Hope for the best but plan for the worst – all the while living for the moment and dreaming of tomorrow; no wonder all we do is spin in circles.

There are some things a person can only think about while falling at steady, but controlled, speed towards the ground. Sometimes a person has to have their feet far, far off the ground in order to see what is really there and not what they think they have seen.

On the one hand, Penelo considered, as she was buffeted about my the wind up high, swinging slightly from side to side under the canopy of her parachute, she had just witnessed the Strahl and her captain crash in a blazing ball of fire. On the other hand it was Balthier who had supposedly died and this was a man who made a habit of confounding expectation.

To blow out the aft engines was suicide; Penelo remembered thinking that even as he did it. Now, looking over the hazy early morning sunshine, Penelo watched the smoke from the crash reach upwards towards the powder blue sky and found herself pondering, what was she really seeing?

The Strahl, a burned out pile of metal and broken dreams?…..or merely an airship, crashed almost artfully in an enclosed gulley with a great deal of dense foliage a person (or a wily, monstrously devious sky pirate) could hide in when the Rozzarians came picking through the wreckage?

As her suspicions mounted and the ground, a swaying field of six foot tall heads of wheat, rushed up to greet her and Penelo's body braced for impact, she found herself recalling a conversation she had once had with Balthier during the halcyon days' when he did not lie to her with every syllable.

She and Vaan had caught up with Balthier and Fran (and been allowed to do so) out on the Ozmone Plains somewhere close to Golmore (but not too close). Balthier and Fran had been re-ftting the Strahl with a new front glossair ring (acquired from another airship that, according to Balthier 'was not putting the technology to best use').

Penelo remembered that she had been shocked to see how easy it was for the two senior pirates and Nono to dismantle the Strahl, piece by piece, and then re-assemble her.

'The old girl is a mongrel, my dear.' Balthier had told her with a careless smile thrown to her as he patted the detached right wing affectionately.

'I saved my girl from the scrap heap, but underneath the gilt and the paint, she's still not much more than scrap made good, which is a damn sight better than most airships these days. Those are headed for the scrap heap, while my girl rises above it.'

'But….what does that mean?' Penelo had asked at the time, almost scandalised by the notion that Balthier would call his airship a 'mongrel'.

Balthier had smiled slyly and beckoned her to him with a quick incline of his head, the sunlight of the plain catching like quicksilver on his ear-ring. He had snaked his arm around her waist when she had gone to him and gestured with his free hand towards the partially dismantled airship.

'When you think of the Strahl, sweetheart, what do you think of first, hmm? The reticulated wings, the retractable dorsal rudders just above the front glossair rings….or a rather elaborately decorated small craft with pretty fretwork?'

Penelo barely knew what dorsal rudders were, or how to recognise them on the Strahl, 'I think of the paintwork,' she had answered carefully, slowly, 'because that is what anyone sees, even people who don't know anything about airships.'

Balthier had smiled down on her, pleased, and squeezed her side (which had pleased Penelo – who at the time had still been new to a man's affections).

'Precisely.'

He had led her over to one of the detached wings, resting like the wing of a huge moth on the grass a few feet from the body of the Strahl. Balthier had let go of her then for a moment to crouch down and idly play his fingers over the wingtip, his expression deviously proud.

'These wings are unique. The Strahl is an old girl and ships like her simply are not made anymore. However airships with retractable wings that look like the Strahl are numerous.'

Penelo had stepped forward and touched the wing herself. The whole wing was enormous, and she only realised it now that it was a part from the rest of the Strahl. Crouching down beside Balthier she played her own hands over the wing.

'So,' she had said thinking hard because she could feel the weight of Balthier's watchful, expectant eyes on her, 'if you had a ship with retractable wings and you painted it like the Strahl……or used some of the bits of decoration from the Strahl…..'

She had turned to face Balthier, puzzled by his slow, pleased smile. Why would he want to fly a pretend Strahl? Why would he tell her this; what was it in his eyes that seemed so intent almost as if he was trying to tell her something terribly important without saying a word?

Balthier had raised a hand to stroke her cheek and let his palm rest there Penelo, as responsive to his touch as a flower to the sun, had closed her eyes and leaned into his hand.

'Now, think hard sweetheart,' Balthier had murmured, 'what do you think about first, when you think of me, hmm?'

