RW Fic: A Life Interrupted 1/2
Title: A Life Interrupted
By: Ada C. Eliana
Fandom: Ronin Warriors/YST
Rating: PG
Author's Note: Not a WIP. I feel bad about teasing people with my WIPs, so I finished this before posting. It's a two-part story. Part two will be up over the weekend. English names used exclusively in this fic.
Summary: Post TV-series (no OAVs). Rowen returns home only to find that he's not the person he used to be. The war changed him, and he isn't sure who he is, or how to return to his old life.
A Life Interrupted
By: Ada C. Eliana
Part 1 of 2
The silence of the apartment mocked him. After weeks of laughter and shouting and too many feet rushing over the same floors, too many voices under the same roof, a tiny, empty, quiet apartment seemed foreign and surreal.
He dropped his meager bag just in front of the door, its thud seeming to echo in the constrained space. He tugged off his shoes, setting them down next to another pair that belonged to him, the ones that had been there since the last day of classes before summer break. His coat hung on the hook and his blue slippers were waiting expectantly, the impression of his foot permanently embedded in them.
He sighed and stared out at the room before him. The tiny kitchen that served mainly as home to the microwave for instant noodles, and pre-made stir-fry, and the rice cooker that he always forgot to turn off was dirty. An opened bag of rice lay on its side, the last few grains spilling from its mouth. A stack of used dishes gave off a foul odor for having sat there for so long.
In the living room the answering machine blinked with missed calls and a stack of magazines lay haphazardly next to the couch, one opened to an article on the aurora borealis, turned towards the couch. The TV remote was on the end table, next to a glass with about an inch of water sitting on the bottom.
He ducked out of there and headed to his bedroom. The sheets on his bed were turned down and clearly slept in, another glass of water adorned the small table in there. The clothes he had been wearing the night before he slept there last were lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. A pile of clean laundry waited by the closet, and the top drawer to his dresser was open.
His last stop on his mini-inspection was the bathroom. He paused at the sight of a blue towel hanging on the towel bar, and another discarded on the floor. Toothpaste had oozed onto the sink from the tube that lay there, and his toothbrush dangled benignly from the hanger. His comb lay on the counter, a few strands of dark hair tangled in it. And when he stared into the mirror the only thing he found out of place was his own face.
He did not know exactly what he expected when he returned, but not this. Everything remained exactly as it had been, the slippers waiting for him to slide them on, the un-finished magazine article waiting to be read, the dishes and the empty rice bag , the comb with his hair and the clothes he had to put away. It seemed as if the apartment had been waiting for him, untouched since he left. But he no longer felt as if he fit in. It did not feel like his apartment, his home, and his things. It was too empty, too quiet, too solitary. He wished something had been different, even one item out of place, one thing moved, one thing changed, one thing to prove that someone had been there since he left. He imagined the others going home, back to their families, back to homes where people lived and breathed for the past month.
He pulled his mind from his dark thoughts and headed back to the kitchen, relatively certain that he would not be able to breathe properly until the mess had been cleaned and the garbage disposed of.
His hands easily moved through the familiar motions of filling the sink with soap and scrubbing the food remnants from the plates, his brain seemed to disconnect, pulled elsewhere, and he was almost surprised to suddenly find his hands still and a stack of clean plates in the drying rack. Trying to avoid the inevitable realization his mind was hedging towards, he moved to do more cleaning.
The food in the refrigerator had long since expired, and he dumped container after container in the garbage can before he moved on to the cabinets. Their bareness was no real surprise to him, how could it be when everything was exactly as it had been? When he had been on his way to the market the day the dark clouds passed over the city?
He grabbed his keys from the hook and shoved his shoes on once more, shutting the apartment’s door firmly behind him as he ventured into the city again.
----------------------------------------
As he chose his favorite ramen from the convenience shelf, his mind wandered to dinners prepared by Cye or Mia, to fresh foods and vegetables, barbequed chicken and steamed corn, okonomiyaki, and summer rolls. His eyes flitted to where the ‘real food’ was kept and he almost convinced himself to buy some, to go home and cook himself a real meal, but then the kitchen and the small apartment flashed in his mind again and so he grabbed some cup noodles and pre-made stir-fry and tossed them in the basket. He indulged himself and bought some fresh rolled sushi as well, but it was nothing he hadn’t done before.
