Chapter Text
Wally was used to Home ignoring him now. Home used to wave its shutters as he left to spend time with his friends, eyes watching him leave with happiness, but at some point that had stopped. Wally wasn’t sure when the house started to resent him leaving, he wasn’t even sure if there was a transition period between Home letting him leave freely and it locking the door every chance it got.
But…but there had to be a reason. There had to be a reason he’d been locked away from his friends for at least a week now. Maybe he’d done something wrong? Maybe he’d made Home upset, and this was his punishment?
He’d asked after he’d noticed the door locked the first morning. He asked every time the house locked the door, but it was like Home was ignoring him on purpose. He couldn’t even look the house in the eye as he asked, because it had pulled the blinds and shut the curtains and even locked the windows.
He gave up. He knew the house wouldn’t reply. He’d filled the first day with question after question, with no creaks of the floorboards or swinging cupboard doors at all. He’d filled the silence, because he hated it, he’d talked until his voice was hoarse and gone to sleep with no answers.
The second day (he wasn’t quite sure it was daytime, but he’d woken up and usually his sleep was on a tight schedule so that he could make time for all his friends in a day so it was probably morning) he’d painted, struggling to see the colors in the dark. He’d made a painting of the tree in his backyard, leaves rustling in the wind. Then he’d painted a bowl of apples, then he’d started a painting of all his neighbors that he didn’t finish before he’d gotten too tired to keep his eyes open.
The third day he’d waited by the door, hoping for it to unlock. Surely his friends were worried by now, he was always out and about even if he didn’t particularly feel like hanging out with his friends. He’d lay on the ground in the backyard and stare at the clouds, or he’d sit in a swing at the playground, sometimes he’d even paint outside simply because it was nice out.
The fourth day he didn’t get out of bed. He had no reason to, no one to see or talk to, nothing to do, so he stayed in bed with his eyes closed and tried to sleep the day away. The next days passed much the same. His stomach churned, anxiety and hunger mixing nauseously together. Time crawled, though at least he knew it was passing by the sound of a clock ticking merrily away somewhere in the house, the sound drifting in and out of focus.
He wasn’t truly sure of what day it was anymore, though he supposed it didn’t matter. No one seemed to notice his absence, nor care that he was locked in Home. He should just let himself wither away into nothingness, it would be doing everyone a favor. With a huff of something close to laughter, he thought maybe that had been Home’s plan all along. Starve him until he understood what he’d done wrong, but if he couldn’t figure it out? Just let him die.
He missed talking and hugs and the sun and the grass. He missed being outside. He missed his friends.