FFXII Fic: Of Pirates and Plottings, Part 1 (Larsa/Penelo/Vaan)
...Remember when I said that I thought I'd have The Uses of Enchantment series all wrapped up by the end of August? ...I'm starting to think I very much overestimated my capacity.
And this is either the best (unlikely) or worst (all too probable) thing I've ever written. But in any case, this is the most ambitious story I've attempted for the series. Because it has a plot! And spans fours years! And has a narrator who I've never attempted to extensively write either! And though I don't think this fic is any good, I'm going to do my best to trudge towards an ending for it anyway.
In any case, this is for the wonderfully supportive artemischan (for our long-lost fic exchange!) and for threewalls (because she's doing a bang-up job helping me plot out this monster!) And as always, comments and questions are very much appreciated... especially since I'd love to know what is and isn't working within this sprawling monster of a peace...
Title: Of Pirates and Plottings (Part 1/3) [ Part 2] & [ Part 3]
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: The Uses of Enchantment
Characters/Pairings: Vaan, Larsa/Penelo, Larsa/Penelo/Vaan (Despite all of Vaan's protests to the contrary!)
Rating: R, strong language, sexual situations
Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story.
*
The first time Vaan saw it, he blinked and wondered if maybe he had taken too much sun.
*
The second time he saw it, he just closed his eyes and opened them again and wondered if it really meant something after all.
*
And the third time he saw it, all he could do was stop himself from falling down on his ass in front of them and think: My partner somehow managed to get the Emperor of Archadia to fall in love with her. Now what the hell should I be doing?
*
As far as Vaan was concerned, he had always been one of the untold sages of Dalmasca, humble and unrivaled in his ability to speak truths that lesser men always ended up trembling at… even if it was usually from laughter. Because as far as he had been able to tell, all his life he’d been telling the truth about things nobody had ever even guessed at until he was vindicated by whatever forces ruled the world.
He had always been right, for example, about his future greatness as sky piracy-- no matter how twitchy Penelo when get when she reminded him just how much of a help she’d been on the way to making him a Dread Pirate (as opposed to just a slightly dismaying one) properly. He had been right about what would happen if Reks went off to war, despite how much his brother had scoffed at him and told him that being under the command of the Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg would keep him safe after all. He had been right waaay ahead of time about breaking into the Dalmascan palace, about helping a certain mini-skirted and menacing lady, and about the fact that the Viera would be even hotter and bitchier in their native village than anywhere they ended up in the world.
Still, for all his acuity, for all of his unheralded greatness in predicting the future in ways nobody else he knew could rival, even he had been taken aback the first time he realized that the Emperor of Archadia was in love with his partner... and that said partner was more interested in said Emperor’s advances than even she herself realized immediately.
*
In the end, what tipped him off about Larsa’s feeling was obvious to the point of being a little ridiculous.
Vaan had officially been on the verge of being something other than a snot-nosed pirating kid when he first noticed it, which had put Penelo in at about eighteen and the royal swain in question at four years younger. (And though Vaan hadn’t been madly in love with anybody when he was fourteen… well, Balthier always did say they grew them up fast in Archades for a reason.)
It had happened in, of all places, on the Phon Coast, during a much needed vacation he and his partner had taken in the aftermath of a trip to a few crumbling ruins in Rozarria that had garnered them half a million gil in loot, the ire of the entire Margrace clan, the amused attention of a certain Al-Cid… and a price on their head that had made the ears of every bounty hunter within the span of a few hundred miles prick up eagerly.
In light of all that, it had just seemed good common sense to both Penelo and Vaan to scramble their way back to a nice, sunny spot in Archadia, where being the friend of His Imperial Majesty himself tended to ward the smartest of the bounty hunters off until they could find a way to lower the prices of their skulls. And given all the racket they had made on their way there (after all, it was pretty difficult to out fly a couple dozen other ships intent on harpooning you to death quietly), it was only expected that their old (in a matter of speaking) friend would come to the coast as well to visit them and see what could be done to save their skins.
But somehow… that day had been the first day that Vaan had realized that something other than mere friendship had made Larsa come down to visit them with a troop of his best diplomats to wrangle out some way for them to stop pissing off the blue blood wankers of the western states.
Somehow, that hour had been the first that Vaan had realized that it hadn’t been just camaraderie that had made Larsa promise any and all possible help towards them and the lady sky pirate among them especially.
And somehow, that moment had been the first that had made Vaan certain that it wasn't just kindness that had made Larsa spirit Penelo away after all the diplomatic yapping had been finished and over, only to return back with his face red and his hair wet and his fingers curled around her wrists possessively.
In hindsight, the fact that the Emperor of all of Northern Ivalice was in love with a girl who once danced through the streets of Rabanastre for stray gil was pretty stunningly obvious. Really, Vaan had to admit that the most surprising thing about the whole revelation was that it had taken him so very long to figure it out.
