We are born with nothing but our need and as we grow, despite all that we learn, we remain merely mewling infants at heart; we want, we need, we hunger and we die. One wonders what the point is.
Balthier did not like sleep. In and of itself this was hardly revelatory. In fact the casual observer might question why such information was even worth the telling. Balthier would be happy to let the matter lie at that. Introspection was also hardly a favoured pastime of his.
Nor was insomnia; alas he didn't get much choice in that.
It was the dreams, you see, or rather one dream, over and over again that festered under his closed eyelids and burrowed into his brain so that he looked for a crux at the bottom of the bottle when forty hours straight without so much as a wink of sleep left the leading man resembling something of a neurotic zombie.
Fran had 'suggested', more than once, with raised eyebrow and slightly pursed lips when she finally despaired of his dazed and sunken eyes, and his tendency to forget what he was trying to say somewhere mid-sentence at the highpoint of his insomnia, that he might wish to seek the aid of some manner of physician.
It was usually at this point that, surviving on some form of hereditary masochistic lunacy and sheer bloody-mindedness, he hit upon the notion of doing something unspeakably insane, for example, trying to safely pilot a burning, malfunctioning sky fortress on a collision course with a desert city he had just wasted nine months of his life trying to liberate (though for the life of him he still doesn't know why: he loathes the bloody place).
Sometimes, on the moments when he is not maintaining his wits over a chasm of petty neurosis and just barely controlled bad habits (Fran berated him, albeit in dry ironic tone, that the drink would pickle him alive. He usually smirked and replied that death by the bottle was still preferable to death by the noose), Balthier wondered if it was worth the effort he expended, this elaborate performance of the leading man.
Then again, considering the success he's enjoyed while battling his various hidden neurosis, he could probably take over all Ivalice with one afternoons work after a few nights decent rest.
No matter, back to the dream, that bloody dream. He might feel more at ease with himself if he could claim it was a particularly harrowing and traumatic nightmare woven from the very threads of despair itself; that would be suitably dramatic for the leading man.
Dreaming of being awake was neither dramatic, harrowing, or even bloody sensible and thus Balthier was not only trapped by a dream of consciousness that never let him rest and a mind that remained active even in the depths of his sub-conscious, grinding the gist of life's experiences to powder when he really, really wanted to be thinking of nothing, but he was embarrassed by the fact.
It was monstrous and exhausting to the soul to never, ever, be able to escape into the sweet oblivion of nothingness. He was always thinking, even when he could not remember what about and his body was always drawn taut and ready even when his muscles ached and throbbed with a need to relax, to let go and rest.
As his eyelids flickered closed and his eyes darted about inside his skull, when his body feigned the lie of slumber, his mind saw itself as awake, relieving yesterday or formulating tomorrow's plans. Balthier hated it and so he was always, always, tired.
Of course he'd die before conceding weakness to his audience; only Fran knew what a pitiable mess the man behind the brocade vest and crisp white shirt truly was, and she had, for reasons best known to herself (and sometimes he thought her madder even than he was), decided to make it her task to help him keep the pieces of his façade together and the performance of the leading man alive.
Recent history had not made Balthier's ill-fated life any easier. Oh, the mess with the Princess and the Bahamut was a lark, and allowed him to settle a few long standing scores (and no one managed a good nights sleep in all the months they travelled together –so his long experience of surviving sleep deprivation proved advantageous to him) but afterward the fates had had their jests with him again.
He still did not know what that false Glabados trinket was, that had, according the Fran, conspired to make him disappear for a handful of hours. To Balthier, however, it had been months. Months in a time not his own where the future was not the bright place of Hume advancement he might have hoped. Instead he had travelled, through magick or merely the tricks of the mind, to a strange and distantly familiar place where Humes still fought the same old wars, but with different names, and everything that he himself had once bled and battled for was long forgotten or rendered obsolete.
