This is the first fanfic I'm posting for over two weeks (the largest gap I've had since 2006!) and writing this was a bit of a wrench. But in any case, this is almost a direct sequel for Blood Simple (what Vayne did to Larsa there had consequences) and is dedicated to the very excellent Threewalls. (Technically, it's her birthday present, even if said birthday is in August… but better early than never, right?) I'm not sure is quite what you expected but since it has plenty of angst and darkness and mourning over what's lost and can never be found again, I thought it'd be right up your alley. ;)
And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved! More than anything, I'm hoping this will jog me up from my recent fic-writing stupor, honestly speaking…
Title: 4 Secrets That Larsa Ferrinas Solidor Will Never Say Out Loud (And 1 He'll Be Willing to Whisper)
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: The Uses of Enchantment
Characters: Larsa, Penelo, Larsa/Penelo, Vayne, Gramis, Noah, Drace
Rating: PG-13
Summary: There's no one who can hurt you like the one you most love.
1. Larsa has always been at least a little insecure over the way he looks, even when he was young and lithe and didn't yet sport a hump on his back that suggested he'd be most comfortable around gypsy maidens and bell towers.
It's probably more than a little odd that he feels that way, considering the fact that beauty is far from the first quality he seeks in the people he himself loves. Despite what the hard-liner blue-bloods still whisper, he married his wife for her spirit and her mind-- though her lissome figure and radiant smile certainly didn't hurt the cause. As long as his children had come out to the world with the proper number of fingers and toes (which was in itself a bit of a gamble, considering royal genealogies), he didn't much care about what they looked like either. And seeing as how his closest friends and companions spent the majority of their time in enormous plates of armor or (in Vaan's case) stolen air ships, what they looked like didn't concern him at all.
But even when he had been young, he had always been scrutinized for evidence of his father's blood, for the dark hair and pale eyes and hooked nose and deceptively soft smile all the men of his family seemed predisposed to. His mother had been his father's whore rather than his wife and though she had sworn faithfulness to the crown of Archadia till the end of her brief life, there were some who had always whispered of whether her child really carried blue blood nestled in veins nursed so well by his line.
He had spent all the early years of his life wanting to be Gramis's true son, wanting to be Vayne's true brother, wanting to be a man of a lineage long and storied enough to make any child proud. And even now, he could still recall the exact moment when, at the age of twelve, he had looked up at his lord brother-- the only family left to him then, all others having been slaughtered-- and realized that they really did look much the same: small eyes and pale face, winged brows and slim mouth.
But even before then, though, even when he had loved his lord brother and thought all the world of him, thought all the world ought to bow to him and do so gratefully... even then Larsa had realized that he was merely a diminished mirror image, at most Vayne Minor. Even then, he knew he'd always be smaller than his brother, paler and thinner and altogether less interesting, like a half-starved ghost of his kinsman grown in ways nobody could ever think very much about.
He's almost sixty now and, other than the usual tiresome round of debutantes and gigolos that attempt to beguile their way towards a crown, no one besides his wife spends much time looking at him anyhow. And for all the portraits and the pamphlets and the propaganda that has borne perfected versions of his portrait, the only real reflection he longs for is the one still lit within her eyes.
2. Despite himself, despite all he knows of himself, he is afraid of his own children at times.
In many ways, this fear is perhaps merely the logical extension of the sort of fears he's always borne throughout his life. By turns, he's been afraid of himself and his brother, his guardian and his lover, his wife and the ones he's most loved. He's always known that no one can hurt you like the ones who most know you and sometimes it makes terrible sense to look upon his two sons and two daughters, reflect upon their gentle hands and slow, bright smiles and think of what they might someday be capable of doing for the sake of power.
