Chapter 9: WHAT WE ARE
Max didn't knock.
The door opened forty minutes after I'd retreated to my room. Enough time for the shaking to stop, for my heartbeat to normalize, for the adrenaline crash to settle into general exhaustion. Not enough time to sleep, though I'd been staring at the ceiling trying.
She stood in the doorway, arms crossed, face unreadable. The defensive posture was back—the one she'd worn during our first real conversation. Testing mode. Ready to flee if things went wrong.
"That was intense," she said.
I sat up. Didn't bother with excuses. "He was going to hit me."
"I know." She stepped inside, closed the door behind her. "That's not what I mean."
Silence stretched between us. I could guess what she meant. The violence of the display. The fire climbing my arms. The way I'd stood over Neil like a predator with cornered prey.
"You wanted to do more than scare him," she said finally.
Not a question. An observation.
I could have lied. Could have given her the comfortable answer, the reassurance that everything was under control. But we were past that now. We'd been past that since the first time I'd shown her fire dancing on my palm.
"Yeah," I admitted. "I did."
Max was quiet for a moment. Then she crossed the room and sat in my desk chair, putting distance between us. Strategic positioning. Smart kid.
"But you stopped," she said.
"I stopped."
"Why?"
Because burning Neil alive would have been wrong. Because I wasn't actually a murderer, despite apparently inheriting a pyrokinetic death wish along with this body. Because somewhere underneath the rage, I remembered that power was supposed to be for protection, not punishment.
"Because I didn't want to be him," I said. "Or like him. The fire is for protection, not—not that."
She studied me. The same appraising look she'd given during our first conversation, when she was trying to figure out if my apparent personality change was real or just an elaborate trap.
"My real dad was like Neil," she said quietly. "Different flavor, but same result. Mom didn't leave because she wanted to—she left because staying would have killed her. Maybe literally."
I hadn't known that. Billy's memories had Susan and Max arriving as a package deal, Neil's new family after his first marriage fell apart. The backstory had never been clear.
"Then she jumped straight into this." Max gestured vaguely toward the rest of the house. "Out of the fire, into another fire. Great instincts."
"People make bad decisions when they're desperate."
"I know. I just—" She stopped, chewed her lip. "I know what wanting to hurt them feels like. Fantasizing about it. Wishing you were big enough, strong enough, had enough power to make them stop."
The words hung in the air. Thirteen years old, talking about violent fantasies toward her abusive stepfather and biological father. The kind of thing that would have sent a therapist into overdrive.
I didn't have a therapist response. I just had honesty.
"It doesn't go away," I said. "The wanting. Even after you're big enough. Even after you have power. It's still there."
"How do you deal with it?"
"You choose." Simple answer. Maybe too simple. "Every time. You make the choice not to be them. And then you make it again. And again. And eventually—I don't know. Maybe it gets easier."
Max was quiet for a long moment. Processing.
"That sounds exhausting," she said finally.
"Yeah." I almost laughed. "It is."
More silence. But it felt different now—less tense, more thoughtful. Two people sitting with uncomfortable truths rather than avoiding them.
"Mom hasn't stopped crying," Max said. "Since you went to your room. Relief tears, I think. She kept saying 'it's over, it's over' while she was cleaning up Neil's mess."
Something shifted in my chest. The exhaustion was still there, the weight of what I'd done and what I'd wanted to do. But underneath it, something lighter. Validation, maybe. Proof that the violence had served a purpose beyond my own satisfaction.
"I didn't do it for her," I said. Honesty again. "Not really. I did it because he was going to hurt me, and I was tired of pretending I couldn't stop him."
"I know." Max stood up, moved toward the door. "But the result's the same. He's never going to touch any of us again. You made sure of that."
"Yeah."
She paused with her hand on the knob. "I hated you. The old you. Just so you know. For two years, every day, I woke up dreading whatever new way you'd find to make my life hell."
I nodded. "I know. He deserved it."
"He did." A beat. "You're not him, though. Are you?"
Complicated question. In one sense, I literally wasn't—different consciousness, different history, different everything except the body. In another sense, I was the only Billy Hargrove that existed anymore. The original was gone, overwritten by whatever cosmic accident had dropped me here.
"I'm trying not to be," I said. The truest answer I could give.
Max considered that. Then, for the first time since I'd woken up in this body, she smiled at me. Not a smirk. Not a grimace. An actual smile, small and cautious but real.
"Then prove it," she said. "Not to me—to yourself. But for what it's worth? What you did tonight? Thanks."
The door closed behind her.
I sat in the quiet for a long time. The house had gone still, the drama of the evening settling into exhausted peace. Through the wall, I could hear nothing from Neil and Susan's room. Either they'd gone to sleep or they were talking in whispers too soft to penetrate the drywall.
Eventually, I held up my palm. Summoned a small flame—three inches, orange, steady as a candle. It danced without wavering, completely under my control.
Control. That was the word Max had unknowingly highlighted. The fire wasn't the dangerous part. Plenty of people had weapons they never used for evil. The dangerous part was the person wielding it. The choices they made every day, every moment.
I'd chosen restraint tonight. Chosen protection over punishment. Chosen to be something other than what Billy's trauma would have made him.
Tomorrow I'd choose again. And the day after that. And every day until the choices became automatic, became part of who I was rather than who I was fighting not to be.
The flame in my palm flickered, then steadied. I let it burn for a minute, watching the light play across the ceiling. Then I snuffed it, laid back, and closed my eyes.
Sleep came slowly. But when it came, it was dreamless.
Small mercy.
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