Chapter Thirty-Seven: Still Not Dead Yet: Death, Pain and other Trivialities

Ashe had not weathered the remainder of the long night well after she had ushered the children from Balthier's room and summoned the doctor to attend him.

To begin with, it had taken an inordinate amount of time to settle the children into bed in the Nalbina nursery that had yet to be fully equipped for the royal children's unexpected arrival.

Then she had had to forestall Larsa and Al-Cid and the others who wanted to see and 'question' Balthier about his recent experiences. In the end Ashe had had to forcibly remind them all that they were guests in her country and if they were not prepared to take rooms in the Keep for the night she was quite happy to find them alternative accommodation in the dungeons.

After her guests had re-discovered their patience and departed to guest rooms, Ashe had returned to Balthier's room only to witness the horrifying sight of the once indomitably resilient sky pirate vomiting blood and convulsing with pain.

Much of the night she sat up with him tearing the inside of her cheeks to shreds as she bit her mouth and did her best to nurse him. In the end, unable to keep her distress from her countenance, Balthier had managed to find breath enough to demand she leave him.

'For the gods own sake, woman, can a man not vomit in peace without an audience?'

What hurt her more than his words was the knowledge that he said it only to spare her the pain of watching him suffer. When Fran appeared, silent as salvation, in the doorway to take over nursing duties it was a blessing to them both. Ashe, however, could not help feeling something of a failure as she departed the room with the sound of Balthier's gasping, choking coughing in her ears.

She had only just climbed into her own bed, in her draughty, unaired bedchamber, when the children arrived, unable to sleep because they too could hear the sound of their father fighting for air as his lungs ejected blood and black bile from his throat. Despite the fact that it was not proper for a queen to do so, Ashe let her children snuggle up in bed with her and mother and children held each other fitfully until such time as the coughing subsided.

Fran had told her that Balthier had lost years of his life; Balthier himself had told her that he had died in truth already. Ashe now found herself wondering if his 'resurrection' was to be only temporary. Watching him last night she had thought he looked like a man with one foot in his grave.

Once dawns early beauty had faded into days hazy light (and she noticed keenly that the storms and sandstorms that had plagued Dalmasca since the Turning had lessened considerably so that she could see sun through the clouds once more) Ashe dressed and left her children to sleep in her bed, as she hurried up the stairs to the top of the tower keep.

'Porridge?'

She heard Fran's voice, and as the Viera rarely spoke in loud voice, Ashe imagined that Fran must be standing close to the door. She could not hear a response from within before she made her entrance.

Balthier, Ashe was both gratified and startled to see, was out of bed and dressed in a warm fawn coloured velvet jacket with embroidered gold thread fastening the sleeves to the body of the jacket so that a line of white shirt could be seen. He was also clean shaven once more and his hair, though still longer than it had been (beginning to carry the slight curl he hated but that Ashe thought was rather endearing) was clean and carefully combed.

Dressed in his habitual finery and seated in a chair by the unlit fireplace, hands clasped over his chest and feet crossed at his ankles, the only evidence of his illness was the sallow pallor of his skin, the sharpness of his cheekbones and the dark, bruised flesh under his shadowed eyes.

'You're up?' Ashe said as she rocked to an abrupt halt in the doorway.

Balthier managed a faint smirk and quirked eyebrow, understanding well what she meant and where her surprise came from, 'Yes, Highness,' and his voice was raw and cracked, 'I am still not dead yet.'

He held out an arm to her as he turned to address Fran once more, 'Yes, porridge, with hot milk and brown sugar…….and possibly a sprinkling of ground nutmeg if some can be found.'

Fran cocked her head as Ashe came and perched on the chair arm and pressed the back of her hand to Balthier's forehead to check his temperature. 'You have appetite indeed this morn.'

Balthier shrugged cheerfully, 'Being dead for the last half year has left me with new appreciation for such things.'

Fran shook her head indulgently and walked to the door, 'You may have to endure an audience with your meal; there are many questions that only you can answer.' She warned as she opened the door.

Balthier actually managed a wheezing chuckle, 'Ah, Fran, you should know better. I am the leading man; the audience must wait on me. One should never sacrifice suspense for the sake of clarity.'

Fran glanced over her shoulder at him and the two shared one of those silent, complex looks between them. Ashe waited quietly for the wordless communion to pass. After a handful of moments Fran inclined her head with just the faintest ghost of a smile lightening her expression and then walked through the door to fill Balthier's breakfast order.

'Don't forget the nutmeg,' he called after her as the door closed, even though the effort of raising his voice even a little caused him to cough and wince painfully. Once Fran's footsteps had receded down the stairs Balthier turned back to Ashe.

'Well Highness, Fran tells me that we are entertaining some prestigious guests, hmm?'

