A/N: If you like this, Please drop me a review or a message to such effect. I could use the encouragement.

If you don't, criticize away. I'm a big girl, I can take it. :3

Prompt: Remembrance.

Pairing: BalFran.

Soundtrack: Deathcab For Cutie – Brothers on a Hotel Bed.

Free song download can be found here: h t t p : / / beemp3(dot)com(slash)download(dot)php?file=5225434&song=Brothers+On+A+Hotel+Bed

Forget .Remember. Forget

773 OV - Autumn

When Balthier first woke, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror.

His eyes were just like Cid's – hatefully so, he thought – but his mouth was slacker, pinched. His cheeks bore webbing of heavy lines and gave way to jowls; His brow furrowed, etched with scars, patterned with age lines. Was it truly a mirror he was staring into? For a split second he thought to sit up and demand who this hideous old bastard was and what business brought him, but when Balthier lifted his hand to rub his eyes, the other face in the mirror did the same.

Balthier exhaled, frustrated at his own confusion. He was so tired - and upon reflection, damn it, he couldn't remember the date.

"Fran," he gasped.

The viera was at his side in a breath, eyes gleaming, with a tray of star fruit and crab apple in her hands; she lay this by his elbow. He frowned at it, returned his attention to her. She was so lovely.

How old was she? He couldn't recall. At a glance she couldn't have been more than twenty and seven, but that didn't seem right at all. He felt as though he'd known her forever. She had always been at his side, it seemed, but time ignored her. He tried to contemplate this for a moment, frowned. But then Fran's slim cool hands folded around one of his. She smiled, so faintly, in that way that only he knew, and he remembered that this particular puzzle didn't really matter.

"Balthier," she murmured. "You are awake."

"Hmm," he agreed, with a little smile. "And apparently still a pirate, by some miracle of your grace, though I rot away to nothing. Damn these mirrors." He caught his reflection again and scowled bitterly at it. "Why does one even bother with them? Half the time I wonder if Cid's prancing about watching me, waiting for God knows what. It's enough to give a man nightmares, I tell you."

"Hush," Fran admonished, stroking the lines away from his forehead. "I will take them down." She did not tell him that just two days before he had found the walls bare, and she had to put them all up again.

Balthier closed his eyes. At a distance he heard church bells, and swiftly remembered his frustration. "Fran... Fran. What day is it? I hear bells."

She glanced down into the courtyard. "It is Sunday," she said at last. "It seems there is a wedding in the square."

"And this is your apartment in Bhujerba," he said, reminding himself.

"Rabanastre, my heart," Fran corrected, gently. He opened his eyes again and looked round at her.

"We're in Rabanastre? What, with Ratsbane about? The boy will rob us blind."

Fran smiled broadly in spite of herself. "Balthier," she said, shaking her head. "Vaan has never attempted to rob us, and he never will."

Balthier leaned back on the pillows and sighed, reluctant. "There's a first time for everything, I'll have you know. The boy's a loose cannon. If I taught him anything he'll be on our balcony with his little tin airship any moment now, ready to crack the safe. And this after all I've done for him, the wretch. Really, Fran." He scoffed, taking a tiny bit of apple into his mouth. "Did you remember to lock the window?"

Patient, soft on her feet, Fran went to the window and locked it. She did not remind him that Vaan and Penelo retired from the sky twenty years ago, and she certainly did not mention that they were in Rabanastre to visit the pair. She never pressed any particular point of the past until he asked. The broad strokes didn't matter anymore – only the fine details. He forgot, more frequently by the day, but she never did. Never would.

"When the crowds have cleared, I would that you walk with me awhile," Fran said at last, to his reflection in the mirror. "I have acquired something of a gift for you. It is outside waiting for us."

Balthier quirked an eyebrow tiredly at her, and granted her a little smirk. "Gifts, Fran? I never. Feeling maudlin, are you?"

"Perhaps a touch sentimental," she conceded, stepping over to the closet. "Will you wear black today?"

"No, thank you," he said. "White; and the green silk vest, if it still fits. God, I've gotten fat."

"You are a rail," she protested, and gestured to his badly neglected plate of fruit. "You must eat."

