A/N: This story was officially finished in February 2009, but I have never been satisfied with how I finished it off; in truth I was disappointed with myself. Some reviewers asked at the time for an epilogue to wrap up some loose plot threads and I have finally found the where-with-all to write one. It doesn't resolve everything but it covers a lot of what I didn't have the fortitude to write before.

At least I now feel satisfied that I have wrapped up the Conversations series as it should have been before; For this whole chapter I must thank Zaz9-Zaa0, whose advice ensured this epilogue was written.

Spikey44: 25th August 2009

My Father, My Ghost

His Highness Prince of Nabradia, Heios Demen Dalmasca, arose on his sixteenth birthday with a certain sense of trepidation and excitement. Today, according to Dalmascan custom he was a man (although according to the Archadian custom of his father's blood he was one already at fifteen). Today, at least, he was ready to take a first step into adulthood.

First however he must face the ghost in the mirror.

Disentangling himself from his bed sheets, narrowly avoiding dripping on fallen trails of loose linen bedding, Heios crossed his bed chamber in the royal palace Rabanastre and faced the full standing dressing mirror in the corner of his room.

Though he took pains to conceal it, Heios did not lack for vanity and he could not pretend to be displeased with the young man he saw standing in the mirror glass. Already taller than most men in his mother's service many decades his senior, Heios had the rangy height and leanness of a long distance runner. People often complimented him on the grace of his carriage, the perfect levelness of his shoulders and his straight back as he walked or sat in repose. The carriage of a king, the sycophants would tell him.

His mother would smile slightly and say 'oh no, he has the pride of a pirate, that is what keeps his back so straight.'

Mother meant it as a compliment, Heios knew this. He knew that the softness that would come across her eyes, a heavy tincture of nostalgia and loss, was not disappointment in him, but instead his mother's reaction to the ghost who stood at Heios' perfectly straight back.

His father, his ghost: the pirate.

Heios watched as his reflections brows dipped. He critically examined his own almost cruelly precise high arched and mobile brows that often gave Heios the keen look of a bird of prey. The scowl on his face made him look both petulant and forbidding and it was probably just as well that Prince Heios Demen had little cause to frown that often in his life.

Still staring into the mirror it was not Heios that he saw, but instead the ghost of a man long dead and gone.

Heios murmured softly, 'I am not you.'

As always he felt a stab of guilt to speak so. His father was almost twelve years dead and the name Balthier was almost never spoken in the royal household. From time to time Captain Vaan or his lady mother the Queen herself, might make veiled reference to "the pirate" but only rarely, and never was his father called by his name.

Heios himself has no reliable memory of his father, but his mind is filled with disparate facts about "the pirate". Thus when Heios looked into a mirror and saw the imprint of a dead man's face staring back at him, he could be forgiven for feeling almost haunted.

'Mother has never forgiven you, do you know that?' Heios asked the ghost in the mirror as he moved to his armoire and pulled from it a soft finely woven white shirt. 'She has never forgiven you for breaking your promise and dying.'

Heios is not supposed to know about that promise. He and his sister the princess Halina, are not supposed to know that it was years before their mother could even summon a wane smile for their father's memory. The 'pirate' may be relegated now to no more than vague allusions and whispers in the royal household, but in the beginning he was spoken of not at all. The pirate Balthier did not simply die; he was erased from the very fabric of Heios and Hallie's early lives by those around them.

The Queen his mother and her Knight Captain Vaan, and all those other people who had once called themselves Balthier's friends and allies, had closed ranks around the fatherless twins and stolen even the chance of mourning their father from Heios and Halina. Heios supposes they thought at the time that they were doing right, but Heios has never truly believed that they were right to steal even grief from he and his sister.

Hallie, very much her mother's daughter, has almost cheerfully accepted the common attitude that her father was less than a shadow; that she never had a father to speak of to begin with. She doesn't remember their father at all. Heios suspects strongly that she does not even try to. He has heard her say of their father's ghost:

'Good riddance, he caused our lady mother enough heartache. The Pirate was a great aid to Dalmasca's glory but he did not serve his family well.'

Hallie is very disdainful of pirates; it is great sport with her to be so. Heios however never speaks a word about his father, "the pirate", either to defend or condemn him. He swallows down the questions that plague him daily as, with every day, he becomes more and more his father's shadow.

Heios doesn't ask: 'Mother why did you risk your throne and reputation to marry a man many say was reckless and ungovernable, with a will to mind no one save himself?'

He does not ask: 'If my father was so much the scoundrel how is it he gave his life to free Ivalice once and for all from the clutches of the Occuria?'

He does not argue with Hallie when she speaks ill of a man she never had the chance to know. He does not say to her: 'You are just repeating the gossip of the streets; our father loved us – he must have loved us: he died for our freedom.'

To the ghost in the mirror Heios says, 'You are a legend from Ambervale to Archades and Bhujerba to Bur-Omisace, but your own children do not remember you. Tell me father, are you at peace, or does it hurt you to know you are a dark shadow over the perfect harmony of your children's lives?'

In Search of Ghosts in All the Wrong Places

Heios had first started searching for his father, his ghost, when he was nine. Dark haired and tall, Heios always felt somewhat the odd one out in his family. His sister, although tall for a Dalmascan girl, has always had their mother's face and colouring, though her eyes are sorrel dark. Heios, in contrast, has always been a slender cool faced shadow against their light. He is his father's memory come to haunt every portrait he is in.

It was only natural therefore that Heios should be unable to leave alone the mystery of his absent father, a man who was as a stranger to him; an enigma and a phantom both frightening and fascinating.

'Captain was my father a kind man?'