'They can wait until you are better.' She told him staunchly and was bemused when that statement made him laugh, which in turn exasperated his cough.

He put a hand to his chest and quirked an eyebrow, 'What have I told you about making me laugh, Ashe?'

Ashe tried to make herself more comfortable on the edge of his chair (ordinarily such a perch was merely a precursor to sliding into his lap – but now that did not seem appropriate).

'I do not see why that should be funny; Balthier, Larsa and Al-Cid are determined to hound you with questions. Marana has convinced them that you and you alone, can reverse the Turning and free us from Occuria tyranny.'

Balthier was still smiling lazily, in that way of his that seemed to view all life as some charmingly amusing joke. 'And of course neither man is my most ardent admirer; no doubt they also want to assure themselves I am not a puppet of Venat, hm?'

'Like I said, I do not see why you find this so funny.' She stated archly as Balthier snaked an arm about her and tried to tip her from the edge of the chair arm and into his lap. She resisted and he raised both eyebrows in question.

'How now, Highness, what is the matter with you?'

'Balthier, I,' she pursed her lips, 'You are ill. I do not want to put unnecessary pressure on your……lungs.'

He laughed again and pulled her off the chair arm and into his lap, adjusting her with his usual confidence until she was comfortably ensconced sideways across his lap with her feet curled over the chair arm.

'Highness I am quietly suffocating as it is. I am positive you cannot make me feel worse than I do presently.'

A crafty smirk danced over his face and he looked at her through deliberately comically sultry drooped eyelids, 'Also' he purred, 'if a man's wife is afraid to exert unnecessary pressure on his – lungs' the smile grew all the more amused as he emphasised that word,'for fear of hurting him he is better off dead.'

Ashe could feel her frown deepening until her brows bunched and her lips thinned in anxiety. She grew rigid in his lap, tense and unhappy. 'Balthier it is not funny.'

She whispered unable to say what she was thinking. Unable to admit that she feared that he would never fully recover; that ever more he would find his freedom curtailed by a body that had suffered too many injuries and hardships in thirty-one short years and was now, finally, beginning to fail.

The average life expectancy of man of good health, and reasonable wealth, in Ivalice was sixty-five years. Her uncle Ondore had already defeated that limit but he, she knew, was enjoying a quiet retirement and making ready to depart the mortal coil even now.

Ashe's own father had lived into his seventies and died by violence before his time, but he was the exception and Balthier, unlike Ondore or even her late father, did not, any longer, have good health to support him.

Fran had said he had lost years of life; but she could not say how many remained to him, or what quality of life he had to look forward too.

Ashe stared fixedly out of the narrow window of the room across from her, staring out with hot eyes at the scudding black clouds lined with vibrant sunlight gold. Her heart hammered in her chest and she fought, biting down on her inside cheek until her mouth filled with blood, not to cry.

Balthier raised a hand to stroke her hair back from her cheek and tuck it behind one ear. 'Take a breath, Ashe, and let go.' He whispered in her ear making her jump as she realised that she had almost forgotten he was there.

Let go? She shook her head hard and curled her fists in her lap as his words haunted her. Did he know? Did he know that he was never going to regain his health and his vigour; how could he sound so blithely cheerful if he did?

'What if you don't improve?' she asked refusing to look at him even though she could feel his eyes on her and his other hand began absently massaging the flesh of her thigh.

'Doctor B'Nellin has assured me that, aside from crises or unforeseen complications, I should recover sufficiently well in a few weeks to be mobile and relatively active once more.'

He chuckled dryly, 'Of course I intend to be active and mobile sooner than that. It would not do to start listening to the advice of doctors this late in the game.'

Ashe continued to stare out of the window watching the pillars of moving sunlight burn through the carpet of rainclouds, radiant and golden, against a backdrop of ominous black and grey. High up in the tower all she could see through the window was sky stretching outward forever. It made her feel very small and very lost inside the questionable security of a tower of stone.

'But?' she whispered, hearing the unspoken caveat. 'What else did the doctor tell you?'

Balthier's fingers tapped a lively tattoo across the pale skin of her thigh as he hitched up her skirt (which she wore modestly to her knees now she was a mother). Her skin quivered and dimpled as his fingers danced.

'But,' Balthier sighed, as if he would really rather not say anything at all, 'I shall be exceedingly lucky if I live to see beyond my forty-fifth birthday…..and in all likelihood I will not be a well man by then.'

Ashe launched herself off his lap and the chair. She had paced to the narrow, arched window before she was consciously aware of it. She spun on her heel to face him.

'That is not acceptable.' The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them and she could barely countenance it when he had the temerity to smirk at her, managing to bite back his mirth on the edge of a laugh.

'This is not funny.'

