I do not own these characters, or the locations. I write for fun and not for money, and hopefully you'll enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
44. Two Roads.
Vaan woke up to the dim light of the dawn, falling onto his eyes over the tops of one of the several mountains surrounding them. Snowflakes were attached to his eyelashes, and even though he had been tucked up in fluffy white wolf pelts -of the best quality, too- he felt cold and tired.
"You're awake."
The Rabanastran thief would recognize that accent anywhere. After all, Archades and her inhabitants weren't the dearest to him.
"Balthier," he muttered, and stopped abruptly at the slight pain flashing through his chest. Vaan turned his head to his left and saw the Sky-pirate's profile against the gray cliffs and innocent white snow behind him. The teen couldn't distinguish any certain emotions on the brunets face, nor on his voice.
"You have been out cold for some time now-"
"Bad pun, Balthier."
"True, but our dear princess ordered me to crack a joke once you woke up."
Vaan frowned at the sky-pirate and sat up slowly, aided by the other man as his ribs roared their protests, and saw the smoking rests of a campfire and four other bunches of pelts around it. At least their comrades were sleeping soundly.
"What did she say?" The thief couldn't believe his ears. They could have been affected by Fafner's icy breath, or the bloodloss caused by his horns and claws since Ashe. Never. Said. Joke. "Was she affected by confuse again? She is, well... Kind of addicted to the spell, after all..."
Balthier laughed at that, and managed to copy Ashe's voice quite well: "'He has truly been a hero today, make sure he will be in his usual mood when he's conscious again. I've heard injuries can cause quite the depression. We can't afford to lose our best blah, blah, blah.' Vaan, I must say that the day you'll feel down from a few light gashes and two broken ribs I'll be shitting golden chocobo eggs."
"Hm..." the thief spent a moment pondering this. "Think they'd bring a lot of gil?"
"Sure. Sell me to that zoo in Rozzaria while you're at it."
"Zoo? But I guess we could let them rent you for a while. Then we would travel the world and earn money eeevery day!" Vaan's smile stretched from ear to ear now, and he was feeling quite the opposite of down as his imagination took a turn for the worse. "You sitting in the middle of a huge white pillow, clucking like a mama Cockatrice while popping golden eggs through your-"
"Not going there kid, or I'll sell you for fifty gil to some old man in Rabanastre."
"You seriously do picture me with ol' Dalan, huh."
"No, in fact I don't and why do you assume-"
"If you've got pedo images of me and some old geezer in your head, then why can't I picture you laying eggs through your butthole?"
Balthier wanted to cry, scream and throw the thief from the top or Bur-Omisace, but he managed to regain his control before anything far too bad could happen. And during the whole silent moment of his fighting against the urge to give Vaan a messy high-height death, said boy laid back down against the fluffy fur- quite happy with himself.
The rest of the team kept themselves hidden beneath layers upon layers of fluffy wolf fur, as they too, were considering the two different ideas of earning their fair share of not-so-bloody gil.