FFXII Fic Annotations: Imprint (Vayne, Larsa, Penelo, Venat)

[mariagoner]

The trouble with writing a mystery is that sometimes half-way through telling a story... the central mystery itself mutates.

At least, this was just the sort of experience I had while I was writing Imprint, my first horror/mystery/whatever the hell this is. I knew there were certain things I wanted to play around with in this story: the relationship between two estranged brothers, appearances being deceiving, the strong becoming the weak and the weak becoming the strong, power dynamics, identity confusion, the inability to let go of crippling guilt, loss and pain... But how to write that kept shifting and changing with one set of motivations and plot conveniences after another until I ended up with... well. I ended up with whatever it is that I have here.

And in any case, here is the general outline and annotations for Imprint. Hopefully, this will explain just what the hell is going on in the story... if not quite what I was smoking when I came up with it! ;) And in any case, I'd love to hear back from the kind people who did read the fic. Does the explanation below make sense to you and adequately explain what happens?

And also, props to lady_venn, ellenthefellon, and threewalls for decoding the hidden plot of this piece. I can't help but be thrilled that far more people than I at first expected managed to understand the story here. ;)

Title: Annotations for Imprint
Fandom: FFXII
Series: Everything and Nothing
Characters/Pairings: Vayne, Larsa, Penelo, Venat, Varies
Rating: R
Summary: Stop. Rewind. Play back lost time. You always have the option of redoing all that has happened previously.
Warning: Disturbing themes, non-graphic sexual content. If this doesn't disturb you, I haven't written this properly.

A Short Outline of the Story:

-Larsa and Penelo meet when Larsa rescues her from Judge Ghis’ attention outside the Lhusu mines. But veering away from canon, Larsa decides to invite Penelo to serve as a “neutral observer” to the events occurring in Archades, to understand more of her uniquely Dalmascan views on the politics there. Flustered but curious and interested despite herself, Penelo accepts and has the time of her (low-born, as she's constantly reminded) life in Archades.

-Penelo forms a close bond with Larsa while serving as his guest, one that stems from both his chivalrous and protective crush on her and her natural sympathy for someone in his difficult situation of being both a scion of Archadia and an increasingly frustrated questioner of its ideals and activities. Partially because of her, Larsa starts understanding more about some of the less savory practices of the empire... and just how far his family has gone to perpetuate them as well. This understandably leads Larsa to start openly questioned just what he is expected to do as a man of House Solidor in the future.

-Vayne hears of this and takes measures to restrict their bond, which leads to Larsa eventually (and reluctantly) returning Penelo to Ashe’s band when he meets with them in Jahara. Until the events of the Bahamut, they remain separated, with Penelo helping Ashe and Larsa spending his time trying to futilely dissuade his brother from war-mongering.

-Penelo and Larsa reunite in the Bahamut, with Vayne meeting the girl who had apparently bewitched his brother for the first time there. Shortly afterwards, Larsa turns his blade on his brother… a fact that Vayne attributes principally to Penelo’s influence and still resents greatly.

-Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, Larsa dies, at least mentally and spiritually. He does so by rushing into the force-field protecting his brother after Vayne is felled the first time… and Vayne does not even realize it until after his second transformation and his eventual triumph over Ashe’s band. (Without Larsa protecting them with the manufacted magicite he gave and then reclaimed from Penelo, the party falls easily.) Only Penelo survives-- and this is only because she abandoned Ashe’s quest temporarily to try (and fail) to rescue Larsa while everyone else was fighting.

-After Larsa dies spiritually, what is left of Vayne’s spirit is channeled within Larsa’s body by Venat. This saves Vayne and gives him new life… but it also causes a great chasm between the two of them that has not and likely never will, seal again.

-Unable to cope with the fact that he could not protect his younger brother-- and indeed, actually was the instrument of his death-- Vayne's personality fractures as he retreats into a sort of waking and self-willed hallucination/fantasy about what went on in the Bahamut. He forces himself to believe that Larsa had actually survived, that Larsa is actually and voluntarily sharing his body and that "Larsa" often has clear ideas for what to do with his flesh.

-At times, Vayne speaks to or witnesses an imaginary Larsa within his own mind. And whenever "Larsa" seems to speak or interact with Penelo in any meaningful way, it is really Vayne acting as his brother’s intermediary in the flesh. Larsa is well and truly dead and never even manifests as a ghost in the story. But Vayne wants Larsa to be safe so badly that he hopes that, by acting out Larsa’s fantasies and desires, he is helping his brother live once more. He believes that when Larsa is actually content, Larsa emerges and becomes the dominant personality in the body again.

-As penance for taking his brother’s life, Vayne also begins to manipulate events and people around him to ensure that Larsa’s dreams for both peace and Penelo are carried out… although this comes as a terrible price to all involved. As the false Larsa and new Emperor of Archadia, Vayne marries Penelo himself, impregnates her and forces her to carry the child to term, deciding first that Larsa needs a larger family and then (as his madness grows) that Larsa deserves another chance at living in a new body after his too early death.

-However, Vayne can’t outrun the truth of what happened with his delusions forever. And as time goes by and Vayne destabilizes further and further by realizing that Larsa is truly gone from his life, Penelo (who has been suicidal but never insane-- and who knows all too well who is really victimizing her) decides to take a chance to try and free herself and her child by killing him. But unfortunately, due to her advanced pregnancy, his superior strength and the still loyal (though increasingly wary) Venat, Penelo is overpowered.

-And by the end of this piece, Penelo (who is set to die in another three days time) will give birth to a child who will be raised as a second Larsa by his father/“brother.” And heaven help that poor child if he fails to live up to Vayne's conception of him in his future years.

*

The Annotations:

Nowadays, whenever Vayne wakes, Larsa is always the first object that he sees.

[This first line of the story is actually one of the largest clues to what‘s happening in the story, actually. Larsa really is an object in this story, not a person. During this whole piece, what is left of Larsa is nothing more than an empty husk that Vayne uses in a useless attempt to assuage his own guilt over his brother‘s death.]

It always happens very quickly, early in the morning, before he has even stirred towards his morning cup of tea. It will be with him even before he rises, before his foot even encroaches on his bedroom floor, his form still draped in suffocatingly rich sheets. It is in the strange breath he stirs with, rancid with his sleep, and in the corner of his eyes, both still stirring. It is the hole Venat left in him, when she had wrenched herself away, in the small hollows to be filled with dreams. It is in the air he breathes, the water he drinks, the sweat he perspires, the dreams that haunt him. It is in all atmosphere he exists within, lucid and still wrenching.

