A.N: How to take a scene, stand it on its head and make it play the banjo. This is the Phon Coast conversation...but probably not as you remember it. Due to the similarity in content, the title mirrors that of Chapter 9.

This was probably the hardest chapter for me to write. Basically, I've always wondered why it was that Balthier was so cruel to Ashe in the game. He's not a bad guy--even if immature at times--and he must see that he troubles her. Yet he takes a very long time to definitely show that he's not interested in that way. When you factor the nethicite in though, it suddenly makes sense. Even though punishing someone for your own weakness is not exactly fair game.

Castles in the Sand

He remembers. A summer day at the seaside. He couldn't pinpoint now when it occurred, but he must have been very young, because his mother was still alive. He sees himself in front of the sand castle he has just built. And his mother is smiling at him, her pale skin bright in the sunlight. This is the only thing he remembers about her. Not the colour of her hair, of her eyes, nor the way her face looked. Just the whiteness of her skin under the sun.

The next day, all that remains of the castle is a small mound of damp sand. All that the tide has left behind.

The problem with sand is that it crumbles so easily.

His heels sink with every step, and he's half-tempted to throw his shoes off and run. Run towards the water, just like Vaan and Penelo, or run along the strand, as long as it's running. A part of him always wants to run these days, more so than usual. Another part...another part lurks in shadow and whispers.

The princess' hair is the colour of sand in the rain. The same light, ashen hue. He realizes that this must have been the reason behind her name.

All of her castles are also sand. Her kingdom has run through her fingers under Vayne's tidal ambition. Her marriage was a political ploy, and disintegrated almost as soon as the tottering hands of both royal families stood it on its feet. Her dreams of power now depend on a force as fickle as a dune under the wind.

(The stone...)

A shudder runs around the inside of his chest, and he tries to smother it as best he can.

Ashe walks slowly, putting her feet down flat upon the sand to keep her balance. The movement is deliberate, yet she is clearly preoccupied with something else. He wonders if she can hear the whispers as well. Surely the stone calls out to her as it does to him. As it does to the Solidor brethren. As it did to his father.

Her thoughts take their toll. One heedless step, and her heel sinks into the sand, making her trip. His hand is swift to catch hers. He needs to know, whatever the cost, although he already sees, from her confusion, from the way she lowers her gaze and walks on—she could be a girl of fourteen—, that it will be high.

"Why the capital?"

It's only after he asks that he realizes the aberration: he's the one who suggested Archades as their next destination, after the attack on Bur-Omisace. Perhaps he wants to persuade himself that the decision was partly hers as well. She pauses. Considers.

"The nethicite. I must destroy it."

Her tone is grim.

"Are you sure? You don't want it for yourself?"

He is pitiless. He sees it from the start she gives: the question has struck home. Surely it is cruel, to probe at weaknesses like this, but she doesn't know that he's also simultaneously asking himself the same question, in an odd dichotomy between examiner and victim.

She stands very still, her eyes to the ground and her head to the side, listening attentively. The move is his, she wants to know how he will end it. A part of him registers how odd it is that, vulnerable as she is to him—and that would be plainly obvious to anyone—she still manages to strategize a conversation.

(The wonders of royal education...)

"Use its power to restore Dalmasca—something like that?"

There is poison in his voice.

"The best intentions invite the worst kind of trouble."

This is true, but the sheer hypocrisy should make him wince. He is certainly not in a position to be giving lessons.

"Lusting for ever greater power, blinded by the nethicite."

Oddly enough, she sounds puzzled: her own words seem to come as a surprise, despite how obvious it is.

"Is that how you see me?"

Slowly, she turns around. Her face is pale, and there is a tinge of disappointment in her eyes. As if she were expecting something from him. Expecting him to pay enough attention to understand her. Her nets are so crudely woven and spread that he could almost feel insulted.

(I don't see you as anything, darling. And you certainly can't make me.)

He can almost hear the snarl inside his head. This is his usual way of bucking at restraints, yet the voice that utters the words sounds so disturbingly fiendish, revelling in the aggression. The other part of him is horrified. Yet he maintains perfect outward composure, as he moves past her.

"That does sound like someone I know."

