Characters/Pairings: Balthier, Fran (sort of Balthier/Fran)
Rating/Warnings: T (for some suggestiveness, violence, and relatively mild profanity)
Summary: A young man is down on his luck when he comes across a bloody mess and a dying viera.
Spoilers: For Balthier's backstory, hence, for the game.
Notes: Takes place about six years before the canon, so Balthier is still new to the whole piracy thing. Balthier and Fran are crazy hard to write, and I wanted to do something a little bit fun and different with them (read: angsty and bloody), so hopefully I didn't push it too far . Finally, I'm not sure if this is, to me, THE way they met – more like a take on it. Originally published on livejournal in August - it took me a while to get it over here!
(originally written for xiphaia, for the FF_exchange of livejournal - her request was a first meeting between Fran and Balthier)
....
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Lost Boys and Wayward Girls
He remembered her as if she were still in front of him –a few years older than him, but still only a girl. He could see it in the glass of her eyes, how dewy and young and unknowing they shined. Just like Ffamran's. She had dark eyes and tan skin, white-blonde, long hair. Pure-bred Dalmascan, common. And very pretty. Especially the dark, milky eyes.
She danced. For a living, not now, although he heard dancing in the way her clothing jingled, in the very music of her voice. He'd met a couple of dancers. He still wondered over the lot, although he still wondered over most exotic things. In Archadia, there was no equivalent. The closest thing was a whore.
He heard the coyness in her voice, volleyed it back with his own. Introduced himself under a different name, as usual; used one of his favorites, too, for her. Hadn't done that since that orphan boy up at the Nabradian border.
Flirting was familiar, easy. It soothed the sting of his no-show interview. Can't get anywhere at life, at least you can get the girl. He laughed, she smiled and whispered in his ear: "You're not from here, are you…? Otherwise you wouldn't be out on a night like this. Anti-Archadian sentiment runs high, Rabanastrians roam drunk – you don't know what kind of trouble you might find…"
He found some trouble, all right. And it was her boy who was making it. Ffamran ran out of the bar before another ale-infused chorus began and the din raised and the merry old violence got started
He sniffed at the memory, then straightened himself (again), adjusting his duster and disdainfully sniffing (again) at the places they nearly tore his blouse. He felt for the dagger up his sleeve, fingered it, preened in his own power. It made him feel secure, although the dagger hadn't seen blood for at least a hundred years. He'd stolen it from his father's study. It was a gaudy, ornamental thing that looked sharper than the other gaudy, ornamental things hung in there. Stealing it had felt good.
His mind wandered back to the situation at hand. The dancer's boy hadn't even been pretty. Ffamran tilted his head, almost violently, at the pub. Bitterness flooded him. He'd stood in the correct place, waited longer than the correct time, and still had not been approached. Whoever it was likely took one look at him and thought him too young, too ornamented, to make a good co-pirate. Probably didn't believe he had a ship. Well, he did.
He began to roam the streets, ignoring the dancer's warning. He received a few drunken calls from the sides of buildings, but no physical threats. He idled about, humming sardonically along with the song that seeped out into the streets. A cheer always accompanied the singing.
All hail, Princess Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca!
(Twelve years old, at last betrothed.)
May the gods bless Prince Rasler Heios Nabradia!
(Ffamran wondered how he'd like his little bride. She was rumored to be pretty.)
May they smile on the fates of our nations! May this joining withstand time and trial!
(Pffft. As though Archadia cared about some stupid marriage between two miniscule countries. Rozarria, that was all they were every really frightened of back home.)
May the gods bless him, for after tonight it seemed as though he'd be partner-less and ship-less. Perhaps bruised up by some bar thugs, too, if the dancer's boy ever weaved his way through the crowd of the Sandsea and actually got to him. But he'd been big. Too big for weaving.
