Set the Stars Ablaze.

They say that when there is smoke, there is fire. Firefighters don't dispute this. They know it's true - they've seen enough cases where they've dismissed the gray wispy tendrils of the airborne solids/liquids/gases, only to find out later, that there was a raging fire in an abandoned building in a neighborhood where nobody cared enough to call, and there were casualties.

Gerard Way didn't dispute this either, but he'd developed an alternative way to look at the proverb by saying that when there was a fire, there was not always smoke. He knew more than anyone - the truth and weight of the words. His co-workers knew him well enough not to ask, and they knew him well enough to not follow him around his hourly rounds of Irvington, New Jersey, looking for unreported fires. He was someone who cared - someone who didn't do his job, simply for the sake of income. He did it to save lives. And that was what made Gerard Way a hero amongst the firefighters.

But of course, like most heroes, Gerard was an introverted person who hid behind his tough exterior of being a workaholic and let nobody, absolutely nobody, get close to him. One of his co-workers, and possibly his only ally, Mikey, had spent days and weeks and months trying to become his friend but Gerard had relentlessly pushed him away, refused to let MIkey know anymore about him than his name, age and birthplace. Mikey never pushed him but he never gave up either. Now, two years after joining the Irvington Fire Brigade, Mikey had been upgraded to knowing the name of Gerard's high school, and that was good enough for Mikey. For the time-being, anyway.

"Where's Gerard?" Mikey demanded to know, one fine Tuesday afternoon, "There's a fire near Clinton Avenue and Rian's out for the day. Get him to round up a crew to get there ASAP."
"On it!" Zack called, from one of the break rooms, "Hold on, let me finish my coffee."
"Zack, it's a fire!" Mikey yelled, rolling his eyes, "Where are your priorities?"

He heard a grumble and a muttering of 'tyrant boss' and then a flustered Zack Merrick ran out, with a huge brown stain down his shirt, shooting Mikey dirty looks. Mikey shrugged in response and grabbed his coat and firetruck keys, motioning for the rest of the confused firefighters near him to follow him. Clinton Avenue fires were the absolute worst - it was a mostly deserted district, with hobos, homeless people and muggers milling around, and they were always looking for ways to kill people they hated. A fire was a perfect way for someone to get rid of their rivals and claim it was an accident. There was never a single Clinton Avenue fire in the past fifteen years where less than three people passed away and it always seemed to take a heavy toll on Gerard. Nevertheless, this was work, and work had to go on. And without their boss, Rian, Gerard was the next most capable firefighter. So he had to be called in.

~*~

"Oh, God," was all Gerard had managed to say when he'd spotted the harbinger of annihilation from a few miles away, "Oh, God."

Even from more than six miles away, the firefighters could identify that this particular fire definitely ranked in Irvington's fifth worst fires of the decade. It was absolutely horrifying. According to one of their investigators already on the scene, it appeared that some hobo had acquired gasoline and fire from somewhere, and decided to set a building on fire whilst one of his adversaries was inside. The fire had spread to a few dead trees outside and the damage done was nearly equal to that a minor volcano eruption may have caused. The air surrounding the property was clouded over with dense black smoke and from their investigators' frantic pleas for them to fasten their pace, the fire brigade could hardly begin to envision the magnitude of the fire.

All the firefighters were naturally distraught, which was quite a difficult thing to do, because from months and years of being in the brigade and witnessing people lose their lives, loved ones, life savings, property, most firefighters had developed an unwanted resistance toward feeling for them. To evoke such powerful emotions amongst twenty five year old plus men who were immune toward the trauma of death, it was a big deal.

As the firetruck had neared the area, Gerard had kept himself busy by organizing the hoses, ladders, ventilating equipment, floodlights, breathing apparatuses and such. Mikey knew this was affecting him but Gerard would rather die than express his emotions openly - out of all the firefighters, Gerard was the last to be rendered useless due to the overpowering effect of his feelings. Instead of pressing Gerard to open up, though, Mikey had wordlessly decided to help him organize everything, their eyes meeting infrequently, the despair in their eyes strong enough to not require words to know what the other was feeling.

"We're here!" Zack called out, snapping Mikey away from his thoughts, "Come on!"

He bounded out of the firetruck, with the rest of the firefighters in tow, briefly looking over his shoulder to nod encouragement at Gerard and Mikey. There was a brief second of silence before Gerard jumped up and looked down at Mikey, expectantly.

"Come on," he said, his voice barely above a whsiper, "We have people to save."

With that, he was out of the firetruck faster than Mikey could say something, leaving him all alone, who grabbed a floodlight and followed Gerard's footsteps.

