Y'know, usually, when people get engaged, they get presents from others. But I just got engaged and I thought, what the hell, given how amazingly supportive everyone has been, why don't I give a present to everyone here? ;)

Thanks again to everyone who's been supporting me through this crazy, hectic time. I'm almost ridiculously happy right now and I can only hope I'll be so in the future.

Title: Of Pirates and Plottings (Part 3/3)

Fandom: Final Fantasy XII

Series: The Uses of Enchantment

Characters/Pairings: Vaan/(Larsa/Penelo), Basch

Rating: R, strong language, sexual situations

Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story.

Watching two lunatics fall in love, Vaan was finding out, was one of the more interesting experiences he'd ever encountered.

He supposed that, in many ways, this was something he should have expected. After all, he had always known Penelo was someone inclined to be hopelessly neurotic about second-guessing every decision that she made and, from the desperation fermenting in Basch's eyes every time Vaan dropped by to see him, Larsa probably wasn't much better. If anything, he might even be worse than Penelo was when riding the cotton pony on top of Mount OMGBBQPMSWTF.

"Does he," Vaan had asked Basch once, "ever get as annoying as Penelo does when she's groaning about how things are going on?"

With the majestic calmness of a mountain, Basch had slowly taken his gored-bull-meets-parasitic-cricket helmet off in response.

"Because," Vaan grumbled on, "he can't be nearly as bad as Penelo. I mean, he's a guy and of course guys aren't as crazy as the ladies get when they're hooking up with someone."

Basch simply stared somewhere off into the distance. Vaan took it as a signal to complain on.

"I mean, seriously, I know Larsa can be… weird and all but he can't get nearly as frustrating as Penelo gets when she wants to bitch about Larsa or bash Archades or go on and on about what they're gonna do for the future. And she complains about the weirdest things too, like how he's always sending her letters and telling people to keep track of her and getting annoyed when she meets other guys and all of that stuff. Aren't girls supposed to like that sort of thing? But then when they get them, they bitch about them. I mean, what are guys supposed to do then? God, Pen's so freaking hard to put up with. I'd change places with you in a heart beat. I mean--"

--and Vaan had missed a beat when Basch had turned his head to look at him straight in the eyes--

"--I mean, don't you agree that Larsa's probably a lot easier to put up with than her?"

Larsa's guardian had simply looked at Vaan with the stony resilience of a man who was damned and yet was determined to endure all the world, despite how many evil twins, lunatic princesses and terrifying, love-sick, adolescent lunatics life threw at him. And within his hollow eye sockets, Vaan could have sworn he saw the flames of hell themselves, rising up to lap at whatever poor souls fell within them.

After that, Vaan had sort of stopped complaining about anything whatsoever to Basch.

That didn't, of course, mean there weren't times when Vaan didn't despair of the fact that he had actually helped his partner get together with the tetchiest ruler in all of the land. In fact, he had wanted to pitch himself off an Archadian balcony for ever having had thought of such a terrible thing plenty of times… especially when Penelo, for reasons he would never be able to fully grasp, used him as the most reluctant agony aunt Ivalice had ever had.

He wasn't even sure just why Penelo had picked him from the job, other than maybe her general sense of sheer, sadistic exhibitionism wherever he was concerned. Frankly speaking, out of the two of them, she was the one who had been in more serious relationships and (though it hurt him like a psychic kick in the nuts to admit this) the one with more sexual experience as well. (It wasn't easy, after all, to be a man who loved frequently rabid mutant bunny women as much as he did.) But for some reason, every time Penelo hit a hitch in her relationship with Larsa, she always came winding back to him, as though he could do something to help her get over it.

"Vaan," she'd moan to him over their breakfast, "do you have any idea why Larsa's so goddamn possessive? He never wants me to flirt with other men, he gets all twitchy when I mention I'm going to dance somewhere and god forbid I even mention I saw Llyud or Velis or anyone else I used to be with. He practically has a heart attack and then tries to guilt me out of ever talking to them!"

"Vaan," she'd groan over their lunch, "why are men so goddamn strange sometimes? I swear, it's like Larsa wants to be my travel agent or something. He always gets neurotic if I go somewhere without telling him and then tries to get me to tell him everything about where I'll be. What the hell? It's like having my own royal stalker sometimes!"

