Headcanon/drabbles

[armorumvigiles]

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Noah and Basch // twin-contemplation? Pre-game, pre-destruction of Landis

[armorumvigiles]

Supplementary foreword
-Landis is invaded when twins are turning 16, Basch enlists himself into the Landissian army for training: Noah follows soon after, not wanting to be left behind
-NOT SURE IF THIS HEADCANON IS GOING TO HOLD, THOUGH, but it was mostly the fact that the FFXII comic mentioned that the both of them fought in 'Landissian style' that kind of spurred this bit of headcanon
-warning for...mentions of dead people...?
-warning for VAGUELY slashy connotation, maybe, though it's more an issue of co-dependency more than anything else?

NOAH POV, btw...

[armorumvigiles]

The aftermaths of war are staggeringly quiet, Noah thinks. The survivors sit in silence, holding rolls and rolls of bandages, their bloodied hands fixing wounds, holding needle and thread, their weapons discarded to count the number of bodies scattered on the ground. It takes one hand to count the number of those that can return to their loved ones-- it takes several, hundreds, thousands of hands to count those that need to be buried. Noah watches, realizing the superfluousness of conversation, the fallacy of words, the simple truth in the moments after battle: they're alive, and others are not. People fight, people live, people die. There's nothing else, he thinks, as he watches the sun slowly move towards the horizon

[armorumvigiles]

That night, pale-faced and with blood on his chin, Noah understood what true horror was

BASCH // How Basch dreams

[armorumvigiles]

Dreams of Landis come in vials of water in Basch’s subconscious. Basch’s mind is an ocean, spanning far and endlessly into a blue horizon where the sea meets the sky, merging into one solitary block of blue-gray where the turbulence and the darkness of the depths fall beneath calmer surfaces. Behind his world of closed eyes and eventual respite, the droplets of water stored in those carefully preserved vials of Basch’s memories overflow, falling into the waveless sea and creating ripples that pattern into obscure but familiar designs

VAAN AND BASCH // Forgiveness in Rabanastre

[armorumvigiles]

There’s an ease in the way Vaan moves along the busy alleys and corridors of Rabanastre’s seedy downtown, brilliant platinum-blond wading through Bangaa and Seeq and Hume of all ages and creeds. It’s easy, Vaan says in that slightly absentminded, always straightforward way of his-“the people here may be sketchy”-Vaan laughs, combing one hair through swept bangs-“ but they’re nice”, he states, simple and ineloquent and never second-guessing or considering the veracity of his claims. Basch is walking a few steps behind the younger boy, watching him move through dark corners and rank spaces with all the comfort of a fish in water, of someone who has seen persistence and a stubbornness for life, and recalls vaguely the first time he himself had waded through the underground of Dalmasca

BASCH // How Basch fears

[armorumvigiles]

To fear is to be human. Basch knows that there isn't a single soul in the world that isn't susceptible to this rule, and that once one forgets how to fear, a layer of humanity is stripped from them-- a layer, just one, but an essential one, akin to forgetting the feeling of hunger, or thirst, or longing. It is a layer, but a layer that Basch thinks about often, on nights where the sky is calm and the winds give him reprieve enough to cast his gaze backwards into the past. His mind wanders to memories of wars fought, of moments passed in a torrent of events and broken dialogue, and slowly he picks apart the times where he'd truly felt afraid: arrows whistling in front of his nose, lives being ended, recollections of standing on the verge of a precipice. He cannot recall being frightened at the time-- the emotion comes from him now, in the present, a slow feeling of nostalgic fear and a jump of the heart that speaks to him, whispering, "ah, I was afraid." It is a confirmation

[armorumvigiles]

And even then, I am no saint, Basch had thought as he smiled at Balthier in return, dropping the subject entirely to pursue more savory courses of conversation. Though Basch knew then and knows now that it was not a resolution that he’d been looking for, knows that neither Noah nor himself had hoped for forgiveness during those brief but ever-long sessions in Nalbina. Basch had done all he could. He had done all that he knew how to. All that he must