Penelo's eyes opened and she had stared at him blankly for a moment, 'What do you mean?'

The truth had been that her thoughts of him were swallowed up with the sensory memory of his dancing, deft fingers gliding over her skin. His lips against her ear when he whispered things to her in the dark velvet of the night that she did not understand but which nevertheless made her shiver deliciously.

He was to her a confusion of sensation; the melodious mockery of his voice, the play of lean muscle moving under fine pale skin against the run of her nervous palms, the glitter of ostentatious jewellery and the rush of adrenalin within her veins at the thought that such a man would ever deign to lie with her.

'Your white shirt and your vest,' she had answered, afraid of admitting the truth, 'and your ear-rings and your accent. Those are the things I think of first.' She had told him when in truth that was only a fraction of what he was to her and it did not touch the fascinating, almost frightening, riddle that was his mind and soul.

In her memory Penelo could clearly recall the gleam of triumph in his dark, shuttered eyes as he had leaned towards her and kissed her slowly, almost languidly until she whimpered and clutched at his shirt sleeve wanting all the kiss promised but denied her during the daylight hours. It had been only weeks since Lemures – weeks since she had learned what it was to really be someone's 'sweetheart' - and Penelo was like a child let loose in a confectioners store – a glutton for sensation sweet and illicit.

'Good,' he had whispered in her ear, 'for that is how a sky pirate survives; hiding the very truth of his being behind layer upon layer of lies.'

…….hiding truth behind lies….or survival behind the performance of suicide?

…….Penelo landed in the field with a bone jarring bump that dislodged her mind firmly from bittersweet memory. Immediately she struggled to wriggle free of the parachutes harness and under the wide blanket of silk coating the stalks of wheat.

Penelo would be the first to recognise that she did not really know Balthier; that was obvious considering her present circumstances, but she dared to claim that she knew him better than most. Aside from Fran she and Vaan had been allowed to learn more about and from Balthier than anyone.

For example Penelo knew that he and Fran had faked their own deaths on the Bahamut on purpose (though Fran's injuries had been accidental - and Balthier had approached guilt whenever they were mentioned). He and Fran had known exactly how to crash the Bahamut and disappear in the confusion; they had almost planned to do so.

Penelo decided that there would be a lot of confusion at the sight of a shot down airship; the Rozzarians would not know who had escaped before the crash and who had not – it would be easy for a lone man to escape a flaming crash site while the Rozzarians were hunting down Penelo, Fran, and Basch.

Still, Penelo could not imagine Balthier would ever sacrifice his Strahl (if he loved nothing else he loved his airship) but she knew, because she had seen it with her own eyes, that the Strahl's distinctive paintwork and outer fret work, which made it so recognisable, could be removed easily from the hull leaving a very plain looking airship underneath.

It took an age for Penelo, her thoughts racing ahead, to fight her way through the dense forest of spindly stalks and stems and punch her way through the wheat field, and when she did, from a much lower vantage point, she could not gain her bearings to find the direction of the crash site.

Her fists were clenching and unclenching furiously as she put the pieces of a puzzle she did not know the shape of together. Looking left and right for any sign of Fran or Basch Penelo headed towards the small copse of trees about half a mile down the dirt road from the field. Whatever was going on it was better to avoid being out in the open.

'I hate you Balthier.'

She muttered as, bruised and disorientated, Penelo scuttled along the road towards the trees. She turned around, shading her eyes to look towards the distant, hazy purplish hills in the not too far distant horizon.

She didn't believe there were only two parachutes. The thought was bedrock in her mind. The idea that Fran would allow Balthier to be so reckless made no sense. With those two pirates it would either be that Balthier had no parachutes at all (too arrogant to believe he'd ever need to bail out of his precious Strahl) or the ship would carry the full allotment for the number of passengers it could carry.

If he had abandoned the falling airship moments before it hit the gulley bed; if he had jumped ship after the airship (and she did not think it was the Strahl at all – any ship could be painted orange and pink and blue) had passed beyond sight, then it was possible Balthier had easily survived the crash.

If Balthier was dead, Penelo decided, barely conscious of the fact that her feet were carrying her, not towards the relative safety of the copse of trees, but down the slight decline of the road and towards the hills, then he could not be prosecuted for Larsa's stolen Gil.

