Yay! So thanks to ElTangoDeRoxanne, as usual, for her awesome, uplifting reviews:
On to the story! I don't own anything.
Balthier stared at Vaan in bewilderment as the man (he was twenty now) rolled on the dusty streets of Rabanastre in front of Migelo's Sundries, laughing wildly.
"Vaan, it's not funny." he said frigidly, wilting in the desert heat. The Caribbean pirates were at ease, seeming comfortable, even. Oh well, they were used to it, at least.
"But it is!" Vaan giggled, doubled over with laughter. "I mean, look at you! You're adorable!"
"I can't believe I just heard that word come out of your mouth." Balthier purred. Anybody but Vaan could hear the threat that was thinly veiled in that one, velvet noise.
"But you did, and that's what makes it funnier!" he howled, "Did it hurt?" Then one of Balthier's gloved fists landed in his gut, sending him sprawling.
"What do you think happens when someone six feet tall is suddenly forced to become five feet four inches?" Balthier scowled.
"Looks like you didn't hit your growth spurt until later in life." Vaan sniggered.
"Why you—!" The boy sky pirate was white with fury as he launched himself at his former sort-of-apprentice. Penelo leaned out from behind the counter to view the spectacle. The duo had long given up pirating and now led a respectable lifestyle running Migelo's old business. That didn't mean that they did not back pirates, though, and found themselves offering shelter to Balthier and Fran on more than one occasion when the two had to lay low. Vaan now lay on the ground wheezing instead of laughing.
"We need to see Queen Ashe, savvy?" Jack leaned over the prone boy, who stared up at him glassily.
"Ashe doesn't talk to us anymore." he said sadly. Fran cocked her head.
"Why?"
"She says she can't be caught consorting with pirates. But we're not pirates, not anymore." Vaan sat up, dusting street grime from his shirt. "You, on the other hand, are going to need help if you want to meet her. Both of you are still at large." he shoved a poster into Balthier's hands, and the recipient dropped his gaze to look into a crude sketch of his own face, with the words WANTED stamped across the top. Balthier's eyes widened slightly at the bounty.
"Ten million gil? For… poaching, kidnapping, thievery, hostage taking, counterfeiting, smuggling…" the list went on and on. By the time he was finished reading, his eyebrows were almost in his hairline. Jack shook his head.
"You've got a list longer than I do!" the pirate exclaimed. Balthier handed the poster back to Vaan.
"Think you can get close to the palace with a list like that and a bounty that high?" Vaan asked.
"I was hoping you'd help." Balthier mumbled. Vaan went back behind the counter to sit with Penelo, who smiled at him.
"Can you guys play any instruments?" Vaan asked suddenly. Balthier raised an eyebrow.
"Violin, piano." he replied.
"Lyre." Fran said simply.
"Piano, harp." Elizabeth listed.
"Fiddle." Jack shrugged.
"Pipe." Barbossa answered. Vaan clapped his hands.
"We have an orchestra!" he cried. "I can play a drum… badly. But it's enough." He got up to get the listed instruments out of a cabinet in the back of the store.
"That's great, but why do we need these?" Elizabeth asked.
"It's your way in. The Queen's birthday party is tonight, and Penelo is going to dance for her. All she needs is an accompanying orchestra." Vaan said. Balthier tuned the violin the man shoved into his hands.
"Vaan, believe it or not, but you actually have a streak of genius about you." he said. Vaan grinned.
"A lot of people say that about me. Now let's practice the piece Penelo is going to dance to."
Fran pulled at a strand of her hair with a somewhat angry gesture. Just this once, they had convinced her to dye her white waterfall of tresses black, though the dye would wash out with water, Penelo assured her. However, even with a changed outfit, Balthier still looked like a miniature version of his older self, unlike Fran, who looked like whole new Viera. She had exchanged her sensual black leather ensemble for a more reserved, white cloth one, and was almost unrecognizable. Balthier simply put a black cloak on, pulling the hood over his face.
