There is no greater corruption than beauty or any evil more insidious than a comely face. Beauty makes villains of us all; heedless to all else in pursuit of a false truth.
Penelo was trying really hard not to cry.
Her eyes still hurt from the brilliant coruscating tongues of fire and shards of light in shades of red and orange and luminous greens and violent purples that had chased the Strahl across the sky as the Sun-Cryst ruptured and the Pharos tumbled.
Penelo knew fear. She knew what it was to expect death; she remembered hiding in the cupboard under the stairs of her old home after the Imperial army swarmed Rabanastre.
She remembered sitting knees drawn up under her chin and eyes squeezed shut against the close darkness of the stuffy cupboard, trying not to breathe, and expecting at any moment to be pulled out of her womb-like dark space into the harsh light of day by steel plated men with harsh voices and even harsher intentions.
She remembered that she had screamed like a child, expecting that one sound to be the last she ever uttered, when the cupboard door opened and three people crowded into her hiding place with her; she remembered the hand clapping around her mouth as a small sobbing child was dumped into her lap.
She remembered Vaan's voice, hissing in a hoarse whisper of almost threatening rage, as he told her to shut up because the soldiers were everywhere. She remembered how the fear was both lessened and worsened unbearably when she realised that Vaan, Kytes and Filo were here with her; they would share the same fate, whatever that might be.
Yes, Penelo knew what fear was. The memory of that long night hidden in a cupboard listening to the muffled sounds of screams and sobbing and the thundering rapport of Imperial Hoplite rifle fire still woke her up at night with a scream lodged in her throat.
This was different; Penelo did not pretend to understand all that had happened at the top of the Pharos, but she knew that for all intents and purposes she was safe now. Everyone she cared about had escaped the Pharos (she would mourn Reddas later, when she had the space and time to take stock of all that had been lost and won).
There was no reason (now) for her to feel almost hollow with terror; no reason that her heart should be thundering in the flimsy cage of her chest like a captured Dreamhare hammering at a bone trap.
Two years of living in spite of an occupying army, which was doing its level best to kill her and all the indigenous populace of Dalmasca through a hundred thousand negligent cruelties, and Penelo had learned to live for the moment; you survived or you died that was all.
For all Rabanastrans there was but one unspoken rule since the occupation. If you were lucky enough to live through the day you did not waste your time worrying about tomorrow, or how close you came to dying yesterday; it would break you if you did.
Maybe, Penelo thought, as she stared up at the ceiling of her borrowed room in Reddas Manse, (….or the manse that formerly belonged to Reddas – and here comes the grief, sharp toothed and bright as broken glass), maybe it was the fact that it wasn't her life she feared for, that made it so much worse tonight.
Another scream seared through the distance of rooms and walls and empty air from one side of the Manse to the other and Penelo surged up in bed in fright; heart constricting in her chest.
Fran!
The six of them, all those who had been through so much already and yet were still mostly strangers to each other, had all escaped the destruction of the Pharos and yet none had come away unscathed.
Penelo remembered how monstrously terrifying it had been to see Fran, who was always so calm and serene, retch blood and thrash and scream in the fold out bunk of the Strahl as Mist sickness convulsed her body and her partner, fighting with a failing airship engine and being chased by the backlash of an explosion, seemingly ignored her suffering and left her fate to chance.
Penelo had risked being thrown all over the cabin as the Strahl was buffeted by Mist waves and gods only knew what else, so that she could hold an Elixir bottle to Fran's blood frothed lips and do what she could to relieve the Viera's suffering.
She remembered it all so vividly. Every horror etched in stark relief upon recent memory. She remembered Basch's face as he took arms against his brother. Ashe's cry as she cut through the phantom of Rasler. Dr Cid's laughter as the Esper Ffamrit bombarded them with water imbued magick.
It seemed to Penelo impossible that all that happened hours ago and that they had arrived safely back in Balfonheim at all.
That she had run after Balthier (who somehow could run with Fran convulsing in his arms) along the Saccio lane towards the Manse and watched as Fran's clawed hands left bleeding runnels of torn flesh all up and down the Pirate's arms as she grabbed at him in her pain.
It seemed wrong, perverse, to her that here she was now in her lovely night gown, safe and sound lying in her huge, fluffy bed, listening to Fran screaming in pain and knowing that a man who had been kind to her and opened his home to her and the rest of the party was dead now. Her mind could not comprehend the magnitude of it all.
She had seen and experienced and feared death so long at yet when it came upon her, even now, it still left her shaken to the core. There was no defence against death's ravages and with every passing it felt like she lost something of herself, even as she continued to draw breath.
