FFXII Fic: Knots, Ties and Tides (Larsa/Penelo, Balthier, Basch)
I swear, I would have kept my vow to not post or haunt the halls of my usual internet fandom haunts again were it not for the fact that I woke up today and realized that: (a) my sister’s coming home from the hospital after a week long stay and (b) this is the one-year anniversary of this series.
I’ve needed more than a little cheer in my life as of late, which is the reason why I’ve thrown caution to the winds and thrown up another chapter of Knots up for public view once again. I hope that it’ll entertain by going back to the roots of the humor of the series and tossing a couple of dueling Archadians, one very nervous Dalmascan and one very manly Landisler through some interesting times indeed.
And I definitely have to thank logistika_nyx, moontear and lady_venn in particular for helping me with the beta-ing of this bit. I wouldn’t have finished at all if it weren’t for them-- and especially if it wasn’t for Logistika. She not only beta’d-- she actually sat down and helped me to write the entire second scene by providing more of Balthier’s thoughts and actions and shaping the froofiest cat fight the world has ever seen. She honestly deserves co-author credit for the chapter you’re currently looking at.
In any case, here’s to another year of writing in the fandom! And thanks again to everyone who’s been following this series. I wouldn’t spend so much time writing this if your reviews and emails and AIM chats hadn’t always been so encouraging. I’m always open to comments, criticism and questions-- and hearing back from people on my work is always lovely.
And I also have some lovely fan-art from navichance of older!Larsa and Penelo here. Don't they look adorable? It's enough to make me root for them, actually. ;)
Title: Knots, Ties and Tides, Chapter 13
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: Knots, Ties and Tides
Characters/Pairings: Larsa/Penelo, Balthier, Basch
Rating: PG-13 (Possibly higher for Baltheir’s innuendo?)
Summary: When Ashe asked Penelo to make a sacrifice for Dalmasca's sake, she had no idea that this was what Her Majesty had in mind...
***
Once upon a time, in a kingdom by the sea, there lived a girl, young and fair, whose mathematical computations were the toast of every merchant she would meet.
Practically since the cradle of her birth, her skills had been a sight to see. Before her teeth had even grew, before she could learn to suckle on much more than her mother's teat, she had been the sort of prodigy whose skills would astound many. Some would say it would surely the blood of her father's family coming to the forefront. An entire line of mercenary mages would have to inevitable culminate it something, be it wonderful or distressing. But other would argue that her strange talents at counting and coin-collecting were surely mere freak accidents of nature, simply the product of strange reasoning.
But none in the land could dispute that she was among the world's greatest prodigies. And none could dispute any of her other traits as well: that she was not only young but fair; that she was not merely bright but lovely. Her suitors were numerous and handsome and inevitably well connected, for who would not desire a jewel such as this beauty? She was bright and cheerful, sprightly and talented, playful and passionate, sweet and seductive, amiable and--
“Apparently also counting the money wrong,” someone said over her shoulder with cheerful, malicious glee.
“Shut up Vaan,” Penelo snapped, though she could already feel the beautiful bubble of her self-aggrandizing fantasy floating away. “That’s tough talk for someone who can’t even count to eleven without involving his toes here.”
"Maybe," he said, though he still sounded damnably smug. "But you've been at the register for a good twenty minutes and you still haven't finished sorting everything."
"Like you could do any better," she replied, snorting, and gave him a good, hard kick of her heel even as she kept her eyes on the gil before her. But however annoying he might have been about reminding her of the facts, he was absolutely right. She was counting everything in the Sundries’ cash-box wrong and dawdling with closing up the shop for the night.
And for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why either.
She might have been trumping up her skills a wee, teensy, eensy, almost completely insignificant fraction while she had been daydreaming. But it hadn't been without at least a little bit of just cause. For while she wasn't much to look at next to the average viera and her skills at dancing paled next to some of her colleagues (or, as the actual gil-girls went, colleagues) in the field, she really was a damn good shop girl. Hell, would Migelo have nominated her as the Number One Sales Associate in Rabanastre for three years in the running if she hadn't been top-notch in her own, admittedly specialized field?
"That's true," Migelo said warmly, from somewhere behind her. "You always did have a knack for charming people when you feel the need."
Despite her immensely large sense of modesty, Penelo almost had to smile and fight a rising blush. "Thanks, Uncle. I swear it. That really means a lot to me."
But Vaan, perpetual kill-joy that he was, merely grunted at her words. "Yeah, you say that now. But you always have a bad habit of charming just the kind of people you don't need."
Before she could even raise a protest, though, someone else came forward to defend her honor here. "Hey," Filo interrupted, her voice bright and sincere. "Maybe she might not particularly want them but we're still in need here. I think she's doing a really good thing!"
"You're only saying that," Kytes muttered bitterly beside her, "because you weren't duped by a couple of saucy eyelashes and a really great set of leggings."
And Tomaj just sighed beside him. "It really is always the leggings that get you in the end, isn't it? I wouldn't have done have the things I did if that bangaa didn't have a great set either."
She wanted to turn back around and ask what the hell they were all talking about. She wanted to ask them how the hell they knew so much about what she was currently doing. She wanted to ask them where the hell they even got off giving her advice, given how screwed up their lives were as well and how much she was giving up to do the un-screwing.
Hell, she'd be happy if she could just figure out where the hell they had all spontaneously come from when she was sure she had locked the door of the Sundries, as she always did when she opened the register to check the day's earnings.
But she couldn't.
She just couldn't.
Because she couldn't stop counting the money wrong.
And she still didn't know what she was missing.
And when she turned around to ask any of them for some help in the matter-- or rather, to fetch more competent help-- her breath caught within her throat, clawing at the smooth skin there like a bird caught within a monstrous spider's trappings.
Somehow she thought she finally knew just what she hadn't been previously seeing.
"What's the matter?" Vaan asked, lopsided smile drooping off his face as his work-scarred fingers moved in a disturbingly familiar way over a new detail in his being. And beyond him lay something she had never thought to see again, something she had never been expecting.
Her mother was there and so was her father, their miraculously whole hands linked together as they beamed at their daughter, the pride in their eyes all but shining. Her brothers were there too, all three of them, weapons glittering at their sides as they stood before her, unbroken completely. Migelo stood to the side with his wife of fourteen years, he beaming as she caressed his tail with her own, both of them looking quietly happy. Kytes made horrible faces at Tomaj as Filo laughed and Kyte's victim looked resigned to his ordeals.
She could see almost everyone she had ever met there: family, companions, enemies. She could see Ashe standing silently at her husband's side, for once looking near content with the world at large, no longer at war with everything. She could see Basch and the figure of his unknown brother, eyes averted but hands folded in peace. She could see Balthier and Fran speaking in low tones to each other, trailed half-a-step by the long-gone viera who had taught her to dance before she had even quite been on her feet. She could see both her grandmothers and her grandfathers, as well as every single man or woman she had known in the past three generations of her family. She could see the quartet of bounty hunters that had captured her, tails flaring through the air as they argued amongst themselves bitterly. She could see the first man she had ever killed, as well as every man who had helped to bloody her hands, though even her first-- Ghis-- did not seem disturbed by his present company. She could see the little children who begged on the streets of Rabanastres and the gil-girl who used it to make their living. She could see every teacher she had ever had, ever warrior who had ever helped to teach her how to fight, every soldier who had ever enlisted besides her brothers, every phantom child of child of Reks she had hoped to have eventually.
She could even see Reks himself smiling wistfully behind his brother, hair face at peace and his arms at rest, looking sad and quiet and serene.
Beyond Vaan lay both her beloved living and her equally loved dead, all of them mingling easily. And for once, they were all as whole as they had ever, before the war had taken so many of them, so quickly.
And all of them looked almost as they always had-- except for one minor detail.
"Hey!" Vaan called out one last time, the most ridiculous black fright wig of all time jammed on top of his head, as it was on top of everyone else's-- even the bangaa who didn't sport a single strand of their own hair to begin with. "Can you stop staring and go back to work already? You're starting to make us feel kinda self-conscious here!"
***
She woke from her sleep with a quick gasp, jerking wildly as the last of her dream vision dissipated around her waking vision with disquieting difficulty.
