A Balthier character piece. One-shot. PG-like for misuse of semicolons (gee, that's rare), multiple mentions of the booze, and a comment regarding the Ladies of the Evening. The existing timeline is pretty much linear, though the piece itself is a bit jumpy. Reminds me of a Ciardi piece I once read.
EDIT: work-shopped for accuracy.
Disclaimer: I don't own FFXII.
Stints
Balthier had three pairs of boots. He kept them neatly lined up at the foot of his bed. The first pair were boots for walking, for hiking, for those old-fashioned, unnecessarily irritating times in jagd, and for strolling or stealing about the streets of just about any damn city he pleased. The second pair, in classic Balthier fashion, looked exactly similar to the first. Truth be told, they were duplicates; Balthier had purchased them both on the same day. The second pair of boots, therefore, had the exact same use as the first; the difference being that Balthier only changed his boots when the first pair got so bad the cobbler complained he might not actually be able to mend them this time.
The third pair of boots, however, were taller, nicer, and possessing of a shine that could only be proof of a reservation for some special occasion. Balthier called them his Sunday Best, even though anyone that knew a thing about them-- and granted, there were only ever a very few souls Balthier sat down with to have a serious discussion regarding his wardrobe of foot attire, and of them, not a one had probably ever met Balthier while he was sober anyway --could surmise the figurative use of the term. Balthier, regardless of how his mother's name for him might make it sound, was no church-goer. And jackboots were not church wear. Their use, for anyone that might care to document, would be a rather interesting mystery were it that anyone other than the One Night Girls from his late run-away teens ever saw them in existence.
Balthier was a focused, steady-minded individual closely in touch with his realistic side, but above all else he was wrapped in a thin skin of his own whims and a film of exciting priorities, the first of which being the mentality that if it couldn't be done whilst telling a joke, it ought not be done at all. It was because of this life-long ideology that Balthier kept not one, but two, pairs of reliable, durable boots-- having acknowledged the benefits of preparation --and one pair of tall, polished, show boots in black, both filled with candy.
Most days were long days, and nowadays beds were used for passing out for ten hours at a time rather than staying up with company. It wasn't hard to be more pirate than Balthier-- surely the men born and raised in the salty blue and white of the Balfonheim Port could spare a scoff for the classy fop that still followed the nobility's rule of no-collar-without-cuffs --but it was, for certain, rather difficult to be a better pirate than Balthier. His methods fell off to the side of the mainstream style for his ilk, moving in backwards eddies against the upward trends of carelessness. Balthier's fun, however, was nowhere near over just yet; he wanted after the kind of treasure that would always be remembered as being stolen, if only to engrave the name Balthier into the heads of those reading the newspapers, and leave the Faram-ing to the church pews. He had, in the past, had his kicks here and there with ferrying away the beautiful wives of men from this country or that, but it was only so long before such games became a bore. If either an entire town or a large group of government officials didn't notice it was gone, it wasn't ever worth keeping anyway.
In the time and place that Balthier grew up, it was a tad unusual for children to dream of a life as a sky pirate, as it complacently became the one-size-fits-all catch-net as the imaginary future escape route for nearly all children oppressed into sewer life by this empire or that, but didn't find quite the same prosperity among children in capital cities, among the literate sons, the ones who had a future-promise as near as their father's conference table. Rather, Balthier lived as a member of the majority of his kind, those being the minority: the well-offs, the easy-comes, the whimsicals. He didn't want for much as a child, primarily because the height-chair he was born into rivaled the height of most thrones among the smaller countries.
It was his lack of reactions that had at first led his father to believe that he had no possible future in any intellectual profession; his short visits to the lab areas, viewing this or that ongoing scientific experimentation, wielding no apparent rewards for the young mind of the genius' boy: outwardly he continued to display those charming smiles and make those "nobility's humour" jokes that earned him so many pats on the head and a thousand you're-just-like-your-father's, but no sign of having drunk in the breakthroughs his father force-fed into his grasp. It was only when a question among the apprentices arose that could seemingly not be sated by any answer the tech crew had that Cid finally realized what it was about the boy that he had been missing in a glance all along. When all understudy was halted due to minor tribulation, and the good doctor himself was called to step out of his office, young clone head only to his waist yet, trailing at close proximity, it was not the photocopy child's accent that Cid noticed, nor was it the familiar pattern of speech, but rather, it was his gentle mother's good skill of speedy notice with little remark that showed itself in the boy. So common was it that the boy would open his mouth and say naught but humour that Cid had come to speak over top of him when necessary, and seeing that both the question was regarding a phenomena of Science, and that the boy had opened his mouth at the same time, Cid prepared to do so again. It wasn't until he heard the words he had been himself preparing in a voice so similar to his own offered in answer that he realized it wasn't wasted time, nor was it a topic over the young master's head-- for the first time Dr. Cid didn't mind the fawning over his son, and decided it might be worth it to take the time out of his day to look him in the eyes every now and then. This same unstartleable tendency was what won him many good treasures from the hands of the guards that would have captured him, had they half the wit and twice the gall as their criminal, who seemed somehow to always have a comeback and a fresh idea.
