kh_drabble | (no subject)

Title: Scents from Then
Challenge: [137] Identity
Rating: G
Word count: 292
Notes: …I would blame this on reading too much Perfume, but the fact is I haven't been. *shrug*

Zexion doesn't think very much of the changes. He's still short, Braig is still aggravating (or Xigbar is mock-aggravating; either way he dislikes it), and Even is still obsessive, as is Xehanort, though as Xemnas his focus has changed. The most the changes have done for them is that injuries are a little more readily treatable, though they remain wary. They're not quite sure how much damage is too much, yet.

What's happened has also altered their scents somewhat, though. Zexion knows that the heart isn't the source of scents- how could it be, located internally- but there's a common note between them all, Organization and lesser Nobodies alike- something that smells a little like dusk and a little like the absence of light.

Save Xemnas, perhaps, who seems closest to Nothing of the Organization's members, and who smells too strongly of it for Zexion's comfort. He smells enough of other things to cause only mild discomfort, but it is still always there at the back of Zexion's mind when they're in the same room. It's not quite as though he's standing near the abyss, but the sense of so much absence close by is worse than the reminder of the loss of his heart.

He tries to recall Xehanort's scent at times, in the thought that perhaps that might help ground him, but to his dismay cannot, though he recalls the scents of the others well enough (sharp and spice; solid and mint). And yet, Xehanort was there, and working with them, else how would they have come to be here?

It is one of the mysteries they have no time for now, though, and so Zexion puts it away and copes until such time as they can solve that riddle.