I suppose if someone wanted to, they could see this as the fic-based accompaniment of a previous essay about Penelo, titled 'Penelo: Paper, Plastic or Full of Personality?' I like to think this is something that could stand alone, however. ;)

In any case, this is for Midnightdiddle, who is celebrating her birthday, who is tirelessly awesome, who really inspired me to rethink my entire characterization of Larsa and Penelo and who writes some of the most enchanting fanfic I've read so far in the fandom. I can only hope this matches even a tenth of her usual brilliance! Comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved. After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration...

Title: Ordinary Creatures

Fandom: Final Fantasy XII

Series: The Uses of Enchantment

Characters/Pairings: Penelo, Vaan, Larsa, Penelo/Larsa if you squint hard enough

Rating: PG

Summary: Sometimes, being only ordinary in a world that's extraordinary isn't such a bad thing.

Whenever Penelo thinks of herself, both she and the world both agree that, overall, she's a pretty damn ordinary girl.

The idea of being just that doesn't really bother her much. She's never been the sort to stand out in a crowd, which is something she's gotten used to and has even figured out how to use for herself, somewhat. Growing up in Dalmasca, she was never really anything special, except maybe to her family, and even then only because she was the youngest and the smallest and the first to get to lick the spoon clean when her mother baked cakes and cookies. Well, maybe she was special to Vaan too, if only because she was usually the only thing that kept him from being killed by giant, evil werewolves on the Giza Plains and giant, scaly, evil lizards on the Westersand. But nobody else besides the people who pretty much had to love her really saw her as very much and she doesn't particularly disagree or dislike that view either. All told, it's something she's pretty used to by now.

Being nothing special but being nothing too shabby either-- well, she guesses that that's her in a nut-shell right here.

People don't always agree with her. Sometimes they even try to prove her wrong by telling her that she can't be ordinary if she's also pretty. In fact, it's usually the first thing that people point out when she says she's run-of-the-mill and that makes her smile because that only proves her point. In the long run, prettiness doesn't mean much of anything. Still, she gets these compliments more and more as she grows up-- and she's only 18, she's still growing-- and she gets used to them little by little. There's no use letting them go to her head, of course, and no use thinking that she's really beautiful. It's just that she's blonde and petite and skinny and the further and further she and Vaan travel from Dalmasca, the more exotic she looks to nearly everybody. Besides, she and Vaan were never ones for big, fussy clothes and they got more than their fair share of stares whenever they get away from Dalmasca-- especially when they're up north and everyone else going goes around in those fussy, enormous outfits that cover damn near everything. They're two sky pirates and people who aren't completely stupid tend to pick up on hat-- even though nobody could be as rude as the men from Rozarria when it comes to staring and ogling.

She still blushes, sometimes, when she catches those looks… but she's gotten used to them gradually. And she still remembers something her mother once said about beauty being a sort of power and a smile being a sort of weapon to wield. So when she needs to, she can flirt and smile and whisper and simper and it's all worthwhile when she and Vaan can use the way she looks as a way of distracting others or letting their rivals think that their team is nothing to worry about-- the flirt and the dope, the idiot and the slut, who cares, they don't matter, don't bother with keeping your eyes on that sort.

It pays off more than she ever expected to because her mother was right. Beauty is power, even when it's just a plain sort of beauty-- and there's nothing more that most men like more than stupid, simpering girls. And there's nothing Penelo likes more than taking advantage of that type of men herself, than making them think she's nothing until she can turn around and prove them wrong entirely.

Payback's a bitch and often, frankly speaking, so is she. And the somewhat frightened looks Vaan always shoots her afterwards always makes her smile with all her teeth.

People don't often tell her this but she's also, much more importantly, brighter than she appears. People tend to dismiss her because of her fluffy exterior and she's mostly happy to let them do so because it lets her get away with more things-- and thanks to Vaan, that's always a handy ability to have. But she could read and write and count up to 100 by the time she was five-- not that her father would ever let her get away with being illiterate, of course, not when he spent all of his days with ink underneath his fingernails as he counted up his legers with one hand and wrote his story books with the other. He had come down in the world when he had married a shop-keeper's daughter and then turned into one himself; any claims he had to being better than run-of-the-mill middle-class had been chucked right out afterwards. But he had always been too proud to let his children be ignorant and Penelo always thinks of him whenever she smells the dusty smell of old pages and dried ink and leather gently ossifying in Archadian libraries.

