Disclaimer: Not mine.

Kay, so a little word before this; if I get any comments along the lines of "OMG, BaschAshe is lyk so cute!!! This fic so totally shows that!!! They should so totally get it together!!!!" I might feasibly garrotte you. This is not and was never meant to be a Basch/Ashe fic in anymore than a platonic sense. There are disctinctive Balthier/Ashe undertones here, people! Cos that's just good (as well as being practically canon, puh-lease, did you see the ending? Shipness!!!). I don't mind it if you like Basch/Ashe in that sense (although I personally don't), but please don't take this fic in a way that it was never supposed to be taken in. That is all.

Basch sighs wearily, hefting his sword back into his lap to continue honing it. He is sitting cross-legged in the corridor of a rather dubious inn in Balfonheim; his back is leaning casually against the wall behind him. They are all settling down for one last night of peace before they fly to the Bahamut in the morning. And yet Basch cannot feel peace; after all these years he still hasn't managed to shake off the underlying feeling of anxiety that clouds his mind whenever the Princess has to sleep without at least a ten-strong fully armed guard protecting her. He supposes that he should be used to it by now... it had been ten years after all, and although two of those were admittedly spent in prison, Basch still found it hard to admit that his Princess was growing up.

"Can't catch me, Basch!"

"Really, my Lady, we should be getting back. Your father would…"

"But Basch!" She turns abruptly then, and he has to screech to a halt in order to avoid running her over into the sand of the Estersand. A few of the guards standing respectfully a few paces behind them muffle their laughter. Indeed, he does not even know why he agreed to this in the first place, other than the fact that she had made puppy-dog eyes at him and he simply couldn't refuse.

"My Lady, I promised your father that I would keep you safe. You are not safe here after-dark, Princess."

"Pshh!" Even at nine years old, Ashelia could still sound as haughty as she could at nineteen. "Basch, there are twenty guards here with me, I'm safe… look!" She pirouettes in the sand to show just how safe she is, and abruptly falls over. Basch immediately kneels beside her.

"My Lady!"

"Oh… and you, I suppose."

Basch can only look at her in surprise.

"Twenty guards and you, Basch." The young child returns his look of surprise, as if wondering why he hadn't deciphered her meaning the first time.

Knowing that he is fighting a losing battle, Basch strives to continue.

"It isn't safe…" He stops at the look on her face.

"Robin always got to come out here after nightfall." She says quietly, and Basch feels his not-so-iron resolve crumbling, as it always does when the subject of Ashelias' deceased brother comes up. He crushes down the remark that Robin had been well three years past Ashelias' age when he had succumbed to the Osmone flu and therefore old enough and tall enough not to practically bury himself in an innocent-looking sand dune whenever his guard wasn't looking. Instead he hooks his hands under the arms of the little princess and lifts her back to her feet.

"One hour." He tries to retain a semblance of severity which all but fails as Ashelia leaps up and wraps her little arms around his waist, pressing her face into the metal of his armour with characteristic exuberance.

"My Lady…"

"Basch?" She turns her angelic face upwards, and he suddenly gets the sneaking suspicion that it was not coincidence that she happened to mention her brother a minute ago. "Stargaze with me?"

It is well past three hours later that Basch starts to make his way back into the city, his voice sore from explaining the names of the constellations, a little princess sound asleep on his shoulder.

The door opens suddenly. Basch lifts his head from his reverie to find Ashe standing there in the complimentary night-clothes that the hotel had kindly supplied for their guests.

"Basch, what on earth are you doing down there?" She questions and he notices the puzzled look on her face for the first time.

"I am taking watch, Your Majesty," he replies stoically. "You must be – "

"You are not." She interrupts him suddenly. "I do not need to be guarded tonight Basch. We are in an inn, not a tent in the Rift. No-body here knows who I am, and I highly doubt that I'm about to be eaten in my sleep seeing as though we are in the middle of a crowded town. Besides," her voice softened slightly. "You need your rest for tomorrow. I'll not have you faint of tiredness while we battle Vayne. And I am not Queen yet."