But even that would have probably meant nothing but an easy way to get their rears out of trouble in the future if his pirating partner hadn’t always been such a hopeless romantic.
And in the end, what had tipped him off about Penelo was the shy, charmed smile she always had on her face when Larsa so much as looked or touched or talked to her… half an instant before she realized that she wasn't supposed to feel this way about someone of his means.
Penelo, Vaan knew all too well, always did have a way of protesting too much about just this sort of thing.
*
"You think he's got maybe kind of a crush on you?" he asked Penelo soon after that, after he finally realized that it hadn‘t been a one-time fluke and after they finished with another visit to Archades that had left his partner apparently flushed and smiling for a few hours straight. "Because I know we're his friends and all but even I think that him letting us stay over anytime we want to and trying to distract me with the palace guards while he whisks you off elsewhere is a bit, um..."
If Penelo's cheeks had been pink before, they were about the shade and consistency of the Rogue Tomato's skin now. "Vaan, are you out of your treasure-loving skull? He’s just a friend to us. To the both of us right here. If he wants to be nice to us because he’s got a lot and we’ve got much less, what’s the big deal?”
Vaan just snorted. “There’s a difference between being friendly, Pen, and being friendly. And somehow, I don’t think you should blame me if I get suspicious about the way he always chucks star fruit at me to keep me from following you two around either.”
She rolled her eyeballs back at him in classic Penelo style-- one hand still stirring a pot of food while her head snapped back and forth like a bobble doll’s. “Gee, Vaan, paranoid much? He’s got about as much a crush on me as he does on… on you, honestly speaking. He’s about as likely to hit on me as he is to invite us both to a threesome. “
For a minute, Vaan could almost feel his balls protectively retreating into his body. “Ugh, Penlo, ugh! Don’t ever talk to me like that!”
“Well then,” she said spitefully, “now you know how I feel. He’s just a little kid and a little too rich for my blood and let’s face it-- I’m not really high class enough to go for that sort of thing.”
"But,“ he asked, almost despite himself, “what about the way you always go red around him, then? Are you sure maybe it‘s not you whose the one with the crush on somebod…?”
And right about the time when Penelo had started wielding the frying pan she had been using for their dinner with deadly abandon was about when he had started dodging.
*
Contrary to what some people thought, Vaan was not and didn’t particularly ever plan to fall in love with the closest thing he had ever had to an evil twin.
People often asked him that question, usually right before they went and hit on either him or her. (And if he was being honest, he had to admit it was usually her.) And when he said no and shook his head in sheer horror at the very thought, there was usually at least one moment where they raised their eyebrows and wiggled them into the air and asked, Never? She’s quite a looker and you’re not half bad yourself. And even when you two were kids, didn’t you ever…?
But as far as Vaan had always concerned, Penelo was just Penelo, no more and no less and nothing all that strange or exotic or exciting at all. He had seen her naked at least a dozen times before and he had bandaged up pretty much every part of her body and he had seen her work her admittedly impressive wiles on any number of targets that went less for pretty boys than for pretty girls… and still, he’d just never been able to think of her in that way seriously.
For Vaan, Penelo had always just been… Penelo, his friend and his partner and the person he leaned on, who he needed to occasionally beat him the hell up and vice versa. Even when they’d been snot nosed kids with actual families to help them, she’d always been the girl that had nagged him into finishing up his homework and helping her with her dancing practice and figuring out new ways to outsmart her overprotective older brothers. When he thought of her, he still thought of the girl with a drippy nose and the straggling braids and the gap-teethed smile, no matter how scanty her clothes got or how scary her admirers became.
Because in the end, he loved Penelo. He always had and he always would. She was his past and his present, his friend and his family… and that was pretty much why he didn’t want her to be his future or his lover either. Because he loved her and she loved him but just the thought of being with her forever was just… weird. And creepy. And a little incestuous to boot. No matter how many guffaws and raised eyebrows came from admitting that to practically any other sky pirate or bounty hunter around.
He loved her but he didn’t love love her. And he knew damn well she really didn’t feel that way about him either, especially not given the scrawny, mopey, so-called-sensitive guys she tended to go after.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t make Vaan worry to think of her leaving him eventually. It had to happen, he knew, sooner or later. She’d always talked about wanting a family, wanting a husband, wanting to settle down and away from people who wanted to stab her through the throat for getting ahold of anything really valuable over and above their means.
It was inevitable, Vaan knew, that she’d find someone sooner or later. But that that someone would end up being a goddamn Emperor had been nothing that either had them been prepared for.
And he just didn’t know how he felt about having her leave him and the his life so soon either.
*
Penelo mostly just sniffed and fumed and turned away when Vaan asked her about it some more in the months to come. If anything, she just got more and more stubborn about the matter, countering every single one of Vaan's arguments about the Emperor of Archadia having (easily exploitable, natch) feelings for her in increasingly grumpy ways that always spelled out PMS storm clouds on the horizon.
