Three Coeurls
By LunarBlade Valentine
Synopsys: A year after communicating that he had survived, Balthier decides to show up at her castle, and for the strangest reason. Queen Ashe, understandably livid, needs not this sky pirate meddling in her affairs. So why does it feel so good to see him? And why is she compelled to search for him afterwards? BalthierxAshe romance. Possible part 1 of 2. Depends on reviews.
Spoilers: This happens after the end of the game, so yeah. I imagine there are spoilers.
Queen Ashelia stormed out of the meeting room. The men of the fishery coalition refused to listen, so she refused to sit and listen to them demand to open Bahamut Lake to fishing traffic. They refused to acknowledge that opening the lake to traffic would mean scavengers going into Bahamut. No one enters it, she mandated, and no one has in the two years since it crashed. Fish loved the lake, it's warm, clear waters had visitors and bathers flocking to it under the scorching desert sun, but it was forbidden to birth a boat. Even a rowboat could get you fined. So far fishers had stuck to the shores, but the bathers scared away the fish. They wanted a royal decree to allow them boats, but Ashe refused. She had been refusing for two years.
The first year she refused because she thought it was a tomb for a man who had sacrificed too much...
And then the ring. The only word from him. He was alive. Hadn't come to see her. She pushed him from her heart as the crown was rested on her head.
And then another year of denying the boats on grounds of the sheer amount of technology that could be stolen from the wreckage. An entire year of trying to express that she didn't need a husband, and that Dalmasca didn't yet need an heir. A year of turning Dalmasca to a Republic but they still insisted they needed a clear line of succession.
She was livid. When she had asked for refreshments and the maid, in her haste, spilled her glass of water on the queen, she nearly bit the poor girl's head off. She felt bad after, as she was dabbing at her silks with a kercheif, hidden away in an alcove, but a queen couldn't apologize. The maid would just have to get thicker skin, as she was fairly certain the woman ran off to cry somewhere. She had been on edge since the assassination attempt last week. The second in the year since her ascension. She had been knocked down by a guard as shots fired. No one was killed and the assassin was captured; an Archadian loyalist. The Emperor Larsa of Archadia denounced the attacked, calling it a crime against peace, but that was all that could be done before the man faced trial. Then the cries for an heir to secure Dalamsca's future became deafeningly louder. Her reign so far was prosperous for her country, and Rabanastre flourished. But if there was one spot that mired it thus far, it was the people's fear that they would lose their monarch yet again.
After it was no longer effective to dab at the spot on her dress, she flung away the useless kerchief, intending to get changed before her next meeting with tourist board and the inns and bait and tackle rights for the lakefront. How much of her life now revolved around that accursed lake! It brought fresh water closer and safer than the Giza Planes, was beautiful, and symbolized to the people a grand new age for Dalmasca in general and Rabanastre in particular. For Ashe it symbolized many other things, few of them pleasant. Still, she preferred the topic of the lake to the topic of her marriage..
A servant entered the room she had been hiding in and said,
"Your majesty," She was about to shoo him away him if not for the slight tremor in the man's voice, "There's a man here to see you."
"There are many people here to see me." She said without patience, "I have a meeting in just a moment. Who does he think he is that I should see him without invitation?"
"He… I don't know how he got into the castle, my Lady, but he said to say he hopes you enjoy having the ring back…?"
She froze.
"Should I call the guards…?"
Her heart hammered in her chest. What could that insufferable man want with her? They had not spoken since that fateful day!
"M'lady…?"
"What?" She snapped, then remembered his question. "No. Do not call the guards. Bring him hither."
"He…" The man looked highly uncomfortable, licking his lips,. "He said it would be best if you went to see him." His tone indicated he was aware of what an imprudent thing that was to say. His expression indicated he expected the man to be expelled from the castle post haste, so he was very surprised when the Queen huffed out a "Take me to him."
He was sitting in a small meeting room barely fit for four people in the long-unused part of the castle. How he got there and how did he find it was a mystery, but one she was willing to defer discovering. He was furnished with a glass of wine and seemed a bit travel-weary. But still the sight of him, even in a white cotton shirt, no vest, and his hair having cut short and grown out again, now longer than she was used to, made her innards react in all sorts of ways. He was as handsome as ever, his eyes not even on her as she entered and was left alone with him at her command. His eyes were on his wine. The nerve! She wanted to cross the table and throttle him.