So despite what people tend to think she's a bright girl and she's always been good with magic-- that's what comes with being a Majus, with being the only daughter of a magical scholar and the sister to the very best mage-soldiers in all of Rabanastre (or so her brothers used to claim.) In Rabanastre, after her parents and brothers had died, she spent most of her days looking after Migelo's shop, at least when Vaan wasn't getting her to play hooky, to chase dreams she'd never really thought of as real until they burst into her world without warning. But every time she had gone to the sundries stock-room to tally up the potions or bent down to count up a customer's gil, she had been running through other numbers in her head. How much would be needed to buy the next level of white magic, how much she'd need to get a proper set of mage armor, how much energy it would take to cast a really awesome fire spell that would really show everybody what she could be...

Vaan hadn't been the only one making crazy plans at that point, though she doesn't ever think she'll admit as much to him. He'd get smug and then she'd have to slap him upside the head till he faked tears and wrote falsely soggy letters to Ashe whining about how mean his partner was and couldn't the Queen of Dalmasca get him a good replacement… and okay, maybe she'd tell him someday anyway. Just to see the smile on his face. When they were both old and gray and he couldn't evade her slapping arm for too long anyway.

Nowadays, though, she usually does have the money to get what she needs for battle. And that's good, because she actually does like to fight, despite the fact that she's always the one to herd Vaan off the field when they meet with a monster that's too much for them to handle. (Someday, she'll get him to believe that discretion is the better part of valor. Just… not anytime soon.) And for two sky pirates who live on the edge for every single hunt they go on-- well, they need the best of the best, no matter how pricey it gets. She worries about their budget all the time but she just can't help herself when there's new techniques to master or new staffs to try out or new spells to cast in the field.

Of course, that brings its own set of problems with their purse strings. Sometimes, no matter how much she and Vaan manage to rake in with hunts and quests and creepy monster looting, it all seems to go away towards new magic and new equipment and new sources of information, until there's pretty much nothing left to actually live on. But, well, they're young and they'll learn yet. And, like Vaan always quipped, that's what friends in high places were for anyway.

She should probably feel sorrier for taking advantage of said friends but, well, she's not particularly moral. Caring, yeah, she tries to be-- but not moral or idealistic or a bleeding heart or anything. She used to object to Vaan's thievery because she was afraid that he'd be caught and thrown into a dungeon (which actually did happen), not because she felt bad for most of the rich jerks he robbed most days. She became a sky pirate because she didn't see what was the use of letting good treasure molder in a dungeon or ancient palace, not when it could help people like Vaan and herself out.

Life seemed to owe them, honestly.

But compassion trumps greed for her-- she's lost track of the number of times Vaan has gotten upset because she decided not to take treasure that other people, people who were even worse off than they were, which was saying something-- needed dearly. He usually comes around to her way of thinking anyway, but he also sulked and pouted and whined like a toddler who'd had his last piece of candy away. And she sometimes gets upset at herself too, because money's tight even when they're sky pirates and it's hard to live off of things you forage in the wild. But she's not going to do anything she knows she shouldn't do-- she's got some pride left, after all, some sense that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed, invisible boundaries that shouldn't be breached. And besides… at their worst, Larsa always has a standing invitation for them at Archades when they're in need. He's a good friend and she always tells herself that she and Vaan aren't taking advantage of him-- they're just taking him up on his offer, really.

She still worries that they are, though. And when she does, she makes sure that the next time they stop in a town, she sends off a letter to Larsa as soon as possible, one with lots of cool descriptions of their adventures (because it must get boring to stay in just one city all the time) and pictures of the places they went to (even though Vaan says that her sketches look like she dipped a miniature chocobo in ink and let it roll around on the paper) and even a souvenir or two (though she doesn't know if even the really cool coeurl fang earrings she sent to Larsa for his last birthday were 'suitable gifts for His Imperial Majesty'-- even though they'd look better on him than any number of silly, girly earrings.)

Larsa deserves much better than to have his lazy bum friends mooch off of him forever without giving him something in turn, honestly.

