The Greatest Help (chapter 26 of 49, 9141 words)
While Jecht visits the Luca blitzball stadium and Auron the library, Braska goes to have his hair cut and then begins his summoning practice. Later, after a strange encounter with Braska, Auron visits a certain establishment to see if it will help him take his mind off things.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
Auron has pretty much no concept of what relaxing would involve. Despite his insistence that he doesn’t have any sexual interest in Jecht, he does tend to be quite physical with him, hmm!
If the device Jecht and Hanta use to communicate is indeed a prototype CommSphere (I couldn’t bring myself to capitalise it like that in the narrative), and the official version is invented by Shinra over the course of FFX-2 … I mean, Shinra is about ten years old, right? So he wouldn’t even have been born at this point; I guess he’s building on someone else’s half-finished invention (in the tradition of all good open source projects)? Now I’m wondering what the Al Bhed version of GitHub would be like.
Hanta is very like Cid … perhaps they’re related, which I suppose would mean he’s also related to Girl by blood. Let’s hope Braska never finds out about this.
Writing Maechen’s dialogue (or, as Auron rightly characterises it, monologue) is always fun because it’s a case of saying things in the absolute least concise way possible. His encounter with Auron here is making him still more convinced that Auron loves studying and similar intellectual pursuits; in fact, that’s much more true of Braska, but Braska’s not really on Maechen’s radar.
I’m convinced that Auron has no imagination at all (unless he’s … er … imagining certain things involving Braska).
I think there would be some general sense that Chappu is an “island name”: there’s a sort of pattern that a lot of the Besaid names have – Wakka, Chappu, Botta, Jassu, etc. Mainlanders tend to have more varied names and sometimes longer ones: Belgemine, Barthello, Shelinda. But then Jimma and Bobba are presumably mainlanders, given how much they love trash talking the Aurochs, and they have very besaidesque names, as do some of the Al Bhed: Rikku, Gippal, Keyakku, Blappa. Maybe in J and B’s case they actually are from Besaid and they’re just talking about the team like that because they’re ashamed of their backwater origins … now there’s a conspiracy theory. Then there’s Pacce as well … yeah, not sure what my explanation is for that one.
I think this is the only time in the fic that I explicitly mention Braska’s actual canonical age … reminder that he’s only three years older than I am! He was literally my age when his wife died, yiiiikes.
His lack of haggling somehow reflects his naivety, his exhaustion, his desire to be kind to others, and his experience living with the Al Bhed at the same time.
It’s a good thing for Auron that Braska didn’t want him there, really, when Braska has decided to choose the docks as his location for summoning. If Auron was with him maybe Braska would have chosen to go somewhere else, especially when he was thinking about Auron’s wellbeing and the water earlier, although, as it’s Braska, it’s probably just as likely that it wouldn’t even have occurred to him.
Jecht may care about Braska and Auron now but he’s probably never going to become an anti-Al Bhed discrimination activist.
Auron in the morning: Yeah! The library’s going to give me all the information I need!
Auron in the afternoon: Ugh, reading is boring … I just want to get on with the pilgrimage …
Jecht really thinks Auron might be about to go to da club with him … sorry Jecht.
“Have a good evening.”
Shoutout to my colleague DJ who once said this in a very odd way.
Auron is obviously not going to tell Braska to stop touching him And Maybe More, because a. as Braska’s guardian it’s his duty to provide what Braska needs, and b. he likes it. But this is certainly a point at which things step up a gear. There will be more such points.
“We’ll have a better selection, I’m sure.”
i.e. “If I tell anyone a strapping young ex-warrior monk was here, all our freelance rentboys (???) will be very eager to work the next shift …”
He would do anything for Braska’s sake.
Including, of course, not making any protest while Braska handles him in an increasingly intimate manner, but also not telling Braska that he likes him Like That. They’re just all so bad at communicating, really.