Worthless, the Second Story, Fall: by Phoenix Pinion

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, simply the story idea. Please do not sue

WARNING – This story contains vivid scenes of self-injury. It can be triggering to those who injure themselves. SI is extremely dangerous and not to be taken lightly. If SI disturbs you, offends you, or if reading about it is triggering to you, then by all means, DON'T READ.

"What were you thinking? …Seriously, what the hell were you thinking?" Hollow Bastion seemed cold and empty that night as Maleficent stormed up and down, pacing jerkily, furiously, in front of the boy. Sitting quietly in a small chair, simply sitting, Riku was there as well, staring vacantly at his arms. Palms up (the right one laced with a pink, rutted cut), the scars were exposed to the world, to Riku's blank eyes, to Maleficent's probing, furious eyes, to anyone who cared to look. He didn't care enough to hide the long, jagged pink scars like he once did. The four new scars that he had inflicted in Neverland, the scars that had caused so much trouble, glared out bright red, still tinged with drying blood, from amongst his pink lines and milky skin. They were deeper than any he had ever attempted on himself. But everything was his fault, so why not? Why not ruin myself just as I ruined Sora?

"Look at me!" Livid with anger and the fact that Riku was completely ignoring her, Maleficent seized Riku's chin and wrenched it up so his face met her eyes. Reluctantly he tore his gaze from those terrible scars and looked expressionlessly into hers. Shaken by his empty gaze, she turned away then stared at the tiny razor in her hand, coated deep red in dried blood. She had found it in Riku's hand about thirty minutes before, on the deck of the pirate ship. The razor was in the hand that was dripping shamelessly with the life-giving liquid; his left arm was so smeared with the same that at first she was completely bewildered as to what was going on. Horrified, she could only stare as he viciously stabbed himself vertically, seemingly as hard as he could, with that tiny razor, then dragged it a good three inches up his arm. The skin separated seamlessly to the razor's persuasion, and the blood welled up to join the rest on his beautiful milky skin. She stared in hopeless shock as he shook, blood pouring not only from his wrist but also from the vein he had just deeply, irreparably slit. She still watched as he rocked slowly, losing consciousness, and his crooning that was slowly fading in volume finally reached her ears: "My fault my fault my fault my fault," and Maleficent gathered her senses enough to hurriedly cast a Curaga spell on the wretched, dying boy before he breathed his last tortured breath. As his newest, nastiest wounds slowly closed in upon themselves, veins healing first, then skin layer by layer until the blood and a large, ugly scar remained, Riku collapsed. His faint was to be expected not only from the massive blood loss, then recovery, that he had just been subject to, but also from his obvious mental shock. As Maleficent kept him with her, traveling back to Hollow Bastion as quickly as possible, stealing small glances at the boy who was now awake but also completely oblivious to the world around him, she found her shock rapidly turning to anger, then fury.

And now here they were in the main hall of Hollow Bastion. "Well?" She continued to shout at the boy, though it was obvious her anger was not vexing or affecting him in the slightest. "Do you have any idea how careless and stupid that was? You could have died, and then where would we have been?" After all the yelling she had done in the past few minutes, Maleficent still paced, and Riku still stared at those scars. To say the least, she was completely stunned and also quite shaken that Riku had the nerve to do something so incredibly idiotic. Having seen the awful scars before, and noticing when they multiplied or diminished, she was well aware that Riku had and still was injuring himself. She did not know how he did it (something that angered her more than the fact of the matter itself), but she also did not feel that his self-injury was a serious threat to her or her plans. After all, Riku was a smart boy, or at least a safe one, and though he took risks with himself and others, he would never go too far. He was simply far too important to her plans to be so ridiculously foolish.

Maybe naively, she had believed this, and for a time, Riku's behavior satisfied this belief. New scars occurred, but he always remained alive and well, until just a half-hour ago. How could he have tried to kill himself? Didn't he realize just how important he was to Maleficent's plans? "You stupid boy," she hissed, striking the side of his head hard with her staff and watching with a surprising amount of numbness as his head flung limply the other way and blood slowly started dying his white hair a dark red. "Without you, I cannot reclaim the keyblade from Sora and open Kingdom Hearts! Don't you understand me? How could you have been so careless?"

Still, Riku was silent. He said nothing of his importance or of his role in Maleficent's plan. He did not mention finding Sora, his former best friend, cutting desperately and unashamedly in the cabin because of Riku's own stupidity. He simply stared at Maleficent until she turned away then averted his eyes back to the terribly glorious (or gloriously terrible?) scars. As he stared at them, at the awkwardly healed-too-soon skin that had scarred layers on top of layers, he only saw Sora's arm, bleeding, cut, scarred from previous encounters of the same sort. He only imagined the diary and the realization, the total realization, that it was all his fault.

As Maleficent stared at the scars with eyes that had not lost any of their fury, she finally realized the ace she was holding. "I still have your razor, boy!" She crowed, holding it out at him. "I won't give it back to you unless you talk to me." Of course, she had no intention of giving back the object she had tore her hair out for months trying to find on him, the object that had continued to cut him while she wondered how and why. It was his one power against her, that razor, his one measure of control in a life that was no longer his to control.

She waited for a response, but got none; he no longer cared even about his most precious possession, the only thing that had and would ever give him the satisfaction of seeing Maleficent bewildered and furious. At the moment, Riku simply couldn't listen or even register her presence. Whatever had shocked him had truly, deeply shaken him to the core. And as the scars burned themselves deeply in her memory, how could even Maleficent see that she worried about his numbness, his shock, his wish to die? A selfish worry, indeed, because she only wanted him alive and well so he could gather the keyblade for her. Once that feat was accomplished, she planned on casting him aside and forgetting about him forever. However thin the concern was, however, it was still there. And Riku was still ignoring it…!

With a final, wordless shriek of fury, she tried to release some of her rage by striking him once more, hard, on the head with her staff. And she watched as her violence caused him to fall limply off of the chair and lay, curled up in a small, emotionless ball, on the floor; looking at those scars, Maleficent finally realized it would never work. Stomping her foot, one last, childish gesture of anger, she then stormed out of the room, leaving Riku alone; she had failed in breaking his already broken, battered and weeping spirit.

To be continued

Author's notes: For once I wrote this chapter knowing exactly what to make the next chapter about. Nice, eh?…Yeah so it's been awhile. I won't deny the fact that I'm incredibly unreliable. If I actually feel like writing a chapter to any of my stories, I can do it in less than an hour. I just have to want to do it, and I have to have the privacy to do it too. And I hardly ever have the privacy, though I often want to do it. So, I'm really sorry. I understand if all of you guys have completely given up on me and everything I write.

And hey. This story is mostly just Maleficent trying to get Riku to talk to her about why he almost killed himself, albeit unknowingly, on the deck. Maleficent's furious of course. The next chapter will be Riku's thoughts on the matter and what he decides to do next.

Well, um. Thanks for reading, if you do. J I love you guys, truly. I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can, but no guarantees. Bye, PP