A Tragic Liaison
Disclaimer: I am not Square, ergo, I don't own FF.
Summary: Semi drabble, semi AU. Two people face death as the world crumbles in its sleep. FranXBalthier. One shot.
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It wasn't bad near the end. After all, it must've been exactly what they pictured separately a hundred times over. She stood there, two or so inches away from the cockpit's edge. Her white mane of hair strayed curiously against the wind, fluctuating at the merest hum. One after another, steelworks, splinters and debris alike fell from nowhere above and rose from nowhere below, each time missing her by a thread's breadth. It wasn't a quiet scene; there were earsplitting explosions right, left and center. Rackets of the most hazardous sort. A normal being would've had it long before to run like hell for shelter, but not her. She knew by hindsight that at that point, trying to save her neck would only prove a little less than futile. She never dodged, nor permitted herself the tiniest movement toward safety. Time might've started drifting away at a greater pace, but not her courage. Like a loyal comrade, it stayed with her, unmoving to the last.
He tarried there with her, quite past the stage of hoping to conjure order from amongst the chaos. His silence seemed to have contaminated the small circle he had since traced around himself. He was seeing something beyond all this, something apparently invisible to anyone else. To him, death no longer posed a surprise. For indeed, it was there all along, clinging to their bodies like a necessary presence they couldn't help ignoring. They'd passed through its road many times before as they pulled their reins to the other direction to avoid its ravines. Now, as if in mutual pact, they'd decided to leap unto it, never to reemerge. And what better way to do it than to do it together?
"Give me your hand." He demanded, as though he meant to employ whatever help she could offer then. "It may be the only right thing to do before committing this kind of crime." He concluded. She could hardly hear him but she nevertheless stretched out her arm to her companion, gracefully as if she were fulfilling a great and solemn promise. He clasped her hand in his, earnestly, though not really endeavoring to make their last minute more comfortable. Side by side, they confronted their fate, chins up, breasts out.
"If there's been any time to put on a brave face, ignorant as it is, it most certainly is now." He said even beyond the range of her earshot. There was a smile on his still vivid countenance, a faintly alive smile that knew no agony.
"Perhaps. And maybe too, now's the right time to stop thinking about how this is going to end." came her reply. Enough as it was, he nodded.
A short time later, tongues of flames issued from around them. The heat had quite reached the state where no living could endure its redoubled intensity. And through darkened and orange film, he saw her face, more dramatically changed than he hoped for and somewhat half-consumed in fire. The length of her hair had been blackened, turned to ashes and rejoined its origin, the dirt. Still as a statue, with the calmness the sky pirate tirelessly admired, she kept herself firmly rooted on the spot. To him, it was like seeing death's post-image; it was doubtlessly serene, yet none as beautiful as her living, moving picture. Alas, they'd run out of tricks to cheat their way out of it, again.
"Ah, sure is no easy business. Dying." He muttered far too faintly to reach a soul, living or otherwise. Soon after, he caught himself gasping for air, his sight blurring, spiraling, disappearing at long last. The suffocation came too quick and the end too sly. The last thing he saw was her half parted eyes, redder than he'd seen them last.
As they'd gone, bliss fused with death. Of course, those two words scarcely found themselves together in one sentence, but at that moment in time, when Fran and Balthier caught up with their resolution, bliss and death were as one as those two had been and would ever be. Thus was the door sealed away, containing the memories of their exploits.
END