Balthier had spent a few nights not just out of then den, but also out of the pack. He had maybe expected Azzurra to find him on his patrol if she really wanted to so he had run that next day patrol and found coverage for a few days while he instead hunted for the stores. He took the raft with him and spent nights outside of the dam borders. He made his time inside the pack lands very limited and watched out for where his sister might have been running if at all. This however was not one of those nights.

On his way back out of Fenmyre he stopped to grab a bottle of wine for reasons he really wouldn’t ask himself. It was just like this urge hit him and all he wanted to do was forget. Unfortunately, that’s not what the now empty bottle of wine gave the effect of.

It was nearly midnight when he stumbled into the bungalow, the raft maybe docked in the sand he thought... he couldn’t remember. The creak in the floorboards on the porch was unmistakable of his presence but if Azzurra was inside then the boom of his body against the shelves of their unit would have been enough to startle her. Uneasy legs found the bed before collapsing under himself. His back would have been turned to his sister if she were there, his deep and heavy breathing from the alcohol would have been the only sounds coming from him as he fought to go to sleep here but his thoughts were every where making it hard to do so.

"Azzurra & Balthier"

The days since Balthier stormed off had been longer and more draining than she had even anticipated, but mostly because of the uncertainty of where he had gone and how long he would be gone. She didn’t feel as helpless and hopeless as she had the first time that he had walked away from her like this. She was mostly able to continue on with her day in some sibilance of normalcy, albeit with far more worry and anxiety. She kept expecting him to show up out of the blue and pick back up on the anger he had left on or for him to somehow figure out it was Erys she had slept with and take it out on him.

Instead, as she was laying in bed half asleep, a sound from the doorway started to pull her awake. Before she could fully shake the sleep that kept her groggy, whoever it was slammed into the shelving along one wall and made her jolt awake, jumping with a startled gasp and panting lightly while her heart raced from the sudden rush of adrenaline. Her sapphire gaze landed on the stumbling form of her brother and she watched in stunned silence as he staggered over to the bed and collapsed with his back to her.

As if his actions didn’t give it away, she could heavily smell the wine on him and she could tell that he had consumed a lot of it as well. She shifted to one side of the bed away from him nervously, frowning as she tried to consider what to do. She had thought about moving into a different bungalow in his absence, but hadn’t managed to do it before now and now she slightly regretted it. She thought she could probably slip out while he was in this state, probably without him even noticing, but the way he was struggling to even move without running into something made her worried and a little afraid to leave him alone. She still loved him as her brother despite everything else and didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.

"Balthier?” she asked quietly, reaching over to gently tap his shoulder. "Are you alright?” It was a dumb question to ask since there was clear evidence of the opposite, but she didn’t know what else to say.

"Azzurra"

Balthier shuddered to her touch in a raspy breath and as much as he wanted to swing back to throw her paw off of him, he didn’t. He was a mess before he landed back on the beaches of Fenmyre, but somehow he was even worse as Azzurra tapped his shoulder.

As if his body was made of bricks he rolled slightly over on his back, gulping hard but the drink made him not able to hold back that raw emotion, much more amplified in the condition he was in. He nearly struggled to take a breath as rivers of tears fell from his eyes and he tried to look at her in the dark room from over his shoulder. In no right mind would even she find him in this kind of state. Balthier was good at holding back his emotions as Azzurra had known all too well. Or at least the ones that took away his sense of manliness.

"How could you do this to me?" He spoke in a quiet cry, his words slurring together but enough to understand. "I’ve always loved you Azzurra. I would have never-" It was like saying anything else was too much to bare. He had always been rather naive and neglectful to the struggles that had happened between them. He had thought as he had many of times before that everything was fine after every bad step. He still couldn’t understand that maybe he was kidding himself. Even in a sober mind, he would never understand why Azzurra had sought out sleeping with someone else. He fully blamed her for the deed too, as much as he wanted to believe she had no choice in it. He was so broken, but more unwilling to understand why she had done what she had.

"Azzurra & Balthier"

Her ears fell back at the shuddering breath the small touch of her paw was met with and she pulled her white dipped paw back as he rolled toward her a bit, revealing his tear-marked face as he sobbed. She was taken aback by the sudden display of emotion from her brother who hardly ever allowed his emotions to come to the surface, watching his face in the darkness as her own chest clenched with painful emotions. She had never seen him like this before and it both worried and scared her. She didn’t know how to respond at first, at a loss for words as he stared into the dark of night and questioned her, asking between his sobs how she could have done this to him.

Part of her wanted to feel guilty, the same part of her that believed Balthier could be her one and only and going to Erys had been cheating on him. That side of her was the inner voice she struggled with the truth. But the other side of her, the one that had over powered the other that night with the help of some wine, knew how things had really been and knew better than to let her believe that. She couldn’t look back on what she had done with Erys with anything but fondness and she refused to let Balthier taint that memory that she had.

