Chapter Twenty-One: History in the hands of man; the future in my hands alone

A/N: This is the second part of a double update, please don't miss out on the preceeding chapter ;)

It may have been due to his inveterate cynicism or his former profession as, if not a villain per se, then certainly a damned good criminal, but Balthier had never believed that bad men suffered in the end and good always triumphed.

The truth was more convoluted and confused than that.

He had heard it hypothesised that there was no such thing as good and evil; that any act can be twisted and re-envisioned depending on personal perspective, that it was, essentially, all a matter of interpretation.

Balthier had his doubts about this. He had met a number of reprehensible, despicable characters (he'd been trained in sky piracy by one such monster in Hume clothing) but it was not the bad in people that convinced him that abstract principles such as 'good' and 'bad' existed; it was the good people he had met that convinced him of the dichotomy of good and evil in all Humes.

Comparing himself to such luminaries of selflessness as he had had the dubious fortune as to meet in his time, Balthier had come to two basic conclusions; the first of which was that he had never been, and would never be, counted among their number, and secondly, he was hardly alone in this.

In Balthier's mindset there were the good, the bad, and the merely morally ambivalent; Balthier considered himself within the later majority. He wasn't an exemplar of moral rectitude and goodness by any stretch, nor was he an utterly irredeemable beast of a man.

Instead he had moments of both beastliness and sublime heroism and most of the time he was content to lurk in the grey areas.

Still he was absolutely certain, morally and intellectually, that he did not deserve this.

As the pain began to erode the happy seclusion of his existential distraction Balthier gritted his teeth and refused, marshalling all his bloody-minded stubbornness, to give his tormentors the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.

They were burning the soles of his gods' be-damned feet!

The ticklish, almost annoyingly vague, burning pain playing over the soles of both his feet was almost eclipsed by the stomach twisting scent of burning flesh (his burning flesh). Breathing raggedly with eyes squeezed shut Balthier tried to avoid biting right through his bottom lip as the pain simply continued, unabated.

He had experienced pain so much more all-consuming that this; he had been shot, poisoned, beaten, whipped until his back was shredded, starved and left to rot in dark holes dug from the ground in his past; he knew all about endurance, but this……it was the sheer pettiness of the torture that nearly unbalanced his mind.

It was cruelty for cruelties sake and it set a taper burning in his mind that rivalled the monstrous heat lapping at his feet.

'For the gods' sake enough.'

Balthier could hear Basch haranguing his tormentors somewhere else in a reality that existed outside of the narrow awareness of the excruciating pain in the soles of his feet, but it was distant and irrelevant.

All Ivalice paled into insignificance compared to the mind-wrenching, agonising torment radiating from the bottom of his feet and racing through his screaming nerve-endings to jab persistently into his brain.

The pain was all the worse because it was not so terribly, stunningly, intense that it robbed him of wits or consciousness, as the greater, more artful, tortures could do.

Instead he was acutely aware of the fact that a person wearing the face of an almost-friend was causing him pain and there was not a gods damned bloody thing he could do to stop it.

'Enough; be done with you. If you would kill us, kill us. This sadism has no point.'

The harsh scrap and jingle of Basch's chains against the wall he was presumably still strung up against created a grinding, disparate harmony that Balthier's wild mind clung to as a distraction.

Panting and soaked in pain sweat Balthier forced his eyes open and looked into the face of the being hidden under Elza's likeness, who crouched on the floor of the stone cell and idly flicked the lit jet flame over the soles of his feet as his skin cracked and blistered.

He stared down into those cold eyes that had never belonged to Elza and something neither morally ambivalent, nor cynical, rose from the fissure of pain in his mind.

'You're going to die,' he told the woman in a voice rough and hoarse but steady all the same, 'I hope that Kry paid you in advance, for I shall see to it that you have no chance to enjoy your wages of sin when I am free.'

