This chapter dedicated to heaven_monument who wanted Noah, Vaan, Basch, and lots of drunkenness.
A Day To Forget - Part 2
Gabranth is drunk.
He wants to finish his argument and complete the final words of his defense. It doesn't matter. He knows what the sentence will be. His tongue no longer remembers how to speak. His limbs are heavy. Lengths of rubber that have lost their form. An ocean of noise echoes between his ears. Around him, the tavern collapses into a flattened sheet of paper, another damning piece of evidence. He stumbles back and forth in blackness, his present state a series of snapshots hanging before him.
Voices surround him. Gabranth is now a beast with six legs, six arms, clumsy and clattering. Something heavy topples behind him. He turns or someone turns him, and he falls into an overstuffed chair, winged sides and upholstered armrests caging him.
"Easy, brother. Easy." His brother's voice rasps behind Gabranth's ear. Snap. The picture of a prisoner hauled in for justice.
Snap. The flash of a face, a hungry ghost seeking revenge.
"Then why are you still here?" The ghost of the prisoner Gabranth once took. "We got you back to Archades — Balfonheim — and Penelo cut you loose. So, why are you still sticking around? Are you gonna say it? Because I know why, but you aren't man enough to admit it."
"Vaan, stop. He's drunk. Let him be."
"Murderer. That's what we should call you, right?" A hard kick jolts his chair. "It's all because of you. I know what you want to hear. Right? Right? My brother died. Penelo's brothers died. Her parents died! And who do you think has taken care of her since then? Don't think life has been easy for us. And don't fool yourself into thinking she doesn't know what you did at the end of the war in Nalbina, because she knows just as well as I, but she still pulled you out of the Pharos. Just think about that. Or would you rather we just call you what you are. Traitor."
Another jolt. Gabranth is falling. His body tumbles with nothing to catch him in darkness's void. He lands in an angular world, hard-edged. Splinters of wood, splinters of cheekbone beneath his skin. Snap.
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This is what it sounds like under the ocean, everything blurred and muffled and heavy.
"Vaan, help me get him up."
A flash of bright lights interrupts blackness. Gabranth knows his face is swelling. Wetness on his hand against his cheek. Basch is hauling him up, gripping beneath his arms. Gabranth does not know when they have him standing, but a series of images dropped in front of his eyes tells him they are staggering forward, their bodies surrounding his.
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The stab of sunlight outside the tavern, the sting of saltwater air. He'll be left under the dock for the next high tide, for the stinging teeth of a school of fish-like monsters, the tops of their heads glowing like ghostly lanterns bobbing along the shore's edge at night. Morning will come and another magister's post will be vacant. No, his post has already been vacated.
Pier planks creak and bow under their feet, and a clatter of hollow footsteps echo below them. Footsteps of their shades. Everything around them stinks of mold. When they ditch him, and he'll be left to decay among the waterlogged footings of buildings that sink an inch every passing year. He can already feel the bitter rush of water filling his lungs. A choking constriction in his throat. He falls forward onto his hands and knees, vomiting over the edge of the pier, crouched low like a dog. Everything around him reeks of his bile. This is what dying is.
"Come on. We're almost there." Hands on his shoulder, straightening him up into the shape of man. A face held like a mirror in front of him. A folded cloth wiping his nostrils and mouth. "Noah, come. Let us help you walk."
Arms hooked under his armpits, hoisting him up. At his feet, vomit drips from the planks into the water below. His body bends forward again. An invisible punch in the gut taking him down. He is heaving. His stomach ripping out through his esophagus, and all the last of his dignity is robbed from him in the minutes before his death.
"We're not wasting a potion on you if you can't keep anything down." The hungry ghost has his hands on Gabranth's shoulders again. "And you're too heavy for us to carry, so you have no choice but to get up."
"Just let me die." He's chokes out the words of his sentence. Poison in his gut, knives in his throat. Death is never swift enough.
Snap.
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.
.
