frank begins
Frank Longbottom had never been one for nostalgia. Memory, sure. He honored memory. But nostalgia was different. It dressed everything in soft gold and lied to your face.
The past didn’t deserve soft gold.
It deserved honesty. And sometimes that honesty came with smoke, with blood, with the scream of a man who wouldn’t live long enough to scream again.
It was late when he found himself alone at the station — paperwork unfinished, lights low. Everyone else had trickled out or gone to bed. Even Remus, who liked to linger after calls, had finally disappeared into the bunkroom.
Frank sat at his desk, the only sound the slow tick of the clock above the whiteboard.
There was a photo taped beside the station calendar. Most people walked past it without comment — a younger Frank in military fatigues, standing with two other men, arms slung over shoulders like brothers. All of them grinning.
The grin Frank wore in that photo? He hadn’t smiled like that in years.
He met Fabian and Gideon Prewett in training.
Fresh out of school. Eager. Too eager.
Frank had been the quiet one, always reading ahead, always watching. Fabian was the talker — the kind of guy who could charm the boots off a general. And Gideon? Steady hands, sharp eyes, the kind of loyalty you felt in your spine.
They made an unlikely trio, but they stuck. Deployment welded them together in ways nothing else could.
Sand. Heat. MREs that tasted like cardboard and gum. The endless noise of engines and radio chatter. The world shrunk down to their unit, their tent, the patrol route they knew better than the backs of their own hands.
And then one day, the world shrunk again — to the inside of a Humvee, the sticky feel of sweat and dust, and a roadside bomb that changed everything.
Frank had survived.
He didn’t remember much. Just the light. The sound. The way time stopped.
And then started again without them.
Fabian died instantly. Gideon didn’t. Frank was still crawling toward him when the second blast hit.
After that, he didn’t remember anything until the hospital in Germany.
They told him he was lucky.
He hated that word. Lucky.
After the army, everything was quiet.
Too quiet.
Civilian life felt like a film with the volume turned down. People worried about parking tickets and coffee orders. They flinched at things he didn’t even notice anymore. They thanked him for his service like that erased anything.
It didn’t.
He wandered for a bit. Picked up odd jobs. Took care of his mum when the cancer came. Lost her, too. That silence deepened.
Then, one night, his apartment caught fire. Nothing dramatic. Just a stovetop mistake in the apartment above. But the fire crew that responded? Efficient. Brave. Loud in the right way.
He watched them work and something shifted.
The fire academy felt like redemption, almost. Or maybe just structure. It was hard, physically demanding, but predictable in a way the army never was. No IEDs. No patrols. Just purpose.
He rose fast. Not because he wanted power, but because he took it seriously. When he was offered command at Station 81, he said yes with a clear voice and a heavy heart.
It meant taking care of people again. It meant building something steady out of smoke and risk.
It meant never letting anyone under his command feel alone in the way he had.
Now, he stood at the station window, staring out into the dark street. Somewhere out there, the city breathed. Somewhere out there, people were burning dinner or arguing or falling in love or just trying to survive.
Behind him, the photo still waited.
Fabian. Gideon.
Frank reached out and touched the edge of the frame.
“I’ve got them,” he murmured. “Every one of them. I’ve got them.”
Because that’s what you did when you couldn’t save the first two.
You saved everyone else.