#spargan ocs

[radioactivepeasant]

Free Day Thursday: Fragile Things

(This is the one where overuse of light eco at the point of death rewound Damas’s soul back three years. He still isn't sure whether he actually died and accidentally entered another timeline's body when that Damas would have died early, or if he just had an extremely detailed vision. Either way, he broke into Haven and kidnapped TPL Jak literally right in front of Errol and his patrol, and 100% forgot to explain this to his people. Including Jak.) This is long so I'm breaking it into two three posts because even with a read-more it'd be a lot of scrolling.

Two Months Before the Incident:

For the children of the North Quarter, the bridge was a popular place to play and congregate. Most people didn't mind their youngsters hanging around the area, as it was close enough to the tower to discourage general mischief. Footraces, dramatic games of make-believe, even impromptu Raids matches were held on the dusty landmark. It wasn't uncommon for a passing adult to stop and keep an eye on the children for a while, occasionally playing referee.

It was not common for that adult to be King Damas.

He leaned against the tower, and an entrance to the filtration levels that only a handful of Spargans had the code to. Nine children ranging from ten to fourteen in age were spread across the bridge in little groups. The smaller ones were playing a fairly unhinged version of Raids that had evolved to include someone's pet dogat. The older three were crouched closer to him, intent on learning a marble game Jak was trying to teach them. Kill-Grid, he called it, some fusion of checkers and an Arena trial. Damas hadn't quite gotten the hang of it yet, himself, but he enjoyed watching Jak play.

One of the water staff exited the entrance and was taken aback to find him there. For a moment, the balding man looked around as if expecting trouble. When he realized that the king was merely taking his turn looking after the collective of children, he relaxed.

"One of these days someone is going to go right over the side of this thing," he sighed.

"And that's why they're never up here unsupervised," Damas agreed. Never taking his eyes from the children, he asked, "How are the new saline filters working out?"

Jeriko made a face. "All good but one. There's a crack in the seal we didn't notice at installation. We're going to have to take it out and use the old filter until it's fixed."

"Ah. I'll have the Trade guild remind its members to examine imports from Kras more closely." Damas rubbed his nose and shrugged. "Still, three out of four isn't bad."

"No indeed.”

They were silent for a while, and Jeriko noticed something. While Damas’s eyes periodically flitted across every little Spargan on the bridge, they always came back to one in particular. The skinny little thing he'd brought back after dropping off Sig for his infiltration mission. Jak, right? Or Jag? Jeriko could never quite tell, but the boy was almost always in the tower. Far more than any of his playmates would have been. Jeriko could almost swear the boy lived there.

"You knew him already, didn't you?"

He couldn't say what had possessed him to ask what so many whispered about already. A death-wish?

But Damas wasn't offended. There was a faraway quality to his gaze as he murmured, "Yes."

He folded his arms and sighed.

"He's thirteen, now. Thirteen! It doesn't seem real."

This was not what Jeriko had expected to hear. He turned to face his king in shock.

"Did you know him...before? In Haven?"

Did he leave a kid behind? He wouldn't do that, right?

Damas’s mind was far from the bridge. He answered honestly, but he did not think then how his answers would be interpreted.

"He's changed so much-! And yet for me, it seems only days since we were first separated."

Oh. Jeriko blanched. The coup. Jak had probably been a hostage to ensure that Damas cooperated. He would have been a newborn then! The poor kid! Jeriko didn't want to think about what kind of life he'd led before Damas went back for him. And now Haven had his other child, too? It was unthinkable.

"Does...does he remember?" Jeriko asked cautiously.

Damas shook his head. "No. I was a stranger to him."

His voice caught on the words.

"But it is...better this way. Better he is spared the horrors I remember. If I must rebuild our relationship from the beginning, I will gladly do so as long as he's safe."

Jak looked up then, meeting Damas’s gaze. He blinked at the intensity of it, then beamed and waved.

Damas smiled and waved back, but his eyes were still troubled.

And now, so were Jeriko's.

Five Days Before the Incident:

(The snippet where Jak jumpscares Damas by asking "Hey are you secretly my dad or something")

The Incident:

On the mainland, autumn had arrived. The air was cooling, and leaves were beginning to change color. On the desert island colloquially known as The Wastelands, fall meant temperatures dropping from 100° to 75°, and the air drying out. A relief for everyone except the people who harvested humidity to sell water. The cooling of the air meant that the sandstorm season had ended, and the rainy season would be upon them soon.

In the city of Spargus, that meant children anxiously awaiting the first major storm of the year. Once it had rained for more than fifteen minutes in a single span, the council would choose a day within the week to celebrate the Rainfall holiday on. Rainfall meant a four day break from school, and distribution of carefully conserved fruits and sweets, and the annual plays and mock battles held in the Arena to entertain the youngest Wastelanders. (And some of the older ones, not that they'd admit it.)

Jak had never heard of the holiday before being brought to the desert city. But it reminded him of Aurora Night in Sandover -- or more specifically, Rock Village. Uncle Erasmus had brought the tradition down into the coastal village when he settled there, long before Jak arrived.

He wondered where in the world Erasmus had ended up -- or maybe when. The calendars were all messed up now.

The holiday sounded like a lot of fun. There had never been more than three children in their little neighborhood in Sandover, and celebrations were subsequently quite small. But here there were more kids than Jak had ever seen in one place before. And even the older ones were excited about Rainfall!

Jak sat under an awning with a few other twelve and thirteen year olds, sorting spent ammunition casings to be recycled. It was normally a chore for very young children, but someone in Jak’s class had gotten them all on punishment.

The actions of one affected the whole.

That's the lesson the teacher was trying to impress on them: that one person breaking rules and taking risks in the ruins could put a whole team in danger.

Half the kids understood the lesson behind the group punishment. The other half -- including Jak -- thought it was just grown-ups being mean.

"Y'know what's the worst about this?" complained a girl to Jak’s left -- one of his regular playmates these days, "It wasn't even me this time! For once, I didn't sneak off, and I'm still getting baby chores!"

Jak snorted. "Lose-lose," he signed.

"You said it," Flick agreed.

She tossed another empty Scatter cartridge into a basket and nudged Jak's foot with her own.

"Hey, you think the big boss will give you a Rain Bead this year?"

"Huh?"

Jak tilted his head quizzically.

Flick took a moment to wind her braided hair back up out of her way, only to undo her work again by shrugging.

"Y'know, since you live...somewhere in the tower. Does he take care of you? Or do you live on the first floor?"

"I live with Damas? You knew that already?"

He wasn't that surprised that she'd forgotten. There were a lot of floors in the tower, and three of them had people living in them. And since people didn't like to talk about Damas’s other kid, the baby his friend in Haven was searching for, they tended to assume that Damas wasn't the one looking after Jak.

The only exceptions were the guards and the filtration staff. They gossiped worse than old Mrs. Perch! Inside the tower, it was an open secret that Jak had either been adopted by the king, or was a biological child that had been taken from him when he was exiled.

Jak pretended not to hear them gossiping when they saw him. It just made his head hurt.

Forget figuring out how that could work. Damas said he wanted to be Jak's dad on purpose! That was even better, right? Because it meant he wasn't obligated to look after Jak, he did it because he wanted to.

Jak watched a strand of bone beads bounce against Flick's braid -- off-white against bright teal -- and counted them silently.

Thirteen, one for every Rainfall Flick had experienced. She was looking forward to her fourteenth bead. Some Wastelanders had as many as twenty hanging from belts or hair! But only those with parents living in the city.

It wasn't a gift friends could give. Apparently it was reserved only for parents and guardians.

Jak didn't know if Damas would give him a rain bead, but he was hoping he would.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice the half filled blaster casing still contained until his hands tingled.

Oh, he hadn't meant to channel it out!

Jak pretended to light one of his fingers on fire and watched the eco hop from vein to fingertip like a perverse candle.

It wasn't enough for a full fireball, but that was for the best. The last time there was an eco imbalance, he'd nearly singed off Teacher Rustin's eyebrows.

"Aw cool!" Flick leaned over with a wide, crooked grin. "Man, I wish I could channel."

Feeling a bit whimsical, Jak used the fire to write words in the air before it ran out.

"That's what the shells are for, right? Even the playing field."

"Yeah," Flick sighed, "I guess that's true."

Then she started digging around for more blaster casings.

"Do it again."

"Guysss!" a younger boy whined from further down the line, "Quit! You're gonna get us in more trouble!"

Considering this was the youngster who had gotten them on group punishment in the first place, nobody paid him much attention.

"Here! How about this one?"

Flick tossed another shell to Jak.

"Nah. Empty."

The baskets were nearly full by the time they found more eco. Most of their classmates had finished their allotted baskets and been dismissed to carry on with their day by then. And according to Rustin, Jak could have left by now. But he hadn't channeled yellow eco in months! Now he wanted to find more!

"Ah-ha!"

Jak held up three shells triumphantly. Now this was enough for a fireball.

Rustin leapt to his feet.

"Noooooo you don't!" the young man shouted, "You get out of here with that eco!"

Cackling, Jak and Flick scooped up a handful of disorganized cartridges and shells and dashed out of the stall towards the beach.

Nobody minded if kids made a mess on the beach. Wasn't much to mess up. Flick turned a cartwheel -- showoff, Jak couldn't do that! -- and landed on her feet. Jak just did a somersault, as he always did back h- back in Sandover.

"Hey! I'll throw a sandball, and you blast it outta the air, okay?"

Flick ran to the surf and began packing wet sand into a sphere.

Jak drew the remnants of the yellow eco out of the spent casings. The stuff ran out quickly. You either channeled it out, or it got absorbed into your core.

The warmth gathered in his palm, sharpened his sight, and Jak waited.

Flick pulled back her arm and launched her projectile straight up.

Blam!

The fireball struck it dead-on. Sand rained down on them both.

Laughing, Jak brushed it out of his hair and shoved the fully empty casings into his pocket. Sorting through the random assortment they'd grabbed, he was disappointed to find no red residue in any of them. Oh well. There was a hint of blue, though.

Jak curved his right hand down into his left palm.

"Again!"

"You got it, partner!" Flick ran back to make another sandball, missing Jak's wince.

He didn't want to hurt her feelings, but he wasn't her partner. It was Jak and Daxter, not Jak and Flick. Damas’s friend would find Daxter, Damas said so! He was so sure of it! Damas was always telling him that he would see Daxter again, that he couldn't give up.

Flick was his friend -- she'd probably be Daxter's friend, too -- but Daxter was the one who'd been through enough with him to be a partner.

"Okay! Ready for launch?"

Flick waved an arm.

"Readyyyyy- go!"

This time, Jak didn't shoot a fireball. This time he'd gotten a fingerful of blue eco.

Just that little bit was enough to propel him four feet up in a single leap to slap a hand against the sandball, smashing it.

"Yoooo!" Flick crowed, "That was awesome!"

Then an idea struck her. Jak recognized that little shimmer. When the girl's brown eyes looked almost gold for a moment, that was cause for concern. That meant somebody's parents were going to get called by the end of this.

Unfortunately, it also meant something really fun was about to happen. Choices, choices.

"Wait here." Without waiting for an answer, Flick turned and pelted up the beach, sending up little sprays of sand in her wake.

Jak tucked the Vulcan cartridge into his pocket with the other casings and shrugged. The weather was nice, he didn't mind waiting. The water was just beginning to cool, the perfect temperature for swimming. Jak struggled with his boots -- laces, he hated laces! It took weeks for Damas to teach him to tie his own stupid shoes! -- and kicked them off with a grumble before diving in.

The salt stung his eyes, but Jak had grown accustomed to that years ago. He pushed past the cloudy grit of the shallows and down past the breakers, to where the water was clear, and clean, and blue.

There was coral here. Not as dense as the reef in Rock Village, but there were more fish around it. Parrotfish nibbling at odd ends, wrasse darting in and out and hiding in the sand, funny little things shaped like flat ribbons that bumbled along. Jak loved to watch them all.

Sometimes, if he looked hard enough, he could find pieces of orbs under the coral. There were some whole ones, too, but prying them out would require breaking the coral, and Jak still remembered Samos's hour long lecture about coral being an animal of some kind. Jak didn't want to hurt an animal that wasn't hurting him just for the sake of something shiny. The shards of orbs he dredged up were enough -- the adults certainly seemed to think so. Apparently there were so many broken orbs around the desert that shards had become the most common form of currency. Jak wondered what could be powerful enough to smash an orb.

It wasn't until he came up for air that he realized Flick had been calling him. He wasn't sure when she'd gotten back. Time seemed to disappear when he was underwater. In no particular hurry, Jak swam a leisurely circuit before making his way back to shore. Flick had a bag over her shoulder that she was clinging to with a clear impatience. What was she up to?

"C'mon! Hurry! Before my mom figures out I took these!"

Well that was both promising and ominous at the same time.

Jak shook off seawater like a crocadog. (He saw them swimming beyond the reef sometimes. He badly wanted to touch one, but it Wasn't Allowed, apparently.)

Flick squealed and jumped out of the way.

"Ja-aak! Quit!"

He did not.

Once he'd wrung out his scarf -- and flicked the water off his fingers and onto his friend -- Jak leaned over with a questioning grunt.

Flick's eyes sparkled with mischief.

When she pulled back the flap, shiny yellow and blue plastic caught the sunlight.

Bullets. Unspent bullets.

Flick was fourteen; she was allowed to have Scattergun cartridges -- Jak still had to wait a year to be allowed to hold a gun -- but Blaster and Vulcan rounds? Absolutely not. The lure of the forbidden pulled at Jak, and he only hesitated for a moment.

The last time he'd given in to that call, his best friend got turned into an ottsel. But, they'd also uncovered Gol and Maia's plot.

And it wasn't like there was any dark eco here. He definitely had no chance of turning Flick into an ottsel.

Jak took adventure's bait, hook line and sinker.

Prying open the bullets to get the eco out was difficult. It took several minutes, and the sun was beating down uncomfortably on their shoulders when they finally cracked the seal on a Vulcan round. But it was so worth it. The rush of blue eco, shooting through his body, made Jak feel almost like he was back on Sentinel Beach. He whooped and took off down the strand, laughing.

Go go go go go! cried the eco in his blood, Faster! Higher! Further!

He'd made it halfway up the side of the cliff before he felt the eco beginning to wear off. Making the most of every last spark, Jak kicked off the rock wall and into a backflip, landing on his feet.

The nice thing about blue eco was that he was never out of breath after using it.

Jak turned to find Flick, much further down the beach. He waved his arms with a theatrical, "TA-DA!"

Flick whooped and waved her own arms. She waited until Jak had jogged back to her before pulling out a Blaster bullet.

"Now let's do fire!"

They spent close to half an hour playing with the elements of motion and range and fire. It was so strange to Jak that this was such a foreign concept to children in Spargus. There were no open vents here, no clusters of raw eco oozing from the rocks and the sea and the earth itself. Was it because it was a desert?

"Hey Jak," Flick said when they had begun to wind down, "How come you can channel more than one eco?"

Jak looked away from the sun, which was beginning to sink, with a startled grunt.

Oh. Right. The sages only ever channeled just one. He supposed monks were like sages in training, so they probably only channeled one eco, too.

"I don't know. I just do." Jak shrugged. "I can't turn it off. It just happens."

Flick laid back on the sand with her hands behind her head. "Huh. Well, that's kind of cool though."

They were quiet for a few seconds, but the calm wouldn't last.

Flick abruptly sat up and shifted to look at Jak. He blinked back at her upside-down visage and wondered why he suddenly had a bad feeling.

Was this what it was like to be Daxter?

"Have you ever channeled more than one eco?" Flick asked, "at the same time?"

A year ago, Jak would have said that was impossible. Picking up green turned off the effects of blue. Yellow turned off red. He just couldn't hold onto two at once.

Or so he'd thought.

