#griefitself

[thehalalgirlofficial]

“Grief is love with nowhere to go.”

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[sunsent]

@griefitself​ said:  “it hurts, i can’t lie.” 

It’s freezing in Zanarkand. The old ruins jut up like bones. Auron props up across from Braska to let him sleep, the fire in front of them doing a piss poor job of trying to warm them both. Jecht’s gone. He put his coat over Braska to try vainly.

“You... don’t have to do this. Still. I wouldn’t turn from you if you left this here.”

[sunsent]

@craterkissed, then @griefitself

They stop through Luca between the steps of the pilgrimage, and it’s in an inn near the blitz stadium that he sips a cup of cider and watches the rain fall outside. They need to stay here for the night.

“The warrior prospects hm-” he tends to be quiet when not directly talked to. It’s an odd day, and he tells it to the other two in the room without stopping himself,  “we used to skate the roofing when it rained so that we would slide further. Or to practice balance.”

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@griefitself is just sitting there like  👀

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@griefitself says “with my hands in the ocean, i pray.” 

Braska introduces them to his daughter three hours after they take Jecht off the lawmaster’s hands. Jecht is absolutely thrilled to have a rapt audience again, and spends the entire time doing increasingly inane tricks for her along the Bevelle shoreline. Auron supervises from the flood wall. Yuna is seven, and she’s watched over by another warrior monk woman who hasn’t entirely taken her eyes off of Jecht. He looks insane. He acts insane. Yuna thinks it’s the most interesting thing and plays a round or two of twenty questions with him. She asks him why his hair is like that, what the mark on his chest means.

And of course, Jecht continues to sound insane and swell with pride, “Zanarkand Abes, of course! Didn’t your old man teach you anything?” 

Auron rolls his eyes and Jecht backflips away from her, landing with all the poise of a gargoyle on one of the wooden posts stuck in the white sand. She laughs at him and hides under the bridge. Her caretaker frowns deeper.

“Auron,” Braska says, walking around his shoulders to settle by him, “Has she said hello yet?”

“Yes. She is very polite.”

Yuna manages to hang upside down from a portion of the pier and Jecht looks to have actually lost her in their game of hide-and-seek. Braska hands him a cup of tea, holding his own half under his long sleeve, and coughs into his collar.

“Have you told her that you are leaving?” he asks, as Yuna, who had managed to pick a crab off of the pier, starts running after Jecht with it to show him, completely forgoing the game.

Braska nods, “She knows I am going on my pilgrimage, and that it is an honor.”

Yuna catches sight of her father, and beelines for him, crab in hand. Jecht folds his arms and rocks on his heels in the sand, no longer the center of attention and now turning to kicking the blitzball they had commandeered a little further into the waves.

Yuna holds out her crab, which wiggles in her hands, “Look what I found. I think this is a rare one. Ser Auron, what do you think?”

“It does look odd for the season.”

Braska holds his hand out to appraise the small creature, and it doesn’t pinch him, settling instead into the center of his palm. His fingers curl and a gentle swirl of water rises from his palms and surrounds the crab in a sphere of water. Magic is effortless for him. He does not have any hesitation period or buildup. The perfect pearl of water suspends the crab.

“I think it is, Yuna. Return him carefully.”

Yuna watches him do it, and holds her hands out again, “I will!”

The bubble doesn’t pop when she takes it and runs back to the water, setting it down in the lapping waves. It disappears. Yuna folds her hands in front of her to watch it swim away. He turns to ask Braska what his plans were for his daughter, but the look on Braska’s face stopped the question.

He looks so sad. It fades when he realizes he’s being looked at. He smiles.

“Ah, we shall go soon, do not worry, Auron.”

Braska sets the teacup down at his spot and drifts after Yuna, stepping into the water in his robes. He gently flicks his hands through the air and calls the water to form into airborne shapes for Yuna to play through. 

It’s not what he was worried about, but he doesn’t say anything back. Braska sits with his daughter and plays with water magic. Jecht eventually catches it and curious, wanders over to ask about it.

The monk that had kept watch over them turns to him and says, “He’s not going to make it. He doesn’t even want to leave.”

