and waved it up and down as if he was waiting at his grandparents. "Well… can you wave Marco?"

Six-year-old Marco stood right by his mother's side and waved happily at his grandmother and grandfather leaving. Then looked up to his mother holding his little brother, and his dad holding his little sister.

Matteo Maloney were just as proud as his oldest son as the twins. But still he couldn't feel an extra beat in his heart when, from the change of his wife's light skin and light brown hair. Both of the twins had gotten his easily- tanned skin, dark eyes and black, curly hair.

"See you tomorrow."

Marco shouted that last. But if he'd only known how wrong he was and how many times those words would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"Well… I suppose we better…."

"NO." Marco shouted at his dad when Matteo leaned towards the kitchen table and the candles that had been lit. "I'm this many…" Marco held up all the fingers on one hand and one on the other. "I can stay up while you go put the twins to bed."

Matteo hesitated slightly. Maybe he already knew that if he left them burning this would end up terribly wrong. But how could he say no when his six-year-old looked at him with those puppy eyes. To get some kind of responsibility

"Please papà"

When Marco pleaded Matteo stepped away from the table and ruffled in hid oldest son's hair while he walked away, out of the kitchen door and upstairs to help his wife put the twins to bed.

If he knew it was the last time! So many things had been left unsaid

That was the last time Marco saw his dad alive.

"Yes." Marco said to himself, only sitting back down at the kitchen sofa and watching the candles as they burned right in front of him. He leaned his head slightly to the side while watching them- three candles was a lot of responsibility for this half- Italian six-year-old named Marco.

And maybe it was too big.

Marco stood up on the kitchen sofa and walked by the side of the table. Then he turned back to blow out the candles. And that was when it happened.

Moving his arm to lean over the table Marco accidentally knocked one candle down, which fell into the other one, which fell into the third one and set fire to the small pile of napkins that laid on the table. And then on the flower and vase that stood right behind it.

Marco started coughing from the smoke. He had learned about what to do in this at school. But mum and dad would become so angry, so on his own he ran back to a cupboard and grabbed a pot that he filled with water.

When he turned back the whole sofa and window curtains were on fire and it burned in the wall, up towards the room where mum and dad and the twins were. Surely, they would see and hear what was going on.

Marco, coughing and barely able to breathe turned to the pot again, but now the handles were so warm he only dropped it. And that was when he remembered what he had been told in school. Blanket, he needed a blanket to hold it with his already blistered palms.

What Marco didn't know was that both of his parents had fallen asleep in each chair upstairs.

Maybe if they hadn't this story might still end happily.

"MUM." Marco yelled when he realized he wouldn't be able to do this on his own. "PAPÁ."

He wasn't able to shout anymore when his lungs had filled with smoke from the now lit up blanket that he had tried to use around his hands to grab the pot. The try hadn't succeeded and Marco was learning exactly how fast fire can spread while he ran up the stairs to see his parents and warn them about what was going on. So that they and the twins could all get out.

"MUM…"

He couldn't even open the door to the twins' bedroom. It was right on top of the kitchen and the handles were too hot for him to grab them.

"PAPÁ"

Marco being suddenly filled up with adrenaline didn't feel the pain when his hands were burned even worse towards the door handle of metal.

"MUM."

But as the two parents they were that had barely slept a whole night since before the twins were born they already slept tightly. And Marco realized that they weren't going to be woken up and there just had to be something he could do- he was six years old, a big boy!

Finally Marco was able to open the door to the burning inferno he was met in over the kitchen. He ran into his own room and grabbed the glass of water he had on his bedside table.

He tried to put the fire out, he really tried.

At last, with burning blisters on both of his hands he let go of one blanket from his room. Mum and dad would wake up for soon and get out together.

Marco didn't have a cellphone. And he lived in a house with only him and his family. Still, when he ran outside in the cold night. He barely knew what he was doing when he ran straight to the neighbors' house. And there were a million years before Miss Sonya came to open the door.

"Marco… what are you…"

"FIRE." He yelled, not having the time to listen or answer. "MY WHOLE HOUSE IS ON FIRE."

"What?"

Miss Sonya annoyingly enough went to grab her shoes and got her husband and son before they ran after Marco and through the hedge that had never been as thick as right now.

But already before passing it they could see the Maloneys' house completely lit up in fire.

