The quill and ink are the greatest and most deadly of all weapons; prose is my sword and words form the garrisons of my mighty army.

Penelo suspected that if it was possible to die of embarrassment she would have died at least a dozen times over already. It was almost a disappointment that it seemed that she couldn't die of sheer mortification.

'You want to talk about a painting?'

Balthier sounded disgustingly unconcerned as he casually waved both she and Vaan into the vacant seats at the table opposite him.

'Not just any painting; I want to talk about the one you were doing of Penelo,' Vaan said talking as if he didn't know she was sitting right beside him dying a thousand painful deaths of shame because of him and his big mouth that would not shut up!

'I see,' Balthier purred as Fran returned with a tankard of ale for Balthier and two tall glasses of root-beer for Penelo and Vaan. 'Let me guess, you are here in your capacity as Penelo's stalwart defender, to insist that I cease and desist in my artistic endeavours, hmm?'

'Huh?' Vaan took a moment to think through Balthier's question, 'No. I want you to finish it, y'know, before we go off to the find the Bahamut.'

Penelo wrapped her hands around her cool glass (which was shockingly clean for the Whitecap) and stared into its liquid depths. She wished she could drown in the glass, better yet, she wished Fran had brought her a pint of ale as she had Balthier.

Balthier had paused with his mug halfway to his lips and now he simply stared at Vaan blankly, before carefully setting the metal ale mug down on the table once more, untouched.

'Contrary little ruffian, aren't you? One moment you are in high fervour to beat ten colours out of me and now you are insisting I finish the painting that had you so worked up in the first place?'

Vaan scrunched his face up as he considered whether 'contrary ruffian' was an insult and whether or not to be offended by it. In the end he decided not to worry about it and press on with his point (much to Penelo's chagrin).

'It wasn't the painting, I didn't even know about that then.'

'Hmm, so you decided to attack me on a whim then?'

'No, that's not what I meant...and I didn't attack you exactly...'

Penelo snuck a quick look up from where she had been sipping her drink with the single-minded attention of someone who wants nothing more than to not be present. As she did so she thought she saw the tiniest of smirks dancing over Balthier's closed lips and realised that he was rather skilfully distracting Vaan from his original thought.

Vaan, growing red in the cheeks as he realised he was losing control of the conversation (not that he ever had control) lost patience, 'I saw you with your hands on her...you shouldn't do that!'

Penelo felt her heart squeeze down in terror, no, no, no, but she did not want Balthier to know, or even suspect, anything about what had happened to her. She didn't even know why but the thought that those dark eyes, which had looked at her with something like interest, would now turn to her with pity appalled her.

Balthier's eyebrows quirked up, 'I have no idea of what you refer.'

'I saw you.' Vaan, elbows on the table, leaned forward, not so much intending menace as simply being too worked up to sit still. Penelo resisted the desire to smash her mostly empty glass over his head to make him stop.

Balthier mimicked Vaan posture and leaned forward across the table also, a snakelike smile in residence upon his lips.

'What did you see Vaan, hmm? Really now, what could you possibly have seen in the half second it took for you to jump to all the wrong conclusions?'

'I know what I saw,' Vaan looked like he wanted to back down, but didn't dare. Balthier remained perfectly at ease leaning across the table, watching Vaan unblinkingly. Penelo looked across from the two males to Fran who sat back in her chair stirring a cup of warm hippocras and looked rather bored by the whole mess.

Penelo had to do something to break this stalemate and so she reached across the table and snatched up Balthier's disregarded tankard of ale. Pulling it across the table she raised it to her lips and downed the entire contents in one go.

She blinked as she swallowed down the malty beverage and carefully returned the empty tankard to the table. Three pairs of eyes were now staring at her with differing levels of surprise.

'I'm sorry,' Penelo shrugged awkwardly, 'it's hot in here and I was thirsty.'

Balthier, looking bemused, sat back in his chair and folded his hands casually across his brocaded vest. Vaan looked mildly scandalised (though Penelo didn't know why, she'd been able to drink him under the table since they were both thirteen) and Fran just looked vaguely amused by the whole thing.