And most of all, it is in his heart and in his lungs, where none of it can be expelled quickly.

[Because Vayne exists in Larsa‘s otherwise empty shell of a body, literally everything he does reminds him of his younger brother and his failure to protect him.]

Nowadays, when Vayne first opens his eyes, light always glimmers on the side of his lashes and Larsa’s hands stir his temple hair serenely.

[Even monsters are capable of tears.]

“Good morning, brother,” Larsa murmurs, eyes wide and lips smiling. “Tell me, of what have you last dreamed?”

[Self-explanatory.]

*

The year that he had turned thirteen, Larsa had brought in a pauper girl home from one of his first excursions abroad, from the first of his several solo journeys.

[Vayne never, ever, ever refers to Penelo by name. Either she is “the girl“ in his mind (sometimes complete with unflattering adjectives) or she is his/Larsa’s “lady wife“ in front of other people. In many ways, Vayne wants very much to erase Penelo‘s identity… if only because it‘s still painful to be reminded of how Larsa switched over from Vayne‘s side to Penelo‘s during the final battle on the Bahamut. Vayne finds it easy to blame Penelo for Larsa turning against him, rather than face the fact that it was largely a consequence of his own homicidal and warmongering actions.]

She had came from the sunless and stifled slums of Rabanastre, something that Vayne had looked upon with dismay at the time, though it had somehow excited Larsa obscurely. In fact, everything abut her seemed to stir some distant echo of pity within Vayne’s gentle hearted brother, everything from her palm of her hands (scarred with work, scabbed over) to the knobs of her (pinkish, bony) knees. Even before he had turned thirteen, before he could be said to understand baser yearnings, Larsa had spent more time than Vayne had thought possible expounding on her virtue and her sweetness and her warmth, as though such were really impressive qualities.

[Even though Vayne wants very much to believe he and his brother are, in many ways, the same person, the way they interact with Penelo very much displays their differences. Larsa sometimes fetishes Penelo‘s differences from him and overestimates how much she needs him to be her knight-in-shining armor… but for all that, he truly did love and appreciate her as a person who had her own life and mind and destiny. Vayne, on the other hand, never really sees her as much more than a human incubator and a means for quieting his own conscience by fulfilling Larsa‘s desires. The only time he sees her as a real human being worthy of respect is right before she tries to kill him and he decides to kill her.]

Larsa had tried, time and again, to make his brother understand his own fascination. But nothing within her struck Vayne as so very distinguished and even now, Vayne cannot look at her-- at her lank yellow hair or her nerveless fingers, at all the marks of her ill breeding-- without wondering why she was so loved by someone worthy of love. What had set her apart from all else in her low-grounded, hollow sphere.

But Larsa, Larsa…

He had been so excited, then and now, at the thought of caring for such a being. As though by doing so he could prove himself a man, worthy less of protection than protecting.

[Poor Larsa really, really, really wanted to be a man worthy of his lofty station. One of the ways he wanted to do so was to be a protector of someone-- especially someone as pretty and vulnerable as Penelo-- rather than constantly be protected himself.]

But now she wears Larsa's ring upon her finger now and carries Venat within, scribing. And Vayne supposes that this as much as anything else makes the girl his brother still madly loves a proper member of their family.

[In this universe, both Larsa and Penelo have had Venat in their minds. A dying Larsa saw Venat right before Venat poured his brother‘s soul into his body and Penelo constantly has Venat monitoring her now for suicide attempts.]

*

"Sometimes," Larsa begins with a murmur, "I fear I must trouble you greatly."

[Just to quickly sort out a few issues on time… Larsa truly dies at 13, is “married“ as Vayne at 14 and “has“ a child at 15. This story spans almost two years.

Also, in Larsa‘s dialogue, there are constant clues that this “Larsa“ is not really the actual Larsa but a projection of Vayne‘s mind that emphasizes all the qualities that Vayne loved about his brother. Would the real Larsa actually ever apologize for troubling, well, anybody, given how he actively sets off events in canon?]

Timidity, Vayne decides, is not a quality that suits Larsa well. In fact, Larsa found a certain assertiveness in all he did since the age of three, when he had decided that as a man of House Solidor, he should be allowed to roam wherever he pleased. Though it had led to some unexpected outcomes, like the creation of the first sister Vayne had ever had, it was a quality he appreciated in his brother most dearly. And in response, Vayne finds himself down at Larsa’s upturned face and blushing cheeks, lower than his even at almost-fourteen.

[Vayne is imagining himself back in his own body and is speaking to a hallucination here.]

"It's not like you," he notes with a small sigh, "to sound so penitent about doing such as of late."

[It isn‘t like Larsa at all, honestly.]

Larsa lowers his face at the remark, his hands moving upwards towards his still childish cheeks, hiding his flush with the heels. "Perhaps not, lord brother, at least not as usual. But can you really fault me? As of late, all of Archadia as a whole has gone through some trying ordeals and I can only conclude that I have helped in generating more worry as of late."

[For the sake of Larsa‘s memory, and because he now inhabits Larsa‘s body and is expected to act as Larsa would, Vayne has ended up suing for peace with the Rozarrian empire and giving up ambitions of conquering that territory. However, in public, he still blames Dalmascan rebels for his “elder brother Vayne‘s death“ and still has that country under his heel.]

Vayne tilts his head in inquiry and, shoulders hunching, his brother carries on. “More specifically, and to be frank, mostly around the issue of my southern guest. Though I do not regret bringing her here, she has set our lives a bit awry.”

He puts his chin in his hands, emit’s a sigh, allows a wary smile to blossom on his face. "Do you mean the way you've had me restructure Archadia to suit both your girl and your governing style? And how the former has been somehow more trouble than the latter, especially in these last few days?"

[As Emperor Larsa of the Archadian Empire, Vayne has had to camouflage his despotic nature somewhat and act more like a boy of thirteen than a experienced politician of almost 30. It hasn’t been easy, though at least Larsa was known as a political prodigy even at a youthful age.]

This time, there is no hiding the blush. It spreads across Larsa's pale skin until it came neatly down the curve of his throat, interrupted by his shirt's ruffled lines. "You put it more succinctly than I thought possible, brother. Perhaps more than I‘m comfortable with, honestly."

