A/N - It has been a long time coming, I know, but it is time to bring these little oneshots to a close. I'd like to think I am going out on a high, but who knows? I would love any feedback or reviews you have to give (ultimate goal = 100+). In the meantime, please accept my thanks for reading for so long and enjoy:)
Metal and Leather
There have been been times, many times in fact, that Fran has packed her few possessions, walked out the door and cursed the very day she met Balthier. Yet something always pulls her back. Perhaps it is the worried crease that appears on his forehead, wondering what misstep he has taken. Perhaps it is the heartbreak of becoming two separate people, two strangers, once more.
This is the closest thing to being alone she has felt since the the sounds of the Wood were hushed to her ears. She hears nothing but the slow, metal creaking of structures gradually twisting on themselves, collapsing in inevitable descent. She herself is another thing broken as she lies half-insensible on the floor.
A deep ache in her left ankle draws her attention, pulsing with the timing of her own miserable heartbeat. Carefully, oh so carefully, she levers herself to a sitting position, a far cry from her usual grace. She runs her fingers over her ankle and draws in a sharp breath as she palpates the unnatural angles.
Disheartened, she sinks back to the ground. Her mind wanders, unable to recall the simple child's phrase she needs to heal the hurt.
Broken, useless. Ruined.
"Balthier, you are reckless. Consider your Hume weakness, you do not," she said, studying the ugly slash along his arm. Balthier himself seemed to be forlornly studying his shirtsleeve, torn to shreds.
"Ruined. Caught me off guard, the damned blighter!" His face was almost comically crestfallen.
Fran glared at him.
"It will have to be thrown out..." he sighed. "Fran, would you mind...er, doing the honours?" He added, gesturing to the gash as if it were some annoyance.
"You could always repair it, the sleeve. I have both needle and thread," the viera offered.
Balthier shook his head. "Ruined," was all he said. Fran sighed a little impatiently.
"Listen well, for I am soon to give you the greatest gift you will ever receive," she said. Balthier looked at her expectantly as she wrapped a cloth around the wounded arm. He winced as she applied more pressure. It had been hurting him a lot worse than he was letting on. "Because you too, have been ruined, and are not as easily discarded as a shirt."
"Close your eyes and picture your arm whole and healed..."
In the darkness, Fran smiles. Both her and Balthier's first spells had been that of Cure. There seemed to be an odd symmetry to this, when all else between them tend towards the opposite. They are the silent forest and the bustling city, a viera and a hume, metal and leather.
But he is not here. This seems wrong.
Balthier wakes to the dark and the damp. He is cold, the kind of cold that chills the bones and slows the heart, and knows this is a bad, bad sign. He twitches his fingers experimentally, and they are slow to respond. He would be a poor marksman were he to encounter any foes, then realises he has no gun.
In fact, memories of what has occurred seem fragmented and flyaway, like some drunken haze from his wilder days. He had been...repairing a ship? Something to do with glossair rings and falling from the sky and a city...He looks to where he is now, lying in dark and twisted wreckage. He does not seem to have done a very good job of it! For some reason, he finds this extremely funny.
He laughs wildly, the insensible caw of a madman. "The leading man has failed, and what's more, has not the strength to make his exit! Is that not funny, Fran?"
...is that not funny, Fran...?
...not funny...
...Fran?
He stops. "Fran?" There is no one else here
"Venat?"
"Pardon, father?" The young man was puzzled. There was no one else there.
Doctor Cid also looked puzzled for a moment, peering at his son through spectacles that could use a good polishing. "You're still here Ffamran? I thought you'd left hours ago! We have much work to do, don't we?"
"...we do?" the young man wondered.
"Not you!" Cid said, making a quick gesture of impatience..
Ffamran raised his hands in defensive acceptance. "I...ah, just arrived to tell you it was time for the evening meal."
The good doctor was visibly annoyed. "You could not have sent a maid to tell me that?" In the past, these words would have been accompanied by an ironic eyebrow or fatherly chuckle. Now there is simply the inconvenience of having to converse with someone he supposedly has some emotional attachment to. It cut into his precious time.
Ffamran didn't meet his father's eyes. "Well father, it has been some time since you've come down to join us. I thought-"
For some reason, Cid seemed to find this extremely amusing. He turned over his shoulder. "He thinks! The boy thinks! But he cannot even fathom how important our work is, can he Venat?" The next words are for his son. "Send a maid up with a tray, boy. We will have to work through the night again."
"Not I," Ffamran muttered, casting a dark look at his father as he left. Meanwhile, Cid chattered away, talking to nothing but his own shadow.
Fran, bruised and barefoot as she is, has searched everywhere.
Then, out of the corner of her eye she spots a tiny tendril of sunlight. She hastens towards it, her limp quite pronounced yet also quite forgotten. The gap is small, but she is confident she can increase it. She delicately runs a sharpened nail around its edges, then draws back her arm and slashes across.