For a brief few seconds a little bubble of silence reigned over their table before Balthier roused himself and looked over at Vaan, eyes half-cast and voice disdainfully lazy.

'Alright Vaan, let me put it to you frankly. Portrait painting is a time consuming business, and in case it had escaped your notice, we may be called upon to go to war at any moment. Therefore my time is finite; I can either paint your darling, dear Penelo, or I can attempt the much more arduous task of teaching you how to fly. So which will it be, hmm?'

Penelo looked up sharply from her contemplation of an unusually shaped stain on the stone floor of the Whitecap to glance at Vaan. Her friend looked stricken, caught between the two opposing desires to defend her honour (or whatever he thought he was doing with all this) or his long cherished dream to fly an airship.

'Wha...?'

Vaan, pale and wane, looked down at the sticky table top as if it would tell him what to do.

With Vaan's gaze averted and Fran's as mysterious and impassive as ever, Penelo risked a glance over to Balthier who was watching Vaan with an amused, vaguely smug expression. They all knew what Vaan would choose. There really wasn't even a contest, or shadow of doubt.

'Penelo?' Vaan looked almost beseeching.

She resisted rolling her eyes, the ale swimming about her stomach making her cheeks hot and her mind just a touch unsteady (she had not eaten in hours and the ale in Balfonheim seemed to be of stronger mettle than the stuff her brothers' used to let her drink back home).

'It's fine Vaan.'

She hadn't wanted him to come here tonight in the first place; in fact she dearly wished he'd never accidentally witnessed the whole embarrassing incident with the kiss to begin with.

Balthier, who had watched all this with the patient amusement of someone who had planned to pull this gambit from the start (and she disliked him for using Vaan's fickleness against him while, at the same time, being immensely thankful that he had), now decided to close the deal.

'So what shall it be: art or flight, hmm?'

Vaan nibbled his lip and raised a hand to rub at the back of his neck, 'Umm, well, you could always do the painting once we're finished with Bahamut and Vayne and the rest of the Empire, right?'

Fran shook her head, 'He speaks as if of mere trifles; alack the callowness of youth.'

Balthier chuckled and made to rise from his chair, 'So it's flight you chose, hmm?'

For the first time since this whole conversation had begun Balthier met Penelo's eyes, sardonic smirk in place, 'Indeed you are blessed with a true friend who ever and always puts your cause before his own, my dear.'

Penelo decided that, in her present mood, Balthier should have been very pleased that she decided not to dignify that statement with a response. She watched as he and Fran left the table and the Whitecap.

Vaan turned towards her after they were gone, 'Er, Pen, I...'

Penelo rose to her feet, annoyed, hot, and bothered, and feeling just a little sick from the ale she had gulped down, 'It's fine Vaan, really. Now can we please go? I'm tired.'

It is not courage that I have, when I say that here I make my stand; I am merely weary of the running.

Penelo did not know quite how she did it, but she managed to get through a whole day in both Vaan and Balthier's company without either humiliating herself further or attempting to kill either of them.

The flight practice had been as awful as she imagined and Penelo somewhat suspected that the only thing that had prevented Balthier from flinging Vaan out of the airlock was Fran's gentle chiding.

For her part Penelo tried to concentrate and commit to memory everything Fran had told her about the navigation systems and the diagnostic arrays and the do-hickey-whatnot-thingie-bob... oh, gods it was hopeless, she was not a navigator, a pilot, or a mechanic!

It was not as though it was Penelo's dream to be a sky pirate and she had little interest in airships, but she knew that Vaan would never commit any of it to memory. In fact it was miraculous that he seemed to get the hang of the steering levers so well, but then again, how much thought could it take to pull a stick back and forth and left and right?

Therefore she was not in the best of humours when she returned to the manse (before Vaan who wanted to go and talk to some strange man he had befriended along the wharf...Vaan having the ability to locate and befriend all the native oddities of any given place).

As soon as she stepped in the door and saw Ashe and Basch (with identical expressions of grim resolution on their faces) standing in the foyer, seemingly awaiting her return, her spirits plummeted (much as the Strahl had almost done under Vaan's clumsy control).

'Oh, no.'

Penelo took an involuntary step backwards towards the door, almost subconsciously preparing to flee, and as she did so, stepped on Balthier's foot as she crashed into him as he entered the manse behind her.