It takes an effort here not to sigh. "Timidity really does not become a man of House Solidor, Larsa. And stuttering suits you terribly. You‘ve pirouetted around your point long enough. What is it that really haunts you here?"

[For all the talk of haunting that recurs towards their story, Larsa actually does not come back from the dead to haunt anyone. Their own consciences do that job effectively.]

His brother shrugs slightly, still embarrassed, still pinking up. "I know you have gone through much trouble for her sake, brother. For both of our sakes."

He does not deny this because, rationally speaking, there is nothing to deny. Besides the expense of rehabilitating her-- or at least what there was of her that could be salvaged, perhaps her sanity could still be pieced together, questionable though it might be-- there was the expense of feeding her and clothing her, of ornamenting her and anointing her, of treating her as would-be royalty. He has slipped rings around barren fingers, draped necklaces about a bare collar, threaded coronets through hair that could not be more coarse or unrefined. Had done it with a smile on her face. Had done it for the sake for the sake of Larsa’s dreams.

[Vayne took the trouble of elevate Penelo to royalty in case “Larsa” ever gave him the directive to marry her. He has really just been biding his time for Larsa to reach a somewhat less scandalous age to marry at, really.]

And still she-- this young girl, she-- Larsa’s chosen-- she--

(that little bitch)

[Vayne really, really, really does not think well of Penelo.]

she persisted in acting--

[And this is because he blames her for turning Larsa against him, fears that Larsa loves her more than his own brother and hates the fact that she will not easily play along with his attempts at being Larsa. Penelo has known from the start that Larsa had died in the Bahamut and doesn’t take well to being told otherwise.]

"I shall not," Vayne says, voice even, "pretend that when I am with her, I am most at ease.”

Larsa's eyes droop slightly, sadly. Vayne's lips twitch at the sight, at what he has hoped to never encounter again, set forth before him presently.

"It is worth it though," his brother says quietly, voice soft, mouth trembling. "You do realize that in the sky fortress of Bahamut, she was the only one who tried--"

[She was the only one who tried to save Larsa. Vayne, Ashe and all the others were too preoccupied when fighting to realize that Larsa was actually dying and not merely unconscious.]

The air in Vayne’s lungs suddenly fights against him; it is astonishingly hard to breath.

[And though he tries to fight this knowledge, it rises in him spontaneously.]

"I know," he concedes gently. "I know you have reason to value well her life."

[And in turn, Vayne is forced to value it as well, which is all that keeps Penelo alive beyond Bahamut.]

"But for all that," Larsa asks gently, "lord brother, do you mind? Do you mind bearing with her presently?"

Vayne pauses for a minute, enough to ruffle fluster Larsa quietly, enough until he himself breaks into a teasing smile.

"No," he admits finally, resting his hand on Larsa's shoulder, destined to grow as broad as his own some night soon. "If only for your sake, I could bear the greatest of burdens, female or other. And surely a burden of the feminine persuasion is less hazardous than what the insurgence still offers up occasionally."

[There’s irony for you. In the end, Penelo comes far closer to killing Vayne than any of Ondore’s armies ever did.]

*

For nearly six months after the incident within the sky fortress, Vayne had seen little to nothing of his brother's pet project, which is more or less just as he prefers her being.

For almost a week after all the rest of her party had been done and disposed of, she had spent much of her time within the city's healing facilities, her thin-blooded, small-veined life prolonged by both the best of all possible medical attention and quiet insistence of the best of all hume beings. She had been moved afterwards into the palace proper, a mere three doors away from his brother‘s suites, though she had not stirred beyond her own for the first few weeks according to Vayne's ears and eyes. And even when she had, she had moved like one of the apparitions said to haunt the palace proper, a weedy looking thing with tangled hair and thin limbs and a piteous cry that was nearly haunting. Her face had never been of interest but during the few moments when Vayne had seen her, even he had to concede she looked a fright, like the ghosts of the dead said to haunt unfaithful men during the waxing moons of some eves.

[Though Vayne did not consciously see her, when he play-acted as Larsa, he visited her and hallucinated that he was his own brother in mind as well as body. Naturally, this didn’t exactly help her healing process.

Also, though Vayne makes constant references to Penelo's weak mind, she is really the only fully informed and fully sane hume being here. Venat might have been counted as such but She isn't exactly operating by hume standards here...]

Sometimes, when Vayne had breakfast in the terraces overlooking the courtyards, he could see Larsa playing with her, courting her still ardently, circling her with gentleness, persistence, warm smiles and charity.

[Again, this “Larsa” who is playing and courting and circling her is actually Vayne, with one of his fractured personalities acting as Larsa and another watching the proceedings as Vayne.]

Any other, Vayne imagines, would no doubt have been flattered to death by such condescension. By the great honor being accorded to their evenings. But the girl had generally responded by looking away, burying her face in her hands and losing herself with what passed, in Archades, for wilds. For something that soothed her dearly. Some days, Vayne had even had caused to wonder if she would think of running from them, of scattering a false map of crumbs behind her to ensure they would lose the scent of her trail, never mind their guards and power, never mind the hold they had on her now.

[At first, Penelo simply did her best to deny what was happening to her. She even made a few attempts to escape Archades, though none of them ever proceeded beyond a few minutes from the courtyards. It was disturbing enough to know nearly everyone she loved was dead. It was even worse to know that she was being courted by a madman in the form of her friend’s dead flesh.]

Still, Vayne discarded the thought instantly. Her eyes could never meet his without her flesh draining but there is still Larsa and she loves Larsa. He had seen ample proof of that already.

[Penelo nearly died trying to save Larsa’s life on the Bahamut. Though he cannot admire her otherwise, Vayne will always remember this about her.]

And there was no other home for her to go home to, anyway. There was no one who waited for her in Rabanstre any longer. A minor regiment had seen to that easily.

[Migelo, Kytes, Filo… Vayne was thorough enough to ensure that Penelo no longer had any means of outside help.]

"I wish you would speak to her," Larsa had requested one evening, too innocent to know what could happen between them if they had to suffer each other‘s presence for too long. As though loving him could bond them permanently. "She seems deaf to me now, brother. I speak and she turns her face away; I touch her and she loses her smiles. Perhaps you could show her better what is to be done? Perhaps you can teach her to once more demonstrate where all her hopes now lie?"

