Bahamut Oasis (remnant)
A/N: 88 reviews...best ever total woot-woot!!...ahem, by that I mean thank you everyone who has sent in reviews both interesting, amusing and hugely flattering! ;)
This is the last of the introspection chapters before I kick the plot into high-gear again! This story is headed towards its climax...though it might take awhile to get there!
P.S: Bluesparx...so glad you like my rendition of Penelo, she is tremendously difficult to write (I'm not good with cute without the cynical...thus Penny's fall from grace!) next chapter should have much Larsa/Penelo, there may even be hi-jinks who knows?
Balthier was not a happy man. His conscience was tormenting him in a vague and accusatory manner.
Needless to say the sensation was not one he relished and he dearly wished his conscience (a fairly new addition to his psychology and not a welcome addition in the least) would go the way of his sense of fair play and shrivel into dust.
It was raining; the rain clouds blowing up from Giza and washing the sky in roiling shades of indigo, grey and violet storm clouds made an impressive contrast to the Paling dome around the city of Rabanastre.
The Paling, glittering in shades of sapphire blue and aquamarine as the rain pelted down on the solid wall of magick, made the city resemble a cheap, tourist bauble. The sort of trinket that contained miniature wooden cityscapes inside glass balls filled with water and grains of rice; the sort of paltry fare that wealthy holidaymakers with more Gil than good taste could pick up from most sundry stores.
Balthier, settled in the overhanging shadows of the ruins of Bahamut (those lower sections of the Bahamut that had remained welded to the sands when he had flown the fortress away from the city), watched the rain pound the surface of the Oasis and considered the ways in which he could justify to his own inquiring mind and over-reaching conscience why it was that he was hiding in the wreckage of Bahamut and not by his wife and children's side.
It was perhaps, when thought of objectively, a good sign in regards his own moral maturity that Balthier was less interested in actively lying to himself than he might have expected to be.
He was not guilty about the nursery; even thinking on it made him smile just slightly, as restlessly his fingers twisted grass stems together and watched the rain with a certain sense of relish (he liked precipitation, he had decided this when the reality of just how little rain Dalmasca received was truly borne home to him when the country became his permanent residence).
Balthier had enjoyed decking out the nursery and engaging the services of two well recommended Moogles as nannies (Gods bless Nono and the Moogle propensity to maintain powerful bonds of amity between kin; without that he doubted he would have been able to lure Sorbet from the Moogling Post for all the Gil in Ashe's coffers).
He had also enjoyed perusing the artisan and toy makers' stores for novel and interesting children's amusements, which was not something he had ever had cause to do before. He and Fran had found the whole exploit to be both an education and an entertaining diversion (or escape, self-imposed exile, or whatever else one might wish to call Balthier's pointed absence from the Palace during the pre-arranged war cabinet meeting).
No, in truth it wasn't the actions he had taken that led him to this moment of semi-melancholy introspection, but instead the motivating factors behind those actions.
If only it had not all been a ruse; an excuse and a justification for escaping the Palace, then maybe, he could have taken more pleasure in Ashe's shocked delight (and yes, he had been well aware of how ready she had been to gut him upon entering the nursery) when she saw the fruits of his labours lovingly displayed for her.
Restless and increasingly irritated with himself Balthier surged to his feet, nervous fingers going to his right ear (which was not in quite the dire state of disrepair it had been, thanks to some clever stitchery by one of the palace physicians).
His fingers brushed over the ragged edge of his ear, where the top rim had been blown clear away; a split in the flesh now sewn up and forming a thick lumpy line of scar tissue ran down the shell of his ear and he had even managed to replace his piercings to adorn what little cartilage of his ear remained.
It would, Balthier thought ill-spiritedly, all be so much easier if bloody Al-Cid Margrace was not currently ensconced as honoured guest in the Palace.
Damn the man and his well timed intervention to save Rabanastre, I am sure he did it merely to spite me.
Balthier walked out towards the edge of the waters of the Oasis enjoying the refreshing sensation of the rain cascading down his face, beading through his short cropped hair and down his neck to roll under his shirt collar (a less pleasant sensation but he was feeling in a masochistic and sorrowful state, so therefore may as well look the part). Disconsolately he watched the silvery, lithe bodies of the fish some scallywag had put in the Oasis flit about near the surface of the water, attracted by the pitter-patter of the rain.