Elizabeth massaged her fingers gingerly. "I believe my fingers are swollen." she announced. They had practiced for hours, until Fran's fingers almost bled from plucking the lyre, Barbossa's lip had swelled from being curled to blow into the flute, and Jack and Balthier's wrists ached from drawing the violin bow back and forth. Balthier drew up a Cure spell, stroking his fingers trailing silver white light along Elizabeth's hand. Fran tended to the other men— Balthier was not about to touch Barbossa's face, not even with his gloves on.
"Ready to go?" Vaan poked his head in, dressed in his party livery. He looked ridiculous, but Balthier did not have the heart to tell him that his fashion sense was terrible. They were admitted to Ashe's birthday ball without even being searched, so no one ever knew that under his cloak, Balthier had a Yagyu Darkblade strapped to his leg, within easy reach on his shin, or that Barbossa had a dagger concealed in a special stitch in his coat. Even Fran had a few poisoned needles on her person, though they were disguised as hairpins. They took their seats on the raised dais, and the ball slowly began to quiet as Penelo took center stage.
Barbossa began to play on his flute, a slow but cheerful song, and the young woman began to dance, turning slowly. Then Jack joined, the music swelling as Fran and Elizabeth began as well, and Penelo rose with them, spreading her arms and tilting her pale face upward. Then Balthier began, quietly at first. The heartbreaking wail of the violin threaded like a serpent under joyous green grass, dripping poison and sorrow but unseen by the world passing above, until it rose and struck, a threat never perceived but always behind. He continued on alone now, and Penelo sank back to earth, like a flower ripped from its stem in a storm but coming to rest. At last the violin died out, and the audience roared with applause. Penelo smiled as if sunbeams were shining through her and bowed as the men and women in the front row threw flowers, before vanishing offstage. Her orchestra chose that time to vanish with her.
"Come with me," Penelo whispered, touching Fran's shoulder and leading them toward the pavilion where Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca was now mingling with her guests. Penelo caught her eye, and she swept forward in a mass of glittering jewels and airy silks to greet them.
"That was beautiful, Penelo!" the Queen said, as she held out her hand. Penelo knelt, kissing it gracefully. Jack instantly decided that this queen was not like Larsa at all. Larsa hadn't made them kiss his hand. Though he was a man. Maybe this was a woman thing. "The dance was quite exquisite, and your musical accompaniment was superb."
"She means she was dazzled by it." a lady-in-waiting snickered, and Ashe threw her a dirty look.
"I am quite capable of speaking for myself." she chided the girl. "It is a pleasure to see you again." Penelo nodded.
"Do you have a moment, my lady?" she asked. "My orchestra wishes to speak to you as well, but… in private."
The instant she saw Balthier's face, she raced toward him and rewarded him with a slap. Balthier rubbed his cheek, where an angry red handprint was blooming. "I don't think I deserved that, Highness. Besides, isn't there a rule against Queens beating children?" he complained, but dodged before Ashe could slap him again.
"I rather think you do! Aren't you a child in appearance only?" the Queen hissed. "What do you want this time? Every time I see you, you want something." She slapped the other side of his face while he stood there dumbstruck.
"You have been seeing Ashe?" Fran's voice was like the crack of doom. Balthier was already now about eight inches shorter than the Viera, and now that she leaned over him, she must have looked absolutely intimidating.
"W-where do you think I got the medicine when you were poisoned in the Zertinan Caverns by a rare strain of Mallicant?" he squeaked. Fran snorted, drawing herself back up to her full height. Ashe sat down with a rustle of silk in a large chair, crossing her arms.
"Well, pirate? What is it this time?"
"My companions know of the subject better than I." Balthier moved to the side to allow Jack and Barbossa to come forward, rubbing his cheeks.
"Your majesty, we seek a way to bind a god to a physical form." Barbossa intoned with a bow. Ashe tapped a finger to her chin.
"So you anger the gods again, do you, Balthier." she murmured. "You tempt the fates time and time again. One day, your luck will run out."
"This is no time for sentience, Ashe. As you can see, my luck has been rather short lately." Balthier said shortly. Ashe looked as if she wanted to slap him more.
