stigmata
(or, the theory of moving targets)

(xiii)

There's something redeeming about war - it makes people anonymous, allows them to blend into the crowd and become something a little less than human. When fighting an enemy, everything else seems to just fall away, until nothing matters except the task at hand. There's something healing about murder.

He doesn't talk about fighting very often - none of the men do. When they aren't actually sparring or being killed, they sit around in tents and look at dirty magazines or play card games. Talk about the woman back home, or the son, or the daughter. And they always want him to join in the conversations, but he doesn't have anyone waiting for him. All of his friends are dead or traitors or worse, and he doesn't have a family, at least, none that will look him in the face anymore. So he just listens with a smile on his face and tells them that they're wives or daughters sound lovely, and their sons strong. Their girlfriends will, of course, want to marry them. Their mothers will cry and hug them when they come home after the war.

That sort of thing. And it's easy to forget the way these men die when they talk so much about life. He feels like intruding would shatter some illusion, that to join in would destroy something sacred, some unspoken rule. He can't explain it, so he just acts like his whole life is devoted to fighting. Which is, of course, the truth, but he'd rather they didn't know that.

Somehow, it sounds like such a waste.

(xii)

The new recruit looks like he's about to pass out again when Basch wakes him up. He's pale, and a little shaky, but looks more sick than scared. He picks up a sword and gathers himself while Basch explains how to fight when not in a wild mob. Reks is his name, and he has a brother at home, and nothing else. He sees something of himself in the young boy, and is overcome with the desire to grab him by the shoulders and ask him why he ever signed up for this war. He's not a born soldier - he's just a child!

But he doesn't, and instead leads him, knowing that will better serve him now. It doesn't really matter now why he joined or what he did before because he can't go back to it or fix his mistakes. And nothing Basch says will change the haunted look in his eyes, a look he knows well, having worn it for years.

The boy turns out to be a fairly good fighter, strong enough. With training, he could become quite the soldier.

(xi)

He sees himself in Reks. This is why it's so disconcerting to watch his brother stab him. It's like history has repeated itself.

(x)

The real curse of prison isn't the loneliness or the shame or the taunts - it's the chains. Not only is there something dehumanizing about chains, the way they devalue the life inside them, but they make him completely dependent on them. After a few weeks of prison, Gabranth comes in to see him, to jeer again, and tells the lackeys around him to unchain him, so his brother can stand before him like a man. But the chains...

He collapses at his brother's feet, and nothing - not the public trial, nor the look of betrayal on Ashe's face when they told her what he'd done - can compare to the shame he feels at this moment. Unable to stand, forced to bow to his own brother like a common traitor, he knows that he must look like something inhuman, completely bereft of life or intelligence or feeling. Devoid of the very strength to move, he is less than nothing.

Gabranth laughs at him then, and asks him why he doesn't stand before his own brother. Or perhaps you want to bow to me?

He wants to punch him, to scream at him, to curse his brother. But instead, he closes his eyes and asks him what he really came for. What questions could Gabranth possibly want to ask him?

But he simply laughs and tells the guards to put this filth back in its cage. Not even his cage. Not even human enough to be defined.

(ix)

They always say that the first night of prison is the worst, but he doesn't believe that. The first night was easy, because on the first night, he was still certain that someone would tell the truth and release him. On the first night, he knew that this would be short and he would be saved.

They say that the first night is the hardest, but the first night isn't nearly as difficult as the 237th, in his opinion. Not that anything really spectacular happens on the 237th night of his imprisonment, except that this is the day he simply gives up counting. After 237 days, he realizes that getting out is not an option, and it never really has been. They say that when you give up in prison, it's supposed to be this salvation, this release - they tell you that it gets easier when you just stop fighting. But Basch has always been a fighter, and giving up is torture.

On the 238th morning of his imprisonment, his brother passes him by, wearing his shining Judge's armor, and doesn't even take the time to sneer. There's something redemptive about that, and something damning as well. While he hardly cares anymore if his brother comes by to torment him or not, it's a little painful to watch as he simply walks by, as though this cringing mess in the cage isn't related at all to him, whether by blood or by circumstance.

On the 238th night, he tries to kill himself, but fails at that too.

(viii)

He sees black every time he glances beneath his cage (and why is he in a cage, rather than a cell like all the other prisoners? Every other prisoner gets a cell and a cot and a meal every twelve hours, but Basch-the-Traitor gets a cage with an unreliable chamberpot and watery gruel every other day, if the guards remember. Why? There are other traitors here, why does he suffer more?) He's always been a bit leery of heights, always hated the feeling that he's about to tumble into the black, but now he has no choice but to simply get used to it.

He's become numb to so much now, though, that he isn't entirely sure there's room left to quell his fears. So he looks up, but that's no better, and looking straight ahead only shows him a tantalizing door. Closing his eyes only brings back memories, and turning around allows him to see only a blank stretch of wall leading down.

He thinks that he must look like some sort of bird, trapped up high in a cage, all tattered and falling-apart and dirty. But not a good kind of bird, like a dove. No, he thinks that he must look more like a vulture - a great, hairy vulture who hasn't bathed in years.

Or perhaps only months, or weeks, or days. He's lost all sense of time, and his 237 scratches on the floor are fading.

