This story is a 10 chapter 75,000+ words tale on Balthier and Fran's lives following the events of Final Fantasy XII. Sadly I have lost my patience with 's UI, so if you'd like to read this story in its entirety, it can be located at archiveofourown dot org /works/947010/.
The story covers F&B's backstory as well.
The artwork in the cover is my own.
Chapter 1: Animals in the Sky
"Get her!"
Fran hangs on to her leather pouch for dear life as she rushes through the ravine, a blur of rocks and bushes flying, the breaths of five angry Bangaa nipping at her heels.
"I will hang you by your Vieran ears!" their leader shouts from far down in the valley, his foot soldiers running as fast as their crooked limbs will allow them, well aware their attempt at outrunning Fran's tan, armoured legs is a futile one.
It is not from them she has stolen the jewels clinking in her pouch. These Bangaa are merely watchmen hired by an entrepreneur, as rich blackguards of the upper class society of the City of Archades likes to refer to themselves. Liars, the lot of them, Fran thinks; deceivers, their sheen nothing but a facade covering up how each and every one of them would sell their own grandmother for a new pair of suspenders, 'friends' to them a term used for people whose opinions, or lack of them, can be exchanged for gil. Fran has been friendly with Archadian gentries on several occasions, in nearly all of them appearing as their latest acquired gem. She would be the highlight of the eve for them, a tall, dark-skinned beauty on their arm, hers would be taking off with their wife's crystal necklace at the end of the night.
This time she didn't have to present herself in an itching gown to have every Hume male gawk at her - it was enough to sneak into the mansion and get the hell out. To her misfortune she'd missed one of the alarms when planning her escape, leading to the the current events of Bangaa heaving at her heels.
Not that she was ever in any real danger - it's been only a few months since Fran and her sky pirate partner helped a princess reclaim her kingdom by use of sword and cunning both. From where Balthier is waiting for her on top of the stone stairs she is now climbing three steps at a time, he could easily have taken their heads off with his perfectly polished shotgun Betelgeuse resting on his shoulder, a grin plastered across his face as he waits for her on his hoverbike.
"That took you long enough," he shouts, mocking both her and the out of breath Bangaa tramping up the stairs behind her. He doesn't move the bike a single foot to aid her, instead waits for Fran to take the strides needed to leap up behind him. With a twist of a hand sparkling with colourful rings and the firm stamp of a leather clad foot they are soon out of Bangaa reach.
"Very considerate," Fran yells over the sound of machinery and sinks her claws that little extra into his side as their destination, their airship the Strahl, appears in sight. Balthier flinches at the touch of her claws. "Fran, as your captain it is my duty to make sure you trim off that excess Flan you devoured so handsomely last week" he shouts. "I can't have you struggling to outleg plump Bangaa."
Fran snorts. Ever since her rabbit-looking ears reached their full height ages ago, she has worn the same size of garb. Over the five years she has known Balthier, his shoulders have grown to fit his shirt, yet Fran appears to Balthier as she did on the day they first met.
In the heart of the Strahl, the cockpit, Balthier plots the course Fran has calculated into the ship's autopilot program. They then go through the procedures, a routine they have done hundreds of times, Fran typing up the system logs, Balthier chewing on a pencil as he sits cross-legged and barefoot in his seat, updating the digital map to match the hand drawn one in his lap. "I think we've earned this," he grins as he pulls out a bottle of brown, spicy liquid as he's completed his tasks, pouring them two small glasses of the strong spirit. Content with a job well done, Balthier unties his vest, pulls it off and throw it in a corner, while Fran unstraps and pulls off her leg armour, swinging her legs onto the dashboard in front of her as she muses at the blue skies laid out in front of them.
Balthier raises his glass. "To your magnificent legs," he declares, face completely serious. She smirks, and drinks to that; it was indeed her legs that brought their prize home.
Back at the pirate port of Balfonheim they unsaddle their airship and go straight to town to make sure the jewels are scattered over Ivalice as fast as possible. Regardless of stolen jewelry demanding fast exchange of hands, Balthier is very specific about finishing a job properly before celebrating victory. He claims it's a preference of ending one thing before starting another, but Fran knows it's also related to how excruciating walking around in the crowds of Balfonheim in the sunlight can be when severely hung over. "To the Whitecap, our brothers and sisters are having a round on us tonight!" he proclaims, confirming Fran's suspicions.
