It has been forever since I've had the time and mental spoons to do one of these but! I did a fairly large plot overhaul to one of my old wips a while back and just realized I never showed the updated version
This is the Splinter Cell au, where Jak took Mar into the Tomb with him and Tess decided the Underground had been compromised after what Torn did. Originally, the first time Jak met his parents was after the race where Errol gets his fool self killed. Now the timeline for the first encounter has been significantly altered. If you've listened to Epic: the Musical, you'll probably catch the lines that inspired this scene lol
The devastation was breathtaking.
Twisted spires of crystal rose like a toxic forest, shattering concrete and crushing walls. Impaling hellcats- and their occupants.
It was as if all the dark eco bubbling under the Tomb had been frozen in an instant. Contained. And then weaponized.
"Holy crap," Daxter whispered, "What did that?"
"Not what," Tess murmured. Her face was grim as she lowered the binoculars. "Who."
She turned to hand the binoculars to her companions and blanched.
"Where's Jak?" she demanded.
"Guess," said Daxter, resigned.
"He's not going after the Stone-!" Tess ran to the roof's edge, scanning the crystalline minefield for her friend. "Even if Praxis dropped it, it's way too dangerous down there!"
"Trust me, he knows."
Jak slid between rock and rubble, desperately scanning the battlefield for the satchel Praxis had been carrying. He knew striking the crystals too hard would cause an explosion -- and with this many spires, it would probably take out half the town. He kept his footsteps light and did his best not to look at the frozen forms of Krimzon Guards, entombed in the eco permanently.
What a terrible way to die.
He heard the moans of the wounded. Someone sobbing. Jak squeezed between two glowing pillars and halted abruptly.
A cluster of KG huddled, half of them collapsed and the other half kneeling and in surprisingly good condition given the circumstances. They had their helmets off -- gods, some of them were no older than Jak. Their families must have been recent immigrants to Haven, unable to hide their firstborn from Praxis's enlistment law.
"We're sorry, we're sorry, don't kill us, we're sorry-" The young girl nearest him was whispering to no one. To everyone.
Jak had reached the epicenter.
Every crystal had shot out from this one crumbling piece of bridge.
There-!
The satchel hung suspended.
Its strap had been absorbed by the crystal, but its contents didn't seem the worse for wear. But getting to it was going to be a challenge.
Jak grimaced and slid off his boots. Then, gingerly, he eased out onto the thin spar.
Easy. Easy does it. Watch your balance.
He kept his center of gravity as low as he could, inching towards the dangling satchel.
The further he got, the more he could see.
Praxis had fared better than his men, it seemed, but even he was having difficulty getting to his feet. He stared with blind hatred past Jak without even seeing him in the darkness. His eye was fixed on a figure standing on the rail of the bridge.
He was bent slightly, leaning on a staff for support and breathing heavily. Jak squinted and realized that the man's arms were trembling as though with exertion. Had he done this?
"What have you done?" Praxis demanded.
He sounded more desperate than defiant.
The man -- a Wastelander by the look of him -- gave a weary chuckle and slowly pushed himself back upright.
"You should be grateful. I left you thirty survivors under your command. Of course, I can't guarantee they'll stay under your command."
Praxis stumbled to his feet and cast about for his sword.
"You-!" He snarled and took a shaking step forward. "What did you do? How did you do this?"
Jak was just as interested in the answer as the Baron. He crouched at the end of the crystal and carefully drew the bag towards him, keeping one eye on the stranger. If he could create destruction like this, he probably had powers on par with the Acherons. Jak wasn't ready to gain a new enemy.
The Wastelander lifted his head, and for a moment Jak swore he was looking straight into his eyes. The man smiled, then glanced back down at Praxis.
"Did you think you'd created a dark warrior?"
He laughed scornfully.
Jak felt the blood freeze in his veins.
"Did you actually think it had worked?"
Suddenly his eyes were pitch black.
"Oh Aldrik. He didn't get that from you."
_______________________________________
Sparing Praxis was not an act of mercy. It wasn't even his choice. Channeling that much eco of any kind at once was hard on the body. Using dark eco like that had the potential to be debilitating. It was fortunate that Praxis was too shaken to realize that Damas was barely able to stand.