[Again, “Larsa’s” dialogue points out that this is not really Larsa. Larsa would never gossip about Penelo’s misdeeds to his brother because, after Jahara, Larsa knew how disturbing Vayne’s attempts at achieving “equilibrium” can become. Here, this is really just Vayne getting more and more frustrated over the fact that Penelo would not play along with the idea that Larsa still exists as something more than a human shell.]

And for the pleading hopes in Larsa’s eyes, Vayne finds himself acting swiftly.

*

As Vayne had explained, she nodded in all the right places, her eyes wide and fever-bright, her smile taut and trembling. She could not move her right hand, not when he was as such, but her left one had pressed persistently against her lips, as though to force something back that had wanted desperately to go awry. And when he had finished, she had sunk down to her knees with a rattling sigh, with damp, undistinguished cheeks.

[Penelo is crying less because Vayne has hurt her than because he has used Larsa’s body to do so. In fact, one of the few reasons Penelo doesn’t try to kill Vayne earlier is because she can’t stand the thought of hurting Larsa, even if there’s no real Larsa around to hurt here.]

And this is what his brother loved. Nothing, absolutely nothing.

[What offends Vayne so much about Larsa’s devotion to Penelo is how bourgeoisie and common Penelo is. He could have understood falling in love with Ashe, even if he always thought of her as a hot-headed harpy. She was at least a royal and distinguished harpy. But that Larsa could have loved someone so ordinary strikes him as unreal.]

But as he had turned to leave, he had heard for voice for the first time in weeks, when not raising upward into a trembling cry. In fact, as she had spoken, her voice had been eerily self-assured, almost uncanny.

There was an echo of Larsa in her, enough to make Vayne turn on his heels. Enough to understand, perhaps, what it was that his brother so admired. Had tried to communicate incoherently.

[This idea of Larsa trying and failing to communicate what he loves about Penelo actually comes straight from this quality of mercy. snippet by puella_nerdii, who this fic was dedicated to. It’s a brilliant look at Penelo, Vayne and Larsa, really.]

"He had talked about you before," the girl had said, her face blank and her mouth firm. As though resigned to something.

"Larsa?" he had said. Quickly, almost incredulously.

[Vayne is desperate to hear anything he can learn about Larsa that he didn’t know before. Anything and everything.]

“Nobody else in Archades,” she whispered, “would even bother speaking to me when I came the first time. Who else would even be willing here?”

[Though Penelo enjoyed spending time with Larsa in Archades and was very happy with the magical lore she found there, her interactions with other Archadians, especially of the blue-blooded variety, weren’t exactly… happy.]

“Larsa,” Vayne had said, and it almost hurt to say that name in front of her blanched white face. “Larsa. What did he--”

[It hurts because she’s a constant reminder that he failed Larsa when his brother needed him the most.]

"He told me you were a remarkable man,” she had interrupted, ill-mannered, as though her lord had said nothing. “He said that you were less like a brother to him than like a second father, you had raised him so dearly. He said--"

[This is blatant foreshadowing here… especially since Vayne really does become a father to a version of Larsa-- the version given by Penelo-- later.]

When she swallowed, the muscles in her throat throbbed slowly. He could see the workings of her body as though her skin was as translucent as glass, and the bones beneath it already interring.

[And yet more foreshadowing for Penelo’s end. Out of nearly all the important canon players, only Vayne survives this story.]

"He said you were like him. But I didn‘t understand, even then. I still don‘t understand why. I mean, when he was… even in the Bahamut. I‘m sure he didn‘t mean…"

[At first, Larsa was very proud of the parallels between himself and his idolized older brother. Later on, though, Larsa confided in Penelo that he was terrified of ever ending up as the sort of madman his brother had eventually been revealed as. Irony of ironies…]

Vayne had to smile here. Clearly, coherency was not so highly prized in the desert lands. “Our character. Our appearance. Our ambition. Our intelligence. Point by point, line by line, most of those who know of us would consider us consider very much of the same type.”

[This is Vayne’s deepest desire, as you can see in this drabble. Vayne has always seen Larsa as being a purer and better version of himself that should have the chance to experience all the kindnesses of the world that Vayne himself did not have. That’s what makes the fact of Larsa’s death and lost potential all the more devastating.]

“No,” she said, her hands then crossing over her body. As though already anticipating something. Anticipating and repelling. “No, really, you’re nothing alike.”

[Though Penelo is “ordinary as dirt,” she’s brave in her own way. She knows that confronting Vayne on this will merely get her hurt but she won’t play along immediately.]

Almost without knowing it, Vayne had taken a step forward. She still stood a little higher than his brother, even with her bare feet.

[Vayne notices this precisely because he’s in Larsa’s currently-still-13-years-old body.]

"Your laugh is too low," the girl continued quietly. "Day or evening, mourning or breathing… it always gives you away eventually."

[There are times where Penelo actually is tempted to just give in and pretend that Larsa is still alive and still loves her and can still protect her from the terrifying realities of Archadia. But the quality of Vayne’s laughter-- which also resurfaces in the last part of the story-- always saves her swiftly.]

*

The gouges on his arms afterwards hiss, tremble, sting. For Larsa's sake, Vayne chooses not to mind.

[I’ll leave you to figure out what happened between the two here.]

*

When Vayne had been young, over and above everything else, he had held a certain fear of the nursery, of that long corridor of airy rooms and broad ceilings that had once cradled and nurtured all the young in his family.

[Ironically enough, Vayne used to worry about being replaced in his father’s affections, just as his brothers were by him. But when Larsa actually came along, Vayne ended up embracing what he had once most feared.]

His eldest brother, being just as he was, would always grin at the very thought, throat exposed as he had laughed, as though he had never feared anything. And what precisely, he had questioned, has excited so, such morbidity, such imaginary fancy? That you shall be sent back in? Shall be supplanted? Shall be treated as we were, eventually?

[Vayne did not have a happy childhood. It was one of the reasons why he was so adamant that Larsa have a happy one of his own, really.]

But Vayne had been treated as such even before, even before Larsa had entered that nursery. And it is a point of pride to Vayne that he has long since stopped dreaming of the place, ever since he had turned seventeen.

(The walls of the place so rough against his skull. The wetness on his skin still stinging.)

[Feel free to speculate freely. Even I’m not sure what’s really going on here.]

His father had never known. The judges had always been called away. And his other brother had, Vayne recalled remotely, always looked down at his blanched white books and pretended to have never seen anything.

[But what is known is that nobody who was actually supposed to protect him could. Another reason why he prizes the idea of protecting Larsa from all possible harm so greatly.]