Feet pounding over dusty, flinty dirt path, kicking up a cloud of bone dry dust in her wake, Penelo ran as fast as her shaky legs could take her towards the cleft where the smoke from the airship was still visible; twirling lethargically up towards the pale, pale early morning sky.

Soon she could not run any more and her side ached and her lungs burned and the tears scolded her sweat soaked cheeks; salt on salt. Still she could not stop herself moving forward as the undulating land began to climb steeply and the path dwindled into no more than a foot beaten trail that picked its way unevenly over rocky ground.

The hills, and that snake of dwindling grey smoke, were her only horizon, the only thing she was truly conscious of, as she dragged herself up the craggy hill, a rough cleft of land hewn from twisted and exposed tree trunks and sharp stones that cut her legs as she stumbled and almost tumbled to the bottom.

'I hate you Balthier. I hate you; you'd better not be dead.'

The words, paradoxical and hardly coherent, became her mantra as she dragged herself up and over the inhospitable terrain. When a trio of Rozzarian airships swooped low over head Penelo took cover under the over hang of a grass and vine covered hollow in the hillside.

Wedging her way in backwards, eyes watching the sky and anxiously waiting for the ships to pass overhead and race on towards the fallen airship, Penelo had no time to so much as draw breath in surprise when a hand clapped around her mouth and jaw and she was roughly dragged into the hollow by a pair of strong arms wrapped in bloodstained and tattered white cotton sleeves.


The world is filled with those who know the value of nothing and the price of everything; it is they who make good souls poor.

Penelo knew instinctively who it was who held her and so it was not survival reflex or terrible fright that inspired in her a furious rage that had her twisting like a serpent to rake her nails (blunt and bitten) down his face, clawing at his eyes, as her feet snapped at his shins and any body part she could kick out at.

Penelo had killed and been party to the deaths of others but she had never wished harm on another living being like she did him at that moment.

'IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou!' She panted in one long stream of hurt, betrayal, and acidic relief. He was not dead and she was glad because now she could kill him herself.

She wanted to gouge out those hypnotic, secretive, dark eyes and spit into the bloody, weeping sockets.

The very violence of that thought stole her fury far more effectively than anything else and by degrees Penelo drew still. When she was calm enough to see beyond the red lightening of her own anguish, swiping scolding tears from her cheeks with shaking hands, Penelo found herself draped half on top of Balthier who watched her through a mask of grime and dried blood with jaded, quiet eyes.

The small hollow was larger than she thought; it was instead a sort of tiny cave of dirt and dangling roots, which smelled richly of loamy soil and mulch. The entrance to the hollow was covered with a long trailing curtain of long grass from above and neatly barricaded by a wall of brambles.

Penelo, in her furious shock, had clambered right through the careful camouflage heedlessly. It was only now that she realised how contrived the little hide out was -how obviously hume-created and perfectly proportioned for one tall, but lean, man to hide in until the coast was clear.

Gulping in air into aching lungs in the space that was really too small for two people, even when one was long and lean and the other short and svelte, Penelo waited for him to say something.

He didn't say a word however and after a few awkward seconds more and Penelo's eyes grew accustomed to the poor light and the lack of space with which to see, she realised that some of the blood on his face had been drawn by her nails, and that the scent of copper richness she had mistaken for fresh turned soil also came from the deep, vicious gash along his right leg that seeped blood into the dark ground.

'Fran wasn't expecting that immobilisation spell.' Penelo blurted out suddenly, confusing herself with those words. 'She was planning on pretending to crash right along with you, but you changed the plan; why?'

Of all the bitter truths she had worked out in her own mind and all the questions and accusations she could have hurled at him, she hadn't expected to start with that. It proved to be a good decision however as he actually answered.

'She was hurt the last time we pulled a caper of this sort. I was not prepared to risk her life again.'

He sounded tired and in pain as he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He was slumped against the wall of the hollow and unable to sit up straight in the tiny space. Once again Penelo's gaze dropped to the gash in his leg, running from mid-thigh to below his knee, neatly bisecting the flesh. He had used one of his belts as a makeshift tourniquet above the site of the wound.

Penelo pursed her lips and examined the wound with the experienced touch of a healer. His hand darted out and clamped down on her wrist, pulling her hand away before she could so much as begin the incantation for Curaga.

