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Resonate	By : memory Category: Kingdom Hearts > General Views: 8147 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-act 1
- 2-Interlude
- 3-act 2
- 4-act 3
- 2
- 3
- 4
Author Notes: I have nothing intelligent to say. Just watch out.

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RESONATE

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[start act 2]

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It didn’t take very much to strip Sora of his former identity. Axel got a foothold, invaded him, and scraped out all that was a little too bothersome. Sora came into Axel’s world somewhat pampered and prepared for his new life by Axel, the caretaker who had decided that memories of the past two weeks and healing spells and whatever else would clutter their rendezvous with unnecessary struggles. Fire spells were interesting, though. Those stayed.

When Axel completed the curettage abortion on Sora’s mind, he washed his hands off and went on to enjoy the fruits of his labor to the fullest extent possible.

Mind control? Well, not exactly . . . Axel subscribed to the philosophy that “there’s always a light in the darkness” was total bullshit and Sora would easily, easily succumb to him. The brightest were always the fastest to burn out, he thought. He was right.

The collar was pretty. Sora stared at it dazedly and lifted his hands to touch. It was made of black leather, the same used for Axel’s trench coat, and had assorted jewels and circlets of gold embedded in its length. Axel smiled widely to reveal blindingly white teeth and extended the collar to Sora for his personal inspection.

“Do you like it?”

“Shiny,” Sora murmured. He toyed with the miniature padlock that was attached to the buckle, which would need a very small key to be opened once the shackle closed. The metal felt cool on his lips.

A key, he thought as he handed back the collar. Axel was standing and Sora was sitting on the peoplecage’s swing, rocking with its natural vacillation. Why does a key sound so familiar?

“You wanna wear it?” Axel asked, although he looped the collar around Sora’s bruised and bitten neck before he got a reply. A space two fingers wide was a comfortable distance between the collar and the boy’s tender skin. He buckled it and then closed the shackle. Click. That was all.

Sora smoothed his fingers over the rubies and diamonds. “How’s it look?”

“It looks good on you.”

There was a way out of the peoplecage: Axel had made a sizable space in the bars. Sora nonetheless pushed away those meddlesome thoughts about keys and escape so he could focus instead on the task of gaining Axel’s approval. Whenever he held the man’s favor, the sex they had made him scream in a “good way” (Axel’s own words), and Axel let him bleed more often. He felt most complete when Axel was happy.

“You always give me such nice things,” Sora said, beaming. In reality he was completely naked; the only thing Axel hadn’t taken from him was the silver crown necklace, which rested as it always had over his sternum. Sora touched the collar again and twisted the padlock around, but it wasn’t going to come off without a lot of trouble—not that he wanted it to come off, though. “You make me feel good.”

“I told you,” Axel said and dropped an open-mouthed kiss onto Sora’s forehead. “That’s all I wanted for you from the beginning.”

Sora pouted when he felt the stirrings of shame in his tummy. “But I understand now.”

Speaking of which, that tummy was far squishier and more vaulted than it had been when he arrived. Axel insisted on feeding him several times a day and usually with the most luxuriant confectionaries imaginable: sticky brownies, dense fudge, warm cookies, glazed donuts, smooth ice cream. It was the food of an endless childhood sleepover. How Sora managed not to die from malnutrition, or even diabetes, was a mystery that he didn’t care enough for to contemplate.

Sometimes the meals were coerced; but as of late, Sora had begun finding himself as starved for more food as he was for more sex. Insatiability had become an integral part of him and he loved Axel for at least attempting to keep up his various appetites in this place where gluttony and lust seemed to go hand-in-hand. (“Sweets for the sweet,” Axel usually whispered after the ninth donut or second quart of ice cream. Sora felt good when Axel said these adoring things to him, even when his stomach might be about to burst, because it made him almost worthy of the man’s undivided attention.) His arms were puffy, his thighs had expanded, he had a second chin, and the girly curve of his ribcage into his hips had filled out to the sum of wavy love handles. The muscles he had developed from wielding the keyblade were now lost behind recently formed adipose tissue. If he tried to punch Axel now, he would be entirely ineffective, exactly like Axel had wanted.

“Do you wanna go for a walk?” Axel asked, revealing a corded leash that could have doubled as a short whip if the need arose.

“I’m hungry,” Sora said, still pouting.

“You have to work up your appetite. Come.” Axel clipped the leash to Sora’s new collar.

“Okay!”

To prevent Axel from getting angry, Sora committed himself to the effort of standing up on his weak legs. Axel really hadn’t let him go outside of the peoplecage at all yet, and in doing so, had made walking great distances an activity of the past. In the beginning Sora had been handcuffed to the peoplecage’s bars each time they had sex, but eventually he stopped putting up any sort of fight, too lost in the numbness—and then the pleasure, once he surrendered—to care. His arms were freed permanently sometime after that, but all he did nowadays was wrap them around Axel’s neck and scream whenever his ass was violated yet again.

“This is your first time outside, right?”

