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The sunset along Phon Coast makes itself known in an entrance of grandeur, stretching vibrant streaks of pinks and purples along the canvas of the sky. Below, upon the sands, the waves tease the seam of the shore in a whisper. The breeze is heavy with salt, and as Vaan takes it in, he can’t help the smile on his face. It is beautiful here. Tucked away in their little outpost, he sheds his leg armor and dips his toes in the water.
Down the expanse of the beach, the rest of the party starts a campfire - fish for dinner, all thanks to Basch and Fran’s work. The eve ahead promises to be peaceful despite treading on Archadian territory; he’ll take peace where he can get it. For now, Vaan rolls his pants up to his knees and walks further into the water, as if doing so could bring him closer to the kaleidoscope of pastels churning along the horizon’s lip.
A figure catches the corner of his eye, and Vaan turns into a gust of breeze to see Balthier approaching. The sunset lights his tooled leather in a gilded shimmer, russet hair gleaming, and truly the man is a spectacle to behold. It is almost liberating, at this point in their journey, that Vaan feels less shame in staring, and even less so in teasing.
“Stick your toes in the sand, you stick in the mud,” Vaan pries, noting the way Balthier is still fully sheathed in all of his clothing. It looks…suffocating, with the air so sweet and water so crisp. “Loosen up a little bit - I won’t tell anyone.”
For Balthier, there's a different story altogether. It’s weighing on him heavier than ever, having divulged his secret to the princess in an attempt to jar her from this path that seems to only end in destruction, as far as he's concerned. Nethicite… how he loathes it in all of its forms. He holds no intention of honeyed words for the young woman. She is strong. That is not flattery - That is truth. Ashe is a politician, a war orphan, a widow, and not yet at her twentieth year. Her grit alone could cut stone - and if all goes well, perhaps it shall.
Surely, or perhaps just hopefully, if her little swing-and-miss in the Stilshrine was just a fluke, she will not choose the path his father chose before her. In a final attempt to sway her from the hunger he sees in her eyes, the cold anger in the weight of her voice, the raw putridity of a lust for vengeance, he has divulged a secret very few alive are privileged to know. The messy scattered wake of dragging that gods-bedamned skeleton out of a long-locked closet leaves a trail of venom and guilt behind it. Yet despite the lingering rancid taste in Balthier’s mouth from a confession he’s never rehearsed, there’s a weight lifted from his exchange with Ashe, however small.
And thus it has occurred him, as she left his side and sat thoughtfully next to the fire, that perhaps she is not the only one to know this today.
A strange pull, the Dalmascan beckons him with, inexplicable and vexing all the same; and it is this - all of this - which brings Balthier to the water’s edge with Vaan now.
“Ah yes– and how good are you at keeping secrets, I wonder? Out of curiosity.” Because there’s one he must get off of his chest if he is ever going to deal with this thing inevitably blossoming in the thrumming darkness of his rib cage.
Vaan’s grin doesn’t fade from his face completely, but its subdued somewhat at Balthier’s demeanor, ever-guarded. He gives Balthier a solid once over.
“Secret-keeping, huh? That comes at a cost.” His eyes stop at the man’s shoes and he cocks his head. “But I can take a loan. Let’s start with those shoes.”
There’s light in his voice, a playful edge because really, he is in such a good mood with the sights, the water, the smell of roasted fish down the expanse of the beautiful beach, and a hunting camp in such close proximity that promises a life free of boredom forever (though the Bangaa could stand to be friendlier). Vaan’s half tempted to pull the pirate by the shirtcuffs into the water to top it all off, but he’s heard enough griping in Giza about sodden leather and there's something lingering beneath Balthier's voice that tells even Vaan - Vaan, the master of ignorance - that pushing the man in the ocean may best wait for another day.
Or, at least, later.
“Ever the rough-and-tumble sort, are you? Very well, if these will keep that insolent mouth of yours shut.” Balthier’s voice arches with his brow, but he unlaces his steel babouches and slips out of them nonetheless. They’re dropped on the sands with a muted thud, and Balthier inches into the water - obviously not as deep as the desert churl would like, but enough to get his feet and ankles submerged. The cool rush of water over his tired skin with emits a sigh from his chapped lips. Not bad.