And it was a dream, she reminded herself, even as her fingers clawed at the rough, thin, poorly weaved blankets she was lying on currently. It was a dream and it had to be. It might mean that her subconscious was ridiculous enough to use her precious sleep-time to send her bizarre visions of what it would be like if everyone she had ever loved and looked up to starting dressing up in little-lord-Solderoy drag, or what Migelo's bald blue palate would look like when covered in dark curls and waves. But still, it was nicer to believe that her subconscious had a mad mind of its own than to believe that the ghosts of her dead had decided to prank her en masse
It’s just dream, she reminded herself, still shaking under her covers. It had to be-- even if it said things about her sleeping mind that were a little bit... Well. A little bit dotty enough to make her wonder if a bit of Larsa really had rubbed off on her, terrifying as the whole notion of ‘Larsa’ and ‘physical activity’ was to her currently. And now that she’d decided it was a dream-- and it was, it was, it had to be, because even if it was real (and maybe her brothers and Reks and Vaan would have been for pranking her, those jerks, but her parents would never have let them, no), the only thing left to do was to figure out was...
Where the hell am I? And who the hell is touching me?!
Because she was nowhere she recognized, on a bed she had never rested on before, with her blurry eyes opening up to take in an expanse of window that let through thin, piercing shafts of sunlight that managed to somehow only conceal everything around her more easily. She was nowhere she recognized and--
--in a very bad case of deja vu, there was a foreign hand stroking the damp hair sticking to her sweaty cheeks--
And when she opened her eyes and saw a weft of dark hair wavering across her face, it was all that she could do not to
[smiling eyes and broken registers]
react like
[the feel of rough paper money]
a wild animal
[you look so silly with that on, Vaan]
panicking--
[i couldn't count correctly]
One heartbeat and she had a thin pair of shoulders trapped within her hands; another and she had whoever had been hovering on top of her on his back already. A third sent her sprawling awkwardly atop of whoever had been trying to ambush her, while a fourth found the thin blade she always hid in her boots already pointed at the white throat gleaming beneath her.
Most unfortunately of all, a fifth revealed exactly who had sent her into spindle-fold-mutilate mode faster than Vaan did when he compared her chest to various surfaces of unimpressive depth over the last few years.
"I suppose," the most unfortunate human alarm clock in the world whispered, "it would have been wiser for me to have shouted an initial greeting?"
"Oh sweet flaming balls of Belias," Penelo whispered back to the one and only Larsa Ferrinas Solidor currently staring back at her-- under her-- nervously.
But before she could do anything to right the current situation-- such as, say, make a mad dash for the hills while yelling at the top of her lungs, that sort of thing- the door the hut slammed open, bringing in what the cruel gods above had somehow decided were ideal visitors to the scene.
The first to enter was a youngish woman who was perhaps in her late twenties, her skin weathered by the harsh desert sun and her arms going slack around the fresh pillows she had been carrying. "Oh, my gods and espers spare me--" she squeaked, as her burden slid from her hands to the dirt of the bare floor below. "I simply heard a few noises and...assumed that...that you two were... that something had..."
And even as his signature gold embroidered pantaloons caught the light of the midday sun, the pirate Balthier still managed to outshine even that with the cocky calm of his ensuing smirk. "And indeed, madame, it appears that you have assumed more correctly than you had thought. But then, they always did breed them to be precocious in Archades. Or promiscuous. I never did know the difference between those two descriptions, honestly.”
Though Penelo hated to admit it (and was in fact already gearing herself up to line up with her ‘old friend hysterical denial’-- had it ever not helped her in the past?), she had to admit that they almostkindasorta had the right to misunderstand was was currently… happening. She had gotten on top of Larsa to slit his throat, not stir his temperature-- but she was still technically on top of him and in a highly compromising position, no matter what kind of sharp weapon she was wielding. (And knowing her luck, threatening people with knives might very well be considered a normal sign of affection in Archadia, or something.) But even before she could scramble off and deny what they thought was happening, she heard Larsa make a quiet, deeply indignant noise at the back of his throat. And then the little brat used her temporary state of questionable sanity to steer her around like a piece of driftwood, until she was lying besides him in the bed, as though curled up next to him to sleep.
Coming from a boy who she had casually slapped around just a few hours back, it was more than a little disconcerting. And while it wasn't nearly as weird as actually accidentally straddling him had been, it wasn't exactly comfortable either. Penelo would have taken this as her chance to kick up a fuss and possibly kick him as well-- had not the look in Larsa's eyes, currently directed at a target other than herself, promised a far more interesting battle to come shortly.
His next words confirmed her hunch. "Good morning to you as well, Ffamran," Larsa murmured, earnestness practically dripping off his tone. The attendant took her cue and fled before the storm, abandoning blankets with any last fragments of dignity. "I had a feeling someone would come for us soon enough, but had no idea you would volunteer for that duty."
If there had been a moogle-made thermometer in the hut, Penelo had the hunch that the mercury within it would have plummeted on the instant that doubly-thick ‘eff’ hit the air. (Though she had no idea before that just one name in and of itself could sound both so grim and goofy.) This-- this-- whatever this was, because she couldn’t exactly work it out from the tenseness in Larsa’s shoulders and the strangely forceful way Balthier was tugging at his cuffs-- was about to get mightily interesting...
But any hope she had for an immediate hissy fit was squashed as Balthier drawled in response: "Never let it be said that I would let a damsel in distress pine for my presence."
“Evidently,” Larsa said, in a pure measured cadence uncannily like his brother’s-- and though it might have just been the concussion but Penelo could have sworn she had actually seen Balthier flinch. “In fact, I see your chivalry even extends so far as to grace even damsels not in distress with the unbearable lightness of your being."
Balthier targeted those brilliant eyes of his {-- looking eerily like Larsa's, as a matter of fact) right at her. “Forgive me, Larsa,” he said, (but he kept smiling at her), “but you’re presumptive to think that it’s Penelo that needs my rather prominent grace to fall upon her.” His eyes flicked to Larsa, who still looked rather ruffled from the inadvertent wrestling match he’d had with her. “After all, from what I could see, perhaps the appellation of damsel in distress belongs to someone other than she.”
Almost despite herself, Penelo found herself nervous glancing at the scowl currently etched across Larsa's face. Somehow, though he apparently had a habit of taking advantage of being seen as a girl for all it was worth (as a crowd of Rabanastran hoodlums who couldn’t understand the nature of dance and a soon-to-be-heart-broken Kytes demonstrated quite well), she rather had a feeling that he wouldn’t take actually being called on it well. And judging from the way his fists were tightening against her hips, she knew she had judged correctly.
“Bunansa,” Larsa murmured, the chill of his voice as startling as a glacier in the middle of the desert, “I request that you leave, because anything further that passes your lips might be bordering on treason. Speaking of your future emperor in such a manner does not become you well.”
Penelo’s heart rose rather quickly to the back of her throat; if Larsa had already started to talk of that, this might get especially nasty soon.
“Ah,” said Balthier simply replied with a certain airy delicacy, “always a risk when one plays on both sides of the border. Such a threat is not one to move me to my knees, Solidor. A request, however--”
Penelo twitched. If Balthier left, she’d be in here alone with Larsa again. A mildly angry Larsa. A Larsa who could, when in a strong enough tizzy, toss her about like an old piece of driftwood. A Larsa who, judging from the slight twitch forming on his left-eye-lid, had a lot of vitriol to expend as of now.
She’d seen how he could blabber on and on when he was actually in a good mood. Based on that, she wasn’t sure her eardrums could survive him when he honestly felt crossed and worth crossing.
“You see, my dear lord, your future empress seems unwilling to be left alone,” Balthier murmured, which-- while perfectly true-- Penelo rather felt ought to have been left alone. (God knows she didn’t want to be dragged into a fight between two of the poutiest prats she had ever known. Larsa was only twelve, however mature he might have pretended to be-- what was Balthier's excuse?) “Penelo knows that I’m not one to abandon a friend no matter how wild the party or how drunk the lass, not when she’s trapped amongst those who might… take advantage of her.”
Oh. Snap. Balthier winked at her, Larsa almost hissed, and Penelo felt interested almost in spite of her own common sense. Admittedly, those bangaa bounty hunters (thankfully) hadn’t got fresh with her…but Larsa sure had. Balthier tugged at his cuffs again, flexing shoulders; Larsa crossed his own arms, the bell of his sleeves puffing. She wasn’t sure who’d crumble first. In the current battle of shirt versus blouse, both sets of sleeves were roughly on equal value of poof.
