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Love is War	By : grimreaperchibi Category: +G through L > Jak & Daxter Views: 4213 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Jak & Daxter, nor the places, people, or objects within. I make no money writing this. Additional disclaimer within.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
A/N: Oh, hey, look. An update. Anyone remember that violence tag I put up? Yeah, I'm having a bad week and the boys are paying for it. Isolation is Daxter's theme for this chapter, since it's from his point of view, but Monster by Skillet is Jak's. Cookies for everyone who gets the joke behind Daxter's opening mantra. Oh, and if you wanna understand Jak "being a guy who does something," go read Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame). It is my second all-time favorite book ever and as a gamer geek, you are obligated to read it.
Additional Disclaimer: The lyrics used within are part of the fair use clause of copyright law and remain the property of the individual artists and recording companies to which they belong. Any misconstruing/mistyping of the lyrics is strictly the fault of the author. All lyrics are used here only for setting ambience.
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Chapter 6 – Isolation (Alter Bridge)
We’resodead,we’resodead,we’resodead,we’resoscrewed! Daxter chanted in the back of his mind, the mantra doing what all repetitive phrases were supposed to do despite the word choice—keeping him calm enough to make sure he didn’t end up dead. Why in the name of the seven gods of hell did he keep thinking one of these dumb tasks would be easy? Nothing else they did was easy, safe, or even moderately sane. Of course a simple pick-up would turn into a cluster-fuck for no apparent reason. That was just the way they rolled.
He swore and instinctively ducked, something behind him shattering scant moments later. They just kept coming. No matter how many Krimzon Guards got blown away, how much blood spilled into the water, or how many corpses accumulated on the uneven boardwalk, it seemed like there was another two transports setting down, pouring out another wave of fresh, faceless drones in red armour. They came from all directions, pushing a hysterical populace into blind panic. Over the distinctive crack of gunfire and the sizzling thud of shots embedding, men were yelling, women were screaming, and children were crying. The environment itself seemed to be disintegrating, the half rotten wood bucking, scrap metal roofs shrieking as they fell, sinking everything into the brackish water below. The lucky ones were killed in the fall. The unlucky ones were finished off by the automated gunners some sadistic asshole had let loose in the area to keep people from escaping via the waterways.
He’d lived through a couple of these wild gang-rushes when he’d still been trapped in the industrial sector, had scars on his wrists from where the wire the Guard had been using as restraints had cut into his skin. The only reason he hadn’t been carted off to his death as slave labour was because a kindly old man had claimed him as an employee for his business. It’d been the sheer luck that saved his skin that day and he knew it. No one in Haven’s poorest district was going to find that kind of compassion today. The only options were to curl into a hole and pray it wasn’t found, or mow right through the tangled free-for-all.
If it had been up to Daxter, they would have made a run for the gate that lead out to the Pumping Station. He was pretty sure there was a way on the far side to get over to Haven Forest. If nothing else, they could wait out the imminent destruction in relative safety. But he didn’t even get to voice the option. As soon as the transports had started landing, Jak had gone frost giant on him; silent, intimidating, and so very, very cold. Then the shooting and screaming had started, and something inside Jak just sorta…snapped. The world seemed to darken around them despite the intense glare of the midday sun. His lips curled back in a smile that was as much devil-may-care as it was a threatening bearing of teeth. Dark Eco had crackled around his fingers as he reached for the morphgun, very calmly and deliberately walking into the fray.
What was Daxter to do but follow that bloody hurricane and pray they made it out alive? Too bad he had so little faith in the power of prayer…
It was hell, dancing through an ever increasing body count, completely at the mercy of bedlam and mass panic. He was a street rat, damn it! He could outrun most zoomers, steal almost anything he wanted, hide in plain sight and lie through his notably large teeth, but he was not, nor ever would be, a brawler. His proficiency was stealth and quick getaways, crawling into places no one else could reach and remembering how to get the hell out again. Everything in him screamed to get off the ground, but not only was the roof space too widely spread out to offer a reasonable escape, it lacked any sort of cover. The armaments on the transports would nail him before he got two steps. He was tempted to try anyway just so he wasn’t being completely useless.
