Mike\'s POV

"Mike, this is Jordan. Jordan, it\'s Mike" my mother introduced us. A smile, which I was sure was a fake one, appeared on his face. He approached me but I withdrew. I hated this man, from the bottom of my heart, but I also feared him. Since I was a little boy again I doubt I\'ll be able to tackle him. All I could do was get out of my chair and take a few steps back.

"Mike, what is it"? My mother asked, concerned.

"Get away from me!" I snarled as he kept approaching despite my back hitting the wall. "Don\'t come to me" I protested, to no avail.

He crouched down, right in front of me and extended his hand to touch my forehead. I shut my eyes tightly and flinched when his cold hand landed on my temple. "Such a sweet boy" he cooed. I tried to move away to get his hand out of my hair but somehow it didn\'t work.

The content smile on my mother\'s face and the devious smirk on this man\'s face, terrified me to my core. It was as if my reactions, my protests meant nothing. As if I was back to being the helpless birdie trapped in the cage.

My mother made me have dinner with this despicable man while being sickened sweet with her. He shot me a few glances, a black stare which terrified me before getting back to my mom. After the traumatizing dinner when he finally left, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"So?" She asked.

"So what?" I snapped back.

"Wasn\'t he nice?" She asked.

"He is a monster," I spat.

"What? Why would you say that?" She was mad. "Do you have any idea how much he has taken care of me. I didn\'t want to give him a chance but when I told him I had a son he was more than willing to be your friend". She huffed.

"Of course. That\'s all a plan to get to you. He wants us to suffer" I countered.

"Mikey, you\'re being ridiculous." She huffed. That man is the sweetest man I\'ve ever met. There is no way he would want us, or anyone for that matter, to suffer."

"And what about Dad? My real Dad. I thought you\'re waiting for him" I asked back.

"I\'ve waited enough. Before it\'s too late, we must move on with our lives" She declared, holding back her anger she held for him. "Is this what it is about? You\'re angry that Jordan Flynn isn\'t your real father".

"No"! I snapped. "Trust me, he is evil. He will destroy us. He.. he…" I didn\'t know what else to say. Should I tell her that I have lived this life and how it turned out? Should I tell her the way she died and the way I had to run for my life afterwards? Will she even believe me?

"Mikey how is that possible"? She appealed to me desperately. "Why would he want us for any other reason? What do I have? What do we have left? This small house. What could we possibly have that would bring him anything" she tried to reason with me.

"I didn\'t say he was a gold digger. He is a monster. And he will ruin everything" my voice quivered and I ran into my room.

My mother knocked on the door many times, but to no avail. I was angry at her, but I was also scared of whatever was happening. I couldn\'t help but wonder exactly what I landed myself into.

I was using the portal charm right, then how come I was in the past? Did my portal open to the past? But that doesn\'t make sense given how I was in my younger self\'s body. To see the man once again after all these years, it terrified me. As if I wasn\'t confused enough, my head was completely all over the place.

Suddenly, I felt something. Something that started to change. I raised my head from the pillow and looked around. Everything, everything including my own form started to change.

Like a flash of memories and suddenly I\'m in the hospital waiting for my little step-sister to be born. Another key-event of my miserable life. My Step-Dad was inside cooing the newborn with my mother who stared at the baby.

I felt a pang of jealousy, which I recall feeling when I first witnessed this scene. They looked happy, something that ticked me even more. I knew in my heart I was going to be replaced, I knew that my already miserable life was about to turn worse.

And I wasn\'t wrong. Soon I became their least priority. My mother justified it by saying a baby needs more attention. But I wasn\'t a grown up man or anything, I was still six. On the other hand my stepfather started to hit me at every other mistake I made and threatened to impart the same on my mother and more on me if I didn\'t hide my scars from my mother.

The trauma, those repressed memories suffocated me as I browsed through them, rendering me unable to move at all. All the power of fire I held, the power to destroy anything and everything and yet here I was… terrified of my own past. Shame on me!

Wait, my power of fire, will it work in this… illusion or whatever the hell it is? I wondered.

After the third hit I tried to summon my powers, to burn through him and soon enough his hand was on fire. An involuntary evil smirk appeared on my face as the fire grew tougher until I saw his face, the devious angry glare that despite being behind the fire terrified me.

I lost control for a moment and soon he slashed my skin using his belt. The skin around the bleeding spot was swollen, and many more came like I desperately wished for it to be gone.

Once again things around me started to turn hazy, and soon enough I found myself in a cage. A cage made of fire instead of regular metal, and yet that was the fire I could control. Neither did it flare up, nor did it consume me, it simply surrounded me, keeping me at my place, trapped. What was happening?

I tried to take a step out of the fire, wondering… or more like hoping that I\'d be to pass through, that this fire won\'t burn me if I am fast enough through it. Except, when I actually did try it the fire expanded making it impossible for me to get out of this gridlock.

I tried to run a bit, only to be still trapped in the fire. I turned back and came to realise that the fire didn\'t expand, it simply followed me, engulfing me wherever I went.

I turned around and I spotted someone through the fire, someone very old and wrinkled. What surprised me was he was very close to my height, so I looked at myself. My arms, my legs… they belonged to an adult. I was an adult again. And that old man… that was Jordan Flynn.

Or what he would look like if I were to meet him right now. Having run away from home all these years ago, I had no idea how he turned out to be or even if he was alive or not. But I did know that for the first time I felt glad that I was surrounded by this ring of fire. I felt as if it was protecting me instead of blocking me.

Wait, protecting me? Was that the purpose of this fire? I… I had the powers of fire and every time I had an intense emotional response my powers would manifest without much of my control. Did I do this? Surround myself with fire to protect myself? Yet somehow it\'s me who ended up in a cage.

Was this what it was all about? In an attempt to protect myself I ended up caging myself. I disconnected myself from people, to deny them the opportunity of hurting me… but instead I have isolated myself, with no one to rely upon except the very few people I bonded with in the past month.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I tried my level best to control this fire, to vanquish this so that I can finally be free and when I opened them I stood face to face with my perpetrator, with nothing between us.

Just like expected, he tried to hit me, but I caught his arm mid air. He glared at me, and I stared back at him with an intense gaze. "You don\'t get to hit me ever again. I am not a helpless kid anymore" I shouted at him and pretty soon he burst into flames like a firecracker.

Then again everything around me turned white and before I knew I passed out once more.