Fran enjoys their nights at taverns, it's where they kick back and relax while getting the latest gossip from other pirates; piracy being a term not reserved for the types of activities Fran and Balthier has just undertaken, but a common term all over Ivalice for treasure hunting, transportation or simply travelling the world. Balthier was but seventeen when they entered the profession together, Balthier being on the run from everything, his fear hidden behind a mask of Archadian upper class arrogance. All his life he had done what was expected of him, only to realize those who asked something from him did not ask out of concern for his well being, despite how much they presented it as so - his father being the prime example. Cidolfus demen Bunansa, of the Archadian House Bunansa, pushed Balthier into the Achademy to train as a Judge, a prime soldier, stating Balthier was accepted at the early age of 15 purely due to talent, which was a blatant lie. Cid Bunansa had used his contacts to push his last remaining son into the position he felt respectable enough for his last remaining heir. He was by no means the first father in Archades to do so.
It is not painless to learn that one's father sees his child solely as possession. Even worse: A tool.
It took Balthier several months from his moment of realization to his moment of breaking free. He says he doesn't know what held him back. "Denial," he told Fran after roughly a year of acquaintance, when he trusted her enough to share the more delicate sides to his past. He eventually stole one of the Archadian army's prototype ships, a ship simply named YPA-GB47 which, as he kept upgrading her, later renamed the Strahl, leaving his old life completely, welcoming a new one as a carefree sky pirate.
Fran believes her being able to relate to leaving something permanently to be one of several reasons they understand each other. She herself left the village in the Woods she grew up in many years ago, leaving behind a life in which she felt she could not breathe. A few months ago the events of reclaiming Dalmasca for Princess Ashe had them both revisit their old homes, only to be reminded why they decided to leave. Balthier swears he does not miss Archades, but Fran thinks of how she dreams of Eruyt, and knows this claim from Balthier is one of the few lies left in the generous reserve of a born Archadian.
Balthier's father was consumed by his greed. The Nethicite stones he seeked for power eventually led to his end. Fran has lived long enough to know that any overwhelming desire is a thing of destruction. The lessons she has learned from Humes is that they often fail to act rationally, to make the sensible choice, often sending them into an early grave. A life of contentment is a far better option, Fran believes.
The inn and tavern by the name of The Whitecap is busy this evening. There isn't even the smallest chance of fitting in by one of the large shared tables, so they sit outside on a small bench drinking ale while waiting for a seat. As they try spotting animals shapes in the few clouds above them, a Seeq with a camera walks up to them. "Your picture taken, good Sir and Madam?" He holds up a tiny camera against his blue shaded, generous perimeter, his tusks bending upwards as he smiles. "I can send it to you when it is done, I do very neat post-production effects." "Can you take out her ears?" Balthier asks, Fran punching his arm, ale spilling onto his thigh. "Why," he says, grinning, "you hate your ears".
They agree on a price. Balthier and Fran puts down their ale and stands up, Balthier insisting on standing on the bench, which Fran finds incredibly silly. It is very obvious she is taller than him.
He puts his arm around her shoulder, Fran sighing at the well known curious touch of his fingers. "Bangaa fleaaaas" the Seeq says as the camera goes off and Balthier tries to grab Fran's breast. As always he is a tad too slow. Her claws will leave a nice mark on his hand. "My lovers keep asking me if I have a cat," Balthier says as they sit down.
An hour later they lean back content in their chairs as the barmaid is clearing their stamp sized table. Balthier is too full to even contemplate flirting with the generously sized wench, as would be normal procedure at this hour.
They are drinking Madhu, the wonderful, stubborn mead from the Sky City of Bhujerba. "We should go back there one day," Balthier says, Fran half expecting him to start ranting about some blonde, busty girl he hasn't been able to forget since the last time they were there. "I remember you were particularly fond of the armour shop," he continues. Before she has a chance to reply, the barmaid comes back with more wine, Balthier telling her to pour a glass for everyone else present at the inn. Herself included, of course.