He had not been back in years. Not since Larsa had been young enough to be cradled therein and his brother, the only brother left to Larsa at the time, had come to visit the new being. And if Vayne had walked there afterwards, after the incident had happened and after the girl had recurred, it was for something distant more than nostalgia and something more potent than mere mercy.

And when Vayne had found himself within Larsa's old rooms, running his hands down the frame of what had once carried them both... that was when he had first realized that dealing with the girl might actually benefit his House greatly.

[And this is precisely the first time he realizes that he can somehow really regain Larsa-- or at least a reasonable facsimile of Larsa in the form of Larsa’s biological child-- again.]

*

"Brother," Larsa had asked afterwards, after their talk. "Brother, I know now why you ask me to do such. But why is it that you haven't done so yourself? Why have you never taken your own bride?"

[Again, Larsa‘s dialogue gives away that this is not Larsa. Would the real Larsa have been so blasé about marrying Penelo because his brother told him to? Larsa would probably not protest the idea so much as the execution, which didn‘t exactly give Penelo herself much say in the operations.]

So many reasons, Vayne could have said. Too many to think of, too dark to speak, too many inconsequential little bits and lies. Too much to say, too much to admit, too much that could make him seem beyond understanding. Too much to tell of what he was afraid, too much of what was unreasoning.

[Vayne is more than a little afraid than any child of his would have been an exact replica of him, without the redeeming kindness that makes Larsa so beloved.]

There was only one truth he was willing to tell and so he had said it easily.

"You were already the most perfect heir I could conceive of," Vayne said, voice lowering. "What need did I have for engendering another when I already had you at the ready?"

[Vayne has never had plans to have a heir other than Larsa. Even this new heir will merely be Larsa in another form for him.]

*

The wedding was quiet, private and beautifully embellished, though it had not anything of the pomp that the marriage of the heir to the greatest throne of Ivalice would held if bride involved therein still had some measure of sanity. But despite the pains towards discretion that had been taken, some prominent brows had still been raised when the announcement had been made. And when Vayne is willing to face the truth, he understands why quite clearly.

[Archadia is so class stratified that everyone‘s eyebrows raises to the ceiling at the thought of the Emperor of Archadia marrying a nobody like Penelo. But after the idea of a Rozarrian bride is rejected due to a shaky peace with Rozarria and after the idea of a high-born Archadian wife is seen as redundant thanks to House Solidor’s hegemony, a base-born Dalmascan girl who is raised to first lady of her land thanks to her ties with the late Lady Ashe isn’t really an outlandish conclusion…]

Though the laws of Archadia allowed its citizens to marry young, it was not every day that a young lord of only fourteen took in an older, foreign and (worst of all) untitled wife. Had she only fortune or heritage or even some beauty, it all could have been passed more easily.

[But of course, though Vayne does his best to make Penelo seem like a legitimate Empress, doubts still linger because of the haste of her being crowned the last noble left in Dalmasca. Of course, this becomes a moot point after she is dead.]

But there was no one who loved the groom better, at least from outside his own family. And though Vayne thought nothing well of her, he knew she loved Larsa and loved him well, even to point of sacrificing everything. mind. No other woman, no matter how high bred, could hold so dearly hold Larsa’s life in her hands. And no other who could make him so happy.

[Actually, this really is the objective truth… at least in this story.]

In all, as long as Vayne did not think of her lineage too often, there really was no better possible bride to keep his brother at ease.

She was docile enough at the ceremony, though whether this was more because of her joy or Vayne's own grip on her arm remained a little in doubt to his being. But she had been obedient in nodding in all the right places, had walked down the aisle with something like dignity, had not even protested when Vayne had informed her that he would be present to see her do her first marital duty.

[Present, of course, both as “Larsa“ losing his virginity to his new wife and as Vayne inspecting the proceedings to make sure everything goes “smoothly.”

…This is probably the most disturbing single paragraph in this entire story, isn’t it?

Incidentally, when I first posted this story, the “bride-groom“ was just thirteen. Then I realized this was skirting a liiiiitle too closely to things I never had an ambition to write so I bumped Larsa‘s age up by a year. Let‘s say Penelo took an unexpectedly long time to recover into a state where she was stable enough to be seen in public and leave it at that.]

Her eyes had been bright as she had heard him. Bright enough, almost, for tears. But she had not quite cried.

She was a better wife for the Solidor than he had expected. Even then, she had been biding her time, trying to peer through his armor intently.

[True enough. Penelo is doing her best to study Vayne, understand how he ticks… and then dissemble him completely.]

And when she had stripped herself of her wedding dress before them, she had done so without a word. As though she had expected this already.

[I will not write this scene out. I will not. No. Really!]

*

When Larsa had been younger and the Draklor labs still productive, Vayne had once carried home a toy that he thought suitable for a boy his brother's age and yet curious enough to suit his strange needs.

Even in his youngest years, Larsa had been hard to please when it came to toys and dolls and any other possible pretty playthings. It was never enough merely to hand his brother a contraption; Larsa needed to know its providence and its probable activities, its special secrets and possible mysteries, before he would take to anything of a kind. It had exasperated Vayne often enough in the past to anticipate it with everything he had gifted his brother from age six and onwards.

[As seen in canon, Larsa can be curious to the point of being absolutely exasperating.]

Nowadays, of course, Larsa had the girl to entertain himself with, however much the concept made his older brother ill at ease. But if Vayne closes his eyes, he can picture the device, still grasped within his brother's chubby, childish hands, still fascinating him completely.

[Again, Vayne makes a point of dehumanizing Penelo whenever possible, seeing her as less a person than a plaything.]

There had (he remembered) been a tape within the device, a tape that had done nothing but hold a melody of some sort, the sort of thing sung by a woman who always lingered briefly. And when Larsa had hunched over and pressed the buttons of the thing, the voice would play, over and over again-- or at least, until one of the contraption’s buttons had broken and Vayne had had promise Larsa that he would ask Dr. Cid to fix it and dithered so much on doing so that Larsa had given up eventually.

Even then, Larsa had known enough not to mourn about what couldn't be. And even now, Vayne can remember what had delighted his brother so dearly.

[Vayne, by the way, has never learned Larsa‘s lesson. He can‘t stop mourning what can no longer be.]

Stop. Rewind. Play back lost time.

The rhythm of it is oddly soothing.

[And this, by the way, is precisely what Vayne is trying to do with Larsa‘s life in this piece.]