"Ashelia…" Basch doesn't tell her the real reason why he was so adamant to keep watch, or why he had volunteered to share room with the princess tonight. He had been far too aware of the way that the sky pirates eyes had followed his future Queen for the past few days.

'Or the way that she has been returning the favour', a traitorous voice in his head whispers and he shakes it away quickly.

"In, Basch." She points towards the room, and there is no arguing with the Princess in this mood; he knows her far too well for that. Slowly he stands up and walks past the Princess into their shared room, sitting down upon the bed. She walks in after him before stopping suddenly and staring at him.

"Ashelia?"

"Shower, Basch."

"But…"

"Basch, I hardly think that someone is going to come in and kidnap me while you are taking a wash." It would be impossible to miss the faraway glint in her eyes as she says this, and as Basch reluctantly gathers up his things and makes his way into the recently-vacated shower room, letting the warm water run trails down his tired, battle-scarred body he remembers the first time that the Princess spoke like that.

Ashelia is seventeen, and she already bears the worry-lines of someone twice her age as she gazes unseeing down at the war-table, unconsciously rubbing the two rings adorning the finger of her left hand with her thumb.

Basch stands respectfully a distance away and she turns to face him, slowly. He bows.

"What?" she asks, dispensing with the formalities.

He pauses, unsure how to go on. He wishes with all his heart that he doesn't have to; that he can somehow keep the Princess as innocent as when she was nine years old, but he knows that that would be impossible. His duty is to Dalmasca, and to his princess, not to his own selfish desire to keep her (who sometimes seems to feel like his surrogate daughter, and even more so now that the king has gone) forever unaware of the tragedies around her. But the time for that is past.

"Your Highness," he hides his feelings behind a screen of formality and decorum. "We have reason to believe that Nabudis is a trap."

For a moment he isn't sure that she has heard him, she walks steadily around the table and to the window, where she rests her hands delicately against the sill and stares up into the blue sky.

"Basch…? Never mind."

"My Lady?"

"I mean, do you ever…" she is almost speaking to herself now, her thumb still absent-mindedly tracing the rings on her finger. "Do you ever just… just want to be free?"

"Your Highness, Dalmasca is yet free! The empire does not crush us yet, and your father is not yet lost…"

"No." She cuts him off quietly and turns away from the window. He knew that it was a bad idea from the start, teaching her the names of those stars. Even now, eight years later she seems unable to tear her eyes away from the sky. "I mean you. Me. Not Dalmasca, not Ivalice. Just, free to be away from all this."

"My Lady!" He exclaims. He doesn't, won't admit to her that he might just know what she means.

"Go after my father." She turns back to the window. "Take some of the third regiment. No more that a hundred men. I will not risk further disturbance if you are mistaken."

The discussion is clearly over and Basch bows to his Princess's back as he turns to leave the room.

"Basch?" He stops at the quiet command. "I wonder if I shall get kidnapped whilst you are away. I wonder if I shall be spirited away and held for ransom in return for Dalmasca, or some such. Maybe they will keep me prisoner somewhere past the Osmone. I have not yet travelled out of Rabanastre in that direction."

He is unable to say anything, but instead backs deferentially out of the room to go and pick his men. Upon further thought, he leaves Vossler behind to guard Ashelia until his return.

Showered and dressed, Basch exits the shower room, knocking first in order to preserve Ashelias privacy. It is a habit.

She is not in the room. He looks around for a second before spotting her. She is sat outside on the little white balcony outside their room, her legs dangling perilously off the edge of the precarious little platform. A soft breeze suddenly blows against her and she rocks forward ever so slightly, leaving Basch to battle his own internal need to drag her away from the balcony and back into the safety of the bedroom. His soldiers instinct is screaming at him all the possible places that an assassin could have been hiding outside the window just waiting for such an opportunity whilst he was in the shower. His more brotherly impulses tell him in no uncertain terms that she is about to fall off the balcony and break her neck on the ground several floors below.