But then came the last battle against the Acherons.

"Actually..."

Now Jak sat up, frowning.

"Actually, yeah! Only once, but it was like-"

He made a few meaningless gestures, trying to convey a sensation he couldn't describe.

"It was all four! And- and they mixed or something into- to- white eco or something!" Jak's hands were exaggerated into a shout. "It was like mega powerful!"

"Nuh-uh!" Flick challenged, but she was smiling. "There's no way. You did not homebrew light eco."

"Wasn't me, it was four sages!" Jak explained. "Maybe that's why I could do it?"

"Well can you only do it with all four, or does it work with three? Or even just two?"

The wheels were turning in Flick's head.

"What if you wanted speed and firepower, but not super strength?"

"Blue and yellow! Maybe!"

Jak didn't know that it wouldn't work.

And even if it didn't, at worst one would just cancel out the other.

"Might not do anything, but who knows!"

"We'll know.”

Next>

[plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows]

WIP for a super old jak&daxter OC of mine. Was undecided on the Blue Eco scarring but I think I do like it lol. Her name is Zi and she’s a Wastelander and a Blue Eco channeler, had a bit of a hard life and fuckin hates everyone except a select handful of Spargans. She goes out and climbs mountains for weeks at a time lol.

[duskglass]

Know any new good Jak and Daxter fanfiction? I'm getting back to it and it feels like I read all the good ones already

notes: all listed fics are Complete unless otherwise noted, and the two Ongoing ones are both recently & actively updating (ie, none of these are abandoned or hiatused). i've also included my own fics as well! i don't normally advertise my fanfic writings on this blog but i figured they're worth a mention too :D

Wayward Sons by Duskglass - Damas & Daxter team up to rescue Jak after he was captured by marauders! lots of action, family bonding, and just a bit of Dad Humour. (ongoing; 4 chapters planned; 2019)

Cascade by Duskglass - big AU where Jak gets stuck in darkmode & has to navigate the events of renegade while looking like a Horrible Demon Monster! featuring lots of exploration of canon themes/settings and a gradual divergence from the in-game plot. (ongoing; 26 chapters planned in pt1 + future sequels; cw for graphic wounds; 2019)

Salvage by Rhinozilla - inexperienced civillians in Haven try to use green eco after a metalhead attack and it goes Horribly Wrong; Keira & Samos & Jak have a lot of work on their hands trying to patch up the victims. (featuring some really cool eco hcs! cw for body horror & graphic wounds; 2018)

What Hides in the Depths by Rhinozilla - Jak and Dax encounter a familiar old enemy in the waters outside Haven City while on a mission at the pumping station. (2018)

Rebuild by Athena_Crikey - Torn works to keep the KG together after Praxis's death. (a new fic by the author of City Boys, which was the very first JnD fic i ever read & still one of my top Torn-centric recs!)

Approval of a Sandking by Meeko - Dadmas & Daxter, my favourite underutilised dynamic!!! set post-3 in a human!dax + dadmas lives au, Dax returns from a mission in the wasteland with some minor injuries & talks with Damas. (2017)

City of Light by Weiila - a Sig-centric story set post-X, where Rayn gets some dirt on him and blackmails him into working for her new criminal syndicate in Kras. (also au where Damas is alive & Dax is human again; 2017)

Exile by Duskglass - oneshot about how Damas and Sig first met, set roughly 20 years pre-canon! (originally posted earlier; new content added as of 2017)

Commander by Varethane - Torn leaves the KG; it doesn't go well. (cw for mob violence & graphic injury; 2015)

Give an Ottsel a Missile by Distantglory - Daxter & Jak & Torn friendship fic, set during the ‘Dax rides the missile’ mission in jak3. (2015)

Strain by Varethane - Jak overloads on dark eco and it's bad for everyone involved; set during renegade. (2015)

Introspective Hero by Weiila - jak3 AU where Dax becomes human again & slowburny jaxter ensues; I'd consider this more action/plot-centric than romance tho, with truly wonderful supporting OCs and an excellent dadmas arc!! my top fav Longfic in this fandom ♡ (ok i know this one was already around way back in the day, but the conclusion still falls into the recentish timeframe of this list)

______annnd I'm gonna toss in my older dadmas favs too, just in case they were missed!! because I honestly can't rec these ones enough:

A Warrior's Way Of Life by Bookwrm389 - Damas & Jak get abducted by aliens Dark Makers and have to fight their way off the spaceship before it departs!

Spartacus Now by Weiila - Jak & Dax hear a story about the time Damas got captured by marauders (alternates between flashbacks of the Action and the duo hearing about it in present-day from various storytellers)

Weathering the Storm by Bookwrm389 - super cute oneshot about Damas and Jak having a mudfight with some Spargan kids! Damas being a silly nerd is my favourite thing ;3;

______((also, usual disclaimer that this is just what i personally enjoy! i prefer gen overall & have a ton of notps in this specific fandom so.... keep that in mind i guess? tho i assume you sent me this ask because my JnD fanart appeals to you– i def look for many of those same themes in fic!))

[radioactivepeasant]

Free Day Thursday, Part Two

<Prev Next>

(TW for Jak having to get medical treatment. He's unconscious for this, but it's not fun for any of the adults treating him)

This was going to be a 2 parter but I forgot that this segment in my doc is spread across two chapters lol so 3 parter it is.

"Sire, you need to come to Ward 2."

Damas grunted, but continued observing two recruits sparring in the Arena. One was a Marauder. Had been a Marauder. He'd shot his commander in defense of a prisoner, and that made him a marked man. That the older raider had been his father only made the price on his head higher. And the weight on his shoulder heavier.

It wasn't out of pity that Damas was allowing the young man to earn a place in Spargus. Nostalgia, maybe, but not pity. When he looked at this young Marauder, this Moln, he saw echoes of Jak. The Jak from the Other Future.

Older, perhaps, than Jak had been when he'd first found him. Moln was probably just past twenty. But he had that same wounded anger at the world. That same need to prove himself.

Unfortunately, Kleiver had taken a liking to the kid. Which meant Moln was probably going to go from sullen and silent to swearing like a sailor in a very short period of time. But honestly, Kleiver needed young blood around to keep him on his toes. And a reckless kid to stress him out.

Alright, that was mean. Damas knew he shouldn't be punishing the man for a future that didn't exist anymore. Call it preemptive distraction so he wouldn't try to eat Daxter when they did find him.

"Sire!" The doctor repeated urgently.

Damas turned, brows raised. "What's happening in the children's ward?" he asked.

The doctor, a thin, nervous man under Petros's employ, wrung his hands.

"It- it's- there's been an accident. Jak-"

That was all he got out. Immediately, Damas was moving.

"What happened? Who's injured?"

Rezzik gulped and hurried after him.

"We- we don't know, we're still running tests-"

"Tests?!"

Damas forced himself to breathe.

He never went to the Chair. You saved him. You saved him. He doesn't know to fear the needle yet.

"The other kid involved said something about two ecos mixing, or, or contaminating- it's-"

"Dark eco." Damas felt his heart skip a beat.

"Oh gods."

No-! He's not ready for this!

________________________________

The hospital bed dwarfed Jak. He looked so small against the white sheets. Damas pushed past the nurse and two monks.

They'd called monks.

This was bad.

"Sire-"

"Let me see him."

Damas didn't wait for a reply. He touched two fingers to Jak’s throat. The skin was cold, too cold, but his pulse was easy to find.

"Thank the Precursors," he whispered.

"He's breathing on his own," one of the monks cautioned, "but we do not know if he will awaken, my lord. He has been poisoned severely. Preliminary scans are showing a level of dark eco consistent with the payload of a peacemaker."

"Rezzik mentioned another child. Who else was involved?" Damas demanded.

"It-" the monk looked uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. "It was the mason's daughter. He's here with her, if you need to question her."

Flick.

Of course it was Flick.

The part of Damas still able to think rationally wondered whether this had been her idea, or Jak’s. They were alike enough to be a force of chaos when together.

"Send her in."

The nurse cleared his throat. "Er, my lord, wouldn't it be better to-"

Damas met his eyes with a look that left the nurse sweating.

"You suggest that I leave him?"

He nodded towards the boy -- too pale. Black veins standing out against his temples-- and scowled.

"I am perfectly capable of asking questions from right here."

Flick was leaning on her father for support when she came in. It was obvious that the girl had been crying. The second she saw Damas, she burst into tears again.

"I'm sorry! I'm so- it- it- it's all my fault!" Flick sobbed.

"Tell me what happened."

Damas couldn't bring himself to soften his voice, as he might've any other time. Not when it was his child fighting for his life.

Stammered and halting between sobs, Flick tried to explain.

"We- we were playing with eco. On the beach. Ja- Jak said once he channeled f- four ecos at once-!"

"Boasting, child," the other monk said sadly.

"Not boasting," Damas corrected flatly. "Continue.”

Flick flinched.

"We, we wanted to know if it had, had, had to be all four ecos, or if t- two would make something new, too."

It does. Raw dark eco.

Damas refrained from voicing the thought. Obviously the girl knew that now.

"What colors?"

"It was blue, sire," Flick whispered miserably, "And yellow."

"And where did you both get that eco?"

Flick hung her head.

"...stole it from my mother's ammo pouch."

She's just a child. She's just a child, like Jak.

Damas closed his eyes and willed himself to breathe slowly.

Jak did no better when he got Daxter transformed- gods, if I'd known him then I'd have been furious with him- they're just children. Only children.

"What you did," Damas said with deliberate slowness, "Was wrong."

Eli tightened his arm around his daughter's shoulders.

"Please, forgive her. She didn't know-"

"I know." Damas opened his eyes to meet Eli's gaze. "I speak of the theft. What has happened to- to my son was an accident. An accident caused by someone's wrongdoing, but still an accident."

Merely pronouncing the words "my son" seemed to take all the oxygen from the room. There were rumors all over the tower, but outside, no one had really given it much thought. Kids played in the tower all the time, why would they assume Jak lived there?

"She will be punished for the theft," Eli said heavily.

He seemed to understand the gravity of the situation even more than the doctors.

Of course he did: he was a father.

Damas shook his head. "There is no need. Whatever happens to Jak-" he swallowed down worry and whispers of a broken future- "That will live with them both for the rest of their lives. Your daughter can't erase that knowledge from her mind, Eli. You could not devise a punishment more severe than what she is already inflicting on herself."

Flick covered her face with her hands.

"I'm so sorry-!"

"Go home, child," Damas said. A bone-deep weariness was already setting in. "You can do nothing for Jak right now.”

Eli apologized on his daughter's behalf one more time before hurrying Flick out of Ward 2. The silence that followed was oppressive. Damas was deep in thought, frantically trying to account for every possible turn this event might take. Kana and Yan, the monks, were signing just as frantically together about the viability of light eco as an antidote. And Rezzik and the nurse looked like they'd just had a blade held to their throats with the realization that their patient wasn't just a ward somewhere in Damas’s household. They were treating one of Damas’s sons.

Nurse Brooks regained his composure first. He took a deep breath, then squared his shoulders.

"Lord Damas," he said firmly, startling everyone out of their thoughts, "We need to know for the purposes of treating him: is it true that Jak is able to channel more than one kind of eco?"

When the king looked up, his eyes were lifeless. Resigned.

"It is," he confirmed, "And it is the only reason I know he's going to survive."

"Then will adding green eco have any adverse effects?" the nurse pressed.

Damas paused.

Jak had two ecos. Daxter said something once about the Baron trying to combine speed and strength. Green eco was only given if subjects passed agility tests to the KG's satisfaction, or if the subject started coding in the Chair. All it did was more evenly distribute the unbalanced eco out of the heart and into the limbs.

"Give-"

Oh gods. Forgive me, Jak, forgive me!

"Give him controlled doses. Combined- combined with red."

Rezzik gasped. "But that will also form contamination!"

Damas laid his hand over Jak's chest, feeling it rise and fall. Unlike the rest of his body, the skin there burned as if with fever. If he left it unchecked-!

"It must be balanced." He ignored the cracks in his voice. Let them hear his pain. Let them understand that he didn't want this, either.

"It will hurt him. But if it means that he lives-!"

It was a long shot. A desperate bid to add the other two ecos in the same concentration as the initial imbalance. Damas felt like a monster.

Before they'd even begun, they had to turn Jak to his side so the child didn't choke on his own vomit. The black veins faded and stood out again in turns as his skin heated and cooled. His body was fighting for its life against something it couldn't quite grasp.

Damas couldn't bring himself to watch the first needle enter Jak's chest, just over his eco core. He cursed himself for a coward and squeezed the boy's hand tightly.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Jak," he whispered.

The addition of the red had an immediate reaction. Brooks had to hold down Jak's right arm and shoulder, while Damas held his left. The boy's back arched, lifting him almost completely off the cot with a grating cry. He wasn't even conscious, yet he was still processing the pain.

He was pale. Too pale, breathing too rapidly. His gums were the same- no anemia. Too pale.

Rezzik barely waited for them to wrestle the child back onto the cot before administering the green eco.

Jak went limp.

His pulse hammered rapidly, but he was almost completely unresponsive. The dark veins snaked down, fading from his temples to his jaw. Then from his jaw to his throat. Then to his chest.

"We'll have to monitor him closely," Rezzik said grimly. "If we messed up the concentration at all, we'll have to keep compensating, and the dark eco will keep building in his system."

"No." Damas shook his head and looked to the monks.

"Brother Kana. Sister Yan. How quickly can you bring a flask of light eco from the temple?"

The monks didn't look like they found the answer any more favorable than he did.

"A day, sire. Provided no Marauders stop us."

"Go." Damas waved them away. "Take any warriors you wish as escorts. Just get me that light eco."

If this didn't work, it was his only hope for keeping this misadventure from permanently damaging his son's nervous system.

<Prev Next>

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

Splinter Cell au today! Last Splinter Cell was father-son bonding time, so today Jak gets to spend time with his mom

Phobos was a light sleeper even in the best of times. Here in this rebel base, during the second week of her and Damas rotating between Haven and Spargus with their children, even the slightest noise was enough to wake her. She sat up in her cot and let her eyes adjust to the half-light of the Babak settlement's barracks. What had roused her?

She let her eyes roam the long wooden hut, taking stock of each of her fellow Spargans and the members of Brutter's tribe. Leave it to a son of Damas to reforge the alliance between the Babak and the House of Mar by accident. Damas had been insufferable for an entire day when he found out. But Phobos found she couldn't be too irritated at him; the way Jak and his fluffy friend brightened when they heard him bragging about them was enough to make that stupid little smirk bearable. They walked a little taller any time she or Damas complimented them, Phobos had noticed. It was nice to see Jak opening up.

Thoughts of her newfound son drew her gaze to his cot, two beds over. With how restless he'd proven to be, Phobos half expected the cot to be empty. But it wasn't.

Jak sat hunched in the center of the cot with his knees pulled to his chest. Even in the gloom, it was apparent that something wasn't right. The fingers that gripped his knees were tipped with curved, black, talons. His skin had faded from bronze to an almost reflective pearl.

Oh.

Phobos had heard the reports of Jak's "Hunter" shape before, but she had never witnessed it in person. She took in the curved horns rising from his curls, and it struck her that the boy resembled nothing so much as the dragonowls that nested in the cacti in Strider Range. All he was missing were the feathers at this point. Even the flickers of violet sparks dancing across Jak's horns didn't diminish the fact that, in the context of desert life,  the Hunter form was a little endearing.

Rising from her cot, Phobos shook out her tunic and made a show of stretching. From what she'd heard, startling Jak when he was in a battle-shift didn't end well. Stark black eyes zeroed in on her in an instant, tracking her movement. Phobos smiled at him and approached his bed slowly.

"Hey, little owl" she whispered, "What's got you up so late?"

