Work Text:
Earthshine — The light of the Sun that is reflected back into space by the Earth, and which can illuminate other objects such as the Moon.
By the time Vaan’s airship descends into the Strahl’s neighboring hangar, the western sky is painted rose-gold. Still, his arrival is earlier than either of them expected. They’re somewhere off the coast of Rozarria's capital Al-Andalus, where the air is warm and teases brine in its breeze. It tousles Fran's hair fondly, and she revels in the sensation as she steps out the bay doors. This, she thinks, is likely the tailwind that guided Vaan here more quickly than they planned for.
Ahead of her, Balthier walks down the gangplank. There is a poorly-disguised haste in his stride obvious only to Fran, and painfully so. She knows he is fighting every temptation to sprint to Vaan’s ship, just as well she knows he is fighting the same temptation to run away. Separating them now from Vaan is naught but a metal wall and a handful of paces to it - hardly any distance at all in comparison to the year that has passed.
Even to a viera, it has been a long year. So fast in the short span of a hume’s lifetime, yet even her kind can squander it if they so wish to (though not she, never she). Balthier would call this year such - squandered; he does, still, for the injuries sustained from their heroics still scar them both in and out. Yet despite this, Fran disagrees. Bahamut struck them both down from their life of freedom in the skies, and they have taken this year to remember what it is to fly and run. To return preemptively as broken pirates would have done them no favors. Impatient, always, these humes. Hers, especially, but she can hardly blame him when time is but an hourglass filled with gold and held fast to a table.
Only when Balthier’s hands were at the yoke again and they soared west to Rozarria did he realize what exactly he had truly left back in Rabanastre.
And so Vaan has sought to deliver himself instead. Fran, admittedly, is dreadfully curious for their reunion. But it is not for her prying ears and eyes.
All she wants to see is how hard Vaan will smack Balthier for his absence - he is not unaware the manner of it, of the death he knowingly pantomimed by omission alone for too long a time. It is Balthier who wagers he can charm his way out of the Dalmascan's wrath born from his yearlong fabricated demise. It is Fran who knows he cannot. The viera has a feeling she’ll be walking away with a heavier coinpurse than Balthier's when he’s left in the dust, rubbing his cheek.
But that is not what causes him to hesitate.
He reaches the bottom of the gangplank before she. Fran watches him pause and though she cannot see his face, she can feel his eyes reading the distance, measuring the steps between him and the door which leads to Vaan.
And finally, when she reaches him, her touch pulls Balthier from his reverie.
“Go to him,” she urges gently, squeezing his shoulder. Balthier sighs a breath he’s surely held for the better part of a year yet he feels no lighter under her touch.
“You’re just interested in your end of the bet,” he replies sourly. He doesn’t look at her, but when she flicks his ear, playful, he finally smirks.
So does Fran. “I would say break a leg, Leading Man - but I think Vaan may take care of that for you.”
Balthier actually laughs (stalling, of course - how is it that he really so transparent to only her, Fran wonders). “Mayhap we leave before I come out of this worse than what the Bahamut rendered me to.”
Though he jests, Fran has none of it. Only Balthier could drive a creature such as she to the point of maddening impatience. It is, perhaps, part of why she loves him so. "You know as well as I that Vaan deserves more than a letter and a chase.” When Balthier doesn't respond, Fran adds, "Even children tire of stale games. And you forget, he too has grown."
"I've not forgotten," Balthier says with no chance at a pause. There's a tightness to his haste that's almost capricious and all at once she knows he jokes no longer, especially of this.
Untangling Balthier from the web of his self-inflicted limitations was a task she undertook for the better part of a year as they recovered and now that it is done, she wishes for him to see the rest of it through. Those same hands on his shoulders tighten and she nudges him forward.
"Then finish what you start."
Balthier fights it, lazily and for the mere principle of being a pain; he pushes his weight back against her as he takes heavy steps forward, until a well-placed pinch on his rear with her long nails causes his yelp to echo through the hangar. When he turns to round on Fran, he faces only her pointed finger directing him firmly back to the door.
"Go to him," she stresses one last time.
