Title: Chains of the heart

Summary: He is my torturer; my capturer; my deadly secret and my favourite sin. He owns me, and I have to come to terms with and accept that. But he will never be my Master!

Warnings: Rated M for a reason! Akuroku - very dark. Torture and sexual themes are included in later chapters. Other side-pairings will be included.

AN: Okay, this is a new fic I came up with and plotted out. I'm not sure if many people will enjoy it, but it will be a dark akuroku fic, approximately fifteen to twenty chapters long. Hopefully people will enjoy, and I hope nobody is offended by some of the content that may be contained within this story. If so, please PM or review me and I will do my best to solve the issue. Thanks!

He was in chains again.

Tight about his throat, his wrists, his ankles, they chaffed and cut sensitive skin until it dripped a brooding red and bruised like a battered peach. The room was one of many in the man castle, and it wasn't the first time he had been chained deep within the bowels of stone and concrete rubble. There was no sky where the stone covered, there was no soft grass or simple streams or trees of branching beauty. No, within the man castle there was only vicious torches scorching black up a brick wall, distant drips of water and sweat leaking past peeping holes, and the thick vibe of disgust and secrets whispering silent echoes down shallow halls.

The restraints had him against the wall, just enough so he could move a pace in either direction. The rungs were threaded with the shackles, the end of them coming to rest at the door for his torturer's pleasure.

Sapphire eyes burned at the thought of that word. 'Torturer'. That's what they were to him. They would attempt to have him call them Master, or worse, when the moments became heated and violent, but he would suffer the threaded vines of a thousand whips before he would subdue himself to monsters such as man.

Blonde Neko ears twitched, the hard mouth tightening into a grimace.

They were coming. Footsteps were clapping against the stone floor, breaking only to take pause on a velvet rug, and he could hear them. They were slow, deliberately slow. Slow enough to taunt him into madness.

He twitched, ears pushed back and jaw clenched. Backing against the wall, left foot braced against the stone for a quick, swiping jump at defence, the shackles clinked with laughter at his vain attempts at bracing for a looming attack.

They stopped outside the iron door, clinking the keys. With each rise and fall his heart would pound in his chest and he would involuntarily flinch, his left eye twitching in memorized remorse. They were provoking him again.

The iron latch was caught and the lock clicked, allowing the tormentors entrance, betraying Roxas completely. From outside, bathing the world within, the torches enhanced their glare, permitting spiteful shadows to cast across the floor and scratch at Roxas' boots.

Crouching, trying to fade into the brick but desperate not to show fear, Roxas stared hard at the perpetrators with practiced venom. A growl was bristling up in his throat, released as a wild and feral noise that had the two shadows stopping momentarily.

"It's chained, isn't it?"

The man on the right was confident, laughing with ease in the face of evil and bringing a devilish spark to the room. Caught up in the laughter, the other man joined in, arms folded with a grin boldly smashed against soft pink lips.

"Of course it is, Xemnas! What do you take me for?"

The voice was husky, filled with elaborate toxins that would poison upon contact with one's eardrums. It came from the man on the left. The man with the outrageous red hair pinned back in a slight ponytail and cold aqua eyes that stared right through him and beyond the grimy, bleak wall.

"Take you for, Reno? Surely that's a question you don't want answering."

Reno's face peeked with enjoyment, his arms coming to rest behind his back. "It's a question many would not dare to answer…" His response fell short, and his friend's analytic amber eyes drank in Roxas' form before the light.

The growl was still evident in the room, clawing at Roxas' throat and leaving it raw. The pearly white teeth with canines slightly longer than they should have been where perfectly straight, perfectly clenched. Pale skin, flawless and unspoiled, put the moon outside to shame, and the blonde wisps of silky smooth hair stayed upright and buoyant, lost in a gravity defying vortex intensified by the mud and blood sticking to it, clumping around the wound taken to the back of the boy's head. The grey tunic remained ripped over his left shoulder, releasing white skin to the crisp damp of the room, and the lithe frame remained flawlessly toned, ever a pleasing shape.

He was a fine boy of seventeen. But there was but one slight problem fitting the figure. The boy was a Neko. A demonic cross of civilisation and the unruly wild that had come to be tamed under man's grasp. The Neko ears were both blonde, both folded back, both branding him to what he was. The other features were undetectable. Besides the ears, there was no way of detecting just what the boy was, but they were clearly evident, and there was no way of hiding his shame for that.

Feeling pressing eyes undressing him slowly, Roxas stood taller, straighter, refusing to bow. Xemnas chuckled at the sight of hard eyes, his fingers coming to tap at his chin.

"He's rather nice for one of them. The others aren't like him…not at all like him." His hungry words lapped about the room like a whirlpool, drawing them all in. "You sure you won't keep him?"

"Nah," the word was a lazy drawl. With one hand on his hip, Reno used the other to exaggerate Roxas' shape. "Look at him, Xemnas. Unbroken, this one. Feral, even."

"I thought you enjoyed a challenge?"

Roxas stiffened, his muscles tense. He had been known to other tortures as a nuisance; a waste of money; a God unholy mess of a mistake; a useless item and… other, less pleasing to the tongue phrases. Even in his mind he couldn't repeat them.

"I do, but I still haven't broken the other one I bought yet."

A roll of amber eyes left Roxas with a chilling shudder shaking his shoulders. "Then why don't you buy them already broken like the rest of us? You could end up getting hurt, you know?"

The coy smile was back on Reno's face, as if it lived there permanently. "Careful, Xemnas, you almost sound concerned for my wellbeing."

