Theme: Scream
Title: What Else?
Word Count: 261
Other: Cry, if you want. It's alright.
(Riku is scared of so much more than they think.)
Boys were supposed to be brave.
…Wasn't that right? Yes, he had to be brave. He had to be brave, or they wouldn't like him anymore. They would laugh at him and call him weak if he were scared.
What they thought mattered most, after all. They had to think he was strong. That he was normal. They couldn't know about the terrible, sweeping fear that made him lash out at the world.
No, they couldn't know he sobbed into his pillow sometimes, body shaking from his desperate need to do something other than sit and wait and live the same boring life his parents did.
They couldn't know he was scared of the ebony tendrils seeping under his skin. He had to be strong. Only little babies were scared of the dark, after all.
He couldn't let them know he was scared. He wanted them there, and he wanted to cry, but they weren't there, and boys don't cry.
No, boys didn't cry, but he could scream.
Screaming was alright – he could say it was because he was mad at the black masses, because he hated them enough to scream, futile as it was. He could never say it was because he was scared, and that he wanted someone to tell him it'd be alright, that they'd make it all better.
Sometimes he wished he could tell them he was scared, but he couldn't – he had to be brave.
He had to be the prince in shining armor – it was all he had. They wouldn't like him any other way.