The religion of his graceful mother on the other hand, had been quite exquisitely wasted on his father, Science putting Fairytales to death everyday, and out of desperation for salvation she resorted to her child as her miracle, sure to impart to her son much more of the Good Word than she had with his father before him. Her failure led to her death, and the first longstanding resentment Cid came to hold against Archadia's Fortunate Son. The truth of his childhood remained, unfortunately, that Ffamran Balthier was raised in a wealthy household, his outlook on life prospering, until of course he was left with a dead mother and a father who had found again his imaginary friends. The questions asked by the media were simple ones that he never deigned to answer, questions asking why it was he never deigned to answer his father's questions.
At age fifteen Balthier had made a sulking mess of himself, having accepted a forced occupation he found no goal or joy in, depressing himself with thoughts of what had become of the both of them. Cid, on the other hand, had taken to ignoring him quite frequently due to the amount of other things he found for himself to do, dialogue only occurring in certain, rare situations. When his father told him, while with his hands red, eyes tired, face numb and boots muddy, that he ought know to take better care of the furniture his mother had taken such a liking to, Balthier didn't bother to vocalize any sort of rebuttal, only waiting until Cid had returned to his conversation with himself to say that his mother must have had rather skewed judgment anyway, as he seemed to recall her having taken a liking to her son as well. He would have spoken directly to Cid were it not that Cid would never have heard him, and that the asides are what really make the production anyhow.
The urge to run away-- to make a new person out of himself, to screw all of his father's high strung plans for him --came and went much like the urge to go drinking on nights when he wasn't supposed to. He was sure the company was better, the time well-wasted, and that it would confirm his belief that the swiftest way to gain distance from his father would be to go absolutely nowhere with life. He didn't really care about the consequences, as no matter how he betrayed his country, his government, his chops, his blood, that it would be a hell of a lot more enjoyable. The plans, therefore, to essentially orphan his father, had been in the making for over a year, just about as long as he'd been drinking.
Sympathy, then of course, was like to a hangover, in that he always knew at the time that he'd feel it in the morning.
It bothered him (in a slightly off-hand way) that, even after running he still bore the lingering stiff spirit, that he still carried the seeds of Arcadian judgementalism and discipline, but Balthier considered that so long as he could pull his head out of his ass-- where every other Arcadian seemed to like keeping theirs --then he wouldn't bee too bad off. He did, after all, find it to be a redeeming aspect in him that, regardless of his past employment, Arcadians had ever allowed themselves to be only so fond of him. No more and no less. As the son of their favorite mad genius and the walking, living, breathing incarnation of Arcadian advancement and the perfection of their child prodigies, they accepted him as one of their purebred, full-blooded own, though still with distaste for his red-on-blue, sarcastic personality. He had many of the same qualities as to be expected from someone that had learned most of what he knew from a city that got high on information-- he had his decidedly Arcadian moments --but upon his theft and disappearance the great city that had been his home hardly mourned his leaving her. Rather they declared him in exile, guilty of desertion and grand theft. The Arcadians then felt no kinship to such low-grade, low-quality aristocracy, and felt no guilt in condemning such has-been riff-raff. Even though it would never be acknowledged aloud, in every pair of eyes that found him guilty it was disgust that lined their lashes. Truth was rarely a thing told in a city where the law was the weight of word, and the truth that would never be spoken about the forever lost Bunansa son was that, in the eyes of the people, it had been his crimes of slang and modesty that had truly been the cause for the bar across the doors of the grandiose coop he'd flown.
His start was slow, chasing small demons and phantoms that haunted at what he wanted, floating through small, alley taverns, hollowed out by their shadows, until he was certain that everyone that knew his name had never seen his face and that everyone that knew his face had never heard his name. It wasn't until he grew into his wit, his grin, and the space in his brain that understood how people worked that he became a threat to any beautiful thing a lady could dress about her neck at the cost of her evening date's fortune. He did not fear the streets, nor did he worry over any air patrol asking for papers. He would steal what they had because they had it, and because at one point he had had it too, only he had run away from it. He had never asked for much as a child, but when it came that he was no longer being handed all the great toys he could possibly have, he would snatch them for the fun he used to be able to have with them.