Overall, she tends to worry a lot about people. She has this in common with Larsa-- though she gets annoyed when someone worries about her too much. (She never lets the hypocrisy bother her. Hey, somebody has to be the responsible one in their team.) She worries that Vaan's eventually going to do something so stupid and reckless that it'll get him killed and this can drive her to nag and nag and nag him about his safety until he storms off, yelling that he wants to get a partner that's a little less of a paranoid freak and for god's sake, Penelo, you're my partner, not my mother. And that's her cue to get angry as well and throw his stupid things off of the cock-pit and rage and rage until he comes back to their ship and lets her hurl insults at him all she likes, until she's spent and shaking and he takes her into his arms and says sorry, sorry, Penny, you know I didn't really mean it, I won't let myself die, I'm here for you, I'll always be, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

She doesn't know what she'd do if Vaan got his fool self killed. He's the last connection she has to her past and if he died, all of it would be gone entirely.

Like her father, like her mother, like Reks, like her brothers. He's the only one who remembers them the way she remembers them. Vaan's her past. Vaan's her memory. Vaan's her partner. Vaan's her link.

She worries over everyone else too, even the people who probably don't even need to be worried about because they've got other people-- who are smarter and quicker and stronger than she'll ever be-- looking out for them already. She worries that Balthier will eventually going to get into trouble that he can't wriggle out of like usual and that even Fran, amazing as she is, can't save him from. She worries that Ashe will find herself in a life she never wanted to live, however much she lives Dalmasca, that her will to fight and go on fighting for the future will be crushed by the weight of Queen, Crown and Country. She worries that Larsa is going to wear himself out before he's even twenty taking care of that mighty empire of his and that Basch'll be hurt while he's doing so, be hurt by being reduced to just a shadow of a dead man she still hates for breaking, for killing, for ruining everything.

And most of all, she worries that she'll do something stupid and that she'll eventually screw something important up and that she'll be left behind once more. That's the greatest fear of them all. All her life, it seems as though people have been leaving her, no matter what she does to keep them with her. Her parents, her brothers, the very first boy she ever…

She knows they didn't meant to do this but still.

Still.

She just wants this sort of thing to end. She doesn't want to lose anyone else and the thought of that-- of having to look on when someone she loves begins to walk away-- is enough to make her shake.

Not that she'll admit it, of course. It's one thing to act like a stupid bimbo when she has to-- nobody she really respects would take that sort of stupid con seriously. But acting like someone fragile, someone breakable, someone who couldn't be trusted, someone who needed to put away before she managed to hurt herself entirely…

No. No, not ever. Not ever again. She wasn't going to let that sort of thing happen once again here.

She cried when her parents died and when her brothers died and finally when Reks died but she hasn't cried since then. Not when she's conscious anyway. Sometimes she wakes up with tears in her eyes but that doesn't really count. Those are just dreams and dream don't mean anything in the face of reality.

Because she's never going to let the past break her, no matter how it greets her. If she could survive almost two years as an occasionally homeless street orphan, she can survive anything else life throws at her. What's important isn't what happened to you in the past-- it's what you're going to try with what happens after.

She knows and can feel it in her bones. That's the really important thing.

But for all of that, though, there's something really comforting about the past. She even misses the old crew from two years past sometimes, even though she knows there's no real hope for them all being together anymore. It's kinda funny, really, that she gets so nostalgic about times that were, when she thought about it, really damn terrible. It'd all been half a year of trudging around Ivalice killing lots and lots of scary things and seeing lots and lots of people die and figuring out that the world wasn't nearly as kind as she'd assumed even after the war. It had all been sort of tragic and awful and brutal and bloody, even if it all needed to happen to get the sorta happy ending they ended up with here.

But still, for all of that, it hadn't been so bad, not when she had had her friends with her almost the entire time. And if she hadn't gone with them, she wouldn't have been the lady sky pirate she was now. She'd never have known how strong she could be if she didn't have Balthier to give his own special brand of 'encouragement', Fran to give her something to aspire to, Ashe to give her something to fight for, Basch to give her some really important lessons on wielding an axe, and Vaan to give her a person to always stand at her back.

So the people she traveled with, they're kinda like her family now and it's funny to see how they ended up that way. Way back when she had first met them, thinking about anyone taking the place of her mother and her father and her brothers would have just shocked her-- especially not this odd group of people she had mostly followed around the world because she was afraid of Vaan getting himself hurt over crazy things once more if she wasn't there to pull him out of trouble. And they were so strange back then-- a collection of seductive sky pirates and exotic vieras and fallen royalty and would-be regicides and then Vaan and her randomly stuck there in the middle, following everyone else around because they didn't really have much else to do.

