In which Ashe learns a lesson and Vaan is largely ignored.
The heat was unbearable, and the sun wasn't helping. Vaan and Penelo wondered absently why the Princess, her bodyguard and the sky pirates were panting like dogs in the hot sun of the wide Dalmascan Estersand.
"And," Balthier continued, wiping an arm across his brow as he glared at the threatening, shifting landscape, "it's a dry heat."
"What difference does that make?" Vaan asked inquisitively. Balthier narrowed his eyes.
"It means we're more likely to dry out, die of thirst."
"But--" Vaan was interrupted before he could object.
Balthier glared at the boy, poking in his general direction with a vaguely threatening finger. "It's too hot to deal with your ridiculous barrage of inane questions, and if you open your mouth one more time I will find no guilt in feeding you to these hungry-looking wolves."
Vaan sealed his lips quickly, looking to his feet.
"Why do we waste time in this soulless place?" Fran asked, ears twitching irritably. "The sand bites and the air smells of despair."
Vaan opened his mouth to speak, but he remained silent at a trained glare from Balthier.
"We're here," he said for the boy, "because we are doing a favor for Vaan's friend Dantro and his wife. Seeing as we are heroes of Dalmasca at this point, I see little fault in taking a few hours away from the battlefront to help out." He grumbled, then stared death at the sky. "But the bloody heat!"
Vaan nodded to assure Fran that Balthier had gotten the basic gist of the situation; he still didn't understand the fuss about the heat.
Dantro, a moderate friend of the boy, had asked him to take care of a small favor for him quite some time ago. It was only recently that Vaan remembered that he had promised this man he would take a medicinal cactus flower to his wife, residing in the South Bank Village in the northern area of the Estersand. So he politely decided to drag the whole party along to help. Ashe still wasn't sure why he needed five companions to deliver a single flower to a woman in the desert, but Vaan was quite the motivational speaker when he tried to be. He'd somehow convinced all of them to accompany him into the heat; everyone was still unsure of how he'd wrangled Balthier, and most chose not to think about it more than they had to.
The boy remained silent as a corpse with Balthier's tired eyes boring into his back mercilessly as they trudged on, avoiding the roaming wolves for the most part, thinning the herd when necessary. A cheer went up among Penelo and Ashe (who somehow persuaded Basch to join in) when they arrived at the South Bank Village. The river glittered happily in the orange glow of the setting sun, and Balthier was the first to dive in and relieve the heat from his skin. Vaan set off to seek out Dentro's wife, while the others joined Balthier on the beach.
"Come on," he gestured toward the water, fully-clothed and drenched. "For the Gods' sake, it's not going to leap out and swallow you!" He jumped nearly a foot from the water as something in the water near him leapt to the surface and back again, rippling the otherwise crystal water.
The comic gesture was lost on everyone as the Lady Ashe's delicate constitution decided to pull the sheets out from under her as she fell into the wet sand on the riverbank.
They were all lucky not to ram their heads against one another as they all moved around her. Balthier, still soaking, was suddenly on the beach with them. Basch moved them all back with his arms, kneeling beside her. Words were spoken, but many together at the same time. Snatches reached her ears:
"--the heat--"
"--inside, she needs--"
"--in the way, Vaan--"
"--something cold--"
"--Lady Ashe is--"
"Lady Ashe?"
She woke at night. A chill had taken to the air, and she shivered despite the warm covering. Her skin felt too warm, but she was cold inside to her core. Her muscles ached, and she wasn't sure why. Her arms felt heavy, and while she knew she wanted to stand, she wasn't sure she was able. She blinked a few times, not recognizing the shapes of the room but feeling comforted nonetheless. Waiting a few long moments until sleep retreated completely from her, she sat up in the bed and gazed about with dark-adjuested eyes.
The lapping water outside could only be the river. The stars outside the window were bright in a cloudless sky. She pulled the blanket closer around her, shivering at the desert cold. Though they were still slightly shaky, she stood and walked out of the bedroom. A fire was going in the fireplace of the main room, and the door outside stood wide open with a dark silhouette in the doorway. The head turned, and sharp, grinning brown eyes sized her up.
"Well... Our sleeping princess has awakened."
"Balthier," she nodded politely in his direction, not deciding whether to sit beside him or not. He turned back to his previous occupation with the sky.
"It seems even Dynast-Queens are susceptible to heat stroke." He glanced upward again, allowing their pause to elongate itself. "Sit for a while," he offered, nodding his head at the empty space beside him on the stoop. She paused only slightly before easing down, the blanket still pulled close around her.
