09/25/2015 NOTE: This story is undergoing revision! This entire thing is still the old version, though. Feel free to read and review! But once I post the new chapters, I'll be taking everything down so that only the new chapters are up. (That's when you'll know it's the revised version!) Please see the last chapter for more details on this.

Summary: Set two years after Hide and Seek. The call to free her sister country has finally arrived, but Anastacia no longer wants to hear it. She is about to realize, however, that when it comes to sky piracy, the dead can be very convincing. BaschxOC

DISCLAIMER: Again, I don't own Final Fantasy XII or any of its characters or anything in it. All of it is owned by Square Enix. The only character I own is Anastacia, an OC.

Heeeeeeey everyone! Sorry I've been gone so long. I'd actually almost finished the next chapter last year (a month after I posted the latest chapter), but I accidentally deleted it (DON'T ASK. UGH.) and after many days of sobbing, I continued to write. A friend of mine, however, insisted that I revise it, so I decided to. Just now. Because I admit that I did get lazy. So we're starting from the start! Which is the prologue, the..thing even before the start. Yes.

But don't worry! I won't COMPLETELY revise the story. In fact, most of the parts I liked from the old story that I'd written and published here are going to stay. I'm just going to remove a few things that were awful and hopefully add better things to the old chapters, so you'll still see some of the old stuff. Just make sure to watch out for the new ones! Read on and enjoy (I hope XD)! :)

Prologue

The silence in Marquis Halim Ondore IV's office was torturing. No matter if the Bhujerban sky was blue and the sun was shining through his windows, pushing through even the thick Rozarrian curtains and bouncing off the walls and crystals of the room to create an array of shapes and colors. The weather in contrast to the estate's current mood especially weighed down his young guest, who had not once been fond of keeping quiet.

Anastacia never was good at the 'waiting' game. Over the past week spent in Bhujerba, she had gotten into innumerable quarrels with her Uncle Halim's Rev guards due to her inability to overcome the desire to reach up from behind them and tug at their ears. She'd found it so fascinating, so entertaining how their race, always serious and taciturn, could have ears as tender and furry as those of adorable little Moogles. It was so...distracting.

Although she wouldn't admit it (it is unsure as to whether she even knew it), Anastacia only engaged in such mischief in an attempt to forget about how she had abandoned her sister in her greatest time of need. Ashelia was the one who forced her to get out of Dalmasca and stay in Bhujerba, yes, but it was her own fault she allowed it to happen. Ugh. She began to feel something clog dancing on her right temple and shook her head, hoping it would go away and drag any thoughts of Dalmasca along with it.

Echoes of the Marquis's footsteps accented with the sound of his cane against the floor resounded as he stopped pacing his office for a moment and stopped to lean on his cane. He looked down at his sixteen year-old godchild, sitting on the floor and fiddling with an already wrinkled dress with her head shaking while bowed, and said, "Keep calm, Anastacia. Have hope."

What a half-lie that was, thought the princess of Nabradia, returning only a half-smile to her godfather. One needn't be a political genius to know that the day King Raminas set out for Nalbina to sign Archadia's alleged peace treaty was the day he set out to sign his and his country's death sentence. Nalbina...she always used to find Rasler secretly (secretly in the way that everyone knew about it) meeting Ashelia there, when she'd come from Dalmasca and he from Nabradia. The memory, too, of how a bright mushroom cloud in the northern distance had informed her of precisely how her country fell came back to her, but she wasn't allowed to tell anyone who wasn't of the Nabradian royal family.

Rasler's death ensured her position as the last Nabradian royal.

Wait, no. She was the last Nabradian– the Archadians arranged that.

Anastacia couldn't believe how jealous she was of everyone who was already playing that other game with Rasler, her father, and her mother. Who gave them the right to die? Why did she have to be in Castle Rabanastre, waiting for a captain who, in all probability, didn't even remember her after giving her so much hope, and who, in his long disappearance, made her hope for that great wave of power gifted from the gods, that tide of destruction, to come and take her, too?

The tall doors of Halim Ondore's office burst wide open. One of the Parijanah rushed in, a scroll nearly crushed in his fist. He bowed before the Marquis and his guest, but the Marquis brushed his formalities off with a dismissive wave of his hand. Halim approached him as quickly as he could and snatched the small piece of paper withholding the fate of Ivalice. The Sainikah outside the office, Anastacia, and her uncle's Rev guards all held their breaths for the Marquis to utter something, anything that would tell them there was still something to hold on to in the west.

"Kastam..."

Anastacia's heart sank, but with the last ounce of hope in her she stood and asked, as Halim's goddaughter and not his subject, "What of Ashelia? You will send an airship to escort her here, will you not?"

Halim Ondore closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Why...? Why not, Uncle? Are there no airships available? I will take my own, and I-"

"No, Lady Anastacia." Halim replied, as the Marquis and not her Uncle who spoiled her and played games with her as a child. He stared down at her, a hard look reflected in his grey eyes; it was a sorrowful sort of glare he had never shown her before. "Princess Ashelia," he read, the gravity in his voice mortifying all those listening, "in agony of her father's death, has taken her own life. Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg is guilty of the assassination of King Raminas and has been...put to death."

