The Final Summoning (chapter 46 of 49, 7377 words)
With the help of a pair of Calm Lands traders, Auron survives the Final Summoning, and returns to Braska's side for the last time. An unwelcome encounter adds insult to injury; Auron decides to return to Zanarkand, alone.
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The title of this chapter is … probably self-explanatory. It seems like there's quite a lot to say about the content of it this time though!
Now that it's Braska's actual last day alive, his mental state is relatively settled, even without the aeons. A good thing too because Auron's losing it. Auron is not generally a suicidal person in the way that Braska is but he genuinely can't imagine his life continuing once Braska is gone – this manifests a couple of times in this chapter.
Braska thinks it's important for Auron to know the truth about which guardian was special because he doesn't want there to be any more secrets between the two of them; he also thinks it might comfort Auron a bit to learn that the chance of an eternal Calm may be higher than usual. But from Auron's perspective this is just a way of finding out that his plan to sort things with Yunalesca is probably too ambitious, so it just makes him feel worse. Braska of course has a bit of a history of forgetting how to be thoughtful and inadvertently making Auron feel bad, although to be fair to him, it's not a result of his general self-centredness and obliviousness this time; he is genuinely trying to do the right thing.
He doesn't notice the implications of Auron saying "you have more faith in the teachings than I do", though: Auron's finally admitting to him that he's lost his faith for the first time since the aborted attempt in Djose, but Braska fails to realise it.
Re Braska's earring: the tassel on Auron's robe is present in the scenes we see in the game from Braska's pilgrimage, but I'm choosing to interpret this as the result of technical limitations. I always thought the tassel looked more similar to Yuna's single earring than to anything else in Spira, so I wondered if both she and Braska might both have worn one, and so Braska's ended up being passed on to Auron … and then Auron was still wearing it on his robe ten years later, because of course he would.
"Love is a wonderful thing."
Suteki da ne?
Auron has been open about his sexuality in the sense of seeking out other gay men to have sex with and doing so; he's not so ashamed of who he is that he hasn't even done that. But he only told Braska he was gay when he really had to (after the summons to his trial came, and when he realised that would have an impact on the pilgrimage) – and telling him he was actually attracted to him, a(n apparently) straight man who was also his best friend, would have been going too far. In a way, I suppose, he sees the act of loving another man as less excusable than just having sex with one; sex is just an activity his body requires, so he has to indulge in it from time to time, but love is just an illogical feeling that he's got used to needing to hide.
"I'm the one who – I should have realised how I –"
What was Braska going to say here: "loved you too"? Or "was taking advantage of you"? We'll never know.
I'm suggesting in this scene that Auron's iconic "live and fight your sorrow" line is based on what Braska tells him at this point – because while Braska died and was free of pain, Auron has had to "live" and fight his sorrow for ten years. And also Auron remembers everything Braska said to him at this point because, again, he would.
"my dear, my wonderful Auron,"
Suteki da ne?!!
I had to have Braska call him "my dear Auron" to pay homage to another "mentally unstable master and loyal servant go on a long journey and hold hands a lot" work of fiction. But I couldn't not also make Braska absolutely ladle on the praise at this point (while also being about to ruin Auron's life for good), so we needed another "wonderful" shoved in there.
Their parting kiss is undeniably romantic; maybe that's the closest Braska ever could have got to untangling his feelings. But Auron still thinks it's a sign of something inappropriate on his part, given that he asks Braska to "forgive" him once it's over. And as much as he hates the idea of leaving Braska to die, Braska has ordered him to find shelter, and as a good guardian he can't disobey.
There's an excruciatingly awkward incongruity (one of my writing specialities tbh) in the Clera and Ruther scene: Clera's trying to be polite while also thinking about Capitalism, Ruther is doing the same minus the politeness, Auron is having a breakdown and spilling boiling water all over the table and himself. He doesn't even like tea, he's a coffee drinker! That's the final insult. But this scene gives us some insight into how ordinary Yevonites see the Final Summoning and the Calm: the human cost doesn't matter when Spira is about to enjoy some peace, and indeed they can't begin to imagine how distressing it must be for surviving guardians.
Jecht's magnified groans are inspired by the battle against his aeon form at the end of FFX. I didn't want to show the scene of Braska summoning him because I wanted to focus on Auron's despair at this point; the facts of what happens in the battle against Sin are less relevant than the fact that someone who was just trying to save the man he loved all along is now lying on the ground destroyed by grief while Spiran life just keeps going on around him.
I couldn't decide whether I wanted Braska's last words to be a. something about how great Jecht had been, b. something that implied he could see Girl, or c. "I'm sorry", so … I kept him alive long enough to say all three. Another debate I had was about how he dies: should he be wounded during the fight and die from blood loss etc., or just have his life force drained by the summoning? A "slowly fading away" death seemed more thematically fitting here than a violent one … and we're obviously going to get a "huge amounts of blood everywhere" moment fairly soon, so variety seemed like a good idea too.
Pyreflies are quite useful for telling when death has occurred, I guess. Although it would only work on people who have accepted their death, so maybe not …
Perula is trying to be duly respectful in her interaction with Auron; maybe she's asked one of her nephews to record her words on a sphere or something. There's quite a lot of contrast between how she tries to portray herself in this public way and how she speaks to Auron when she isn't trying to declaim things.
Anyway Auron's entering his necrophilia era I guess.
Of course Perula's preferred element for sendings also happens to be the one that Auron has traumatic associations with. It's not "a large body of" so it doesn't have that particular effect, but … there is certainly some watery symbolism going on here.
I've semi-arbitrarily picked "queer" as the Bad Term for being gay in Spira and "gay" as the interesting connotation-free Zanarkand term that Jecht helpfully introduces Auron to, not as a way of involving myself in any discourse around what is a slur and what isn't (god forbid), but partly because "a queer" is one of only two terms I've had used against me as a term of homopbobic abuse and I've linguistically modelled Yevonite culture on British culture for the most part.
Auron is clearly unable to process what's just happened as he starts his journey, so his thoughts conveniently turn to a different traumatic experience. The details of his trial and condemnation have been gradually revealed over the course of the story so I don't think there would be anything particularly surprising in this account, but it's the first time we see everything in one place.
I have no good explanation for why the teleporter doesn't work at this point. The explanation is Plot (and by Plot I really just mean "more reasons for Auron to suffer").
The "worst" word Auron has said aloud up to this point has been "piss", so he really is losing it now. Also it's lucky for Nemma that he's finally lost his ability to fight despite having been on the verge of breakdown for several days but still managing to see off all the fiends, I guess.
But the Ronso always put the affairs of their tribe first: that was a crucial part of their moral code.
As we know, Ronso deal with Ronso problems. Nemma is … naïve? … enough to think that warning Auron that the fayth will be angry with him is enough to discourage him from continuing, not realising that he doesn't particularly care what they think. At this stage he's less of a Yevonite than Braska ever was.
Auron is the kind of person who just keeps going when things are unfathomably bad; that was undoubtedly what got him out of the Via Purifico as well as allowing him to push through during the difficult parts of the pilgrimage. So even now his instinct just tells him to keep going – and indeed this will be the case even after the massive blood loss event that I've already referred to.