There was something incredibly wrong with her. He had never expected her to come along so docilely. But she hadn't made so much as a single sound of protest as he had escorted her back to the Strahl; she had merely followed him on unsteady legs like a lamb lead to the slaughter, her fingers cold and limp in the gentle clasp of his.

When they arrived, he had taken one look at her and knew that there would be no resolution in store for him tonight. She was shivering violently, the excess water on her skin having soaked through her thin clothing, inviting the cool ocean breeze to drift along and freeze her into an icicle. Gooseflesh prickled her skin all over; even her lips were tinged with blue. And her eyes were...blank. They blinked, but saw nothing. Like a doll's eyes, they were dull and lifeless. She had retreated to a place he could not reach, and this was something he had not anticipated - that she could be present physically, but absent mentally, emotionally. That she could run without actually ever leaving him.

She protested only once as he pulled her over the threshold of his room, a tiny, wordless cry of alarm, digging in her heels. But her strength was exhausted, and his determination to get her out of her wet clothes and tucked safely into bed overpowered her.

He rummaged through his drawers in search of some something to put her in, and she stood near the window, shivering. Finally he found a shirt - old, but worn to a supple softness that would not abrade her delicate skin. She did not protest as he undressed her and buttoned her into his shirt, but neither did she aid him. Gaze fixed longingly out the window - as if she would rather be anywhere but here, with him - she merely stood still and accepted his ministrations without fuss or complaint.

She smelled like an enchanting blend of lavender and the salty sea air, fresh and clean, the sweetness of the floral balanced in the tangy bite of the salt. The scent assailed him as stroked her hair back from her face - he wanted to bury his face in it, breathe her in. Her hair had mostly dried on the walk back to the Strahl, falling down her back in glorious disarray, a disheveled skein of blond waves. The wind had chafed her cheeks to a pink flush, the only spots of color in her otherwise bloodless face.

The shirt was huge on her, giving her a waifish appearance, cuffs dangling down over her hands, hem ending at mid-thigh. It aroused a primitive sort of satisfaction in him to have her clad in his shirt - like a mark of ownership, announcing 'this one is mine.' Perhaps she wasn't yet...but she would be.

He turned her, nudging her gently towards the bed, curved his warm hands over her shoulders, pressing lightly to urge her into it. After a moment's hesitation she did as he bid, sinking into the soft mattress. Her lashes fanned her cheeks, and a weary sigh escaped as her head touched the pillow. And he thought for a moment of how trying this day must have been for her - racing across the coast in a journey of several hours, the shock of his appearance, his less-than-gentle attentions...his insistence on bringing up all the things she had tucked away inside her. Surely one night of respite was in order - everything would keep until tomorrow. She was dead on her feet now; he would be a monster to force a conversation tonight.

He smoothed her hair away from her face, tucking the blanket around her shoulders. She hadn't stopped that wretched trembling, and he was no longer quite so sure it had anything to do with cold. Dread was the more likely culprit. Poor, dear girl, wearied to the point of exhaustion. Another sin she could lay at his feet.

"Please, just have done with it," she said in a ghostly little voice, and he winced to hear it. And he wondered what she expected to hear from him, that such desolation colored her tone. No doubt she expected nothing but recrimination, more humiliation at his hands.

"Not tonight," he said, and his voice was the soft croon that might be used to soothe a wounded animal. "Not tonight, darling girl."

He sat at the edge of the bed, tugging off his boots, dropping them haphazardly to the floor. He didn't dare remove anything else; he did not trust himself unclothed in bed with her and he had already shown a regrettable lapse in judgment tonight. He hadn't set out to seduce her at the hot spring - indeed, it would be more accurate to say that she had seduced him - but she had been so glorious and eager and perfect. And it had been so long, and he had been weak. Or perhaps he was only weak with her...she made him weak. But he could not countenance it again tonight; he suspected she hadn't had an entire night's rest since she'd left Rabanastre. She had been living on nerves, and it showed.