We’resodead,we’resodead,we’reso—
His thoughts ended abruptly as he felt something jab into his back right before the sharp, burning pain of electrocution pulsed through his nerves. Everything locked up as agony took over the world, bright and black and hot. He fell to the slick causeway hard enough to drive the air from his lungs and he couldn’t find the coordination to take another breath. Everything in his back was seizing, painfully taunt, slowly echoing out through the rest of his muscles in rapid twitches and spasms. He could do nothing when a large hand clamped down on his neck, hauling him back upright.
Despite his semi-paralyzed state, he must have made some sort of noise because Jak was turning back toward him. Time seemed to slow, letting his partially functioning brain process each second with complete clarity. Jak’s dark eyes raked over the scene, taking it all in at a glance, his stare shifting from being simply hostile to completely enraged. The smell of hot ozone overrode the heavy, cloying metallic tang of blood in the air. Dark Eco arced all around his friend, a thousand miniature lightning bolts of radiant purple twisting and twining inches away from his body.   His skin lost all its pigment almost all at once, going beyond pale and even ashen gray until it reached a shade of white Daxter was used to seeing on the edges of storm-tossed waves. Bloodless lips peeled back further than the normal reckless grin to reveal the incisors that suddenly seemed too large for a mouth to hold properly. Blond hair bleached to an almost blinding white before parting neatly around the arch of obsidian horn that curled up like a crest over the top of his head. The morphgun dropped from fingers no longer able to hold it. The inch long nails were now more like claws, tapered to vicious points of volcanic glass. Then it was like the light went out of his eyes, wiping out all remaining colour until nothing but the most ominous shade of black was left behind.
Every movement was predatory, controlled, followed by the hiss-pop of eco as it slipped loose from a container over flowing. The ease and speed with which Dark Jak closed the distance would have been breath taking if Daxter hadn’t already been short on oxygen. He watched with a certain sense of detachment as those sharp, knife-like nails flashed out in a smooth strike that completely belied the strength and speed behind the action. They flew by his face, close enough he could feel the air stir, feel the errant sparks of Dark Eco dragging along his skin. There was a crunching sound, inordinately loud in his ear. The hand that had been holding him like an errant ottsel fell away. Something hot and wet splashed against his neck, soaking his back from the shoulder down as the looming presence behind him disappeared as well. He turned his head just enough to see the hand pull back, crimson and dripping, before collapsing to his knees.
There was yelling he didn’t understand. Then there was a barrage of red-trailing gun fire. The Dark Warrior in front of him turned toward the newest threat, an act in and of itself that scattered some of the Guard ranks. A brief breath of anticipation, then he was in the air, flying toward the opposition courtesy of impossibly strong legs. He landed fist first into the boardwalk, slightly short of the engagement line; a miss at first glance, but a short lived assumption. The very world seemed to warp, folding in on itself before giving way to the surge of Dark Eco that followed, rising up like a tidal wave as Dark Jak pushed the chaotic energy into an attack the Oracle had called a Dark Bomb.
For the first time in what felt like hours, Daxter felt his heart beat. It trip-hammered as the rolling eco storm reached out with greedy hands to anything living, coiling and ripping into enemy and innocent bystander alike. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the technique—it was actually one of the preferred methods of dealing with encroaching Metalheads who refused to stay down. Quick, effective, devastating. A single violent but relatively quick explosion that usually drew out all the Dark Eco Jak had been harbouring up until that point. It was an easily recognized technique, the lead up obvious and the initial distortion upon impact enough warning for Daxter to find cover behind a wall or a rock. But the redhead couldn’t move, couldn’t rise from his knees and scramble behind the dubious shelter of a nearby hut and wait for the cold ripple of terror to pass him by. It was all he could do to cross his arms in front of himself, bracing as best as he could for the impact of the rogue wave.
Daxter screamed when it reached him. Or at least, he probably screamed, as much as his sore lungs could possibly manage. It would have been impossible not to. Where the first encounter with the black ooze had been somewhat swift, knocked in and spat back out, feeling an achy sting like he’d been out in the sun too long, this was much, much more drawn out. Each individual flash was felt, leaving a trail of cold, burning pain where it touched his skin. Every crackle that was absorbed was a knife wound, lancing open the hidden stores of eco his body had kept even after becoming human again. It became a magnet, like power calling to like power, focusing in and using him as a conduit to increase its range and potency.
