Warnings: Speculation, Introspection
A/N: Written for who_contest's Prompt:Vacancy. I must admit, I struggled with this one for two weeks. Then (just as inspiration struck), the deadline was near and I was out of time - and stuck on the very last paragraph. This challenge was extended by a whole week (which was awesome!), but I still found myself wrestling for the next seven days with differing paragraphs and endings, unable to find anything that concluded this fiction in a satisfactory manner (at least, in my opinion). Here it is, deadline once more nigh and I'm sweating the ending, like the extension never happened in the first place. But I have to have something, yes? So there is an ending, such as it is. :D It isn't quite as fantastic as I was aiming for, but as an ending, it will have to do. I'm only hoping the rest of the fiction will make up for it. I'm no good at endings, really. But then, neither is the Doctor himself (so I'll take a bit of comfort from that thought). As per usual, this fic is mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. And (as always), I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/wandery/blithery and unbeta'd.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!
There is a townhouse with an attractive blue door that no one lives behind.
It's not that no one has ever lived there, it is just that no one lives there now; at least, according to Ms. Mackinaw, who has lived two townhouses down from that blue door for well over twenty years. She can recall a nice couple that lived there once. It was about fifteen years ago. But one day they just never came home.
And still the original owner (whoever that might be), never has put up a sign. You'd think they would. Still a perfectly serviceable dwelling. Nicely suited to couples who wish to start a family.
Or for little elderly ladies who just want to spend their retirement years in a nice neighborhood.
O-o-O-o-O
There was an apartment that was a lot like that townhouse – though it was much further into the city – and its door was white, not blue. Though the landlord thinks there might have been a widowed woman who lived there with her daughter, he isn't quite clear when they lived there (if they ever did) or what their names might have been. Maybe the widowed woman's name was Jill, the daughter's name Lilac…something flowery. But he can't tell you when they were there, if they ever actually were.
The place has been 'To Let' for a few years now. 'Can't keep tenants!' is his (long, ranting, often drunken) complaint. Shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone though, really. The neighborhood is run down – austerity cuts and the like. The junkies and hookers have taken over much of that area of the city, but the landlord had a sneaking feeling that isn't the reason he can't keep people in that apartment. He doesn't get an answer as to why they are leaving before they pack up and move (rather abruptly, most times). If he was a more curious man, he might've wanted to hazard a guess, but he isn't a curious man, much less a reflector on the nature of things, so he never truly bothered to think on it. All he knows is that once (just the once, pity), he got two month's rent ahead of time and they didn't even stay long enough to enjoy their lodgings for two weeks.
Not that he was overly put out about it. He got extra money, after all. Cash in hand. And no sooner had they hit the bricks, he had the 'To Let' sign back in the window. Maybe one day he could keep a tenant. And who knew? Maybe someday (in the not-so-distant future), Jemma and Daisy would come back – and wouldn't they be pleased that it was all nice and tidy? Even the electrics had been updated.
Not that this put paid to all the flickering in the fixtures. T'was a short in the wiring somewhere. That's all.
O-o-O-o-O
Anyone who'd get a peek inside the townhouse with the blue door would see that nothing had much changed in twenty years: there was still a need for washing-up tabs for the dish machine. Red hairs were still clogging the drains in the bathroom. The answering machine still had 124 messages logged – even though 150 calls had been made to that phone in the last fifteen years.
Mysteriously, there was no dust. The kitchen floor still needed a mopping, the bed in the main bedroom was still rumpled and mussed – like the tenants had stepped out to run errands and would be back at any moment. There was no sign at all that the previous inhabitants had been away for such a very long time. It was as if the house was waiting for their return.
Who knows? Maybe the townhouse knew something the rest of the neighborhood didn't.
O-o-O-o-O
There was a red door that had once housed an bungalow that was two stories high (even as it really wasn't). The man who had owned the place moved, though. He and his new wife had their baby and decided they needed a bigger place – and a shorter commute to work.
If there had actually been a second story, they might have stayed.
Then again, they might not have.
It didn't matter, anyway.
There was never a second story (with another apartment at the top).
Even when there was.
O-o-O-o-O
Twenty-five years had passed since the nice couple had stopped gracing the inside of the house behind that blue door. Twenty-five years of the strangest lack of dust, the ancient answering machine blinking (bleating on) about the 124 calls still lodged in its moldering recorder, the kitchen floor needing more of a cleaning than ever.
