Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As a rule, Sig Seldasson was an easygoing man with those who knew him. Quick with a laugh, quicker with a bullet. The hard, stoic, front he presented to outsiders was rarely ever seen within the walls of Spargus.

Except for now.

Sig's one eye bore down on his king, colder and harder than steel. The presence of Kleiver, standing uncomfortably by with Jak’s arm draped over his shoulder, was likely the only thing keeping the spy from doing or saying something they'd all regret. Damas had seen that kind of fury on Sig’s face before, but never directed at him . 

Jak was pale -- he'd been pale since returning from the caves, pale and sweating. Damas had tried to go through the debrief quickly enough so the boy would just go sit down somewhere -- he knew someone as headstrong as Jak would never ask for help.

A tinge of unease worked through his chest as he looked down at the teenager.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"What's it rotting look like?" 

Daxter scrambled up Sig’s arm to glower at the king.

"He's poisoned, you spiny idiot!"

"Hey-!" Kleiver barked, but Damas cut him off.

"Poisoned? You said you outpaced the gas!"

"Jak was the closest," Sig growled. "Because someone gave him the idea that he had to personally destroy the egg cluster if he didn't want to be exiled."

The accusation was just barely hidden under his words.

Daxter bared his sharp little teeth. "So congratulations old man, you get your wish. But I'm warning you now, if Jak doesn't get eco in time, I'm goin' back in that Arena and I'm taking you with me."

Being the king of a Wastelander city meant that Damas had learned long ago to hide his feelings behind a stoic mask. It was second nature to keep his features still and impassive, but inside he was anything but calm. Everything had gone so horribly wrong, faster than he could keep up with. The presence of Sig had thrown off Jak’s final Arena trial, leading Jak to break one of the only laws of the trials in front of hundreds of veteran gladiators who had shed their blood to create that law. Jak's age would have protected him from outright banishment, but the alternative wouldn't have been any less harmful if the Warriors' Guild had decided Damas was taking too long to choose a punishment. 

Killing metalpedes was supposed to be serious enough to teach Jak not to cross that line again -- at least, not in front of witnesses -- but not serious enough to cause a fighter like him any real harm. Especially since the only Spargan in living memory to kill a metalpede with just a peacemaker would be going with him.

Only, that had backfired, too.

"Give him to me," Damas said gravely.

Daxter leaped down to block his way. "I think you've done enough," he hissed venomously. 

"Do you have eco?" the king demanded, losing his patience, "No? Then give Jak to me before his legs give out!"

Kleiver was only too glad to extricate himself from the situation. The ornery mechanic cleared his throat awkwardly as he passed the glassy-eyed teen over to Damas.

"The nipper owes me a race," he said gruffly, "You mind he don't show me up, lordship."

It was the closest a man like Kleiver would ever get to admitting he was worried.

Damas quickly realized that in Jak’s apparently disoriented state, waiting for him to stumble along into the elevator would take precious minutes they didn't have to spare. With a grunt, he stooped and lifted him off the ground entirely. He tried to ignore Sig and Daxter’s eyes burning into his back. They didn't understand. He was trying to protect Jak! But...he'd failed all the same. Their anger was warranted.

"If it was an aerosolized poison, it will attack his respiratory system first," Damas said tersely, if only to fill the oppressive silence of the lift. "Sig, I need you to get an air tank out of the old barracks and bring it to my quarters."

" Your quarters?" Sig demanded, "Why aren't you taking him to C-Ward?"

The elevator ground to a halt, and Damas only had time to glance back at his Second.

"Because this is my failure, not the monks'," he ground out, " My responsibility."

He didn't bother to wait for a response. If the gas worked the way metalpede venom was known to, there was a ten hour window before the damage became permanent. But Jak was the first person to get close enough to a nest to activate the poison gas. If any of his other Wastelanders had encountered the airborne poison before, they hadn't lived to tell the tale. Damas wasn't going to take a chance on the poison working at the same speed as the venom. 

Setting Jak down on a woven mat in his bedchamber, Damas shoved aside a stack of crates he used to conceal a sealed eco vent. The sound of running feet heralded Sig’s arrival -- albeit not as soon as Damas would have hoped.

"Here." Sig all but threw the tank at him. 

Damas caught it in one hand and pulled out his amulet to unlock the vent. Light eco burst forth, flickering towards Jak like tongues of flame. Somewhat clumsily, Damas channeled them into the tank of oxygen. It was hard without a channeling ring or focus crystal, but it was enough to function as medicated air. He slipped the corresponding mask over Jak's mouth and nose, and opened the valve.

"His immune system isn't going to like this, being a dark channeler," he sighed wearily.

Then he looked up.

"Sig," he said hesitantly. 

"Don't."

"Sig, I know you're angry-"

"You made me a liar, Damas." Sig turned his back on Damas, focusing on Jak’s face. "I told him I'd teach him to be a Wastelander. I told him it was better out here. And then you put a sixteen year old kid in the ring and tried to make me fight him. Me! I taught him to shoot, Damas!"

He glanced over once, anger still radiating from him.

"We have rules about pitting rookies against mentors!"

Damas’s hand almost slipped off the mask. "What do you mean sixteen?!" 

Sig curled his lip. "Does that look like an adult to you?"

The king immediately leveled a hard stare at Daxter, who met it head-on.

"You said you were eighteen!" he accused.

" I'm eighteen!" The ottsel retorted, "Jak never said how old he was, because he wanted you to take him seriously!"

"Volcan's bones!" Damas swore.

He fell back on his haunches and drew a hand over his face.

"I told him the Arena wasn't for children and he never said a word-!"

Incrementally, Sig began to soften. "He wouldn't have," he grunted. "I...don't think he's ever been allowed to think of himself as a kld. Haven just treated him like...like an attack dog."

He hardened again for a moment. 

"But even setting his age aside, there are rules! You can't just make an exception for me and then throw Jak and Daxter into the line of fi-!"

"The exception wasn't for you!" Damas snapped back. Jak stiffened, and Damas made a conscious effort to soften his voice. 

"The Old Guard wouldn't have come after you. You have all three amulets. You have a reputation . Jak has none of those protections. And you've killed a metalpede alone before! I thought if I sent you together, he-"

Frustrated, he slapped his thigh. "He wasn't supposed to get hurt!" 

The confession bounced around the room, leaving the men to process it in silence. The king of Spargus had just admitted to circumventing the laws of his predecessors for a non-citizen. To trying to shield him from traditional consequences. 

Suddenly, Jak's body convulsed, breaking the silence with a harsh gagging sound. The eco was doing its job, repairing the damage to his lungs. Now it was up to his body to expel the rest of the poison.

Sig pulled the oxygen mask from Jak's mouth and quickly rolled him onto his side in time for a stream of bile to eject from him. He coughed harshly, specks of blood mixed with spittle.

"Breathe, Jak," Damas commanded, pulling the half-conscious boy into a more upright position. "Come on, breathe!" 

After three more wracking coughs, Jak finally opened his eyes and took a desperate gulp of air. Damas’s shoulders relaxed, just a little. 

"Good, boy," he sighed with relief, "just keep breathing."

Taking the corner of his robe, he wiped Jak’s face and tried to sound reassuring.

"You're past the worst of it. It's just up to your body now."

With eyes just a little too bright, Jak slowly scanned the room, clearly confused.

"..D..x?" 

Daxter scurried forward. "Right here, pal. You breathed in more of that poison than we thought."

Jak frowned. He was still too pale, and clammy. "Don' f- feel good," he rasped, then winced in pain. The gas had irritated the soft tissue of his throat badly.

"I'll get him some water." Sig stood up with a heavy exhale. He glanced back down at Damas. "You and me, we need to talk later."

"I know."

Daxter rubbed a comforting paw over Jak's arm. "How's it feel, Jak? Better or worse than when you're oversaturated with the dark stuff?"

Rather than answering aloud, Jak shifted and raised his hands to sign. 

"Skin hurts, like dark eco. But it's more like...I don't know. Sick."

He swallowed, then made a tiny, pained whimper without meaning to. He hunched over and peered at Damas from the corner of his eye.

