Bought or Stolen?
As the engines of the Strahl hum soothingly below Ashe's feet, she wrings out her wet hair having just emerged from a well deserved shower, very thankful that the moogles filled the airship up with a supply of hot clean water before they left the aeroport.
Actually…
She thinks as she runs her fingers through her hair to separate out some of the knots.
This hair is getting a bit on the long side…
Ashe always hated having long hair, as it used to invite being pulled by her brothers when she was a child, and being an irritable tomboy of a princess she so hated to have it brushed or braided by anyone.
She remembers one disastrous occasion in her childhood when in the heat of summer one year, (after she had been persuaded to let it grow to a reasonable length for once) in a fit of discomfort she had taken a pair of scissors from her nurse's sewing box and cut it all off at ear-level; oh how her nurse had wept at the golden hair all over the floor and the impish-looking eleven year-old brandishing a pair of scissors defiantly at her.
Whenever she had just woken up for some time after that she usually looked so distinctly dishevelledthat her brothers used to say there was a dead chocobo in the room, its feathers sticking out all over the place…and then often adding something about the smell.
Ashe consequentially learned to fight from a very early age, but then she learnt how much she really did love each one of her brothers when she lost them to the war…
Rassler too of course…
She reminds herself of this autonomously, adding that she never fought with him…never havinghad the chance to. She wanders out into the cabin to find Balthier stretched out languorously over the controls of his airship; this trip over to the Ridorana Cataract will take at least a day and he merely watches the meters to check the new skystone doesn't do anything untoward to his ship,
"Ahh, Princess," he greets her without turning. "Enjoy your shower? I expect that the rest of us will now have to suffice with cold ones if the steam you managed to produce is anything to go by," he teases with a gesture to the fogged up windows. She sits sideways in Fran's chair next to him and drags her fingertips roughly through her hair again, finding it at that length which is just long enough to produce the most unreasonable tangles in almost no time at all.
"Perhaps you should offer to share with someone to save water," she retorts, and he gives her a pitiful glance.
"I would expect nothing but a black eye from such a proposition," he replies nonchalantly, and Ashe wonders if she may have misread the relationship between Balthier and his partner; feeling slightly embarrassed by this she pulls at her hair again.
"And" he says with a grimace, "you will break your hair manhandling it like that." He speaks with a tinge of distaste, for he has been studying her awhile now.
"It's too long," she comments bluntly, and then winces as her fingers catch a knot near her back of her neck,
"Isn't it the fashion of Princesses to have long flowing locks?" he questions, grimacing every time her hands catch, how he longs to simply take a brush to it and stop this torture, but he resists for now.
"Flowing locks are not so practical in the real world" she answers, taking a mat and pulling it apart, as the residual water rolls down her fingers and forearm.
"So... you would not consider palace life the real world then?" he asks, starting grind his teeth through his grin and knowing he cannot take much more of this,
"Well…no…" she replies awkwardly. "It is a different world at the very least." She takes an especially violent tug at a knot, and as a hunk of the fine strands snaps Balthier suddenly leaps up from his chair as if her had been stung.
"Stay there and don't touch anything!" he snaps, disappearing off down the hall as she wonders what could have provoked such an outburst. He returns a few minutes later with a rolled up piece of colourfully embellished fabric, inviting the princess's curiosity as he unwraps the bundle and she discovers that within its folds lie a set of engraved silver hairbrushes. He studies the arrangement carefully for some time, then takes a long handled brush decisively and strides up to her, turning her head around so that the back faces him.
"For gods sake just let me do it," he mutters angrily, and pulls the brush down the back of her head. She had no brushes of her own, evidently, but he simply could not bear to watch her ripping at it like this any longer. Although he thought she would be thankful for his offer, Ashe she hunches up and drops her head the moment he puts the brush to her hair.
"No, Balthier," she pleads. "I cannot bear to have anyone brush my hair."
"I may have noticed that," he remarks crossly, and then places his hands on her shoulders to lower them. He lifts a lock of soft, damp hair then very gently persuades it through the bristles of the brush.
Normally she would've pushed away any man or woman who even dared to try and comb her hair for her, but Balthier is so very gentle that Ashe can barely feel it, and seeing as she had nothing to brush her hair with herself, and her hands were not making much good, she begrudgingly allows him to do so. There is only one other person she remembers being able to let brush her hair for her, which was her mother, but she supposes that just this once she can make an exception – before she tears her own hair out.
One could suppose Balthier's hidden fascination with hair started with his mother, who lacking a daughter used to oblige her son brush her hair every morning and evening for the best part of ten years; it was always considered a chore in the young boy's eyes and she had such a sensitive scalp he learnt quickly how to tame the most hideous knots without receiving more than a short reprimand or occasionally a sharp rap across the knuckles with a comb from the daunting woman known as his mother.
