Parallel
Yuna is her father's daughter.
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Braska lost his parents to Sin. He was 10 when Sin sunk the ship where his parents were on their way back to Beville from visiting friends in Besaid. He was staying with his aunt the time. He always remembered her scream of grief when word came that her baby sister and her husband had died. That scream became linked with Sin in young Braska's mind. Sin is grief.
Yuna lost her father to Sin. While everyone celebrated her father's Calm, the little girl of just seven, all alone in the world, huddled in a corner of her bedroom, waiting for her father to come get her as he always did. He doesn't. Instead a strange creature with blue fur comes and tells her that it's her father's wish that she be taken to Besaid. For her, Sin is loneness.
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Braska decides to become a summoner after Sin takes the lives of his aunt and uncle, the last family he had left. As he enters the Chamber of the Fayth for the first time, he vows that no more families will be destroyed like his have been.
Yuna decides to become a summoner when word reaches Besaid of Chappu's death. She sees how devastated Lulu and Wakka are, sees Lulu withdraw even further into her shell, sees Wakka lose whatever hope he had left for the Aurochs to accomplish anything, even as he throws himself into the team. Sin has made them lonely, just as it had made her lonely. She vows to the fayth that no one will be left alone because of Sin again.
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Braska loves Sarah, his little prickly Al Bhed wife with all his heart. It hurts him to see their neighbors mock her, when she's sneered at in the streets. He doesn't care. To him, she's Sarah, who isn't ashamed of him for becoming a summoner, and then refusing to go on pilgrimage. So what if he only has one Aeon? She loves him. That's why it breaks his heart when she's found dead in their bedroom, a ceremonial knife through her heart.
Yuna loves Tidus, her lost refugee from Zanarkand. She never tells him anything, just being around him is enough to give her the strength to go on. If it wasn't for him, she doubts that she have been able to continue on past Operation Mi'ihen, much less the disasters in Macalania, Beville, or Guadosaalam. Even if she had made it to Zanarkand without him, there would have been no way she could have stood up to her namesake and found a way to bring the Eternal Calm. He's the only reason she makes it through. That's why it breaks her heart when he disappears off the airship.
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Braska was turned away from the temples for eight years, the entire length of time he was married to Sarah. Even after she died, members of the clergy still let their eyes drift over him, they respect his status of as a summoner to allow him access to the fayth, but the other amenities the temples offer that other summoners and their Guardians take for granted, are denied to Braska. That's why when he finally sets out on his pilgrimage, over ten years after he gains his first Aeon, he deliberately chooses those who are just as outside of Yevon's teachings as he is for his Guardians. And while Auron might be just a little too uptight at times, or Jecht gets them all in trouble with his drunken antics, Braska wouldn't trade his friends for anyone in the world.
Yuna gathers all the friends she can trust on her journey. Like she tells Dona, she can trust all of her Guardians with her life, never mind that it is unusual for a summoner to take more than two or three Guardians with them on pilgrimage. That's why, when the temples turn against them, when the lies of Yevon's teachings are exposed, it suddenly doesn't matter anymore that Rikku is Al Bhed or that Wakka still secretly blames them for the machina weapon that Chappu died with, or that Tidus still slightly fumbles with temple protocol, or that Auron and Lulu don't understand the meaning of tact, she knows that nothing on Spira can induce them to betray her.
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"Make your father proud," they tell Yuna as she passes by. "You're the image of your father on his pilgrimage."
No one knows just how right they are.
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Something that I've been looking for recently, and haven't found. If you think about it, thae parallels are quite close. Braska was outside the temples, he even admits it to Jecht, says that he's a disgraced summoner, likely for marrying an Al Bhed and, in this at least, delaying his pilgrimage without accepting a position in the Yevon clergy. Yuna was outside the temples, after killing Seymour, and discovering the lies the priesthood had told for a thousand years. Braska loved his wife, Yuna loves Tidus, Braska brought a Calm, Yuna brought the Eternal Calm.
This is just a spir-the-moment fic. It has no effect on my update schedule for my two in progress stories. As a matter of fact, I'm just about to hit finals, so my writing priorities have shifted downward. As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to be studying now….
Please review. It breaks my heart when readers don't review.