Song of Portals
Sin's story ends with me, it has to. I might not have known that until we listened to Yunalesca earlier, but I sensed it for awhile now. We solved the mystery: Braska, Auron and I, and I now know that all paths to Zanarkand closed to me the day Sin brought me here, to this world, the real world.
Before I agreed to become the Fayth, Yunalesca asked me why I volunteered to take on this burden. With Braska able to hear me, I couldn't quite answer. It sounds crazy, like the ravings of a man from an imaginary place. I suppose he'll hear me, when he prays to me and acquires my Aeon from Yunalesca, but of all the things in this showman's life, I prefer that this one thing be said in privacy.
I am Jecht, the man from Zanarkand, a place far, far removed from this particular set of ruins. Everyone knew me in that city, the world-famous star player of the Zanarkand Abes. My fans loved me, my wife adored me, and my son followed in my footsteps. Money from the sports paid for nice things and lots of booze. What more could I ask for?
I received more though, much more. I don't remember much about that morning, although only three months have passed between then and now. The sea called out to me, the old urge to practice rose up in me. Even if my talent eclipsed all the other players, I used to hone my showmanship by an abandoned beach, the only really private place in Zanarkand. In the good old days, I practiced daily, but I admit that late-night drinking became more of a priority than early-morning practice, so that more often than not I skipped it.
Say, if I had spent that morning in bed hungover as usual, maybe I would still live in Zanarkand unaware of everything outside. Still pushing my son to follow in my footsteps, still taking care of my wife, still pandering to the fans. I admit it's an empty life compared to what I lived in Spira, but if I could return, I would. So, that morning, I must have practiced by the sea for the first time in over a month.
I remember watching a ball sail towards to the horizon. A wave that could pass for a blitzsphere rose high to meet it, and sent the ball back into my arms before it crashed down on me. Darkness surrounded me as the current carried me to the craw of the sea monster, Sin. It opened something the water could push me through, and my world changed.
The city skyline expanded out from me, as if I were seeing it from the gull's eye, only everything but the lights of the building was black. Like a feather, I drifted downwards through the air as my sight blurred. I think I saw a person, and maybe he or she nodded at me as I fell to the floor. As I touched down my vision faded. I woke up in prison, but Braska'd already know that. He told me that he was going to Zanarkand, and so I could accompany him on his pilgrimage as a Guardian, a very convenient arrangement for the both of us.
While I lost my faith in ever returning to my Zanarkand, I gained insight in my travels with Braska and Auron. Braska and I share fatherhood in common. Before we left Bevelle, I met his seven-year-old daughter, the same age as my son. Watching the easy way that father and daughter talked and hugged, I wanted to see my son again. For the first time, I wished I was good at letting him know what he meant to me. Braska told me later, it took most of his effort to part with his daughter. The single hardest part of his pilgrimage was saying that last goodbye to Yuna when both knew those were his last words to her.
He journeyed for her sake, though. Braska and I share that commonality as well. Had Spira been my native land and I tried to raise my kid where Sin rampaged, I would risk all to keep him safe. I left him everyday to play blitz, so that he would see me as an example. Of all the people who watched me, only my son's approval mattered. I knew from his birth that he would follow my path, albeit reluctantly.
So I almost instinctively knew that he'd come to Spira one day. I wanted him to so much, especially as we journeyed on. The father the boy knew in Zanarkand played blitzball and drank when he wasn't playing or sleeping or heckling his son. I did so much more in Spira. I saw things, did things I was proud of and things I wasn't so proud of that changed my life. I saw why Braska planned to give his life for his daughter as we watched Crusaders fall as they defended the blitzball stadium and the citizens from Luca from Sin.
When my son came here, I wanted him to know what I had done. I wanted him to be proud of me. With Braska's permission, I recorded our journey and hoped that one day he would find it. Somehow, I know he will.
The one thing I want him to see the most, I could not record. He needs to know the truth about Zanarkand, about everything. Maybe he will understand why I made this choice and why I will go through so much trouble to make sure that he is the one to kill me. Auron knows some of what I have planned, even if he will never know the real reason until after I'm gone. Braska knows too, although he will be a spectator, watching from the Farplane. Like me in the body of Sin, just a spectator for the first time in my life.
I never could tell this to Braska and Auron, but the night we camped by the Fayth wall, I managed to visit Zanarkand again. Time passes the same between the two worlds; nearly three months since I failed to return from practicing. The fans and groupies who worshiped me still lined the stadium. Candlelight flickered around a crude shrine built to my memory. I walked through that crowd, announcing my arrival at the top of my lungs, but the masses stared through me to my memorial.
I walked to the front of the crowd, next to where old magazine photos made a collage honoring my career. A regulation blitzball I had autographed stood surrounded by the offending flickering lights. The sight of the mourning compelled me to breathe and breathe deep just to prove that air still moved through my lungs.
See, I'm not a ghost! I wanted to shout at the audience, but my voice was as my body, non-existent to those who used to hang on to my every word and gesture.
Only one person made eye-contact, a little boy with a jacket bearing Bahamut's wheel on the back. Braska called him a Fayth. That boy crept me out, although when he beckoned for me to follow I did. The crowd between me and him left trails of mist on my arms like the spray from the edges of the machina that filled the blitzsphere. At least my feet walked on warm, solid ground, like the pavement in my Zanarkand.
He didn't speak as we made our way down the street between the stadium and my houseboat. Every now and again, he stopped to point at proof that I touched this world once, but no longer. A large picture of my handsome, confident face lined a billboard. Banners underneath declared the mourning of the world for the loss of their hero.