(Which was, frankly, excellent if only for the fact that she wasn’t sure who’d count as shirts and who’d be blouses, considering how many ruffles they both donned on as a matter of course.)
Still, maybe Balthier had rather underestimated the acid fortitude of Solidor blood. She could understand that; she’d made the same mistake-- though at least she had been smart enough to start regarding Larsa as about as harmless as a teddy bear rigged with barbed wire and poison venom already. Apparently, Balthier hadn't quite cottoned on. And even as the older man spoke, Larsa’s lip curled, and the way his eyes dragged down Balthier’s frame in a way that suggested that mounting Balthier on a spit and serving him for supper wouldn’t be too outlandish an idea.
“Truly,” Larsa remarked, the little statesman always, “it is heartening to hear that my future wife inspires such devotion, across all ranges of hume classes and vagrancies as well. Still, the information obtained in the capital indicates that it was less Penelo’s appearance required at that particular party, and more yours that incited the bangaa’s desperate desire to…how shall I put this…bugger you around as an old pal should?”
Oooh. Snap. And a half. Balthier barely hid his recoil. Whether or not Larsa knew what that word meant (and she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to know or not, because if he did, then at least she wouldn’t have to explain, and she couldn’t believe she just thought that, what was happening to her, she had never wanted to think this deeply about the quality of sexual education available to Archadian princes, ever, ever, ever), it had Balthier’s smile stutter a little.
(If she had been a worse person, Penelo might have almost snickered at that. Apparently, a few little observations she had made about B’ga… B’gama... B'gaga... B'garganzola… whatever the hell his name was and the rest of his cue hadn’t been so off the mark either.)
Not that this particular pirate was cornered just yet. He merely bowed in mock deference and continued on. "You would make a very poor emperor, little prince, if you went about repeating the words of every scurrilous street ear you meet. After all, this leading man’s yet to hear a complaint from the ladies...or-“ he smirked, “--have a knife put to his throat from any woman he has apparently tussled with most unwillingly.”
Not for the first time, Penelo found herself wondering if it was possible to work out a way to will her head to explode to avoid being pulled into the froofiest cat fight she had ever seen. On the whole, if this was the sort of thing she had to look forward to when she was around Archadians all the time, death itself might be a kindness and a victory.
“True," Larsa said, gritting his teeth in a way that almost seemed to signal defeat-- which struck Penelo as odd, seeing as how she had certainly never seem him do so before. He had always struck her as the sort of person that wouldn’t let anything as piddling as mere facts or common sense get in his way presently. "But..." Ooh, she never trusted Larsa when that little smile graced his face-- "...I suppose that only makes sense for the leading man. After all, Captain fon Ronsenberg always has been a favorite of the ladies.”
All of a sudden, Penelo's mind had a sudden and vivid image of a pair of blood-strained frills flying through the air eventually. But before she could cover her eyes or finish placing bets on the outcome (Balthier was bigger but Larsa seemed a lot more scrappy; Balthier had Fran and everything that implied but Larsa could conceivably call on an entire army...), the most beautiful possible distraction of all time fortuitously entered the scene.
He walked in beauty like the night, composed of imperial fleets and starry skies, with all that was best of dark and bright meeting in his aspect and in his eyes. He could have been compared to a summer’s day, were it not that his face were yet more golden and gay, and that the rough winds that did shake the darling buds of May would have no hold on him. Death could not brag of wandering in his shade, nor of having swept by what accruements he had made, and she would have given anything to have been laid by he, he, he.
The cavalry had officially arrived to the war-zone. And it looked amazing.
But just before Penelo could trickle out of the bed of floofery and death and towards the salvation of perhaps the last sane man she had ever met, Captain Basch fon Beautiful smiled and said just the words she felt that she had been awaiting all her life to hear.
"Is anyone here," he murmured in a husky murmur that could have sent legions of ladies underwear flying through the air from Ambervale to Archades, "feeling the least bit hungry?"
***
And that was how, half an hour later, Penelo found herself munching on fish kebabs on the coast with the best looking man she had ever seen across from her and a pair of swishy human powder-puffs staring intently at each other from opposing sides of a cheap wicker table, as though waiting to see which of them would first spontaneously combust from the cloud of styling products and gilded finery that followed the both of them around near incessantly.
Lunch had finally arrived, with a nice table-spread of regional Estesand delicacies to accompany a side of incredible social awkwardness and the sort of deep, scarring humiliation that was already quite literally already haunting Penelo in her dreams. And honestly if she hadn't just passed the most surreal week of her life, she probably wouldn't be handling the situation as well as she was at present.
Actually, under normal circumstances, she had the feeling that watching a pair of foreigners draw blood with their tongues while she learned of how she had ended up comatose and half-molested by the terminally under-aged and over-sexed, she probably would have already run off shrieking into the night already. (Possibly while gibbering about the intrusive effects of kicky purple tights into her life like a woman assaulted by a pair of sentient, royal-hued hosiery.) But she was finally odd enough to appreciate the humor of the former and jaded enough to have realize that she could have had worse done to her than the latter. (Though her terror of chocobo-flavored kisses hadn't quite worn off here and she still flinched whenever Larsa turned to her in a manner most distinctly peck-y.)
So for the time being, she simply kept her mouth occupied with clams from the table, her ears engaged with listening to just how she had gotten into her recent predicament (something about being knocked out by the local members of the animal kingdom because she and Larsa had apparently -- gods help her-- disturbed their habitats with certain actions that had taken place short before her unfortunately incomplete beheading) and her eyes enraptured in staring at the most righteous man she had ever wanted to engage in quasi-incest with, damned be duty and country.
After the furious amount of shouting and debate she’d engaged in during the last few days, it was almost soothing to be able to slip back into her customary role as a furiously listening presence who kept quiet when more important people (that is: everyone in their little party but Vaan) were speaking. And in light of all that, perhaps she could be forgiven for being distracted in the pivotal moment to come, too caught up in the rush of a roasted piece of bread and the equally delicious glimpses of golden thighs and calves that Basch inadvertently kept giving her to notice when the conversation drifted from her to her-and-Larsa and the prince himself began to speak.
In fact, shot nerves be damned, she only began to pay attention once she heard the key words lustrous loveliness and exquisite hip movements and incomparable nobility shoot out of Larsa's mouth as he batted his lashes at her like a cheap whore being paid on retainer and went on to recount a version of their history. And even that probably wouldn’t have been so very bad-- hell, at this point, even she could have done with a recap-- if only his version of history didn’t seem so… skewed.
And also, more than a little inaccurate.
And also, disturbingly prone to lingering more on how absolutely perfect she and Larsa were for each other than, say, how absolutely insane the plan to engage them had been from its misbegotten infancy and how much trickery had been included from both of their ends to accomplish it.
And when Larsa paused in his recitations to twinkle at her knowingly even as Basch and Balthier slowly turned to stare at her with no small degree of amazement, amusement and morbid fascination, Penelo knew there was only one thing she could do to save herself right here.
"Dear Gods," she murmured to any heavenly beings that might even now be plotting her end. "It's Penelo. Why haven't you already struck me down with lightning yet?"
***
But in fact, despite her urgent pleas, Penelo did not find herself expiring within the next thirty minutes of mad-prince-monopolized conversation. She still desperately wished to, however, especially when Larsa began to go on rapturous flights of ill-conceived poetic fancy where he compared her hips to the pistoning engine of an imperial war cruiser (disturbing), her palm to a sweet yet immensely powerful oar made of human flesh (extremely disturbing) and her lips to a precious relic that needed to be stored away from the outside world lest some evil field damage their sanctity (possibly the most disturbing image Penelo had ever been exposed to, in a very strong contest that included visions of war, plague, pestilence, death and Vaan's over-ripe, morning-time underwear.)
Clearly, Larsa hadn't quite mastered the poetic tongue that had blessed his brother’s near-coronation in Rabanastre just a few short months ago. But he had apparently gotten ahold of Vayne Solidor’s talent for propaganda and was deploying it skillfully as he painted a picture of his epic love for Penelo that somehow stretched days into months, months into years, a few odd bits of actual enjoyment into transcendental moments of happiness and a disturbing tussle on the beach into the sort of rapture that came over Ashe when she saw an enemy whose eye perfectly belonged on the sharp end of a stick.