“Where I come from, information is worth more than any treasure. You’d be wise to remember that.” In a habit, Balthier crosses his arms, and hopes that is preface enough for what he’s about to say being in fact quite sensitive.
“Ears open, lips sealed, got it.” Vaan keeps his voice soft like the warm shadows resting on the sands from the palm trees, and thinks of Ashe that night in Jahara. They stood just like this under a beautiful sky in a place he never knew existed, and the parallels do not miss Vaan now, though that night feels so far away. He feels oddly grateful that people come to him at all with anything of merit to say. Especially this person.
When Balthier speaks, his profile stark and pointed against the cliffs and sky, Vaan thinks he looks so very Archadian and yet so very… not. “You may have noticed by now that this… pilgrimage has become a bit personal for me. I stand by my original thoughts. I never wanted to be involved.” Balthier's voice is sharp, as if he were affirming this for himself and not Vaan at all. “Alas, the Leading Man’s script has a way of getting curveballs, especially when the script is styled by the whimsy of primadonna gods. The more I’ve seen of this folly, the more I’ve realized my involvement is essential in a way I hadn’t expected.” He tries to be light but his lip curls at the staleness of it. There’s no way to make light of this, and Vaan is no child; any attempt to make this sound less serious than it already is would merely be insulting. Balthier sighs, moreso at himself than anything else. This grows tiresome.
“Would you think the same of me, if you knew why — I wonder.”
“Well, we won’t find out until you tell me,” Vaan prods, curiosity eating at him as Balthier rambles on. He looks to his left at the pirate, gaze wand’ring further still down the coastline to the distant campfire. No one seems to care that they’re tucked away alone together, and Vaan finds himself grateful. Not often is his company with Balthier so private outside of closed doors, and the fact he can speak openly with the man under the sky feels… right, despite the austerity in the thread hanging between them.
Sinking the tired arches of his feet further into the sand, Balthier seems to have deflated a bit. The channels he’s taking for this route with this particular audience are different altogether than that he used to reach the princess, but the words are still no easier to come by. Balthier suddenly finds that his tongue feels like lead, and he is almost rethinking all of this but, ah - sooner or later, Vaan will find out. If he tells him now, he will at least have control of the way in which he hears it.
Balthier scolds himself, wondering why, exactly, he cares what Vaan thinks — the street thief is only just more than a stowaway as far as he’s concerned… isn’t he?
Hah. A tired lie, that.
A tired lie which sounds hollow even to the rapt audience of his own headspace, an audience always ready to validate and indulge any inane thing he spits into the void. Yet this? A stowaway - sure, he had told himself that once, twice, four or five times, until he couldn’t keep the boy out of his thoughts and as of quite recently, out of his hold. A stowaway, no - quite more valuable than anything Balthier has picked up and carried off in some time, he realizes.
The ring burns in his pocket, but it’s not time to give it back yet. Ashe needs to do what she needs to do, first. They all do.
Which is why he continues.
“I…” He hates how it’s harder to tell Vaan this than Ashe, hates that he’s telling Vaan this for reasons different altogether. Why no, his intentions here are not to stray Vaan from destruction, from anger, from blind vengeance. His attempt to connect with Ashe was on a completely different plane than this. Vaan is in no need of aid - well, not today, at least (though the day isn’t over yet and Vaan can be oh-so-full of surprises). Balthier's intentions here are to lay open the wrought iron guts of his past simply because he deems Vaan deserving to know. Pitiful, he finds himself, and his tired leaden tongue makes his mouth taste like ash.
“We’re headed for a place that I turned tail and ran away from, years ago. A place that I had no whim or desire to see again ere the very sund’ring of the world.” Balthier picks each word carefully as he goes, and watches the sky like a hellhound. It anchors him somewhat. The expanse above gives him words to go on; no matter what he says at the sky, at the end of the day it will always take him back.
