The Truth Revealed (chapter 43 of 49, 6329 words)
Braska and his guardians head into the ruined city, disturbed by visions of past summoners and their companions. Jecht busies himself with trying to stop Auron breaking down by any means necessary, until the three travellers suddenly discover what truly awaits them.
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Braska's attachment to Auron being the one thing he'll stand up to the aeons about … yet more normal friendship behaviour …
Auron and Braska both independently thinking about the possibility that the former may need to carry the latter … Yet More Normal Friendship Behaviour …
"Just as you said – it's better than the alternative."
Braska, please. That's just about the opposite of what he was saying.
If not for the æons, he thought, he would hold Auron close in his arms and not let go for a very long time.
YMNFB …
I feel like I'm not giving the separate bad times everyone is having due focus in this chapter, but the problem is that everyone really is having such a bad time and the bad times are indeed separate. If I take a couple of paragraphs to concentrate on Braska I then have to find some way of reminding the reader that Jecht is having an existential crisis and Auron is on the verge of another breakdown, without appending those exact words to every sentence.
Auron may have lost his faith, but he's still horrified to see unsents wandering around … For Now.
I wanted Braska's explanation of the pyrefly memories to use some of the same phrases that Auron uses when he explains it in the game – the idea is that he's remembering what Braska said and using some of the same words. Because he still remembers what those words were ten years later, being such an unbelievably tragic man.
Back on the Thunder Plains Auron told us (wow remember when he was mostly mentally stable) that Yocun's male guardian "had some kind of mental problem". You're next, boyo.
The memories we see of Braska and his guardians at this point in the game show them running through the area, so this was why I thought they could be moving through the ruins at speed to avoid the fiends. If they're a challenge for Yuna with six guardians and no particular aeonic effect on her health, they're probably a lot harder to get through in this case.
Auron resolves to tell Braska the truth at this point, but that only goes as far as saying "I cannot accept it" – he still can't actually tell Braska that he loves him.
I find Jecht's canonical lines about "parades and fireworks" a bit egregious in this chapter given that we've seen him come to understand the pilgrimage and become a bit more sensitive to Braska's reasons for taking it – so I devised this explanation that he's deliberately being obnoxious to avoid having to confront Auron's and his own emotions, which I think works decently.
I find Braska's "Probably" line so funny … he's just entirely checked out by this point. This guy has one goal and it's "get the Final Aeon and die asap".
Don't worry, Auron, I won't make you say "ass".
"and I swear, I will slit your damn throat, you utterly disreputable, odious reprobate –"
Hits different when Auron literally did slit two people's throats a few chapters earlier.
The "what do you mean, no Final Aeon" line is canonical, but it tends to get left out of Jecht sphere/pyrefly memory compilations because it's just that one line and doesn't have any accompanying visuals.
My headcanon is that Gandof and Ohalland and their respective guardians definitely knew what they would be in for once they reached Zanarkand; by Yocun's time, Yevon had mostly succeeded in suppressing the truth, but she and her guardians somehow found out on the journey (hence the guardians' earlier conversation).
"Be pleased with yourself; be proud."
Be you, be proud of you, because you can be do what we want to do. Related: I deliberately had Braska's "doors will always open themselves to those who do" line happen offscreen in the chapter 41 because it's so clumsy.
He is the salvation we were promised.
Thanks battle lines and garment grids for giving me this one.
Yunalesca doesn't speak directly to Auron and Jecht at this point, and perhaps doesn't even hear them, because being ordinary men with no particular aeonic (look I've invented this word now, I might as well use it twice) connection, they're irrelevant to her until one of them is chosen to be Braska's fayth.