It's happening again. The shattered sounds, the way every word Remy says is like a glassy shard of icy awful agony in his head, the way every time Piotr tries to pat him on the shoulder or give him an encouraging little grin makes him want to hit something, hurt something, burn something. And it's not the good kind of burning, this heat that's filling him, this dangerous sweet shuddering pressure that keeps rising in him until even the air he breathes is thick with it.

It's usually easy to make it die down again. The laughter, the freak fires, the madness, it's, what, it's theraputic or cathartic or one of those shrink words they used to use on him all the time before he got out, out, out. And so usually he can bring it down, smother it by getting out of himself, by losing a little bit more, by…

"S'riously, Johnny, you need to chill. Have a smoke." Remy holds out a pack across the card table and John feels like crying or killing, one or the other, but he takes the pack and takes a cigarette and lights it like nothing's wrong. The smoke doesn't soothe him, it just rasps down his lungs and makes him think of dark things and ruined things and John gets up from the table hard enough to make his chair fall over backwards.

"I'm going out," he says, and the other two look up at him like he's crazy, like he's insane, like he's nutso, bonkers, wonked out and John has to turn around and stride towards the door. "For a walk," he bites out as he reaches it, because they might need clarification, because they might come after him, and that would be the worst thing. He needs solitude, or silence, or the loudest noise imaginable. He needs something to get him out of himself before he breaks out.

As he pulls the door open and slips through, he hears Remy say to Piotr,

"That boy needs to get laid."

And maybe, maybe that's true, maybe what he needs is a girl with a short skirt and fire in her eyes, a girl who will kiss him without worrying about getting scorched, a girl who can touch him without staring at the scars. But he doesn't have one, is the thing, and he doesn't see how he's going to get one so it's not even worth considering. John laughs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunching his shoulders against the misty rain that makes everything outside look gray and haunted and like what's left after a house burns down. It's not like there aren't girls he wants, of course. That's not the problem. Wanting has never been John's problem.

But right now he can only walk and want and burn, combust, snakes of fire (not real, not real, not real) hissing through his ribs and down between the muscles of his abdomen, slipping into his belly and making him bite his tongue against a cry because it isn't real, and he knows it, but he feels the pain anyway.

John, right now, is not Pyro who is insane and dangerous and stupid, always the stupid one, the one you're afraid of but also not really because god, how can someone that fucked up in the head actually hurt you? John, right now, is Johnny Allerdyce who left Australia after destroying his home and everyone in it on the day after his fourteenth birthday, who heard his sister shrieking, skin crackling, hair stinking up the air as it sparked, sparked and caught, and who couldn't do anything but crouch there in the blaze and cover up his ears and scream. Johnny Allerdyce who came to America and rotted on the streets until one man offered him a chance, one chance, the chance of a lifetime, and all you have to do is whatever the hell I say, even if that means burning buildings, cars, people. Which, really, isn't so much to ask, is it? After all, that's what he does. That's what he is.

He reaches the trestle bridge across the train tracks, the one right before you reach the inner city proper, and leans against the railing. Below, there's the tracks and a spill of broken gravel, spokes of rusted metal jutting out from where they've been spewed by trains or kids who pick them up and toss them back over the bridge. It's late, and cool, and the weather is what it is, and so there are no kids running along the tracks and trying to balance on them, little feet slipping off the metal easy as ice. There's only John, elbows gritting into the wooden rail, hands dangling down over the drop, thinking not about jumping but about exploding off the bridge. Somehow that seems different. Not like dying. He doesn't want to die; he never wants to die. He wants… He wants… to disappear, maybe. To be gone, for a while, until the pressure settles back and lets him go on. This is the price of something, he's sure, though he's not certain whether it's of madness or sanity.

If a train would only come, he could yell his lungs out and no one would hear over the hideous overwhelming rumble of it all. Instead, into the silence and the heavy humid air, he says something very calmly.

"Fuck." It's a nice word, a good sharp angry word. So he says it again, a little louder. A car passes; he ignores it. The tracks, the rocks, the rust. He shouts it, snapping, not caring, because it's such a short word, and even if it does bring someone to see what lunatic is standing here shouting curse words, it means he'll get a chance to fight and actually, a fight sounds pretty good right now. No one comes, and John is there on the trestle with the echoes whispering at him, fading into nothing. He leans forward until the edge of the railing bites into his chest, and sees if maybe he's going to throw up. Sometimes that happens. He doesn't, but he stays like that anyway. Blood rushing to his head, pounding in his temples, and then it starts to really rain. The water pelts him, plastering his hair to his forehead as he dangles there, and he imagines being clean.

After a long while, John straightens and slicks his hair back away from his face and starts walking back towards where Remy and Piotr are probably not still wondering about him. It's not gone, but it's better now. A little lighter against his chest, his ribs not so compressed.

For the first time since coming to the bridge, John notices that he's cold. He folds his arms, wrapping them around his thin chest, and heads for home.

I cannot take this anymore

I'm saying everything I've said before

All these words they make no sense

I find bliss in ignorance

Less I hear the less you'll say

But you'll find that out anyway

Just like before...

Everything you say to me

Takes me one step closer to the edge

And I'm about to break

I need a little room to breathe

Cause I'm one step closer to the edge

And I'm about to break

I find the answers aren't so clear

Wish I could find a way to disappear

All these thoughts they make no sense

I find bliss in ignorance

Nothing seems to go away

Over and over again