Auron's thoughts expressed in vintage meme format:
Yevon's Blessing (chapter 31 of 49, 6623 words)
The travellers pass through Djose once more, where Jecht steps in to save Auron from an awkward encounter, but ends up doing more harm than good. After a strange meeting with a young priest, Auron tries to have a serious talk with Braska.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
although it was possible that Al Bhed-made equipment would be going too far even for him.
Give it another ten years …
Now that Braska is feeling reasonably settled (… thanks aeons???), he's ready to pay attention to Auron's wellbeing, although Auron doesn't really want to talk about it – partly because part of the issue relates to his wanting to save Braska and he's trying to keep that a secret, partly because another part relates to his being gay and he feels ashamed of that thanks to Yevon's homophobia, partly because he doesn't want to give Braska additional things to worry about when he has a hard enough time anyway.
Jecht is genuinely trying to be friendly to Auron at this point (by, er, insulting him … look, he's doing his best), but Auron isn't having it.
When Jecht suggests to Auron that they engage in sexual activities, Auron never seems that bothered by it – I think it's because he knows Jecht doesn't think it's shameful, whereas if he sleeps with a Yevonite, both of them are going to be distracted by the fact that they think they shouldn't really be doing it.
Not sure that “you might be dead in a couple of weeks so surely you ought to have sex with me first” is a great argument, but this guy is obviously quite desperate. Auron finds it a bit harder to shrug it off this time: things are getting to him …
Anyway, “this could be your last chance” is a gratuitous reference to the opening of some video game or other.
“Jecht's disconcerting embrace” is one of my favourite lines in the whole fic for some reason.
“I'm sure it'll pass” is pretty much extreme optimism coming from Braska, haha.
“You can't be serious,” said Auron.
Entering his John McEnroe era.
Jecht is the kind of person who won't explicitly say “sorry” when he believes himself to be in the right, which isn't really helping the situation.
It also doesn't help, actually, that nobody has told Jecht outright that Yevon preaches discrimination (and worse) against those of minoritised sexualities. The idea of institutional homophobia is just not on Jecht's radar, so despite being a pretty perceptive person, he hasn't picked up on this even though there have been a few clues. It's fair enough that Auron hasn't told him because, like, he does not feel good about it, but Braska really ought to at this point. But it might make his head hurt if he tries, I guess. He's just about able to be some help to Auron while Auron's actually in the room, but he doesn't really think through what else he might do to assist once he's gone, so this awkward culture clash persists where Jecht's thinking, huh, Auron's really weird about the fact that he's gay for some reason.
The silver lining on the cloud of Auron's forthcoming exile in Jecht's Zanarkand is that he'll have ten years to explore his sexuality without feeling shame about it. Clearly there will be other things negatively affecting his mental health, but that's one advantage.
Classic Auron to be experiencing gradually worse responses to trauma and to be like “this is just a personal failing that I can overcome if I put my mind to it.”
If he was in his right mind he would obviously be very insulted by someone assuming him to be a Crusader.
I wrote many years ago about the weirdness of Isaaru saying he'd looked up to Braska since he was a child – he's canonically 16 at this point, and I don't think that would be considered childhood by Spiran standards. So having him remember what Braska was known for before seemed to be a way of making that work.
The fact that everyone has forgotten Braska's title shows that Kinoc's rehabilitation plan is probably going to succeed.
Isaaru and Maroda look quite different from each other, so my gratuitous headcanon is that their mother is a high-ranking official who gets relocated a lot and takes up with different men in different places. I don't think the teachings would generally promote that kind of behaviour, but maybe she's senior enough to be able to live her best life with nobody challenging her about it.
I noticed that Pacce is supposed to be ten years old in FFX and then couldn't resist working his birth into the story. I'm sure Auron will feel very guilty when he meets Isaaru on Yuna's pilgrimage and sees that he did indeed become a summoner … another thing giving him cause to have a bad time, delicious.
Anyway, Maroda's entrance intercepts Auron just when he's about to openly blaspheme in a temple, so that's good news! At least it would have made it clear that he doesn't have faith in Yevon anymore, which Braska and Jecht still haven't worked out.
Braska is definitely not beyond reproach … I mean, he isn't really involved in the particular matter that is upsetting Auron at the moment, but it's not as if he acts in a way that's conducive to preserving Auron's mental health the rest of the time. But Auron is obviously too blinkered regarding Braska to think otherwise.
Auron's thoughts expressed in vintage meme format:
I was about to say that after two chapters of being put through the emotional and physical wringer, Auron is going to have a better time in the next one … then I remembered what happens in the next one … ok, he's going to have a mostly better time once we eventually get to chapter 33. 😬
