farina | Vita | Tales of Symphonia

Title: Vita
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Words: 4,112 words
Summary: Half-elves can now attend formal schools as well as teach in them. They can join the church, attend the theater, walk into any medical facility and receive treatment, and practice medicine. But they cannot marry humans.
Pairing/Character: Regal/Raine, Zelos gets some lines too.
Warnings: Fantasy racism, procreative sex, and literal healing sex.
Rating: Explicit
Genre: Oops!All Tenderness. This skews heavily into romance and longing and is ultimately a happy story. You're welcome.

Notes:

Link to the podfic: here!

Inspiration pulled heavily from I Fell in Love Again Last Night. I very nearly named this story after the song.

These lines mess me up the most:

I fell in love again last night
When you kissed me the way you've always done
Like the first time you were with me and my heart just came undone

The whole mana/vita thing is pulled from a meta I wrote: Boltzman's Theory of Vitality (and The Manavita Effect).

Regarding Regal's apartment in Meltokio: I go to this option so often because it feels plausible. I'm sure he spends quite a bit of time there.

Half-elves and humans not being able to marry is just something I made up for this story. That said, I think it's probably more likely to be canon than not, especially in Tethe'alla.

The incident in Flanoir was a hate crime and Raine was the intended target. This could be its own story, though in here it's just a mention and serves to explain her chronically poor health.

Aisha and Harley are me just making stuff up. I always sorta just...wondered about them, I think. I could have just as easily gone with Linar and Harley, but Linar seems to have a crush on Raine.

Viscount Alaric is from Break Open the Sky. He's a minor character who will have a bigger role in Swallow the Ground. He supports half-elf rights (not always for the right reason) and has some sway with the other minor nobles.

Regal's father: I pulled this from the drama CD, at least to the degree that he bought votes and threatened people to get what he wanted. I think in Regal's current situation it would be hard not to feel despair at how, while things are changing, the change moves slowly. He could certainly buy more votes. But he is too honest a man to stoop that low, and it's one of the reasons Raine loves him.

Thaddeus is a name I always give to the most asshole male character I can find. It's a long story. Just know Regal's father fits the bill best in this fandom, so it's the name I'll use. He would definitely hate Raine.

Regal's anger about his mother is a headcanon I have that I still haven't managed to write into anything. I imagine she died while Regal was away at school, and all he got from his father was a short letter saying she was dead. He hates that he was forced away from her and to school, but he has never processed his anger and grief over the way his father handled his mother's death—as if it was an unimportant little footnote, hardly worthy of recognition.

Regal's father being a count. This is also a headcanon. While Regal was granted the title of Duke (or Grand Duke—the game low-key hints at this being the actual truth), I find it hard to believe the nobility wouldn't all hate him vehemently if he'd risen from nothing to the highest noble rank. The fact that the Bryant family has been wealthy more than 800 years (even before Tethe'alla was flourishing!) tells me they've always been a noble family, and the rise from count to duke isn't a large leap (even if the title is still deeply meaningful).

Procreative sex: I don't think these are characters that would moan about making babies. Like, it's very hard for me to picture Regal talking about how he's going to impregnate Raine while he's fucking her, even if getting her pregnant is what he's aiming for. That is especially true in this story, where there's a sort of sadness about even trying for a child. That said, they do try, so I had to tag it, even though it's maybe not what anyone expected when they saw the tag.

Also, the incident in Flanoir might have made her incapable of conceiving, though neither of them let themselves think about it at this point in the story.

I don't even know how to bring this topic up, but I do want to talk a little bit about the importance of marriage to these characters. I think if the person reading this story is of a marginalized group, they don't need to have this explained. Society has been shit for so long. Interracial marriage wasn't legal in the USA until 1967. Same-sex couples were not granted full marriage equality until 2015. And even now, disabled folks face discrimination and do not have equal rights, as they often lose their right to assistance the moment they marry.

These characters could live together and they could have children together, but we don't know how the Tales of Symphonia society will treat that behavior. If the Lezareno Company functions like a company (and according to the drama CD, it does), the board could simply remove him as president. Then what happens to him? What happens to the world when the most influential person in it can't exert any influence?