It was not Balthier's usual style to make such crass and tasteless threats (they were beneath his considerable dignity) but right at this moment, with his feet blackening, Balthier threw dignity to the wind.

The woman turned her dead eyes away from him with nothing but disdain for his threats (a mistake; Balthier had very rarely decided to deliberately see to the death of another hume, but when he did he always succeeded).

'How?'

Balthier gasped a new question and then locked his teeth together against a strangled howl of pain as the woman withdrew the naked flame only to thrust his poor, beleaguered feet into a waiting bucket of ice cube wreathed water.

Tears dazzled his eyes and he fiercely blinked them back as across the cell from him he could see Basch's face drenched in sympathetic, compassionate horror, eyes caught in glassy imagining of exactly what Balthier was experiencing in exquisite torment at that moment.

'Ghn…..how...aghh….how did you do it?' he panted as fire and ice and screaming pain set his nervous system alight. His feet burned in ice water as the cold and remembered fire raced up his legs sending klaxon calls of stimulus to his brain.

The woman who was not Elza lifted bored eyes to his. She said nothing but there was just the hint of scornful of curiosity in her dead-eyed regard.

'How did you kill her?' he snarled, through clenched teeth as burning pain was drenched in agonised numbness.

Ultimately it did not matter to Balthier what answer this loathsome woman gave; that was not the purpose of the question. It honestly did not matter what the exact sordid, tragic details of Elza's death were; it did not add or diminish the genuine grief he felt at her passing (and it surprised him that he should feel it so keenly and that it was not merely guilt – a person he had known for years was now dead, it……hurt).

Still this was the only requiem Elza was like to get and Balthier would not deny her memory the right to an explanation.

It was also the case that, despite knowing that the knowledge would do nothing to make what was done less pointless and cruel, Balthier himself still wanted to know, needed to know.

Even if it was only so that he could lie and give Elza (and Rikken) a more fitting last moment than he imagined reality had granted the pair, when it came time to break the news to those who would care enough to mourn them properly.

He would make heroes out of victims; it was the least he could do for two people he had never bothered to befriend in life.

'She killed herself; stupid mare. Mayhew came to her in the guise of his brother and the daft wench believed him a wraith from the other side. She went and killed the one-eyed man in his sleep and then threw herself from the Cerobi bluffs. Bloody stupid bint.'

(Pitiful; Elza, Rikken, you deserved so much better than that.)

The ice water had numbed his legs up to mid-calf and while that gangling creeping pain sent erratic jolts through his tired nerves, the surcease in immediate agony allowed Balthier the use of his more complex cognitive functions.

'His brother?'

And the final piece fell into place; Balthier had been unable to fathom the connection between Kry and Aeneas, though he recognised now that there must be one, and one that was not nearly twelve years mouldering in an unmarked grave.

Now it seemed he had discovered that causal link.

'I see,' he breathed not bothering to waste the energy on any emotional response to this almost anti-climatic revelation, 'This brother, Mayhew is his name, you say, and he once worked with Kry and my father, is that it?'

The surly woman did not do him the courtesy of answering. Balthier scowled at the top of the woman's head in a futile attempt to see through the glamour of the Quidion spell to the true visage beneath it.

Balthier had no interest in discovering the woman's true identity, he suspected from her accent alone that she was merely a reprobate from Balfonheim, enticed to play a part in this elaborate vengeance by the promise of Gil and, even more wretched, the chance of three square meals and a bed for the night.

Balthier did not believe in evil………it was his defence against reality.

'And was it under this Mayhew's orders that you decided to perpetrate this abuse on my person, hmm?'

Basch was watching Balthier carefully from the opposing wall, but Balthier only had eyes for the woman at his feet.

'What's it to yer?' she demanded essentially confirming his hypothesis.

Balthier smirked faintly, because gods knew he would not let a trifling thing such as immense physical and emotional pain get in the way of his performance.