Sora nodded and looked into the darkness surrounding the peoplecage. Now that he was free to feel everything he had repressed as the Keyblade Master, he had no problem admitting to himself that the darkness intimidated him. But Axel was smiling as he pulled Sora along with a jolt of the leash; he walked into the darkness and Sora stumbled, afraid for that instant of falling since he couldn’t see any definite floor.

“You can’t see in the dark,” Axel observed. He motioned off at something Sora couldn’t make out. “This is an in-between place crafted of my own imagination and darkness. We live here together, and you shouldn’t be afraid.”

“I feel safe when I’m with you,” Sora said, bouncing a little on his heels in an attempt to keep up with the man’s longer strides. “Where are we going? I’m hungry.”

“My bedroom.”

They had only had sex in the peoplecage up until now. The insinuation Sora understood—that they’d enjoy each other on a real bed—was romantic enough to make his heart flutter. Strangely winded and light-headed, he stumbled again and would have landed on his face if not for Axel’s sudden grip on his upper arm.

“Do you love me?” Axel asked. They were standing still now.

“Yes,” Sora said, jittery with nerves. Finally, after so long—! “Yes.”

“Who owns your heart?”

“You do.” His heart fluttered faster and faster like an overexcited bird.

“That’s what I thought.”

Seemingly satisfied, Axel directed Sora through several invisible entryways. In the next area a soft light like the one that illuminated the peoplecage came on, revealing an entire collection of bathroom amenities.

“This is only a detour,” Axel said once he noticed Sora’s disappointed look. “You’re dirty. You haven’t bathed in days.”

Sora scrunched his nose a little. It was true. After every fifth visit or so, Axel would bring along a moist washcloth to wipe Sora off—but it hadn’t done anything for his hair, which was greasy with sweat and foodstuffs.

“Will you bathe me?” Sora asked expectantly.

Axel unhooked the leash, coiled one end around his hand, and snapped the other against Sora’s abused behind. The boy yelped and jumped forward, but didn’t reach up to rub the fresh welt. “Get in the tub,” Axel said. “Let’s see if we can make you clean again.”

Sora learned to love the sight and taste of his own blood. When he had been a bad boy—when he had cursed Axel on an hourly basis and had wanted him to die even more regularly—Axel forced his head to the floor and made him clean up the mess of cum and blood from the most recent rape. Whenever he had the strength to, he fought back. He would summon the keyblade, bring it upward, and attempt to impale his kidnapper before he felt too numb to even think—unfortunately, Axel had learned to predict every one of Sora’s moves. It would only take one swift, open-handed slap to knock Sora back down into the mess. Sora would cry a little as he bent down and swept his tongue through the combination of fluids, but he had discovered that not thinking anymore was the best way to escape the pain. That had been the first milestone in his transformation.

Axel loved Sora’s blood too, which had horrified Sora at first . . . but like with all the things Axel liked about and wanted from and did to him, Sora learned to feel flattered by it. Once Sora had learned to love the sight and taste of his own blood, Axel was free to do whatever he wanted to him, so long as it made his skin break and bleed.

The mattress shifted as Axel rolled over. “Do you want to bleed?”

Sora looked up at the canopy of Axel’s bed through his fingers, amusing himself with the shadows that formed all sorts of animals, like a bunny rabbit that wiggled one tapered ear just a little. The shadows of this in-between world were alive: they cuddled up to Sora as he slept, played their own games with him whenever Axel wasn’t around, and made sure to help him up if he fell after running into something. Lately he had been able to make out vague outlines of objects and doorways, but more often than not he still tripped and stubbed a toe or banged an elbow.

A butterfly appeared and coasted from corner to corner of the canopy. “The answer is always yes,” Sora whispered. The question had been frightening the first hundred times Axel asked it, but now it made Sora feel loved.

Axel propped himself up onto his palms and smiled. “How do you want to bleed?”

“Because you made me bleed.” A dog slunk in from the left side of the canopy and sat on its haunches, tail wagging fiercely.

“How intriguing,” Axel murmured.

“I need it.”

Sora shut his eyes and listened to the undercurrent of his own pulse. These days he was constantly aroused. His groin felt hot, his breathing was stifled, and his scalp tingled pleasantly. It seemed that anything could set his penis off: brushing a hand over his paunch, sitting down, seeing Axel, eating, standing up, tasting blood, touching Axel, bathing, seeing blood—anything at all translated into arousal. Touching Axel elicited the strongest reactions; feeling the planes of the man’s hard body under his fingers or against his cushiony abdomen never failed to make his blood boil and then drain straight into his genitals.

“But I need—”

“No, you may not touch yourself.” Axel holds Sora’s bruised wrists held firmly at his sides. “It is forbidden.”

“Why?” Sora exclaims, struggling against the man who is far stronger than him now. “You’re not around all the time, and it hurts . . .”

“Am I not enough for you?” Axel hisses. His fingernails dig into Sora’s skin; Sora whimpers and looks away, but defiance shines in his eyes. “I want to be the one that brings you to completion every time. The rule is, ‘Axel will always make Sora whole.’ Repeat that.”

Sora opens his mouth, closes it, and finally opens it again. “Axel will always make Sora whole,” he mumbles.