Ship-less. In the shadows, any passing observer would have seen his face collapse. The mere thought of what he'd done to her hurt him as much as he imagined all that bare circuitry and scraped metal hurt her. Her – that was his Strahl. Messy incident, that. Not really his fault, either, no teenaged mistake (he was always careful, professional, adult, when it came to his ship). It was those damned men from Draklor. Damn Archadia. Damn his father. Fear of a repeat forced him to use private docks, and that got pricy. He needed to get to the handle on the 'stealing' part of piracy, and soon. He'd have to stage something grand, too. Ffamran could only justify stealing when it was from those aristocrats pompous enough to deserve it. Like his father.
The moon rose higher. He didn't notice; clouds covered it almost fully. With no idea of time passing, knowing only of his own defeat, he wandered. He wandered into the corner of town where the traveling merchants stored their cargo. He remembered vividly a lesson straight from one of the books, back in that big library: Rabanastre, known as much for its Trade as for its Dancers… The loading area was near one of the gates – he could never remember which was which, no matter how hard he recalled those textbooks. Half-heartedly, he thought of stealing something. Instead, as he walked, he dragged his ringed hand across the bars of a loading cage. A satisfying and lonely clang-clang-clang rang out into the night.
A drunken humming alerted him to a soldier's presence, reminded him that his presence was unwelcome around these goods. Ffamran went still. The sound of his rings came to a halt. The humming stopped. Ffamran heard no footsteps, counted to five. Then he broke into the shadows of a large loading crate, saw a slower, more cautious movement out of the corner of his eye. He wasted no time in running, making his gasps for air as silent as his footsteps, as silent as he could, counting to thirty. He was small, light, quick. He could outrun anything.
He jumped up a few boxes, making a ruckus, then jumped off to the other side. The area was small, but crowded, layered. Rabanastre was like that. Sprawling and complicated, crowded, for as long as it went on. He landed on his feet, felt his knees buckle. Stood up.
He found rest in the alley's darkest corner, made darker by a fully obscured moon. He finally dared to take more than a silent, shallow breath. Adrenaline buzzed through him pleasantly.
His breath nearly stopped – again – when he heard a rustle behind him. Someone groaned. He jerked his head, too late, in its direction. A bulky figure rushed out of the shadows- at least, it rushed as fast as someone limping and clutching a broken bottle of ale could rush. It stayed clear of him, and Ffamran let him run. There was movement in the shadows. Ffamran considered. A wiser man would turn the other direction, go back to his inn for the evening. Ffamran was a stupid boy. He crept into the shadows, slow with the dagger conscious in his palm. His own voice, a little higher than normal:
"Hello?"
The answer was another groan, desperate like a cry. Ffamran's lip curled back, resentful of his own decision even as his irises dilated, searching the darkness.
He stumbled over something, quickly tried to regain his composure. Looking down, he realized that it was another man, this one younger, smaller. Ffamran strained to listen for sounds of breathing.
"Just a dead man," he murmured, stepping over the body. He tried to still the beating of his heart, the suddenly unpleasant nausea that accompanied his rush. "Well. He'll be soon, at any rate." An arrow stuck out of the man's throat, now sticky with blood. Ffamran squatted gingerly near the body. Careful to keep his white cuffs clean, he attempted a closer examination of the wound.
Think of it like a beast, he thought to himself, like in lessons.
"It looks like someone got you in the jugular vein." He'd never seen a human corpse before. He'd only ever seen the insides of small things; a cockatrice, once. The blood was clue enough that someone had hit a very red, very sticky bulls-eye. His nose scrunched up.
He got to his feet, brushing off his trouser legs. Then his hands, although they were still pristine. "That's very precise stabbing, there. It would be far from pleasurable to meet the gentleman whose handwork this is."
He turned away from the body and inspected the heap of cargo. Were they fighting over this? He looked around with renewed interest. Well. Most everything was boxed up, but even so he had trouble imagining anything around here worth a fuss. He was about to leave when he heard a last choking sound from the dying man and turned.