“The place where I watched my father’s obsession with Nethicite turn to madness, and where he made me a Judge in that madness — as though it would get me out of his hair.” A laugh, bitter and angry, belies the knot in his throat, and he’s reminded why he hates talking about this. His earrings glint in the dim of the dying sun as he shakes his head. “Nay, I daresay I had different plans altogether for how to rid myself of his lunacy. Still alive to tell the tale, much to his chagrin, no doubt. Can’t say I’m not looking forward to the look on Doctor Cid of Draklor’s face when I tamper with his plans yet again. This time, for good.”
He’s said it. For the second time in the past several hours, he’s said it, and if Fran ever tells him again that he possesses the bravery of a coeurl cub in the face of self-admittance, he will vow to not speak to her for an entire half-day.
The water inches up, brushes over their toes, retreats, repeats. And Vaan stares, echoing Balthier’s monologue in his head, ruminating over each word heaved from his mouth as though he were lifting great weights with each syllable.
Vaan doesn’t understand why.
Were he a man of more tact, Vaan would have perhaps constructed a more composed response to a confession that carried as much importance as Balthier has perceived it to. Alas, he is Vaan, of all people, and barely pauses after Balthier is through before simply saying,
“That’s it?”
The waves fill the silence between them, and Vaan thinks, perhaps he should elaborate.
“I mean,” and here, he flits his gaze to the hypnotic tide, “it’s no secret you’re as Archadian as they come - no offense meant, it’s just, well, you get it,” Vaan is stumbling here, a little awkwardly, but hopes Balthier, well, gets it . “And the Strahl, you mentioned to me it was Archadian too, before you and Fran modified it. I mean, I kinda put a few things together, here and there. It’s not like you came from nothing. You don’t act like you’ve come from nothing. ‘Sides, it’s not like Arcades has a middle class anyway.” Vaan sighs, out of breath from his ramblings, and leaves the water to sit on the shore. Balthier joins him. “What I’m saying is, it’s no surprise, I guess, that you come from some hoity-toity upbringing.”
He tilts his head more thoughtfully now, propping a round chin on his elbow rested upon his knee, and grins. “But you used to be real Empire, huh. Makes a lot more sense, now.” Vaan turns back to look across the ocean.
“A judge, though? Like Basch’s brother, or Imperial bucketheads?” Here, Vaan laughs out to the horizon, chortles peppered along the surface of the water like skipping stones. The very notion of Balthier in anything like the garb donned by the monstrous looking executioners he glimpsed of in Nalbina is downright hilarious, if not weird as hell. No, he much prefers the man before him now. “No wonder you ran. Can’t fly with all that iron weighing you down.”
Vaan leans back on his hands.
“Was that it, though? What you wanted to tell me?”
Balthier falls quiet, as though he’s stunned himself into silence. He flits Vaan’s responses around like a stone in his hand, smooth as a pebble, trying to find juts and edges, some underlying cut or jab, some undertone for something more than just that’s it. There is a part of him that wondered… did he not hope that Vaan might hate him for this? Might in doing so give him reason to tear out this sproutling in his chest from the root and stomp it out lest it flourish? How easy that would be, then.
He’s nearly compelled to ask, Don’t you hate me? Do you not reel backwards with the truth of my blood? Am I not the very men you scorn, who litter your streets, cast cold iron in the veins of your city? But no, there is nothing there, in Vaan’s words. How maddeningly like him. He wants to be annoyed — all that buildup for this?
Perhaps anti-climatic, but relief comes so swirling in its intensity he feels a different breed of nausea altogether. The pirate finally turns then to look at Vaan. A moment passes, and Balthier reaches out beringed fingers to brush a strand of wild platinum from the Dalmascan’s face to tuck behind his ear. His hand vanishes but a second later.
The sight is almost laughable - Vaan jolts from the touch, eyes wide only for a fleeting second as they search behind Balthier towards the other four far down the beach. He mirrors the gesture. Far down though they are, the party is unaware, or at least, is polite enough to fein to give them some semblance of privacy.
Irksome though their company may be at times, Balthier applauds them for their combined cognizance. Unlike Vaan, at least everyone else knows when to leave him alone.
