Hush: Part I
A sudden weight crashed onto his shoulders. He found it difficult to wrap his mind around the words she had just spoken to him. It was something that happened to people every day; it was a part of life. And yet, he never thought it would be a part of his life.
His perceptions of the world around him suddenly shifted. The stagnant air became harder to breathe in. Once he had felt a particular warmth to the room, but no longer. Despite his attempt to block it out, her even breaths sounded loudly in his ears. He bowed his head low until it met with his hands, and he cradled it there for a long while in the deafening silence.
“What are we going to do?”
There was a certain strain to his voice, almost pleading to her. At that point in time, he was unable to work out the answer on his own. But how did his lover feel about the situation? The recent turns of events did not only affect him but her as well. He was fearful of her response. His heart was swaying in one direction one moment and the other the next. Somehow, he hoped that she could still it.
“Let us allow nature to take its course.”
Whether it was his position on the subject matter in that fleeting second that caused his reaction, he would never know, but her words betrayed him. That was not what he expected her to say. All the years they had been together in all senses of the word, and she still had an ace up her sleeve. Balthier was disappointed to think that he thought he knew her in her entirety but was clearly mistaken. Why did she want this? How could she think it was going to work out?
“But we are sky pirates, Fran.”
Since the very moment she had spoken those words to him, he was unable to look her in the eye. In them, he feared what he might see. They had been partners for long enough that Balthier knew Fran understood him, probably long before he ever understood her. She knew when to press matters, when to scold him like a child, when to jest with him, and when to love him. He felt her clawed fingers intertwine with his own. Initially he wanted to pull from her grasp, but his body wouldn’t obey. After a while, he simply stopped fighting a loosing battle.
“Though you speak the truth, we are firstly Hume and Viera, male and female.”
Everything she said to him made perfect sense, yet it was as if she didn’t see the severity of the situation. Things weren’t as simple as she was making them out to be. Maybe to Fran, everything was black and white, but to him, it was most certainly not. Balthier could understand if she was happy about this, or even sad, but neither were the case. She was just accepting, as if the tavern was out of her favorite drink and she had to choose another. She was just being Fran, and he was envious because he couldn’t just be Balthier.
Sensing something off in her lover, Fran let go of his hand. He felt her fingers slide across his upper back, into the hair on the nape of his neck. There, she rubbed to relax him, playing with the hairs in each passing caress, but he could not be so easily pacified. After several moments, he shied from her touch.
“How can you be so calm?”
That tone was even bitter to his ears. After the words escaped his lips, he wished he could catch them before they made it to her. However, she got them loud and clear. Balthier knew he made a mistake when her hand abruptly stopped its soothing movements and returned to her lap. He was sorry, though he did not feel much like apologizing to her right then. Instead, he rose from the bed, seeking out the open window on the other side of the room.
“Moodiness is a symptom of my condition, but your excuse eludes me.”
Thankfully, words were not able to cut like a blade, or at least not in a physical manner. Her disappointment in him was evident. He was aware that he was acting like a spoiled brat and she knew it too, but he was not sure how else to handle the situation. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like so much the leading man but a glorified boy put into a judge’s suit by his own father’s hand.
He caught her loud exhale. Now it seemed like she was the one who regretted her words, an action that occurred very sparsely in their time together. Fran shifted on the bed, the springs creaking beneath her. A subtle noise sounded from her lips, one that Balthier was unable to place.
“If you would choose your place in the sky over us, I would not hold it against you.”
His heart was pierced. His eyes burned. He did not want to loose her. Didn’t she understand that without her, he was nothing? It was always Balthier and Fran, or Fran and Balthier, but never one without the other. Uneasiness crept up in his stomach. Would she really leave him?
How much was she sacrificing because of his selfishness? Once, many years ago, a Viera confessed to him that she was in love with the sky. That, he knew, still held. Many times after they had become lovers, he had wondered who came first in her heart, him or the heavens. She chuckled when he asked her, saying that the answer was an obvious one. In time, he came to know the response. He felt passion for her, and she for him, but they had a mistress. And she came first in both their hearts. So why give that up for him?
“Fran…”
The bed breathed a sigh of relief as she lifted from it. Slowly, she approached him, and he stilled when her arms snaked across his chest. Firmly, Fran pressed herself into his back, her head resting against his.
“But I implore you, for one who can not yet speak, do not make the same mistake your father did. Do not trade your son for an obsession.”
Then realization struck him. All those years of hating what his father had done to him, and he had nearly done the same to his own. Coming to that understanding, Balthier cried. He may have loved the sky more than Fran, but he loved his child above all other.