It's also important to note that they want marriage because they want the security marriage offers. Raine is likely to outlive Regal, and he wants to ensure that she, and any children he has with her, will be taken care of when he dies. If they simply live together and he dies, she (and any children) lose everything.

Marriage is a HUGE deal to them.

Healing!Sex. Uh, look. The way Regal's healing works in-game (the closer the target, the more he is able to heal) forced my hand. This concept was begging to be written and I'm surprised I haven't even seen it mentioned before.

Jokes aside, this is straight up a kink for them, and especially for Raine. There might be something to be said here for the healer wanting to be healed by someone else, but I was mostly just thinking about how she probably has a lot of violence directed at her, and sex with someone she loves and trusts while those hurts are healed is just...very emotionally and physically gratifying for her. (At least if they're having sex when he heals her, she gets pain and then pleasure, but if the healing is standalone she only gets the pain...which she's already experienced in sustaining the injury in the first place.)

Also, the whole ejaculation + release of vita into her thing just seemed like a way to tie the healing sex in with the fact that they are trying for a baby.

As to what I imagine the transfer of vita would feel like, I pretty much explained it in the story. Generally it just feels good in the way, say, a massage can feel good. But when it comes at certain times or from certain people, or there are emotions involved, or, you know, it comes along with sexual gratification, it can feel like a lot more.

I also had a small thought here that even if she doesn't have physical injuries, he can still transfer vita to her to help boost her energy levels and that will make her feel better, too, albeit in a slightly different way.

I also just thought it would be kind of funny that they could discover it by accident. I imagine she had her arm in that sling and refused help but he decided to help anyway when she wouldn't have the chance to argue about it lmao. Oops, new kink unlocked.

As to the sex position itself, it's just a side-by-side. If he's trying to heal her while he makes love to her, he'd have to choose something that wouldn't require too much thought or focus from him. This one is a good compromise where she can let him do the work at first, and then participate later when she's feeling better and they both want to get off.

I have no defense for "darling" as a pet name. I think he might also call her "dear" or "dearest" sometimes.

Raine calls Presea "dear" (affectionate) and Sheena "dear" (derogatory) in-game but she doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would be super into having pet names for her partner or being called by one.

Every now and then, though...she might like it. She just usually prefers her name.

"You're already my wife" is to show he already thinks of her this way.

It also references the earlier scene where Raine tells him he's a better husband than his father was. She thinks of him this way, too.

The first kiss in Meltokio was at the in-game party.

Regal crying had to happen. He's very empathetic and feels things deeply. What do you do when happiness comes with an immense and heavy relief? You cry.

I like the idea that post-game Zelos works hard to do his best at making the world a better place, and I wanted to include him here. He and Regal probably work together a lot and their alliance is to be feared and respected. The fact that Zelos supports him and his ideals even fifteen years later is a testament to his character and the reason Regal has remained friends with him.

Because he helped the change come about, Regal wants his name on their marriage license. (Raine would want this too, if I included her opinion.)

Her sleeping on the couch is me trying to subtly show she deals with fatigue a lot. Otherwise, she would have been waiting outside for Regal.

Regal has brought his mother's ring with him every year to vote.

I was attempting a slight culture difference between Sylvarant and Tethe'alla with weddings where rings are not common in Sylvarant but expected in Tethe'alla. Tethe'alla probably tends to have more elaborate ceremonies and Sylvarant veers toward simpler traditional things.

The last Sylvaranti wedding he attended was Colette's (to any partner you prefer teehee), but that was more than a decade ago.

I wanted to include SO MANY OTHER THINGS in this story, because any story 15 years into the post-game just brings up a lot of questions, like how Lloyd's expshere journey is going and who has married and who has children. I didn't even get to mention Genis in this story, which felt like a crime considering this law would matter to him, too, if only tangentially at this point.

If you couldn't tell, I really enjoyed writing this one. I even cried at one point. I hope someone out there enjoys it as much as I enjoyed working on it. 🤍💙