You were the one that sought out the boy alone on the sands, not the other way around, a gnawing voice chatters, and Balthier smothers it somewhere with a hefty fistful of metaphorical sand before responding to Vaan.
“Aye, that’s all. You see — I rather rashly told our dear princess just earlier today the same tired tale. To urge her away from this path… I know where it leads. It’s been long since I’ve said these words to any ear. Strange it sounds to even my own.”
Vaan’s quiet for a moment - only a moment, that’s all the boy can usually muster, and even short-lived is that. “Well, of course it sounds weird. You’re not that person anymore. You haven’t been for a long time.” The smell of cooked fish reaches the breeze by them and he’s excited to eat, but the rarity of this exchange is not lost on him. So he stays rooted to the sands next to Balthier.
“It was good you told Ashe. If anyone can talk some sense into her, it’s you.”
The Dalmascan’s chin curves to the palms swaying above, a whimsical lilt of sunkissed features; the boy looks so right against the brilliant colors of the sky, Balthier thinks fleetingly as Vaan speaks. “I think she’ll make the right choice. We’re all rooting for her. And,” Vaan tilts his head minutely to the side to face Balthier, “We’re all really lucky to have you with us. I’m glad…” he pauses here, to idly trace patterns in the sand as he becomes somewhat meek suddenly, “I’m glad we met. You, me, Fran, everyone. I think… we might really make a difference. I know it’s not what you wanted, when you ran away. But hey,” a careless ripple of tan skin arches upwards as Vaan shrugs, “Once this is over, it’ll really be over. You can be free again.”
Curse the chit for making this all sound so laughably easy.
Vaan’s words are a disgusting show of earnest that peel apart what are years of hard-built facades Balthier thought were foolproof, and fool though Vaan is, mayhaps he should have considered thiefproofing them as well.
Too late, now.
Balthier watches the ebb and flow of the waves, taking in a deep breath of the salt-air and resting his elbow on his knee, chin propped upon it.
For a moment, he almost looks his age.
“Glad, are you? Well, don’t go counting your chocobos before they’ve hatched. We may yet be headed for disaster — but ah, needn’t that worry our merry band of fools. After all, you’ve got the leading man on your side.”
The divergence is overkill even to his own ears. It’s probably obvious, his discomfort at the entire ordeal, but if it is Vaan doesn’t say anything. Merely, Vaan validates his frippery with a snort. He’s half-tempted to groan at himself, if not for the way his breath catches in his throat when he glances briefly at Vaan - hair tousled fondly by the wind, sunset bathing him in a warm glow.
The boy is damnably beautiful, and Balthier is equally as damned by the temptation of beautiful things. He’s not sure if that’s the blood of a pirate or blood of an Archadian talking, and the irony compliments the venom already stirring in his throat.
Vaan has learned of his past and shrugs it off like water from a Giza Hare’s back. For that, the boy is more pirate than Balthier thinks he knows right now. If they can manage to wriggle out of Archades alive - and oh, he plans to, by the mist he’s going to make this right - there are lessons to be taught. The boy has earned a chance at wings. It’s about time, he thinks.
Ah, but he digresses — heart-to-hearts neveer being one of his strong points, Balthier is reminded of this weakness here, in the wake of these twofold confessions that render him heavy and nauseous still. Truly he deserves a medal for this, and will ask Fran to carve it from her helm post-haste.
A salty ocean breeze brings with it the smell of roasted fish and muffled, distant exclamations from Penelo above the sound of waves and mutual silence. The sun is nearly gone, now.
“Mayhaps we should make our way back for dinner, lest we lose our helping to other hungry mouths.”
Vaan rises from the shore, not needing to be told twice about eating food, and brushes sandy palms off on his pants. When he reaches down to Bathier with hands outstretched and eyes earnest, his smile hides nothing.
“Let’s go, then. And I’m holding onto those shoes as a loan. You still owe me a swim, pirate. You barely dipped your toes in the water.”
When Balthier takes Vaan’s palm to stand, he feels lighter, and only lets go of it when they’ve reached the campfire’s licking flames that kiss the edges of their silhouettes.