A/N: Ultimately Balthier/Vaan, rated a very hard M for explicit matters in the second chapter. Enjoy!
# # #
Vaan flicked his sopping wet hair out of his eyes, gasping. Rain poured down in torrents across the broad green expanse of the Tchita Uplands, the combined wetness and encroaching nightfall swallowing the rolling fields in dark mist.
I hate rain, Vaan thought sourly, dodging a long gold-green tentacle that shot in his direction. The tentacle caused a slap-suck noise that made Vaan shudder as it struck the front of his shield, and only a quick wrench backwards kept the tentacle from claiming the armament as prize.
Red light flared in the corner of his vision. "Clear!" Ashe shouted, and Vaan skipped back a step as fire engulfed the creature before him, causing the abomination to scream in fury. Vaan shuddered again. Whatever this creature was, it was no ordinary Marlboro. A battle-seasoned party of six was more than enough to overwhelm a single Marlboro in open combat, but this one-
"Just. Won't. Die!" Basch grunted from his left side, heavy axe swinging forward to lop off the end of a tentacle. The creature screamed again, rearing in Basch's direction and spitting acid in a vile purple spray: Basch hissed and jumped backward as flecks burned into his flesh, his axe-hand swinging in an automatic figure-eight pattern to ward off any stray tentacles.
Vaan reached for his magick reserves but felt himself go light-headed; he didn't have enough to deliver a cure spell. He barely had time to parry another flailing tentacle before twin healing spells – one to counter poison, one to seal wounds - flew past him to careen into Basch in a show of white so bright it hurt Vaan's eyes.
"Mind yourself," Balthier said from the other side of the battle, strain evident in his voice. "I don't believe I can do that again."
"It's got to be almost dead!" Penelo cried. During the battle one of her hair-tails had become untied and plastered to her neck with the rain; despite the chill her cheeks were nearly red with effort. Penelo's sword was quick: the creature was mottled with several thin cuts where it faced her.
An arrow whizzed past Vaan's left ear and buried itself into the not-Marlboro's eye, causing the creature to screech so loudly he was momentarily deafened, and whirl around so that its face turned the opposite direction.
"Its time is nigh," Fran informed the group from behind. Vaan breathed deeply; Fran was nearly always correct in these things, so Vaan took a deep breath and redoubled his efforts.
Vaan leapt forward at the same time Basch did: both buried sword and axe deep into the back of the thing's head. The not-Marlboro flailed; Penelo slid across the wet grass on her knees to angle her sword upwards through the thing's tentacles. Black liquid sprayed Penelo across the face from the wound as the creature struggled, but Penelo merely shook her eyes clear of the mess and threw her weight to the side to twist the blade deeper.
The creature was horribly strong; Vaan was lifted off the ground in its death throws, and he braced his legs against Basch's hips in the absence of ground, using the angle to his advantage. He couldn't suppress a wince as living matter crunched under his sword like dry leaves.
"Die, damn you," Balthier muttered, awkwardly resettling his own sword to give the thing a deathblow. Normally, Balthier vastly preferred his gun collection to any form of melee weapon, but the rain and damp made it difficult to keep powder dry. Consequently, for their sojourn across the Uplands, he had reluctantly switched to a blade out of practicality.
Shifting his hands back to position a double-handed strike, Balthier swung forward with a grunt, burying his sword deep within the thing's face. That was it: the creature wobbled and slid down, its tentacles going slack as life left its body.
As it was dying, the not-Marlboro opened its mouth, by now leaking the same black fluid that covered Penelo, and heaved a great cloud of noxious fumes forward, engulfing Balthier. Basch cursed and stepped backwards, pulling Vaan and Penelo with him; Penelo's sword was so deeply buried in the thing's body that she had to let it go.
When the smoke dissipated, Balthier let go of his sword's hilt and staggered backwards, his eyes passing over all of them as if he hadn't quite seen them before, or as if they were strangers that he couldn't place-
"Confusion," Fran said from behind them, red eyes glaring hotly at the wavering Balthier and the dead thing's corpse, which was beginning to wilt into sopping plant refuse and ooze under the rain.
Penelo darted forward to grab her sword from the not-Marlboro's corpse, bracing one foot against what used to be its head to work the weapon free. Balthier blinked, staring blankly at Penelo sliding her blade out from the dead monster before his lip curled back-
"Penelo!" Ashe cried as Balthier lunged forward and hit Penelo with an uppercut that sent the girl reeling, adding a streak of hume-red from her nose to the black monster-blood already striping her face.
Vaan's first instinct was to draw his sword and he did; only a last minute remembrance told him that he didn't want to injure Balthier. Vaan had only seen the other man fight bare-handed one time previously – when they were both prisoners in the Nalbina Dungeons - but Balthier was good at it, a skill likely honed through long nights spent in seedy districts. Penelo wasn't a bad fighter herself but Balthier was stronger and had the element of surprise; Penelo gurgled as Balthier pinned her in a headlock.
Fortunately Basch was thinking quicker than Vaan, as he dove forward and wedged himself between Penelo and Balthier, forcing the other man back against the rain-drenched grass. "Smelling salts!" Basch bellowed, voice borne from years in a military life. Balthier howled in rage as Basch drove him off Penelo and the sound sent a chill up Vaan's spine – it was animalistic, not a noise Balthier would ever make in his right mind. "Remedies, anything!"
Balthier snarled and hit forward, causing Basch to grunt, wincing as he drove back against Balthier. While Basch was more than a match for Balthier in terms of strength, he was also encumbered by not wanting to seriously injure him. The Uplands were dangerous enough as it was; it wouldn't do to have a member of their group knocked out with a broken limb if it was avoidable. Not to mention, Balthier seemed to be the only one who knew where they were going, driven toward Archades by some internal compass, the points of which were unknown to Vaan. It was as if Balthier had been there before. Vaan would have asked but for the unspoken rule of don't ask that hung over the six of them as surely as low-bellied rain clouds. Each one of them seemed to have a checkered past that they didn't want to talk about. And if Vaan didn't want to talk about starving in the gutters of Rabanastre or his brother's slow decent into instability and death, Vaan wasn't going to ask Balthier why he seemed to know how to get to the capital of the empire as well as he knew the control deck of the Strahl. It wasn't worth it.
Vaan quickly turned to dive through their bags but Ashe and Fran had already beaten him to it: food supplies, changes of clothes, eye drops, antidotes, potions, gil, handkerchiefs all scattered across the wet grass, but no smelling salts.
Ashe sat back on her heels after tearing through Basch's carefully ordered bundle. "Maybe I could-" she settled back and a faint white aura grew and flickered around her, attempting a healing spell. Vaan shook his head, impressed by her magickal stamina – he knew that the spell needed to counter confusion was well beyond his reach at the moment.
"No!" Fran shouted, pointing behind Vaan. Vaan whirled around and was almost blinded by a gaggle of four storm elementals, their unearthly brilliance lighting up the fields like daybreak come early. For a horrific moment Vaan thought they had been attracted by Ashe's attempted spell but it seemed as though Fran had stopped her in time. The elementals merely floated among the ruins, ethereal and deadly, but harmless for now.
"There's no way we could take them on," Vaan said, shading his eyes against the light to get a better look. "One, maybe, but four?"
"Even one," Fran said, turning back to watch the ongoing wrestling match between Basch and Balthier; Basch bled sluggishly from long jagged cuts on his arms, likely from Balthier's nails; Balthier also seemed to have no compunction against trying to bite the other man. Basch grunted as he held Balthier off with trembling arms. While Balthier seemed to have gained a second wind from his confusion, Basch was clearly exhausted.
