Written for the Final Fantasy Kissing Battle 2012 on DW, for a prompt from ser_pounce_alot.
Is it loyalty, then, or ignorance that drives us forward?
"My brother wants me dead." Basch shook his head, already regretting ever venturing this far. Auron offered him his gourd, but Basch shut his eyes and turned away, groaning into the pillow at the sudden wave of dizziness that struck him. I should have known better…
"You are certain?"
Was he? Gabranth…
"Noah." The name was bitter on his tongue, yet familiar. The name held memories that Basch had once prided himself in making; it was of memories that had long since faded away, swallowed by the whirlpool of time.
And then Basch found himself wandering through them as if in a distant dream, his own faint laughter ringing in his ears, Noah's wide proud grin when his brother beat a street urchin in a duel. "We both hoped of joining the Knights' Order of Landis. Trained hard we did, Noah pretending he was Mother's shield, while I her sword. She… Mother would watch and laugh." It made him smile to think of her, but it was a blade in his gut when he found that he could not even remember how she looked like.
When you abandoned home and kin, your name was forever stained with blood!
"She would laugh," Basch covered his eyes with a palm, "and tell us how proud Father would be were he still alive."
"Then why," Auron's voice broke the silence like a rock thrown through a glass window, "did you flee your homeland? Why did you continue to fight, when you knew the cause was lost? You left your mother, you left your brother, ran away to a land where no kin of yours live. You are nothing but a fool."
"Landis – my home – was destroyed before my eyes." Basch pushed himself up, glaring daggers through the semi-darkness at Auron. "There was nothing left for me there. Archadia's terms were simple: serve, or be silenced by the gallows. I chose neither. Dying with a noose around my throat without even raising a finger – no." He threw off the quilts and made to stand, but his vision was blurred, the gloom being the only thing he saw clearly.
"I strongly advise against moving about."
"I will not sleep in the same room, much less in the same bed, as a man who knows no honour." Basch staggered to the chair over which he had draped his vest.
"Feel free to share the lobby with the rest of the wounded soldiers. They will not be very kind if a stranger, uncut and unhurt, were to take up space amongst them."
Basch ignored him and, with his swordbelt and vest in hand, stepped towards the door. The darkness was overwhelming, however, and by the ridiculously dim light of the candle in the corner and his pounding head, Basch tripped over his own feet and stumbled. I should be a fool at a wedding instead of a knight of Dalmasca. He accepted Auron's help without a word, teeth gritted in sour resentment. Auron took him by the forearm, his grip reflecting the hard, harsh man behind the sunglasses and gorget. He dropped Basch's equipments on the floor without much care as he steered him to bed.
"Lady Yuna was kind enough to pay for a bed fit for three soldiers, and this is how you repay her?" Auron shoved him back down onto the mattress. By the glow of the candle, Basch could only see the right side of his face – the scarred side. "At least have the decency to fake your thanks. Are all knights of Dalmasca such ingrates?"
Basch could not find the strength in his legs to even stand, his senses rendered lame by the swordsman's wretched nog, but he did manage to seize Auron by the wrist. "I did not seek your hospitality nor do I want it. Ingrates, fools, mummers – call us whatever you wish, but the knights of Dalmasca are second to none when it comes to loyalty."
"I am glad to know that your charge is in good hands," Auron said, curtly, and wrenched his wrist free. "But I question your resolve, as well as the others'. This princess of yours… She has nothing but a broken airship, a pair of sky pirates, two orphans…and a disgraced knight for a guardian. Tell me, Sir Basch of Dalmasca," he folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall, his thin lips casting a deep frown over Basch, "is it really loyalty that spurs you on, or do you still hope for your homeland once the kingdom is restored? Do you see your princess, or do you see just the lands in which you have shed your first blood? Do you wish to swear fealty to the throne, or do you wish nothing more than to run home to your mother?" Auron dropped his voice to a deadly whisper. "Or do you mean to slay your brother, before he slays you?"
"The gods curse kinslayers." Basch spat at Auron's feet. "Noah…Gabranth is welcome to try. Let him raise his sword against me. He may take my blood, but his shall never taint my own blade."
