Star crossed lovers ought to remain in the books, he'd think callously to himself.
Since the day he'd washed along the banks of the Nebra with Fran, he'd nearly succumbed to his wounds two to three times over. Fran fared far better than he, coming and going from the village hut freely as if she was nothing more than a casual wanderer and not a wounded rebel just washed ashore beside him, while he lay helpless.
Apparently humes had a far more difficult time staying alive.
Fran feigned memory loss to cast a mystery over it all, as even simple village folk found the timing of their status in the Nebra so soon after the Bahamut crashed into the desert and Dalmasca's lost daughter was reunited with her palace in Rabanastre. The village women kept him in an extensive sleep through medicinal herbs down a smoking pipe brought to his lips in a heavenly inhale, a state he took for granted in the moment with frustration at Hashmal's ever existing presence in him dreams.
When he awoke clearly enough to comprehend the extent to which his bones had been broken and how far inward his lungs had collapsed, so that even the simplest of stimulation made him lose breath and clench his teeth in agony, he realized the dreams were less of an annoyance and more of a mercy.
Hashmal served his father before him. In Balthier's bitter frustration, when he felt Hashmal's shadow he also saw the shadow of Dr Cid, and then subsequently cursed whenever poison he was being fed for putting him in this state to begin with.
In part, his sacrifice was an attempt to cleanse himself of Dr. Cid, to go so far to undo the plan that his father had put in motion that he'd actively eliminate himself, and with it Dr. Cid's line and legacy. Long evenings in his father's study at his side and the soft cadence of his father's voice guiding him through equation after equation, the collection of dead funeral flowers left in reminder of his deceased mother's wake, a ceremony he was too young to remember in the first place. None of that mattered. If Dr. Cid had it way, none of it would exist. Ashe was the future her father had wanted for this story, and Balthier was but a wayward son to his father, and before that, insignificant beside the voice of Venat.
The other part of his attempted sacrifice was for her.
The one referred to as queen among the village folk walked through his dreams under Belias' shadow. She always walked upright by day, her shoulders squarely back, far from her hunched shape before the evening fires they would light on the road. Back when there was so much at stake she would exhaust herself speaking to Rasler's ghost, constantly trying to determine what pattern worked best in making him appear. It troubled him at times- a similar mania he'd witnessed in his father.
It was twilight when the flames that defined her crackled and spat, and in their wake she appeared her most vulnerable. He understood that now, fully.
A child bride turned widow in less than a week's time. From there, a sewer rat turned rebellion leader. He loved her for that, as much as he loved her for being ever unattainable. There were no consequences for whatever intimacy that could exist between him and Ashe. She walked palace halls of deep stone that shielded her from the heat of the desert sun and bathed in fragrant oils that made her hair shimmer in the light and skin soft to the touch, but that did not diminish the power she claimed when speaking commands on the throne.
But he remembered her being tired, starving, scared and angry among the peaks surrounding Mt. Bur-Omisace when Archadia invaded and slaughtered refugees like cattle, and the good Judge Magister attempted to strike them down as he had the Gran Kiltias. Balthier had been as angry as she, so he confronted her that evening amid a backdrop of corpses and ash.
"This Dalmasca you dream of avenging, who is it for?" He words bit her, he could tell. She was speechless. He was too angry to care.
When Balthier woke enough to finally able to breathe without misery, he stepped outside into the desert sun, blinked several times and cursed before retreating back into the fold of the hut.
In several days' time he would successfully venture out, would collect stories from villagers about the circumstances in which he was found with his viera companion, and like Fran he would feed them lies in return about not recalling the events which contributed to their battered state. The villagers bought into it, for this was hardly the first time he and Fran collectively decieved the masses. They would in turn grant him words of encouragement that as he healed, his memory would return.
As if he could forget. The violent turbulence, the flames from the fire swallowing them both as Ashe called his name over the coms:
"Balthier!"
Then, silence.
It was then his first dream came, but it wasn't a dream. Not quite. It was before he could experience the sedatives offered to him by the village medicine woman, quite possibly before his body broke the surface of the river. It was Ashe's prayer and memory as much as it was his illusion amidst a rapidly dropping altitude: He saw Ashe at dawn on the Ozmone plain dressed in a nightgown that he knew she would have no way of possessing then, but he knew she possessed in the palace of Rabanastre.
"I dreamed you, Balthier." Ashe turned her head over her shoulder to look at him, her voice cool and level as it was when she really wanted to emphasize her point. That voice she used when she really wanted someone to listen, the way that women in authority had to collect themselves when delivering a message to men "And I dreamed Fran. And Basch. And Vaan and Penelo. Larsa. Vossler."