He must have slept many hours. He's on his back on a lumpy mattress. A sweat soaked sheet slips from his body before his hand can catch it. His left arm hangs down from the bed. Skin is crusted with the stench of his moral failures. Barbed wire cuts inside his mouth. Runs down his throat. Ties knots around his heart. Beside him, his twin sleeps, jaw slackened and snoring loudly. His brother's face is still too narrow. Thin like a victim of famine, like an angry wraith.
Reks' brother snoozes by the door, body slumped over in a chair. The prison guard. Earlier, the bottle had been Gabranth's torturer.
He remembers it now, remembers enough to feel sickened.
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Basch and Vaan found him in the tavern by the waterfront just before noon. That morning, Gabranth had gotten himself too drunk to leave, too drunk to fight back. After Vaan burst in, he ran over and grabbed Gabranth by his wrists, feeling through the cuffs of his shirt for that bracelet. "You didn't put it back on, did you?"
"No."
"Where is it?"
"Over there." He pointed with his chin toward the bar.
Vaan jogged over to the stool where Gabranth had sat. The thief's swift hands pocketed the bracelet still wrapped in a silken handkerchief.
By then, the bartender was no longer there. He must have slipped into the kitchen knowing trouble would start even though Gabranth had not carried a weapon on him since arriving in Balfonheim. Penelo disarmed him moments after he followed her onto the Strahl.
Vaan turned to Basch. "He's your brother. What do we do with him now?"
Basch strode toward Gabranth and clapped his hand on his shoulder. "Where will you go?"
"I am still a Magister. What does it matter to you? And I will not take aid from a traitor."
"Look here," Vaan spat. "He didn't offer you his help. He only wants to know where you're going."
"Vaan. He's drunk. Don't argue with him."
Tense as a desert beast, Vaan turned away and slipped behind the bar, fiddling with a stack of glasses, acting as if he was busy with something else.
Basch dropped his arm around Gabranth's shoulders. "I will offer you my aid if you ask it."
"Why? To put me in your debt? And what treachery will you require of me when you come seeking repayment?"
"I only offer my help. That is all."
"You offering me your help?" Gabranth shrugged his brother's arm away. "You never cared about my fate before. Not then. You cared nothing for what I wanted — what I needed — when I last asked for your aid. Now you dare offer it twenty years too late?"
"It needn't be like this."
"Brother, do you not mourn what we lost — what was stolen from us? Lives were stolen! Stolen from all of us. Are your ears deaf to the cries of our people's ghosts?"
"Look," Vaan interrupted, "we all lost people we cared about."
"This is none of your business," Gabranth spat back.
"Really, Noah? That's your real name, isn't it? Let me tell you, your business became mine the minute you started up with Penelo, following after her like a hound all the way down the Pharos and into that private cabin in the back of the Strahl. After the war, she's all the family I have left, and don't think she escaped the war without scars. Someone like you should know better than to let something like that happen."
"I had thought my business became yours when I left a knife in your brother." Alcohol had always sharpened his tongue more than anger. Gabranth expected Vaan to hit him. He braced himself, waiting for it.
Vaan sucked his breath hard, and was out from behind the bar in a few quick paces. Gabranth was read for the blow across his face that would surely come.
It didn't.
"My brother died because he fought for something he believed in," Vaan barked in Gabranth's face. "What about you? What did you believe in that night in Nalbina? And what about up in the Pharos the other week? Huh? You're just a coward, trying to send Ashe to take care of your business because you don't have the courage to stand up against Vayne."
"Vaan." Basch made a shushing sound. "Wait until he sobers."
Vaan poked his finger into Gabranth's chest. "Look, you still have your brother, right? And I still have Penelo." Vaan poked his finger again. "And I really hope you were careful when the two of you did what you did. She doesn't always think things through, and that's when she gets herself into trouble. And you — you're supposed to be a magister, right? Don't you know better? Or do you just think we're a bunch of dumb Dalmascans and you can do whatever you want with us because it doesn't matter?"
"Vaan!" Basch inturrupted. "Wait until he comes to his senses."
