Chapter Text
Arthur couldn’t breathe.
He could see nothing, nothing but the blazing flames, except the biting fire, the red-hot tongues eating up everything around him.
He hadn't checked his oxygen tank on his back before, had rushed back into the house just like that, even though his colleagues had yelled after him - after he had pulled the little girl to safety. She had shown no more reaction, and Arthur prayed, hoped that he had come in time.
But he had wanted to make sure no one else was in the burning building.
Now, with the heat rising and the flames creeping ever higher around him, Arthur knew he had made a mistake. That he had been terribly wrong to run back in here so quickly. His breathing mask was so coated with soot and dirt, with the markings of his own breath, that he could barely see.
He heard something creaking behind him, horribly loud and heavy, and tried to make out where the sound was coming from, with last glances at the ceiling. It had to be the roof beams, Arthur was sure. They were breaking away under the fire, it was just wood, just damn wood. Just as he wouldn't live here much longer, would break the same way.
Breathing became harder, and slight panic crept up inside him. He couldn't get his bearings, where had he come from, where had he gone in? Where were the flames coming from the strongest?
Sweat burned his eyes, and he let out a deep gasp, coupled with a slight cough. His body made a half turn in the circle of flames, searching, looking for something, anything, that would offer him an exit. But there was none.
As Arthur became aware of this fact, deep and burning in his chest, heavy as a stone, he let his tense arms dangle beside his body, his eyes fixed on the ground. He could barely see now, everything blurred in that black soot, his breath, the panic. Dizziness crept up his neck, hard and indelible.
So here they were, finally.
The last moments of his life.
Arthur had thought it would be like in the movies - that he would see his whole life flash before his inner eye, his happy moments, that he would see his parents and siblings again, that they were somehow there, that something was happening to him now that he was in the midst of a hell of flames, slowly threatening to lose consciousness.
But there were no colors, no images, no cinema in his head, no images of childhood like a pretty movie in shadowy color. He felt sick, so sick, and he leaned over. He remembered a day in his childhood when he had been very ill, pneumonia. For weeks he had lain in bed, hardly eating, only sleeping.
The inflammation of his lungs had burned as much as every breath did now.
Arthur tried to pull himself together, tried to rest his hands on his thighs, to find support, something to hold him.
He’d never thought he would die alone, surrounded by what he had spent a lifetime fighting as a firefighter - fire. Hot, feeding fire.
Arthur managed to let out a snort, a deep snort that nearly took all his breath away, and it became more dizziness, his eyelids growing heavier, slowly fluttering shut.
"Arthur?!"
Was that his mother screaming for him? His father? Arthur, though raised strictly Jewish, had never really believed in anything like a God. Or maybe it was the devil who would come for him now, dragging him by the scruff of the neck into the depths of hell.
"Arthur, fuckin’ hell!"
There it was again, that voice, but Arthur couldn't place it because he saw nothing, smelled nothing, couldn't breathe. He felt his knees give way and expected a painful impact on the hot floor - but he didn't fall, at least not really.
Something cushioned the fall, and held him. Arms, were they arms?
The voice blurred, deep it was, but he didn't know. Didn't it matter either? He was dying right now, right in the heart of the fire.
At least the little girl was safe.
"Arthur...?"
Darkness, nothing but darkness, dizziness, nausea, and the feeling of choking in his throat, and still Arthur felt like he was being pulled away. Away from the fire.
But before he could lift his head properly, he fainted.