"He can't possibly have a crush on me," she had muttered after spending the week of Larsa's fifteenth birthday as his special guest, Vaan having had to take care of business that had mysteriously popped up elsewhere. "I mean, have you seen some of the women that are always hanging around him nowadays? He could have any of them just by snapping his fingers. And why wouldn’t he want them instead of me? Hell, they know how to-- to-- to play the piano and giggle on command and speak 93 different languages and wear those stupid high heels and impress all the ninnies from his court like you wouldn‘t believe. I couldn‘t do any of that if held a moogle to my head and told me if I didn't, he'd explode on me."
Somehow, Vaan got the feeling that that wasn't exactly the sort of thing that inspired Larsa to wild passion anyway. And one upturned eyebrow later, Penelo's flush confessed that she had figured that out already.
"But look," she had just continued on doggedly, "what can I offer him anyway? I'm not educated, I'm not blue-blooded, I'm not high class-- hell, I'm not even that pretty! I mean, I know he kinda... well, liked me or something when he was younger. But that was when he was twelve. He just turned fifteen. There's a world of difference in him here!"
"Yeah okay," Vaan finally said, less because he agreed than because Penelo had an impressive way of going on and on when she wanted to argue something out. "I guess you could believe that he keeps trying to have you stay over any time you can just because he wants to be your lord of the dance, or whatever. I mean, if you‘re willing to look right through something that freaking obvious, why not?"
"I can‘t believe," she just groaned, "that you‘re trying to get me to be less oblivious to the world. Whose the one who spent our last trip to Mount Bur Damntheplace trying to charm the wrong target? You go for the Archadians that want the pretty boys, Vaan, not the pretty girls!"
Vaan just shrugged. Hey, he’d have gotten away with it too, if said target hadn’t decided to start groping him below the belt and realized a little too soon that Vaan had a cluster of twigs and berries where something more along the lines of a bush should be.
“And anyway,” she huffed, “why would I be interested in him? I mean, he’s cute and all but somehow, I don’t think Larsa’s quite man enough for me.”
“Well gee,” Vaan muttered, rolling his eyes, “you mean, other than the fact that he’s probably the wealthiest and most powerful kid in the north and could probably hand you the world on a silver platter?”
And one bruised arm later, Penelo was pointedly looking away as she unrolled the blueprints for their latest heist over his yelping. “I rob graves for a living, Vaan, not cradles. And other than when it comes to temples, I’m no gold digger either. So can we start talking about things that make sense again, please? Like just how to get past these guards and into this treasury? Jules tells me its got some extremely interesting and, more importantly, valuable treasures that once was part of a place called Nabudis…”
*
In any case, nothing Penelo had to say about the matter convinced Vaan any, especially not in light of the way Larsa just kept looking at her, as though she were the most fascinating thing the world had to offer, and the way she had slowly but surely started looking back at him over the years. And in retrospect, probably the most embarrassing bit about having the Emperor of Archadia in love with his partner was how damn long it had taken Vaan to find a way to taking advantage of the whole thing.
Archadians being Archadians, of course, it was easy as killing a cactuar as soon as his brain had started finally working. Because in the end, all Vaan had to do to get a helping hand was stroll into Old Archades, start bemoaning the prices of equipment as opposed to the relative poverty of poor and hungry sky pirates and stroll away content in the efficiency of the gossips there.
A mere three days later, he and Penelo woke up at their camp in the middle of the Nabradian Deadlands to a very pleasant surprise: three enormous crates worth of weaponry, equipment and food supplies that ended up being enough to keep the two of them going strong for at least half a year. And even as Vaan all but dove into the pile, he had to admit that as far as Archadians go, Larsa wasn’t turning out to be such a bad would-be-brother-in-law either.
“The hell is this about?” Penelo asked afterwards, eyes wide open and the vein on her forehead already going all twitchy. “Even forgetting about just why someone would do this… how the hell could anyone have even traced us here? I didn’t tell anyone about our destination, did you?”
“Course not,” Vaan lied incoherently around a mouthful of food. “And anyway, Pen, you just have to try this stuff. It supposed to be-- let’s see, let’s look at the package-- wazabi flavored cactuar drippings…”
*
Vaan’s estimation of Larsa’s goodwill admittedly went down a bit after getting the stomach ache from hell from eating a bit too many of anything and everything that had been flavored with the magical Rozarrian spice wazabi.
“Oh god,” he groaned from the toilet of their ship, “I feel like I’m giving birth to the Anti-Kiltias right here.”
“Too much information,” Penelo yelled from somewhere in their tiny sitting room. “And can you keep the manly grunting down, please? I’m trying to read Larsa’s letter and I still can’t believe it but even he has no idea who on earth could be helping us out here.”
Even in the midst of sweaty, torturous and incredibly manly labor, Vaan had to pause. “And just what’d you if you could figure out who gave all that stuff to us?”