"You're terribly officious, you know," he remarked, quirking his brow in distaste, "And this starfruit's under-ripe." But when he slipped another piece into his mouth and savored it, she noticed. She noticed everything about him. Perhaps she even noticed that he was still young, in spite of it all. He prayed she could still see him, beneath everything.

Damn these mirrors.

When Balthier had eaten half his plate, Fran presented him with his favorite white shirt, helped him shrug into it. His fingers wouldn't work the laces of his collar, and he had to let Fran help him into his shoes. But when she touched his cheek and smiled, he let the indignity of it all slip. After all, it was to be one of his good days. How could it not be?

She helped him to his feet, and smiled graciously when he pressed his lips to her shoulder. "Well then; a walk and a gift, you say. Shall we off?"

-

The hovercycle was beautiful. Balthier laid a trembling hand to the bronze and copper flank of the suspension well and studied the engine block with tired, careful eyes.

"It's a Bhujerban model. And a 706; Ah, Fran. But, hm; the differential's on the fore well? I thought the guild stopped making these. Inefficient, they said."

"They did," Fran said. "But I thought a classic would best speak to your sensibilities. She is fine, yes?"

"She is; very fine," he agreed, softly. "Thank you, darling. You spoil this old fool so."

"Nonsense," she said, flicking one ear with dry humour. "My Balthier must have only the best."

"Ha," he said. "Is that so?"

She purred, laid her hand to his cheek. "It is so."

The handsome old thing was his, after all, though Vaan had tucked it away in storage for the past fifteen years. She stole it sixty-seven years ago, on a lark. If he didn't remember, she would hardly press the issue.

Balthier gazed sadly down at the handlebars of the hovercycle, patted the rear suspension again. "Surely you're entirely sick of me by now, Fran. I'm a tangled wreck of nothing, and you – well, you're ever so – you're radiant, darling. Why do you waste your energy and youth on a man like me?" He looked up at her, perplexed. "I don't understand."

Youth – oh, my love. Her hand still at his cheek, Fran pressed her lips together and said it again. "Ffamran Bunansa – Balthier. I love you. This is all you must know. Do not be troubled."

His green eyes searched her, squinting – he still refused to wear his spectacles – but at last he sighed, and let his eyes meander around the courtyard. "Well, here we are, on the street in broad daylight, for once in our lives. But damn me, I've forgotten. Where are we going?"

Fran straddled the hovercycle. "Never mind where," she said. "Come; hold onto me."

Balthier allowed her to guide him onto the cycle, and wrapped one arm around her bare waist; with the other he drew her shoulder slightly backward, that he might lay his brow against the curve of her neck.

"My love," he murmured vaguely, "Forgive me. How old are you?"

"Thirty-two, my heart," she lied quietly, and turned the ignition.

Rabanastre sailed around the pair of them in a beautiful blur. Golden cobblestones streaked into one another. Red and brown and white brick buildings rushed past, flash, flash, flash. The alleyways whistled, sang with their velocity. Pedestrians they passed were rendered anonymous by their haste, Bangaa and Seeq and Hume and Viera all left to nothing but shapes, sizes, colours. Balthier held tightly to Fran's waist and his eyes watered against the wind, blissful, invincible.

"Perfect," he exulted to himself. "Perfect."

Balthier laughed hoarsely when Fran guided the cycle over the central square's Northern bridge, and swooped low over Palace Galtea's courtyard. The memories came to him in flickering bursts, stretched his smile thin. The heist. The shard. Vaan, the idiot, sinking them into the sewers. Ashe, and her silly tin sword. Rats, and dead insurgents, and Vayne, damn his rotting corpse. He recalled Basch then, vaguely, and called to Fran over the whine of the hovercycle's engine.

"We ought to visit Gabranth one day soon, don't you agree?"

Fran flicked one ear in hesitation, exhaled gently in despair - Basch fon Ronsenburg had been dead for ten years. Balthier's eyes flirted around the courtyard, scouting for escape points, and she heard him muttering to himself, strategies, snippets of thought. She turned her head and watched him slip backward through time, caught in the snapshot of place, sense memory overwhelming logic.

"Lovely afternoon..." he mumbled. "Fence is down over the north row; we could make it if... But if they're already here, we might as well... no. Fourth floor, last panel on the... not easy... hm. Cid, you bastard, what are you hiding now?"

