The rain was falling. Acid slowly scraping away at dirty brick reluctantly, not wanting—choosing—to be here either. Not this small town where the buildings were in shades of graveyard and the people fittingly dead in spirit. Grey skies, grass the color of burnt pastel green, buildings all a dull rust, depressingly uniform. The man cloaked in midnight did not wander, did not take time to inspect this world any more than necessary.
He recalled the memory of disappointment when the inhabitants cast not one curious glance at his sudden appearance in their vicinity or his attire that differed greatly from theirs. It took this unexpected lack of interest to realize that he had become accustomed to inducing uneasiness in others. First edginess, then the irritation directed towards his scathingly accurate remarks about behavior and appearance. All a delicious build-up to the climax when their shells were reduced to writhing dusks and he could watch their glowing hearts rise lost and will-less. No longer able to conceal their inferiority through pretending and self-delusion. Not when their very visages testified to the exact opposite and truth. What semblance of satisfaction he remembered lingering.
But these…at the risk of sounding childishly petty, these were no fun. Not able to provide him with the anticipation and, thus, the culmination of his efforts. And so he ignored the world as it ignored him. But there remained that vague kin of hope, the thought saved for the near future that maybe once his mission was completed, maybe things would have changed enough for him to experience that last gasp of feeling. Not that it would go down in his report to the Superior nor in conscious thought to himself.
The blond boy he found almost immediately, scent still fresh, not tainted by darkness quite yet, although he was walking the edge of day and nightfall. The smell of despair was filtering in, invading the youth and naivety. But he reveled in the sudden appearance of the other child, the one from the future in this world where science would progress fast but without exploring the self, the one with the sheen of a raven covering his head. Reveled until he realized that this world held no possibility of his personal gratification for every sentient being either was consumed by negativity to the extent of no increase being possible or so far placed from it that such subtle manipulation was impossible. So he coldly resolved to finish all that was necessary and return to The World That Never Was where he could enact the frustration he imagined he must feel on some unsuspecting neophyte.
It was pathetic really, how easily he had infiltrated that company, not that he'd expected the overweight supervisor to see past the features he had carefully sculpted to fit within this world. As he'd impulsively, for once in both his existence and non-existence, appeared to one routine meeting with several copies of himself, he'd honestly thought someone would have noticed then and at the very least become suspicious. They didn't and, as employee after employee fell to this mysterious heartless he'd yet to locate, he replaced each of them with a clone and everyone was none the wiser.
When Ms. Marion entered, every employee remained unimpressed except one. Zexion himself blinked as the scent of darkness assailed his senses. He was the only one watching the window when the bowler hat appeared beyond it and the only one to see its glowing crimson eyebeam alter to golden in a flicker. He only half listened and watched, even after the blinds were lowered, to the wretched scarecrow of a man as he babbled about his latest invention, although the Schemer did allow his half-formed unconscious thoughts be voiced through some of his clones, if only to keep up the pretense of them being individuals. His mind and attention were focused entirely on that smell, memorizing it, analyzing the Heartless. Attempting to figure out its intention. For this one had intention beyond consuming hearts; it was more sentient than the rest.
All it required was watching and waiting, and in the end he was almost disappointed. The Heartless was manufactured, created by the blond youngster, as an older being, having aged but still unwise in his years. What he had thought was a higher thinking process was that of a computer and its goal merely that of one blindly driven by the thirst of vengeance: the death and destruction of its creator and the world.
The only thing he discovered in those latter days that interested him at least briefly was the repeat of that day. What intrigued him was the fact that only he noticed the replay of the conference with Ms. Marion and the different road it went down. And not once too, but twice. The second occurrence playing out almost exactly as the third in technicalities, but with a vital difference. In what he assumed was the last, the Heartless was destroyed. By its creator no less, and he would definitely have to report this in detail, with a simple resolve to never create the thing. And it faded from existence with that simple statement. Fascinating.
His logical mind absorbed the fact and left it at that. However, his traitorous, more inquisitive side whispered to him as he was contemplating the events and organizing them. If that Heartless had been removed from existence with a heart of strong will, could a Nobody? And once again, his mind split with the roads the rational and irrational decided to take. His immediate thought was that such a heart ought to be captured and studied thoroughly as soon as possible. That damnable nagging side wondered quietly if he somehow managed to obtain that machine the boy had used, return to Radiant Gardens when it was still under the original dubbing of that name, and perhaps (and here was the traitorous, however fleeting, notion) destroy Xehanort, what would he be? Would he be Zexion still, having experimented upon the heart with the other apprentices regardless? Or would they have taken a different path? Would he still be…Ienzo? Tanner, able to be amused, able to feel without resorting to what ran dangerously close to sadism, able to cry, to rage, to laugh?
Such thoughts were dangerous, he concluded as he recommended Luxord, one of the newest recruits, be sent to deal with this world next. Alas, he had so hoped (not hope, something else…) to be able to wrench that repelling optimism from the few that retained it in this world, show the despairing what lay ahead and why their previous hopelessness was worthless. He had wanted to savor, to watch. Impossible though; with this world revolving around the concept of time travel, only one of them was able to unravel it utterly and completely.
This world of two different faces, one of foresight, the other of hindsight. What if though?
A/N: This started quite innocently as me watching Meet the Robinsons and realizing that in the scene with the BHG meeting the boss of Invent Co. all of the people sitting around the table looked exactly the same. Which led to a KH crossover that turned out more serious than lighthearted.