He could hear her snort from yards away. “Give it back, of course. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like not having to worry about running out of groceries while fighting off fiends. But if I knew who… I’d return it, or at least whatever you aren’t passing through your kidneys. It’s just not right for us to take so much and not give anything back and you know it, Vaan.”
“Then Larsa doesn’t know either?”
She just sighed. “Not at all. Which is pretty weird considering how on top of things Archadians tend to be. Sometimes I almost feel like he’s holding out on me…”
It figured, honestly speaking. But still, if nothing else, it also proved that whatever else Larsa was like, he was at least someone who did care for Penelo, up to and including to the point of not taking credit for his good deeds if she was willing to throw them back away.
Vaan had to hand it to him. Murderous relatives and creepy blood line aside, Larsa could almost be endearing when it came to falling in love with somebody.
*
Growing up, Vaan knew that he had never really been considered the sharpest sword in the weapons armory by anyone in Rabanastre, Lowtown or even in his own family. And even he had to admit that even the most brilliant of his plans had a way of sometimes spectacularly backfiring, necessitating a later and usually rather belligerent rescue by Sugar Thighs over there.
Usually, this was a reputation that actually worked for Vaan. In much the way that Penelo was pretty damn good at acting like a blond bimbo when she needed to, he could exaggerate what she liked to call his god-given idiocy until he seemed as though he had no more brains in his head than an average Ivalicean Seeq. The bimbo and the bubble-brain, the moron and the muscle-head… acting just that way had saved their hides more than once in the long-range of things.
But if there was one thing Vaan had always been good at, it was predicting certain inevitable things would happen, even if nobody ever believed him ahead of time. And somehow, with just that keen sense of the future, Vaan knew that sooner or later, the Dread Pirate Sugar Thighs would succumb to the charms of the Dread Emperor Crazy Eyes eventually.
And when it came to something as mad as that… well, all that he could really do right now for her was to try and help her be happy.
*
By the time Larsa had turned sixteen and become the most sought-after bachelor in all of Ivalice (the lucky dog), Penelo’s rationalizations for just why Vaan was crazy for thinking she had a thing for Larsa or vice-versa started to sound just a little a bit… desperate.
“He’s not very good looking, you know,” she told Vaan one night over a simple meal shared over their ship‘s cockpit, both of their respective flames having abandoned them for the evening. “I mean, looking back, it’s actually a little weird because he used to be so cute when he was a kid. Honestly, freaking adorable, even if he did want to grab at me practically every time he saw me. He had such pretty hair and such a cute little nose and such big, wide eyes… and now he’s all squinty from reading too much and his face is getting all long and pointy and his nose is so damn huge now, just like his brother‘s. He still has fabulous hair, though, I‘ll admit that much. That didn’t come from the rest of his family.”
All Vaan could do was stare at her blankly. “You mean Velis? But you never even met him until you were seventeen. And I don’t even think he has a brother either.”
She just gave him one of those Vaan-are-you-still-sober looks that never failed to make him wince. “Velis? I was actually just thinking about Larsa. Why would I be talking about Velis anyway? ”
Why indeed, Vaan thought wryly, after having had the eye-scarring experience of having walked in on them in bed not just once or twice but three separate times. “Why should he be on your mind anyway?”
Turning bright red, Penelo seemed to have caught on. “Larsa’s just on my mind because he asked me to visit him again in Archades, that’s all. He says his anniversary as emperor is coming up and since he didn’t want any of the gold diggers in Archades to annoy him during it, well…”
Vaan cocked a wary eyebrow at her; Penelo rushed on immediately. ”He wants me there as a friend, Vaan, a friend. Just as someone to talk to during the night, so he isn’t bored to death by all the catty bitches trying to claw up his short sleeves. And he wants me there mostly because he knows I wouldn’t take advantage of him, unlike… well, unlike damn near everybody but Uncle Basch and me.”
And then she paused and bowed her head a bit and said, almost more tenderly than Vaan could remember, “And I wouldn’t do that. I really wouldn’t even think about that sort of thing. I think he’s got too many people in his life trying to do that to him already.”
And just then, Vaan realized just what Larsa was going to have to overcome to get Penelo: her conscience, her kindness... and her sheer, stupid stubbornness about just doing what she thought was best, no more and no less and nothing else, thank you kindly. And having born the brunt of it for much of his life, Vaan didn’t much envy Larsa for the monumental task ahead of him.
But that was, of course, assuming Larsa actually loved Penelo, not just saw her as a pretty piece of sky pirating kitty, or whatever. Because if he did... well then, Vaan thought he had a shallow grave with the Solidor name ready to be engraved on it. (Or, barring that, since Basch actually was pretty good at being very menacing in a plate of armor, at least a solid beating.)