A bare knee plants itself between Sora’s thighs and pushes up against his half-hard cock, which stiffens to a full, upright position an instant later. “What was that? I think you need some more enthusiasm.”

“Ax—Axel will always make Sora whole!” Sora groans and feels a bit light-headed when the pressure increases. One ornately sculpted post on Axel’s bed digs uncomfortably into his back, but the way Axel is looking at him with glittery, lustful eyes distracts him from the pain. “Axel will always make Sora whole! Axel will always make Sora whole!”

“If you keep being a good boy, I won’t make you wait so long anymore,” Axel says, kissing Sora on the mouth. “Otherwise I will snap your wrists and leave you alone forever.”

Sora catches the man’s bottom lip between his teeth and mercilessly tears into it. A wash of blood enters both of their mouths and the excess dribbles down their chins. Both of them are naked—they always are when around one another—and Sora feels Axel’s erection pressing against his hip. Axel laughs as they sink down to the ground together to better drink up the blood and tease the wound for more. After that, Sora never masturbates again and Axel leaves him alone less and less until . . .

Axel hadn’t left him in days—or at least, what Sora thought were days, since it was impossible to tell time in this mysterious dimension of darkness and imagination. The only time Sora lost Axel’s attention was when they slept, which they did together as well, although sometimes Sora faked it so he could stroke the man’s hair or whisper adoring things to him without interruption.

“I need it too,” Axel admitted. His grin was wolfish as he slipped off of the bed, silk sheets rustling goodbye. “I know just what we should do.”

Axel was the master of innovation: he proved every time to be ingeniously clever with new methods of making Sora bleed. Although Sora would be interested and pleasured no matter what Axel did to him, Axel made sure to provide an exhilarating experience regardless of how old-hat the basic act itself had become.

Axel bent down next to the bed and pulled out a simple cardboard box from underneath it. Sora shimmied over and peered at the box when Axel placed it on the bed and opened it. There were several things inside. Axel selected a blindfold of black silk and dangled it in front of Sora’s face.

“Put this on for me.”

While Sora didn’t protest audibly, he pouted as he reached out to take the blindfold. He tied it around his head, made sure he couldn’t see anything, and then followed Axel’s subsequent orders to lie down on his back. The darkness of the blindfold was different, but not frightening at all to Sora. In the time he had been here, at home, he had learned not to be afraid of the darkness, even if the living shadows that provided him company only bit him whenever Axel wasn’t around to curtail their hungry. Axel’s own darkness was warm and comfortable, like an embrace. Sora felt safe.

“I want your heart,” Axel said as he climbed up onto Sora and straddled the boy’s hips. He reached into the box again and sorted through the other objects.

“Then take it,” Sora replied automatically. His erection pressed gently against the cleft of Axel’s ass—but that was the closest Sora could be to ever taking the man. “I want you to have all of me.”

“Don’t you like your heart?” Axel fingered the first tack he removed from the box, testing its sharp point with the fire-calloused pad of his thumb. “It’s an awfully pretty heart.”

Sora smiled and wiggled his hips a little. “I want you to take care of it. You know that. I want you to take care of all of me.”

“Someone is eager,” Axel murdered with a wicked grin that the boy couldn’t see.

But Axel was eager too; his cock was already hard from the mere prospect of having Sora in more ways in one, and the excitement similarly showed in his eyes, his sneer, and the methodical way he made Sora bleed just a little bit when he flicked the tack’s point over Sora’s collarbone. He placed his hand on Sora’s chest, which was much paler now; none of the tan he came here with from an active outdoors lifestyle had been able to survive in a place that barely knew light. Sora sucked in a breath.

The first tack slid easily into the soft, flabby skin near the center of Sora’s chest, and the pain could only be described as exquisite. Sora squeaked and flinched as the skin around the tack began to heat and a thick droplet of blood leaked out from beneath the tack’s wide head. The nail portion of the tack wasn’t very long, but it was long enough.

“Please,” Sora whispered. He wanted to hurt so much. “Please.”

Another tack glided into his skin a short distance from the first, producing another rill of fresh blood. Axel didn’t say anything more as he went on to the remaining tacks; Sora found the silence to be maddening and furthermore arousing, because he tried to imagine just what Axel’s expression might have been. The image in his mind turned his legs to jelly.

Fourteen tacks later, Axel took his fingers away from the sweating skin. The heat radiating off of Sora was palpable like sunlight. Sora was panting from the exertion of taking in and cherishing the pain with all he had left inside. Beads of blood frequently rolled off of his chest and onto the dark sheets; had Axel chosen white bedding, it would have looked like a slaughter had taken place. Maybe one had.

Axel leaned back to surreptitiously feel Sora’s erection on his ass. “What shape did I make?”

Sora traced the path of the pain in his mind’s eye. The sharp was perfect, symmetrical, with two upraised area and one bottommost point. He relished in the sensation of being marked like this.

“A heart,” he said, smiling tremulously.

“That’s right.”