His ears flicked up, then back -- a warning that he did not want to be touched, Phobos guessed. She settled on the very end of the cot and kept her hands where he could see them. Had he had a nightmare? From the things Tess mentioned now and then, Phobos knew the boy had more reasons for nightmares than most people twice his age. They may have been just acquaintances so far, but it rankled to know a young boy had suffered so horribly with no one to stand up for him.

"Are you alright, owlet?" Phobos frowned gently and tilted her head. "Has something disturbed you?"

Surprise softened Jak’s face. He cocked his head and mirrored Phobos's frown.

"You're not afraid?" asked clawed hands.

Phobos clicked her tongue, almost scoldingly.

"Why should I be? I am as dangerous as you are, owlet. And neither of us are as dangerous as the sea."

Jak furrowed his brow and drew his knees in closer.

"...doesn't feel good," he finally admitted. "Too much dark eco, can't let it out right now."

"Ah." Phobos sighed and shifted a little closer. "You're oversaturated? Yeah? I saw that happen to your father once when an ammunition crate broke."

It was getting easier to call Damas this boy's father. Easier to think of Jak as her own.

"It was a different kind of eco, sure, but it looked like it sucked either way."

If he had been Mar -- a strange statement, considering he had been Mar in another world, another life -- Phobos would have rubbed his back and hummed him to sleep again. But Mar was a toddler, still dependent on his adults for comfort. And Jak was just a few years shy of being old enough for the Arena trials! Most teenagers his age found such coddling embarrassing; Phobos could admit that she had been one such teenager once upon a time, cringing at her own mother's public affection.

But would Jak be the same?

He was so much older than their Mar, and yet sometimes she could see her little boy peering out from behind those bright eyes. He was starved for affection, but conditioned to distrust most touch. Unbearably lonely, but afraid of rejection.

Phobos bit her lip, then held out her hand. "Come on, Jak. Let's go outside. We'll get that eco spent so you can go back to sleep, alright?"

Jak winced and looked up. Fangs dug into his lip as he frowned.

"Can't. Might need it for battle."

"There will be more eco in battle," Phobos said. She stood and kept her hand extended.

"Come on, baby. I got you. I'll watch your back, okay?"

It took another five seconds of gentle cajoling before Jak uncurled himself and slid off the cot. He didn't take her hand -- he usually didn't -- but when Phobos looked back, he had the end of her sash in one hand, twisting it around his claws like he was afraid he'd get lost if he let go. He let himself be shepherded along the catwalks connecting the Babak village to the mine shafts. The humming of the elevator seemed to vibrate in his bones, through his horns, unbearably loud.

It was better to wake up in the stifling heat of the caverns, better to be surrounded by snoring, than to find himself in the harsh cold of the Baron’s laboratories. Better to be soaked with sweat on a creaky cot than to shiver while listening to the screams of other test subjects. But even here, even from the grave, Errol still held sway over his nightmares. That was what had gathered the eco into battle-readiness in his body, looking for threats that did not exist. Jak was a haunted man.

The cool night air washed over them both, and Jak shivered. It ended in a sneeze, and the woman beside him smiled softly.

She nodded to the cliffs above the cave network.

"Sig said he saw you scale a building in this shape, fast as a lizard. I bet you're even faster with real handholds."

She stepped back and squinted as if searching for something.

"I'll bet," she said slowly, "I'll bet you there's a couple hotfoot lizards up there, actually. You can eat those, you know. They don't taste that great, but they help your body regulate heat better for a while."

She shrugged.

"Why don't you see if you can catch a few, and I'll show you how to cook them in the morning."

Jak's sharklike eyes studied the cliffs, absorbing even the smallest pinprick of light. He grinned slowly.

"Eat them raw?"

Phobos made a face. "Blegh! You can, but you might regret it later."

"I might not."

"Oy!" Phobos shook her head and laughed quietly. "You sound like Damas when he was young!"

She wasn't sure if the subsequent darker hue of the boy's skin was a blush, or if the observation had made him lose a little dark eco.

Jak bent his knees slightly, and then with a rush of air he leaped; suddenly airborne, six feet directly up. One hand caught the face of the cliff, and soon he was scaling up the rocks at a dizzying rate. Despite herself, Phobos felt her jaw drop. She had never seen anyone but a Lurker make a jump like that unaided! Would Mar be able to do that one day? Or was this an ability only Jak had, learned from the Dark Oracle that favored him?

"Look at you!" She laughed in astonishment and clapped a hand to her forehead. "I oughta put you on the rigging in my fishing boat!"

Jak reappeared after a noisy minute or two with dark spots on one cheek that looked suspiciously like blood.

"Found the lizards," he signed down to her.

Phobos raised an eyebrow. "Did you eat them?"

"No....yes. One." Then he reached back and almost sheepishly raised the battered carcass of a Glub.

"Ohhhh." Phobos squinted up through the darkness. "You want any help up there? Or do you just want to hunt until the eco runs out?"

She knew the answer before Jak had even set the Glub down to sign again.

The moment she'd said "hunt", his eyes had narrowed and his ears flicked up.

Dark eco wasn't just the element of the ocean. It was the element of the hunter, the carnivore, and the tempest. The chase was in its very nature, and right now that nature was rushing through Jak's veins at breakneck speed.

Jak bared his fangs in what was either a show of aggression to Glubs, or a very unsettling smile. Then he dropped out of sight, and Phobos guessed that he was probably shimmying along the ground to look for lizards.

He would probably be up there for a little while. Phobos strolled along the small strip of beach, looking for palm fronds to weave into a basket. She somewhat doubted that Jak would remember to actually bring her any lizards, but she liked working with her hands nonetheless. Without really thinking about it, she hummed quietly, keeping a rhythm with her hands. It was a lively tune, a folk song so old that no one in Spargus really remembered where it had come from. In the language of the people who had once lived in the ruined coastal settlements, the lyrics were something to do with a wily cacomiztli asking a cockatoo to a Fiesta with her. She praised the bird's plumage and grace, and he, flattered, agreed to go. Naturally, the song ended with the cacomiztli having a very nice party meal.

A bit morbid, perhaps, but it had a fine, rollicking melody, and easy to remember rhymes -- even for those who couldn't speak the Coastwatcher dialect. And it reminded children not to trust a flatterer.

A shuffling of feet on the sand paused Phobos's humming, and she glanced up. Jak crouched less than two feet from her, watching with a bemused expression. How was he so quiet?!

His horns had receded considerably, now no more than little nubs poking out of his curls. He'd gotten some color back, too.

"Oye, owlet, did you bring me any lizards?" Phobos asked.

Sheepishly, he held up two lizard tails. Evidently, he had forgotten that the creatures could detach their tails and flee. By the mess on his hands, Phobos guessed he'd spent more time hunting Glubs. She laughed and patted the sand next to her.

"Better luck next time, eh? Here- go get yourself a frond. We're making baskets until you're ready to go back to sleep."

The dark eco continued to fade as Jak struggled to weave with claws. What little hadn't been expended on the small carnivores up the cliff was rapidly being reabsorbed into his bloodstream. When the dark form dropped entirely, Phobos almost didn't notice at first. Jak was as quiet as before, sitting still and watching her weave. She continued to hum until a raspy voice interrupted her.

"Did...Dax...teach you...that?"

Phobos glanced up and noticed Jak wince and massage his throat. She clicked her tongue sympathetically.

"Regretting eating that lizard raw, huh? Too bad we didn't bring our canteens so you could wash that taste out."

"It...was bad." Jak made a face.

With a chuckle, Phobos scooted closer. "Alright owlet, let me see what you've got."

She looked at the sad, lopsided basket, and took hold of Jak's hands to guide him.

"Here: over, under. Over, under. Do that all the way around until you have an alternating pattern on each stem."

Jak furrowed his brows and did his best to follow her movements.

"You didn't answer my question," he croaked.

Ugh. That taste was going to sit in his throat for hours.

"Which one, baby?" Phobos asked, reaching over to flick a coil of hair out of his face.

Baby.

Nobody had ever called him baby before. Well, not sincerely, anyway. Jinx and his guys did sometimes, but they called everyone nicknames like that, because they were weird.

They didn't have the same warmth in their voices, and they definitely didn't apply affectionate nicknames to his dark form!

"The song. Daxter's favorite when we were little. Did he teach you?"

Phobos leaned back. "It's been around that long? Huh! Didn't think the Coastwatcher people went as far as Dead Town."

Jak shrugged. "Daxter's not from Sandover either. He showed up in a boat a year before I did. Said a hurricane washed his village away and he was trapped in the boat."

Jak paused as something occurred to him.

"Wait. How far is your island from Misty Island?"

"Misty Island?"

"Where everyone says the Nest is," Jak clarified.

With how much dark eco had been there when he was a kid, he wasn't surprised that the metalheads had chosen Misty Island to nest.

"About two days on a propeller boat," Phobos said, rubbing her chin, "Closer to two hours by air."

The math lined up surprisingly well, and Jak began to wonder if perhaps his best friend had his origins on the same island he had allegedly been born on. One more thing tying them together; Daxter would be so excited!

"You telling me your buddy in the Titan Suit is a Coastwatcher?" Phobos asked with interest.

"Um...maybe? Have to ask."

Phobos whistled low. "When we go home, we'll have to keep the monks from snatching him. They're obsessed with history and archeological discovery. You tell them a Coastwatcher ancestor is still living and they'll lose their minds."

Jak laughed, almost silently. "He'd probably like that, though. It's rough being the last survivor."

Phobos wrapped an arm around his shoulders and, distracted as he was, Jak simply leaned into her. Phobos stilled, unwilling to jeopardize this moment. She smiled and set her basket aside to brush a hand over her son's hair.

"Well. Neither of you are alone now," she murmured. "And I can promise you, we're not going anywhere."

Was it her imagination, or did Jak lean into her side a little further?

They sat quietly for a moment, watching the waves roll in and out. Then, barely audible over the hiss of the surf, Jak whispered,

"Good."

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Meddling Mar Monday

(From a bit later in the story)

The waters surrounding the coastal desert were cool and green, and so undisturbed within the cove that beyond the breakers everything took on a breathtaking clarity. Colorful fish darted back and forth after food, while poisonous eels floated serenely in place beneath the dock, enjoying the shade. Deeper down, the light that filtered through the waves colored the world a watery blue, disguising brighter colors.

Jak kicked his feet and spiraled down to the edge of a slightly sickly coral reef. It seemed to span the entire mouth of the cove, turning it into more of a lagoon. Just beyond, the depth dropped sharply. Jak stared down into an abrupt expanse of dark water and couldn't shake the feeling that something was staring back. He would have expected that to frighten him, or at least unsettle him. But somehow, Jak wasn't afraid. He swam backwards a foot or so, and eagerly scanned the depths for a glimpse of larger animals. He knew he'd seen something from Damas’s tower. Was it watching him now? Was it bigger than even the various species of Lurker Sharks?

Jak had glimpsed the Colossal Shark Brutter kept at the fish cannery once. He'd been overwhelmed by the sheer size of the fish. The idea that creatures so powerful and vast still swam in their waters in spite of everything was really sort of humbling. Brutter kept it in captivity simply because he could think of no way to safely release it without mass casualties. Jak wasn't even sure how he'd caught the thing in the first place.

An orange jellyfish drifted along behind Jak, and its tentacles briefly grazed his shoulder. A jolt of pain, not unlike electricity, shot down his arm. Annoyed, Jak shook the limb out, sending the oblivious jelly tumbling away. Well, they couldn't all be harmless, he supposed. Shrugging off the pain as he always did, Jak made a leisurely climb to the surface to suck in another lungful of air, then dove below again to immerse himself in the jewel colored world beneath the water. A glint of metal caught his eye, yards away, and he grinned. There we go.

When he was a kid in Sandover, there were always orbs washing up on the shore from sunken Precursor cities and research stations. Surely, the Wastelanders couldn't have found all of them.

While nowhere near the tens of orbs he and Daxter used to scoop out of the shallows, the orb Jak found encrusted with barnacles was worth perhaps thrice as much as it had been when he was Mar’s age. Satisfaction filled his chest as he examined the sand-scoured weight. This would at least give them a start on buying enough food and water to last the week. Jak carefully slid the orb into the pouch he'd made out of his scarf, taking care not to damage the two small conch shells and three cone shells he'd already picked up. An orb wouldn't do him much good if it smashed his rent payment, now would it.

Though he was reluctant to leave the lagoon, Jak knew his supply of air was finite. In his dark form, he could've stayed under for far longer. But he was not ready to let these people know about that part of his life. Even if the ocean did seem like a safe place to release dark eco buildup.

When Jak waded out of the surf, his fingers were wrinkled and his hair was a mess, but he couldn't have cared less. It was as if months of tension had uncoiled and drifted away in the lagoon, leaving him lighter for it. Humming cheerfully, Jak wrung seawater out of his tunic and bent down to pick up his boots. A glance upward made him pause.

Mar was still with the six kids who had been playing with catapults on the shore, but now they were all clustered together, staring at him.

"What?" Jak asked self-consciously. His mood was beginning to deflate.

The oldest child there, roughly twelve or thirteen, pointed at the water.

"You went to the edge of the reef!"

Confused, Jak looked to the one-armed teacher for explanation. She looked as startled as her charges, but also a little impressed.

"You've got guts, I'll give you that," she said after a second, "But then, Seek here says you're new to Spargus, so I guess no one told you about the reef."

Jak laced up his boots and stood, brushing off sand. "Oh. Well, I didn't touch it, if that's what you're worried about. It doesn't look that healthy."

The teacher -- Korah, Daxter would later tell him -- grimaced.

"Yeah, that's our fault. Last generation didn't understand the damage yellow eco residue can do to coral. Took a couple years to pinpoint the shells ejected from the turret as the problem."

She shrugged.

"It's healing at its own pace. But that's not what the kids are concerned about. They thought you were going to go over the reef."

Jak actually laughed, surprising himself.

"Into dark water before I've had a chance to get a headlamp? Right. I'd want to be able to see what's down there."

A boy about Mar's age grimaced comically. "That's not allowed! You'll get eaten!"

"No I won't."

"Yeah you will!"

Jak boldly tousled the kid’s already messy black hair.

"I'm not afraid of sharks."

Korah cleared her throat.

"It's not sharks you have to watch for."

She pointed out towards the small island Jak had spotted past the reef. "That's Mother and Child Island. We don't swim there, and we don't take motorized boats there. The sounds attract the Scylla."

Daxter left off playing some kind of marble game with a little girl and cringed. "Uh...you mean the beastie on the edge of old maps? The "here there be monsters" Scylla?"

"I thought those were made up!" Jak looked just a little too eager.

"Nope." Korah shook her shaved head. "She's real, alright. Don't know how many of her kind there are out there, but she likes this coast for the smaller squid that hang around, and the occasional swimmer."

Daxter's fur puffed out. "Jak, if you try to take me past that reef, I'm gonna unionize."

Jak shaded his eyes and stared at the water as if he could see the colossal squid.

"So has anybody fought her or chased her off before?"

Korah's tone turned sharp. "Don't even think about it, newbie. Not only is that a fool's errand, it would unbalance the ecosystem."

Another one of the two older kids nodded. "The Scylla eats the squid and smaller sharks so they don't come bother us. If there's no Scylla, something bigger will move in."

Intrigued, Mar asked, "Bigger like what?"

The girl bent slightly to look him in the eye. "Ever seen the Colossal Blue shark?"

"No," answered Mar, and at the same time Jak and Daxter answered, "Yes!" With wildly different levels of enthusiasm.

"Yeah." The girl tossed auburn hair over her shoulder and straightened. "The Scylla keeps the Colossal Blues out of the area. Teacher says we give her her space, and she gives us ours as long as we don't swim past the reef."