"JAKE." Miss Sonya shouted to her son. "CALL THE FIRE BRIGADE."

Jake didn't need to be told that, he had already pulled up his phone from his pocket and was pressing the number with shaky hands and they all waited for a million years before someone picked up the phone in the other end.

"Marco? Sweetheart?" She kneeled by the child while they heard Jake shouting in panic towards the phone. "Where are your parents and the twins?"

Marco looked around for just a couple of seconds. Surely his family had gotten out by now, the whole house was lit up and burned with fire and smoke. But he just had to realize quickly- his family members weren't here.

"MUM."

"No Marco." Miss Sonya grabbed the young boy when he tried to run and get into the house. "I'm sure they're safe."

She wasn't sure. Actually, she was pretty sure they weren't. But Marco didn't have to know that.

They all started hearing the sound of sirens soon after, at least two fire trucks and probably both ambulances and police cars too.

Police cars? Marco couldn't understand if he had just committed a crime? Would they take him away and put him in prison?

There was a small house right by the trees. It was just like a small flat, it also had a big, stone porch and Marco ran over to it and hid beneath the porch when the fire trucks and ambulances and police cars skid into the driveway.

"I don't think there's much we can do." One of the police men said to another. "We can keep the fire from spreading but that's about it."

That's about it? Weren't they going to save Marco's parents and little siblings?

They had to. They absolutely had to.

"Is there anyone inside?"

"Yes." Miss Sonya answered. "The son came to get us. A man, a woman, and newborn twins. Jake? Did you call her parents? And… where did Marco go? He was right here just a second ago? He didn't go back into the house, did he?"

"Help."

Marco still laid under that big, stone porch. His hands were still burning and wounds ripped open through the skin of his hands, He saw them but it was like he couldn't feel them.

"Did you hear that?"

The policeman that had carried out the twins' bodies out of the buildings stopped at Marco's small whimper and looked around. Marco didn't know if he should make a sound or just stay where he was. He wouldn't be able to hide forever. But before he had the time to change his mind a car came driving on the road and skid- stopped on the road.

"No…"

Grandma Mary was the first one out of the car and looked around. To the house where they had arrived just a few hours ago. And when grandpa Paul joined her and watched the fire that was still burning…

"ANGELA?" Grandma Mary shouted and looked around and ignored the policemen and firefighters trying to stop her from going straight into the smoke. "ANGIE… ANG…"

Her yells died out when she saw the four bodies lying across the wet and muddy ground.

"No… No…" Her steps were weak when she stumbled over to them and fell to her knees right before she found her daughter and had to crawl the rest of the way. "Angela… Angie… You need to wake up now… you need to… oh my god."

When grandma married reached out and ran a hand over her daughter's face it was not only warm and broken. It warmed even more and pieces of it fell off when she touched it.

"Oh my god… oh my…" Grandma Mary was soon onto her feet and looked around. "Paul… Paul… I can't find Marco. I can't see him anywhere. MARCO? MARCO? WHERE ARE YOU SWEETIE?"

Behind his grandmother's back he crawled out from under the stone porch, and when the firemen started to see him he crawled onto his knees on the ground still behind her.

"Marco?"

Grandma Mary came over and lifted him up by his shirt.

"Are you okay?" She shook him. "Are you hurt? How did this start?"

That last question was the one Marco had been dreading. How was he supposed to tell his grandma and grandpa- or anyone else for that matter that this was all his fault?

"I'm this many." Just like he had earlier today Marco held up six fingers. "When a person is this many, he should know how to blow out candles… I thought I knew… but then the candle was knocked over. I wanted to sort it out myself but… it spread so much. It spread so fast."

Marco gasped when he walked closer tot the bodies lying right outside what had been a house, he lived in. Bodies of two adults and two small children- they would stand up, would they? They would laugh and this would all be a joke.

They would take all of that makeup off.

It had to be makeup… didn't it?

Marco carefully held his burning hands towards the legs of his jeans. The adrenaline was starting to run out of his body and he could feel it start burning, as if his skin was tearing off.

Grandma Mary panted while she looked to her oldest grandchild, to her daughter, to her son in law and her younger grandchildren. Then she looked back again, before turning away from Marco before she suddenly turned and stumbled forward to vomit into the bushes at the edge of the yard.

"Mary…" Grandpa Paul went over to her, and while she panted and then gagged again he held her hair back. "…You have to understand that this was an accident. And I think that our grandchild has been punished perfectly enough… this will follow him through all his life."

