Author's Note: I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. I had writer's block like you wouldn't believe. Thank you all so much for your kind reviews, for adding me to your favorites and for keeping up with this story. It will wrap up in an Act or two, so please, leave feed back. Nothing gets me moving like reviews. Thank you all and enjoy. Please note, this is completely rough and in dire need of editing. I posted it thinking that a little something would be better than a big 'nothing' I'll come back and edit it as soon as I'm able. Thanks everyone for understanding! Comments are so so so welcome as my betas are long gone...
Interlude Becomes a Dream
Act 8
"I remember the day Nabradia fell. Of course I do."
The voice was soft but clear. In the darkness, devoid of sight and of touch, the voice commanded her full attention and she gladly gave it. That voice. It was everything to her. It was the embodiment of her youth and her hope. When times had seem dire, when it had felt like her life had been forfeit and all was lost, it had been that voice that had given it all back to her.
Taking a cue, the background moved from the velvet black to a ridged landscape. In the distance, a city burned casting the sky in to a sickly orange, the clouds set on fire.
In bits and pieces, knowledge came back to her the way it often does in dreams, and this was, a dream...wasn't it? The girl looked down at her hands, her body. The last thing she remembered was talking to the Grand Kiltas. She had left him feeling so lost, so alone and tired. She had to fight. It was so important and all consuming, the fighting was everything. Had to save the Sky pirate. From what, she wasn't sure anymore but had to... and then it was back to her life of saving Vaan from his own sense of reckless adventure. But the thought of what she had to do and what was to come was such a weight on her.
Time, it was all a matter of time and she was losing it. Every step back to the Strahl was costing her seconds she couldn't spare but...
"I was tired." Penelo said in to the wind that carried ash away from the wreckage all around her. "I came back to the ship and -"
"And you slept." The man finished for her. She didn't turn around to see the speaker, only nodded. "This is a dream then, of that day, the day Nabrada fell. And it's important, isn't it?"
"I remember it." Balther continued. "Naught that memory serves purpose but I can't forget it. Mid week day. Hot. Very hot. Long days, the sun so slow in setting. Plenty of daylight, plenty of time to see to the destruction of a nation. It fell in a single day."
The young woman could feel the heat of the fires that burned in the distance. Fires that would burn long in to the night and beyond. Surely they would last forever in her memory. "Not you." She answered under her breath. "You didn't do this. You were forced."
"Oh to be sure, I didn't do any of the fighting. Heavens no, I was far too important for such grunt work. My sword was never bloodied ere the field of battle. But..." The pirate drew a deep breath in to his lungs, so deeply that Penelo felt her own chest expand with the effort. "I am guilty of this. Of all the deaths therein and of all the lives that could have- would have been born aft." A tan hand gestured to the smoldered city, drawing her attention to the man behind her as she turned to face him.
Balthier looked perfect. When didn't he? But even better than she remembered. He looked solid and healthy, the same man she had traveled with those years ago not the ghost that had been her company the few days prior.
"You can't blame yourself." She offered quietly.
"The memory of inaction in the face of evil weights heavier than the deed of evil itself." His deep gray eyes peered out over the horizon and gradually the sand melted in to metal. The sky enclosed to steel and the pair found themselves in the haul of a great war ship, flying directly over where they had a heartbeat ago been standing. Out the window, the city was whole and perfect again. Night lights shone like stars on the streets and the buzz of activity in the thriving metropolis could be heard over even the roar of the engines.
Across the way, tucked against the wall, away from the other command center sat a lone Judge, quite and reserved. Penelo didn't have to ask who it was. She knew. Balthier regarded his younger self with a look of disgust.
"Don't get me wrong." He started again, breaking the silence as he walked over to stand by bay window. "I'm not a fool with delusions of grandeur. I don't think I could have stopped what happened. Best I could have hoped for was causing them a minor inconvenience as I got myself killed for trying something radical and ultimately pointless. War is a machine, wheels within wheels and all that rot. The death of one naive Judge wouldn't even be considered a hiccup."
"You're too hard on yourself." Penelo said, her voice rising. "You keep blaming yourself for things that were out of control! Look!" She motioned to the Judge he had been. "You're tiny in that armor. You couldn't have been more than a child! And to have to witness what the Empire is capable of -"
"Younger than you, yes. But not a child. No never something so pure."