He wanted to kill him.
He should have killed him.
He had accepted Haven's rejection of his House. He had chosen not to pursue revenge, chosen to move on. And in spite of this, his enemies had the audacity to take his son.
His sons.
Phobos was cautious. Not ready to hope, yet. Believing in parallel timelines didn't necessarily translate to believing that the boy Sig was mentoring was theirs. Was from a timeline where they'd actually succeeded in having a second child. She said nothing to Damas about it, but he knew she was struggling with the thought of finding not one, but two children who had been taken from them.
Whoever this young resistance fighter, this Jak, had begun life as, Damas knew in his heart that he, like Mar, had done nothing to Praxis.
"You could have walked away," Damas remarked, looking down from the crumbling rail. "I was willing to go my own way. But you've crossed too far over the line, Aldrik, and I'm not going to allow you to retreat this time. Not after what you did to my son."
Praxis found his sword, jammed between concrete and rebar, and began trying to work it free.
"I didn't do rot to your brat," he sneered.
"Didn't you?"
Something in his voice must have caught Praxis's attention, because the man stilled. He raised his eyes slowly, and for the first time seemed to notice his enemy's altered visage.
"Didn't you, Aldrik?"
Would the traitor respond with bravado, Damas wondered, and foolishly brag of his experiments on the boy?
Would he feel fear, understanding that his experiments had done nothing but destabilize a power the boy was born with?
Or would he feel anger, apoplectic with the knowledge that the thorn in his side who had escaped his clutches so many times was the son of the man he'd betrayed?
"No." Aldrik seemed to be speaking to himself, rather than Damas.
A little of his strength was returning. Enough to lean forward without losing balance. For a moment he glanced to the left, to the slight figure crouched on the spire. He'd tracked the boy through the havoc he created often enough to recognize that silhouette.
Look at him! No fear!
Despite himself, Damas smiled. He'd keep Praxis distracted. Let the boy do what he'd come here to do.
"Come on, Aldrik. Don't disappoint me," he said mockingly, "You can work it out on your own. Your experiment failed, you never had control in the first place, because-?"
With a snarl, Praxis ripped his sword from the rubble. He raised it with a trembling arm, no stronger than Damas was at that moment.
"I should have killed your hellspawn-!"
His fury was interrupted by Damas slowly clapping.
"Look at that, he can be taught!"
Damas channeled his mother-in-law, feigning an encouraging tone like a youngling teacher.
"That's right, Aldrik!"
Then he dropped the undignified charade, cold as ice again.
"He was mine."
Whatever you intend to do, young one, this would be a very good time to do it-
He didn't even have time to finish his thought. Jak snatched something round, faintly glowing, from the bag Praxis had lost hold of. Damas felt a jolt like electricity shoot down his spine.
The Precursor Stone.
That was the bloody Precursor Stone!
He had narrowly avoided utter cataclysm!
"Hey Praxis!" the boy shouted, and his enemy whirled, caught between the two.
Grinning fiercely, Jak held the Precursor Stone up over his head.
"Drop something?"
"What?"
In horror, Praxis grabbed for his belt, only to finally realize that the satchel was gone.
Without another word, the boy stood and leapt to the next spar of crystal.
Was he barefoot?!
Frith in a bucket, he was going to be just like Mar, wasn't he?
Damas watched Jak hop from facet to facet, beam to stone, as if the combatants and destruction around him were mere inconveniences.
He couldn't help it. Damas laughed.
A long, rolling chuckle bounced around the solidified dark eco, echoing eerily. Damas shook his head as the laughter subsided.
"Ah, look at him go," he said, beaming. "I look forward to catching up to that one."
Then he turned his attention back to Praxis. He'd run out of eco. On the other side of the forest of crystal, he could see one of his people approaching quickly in a stolen zoomer. His enemy would live to fight another day. But not with the forces he'd commanded before.
A spiteful urge seized him, and he found himself repeating what Praxis had once told him, as he was dragged into the air train in chains.
"A wise man knows when to stop fighting. Do you, Aldrik?"