She did not understand and that scared her more than any fear she had lived with since the occupation.
She had hated, but understood, the Imperial invasion. She had feared the soldiers that trapped her in her own mother country and herded her and her people underground, but she had understood why they did what they did. This, however, all that had happened, was just too much and too strange.
It was all so big and she was just too small, too young, too insignificant, for these events.
Another scream rode the night and Penelo was swinging her feet out of bed to hit the wood floor of her room without conscious thought, and now she was moving swiftly, like a dream, along the corridor of Reddas' Manse and to the chestnut door at the end of the corridor furthest from her own room.
Vaan was loitering, wide eyed and pale faced, outside the door. He simply nodded to her silently when she approached.
'What's happening?'
Her friend shrugged in the lull of agonised cries from beyond the closed doors, 'I don't know. He won't let any of us in there. He made Rikken get him a portable bath and some pails of water and he took pretty much all our potions and Phoenix Downs but won't let us see her.'
A surge of fear tinged annoyance rose in Penelo, 'That's stupid. We could help.'
Vaan rubbed the back of his neck and glanced anxiously at the door, 'That's what Basch said and…..' Vaan trailed off.
She frowned wondering why Vaan, who never heeded any restrictions on his movements, was dithering outside the door when he clearly wanted to be inside and also why Vaan was hesitating to recount a tale to her, 'And what? What happened?'
Vaan shuffled his feet, 'I thought he was going to hit Basch. I mean, there was just this look in his eyes, Pen, really – I don't know – it was kind of frightening, and he just said, really quiet 'I don't need you. Fran does not need you. Leave us be,' and then slammed the door in our faces.'
Penelo found herself trying to imagine such a scene and what each of the players would have done in such an instance; she found that she could imagine it rather easily (she had not forgotten how intense and wound-up Balthier had been in Draklor – he had scared her a little then, too).
Therefore it was a shock to her when she side-stepped Vaan and reached for the door handle. To her surprise the handle turned in her palm (was he really that arrogantly confident that no one would disobey him that he had not even locked the door?) Before Vaan could react Penelo pushed the door open and slipped inside the pirates den.
We are all mirrors; reflective surfaces wherein the expectations of others are all that can be seen of us. It is rare for anyone to see beyond the reflection to the sight within.
Fran was lying on top of the bed and Balthier was carefully laying cool compresses over her bare skin. Penelo noted with horror that Fran's limbs and joints were horribly swollen with a surfeit of fluid due to the Mist poisoning and her breath was rasping.
Fran's eyelids were puffy and swollen shut, her lips were bruised and protruding. In short the Mist had ruined Fran and Penelo instantly suspected that Balthier had refused any one entry so as to protect his partner's dignity.
'I knew someone would be rude enough to intrude, but I did not expect it to be you; I had rather thought the Princess would be the only one bull-headed enough to ignore my express wishes.'
Balthier, leaning forward in a chair drawn up to Fran's bedside, did not turn towards her and his voice was subdued, not angry.
Penelo moved forward swiftly, noting the bowl of water (or more likely luke-warm water mixed with healing draughts) balanced on Balthier's knee and the strips of torn bed sheet he was using as bandages and compresses.
She said nothing as she came to his side, picked up one of the pre-treated damp strips of cloth, and moved to the other side of the bed so that she could begin to wrap Fran's bulbous, painfully red and swollen feet.
Minutes went by and the only sounds were the occasional tearing of cloth as Balthier butchered the bed sheet and the irregular, shallow rasping of Fran's breathing. Penelo worked with patient efficiency loosely draping and binding Fran's limbs in the bandages and compresses to relieve the swollen heat in Fran's beleaguered body.
The large window behind their backs painted the unlit room in shafts of milk-pale moonlight and cast their work in shades of black and white and muddled shades of grey. Out on the ocean a fishing boat rang its bells and the waves sighed with the dull boredom of the ancient, unchanging, surf.
She and Balthier did not speak or acknowledge each other as they both tended to Fran, their only contact came when Balthier handed another strip of cloth to Penelo or she came forward to re-dampen the compresses with liquid from the bowl on his lap.
Presently their labours were completed and Fran was covered nearly head to foot in potion saturated cloth. Penelo was relieved that it seemed that Fran's breathing had evened out a little.
Balthier must have been confident the worst had passed also as he rose from the chair and moved to the chest at the foot of the bed, all without once acknowledging her awkward presence on the other side of Fran's bed.