If only I had not beaten the man half to death with my own rifle...
Balthier mourned internally, though even as he thought this a more self-serving, and truthfully more familiar, voice argued that what he truly wished was that either he'd finished the job and killed the foppish Rozzarian idiot, or that there was not at least two people also currently in the Palace who knew of his guilt.
After all Balthier had enough experience both as gentleman pirate and well-bred miscreant to know that it was not the perpetration of a crime that was the sin, but the being caught that held all the woe for the guilty.
What truly bothered Balthier was not that it had become an open secret that he had, in a moment of shameful indiscipline, attacked an unarmed and (relatively) innocent man, but that self same victim had said not one word about said crime. Balthier suspected the openings for blackmail (and Penelo, gods bless the little minx, had already taken her opportunity) yet for the life of him he could not think what Al-Cid might want that would warrant such furtiveness.
The prospect that Al-Cid was keeping his peace because he was in fact the better man (at least in a moral sense, so far as received wisdom on morality would have it) was part of the pressing weight of things unspoken and unwelcome that had driven Balthier to breach the Paling and escape a growing sense of guilty paranoia.
It is not as if a simple, contrite apology will suffice. What am I supposed to say? Sorry for beating you bloody, Al-Cid, old chap, no hard feelings, hmm? Oh, and be a sport about it all and don't tell my wife, there's a good fellow.
The whole thing was ludicrous.
There was no means of apology for what he had done to Al-Cid Margrace and any act of contrition he might perform would be solely as a sop for his own over burdened conscience.
Balthier was not proud of himself or what he had done, but the still smouldering rage he harboured deep inside when he thought back on the moments directly leading up to his unfortunate homicidal episode told him clearly that he did not feel sorry for the pain he caused the other man.
Seeking an escape from his own unpleasant introspection Balthier refocused his attention on his surroundings, which was as dampening and miserable as his mood.
The water of the Oasis had a strange consistency, he noted absently. It was more akin to the waters of a spa pool than a fishing pond and as he pushed his hands into the water, breaking the rippled surface, it seemed to him that the waters resisted, pushing against his hands.
'Ah, my friend, you be a hard man to find, eh?'
Had Balthier had a rifle to hand at that moment he would have found himself compounding his problems by becoming responsible for the manslaughter of the fallen Margrace, Al-Cid. Thankfully (for them both) Balthier was unarmed and so Al-Cid had only to contend with a frankly shaken and alarmed Balthier.
Gathering his wits as swiftly as he could and already (due to surprise and guilt) on the back-foot and highly defensive Balthier uncoiled from his pensive crouch at the water's edge and turned to face the rain dampened Rozzarian exile.
Al-Cid looked better than the last time Balthier had seen him (which, he admitted ruefully, was hardly surprising as the last time he had seen the man he had been in the process of pummelling him to a bloody pulp). Dressed in his annoyingly habitual yellow frock coat and tight fitting leathers Al-Cid had also donned his sun-glasses and absently swept the fall of heavy dark hair from his face with one black gloved hand.
'It is strange that I should find you 'ere, no? You are developing de unhealthy affinity for de Bahamut, eh?' Al-Cid chuckled easily and walked over to the relative shelter of the ragged prongs of steel that was all that remained of the fortress.
Balthier simply watched him, heedless of the rain that was squalling westward up from the Giza Plains. He was experiencing a rare moment of speechlessness in the presence of the man he had not so long ago attempted to murder with his bare hands (and his rifle), who was now making idle chit-chat.
Al-Cid seemed to sense that any further attempts at pleasantries would be met with the same incredulous silence and instead took his rain flecked sun glasses off and looked at the man who had tried to kill, but who had also risked his life to rescue him in something the intellectual in Al-Cid recognised as a fundamental paradox between personal expression and the loyalty to a loved one, with calm, assessing dark eyes.
'We need to talk, eh? To, how you say, get our stories straightened?'
Balthier, who was still entirely unable to engage his mind or tongue to formulate a response, quirked an eyebrow deeply bemused. Al-Cid was now managing to make it all sound as if they were both equally complicit in the crime of beating the Rozzarian senseless, as if by being the unwilling victim of an act of unwarranted violence, Al-Cid now felt the two of them had something in common.