She jerked when he climbed into the bed beside her, pulling her knees up protectively as if she might be forced to defend herself against him. The movement wounded him, tugged on his heart. And he would have gathered her close if he didn't suspect it would push her over the edge, shatter her fragile composure. So instead he merely settled close to her, so close she could feel the heat of his body, his warmth seeping into her, chasing away the chill that had soaked into her bones. His hand slipped over her pillow, stroking her soft, fine hair.

By slow degrees, her tension faded, shooed away by the encroaching shadows of sleep. And just before she fell into it, she gave a tiny, wistful sigh that said to him more than words ever could have. The sound pierced him; his hands clenched against the desire to hold her, to wrap her securely in his arms, to banish the anxiety, the fears that haunted her.

But he held himself back for her sake - after all, he was at the heart of them.

Sometime in the night, Balthier felt Penelo's body go rigid beside him, tense and trembling, heard her make a tiny whimpering sound in the back of her throat. He curved one hand over her hip, the other sliding over the nape of her neck, surprised to find the hair there soaked in a cold sweat. She made another pitiful sound - he had heard the like before, on the coast last year when she had been in the torturous grip of fever dreams, nightmares of the night her family had perished.

He hurt for her, cuddled her close, murmuring words of comfort in her ear. Her arms had curled to her chest, fingers curved into claws, nails digging at the soft flesh of her throat, her chest, as if she were trying to tear out her breaking heart before she choked on it. Carefully he pried them away, lacing his fingers through hers, bringing them to his lips. But she thrashed restlessly, arching away from him, resisting the reassurance he offered.

And she cried out in a broken, pleading tone, "Balthier!"

He froze, for a moment uncomprehending. And then a dark, wrenching tide of guilt and remorse swept over him - she didn't dream of fire, of her family's last moments...she dreamed of him. Nightmares of him had eclipsed those of her family, tied her into unconscious knots of fear and pain.

Each despairing gasp, each shudder was a knife through his heart, twisting in jagged jerks, rending him to threads. He pinned her beneath him with one leg thrown over her hips to restrict her restless thrashing, to calm her. His hands cradled her face, holding her still. He covered her mouth with his, muffling her anguished cries, drawing them from her lungs before they could escape, taking her distress into himself to bear it in her stead. Hot tears seeped from beneath her lashes, coating her cheeks in salty wetness. Against his chest he felt the panicked flutter of her heartbeat.

Gradually she ceased attempting to strain away from him, as the nightmare ceded its grip to wakefulness. He felt it in the softening of her lips beneath his, the way her neck relaxed and her head fell into the cradle of his hands.

"A nightmare," he whispered roughly. "Only a nightmare." He swept away the remnants of the tears from her cheeks, touched his forehead to hers, but her breath still came in fierce, ragged bursts.

"This room...I can't...I can't breathe in here..." The words were forced out between gasps.

Of course - his room. She had not wanted to be within it, after all. He rolled away, hauling her into his arms covers and all, managed to work the door knob, taking her across the hall to her own room. He flipped a switch and she blinked against the sudden influx of light. Setting her at the edge of the bed in a rumpled mound of blankets, he took her cold hands in his, going to a knee on the floor before her, like a supplicant at the feet of a princess.

"Tell me," he said. "About your nightmare."

She shook her head furiously, the shadowy smudges beneath her eyes stark in her pale face.

"You cried out for me." He had tried to keep his voice well-modulated, even, calming - but even he heard the betraying huskiness in it, the emotion that had welled in his chest when he had realized the nature of her nightmare.

"No." But she whispered her denial.

"Yes," he insisted. "You did. Penelo -" He released her hands to reach for her, but she swatted them away, breaking free from the prison of blankets to scramble away from him, making a mad dash for the door. But he was closer, and faster, and before she could get it open he flattened his palm against the door, leaning his weight into it.

"Stop running," he chided, frustration coloring his tone. "It won't do you a damn bit of good, you know that." He brushed her fingers away from the doorknob, grabbed her shoulder, turned her around to face him. "You're better than this. I would never have taken you for a coward."

