sarasa_cat: (judgegabby)
sarasa_cat ([personal profile] sarasa_cat) wrote2015-01-03 11:55 pm

FIC: My Mud-soaked Name [FFXII, Gabranth, 300 words, PG]

My Mud-soaked Name
(in the "My Brother, The Traitor" series)
Final Fantasy XII, Noah fon Ronsenburg (Gabranth), PG
300 words

Written for [livejournal.com profile] 31_days prompt Jan 3 - My dreams! My brother! My family! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine! I have a duty!

A/N: The prompt alone tells the story, but I decided to write 300 words for it with a 30 minute time limit for writing & editing. Noah fon Ronsenburg in 687 O.V. as his family (without Basch) flees war-torn Landis for a new life in Archades.

.

Along the disputed eastern border of Archadia, a parade of despair trudged through the refugee camp. Torn documents recording property holdings and familial duties lay trampled in the mud, discarded during the final push to leave.

At seventeen Noah's hands had grown too large for his frame. He perched on an empty crate and stared at his right hand as he clenched and unclenched his meaty fist. He had paid four gil to soak his washcloth twice in water so he could scrub his hands clean and manicure his nails. Noah waited for the inevitable. When that moment came he forced himself to stand as the judge called out the name Gabranth.

Noah despised the foreign sound of that name and the truncated way the judge grunted it out, but he stood tall as he walked toward the judge's desk, the man's flabby hand clutching Noah's entry papers. The judge shoved a ledger forward. Noah hesitated, twirling the quill between his fingers before awkwardly scrawling a new signature.

"Six hundred gil," the judge barked.

Noah picked at the cords securing his pouch.

"Can you count, boy?"

"Of course I can count!" Noah yanked the cord with such violence it snapped and the last of the Ronsenburg wealth spilled across the desk. Noah slapped the coins, fighting to keep them from rolling off.

After fees paid and papers secured, Noah thumbed the last of his coin while walking away. Twenty seven gil felt terrifyingly small when cupped in his hand. He shoved the five coins into his pocket, crumpled the empty money pouch, and hurled it into a ditch.

His mother and sister waited for him to heft their only packing trunk up the gangway. Together they boarded the airship, leaving the last of Noah fon Ronsenburg behind in Landisian mud.
 

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