'Ugn...do you mind?'

Balthier looked up from his foot to Penelo's pale and stricken face and then to Ashe who had made to step forward when seeing Penelo's distress. Balthier met Ashe's eyes and then Basch's and his expression closed in on itself, 'So our sojourn in Balfonheim comes to an end, does it?'

Fran had slipped in the doorway behind Balthier and Penelo, 'We have heading and course for the Bahamut at last?'

Ashe nodded and bit down on her bottom lip savagely but it was Basch who answered Fran's question, 'Rabanastre; the Marquis Ondore and the Resistance fleet seek to engage Vayne's forces over the skies of the city. It seems like as not that the Bahamut will be there.'

'No...' Not Rabanastre...not another battle in her home. What about Kytes and Migelo and all the people she had left behind? Without she and Vaan there who was to protect the children?

'Hmm, well, there is a symmetry in it all I suppose,' Balthier remarked as the three jaded adults calmly discussed events, unaware or merely ignoring, Penelo's fright. 'Convenient in a way, too, at least we know the way back to Dalmasca.'

'When do we leave?'

Fran asked quietly, stepping closer to Penelo so that the long, gossamer tendrils of her white hair brushed against Penelo's bare arm. Somehow in that one, seemingly impersonal contact, Penelo felt that she was not invisible after all. Someone at least recognised her fear and pain.

Ashe looked from Fran to Penelo and something passed over her expression, 'You, Basch, Balthier and I will leave at dawn. It will take until dawn the next day to reach Rabanastre, which should be just enough time to use the affray as distraction to cross to the Bahamut.'

She glanced at Penelo with pained sympathy in her eyes, 'I do not think it right that Penelo and Vaan should join us, however.'

Penelo looked up in surprise as Ashe stepped up to her and grasped her shoulders, 'You and Vaan have served myself and your kingdom with the bravery and conviction of the greatest of Knights,' she looked back at Basch for his assent and the kindly older man nodded, a gentle smile upon his lips as he looked at Penelo.

'Aye, bravery indeed, more so than one might think for someone as young as you and Vaan,' Basch rumbled in his deep, comforting, faintly paternal, voice.

Ashe nodded and squeezed Penelo's shoulders a little to draw her attention back, 'As your Queen, however, I cannot permit you to risk your lives any further. Therefore I have decreed it that you and Vaan should stay here. Should we be victorious I will send means for you to return to Rabanastre.'

Penelo found herself looking from Ashe's serious eyes to Balthier, who had taken to lounging against the back of the sofa in the foyer and main living room area, with his arms folded across his chest and head bowed as if in thought.

Something about his posture suggested that he did not agree with either Ashe or Basch's decision. Fran came around to join her partner and the pensive little furrow in her brows suggested that she too was not completely happy about leaving Penelo (and Vaan – though he was not here to know about it) alone in Balfonheim while they went off to fight for the place that was Penelo and Vaan's home.

'No.'

Penelo was surprised by how calm and steady her voice was, 'Ashe I know that you are our Queen, or at least should be, and I know that you and Basch just want to protect us, but the fact is, it isn't your choice to make. If Vaan and me were old enough to fight with you on Mount Bur-Omisace, and Giruvegan, and in Draklor, then we're good enough to go the whole way.'

Ashe opened her mouth to argue but Fran spoke up, 'She speaks truth; do not deny her passage because of that which she cannot change. Age is but a number and death will find her wherever she be, should it be the will of the fates.'

Ashe turned to Fran, both angry and appalled, 'I could not live with myself should I prove responsible for either she or Vaan's death.'

Fran shrugged, 'Unless you raise your sword against them you will not be; Penelo's choice is her own and the consequence will be as well.'

Basch shifted, 'Aye, well enough, but it is the duty of those older than they to ensure they live to see those consequences out. To allow them to walk into odds unknown...'

Balthier shifted from his lounging repose, 'I am not overly fond of the idea of walking into almost certain death, either, Captain, and I am younger than you,' Balthier smirked ironically tugging at his cuffs, 'Are you going to prevent me from fighting as well?'