Words bubbled up with bile. "Stop," Gabranth cried. "Stop speaking of me as if incompetent."
"Far from it." Basch's arm was around him again.
"No. No, Basch. No. You never let me speak back then. Never. I knew they would lay siege to our town. But you never listened. You only did as you wished."
"I did what our people asked me to do."
"And you caused many of their deaths! Because of you, everything was taken from them and taken from me. Do you know what I saw? I watched them— I watched— " Words dissolved into sobs, and the sound of his voice was drowned out by keening ghosts.
Basch tightened his grip around Gabranth's shoulders, pulling him closer. The room started to spin and Gabranth fought to keep his eyes open.
"Look," Vaan said. "Lots of people fail to listen at the moment they should, but that was long ago, and we all have other things to worry about now. We all make mistakes, okay? Anyhow, you're a wreck. You can't stay here like this."
"Let me help you stand," Basch said. "Vaan, help steady him."
"No." Gabranth pushed his brother away. "You cannot take me anywhere. You cannot! I am still a magister. You have no right to place me in your custody."
"We are only concerned for your safety," Basch replied.
"My safety? My safety? You only seek to place me behind bars, or worse."
"We seek to help you into bed. You've drunk more than you can handle. You need sleep."
"Do not tell me where I can and cannot go, brother. You were the one who ordered me to stay home behind barred doors. Do not think me naive."
"Noah," Vaan interrupted. "Your brother is worried about you. Just because we're in Balfonheim doesn't mean no one will report us, and I'm pretty sure that a bunch of Imperial Hoplites have no more love for you than they have for us." Vaan sighed. "Just come back to the Manse with us, okay?"
"Why do you not seek my death?"
"What good would it do? Me and Penelo just want to live our lives. Anyhow, I know what happened. Vayne needed a witness. You were told to capture someone and make them believe Basch did it so they would testify against him in a trial. You probably just believed all of Vayne's lies, right? Basch said you're full of regret, but you just don't want to admit it. The truth is, you did something really stupid, but now it's done. So if you want to make things better, you'll just have to help us."
"You're only saying this to trick me."
"Believe what you want, you're still coming with us."
"Others would gut me and dump my body in the sea."
"Then I guess you're lucky others haven't found you yet."
"Vayne wants me dead! I know it! He will find me — find all of us. He'll seek his revenge."
Vaan put his hand on Gabranth's shoulder. "Which is why you're going to help us once you've slept off the booze."
"And what guarantee do I have that you will not take your revenge on me once all is done?"
"Noah, stop." Basch hushed him.
"No! All of you wish me dead. Admit it!" Gabranth had been ready the moment he stepped into the top of the Pharos. Let them spill his blood. Let them have a taste of the revenge they should seek. He and the all of the Empire deserved it.
"Alright, Basch," Vaan said. "Let's get this mess back to the manse. He needs to sleep this off."
Sour bile scorched Gabranth's throat, burning the back of his mouth. "All of you want me dead. Say it! Say it!"
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He had been drunk, so drunk, drunker than he had ever let happen before.
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Head pounding, Gabranth reaches for the fallen bed sheet, dragging it up, over his body. Basch still snores next to him. He wears a shirt that is ripped and stained. Lying together, they are a portrait of failure the world should burn and forget.
A knock on the door. Vaan wakes and jumps up just as the it begins to open. The boy's reflexes are fast, one hand against the doorframe, the other pushing hard against the edge of the door. His body blocks the narrow crack that has opened.
"Vaan, what's going on?"
"Penelo, not now."
"Is that Noah? Is he alright?"
There is whisper of words Gabranth cannot hear. Vaan pushes the door closed and clicks the lock into place.
"I cannot help you," Noah says, not looking at Vaan, not lifting his head. "I cannot."
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Next chapter is "Those who Lack Power," a Noah/Ashe/Basch mess in response to a request ellnyx made many, many months ago... Sorry for the delay in this one. Life became too busy and writing the opening 800 words from the point of view of a terribly, terribly, *terribly* drunk person wasn't easy. Those words sat on my computer for way too long.