If the stewardess, who returned a tense and silent half hour later, had experienced any confusion as to why a newlywed couple might call for an entire bottle of whiskey with their supper, she did not voice it. She merely laid out their repast on the low table, replaced the champagne flutes with smaller, sturdier glasses, and set down fresh silverware.
Balthier clutched the bottle of whiskey by the neck as though it were the only steady thing in a world collapsing in on itself, reengaging the lock after the stewardess had left. He collapsed into a chair, propping his feet up on the table, eschewing his elegant manners in favor of comfort. Penelo yet huddled small and still on the bed. She had not moved since he'd summoned the stewardess, had not made even the smallest bit of noise, as though she thought she might be able to disappear if she tried hard enough to do so, to just vanish into the ether and slip away forever.
He leaned over, patted the sofa beside his chair. "Come. Sit." His voice was gentle, because he sensed the fragility in her, the tightly-wound tension that threatened to spring free and overtake her. A moment of hesitation, a vague look in her eyes reminiscent of a prisoner sentenced to death, and then she unfolded herself gracefully, carefully rising from the bed, dragging the blanket with her. She settled onto the sofa, resuming her defensive pose. Her bare toes peeked out beneath the blanket. She looked so young, so vulnerable. He could not remember a time he had ever been that young, if he had ever been so innocent.
He cracked the seal on the bottle in his hand, removed the cap, took a healthy swallow. She seemed somewhat startled by this, as if seeing him drink straight from the bottle had been totally unexpected. The whiskey warmed his throat, pooled like fire in his stomach. He had never much liked it, he had always preferred to be clearheaded, he had loathed the stripping effect of liquor, the way it revealed things he had always wished to hide. But just now he needed the lowering of inhibitions, needed it to loosen his tongue, to pry the secrets from the depths of his soul, to ease them out of the deepest parts of himself.
He waved a careless hand at the plates spread out on the table. "Eat."
A brief shake of her head. "Can't," she said, and her voice was scratchy, strained.
"I insist." He plucked a roll from the tray, offering it to her. Reluctantly she thrust a hand out from beneath the blanket, taking the roll with a grimace. She picked it apart in tiny pieces, the bits she ate mere whispers of flavor on her tongue, more air than substance.
"You first," she whispered. She shifted, withdrawing to huddle into the far corner of the sofa, lost amidst the folds of the blanket.
Another hearty swallow. The bottle dangled carelessly from his fingers. He heard himself speaking as if from a distance, as if he could detach himself from the words and listen as an observer himself. As if he could distance himself from the pain of his past.
"The letter," he said, "was to my father. Cidolfus Demen Bunansa." He saw her eyebrows draw together, an expression of vague recognition for the name that she could not yet place.
"He is better known, perhaps, as Dr. Cid, the mastermind behind the manufacted nethicite on which Archadia has relied so heavily in its quest for the domination of Ivalice."
There it was, the wide eyes, the open-mouthed expression of shock and dismay. He wondered briefly if she would think that he had betrayed them, that his letter had outlined their plans, revealed their scheme to overthrow Vayne in his own kingdom. But he saw no anger in her face, no suspicion. She had not even considered the idea, and that both perplexed and heartened him. It seemed that little Penelo trusted him implicitly as well.
"I take it you're not on good terms." She made it a statement, not a question. He gave a harsh bark of laughter, but there was no humor in it, only a dark animosity, a seething, consuming hatred.
"The understatement of the century, dear girl." He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "No, I know of no single person in all of Ivalice more deserving of hatred than my father. His weakness, his very corruption and lust for power has been the downfall of entire kingdoms. He has destroyed everything I have ever loved." His voice had cracked on the last word, and he brought the whiskey to his lips once again, hoping it would mask the fissures in his composure. It was not enough; it could not soothe the torment that gripped him. It did not blunt the sharp edge of his anger, and that anger cut at him from the inside, shredding him to ribbons.