Silently aghast at the tortuous and circuitous twists and turns his life took, Balthier found himself thinking almost nostalgically back at the simpler, halcyon days when all he had to fear was the hang-man's noose and Ba-Gamnan's rotating saw.
'I 'ave no intention of informin' de Lady Ashe of de bad business dat occur between us.' Al-Cid continued, unnecessarily in actual fact as Balthier had already surmised that Al-Cid (for his own incomprehensible reasons) intended to say nothing. After all, he had had ample opportunity to do so.
'We let de sleepin dogs lie, eh? Dis is a matter between us men an' one dat I 'ope can be settled between us 'ere an' now.'
Almost imperceptibly Balthier tensed, furtively looking about for a hidden Bird with a poison blowgun secreted in the shadows of Bahamut, or for Al-Cid to put aside a lifetime of self-styled pacifism and come at him with rapier drawn. Instead the former heir apparent of the Rozzarian Empire tapped his fingers against the rusted scraps of Bahamut; the drumming of his fingers echoing the fall of the rain.
Al-Cid looked up at the tumultuous sky and the gnarled, twisted, root like protrusions of steel that remained where once Bahamut had loomed; he addressed his words as much to any wandering gods listening in from the skies as to Balthier himself.
'As a boy I once went on de progress through de Rozzarian provinces wit' my father. Dere was, I remember as though it were de day dat 'as just been, a great uprising in de south of de empire. My father's Prelate in de region he put some two thousand men to de sword, lay waste to many hundred acres of fertile land. He did dis thing, or so he say at de time, in de name an' de honour of my father.'
Balthier, still deeply wary and unwilling to say anything at all, shifted impatiently where he stood, on virtual tenterhooks, alert for snipers in the wings. He could feel an unfortunate bubbling of irritation within him in response to Al-Cid's words. Born and bred as a privileged son in the other great empire of Ivalice such stories were hardly new to him.
Really, did Al-Cid expect sympathy? Balthier's father had engineered and overseen the genocide of an entire nation, even the blood-thirsty ambition of the family Margrace had never reached such proportions (though Mishman had, of late, set his sights upon such lofty goals).
'It was den dat I declare myself to be de man of peace. It seem to me, even as de boy of twelve, dat to kill a man is easy. To win an argument at de end of de sword or,' here Al-Cid cut a sharp dark eyed glimpse towards his silent but irritable audience, 'de gun is no victory at all. You may t'ink it cowardly to refuse to take up de arms for de beliefs I 'old, but I say to you dat to do so is to betray dose beliefs, an' what would I be den, if I be a man without belief?'
'Less of a liability?'
Balthier cursed himself silently even as the words rolled, smoothly and coldly, off his tongue. Balthier was very far from a foolish man and he knew that to be drawn into discussion with Al-Cid Margrace was foolish indeed.
He knew Al-Cid to be a man of considerable learning and a highly astute politician, he also knew that whatever sensible and reasoned argument he might make against Al-Cid's philosophy the other man need only mention the unfortunate events in Mikanel to have Balthier over a barrel (figuratively speaking, though if Ashe were to hear of it that might very well translate to a literal punishment).
Al-Cid smiled his politicians smile, quiet and utterly humourless. 'Perhaps, my friend, or perhaps de circumstances dat drive you from your wife an' your young ones to sit in silence in de rain, mean dat you 'ave come to see how de faithless man can be de liability also, no matter 'is skill wit de rifle, eh?'
Balthier twitched, the rain water dripping from the gold thread embossed cuffs of his white shirt chilling his bones. He narrowed his eyes at the other man who stood directly before him and faced him with all the presence and command of a man who knows that although he was the one who took the beating the last time they faced each other, he had for all his apparent pain, come out the enduring victor of their skirmish.
'Enough with the allusions, it is raining and I am wet, make your point, name your price and let's get on.' Balthier said levelly.
This would not be the first time he had found himself with his back against the wall with nowhere to run and no recourse but to pay his dues, however familiarity (albeit sparse, he did not lose so very often after all) did nothing to make the sting easier to deal with.
A crack of distant thunder seemed to conspire with Al-Cid in his moment of triumph and the Rozzarian shook his head, swiping wet hair from his face.
