#currently tess is more interested in the desert wildlife but as soon as they're in that city she's going to lose her mind over gunstaffs

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Gremlinverse

(Brief warning for mention of Past Samos being ignorant bordering on ableist -- early 2000s writing really did not do him any favors -- and getting walloped for it)

The drive across the desert had not been a silent one. Between Tess pointing out every animal they saw to Mar, and Daxter trying to convince Sig that he knew how to drive and should totally get a turn at the wheel, Damas was amazed he could hear himself think. One of the little ones stood up in his periphery, sending a little spike of panic through him. Before the child could either topple over the side or get his sticky fingers on the gear shift, Damas scooped him up on instinct and set him on his knee.

Belatedly, he realized it was not the Mar he'd assumed it was.

"Ah-" Damas cringed. "Sorry, wrong kid."

He let go and Jak quickly slid down into the space beside him.

"We'll pretend that didn't happen," Jak answered.

"Agreed."

Jak cleared his throat of embarrassment. "Tess has Mar pretty well trapped back there, anyway. He's not getting out of his seat."

Damas raised a brow. "You got out of yours."

"So?"

"So Mar is you, and you are Mar." Damas glanced back at his toddler with suspicion. "Now that he's seen you do it, it's only a matter of time before he figures it out."

Jak looked like he was going to deny this, but then he made a conciliatory face.

"Okay, yeah, he kind of is an escape artist. You'd think he wouldn't be able to get that far on stubby little legs, and yet."

"And yet," Damas agreed. He paused, and leaned back to study Jak’s face.

"Do you have a scar under your left eyebrow?"

"That," said Jak, "is weirdly specific. Why?"

"Mar's first Escape was launching himself out of his cradle at ten months old," Damas said with a grimace. "Predictably, he landed square on his head and screamed bloody murder."

He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head.

"Scared me half to death."

Jak touched two fingers to the place on his forehead where the eyebrow grew unevenly.

"Do you think the Before Damas was scared, too?"

Damas looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well," he said slowly, "if I am him, and he was me, then I'd say he must have been."

Jak peered out at the dunes around him and casually remarked, "One time back in Sandover Samos asked if I didn't talk because I got a head injury, and the fisherman boxed his ears real hard."

"As well he should have!" Damas growled. "Idiot sage. Didn't he know how to recognize a different dialect of signing?!"

Jak shrugged. "For once, he wasn't trying to be mean, that's the funny part. He was trying to figure out where the scar came from and he let that slip."

The boy gave a grim smile wholly out of place on such a young face.

"Boy, he never did that again. He found something new to belittle me about every week, but when it came to me not using my voice, he learned to keep his big mouth shut."

"I think," said Damas, "I think I would have liked to meet that fisherman."

"His name was Ollie." The grim look softened into a more nostalgic one. "He was one of the only ones who was always nice to Daxter. He'd offered Dax a place under his roof a couple times, but Ollie also had breath that could kill plants at short range. Probably because of the fish he ate raw. He didn't believe in cookstoves."

Damas thought of Kleiver, who had similar thoughts on oral hygiene. He made a face.

"That doesn't sound like an environment your friend would enjoy. He's quite serious about health and cleanliness, isn't he?"

"Well one of us has to be!" Daxter interrupted.

Jak turned around and stuck his tongue out at him.

"Oh, what are you, five?"

"Why don't you come down here and say that to my face, huh, Bigfoot?"

Sig rolled his eye. "Do I need to separate you two?"

Both boys paused and looked confused.

"Why?" asked Daxter, "This is normal!"

"Yeah," Jak added, "I get two years of payback for him always callin' me Bigfoot, and he gets to make short jokes. Fair is fair."

Sig cringed, and Damas fixed him with a look.

"Your impudent past has come calling," he said dryly.

"Oh, so when they're being goblins it's my impudent past, right." Sig shook his head and swerved around a tight cluster of desert sheoak trees.

"I could say something about that, y'know."

"You could, but you won't."

"Won't I?" Now Sig had a smug little grin on, one that matched Daxter too well to mean anything but mischief.

Surprisingly, Damas matched the challenging tone with a wry smile of his own.

"No indeed, you will not. Because that would entail admitting to certain exploits we both agreed never to mention again."

The buggy slowed, and Sig leaned an elbow on the console. "What, this isn't you mentioning it right now?"