He had asked as a little boy running after Captain Vaan as he trudged across the combat practice yard of the royal barracks. Captain Vaan had been more father to him than any other man and his own sons are like little brothers to Heios and Halina both. He remembers the expression on the captain's usually smiling face. It seemed to take Captain Vaan too long to answer, and that in itself was answer enough.

'He was a good man.' The Captain had said finally as if he had had to discard all manner of other answers.

Heios had shaken his head, quick mind flying along as fast as the gulls circling in the blue sky beyond Rabanastre's paling.

'But a man can be good in principle and cruel in person. He can be moral but ungenerous, principled but unfriendly.' Heios remembers clasping the Captain's sleeve in quiet desperation, 'You knew my father well Captain, what manner of man was he?'

He remembers that Vaan's face had fallen, the smiling lines sun etched into his broad and open features falling into unnaturally solemn lines. Vaan's clear blue eyes had looked down into Heios' dark ones and he had clapped one gauntleted hand onto Heios's shoulder and squeezed.

'Balthier was just Balthier. He wasn't like any other man.' Vaan had seemed suddenly intent and he had squeezed Heios' shoulder again, 'Don't listen to what people say: your father wasn't what they say he was.'

Your father wasn't what they say he was? Heios had puzzled over that for days and eventually he had approached his mother, after his lessons were completed for the day and mother had just finished with her chancellor Sir Migelo.

'Mother, was the pirate Balthier not my father?' he had asked.

The eventual conclusion he had drawn from Captain Vaan's words was that, despite the generally accepted view, his father could not have been the pirate Balthier. He must have been someone else because people said that the pirate Balthier was his father and the Captain had told him not to listen to what the people said.

He remembered that his mother had stared at him in shock, 'Of course your father was Balthier,' she had said. 'What makes you ask such a question?'

Heios had told his mother what Vaan had said and he had asked her the same question as before: 'Mother what manner of man was my father?'

He remembered that his mother had sat back in her throne and patted her lap and Heios, although he was a big boy of nine then, had nevertheless crawled into his mother's lap and settled his head against her shoulder. His mother had been quiet for a little while, looking beyond the far reaches of the royal chambers to somewhere else.

'He was the leading man,' she had said finally with a sad little laugh and shake of her head, 'He was proud as an emperor, sulky as a little child, vain as a peacock, and more arrogant than a brace of Margrace brothers.'

Heios had lifted his head to look at his mother in puzzlement. These did not seem like sterling qualities to him, but his mother had been smiling.

'He,' she paused as if thinking of the right words to encapsulate the life and passions of a ghost, 'He had a brilliant mind, but he always made life difficult for himself. He liked to be on the move yet his hobby was watch repair, and he was a desperately fussy eater. He would say he had no allegiances but when he gave his loyalty he did so for life. He died for the freedom he believed in above all else.'

The smile had dropped from his mother's plump cheeks then and her eyes had seemed haunted. 'I still can't believe he's been dead almost five years,' she had whispered raising a be-ringed hand to her small mouth, 'He taunted death so many times I still, even now, even when I know it is over, I find myself half expecting him to stumble through my chamber doors.'

Discoveries found in Old Paintings

As far as Heios knew his father never did stumble through his mother's chamber doors, or any other, in the intervening years. He vaguely remembers that someone in northern Rozzaria, a pirate and a petty brigand, started calling himself 'Balthier' and causing all manner of mischief about three years ago. He remembers that the Rozzarian President, Al-Cid Margrace, reaching the end of his third and final term in office, had been most swift to expose the man as nothing more than an impostor.

Heios remembers that he was in Archades at the time the false Balthier was arrested and exposed. He had been visiting with the Emperor and Empress Solidor, and their children. Empress Penelo had specifically invited the thirteen year old Heios because he had expressed an interest in learning more about his father's homeland.

He remembers being puzzled by the Emperor, his own godfather Lord Larsa, when he made comment to the effect that it was ironic that this 'new' Balthier should be declared as an 'impostor' when the original 'Balthier' had been merely an alias for a son in hiding. Heios remembered that he had looked up then and spoken:

'Balthier was not my father's name?'

He remembers that the Empress, who always insisted that he call her "just Penelo" had lightly smacked her husband's arm and chided him for his insensitivity and the Emperor had looked quite chastened, surrounded by his four daughters and two sons (He would later have another son, the Empress having what amounted to a baby a year). It had been Grace, their oldest daughter, a sweet girl of eight years old with a mischievous sense of humour, who had squeezed his arm and whispered in his ear:

'Here in Archades they call your father 'the prodigal Bunansa'. He was born of the name Ffamran Mid Bunansa right here in the city.'

Ffamran Mid Bunansa. Later, during that very visit to the Archadian Capital, Grace and her brother Vayne, while on a chaperoned visit to the Archades National Portrait Gallery, had slipped with him away from their guard; Grace and Vayne had taken him down one long thickly carpeted gallery to the very end, wherein two portraits in an older style, hung side by side.

'See that?' Grace had pointed, eyes bright with mischief and her dark hair taut in pig tails, 'That's the Doctor Cidolfus Demen Bunansa: he's your father's father, but no one talks of him in the city because he was a very bad man. Your father and your mother and our mother killed him.'

There had been a certain ghoulish relish then in Grace's words, Heios still remembers, and in the glimmer in her eyes could almost be described as evil.

Heios had been shocked at the time. He had thought he knew all the details of the battle for liberation; that great battle for the throne his mother had fought years before he was born. Yet he had never heard of Cidolfus Demen Bunansa before.

'Is that why I am called Heios Demen?' he had asked, 'I am named after a bad man?'

The thought had been less than edifying.