A Bangaa they know well, a fellow Clan member, walks over to their table to give thanks for the drink and hear the tale of today's bounty. Balthier is midway in his story, painting a vivid picture of their evil Archadian counterpart, when Fran notices a girl watching them, standing a few tables away. She is well dressed in Rabanastran middle class clothes: earthy colors, long pants and a shirt that unlike Balfonheim fashion leaves everything up to the imagination. Her light hair is cropped just below her neck, and she is pretty, sort of noble looking - had anyone told Fran the girl was of Nabradian royal heritage she wouldn't have questioned them.
She is clearly listening to Balthier's tale, shamelessly so, for eavesdropping without presenting your business straight forward is seen as rude in this part of Ivalice. Or in any port, for that matter.
"...what are we to do with these Archadian kings anyway," Balthier spits. "They will never give up power, nor for any king or politician - for they are the ones providing the silk for the royal and well worded ones' web. No, the only way to weaken their ranks is to relieve them of some resources," Balthier grins and throws his feet up on the table, the Bangaa nodding intently.
Without further ado, the girl walks up to them. "You're saying all Archadians spins lies and destruction?"
Balthier looks up at her with surprise, his face turning slowly into a smirk by what he sees. Fran watches him dress into his silver tongue.
"Not all of them, of course" he modulates himself. He looks her up and down, trying to determine his strategy. Fran rests her head in her palm. She has seen this too many times for it to be even remotely interesting. The Bangaa snorts and walks off, knowing he will have to be content with the story as it was told up until this point.
"So," Balthier says, Fran waiting for his line, only halfway interested to find out if it will be one of the worn out ones, or if he values her enough to bother coming up with something new.
The girl glares at him. "Nothing you will ever say or do can interest me," she snaps. "I do not bed with pirates."
Fran sharpens her ears. This is a most unusual outcome.
Balthier frowns. "Hey now, what did I do to upset a beautiful lady like yourself?"
"Spare me your pitiful attempts. All I came over here to do was to stop your tongue from badmouthing people you barely know anything about."
"Well then," he says, his demeanour changing completely in a split second. "How would you propose we solve a problem like the one of gil hoarding richmen taking advantage of man and country alike?"
"The way to solve this situation is not to rob them blind" she huffs. Balthier looks up towards the ceiling, clearly annoyed by this righteous girl who is too pretty to keep in his visual space when he so obviously has no chance with her.
"Woman," he tells her, Fran watching the girl take the bait completely, "there is no way to 'resolve' a situation of Archadian millionaires who insists on scraping regular hard working citizens of gil." He uses his arms to illustrate his point. "The only thing that works is to take their excess, then give it back to the people. Simple as that."
She folds her arms. "After you've had your share, I presume?"
Balthier grins. "I swear, my partner and I only keep a discreet share. Only what we need to keep our ship flying and our bodies functioning."
She gestures towards the bottles on their table.
"...and to keep you well fed and intoxicated." She glances around the room. "The both of you as well as anyone to happens to be in this bar." She sinks her eyes into him. "No wonder you have so many friends".
Uh oh. Low-blow. Fran's ear twitch as she watches Balthier go from annoyed to angry. He sits up, taking his feet off the table, planting them to the floor. For only having talked to him for three minutes, this girl certainly knows how to work him.
"Now you listen," he says, threatening her with a pointed finger, "I understand your kind. You higher-class born well educated daddy's girls."
Judging from her expression he knows how to work her as well.
"You believe that because something was written down by a scholar, it represents the truth. When the fact is, people walking the surface of cities like the City of Archades know next to squat about the real word. Forget 'right' or 'wrong' missy, forget your politics - down here it's a matter of survival. Look around you. Do you think people in this place can afford to plan for years ahead?" He gestures around him. "We'll I'll tell you they don't. They live from day to day, hand to mouth, and from their point of view, they have just enough to feed their families and sleep under a crooked roof, while the people you're trying to defend are resting their asses comfortably on a cushion of crimson and gold."