"Let us make for Westgate, yes?" Fran said at last, when his brow furrowed.

"Hm? Oh - fine," he agreed. Immediately he was smiling again, vibrant with the peace of being in the air, the promise of speed. She banked the cycle again and they swept with fluid streaking grace over the cobblestones, kicking up a fine dervish of sand behind them. When she slanted the craft to make a particularly sharp turn, Balthier's arm tightened with alarm around her waist. She took the engine down a gear and hummed to herself. So long ago he had mooned over this hovercycle, tinkering with it, clucking his tongue in disappointment when he couldn't fit a sixteenth gear onto the engine block.

These Bhujerban cycles don't have near enough speed to them. I could get her up to one hundred and seventy, with the right conducer. What a shame.

Fran shook her head, smiling, and the cycle purred to a halt beside the aerodrome.

"We have arrived, Balthier," she said.

-

Vaan stood in the aerodrome concourse, white-haired, leathery, wire-lean. He moved slowly now, but his smile was just as wide and cocky as it had ever been. Balthier raised his brows in disapproval at the man, and his smile faltered slightly. for a moment Fran entertained the thought that they were seventeen and twenty-two again, scrutinizing each other, Vaan waiting to be taken down a peg for some cocky mistake.

"Ratsbane. Still walking free, after all Dalmasca's thrown your way? Slippery little git," Balthier rasped, smirking.

Vaan laughed. "Gotta keep moving or you'll steal my girl again. Balthier, you terminally charming bastard; Come here."

Balthier embraced his old protégé with real warmth. "You're looking well."

"Still running," the man grinned, "And still raising hell for Galbrai and Reksia, poor girls." His eyes glinted with mischief, and he called across the concourse. "They're finally here, ladies. Come and say hello, before they ditch me again."

Vaan's twin daughters bore his blue eyes and his blonde hair, but smiled quietly, much like their mother. They shared the work of pushing Penelo along ahead of them in her convalescent's chair. Galbrai stood on tiptoe and kissed Fran on both cheeks as Balthier bowed creakily to Reksia, who put both hands over her heart and exclaimed over him. "Ever a gentleman and a rake. Dearest Balthier, it's been too long."

Smiling peacefully, Penelo peered up at all of them, pleased at their reunion. Her hair had long since gone white and thin, and would not hold a braid; it frizzed in a spidery cloud around her small white face. Her blue eyes still glittered, and keenly.

"Fran," she said happily, "I'm so glad you came. I thought you might take that hovercycle and vanish. It's valuable enough."

"Such things are not beyond me," Fran teased, "But then, I am not entirely cruel." She put her arm around the woman's shoulders. "Penelo, sister. How are you?"

"I'm quite well, all considered. But oh, Balthier, it's been years."

Balthier bowed slowly, brushing his lips over the back of her hand. "Penelo, darling," he said.

"Still trying to charm me off my feet," she noted, mischievously.

"It's working," he retorted, gesturing to her chair. Her daughters laughed indulgently, and Penelo herself had the grace to blush.

"Hey, that's my girl, old man; my girl," Vaan warned.

Balthier looked askance at him, smirking. "Go on with you, Ratsbane. You don't deserve her. But, speaking as we are of who owns whom: Where is my girl, hm?"

"I was hoping you'd ask," Vaan mused, with a faint clever smile. "Come with me."

-

Fran was pleased to see that Strahl was in good repair. But then, she could expect no less from a mechanic as fastidious as Vaan.

"Beautiful." Balthier clasped his hands together gratefully, let his eyes wander high, higher, taking in the familiar lines of his airship. "She's not gone all to rust and mothballs inside, has she? I'll feed you a bullet if you've been polishing her to keep me happy, Vaan."

Vaan almost looked injured. "Balthier, I'm not an idiot."

"That still remains to be seen," Balthier said, affectionately. "But, truly. Thank you, my friend."

"We'll leave you to get reacquainted," Penelo said warmly. "Fran – could we drag you away for a moment?"

"But of course," Fran said. "Balthier, my heart, I trust you'll not take off without me."

"As if I would ever dare," he protested, smiling slightly. "You have the coordinates to Nabudis, and if we're going to run this heist properly I'd be mad to cut you out. Go on, then, socialize. I'll wait."