"Vaan," she'd wail over their increasingly infrequent dinners, "how can one mere man be so goddamn neurotic? I mean, I know he had a tough childhood but so did we and look at how well adjusted we are! You think maybe he'd be offended if I told him he needed to find some professional help for his crazy eyes and what-not?"

And Vaan's greatest way of striking back was usually to either yell at her about having really bad taste in bed partners or sink into a small ball on the ground and rock back and forth in increasing desperation. Usually, she'd take pity on him and let him finish his food in peace… even if she did just start up the next time they sat down for a meal again.

From time to time, Penelo would still invite Vaan to threesomes with even more glee than previously. And the most disturbing thing was that since Penelo's new "partner" was apparently hypnotized or pussy whipped or whatever with her, Larsa'd probably go along with it if she asked him as well.

"Would it help if me and Larsa wore some fake viera ears in bed?" she had asked perkily one morning. "I mean, since I know you got some weird bunny fetish from being exposed to the Giza Plains and Fran during your formative years and all..."

"Argh," Vaan had said in cringing, wordless response. "Argh, argh, argh!"

"Well," she said, pouting prettily. "I guess that'd more or less count as a no then, huh?"

It was also annoying when they tried to plan future heists together as well. It never stopped being aggravating to know that there was some huge prize on the horizon that they couldn't go after because Penelo had to go over to wreck some official matchmaking function or wanted to rescue Larsa from the terrifying banshees of his court or just spent the night in someplace Vaan didn't know, doing things he didn't even want to speculate about.

And even though Vaan knew this was probably something he had to get used to, it didn't mean he didn't get lonely by himself. Even if Penelo was sort of a pain in the ass sometimes… she was a pain he'd gotten used to. And wanted to work with. And kind of… didn't mind all that much when she wasn't driving him mad with her love life either.

It was inevitable, though. Vaan knew that. She'd never signed up to be a sky pirate forever and they had both always known she'd leave after a few years of doing it. She was really much too much a worry wart to live on the knife's edge forever, he'd always realized that. Hell, he'd been lucky she'd even decided to go off with him for the few years she had, rather than staying in Rabanastre to work as a medic or a writer or whatever else she could have become. And it was… good, he knew, to see her happy in the way she was now.

After all, during the incredibly rare times when Penelo wasn't being a whiny jerk or grossing him out with plans for a menage a tois or getting the way of them making a decent pirating profit … it was actually sort of… sweet, seeing her with Larsa. Because as much as she might complain about him when she wasn't around him, Vaan could see how happy she was when she was with Larsa, how often they looked and smiled and whispered to and touched each other, how Larsa's apparently vast waves of crazy receded around her, how even the ocean of hopeless despair in Basch's eyes seemed to slowly evaporate as time went on.

Which should have been Vaan's cue, of course, to know that that happy state of events couldn't last for long either.

"I just had sex with the Emperor of Archadia," Penelo said a few otherwise happy months later, and less to Vaan than to the enormous mug of pale ale she was currently nursing. "And it was the worst goddamn experience I've ever had in my life."

"Oh my god," Vaan moaned after his brain had finally finished processing the bizarre and disturbing images that conjured up. It wasn't unlike trying to picture his brother haven't a go at it with… well, with Penelo, disturbingly enough. "Why do you have to tell me about these things? Why do you always think I need to now them the way you know them now?!"

"Because," she said sourly, "If I have to suffer, you have to suffer as well. Oh boy, did I suffer, Vaan. I suffered a lot."

Somehow, even though he knew the details might scar him from life, Vaan just had to ask. "That bad, huh?"

Penelo raised three fingers up into the air; despite himself, Vaan winced. "Okay... so I guess it is that bad. So… so just what are you gonna do about it now?"

"I have no idea," his partner said miserably, looking down into the already emptying bottom of her cup. "I mean, I'm thinking that maybe I could train him into lasting a bit longer but so help me, I don't even know where to begin with such a hopeless case. God, Vaan, he didn't even know how to insert tab L into slot P properly the first time around!"

Vaan winced again. "Gee… trying to have him learn that must have been… fun."

She gave a snort that somehow snowballed into a combination of a sigh and a cry. "You have no fricking idea. But I mean… how the hell was he supposed to learn otherwise? I think he was keeping himself… pure or whatever for me and-- god, just look at just who he has to talk to in Archades. They're all blue-blooded asses that are either arranging their creepy little rendezvous to one-up each other or military men who run around in giant suits of armor that take hours to take off. It's like everyone in his empire is trying to have a miserable sex life."

