One step forward two steps back is the way of a world turned black.
It was incredibly dark in the forest and Penelo walked with one hand curled into the fastenings and ties at the back of Balthier's vest to keep herself steady. The muttered oaths and stumbles as Balthier tripped over objects on the ground and walked into invisible tree branches functioned as an early warning system so that Penelo could save herself from trips, falls, and getting smacked in the face by low hanging twigs.
She had tried using a ball of Holy to light the way ahead for them but the magick had not remained stable and after she had incinerated a small blackberry bush they had both decided it wasn't worth the risk for what small illumination the magick offered.
Abruptly Balthier stopped on the path and Penelo ended up walking straight into him. 'This is pointless. I cannot see my hand before my face; we'll not find our way out anytime soon.' He muttered.
Penelo had already decided the whole thing was hopeless hours ago. Her legs ached intolerably, the muscles of her thighs twitching with fatigue, her eyes burned from the effort of trying to see through the thick, canopy shaded darkness, and her head rang with exhaustion. Still, stopping for the night could be just as dangerous, as they could end up food for fiends.
For no sensibly reason Penelo began to giggle. It was all just too much; she had survived an airship crash, been betrayed by her lover, been knocked unconscious and very nearly raped, and now she was lost in a forest with no obvious way out. Penelo did not have the energy for tears, so instead she laughed.
Balthier had turned around to face her (Penelo could just make out the gleam of his eyes in his grey silhouette) and she barrelled into his arms without thinking about it. She pressed her face into his chest and decided not to worry about the fact that she really should not be snuggling up to him but instead should have the sense to hate him thoroughly. The whole situation was just so pathetic that it made her laugh all the more.
Balthier wrapped his arms, covered in tattered sleeves, around her and sighed deeply, belying his own exhaustion, 'Now, now, no hysterics or you'll set me off too and one of us needs to be at least partially sensible.'
Penelo tried to regain her composure but she was light headed from hunger (she had not eaten anything since Balfonheim) and her brain buzzed giddily with spent adrenalin and over-wrought nerves.
She was still giggling as they stumbled blindly into a small clearing between the trees, where the canopy broke enough to allow faint starlight to cast silver shadows across the bouncy moss coated grass. Balthier pushed her down onto the spongy quilt of leaves and pine needles and collapsed down beside her.
Penelo let her head drop onto his shoulder, leaning her weight against him as Balthier rested against the trunk of a tree. 'I'm so tired I can't think.' She admitted around an enormous yawn.
'Hmm, go to sleep then.'
Balthier's voice almost slurred with exhaustion and Penelo supposed fuzzily that he'd had a long, tiring day as well. Deliberately crashing an airship, getting injured in the crash, and then chasing after her and her kidnappers. In reality neither one of them was fit to stand watch but one of them would have too.
Penelo was actually thinking about offering to take first watch when she all but passed out asleep.
The selfish man feels guilt and does penance for his sins; the unselfish man simply makes amends.
Balthier knew Penelo was asleep when she capsized over into his lap and he had to catch her and prop her up in his arms. Almost instantly, and with that sensuous abandon she always displayed while asleep, Penelo slipped one hand across his tattered vest to run fingers over the damaged patterning. She sighed contentedly with her arms arrayed about him possessively.
Balthier kept his eyes open (though he could not see much of anything) and tried to remain alert for the sounds of predators lurking, but the truth was he was almost sick with fatigue. He'd had quite a day. Contriving his own supposed death, breaking a girl's heart, murdering a group of lecherous wretches and traipsing aimlessly through a forest that seemed to have swallowed the length and breadth of Ivalice it was so vast.
Penelo mumbled something nonsensical in her slumber and nuzzled her head against his shoulder. Balthier tried not to wince as she kneaded a nice collection of bruises with the crown of her head. He made a mental note not to crash any more airships for a while; he'd barely made it out of the last crash in one piece. To keep Penelo from fidgeting and accidentally exacerbating any of his injuries he stroked his fingers through her hair as she slept; he knew she enjoyed that.
'Mmm….Balthier?'
He only realised his eyes had closed when they popped open at the sound of her voice. Guiltily he looked about him and was relieved to find they were not surrounded by slavering, blood-thirsty fiends.
'Hmm?' good gods but he was exhausted.
'I wanted to ask you something.' Penelo mumbled, her eyes stilled closed and her head still nestled against his shoulder. She yawned and once again nuzzled the clump of bruises over his collarbone; at the very least the jab of pain helped to keep him awake.