But if Larsa loved her… if he wanted her and wanted to be with her and wanted to give her everything she wanted too, everything Vaan knew enough about Penelo to know that she had always looked for as well…
And that was just when Vaan realized it was probably high time that he himself paid a trip to Archades.
And this is either the best (unlikely) or worst (all too probable) thing I've ever written. But in any case, this is the most ambitious story I've attempted for the series. Because it has a plot! And spans fours years! And has a narrator who I've never attempted to extensively write either! And though I don't think this fic is any good, I'm going to do my best to trudge towards an ending for it anyway.
In any case, this is for the wonderfully supportive artemischan (for our long-lost fic exchange!) and for threewalls (because she's doing a bang-up job helping me plot out this monster!) And as always, comments and questions are very much appreciated... especially since I'd love to know what is and isn't working within this sprawling monster of a peace...
Title: Of Pirates and Plottings (Part 1/3) [ Part 2] & [ Part 3]
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: The Uses of Enchantment
Characters/Pairings: Vaan, Larsa/Penelo, Larsa/Penelo/Vaan (Despite all of Vaan's protests to the contrary!)
Rating: R, strong language, sexual situations
Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story.
*
The first time Vaan saw it, he blinked and wondered if maybe he had taken too much sun.
*
The second time he saw it, he just closed his eyes and opened them again and wondered if it really meant something after all.
*
And the third time he saw it, all he could do was stop himself from falling down on his ass in front of them and think: My partner somehow managed to get the Emperor of Archadia to fall in love with her. Now what the hell should I be doing?
*
As far as Vaan was concerned, he had always been one of the untold sages of Dalmasca, humble and unrivaled in his ability to speak truths that lesser men always ended up trembling at… even if it was usually from laughter. Because as far as he had been able to tell, all his life he’d been telling the truth about things nobody had ever even guessed at until he was vindicated by whatever forces ruled the world.
He had always been right, for example, about his future greatness as sky piracy-- no matter how twitchy Penelo when get when she reminded him just how much of a help she’d been on the way to making him a Dread Pirate (as opposed to just a slightly dismaying one) properly. He had been right about what would happen if Reks went off to war, despite how much his brother had scoffed at him and told him that being under the command of the Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg would keep him safe after all. He had been right waaay ahead of time about breaking into the Dalmascan palace, about helping a certain mini-skirted and menacing lady, and about the fact that the Viera would be even hotter and bitchier in their native village than anywhere they ended up in the world.
Still, for all his acuity, for all of his unheralded greatness in predicting the future in ways nobody else he knew could rival, even he had been taken aback the first time he realized that the Emperor of Archadia was in love with his partner... and that said partner was more interested in said Emperor’s advances than even she herself realized immediately.
*
In the end, what tipped him off about Larsa’s feeling was obvious to the point of being a little ridiculous.
Vaan had officially been on the verge of being something other than a snot-nosed pirating kid when he first noticed it, which had put Penelo in at about eighteen and the royal swain in question at four years younger. (And though Vaan hadn’t been madly in love with anybody when he was fourteen… well, Balthier always did say they grew them up fast in Archades for a reason.)
It had happened in, of all places, on the Phon Coast, during a much needed vacation he and his partner had taken in the aftermath of a trip to a few crumbling ruins in Rozarria that had garnered them half a million gil in loot, the ire of the entire Margrace clan, the amused attention of a certain Al-Cid… and a price on their head that had made the ears of every bounty hunter within the span of a few hundred miles prick up eagerly.
In light of all that, it had just seemed good common sense to both Penelo and Vaan to scramble their way back to a nice, sunny spot in Archadia, where being the friend of His Imperial Majesty himself tended to ward the smartest of the bounty hunters off until they could find a way to lower the prices of their skulls. And given all the racket they had made on their way there (after all, it was pretty difficult to out fly a couple dozen other ships intent on harpooning you to death quietly), it was only expected that their old (in a matter of speaking) friend would come to the coast as well to visit them and see what could be done to save their skins.
But somehow… that day had been the first day that Vaan had realized that something other than mere friendship had made Larsa come down to visit them with a troop of his best diplomats to wrangle out some way for them to stop pissing off the blue blood wankers of the western states.
Somehow, that hour had been the first that Vaan had realized that it hadn’t been just camaraderie that had made Larsa promise any and all possible help towards them and the lady sky pirate among them especially.
And somehow, that moment had been the first that had made Vaan certain that it wasn't just kindness that had made Larsa spirit Penelo away after all the diplomatic yapping had been finished and over, only to return back with his face red and his hair wet and his fingers curled around her wrists possessively.
In hindsight, the fact that the Emperor of all of Northern Ivalice was in love with a girl who once danced through the streets of Rabanastre for stray gil was pretty stunningly obvious. Really, Vaan had to admit that the most surprising thing about the whole revelation was that it had taken him so very long to figure it out.
But even that would have probably meant nothing but an easy way to get their rears out of trouble in the future if his pirating partner hadn’t always been such a hopeless romantic.