Twenty-five years of silence: no small children running through the halls, sounds of laughter or arguments or murmurs long into the nights. No noises of washing machines, fights over toys, cooking mishaps and repairmen tromping through the various rooms.
Ms. Mackinaw had passed away two years before – her own family there to mourn, clean, sort out her estate and then (eventually) put her townhouse up for sale. A new little family moved in, bringing light and noise and hectic rushings-about to the quiet, older neighborhood.
Most of the residents were getting on in years; and none of them remembered the previous tenants of the townhouse with the bright blue door. Most assumed it was owned (likely by one of those rich, jet-setting types who needed a residence to claim as their own, even as they never stepped foot within it), but never bothered themselves at not seeing people going to and from its doors; pretty as those doors were.
It was almost unnoticed, then, when a man showed up, eyebrows fierce, mouth frowning, eyes twinkling (of all things) – his demeanor sad, almost nostalgic – as he looked over those blue doors, finger brushing the frame in a strange sort of reverence (for a lack of a better word). He looked as though he wanted to smile. Then he looked as if he wanted to bite someone. The frowning mouth tilting slightly at one corner, the twinkling eyes far away, as if lost within a memory.
Almost unnoticed…
The mother of the newest little family in the neighborhood stepped from Ms. Mackinaw's old residence (though, I suppose, it was truly her family's residence by now), giving cautious instructions to the latest babysitter before heading to market. She was too wrapped up in remembering all the little things sitters would need to know to notice the man two doors down – at least, not right away.
She only noticed him as he was hopping down the steps, his movements awkward, yet smooth all at once. Like he knew how to hop, but not quite with the legs he was sporting. It was such an odd sight, it made her pause, unsure whether to call out, or just go on with her day; she wasn't raised to speak to strangers, but she wasn't raised to be unfriendly or un-neighborly, either.
"Excuse me," she called out, waving a bit to get the stranger's attention. "Are you the owner of that townhouse? Or looking to buy it?"
"Neither," the man said with a sad smile. "I'm here to say goodbye to some old friends."
She didn't have anything to say to that, so she gave another little wave and scurried away, just a touch unsettled, but not enough to throw off her day. By the time she had gotten home, she had quite forgotten about it. And by the time she rose the next day to feed the smallest one his mash, she had completely forgotten the odd little man himself.
Just as well, as the townhouse itself was no longer there.
It had simply vanished while the neighborhood had slept – and after a week, one would be hard-pressed to remember it was there in the first place, much less the blue doors that made it special. Ms. Mackinaw would have remembered…but Ms. Mackinaw (like the townhouse with its blue-blue doors) was no longer there to say one way or another.
O-o-O-o-O
Thirty-two years had passed in that little neighborhood. Thirty-two years of births and deaths and retirements and promotions. Thirty-two years of quiet and contentment.
Not everyone who had lived there over the years had been there quite that long, but all of them could recall when they first saw what made the neighborhood unique. It was why (they would say) they bought or leased a townhouse there in the first place.
In the middle of the crowd of townhouses, there was a garden. Within that garden (roses of all kinds, mostly), there was a small pond. The pond never attracted any ducks (mores the pity), but it was a lovely little pool of water that blended perfectly within the boundaries of the rose-gardens.
It had always been there (according to the residents) – brightening the neighborhood, giving one a place to relax in peace – the very air feeling safe and tranquil. The little plot was welcoming as well as it was soothing, the bench of the bluest blue you had ever seen rounding it off to perfection; a spot of wild color in amongst the red, gold and white of the roses.
Once (probably as a joke), someone had planted a 'To Let' sign (like the plot itself was rentable), but it was such a quaint and funny placard, no one thought to remove it, much less be offended by it. Instead, it earned the little piece of paradise the nickname 'Vacancy' and the neighborhood was very proud of the quaint touch of the rural within their urban haven.
Oh, other neighborhoods had their urban gardens – vegetables and flowers of all kinds – clumped together in bedraggled patches of exhausted city dirt. But nothing topped their blooming and bright garden of implacable peace.
And to think, the council could have just as easily put another townhouse there. A dreadful idea, really. Not to mention more than a bit silly. Any neighborhood could be crammed with housing (and very little sense of character). But no other neighborhood could claim they had a 'Vacancy' and it mean quite the same thing.
After all, their Vacancy came with roses and a pond.
A perfect addition to a rather nice neighborhood. One that had been there long before any of the current residents had even been born; likely to be there long after they were no more – timeless and serene. A comforting thought in a way.
It was nice to know that some things never change.