Axel undid the clumsy tie Sora had made in the blindfold. Sora immediately tore the blindfold off, got up on his elbows, and looked to where Axel had been inserting the tacks. Together, they formed a classical heart shape: it was the kind of heart kids painted on Valentine’s Day cards, scribbled in the margins of school notebooks, chipped into stone or carved into tree trunks to commemorate a relationship. Axel & Sora 4Ever—messy and genuine love.

The blood from each piercing had gone everywhere, sticky and warm now. It had doused his abdomen—even stained his pubic hair and coated the base of his penis—and smeared his hips. It looked like strawberry glaze, salty instead of sweet. Sora whimpered.

Axel slid down the boy’s body; his mouth followed the contours of a neck, shoulder, chest, and growing tummy. When he reached the blood, he licked it and luxuriated in the taste of blood on sweat on skin on Sora. Nearby, Sora’s hands curled into the sheets as he groaned.

They had had sex an innumerable number of times and the evidence showed just as clearly as the overeating had. Sora’s severely abused asshole had loosened after being rammed into so often; as Axel clawed into position, leaving fingernail marks on Sora’s hips and flank, his burgeoning erection teased the scarred, widened opening in one half-circle sweep and then drove into it. The muscles tensed and then gave up in nearly the same moment, welcoming Axel home again, and Sora lifted his chubby legs up and up to the angle that would provide Axel the chance to hit the deepest regions possible. Axel supported each of his thrusts by planting his hands next to Sora’s head, compensating for the more spacious rectum by twisting and turning with every movement. Sora saw fireworks bursting on the black canopy above the bed.

Rarely did Sora make it through sex without bursting into tears, and this time was no exception. He rolled his head back and gasped for air between each emphatic sob: each time Axel entered him, he felt completed, and each time Axel withdrew, even partially, he felt like some part of him had just died. If it had been practical and sanitary, he would have insisted that Axel stay inside him forever. They were two pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly.

“Axel, Axel, Axel—!”

Sora screamed Axel’s name a lot, too, as promised when all of this began. There was no “master” and “slave” here; Sora did not call Axel God or something cliché enough to wince at. When they were together like this, smeared in the blood of one or the other or both of them, Sora didn’t feel empty and nonexistent anymore. During the very first rape, some part of his soul had shut down forever, and he only felt his sense of self and purpose rekindled whenever Axel chose to commit so intimate an act with him.

Too bad Axel was just a shell and none of this meant anything to him.

Axel rarely said anything while claiming Sora, but this time he ducked his head and breathed hotly against the boy’s forehead. “Sora,” he crooned. “Sora—”

Sora’s eyes snapped open and gazed in mute wonderment at what part of the man hovering over him he could see. Before he understood what was happening, he clenched his teeth and screamed in his throat as he climaxed without having to be touched even once. Ejaculate sprayed both of them, and soon thereafter Axel came spiraling down from Heaven after him.

Before, Axel would have removed himself and gotten cleaned up immediately, sparing Sora none of the afterglow to cry and curse in. Now he sunk down on top of the smaller boy, his cock sliding out to a lonely freedom. His fingers released their bruising grip on Sora’s shoulders and Sora let his numb legs drop down onto the bed again. Breathing together, nearly panting, they rode out the aftermath. Sora never felt happier than he did during this time.

Axel chuckled humorlessly, thought about removing the tacks from Sora’s skin, and decided that they should stay in for a while longer. He tilted his head down and buried his face in the bend of Sora’s neck, breathing in that raw scent of him and listening to the echo of his still-functioning heart.

“Thank you,” Sora murmured.

Squishy thighs, warm groin, rounded stomach coated in semen—all of Sora’s anatomy lined up neatly with Axel, despite his longer-legged frame. Axel curled into the body that had becoming his willing host so many times. And maybe, just maybe, he dared to dream about infinity while he idly toyed with the silver crown necklace’s chain still hanging from Sora’s neck.

One thing was for certain: Axel wanted to have Sora unequivocally.

They slept together all the time now. Sora always woke up first and he was always unbelievably horny.

Most times he would roll on top of Axel, stroke him to an erection fast enough to prevent the man from waking fully, and then sag down onto the cock that fit into his asshole as surely as two complementary puzzle pieces fit together. It was a ritual. Their blood would rise to a boil within the first ten minutes of wakefulness and remain that way until they slept again.

But today was different.

“Let me have you,” Sora groaned unthinkingly. One hand darted down the curve of Axel’s spine, memorizing each vertebra. Axel went very still as Sora slid his fingers over the crest of an ass, skirting the tender and heated crevice like an intrepid explorer. “Let me take care of you.”

Axel opened his eyes and blearily looked down at Sora. The first things he noticed were the remnants of s’mores in the boy’s hair: scatterings of gingerbread crumbles, small clumps of chocolate, spider webs of marshmallow. Food and sex—and that feeling of home—had become so intertwined by this point that even Axel had begun to lose sight of the boundaries. He could taste marshmallow paste on the roof of his mouth, because last night they had both gorged on the gluey-sweet treats, taking turns feeding warm sandwiches to each other and then licking errant food away. After the second plate, Sora had smiled playfully, pushed Axel over onto his back, and deep-throated him (a wicked technique that had left the recipient stupefied and smothered) with the bittersweet chocolate still swirling around his mouth. Axel’s genitals were sticky now, coated with dried cum, chocolate, marshmallow, and blood; his pubic hair was stiff and bristly. If Sora had not decided to do something different this morning, Axel would have suggested they share a bath.

