Distant city bells tolled the midnight hour in muted basso voices. Gasoline lamps winked out one by one across the city; no place in particular. The world to one side had blended so with this one that there was no telling the difference.
    He stood with his hands in his pockets, observing the dying of the light from the Strahl's cockpit. His mouth twisted into an unhappy downward slash, though he paid it little notice.
    "I really detest negotiating."
    He wasn't sure when she'd appeared beside him. She had a way of doing that, of slipping in and out of his daily life in perfect silence. Observation and stillness, learned from her, had taught him to know when.
    "You sound bitter, sky pirate."
    "Observant as usual," he sighed. "I am bitter."
    "You will stay awake, here, until a solution you have found?"
    She studied him, and he could feel her eyes on him, taking in his general displeasure.
    "Maybe," he conceded.
    "'Tis not healthy."
    Fran made few statements unless she felt them to a purpose, and he found himself sighing at her blunt observation. He half-turned to face her, not quite looking directly at her, watching the way the dim lights lit her white hair, or the way her ears turned this way and that.
    Balthier considered his dilemma as much as he considered the viera.
    "No," he finally conceded. "It isn't."
    "Your body slows." Fran's observation was matter-of-fact. "I hear your heart, sky pirate. If you do not give yourself rest--"
    "Bah." He waved a dismissive hand, even as he felt a sliver of guilt at gainsaying her perception. How could she hear the beat of his heart from across the room? He could scarcely feel it himself. "The leading man knows when to fold his cards. Not now."
    "Perhaps... if you were aught more than a supporting role." Her lips quirked, took the sting from her rebuke, and she shook her head. "Rest. You push too hard."
    "I've got to find a solution to these glossair rings, while we can still fly."
    "Nono knows the ship as well as you and I."
    "The Strahl's my responsibility."
    "Am I not your partner?" The viera arched a stark white brow. "Your equal in this... venture? Responsibilities, shared?"
    "I'll find a solution. I always do." He shook his head. "She's my responsibility, you know. I'd be a poor sort of leading man if I couldn't effect a few small repairs on my own ship."
    "It is true, it is true... a way you will find, most times. But I recall differently, that last mark, deep in Paramina Rift, not a sevenday after the Strahl was returned to us."
    "That was different."
    "Was it? You took risk. Too much. For hours you bled."
    "I've had nastier scrapes."
    Fran arched a skeptical brow.
    "I got better," he insisted, a little defensively.
    "You raved. Fevered. I know how you despise drink for that. How you loathe loss of control." She sighed, but there was no rancor in the sound; merely acceptance. "And you will rave until you find your solution, even now. Stubborn hume-child."
    "Wayward rabbit."
    But the insults were comfortable, almost affectionate. Thy carried the warmth of the familiar. He stood in companionable silence as he studied the city below; sighed faintly at the barest weight of the hand on his shoulder, the almost imperceptible touch of the viera's long, claw-like nails.
    "Be not too stubborn. A way will present itself."
    Balthier cast his hazel eyes out over the skyline, watching like a hawk as lamps dimmed in succession, a wave of darkness swallowing the city. He sighed, nostrils flaring. "If this business with Captain Rimehart works out... only time will tell, for true."
    She stared at him with those inscrutable eyes, a few shades darker than blood, and in the end she closed them, nodding once as she looked out to the city.
    "Then may the gods smile on us," she murmured.
    He reached up and folded his hand over hers, eyes on the city below, his half-smile finding its confidence once more.
    "They rarely do, my dear wayward rabbit... but I still wouldn't have it any other way."