'Why not let me bleed out, hmm? Save your compassion for someone you do not despise.'

Despite his words there was very little venom to his tone as he dropped her hand and shifted a little painfully to elevate his leg. She watched the wound ripple and could see, peering against the dim, pale light that came through the tangle of undergrowth at the hollow's entrance, the layers of fat and tissue that had been paired back by whatever had sliced open the meat of his thigh.

'I don't despise you.' she told him sadly reaching out again to lay hands on the wound, and this time he did not stop her, moaning instead as he was unable to withhold his relief when the Curaga spell flowed from her palms through his tired, battered body.

'Why not?' he asked after a moment when she had used a strip of her own tattered silk trousers to clean the half healed wound of grit and dirt and prepared to cast another curaga. She glanced at him and met eyes that were as dark as the dirt hole he cowered in.

'Because even if I tried, even if I nurtured every little hurt you've caused me, I could never, ever, hate you as much as you hate yourself.'

She told him boldly and waited, her breath caught in her chest, for his response. He smiled faintly and closed his eyes again.

'True enough,' he breathed out.

He was not looking at her but still Penelo fought the hot tears prickling at her eyelids. His calm reaction to her words, to the accusation she had never dared level at him before, hurt her in a strange way more than anything else he had ever done to her. It hurt because she loved him and it wounded her that he just didn't seem to care about himself – or her - at all.

'I've figured it out,' she told him quietly, wishing she could move away from him, wishing that her legs weren't entangled with his and her head wasn't bent against his shoulder because she had no other way to lay down in this hole and no room to sit up. She wished dearly that the way they were lying together did not remind her of being in bed with him and that the close, tight, humidity of this little dirt hole didn't put her in mind of dark, sweltering nights under fine cotton sheets.

She waited but he didn't show any inclination to say anything in response to her. Penelo noticed that the right side of his face was swollen and discoloured with an enormous, advancing bruise and his eye was half closed under a congealed knot of blood and filth.

Whether he had planned the whole thing or not, he had obviously taken an immense risk deliberately crashing that airship; he could so easily have died in the attempt – and yet – he just didn't seem to care at all. Penelo, stupidly, wanted to clean his face for him but did not dare. Somehow she thought that he would stop her if she tried. Somehow she knew it wouldn't really hide the ugly truth anyway.

'You planned everything didn't you? You knew that Larsa would send me to Balfonheim and that I'd agree to come. You knew that Larsa would send Basch to rescue me as well.'

Penelo looked up at him, but his eyes were still closed, his face under the dirt and the bruises still as a statue and his breathing so steady he might have been asleep.

'You never thought Larsa would send another million Gil for me; I was just the bait to catch Basch.'

She sucked in a breath of hurt and continued doggedly, oddly emboldened by his absolute silence.

'You knew that Larsa would tell Al-Cid that you had stolen the Gil and that the Rozzarians would be ready to attack the Strahl – or an airship that looked like the Strahl – if it came to Bervenia. You knew all that so you created a fake Strahl and engineered this whole crash.'

Again she waited, baited breath, for his denials. She waited for him to smirk at her, mock her, commend her for working it all out, or smile that sly, seductive smile of his and ask her hmm and what, pray tell, are you going to do about it, my dear? Yet he did none of those things. Instead he remained still and quiet and remote as she revealed all his secrets and all his schemes.

'Fran must have been waiting in Balfonheim, or Cerobi or something, for sign of Basch, so that she could ambush him. You and Fran stripped Basch of his armour so that you could use it at the crash site, didn't you?' she demanded to his stony, distant silence and received only the sound of his soft, steady, breathing in response.

Staring at his face, absolutely expressionless and empty of life, she had to bite back the desire to hit him again, just to get a response. Instead she took a deep, steadying breath and put her thoughts together as she spoke.

'The Rozzarians are going to find the armour in the wreckage of what they think is the Strahl – they'll know that a Judge Magister is here and if Larsa really doesn't know what's happening then he soon will and Al-Cid would be scared that he'd be found out.'

The statue moved and Balthier almost made her jump when his lip curled into a humourless half-smile, 'Not Larsa; Al-Cid does not fear Larsa.'

Penelo stared at him, all her almost formless suspicions, the fears of her subconscious, rearing up and being proved correct all at once.