"...he still mad?"

Daxter eyed Damas with some trepidation, then signed back, "Not sure anymore if he was ever mad at all. You had the air mask hissing in your ear, but he said he was trying to make the guards think he wanted to punish us. He thought he was protecting us or something."

Jak pulled his knees to his chest.

"He's got a funny way of showing it."

The boys' signing was not fully accurate SparSign: there were multiple signs that appeared to have come from another dialect. Some indicators were different, and they had added ear positions to some signs, but Damas could still make out most of what they were saying. He did his best not to focus on what they were saying about him, instead zeroing in on Jak’s description of his symptoms. Mindful of his skin sensitivity, Damas briefly touched Jak’s shoulder as he settled on his knees.

"Jak, can you tell me if it hurts to breathe?" He quickly shook his head when the boy opened his mouth. "Nod, don't speak. Your throat is raw enough as it is."

Jak frowned and shrugged. "Hurts compared to what? Just feels like a panic attack. Wait, Dax, don't tell him that part."

Cringing, Daxter translated the loose signs.

"Uh...he wants to know if you have a scale of hurty things for him to compare it to. He's got a weird idea of what's tolerable for normal people."

If the situation wasn't grave, Damas would have been amused by the paraphrasing. But he didn't have time to play charades with the boys. 

"I know what he said," Damas answered bluntly, "Or most of it."

He picked up the oxygen mask again. 

"It's not going to play well with your dark eco reserves. I'm sorry for that. But you need to keep this on until your chest doesn't hurt."

When the boys merely blinked at him with dumbfounded expressions, Damas opted to hold the mask to Jak’s face himself.

"You need to tell me if you're in pain, understand?"

Jak tensed and shoved the mask away again, looking pale. Patiently, Damas pushed it back into place. "I know," he sighed. "I know, it's a vile taste. Eco wasn't meant for oral consumption."

The accusing look he got was almost funny, in a sad kind of way. Mar used to make the same face when he had to take medicine.

"This is for your own good," he found himself saying out of a habit he'd thought he'd lost long ago. "It may not feel like it now, but I'm trying to help you."

For a moment, Jak raised a hand to argue. He was midway through signing "why?" when another spasm shook him. This time, he was able to pry Damas’s hand off long enough to lurch to the side and vomit.

Daxter leaped back with a yelp, scrambling out of range as fast as he could.

"Watch where you spray that!" he gagged.

"You're not helping!" snapped Damas, "Go find a bucket or something if you're just going to stand there!"

"Um, excuse me , but that is not a normal color for puke to be!" Daxter argued.

"Because he's expelling poison , Daxter." Damas forced himself to keep his voice relatively level. "Where's Sig? He should have been back with the water by now."

The ottsel peeked out the door for a moment, and his ears perked up.

"Apparently he stopped to empty the custodian closet on the way. Thank the Precursors, you people do know what a mop is!"

His tail twitched as behind him, Jak began retching again.

Sig pushed in with an armload of things shoved into a bucket. A mop, towels, jugs of filtered water, and something in a small tin can all rattled around as he marched in. He paused to glance at the sickly green puddle now staining the rug, then set the bucket down with a hollow clang. Unceremoniously, he tossed the mop to Damas, followed by the towels. A moment of digging produced a tin cup, and Sig unscrewed the cap of one of the jugs of water to pour in a little.

"Alright, cherry," he said in a soothing voice -- a far cry from how he'd spoken only a few minutes prior -- "Got you some nice, cold, water. See if you can keep a sip down, okay?"

Jak didn't want to. Frankly, the thought of anything touching his throat sounded awful. The stomach acid he'd regurgitated burned like dark eco against the already scorched flesh in his mouth and throat.  What good would the water do to neutralize the acid? What use was it if he just threw it back up again? He hated the pain, and he hated himself for vomiting in front of Damas. Wastelanders weren't supposed to show weakness -- and being visibly ill in Praxis's prison was practically a death sentence. To be so unwillingly vulnerable in front of others in such a manner was humiliating for Jak. 

He took the cup in hands that only barely shook. It wasn't like he had chills, at least. But his muscles were beginning to cramp from whatever his body was doing to fight the remaining poison. The tin felt unusually cold against his lips -- or maybe he was just heating up. The water did soothe the pain in his throat, washing away the taste of bile and blood. That, at least, was a mercy. But his lungs were still pinched, and Jak knew that the second he let on that there was any discomfort in breathing, Damas was going to put the air mask back on him. Which meant that he would inevitably vomit again when the sour eco forced out more poison particles.

Maybe Damas was still punishing him after all.

The thought of the light eco's taste set his stomach churning, and Jak clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, willing what little remained in his stomach to stay down. His skin chafed against his clothes and armor as though they were made of sandpaper -- even his scarf. He could hear Sig, Daxter, and Damas having a very intense whispered discussion of some kind, but he couldn't be bothered to listen in when he was busy fighting a losing battle against his own body. And this was Damas trying to protect him?

But-

Then again, Tess sometimes put on acts in public to protect her secrets, didn't she? And Sig played Krew's Enforcer pretty efficiently until you got to know him.

What if Damas really had been trying to cover for them? He wasn't a spy -- he was about as subtle as Jak was, on that front -- but Jak knew how worry could come out as anger if you did it right. And Damas probably didn't want to lose Sig.

Jak took another slow sip and held the cold cup to his forehead. He decided to leave the matter of Damas and his inscrutable motives for another day, and silently vowed to never go into a metalhead nest without a gas mask again. He'd seen two or three in the North Market a few days ago, but he hadn't been able to afford one at the time. A couple days of grunt work at the forges would probably serve as a fair trade for one. Jak was willing to endure the blistering heat if it meant avoiding this kind of pain again. 

Someone touched a hand to his head, jolting him out of his thoughts. Sig pulled back with a look of apology when Jak started.

"Ooh, cherry, you're warm. Well, I got good news and bad news. Unfortunately, that temperature of yours, that's the good news. Means your body's really started fighting back against that gas."

Jak groaned and let his forehead rest on his knees. That was the good news? With a click of his tongue, Sig continued. 

"The bad news is, Chili Pepper and I need to go get checked out by the medics to make sure we don't have a slower acting case, seeing as we were in the same proximity. Which means we gotta leave you for a little bit."

Despite every cell in his body shrieking in protest, Jak began to push himself to his feet.

"S'fine," he croaked painfully, "I'll...go too."

"Abso lutely not. Sit back down." 

Damas descended on them like a vengeful spirit, pushing Jak back down onto the mat as Sig ducked out.

"And take that armor off."

Jak balked at the order. Wasn't he helpless enough as it was? Why deprive him of what little protection he still had? He flinched away when Damas reached for his pauldron, almost missing the pained look that crossed the man's face.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Jak," he said quietly. 

When Jak inched further away from him, he repeated it. "I’m not going to hurt you! I promise, I just want to help you."

The look Jak speared him with needed no translation. Damas didn't hide his wince this time. 

"I know. I...didn't handle things well this morning. I did not realize the metalpedes had nested through the entire tunnel system, I- well. It means nothing now , I realize, but I truly did believe you would be safer there than facing the wrath of the Warriors' Guild."

Jak faltered and frowned. He turned his face away and sipped at the water in a decidedly sullen fashion. Damas supposed he probably deserved that. He let out a breath and tried again.

"Your body wasn't the only thing exposed to the poison, Jak. Your clothes and armor need to be sanitized."

This time the boy pulled back into a protective ball, glaring over his knees. In shaky signs, he made it very clear that he didn't have other clothing, and punishment for mutiny be hanged, he had no intention of walking home in his underwear. 

Precursors, he still had the preposterous idea that Damas was going to let him out of his sight.

"You're not going home," he said sharply, "Not until I know you're alright. I'll find more clothes for you. You keep still and focus on expelling that poison."

"You want me to throw up?!" Jak looked betrayed. 

"The alternative ways of removing the poison are far less pleasant," Damas warned with a grimace. "You may be through the worst of it, but this still has to run its course if it's anything like the usual venom -- and I am glad it was not in your bloodstream like the usual venom would be. That would have been much harder to treat."