Her shoulders stiffened, bright spots of angry color burned in her cheeks - but her anger was preferable to her desolation, her emptiness. If he had to provoke her to anger to bring forth a response, so be it.

"You can call it cowardice," she said in a furious whisper. "I prefer to call it self-preservation."

He scoffed. "You've never demonstrated any such proclivity before. Why begin now?"

A flood of high color washed over her; he thought she might actually take a swing at him. But her livid gaze met his unflinchingly, and she was beautiful and incensed and once again full of life.

"You turned me into a coward! I hate you!" She shrieked it at him like a fishwife, exploding into a flurry of flailing fists, more designed to vent her rage than to do actual damage.

Good. That was good. She had been holding too much in, and it had been all too much for her to manage, and she had been cracking under the strain. He accepted the meager blows as his due - he had deserved her rage, her scorn. She had been so mired in shame - an emotion that rightly belonged to him - that she had been unable to give rise to the underlying anger she ought to have felt.

"I wasted a year mourning for you, you miserable bastard! I might have wasted the rest of my life! Didn't you care for me, even a little? Enough to let me be free of you?" Her small fists thumped his chest, pitiful as blows went. "I didn't need you to stay. I could have been happy if you had left. But how could I have been happy when you were dead? How was I supposed to go on?" Those furious eyes threatened to give way to tears once more, and she blinked them back resolutely...but she was glowing. She was glorious. She glared at him, skewering him with her wrath. "I don't even know who I am anymore," she said in a choked voice. "You've turned me into someone I don't recognize."

She had done the same to him, but it had been a change for the better. Perhaps she had been changing him into a better version of himself all along, with her sly wit, with her incessant prying, with her gentle hands, with her soft eyes, softer heart. She hadn't even known it was happening, because she had not set out to change him - he had changed himself because of her rather than having been changed by her. She had not forced him to fit into her mold; rather, he was growing to fill it.

She swiped at her eyes, staring at him rebelliously, mutinously. "I hate you," she muttered again.

"You don't," he said.

Her temper pricked once again, she shoved at his chest, accomplished nothing. "Don't presume to tell me what I feel!"

"You wouldn't waste such emotion on someone you hated," he responded. "You're understandably angry with me, but you don't hate me, darling girl."

"Don't call me that! You don't have the right -"

"I have every right in the world. You gave me that right when you came to my bed." He boxed her in, towering over her. She pressed herself flat against the door, lifting her chin in silent challenge. He liked her best like this, hissing and spitting like an angry kitten, all flushed cheeks and mussed hair and vibrant eyes.

He lowered his voice to a husky murmur. "You gave me that right tonight at the hot spring. You took me, darling -"

"Stop!" All of the blushes he had missed in the past year were determined to come out tonight, staining her cheeks with hot color. "If you are any sort of gentleman, you will stop right there."

"I've never laid claim to that title. In fact, I actively discourage it the vast majority of the time." One corner of his mouth lifted in an insolent smirk. "But if it offends your delicate sensibilities, I shall leave off." And he chuckled, stroking her flushed cheek as her eyes snapped blue fire at him. "I should have provoked you from the first."

Her brows drew together in irritated bewilderment. "What? You...you..."

"I've made a bit of a tactical error. When you're angry, you let your restraints slip, you vent all the things you've bottled up and denied. I made the mistake of coddling you when you needed to be pushed instead. You wanted to run and hide yourself away, but it wasn't what you needed. No, darling, you needed to let loose your anger, to place it where it belonged. With me." He sighed, a sound of pure, honest relief. She would be all right - she only needed to refocus her emotions, to let him shoulder the blame he rightly deserved instead of directing it inwards, where it had served only to torment her. "You deserved better."

