I know I should have worked on Sands but I could not stop thinking about this! This is the sequel to "Struck by Lightning" which is a crossover with Tango-chan's So Starstruck series. Thanks for the inspiration, ElTangoDeRoxanne. Thanks for reviewing, emeraldonyxdragon! I did not focus overly much on Lightning and Mustadio because that is Tango-chan's story to tell, if she so chooses it.
Balthier did not know what music he and Fran were dancing to, alone in a dark, Archadian alley; all he knew was that they had rehearsed this piece many, many times. His left hand rested light as a feather on Fran's waist, and his right clasped her own hand tight near his shoulder. This silent waltz was always a little difficult because she was taller than he was. At just the right moment, while she whirls perfectly under his arm in a spin, he lifts himself onto his toes to gain enough height so that her ears will clear his arm. Today, Fran breaks the silence first as he pulls her close again.
"You are lucky you were not injured badly enough that you went on a rampage," she said, referring to his most recent journey through time. It had been almost fifty years to that day. "It was just a flesh wound that the shrapnel dealt to your head. However, I do not know what wild thoughts go through that strange head of yours anymore… As far as I know, you are always hungry." Balthier gave a black velvet chuckle, nipping playfully at her neck.
"Head wounds bleed profusely because the vessels are close to the surface, but I wasn't that worried, Fran," he hummed. "I'm sure Lightning would have stopped me; apparently she was responsible for keeping the beast at bay when the other me harbored the mad god Ragnarok within him. Besides, the word rampage is so unfashionable, darling," his voice dropped into a luxurious purr.
"Oh?"
"I prefer temporary loss of bodily control and mental stability."
"I fail to see the difference." Fran tossed her head like an irate warhorse, flinging her white mane of spiders' silk tresses over her shoulder. "I am rather doubtful this Lightning would have found the courage to give you enough harm to make you stop." Balthier raised his eyebrows.
"I am afraid I fail to grasp your meaning."
"You may not be her lost love, but you are exactly in his image and mostly of the same disposition. After all, he was that world's version of you. Whether she knew you are an undead incapable of being killed or not, she would have died herself before raising her sword against you." Fran explained. Balthier lifted his hand from her waist as she whirled again, allowing her to stretch her arms like a bird about to take flight.
"I found myself distinctly under the impression she was afraid of me and found me dishonest. Not that I am denying the latter statement…" Fran slid back into his arms, and could not stop from shivering slightly as he wrapped his cold arms around her.
"Balthier, we have known each other for some time now, yes? Over three centuries, correct?" she asked, looking down at him.
"I'm three-hundred-ninety-seven now, Fran, and I am pretty sure you are about to hit the half-millennia yourself."
"Yes… the point is that we are this old, and have been so close for this long, and I still cannot find a way to peacefully stop you without offering you my own blood. If I recall, offering you Baknamy was an awful idea."
Balthier shuddered, making a face. "I think I purged for hours after that. Call it an allergic reaction, if you will. Not to mention, it tasted terrible—I didn't know things could taste that bad."
Shouts outside the alley, the sound of pounding feet on stone bounced off the walls. "In there, he's in there!" Harsh voices, shadows racing ahead of their owners like hungry dogs.
"Off you go, Fran—the performance is about to begin. The 'finale' to the charade of our lives as bounty hunters for hire. What shall we be next? I rather fancied it when we were sky pirates, you know." Balthier said, smiling.
"Sky pirates it is, then. I shall see you soon." Fran slipped out of his arms and away into the shadows just as the first man rounded the bend.
"Balthier Bunansa, you are held responsible today for the wanton slaying of numerous humes in Ivalice and the theft of the belongings of several persons of importance," a rather dry stick of a man read the sentence in a thin, reedy voice. "Despite your acts as a bounty hunter working to rid Ivalice of men who are a danger to us, you have committed many heinous acts, including counterfeiting and posing as men of the law, in the name of your work."
"Ba'Gamnan is an excellent model," Balthier said, smirking. The man jumped and looked affronted at the interruption.
"The penalty for all is death; on this day, one-thousand-eighty-one, old Valendian, you are to hang from the neck until dead." The man rolled up his scroll and turned to the executioner, a rather big brute of a man with a black hood over his face. "Please, do the honors, Master Carrow."
The rope was actually very itchy, and Balthier wished he had his high collar shirt on; unfortunately, they did not let you wear those particular kinds of clothes to hangings. He could feel it tightening around his neck, the fibers scratching against the skin at the pit of his throat. They thought he would dance a merry jig for them, his feet kicking as he fought for breath and his neck snapped like charred wood, but no—they did not know it, but he was used to this game. Balthier stood on the trapdoor proudly, raising his head to scan the crowd, picking out people he knew. There were two people standing just in the shadows of a nearby awning in the town square. One was a woman, with long hair that seemed to be faded blonde and pink. Pink! He scoffed mentally. He could not see her face for the shadow on the awning. There was someone else with her, someone just a little shorter, but he wore a long travelling cloak with a hood. Fran was nowhere to be found. He smiled, closing his eyes.