Finally, Larsa was finally winding up. “And after she learned of my perfidy,” he said with a troubling amount of sincerity, “she struck me with a blow that could have felled that overgrown lizard that still haunts Dalmasca-- no, Penelo, not your dear Migelo-- in a manner that literally stole my breath-- as much from her daring and her breathtaking honesty as from the intense pain that such beautiful weapons of precision somehow handed…”
Penelo stared at her hands with blank surprise. She had never before had to think of her hands as actual, lethal weapons.
“But yet,” Larsa went on with brisk, manly sorrow, “I cannot blame her for her passion! After all, were I a better man-- a noble man-- a more sincere man-- a more honest man--”
“Or even a man at all,” Balthier muttered in a sullen undertone that sent her dear Basch frowning in a manner that sent some of the village men, nearly all of the village women and an odd percentage of the village children watching them warily from nearby out-posts all but swooning to their ends.
“A better man,” Larsa continued on with his nose hoisted high into the air, “I would have told her of my intentions to wed her plainly, in a manner that would have shown her that I and I alone was the architect of all my dreams. I would have informed her that her radiant beauty, thrilling charm, wonderful sense of humor, incredible kindness and astounding vivacity enchanted me so that I knew I could settle for no less a woman to be my wife-- my bride-- the mother of my country when I finally ascend to the treacherous heights of the ruler of my land!”
“Um,” Penelo reluctantly speaking for nearly the first time in the conversation. She really would have preferred to keep silent, especially as she was feeling not in the least beautiful, charming, humorous, kind or vivacious-- but the batted lashes Larsa had sent in her direction begged for some sort of acknowledgement. “Er. Yes. What he said.”
“In which case,” Basch murmured, speaking slowly for the first time since Larsa had launched on his mad tirade, “it seems as though you and your… lady are getting on well then?”
For Larsa, that was probably an understatement. But since Basch actually seemed to be addressing her as well, Penelo opened her mouth to speak with some actual enthusiasm. But unfortunately, overcome as she was by the sheer presence of her Captain Oh Captain‘s manliness, Larsa rather beat her to the punch.
“Oh very,” he assured them all. “Very, very much so. I doubt either of us could be more splendidly happy with this arrangement and I’m sure all will be able to deduce that merely from the delicate flush already coloring my Penelo’s sweet face--”
“And also, the fact that you didn’t actually allow her to answer the question,” Balthier pleasantly interrupted.
Thrown off his poetic stride, Larsa narrowed his eyes in a manner that suggested he either had to squint to see his adversary in the desert sun or that he was attempting to send his opponent’s head flying off through the power of mental telekinesis. Archadians being what they were, either could have fit the current conversation.
“I was,” the prince answered with cold precision, “merely making a point of demonstrating how wonderfully Penelo allows her excitement about our future nuptials shine through her demure demeanor. This, as well as the historical chronicle of our romance that I have just practiced--”
“You mean the fairy tale propaganda you shall use to brainwash the masses,” Balthier rather nastily-- there was really no other verb to describe it-- ejaculated into the middle of Larsa’s sentence.
Larsa seemed to twinkle through sheer force of will just then. “Exactly, my ever so dear companion. Her delicate responses, my open enthusiasm, our political reasons and the fairy tale-- or rather, history-- that I’ve concocted out of the facts of the matter will surely be enough to garner the enthusiastic support of most of my fellow country men. Though I’m quite sure that you, of all people, know of just how very elitist the gentry in Archades can be--”
“That is,” Balthier interrupted blithely once more, “rather like pointing out that the sun is a tad warm, the sky hangs rather high and at least three of your honorable ancestors are known for attempting to mount chocobos through the wrong end.”
Oh my. Apparently, her dear actual-uncle Mortimor apparently had his counterparts among Royal Archadians.
Regardless of the sudden similarities reveled in her family line and his, Penelo rather expected Larsa to startle at that. And indeed he did-- but only for a moment, before his own lips curled into a vicious grin that rather answered Balthier‘s own. “Common enough knowledge, my lord sky pirate. Though I suppose you would know better than most… seeing as how that side of the family contributed to your misbegotten family tree as well.”
There was a long and rather terrible silence; Penelo wanted rather desperately to curl up into a fetal ball and not think about how many men she had apparently already mentally committed quasi-incest with.
Luckily, with an exquisite sense of tact, Basch finally mustered up the sense to cough and go on as though high noon at the too-clever-for-their-own-good corral hadn’t already commenced. “Nonetheless, the two of you both seem like sensible and responsible children. I’m sure that, despite your relative inexperience, you’ve both attempted to logically resolve any problems you might have had?”
Any other man that called her would have probably been picking his teeth out of his trousers in the next few minutes. But when Basch said it... Penelo sighed and tried to put off the disturbing revelation that had come to light the moment before by imagining some beautiful world where she needed to sex him up in the service of god, crown and kingdom.
“Yes,” she murmured with far more fervor than before, trying to keep both mad and apparently interrelated Archadians out of her peripheral vision to only focus on the only other sane member of her party for one dreamy, lingering moment. “I swear, uncle, that I’ve been really very logical about this-- very logical and responsible and everything else I can. In fact, I’ve been so very logical and responsible you could practically name me after it. Like… Logistika Responsibilita… or something just like that!”
Basch gave her a rather indulgent smile as a response; somewhere within her trousers, Penelo could have sworn her ovaries responded with a deep, resounding cheer.
“And it was with that reasonableness,” Larsa summed up with one last smug sigh and one last flutter of his lashes, “that my darling and I reconciled to our fate as the future mother and father of our nation. And that, my dear fellows-- though I suppose some of you might answer to less respectable sobriquets--”
The grin that Balthier gave at that truly did scare her a bit.
“--But nonetheless, that does not change my basic point,” Larsa went on, though his hair was starting to look distinctly ruffled in light of all of this. “We have come together and really, though I thank you for your kindness and your… kindness, we really require no more from either of you than safe passage to our next destination. Shall we set out from here, then, and move to the next leg of our plan?”
And as though it were a signal that bypassed her entirely, they all-- sane or insane, tall or short, attractive or otherwise, turned to look at her as though to finally garner her approval on leaving, as though she and she alone held the answer to their question.
“If you’re feeling all right--” Basch began, just as Larsa began to murmur “If your head finally has recovered from the fall” and even Balthier began to mutter something about how the unholy union that was to come could stand to be delayed for a few more days if she was not yet up to garnering the maddest royal house in Ivalice as her own family just then.
And it was then that she realized that if she wanted to, she really could delay this for just a bit. She could ask for further rest, or claim that her head was still pounding viciously beneath her tired eyes, or beg for just a few more hours in bed before the long trudge back to Rabanastre had to be undertaken.
But what would that buy her, even if she could stretch this precious time in her own kingdom for as long as Larsa was patient? A few more days mourning her loss of everything? A few more hours pretending that her life wasn’t going to change? A bit more contempt and pity from Balthier? A bit more gentle but useless bits of kindness from Basch? And perhaps even further suspicion about her motives from Larsa, which was the very last thing she needed now that she actually would marry him?
Because she was going to do that-- there was no way to turn back. She really was going to go to Archades, she really would leave her home in Rabanastre for years (if not forever), and this really would lead to her being the ‘mother’ of a foreign land where the conquest of smaller country that had never done them any harm could be accomplished on the mere whim of some badly-dressed bastard with bad hair and propensity for bat wings on his britches.
She was going to go. No one could help her out of this. And though she really didn’t have any sort of overpowering beauty or charm or humor or kindness outside the fervid dreams of a boy who had read far too many ten-gil romance novels growing up, there was no sense in putting off what was to come here.
She had, after all, promised herself that she was finally going to have a hand in writing whatever story held her within it. And right now, she felt more than motivated enough to damn whatever consequences that goal might have.
“Lets,” she said, and rose from her seat, eyes wide and heart pounding and a sense of adventure stirring deep within her flesh. And when Larsa beamed and Basch’s smile widened and even Baltheir’s eyes narrowed just a little in their frames, she thought she finally was doing what she needed. “Let’s get out of here and move onto something new. I think I finally know what I‘m doing at long last.”
***
Author's Note: And now that this is done, I must ask: shirts versus blouses. Who's on what team and who won the overall argument? ;)
And since this is something that's been nagging me, I wanted to toss this out as a silly debate question. Where do you fall on the being-married-to-the-over-eager-12-year-old spectrum? Do you feel as though Penelo ought to simply give in and give up and call it a day on marrying Larsa? Or continue to scheme get out of her predicament like a proper Archadian noblewoman? Or some combination of all of the above? I've been getting a wide range of views on this issue in the past so I thought it'd be interesting to ask everyone!