This is equivalent to a desperate lunge in his mind. He is throwing her the stick to beat him with, so to speak. The very same one he gave to Fran. Except that Fran never used it. She took the information and shelved it away somewhere inside the convolutions of her thoughts. A maze that he has been shut out of, no matter how hard he has tried to map it. Fran, who is now standing at Basch's side, a little further down the shoreline, calmly pointing something out to him, as Vaan and Penelo root around for seashells. And he yearns for her to look this way, or to hear him, even though he knows they are well out of earshot. Almost like a vindictive child—(see? I'm confiding in her, just as I would confide in you)—craving attention.

Because, no matter what the reason, that is exactly what he is doing. Toying with the one, taunting the other, but all he wants is for the insidious hissing to stop. He knows what—or, more precisely, who—this is turning him into.

"He was obsessed with nethicite. It was all he cared about. He'd babble nonsense, blind to aught but the stone's power. He'd talk about some 'Eynah'...or was it 'Venat'? No matter. Everything he did, he did to get closer to the nethicite, to understand it. He made airships, weapons…He even made me a Judge."

The words are tumbling out of his mouth with little rhyme or reason, and he walks, almost mechanically, to prompt them on. It's a cathartic, seemingly sloppy, but oh-so-insidious move. Confidence is a deadly trap, even if he has to force it out, to override compunction.

"You were a…a Judge!?"

She sounds shocked, and rightly so. It feels more natural than Fran's quiet surprise at learning the same news. Paradoxically, however, it also feels much coarser.

"Part of a past I'd rather forget. It didn't last long. I ran. I left the Judges…and him. Cidolfus Demen Bunansa."

And every word is a notch in his chest. How long has he not heard or pronounced this name with its full honorifics? It feels like conjuring a ghoul.

"Draklor Laboratory's very own Doctor Cid."

As if that could somehow make the name easier on his tongue.

"That's when he lost his heart to nethicite, lost himself. And I suppose that's when I lost my father."

He stops as he reaches the water, pausing to let her take in the revelation. She is silent, standing behind him with her gaze pinned to his back, as he looks into the distance. At least, that's how it would appear to her, from her vantage point. She can't possibly tell that his eyes are fixed on Fran.

("Listen, listen to what I'm telling her. Look how she takes the bait and swallows the hook. This should be you, you should be the one to..."

"...save me...")

Yet, at the same time, he knows Ashe is the only person he can speak to about this. The stone doesn't whisper to Fran. It doesn't whisper to anyone else in the group but the two of them. Ashe knows; he persuades himself that, on some level, she understands why he is telling her this.

(This is my sand castle. And I need it brought down.)

He turns to her for a moment.

"Don't follow in his footsteps."

But the strain in her eyes is more than he can bear. His gaze travels back to Fran, latches on and burrows in, as a wounded animal returns to its den.

"I ran away. I couldn't stand seeing him like that, a slave to the stone. So I ran. Free at last."

Only he isn't. He just wishes he could be.

"Funny I went for the Dusk Shard. How could I have known that it was nethicite? And then, of course, I met you. All that running, and I got nowhere."

Perhaps this is another reason why he is so merciless with her. Because, by demanding attention the way she does, she is twisting his head around and forcing him to look back on everything he has left behind. And he doesn't know if he's strong enough to withstand the pull of these strings that bind him.

"It's time to end this—cut my ties to the past."

(And you will go with them.)

But if she decides she wants revenge after all...If she cannot resist, with all the responsibility she bears, then why should he?

Again, she is silent for a few moments. Then he hears her move up, until she is standing next to him, and there is an instinctive recoil in his muscles. She holds up her left hand, pensively contemplating her wedding-band.

"It's hard to leave the past behind. I know," she finally says.

Her voice trails off. But he has no way of seeing what this evokes in her head. No way to picture Rasler's face as she remembers it, no way to hear the reminder that, to him, there was little more between them than political convenience. He cannot see this, cannot fathom how deeply this cuts her. Not when all he wants is to be set free.

Finding her silent again, he turns to her.

"The choice is yours to make. But don't give your heart to a stone. You're too strong for that, Princess."

There is flattery and double meaning in the words. And it disgusts him, but this is the only way of escape he has found thus far. The choice is, indeed, hers. It will influence his as well. But once again, he can't quite face the yearning in her eyes as she glances at him. Thankfully, she averts her gaze. He seizes the opportunity, and starts walking towards the others.

"I…I pray you're right, Balthier," she concludes in an undertone.

A light waft of wind wraps the words around her. He is already out of earshot.