[FFXII] A Drop and a Ripple, part 3/19
Title: A Drop and a Ripple: Moonlight (part 3/19)
Canon: FFXII Original
Timeline: about 2 years pre-game
Characters/ Pairings: Fran, Balthier, mentions of Dr Cid, Jote and Mjrn
Rating: PG
A/N: [2, 799] Nighttime makes for easier conversations.
He can’t sleep. He lies in his cabin, listening to the steady drone of the auxiliary engines keeping the Strahl afloat. The moonlight streaks in, stealing stretches of wall, floor, furniture, bedsheets from the darkness, and his mind wanders. Its usual tracks lead back to Archades, to the place he once called home, to the demented figure toiling away at gods know what in his laboratory, towering above the city. A bitter smirk finds his lips.
(Almost like a villain from a fairy tale…)
Restless. He suddenly finds that lying down is unbearable. Getting up, he throws some clothes on himself and walks out of the room. The Strahl seems almost otherworldly, barred by oblique columns of moonlight. At the door to Fran’s room, he pauses for an instant, but then continues, making his way towards the deck exit.
The Cerobi Steppe is flooded with ghostly silver. A few hundred feet below, the treetops and tall grasses themselves seem carved out of moonlight, which also traces a long, shimmering track across the surface of the sea in the distance. Barely a breath of wind on the air.
He pauses. Fran is here as well, sitting at the far end of the deck, her long legs stretched out and crossed in front of her. Whatever garment she’s wearing-most likely a short nightgown-seems made of silver as well, the way it catches the light. So does her hair, and even her ears. He notices that he is holding his breath.
Fran. It’s been…what? four months since that first meeting in Bhujerba? They never agreed on a definite duration. She seemed to be the kind that came and went as she pleased. Ideal for a sky pirate, admittedly, only he’s never been fully certain whether his company was to her taste, or whether it would remain so.
He finds himself wishing that it would. However unlikely it may have seemed at first, it’s obvious that they make a good team. Fran is reasonable, intelligent and efficient. She’s also a good deal more experienced than him, in many things. Courtesy of being a viera, most probably. He remembers hearing that a viera’s lifespan is three times that of a hume. How anybody would know, considering how rarely one gets to meet viera, is a different matter altogether. But, assuming that is true, if she were his own age, it would make her at least sixty. Small wonder she comes up with things he has never heard of sometimes.
Fran…is also stunningly beautiful. In the evanescent moonlight, she seems almost unreal. Never mind the long white ears, the claws, the fact that, even without her heels, she’s taller than him, or only has three toes on each foot. The silver haze glories in her form, cajoles her every line as if she were its own. He doesn’t deny that he’s harboured thoughts of seduction, many of them, but somehow, they’ve all left him with the definite feeling that, for once, he would be on the losing end. As if he were missing the point. What the point is, however, he doesn’t know.
But he does know that he needs to be here right now.
“You cannot sleep?” her voice is startlingly distinct in the stillness of the night air.
He closes the distance and sits down next to her.
“Neither, it seems, can you.”
She tilts her head to acknowledge the obvious remark.
“There are…memories that come back, sometimes,” and her voice is thoughtful.
From a glance at her face, he sees that her expression is less inscrutable than it usually is. There is a strain about her eyes, something which seems to be painful to remember.
“Memories of which kind, if you don’t mind my asking?”
It’s a rather bold move. Fran is not given to expound on her past, and he usually refrains from prying, even when she makes the oddest statements (such as why exactly saffron is so prized in Rozarria, he has still not quite recovered from the shock). However, his question is more than just idle curiosity. She seems to sense it, because she actually answers.
“The kind that leave regret in their wake.”
He glances off to the side, somewhere into the silvery gloom around them, nodding almost imperceptibly.
“I seem to favour the bitter kind myself.”
Her red irises are searching his face. He lets her look. He lets her gaze focus on his own and read whatever it is that she seems to be able to read.
“And what is it that you see?” he asks, intrigued that she is actively displaying so much interest.
It’s not that Fran is callous or unfeeling, whatever first impressions may imply. It’s just that she usually waits for the information to come to her, letting her interlocutor a way out if they do not wish to give it. She’s not being obtrusive now, either. Only…more involved, somehow. He barely registers that he is willingly submitting to the procedure. It makes sense in a way that things rarely have before.
“Incomprehension, disappointment. Anger. There is sadness as well.”
(Was it that easy?...)