"Where has Basch gone? And the others?" She hoped to the Gods she hadn't been left behind with only the sky pirate for company. Balthier smirked, taking his eyes from her to the stars.
"Your bodyguard is off to Rabanastre with young Penelo to guide him through the Estersand, though I believe his fervor to cure you would be enough to part the very sands before him. Fran has taken off somewhere either to sleep or to curse my name into the soil a few times more for convincing her to come." A short laugh, and he leaned back to support his weight on one hand behind, pulling one knee casually from the ground. "And I am left as door ward for the sleeping princess. Not one of my more exciting jobs, I'm sorry to say, Your Highness."
She nodded, conceding. "I apologize. No one should have to care for me. If I am to be queen, I will need to learn more self-reliance than I've shown today."
"That's where you're wrong, Lady Ashe," he said, at last tearing his eyes from the heavens.
"I'm sorry? I do not think I follow your reasoning."
A smirk. "A lesson you didn't learn in your royal training, then? Or perhaps you've been a rebel for too long to remember?" He sat completely straight again, stretching his arms lazily before him. "I wonder, is it more philosophy or common sense at play here?"
"Do you have a point, or am I to be forced into sleep through sheer boredom?"
"Always the kind word, Princess," he added with a raised brow. "All right, have it your way. My point is that no one should spread themselves as thin as you have today." He checked the sky quickly. "I'm sorry; yesterday." A sly grin, and he adjusted his shirt cuffs. "Anyone relying solely on themselves is a fool, and deserves a jolt to set things on the right path. Granted," a silent, shaking laugh took him, "heat stroke was not the particular method I would choose for anyone. A stern talking-to is generally sufficient."
She stared incredulously in the starlit darkness. "This is all amusing to you, then?" She felt hurt that her tribulations would cause anyone mirth.
"To be honest, yes," he said with a grin that quickly disappeared at her heated glare. "What I mean to say is that one being so frivolous in their so-called 'self-reliance' needs something to set them right. Your 'something' happened to be a bit of heat stroke. What do you think this is all trying to tell you?" Hopefully the change in subject would be followed.
She shrugged the blanket close around her, almost forgetting the cold. "That I should keep to the shade." Her tone was more bored than rueful, and she looked at her feet. She didn't expect the barking laughter from beside her, and it almost made her jump.
"Dear Gods, she has a sense of humor," he said as he shook his head in amazement. He held up his hand to stop her before she tried to speak again. "The lesson you should take from this little experience, Highness, is that reliance on others is a necessary part of life let alone the royal life."
"Oh, yes, you are going to preach to me about self-reliance? You, the 'leading man', with no rules and no one to keep him in check?" She would have pouted if she weren't trying to prove herself in that moment, so she straightened her back defiantly and stared a challenge down her nose at him.
He shook his head, crossing arms across his chest with a coy little grin. "A captain is nothing without his first mate."
Her face read blank for a good solid half minute before the thought of Fran finally crossed her mind. There wasn't a time the two weren't attached at the hip, making decisions, talking amongst themselves as if they had their own secret little code. They weren't two individuals, they were a unit. She met Balthier's eyes, but didn't want to lose what ground she had. She knew that he could sense her defeat, and he smirked to show just that.
"All right," she said quietly, looking away again. "What do you suggest, then? Lay my life and my problems on the table for everyone to see and dissect?"
He stretched again, grunting slightly as he stood, dwarfing her. "That is for you to decide, Princess. Just know that in times like these, more people are willing to listen than you may think."
He walked toward the fire, stoking it with a stifled yawn and tired eyes blinking at the bright light. She watched him with guarded features, turned halfway in the door and half out, her blanket her shield. Before he could move away from the fire, she found her voice.
"My father was happy when I was born," she started in a low tone. Balthier turned, eyebrows raised, but her face was on the floor. "...but I always wondered if he might not have been happier with a son." She looked up, and her emotion was laid bare between them. He didn't know whether it was because he was the only one available or something else that he wasn't sure he wanted to think about.
A long, pregnant pause seized them, and both worried that the other wasn't going to speak. Finally, with a vague upturn of his lips:
"Go on."
Basch arrived later in the early hours of the morning. The desert sun wasn't yet peeking over the dunes, but the sky had colored itself pink and gold in anticipation. Penelo threw herself into one of the hammocks strung between two palms and fell directly into an exhausted slumber. Basch was quick to step inside the open doorway of Dantro's wife's home where Lady Ashe had been kindly stowed after her episode on the beach. He hadn't been sure of what to buy, and many of the shops had been closed at the late hour of his arrival. So his arms were full of remedies, potions, assorted creams bought from 'learned' Lowtowners as well as a few malodorous herbs acquired from a questionable street vendor.