"What do we do?" Penelo wanted to know, face still streaked with her own blood and the creature's. She ran a gauntleted hand across her nose, to little effect. "We can't let him just… kill us all!"
"We could knock him out?" Ashe suggested.
Fran shook her head. "Unwise. Losing consciousness is dangerous enough as is; losing consciousness through blunt force when one is not in their right mind is to court death or damage."
Vaan dropped his sword and carefully removed his shield, shaking his shield arm to stretch it. When he flexed his fingers his knuckles cracked, and Vaan winced, mostly at the noise. "What if we just… held him down?" he suggested. "He's… confused, but we outnumber him, right?"
It was as good of an idea as any. Penelo tightened her gauntlets by pulling at the frayed knit rope with her teeth while the other two women dropped their bows among the rest of their belongings spread on the knoll. Basch and Balthier were still struggling against each other on their feet; finally, Basch managed to hook a foot around the pirate's ankle and send him sprawling.
As soon as Balthier fell flat on his back, Vaan pounced and secured Balthier's left leg, while Penelo wound like a snake around Balthier's right. Basch caught wind of what his companions were trying to do without instruction and slid back to pin Balthier's left arm down against the mud; Ashe curled around Balthier's right arm so tightly it looked as if she were embracing a lover.
Balthier thrashed, his head beating mercilessly against the soft ground until Fran's hands slid down to cup the back of his skull. "Balthier," she said softly, and Vaan's scalp prickled at her tone, "calm yourself."
Balthier's breathing caught, sounding strained as he pushed air through his nostrils. His eyes opened and lolled back and forth in their gaze, aimless. "Let me loose," he pleaded, voice too soft and not entirely his own.
Fran shook her head, ears twitching slightly in the rain. "Balthier, come back."
Lifting his head, Balthier's blank stare traveled down his body and over his companions that held him down. "Who?"
That too-soft voice, lilted with a stranger, more aristocratic accent than usual, if that was possible – from his job of securing Balthier's straining leg, Vaan lifted his head. He'd been confused by enemies before, but it was only for brief moments before one of his companions had thrown healing spells or smelling salts at him to bring him back. Of course, those moments had been lost to him in conscious thought, but was it possible to forget one's own name?
Fran sighed deeply, her long-nailed thumbs stroking gently against Balthier's temples. Vaan couldn't pretend to know the actual base of the strange relationship between the pirate and viera – upon first meeting them he had assumed they had a romantic or at least a sexual partnership, but as time wore on, he found he wasn't so sure if it was that simple. At times like these, it was almost as if Balthier was Fran's doted upon favorite son. She was certainly old enough for it, that much Vaan knew for sure. In fact, she was probably old enough to have grandchildren Balthier's age. Thinking about Fran's actual age when her body retained the shape of a supple youth always unnerved Vaan – he turned his attention back to holding down Balthier's leg to get his mind off of it.
After another long-suffering sigh, Fran leaned over and whispered something in Balthier's ear that made Balthier's muscles seize like he'd caught a sudden bout of lockjaw. Surprised, Vaan slackened his grip and nearly let go of Balthier's leg entirely when the pirate started struggling again with a vengeance.
"What the-" Penelo wanted to know before Balthier cut her off with a piercing scream that echoed off the misty hills in the distance as his body arched desperately off the ground in yet another bid for freedom.
Fran hurriedly clapped a hand over Balthier's mouth, muffling the sound and looking up at the hovering elementals. Being elemental they had no sense of hearing, but they seemed to be very acute at discerning vibrations. Holding his breath Vaan dared a peek – they were flitting in an eerily glowing cloud above a ruin, but seemed unconcerned with their presence. The only thing to be grateful for was that the chill rain seemed to have deterred the other, lesser monsters from coming out of their dens to see what the commotion was about.
"Now what?" Ashe wanted to know, her teeth starting to chatter against the cold and damp, now that the battle-fever had worn down.
Fran shook water from her ears in a sudden torrent, some of it striking Vaan in the face. One of her hands still gagged Balthier, the other stayed cupped behind the crown of his head to prevent the pirate from concussing himself as he flailed. "He'll lose consciousness soon," she replied in her calm, strange accent. "He's exhausted and confused and believes we're his enemies: the fear will overwhelm him shortly."
Hearing it explained like that caused the hair on Vaan's neck to stand up. Sometimes, he wished the viera wasn't so blasé about such things. It was unnerving.
Five minutes passed, ten minutes, a half hour. Vaan's muscles started to go stiff with cold and wet: his limbs vibrated against his will with the chill and he had to lock his jaw against teeth chattering. To distract himself from the discomfort, he watched Penelo's face scrunched closed against Balthier's leg. Air escaped her nostrils in tiny visible puffs.
Balthier's struggling became noticeably weaker as time wore on. At the forty-five minute mark, he merely twitched occasionally and moaned in the back of his throat. Finally, his limbs went slack and his head rolled to the side in a dead faint.
Carefully, the rest of the group untangled themselves from Balthier's body, cursing at stiff limbs and cold ears and toes.
"What should we do?" Penelo asked between clenched teeth to ward off chattering.
Basch shook out his stiff arms, wincing. His hair was matted with blood on one side, the result of either the not-Marlboro or Balthier getting a left hook in. "We should bind him," the knight said, rubbing a hand against his stubble. "Just in case he wakes up still confused."
Fran was the last to stand away from Balthier, carefully pulling her hand out from under his head – her fingers were purpled and swollen from being constantly pounded against the earth, but she said nothing of it. "There is a ruin not far from here where travelers have stayed before," she announced, her nose twitching. "I can smell wood from old fires."
"Hopefully there's still wood in it," Ashe added. Her left flank was soaked through with mud, and when she pushed back her hair, a cascade of water ran from it. "Otherwise we won't find aught to burn in this tempest."
Slowly, they busied themselves gathering their possessions they had strung across the knoll in their attempt to find items to cure Balthier. Basch bound Balthier's slack legs together with a pair of spare leather belts and knotted Balthier's arms behind his back with the rawhide tie from a rucksack. Vaan grabbed Basch's pack while the knight carefully picked Balthier up from the ground with a grunt and resettled his weight. Balthier hung like a ragdoll, his head lolling back and forth.
"Which ruin?" Basch asked, strained. "I don't think I can bear him that far."
Fran pointed with her bruised hand. "Not far beyond the elementals. It should not take us longer than ten minutes at an easy pace."
Footsore, weary, and injured, the group dragged their possessions behind Fran. If there were any small favors it was that despite the night they had no need for torches – the gaggle of elementals provided more light than they needed.
# # #
The ruin that Fran had mentioned had indeed been frequented by other wayfarers – once the group picked their way past the rubble that half-blocked the entrance, the floor had been blackened by recent fires and the scent of flint and ash still hung heavy in the air. Being as the ruin had been constructed of stone it was just as cold as the outside, but blessedly dry. After Basch had staggered in with Balthier, Fran carefully piled the stone rubble against the opening so as to discourage monsters from simply ambling into their camp, while Ashe collected wood pieces from around the ancient fire pits and stone rubble to build a fire.
They had been building and dismantling camps for so long now that everybody was able to go about their business without getting in each other's way. Penelo dug through their packs for cookware and food while Basch resettled Balthier on his side out of the way.
"We probably shouldn't leave him like that," Vaan pointed out, sorting through their potion stores. "He's liable to catch the ague if he sleeps in wet clothes with no blanket."
Basch hummed under his breath, searching through his pack for something. "I wasn't planning on it. When we get the fire laid we can wrap him in one of the Kiltas cloaks… I also want to rebind his hands so that he doesn't accidentally dislocate his shoulder if he rolls on his back." With a grunt of satisfaction, Basch pulled out flint from a side pocket in his haversack. "Do we have anything to burn?"