He glanced at her at length, watched her seething, and grinned, rising the glass in a toast even as he didn't rise from his chair.
"Ah, there you are." He said conversationally. Her jaw was clenched so tight her teeth were aching and her hands clasped in front of her so tightly she was worried she'd draw blood. She forced herself to calm down and said coldly,
"How are you."
"As well as can be expected of a dead man, princess."
"It's 'your majesty' now."
"I prefer 'princess'. Much cuter." She wanted to call the guards to beat him.
"It's customary to stand when the queen enters the room." She seethed.
"I read that somewhere, yes." He agreed in a drawl, still smiling and taking a sip of wine.
"It's a sign of respect." She intone, her voice a dangerous lake of ice he was treating on. He met her eye again, mirth in his own.
"I've seen you covered, in order of viscosity: in water, wine, blood, smile ooze, mud and one cherry jubilee, it having escaped Penelo's consumption by jumping into your lap."
She remembered each one painfully clearly. He continued,
"My treating you like a human being is my sign of respect for you, princess."
Was her guillotine still functional? Dalmasca had abolished death by beheading some years into her father's rule.
"Why didn't you tell me you were alive?" She snapped. He grinned bitterly to himself.
"It's complicated." He answered.
She could get his head stuffed and then have her favourite part of him, sans the wit. The sooner she got this scoundrel out of her palace the better. What a reunion.
"What do you want?" She was still standing by the door, he was still sitting, easy as a Sunday morning, at the table.
"Ah, yes." He said, as though the contemplation of the wine had drawn his mind off of matters. He reached down unto a duffle he had at the foot of his chair and pulled out a sheathed long dagger. Her first reaction was a startle, that he could so easily bring a weapon into her palace, but then she recognized it as her own.
"I'm settling some affairs," He said, looking intently at her reactions, "And found this. It belongs to you and I thought I shall return it." He pushed it across the table towards her. It was a simple, elegant blade that the head of the Palace guard had given her at the beginning of the war. He told her that all the guards in the world were no match for self-reliance. He told her to keep it on her, and she did. And she did indeed intend to end her own life with it when it all went straight to hell.
"It seemed to have ended up amongst my possessions." He elaborated briefly.
"I wonder how that happened." She said, dripping sarcasm. He replied only with a smile, letting the jibe slide off. How did it end up with him? Their possessions had been stolen from them, scattered, misplaced, confiscated and redistributed so many times that she knew he had likely not stolen it. She had this inexplicable urge to hurt him, though. "It's such a simple, common thing." She said disdainfully, picking it up and unsheathing it to observe its status, "What would possess you to imagine I would want it? I can buy a dozen of these, and finer, too." Had he really come all the way in order to return it? There was probably a request or a favour coming.
"In light of current events I thought you ought to have it." He said, his smile fading for the first time. He was referring, she knew, to the assassination attempts. "Nothing stopping you from discarding it at your earliest convenience."
It was a sturdy Dalmascan steel blade, about the length of her forearm. It was easily concealed upon her person either at the small of her back or at her boot. She used it extensively on their adventures: Everything from an emergency weapon to snipping of herbs for the evening meal. Baltheir continued after giving her pause to contemplate it,
"You can throw it aside easy as anything," He reiterated, "But I rather hoped it would remind you of the woman who could take out three Couerls. She was much more sincere than queen Ashelia."
Her gaze, fiery with rage, snapped to him as the dagger snapped back into its sheath.
"What?"
"Working at the palace is called 'the dreaded honor' I hear. The rumors of your temper have spread far and wide, your majesty." He said her title like one would describe a snake, and she lost all pretenses of regality.
"How dare you, you sky pirate?! What would you know about leading a nation?" Her voice was loud and shrill and she cared not who heard it. She had thought him dead, mourned him for a year and he thought he could just- just-!
"I've lead this nation from ruin to prosperity!" She screamed. His face was passive, intent. She'd seen that look on his face before. She had labelled it 'mild disdain'. To have it directed at her made the blood boil in her veins.
"Yes, I heard you're turning Dalmasca into a republic. Well done," He mocked, "Helping the common folk by allowing those with money to dictate the rules. Yes, very well done."
