kh_drabble | Challenge 84

Challenge: [84] Dust
Title: Should-Have-Been
Word Count: 278
Spoilers: Just to be on the safe side, you should probably have played up to and including a good half of the last world of KH2. So just about everything.
Notes: Vaguely Xigbar/Xaldin. Other than that, I'm going to follow the old adage of "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all" and just let you read the fic.

It hurts—in that peculiar way that the Nobodies have learned, applying memories of the past to the present to fake their way through anger and pain and hope, waiting for when they’ll actually be able to feel again—to see the dragoons continue after their master’s been destroyed.

He honestly hadn’t been able to drudge up the echoes of feelings that he should have felt for Demyx’s passing. But Xigbar’s Other hand known Xaldin’s Other. Braig and Dilan had known each other well, when they’d existed, and Xigbar and Xaldin had been as close to friends as you could get without a heart. Having an actual relationship, one that wasn’t based off pretending feelings, with the lancer had been one of the things Xigbar had been most looking forward to upon the return of his heart.

And then that self-centred, deluded, brain-washed little brat had come along. Yeah, they were using him to their own ends, but Xigbar hadn’t expected the stupid, blind faith on which he took the things that old coot Yen Sid had told him. Hadn’t expected the way the boy clung to those facts, no matter what was presented to him. Hadn’t expected him to ignore everything presented to him and cling to that one view.

That had been the big mistake, he guessed, assuming that just because the boy wielded the Keyblade that he’d think about what he was told and come to his own conclusions. Still only fourteen in the end.

That was why he was going to kill the Keyblade Master. For all that hope ground to dust on the edge of the Keyblade.