Grace had merely shrugged in response and Vayne, a precocious six year old, had pointed out the other portrait. 'See that?' he had asked blue eyes very large, 'That's your father, as he was at fifteen: he looks like you.'

Heios had looked then at the sombre picture of a very grave young man standing stiffly in a full length portrait, dressed in the armour of an Archadian lower judge. The boy in the picture had Heios' own scowl upon his brow, his sharp blade of a nose and sharp chin. The portrait was unsmiling. The engraving upon the dark and empty background of the canvas carried the legend: Ffamran Mid Bunansa, Judge of the Fifth, son of Cidolfus.

'My father was a judge?' Heios had been in confusion. His mother and everyone at home had always told him his father was a sky pirate. Surely he could not have been both…..and what was this about father killing his own father?

Heios remembers that he had grown increasingly distressed staring up at those two pictures but eventually the three of them had been discovered by the Empress "just Penelo" herself. She had looked at Heios' pale face and swiftly sent off her two naughty children. The Empress (pregnant as always) had dropped down onto the carpeted floor of the gallery completely unself-conscious and had bid Heios sit beside her.

For a time she had simply sat with Heios as he stared transfixed by the picture of his father in an Archadian judge's armour. Then, in the simple manner of speech that made the Empress so very popular with the common people of the Empire, 'Just Penelo' had started to tell him the story of his father and his grandfather.

'He ran away, you see, when he was sixteen. He hated being a judge and Dr Cid, Balthier's father, he was….well, he was quite mad and a very bad man. Balthier, your father, he didn't want any part in something he thought was cruel and wrong. He ran away, changed his name, and became a sky pirate.'

'And then he killed his own father?' Heios had asked in shock. He had wondered just how bad Cidolfus, his grandfather, must have been that his own son had killed him.

Empress "just Penelo" had twisted her hands together in her lap, tapping her nails on her huge pregnant stomach in thought. 'When you are older, Ashe will tell you the whole story.' She had said carefully before turning to look at Heios very seriously.

'You have to understand, Dr Cid, what he did, helping Vayne Solidor – the first one I mean – it killed many, many thousands of people.' Penelo had sighed and looked down into her lap.

'I think Balthier wanted to save him, even after everything Dr Cid did, but Dr Cid, he wasn't going to let him. I think it hurt your father to watch Cid die…..I don't think he ever really got over it.'

Almost on the impulse of the moment Heios had then blurted out the question that had plagued him for years.

'Was my father a good man?'

Heios had turned back to stare up at the solemn boy in the old picture who stared down at him sadly from the many years ago, 'Did my father love my sister and I?'

'Oh Heios,' Empress "just Penelo" had wrapped an arm around him in an impulsive hug, 'Of course he loved the two of you. He used to let you read books your mother didn't want you reading: stories about exotic fiends and adventurers.' She had looked at him almost slyly, 'Almost every book in your library, and Hallie's, was bought new by your father when you were still in your cradles. He wanted the two of you to have all the answers to every question you might face without having to ask.'

Heios had thought then on his beautiful library that had been filled with gilt bound tomes for as long as Heios could remember. 'I did not know that. Mother has never said so.'

Empress "Just Penelo" had grinned, 'Ashe always said that he let you and your sister get away with all sorts of mayhem,' the Empress' smile had turned soft, 'He never once raised his voice, or had a cross word for either of you.'

Heios had sat back then and in a choked little voice made a very secret admission: 'I wish I had known my father. I wish he was still here now.'

Empress "just Penelo" had hugged him even more tightly and said quietly, 'We all do, Heios, we all do.'

Seeking Peace in Old Relics

At fourteen Heios was in Nalbina with his mother, his sister, and the rest of the royal household, on a progress of the kingdom territories of Dalmasca-Nabradia. It is rare for the royal family to stay in the keep of Nalbina. Their mother does not like to visit Nalbina keep; it was their father's home when he was not busy flying his Strahl or at the Palace with their mother.

Heios had always liked Nalbina. It was a much busier, noisier place than Rabanastre. There was always hustle and bustle and a tangible sense of purpose and industry in the air.

In Nalbina, when Heios was fourteen and on progress, the name Balthier was spoken with reverence by all the inventors, the entrepreneurs, and the mad dreamers that packed the city to the rafters, and still missed their patron: the queen's late husband who would put up the Gil for even the craziest of schemes, ventures, and inventions.

It was very early in the morning, on the day that he and his mother and sister were due to leave Nalbina for the new settlement of Nabudis, and Heios had found himself standing before the Strahl. He didn't remember how he came to be there, but once there he couldn't drag his eyes from the ship.

His father's ship.

The Strahl had been permanently tethered in the Nalbina aerodrome since her recovery from the flood waters of Balfonheim almost ten years prior. The ship then, as it still is and ever will be, was kept in beautiful flight worthy condition by a dedicated troop of moogles. Even so, the Strahl had long been nothing more to the people of Dalmasca than a sombre memorial to a dead pirate.

It is, Heios had thought then, the only memorial or monument to his father that has ever been. Heios is not sure his father even warranted a state funeral and he has never seen a grave marker or found his father's name upon the Walk of Heroes. Not so much then that the pirate Balthier died, more like he never truly existed.

As he stared at the ship that day Heios had fancied that he could still see the deep scars in the metal hull. Scars from where the raging Mist fuelled flood waters that drowned the once infamous Balfonheim port, had crushed the Strahl as well.

Heios was still staring at the ship that day when the governor of Nalbina, the moogle Nono, had arrived trailed by his loyal attendant the Baknamy Bells and Whistles.