The moon swelled out from behind the clouds and Ffamran nearly stopped breathing. The man with the pierced jugular was perhaps the luckiest of the bunch. Ffamran initially assumed it to be a bar brawl, but after the arrow – after seeing this - held no doubts that this was something… grander. Grander and more terrible. One man, whose eyes were frozen open in horror, had slashes up and down his arms, a mutilated face, multiple, bloody pierces near his heart, as if the murderer hadn't found the heart on first try and didn't care to. Absently, Ffamran noticed the fine material of his bloodied clothes, the stylish cuts and rich colors. Little good they did him now. Next to him, slumped boneless against one of boxes, was a viera. She lay in a funny position, as if she was broken. She had a bow on her back, an arrow loose in her palm. He mistook her for dead until she, too, let out a choking claim for breath.
He hurried to her side. He lifted her arm to check for a pulse. It pumped, slow and steady. Unfrightened of death.
There was a slight movement – her, wincing. She opened her eyes. Milky and dark. They distracted him, unnerved him. She was uncut, but bloodied (the blood of the men around her?) and hardly seemed to be breathing. She struggled to her feet, he held her down. Her lips moved and she mumbled something incoherent.
Suddenly aware that he held the bloody hand of a murderess, Ffamran dropped it and scrambled to his feet. "It's indeed been a displeasure to meet you," he murmured, half out of nervousness and half sardonic, "but I don't like bloodbaths and I think I'm better to be off."
She groaned something and he realized all at once that he couldn't leave her. Milky, dark eyes – remember, Ffamran? He hated himself, even as he did. Remember your mother?
His mother's eyes were not leporine, weren't quite so dark, weren't a viera's eyes. He tried to point out the easy differences: this viera had short, dun brown hair, rabbit ears, knives sheathed on her leg. But even the faintest recollection latched the guilt to him, made it tug hard.
She was the only survivor. The only one left. The only one he could save. The one his young, soft conscience would nag about until his dying day, unless he picked her up and dragged her back to the inn.
It took longer than he expected. She walked with a heavy limp, leaning on his shoulder.
She was taller than him. Her arms were thinner, and stronger. He said nothing to her the entire way and she, obviously dying, said nothing in return. There was a lot of waiting in the shadows to turn a corner, hiding behind something as a Rabanastrian or two strolled past. But the night was old and quiet, and the drunks and orphans paid them no mind. The moon hid behind the clouds, and the darkness hid them, too. They had to go into the inn by the back door. By the time he got her back to the room he'd rented, her breathing had slowed considerably. When he felt for her pulse, it beat weaker than before
He got her a glass of water, and when she didn't drink that, he took some ale from the kitchens and forced that down her throat. Numbed her up. She was sticky with blood; when he reached to steady her head, he found a wound, bleeding into her hair, that he'd not seen in the moonlight. He attempted to bandage it. Then he stripped her down as much as he dared and set her into the bathtub, to get the blood off. It was cumbersome, carrying that tall body and his own into the tiny bathroom. She stirred and mumbled something else that he couldn't hear.
When he next felt for her pulse it wasn't there.
He rubbed at his temples, trying to get rid of his headache. He had a dead body, a bloodied bathtub, and a sleepless night. The gods are laughing at me.
After a few swigs of the leftover ale he fell asleep on the floor, next to the tiny bathroom's door.
He was awoken by a loud knocking on his door. He started, then listened, ears pricked up. The knock was strong. The knocker waited a long moment and gave another strong knock.
His headache only intensified. Just the owner, demanding I pay up, he thought, and brought the bottle to his mouth. There were other possibilities, too, but he concentrated on his drink. Only a dribble of the bitter ale remained, and he drank it greedily, clutching the bottle tighter as it went down.
There, again. The knock.
He shook as he stood. What time was it? He'd gone to sleep late the night before, nearly morning.