----------------------------------------
The apartment waited for his return in stoic silence, exactly as he had left it. It was always exactly as he left it. There were no voices calling his name, no one greeting him upon his return. He put the food away, belatedly pulling the sushi back out of the refrigerator and heading into the living room with it. He flicked the TV on, all the stations seemed to be playing nothing besides pointless game shows these days, but he didn’t really mind, he wasn’t turning the TV on to watch it so much as to break the silence around him.
----------------------------------------
That night he barely slept, ears perked and jerking awake every time a truck rumbled down the street or someone walked by. His fingers tightened reflexively around the armor orb beside his bed, (a habit he couldn’t see himself breaking anytime soon) before he figured out where the sounds had come from, before he remembered that he lived on a main stretch of road. The seclusion of Mia’s home was gone, the silence that existed outside of her house had now been transferred to the complete lack of sound inside of his home. He hated the silence inside, but somehow knowing that outside his walls were people and action and life was even worse.
He finally dozed off around 5 a.m., when the birds had just begun to chirp and the sun streamed in through his windows. And when he woke up he stared at the ceiling for too long before remembering where he was.
----------------------------------------
As he moved around the apartment everything felt foreign, odd, as if he were in someone else’s house, trying desperately not to break anything or disturb the order the owner preferred things to be in. The rumpled clothes were still on the floor, and for a moment he forgot they were his, he forgot about the night he tossed them there, too tired to care about cleanliness, certain that the next morning he would pick them up. That night seemed to him a million years ago, a distant memory that he did not even associate with himself, as if it had been a stranger. As if someone had told him about it long ago.
He reached out to pick the clothes up but then his hands fell back to his sides. This wasn’t like the molding food in the kitchen or the encrusted dishes, no, this was something different. It was the symbol of a life interrupted, how he left the apartment and never came back. He was a different person now then he had been, and this place, his ‘home’ seemed to still be waiting for its real inhabitant to come back.
But this was still his apartment, this was still his life.
He just wasn’t sure he wanted it to be anymore.
Part II
By: Ada C. Eliana
Fandom: Ronin Warriors/YST
Rating: PG
Author's Note: Not a WIP. I feel bad about teasing people with my WIPs, so I finished this before posting. It's a two-part story. Part two will be up over the weekend. English names used exclusively in this fic.
Summary: Post TV-series (no OAVs). Rowen returns home only to find that he's not the person he used to be. The war changed him, and he isn't sure who he is, or how to return to his old life.
A Life Interrupted
By: Ada C. Eliana
Part 1 of 2
The silence of the apartment mocked him. After weeks of laughter and shouting and too many feet rushing over the same floors, too many voices under the same roof, a tiny, empty, quiet apartment seemed foreign and surreal.
He dropped his meager bag just in front of the door, its thud seeming to echo in the constrained space. He tugged off his shoes, setting them down next to another pair that belonged to him, the ones that had been there since the last day of classes before summer break. His coat hung on the hook and his blue slippers were waiting expectantly, the impression of his foot permanently embedded in them.
He sighed and stared out at the room before him. The tiny kitchen that served mainly as home to the microwave for instant noodles, and pre-made stir-fry, and the rice cooker that he always forgot to turn off was dirty. An opened bag of rice lay on its side, the last few grains spilling from its mouth. A stack of used dishes gave off a foul odor for having sat there for so long.
In the living room the answering machine blinked with missed calls and a stack of magazines lay haphazardly next to the couch, one opened to an article on the aurora borealis, turned towards the couch. The TV remote was on the end table, next to a glass with about an inch of water sitting on the bottom.
He ducked out of there and headed to his bedroom. The sheets on his bed were turned down and clearly slept in, another glass of water adorned the small table in there. The clothes he had been wearing the night before he slept there last were lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. A pile of clean laundry waited by the closet, and the top drawer to his dresser was open.
His last stop on his mini-inspection was the bathroom. He paused at the sight of a blue towel hanging on the towel bar, and another discarded on the floor. Toothpaste had oozed onto the sink from the tube that lay there, and his toothbrush dangled benignly from the hanger. His comb lay on the counter, a few strands of dark hair tangled in it. And when he stared into the mirror the only thing he found out of place was his own face.