'Ah, no, it shall not be dat way, my friend. You 'ad your say in Mikanel, extracted de price in blood dat you felt was owing. Dat I do not argue wit de need for penance does not mean I 'ave no recourse to argue over de right you claim to be de one delivering such, eh?'
Balthier fought the scowl now seemingly permanently engraved upon his brow and forcibly refused to acknowledge the knot of unpleasant brutality in his hindbrain that suggested that it would be really rather satisfying to crack Al-Cid across the chops once more, just for good measure.
Exposure as a violent fraud, some form of punitive punishment, even Ashe's disappointment and censure he would endure as his dues for an action that had so haunted him already, but Balthier could not and would not endure a moralistic sermon from a man who could not even save one tiny child (his own citizen) from a painful and ignominious death in a middle of a battle fought in her name but without her consent.
'Spare me.' Balthier spat. 'Whatever my failings, you are still, and always will be, no more than a failed politician.'
Al-Cid shrugged expressively casual shoulders. 'Dat remains to be seen, I 'ave not yet put forward my proposal.'
A dark and furtive smile flickered over Al-Cid's face as Balthier, swiping the damp fringe of his hair from his own brow, looked at him sharply. So, this was the baited hook, a proposal?
Balthier regarded the man narrowly; he recognised the opening gambit for a complicated blackmail as easily as he had seen Penelo's clumsy attempt telegraphed in her every nervous twitch.
'I believe dat men can be defined by two key characteristics, my friend, deir fear an' deir beliefs. Dere are some men who will do anyt'ing for deir beliefs be it killing a man or dying for does higher ideals, an' den deir are does men who are driven by deir fear so completely dat dey 'ave no room for any 'igher belief.'
Balthier repressed the almost overwhelming urge to hit the man before him as the rain lashed down on them both, creating a slinking grey curtain that cut off their tense, unfolding drama from the drab, wet, grey-hued shadows of the desert and the storm battered Oasis.
'You are de man who is driven by your fear, no?'
Al-Cid called Balthier a coward to his face in so many words with the ease of one discussing the weather, or perhaps, more accurately, with the confidence of a man who knows that he has far too much leverage against his opponent for the other man to have any recourse but to listen in seething silence.
'You made de career out of running away from de commitments of life, dat is so, eh? First from your wealth an' de status of your heritage, den you play de dead man so dat de Lady Ashe for a time fear you dead, for you fear de responsibility of 'er gratitude, no? You are de man who runs an' say he believe in nothing because it is easier than failing in what he believe, I think dis is so.'
Balthier's fists were so tightly clenched his short, carefully clipped nails, cut into his palms. He wondered in the small part of his mind still capable of objectivity, if Al-Cid realised just how close he was to another beating?
It was not the words Al-Cid spoke or the allusion to the weakness in his character, his propensity to flee when flight was an option and worry not for what was lost in that escape. Nor was it the insinuation of cowardice that was part and parcel of such allegations. Gods knew he had heard insults aplenty of a similar vein from wiser souls than this self-important aristocrat (Fran had called him a foolish, vain, child of a Hume for striking out at Al-Cid Margrace and had had occasion, and taken full advantage of such, to call him worse in the past).
What filled Balthier with a wordless, dangerous fury was the fact that for all his veiled curses and sly aspersions, Al-Cid Margrace and all the others that had called him coward and turncoat and worse in the past, had managed to make a fundamental mistake when judging the great flaw in Balthier's character. It was not that he was a faithless coward at all.
No, the real reason that Al-Cid was in danger right this moment was not because he was tempting the seething rage of an accursed coward, but instead, a man who, in his deepest soul, knew himself to be a villain.
Balthier, with the cold knowledge of a man who had been raised with principles and morals instilled in him by rote (if perhaps with little genuine conviction) from birth and yet had still gleefully broken every taboo when he declared himself pirate and free, knew that if he really wanted to he could convince Ashe of anything.
He could excuse himself of any crime (and had already done so in public court before some seven hundred of her citizens) in her eyes, if he really wished it so, because she loved him and he knew that the means to control the Queen was through her heart, which he already owned.
Thus the only thing, the one and only reason, that Balthier was even listening to Al-Cid attempt to blackmail him now, was because he felt guilty and wanted to deny to himself that he was the snake in the grass, black-hearted bastard that, deep down inside, he knew himself to be.