In that place that might never be, and might well be tomorrow's offspring, they did not even fly airships anymore; all in all dream, delusion, or ghost of reality yet to come, the whole experience had been very much a kick in the teeth to Balthier.
Thus, back in his own time and place, he was now carrying on his back the weight of near constant insomnia and the memories of a future that might be only a figment of rampaging psychosis…….
…….oh, and bloody Penelo wouldn't leave him alone!
Thus when he finally broke down and asked Fran to mix him the concoction of Hi-potion, remedy, Bacchus Wine (yes, that addition had surprised him too) and a pinch of sleeping weed, which in full dose could fell a Behemoth from twenty paces away, because he was utterly exhausted and bored of feeling punch drunk all the time, he had anticipated a peaceful night of sipping Fran's dangerous insomnia cure and watching the moon wax and wane on the observation deck of Vaan's airship.
He had not expected to be disturbed by another living soul. Honestly, he should have bloody known better and escaping from Penelo with his wits intact and his libido chained behind an effort of will that left even more exhausted than he began, Balthier had retreated, with all expected dignity and suave assurance, to his cabin and locked the door firmly behind him.
It should have been enough. In a fair world it would have been, but for too long Balthier had been the gods' plaything and the joke, it seemed, was once again on him.
Sleep is the universal equaliser; we are all as one in slumbers embrace. A pity it is that we cannot share each others dreams, then perhaps, there would be no war, no hate, and no need to deceive.
Penelo was not sure what had possessed her to do this; it made no sense and was a gross invasion of privacy. Still, even as all these objections went through her own head, crouched as she was before the locked door of the cabin Balthier had declared his for the duration of his stay, it did not stop Penelo was twisting the pick in the lock.
It was a little known family shame that Penelo's second eldest brother had been something of a professional thief and scally-wag before he was strung up by the Imperial soldiers, a month into the occupation, for daring to steal from an Archadian supply store. For very good reasons Penelo had never told anyone, especially Vaan, that Annikil had taught her how to pick locks.
Thus it was seconds later that Penelo breached the threshold of the cabin doorway and tentatively, silently, shut the door behind her. The room was in darkness and the only sound was the deep, rhythmic rise and fall of Balthier's breathing.
Penelo stood in the centre of that dark room, unable to see anything except the spots of grey and white and black that made up the thick wall of darkness before her. She took a moment as she acclimatised to her new surroundings to work on controlling her own breathing and the tripping of her heart in her chest.
Over and over again one question kept rolling back and forth in her mind like a single Gil coin in an otherwise empty purse: what was she doing here, in Balthier's room, in the middle of the night?
Another voice in her head, not very like Penelo at all, for it was both snide and disdaining, pointed out to her in withering disparagement that there was only one reason a girl would sneak into a renowned womaniser's cabin in the silence of the night.
Slowly the dancing dots of shadow began to converge and coalesce into recognisable shapes, dim and ill-defined in the heavy, warm blackness that closed in on Penelo pungent with the unfamiliar scents of an intimacy she had not been invited to share.
Narrowing her eyes she could pick out a collection of hooks on the wall where Balthier had hung his Arcturus rifle within arms reach of the bed. She also saw the pale grey ghost of his white shirt, dulled by the lack of light but still brighter than almost anything else in the room, hanging from another hook.
The cabin had the vestiges of the scent she had come to associate with Balthier; gun smoke, ink, and the comfortable tang of leather, as well as something sweet and heady, not cologne or perfume, but an aroma that was familiar, and seemed almost edible, that rose from his skin.
Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to put it off any longer Penelo let her gaze fall upon the form wrapped up in the bed sheets lying on the bed. She bit the inside of her lip hard as her eyes feasted with voyeuristic glee.
He plays with you still, does he? Fran had said when she found Penelo still fighting tears on the roof top of the airship some fifteen minutes after Balthier's departure, Or perhaps he acts in your interests? Perhaps he fights his own nature for the betterment of yours?