"And it should." Grandma Mary still stood leaned forward by the bushes, now stained by sour bile, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before she finally turned around towards her now only grandchild again. "You can choose now Paul. If you want me in your life I will never speak to you and you're dead to me. Just like…" She looked towards her only daughter. "Just like they are. And if you choose… him… then… then I never want to see you ever again."

"Mary…"

"It's his fault." Mary half shouted half heaved as she leaned forward again as the chock and all the feelings that ran through her body made her stomach turn inside out. "It's his fault and you know that very well."

Once again, she rose and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Paul, in distress looked from one to the other in between his wife and his wife.

"Mr. and Mrs. Daniel." One paramedic was suddenly standing right by them. "Look, we see these sorts of cases every day. They happen and they happen fast. And I don't think the right thing to do here is to blame your grandson or anyone else. This could have happened to anyone, and you've all been through some nasty things tonight."

Grandma Mary almost wheezed, like a cat going up their enemy and the paramedic shut his mouth. He turned against grandma and walked away and knelt by the small boy next to him, standing in the dark shadows of the trees.

Those trees and those bushes were some of the reasons his parents had decided to buy this house even though it was way too expensive. But the thoughts of Marco, Bruno and Rose and whoever kids they might have in the future growing up so close to nature…

"Hey kid." The paramedic looked given up but still hopeful. "What's your name? My name's Karl."

"Marco sir." Marco half squeaked half whispered. "Marco Maloney."

Marco had only barely gotten onto his feet, now he collapsed right into Karl's waiting grip. And that's when he felt the wounds on Marco's hands and arms.

"Oh dear."

Karl stood up and lifted the boy in one single move. Marco laid his arms around Karl's shoulders and held his arms tightly as he watched the world outside. Which included the still burning leftovers of what had just been the house he lived in with his parents and the twins. And right by it he saw…

"…No." Karl held Marco to his shoulder and slightly pushed him away. "Don't look in that direction."

But it was too late. Marco had already seen what was left of his family. And boy, would it haunt him in his dreams for the rest of his life?

Whenever Marco was thinking about his mum for the rest of his life, imagining her on the back of his eyelids he would never be able to remember her brown hair or beautiful smile. The only thing he'd be able to remember the burned piece of what had been a person that laid on the ground right now. And as the rain started falling, and it came out of nowhere it started streaming down his face mixed with salt, warm tears into Karl's shirt.

"Here." After what felt like it had taken a million years they were by the ambulance and Karl more or less threw Marco down on the stretcher. "That's it kid. Stay awake for me." Marco felt something touch the burned skin on his wrist. "He's in chock… No Marco, here." Karl laid his hand on top of Marco's chest and shook him. "Stay awake, just for another few minutes, okay?"

Marco didn't answer him verbally at all. He was so nervous he was afraid that if trying to speak he would vomit all over the place. And now the adrenaline had started running out of his body his arms and hands was so painful he couldn't move them at all.

Still it was mostly the memories on the backs of his eyelids that haunted him.

"No… no…"

"Stay down little man." Karl laid his hand on Marco's chest again, this time holding him back. And then Marco felt something pulled around his head and something else put onto his finger. "CARLIE." When Marco barely looked up he could see Karl opening a small lid in between this back of the ambulance and the front seats. "He's in chock and his heartbeats are very weak. So just go fast, just go as fast as you can."

Marco knew that if he only yesterday had been in an ambulance with lights and sirens on, he would have thought it was cooler than anything.

Now he wished he would never have to do it. And as he felt the driver (Carlie) speed up his stomach churned with motion sickness and he barely even noticed when bile started moving up his throat and up into his mouth and Karl moved away the breathing mask and then held a basin in front of him…

"It's okay kid." Karl rubbed his back. "I think you're just a bit motion sick. Carlie? Can't you go any faster?"

Marco leaned his head backwards when there was nothing left to throw up. He felt Karl wiping around his mouth and then something soft being pushed into his hand.

"There, now you have a teddy bear… And I guess you will have to start a collection now…"

Now you're old one's literally gone up in flames.

"No. Marco…." Karl's voice went louder but at the same time sounder further and further away. "Stay awake. Stay with me kid! Carlie. Just drive as fast as you can. We're almost at the hospital now Marco. Just hold on… hold on…"

But Marco couldn't hold on. Everything just hurt so bad…

The last time he'd woken up he still had siblings, he still had two parents and two grandparents who loved him very much.

