Sora jerks violently, eyes snapping open, cutting off a scream. His blue eyes are too wide and blank with horror to fill with tears; too dry with terror. Silent sobs escape him as he tries to curl up, to hide, but the borrowed bed makes it nearly impossible. Being denied this action of comfort nearly drives him insane; seeing not the darkened room before him, but hundreds of sickening images.
Before he comprehends his own actions he throws himself off the bed, scrambling pitifully into a corner. His heart beats as if it has been injected with adrenaline, trembling and constricting with the liquid fear pulsing beneath his skin; shallow gasps coming quick and ragged. He clutches the pillow too tightly, folding his body into itself; trying to make himself as small as possible against the adjacent walls.
His actions are no longer conscious, but animalist and spurred by feral instinct; no different than the heartless. He cringes painfully at the word reverberating in his skull, the word dragging up fresh memories that were putridly tangible.
heartlessheartlessheartless heartlessheartlessheartless heartlessheartlessheartless heartlessheartlessheartless
The sobs and choked cries refuse to stop, every so often coming out as coughs and gags. He clutches the pillow so tightly that soon a finger tears through the soft casing, more sure to follow.
Sleep only brought back the memories, the scenes he wish he could forget. Forced to relive them not only in his nightmares, but also in the following hours spent awake in anguish before the sun dared to rise.
That first year was the mark of lost innocence; he'd had no idea what he was getting into; wishing he had known so as to refuse.
That first year was nothing more than ignorant slaughter, killing hundreds of thousands of heartless. Murdering other living creatures. He didn't care that the others reassured him that it was okay because they were abominations, things of pure evil.
Sometimes Sora wondered if it wasn't he who was the abomination.
It doesn't matter how evil they are, he can still remember that first kill. How scared he'd been, how his keyblade cut thickly through the twitching shadow, the screeching it made as it lay dying, the inky substance it left behind instead of blood. Even after the creature dissipated, the fluid pooled on the ground, standing as a reminder almost. It stained the clothes and smelled of burning flesh and rotten fruit, sticking to the skin as if condemning the offender.
Sora gags at the memory, still so fresh after all these years.
The worst part of it being that it didn't stop there. It was only the beginning. He kept on killing, kept on butchering writhing hordes. The offences only made all the more real the moment he became a heartless himself. Finally understanding the unrelenting pain they lived through. The burn of not having a heart, the ache of wanting one so singularly that it was like an addiction, the constant fear of everyone poised to kill you. He remembers too painfully clear what it was like to crawl around in constant, animalistic fear; which was worse than fearing as a human, because at least then you could rationalize it. Fear in that form was pure; the one thing that truly drove the heartlessinsane, pushing them on in their endless quest for completion.
And still even then he strove on, wanting only to kill more and more.
It doesn't matter how far he's crammed himself in the cold corner of the dark bedroom, he throws himself back again, limbs knotting together uncomfortably. His face is pressed into the pillow, biting his bottom lip so hard that little red rivers run down his chin, staining all that it touches. Blood tends to do that, taint, never truly washing away.
He feels like retching when the images behind his eyes change from the heartless to his murder of the nobodies. He doesn't understand how he could be so delusional to think that what he'd done was okay.
He doesn't care that they didn't technically have a heart; they were as close to human beings as the heartless came. They breathed and thought, they spoke, they lived.
And yet he hunted them down, like a wolf preying upon a scattered herd of sick deer. He chased down each and every one, murdered almost every one of them. They were people too!
He almost loses it at the memory of his keyblade piecing flesh countless times, at the flowing blood, and tortured cries of pain. He can't fathom how he was able to keep his cool through all of that, while watching them despair as their bodies were literally torn apart into tendrils of darkness.
They looked like humans, they acted like humans, they might as well have been humans. And he'd massacred them, just because he was told to, just because he thought it was 'right'.
Sora sobs harder, wishing he could take it all back. Wishing he hadn't killed millions of creatures. Wishing he was still that naïve kid who wanted to travel to other worlds. Wishing he was that kid who had no idea.
He weeps, with bloodshot eyes and a raw throat, alone in the darkness, waiting for the sun to rise. For with the sun comes a new day. A new day in which he'll go on to slaughter thousands more and justify it with weak excuses; waiting only for the night to come and bring with it more nightmares to plague him, more nightmares to remind him of the heinous crimes he has committed.
Not once, in all the games, did Sora ever question his actions. Nor did it ever seem like he was even effected by it. And so I wanted to make our sunny hero of the universe more human