[sunsent]

😳

send me  ‘ 😳 ‘  for my muse to tell to yours how they feel about them, good or bad!

Braska still has to get to Sin, and he can’t walk. His body failed him the first few steps out of the chamber, and Jecht did not come back. There was a bruising under Braska’s chest that would not stop bleeding.

Braska’s mouth fills with blood and he mutters something about his body finally failing while Auron carries him out of Zanarkand. There’s no one to send Braska if he dies, and he will die quickly. He doesn’t seem to mind it, Braska. He smiles as he talks to Auron. Auron gives one sentence answers to keep him talking.

“Thank you.”

“-For what?”

Braska sighs, deeply.

“For guarding me. For becoming my friend. I’ve always been dying, Auron.”

Auron shakes his head in response. Jecht had the plan and he was still thinking of how to follow it.

“You- Jecht.”

“You knew this, Auron,” he reminds him. Yes, he did.

Man when are you going to tell him? He’s about to die. Not that it’d change any damn thing.

Jecht ribbed him from beyond the grave and the long green hills of the valley came into view.

“Braska, you lived meaningfully, and you were kind. Always.”

No, you moron.

“Is that all?”

Braska laughs at him like he’s not going to summon something to slaughter a decades old incarnation of human misery. He slides out from Auron’s arms and testing, holds onto his forearm to try and step into the grass. Three successful steps and Auron keeps his arm in place and walks with him.

“Probably not,” Auron starts, “-but... we wait for Sin here? We coax it here?”

The Calm Lands around them were quiet, the tall grasses swaying in the wind.

“We wait. It will come for me.”

Auron smarts.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I know. But look at it, at this thing we have done-”

He pulls the circlet and hood off his head and lets it fall, letting Auron’s arm go to do so. Braska pulls the plates and sleeves off of his robe like they’re on fire. 

“Look at this fantastic thing we’ve done-! and we shall beat Sin- not a soul will remember us as anything but this impossibility. We’ve done it, we will do it. We are doing it and victorious.”

Braska reaches to the sky, tips back, and flops into the grass. The clouds are perfectly gray and storming already. It’s a sign and Braska is smiling at the death he’s been avoiding for the length of his life.

He never stops smiling.

Auron stands over him and watches the silhouettes of clouds.

“I... Hm,” he stops before he says it, and good too, because Braska sits up at rapt attention and stands tall as a shadow falls over them.

“Auron. Take care of Yuna, please. I want her to grow up in safety and not be shamed for her father. I want her to be happy.”

“Braska-” Braska lifts both of his hands before he can say anything, do anything, and bites into the meat of his palm until blood spurts out. There’s a burst of light, and energy. Braska’s always been too bright to contain in his body. He’s consumed by it- and then a claw explodes from the ground under his feet and the Jecht in his head sneers at him as a monster rises from the flames.

[escapekissed]

± me next me next

“What can I say I like about you that isn’t obvious? You’re the human embodiment of the sun, except you shine five times as brightly, and you’re so close you can and will burn a bastard shade to death. It hurts my eyes honestly. It hurts my heart.”

“I hate that you’ve suffered. Everybody suffers, I know. But some people just seem to suffer a little too much. Enough that even with all the goodness in their heart, all the warmth, the love... the shit just breaks them.” 

“You work so hard at giving up. You can’t practice death. I guess, except in Spira, where you can get real, real good at it. Circle of death and all that.”

"I hope when you die, it’s good enough for you. I hope it’s good enough for this whole fucking world, because they’ve taken fucking everything else from you, haven’t they? Or else you wouldn’t feel like you have to do this.” 

“There’s nothing I can say--that’ll get you to change your mind, that won’t make you feel betrayed, or hurt, or like i don’t understand you and all your light, your path of justice, you sacrificing yourself so beautifully and brightly. Not just going out with a bang---but with fucking beautiful-ass fireworks that fucking sparkle Sin out of the sky, make the whole world clap. And that hurts most. You’re so good, and you’re going to die, and I hate that more than I’ve ever hated anything before, and it makes me want to hate everything fucking else.”

“I can’t hate you for it, though. I just hate... that you feel this way. And that I... care about you enough to go along with it.”