They call me a villain, a criminal - a monster.

A traitor.

But I am none of those things: I am an inferno, a cleansing light, a necessary governance. I am a bastion of flame that shines against an oppressive darkness, whether they can see it or not.

But it wasn't always this way. There was a time where I hopeful, naive. I longed for a future that could not exist. I fought and I bled - I dreamed and I wept - I sacrificed and I gave - but I hoped.

I do not hope anymore.

Hope is for the ignorant and the foolhardy. There is no word more deceiving than hope. It is a facade, it carries on like the blanket of a dream in the wind, and flows through your fingers all the same.

When you say that you wish, or that you hope; you place what could be in the palms of somebody else. It is a lie, for if you want it, if you want to change something - you have to step out of the darkness and do it yourself.

I fought for a system I believed. I did not fight for me, I fought for what I thought we could all be. What I hoped for. But I am not we, and the system was not us.

It churned through the motions. A status quo was its ocean and mediocrity was its currents. To ride atop the crest of its waves gave you direction and the simulated sense of movement but you did not move, and things did not change.

For years I wasted away, I toiled and fought. In the end though, I looked back and I realised that the world was no better with me in it than without. The same problems in the same places, so much effort, yet I had solved nothing.

So I left and struck out alone. I shed the organisation that controlled me, that contained me. To try and do right.

For the first time in a long time things are clear - there are people who need me.

And to those that that stand in my way?

They will burn.