She was afraid that she would not be strong enough to lead her country out of the submissive role given to them by the Empire. She was afraid that once she was queen, she would not have the courage and fortification to keep Dalmasca as an independent and self-sufficient a nation, and that it would once again fall to the ambitions of foreign leaders. She was afraid, most of all, that she would not live up to the expectations set down by her father and his forefathers before him, who were wise and brave and written into the pages of history as great rulers.

Sometimes, especially at night, when there was nothing else to busy her mind with, and all other noises and distractions have disappeared, she couldn’t think of anything but the possibility of failure. There were times where her will crumbles to the point of giving up, where she thought that her goals were foolish and unreasonable, and that Dalmasca would never be free of Archadia’s influence, no matter what she did.

It was usually on those nights that she struggled the most to keep her guard up, to maintain the image that she was strong and persistent and brash, and even though she knew that she was all of those things anyway, the façade was an important one for not only her, but her companions as well.

Because the image was so important to her, as she knew it must be, for she was raised as royalty and understood her role to the people, she had grown very good at watching other people, for when she studied the comrades around her, she could further comprehend her own mask, and strengthen the cracks within it. It was a habit that she grew so accustomed to that she frequently lapsed into it without really knowing it, and found herself carefully observing her companions with a shrewdness that she never really knew she had.

The children were easy to read. She supposed she really shouldn’t call them children, for they knew hardship and struggle and pain the same as she had, but they were still young and viable, and their lives stretched out in front of them like wide expanses. Vaan and Penelo were easy to read, because they wore their emotions clearly and openly, every gesture and movement displaying their current state of mind.

Penelo, when upset, had a tendency to fight against the crumbling of her face and the dissolving of her resolve, but she couldn’t help the way her eyes teared and her cheeks flushed, and it gave her away. Vaan was better, but couldn’t hide when he was shocked or amazed, and his mouth hung open like a landed fwash. It usually made the others laugh, and the young man never seemed to care.

Basch, who seemed at first like an impenetrable fortress, behaved in much of the same way as Ashe’s brothers and father had, just the same as nearly every man she had ever known with military training had. Soldiers hide their emotions well only because they are taught not to feel them at all, but there are always signs in order to interpret them.

In the case of Basch, he pressed his lips together in a motion which thinned and elongated them, creating little lines around the corners, and he narrowed his eyes just enough to be noticable. This usually occurred when he was struggling against arguing with Ashe’s orders and decisions, but seemed to happen around people outside the group as well, as if he didn’t trust them.

Fran seemed like a cold wall at first, but in time the Viera grew remarkably easy to read. She made few facial expressions because her temperment was perhaps the most even-keeled of anyone that Ashe had ever met, and she was rarely troubled or startled by anything, but when she was confronted by something that truly affected her, such as accumulating Mist, she became so agitated that one always knew exactly how she was feeling.

But Baltheir was a different story. Ashe couldn’t read the sky pirate like she could the others. His mask was too carefully crafted and too practiced to have visible cracks, and he reacted to everything with an easy, distanced calm. At first it seemed like he cared about nothing, and then it seemed like he cared about things only when they affected him, and then Ashe still didn’t know which it was. He was still as much of a mystery to her as he had been when they had first met.

It was because she couldn’t read his emotions that she began watching him more closely than the rest of the party. It was almost like a trial or a test that she set out to win, and had almost unwillingly kept her gaze on the sky pirate as often as she could without being noticed. She knew that under all the bravado and wry grins that there had to be something there; a twinge of fear or mistrust, or even an all-encompassing despair as a reaction to something in the past. She didn’t care what it was, as long as she found it, and proved to herself that Balthier really did care about something, no matter how small it was.