He hates this fear more than anything else in the world, more even than the specter of war, upheaval and poverty that constantly runs through the mind of any half-way decent ruler. He hates this fear and knows it to be a mad one, madder even than the paralyzing suspicions he used to have before his marriage, the ones that left him shaking in the morning and sending out the ears of his empires after his lady love, to assure him that she was still nearly chaste and constantly kind and not ready to fly from him whenever his ambitions for her came to light.
Their children are half hers and her kindness is their kindness and he and Penelo have raised them right, done their best to see them as children first and heirs only afterwards. And if he's occasionally had to push them too hard, had to demand of them too much, he knows they've always had Penelo to fight for them in the way that he had once had Drace, once, before all the world had connived to swallow her whole.
He knows they're all far more like himself than his brother, and far more like his wife than himself, and those facts alone would keep them from treading their uncle's paths.
And yet--
And yet, his brothers had all died before they had reached the age of thirty, slaughtering themselves for the sake of an empire with the blessings of their father. And when he had been twelve and their father was dead at the hands of his own child, the last of Larsa's brother had knelt down before Larsa to pass on that mantle and whisper of just what he had done and why he had done it and what Larsa was expected to do to him in a time to pass soon enough.
Larsa knows all too well of how many blasphemous secrets a family such as his can hold, and of what cruelty can be justified in the midst of a noble end searching for means proper. And though he smiles every time his wife engraves her unofficial motto for their line into the family silver
['No patricide, no matricide, no regicide, no genocide… it's got a nice ring to it, right Larsa?')
'Very much so, especially since you made it so easy to remember through rhyme.'
'That's me, always thinking of others first. Now hold the ladder steady-- I need to start putting this banner up...'
he can't help but worry whenever he thinks of what his children, and his children's children, and their own children in turn could do if they take more after his line than her's. He knows too well how easy it is to love irredeemable evil to do otherwise.
And more than anything else, more even than the deaths of his father and his judges and his friends-- this is what makes entirely forgiving his brother a futile and hopeless endeavor.
3. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to forgive Drace for getting herself killed.
In many ways, Larsa knows that it's unfair for him to resent Drace so much. After all, she's done nothing to him that his father and his brother and his other guardian hadn't done either, or harder. She wasn't the first nor the last to leave him in his life-- and her death had, in the long run, been almost inconsequential. Her death hadn't left him with a new guardian taken from Dalmasca's grasp or completely changed the politics of his realm or placed the mantle of emperor about his shoulders before they had even broadened enough to bear it with ease.
She had died but her death had left him with so much less to be bitter about than the deaths of so many others.
But there still remained the element of choice in her death, a choice withheld from others. His father hadn't been able to choose the manner nor the time of his death and neither had Gabranth. As far as Larsa knows-- as far as he wants to know-- they had both been helpless in the hands of his brother. They had been victims and Larsa knows-- wants desperately to believe-- that if they could, they would have lived for him, endured for him, kept him rooted to the ever-shifting earth as his wife had done for all but sixteen of her sixty one years.
And his brother Vayne... he had been the cause of all of those deaths, yes, and in the long run, even his own. But Vayne had been mad, no matter what other qualities he also had. His brother had been brilliant, yes, and noble, perhaps, in his own way. He had been exceptional and noble and gifted and driven-- and mad in a way that shattered all that he touched, that would have likely shattered Larsa as well, if he had been forced to watch Vayne destroy all he had loved much longer.
Towards the ends, his brother had not been, perhaps had never been, sane and Larsa does his best to drudge up as much mercy for his memory as he can. It's easier to mourn Vayne and not hate it when Larsa can tell himself it was not entirely his fault.
But Drace-- Zargabaath had told him before, in terrible, inscrutable, damnable detail, of just what had happened on the day she had been killed. And after hearing of her last defiance, her last words, her last and nearly silent thoughts, Larsa knows that she could have lived in spite of everything else. She could have swallowed her pride and she could have bent her knee to his mad brother and she could have kept silent, as Zargabaath had kept silent, and gone along with all that Vayne had planned until she could have reunited with Larsa and found some way to help him before all was lost.
