Bridget's Flame Entry - Week 1 - Thank You
He's grateful, but he doesn't know how to say it.
By rights, he shouldn't be. The training is a special hell that he earned his way into somehow. Maybe if he'd eaten his vegetables when he was growing up, or if he'd gone to bed instead of staying up to read comic books. But no. Now it's nothing but wake up, train, fight, and then stumble back to somehow do it again.
Mark isn't grateful for it when Afiah wrenches his limbs or when Suhar doesn't sympathize. They have to do it because they have to break him down and build him back up. He knows the game, but it's not one that he enjoys playing.
But there are little things - when Afiah touches his arm after a hard match, or when Suhar tells him stories. The jokes of the crew when he's eating with them.
It feels like a cinder glowing where there were only ashes. The dim promise of something better. Mark is compelled, drawn to it as a desperate man.
He doesn't know how to thank them for this small and growing thing which might engulf him and make him live again someday.
So he falls into the Fire over and over, to that sweet agony, that joyous pain. Because that is where life is waiting, and life is what they want.
A/N - Honestly, this isn't the best I've ever done. But done is done either way, so I guess I'll have to accept the consequences. That's just how I roll.