She open her mouth to speak, but before she has the chance he cocks her head and says "...and don't look at me like I'm only saying this because I am uneducated. Believe me, I know more than enough of Archadian lifestyle." The last part he says in a thick, genuine Archades upper class accent.
She shuts her mouth tight.
"I'm not telling you my House," he replies to her question before she has the chance to ask it. Then he puts on his most charming smile and pulls out a chair for her. "Now, could I interested you in some excellent Bhujerban Madhu?"
Claire quickly glances around the room, clan hunters, pirates and travelling merchant mingling into a mix you would never see in the City of Archades. Her face turns back to Balthier, for a short moment looking vulnerable, then she sits down, offering her hand to Fran. Her handshake is neither firm nor loose. "Claire," she says. "Claire of House what-do-you-care," she adds, giving Balthier a sour look.
During this first night of acquaintances, they learn several things about Claire. The first is, she's not as awful as they presumed. She's just very faithful to her ideas, and, rare for a person to mention outside of Archades, proud to be Archadian. She laughs at a joke or two and doesn't insult every person in the room behind their back.
The second thing is, even for being an Archadian upper class girl, she is a weapons apprentice. At the moment she is stationed at Rabanastre. "When I decided Archades could stuff it and escaped it a few years ago," Balthier slurs to Fran when Claire is most likely repulsed about using the hole in the ground around the corner, "it was starting to become this thing for upper class children to take interest in the skills of the common people. I kid you not," he says as Fran cocks an eyebrow, "even fashion was influenced by the lower ranks. One year you'd see a classmate with expensive, red silk. The next he's walking around in a grey tunic." He chuckles at that and shakes his head. "It's what happens when people have too much money and too much free time on their hands, Fran."
The third thing they learn about her is, she is lost. Not just metaphorically, as Balthier snorts when they are shambling home to the Strahl. She was not meant to end up in Balfonheim. She was on one of the official airship routes when the airship broke down and had to land here. The repairs took several more hours than the crew first anticipated, leading to a mistake in the communication to the passengers. When she returned to the Aerodrome she found an empty hangar. She'd been lost as to what to do, so she'd wandered down the docks for a while, freaked out by a few things, fascinated by others, before she'd entered the Whitecap to pay for a place to sleep.
And so she ended up at Fran and Balthier's table.
She is not an eager Madhu drinker, to Balthier's disappointment. When he gave her the first cup she wrinkled her nose. By the time she's pressed down half a glass, Balthier is halfway into the second bottle, which is the appropriate amount to make him find excuses to touch people. As he is talking to Fran, he grabs her arm. He always does this when he's on the Madhu wagon. His hearing ability drops too. As he is telling Fran his story, Claire tries to ask him something two times, the Bangaa on the table next to them shouts his name thrice. It's not until someone drops a tray of glass, making a huge racket, he finally looks up, then purely out of instinct imprinted from five years of pirate life.
The atmosphere in the tavern is getting quite jolly. The Bangaa stands up on the table to sing one of the well known hymns of praise to the purple liquid. Come all, wet your lips on Bhujerban Madhu, he starts, making several men, Balthier included, get up on their chairs to finish the verse, then start it all over again.
Come all, wet your lips on Bhujerban Madhu,
the finest there is, I promise you this,
no girl can say no to a bottle or two!
When she cries for more then you know what to do!
"Charming," Claire says to Fran.
When the lads are into the second verse, threatening to knock themselves and their precious Madhu off the table, Claire gets up from her chair and looks at Fran. "Join me outside for some air?"
Fran doesn't know if Claire is asking her because it is Fran she wants to talk to, or simply because she is the least inconvenient person to ask. She has her suspicions.
Outside the night air is comfortably cool and fresh. Fran enjoys the salt in the air and the sound of waves lapping towards the shore.
"Would you mind if I ask you something?" Fran says to the girl when they have stood in silence for a couple of minutes.
"Of course not," Claire replies a little too welcoming.
"Do not take my intentions wrong for how I word this question," Fran says, making the girl's eyes flicker ever so slightly. "But why weaponry?"
