The Highest Authorities (chapter 11 of 49, 6071 words)
Jecht finds it difficult to cope without alcohol, but Braska’s magic provides welcome succour. The three arrive at the inn at Djose and discover an upsetting notice.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
This whole opening scene is an attempt to explain why Jecht apparently gives up alcohol with such ease, something that seemed like a bit of a plothole to me. The answer, as always for anything unexplained, is magic.
I guess Auron is quite conflicted about his arguments with Jecht: he knows they upset Braska, and not upsetting Braska is clearly one of his top priorities, but he also has a pathological need to be correct, and Jecht is just wrong about everything, damn it!
Auron is quite good at bushcrafty stuff in general but like everyone else in Spira, he’s never learnt how to light a fire with tinder because he’s used to travelling with mages who can do it with a flick of their fingers. People from Zanarkand are presumably more likely to know how to do it: we see Tidus doing it in Baaj! Although based on this scene I guess Jecht doesn’t know. He’s probably too famous to have to light his own fires … give Tidus a few more years (um, were he still to exist).
I love Auron a lot, but I’m not going to pretend he’s always a nice and kind person.
Jecht suddenly has no beer left, even though he’s always made sure to carry plenty up to this point. Perhaps he tipped everything he had left into the river.
Braska knows Jecht well enough by this point to know he tends not to be especially forthcoming when he’s suffering.
Jecht is having a great time thinking about how Braska’s hand-delivered magic is so much more comforting and intimate than the spells he casts with his staff, and yet that’s how Braska casts magic on Auron all the time! Hmm.
Jecht is “hazy on the details” of his imprisonment because of how drunk he was at the time.
I thought I might have mentioned the Via Purifico in these notes before, but perhaps this is the first time it’s come up. In the game, Kinoc says that nobody has ever survived it, but Yuna’s party manage to do so while nowhere near Final-Aeon-defeating strength, and with added undead Evrae that presumably isn’t normally there. My theory is that some people do manage to make it out of there, but the Yevonites cover it up and pretend they were never sent there in the first place. It wouldn’t look good for them if they were to pronounce someone guilty of some heinous crime, submit them to what is apparently Yevon’s judgement, and then discover that Yevon’s judgement seems to be opposed to what they decided. So the line is that nobody ever gets out, as a way of demonstrating Bevelle’s absolute power, but actually some people do make it and it’s just hushed up afterwards.
Once again the practicalities of fiend bounties go entirely unexplained.
I like the thought of Auron finding reading more difficult when he’s emotionally compromised.
The picture of Braska is quite likely to be from before Girl died, but I think he has always been quite a melancholy person, in a kind of “why do it be like it do” sense. But back then he was also capable of being happy, especially when he was around people he knew and trusted, whereas now, er, I guess he occasionally laughs at Jecht’s stories sometimes.
I don’t think the Djose inn is even big enough in the game for Jecht to stand a few feet away, but I guess this is artistic licence. Yuna’s entire phalanx of guardians must have stayed there while she was having her all-night healing session, after all.
This is the first time Auron has said please to Jecht! A milestone. He’s still giving him an order really, though. If Jecht refused Auron would definitely start shouting at him.
I enjoyed making the notice heavily imply that people need to demonstrate their loyalty to Yevon by refusing to help Braska and his guardians. The phrase “our teachings” of course emphasises the fact that it’s the clergy who decide what’s deemed morally correct.
Jecht knows Auron had an unspecified bad time in Bevelle, but he doesn’t know it’s because he “blasphemed and rejected our teachings”.
I’m sure Jecht has used the term whore plenty of times in the less salubrious moments of his life, but to see it being used earnestly is still something he finds quite shocking.
“No images of Jecht were found in our archives” because he’s only been in Spira a fortnight. I like how the notice implies his long hair is somehow blasphemous … Auron’s hair is longer, but the fact that he ties it back somehow makes it more acceptable, I guess.
Jecht is very interested in hearing about Auron’s obscene acts. Auron (for now) manages to maintain his composure and avoid the question.
“I heard they made you second in command” – er, of both the warrior monks and the Crusaders, it seems. But I think it’s fair to assume that Kinoc’s position is some kind of deputy maestership, and in the game his maesterly responsibilities appear to include having the ultimate authority over the Crusaders, so it makes sense that he would now be “vice-chief of Crusader liaison”. It also means in this story he’s in the perfect position to issue certain orders to the Crusaders later on …
I think fiends do generally stay away from built-up areas! When they turn up in Luca in the game, everyone is very shocked. And the towns and villages we see don’t tend to have people standing guard at every corner.
Auron is definitely a Yevonite (at this point), but when Braska refers to “the Yevonites” he just as definitely isn’t including him. “I don’t mean you, Auron,” he would say, entirely sincerely and with no trace of embarrassment.
We’re starting to see some glimpses of Auron and Jecht bonding over Braska’s sometimes erratic behaviour.
I like the idea that Jecht’s Zanarkand stories are normally far too filthy to tell children.
I guess the sphere that Jecht takes at this point just gets lost. Maybe it ends up buried behind the temple somewhere. Maybe the monkeys make off with it … they don’t seem to be around at this point.