The wry grin widened into a crocadog smile. "Keep pushing, you'll find out."

Tess giggled and shifted little Mar on her lap. "Uh-oh, it's double trouble!" she joked.

Mar wrinkled his nose and looked baffled. "What's funny?" he asked, "Are they fightin'?"

Tess wasn't fluent yet in reproducing the signing dialect the boys used, but practicing with Daxter got her far enough to understand most of the things Mar said.

"Just pretend fighting, the same way Jak and Daxxie do," she reassured him, "See? They're smiling! They're doing that silly grown-up thing where we have to see who can look the most serious while playing."

Mar relaxed. "Jak-jak is good at that game!" he observed innocently.

Then he perked up and pointed to a glow on the horizon.

"Look look!"

Damas looked back, and his whole face softened when he saw the excited gleam in Mar's eyes.

"You see the Lighthouse?" he asked.

"Almost home!" Mar answered, hands animated enough to be a shout.

"Almost home!" Damas echoed aloud. "Are you ready to see Mommy?"

"Mmm-a!" Mar croaked, flinging his arms into the air.

Jak turned around to lean over the back of the seat, pillowing his cheek on his arms.

"What's she like, anyway?"

Mar blinked, stumped. What kind of question was that? Mommy was, well, Mommy! Didn't Jak-jak remember?

"She goes swimming, and paints stuff," he said confidently, "And she likes sandwiches."

Damas turned his head quickly to disguise a snort of laughter as a cough. Of all the things to remember-!

Phobos didn't actually like sandwiches all that much. But as a two year old, it was the only food Mar could be trusted to handle on his own. He had made "sandwiches" for his mother to take onto her boat with her often enough for it to stick in his memory, clearly. And Phobos, of course, didn't want to discourage his burgeoning kitchen endeavors, or his wholehearted gestures of affection. There had been more than one week where all Phobos had for breakfast was two pieces of flatbread with tomango paste and three pieces of cereal stuck to it.

The face that Tess made above Mar's head, a grimace aimed at Daxter, indicated that the young rebels had also sampled Mar's version of sandwiches at some point. Evidently his choice of ingredients had not improved in the two years he had been gone. Nevertheless, Damas had promised himself many times that he'd choke down any nasty sandwich his son offered if he only could see him again.

"Sandwiches?" Jak asked Mar, looking dubious. "Uh...okay, if you say so."

He slid back around to face the windshield.

"Probably shouldn't have asked the toddler," he muttered.

Sig grinned and shook his head. "Don't worry about it, cherry. She's...she's a lot like you, actually. No nonsense, loves exploring, used to climb everything, especially if you told her not to-"

"Hey!"

"Well you do, kid." Sig accelerated to cut across a sandbar in the middle of a lush, green, riverbank. Water splashed up, almost as high as the doors as he guided the vehicle through a shallow place in the Cacomiztli River.

"And so did she, when we were kids. Heh. She used to get my cousins into so much trouble."

"Yeah," Daxter said, finally dropping back into his own seat, "That sounds like Jak."

A pair of eyes appeared over the edge of the roll cage, narrowed at Daxter.

"Dax-" he warned.

Daxter, predictably, did not heed the warning whatsoever.

"Hey, Sig, ask Jak what he did on his ninth birthday."

Jak hissed for all the world like a caracal.

"Daxter, I swear by my tiny little hands, I will end you!"

"You can't reach," Daxter teased.

"Wanna bet?" Jak jumped up, about to launch himself at his friend's head.

"Hey!" Sig leaned out of the way of a small, sharp, elbow. "Park your carcass! I'm driving here!"

Damas hooked an arm around Jak’s middle and pulled him back down onto the center console he'd made his seat. That arm stayed across Jak's torso like a makeshift seatbelt, to the boy's exasperation.

"Next person to get out of their seat is washing the garages when we get home. You can go back to killing each other after we shut off the engine!"

He paused, then scoffed. "Ah. I've become that parent."

Having started out with only Mar, Damas had never anticipated becoming like the Wastelanders who had to spend half their oasis trips dealing with offspring practicing for their Arena trials on each other in the back of the buggy.

Tess cackled. "Oh Daxxie, your face! Don't worry, babe. I'd help you if you had to wash a garage. A little."

"I wouldn't," Mar added bluntly.