Queer Vermillion
a k a n t h a e - h i m e
Authoress' Note & Disclaimer: This was originally supposed to be a continuation of Wild Eyes but it strayed too far from the storyline so I decided to make it a separate story detailing what happens when a flirty sky pirate steals the heart of two women; two women that he doesn't love back but would love to get into his britches. (Horny dorkface.) The first segment shows how Ashe eventually goes crazy because of Balthier's presence, as well as Balthier's somewhat guilty feelings. The second entails the earlier details of Fran's relationship with Balthier, how he tried once upon a time to woo her and the outcome of the situation. Read on, my lovies, to find out the exact points. All standard disclaimers apply.
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i. killjoy memoranda
The first time he had experienced the passion in her voice he had found it to be the marker of a discovery that would change the way he saw the world.
She was haughty, oh-so-very haughty; and charmed the sky pirate into submission had the ember eyes like they were dancing around a fireplace full of smoldering ashes. The ashes, he reflected, were him. In much the same way as coals did to a fire so had Ashe seized the opportunity that day and claimed his heart...Well, more or less, considering that he wasn't that easily given away. Women melted under his very gaze; and he was smitten at first sight?
No; Balthier was far too flighty for something that macabre.
Rather, she was smitten with him. She lavished herself with images of the way his lean frame would recoil after he'd pulled the trigger of his gun and blasted something (something she'd been to busy to pay attention to) - as if moments like those actually meant something to him. It meant something to her, at least. It satisfied Ashe's insatiable need for another way to heal her morbid silhouette of a soul aside from destroying the life of another: the joining of female and male in a process that would make both of them forget everything but everything.
She would pull the sword out of the already dead body of one cockatrice or another and then she would wonder whether the buzz in her head was due to pent up guilt or just another wave of Dalmascan desert heat. In the same way, Penelo say one day, she had tried to kill off things undying that jostled around and attempted to earn foremost place amongst her current worries.
Bang went Balthier's metallic gun. The words of a doting father whose high aspirations were all folly.
Whoosh went Fran's oiled bowstring. The curling vines of an ivy plant that wondered why she couldn't hear its desolate cries.
Swish went Penelo's staff as she spoke the words to a spell. Ten thousand steps pounding out the beat to a silent song.
Slice went Vaan's spear as it found its mark in a beastly creature's heart. Vermillion-hued lilies sitting in a vase by the hospital bed.
Thump went Basch's blade as he removed it from a desiccated metal contraption. Rasler's dead body.
They all had problems; Ashe most of all. Queens and warriors and puppets...at times, she wondered which of them she might be thought of as in the history books. The only problem with that theory was that she was too miniscule against history's weave to matter that much. No one wanted to remember the desperate times, so no one wanted to remember her…Not even for the peace she brought with her to Ivalice amidst times of terrible manslaughter.
Only Balthier - dashing smile and all - would hide something dark and secret behind benign eyes. He would hide another pair of eyes, ones dark with fear and animosities unknown to those human enough to wonder. He would hide wild eyes with just a touch of fairy tale princess; and he would do it in hiding until the day he died.
He owed her that much because of all the things he never gave her...The things she craved to the point of extinction.
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ii. silent, sleeping indigo
Balthier wasn't one to be trusted very well. Fran knew it; yet she also knew she didn't apply to the category most of Balthier's many women did. Elza would fawn over the lean, wiry frame. She would smirk and flirt and be so perfectly enrapturing that Fran knew that even the exotic beauty her viera status gave her wouldn't stand a chance. Fran regretted never having been born a regular Hume woman...if only because Balthier had given up on her long ago.
She'd played hard-to-get. Fran wasn't the sort who would give herself away on a whim - what she thought was lust at the beginning had flourished into something passing the boundary of regular humanoid desires to mate and carry on the next generation. She found herself unable to sleep at night because she was too busy conjuring up the image of a certain sky pirate who wasn't good enough to play rough with her. Irresistible, she'd describe him as, but not very deep. Just another flighty (or flightless, depending on your perspective) bird who would eat up a lady's heart at a moment's notice.
Fran never let him get close enough. Sooner or later, she surmised at the beginning, he would give up trying to bed her for the boasting admiration to follow. Then she would see if he was actually worth the trouble of loving.
He wasn't. He was just another archipelago in the cerulean sea.
(She remembered her first time at the sea, actually. Balthier had called it a lady, sister to Luck and daughter to Destiny. He had also mentioned, however, how the serenity reminded him of her apathetic disposition; and that it would be the last time he'd see the sea until they got to Rabanastre.)
Fran relished the idea of those gentle blue waves. Their caress probably envied the Forest's, the pure foamy white that matched her wild tresses weaving amongst the many shades of indigo. They reminded her of all the things that Balthier couldn't give her - couldn't give any woman, actually, save for sensory pleasure - like mutual comfort, a sense of home, empathy...The list went on and on.
It spiraled endlessly into another paradox of disastrous events; somewhere, somewhen, Fran knew another version of herself was having its heart broken by a dashing sky pirate in too-tight britches.