It wasn’t until he gave her a flippant, seaside confession that she realized that while her history was well known and open to all of her comrades, as it tends to be the case with royalty, her companions’ histories were wrought with holes that she couldn’t fill in, and though she could piece things together for the most part, Balthier was the only one whose slate came up truly blank.

His past, when she finally learned of it, caught her off-guard, and, if possible, created only more questions and mysteries. She had no idea how someone who had once been a judge for Archadia could possibly care so little about the world around him; he had clearly cared enough to run away.

The startling new development was the reason she was sitting awake that night in the hunter’s camp, watching the starlight reflections twinkling in the gently rocking waves, feeling oddly soothed by the rhythmic, shuffling sound of the tide lapping up against the sloping sands. She sat huddled atop a pile of crates, hugging the thin blanket she’d been given close to her when the spray of the ocean splashed up onto her skin.

She felt odd surrounded by people whom, in reality, she barely knew, and yet for some reason trusted with her very life. The fact that they knew of her identity, and knew of what would happen if the Empire found out, meant that her livelihood and country were completely in their hands, and the thought of losing faith in them had not yet crossed her mind.

There was a rustling sound to her right, and she glanced over slowly, watching Basch rise from his sleeping position and move to her side, carefully stepping around Vaan, who had a tendency to sleep with his arms and legs splayed out in all directions.

“You should sleep,” the Knight told her, and she could hear the concern under the chastising nature of his tone.

“Do you not find it odd that we are here with these people?” she asked him, letting her gaze settle back on the sea.

“Given the situation, I find very little strange,” Basch replied, and she smiled.

“You do not find it strange that until a very short time ago, you were a prisoner and a traitor, and now you are aiding the very line of royalty that you supposed committed treason against?”

He thought about it for a moment, narrowing his eyes in his all too familiar fashion, and crossing his arms over his chest. He was silent for a long time before answering.

“I think that our situation is full of hope,” he said. “Hope that things are changing, and hope that even traitors can find a use in the world.”

“I do not really think you a traitor,” she told him, giving him an apologetic expression, should he have misinterpreted her earlier question. The last thing she wanted was to ostracize one of the few comrades she felt a true friendship with.

“I am more traitor than you,” she continued, when he remained quiet. “I have done nothing for so long to bring my country out of ruin, and out of the clutches of the Empire.”

“Highness,” he interjected, but she waved him silent.

“It is my duty to worry about these things,” she said with a small sigh. “I am the only one who will. I am the only one left.”

“You are not a traitor, princess,” the Knight shook his head. “And although you are the last of your lineage to survive, I do not think you weak. And I do not think you ill-fit for the throne.”

“Maybe,” Ashe whispered. When she felt Basch’s eyes still on her, she turned to him with a small smile and let her head fall to one side. “Thank you for your loyalty. Your faith means a lot to me.”

He started to move back towards his mat, but then paused and glanced over his shoulder at her.

“You really should sleep,” he said.

“Yes, I will,” Ashe replied, “in a little while.”

Basch took her answer with a firm nod, and crawled back under his linen sheet. When Ashe turned her face back to the ocean, it had picked up a bit, the tide coming in faster and further onto the shoreline. Without really thinking, she kicked off her boots and slid down from her vantage point, enjoying the feeling of the sand between her toes.

In Dalmasca, the sands surrounding the city were hot and humid, and the dunes were too warm to walk through without coverings on, and so the granules falling in-between her toes were comforting. She took off down the coast with a slow, leisurely pace, shivering every time the tide came up and buried her feet and ankles in its salty depths.

She let her thoughts drift to her father and Rasler. For a long time after their deaths, she didn’t think she could go on with life, not because of the grief that gripped her heart, while it was horrible and encompassing, but because without their guidance and wisdom she was afraid that she could not make the correct decisions regarding her country.