And in the end, what had tipped him off about Penelo was the shy, charmed smile she always had on her face when Larsa so much as looked or touched or talked to her… half an instant before she realized that she wasn't supposed to feel this way about someone of his means.
Penelo, Vaan knew all too well, always did have a way of protesting too much about just this sort of thing.
*
"You think he's got maybe kind of a crush on you?" he asked Penelo soon after that, after he finally realized that it hadn‘t been a one-time fluke and after they finished with another visit to Archades that had left his partner apparently flushed and smiling for a few hours straight. "Because I know we're his friends and all but even I think that him letting us stay over anytime we want to and trying to distract me with the palace guards while he whisks you off elsewhere is a bit, um..."
If Penelo's cheeks had been pink before, they were about the shade and consistency of the Rogue Tomato's skin now. "Vaan, are you out of your treasure-loving skull? He’s just a friend to us. To the both of us right here. If he wants to be nice to us because he’s got a lot and we’ve got much less, what’s the big deal?”
Vaan just snorted. “There’s a difference between being friendly, Pen, and being friendly. And somehow, I don’t think you should blame me if I get suspicious about the way he always chucks star fruit at me to keep me from following you two around either.”
She rolled her eyeballs back at him in classic Penelo style-- one hand still stirring a pot of food while her head snapped back and forth like a bobble doll’s. “Gee, Vaan, paranoid much? He’s got about as much a crush on me as he does on… on you, honestly speaking. He’s about as likely to hit on me as he is to invite us both to a threesome. “
For a minute, Vaan could almost feel his balls protectively retreating into his body. “Ugh, Penlo, ugh! Don’t ever talk to me like that!”
“Well then,” she said spitefully, “now you know how I feel. He’s just a little kid and a little too rich for my blood and let’s face it-- I’m not really high class enough to go for that sort of thing.”
"But,“ he asked, almost despite himself, “what about the way you always go red around him, then? Are you sure maybe it‘s not you whose the one with the crush on somebod…?”
And right about the time when Penelo had started wielding the frying pan she had been using for their dinner with deadly abandon was about when he had started dodging.
*
Contrary to what some people thought, Vaan was not and didn’t particularly ever plan to fall in love with the closest thing he had ever had to an evil twin.
People often asked him that question, usually right before they went and hit on either him or her. (And if he was being honest, he had to admit it was usually her.) And when he said no and shook his head in sheer horror at the very thought, there was usually at least one moment where they raised their eyebrows and wiggled them into the air and asked, Never? She’s quite a looker and you’re not half bad yourself. And even when you two were kids, didn’t you ever…?
But as far as Vaan had always concerned, Penelo was just Penelo, no more and no less and nothing all that strange or exotic or exciting at all. He had seen her naked at least a dozen times before and he had bandaged up pretty much every part of her body and he had seen her work her admittedly impressive wiles on any number of targets that went less for pretty boys than for pretty girls… and still, he’d just never been able to think of her in that way seriously.
For Vaan, Penelo had always just been… Penelo, his friend and his partner and the person he leaned on, who he needed to occasionally beat him the hell up and vice versa. Even when they’d been snot nosed kids with actual families to help them, she’d always been the girl that had nagged him into finishing up his homework and helping her with her dancing practice and figuring out new ways to outsmart her overprotective older brothers. When he thought of her, he still thought of the girl with a drippy nose and the straggling braids and the gap-teethed smile, no matter how scanty her clothes got or how scary her admirers became.
Because in the end, he loved Penelo. He always had and he always would. She was his past and his present, his friend and his family… and that was pretty much why he didn’t want her to be his future or his lover either. Because he loved her and she loved him but just the thought of being with her forever was just… weird. And creepy. And a little incestuous to boot. No matter how many guffaws and raised eyebrows came from admitting that to practically any other sky pirate or bounty hunter around.
He loved her but he didn’t love love her. And he knew damn well she really didn’t feel that way about him either, especially not given the scrawny, mopey, so-called-sensitive guys she tended to go after.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t make Vaan worry to think of her leaving him eventually. It had to happen, he knew, sooner or later. She’d always talked about wanting a family, wanting a husband, wanting to settle down and away from people who wanted to stab her through the throat for getting ahold of anything really valuable over and above their means.
It was inevitable, Vaan knew, that she’d find someone sooner or later. But that that someone would end up being a goddamn Emperor had been nothing that either had them been prepared for.
And he just didn’t know how he felt about having her leave him and the his life so soon either.
*
Penelo mostly just sniffed and fumed and turned away when Vaan asked her about it some more in the months to come. If anything, she just got more and more stubborn about the matter, countering every single one of Vaan's arguments about the Emperor of Archadia having (easily exploitable, natch) feelings for her in increasingly grumpy ways that always spelled out PMS storm clouds on the horizon.
