InsaneJournal

The Things Fran Doesn't Know [Balthier-centric]
Annnd speaking of Balthier being off his rocker.

Title: The Things Fran Doesn't Know
Characters: Balthier, Fran
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 315
Note: For 30_darkfics on IJ. Prompt 25: Broken. In all honesty, I have no idea if this fic makes sense. It was sort of experimental.

Fran doesn't know that he's awake, nor does she know that he is most nights. The Strahl is silent save for sleeping breaths and the carefully soft patter of footsteps as Balthier exits, leaving Fran to rest unaware that he's gone.

She doesn't know that his dreams are a plague and that he often awakes unsure of who or where he is. He gets up and explores the Strahl, and reminds himself of his life, his future. His past, he tries to ignore.

She doesn't know, and she never will, that this night he looks through a pile of things they've picked up from here and there and finds an old, ornate wine glass, and it looks like one from his former home, and very soon it only looks like a large number of small pieces on the floor. Once it is broken, it only reminds him of now.

He picks up the pieces one by one, and he thinks, wonders how many times he's spent nights like this contemplating broken pieces. They are all he knows, all he has to work with. He ceased thinking in terms of wholes when he embarked on this new life. He spends these nights taking the pieces and rearranging them; Balthier, the man he is now, made up of nothing more than broken glass. Usually the pieces he manipulates aren't nearly this tangible.

She doesn't know, but she silently wonders the next day, that the cut on his finger is from a piece with a particularly sharp edge. He smiled ironically when it pierced his skin, decided that one belonged to Ffamran, and tossed it in an out of the way corner to be covered in dust.

Later she finds him staring into a broken mirror, and she doesn't understand the fascination in his eyes, or the reason he gets angry when she suggests they throw it away.