One short fingernail swept around Axel’s puckered asshole and then eased inside, rappelling with all the care and grace of a professional. Axel, still overcome with the clinging warmth of sleep not yet vanquished, shifted minutely and accommodated the finger without thinking about it.

Sora wedged the finger in up to the second joint. “Please,” he whispered. “I want you. I need you.”

Everything came into focus after that, and Axel realized what was going on.

Sora’s soft crooning become a frightened yelp of pain when Axel tore his fingers through the boy’s soiled hair. One merciless yank caused Sora to relinquish his reckless ideas of conquest.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Axel demanded and pulled until Sora took his hand away.

“I love you!” Sora gasped, tears condensing in the corners of his eyes. Under the usual circumstances he would have found the pain exciting and stimulating, but the hostility in Axel’s eyes changed this. “I just wanted—”

Axel laughed and clenched his fingers. Blood slipped from Sora’s torn scalp in rivulets almost too thin to be seen.

“You just wanted,” Axel muttered. “You’re getting selfish. You’re going to forget who owns your heart!”

“You own my heart! You own my heart!”

Axel laughed again and the shadows on the bed’s canopy giggled. The room darkened around them; the features Sora had come to recognize faded away. “You say you love me!” Axel exclaimed when he regained his composure.

Sora didn’t like the sound of Axel’s voice at all. It frightened him—and it had been a while since he last felt genuine fear. The way Axel sat on him prevented him from squirming away, but he tried anyway, because for the first time in forever he just wanted to run and hide.

“What’s wrong, Sora?” Axel asked, uncurling his fingers. He nonchalantly wiped his hand off on the silk sheets, leaving behind stains and strands of brown hair. “Don’t you know that I love you too?”

The fear disappeared. Air tangled in Sora’s throat and his heart thumped audibly as he stared up at the man who was smiling so derisively at him. Axel had admitted—did he really?—it was impossible—finally, after so long!—but Sora whimpered, forgetting his pounding headache and Axel’s hateful stare because he was happy.

Axel shifted and caused his new erection to prod Sora’s tummy. “I love you,” Axel whispered, dragging his fingernails down Sora’s cheeks. “Because you—”

High and mocking laughter cut off that sentence, leaving “—will fall for that every fucking time” unsaid. Sora felt wounded and aroused all at once.

“I don’t think you really love me,” Axel said after a while.

Those words were like a slap in the face. Sora reeled in the chilly feeling of disappointment that threatened to make him collapse from the inside out. “I do love you,” he countered weakly, seeking out Axel’s nearest hand with one of his own. Surprisingly, Axel did not wrench away. “Let me prove it to you.”

“How would you do that?” Axel asked, smirking. “How could you possibly prove that you love—”

A peculiar light passed in and out of his eyes, and for a second he looked very far away to Sora. Axel shivered, ducked his head, and changed his smirk into something of a private, pleased smile that was indecipherable but full of promise.

“I know how you can prove that you love me,” he amended, leaning down over his captive.

They were both covered in the mess from last night, even uncomfortable in their own skins, but Sora felt at home when Axel’s tongue swept over his furrowed brow for a taste of chocolate and semen.

“You really want to prove you love me, right?”

“I said I did,” Sora said quietly. “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?”

“Anything you want.”

Axel cleaned Sora’s lips off with enough violence to bruise them. When he drew away, they looked red and puffy, and Sora was breathing hard. Sora had not attempted to reciprocate the kiss because he thought the severity of his infractions assuredAxel full control.

In an uncharacteristic moment, Axel pouted and nuzzled Sora’s cheek. “It’ll all be okay again once you prove you love me.”

Flushed with the exertion of self-restraint, Sora tilted his head away and nodded. Axel rolled off and landed on the floor somewhat shakily—just how long had they been in bed together?—before reaching over to pull Sora onto his feet as well. Sora felt his thick skin sag a little more than he remembered.

Axel stepped back, looked straight at him, and said, “I want you to summon the keyblade.”

Of all the things Sora had been expecting to hear, that had been the last one. He looked up at the taller man, blinked, opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Summon the keyblade? he wondered. Summon the . . .

When he was ready, he opened his mouth again. “What’s that?”

Axel sighed impatiently. “The keyblade, Sora. The paragon of your Light, destroyer of all things Dark, something I once thought was compensation and found out otherwise.”

Sora frowned.

“I don’t have one of those . . .”

“You couldn’t have forgotten everything,” Axel said, exasperated. “In all the darkness, there is always a light that refuses to go out. Your heart has not yet bent entirely to my will, so summon the keyblade.”

“The keyblade,” Sora parroted.