As casually as if he was going for a Se'enday drive, Damas swung himself up into the passenger seat when Kleiver -- looking notably shaken -- pulled close enough.
"What the bloody rot did you do?" Kleiver hissed, gunning the engine.
"Sent a message," Damas answered. He pointed towards a barely visible silhouette running towards the edge of the roadway.
"There. Follow him as far as you can. Shoot down anyone who tries to stop him."
"And you are gonna do what?" Kleiver asked sourly.
"Probably pass out," Damas admitted.
"...I ain't rescuing you from your wife when she finds out about this, lordship."
He snorted. "That's a problem for later."
The mechanic glared at him and swung the zoomer into a faster lane. "You're half mad, you know that?"
Damas leaned back in the seat and finally let his overtaxed limbs rest.
"I've heard something along those lines, yes. Try not to lose the boy. I want to know how he's getting to and from the island without the air train."
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,
I got another chunk of the Splinter Cell au out of my brain and onto a page at last! This time: father-son bonding time with Jak, Dax, and Damas
Tess looked tired when she stopped by the barracks looking for Jak. Daxter eyed her and grimaced.
"Oof. Rough shift, babe?"
Tess leaned against the doorway and grumbled. "Takes a lot of energy to be perky and cute all the time."
Daxter stretched out on the cot he'd monopolized. "Oo girl, don't I know it. Say, I dunno if you noticed, but there's plenty of space right here to relax a little."
Tess smirked. "Tempting, but I have to check in with Vin first. And I need to find Jak. Krew's starting to get antsy about how long your "hunting trip" has been. He says if you two don't come back with one heck of a trophy, he'll make you regret it."
From anyone else, that would've been an empty threat. But Krew had ties to the Baron, and was still stinging over Jak ruining his bet on the race. As Krew's "employee", Jak had been given a certain level of protection from the KG, who didn’t like crossing the crime boss when they could help it. Retracting that protection was just the beginning of what Krew could probably do.
Daxter wrinkled his nose. "Ugh! Is it too early to give our two week notice?"
The ottsel sat up.
"Do we even need Krew anymore? We're gettin' strong! Makin' allies! We got all the intel we need from Vin and the Scout Flies. I say we just ghost ol' Hover Huckster and let him pick up the slack!"
Tess didn't look amused. "90% of our intel on KG movements comes from me eavesdropping at work."
Daxter cringed. Leaving Tess to do the lion's share of the work at both the saloon and the factory was not ideal boyfriend behavior, even he knew that.
"Er...I'll let Jak know we gotta go hunting," he said sheepishly. "If, y'know, the New Parents will let us out of their sight for ten minutes."
Which was how he found himself sitting on Jak’s shoulder two hours later, scanning the surrounding mountain country for Ramheads.
"Last time we found one of those, we were poking around the Eastern Temple," Jak yawned, squinting down from the central hub.
"Also a lot of loose boulders that were a real pain in the-"
He glanced to the side and cut himself off.
For some reason, Mar's dad got annoyed when Jak copied Sig’s more...blunt language.
Damas crouched at the ledge beside him and glanced up at Daxter. "Movement?"
"Nada. It's deader than Krew's love life down there," Daxter sighed.
Jak snickered.
The Wastelander king made a sort of harrumph sound and narrowed his eyes.
"Ah yes. Krew. You know, Sig didn't tell me how you ended up working for him."
There was a distinct flavor of disapproval in his voice that left Jak cringing. He'd never liked the feeling of someone being upset at him -- which Samos almost always had been when he was little -- but he'd gotten pretty good at shrugging off other people's disapproval, or at least not capitulating.
As it turned out, parental disapproval felt much worse.
Feeling a little defensive, Jak stood up sharply.
"Wasn’t by choice. Torn sent us to work for him so we could get information out of him."
He folded his arms and looked away.
"Not like anyone else was giving us food," he said sullenly.
Damas clicked his tongue and sighed. With one hand, he pushed himself upright and slung his rifle over his back.
"I see. They put you in a difficult position."
Jak scoffed. "Yeah. It happens a lot."