Once she is sure of the exit she will resume her search once more, for she will not leave this ship alone.
Balthier has been alone for many hours now, and still he wanders.
There is a purpose to his wandering, and that is to find Fran. After that he surmises there is probably something else they need to do but he cannot seem to grasp it. Ah, that's it, escape! He smiles a little fondly as he remembers the many times and many ingenious ways he and Fran have evaded the clutches of their pursuers. Even now, he can feel the thrill of adrenaline buzzing in his blood as they run, and of turning to Fran to meet her feral grin with one of his own.
"Ooof," he groans, suddenly on the ground. Colour rises to his cheeks as he realises that he had broken into a lumbering gait as if he truly did run with Fran, subsequently making an abrupt acquaintance with a wall.
"I've gone mad, just like him," he whispers mournfully, thinking of his father. Perhaps Fran was his Venat...but Venat was real after all, wasn't he...
A load, metallic screech draws Balthier's attention. Either his luck has run out and the whole blasted thing is coming down, or someone is making a desperate bid for freedom. He optimistically convinces himself of the latter.
"Dreaming again, am I?" Balthier's voice asks. Stripped of all drawling sarcasm, he seems younger and almost childlike. Fran whirls around, spotting the slight sheen of her partner's leather-worked vest. Relief knocks into her and she staggers forward under the force of it.
At this, the leading man musters some of his Archadian charm. "Hmmm? Either I've gone mad or you've actually deigned to show me some affection Fran."
Up close, he is quite clearly concussed, yet still manages to encircle his arms around Fran's waist. The viera lays her head on his shoulder, now of even height after divesting herself of her heels. She is struck by how peaceful it is, to be so entwined, fitting so neatly into the embrace of a hume.
As the sunlight changes, Balthier catches sight of the hole Fran has managed to tear in the wall. Squinting, he surmises that they have crashed into some sort of desert oasis. The only way out is to swim to the shore.
"An undignified exit to say the least," Balthier half-heartedly complains. He tugs at the back of his vest, now looking rather more careworn and...charred than usual, and throws it unceremoniously on the floor.
"Shall we, my lady?" He holds out a hand as if to ask her to dance, and indeed this is a set of steps they know all too well. Smirking, Fran pushes him in first before following, diving in a perfect arc.
The water is still warm from the crash and the desert sun, yet they know they mustn't linger for fear of what else might be leaking from the once great ship. Fran cuts through the water, stretching out her long limbs, only just catching up to Balthier's admittedly more refined stroke.
They stagger out of the water and collapse onto the sand, both unwilling to let the other go. Together they breathe in the salty dampness of wet sand and think it the finest thing in the world.
After a moment of catching their breath, Balthier sighs and flips over the face the sun, uncaring for his usual disdain of freckles to bask in the light that eluded him for so long. Fran soon notices just how uneven Balthier's pupils truly are. He raises an eyebrow, and this is enough to set the viera off. Laughter erupts, and her partner joins in simply because of its rare sweetness. Insensible, they are unable to stop.
"You...," Balthier gasps, between tides of mirth, "are sopping wet." A wet strand of hair sticks to her cheek, and he carefully tucks it behind her ear. She also has a sooty smear across her nose, but he isn't going to tell her that.
"Your clothes are soaked through," Fran replies. Balthier instantly looks dismayed. "You do not seem at ease in the watery environment of a traditional pirate. And you are concussed."
Balthier blinks slowly, still processing the three observations, some of which may or may not have been insults. Fran huffs a little sigh and places a hand over his forehead, drawing out the concussion. She is pleased when he catches up the same hand in a kiss before she pulls away.
"You know m'dear, there looks to be an alarming amount of political...issues that will need sorting through after this most recent development," the sky pirate says thoughtfully.
"It was my belief that you enjoyed politics," Fran observes.
"I do play the part exceedingly well," Balthier says, running a careless hand through Fran's dripping hair, "However I was thinking more along the lines of, say, letting our companions sort out what needs must while we go off and be dashing and debonair."
As Balthier gently works out the tangles in her silver-white hair, Fran stretches out as luxuriantly as a desert cat, She is reminded of a time, not so long ago, that her companion had firmly put a stop to her half-formed notions of cutting it all off. He had taken up her brush silently, finally tucking a loose strand behind her ear as he tilted her face up towards his own.
She smiles. It had been just the two of them travelling together then. "I have no wish to return...immediately."
"I am glad you agree," says Balthier as he rolls lazily onto his side to face her. "Perhaps you should take off that armour Fran. It would not do to let it rust," Balthier comments, a secret smile in his eyes.
"Concussed you still must be, to suggest such foolishness."
"Well my dearest, I have never been wise."