He plucked out a fresh shirt and disappeared behind the lacquered wood folding screen depicting a scene of the Cerobi Steppes, to exchange his shredded shirt for a fresh one.
Briefly Penelo wondered if Balthier had used some of the healing potions himself upon his arms where Fran had ripped at him, but then supposed it was a foolish and irrelevant thought and let it lie.
Ignored by the only conscious occupant of the room, who was hidden behind the impressive screen, she allowed herself to flop down the side of the bed and dropped her head in her hands. She ached in pain, so much so that her teeth hurt in her jaws and her eyes throbbed. She felt insubstantial and fly away as if at any minute she would simply explode into particles of light much like Dr Cid had done.
The sway of the sea and the quiet rasp of Fran's breathing became a lulling, soothing backbeat as Penelo swayed on the edge of the bed and strained to hear the sounds of Balthier moving behind the screen.
When the man in question popped out of the other side of the screen, in fresh white shirt (albeit a little creased from being folded in a trunk) Penelo rose unsteadily to her feet and turned to face him.
'Your welcome, by the way.'
She told him vaguely as, after giving her one incurious look, Balthier had continued to ignore her walking over to his place in the chair by Fran's bedside. He turned to her and raised one eyebrow, 'I don't recall asking for your assistance.'
Penelo, feeling light headed and strange, the last three days trekking through the Pharos finally catching up with her now that she was no longer running on adrenaline and fright, found herself oddly emboldened, despite his less than gracious response to her presence.
'You didn't, but I won't hold that against you. Fran might be your partner but there are others who care too, taking help from us doesn't mean you can't help Fran alone, only that you don't have to.'
The almost hint of a smirk touched the right side of his mouth as his other brow rose to join the first, 'Pardon me?'
Penelo nodded accepting the apology even though she knew he had not meant to make one, 'I'm sorry for your loss Balthier.'
She knew that she walked on thin ice over a narrow precipice with that simple (honest) sentiment. Dr Cid was an evil man, worse maybe than Vayne Solidor and the Judges that had destroyed so much, but he had still been Balthier's father. No matter what he said there must be some part of him that would mourn his death.
Unsurprisingly (and perhaps to Penelo's relief) Balthier did not reply to her or even acknowledge the statement. He sat hunched shoulders, elbows on knees, and face in palms intently watching the steady rise and fall of Fran's breathing.
Penelo turned her back, disappointment and hurt bubbling under her breastbone (though really she have known not to expect anything at all from him, neither gratitude nor acknowledgement).
She fumbled with the door handle as her vision fractured into specks of light and shadow and the sonorous rush of the waves sounded to her like hissing whispers mocking her.
She pushed on the door when she should have pulled and her fingers slipped off the handle. Cheeks heating with her own stupidity and the acidic burn of staggering fatigue she struggled hopelessly to force open the door and failed.
'….stupid…stupid door….why won't you open?'
She managed to tug the door open only to stub her bare toes as she failed to remember to move out of the way. Behind her she heard the sound of Balthier rising to his feet, perhaps disgusted with her inability to get out of a simple door.
Abruptly, stupidly, she burst into tears. Hating herself even as the first tears descended, because if she was going to cry she would do so in privacy, or maybe with Vaan, she wiped at her face and fought with the door.
It was only when she realised that the door handle was high above her head and not where it should be that it occurred to her that she must have fallen to her knees.
As Penelo was puzzling this out strong arms hefted her up with precious little fanfare and, feeling like a puppet with cut-strings, she found her cheek pressed against a white cotton shirt while her legs wobbled and refused to take her weight.
'For goodness sake; one damsel in distress is all I am prepared to cater for this evening.'
Penelo did not have time to react at all when she suddenly found herself lifted up, like a baby or a particularly unwieldy sack of flour, into his arms. For balance and purchase she wrapped an arm about his neck and looked up at him blankly.
He looked exceedingly annoyed, 'When did you last eat, or sleep, for that matter?' Penelo opened her mouth but he spoke over her, voice sharp with impatient annoyance, 'No, don't bother answering, I can guess.' he sighed.
Balthier did not bother to juggle with her and the door handle, instead he pivoted on his heel and walked her over to the other, unoccupied bed, in the room he and Fran shared through choice.
Penelo was deposited on the bed almost callously, so that she bounced a little as she was dropped down, 'Foolish girl, did no one ever teach you to look to your own welfare before aiding others? You'll be no good to anyone if you drive yourself to an early grave.'
He sounded annoyed and a surge of defensive anger rose in her, 'I wanted to help my friend. I know how to take care of myself. I've been doing it for years.' She snapped.