He did not know exactly what he expected when he returned, but not this. Everything remained exactly as it had been, the slippers waiting for him to slide them on, the un-finished magazine article waiting to be read, the dishes and the empty rice bag , the comb with his hair and the clothes he had to put away. It seemed as if the apartment had been waiting for him, untouched since he left. But he no longer felt as if he fit in. It did not feel like his apartment, his home, and his things. It was too empty, too quiet, too solitary. He wished something had been different, even one item out of place, one thing moved, one thing changed, one thing to prove that someone had been there since he left. He imagined the others going home, back to their families, back to homes where people lived and breathed for the past month.
He pulled his mind from his dark thoughts and headed back to the kitchen, relatively certain that he would not be able to breathe properly until the mess had been cleaned and the garbage disposed of.
His hands easily moved through the familiar motions of filling the sink with soap and scrubbing the food remnants from the plates, his brain seemed to disconnect, pulled elsewhere, and he was almost surprised to suddenly find his hands still and a stack of clean plates in the drying rack. Trying to avoid the inevitable realization his mind was hedging towards, he moved to do more cleaning.
The food in the refrigerator had long since expired, and he dumped container after container in the garbage can before he moved on to the cabinets. Their bareness was no real surprise to him, how could it be when everything was exactly as it had been? When he had been on his way to the market the day the dark clouds passed over the city?
He grabbed his keys from the hook and shoved his shoes on once more, shutting the apartment’s door firmly behind him as he ventured into the city again.
----------------------------------------
As he chose his favorite ramen from the convenience shelf, his mind wandered to dinners prepared by Cye or Mia, to fresh foods and vegetables, barbequed chicken and steamed corn, okonomiyaki, and summer rolls. His eyes flitted to where the ‘real food’ was kept and he almost convinced himself to buy some, to go home and cook himself a real meal, but then the kitchen and the small apartment flashed in his mind again and so he grabbed some cup noodles and pre-made stir-fry and tossed them in the basket. He indulged himself and bought some fresh rolled sushi as well, but it was nothing he hadn’t done before.
----------------------------------------
The apartment waited for his return in stoic silence, exactly as he had left it. It was always exactly as he left it. There were no voices calling his name, no one greeting him upon his return. He put the food away, belatedly pulling the sushi back out of the refrigerator and heading into the living room with it. He flicked the TV on, all the stations seemed to be playing nothing besides pointless game shows these days, but he didn’t really mind, he wasn’t turning the TV on to watch it so much as to break the silence around him.
----------------------------------------
That night he barely slept, ears perked and jerking awake every time a truck rumbled down the street or someone walked by. His fingers tightened reflexively around the armor orb beside his bed, (a habit he couldn’t see himself breaking anytime soon) before he figured out where the sounds had come from, before he remembered that he lived on a main stretch of road. The seclusion of Mia’s home was gone, the silence that existed outside of her house had now been transferred to the complete lack of sound inside of his home. He hated the silence inside, but somehow knowing that outside his walls were people and action and life was even worse.
He finally dozed off around 5 a.m., when the birds had just begun to chirp and the sun streamed in through his windows. And when he woke up he stared at the ceiling for too long before remembering where he was.
----------------------------------------
As he moved around the apartment everything felt foreign, odd, as if he were in someone else’s house, trying desperately not to break anything or disturb the order the owner preferred things to be in. The rumpled clothes were still on the floor, and for a moment he forgot they were his, he forgot about the night he tossed them there, too tired to care about cleanliness, certain that the next morning he would pick them up. That night seemed to him a million years ago, a distant memory that he did not even associate with himself, as if it had been a stranger. As if someone had told him about it long ago.
He reached out to pick the clothes up but then his hands fell back to his sides. This wasn’t like the molding food in the kitchen or the encrusted dishes, no, this was something different. It was the symbol of a life interrupted, how he left the apartment and never came back. He was a different person now then he had been, and this place, his ‘home’ seemed to still be waiting for its real inhabitant to come back.
But this was still his apartment, this was still his life.
He just wasn’t sure he wanted it to be anymore.
Part II