And then he heard it, in the small part of his mind that had stepped back from the pain before madness could set in. A scream. A whisper. A voice raw and broken, yet strong and powerful. One he’d heard many times in those long nights of isolated nightmares…
Leave me alone! Stay away! I won’t let you touch him! I’ll die before I let you close!
Everything sort of shut down after that. He didn’t feel himself get lifted by the energy current, nor the nearby wood wall he was thrown into collapsing under his weight. He didn’t see the sky above him, couldn’t hear the shouting, wasn’t aware of anything other than that voice echoing in his head. It could have been seconds, minutes, or days before something else finally penetrated that anguished monologue.
Oh, Jak…
The world came rushing back, centered entirely upon that one thought. He still couldn’t feel much as he peeled himself off the ground, but that didn’t stop Daxter from gaining his feet. He wobbled unsteadily, feeling heavy and exhausted. There was still some errant KG running around. They took no notice of him, rushing toward the place he could feel Jak waiting, just out of sight. His hands shook when his picked up the discarded morphgun, cycling it through to check the ammo. There wasn’t much of anything left. It was still slung over his shoulder as he continued forward. Muscle memory helped him pick his way through the destruction, almost blind to everything else as he followed the rapid fire thoughts.
When he finally got around to the new battle line, he had almost made it out of the water slums. The ranks of red suits seemed to have finally gotten smart. They circled around, always moving, forcing Jak, still in Dark Mode, to shift around constantly to keep tabs on everyone. A part of him felt like he should be surprised that his friend was still caught in the grip of his power. The Dark Bomb tended to be an all or nothing attack. Eco, no matter the type, was always finite in the amount of energy it produced— one of the few things he remembered from Samos’s many lectures. Dark Jak walked onto the field, Jak walked back off, whatever internal store he’d been keeping completely wiped out. For the transformation to continue meant that there was still something to fuel it…and from the feeling still bubbling in the back of Daxter’s mind, that supply was more than abundant even after such an attack.
Not all that shocking, really. It had been weeks since the last time Jak had changed and drained off the eco his body seemed to collect naturally. There was a vague thought to how much deeper that reserve of power seemed to be and a half memory of the Oracle saying that one day it would consume him. Daxter shook it off. Survive now. Worry about tomorrow when (if) it came.
His next course of was clear; break the circle around his friend. Firing the morphgun would be the fastest if he could lift it, which he couldn’t right now. There was always the possibility of propping it up against something to steady his aim, though that presented the Guard with two targets instead of one. They needed to get out of there before more reinforcements showed up. No, he needed something flashy, loud and distracting…like that bandolier of eco grenades still strapped to the chest of a nearby body. There was no way to pull it off without going armpit deep into entrails, however. Then again, maybe he didn’t need to pull them off at all. It was an insane idea, but right now, insane was all he had.
Trying not to look too closely at the gory mess that used to be a head, he wrenched two free and pulled the pins on the rest just in case. “Sorry, pal,” he said under his breath, feeling slightly bad for what he was about to do, “but the greater good an’ all that jazz.” Then he shoved the body into the water and ran.
There was a bit more lag time than he expected between the splash of something inert hitting the water and the explosion that resulted when those grenades were hit by the weapons on that beast of a machine currently patrolling said water. Daxter wasn’t going to complain; that explosion was bigger than he had thought it would be, too. It worked, though. The circle of KG froze in confusion, most seeming to forget that the greatest threat they’d ever face was already in front of them.   Dark Jak took the moment of inattention to break the ranks. Daxter threw one of his pilfered grenades opposite of the way his friend moved and dove through the widest gap he could find. The secondary explosion caused everyone to duck and scatter, sending up a decent sized dust cloud in the process.
He and Jak ran into each other more by dumb luck than by design, with “ran into” meaning Jak barreled straight into him, tackling and taking him to ground with the force of an out of control zoomer. For the second time that day, the breath was driven from his chest. His back seized again as the bulk of the morphgun pressing into his spine. Daxter came perilously close to blacking out when he was suddenly hauled back up to his feet, Jak’s strong arm around his waist the only thing keeping him there.
“Run, idiot,” he gasped.