I’ve needed more than a little cheer in my life as of late, which is the reason why I’ve thrown caution to the winds and thrown up another chapter of Knots up for public view once again. I hope that it’ll entertain by going back to the roots of the humor of the series and tossing a couple of dueling Archadians, one very nervous Dalmascan and one very manly Landisler through some interesting times indeed.
And I definitely have to thank logistika_nyx, moontear and lady_venn in particular for helping me with the beta-ing of this bit. I wouldn’t have finished at all if it weren’t for them-- and especially if it wasn’t for Logistika. She not only beta’d-- she actually sat down and helped me to write the entire second scene by providing more of Balthier’s thoughts and actions and shaping the froofiest cat fight the world has ever seen. She honestly deserves co-author credit for the chapter you’re currently looking at.
In any case, here’s to another year of writing in the fandom! And thanks again to everyone who’s been following this series. I wouldn’t spend so much time writing this if your reviews and emails and AIM chats hadn’t always been so encouraging. I’m always open to comments, criticism and questions-- and hearing back from people on my work is always lovely.
And I also have some lovely fan-art from navichance of older!Larsa and Penelo here. Don't they look adorable? It's enough to make me root for them, actually. ;)
Title: Knots, Ties and Tides, Chapter 13
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: Knots, Ties and Tides
Characters/Pairings: Larsa/Penelo, Balthier, Basch
Rating: PG-13 (Possibly higher for Baltheir’s innuendo?)
Summary: When Ashe asked Penelo to make a sacrifice for Dalmasca's sake, she had no idea that this was what Her Majesty had in mind...
***
Once upon a time, in a kingdom by the sea, there lived a girl, young and fair, whose mathematical computations were the toast of every merchant she would meet.
Practically since the cradle of her birth, her skills had been a sight to see. Before her teeth had even grew, before she could learn to suckle on much more than her mother's teat, she had been the sort of prodigy whose skills would astound many. Some would say it would surely the blood of her father's family coming to the forefront. An entire line of mercenary mages would have to inevitable culminate it something, be it wonderful or distressing. But other would argue that her strange talents at counting and coin-collecting were surely mere freak accidents of nature, simply the product of strange reasoning.
But none in the land could dispute that she was among the world's greatest prodigies. And none could dispute any of her other traits as well: that she was not only young but fair; that she was not merely bright but lovely. Her suitors were numerous and handsome and inevitably well connected, for who would not desire a jewel such as this beauty? She was bright and cheerful, sprightly and talented, playful and passionate, sweet and seductive, amiable and--
“Apparently also counting the money wrong,” someone said over her shoulder with cheerful, malicious glee.
“Shut up Vaan,” Penelo snapped, though she could already feel the beautiful bubble of her self-aggrandizing fantasy floating away. “That’s tough talk for someone who can’t even count to eleven without involving his toes here.”
"Maybe," he said, though he still sounded damnably smug. "But you've been at the register for a good twenty minutes and you still haven't finished sorting everything."
"Like you could do any better," she replied, snorting, and gave him a good, hard kick of her heel even as she kept her eyes on the gil before her. But however annoying he might have been about reminding her of the facts, he was absolutely right. She was counting everything in the Sundries’ cash-box wrong and dawdling with closing up the shop for the night.
And for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why either.
She might have been trumping up her skills a wee, teensy, eensy, almost completely insignificant fraction while she had been daydreaming. But it hadn't been without at least a little bit of just cause. For while she wasn't much to look at next to the average viera and her skills at dancing paled next to some of her colleagues (or, as the actual gil-girls went, colleagues) in the field, she really was a damn good shop girl. Hell, would Migelo have nominated her as the Number One Sales Associate in Rabanastre for three years in the running if she hadn't been top-notch in her own, admittedly specialized field?
"That's true," Migelo said warmly, from somewhere behind her. "You always did have a knack for charming people when you feel the need."
Despite her immensely large sense of modesty, Penelo almost had to smile and fight a rising blush. "Thanks, Uncle. I swear it. That really means a lot to me."
But Vaan, perpetual kill-joy that he was, merely grunted at her words. "Yeah, you say that now. But you always have a bad habit of charming just the kind of people you don't need."
Before she could even raise a protest, though, someone else came forward to defend her honor here. "Hey," Filo interrupted, her voice bright and sincere. "Maybe she might not particularly want them but we're still in need here. I think she's doing a really good thing!"
"You're only saying that," Kytes muttered bitterly beside her, "because you weren't duped by a couple of saucy eyelashes and a really great set of leggings."
And Tomaj just sighed beside him. "It really is always the leggings that get you in the end, isn't it? I wouldn't have done have the things I did if that bangaa didn't have a great set either."
She wanted to turn back around and ask what the hell they were all talking about. She wanted to ask them how the hell they knew so much about what she was currently doing. She wanted to ask them where the hell they even got off giving her advice, given how screwed up their lives were as well and how much she was giving up to do the un-screwing.
Hell, she'd be happy if she could just figure out where the hell they had all spontaneously come from when she was sure she had locked the door of the Sundries, as she always did when she opened the register to check the day's earnings.
But she couldn't.
She just couldn't.
Because she couldn't stop counting the money wrong.
And she still didn't know what she was missing.
And when she turned around to ask any of them for some help in the matter-- or rather, to fetch more competent help-- her breath caught within her throat, clawing at the smooth skin there like a bird caught within a monstrous spider's trappings.
Somehow she thought she finally knew just what she hadn't been previously seeing.
"What's the matter?" Vaan asked, lopsided smile drooping off his face as his work-scarred fingers moved in a disturbingly familiar way over a new detail in his being. And beyond him lay something she had never thought to see again, something she had never been expecting.
Her mother was there and so was her father, their miraculously whole hands linked together as they beamed at their daughter, the pride in their eyes all but shining. Her brothers were there too, all three of them, weapons glittering at their sides as they stood before her, unbroken completely. Migelo stood to the side with his wife of fourteen years, he beaming as she caressed his tail with her own, both of them looking quietly happy. Kytes made horrible faces at Tomaj as Filo laughed and Kyte's victim looked resigned to his ordeals.
She could see almost everyone she had ever met there: family, companions, enemies. She could see Ashe standing silently at her husband's side, for once looking near content with the world at large, no longer at war with everything. She could see Basch and the figure of his unknown brother, eyes averted but hands folded in peace. She could see Balthier and Fran speaking in low tones to each other, trailed half-a-step by the long-gone viera who had taught her to dance before she had even quite been on her feet. She could see both her grandmothers and her grandfathers, as well as every single man or woman she had known in the past three generations of her family. She could see the quartet of bounty hunters that had captured her, tails flaring through the air as they argued amongst themselves bitterly. She could see the first man she had ever killed, as well as every man who had helped to bloody her hands, though even her first-- Ghis-- did not seem disturbed by his present company. She could see the little children who begged on the streets of Rabanastres and the gil-girl who used it to make their living. She could see every teacher she had ever had, ever warrior who had ever helped to teach her how to fight, every soldier who had ever enlisted besides her brothers, every phantom child of child of Reks she had hoped to have eventually.
She could even see Reks himself smiling wistfully behind his brother, hair face at peace and his arms at rest, looking sad and quiet and serene.
Beyond Vaan lay both her beloved living and her equally loved dead, all of them mingling easily. And for once, they were all as whole as they had ever, before the war had taken so many of them, so quickly.
And all of them looked almost as they always had-- except for one minor detail.
"Hey!" Vaan called out one last time, the most ridiculous black fright wig of all time jammed on top of his head, as it was on top of everyone else's-- even the bangaa who didn't sport a single strand of their own hair to begin with. "Can you stop staring and go back to work already? You're starting to make us feel kinda self-conscious here!"
***
She woke from her sleep with a quick gasp, jerking wildly as the last of her dream vision dissipated around her waking vision with disquieting difficulty.
