recklessly on thorns
"Ffamran," the voice-down-the-hall says, loud, so as not to be interrupted by questions or repetition - "I have a proposition for you."
--
"Oh," she says, soft, weak, "Oh, I see. Well, thank you for... for everything. We owe you such a great debt. How could we ever re - " but the rest is drowned out by coughing.
His father opens the door and lets the doctor out; he, by the doorway unseen, listens, sees: Father paying the doctor, Doctor accepting the money, but using phrases Fframran has already learned to hate (I'm sorry, but there's nothing - I don't think we can - I'm afraid all you can do is - ) and he already knows. Tomorrow will see another doctor, another specialist, another blind grasp for something, anything to hold onto.
Like his mother, he is already giving up. It's his father who refuses to let go. That night, voices argue, one strong, one weak, both desperate.
Father doesn't know how to let go; Mother doesn't know how to hold on. Ffamran wishes on the brightest star he can see that she will watch the next dawn, wishes that, at least, she doesn't die during the night while he sleeps.
I want - he whispers - for her to see one more sunrise. That's all I ask. Please.
His mother dies two hours after dawn. Father tells him later, at the funeral, that that fool of a doctor had sworn she had at least another week, that fool, that - that - that liar, he said -
Ffamran stares at her casket and thinks she's smiling. Faintly, but still.
--
"Ffamran, yes," the voice-at-the-door says, boasting, to be noticed, "Top of his class at Akademy. I promise, if you take him in, you won't be disappointed."
--
The street-ear's fingers are nimble, performing what must be a very simple magic trick. Ffamran watches the cards move faster than his eye can follow, and guesses that it's here that the trick happens, if only he could catch it. Jules grins - "You think I'll show you how to do this? No, boy, go back home to your mother. This is a real man's trick."
"My mother is dead," he replies coldly, "and I think your trick is stupid. Besides" - as he's walking away - "you've had the card up your sleeve the whole time. Not very magical."
A lucky guess, yes, but a correct one all the same. Jules agrees to teach him magic tricks, and he politely declines. After all, what would father think of his boy learning sleight of hand from a street rat? No, Ffamran Bunansa is better than that.
So, he buys a book of magic tricks and teaches himself while Father thinks he's learning the law.
Later, he goes back and earns twice was Jules was earning, because - among other things - he knows how to smile right and look harmless. Jules may know the act better, but he has no stage presence. People like watching Ffamran perform, even if he makes a mistake. Jules hates him, and his father forbids him from ever going back, but Ffamran can't stay away. The streets of Archades are not ideal, but they are better than being cramped in a library.
He performs once for a sky pirate, a bold figure who watches and laughs uproariously and insists on buying the young magician drinks. He shows Ffamran his airship and his lovely friends, a woman his father would never condone being seen on the same street with, and a tall, scruffy-looking man. They drink together and the sky pirate asks what he intends to do with his future. The woman leans on the table, and without thinking, Ffamran replies - "I'll be an infamous sky pirate one day."
They all laugh and talk about what a character they've picked up, and explain how to control an airship, and when Ffamran gets home, it's almost morning and he's completely sloshed and has to be at Akademy in three and half hours. Somehow, he makes it to class, sits through the first lecture, and promptly throws up on the teacher when asked where his work is.
--
"Ffamran," the voice-at-the-desk says, slowly, intimidating, "Would you care to explain this?"
No, he replies, not particularly.
--
The judge's helmet is stifling in the heat of summer, like breathing inside a volcano, choking. He clanks everywhere, and sweats under the bulky metal armor. Stairs quickly become the purest form of hell, because not only are they hard to see through the too-small slit in the mask, but they also prove difficult to slouch up, wearing twice his weight in bronze. All it takes is one instance of witnessing a Judge slip at the top and clank all the way down to convince him that, protocol be damned, he's taking off the helmet at least ten meters before any staircase.
Ffamran hates everything about being a judge, with one sole exception - he is free to do or say anything he pleases. None of the people from his past will recognize him behind the helmet, and he cares nothing for his peers, even hates most of them. They're snobby rich fools whose parents bought their positions - and Ffamran does realize, painfully, that he falls directly into their mold.
Oh, you're the son of Doctor Cid? Do you work in Draklor? What is it like?
It's like being forced through a shredder, he wants to say, it's like being very slowly and deliberately ripped apart. Why do you ask?
