Stuck in the Shallows / KH

VIII. Broken

Left alone, as was seeming to become a pattern in her life, Manami found her feet steering her in the direction not of the tiny apartment she had inhabited for the past year, but up towards the clock tower, where the train station was.

Some local kids jostled past her as she went, laughing and taunting each other in such a manner that she could not help but be reminded of Dyme and how they had played together as children. She missed him. She missed him so badly that it hurt, and it was often all she could do to take her mind off of him and distract herself with hours upon hours of training.

But she was done training. She was drained, and now all she could think about was if she would ever really be reunited with Dyme. It had been a year. And she hadn't even known where he had gone before Radiant Garden's collapse.

Pushing a hand back through her hair, she wondered if it was even worth holding onto hope.

There was, of course, always that little voice in the back of her head, the one that told her to keep pushing, that, where there was a willingness to try, there was always hope. She clung to that little voice with all of her strength, but today, especially after what had happened between her and Axel, it was just so faint.

"Say, Kiddo. What's with the long face?"

An unfamiliar voice pulled her from her thoughts and brought her back to reality where, once she pried her stare from the brick-paved platform of the Station Plaza, she was met by an older man with an eye-patch obscuring a visibly scarred eye while the other eye studied her with an expression that, while she couldn't quite pinpoint it, she didn't entirely trust.

He had on a floor-length black coat, a lot like the one Axel wore. It was what finally pushed her to answer his question and break her momentary silence.

"Just a hard day, is all. Who's asking...? If you don't mind me asking?" She didn't trouble herself to keep the suspicion out of her voice nor off of her freckly countenance.

"Name's Xigbar. It's dandy to finally meet you... Manami." It took her a moment to register the fact that he had called her by her name, but by the time her mouth caught up to her brain, Xigbar had already continued.

"See, you've been hanging around a friend of ours for... some time now. I'm sure you already have a pretty good idea who I'm talking about."

Manami's heart fluttered, and her thoughts rewound to Axel's earlier words.

"They're not exactly great guys. And I don't want them finding out about you."

"Axel warned me about you guys," she piped up, summoning her keyblade. She noticed the way he eyeballed it; it was a lot like the way a cat might look at a particularly juicy mouse. She took a step back and aimed it at him. "Stay away from me. I don't want anything to do with you."

Laughing as though she had just told him a hysterical joke, Xigbar straightened up off of the wall upon which he had been propped. "Hang on there, Hotshot. He didn't happen to tell you that he knows exactly what happened to your friend, now did he? What was that name again?" He tapped the top of his head, as though it would send the answer flooding to his brain.

"Oh, that's right! I remember now. Dyme... Wasn't it?"

Manami froze. Her eyes were as round as dinner plates, balanced precariously upon the olivine curvature of her cheekbones. When she finally found her voice, something that took several seconds, it was only so that she could croak out the words, "What do you mean?"

"Oh, so he didn't tell you?" He laughed again. "Why am I not surprised? That little friend of yours is no longer with us, I'm afraid."

Manami shook her head, her eyes flickering briefly down to the ground before flying back up to Xigbar's smug face. "What are you even talking about?"