Stepping into the main room, he was met with the sight of Lady Ashe asleep in the comfortable chair by the fire, which had become little more than embers. The quilt was pulled close around her, and her knees were tucked up to her chest in peaceful, almost child-like sleep. Basch's immediate anxiety dropped from him, and he allowed a candid smirk. Nearby, on a small wooden stool by the fireplace, sat the sky pirate Balthier, eyes closed and head nodding in intermittent sleep. He looked as if he would fall of either side of the stool at any moment, but he managed to stay on unconsciously.
Quietly, Basch set all of his "miracle cures" on the table nearby. The slight noise caused Ashe to stir in her cocoon, and Basch froze. The last thing he wanted to do was give her a rude awakening. Fortunately, she woke of her own accord, blinking into the room with a groggy sigh. She caught sight of Basch's blonde head first, and she took a contemplative, sleepy moment to make sure it was him.
"Where have you been?" she asked quietly, peripherally aware of Balthier asleep on the stool. She managed to sit straight, stretching the sleep from her limbs.
"Rabanastre," he admitted in the same quiet tone. "Penelo took me there to find something to help." He offered something of an embarrassed shrug. "It seems I may as well have stayed; you seem perfectly capable of taking care of yourself."
She smiled, pleasantly, cocking her head and chancing a glance at Balthier before standing and walking carefully toward Basch.
"Maybe I do not need to anymore."
The hug was unexpected, but he took it with an odd, mixed expression, thinking this was perhaps part of the heat stroke. She pulled back, shaking her head slightly at her intrusion.
"Forgive me, I did not mean--"
"Your Highness," he interrupted unthinkingly, "has the heat gone to your head, or has Balthier somehow tricked you into embarrassing me?" Though the question could have been taken as offensive, her smile remained.
"No, no tricks," she said. She honestly found it hard to believe, now, that she had listened to Balthier at all. But it had somehow made her bold. "Basch... I need to know that I can rely on you." Her eyes smiled as she looked up at him.
He allowed a wide-eyed, blinking pause before he nodded. "Of course, Lady Ashe," he assured her. Her hand rested on his arm, solidly, feeling their connection.
"Thank you," she said finally.
He attempted a smirk, but was interrupted as Vaan, hair tousled and looking worn, stepped into the door frame. Eyes of all three met, staring wordlessly, blinking in confusion. Basch stepped awkwardly back from Ashe, trying to remain calm at the intrusion.
"Ah, Vaan, there you are," Balthier's voice sounded from near the fireplace. Basch's face would have flushed in embarrassment if he felt he'd been capable of the emotion. Ashe whipped around, compensating for Basch and blushing furiously.
"How long have you been awake?" she asked finally, eyebrows lowered defensively. He shrugged playfully, turning his attention to Vaan.
"Where have you been?" he asked, crossing his arms and ignoring the princess. Vaan looked wildly about, knowing he was missing out on something and wondered exactly what was going on.
"What?" Vaan asked at last, eyes darting from smug Balthier to indignant Ashe to flustered Basch, his own visaged painted with utter confusion. "You didn't notice I was gone until now?" He looked from face to face again. "I mean, you didn't come looking or anything?"
"No, not really," Balthier said as he walked past Ashe and Basch. Vaan's face fell at the information, but Balthier clapped a hand on the boy's shoulder and steered him out the door. The sky pirate chanced a glance over his shoulder to Ashe. "You've got a fine start, Princess," he told her before moving Vaan bodily from the vicinity.
And so it came to pass that Ashe admitted her need for others, Bacsh found his worth, Fran and Penelo got their well-deserved rest, and Vaan was no longer ignored. Dantro's wife got the flower that she needed to make her medicines, her patient was healed after much waiting, and the South Bank Village seemed a little brighter for their efforts. They left early that afternoon, voices trailing back to the skirts of the village.
"Montblanc told me about this Mark in the Lhusu Mines--"
"Hold your tongue if you value your life, Vaan."
"Right, yes, sir..."
AN: I had a few ideas for some more FFXII ficcies, and this is one of them! Huzzah! Lemme know what you think and I may serve up a few more or something. I'm a little fond of ignoring Vaan, sorry Vaan fans, but yeah, all constructive critisism gladly accepted. Thanks much for reading!