Basch looked sour and Penelo had to resist a grin of pure triumph as she realised that Basch would struggle to argue his way around that using his previous point. She was therefore in the position of finding herself grateful to Balthier for his intersession (Fran also, but she did not mind that half as much as she minded feeling indebted to Balthier).

The irony was that Penelo had no desire to fight, or die. She did not want to go with the others out of pride or a desire for revenge, it was simply that she had come this far and ultimately, all she wanted, one way or the other, was to go home.

Balthier walked casually past Penelo on his way back out of the manse, Fran following in his wake. He paused as he stepped through the threshold of the doorway and looked steadily back at Penelo.

'I think our two little street urchins have earned the right to throw their lives away in a pointless, heroic manner, if that is their wish.'

He smiled sharply, for Penelo's eyes only, 'In any effect I have just spent hours of my valuable time teaching them the rudiments of flight. Should anything befall Fran or I you will need these two to escape Bahamut.'

Then, with that as his parting shot, Balthier (and Fran) departed, presumably to make ready the Strahl and prepare for their dawn flight. Penelo watched the two sky pirates go and wondered, had they done her a favour by taking her side, or simply allowed her to condemn herself?

We are our appetites and not our philosophies; we devour each other with every glance.

Dawn was five hours away and Penelo felt as if she could not stand it anymore. Once Vaan had returned and had his own occasion to bemoan the mere suggestion that he and Penelo would be left behind (finally putting to rest any notion Ashe or Basch might have had of sparing either of them the horrors of the upcoming battle) the evening had come in with the tide on a wave of strange, unsettled, anticipation.

For Penelo, Vaan, Basch and Ashe there was little to do but eat, make stilted conversation about trivialities and retire to bed early. More than once as Penelo choked down her evening meal (which was lovely but she had no appetite) she had found herself envious of Balthier and Fran, who had at least the Strahl and their flight preparations to take their minds off things.

It was the dead of night now, and crouched in a corner of her borrowed room, in her loaned white nightgown, staring at the pale ghost silhouette of the easel across the room from her, Penelo felt as if she was drowning.

She was suffocating on her fear, which crawled under her skin like a hundred thousand millipedes. She imagined that she could feel their many, many legs pitter-pattering over her exposed nerves and flesh, driving her quietly insane.

It would take a whole day to fly from Balfonheim, halfway across the known face of Ivalice, to Dalmasca and after that...after that...

After that she could be dead; not just her but Vaan as well. In less than two days she could be dead.

Penelo was just barely seventeen; she had turned seventeen during her journey with Ashe, but had not felt it appropriate to mention it to anyone (though Vaan had picked her a Posey of wild flowers to mark the occasion). She could not imagine what it would be like to no longer exist.

What if there was no afterlife, or what if there was? How could she face all her family and tell them that she had failed and died as well; the last of their family line, with her every trace of her family would be wiped clean from Ivalice forever.

What if, were she to reach the afterlife, she discovered that her family were not there to welcome her, what then? Or what if she and Vaan became separated after death and she found herself all alone for eternity? Was it a terrible thing to hope that should she die, that Vaan would be there with her? It must be monstrous to hope that he too would die and follow her into the next life.

The lights from fishing schooners out on the flat, steady, gray roll of the ocean beyond her window cast bright white shards of light over her walls. Those bars of light and shadow seemed a prison to her eyes.

Everything that was, was bearing down on her, crushing her from overhead like an avalanche; she could not breathe and the night sounds seemed to fade in and out of focus. The ocean waves were alternately a hissing roar and then too faint to hear above the pounding of the blood in her ears. The shadows and muted greys painting her room in sombre mourning tones seemed harsh to her eyes.

Penelo did not know why she was so scared now; she had feared that she might die during this strange quest many times before. Was it because, even if they won, it would all soon come to an end?

Could she really be so fickle, so confused, that she was as terrified of what victory would bring, and all its uncertainties with it, as she was of defeat?

Penelo curled herself up into a little, sweaty ball of misery and rocked back and forth, arms tight about her drawn up knees, trying to breathe through her nose with her lips tight shut, lest she end up screaming and screaming until she died of lack of air.