She abruptly disappeared one day…to a mixture of relief and regret from the seventeen year-old boy destined to become a Judge, but at least he wasn't brushing hair anymore.
The realreason he was doing this now was quite simply because of Fran; for never in his life had he seen such a beautiful or unruly head of hair as that of the Viera, and it was a particularly calming activity to tame it, not least when she refused to do it herself while he was so willing and well-equipped, as the brushes he had now were those of his mother.
He switched through a variety of the brushes in the pack, teasing Ashe's hair this way and that until eventually he could pass a comb so fine you could not see the space between the prongs through any given section of her delightfully soft hair.
Fran's was beautifully wild, each hair strong and tough like it were made of drawn metal, but Ashe's was gently inviting; too inviting, for his wandering mischiefs. He stealthily sneaks the scissors from the folds of the material and winds a lock about his fingers then trims a few inches from it to the floor,
"Balthier what was that?" she asks threateningly, and he sweeps the upper layer of her hair away to expose the darker curtain around her neck, then deftly flicks the blades around her skin and a haze of hairs rain down onto the floor of the cabin,
"You said it was too long Princess," he answers with a smirk. "I'm merely fulfilling the lady's wishes." She tries to stand up but he holds her into her seat and eventually forces her to relent; holding the scissors between his teeth he withdraws another comb from the pack.
"Do you have any idea of what you're doing?" she questions worriedly, and Balthier chuckles as he begins slicing off larger chunks merrily, spiking a pit of dread in Ashe's stomach which rises to her throat as the blades flash tantalizingly close to her ears and the cold metal brushes against the skin of her neck,
"How do you think Fran retains those fabulous curls?" he whispers in her ear, combing her fringe out over her eyes and tickling her nose,
"You mean…" she starts.
"Beautiful hair…" he sighs as he interrupts her, "but impossible to cut alone…luckily enough for her, a leading man stocks a great range of skills, so that he may play his hand at a variety of trades."
He turns Ashe's head around slightly and begins to feathers the tips of her hair, until the quiet clicks draw near to her jaw, when he spins her around to face him fully, then kneels down before her, holding his face remarkably close to hers with a look of pure concentration as he frames her face with a halo of wisp-like cuts.
She is entranced; she unwinds under the casual methodical touch of another Hume, finding herself relaxing as he leans closer to cut her fringe, so close that she can feel his breath on her face. He speaks in a soft, silky voice, the one you know could talk you into anything if he tried hard enough.
"If you would close your eyes…'" he instructs, and they flutter shut obediently as he runs her fringe over his fingers and the snipping continues across her face, making tiny mists of hair fall down her face as she feels his breath again on her lips.
Suddenly another pair touch against them; as Balthier has let the scissors swing from his finger and softly kisses her.
It had been well over two years since Ashe ever kissed anyone, and what she feels most is shock, then surprise that someone would want her in a time and place like this, and then she feels the crushing betrayal of her Rassler in letting her kiss be given to another man. She pulls away quickly.
"Ah, Princess, I should have warned you that is part of the service," he teases, a wicked smirk on his face without an ounce of respect for the fact that she is a widow.
He raises his hand and makes a final tweak to her fringe, then blows over her face to rid it of any trimmings and sets about reorganizing and repacking the ornate brushes. Ashe sits in stunned silence as he slips the ornaments all into their specific pouches, and she notices how exquisite the tools he has used are.
"Bought or stolen?" she asks cruelly.
"What do you think?" he asks coolly, standing and dusting the wisps of now silver hair off his clothes in the dim cabin light.
"I think nothing of any real beauty can be purchased," she answers resentfully, angry with him for kissing her but not wanting to name it by bringing it up.
"How wonderfully true…" he replies with a secretive smile as she brushes together a small pile of cuttings with her feet, running her fingers through her 'new' hair and finding the length almost perfect. "They're stolen, of course," he finishes with an amused grin.
"I could have guessed," she scorns, and Balthier strongly considers just grabbing Ashe and throwing her over the control panel, kissing her with all his conjured passion because he wants to know what she'll do; however he doesn't get a chance to find out, as there comes a gentle tap at the door and Penelo sleepily steps halfway into the cabin.
"Um…Balthier?" she mumbles drousily, "Fran says she's on her way out to keep watch, so you can get some sleep."
"Thank you, Penelo," he says warmly, dusting his fingers over her shoulder as he passes her – Ashe wonders if there isn't a female he will not harass with his charms.
"Are you okay Ashe?" Penelo asks as she is passed by the princess in the doorway. "What were you doing in the cabin?"
'Nothing' she says coldly, and makes her way towards her bed in the dark, which is lucky considering the colour she blushes
'Dances her celebratory 20th fic dance'
Edited 21/01/10