"So I have to puke."

"So you have to puke," Damas agreed. "And don't think I didn't see you trying to breathe shallowly. If you don't want lung damage, you'd better put that respirator back on."

"I hate you," Jak signed with little real feeling behind it.

"I know," Damas sympathized.

He held out a hand as if to help Jak up.

"Come on. We'll get you some clean clothes, then I'll deal with this mess. Try to keep the respirator on while you change."

The oversized linen chiton Damas came up with was at least a little softer than Jak’s clothes, if only because of years of wear, but it still sat rough against his hypersensitive skin. As standing had instigated a new wave of nausea, Jak had opted to change while sitting. If the shoulder fastenings were a little lopsided as a result, Damas didn't say anything about it. Although, Jak supposed that could have been because the king was currently mopping up vomit like some kind of servant. The most he did was give Jak an unusually soft look and make some odd remark about him growing into it.

Nausea continued to wrack Jak’s body as he shuffled back out of the corner, but for the moment it was controllable. Either that meant he'd gotten a good chunk of the poison out of him, or he just didn't have enough in his stomach to warrant throwing up. He hoped it was the former, but he probably wouldn't know for sure until he stopped throwing up green.

Jak stood awkwardly with his clothes and armor in one hand. He felt naked without even his channeling ring.

"Just set them on the rug," Damas said, barely looking up from the soiled mop, "I'll take it all to decontamination once you're settled."

He gestured to one side of the chamber, then another.

"I'll let you decide whether you'd rather be in a chair or in bed, but you need to rest either way. Use the mop bucket if you need to throw up again."

"Why are you cleaning that?" asked Jak after dropping his gear. He had to repeat the question when Damas finally looked up. 

"Because it has to be cleaned up."

"No, why are you cleaning it?" Jak emphasized.

The king blinked as though the question didn't make sense. "Spargus puts its people to work, you know that. Sitting on a throne doesn't make me exempt."

He shrugged.

"Anyway, it's technically my fault you, ah… christened the rug as it is, so I may as well be the one to deal with it."

He pushed the mop into the bucket and swirled it across the flagstones a few more times before deeming them satisfactory. When he looked up to find Jak still staring blankly at him, he cleared his throat.

"I take it your throat still hurts."

There wasn't much point in denying it. Jak scowled and nodded. "Eco isn't helping," he complained, "every time I puke it hurts worse."

"Ah." Damas straightened and stretched his back. "I expect that'll be why Sig brought a tin of tea with all of this. Something hot will ease some of the pain. Honey would be better, honestly, but I'm not sure I have any. Never been one for sweets."

He examined his patient, and was struck by how young he really looked, all but swimming in an oversized robe and unable to hide under a scarf. Only sixteen! Had he known-

Well, had he known before, Jak would never have been in this situation to begin with. 

But at least if the Warriors Guild still complained -- unlikely, given the magnitude of the task Jak and Sig had accomplished -- at least he could let them know that what they had witnessed was not a flagrant trampling of the traditions they had created so much as it was a fit of teenaged pique. Part of the Old Guard they might have been, but most of the Guild would view Jak’s defiance more kindly knowing he'd never been meant to be there in the first place. 

Or they might try to have the minimum age requirement changed again on the basis of Jak proving himself capable. Damas hoped to avoid that discussion. 

Damas rubbed the back of his neck and felt the creeping guilt he'd been trying to ignore, curling over his shoulders like a mantle.

Has he always been so...small?

Abruptly there was a soft gurgle, and Jak's eyes widened. He spat out the oxygen mask and lunged for the bucket. Damas would have averted his eyes for the sake of Jak's pride, but without his goggles, there was nothing holding the boy's hair out of his face. It felt too personal, a boundary he wasn't meant to cross. But the kid was miserable as it was; Damas didn't wish puke-soaked hair on him. He set down the mop and knelt beside Jak, sweeping sweaty green curls out of his face with one hand. Jak spasmed, retching, and between gushes he gasped for air and clutched his stomach with one hand and his throat with the other.

"Ow."

The word was barely audible, just a faint whine, but it was enough to get the point across: the sensation was far from pleasant. If there was anything good about the situation, it was that the vile green in the bucket was fading to mostly bile now. But with what little water he'd consumed back in the filthy mop water now, Jak was fast approaching dehydration. 

Volcan's bones, he's so young .

Forever after, Damas would believe that his body had responded instinctively, reading signals his brain was months from picking up. He found himself rubbing the boy's back in small circles as dry heaves shuddered through his frame. Smoothing back the hair falling into his face. Dimly it occurred to Damas that he was offering a comfort -- an affection -- he'd only ever reserved for Mar. For his son. And it was possible that Jak might not appreciate this when he was more in-control of himself. But Damas was tired of pretending not to care about the young survivor.

"I know, I know," he murmured as another pained whimper left Jak. "I know it hurts, little one. Just bear it a little longer, get it all out."

Tears of embarrassment prickled in the corners of Jak's eyes. "H- hate this," he hissed through clenched teeth.

“Ssshh. I know, I know.”

Why was Damas fussing over him like a mother bird? Why had he tried to protect Jak after his defiance in the Arena? Jak understood being given second chances for the sake of his usefulness to others, but when he was a useless pile of sweat and puke? It didn't make any sense. Unless Damas actually did see him as more than just a good weapon to be trained and honed. 

The acidic bile tore into his larynx with a fresh round of sharp pain. With the way he felt, he was amazed that he wasn't choking on blood at this point. When the heaves had passed, Jak had no strength to resist being pulled back from the bucket and propped against the wooden bedframe. He closed his eyes and shook his head weakly when Damas held up the cup of water again.

"You need to stay hydrated, Jak," said Damas patiently.

"Don' wannit. I’ll throw up again," Jak croaked. It wasn't even recognizable as his voice. "Don' make me."

The cup was pressed to his lips regardless.

"Come on, just a few sips -- Slow! Slow, now!" Damas held the cup steady.

"Slow and steady and you won't throw it back up. Finish this, and I can make some tea if you keep it down."

When a few seconds had passed without the immediate reappearance of the water, Damas deemed it safe enough to leave Jak unattended for a few minutes. It was depressingly easy to hoist the boy up onto the mattress, dead weight or not. He wasn't quite the scrawny thing Damas had plucked from the desert, but it seemed he still had a ways to go before fully recovering from Haven. With a disapproving click of his tongue, Damas slid his arm out from under Jak’s shoulders and settled him on his side.

"Try to sleep off the nausea," he directed, "I'm going to take everything down to C-Ward's decontamination center. I'll only be a few minutes."

He set his talk-box down on the blanket beside Jak. "If you need me before then, Frequency Z1-4 is the C-Ward. Frequency Z4-4 is Sig."

Jak pressed his lips together until they turned white. He looked too exhausted to make much protest. As Damas turned to gather the contaminated items, Jak whispered, "Ss- sor- ry."

Sorry? For what? For throwing up? For the Arena debacle? There was no telling, and frankly, Damas doubted it mattered. The answer was the same either way.

He sighed and tried to smile at Jak.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

Jak lay curled up on the spartan bed, turning the words over in his mind after Damas left. He'd been trying to apologize for taking up so much time, wasting resources like this. For being a burden. But he couldn't tell what the king had meant by "You didn't do anything wrong". Did he mean the sickness? Or...or was he acknowledging that Jak had been in the right when he refused to fight Sig?

It would be nice to think it was the latter; usually when he was right and others were wrong, the most he could hope for was a begrudging statement blaming someone else. Never an apology.  Never an acknowledgement that he'd been right.

Swallowing reflexively sent another stab of pain down his neck, and Jak curled tighter into a fetal position. At least no one was hunting him down this time. The last time he'd thrown up, it was a case of food poisoning from stealing leftover scraps out of Krew's kitchen. He'd spent the night stumbling from hiding place to hiding place while Daxter periodically disappeared to steal medicine for him.

He hoped the medic would clear Daxter. Jak wouldn't wish this recovery on anyone but Errol.

Time never seemed to work right when you were sick, Jak found himself musing at some point. It either moved unbearably slowly, or altogether too quickly. Typical. Time hated Jak. The fact that he was sixteen and not five years old at the moment was proof.