There was a rumbling groan and the trapdoor dropped out from under him. There was a gut wrenching drop, and a brief scream of air whistling past his ears. The crowd gasped, some cheered, others screamed. With a sickening crack, he knew no more.
Balthier Bunansa dangled from the gallows like a marionette with cut strings, but he never stopped smiling!
Fran marched up the snow-covered hill to the prison cemetery, a spade over her shoulder. They hadn't really planned on the villagers (a rather superstitious lot) giving Balthier a decent burial. "If ye don' take care o' tha' body, 'is ghost is gonna come back an' 'aunt us," the undertaker said, nailing the coffin shut. The pirate's vacation plans to the Bhujerban Engineering Exhibition had to be put off for a day or two while Fran came up with a remedy to the situation. No doubt, when Balthier woke up from his death trance, he would be very confused as to why it was so dark and why he was in such a tiny, enclosed space. She pitied the claustrophobic sky pirate.
It was very cold, and Fran shivered, shaking a few snowflakes from her ears. Perusing the gravestones, she came to the most recent one. The headstone was simple—not even a stone, really, just a wooden board with Balthier's name crudely scratched into it. She froze; there were two people standing over the grave. The woman, a fine-featured thing dressed in vermillion, turned toward her, studying her with wide, ice blue eyes.
"Fran?" she asked. Fran flicked an ear, the only sign she acknowledged the girl. The woman had pink-blond hair, as if the blonde coloring was fading out. However, she recognized the girl as the person Balthier described.
"You are the woman called Lightning." Fran said simply. Lightning nodded, smiling faintly.
"I feared you were dead when Balthier did not rise," she continued tentatively. "He mentioned your lives were tied together. It is good to see you again."
"I am not the Fran you know," Fran said gently, and Lightning's smile, already small, almost vanished. "Balthier must have trusted you very much if he parted with that information," Fran continued as she began to dig. The snow parted easily under the shovel's metal head, but soon, she hit the frozen soil beneath. Lightning remained silent, simply watching as Fran dug on. "You have yet to introduce your companion," Fran said eventually. Lightning's eyes darted toward her hooded partner, before nodding imperceptibly. The man raised his hands and lowered his hood.
"This is Mustadio… Mustadio Bunansa," she said quietly. Fran stopped digging and leaned ever so slightly on the shovel. The boy looked every inch like Balthier when he was younger, but for his long ponytail. Fran was certain Balthier would die before letting his own hair grow that long. She was also certain he would die if he found out that in the future, he had children. Come to think of it, he was already dead… did that even work anymore? Fran shook her head, snow falling from her hair. That was a thought that need not to be dwelled upon.
"Related to Balthier in your Ivalice, I presume?" she asked. Lightning nodded, while Mustadio watched Fran continue digging with the most fascinated look on his face.
The ground really was very hard, and the villagers really did bury her partner's body very deep. Fran's arms protested as she lifted the shovel again, but Lightning took the shovel from her. "Allow me," she said. The Viera did not argue, but simply handed the tool over as Lightning took over. Fran glanced toward Mustadio with incurious eyes, and was not startled to find his eyes glued to her ears. "Mustadio, stop staring," Lightning commanded. "You've seen Mydia before." The boy jumped guiltily.
"I'm sorry. There's not very many Viera where I come from, that is all," he said.
"That is what Balthier asked Vaan, eons ago," Fran said, at last smiling thinly. Mustadio seemed relieved, as if her smile melted all the ice and snow surrounding them.
Lightning's shovel hit the wooden lid on the coffin below, just as a hand burst through. The pink-haired woman wasted no time in demolishing the lid, and Balthier sat up quickly, gasping, before looking up at them from the bottom of the hole.
"Lightning?" he asked incredulously. "How did you get here?"
"Mustadio and his father discovered a machine that is able to send people across space, so why not across time?" Lightning shrugged as she grasped his hand and pulled him from the grave. Fran idly tossed him his usual white shirt and brocade vest, which he snagged and changed into. He could not stop but notice the way that Lightning looked at it almost longingly, her hands curling into fists.
"Mustadio?" Balthier raised an eyebrow, turning toward the young machinist. Instantly, his smirk descended into a look of guarded caution. "And where, pray tell, did you pick up this pup?"
Mustadio flinched visibly, and Lightning took his hand. "He is no stray dog," she snapped. "The Balthier I knew handled the first meeting much better than you."