'Oh, no reason really,' he replied airily, 'I merely wished to get the measure of the man as I doubt I will have the opportunity to personally spit in his eye. No doubt he'll be dead soon enough.'

The false Elza's face creased in belligerent confusion, 'What yer talkin' 'bout?'

Balthier allowed his smirk to widen fractionally and deliberately looked over the woman's head to Basch.

'Shall we wager, my good man?' he gestured with a turn of his head, about the only body part he could comfortably move, 'Two hundred Gil says this Mayhew has already been dispatched; I'll throw in another hundred that Ashe has done the deed personally.'

Basch's face wrinkled in confusion the near mirror of the woman's, 'Balthier?'

At the same time the woman leapt to her feet, 'What yer talkin' 'bout yer smarmy git?'

Balthier regarded the woman with bored, sardonic eyes, 'You are a pawn in the games of great men, my dear little slattern,' he purred with honey-venom dripping benign damnation with every word, 'have no fear, your number shall be up next.'

Without allowing the woman the chance at reprisal he looked over at Basch, 'This is pure conjecture, you understand, but I think from the strength of the evidence that I am right.'

Basch cocked his head to the side questioningly but said nothing, ready to listen, even though he had no idea what convoluted game Balthier was now playing.

'I am going out on a limb, but I think it seems likely that Mayhew was the mastermind behind Ashe's capture. He seems the sort to try and use a man's wife against him, disregarding that this wife is no man's tool. If he were here he would have tortured or killed me himself by now….therefore, likely, Ashe and Mayhew are elsewhere.'

Basch quirked his scarred eyebrow and something unspoken passed between them; a previous, unobserved conversation remembered by both men, and a plan vaguely hashed out, put into practice with a few carefully chosen and seemingly off-hand words from Balthier.

'Aye,' Basch growled, 'I'll meet your wager, Balthier, and raise you that Fran has mustered arms enough to deal with any threat to Dalmasca's sovereignty.'

Balthier smiled slightly understanding the tacit mention of Fran in accordance to their previous, secret conversation (thank you Basch, your assistance is appreciated). The woman looked angrily between the two of them, impotent in her suspicion.

'Enough double-talkin' swine,'

She lashed out with her hand and back-handed Balthier across the jaw; his head was knocked to the side and his teeth sliced the inside of his lip. Absently he licked the salty blood away.

'Temper, temper, my girl, did no one teach you of lady-like deportment, hmm?'

The woman, Elza's face sitting uncomfortably upon an expression contorted and mottled with rage, snarled before dropping swiftly down to the ground and wrenching the bucket of ice water from the floor, painfully knocking Balthier's feet away as she did so.

She threw the wooden bucket and contents at Balthier's chest before turning and hurrying from the tiny Pharos cell room.

Balthier shook icy water from his face and gritted his teeth against the cold as rivulets of slush ran down his bare torso and seeped uncomfortably underneath the waistband of his trousers. He did not doubt for a moment that a large bruise would soon form over his breastbone where the bucket had impacted with his flesh.

'Well,' he breathed out carefully, 'needless to say I did not much enjoy that.'

Basch shook his head with a certain wry respect in his eyes, 'Aye; I would question your sanity more than I do already had you said other.'

Balthier accepted this with a wry grimace of his own, 'Mind over matter, Basch, but then I doubt I need tell you that. You who survived two years in a large cage suspended over a deep drop underground, hmm.'

Basch actually chuckled, 'You need not be reduced to base attempts at flattery Balthier; I have already agreed to pass your message to Fran.'

'And I am grateful for that Basch, however that was not an attempt at base flattery,' he sighed, 'Can we not be done with this squabbling now, I am heartily sick of it all.'

Basch managed to look at once amused, questioning, and slightly condescending with the judicious movement of one scarred brow (Balthier wondered vaguely if he had been taking lessons from Fran?).

'Aye? I'd not thought to hear such a thing from you, even under our current circumstances.'