"So you are offended that I actually care for you? I thought you were passed all this." she snapped. "Binding a god… in Giza, they bind the rain gods into magical pots to use their power."
"Larsa said the same thing." Fran replied.
"Our goddess in our world had a flesh and blood body, though she was still powerful and immortal, she could also be held and killed." Jack told the Queen, who nodded thoughtfully.
"There is one way. Balthier has been touched by the very fabric of the water god's being in order for him to be transformed so. By the look of it, the spell was actually much stronger, and it was supposed to make you regress all the way to infancy. Something interfered, and is still interfering, holding the magic without letting it fade. Do you know what it might be?"
"Yes." Fran marched over to her partner, pulling his shirt off.
The edge of the golden medallion in his chest would normally wink in the light like a little sun, but it was dull in its frame of puckered scar tissue. But that was not the worst part of it. Black veins surrounded by sickly white flesh radiated from the coin, like a thick, gross spider web lying across his chest.
"Oh!" Ashe gasped, Penelo put her hands over her mouth, and Vaan stared.
Balthier only had time to look at Fran with very worried eyes before his face turned as white as his shirt and he fainted clean away. Fran caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him gently onto another couch.
"What is all that?" Vaan yelped.
"That is the seal you made with Calypso?" Jack roared. "I knew you were crazy, but I didn't think you'd let her replace your heart with a metal disc!"
"If you recall, he was a cursed skeleton at the time, and therefore had not heart to speak of." Elizabeth whispered, laying a hand over his cold chest. Still there was no heartbeat under her fingers. Barbossa shook his head.
"Calypso is a very powerful goddess in her own right: She brought me back from the dead. Methinks we were pitifully underprepared to face this water god if his magic could contend with Calypso's." he said.
They all jumped when someone pounded on the door.
"Your highness?" a voice asked. "Are you in here?"
"What is it?" Ashe snapped.
"The thirtieth prince of Rozzaria wishes to see you and ask your hand in marriage." The Queen's face could have made Yiazmat run for cover.
"You are interrupting something very important, sir, and if you and your thirtieth prince of Rozzaria do not leave in ten seconds, I shall personally fling you from the battlements of my palace." she screeched. It was surprising that Balthier did not wake up with the amount of noise she made, but for all purposes, he looked and felt very dead.
"This is what you can do, if your goal is the Fountain of Youth. The only way to cure Balthier and get your water is to kill the god, and there is a way. Since he has touched Balthier, he has left a residue that allows him hold on Balthier's life, and that is why Balthier is a child again. However, the bond can go both ways, allowing you a hold on the god. In ancient days, there was a method of sealing rogue gods and demons into humans who acted as vessels, chaining them to the mortal spectrum. The supposedly immortal creatures could then be killed by practical means, be it hanging, stabbing, poisoning, anything that could kill a man. If what you say about Balthier is true, he can die briefly before coming back to life.
"I think if you trapped the god in Balthier and killed him, you can thus free him from the curse, and get your water of Eternal Youth." Ashe finished. Jack whistled.
"Sounds complicated. Now, who amongst us knows how to do this sealing?" he asked. No one said a thing.
"I told you, it's very ancient." the Queen huffed.
"I'm not sure he will appreciate serving as a receptacle for a god, even briefly." Fran said.
"Look here, he's coming around!" Barbossa pointed to the sky pirate, whose eyes fluttered open at the same time. Balthier blinked blearily before focusing on Fran.
"What's happening to me, Fran?" he asked, gesturing to his black-veined chest. "I'm sure this is not normal."
Fran brushed a stray strand of hair from his forehead with her thumb. "It is not." she replied, and Balthier sat up, wincing as the medallion twinged. "Is everything alright with you?"
"Thank you for being so optimistic." he said. "I was just severely shocked."
"Now would be a good time to ask him." Ashe nudged Fran gently, but before the Viera could say anything, Vaan asked,
"Balthier, would you mind being a vessel so we can put the water god in you, then kill you?" The sky pirate gazed at him, treating him to his most freezing stare.