'I am to make de proposal to Larsa, Marquis Ondore an' de Lady Ashe on de morrow, I 'ope, in de spirit of co-operation you will be lend your backing to such a proposed action?'
Balthier met the keen eyes of the ambitious, but otherwise good man Al-Cid Margrace, and felt his own lips twitch into a familiar smirk.
It was ironic that he should miss the gist of Al-Cid's proposed plea-bargain, having been too busy berating himself for his inner evils. Somehow he thought it would make a bad business all the worse if he asked the Rozzarian idealist to repeat his threats as he had not given due polite attention the first time.
Instead Balthier gave Al-Cid an insouciant little smirk, and shrugged his shoulders, arms folded across his chest (noting to himself as his shirt clung to his flesh wet and itching, that he really should be getting out of the rain before he caught his death from the damp).
'I hold no formal rank or office in Dalmascan governance or in the international arena. I make a poor ally to your ambitions, sir.' He drawled, hoping that it was not too obvious that he had entirely failed to listen to the unveiling of said ambitious scheme.
'It is not de man wit' de public rank dat hold de power. Power is at its most effective, eh, when no outside eye can see de strings being pulled.' Al-Cid conceded.
'De Lady Ashe holds de honour of being revered even by dose not born in Dalmasca, even in Archadia dey speak of de Dynast Queen wit' de respect. Through her actions dese five years past she make herself de power around which Ivalice's elite revolve...an you, my friend, are de power in de wings dat she turn to when she need de last minute rescue.'
Al-Cid's words, the words of a consummate politician who knew well where the strings lay and how to pull upon the puppets of Ivalice, left a sour taste in Balthier's mouth. He might be a thoroughly jaded bastard but even to him, a man without belief or faith, there were some things that were inviolate Ashe being primary among those few beings Balthier cared for more than himself.
'I will not abuse Ashe's trust by giving her bad advice just to save myself embarrassment.' He snapped, now truly regretting having not listened to Al-Cid's 'proposal' of moments before. If nothing else he could have warned Ashe of her friend's possible ill-intentions (if he in fact had any – damn his inattentiveness).
Al-Cid, thoroughly soaked through, smiled as he slipped his sun-glasses back on over his eyes. 'That is why, for all dat you lack de fortitude of conviction, you are no liability to de Lady Ashe, my friend, because you at least believe in 'er.'
Al-Cid turned away from the Oasis with one last nod of farewell, 'til de morrow, my friend. If not'ing else it should be an interestin' meeting.'
With a languid wave the self-styled man of peace moved swiftly towards the Walk of Heroes and the promise of dry clothes and a respite from the rain within the Paling dome of Rabanastre.
Balthier, forced to wait until the other man was far enough in front that he would not have to endure walking with him, trudged back towards his wife's kingdom, feeling as though he carried twice his own body weight in rain water on his person. With his head down and eyes averted from the list of names of all those who had fallen in battle against his countrymen, or gods curse his soul, as a direct result of his own father's vaulting belief in his scientific endeavours.
Balthier went directly towards the nursery when he finally reached the stifling, claustrophobic, but thankfully dry enclosure that Rabanastre under the Paling had become.
He wanted to bask in the warm glow of his children's love; both of them far too young to turn against him yet. Balthier was so very tired of being a cynical, morally bankrupt bastard. He would so very much rather play the part of doting new father.
When he swung open the doors of the nursery (having at the last minute decided to take a detour to the Queen's chambers where he found dry clothing to change into) he was accosted by a sight that momentary startled all his dark thoughts from his mind.
Ashe, through the shimmering blur of a Bubble spell looked up, irritable frown at the intrusion already forming upon her brow, from where she sat in the rocking chair, one baby to her breast.
'Where have you been, and why is your hair wet?'
Her tone was fractionally less accusatory due to the tiny, snuffling presence of the tiny infant clamped to her teat. Balthier, feeling the familiar discomfort of being around such an intimate and maternal display, averted his eyes as he went to perch on the window seat.
'Standing in the rain.' he replied jauntily, 'I was feeling a mite dehydrated. But enough about me, what is this Highness, the little ones are out of confinement already?' He added with a genuine smile.
Ashe was suitably diverted as he knew she would be and smiled dotingly down on the dark head that remained pressed to her chest. Balthier told himself sternly not to give any physical expression to the squirming he felt inside at witnessing what was, he told himself in sharp rebuke, a perfectly natural part of motherhood.