'Hmm?' there was a tad more suspicion to his non-committal utterance this time around. He did not want to be forced to lie to Penelo again.
'Mm, I had a letter from Tomaj a little while ago,' Penelo told him sleepily, 'you remember him? He was with us during the Lemures battles.'
Balthier forced his mind to rifle through the pages of his recollection and finally placed the man Tomaj. 'Yes,' he said after a moment, 'the knave who fancied himself a businessman; had rather a liking for Fran, if I recall.'
Fran, who was used to the unwanted attention of hume males and somewhat inured to all forms of romantic overtures, had nevertheless shown considerable tolerance towards the Rabanastran would-be entrepreneur's clumsy attempts to woo her.
When he had asked, curious, why it was she was encouraging the young sap with her gracious acceptance of his gifts, she had told him that Tomaj reminded her a little of Balthier himself, only without the self-denial and bitterness. Balthier had decided that there was nothing politique he could say in response to that and so had said nothing at all.
Penelo giggled a little as she opened her eyes and tilted her head up to look at him, 'Well he wrote to me about maybe doing a show together.' She told him diffidently.
He frowned puzzled, 'A show?'
'Yes, a travelling song and dance act; he said that with the reputation I had gained from the Archades music halls and his business acumen we could be the best travelling performance artistes in all Ivalice.'
Balthier blinked, shifting against the tree trunk he was leaning back on, 'What business acumen? My understanding was that every business venture he has ever begun has ended in bankruptcy and a need to run from his creditors.'
Penelo moved away from him a little and looked up at him thoughtfully, 'Well – he did say that he thought this would work out better as our overheads would be low and profits would be high because people would want to see me dance.'
Balthier considered this; he had seen Penelo dance after all. 'Hmm, I see.' he said carefully, 'What was the question you wanted to ask me?' for she had said she wished to ask him something.
'Oh, um, I wanted to ask your opinion; do you think they will? Come and see me dance I mean. Do you really think people will pay to see me dance in a new performance; one they don't know the words to?'
For a moment the image of loose flowing golden hair, pink silks, and spinning petals under a blazing desert sun rose up, Phoenix like, in his mind's eye. In his memory sinuous, strong limbs twined in dance, a young, lithe body moved with a staggeringly graceful violence of intent and he could almost hear the rhythmic thunder of bare feet over rough wood stage.
'Hmm…..yes, I rather think they might.' He cleared his throat a little awkwardly and decisively stopped his imagination dead; now was not the time or the place to be thinking about Penelo writhing and twisting in dance -or writhing for any reason – he added firmly.
He realised rather to his surprise that he himself would pay to watch Penelo perform, and had done so in Archades, a place he had promised never to return to. Balthier would pay quite a bit of Gil to see her dance, he realised, and this was while knowing quite well that she would perform for him for free if he asked her to.
He shook his head to clear it and spoke a little more briskly, 'Of course that is not to say that soft hearted sap Tomaj wouldn't have the capacity to make a loss out of your talent. If I were you, and you are insistent on taking Tomaj as a manager, I would find someone else to back your venture financially.'
Balthier was not sure he had said more than ten words to Tomaj when they were all trapped together on Vaan's airship, but he did remember watching with a certain bemusement as the cheerfully foolish young man had plunged a potentially lucrative business as weaponry and sundries seller into the red at alarming rate. The man had wit and initiative enough, in Balthier's opinion, but he (like Rabanastrans in general) was too generous by far to be a successful businessman.
'What about you?' Penelo asked. She had grown tense, almost rigid in his arms as he spoke and now looked up at him with intense, slightly anxious eyes. For the life of him Balthier could not make head nor tails of her attitude.
'What about me?' he asked, genuinely not understanding how they had gone from discussing her future career as a popular entertainer to him. What did he have to do with her future?
Penelo, her face moon pale and indistinct in the starlight dappling the trees and falling down onto the loamy soil and mossy quilt they sat upon, still seemed to be all but holding her breath in suspense.
'Would you back me?' she asked in tremulous voice, 'Would you…..would you….' she trailed off, eyes dropping and gaze skittering over a clump of mushrooms huddled at the base of a tree trunk a few feet away.
'You want me to put up the Gil for your new venture?' he asked just for clarification.
He was genuinely surprised that she would ask such a thing of him; she had never shown any inclination to gain access to his Gil before. Instead she had always been so delightfully surprised and grateful for anything and everything he chose to give her.