"Well, when you put it that way, I bloody do mind!" Balthier snapped. "Everyone takes advantage of the dead man."
"Do you want to be sixteen for the rest of your life?" Jack asked. "You're alive, granted, but you won't get any women. And no rum! Because you're underage! For the rest of eternity!"
"I see what matters to you, Sparrow." Elizabeth glared at him. "For now, Balthier, I think you should rest. Moving about as much as you are and have been is clearly not good for you. Look! The veins are spreading." Sure enough, the latticework across his chest was growing, albeit by millimeters, but growing all the same. Balthier hissed in annoyance, the sound vaguely like that of a cat's, before deigning to let Fran lift him, cradled in her arms.
"We will go back to the Strahl and there hold conference. I am willing to bet that it is the concept of spirit alignment." she said, turning toward the door to leave, Jack, Elizabeth and Barbossa following her like the disappointed tail of a comet.
"I wish you luck." Ashe called after them.
As far as luck was concerned, the band of pirates had no manner of it whatsoever. As soon as they stepped out of the private room, a large green bangaa with a spiked beak cover leapt at them, screaming "Balthieeeeer!" in his croaking reptilian voice. The ball erupted into chaos, and Fran almost dropped the boy in shock!
Ba'Gamnan, for that was indeed who the bangaa was, stumbled to a halt when he took in the sight of Fran with her hair dyed black and the hume child she clutched in her arms before bursting into guffaws of laughter.
"How far the mighty have fallen, Balthier!" the bounty hunter cackled. Balthier struggled out of Fran's grip, pulling at the clasp of his cloak and letting it fall away, ready for a fight.
"You mustn't move so much, you'll spread whatever manner of sickness you have!" Elizabeth cried. "Let us protect you. We have much more interest in your welfare then you would believe."
The green bangaa snorted as they were surrounded by guards before shrugging his shoulders. A burst of energy scattered them like tenpins, and Balthier recognized the power immediately.
"Nethicite implants! Where did you get them, fool?" he barked.
"I did them myself, I did, and I'm proud of it. Spoils from the Draklor labs I received as payment from the Empire, saved for five years until the time was right." Ba'Gamnan chortled, drawing his rotating circular saw blade. "I'm going to go easy on you, nice and slow. You only fetch half the bounty dead." He swung the staff.
"Sorry, Elizabeth, but I can't stay out of this, even if it kills me or turns me back into a brainless zombie." Balthier dodged the blow, leaping backward to avoid the cutting edge. His hand dropped to his shin, and he pulled the ninja sword free of its black lacquered scabbard. "This enemy is beyond just the three of you. You'll need our help!"
"And you'll have my help as well, pirates." Ashe stood before them, resplendent in her battle attire, a pure white sword gripped easily in her pale hands. "You are not alone in this fight. Ba'Gamnan, you dare violate my demesne? That is a crime worthy of capital punishment— a punishment I shall now enact." She jumped into the fray.
Balthier managed to execute a flying leap and land on the bangaa's back, and he slid his blade between Ba'Gamnan's shoulders, attempting a kill strike, but before he could get the sword in, the bounty hunter twisted, delivering a crushing punch that sent him sprawling. He cursed, wiping blood from a cut that welled up just above his eye, blinding him and painting the scenery red. Elizabeth ducked under the bangaa's upraised arm and managed to graze his ribs, but the hard, reptilian scales turned away the rest of the strike.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and Ba'Gamnan jerked as a round hole spewed blood from his shoulder. Barbossa stood a short distance away, a smoking gun in his hand.
"Chew on lead, ye great lizard!" Barbossa snarled. Ba'Gamnan roared in return, and Barbossa was forced to run before the bangaa cut him in half with the saw blade.
"Where are your siblings? Rinok? Bwagi? Gijuk?" Balthier panted, spinning and slicing into Ba'Gamnan's muscular thigh. The bangaa didn't even notice, and with another flare of nethicite energy, he blasted Balthier into the stone wall of the palace.
