A/N: While I was making my way through the Ozmone Plains, I was ganged up on by six Wus at a time. I nearly died.
I was saved by a wandering warrior. As we were headed on our way, I noticed you could target him as an enemy and I stole from him just for fun. I didn't even get anything, but he started attacking me. I ended up killing him, and I felt really bad about it afterwards.
Anyway, that's where the idea for this story came from. Onward.
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"Balthier! Here!"
Vaan literally threw the spell over the crowd of monsters and to Balthier, where it was sucked into his skin. It still didn't bode well – Balthier's health was still only halfway at best, and you could see it in his face. His colouring was becoming alarmingly sallow and he was breathing heavily, though he did his best not to show it. The arm that raised his gun was trembling.
"There are too many of them!" Fran called from behind them, her lilting voice strained as she fended off a Mesmenir with her bow. The fire spell she launched at it did nearly nothing, and Vaan ached to help her, but there were three monsters in the way.
Vaan launched himself back in the fray at Balthier's side with a war cry. It was all he could do; they were trapped in the skinny rock passage with no room to escape, and the other three members of their party were scouting on the other side of the Plains. He heard Fran's anguished cry behind him and threw a hi-potion wildly over his shoulder to her. The fight was quickly deteriorating on their side, and only one monster lay dead.
Suddenly, the sound of iron clanking hit Vaan's ear, and the monster before him fell suddenly. A warrior on the other side bent down and ripped one of the Mesmenir's iron carapaces off quickly, then rushed another foe without a word.
Vaan sent up a small murmur of thanks to the Gods and did the same.
With the warrior's help, the rest of the fight was short, if grueling. After the last monster had fallen, Vaan collapsed on the gound, too spent to heal himself, too spent to move. Balthier did the same, though with considerable more grace and dignity. Fran knelt next to them, and began the murmurings of a curing spell; Vaan felt a sudden rush of warmth for the Viera girl, who continued with her own exhaustedness and pain to heal theirs.
After a moment, they got up and continued on, unable to stop for the rest they sorely needed. The warrior, still standing silently, did not speak or move as Balthier, Fran, and Vaan slid past him, though Balthier uttered a soft 'thank you.'
It was pure habit, as Vaan passed, to slide one hand into an exposed pocket and finger a few of the coins he found there. It wasn't for profit; simply a way for Vaan to spread the fact he'd been there to the few citizens who noticed four or five gil missing. In a world full of rightful heirs, famous knights, graceful eye-catching Viera, and wanted sky pirates with million-gil bounties on their head, it made a lowly street thief feel a little better to know he had left his mark, a little something to remember him by.
The thief didn't realize something was wrong until Balthier was standing next to him and the clang of metal was ringing in his ears. When he turned, he found the blade of the warrior inches from his unprotected neck, the barrel of Balthier's gun mere hairs away, parrying the deathblow.
"You dare steal from my, boy?" the warrior growled. Somehow, now, his mask looked more fearsome, angry. He pulled his blade back and swung again, but this time Vaan was ready. In one fluid motion, he unsheathed his sword and ducked under the blade, trying to hit him with the flat of his blade. The warrior blocked it with his shield and pushed him away, aiming this time for his side. Vaan parried, but his new, barely tested blade didn't have the roughness needed to keep it in place by friction; his force slid it up the blade of the weapon it blocked and into the stomach of the warrior.
The man let out a strangled cry and dropped his sword. Then he fell.
Time stopped for a minute as the warrior collapsed to the ground, coughing weakly. Within seconds, he made no more sound. Several long moments passed, and still Vaan was frozen, sword clenched tightly in hand, watching the warrior-turned-corpse lay there.
It was a joke, right? Surely he wasn't really dead. Good warriors didn't die just because of something stupid like that. But there was blood on the ground. He wasn't moving.
There was a hole in his stomach.
"It was just… just some spare change…" he whispered, unable to move his eyes from the others.
"Just four gil…"
It wasn't the first death he had seen. Not by a long shot. It felt as though ages had past since he'd watched that first man fall in front of his feet, and that had been long after he'd witnessed deaths caused by Fran, Balthier, or Ashe.
But… then, he was on a great quest, to restore Dalmasca. He was fighting for his country. And now…
A warm, comforting weight descended on his shoulder. A ghost of breath tickled his ear.
"Some men will fight and kill for such harmless things." Balthier murmured, squeezing his shoulder gently.
"And others, they defend themselves, trying to avoid harm and thinking always kindly of their enemies. And sometimes even this cannot save them." Vaan looked up into Fran's eyes. Her face was soft with understanding. They understood. They did not blame.
But at his feet, the corpse seemed to be looking straight at him, even with the mask hiding his eyes. They were accusing, enraged.
"It was just a prank." Vaan told him, unable to hold the gaze of the dead man whose eyes he couldn't even see. "You could have ASKED for it BACK!"
He felt stupid for talking, screaming at a dead person, but it had to be said.
"Some people just can't take the joke." Balthier noted, dryly but not without sympathy. In a rare display of tenderness, he wrapped one arm around Vaan and used the other to ply the bloody sword from his hand. The sky pirate wiped it off in the grass while Fran knelt beside the man and muttered the words of release, letting the corpse turn to dust and flow back into the Great Cycle.
Vaan accepted the sword when it was handed to him and threw the stolen gil into the grass. Then, he emptied his pockets of all his money too, scattering it across the ground for some more greedy soul to pick up and horde. His own ship could wait; every piece of gil in his pocket had been stained by the bloody gil of the warrior. He didn't need the money. He never had.
Balthier and Fran didn't say a word to him, didn't even let their glance linger over the wasted, abandoned money. Instead, they waited for Vaan to reach them, and fell in step together, moving as one.
They turned to the West and continued on.
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A/N: And so goes my entrance into the FFXII fandom. Not my best, but I liked it.
Read and review please, and let me know if you want me to continue posting my work.