*

The girl used to spend more of her time with his brother, Vayne remembers that much.

When Larsa had first brought her to Archades, she had been a nuisance of the highest order, distracting Larsa from all his duties, treating him as she might any other. Instead of acting as his station demanded, he had spent vast swatches of his time with her, acting as though the fate of Archadia would not one day hang on his thing shoulders. Vayne himself had done his best to reduce the hours Larsa spent in her presence, even from the farthest corners of Rabanastre. But still his brother had persisted in being her shadow, of understanding and attending to her.

[Larsa actually enjoyed being with Penelo, and with pretending to be an almost normal person. One of the things that he most loved about Penelo was that she would always inevitably slip back into thinking of him as Larsa-my-crazy-little-friend instead of Lord-Larsa-the-heir-of-Archadia. That meant the world to him, really.]

Now, though, Vayne looks back and wonders if it was really such a terrible thing that she had done. If stopping her was an error he had committed. If Larsa had been happy for once, with whatever he had done with her.

[Again, Vayne is trying to make amends both for destroying his brother‘s life and cutting short his happiness earlier by doing whatever is possible to extend it here.]

It should not matter now, though. Vayne has done his best to repent, to give his brother both a fairy tale and a role.

But the girl, the girl… she refuses to understand, to realize the wrongs being made right. And short of dissecting her and examining what her slowly swelling form held, Vayne has no way to understand why either.

[Penelo keeps resisting until she realizes that she‘s pregnant almost six months into her sham marriage. Then she has to submerge her own will to struggle-- at least temporarily-- for the sake of understanding how to save both herself and her eventual baby.]

*

Venat no longer stays with him for very often now.

She had been sent to the girl’s mind very early on, to cease any more attempts the girl might have made at slashing her wrists or sinking into the bath or (this had been the last and most desperate yet) biting her tongue out entirely. But it has been weeks and weeks and weeks since the girl has given up on those attempts, since she had learned of what was impending. And it has been still longer since Vayne has felt the pulse of Her senses within his flesh or felt the membrane of Her presence seep into his own mind, as ready to spread within.

[Penelo made a few early suicide attempts, half out of despair and half out of a desire to test how far Vayne could control her. And here, you can see how strained the relationship between Venat and Vayne has become after Vayne was transferred into Larsa‘s body by Venat. She managed to save him but doomed Larsa in the doing… Not that Vayne will consciously recall that. But it shows up beneath the surface of their interactions and the rift between them is widening.]

He cannot help but be sour at the thought of a society of obstinate women folk assembling against the men still left to House Solidor, however absurd the notion seems.

[Penelo/Venat OTP? Their interactions together-- and what Penelo learned of House Solidor from Venat-- were… interesting…]

It all comes to a head one evening in the spring, a few months before Larsa‘s child is said to be born in the summer time. "I do realize,” Vayne finds himself saying to Her, almost bitterly, “that the mind of a woman so fitfully ripening must be of interest to you, you who can never bear any seed. I understand, I allow for allowances, I make room for your interests clearly. But what compels you to remain within her so constant of an hour and never answer my pleas either?”

[See above. And Venat actually is rather fascinated by the unformed thoughts of a pregnant woman‘s hume offspring…]

There is a long silence, the space of three heart beats. Once, when Larsa had been seven and learning human anatomy, Vayne had let his brother press a flushed ear to his chest, as though to feel the workings of the organ that could, even then, beat on command for his being.

"I can hear it, brother," Larsa had whispered, eyes wide and wondrous. "Quiet but steady. I can hear it all so clearly."

[As you can see, as the months go past, Larsa starts interacting with Vayne less and less, because his delusions have been waning in effectiveness. Vayne can no longer keep pretending Larsa really is still within him and this is shattering his poise thoroughly.]

Even gods, Venat says in the here and now, are entitled their moments of defeat.

*

Barring disembowelment, there is always conversation. For his brother’s sake, Vayne tries repeatedly.

"Do you still expect to be rescued someday?" Vayne asks the girl one night, one hand tucked under his chin, another one dreaming upon his knees.

[A pose he pulls off in the Rabanastran palace once and something that always helps Penelo tell who she‘s “speaking“ to currently.]

"I can't even begin to imagine," she replies after a second of hesitation, "why you'd ask me such a thing. Or why you‘d even try to care to know it either."

There is a knitting needle in her hand and a half-done sample in what is left of her lap. She is, to his surprise, domesticating.

[Or pretending too, really. Even if she does snap at times from the pressure of having to do so constantly.]

“You are my sister,” Vayne says, both because it is true and because he wishes to needle her ever so slightly. He knows precisely what she thinks of her position in his life, of her new-found role in Archades. “You have already married my brother. You do not feel as though the idea of your being kidnapped or spirited away by what you ought to have forgotten already would bother me?”

[It really would. But mostly because it would be so much harder to play-act as Larsa and bring him back to “life“ if the object of so much of Larsa‘s desires were displaced.]

Her bloodless eyes lower of their own accord but then snap back up to meet him. What they hold, he cannot read.

[Penelo never looks away when he looks right at her. It‘s one of the things that help her keep her sanity. And it‘s also a sign that she‘s stronger than she looks, even if she‘s left off openly rebelling.]

"Rescue?" the girl says at last, hands clenched on her needles. "There's no use doing any fantasizing. There's no one in Archades even left to--"

*

A space of 3... 6... 12 separate heart beats. And three stories later, Larsa had fallen asleep and Vayne had let him dream the eve away in his bed, curled up and softly snoring.

[Larsa was all snores and elbows when he slept. It wasn‘t particularly comfortable to be near but neither Vayne nor Penelo minded so badly.]

*

Afterwards, Vayne pretends to believe that she had said that there was no one in Archades left to rescue her.

[Both Vayne and Larsa, actually, would expected Penelo to serve as a fairy tale damsel in distress and wait for someone to rescue her, as Larsa did in the Lhusu mines.]

And it was all true. The princess and the pirate, the guardian and the viera, the young boy nipping at all their feet...

It made sense. They were all dead and gone, buried beneath innumerable piles of rust and stardust. Of them, there was left nothing. And there was no one else in her world that would dare move against him, that would come into the heart of his power and snatch away one-- two-- of his own family.

[Two because Penelo is now pregnant and carrying his new heir. And there really is nobody else that would help her. Penelo actually went so far as to ask Zargabaath to run away with her or help her defeat “Larsa”/Vayne… but outside of a few token protests for her comfort, he ended up doing nothing.]