"Hm." Damas folded his arms across his broad chest and shifted to gaze down at the valley. His shoulder brushed against Jak’s just barely, a tacit show of support.
"What is it you would do if given the choice?" he asked.
Jak raised his gun, exhaled slowly, and took aim at the upturned floating platform that bobbed between the temple and the valley. Before he could overthink things, he fired one blaster round into the unbalanced base, smoothly flipping the platform upright once more. Jak slid his morph gun back into the holster on his back, crouched, and leapt to the circle of Precursor metal. As it floated down, he thought about Damas’s question.
What would he do if he had a choice?
It seemed simple at first: he wanted to get out of Haven. He wanted to go home.
But...where was home now? What was home? Did he really belong anywhere?
Jak supposed he could just explore the world until he found someplace that felt like home -- he'd always loved exploring, almost more than racing -- but what about his friends in Haven?
What about Mar?
Finding Damas and Phobos meant he wouldn't have to be the child’s sole caretaker anymore -- Jak wondered if he was supposed to feel guilty about the weight of the relief that came with the thought. He felt almost that he could breathe easier and just be Mar's brother when he didn't have to worry about who was watching him, and where their next meal would come from.
Jak hopped down onto soft grass and absent-mindedly took a seat while waiting for Damas to make his way down. Idly, he plucked a few blades of grass and crushed them between his fingers to release their sharp fragrance.
"What would you do if given the choice?" he asked Daxter as they watched the platform float back up.
It seemed Daxter had no such troubles of indecision. His answer was so quick it had to have been either rehearsed, or something he was genuinely excited about.
"I'm gonna own my own pub someday!" The ottsel chirped, "Better than anything Krew could ever come up with! I'm gonna have drinks, and music, and dancing- ooh! And I'll make so much money I'll be able to set Osmo and Ximon up with a permanent contract for pest control! They'll get their store back in no time!"
Daxter hopped down from Jak’s back, gesticulating wildly with each new idea.
"And- and- and Tess and me are gonna have an apartment above the bar. And a pool! Right on the roof! So you can come up and swim where nobody will bother us! And I'll always have enough food for us and anyone else who's hungry!"
Jak smiled, but his heart ached for his best friend. Daxter's ambitions were both grand and heartbreakingly simple. A home he could own. A roof over his head. Enough food that he didn’t have to worry about where his next meal was coming from. And in the midst of all that he still planned for his friends: a way to repay the man who had taken him in while Jak was in prison, a way for Jak to relax without showing the world his scars.
"You're a good man, Daxter," Jak murmured, unintentionally interrupting his friend's rambling monologue about menus and upholstery.
Daxter paused, and gave him a simple smile in return. They didn't need words to understand his meaning. You're a better man than I am, each believing it of the other without a shred of doubt. To Daxter, Jak was the unselfish one, dealing with his annoying habits and the entire weight of the world every day and still choosing to save people, no matter how angry at them he was. He wondered if he should have said it more when they were younger. If maybe it would have made Jak believe it now.
The moment ended with the thud of Damas’s worn boots against the grass. He looked a little annoyed, although Daxter couldn't have said for sure whether it was the floating flip-pods that irritated him, or Jak leaping off without him. For all that they were still strangers to each other, the Wastelanders really did not like Jak getting out of range of sight. It was like they were afraid he'd vanish if they looked away.
If he was being honest, Daxter knew how they felt. Every waking moment from the instant he'd found Jak in that awful prison, for weeks, Jak had behaved the same way about him.
Damas glanced down at the blades of grass Jak was idly shredding, and the green staining his fingertips. His annoyance softened into quiet amusement.
"There are easier ways to find raw eco," he joked, leaning on his staff.
"Huh?" Jak looked down at his smudged fingertips and grimaced with chagrin.
"Er...let's uh, let's just get going."
The boy hopped up with an ease Damas envied -- regenerative light eco was all well and good, but it didn't stop his knees from popping when he had to get off the floor!
"You didn't answer my question before," Damas prompted.
"Had to think about it first!" Jak brushed him off and headed for a short drop down toward the valley.