Reluctantly, Jak agreed that the rule made sense in context. But now he really wanted to see the giant scylla.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippet Thursday part 1: Blackmail au

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Daxter fanned himself rapidly and slid down into the shadow cast by the front seat. "How can you people live like this?" he groaned, "Can we go back to that beach? Let's go back to that beach!"

Jak smirked but said nothing. It was a dry heat, not quite like the humidity he remembered from the Precursor Basin. After two years of the prison, and feeling as if he would never be warm again, Jak felt almost at home.

Home. What a strange thought. What was this man, Damas, going to do once they got to his city? Did he have any intention of letting Jak go free?

What did fathers do usually? Samos complained and criticized and demanded and condescended but he did teach Jak to channel. Praxis blustered and brutalized, he took and he took and he took -- even from his own kin, judging by Ashelin's complaints about risky missions to find relics.

Those were the only fathers Jak knew of. Daxter spoke often and fondly of a man called Osmo, he knew. An elderly man who had opened his home to Daxter while Jak was imprisoned, who treated Daxter like his own child. Jak knew it wasn't fair. He knew it wasn't Daxter's fault. But sometimes he listened to his friend speak wistfully of the home he'd shared with the old man and his son and a bitter envy crawled up his throat like vomit, burning on his tongue. He hated himself for it. Of all of them, surely Daxter deserved it the most! He'd been treated the worst of them growing up, even Jak was "raised" compared to Daxter.

What was wrong with Jak? How could he be bitter about that?

And yet.

Jak folded his arms across his knees and gazed out at the towering red rocks as they passed. The air was surprisingly clean, if hot. He took in a deep breath and glanced up at Sig and Damas. They seemed to be more focused on their surroundings than he'd expected, looking around constantly as if expecting an attack. Well, Jak supposed Kor had mentioned there being really big metalheads in the Wastes.

"Hey, uh-" Jak cringed.

What did he call this Damas guy? It would be a cold day in hell before he called a total stranger "Father" or something ostentatious like that. But it felt a little uncomfortable to call the guy by his name. They weren't friends, after all. Jak would grant him a modicum of respect unless he did something to lose it.

Damas turned instantly with an inscrutable expression. "Yes?"

Jak shifted to lean against the hot metal of what was probably a gunner's seat under normal circumstances. "What are you watching for?"

"Two kinds of enemies," Damas answered. He pointed back the way they'd come. "The southwest coast of the Central Wastelands holds a colony of Frosthold. The Marauders weren't thrilled to discover that the island was already inhabited, and they have a bothersome habit of trying to kill or enslave my people whenever we leave the city."

Jak bristled. The Marauders were slavers? Like Praxis? Dark eco dregs swirled around in his stomach -- mercifully too few to let him transform. He didn't want to know what his alleged father would say if he was That Thing.

"If you see them," he hissed, "Stop the car. I'll kill them."

"Absolutely not. We have a turret gun for a reason." Damas pointed to the construct over Jak's seat. "Sig tells me you're something of a prodigy with firearms. If we come across Marauders, you can prove it."

Daxter waved a limp hand before squeezing further into the shade. "Er...what's the...other enemy?"

"Metalhead Beasts, Chili Pepper," Sig answered without looking back. "Around here, we call em Apex Metalheads. Big-ass suckers, run in packs."

He pointed to a dusty plain ahead where the sand gave way to scrub grass and desert sheoak.

"And they like to graze up here in the steppes, so keep your eyes peeled."

"Graze?" Daxter repeated hopefully, "Like they're herbivores?"

"Graze for unwary drivers," Damas answered with a scowl. "Humans, Leapers, even other metalheads. They'll eat anything."

________________________________________

They make it to Spargus unscathed, and Jak is not as happy about the crowds as Daxter is

_________________________________________

The West Market was loud. Loud, and bright, and crowded. There were dozens of stalls, and scores of Wastelanders wandering between them. Some haggled for fresh fruit, some examined racks of fabric and garments, and some even sat chatting while people did their hair. The nearest equivalent Jak could think of was Rock Village. 

"Lord Damas," a stout, cheerful man greeted him, echoed by a boy no older than Jak. "What can I do for you this evening?"

"I need a few sets of clothing for this one, Finn," Damas answered, gesturing to Jak. "Three tunics, two sets of trousers, underclothes et cetera."

"Pre-made, or custom?" Finn asked, raising pencil-thin eyebrows.

Damas looked back at Jak, who appeared distracted.

"Jak. Jak. Do you want to choose the fabric yourself?"

Jak started like an alerted deer. Dark eco heightened the senses, made everything sharper and clearer. In a crowded market, that wasn't necessarily a good thing. He could hear a man ten feet away complaining about prices. Two people at the next stall over were gossiping about someone's love life. There was a baby crying somewhere close by. All of it grated against Jak’s sensitive ears. Damas calling his name was just one more sound lost in the rising babble. He flinched when Daxter squeezed his shoulder. 

"...what?" he asked, a little hoarsely. 

Wearing an aggravating look of sympathy, Damas repeated, "Do you want to choose the fabric yourself, or do you mind pre-made?"

Jak stared blankly at the men. He had choices? He hadn't been given real choices in years. How many options were there? Was it important? Why did he need so many clothes anyway?

"What's the difference?" he asked after an awkward silence. 

The boy behind the counter answered instead of Finn. "Well, pre-made is faster, but there's always a chance that it won't fit you as well as something tailored. But you could also grow into it."

"...I could?"

Damas looked concerned.

 "What's tailored?" Jak asked, completely serious.

The other boy didn't seem to pick up on the meaningful glances Finn and Damas were passing each other. He scratched his nose with one hand -- a prosthetic, Jak realized belatedly, with some interest, and shrugged.

"You know, tailored? We measure your neck and shoulders and waist and stuff so the tunic will fit you and only you perfectly?"

It was bragging, just a little bit. But Cairn was very proud of his family's textile business.

He held up his favorite blue measuring tape and smiled.

"I could get your measurements real quick if you want?"

But the other teen jolted. 

Jak flinched back, caught somewhere between trying to curl inward and trying to puff himself up to look bigger and more intimidating. He seemed...oddly and noticeably paler than he had been when they'd approached the stall, pupils blown wide. Cairn had seen older Wastelanders react like this before, but never anyone his age. He frowned and looked to his uncle for assurance.

Damas raised a hand placatingly. "Don't take it personally, young one. We are all strangers to him still."

He had hoped Jak would feel more at ease around someone his own age. He liked Cairn. The boy wasn't a warrior, or a scout, but his skill with a loom was darn near prodigious. 

Sig placed a comforting hand on Jak’s back.

"We're just not ready for that kind of close contact yet," he apologized, "Just give him time to adjust."

Cairn, thankfully, didn't seem upset. "Oh. Okay, guess you'll want pre-made, then. See any you like?"

Jak looked to Daxter and raised his brows. "Um...do we?"

The ottsel examined the small selection on the rack and nodded. "The yellow one, that's gonna look good on you."

"I like blue."

"Do you see blue?" Daxter argued, winking at Cairn as he skillfully pulled Jak out of his shell, "No? Go for the yellow. It'll bring out your eyes."

"I don't like that shade of yellow! It looks like a pine-pear!"

"So? You'd be a very handsome pine-pear."

"No!" Jak scowled and shoved Daxter, nearly sending the ottsel off his shoulder. "I shouldn't have asked you."

Finn laughed. "Well, we don't have any dark blue at the moment -- the traders haven't brought any more indigo yet -- but we have some woad-turquoise."

He fished around in a basket under the wooden counter and produced a scrap of a dark green-blue. 

"Cairn wove this himself," he said proudly, "You won't find a softer, lighter, linen anywhere in Spargus."

"Uncle!" Cairn covered his face in embarrassment.

Hesitantly, Jak reached out and touched the scrap of linen. It was lightweight. Tightly woven, worn smooth and soft. Experimentally, he rolled up his sleeve and laid the linen against his skin.

It felt like barely anything was touching him at all.

What would it be like to have an entire tunic made of this?

Damas watched the boy twisting the fabric around his fingers, over his wrist. There were markings there, the telltale calluses of shackles. 

Praxis was going to die. Slowly. 

"Finn," he murmured, "Would you make two kurtas in that fabric? And- and a blanket, I think."

The tailor nodded. "I can have it done in a week."

"Thank you. In the meantime, we can take that brown one. What do you want for it?"

Finn shook his head. "You go on and take it, sire. There aren't enough young'uns in the Wastes. I'll not charge; seems the lad's in dire need of a little kindness in his life."

He glanced meaningfully at his nephew's prosthetic. 

"Call it returning a favor."

Cairn’s family had never forgotten that Damas had commissioned the boy's prosthetic himself after taking the throne. They'd tried to "pay him back" so many times that Damas was fairly sure that he was the one in debt now. 

He chuckled. "Alright, alright. Put it on my tab."

Then he looked thoughtful.

"Can he keep that scrap? Seems to be helping."

"Sure!" Cairn piped up. "I can always make more!"

Jak tucked the scrap into his sleeve and nodded to the other boy silently.

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[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Meddling Mar Monday

About time we checked in on the Demolition Brothers! The chapter index can be found HERE

Alma's kitchen was full of spices and vegetables that Jak had never seen before -- or maybe he had, but they'd been pickled and preserved beyond recognition in Haven. These were fresh, filling the room with vibrant reds and yellows and greens, and Jak couldn't help wondering what they tasted like raw. He gave his hands a perfunctory rinse at the sink and stood awkwardly beside a long strand of hanging peppers, waiting to be given some kind of direction. Daxter seemed far more comfortable, cracking his knuckles and opening cabinets without so much as a by-your-leave.

"Alrighty, where's your measuring cups?" he asked.

Alma snorted. "Measuring cups? I use the scale! Go get my pot of salt off the table -- black lid -- and don't you dare drop it, Pequeño! That stuff is expensive!"

She glanced down at Mar. "You gonna wash your hands or what?" she asked.

Mar unwrapped his arms from around the caprid fawn's neck and signed, "Or what."

Behind Alma, Jak groaned. Was this what it was like to be Torn? In sharp gestures he warned Mar, "Don't push her buttons, we need this to work out. Do you want to go back to the tower?"

"No!"

"Then be nice! Treat her like she's the Bird Lady or something!"

Mar pouted and wrapped his arms around Cabbie again. Jak noted the disapproval on Alma's face and grimaced at Daxter. They weren't off to a great start. Daxter grimaced back, but held up a hand as if to calm Jak.

Jak might not have remembered a lot of what he'd been like at Mar's age, but Daxter did. And Daxter could hazard a guess as to the root of Mar’s contrariness.

"Sorry about Junior," he piped up in a lighthearted tone, "He has trouble transitioning between activities, especially in a new environment. In my experience, you gotta set a clear expectation and timeline, and then stick to it."

Jak blinked. "Wait, really?"

His best friend gave him a wry look. "You were exactly the same, pal. I have experience."

Alma appeared to be considering this for a moment. At first, Jak thought she would agree to give Mar a few more minutes to switch between tasks. But then she pointed a skinny finger towards a low door at the back of the kitchen.

"If you aren't gonna help make bread, you can take Cabbie and go help with the caprids," she said, shrugging the shoulder that sat lower.

"Don't have to wash your hands for that."

Mar frowned thoughtfully and considered his options. If he helped outside, that would mean he was still playing with Cabbie, right? And then he'd get to see more caprids! So far they weren't much like crocadogs, but they weren't boring like yakkows, either. Mar liked animals, especially the ones that could play with him.

He nodded and pushed himself to his feet. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he asked, "Can I feed them?"

"They've already been fed today," Alma answered, "Don't believe them if they act hungry. They'd eat the house if they could. Just fill the water trough alright?"

Mar let himself out the back, and almost immediately came back in.

"Where's the water?"

As Alma had her back to him, Jak quickly relayed Mar's question. The woman didn't look up from tossing flour and water into a bowl.

"See those big meshes out there? They harvest fog. The barrels underneath catch the water. Use the tap to fill up a bucket -- turn it off before you walk away!"

"Okay!" Mar hopped back down off the step and into some kind of courtyard between buildings. Metallic jangling and caprids bleating nearly drowned him out.

Alma turned her head. "Close the door!" she called, "Don't let the little criminals in here!"

Upon hearing Jak's snicker, she scooted the bowl towards him. "Here, young-arms. Mix that until it's evenly goopy."

Well, that couldn't be too hard, right?

Wrong.

Jak's first attempt sent watery flour splattering across the counter, Daxter, and anything in range. His dismay must have shown on his face, because Alma didn't berate him. She grumbled about wasted dough, but it was under her breath.

"Not so hard, boy! You aren't trying to kill it!"

Being told not to kill something was a bit of a reversal from what people normally demanded of him. It was all destroy, destroy, destroy. And while Jak could admit -- and would admit freely -- to taking pleasure in the destruction of things, like mining platforms and KG bases, he'd always hated being ordered to destroy people. It was much too close to what Praxis had wanted to make him into. A soldier; an executioner. Made to destroy and good for nothing else.

I can do more than destroy, he insisted to himself, I'm gonna have to if I want to survive out here. How am I supposed to take care of Dax and Mar if I can't even make dough without ruining it?

But he couldn't ask for help. He'd look like some useless city-slicker who didn't know how to work! Gingerly, he pushed his fist into the gooey mixture again. It wasn't a very nice texture, all sloppy and wet. Gritting his teeth, he mixed and pushed until it clung to his hand from every side of the bowl. The texture was awful. He closed his eyes and told himself to ignore his skin screaming at him.

"Is...is this right?" He lowered the bowl to show Alma.

The landlady eyed it critically, rubbing her chin. "Good enough. Now we add the yeast."

Daxter hopped up onto the counter and nudged Jak sympathetically. "I got this. You get that gunk off your hands before you blow a gasket."

Gratefully, Jak ceded the bowl and did his best to scrape his hands off on the rim. The landlady probably wouldn't want him washing this stuff down the drain, he guessed. He suppressed a shudder and rubbed his fingers together under the pump water until the stickiness dissipated. Felt too much like metalhead guts.

"City boy," Alma scoffed.

Jak bristled. "Stick your hands in metalhead entrails a couple hundred times," he shot back, "and maybe you won't like the texture anymore either."

Alma lowered her brows at him. "Don't take that tone with me, chico," she warned.

"Then don't make assumptions about me," Jak retorted through gritted teeth.

Don't snap. Lower your voice. Hands where she can see them. If you're dangerous where people can see you, you'll get yourself and the guys kicked out.

For a moment they held each other's gaze, neither willing to back down in a silent standoff. Then Alma thumped her cane against the floor and scoffed.

"You've got some fire to you, boy. Good. I don't want any mealy-mouthed suckups in my house -- but you still better watch your mouth, eh?"

Jak grumbled an assent and flicked the last of the flour mixture off his fingers with a shudder. Dark eco hypersensitivity was a special kind of hell. It had been mercifully absent during their time in the convalescence ward, but the heat of the day seemed to be drawing it out again.

"I'm gonna check on M-" Jak caught himself at the last second- "My brother."

"Don't let any caprids in the house," Alma warned dismissively.

"And get your things up to your room! We don't have bellhop service here."

Daxter checked the yeast and tossed some flour onto the counter. "Uh...about that. Yeah, what you see is what you get. We don't have any stuff."

Alma half turned and looked around her kitchen skeptically, as if expecting to see a hidden pile of luggage. When no such baggage appeared, she shook her head -- whether it was in judgement or sympathy wasn't clear.

"When they come get you this evening to show you how to get groceries," she said to Jak, "Tell 'em Alma said you need a clothing allowance."

The room the boys would be renting wasn't particularly large. There was a sink, a tiny cook top, and a low table in one corner, a bathroom in another, and everything else was open space. Some hooks on the rafters suggested that previous tenants had divided the room with curtains for a while. That was probably the most privacy Jak was going to get in a place like this.