They've come to get you, the voice in his mind nagged. He would have tried another swig of ale, but there was none left and, anyway, he hated the stuff. He felt like a new man today. Someone who knew things, who felt nothing. Someone strong. Someone hungover. He'd never been hungover before. He'd only ever sipped at wine during dinners and parties, never enough to get drunk and achey. He couldn't say he liked the sensation.
To hell with it. Whoever was knocking, they were irritating him. No way was he going to stand for this, or for them, standing out there and… knocking. He didn't like it. It gave him a headache.
When he opened the door, he squinted against the sunlight. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things. Then he groaned.
She flicked her ears again, just slightly, as if she could feel him staring at them.
Another viera.
His muscled tensed, pulled him back into the ship. But he stood his ground against the pull, and the viera took a step forward. His words finally came; more a sensation of them finding him than he finding them.
"May I ask – what you're doing here?"
She rose her nose (rabbity, he noticed, like her ears and eyes), and looked to the heavens. All that was there was the ceiling. "She is passed."
"If you mean the other viera – yes." He stared at her for a moment more, her all out of place and strangely spiritual. His voice softened. "If you want her, she's inside. Her body, at any rate." Awkward silence ensued. "She's… passed away, yes."
The viera met his eyes.
"You have my condolences. This must be difficult for you." His voice was soft; he was using the euphemisms of his youth, comforting her in a way she likely didn't understand. But when she looked at him, he wondered that she did.
"I heard her cry."
"I didn't kill her."
"I know this."
"Well," he murmured, "at least that's clear." It was the only thing. Everything else was dizzy and throbbing. Those boys back in Archades had been right, for all their jabs. He couldn't hold his liquor. Couldn't keep a viera alive. Couldn't properly find a partner. Couldn't do anything except run away with a stolen toy – no, he corrected himself, she's your baby.
The viera looked at him again with those eyes that seemed to feel and feel nothing, then strode past him into the ship. He leaned against the doorway. Blasted headache. Made him confuse her eyes with the dead viera's hazy ones, with his own mother's.
"In the bathroom," he said, "in the tub."
"She must be put into the earth."
"Do what you like." He felt sheepish. Should he have done better with the body? Something different, some viera custom?
He'd never conversed with a viera before. Her accent was odd. So was her hair – long and white, with dark tips. Had she dyed it, he wondered? She must have grown it out. A while ago. It was longer than any viera's that he'd ever seen.
And her eyes. The sunlight brought out their crimson, alienated him. Their expression reminded him of the expression he saw in the eyes of all viera, shut-off and self-turned. Yet it held interest, too, as though she took him in more quickly and greedily, saw him more thoroughly, than any human ever saw anything.
He stood there, eyes closed, unwilling to see. When he opened them again, the viera were gone.
He thanked the gods he hadn't had to carry the body out. Small miracles. The gods were smiling cruelly upon partner-less, futureless Ffamran. Something had to give.
'Something' occurred to him:
He was Ffamran no longer.
The viera returned at dusk.
"You have her bow."
For a moment, he didn't remember what she was talking about. Then he remembered, just another stilted shot in a blurred collection: he had taken off the viera's weapons off before putting her in the bathtub.
He returned to the doorway with the bow, the quiver, and the knives. The white-haired viera took the first two and ignored the last.
"You don't want them?"
"Her sisters crafted this bow. She would want it lain on her grave."
He examined the knives. "I suppose you don't want these because they were made by men. Pity. The craftsmanship is excellent." He looked up at her, smiled wanly. "And we men – we're not so horrible, viera."
"My name is Fran."
He waved at her dismissively, not caring much for anything. "This one, she died of a head injury. Looked like she was pushed off of the crates, down in the cargo holding area. I thought you would… want to know."
Fran examined the bow and didn't answer. He wondered why she didn't walk away until he realized she wasn't really listening to him.
"It was to be a quick kill," she said. Her voice was smooth, but soft. A shiver went up his back.
She looked up, saw him there, and walked away. He followed her into the deserted hallway. Words jumped out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying.