The word tugged hard at something inside Sora’s chest, stretching a muscle that had been on the brink of atrophying. Those two syllables drummed back and forth in his mind, dredging up memories buried under a lifetime’s worth of trauma and numbness, and he began to see—the keyblade. Fighting with it, trusting it, thanking it, blessing it; using it to protect his friends and strangers, to protect their hearts; casting magic, defending, dismissing, summoning . . .

In a streak of silvery light, Kingdom Key materialized in his right hand.

Axel shielded his eyes from the initial burst of light, which faded after several seconds into a warm-looking afterglow. Once Sora understood what had happened—the light temporarily blinded him, since he had grown so used to the darkness in Axel’s domain—he gasped and dropped the weapon. It disappeared in a shower of sparks.

“The keyblade,” Axel clarified.

Sora brought his hands close and stared at them, testing the fingers one by one. The keyblade, despite its brightness, had not burned him. When he had held the keyblade, a great feeling of power and gratification had coursed right through him, as quick as a lightning bolt. The memories that had been buried beyond the perimeter of his consciousness clawed out of their graves—keyblade, keyblade, keyblade!—and came lumbering back, each one more distinct than the last . . .

It had been a long time since he last devoted even a thought to the keyblade. Axel had left no room in his head for thoughts deemed inessential: the responsibility of protecting the worlds, defeating the darkness, opening the Door to the Light were all useless. Whenever guilt invaded Sora and threatened to suffocate him like water in the lungs, Axel just seemed to know what was happening and remedied the situation by raping him repeatedly or making him bleed those impurities away. The viciousness ended in ignorance, but an admittedly blissful ignorance.

But even though Sora knew all of this—that Axel had polluted him, tortured him, broken him, defiled him—he didn’t feel any of the indignation, the hate, the anger that he should have for being so ruthlessly led astray and conquered. He loved Axel. And it was always hard to hate someone you loved.

“Axel?” Sora looked up at the man, disoriented. He felt like two people in one body, or a heart simply warring against itself. The Keyblade Master was completely incompatible with the identity he had taken on with Axel’s guidance. “Who am I?”

“You are mine,” Axel answered smoothly. “Do you still want to prove that you love me?”

Sora nodded. He wanted to show more than his love now—he wanted to show the keyblade that he had discovered a kind of devotion that was more beautiful than the aimless, painful one he used to have for the Light.

Like before, Axel’s gaze was direct and intense. “Then summon the keyblade.”

Once the light had settled again, they were both given the opportunity to really look the weapon over. It didn’t take much more than a glance to realize that there was something definitely off about it: the shaft and tines of the keyblade, usually silvery and shiny, were translucent and possessed an aura of energy that fluctuated like the light from an uncertain star. Sora frowned and tightened his fingers around the hilt, which felt real enough, but nothing changed.

“Intriguing,” Axel murmured. “Your heart only has so much Light not yet consumed.”

The fading keyblade upset Sora, but only because he had been someone who would have never yielded to the darkness. Axel had proven himself to be a teacher with lessons in giving in too fantastic to resist.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Sora asked, just wanting to get on with proving himself so he could make the keyblade go away forever.

“Don’t pout.” When Sora protruded his lower lip out more in retaliation, Axel grinned. “I require proof that is fairly smile.”

“Okay,” Sora said, preparing for the trial. “What is it?”

“I want you to hit me with the keyblade as hard as you can.”

The aura surrounding the keyblade went into flux. Sora’s heartbeat accelerated with perceivable fear and private pleasure; the sides of him that wanted to love and hurt Axel reached an impasse, made a truce, and then broke it all within a few seconds. His mind showed him an overwhelming number of things, some of which he couldn’t understand—snapshots, silent stills, of who he was and who he had been and who he might be. Sucking Axel’s cock, fantasizing about castrating Axel, vanquishing the Heartless. Voluntarily licking up a mixture of his own blood and cum, struggling against cold silver handcuffs, screaming in battle and during a rape. Living the rest of his life in this dark place, burying his face in Axel’s hair smell marzipan and dead autumn, laughing and joking with his best friends. Receiving a warm hug from Mom, trying to cast Stopga and discovering he didn’t know how to, waking up every day spooned against his kidnapper.

Sora suddenly felt very old. He had longed to hold the keyblade again, to have Axel standing here without chance of escape—above all else, to be able to act out those shockingly graphic fantasies of murder! With one forceful thrust, he could impale Axel with something pure and light and good; a turn of the handle would rend Axel’s internal organs, spill his blackened blood, make that immensely satisfying noise (kuh-cah-RACK!) of ribs breaking and pain pouring in and out uncensored. He could pluck out Axel’s eyeballs and fuck the bloody sockets, sodomize Axel with the keyblade, make Axel understand just how much it hurt to have the muscles of your ass cramp and bleed and scream in the futile effort to protect the sensitive lining of the rectum.

Two feet from vengeance, and Sora didn’t move.

“Well?” Axel said. “I’m waiting.”

Finally, Sora thought with a shiver. The keyblade felt as light as air and then as heavy as lead, yo-yoing from functionality to inutility and back again. Finally, I’m going to kill him for all he’s done to me. I’m going to kill . . . him . . .