The faintest whisper of footsteps outside her door jarred her from her solitary collapse into panic and madness and Penelo lurched, ungainly, to her feet and ran to her door.

She wrenched open her door in time to see Balthier's head disappear down the stairs, where the staircase curved at an angle from her doorway. He did not appear to notice her standing panting in panic in the threshold of her room.

Without thinking, without pausing even to put on proper clothes and shoes, she ran after him.

He was already out of the manse when she reached the bottom of the stairs and she heedlessly threw open the front door and chased his jaunty, confident moon darkened silhouette through the glass littered cobbled streets of Balfonheim Port in her bare feet.

He stopped abruptly, having detected that he was followed some time ago, just before the looming grey ghost of the Aerodrome. Penelo however did not even so much as slow down and instead she all but launched herself, sobbing almost uncontrollably, into his arms.

'Ugn...what in the...?'

Whatever curse or exclamation of surprise he had planned to make was crushed out of him as Penelo locked her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his velvet and leather vest hard enough that she felt that she would either find herself walking through him, or she would break every bone in her face.

'Penelo? Good gods, girl, what are you doing running about at night in your nightwear...and, sweet gods, you are bare foot.'

Balthier sounded more alarmed and surprised by this than he had almost anything else that had happened to them all throughout this venture and it was enough to force Penelo to look up at him, 'I c-can't...I...I...'

Words failed her as she struggled to breathe and regain her composure. Balthier, looking down on her from his lofty height, frowned and glanced about him at the walls of packing crates and trails of abandoned rope that created the backdrop to their scene of woe; he began to tap his foot in agitation.

'I suppose you had best come in with me, can't have you being abducted by ne'er-do-well's right before we all charge off to our noble suicide, eh?'

Penelo flinched violently at the off-colour jest, 'Don't!...Just...don't even joke about it.'

She snapped more harshly and with far more vehemence than she had meant. Immediately she withdrew from Balthier and slapped a hand across her mouth. All around her the shadows took on sinister aspect and the dullness of the grey pre-dawn night seemed black as pitch and impenetrable.

Balthier, who had been watching her darting eyes and shivering, nightgown swathed frame, quirked an eyebrow, 'Ah, I see. Having a little communion with your own mortality, are you dearest?'

'W-what?'

'Oh, it's perfectly natural,' Balthier continued as he turned and strolled off towards a side door leading directly into the Aerodrome hangars and by-passing the public foyer.

'And this is the witching hour, after all. The time of suicides and awkward questions we can no longer keep at bay. It is only fitting that a girl going off to war, and most probable death, should be a little skittish.'

His voice floated back to her along with his long shadow as he led the way through the eerily deserted aerodrome hangar. The grated metal flooring dug into her feet and she tip-toed after him and the hulking shadows of sleeping airships loomed up from the fuzzy mists of grey obscurity like lurking behemoths of metal.

'Balthier,' she piped up as she saw that he made for the Strahl, which somehow did not look nearly as frightening as the other airships in the dark, 'Balthier...if I die...if I die then no one will ever remember my mother and father, or all my brothers. It will be as if they never existed.'

As he lowered the boarding ramp of the Strahl (which fell with an almost soundless whisper of greeting) Balthier turned back to her with an odd expression on his face, 'and that is what concerns you, not that you should die, when you have yet to live, but that you will no longer stand as a living tomb for dead men?'

Penelo stopped dead in her tracks to hear the harshness in his tone and the breath left her body all at once. Balthier advanced on her and gripped her shoulders tightly. A thrill of something hot and liquid ran through her entire body at the unsolicited and unexpected touch.

'Listen closely now, my girl, for I'll not say this again: life is for the living and the dead are as dust under foot; nothing. If all you live for is to be a fleshly sepulchre for dead peasantry then you are better off joining them in the grave.'

Penelo did not think he could have hurt her more if he had slapped her and kicked her to the floor. She tore free of his grip and it felt as if her chest would cave in from the shock that passed through her in an audible gasp.

'How can you be so monstrous; do you care about nothing? Is nothing sacred to you?'

She did not realise she had shouted until the echoes rebounded off the roof of the hangar and the metal sides of the Strahl to slap her coldly in the face. Balthier simply watched her, face saturnine and remote. He seemed as alien and unfeeling as the vehicles of metal all about them.