"It could have been avoided entirely if you hadn't -"

"No," he said fiercely. "You deserved better. In all ways, in all things, you deserved better than me. That is why I didn't take you with me when I left. That is why I let you believe I had died. It was kinder, I thought, than leaving you. And even leaving you was infinitely preferable to taking you with me and letting you discover how unworthy I was, to giving you nothing but regrets." He touched his forehead to hers; there was nowhere for her to retreat to, and so she could not rebuff the tender gesture. "You were never meant for me, but I was too selfish not to make a grab for you. I have always been a greedy, grasping bastard; I have never been a good man, and I'm unlikely ever to be. And I'm still selfish enough to want you anyway."

Her small hands flattened on his chest, simply resting as though she couldn't decide between pushing him away and pulling him closer. Her eyes were wide and wary, distrustful. But she didn't flinch when he brushed his lips across her cheek, when his arms drew her close. So slowly, like a butterfly testing a surface before it fully lighted, she rested her cheek upon his chest, took the comfort he offered. Then again, he was all that was available, and beggars couldn't be choosers. She needed to be held, to be petted and soothed. She needed someone else to be strong for her, so that she could fall to pieces if she felt the need, and let someone else deal with putting her back together again.

"Do you remember that night on the Phon Coast a year ago when you had gone off to the hot spring alone, and I shouted at you for it?" he asked in a low voice. His fingers traced gentle patterns on her back, feeling the delicate outline of her shoulder blades, the dip at the small of her back. She gave a short nod.

"You told Ashe that you hadn't considered that anyone might worry for you, because you had been responsible for yourself for so long." One had cupped the back of her head, stealing into the soft, fair hair, tangling his fingers in it. "It was the same for me. I never considered that you would grieve for me. No one else would have."

She took a trembling breath, her fingers curling, nails scraping across the linen of his shirt. "I broke, Balthier," she said in a small, lost-little-girl voice. And perhaps she was a lost little girl, just as he had once been a lost little boy. But she had found him, rescued him, and he would do no less. Whether she knew it or not, she needed him, just as he had needed her.

"I just...broke." Her shoulders hunched, such a gesture of vulnerability. She was still broken; the damage he had wrought could not be repaired overnight. Her breath sighed out heavily, her cheek pressed against his chest, a few wayward strands of her hair tickled his jaw.

"I couldn't have taken you with me," he said again. "You deserved to be celebrated, to be feted, to live a life of leisure for once. To experience everything Ashe could offer. You deserved to have everything."

"It was a prison. A cage."

Despite himself, his lips quirked. "With silks and gems, gowns and balls?"

She laughed without mirth, in discordant, flat tones. "A gilded cage is still just a cage," she said.

And he rested his chin atop her head, considering that. She had always been so much wiser than her years would ordinarily suggest. He might have squeezed her a bit too tightly, for she made a muffled protest, pushing away from him fractionally.

"Please, I'm very tired. I'd like to go to bed."

Reluctantly, he released her, easing away to give her a bit of space, breathing room. After a moment in which he made no move to leave, she cleared her throat awkwardly and repeated, "I'm going to bed."

He shrugged. "By all means."

She twisted her fingers, worrying her lower lip between even, white teeth. "Alone...?"

He shook his head gravely, eliciting a bright flash of annoyance from her.

"What, do you think I'll run off again?"

"Yes. Will you?"

Somehow, his candor surprised her. Her brows jerked skyward, her mouth dropped open. Finally her chin lifted in defiance, and she said, "I haven't decided yet."

That was fair; he could hardly expect her forgiveness, but at least it seemed that he had earned her honesty. "Then forgive me my caution. I will sleep easier knowing you are safe."

Her eyes slid away from his. "I won't sleep at all," she muttered.

He smothered a grin, but his eyes glinted with amusement anyway, and she shifted uncomfortably, tugging the hem of the shirt down, feeling suddenly exposed. But even that gesture was telling, and she felt, with a prickle of awareness, his eyes skimming her bare legs.

Flustered, she retreated, snapping, "Fine. I don't care what you do. Just...just don't bother me." And she scrambled onto the far side of the bed, turning her back on him with a petulant flounce, curling into a ball beneath the covers until all that was visible of her was a hank of her bright hair spread across the pillows.

