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She awakens before dawn. Penelo breathes quietly from one corner of their shared tent, a faint wheeze just as she inhales and then a subtle exhale; the noise is suddenly piercing, all she can think of as she rests and so she makes her way into the gloom before sunrise.
The cold is a shock that sends her back into the tent long enough to procure one of their sleeping furs for a cloak. It is undignified but her chill fingers are enough compensation to soothe her stung pride.
The Garif are an industrious people. Ashe must dodge several of the children as they rush about, beginning their day well before the sun rises. Rabanastre did similar in the past—they do not do so now, desert sensibilities bowing to the Archadian love of late nights and sluggish mornings.
Ashe has never shaken the habit of rising with the light, though she herself has never had need to work before the heat of midday. The castle had always been kept cool with the judicious use of ice magicite.
Vaan is awake as well, bundled in a fur of his own. He nods to her as she comes to stand beside him. It is nowhere near the bow that is her right but these are lean times indeed for royalty and she has become inured to the myriad small indignities that plague her now.
Lord Larsa, she remembers, had not even merited a nod.
"It's only gonna get colder, huh?" Vaan asks.
"There is snow in the Paramina Rift," Ashe says. She vaguely remembers it from her youth, searing cold that turned to wetness when indoors.
“Heard of it,” Vaan says, “Never thought I’d get to see it, you know?”
“It likely isn’t as exciting as you’re picturing,” Ashe says.
Vaan contemplates the same sky she is looking towards. “Me and Penelo are probably gonna be pretty whiny when we get there,” he says with a kind of thoughtless good cheer that Ashe, at times, envies.
Their two peasant companions are ceaseless fonts of good cheer, even in the face of betrayal and Empire be damned royal children. Their conversation last night seems to have left little true impression.
Lord Larsa had smiled at Penelo, when he should not have even deigned to acknowledge her existence. Would Ashe have done the same, if she had not had need of Vaan that first night? Would she have noticed her people at all, if she had done what she needed and no more the night of the fête?
“I’ve grown used to the grumbling,” Ashe allows.
Would the Emperor’s child have been more gracious, she wonders privately. Would he have smiled and jostled Vaan’s shoulder?
Would he have seen Rassler? Would the nethicite call to him as it did to her? As it had to Vaan, at the temple?
She tugs her fur tighter about her shoulders. Thoughts tumble about her head. One keeps turning up, over and over again, like a polished stone ready to be evaluated.
Would the Great-Chief Uball-Ka have spoken to Vaan, if she had not been present? Would he have called Vaan a child of the Dynast King as he had called her?
There is naught to do but simply ask.
"Did you know your parents?" Ashe asks. She mentally winces—even the lowliest peasant must surely take offense at the question of lineage.
Maybe Vaan does not understand what she is truly asking because he only rubs a hand across his nose. "Yeah," he says, "The plague took them."
The plague of five years ago, Ashe assumes, though she has heard rumors that there has been a resurgence of the disease in the past two. Another offense to lay at the Empire's glutted feet. "I'm sorry," she says.
"It was a long time ago," Vaan allows, "There's nothing to apologize for."
Ashe thinks of Lord Larsa's insistence that now is the time for peace, that the wronged do not need vengeance, that she should not need to quiet her dead only a year gone. "Not so long ago," she says because she must.
Had the war been five years ago, it would still be too soon to forgive.
"Long enough." Vaan stoops to recline against the bridge struts, boots kicking idly at the empty air. "I can barely remember what they look like, you know? And towards the end, they wanted to die so bad that it's hard to be really sad they got to go. It was a bad way to die."
“Is there ever a good death?” Ashe asks. There are romanticized stories, certainly, ones she had grown up on, ones she had once listened to raptly at her nursemaid’s knee, but they no longer hold her fascination. She would much rather her royal father alive instead of murdered trying to sue for peace, romantic though the notion may once have seemed to her.
Vaan rubs again at his nose. If she were Balthier, she would have a handkerchief at hand to provide, but she is only ever herself and so looks to the stars instead. "There are worse deaths, though," Vaan says, "Like rotting away from the inside, or burning." Vaan pauses and looks contemplative, something she so rarely sees him display. "I'm pretty sure some of them were still alive when they got added to the burn pile after the quarantines went into effect. It was bad."
She truly has very little memory of that time. His Highness had sent her to Rassler and Nabudis, purportedly to learn of the kingdom she would inherit with her marriage. They had all known the truth nonetheless: the populace had sickened while their princess hid like a child.
Her royal father had only allowed her return after the last of the plague pyres had been cleared away.
"Why'd you want to know about my parents?"
How can she tell him that she wonders at the color of his blood? "You knew them well?"
"Sure."
"What did they do?"
Vaan squints up at her for a long moment. Perhaps she has pushed too far.
"Dad was a guard," Vaan says finally, "Nothin' fancy or anything. He wasn't one of the royal guards, just patrolled the streets at night. I remember that he was always sleeping during the day. Mom was always getting on us to be quiet.
"Mom took hunt bills to bring home some extra gil but she mostly stayed at home raising us."
All of it tells her nothing, of course. The answers she seeks may have died out with Vaan’s progenitors.