“No!” Jak growled back. “I’ll end this!”
He smacked the other upside the head. Jak snarled at him. Daxter snarled back, then promptly tried to get reacquainted with the ground again.
That was the end of the argument. Jak tightened his grip, the only warning before they were both air borne. Daxter watched with a mild sense of wonder as they left street level and began climbing up the nearby buildings, leap frogging from one point to another like Jak had been doing it his entire life. Almost a third of the way from the top, Daxter remembered the other grenade in his possession. He smiled with grim satisfaction when it detonated right in the middle of the group assembling to try and shoot them down. Then they were racing over the rooftop. Half running, half jumping, they crossed over the densely packed buildings. Jak took the death-defying jumps between sections with ease, his grip never wavering. For his part, Daxter just hung on, trying to make sure he didn’t trip them up somewhere along the line. There was little worry though, because soon they were falling back to the streets, landing surprisingly lightly in the quiet alley just a little ways from their safe house.
As soon as the door locked behind them, Jak let go. Daxter floundered a bit before a heavy hand pushed him back, pinning him to the door while the other slammed into the wood with enough force to make it groan and shudder.
“Why?”
There were so many other questions wrapped up in that one word, a pain and desperation shining in eyes still blacker than the eco that produced them. How was it possible for someone designed for absolute destruction to sound so young and lost? Everything about the Dark Warrior was meant to be intimidating, fear- and awe-inspiring. The contrasting between alabaster skin and inkpot eyes was startling enough. The blade-like claws, heavy horns, and sharp fangs that completed the feral aggressiveness were meant to clash headlong with the natural wrongness of the Metalheads. Everything rippled and strained with power barely suppressed, a living threat that no manner of defense could be erected against.
But beyond those was the person he’d always known. The guy who had offered a loud-mouth brat an ear and a silent shoulder to lean against. The friend that had set his jaw and swung his fist against the sand snake that had been bigger than him. The brother that had apologized every night after their fateful trip to Misty Island and for weeks beyond, even after making good on his promise. It was still Jak staring at him from beyond the veil of Dark Eco, asking that loaded and dangerous question.
“Why?” he demanded again, claws gouging the wood of the door.
“’Cuz I’m not gonna let you be what they want ya to be.”
The response seemed to surprise Jak. Daxter took the moment to clasp the hand next to his head, ignoring the reflexive jerk it invoked. The long nails were still encrusted with blood and the slightest twitch would seriously maim anything close. Despite that, he nuzzled his cheek into it, holding the palm against his face. “This is just another weapon, Jak. Like the morphgun switches through different types of ammo. Somethin’ that lets you end the trouble others start. But it’s not you. No matter what they say, yer still the same you ya’ve always been. An’ I’m not gonna let you forget it just ‘cuz some asshole thinks he knows ya better than me.” He pressed a kiss to the rough skin.
“…Dax…”
Daxter gave him his best reassuring smile. “C’mon, big guy. Think ya can get us to the bathroom ta get cleaned up a bit?” Jak nodded slowly, carefully wrapping an arm around Daxter’s waist and all but hauled him across the room. It took some doing, but they eventually shed their blood-soaked clothes, abandoning them and the armour to the floor to be dealt with later. The redhead dampened a washcloth and gently started wiping away the traces of carnage. Jak put up with it quietly enough as the gore was carefully cleaned from under blackened nails, flinching slightly when the cloth was run over his face. It was amazing how cold Jak’s skin felt, smooth and solid like marble. There wasn’t a scratch on him anywhere despite knowing he’d been shot at least twice. From there, it was impossible not to see what else had changed and what had stayed the same.
The fall of white hair was silky, light and soft in complete opposition to everything else. It slipped easily through his fingers, whispering gently was the strands ghosted over his skin. His hands threaded up and out a few times before getting brave enough to touch the protrusions on the crown. Jak made a strange noise, something between a groan and a purr as he gently probed the place where bone changed into something more. The sound escalated to a full-on snarling moan when he lightly traced the surprisingly sensitive horns from root to tip. It looked sharp and smooth, but it was really lined with tiny ridges along the whole length, and the end was blunt enough he could easily run fingertips back and forth without fear of being cut. He played for a while, palming, stroking, and tugging lightly to see what kind of sounds he could cause until Jak shook his head and huffed.