"You know," Vaan said speculatively, "that just might explain a lot. I mean, if all the Archadians suck in bed, maybe that explains why they seem to want to punish everyone else for having more good times? Although… man, maybe that's just because they keep jumping into bed with prick teases like you. You've been with each other for how many months and you still didn't do the deed till now?"

She snorted again, though thankfully this time without the cry. "Not everyone has to rush to the main event, Vaan. Some of us take the scenic tour. And right now, all I'm thinking about is just how to get Larsa to stop being so damn sad the next time we start rolling around the country side of our beds with each other..."

Luckily though, being male himself, Vaan had a rather better idea of just how to help with that problem... though even his visionary gaze had never foreseen a future where he'd be teaching the Emperor of Archadia how not to suck in the sack. After all, greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his sanity for the sake of his friend's incredibly terrible sex life. Or whatever.

…Besides, the blackmail material he'd probably get out of this would likely be priceless. And whatever else he was, Vaan was much too much a pirate to let any opportunity as golden as this one down.

"So seriously," Vaan began, his eyebrows threatening to annex his forehead as he stared at the Emperor of one of the mightiest empires in all of Ivalice, right in the very stronghold of his power. "Why the hell were you a virgin the first time you had sex with Penelo?"

Right now, though, said Emperor didn't particularly seem as though he was in the stronghold of anything very imperial right now. If anything, thanks to the rapidly spreading flush on his cheeks and the face he had now slammed against the desk he had been working at before Vaan had interrupted him, he looked younger and more lost than Vaan could ever remember.

"Did she tell you that directly?" Larsa finally groaned when he had stopped head-desking himself. "Or was it something you inferred merely from how horrible and abrupt our entire first evening together in bed was?"

"A little bit of column A and a little bit of column B," Vaan admitted. "And since you're you and you sure could have gotten some if you wanted to, what with the whole being emperor thing and the fact that you've got groupies everywhere in Archades and all…"

At least, and for once, Vaan wasn't the only one massively suffering from the mating dance of the biggest dunderheads he had ever known. Still about the color of the remains of the Rogue Tomato, Larsa weakly raised a hand to get Vaan to stop. "Yes. That is indeed true. If I had been predisposed to such actions, I could have garnered years of practical experience in the… boudoir, I suppose, by now. But I…"

It was, Vaan had to grudgingly admit, sort of cute to see Larsa, who never seemed to be at a loss for words in pretty much all the time Vaan had known him, struggle for the right ones now. "But I wanted to experience my first carnal encounter with her. Because I love her and I want only her and it would have cheapened the moment to have spent the moment with any other while picturing her all the while. And though I don't particularly regret saving my… purity, I suppose, for her presence, I do feel rather wretched about said purity wrecking most of the enjoyment I wanted to give her now."

All Vaan could do was sigh. "God, Larsa. Do you have any idea how much you sound like a squealy little girl right now?"

His old friend smiled back rather slyly. "Considering how I apparently spent my childhood appearing as such to most around me, it seems fitting enough."

Vaan had to laugh and, after a moment, Larsa joined in. Then, still chuckling, Vaan clapped a hand around his friend's shoulder. "So what the hells the problem, then? Can't get it up? Can't keep if up? Or do you just get it off too fast whenever you're around her?"

Larsa just turned another interesting and exciting shade of red, hunched his head down again and muttered something about the last problem being possibly the most relevant one in his case.

Huh. But Vaan supposed it made sense. After all, Larsa was just eighteen years old and had apparently had some sort of weird fatal attraction for Penelo or possibly just the worst taste in girls that Vaan had ever heard of. Really, given all that, it just figured.

"You know," Vaan said eventually, "if you're really about to blow the motherload every time you see her, then you're just gonna have to figure out some way to hold it together until she's ready to get off too. Maybe you could picture something really awful like… um… your parents having sex to stop you from getting off?"

When he finally looked up again, Larsa looked slightly disturbed but oddly relieved as well. "Unfortunately, though that might be a viable option for most people, I don't particularly remember what either of their appearances, especially that of my mother. And given all that, I'm not sure I would be able to strain myself in recalling them when I'm with my… partner either."

Vaan tried again. "Well, what about trying to picture your scary-ass brother having sex? I mean, you can't tell me that something like that wouldn't gross you the hell out, especially considering how freaking weird and veiny he got the last time we saw him before we punted his punk ass off."