Penelo approached him. As she gently rested her slender hand on his shoulder, she whispered. "I want to help you."
He was about to answer her when the ship faded away and without ceremony, a cave took it's place. They stood at it's towering entrance, a giant maw that swallowed light to the dark depths of the earth. Balthier swallowed hard.
Dream knowledge is a powerful and undeniable thing and in that moment, Balthier knew that his worse parts were about to be drug to the surface. There was no arguing, no debating, no begging. This was it. The curtain, the final act. It just was. "I'd prefer you not see this next part." As he moved to reach for her, determined to wake her no matter what the cost, doubt spread like wild fire in his veins.
Stopping dead in his tracks, the sky pirate looked at the girl – no, there was no denying it – the woman in front of him. Penelo. She had always believed in him, always had faith that what he did he did for the greater good of the group. Had always trusted that he'd protect them, even if he had to bend the rules to do so. In that moment, Balthier knew that if he took her from here, he'd always be the hero to her. And because of that, she would break herself apart trying to save him.
In a heart beat he weighted the beauty of her hope, her unfailing belief in him and in that instant, made his discussion.
"I'm as a man drowned." The sky pirate said slowly, as he took a step back. His form faded with the distance, each move away from her drawing him out of her dreams and away from any hope he had of keeping her from this truth. "I'm coming up only long enough to show you with lies under this stillness. I've had enough of your pit and your help. The gods can't do anything to me that I haven't already done to myself.
"Watch." He said simply, silencing her the protest in her eyes. All the emotion that had been waring in him a heartbeat before was swallowed by calm indifference.
Balthier watched as it registered that she was being left alone in this nightmare to face his inner demons. That in the telling moment, the man she had always counted on was leaving.
And as he vanished, he forced his face to remain calm. As if it hadn't hurt to see her look at him that way. As if he didn't still have a heart to break.
~.~
The sharp pain in her chest was so real, Penelo thought that it would probably wake her up. And when it did, she was going to beat Balthier. Long. Hard. With several objects of choice. When there was time, she was going to make sure that some of this pain she was feeling was returned to sender. "You jerk!" She yelled at the sky. A phrase that would have been followed up by more choice words had her attention not been distracted by movement inside the cave. The dream played on.
The last of the survivors – a rag tag band of refugees, clung to the edges of the cave. Fearing to venture too deeply in to the devouring stomach of the Earth, but equally fearful that pursuit would follow, the band wore the expressions of those already resigned to death. The Judges had come to silence the truth of the Empire's actions on the last tongues left to speak it.
A tall Judge came in to view, looking at the terrified group.
"Depose of them." He ordered.
CRACK.
The shot rang out in the deafening silence; the Judge's helmet lurched back on his face, slammed by the force of the bullet that was reflected by the thick steel. It took the bewildered Judge a moment to realize he had been the target of the shooter.
He spun around in cold fury, eyes searching the many dark caverns littered around the cave. "How dare you!"
"Ranged weapon not such a foolish choice now, is it?" Came the angered reply. A male's voice echoed off the cave walls, giving nothing of his position away. "A cowards weapon' I believe is what you called it. In case you missed that last shot – these are not the actions of a coward."
The older Judge fumed, his voice a poorly contained scream of rage. "JUDGE Fframn, get down here at once! You defy the Empire with your actions and you will pay the price!" He snarled. The crowded mass of refugees wept anew, fearing the Judge's angry tantrum as much as the faceless shooter.
"That's hardly what I'd call an "incentive". No, I'm quite comfortable where I am, thank you. I have an unbelievably clear shot of at least three places that would prove fatal." The voice held enough of the cold anger to be scalding and enough dripping sarcasm to drown in. "Leave them and go."
The Judge's voice echoed soullessly across the cave. "You'll be hunted for this Fframn. And so with this single action, you cast yourself out. Nary your father will welcome a traitor. This trash," an armored hand gestured to the assembled group, "are the enemies of the Empire you are sworn to protect."
The reply was simple and undeniable. "I have no father nor country to call home. I owe little to an Empire that could commit such acts."