Penelo flinched away from him, sitting up with her back to him and wrapping her arms about herself, almost defensively.
'I'm sorry.' she said in a quiet voice, 'it was Tomaj's idea and I told him you wouldn't want to do it but he was so excited about the idea and I thought maybe….maybe you'd think I'd be good enough and that,' she sighed gathering her thoughts as she looked sadly over her shoulder at him, 'I'm sorry. I had no right to ask you, let's just pretend I never said anything.'
Balthier frowned. He was shocked, somewhere deep inside; it was not that Penelo would ask him for such a thing, or that this Tomaj had thought to use his affection for Penelo to manipulate him (as a very good businessman) to support one of the other man's latest schemes. Instead he was shocked (and a little hurt – truth be told) that she would think he would not give her the Gil if she asked it of him.
He had his faults (and they were legion) but he had never denied Penelo anything if it was in his power to give it to her (save perhaps basic honesty – but then he did not grant anyone that).
Still he was a businessman at heart (piracy was merely a business on the other side of the law when one looked at it sensibly) and a businessman never gives his Gil away without judging the merits of the venture. 'What, pray tell, would this new musical extravaganza entail?' he queried dryly.
Penelo, who had turned her back on him again and was looking down at a patch of springy mossy flowers (Balthier was no botanist and one plant looked much like another to him), looked up at this turning huge blue eyes to him with something like dawning hope.
'Oh!' Under the dappled spray of silver starlight and banded shadow he could almost see the blush rise in her milk pale cheeks, 'Um, well, Tomaj wrote it, and well,' Penelo seemed to be mentally girding her loins, 'it's called the Cerulean Chocobo and mostly it seems to involve me wearing an outfit with lots of feathers and spangles and not much else.' she admitted ruefully, 'Tomaj says that's the sort of thing people like to see.'
'Feathers and spangles?'
Balthier could feel the smile curving over his lips, 'I don't believe Chocobo's come in that particular shade of blue; I've never seen one particularly spangled either.' he added simply to see her reaction. Penelo was no prude and she giggled before swiftly attempting to look disapproving and proper.
Rising to the game she gave him a narrow –eyed look, 'Don't laugh. It's actually a pretty good play. I think Tomaj has a real talent for writing and it could be lots of fun.'
She explained to him in a rather haughty manner that was very unlike her, and then, teasingly, she fluttered her eyelashes at him over her shoulder.
'I look good in blue, anyway.'
She added provocatively and Balthier chuckled pleased that the strange, melancholy atmosphere between them had passed away. The uncomfortable silences heavy with apologies he could not force off his tongue for love nor Gil and the anguish Penelo simply did not have in her melted away in a spirit of companionable mischief.
He found himself indulging in thoughts of Penelo wearing nothing more than a few strategically placed sky blue feathers, sequins and beads. Yes, he could see the profit in the idea. Smiling faintly and feeling in much improved spirits, Balthier opened his arms for Penelo who snuggled back into his embrace comfortably.
'How much?' he asked after a moment and felt Penelo tense a little once more as she instantly understood his question. She hesitated on giving the sum, although he knew she had to have it ready on the tip of her tongue; vaguely he wondered how long she had waited to bruit the subject with him?
'Twenty thousand,' she admitted awkwardly. Balthier arched his eyebrows, though Penelo could not see it. Twenty thousand Gil was not such an enormous sum to him in truth, but Balthier had not entered into piracy because he enjoyed giving his ill-gotten gains away.
Still, he had always enjoyed to gamble and a be-sequined and spangled Penelo might be worth a hit to his finances. His mouth curled up at the edges and he kissed the top of her head.
'Very well.'
Penelo tilted her head up and back so she could roll her eyes to look up at him. The position didn't look comfortable and Balthier couldn't resist brushing his fingertips over the exposed stem of her throat, which in turn made her shiver.
'You'll pay?' she asked as if she couldn't believe it. Really, Balthier thought a little put out, he wasn't that much the heartless bastard.
'That should make us even, hmm?' he murmured closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the tree trunk as Penelo snuggled in and re-arranged his arms to suit her more.
As apologies went it lacked emotional depth, or any promise not to hurt her again in the same manner at some unspecified point in the future, but throwing Gil at a problem was the way Balthier had been raised to resolve conflict; it was the aristocrat's way.
