(no subject)

[wordslinging]

Title: Firebug
Fandom: Dark Tower
Characters: Cuthbert Allgood
Rating: PG
Summary: Written for the fanfic100 "fire" prompt. Cuthbert's always been a bit of a pyro.


At the age of three, Cuthbert watches wide-eyed, one hand held tight by his mother, as a shop in the merchant’s quarter burns to the ground, all efforts to save it proving futile.

At eight, he sits in a circle with the other boys of his ka-tel as they learn how to light a camp fire, a look of eager delight on his face.

At eleven, due to an incident involving a stuffy-guy, a pile of big-bangers, and several unsupervised ‘prentices, Cuthbert ends up very briefly on fire. Alain puts him out, as Cuthbert is laughing too hard to do it himself.

At fourteen, Cuthbert barely outruns the explosion at Citgo, shoots big-bangers into the tankers at Hanging Rock and rides through the fiery chaos that results as if he were having the time of his life, and begs Roland to let him set the fire at Eyebolt Canyon.

He also, at fourteen, watches Roland watch Susan Delgado burn to death.

For the rest of his life, Cuthbert, along with Roland and Alain, stays as far from Reap Night bonfires as he can get. But he stares into camp fires and hearth fires and passes his fingers through candle flames and sometimes, when he lights a cigarette, lets the match burn down as far as he can without burning himself, watching it intently and shaking it out at the last moment.

At twenty, he watches Gilead burn.

And at twenty-four, in a camp near a slope called Jericho Hill, he sits close enough to the fire for the hair on his arms to get singed, and only pulls back when that happens and Jamie—Jamie who will be dead by tomorrow night, if only they knew it—asks him if he’s trying to get himself burned.

When that happens, he answers with some joke, laughs it off, and stays a suitable distance from the fire for the rest of the night. What he could tell Jamie—could tell all of them—but doesn’t, is that he’s not trying to get burned. He just wants to see how close he can get before he is.

Comments

[randygrapes.livejournal.com]

This is so perfect, so utterly Cuthbert, and so what I'd been needing to read, all rolled into one.

I've been longing for some good Dark Tower fanfiction, and (and I hope you don't mind the intrusion into your LJ) with your work I think I've found that.

Thank you.