If there had been something to hand that she could hurl at him it would already be airborne, as it was she turned on her heels and gripped the narrow stone window ledge in her hands; the corners of the stone digging into her palms as she sought a handhold against the sudden sense of dizziness that took her.

She heard the laborious sounds as Balthier levered himself carefully out of the chair and walked across the room to her. She wanted to turn and order him back into the chair, afraid that every unnecessary exertion was another week, or month, lost from his already truncated life expectancy.

She wanted to deny his words and clap her hands over her ears and not hear anything more. All she could do, however, was stare out of the window at the shifting bands of sunlight puncturing the clouds and casting drifting pools of light over Nalbina and the Highwaste.

Balthier stepped up behind her and slipped his hands around her waist and she almost shook his hands off her; today he could hold her but what of tomorrow and the day after that? How could he do this to her?

'You promised to outlive me.' She told him staring out of the window and refusing to acknowledge his reflected gaze in the windowpane.

His hands massaged her sides as he stepped in closer, 'Yes, and believe me Highness, I would very much prefer to have a twilight act of balding, toothless senility before me but unfortunately life doesn't work that way.'

'Why are you so calm?' she clutched at his hands and pulled them around her more completely. He chuckled lazily and kissed the side of her neck, nuzzling her hair out of the way.

'Because such trivialities are not worth the effort to be anything else,' Balthier smiled against her skin and his chuckle breathed across her throat, 'Also, Doctor B'Nellin's medicine is an amazing pick-me-up.'

'You would call dying a triviality?' She shivered as he continued to nibble her neck and his hands flexed over the beaded and embroidered bodice of her jacket.

'So would you, Highness, if you have died, or nearly died, as often as I. Why should I worry about dying at forty, or fifty, or even sixty, when less than two days ago I was already dead at thirty-one, hm?'

Ashe watched as far in the distance below her, to the north and towards Nabudis, it began to rain. She could see the clouds bleeding down through the horizon like running ink across a tumultuous solid grey canvas. All Ivalice was grey and purple shadow lined with gold.

'I cannot watch you die. I cannot see you dead in a casket; it will break me to go through that again.'

'Then don't watch.' He told her blithely, 'and for that matter I have no intention of rotting inside a wooden box. I shall be cremated quietly, when the time comes, and that shall be an end of that.'

She tried to shove free of him, furious and desperate to escape this conversation, but Balthier somehow, despite everything, managed to equal and defeat her vehemence with his own, stubborn, implacable strength.

He held her about the waist and leaned in to whisper in her ear in firm voice, 'Close your eyes.'

He squeezed her sides when she initially refused and, more to stop herself from crying than in acquiescence, she snapped her eyelids together to seal away the ugly truth.

'Now,' Balthier breathed into her ear and the broken burr of his rasping breath sounded like purring instead of sickness as he pulled her into him until she was leaning just a little against his chest, 'Let go, Highness. Don't think, don't fret, don't do anything at all, but keep your eyes closed and breathe; understood?'

She savagely tore another chunk of skin from the inside of her mouth and Balthier clucked his tongue disapprovingly, 'And would you stop that? Really, Ashe, a queen should know better.'

He ran his hands up and down her side, palms bumping over the seed pearls and gold net embroidery that covered her creamy white jacket and patterned the pale, rose pink skirt she wore. All Ashe could see was the darkness behind her closed eyelids and the golden backlit branches of capillaries. She took in a hitching breath as Balthier continued to glide his hands up and down her body.

'Feel better yet?' he queried casually as he flipped open the bottom two fastenings of her bodice and ran the pad of the thumb of his left hand around the perimeter of her navel.

Ashe began to open her eyes, and Balthier immediately knew, 'Eyes closed, Highness.' He wrapped out sharply with such command that Ashe did so without a moments thought.

'Now, I have been thinking, in between bouts of agonising pain and vomiting,' he began in chipper tones, the same almost brash cheer she had heard in his voice while he piloted collapsing sky fortresses, 'and I have decided that dynastically you have come away from this marriage much more successful than I.'

The only thing that stopped Ashe opening her eyes was Balthier's right hand covering them and then slipping from her eyes to gently click her jaws shut when she began to speak.

'Now, now, listen to my proposal before you comment, hm?'

His left hand continued to idly pet her belly, fingers just threatening the waistline of her skirt. The flesh of her abdomen jumped and quivered as his deft fingers gambolled over her skin. His voice in her ear was roughened velvet and raw silk. His words swirled in her head like incense, thick and dizzying.

'You have two heirs for two thrones but I have not a one. House Bunansa has not been well-served by its most recent scions; I have come to view my heritage a little more favourably of late and decided that the Bunansa name needs to be redeemed, and, the gods know, I am not the man to do it.'

Ashe jolted from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet as she made sense of what he was alluding too. She tried to whip about to face him, but he held her firm with one arm braced around her stomach and the fingers of the other briefly tangling in her hair, lifting it from the nape of her neck so he could kiss the sensitive skin there.

