InsaneJournal

His family’s men grow their hair too thickly, too quickly to otherwise avoid the shadow of an afternoon’s stubble. His memory is weighted by his father’s unconcern for appearances. When Balthier sees, feels his own cheeks weighted by that stubble – a thing that belongs to his sire, not to him – it disconcerts him, even now, years after his first growth and the death of countless whetstones, the discarding of innumerable razors honed too thin. Balthier considers the late afternoon’s shave a necessary task for the evening’s concerns, but he is not as vain as he appears. He shaves when circumstance tolerates: in the wilds he does not usually indulge the habit.

Yet, here, Balthier decides to shave twice a day, and does so despite the desert, or perhaps precisely to spite it.

He rolls his shirtsleeves to the elbow, baring the whorled hair on his forearms, the old scars that ring his wrists. He props his mirror, small enough that he cannot see his face entire, on a handy rock to kneel before it. Should that be lacking, a cactus’ raised arm suffices, and once – only once, when the desert’s scape proved too vulgar to offer a hand and Balthier would not put Fran to such a use – the still-warm corpse of a wolf. Vaan did laugh at that; bless the smooth-cheeked little bastard.

Making obvious his control over the refined side of Mist, Balthier heats water with a caress of light, long fingers of fire. That magicked tickle always has Fran smile, whether she stands close, with pointed chin on his shoulder, or far, atop an outcrop and scenting the horizon. Balthier sharpens his blade on his whetstone, a blue Bhujerban quartz; the application of sparing droplets of gun oil has the edge singing across the grain of the stone. Balthier cannot be satisfied until the cutthroat could shave sunlight.

Balthier uses soap, lathered thickly, briskly. He does regret the lack of rich foam, of rose-scented cream - and for after, a dab or four of white musk - but after all, he must make some concession to their desert-bound circumstance.

Vaan wears the relief from their pace with ill-ease, and scuffs at pebbles, at sand. He manages to disturb an ant’s nest or spider’s web at least every second day. The boy’s ridden on the tail of calamity for too long to enjoy calm, Balthier considers. He knows the feeling. Fran, also, is more like the boy than she would care to admit: homeless and motherless both, Fran cannot relax. The wait reads as a scarce noticeable difference to the catlike coil of her muscle. Basch—

Balthier times his blade to the length of Basch’s breath.

Basch finds shade, at these mid-afternoon breaks, and wants nothing more. Like a hound, he curls in whatever relief the desert offers, and like a hound, scarce complains at the quality or lack of. He sips at his water, hollow-cheeked, and never takes what Balthier thinks is enough. Basch’s ribs would be paining him still, and elsewhere perhaps worse; Balthier remembers the Barheim, and Balthier’s hands remember the feel of broken bone sliding back into place, his strength offered to Fran’s more able control for that particular task. Worse, even, this lingering memory: the feel of starved skin, flaccid with hunger, fragile, like the finest of tissues. Basch had made no outcry then, no complaint, much as now. Even his breath Basch held prisoned, despite the pressure of shifting bones, and he does the same now, his breath silent, swallowed with the shame.

Balthier leads long paths, circuitous ones, thinking the effort of running through Dalmasca’s shifting sands less than the insanity that throws Basch into every skirmish, at the fore even though he keeps pace at their rear, his blade wild, vengeful. Frustrated. Basch fights whip-fast for all his exhaustion, a winged edge that keens, powered by the memory of form, of health, of skill.

Two years, Balthier does not want to think of it, thus - motionless, bound, sleepless, a spirit broken with stillness, with cold, with the shards of strain. Another lingering memory, that: Balthier knows the torments birthed in the heart of Archades, of the soul more than the body. The wounds that had been lavished across Basch’s back would have been welcomed as relief. Memory proves rather like the stubble on Balthier’s cheeks, refusing to be stripped, growing back, spiting the edge of every razor he takes to them.

When they run, on point to Rabanastre, Balthier watches Basch’s pace lag, notes the afternoons are the worst. Through the morning Basch’s strength of will keeps him close to the three, and the forced halt for lunch – Vaan would keep moving, for the boy’s too accustomed to hunger – has Basch recover for a short burst. But he has no reserves for the afternoon; the weighty heat of the day’s peak swallows his efforts, makes him falter. Still, Basch stays silent, strays further, never speaks.

Balthier will not give him pity. Balthier cannot think a man such as Basch, as Basch used to be, will welcome such a barbed gift.

So Balthier shaves, twice a day, because he needs to; because stubble is, admittedly, rather uncouth.

