Celestial (chapter 35 of 49, 6263 words)
After a visit to the Farplane, Braska has to use the aeons to gain the strength to leave Guadosalam. Later, Jecht indulges his competitive nature while Auron briefly gives in to his desires.
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I honestly don't know why I have warnings in certain chapters for Braska's suicidality because it comes up in most of them tbh … I guess there are some where it's a bit more prominent, and this is probably one of them, even though the allusions remain "brief". Brief but manifold.
Like Braska, I find it extremely endearing that Auron can't spell "supplies". It's surprising that he got Jecht's name right, but I think he probably asked Jecht how to spell it when writing the note.
I think Braska must be starting to detect some similarities in the appearance of Yuna and Girl, as in his sphere that we see in the game, he says his most yikes line of all, "You must be very beautiful, like your mother." I'm not even sure they do look that similar, actually; Yuna clearly didn't inherit her mother's blonde hair, for one.
"The pyreflies merely react to our thoughts, and it's nothing more than that."
"Sounds kinda like Zanarkand," said Jecht.
In more ways than one, Jecht …
As we've seen, when Auron seems about to get upset Jecht's reaction is much more like "gonna cry, you wuss?" But he considers Auron to be a Masculine Man like himself, while he's seen Braska in this state enough times to assign him to some other mental category of "people who are a bit fragile and aren't manly like me so I guess it's ok if they get upset sometimes". As a result, he's a bit more capable of being nice to him by this point.
I like to have the names of characters not canonically named in the game said out loud as little as possible, so I concocted this thing about the Al Bhed not wanting to say the names of fairly recently deceased people as an in-world explanation for why Braska very rarely says Girl's name (I think he says it once, in the next chapter, as it happens). He's also so fixated on her, of course, that he doesn't need to name her and every time he says "she" it's pretty obvious that he's talking about her. Similarly, it looks like Jecht only actually says "Tidus" once as well.
Once again, Braska has a type.
Braska knows that Auron is a bit disturbed by the fact that he wants to die, even if he doesn't realise why Auron doesn't like hearing about it, so he's used to being a little bit less open about it when Auron's around. But when it's just Jecht, he's not going to hold himself back from talking about how suicidal he is.
Auron is probably glad in some ways that Braska needs support, because it means he can focus on that instead of getting distracted by a certain Event of the previous night; although, as we soon see, he's not always successful in not thinking about it.
Braska is once again in "nobody has suffered as much as I have" mode.
Auron hasn't had too many opportunities in this fic to complain about Jecht being late for things, but I've tried to slip them in where possible. When they meet at the end of FFX, the first thing Jecht says is "you're late, Auron," so I wanted to make that a reference to their time together on the pilgrimage. If Auron keeps complaining that Jecht's late, it's another (delightful … sob) irony when Jecht finally gets to say the same to him ten years later.
By saying "what are you doing?" Auron briefly transforms into my mother.
Braska is building a collection of different types of headache.
The real "miraculous drug" is the aeons, I suppose, given that Braska has somehow managed to distil them into some kind of antidepressant.
In the game the Thunder Plains travel agency is one of Rin's, so using machina to track participants in the lightning dodging game makes a lot of sense. At this point, given that I've placed the agency in the care of Yevonites, the whole thing seems a lot less explicable … unless it's just more Yevonite hypocrisy. Which it is. Look, I just needed to get Jecht out of the way for a while so I could give Auron some Sexy Dream Time.
Yevon obviously is a person, but I think it's implied in the game that most people aren't aware that Yu Yevon existed all those years ago; Yevon is just the name of the faith they follow. "Yevon isn't a person, Jecht" is also a Peep Show reference, because Auron and Jecht's relationship is oddly similar to Mark and Jeremy's.
As a person with modern ( … American?) morals, Jecht immediately wants to shut down any discussion of underage sexual activity.
I couldn't bring myself to have Auron say "hot", even if he is quoting Jecht, so Jecht cuts him off just in time.
Sorry Jecht forgot your name, Jassu! You'll have a mediocre blitzball career eventually!
Auron doesn't appreciate the reminder that Braska doesn't "wanna get better", because he knows that for his plan to work, Braska has to eventually agree that life is worth living.