'Master Heios,' Nono had stopped then in surprise to see him and bowed to him low, his pom-pom plume bobbing. Heios had smiled. Nono had never called either he or Hallie by title but instead as Master Heios and Mistress Hallie. In that way they were honoured not as the heirs to the Dalmascan throne but as the children of Nono's much lamented captain, Balthier.

'Hello Nono.' Heios' eyes had gone back to the Strahl almost against his will. 'What brings you out so early?' he had asked the governor of Nalbina, master of Dalmasca's second greatest city. Heios had wondered then if his mother had bequeathed the title on Nono because it was what his father would have wanted. Heios had heard it said before that day, that Nalbina would not have recovered after the war had it not been for the dedicated patronage of the pirate Balthier.

Nono had looked at him almost quizzically in response to his polite inquiry. 'Kupo, I always come and do the maintenance checks on the Strahl at this time.' Nono had blinked his deep obsidian eyes up at Heios. 'Master Balthier always used to get up with the sun. Often we would run the checks together, kupo.'

'But the Strahl will never fly again,' Heios had said then, confusion making him almost rude, 'And my father is dead.'

'Kupo-po,' the moogle had stepped back then in complete affront, 'Master Heios! Do not say such things.'

Heios had stared at the moogle then; it had seemed to Heios that the moogle's eyes had been suddenly wet. Quietly the Baknamy Bells and Whistles had passed Nono a handkerchief.

'But it's true.' Heios had stuttered utterly perplexed.

'Kupo,' the moogle had said almost petulantly, 'Master Balthier is gone on now, I cannot deny, but for his own son to claim the Strahl will not fly again,' the moogle had shaken his head vigorously enough to send his pom-pom to lash from side to side, 'Kupo-po! Travesty: sacrilege!'

The governor of Nalbina, and the pirate Balthier's most loving aide, had looked out at the Strahl, wrench in hand, on that morning with a look of grim determination on his small, furred face.

'She will fly again,' Nono had said as Nalbina began to rise to life around them, 'Kupo-po, Master Balthier will be able to go to his rest easy, when he sees his ship in flight once again.'

Heios had been staggered and aghast, 'You do not think my father is at rest?'

Nono had turned sad and endless eyes away from the shackled Strahl, and up to Heios once more then, and he had shaken his fluffy white head slowly and certainly.

'How can my master rest easy, kupo? How can my master rest when all he was is forgotten?'

Looking for the Pirate in the Woods

By the time Heios reached his fifteenth year the situation was growing desperate. Heios was convinced that his mother winced every time she looked at him, seeing not her son, but his father's ghost. The comments behind the hands grew louder, and although he tried not to listen, he still heard every word that people said.

'The young prince is always talking about going to foreign parts; he has pirate in his blood, no doubt. He'll not sit still on a throne that's for sure.'

'I remember the master Balthier, the prince is his very image: they can both command a room to silence just by walking in the door.'

'Her Majesty's heart must ache, the prince is so like his father; I've always said that must be torture: losing a husband as she did and then having to see his shadow in her son. I just hope the prince does not share his father's ill-starred fate.'

On a visit to Landis Heios had slipped his royal guard and 'borrowed' an air skimmer from the Landis aerodrome to go and visit his god father Basch and Fran in the thickly forested Salomna region of Landis. Arriving without invitation he had found himself face to face with the Viera while she stood by a rock pool in the centre of a copse of silver birch trees. Dressed in white the Viera was an almost ethereal figure; tall and dark but clad in light.

'Fran,' Heios had nodded deeply to the Viera as he might to his own lady mother the Queen of Dalmasca. Fran, although she visited Dalmasca rarely, had always been part of the fabric of he and his sister's lives. Breathless and red checked with his distress Heios had been unable to find the words for his many questions.

Fran had stepped away from the rock pool and moved forward to lay a hand against his cheek. It seemed to Heios that she smiled at him and he found himself wondering traitorously if she thought she smiled at his father.

'No,' Fran had spoken, 'He is not you, and you are not he. I know this, as does your mother. Listen not to the words of strangers, for they are but chattering geese on unkind gales.'

Heios had not been surprised at the time to discover that Fran had known exactly what brought him hurrying to her with the questions he couldn't repress any longer. He had imagined that the wind in the trees told her as she walked through her wood.

'But I look so like him,' Heios had said, 'Everyday someone says it is so.'

'You are of his blood, is that so strange?' Fran had bid him sit upon the smooth stone of a rock facing the pool and she had sat herself down beside him.

'I know all about the Nethicite, Dr Cid, Nabudis, and the Occuria who caused the deaths of both my father and my grandfather.'

Heios had blurted out this great secret in a rush, words tumbling like pebbles into the depths of the rock pool. 'I know the secrets of my father's deeds aboard Bahamut. I know that he foiled an assassination attempt on Emperor Larsa and rescued the former president Al-Cid Margrace from Rozzaria when his brother tried to kill him. I have even found evidence of my father's crimes when you and he were pirates.'

It had not been easy going behind the backs of all those who would keep the secrets from him, but Heios had finally found some of his answers. He had begun to build a picture of his father up within his mind, but he had found then, that the pieces of the picture did not make a good fit. The fifteen year old Heios had found himself with more questions than he had answers even after all his hard work.

Fran, on that day by the rock pool, had merely nodded calmly in the face of his revelation.

'You know the facts but lack the moral of the story, yes?' She had murmured in her strangely flat yet musical voice. 'Your father is but a caricature upon history's pages; you know his deeds but not his heart.' Fran had shaken her head, almost sorrowfully, 'A sad fate for the leading man; a sad fate for his child.'

Heios had nodded feeling heat behind his eyes that he would never let fall as tears. Heios was not a child given to tears and he never had been.

'Fran, my father was he….?'

