So many excellent future fic ideas in this story. Very emotionally painful.
Some honest concrit: Overall, the story left me wanting something more -- more explanation and more exactitude through showing what is going on in each character just before each of their transitions. The individual scenes are each well crafted but the larger story felt like it wasn't given enough space. Either too many story ideas for the length devoted to it or not enough length to flesh out character motivations/transitions/changes in full. Thus, the transitions between scenes and between presentations of character's states of mind felt a bit jarring. It came together during the final 1/3 (when Ashe sends Ffam away to the end) but, at least for me, it felt bumpy getting there. D:
The dialog is excellent and telling. I think it's the exposition in the middle of the dialog that gave me problems. In a few places the prose didn't flow as well (mechanically, stylistically) as your prose often does and in other places it felt like the words wanted to say much more than you were willing to allot space to saying. Thus, in those places the story either felt a little constipated (?!) or as if beating around the bush. BUT, the dialog between characters provided the real honest, powerful moments. Thus, when I say that some of the ideas in this story feel like they need more space, they might not necessarily need more words. It might be a matter of trimming and pruning?? Not sure. I'm still trying to decide if the story didn't feel tight enough (thus pruning is needed) or didn't feel rounded out enough (thus more words needed).
In the first half, I found myself rereading a lot to see if I missed something between the lines. Basch confused me at times. There is much implied but not enough space given to let him breathe. But, that may be an issue of fanfic vs orig fic. Or shared headcanon. Or such.
Balthier's dialog was consistently brilliant. And so emotionally painful especially when he's out with Basch. Outstanding ideas in this story -- the IDEAS in this story are excellent and painful and powerful. I love all that Balthier goes through in this story. He is round and emotionally raw and just freakin' excellent and I *felt* for him as this whole story moved forward. It just seemed that everyone else was a little weak/flat.
Perhaps others will violently disagree with me regarding my crits and say that I'm smoking crack??? Maybe it's just me, you know, and all the annoying noise outside my window while I'm trying to read.
The final two scenes worked really well, especially Balthier's final scene.