I’m not a firefighter.  I am a women’s advocate.  I have worked with survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

There are different kinds of fires in our lives, so the metaphor won’t apply to every circumstance, but here is how it does apply.
To stop most fires, you have to cut off the supply of oxygen (or fuel).
You can pour water on some fires, but that creates a lot of smoke and damage.

Chemical fires tend to get worse when you pour water on them, like the containers which burned on the Straits of Juan de Fuca on October 24, 2021. The containers were carrying a combustible powder: potassium amyl xanthate.  Exposure to heat and moisture causes it to burn or explode and release poisonous gas.  Unfortunately, the crew, (which was rescued by the Canadian Coast Guard), poured water on the containers to put out the fire, and that turned out to be a bad idea. You don’t want to do that.

To quickly extinguish small fires, you want to suffocate them by removing the oxygen.

Here’s what I mean:
Giving an abusive person, especially a manipulative narcissist a lot of time to talk is like giving the fire more oxygen. It’s like fanning the flames.
The quickest way to stop this kind of fire is to simply not engage.

Let me repeat that.
The quickest way to stop allowing abusers to continue VERBAL abuse or arguments, is to simply not engage.  Don’t answer phone calls or texts. Have them go through a third party, if you can, like your attorney. Or keep conversations as short and unemotional as possible.  Stick to facts, but don’t argue or debate.

Verbal and emotional abusers want to dominate and control their intended target by luring them into absurd and twisted arguments, by saying ridiculous things, by accusing their target of being bad and wrong or mean, in order to elicit a defensive response and keep the argument and the conversation going.  They enjoy this.  This gives them the satisfaction of engaging the person and throwing them off-balance.

Don’t get sucked into that.

It’s important to keep an eye on the fire for your own safety, but you don’t have to let them know what you’re doing, because they thrive on the attention.

You may not be able to prevent a fire (sorry, Smoky), but don’t give it fuel or oxygen.
Spare your breath for breathing.   Be safe.