It seemed to appease Penelo in any respect. She reached up to kiss his cheek lightly before resting her head in the crook between his chin and shoulder; she did not thank him and he felt better for that. She had accepted the tacit apology in his offer of financial aid and his conscience, while not any lighter, was at least silenced by her forgiveness. He let his eyelids droop closed as inky black cloud smothered the thin light from the stars above their heads.
It was not foolproof but it seemed to Balthier that if any fiends were on the prowl they would have pounced by now and he was so tired his tongue was sandpaper in his mouth and his brain was heavy as a brick. He fell asleep with Penelo warm, pliable, and softly inviting curled in his arms.
You can never know a person; their outer shell changes with the years and their true heart and mind are never to be revealed.
Penelo was woken roughly as the comfortable, firm but warm pillow she was resting on (otherwise known as Balthier) moved with speed, dislodging her as he surged to his feet and had his stolen rifle drawn and trigger cocked in an eyeblink.
Penelo, picking herself up and spitting out a mouthful of moss and lichen she had swallowed as she fell forward onto her face in the grass, looked up to see a rather scabrous and unhealthy looking Marlboro lurch out of the thick brambles lining the clearing into the open space.
Penelo had just a moment to think to herself that she had never seen a Marlboro that looked quite so bedraggled and unfortunate when the fiend, upon spying Balthier's rifle pointed straight at it, suddenly developed arms and vocal cords.
'No wait! Don't shoot!'
Penelo leapt to her feet even as her jaw dropped and her mind, abruptly awakened from peaceful slumber and still partially shrouded in dreams, registered the impossible fact that she recognised that voice.
Balthier's whole body jerked as he took his hand from the trigger mechanism in total surprise and the Marlboro began the laborious (and frankly revolting) process of shedding its skin to reveal the man underneath.
'Vaan!'
Her best friend, her life-long companion, the person she loved with the determined, constant devotion usually reserved for blood family, stood before her. His pale hair (falling floppily into his eyes) and his wide eyes were totally familiar to her but what was not so familiar was seeing Vaan's round, still boyish, face, framed by the drooping, filmy glazed eyeballs of the Marlboro carcass he was wearing like a cloak.
'Gods almighty,' Balthier growled more in exasperation and shock (he had been a split second from shooting Vaan in the head) than real anger. 'What the hell are you doing?'
Penelo, who could not so much as formulate a coherent thought as she stared at Vaan mouth hanging open, staggered to her feet and clasped Balthier's sleeve.
Vaan looked from Balthier to Penelo and shrugged (which was made all the more disturbing as the gesture made all the eyeballs of the Marlboro bounce up and down). 'I'm in camouflage.'
Penelo continued to stare at her friend; there was no single thought in her mind that could force her tongue to work as she stared. The Marlboro skin was……moulting. Bits of dead Marlboro peeled off and flaked down to the ground like dead leaves. The tentacles were dragging about his feet and tangling in the underbrush and one of the eyeballs on the fleshy stalks dropped off onto the ground as she gaped at him.
'Camouflage?' Balthier asked leadenly as he too looked fastidiously at the discarded eyeball.
Vaan nodded and extended his arms from split flaps in the Marlboro's skin. Penelo was silently relieved that his arms weren't twinned with Marlboro intestines or entrails of some sort. Sometimes she wondered precisely how Vaan's brain functioned for she did not think it was the same as any normal hume.
'Yes; this way no Rozzarian will recognise me. This is a stealth outfit as I move about undetected.'
Balthier propped the rifle on his shoulder and studied Vaan for a long moment, 'A stealth outfit?'
He repeated in tones as soft and insubstantial as snowflakes at night. Penelo looked over at him; Balthier was either lividly angry or trying very hard not to collapse with laughter but Penelo could not tell which.
'Yes,' Vaan agreed again beginning to get annoyed at the fact that Penelo could not stop gaping and Balthier seemed rather slow to grasp the basics of his disguise. 'It helps against the fiends in this wood too; they don't know what to make of me so they keep their distance.'
'Yes, quite.' Balthier said in very, very dry voice, 'And did it not occur to you Vaan, that impersonating a fiend might not be the most prudent way of remaining incognito?'
Penelo managed to clamp her gaping jaws together again and gently squeezed Balthier's arm as she sensed the strained impatience in his tone.
Vaan frowned, managing to contrive to look aggrieved at their response to his cunning disguise.