Several things cracked— his spine snapped against the wall, his head slammed into it hard enough to make spider web fractures in the stone, and his hip, which had contacted the wall first, shattered. Blinking stars from his eyes and struggling to make sense of the world around him, Balthier managed to raise his head, though his neck screamed in pain to do so, in time to see the green smear that was Ba'Gamnan towering over him, whirling his staff.
"My family is dead, punished for their cowardice, and I killed them!" he laughed with the laugh of the insane. "You can meet them in the underworld, soon enough!" The blade slashed down. The last thing Balthier saw before everything went dark was a pool of his blood, spreading like a monstrous flower bloom across his torn shirt and spilling across the flagstones, staining the white cloth black.
Fran watched him as he went still, night black blood spraying out of the fatal wound Ba'Gamnan had dealt him. With a wordless scream of rage, she tried to fling herself at the bounty hunter, but Elizabeth, Jack, and Barbossa piled on top of her, holding her down. She struggled against them wildly.
"Stop it, bunny girl!" Barbossa snarled into her ear. "Remember? His life is bound to yours, and he can't die, unless you do. Do you want to get killed by that creature?" he looked toward Ba'Gamnan, who stood triumphantly over Balthier's "corpse". Penelo's hands were clapped over her mouth as she choked down a scream of horror. Vaan was valiantly trying to get in between the crazy bounty hunter and the body of his reluctant mentor without getting hacked to pieces when Ba'Gamnan attempted to mutilate the cadaver.
"What happened to 'nice and slow,' Ba'Gamnan? I thought Balthier only fetched half the bounty when he was dead!" Vaan shouted.
"Five million gil is enough. This brat has humiliated me many times, and today, I have gotten revenge!" the bangaa roared.
Ashe prepared the most lethal spell she knew: Death. The black and red miasma wrapped around Ba'Gamnan's body, but fell away, rolling off of him in a wave, leaving him unscathed.
"Foolish little Queen, to think she could cast a spell like Death with no intent to kill." Ba'Gamnan laughed as he advanced upon her.
"Then fight someone who does." Fran said coldly, standing up and throwing off the three pirates attempting to hold her with inhuman strength. "For if it is killer intent you seek, you will find it here, in my claws."
She descended upon him, glorious in her rage and bloody in her methods. Ba'Gamnan attempted to cleave her in two at the waist with a wild swing of his saw blade, but Fran was too quick for him, and she tore off his ear, throwing it to the ground.
"A warning, that." she flicked blood from her nails. "Next it is your head." The mist surrounding the bangaa was burning in her already inflamed mind, and it condensed as he readied another powerful attack. Fran would have stopped, had she been possessed of her normal mind, but everything was a whirl of pain, sorrow, and madness. She ignored the hot mist licking at her arms and face, and in one smooth movement, pulled the hairpins from her curls and shoved them into Ba'Gamnan's heart. The poison worked quickly, entering his bloodstream and spreading through his body. Fran listened with bitter satisfaction as his heart tripped and labored, struggling against the poison that had already done its dirty job, watched with glee as froth sprang from his snapping jaws. The bangaa's eyes were rolling like billiard balls in his skull, and he seemed to be attempting to cast Poisona upon himself, but could not formulate the words to do it. Finally, his head dropped back, and his swollen tongue flopped out of the corner of his mouth.
"And thus, Ba'Gamnan departs from our numbers." Fran intoned, before dropping to her knees in the sea of sticky black blood surrounding her fallen partner.
"I'm sorry, Fran. I couldn't protect him…" Vaan mumbled.
"It is alright. He is alive, I am sure of it." Figuratively speaking. Fran tore a strip from her white blouse, using it to wipe away the blood caked on his chest. She was right; the wound had already healed, but it had indeed been a grievous injury.
A new, knotted scar stretched from Balthier's right shoulder to his left hip, but it was not the scar that worried her: it was the lattice of black veins that had now spread over his entire chest and abdomen. And even though he had mostly healed, Balthier was not waking up from the death trance yet, and his face was unnaturally pale.