But now they're not just a strange group she once traveled with to go and help save the world and break some stones or what have you. (She's still not sure about exactly what happened after they had stopped fighting just Archadia and started fighting fate itself and Ashe refuses to talk to anyone about some of the things the Occuria told her anyway.) Now they're her friends and allies, her uncles and aunts, and she thinks it's good to know that she's got their back-up whenever she needs it most.

And Vaan is of course her brother, the last of the four brothers she once had in this world, and she loves him more than anything else still remaining on earth. She doesn't always agree with him, god knows, and she still thinks its unfair how he gets to be the captain when she's only the navigator on their airship. (Though it is true that he couldn't find his own arse with an atlas if he didn't have her around to help.) But he's her brother and she's his sister and she'd never stop having his back on things when he needed her to help him find his way.

There's another person, though, who might be almost as important and almost as much a friend and far, far, far more needy. And sometimes she feels almost guilty about it-- because really, what would her brothers say if they knew what she felt? Sleeping with the enemy, they'd probably dub it, like a lot of women who were hard-up did during the war years, when most of the men of Rabanastre were dead or in prison or elsewhere entirely. Sleeping with the enemy and that made you the enemy too-- never mind that she'd never be able to see Larsa as the enemy, or that she wasn't about to jump into bed with a fourteen year old boy (god, no), or that Archadia had been an ally for Dalmasca after Vayne was finished off.

But then she's never really hated the imperials, not the way Vaan or Reks or her brothers did anyway. A lot of them had been absolute jerks during the time Rabanastre was a part of the Archadian Empire-- but she knows that that was less because they were really terrible people (most of them had been-- not too good or bad or anything really) but because it was easy to get away with bullshit in a country their nation had conquered. So she had hated it when the Archadian soldiers had bitched and whined and taken advantage of Dalmasca's people and merchants, when they had given ridiculously huge bills for even the smallest items at the market and left crap tips for dancing girls. She had hated it but she had known even that that they had all been all human and that, no matter how many annoying and petty things that they had pulled, they hadn't been the one to make decisions about what to do or who to conquer. They hadn't had much of a choice in who they were and what they had to do to survive either.

It's the people who did make those decisions and rested easily afterwards-- like Vayne Solidor-- that really scared her.

Something about Vayne had terrified her from the very first. And sometimes, even the last remaining scion of House Solidor frightens her as well. Because-- well. Larsa's always been nice to her, even from the very first moment he had been her knight in shining breeches, dragging her away to safety from the hound dogs of his empire. He's always been kind and gentle and friend and even-- it kinda startles her to admit it but she's noticed-- kind of cute, in a bright, birdy, boyish sort of way. He's growing taller, even though he's still as skinny as ever, and he's still got better hair than she's ever had and even though that makes her a bit jealous, it's something she likes about him anyway.

It's hard, of course, not to like Larsa, not to like his slow smile or his surprisingly low laugh or the way he folds his gloved hands and leans forward when he wants to whisper something into her ear. It's hard not to like someone so strange and so interesting, so much a combination of gawky boy and earnest adult, of child emperor and teenaged friend, of someone so set in it's ways even when he's still growing. Penelo knows he's something special, something she could never hope to be, and she might even have envied him if she didn't know how much it cost him to have to be that way.

So Larsa's both very strange and very kind and he has a standing invitation for them at his palace that she and Vaan always take shameless advantage of when the bounties are few and far between. And whenever they go, Larsa always pulls out all of the stops for "Lord" Vaan and "Lady" Penelo (which makes her blush since she's still not used to being called that even though Ashe always insists) and they can eat as much as they like, whenever they like. For two sky pirates that used to (literally) sing and dance for their suppers, that's a big deal.

Every time she breaks bread at Larsa's table, she think she loves him-- as a friend!-- just a little bit more. And every time she has to nudge him into eating at that same table in turn instead of gawking at her and Vaan as though they'd disappear if he blinked too hard, she thinks maybe she's necessary to someone other than Vaan after all.

And sometimes, afterwards, when Larsa finally looks more like himself and less like a "hunchback slavering over papers"-- that's how Vaan describes him and even though Penelo glares at him for it, she kind of agrees-- she'll put her arms around her friend a little. Just a little, of course, she doesn't want to give Larsa the wrong idea. She's not blind, despite what Uncle Basch might think, and she knows he's got a little crush on her, that he's sort of always had one on her, ever since they first met in Bhujerba and after a week of being with each other, he spent all of their trip up to the Leviathan letting her know that if she really wanted to stay with him, she could.

