A/N: Okay. I started this a very, very long time ago. And I think that's pretty damn obvious from the crazy voice change about halfway through. Also, I seem to remember having a really awesome ending. I don't remember it. I also don't really remember the point. If you find it, could you explain it to me? Please?
When he's sixteen, he takes his first step into Old Archades. It's filthy and crumbling and the people jealously eye even is plainest set of clothes. Still, he is here for a reason, and he continues forward, staring straight ahead and keeping one hand on the purse at his belt.
He finally reaches his intended destination, a seedy tavern in poor repair even by Old Archades' standards. Bodies press closer to him and he clutches his money still closer as he marches to the counter. "I'm in search of a man named Jules," he mutters to the barkeep, and his voice cracks at the end. Titters pass through the bar, and the greedy eyes grow more hopeful with his obvious naïveté. He's saved, though, when a man with few years on him steps forward. "I'm Jules, but who's askin'?"
"Balthier," his tongue fumbles over the pseudonym. He wrings his hands for a moment before returning to the vigilant watch over his coins.
"Uh-huh…. Uh huh." The man named Jules walks in slow, wide steps and strokes his face where an older man would have a beard. "Why don't you an' me go for a stroll, eh, Balthier?" He snakes an arm over the younger man's shoulders and guides him outside without waiting for an answer. After a moment of walking, he finally builds up the bravado to speak.
"Where exactly are we headed?" He stumbles over a crack in the flagstone. Jules, to his credit, does not laugh, but merely answers his question.
"My office," and he flashes his new and clearly high-profile client a yellowed grin. His 'office,' it turned out, was a dead-end alley with a tattered curtain strung across the entrance. Jules drops down onto a cushion in the corner and invites his customer to do the same. He does, and then Jules gets down to business.
"So, Mister Balthier, what words do you want me to fetch?" He lounges as he listens.
"I am looking to commission airship parts. This must all be done inconspicuously, however. There are… certain parties whom I would prefer remained in the dark as to this transaction."
The streetear attempts to hold back a snigger, and fails dismally.
"What is it that you find so funny?"
"My 'pologies, good Sir. It is just that it weren't often that I hear so many five-gil words all strung together like that."
Balthier's never heard this expression before, and he frowns in confusion.
"It means fancy words. Fancy and expensive," Jules elaborates.
Balthier sifts through the coins in his mind, searching for the slim silver pieces that denote five gil rather than the fatter, gold denominations. His frown deepens. "But five gil is hardly pricey," he complains.
"Maybe not to you, Sir, but five were a lot for a measly word. Talk is cheap, ya know?" He sits up as he explains. "Only decadent, rich folk can afford to use such decadent words."
Balthier smirks and thinks he's caught his opponent in his own trap, as he points out that 'decadent' is a decadent word in and of itself.
But Jules simply taps his nose and informs him that that's part of the joke, see?
When Baltheir finally leaves Old Archades, he's found his mechanic and his airship parts, but can't seem to understand Jules' joke.
When he is twenty, he steps into a significantly nicer tavern in Rabanastre. Now, people eye his luxurious clothing with awe and admiration, or even warily (it's not always an honest man who comes by such finery in these parts). He soaks it all in with his usual smirk though, and ignores that most of them have found better sport in staring at his Viera partner. She, for her part, either does not notice or does not care, though he would bet on both.
"We'd like to partake of your finest Rozarrian whiskey, if we might," he requests of the barkeep with a flourish. A less familiar man wouldn't hear the scoff in the subtle noise that Fran makes from behind him. "We shall only require one glass," he adds smoothly. He remembers the one time in which he persuaded Fran to try a shot of whiskey—and that had been a truly fine Rozarrian label, and served in a bar which was rather a step up from The Sandsea. Even so, she'd insisted that though the name was fine and pleasant, she would rather swallow a lit torch than to drink it again. To prove to her that it was excellent, he'd finished off the rest of the bottle and received an almighty headache when he finally awoke sixteen hours later. Fran had offered him no aid other than to snicker at his misfortune—as well as Fran could snicker, anyway.
The barkeep raised a brow at Balthier, as one would when they suspect they are being tricked somehow. "…Coming right up, Good Sir," he answered slowly. He reached below the bar and unlocked the cabinet that housed their finer drinks.
"Is something amiss?"
"Ah, no Sir. It's just… a simple 'whiskey please' woulda gotten the job done alright. Folks don't talk like that too much around here. This isn't Archades, ya know?"
Balthier takes his drink and chooses not to answer.
When he is twenty-three, he watches is father die. He never imagined, not from the time he was sixteen, that he would see this. He certainly never thought that it would be at his own hand. He has always assumed that he would hear of the great Dr. Cid's demise through some social connection, about how he passed writhing in his bedsheets and raving distantly about nethicite, talking to himself (but dear father was never mad at all, now was he?).
Rather than fading away in a pool of finery and the indulgence of a decadent insanity, though, Cidolfus Demen Bunansa is choking on his own blood, dying in a damned crypt.
"Ffamran," the doctor calls out, his voice rough and liquid all at once. Balthier turns, warily, to see the broken silhouette of a man crouched on the floor. Crimson pools across the filthy cobbles and turns brackish with dirt.
"Cid," he acknowledges, incapable of forgetting his pride even now. The others continue to recede from the room.
"You know, before all of this strife and falling-out, I loved you. Once upon a time, I like to think that we both did." Cid wheezes. Balthier laughs.
"No one really talks like that anymore, old man."
Cid adds in his own chuckle, and for a moment they are young and happy and together again. But the moment ends and they are back in a crumbling tomb where a son is watching his father die.
"You're right. You and I, Ffamran, are relics of a passing era. Our time is come to a close." Cid's hands, pressed to his wound, fall away to hold his head away from the floor. His last breath threatens closer and closer.
"You're wrong about that, old man. I still have some business left to attend to before I can leave this world."
"Is that so?" His chuckle is disfigured into a cough.
"Yes."
"Well then, my son, I wish you the best of luck."
He walks away, and he finally understands what Jules was trying to tell him in that alley in Old Archades. He doesn't turn around.