"She killed one with an arrow in the throat," he said to her back, "One fled. The other, she slashed up. Knife wounds all about, really cut up. What was that all about?"
For a moment, all she gave him was her still back. Then she turned, eyes glassy. "I saw. She finished her job; she left this world with her duty fulfilled."
"Assassins, are you?"
The viera looked up at him. "Not I. But she, yes."
He followed her. "Why did she target them?"
"It is not your affair."
"Why the knives?"
"To kill. Her duty."
"I…" Words fell short, and he wondered why do I even want to know? The image of the dead viera came back to him, her black eyes half-lidded, her hair thick and sticky and brown, the bathtub clouded with red. "Tell me what happened. I could go to the soldiers, you know. Tell them she killed two Rabanastrians. That you know something about it."
"You have no proof," the viera replied. He wondered if she'd done something with the bodies. But for all her sureness, the viera averted her eyes and he knew she worried how her word would stand up against a hume's. She had no idea that he was a fugitive himself, that he wouldn't go to the soldiers for all the gil in Ivalice. Not if it meant losing his freedom.
"Her employer sent her to kill a man, a dealer of illegal goods with whom her employer disagreed. She was to mutilate the body after. He wished that she send a message. She planned for a quick shot to the heart. I have no idea what happened there."
An accomplice lured him out with a business offer, but he'd known. He managed to sneak up, got to her first, as she sat perched on the highest point in cargo area, ready to shoot. He pushed her down, but she'd heard him behind her, and pulled him with her. They tumbled in a fight, but he was woefully outclassed. He realized it had been stupid of him to come alone; he ached, but was pleased because she took the worst of the fall.
The viera unsheathed her knives; was forced to make the kill short-range. She proceeded to mutilate the body. As she sliced her victim, two drunks came along (the broken bottle in the first, fleeing man's hand, he remembered that now), saw what she was doing, were frightened of the beast before them. If they had been sober, they would have ran. Instead, they fought her, tried to stop her – in the name of all that was Dalmascan, against those strange and fierce creatures from the wood. One held her good leg; the other tried to smash in her head with his bottle o f ale. She reached for the quiver on her back and, with her good hand, she plunged an arrow into the first's throat. The other ran as she dragged herself over to a crate, propped herself against it, breathed in, breathed out… She might have reached up to touch the wound on her head, felt it come away bloodied, before everything started going dim…
And then he'd stumbled in.
A pronounced clicking sound brought him out of his reverie. It was the sound of the viera striding away on her stilettos. Dazed, he let her go. Then he shut the door.
She had been sitting at the same spot – this tiny, out-of-the-way table – for three days straight. The bartender looked irritated with her. She ignored him. She was waiting for someone to come.
A pair of viera - Rava, for they had darker complexions – sat together near the window. They exchanged a word every now and then, but mostly just sat sipping at some drinks, something Fran recognized as an attempt to blend with the humes. The two dyed their hair, one dark blonde-brown, one chestnut. One looked up and met Fran's eyes for a moment. Fran looked away.
She'd cut the dark ends off her hair last month. It relieved her not to stink of chemicals
She heard a scuffling sound and turned her head to the young man sliding into the seat across from her. Young was an understatement. His life could only have been a fifth of hers, and he was hardly a man even by hume standards. His fingers glittered when he raised them in greeting.
And then she recognized him – perhaps by the rings, perhaps by the way he gestured. He still looked young but he looked older, now. It always amazed her, how humes could grow so much in so short a time. Just less than a year, and already he looked less of a boy.
As she stared at him, he leaned back, cocked his head, and stared at her. His eyes darted a little too quickly, and she read anxiety there.
"Well." He recognized her, too.
"I am not what you expected," she said, her voice quiet and accented.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Neither are you what I expected."
"No," he said, speaking in his already-familiar tenor. "But I saw you as I walked in, so I've had more time than you to get used to the idea of partnering up. About thirty seconds more."