Fran had shaken her head again then, interrupting him, and letting falls of softly curling white hair tumble behind her back.

'Answers I cannot give you,' she told him before he could finish asking, 'It is not in my power to tell you who your father was.' She had looked at him with her ageless eyes.

'Of he that was my partner in the sky, I may speak, of he who was father to his children, I cannot.'

Heios had tried to puzzle this out, 'Why? Fran if not you then who?' he had asked desperately, 'If you, who was to my father his closest friend and confidante, cannot tell me what manner of man my father was then who can?'

It was at that moment that another man had cleared his throat and Heios had leapt from his perch beside the still and serene Fran to see that Basch, silver gleaming to twine with his golden mane, had returned from his fishing expedition alongside his daughter Leda.

Leda, her pale white and black tipped ears, so like her mother's, flicking back and forth as she had looked solemnly from Heios to her mother had trotted, fleet of foot, to her mother's side without uttering a word.

'Your highness,' Basch had greeted him with faultless courtesy and Heios had rolled his eyes in irritation, 'Basch please, you of all people do not need to call me that.'

The former knight and former Judge Magister turned simple farmer had smiled faintly and nodded his head, stepping forward into the small glen, 'As you say, young master.' He had looked at Heios keenly as he asked his habitual question, 'How is her Highness your lady mother, and your sister the princess Halina?'

Heios had smiled then thinly trying to constrain his impatience, 'They are well, thank you, and you sir?'

Leda had by that time jumped up onto the rock beside her mother and was now whispering into her mother's tall ears, Fran's head dipped attentively down as she listened. Basch had watched the two with a gentle smile on his face.

'Aye, I am well.' He had said simply eyes never leaving the sight of his small family, 'I have all that I could need and more.'

Heios remembers that he had wondered at the time, if his father had ever watched he and Hallie with their mother and thought the same himself? Had his father, the pirate, looked at his family and considered himself blessed – or perhaps cursed?

The rest of his impromptu visit had been both pleasure and torment for Heios on that day. He had seethed with questions but it had seemed that no one was either able, or prepared, to answer them.

Finally when his royal guard and the Landia aerodrome security had caught up with and he was preparing to leave the Fon Ronsenberg farm little Leda had approached him, tugging on his sleeve.

'Mother told me to tell you,' she had begun simply, her pale, pale golden hair falling in a smooth sheet to her waist, 'that she smiles at you not for his memory, he that is now one with the sky, but because in you my mother knows that he that was her heart's dear companion before my father, is at peace.'

Leda, her mother's emissary, had looked into Heios' eyes very intently as she spoke the last of the message. 'You are the peace the pirate Balthier lacked in life; your freedom from his strife is his salvation.'

Releasing the Legend

In the present, before his mirror glass, the sixteen year old prince Heios turns from his father, his ghost, in the mirror to fish out the item he stole from the locked room in the Nalbina tower.

He remembers the room filled with rifles with their triggers all removed, and dozens of clocks, the hands frozen, and their time halted forever. The tower room was his father's, and the room his lady mother declared be closed off ever more upon his father's death. From that room Heios had stolen many small trinkets, but he reaches for just one now: a simple brocade vest.

Heios has some trouble with the complicated ties and clasps at the back of the garment but he eventually manages to have it securely fastened over his simple white shirt.

'Well father, what do you think?' he asks his reflection turning back to the mirror, 'Would I make a good pirate?'

He thinks for a moment that he sees his father's ghost smile at him, but then he reasons logically that it is only his own smile he sees in the mirror glass. Heios runs his hands over the intricate patterning on the stiff treated leather of the vest. No wonder his father was always praised for good posture, this damned vest is tighter than a lady's corset (or so Heios imagines).

The door to his bed chamber bangs open so abruptly Heios has his dagger drawn to defend himself before his eyes recognise the identity of his intruder. Hallie stands in the threshold of the room staring at him, hands on hips.

'I can't believe you are really going to do this.' She stares at him, stares at the stolen vest, the pure white shirt and the patterned leather trousers he wears. Heios does not know what to say. He loves his twin sister but he has never shared his father, his ghost, with her before. Now Hallie stares at him and grows pale.

'You will upset mother.' She tells him and Heios feels himself shrug coolly, as he roots about for the long needle, the disinfectant ointment, and the candle he has gathered in preparation.

'I upset mother everyday I grow older wearing this face,' he replies flippantly lighting the candle and eyeing the needle nervously. 'If I'm going to be forever labelled a ghost I may as well play the part fully – at least for one day.'

Hallie stamped her foot on the floor of his chamber, 'Do not be flippant Heios. This charade is cruel.'

Heios holds the holds her needle in the candle flame, the heat licking at the tips of his fingers, 'Oh yes,' he agrees with almost cheerful malice, 'I agree, sister.'

His eyes are narrowed and his lips curled into a sharp smirk that is very unlike him, 'This charade of silence, this pretence that we have no father to speak of publically or privately is cruel indeed. Our father died to protect us and we cannot even bring ourselves to speak his name?'

Hallie stares at him for the longest moment. She chews on her lip as Heios fumbles the hot needle, drops it, curses, and drops onto his knees to retrieve it and start the process all over again. After a moment his sister seems to come to some sort of decision. She stamps her foot once more and then moves forward.

'Oh for goodness sake, here let me do it.' She snatches the needle from him and holds it competently in the flame. 'Go sit on the side of the bed.' She commands sharply.

Heios eyes his sister warily as she approaches him with the red hot needle. He braces himself and it does indeed hurt as she drives the needle through the soft flesh of his earlobe. As soon as she releases him he jumps up off the bed with a curse, clapping a hand to his ear. Hallie smirks at him.