The Judge considered his words with a short nod and a humorless laugh. "You're a fool. A damned fool. Better rid of you now, exposed as you are for worthless." Turning, he addressed the guards behind him. With a flick of his wrist, he motioned forward more guards.
"I am serious!" Fframn shouted, the click of his gun reloading adding weight to his threat.
The Judge laughed again, a cruel sound. "You are no killer. A coward full of words and empty threats. A child playing at games. Were you capable of killing me, your first shot would not have been a warning. A lesson, boy. You can't save anyone."
As the guards rushed in to the cave, surrounding the group, the Judge didn't move. He stood, offering himself to Fframn, daring him to make good on his threat. "Dispose of them." He ordered again, annoyed.
Shots filled the air.
Not a single one of them from the gun that slipped to the ground as Fframn watched, unable to act, he felt himself dying as surely as those that stood below him.
The dream moved away from the cave, spanning out over the sands. A pair were standing near a city, this one far removed from the destruction visited on it's neighbors to the north.
"Are you sure you wish to in debt yourself to a wanted man?" The speaker had a bald head, his white sideburns standing out starkly on his dark skin. "I have little doubt that both our heads carry a hefty price."
"I rather think they believe you to be deceased." Answered the younger man, a haunted look in his eyes. "I never thought I'd wish myself thought of as the same. I suppose I shall make do as an outlaw…hmm, never much cared for that word. I'll have to call myself by another title." He chuckled and for the first time in his life, mimicked an aristocrat, brushing imaginary dirt from his armor with a sense of distain. "I can't start my new life as something so unsavory."
The events of three weeks ago still too fresh in his mind, the act dropped away quickly, reveling the panicked shock that still echoed in his gray eyes. "Where will you go?" He asked in all seriousness.
"Myself? I will seek the path of redemption for my sins, though I fear it is a path I will not survive the seeking. And what of you, Ffraham?"
The young man winced at the name, but quickly covered with nonchalant shrug.
"I fear nothing so lofty. There's nothing redeeming about myself and I'd like to keep it that way." All too clearly the young man recalled the horrible coldness he had felt in the cave as he watched, helpless. It was a suffocating pressure in his chest. How he managed to surface from it once was nothing short of the most powerful kind of blessing... or curse. The idea of facing that coldness in himself again made him physically ill.
He wouldn't seek healing for crimes he knew there could be no atonement for. Instead, he would simply cease to be. He would be someone new. In a way, he'd been running from himself his entire life. Now would be the perfect time to lose himself completely.
"Travel, I suppose is entirely acceptable for men in our position. I'd like to seek a ship, perhaps. See what fates deem for me now that I've no ties to clutter my destiny."
"If that is your desire, I'll not argue the point." The older man cast a piercing look to the city before them. "I doubt you've mind to, but you shouldn't return to Arcades, ever. The Empire is naught forgiving. However, if travel is your wish, I know of a place where you can get a ship. I have men in Balfonheim." He nodded towards the port city. "If you don't mind dealing with pirates.
The youth looked at the man with a mixture of distrust and…hope? "Why help me?"
For a long time, the older man considered in silence. A thousand petty reasons crossed his mind and he almost answered because they were now kindred spirits – no one else would understand what they had faced, least of all within themselves but this was not entirely true. The truth was because when he looked at the youth before him, he saw a ghost. Fframn the Judge hadn't made it out of the cave alive. And Reddas had a lifetime worth of death.
At last, he answered, "Consider it a step down my long path. It will afford me a small comfort to know you are out there, flying free."
Deciding not to press the point, least it be revoked, Bathier nodded. "You have my thanks. Let's get to it then. I have a life to forge and what a life it shall be..."
~.~
Penelo woke in stages. Eyes closed, the first thing she was aware of was the heavy ache in her chest. Next, it was the stiff soreness of her muscles. Not surprising, when she opened her eyes to find she had passed out on her bedroom floor. Lastly, she glanced out the window and recognized the fetid skies that hung over the necrohol and knew that they were headed towards the cave from her dream.
Moving off the ground, she stubbornly refused to acknowledge the tears that cut heart broken paths down her face.