FIRE-SONG

Prologue

Author's Note: Main Titles - Logan OST

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Have you ever felt...like you can't breathe?

~:Ash.

Fire.

Embers.

Smoke.

Every suffocating, airless breath she takes enters her lungs with a vengeance. The gases, the toxic fumes, they stab and eat away at the organs and steal away any particle of oxygen she tries to consume. Her eyes, spectacularly green and vibrant, fill with water and redden. She can hardly see, blinded by tears and by the smoke.:~

That, no matter how much you try, you just can't take in a breath? Or that there's such a thick atmosphere around you, you feel like your taking in water instead of air?

~:The trees, charred and blackened, splinter and crackle from the heat. Every step she takes has a coughing fit and series of stumbles accompanying her pace: she steps blindly and without a sense of direction.

The flames lick her skin, causing the flesh, the nerves, and even the bones underneath to scream in pain and reel from the heat. She tries to scream and sob, but has no oxygen to spare, and all that escapes her maw is a deflated, withered exhale.

And yet, she struggles on, blind, burned, and broken. For through the fire, something calls to her, and she just can't help herself but to be drawn towards it. Even if it means walking through the flames of Hell to get there.

But she's not in Hell. She's in a forest set ablaze.:~

My entire life up to this point has been living for that next breath, for that refreshing drink of air I want, no, NEED to keep me from dying.

The Vertigo, they call me.

X-F, they say.

Rhodes, they order.

Ava, they rarely utter. I'm not human to them. I'm nothing but a series of letters on a spreadsheet - a dog of war, an asset to be wielded like a weapon, the spark of the fire and the resulting inferno.

~:The ground suddenly vanishes underneath her as a steep incline replaces the even, smoldering ground. She's taken by surprise, and in a tumble covered in smoke, ash, and fire, she roughly rolls down the steep drop. Every jagged rock, uplifted root, and splintered stick tatters her uniform and spills her blood on the smoldering ground. The woman finds herself crashing hard into the ground, kicking up dust and everything in between, upon a harsh landing.

She cries out, broken, battered, and on the verge of death. An arm drapes over her left side, feeling the debilitating ache of the fractures embedded within the fragile bones.

Bracing herself on the other arm, she rises ever so slightly. She gags at the metallic taste of blood on her tongue, sickened by the flavor and tang. It crawls up her throat and leaks ever so subtly from the corners of her mouth.

Damn it, She curses in her thoughts. I think I punctured a lung.

Her breathing becomes incredibly labored, every inhale and exhale coming with sputters of blood and pain. Everything is in a daze for the poor woman enveloped in the flames; her entire body is plagued with tremors with shivers like an exposed live wire does with electricity.

Screaming for help yields nothing in her favor. Even if she could scream, there's not a soul around for miles that could hear her struggle and come to the rescue. And yet, she tries anyway, but never once expected for someone to answer her call.