"We were lucky." Ashe's voice floated from a dark corner of the ruin: she walked into sight with her arms piled high with split wood. "Somebody must have stayed here for a long period of time and cut wood. It's all dry, too."
"Perfect." Ashe handed him the pile of wood and then went back to the perimeter of the stone room to collect dead leaves and dry grasses for kindling as Basch arranged the split wood into a burnable configuration. Penelo stepped over Vaan's squatting figure with an empty pot, which she carefully balanced on the edge of Fran's stone fortifications to collect rainwater.
"One good thing about rain," Penelo said with a smile at Vaan, "at least it's not hard to get water for tea!"
Vaan rolled his eyes, just as his stomach rumbled so loudly it echoed around the room. Basch dipped his head to cover a smile.
"Do we have anything-" Vaan started, before Penelo cut him off.
"You know what we have to eat," she admonished him.
Vaan sighed. "That means we have nothing. As usual."
Returning with double handfuls of fragile brown leaves, Ashe cocked her head. "We still have that bread, right?"
Penelo nodded and waved a hand at the offerings she had lined up for their dinner, which wasn't an impressive lot. Half a round of black bread, salt, a heel of precious cheese, and a handful or so of dried dandelion leaves.
Basch looked up from scraping sparks into a pile of dry leaves to shake his head at the meager pile. "We do need to eat better," he rumbled, scratching at the stubble clinging to the underside of his chin. "We can't be expected to run and fight day in and day out on dandelion leaves and stale bread. It's foolish."
"And tea," Penelo added. The rain was pouring so intensely outside that it hadn't taken long at all to fill the beaten copper pot up. She brought the pot inside and placed it next to the fire in preparation for it to be lit and sat down on the ground to start assembling the pot's tripod to hang it over the fire.
"And tea," Basch conceded with a slight smile.
Vaan, after having done the obligatory potion count, started parceling them out to those who needed them most. Basch and Fran were at the top of the list this time, what with Basch's injuries from grappling against Balthier and Fran's swollen hand. When Vaan offered Fran a flask she waved it impatiently away, in favor of digging through a pack and pulling out a long woolen cape.
The Kiltas, grateful to their group for fending off the empire which had killed the Gran Kiltas, had gifted them with renewed supplies, new rucksacks, and a set of woolen capes crafted from wolf pelts and backed with double-braded yak hair. They were made to protect the Kiltas against the brutal weather of the Paramina Rift, and were wonderfully durable and warm. Laying one pelt-side down against the blackened floor, Fran busied herself with carefully lifting the still-unconscious Balthier and placing him on top of it.
"Wait," Basch commanded, hurriedly passing his flint and stone to Penelo, who blinked uncomprehendingly at the implements. "Let's move him over there-" – he pointed at a thin chipped stone pillar not too far from the fire – "-and I can bind his hands to that instead."
Fran nodded wordlessly, and they stepped apart to pick up opposite ends of the cloak and carry Balthier over to the pillar. Basch untied the pirate's hands while Fran carefully divested Balthier of his sodden vest and shirt. Basch pushed Balthier's unresisting arms above his head and bound them to the pillar with a complicated, nameless knot he'd learned at some point in his military past, and Fran doubled the cape over again to cover Balthier once more.
Ashe, Penelo, and Vaan had watched silently. "Will he be all right?" Penelo wanted to know, still holding flint and stone.
Basch crossed back over to the fire with an unusually warm smile. Vaan would never, ever admit it, but he liked Basch when the man tried to be reassuring. It reminded Vaan of his own father, vague as his memories were of his blood relatives other than Reks. "He'll be fine." Taking the flint and stone from Penelo, he struck it again and blew on the resulting sparks: the dry leaves withered and smoked as fire finally came to life. Vaan shed his paralysis and helped Ashe gather more kindling. "We just have to keep him from hurting himself or us until it wears off or we can use something to heal him. It's nothing permanent."
Vaan shot a side glance at Fran, who was absently massaging her hand and staring out over the blocked entrance to their camp; the disquieting glow of elementals still hovered outside and filtered through the rubbish.
"The rain will not stop tomorrow," Fran announced, still squinting out over the weather like it was a scroll she was trying to read.
Basch grunted, accepting more handfuls of twigs and dry leaves when Ashe or Vaan passed them to him. "Should we try and make it back to the Phon Coast?"
"Isn't there anything closer?" Vaan wanted to know, heart sinking. The hunter's camp back on the coast was at least three day's walk through treacherous territory. It had been difficult enough getting as far as they had.
With a shrug, Basch piled more kindling up against the small fire, careful not to smother it. "I know that Balfonheim lies east of here, but it would be at least another three day's travel through the rest of the Uplands and even farther across a place known as the steppe. I don't know if there's anything between here and there – and I don't think it would be any closer than Phon. Archades would be a fool's gamble to try and get to from here with Balthier in such a state. I don't even know how to get to Archades and even if we could I don't think it would be wise to go into the heart of the Archadian Empire with one of us incapacitated." Sighing, Basch cleared his throat. He didn't normally speak so much at one time, and the effort left him looking uncomfortable. Balthier usually did the strategizing. "We at least know where the hunter's camp at Phon is."
Ashe sighed, coming forth with another pile of split logs: the fire had taken well to the kindling. When the princess put the wood down, she made a face and brushed dirt off her arms. "Surely we can't carry the pirate all the way back to the camp. Not with all these hostile monsters about. Even if he was unconscious the entire time it would be nearly impossible… if he were awake and fighting us, we'd get torn to pieces by a beast."
Vaan's lip twitched. Ever since Balthier had conned the princess into giving him her wedding ring, Ashe had been none-too-fond of him. She was wise enough to recognize his usefulness and it never became ugly or petty – for if Balthier left the group, not only would they lose him, but likely Fran as well and they definitely couldn't afford that – but Ashe rarely referred to him by name. He was always "the pirate."
Penelo deftly set up the copper pot's tripod over the flames while Fran rolled hand-sized rocks into the fire to heat. "Maybe the confusion'll wear off soon," Penelo pointed out. "We could always wait." Carefully, Penelo set the water to boil for tea.
Fran's ear twitched as she sat next to the fire, the flames reflecting vividly in her red eyes. "Confusion, if maintained for a long period of time, is like being caught in endless nightmares with no escape." Vaan's neck hair prickled again. "While it would be possible to sit and hope it leaves Balthier soon, it puts him in a… less than enviable position. Even now, he is lost in the darkest recesses of his mind."
Uncomfortable silence enveloped the camp until Basch cleared his throat and stroked absently at his stubble again. "Besides, it would be unwise for us to venture any further as ill-supplied as we are," he pointed out. "What would we do if we came across another one of those fell beasts? We were fortunate that only one of us fell to such a fate."
He was right, Vaan realized, chilled at the thought. If Basch hadn't pulled him and Penelo out of the way when the not-Marlboro had expelled those putrid fumes, it could have been their undoing. It had been difficult enough to fend off Balthier alone: two or more cases like his and they all might have cut each other to pieces on that knoll.
Ashe sighed, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin against her folded hands. Dirt clung to her damp boots and face. "What should we do? We cannot go back to the Phon Coast as we are, nor can we continue."
Penelo dug through her haversack and produced a leather bag of Dalmascan green tea, a small amount of which she tossed into the copper pot of steaming water. "We could split up," she suggested. "Some of us go back to the hunter's camp for supplies, some of us stay here and look after Balthier."