Of course, Damas acknowledged that Jak might not yet feel comfortable sharing that kind of inner thought with a relative stranger -- or a strange relative, for that matter. Thus far, he hadn't been able to spend much time alone with the boy. Phobos had been much more successful in getting him to open up a little, but she had more opportunity to see him off the battlefield, seeing as she'd dedicated herself to monitoring their son.
Well, their younger son.
During the missions Damas had accompanied Jak's teams on, he'd noticed that the boy was developing a habit of trailing around behind him, watching intently whenever Damas gave orders to his people. Phobos even swore up and down that she'd seen Jak subtly mimicking his posture and movements whenever they were in the briefing room at the same time.
It gave Damas hope that Jak might at least have positive feelings about having them in his life, but he didn't want to push too far too quickly. Jak was a teenager, after all, and he had boundaries. Or, he ought to have had boundaries. Some of the things Sig told him made him worry that Jak had trouble standing up to people using him.
"Usually all we have to do -- whoop-! Watch the loose rocks, Dax-"
"Yeah, I noticed. I'm not patching your shirt this time. Learn to sew!"
"Yeah yeah. So- the Ramheads aren't the intelligent ones I don't think, they're more like...cannon fodder. But they're really territorial."
Jak swung his feet up under him and slid down the remainder of the incline on his heels, kicking up a plume of dust behind him.
"So basically we shouldn't have to do much more than walk around a little to draw one out."
Damas pursed his lips thoughtfully, then hopped down to follow Jak, avoiding the gravel a little easier than he had.
"Sounds pretty straightforward."
"It is! They're big, but they're dumb," Jak bragged, "You just gotta be fast."
"And not get two of your ribs snapped by a headbutt like last ti-"
Jak slapped a hand over Daxter’s mouth.
Sheepishly, he added, "I mean, yeah, keep some eco around in case of freak accidents, I guess..."
Ah, he's trying to impress me.
Humor bubbled up in Damas’s chest, and he tamped down a smile. He had absolutely no doubt that the boy was capable; thus far he'd proved to be a prodigy of a gunner. His risk assessment left something to be desired, but reports indicated this was largely the fault of the people who had been grooming him to deal with all their problems since he was Mar’s age.
"Well it can't possibly be any more difficult than clearing a city sector and setting watchposts," Damas reasoned, "Let's see if we can't scare up a couple of these Ramheads of yours."
Jak grinned. "Right! So, we're gonna go south, first."
"Oh?" Damas adjusted his rifle strap and kept pace with Jak easily. "I thought we were headed for the valley?"
Daxter squirreled up onto Jak’s head and pointed one paw south. "Lemme guess: you remembered somewhere you haven't trespassed on yet."
With a snort, Jak broke into a jog. "It's not trespassing if it's completely abandoned!"
"I think the centurion-heads would argue against it being completely abandoned, buddy."
"Where's your sense of adventure?"
"I traded it in when it got recalled and got an improved sense of street smarts!"
Damas strode after them with a grin lingering on his face. They were loosening up now, finding their stride. Listening to them bicker reminded him of Phobos and Sig in the old days. Putting on a small burst of speed, he caught up and gave them a slightly mischievous sidelong look.
"Is a tie-breaker required?" he asked.
"No," Daxter groaned, "I'm resigned to my fate. That's what I get for swearin' I'd never let Bigfoot out of my sight again."
Jak cheerfully added, "Dax keeps promises no matter how dumb they are."
"Good man." Damas nudged the ottsel's shoulder in rough approval.
"In that case, I agree to this little detour, but on one condition. Which is...?"
He waited.
Jak thought back to conversations they'd had during the couple missions he'd accompanied them on, and he thought he could guess the condition.
"Don't tell Sig you were doing stunts?"
Damas clapped him on the shoulder and smirked. "That's my boy."
He didn't miss the way Jak's eyes and smile alike widened in response.
This is part of my Splinter Cell au, following up on Jak meeting his alternate timeline parents for the first time
Mar peered at the crowd from the safety of his uncle's arms and frowned. That was a lot of people! They looked normal, not dressed funny like the people in this city, at least. But what were they all crowded around?