And it was a dream, she reminded herself, even as her fingers clawed at the rough, thin, poorly weaved blankets she was lying on currently. It was a dream and it had to be. It might mean that her subconscious was ridiculous enough to use her precious sleep-time to send her bizarre visions of what it would be like if everyone she had ever loved and looked up to starting dressing up in little-lord-Solderoy drag, or what Migelo's bald blue palate would look like when covered in dark curls and waves. But still, it was nicer to believe that her subconscious had a mad mind of its own than to believe that the ghosts of her dead had decided to prank her en masse
It’s just dream, she reminded herself, still shaking under her covers. It had to be-- even if it said things about her sleeping mind that were a little bit... Well. A little bit dotty enough to make her wonder if a bit of Larsa really had rubbed off on her, terrifying as the whole notion of ‘Larsa’ and ‘physical activity’ was to her currently. And now that she’d decided it was a dream-- and it was, it was, it had to be, because even if it was real (and maybe her brothers and Reks and Vaan would have been for pranking her, those jerks, but her parents would never have let them, no), the only thing left to do was to figure out was...
Where the hell am I? And who the hell is touching me?!
Because she was nowhere she recognized, on a bed she had never rested on before, with her blurry eyes opening up to take in an expanse of window that let through thin, piercing shafts of sunlight that managed to somehow only conceal everything around her more easily. She was nowhere she recognized and--
--in a very bad case of deja vu, there was a foreign hand stroking the damp hair sticking to her sweaty cheeks--
And when she opened her eyes and saw a weft of dark hair wavering across her face, it was all that she could do not to
[smiling eyes and broken registers]
react like
[the feel of rough paper money]
a wild animal
[you look so silly with that on, Vaan]
panicking--
[i couldn't count correctly]
One heartbeat and she had a thin pair of shoulders trapped within her hands; another and she had whoever had been hovering on top of her on his back already. A third sent her sprawling awkwardly atop of whoever had been trying to ambush her, while a fourth found the thin blade she always hid in her boots already pointed at the white throat gleaming beneath her.
Most unfortunately of all, a fifth revealed exactly who had sent her into spindle-fold-mutilate mode faster than Vaan did when he compared her chest to various surfaces of unimpressive depth over the last few years.
"I suppose," the most unfortunate human alarm clock in the world whispered, "it would have been wiser for me to have shouted an initial greeting?"
"Oh sweet flaming balls of Belias," Penelo whispered back to the one and only Larsa Ferrinas Solidor currently staring back at her-- under her-- nervously.
But before she could do anything to right the current situation-- such as, say, make a mad dash for the hills while yelling at the top of her lungs, that sort of thing- the door the hut slammed open, bringing in what the cruel gods above had somehow decided were ideal visitors to the scene.
The first to enter was a youngish woman who was perhaps in her late twenties, her skin weathered by the harsh desert sun and her arms going slack around the fresh pillows she had been carrying. "Oh, my gods and espers spare me--" she squeaked, as her burden slid from her hands to the dirt of the bare floor below. "I simply heard a few noises and...assumed that...that you two were... that something had..."
And even as his signature gold embroidered pantaloons caught the light of the midday sun, the pirate Balthier still managed to outshine even that with the cocky calm of his ensuing smirk. "And indeed, madame, it appears that you have assumed more correctly than you had thought. But then, they always did breed them to be precocious in Archades. Or promiscuous. I never did know the difference between those two descriptions, honestly.”
Though Penelo hated to admit it (and was in fact already gearing herself up to line up with her ‘old friend hysterical denial’-- had it ever not helped her in the past?), she had to admit that they almostkindasorta had the right to misunderstand was was currently… happening. She had gotten on top of Larsa to slit his throat, not stir his temperature-- but she was still technically on top of him and in a highly compromising position, no matter what kind of sharp weapon she was wielding. (And knowing her luck, threatening people with knives might very well be considered a normal sign of affection in Archadia, or something.) But even before she could scramble off and deny what they thought was happening, she heard Larsa make a quiet, deeply indignant noise at the back of his throat. And then the little brat used her temporary state of questionable sanity to steer her around like a piece of driftwood, until she was lying besides him in the bed, as though curled up next to him to sleep.
Coming from a boy who she had casually slapped around just a few hours back, it was more than a little disconcerting. And while it wasn't nearly as weird as actually accidentally straddling him had been, it wasn't exactly comfortable either. Penelo would have taken this as her chance to kick up a fuss and possibly kick him as well-- had not the look in Larsa's eyes, currently directed at a target other than herself, promised a far more interesting battle to come shortly.
His next words confirmed her hunch. "Good morning to you as well, Ffamran," Larsa murmured, earnestness practically dripping off his tone. The attendant took her cue and fled before the storm, abandoning blankets with any last fragments of dignity. "I had a feeling someone would come for us soon enough, but had no idea you would volunteer for that duty."
If there had been a moogle-made thermometer in the hut, Penelo had the hunch that the mercury within it would have plummeted on the instant that doubly-thick ‘eff’ hit the air. (Though she had no idea before that just one name in and of itself could sound both so grim and goofy.) This-- this-- whatever this was, because she couldn’t exactly work it out from the tenseness in Larsa’s shoulders and the strangely forceful way Balthier was tugging at his cuffs-- was about to get mightily interesting...
But any hope she had for an immediate hissy fit was squashed as Balthier drawled in response: "Never let it be said that I would let a damsel in distress pine for my presence."
“Evidently,” Larsa said, in a pure measured cadence uncannily like his brother’s-- and though it might have just been the concussion but Penelo could have sworn she had actually seen Balthier flinch. “In fact, I see your chivalry even extends so far as to grace even damsels not in distress with the unbearable lightness of your being."
Balthier targeted those brilliant eyes of his {-- looking eerily like Larsa's, as a matter of fact) right at her. “Forgive me, Larsa,” he said, (but he kept smiling at her), “but you’re presumptive to think that it’s Penelo that needs my rather prominent grace to fall upon her.” His eyes flicked to Larsa, who still looked rather ruffled from the inadvertent wrestling match he’d had with her. “After all, from what I could see, perhaps the appellation of damsel in distress belongs to someone other than she.”
Almost despite herself, Penelo found herself nervous glancing at the scowl currently etched across Larsa's face. Somehow, though he apparently had a habit of taking advantage of being seen as a girl for all it was worth (as a crowd of Rabanastran hoodlums who couldn’t understand the nature of dance and a soon-to-be-heart-broken Kytes demonstrated quite well), she rather had a feeling that he wouldn’t take actually being called on it well. And judging from the way his fists were tightening against her hips, she knew she had judged correctly.
“Bunansa,” Larsa murmured, the chill of his voice as startling as a glacier in the middle of the desert, “I request that you leave, because anything further that passes your lips might be bordering on treason. Speaking of your future emperor in such a manner does not become you well.”
Penelo’s heart rose rather quickly to the back of her throat; if Larsa had already started to talk of that, this might get especially nasty soon.
“Ah,” said Balthier simply replied with a certain airy delicacy, “always a risk when one plays on both sides of the border. Such a threat is not one to move me to my knees, Solidor. A request, however--”
Penelo twitched. If Balthier left, she’d be in here alone with Larsa again. A mildly angry Larsa. A Larsa who could, when in a strong enough tizzy, toss her about like an old piece of driftwood. A Larsa who, judging from the slight twitch forming on his left-eye-lid, had a lot of vitriol to expend as of now.
She’d seen how he could blabber on and on when he was actually in a good mood. Based on that, she wasn’t sure her eardrums could survive him when he honestly felt crossed and worth crossing.
“You see, my dear lord, your future empress seems unwilling to be left alone,” Balthier murmured, which-- while perfectly true-- Penelo rather felt ought to have been left alone. (God knows she didn’t want to be dragged into a fight between two of the poutiest prats she had ever known. Larsa was only twelve, however mature he might have pretended to be-- what was Balthier's excuse?) “Penelo knows that I’m not one to abandon a friend no matter how wild the party or how drunk the lass, not when she’s trapped amongst those who might… take advantage of her.”
Oh. Snap. Balthier winked at her, Larsa almost hissed, and Penelo felt interested almost in spite of her own common sense. Admittedly, those bangaa bounty hunters (thankfully) hadn’t got fresh with her…but Larsa sure had. Balthier tugged at his cuffs again, flexing shoulders; Larsa crossed his own arms, the bell of his sleeves puffing. She wasn’t sure who’d crumble first. In the current battle of shirt versus blouse, both sets of sleeves were roughly on equal value of poof.
(Which was, frankly, excellent if only for the fact that she wasn’t sure who’d count as shirts and who’d be blouses, considering how many ruffles they both donned on as a matter of course.)