'Big baby; you're hardly going to follow in father's footsteps if you can't even stand a pierced ear,' she gloats. 'Father had six piercings: three in each ear.'

'I know,' Heios mutters mulishly (as if there is any fact, no matter how trivial, he does not know about his father now) 'But I should imagine father had a much more competent person to assist him than I.'

Hallie is cleaning the needle ready to do his other ear. She narrows her eyes dangerously at him, 'I could just leave and let you do this yourself. Or better yet, I could run and tell mother what you're planning.'

Heios narrows his own eyes, the two siblings settling in for a glaring contest like they used to have as children, 'You wouldn't.'

Hallie considers, dropping her eyes first and staring at the needle, 'I should. I think I really should.'

Heios watches her, 'You don't want to though, right sister?' he sits back down on the edge of the bed and lets his sister drive the hot metal through his other ear; biting his tongue against the sharp pain. 'Admit it,' he adds almost cajolingly, 'Despite what you say, you miss our father too.'

Hallie releases a sharp breath of irritation, 'Heios I don't even remember him.' She glares at him as she hands over the twin twists of burnished silver for insertion into his ears, 'Anymore than you do.' She flaps her hands at his attire, 'All this is just make believe and dress up: when all is said and done it won't bring our father back.'

Heios is quiet for a moment and almost involuntarily he glances at the solemn faced man in the flamboyant clothes with the heavy silver ear-rings hanging from his red and throbbing ears that he sees in the mirror.

'No,' he says quietly, 'I think you're wrong sister. I think,' he licks his lips as he prepares to finally speak his mind, 'I think that nothing can ever give to us the father who died when we were too young to remember, but I think….I think I can bring back the man who was our mother's lover, Fran's partner, Nono's master. I think for just a day I can give Ivalice back her leading man.'

Hallie's bottom lip trembles and her cheeks flush before she quickly controls it, 'Heios….'

She does not finish and instead stares down at the floor, 'Heios even if you are right, it doesn't change anything. You can wear his clothes forever and a day but our father will still be dead.' Her eyes beseech him to understand, 'You can't know a man by wearing his shirt.'

Heios stares into the reflection in the mirror and he thinks he sees the ghost who has quietly haunted him for years nod his head just slightly in agreement with his sister's words. He senses that his father would not want for Heios to try and live his life for him at the detriment of his own. He sighs.

'I know that Hallie; truly I do. No matter what this looks like,' he raises his own hands and tugs at his loose white sleeves, 'I know that you are right.' He turns to meet his sister's sad eyes, 'but don't you see sister? For the last twelve years our father has been a ghost hidden in muffled conversation and veiled glances we are not allowed to know about.'

Heios leapt to his feet and paced a tight circle in the room, absent-mindedly tugging at the cuff of his right sleeve. 'The only people who speak of Balthier are those who never knew him; the Strahl is abandoned in an aerodrome hangar, left to gather dust and spiders, and that is wrong sister. It is wrong.'

'Heios, brother; what has gotten into you?'

Hallie has rarely seen her calm, collected brother so over-wrought. Her own heart starts to pound with a strange mixture of sympathetic excitement. Heios' eyes were intense and dark and filled with a wild energy when he turned back to Hallie.

'Just for one day, sister, as a citizen of the country he gave his life for, let alone his child, I want to celebrate our father's life.' Heios stared into his sister's eyes, willing his twin to understand. He swallowed hard and spoke the hard and inescapable truth.

'Tomorrow and the next day, and every year of our lives after today, our father will still be dead. We will never know what he would have made of us, we will never talk to him; we'll never know who he truly was.'

Heios slapped a hand over his brocade covered chest, 'But by the gods, I won't let those who do remember forget him. I will not let his spirit go forgotten. Our father deserves better than that.'

There was a long silence, in which time Hallie gnawed on her bottom lip and then, abruptly, almost violently, she lunged forward and yanked another of Heios secret cotton shirts out of his armoire before yanking it roughly over her head. Eyes bright and fierce with tears and excitement Hallie smoothed out her fly-away hair and turned to her brother.

'I shall need a vest of my own and some more of father's jewellery.' She tilted her chin up proud and arrogant as any roguish privateer, 'I am a pirate's daughter too,' she told him imperiously, 'and I'm not letting you have all the glory.'

Heios grinned and immediately pulled the spare vest and ear rings from their hiding spots (he had hoped his sister would be with him in this venture and prepared accordingly).

Thus it is that before the dawn has fully risen on the twins sixteenth birthday, the two royal children of the Dynast line abscond from the Rabanastre palace and their own coming of age celebrations to make haste for Nalbina.

To the Victor go the Spoils: When Our Wars Are Won What Then?

Her Royal Highness the Dynast Queen Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca is sitting on her balcony with a cup of herbal tea when the two heirs to the throne dash by across the royal gardens. She sees Hallie, smothered in an ill-fitting brocade vest and a white shirt too big for her, gainfully keeping stride with her leaner, taller brother. For a moment her heart catches as she sees Heios turn around to grin at his sister.

For just a moment it is not her son she sees, but another.

Ashe watches her children as they make a poor show of stealth and she sighs. She will have to give them both lessons on slipping away from the palace unseen and unheard after all this is said and done. One never knows when it might come in useful.

The gods only know that Ashe has made sure that the children are well versed in melee combat and the use of firearms, after all. She has made sure they can both pilot an airship in an air dogfight, and that they both understand the finer points of diplomacy (namely when it is appropriate to be diplomatic while wielding edged weapons).

She has tried to ensure that her children will be prepared for all eventualities - and she has been waiting for this day for many months.