If she had wanted to, Larsa knew that Drace could have survived. She had, after all, been the one to teach him that much.
But she hadn't. She had let herself be killed and passed on her duty of being with him to someone else, someone who proved to be just as fallible and mortal as she had ever been, someone who had died in his own turn and left Larsa with nothing but ashes, tombstones and memories.
In the end, Drace had chosen to die for her own sake when she could have lived for his… and Larsa does not know if he'll ever be able to stop himself from resenting her for choosing to do such.
4. Larsa doesn't ever want to say goodbye.
The last time he had ever said goodbye, it had been to his father. Then, he had been all of twelve years old and had barely reached his sire's elbows, much to the amusement of anyone who ever saw them together. Age had not had time to stoop Larsa's father as it had now bent over Larsa and he could still remember very clearly how he had once had to crane his neck to look at his father directly-- at least when his father did not actually lift him up so they could see each other face to face.
When Larsa had been twelve and on his way to Bur Omisace, he had gone first for the blessing of his father, for he had already known that he could ask nothing of that sort from his brother any longer. He had gone to his father's throne room and gone on one knee and asked if his father would once more give him leave to experience more of the world on his own, unencumbered by guardians, finally set free.
And unlike previous times when his father had sighed and told Larsa that he knew his son would do as he pleased anyway, this time, his father had actually said yes sincerely. He had tilted Larsa's chin up in his trembling hands and when Larsa dared to look up, there had been a smile tucked in the space between his mustache and his beard and the faint, delicate line of wrinkles that always came about his eyes when he was happy .
Yes, his father had said, yes. I believe in you, in what you may do. With you, I've always been best pleased.
That had been the last time Larsa had ever looked into the living face of his sire. He wouldn't learn until two months later of the awful and possible finality of such things.
This is what happens, Larsa knows. This is what happens, especially when you grow old and your hair grew white and everything you loved started fading, predictably wearing away at the edges till nothing was left of the thing. And he knew better than anyone that a man could love and love and love with all his heart, trust a person with all of his soul, give to them the remnants of all of his being-- and still, every sight of them could be his last sight, and every word said could serve as a farewell to everything, everything, everything.
Larsa has never been one for goodbyes. And more than anything he hopes this is something his wife will forgive him for eventually.
5. But he's reconciled himself to one day saying goodnight.
He will be fifty seven years of age tomorrow and his life will move forward by one more year. And though there shall be celebrations, in both his family and throughout Archadia, and though he will have children to reunite with and grandchildren to embrace, it doesn't erase any of the inevitable realities of his life here. Every day, more and more is leaving him, with his children growing older, with his empire growing stronger, and with his wife, his Penelo, his bride and his light, leaving him, slowly leaving, with every breath she takes during every minute of every day of the rest of their quickly yielding beings.
She is dying, his Penelo is dying, and they will never celebrate their fortieth year of marriage because she will leave him presently, as unjustly as his father and his guardians did and more terribly than his brother ever dare dreamed. She is dying, his finest friend is dying, and it is undeserved and unfair and absolutely inevitable and he would rage but there is nothing to rage at, not even the impotent gods his brother fought against so ruthlessly. And for all the words his silver tongue has parted with through the years, there is nothing left to say but the inevitable and the insufferable, the words that he cannot bring himself to say to anyone else, not since he turned thirteen and a girl put her hand about his shoulders as the last of his family left him and bound him with ties he's never wanted to let slip away.
He will be fifty seven years old tomorrow and he knows that though he's never wanted to say goodbye
[never wanted to say goodbye, never wanted to have anyone leave his life, never wanted to see yet again someone he loves close their eyes and turn away their smiles and know he'd never again hear their voice or touch their skin or wake up to the paper thin imprints of their kindness and their light
he hopes he can deal with saying goodnight to his wife one eve and waking up to a world without her presently.