Still, maybe Balthier had rather underestimated the acid fortitude of Solidor blood. She could understand that; she’d made the same mistake-- though at least she had been smart enough to start regarding Larsa as about as harmless as a teddy bear rigged with barbed wire and poison venom already. Apparently, Balthier hadn't quite cottoned on. And even as the older man spoke, Larsa’s lip curled, and the way his eyes dragged down Balthier’s frame in a way that suggested that mounting Balthier on a spit and serving him for supper wouldn’t be too outlandish an idea.
“Truly,” Larsa remarked, the little statesman always, “it is heartening to hear that my future wife inspires such devotion, across all ranges of hume classes and vagrancies as well. Still, the information obtained in the capital indicates that it was less Penelo’s appearance required at that particular party, and more yours that incited the bangaa’s desperate desire to…how shall I put this…bugger you around as an old pal should?”
Oooh. Snap. And a half. Balthier barely hid his recoil. Whether or not Larsa knew what that word meant (and she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to know or not, because if he did, then at least she wouldn’t have to explain, and she couldn’t believe she just thought that, what was happening to her, she had never wanted to think this deeply about the quality of sexual education available to Archadian princes, ever, ever, ever), it had Balthier’s smile stutter a little.
(If she had been a worse person, Penelo might have almost snickered at that. Apparently, a few little observations she had made about B’ga… B’gama... B'gaga... B'garganzola… whatever the hell his name was and the rest of his cue hadn’t been so off the mark either.)
Not that this particular pirate was cornered just yet. He merely bowed in mock deference and continued on. "You would make a very poor emperor, little prince, if you went about repeating the words of every scurrilous street ear you meet. After all, this leading man’s yet to hear a complaint from the ladies...or-“ he smirked, “--have a knife put to his throat from any woman he has apparently tussled with most unwillingly.”
Not for the first time, Penelo found herself wondering if it was possible to work out a way to will her head to explode to avoid being pulled into the froofiest cat fight she had ever seen. On the whole, if this was the sort of thing she had to look forward to when she was around Archadians all the time, death itself might be a kindness and a victory.
“True," Larsa said, gritting his teeth in a way that almost seemed to signal defeat-- which struck Penelo as odd, seeing as how she had certainly never seem him do so before. He had always struck her as the sort of person that wouldn’t let anything as piddling as mere facts or common sense get in his way presently. "But..." Ooh, she never trusted Larsa when that little smile graced his face-- "...I suppose that only makes sense for the leading man. After all, Captain fon Ronsenberg always has been a favorite of the ladies.”
All of a sudden, Penelo's mind had a sudden and vivid image of a pair of blood-strained frills flying through the air eventually. But before she could cover her eyes or finish placing bets on the outcome (Balthier was bigger but Larsa seemed a lot more scrappy; Balthier had Fran and everything that implied but Larsa could conceivably call on an entire army...), the most beautiful possible distraction of all time fortuitously entered the scene.
He walked in beauty like the night, composed of imperial fleets and starry skies, with all that was best of dark and bright meeting in his aspect and in his eyes. He could have been compared to a summer’s day, were it not that his face were yet more golden and gay, and that the rough winds that did shake the darling buds of May would have no hold on him. Death could not brag of wandering in his shade, nor of having swept by what accruements he had made, and she would have given anything to have been laid by he, he, he.
The cavalry had officially arrived to the war-zone. And it looked amazing.
But just before Penelo could trickle out of the bed of floofery and death and towards the salvation of perhaps the last sane man she had ever met, Captain Basch fon Beautiful smiled and said just the words she felt that she had been awaiting all her life to hear.
"Is anyone here," he murmured in a husky murmur that could have sent legions of ladies underwear flying through the air from Ambervale to Archades, "feeling the least bit hungry?"
***
And that was how, half an hour later, Penelo found herself munching on fish kebabs on the coast with the best looking man she had ever seen across from her and a pair of swishy human powder-puffs staring intently at each other from opposing sides of a cheap wicker table, as though waiting to see which of them would first spontaneously combust from the cloud of styling products and gilded finery that followed the both of them around near incessantly.
Lunch had finally arrived, with a nice table-spread of regional Estesand delicacies to accompany a side of incredible social awkwardness and the sort of deep, scarring humiliation that was already quite literally already haunting Penelo in her dreams. And honestly if she hadn't just passed the most surreal week of her life, she probably wouldn't be handling the situation as well as she was at present.
Actually, under normal circumstances, she had the feeling that watching a pair of foreigners draw blood with their tongues while she learned of how she had ended up comatose and half-molested by the terminally under-aged and over-sexed, she probably would have already run off shrieking into the night already. (Possibly while gibbering about the intrusive effects of kicky purple tights into her life like a woman assaulted by a pair of sentient, royal-hued hosiery.) But she was finally odd enough to appreciate the humor of the former and jaded enough to have realize that she could have had worse done to her than the latter. (Though her terror of chocobo-flavored kisses hadn't quite worn off here and she still flinched whenever Larsa turned to her in a manner most distinctly peck-y.)
So for the time being, she simply kept her mouth occupied with clams from the table, her ears engaged with listening to just how she had gotten into her recent predicament (something about being knocked out by the local members of the animal kingdom because she and Larsa had apparently -- gods help her-- disturbed their habitats with certain actions that had taken place short before her unfortunately incomplete beheading) and her eyes enraptured in staring at the most righteous man she had ever wanted to engage in quasi-incest with, damned be duty and country.
After the furious amount of shouting and debate she’d engaged in during the last few days, it was almost soothing to be able to slip back into her customary role as a furiously listening presence who kept quiet when more important people (that is: everyone in their little party but Vaan) were speaking. And in light of all that, perhaps she could be forgiven for being distracted in the pivotal moment to come, too caught up in the rush of a roasted piece of bread and the equally delicious glimpses of golden thighs and calves that Basch inadvertently kept giving her to notice when the conversation drifted from her to her-and-Larsa and the prince himself began to speak.
In fact, shot nerves be damned, she only began to pay attention once she heard the key words lustrous loveliness and exquisite hip movements and incomparable nobility shoot out of Larsa's mouth as he batted his lashes at her like a cheap whore being paid on retainer and went on to recount a version of their history. And even that probably wouldn’t have been so very bad-- hell, at this point, even she could have done with a recap-- if only his version of history didn’t seem so… skewed.
And also, more than a little inaccurate.
And also, disturbingly prone to lingering more on how absolutely perfect she and Larsa were for each other than, say, how absolutely insane the plan to engage them had been from its misbegotten infancy and how much trickery had been included from both of their ends to accomplish it.
And when Larsa paused in his recitations to twinkle at her knowingly even as Basch and Balthier slowly turned to stare at her with no small degree of amazement, amusement and morbid fascination, Penelo knew there was only one thing she could do to save herself right here.
"Dear Gods," she murmured to any heavenly beings that might even now be plotting her end. "It's Penelo. Why haven't you already struck me down with lightning yet?"
***
But in fact, despite her urgent pleas, Penelo did not find herself expiring within the next thirty minutes of mad-prince-monopolized conversation. She still desperately wished to, however, especially when Larsa began to go on rapturous flights of ill-conceived poetic fancy where he compared her hips to the pistoning engine of an imperial war cruiser (disturbing), her palm to a sweet yet immensely powerful oar made of human flesh (extremely disturbing) and her lips to a precious relic that needed to be stored away from the outside world lest some evil field damage their sanctity (possibly the most disturbing image Penelo had ever been exposed to, in a very strong contest that included visions of war, plague, pestilence, death and Vaan's over-ripe, morning-time underwear.)
Clearly, Larsa hadn't quite mastered the poetic tongue that had blessed his brother’s near-coronation in Rabanastre just a few short months ago. But he had apparently gotten ahold of Vayne Solidor’s talent for propaganda and was deploying it skillfully as he painted a picture of his epic love for Penelo that somehow stretched days into months, months into years, a few odd bits of actual enjoyment into transcendental moments of happiness and a disturbing tussle on the beach into the sort of rapture that came over Ashe when she saw an enemy whose eye perfectly belonged on the sharp end of a stick.
Finally, Larsa was finally winding up. “And after she learned of my perfidy,” he said with a troubling amount of sincerity, “she struck me with a blow that could have felled that overgrown lizard that still haunts Dalmasca-- no, Penelo, not your dear Migelo-- in a manner that literally stole my breath-- as much from her daring and her breathtaking honesty as from the intense pain that such beautiful weapons of precision somehow handed…”
Penelo stared at her hands with blank surprise. She had never before had to think of her hands as actual, lethal weapons.