Looking down on her where she lay upon the bed (his bed) Balthier's face was expressionless and the moonlight brought out the underlying harshness of his sharp features, 'No you haven't. You, my girl, are an altruistic suicide waiting to happen. That you haven't killed yourself fretting over Vaan or anyone else is testament to sheer dumb luck alone.'
Penelo surged forward, anger infusing her with strength, 'That is not true; you don't even know me or anything about me.'
Balthier stepped back and settled into the window seat. He raised one knee, foot braced on the bench and wrapped one arm casually about that leg as he propped his chin upon his knee, 'Don't I now? Well, let's see about that, shall we?'
Penelo couldn't stop herself pressing a little bit into the headboard of the bed as he fixed her with shadowed eyes, the moonlight electrifying the outline of his body and throwing most of the details of his form into shadow.
'What…what do you mean?'
'An artist does not just paint a picture; he studies his subject, learns not just form and movement, but attitude and nature.'
Penelo licked her lips, robbed of the strength to get up off the bed and away, she still wished for flight, 'I don't understand.'
'Hmm, so you say, but I don't believe idiocy is native to your character; though the fact that you let Vaan make your decisions for you does throw that into a certain doubt.'
Penelo gasped, 'I do not…'
Balthier interrupted her, or rather his speech simply rolled over her stifled complaint like a rushing stream over a lone pebble in the riverbed.
'A girl who let's others decide her fate; you cleave to Vaan because you have no one else. You've no real stake in any of this mess but you fight anyway. It seems fair to surmise that, as you are not fundamentally stupid, therefore you are either suicidal or…..'
He allowed his speech to trail off deliberately cruelly aware that she was hanging off his every word, straining to know what he really thought of her after so long assuming that he could not be bothered to notice she existed.
'Or what?' she whispered when the silence dragged on interminably and he showed no sign of relieving her agony.
Balthier smirked with a sly twist of closed lips and uncoiled from the window seat. He rose up to his full height and stretched his arms behind his head as he stifled a yawn, dragging out the moment mercilessly.
'That's the question, isn't it?' he purred as he passed across the end of the bed towards the door, 'What is the truth of Penelo, hmm? Is she the sweet-hearted best friend of a benign idiot or,' he cast her a sharp look over his shoulder as he tugged open the door, 'is there something more, something far more interesting, lurking inside that comely frame of yours?'
He jerked the door open with a flourish and stepped neatly aside as Vaan all but stumbled through the opening, 'Ah, Vaan, make yourself useful and tend to the ladies would you? There is a drink or five calling to me from the Whitecap.'
As Vaan righted his balance and took in the sight of Fran asleep upon one bed and Penelo laid out across the counterpane of the other, with an odd look of suspicious befuddlement upon his face, Balthier slipped through the open door and disappeared.
It didn't matter though because his last words, and the appraising look in his shadowed gaze, had seared her consciousness.
Something more, something far more interesting, lurking inside that comely frame of yours.
As Vaan yammered questions at her Penelo let her eyes droop shut, a warm diffuse excitement inside her; if a man like Balthier could believe, even for a moment, that Penelo, orphan shop girl of occupied Rabanastre, who until eight months ago had spent her days trying to avoid starvation and molestation by Imperial soldiers, could be something more and something greater than her circumstances, then maybe it was true.
For the first time in almost three years, since the Imperial army swept away her life and replaced it with fear and drudgery, Penelo dreamed of tomorrow and the next day……and in those dreams it was not a thing to be feared.
It takes bravery to walk in another's shadow. It is far easier to cast a shadow than to mind its passage; those who walk in shadow are silent in their toil.
Penelo awoke late the next morning and was only marginally surprised to find herself in her own room, still fully clothed, but tucked into her own bed. As she stretched and yawned in greeting of the new day her fist brushed across something white and square and crisp lying on her pillow beside her head.
Turning on her side Penelo unfolded the piece of velum paper and was unsurprised to find another sketch, even though he had promised her he would not draw any more pictures of her without her conscious consent.
Still despite the breaking of his promise Penelo found she did not mind so very much; she'd be a fool indeed to trust the promises of a sky pirate, after all.
When she looked upon the picture of a tired, worn, but still oddly lithe young girl leaning over a bed to gently wrap a Viera's foot in bandage, an expression of quiet authority and competence upon a very young face, it was the words etched into the bottom right hand corner that had the most value:
Kindness Personified……
…..thank you.
Penelo refolded the sheet of paper and pressed it to her heart as she burrowed comfortably under the blankets and returned once more to a happy, contented sleep.
She did not know it but she smiled in her dreams.