Was I that easy? he almost wants to add, with all the implications that the words carry. As if there already was a past that corresponded to them, as if, somewhere along the line, he had already given in, unawares. Easy? Why, yes, he probably would be. Easy for her to understand, decipher, pick apart…easy for her to have, if she had a mind to it. It wouldn’t solve anything, but he wouldn’t object. Much less resist. Not when he welcomes her deep grenadine eyes as eagerly as parched soil welcomes the rain.
He doesn’t address her words directly. He lets them sink in, lets them pick out the matching threads in the confused tangle that thoughts of his past always bring up.
“I believe one becomes a sky pirate from the need to run. Doesn’t really matter from what.”
Her gaze leaves his face, wandering out of focus somewhere in the space between them.
“It is fetters that you shun, then. In that, we are the same.”
It’s now his turn to study her expression, all silver and alabaster cautiousness. He wonders if she is willing to share. Her secrets are a silent aura around her, always following wherever she goes, almost muffling her steps and gestures, and he doesn’t know if there is a voice for any of them. Some part of him believes that even if there was, he might not be able to hear it. But he would like to try. And while he finds that she will not offer her eyes up for scrutiny the way he-perhaps a little foolishly-just did, she does follow up on her remark.
“The Wood…for some it is a haven. For others, a prison.”
“So is a Judge’s armour.”
The words slip out of their own accord, as if they had been dammed up inside for too long. And from the way her eyes dart back to his face, this was something she did not expect.
“Strange. I would not have thought…”
“…that I looked like a Judge? Neither did I. But Dr Cidolfus Bunansa certainly thought otherwise. Or at least, he thought that Ffamran did. The name was as ridiculous as the idea. But I was as little suited to ‘justice’ as I was to science. He was just fooling himself. In that respect, he has succeeded admirably.”
She scrutinizes his features once again, catches the resemblance, puts the pieces together.
“You are the runaway son, are you not? I remember hearing about this when last I visited Archades.”
The fact that he is notorious, even in her eyes, brings a smirk to his face.
“I’m flattered that you remember, my lady street-ear.”
She smiles sympathy, and he is beginning to think that talking to her by moonlight might be the best way to communicate with her.
“My father…his studies on nethicite changed him. When I was sixteen, he took a trip to the Jagd Difohr. I reckon you know the place.”
Her eyes darken considerably. The name definitely doesn’t bode anything good to her.
“That was four years ago. And when he returned…I couldn’t recognize him anymore. Always muttering to himself…or to someone else, who knows what a madman imagines? Obsessed, consumed by his research and his stones. I doubt much else existed for him apart from that. And he didn’t really exist for me any longer either. Not as my father, at least. It’s difficult to bury the living. So I ran. I damned it all to hell and I ran. Being one of the emperor’s lapdogs wouldn’t have been a life for me anyway.”
She seems to consider the possibility, as she observes him.
“No, I believe not,” she concludes, almost seriously, and yet with unusual gentleness.
“Please don’t tell me you actually had to think about it.”
“It is a good exercise for the imagination.”
“Maybe so, but what a blow to my credibility,” he rolls his eyes.
The light smile on her face fades away gradually, as she ponders something, and her voice is sombre the next time she speaks.
“This nethicite you mention. Dark are the workings of the stone. Garif legends speak much of magicite, yet they are strangely laconic about its counterpart. It is said to wreak havoc in men’s souls, and they fear it. I would be cautious, if I were you.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I’ve left all that to him.”
Her gaze wanders off towards the sea.
“Perhaps,” she says, after a pause, but the thought seems to linger.
She’s left a stepping stone for him, however. In daylight, he might not have taken it, but the ghostly luminescence that coats everything has been goading things unspoken out of both of them, so he lets it continue.
“Garif legends, eh? You do take to the oddest things, don’t you?”
“I do not recall you ever being dissatisfied with my comments. Especially when they spared you almost certain embarrassment,” and he receives a sly look from the corner of her eye.
“Embarrassment? Whatever could you mean?”
She smiles to herself, and reverts back to the point.
“I have spent about four years with the garif when first I left the Wood. I was curious of everything I could find, and I learned much from them. In their bonds with the earth, they are similar to viera. The time given them is also long. Yet they do not believe in complete isolation. It allowed me a more gradual acquaintance with the turmoil of your world. At my age and with my propensity for mischief, it was a beneficial experience.”
‘Propensity for mischief’ earns her a delighted chuckle.
“Now that, I would have liked to see,” he grins at her with a note of disbelief.
She darts a suspicious glance at him.
“I was a youngling back then. Fourteen, by your reckoning. Fifty years have made me cautious since.”