Vaan sighed, reclining back onto his forearms as he watched the fire grow. "Do you think we could make it across the uplands with only four of us?"
Basch grunted again, leaning forward to throw more wood on the growing fire. The stone room was rapidly becoming warmer; as the fire strengthened, the stone walls and floor retained heat. Vaan's wet clothes started to steam on his body. "Probably three of us would go," the knight said, carefully angling a fresh piece of wood against the others. "It wouldn't be wise for only one person to remain here alone, just in case something attacked, or Balthier got loose."
Ashe stared pensively into the flames for a moment before twisting behind her to retrieve the metal bowls they used for everything from drinking to digging fire pits. "It would be a gamble," she said, lining the dented bowls up next to the fire, "but as long as we kept moving and didn't encounter something along the lines of that Marlboro fiend, we should be able to make it."
"There were chocobos back at the camp," Penelo pointed out, wrapping spare socks around the copper handles of the pot and carefully removing the boiling tea from the tripod. With practiced ease, she measured out the drink into five of the six bowls. "They could be rented when we came back and we wouldn't have to worry about beasts, nor being burdened overmuch with supplies."
"It would be expensive," rumbled Basch, picking up one of the bowls to pass around, "but quicker. With the chocobos, we could go and be back in less than four days, if we don't dawdle."
Vaan drew his knees up and parted them, looking at the rest of the group through the V his bent legs formed. "Who would go and who would stay?" he asked, accepting a bowl of tea when it was passed.
"I shall stay," Fran said. With a length of metal rebar she rolled the heated rocks out of the fire, carefully wrapped them into fabric, and walked towards Balthier to pack them against his body and ward off the cold.
"I'll go," Basch said. That also made sense: he was easily the party's most seasoned warrior, aside from perhaps Fran – but she would not leave Balthier.
Penelo, Ashe, and Vaan exchanged looks. "I'll go," they all said at once.
Basch grinned again over his bowl of tea, but said nothing.
Penelo cocked her head at Vaan and gave him her most winning smile, which caused Vaan to roll his eyes at her again. Penelo would have to go – she could turn a bargain at a market stall like nobody else. It was a skill honed by lean years arguing at the Muthru Bazaar in Rabanastre, since she was the one charged with scrounging for food for most of her extended street-rat family. And if the entire purpose of the trip was to go gather supplies, it would be foolish for her not to be leading the pack when it came to haggling.
Ashe, on the other hand, said and did nothing, her hands still clasped around her bent knees, eyes pensive as they reflected the fire's light. Vaan let his head drop back as he studied the ceiling – ancient crumbled mosaics flickered eerily in the scant glow from the fire. Ashe was the princess. One of the main reasons why any of them were camping in a ruin to begin with was to regain Dalmasca's sovereignty; in the event that it actually happened, Ashe would become a queen.
And if a queen wanted to run across the Tchita Uplands for half a week rather than stay with an injured pirate and a viera, then that was her prerogative. Ashe had never flaunted her royal dominion over the group and things were mostly democratic, but Vaan knew that all she technically had to do was order him. And he suspected that Ashe knew that, as well.
Finally, Vaan lifted his head up. "I'll stay," he said, heavily.
# # #
Five hours past dawn, and Vaan was restless.
The night before had ended shortly after the division between who would go back to Phon and who would stay in the ruin had been drawn. Everybody was exhausted, and finishing the day with a mostly empty stomach had not put anyone in the mood to linger around the fire. Everybody rose at their usual predawn hour save Balthier, who was still out cold and tied to the pillar.
"Try to relax," Basch suggested to Vaan as they resorted the packs. "You'll find precious little downtime after this, most likely." Ashe, Penelo, and Basch would take all the pelts, bones, teeth, and other sundry items that could potentially have market value, as well as half of their healing supplies. The storm elementals still maintained constant vigil over the spires of the ruins, and nobody wanted to chance being caught without either the ability to do magick or the appropriate salve.
Vaan, still sulky at being left behind, had merely grunted, tying a bundle of wolf pelts together to shove down into Penelo's bag. "Be quick," he admonished the older man, handing him his freshly sharpened axe.
Basch gave him a lopsided smile and saluted with the pole of his weapon, before turning to check and make sure his companions were ready. Penelo and Ashe were shifting on their feet like impatient horses, ready to be on the move before midday, which was when the majority of the monsters would come out of their dens in search of food irregardless of the wet weather.
"Make yourself useful, Vaan," Penelo said with a smile, reshouldering her pack. "Do some laundry or something."
Vaan scowled and waved them off with an impatient hand. "The sooner you leave, the sooner you get back," he told her curtly, ignoring Basch's unabashed grin and Ashe's politely disinterested look.
Now, five hours later, Vaan was taking Penelo's advice for lack of anything else to do. The rain came down steady enough to constantly refill the small copper pot, so he didn't even have to leave his assigned task of babysitting the still-unconscious sky pirate to fetch water. He didn't have any soap, but any article of clothing he picked up to dunk into the small basin rained dirt even before it touched the water, so Vaan figured that even a quick rinse would do them all some good.
Fran was out hunting. Almost as soon as Ashe, Basch, and Penelo had taken their leave, Vaan's stomach angrily pointed out that it hadn't been fed adequately in quite some time. Fran's eyes had snapped up towards Vaan at the sound.
"I suppose we shall have to hunt," the viera said distantly, as if it didn't matter, her eyes boring into Vaan's.
One of the reasons why Vaan hadn't wanted to be left at the ruins was how disconcerting he found Fran most of the time. In general, there were four other people with Vaan to dilute her influence on him, but being stuck in a rainstorm alone with her was not a tantalizing prospect. She always made him feel like he was doing something wrong. "I'm hungry," he admitted.
Fran's lip ticked up. Vieras, Vaan had learned, were very strict vegetarians. Due to their intimate connections with the Wood and the Mist, killing animals for food was seen as anathema. To be honest the logic rather confused Vaan, as killing animals for salves seemed to be just fine in viera creed; but, again, he had never had much desire to debate the subject with Fran. Since Fran was also farther removed from the Wood than the average viera she occasionally partook of flesh, but only when there was no other recourse. It was obvious Fran still found the idea of meat eating repellant.
"I shall be back, then," Fran had said, rising from her perch next to Balthier to head for her arrows.
Vaan opened his mouth to offer to go hunting instead, then shut it. He wasn't nearly as skilled with a bow as Fran was, and the only practice he'd had hunting game for food was in the sewers underneath Rabanastre. Fran's woodcraft was also undoubtedly more honed than his own, being as she had spent a hume lifetime in the jungles and he had lived in the stone walls of Dalmasca's capital for the scant decade and a half he'd been alive. Besides, even offering would cause Fran to skewer him on a pointed look and Vaan was just as eager to avoid that.
"Watch over him," Fran said, her ears pointing towards Balthier while stringing her bow and resting a quiver against her back. "If something happens… I'll be back as soon as I am able."
Vaan nodded tersely; Fran looked him from top to toe once, briefly, before giving him a lopsided smile eerily similar to Basch's. She maneuvered past the rubble blocking the entrance of the ruin with all the grace of a willowy dancer and slipped out into the rolling dark mist of the Tchita Uplands.
At that, unwarranted resentment welled up inside of Vaan: three members of their party were on a desperate bid for supplies, Fran was out seeking food, and all he was apparently good for was washing clothes and looking over an incapacitated pirate. Scowling, he angrily whacked a wet pair of Basch's calf-length trousers against the tiled wall of the ruin and hung them up on an imperfection in the broken mosaic.
As he picked up the pot to throw the dirty water out the door, a loud crack behind him caused him to gasp and drop the basin: washwater exploded across the floor like a firework.
