"You're doing it wrong."

Affronted, Balthier swung around to face Penelo, who was leaning over his shoulder, peering at the Strahl's navigation panel. "I beg your pardon?"

She gave a little huff and dropped into the seat beside him, gesturing to the screen that displayed their current altitude and speed. "Flying so low isn't fuel-efficient," she said. "The glossair rings have to pull more power, forcing the engine to work harder, and consuming more fuel. We should be flying higher and slower. At this rate, we'll burn through a tank in just a few hours."

Balthier bit the inside of his cheek to force back the instinctive, ill-mannered response that rose in his throat. "Be that as it may," he settled on at last, "I am not in a position where I must economize on fuel consumption. And the view is nicer from here." To stress the point, he reclined back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head and plonked the heels of his boots atop the nav console.

The Strahl was currently skimming atop the glassy-smooth surface of the Oenalian Sea, just a hundred yards or so from the rocky shore, headed north toward Galina. Sunrise burnished the horizon, a bright patch of scarlet skittering across the sea. A pod of coastal dolphins breached the silky surface of the water ahead of them, and were quickly left behind in the Strahl's wake. The water stretched out into the interminable distance, a deep, vivid blue interspersed with sandy shoals around which crowded schools of brilliantly-colored fish. Perhaps Balthier had chosen the scenic route to get to their destination, but he captained his own ship, and it was his prerogative to do so.

Penelo jogged her knee up and down, crossing her arms over her chest, her eyes focused out the massive windscreen, but not on anything in particular. Merely out. Her lips were pursed in annoyance, but if she had had anything to say, she kept it to herself. And still, her knee jogged up and down, up and down – like a nervous habit. A muscle pulled in her jaw, tight and tense.

"Alright, there?" he asked. Perhaps she was simply tired. True, she had slept most of the day away yesterday, but he imagined that she had a good three years of sleep to catch up on. Yet she had not retreated to Fran's room upon their return to the Aerodrome; instead she had insisted on staying up for what night remained. At first she had settled into a chair and pulled her legs beneath her, content to sit out the ride, but as the night had worn on, she had eventually jumped out of her seat to begin pacing anxiously.

"Fine," she said, in clipped tones. Her knee began bouncing even faster, and she unfolded her arms to clench the armrests, the fingers of her right hand tapping out a rapid tattoo against the smooth wood.

Good gods, she'd soon be climbing the walls.

At last she seemed to become aware of his perusal and caught herself, gripping the armrests and planting her feet firmly on the floor. "I don't…I don't like being inside," she said at last, in a small, hesitant voice. "I mean, if I can't…" Her voice squeaked out into silence. A pulse in her throat beat a frenetic rhythm, as if she'd been running for miles.

If there wasn't an easy avenue of escape, she meant. She had seen the same walls every day for the last three years because she had had no choice. She had tolerated the city reasonably well, given that they hadn't stayed indoors for more than a half an hour at a time, but here, in the Strahl, she was confined once again out of necessity, and they had been flying for hours. She wasn't merely irritable; her nerves were shot through and she was on her very last of them, pretending a nonchalance she did not feel.

"Shall I set her down?" he inquired.

Her gaze jerked to him, brows arched high over wide eyes. "No…that's not necessary," she said, but the words came out rough and forced, scratching out of her throat like each of them had been a battle of its own. Her knuckles were white from the pressure she exerted upon the armrests, her fingernails carving divots into the once-pristine wood. And it simply wasn't in him to chastise her for her lack of care; the wood could be resurfaced – she could not be repaired so easily.

Probably she had grown accustomed to her desires being ignored, discarded as immaterial. What use was there in asking, when one would only be met with denial? But she would have to learn to continue as she meant to go on, and that would mean casting off old habits in favor of new.

"You have only to say," he said. "We're still some distance from Galina." And yet, he was fairly confident that she would not withstand the hour or so that remained.

She made a strangled sound in her throat, but otherwise held her peace.

Tap tap tap. Her nails resumed their beat; he imagined the scars they would leave behind, holes worn into the armrests like a woodpecker had staked its claim.

Tap tap tap. She shifted in her seat, crossing her right leg over her left. Her hair bounced over her shoulders as her head swiveled, eyes searching for something to latch onto, to concentrate on in a futile effort to hold onto the threads of her control.