'Ashe.' She whispered. 'Ashe knows everything doesn't she?'


I once bit deep of the forbidden fruit of love. It bit me back and still I bleed as loves poison weeps from hearts wounds that ne'er will heal. I loved you and you loved me not.

Balthier opened his tired eyes and looked at her with remote, dispassionate eyes, 'A sky pirate does not wage war on two empires simultaneously for no reason.'

He told her while answering nothing at all. Penelo did not realise she was crying (again – so many tears) until he reached out a scratched and bloodied hand to brush them away with the pads of his thumbs.

'Ashe told you about the secret Gil onboard the galleon, didn't she?' Penelo whispered brokenly.

'Yes.' He said just as softly, except that he would never break – or maybe he had simply broken years ago already?

Penelo thought furiously, trying to think her way through the heartbreak; she wanted to know, at least, why all this had happened. It wouldn't make it hurt less, but at least she would know the truth.

'Ashe didn't want to marry Al-Cid,' Penelo suggested growing more confident in her assertions as she spoke, 'and she suspected there was something wrong about Al-Cid offering her the Bervenia magicite so…..'

'The marriage of the Dynast queen to a scion of Margrace is not popular with your countrymen.' Balthier said softly as Penelo hit a dead end in her thought process, 'nor with her Highness. Ashe has had bad luck in marriage before and has no desire to see her kingdom become a province of Rozzaria anymore than a conquest of Archadia -alas her privy counsellors do not feel the same.'

'So she needed proof that Al-Cid wouldn't be a good husband,' Penelo seized upon the motive, 'but she couldn't just admit her suspicions because if they weren't true it would look bad. So she…..'

'Hired a sky pirate to dig up her dirt for her,' Balthier murmured dryly. 'I was already aware of the Bervenia situation but without the support of a monarch a pirate dares only so much.'

In the hot, clammy darkness Penelo took three tries to find speech and was glad when her voice rang out steadily, 'Thank you for telling me the truth.'

She struggled, almost blindly, deafened by the hammering of her bleeding heart, to clamber over his legs and body towards the entrance to the hidey-hole. 'I'd figured most of it out myself, but I appreciate that you didn't deny it.'

She added refusing to cry and give him the satisfaction of her pain; though in truth it hurt more to know that he had never deliberately set out with the objective to hurt her but instead had not really thought of her feelings at all.

She was halfway out of the hollow when his words stopped her, 'You had one part wrong.' He told her while never once looking at her.

'What?'

She didn't want to hear his voice anymore. She didn't want to know how stupid she had been to ever believe, even for a moment, that he was capable of caring for anyone when he didn't even really care for himself (no one who cared about themselves would wilfully pretend to die, or alienate every friend he had if he cared about his own well being).

'You were never the bait; I did not really need your involvement at all.' He told her in lilting, melodious voice.

It hurt more than she thought it would. The last tiny, treacherous filament of hope she had cherished - that he might still need her even if he didn't want her – snapped and her head hung low between her shoulders as she hesitated on hands and knees half in and half out of the hollow.

'Why do it then? Why do all this to me?'

His neck turned and his head went with it. His brown eyes were black holes in his face reflecting no light and giving no warmth. 'You're here because I missed you, sweetheart.'

Penelo felt the blood leave her head as her heart burst. She could not even formulate speech. She could not quite believe her ears, except that she did not believe that Balthier would demean himself by telling her a lie quite so needlessly cruel.

A bitter smirk scythed across his face as he turned away from her and let his eyes, windows to a blackened soul, fall closed once more.

'I threw you away but I couldn't let him have you; I couldn't let any of them have you. I don't deserve you but neither does any senator, or armoured executioner.' He whispered on the dead air.

Penelo, feeling like she was dying a thousand times over and more scared than she had ever been scrambled away from the entrance of the hollow and ran, as fast as her legs could carry her and her aching chest could power her flight. She thought she heard, but it might have been only her mind playing tricks, his voice in her ears.

'Goodbye sweetheart.'

She was running so fast and so blindly, desperate to flee from heartache and the deep, stormy waters of love and lust, that she did not even feel it when the waiting Rozzarian patrolman struck her across the head with his cosh as she flew along the rocky path.

When she fell into unconsciousness it was something of a blessing in disguise.