Promising enough, Larsa looked a little paler. "That… that strikes me as a more workable solution. Unfortunately, seeing as how I can't even recall my brother expressing any sort of romantic or passionate interest in anything other than the voices in his head, I'm not sure that would work within the heat of the moment."

And then Larsa looked down and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like and thank god for it under his breath.

"Well fuck," Vaan groaned, already running out of options. He usually pictured Penelo's shrewish face scolding him when he was trying to hold off on coming but that probably wouldn't work for Larsa, what with him wanting to bed her better and all. "Okay, okay, don't panic. I've got it. Why not try to picture Seeq sex whenever you're trying not to get off?"

For a very long moment, there was completely silence. And then, in a voice muted to the point of a squeak, Larsa said, "Pardon?"

Vaan beamed triumphantly. "C'mon, really, doesn't that make sense? 'Cause really, I've met some freaky ass people out there that like, y'know, things you wouldn't even believe but I've never, ever, ever met anyone who liked Seeq sex-- or the orgies they're supposed to have when they're trying to make squeally little Seeq babies either."

"I think," Larsa said in a faint tone, "there's probably a very plausible reason for that."

"But y'see," Vaan went on happily, "that could be just the thing you need to keep from spurting when it just ain't good enough. I mean, can't you just picture trying to see a couple of Seeqs getting it on? With all those blubber and those scales rubbing against another after they've taken off their clothes and started slobbering on each other and humping their legs and making those scritt-scritt glub-glub scritt-scritt sounds…?"

Even despite the delicate shade of mossy green he'd turned into, Larsa somehow managed to whimper a protest out. "Thank you, Vaan, for such a visual. But somehow, I really don't believe I would want want to picture any gyrations made by… such… such… such creatures within my bedroom, especially when my lady sky pirate is around. I don't want the few precious moments I have of her presence to be tainted by such… interesting… and… fascinatingly detailed… thoughts…"

Vaan just had to sigh at that. "Well, then. If you're wanna be that uncreative, you could just do what lots of guys do for their ladies. You get them off before you start doing anything for yourself. And since you're so freaking eager to please, it's shouldn't be hard for you to do that either."

Suddenly, Larsa looked up with a surprising gleam in his eyes. "And… precisely what would I have to accomplish such a task in, er, 'getting' Penelo off?"

In times like these, Vaan always felt as though he was looking into a gaping abyss that was just ready to swallow him up. Despite all that, though, he clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth and moved on. "Lost of things, depending on what she likes, wherever she likes. And no, before you ask, I don't know and don't want to known just what that is about Penelo either. You use your hands or your mouth or your tongue or your cock or whatever other body part she wants. You pay attention to her and you ask her what she wants and you keep your eye on her at all times to see if you're doing something she likes. You try to surprise her with romance or candy or flowers or, knowing Pen, something that can keep her still and make her pay attention to you for once. Think leather-- it might be the only thing that'll shut her up for long."

Larsa's pupils became disturbingly dilated after that last sentence. Suppressing a shudder, Vaan went on.

"And until you get the hang of it, you make sure you do exactly what she wants, when she wants, to make sure she has a good enough time to come back for round 2. Because buddy, I've been with a dozen or so women and woman… ish people already and I can tell you this much. If you don't make making them happy one of the top things in your life, you'll lose them. And even though I've never been with anyone the way you're with her, it hurts like hell to lose them. And if you make her unhappy, you'll be losing some of your permanent teeth. So you better start boning up on some of your lady-stroking techniques as soon as you can."

There was a long, long silence after that, long enough so that even Vaan had wonder if he'd said something hopelessly tactless, like the time he mentioned age to Fran or Ashe having beauty, brains and a likely fetish for chains to Basch. But then, slowly, Larsa began to speak.

"I am, of course, sure that Penelo might have mentioned engaging in a ménage à trios to you in a jesting way several times before but… well. Perhaps you might give it some serious thought after all? Perhaps, with your permission, you, Penelo and I might decide to enjoy a bit of-- bedroom tussling, I suppose, just to make sure I do not lose either my permanent teeth or my lady love in the future. Though of course, I'd have to insist ahead of time on being the repository of any and all of your physical and sexual pleasur--"

It's probably a good thing that, for one reason or another, Vaan was always the one in their party to receive the summons with wings. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have survived tossing himself off a god-knows-how-high Archadian balcony to avoid hearing just how his friend planned to end that sentence right now.