A tall lady moved aside for an instant, and Mar almost could've shouted in excitement if his throat hadn't seized up.
Mama!
He smacked Sig’s arms, his shoulders, frantically, pointing at the crowd and then himself. With a shaky breath, Sig crouched and set him down on the sand.
"Go on," he said thickly, "Go to your mama."
Mar didn't have to be told twice. He ran as fast as his short legs could carry him. Some of the adults heard him coming and turned to see him, only to step back out of his way with wide eyes. Mar slammed into his mother's legs and clung to her skirt. He didn't understand why he was about to cry. He was happy! He'd missed his mother so much! So why was he crying?
Mama gasped, and then her arms were around him, warm and strong and just like he remembered.
"Baby!"
Mama's voice bounced up and down, like she had the hiccups.
"Oh Minnow, we were so worried about you! Who took you? Are you okay? Do you remember what happened, baby?"
Mar buried his face in the crook of his mother's neck and shook his head. He didn't remember much about the night they all got separated, just mean faces and an ugly bird and people yelling at him to be quiet. Probably because the weird people in Haven were so loud that they couldn't hear themselves think already. Mar thought he maybe used to cry out loud, but it wasn't quiet enough.
"Where's Jakky?" Mar asked, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Hadn't Jak had a mission today? Did he come back okay? He'd seemed scared before going.
"Your br- your older brother?" Phobos asked. She smiled, but her eyes were damp. "He came out to meet us when we got here. Your daddy is talking to him."
"Where?! Where's Daddy?!" Mar whipped his head back and forth, searching the crowd for his father.
He spotted Jak, looking really nervous and doing the thing where he scratched his arm a lot. Mister Kor used to call it a Nervous Tick, which was a weird thing to say, because Jak wasn't pretending to be a clock at all. Jak looked down at the sand and mumbled something.
Why was he nervous? Jak wasn't afraid of anything!
"Is Jakky sad?" Mar asked, confused. "We found you! Why's he sad?"
His mother's arms tightened around him. "I don't think he's sad, sweet one. But Jak hasn't met us before. He's a little shy, and that's okay."
Well that didn't make any sense, and Mar wasn't shy about saying so.
"Mommy," he signed, matter-of-factly, "You're Jakky's mommy too, remember? You remember? Why you said he hasn't met you?"
Phobow frowned and slowly rose from the sand to settle Mar on her hip. She looked to her husband, speaking quietly and gently to the skittish teenager, and sighed.
"Jak...got taken away a long time ago. Just like bad guys took you away. I think he was too little to remember us."
Righteous indignation rose up in the little boy's chest and spilled over his cheeks in hot tears, even while he fought to keep his lip from trembling.
"That's not fair!" He almost hit the Spargan next to Phobos with the vehemence of his signs.
"It's not," Phobos agreed. "But we're here now, and I promise, Mar, we will never lose either of you again."
Jak met her eyes at that moment, and he pointed at himself in disbelief. Phobos's heart ached seeing the shock in this newfound son's face. It wasn’t that he didn't believe they were his people. Phobos had seen those eyes in the broken before the rebellion finally toppled the old regime of Spargus: Jak didn't know he was worth saving. He didn't understand why anyone would want him -- or was it that he was used to being wanted as a weapon? An object, a tool with no autonomy or feelings of his own.
Phobos would find the people who had taken her baby, and she would find the people who had broken this boy -- this spitting image of Damas -- and they would pay in blood for every tear they'd caused to fall.
For now, she simply held Mar to her breast. She closed her eyes and let herself feel the pulse in his skin where it lay against her neck, warm and alive and proof that this was real. He was so much taller now, and thinner than he ought to have been. A gangly tangle of arms and legs, wound around her neck and waist. Phobos buried her face in his hair and let the tears fall at last.
Relief and joy and the pain of two lost years -- two years of milestones they would never get back -- and it was finally over.
Jak watched the woman crying softly into Mar's hair, feeling unbearably out of place. This scene wasn't meant for him. He wasn't Mar.
He was as much a stranger to these people as they were to him. They didn't know each other. He couldn’t just pretend to suddenly have memories and emotions that had been ripped from him ages ago. Whatever he'd been like as a little kid, who was to say he had been anything like Mar was now?