Her arms fell limp as she stared back into the Marquis's eyes. Involuntarily taking a step back, she tried to hold her ground, but her knees buckled, and now no one rushed to catch her. Anastacia's misting eyes and quivering lip, which she tried to hide to herself, could not move even her Uncle into withdrawing his statement. He simply dismissed the messenger, slipped the scroll into Anastacia's hand, and slowly walked back to his desk.

It couldn't be. It was impossible. Ashelia was the strong one. Despite everything that happened to her, though her plight was just a little less awful than Anastacia's, she would never weaken. Ashelia played the game of waiting with her in Rabanastre and promised they would continue to together no matter how far away they were from each other. She couldn't have just quit on her! And Basch...Captain Basch! His loyalty to King Raminas was so unfathomably great that he put up with the King's niece and spoke clearly to her when all the others spoke falsities and would call her a fool. It wasn't his game to lie or pretend!

"No."

"What is it, Lady Anastacia?" he asked, facing her once more.

"NO!" Anastacia hurled the scroll containing the lies at the Marquis and hit him square in the nose. His Rev guards moved forward to detain her, but the Marquis stopped them. Anastacia continued. "Captain Basch would never do anything to betray Dalmasca. Ashelia...she would never give upon a game with me! You lie! You lie, Uncle! Why? They're not dead!"

One of Halim's Rev guards could foresee the princess breaking down again and causing another ruckus. "My lord?"

Halim sighed, once again becoming her godfather. "Dear niece, did you not give the same reaction to Rasler's death? Yet you now acknowledge it...give it time." He neared her and bent down, squeezing her shoulder. "Someday, I, too, will be gone, and all I own now will become yours. What then will you-"

"Be quiet!" yelled Anastacia, removing his hand from her person and standing. Since her outburst in Rabanastre's great Cathedral, only he, King Raminas, and Ashelia had not considered her an imbecile. Now that he was the last of them left, did he realize that everyone else was correct? That from being the blithe daughter of the great Nabradian monarchs, she had become the deranged princess of a fallen kingdom? "This is an awful game...Call it over, uncle! Stop treating me like a fool...I beg you, do not proclaim the contents of that document true. Please, uncle! Promise me you'll never read that scroll before anyone else again!"

"Calm yourself, Anastacia," said the Marquis of Bhujerba, saying nothing to appease her. "And enough of these games; we must face the truth. Mourn you may, but you shall move on. Under the alliance between Nabradia and Dalmasca, you are now Dalmasca's queen. There is still hope. We can still repossess the lands of Nabradia. You shall meet with the emperor of Rozarria as soon as possible. He has an unmarried son, not the crown prince, only five years your senior, Al-"

"You're heartless...my godfather has become as Archadia's Emperor, callous to the death of his beloved!" said Anastacia, a hint of laughter in her voice. She repeated her last statement and this time laughed outwardly, tears forming in her eyes, beckoning to a willing sob. Soon she accused the Marquis of other grave things, such as allying himself with her mother's murderers, although no one could hear past her wailing. It would have been laughable to an outside party. The Parijanah, the Sainikah, Halim's Rev guards and Halim himself, however, now grew afraid. The Marquis had opted to wait for her to simmer down and fall asleep like most infants, but he had forgotten one thing about this infant: she could run.

And she ran out of his office.

His Rev guard's prediction was true. "Follow her," the Marquis said to all who could hear, "disable her if temporarily if you must. Go!"

Tag. She couldn't lose this game.

Racing out of the smothering peaceful hallways of the Ondore estate and out into the freedom of the Bhujerban marketplace, Anastacia looked to her left and right in a panic. The Sainikah were already calling for help from the guards at the front gate and she could barely see! Why were tears so foggy? But she couldn't help it, and tears streamed down her already sticky face as she moved forward, down past a few armories and a magick shop. Weeds growing from the city's ochre brick roads nearly tripped her on her way westward to Miner's End.

"She's not in the skygrounds. Check the inns and the other shops!"

Anastacia gasped and looked back, hoping they wouldn't think to come her wa- and she had never felt so free, somersaulting into the air...and landing on a suddenly aching back.

"Ugh..." groaned the man she'd run into, standing and smoothing the creases in his long white sleeves. He was in much less pain than she was, yet he complained, "What could you have been in such a hurry for?"

"Forgive me," she muttered in reply, turning around to face him and curling up beside a wall she found. She leaned a tired, throbbing head on it and wiped her eyes. "I'm troubled."

The man huffed, looking down at her disdainfully. "Well, it couldn't have been so...hmmm." he stopped when he noticed the little chain around her sweating neck and the coat of arms on the pendant it carried. "A runaway, eh? How...awkward."