(vii)

There's something terribly cruel about his first hours of freedom being trapped underground with two disinterested pirates and a kid who hates him (he says his brother was Reks, Reks the boy soldier-who-might-have-been, and that he's dead, which is unsurprising but terrible all the same). There's something immeasurably cold about the world if it can cage a man for two years and then trap him underground, all but alone.

They don't really believe him when he tells them his story, but he can't bring himself to care, not yet. He wants to ask what's been happening, because a sky pirate would have kept up with the world, and wouldn't be so entangled in it to be biased. But none of his companions seem very approachable, so he doesn't comment, and simply keeps moving.

That always seemed to work before; the theory that moving targets are harder to strike. When fighting enemies - particularly enemies with guns or bows - this was rudimentary. Everyone learned very quickly that to stay alive, stay in motion. Stop, even for a moment, and you leave yourself wide open to attack. Now, he lets that old instinct take over, and decides not to stop and try to fix things yet. Focus on getting out, and then worry about convincing people that he's alive and loyal.

It's comforting to let go, and he doesn't really think it should be.

(vi)

Sometimes, he thinks that freedom after so long is more frightening than any prison cell could ever be.

(v)

The trick to keeping your head in war is to never look your enemy in the face. If you do, you'll see that he's human, a living, breathing, eating, sleeping mirror of yourself. You can't kill someone who looks like you - it haunts you, because you fully understand how inhuman fighting really is. You fully understand how easy it is to die. So, to stay sane, you never look at who you're fighting. Vilify the enemy, turn them into baby-killing heathens, and you can kill them. Realize that they're no different from you, and you'll die, or kill yourself, or drive yourself insane.

(iv)

He feels strangely vindicated when Ashe slaps him, like he's been waiting for this, and now he can move on. Now he can begin to recover, though he doesn't really understand why he should feel better about it after being hit (quite painfully) across the face. But he doesn't dwell on his emotions, preferring again to focus on the theory of moving targets. It's so much easier to believe in her when he doesn't stop to dwell on past mistakes.

It takes her a long time to trust him, but that seems fitting - after all, what kind of queen would she be if she trusted so-called traitors every time they claimed innocence? He doesn't like the way she looks right through him, though. As if he doesn't exist, something less than zero, worse than inhuman. He fights it. Tries to make her understand that he was loyal to her father, and he is loyal to her.

But he owes his allegiance to a dead man, and he isn't sure his allegiance still has value.

(iii)

He wakes up one night, biting back a cry of pain or of horror, vestiges of the dream still clinging - a dark place, unforgiving, the faces of the people he failed (oddly enough, not Prince Rasler or King Raminas, but Reks, the soldiers under his command and the girlfriends he once swore would love them, his brother, his mother - the people who trusted him by default, not by any oaths or tokens or commands). He could see the death on their faces, the utter betrayal, the absolute fear of what lay ahead.

He shakes it from his eyes, but it won't entirely go away. He can still hear their laughter, their jokes, the little mannerisms he had grown used to. It's haunting. He closes his eyes and tries to banish the visions, but the dead won't leave him alone. And somewhere thrown into it all is Ashe, the look of mingled disgust and hurt in her face at the man she once trusted completely.

This image is harder to dismiss.

(ii)

He feels most at home when they all sit around the fire somewhere along the Ozmone Plain wasting time before going to the Pharos, Vaan entertaining the group with a story about some kid in Rabanastre who used to set traps for the Imperials. Everyone is laughing, enjoying themselves, taking advantage of a brief carefree moment. He sits on the periphery, polishing his weapon next to Fran. She glances at the party, smiling a little, but doesn't say anything. He realizes suddenly that he can't remember seeing the Viera smile before now. It strikes him as odd, but Viera aren't exactly known for being overly expressive.

He's always been a watcher, for as long as he can remember. He gets involved in matters when he must get involved in matters, but tends to stay on guard and let the others have their fun, or their spats. He has the feeling, again, that to intrude would be to break a rule of some sort; that if he says something, he'll make the scene end.

So he watches, and waits for something that isn't coming - an answer, maybe, or a sign - when do the scars fade?

(i)

He wishes with everything he is that he could hate his brother, but when he's lying on the bed, barely alive, Basch feels nothing but pity. He doesn't want it to end this way - he half-wants to get into a one-on-one fistfight with Noah until they both bleed, like old times - and he doesn't want to have to see this.

It would be entirely different if Noah died in some far-off country, being a Judge. But to watch it happen is more painful than he could have ever imagined - there are so many memories that he's spent so long suppressing, coming back in full force, hitting him in the gut with the easy-to-ignore fact that, no matter how cruel or thoughtless or emotionless, Noah is a human, but more than that, Noah is his brother.

And that's the problem with the theory of moving targets. You can't keep running; eventually, you have to stop, and it all catches up to you, much worse than it would have been before, but you didn't know it then. If he could have it all again, there's so much he'd change.

But there's no going back. He's never fully understood this before - well, of course he's always known it's impossible to go back in time, but he always half-suspected he could still make amends, and now he has to face the painful realization that that's not going to happen; the dead have a nasty tendency to stay dead, no matter how much he still has to say to them.

Noah is dead before Vaan lands the Strahl, and he somehow thinks it's fitting that he died while flying, free.
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(A/N: I've been working on this for four days, and I do not like it. But I've been trying so hard to write Basch, and I've always really liked this style of writing, and... Argh. Don't mind me. Review if you like.)

(Oh, and by the way - stigmata (n) - a mark of disgrace or infamy, a stain or reproach)