#Door Locks & Handles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

radioactivepeasant · 6 months ago

Text

Surprise Snippet because I didn't get time to post a schedule this week

(Woe: Summer Reading Programs be upon me)

But because I can never resist giving Damas of Spargus a hard time, I propose the following scenario: Jak carries germs from Sandover that modern people aren't vaccinated against. Modern people like Damas. And because Jak doesn't do anything by halves, it's a disease that only effects channelers because it's a non-dark-eco eco imbalance.

In his roughly twelve years as king of Spargus, Damas had dealt with the occasional illness. In the two years before he took the throne, he'd gotten all manner of unpleasant ailments. Crane Cough, White Flu, Dust Colic, even! And that was something most Wastelanders grew out of in infancy! But vaccinations were for the elite. For everyone else it was survive or die, unless you were willing to hand over your entire artifact intake for the week.

Damas had been one of the lucky ones: being a channeler meant he recovered far more quickly than some of the other recent exiles.

He'd grown complacent since then. A germ could be dealt with in no more than a day or two with a little eco and a couple hours of rest. He could pinpoint the early warning signs of every disease common to Spargus and Haven alike.

That was, in hindsight, the first sign that Jak had not originally come from Haven. Because whatever was rattling around in that bullheaded kid's immune system was like nothing the doctor had ever seen before.

It started so innocuously. A slight pain behind his eardrums that he could ignore. Stiffness in the joints that he put down to having finally passed forty. Something sluggish in the chest, almost like anxiety.

He already had Anxiety, that didn't narrow anything down at all.

And then, without warning, the symptoms all combined and intensified. It felt like influenza, but without the respiratory distress. Worse somehow.

The boy was present when the symptoms crossed from incubation to a full manifestation of whatever hell he'd just contracted. The timing could hardly be worse: he'd just finished reprimanding two young scouts for fighting in the vehicle pit. And of course, Jak had been one of those scouts. He'd thrown the first punch, because of course he had, but at least it hadn't been unprovoked this time.

"At least". As if there being two guilty parties was somehow better.

Evidently young Kwan had proposed some kind of bet revolving around artifacts, and suggested that the loser would have to go shirtless for a day and show off their scars.

Damas didn't support Jak breaking his nose, but seeing as he was convinced that every Wastelander under twenty-five had some degree of senselessness, he supposed it was probably a valuable lesson for Kwan.

Which did, unfortunately, make it hard to rule fairly between them.

Ultimately, Kwan was given a sharp rebuke about goading non-consenting comrades into bets -- especially when some degree of their autonomy was on the line.

Jak's reprimand was more along the lines of warning him to either walk away or find an older Wastelander to handle things, blast it all-!

But seeing as Jak was the first one to throw a punch, it was Jak who had to forfeit the artifacts he'd picked up for the day in order to pay for the eco Kwan would need.

Not that this stopped Damas from adding that this hadn't been the first time Kwan's love of bets had gotten him into trouble, but by Volcan it had better be the last.

A rather shame-faced Kwan had just left the tower -- like rot was Damas going to allow them to occupy the same elevator at the same time, somebody would be dead before the ground floor -- when the lung cramps started.

"I'm...sorry," Jak was in the middle of saying, with extreme reluctance, "for fighting in the garages. I'm not sorry for hitting him, though."

When his only answer was an unnaturally wet sounding cough, he looked up to find Damas clinging to his staff for support. His other hand gripped his chest, veins standing out. He'd gone pale.

"Oh shi- Damas!" Jak ran up the stairs. "What's wrong?"

"Are you choking?" Daxter asked in loud, exaggeratedly slow words, "Do you need assistance?"

What's it look like?! Damas wanted to shout, but he could barely get his lungs to expand enough to breathe, let alone speak.

Something bitter and hot flooded his mouth on the next cough.

At least his lungs had reopened with the ejection of the fluid, but he couldn't help wondering if he'd just coughed up a vital organ. Damas spat, and something thick and colorless splattered across his boots. It wasn't bile, nor mucus. There were, on closer inspection, specks of color floating in it. Green, red, yellow, blue- the colors of eco, but far more saturated than they had any right to be.

Jak pulled his fingerless glove off and laid the back of his hand against Damas’s forehead like he was a child. Just as quickly, he removed it.

"Uh. Have you been having like...a lot of aches? Joints and jaws and stuff?" he asked nervously.

Damas glared at him, but ultimately nodded.

"Crap. Crap crap- uhhhh okay. Okay!" Jak ran his fingers through his hair.

"Damas, you gotta sit down, okay? It's Blackwater virus, so altitude is bad, right?"

"Th' rot's* Blackwater?" Damas rasped. He clenched his teeth against the ache in his jaws.

"Pal," Daxter said to Jak, with an unusual gentleness, "They don't have that here. Probably haven't for a long time, you get me?"

The ottsel hopped down from his shoulder. "You stay with Lumpy Lungs there, I'm getting a doc to rule out everything else."

Damas knew without asking that Daxter was trying to spare Jak. That boy had a debilitating fear of exam chairs that went beyond the usual childhood disdain for doctor appointments. And by now, Damas wasn't the only Spargan who had connected the dots between his fear of doctors and his refusal to let anyone see all of his scars.

Jak took hold of his arm and pushed him down to sit on the stairs. Any other day the manhandling would've gotten someone at least a good punch in the gut. But right now Damas could barely catch his breath enough to stand his ground. That was humiliating even without the unidentified fluid still lurking at the back of his throat.