'The Rozzarians are looking everywhere for you, me, and Fran. They know we're here with Basch and its really dangerous to walk around without some kind of disguise. This way no one recognises me. They just think I'm a fiend.'
Balthier made a less than elegant noise of frustration in the back of his throat and turned exasperated dark eyes to Penelo, 'Would you mind terribly if I just shoot him?'
Penelo nipped her lip and shook her head against a grim smile as she strode over to Vaan and slapped him about the top of his head, 'Vaan -you idiot -humes shoot fiends. They might not know you're you but you'll be just as dead!'
'Hey!' Vaan jerked back, but not before Penelo had retreated from the monstrous smell of dead Marlboro skin and shrivelled eyeballs. He paused a moment and then flushed, 'Um, I guess I didn't think about that.' He admitted bashfully.
'I'm not sure you think at all.' Penelo sighed as Balthier shook his head and threw up his arms in despair of them both.
'Did Fran send you to find us?' he asked impatiently.
Vaan nodded, 'We checked the hidey-hole by the crash site and you weren't there but Fran caught both of your scents leading into this forest. Fran and Basch are somewhere in this wood as well, but I found you both first.'
Balthier gestured for Vaan to lead the way back to reunite with Fran and Basch, which he did, waddling along in a surprisingly good approximation of a Marlboro's tiptoe shuffle.
Penelo exchanged a look with Balthier and saw his lips curved up in suppressed laughter behind Vaan's back. He gave her a slight flourishing bow and gestured for her to precede him after Vaan.
Penelo imagined, as she followed Vaan through the sunlight lit thick woodland, that Fran must have thought it amusing to send Vaan off looking as he did; either that or Vaan had skinned a Marlboro after separating from the Viera. Penelo could not imagine Fran would have thought dressing up as a fiend was a good idea -unless she secretly wanted Vaan dead?
'There is a strong Rozzarian presence on the island, you say?'
Balthier asked coolly as they stopped and waited while Vaan picked himself up, having tripped over one of his tentacles in a thick patch of stinging nettles.
Penelo had reached for friend to steady him but withdrawn in disgust when her hand touched sloughing dead Marlboro flesh. Balthier had the excuse of being too far away to assist but the honest truth was he wouldn't have stopped Vaan falling even if he wasn't wearing a dead fiend on his back.
When Vaan was upright once more (and any number of Marlboro eyeballs had dropped out of the fleshy stalks – Penelo felt queasy even looking at him) Vaan nodded his head.
'Yeah….there's probably something you should know.' He admitted reluctantly beginning to rub at the back of his neck and shuffling his feet in habitual gesture. Another eyeball popped from a dead stalk, quite suddenly Penelo reached her limit of endurance for her best friend's eccentricities.
Balthier quirked any eyebrow but before he could inquire after what it was they (or rather he) should know Penelo interjected explosively. 'For the gods' sake Vaan! Take that horrible thing off before I throw up on you in disgust!'
Vaan looked hugely startled and Balthier glanced at her a little surprised; huffily she crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her chin defiantly. 'I mean it; take it off. Now.'
Vaan reluctantly complied, he knew Penelo well enough to recognise that particular tone of voice and that disobedience would not be tolerated. The dead skin sloughed off him and lay like a foul smelling bundle of rags at his feet. Fastidiously, and ignoring all the jellied eyes looking up at her, Penelo kicked the foul thing into the underbrush.
Balthier cleared his throat pointedly, 'Right, now we have that out of the way,' he glanced at Penelo in case she wanted to make further interruption. When she just shrugged he returned his gaze to Vaan, 'perhaps you'll tell us what it is, precisely, that we need to know, hmm?'
Vaan looked from Penelo to Balthier, both of whom had crossed their arms across their chests and looked decidedly worse for wear after a night spent in the woods. Vaan licked his lips nervously.
'Umm, well, Fran thought you ought to know,' he began and Balthier narrowed his eyes at him as he hesitated; Vaan looked acutely uncomfortable, 'Al-Cid is here…..and so is Ashe.'
Penelo blinked, not completely sure what the relevance of this was, or why it was bad news (though she could tell from Vaan's face that it was bad news). Balthier however understood how bad it was to have Al-Cid and Ashe on the island completely, at least Penelo thought he must as some of the worst curse words she had ever heard erupted from his lips.
Penelo stared from the abruptly furious Balthier to a very sheepish looking Vaan, 'Yeah,' he muttered, 'We're in real trouble now.'