Thus on that note of a trickster's thought process began his years of becoming, the period of time during which Balthier learned by experience, as one of the youngest, most cynical, and most expensive bounties to make the Rosarian memo. For a year the Arcadian emperor heard his name and laughed at the familiar ring, promising a banquet in a sky pirate's honor were the man himself to ever come strolling through the palace doors. At the year's end Balthier had made Arcadia's Bounty as well, and no longer put the emperor in a good mood.
Secretly Balthier cherished that wild side of his as a relic from a time and place and personality that did not fade in its brightness from white to grey, become stale and brittle because of war, or capitulate to hate, grief, or spite. Rather, Balthier saw himself as a peacetime regularity, a childish greed born out of the economic boredom of an expansionist country spreading in distance, increasing it's velocity, but allowing all acceleration to stagnate. In Ivalice, Balthier's kind had as of late become a dying breed, putting his survival instincts on the edge.
He really didn't fear much though; death was eventual, heights had a view. The dark was for sleeping, and when he was alone it was easier to concentrate. He was, however, afraid of becoming boring like men had before him, and took active measures to prevent it. Each big bang, each target steal, had to be bigger, greater, and more fun than the last. Otherwise, he might just hit a limit, flat line, and fade away into the nether regions of obscure piracy, kidnapping old maids, stealing valueless rocks, and being hunted by once famous men, now discussed in taverns only after three too many drinks and as infamous "has-beens." Watching his charges escalate with the distant alarm with which one might watch the Richter graphs, it occurred to him at one point that his insecurities might one day be the death of him, but he still had a few years to go before he'd ever care.
Balthier's run-in with the rarest treasure he'd ever happened upon occurred shortly after his first crawl out of a prison sewer, and hasn't ended since. He hadn't made any sort of habit out of getting to know his neighboring wilderness, but he was aware of the strange sight a man might see if he was lucky, drunk, or in the wrong place at the right time. The hidden ladies with pointed toes-- the lovely Vieras. He said it must be the beginning of a very good Act Three; she said the Gods had cast her a strange lot to meet a man so terrible smelling, and asked him to speak softly.
When she told him to steer clear of a forest he'd never heard of, he said he'd be sure to do so, simply because there was no use traveling where no one had been before-- there was nothing to steal. He told her, for her own information, that the excitement was where the people were, and by now she agreed.
He didn't try to pull anything with her, he told her straight that he only had one bed, and that she was welcome to it if she'd like, the couch would suit him. She didn't bother to consider it too thoroughly before declining the kind gesture-- beds, she claimed, were so full of smell, so smellful, so meshed together and made-up of chunks of it's person, that she wouldn't ever possibly spend any amount of time in an area so personal to him; it made her head hurt. She instead slept on his couch, curled in a ball, while he wished he was half the piece of work he'd once been, because it would have been one hell of a claim to have said he'd bedded a Viera.
It was around the time that he learned his partner (for the term 'friend' just didn't sit well between them) was attracted to the synthetic shine of the things humes could create in factories and through the deformities of manipulating her green nature-- the time when he began to wrap gifts daily in Aluminium foil for her --that he could feel the cool steel curtain draping around him and cutting him off from the dying fires and the calming rebel of Ivalice's once most sought after bounty-head phantom. It was his desires more so than his age or experience that mellowed him, clapping his outrageous, excessive, and atrocious in irons; leaving him with practicality, some empathy, and a respectably criminal mind. At twenty-something-or-other, Balthier knew he would be young forever, but he finally had let the teenager's spirit go to it's grave.
When the target nearly got them killed and Balthier came back without it; when he carried her all the way back in the dark and sat by her bed until she woke up to offer her candy-- he knew he had left his plateau of cynicism behind, his flee having brought him somewhere he had never thought he'd come: close once more to another living being. The feeling as if there were two of him became prevalent, and he wondered if she looked at him and thought, as he did of her, that he was but an extension of herself. Then again, he knew first-hand that Vieras had better perception than that.
He hadn't always wanted to do what he was doing, and be who he was, but he was certain as he was clever that he would let himself change with his whims, as that seemed to keep him safe from the dull, dreamless state the Arcadians called making a life, the madness that seemed able to capture men's minds from their very veins, and keep him forever on the move: on the wing.
Note: This was written while Clueso's "Chicago" was on repeat, if you were wondering. True story, good song.