It made sense, that first meaning.

And it is only later, when he stares at a curious new stain upon his glove, that he realizes that what she had really meant was that there was no one left in Archades worth rescuing.

[But really, what Penelo wants more than anything is to have someone to keep fighting for, besides her own life. If Larsa had still existed, she would have fought for him. But that is just what having an impending child does for her, honestly.]

*

There are places, now, that the girl will venture, that Vayne refuses to pass entirely.

[Penelo is stronger than she looks, and Vayne more weak than he first appears.]

Slowly, Vayne finds himself testing the boundaries of the control he has opposed on her, testing when precisely to rein in her leash. She has been surprisingly stable during the last few months, since the news of what was impending. She talks less and eats more and spends much of her time within her room, quietly reading and knitting. There is little enough of the wanton Vayne had known before, with even her features having been distorted with the fine living in his sphere, turning softer, whiter, more fleshy. If Larsa had protested, Vayne would have been concerned, but his brother seemed to approve of all the changes in his wife presently.

[Again, this is a distorted reflection of Larsa as Vayne would have him be, rather than what he had truly been. The real Larsa would have been horrified at the way Penelo seems to have her identity and her agency stripped from her completely.]

"She looks lovelier and lovelier every time I see her," Larsa says, and blushes at the comment quickly.

[Actually, Larsa at fourteen would have been somewhat terrified at the thought of a pregnant wife. He certainly wouldn‘t find it very alluring.]

It makes sense, of course. Fairy tale prizes were never hellions who hid shards of glass or screamed themselves hoarse or threw themselves at their would-be-brothers with their thighs and nails and teeth. She was so much easier to deal with when she had given all of that up, when she had become the wife Larsa needed her to be.

[Or at least when she pretended to be.]

She is so docile, in fact, that merely letting her out into the grounds, accompanied by a guard or two, seems as though to cost nothing. Even if he could not understand why she'd go there so often, only to come back with petals in her hair and dirt on her feet. How she could stand the sight of the thing.

[What Penelo visits and what Vayne cannot is “Vayne‘s“ grave site. Going there makes her feel surprisingly calm but only reminds him of his inadequacies.]

The only hitch is those times when Zargabaath, who reports on her most, looks as though ready to recommend doing the same to his lord. Looks ready to offer some pity.

[Zargabaath does not act, he reacts. And furthermore, he is the last of the Magisters-- Gabranth having been executed after he failed to protect Larsa sufficiently-- and he has no concrete idea that the new Emperor Larsa is not actually Larsa. Which is more or less why he spends little to no time in this actual story.]

And those are the times in which Vayne wonders if perhaps the ranks of the Judge Magisters, decimated though it might be after Gabranth‘s execution, could use still yet more pruning.

[I‘m not sure if Zargabaath survives this, actually. I hope he does. He just might or might not be the last sane man left in Archades.]

*

Sometimes, when Vayne thought his heart could stand it, he could recall with ridiculous clarity the last time his brother had loved him completely.

[Again, as time goes by, Vayne destabilizes by being less and less able to connect to his hallucination of his brother and more time dwelling in actual memories.]

He had been, perhaps, twenty five, and his brother a young boy of less than ten years. He had been in his own rooms and practicing in front of his own mirrors, hands gracefully arching through the air, the speech in his mind already bubbling. And in another moment, he had looked at his own reflection and realized the duplicate beside him, hands floating and head dipping, copying him so closely. And then he had smiled and then Larsa had beamed and the rest of the night had been spent demonstrating the art of fascinating a crowd to his brother, till he as well could do so exactly.

[Larsa is both Vayne‘s other half and his better half. This is why losing Larsa devastates him completely.]

And that had the first time he had realized who Larsa was and why he meant the world and why he himself could do anything for his brother, his child, all that was left of his family. The boy who had once heard the beat of his brother’s heart, who had mimicked his movements in the mirror with pride, who had curled up against him in the cool of the night and demanded stories of princes and noble quests, of enchantments and helpless maidens dreaming. This stubborn little wisp of a boy who had gone where he pleased, who had asked endless questions and mimicked his every movement, who had lived always on his own two feet.

[This paragraph is virtually a memoriam to the real Larsa. I‘m surprised that the very last line didn‘t give away the fact that Larsa is dead to more people.]

“Do you still love me, Larsa?” he asks ever night. Eyes wide awake. Arms open. Reaching out to something and nothing.

“Do you still love me despite what I’ve done? Despite how I’ve ruined everything?”

[I think the answer to that might be no, actually. Larsa loves deeply but not necessarily unconditionally. Vayne, on the other hand, loves that way.]

There was no answer for him at times. And Vayne pretends that he is surprised and notes that he fails to be so completely.

[Again, Vayne is coming closer and closer to understanding that Larsa is actually dead, which is something that would break him completely…]

*

On the last night together, his brother's bride comes to him for a change, decked out in the best of her finery.

[Penelo has never approached Vayne before; he was always the initiator in their encounters together. She only finds him now to set up what she wrongly believes to be his death scene.]

Her footsteps strike Vayne as odd even before he sees her proper; she has never approached him before, though her eyes had never dropped from his whenever he caused them to meet. But tonight she comes and she wears the dress she wore on her first night with Larsa, the one he had wrapped himself against eagerly. There are roses from the orchard garlanding her lank hair and pearls twined around her hands and feet. She is not beautiful but she is graceful… and when she approaches him, she sounds of cathedral bells, of a thousand little cacophonies.

She is not beautiful and has never been so-- especially not with her form so distorted with a Solidor in the making. But she does not care and she knows enough of him by now to know that he will not care and there is something in her boldness that strikes him as strange, that makes her almost exciting.

[The only time Vayne ever considers Penelo worth of respect is also the moment where he realizes that she is too dangerous to go on living after her child’s birth.]

And when she presses herself to him, she smells of crushed flowers and feels like a bird, small bones easily broken and still mending.

[Penelo‘s original outfit in the game had leather wings on her back. The bird metaphor, therefore, has always fit her beautifully.]

"Oh," she says with delicate precision. "Oh, how I've missed you so much, love. You haven't been in my bed for weeks."

[She‘s speaking to the “Larsa“ personality within Vayne here, which she knows has always allured Vayne in the past before, though she was usually too disgusted to make use of it.]

