Fran knew him before this night, dismissed him for his constancy in flight; this night, she notes him only for that he will attempt the floor. His preference is to sit at the Whitecap's periphery, shoulders landside and eyes to the ocean, a sketchbook against his forearm, his cup untouched for his hands are busy. She finds it strange to see him in motion. Unwary, Fran leans to see, too far: her table's candle licks her cheek with heated warning. She shifts the taper, backhanded, absent.

His steps that are not those of Balfonheim, but close. He is too rigid across his shoulders for true grace but deft with his footwork, quick with his hips and his hands. His smile compensates his stiffness; his tongue earns him more than forgiveness. He is ever in the hands of others.

She knows this dance, of Humes and youth, of play before bed, thus she is surprised to see that when he departs for the docks, he goes alone.

On the morrow she watches him bargain with a knowledge that speaks of true concern, a word for the vendor's youngest's healing canker, a quip scarce-veiled flattery for the vendor's wife that she folds extra chalks into the bundle of papers and inks he buys. He is stopped on his way back to his ship, a girl that knows him by candlelight, surprised to see him by day. She sings a song of seeing his ship; she sees his parcel and wants to see his sketches instead; all she wants is sex; all she gets is his smile.

Fran follows him to his ship. He caresses the hull; moves within with a grace of long-practice. She marvels that he pilots it partnerless but for his below-decks workcrew; the complexity of control is not a thing for a man to bear alone.

She follows; she learns his pattern and waits; she stays in shadows, hunts, wonders – is it all because she saw him dance?

His skill had not been so notable, but perhaps it is that contrast that draws her attention, for in the city he moves so fluidly he belongs on every beat, his true dance as he navigates the streets; he sights those sirens who wish to ground him, he slips away, hunches that his height does not betray him, slides behind merchant stalls and down long alleys that take him nowhere but away; he is awkward and desperate, sly when confronted, smiles when seduced, swift in retreat.

She sits on the dock above, watching, he sits on the sand below, sketching. She sits at table, to sip at tea when he hides in his ship's engine bay; when he comes out again filthy, cursing, his sleeves rolled to his shoulders and a pen behind his ear, her tea is cold and biscuits gifted to the birds, to the sky.

He has never stayed so long in port before, never long enough to make her wonder where he goes, why he goes, what hope fuels his ship, what dream he drafts daily, for she notes his fingers are ever stained with ink and engine oil.

Sky pirates are as inconstant as the ocean. Fran does not know if she envies or despises their mercury. Perhaps he is different.

-yet, not so, for fickle Hume blood heats his veins and a sky pirate's heart calls for comfort scarce in the sky, and after a fortnight he falls as men are want to do when temptation strikes unsubtly enough to numb.

It is a Hume girl that trips him with a bust that would rival a matron three times her senior; his long fingers near span her waist. His is a broken rhythm; the girl mewls to fill the alley with echoes, pleased and pained. Fran slides into shadow, intending away, but she has never had such success with retreat. It is her weakness, his perception; he hears her, he stops as though stabbed, his eyes wide, guileless in the dark, and he sees her. The barmaid yelps, yet he does not separate from between her legs, his trousers about his knees. Fran notes the slight tremble of his thighs, imagines the motion within the girl.

He does not smile, which pleases her for she has seen the devastation that causes.

"Anything I can assist you with?"

"I have heard word about town that you wait for an engineer for your Strahl."

His eyebrow quirks; he ignores the hiss of the girl he holds. "You know her name. You've heard rather a lot more than just the word about the town."

His eyes dart to her ears, brief. He refrains from the obvious comment that his customary wit would have him state, and it is that which decides her.

"I have not heard your name."

"Balthier—" whines the barmaid, hand at his sleeve. His eyes stay on Fran.

"The quarters are too close for comfort," he warns, and rue paints his lips, dark, and he says this next with a strange regret she does not comprehend. "I suspect such a thing wouldn't bother you, considering where we currently stand. Do you pilot?"

"Yes."

"Come on the morrow."

"Balthier-!"

"Yes," exasperated, he faces the girl, hefts her against the wall, with effort. "You can come now."

On the morrow, and the morrow after, after – again – ever – until his mercury is in her veins –

When he sleeps, Fran surveys his laxness. He pilots, and she observes his competence. He talks. She never listens but looks at his lips, or if he mentions the Strahl, his sketches.

When he leaves to go to port, she seeks those sketches, his cabin, his bed, below, behind, and finds –

-in a hundred poses, shades, shapes, strokes, signs, songs, sitting at a table before the shore sipping tea, on the dock above the ocean's wave, her hair riding on the wind, her face, her hands on the curve of the Strahl's column, and that one, there, the most recent, drawn in impatient lines of his regret-

Fran thinks, perhaps, she will smile for his next sketch.

.