As if on cue, the next hangar over echoes the landing of Vaan’s ship - a vibration followed by the whir of support-beams to balance the Galbana's frame. Fran's ears twitch and she dissects the sounds. From this distance, she imagines it is a small, light craft; fast and efficient. Already she is eager to know of its origin, to peer at the engine and skystone ports. A year away from airships has left her hands itching to tangle in a mass of cables and learn. It is one way to keep herself occupied while she anticipates Balthier and Vaan will find their own creative ways to do the same.
“Long he has waited for you,” she reminds him, gentler. “Will you keep him waiting longer?”
Her partner's face softens. She imagines, for a moment, she even can hear his breath catch with anticipation.
“No,” Balthier relents, his voice quiet in the finality of it. And when he smiles, it's like a bird stretching its tired wings and taking flight. "That would be terribly rude, and surely I'm the only one to set a positive example for the churl."
A Leading Man's bluff. She'll let him have it for now.
“You are long past your cue, I think. But fret not. He is a forgiving audience.” Only her ears could catch it, the sound of his laugh kept in his throat.
And then he turns back to make his entrance.
Were she Balthier, Fran would blame the warmth she feels on the sun.
But Fran is not Balthier. As she watches him walk towards the door that leads to Vaan, she knows for this warmth there is nothing to blame, only savor like gold.
--
Fran doesn’t see them again for a week’s time, and she can only tell they’ve returned to the port town because she hears their laughter carry out of the tavern into the streets.
They won’t leave the other’s side. She wonders if they realize it, deciding quickly after that they must. At the table, Vaan’s shoulder touches Balthier’s. On the table, their fingers lace together, restless in their idle caress of the other’s skin. Underneath the table, she can hear the sound of Balthier’s foot rubbing against Vaan’s shin.
As night deepens, they eat and drink and laugh, and Fran has never seen Balthier happier since their first heist. This long year, which has weighed and pulled and barbed at him, has melted away in the wake of Vaan’s smile; the fledgling pirate beams, open like the sun, and does not turn away from Balthier’s gaze the way he used to a year ago, shy and naive.
A year indeed is a moment for the viera. But on Vaan, on Balthier, she knows its significance on a hume’s life. For them there is much lost time to make up for.
Lucky, then - for if anyone knows how steal back what is lost, it is a pirate.
Vaan’s voice has deepened a half-octave. Balthier can likely catch the hint of it, but it echoes moreso in Fran's ears as Vaan talks. Especially, she thinks, in his laugh - louder and lower but with no loss of its telltale glow. She watches them banter, regaling tales to her of their recent hunt and the sights seen throughout the week, and her nose twitches. Beneath the sizzling of local Rozarrian fare on the table, all she smells on them are clean sheets and hume musk.
“A likely story,” she teases when they are through. “But you cannot fool me with these tales when it is obvious all you’ve seen this week is the vast landscape of a Rozarrian inn bed.”
“Fran, please,” Balthier feigns scandalized at the very notion, before adding, “that was only the first five days.”
Vaan’s sunbathed skin pinkens with his blush as he dips his head, grins something twisted and hinting at dimples she wagers he’ll never outgrow. “Nothing gets by you, huh Fran.” He rubs his nose.
“Do not forget it,” she reminds him, not unkindly.
When they stand to leave, even her sharp eyes cannot tell whose hand grabs whose first. She tries to hide her amusement, but the sight of her partner smiling like that makes it no easy feat.
It matters little, she thinks as Balthier and Vaan walk, enamored under the Rozarrian summer night - they are not paying a single mind to anything but each other.
So Fran smiles all she likes.
Balthier has always been a misplaced puzzle piece, brilliantly unmatched and jagged on every edge, but Fran sees he's not so lost after all. There is a bigger picture in him that was not there before, now that Vaan walks beside him - no longer chasing behind, no longer running to catch up. Together, they are the sun and moon meeting in the tapestry of a blue sky, connected fast by the intertwining of their fingers.
A hume’s life may be short in this realm, but as Fran watches Balthier and Vaan amble ahead, she knows they will fill their shared years with a story that will outlive the legend of any timeless treasure before it.