A.N: This is set after the whole Eryut Village/Henne Mines episode. And probably features Fran at her most vulnerable. Not an actual game scene, but there are references to some.


Lost

She listened when they first entered the sanctuary of the jungle, walking deeper into the warm green gloom of the trees, where almost every path brought back a memory. She listened as they repelled the swarms of panthers and foul-smelling malboros, fiercer than she remembered them. She listened even when the luminous glyph barred their passage, and she knew that they were not welcome. The princess and the little fledgling emperor, the knight with bloodied hands and the outlaw of the skies, the two bewildered children. And her as well, the prodigal daughter. She had expected as much. She remembered how ominously silent the shadows of the trees were the day she left. She remembered that the Wood did not try to hold her back, and it had surprised her then. She'd been almost glad it was so easy. But she knew now that silence was always worse than angry words. And even if she was aware that she was a stranger in the eyes of her Mother, still she listened. She looked for the hidden path among the trees and wove the simple spell, tracing unseen prayers on the dark air. The Wood allowed her to pass. This was her first glimmer of hope.

Balthier was surprised that she had decided to return, and she had to tell him. She had to tell him of the darkness lurking behind his eyes.

"You are ill at ease. The nethicite troubles you."

It chilled her that he seemed startled. Did he not know? Two years was a consequent enough amount of time for a hume. Surely he was used to her being able to read him. Or perhaps this was something he didn't want her to find out. Something he was reluctant to admit, even to himself.

"You've let your eyes betray your heart."

Naturally, he shrugged it off. He never did like the idea of weakness.

Eryut. Exactly the same as she had left it fifty years ago. Time seemed frozen here, even more so now that she wasn't accustomed to it any longer. The reassuring smell of the air, the sunlight dancing on the paths and fanes, the all-enveloping hush…Everything so quiet and still. Her home…images of languid days spent by the village spring, hypnotic, mesmerizing and so calm…her home no longer. She watched them, the humes, walking warily towards the trees, yet completely blind to the hundreds of arrows levelled at them from behind the path screens and among the boughs. They would not shoot. They knew she was here. But they were ready for any eventuality. And she felt trapped between two realities, none of which she could fit into.

"She is not here."

The Wood spoke. Once.

She started at hearing the long-forgotten voice, a distant whisper on the air, somewhere just at the boundary of her conscious mind. The words were faint, faded, threadbare. But she hoped. Hoped that all was not lost. Those were the only words She would utter, the only words she would be able to hear, yet at that moment, she felt a surge of pride. Jote had said she would forget how to listen. And she thought she had. Yet right then, she believed she could face her sister and prove her wrong. Prove that viera could choose a life among the humes and still remain viera.

But she knew almost right away that she was mistaken.

"The Wood tells us where she has gone. Or can you not hear Her?"

Jote, regal and splendidly cold. Barely older, flawlessly beautiful, right up to the immaculate whiteness of her ears. Jote's voice; deceptively soft, yet mercilessly catching on her 'r's and revealing her true nature. Harsh. Unrelenting. She had always been. When she had taught her the Green Word. When she had first confronted her about her desire to leave. She was born to be their leader. Born to limit and to restrain, to keep bonds strong. Considering the situation, she could hardly be blamed for the lurking, razor-thin cruelty in her words.

Mjrn was too young, too impatient, too naïve…No good could have come of her wandering off as she did, alone into a magicite mine, considering how coveted the mineral had become. Mjrn was about the same age now as she had been when she left. But there was no Empire vying for world domination in her days. And Mjrn was not strong enough to resist them yet.

Little sister, small and fragile, stumbling blindly through the darkness…and then that voice, that apparition. An idol, a statue of Mist with glowing eyes. The entity had its own will, even if it was imprisoned within a manufacted stone.

"Stay away, power-greedy hume!"

She saw the princess start at those words. They had struck home. She wondered for a fraction of a moment, before the gigantic wyrm towered over them, if they had stirred something in Balthier's mind as well.

Little sister, exhausted and afraid. The stone, spent and powerless, slipping from her grasp and disintegrating with a small noise as she collapsed to her knees, into her arms. And she cradled her as she used to cradle her all those years ago, before the world had intruded between them.

Even with her short, childish bob of hair, even with her innocent round face, she was no child anymore. The humes had shown her just how cruel they could be, all at once, all in one shattering blow. And she was not sure where the bitterness in her chest came from. Was it because she resented the offense against Mjrn? Because she believed that this would dissuade her from ever trying to leave again? Because she didn't want her to leave? Because she regretted leaving herself?

"You're as foolhardy as your sister."

She heard the fondness in Balthier's voice and she welcomed the playful softness in his eyes. Talking to Mjrn, looking at herself. And if the regret was there, it dissipated temporarily, because instants like these made everything more bearable. They even quieted the insistent voice inside her head, warning her of the hold the stone was beginning to have upon him.

"I am as them now, am I not?"

She fought with the next best weapon at hand when they returned to the village. One family was denied to her, but she did not want to give up. Jote stood for everything she could never regain, but she had to show she had found something just as valuable. A new family that didn't care about her viera blood and accepted her as readily as if she had really been one of theirs. That was one thing the Wood could not tell her sister, and so she had no reason to contradict her.

Except of course, that was far from being the truth.