“Yeah, yeah… Sorry.” He coughed to cover up a laugh. It was then that Jak apparently decided they were clean enough and hauled them back to the bed. Daxter groaned as he slumped over, the thousands of aches adrenaline had helped him ignore earlier suddenly making themselves known. He tried to sit back up, intent on finding some pain killers when Jak carefully, gently, but pointedly pushed him back down. They played this game twice before the transformed hero growled threatening, leaning into the hand keeping the redhead pressed down with just enough force to make struggling useless.
“No,” he hissed. “Stay.”
“’M not goin’ nowhere, ya big lug,” Daxter whined, still trying to pry his friend’s hand up. “I need to take somethin’ now, or I ain’t gonna be able to move in the mornin’.”
“Stay,” Jak repeated, slowly easing up on his hold. “Where is it?” he asked when Daxter remained still.
“I can find it myself if you’d just let me—”
“Where?”
That tone told of failing patience. The redhead rolled his eyes. “The bag in the far right corner, towards the bottom left in an unlabeled bottle.”
With a look that promised pain if he so much as twitched, Jak moved away to retrieve said item. It was amusing and fascinating to note the difference between the graceful flow during battle and the lumbering, almost hesitant motions displayed now. There was an intense look of concentration on his face as he walked to the corner, half shuffling, half bouncing, like his legs had locked up. That was plainly not the case when he dropped down to a knee to rummage through the specified bag. Counter intuitively almost, hands that had little problem tearing apart just about everything never once tangled or ripped. With surgical precision, Jak pulled out the correct bottle without damaging anything else, at ease with the wicked sharp points on each finger like he’d been living with them for years. He stopped short when he noticed Daxter watching him. “What?”
“Nothin’. Just…never noticed how well ya use those clam diggers before. Yer really graceful…”
Jak’s ears dropped in a self-conscious move, the barest hint of colour taking to his cheeks. “No.”
“No? No what?” Daxter half sat up and regretted the movement. Jak was instantly at his side, gently palming his face. It was kind of weird being the warm one for once, though it was far from unpleasant. The cool helped ease the raging pain gathering behind his eyes. He sighed and leaned into the touch. Once again, he held that larger hand to his cheek when Jak tried to pull away. “No. Stay. Please?” It sounded petulant to even his own ears, but he couldn’t muster enough self-possession to really care. He felt like crap, tomorrow was going to suck even worse, and the only thing that was making all that bearable was the fact that his best friend was right there with him.
“Dax…”
“I don’t want anythin’ else. Just company. Until I fall asleep,” he added when Jak still hesitated.
It took his best forlorn, drowned ottsel look, but Daxter won out in the end. Jak carefully laid down on the bed next to him and the redhead wasted no time squirming up against his chest, soaking in the radiant cool. For a while, it seemed like Jak didn’t know what to do, stiff and held back. The longer Daxter remained motionless, however, the more he began to relax. One hand pressed against thin shoulder blades while the other rested lightly on a hip.   By now the painkillers had started kicking in along with fatigue. Daxter nuzzled against Jak’s throat absently, only half aware as he pressed a kiss to a hastily lifted jaw. Then he wasn’t aware of anything.
***
The room was completely dark when Daxter woke again. He cast around half-heartedly for what might have awoken him and found nothing. Minorly annoyed by waking without a solid reason, he wiggled back down into the warm, solid mass in front of him with a contented noise. Something tightened around his waist in response as a warm pair of lips pressed to the top of his head. The redhead was suddenly a lot more aware than he had been.
“Jak?” he whispered quietly, tensing.
“Yeah…” The answer was almost sighed into his hair. “Sorry.”
“Fer what?”
“…Everything.” Jak sighed again, shifting like he wanted to pull away and hug Daxter closer at the same time. “I’m sorry for everything that…happened today. We should have run. I didn’t even ask you, I just...” The rambling was cut short when Daxter leaned up and rather insistently kissed him. “Dax—”
“No, don’t even. Turn on the damn light. We’re not havin’ another of these conversations with just disembodied voices.” The bruised muscles in his back didn’t let him do much more than roll over when Jak reached for the lamp. Squinting against the sudden brightness, he tried to focus on the blond now sitting up and not looking at him. “Now, what’s really eatin’ yer tail?”