And he cannot help but bend to her, cannot help but go down before her on his knees. As though he were smaller than as he really was, as though he was before her transmuting.

[And Vayne is desperate enough to believe Larsa still lives in some way within him that he plays along.]

"Oh," she says, and surely she has done this a hundred times before, her lips against his forehead, his chest stirring against her ripe beauty. "Oh, we haven't done this in so long." And it is easy and simple and unremarkable and when the pain first begins, it seems almost not worth noting.

"Oh, I won't let you do this to me anymore,” she whispers, and the hem of her dress is being speckled with his blood. As though she had planned this entirely. “I won’t let you do this to any of us anymore. To his memory. To my baby.”

[She has planned this out. And “his memory“ is, of course, “Larsa‘s memory“-- because Penelo can‘t help but think that by pretending to be Larsa, Vayne is ruining all of her better memories of someone she truly loved as a friend in these past years.]

And that is when Vayne realizes that there is a knife in between her careworn hands.

A knife. Long. Practical. Sharp. And even brighter than her unshed tears.

*

She must have been planning this for months, Vayne realizes. Weeks and weeks, months and months, edging close to a year. So many hours spent in the dead of the night, trying and planning and dreaming. Forcing herself to be a perfect wife, making herself model a proper Solidor bride, being everything that he and Larsa had expected her to be. All biding for the time when he has his guard lowered, when she had been able to charm someone to garner the weapon at hand, when she knows he cannot kill her quickly.

She is more a Solidor than he had previously given her credit for.

[Vayne cannot be impressed by kindness or love but he can be impressed by cunning. And though Penelo is not the genius he is, she can marshal patience and stealth nearly as well as anybody.]

And still, he overpowers her easily.

[In my first draft, Penelo actually manages to kill him, leaving him to hallucinate being reunited with Larsa as he is dying. But I scrapped that as being much too unrealistic and cliché. Besides, horror fiction is always so much more memorable when it has a terrible end…]

Perhaps she could have won if the circumstances had been different. If he had not been who he was. If Venat had been loyal even now. If she had not been slowed down by the babe within her swollen body.

If. And only if. Perhaps she could have succeeded. But he wrests her weapon from her desperate hands easily and the wounds that she inflicts, though deep, are nothing to one of Venat’s abilities.

[Why didn‘t Venat warn Vayne of Penelo‘s plans before? Because She honestly thought that seeing Penelo as a danger would wake Vayne up to understanding why he couldn‘t pretend that Larsa still existed within him anymore. And that actually does end up being the case…]

And when she is finally down on her knees, for a change, Vayne sees in her eyes actual fear.

“What will you do?” she says, bluffing and shuddering, her white body a corpusclent heap. “What can you do, really? You’ve done all you can to me and more. I no longer fear you in anything.”

[Penelo is lying here. She still plenty fears what he could do and absolutely does not want to die-- not when her child gives her another reason to go on, anyway. And not when the thought of her helpless son or daughter in Vayne‘s hands terrifies her completely.]

“No,” he finds himself saying. “No you don’t. And nor should you. There are far worse beings here.”

He bent his head down and his lips met hers one last time. The blood on her mouth tasted sweet.

[Another clue that Vayne has been playacting as Larsa and sharing Larsa‘s body. Why would Vayne ever kiss her otherwise…?]

“Do you want to know what fear really means, sister? Or perhaps you know already? It’s when you truly want to forget something. Want to erase it from the world. But you can’t, no matter what you try. It simply follows you wherever you go. There is no possible release.”

[This is a modified quote taken from the (literally) bloody excellent Korean horror movie Tale of Two Sisters, an amazing piece of art that also deals with issues of multiple identities, fractured personalities, desperate hallucinations and never-ending guilt. And as this quote shows, Vayne really cannot get away from his guilt completely, no matter what he does. Even when he decides to switch from having Larsa “dwell” inside him to resurrecting him as his own son, problems will crop up eventually…

The actual quote is as follows:

“Do you know what's really scary? You want to forget something. Totally wipe it off your mind. But you never can. It can't go away, you see. And... and it follows you around like a ghost.”]

And she is weeping now, the noise low and constant, the tears on her bloodless cheeks haunting. Vayne wonders if it will be possible to rid her of them before the midwives come to work, to wring her dry completely.

"What will you do with me after the birth?" the girl asks. He has taken pains not to hurt her yet, but she looks perilously close to retching.

Her belly is a living weight beneath her bare, firm breasts. And despite himself, Vayne finds himself smiling.

"You shan't be needed for long," Vayne reminds her, almost kindly, although his hands still hold her collared leash. "If you wish to end this, you will be allowed to do so. In fact, I will attend to you personally."

[Penelo dies three days after she gives birth to a son. Vayne at least ensures that it is a dignified one, as befitting a true mother of her country.]

And surely it is not his fault when this strange creature starts to crawl away, limbs already convulsing.

[If you‘ve seen Tale of Two Sisters-- or nearly any asian horror movie in the last few years involving a female ghost-- you‘ll understand where I found this piece of imagery.]

*

And soon, it is time enough for the midwives to come calling, ringing the halls of the thousand year palace with the bird song of their maternal cooing.

Soon, Vayne knows, soon they will come and ask him to give his blessing. As Solidor men have done since time memorial, he will be expected to inspect the child and pronounce it his, to ensure his crown’s safe passing. He will raise it in his arms and beam with paternal pride and introduce him to all in the empire swiftly. And most crucially, he will see to his son‘s nomenclature proper, memorializing and disposing of his mother and ensuring not even a hint of bastardy.

[This is terribly important to Vayne, since the real Larsa was a bastard and this used to upset him terribly.]

The future will be set for this new one, this old one. All is finally as it should be.

And he already has the perfect name for the child, of course. Has known it for months now, actually.

[It‘s Vayne, actually. Vayne Penelo Solidor. But he is still Larsa in spirit and his father/”brother” will do his best to see that this new one matches up to his predecessor completely.]

*

"I shall be with you soon," Larsa promises, and begins to laugh.

Softly. Very softly.

[Aaaaand this harkens back to the first time Penelo and Vayne directly speak in this story. Penelo notes that Vayne‘s laugh is much too soft to be mistaken for Larsa, even if Vayne now has control over Larsa‘s body. And Larsa‘s laugh and promise here both shows that Vayne expects Larsa to be returned to him in the form of Penelo‘s son… and also that Larsa has been Vayne all this time, actually.]