"What's wrong with him? Why isn't he waking up?" Elizabeth knelt next to Fran, ignoring the blood that soaked into her dress.
"It's because he is dead." Vaan said sourly. "The dead don't wake."
"You know not of what you speak, Hume." Fran snapped, and Vaan jerked. Fran had never spoken to him like that, not even with a semblance of anger in her tone, and the words were like a physical slap. "We will take him back to your home to recover, if that is all right with you."
"Uh, sure, if you think it will help, go ahead." Penelo answered.
The two former sky pirating duo lived on the second floor of Migelo's Sundries. Fran took Balthier's unmoving body and put him in Vaan's bed, where she stayed at his side and would let no one else see him, so the rest of the pirates went to the kitchen, where Penelo was putting chipped mugs of tea on the table. For once, Jack was serious and did not ask for some manner of alcoholic drink.
"I don't get it." he finally said. "What's happening now? Balthier has been stabbed, shot in the head, had all his ribs broken right down the middle, his neck snapped, and he's walked away from all of it, and now, suddenly he's down for the count?"
"Queen Ashe said that the pact with Calypso was interfering with the water god's spell. Could it be going in reverse as well, the water god's spell meddling with Calypso's magic?" Barbossa asked. Elizabeth nodded.
"That would explain things, certainly." she took a long drink of tea. "I hope it hasn't interfered with the part keeping the beast in him in check, though I would not get my hopes up." Penelo gave them all a strange look.
"So, you're not from here, are you?" she asked, changing the morbid subject, and the three of them shook their heads.
"We're from the Caribbean. It's on Earth." Elizabeth replied.
"Earth? How did you get here, then?"
"We sailed off the edge of the world, then appeared up here in the Ridorana Cataract. Fran said it was like a giant hole in the sea, but it must also be a gate." Barbossa mused.
"You guys must be pretty desperate to get this Fountain." Vaan crossed his arms and leaned forward on the table. "Why's Balthier involved with you guys, if you're from another world? I thought he didn't age any more, and he liked being twenty-eight for the rest of his life."
"He owes us favors from when he came to our world, and now he's granting us our boons." Barbossa replied, avoiding the fact it was his fault Balthier was now having so many problems by cursing him in the first place. "He got in the way of a curse meant for Fran."
"I told you Balthier wasn't crazy!" Penelo gave Vaan a hardy slap on the back. "You guys are real! Balthier really did get teleported to another world!"
They were interrupted when Fran stumbled down the stairs, exhausted from attempting all manners of spells and healing methods on her partner, but to no avail. She collapsed into a chair, burying her face in her hands.
Clearly, the matter was very serious. Fran, so usually calm and collected, was on the verge of breakdown, drained of Mist Energy and sorely in need of rest. Penelo pushed her onto the couch, even though Fran was a little too long for the Hume sized piece of furniture, and gave her a bottle of Ether. "I have to go back…" Fran was muttering, even as she uncorked the Ether and downed it.
"No, killing yourself to help him is not the solution, Fran. How many times must we tell you?" Jack asked the Viera, who gave him a hard look.
"Here, I'll go keep him company. You rest, Fran, and I'll have no arguing about it." Elizabeth got up and was down the hall before Fran could even get up from the couch.
Elizabeth sat down on the stool by Balthier's bed. The window by the bed was open, and sunlight was filtering down onto his face, making it look even paler than usual. For a moment, panic gripped her as she noticed he was not breathing, until she remembered he did not have to. Unconsciously, she found herself reaching forward to stroke his russet hair. It was actually rather soft.
It was in this moment that Balthier finally quietly returned to wakefulness.
"Elizabeth." he said calmly, in the way only people not fully awake could speak. She smiled at him before sweeping to her feet. "I'll go get Fran. She has only just left your side on the verge of exhaustion."
"Don't." Balthier sat up in the bed, massaging his neck. "Let her rest. Why not stay here?" Elizabeth could not see why there was anything wrong with his reasoning, and so sat down on the bed next to him.