"He can't possibly have a crush on me," she had muttered after spending the week of Larsa's fifteenth birthday as his special guest, Vaan having had to take care of business that had mysteriously popped up elsewhere. "I mean, have you seen some of the women that are always hanging around him nowadays? He could have any of them just by snapping his fingers. And why wouldn’t he want them instead of me? Hell, they know how to-- to-- to play the piano and giggle on command and speak 93 different languages and wear those stupid high heels and impress all the ninnies from his court like you wouldn‘t believe. I couldn‘t do any of that if held a moogle to my head and told me if I didn't, he'd explode on me."
Somehow, Vaan got the feeling that that wasn't exactly the sort of thing that inspired Larsa to wild passion anyway. And one upturned eyebrow later, Penelo's flush confessed that she had figured that out already.
"But look," she had just continued on doggedly, "what can I offer him anyway? I'm not educated, I'm not blue-blooded, I'm not high class-- hell, I'm not even that pretty! I mean, I know he kinda... well, liked me or something when he was younger. But that was when he was twelve. He just turned fifteen. There's a world of difference in him here!"
"Yeah okay," Vaan finally said, less because he agreed than because Penelo had an impressive way of going on and on when she wanted to argue something out. "I guess you could believe that he keeps trying to have you stay over any time you can just because he wants to be your lord of the dance, or whatever. I mean, if you‘re willing to look right through something that freaking obvious, why not?"
"I can‘t believe," she just groaned, "that you‘re trying to get me to be less oblivious to the world. Whose the one who spent our last trip to Mount Bur Damntheplace trying to charm the wrong target? You go for the Archadians that want the pretty boys, Vaan, not the pretty girls!"
Vaan just shrugged. Hey, he’d have gotten away with it too, if said target hadn’t decided to start groping him below the belt and realized a little too soon that Vaan had a cluster of twigs and berries where something more along the lines of a bush should be.
“And anyway,” she huffed, “why would I be interested in him? I mean, he’s cute and all but somehow, I don’t think Larsa’s quite man enough for me.”
“Well gee,” Vaan muttered, rolling his eyes, “you mean, other than the fact that he’s probably the wealthiest and most powerful kid in the north and could probably hand you the world on a silver platter?”
And one bruised arm later, Penelo was pointedly looking away as she unrolled the blueprints for their latest heist over his yelping. “I rob graves for a living, Vaan, not cradles. And other than when it comes to temples, I’m no gold digger either. So can we start talking about things that make sense again, please? Like just how to get past these guards and into this treasury? Jules tells me its got some extremely interesting and, more importantly, valuable treasures that once was part of a place called Nabudis…”
*
In any case, nothing Penelo had to say about the matter convinced Vaan any, especially not in light of the way Larsa just kept looking at her, as though she were the most fascinating thing the world had to offer, and the way she had slowly but surely started looking back at him over the years. And in retrospect, probably the most embarrassing bit about having the Emperor of Archadia in love with his partner was how damn long it had taken Vaan to find a way to taking advantage of the whole thing.
Archadians being Archadians, of course, it was easy as killing a cactuar as soon as his brain had started finally working. Because in the end, all Vaan had to do to get a helping hand was stroll into Old Archades, start bemoaning the prices of equipment as opposed to the relative poverty of poor and hungry sky pirates and stroll away content in the efficiency of the gossips there.
A mere three days later, he and Penelo woke up at their camp in the middle of the Nabradian Deadlands to a very pleasant surprise: three enormous crates worth of weaponry, equipment and food supplies that ended up being enough to keep the two of them going strong for at least half a year. And even as Vaan all but dove into the pile, he had to admit that as far as Archadians go, Larsa wasn’t turning out to be such a bad would-be-brother-in-law either.
“The hell is this about?” Penelo asked afterwards, eyes wide open and the vein on her forehead already going all twitchy. “Even forgetting about just why someone would do this… how the hell could anyone have even traced us here? I didn’t tell anyone about our destination, did you?”
“Course not,” Vaan lied incoherently around a mouthful of food. “And anyway, Pen, you just have to try this stuff. It supposed to be-- let’s see, let’s look at the package-- wazabi flavored cactuar drippings…”
*
Vaan’s estimation of Larsa’s goodwill admittedly went down a bit after getting the stomach ache from hell from eating a bit too many of anything and everything that had been flavored with the magical Rozarrian spice wazabi.
“Oh god,” he groaned from the toilet of their ship, “I feel like I’m giving birth to the Anti-Kiltias right here.”
“Too much information,” Penelo yelled from somewhere in their tiny sitting room. “And can you keep the manly grunting down, please? I’m trying to read Larsa’s letter and I still can’t believe it but even he has no idea who on earth could be helping us out here.”
Even in the midst of sweaty, torturous and incredibly manly labor, Vaan had to pause. “And just what’d you if you could figure out who gave all that stuff to us?”