Silence was the immediate answer. That reproachful scowl was back in Jak’s face, complete with clenched jaw and hands, but his gaze was turned inward. Every once in a while, his breath would sharpen, or his mouth would twitch like he was going to snarl. Otherwise the internal debate stayed where it was. Daxter waited patiently, keeping himself awake by picking at the loose threads of the blanket until he figured his friend had suitably berated himself.
“Jak.”
“You need to stay away from me.”
“Like hell I’ll stay away from you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand, exactly?” Daxter demanded. “How easy it is to snap my skinny neck? The kinda damage a well-placed blaster shot can do? What it feels like to have somethin’ crawlin’ through yer veins, slidin’ through yer insides like some worm in a rotten piece of fruit?”
“How easy it is,” Jak retorted, looking anguished for the admission. “You don’t understand how easy it is to give in to the bloodlust, how badly I want to hurt them like they hurt me.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair, eyes suddenly shining. “Gods, Dax, I want to hurt people just because of the armour they wear, the things they say. I’m not hurting the people who deserve it, I’m just attacking for the sake of ripping something apart… What happens when I can’t distinguish one red from another? What happens when the one thing I’m trying to protect ends up dead in my hands?”
“We worry about that when we get there.” Jak snorted in exasperation and shook his head. “Yeah, I know it ain’t a very satisfyin’ answer an’ yeah, sometimes it’s nothin’ more than a truck-ton of yakow shit, but there ain’t anythin’ else we can do right now.” Firmly ignoring his body’s protests, Daxter sat up. He actually ended up more or less sprawled against his friend’s side, but he was up high enough to get an arm awkwardly around those slumped shoulders. “For what it’s worth, there ain’t a single innocent soul left in this burg. Everyone’s sold themselves for one thing or another. Their body, their soul, their values… All that stuff Samos tried to teach us growin’ up doesn’t apply here.”
“That doesn’t make things right.”
“But they ain’t wrong either. It just is, Jak. It’s just one big, twisted game of survival of the fittest. An’ maybe it’s selfish of me to think this way, but if a thousand people stand in the way of me survivin’ the day, then that thousand’s goin’ down. If slippin’ into the eco’s what’s gonna make sure you come through alive, then I don’t give a damn what caused it or what the price will be in the end. ‘Cuz yer here, alive an’ whole an’ right here… I’m sorry, but I just can’t give a flyin’ fuck about anythin’ beyond that.”
They settled into a semi-comfortable silence. Jak was still tense, though the bleak look on his face was starting to mellow out. Reality wasn’t pretty. People died as a direct result of some of the things they did. There was no way to cover that up or make it something less than what it was. Anyone who was happy about having blood on their hands was psychotic anyway, so Daxter took some comfort in the stabilizing of guilt. There’d be plenty of time for regrets after they took out the Baron.
“It doesn’t bother you,” Jak finally asked quietly, “sleeping with a mass murderer?”
“Yer not a murderer. A guy that cold-blooded wouldn’t be losin’ sleep like this.” Jak finally met his gaze. Daxter smiled and kissed him softly. “Yer a bona-fide hero, buddy, even if yer ridin’ that blackguard line right now. An’ that means yer one of the good guys.”
“I don’t feel like a good guy.”
“Then just be the guy who does somethin’. Let the rest of ‘em figure out whose side was what.”
That earned a flicker of a smile. “‘The guy who does something’?” Jak repeated, a weak laugh bubbling up even as a few stray tears slipped free from his eyes. When Daxter nodded, the blond pulled him into a strong hug, which was returned as best as was possible. After a long moment, the remaining tension began to ease out. “Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than it had been in a while. “I think I can be a guy who does something.”
Daxter tightened his hold. “I’d never ask for more of ya.”
***
When all is lost to you inside,

When all the darkness takes the light

The ritual warning has begun,

And now you tear away from everyone

Disconnected, so alone, severed ties from all you know

Isolation—Brings you to the end, until you love again

Isolation—If you could only see, what will come to be.

~Isolation – Alter Bridge~
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To be continued.
- 5
- 6
- 7
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Love is War