"I was his prodigy, you see. I was to be his grandest contribution to the Empire. A Judge at sixteen, such a credit to my exalted lineage. I played my part well for a time. I did not question whether or not it was the right of Archades to command and conquer. I had been brought up from the cradle to believe that Archades' rightful place in the world was to be the beating heart of all of Ivalice." He swiped his hand across his mouth as though he could wipe away the bitter taste of the words, took another drink to rinse them from his tongue.
"But then he discovered the nethicite, and all else was forgotten, unimportant. He lived in his laboratory, neglected his family. Three sons and a daughter, all insignificant compared to his all-important research. It seemed as though he had forgotten that we even existed. I wish to the gods that he had." His gaze was unfocused now, lost in the memories of a lifetime ago. Shades of the past danced tauntingly before his eyes. "My brothers disappeared," he said, "and my father began to talk to himself. It was clear to me that he had gone mad. He talked of blood sacrifices and carnage, dark rituals that required performing in honor of dark gods, and it did not require much imagination to realize what he had done. The servants steered well clear of him, none wanted to be his next victim, yet none dared to speak against him, to denounce him as a monster. Not even I dared to cross him."
He raised haunted eyes to meet hers, looking but not seeing. "No one cared about my brothers, of course. They were inconsequential, scapegraces, both of them. They were not driven, they did nothing to advance the cause of Archadia. And Dr. Cid was everything to the Empire. So there were no charges, no inquiries. It was simply as if they had never been, never existed at all. I wondered when my turn would come, but he always looked through me as if he could not see me. Instead, he took Sarema, my sister. She had been so frightened of our father. I had assured her I would protect her, but..." His eyes dropped to the floor, and she felt his shame, his guilt, as if they were tangible things. He did not need to speak the words; the truth of what had happened was written on his face.
"She was just twelve years old," he said finally. "And I...ran. I gave up everything, I fled Archadia, renounced my Judgeship, broke with the Empire immediately. I became everything he despised. He destroyed me, and I hated him with everything that was left inside me."
"The letter?" she asked hesitantly.
"The letter gave voice to my intention to take my revenge," he said, in a low, dangerous tone. "I wanted him to fear me, to wonder, to worry. I wanted to torment him as the memory of him, of his madness, has tormented me. Though his grip on sanity, at this point, may be too weak for him to understand my meaning, perhaps even to care. It has been six years."
She thought for a moment how he had worried for her, how angry he had been when he felt she had placed herself in danger, how he had treated her so much differently than he had the rest of their party. How she and Sarema were roughly the same age. Or would have been, had Sarema lived. She shifted a bit, uncomfortably. "Do I...remind you of her? Your sister?"
He scoffed. "Not in the slightest. Sarema was...delicate. Fragile. She was so quiet, always lingering in the background. I scarely ever heard her speak above a whisper, and she was always lost in the shuffle of three older brothers. She was always clothed in such muted colors that she looked like a watercolor painting, drifting through our home like a little ghost. She was sweet and gentle, but there was always the feeling that one day she might just...fade away." In the years that had passed, he had had to struggle to hold on to her memory, but even her face seemed smudged, blurred in his mind, growing fainter whenever he tried to recall it. He could no longer summon the image of her smile, the precise shade of her eyes, the exact color of her hair. He was losing her a bit more every day.
No, Penelo was nothing like Sarema. In contrast, Penelo was vibrant, colorful, confrontational, challenging, etched indelibly upon his memory. Sarema would never have fought with him, would never have thought to speak a single harsh word to him. Penelo did so frequently and with great relish. No, they were nothing alike...but the thought of losing Penelo had affected him just as deeply and painfully as it had when he had lost Sarema. He had not been touched, cursed, with such emotions in years, but when it came to Penelo, he writhed with them, burned with them. Somehow she had ignited something inside of him, some primal protective instinct. She had resurrected emotions he'd long thought dead and buried, emotions he had been content to let go to rot. Many before her had tried and failed, but she had done it without thought, without effort. He wondered if she had any idea, but decided she did not. How could she?
