Thanks For Your Concern (chapter 5 of 49, 7733 words)
Braska receives the aeon of Macalania, while Jecht learns more about Spira.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
Auron tells Tidus in the game that Jecht “never was a patient man”. It’s something Braska’s two guardians definitely have in common. Nonetheless, this moment is one of the first signs of a thaw in their relationship! It’s going to take a very long time before Auron admits Jecht is his friend, a very long time, but he gets to be a bit more civil to him for a while here even if it doesn’t last long.
I had a go at some summoner maths for a previous fic:
Of the summoners who finished their training and gained their first aeon, around half were denied access to the second by fayth who deemed them not worthy of the responsibility. Then, half of the remaining summoners failed to get the next aeon, and so on. That meant roughly one in sixteen summoners managed to enlist all five of the usual aeons and reach the stage where they were permitted to proceed to Zanarkand. But that was forgetting those who were killed or seriously wounded on their journey – such casualties took out nine out of ten of the remaining summoners. Half the rest gave up on their journeys, and two-thirds of those remaining failed to defeat Sin even having completed the entire pilgrimage. That meant that roughly, out of every thousand summoners who set out on the journey, only one saw it through to the end.
This was an attempt at explaining how there have been so few High Summoners in the past when we know of at least three on the go at the time of Yuna’s pilgrimage. If there have been three previous High Summoners in a thousand years, though, that suggests there have been 3000 summoners who have journeyed in total in that time, i.e. three per year. In the current fic, Auron says that there are roughly 7.5 summoners out at any point, so unless they stay on their pilgrimages for an average of over two years, this doesn’t work … let’s say it’s only been 400 years, though, if Gandof defeated Sin 400 years ago. It seems a bit too neat that the first(ish) summoner to take the pilgrimage defeated Sin, but he could certainly have been one of the earliest to try. In that case, that’s 3000 summoners across 400 years, so about 7 summoners per year, which would suggest they spend about a year out. That’s a bit better, but still seems like a long time when so many summoners are turned back early and I’ve calculated a successful pilgrimage as taking about 40 days in the universe in which this fic takes place.
Given that the time between High Summoners seems to be decreasing (200 years, then a hundred, then another hundred or so, and then, in the future from where we are at this point … ten?!), though, perhaps another factor to consider is the rate at which summoners attempt the pilgrimage; maybe it’s increasing, as the idea of becoming a fayth to guard against Sin falls out of fashion (we don’t hear about new fayth being made, right?) and the idea of becoming a summoner instead becomes more popular (you can pull out until quite late, you don’t have to be immortal, everyone knows your name and loves you). So maybe, in Gandof’s day, the number of summoners was very low, while the more success they seem to have, the more people want to follow the same path, so 400 years later we now have about 7.5 people having a go at something that back then would have only attracted people occasionally. If the rate of 7.5 remains constant and our next High Summoner (who might that be) makes it ten years after Braska does, that means 1000 summoners in 10 years, i.e. 100 per year, suggesting that on average, summoners are on pilgrimage for slightly less than a month. Balancing out those who get turned away (Or Worse) really early and those who find the pilgrimage hard and keep making repeated attempts to get on the fayth’s good side, I think this could work, although the 100-ish years to 10 years reduction still implies a huge increase in the number of people choosing this particular career – presumably as a result of the success of our (at the time of the fic) upcoming High Summoner, who (checks notes) really loved Yevon and the teachings, and never went near an Al Bhed, of course!
Anyway, take this with a pinch of salt because it’s possible I got a calculation wrong somewhere … maths actually was one of my strong points at school but a. it’s been years and b. it was always simple arithmetic that tripped me up.
Auron would “willingly risk his life for the sake of Braska’s wellbeing”, but he’s still sure that risking his life isn’t the same as actually losing it.
Noclip dot website taught me that there’s this extra path to the chamber of the fayth at Macalania Temple, which seems unnecessary. It’s just another way to make Braska suffer, but I promise it’s not my fault this time.
The ritual I’ve concocted for the exchange of memories with the fayth is broadly the same at every temple, but the memories of Braska’s life that are highlighted each time depends on what each fayth is most interested in. Macalania’s fayth is interested in love and passion; she wants to know that Braska truly loves the people for whom he is making his sacrifice. And as above, maybe if Braska had been around a few hundred years earlier, he would have chosen to become a fayth rather than a summoner! The experience of reliving both his own life and the fayth’s is both mentally and physically painful, more so if the fayth is less willing to trust the summoner and grant them their aeon. As these experiences go, this one is probably about average on the scale, although Braska’s not used to it yet and not feeling that well anyway, so he finds it pretty hard. His lack of summoner ancestry also makes it more difficult; this will be alluded to in later chapters.
Ether really does seem to be at a premium in Spira, right? I think in some entries in the series you can buy it in shops, but in FFX it only comes up in specific places.
Perula is not exactly the villain of the story, but we meet her a few times and she’s just not really very nice. Some people want to be High Summoner for the glory, even though that doesn’t really make logical sense, given how a successful pilgrimage ends; she is one of these people.
Jecht has once again made a promise that he hasn’t kept.
Jecht gets a couple of lessons in mortality during this excursion: first, he learns about the fayth’s sacrifice, and then he has the shock of briefly wondering whether Auron was actually killed by the fiends. Braska, meanwhile, is perfectly ready to help Auron when the latter is unconscious, even if he’s been reluctant to spare attention for anyone but himself up to this point.
My style guide for talking about specific spells: white magic (Cure, Shell, Haste etc.) has a capital letter at the beginning, black elemental spells (fire, thunder, water etc.) don’t. I don’t use the -ara/-aga suffixes here, but just refer to the spells in terms of intensity (e.g. “strong white magic”). I think things would get more complicated with things like Bio and Ultima, but fortunately for me, they don’t come up (Braska hasn’t been working on his sphere grid, smh).
Auron doesn’t sleep as much as Braska does at this point in the story, but he finds it easy enough to get to sleep when he’s tired. Noting this for reasons.
I’m not sure where the lads had dinner last night, as it wasn’t described … I guess Auron and Braska had something at the travel agency, and Jecht was too drunk to care or something.
This is the first mention of Braska’s earring! It doesn’t come up much during the story as it’s always tucked into his headdress and we rarely see it, but it will gain (somewhat tragic) significance at a very late stage.
I wanted to give Auron a moment of slight immaturity in the form of his nap in Braska’s bed; he’s the youngest of them, after all, and it’s hard to seem competent and sensible all the time, isn’t it.
I find it very endearing that Braska gently scolds Jecht for saying “crap” in front of Yuna. He’s in two minds about Jecht’s appearances on the spheres he takes for her; he really does want Jecht to feel included, and if he wasn’t so preoccupied, he’d definitely be making more of an effort to develop a friendship with him.