Ashe looks down at the brightly coloured (but undoubtedly garish) rings on her fingers. One is pink and blue and the other yellow and green; she used to wear them on her thumbs because they were too big for her fingers – now her fingers are plump enough for them and her thumbs are too fat.

At forty years of age Ashe is of matronly proportions. A decade of safety and prosperity in Dalmasca and the presence of men she can trust in her council and her guard have allowed Ashe the reward of growing dumpy and indolent in her later years. Her battles are all fought and won; her losses in her past. Now she can think on abdication in favour of one or both of her children and the prospect of living out the rest of her days in peaceful leisure while waiting for bushel bundles of grandchildren to dote on.

Ashe twiddles one of the rings on her fingers; it is the ring Larsa handed to her all those years ago. The one he had pried from his finger before he died. Sometimes she imagines that when she dies he will be waiting for her, and sometimes he is even joined by Rasler, and that the two men she has loved and lost will greet her in eternity by promptly demanding the return of their rings.

When she thinks this, Ashe smiles; she has so many dead loved ones now that she often thinks of an after life in which Rasler is a good and just king and Balthier is free to roam eternity as he wills. It is a fantasy that has allowed her to still take joy in the life she has. She couldn't do so if she honestly believed that men like Balthier can truly cease to be forever.

Ashe has known for months that Heios would do as he has – she hadn't been sure if Hallie would follow, but she is now glad to see that the twins are going to commit a crime of theft together; that sort of thing should be kept in the family.

Ashe raises one of her small, plump, hands in the air and admires it; instead of being alarmed when her finger became to wide for her to wear her first wedding band and that of Rasler on her hand, Ashe had laughed and simply taken to wearing the rings on a chain around her neck. The life she had led since she was widowed, orphaned, and falsely declared dead at seventeen is not one that ever promised the opportunity to grow old, fat, and grey haired. Ashe therefore considers every grey hair threading through her scalp and every laughter line around her eyes a reward for the trials of her youth.

She is growing old in peace when too many people she has loved and lost are not.

Ashe has sent word, discreetly, ahead to Nalbina and to the guard stationed around the palace and the Barheim passage; they will watch for her children but they will not stop them.

After twelve years, Ashe thinks with satisfaction, the Strahl will fly again.

Ashe leans back in her chair upon her white rose strewn balcony; she looks up at the dawn burnished sky. She smiles at the birds just rousing. She thinks that the pirate would be pleased with these events.

Ashe strokes her hand over the two rings on her other hand as it rests calmly in her lap. She misses him still, but she does not mourn him. The leading man never dies: his children will guarantee it.

Ashe closes her eyes as the sun rises, warm and caressing, to fall upon the balcony. A single tear strokes down her cheek but she is smiling all the same. This is her legacy, her reward for two dead husbands and so many lost comrades. She may cry, but at least now she can smile as she does so.

Finding Laughter in the Winds

There are two people waiting for the twins when they arrive in the Nalbina aerodrome. Nono, wrench swinging in his hand, nods to the children in perfunctory fashion.

'Master Heios, Mistress Hallie: kupo. The Strahl is ready for launch.'

The Moogle is calm; he always knew this day would come. He simply could not believe that the son and daughter of master Balthier could be born without wings. He knew that one, or both, would come for the Strahl one day.

With one last nod to the other occupant of the aerodrome the moogle leaves. He is satisfied that he has done his duty for the Strahl and her departed captain; he is satisfied that master Balthier will be easy in his rest now.

Nono thinks as he toddles off, that maybe he too, will be easy in his rest now.

The Strahl will fly as she aught do, and master Balthier is not forgotten.

Once the Moogle is gone the two hume Dynast heirs turn to face the Viera Leda. She is only ten years old but she is tall as Heios already and looks older than her years. She regards the two humes with calm pale pinkish eyes. Her face is a perfect copy of her mother's even if her hair is threaded with her father's sunlight gold.

'On yester-eve, my mother was walking in the grove,' Leda explains in her musical voice touched with the earthen tones of her father's homeland, 'the soft summer breeze that plays about her hair and dances in the boughs, came upon my mother. The breeze spoke with voice that my mother has ne'er heard in long years: the wind told her that the Strahl would fly upon the morrow.'

Heios and Hallie exchanged a look. Generally speaking it did not surprise them that Fran would know this, as Fran was generally expected to know everything about everything by the twins. It was Hallie who asked the question:

'It is always good to see you, Leda, but why are you here and Fran is not?'

Leda actually smiled; her father's smile. 'My mother's wings were lost when her partner took to skies unending without her. She will ne'er fly again.' Leda shook her head, 'but the sky is part of my heritage too. She bid me fly with you.'

'Oh,' Heios grinned, 'That's alright then.' He clapped his hands together, 'Let's be off.'

Hallie rolled her eyes at him but Leda awarded him with another of those flashing grins, 'My mother also bid me tell you that you will have fair winds from here to the Viera forests of Balfonheim and back again. She says that your father is laughing and the skies are smiling.'

'Oh I know,' Heios replied blithely even as his sister blinked swiftly to obliterate tears, 'The smile is right here on my face.' He said.

A Prodigious Return and Ghosts and Legends to their Rest do go

Empress Penelo was knitting. It was a hobby she had only taken up since living in Archades where it snowed in winter fairly often. She generally limited herself to knitting very brightly coloured scarves because she couldn't knit very competently and a scarf at least was very simple. For this reason her husband and her children had a great many scarves. It had become a family joke that all visiting dignitaries were gifted with a hand knitted by the Empress scarf whether they wanted one or not; in fact if they came often they might have several Empress knitted scarves. It was practically an industry of one, Penelo and her knitting.

