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Deepest Darkness by MithrilQuill

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Chapter 18 Firefighter

Firefighter
Heaven’s Mercy
Firefighter
Angel’s Wings

Angel’s smile
And Fearless Strength


Liam sat up and waved his arms around him in the dark. People were talking and whispering around him and they seemed to be moving around too, though how they could do that in the dark…


Oh yeah, he reminded himself, you’re blind.


And he deserved it.


Images flashed through his mind and he realized he could still see in his head if not out of it. It wasn’t a very cheering thought, though, because at the moment all he could see was an apple, a large bag of bread and an eerie green smoke.


“Ah, you’re awake!” the voice of an old woman interrupted the movie that was playing in his mind and he tried to concentrate on her voice, a very small part of him hoping that it would help him see, even through a hazy white mist like the past few days.


Liam hated doctors, and not being able to see this one wasn’t exactly helping. He was being poked in his injured shoulder and in is ribs and he could only imagine what the cool pointy object she was using looked like.


“Can Blind people be firefighters?” he asked trying to get rid of the mental image of a large frightening robotic…something.


There was a long silence in which Liam knew she was trying to come up with a good, encouraging lie.


“You can be anything you want,” the new voice was almost familiar, “If you can do magic like what you did before, you can be whatever you want.”


“Mr. Weasley,” the woman’s voice interrupted, “This boy needs some rest to recover; you can speak to him, or rather carry out Alastor’s interrogation mission later-”


“Now, now, Poppy, I’m sure Mr. Weasley will not disturb the boy and Alastor is a little too busy interrogating Mr. Potter at the moment to issue any orders. I need to speak with you before our meeting.”


Liam heard footsteps that slowly got further and further. Whoever that third voice belonged to, Liam liked the sound of his voice.


“My name’s Ron,” the familiar young man’s voice said, “What about you? Got a name or should I call you Mr. Firefighter?”


“Liam,” he could tell from Ron’s voice that he was young, probably the same age as Jasmine’s brother Mat, “And I can’t be a firefighter because I can’t even see!”


“Course you can!” Ron said, suddenly grasping his hand, “I brought some of the wands from Ollivanders for you to try. I know you’re not eleven yet, but Fred and George said they saw some impressive magic. Course, no one’s as good at helping choose wands as Ollivander, but Professor Dumbledore saved some of the best when he disappeared.”


“Wh-what?” Liam was very confused, but his heart did a sudden leap at the sound of the words “magic” and “wands”.


“Here!” a cool, smooth stick was placed in his hand and Liam ran his hands over it until he felt a handle.


“But…where am I?” Liam didn’t really want to believe that he was actually holding a wand in his hand and that a very serious voice, belonging to someone clearly adult, was talking to him about magic. After all, the last time he believed in ghosts and shadowy things and weird colors bad things had happened. But then again, maybe that was because people hadn’t believed him. Because he was right.


“Hogwarts of course!” Ron sounded surprised, “Oh no, you’re not a Muggle-born are you? I should have dragged Hermione out of the library for this, but…well...Muggles are people who can’t do magic you see and they don’t really know about…”


Liam spent the rest off the afternoon listening to Ron’s story and explanation. These wizards seem to be able to detect it whenever someone did magic and Ron said that even thought they thought it was a girl named Hannah he was the one who had made the flames go funny colors… He took a deep breath at the memory of that day, but it was no use, the tears escaped anyway.


Suddenly he picked up the wand that was lying on his lap and forced Ron’s words to cover up everything else his brain was trying to tell him.


I’ve got a job for you, Liam…Hermione, clever witch like you, found this spell for us…don’t forget all the ugly things you saw, never, ever forget them, because you’re going to be a firefighter and put out all those fires out and you need to understand how ugly they are so that you won’t ever give up when it gets hard or scary to keep going…when the fire is all around you, you’re going to be strong, Liam and you’re going to fight it for me, for us, and you can do it even though you only know one spell.


Liam raised the wand- his wand until he thought it was level with his eye and took a deep breath. He remembered Mummy’s beautiful hair almost glowing green and purple in the light of the strange fires. He remembered Jasmine’s scream and his little yellow truck flying across the pavement when he jumped to his feet. Dark, evil images from his days on the streets flashed through his mind, things Liam didn’t have words for yet, and he could feel his heartache and that burning cold feeling in his chest. Most of all, though, Liam remembered large wet tears that fell all over a handsome boy’s face in a quiet kitchen that smelled like tasty sweets and flowers. That was when he had realized that the world was empty.