It was difficult to call their little ragtag group a proper team, much less a family. Vaan, with his latest silly escapade, proved once again that he had only bewilderment to offer her. Kind, bland little Penelo showed concern, but then she did so with everyone. The princess—for some reason, her name never came naturally to her mind or her lips—displayed, at best, wary curiosity. Basch considered her as an equal and a worthy ally, but, as almost everything about the man, it went silent and aloof. The only one who accepted her willingly and gladly, with respect, admiration, trust and…whatever else might have been, was Balthier.

She was not a hume. She could never be one. But neither was she fully a viera anymore.

"The Wood longs for you, for the child gone from under Her boughs."

Jote, smooth and solid as marble, yet if you looked closer, there were some cracks in the uniform surface. The words were reflections of her own feelings, as hard as she was trying to suppress them. But the Wood...the Wood did not understand. If She had, surely she would have heard Her voice instead of Jote's veiled regrets.

"Viera who have abandoned the Wood are viera no longer."

Who knew how sincerely Jote believed that? Who knew that she didn't secretly envy her, somewhere very deep down inside? Yet even if her sister harboured second thoughts, it did not change the fact that she had lost something. She was maimed. Crippled. Incomplete. And afraid. Afraid that the kindred spirit she had found might falter. And despite the trust she bore him, there was an irrational, dark little thing lurking in a corner of her mind, insidiously muttering that something—or someone—might eventually turn him away from her, just as the stone was threatening to do now.

"This…solitude you want, Mjrn?"

The words spoke of the solitude of losing her past. But what she really meant was the solitude of helplessness at watching someone precious slip away.

The Wood was dark, silent and still around her, an empty shell of trees that refused her its meaning. And she never knew she could yearn for it so much: the simple, steady certainty of rules. She wandered off from where they had stopped for the night, her mind restless and heavy, not listening any longer, because she knew she couldn't hear. She strayed far under the trees, little caring where the paths took her. She knew them well enough to find her way back, ironic as it was.

"Uhh…how old were you again?"

(Too old for your world already, child, and yet…Fifty years, fifty years of wandering the length and breadth of it, trying to understand what it was about your kind that made you so fascinating to me. Fifty years to no avail, it seems. I find myself here again, regretting my recklessness. What was it all worth? I strove to be free, and now…Now I only wish for something to remain. The Wood used to hold me fast, every branch and every creeper, as moss clings to a rock. And I resented those bonds. Now the hume world rushes past me like a river, while I desperately want it to leave a mark. Now I am free. And I am alone.)

The undergrowth rustled behind her, and she turned, one hand on her bow.

"I know you've taught me how to follow a track, but you could slip through the most tangled thicket and leave it untouched. I do beg you to consider my lowly hume capacities, my lady ranger," came in a grumble, as a somewhat bedraggled figure pushed through the vines and out into the clearing.

She wished she could tell him just how painfully sweet it was to hear his voice right then. How worried it made her, day by day, to hear the keen, impatient note growing in it. How afraid she was that, one morning, he would come up to her with a preoccupied look on his face and say 'I'm sorry Fran, this is as far as we go'.

"Fran? What is it?"

She wanted to shake her head, wanted to smile, to try to say something, but she could not move. All she could do was keep faded, inscrutable eyes on his face. Where were the words? Everything inside her felt numb and remote.

(Don't leave.)

"Is this about Mjrn?"

She was silent.

"You know you were right in telling her to stay. It's not safe for her right now."

His tone seemed gentle and preoccupied. Yet still, nothing came from her. He took a step closer.

(Don't go.)

"Is it what Jote said?"

The same dull, mute pain greeted his question.

"You've had the courage to do what neither of them could. Surely, you can't doubt that?"

(Please.)

Somewhere in her head, she wished she could have cried, but even the tears wouldn't come. He observed her, holding her extinguished irises in his own.

"It can't still be Vaan's stupid comment, can it? No one would dream of calling you old, Fran. Not anyone who had full use of their eyes at least. And that boy wouldn't know propriety if someone rubbed it into his face anyway."

(Age. Time. It's what keeps me from you. I don't want to hear it.)

"Fran, what's wrong? Tell me."

Something flashed briefly in the depths of his pupils at those last two words, something that seemed almost reproachful, but she could not know what echoed in his mind at that instant. He took another step, reaching out a hand for her shoulder.

"Tell me," he repeated more quietly, only centimetres away, as if suddenly acutely conscious of their closeness.

Something gave out inside her, and she let herself move. Her hands met at his back, holding on more tightly than she could have expected, her face found his shoulder.

"Hold me, Balthier," she whispered faintly and wearily against his collarbone.

(You are my home, the only home I have left.)

The gesture took him by surprise, she could feel the slight pause and tension in his limbs. But then his arms closed around her, cautious and reassuring. At least, she wanted them to be. Nothing was actually amiss, except for that vague, but insistent impression that his patience was wearing thin. As if some tenuous thread were stretched taut between them, about to snap. She almost fancied him repressing a small exasperated sigh, and it chilled her.

(All those years…This long string of years to come...You don't have the time, you have not been given the time. And I would find the patience, find the strength to bear them somehow, because I don't have a choice. Time will take you from me, in the end. I thought it was the only thing that could, and I knew, I knew I had to learn to deal with it. Just stay until then. Give me as long as you can give. I belong with you now.)

She clung to him, the omnipresent plea inside her head, yet already knowing perfectly well that she would never be able to bear the shame of holding him against his will. She only hoped she would never have to make that decision.