Claire chews on her answer. Fran suspects she has mastered the art of wording out any answer just right, as Balthier used to do when she first met him. Every reply he would give would be ever so slightly tainted with sarcasm, and he would never say anything if he didn't know it to be perfectly accurate. He used to loathe being corrected. Even today when she points out a flaw in his plan, he almost always has to argue with her for the sake of argumentation. Thankfully nowadays he does it with more humour than graveness. He finally trusts her intention to not being making him look bad.
She does believe the girl will not stay this way forever. As she sees it, there is two roads for her to go down. Either she will go back and become a full blooded Archadian, marrying someone her rank and keep herself busy talking behind her acquaintance's backs at boring parties where they certainly won't be serving Bhujerban Madhu - or, she will find something along the way, some kind of enlightenment, something that allows her to trust, that opens her up a little. Because one thing is certain, the girl is strung up as a well tight bow.
"I used to enjoy the stories in the books in my father's library," she says. "He had many books, some with illustrations, of beautiful weapons and armour, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I went to the museum to look at some of them. I don't know," she shrugs, "I found them inspiring, somehow. Made cleverly, and with care." The discontent is back in her voice. "Not something completely stiff and masculine as Archadian armour."
There is honesty in her words. The fact still remains that Claire started learning about weaponry out of interest. Fran had to learn in order to survive.
"Tell me something, Fran," Claire says, not repaying the courtesy of asking before asking, "do you not find it strange how so many non-Humes leave their birthplace to venture into Hume land, when it so rarely happens the other way around?" Her expression is straightforward, impossible to read.
You and I will never be good friends, Fran thinks to herself.
The next day Balthier and Fran are having breakfast in The Whitecap when a gang of shady looking Humes enter. Balthier is adding more salt to his overly salted slice of ham as Fran tunes her ears to pick up on their conversation. "...was here last night. Dunno if she's still here," the barkeep says. He has clearly taken a bribe already. "...ship to Archades, got held up. We ask the guests to leave by noon." And then, "Seven."
Fran nudges Balthier with her foot under the table. "What," he says annoyed, his head still mending from a bottle or three of too much Madhu. Which, by the way, several girls were perfectly able to say no to yesterday.
Fran drops a piece of bread to the floor. "I think the cat is fat enough already" he says as he bends down with her. As she reaches for the bread with her claws, she whispers "they are looking for the girl. Room seven. Yesterday she was at the docks." As they sit up, Balthier brushes dust off the bread and finishes his fruit juice.
"Good day," he calls to the barkeep as they head out.
"So this House, they've got gil?" Fran asks as they head down a narrow alleyway. "Uh huh. Most likely Hostegar or Lamont. Maybe Lhusu. Either way, they'll be stuffed." He looks up at the sun. "Elevenish. Do you think she knows?"
Fran frowns. "Last night she didn't give off any impression she was being chased. But she is not easy to read. She appeared to be very private, but…" she doesn't have to finish the sentence.
"A child of Archades." Balthier nods. "Either way, if she doesn't believe us, we'll just wait for them to come for her." He sighs and touches his forehead. "This isn't really a day for saving snotty girls from kidnappers."
They find her down by the docks, sitting with some kids trying to catch fish. She barely greets them.
They move in on her slowly from each their side, surrounding her to block her way up to the path. The kids she is sitting with instinctively takes their fishing rods and leaves. "Say Fran," Balthier says as he's looking out to sea, "those friends of yours who came by this morning, you think their intentions were any good?"
Claire's expression stiffens. She stands up slowly.
"You scum," she hisses at Balthier. "I knew I couldn't trust you."
"Relax," he says nonchalant. "We're not trying to make money off of kidnapping you." He turns around as he spots the group of men working their way down to the docs. "We're merely trying to make money off of saving you from those who do."
She turns her head slowly, the fear in her eyes obvious when she sees them. Pale, wide-eyed, she turns back to Balthier.
"Fine," she says, clearly apprehensive. "I'll go with you."
Fifteen minutes later they have successfully snuck their next meal ticket on board the Strahl, dashing off towards the skies.
See top for information on where to find the rest of the story.