multiversallogs | do they cease to exist when you stop being missed

Who: Jack and Balthier
What: Some fussing and recuperating. Also, dinner.
Where: Jack's ridiculous apartment in West Gidd.
When: ~~Tuesday~~ Misdi evening.
Warnings: Food details, otherwise nothing much.

Despite what he said in his text, it might be better if Balthier doesn't hurry over. The contents of Jack's fridge being well above your usual bachelor fodder of condiments and old bread (he is, after all, a bachelor raised to ridiculous culinary standards), what he throws together is somewhat involved, including not only both meat and vegetables but actual herbs and spices. A little pepper the steaks, parsley and tarragon with the root vegetables, and he refrains from glazing anything out of vague recollection of the other man's tastes.

The activity helps him process – which is what he calls it in his mind, not think or feel, like he's some kind of machine that should be able to take the lingering echos of so many souls lost under his command (and more, closer to him) and arrive at a neat, clean explanation for why he's been so irritated at the thought of losing anyone else.

But he didn't lose anyone, this time. He has to remind himself of that, and there'd be relief in the thought if he was willing to acknowledge having anything to be relived over, which naturally he isn't. Instead, he's chopping too many carrots and cussing at the stove and will generally feel a lot better when he can actually see his friend in one piece.

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Jack notices, more so right now because there's such quiet between them, because he's already studying the other man for signs of discomfort or just to remind himself through those little details that Balthier is here now, safe. The little toast makes him smile, but he waves a hand at it, dismissive. (Distracted.)

"You know, you have better manners than my father," he muses, eyebrows knit like he's particularly fixed on the thought. "Which would be meaningless if the man had always been king, but he was born the son of a mule breeder and had to learn late."

Balthier doesn't strike him as someone who learned late.

"A mule breeder," Balthier echoes, sounding partly incredulous and partly thoughtful. He keeps his eyes on his food as he says it, casual, presumably in the interests of not accidentally making some hideous mess with his delicate one-handed work. "I've not heard stories of such likeness except in fables. Ivalician hume blood is strong; you hardly ever get inbred royals, these days."

Thus eliminating the need for bringing in unrelated individuals with proper-functioning minds? Perhaps. Balthier reckons it'll dilute in a thousand years or so - but that's utterly unrelated, and his mind is merely wandering, spiraling, considering. (He knows an awful lot about royals.)

"I learned when I was a boy," he says, and does look up at Jack, now. "Younger than that, really. When I was an impressionable lump. I don't suppose you'd believe it to be the habit of an eccentric parent." In all the months of their intimacy, Jack has never asked. Balthier is impressed at his restraint, and unsurprised at the inevitable.

There would be a disparaging comment here about how he can't help it his God prefers farm boys to royalty, but he doesn't want to derail this, for once. He hadn't asked because they haven't asked anything of each other – for all their banter, the closeness between them has been left unspoken, without obligation to have (let alone share) any manner of subtler emotion, and Jack has appreciated that comfortable silence enough that even now, he's loathe to disturb it. But everything is closer to the surface tonight, and he has wondered.

"Not unless said eccentric parent was of a particular class themselves, no." Good breeding doesn't come from nowhere. It's said gently, but his eyes don't falter from his friend's, even as he reaches absently for his own wine.

The smile Balthier gives him is kind, but also sad, and without the veneer of his usual facade. It's utterly unlike him, and somehow seems a hundred times more real than any other moment he's ever shared with Jack. He seems profoundly tired, with eyes that speak of eons, even with how strangely young he seems when he's quiet.

"Long ago, I killed a young man in the Imperial city. All his sins and virtues, the whole of his history, were left up there in that golden palace. It doesn't matter that his grave is empty; no one is ever going to look. He isn't ever coming back. Not even the gods can resurrect the dead if they've no will to return to their lives."

Silence, then, as he breaks in his story to continue eating, just for a moment. "It's a facade, you see," and he picks up his wine glass, looking at Jack again. "An outlaw with manners. It's theater. People are charmed and entranced by the romanticism of it, this pirate who could be an actor. And with how damn good at either I am - what's the difference?"

It is so utterly different from how he knows the other man, and yet it doesn't shock him. Watching, listening to his friend's words, so many small truths hidden between layers of fiction, gives shape and substance to what he'd had only inklings of before. It fits. It feels right. The knowledge that Balthier has constructed such an elaborate facade seems no more unnatural than the fact that he'd done so himself.

"No difference at all, to them." But to him? His gaze is soft, knowing. Yet, it isn't the same. Jack's masks are meant to hide, to repress. What Balthier describes seems a clean break from the past. Real change.

"I knew I liked you for a reason," he says after a beat, words that could be cynical but in this moment are sincere. Almost envious. "Not for what you left, but that you left it."

"Don't mistake me for royalty," he says, and now he's wearing a faint smile that's more wry than anything. "I'm sure that I could have been, had I fought for it in the senate. But I've always preferred the beasts in the wild to those particular monsters."

How annoyed must his superiors have been, when he left - every time Balthier has lent his insight to Jack's political notions, it's been with a keen eye. Effortless, almost. (Then again, that could easily be why he so badly wanted to run from it.)

Jack has shared what he has of his politics with Balthier because of that aptitude, and has himself considered – fleetingly, but still considered – how the pirate could be of more use to him in an official capacity. He can imagine how irritating it would be to be denied that insight altogether.

"And yet you keep company with one of the worst." Monsters, that is, and yes he means himself, if the cynicism in his voice is any indication. (He has no illusions about his own righteousness, only his ability to do good despite it.) He swirls his wine in his glass. "You don't miss it? The lures of power and influence never tempt you?"

His expression turns a little more sad - like colors fading in the sunset, just another subtle hint, here and there. Not for himself, or for Jack. Some great thing beyond the both of them.

"Am I so powerless?" He's not a politician; he'll never again be a Judge, and he'd rather send himself to his own, true death than ever act as even a shade of one. He has no country and no home and a price on his head... and it is beautiful. Balthier has no need of Imperial power and influence. If he wants either, all he has to do is walk out on his stage. He turns it on and off at will, and he lives his life without chains - without so much as a string.

Balthier takes another swallow of his wine and then reaches out, his fingertips brushing Jack's elbow, connective, maybe a little wistful. There's something hollow behind his eyes. "That you think of yourself as such," and he drops his hands, goes back to his dinner, "Gives me hope for your world."

Jack tilts his head, but nods, as if agreeing up to a point. "A different kind of power," murmured. It's a difficult thing to acknowledge, that Balthier could shed the binds that Jack has come to know like a second skin, and without cost, without sacrificing the right to shape the world around him. But it is different. The power Jack amasses so desperately is constant and steady as he can make it. It doesn't matter that he can't turn it off because he wouldn't, because he doesn't know what he'd be without it.

(Happier, maybe.)

The touch, however, that gives him pause – the words that follow, more so, but his smile flinches and twists like it can't settle on an expression. His teeth digging into his lip, shaking his head, "You'll doom them all, treating me like that." Like what, Jack, nicely?

Rather than specify, he downs what's left in his glass and pushes off from the counter, his dinner left half finished. Not going anywhere in particular, just– look, he can't just sit here and feel.

do they cease to exist when you stop being missed

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