Oddly enough, quite a few bounties for stray sky pirates started coming from around Archadia right after Vaan's impromptu lesson plan. And Penelo suddenly got into the habit of not only taking on said bounties but staggering back to their airship days afterwards, usually with a brilliant smile on her face and a cache full of new armor and weaponry and suspiciously dark bruises on her collar bone that she refused to heal.

"If you're asking about the new equipment," she said, too happy even to snap at Vaan like usual, "it's only because Archades has some brilliant prices for these things. I, uh... I managed to get find a great contact there that tends to, erm, reward me really well when I'm good to-- for him. And really, I'd have to be a fool to turn down something this steady!"

"And the hickeys?" Vaan asked, eyebrows raised as high as they'd go. "What can possibly explain them, hmm?"

She doesn't even have the shame to look guilty. "Oh those? Now those are from Larsa. Did you really think I'd go all the way to the capital city without paying him a visit or twelve?"

For almost half a year, things went on in much the same way, though even Vaan wasn't oblivious enough (he never had been, not really) to think that it would happen indefinitely. But time went by and things were well, better than he had ever hoped they could get in the crazy, mad-cap, mixed up mess that he called his life, sandwiched between demented emperors and lady sky pirates that loved them truly, madly and possibly off the deep end of sanity as well. And it was all a big jumble of heists and hormones, of madmen and imperial mistresses, of the strangest people in the world finding each other and making them happy and trying his best to be happy for them, even when he felt he had his face pressed against love's glass, watching them do what he just couldn't right now.

And then one day Penelo walked into their ship and looked Vaan directly in the eye and he somehow knew that everything was going to change now, everything, everything, everything. And she was smiling and shaking and he knew then that whatever happened now would change everything and so he looked up at her from his chair and put his arm out until she settled into the bend of his elbow and pulled her to him, held her close, and asked her what the hell she could possibly be up to now.

"I think," she said, and trembled like a wet dog against his side. "And I think I might have just done the dimmest thing I've ever thought of in my entire life."

There wasn't very much Vaan could say to that so he just nudged her again, waited for her to go on.

"Larsa asked me to marry him," she said quietly, her tremors easing down just a little bit as Vaan slung his arm around her again, steadying her up. "And I said yes. But I shouldn't have. Because I have to go back around now and turn him down so I don't end up hurting him even more later on."

He had to put his forehead against her shoulder for a minute, just to understand it. But as soon as the world stopped spinning, he sighed and wondered if it'd be alright if he hit the future empress of Archadia upside the head to get her to stop making a small amount of sense now.

"You goddamn crazy woman," he said gently instead. "What the hell are you going on about?"

"Look," Penelo said, and her voice sounded almost eerily rational, nothing at all like the energetic harpy Vaan was used to having in his life. "You know and I know and somewhere, deep down inside, even Larsa knows that I'm not the sort of woman he should be with, right?"

Vaan gave her the sort of look that told her exactly what he thought about that argument; Penelo just shrugged him and his arm off. "Well, I'm not, and even though I'm not, of course you'd be biased. You're my friend; you're supposed to think I'm all that and a corral of chocobos, even though I'm not. And of course Larsa's biased too; he had the shittiest childhood I've ever heard of and his brains were scrambled every since and that's why he thinks I'm the best thing since pre-sliced toast. And of course I'm biased; I fucking love him, I want to be with him, I want to be good enough for him. It's just--"

"It's just," Vaan interrupted, "that you're an idiot that loves to take things for granted."

If Penelo had been acting normally, this was about when she'd probably wallop him on the back of his head for impinging on her piratical honor. Instead, she just laughed-- a dry, sad sob of a sound. "Probably. God knows that I've been taking us being happy together in the end for granted, after all."

"That's not what I meant," Vaan said again, even more stubbornly than before.

"No," she said quietly. "I know that. But it's probably true anyway. Because I always took us being happy together after a bit for granted. Because I love him. And he loves me. And he's such a dreamer and he's also a damn schemer and he thinks that if he fights hard enough to win me over, if he can just get us up to a goddamn alter, we'll be fine. Because he's just… him. He's just Larsa. And he doesn't… he can't understand… he doesn't want to think…"

She took a deep breath in that way that always meant business, that meant that she was making up her fool mind about something. "Because he doesn't want to think that what'll come after. Because he thinks that being married is like living in a never-ending honeymoon and we'll always be happy after we finally get the chance to tie the knot. Because he thinks its worth giving up almost anything to get the chance to make me a real lady and marry me and that scares me so goddamn much."