He could hear her snort from yards away. “Give it back, of course. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like not having to worry about running out of groceries while fighting off fiends. But if I knew who… I’d return it, or at least whatever you aren’t passing through your kidneys. It’s just not right for us to take so much and not give anything back and you know it, Vaan.”
“Then Larsa doesn’t know either?”
She just sighed. “Not at all. Which is pretty weird considering how on top of things Archadians tend to be. Sometimes I almost feel like he’s holding out on me…”
It figured, honestly speaking. But still, if nothing else, it also proved that whatever else Larsa was like, he was at least someone who did care for Penelo, up to and including to the point of not taking credit for his good deeds if she was willing to throw them back away.
Vaan had to hand it to him. Murderous relatives and creepy blood line aside, Larsa could almost be endearing when it came to falling in love with somebody.
*
Growing up, Vaan knew that he had never really been considered the sharpest sword in the weapons armory by anyone in Rabanastre, Lowtown or even in his own family. And even he had to admit that even the most brilliant of his plans had a way of sometimes spectacularly backfiring, necessitating a later and usually rather belligerent rescue by Sugar Thighs over there.
Usually, this was a reputation that actually worked for Vaan. In much the way that Penelo was pretty damn good at acting like a blond bimbo when she needed to, he could exaggerate what she liked to call his god-given idiocy until he seemed as though he had no more brains in his head than an average Ivalicean Seeq. The bimbo and the bubble-brain, the moron and the muscle-head… acting just that way had saved their hides more than once in the long-range of things.
But if there was one thing Vaan had always been good at, it was predicting certain inevitable things would happen, even if nobody ever believed him ahead of time. And somehow, with just that keen sense of the future, Vaan knew that sooner or later, the Dread Pirate Sugar Thighs would succumb to the charms of the Dread Emperor Crazy Eyes eventually.
And when it came to something as mad as that… well, all that he could really do right now for her was to try and help her be happy.
*
By the time Larsa had turned sixteen and become the most sought-after bachelor in all of Ivalice (the lucky dog), Penelo’s rationalizations for just why Vaan was crazy for thinking she had a thing for Larsa or vice-versa started to sound just a little a bit… desperate.
“He’s not very good looking, you know,” she told Vaan one night over a simple meal shared over their ship‘s cockpit, both of their respective flames having abandoned them for the evening. “I mean, looking back, it’s actually a little weird because he used to be so cute when he was a kid. Honestly, freaking adorable, even if he did want to grab at me practically every time he saw me. He had such pretty hair and such a cute little nose and such big, wide eyes… and now he’s all squinty from reading too much and his face is getting all long and pointy and his nose is so damn huge now, just like his brother‘s. He still has fabulous hair, though, I‘ll admit that much. That didn’t come from the rest of his family.”
All Vaan could do was stare at her blankly. “You mean Velis? But you never even met him until you were seventeen. And I don’t even think he has a brother either.”
She just gave him one of those Vaan-are-you-still-sober looks that never failed to make him wince. “Velis? I was actually just thinking about Larsa. Why would I be talking about Velis anyway? ”
Why indeed, Vaan thought wryly, after having had the eye-scarring experience of having walked in on them in bed not just once or twice but three separate times. “Why should he be on your mind anyway?”
Turning bright red, Penelo seemed to have caught on. “Larsa’s just on my mind because he asked me to visit him again in Archades, that’s all. He says his anniversary as emperor is coming up and since he didn’t want any of the gold diggers in Archades to annoy him during it, well…”
Vaan cocked a wary eyebrow at her; Penelo rushed on immediately. ”He wants me there as a friend, Vaan, a friend. Just as someone to talk to during the night, so he isn’t bored to death by all the catty bitches trying to claw up his short sleeves. And he wants me there mostly because he knows I wouldn’t take advantage of him, unlike… well, unlike damn near everybody but Uncle Basch and me.”
And then she paused and bowed her head a bit and said, almost more tenderly than Vaan could remember, “And I wouldn’t do that. I really wouldn’t even think about that sort of thing. I think he’s got too many people in his life trying to do that to him already.”
And just then, Vaan realized just what Larsa was going to have to overcome to get Penelo: her conscience, her kindness... and her sheer, stupid stubbornness about just doing what she thought was best, no more and no less and nothing else, thank you kindly. And having born the brunt of it for much of his life, Vaan didn’t much envy Larsa for the monumental task ahead of him.
But that was, of course, assuming Larsa actually loved Penelo, not just saw her as a pretty piece of sky pirating kitty, or whatever. Because if he did... well then, Vaan thought he had a shallow grave with the Solidor name ready to be engraved on it. (Or, barring that, since Basch actually was pretty good at being very menacing in a plate of armor, at least a solid beating.)
But if Larsa loved her… if he wanted her and wanted to be with her and wanted to give her everything she wanted too, everything Vaan knew enough about Penelo to know that she had always looked for as well…
And that was just when Vaan realized it was probably high time that he himself paid a trip to Archades.