Nervously scanning the room, he saw it was only that the fire had resettled and fallen deeper into the pit. No monsters had broken in an unseen back way; Balthier still lay motionless in the Kiltas cloak. Breathing unevenly, Vaan went to attach his sword around his hip before seeking out more wood.
He was alone now, truly alone in a ruin in hostile country; alone in a way he hadn't been for his entire life. He didn't like the feeling, and almost welcomed the droll business of washing to keep his mind from it.
# # #
When Balthier awoke, it was because of the acrid scent assaulting his senses. It wasn't a putrid smell at all: in fact, it was the very cleanliness of it that was offensive. Too clean. Sterile, almost.
He opened his eyes and winced back at what seemed to be pure white light hitting him from all angles, impossibly bright like waking up on top of the sun. He tried to open his eyes again and this time his body regained enough mobility to attempt to deny the light by throwing an arm over his face. However, when his arm tried to complete the motion it was restricted by something unforgiving and metal that clattered like a pan dropped on a metal floor.
"Ah, he's awake."
Balthier instantly recognized the voice, and it made his stomach ill with fear. No malicious stranger could have possibly inspired such wanton aversion in him as that familiarity. A shadow crossed over his face, dimming the hellishly bright light, allowing him to open his eyes.
His father smiled down at him, eyes veiled by light refraction off his spectacles. "Good morning, Fframran," Cid said cheerfully.
Balthier didn't grace that with a response. Slowly moving his sore eyes proved that he was in a hospital bed, which accounted for the sterile odor and brilliant light. The metal that had prevented his arm from blocking the light was from manacles binding both his wrists and his ankles to the metal frame around the bed. Before he could stop himself his body jerked in surprise and aversion to the restraints, causing all the metal to clang against itself and Balthier to wince at the noise.
Cid hummed, thoughtfully positioned as a shade between Balthier and the bright light. "Don't worry overmuch about the manacles," he advised his son, "they're just on for the time being. We'll take them off you soon, after we're finished."
"Where am I?" Balthier asked flatly, swallowing against the nausea beginning to creep through his guts.
Cid's eyebrow raised, thoroughly unimpressed by the question. "Obviously, the Akademic Hospital in Archades, where else?"
Balthier's eyes took a wider circle around the room: it wasn't a mere inpatient or outpatient station, but rather an operating room. The nausea had strengthened and Balthier didn't trust himself to speak without either choking on it or vomiting all over the impossible whiteness of the hospital's sheets.
"Of course," Cid allowed, the kindness in his voice making Balthier want to lash out at him, "you've lost track of what's happened. We found you in the Tchita Uplands, sprawled out on a knoll, quite alone."
"Alone?" Balthier managed against the rising bile.
The look in his eyes must have betrayed him: Cid smiled again and adjusted his spectacles. "Quite. I'm not sure what happened… we did have information that you were traveling with quite a pack of unfortunates, but something must have happened and they abandoned you there." Cid shook his head, the light reflecting off his spectacles and into Balthier's eyes, blinding him. "This is what you get for consorting with turncoats and thieves, you know. They leave you at the first opportunity."
Balthier didn't trust himself to speak, so he didn't.
Sighing, Cid tilted his head up. "You could be more grateful, my wayward son," Cid chided him. Balthier let him talk; the old man loved the sound of his own voice more than anything in the world, except perhaps nethicite. "If not for me you would have been stripped of your gentry status and left to the devices of the shadow men under the banner of treason, with aught to look forward to but a date with the noose."
Balthier couldn't repress a flinch, which made the manacles clatter once more. The shadow men were those employed by the Empire to make captives talk or scream, depending on the will of the Emperor. Those indicted for treason were usually sent to the scream side of the equation, and Balthier wouldn't put a bent gil on Vayne having any love for him.
"I thought so," Cid continued, a touch of gloat in his voice. "But fortunately for you, Vayne is a generous man with his friends, and I was able to convince him that I can't be bothered to lose my heir: it would detract from my research and development. As – forgive me for the bluntness – terrible as you have been as a scion for the Bunansa name, you at least are alive and of the age to continue the line." Cid sighed, and for a moment, true consternation marred his features. "I had hoped for so much more from you, Ffamran, you were so promising, but… well, what's done is done and it's all on your shoulders now. I can't be blamed for it."
"Why am I here?" Balthier asked and couldn't keep the note of panic out of his voice – he hated it, hated it.
Cid sighed again, so deeply that his entire figure seemed to ripple with the movement. "I had to promise Vayne that there would be no possible way you could cause him any more headaches than you already have. And given your inclination towards escapism, I couldn't very well stake my reputation on having you locked up somewhere. And besides, burying you alive in a hole wouldn't boon my aims of continuing the Bunansa legacy. You might as well be dead, if that were the case."
The thought of being buried alive caused Balthier's throat to constrict as though the aforementioned noose was wrapped around it. His breath started to accelerate unbidden: he was rapidly losing the fight against blind panic.
Cid's head tilted down, removing the shine from the bright light on the glass of his spectacles and allowing Balthier to see his eyes. They were clouded with pity. "As demeaning as it will be to have a vegetable for a son, it seems as if there is no other recourse."
For a few blank seconds Balthier still didn't understand, but then his head snapped to the side. Lined up with a surgeon's precision on a tray were scalpels, knives, saws, thinly bladed and intended for fine cutting, delicate work.
A memory, a distant one, where he was young and not yet as tall as the table his father sat at, before his father set aside the intoxication of wine for that of power and stones. Red-faced and cheerful, his father tilted his head back and sang, one arm over the blushing shoulders of his soon-to-be-dead wife, the opposite hand waving a fluted glass carelessly, with the effortless elegance of drink.
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, his father had sang to his wife, flushed with wine and pleasure, than a frontal lobotomy. Or is it the other way around?
With a sharp gasp, understanding hit him as hard as a ship explosion against a tower and Balthier railed against his chains. "No!" In his vehemence, the metal rails of the right side of the bed dented inwards with the force of his denial. Cid stepped back from the light, blinding Balthier again with its cruel intensity. Dark figures flooded in from all sides, doctors, technicians, hurriedly wheeling in the mechanisms that would sedate him, rip his mind away, and leave him a blank, staring husk, a living zombie.
"No!" Hands and voices surrounded him, pressing against his shoulders, holding him flat against the paper-dry sheets of the hard mattress. He flailed uselessly, wanting desperately to call for help but solid in the knowledge that none would come. They had left him to his fate. Nobody would come for him now.
"Shh," his father's voice came from somewhere, everywhere in Balthier's terror, the debilitating fear. "It'll all be over soon."
"No!" The hands pressing against him were too strong, there were too many, he had no weapon, he had no backup, it was over, all of it was over. In a last, hopeless, unconscious attempt, "Father!"
"Oh," said Cid's voice, vaguely amused, eternally patient. "Now he calls me 'Father.'"
Everything went black.
# # #
Two hours later, and Fran still hadn't come back. Vaan fumed silently, angry with himself for being unable to decide if he was desperate for her to come back for the company, or afraid of the company she would be when she did come back.
He had washed every article of clothing he could find and hung it all up on the walls, so that it looked like a mockery of a Dalmascan opium den. The real opium dens were swathed wall-to-wall in rich fabric and plush tapestry; here the walls were covered in battle-worn garments that still smelled vaguely of sweat and dirt. Not even the poorest of Lowtown's low would pay a gil for this den, Vaan thought with a slight smile.
Vaan had moved on to sharpening all the spare weaponry they had. While the tedious work of laundry and sharpening still vexed him, he had to admit that at least it was useful. He thought that Basch had a jar of leather oil somewhere in one of his bags: when he was done with the swords, maybe he could set to oiling his boots and gauntlets.