She looked up and the look in her eyes could have broken a lesser man's heart.

"Because he thinks that I'm worth almost anything in the world and I'm not, Vaan. I'm just not."

The sound of his palm whacking the back of her head turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying one.

"You are," he said, when she had finally stopping rubbing the back of her head and shooting him glares that promised him a slow and painful death. "You are if you and him think you are. And if you want this and he wants this and he can figure out a way to get this… well, why the hell not?"

And she sighed and she laughed and she made all those odd Penelo noises that he knew he'd miss in the future, when she wasn't just his partner anymore but something far better, something that belonged to a world outside his one.

"You ass. That hurt. And that isn't… it's not…"

He whacked her again to get her to keep talking, only marginally more gently this time around. She gave another sad sob-laugh and punched him even harder on his shoulder in a way that'd leave some damn interesting bruises in the morning and went on.

"It's just… it's just, I love him and I want him and sometimes I need him so much that it… it hurts when I can't have him, when I can't stay the night or touch him in public or come up with a way to see things through. It hurts when I'm with him and when I don't get to see him or I have to watch half of the royal tarts in Ivalice try to find a way into his trousers. And he drives me crazy sometimes when he nags me, when he tries to get me to stay with him and not do the things I have to, when he's so needy and he's so grabby and he looks at me like he thinks I'll disappear if I so much as go a day without sending him a letter to let him know I'm alright. And he snores in bed and he elbows me when he sleeps and I love him so much it's really kind of stupid and I don't even know why or how."

If she was crying right now, she was hiding it well. All he could see of her was her hair in front of her face and her hands in front of her hair and her knees curled up in from of her hands, as though she was trying to shield herself from everything she could.

"And he wants to marry me and I love him, I love him like crazy, and I just don't know what to do. Because he's willing to do almost anything and he's so brilliant and so lovely and I want to change the world with him, I want to live with him and die with him and everything with him, everything, anything and all the way through. But I'm so goddamn ordinary and every day I'm with him, I can't stop thinking he'll just eventually realize that he could do better and tell me that it's all a mistake and he found somebody better and I was an idiot to ever think he'd settle for someone like me. He needs something I'm not and I just don't know how to be what he needs me to be before he figures all of that out."

And all Vaan could do was look and look and look at her and realize that however much he'd miss her, he wouldn't miss how goddamn annoying she could be about denying everything in her life that should be so easy, that should be done without even blinking, without letting something like worry bog her down.

"I always knew you could be slow sometimes," Vaan said finally. "Especially when it came to anything below the belt. But I never thought you were as much a bleeding idiot like you're being now and if that's the sort of way you're going to think, maybe you're right about being a crazy fool after all."

Penelo's mouth all but audibly dropped. But before she could set that razor tongue of hers off on him again, Vaan rushed in, trying to make her understand, trying to realize just what she had and what she had the chance to do.

"Because he loves you, you idiot, and after knowing you for six years, don't you think he knows just who you are almost better than you do? Don't you think he's figured out what you're like and why you're like it and the sort of crazy ass things you naturally seem to be attracted to? Do you honestly think anyone who's ever loved you could ever do that sort of thing to you?"

When she looked up at last, there are tears in her eyes and a snarl on her mouth and she had never looked so crazy or so ferocious or so beautiful. "And just who am I, Vaan? Some gutter girl who clawed her way up the streets before? Some stupid tramp that actually thinks she can marry an emperor? Some low-class sky pirate that's not a part of his world?"

"You total nit-wit," Vaan said, and he had never loved her or wanted to strangle her more. "You're the best thing that's happened to either me or him and you're just the sort of thing his crazy ass needs the most to keep from going over the edge and doing just the sorts of things his brothers would do. And you're wonderful and you're magical and you're terrifying and pretty goddamn adorable and you're the farthest thing from ordinary I've ever met and if you don't recognize that, I might have to kick your ass until you do."

Impossibly, she managed to laugh at that, fingers tangling through her fair hair in knots. "Oh please, Vaan. Like I'd ever let you."