Taptaptaptaptap. His lips quirked up just at the corners, though he elected not to remark upon the furious click of her nails. She would have to be the one to cry halt.

"Balthier?"

Ahh, and there it was. Honestly, he'd expected her to hold out a bit longer. "Hmm?"

"Would you…" A pause; she clenched the armrests and made a concentrated effort to compose herself. "Would you set her down, please?"

The quaver in her voice bespoke more than just nerves; it was genuine distress. A quick glance revealed her face drawn and pinched, sweat beading upon her brow. She swallowed spasmodically, but it was the hitch in her chest that had him snapping swiftly into action.

"The washroom is just down the corridor," he said as he grabbed for the yoke. The poor girl was dreadfully close to casting up her accounts.

A slow, careful shake of her head. "Too small," she croaked miserably. Her throat worked desperately, her cheeks were devoid of color.

Thank the gods they were so close to land; he cut across the open waters, gently easing the Strahl up and over the nearest ridge of cliffs, steadily reducing the speed until at last he could bring her down upon the flat crest, already punching in the commands that would extend the dock.

The moment the ship touched stable earth, Penelo launched herself from her seat, grappling for purchase against the wood-paneled walls of the corridor, stumbling towards the dock.

Balthier wasted no time in heading to the Strahl's small kitchen for a glass of water and a tea towel, struggling in vain to vanquish the sliver of guilt that pierced him. Blast it, he had known she wasn't going to make it – he should have landed immediately, spared her the suffering.

The unmistakable sound of retching told him that she hadn't gotten very far. And as he rounded the corner, he saw that she hadn't even made it off of the dock – instead, she was bent over the rail, clutching at it with one hand while the other frantically scraped at her loose hair between heaves, attempting to keep it away from her face.

He set the glass of water on the dock as he stepped forward, placed his hand on her shoulder to alert her to his presence, and carefully swept her hair back, disentangling her fingers as he went. Her skin was cold and clammy, a light sheen of sweat glistened on her shoulders, plastering down the baby-fine hairs at the nape of her neck. Gathering her hair into one hand, he used the other to snatch the tea towel off of his arm and blot away the sweat from the back of her neck.

Freed of the task of holding back her own hair, her free hand grabbed the rail in a death-grip and her whole body shuddering as she expelled the contents of her stomach. At length, she took a few gasping breaths and wilted to the dock, folding her legs beneath her.

"Water?" He snatched up the glass and held it up before her. Snatching at it with shaking hands, she rinsed her mouth and spat through the railing over the side of the dock until the sour taste had been purged. Then she chugged the last remnants and carefully set the glass aside as she collapsed to her side and curled her arms over her head, groaning.

"Any better?" he asked, folding the tea towel over on itself and using the clean side to sponge gently at her face.

She shook her head, just a bit, as though reluctant to make any sudden moves. "Dizzy," she mumbled. The morning mist enveloped her, settling over her like a cloud, filtering the harsh rays of early sunlight into a hazy glow. Moisture collected on her hair like tiny glass beads, softening the tangled blond strands into graceful disarray rather than chaotic disorder.

He could no longer ascertain if her pallor was the result of illness or her three years absence from the warmth of the sun. For all he could tell, she might just fade away into the shroud of mist and disappear altogether.

"Sorry," she muttered. "Couldn't help it. Walls closed in."

He wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, but she seemed too fragile for such a thing. Instead he said, "No harm done. I suppose I'm simply thankful you made it off the Strahl in time."

She managed a ragged laugh and turned just a bit, uncurling herself to roll onto her back, one arm draped over her eyes to shade them from the light. "It wasn't easy, that's for certain." She shifted a bit, hissing as the cold metal of the dock touched her back. Her movements were tentative and shaky, still beset by a lingering weakness.

"You should be abed," he said. "You've remained awake the night through. Can you stand?"

"No, I –" She paused, took a deep breath. "I'd rather stay here. Just for a bit. If that's all right." Her voice subsided into silence, captured by the fog.

He had hoped they would make Galina this morning, but…he supposed they were in no particular hurry. Morning was not yet well advanced; he supposed they could spare a bit of time. And so he said, "Certainly. I'll be just a moment."

And when he returned just moments later with a blanket and pillow pilfered from Fran's bed, she was already asleep.

