Title: This House
Author: zoulvisia
Pairing/Characters: OCxOC
Word count: 746
Rating/Warnings: G, depressing.
Summary: In a beautiful city, a popular destination for tourists, there is an empty house.
Author's Notes: Like I mentioned, this is depressing. It was written for the gw500 prompt "vacant", for which I had had several ideas. Then this one hit me and, just like "Click", wouldn't let me go until I had gotten it out of my system. If you want to give me feedback (which would be wonderful!), you can either comment via LJ if you found this through and LJ post, or e-mail me at zoulvisia AT gmail DOT com.
Disclaimer: Don't own the universe in which this is set, do own the OCs, but I don't mind if you steal 'em. In fact, if they inspire you to write something, I'd be flattered as hell.
This House
This house is empty.
Outside, the asphalt of the street is slick and glistening from the rain. Lovers pass by arm-in-arm, the sound of their feet on the water-darkened concrete sidewalk punctuating the rat-tat-tat of the rain and distant whoosh of tires against the wet streets. Vacationers caught out in the sudden shower pull their coats over their heads and hurry back to their hotels. Children—and adults, too—splash through the puddles with abandon. Families walk their dogs under the brooding gray sky.
For the most part, though, people are inside, making tea or hot chocolate, curled up in blankets or reading. Warm. Safe. Comfortable and content on this rainy Sunday.
This house is empty.
The person who lived there once will never make tea again. He is nothing more now than a lifeless body, nourishment for the beetles and worms. His body is not even in one piece. The house is painted with faded blue paint; the wilted garden is bordered by a rusted chain-link fence with a hole in it. The windows are dark, and one of them is smashed in, the handiwork of some bored teenager; the rain soaks the dust-covered, sand-coloured carpet inside, but nobody sees and nobody cares. The doorbell has not been rung in many years; the newspaper boys and girls know by now not to deliver the daily news to the doorstep. The lock is rusted shut. The house is for sale, as the lurid sign in the middle of the dead brown grass proclaims, but nobody is buying it. Nobody cares about it.
Who lived there? Nobody ever bothers to ask, but if they did then maybe one young woman who hasn't found it in herself to move on from the ghost of her dead lover would tell them. She would tell them that his name was Martin, that he hated being called Marty, and that he was a young man, a kind and humble man with simple ambitions and a heart of gold, and that he had left to join the Alliance. She would say that he had told her that he wanted to do his part in maintaining peace and order; that it was something he had to do. She would say that he liked a lot of Parmesan cheese on his spaghetti bolognese, that he always ended up in jail in capture the flag but loved playing it anyway, and that he had always wanted to adopt a dog from the animal shelter but never had because he knew that he didn't have the means to care for it. She would say that he had been just about to graduate from the Lake Victoria Base Academy, into the Specials, when he and the rest of his class had been destroyed, demolished, exterminated by Gundam 05 in the name of peace.
She would say that it hadn't been his time to go. That he was a good man, and that she had loved him so much.
There is a lot she wouldn't say, but it would hang there, unspoken but clearly heard. Can you hear it?
(This house is empty.)
Maybe the memories would become too painful for her and she would break down in tears and say that she passes the house every day, and the empty windows stare back at her, cutting into her heart like knives (she has a poetic turn of phrase), but that she can't bring herself to move away because that empty house is all she has left of him. All she has left of him other than an impersonal letter on white paper that smells of absolutely nothing, with the words "We regret to inform you..." (this house is empty) printed on it in ink that is as black as the blood—his blood—she sees in her nightmares is red.
But nobody ever bothers to ask why this house is empty. Most of those who pass are visitors enjoying the beautiful city—it is a major tourist attraction—and hurry by that unsightly blemish on the city's picturesque, peaceful setting, preferring not to think about it or question it. They are people there for a vacation, people who, now that the wars are over, are determined to make the most of it.
This house is empty.
And if—when?—war breaks out again, there will be nobody in this house to wonder if any of it was worth it.