"How dare you?!" She howled again, fists clenched at her sides, one closed tightly over the dagger in its sheath. "You vanish as it suits you and show up like an unwanted disease," she spat, "Coming here with this trinket and telling me my business. I don't care what other pearls of wisdom you've come to impart, Balthier, but get out this instant before I have my guards clamp you in irons, you lout! You're a wanted man in Dalmasca!"
He eyed her cooly, still sitting casually, then broke eye contact, examining the glass of wine with its beaded sweat.
"Indeed, I am a wanted man." He muttered to himself, looking unsurprised at her outburst, "I figured my visit would end thus." He sighed imperceptibly, then grinned mirthlessly and raised his glass again. "As you wish, majesty." She hated how he said her title, "Just as I finish this fine wine. Waste not want not, hmm?"
She stomped out of the chamber, barked at her chancellor to cancel any and all afternoon appointments and escaped to her room where she proceeded to throw the dagger in a corner and throw a magnificent tantrum, screaming at the wall and throwing her pillows around. She even attacked the posts of her bed with them, yelling the best obscenities the underbelly of Rabanastre had taught her at the sky pirate.
He had called her monstrous! The gall! The nerve! The sheer uncaring meanness of it! She thought him dead not a year past! What had he sacrificed? He ran once everything calmed down, not bothering to show his face for two years. She could have used his help!
She threw herself on her bed, feeling not an ounce better. She felt drained, hollow. Not how she thought her reunion with him might go. Never dreamed he would fling such insults at her or show her such disrespect. Thought maybe…
The woman who fought off three coeurls…
She was the one on guard duty, somewhere between here and there, between hell and hellfire. The coeurls had tried to sneak on them, and Ashe had used the very blade he returned to her to make short work of three of them before the commotion stirred the party out of their tents. It had been towards the end of their journey, when they had honed their minds and bodies to fine fighting machines. Three coeurls were nothing, really. But the rest took care of the remaining two beasts and Baltheir had given her such a grin.
"Princess," He had said, "You're a wonder of the world, you are. We were right here, you know, could have called us." He had winked at her.
She didn't understand at the time. Not the flirty wink, for she had not the farthest thought of romance then, and not the statement. Still didn't.
The woman who fought off three coeurls…
Had he meant the assassination attempt when he spoke of recent events, or of her temper? She picked up the blade and unsheathed it, watching the steel glint in the candle light. The blade was plain, utilitarian. Not fit for a princess, but fit for battle. She could have had an engraved, ornate thing, but she, despite her previous words, liked this one. It served a purpose, didn't get bogged down with unneeded decorations, didn't need to shout to make a statement…
And then she realized she had been wrong.
And she realized what he had meant.
And realized, perhaps, why he wanted to call her 'princess'.
And then she felt ashamed.
She looked down at her over decorated gowns. She had chosen them each to add regality to her visage. Was nervous, right after the fall of the Bahamut, that her war-like demeanour and young age would make the powerful men in the country belittle her. She still wore them; elaborate, inflexible garments that cost a fortune each. She might have been able to dodge her assailants without the assistance of her guards had she been wearing practical clothes...
She had forgotten about the woman who fought off three coeurls.
The woman sat up, looking at the now less than perfectly ironed dress, a fancy sheath for the plain blade that she was. Thought of her shouting at the fishermen earlier…
Balthier had become their leader then without anyone actually discussing it. She had crashed into him in the sewers, literally and proverbially at her lowest point. Cornered and on the run, he was suddenly there. Suddenly he was calling the shots and she was under his protection and under his wing and it felt as natural as breathing. When Vaan so much as made a suggestion she shot him down, but when Baltheir suggested a course of action they were on it before she could think to protest.
How did he do that?
Chapter 1. I told myself I've quitted Fanfiction, but now I understand that that is impossible. I never want to stop being inspired by others around me. I'll keep writing fanfiction for as long as I feel like. I have been concentrating much more on my personal projects, like my webcomic, but I will finish this story. Next chapter should be up on Sunday.
Let me know what you think? I love long reviews best. If you have any questions let me know in the comments and I'll gladly answer in the author's notes of next chapter. That's where I also thank reviewers who leave detailed comments!
Ever yours,
~LunarBlade