Jak wondered if he would ever recover any of the memories he'd lost during his time with the Underground. Maybe someday he'd remember when he got Chomper. Or who gave him that amulet.

Jak bit his lip. Who had his amulet now? The Guards -- no he would not call them the "Freedom League", they were KG to him and they always would be -- had taken it from him when he was arrested. For all he knew, it was on some Council rat's desk now, being used as a paperweight. A combination of anger and something closer to loss swept through him, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

That amulet was the only connection he had left to whoever he'd been before Praxis interfered. And now that was gone, too. It wasn’t fair!

At least with Damas out of the room, there was no one to see it if Jak let some frustrated tears fall.

There was no telling how long he dozed fitfully, waking now and then in pain. When Jak’s guts decided to rally for one final push to banish the last of the poison, he was groggy and incoherent. It was a miracle he didn't miss the bucket, considering how shaky his core muscles were. The burning in his abdomen reminded him far too much of the aftermath of the dark eco injections in the prison. He could almost smell the combination of sweat and blood and puke that permeated every cell. It didn't matter that he knew he wasn't there, he could remember .

"Jak?"

Across the room, someone stood up from a chair Jak had forgotten existed. Damas hurried to the bedside, and it took several seconds for Jak to place why he looked...off. The man had removed his armor -- pauldrons, vambraces, even his boots. He looked somehow wrong in just a white chiton and belt. Like anything less than full armor was nudity. What a weird look. Weird man. Peeled Damas. Jak would have giggled if he hadn't known his body would punish him for it. 

Maybe he'd puked on Damas in his sleep, and that was why he wasn't in armor. 

It would be a rude thing to do, but to be fair, Damas kind of deserved it.

Nonsensical thoughts continued to circulate in his half awake mind before another dry heave left him convulsing over the bucket. A rough hand smoothed back his hair with a gentleness Jak was far from accustomed to.

"You've really been through it today, haven't you, my boy?" Damas murmured.

Jak raised his head to level the strongest glare he could muster at him, and Damas muffled a chuckle.

"Stating the obvious, eh?"

He leaned over the befouled bucket and nodded. "We'll give it one more hour and then I think we can safely say the poison has run its course."

Jak struggled to sit up before begrudgingly allowing Damas to help him. 

"Another hour?" he signed, "How long have I been in here?"

"Four hours," Damas answered casually.

"Four hours?!" Jak gaped at the king. "Where are Daxter and Sig, then?"

"On a course of antibiotics in C-Ward, as a precaution." Damas easily lifted Jak into a sitting position against the single pillow and turned to tinker with something out of sight.

"They'll be released in the morning, if not sooner, but that's up to the monks' discretion. You, meanwhile, are effectively grounded until I am satisfied that you are recovered."

"You," said Jak, "are officially the strangest man I've ever worked for."

Damas glanced up. "Why, because I care about you?"

"Yup."

Jak’s physical discomfort allowed him to keep an impressive poker face, but the scarlet tips of his ears revealed just how unprepared he'd been for Damas to make a statement like that.

"Hn. I see: you were raised by wolves."

"Oracles, actually," Jak retorted with a hint of a smile. "But they don't have hands so...close enough."

The king shook his head and huffed good-naturedly. "Jak, Jak, Jak," he snorted, "What am I going to do with you?"

"Compensate me for mental distress by giving me the last battle amulet?"

That made Damas laugh outright. "Nice try!"

Sobering, he carefully asked, "Jak...Why didn't you tell me you were only sixteen?"

Jak’s eyes narrowed. "Who told you?"

"None of your business." Damas stood up and moved to a small electric kettle on the desk beside his chair. Stiffly, he measured leaves into a small tea strainer

"You let me think you were old enough to compete in the Arena."

He turned and shook the strainer at him. "By rights, you shouldn't have even been there today!"

Jak shrugged and slouched a little against the pillow.

"Sixteen. Eighteen. What's the difference? We all fight to survive anyway, right?"

"The difference ," Damas said sternly, "Is that a sixteen year old's growth plates haven't fused yet. You aren't physically mature yet. I am not my predecessor: I do not allow children in the ring!"

"Sixteen isn't a child!" Jak argued.

"It is to me!" Damas pointed imperiously at Jak. "I bear responsibility for not pressing you for the truth, and for not providing the protections someone of your age is entitled to. Therefore it is my responsibility to ensure that you do not enter that Arena again until you are of age."

"You can't do that!" Jak's hands grew sharper, more vehement.

"I'm not waiting two years to earn my freedom!"

Damas froze. "Your...your freedom?" 

His voice was strained. "What makes you think you aren't- what do you- I don’t understand. Do you think you're a prisoner?"

Jak’s chest hurt. He couldn't say for sure if it was the sickness causing it, or the look on Damas’s face. He swallowed hard and immediately regretted it.

"I'm...not an equal. I've got that...that life debt, remember? Dax and I don't have the same rights as you or Sig. Not until we have all three amulets. I...know what happens when you work off a debt but don't have the rights citizens do."

Damas sank down onto the chair. He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long, protracted sigh.

"Then I've failed you more than once, it seems."

He looked up.

"Candidates work before earning all three amulets because they are supposed to be forming connections with the people who will be their fellow citizens. It's not about the life debt -- and regardless, you already paid back yours with interest during that last sandstorm. The amulets form a beacon when joined; by the time you have them all, if you need to activate it, you will have made enough allies to ensure that someone comes to your aid."

There was something unreal about seeing Damas look so discouraged. Jak quickly looked away, deeply uncomfortable. 

"Well that's...that's not what Kleiver said."

" Kleiver ," Damas grunted in reply, "is a professional troublemaker, with a sense of “humor” I do not share. Take anything he tells you with a healthy dose of skepticism."

"You couldn't have told me that the first time I had to work with him?!"

Jak groaned and folded his arms, then unfolded them again to ask, "Was threatening to eat Daxter one of his jokes, too?"

Damas cringed noticeably. "No, unfortunately I have had to have more than one conversation with him about not eating anything that can speak. He would eat a metalhead if he thought he could cook it."

"Eh. They're not great. Mostly muscle and grease, no real meat. And they eat garbage so...I mean Dax thinks Kleiver probably eats garbage anyway-"

Jak paused and took Damas’s horrified expression in.

"What?"

"Tell me you didn't eat a metalhead."

Defensively, Jak protested, "I was stranded in Dead Town for three days! Daxter would've starved if I'd eaten my share of the rations!"

Damas put his head in his hands again. "I begin to wonder how you ever fooled me into thinking you were older."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you need adult supervision." Damas reached over to lift the kettle off its base as it hissed and bubbled, then poured boiling water into the cup Jak had been using. "And no, "employers" don't count as adult supervision."

"Do "me'tors raisin' you t' be cannon fodder” count?" Jak croaked aloud, then grimaced, regretting it.

Damas stared at him again for several seconds, then sighed. "No. No they do not count."

That had some unfortunate implications about the boy's entire life thus far. And slightly worse implications for the way Jak seemed to view their interactions. 

Blowing steam from the top of the cup, Damas brought it to the bedside. "Careful: it's hot."

"Convenient way to make me stop talking," Jak signed with a tired twitch that might have been an eye roll.

"Now there's an idea," Damas snorted. "Maybe you'll actually go back to sleep!"

When he handed Jak the cup, the boy hesitated. He stared at the steam rising from the tea as though it were some great enigma he couldn't quite puzzle out. Damas waited a few seconds, then sat on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong?"

Jak blinked, then sheepishly took the cup -- seemingly more to avoid answering than to drink it. He held the hot mug against his stomach, letting the heat soothe his muscles, and thought. 

He didn't understand why Damas said he cared about him. Sure, he was useful, Damas had said that often enough. But why did he care? Why was he the one tending to Jak, and not a medic? They weren't friends, not like him and Sig. 

"Wh- why're you help'n me?" Jak rasped painfully, "Don' gettit. You're king, I'm..."newcomer"."