What had possessed her to chase after him; how could she have thought that she would find comfort or compassion from a man who had carved out his heart and soul and sold it for a pair of wings?

'Hyram and Vassili, those were their names,' Balthier's cool voice floated through the still, faintly oily air of the hangar.

'Whose names?' she whispered the sudden inexplicable statement throwing her off kilter.

'My elder brothers; Hyram and Vassili of the family Bunansa,' Balthier's lip curled slightly upon uttering his own last name.

'I didn't know you had brothers.' She whispered.

Balthier smiled humourlessly and she thought she saw the glint of teeth in the moonlight, as savage as a Silver Lobo's snarl.

'I don't, that is the point. They both died long before my birth but that did not stop my father comparing his dead infants to his living son...and less than favourably I might add. I don't say these things to you to be hurtful; I merely know what it is to feel like nothing more than the one that lived.'

Despite the shadow and the darkness, despite the veil of grey that stifled every living colour, Penelo saw Balthier's eyes as he looked upon her. She swallowed, 'The one that lived?'

'They call it survivor guilt, those that make a living prescribing the illness and infirmity of the mind. It is common enough. Those who survive when those dearest to them do not tend to feel as though they must in some way justify that continued existence, or pay penance for it.'

Penelo took one step forward towards Balthier and then another and another after that, until she was before him. She tilted her chin to look up at him standing barely a hairbreadth from touching. He looked down on her and an almost gentle smile curved his lips at the corners.

'It is ironic, isn't it? You and I are nothing alike in experience or temperament and yet, it seems that some of the same ghosts haunt me as do you.'

Deftly Balthier lifted her chin a little higher with one long finger, looking down into her eyes all the while, 'When I was your age, or there about, I almost destroyed myself trying to be what I thought I must be for a father I felt I had let down from the very cradle.'

He paused and the silence was created through the mingling of their breath. Penelo almost unconsciously rose up on her tip-toes, the tumult inside her calmed by the soothing waves of his voice as he told her something he had told perhaps only Fran before, and maybe not even she.

Balthier cupped her chin in his palm and Penelo had the strangest desire to rub her cheek against his hand, almost as she had seen Couerl's scent mark the long grass. She wanted to feel those gun calloused, artist's hands against her skin and savour the sensation. Instead, because she was still somewhat afraid, she closed her eyes and let herself be borne aloft on the current of his confession.

'Soon enough I had but one choice, run away from everything, or take a knife to my throat and be done with the charade.'

Her eyes snapped open in shock and she stared at him aghast. Had he admitted what she thought he had? Balthier smiled dryly at her reaction, 'Hmm, yes, the truth is a sorry thing, don't you think; hardly ever glamorous and usually rather sad.'

'I'm sorry,' she told him, and she was.

She had lost two glorious parents and the best brothers in all Ivalice, but she had at least the comfort of knowing that wherever her family's spirits resided they loved her and had loved her in life. Balthier did not even have that, worse, he almost certainly had proof that his father hadn't cared over much for him at all.

Balthier surprised her by letting go and stepping back with a light chuckle, 'You have nothing to be sorry for, and I did not tell you such hoping for sympathy. I merely wanted to prove a point.' He looked at her sharply, 'Fear is fine, it is probably sensible as it will keep you sharp, but remember what you live for Penelo, or you are no better than a shade.'

Penelo watched him turn his back on her with the memory of his hand still hot against her skin. What I live for? But she did not really live for anything. She had no purpose, no calling, no reason to still be living...but then, did she need one? Was it not enough that Penelo breathed and Penelo lived and she laughed and cried and danced on occasion? Was that what Balthier was trying to tell her?

He had decided to live for his own reasons, going so far as to become someone else to do so; maybe it was time Penelo lived too?

She did not know and her head was spinning with questions, so she did something that was becoming worryingly close to habit. She hurried after Balthier as he was moving towards the Strahl's ramp and hooked her fingers into the bindings at the back of his vest.

This time when she jumped up on tip-toe to kiss him she knew what she was doing (though the reason why still eluded her). The difference this time, however, was that Balthier did not push her away.