"So now you know," he said flatly. And he knew she did not judge him, but nonetheless his tainted blood disgusted him, by all rights ought to have disgusted her. But she merely looked at him with those wide, clear eyes, and he wondered if the tears that washed them were for him. He did not deserve her sympathy, her pity, her understanding. Another harsh swallow of whiskey; by now it was going down pleasantly. He wondered if he slurred his words yet, decided to put it to the test.
"And now it is your turn," he said, but the words sounded smooth enough to him.
She erupted into motion, reaching out and snatching the bottle from his hand. He relinquished it easily, surprised. She squeezed her eyes shut, took a large gulp. Swallowed heavily, teared up, coughed and gasped as the liquor burned down her throat.
"Ugh." She pulled a face, glaring down the bottle as if it had wounded her purposefully. "How can anyone like this stuff? It's like drinking fire. And it tastes horrible."
Her revulsion drew from him an unwitting smile. "That's a rather good whiskey, actually. But it is something of an acquired taste. Give it here." He held out his hand, but she pulled away.
"No," she said, focused on the bottle. "I might need it." She grimaced, as if the prospect disgusted her. "Maybe it'll improve upon itself if I have more."
It would not, at least not for her. She liked the sweet champagne; she did not like the smoke-and-leather taste of the whiskey, however fine. He did not want her soused before she could repay him in kind for his own story, but neither did he wish to deny her the comfort of a bit of old-fashioned liquid courage, had she the need for it.
"The story, Penelo," he prompted. "We had a deal."
"I know," she gave a shuddering sigh. "It's just that...it hurts so much to talk about it. I never have before." Her voice was husky with tears, her lips trembled. But she steeled herself against the tears and forged on.
"Three years ago, I lived in Rabanstre. Properly lived, in a small house near the center of the city, not like now in Lowtown. My parents had just taken in Vaan after his brother died. It was overcrowded, of course. With Vaan there, it made six of us, with Mama and Papa and my brothers and I." She sloshed the whiskey in the bottle, watching the amber colored liquid catch the light. She wondered if she could choke down another swallow. Decided to risk it. Barely forced it down her throat.
"The Archadian army attacked in the dead of night. I had been out with Vaan that night; we'd snuck out against Papa's orders. We'd taken up jobs with Migelo, one of the shopkeepers, because there had never really been enough to go around, and now there was an extra mouth to feed. It was the first time - the only time - I can remember ever arguing with my parents." A tear escaped, sliding down the curve of her cheek. But she neither sniffled nor sobbed, gave no indication that she'd even noticed it. He wondered when she had learned to cry so silently.
"I didn't know how unsafe the city was already, how each day brought us closer and closer to the brink of war. They had only wanted to keep us safe, of course, but I...I thought I knew better, I thought I was so grown up." Another tear. It dripped off her chin, splattered on the back of the hand gripping the bottle. "So I was out with Vaan when...when I saw the rain of arrows as they soared over the stone gates. They blazed like comets, because they'd been dipped in pitch and set on fire. It was instant chaos. The fires spread quickly, too quickly to contain them. It destroyed whole blocks of buildings. It destroyed my block. The fire had started on the roof, and with all the houses crammed so tightly together, it spread in a matter of minutes. It was well past midnight. My parents, my brothers were sleeping. They never had a chance." A steady stream of tears now, her eyes were bleak, her face pale.
"I tried anyway. I had to try. You must understand that, right? I had to try." It seemed essential to her that he understand that, and he nodded silently to reassure her. She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to compose herself, to force back the tears that choked her. "There was too much smoke. They were already gone, already dead. I couldn't save them. There was nothing of them left to be saved. The smoke was so thick, it had stolen their breath away as they slept. And then, I couldn't breathe either. And I didn't care." She took a steadying breath. "The roof collapsed. I was trapped under a burning beam. That's how I got the scar; that's how I was burned. I don't remember it. I was already unconscious. But Vaan had followed me, he knew I was inside, and he pulled me out. He saved my life. I wish he hadn't."
He lurched forward in his chair. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that."
"It's true, though. Maybe you were right. Maybe I do have a death wish. Maybe I have been trying to die this whole time." She dashed away the tears from her cheeks with shaking fingers, lifting tragic eyes to his. "I should have been there," she whispered brokenly. "I should have been with them. I should have died with them. Why them? Why them, and not me?"
