Who We Have To Be (chapter 14 of 49, 8327 words)
The travellers continue to the Mushroom Rock Road, finding their progress impeded by Crusaders. A conversation about Zanarkand leads to an unwelcome discovery for Jecht.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
After the last very short and relatively uneventful chapter, stuff certainly happens in this one, yikes.
Auron frames the idea of going for a run as “put[ting] things right” because he’s convinced that it’s a moral outrage that he hasn’t been able to benefit from Jecht’s good idea yet. The only good idea Jecht has ever had, Auron would like to add.
Pastries are my go-to food in fictional settings for some reason. I’m not even that keen on them irl.
Auron probably isn’t really the first “one” that the clerk has ever met, but people tend to keep it quiet, because, as Auron says, it’s not worth being indiscreet. The clerk has almost certainly come into contact with others, but unfortunately for him, he hasn’t realised.
Auron really thinks this might be an attempt to pay for sex with pastries. It’s a good thing the clerk didn’t know about his inclinations the previous afternoon, because when Auron offered services rendered in exchange for medicine, he definitely would have been like “come to my room owo” and then Auron would have had to decide whether he was prepared to, er, whore himself out for the sake of Braska’s wellbeing.
Everyone is being very lustful towards Auron this morning! It’s just how I imagine the world. I like how Jecht can just have a brief sexual fantasy and then be entirely nonchalant about it.
Auron referring to himself and Braska as “us” is quite revealing about the way he perceives Jecht’s role on the pilgrimage, I think. Braska is of a similar opinion, although he tends to be less openly dismissive of Jecht than Auron is.
Auron certainly doesn’t give up the moment things don’t go his way, but he sometimes takes that idea a bit too far. Jecht, to his credit, doesn’t tend to do so either, but he’s a bit less obsessed with getting everything right than Auron is, so Auron probably sees him as a complete flake.
While Jecht and Auron have very different attitudes to Braska’s mental state, they’re finding increasingly frequent opportunities to bond over having to deal with it, which is an odd side-effect.
Even though Auron left the warrior monks in disgrace, he still agrees with a lot of the ideas espoused in the corps because they’re basically all he knows. One such idea is the belief that the Crusaders are bad somehow. There is no clear reason for this; they’re not always entirely strict about the teachings, although, as Auron later points out, the warrior monks don’t follow them to the letter either. He believes they’re less good in combat, but it’s probably more the case that they just use different techniques (and he would have thought the same about a lot of his comrades in the warrior monk corps anyway). Really it’s just that they’re a rival military force so he is compelled to dislike them … in a sense, just like how Jecht is a rival for Braska’s attention so Auron is required to be suspicious of him.
Jecht will be relieved to hear that he’ll get to ride a chocobo in a fortnight or so.
In fact, he realised, Braska hadn’t used the æons in battle once over the course of the pilgrimage so far.
I’m sure that’s fine! I’m sure the fayth are going to be completely ok with that!
Auron is well aware that a Crusader was recently involved in a scandal; just like how he already knew about the regulations for temporary military encampments that were mentioned in the newspaper back at the Thunder Plains travel agency.
“The Crusaders aren’t an army,” said Auron dismissively.
Ok, what are they then, Auron? Paramilitaries?
We learn at this point that Zanarkand is very open about sexuality, and with the exception of a few people who are known to be bigoted, everyone is quite happy for people to have relationships with whomever they choose. Jecht doesn’t quite realise how amazed Auron is by this, and never really will. It’s very different from Spira, but Auron doesn’t want to go into deal about exactly how people like him are seen by Yevon.
There’s a big contrast, of course, between the way Jecht talks about homosexuality and the way it was spoken about earlier by the inn clerk. That’s the way most people in Spira have to talk about it, never naming it out loud (because most of the names they have for it are either clinical or insulting – Auron’s never even come across the word gay before), speaking of it in hushed voices, in euphemistic terms. Auron is absolutely astounded by the fact that Jecht can talk about attraction to men so openly, so casually, especially in front of someone that he doesn’t yet know isn’t straight. Jecht “would know what it was like” if Auron were to discuss his sexuality with him, he thinks, but that’s not entirely true; he knows what it’s like to be attracted to men, sure, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to have to keep it a secret.
He looked into the distance, and his gaze came to rest on Braska, who was facing the other way, looking out over the steep incline that led down towards the shore.
Something has finally clicked inside Jecht’s mind.
Auron checks with Jecht about three times that Jecht doesn’t mind that he’s gay, even though Jecht has stated that he’s attracted to men himself, which is kind of sad tbh. Jecht thinks it’s weird to even ask the question.