Panic began to build in his throat, ringing in his ears and drowning out whatever Mar's father was saying to him.
They have some version of me in their heads. Everyone does. What do they want me to be? What'll they do the first time I screw up? Sure, they're nice now, but what happens when I don't fit in their box?
Suddenly Daxter was there, weighing down his shoulders, digging in his claws just enough to bring Jak back down to earth. And he felt something else, something he'd only experienced once before.
Light eco.
The eco washed over him like a warm wind, soaking into his muscles and down into his core. It met the darkness head on, and a violent surge of nausea rocked Jak. His knees hit the sand unexpectedly, and his jaws ached with the force of holding back bile. Every nerve, every cell burned like he was back in the Chair again. And then, just as quickly, the pain was gone.
The ugliness, the boiling acid that flowed between his veins and arteries, was...different. Farther away, almost. As if it had been neutralized by something. The light eco?
"Easy, easy there, pal."
Daxter patted his back.
"Just take some deep breaths and let Spike here work his magic."
"Don't call me that."
Mar's father sounded mildly irritated, like he was distracted.
"It fits, doesn't it?" Daxter retorted.
"Call me Spike, Scar, or anything that isn't my name," the man grunted back, "and I'm calling you "rat"."
Daxter crouched low against Jak’s neck and muttered in his ear, "Touch-y! I can see where you got your sense of humor, Jak."
He turned to give Damas a wry look. "Bigfoot here gets the same way when Krew's goons call him "prettyboy"."
Jak gritted his teeth. "You call me dumb names," he rasped through numb lips, "nobody else does."
He finally found the mental wherewithal to raise his eyes and discovered that Damas knelt in the sand across from him, one hand glowing slightly. There was a very grim look in his eyes, one that spoke multitudes.
"Never let them take your name from you," he agreed solemnly.
Jak averted his gaze again with a bitter snort.
"They already did once. But this name, I chose. It's mine."
Precursors knew he'd gotten to choose precious little in his life. He wouldn't give this up.
Damas leaned back and settled both hands on his knees.
"All the more reason to fight for it," he said.
Then he tilted his head and frowned.
"Is your eco core stable now, young one?"
A cold chill squirmed in Jak’s gut. He swallowed hard, and the words stuck in his throat as he turned to Daxter.
"How close was I?" he signed as dread rose to squeeze his lungs.
Daxter winced. "Fangs and claws, but no horns," he whispered.
Oh rot.
Mar's father had seen the Thing. Barely a glimpse, but it would be enough to seal his fate.
Trembling, Jak looked up.
Damas’s expression was still grave.
"No one else saw it," he said quietly, "It's alright. You're alright. Do you often lose control in fight or flight situations?"
"Lay off! It's not Jak’s fault!" Daxter leaned out from Jak's shoulder, fur bristling.
"I never said it was," Damas answered. His face softened, and he leaned forward.
"When was the last time you absorbed light eco, son?"
What kind of question was that?
"...two...two years ago," Jak mumbled.
That seemed to satisfy the exile king. He fell back on his heels with a nod.
"Self-taught mastery over dark eco hasn't happened in generations, and never without the balancing influence of its sister element. I'm amazed you can battle-shift at all with an unbalanced core."
Jak and Daxter stared at the man with dull shock stamped across their faces.
Slowly, Daxter turned back to Jak.
"Did...did you get any of that?" he asked.
Jak grimaced. "I understood all those words separately," he muttered back.
"Sig, has he done this before?"
Jak craned his neck as Sig pushed through the crowd to sit down beside Jak. He dropped a comforting hand on Jak’s back and clicked his tongue.
"Just give him space. He's got this. Right cherry? You got this."
He waved off the other Wastelanders with a brusque gesture and shifted to one side, sitting as if guarding him.
Damas visibly relaxed and nodded once.
"I'm afraid this many of us at once may have overwhelmed him."
Jak slotted his fingers into his hair and an inappropriately hysterical giggle burst out of his throat, startling him and Daxter both.
"Ye- yeah, you could say that."