The title of hero no longer suited me. I still accept that I was the best player the Zanarkand Abes ever knew and will ever know, and that I was an excellent showman, but Spira changed my definition of a hero. Braska qualified as a hero; everyone derided him for traveling with a drunk and an outcast, for marrying an Al Bhed, but his resolve to sacrifice himself for peace never wavered, even when Auron and I became discouraged.
Bahamut Fayth watched and waited from a distance while the significance of the memorials embedded itself in my mind. Finally I caught up, demanding he give me answers, but he shook his head and pointed to my houseboat.
My wife stood on the railings, the good, devoted groupie who never questioned my outings, my drinking, anything. Honestly, she bored me after the first year or so, but I never was the man to just abandon what was his. But she always adored me; even now I saw evidence of her wasting away. Were her cheeks so sunken before I left, or her skin so pale? Certainly she never looked so sad, even after our fights. My son stayed further in on the deck, a determined scowl on his face while he practiced blitz. I accused him so much of being a crybaby, so why was he the only one in this city not crying?
He looked like his mother, but I still recognized something of myself in him, so much that I trained him from birth for blitz just as my father trained me. I hated the sentimental garbage, still do, but since I could never say it aloud, I would like the opportunity to say it in my final, unspoken confession. I love you, boy. I wish that you can come to Spira someday and see how your old man turned out.
I prepared to say the words to his deaf ears, but he suddenly turned in my direction and his bright eyes burned with determination. He tossed the ball I gave him for his last birthday in the air and prepared a flipkick, the basic move for many of the best shooting techniques. It went through my body and landed just a few feet behind me, at the feet of the Fayth, a weak shot but a hit nonetheless. Our last practice, the morning before I went out to sea, he still missed nine out of ten tries. Now, I watched him from a distance as he nailed the ball consistently and exactly where he aimed, right through me.
The Fayth assured me that my son did not sense me in any way, but I still turned away from my boy without saying what I intended. Take me back to Spira, I demanded, knowing that Braska and Auron needed me to complete their journey, and the burning desire to see the future Zanarkand pulled me back from this dream. He refused, not until he told me the truth and why I was brought back here the moment I touched the Fayth at Gagazet.
My existence was all a dream, those crowds, my wife, my son, just illusions from people who never let go of their lives when they saw defeat approaching. Someone in the depths of Sin summons our city from the Fayth trapped in that wall.
I'd seen Braska summon his Aeons. As they were nothing but the dreams of Fayth, Braska and the rest of the summoners controlled them easily. That truth made me stagger for a second as I wondered if I was nothing but an Aeon and something inside Sin controlled me.
No, I reject that. No one controls the Star Player of the Zanarkand Abes. No one summons him, starts him, stops him, or bends him to their will. I never played for puppets, even if the fans at the stadium never had individual faces to me. I never married a doll, even if my wife devoted all her time to me, so much that I wondered if anyone else existed to her. My son...
I believe in my son, that if anyone besides me in all of Zanarkand truly mattered, he did. I called him crybaby so many times, I sometimes forgot I had named him something different. His tears, his shouts give me faith in his reality. He exists for his own sake, to perform one day, not to sit in the crowd. If I somehow have something which makes me more real than the rest, then I know he possesses it as well.
No matter whether the world we lived in was an illusion, my son and I are more than that.
The Fayth pleaded to me. End this. We don't want to dream anymore.
And then, I woke up, both Auron and Braska looking over me with concerned expressions. I never explained anything, and after we moved camp for another day's travel, they never asked again.
Jecht lived. I hope the world, both worlds, say that about me when I leave for good. Jecht lived, Jecht worked hard, Jecht played hard. I know one world still mourns me while the other will curse and revere me in turn. I exist in the hearts of people from both worlds as an extraordinary figure, and if I have that, I can accept this fate almost happily.
I don't know how this being Sin thing works, if the Final Aeon really gets reborn. Will I control it from the inside? Will it take me over? Will it be a progression from one to the other? I suppose I'll find out when Braska carries me to the Calm Lands and uses me to kill Sin. I plan though, in case I can control Sin. Auron will watch over my son, and when he is ready, I will bring them to Spira.
The tugging of Yunalesca tells me to think of a form for my Aeon, and my mind freezes. I am Jecht. Jecht is Jecht. I never wanted to be anything besides myself in the twenty-eight years that I lived. I want to be me, larger, stronger, but even more myself than I was before. More than that, whatever my form is, I want to remain me for as long as I can. I want to bring my son to Zanarkand and show him this truth, and then, I want him to kill me.
I will end this, the spiral of death created to fuel a illuminated puppet show. Zanarkand commands my love more than Spira ever will, but some truth inside me says that Spira must take precedence, even at the sacrifice of my hometown. The world should belong to the living and the real.
I have done my part. Auron, Braska, the rest is on your shoulders.
I will be the last incarnation of Sin.
Author's Notes: For a man who has such simple-seeming motives, he ended up having some very complicated thoughts when he became the Fayth. This is extrapolation, and that while he gave up on returning to Zanarkand long before he could have seen the Fayth wall, his learning the truth about Zanarkand would cause him to want to become the Final Aeon. Jecht is perhaps the Fayth we know the most about, as we have both Tidus and Auron's memories of him as well as the Jecht spheres and Jecht himself at the end of the game. So here, instead of telling the whole story, I wanted to show an important moment that no one else could touch.