At least I don't have any extra clothes to worry about changing into. That definitely lowers the chances of Mar seeing my scars.

Pushed against the far wall, opposite the bathroom, was a low, wide, bed. There were no blankets on it, and the pallet was old and worn. But it was better than most places Jak had slept in Haven, and he wasn't going to complain as long as there was room for all three of them. He sank down onto a corner of the pallet and unlaced his boots with a sigh. As much as everyone kept repeating that he wouldn't be put to work, Jak knew it would only last until they saw what he was capable of. Which would mean he'd be able to keep them fed, but in this kind of heat it would probably be exhausting. Better to take it easy while he could.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Meddling Mar Monday

Back in order again, picking up with the boys being transfered from the tower to their new home. Chapter index can be found HERE

The building didn't look like much. It was the same sandstone and stucco construction as the rest of the city, with two separate staircases and doors going to two separate levels. The lower level had some yellow and white paint around the lintel in designs that were no longer fully discernible, and that was the only touch that indicated the building was inhabited at all. Damas rapped sharply on the lower door and grumbled under his breath.

He'd called ahead, of course. As the evaluator, it was his job to inform city landlords when a new tenant was arriving. But Alma was one of Spargus's more...eccentric individuals. She was an elder, and therefore held a place of honor in the West Quarter as a retired sharpshooter. Damas trusted that she'd keep these young rascals well in hand. But...well, she had always been a bit odd when it came to rent and trading. And she operated very much on her own time and nobody else's.

At last the door opened, and a diminutive woman with a sharply curved spine squinted up at him. She leaned on a driftwood cane and cocked her head to look around Damas to the boys behind him.

"About time someone sent me some more strong backs," Alma wheezed, "Am I supposed to drag my groceries home by my cane?"

Daxter groaned and buried his face in Jak’s scarf. "Noooo, it's another Samos!"

Damas cleared his throat. "No manual labor for another week, Alma. Petros's orders."

Alma blinked her round, brown eyes behind owlish spectacles. "Petros?! Ay, sire, the messenger said they were exiles! You're telling me that beanpole behind you is a minor?"

Mar tiptoed to peer around Damas’s elbow at the woman who was supposed to be their new landlady. For a moment, the elderly woman and the little boy just stared at each other. Then Mar innocently announced, "You look like a dragonowl."

"Mar!" Jak hissed under his breath, and lightly cuffed his younger brother across the back of his head.

"Hey!" Mar twisted to shoot a dirty look at Jak. "What was that for?!"

Alma blinked twice. "He's tiny," she said flatly.

Unbidden, the memory of the children collapsed in the desert surfaced in Damas’s mind. He grimaced.

"Aye. If there's any trouble with upkeep, I'll deal with it."

Blessedly, the old woman didn't point out that usually that was an assigned guardian's job. Damas didn’t feel like having to justify his monitoring of the boys -- or the gut feeling driving him.

Alma shuffled over a step and adjusted her glasses. "You! Tall child!" she beckoned to Jak.

Jak sighed and prepared himself for the kind of inane orders people always gave him. "Yeah?"

With a thump of her cane, Alma declared, "Rent is the second of every month. One whole conch shell, no fragments missing. And no critters inside! Can't abide them little pinchers."

Then she turned to Mar.

"And you! Pequeño, you know how to make bread?"

Mar, Daxter, and Jak exchanged bewildered looks.

"Kinda?" Mar answered cautiously. "Out of rice flour mostly?"

Alma made a face. "Rice flour?" she asked, "What does that taste like? Eh, nevermind. Go wash your hands. You're all helping me make bread."

Then she paused and peered at Daxter.

"Does he shed?"

Indignantly, Daxter puffed himself up and stood.

"He does not, thank you very much! This coat is made for waterproofing!"

Damas raised a hand between them as though cutting off an argument before it could begin.

"This is Daxter," he said calmly. "He is not an animal. He has a....a condition."

"Boy meets dark eco, dark eco wins," Daxter supplied helpfully.

The woman's eyes lit with mild interest. "That so? Here I thought the stuff just killed ya."

She took a dragging step away from the door and pointed to the stairs leading to the upper part of the building.

"You'll be up there, second compartment: the one on the left. But we all eat together. Keeps the lodgers from snacking through all their supplies and into mine."

Jak studied the upper half of the building and nodded. Space for the three of them, shared resources, and a rent he could pick up on the beach. That wasn't bad at all, really. In fact, it reminded him of picking up the once ubiquitous Precursor orbs all over Sentinel Beach to buy power cells from his neighbors. The heat was draining his energy far faster than he would have liked -- apparently Dr. Petros actually did know what he was talking about -- but still Jak itched to get into the water. He wanted to dive below the surf and look for forgotten treasures in the clear blue water, down where no one could bother him but fish.

It took him a moment to realize Damas was speaking to him. Jak tore his eyes from the direction of the sea and blinked.

"Huh?"

Damas frowned. "I said this evening someone will show you where and how to buy food. Help where you can, but keep in mind that if you push yourself too quickly you'll just end up in the recovery ward again."

"Oh." Jak shrugged. "I'll be fine. Hey, uh, how do you get to the water from here?"

Damas lifted an arm to point between two asymmetrical houses. "It's about five minutes' walk due West. You'll have plenty of time to explore after the noon rest. Understood?"

He was testing Jak, seeing whether he could take orders. Jak wasn't sure how he knew that, but he could just feel it. Well, lucky for Damas, Jak already felt somewhat indebted to him. In most cases, he didn't comply with orders unless he was getting something in return. Give and take, tit for tat. Owing a favor meant somebody had power over him -- and Jak had long since learned that someone having power over him meant that he was going to get hurt.

Sure, the desert people acted affronted by the suggestion that a couple of kids owed them for medical treatment, but when it came down to it, a debt was a debt. Jak wanted to investigate this society from a place of equal standing, not as a destitute castaway. He would tread lightly until he had the measure of these people.

"Fine, fine." He folded his arms and tried to downplay his eagerness to explore.

Precursors, how long had it been since he'd gotten to explore someplace new? At least he had that to look forward to.

"Thanks," he added, absent-mindedly.

Damas studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Prioritize your recovery over physical activity," he directed. "At least until Petros clears you to join the regular chore roster. I'll see you all later."

Then he aimed a sidelong glance at Mar.

"And Seek? Behave."

Daxter burst out laughing at the parting words. Mar folded his arms and did his best to glower menacingly at the king. Predictably, it was far more endearing than threatening. Damas cracked a smile and waved him off.

"You'd better get going if you want to help Alma make bread," he said, pointing behind them.

Mar hesitated. He wanted to ignore The Snitch as a matter of principle. But fresh bread was fresh bread, and he wasn't going to turn it down. He grabbed Jak's hand and towed him into the house behind him. No way was he doing all this lady's kitchen chores by himself!

Inside, herbs hung in bundles from the rafters, well out of reach of a frustrated animal trying in vain to get to them. It reared up on spindly black legs, dancing back and forth on cloven hooves and bleating piteously. Alma hobbled past it, ignoring its cries.

"Told you I'd get Leif to tie the herbs up if you kept eating them," the woman sniffed.

Dropping back on all fours, the creature bleated again and butted its small head against Alma's side. She pushed it away, nonplussed.

"Don't fuss at me! You were supposed to go back outside once you were weaned!"

Mar shoved past Jak and scrambled over a bootjack and short step to get to the animal.

"What's that?" he asked, staring into bright, slit pupils.

Alma squinted at him. "You never seen a caprid before? That one's a kid. Cabbie: the most spoiled caprid in the flock. Completely rotten."

Mar stroked the baby caprid's sandy brown head. "You have more?!"

Jak crossed the threshold to crouch next to him and run a hand over the caprid's velvety ears. "What do they eat? I didn't see a lot of plants on the way here."

"Cactus, mostly," Alma answered, "And anything else they can fit in their thieving little mouths. I swear if I didn't need the milk for cooking..."

She shook her cane at Cabbie menacingly.

"Half of your cousins: cabrito en salsa! Wham!"

Mar didn't know what cabrito en salsa was, but it sounded like food. He frowned and covered Cabbie's ears.

"Don't listen, kid," Jak said, patting it's short coat.

Their new landlady shook her head as if in despair. "Don't encourage him, he's bad enough already!"

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

My writing brain is on a roll with the Meddling Mar au, so that's what y'all are getting once again lol (Faulty Info has been Fighting Me, but I'm finally in the home stretch for chapter 10)

Part One, Parts Two and Three, Part Four, Part Five

The second day was the hardest. 

It was the first time Jak remembered waking up, not that he was awake for all that long.

There was an itch in the crook of his right arm, but he couldn’t even muster the strength to lift a finger, let alone scratch at the offending sensation. He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t move his limbs.

The smell of antiseptic permeated everything.

If he'd had anything in his stomach, he would have vomited.

Seconds, minutes, hours- Jak had no way of knowing how much time was passing. Or if it was even passing at all. One moment he would hear voices near him, the next there would be nothing but the whirring of fans and an ever-present, infuriating beeping. 

He hated the beeping.

As if it somehow knew that, the sound would get faster the angrier he got. But being angry was as exhausting as everything else, and soon enough the beeps would slow down as everything spun into nothingness again.

Jak dreamed -- though what he'd dreamed, he couldn't have said afterwards. There were only impressions of colors and voices and an endless sea. 

Sometimes he woke to something blessedly cool resting against his head. Mostly he wasn't awake long enough to pin down any specific sensations at all.

He woke periodically through the night, each time expecting Daxter to be there.

He never was. There were only solemn, painted faces looming over him and chanting prayers. 

Jak decided he was still dreaming.

The longest he was awake was the moment they took out the IV. Until then, he hadn't even known there had been a needle. Jak remembered screaming, yanking his arm away from the old woman. It was more movement than he'd been ready for, and he'd collapsed against the pillow, out of breath. 

The woman didn't scold him for making her job more difficult. Instead she had cooed and apologized -- apologized!! -- to him for hurting him. Hurting him!

"Oh, oh, I'm sorry, dear," she'd clucked, wrapping a bandage tightly around his elbow. "I know that stung. I'm sorry. That was the last one, promise."

That was how Jak found out he'd been hooked to electrolyte solutions for two days after collapsing in the desert. He'd panicked again, looking around frantically for his companions. 

He was alone.

The old woman squeezed his hand and propped a pillow up behind his back. The gentleness of it all very nearly brought him to tears. 

She wouldn't if she knew I was an eco freak.

She wouldn't be so kind if she knew I was just the Precursors' spare key.

"Mm-" Jak's voice was rusty with disuse, cracked and no louder than a whisper. "Mm-y b- bro-ther-?"

A calm smile split the woman's leathery pink face, and she patted his hand comfortingly.

"We released him to the convalescing ward just last night, love. You know, you probably saved his life, wrapping him up like that."

She nodded with approval.

"That was a very brave thing you did."

Jak wet his lips and tried to ask about Daxter. Fear held his lungs in icy claws, threatening that he didn't want to know the answer.

He slept again. 

The next time he remembered being awake, it was night, and a man with glasses was writing something on a datapad at his bedside. He stared at the man and gripped the thin sheet that had been draped over him.

The man looked up and blinked in surprise.

"Oh! Bless me, you're awake! Hello there, young warrior. You've certainly had a close call, haven't you?"

 "Where am I?" Jak tried to ask, but all that came out was, "Where-?"

"Emergency clinic," the man answered. "My name is Petros, I'm a pediatrician."

A what now? Jak had never heard that word before. His confusion must have been somewhat obvious, because the thin man clarified, "a doctor who treats kids under eighteen."

Under eighteen? 

Well. Jak had always known he didn't actually have an autumn birthday like Daxter, but he would've thought he'd be at least eighteen by now. The doctor was probably assuming he was younger because he was short. Those dark eco experiments had really messed with his growth.

Deciding to humor the man -- because he couldn't think of anything else to do -- Jak slowly accepted a tin cup from him. The water had a slightly metallic taste, but it was far cleaner than anything he'd had in Haven. It felt like heaven, cooling his dry throat and clearing his head. Was it because it was clean? Jak examined the bottom of the cup warily.

"Just a bit of green eco mixed in," Petros said, a little too cheerfully for Jak's taste, "We already reversed the organ damage with the high-grade stuff. This is just to soothe your throat a bit."

"Or- organ damage?!" Jak's fingers tightened on the cup. 

"Now," the doctor said briskly, ignoring him, "You've still got a long recovery ahead of you. Judging by the bone scans we did, you've been through quite a lot, and your body is still playing catch-up."

He stood up, groaning as his knees crackled and popped, and slid his notes into his pocket. 

"I'm going to bring you some more water, and a little broth -- slow sips, mind you. Let's not have you making yourself ill -- and when you've finished, you're going to take a cool bath."

Jak shifted uncomfortably in the cot. "What's the cost?" he demanded, "Nobody does this for free."

Petros leaned back as if startled. His eyebrows climbed so high they almost vanished into his receding hairline. For a few seconds he said nothing. Then, he sagged, looking as if he'd aged a few more years with the space of a breath.

"Ah," he said, almost sadly, "I see. Been that sort of life for you, has it? Well I don't charge minors, so you don't need to worry about that. If you and the little one end up being assigned a temporary guardian to help you transition into city life, they'll deal with the cost."

Then, seeing that Jak wasn't convinced, he pasted on a small smile and shrugged. 

"But, when you've been deemed to be sufficiently recovered, you can always bring me some medicinal herbs from the clifftop farms, like the other children usually do."

"I'm not a child," Jak muttered with a scowl.

Petros took this in stride. "Adolescent, then. Still got a couple years before you'll be allowed to pitch in with any of the heavier work around here, at any rate. But you can discuss that with Damas once the monks let you out of convalescence."

"What," Jak said slowly, "does that even mean?"

The doctor smiled blandly and began to walk away. "Later. Right now, we get food in you. Then you wash off the paint and get some rest. Before dawn tomorrow, you'll be moved to the convalescing ward with your brother."

Paint? What paint?

Jak frowned and, for the first time, realized that his cheeks felt a little stiff even after the water. Cautiously, he reached up and touched two fingers to the skin. A flake of white came back on his fingertips, and his eyes widened.

He held the tin cup close to his face and stared at the reflection.

A broad, red stripe had been painted in an arc over the bridge of his nose and down to his jaw, ending in an old pictograph for "peace" on his throat. The rest of his face had been painted bone-white.

They had shaved him to make the paint lay even on his chin. 

He looked like a little kid like this!

"Oh what the-?!"

Petros paused and looked back. He grimaced.

"Ah. It's...well son, I don't want to scare you, but we almost lost you the night you came in. The monks started giving you last rites before the eco kicked in and your body really started fighting."

"Last rites?!" 

Jak's breathing quickened, and his chest felt constricted.

They'd touched him while he slept. Took a blade to his face. What else had they done? How much had they seen?

He resisted a sudden, overwhelming urge to check the pocket Tess had sewn into the lining of his pants, just to make sure his and Mar's seal was still there. 

"Wh- where's my brother? Where's Daxter?"

We need to leave.

Petros tilted his head. "Daxter? That's your brother's name?"

The misunderstanding was just weird enough to let Jak get a full breath before the panic settled into something more manageable. 

"What? No? He's-"

"He's Mar" almost slipped out of Jak's mouth, but he stopped himself just in time.

He didn't know where they were, or how far from Haven they'd gotten. He wasn't going to risk word getting back to the Council.

"He's the orange guy," he amended quickly. "Where is he?"

The understanding on the doctor's face was a welcome relief. He knew what Jak was talking about. That had to mean Daxter was okay, right?

"Oh yes!" Petros nodded. "Last I heard, that little fella has been standing guard over your little brother. He's bitten at least one monk so far."

Jak fell back against the pillow, feeling as though he'd just run a marathon. 

"He's okay," he gasped. "They're okay."

