Every night feels like giving up and every day feels like nothing.

He goes early to bed just to lose the battle against exhaustion and wakes up early to get rid of the dreams which make him choke. It takes him too much time to realize that there's air, and he spends the next ten minutes just breathing.

Sometimes he falls asleep because he has too much air and he needs to choke.

Waking up has really become a struggle with his body. He used to be able to move his muscles and control his body to do exactly what he wanted it to do, but nowadays he doesn't have the strength to even raise his hands.

That's why he's often blinded by water in his eyes – no hands to wipe away the tears. And even if he had working hands, he probably wouldn't know how to wipe away tears which were his own. Maybe if he could lift his hands he could collect all his tears and put out the fire with them.

Blinded by his tears he had knocked over his tea mug. He remembers how the hot liquid burnt, and how he didn't clean up the shattered pieces of glass. He hopes that he accidentally steps on them.

He doesn't light up candles anymore. The shadows dancing on his walls always steal his matches.

Unconsciousness has become a friend who comforts you and when you close your eyes it stabs you in the back. And after every wound you come back for more because the burning is never enough. You never burn until there's nothing but ashes. Even though you should. When will you learn?

He can't remember his own voice anymore. And he's pretty sure that if he spoke, the sound would break the silence and make him deaf. But sometimes there's a little crackle of a flame. He's never able to extinguish it in time and every night it burns down the lair. Maybe he cries himself to sleep while his bed burns but he just doesn't know it. Maybe he's already deaf and that's why he can't hear himself sob.

He's sure that he's not supposed to talk – if he did, the shadows on the walls would surely think he was crazy.

Maybe he should just turn off the lights. After all, there's nobody who needs it anymore, and there's nobody to fix it if it breaks. He's tired of staring at his hands. They never move.

One day he snaps out of it. He drags hid heavy legs out of bed, walks past the mirror reflecting his thin body and burnt hands and walks to the kitchen.

He sits down and it feels weird. He sits for an hour, then two, and it no longer feels like he snapped out of it.

He takes a painful gulp of air and let's all the water he has drank this week out in a form of a small tear. He keeps water in glasses, in small buckets, but he never drinks it.

Sometimes there's a flicker of fire in the corner of the room, but he never dares to turn and look. So he just listens it eat the walls and the paint with it. His hands never move.

A choked sob escapes his dry lips and he flinches, not able to use his shaking hands to cover his mouth. He's not supposed to talk – he doesn't know how to talk. There's smoke in his lungs.

But he wants to. There was still something he needed to say. But there was no oxygen left. If there had been, he would have shared it. No, he would've given it all away. He doesn't remember opening his mouth, where did the air come from now?

He thinks about the tea again. Well, he used to think about the tea, but now he just thinks about the burning it causes.

"Your brothers are dead", he whispers and his voice drowns in the dust covering the table. The shadows are gentle and they lit up the dust with their stolen matches. The words burn with the dust and Leo chokes in the smoke.

A/N: If you want to understand, read this. If you don't, then don't read this. So what I had in mind while writing this is that Leo lost his brothers in a fire where he couldn't save them. He was supposed to burn with his brothers, so he wonders why he's still burning alone. Sorry about my English.