'You want another child?' her voice rose harshly with her astonishment; surely she had misunderstood him. It was inconceivable he should be thinking such things at a time like this.

'Hm, why not? You're young and I'm dying by degrees; it seems apt.' he replied cheerfully unaware of her stunned reaction.

'Of course,' he continued blithely, 'we can wait until a more opportune time…..perhaps after we come back from the tour of the Tallinak Purveema.'

'Tour of the where?'

Ashe tried once more to face him and once more he wouldn't let her. His left hand pinched her belly teasingly and she jumped as the fingers of his right tickled over the stem of her neck in a virtuoso performance of ambidextrousness.

'Tallinak Purveema; I had been planning something of a family holiday for a while. Alas possession, kidnapping, and a brief spell of drowning, interfered with my plans. Once we have sorted out this Occuria nonsense I think it high time we get away for a while.' He paused and then continued with sardonic humour, 'I'm sure Penelo will be happy to cover for you again in your absence Highness.'

Ashe could feel tears seeping free of her squeezed closed eyelids she sucked in an unsteady breath, 'You have been given but fourteen years to live and you want more children and a holiday; did you leave your commonsense in a crystal somewhere pirate?' she didn't know whether to laugh at him or scream.

Balthier's fingers caught up her tears, tracing the tracks of moisture back up towards her quivering lashes as his fingers caressed her skin; one cheek and then the other.

'Ashe, please, I never had any commonsense to begin with; there never was, and never will be, anything common about me.'

His hand against her belly was firm and solid and warm, tickling over her navel deliciously. Ashe choked back on a wet chuckle, shaking her head.

'Tell me, Ashe,' he whispered, breath warm and sweet against the shell of her ear, 'is this the touch of dead man?' he kissed the side of her throat once again, 'Am I any less than I was for being forty pound the lighter and suffering a cough, hm?'

Her eyes opened and she shook her head again, gnawing on her bottom lip. She turned slowly away from the window and looked up at the lazy, debonair smirk on his face.

She was scared. Looking into his face, already pale and worn with his illness, she did not know how he could smile at all; wasn't he angry? He had been given no more than fourteen years to live at most and time always ran so fast.

Balthier raised an eyebrow, 'Oh come now, Highness,' he began impatiently, 'don't tell me that, once again, you have forgotten my part in this story?'

Ashe blinked and her in-drawn breath was so sharp that she almost choked on it. His part in the story……? She gripped his right hand as he reeled her in against him with the left, fingers splayed across her lower back, slipping up under her loosened jacket. Balthier smiled, eyes dancing with the same bright, cynical cheer he always had when facing impossible odds and unfair circumstances.

'I am the leading man.'

……and the leading man never dies……

'Times winged chariot might be harrying my heels, but I'm not dead yet, nor do I take kindly to anyone dictating to me my allotment of time on Ivalice; I'll drop dead when I'm ready and not a minute sooner.'

Ashe rose up on tip-toe, as his hands rose to cup her face, so she could kiss him. She wound her arms about his neck and she did not feel how thin he had become or the tremor in his muscles as he tried to hide how much it cost him to stay standing. She determinedly did not hear the rattle in his chest as they broke from one another either.

Such things were but temporal and they did not change who and what he was; they never would. Time and tide waited for no man, but, by the gods, they would make time run.

Balthier pulled away from her and looked irritably at the closed door, 'Where is Fran with my porridge? Sick men should not have to go hunting down their own breakfast.'

He glanced sideways to Ashe and inclined his head towards the door with a sigh and slight cough as he returned to his chair by the unlit fireplace and resumed his pose of nonchalant relaxation.

'What odds will you give me that the inquisition waiting downstairs is holding my food hostage hmm?'

'I will go and find out what is keeping Fran.' Ashe said, not wanting to offer odds against his suspicions. Balthier waved a hand to forestall her, a wicked smirk playing over his lips.

'Let them come up, Ashe. I am feeling the need for some sport at the expense of our illustrious allies.' His eyes simmered with dark amusement, 'I have a few choice words to say to her Grace Marana too.'

Ashe hesitated scrutinising him keenly, 'Are you sure?'

Balthier's couerl with cream smirk grew wider, eclipsing the lingering signs of fatigue and illness on his face, 'Oh, yes. There is nothing like a revelation regards the fundamental nature of hume-kind, to start the day off right.'

Ashe could not stop herself from smiling a little wryly as she realised that she should have known better than to assume that his recent misfortunes would affect Balthier in a predictable manner; after all the leading man would not allow death, pain, or a future of ill-health, to impede upon the flawless perfection of his performance.

The leading man might die, but he would never let the spectre of death stop him enjoying life.