He notices that she is still gazing resolutely at the stars, and both voices are instantly stifled. Slowly, cautiously, he walks over and sits down next to her, ignoring all his instincts to take her inside to safety.

"My Lady." He announces his presence, as it has become his wont to do. He is never quite sure whether she wants him there or not, or if she still holds him responsible for her fathers' death. He wouldn't blame her if she did.

"Basch." She never takes her eyes off the stars, but suddenly she lifts her arm and points towards the night sky. "What was that one called again?"

He is stunned by her question, so stunned that he turns back from his own silent vigil to look at her properly. And he realises why she will not take her eyes off the sky. They are swimming with unshed tears and the sight makes him want to hit something.

"Ashelia…"

She must have realised that he'd noticed for she abandons all pretence now and brings her arm down, furiously wiping the wetness away from the corners of her eyes before turning to look at him.

"Her majesty cannot abide weakness, especially in herself."

He fights the urge to draw her close to him like when she was a child, but she pre-empts him and lays her own head down upon his no longer armour-clad shoulder. He is for a moment so shocked that he forgets to speak, as his mind takes him back into a whirl of past-events and little Ashelias doing exactly what his Princess is doing now.

"My Lady…"

"I am worried, Basch." She fights to keep the wobble out of her voice, speaking in as regal a tone as possible, but he is not fooled.

"You heard what he said to Vaan." It is a statement, not a question, for he can think of only one thing, of only one person that could make Ashelia like this.

There is no answer, other than a shift of movement on his shoulder that he takes for a nod. And for a moment he feels suddenly, incredibly sad for the Princess whom he used to teach the names of the stars.

She has lost so much; her husband, her brothers, her mother, her father, he thinks angrily. How much will he make her lose again?

She speaks again, quietly.

"I owe to Dalmasca to continue, Basch." As if he is the one who is contemplating giving up. "I shall not fail my people, or my memories."

He is afraid to speak, afraid that if he says a word it will be the wrong one, that it will break the magical bubble that seems to encase him and the Princess in its' calm serenity. Basch has never been good with words, and he never will be. But he never thought that it would matter so much as it did now.

"So many people have died Basch. For Dalmasca."

"Yes, Princess. And they are all behind you now. As are we."

She continues as if he had not spoken, softly now, so softly that he has to strain to hear the words.

"So many people have died for Dalmasca… And yet he is the first to have said that he would die for me."

He struggles against that, struggles against shouting that Yes! I would die for you, Princess! Because he knows that it is not true, and so does she. Behind him there would always be that shadow, the shadow of duty calling ever for him to defend his country first and foremost, and all else second. Yes, he would die for her, but he would be dying for Dalmasca at the same time.

Perhaps… it was for the best then.

If the sky pirate was the only one who could offer that kind of loyalty to the Princess, precisely because he cared not for their cause, then maybe that was alright.

Not for the first time, Basch wonders just how many private conversations the Princess has managed to steal with the pirate whilst his back has been turned. He is not sure that he really wants to know.

Ashelia fades into silence, her head still leaning against Basch's shoulder and he sits there in stillness, looking up at the starry sky in a lonely vigil against the night. Three hours later he picks the Princess up gently, ignoring the wet patch of tears on his shoulder and carries her inside, laying her down softly into the downy mattress. For the rest of the night he sits awake on the other side of the bed. Because he may be a traitor now, and she may be in love, but just for this one night, she is nine years old and he has just carried her home again. And, just for tonight, he can be her knight again.

Yeah, so Basch was this close to being pretty much reduced to completely mono-worded lines such as "Princess!" and "Ashelia!" here, but I managed to squeeze in a few proper sentences for him occasionally. What else can you do? Please R+R!!!