It was a strange thing seeing her barefoot. But as she turned her body around fully to face him the hem of her nightgown grazed her calves, and the dip of her breastbone was the only shadow in sight.
"And I won't let you make my dreams into a ruin."
Balthier opened his mouth to muster a response, but with the first syllable his vision faded to black with the sensation of falling, until he awoke for the first time after he fell from the Bahamut.
Hashmal and Belias chattered all the time. He could feel it in his bones, the vibrations of what was an undeniable conversation. What could two Espers possibly have to talk about? He asked Fran this very thing irritably, when he was well enough to drink ale by the fire with the villagers in the fishing shed-turned-tavern-at-dusk.
Fran wrinkled her nose and stared the way she did when she found something amusing, though to most unknowing humes her face would appear anything but amused that way. "I imagine if they have much in common, so they have much to say."
She'd said it in a jest, he knew, but there was a simple wisdom in humor that he never left unturned when observing it in others. If certain Espers were drawn to children of certain astrology, then what could Hashmal and Belias have in common?
Both handed from father to child, he thought bitterly.
Ashe was born in the early spring, where in more temperate climates than the place of her birth the ice fully melted, and growing leaves yielded buds that uncurled to reveal an impending bloom. And he was a child of the peak of summer, where the early blooms had decayed and the most robust colors of the year burst from every bit of foliage.
He'd had a number of lovers, but in his single liaison with Ashe there was every bit of passion that he'd always been left wanting, yet felt unwilling to divulge. And yet when she wrapped herself around him, he'd felt he was receiving every bit of every woman he'd ever wanted, and by that happenstance, he wanted to do nothing short of worshipping her.
He was most comfortable wanting an unattainable woman. And yet, this very fact made him miss her all the more.
The resuming of normal trade routes through Rabanastre increased the amount of traders, and with them, the stories they carried. Balthier first heard word of the Cache of Glabados among murmurings of those passing through and before long, he stepped on the uneven sand as a still-wounded man, but one with a newfound purpose: they would locate the Strahl and find this cache.
The ring that had become separated from him in the crash was returned to him by a desert child, a young boy who'd heard he was sky pirate and wanted to show off his newly found treasure.
"I think a found something of value." The child declared as he marched up to Balthier and Fran before the village pyre.
"That is a valuable piece indeed." Balthier murmured in astonishment as he recognized Rasler's ring immediately. He carried it for nearly the entire duration of their journey, initially demanded as payment for his trouble in a sort of bargain with a princess who had previously proven herself every bit as deceitful as he was by her faulty promise of valuable treasure from her ancestor's tomb.
Balthier leaned forward to offer his palm to the proud child, who passed the ring on to him eagerly. He turned it over several times between his fingers that were adorned with their own rings. It was utterly unbelievable, the odds that a child should come upon this ring, scattered in the desert.
"It's mine!" The child attempted to snatch it back, causing Balthier to instinctively close his fingers around it and pull it away, staring down at the child in defiance. The child had undoubtedly noted the look on Balthier's face as he eyed the trinket.
Ashe's trinket.
"What if I told you there's something more valuable than this?" Balthier opened his fingers just enough to let the light of the fire dance off the glimmer of Prince Rasler's fine gold.
It was a curious exchange that caught the attention of curious fishermen, and caused Fran to raise her eyebrow beside him in response. Only she could surmise the irony of it all. A crippled shipless pirate, albeit temporarily bartered with a small child over the ring of mystery, ultimately turning the tide of the child's tenacity to maintain ownership when the Cache of Glabados was brought into question. And with that they struck a deal: the child would relinquish ownership of the ring on the cripple pirate's promise to find him a treasure more valuable in it's place.
The child's mouth fell agape. "I can pick anything?"
Balthier nodded. "Anything."
He no longer partook in the sedatives to ease the pain, as the worst of it had passed. He was now strong enough the bathe in the river like the rest of the villagers did. And all the while he kept the ring close in his protection, much like he'd already done for months. It contained Ashe's ties to her deceased prince, and then, against her best judgement, her ties to Balthier.
Time had passed and Ashe had now resumed her rightful role, and by that no longer had use for any of them, whether she liked it or not. By returning Rasler's trinket to her, he was effectively breaking his ties. What, then? He now had a convenient reason to find Vaan and Penelo and seek the Cache of Glabados. And from there? More trouble would surely follow, as it always did.
There would certainly be a reunion, someday. An open window in the night of the palace in Rabanastre. A chance meeting at a function when he was on the job, intending to pillage the most sacred of treasures from the highest offices in the world.