Naturally, he does the math. If his initial assumption about viera longevity is correct, that would make her…ninety-two now, about thirty in hume years. It’s a little dizzying to realize that she’s lived longer than either of the current political leaders, witnessed almost a century of Ivalice living, dying, changing…and that, despite that, she’s only effectively ten years older than him.
(Only ten years…I can live with that.)
He registers the thought, a little taken aback, and leaves it suspended: there is no place to shelve it away inside his head at the moment. Instead, he wants to let the moonlight tell him more.
“If you had really grown cautious, you wouldn’t be here, would you?” and perhaps there is another question in his words.
She raises a snowy white eyebrow at him.
“You overestimate yourself. I notice that this is something hume males are fond of.”
A sandy brown eyebrow matches the movement.
“Are we bragging about conquests now? My lady pirate, you are decidedly full of surprises,” and his grin has a carnivorous glint in it.
“I intended nothing of the sort,” she tries to sound indifferent, but another wily look slides his way out of the corner of her eye, “you would not stand a chance if I had.”
He whistles, impressed.
“And there go all my certainties about you.”
Her face is a strange mixture of curiosity and feigned disdain.
“Oh? You had certainties? Your kind really is brash, is it not?”
“Well, I just supposed that your lot was…above such things. You do turn down proposals quite adamantly, you know.”
“You mistake my reasons,” and her voice has a didactic edge to it, “few males are born to my kind, we are taught to appreciate the full value of such things.”
“Yes, but you’ve left that behind, haven’t you? Or was the bragging just bluff?”
“There is a difference between a glutton and a gourmet.”
“Ah, yes, touché. Very well then, I bow to your superior knowledge, my lady seductress.”
It’s all good-humoured enough, but he can’t help that faint something inside his chest, very oddly wavering between envy and…jealousy?
“If your kind took to educating us, I’m sure we could become gourmets enough, even for your taste,” and his tone is almost wistful.
She avoids the bait. The only way he realizes she is aware of it is the slight twitch in her right ear.
“Not enough of us take much interest in the hume world. At least, for now.”
“Ah, yes, very true. Couldn’t you…spread the good word, hmm? Inform your kind that we are not all uncouth and unmannered?” he continues, possibly relieved.
She levels another haughty look his way.
“And I suppose you include yourself in that exception?”
“That is for you to tell me, my lady anthropologist. I’m not one to ring my own bell.”
She observes him, almost as if she were sizing him up, and he would dearly like to be able to read her as easily as she read him just a while ago.
“Even had I the mind to do as you say, it would be impossible. I would not be welcome to return,” and her voice is muffled, “not lightly does a viera forsake her kin.”
This brings him back to reality. To the reality that they are both fugitives, castaways who refused to diligently unravel the length of life which had been meted out to them, preferring to choose for themselves. So many broken bonds…it’s unlikely that they haven’t left wounds. Wounds which perhaps haven’t closed as well as they would like.
“Do you miss them?” he asks, now serious as well.
She is silent for a few moments.
“I have two natural sisters. Jote is the leader of our village. She pronounced the banishment. Mjrn…she was a very young child when I left, I do not know how she bears my absence. As for ‘friends’…whatever preferences I was given dwindled as soon as I began showing signs of restlessness.”
He nods pensively. Iron rules, cold authority, custom and expectations. He knows this too well, and if there were words that could help allay the bitterness, he would speak them, but he doesn’t know of any. And somehow, he feels that she understands this too.
“Cages come in all manner of guises, don’t they?”
She looks up at him.
“But yours was a similar one, was it not?”
“Throw in a good dose of parental insanity, hypocrisy and deceit, and yes, you’d be about right. Archades is all about humouring the Solidors these days. I’m surprised how as big a lie as the Magistrate remains standing rather than collapsing on itself,” he sneers.
“Your Emperor let his sons kill each other. That is explanation enough.”
They both fall to following the silver moon-trail along the dark waters in the distance. And it all seems so petty by comparison. So tedious, so empty. A fleeting thought sends him wondering if this is how she sees their world as well. Her time is not the same as their time. To him, this preternaturally shimmering night is a taste of eternity. To her, it is probably something like her common lot. To him, the bickering of the imperial court was a whirlpool where he could have drowned. To her, it is probably little more than a drop and a ripple. And in the grand scheme of things, it is most likely the case as well.
“The last thing I want is to suffer the consequences of their madness,” and he tries to sound lighter than he feels, “I have the sky now; it’s all that matters.”
Her gaze seems to turn inwards for a moment, as if she’s considering something.
“We,” she finally adds quietly.
And for now, the moonlight falls silent.