"Thanks to you, yes. They're okay."

Petros assured him. Then he was all business again.

"Now: no more stalling! Soup, and then bath. And don't even think about trying to sneak out of that bed! I've been doing this for twenty-five years, and I've got a sixth sense for teenagers sabotaging their own recovery!"

He shuffled off, leaving Jak worn out and thoroughly bewildered.

Who are these people?!

________________________________,_________

Mar was bored. 

Incredibly, infuriatingly, bored.

He wasn't hooked up to the beeping box anymore -- the one the doctor lady said measured his heartbeat -- but that didn’t mean he was free to run around. For the first day after the needle came out, he'd been too tired to move at all. Now he still got tired easily, but he didn't want to sleep! He wanted to find Jak!

But every time he got out of bed, one of the people with the colorful face paint would find him and take him back!

Once, a man with spikes in his head had found Mar, halfway up a staircase where he'd run out of breath. He had given him a very strange look, and then the next thing Mar knew he was being carried back to bed.

At this point, he was pretty sure the horned man was the painted people's guard, to make sure he didn't escape. Because now every time he made it to the door, the horned man was somewhere nearby. All he had to do was give Mar a Look, and it was enough to send him scurrying back to bed.

At least Daxter was here. Mar didn't think he could've endured it if neither of his big brothers was present.

"Do you think Jak’s okay?"

Mar pulled his knees up to his chest and frowned at the curtains around his bed. He'd seen grown-ups in the other beds when he'd tried to sneak out before, usually with casts on limbs or sleeping. They weren't mean or scary, but they usually ignored him.

Generic adult behavior. 

If Jak had been in one of the other twelve beds, he would have come to check on Mar by now.

Daxter stretched to peer through a gap in the curtains. Then he sighed and returned to carding through Mar's coily hair with a comb that had been left unattended.

"I...I dunno, kiddo. The last time I saw him he-"

Daxter swallowed and forced the words out.

"He wasn't lookin' so good."

Mar's stomach clenched with worry. He gnawed a thumbnail for a few seconds, then asked in subdued signs, "What do we do if he- if something happened to Jak?"

The ottsel let go of the comb -- leaving it vertical in the boy's hair -- and scrambled around to take Mar's face in his hands.

"I'm gonna stick by you, that's what. It's you, me, and Jak, to the end of the line." He squeezed Mar's cheeks to punctuate his words. "I p- I promise, kiddo. One of us is always gonna be here to look out for you."

With a sniffle, the little boy suddenly reached out and dragged Daxter into his arms. He clung to him like a lifeline -- like Jak used to when they were very little. And just like with Jak, Daxter didn't need to see Mar's hands to know what he was saying.

I'm scared, Daxter.

Daxter wrapped his arms around the kid's neck and sighed. "Me too, kid. Me too."

You'd better be okay, Jak.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Snippet Monday -- Meddling Mar

Part One, Parts Two and Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven

Mar awoke to the sound of arguing.

He sat up, squinting and rubbing his eyes against the flood of sunlight from the small window high above his bed.

"I'm not drinking your mystery medicine."

That was Jak! Mar would know his voice anywhere!

"Oh yes you are. You are too dehydrated to get a choice. You will drink the lily water or I will pour it down your throat!"

Oh. That was Gawyn, the cranky monk who made Mar take the sleepy medicine. Mar did not like Gawyn. The little boy's ears pricked up when he heard a low, menacing growl.

"Don't touch me."

Concerned, Mar kicked off the sheet and wriggled down from the bed. Jak was upset enough to use his Dark Voice. Mar remembered that voice. It meant his big brother needed him.

Mar flung back the curtain beside his bed, revealing Gawyn standing beside the bedframe built into the wall. He was glaring at Jak, who sat in the bed and glared right back.

With a cry, Mar shoved past the monk and scrambled up onto Jak’s bed. He flung his arms around the older boy's neck, so relieved to see him that he didn't even see Daxter asleep on Jak’s pillow until he almost fell on him. Jak went rigid, and for a moment, Mar was afraid he'd scared or angered him. But then his brother reached up and hugged him back, holding him so tightly to his chest that Mar started to feel squished.

"Ma- Kid!" Jak gasped and pushed Mar away to hold him at arms length, scanning him for injuries. "You're okay!"

The little boy's hair was far neater than it had been the last time they'd seen each other, combed up into fluffy twist-outs and trimmed at the temples. Jak hoped they hadn’t done it while Mar was asleep, like they'd done with his facial hair. The monks -- or the doctors, Jak had no idea -- appeared to have either changed Mar's clothes or brought him clean ones: his filthy green tunic had been replaced with some kind of long, loose, shirt or robe that fell to his knees. Given where they'd been, Jak was surprised that it was long-sleeved. It looked lightweight, at least.

"What happened to your tunic?" Jak asked.

"Dunno. I think they threw it away when I took a bath." Mar shrugged. "What happened to yours?"

Jak glanced down at his own arms -- bare, save for several bandages around his elbow and covering some of his old scars -- and just as quickly glanced away.

"I'm...not sure. I don't remember this happening."

Mar nestled closer again. He didn't want Jak to think he was a baby, but he was just so relieved to still have both his brothers. Jak must have been relieved too, because he didn't even tell him to give him his personal space. He kept an arm around Mar's shoulders and just breathed, slow and deep.

"Who combed your hair?" Jak asked after a moment.

He knew darned well Mar hadn't done it himself. If there was one constant between their paradoxical childhood, it was that they both hated the feel of a comb against their scalps.

"The snitch did it."

"The...the what."

Jak squinted at him.

"What snitch?"

Mar scowled. "He's the guy that guards the door. Before you came, I tried to leave to find you. But the snitch always finds me and brings me back to tell the monks!"

Jak looked at him blankly.

"Um..."

"He's so weird!" Mar complained, "He made me go to bed while the sun was still up! But then he brought a board game for me and Daxter, and fixed my hair! But he tells on me to the monks!"

The little boy sulked.

"Just make up your mind already! Quit playin' "good grownup, bad grownup", right?"

Jak shifted to eye the sleeping ottsel beside him. Something hard and sharp about his demeanor faded away for a moment, leaving behind a teenage boy who was all too vulnerable. A long breath puffed out his cheeks.

"Is...is Dax okay?"

Unwilling to show weakness in front of the weirdo threatening him with medication, Jak signed the question to Mar.

Immediately, Mar nodded.

"Yeah, he's okay. He doesn't even get tired easy like me. So unfair."

Gawyn cleared his throat sharply. "Yes yes, this reunion is very touching and all, but you still have to drink your medicine."

He pointed meaningfully at the cup on the table.

"Use your brain, boy. Would we really go to all this trouble if we wanted you dead?"

He faltered somewhat when Jak met his eyes and answered, "There are some things that are worse than death."

This was starting to feel like it was above his paygrade.

This boy wasn't one of the people of the Wastelands. He didn't recognize a senior monk of the Golden Order of the Precursors, obviously. But something about his eyes...

They had seen too much in his short life.

Those eyes made Gawyn nervous, and he couldn’t even pinpoint why.

"It's just green eco and Desert Lily." Gawyn puffed out his chest and did his best to recover his nerve. "You know what Desert Lily is, don't you?"

Mar nudged Jak with a worried look.

"Daxter will know. Daxter knew what they were giving me before."

To the consternation of the monk, the two boys proceeded to shake the mouthy orange rodent-thing awake. It blinked at them in a daze for a couple seconds before its ears shot upright.

"Jak! You're awake!" Daxter gasped.

With a soft grin, Jak held out his hand for a fist bump.

"Hey Dax."

Mar reluctantly scooted to one side to let Daxter climb up to Jak’s shoulder. Almost immediately the little boy glued himself to his brother's side again.

"Daxter, they wanna give Jak medicine!" he said, more than a little tattle-tale in his choice of signs.

Daxter raised a furry brow. "Is it that mashed up green eco plant in water?"

"Desert Lily," Gawyn groused, "It's called Desert Lily."

Jak relaxed his shoulders slightly. "Is it drugged?" he asked Daxter quietly.

Instantly, Daxter understood Jak’s fear. After the prison, after having substances forced into him without pity or explanation, he had a right to be wary. Drinking something unidentified was a good way to black out and wake up on an operating table.

"No, it's not drugged, but uh...you better check how well they filtered the leaf juice if you don't want your digestive system to be very very mad at you."

"The bathroom's by the other end of the room," Mar added, pointing helpfully.

Jak made a face. "That's...good to know, I guess..."

Gawyn resisted the urge to groan.

"It's double filtered. The idea is to re-hydrate you, not de-hydrate you."

He waited a moment, but Jak continued to stare him down.

"You're...not going to drink it until I leave, are you?" he sighed.

"Pretty much."

This time, the monk did groan.

"Save us from the stubbornness of teenagers!" he grumbled, but he reluctantly turned his back.

"Just so you know, you have to drink that again tonight. And twice a day for the next two days."

Jak raised his brows and signed to Mar and Daxter, "They won't know if I just pour it out, right?"

"Don't count on it," Mar cautioned. "The Snitch is everywhere. If he sees, the monks will know."

"That's because you have the subtlety of a stampeding yakkow, kid," Daxter interrupted, punctuating his signs with a bored expression.

"But considering you're Jak’s mini-me, that doesn't bode well for his subtlety either."

Jak pushed Daxter off his shoulder.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

(This is the reunion scene from my Splinter Cell au. It got away from me, so be forewarned: looong post incoming)

Of course there had to be another problem the moment they got back from the race. It wasn’t enough to just let them savor a victory for once. Or, Precursors forbid, let them actually rest. It was always something.

"Radar is picking up a craft headed for the island!" Vin's nervous voice crackled over their radios.

"What size is the aircraft?" Tess asked, shedding her weariness to take command.

"That's the thing...it's not an aircraft at all! There's a ship headed for us! I estimate it'll reach us in, er, er, 3 hours!"

"A ship?" Jak frowned. That was a little unusual.

"Could be Brutter," Daxter suggested, "His fishing boat has to come back for repairs sometime, right?"

"Maybe."

Tess sounded doubtful.

"Can we get some snipers down here? Just in case. We're gonna need em anyhow once the Baron figures out we swapped the Stone for a fake."

"I'll hang around and keep an eye out," Jak volunteered.

With a faint frown, Tess shook her head. "You can tag out, Jak. It's fine. You just came off a mission."

Jak snorted and kicked at the sand. "Mission? Tess, I was just racing! I do that for fun! You and Dax are the ones who actually did all the work."

He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms, fully intending to patrol the beach until the craft either pulled up or passed by. Sure, he was a little tired, but they couldn't afford to get complacent just because they'd stolen back the Precursor Stone. Besides, the entrance to the Babak settlement wasn't far, and Jak had no intention of leaving it unguarded.

Tess caught up to him in two swift strides. She made sure he'd seen her before reaching out to grab his shoulder.

Unexpected touches were not welcome. She'd been around the block a few times: she knew to announce her presence.

"Hey, no. Don't do that brushing-off thing with me." She stopped in front of him, giving Daxter the opportunity to hop from her shoulder back to his.

"Jak, listen. I promise, I'm saying this because you're my friend and I care about you, not because I doubt you. But every time you have to be in the same vicinity as Errol, that's a trigger. I'm not putting you on any new assignments until you're ready, mentally and emotionally."

Jak laughed harshly. "Errol? Oh he's dead. He's super dead."

Surprise stretched Tess's face, then it slackened with relief. "Did you-?"

The boy looked away for a moment, then shook his head. "Nah. Wasn't me. He tried to run me down with his zoomer after he lost the race. Wasn't that hard to dodge. He crashed face-first into a month's supply of eco."

A dark vein pulsed in his temple, and one of his canines showed, sharper than usual, when he smirked.

"He never was much good against opponents who weren't chained down."

Daxter's comforting weight on his shoulder grounded him, steadied his erratic pulse. Jak focused on the sensation of paws on his shoulder, feet braced against his back. He was here, he'd survived, and this time Errol couldn't taunt him anymore. There was a part of him that was angry. Furious, even. It was a quick death, and Errol had deserved far worse. He'd deserved to be chained to the same injection chair that had seen Jak's worst moments, left to the tender mercies of the needle and Jak's own darkness. But now the sadist was beyond his reach.

"Wait." Daxter leaned into his face. "You're telling me that old Coloring Book Face -- the famed racer, the one Krew bet on -- in front of his adoring fans, crashed into tanks of eco like a moron?"

He hopped once and hooted with laughter.

"He blew himself sky high and took his reputation down with him? What a dumb way to go! It's perfect!"

Jak wouldn't have called it perfect. But he could appreciate the level of humiliation Errol had unwittingly dealt himself.

Tess still looked at him with that terrible knowing in her eyes. Sometimes, Jak thought the older girl could see right through him. It was unnerving.

"How are you doing?" She asked, and for once, Jak couldn’t bring himself to lie.

"I'm...here. I don't want to be around a lot of people right now. I..." He shrugged. "I need to focus on something else before I get angry again."

Satisfied, Tess nodded. "Okay. Do you want to be the one watching for the ship?"

Honestly, he did. Jak had a lot to process regarding the death of his abuser. But at the same time, the adrenaline of the race, and getting to challenge Praxis right to his face, still vibrated through his body. He really needed somewhere for all that energy to go.

Sentry duty was quiet, but required focus, and movement. Sig had been right about him needing that kind of activity.

"Yeah. Um, yeah, I got this." Jak stretched and swung his rifle off his back. "Could you just...uh, could you let Sig know I'm okay? I kind of had to blackmail him not to come to the race and snipe Errol when he passed the stands."

"Fair," Daxter observed. He stretched lazily across Jak’s shoulders feigning flippancy. "That woulda been way quicker than he deserved."

Tess shifted her weight and sighed, resigned.

"Okay. I'm gonna get this stone locked up somewhere safe. You let me know if you guys need any food or anything out here."

Jak agreed without really meaning it. The Babak settlement was right there, after all. If he really got hungry, he could just ask Brutter for some scraps. Of course, that was more an excuse to see Mar than anything else, but who was going to tell on him?

With Errol dead, finally dead, that was one less threat to his little brother.

Or at least, it should've been. It didn't feel real yet. Everything had happened so fast-

What if the explosion hadn't actually killed him?

What if some people were actually too evil to die?

Stop, stop it. That blast took out three guards that were just near the eco. Errol went right into the heart of it. If he lived, it wasn’t for long. He can't get me he can't get me he can't get me-

"Jak?"

Jak inhaled sharply and straightened his shoulders. "I'm gonna post up on the ridge over the caves. Keep me updated about the boat's progress, yeah?"

Daxter grimaced. "Uh...Jak, Tess already went inside. You zoned out there for a minute, bud."

Jak winced. "Sorry," he muttered.

His best friend shrugged it off. "Let's get to Our Spot, huh? I think we still have some candy stashed up there that Junior hasn't found yet."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The smog that perpetually surrounded Haven city was, just this once, a blessing in disguise. Thick and oily, it hovered over the water, hiding the boat from sight and muffling the sound of propellers. Rags wrapped around gunstaffs and rifles added to the muted quality of the infiltrators; they weren't here for invasion. It was not yet time to reveal themselves to the city.

Drake shifted the rudder and eyed the monolithic factory rising from the smoke. Ominous looking thing.

Not as ominous as the figure standing at the prow.

Every Wastelander there knew that for the king to leave the city, something had to be earth-shatteringly important. Damas hadn't spoken a word since boarding the vessel, not once during the eighteen hour voyage had he explained their mission. He just watched from the prow with hard eyes, tensed and ready to fight at a moment's notice. There was an air of anticipation about him -- not the look of a man waiting on the edge of battle, Drake reckoned, more like a man waiting for something to begin. Waiting for something important.

A glint of light caught the Wastelander's attention, up near the silhouettes of palm trees near the upper levels of the factory.

