Tim closes his eyes. The hot cinders are starting to sting his vision. The crackle and creak of wood crumbling is starting to overtake everything else, even the mutter of the guy next to him. Just someone else, another person he failed to save.

"Not a bad way to go," Tim agrees hoarsely. "Didn't really save you and you didn't really save me but - there're worse ways."

Like being run through with a knife to the throat by a man who's shrieking and sobbing and breathless and helpless, or pitched over a balcony by your old best friend, or shot in the gut by the one person you fought for years to save, or having your mind torn clean from skull while the rest of you snaps evenly under the pressure of a thing you'll never understand. Yeah, being burned alive isn't so bad. It's painful, sure, but he's earned that. More than earned it.

The easiest lesson he ever learned was knowing how to lie down and die. How, and when.

"Tim," he blurts, as the thought occurs to him. "Gonna die one way or another. But, uh, I figure you should know. Tim. That's my name."