'It was agreed that breastfeeding would help our children grow stronger sooner. As long as I remain within a properly cast Bubble spell they are perfectly safe.'
'Well, I shall leave you to it then.' Balthier rose from his tentative perch on the window seat keen to make his swift escape.
'Balthier.' Ashe called him back before he was half way to the door reluctantly he turned back to her, blandly pleasant half-smile firmly in place upon his countenance.
'Hmm?'
Ashe had removed the baby (and yes, Balthier felt some small qualm for not having the paternal sixth sense to tell which child it was...it was unfortunate that wrapped in swaddling clothes and with their eyes closed they both looked exactly the same to him) from her breast and was now stroking the almost bald head with its fuzz of dark downy hair with a loving hand.
'Our children are nearly a week old, they must be shrived by a priest and formally given their names.' She informed him with all the solemnity of one passing on momentous news.
Balthier, wondering if he had missed some manner of subtext preceding this statement, said nothing. After all it was only natural that they should name their children something other than 'girl' and 'boy'. However he had expected Ashe to already have some manner of properly traditional name in mind as it seemed to him (with his albeit severely limited knowledge of such things) the sort of thing a mother would do.
Perhaps realising that his uncharacteristic silence was a symptom of a lack of understanding Ashe rolled her eyes, sighed with long suffering irritation, and deposited the baby back into the cradle. After whispering a swift incantation to first erect another Bubble shield around the cradle and then to 'pop' the spell around herself Ashe walked over to him.
'In case it had escaped your notice Balthier, you have done such a good job of making yourself scarce after all,' she added with clear reproach that his over active conscience lapped up with masochistic delight, 'we have yet to decide on names. We have not even discussed it, beyond your assertion that you wished to name our daughter after a dead child.' She added acerbically.
Balthier winced as the barb hit home. He was not overly proud of that suggestion (if one could call it such) but then he had so many things in his recent past to be less than proud of that he was growing tired of keeping track.
'I take it you do not wish to name our daughter after a dead child?' Balthier queried dryly, wondering if he was headed for another pointless argument with his wife.
Ashe stood before him with her arms folded across her stomach, unconsciously mimicking, with purely habitual annoyance, Balthier's casual stance.
'I don't believe that it would be appropriate either for our daughter or as a tribute to the memory of Alfayna.' Ashe said deliberately softening her tone in an awkward attempt to express sympathy and understanding.
Ashe's clumsy attempts to be anything other than the fierce and headstrong creature that she was always instilled in Balthier a paradoxical sense of affection. Lazily he wrapped his arms about her and tugged her against him.
'Hmm, so you have an alternative suggestion?' He murmured, thinking that she was right and he would never have really wanted his bright eyed baby girl to carry the name of the doe-eyed child he had known for so brief a time and betrayed so utterly.
'I would like to name her for my uncle. Halim was at my side throughout my labour and has been as a father to me, these last few years.' Ashe said her words muffled as she rested her head against his chest.
Balthier, perhaps not operating at optimum mental acuity, frowned. 'You wish to call our daughter Halim?'
Ashe jabbed him painfully in the ribs, mistaking a moment of Vaan-like stupidity for a failed attempt at levity, 'Halina which is the feminine of the name Halim. I had thought to call her Halina Amalia, for my mother also.'
Halina-Amalia Balthier smiled slightly and nodded his head minutely, as he rested his chin on the top of Ashe's head. I shall call her Hallie.
'I'm sure the Marquis will be delighted,' Balthier said with simple honesty, 'But what of our boy? Be warned though Highness that if you say you wish to call him either Rasler or Basch I shall disavow all further contact with him. No son of mine will ever be called Basch.'
Or Rasler. A dead former husband is something to be accepted and endured, but a man must have some pride, I don't want my son named for a dead man.
Balthier added silently, though he said nothing out loud as Ashe gave him another jab to the ribs, in response to his remarks about her beloved captain. Then she laced her hands behind his back, after first pulling his shirt loose so she could splay her fingers over his naked flesh, and nestled her cheek more comfortably against his chest.
'Heios.' Ashe said with a certain hesitancy, as if she expected him to object. 'It is a name that traces its roots back to the days of Raithwall and is respected in both Dalmasca and Nabradia.' She added swiftly.