"Okay, okay-" Jak was talking more to himself than to Damas. "Eco's pretty saturated so you're prooooobably right at the beginning of this. Crap.”

The boy dropped to sit beside him with a groan.

"I- crap! I'm sorry, Damas! I didn't think I was in here often enough to pass Blackwater to you! I swear, I thought I wasn't contagious anymore!"

The pinching in Damas’s lungs returned, and with it, the wrenching coughs.

"You-?" he managed to gasp.

Jak winced. He looked so strangely young when he felt guilty about something.

"Two- two weeks ago? Remember I didn't take any jobs for a couple days and you had someone go make sure I was still in the city? I was getting over Blackwater virus. I um."

He tilted his head back and blew out a breath.

"Used to only get it when I was little. But after the- after what Praxis did to me, I'm more susceptible to it than I used to be. Usually I can catch it in the incubation period before it gets bad, but I've been more focused on work than tracking symptoms."

"Why," Damas wheezed, "didn't you just get eco?"

"From the white coats? Rot no!" Jak snapped.

"From. The well." Damas bent double with another cough. "I know. You're. A channeler."

"Oh." Jak looked away and tapped his fingers together nervously. "Good point. But...no, eco doesn't work on Blackwater."

"What?"

"It's the eco that's infected."

"What?!"

* author's note: the use of "rot" as a curse word in Spargus is used as an abbreviation of an older curse. The full phrase, usually lobbed at Marauders during skirmishes, would be "Go rot with your dead gods". That's a bit of a mouthful, so Wastelanders just looking for a handy expletive will shorten it to "rot"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>

Legend said no one had ever made Damas of Spargus do anything against his will. Or at least, no one that lived to tell the tale. The previous ruler of Spargus didn't count. Just the idea of telling the king where he could and couldn't go was sacrilegious!

...unless you were the new kid, apparently.

In fairness, Damas didn't actually remember Jak talking to the doctor and that blasted moncaw. He didn't remember the moncaw reluctantly giving in to Jak’s...strongly-worded...demands to be shown where Damas slept at night. What he did remember was a ringing in his ears that blocked all sound, and a vicious ache in the front of his skull. He remembered someone slinging his arm over their shoulder, and then he was coughing too hard to actually pay any kind of attention to his surroundings whatsoever.

He didn't remember entering his rooms. But he most certainly remembered the moment he realized he was on the couch he used as a bed when he couldn't bear to unlock the room he'd shared with his wife and child. Jak was all but shouting at a monk who had apparently followed them in.

"He doesn't need eco! You give him that, he's gonna feel five times worse!"

"I hardly think a boy is qualified to tell me the ways of eco."

"It's rottin' Blackwater! You wanna help him, or you wanna poison him?!"

The monk planted his feet. "You will not stop me from treating my king, newcomer." He reached for the flask of eco all monks carried.

Daxter made a sound like a buzzer. "Brrrzt! Wrong answer! Jak, get this clown outta here."

Before Jak could oblige, Damas caught him by the wrist.

"No. Fighting," he coughed, and gave what he hoped was a stern look.

Jak softened his voice immediately. "I'm not, I'm not. Trust me, okay? I'm helping you."

"Sire!" cried the monk, clearly worried, "The scout won't listen to reason! The doctor brought me in because he couldn't identify this poison in your system! Let me give you the eco your body needs to heal, please!"

Jak shook his head firmly. "The virus will use it.”

"What virus?!" Brother Rhys exploded, "These are not the symptoms of a disease, they are the symptoms of a toxin!"

"I am aware." Jak turned away from him. "I get this about once every two months. I know what I'm talking about, okay?"

Daxter hopped up onto the couch as if he meant to intercept any eco. "It sounds counterintuitive, but you gotta go with the old ways on this one, doc. Modern medicine makes it worse."

Jak crouched in front of the couch, ignoring the monk.

"I'm gonna get you some water, okay?" he said in a low voice, "This is pretty much going to wreck your system for a couple days. You should probably cancel any meetings you got coming up."

"Probably?" Daxter sounded offended. "Try absolutely! Blackwater puts you out of commission for days, and you're you!"

"I'm not gonna tell you what to do-" Jak started.

"Yeah we are," Daxter interrupted.

"...yeah, I am," Jak sighed in resignation.

"I know it sucks, okay? But you gotta let this flush itself out."

"And how. Exactly. Will it do that?" Damas growled.

Who did this boy think he was, giving him orders like they were kin? He was barely out of puberty and he wanted to take command?

"Charcoal."

"You must be joking," Rhys complained, "We've gone back to the dark ages!"

"Why d'you think it's called Blackwater?" Daxter asked dryly. "You gotta flush the toxins the old fashioned way."

"Don't think," Damas wheezed around another chest cramp, "that there won't be a reckoning for this, boy, because there will."

"Uh-huh. After you drink the charcoal.”

#making Damas miserable for fun and profit #writing prompts #fic prompts #jak and daxter #dadmas #king damas #Damas does follow through on that reckoning by the way. it's that he knows there are child locks on the door and Jak does not #he calls it preemptive quarantine but everyone knows he's just keeping them in his living room for revenge #meanwhile Jak ended up holding down the fort for two days as the most unwilling regent in Spargus history and Damas did NOT know about this #in fairness Jak didn't either. he just thought he was keeping people from bugging Damas by handling their issues #free day Thursday #blackwater trial

45 notes · View notes