It was then that she raised her head to glare at him, but it was ineffective. She was dried-up, a shriveled seed, her chance to ever grow stolen away by the winters of war. Her stamina was depleted; there was no going on in this game. Perhaps she really only was the deranged princess of a fallen kingdom.

But this man was interesting, she would grant, with his zebra blond hair and his illuminating eyes, his many earrings and the colorful bands around his fingers and wrist. It was obvious in his accent that he wasn't Bhujerban. And he had the most intricate vest! She could stare at it for hours, trying to figure it out without another care in the world...

"I am a runaway," Anastacia admitted.

"And where did you come from?"

"Not far from here, but I'd like to be. May I come with you?"

The man raised his eyebrows. "And be accused of kidnapping a royal? I'd rather not. Now if you'd excuse me, your Royal Highness," he said, with a flourish of his arm and a bow, "I have an important matter to attend to."

Anastacia blinked in surprise until she realized her clothes were an easy giveaway. Where had her pursuers gone? It didn't matter; the man was leaving! She heaved herself up and ran after him.

"Wait! I can...I can feed myself; you won't have to trouble yourself over that. I'm skilled at finding things! I'm small, too, so...so I can slip past many people unnoticed to support myself! Or take things, if you're that kind of person. N-no offense. And once you take me with you, there will be nothing to prove my lineage. Marquis Ondore will be forced to proclaim me lost...and dead, like the rest of my family. Please! And you can have this," she fumbled desperately for her pendant, removed it, and shoved it into the man's hand. "You can sell it for more than a good airship to the Marquis. Just take me with you." Her head spun. What else did she have to say? Why was she even saying this? She had no idea who this man was or what he did, but he was her only hope, it seemed. Leaving this place with him was the only way to keep her already dwindling sanity intact.

Staring at the pendant in his hand, the man sighed. "What an odd company we'll be..."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing," he muttered, pocketing the pendant, "All right. You can come with us."

"Us?"

"I've a lady waiting in one of the book stores here," he answered, already wondering if bringing her along was the right choice. Then again, she fit their category. Once meant for great things in their homelands, orphans, failures, deserters. "You'll meet her in a moment."

"What's she like?" Anastacia prodded, following him, "Is she pretty? Kind? Do you think she'll like me?"

"Yes, yes, no; stop asking such irrelevant questions. Now, we can't have you going around and announcing your heritage...your name is too unusual. I don't like it. We'll need to give you a new one."

"Well... What name could I use that's not unusual?"

"I was thinking...Anya."

"Anya..." Anastacia tried to smile, but found that she still could not (she'd almost forgotten about her sore eyes and sticky cheeks), so she nodded. "That's a nice name. Usual enough for me. How does it sound to you, sir?"

"It's Balthier," the man corrected her, both displeased and amused by her mockery of him, and shrugged. "And it sounds fine. I thought of it, didn't I? You already looked the part of a vagabond; all I had to do was change your name. Later we'll get rid of that unwieldy little dress..."

Anastacia's face took on a distorted and appalled look. She was about to reply with an unladylike statement (she was a vagabond now, anyway, so there was no need for formalities) when Balthier spoke again.

"Oh, yes. Fran and I have a rule concerning our troupe; I hope you are willing to follow it."

The girl walked ahead of Balthier to fix her tangled hair and, without hiding her suspicion, asked, "What rule is that?"

"Everything you were before you joined us, everything you had...you must forget. You may speak of them one last time before we depart if you wish, but after that, you must forget. Forever." Balthier tilted his head at her as her pace slowed. Had she changed her mind about coming along? "Do you understand?"

Anastacia–no...it was Anya who whirled and stared at her new...friend. On her dry lips and in her swollen eyes, he could see the slightest trace of a smile as she whispered, "I can play that."

"As I thought," Balthier smiled, especially at her wording, and ruffled her hair lightly. "Welcome to the cast, little Anya."

Hooray, you're still here! I was sure you'd have disappeared by now. THIS time, the 'Anya' as an alias is a definite reference to Anastasia.

Sainikah - Bhujerban word for soldier

Parijanah - Bhujerban word for guide

And yep, this time, Fran doesn't make an appearance in the prologue.

To TGWP's old readers, I hope this prologue sort of clears up why Anya was acting the way she was before (in the old version). I had meant to say why in a later chapter but it seemed to confuse and annoy people who PMed me so much that I decided to just say it when I revised it. Anyway, Anastacia's kind of crazy here because she was kind of crazy in Hide and Seek, but that kookiness of hers (though it was only brought out by Rasler's death) seemed to die out in the old version's prologue, so I decided to add another pinch of lunacy (not that the whole games thing isn't already nuts).

So! As usual, constructive criticism is very much needed and appreciated! If you don't give crit, then just tell me what you liked about it by pressing the little Review button down there. :D To old readers, tell me what you think of the revised one? It killed me to delete the old ones, but I think it was needed. Not that my writing has actually gotten any better, especially since I haven't written in a while...feh.

Annnnyway, thank you so much for reading!