And was also Prince Rasler's middle name, though clearly I am not supposed to know that. Balthier thought dryly, though with little real rancour. A Prince needed a name fit for his station and such a name as Heios would make the people happy. It was no worse a name than Ffamran he supposed.
'Heios and Halina it is then,' he declared in good cheer, 'And we have even managed alliteration as well.' He added with sudden realisation, smirking as Ashe lifted her head to regard him, however her serious eyes caused him to stop smiling.
'Heios Demen.' Ashe corrected him, 'Halina Amalia and Heios Demen Dalmasca.' She intoned watching him the way one might watch a fiend spotted prowling near-by, cautious and wary but resolute.
Balthier felt his arms drop from around her. He took a step back and walked almost distractedly to the cradle. 'I don't like that name so much.' He said and even to his own ears he sounded like a somewhat petulant child.
'It is a good name, Demen. It has a lineage almost as long as Heios. A name with roots in Landissian dialect from long before the first stone of Archades was laid.' Ashe began reasonably.
Balthier frowned, looking down on his sleeping children, 'I know where the name comes from, and do not tell me you have picked it for its ancient history.'
Ashe stepped up behind him and touched his back. For no real reason he shook off her touch and stepped away from her and the cradle.
'Ffamran, then.' Ashe said, with just a trace of both irritation and appeal in her voice. 'If you won't have Demen, let your son have your name, the one you don't want.'
'That name is worse.' Balthier muttered gaze seeking refuge in the storm tossed horizon beyond the window.
Yes, worse, Balthier thought in a muddled sort of way, because Demen was the lesser known name of a man who may have been a monster but at least had the courage of his convictions. Ffamran is the name of a man who created another name to hide behind because he did not want to face his own short-comings.
'I thought you would take this better than you are.'
Ashe said with all the dejected impatience of a woman who has been plotting since the birth of her children how the broach the subject and could not completely understand his reticence. Balthier did not entirely blame her, his own feelings made little sense to him and he knew he had no hope of explaining them to her, even if he had had any desire to try.
Feeling like a man with no safe haven and no port to shelter from the storm; a man driven from the refuge of his children's silent, unquestioning, insensible love by the expectations of their mother, their mother's allies, relations, subjects and friends, Balthier turned away from Ashe, the cradle, and the nursery he had so lovely prepared himself.
He felt as if the expectations of all those innumerate individuals who either wished he would die (most of her councillors), wished he was a considerably better man than he was (Basch) or wished to use and extort the ill in him for their own ends (Al-Cid, Halim Ondore, even little Penelo) were chasing him from where he felt safe and he had nowhere left to run.
'Call him what you will, Ashe. It makes little difference to me.' He told her callously, and completely untruthfully, as he left the nursery in his own cloud of ill-temper.
Had he stayed, had he thought for a moment that she might have understood him more completely than he gave her credit for, he might have realised that she was trying to give him a gift. Trying to restore a little of the sense of self that he thought he had thrown from him long ago never to regain.
Yet he did not stay, instead Balthier left the place and the people who might have made him feel marginally better in the height of his own indignant pride and persistent depression. Deep inside he pondered the reason why her choice of middle name for their son had so upset him.
It wasn't bad association, particularly, it was more that he loved his children so completely and so easily (and he was man enough to admit that loving others did not come easily to someone as unrepentantly self-centred as he was) that he did not want that love tainted.
He loved his son and his daughter because he believed that he had given in their conception everything he had to give that was good. They had been born to perfection as far as he was concerned and his greatest fear was that they might grow up to be like him.
He did not want his son burdened with such a legacy and it seemed that even in imparting on him a name from his family line Ashe enacted some form of horrible self-fulfilling prophecy that Balthier would do anything to prevent befalling his boy.
A father, Balthier believed, should want better for his own children than his own lot in life, and gods only knew the mess he had made of his own existence. Balthier, thoroughly miserable as he had not been since he was sixteen and terrified of all his life had become, found himself pondering if perhaps the best thing he could do for his son and his Hallie was in fact to take flight and never return?
A/N: y'know I don't know why but Balthier is determined to be depressed throughout most of this story...his numerous issues just won't let lie...ah, well, death cures all as they say! ;)