Penelo woke hours later to the distant cry of seabirds and the scent of freshly-brewed coffee. Though her back ached with the impressions of the Strahl's dock, her cheek was turned into the downy softness of a feather pillow and the wispy tendrils of fading fog touched only her face; the quilt that had been draped over her blanketed her in insulating warmth. She made a soft sound of discontentment as she rubbed at her eyes. Her stomach had mostly settled, but her muscles ached with the force of the spasms that had assailed her, and there was a bit of lingering dizziness.

"Ahh, and Sleeping Beauty at last awakens."

She cracked one eye open with no little effort; not six inches from her face rested Balthier's boot. He had taken up a seat upon the dock, stretched out in a carelessly elegant sprawl. His hands were curled around a mug from which rose a thick cloud of steam, obscuring the lower half of his face. But his eyes were faintly mocking.

She huffed her annoyance; she felt like death warmed over, and she was certain she'd never borne less of a resemblance to a fairytale princess. She tried to swipe her hair away from her face, but her fingers knotted in the mass of tangles. She was fairly sure she'd drooled in her sleep, and there was a crick in her neck that promised to remind her of this misadventure all day through. But she dragged herself up nonetheless, ignoring the protest of her sore muscles, and scrubbed at her pale cheeks.

"Is there coffee, then?" she asked, sniffing the air.

"Of course." He adjusted his grip on his mug to free a hand, then reached down to retrieve a second mug from where it was concealed behind his knee. He slid it toward her, just at the edge of the blanket.

She looked like a little bird in a rumpled nest. As she reached for the mug, the blanket slid off of her shoulders to pool in a semi-circle around her legs. A satisfied smile flirted with the corners of her mouth as she wrapped her hands around her mug, lifted it to her face, and inhaled deeply of the vapor rising from it. "Ohhh," she murmured. "This is good."

As if he would stock inferior coffee. "The best money can buy," he said. And then, mulling that over a bit, he amended, "Perhaps instead the best money can't buy. This was private stock, blended exclusively for a princess of Rozarria."

Her shoulders hunched just a bit and she ducked her head and snorted, as if she had only just managed to hold back an onslaught of giggles. "You, ah…liberated it, then, did you?"

"Well, I was in dire need. Not to worry; I left the princess at least a few ounces."

"Oh? And how much did you take?" she inquired, but there were traces of amusement lingering about her lips as she posed the question.

"Oh, pounds and pounds of it. More than I could drink in a lifetime, I'm sure." He readjusted, braced his mug on his knee, and said, "Do you know, I can't even recall what we had initially gone after. The coffee was by far the better part of the spoils."

She sighed, a wistful sound, as if she could almost recall the job herself. "I've missed so much," she said. "All that wasted time." Amusement fled, regret tilting at the corners of her lips. Another sigh, heavier this time, and she hid her face behind her mug so that he could not see the expression she wore. "I was such a fool."

"You were young. Everyone is foolish when they are young." He unfolded himself and rose to his feet. "But you're free now, and likely years sooner than your, ah…former suitor would have reason to expect. There's ample time to plan your revenge."

Her head jerked up in surprise. "Revenge?" she whispered, as if the word itself was foreign to her.

"Surely you've thought about it," he said. "How could you not?"

She shrugged, a hesitant rise and fall of her shoulders. "I suppose I must have, at first," she murmured. "But it doesn't last when you have no way to bring it about. It's like a dream; it couldn't stay when all of my thoughts were collected on working my way out. I couldn't waste my time on thoughts of revenge while I contemplated freedom. Eleven hundred and twenty-seven days I was trapped there," she said, "and I marked each of them on the walls of my room. Freedom will trump revenge every time."

"But now – why the one or the other when you might have both?"

Why, indeed? It was just that every time she had thought of Raen in the past three years, she had been unable to quell the tide of fury that swept over her, and the seething depths of it had appalled her, frightened her. In her younger days, she had turned the other cheek to slights against her, but the years had worn thin her skin, and she was the tiniest bit afraid that if she ever encountered Raen again, she would not seek to put matters equal, she would seek to kill him. And while just the thought of it was as satisfying as it was terrifying, she would never give a man so much power over her again.

"I'll consider it," she said at last. "Though to be honest, I'd just as soon never lay eyes on him again."

"Oh, come," he said. "There's much to be said for revenge. I ought to know."

