Work Text:
15 August 2005
She'll always maintain that the day had been beautiful, dry weather and a gentle breeze in the garden, waiting around with Kim for midday.
Though, she wishes she could say she had known, had run hot, wore a flaming red face stoked by gusts of wind, realized and was prepared for James struggling to breathe through smoky static filling the line, voice choked under sirens.
Kim told her she was ghostly sitting there on the floor. She felt closer to cinders than to spirits and whispered, in a voice damaged by ash, “Can you help me get in the attic?”
29 July 2012
Vincent didn’t set the fire and neither does he know how to put it out. All he knows how to do is throw himself into the wreckage of burning buildings and struggle to pull himself out. His son is very much a man who perennially runs toward danger only to find himself herded and penned, held down by a legion of vicious, snapping dogs who howl at him, demanding to be fed.
If the way to free him is letting his sanctuary again burn down to embers, so be it. He’ll look over the ruins and begin the restoration anew.