Axel managed to look knowing and ignorant all at once.

Sora brought up the keyblade and held it over his shoulder like a baseball player, and while he prepared, he got one final look at the monster that had corrupted him. Red hair, green eyes, pale skin, thin and long legs, penis that was neither especially impressive nor embarrassing—this was Axel, who had chocolate and marshmallows in his hair, who possessed strength he shouldn’t have had, who always made sex feel like getting run over by a truck. Axel’s hands were hanging loosely by his sides, by no means beautiful or perfectly sculpted but still capable of attracting attention. Sora looked at Axel’s hands now and hoped they were clammy.

Finally. The keyblade glowed brighter.

Axel just grinned.

Once he planted his feet, Sora focused his mind and directed all of his anger inward. The keyblade shifted off of his shoulder as he stretched his arms out, swung the keyblade in a powerfully driven circle, and guided it toward a hurtling home-run hit meant for Axel’s unprotected side. In the darkness, the keyblade left a dazzling trail of shine that scared the shadows and made Axel’s eyes brighten unnaturally.

Sora was an inch from revenge . . . teetering on the balls of his feet from the sheer centripetal force of his attack . . . when some critical process derailed inside of him. His heart drummed with righteous anger, but at the same time the part of him that had fought against this before had not yet given up; its counteroffensive hit hard, and the twin thoughts of I’ll kill him and I’ll protect him translated into instantaneous occlusion. His heart stopped for one very important second. He blacked out just long enough.

The keyblade disappeared.

It happened quickly: the retaliation fantasies, one by one, broke up and faded. His anger soured and became ineffectual, permitting the emptiness that was a form of relief to return.

It was over before it began.

The world had fallen apart.

He had tried to kill Axel. He had tried to kill Axel. His nausea intensified. His throat hurt with repressed tears. He shut his eyes, lifted his hands, and grabbed at his sticky, dirty hair. Would Axel ever be able to forgive him? If not, then would he ever be able to forgive himself?

Axel stepped up in front of Sora, who was trembling badly, and pressed two fingers against the hollow of his throat. The heartbeat was detectable, although irregular and sluggish. Intriguing.

“What happened?” Axel asked softly.

Sora shook his head.

“Sora, what happened?”

“I wah—wah—wahnted to kill you!”

“It’s okay.”

Axel took the boy into his arms in one of the few true embraces he ever gave without expecting to receive a blowjob immediately thereafter. With a soft whimper, Sora turned and seemingly tried to suffocate himself by pressing all of his air passageways as close as possible to the offered shoulder.

“Axel . . .”

“No, it’s okay.”

Did I prove that I love him? Sora wondered, bewildered with the man’s gentleness. Was this just a test?

Sora shut his eyes and let the tension leave his body. “I’ll never hurt you.”

“Because you love me.”

Sora’s slow nod confirmed this.

Axel smiled and revoked his embrace, but this time without the usual violence and disgust. “That was half the battle. You have one more step to take to prove your love unequivocally to me.”

“Anything,” Sora swore and pushed at his eyes.

“Summon the keyblade again.”

“Are you crazy?” Sora exclaimed. “That thing wants me to hurt you!”

“It can’t hurt me if you make it protect me instead,” Axel said earnestly. “If my hypothesis is right, you’ll be able to force it to bend to your will rather than the other way around. Demand that I be allowed to wield it, Sora, and don’t give up until it agrees. The keyblade should always listen to the Keyblade Master—not the other way around. Right?”

This made an awful lot of sense to Sora, but he still frowned and thought about it hard. He had already taken too many stupid chances with Axel’s welfare.

“You trust me,” Axel said.

Sora looked up. “Of course I do.”

“Then let me hold the keyblade, Sora. Don’t worry about anything else.”

In a blind leap of faith, Sora made his decision and lifted his hands. They looked normal, just like Axel’s, even if his fingernails were black with dried food and cum and blood, and the thin white lines of almost-healed scars bordered his palms and wrists. To him they looked harmless, and it was scary that with just a thought he could will into his hands the most devastatingly powerful weapon for fighting the darkness. It was unnerving to have this ability, especially when it was meant to destroy everything associated with the darkness—including Axel.

Axel’s explanation made him wonder: when he had been the Keyblade Master, had he been in complete control? Had he been a pawn for the forces of Light? Who was “Sora” really?

I choose to love Axel, Sora thought viciously. He pulled back his right hand and summoned the keyblade. This time, it appeared as the Oathkeeper without his meaning it to. The promise he saw written all over its pearly plating was no longer Kairi’s, but—And I promise to protect him forever!

He turned around and faced Axel, eyes looking straight through the keyblade’s translucent shaft. The keyblade was even paler and dimmer than it had been minutes ago, but since it continued to feel real, it didn’t matter to Sora.

“Now force it to listen to you for once,” Axel prompted, “and then let me hold it.”

“Okay,” Sora whispered.