Three months into his tenure as The Most Outspoken Judge of Archades, he loses his temper. What does it matter? Father is in some far-off place. Feigning surprise inspection - and imitating a higher-ranking judge while at it - he clears the Aerodome to make way for himself. Only one person refuses to leave, a tall Viera who scoffs and tells him that Hume boys do not frighten her.
So he takes her along with him, or perhaps the other way around.
Either way, he leaves a pile of bronze armor in the airlock of the best airship he can get his hands on, and takes to the skies. As soon as he can see Tchita, he and the Viera throw every bit of it over the deck. She tells him to make for Rabanastre because she has business there to attend to; from there, he can do as he pleases. Fran is her name, and she scares him far more than he would ever admit.
"Your name?"
He hesitates. Ffamran is too revealing, but he has no other name. Flustered, he says the first thing that comes to mind - "Cid. My name is Cid."
She stares at him for a moment and raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment. "Well, Cid, do you know how to land her?"
--
"Ffamran," the voice-in-the-dark says, "Ffamran?"
--
In Rabanastre, hot beautiful empty Rabanastre, he is lost. In this place, gossip is worth only the breath to speak it and magic tricks are nothing more than an interesting novelty. He plays card games for a while and loses a lot of money at the tables and wonders vaguely where the tall Viera disappeared to because he hasn't seen her since a somewhat clumsy landing in the city and because even a condescending companion is better than no companion at all.
The Rabanastrans have a sort of drink that he thinks must be imported from somewhere because no desert alcohol can be so cold and warm at the same time. They call it a Cloud Water, and he thinks this must be the stupidest name for a drink in the entire world, until he tastes it and realizes that nobody really cares what it's called anyway.
In Archades, they would always shake their heads when he walked in the door - everyone knew that Cid's son was too young to drink! - but here, he can smile and show the right coinage and no one asks questions.
It's like Old Archades, only hotter. And with more interesting clientele.
He decides - as much on a drunken whim as anything else - that he will, after all, become a sky pirate. After all, what else is he to do with the ship he liberated from Archades? And part of him still thinks they might be chasing him now, or hiding in the corners, or talking to all the soldiers and officers they can find, or -
Or anything. Part of him believes that his father hasn't shrugged off his disappearance.
(The truth is, though he will never admit it, if his father showed up in Rabanastre right now and demanded that he return home, he would. This is why he stays in the Sandsea for three weeks, tempting fate.)
(This is how the tall Viera named Fran finds him: staring into another Cloud Water and ready to vomit.)
--
"Did they come looking for me?" the voice-at-the-bar asks, "Did they ask you about Ffamran?"
"I have met no Ffamran," she replies.
--
"Balthier," he tells her one morning, bright and early and lost somewhere in the vast expanse of Ordalia. "I think that's what I'll call myself." She doesn't reply or even pretend to listen, so he continues. "I heard about a great hero once, named Balthier. Isn't it ironic, the hero becomes the thief?"
Fran nods, slowly, and looks around. "Do you know where we are?"
"No," he shrugs, leaning back into the grass, "Should I?"
Annoyed, the Viera stalks off. Idly, he watches the clouds - swollen with rain, threatening a storm - and wonders what his father would say if he could see him now. When Fran returns, she has procured a map, though from where, he neither knows nor cares. Wordlessly, she hands it to him, mentions the storm that must be on its way, and moves back into the Strahl.
Without looking at it, he follows her to the cockpit, where she is already sitting, entering coordinates. "If you don't know where we are, then how do you know where we're going?"
"Because I looked at the map before giving it to you. I am going to Balfonheim. You may follow if you wish."
"I believe I am the pilot of this ship, Fran," he says coolly, sliding into his seat. She arches an eyebrow.
"Perhaps if you acted like one, I would treat you as such, Ffamran."
"Balthier."
There's a beat, and then Fran replies, quiet and measured, "You have not yet earned a new name. When you are mature enough to be someone else, then I will call you that."
Against every screaming instinct, he stays in the pilot's seat and makes for Balfonheim. After a long silence, in which the rainstorm begins, he finally says - "It's just a word. I've been called others. What's so special about it?"
Thunder. "Were it simply a word, I would agree." Silence.
When they arrive, Ffamran-Cid-Balthier decides to leave Fran in Balfonheim.
After a week in Rabanastre, he returns and finds her right where he left her - in the Weapons Shop, looking at bows.
--
"Did you find what you were looking for?" the voice-at-the-counter says slowly, "Did Rabanastre teach you anything?"
"Yes," he replies, "my name is Balthier."
She still calls him Ffamran.