"Hush, Jak. Drink." Damas cupped his hands under Jak's, lifting the tea back up to his face. "Tomorrow I'll have a medic from C-Ward come look you over. The eco in the respirator should have prevented the need for any injections."

At the mention of injections, Jak went rigid. His eyes clouded as he tightened his grip on the cup. A hot droplet sloshed out onto his hand. Damas grimaced and sighed.

"No, no Jak, there's no needles. I brought you here so we could avoid the needles."

"Y...did?" Jak cocked his head and furrowed his brow with an almost forlorn expression. "Wh-y av- v- void?"

"For you."

Damas looked at him as though the answer were perfectly obvious.

"You clearly have a... history , with needles, son. In the fragile state you were in, I didn't want to risk elevating your heart rate with something like that."

Naked shock decorated Jak's face before everything seemed to crash down on him. Overtired, in pain, and already reduced to such a vulnerable state, perhaps it wasn't such a surprise that Jak's vision began to blur. He blinked fiercely, but the moisture only doubled. Immediately, Damas was hovering.

"What is it? Are you in pain, Jak? Can you breathe?"

Jak pulled back. "Is. Sstup'd."

"Obviously not," Damas argued, and gently took the cup back. "Do I need to get the respirator?"

Irritated, Jak shook his head. "It's not that, it's stupid," he signed. "I just. I didn't think anyone noticed. About the needles."

Damas sat back and nodded slowly. "You mean you didn't think anyone would care. Yes? That's what you thought?"

"No one in Haven ever did."

"Hm." Damas pressed the cup back into Jak's hands. "I want to be better than Haven...though, obviously, I do not always succeed. It will be- it will be better for you, I think, this...break...from the Arena. It seems you are unfamiliar with the kinds of provisions a strong society ought to make for adolescents."

"I c'n s'vive...on my own. Always have, me an' Dax."

"You shouldn't have had to." Damas scowled. "It would have been better if you had been born Spargan. It wouldn't have been a soft childhood, or an idle one, but at least you would actually understand the apparently foreign concept of trusting the adults in your community to care for you."

Jak shrugged and sipped at the tea. It was an odd taste, a little sharp and a little earthy. He couldn't decide if he liked it or not. It was mild, at least, which meant his poor abused stomach muscles wouldn't be as likely to toss it back up. Moisture still gathered embarrassingly in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill over if Damas said one more sappy thing. 

He'd given up his own quarters and mopped vomit off the floor just so that Jak could avoid the trauma of needles.

He openly wished Jak had been born as one of his citizens.

A lonely, pitiful voice deep inside Jak clung to that, hopefully insisting that his anger that morning really had just been an act, and that Damas really did care about him, specifically. 

With a tired grunt, the king forced himself up and off the mattress. He braced his hands against the small of his back and stretched until something popped. With a groan, he stepped past the bed, absentmindedly tousling Jak's hair as he went.

"Don't get old, kid," he muttered, "It's a pain."

There was a rustling of papers, then he said, "I have a debrief to give tonight, so I'll be gone for a few hours. You have Sig’s frequency in case of emergency."

He reappeared beside the bed to grab the befouled bucket. "I'm going to take this to decontamination and get you a trash can or something. Try to sleep off the rest of the nausea, and we'll see if you can hold down some broth when I get back."

That sounded like a lot of work with no payoff to Jak. Like the kind of labor he was used to in Haven. He didn't want Damas to have to bother with that.

"S'fine," he managed, words only slightly aided by the hot tea, "I c'n rest at h- home."

Damas dismissed this out of hand.

"Absolutely not. You remain at my discretion, and until such time as I judge you to be recovered, we will proceed as if you are home."

Jak made a face like he wasn't sure whether to protest angrily or just sink into complete bewilderment. "You're...jus' gonna...keep...me here?"

"Yes," answered Damas bluntly. "Pull any stunts that jeopardize your recovery and I'll keep you here even longer, so you had best not do anything rash."

Jak looked at him as if he had lost his mind. 

"Don' baby me," he huffed.

Damas picked up one of his pauldrons and shrugged it on, then retorted, "If you think the bare minimum of care is "babying", what are you going to do when I actually start taking responsibility for you as a minor?"

He cracked a smile at the croak of pure outrage from the bed.

"Well. You've given me enough gray hairs unsupervised. Turnabout is fair play, eh? Perhaps I'll finally manage to get you to choose your battles more wisely."

"Wha' d'you mean 'spons'bility?!" Jak demanded in spite of his raw throat. 

"Hey! Hey! Come back here!"

"Go to sleep, Jak," Damas chuckled, and shut the door behind him.

__________________________

Spargus was not a massive city, but it was big enough that a summons for the heads of the Warriors' Guild and the Hunters' Hall could take up to an hour to answer. With a little time to spare, Damas looked in on C-Ward to check Sig and Daxter’s condition. Daxter, apparently, was giving him The Silent Treatment. In a complete turnaround from everything he'd ever expected, it turned out that a silent Daxter was a Very Concerning Daxter. 

"I'm calling the Guild together to warn them about the poison gas," Damas told Sig, trying to ignore Daxter's burning stare, "And to get the matter with Jak straightened out once and for all. Any notes you may have would be appreciated."

"Notes on the nest? Or on Jak?" Sig asked pointedly. "I've got a couple on the nest. I've got a whole lot more on Jak."

"Whatever you think will keep Pike off his back," Damas sighed. 

"How is Jak?" 

Sig leaned back in the reed chair he'd been provided with and ran a hand over his stubbly head. "Did he sleep any?"

"Four hours," Damas answered. "He's...better than earlier, for certain. Well enough to drink the tea you brought."

He huffed and folded his arms.

"...and well enough to complain that basic medical care apparently qualifies as "coddling" and treating him like an infant."

Sig blinked slowly, then all at once the breath left him in a whoosh and he bent over to drop his forehead into his palm.

"'Cursors alive. That boy is a mess ."

"Quite."

Damas nudged his arm. 

"I left him with my talk-box since his is in Decon. I need to look over the nest footage on yours."

Sig snorted. "Guess where my talk-box is."

"...Decon?"

"Yup."

"Rot sucker!" Damas grumbled, "Now I have to go on memory."

The snort became a chuckle. "Language, boss!" he needled.

The gesture Damas made in return was neither kingly nor even slightly suited for polite company.

He thought he heard Daxter snicker to his left, but of course, he couldn't prove it.

_________________________

The Hunters Hall had been considerably more sympathetic to Jak when he and Sig were pulled from the Arena. But then, there was a bit of a rivalry between the Hunters Hall and the Warriors' Guild, and they may have simply been playing the devil's advocate.  Either way, the Hall's chosen leader for the month, a swaggering, charismatic man called Torrens, asked about Jak almost before Damas had time to sit down.

"Heard you sent the boy to clear a nest of metalpedes, sire." The thin man crossed his arms and whistled. "Any other circumstances, even Pike would petition for him to get an amulet for that."

Pike, one of the three heads of the Guild, made a sour face. "And then he would see it as rewarding bad behavior," he sniped at Torrens, "Getting his crime nullified is reward enough for surviving metalpedes."

" About that "crime"." Damas gripped the arms of his throne and frowned. "In the aftermath, I have made the unfortunate discovery that the infraction was ours , not his."

Both parties fell silent as they tried to work out how this could possibly be the case. They didn't have to wait long for answers.

"Before I found him, exiled in the desert, Jak had been a member of the resistance in Haven. More specifically, he was informally apprenticed to Sig."

"Aw rot," one of the Guild muttered in understanding. 

Candidates competing for citizenship were supposed to be on equal footing with those they fought, in order to best determine their actual level of skill. Pitting a rookie against the person who trained them put them automatically at a disadvantage. 

Pike furrowed his brow. "Then why didn't Sig bring him to the city himself?"

"Because." Damas’s voice grew harsh, "Haven really wanted that boy dead. They imprisoned Sig when they exiled Jak, just to ensure that he could not save him. He thought Jak was dead, right up until they met in the Arena."

Pike relaxed somewhat. "That is no one's infraction but Haven's, my lord," he insisted, "No one can be blamed for being unaware of that, least of all you!"