When he started waking up in the A &E he didn't have anything of it left.

His eyes fluttered open barely, and he recognized the inside of the hospital room quickly. But it took a second for him to recognize the paramedic who still sat right next to him. Now sleeping deeply after the tough night.

"Hey…" Marco could barely a croak through his dried, burning throat. "Hey."

"Yeah, yeah… Marco."

Karl had been sleeping with his arms against Marco's bed and his head on his arms. He barely looked up at first but then flew up in sitting position when he saw Marco was awake.

"Here kid." He ran a hand over the child's forehead. "How are you feeling?"

Marco looked down on his hands that were wrapped in two thick wires of bandages. Then felt tears starting to rise in his eyes when everything that had happened last night came back to him.

"Did they come back? Grandma and grandpa?"

Mum, dad and the twins were gone already. They would never come back no matter how Marco wanted them to. He might as well ask how it was with the other two. But was once again heartbroken when he saw Karl shake his head at the one question.

"Do you…" Karl swallowed with a shaky and heavy voice. "Does your dad have any parents that could take care of you?"

"My nonna and nonno are in Italy." Marco pulled his blanket tighter around him. "Where my dad comes from… I've never even talked to them. My dad wanted to forget them when he moved here… It's sort of a long story. They could never take care of me."

Karl the paramedic looked so strange when he looked back at the young boy.

"Do you have any aunts or uncles? Your neighbours were here earlier?"

It was like Karl was grasping onto every little straw he could. How could he sit here and ask a six-year-old boy who had just lost all his family if there was somebody else to take care of him.

"Marco." Suddenly a doctor came into the room. "We had to make a few phone calls. And this…" She gestured toward a dark- skinned, fat man standing right next to her. "If I understand this right There's nobody to take care of you now…"

"But no…" Marco said weakly. "Karl can take care of me. Can't you Karl?"

"It's not quite that simple little man." He took the teddy bear Marco had gotten in the ambulance and laid it in Marco's hand. "But I'm just going to get some things."

Marco couldn't help but to let a few tears run from his eyes. All of this was so confusing? Where were his parents? Where were the twins? Where were his grandparents and everything he had had only twenty four hours ago?

"My name is Duke… that's a strange name. Isn't it? Well, a woman named Elaine was supposed to come here today but she had a nasty cold so she sent me instead. I work at a place called Stowey house that's a care home… Do you know what a care home is?"

"That was a bit running forward." The doctor commented when she checked something on the board that told Marco's heartbeats and breaths. "Oh well. You do your job and I'll do mine."

"Hm… I thought they told you some of this already."

"I was asleep until just now." Marco looked down on his hands covered in bandages. "Where's my mum and dad and Rosie and Bruno?"

Duke seemed awkward and carefully he took Marco's bandaged hand in his own.

"Marco… There's not an easy way to say this or for you to hear it but… your parents and little siblings died in the fire last night."

Then that was it, Marco started hyperventilating. It was like an elephant sitting on his chest while memory after the other span in his mind.

He had done this? He had caused this?

"No…" Marco sobbed when he could find his voice again. "…No. NO. NO. NO. NO. MUMMY." He cried at the top of his lungs and got up, with everything he had been through he fell right back onto the bed. "MUMMY."

Duke had laid his hand on Marco's arm and Marco cried so loudly both Karl and the doctor from earlier came running.

"MUMMY." Marco yelled at the top of his lungs. "PAPÁ"

He must have known already, he had seen his families' bodies. He had been taken away in an ambulance. He had heard how grandma Mary blamed him.

"Mummy… mummy…."

The yelling at the top of his lungs turned to wild sobbing down towards the mattress and the teddy bear he had gotten. On his arm he felt Duke's hand and then Karl when he laid a bag of something soft and sat down right where Marco could see him.

"Mummy…" Marco sobbed. "I want my mummy."

But Karl knew there was nothing he could do to ease the pain on this little boy in front of him.

"Can you take care of me now Karl?" Marco asked the older boy weakly. "You were there, now can you take care of me?"

Karl swallowed, he barely even had a place of his own and had just finished school. But there was still so few things he wanted to do rather than take care of the boy, especially when he helplessly up towards the older man behind him and then moved to the side when Duke came closer.

