& a bit more.
I kept trying to respond to this one review and fanfictiondotnet kept glitching, so yeah. When Vayne had his strange manner of speaking in the previous chapter, that was other!Vayne, or at least the nascent other!Vayne.
Just like Vayne made a lot of progress towards normalcy between his birth and game time, the other!Vayne, whose job it was to figure that out, made a lot of progress towards being/sounding normal between then and when we see him in the game. He was meant to sound like he was trying to grasp for meaning & not sound quite human about it in the last chapter.
In any case, two steps forward, one step back...
-
It wasn't that Vayne had suddenly started acting differently. It was that he wasn't.
He wasn't coming over to Sulpher and asking if he had any wishes (Sulpher had wished that he would ask instead of just reading Sulpher's mind/will/whatever it was). He wasn't waiting for Sulpher to make every decision, but doing things like pulling open a random book or poking at the remains of the garden when he didn't have anything to do. It wasn't that he had suddenly gained the ability to be interested in things, or hobbies, but he seemed to be learning how to make his own entertainment.
Vayne wasn't acting differently. He was acting normal, and it was a huge relief.
He wasn't pestering Sulpher while trying not to because he needed something to do all the time. He wasn't suddenly becoming empty-eyed and remembering. He wasn't granting wishes.
If there were any nearby towns that hadn't heard the rumors of the demon child by now Sulpher would have tried taking him there, he was so improved. He'd even started eating without Sulpher having to remind him!
"I don't want fish again, but I'm hungry." Vayne grimaced, sitting on the bank, when Sulpher asked about it.
He'd thought it was a pity that Vayne hadn't gained the ability to want things yet. And of course if he was able to want anything, it would be fish.
It didn't occur to him to wonder why a mana would be hungry for normal food when normal mana were incapable of eating. It didn't occur to him that the amount Vayne was eating was far too much: Theofratus had been eating far too little those last few years, and growing kits, and probably boys as well, ate more.
When Vayne clutched a bloated stomach, pained and almost crying because he was so hungry he hurt and needed Sulpher to fix it, please, Sulpher wasted precious hours having Vayne try potion after potion, panic starting to claw at his own stomach.
It wasn't until a vial dropped through Vayne's hand to shatter on the floor and they both stared as the hand wavered between solidity and mist that Sulpher realized this wasn't a disease. Hunger.
Vayne turned to him, horrified, the familiar plea about to pass his lips, and Sulpher's back arched and he hissed, full of anger with himself, for Vayne to, "Don't worry me like this! You need to grant wishes to survive, so grant at least that many! I wish for you to recover!"
He knew he was right when Vayne's eyes grew blank, when he began to hover again as he hadn't since the last time Vayne had granted his wishes. "So my survival is important?"
Sulpher would have sputtered if that hadn't been undignified. Not that his dignity wasn't already lost. He would have to do a lot of grooming after his hair had stuck on end like that. "No cat would need to ask that question."
"I shouldn't grant wishes unless it's important. You wanted me to learn that, but you also wanted me to stay with you. Right, I can't stay with you if I die." Like Theofratus. Vayne looked almost sheepish, still-pale and a little frazzled with the stress of trying to understand what wishes were to mortals. Or to people who weren't the mana of wishes - surely other mana didn't always get what they wanted. "I'm sorry."
Sulpher flopped down on the ground, now that Vayne was going to try to be sensible. "I didn't raise you all this time just for you to starve. If you need to do what I want you to, then do so. If you have to use your powers," perhaps it was like exercise, important to health, "then do so."
"You want me to think of my own life and my own needs as important. That's a lot easier than figuring out what I want." Necessities were necessities, it wasn't asking him to pick from infinity.
It wasn't that Vayne wasn't interested in Theofratus' books or the plants in the forest or anything, it was that he was equally interested in just about everything. He didn't seem to have preferences.
Perhaps even his dislike of death was that death meant that people couldn't work to attain their wishes anymore, and Vayne was, as near as Sulpher could tell, people's wishes. So a death would diminish Vayne, perhaps?
That made it not an ethical choice, a wish for people to live, but a fact of his existence.
Sulpher had thought Vayne understood that death was bad, had seen that as a starting point in getting Vayne to understand what it was to want things, but if Vayne didn't even intrinsically prefer himself to be alive?
Recently, the 'normal' Vayne hadn't been able to tell what Sulpher was thinking when it came to things he... didn't remember? If Vayne hadn't remembered that hunger meant he needed to grant a wish that would explain how this had happened.
"You don't want me to suffer, Sulpher. So I don't either." It was clear he was saying this to comfort Sulpher (who wanted to be comforted right now), but at least that was one good thing. "I'll try to figure out what you want me to, how to act human without being discovered."
Sulpher sighed, tail lashing. "If you are in danger again, or hungry, or... I may wish for you to need me less, but that doesn't mean I wish for you to suffer," as Vayne had put it. "Do you need me to wish you to do something else."
"I'm fine, for now. And changing myself so that I can understand is a big wish. I'll do my best." So don't worry.
Did Vayne not want Sulpher to worry because Vayne cared or because Sulpher didn't want to worry? Or was it both, and Vayne simply couldn't tell the difference yet?
Sulpher didn't know, but he tried to tell himself that at least knowing more about the problem was progress (something Theofratus had said), as Vayne returned to his best imitation of normal.
Vayne was never going to be normal. Sulpher should have known something was wrong when he had seemed that way instead of just viewing it as a relief and a sign he could take a vacation from responsibility.
Vayne was still such a kitten, and if he was willing to starve to death to please Sulpher there was still a lot of work to be done. Of course Vayne would never achieve a cat's level of independence and self-respect, but if what made Vayne happy and healthy was serving others, then Sulpher would have to live with that. After all, he wouldn't have complained if Theofratus' priorities had been a bit straighter.
Vayne might be such a kitten, but he would never be able to become a cat, poor deprived creature. Sulpher just had to accept that he was a lesser being, as cats had put up with humans for eons, and do his best, as a cat, to ensure that Vayne could be happy despite this handicap.
A pity that even if he wished that Vayne would turn into a cat he would still be a mana.
Or could Vayne change his own nature, own species?
That would have been the easy solution to Sulpher's problems, but forcing another to go against nature? Humans might call cats selfish, but he would never allow Vayne to think that he had to stop being himself to please Sulpher.
He would never allow Vayne to do that. What use was happiness if you were no longer you to be happy? If that happened the Vayne he had raised would be as dead as Theofratus.
Still, he knew that he would even stay by that new soul in memory of this one, just like he was helping Vayne, at least in part, in memory of the person Theofratus had once been.
-
This sets up game-Vayne's approach to wishes, where he does what other people want him to (Sulpher, Flay...) and tries to grant their wishes/make them come true (like Roxis' wish for a mana), but never draws on his powers unless lives are on the line (or a tree's life, at least).
I might have this continue into the post/endgame fic idea I had, yet another alternate ending & a better one. Or I might end this on the same downer note as the game, where Vayne ceases to be himself, kills his true self in fact, becoming only the delusion.
The game's ending is a bit similar to Kiki's Delivery Service's. Although at least Kiki... Well, that's spoilers.