But Damas laughed bitterly. "Oh no? I was so preoccupied with making repairs after the sandstorm the day I found Jak that I sent him off to the Arena without checking that he was the age he claimed to be."

The Guild members and the Hall members exchanged a variety of confused, amused, and worried glances between each other. Jak really was the city Problem Child, wasn't he? If it wasn't one thing, it was another. 

Pike groaned. "Oh, don't tell me! My lord, don't tell me he lied about his age!"

Damas wore the very same expression of weary exasperation. 

"He's sixteen."

Muttering broke out, one part impressed, one part offended. They knew the laws as well as Damas. The boy should never have been in the ring to begin with. Now the Guild looked uncomfortable as it dawned on them that their anger before, and their demand for punishment, had been directed at someone who was still a child by the count of their people.

"But-" one of the other Guild heads, a woman named Mella, pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "The barring of children from the Arena is common knowledge; it violates the protected status of younglings! Why would he lie about his age?"

"Haven," Damas answered simply. "Because of what he experienced there, he was under the impression that his "life debt" was a form of indentured servitude that he could only escape by earning citizenship."

Disgust swept across the gathering, especially on the faces of those who had once been Marauders. They had come to Spargus seeking freedom, and the assurance that they would not be enslaved as a punishment for failure -- not an uncommon occurrence in the Marauder fortress. To know that a newcomer had believed their city -- their home -- would be similar was insulting, and not a little disturbing.  And there was another matter to worry about, with the revelation of Jak being the first minor to be found alive in the desert.

Pike, Mella, and Urduja whispered between each other for several seconds while Torrens just looked uncomfortable and Damas wished they would hurry up so he could actually debrief them . The leaders of the Warriors' Guild then turned to face him, looking slightly worried.

"Sire," Pike began, "In light of the boy's improper age, are his two amulets to be confiscated?"

 "Will they be held in trust until he reaches majority?" Urduja clarified quickly. She tugged at her lip thoughtfully.

"While the disaster in the Arena cannot be faulted to any one person, it was a collective failure of our community to let him progress even that far. The Warriors' Guild acknowledges our fault in this endeavor and requests pardon for demanding your action in the matter. Will you require us to take responsibility for the boy in penance?"

Ah. That's what they were worried about. Having been the reason Damas made up a "redemption mission" that took Jak out of the city, the Guild now worried that they had opened themselves to accusations of plotting the injury of a youngling. There weren't many children in Spargus, and the few they had were guarded as jealously as water. 

They weren't offering to take Jak in out of the kindness of their hearts -- frankly, his antics would probably drive them to insanity even without the addition of Daxter -- but they believed they needed to atone .

"That is not necessary," the king answered. "You operated in good faith on bad information. I do not hold it against you, although I cannot speak for Sig, Jak, or Daxter."

He shook his head.

"It was my inattention that led us to this point, therefore I will take responsibility for Jak going forward."

Then he cleared his throat. "If there are no further questions about my infuriatingly reckless ward , then we will proceed with the notes Sig took on the tunnel nest."

Torrens -- and every Hunter, really -- brightened at that.

"Ah! Yes, Kleiver said they got a good look at the inner structure of a 'pede nest!"

Then he frowned slightly. 

"Uh...something about poison? Is...Sig good? We haven't seen him since he got back."

"Precisely the reason for this briefing," Damas said, mildly annoyed by this interruption. "Sig and Daxter are undergoing precautionary antibiotic treatments in C-Ward at present, although Jak took the brunt of the attack. They discovered that the egg clusters are surrounded by proximity-sensitive organs or sacs that release an aerosolized poison when anything but a metalpede approaches."

"Well rot!" Mella exclaimed, "That's inconvenient! How fast does the poison work in gas form?"

"Quickly." Damas’s jaw tightened. "It was touch and go for a few hours with Jak. He's coming through alright, but he'll be off the field for a while. I want the Guild and the Hall both to implement new protocols in light of this new information: nobody enters the canyons or tunnels without at least one filtration mask. There's no telling how many people we might have lost in future artifact runs if Jak hadn't gotten that close."

Torrens nodded sharply. "Understood, sire. We'll inform the artifact runners at our next Hall meeting."

"And we will begin implementing gas mask training into the candidacy program," Urduja added.

"Good."

Damas stood. "My intention was to fully debrief you on the internal structure of this nest -- if they managed to construct one this elaborate without us realizing, I suspect there are others -- but the talk-boxes with the necessary footage are currently undergoing decontamination. We will reconvene tomorrow at fourth bell to go over the information with the artifact runners. Dismissed."

Of course, Damas knew this meant he couldn't put off hand-writing Jak and Sig’s account of the nest mission anymore. If they wanted to develop effective countermeasures against metalpede nests, or metalhead nesting grounds in general, they would need thorough, accurate documentation. Which meant he'd have to retrieve his talk-box from Jak. He barely restrained a sigh.

On his way to the elevator, Torrens paused. "Say, if the kid is barred from the Arena for now, how about sending him on some Hunts to get all those dickens out-"

"No."

Damas pointed him toward the elevator without looking.

"He's grounded. Try recruiting him and you're grounded, too."

Bushy eyebrows raised high, Torrens backed away, hands raised placatingly.

"Okay! Okay! Your kid's off-limits, I get it."

"Out."

"Right! Going, going!"

_______________________________

It had been a while since Jak last had a nightmare. 

It wasn't about Errol and the Baron, at least, but that was a small mercy at best.

Jak huddled behind a rock on Misty Island with Daxter, voiceless, as he watched Gol and Maia address the Lurkers they had enthralled. His stomach gurgled pathetically, and bile crept up his throat even as Daxter gave him a panicked look. 

"Don't puke!" the dream-Daxter whispered, "If you throw up, we'll get caught!"

The Acherons turned as one as green bile spewed out of Jak in an unrealistic fountain.

"The boy!" Gol snarled, pointing. "You won't escape this time!"

It would not be until after he'd woken that he would realize Gol wore Count Veger's face, not his own. 

The nightmare spiraled off into shreds of nonsense. A perfectly normal day, but Daxter was an ottsel as tall as Sig. The Precursor Stone hatching into the baby Flut-Flut from Sandover, declaring Daxter its mother. Desperately racing against the clock because for some reason some undetermined horrible fate would befall him if he didn't get a bag of pomelos out of the city.

Jak woke tangled in a lightweight blanket, curled into a knot with a dull, throbbing pain in his abdominal muscles. He lay still, completely disoriented and drenched in sweat, and tried to work out where he was. It wasn't his hammock down in the barracks, or the pallet in the room he rented with Daxter-

Oh.

As his mind woke up, the memories of the last several hours rushed back in within seconds.

Great.

No gear, no weapons, no Daxter , and Jak was basically under house arrest. Except the house in question was Damas’s . He would have groaned if it weren't that even swallowing was agony. Ignoring the twinge in his gut, he rolled to his other side, where the mattress was cooler. For the moment, he could begrudgingly set aside the humiliation of feeling helpless -- for once he didn't feel more than a hum of anxiety about that. Was that a good sign? -- for a sense of relief that no one was asking him to move. He could just lay there and ignore the world for a little while longer. 

The faint hum of the rotating fan above the bed seemed impossibly loud in the stillness, but as Jak fought to pry open his eyes, other sounds began to creep in beneath the buzz. The soft hiss of the sheet against his skin mingled with a steady scratching sound coming from behind him. There was something made of cloth that was periodically rustling on the other side of the bed. A curtain, perhaps? And beyond it, the whoops of dragonowls suggested that Jak was facing a window. He strained his ears, wondering if the window was open or closed, and picked up the sound of someone else's breathing.

Jak held his breath and listened; one ear swiveled just a fraction.

The other person's breathing was steady. No indication of trying to quiet their breath, nor any other noticeable sounds of danger. Still, the hairs on the back of Jak's neck prickled. Logically, he knew it was probably Damas. He was contaminating Damas’s room, after all. But out of habit, he huddled smaller and timed his own breathing to feign sleep. If for some reason there was a threat present, better that they underestimate him.

There was a sigh or a yawn behind him, and the scratching sound stopped abruptly. A chair creaked, and the scratching resumed.