Survivor's guilt. He wondered how he had not recognized it before, since he had suffered it as well. And it was a special kind of hell, lingering over all the things that might have been, considering what one might have done differently, the myriad ways the outcome might've been changed. He rose, gently prying the bottle from her white-knuckled hand to set it upon the table. Then he dropped onto the sofa beside her, gathering her, blankets and all, into his arms. She went gratefully, climbing onto his lap like a child, desperately in need of comfort. The steadily falling tears quickly soaked his shirt front and still she did no more than hitch her breath, struggling to keep the sounds of her grief buried inside her.
And he wondered when the last time she had cried for them had been, if she had ever. Somehow he suspected not, because she had been alone then, responsible for herself. Gods, she had been alone. Trying to survive in a world that no longer held any measure of safety or security, in a world that had changed forever in an instant, stripped her of all she held dear. How had she managed it? How had she stayed sane? He had had Fran, who had plucked him from a rough bar in Bhujerba, given him expectations to rise to, taught him everything he knew, practically raised him from broken boy into arrogant man. To whom had she turned, in her hour of need?
"There's barracks there, now." Her head was bent, her fingers grasped his shirt, clutching as if he anchored her to the present, as if she feared she might be swept away into the torrential sorrow of the past otherwise. "Where my home was. They cleared away the rubble, the bodies...and they built their barracks on top of it. The same soldiers that killed my family, they sleep there. They live where I lived. They live where my family died."
She spoke in what was barely even a whisper; she spoke through years of pain and torment, the words dragged out of her, out of the sorest, rawest pieces of her heart. "But the worst of it is that we argued." Her voice broke, high, inconsolable. "The last time I saw them alive, we had been fighting. Their last memories of me, my last memories of them, were ones of anger. I will never forgive myself for that. Never."
With exquisite care, his hand cupped her head, stroking her hair, pressing her face against his chest. She struggled, pushed away, even as his other arm wrapped around her back.
"No!" Her voice was ragged, scratchy. "I'll cry. I don't want to cry!"
"You're already crying." And his fingers lifted from her hair to swipe the wetness from her cheeks as proof.
She hiccoughed. "I can't cry," she said plaintively, with a self-deprecating flutter of bitter laughter. "I don't think I could ever stop if I started."
His face was carefully neutral, but she wondered what he must think of her, the girl who had abandoned her family to cruel, merciless deaths. And she remembered that he had experienced the same trauma, the same heartache. The same helplessness. The same sundering, soul-rending grief.
"You need to cry," he said softly. And he crushed her pathetic resistance, wrapping her securely in his arms. He could feel her rigid self-control splintering beneath his fingers, breaking her down to the very essence of her being, crumbling the years of self-reliance away until all at once she was reduced again to the abandoned child she had once been, frightened, alone, and lost.
She tried not to. But she cried all the same, in great wrenching sobs, in pitiful wails of anguish, in such complete and abject misery that nothing he could do, nothing he could say could possibly have eased the terrible magnitude of her suffering. And in those long, agonizing minutes of torment, she was laid bare, naked and vulnerable, and he did not know how to comfort her, to care for her, to piece her broken heart back together again, for he had never been able to do it for himself.
Eventually she quieted, resting silent and still against him, her face still pillowed against his chest, fingers still clenched tightly in the fabric of his shirt. She felt empty, devoid of emotion. She was simply a hollow shell, built of the fragments of a person that no longer existed. If she moved, she would shatter into a million pieces, fracture irrepairably. But the rhythmic pounding of Balthier's heart beneath her cheek steadied her, gave her something to focus on, soothed her like a lullaby.
"All better, now?" She felt the words more than heard them, rumbling in his chest.
She shook her head, a tiny, nearly imperceptible movement, because she didn't think she could manage anything more than that. Her voice, when she spoke, she didn't recognize for its hoarseness, the way it scratched out of her throat as though it had claws. "It'll never be better."
