Dedicated to theshinyglaceon, the one Glaceon who introduced to me the world of writing, and finds a way to always inspire me to write. Thank you so much <3

A/N : Before I start, this is not a novella or novel, but rather a series of short stories that link together, to create one whole storyline. As I introduce more short stories to this link, I will not specify where exactly it falls in the timeline, as I'll leave that to you readers to find out. That being said, I hope you enjoy!

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He woke up, and everything else around him was silent.

Blinking away the dreams of the night, he stood up and made no attempt to fix his bed. His room consisted of nothing more than a mundane cot and a simple, empty desk. Gray light softly streamed through his window curtain, adding a surreal glow to every surface in his room.

He gripped his hand around the silver door knob, worn down by the generations of his ancestors that had lived their whole lives there. It didn't twist gently anymore, and made a soft creaking sound as he turned it. He gently pushed the door open, but it made a noise nonetheless, and an echo resonated throughout his empty house.

Shaking away the feeling of isolation, he stepped into the hallway, where the only light flickered. He could recall that the lights had always flicked, even when he was a kid. The dark wood underneath him softly groaned under his weight, reminding him that his home was older than it looked.

Memories lined the outskirts of his mind like the pictures lined the plain white walls. They were the milestones of his childhood. His first steps, his first book read, his first invention. The emotions unearthed from his past came to him in a torrent, and he stopped to just reminisce on what life had used to be like for him.

Shaking away the memories of happiness he once had, he forced himself to keep walking. As he walked down the stairs, the steps never made a noise. Lights strung together were the only things that illuminated the spiral staircase, but they were in the same state of disrepear as one at the top. 

The dimly lit stairs flowed down to the main floor, which consisted of nothing more then two rooms separated by a wooden wall. As he stepped off the last stair, he brushed his fingers against the smooth wall, and remembered every single time his recklessness had caused some kind of dent into the wall.

As he walked throughout his home, he stopped in front of the sole table in his dining room, where four ceramic plates stood untouched. White chairs remained where they should have been, arranged in a perfect pattern to sit a family of four. A black ceramic vase with a colorless, single rose stood alone in the center of the table. Hundreds of memories of meals with his parents and brother were embedded in his mind, and along with those meals were the memories of prayers uttered over every single meal.

His finger reached up to brush his neck, and he felt the cross that hung there. It was a gift, given to him when people could still afford to give. He let his fingers brush across it, feeling every detail, every bump, every indent. Memories of prayers spoken at night ran through his head, and made him weakly smile at every memory of his mother teaching him—even well into the night—about God and the stories surrounding him.

And with more memories came more silent smiles. He couldn't help but relive his first time eating anything sugary, where he had abruptly spit it out, due to the foreign taste. His sister had been horrified by that, and went on eating her own candy, while his parents had just laughed together. The thought of all of them all together again made his heart warm, yet it also tore it apart.

Taking a breath, he guided himself to the front door, and stopped to remember every single time he had run out that door—many times in tears. Sometimes it had been to escape his old life, and sometimes it had been to run to his new one. The doorway held many memories of his mother yelling at him to leave their family before he disappointed her even more, and his father letting him back in after dark so that none of the people outside would hurt him.

He shook his head in a fruitless attempt to brush away the memories, but they clung in his mind and weighed it down. Emotionally exhausted, he pushed the door open. A stone sidewalk set into the dirt led away from his door and to the street, weaving between patches of tall grass and large stones.

Pinecones littered the grass around the many trees, and simple dandelions had sprouted among the grass. The sky was gray, yet some sunlight still found its way through the thick wall of clouds. Most days had been like this, but those were the days that filled his memories.

He took a glance around, and everything else around was deserted. Homes were empty, as if there was no trace that there was ever an inhabitant. Along with the isolation, there was no sound to be heard. The silence in itself was almost deafening, but his almost-inaudible footsteps were all that he could use to break it. He tried to remember what life was like before everything, but his mind dulled and he came up with nothing. 

After all, It was hard to visualize a world that he had always been told to avoid. There were many dangerous things out in the real world, and he had always been taught to avoid it at all and any cost. The only times he had ever come out from the "safety" of his home was when he was sent by his father to fetch something for him.

He started walking again, and stepped from stone to stone on the path. It reminded him of the years when his father had secretly let him out of the house, away from the judging eyes of his mother. A faint memory in his head reminded him of the games he used to play, where he hopped from stone to stone without ever touching the grass. And at the end of every day spent mostly inside learning from his parents, he remembered taking out his father's old telescope and bringing it glance out his window, to simply watch the flairs and burst of light in the night sky. 

As soon as he reached the road, something in his mind made him pause. A memory of when his father had tried to teach him to bike while it was still safe to be outside materialized in his mind. He had fallen many times, but always came back up smiling. He remembered exactly, how one day, he had been going too fast, and ended broke his wrist in his fall. That abruptly ended his will to learn how to ride a bike for the next couple years.

But stored alongside the good memories were the bad ones. They were the ones that reminded him about the true, destructive, nature of his parents. Hidden underneath the blanket of faked love and pretend care was a monster, and he was the victim. He could remember how every single time a mistake meant a bruise, and how every failed task meant a loss of food or water.