"Are you hungry?"

Jak finally opened his eyes, and was surprised by how dark it had gotten. Clouds covered the sky, leaving only one or two stars visible through the thin curtain. The only light seemed to be coming from a lamp on the opposite end of the room. Jak's lips twitched, too tired to even frown in curiosity. What was Damas doing?

There was a gentle scoff. And then, "I know you aren't asleep. You're not the first child to try that trick with me."

After a failed attempt at rolling back over, Jak settled for making a questioning grunt. What did Damas know about kids? That was such a random thing to say!  

He heard the sound of a chair being pushed back, then footsteps approaching. His back tensed and he instinctively tucked himself into a protective curl.

Stupid, it's just Damas! he tried to tell himself, but reflex was reflex even so.

Behind him, Damas sighed heavily. After an agonizing second, a cool hand touched his shoulder.

"Alright. You're alright. See? You're safe."

Careful not to startle him further, Damas lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress and touched the back of his other hand to Jak’s cheek, then his forehead.

"Hm. Still pretty warm. The medics told me to wait until you'd gone twelve hours without throwing up before administering more light eco, but-"

More light eco? Under any other circumstances, Jak would have gone for it immediately. But channeling was one thing. Having it pumped unwillingly into his body was another matter entirely. Jak groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. He raised one hand as if to ward off the eco, or Damas.

" Channeled eco, Jak."

The hand on his shoulder squeezed lightly.

"No more respirator unless your chest hurts, I promise. And you'll tell me if it hurts, won't you?"

"Uh-uh," Jak mumbled rebelliously.

"Oh yes you will. That is, unless you want to spend the next three weeks under my direct supervision." Damas patted his shoulder and slid off the mattress to do something on the side of the room lit the small lamp.

"Now, I don't think you've eaten since this morning-"

The mere thought of food made Jak groan again. Even though the worst of the nausea seemed to have passed, his muscles ached so badly that he couldn't bear the thought of anything going in his stomach that wasn't a liquid. Precursors, he hated being sick. Being helpless. Without Daxter there, it was hard to truly feel safe. Damas obviously wanted him to feel safe, but he didn't know why Jak still flinched.

When this was all over, much as he hated to think about it, Jak thought he probably owed Damas some explanation of his fear of needles, and people touching him unexpectedly. 

Forcing himself to roll onto his back, Jak opened his eyes and tried not to slur his signs as he insisted, "Don't want food. I'm fine without it. I just need to sleep this off and I'll be out of your hair."

Belatedly he wondered if he shouldn't have used that phrase, seeing as Damas appeared to have to shave the top of his head for the sake of the crown/piercing/implant things. Well. That meant Daxter would definitely have said it.

Something metal rattled, and Damas sounded annoyed. "You know, I can't tell if you're just stubborn about accepting help, or if you're actually convinced that I secretly don't want to help you." 

He reappeared in Jak’s field of vision for a moment with a slightly melancholic set to his eyes.

"Not...not every offer of aid comes with a price tag, Jak. Relationships aren't meant to be transactional. Not with people you can trust."

"That sounds pretty idealistic for the Wastes."

Jak wasn't sure what to make of this side of Damas. Was it just because he knew Jak was younger than he'd originally thought? 

"Maybe so," Damas allowed. He held a hand out, offering Jak assistance in sitting. "Here. If you aren't going to sleep, you need to drink something."

Jak made a face. "Sleep it is."

"Very funny." Damas waited, unmoving, until Jak relented and allowed himself to be set upright. "If Sig finds out I let you get dehydrated, I'll never hear the end of it."

Catching the frown that the name elicited, the man paused before handing Jak a full canteen.

"Jak...listen to me. Understand that I'm not blaming you for any of this. I understand that we hadn't earned your trust yet. But you need to know how you ended up facing Sig in the ring this morning."

Jak's fingers tightened on the canteen. He hitched his shoulders and looked away, inching his knees up until they rested against his chest. He didn't want to talk about that.

Damas kept talking anyway.

"By law, you weren't supposed to be eligible to compete in the Arena," he said, "but even if you had been, candidates aren't supposed to be pitted against their teachers for the sake of getting a fully accurate read on their skills." 

Damas grimaced.

"And no one in Spargus knew that Sig had been training you before Haven separated the two of you."

"H- haven's fault," Jak whispered. "T'p'cal."

"No," Damas corrected him, " My fault. The moment I started involving myself with your training, I should have started asking questions about who taught you to fight before I found you." He tugged at his beard thoughtfully. "I thought your style of shooting looked familiar, but never thought to ask."

Jak pinned the flask between his knees to free his hands and gave Damas an odd look. "You can recognize people's way of shooting?"

"Sure, if you've fought by their side long enough." Damas shrugged. "Doubtless you'll pick that up as you get older."

If he were being honest with himself, Jak had never given much thought to growing older. When every single day -- every hour -- had been a fight for survival for so long, it was hard to see past the next moment. He didn't really plan for the future. What would he even be like as an adult? The most he could pin down for any kind of ambition was having a real beard! Well, maybe a beard and having a metalhead kill count as high as Sig’s. But so far he was on track to accomplish the latter before he turned eighteen.

That was still two years away. Two years before Damas intended to let him become a full citizen of Spargus. Two years before he legally belonged somewhere. Jak's mood soured with his stomach. Part of him could almost approve of this ban on child soldiers...if he hadn't been the soldier in question. After the frankly horrific things he'd been put through by the adults around him since he was four , being suddenly treated as "too young" felt insulting.

"What?"

Of course Damas had seen his expression change. Jak had always tended to wear his heart on his sleeve. He sipped from the canteen to give him an excuse for not answering -- something Damas recognized as a ploy immediately. He frowned, caught between concern and letting the boy keep the privacy of his thoughts. If Jak wanted him to know what was bothering him, doubtless he'd make it known. 

With a sigh, Damas turned away. "I'll heat some broth for you. We'll need to monitor your fluid intake for a few days to make sure you're properly hydrated."

He took a small paper envelope from a drawer containing a powder made from domesticated Glubs. A little hot water, and it would form a thin broth. A bit bland, perhaps, compared to the flavors usually produced in Spargus, but it was mild. It remained the go-to for parents with sick children. 

Was that what he was right now? The parent of a sick teenager?

Usually children weren't supposed to get sick because of something their parent had sent them to do. Not a stellar showing thus far. Then again, Jak seemed to imply that he had no experience with the way parents ought to behave to begin with. Perhaps he wouldn't judge Damas too harshly. 

Damas poured hot water into a bowl made of beach glass, and shook the powdered broth in after it. As it dissolved, a savory smell began to circulate, carried by the ceiling fan. The restless rustling from the bed indicated that it had not gone unnoticed. Jak had shifted to watch him from the corner of his eye, still clinging to the vestiges of wariness. The trick, Damas suspected, would be to behave as if everything was completely normal. 

"Alright, up you get." Damas jerked his head towards his chair. "This stuff stains. Best not to have it in bed."

Jak made a face, but slowly rotated until his legs were hanging off the bed. His limbs felt as if twenty pound weights hung off them. He gripped the frame and, after two failed attempts, hoisted himself up. Exhaustion very nearly pulled him back down immediately. 

I thought sleep was supposed to help!

Crossing the few feet to the chair was tortuously slow. Jak yawned, and then hissed in muted pain. Seemed like that soreness in his throat wasn't going away any time soon. He fell heavily into the chair and allowed himself a small scowl. Surely he was allowed to be a little surly after all of that!

"Wha-"  

Bad idea. Even one syllable felt like claws raking down his esophagus. At least it had the intended result of getting Damas’s attention. Back to signing it was.

"What if I don't have two years?"

Damas looked at him strangely and stopped stirring the broth for a moment. 

"What does that mean?"

Nerves shot through his chest, spiking his pulse like he was preparing for a fight.

"What if I don't have two years? The monks- they said the Day Star is coming. End of the world crap. I don't-"

He debated with himself for a minute, wondering whether he ought to just stop there. Damas would understand what he was getting at, right?