He was honing an edge on a spare broadsword when a soft noise got his attention. He had gotten less paranoid since the fire first collapsed: strange noises were usually just the wind in the eaves or the settling of ancient masonry creaking under the weight of unrelenting rain. Vaan barely paid it any mind, as he was so intent on the keen of his blade.
But then again, and again. Finally Vaan looked up with a slight frown. It almost sounded like a hiccup.
Rustling turned his attention towards where Balthier had lain motionless for the entire day; the only sign that he wasn't actually dead the occasional rise and fall of his chest. But now he was moving: suddenly he rolled to his side with such force as to throw the cloak that had been covering his body away from him.
Instantly Vaan rose, one hand firmly on the half-sharpened broadsword. He didn't know if Balthier had woken up or not, but he was taking no chances. Of course, Vaan still didn't want to hurt the other man, but if Balthier had come to consciousness in a wild frenzy he would have to protect himself, as he was alone this time.
Carefully picking around the fire, Vaan slowly approached, the sword held low against his right hip. Balthier was still shifting uneasily on his side, the rawhide straps binding his wrists to the pillar cutting into his skin so deeply that he bled. Vaan winced in sympathy, but didn't stop his approach.
When Vaan was alongside Balthier, he hissed softly between his teeth. Since they hadn't been able to heal Balthier through magicks due to the elemental presence and they were afraid to feed a potion to an unconscious person for fear of choking him, the pale skin of Balthier's bare arms, chest, and back were mottled with purple-blue and crisscrossed with scratches and scabbed cuts. His leather trousers had shrunk in the wet and now clamped mercilessly around his ankles and waist, trapping the blood there and causing the skin to swell an angry red.
Worse, and what made Vaan suddenly pause with a feeling like mortal dread in his guts, was the fact that Balthier's chin was bowed to his chest and he was weeping noiselessly, tears cutting tracks of grime across his face to spatter against the yak hair of the cloak.
Vaan clenched his jaw against the reoccurring theme in his life. His last memory of his parents had been when they were insensible and deathly ill in the general hospice along with what seemed to be half the population of Rabanastre, all groaning and crying and moaning their way to a death from pox. Reks, once so strong and able, fading away to a blank shell, looking up at Vaan with eyes that didn't comprehend, didn't understand, and wouldn't ever again. The mighty kept falling. Balthier, bloodied, beaten, bound, half-naked, weeping, insentient – it was so alien from the cosmopolitan, competent picture the sky pirate usually presented that the stark contrast felt like a blow to the stomach.
A soft hiccup from Balthier – the noise that had disturbed Vaan from his sword sharpening – caused him to snap back into life. Am I still a silly child? Vaan asked himself, looking down at Balthier, Or am I a warrior now? Things have been much more frightening than this!
Quickly, Vaan put down the sword and loosened the belts binding Balthier's ankles slightly. After he was satisfied that Balthier wasn't about to start kicking in a bid for freedom, he removed the binding and, with a silent apology to Balthier, reached for the waistband of the pirate's painfully tight leather trousers.
When his fingers touched the skin of Balthier's abdomen, Vaan recoiled. Though the other man was coated with a thin layer of fear sweat, his skin was as cold as if Balthier had taken an ice bath. Biting his lower lip Vaan quickly undid the clasps, zipper, and fly. Removing the trousers took a while: they were so tight that they peeled away from Balthier's skin audibly, and each stitch in the leather had pressed purple dents into Balthier's thighs.
When the sky pirate was all but nude Vaan hastily covered him back up with the other end of the cloak and went to go poke up the fire. After the fire had roared back to life Vaan rolled the rocks Fran had used to heat back into the base of it and set a pot of water on to boil.
Then, taking his courage in both hands, Vaan went back over to Balthier and knelt next to him, putting one hand on the other man's ice-cold shoulder. When his parents had been half-dead with pox, Reks still insisted that he and Vaan visit and speak to them; nothing, Reks had said when Vaan balked against trying to hold a conversation with somebody who couldn't answer, is more comforting than a familiar voice. Vaan had done the same with Reks when he had been in hospice, and decided to try again now. "Don't cry," he told Balthier lamely, unsure of what else to do. "Whatever it is, it's not real."
Vaan sighed, feeling unbearably stupid. His only task at the moment was to look after an unconscious man and he wasn't even doing a good job at that. Carefully Vaan cupped his hands around Balthier's head and used his thumbs to wipe back some of the tears – he had a vague recollection of somebody doing that for him as a child, and the gesture always struck him as something kind and intimate.
When Balthier's eyes flew open, shock kept Vaan from immediately pulling away, as he should have.
They stared at each other for a couple of moments, before Balthier's dry rasp of a voice broke the silence. "Vaan?"
Vaan took a deep breath, awkwardly unsure with what to do with his hands, still cradling Balthier's skull. For a hopeful moment Vaan thought that maybe the confusion had left him, but one look at Balthier's usually sharp gray eyes proved otherwise – the pupils were different sizes as if the pirate was concussed, but they were rapidly dilating and shrinking out of sync. This was just a brief spell of clarity.
Vaan nodded to the question. "Water?"
Balthier nodded slowly in reply, like the motion hurt. Vaan unhooked the waterskin from his belt and carefully lined the opening up against Balthier's mouth, taking great pains to control the flow of the water. After Balthier had drained it, Vaan lowered the waterskin and inclined his head toward their very small collection of potions. "Can you drink a potion? We can't use magic to heal – this place is infested with elementals."
Balthier's eyes fluttered closed briefly with a great sigh. "Too much to hope for that we could either cure this with a spell or that we happen to have a curative, is it?"
Vaan managed a half smile before standing to go claim one of the potions. "If we could do anything else other than tie you to a pillar, we would have done it."
Expecting one of the pirate's trademark quips Vaan's ears were pricked for the challenge, and was almost frightened when it didn't come. Instead, Balthier merely looked extremely pale and utterly exhausted, his dark eyelashes sweeping low over powdery purple hollows under his eyes.
Vaan cleared his throat, kneeling next to him again with the potion. "Fran said it would be terrible for you," he offered, working the cork out of the bottle.
At Fran's name, Balthier craned his neck around, looking for her. "Where did everyone else get off to?"
"Ashe, Basch, and Penelo went back to the Phon Coast to get supplies. We figured that if the storm let up and the elementals left we'd just wait for them to get back and heal you with magick… if not, they said they'd try to be back within three days. Fran's out hunting."
The mention of food made Balthier open his eyes again. "I could probably eat an entire cavalry," he admitted. "Armor and all."
Vaan fiddled with the potion in his hand, anxious to get it down Balthier's throat before he lapsed back into nightmares. "If you're still with us when she gets back, you can have some."
Balthier laughed softly. "Gods, Vaan, you have a beautiful way with words. 'If you're still with us'? You make it sound as if I'm dying of plague or pox. Highly reassuring, I thank you."
Vaan smiled at the wan return of Balthier's sense of humor. "Come on, the potion. You must ache."
Balthier nodded again and let Vaan tilt his head forward to drink from the bottle. Once done Balthier made a face at the residual taste as well as the sickly-sweet feeling of flesh mending itself unnaturally fast. When the potion had taken its effect Balthier looked slightly healthier – a mild pink tinge returned to his ice-pale skin.
"I don't think I've ever been so cold in my life," Balthier commented. "Too cold even to shiver. It's as if my body finds it futile."