"I know." She thought his lips had brushed her hair, breathing the words into the fine strands. "I know, darling."
This time the endearment was not for the benefit of whoever else might be listening, not given for a ruse or a deception, to maintain any sort of charade. This time he had meant the word. And the tears flowed freely again, because she knew that he truly did understand.
She had finally fallen asleep, curled up so trustingly in his lap. He had managed to stretch out to the best of his abilities, and she had tucked her head beneath his chin, turned to face him to allow him to rub her back, and lay silently until the soothing stroke of his hand had eased her into sleep. Her death grip on his shirt had loosened, her small hands resting, quiescent, on his shoulders. The blanket had slid down around her waist, but she had been too preoccupied to either notice or care.
He had not. He was intensely aware of the pressure of her breasts against his chest, the rise and fall of her chest with each gentle breath she took. He wondered at her trust in him, wondered if she knew the toll that the silk of her skin beneath his fingers, the warmth of her breath on his throat was taking on him. But the salt of her tears was still drying on her cheeks, the echoes of her grief still fresh in his mind, and her very vulnerability in these moments kept his touch light, gentle, without demand, giving comfort without seeking response.
They were kindred. Two wounded, tormented souls, wishing desperately to forget, doomed always to remember. He knew it on a visceral level, recognized the significance, wrestled with the knowledge that this girl, this totally unsuitable, contrary, utterly perfect girl knew him, understood him in a way that no other person ever had or ever could. He had told her things, admitted things to her, that he had never spoken to another person, had never even voiced aloud before.
It scared the hell out of him. He should have guarded himself against it from the very first, from the very first moment he'd ever worried about her. Worrying lead to caring, and caring lead to...things that were best unmentioned. But it was too late for him, for he already cared. She had slipped under his guard like a master thief, had unmasked him, had forced him in that effortless way she had to reveal himself, had made him want to reveal himself. To her. Only to her.
And she had in turn revealed herself to him, had trusted him in a way that he knew she had not trusted even in Vaan. The thought humbled him, sparked a glow in his chest he had not felt in years, since before Sarema's death. She had chosen him to confide in, and he would treasure that confidence, protect it, as he would protect her.
This he had already accepted; her vulnerabilities were his as well. He could not ignore the roiling emotions he suffered when she was in danger, when she was hurt, when she cried. For her sake and his own, he would safeguard her. And if with that duty came moments like this, moments when he held her, when the world narrowed to a space that contained only the two of them, well, he would not deny them. He had, after all, already tried to put her from his mind, to keep her at a distance. That had been a miserable failure all around, culminating in the most wrenching, agonizing, freeing experience of his life. Because of her, his armor had shattered to shards. Because of her, he thought, he had perhaps - finally - begun to heal.
He awoke when the ship docked, jerked from a sound, if uncomfortable, sleep on the sofa. A thin stream of early morning sunlight poured in through the window, puddling on the floor near the sofa. The blanket was draped around him, but the warmth it lent was paltry for Penelo no longer shared it with him. He glanced around; she stood, fully dressed, at the window.
"We've arrived." Her face was pale, her voice still the tiniest bit strained.
He rose, stretching muscles that had cramped during the night spent on the sofa, wincing. The buttons of his shirt were still undone, his vest was still slung over the back of the chair, his shoes tucked neatly beneath the bed. He joined her at the window, pushing back the curtains entirely, flooding the room with light. The vast sprawl of Archadia stretched before them, lush green hills striped with roads, neat rows of buildings stretched along them, leading back to the massive palace that loomed in the distance.
Her expression had not changed, except for the minutest narrowing of her eyes. The opulence, the prosperity disgusted her. The gaudy display of richness, of excess that should have dazzled instead rankled because it reminded her of the conquering of her own kingdom, how this kingdom had crushed the spirits of the Dalmascan citizens, had stripped it of its own resources to claim them for their own. She had hated it on sight, a feeling he knew only too well. He, too, despised what this land represented.
And so, with just the barest touch of irony evident in his voice, he turned to her and said, "Welcome to Archadia."