~*~

Nobody quite knew what to expect outside but it wasn't this. It was, in one word, a catastrophe. Now, a fire is always a catastrophe to a normal person, but this scenario, standing outside a building in flames on Clinton Avenue, with fifteen firefighters standing there with their mouths hanging open...well, this was also a catastrophe to the firefighters.

The investigator's report didn't hold a candle to what they saw. It was a raging-fucking-inferno, as Jack put it, bluntly, and he was right. It appeared that the fire had grabbed widespread media attention and now the police, the media and loads of bored onlookers were mulling around, staring open-mouthed at the fire. Some spectators had even decided to be brave and had ventured out near the fire, ducking behind the police tape and begun gazing at the flames. The building itself had blackened and the miasma of death and destruction clogged up the nostrils of the firefighters. There were huge flames emitting from the open windows of the building and the area around it was almost completely ablaze. It was a firefighter's nightmare - there was no way to get to it without putting out the fire around the building but there was a person, if not more, trapped inside.

Gerard was the first to realize this, and the fact that if they didn't get a move on soon, there'd be more chance of the people inside asphyxiating to death. He yelled out to his colleagues and sprinted back to the truck, grabbing hoses, ladders, ventilating equipmment and whatever else he could carry and ran back, haphazardly dumping the supplies on the ground, motioning for the others to take on a role and play an integral part in saving someone's life.

Things moved on quicker after that - the police managed to round up most of the foolhardies sauntering around near a burning building, and the brigade managed to put out most of the fire around the building, before working on the building itself. There was absolutely no way it could be saved, so they began to send in people to rescue those trapped inside it. Of course, Gerard, being the most selfless, claiming it was because he was in charge, went in first, despite Jack, Alex, Zack and Mikey all insisting that he didn't need to.

Securing his coat tightly, Gerard ducked into the flames, ignoring the way the flames licked his clothing and heated him up so much that he felt like he was roasting. He coughed violently, and trudged into the wreckage, making out dilapidated, crumbling pieces of plaster which were probably walls. He walked around the ground floor, wheezing and rasping, feeling his supply of oxygen becoming lesser and lesser as he ventured deeper into the building. With a groan, Gerard realized that he needed to explore the other two floors of the building and walked upstairs, his vision blurring and his head spinning. This was normal, he knew, but for some reason, he felt as if it was consuming him this time.

Trying his best to ignore the feeling, he searched the second floor as best as he could, given his situation. Just his luck, Gerard thought, the victim is in the last floor and I'm choking to death here. As he began to ascend the stairwell connecting the second and third floor, he heard a cry so faint, it would have been carried away with the wind had he not been looking out for it. With a burst of energy, Gerard ran over to the left side of the corridor and began to slam open doors one by one, scanning every square millimeter with his eyes, until he came to a bundle of clothes lying in one corner of the room, shuddering.

"Hello?" he called out, "Hello?"
"H...here..." the pile of clothes sputtered out, "H...here."

Gerard widened his eyes in disbelief, running toward the heap, and gathering it up in his arms. He could make out the scarred and pockmarked face of an elderly man, looking up at him with expressionless gray eyes, his mouth slack. He barely weighed anything and Gerard couldn't even find the trace of a pulse as he looked for one whilst running down the stairwell.

"Th...there's..." the man croaked, weakly, "Don't...time...less."
"No, no, stay with me! Stay with me!" Gerard begged in despair, "We'll get you to a hospital soon, you'll make it through this!"
"I...time..." the man said, weakly, "Another one..."
"Stay with me!" Gerard cried, as he ran out of the building and soaked into the fresh air, "Please! We have paramedics-"
"Save..." the man choked out, "In the...hous...e"
"NO!" Gerard bellowed, barely hearing the man's words, "NO!"

He sank to his knees, with the man still in his arms, bowing his head down in defeat. He could vaguely make out the footsteps of people around him, and someone gently taking the man away from his arms. He tried to block out the clear voice of one of the paramedics announcing "Time Of Death - 2.42 PM" a few yards away from him and let the sadness envelop that he couldn't save-

"THERE'S SOMEONE ELSE IN THERE!" Gerard's head snapped up at the sound of Jack's horrified voice, "I JUST SAW...HAND! GERARD!"

Gerard saw Jack and Alex race over to him and shake him roughly by the shoulders. "Gerard! Gerard!" He wailed, "Gerard, there's someone in there and they've been trapped for nearly forty five minutes! Get him!"
"No, I'll go." Alex said, urgency evident in his voice, "Hold on, let me just-"
"No," Jack shook his head, "Gerard's the only one equipped for this right now. He needs to go in now, even if there's a shred of chance for the person up there."

Gerard moved his head, slowly, to look into Jack's eyes and nodded vigorously. "On it."