"We were worried about you. We thought you'd actually died." she murmured. Balthier gave a little snort of laughter.
"Fancy that, people actually care if I am injured." he said. "I was worried all you people saw me as just some kind of human shield."
Elizabeth lightly blocked his verbal jab. "Never. Can I get you anything? I don't know, a cool cloth, some food or water?"
"Hm… I'd have to think about it." Balthier purred. "A little food wouldn't be amiss." Elizabeth made to leave again, but in a movement faster than she could see, she found herself pinned to the wall, Balthier's hands locked around her wrists with a cold iron grip. "But don't go. You don't have to leave." he whispered, his eyes burning into hers. She realized belatedly that they were not their normal brown hue, but were misty silver, as if all color had been drained out of them. His face also remained as pale as before. She felt as if she were melting, her will sapped away by his eyes.
"What are you doing?" she asked him cautiously, her breath hitching. "You would not compromise the honor of a married woman?"
"No, I would not." he breathed, his voice velvet rich. Elizabeth shivered as he brushed his lips, cold as the winter wind, along her collar bone.
"Such behavior is unbecoming of sixteen year-old boys, Balthier." she chided, and he smiled, though she could not see it, as he traced his way up her neck. She felt the cold tip of his tongue flick over her skin, the warm puff of air as he smelled her flesh. "Please, desist." she whispered.
"I see no reason to." Balthier said, before Elizabeth realized something very sharp was beginning to prick at her neck. At this point, her nerve broke, and she did the only thing she could.
"Jack!" she screamed. "Barbossa! Fran!" she struggled out from between him and the wall. Balthier growled as the three called, as well as Vaan and Penelo, burst through the door. It took only a second for Fran to take in what was going on before she was upon him, but he was strong, to her shock, and it took the combined efforts of Jack and Barbossa to aid her in pulling Balthier away. As soon as he and Elizabeth were separated, Fran wrapped a large cinnamon hand behind his head and pulled his face toward her shoulder before he could bite the Hume woman, whispering into his ear in Vieran and stroking his hair.
Balthier hissed in frustration, struggling against her, and she caught sight of his hungry silver eyes as he thrashed about in her arms. "Calm, Ffamran. Be still. Is it the blood loss?" she murmured as he began to still. She pressed his face to her long, dark caramel neck, and she felt him quivering from restraint.
"I'm sorry." he managed to gasp eventually. "I can't- I don't- I- I-!"
"Hush." Fran said quietly. "Take it, for it is your right as well as mine, for are you not bound to me by soul?"
Oddly enough, when he bit her, there was no pain, but she could only relax against him as he hungrily lapped at her blood as it flowed in a thick, red flow from twin punctures in her neck. When her head began to loll, eyes fluttering, Elizabeth called out in warning.
"Ffamran!" He jerked, the word having the desired effect on him, and looked around, before noticing Fran limp in his arms. Balthier stared at the blood dripping from her neck, blinking in confusion for a moment, then realized what he did.
He wanted to throw up all the blood he'd ingested, but he felt far too good to do it. His eyes were back to their brown shade, the color had returned to his cheeks, and the green magic of the Wood flowing in Fran's blood had counteracted the effect of the water god's interference on Calypso's spell somewhat, localizing the blackened veins to a general circle around his heart.
"I suppose you just needed a little blood transfusion, eh? After getting your insides emptied onto the pavement by Ba'Gamnan." Vaan joked as they waited for Fran to recover. A large pile of potion bottles had accumulated by Fran's resting place on the couch, and Penelo would occasionally toss a Cura spell her way as needed.
"I can't live like this." Balthier whispered, watching Fran sleep on the sofa, her knees curled up to her chest. Her nose twitched in her sleep, and her fingers curled. She must be having a good dream. "I can't just drink Fran's blood every time I get badly injured. The whole reason I made the pact with Calypso was to avoid having this kind of problem at all. Very well, I consent to being the poor sod that plays the container for a mad god."
"There's a good man." Jack nodded his approval. "Now, how are we going to get him in you is the hard part."
Yays.