She didn’t respond right away, her own anger at the situation building as she tried to find her words. "I had never had anyone make love to me and be able to look me in the eye and not look guilty when we were done," she told him as she started to sit up, keeping to one side of the bed while he was on the other. Her ears were pulled back and her brow was creased as she spoke, wondering if he would even listen to her in his current state. "Have you never considered how messed up that is? Or how that made me feel? To… to love someone that couldn’t look me in the eye and feel good about being together?" She glanced away from him with a sigh, frustrated tears gathering in her own eyes.

"Azzurra"

Balthier grit his teeth and shut his eyes tight, retreating back into himself as Azzurra started talking "I don't want to fucking hear about it." The drink had certainly muddled the feelings on the outside but they were still true. Balthier didn't want to hear about how great or wonderful being with the mystery man was, let alone the encounter completely. He'd never really know just how messed he was in these situations. While they were both young and rather mature, it didn't seem so on many levels. Or at least for Balthier. He was blind to himself.

"Because we're not meant to be together Azzurra!" His tone rose while his angered gaze was back away from her towards the den wall. He growled slightly as his paws ran over his watered eyes and the more he laid here the more he wanted to be away from her. "I didn't want to be with any one else but you though." He laid there for a moment with his face in his paws, maybe trying to just forget everything. That's what the wine was for anyway.

After that long moment, his uneasy paws met the floor as he struggled to stand and his shoulder bumped into the wall of bungalow. He stood there for another few seconds as his drunk brain tried to comprehend how to walk again. Moving from laying down to standing had his vision swirling around. He stumbled toward the doorway, his shoulder slamming into the door frame as he made it there and stood still again. He just needed to be away from her.

"Azzurra & Balthier"

She flinched a little as he snapped back at her, telling her that he didn't want to hear about it, making her fed up anger boil even hotter with tears pricking at her eyes. She never intended to talk to him about Erys in any kind of specifics, but the things that continued to be a problem between them were the things that had driven her to Erys to begin with. The guilt and the shame that Balthier had brought into their sex life, the way he refused to even address it as a problem, the way he stormed out every time she tried to bring it up or mend things. She couldn't take it any more. She was exhausted by it all and even though she did still love him and she dreaded the thought of not having him in her life, she just couldn't put up with the constant rollercoaster of emotions any more. She had gotten a taste of what love and sex could be and she couldn't go back from that now.

He yelled again, saying how they weren't supposed to be together, and made her flinch again as her stomach twisted up into knots. Even still, he conflicted himself as always as he insisted that he didn't want to be with anyone else. It this cyclical thinking had kept them trapped for far too long and she hadn't felt strong enough to finally break the cycle—at least not until now. She watched as he laid there looking away from her for a long moment until he finally attempted to get up and made a miserable attempt of trying to leave, bumping into the wall and staggering over to the door only to slam into the door frame again. She sighed and got down from the bed, walking over to where he was standing at the door and slipped past him, tuning to face him as she gently pushed his chest with her paw to nudge him back toward the interior of the bungalow. "You stay, I'll go," she insisted firmly. She didn't want to be near him any more than he seemed to want to be and she wasn't going to sit around and let him drunkenly blame all of this on her any longer.

She turned to leave, hurrying down the small set of stairs that led off of the porch before he could stop her. Before she left though she turned back to face him with angry tears in her eyes, yelling up at him, "If you truly loved me then you wouldn't treat me this way! If we're not 'meant to be together' then maybe we shouldn't be!" With that, she turned and started storming down the beach to go find somewhere, anywhere, else to be but here. She didn't know where she could go in the middle of the night, but it was better than dealing with Balthier's drunken belligerence any longer.

"Azzurra"

Azzurra pushing her way past did little to his own stance while he was leaned up against the door. With his head spinning his eyes had closed as he tried to regain any sort of physical composer that he could. It didn't help much.

With his own cheeks stained from the tears he had actually never showed, his drunken state wouldn't even keep the whole scene in his memory, both of them cry screaming at each other and Azzurra really just needing him to understand or at least just listen to her. But he never would. He wouldn't know just how much he had destroyed this unusual and strong relationship with his sister. He could know that it wasn't only her that caused the problems. He knew what she said was true about him, but he'd never understand why she slept with someone else.

He didn't stop as she stormed off and turned back to shout at him, his paws coming to the edge of the porch as he took a moment to watch her walk away. "I'm not fucking staying here!" He shouted back in mumbled and slurred tones probably inaudible from the distance they were away. His paws took him off the porch and away from the bungalow, finding balance in every step he took over the sand but everything was still moving all around him. He had made it to the shore, looking back and forth down the moonlit water break. The raft was no where to be seen, it had drifted out to sea. "Fuck!" He'd have to cross the ferry, or he'd be stuck back on the island all night. At least he was smarter than to try swimming to the mainland in his condition.

"Azzurra & Balthier"