Sig frowned sharply. When Jak’s eyes drifted away, he quickly signed to Damas, "He's known little kindness and much suffering. He barely remembers how to be a kid."
Damas winced ever so slightly. He let out his breath in a few short puffs, then rocked back on his heels again.
"Jak," he said slowly, "I...apologize if this question is intrusive. But do you have any recollection of your parents from your original timeline?"
The boy's eyes hardened, and he shifted, drawing his knees to his chest in an almost protective gesture.
"No," he said sharply. "I didn't know my parents. Wasn't part of Samos’s plan."
Samos.
The name clearly meant something to the exiled king. Anger flashed briefly through his eyes, warning of an approaching storm.
"Meddling acolyte," Damas muttered under his breath with a vicious curse to punctuate it. "He has much to answer for."
Shaking off the dark look, he tried to settle to something more neutral.
"If that is the case, then we really are starting at the beginning, aren't we? I...understand that we have not yet earned your trust, Jak. But would- that is, would you permit us the chance to do so? To get to know you?"
Jak tightened his arms around his knees and resisted a childish urge to bury his head in them. To hide. This was so much attention, so unlike anything he'd become accustomed to. They weren't treating him like a monster, but they sure weren't treating him like Sandover and the Underground did when he was a "hero", either. No demands, no assumption that he was going to fall in line and see things their way just because they told him it was the right thing to do. Someone was asking for a chance to prove himself to Jak!
Unable to properly form his thoughts into words, Jak bounced one shoulder. It was a silent cue to Daxter, a plea to answer on his behalf. The ottsel sat up and folded his arms with a grimace.
"Is this some kind of trick?" Daxter asked suspiciously. "People don't normally ask -- or care -- what we think. Tess and Sig excluded. They just bark orders at us and complain."
"Sounds like Haven alright," Damas answered dryly. "Let me guess: "go there, do that, fetch this, kill them, everything's all your fault", right?"
Daxter squinted at him. "You sure you only just met us? Cause you're basically reading off our script."
With a humorless smile, Damas shrugged. "Even kings are not exempt from their demands. Or perhaps it is especially kings who are not exempt from their demands."
He looked like he was about to say something else when the breath was driven from him with a loud "oof!"
Mar barreled into him, knocking Damas back onto the sand.
"DADDY DADDY!" Mar's hands shouted, then he flung his arms as far around the man's chest as he could reach -- which wasn't far, frankly.
Damas caught Mar up in a fierce hug, and curled his body around the little boy as though he could hide him from the world.
"Mar! Oh, let me look- let me look at you!"
He smoothed back Mar's hair, traced his fingers along round cheeks, memorizing every detail.
"Sweetheart, you got so big! When did you get so tall?"
Jak was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, but he couldn’t help answering anyway.
"That's um, that's pretty recent. Just since moving in with the Babak."
He hoped that was at least some comfort to the man. In just the two years they'd been apart, he'd found himself shocked by how much Keira had changed. He couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to miss your own kid's milestones like that.
Well. Maybe he could.
After all, the Explorer he'd called Uncle had traveled so often and so far that Jak had experienced most of his milestones alone.
A small, warm, hand slipped into Jak's and squeezed. He looked up, surprised, to find Mar leaning out of Damas’s arms. Mar was frowning, eyebrows knit together. He pursed his lips and tried several times to make a sound.
"Dz- ss-" he swallowed hard and tried to remember how to use the muscles in his throat. "J- Ja-k?"
Jak's mouth fell open.
He knew Mar preferred to be nonverbal, just as he had been at the same age. Speaking out loud was reserved for when they felt safest. When they were fully comfortable with their surroundings. Mar had never felt safe enough to verbally talk to Jak before.
Are we safe? He's safe now, what about us?
Damas’s eyes widened, and there was a suspicious moisture in Sig’s single eye as they both stared at Mar. They knew Mar Didn't Talk To Strangers. He didn't speak to people who weren't family. Which meant that Mar had fully accepted Jak as family.
Well, that streamlined things a bit.
"Jak's okay, Lil Man," Sig said, clearing his throat. "Just give him time to adjust, okay?"