"You are young to be a sky pirate." She thought of getting up and leaving. She hadn't imagined him to be anything of the sort when she'd seen him last.
He looked at her hard, his eyes not quite meeting her own, instead lingering on her ears. She flicked them back in irritation, and his eyes slid back down to her hers.
"Last I saw of you, your head ached and you smelled of ale."
He let out a choking laugh, as if he couldn't decide whether her words were humorous or insulting. "Last time I saw you, the viera whom I assume was your partner had just passed away. And I was in a very bleak period, I'll have you know. Just so you won't rule me out on grounds of being a drunkard."
He mentioned the dead viera casually, so casually that Fran would have walked away had she not caught the way his eyes flicked away and back as he mentioned her. He hid things, this boy. He acted and postured so often that much of his cockiness had become real. But he was not insensitive.
"She was not truly a partner," Fran said, the words coming out thick. She searched for the right words to describe their relationship, the relationship of all viera. "She was a sister. We were only together two hume years. That is hardly any time at all."
Here he raised an eyebrow. "I think you will find me a perfectly sufficient pilot." He paused, thoughtful. "But what about you? Excuse me my skepticism, but are you truly an engineer?"
"I have pursued many lines of work," she replied absently.
He pursed his lips. "I may be young, but I am not by any means… inexperienced."
She was silent, for a moment, eyes still absent.
"You are too young to be away from home."
He bit at his cheek in annoyance and rolled his eyes, even tossing up his hands. She noticed again the rings glinting there, reeking of hume mines. How childish. They reminded her of her own fascination with bits of colored glass, when she was a child.
"Didn't seem to have any sermons for me when you picked up your… your sister."
There it was again, the pangs, in his tone. Guilt? Fran knew that emotion well. More like pain, perhaps, although she found his grief odd. Her sister meant nothing to him. Why did he feel grief over her death? Why had he tried to help her at all?
She met his eyes again. They were dark as coal, the corrupt gold of humes, but when he moved his head to look at her again they had the faintest sparkle of something amber.
"I do not believe you to have an airship," she said.
"Her name's the Strahl," he said, with a sort of tenderness, and his eyes looked more amber as he tilted his head up toward the gods. There was only the ceiling there. "She's beautiful."
"What sort of a ship is she?"
His lips tightened. "She's special," he said, his voice not nearly as tight as she expected it would be. In fact, those tight lips broke into a smile, something nearly dark, but also triumphant. "I've done quite the number on her."
"You did work on her yourself?"
"Yes, indeed. I'm a very fine technician, if I do say so myself."
"And yet you remain in this city?"
He looked up at her. "She's broken. I can't fix her. I've been stuck here – grounded, like a blasted bird with its wings clipped. Doing the odd treasure hunt, trying to get by. I'd wager that the process would be easier – and quite a bit less dull – with someone by my side."
His eyes clouded over with annoyance. The amber still sparkled there. "I need another engineer to help me fix her. My airship." When he said 'my airship' it sounded like 'my firstborn child'. "I… need someone."
Dependence was unattractive to her, and yet she felt what he said more than heard it. Recognized it
Three days, she reminded herself. Three days, not a single offer. Pirates were a dying breed, and viera a hated one. Fran had always thought that the two went well together.
She felt for the words, again, sticky and difficult to say, like she had tree sap in her mouth. "I have worked with humes before. I have lived among them for years. I have worked alone, as well, and with my sisters for many, many decades. But I have never worked with a child."
"My name is Balthier," he said, a certain note of pride in his voice, "And I'm not a child."
Fran's lips twitched up. Not a smile, certainly not one he could detect.
"That is your real name, is it?"
"Yes."
"But not the only name you have ever known?"
His expression told her he'd been caught off his guard.
"Do not worry. It suits you." Her lips twitched again. She feared he might see it this time. "You only need grow into it."
She stood up, but he stopped her with a flick of his wrist, standing as he did so.
"Let me get your chair for you."