Written for the Helitalia groups fanfiction contest on Deviantart. The promt was Sunset and it needed to be a flashfic(no more than 500 words) I was really strapped for ideas for this until I was to a place called Eden Camp a few days ago.
For those of you who are interested(why?) Eden Camp is a former POW camp in Yorkshire that has been converted into a museum-like thing about WW1/WW2.
Anyway, I don't and never will own Hetalia or anything related to it other than some merchandise ^^;
Enjoy~
Endless shades of orange and red bled into the sky over the crumbling city. Arthur sighed as he looked out across the broken buildings; debris lying in the streets, cracks in the road and pavement.
It amazed him; how through all the pain and destruction his people had seen, they still went along with their everyday lives as though it was all normal…fathers and brothers were still here; neighbours were still alive; houses still stood. People just walked by, going around the bricks that were once their homes and work places as though they'd always been there.
Emerald eyes looked to the sky again, "it just keeps getting lower and lower," he whispered to himself, anger lacing his words, "it'll be like any other day, the sun will disappear, the ghosts will howl and then they'll come…" Arthur hated how useless he felt, but there was nothing he could do; he'd lost count of the amount of times he'd wished he could just run into the horizon and push that great light source higher up into the sky; putting his city into daylight once more. He'd long since stopped counting the different spells and hexes he'd tried to use to keep light shining on them, so THEY wouldn't come.
It was getting to the point now where it was dark enough for street lights to switch on and you'd see everything light up as families put the light on to sit down for dinner, or workers sitting at their desks attempting to complete an endless pile of paperwork…but that was not the case. The city was just becoming darker and darker with every passing second as the sun; that Arthur had willed so strongly to stay in the sky; disappeared lower and lower into the skyline.
Blackout curtains contained any light that may have been within the buildings; street lamps stayed off; traffic lights were dimmed to the point of being useless…it was nothing like a city should be when the sun was going down. A city should be vibrant and full life, children using the last essences of the sun before they had to go inside; groups waiting for the night time to come so they could go out and forget about the days work…not this darkening waste land.
Arthur did nothing as the sun slipped below the horizon; the sunset ending and night creeping in; he simply waited, waited for the ear splitting howl of the sirens, signalling another night spent in shelters, not knowing what destruction you're going to come out to. Signalling for the pain in his heart to grow stronger and stronger.
London wasn't a city anymore…Arthur didn't know what it was.