A barely concealed snort behind pale, gargoyle hands was his reply. "Concern? For you? Don't make me laugh, Reno." Golden eyes shot back Roxas' way, the finger still tapping against the chin in thought. "So, if you're not going to keep this one, just what do you plan to do with it? If you aim to sell it, I'll give you five hundred gold pieces right now."

"Five hundred?!" Reno almost chocked on the offer, outrage coming to his face. "I paid four fifty in gold for it from the damn market. I'd barely be making a profit!"

"Perhaps, but this slave is unbroken. I'd be surprised if you could find a higher offer elsewhere at all. Five hundred gold pieces and I'll take it off your hands. I swear to you I'll have it broken within two turnings of the moon."

Reno was thoughtful, considering it for a moment. With arms folded, it was his turn to stare Roxas up and down with those hard azure eyes that burned like the flames licking up the wall. Roxas' heart beat so hard against his chest he feared the other two could hear it. Ears folded back, the growl all but gone, the chains hurt when he moved and left him rendering out hisses.

Reno was amused. "No, I don't think I'll accept your offer, Xemnas. This one's a real beaut, I can get seven hundred for it easy if I just hold out for the right buyer."

"You are madder than I first thought if you feel that anyone will pay anything over five hundred gold pieces for an unbroken slave. These things are dangerous, Reno. Not many people will trifle with them when unbroken."

"True, you're right. But then again, leaving it unbroken leads to an excess of speciality. To buy a slave already broken means to buy a slave for a purpose. Unbroken, they have none. They are the perfect puppets to mould. Some people would pay a lot of money for that."

"Specialisation? Is that what you keep in mind when you purchase stock these days? I thought you were more of a man for the broken stock than the challenge of unbroken. I would be very careful if I were you, Reno. You could end up stuck with this one."

"If I don't shift it by the end of the month I'll break it myself." Malicious eyes turned over to glare at Roxas again. Tossing the keys up, catching them, and repeating the process, Reno had that wicked grin smothered on his lips. "I've never lost a slave yet. This one'll be easy to snap."

"We'll see. If you can't manage it I would be grateful if you'd turn it over to me. Of course, depending on the state of it my price will moderately change. Nothing excessive, but the value does diminish with treatment."

"I'll keep it in mind," Reno hummed, picking out a specific key with a bent edge and jagged end. "Anyway, I've shown you my latest prize, but you were after something different, weren't you?"

"Mm. My latest possession attempted to run from my estate within the depths of darkness. One of my guards panicked and the dogs were released. The tattered remnants are nothing I would desire to keep for a bedroom slave."

"How bad was it?"

"The skin of the left cheek was shorn completely off, an earlobe missing on the right and deep jagged teeth marks guiding the line of the throat. Needless to say it wasn't worth the money to have the specimen repaired. I had the gamekeeper shoot it whilst my other pieces of property watched. It gave them a message, so to speak."

Reno's smile had vanished without so much as a whisper of a word, like a snake heading into grass, it was a deadly, hidden device that could strike with a venomous lashing. The hard mouth showed no sign of letting up, and there was a chill in Reno's voice that had Roxas pressed further against the wall with another growl bouncing around him.

"You had it shot?"

"It was cheaper to buy new rather than have it fixed. So I thought I should come here to see what prized gems you had hidden away. It's a shame this particular one you will not sell to me for five hundred. I could have bent its will and given it a bed."

With a dry throat, the blonde refused to flinch at the prospect that it could have been him running from the bedroom of the cold man. He was almost grateful Reno had held out, but the hatred and revulsion at them both had him reeling in disgust at the thought of thanking them.

With the utmost care for his choice of words, Reno spoke. "As I've said, if by the end of the moon's turn I haven't found a buyer, I'll break him and send word for you to come. Until then I'm afraid I can't accept anything under seven hundred for it. For now all I can do is show you around the others and hope there's one to your tastes."

He held his hand out, guiding Xemnas to the door.

Taking the subtle hint, Xemnas turned his back on the blonde Neko and strode from the cramped room. "I think there may be something adequate enough to appease me. Something beyond sparing control, I should hope."

Following him out, Reno cast Roxas one last smirk with a wink before the iron door was closed. The booming click of the lock sent vibrations through the leaky walls. The torches flickered against an imaginary gust of wind, and by the back of the wall, still unable to move, filled with nervous energy, Roxas waited.

The footsteps grew weaker, heading further up the hall from which they had come. The click of stone finally vanished, and Roxas released a heavy breath he didn't know he had been holding. His shoulders shuddered violently, sagging inwards in submission as the chain about his throat chaffed cruelly.

With aching feet he slid down the stone, shuffling a pace to the left to curl up into the corner. Ears up and alert, breath frosting slightly in the icy room, the chains continuously attempted to tug him back to the middle, refraining him from finding a secure position against the stones.

As if sensing the aching pride and the wounded heart, the torch above finally gave into the fight of the damp, guttering out completely. The darkness ebbed into the room like a chocking fog, scouring all light bar the crack beneath the iron door. Eyes open, unable to sleep for fear his tormentors returned with a change of mind and blackened hearts, he listened to the fake sounds that weren't really there. The scratch of stone; the drizzle of something wet; a squeaking creak and iron locks being bolted further down the hall… where they real? He didn't know. And he didn't want to know.

Knowing only ever made things worse, and, in some small way, he thanked the darkness because it always hid what he knew was coming. That could be a blessing at the worst of times, acting as a shield of protection. It was that shield that hid the pain the tormentors cast; it hid the tears and the biting of the cheek and the quivering lip. Too close had he been to breaking before.

He wouldn't let that happen ever again.