So it was that Penelo sat knitting while Larsa sat opposite her in their private chambers ostensibly reading, but was in fact, staring in slightly aghast awe at the six feet long bright orange and green woollen scarf Penelo was industriously adding to with each click of her knitting needles.

Larsa wondered if he should suggest, politely, to his adored wife that perhaps the scarf was finished, but then again, perhaps he shouldn't. Penelo was sometimes a little self-conscious about her knitting.

Therefore it was a relief when a messenger in the black and red livery of the Solidor household was admitted into the suite and proceeded to pass on his message. The Strahl, he said, was in flight once more and headed for the capital.

Penelo's knitting needles stopped in mid motion. She smiled as Larsa dismissed the messenger. 'I'll go and wake the children.' She dropped her knitting and her bushel of yarn and went to the adjoining suites where the children were housed.

Larsa walked out onto the wide balcony and into the sonorous night air. The sounds of the city rose up from deep below the rise of the Imperial residence. Larsa could see the night silenced spindly hulks of the cranes and other large equipment being used to clear the Old Archades slums and build the new housing; housing that would no longer confine any of his people to poverty and squalor. Very distantly he thought he could hear the cries and calls of the street ears and the ardents chasing chops; the faint refrains of an aria from the opera house in Tsenoble. He smiled at his city; smiled at the changing face of his empire.

The children ranging in age from two to eleven arrived then herded by their mother onto the balcony. Larsa picked up his youngest child, his son, Solas, and stroked a hand over his fine golden hair, which looked white in the darkness. His eldest child, Grace, nudged her head against his arm and bustled closer while young Vayne came up on his other side.

'What's happening lord father?' Vayne asked keenly, eyes sweeping the night sky for any likely disturbance or event interest, 'Why have you woken us? Is there some danger?'

Penelo laughed. Her arms full of their five year old son Tannolo, named for Penelo's own father. 'Oh hush you, there's no danger. You are always looking for trouble Vayne.' She chided gently.

'They're children; children are always looking for trouble.' Larsa pointed out mildly, secretly thankful that his son Vayne had little in common temperamentally with his name sake, Larsa's late brother.

Penelo snorted her eyes glittery with humour, 'Oh they're children now,' she agreed, 'but you wait, in a year Grace will be off on her own, seeking out old enemies to make peace with and trying to right all manner of social injustices.' Penelo grinned, 'Just like her father.'

'Well,' Larsa shifted his youngest son a little so he could make a show of buffing the nails of his free hand, 'One does not like to brag,' he murmured, 'But I like to think I have set an example worthy of following.'

Penelo might have said something in rejoinder at that point but she was cut off by Daisy-Diana, their three year old daughter, 'Oooooohhh, look, father, mother, do you see the pretty ship?'

Daisy-Di, Lorelei and Jemima, the three younger daughters, were all precariously balanced on an over turned earthenware pot so they could just see over the balcony rail and each of the children began pointing and cooing as an airship, emblazoned with swirls of pink and orange and blue, was granted entry through the personal Imperial palace paling to hover just twenty feet from the balcony.

'That's…' Vayne scrunched his brow trying to identify the ship, but it was Grace who beat him to the punch. She gasped and grabbed her father's velvet sleeve:

'Father that is the Strahl!'

As Grace was speaking the airship did an about face so that it was possible to see into the cabin at the two grinning Dynast heirs, in their brocade vests, ear-rings and white sleeves, alongside the slight and elegant Viera, waving from within. Larsa and Penelo both laughed to see the twins dressed like their father, and the Solidor family devoted themselves to at least three full minutes of enthusiastic waving before the Strahl turned to make her exit.

As the children called goodbyes and chattered excitedly to one another Penelo handed over Tannolo to his older siblings care and Larsa handed over Solas to Grace so that he could slip his arm around his wife, who was sniffling slightly. Penelo put her head against his shoulder and sniffed a bit more loudly.

'I never thought I'd see the Strahl in flight again,' she half laughed and half-sobbed. 'Vaan did a good job teaching Heios to fly her.' Penelo wiped a hand over her eyes flicking away tears. 'Balthier would be proud.'

Larsa smiled watching the Strahl leave Archades air space as smoothly as she had entered. His mind drifted back to the moment, over a decade ago, that he had watched the sky pirate Balthier die in the chambers of the Occuria deep in the cold heart of Giruvegan. He closed his eyes as memory rose.

'It is over now,' Balthier's voice was more Phantom than reality, 'It is time to fly away from this place. I can hear the sky calling me.'

Before Larsa's eyes Balthier raised his arms slightly out from his body and tilted his head back as if basking in some unseen light. For just a moment Larsa thought he saw the ghost of the old sly smile bright and unrepentant, appear despite the tracks of tears that seemed to glow across his shimmering cheeks. Larsa watched and Balthier faded; there were no last words, no apologies, just a time weary smile that faded last of all.

In the end, against all expectations to the contrary, the greatest of all the sky pirates, the infamous Balthier, did not die with a bang or a whimper, but instead went silent and peaceful as a little lamb into legend.

'Silent and peaceful into legend,' Larsa laughed at his own reflections, 'I suppose it is true, a good man does not die.' The Emperor of Archadia kissed his Dalmascan wife on the temple, 'At least not so long as he is remembered by those that love him.'

*****

And so it was from the great new forests of the Viera in Balfonheim and Cerobi, to the town of Atholl where the magickal sheep grazed, to the small holding farm in Landis where a Viera stood under the canopy of her Wood and listened to the song of the wind, that a man who had passed into legend lived once again in the joy of his children, the love of his widow, and the memories of his friends.

Thus the Strahl flew through that long magical night and onwards into a new horizon while at her back, history in the hands of man, found its peace.