I imagine that Auron found out he was about to be outed a few weeks before the pilgrimage started, and he knew he had to warn Braska, even though it was going to be hugely embarrassing for him. But he was aware that Braska needed to know a. that depending on what happened to him, he might not be in a fit state to embark on the pilgrimage, and b. that if they did start the journey as planned, Braska would be spending a lot of time with Auron – not that he didn’t already – but they would be seeing each other in compromised positions, sleeping in the tent together, etc. So as much as Auron was ashamed to discuss this at all, he had to explain the situation to Braska just in case Braska felt uncomfortable about going on the pilgrimage with a guardian who was attracted to men. Fortunately for Auron, Braska merely saw a reflection of his own experiences: a man being cruelly vilified by Yevon for no reason other than the fact that he pursued relationships that contravened the teachings. I was about to say “Braska is many things, but he’s not a hypocrite” … actually, he definitely is a hypocrite in some respects, but not in this one, I’m glad to say.
Braska and Auron have definitely had this “I’m worthless and terrible”/“no you’re not” conversation many times.
“He was married,” Auron reminded him.
Jecht doesn’t really pick up on the fact that Auron’s phrasing here indicates that same-gender marriage isn’t an option in Spira. He’s basically incapable of understanding that homophobia can operate on a societal level.
Taking an excuse to touch Auron’s nice muscled arm, are we, Jecht?
The flipside of Zanarkand’s enlightened stance on sexuality is that stereotypes about gender are very entrenched, much more so than in Spira. So while Jecht knows it’s fine to be gay, he also assumes that gay men tend to be effeminate, which is part of why he never realised Auron wasn’t straight even when Auron became so defensive every time Jecht insinuated anything about attraction to women. It’s odd because Jecht is attracted to men himself and certainly isn’t a feminine person, but I suppose he’d argue that a. he’s pansexual, not gay, so it balances out; and b. he’s the great Jecht, so he gets to defy stereotypes even if nobody else does.
I’m enjoying the thought of Jecht having a maths lady meme moment as he looks at Auron and thinks to himself “long hair … weird about Braska … gay???”
The Crusader who gets aggressive with Jecht has enormous Luca Goers energy. Maybe he’s Bickson’s older brother or something. Meanwhile, finding out that someone is Misrepresenting The Rules, Auron can’t not get involved.
“Buddy” is a word Jecht tends to use either when he’s trying to be kind to someone in a vulnerable position (and he certainly doesn’t do that much … not yet, anyway) or when he’s sarcastically making the point that the person he’s addressing is very much not his buddy.
I always thought Tidus’ reaction to being told Zanarkand doesn’t really exist anymore seemed a bit muted. I suppose it’s very soon after he arrives in Spira, so he’s probably in a state of shock anyway. Jecht would definitely lose his shit.
“A terrible, brutal occasion – so they say.”
Maechen has wisely decided not to be like “and btw, I was there”. That would just make things even more complicated.
Maechen just wants to tell everyone about history! Let the man infodump. He hasn’t realised that everything he’s saying is just getting Jecht even more riled up. He’s also very confused by Braska. This is a bit of a running joke.
Tbh, it is a bit dickish of Braska and Auron to have just listened to Jecht telling his stories about Zanarkand all this time without ever saying “um, by the way, everyone says Zanarkand is just a pile of rubble.” As Auron is about to point out, his excuse is that he didn’t believe Jecht to start with, and Braska’s excuse is the same excuse he has for everything. But there certainly would have been opportunities; I suppose they both knew it would be a difficult conversation.
“There’s no such thing as time travel,” Auron yells at all those people who played FFX and apparently misunderstood this fundamental point. The “teleportation in space” is setting us up for the pads we can use on Mount Gagazet and at Zanarkand; Auron probably doesn’t know about those specific examples, but he’s heard of such devices existing, I suppose.
Auron’s “two Zanarkands” explanation is simply the most logical thing he can think of on the spot. I think it’s a decent theory, and not really too far from the truth. All his references to “your Zanarkand” in the spheres seem to suggest that he has developed a mental conception of “your Zanarkand” and “our Zanarkand” as two separate places. Yuna and her guardians seem to say similar things to Tidus.
They hadn’t lied about anything as big as this, to his knowledge, but it wasn’t impossible.
Haha, oh Auron, you have no idea.
Jecht has never said anything but “I’m fine” when asked whether he’s all right.
Braska has become much more lively during Auron and Jecht’s absence. The thought that someone else may be having a bad time is often sufficient to make him feel a bit better himself, if only because it gives him an opportunity to talk about his own struggles, as he tries to do in a moment.
“Nothin’ better for clearing your head.”
This is just about as close as Jecht would ever get to admitting his own vulnerability.
Auron’s offer to take first watch shows that he really is starting to care about Jecht a bit. Jecht is obviously not going to accept, though.