Rossiter
By Kryss LaBryn
Winner of the Grab Bag Category of the 2006 Phoenix: V for Vendetta Fan Fiction Awards!
Grab Bag #6: Movie/comic--If Evey's imprisonment had really been 'real'--that is, if she had been held by actual government officials--Rossiter would have been a real person. WRITE ABOUT ROSSITER. Alternately, write a story about the person V based Rossiter on.
A/N: As usual, I own nothing at all.
Picture a man…
He is not a particularly tall man, nor a particularly short man.
He is not a particularly good man; he is not particularly evil.
He does not particularly like Brussels sprouts. He does not particularly like marzipan.
He is not a particularly religious man, but he bends his knee each Sunday to a fairytale he hasn't believed in since he was a child, to please a wife who clings ever tighter to that empty hope. There is no God; if there is, He doesn't care. Of that he is certain.
He does not particularly like his job; he does not particularly dislike it. He is particularly good at it. He is particularly efficient at causing misery.
If there were such a thing as God, he muses as he cleans up at the end of his shift, he would have died a long time ago. Not that he feels particularly guilty about what he does; it's just that so many have cursed his name for so long, calling upon God to avenge them, to save them, to kill them, that if there was anything listening he should have been dead.
And yet, he lives.
There is no God.
Just Rossiter.
The man in Room Five, under his quiet exterior, particularly hates him. Holds him in particular contempt. It would have been understandable, at least, if the guard believed in what he was doing. But the man had no principles. He believed in nothing. He lived for nothing. He did what he was told…
…Because he was told to do it.
That was all.
Rossiter was not a particularly evil man; he was not a particularly good man. He was not a particularly good husband; he was not a particularly bad father.
He did, however, take a particularly long time to die.
Finis