FicWad

With hair closer to plaited straw than spun gold and eyes that didn't so much shine as occasionally glint, Lucy Richards was no prince, despite the comments on what a 'good boy' he was that flooded in on a daily basis. He was wild, reckless in a way that screamed more for movement than any specific adventure.

Of course, most people couldn't see it, didn't want to notice how his fingers tapped lightening quick along the edge of his desk, his chair, any surface he could reach, beating out a message he thought only he understood.

I knew what he was saying though. I'd watched him over the years, picking up every stray twitch and sentence he threw out as they wore thin and tucking them away in the windowsill of my mind I have reserved for any such orphaned trait. I could see through the façade of maturity he put up at times, for the benefit of all of those idiots who worried that, day by day, he was slowly killing himself through a combination of a severe lack of sleep and staying as far away from anything edible that didn't contain sugar as possible. I worried about him as well, of course, but I was much more concerned about the diet of his soul; with all of the ridiculous characters that surrounded Lucy, spouting their nonsense at him on a consistent basis, how could he be expected to learn how to open his eyes and see the rest of the world as it saw him? His own innocence was eating him alive, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed. From where I was sitting, it looked as though not even Lucy himself could see the danger he was in.

So, I tried to help him as best I could. I gave the darkness I saw peeking out from behind his eyes every now and then a name, which in turn eventually gave it a Voice. And what a voice it was, screaming out into the night against every wrong, intentional or not, that had ever been committed in its presence for the world to hear and judge as it saw fit.

Of course Lucy, sweet natured, wonderful, darling little Lucy couldn't allow the darkness within him to have control for too long. After all, someone might have been hurt and he would never have been able to live with that, no matter how angry he was. We would have never let him.

But I still knew.