"If I paralyzed you first, I could probably get away with it. But that's not the point. The point is..." And he had to take a breath before he said this, because he didn't know if he'd ever been this honest with her, this real, this true. "The point is that you're the biggest idiot I've ever met if you don't know just how lucky you are right now to love someone that much and have him love you back and have the rest of your life just up front and how goddamn jealous I'm trying not to be of you two."

"Oh God, Vaan," she said, and there were tears running down her cheeks again and her make-up smearing all over her face, until she looked vaguely black and blue. "Do you mean that, really? Do you?"

He leaned against her, buried his face in her shoulder, felt her do the same for him. "Hell yeah. I didn't mean the love of my life when I was just a punk kid from Rabanastre, being kidnapped by a couple of scary-ass bangaa bounty hunters. Do you know just how fucking lucky you are to have that whole mess just work out?"

She sniffed into him for a bit, hands gripping his shirt the way she always used to when she was young and she was scared and they seemed all alone in the rest of the world, with nobody else to cling to. And she was Penelo, his best friend, and the Dread Piratess, his partner, and Penny, the girl down the block with ragged braids and scary older brothers, the one who put frogs in his bed when he misbehaved and who had an undying crush on his brother and whose parents who took him in when he had no where else to go. And she was here and it had always been so easy and so simple to be with her and he loved her and he knew that maybe, just maybe, they both finally knew just what they had to do.

"No," she finally said, "but you were there to let him in on just who to rescue. And when me and Larsa finally figure this all out, you'll be in on it too. You're gonna have to stand up for me in my wedding and be godfather to all of our flippy haired babies and beat any crazy out of them too. You'll be at my engagement and you'll be at my child bed and you better even be at my goddamn funeral if I go ahead of you."

And he wrapped his arms around her and thought that maybe, even after she was gone from his ship, she didn't need to leave his entire life after all.

"Wouldn't miss any of it for the world," Vaan said, and felt his mouth curve into a smile. "I mean, as long as you don't keep trying to invite me to some threesomes during all of those things which is just… god, Pen, that's just gross. I think I'd rather roll around in bed with Old Dalan and Migelo than you two loons."

"Fine then," Penelo mumbled into his chest. He could almost feel her own grin against his bare skin. "Have it your way. Besides, judging from what all your viera have to say during their mornings after, Larsa would probably end up being much too much woman for you anyhow."

There were a lot of things Vaan had been wrong about in his entire life. There were so many, in fact, that had he lost count right around the time he turned eighteen and it turned out that even if he had managed to become a sky pirate, it'd turn out to be a lot harder than he had ever thought it'd be and he needed a partner far more than even he had figured. But as far as he was concerned, even if he did sometimes have a tendency to miss the small details, he had always been great at seeing the big picture.

After all, he had always knew he'd someday be a sky pirate someday, even if the path to getting there was longer, stranger and scarier than he'd dreamed of ahead of time. He had always known that someday his thieving tendencies would lead to bigger and better things for him, even if he hadn't foreseen the sexy sky pirates and improbably innocent knights and homicidal princess in his immediate future. He had always known that the pain in the ass little girl that he'd lived with him for a good chunk of his life and had stuck with him through thick and thin would end up being something great, even if she had refused to believe him ahead of time.

And in the end, he had been right about this as well. But even he knew that it wouldn't be hard to predict that Penelo would make for the most radiant and most humid bride he had ever met. And when she finally stood in front of Vaan with flowers in her hands and a veil trailing around her hair and a trembling smile on her face, all Vaan could do was touch the edges of her eyes with his thumbs and smear her elaborate make-up and brush her tears away so she was just a little less bleary on her wedding day.

Not that it mattered anyway. When the Dread Empress Sugar Thighs needed to, she could outshine anyone else around.

"Ready?" he asked one last time, for the very last mission the Dread Pirate Ratsbane would ever carry out with his best friend, pirating partner and general evil twin.

"Ready," she said, at his side for the last time as he had always known she would be. "And really, when wouldn't I be?"

"Never," he said, and held one gallant hand out to escort her down to her groom. "And that's why you're gonna go and surprise the hell out of everyone who thinks you're not going to be able to pull this off."

"But not you?" she asked, and her tears were sliding into her smile again and her eyes were bright, so wet but so bright. "You always believed in me, right?"

"You were," he muttered, "always too annoying to let me get away with doing otherwise."

And then they stepped out to let the world see the last adventure that they would ever embark on together, side by side by side.