True, he had been instrumental in his own father's demise – but even that had been merely one cog in the larger machine that had finally freed Ivalice from the machinations of capricious gods. So he had had his revenge on his detested father, but she wondered if it had been as satisfying to him as he claimed, what it had cost him to obtain. In counterpoint to Balthier's claim of the merits of revenge, there was also Ashe, who had had every reason in the world to pursue it. Ashe had lost more than any of them, and it was only by the strength of her own character that she had built a new future for the whole of Ivalice out of the ashes of the old, forsaking revenge in favor of peace. Penelo might've had some such nobility in her once, but it had long since been worn away by cruelty. Two paths diverged, and she wondered which of them their travelers had found most worthy.

"I said I would consider it," she said again. "But it's my business, and I'll thank you to stay out of it."

She had hoped that her sharp tone would have put him in his place, but he merely chuckled and stretched out his hand to her to help her to her feet. She set her hand in his and allowed him to pull her up, then passed him her coffee mug as she bent to collect the blanket and pillow.

"Will you make it to Galina?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so," she said. "It's just that I haven't been on an airship in years, and…"

"And perhaps there was a touch of claustrophobia?" he suggested. She had suffered well enough the confines of the Strahl when it was her freedom from incarceration. It was only now that other options presented themselves that she chafed under the restriction and panic had reared its ugly head.

She gave a half-hearted shrug. "I don't like walls," she said. "I've seen enough of them to last a lifetime." And she rubbed one ankle against the other, as if the weight of the manacle that had bound her stayed with her still.

"The Strahl is convenient," he said. "The fastest ship in the skies. We should make pitiful pirates without her. But…perhaps you might like to fly her."

She started, so surprised by the offer that she had to make a desperate grab for the pillow that had slid right out of her hands. "Oh," she said. "Oh, I couldn't. I haven't in years." But her fingers curled, crushing the soft feather pillow in them, as if already imagining the yoke in her hands.

"No time like the present to learn again. And besides," he said, "it's a matter of practicality. If you fly her, you may choose when to set her down." Perhaps she might still be locked within, but this time the key would be in her hands.

"I…I suppose I could try." She shuffled around the blanket and pillow so that she could free one hand to thrust her tangled hair away from her face. "But I wouldn't want to cause her any damage."

He chuckled. "You had the care of her for a year, and nothing ill befell her," he said. "I'm sure you'll do fine."

Famous last words. She flew like a demon. For all her blathering on about economizing on fuel, once the yoke was in her hands and command given over to her, all respect toward caution or fuel efficiency went straight out the window.

But even as she jerked the yoke and they careened around a jutting cliff so sharply that his stomach crept up his throat and then slammed full-force back where it ought to be, he heard the star-bright, scintillating, joyful trill of laughter that escaped her. Just once, just for half a second – but he thought she had not had cause to laugh in a very long time, and he didn't want to be the one to take it from her once again. And so he clamped his mouth shut – the wisest course of action, given the fact that the swift rising and plummeting threatened even his cast-iron stomach – and dug his fingers into the divots hers had left on the armrests while he fought to remain in his seat.

The Strahl dipped, skimmed the surface of the water, and then shot up, up, so fast that Balthier found his back pinned to the seat by the force. They hurtled up the steep incline of a rocky cliff, and in the Strahl's small kitchen, he heard glasses clank angrily as they were jostled in their cabinets. She'd probably shattered half of his glassware.

But he risked a glance at her face, saw the dimple shining in her cheek and the jubilant, unpracticed smile and the sparkling eyes.

Hell. He'd just have to buy new.

Over the roar of the overtaxed engines, she shouted, "How much further to Galina?"

At the speed they were traveling, she'd cut an hour-long trip down to twenty minutes. "Not far," he managed, striving to be heard over the din. "There's an inlet that cuts across from the sea into the port. Traveling along the coast, you can't miss it."

"Can I take her in?"

At this point, he was fairly certain that which of them had the dubious honor of landing the Strahl was quite irrelevant, seeing as there was absolutely no way in hell that they would make it to the city alive. This was how he was going to die – not in glorious battle, not in a blaze of gunfire over his liberation of some priceless treasure, nor even of old age – but here, in the fiery crash of his beloved airship, with Penelo at the helm.

But her giddy exhilaration…

And he stretched his lips into a bland approximation of a smile, and said, "By all means."