It was the reason she had gone into hiding. She knew that on her own, as it was, she couldn’t stop Archadia from taking over the nation. Her continued presence would be a nuisance, but would be easily ended by a swift Imperial archer or gunman. She had fled to the underground sewers in order to gain both the power and support she knew was necessary to combat the Archadian threat, and while the guilt of deserting her people weighed constantly on her mind, she hoped that in the end, the outcome would prove the absence was the right choice.

Sometimes, the end was awfully hard to see, and she couldn’t comprehend a liberated Dalmasca without her father there to rule it. It was a hard paradox to be stuck in, and she sighed to herself as she dug her feet through a particularly large mound of sand, looking out into the distance where the inky black horizon was lost in the infinite darkness of the sky.

There was a splash behind her, and she turned with a muted gasp, drawing her hands up instinctively into a fighting stance. Years of living beneath her city had taught her excellent survival skills, and even though she didn’t have her sword with her, for her belt and sheath were lying over by the sleeping mats, she knew she could handle a sizable fight without any weapon at all.

But it was only Balthier, who was looking at her with a bemused expression, standing near the water’s edge with his hands balled into fists and resting on his hips.

“A rather odd time to be taking a stroll,” he told her, rolling his head around in a semi-circle in what appeared to be an attempt to get the kinks out of his neck.

“I have many things on my mind,” she answered. “This is the only time I can be alone to think on them.”

“Worried about the Nethicite?” he asked, and the amusement left his features. Ashe stared down at her bare feet, coated in a thin layer of sand and grime, sticky with drying saltwater, and wondered if he was just naturally good at reading thoughts, or if he for some reason was not fooled by any of the masks she put in place.

“Yes,” she admitted, deciding that denying it would do little good. There was a stretch of silence, and then she glanced back over at him, watching him as he stood gazing off at the sea as she had been earlier. His face was neutral and impassive, like always, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Do you think it’s wrong for me to seek it out?” she inquired, hoping to get a reaction out of him. But he merely shrugged in an impartial way, and didn’t look over at her.

“I think it might be the only shot you’ve got,” he told her. “Sometimes the only solution is to use power against power.”

“But do you think I want it for… personal reasons?” she asked, her voice dropping low.

“Doesn’t everyone?” he countered, and she had no response. They stood side by side in another stretch of comfortable quiet, with the only sound the lapping of the waves against their feet.

“What was it like, being a judge?” Ashe finally asked, blurting the question out before she could stop herself.

She had thought perhaps he would refuse to answer, like he did with so many other personal intrusions, but he cocked his head to one side and looked contemplative.

“There were a lot of rules,” he answered. “Everyone was plotting against everyone else in their own way, and each person had their own individual set of rules that they lived by. Cross one of them the wrong way, even inadvertently, and your life would get considerably harder.”

Ashe giggled then, and she could tell the action surprised him. His features on her were amused once more. When he said nothing, and she realized that he was waiting for clarification, she smiled and looked back out over the trembling ocean.

“It sounds like every political discussion I’ve ever been a part of,” she explained. “Every country has their own beliefs and goals, and if you get in their way, or offend them without meaning to, negotiations could fall through in mere moments.”

“Did they train you to lead with so many others who were to rule before you?” Balthier asked. Ashe grew somber.

“Not really,” she said with a sigh. “I really… well, I wasn’t supposed to have to be the leader of the country. That’s why I was married. I don’t think they ever wanted me to have to be a ruler.”

“Then they didn’t know you very well,” the sky pirate said. When she raised her eyes to him in question, he shrugged again, which seemed to be his response for nearly everything, and glanced back at the ocean. “I think you’d make a very good queen.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling strangely humbled. Balthier looked back over at her and quirked one side of his mouth up, raising a single eyebrow.

“You just have too many doubts.”

With that he left her alone and made his way back to the sleeping mats, and she stood there for a long time wondering how he was able to worm his way under her façade as if it wasn’t there at all, and she still could figure out no more about him than she had been able to at the beginning.

There was a strange injustice to it all. She kept her eyes on him the entire time he retreated into the distance, vowing that somehow she would figure out what went on inside that head of his, and find out what the pirate really felt.