( playing with fire )

This game, this whole save-the-world thing, it's easy, really. Not that hard, just go with the flow, ride along, and don't let them know you haven't got a clue what's going on. Easy. Nothing to it.

It's all the other stuff that's hard - the things like walking to the nearest tree so you can breathe for two seconds when you've just finished off a whole herd of wolves. Not the fighting, no, that's easy - the stopping, that's hard. And it's easy to wander the streets of Archades, or to convince Vaan to not steal that scary-looking Bangaa's money because his head is worth more than a few gil. But it's hard to just keep moving sometimes, sometimes when it'd be a whole lot easier to curl up at home and cry.

Only she doesn't have a home anymore, and that's why she's here. And she's lost so little compared with everyone else - Vaan lost his family and his cause, just about, Ashe lost her husband, her throne, and practically her life, Fran's been ostracized from everything she used to know, Basch was locked up in prison for two years for a crime he didn't commit, and Balthier... Well, she's sure he's lost a lot, or else why would he be so hell-bent on keeping it from everyone?

And she? She's lost her home and her family, yeah, but she's okay. She misses them, but can go on. She didn't lose her leader - no, he's always been around, and still is, with that big pointy sword that Reks would laugh so hard if he could see his brother carrying.

Well, okay. There is Reks. Always has been, only never will be again. And that stings sometimes, because Reks was more like her brother than Vaan. Vaan, she always had this little crush on - little crush that everyone seemed to see but him and Migelo teased her about right in front of him, and he never seemed to get it - but Reks was her brother, really. Because Reks was the one who had tried to comfort her once when she was little and just messed up her hair, and then tried to braid it back again, but just made it worse. Reks was the one who did all the brotherly things, like fight off the mean older boys who would taunt her, and dance with her when no one else would, even though he didn't know how and spent the whole time stepping on her feet.

Reks never meant to make things worse, but he had the uncanny knack of doing just that. Vaan is the same way. Trouble likes to hang around Vaan, and she's always been there too, because he needed someone to intercept it.

And it's never been hard. Because she's used to that. Used to being Vaan's shield-slash-sister rather than his friend-slash-more. And it's easy to pretend that it's easy because she's done it so long, that she'd be all confused and scared if he did look at her that way. A poet could probably come up with a million different ways to talk about her "broken" heart, but she's no poet, and they kind of creep her out anyway, like they should probably find a girlfriend or something.

And she doesn't really think of her heart as "broken", rather "temporarily out-of-order." Yeah, that's better than all busted up and shattered, right? Because she's been on the streets for a while now, and out in Rabanastre, or worse, Lowtown, being broken is no excuse.

Everyone's broken in Dalmasca.

So it's easy. It's easy to play with fire, and easier to get burned. It's easy to fight the enemies, to play the game, to save the world from a power-hungry empire. It's just not so easy to listen to Basch tell her that Vaan's just being dense, because Basch is kinda trying to play father figure to them, and while it's nice, it's also kind of not because she doesn't want to hear it.

It's easy to ignore Ashe when she tells her that he'll come around. It's just not easy to watch while he doesn't.
---
--
-

(A/N: End? It doesn't feel finished to me, but I can't think what else it needs. Oh, and another thing. I don't care if all you say in a review is, "You suck at life, now quit writing, or I will rip your lungs out with a dull spoon." Just tell me something. All 60 hits and 0 reviews tells me is that I've done something wrong, just not what.)