Balthier hissed, cat like, baring his sharp teeth. "In case you have not noticed, I'm not the other me." Lightning purposefully moved between Mustadio and Balthier, while Fran placed a hand on her partner's shoulder. "Why did you bring him here, Lightning? To taunt me? You were so cold to me when we met, but this… even this seems beneath you!" Lightning recoiled, but did not back down a step. Her hand fell to a strange sword at her hip that was like a rifle and a sword put together.
"You are lowering yourself, Balthier," Fran said quietly. "This is not how you usually are." The sky pirate took several breaths, seeking the calm that he never really ever had.
"I suppose introductions are in order, then," he said brusquely, holding out his bare hand. Mustadio tentatively slid out from behind Lightning and shook it, frowning.
"You're like Lightning," he said.
"You didn't figure that out from my execution and subsequent rise from the grave?" Balthier asked, turning away and stalking down the hill. Fran sighed, her breath hanging in the air like pearly smoke.
"I am sorry, Lightning. You have come all this way only to find disappointment. My partner does not take surprises particularly well nowadays."
Lightning shook her head. "It is alright, I guess," she said. "I understand he is different from the Balthier that I…" she stopped, skipping the word as if it was too painful to say and moving on. "I just did not think he would be so opposed to this."
"Come, we should away this place; Balthier like as not has gone to the Strahl, and we can go to Tchita where we will be less sought." Fran said comfortingly.
"I'm causing you so much trouble, Lightning," Mustadio said sadly as they sat by a campfire in the Tchita uplands. Balthier had slipped away into the night, silent as a ghost, leaving Fran alone with Lightning and Mustadio. "Perhaps I should just go. I'll come back to pick you up in a few days—Or, I would if the controller for the time travel device was not broken."
"No," Lightning said quickly, then blushed faintly. "You are no chauffeur between worlds for me, Mustadio. Even if Balthier is angry, I would not send you away." Fran stifled a low laugh as she stirred a pot of stew simmering over the fire.
"You are not as he said," she said after a while. "He called you a lost Chocobo wandering Ivalice in search of something to fill your empty heart."
"He said that, did he?" a twisted smile pulled at Lightning's lips. "I did not know I came across as such. True, I wept over Balthier's grave for a thousand years before my mentor, Cidolphus, found me and gave me another reason to continue…existing, but when we met, I was not lost."
"I can't imagine Light looking like a lost chocobo," Mustadio laughed. "Lightning always leads the way!"
"That is for sure," Balthier said, emerging from the night with a small hide bag in his hands and perching next to Fran. "When the Bandersnatch arrived, you did not hesitate to go for a ride, eh, Thunder?" He smirked, while Lightning flushed.
"That was not the way of it," she said to Mustadio in a low voice, but still, Mustadio viewed her with a new look of wonder, while all the while, glancing back toward the Hume sky pirate with wide eyes.
That night, after Mustadio had gone to sleep, Balthier turned to Fran, a livid expression on his face.
"I cannot bring myself to accept that whelp," he snarled in Vieran, his voice almost like that of an angry couerl. "I wandered away, hoping to find solace and the will to take him into my heart, but I could not. Everything I worked for—everything! Gone! I do not have children because I do not want them to follow in my footsteps!" His eyes were nearly glowing silver with his rage.
"Peace, dear partner. The boy comes from a different world; it may not be the same for us. Do you not see? Lightning is happy to have him. She is a lost Chocobo no longer. And if the child exists, that means you have not been loyal to me, either." Fran said slyly.
"Tch." Balthier rolled his eyes, and in doing so, caught sight of Lightning watching. In an instant, he knew she had understood, as soon as she looked away from him, her eyes hard. "There's just no privacy with her around, is there?" he asked miserably.
"Let us go on a hunt tomorrow," Fran said. "It will distract you and ease your mind, as well as Lightning's. Fafnir wanders the Paramina Rift 'gain."
Balthier snorted, climbing the rope ladder to re-enter the Strahl, and Fran turned back to the fire. Lightning approached her slowly, sitting in the spot Balthier vacated.
"He left something," she murmured, handing Fran the small pack Balthier left on the log next to her.
"Aye," the Viera agreed, "But it was purposeful. I believe he meant you to have it."
"I do not need potions, elixirs, or anything of the like," Lightning said dubiously, peering into the bag.
"Then they are for Mustadio," Fran said finally, glancing toward the sleeping boy. "He does care, in his own strange way. I think he was just shocked that there were still Bunansa offspring in Ivalice; he does not want anyone to know what happened between him and his father, and he certainly does not want that to happen between him and any offspring."