But it wasn’t, not yet, because he was going to be a firefighter.


“Minerva!” a worried shriek made him jump a little and his wand went limp in his hand, spraying a few last drops of water onto his bed-sheets, “Come look at this Minerva.”


……


Malaika stood in the doorway of her ward her eyes constantly flitting back and forth between the sleeping patients and the small huddle of stupid time-wasting fools she was being forced to listen to. The bloody government scientist was not only wasting their precious time, he was also very much out of his water and he hadn’t the slightest clue what he was talking about. They didn’t need imbeciles like this telling them what to do, not now when it was so crucial that they keep the Hospital running the best way possible.


The middle aged woman on the third bed from the door stirred, but Hannah was headed her way before Malaika could give an order. She smiled at the girl before turning back to the small impromptu meeting, her face set.


“I think,” she began with a voice only slightly higher than usual, “That you should leave Hospital administration and decisions to the people in charge.”


She paused for a few seconds when she noticed that all eyes were now upon her and wondered what gave her the right to speak since she was only an almost-graduated nurse after all. All eyes turned to her, including two that belonged to John I’ll-have-my-picture-in-the-paper-before-twenty Digger, which were fixed on something decidedly lower than her face. How was she supposed to speak intelligent words when the bloody git didn’t even have the decency of looking her in the face in a serious conversation?


“The people who know what they’re doing,” she continued a little more strongly than before, “There are other much more worthwhile things you could be doing right now like fixing the blasted electricity problem, getting a radio or TV working. We would do a much better job here if we could see, live, what was going on around town and knew what to expect every time we heard a bloody explosion. Now I have a ward to get back to and more patients that need to be moved in to the quieter rooms, so if you’ll excuse me…”


She didn’t wait to know if they were going to ‘excuse her’ or not and strode past them to help the men who were carrying patients with severe burns and show them the way.


Her heart fell immediately upon seeing Lucy’s neighbor on a stretcher. She gave a loud barking order and yelled for Hannah to take care of the room before finding Dr John.


“I’m going to the site, Doctor; Hannah will take care of things while I’m away!”


His protests could barely be heard as she was soon out running out the large ER entrance and onto the street. It was only a few blocks away and she was there before she could really register the cold. Small words of encouragement and orders for the field nurses came out of her mouth almost automatically as she searched the horror-struck faces for Lucy and Millie. Every time a face turned out not to be Millie’s she felt a small bit of hope returning. Lucy knew what do in an emergency. Malaika wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with her sister.


When Lucy came out passed out on a stretcher minutes later Malaika gave a small anguished gasp and stopped dead in her tracks, eyes glued to the smoky doorway of the building.


She counted three of them before the most beautiful firefighter she had ever set eyes on walked out with her sweet girl in his arms. His face was nothing short of angelic and he had a smile on that made the heart ache. It was sincere. Even though he was a grown man who saw fire and destruction every single day the smile was sincere, gorgeous.


Millie’s eyes locked with hers and the little girl gave a little shriek of joy so he let her down. She was running. She was laughing. Malaika dropped to her knees- and only half because she wanted to hug Millie the other half of her brain was thanking God for beautiful, beautiful firefighters as she kissed her sister’s cheeks and buried her head in her hair.


Malaika heaved Millie to her shoulders and continued her rounds through the crowd, picking up where the tired firefighters’ jobs ended. They stayed, standing in the middle of the street as everyone went off to a different part of their lives, and waited for him, to thank him.


He had gone back in three more times and he stayed to watch as the last traces of the small building disappeared into uncontrollable flame. “Must be difficult having to do it without all the equipment and the trucks,” she said coming up beside him, “Thank you sir.”


“No ma’am,” he said, his eyes locking with hers and his face breaking into another, slightly grimmer, smile, “Thank you. We can’t stop fires or save people from pain of injuries and sometimes a fireman feels completely useless, but we weren’t today because of people like you.”


“They’re trying to demolish it,” she said the one thing she’d been dying to say ever since she read the news about London, “Just like London and then Chester and- and….they won’t stop until this city is finished too.”


“No,” his eyes never left hers for a moment and he spoke to an equal, “I don’t think they will, but we won’t stop either will we? We won’t stop until we fall dead or completely paralyzed.”


“Yes,” she whispered, “And that’s much longer than them, isn’t it?”


“I know it is.”


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