“But yet,” Larsa went on with brisk, manly sorrow, “I cannot blame her for her passion! After all, were I a better man-- a noble man-- a more sincere man-- a more honest man--”
“Or even a man at all,” Balthier muttered in a sullen undertone that sent her dear Basch frowning in a manner that sent some of the village men, nearly all of the village women and an odd percentage of the village children watching them warily from nearby out-posts all but swooning to their ends.
“A better man,” Larsa continued on with his nose hoisted high into the air, “I would have told her of my intentions to wed her plainly, in a manner that would have shown her that I and I alone was the architect of all my dreams. I would have informed her that her radiant beauty, thrilling charm, wonderful sense of humor, incredible kindness and astounding vivacity enchanted me so that I knew I could settle for no less a woman to be my wife-- my bride-- the mother of my country when I finally ascend to the treacherous heights of the ruler of my land!”
“Um,” Penelo reluctantly speaking for nearly the first time in the conversation. She really would have preferred to keep silent, especially as she was feeling not in the least beautiful, charming, humorous, kind or vivacious-- but the batted lashes Larsa had sent in her direction begged for some sort of acknowledgement. “Er. Yes. What he said.”
“In which case,” Basch murmured, speaking slowly for the first time since Larsa had launched on his mad tirade, “it seems as though you and your… lady are getting on well then?”
For Larsa, that was probably an understatement. But since Basch actually seemed to be addressing her as well, Penelo opened her mouth to speak with some actual enthusiasm. But unfortunately, overcome as she was by the sheer presence of her Captain Oh Captain‘s manliness, Larsa rather beat her to the punch.
“Oh very,” he assured them all. “Very, very much so. I doubt either of us could be more splendidly happy with this arrangement and I’m sure all will be able to deduce that merely from the delicate flush already coloring my Penelo’s sweet face--”
“And also, the fact that you didn’t actually allow her to answer the question,” Balthier pleasantly interrupted.
Thrown off his poetic stride, Larsa narrowed his eyes in a manner that suggested he either had to squint to see his adversary in the desert sun or that he was attempting to send his opponent’s head flying off through the power of mental telekinesis. Archadians being what they were, either could have fit the current conversation.
“I was,” the prince answered with cold precision, “merely making a point of demonstrating how wonderfully Penelo allows her excitement about our future nuptials shine through her demure demeanor. This, as well as the historical chronicle of our romance that I have just practiced--”
“You mean the fairy tale propaganda you shall use to brainwash the masses,” Balthier rather nastily-- there was really no other verb to describe it-- ejaculated into the middle of Larsa’s sentence.
Larsa seemed to twinkle through sheer force of will just then. “Exactly, my ever so dear companion. Her delicate responses, my open enthusiasm, our political reasons and the fairy tale-- or rather, history-- that I’ve concocted out of the facts of the matter will surely be enough to garner the enthusiastic support of most of my fellow country men. Though I’m quite sure that you, of all people, know of just how very elitist the gentry in Archades can be--”
“That is,” Balthier interrupted blithely once more, “rather like pointing out that the sun is a tad warm, the sky hangs rather high and at least three of your honorable ancestors are known for attempting to mount chocobos through the wrong end.”
Oh my. Apparently, her dear actual-uncle Mortimor apparently had his counterparts among Royal Archadians.
Regardless of the sudden similarities reveled in her family line and his, Penelo rather expected Larsa to startle at that. And indeed he did-- but only for a moment, before his own lips curled into a vicious grin that rather answered Balthier‘s own. “Common enough knowledge, my lord sky pirate. Though I suppose you would know better than most… seeing as how that side of the family contributed to your misbegotten family tree as well.”
There was a long and rather terrible silence; Penelo wanted rather desperately to curl up into a fetal ball and not think about how many men she had apparently already mentally committed quasi-incest with.
Luckily, with an exquisite sense of tact, Basch finally mustered up the sense to cough and go on as though high noon at the too-clever-for-their-own-good corral hadn’t already commenced. “Nonetheless, the two of you both seem like sensible and responsible children. I’m sure that, despite your relative inexperience, you’ve both attempted to logically resolve any problems you might have had?”
Any other man that called her would have probably been picking his teeth out of his trousers in the next few minutes. But when Basch said it... Penelo sighed and tried to put off the disturbing revelation that had come to light the moment before by imagining some beautiful world where she needed to sex him up in the service of god, crown and kingdom.
“Yes,” she murmured with far more fervor than before, trying to keep both mad and apparently interrelated Archadians out of her peripheral vision to only focus on the only other sane member of her party for one dreamy, lingering moment. “I swear, uncle, that I’ve been really very logical about this-- very logical and responsible and everything else I can. In fact, I’ve been so very logical and responsible you could practically name me after it. Like… Logistika Responsibilita… or something just like that!”
Basch gave her a rather indulgent smile as a response; somewhere within her trousers, Penelo could have sworn her ovaries responded with a deep, resounding cheer.
“And it was with that reasonableness,” Larsa summed up with one last smug sigh and one last flutter of his lashes, “that my darling and I reconciled to our fate as the future mother and father of our nation. And that, my dear fellows-- though I suppose some of you might answer to less respectable sobriquets--”
The grin that Balthier gave at that truly did scare her a bit.
“--But nonetheless, that does not change my basic point,” Larsa went on, though his hair was starting to look distinctly ruffled in light of all of this. “We have come together and really, though I thank you for your kindness and your… kindness, we really require no more from either of you than safe passage to our next destination. Shall we set out from here, then, and move to the next leg of our plan?”
And as though it were a signal that bypassed her entirely, they all-- sane or insane, tall or short, attractive or otherwise, turned to look at her as though to finally garner her approval on leaving, as though she and she alone held the answer to their question.
“If you’re feeling all right--” Basch began, just as Larsa began to murmur “If your head finally has recovered from the fall” and even Balthier began to mutter something about how the unholy union that was to come could stand to be delayed for a few more days if she was not yet up to garnering the maddest royal house in Ivalice as her own family just then.
And it was then that she realized that if she wanted to, she really could delay this for just a bit. She could ask for further rest, or claim that her head was still pounding viciously beneath her tired eyes, or beg for just a few more hours in bed before the long trudge back to Rabanastre had to be undertaken.
But what would that buy her, even if she could stretch this precious time in her own kingdom for as long as Larsa was patient? A few more days mourning her loss of everything? A few more hours pretending that her life wasn’t going to change? A bit more contempt and pity from Balthier? A bit more gentle but useless bits of kindness from Basch? And perhaps even further suspicion about her motives from Larsa, which was the very last thing she needed now that she actually would marry him?
Because she was going to do that-- there was no way to turn back. She really was going to go to Archades, she really would leave her home in Rabanastre for years (if not forever), and this really would lead to her being the ‘mother’ of a foreign land where the conquest of smaller country that had never done them any harm could be accomplished on the mere whim of some badly-dressed bastard with bad hair and propensity for bat wings on his britches.
She was going to go. No one could help her out of this. And though she really didn’t have any sort of overpowering beauty or charm or humor or kindness outside the fervid dreams of a boy who had read far too many ten-gil romance novels growing up, there was no sense in putting off what was to come here.
She had, after all, promised herself that she was finally going to have a hand in writing whatever story held her within it. And right now, she felt more than motivated enough to damn whatever consequences that goal might have.
“Lets,” she said, and rose from her seat, eyes wide and heart pounding and a sense of adventure stirring deep within her flesh. And when Larsa beamed and Basch’s smile widened and even Baltheir’s eyes narrowed just a little in their frames, she thought she finally was doing what she needed. “Let’s get out of here and move onto something new. I think I finally know what I‘m doing at long last.”
***
Author's Note: And now that this is done, I must ask: shirts versus blouses. Who's on what team and who won the overall argument? ;)
And since this is something that's been nagging me, I wanted to toss this out as a silly debate question. Where do you fall on the being-married-to-the-over-eager-12-year-old spectrum? Do you feel as though Penelo ought to simply give in and give up and call it a day on marrying Larsa? Or continue to scheme get out of her predicament like a proper Archadian noblewoman? Or some combination of all of the above? I've been getting a wide range of views on this issue in the past so I thought it'd be interesting to ask everyone!