never seen a bluer sky
(freedom)

1. At sixteen, she is standing in the doorway to the Palace of Nabradia, worrying a handkercheif in her hands. Her father is beside her, tall, proud (slightly stooped, getting old) and stately, ushering her inside to meet with her future husband, a man she's heard of - in the streets of Rabanastre, the girls giggle about the handsome Prince Rasler-Charming - but has never seen. Her first glimpse of him is from a distance, far off in the hall. His hair shines in the candlelight and glints off a laughing face.

He is more than handsome, she thinks, he is beautiful. And in her mind, he wants nothing more than to take her hand and fly away into the blue, into freedom away from responsibility and kingly duites and crowns and dresses. In her mind, he will sweep her off her feet and take her far away to places she's only ever heard whispers of. In her mind, she already loves him, blond hair and bright eyes and kind smile and what will surely be strong hands to carry her away (always away, because being a princess is so stifling even as she dutifully follows it. He will carry her as far as she asks him to and then bring her back because he will know her better than herself and he will know what she needs.)

In her mind, she loves him. In her heart, she's not so sure.

(But her heart will forgive her for loving a foolish dream. Her people won't forgive her for following it.)

2. At seventeen, she is standing at an altar in a cathedral, shaking with nerves and something else she either can't or won't name. Prince Charming himself is standing in front of her, handsome, regal (saccharine, a little bland) and smiling at her. She smiles back, hoping it doesn't look forced. She loves him, yes, but would loves her idea of him more.

She supposes that she shouldn't be disappointed. Rasler is, after all, the Crown Prince of Nabradia. He can't very well swoop off into the sunset whenever he wants or take her on a moonlit stroll because she's feeling down. Anywhere he goes (and anywhere she goes as well, but lately they've been the exact same thing, which is annoying as much as it is sweet) he is trailed by guards and servants and soldiers and in the entire year that she's known him, she's never been alone with him. Which makes the coming night all the more terrifying.

What does one do when one has to sleep with a person one's never spoken to privately? What does one do when one wants nothing more than to escape like a dove out of a cage, to fly away and never look back? What does one do when one is marrying a man one only sort of loves?

Love will come, she tells herself, and it isn't really a lie. She thinks that he must be fascinating behind the solid exterior of "I Am A Prince And Must Act As Such" that he puts up in public, which is everywhere for royalty. She thinks that he must have some delicious secret underneath it all. Maybe he likes to slide down banisters or roll down sand dunes. Maybe he's just as wild as she is, past the facade.

(This isn't a false hope, she tells herself, and half-wishes to be set free.)

3. At eighteen, she is newly widowed and finds herself far more wounded by Rasler's death than she ever would have expected. For all of his faults (he was a little boring, and didn't have much of a personality when it came down to it. Just politics and... politics), he was a solid rock that she'd come to rely on over the past almost-a-year-but-not-quite. She'd gotten used to his presence beside her, to waking up to a faint kiss on the cheek and his morning breath. She'd gotten used to seeing him and gotten used to being just a little disappointed in everything.

It wasn't his fault that she expected more of him than he could give. It was her fault that she only maybe loved him. It was her fault she wanted him to be... Something else she still couldn't decide on. Maybe a little more spontaneous. Maybe anything but a prince.

And she thinks that that must have been the barrier between them - he was a prince, and was therefore just as trapped as she. He could no more save her from the confines of royalty than he could escape himself. But she fooled herself into believing that he would save her, could save her, should save her (even though she never really needed rescuing). And now he's dead and she's lost her rock of support and her comfortable lie and she has nowhere else to go.

She does not want to cry over him or her father or Captain Basch or the fact that she is now the Queen of a conquered country or the fact that she has nothing left to lose, and surprises herself when she sobs for a full hour in her bath, all alone and just a little bit scared. Just a little bit adrift without him there to guide her.

She dries off, rubs her eyes violently, and is out of the palace before dawn, leaving behind instructions for Vossler to find her in the Waterway and to contact her uncle in Bhujerba. A tiny part of her considers leaving Rabanastre entirely, but she cannot do that to her people. She can't leave them to Archadian tyrrany.

(She just isn't quite sure she can do it to herself.)

4. At nineteen, she is standing in the bright light of the Bhujerban Aerodome, trying to decide if it wouldn't be easier to slip away and disappear. Everyone thinks she's dead, right? Her only allegiances are to the dead, right? She could run away, leave it behind and never have to -

But she can't, she can't leave Archades to itself, she can't leave her people to a life underground, bathing in sewers, oppressed. She can't do that to them. She sneaks aboard Balthier's airship and is fully in his seat (it smells like him, an odd mixture of gunpowder, leather, and freedom) before she realizes that she's never flown an airship before. She can never fly it away, and even if she could learn before he comes back, how would she know where to go? She can hardly read a map and all of Balthier's are terribly complicated, covered in odd runes and archaic symbols. She nearly screams in frustration.

And then Vaan walks in and everything only sort of comes crashing down, and it isn't until he agrees to take her to Raithwall's Tomb and she's sitting in the seat behind him, disappointed, that she understands. She wouldn't have needed to know how to read a map, or even really how to fly the ship. As long as she could have gotten into the air and made it move, the rest... If Balthier hadn't stepped in, she knows she would have run away, because this is all far too much to take.

She sits behind him, thinking of freedom and of doves and knows, somehow, that he's the ideal she tried to hold Rasler up to. Balthier is the very definition of freedom, of escape. He represents everything she ever desired as a girl, everything she ever dreamed of as a teenager. He is the man that Rasler could never have been. She thinks that, as a sky pirate, he must know something of chains. If she asked him to, he might -

But this is foolishness. She has a country to rule. She has duties that can't be thrown away on an image of deliverance, no matter how wonderful they are. But he is independent and dashing and completely unburdened by any sort of responsibility and that is far more beautiful than his face to her. He could take her away as she once wished Rasler would, and the prospect of that freedom is so tempting, so tantalizing, so close that she can touch it, if she only reached out her hand.

(She opens her mouth to tell him to turn around, to go anywhere else, anywhere but back to royalty, but catches Penelo's eye. The younger girl smiles, and she cannot abandon them.)

5. At twenty, she has loved twice and lost twice, and for the exact same reasons.

(Her heart will forgive her, she says, for loving a foolish dream. She wishes with all of herself that she believed that.)