Penelo, unsure what to make of that enigmatic statement, simply wiped her nose on her arm and told Fran the truth, or at least that fraction of the truth that made sense to her, I just want to be his friend, Fran. I don't know why he keeps…..she had hesitated cheeks pinking despite the cold as she thought about exactly what Balthier kept doing to her and then stopping abruptly most cruelly, just when she felt ready to melt with pleasure.
The look in Fran's ageless eyes said she was well aware of what was happening, and probably understood it better than Penelo herself. Still the Viera had more tact than to address it directly and instead to a more circuitous route around the issue.
His sleep is oft times troubled; his mind always roving never resting. On occasion when his agitation too much becomes, he drinks of a draught I give him. If you would pursue where even he wards you off, then tonight with sleep heavy on him, you might gain what you believe you want.
Before Penelo could formulate and verbalise the first question, of which she had many, Fran had turned to leave but paused after a step or two and fixed Penelo with keen, inhume eyes that held a faint, dry humour, And I had thought the most danger lay with the Princess, but it is the pauper that troubles the appetites and conscience of the pirate, after all.
Then Fran had departed and her inexplicable words, part warning, part acceptance, and part censure, died on the chill night breeze. Penelo, alone once more with much to think on, found herself wondering what was it that she really wanted from Balthier: friendship, honesty, or merely a delivery on the promise in those bedroom eyes?
Flushing at the audacity of her thoughts and the memory of her strange conversation with Fran, Penelo blinked her eyes in the present and looked down on the vulnerable, sleeping, pirate before her.
He was laying face first against the white pillows, one hand shoved under the three thick mound of down filled pillows and the other reaching up over his head as if he had just tackled the pillows and was still in the process of restraining them.
It came as a shock to Penelo to realise that this was the first time she had ever seen his bared arms.
Even during their trek through the wide open spaces of Ivalice, when they had all camped under the stars, Balthier was always one of the last to bed down and the first to rise and she had never seen him in any state of dress except buttoned and fastened from ankle to neck.
Almost without consciously deciding to do so she had breached the confines of the room and now hovered above him as he slept.
Her right hand moved of its own accord and hovered, like a white ghost, over the small expanse of his strong shoulders and back that was revealed before the blankets swallowed him up. It was not chill in this cabin and Penelo wondered why he had so many blankets pulled up to mid chest.
Even as she was pondering why a man who was so extravagant in most things should be so shy of his body, and her hand hovered an inch above that warm flesh, Balthier seemed to hiss between his teeth in annoyance and rolled over abruptly.
Penelo gulping in shock, jumped back, snatching her hands to her, and clasped them together tightly, as she almost crashed into the far wall of the not very large cabin in her haste to get away.
Gods, please don't let him wake and find her here!
The gods must have been smiling on her, or perhaps merely frowning on Balthier, because although he rolled over onto his back with a half-formed murmur of complaint, fidgeted for a moment, and flung one arm up over his head across the pillow, he did not waken.
After counting out a handful of heartbeats and waiting for his breathing to even out once more, Penelo crept closer again.
She still didn't know what she hoped to achieve by invading Balthier's privacy like this and watching him sleep (though that was strangely fascinating – it had seemed on their journey a year ago as if the pirate had somehow learned how to survive without needing to rest).
Still, as she tip-toed over to him once more and could now see his face without its habitual cynical mask, she found herself thinking that he looked tired, which was funny as he was sleeping while she thought it but also that he looked……unhappy.
Almost immediately Penelo tried to reject the notion. He was a sky pirate, a man who a queen and an emperor owed a favour too, and all Ivalice was quite literally his for the taking. Still, for all that, Penelo found that she could not really pin-point a time he had ever seemed truly happy to her except, maybe, when he had stood before his easel and teased her while she curled upon the windowsill of her borrowed room in Reddas' manse, caught in a gorgeous apoplexy of acute embarrassment and pleasure, to be his chosen model.
