She is reminded over and over again why she is better off alone.

She is reminded over and over again that putting herself in the presence of others only spells out pain, for her and for everyone involved. And she tries to save them every single time, for a reason that she has not yet discerned. Has it ever worked in her favor? Has it ever done anything to lessen the weight in her chest, or cause the scales of good karma to tip in her favor?

She leaves every encounter more bitter than she had been before, her self-loathing a poison that she puts into her own bloodstream and lets it recirculate until she chokes on her own venom.

She sees him though, and she freezes.
She sees him and she is all at once caught in a riptide of fear and want—in hoping that his eyes might lift to hers, while simultaneously praying that he doesn’t see her and she could slip away unnoticed.

But in that moment where she wavers between what she is afraid of and what she hopes could come to be (because buried under all that fire and anger is a still stupidly hopeless girl) she makes a decision; a decision to chase any high that she can find, a decision to find any way to numb this pain that has made a home inside of her very bones.

He is a distraction, both welcome and unwelcome,  and she walks towards him even though what little conscience she has left is screaming not to.

It shouldn’t be him. She is already warring with herself, pointing out all the reasons that she is going to regret this, because he is not someone that she wants to hurt, but there is a reason she chooses him—why it has to be him.

Because he can hurt her just as easily, if not worse, than she can hurt him.

“Brigade,” his name still tastes like sparks on her tongue, seeming to come alive in the red embers that flicker in her mane. She is different than when he last saw her, now made up of the living fire that has always lived in her veins. But her voice is the same, simmering and quiet, and through the flames there is a faint smile when she says, “It’s been a long time.”

— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —

She exhales a short laugh at his comment, a wry sort of smile twisting through the flames on her lips. “I have always been on fire, you just couldn’t see it.” She had warned him, she was sure of it; had warned him not to touch her, but she wasn't sure if he had understood why. Her appearance back then had been plain and unassuming, just a simple bay girl with smoldering eyes and a tongue that was too sharp. Their encounter had been charged with so much anger at themselves as well as each other that it would not surprise her if he had taken the warning as an insult—that she was telling him that she did not want him, specifically, to touch her— rather than understanding she was only trying to protect him.

The possibility of a misunderstanding had haunted her in the days following their interaction, but in the end it had not mattered, because their paths did not seem destined to ever cross again. Which was for the best, she had told herself. Even if somewhere beneath the poison they tried so hard to sink into each other there was an echo of want, it was an impossible, unattainable thing—she would never be something that he, or anyone else, could hold onto, and it was easier to let herself pretend she preferred it that way.

“Just passing through, but depending on how this goes my plans could change,” the forced lightness to her tone only serves to strengthen the tightening in her chest, amplifying the feeling that something is trying to pry it open. She isn’t sure why she had thought she could coerce  a facade of casual indifference in front of him, and she thinks if it weren’t for the glowing flames that flickered across her face he would be able to see right through. Perhaps he still can.

Her firelit eyes remain focused on his face, wishing that he didn’t look just as she remembered; wishing that maybe her memory had painted him in a better light, that seeing him again would show her he was not something she would have wanted anyway.

The bitterness that blooms across her tongue when she is forced to recognize that he is unchanged and still something she could never have is undeniable, and it shows in the tight set of her jaw and the way her dark eyes glint with a resolved hardness.

“How have you been?” the question should have been a casual one, but instead the words are sharp in a way that is almost accusatory, as if she is daring him to admit that he is fine. Daring him to offer her the knife to cut herself, to have to hear him say that his life is perfect while hers has done nothing but fall apart, and maybe then it will be easier to hate him.

— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —

Her firelit eyes snap to his face when he says that he had been dead, and she is not sure which irritates her more: the casual way it is spoken, or the unsettled feeling that rises up in her chest at the idea that he could have been dead and she would have never known. “What do you mean you were dead?” Her face is mostly unreadable, much of her expression masked by the flicker of flames, but the mixed emotions in her voice cannot be mistaken—the way a note of concern rises above what she tries to pass off as an indifferent kind of confusion, as if what he is saying is boring but she is forcing herself to play nice and pretend to be interested.

But there is only so much that she can pretend, only so long that she can keep this apathetic shield in front of her.

For all the firefight exchanged between the two of them, she did not hate him—she had never hated him. 
She buried herself under his skin because knew that was the closest she could ever get, but she did not hate him.

