Never Told Him I Loved Him (chapter 36 of 49, 7868 words)
Things seem to be looking up as the party travel across the Thunder Plains and into the woods, but a difficult battle forces them all to take stock.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
This is very much a chapter of two halves, the first being "a lot of mostly lighthearted dialogue and me taking opportunities to shoot down a couple of elements of extended FFX canon that I find particularly egregious", and the second being, er, back to the standard "sad and/or gay" fare.
In the game people refer to Auron as "the legendary guardian" as if he's the only one who's ever existed, but I don't see what he could have done that's so legendary seeing as he fucked off to Jecht's Zanarkand pretty quickly after the Final Summoning, So I decided that maybe "legendary guardian" was just a general title for any guardian who outlived a High Summoner, and there have just never been that many of them so at the time that the game is set, Auron has become the example. As he says later in this chapter, one of Lady Yocun's guardians also survived but was damaged by the experience, so perhaps the people of Spira would have been less willing to refer to him as a legendary guardian, meaning Auron ended up being the only legendary guardian in living memory believed to be truly deserving of the title.
"but humility is a useful asset too, in case you hadn't realised."
Jecht is so right to call Auron out for saying this. As if Auron's ever been humble for a second.
"there are all sorts of ludicrous rumours about High Summoners and their guardians anyway."
Indeed; as Kinoc mentioned in chapter 30, there were certain rumours about Lord Gandof … which I think Auron probably hasn't heard.
The FFX-2 fiend tales make no sense at all, and afaik the only one that makes any reference to Braska's pilgrimage is the cactuar one, where we're told Jecht got separated from the others and ended up in a desert somewhere teaching a cactuar to play blitzball. It would have been a nice sideplot to have one of the lads get separated from the others for more than a few hours, but imagine how much longer this already massive fic would have got, lol. Anyway, I wanted to make it clear that there is no scope for Jecht teaching blitzball to cactuars in this universe. If we insist the fiend tales are canonical (and I really don't, because they basically break FFX lore), we can say that this particular cactuar has delusions of grandeur and has spent too much time internalising one of the "ludicrous rumours" that Auron refers to.
Anyway, my second "this didn't happen" is Chuami, because there is obviously no way Auron has biologically fathered a child. At least some of the in-game characters agree with me on this. I kind of like the ideas in the audio drama, although it's hideous to think Bad Things Are Happening in Spira again only a relatively short time after they've finally escaped the Bad Thing that was after them for a thousand years. But the claim that Auron is Chuami's literal father is clearly going too far.
I think Jecht is reluctant to talk about sex when Braska's around because he sees Braska as a (clearly deeply flawed but) slightly saintly, kind of non-sexual figure? He certainly seems a lot less distracted by his own sexuality than Auron is, but his mental health has undoubtedly harmed his libido. Whereas as we are about to see, Auron has some insight into Braska's past sexual activities that Jecht would surely never have expected.
The way I've grappled with the geography of Macalania Woods has meant that I'm depicting the route from the Thunder Plains exit to the Calm Lands one as much shorter than Bevelle to Macalania or Macalania to the Thunder Plains … which I suppose is fine.
Braska saying that his headache is "not too bad" should really be a cause for celebration. (Although he does follow it up with "it's really the least of my troubles", haha, which I suppose is more typical.)
not yet having learnt any magical abilities himself,
Don't worry, Auron, you'll master the sphere grid one day.
In FFX it's Auron who explains to the others that the lake is made of sphere liquid (random thought I'm now having: does that explain why Tidus and Yuna are able to float around in it so aesthetically??). I thought it would be fittingly cute + heartwrenching to have him pass on that knowledge after being given it by Braska in this scene. How secretly anguished must he be on Yuna's pilgrimage with all these reminders of Braska's, gaaah.
The spherimorph is like the Kilika ochu and the chocobo eater, I guess, in that it reappears periodically.
Ah yes … Braska gets hit by the spherimorph and Auron immediately gives him a potion, and then Jecht gets hit and Auron does nothing at all … classic.
I don't know why broken ribs is my go-to Jecht injury, but I guess it makes sense when he's bare-chested.
Jecht sees Auron kissing Braska in some kind of way and he's like, oh, I guess they're going to be a couple now. If only it was that simple, Jecht!
The recording Jecht makes in the woods is on the same sphere as the one of him being freed from the prison, so having him pay some attention at this point to climate change the fact that the sphere liquid take quite a lot of effort to harvest seemed to be a good way of accounting for that. He takes the sphere in the place where the spherimorph appears in the game, although I needed the other two out of the way for it, so that's why I had the spherimorph chase them into a different clearing and fight them there.
Jecht wonders how old Tidus will be when he watches the sphere, and later, when Braska canonically takes his sphere for Yuna, he says out loud, "I wonder how old you are, now that you're watching this sphere." Dad parallels! (And then, of course, Braska says that line, his worst line. Stop being so obsessed with your dead wife pleeeease.)
Jecht complaining that Tidus is "always fucking crying" while crying himself … well, yes, quite. I think he's naturally a very emotional person – much more than Auron is – but because of the special Zanarkand toxic masculinity, he covers it up as much as he possibly can.
Auron seems less fucked up by today's brand of "doing intimate stuff with the guy you're in love with" – maybe because nothing can beat the drunk Guadosalam kiss, or maybe because this time he really believes that he was kissing Braska for purely medicinal purposes. Or indeed both!