It took me forever and a day but I finally managed to finish the first set of drabbles for the madness drabble challenge I issued a while back. And god help me, there will be further drabble/ficlet/what-have-you posts coming up. God help us all, really.
And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved! After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration... I'm especially interesting in knowing what ficlet you liked the most of the three below. If nothing else, it'd be helpful in writing these in the future.
Title: Disordered Thinking, Part 1
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Characters: Noah & Basch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The truly fearful thing about madness is that nobody is immune. Nobody.
I. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Gabranth for Trancekuja
[Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric disorder most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or "rituals") which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.
All his life, Noah's always been second to his own twin.
Sometimes, Noah wonders if such a fate had always been marked to him. It couldn't have been mere chance, after all, that made Basch the beloved first-born and Noah the ill-favored lump that was thrown in to the world after him. It couldn't have been a simple coincidence that his mother had always smiled more brightly at the sight of one face than another, or that his father's fingers had always lingered more at Basch's shoulders than at his. It couldn't have been mere luck that made Basch's sword swings stronger, Basch's tactics at war better, Basch's honor so much more difficult for the bastards around them both to warp and bend.
It had to have been fate that did such a thing. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Noah's lagged behind his brother almost all his life and when they were young, Basch had always had a way of rendering Noah second-best. No matter what they did, as both children and young men, Basch always had a way of exceeding and even out-stripping him. And even now, within his cocoon in Arcades, Noah sometimes thinks despite himself that maybe his parents were right-- maybe Basch did deserve all the love and all the glory, all the adoration that they would always harbor for him…
No matter how loudly Basch's footsteps had rung in their ears as he had turned and walked away from all of them.
Noah has never been the sort to leave unless he had to. Basch has never been the sort to stay unless Noah bound him.
And till the end of their lives, despite it all, Basch had always been the one that their parents had loved best.
But now, so many years after the fall of Landis, it's finally Noah who's out-stripped his brother and reaped all the glory that deflecting the winning side can offer a twin with superior wits. And whenever thoughts of how little he's truly worth chase him again…
(and all Noah can see is the face of his father, the face of his mother, beaming at Basch and looking blankly at him, he so ill favored, he so misshapen, so undeserving, pathetic and cowardly, the ghostly reflection of the better son sure to outlast him, sure to overlay and overtake all that had ever been given to him)
…Noah always knows it's long past time to pay his brother the courtesy of another visit.