Disclaimer: Check.
Warnings: Sufficed to say, it's dark. I really can't warn you of to much without spoiling the ending.
Pairings: None, really...
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Whispers In The Night
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It's cold, almost mocking, and certainly cruel.
Sora thinks he's going insane.
A smooth, taunting voice telling him things he doesn't want to know.
"It's in you too," the voice informs him, "the Darkness will eat you alive."
It's not every night the voice comes, it's only every other night.
'Every night' is when Sora waits, body tenced, to hear it.
"It will destroy you, Keybearer," the whisper comes, and Sora forgets how to sleep.
"How many lives have you taken?" it asks.
It wonders aloud, "how long can you pretend not to care?"
"How long until someone else takes up the keyblade, because you can no longer hold it?"
Sora stops smiling after a month.
He still eats, still fights, still picks up his blade of light and tears down heartless like he was born to do it.
Every night he waits for the voice. Every day he's a little more exhausted.
"Can you feel it in your heart yet, taking it over?"
Kairi and Riku wait in the sands of Destiny Island. Kairi to pure to fight, Riku to tainted.
Every one else doesn't know enough to notice Sora's tears in the dead of the night.
Nobody else hears the whispers.
"You are going to break," comes the promise.
Sora sometimes beleives it.
Thinks he can feel the shadows tendrils in his heart, slowly eating at the light he was supposed to have.
But he still gets up and fights - there are so many people depending on him to do anything else.
Though...
"How many of your friends will you take with you, when you finally break?"
Sora wonders. Despite himself, he wonders if the voice is his concience. Or his dreams.
No matter how often he bolts upright and searches in the light of his keyblade, there are no enemies hiding in the shadows of his bedroom, the gummi-ship, or wherever else they lay camp in the night.
"It's already started," the voice assures him, "It'll be over soon."
Sora can imagine Donald's disbeleiving and concerned face, Goofy's worried but clueless expression. It's enough to stop him confessing, when they ask after his sleep.
Still, the voice keeps coming.
The deadly, (prophetic?) whisper through the darkness.
"They will consume you."
Sora collapses on the battle-feild.
Exhaustion to much for his still teenaged body.
The keyblade flickers as Goofy and Donald drag him to saftey.
They leave him to sleep, worrying loudly in the next room.
"It's claiming you," the voice whispers against Sora's ear, "gunna turn you into shadows and make you crave for beating little hearts of your own."
Sora's silent tears soak the pillow.
He can't force himself back to sleep.
He never asked for this.
"Gunna break you, Keybearer," a dry nasty chuckle, "gunna break you soon."
Exhaustion chases away his appetite.
Turns him super-alert, paranoid.
There's a monster in every cluster of shadow, a demon in every night.
"Is there any light left in you?"
Aerith's healing magic does nothing for the hollowness in Sora's chest.
Leon's worry makes him feel worse, and he begs for them to leave him be.
He needs distance, needs solitude, because he's all but certain there's nothing left of him to save.
"Break break break, little killer," the whisper advises, "wont hurt so much without a heart."
Sora leaves Radiant Gardens. Leaves Donald and Goofy.
Leaves everyone that could miss him, and can't bring himself to leave a note.
"Running to your death," the whisper narrates, it's laugh echoeing in Sora's skull.
The heartless never seem to end, no matter how many hearts float into the sky.
Sora doesn't stop though. He cleaves and spins and sobs his way through the mass, determined to take as many with him as he can.
"You will break."
And hours later, exhaustion making his legs tremble and his arms nerveless, pain making him numb to the puddling blood and ache in his lungs, Sora breaks.
His eye lashes flutter, the heartless pounce.
Before the darkness can completely close in, Sora see's red.
Red and gold and black.
Two shining-white tear-drop tattoo's shift, and the smile whispers, "Roxas," as Axel forces his way forward, and eats Sora's heart.
There will be no more soul-eating for Sora.
"Axel," Nobody whispers back.
Whispers in Roxas' voice.
Whispers in the night...
(xxx)