They say I don't take well to orders, and I'm the first to admit that it's true. I'm my own girl; not easily swayed.

When Balfonheim were little more than a dent in the coastline I was always shirking chores. The docks would go unchecked for hours at a time, and I sat in the whitecap, pretending my mandragora juice were serpentwyne and wishing a real pirate would show up. He'd just saunter in, bow at the waist, and sweep me off my feet into the bonny waves.

It was all I ever thought about until Reddas showed up.

He came from inland – I still laugh at that sometimes. He stumbled in from Cerobi looking like Heth Himself had spat him out of the sky. Scrubby pale beard all ashambles, fancy black and red clothes tattered and dusty. He looked like he hadn't had a square meal in a month.

Rikken took him in. He didn't talk for the first few days, and kept looking over his shoulder whenever there was so much a creak in the floorboards. He could sure hold his whiskey… I've never seen a man get so drunk.

I asked his name on the fifth day, but he waved his hand and grunted.

"Away with you."

So, I hated him.

His fancy accent, his black wool and leather clothes, his bad teeth. He could rot in the whitecap, muttering to himself, if he wanted – I wouldn't have cared.

But he didn't. He got a job running crates instead. And blazes! The man could run.

The first time I ran alongside him, baskets of fish on a running-pole over my shoulders, he beat me to the dock right easy. I weren't pleased. Tried to duck him into the bay and he dodged. I went over instead, and lost all my fishing baskets.

It were worth it, though, 'cause it made him laugh.

He got me out of the bay, gave me a fresh running-pole.

Then he said, "Right sporting, young lady."

I stuck my tongue out and he laughed again. A fine noise, that.

"I have been remiss in treating you ill. I am the pirate Reddas, at your employ."

"I'm not employing no pirate," I said, and he laughed harder.

"Shake, then," he said, and held out his hand.

Eventually he got sent to supervise on the dock, and then he kept on climbing the ranks. Before three months were out, the manse was his. He was commanding the ships like he'd been doing it all his life, and he seemed happy.

But he always cried in his sleep.

I teased him, gave him grief, sassed him when he gave orders. But I never dared not take them. He was too good, he was too sharp. Without him, Balfonheim would have been made a battleship yard as soon as the bluebloods in Dalmasca vanished. I knew that I think, even then. I couldn't imagine Balfonheim without him.

And then I think I fell in love with him.

No, I know I did.

Because I could always hear him crying in his sleep.

When he left for Archadia, I thought he wasn't going to come back. I drank like a fish, and cried. He told me, before he left, that he had his past to pay for.

I still don't know what he did to warrant wanting to die, but I could see it in his eyes. I know what guilt looks like. I've seen it everywhere around here. Viera who limp in with tattered ears, looking sick and fragile like seashells. Bruisers who come through from the south, looking for asylum, or just a change of scenery from the same empty four walls.

Divorcees, ex-convicts, orphans, veterans, refugees from Landis and Kiltia... We're all crying, all the time. Even when we're dancing and drinking, we're dying inside.

So when Reddas left, I drank, and I waited for my pirate to come out of the sea.

I wanted it to be him. More than breathing, I wanted it.

I started crying in my sleep, to make up for the crying he wasn't doing.

And then he came back, with company.

I didn't like the look of any one of them at first, especially the one with the earrings and the gun. He was too clean-cut, too sharp around the eyes. He treated Reddas like he was a bear trap about to spring, and acted like he knew everything. Looking back, turns out maybe he did.

The Dalmascan kid was a fine ball of spark, even if he did stare at me too much. He could run, blazes, he could run. Cleared Rikken and Raz out of their potions and gil in about a week.

And Earrings, he wasn't so bad after a while. Didn't know a boat from a button, but he could drink, and he had fine stories to tell. Stealing, running, dancing, kissing the girls.

But then Reddas caught word of something foul going on out east, and the fleet got sent out. Only four ships came back in, out of thirty. I still hear the ghosts in my sleep. Or at least I fancy that I do. What happened out there?

The night afore Reddas left to go East, with Vaan and Earrings and all of their crew, I got this feeling in my bones that this time, he wouldn't come back… but I wouldn't need to drink him out of me, either. Maybe I could let him go.

And that flash, out over the sea… I knew what it was. I knew it was him, paying his due.

When the others came back, Earrings told me what happened out there, how the sky had blown to bits and then Reddas saved everyone.

Everyone but himself.

"It's my own fault, in a way, Elza," he said, and gave me his handkerchief.

I don't understand, but I don't need to.

Reddas isn't crying anymore. That's good enough for me.