What Must The Phoenix Do?

Flames. They climbed around his throat when he wasn't looking. His hope crumbling like the frosted over flowers in the winter. Everyone knew what he had done. It was in old newspapers. They taught about it in schools. A boy blew up a gas chamber, killing fifteen Nazi guards and killing 13 captives. Wow. He was a famous person among middle school children. It made him sick, he was thought of as if he wasn't real. They didn't understand that whenever he saw a candle he thought of the blue flames that caught leaks of gas. The gas climbing along children's bodies as they screamed for their families. He couldn't possibly expect he'd ever get rest. He was an older brother. He was a blacksmith, he was a grown man. But he was only 10 when he blew up the chambers, hadn't even had his bar mitzvah. He never did. And probably never would get one. He couldn't imagine watching another little girl scream, pleading for him to stop the flames, then gripping his hand and telling him it wasn't his fault. He could have stopped it... 27 people. He never found out their names. He only knew one of them. Lexnour Nina Bryant. His older sister, who had ran in to save him. He was never important. He caused problems, and was something people traded for something else. He was a pawn, something easily killed without hesitation. He just wished that someone would tell him it wasn't his fault. Maybe he would believe it. Probably not though. He could never believe it unless it came from that little girl again. The one he never learned the name too. 

Rushing wind past his fingertips, fire building across the hills. He chased his sisters, he saw Lex's metal arm. "Lex!" he called out, tripping down a ditch and hitting his head on a rock. He felt the shooting pain through his head. Just like the first bullet. "Oh Ry Ry" Damien's dark predatory voice called. "Are you making an excuse to run from me? I know damn well your sisters are dead. In fact, I killed them myself." He chuckled. Ryder shrunk further back into the rock, though he felt paralyzed with fear. "Damien, there is no reason to make this a game. We just need to kill him and get out of here." Calista's annoyed voice hissed. She sounded like a snake, and frankly, to Ryder, she looked like a snake too. Ryder hugged himself as he remembered the soldiers surrounding him with their weapons. Poking him with sticks, confused on how he survived the explosion. Fire couldn't hurt him, heat couldn't either. But being immortal didn't mean he never felt pain. "Ryder, you should just let me kill you, we both know you'll come back. Plus, wasn't your immortality a gift from the gods? Saving a village, a puny village. Oh wait, you didn't save them, Thane did. You took credit for a little fame." Damien laughed. Ryder tried to move, his eyes darting around as he tried to slow his breathing. He didn't take credit. He was killed in that life. He killed a dragon, a vile crime. It wasn't his fault, Thane was a fucking liar. Damien's face popped over from the bushes, his smile landing on Ryder as he chuckled. "I found him Calista, why don't we have a little sentimental time before he dies?" he asked, his best friend's blonde hair appeared as she dusted herself off. 

"Sure sure, lets get this over with, I'm getting ten thousand dollars and I need it now." She huffed. They walked over, Damien pulling out a pocket knife and pressing it to the bottom of Ryder's palm on the flat side. "Oh, such scarred hands, my how you have suffered. Don't you just want to say no to that gift from the gods right about now?" he asked. "It wasn't a gift." Ryder spat, and tried to take his hand back. He felt frozen. "I think I landed my shot." Damien laughed, and looked at the bullet wound in Ryder's arm. "Parallelization? That's so last year." Ryder tried to laugh, but started to feel cold. "No, freezing, but nice guess." Damien smiled, jabbing his knee into Ryder's stomach. Calista winced as her old friend coughed up blood onto the dirt. "Money huh? I guess that makes sense, I've always been something that people would give up for another thing." Ryder smiled at Calista. Who's eyes welled with tears. "Oh. You're sorry now? You're sorry when you realize the only person who cared about you is about to die? Didn't you already realize that Cal!?" he shouted now. Smoke billowing off his clothes. "I didn't think we'd actually have to kill you-" "Sure, sure, Damien's a fucking psycho!" he yelled, and Damien hit his head against the rock again. "Oops" he chuckled, kneeing Ryder again in the stomach. Calista held her mouth closed as she cried. He stared at her red eyes. The tears that streamed down her cheeks. "I guess, if in reality I could turn back time... I'd go back to 1942, and kill myself before I could burn up the chambers" he thought. Knowing full well Calista could read his mind.

"What the use of an immortal with fire manipulation if he never uses his power?" Damien hissed in questioned. Ryder sighed looking at the clouds. The fire couldn't hurt him, and he wanted to make it out alive to Sereia. He felt heat build up around him, as the forest went up in flames.

He thought back to the first thing he had read since his past life ended. It had been something his best friend Hannah, had gave him. A book. He had read it, having his own chapter in it. 'There were once two people. One Good and One Bad. Two doors to no where, the place where nothing bad happened, and the place where everything bad happened. Two things. Black and White. In his opinion Black was usually better than White. The gray area in between. The morally gray people. Was he Good or Bad? He wanted to reach out a hand to the people out there. To anyone who would listen. There was no one. Where had all the good people gone.... They had all disappeared.' Weirdly enough, the text had suited him well enough. He wished Hannah was here, telling him to 'get his ass up' because 'life doesn't wait for dead beat dads in their teenage years.' He was pretty sure Hannah never learned how to be kind... Maybe she had...

As the flames went out he opened his eyes, the flames should leave him alone. His 'downside' to his power made him explode into flames at random. Mainly when he was nervous. Maybe he should think about that. Was he afraid of the fire? Or afraid of the people that the fire could hurt? Maybe he should stop being afraid... Maybe he should let the flames killed Damien and Calista... He stood up, ignoring the pain in his head. If he died he would just come back. Simple. He looked over at Calista running from him, his face felt frozen in time. Numb, just like his body as he ran after her, tackling her into a ditch and going up in flames.