'Something more valuable- Cache of Glabados.' he wrote to her, their first words since the doomed exchange between the Strahl and the Bahamut.
The meeting did happen, though not in the way he intended. It was a gentle brush of shoulders in the market in Rabanastre. He never laid eyes on her, not directly. Just the simple caress of skin to skin and that posture he could make out at the corner of his eye- a woman of status disguised as a hooded commoner in the market. Her 'companions' were undoubtedly her guard, allowing her the freedom to roam in peace to lift herbs from a basket and hold them under her nose, or to inspect fruit in the palm of her hands to select them from a barrel, but not without security.
His eyes fell to a short sword sheathed at her waist. They stood now side by side, surely she knew it was him.
"Is that a sword under all that? Or are you happy to see me?" He turned to Fran as if speaking to her, but he knew Fran was well aware he wasn't speaking to her at all.
Admittedly, he relished how Ashe stiffened her already measured demeanor. Freezing like a statue turning the glass beads in her under her thumb as if they were suddenly greatly interesting to her.
Ashe wasn't that interested in the beads. Enough of an eternity seemed to pass, so much that there was surely a historical record of this encounter somewhere in the archives of Archades by the time another word was spoken about a chance meeting between a regular man and a common woman in the marketplace, both refusing to face one another out of caution for discretion.
Or, something else.
"There are crude men in the market today. I thought it might be necessary." Ashe replied at last. She was pretending to be speaking to her royal guard disguised beside her, a young lad who looked back at her inquisitively, the only participant present with no context of the exchange happening, or the fact that it was happening in the first place.
Hashmal fluttered excitedly- as relentless as his bounding heart in his chest.
Balthier chuckled. "There are, but madam, they're in the market today just as much a any day; they lurk here and there whether you know them or not."
Ashe maintained her feigned interest in the beads in her hand. The merchant was starting to notice and asked her if she'd be inclined to discuss a price, she declined.
"I know one. But he returned what he owed to me. I'm not sure..." She paused, "Is gratitude a word for the compensation of what had always been yours to begin with? When the terms were at the crude man's discretion?"
It was true, the terms were conjured by him and she, desperate in the moment for a ship, hastily agreed to them.
"I can't say."
She scoffed, dropping the beads back into a bucket, before clapping her hands to rid them from the debris that had collected there. "I should like to hurt him. To pick him apart limb by limb so thoroughly that he should never be reconciled."
Balthier wrinkled his nose. 'It's been done...' He wanted to say, given his state just one year before. But he suppressed the urge. A year of dreams had led to this exchange, and he could never stay sleeping long enough to listen to her as he could now, in the waking world.
"-But I can't because he is gone now." Ashe finished quietly. "What remains is a crude man in a market. I should know better by the cryptic message he wrote me, but I admit this encounter comes as a surprise. I want to commit to nothing short of punishment for such a lengthy and grandiose repose on his part."
"That can be arranged." Balthier replied teasingly.
The guards were getting impatient, meandering about their queen in disguise who had reserved herself in one place for discrete banter with one person. Fran had even resigned herself to wander to a neighboring pavilion of arms, leaving Balthier and Ashe standing together, though still not looking one another straight-forwardly.
"Do not play coy. You know I'm not speaking of pleasure."
Their meeting ended as abruptly as it began- a guard urged her to keep her profile low by moving along in hushed tones, and by her reluctance she vanished from his peripheral altogether.
He smiled to himself, looking down at the bucket of beads she'd just dipped her hand into not so long ago.
The dreams no longer came. Meetings by happenstance were indeed possible with a woman so unattainable, making the dreams unnecessary, for she wasn't so unattainable anymore after such a random meeting of chance. Aboard the Bahamut, Basch had declared that a queen could always escape with the help of a pirate looking to raise his bounty, and Balthier could now wager she'd have her way sooner or later should that be the case.
Hashmal had come unfurled after being relinquished by his father. And be it by Hashmal's blessing or his father's spite, he'd somehow returned from the grave he was more than willing to sentence himself to.
For what? Who was Ashe's Dalmasca for?
'If you are set on running, hadn't you best be off? Fool of a pirate.'
Even now, he couldn't fully decipher what his father meant by his last words. Until, in sometime and someplace, his somewhat attainable princess-turned-queen encountered him again, in a fashion far more deliberate than shoulders brushing in a market, and when his fingertips grazed her fine silks he knew he most certainly above all, a complete fool.
"I dreamed you." She told him, but he was unimpressed, as he'd heard those words before.