Vaan's smile flickered.

-

Vaan lowered his voice, though Balthier surely couldn't hear him from three rooms away.

"A heist, in Nabudis? That's a bit of a stretch even for Balthier, isn't it? I mean, sure, Nabudis isn't crawling with undead anymore, but there's nothing there. There hasn't been for sixty-five years."

Fran flicked one ear in what she hoped was a carefree gesture. "I imagine he thinks Nabudis is still under Heios Nabradia's rule, and we are back in the war."

"Balthier, losing his mind? Doesn't seem right," Vaan mumbled.

"He is ill," Fran admitted, with difficulty. "He forgets, or remembers at odd moments. The mirrors go up on the walls, and are polished; they come down again the next day. He will plead with me to let him visit Elza, only to turn and demand where we are once we arrive in Balfonheim. He will banter with me about the day we met, but then the next hour he looks at me as though he does not know me. Indeed, he thinks I am young, so young. I am thirty years old one day, and twenty the next. If only..."

Her eyes filled with tears, and she exhaled, pushing them back, disregarding them. This was not the time. This was a good day.

"Fran," Penelo crooned.

"He coughs," Fran continued, weakly. "He eats little. He complains of pain in his chest. He weeps in his dreams, sleeps far too often. I fear..." She shook her head and turned away.

"Don't be gone too long," Vaan said gravely. "We worry about you out there."

"I will be fine, child," Fran said gently. But then, it wasn't her welfare he was concerned about.

When she returned to the ship, Balthier was already in the cockpit, hands resting tenderly on the controls. His eyes flashed with mirth at the sight of her. "Darling," he said, "My darling. Our audience awaits. Onward to Nabudis, and our probable demise, then?"

"Probability is nothing," she jested him, tenderly. "I do adore watching you slip the noose."

He grinned rakishly and waved his hand in dismissal, as if it was just yesterday that they fled Verdpale Palace, hand in hand, and he'd already grown bored of watching death lose track of him. Fran set a course for Bhujerba, nestled as a jewel in friendly skies. As he opened the throttle, she smiled.

-

Three hours later, Balthier inquired after their supplies. "Should we take to port tomorrow, darling? We've been in the air frightfully long."

Fran glanced sidelong at him. "We are provisioned for another week, Balthier. Do not be troubled."

"A week? Hum," Balthier mumbled, taken aback. "Right. My mistake... I... ah."

He began to cough, rasping, a whistling lodged deep in his lungs; his eyes widened, watered, then squinted suddenly in reaction. When he took his hand from his mouth, Fran smelled blood.

"My love," she said, as calmly as she could, "I would that you go abaft and lie down. You seem tired."

Balthier shook his head and opened his mouth to retort, but instead renewed a round of coughing into his sleeve. This time she saw a clot of crimson spatter the soft white cambric.

"Balthier," she said, firm. "Get you to bed."

"I heard you the first time, damn it. I'm perfectly fine, you officious woman," Balthier grated, bitterly, studying the splotch of blood on his sleeve with a glare of disdain. But Fran rose from her chair and sniffed the air between them; pain radiated from him, and a bitter nauseating sickness breathed in his lungs. She leaned over his shoulder and tapped in the autopilot code, locking it.

"Ffamran Mid," she said, "You will not order me about. Get you to bed."

He wheeled around in his chair and grit his teeth, gasping. "Damn you and your... tone... who in hell do you think you are... This is... my ship."

"And you are my Hume, fool child," she hissed, furious, desperate. He was forgetting her. He couldn't.

"You dare call me a child!" he snarled, but then pain seized him again. He doubled over – coughing, choking, with wide eyes and red face – then fell to his knees and retched on the cockpit floor.

"Balthier," Fran whimpered, frozen in her misery. She had done this to him; she had overexcited him; she might have known he would suffer this way... But in his turmoil, she saw only how young he was, and so afraid. She could not rescue him. This she despaired.

"Oh gods," he moaned, head between his hands. "Gods, I'm splitting apart. My head, it pounds. Where am I? Oh gods. Curse you, woman, what have you done to me?"

"Balthier," Fran repeated miserably, trying to bolster him to his feet. "I am sorry. Oh, forgive me. Lean on me, now - to bed with you. Come..."