Drake tapped the bulwark twice, catching his silent companions' attention. With a hand signal, he indicated "light" and "gun scope" before pointing in the direction he'd seen it.

Damas stepped down from the prow and moved silently to the stern to crouch beside Drake.

"Where?" he mouthed.

Drake raised his arm straight, pointed to the glint that was still appearing from time to time.

Abruptly, the tension melted out of Damas’s shoulders.

"Just where Sig said he'd be," he breathed.

Damas patted Drake's arm. "Take us in. Stay out of sight of Haven. I'll handle the rest."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Up on the cliff, high above the rough waters, Jak watched the boat through the scope of his blaster. He counted at least six figures, though he couldn't make out any details yet.

"Well, it's not KG," he murmured into his radio.

For some reason, it felt wrong to speak above a whisper.

"Is it metalheads?" asked Tess.

"Nope."

Jak squinted. The figures vanished in a patch of smog for a second before reappearing.

"They almost look like-"

With a jolt, Jak sat up. "Sig," he realized.

"Huh? What do you mean they look like Sig?"

"No, I mean-" Jak jumped to his feet and snatched up his gun. "Get Sig! I think he might know these guys, they look like Wastelanders!"

His heart hammered painfully in his ears as he picked his way down the ridge, Daxter clinging to his shoulders for dear life. Wastelanders. In their waters. There was a chance they were on a job for Krew, but this soon after Sig contacted Mar's people?

It couldn't be coincidence. Jak had learned the hard way not to believe in coincidence.

A wrong step nearly rolled Jak’s ankle, and he cursed. Where's your head, Jak? Don't get sloppy.

The truth was, he was afraid. He was eager to find allies, and desperate to find people he could trust around Mar. But he was terrified of inevitably having to justify his existence to Mar’s family. Just the vague possibility of meeting an alternate timeline version of his own father -- a complete stranger -- made him want to throw up.

"Jak?"

Daxter's ears were pinned back against his skull. He was clearly agitated, though Jak couldn't work out whether it was because of him or the boat.

"Are you sure about this?"

Ah. Him. Daxter was definitely upset because of him.

Jak gripped the spiny trunk of a palm to steady himself halfway through their descent. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, like Sig made him practice. In...out. In...out. It wasn't a very impressive attempt at calming himself, but it was better than nothing.

"I...don't know if I want to meet them or not," Jak confessed.

His throat was dry.

"Today was...a lot. Y'know? I can only take being called a freak so much in one day."

Daxter stretched himself to his full length to wrap around Jak’s shoulders. He didn't say anything; there were times when words just weren't enough.

Cognitively, he knew Jak didn't blame him for leaving him to rot in that hell for two years. He even knew that such a thought would never even have crossed Jak’s mind. But that didn’t keep it from haunting Daxter.

For at least a little while, in the latter half of their separation, he'd had a roof over his head. A warm bed. A job, for Precursors' sakes, working for a man who treated him like a person! And that whole time, Jak had been enduring a nightmare Daxter wouldn't have even wished on Gol Acheron.

Guilt ate away at Daxter constantly. What kind of friend was he, living the mediocre life while his best and only friend was being treated like a lab rat? Jak was the only person who'd ever cared about him -- well, before Tessie and Brutter and the Kid, at least -- and he'd left him behind like a coward. Daxter owed Jak so much. The least he could do was be here, now, to watch his friend's back, physically and emotionally.

"Listen, pal," he quipped, hoping Jak couldn't hear how forced it was, "Insulting Orange Lightning's sidekick is a crime punishable by...well, not...not by death, exactly. A very stern talking to- and a wet willie!"

He nodded in satisfaction. "And I'll...I'll...I'll bite their nose! And you know I hate biting. I don't make offers like this for just anyone, y'know."

A little thread of comfort unfurled in Jak’s chest. Daxter hated fighting, and getting dirty, and anything even remotely scary. Knowing that, Jak couldn't help but acknowledge that Daxter didn't run from his darker half. The boy turned ottsel generally stared down his murderous fangs with a look that said "Is that the best you got?" Whatever else happened, at least he had Daxter.

He swung down onto the stairs to the beach and set the morph gun to Vulcan. If things got ugly, he'd need rapid fire.

Maybe, just maybe, things wouldn't get ugly.

But when had Jak ever been that lucky?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He was there.

Damas could see him clearly now, watching them from the beach.

His heart clenched painfully in his chest, and it was all he could do to keep from diving overboard and simply swimming to shore. For the entire voyage, he’d prayed to whatever force might be listening that Sig wouldn’t be wrong. That his – their – hopes wouldn’t be dashed. Having had the possibility of a much longed-for second child placed before him, Damas had struggled with a fear that it was too good to be true. That it was selfish to be hoping for more when it was a miracle that Mar had been found at all.

But now the boat was close enough for him to see the wiry boy, standing with his rifle ready like a second, smaller edition of his own self.

Oh look at him! He’s all me!

An untimely bubble of mirth rose in his chest. He and Phobos had always debated over which of them Mar would turn out looking like the most. She always insisted Mar would look like his father, and he’d always been sure Mar would look like his mother.

Phobos had just won a bet they’d thought would take ten years to settle.

“That’s far enough!” shouted the boy, raising his gun. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

Damas laughed.

“Friends of Sig!” he returned through cupped hands, “He called us in!”

The boy – Jak, Sig said he’d named himself Jak – spoke quietly into a small radio, probably seeking confirmation from Sig. Just waiting that long made Damas antsy, and whatever made him antsy made the Wastelanders antsy. Well, not Phobos. Phobos didn’t do “antsy”. She was simply ready.

Then, to their surprise, the orange furry thing around Jak’s shoulders raised its head to shout at them.

“Alright! Come in nice and slow, no funny business!”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jak wanted to bolt, but his boots were frozen to the beach.

This wasn’t just a party of mercs Sig knew. That man with the spikes or horns on his brow-

That was the bloody deposed king of Haven!

That was Damas son of Arez!

For all intents and purposes, in another life that had been his father!

And the poor guy probably had no idea. He was here to save Mar, to take him home at last. He didn’t need to know Jak was connected…right?

But then, Jak knew in his heart that he would never be willing to let Mar out of his sight. Not after everything they’d been through together. Maybe he could convince them to take him on as a bodyguard or something. Out in the wastes, maybe there wouldn’t be as much dark eco. Maybe he could suppress the Hunter inside him, and no one would have to know.

“Whoa, hey, what’s Spike doing?” Daxter demanded.

Jak shook away the spiral of thoughts in time to see the ex-king swing himself out of the boat. He landed waist deep in water and pushed forward, leaving his fellow Wastelanders behind. In a distracted sort of way, Jak noted that the man must have been incredibly strong to march through the deep water with no more resistance than a field of tall grass.

His eyes found the man’s face, and he lost his train of thought altogether.

The man was looking at Jak as though he feared Jak would vanish the second he blinked. Like it was Jak he’d been searching for, and not little Mar.

He looked at Jak as if he already knew him.

“Um,” said Jak eloquently.

Now that Damas was out of the water, there was no mistaking him for anything but a warrior. He wore wicked looking mismatched layers of armor, scuffed and worn with much use. Much like the armor, his skin bore thin, silvery scars wherever visible, telling stories of survival. Unconsciously, Jak’s hand drifted to his left arm, where needle tracks clustered like foul constellations. Here was a man who probably had as many scars as he did!

Jak’s pulse hammered away in his ears, so loud that he almost missed it when Damas breathed, “So it’s true!”

Completely at a loss for how to greet a king – let alone a man who might’ve been his father if fate had been kind – Jak stuck out an awkward hand in a half wave.

“Uh…I’m Jak. This is Daxter. You’re…friends of Sig?”

A smile split the king’s face, so wide it threatened to touch his ears. His fingers twitched oddly, like he was trying to hold himself back from something.

“Hello, Jak,” he said. His voice cracked and bounced with each syllable in a herculean effort not to break. “I- we’ve been…waiting to meet you for quite some time now.”

The boys exchanged a bewildered look.

“Me?” Jak stammered, “Don’t you mean M-”

Then he could hold himself back no longer; Damas reached out and clapped his hands to Jak’s arms.

“Just look at you!” He laughed and blinked back a slight glimmer in his eyes. “Look at you! You have my eyes-!”

Tongue-tied, Jak stared numbly into a pair of eyes that were indeed similar to his own. The shade was more violet than blue, but their shape was as unmistakable as the bronze tone of the skin surrounding them.

Why in the name of sanity did this man sound so pleased by the resemblance? Jak was a complete stranger to him! They did not have years of shared memories – like we should have, his mind whispered – and really knew nothing about each other. He wasn’t- He wasn’t the right Mar! He didn’t even look exactly the same as Mar!

“How old are you, boy?” Damas asked him with a weirdly friendly smile, “Fifteen, or sixteen?”

“I…think I’m seventeen?” Jak managed.

But then, he was calculating his age based on Samos’s guess of Mar’s age. And Mar claimed to be four, not five. He could’ve been mistaken, but then, Samos thus far hadn’t been the most reliable of narrators.

“Uh…how old is your son?”

Damas looked taken aback for a moment, but recovered quickly. “Mar is four,” he answered.

Daxter tallied out a few fingers. “So…sixteen, huh? Welp. Turns out you’re not old enough for a driver’s license after all, pal.” Then his eyes lit up. “Hey! This means I am older than you!”

“Wh- no!” Jak pulled an arm free to smack at Daxter and missed. “If you tell Tess-!” He let the threat hang in the air, unsure how to finish it.

The other Wastelanders beached the boat and splashed ashore, good-naturedly grumbling at their king for not waiting.

Wait- they still thought of him as a king?

Jak began to wonder if some Wastelanders were exiled supporters of the House of Mar. Had Mar spent his first years surrounded by people who had chosen the life of a Wastelander over Praxis? That might explain the kid’s seeming lack of self-preservation if this is what he was used to. He hoped they had no expectations of him, because they were bound to be disappointed.

“Come! Come, my friends, come and see!” Damas waved them closer, still grinning broadly. He moved to stand beside Jak and gestured between them. “Look! Who would you say this young warrior looks like most?”

Of the four men and five women in the band, only two managed to overcome their bewilderment enough to speak. The first, a burly man with a drooping handlebar mustache, stumped forward and squinted at Jak.

“I’ll be,” he huffed. “You been hiding another ankle-biter out here, lordship? How’d you keep Praxis from findin’ him when you got exiled?”

The woman, a stern looking fighter with one eye, pursed her lips and folded her arms.

“Well aren’t you just a chip off the old block?” she snorted. “Nice to know Sig isn’t losing his touch.”

This seemed to embolden the others, and in a matter of seconds, Jak was surrounded. Nobody touched him, for which he was supremely grateful, but he was still very uneasy with all these strangers in his personal space.

“Ha! He can’t grow a real beard either, eh, Lordship?”

“Oh don’t you start with me, Kleiver.”

“Now there’s a fighter if I ever saw one. Hey kid, what’s your favorite ammo?”

“Blaster-?” Jak answered in confusion.

“Oh, good choice! Sig teach ya how to use a Peacemaker yet?”

“Of course not, dummy! Look at him! He ain’t even old enough for Arena trials yet, I reckon.”

Jak was getting overwhelmed, and that was never a good thing. When there was too much input at once, when new sounds and faces surrounded him without giving him a chance to process, his grip on the dark eco tended to weaken.

Not here, not now! He pleaded silently with himself.

Noticing his tension, Damas suddenly waved the Wastelanders off. “Give him space! Give him space, all of you!”

He took a step to the side as well, leaving Jak with a ring of emptiness around him as a buffer.

“I apologize, Jak. We’re just…very eager to meet you. Sig has told us much, but I needed to…to see for myself.”

Jak gulped in deep breaths of air, doing his best to slow his pulse before something happened he couldn’t take back. They acted happy for now, but once they saw The Hunter-

Daxter leaped off his shoulder and stood in front of him like a guard. “Alright, alright, one at a time! I know we’re amazing, thank you, thank you. But our boy here functions best with a little thing called personal space. Eesh!”

He pointed at the Wastelanders. “No crowding the heroes, got it? And no insults! Any and all job requests must wait three to five business days for consideration. And under no circumstances will there be any pinching of cheeks!”

One of the older Wastelanders pushed to the front of the crowd and squatted to examine Daxter with some amusement. “You’re a feisty little one,” she said, and poked his midriff with a bony finger. “Not familiar with your species. What are ya, kid? Some kind of talking dogat?”

Daxter shied away from the older woman with a startled yip. “No touch-a the merchandise!” he squawked, and scrambled back up Jak’s leg and torso to sit on his shoulder. “And I’m an ottsel, for your information!”

Through the whole ordeal, one of the Wastelanders had remained silent. She merely stood there, studying Jak intently as though she wasn’t quite certain what to think of him. It was the only sensible reaction of the lot, and that drew Jak’s attention. What held his attention was her hair: coils and spirals of green tinted gold, exactly like his own. Jak had never seen anyone in Haven with hair even remotely similar to his! Hers, of course, was well maintained, and not the unkempt mess his own had been before Sig finally caught him long enough to cut some of it.

Her face was round and smooth, the same deep tourmaline that Jak saw every time he looked at Mar. He saw the curve of Mar’s jaw in hers, and the same solemn quirk in her brow. Jak’s stomach flipped, then dropped with dizzying speed. In his heart, he was fairly certain he knew who the woman was. But he didn’t want to even acknowledge it in his mind. She wasn’t here for him, after all.

He watched her turn towards Damas with an expression of intent. For a moment, they seemed to be having a conversation with just their eyes, much the way Jak used to with Daxter. And then, without warning, the hard look on the woman’s face melted away. She looked back to Jak with something disturbingly bittersweet in her gaze.

“Phobos?” Damas asked softly.

She moved towards them as if in a trance, only stopping when she was mere inches from Jak. She pointed to the chain around his neck.

“Is that your amulet, or your brother’s?” Phobos demanded.

They know! Oh Precursors, what now? What do I do?

“…mine…?”

Phobos nodded, suddenly shaky. A glance to the side revealed that the ex-king was looking a little shaky as well. What the-?

“You were him, in another world. Weren’t you?” she asked, much softer.

Jak swallowed hard, and his eyes dropped. He couldn’t meet her gaze for several seconds. “…yes.”

There were tears in this woman’s eyes when he looked back up, and Jak instantly felt a surge of guilt.

“S- sorry-” he started, but it was drowned out by a somewhat wet chuckle coming from the woman.

Jak would have understood tears. He’d probably cry too if he had to have a monster like him for a son. But under the wetness of her cheeks this woman was smiling. She reached out to steady herself against Damas’s shoulder, and she laughed. A deep, full thunder, rolling up from some holy place inside her as she wiped her eyes again.

“Damas, look at him. He’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, and reached a hand out to gently touch Jak’s face. Rough, calloused fingers traced the curve of his cheekbone, then brushed an errant coil of hair from his face. 

Beautiful?

In the whole of his life, Jak could safely say that no one, not one person, had ever called him beautiful.

As he stood frozen, speechless, Daxter took it upon himself to speak for him. “Well thankee kindly,” he piped up in a ridiculously exaggerated country drawl, “You’re not too bad yourself, missus!”

This had the intended effect of breaking Jak out of his shock. He slapped a hand over Daxter’s mouth in horror.

“Dax no!”

The older woman who had greeted Daxter before burst out laughing.

Jak did not share her amusement. “I- I’m sorry, Dax is just- Gah!” 

He yanked his hand away from Daxter’s mouth and shook it. “Did you just lick me?!”

“That’s what you get!” Daxter snickered.

“Gross!”

Damas chuckled -- it was a warm sound, without any of the bitterness Jak had come to expect from laughter

[radioactivepeasant]

Lol I spent literally the entirety of my day off on this, because time ceases to exist when I'm in Art Mode

Damas steepled his fingers together and did his best not to laugh. He was the authority figure here: if anyone had to be The Adult in this situation, it was him.