Certainly, she would like to think well enough of her own father to not have to wonder if he had ever forced himself on a servant.
"I had just started apprenticing when they died," Vaan kicks his feet harder for a moment before he subsides. "After, we started to apprentice to Penelo's parents—they owned a bakery. Then the war came, Reks joined up, and everyone died. War orphans aren't allowed to hold property. The Empire calls it restitution for our parents having fought."
Vaan sniffs indelicately. "Penelo's parents didn't even fight. They died during the riots after the Empire marched in and started forcing us into Lowtown."
It is at times hard to remember that others have lost just as much to the Empire as she. Vaan and Penelo have never worn crowns, but she has never been ground small beneath the Empire's heels. Always there was Vossler and the promise of a lineage restored.
What hope had her people had?
What hope had she now, with her stalwart defender a murdered traitor, and her fate in the hands of yet another of the grasping Empire’s children?
"I am sorry," Ashe says.
"You and Basch." Vaan stands while shaking his head at her. "You guys have gotta stop apologizing for things that aren't your fault."
She represses the flash of fury at a peasant daring to tell her what to feel and looks again to the stars. This far out they are undisturbed by a paling and they are lovely even as they fade to daylight. "And what, then, is my fault?"
Vaan shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know," he says, "But I know that Rabanastre falling to the Empire isn't."
"Maybe it was not my fault," Ashe allows, "However, it is now my responsibility."
At this she sees that she has lost Vaan, regardless of his blood. She cannot explain the complex rules of responsibility and liability, debt and duty to a peasant who is responsible only for kith and kin.
Dawn is almost upon them. Lord Larsa will be asking her decision soon.
She is still not sure what it will be.
"Ah," Balthier's voice cuts through the silence, "Here you are."
Vaan turns to grin at Balthier. "Were you looking for me?"
"You absconded with one of the furs," Balthier says.
It is not as it sounds, Ashe is sure, and she is proven correct a moment later when Vaan says, "You were all cuddled up with Fran, I didn't think you guys would miss the one."
Balthier merely raises an eyebrow at him. "You did not think to keep your own?"
"Basch wasn't sharing body heat with anyone." Vaan's smile turns mischievous as he tucks his hands behind his head, fur slipping from his shoulders to puddle at his feet. “You wouldn’t want him to freeze to death, right?”
Both she and Balthier stare at the discarded blanket on the ground. It has, miraculously, not come to rest in a bit of stagnant mud. “A sacrilege has occurred,” Balthier mutters darkly. He is wearing more than either she or Vaan, but his fine cloth is thinner than her sturdy desert wear, and she is, admittedly, fairly cold even wrapped in a furred blanket.
“Oh, relax,” Vaan says, dropping his arms and stooping to grasp the blanket. “It’s not like it’s broken because it’s been on the ground.” He wrangles it back into place and pinches it closed around his chest with his fingers. “There, okay? Fixed it.”
“First you pilfer a fur--” Balthier begins.
“You can share it with me, if you want,” Vaan interrupts. He offers a corner of his blanket.
Ashe would laugh if it would not wound Vaan's feelings. Balthier is far removed from his origins but she is certain he guards his space just as jealousy as she. Nobility is ever cautious of a dagger to the side.
“First you pilfer a fur,” Baltheir says again, more stridently, “Then you allow it to drag in the dirt like refuse, and now you offer it to me as though I am desperate enough to take it?”
“Are you?” Vaan asks. He waggles the corner again. “You look pretty cold.”
Ashe covers her mouth with one hand. Mirth is sparking bright and welcome in her chest; it does her good to see Balthier wrong-footed, lightens the ache her discarded wedding band had clenched around her heart.
Balthier’s jaw works for a moment.
"Have you never heard of a lie-in?” he finally complains. He makes no move to join Vaan beneath what is surely a body-warmed blanket. “It is, no doubt, the last good rest we're apt to get. The Rift is chill."
Ashe shares a glance with Vaan before she turns away to hide her smile. He tries, but at heart Balthier will always be of the Empire.
“I guess you’re gonna be whiny too,” Vaan says. He swings the blanket off his shoulders and drapes it over Balthier’s head all in one smooth motion. “You don’t like the desert, you don’t like the cold, what do you like?”
Balthier gapes like a fish. He does not splutter, as Ashe would most likely do, but it is not attractive just the same. Ashe savors it.
Vaan’s boots ring loud on the wooden bridge as he walks away from them both. “I’m going to go wake up Penelo,” he says. “She’ll be mad if she misses breakfast.”
And breakfast is beginning now, Ashe realizes. She can smell cooking meat and the fires have taken on distinct, dark smoke as grease splatters into the flames.
Lord Larsa will want his answer soon.
“That churl,” Balthier finally mutters, “The gall of him.”
He has, Ashe notes, removed the fur from his head and tucked it around his shoulders. “You’re certainly one to talk,” she says, and turns her head to make it clear she is finished speaking with him.
"Ashe," Vaan calls. She tilts her head to show she is listening even as she continues to watch the coming dawn. "My great-great-grandmother was a disgraced chambermaid. Raised up my great-grandmother all by herself. If you were wonderin'."
She startles.
It does not, she reflects after a moment, answer her questions at all.