Fic: Damage Like This (FFXII, Balthier & Fran)
A gift for ridorana for the whump exchange!
Fran passes out in Balthier's arms, so he places her down where the floor is still solid and walls still standing and gently presses a phoenix down to her chest until the shaft snaps. She wakes as it burns up, dragging herself to her feet as the Bahamut judders and dies around them, and they make it perhaps thirty more seconds down the hall before the floor drops from beneath them.
Balthier has a horrifying moment of slipping, animal panic sending his arms outflung, fingers like claws on the walls, the thin air—he falls, and falls—then pain across his ankles, legs as they buckle, shoulder and head as it smacks into something hard—the pain sharpens to agony, cutting through him, tearing the breath from him—
He blacks out.