Maryam Chime, the merchant, had no such qualms upon seeing the mess her son had made.

"H- hi, Ma..." Merit gulped, looking suitably sheepish. He attempted to brush off some of the mud covering his hair and gave up.

Flick was wholly unrepentant. Jak looked like he wasn't sure if he should be apologetic, or if the adults' chagrin didn't apply to him. The correct answer was the former, he discovered, when the consequence for turning chores into a mud ball fight turned out to be having to go to the bath house.

"He only has one clean tunic," Damas complained to Maryam when she gave him an odd look, "Might as well get his clothes clean along with the rest of him."

Maryam sort of wished he hadn't given Merit the idea. She just knew the boy's clothes were going to smell of slightly salty bathwater from now on. Nevertheless, she handed Damas a jar of coconut oil without comment. At least he'd finally asked her for help with the foundling's curls. She and her sisters were beginning to think the new boy was just going to defy all combs forever.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippet Friday: Faulty Info au Strikes Back

Jumping back to the first chapter I'd posted, this is the immediate follow-up. Warnings for mentions of medical trauma (via the Dark Warrior Program)

The scanner the young woman waved over Jak's body was old technology by the standards of most. Cast-offs from Haven, welded together with bits and curses. But to Jak, it was as strange and new as the vehicles he'd seen since his rescue. What was the woman looking at on that screen? What could she see? He craned his neck, trying to see.

"Keep still, young'un," the woman scolded.

She waved the boxy device close to Jak’s ribcage and it sounded a long tone. The medic frowned at the readout and tapped it a few times. Periodically, she stopped to write something on a notepad. Jak watched the medic get a little more tense with each note, and her eyes darkened a little bit more. He knew by now that when someone's eyes looked like that, pain was sure to follow. 

They hadn’t strapped him down, though. And the door was unguarded. Weary though he was, Jak was pretty sure that he could escape the woman and the king both if he had to. The question of where to go after that was shoved away, to be dealt with later.

The medic returned and sat down on a stool across from Jak. "How old did you say you were again?" she asked.

"Fifteen." Jak closed one eye to think. "Maybe almost sixteen? I don't know what season it is."

For some reason, that seemed to be the wrong answer.

"You're sure?" The medic pressed, "That's how old your parents say you are?"

The dark eco throbbed, hot and acidic, against Jak’s ribs. His mood darkened with it.

"I never had parents," he signed, and not very politely, "Uncle had to guess."

An expression of understanding crossed the medic's face. "Ah. Were you tall as a little tot?" she asked.

Jak shrugged. "I guess so."

He'd always been taller than Keira and Daxter, anyway. There weren't many other children to compare heights with in Sandover.

"Why the questions, Maud?" Damas asked from the back of the room. He folded his arms and raised a brow. "Do you suspect his age is incorrect?"

The medic, Maud, leaned back to retrieve her notebook and flipped through the pages. 

"My lord," she said, "this young'un's physical development has been altered slightly by the dark eco poisoning, but not enough to change the development of his bones."

"My bones?" Jak was alarmed. "What about my bones?!"

Maud didn't look up from her notes, missing Jak’s question. "Comparing average Spargan and Havenite skeletal development to the eco scan, this boy has barely entered puberty. He can't be older than thirteen, by my calculation."

Thirteen?!

There had to be some mistake. Jak wasn't that young! He was just a late bloomer, that's what Samos always said. 

Samos wouldn't have sent a thirteen year old kid to fight Gol and Maia and all those Lurkers alone, right? 

...right?

Damas reached out and took the notes from the medic, and a chill ran down his spine. Only thirteen. This child was only thirteen and he had already suffered so much.

Please, Precursors, Winds, Volcan- anyone: don't let Mar suffer the same-!

Dark eco had been pumped forcibly into the boy's body for several months at least, according to the scan. Oddly, where most poisoning cases would have already had the unstable eco spreading through their body, Jak's case was isolated to his torso.

"How is-" Damas's voice betrayed him, weakening to a croak. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and asked, "How severe is the concentration of eco? Will he require an antidote?"

Maud sucked on her teeth and grimaced. "Ayup, I think so. Don't rightly know how he's keeping it from getting into his muscle fibers right now, but I doubt he can keep it up forever."

That, at least, Damas knew how to fix. Wordlessly, he moved to the shelves full of jars and boxes and began hunting for the ward's carefully conserved supply of light eco. The search, at least, could hold his attention and keep his mind from wandering too far from the matter at hand.

"What of his immunizations? Has he had any?" He asked over his shoulder.

"He said they didn't have a doctor in his village, just a green eco sage," Maud answered, "Which suggests he hasn't had many of his shots."

Jak immediately recoiled at the mention of shots. They were going to inject him with something! Blind panic seized him, and he bolted.

No more! No more pain! I won't let you!

"Hey, no-!" Maud skidded around the bed and jumped in front of the door. "Dangit, kid! You're still poisoned!"

Wild-eyed, Jak tried to shove her aside. The young woman barely budged. Spargans, it seemed, were very solidly built. Maud raised her hands and spoke quietly, trying to calm him, but the words seemed to float above his head as if he was underwater. Maud stepped closer, hands coming too close to Jak to feel safe. Panicking, he snapped at her fingers; she pulled back quickly. The dark eco boiled in Jak’s blood, and he could feel it spreading, seeping deeper into him. 

No-! 

With all his might he pushed at the chaotic substance, forcing it back into the wounds. 

His emotions were raw, and at any moment he felt he was about to snap. The medic still blocked his escape.

I don't- I don't want to hurt you! But- But you need to move!

With a silent snarl, Jak drew back and tensed to charge the woman, fist raised.

For years after, he would wonder how the king had moved so fast. One second he was peering into a glowing jar behind the counter, then within a heartbeat his arms were around Jak, restraining him as gently as he could manage against his chest. 

Jak thrashed in his grip, desperate to escape, but Damas held firm.

"Stop," he grunted, trapping Jak's arms beneath his own. "Stop, child! She will not harm you! Be still. Be still, Jak."

Jak couldn’t speak like this, hands pinned to his sides. He shook his head violently and tried to force a word -- a sound, anything -- out of his throat. A rusty, scratchy, cry faltered and trailed off between gasps for air.

Damas tightened his arms. "Be still, child. Be still," he whispered, over and over until at last the boy went limp. His heart still hammered against Damas's forearm, and the king frowned. He doubted the boy had calmed. More likely he feared the consequences of further resistance.

"Poor kid." Maud shook her head and slowly relaxed her guarded posture. "I'm betting he doesn't have any kinda good association with doctors. Lemme make a chart up for him, and we can figure out immunizations later. I think for now the light eco is the most we should do."

She crouched in front of Damas, trying to look into Jak's eyes.

"Hey, hey there, soldier. Breathe, breathe in now."

She waited until Jak had sucked in a ragged breath, then gave him a sympathetic half-smile. "Now breathe out, nice and slow. Easy does it, eh, kid? No shots today, it's okay."

Suspicious, Jak narrowed his eyes at her. The medic didn't seem to be offended. She stood and offered the glowing jar to Damas.

"I'd rather counteract the worst of the dark eco exposure and let that settle before introducing anything new to his system. For all we know about dark eco, it could exacerbate any potential diseases instead of inoculating him."

Damas sighed heavily. 

"Boy," he said, "I am going to let go now. Do not try to bite the medic again. She opened the clinic in the middle of the night to help you, is that understood?"

Oh, Jak understood. But that didn't mean he believed it.

He nodded and waited for a chance to run.

Before he could try, the jar caught his attention. This close to it, he could feel the contents being drawn towards him. It was...eco. Not dark eco, but warm, bright, good eco! Even after the experiments, he could still feel it!

It wasn't quite like green, nor blue or red or yellow. It was...it was all of them at once, just like during the battle against the Acherons. Was it really, truly, light eco? All the way out here?

Damas opened the jar and dipped two fingers into it. Light swirled around his hand, not quite liquid, but not quite vapor. 

He was channeling! Was the king a sage as well? Was that possible? Jak couldn’t stop himself from reaching out for the ball of light. 

"Don't-!" Damas tried to pull it out of the boy's reach. 

Only a trained channeler could use eco to heal another. Without training, it could end up doing far worse damage than the wounds it was meant to heal.

To his bewilderment, the light eco all but leaped from his fingers to the boy's outstretched hand. It jumped from finger to finger in sparks before being absorbed into the skin. Jak yelped in surprise and shook out his hand, then blinked down at his torso with wide eyes. One cautious hand pressed against the skin over his ribcage, gently prodding.

When Jak looked up, the shock was evident on his face.

"It...can heal?"

It took a moment for the medic to answer, as Damas was still staring at the boy with a perturbed look.

"Ah...that is, yes, yes it does. But you- kiddo, how'd you-" Maud scratched her freckled nose and squinted at him. "Only sages and the king can float that stuff around like that."

"Yeah, and me." Jak shrugged in a distracted fashion. "I think Samos wanted me to be a sage, but he gave up."

After a moment, he realized the sage's sign nickname wouldn't mean much to people from another city, and amended, "the Green Sage tried to train me to be like him, but I was too wild."

Damas and Maud exchanged a meaningful look. 

If the boy was claiming to be a channeler, that could explain the Baron’s interest in him. Channelers had become rare in the last two generations, and now only Sages remained. If word got out that a young boy had begun channeling light eco-

Like Mar? Like I can?

Stop. Don't do this to yourself. Focus on the task at hand. Focus on preparations for tomorrow's tasks. Focus on the next breath, the next step. 

"This visit will remain confidential," he announced. It was not a question, nor a request.

"Of course, lordship." The medic saluted him gravely. "He's one of my patients now. Would help if I had a responsible party to schedule with, but I s'pose it can't be helped."

Damas glanced down at Jak, who watched him with a mixture of curiosity and caution.

"I..." Damas blew out a breath. 

"I intend to declare the boy a ward of the city until his last known relatives or connections come forward. Winds know we've had our share of them in the years after Atys. Until a guardian can be appointed, I will handle matters for him to preserve confidentiality."

The medic made a little "hmph" noise and bobbed her head. "Makes good sense t'me, sire. The whole city don't need to see his chart, after all."

She pivoted on her heels to face Jak.

"You take care, kid. When you've gained some weight, and the light eco has been fully integrated into your system, then we can talk about vaccines."

"What's V-A-K-S-E-E-N-S?" Jak spelled out the unfamiliar word as best he could. 

Maud cracked a smile that was considerably easier in manner than her earlier ones.

"What's a vaccine? It's...think of it like a medicine where we take a tiny, weak, itty-bitty form of a really nasty disease -- like Dune Pox, or White Flu, or Crane Cough -- and we inject it into your bloodstream. It's not enough to make you sick, it's just enough to teach your body what those germs look like. Then your blood cells learn to hunt down and destroy those diseases."

Jak remembered Samos talking about germs once or twice as a little kid. Nobody else in the village ever seemed to know what he was talking about. Little beasties too small to see that made you sick? Equally tiny bits in your blood that hunted the little beasties? It all seemed like a silly story for children. Something to make sick days easier to bear.

"That sounds fake." He narrowed his eyes skeptically. "Blood doesn't fight, it's just blood."

Maud blinked several times. She glanced up at Damas. "Remedial classes?" she guessed.

"I suspect so," Damas agreed.

Maud picked up the medical scanner again and took it back behind the sandstone counter. "I'll be running some tests on these results in the morning. Should I contact you if I find anything of note?"

With a sharp nod, Damas answered, "You have the palace frequency should the need arise." 

"Understood." Maud dragged her stool back and took a seat. "I'd have liked to keep Jak for observation after that light display, but I doubt that would be good for his emotional state. Will you alert me if there are any changes?"

Ah. Damas hadn't anticipated that. The boy would require supervision for the next few hours to ensure that the light eco was working as intended. Usually, patients remained in the medical ward until the observation period was over. But Maud was right: the longer Jak was around medical equipment, the more agitated he was becoming. High levels of stress wouldn't help his case much.

Well. You did say you would look out for the boy until a place could be found for him. It's not Sig or the boy's fault that you didn't fully think that through. 

Damas gave a short, sharp, nod, then guided Jak out of the clinic. The boy was decidedly more subdued than he had been a moment ago, and thanks to the light eco, his breathing had finally calmed. Between streets, he periodically glanced up at Damas, then away just as quickly. By the time they'd gotten to the palm row, Damas had had enough of it. He stopped and turned to look down at Jak. Jak winced and hung his head, signing a contrite apology.

"I am not the person you should be apologizing to, young one," Damas answered. He clasped his hands behind his back and clicked his tongue. "I understand that you panicked. I understand that you feared for your safety. You do not know us, why would you trust strangers? But fear dulls the senses, Jak. You must learn to breathe first, and act second."

Jak fidgeted with his fingers and stared down at his feet. None of the twisting motions were words. Just the awkward fidgeting of a frightened boy. He nodded miserably. 

Damas stepped closer and crouched slightly to look him in the eye. Don't think of Mar. Don't think of him, he told himself, no matter how much it felt like a betrayal.

"Every person in Spargus has a part to play and a job to do," Damas gently admonished the boy, "Maud's role is to ensure that our citizens are safe and healthy, and to treat them when they are injured, not injure them further. That's her job. If you had managed to harm Maud back there, she might have had difficulty caring for other citizens tomorrow."

Ashamed, Jak hitched his shoulders. He knew the man was right. And it wasn't like he'd even wanted to hurt Medic Maud. But he almost had, anyway, hadn't he?

"I'm sorry I tried to bite her," he signed again. "I'll...Should I go apologize?"

The king shook his head. "Wait for the morning. When the clinic is officially open, then you may apologize. If you are reminded of something that happened in Haven, or something she is doing causes you pain, you can tell her, or me. But I will not have you attacking my people, is that clear?"

"Yes sir." Jak's hands moved so little that he was barely above a whisper.

Damas nodded curtly and straightened. “Good. We wish to see you recover from your trials, Jak, but there will be rules to follow in this city. For the sake of clarity, consider "no biting the medic" your first rule."

Not that having such rules had prevented little ones from occasionally biting Maud and the pediatrician, Petros, before. Jak certainly wouldn't have been the first to try to take a chunk out of the person with the needle. Damas knew it was a little too optimistic to hope he would be the last.

The remainder of the trip to the palace was unnervingly quiet. The boy stole glances periodically over his shoulder, in the direction of the clinic, with a perturbed expression. Perhaps the details of his moment of panic were beginning to set in. Or perhaps he was stinging from the scolding. He walked with the body language of a younger child, fidgeting with guilt. It was a blessing that the dim torchlights did not illuminate them enough for Damas to see the color of Jak’s eyes. The reminders of his son clung to his ribs and ached with every breath.

Please be alive, my son. Be strong, for me. I will find you, I promise. 

[radioactivepeasant]

Faulty Info au gives me an excuse to mangle Avatar screenshots again so I can draw some of my Spargan ocs as middle schoolers lol

From right to left: Jak (13.5), Merit (15), Raza (Too Sneaky, also 11), and Flick (14)

They look like they either just watched a Leaper chase down a kangarat on their way home from the market. Or possibly they got challenged by some older kids trying to goad them into ditching their chores and racing. Either way, Leaper mayhem ensues.

[[MORE]]

The original I started with:

[radioactivepeasant]

The Jak and Daxter series had some very silly plot holes, but very silly plot holes demand equally silly solutions.

Cairn (oc): "Flick, you're making this weird."

Flick (oc): "So...no judgment Dax, but why don't you ever de-transform, like Jak does? You know there's a light eco vent in Spargus, right?"

Daxter: "Wat."

Recently transformed Daxter: "Tess! Tess, holy crap!"