Balthier ignored the statement and instead looked at the more or less healed dark puckered scar on the other man's torso where the magicite crossbow bolt had been removed and the wound treated by the same people who had rendered the injury in the first place.

'How's your stomach, Basch?'

'Well enough.'

'Hmm,' Balthier was once again troubled by his feet. Now the numbness from the ice water soaking had worn off he could almost feel each individual blister on the soles of his feet. He could almost taste the throbbing, itching, scratching texture of the burns on his tongue, the ache reverberating in his mind.

'I do not think it will be long now before Kry comes for me himself; I doubt it will take much negotiation to have him set you free.' Balthier said talking over the undercurrent of pain, 'Kry is not a natural villain. You are not necessary to his success and while a proper villain would simply kill you, Kry would probably sooner you simply be gone from here.'

Basch studied Balthier, 'You know this man well Balthier?'

'No, not well at all, it is more that I know his sort,' Balthier smiled faintly, 'And he and I have something of value in common, that allows me some insight at least.'

'And I suppose you will not be sharing with me what that commonality is, correct?'

A sly chuckle escaped Balthier's lips, 'I have always thought you a perceptive man, Basch, I am pleased to see I was correct in that surmise.'

Basch simply gave him what counted with the other man, as a filthy look, but Balthier was not really paying attention. He was trying to build up the courage to attempt to wriggle the toes of his right foot and debating with himself if it was worth the inevitable pain this would cause.

Basch heaved a deep sigh, 'If you insist on hoarding your secrets even now I'll not waste breath attempting to dissuade you,' pale blue eyes regarded him keenly, 'but you are sure that Vaan will act as you predict, and Fran will understand this message you would have me bring her?'

It was Balthier's turn to give the other man a look of utter disbelieving disdain as he drawled smilingly, 'Basch please, I live my life on the basic tenet that all life revolves around my wishes, would you take from an injured man his most treasured delusion now?'

Basch actually snorted in disgust, 'Any other man would leave you to your fate, most richly deserved, and be nary troubled by the act.'

Balthier allowed himself a wider smile, 'Ah, but Basch, you are a good man, and as such, you have little choice but to acquiesce to my wishes.'

'Aye, and how many a good man have found themselves your catspaw in times past, I wonder?'

For just a moment something dark and cold touched the pained edges of Balthier's psyche at Basch's half-jesting slur against him; he fought for, and maintained, his cavalier smirk and demeanour however, 'A great many, I dare say, and equal that the number of evil men as well. As I say, all Ivalice swings to my whims, Basch.'

Basch looked him in the eye, keen and sharp, 'Be careful Balthier, I know you but jest to stave off the pain in your body, but I hear in such words the echo of another man's arrogance: 'history in the hands of man', rings a hollow echo in your speech.'

Balthier regarded him smoothly, blandly, untouched by the warning and the criticism. He had heard it all before, in recent hours his own thoughts had cycled through similar fears, but Balthier had become adapt at smiling into his own personal abyss.

He knew himself, he knew his strengths and his faults; he knew (as no one else did) his every crime and sin and even now, when push had come to shove, he flatly refused to bow down and repent.

He was the bloody leading man and this was his story; let Ivalice repent for his sins, Balthier was too busy with greater concerns.

'I have no interest in history, Basch, it is a realm of dead things. I look to the future, wherein in the real bounty lies.'

He was the leading man (burned of foot but unbroken) history had no claim on him yet, and whether it judged him a man of good or evil was none of his concern. He knew who he was and he already knew how Kry and Mayhew would pay for daring to presume that they could cast the leading man in a role not of his choosing.

The man who controlled the present controlled the future and, ultimately, claimed the prize; Balthier, of course, had already loaded the dice and rigged the game before Kry and Mayhew threw their hats into the ring.

Triumph eternal to the leading man; it was time to play his full hand….the hand Cid dealt him.

A/N: Next up…..a death in Nabudis?