Title: Pulchritudinous, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and its characters belong to that of Square Enix and its co-partner, Disney. And I, a smitten fourteen year old fangirl, am in no way affiliated with them.
Warnings: None, really.
Summary: Maybe he was God. Maybe he was broken. Or maybe he was human...Pulchritudinous. Mild Riku/Sora.
Author's Note: This is just a short one-shot I wrote for lack of anything better to write. It'll be told in Sora's point of view. Enjoy! :
Pulchritudinous -- Having qualities that attract the eye.
Riku was what most would call 'competitive,' but I knew it was much more than just that. He needed validation of himself; needed to mark his position as the best. Most people would look into those eyes of his and see nothing but mocking, uninviting aquamarine that wanted nothing other than unadulterated obedience, but me, on the other hand... I saw vulnerability. Though no matter how well I saw through him, like an open book but with torn pages, the ink seeping through the paper because his story was written with such anger and force and despair, he did a damn good job of hiding what was his true feelings from the rest of the world.
He would walk around as if he were a God, and for awhile, I actually thought of him as one. Silver hair the reached his shoulders with the combination of pale white skin that made him look rather ghostly, though still striking; effeminate yet rugged facial features with an expression that could only be described as smug and overconfident, a body that surely had a girl magnet attached to it to top it off... Everything that he pretended to be was simply perfect. In fact, perfect could never describe the Riku you'd see on the outside. It was much stronger, much more meaningful. Although I had no clue what that word was.
Yet I, as his best friend since age two, noticed something that I'm sure nobody else had. Could I be the only one to have realized something inside of him breaking with every step he took onto the world? That he was...broken?
No. I couldn't be the only one. I'd talked to Kairi about it several times, and I'd talk to her like a patient would to a therapist. I let everything flow, told her every thought with every detail in my head with no hesitance. And yet, she still never understood. Sweet, innocent and naive Kairi who had her head in the clouds every hour, every minute of every day.
That's exactly what Riku wanted -- reach for the stars, so if he falls he'll land on a cloud. Lose reality for just a moment, and in that moment, he'd also lose himself, lose all doubts and feelings of impurity that kept him from moving forward. Just one moment, and life would be what Hollywood always perceived it to be:
Perfect. Perfect, like a sinless new born child. Perfect like... Like...
Like Riku.
Even though he wasn't whole, even though the life he was living was nothing but a facade, and even though he was broken, it was his imperfections that made him human.
That made him pulchritudinous; the best word to describe Riku in all his glory.