She hated the way she had looked at him the first time she met him and instantly was drawn to him in a way she could not name. She hated how in that first instant, before either of them spoke, her mind had churned through every possibility and every wrong outcome; how that cruel voice that lived in her head had reminded her there was nothing to be found here and to stop looking for things not meant for her.

She hated so many things about herself and about the world, but he is not one of them.

“I’m glad you’re not still dead,” she says, and though her tone is even and unwavering, her eyes catch and hold his for just a moment too long. She feels that familiar heat crawl up her neck and that same impossible feeling in her chest, and she clenches her teeth before purposely diverting her gaze to something indistinguishable in the distance. “I have been painfully alive this entire time,” she answers him, and she does nothing to hide the bitterness that poisons her tone. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —

He speaks of his death so casually, and that in itself seems to further stoke whatever unrest is brewing inside of her.

Because she has to bite back the urge to argue against the bitterness she senses in his voice when he says not even death had wanted him; has to rein in the instinct to tell him that could not be—is not—true. She has nothing to hold her word against, after all, because what has she done that would lead him to ever believe that she thinks otherwise? She used him as the fuel to her fire, she coaxed that anger and self-loathing out of him because there was something cathartic in seeing what she despised about herself staring back at her, knowing that it lived in someone else and not just her.

Misery truly loved company and neither of them were lacking in that department, but something she has never been able to figure out is why he is so unhappy.

She finds herself staring at him, closer than she has before. She looks at him the same way she has seen others look at her, as if they are trying to peel back the layers and find the root of her anger like it is some great mystery when to her it always seemed so glaringly obvious and now, now that it lived on her skin it was. It was almost a relief to be made of fire; for them to see her for what she is and to no longer have to spell it out for them and to not have to feel guilty if they tread too close and get burned.

Maybe he is on fire, too, and she is too blinded by her own flames to see it.

“It would have certainly been a shame for either of us to miss this opportunity for another joyous conversation,” she quips, adding with a sardonic smile that edges on the verge of being genuinely amused, “clearly it’s the reason we are both still alive.” She follows this with a small laugh, flames sparking across her lips at the faint exhale of breath. “Fate has an odd sense of humor.”

She lets the silence settle between them, though it is hardly a relaxed one. Her eyes are still tracing the hard angles of his face, recognizing how long he had to have worn the stony expression in order to appear as though he is carved of granite itself. With a tilt of her head she finally asks him the question that has been burning on her tongue, knowing that it might ignite another fight between them but also accepting that perhaps that was simply the way of them—their own chaotic version of destiny. “Why are you so angry?” It is asked in such a matter of fact way that she does not think he will miss the true nature of her question. That it is not an accusation, or not even one of concern. She asks because she thinks it is obvious to him by now why she is angry, and she cannot help but to think it has put him at an unfair advantage in their imaginary playing field.

— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —

Though it wasn’t her intention, she cannot be surprised when he responds by lashing out at her. It, regrettably, seemed to be the norm for them, and while there is still a part of her that wants to rise to meet his storm with one of her own, for once, she does not.

“I am not the source of your anger,” she responds tersely to his accusation, surprised at how level she keeps her voice despite the way the tension is still brewing beneath her skin. Her dark eyes are unusually calm, though not in a way that suggests she is in any way serene or passive, though she is sure he knows that by now. “No more than you could be the source for mine.”

She had not been born irascible; she had once been quiet and composed, and easily concealed any ill feelings she might have had. Where now she seemed to always be a spark away from becoming a wildfire, there had been a time when someone like Brigade would never have managed to aggravate her.

She is surprised to find remnants of that young girl amongst the ash and embers she is now; how instead of succumbing to the flames and the anger she manages to meet him with a hardened and almost impassive stare. “I don’t hate you, you know,” she says, even though he hadn’t asked and likely didn’t care. “But if you hate me you can just say so,” and while a few minutes ago she might have said this as a challenge or a dare to see how far she could push him there is instead only a dull kind of indifference, as if she has already resigned herself to the truth. He doesn't have a reason to hate her, not a real one, but she couldn't blame him if he found one.

She cannot control the flames that flicker across her skin, but it is as if they have begun to extinguish themselves all the same as she closes herself off, shuttering herself out of reach of his sure to be scathing reply.

— if i’m on fire, you’ll be made of ashes too —