Remembering the rocks in the flames, Vaan stood up to coax them out with the length of rebar Fran had used for the same purpose. The rocks were far too hot to handle; cursing with the burns Vaan managed to roll them into the thick felt pads Penelo used to carry the hot copper cooking pot. With care, Vaan crossed the room back to Balthier, and slowly pushed them under the cape, trying to settle them against Balthier's body without burning him.
"Don't move too much," Vaan cautioned, situating a pair of the rocks by Balthier's feet. "I tried to wrap them well, but you never know."
Balthier had watched him silently throughout the process, his uneven gray eyes both unusually focused and unusually insane. "Vaan."
"Hm?" Vaan looked up.
Balthier's gaze didn't waver. "It seems that all I've done is complain since I woke up and all you've done is coddle me."
Vaan was unsure if that was supposed to be a reprimand or not. Nervously, he resettled the cloak against Balthier's neck. "You have every right to complain," he said uncertainly. "You're not half the whiner I would be, were I you."
Heaving a sigh, Balthier's head rolled to the side. "I had always thought that my worst enemies were other people," he said, eyes aimlessly roving over the mosaics and damp laundry on the walls, "and that I was always safe inside my own head. I never really realized… how dangerous the psyche could be."
His voice was so forlorn that Vaan couldn't think of a single thing to say.
Balthier's head turned back towards him and Vaan was caught in his unsteady, intent look again. "It's just that yours is the first kindness there's been in the past day of hell. Thank you."
Again, Vaan was rent speechless, this time from embarrassment. "You'd do the same for me," he mumbled, not at all sure if the other actually would.
A wan smile spread across Balthier's face. "Talk to me," he said abruptly.
"…about what?"
"Anything. Everything." Balthier shifted uncomfortably, causing the dried blood around his wrists to crack and flake.
Vaan fetched a cloth and wet it, gently dabbing at the wounds, trying to clean the ugly gouges yet not break the scabs. Impatiently, Balthier's hands curled weakly around Vaan's, demanding his attention.
"Give me something to focus on," the pirate pleaded in a soft voice. "I can feel… I'll faint again soon." Balthier's pupils were shifting sizes so rapidly that Vaan had to look away; it made him nauseous.
"All right…" Vaan said, using his task of cleaning Balthier's wrists as an excuse not to look in his eyes. He haltingly started off talking about Dalmasca, his favorite foods, the best places to pickpocket the rich without risking getting caught. He gained momentum as he continued in his monologue: he spoke about opium dens with their thick spicy smoke and hammans, the public baths in Rabanastre that siphoned water from deep in the ground.
Eventually he went on to more personal topics: his parents' deaths, living with Penelo's family until the death of Penelo's parents and Reks' incapacitation during the war orphaned him all over again. Then, learning how to steal and try to keep a roof over his head, the family of street rats and orphans he accumulated, hunting rats in the sewers, sleeping in the alleyway next to Old Dalan's place. Working for Migelo, pick pocketing the Imperials in petty revenge whenever he could.
"And that's why I ended up at the palace, when we met," Vaan finished, voice dry with speaking about so much for so long. "It was the ultimate pick pocketing… stealing crown jewels right from under their noses. Now that I think about it, it was massively stupid, but…" he shrugged, sitting back on his heels. "It brought me where I am now, so even though it was a stupid gamble, it was the right one."
Balthier had been so silent throughout the whole thing that Vaan had half-expected he'd fallen back into unconsciousness, but those uneven gray eyes were as solid on his face as when he'd started his story.
"You must hate them," Balthier said, an unusual note of blandness in his voice.
"Who?"
"Archadians. For doing that to you."
Vaan opened his mouth to agree, and then closed it with a shrug. "No," he surprised himself by saying. "I don't."
Balthier raised an eyebrow. "I would hate someone who had killed my only family and left me to starve on the streets."
Vaan's lip ticked. "You misunderstand me. If I ever get a chance to stand toe-to-toe with the kingslayer, the real kingslayer who murdered my brother, he'd better have a priest on standby. It doesn't matter where he's from. But, I don't hate Larsa."
Balthier chuckled, shifting to lay more comfortably among his heated stones. "Larsa. The savior of all Archadians."
"Also," Vaan added in a fit of pique, "I don't hate you."
Tilting his head forward, Balthier sighed. "How long have you known?"
Vaan shrugged. "I didn't. You just confirmed a suspicion. But now that I realize it your accent alone makes it obvious."
At that, Balthier smiled. "Outwitted by somebody who hasn't seen a score of years yet. I am diminished, surely."
"Of course," Vaan said dryly. "You should just go outside and end it all with one of your guns. Gods forbid anybody else have wit."
"Do you trust me?"
The abrupt change in conversation caught Vaan by surprise for a moment before he recovered. "Of course."
"Why?"
Vaan shrugged. "Why shouldn't I?"
"I'm Archadian."
"So?"
"I'm the son of Vayne's top advisor and the person who engineered the weapon that made Nabudis what it is today."
Vaan blinked. "And?"
Balthier sighed, like he had been trying to explain simple math to a dullard. "So you probably shouldn't trust me."
"You've never given me any reason not to trust you," Vaan retorted. "If you'd wanted us dead you could have done so several times by now. Not to mention, we trusted Larsa well enough and he's the brother of the Emperor."
Balthier's eyelids suddenly became heavier; it was obvious the pirate was having a hard time staying conscious. "The Empire came for us when we were at the Tomb of Raithwall."
"That was Vossler," Vaan said stubbornly, mystified at this entire conversation.
"How do you know for sure that I haven't been in on it the whole time?"
Vaan sighed, annoyed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because you're a pirate, and you act in your own self interest. Your self-interest is not the Empire's, that's been proven quite clearly several times. When we first met and I was a stupid street kid in the Empire's treasure room, did you somehow know that I was going to cause serious trouble? Why didn't you just drop me when I was hanging off the side of your floating two-wheeled thing? This is a ridiculous conversation, Balthier, and I'm not having it anymore."
Balthier gave up and closed his eyes, but he was smiling slightly. "Say my name again."
"…Balthier?"
Balthier sighed. "That's right. Balthier."
Vaan shook his head, assuming that Balthier's decent back down into unconsciousness was addling him a little bit. "Of course. That's you."
A faint smile crossed Balthier's mouth, and Vaan impulsively reached out to gently touch the side of Balthier's face. Balthier unthinkingly turned toward the warmth before a soft sigh told Vaan he was gone entirely.
# # #
When Fran came bounding back about two hours after Balthier had lapsed back into unconsciousness carrying a pair of rabbits, Vaan told her everything.
Fran listened, motionless, seemingly intent on every word. She nodded when he finished. "As much as I would have wanted to be here when he awoke, you did well. Hopefully, his nightmares will not torment him so."
Vaan took the pair of rabbits from her, hanging limp and lifeless. Idly, Vaan wondered if the similarities between the rabbits and Fran bothered the viera at all, but, again, decided it would be more prudent not to ask. "You think I did well? I was scared out of my head, Fran," he said instead, going for a dagger to gut and skin the animals.
Fran nodded and went back to poking up the fire and setting up the tripod for the pot so they could have stew. "When inside your head there are no allies, it is always good to know that you have them on the outside."
"He said something like that," Vaan admitted. They worked in silence, Vaan quickly cleaning the meat and handing it to Fran to cut. If Fran found the work distasteful – which Vaan was quite sure she did – she gave no indication, chopping the meat and dumping it into the boiling water. In addition to the meat Fran had also pulled up some edible roots and cut wild onion to add flavor and nutrition: she even had a sprig of fresh rosemary to add along with the salt. Vaan shook his head, glad once again that he had allowed the viera to do the hunting without comment. While both Fran and Basch had taken pains to teach both Vaan and Penelo woodcraft, Vaan was still a beginner and most of the time couldn't tell a poisonous mushroom from a truffle.
