Some say the world will end in fire

Some say in ice…

I saved the world to see it burn.

Shattered the ice, torch in hand, and lit the world with self-righteous fury.

How I did it, when I was so cold myself, I don't want to know, even though I do…

I see the moment where time splits itself in two, into ice and fire, fire and ice – replay it in my mind over and over. A vicious cycle of regret, regret that twists in my stomach, raging and growing as the days pass and the world goes to hell, and I go along with it.

Let the world blaze. I'll be there when the flames die down and the ashes linger, smoldering in the wind. I'll be there when those who've won – if they win – turn to me with questions on their lips and ice in their eyes.

I tried to save the world once. I'm not making the same mistake again.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favour fire.

Don't get me wrong; I burn with the rest of them. Fire is infectious, and perhaps I'm angry at myself more than they are.

I should have let someone else do the honors. Should have let someone else light the match. God knows they were willing.

But destruction's in my blood. Genetics had it out for me, and I know, deep down inside, that none of them could have done it. That it was something I had to do. We were freezing over, and I had the chance to stop it – it was the chance I had to take, and risk was the price I paid for it, so much more intensely than the pain everyone else saw.

It's human nature, isn't it? You have to try, if there's even the slightest hope. You have to know that you did everything you could.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate…

The flames don't cool, but with time I do. I had been so full of bitter hatred, almost loathing him, when he told me it was my job. Eight years old, and a hero by birth – wasn't something I had wanted.

My brother did, though, and I hated him as well – for not understanding how lucky he was, how stupid he was. And because I wanted to blame him when he tried and things went horribly, horribly wrong. I wanted to know that I wasn't the only one – don't they understand, what it was like, to grow up with that hanging over your head? – and when he failed I knew, inside, that I was alone.

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

There was always a slow, bitter antipathy between myself and "them" – the world, at first, and then as I grew up and realised it wasn't always a bad place, only those who betrayed me. It was never open or obvious, like my forced revolution, but instead hidden, slowly spreading between us and breaking off all tendrils of friendship. I needed to blame them for making me do this. I needed to hate someone because I was so resentful, and the enemy was already my anger's target.

I knew what the enemy did was wrong. I knew it had to be stopped. But I also knew that what they did to me wasn't right, that shifting the responsibility to a child couldn't have been, as they said, the only way.

I did what they asked. I saved the world. They never specified what had to happen after that.

Their loss. I can't seem to care anymore.

…And would suffice.

If I could go back, would I do it again?

Would there have been any other way? Could I have balanced the two, fire and ice, and truly saved the world? It was spinning out of its orbit, out into space, and I pushed it into the sun.

Or should I have let it drift, let it freeze over, and let humanity turn on each other?

Would it have been a better way to die?

A/N: This is the framework of a story concept I had awhile ago; I'm not sure if I want to write the actual storyline for it, or leave it as a series of vignettes.