Since he had no idea how to go about controlling the keyblade beyond thinking furious thoughts at it and altering the meanings of its keychains, Sora improvised by making the process entirely worldless. He shut his eyes and conjured all of those mental snapshots from before, but this time he weeded out and symbolically annihilated all of the ones of the “person”—the Keyblade Master, the pawn!—he had been before loving Axel. Vanquishing the Heartless, screaming in battle, struggling away from Axel, laughing and joking with his best friends. Bleached, burned, destroyed, gone. Dead.

Axel waited. Sora opened his eyes, blues flat and full of grim resolve, and stared at Axel hard until the man’s calculating expression waned into something closer to curiosity. When Sora held out his arm and offered the keyblade, and even when Axel took it from him, nothing extraordinary happened aside from the slight dimming of its glow. In the diminished light, Axel looked like a ghost as he inspected the keyblade. It hadn’t disappeared from the touch of a Nobody.

“It worked,” Sora said, although he didn’t sound very happy.

On the other hand, Axel was very pleased: “It did.”

“What are you going to do now?” Sora asked quietly.

Axel thumped the shaft into his opposing palm and felt a stinging vibration of power go through his body. It hurt a little, but the Light always singed you no matter how lost in darkness it was. Axel did not feel afraid, because Sora would never hurt him on purpose. That had been the entire point.

“This.”

That was the only warning Sora got before the keyblade—tines facing forward, completely unlike his own fighting style—slammed into his unprotected side in exactly the same spot he had fantasized hitting Axel. Surprisingly sharp metal tore through his skin, sending out a spray of blood, and Sora let shrieked hoarsely and doubled over.

Sora registered shock, the conspicuous absence of feeling betrayed, and Axel hit him twice more with strokes vicious enough to force him down further. Kneeling as if in front of God did nothing to disabuse Axel’s murderous intent: the keyblade cracked against the top of Sora’s skull, stimulating a rush of blackness and stars, and then sliced his scalp in a glancing blow.

And yet, the keyblade did not disappear.

“Do you see?” Axel said in a mild tone completely incongruous with the beating’s severity. “Do you see, Sora?”

Sora slumped down onto his side, curled up on the cold marble floor, and teetered on the edge of consciousness while Axel began to methodically break every bone in his body. His protruding hipbone, weakened from poor diet, cracked and split after one carefully aimed attack. That gave him a significant amount of pain, enough to even part the veil of numbness that had settled over him, but the flurry of blows that shattered his femurs and burst his kneecaps and ruined his shins sent him hurtling back into blissful numbness.

Heartless had never shed blood, but someone warm and living like Sora had nearly six pints to slosh through. Hypovolemic shock set in quickly as arc after arc of blood went lashing out through the gloom, splattering surfaces hidden beyond his narrowing line of vision. Sora thought he could see the living shadows dancing in the corrupted rain shower.

“Do you see?” Axel demanded, his voice louder and sharper now. The keyblade came down and ruined both of Sora’s ankles at once; if Sora had tried to get up now, he would had never been able to. “This is what the Light does to you, Sora!”

WHACK. That was Sora’s ass being torn into—the ass-ramming he had wanted to serve to Axel in cold revenge.

“Why is It letting you be hurt like this?” Axel said, licking at a droplet of blood that had splashed up from the picturesque red mess that Sora had become. He derived the greatest pleasure from the flavor. “Or is that what It has always done to you? Hurt you?”

THWOCK. Sora rolled his eyes back to see more shadows hanging above him, skulking closer and closer to get a good look at the Keyblade Master being beaten to death by his own weapon. They wanted to get a taste of him too.

Axel grinned manically, splattered all over like a too-zealous butcher, and used the tines to saw the remainder of the way through Sora’s shoulder. Bone gleamed between the still-attached strips of flesh and muscle, disarrays of pure white in all of that hideous red, red, and more red. Sora’s mouth had always tasted a little like blood, but not the coppery flavor people always associated with it. Instead of metallic and unbecoming, the flavor had been hot and pulsating with the promise of life. All along, Axel had only been—

“—trying to make you appreciate—”

It was kind of strange that Axel’s eyes were so green, Sora decided. Like a forest. Like something he could get lost forever in, although his fiery hair was so close by. He wouldn’t be afraid . . .

“Don’t be afraid—”

The keyblade went overhead in a streak of light, barely lit, a candle about to be smothered. Everything slowed down to this: Axel with his strong legs spread apart and Sora pulling inward into a fetal position, blood dripping steadily from the Oathkeeper, the shadows close enough to smell Sora’s dulled heart.

“—because I love you,” Axel breathed, bringing down the keyblade like an executioner might. “Now scream for me, Sora.”

Unforgiving tines were posed to sever Sora’s jugular vein and end this. His neck would snap instantly under the force, and yet his heart would continue to pump frantically for a while, unaware of the lethal blow that had been dealt. Once his brain started shutting down, maybe his heart would understand, but for now it was hammering and screaming and Sora just wanted to lie down next to Axel, snuggle up, and sleep forever.

Two inches from death, and all Sora wanted was Axel.

A blinding flash of light interrupted the attack.

.

.

.

.

[end act 2]
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