Chapter Thirty: A brief respite; the importance of good grooming

Fran awoke before the dawn. Most of the Garif were still sleeping as were Penelo and Ashe when Fran left the hut they had been sleeping in.

' Ah, another day another ride.'

Fran's sensitive hearing caught the sound floating on the cool, damp pre-dawn air, she followed the sound until she saw him, standing with his back to her, facing the pen that held Gurdy's Chocobos.

Balthier appeared to be conducting a one sided conversation with the Chocobo he and the Princess had ridden the day before.

' And you are going to go faster today, aren't you?'

Balthier hissed at the Chocobo who looked at him with the dull witted placidity of all beasts of burden.

' Because, if you don't, you might find yourself making some deserving Rabanastran a very fine duvet.'

'Balthier some might consider talking to a bird who does not talk back a sign of madness.'

Fran came up behind him. Balthier, much like Fran, tended to rise with the dawn so she was not terribly surprised to see him up and dressed.

Though on closer inspection Fran reconsidered her previous assessment; it did not seem to her that Balthier had dressed for the new day as it appeared he had slept in his clothes.

Balthier did not turn around to face her but Fran could hear his smile ' And good morning to you too, Fran. Sleep well?'

Fran came abreast with him, reaching out to stroke the Chocobo Balthier had been berating on the head. The creature cooed pleasingly and Balthier snorted irritably.

' My sleep afforded me more rest than your own I would guess.' Fran murmured dryly casting a critical eye over Balthier.

' How right you are, Fran. Please tell me we shall be riding together today, this stupid bird has it in for me, I'm sure.'

Balthier turned his head towards her but quicker than thought Fran cupped and lifted his chin turning his head first left then right, looking down on him critically.

He was unshaven and shadows blackened his eyes. She questioned whether he had slept at all the previous night.

Balthier did not question her grip on his chin merely met her eyes and waited. His skin was warm in her palm.

' Your sideburns need shaving.' Fran informed him.

Balthier's vanity was as inherent to his state of well being as food and water, Fran had long considered.

Fran had developed a level of tolerance and patience for his fastidious and prodigious grooming habits few others could imitate. To see him so dishevelled concerned her.

Balthier sighed, 'I know. Damned shaving mirror was broken somehow. I suppose I shall have to wait until we reach Rabanastre.'

Fran, still cupping his head stroked one long, clawed finger down the curve of his increasingly unruly left sideburn. His skin was fine grained and smooth, resilient with youth.

Fran raised one eyebrow quizzically, 'Is the Leading Man feeling unwell? This is not like you.'

Balthier frowned at her words, his vanity, so blatant he had made something of a joke of it, rushing up to the surface of his thoughts, which Fran suspected had been many miles elsewhere.

'How bad is it?'

'Bad enough that I will make no comment on the state of your cuffs, Balthier. We are in dire straits indeed for you to be so remiss in your grooming.'

All the while Fran continued to stroke her finger down his cheek and Balthier continued to rest his chin against her hand peaceably.

'I know. I am beginning to think I should just stop wearing white shirts.' Balthier remarked.

Fran cocked her head to the side, ' You once informed me that you would sooner sell your soul than wear any other form of shirt. A white shirt, you said, was the attire of a gentleman.'

Balthier gently pulled from her grip and sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, his fingernails, Fran observed, were dirty.

'Sometimes Fran I wish you were gifted with a less prodigious memory. No man likes to be reminded of his every utterance.'

'Come I will shave you.'

Fran called over her shoulder, as she moved away from the Chocobo pen. Balthier grinned. Fran suspected he had been hoping she would make the offer.

Fran had him sit down on the pre-dawn damp soil just outside the animal pen in the Garif village while she fetched his razor, a bowl, cream and fresh water.

'We shall not be travelling together today Balthier.'

She informed him as smoothly she wielded the razor, using the second customised blade to weed out the errant hairs and shape his sideburns to his liking.

She had had much practice in doing just that, in three years of partnership the image and persona of the leading man had been an ever evolving creation.

'Why not?'

Fran paused in her ministrations to look at Balthier critically once more. She spoke dryly.

'It appears the Princess would grace you further with her company.'

Fran looked on him quizzically. 'You have been distracted of late. The leading man has not been paying attention.'

'I know.' Balthier conceded on a sigh, wry humour glittering in his eyes as he looked up at Fran.

' I have completely failed to see my competition until now, for one thing.'

' Competition?' Fran inquired, curious.

' Basch.'

Fran stilled her movements and allowed her puzzlement to show on her face and in her eyes.

Balthier smiled at Fran, not his habitual smirk but the real smile that belonged only to her.

' I do not think you make a good match Fran, he has no airship and I think a life of unremitted duty would bore you very quickly.'

Fran allowed herself the ghost of a smile; she resumed her work on him.

' I thank you for your advice.'

She demurred, then, because they were alone with only animals for witnesses, she playfully tapped the tip of his nose with her finger, coating it with shaving foam.

'I am not planning to form any new, lasting, partnership with the Knight.'

Fran informed her current partner calmly, watching the devilment alleviate the exhaustion from his features.

'Ah, so it is a holiday romance, a little slap and tickle with Sir Knight before we go back to the business of piracy?'

He teased her as he washed off the remaining foam and wiped his face with the hand towel she presented him with.

Fran got to her feet, towering over Balthier as he remained knelt at her feet like a supplicant, the wayward thought startled Fran and she frowned when she saw, for a moment, the unguarded look in his eyes.

It was a surprisingly frank look of open admiration. It was not a look Balthier had ever cast on any other women that Fran could recall.