Balthier angles his mirror to refine the line of his sideburns; the tilt of the mirror encompasses sight of Basch, and Balthier counts the silent heave of that broken-boned, too-thin ribcage.

Only when Basch looks up again, his gaze…still not sharp, but less dull, less dead, and seeing again, does Balthier apply the blade with any exactness; only when Basch’s breath stablises, a normal pace instead of that shuddering heave, does Balthier tip the water to the thirsty sands, folding the blade.

“Quickly now: ready?” Balthier says this or some variant, each time as though he had not been the one delaying them. He rolls down his sleeves with a sparing motion, refastens the cuffs deftly for his one-handedness. Vaan watches both motions, disdaining the sleeves but longing, eyes hungry enough that Balthier can read it, understands it: a hunger that wants to devour the world in the place of food. The boy has no appreciation for style, yet, but he wants it all, appreciation, style, admiration. Balthier will not tell him to look elsewhere, will not admit that his intent is far more prosaic and less proud than Vaan imagines: the harshness of Dalmasca’s sun towards those not her own children would have blistered him before a day’s span.

Basch stands as soon as Balthier’s cutthroat folds, still silent, his eyes hunting the horizon for prey that is not there, and he falls into step at the rear.

---

“I may become concerned,” Fran murmurs, her legs matching Balthier’s length, tangling, “that you fuss about your face overmuch now when such fancies you have scorned before; do you seek to beguile the boy or the man?”

“Foolishness,” Balthier replied, smiling into the dark of their tent, “and you know so, my love. Any man who turns his face from the guiding light of your radiance deserves the hole that waits to trip him.”

“Ah,” she says, the particular lilt there that jesting, “with such talk one would think you wish to trip me into your bed.”

“Possible, I concede: if we had not already been on such a trip before. Tell me, was it such an enjoyable jaunt that you found it necessary to book yourself a permanent passage?”

Against the raw skin of his cheek, he feels the stuttered breath that is her almost-laugh.

“Balthier,” she sings the name, “the Captain knows what you do for him, with this game. Once, already he is in your debt, for his release. He is shamed.”

“Nevertheless, he will not speak when he tires, and he would slow us more should he collapse. We are not bound by time: only he. His shame shall bear it, with only a boy and two pirates to witness.”

“It surprises me, that you speak thus.”

“I?”

“You wear your pride on your sleeve. Rather, as your sleeve.”

“My lady,” Balthier says, heavy with irony, “have you not heard the proverb of old Archades, which states thus: that shame is pride’s cloak?”

Fran considers. “Thus: Basch will wear his shame, like his scars, to hide his pride—?“

“Intriguing, for you to interpret, so. But such pride he hides, yes: such pride that it would burn the world for his sufferings, had he not another coat-hook to hang it upon, or another fate that hangs upon it; Dalmasca’s. And he is perhaps glad for that constraint. Anger is too hungry a beast for one man to feed, without a purpose.”

“—and you, for whom pride is your only garb—“

“I hide no secret shame beneath,” Balthier says, “for I am shameless when naked, no?”

Fran laughs, then, full-fledged, alight, and strokes the length of Balthier’s spine through his shirt. “Then doff your cloak, sir, be it of shame or pride; I shall judge if you have ought of which to be proud.”

“Be warned, lady: you may find instead a reason to be ashamed.”

“Oh, Balthier,” she says, her voice catching in a way he has not heard before, “your intentions are always better than you pretend.”

“…I was not encouraged to consider beyond the bounds of my own skin.”

“But you strive to do so.”

“And that makes it worth more, for the effort it takes? You make me more than I am, Fran. Than I can possibly be. It would grieve me to disappoint you when I prove mortal.”

“But you are more than your regard for yourself, thus: perhaps that is the shame that you hide under your cloak of pride.”

“I say again: foolishness, my lady. You cannot twist my own words against me.”

“Nevertheless. You will continue to shave twice a day, and spare Basch what you can.”

“Until we gain Rabanastre’s walls. Basch recovers, improves, daily.”

Her fingers find his cheek, questing along his jaw, finding only skin as serration. “It does not disconcert me,” she says, and her lips find him, in the dark, “this grooming. I think you should continue this regime quite strictly.”

“Aha,” Balthier says, “perhaps Basch repays his debts already, if not how he had supposed. I was of half a mind to ask him for an empire’s ransom and a princess in the bag, but this revelation of your latest predilection may be a treasure worth almost as much.”

Fran’s lips, her tongue, her smile is silk against his cheekbone. “…almost?”

---