Title: To Be Alone with the Freedom
Fandom: Bandom
Pairing: Jon/Spencer, Jon/OCs
Categories: angst, AU, dark, drama, sad stories, slavery, virgin, cross-dressing of a sort
Length: Long (~30,000 words)
Warnings: main character death, sad ending, dub-con, non-con, sexual slavery, suicide, murder, violence

Author on LJ: arctic_grey
Author Website: Directory

Review:
When Jon gets coerced into teaching music to the pueri—boy slaves used for sex—by Pete Wentz, he has a bad feeling. But when he actually meets the boys, things go from bad to worse.

I was a bit peeved with this story’s lack of warnings. It’s a fantastically convoluted tragedy, something along the lines of a dark fairy tale or “Romeo and Juliet,” full of ambiguity and darkness disguised as love. But the lack of warning does leave the reader completely unprepared for the ending.

There are a few hints of what’s to come, but even so until the very end it seems certain that a happy if delusional conclusion will be reached without much work at all. I honestly like this ending better than any happy ending the author could have come up with. This is the most realistic sexual slave story out there. And the ending is the only honest possibility—unless the author had gone even darker.

Since the main relationship in this is between a slave and a free man, the relationship is shown to be one of inequality of power and, better yet, inequality of understanding. This makes the relationship come across as obsession/devotion rather than any actual relationship. I am truly impressed with this; it’s not an easy topic to think about and must be far more difficult to write. But please do not read this if you cannot stomach dark fic.

To Be Alone with the Freedom