Well, she hadn't stayed with him then and she doesn't stay with him now, even during those strange moments where he looks ready to ask her to once more. But she comes to visit him with Vaan at least once every few months-- she figures that he could do with the company-- and she always puts her arms around him when he looks sad, which he does all too often nowadays. It always makes Larsa's face brighten a little and that's nice because he looks too pinched most of the time, in a way he never really used to. And when that happens, she's even more tempted to run her fingers through his soft, dark hair than usual, even if it means having all of his scary, armored guards jumping on her for 'taking liberties with their liege'. Not that Larsa would let them do it anyway-- he must be the most easy-going emperor of all time because he never seems to mind; he just closes his eyes and tips back his head and lets her do whatever she'd need to. He's funny that way and some very, very, very quiet part of Penelo thinks he might actually be a little dangerous when he grows up and his body finally catches up to that brilliant mind, adult at just 12 years.

She likes Larsa, wants the best for Larsa, knows that he's already seen all too much hurt and unhappiness before he was even half grown. All of those in their little family have, really, but none of them have the sort of crushing responsibilities that he does. None of them have ever had to take over an entire empire; none of them were ever so gifted, or so fragile.

She likes Larsa and she hopes, more than anything else, that he'll keeps his promises of peace for the future. But he scares her, still. Just a little, of course, because he's still her friend… but it's enough to make her worry about what he's capable of.

Because he's so young and so bright and already so powerful. He's kind and he's needy and he's already an Emperor, and she gets so, so, so scared that he's going to follow his family anyway, even after fighting them, and drag all the ugliness they've already gone through into the future.

She worries about everybody in their odd little family-- but Larsa most of all. For all his power, he is so needy sometimes, as though he has everything he wants and nothing he needs and all the world dragging down on his shoulders. He's only fourteen and there are already shadows under his eyes and a slump to his arms and he only gets exercise when she drags him to mock-spars and dancing lessons and tells him that she won't return to his throne if he can't out-fight or out-dance her.

He usually manages to best her at least once when she says that much.

He's only fourteen and he looks to her more and more to give him something approaching normal-- maybe because she's the most normal thing of all in this crazy mixed up world of theirs, full of princesses and stones and strange excuses for a childhood growing up with all the world looking at an infamous boy emperor. And she likes being needed-- she truly does. She doesn't know if anyone except Vaan has truly wanted her before, or saw her as somehow important, vital, essential.

It's addictive, that feeling. But it's hard not to worry about it all.

But she likes to hope for better things and so she always puts her hand on Larsa's broadening shoulders while Vaan cracks bad jokes about the Emperor of Archadia someday kidnapping a sky pirate's navigator till said emperor turns bright red and said navigator rolls her eyes and vows silent revenge when there are no witnesses around anymore. And then her Emperor will laugh, a bright, warm, trilling laugh that always surprises her when it comes out of that gangly, still growing body, as though nothing could hold it back further. And when she hears that strange, beautiful sound, she thinks the future can just i bring it /i because she can be tough enough to withstand anything to hear that wonderful sound for years and years to come.

Still, sometimes she worries about herself too, because worries always a constant with her. Vaan teases her all the time about growing dark circles under her eyes to match Larsa's, but it's hard to stop. Most of all, she worries that she's always going to be too ordinary to live up to what she wants to do in the world. Normal girls are girls that are just like her-- girls somewhere between plain and pretty, somewhere between tough and weak, stuck in the middle of everything and nothing whatsoever and often just trying to figure out just what in the world they should be doing anyhow.

But then, most ordinary girls don't help save all of Ivalice before they turn 17, battle some of the toughest, stupidest and (thinking back to the very last battles on the Bahamut) i ugliest /i villans in Ivalice and see a queen regain a rightful throne with her help afterwards. So maybe, just maybe, she isn't so run-of-the-mill after all.

Or maybe she really is as ordinary as the world always told her she was-- and that's something better than most people will ever see clearly.

Whenever she thinks like that, she knows that whatever's up ahead for her is a challenge she'll be happy to meet with. And when the future comes calling, she'll go running towards it-- no matter what sort of strange, wild, beautiful things it might have in store for her.