"That is logical," Lightning said softly, her hands busy shining her gunblade. "Balthier came back, eventually, in my world as well… he left later, but he did not deny Mustadio as a relative. Though, if Ramza dared call him 'grandfather'…" she let the sentence hang, while Fran smiled.
"My partner would have been no different."
Mustadio clung to Lightning as she led the way through the Paramina Rift, sure of the location of Fafnir. Balthier smiled indulgently; she was from Ivalice's future, of course, so of course she'd know where everything was.
Fafnir was as imposing as ever, his scarred body standing out against the snow despite his white coloring. Mustadio put on a show of bravery, puffing his thin chest out.
"He's smaller than Yiazmat! Let's get it, Light!" he yelled, but Balthier could smell his fear, rising like a wave from his body. Even if she could not sense it the same way he could, Lightning apparently knew of the farce.
"Stay behind me, Mustadio," she ordered, naturally taking charge. "Back us up with your gunfire. Balthier and I will worry the beast from close quarters."
"Worry it?" Balthier raised his eyebrows. "I would hope we could do more than that."
"Follow my lead," Lightning snapped, cutting of all arguments and dashing for the monster. She dodged its claws as if she knew what was coming next, ducking under the swipe of a shattered horn. Mustadio managed to shoot the dragon in the face before it could snap her to pieces within its jaws. Unfortunately, that made the monster turn to the young machinist. Before they could move, Fafnir was lumbering toward Mustadio, who seemed frozen in place.
"Dear gods, boy, what are you doing? Move!" Balthier shouted, pushing Mustadio away as Fafnir gouged a long cut from his left shoulder to halfway across his chest. He collapsed into the snow, clutching the wound.
"Balthier? W-why?" Mustadio was on his knees next to him, not caring that his hands were rapidly being coated in gloves of sticky, black blood. The sky pirate coughed weakly, managing a tiny smile.
"Light likes you," he said simply, shrugging his shoulder and wincing as more blood poured from his wound. Lightning and Fran quickly helped Mustadio drag Balthier behind the large rocks, though it was barely a struggle, considering his weight.
"Don't talk, Balthier," Lightning said urgently. "Concentrate on getting better; I know you do not need magick to heal yourself."
"Silencing Balthier is like attempting to dam all the water in the Naldoan Sea," Fran said dryly. "It is impossible to stop him if he wants to say something."
"Fran, please," he spluttered. "You're ruining the drama of the moment."
"I fail to see where the drama is, pirate." Lightning growled. "You've been laid open like a fish. Why did you do it? I thought you hated Mustadio."
"At first… didn't know what to think." Balthier forced himself to stay awake, even though his body screamed that it wanted to sleep off the wound. "Just… woke up in the dark, and then I saw him. I was… jealous."
"Jealous!" Lightning exclaimed. "You have Fran. Why are you jealous?"
"You're really… such a pretty girl, Light. When I finally looked into your eyes… thought you looked… so very sad and lonely. Gods… I was so selfish until now… I did not realize it until last night… realized you were happy… I am so very glad for you, Light. And Fran… I'd say you never intended to kill Fafnir. You wanted to kill me. Pity I had to die to realize all the things you wanted me to." Balthier scowled before passing out. Lightning returned his scowl unconsciously as Fran hefted the pirate over her shoulder, sprinting out of the canyon as fast as her mocha legs could carry her, Mustadio close behind them.
"You say the mechanism to send you across time is broken?" Balthier sat at the kitchen table in the Strahl with Mustadio, while Fran poked and prodded his new scar to make sure it had healed decently on its own.
"Yes," Mustadio said, dumping the little machine on the table. Screws and crystals spilled out of its ruptured casing. Balthier raised his eyes toward Lightning, who lounged behind Mustadio's chair.
"Good gods, woman, what did you do to this thing?"
"Balthier, Snow would have done something like break it, but not I."
"Whoever 'Snow,' is," the pirate grumbled, leaning over the machine to help Mustadio repair it. "I have a Teleport Stone; you can use it to replace the power source in your machine. It will likely be enough; it was enough to teleport the Strahl." Mustadio whistled.
"My father would be jumping mad to get ahold of this technology," he muttered, replacing the screws and sweeping crystal dust into his palm. "I suppose he'll be missing us now, Light. Er… thanks for letting us stay?"
"Nice of you to visit," Balthier purred. "Send us a letter in advance though if you plan on dropping by. I wouldn't fancy killing Mustadio because I thought he was a figment of my own, broken imagination."
Mustadio pressed the button almost too quickly, and the elder Bunansa laughed wickedly. "Enjoy yourself, Lightning. Mortal lives are short."
"Eternity is not forever," she replied, before in a flash of green light, they disappeared.
Fran shook her head.
"An interesting girl, Lightning is."
"You have no idea." Balthier said mildly.