He had found her fit of pique endearing, but somehow he did not imagine that she would appreciate that knowledge. So he restrained himself from goading her further, switched off the light, and slid into the bed beside her. He did not touch her - he had already trespassed enough this night - but she tensed anyway as if in expectation of it.

And he sighed. "Sleep, darling girl. I will keep your nightmares at bay."

She floated on a sea of contentment, the gentle waters comprised of downy blankets and plush pillows, cushioning her, embracing her in feathery, insulating warmth. She drowsed, loath to emerge from her nest of perfect tranquility, peaceful forgetfulness. Here, nothing could intrude upon her healing hibernation, and the worries and fears that had plagued her waking hours seemed to drift elusively out of reach, slipping through her fingers like water through a sieve. She let them go, giving herself over to the easy current, letting it carry her away.

Gradually the current grew stronger, cottony-softness giving way to heat and the even, deliberate caress of fingers upon her bare skin. They moved in carefully measured beats, a song of perfect, light strokes sliding up her back, whispering over her arms, playing over her shoulders. They lingered there, between her shoulder blades, the delicate touch searching out the tightness of knotted muscles, exerting a cautious pressure in the exact place the tension gathered, kneading it away until she went lax with a shuddering sigh as the slight discomfort eased into relief. A warm hand cupped the back of her neck, gentling her, searing an apology into her skin.

He bent, and breathed her lavender scent into his lungs as he pressed his lips to the exposed nape of her neck just above the place his hand rested. She made a soft sound in her throat, neither acceptance or rejection, and he marveled at how perfectly she fit under his hands, as though she had been molded to fit them. Every part of her filled them in exact perfect proportions, in a way that ought not to have been possible but somehow was, because she made it so.

After her, anyone else would be just a poor substitute. She filled all of his empty spaces, had stolen into his mind...his heart. He closed his eyes in silent amazement as time spun away, floating off into eternity, slowing, coming to a world-shattering halt.

He loved her. Maybe he had always loved her. Maybe he had been falling in love with her a bit at a time until at last there had been no part of him that hadn't belonged to her, had been no corner of his heart in which she could not be found. There was no singular moment in which he could say, 'this is when I fell in love,' rather it felt as if he had always loved her, as if from the very first moment he'd met her his heart had known her intimately. There was a sort of terrible irony in it; that this small slip of a girl had felled him as no one before her had ever managed, that she alone could make him writhe in an agony of despair or lift him to the heights of ecstasy.

It was all there, in the lush curve of her lower lip, the thick fringe of her lashes as they fanned her cheeks. The sprinkling of cinnamon freckles over her slim shoulders, the way the sun caught in her hair, imbued it with sparkling incandescence. How the moonlight turned her to a sultry, glowing fey creature. The dip at the base of her spine, the flat, smooth plane of her stomach, the clasp of her slender, soft legs around his waist, the kneading and prickling of her nails upon his skin, the sweet curve of her chin. It was in the lash of her anger, the sly cut of her dry wit, the grace and subtle beauty she exemplified, the boundless kindness she bestowed upon those who had earned her favor, the effortless way she had soothed and tamed him. The myriad things that had caught him, trapped him until he lived and breathed only for her.

His heart restarted with a lurch, beating fast and furious in his chest. And the words to tell her lodged in his throat, clawing to escape. But he clenched his jaw against them, because he knew she would not believe them. Not now. In the future perhaps, but not now. He had so much to make up for, so much to give her before she might at last be prevailed upon to find him worthy of her.

And he pressed his lips once again to the nape of her neck, just the barest touch upon the smooth perfection of her skin, as if he could pour the whole of his heart into her through it.

But she had felt the difference between the first kiss and the last, and did not understand it, and feared it. She whispered, "Balthier?" in a trembling, uncertain little voice.

She did not see his wry smile. And he forced the words back down into his heart and willed them to stay concealed for the time being. And he murmured only, "It's nothing, darling girl."