He almost turned around and went back, because the memories were painful to remember. Even though it almost physically hurt to remember those times, he forced himself to go on. There was nothing that could hurt him now. Nobody was out there to hurt him. Not anymore.

As he stepped off the concrete road, the soft dirt was warm on his bare feet. The road he walked on looked like it never ended, but it sloped down with the hill. He kept walking, and felt a cool breeze brush his cheeks as everything else around him stood still.

Before long, he reached his destination, a simple park. Really, it was nothing more than a slide and two pairs of swings, but it held almost as many memories as his home. The first time he had gone down a slide and into his mother's warm, loving arms. The time he had went flying off the swings, and his father had picked him up and brushed off the rocks that had clung to his jeans. And along with that memory came the memory of his sister's many delighted giggles as she had went flying down the slide, where his mother and father would be there to catch her. 

There was also the bench, barely holding apart with old wood and rusted nails. But that had almost been like his second home. He had used to spend countless hours just sitting there, either reading or tinkering with a new device.

He also remembered the dark, lonely nights where he had stumbled alone to the park, tears streaming down his face. Every single time, he collapsed on the bench, crying himself to sleep as new bruises formed down his back. Nobody had ever really learned the reason behind why he was so hurt.

It had been the other kids who did it. They never had truly accepted him for being socially awkward, and had used every insult they could to tear him apart. Even up to that day, he still didn't know what he had done wrong in the past. But they had torn him apart, mentally and physically, to the point where he didn't want his life anymore.

There were many nights that he had contemplated ending it. Ending all of it, because none of the other kids ever really wanted him. He was the stranger in the crowd, the outcast, the one nobody cared about, and the one that nobody would notice if he died. 

When he had tried to tell his parents about it, he had been met with a reply telling him to find out what he had been doing wrong, but the minute he tried that, it was only met with more teasing and more laughter. In the end, he had given up and had wondered if everyone else would have been truly be happier if he had been gone.

But everything in his life turned around the day he had met her.

One tree reminded him of her, and he almost lost his breath just remembering everything about his past with her. Long before the world as he had known it ended, he had met her there as she was reading. She had been laying in the soft grass, faintly smiling as she had flipped the pages of her book. He had introduced himself to her, and had mentally braced himself for the rejection, the rejection telling him to screw off or go away, like every other teenager had done to him.

To his surprise, she had only motioned with her hand for him to lay down in the grass by her. He had grabbed his book, and without a word, started reading beside her. He had silently observed her, instantly adoring her long, black hair, and the way that she had intently read as if nothing else had existed in the world. When it had begun to grow dark, she left without a word.

But the next day, she had been back at the same time. For the next two months, they had just read beside each other, where only a handful of words were exchanged every time. It had felt nice, but he had known that he had wanted to be more than just a friend to her, but the words always felt stuck in his throat, and he never knew just how to ask.

Eventually, it had been her who asked him. She had nervously asked him with a smile, biting her lip and hoping for a yes. He had known that she was the one for him the second she didn't judge him, and accepted it with a smile.

They had grown to love each other. Their lives slowly grew together, and had intertwined themselves like vines. She had known everything about him, and he had known everything about her. Through his world of doubt and insecurity, the only thing that he ever had really known was that he loved her.

And for a while, he had been happy. He had finally found someone who understood him, and who appreciated him just the way he was. There was no feeling better than that to him.

But then the war took all of it away.

To him, it felt like the war was a living person. Like the war knew exactly what to take away from him to shatter him apart, and slowly destroy him. It had taken his parents away. It had taken his smiling sister away.

And it had taken her away.

He wrenched himself out of his memories, and blotches swam in his vision. He fell on his knees in the grass, and let his hands cover his face. Tears streamed out through his net of fingers, and fell on the grass that they had both laid on together. Grief overtook him, and he gave a wail of despair, shattering the silence that he carried with him. There was nothing that he could do to save her, no matter what he did with the rest of his life. No piece would ever fit the broken hole in his heart.

He pulled himself together, tears streaming down his cheeks. There was no second chance to save everyone, nor was there a way to bring them back. The war had destroyed everything and everyone, except him.

There was nothing left to do in the park, so he started to head back to his home. Everything was starting to turn dark, signaling the end. However, he was not in a rush to try to get back to his home. It didn't matter to him.

Before it had gotten chilly, he arrived to his home. An empty mailbox welcomed him, and he knew that it would forever stay empty. He picked up a gray watering can, and poured it on the colorless wild flowers, even though he knew that it would make no difference in the end. He just wanted to do one last thing in that world before it was over.

In the end, nothing he would do would really make a difference. There was no reason for him to keep trying, when everyone who had ever cared about him was gone.

But he knew that he would go on. If not for him, then for her. She had taught him to never give up. He would honor those words, for as long as he would live. He would keep trying to find a way to change the effects of the war, and maybe, just maybe, fix the world to what it used to be.

Everything around him started to fade away, and the simulation turned off.

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-Robo