11 days of Harringrove [harrington x hargrove]

4. The Good, The Bad and The Dirty

Alternative universe one-shot (very strange and a little twisted, doesn't have a happy ending - just a fair warning).

Alternative song (because it really turned out to be more this than P!ATD, or it could very well be I Never Told You What I Do for a Living by MCR, oh well) :

Billy Hargrove let his muscles relax, allowed his body to crash down onto the couch. His head fell back as he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and exhaled. He watched smoke twist and turn until the last swirls of grey dissolved into thin air. His eyelids fluttered close for a fleeting moment of vulnerability. He didn't care that blood from his clothes was seeping into the cushions. He didn't care that the Persian carpet was ruined by the grime from the soles of his boots. He could snap his fingers and get dozens, hundreds of new ones. Fuck, just one command and he could make someone lick them clean for him.

His elbows came down onto his knees. He reached up, undoing the straps of his mask and pulling it off. He looked at his hands, at the ash that was edged into every line, every crevice, every scar that covered his skin. When the mask was on he wasn't Billy Hargrove anymore – he was Gasoline, or at least that's what people dubbed him. First he was referred to as The Devil. Then reporters covering his stories started calling him ridiculous names like Hellbringer, Inferno, Firestarter – generic aliases for a villain with his line of abilities. A mysterious figure that burned to ashes anything and anyone that stood in his path? A new villain who brought horror and ruin to the streets of their city? People didn't want his real name, they didn't wasn't to see his face, they didn't want to hear his story, they didn't want reasons why. All they wanted was a sensation, something to whisper about to spice up their mediocre day to day lives. "Did you hear? How horrible. How dreadful. 30 people? Heartbreaking. We are all praying for them." They didn't care about who those people where, what horrors they have caused. To them, what Billy did was just a source of morbid entertainment. They were just as bad as he was – animals who savored the pain of others. And what was the damage to them? Nothing but a mere inconvenience of having to use a different road if their usual one was closed off. If their hands weren't those being burned by his flames, he was nothing but a phantom, a story, a legend to them.

Billy hated it, hated them with burning, scorching, boiling passion. But if they craved havoc, if they wanted destruction, he would gladly deliver. He would give them headlines they'd never forget. So instead of doing his job quietly, he made his actions seem like exaggerated acts of gory vengeance. He made a name for himself. He dipped his fingers in gasoline, painted a phrase on the walls, ceilings, sidewalks, of the places where he left the corpses. You are ash and to ash you shall return. He ignited the letters, let the words burn, he left them as a reminder not because he wanted to but because he could. He was sure it would cause outrage among the masses. People didn't like it when their God was being mocked. The twisted sentence taken out of the Bible became his signature. And so he had earned his new name. He let the media exploit him, antagonize him. He let the aura of hatred raise up around him, he let it envelop him. He became fear. He became the personification of terror. And he learned to relish it. He watched silently as this character, this thing he wasn't even close to, was forged out of him – Gasoline, the villain with fire dwelling in his fingertips.

The mask slipped out of his hands, it fell down onto the carpet with a hollow thud. Billy's eyes were blurry, his gaze far away, distanced. He brought his hands up, raked his fingers over his face, through his hair. The man he had killed today had begged for his life. He begged and Billy pulled the trigger anyway (for he never killed anyone with his flames – he knew all too well the horror of smelling his own flesh burn). The man had not been innocent – none of them were. The man had killed dozens of people himself. He must have looked into the eyes of his begging victims and Billy doubted he had ever granted them mercy. But Billy was not a cold-blooded killer – despite his belief that purging the world of rotten, truly bad people was the right thing to do, he was not a monster, and the feeling of clawing guilt tormented him more and more with every step he took, until he couldn't take it anymore. So he taught himself to turn it into something entirely different – true hunger for vengeance.