The rising sun cresting the horizon cast its rays all around Fran, she could feel its heat on her back, feel the sun's rays begin to burn away the pre-dawn coolness.

'Is there something troubling you Balthier?'

Fran asked him when the look did not immediately dissipate when he realised she could see it.

Balthier suddenly smiled again, once more it was not the habitual smirk that mocked himself and those he bestowed it upon, this smile was kinder.

' Your hair is in dire need of a good brush, Fran.'

'Pardon?'

Fran blinked, then looked down upon the tendrils of hair that always brushed her cheeks.

Balthier stood, looking disparagingly down on his worn, grime coated cuffs that had long since lost their gold thread finish.

' It would appear I am not the only one letting good grooming slide.'

He quirked an eyebrow pointedly as Fran pushed fingers through hair that was thick with knots and tangles.

'Tsk tsk.' Balthier shook his head mournfully, ' A right pair of down and outs we have become Fran.'

' It takes too long to brush each morning.' Fran admitted.

'We have time now. Fetch your brush and I'll do it for you.'

Fran thought about this for a moment. It was something that was private between them and Fran did not often ask, or permit, Balthier to brush her hair.

She did not know that she wanted him to do so now, here, in the Garif village.

Balthier was watching her keenly; Fran suspected he could fathom something of her thoughts.

'It is either now or wait until we reach Balfonheim, and knowing our blasted luck we'll have precious little time for anything save re-fuelling before we're off to save all Ivalice from tyranny once more.'

' I will fetch the brush.'

Fran conceded the point her tangled hair a heavy weight against her back.

When she returned she settled on the ground in front of Balthier who knelt at her back and carefully separated a hank of hair at the root before running the brush firmly through the strands from top to tip.

Fran maintained her impassivity on the surface as Balthier continued the process with another lock of hair and then another, working silently and efficiently, his body warm against her back.

Balthier managed to extract an involuntary shiver from her when he deftly stroked the tips of his fingers up the length of her right ear, tickling the rim of said ear.

Fran refused to frown, 'You over-reach yourself Balthier.' She reminded him.

His chuckle thrummed through her back in response.

'You are beginning to sound like our Princess, Fran. I thought you liked it when I stroked your ears?'

In her defence she reached behind her and lightly pressed the points of the nails of her right hand into his leather groin, if she wished it her nails were sharp enough to pierce the leather to the skin beneath.

Balthier drew a sharp breath, body tensing.

'Touché.' Balthier shifted back a little. 'I'll behave myself then.'

They lapsed into companionable silence after that. Under his careful brush strokes Fran felt the tangles fall from her hair and allowed her head to rest back against his shoulder briefly as he concentrated on the finer, shorter hair that fell down around her face.

'I've missed this Fran.'

Fran opened her eyes to see Balthier's face looking down on her, appearing upside down as he leaned over.

'What have you missed, Balthier?'

'Us. The two of us. I will be immensely pleased when all this is finally over and we can return to our lives. Next time Ivalice can save herself without our aid.'

Fran considered his words. Yes, she could see his point. The insulated contentment with which they had conducted themselves until just six months ago seemed indistinct and phantasmal to Fran now.

'Those are not the words of a Leading Man.' Fran pointed out.

They had come so far and these other humes had invaded and diluted the cohesion of their partnership, until such moments of inter-connectedness like this one seemed to Fran guilty pleasures instead of their right.

'Perhaps not, but they are the words of a sensible pirate, which I am clearly not; had I been we'd not be this situation.'

' We do as we must, just as the others.' Fran pointed out.

It was the realisation she had come to on the Phon Coast. She did not need to see Balthier's frustrated frown or hear his irritated sigh to know that he knew this too.

'I miss the Strahl, Fran. I miss our freedom. The longer we stay on this course the harder it is to remember what life used to be.'

'Ivalice is not our home. We belong to the sky, where we may leave what conflict divides the humes many miles beneath us.'

Fran murmured repeating the words of the mantra they lived by.

Fran continued to let her head rest upon his shoulder and briefly Balthier lowered his own face to breathe in the scent of her hair. His cheek brushed against the backs of her ears as he did so.

'Except that even free birds need a place to land eventually.' Balthier finished the thought for her, defeat in every syllable.

Fran nodded thinking on the Sun-Cryst and the decision she had come to after much thought.

That it must be destroyed, sundered so that no Hume would ever be able to use it against another. Fran would not see the Princess become tool of the Occuria.

' We must savour what we have, Balthier.' Fran spoke.

'For we are birds caged in duty and must remain so until duty is served. Then we will be free to roam Ivalice's skies once more.'

Balthier turned his head so that his whispered utterance tickled her inner ear.

' You have been spending far too much time with the Captain, Fran. All this talk of duty does a pirate no good.'

Fran did not respond as they watched the sun finish rising in the sky and waited for the inevitable rising of the rest of their party, both relishing this stolen moment of solitude.

Fran wondered that she did not confide in Balthier her decision regarding the Sun-Cryst, but even as she did so she knew her reasons against doing so.

Just as the Occuria would have her do to the Sun-Cryst, Ashe had already carved out for herself a facet of Balthier's heart.

Fran knew that Balthier would have to make a decision soon enough. Choose where his soul lay, in flight through open sky, or within the gilded cage of a Princess' heart.

So, though it troubled Fran, she would keep her own counsel. Fran knew that Balthier would follow her judgement above even his own and did not wish to put such an imposition upon him; his choice must be his own.

Yet despite this resolve to remain impartial even in matters most intimate to her own life, it was with fervent wish that Fran hoped that soon enough she and Balthier would be soaring high among the clouds once more, free and complete in their wonderful isolation, tied to no-one and nothing but each other and the Strahl.