"I'd like to hear your head say that once your brother has hacked it from your shoulders." Auron settled down on the mattress, pulled the covers over himself. Basch was left to his own drunken musings in the silence that followed. That confrontation with his brother in the Pharos plucked a heartstring – one that, after so many years of pain and torture and suffering, he thought had snapped long ago, namely after the fall of Landis.
How can twin brothers who look so alike be so different? Basch often wondered, and always he never found the answer. But he knew one thing was for certain: "I swore an oath; I knelt as a boy, rose as a knight. For as long as I draw breath, princess and kingdom shall I defend."
Auron let out a low chuckle that drew Basch's scowl. "I told myself something along those lines as well. Around the time when you were made knight, I was made guardian of a man. He was not only a summoner, but a father as well. And I stood by and watched him die, the naïf that I was." Auron closed his eyes. "You and I… No matter how you look at it, we are the same. I thought I could save the world, but in the end, I returned with nothing but dust in my hands. I returned alone, shivering from the cold, on legs that should have failed me long ago." He rolled to lie on his side, an arm tucked under his pillow.
"What are you doing here, then?" Basch wanted to know. It was hard trying to read this man in the eye, but with his back towards him, Basch found it impossible. His voice gave nothing away.
"I swore an oath too, a promise." Auron paused. "And like you, I do not wish to break it."
Basch reached for the gourd of nog and drained it; he must have been drunker than he expected. The heat that rushed throughout his body felt good, if only for a moment. The night was cold (Auron insisted on keeping the windows open, and Basch, ever aware that it was their money that his party was spending, was forced to agree), so he huddled under the covers and edged a little closer to Auron.
"Why do you think I did not place my sword between us?" The scorn in Auron's voice did not bother Basch so much, what with the alcohol taking over his senses. After almost a week of camping out here, he should be used to it, especially when it came to sharing a bed.
Basch had his back against Auron's, both bare and warm and so alive. He found a strange comfort in that. It took his mind away from his brother, from the Occuria and the Pharos, from Vayne Solidor and Dr Cid. All of them stank of lies and deceit, of death and destruction. It was a solace that Basch was glad to lose himself in, so much that he did not mind when he felt rough stubble against his chin and chapped lips press against his own. He was just content with lying there, enveloped in an embrace that made him feel so warm, so…alive.
And then Basch realized it was Auron's arms around him, Auron's mouth on his neck. He tried pushing him away, but the nog made his limbs feel like they were made from the flesh of flans. "Don't." This was not to happen again.
"After the summoners sacrifice themselves for the betterment of Spira, a time of peace settles upon the land," Auron murmurs against Basch's shoulder, a calloused palm pressed against his side. Basch could almost hear the disgust in his tone, but for what, he did not know. "What do I fight for, you ask?" Auron drew back, his face just a breath away from Basch's. "I fight for Spira, for its people. I fight so they can live without fear of Sin. I fight with a blade, a novice's ignorance as my shield." Basch reached up, upon instinct, to brush away a stray fringe of black hair that hung over his forehead. "Sin will return. No matter how many summoners die, or how many guardians," an odd look fleeted through his eyes, "Sin always returns."
He is afraid, Basch realized. A tight, almost cruel, smirk tugged at the corners of Auron's lips.
"What do you fight for, I wonder? Lands? Prosperity? Kin?"
"Dalmasca," Basch whispered, seeing the princess's face flash before his eyes. But soon, that sweet smile that she wore on her wedding day faded away, dissolving into Gabranth's wicked stare as he looked upon his brother, broken and stinking of piss in the dungeons.
"Truly?" Auron chuckled again, a harsh, bitter sound. His hot breath fell upon Basch's face, smelling of nog. "I see doubt in your eyes. You are loyal, of that I am certain. But, Basch," Auron traced the scar on his left brow, the gesture almost tender by his rough fingertips, "believe you me, loyalty only makes a man bleed worse. I've bled as an ignorant, and now, I am bleeding by the dagger of my promise. It is a double-edged sword, oaths."
Basch caressed the stubble on Auron's chin with a thumb and allowed himself a small, sad smile for the both of them. "Of that I am no stranger."
He took Auron into his arms, sighing at the sweet heat of his body, and no words were said for the longest time.