Balthier moved again, brow creasing in a familiar scowl as he shifted on his side as if to face her and snatched roughly at his pillow with questing fingers. His wide expressive mouth, usually tightly under his control and contorted into a mocking smirk, was now soft and relaxed and his full bottom lip formed an entirely unintentional pout that, to Penelo, made him look utterly adorable, and akin to a sulky sleeping child.
Smiling to herself for no discernable reason Penelo's fingers reached out and she brushed just her fingertips over the veldt of soft brown hair cover his forearm.
His arms were corded with muscle as she might expect from a man who made a habit of hefting a three foot long rifle in one hand and could pick up Vaan and run with him over his shoulder as if her friend weighed no more than a sack of flour (Vaan was still easily embarrassed by that event, which, although she had not witnessed it in person, Penelo still delighted in hearing about).
Feeling strangely emboldened by Balthier's obliviousness, and also considering it just revenge for earlier that night when he had touched her conscious body with much more wanton ease than she dared do to him even while he knew nothing of it, Penelo let her fingers walk up his forearm from wrist to shoulder.
His skin was as pale and fine-grained as she had imagined from someone who wore a leather vest and full sleeves in all weathers, and there was something deliciously empowering about being able to play her fingertips over his body while he was so pliable, peaceful, and still, underneath her hands.
She found herself wondering what it would feel like to be in the circle of those arms, drifting to sleep with her cheek against his heartbeat and as her stomach performed dangerous acrobatic tricks inside her at the notion, Penelo found Fran's voice haunting her thoughts once more.
Tonight with sleep heavy on him, you might gain what you believe you want.
Balthier's breathing did not alter in its steady, deep pace, and the almost violent flicker of his closed eyelids and the bunching of his brows had nothing at all to do with her, she was sure, as her hand ghosted down his flank which tapered down into a narrow waist. His skin was delectably warm and pliant as Penelo let her fingers climb back up from his waist to his shoulder.
Curiosity over took her completely when Penelo's fingers brushed the first of a number of cross-hatching, dribbling, broken lines of scar tissue that petered down his shoulders and covered his back in a latticework of thin, vicious marring wounds.
Penelo, a healer of some skill, knew something of injuries and found her mood dipping from excited mischief to a certain trepidation when she realised that not only were these scars all the result of a multi-braided whip, but that there were layers upon layers of whip scars covering more whip scars from multiple, separate, lashes.
The healer in her overtook the voyeur, though in truth a casual observer may not have noticed the difference initially, as Penelo rolled Balthier onto his stomach and pulled down the blankets to his hips so she could see if the scars really crawled all the way down his back.
They did, and Penelo bit the inside of her lip in sympathy for the pain these old wounds must have caused him when fresh, especially as no one had been there to heal them and stop the scars forming in the first place.
It was ironic therefore that Balthier chose that very moment to emerge from the depths of deep sleep.
That very moment when Penelo was least ready to face him (not that she ever was ready to brave that rapier wit – despite her boldness in breaking into his cabin while he slept) or defend her presence in his room, caught leaning over him while he slept deeply and completely unaware of her presence.
Had she been a different sort of person, or been more quick witted, she might have hit him with a Sleep incantation right then and saved herself the mortification of an explanation.
As it happened, not having either the wits or the cowardice to do that, Balthier swam up from drugged sleep with Penelo's breath tickling the nape of his neck and her hands, faintly glowing with a healing light summoned by sympathy alone, spread across his bare back; he stirred and his eyelids struggled to open half-mast.
Heart going into painful palpitations in the flimsy cage of her ribcage Penelo was trapped between the paradoxical and nonsensical desire to either burst into tears or collapse into giggles as Balthier blinked owlishly at her and cleared his throat before murmuring in a voice thick and languid with sleep.
'Can I help you with something, darling?'