Best Intentions (chapter 6 of 49, 6389 words)
Braska and his guardians head back into the woods. Braska calls his new aeon, and wonders how to make Jecht feel at ease.
Read here on praze.net or here on archiveofourown.org, or read the whole fic so far as a PDF or an EPUB.
An extra note on chapter 5 which I forgot at the time, but ~lissajous reminded me of this after rereading the chapter: the scene where Auron gets into Braska’s bed was loosely inspired by a university friend of mine who had some kind of interest in a girl in the year above us, and who one day did the extremely normal thing of going into her room when she wasn’t there and sleeping in her bed. On this occasion I don’t think I can claim that this is the universal young queer experience.
Was the title of this chapter inspired by this video (niche British political humour [??] from over a decade ago)? I think it may have been and I, too, am sorry.
On the few occasions where Auron did accidentally meet Jecht’s eyes, Jecht smirked at him and raised his eyebrows; Auron didn’t want to begin guessing what that was supposed to mean.
At this point, I don’t particularly know what this is supposed to mean either. I think Jecht’s just trying to wind Auron up.
Gratuitous headcanons: Auron was naturally good at swordwork as a lad, but not naturally good at diplomacy; he had to put much more effort into learning the latter. Kinoc was the opposite, but was a bit too lazy to bother learning the sword stuff. Kinoc was better connected than Auron, though, which made up for it in some respects. Meanwhile, absent-minded and gullible Braska was actually a shocking choice for sending to negotiate with the Al Bhed – almost as if they didn’t actually want him getting anywhere.
More gratuitous headcanons: Braska drinks tea of every variety. Auron and Jecht both prefer coffee, and both take it black, although Jecht is used to having sugar in his. Sugar is probably rare in Spira, but there are sweeteners available that meet Jecht’s standards.
The sky trail seems to manifest itself after Yuna’s party first travel through the woods and then remain there thereafter, for no obvious reason. I guess in terms of an in-world explanation it just appears and disappears randomly, unless Braska is right and Macalania’s fayth controls it somehow. On a very slightly related note, Braska is a very spiritual person, I think, even if he no longer prays or considers himself a Yevonite. Auron, on the other hand, is quite unspiritual but (at this point in the story, ahem) is certainly religious. I think he quite likes having a set of rules to follow, and Yevon gives him that, even though he’s conceded that one or two of those rules are incompatible with who he is.
I’m pretty sure aeons are exclusively referred to as “it” in the game, although they seem to get gendered in fanfiction quite a bit? Every fic writer is as spiritual as Braska is, clearly.
The celestial weapons will not be appearing in this fic (I’m certainly not going to include all that grinding, this is long enough already), but Jecht’s encounter with the strange ethereal voice is the first of a couple of callouts to them.
Jecht’s response when Braska asks if he would be able to stop drinking is similar to the response he gives Tidus in the flashback scene: first, he says he can stop whenever he wants, but then he says, “tomorrow, maybe”. We’re told that after the shoopuf-attacking incident Jecht does seem to be happy enough to just stop, though. I have concocted a simple explanation for this and it’s the same simple explanation that drives pretty much everything else in Spira (starts with “m”, ends with “agic”).
Auron hasn’t seen Braska summon nice friendly Bahamut yet, so this is his first time seeing Braska summon at all; he’s quite excited about it, and it lives up to his expectations. Braska and Jecht are both entranced by Shiva, but Auron is entirely unaffected, haha.
Jecht’s “smokin’ hot ladies” is probably one of my favourite lines in the whole fic. Jecht does tend to get all the good lines. I suppose he’ll be disappointed when he eventually sees the other aeons and realises Shiva is the only smoking hot lady among them. Even Braska, who probably hasn’t experienced much sexual desire recently, has quite a physical reaction … I guess Shiva is just that attractive.
Braska is trying really hard to be compos mentis at this point; he knows that doing what the fayth want is really his most important goal right now. As a result, he pays a bit more attention to his guardians, and remembers it’s probably worth trying to be nice to Jecht.
The “stronger than I figured”; “looks can be deceiving” exchange is a wee homage to some lines from Braska and Jecht’s first meeting that are present in the FFX files but were cut from the game. I wrote about them before (nearly three years ago hahaha wtf), although I’m not sure how in character it would have been for this particular incarnation of Braska to perform whatever physical assault on Jecht he seems to enact in the original context.
As Auron discovers after the others go to bed, the Crusaders are up to something! More of their not particularly effective attempts to disrupt the pilgrimage will be seen later. Even though Auron loves to be annoyed by the Crusaders because of their longstanding rivalry with the warrior monks, it’s not really their fault because their orders are coming from somebody (cough) higher up the tree.