At last the stew was done and they fell upon it like ravenous wolves: between the two of them, they finished an entire rabbit's worth. Satiated, they started cooking a second batch for the next day.
"Maybe tomorrow he'll wake up again. He said he was hungry," Vaan said, as they settled back to let the second pot boil.
Fran looked over at him with an amused look, rare warmth in her eyes. "Maybe," she agreed.
# # #
The next day saw Vaan oiling his gauntlets, when Basch crashing through the rubble blocking the door nearly scared him halfway to the Realms of the Dead.
"I pray you bring good tidings?" Fran asked mildly, an eyebrow raised at Basch, Ashe, and Penelo's unexpected early return.
"We ran into a caravan on the way to Phon," Penelo explained, beaming at their good luck. "They were rained in and falling over themselves to do business with us… they even rented us chocobos for a knockdown price."
Vaan couldn't help but grin – the obvious joy Penelo got out of turning a good bargain was hopelessly contagious. His grin faded when he realized that all three of the journeying party had dark circles under their eyes. "Did you sleep at all last night?" he asked, half-horrified.
"Nary a wink," Basch replied with blithe good humor, unloading his packs on the floor. "So I hope that you and Fran can be in charge of the cooking, because I could sleep for a fortnight or two, but I will consider arising for a good repast."
Ashe had been digging in her pockets and held out a small crystal vial to Fran with powdery white contents – smelling salts. "For the pirate," she added.
To Vaan's surprise, Fran didn't rise immediately to take it. Instead, she turned her pointed face towards Vaan and nodded at him. "Go on."
Vaan blinked, and took the vial from Ashe's offering hand. "All right," he told the group, turning back towards Balthier.
When he knelt and put the vial against Balthier's nose, Balthier's head jerked once, twice, at the pungent smell and then his eyes shot open – not uneven and hazy, but crystal clear. His gaze turned toward Vaan, and Vaan felt Balthier's body sag with relief when the pirate realized he was free of the poison in his brain.
"Praise the gods," he said simply. "All of them. Even the ones I don't believe in." He tugged gently at the leather ropes binding his hands above his head. "Untie me?"
Vaan did as he was bid, and then Basch was there to help Vaan assist Balthier to a sitting position. Balthier hissed between clenched teeth at moving his arms, which had been pinned above his head for so long. "Hurts," Balthier said.
Basch smiled and used his large hands to knead the blood back into Balthier's veins, which only caused Balthier to swear more volatile oaths. "Come now, pirate, surely it's nothing compared to what you just went through. A little pain in the arms, and then it's all gone."
At that, Balthier sighed. "You speak the truth, military druge. Why does everyone insist on calling me by my profession? I have a name, if anybody's interested. And I'm rather fond of it."
Vaan had rooted through the packs until he found the one stocked with potions: good ones, rich and thick and foul tasting, but powerful. He had pulled one out of the rucksack and walked back over to Balthier. He offered the other man the potion. "Here, Balthier."
Balthier looked up at him with an eyebrow raised. With a half-smile, he took the proffered bottle and undid the stopper with his teeth, his fingers still too bloodless for the task. "Thanks, street rat." With a mocking toast, Balthier spat the cork onto the floor and downed the contents, unable to suppress a slight wince at the taste.
# # #
Once Balthier had been attended to, Penelo, Ashe, and Basch fell almost immediately into sleep, rolled into Kiltas cloaks along the perimeter of the room, recovering from their journey. Fran and Vaan dove through the rucksacks of supplies, each new bag providing more pleasure to Vaan than any present he'd ever received on his nameday. Flour, cornmeal, rice, fresh vegetables, precious eggs, lentils, beans, fruits, spices, coffee, dried and fresh meats. Fortunately, Fran knew how to cook with actual ingredients: the only things Vaan was at all skilled at preparing were the scanty campfire meals they usually ate. With Fran's instruction and Balthier – who was resting propped up against the pillar he had formerly been tied to – giving occasional comments, they had prepared a rich soup thick with vegetables, lentils, meat, and spice, a fruit salad, and Vaan had fried an impressive pile of flatbreads on a flat rock. When the coffee was set to boil over the flames Vaan was exhausted, but felt work had never been so worthwhile in his life.
The smell of a good meal roused their companions from slumber and they all ate until Vaan was positive that one more bite was going to make him explode like a vengeful bomb.
"Somebody did laundry," Basch observed, eyes roaming over the now dry clothes that fluttered slightly in the wind caused by the fire absorbing oxygen.
"That was me," Vaan admitted, mopping what was left of his soup out of the bowl with a wedge of flatbread.
"And sharpened all the swords," Ashe commented, picking one up and weighing it. "Last time I saw this one, it was covered in rust."
"Mmgh… me," Vaan said, his mouth full of the aforementioned flatbread.
Balthier snorted, crumbling a piece of flatbread absently between his fingers. "Maybe we should lock him up more often," he suggested. "It would get all the housecleaning done."
Penelo giggled, and Vaan rolled his eyes before turning back to his dinner with intense single mindedness.
Shortly after, Vaan stepped out from the dinner to go relieve himself. Looking up at the sky proved a lighter gray coming from the east – the storm had nearly passed through. One lone storm elemental swirled between the towers on the ruins, and Vaan watched it with a detached fascination, since he didn't have to fear it would attack him for once. It was actually quite a beautiful apparition, all silver and lightening, expanding and contracting, dancing like a will-o-the-wisp.
"They are quite fascinating, aren't they?"
Vaan jumped, then sighed and turned around. "You could announce yourself."
"You could pay more attention to your surroundings," Balthier retorted, leaning up against the side of the ruin, the Kiltas cloak around his shoulders making him look disturbingly monkish. He was fully-dressed again: fortunately, Balthier had a spare pair of leather trousers, and said he could probably get a new set made while they were in Archades. The only indication that the confusion had touched him for so long was in the dark circles engraved beneath his eyes, but that wasn't anything that a couple days' sleep couldn't fix.
Vaan turned his head back toward the elemental, allowing a slight smile to cross his features. "It is good to have you well," Vaan offered, deliberately avoiding a battle of wits by stating concern.
"Hmph," Balthier said, obviously aware that Vaan was diverting the conversation. "It's good to be well." The pirate stuck an arm out from the tight folds of the cloak in a gallant gesture and bowed his head. "I am in your debt for that, of course."
Vaan cocked his head, curious as to how much Balthier actually remembered from their conversation, but he had no desire to relive it at the moment. "I'll call you in on that debt someday, you know," Vaan threatened, only half-serious.
At that Balthier suddenly stepped forward, so close that the wind whipped his cloak against Vaan's chest. Surprised, Vaan almost backed away a step before quashing the urge and holding his ground.
Balthier very pointedly looked down at him, as the man nearly had a hand-and-a-half span of height on him. Vaan was staring at the knot in Balthier's neck blankly for a moment before looking up into eyes that seemed to be seeing through him rather than looking back at him. Vaan felt his blood start to pound in his ears.
"See that you do," Balthier said oddly, before stepping back and retreating around the back of the ruin, ostensibly outside for the same reason Vaan had been moments earlier.
For a moment Vaan hovered uncertainly – what had that been about? – before quickly ducking back inside the ruin, where he was enveloped by the enticing smell of food and a low rumble of satisfied conversation. He put aside the weirdness of that exchange in favor of a fourth bowl of soup, which Fran passed him with a raised eyebrow that Vaan ignored. When Balthier returned from outside, the pirate acted as if their conversation never happened.