But he pulled away from her, teeth bared. He feared her, he hated her. He tried to crawl away from her but his breath caught in his chest, rasped, choked him again. He looked round the room, as if he'd never seen an inch of it before in his life. Before Fran could react, he fainted; in seconds his face became like parchment, his lips began to turn blue -

"Aii," Fran cried, as her mind broke into pieces with panic. "Aii, ce, zhua're vas dn'a, sr'hu mai da'tec, liith, ci gl'ha..."

No, they won't take you, I won't let them, gods, don't die... She drew Esuna between her hands, fairly threw it into his chest. "Balthier... Balthier...!"

Color came into his cheeks, and he began to breathe again as rivulet of blood came from his lips. Nothing could have prepared her for the way he lay so silently in her arms (too frail, too quiet) but Fran plucked him from the floor and carried him down the corridor to his cabin, sobbing silently.

-

Fran lay Balthier upon their bed and knelt beside him; he sighed. She raised her head and watched his eyelids flicker, as if caught in dreaming. She bowed her head and began to pray.

O Faram, you who loathe me, here I surrender. Do as you must do, and let this humechild die. But grant me this: Let him know me. Let him see me once more. Let me say goodbye.

"Please," she whispered.

Balthier opened his eyes. His eyes followed the curve of the cabin ceiling, lingered on the doorframe, and finally came to rest on the porthole beside the bed. Beyond it stretched the infinite evening sky - cold and empty and lit with fire, and free - the only place he belonged.

"Where..." he breathed.

"We are almost home," Fran said weakly.

"I..." Balthier turned his head, painfully slow in the motion, and she saw every line in his face. But there, between crepe thin eyelids and a million lines like cracks in earth, his eyes gleamed hazel green from his face. The essence of him shone unchanged, and he focused his attention on her face one last time.

"Who are you?" he murmured.

Fran bowed her head. "Ff...Ffamran," she stuttered, weeping. "I am your wife."

She covered her face with her hands, trembling, and the silver wedding band that he had given her sixty long years ago winked from her finger.

She was mortified that he would see her weep so fervently. Viera do not weep. But nor do they smile, she realized. They do not laugh, nor kiss, nor raise their voices in anger, nor fly in ships, nor make love. They do not scream when in pain, they do not feel; they breathe, and they eat, and they pray and sleep and ignore the weight of the world as it crushes them from every side.

She was not of them.

Fran bent herself over the little bed and sobbed. She thought of the way Balthier laughed when they survived their first heist together; he was seventeen and invincible, flush with pride and life and fervor. She thought of their very first kiss and the way he breathed, trembling, supplicant to her. She thought of him shattering the bathroom mirror, with a scream which woke the entire ship: My Father Is Dead. She remembered the way he made love to her, savored the smell of his blood and sweat under her fingernails, saw the steam rising from the cold windows, heard their moaning. She thought of the day he drew a serpent fang from her thigh with his teeth, and how she screamed to feel the poison running through her veins. She thought of trudging waist deep through the snow with him, cold and starving and afraid, and of the way they laughed with each other when adrenaline overtook them in the heat of battle, or in the frenzy of escape. She thought of funerals and weddings, parades and prisons and sewers and palaces. She thought of fear, and of love; of victory, and of death.

Balthier took her hands from her face and kissed them.

"Fran," he whispered. "Fran, I remember... My heart... my wife. I'm sorry... what have I... done... to you now? Don't... weep."

"I cannot say goodbye. I know not how," she protested, shaking her head as another wave of tears flooded her eyes. "Ffamran, I am afraid. How will I... what will I do?"

"Hadn't you... best be off?" he admonished, pressing his cheek into the palm of her hand. "What a pirate... does. Fly. Fran..."

"I suppose..." she choked, but she couldn't banter with him. She sobbed. His eyes were so bright, so full of stars.

"You... forget," he breathed, smirking, so faintly. "Leading man... never..."

The light passed from his face, gently, and Fran closed his eyes with feather soft fingertips. Strahl banked, and her proximity warning sounded calmly, announcing their arrival over Bhujerba – the aerodrome where first they met, the terrace where first she kissed him.

Beginning and end. Home.