Title: Heroes and Villains
Rating: K
Character: Riku
Game: Kingdom Hearts I
Summary: Riku remembers fairytales from his childhood.
Notes: For the theme 'children's stories' at the Key Blade LJ community.
As a child, Riku loved to read fairytales. He would lock himself in his room, books in hand, straight from the school library and a little out of breath from the run home, and throw himself onto his bed, curl into a tiny corner of the mattress with his comforter and his pillow and a little nightlight to keep him company, and he would read well into the night. He'd read about princesses and knights and castles, and he'd read about dragons and monsters and all of the myths that have ever been spread around about sea serpents and beautiful women whose voices would woo even the strongest of men and the knights who rode beautiful white horses and could save anyone and everyone they wanted to save, and he'd think, "that's what I want to be like." He'd fall asleep like that, curled around one of the books that smelled of sea-salt and damp pages and old paper, and he'd dream about a life where he was the one riding valiantly into battle and saving the princess (Kairi) and fighting off the evil villains (sometimes Sora or Tidus would be the villain, but he knew that would never happen) who tried to overthrow his King's kingdom (he's had a dream where Sora was the king, oddly enough, although he didn't think Sora could ever be a good king).
Now, sitting back in his room, when it's all over, holding onto the books that he hid under his bed and told the librarian he had lost just so he could keep the longer, Riku realized he wasn't the one to grow up to be the knight, or the king, and he never did get to save his princess, and he realized, a little broken-hearted, a little turned down, that fairytales and children's stories never really do come true.
(He only felt a little remorse when he threw out most of those books the next morning, and decided to try to write his own fairytales from now on; stories about a villain who turned good again, and fixed everything he had ruined, and a princess and her knights, and everything else he knew was really true in the end.)
