The room flickered with the red-orange hue of the fire that never quite left him. The walls had scorched days ago, ash collecting along the corners like snow nobody asked for. He sat hunched on a blackened ledge of what used to be a skyscraper window, boots dangling over the edge, smoke curling from his knuckles like breath on a winter morning.

“Still nothing,” Johnny muttered, voice raw with something unspoken. “They're hiding you. Cowards.”

He cracked his neck, heat bristling down his spine.

“Doom said Europe blinked first. That London was too easy. Then Berlin. Then Cairo. Reed says we’re making history. I say—screw history.”

The fire licked up his forearm. He didn’t flinch.

“They think I’m distracted. That I’m soft. That I’ll burn bright and fade fast. But they forgot what it’s like to want something. Really want it.”

His grip tightened on the edge. The ledge cracked beneath his fingers.

“Reed’s got the plan. Sue’s got the cold. Ben… he’s got the fists. But me? I’ve got you. Or I had you.”

He stood, slow and deliberate, flames coiling up his back like wings.

“They think fire’s just destruction. They think I’m just the explosion, the flash. That I don't remember what it felt like before—before my veins were full of gasoline. Before the world was afraid of my name.”

His boots scraped against the stone as he turned.

“But I remember. Every stupid Sunday. Every time we snuck out to that rusted rooftop above the deli. That first time you touched my hand like I wouldn’t burn you.”

He exhaled, and the air rippled.

“You didn’t run. You never ran.”

His fire dimmed for a breath. Just long enough to remember the curve of their shoulder in his hoodie, the scent of soap on their collarbone.

“I should’ve taken you with me. I should’ve burned down that city and lit the way to wherever the hell we were gonna go. But Reed had the cure. Sue had the guilt. I thought we were doing good.”

His laugh was bitter, crackling like kindling.

“Now we’re gods. Monsters in capes. And the world’s on its knees asking for mercy we don’t give.”

He gazed toward the horizon. It was orange and black and angry.

“But I’ll give you something. Not mercy. Not apologies. Something better.”

He stepped into the air. The flame caught beneath his heels and held him like a promise.

“I’m not asking. I’m coming. I don’t care what bunker they’ve buried you in. I’ll burn through it. I’ll burn through them.”

His voice dropped, fire curling around his eyes.

“They took you to punish me. They thought I’d simmer down. That I’d wait. That I’d sit still and be a good little bomb.”

He launched into the sky, the wind screaming against the roar of his flames.

“I waited long enough.”

The fire blazed behind him, carving his name into the clouds.

“Let the world burn.”