"I work at a place called Stowey house." Duke told Marco calmly. "It's a place where children come when they don't have any parents to take care of them. And the doctor now called me and the company I… work for. It's called the social services and we were thinking we can take care of you now."

Marco looked from the other of Karl, Duke and the doctor, still standing by the door. How was a little boy understand everything that was happening around him.

"We think…" The doctor started. "Well, we're at a hospital. But now you're awake and your vitals are looking fine there's only so much we can do. So we were thinking you could go home right now. And then come back when you need to get those bandages off."

Home… wherever was home? Yesterday home had been with his family?

He tried to imagine his beautiful mum, his strong dad and his two little siblings with their tanned skin and curly hair. Was all of that gone in an instant?

He couldn't see them. All he could imagine were their bodies lying in the yard, the skin boiled away and it was all because of him. Just all because he wanted to prove himself old enough to take responsibility enough for some stupid, lit up candles.

If he could only turn back time…

"I don't even any clothes."

Now all of what he owned had been taken away and that was what he thought about…

"I've got that fixed." Karl held up a bag. "They're just some of my old ones. But they will do and then if you break them or they get dirty it won't matter."

Slowly, every single move wrenching his whole body meanwhile the bandages around his hands blistered the already burned and blistered skin. He pulled up red hoodie and black sweatpants that suddenly made him think of something.

"Have you got any straps?"

"What straps?"

"Reflex ones. That you can put around your arms or legs when you need to be in the dark so that car drivers will see you."

"I'll go check."

The doctor finally went out of the room while Karl helped Marko get out of the hospital gown and into the red hoodie she went and found every single one of those straps she could find. She didn't know why. But she did know Marco needed as many as he could possibly get.

"Here." When she had searched through the whole hospital and Marco had gotten into his new clothes onto him she laid all of the straps on the bed before Marco pulled one around his wrist, then one on his other wrist, then one around his ankle and so on before the straps were all around his body.

"Going home?" He looked up from the straps and looked at Karl. "I don't know where home is."

"That's okay." Duke stepped forward. "I've come to take you to Stowey house. The children who live there have all been through… hard things…"

He couldn't bear to say that there were kids that had gone through anything as hard as Marco had. Because they simply hadn't.

Karl took the bag and rolled it up to put it in his pocket. Meanwhile Marco had once again started hyperventilating but wasn't exactly given a chance when Duke took him by the hand and more or less pulled him away from the bed and the hospital. But as they hadn't even gotten to the door Marco turned back, and saw Karl.

Everything had just worked out so fast. Marco could see why, the adults wanted to get him home as soon as possible to keep the traumatic experience as short as possible. Obviously they had been planning what to do before Marco was even alive.

Maybe he would find out more. Maybe he would understand this somehow.

But right now he didn't. Right now he just let go of Duke's hand. Or more likely pulled the bandage straps out of it before he ran back towards Karl, the only one who had been there through exactly everything.

"I want to stay with you."

"I know that kid." Karl mumbled into Marco's ear. Just like he had whispered those things at the worst night of Marco's life. "But it's not that simple."

Marco looked back on Duke and glared at him as if it was Duke's fault he had done all of this to Marco. Then Karl leaned down so Marco could end up standing on his own two feet, but still looked back as he took Duke's hand and all the time he could see Karl.

Just a week ago he had just been a normal kid in a normal family.

And now here we was, wearing red clothes, reflex straps and a red beanie.

"Now… tell me." Duke started as he strapped Marco in his car seat in the back of the car. "I get the hoodie and the sweatpants that Karl gave you. But what is the story behind these stories?"

Marco pouted and didn't answer anything until Duke had started driving and turned into the street.

"When I wear these clothes I am firefighter Maloney."

Marco could see in the mirror at the front that Duke was frowning and decided that he hadn't said enough.

"I need more dress up clothes. Anything is better than Marco,"

"No… why would you say something like that?"

"Because Marco's the one who set fire to his family's house and burned his family to death… And I don't want to be Marco anymore. I am firefighter Maloney now. And I can prevent fires and put them out so no one has to die."

I know it all worked out too fast. But I tried to explain why at all points and… Well. This is what I ended up with. I also hope it wasn't too much alike Tracy's chapter.

Random fact

Outside the house I grew up in there was a little house like that. So it might seem strange but they do exist.