Disclaimer: FFXII is Squenix's.
Summary: He's gotten good at hiding because she's good at finding.
Comfort
A Viera is gifted naturally with astounding senses. The smells and sounds they could detect would bowl a human over, make them quiver with shock.
Balthier usually found this a very useful trait in Fran (though it certainly was not why they were partners). As of now though, it was all he could do to not cry because of them. (Cry out, cry tears, whatever.)
She sat in the co-pilot seat of The Strahl, those ears twitching with the effort to not twitch.
She could very clearly detect something was wrong with him, but did not want to make it apparent that she knew. Absently, he wondered what sadness dredged up from a person's past would smell like. She most certainly knew, but he wasn't about to ask.
Her hands moved fluidly over the controls.
Could she hear his heartbeat, ask it to pump out his secrets? Could she communicate with the wind, guide it to blow his dreams from his tangled mind into her open palm?
Her eyes were something different. Worry was evident in every bit of them, gliding over his slouched form, his hair in disarray, his hands moving hypnotically.
He'd thought he'd gotten better at this. Hiding. He couldn't hide anything from her because of those canny senses. She'd taste the tears in the air, falling, a mile away. Feel the broken child hiding somewhere in the man. She exposed him to the biting reality of it all. She wouldn't let him shove it down and lock it away.
Unable to ignore it any longer, she stood.
"Balthier. What is the matter?"
His eyelids fluttered shut. When he heard her question, he knew he had to answer. He buried his face in his hands, forceful and smudging his palms into the bones of his face.
She came to him. In a strange display of tenderness (but oh, was it appreciated), she told him, "I'm here."
And then he knew that she didn't tell how he was with a whiff of him or a careful glance. She could tell because she was Fran, and because she cared.