But the truth was, Jak was too busy fighting just to stay awake to devote any energy to hiding his vulnerability for once.

"Are you really going to make me wait until maybe we survive the apocalypse to have the same rights as everyone else?"

Damas remained frozen, and the confusion turned to concern, lining the creases of his face. Then he let out the breath he was holding and set the spoon down. In lieu of an immediate answer, he leaned down to hand the broth to Jak. It was warm, but not hot. Jak let it rest against his chest a moment, soothing the muscles as he had with the tea.

"Jak, this is not Haven. Being a minor does not mean you have no rights in Spargus," Damas said. He crouched beside the chair and held Jak's stare, willing him to understand. "It means that you have more protections than most. It- until you are eighteen you don't have to compete for citizenship, you simply are Spargan."

"An'...aft..er?" Jak croaked, narrowing his eyes.

"And after you turn eighteen, you will earn your last amulet," Damas replied. "For those already considered citizens by their age -- including you, now -- that means earning the rite of passage that lets you join either the Warriors Guild or the Hunters."

Most of the few children born in Spargus -- or brought by parents who were competing for citizenship -- were taught this within weeks of arrival, if not from birth. It couldn't be helped: Jak had deliberately misled them about his age, and so they could hardly be faulted for not giving him the information minors traditionally received. Damas wondered in the back of his mind if Jak had ever seen the way other youth in Spargus were treated, or if the complications of his own past were simply overshadowing every interaction he witnessed. In Haven-

Oh.

In Haven Jak had had no rights, isn't that what he'd said?

Forced to work off some kind of debt he didn't owe, by the sound of it, given no say in his situation. 

Ah, therein lay the problem. Autonomy. Like all Wastelanders, Jak viewed the thought of losing his autonomy with fear and anger.

Damas nodded slowly as if agreeing with his thoughts. He looked at the boy, comically dwarfed by the chair and oversized chiton both, and affection spread through his chest to wrap around his ribs like bands of iron. Perhaps Jak didn't understand it yet, but he wasn't alone anymore. He was fully Spargan now, if he so chose, and his people defended each other to the death. Jak had Daxter, and Daxter had Jak, but did either of them have a community before this? By the looks of it: no.

"Jak," Damas said, trying his best to be both gentle and firm -- he was out of practice. Two years was too long -- "Taking responsibility for you does not mean I'm going to hold it over your head like a threat, or leverage that authority against you. I will not make any decisions regarding you without your input. You have my word."

Jak tried to hide a skeptical look behind the bowl of broth, but he was only partially successful. In the Baron’s prison, no one asked what he wanted. No one cared when he fought, when he screamed. Compared to the labs, even his and Daxter’s status in Sandover as "Samos's personal labor-saving devices" felt like complete freedom. At least they'd been able to leave if they'd wanted.

Even here, despite being cared for , even being shown some kind of affection , the inability to leave under his own power stung. It burrowed down under Jak's skin, trying to dredge up the feelings of helplessness and panic that locked doors still triggered in him.

"Nature abhors a cage," Damas quoted suddenly. He smiled, a little grimly. "The captain of the guard told me that, when I was a boy. I didn't understand what he meant until I was older. But I suspect you understand already, don't you?"

He can't know! Can he?

Jak choked down a sip of glubbroth and muscled through the gag reflex the pain triggered. He peered over the colorful edge of the bowl to study Damas’s expression. How much did he really know? And how much had he guessed?

Damas patted his leg, then stood. "If you'd rather finish your recovery in C-Ward with your friend, I can arrange that in the morning. You're still confined to the tower until you're fully recovered, but the ward is more open than my chambers."

Now Jak had a dilemma. More open space felt less like a cell, but if it was an entire ward, that meant almost no privacy. And Jak was prone to night terrors. Being... monitored ...wasn't a nice thought. It made his brain itch, and his skin crawl. But in a medical ward, there were doctors. Jak had no fond memories of doctors. A ripple across the broth gave him away, in spite of his best effort to keep from shuddering.

Lights overhead- 

Faces looming over him, poking at him-

"N- no...doc...tors," Jak whispered, almost pleading.

"I need to have at least one look you over, Jak-"

"Please!"

Jak tensed.

"I...can't."

Damas leaned back on his heels and wished that he could say he was surprised. Seventeen faded needle marks on each arm, twelve on his chest, and four faded to silvery nothings on his cheekbone: they all gave more than enough reason for a man to hate anyone in the medical profession. Gods, what Damas would've given for a chance to get his hands on the people who had done this to a youngling . Who had so destroyed his trust in other people that he even feared what Damas might do while he was vulnerable. 

"Would- would it-" Damas fidgeted, feeling well and truly useless in that moment. Just to give his hands something to do, he began to collect the emptied teacup from before, and the canteen.

"Would it help if I was there? The whole time?"

Like sitting with Mar through a checkup-

Jak stared into his bowl, face dark with shame. "'M no' a co'ard," he whispered, more to assure himself than Damas.

Damas stepped around the chair and set the dishes in his sink. He sighed as he reached for a rough cloth to scour them with.

"The man who avoids the scorpion after having been stung is not a coward, Jak. Nor are you a coward for not wanting to return to an environment where you were abused before."

He didn't turn around. He wasn't sure he could bear to see the boy's expression. 

Part of him wanted to reassure Jak, to promise him that he would never let anyone hurt him again. But he'd hurt Jak. He'd put him in the situation that led to this moment just as surely as if he'd dosed the poor boy with the poison gas himself. What good were empty words now? Jak's trust had to be earned . He only hoped he had not lost it fully.

"Okay," Damas said after a moment, and his shoulders fell slightly. "No doctors, Jak. I won't let them touch you. We'll just bring Daxter here -- if he can mind his tongue -- is that a fair compromise?"

"......'kay."

It was quiet for a little while. Damas focused on cleaning the dishes he'd been putting off -- and he'd been putting them off for a while . Even now he was only washing them because they allowed him to procrastinate and put off writing his metalpede debrief! He could feel Jak's eyes on him, burning against his back, but forced himself to keep scrubbing. If he stopped now, the pan would stay dirty until the crack of doom. Perhaps seeing him in such a mundane context would help to put the boy at ease.

"I...know what my monks are saying. About the world coming to an end."

Damas turned on the tap just long enough to rinse suds and debris from the pan, swiftly cutting it off to conserve water.

"But we are survivors . We have always been survivors. I believe that our people will live on long after the world as we know it dies."

He turned slightly to meet Jak's gaze. "You can call that optimism if you want. I call it being a hard-headed old man who doesn't care for the idea of pre-written fates."

He snorted.

"Spent enough of my life raised with people always telling me who I was and who I had to be. What my "destiny" was. They all thought the world was ending when Praxis took control of Haven, but here I am, and where are they?"

"Dead...like P-r-ax-is, prob-abl-y," Jak croaked wryly. 

"May even the worms reject his bones," Damas answered with a kind of perverse cheer.

"A- men." Jak huffed out what was probably a laugh. 

When he had finally chipped the last bits of burnt rice out of the pan, and scrubbed it...tolerably clean, at least, Damas set it aside to dry. He shook water from his hands and eyed his counter critically. He was nearly out of salt. Despite living on the coast, salt was fairly expensive to trade for. He'd need to check the budget he allotted himself.

Rice was low, too. He needed to stock up on rice. It was mild enough, and filling -- and Jak desperately needed the subcutaneous fat to start building some more muscle. He could still see the boy's ribs whenever he lifted his arms!

The thought trailed idly into other supplies he might need for any future plans of making Jak live in the tower with him. Clothing allowances, a spare cot -- or spare room: Jak was a teenager, and he'd doubtless resent having to share an apartment with Damas. Perhaps-

No. Mar's room was off-limits. Mar's room would be off-limits even if his son were still alive home. Children needed boundaries and all that. 

The Aviary was out of the question. Poor Jak would never sleep again if he was stuck in there, even without Onin's wretched little familiar jabbering away. 

There was a room directly above his in the floor plan that he occasionally used for small meetings. It wouldn't take much to replace the passcode system with a door that locked from the inside, and it could easily fit a cot and foot locker in there. Damas wasn't sure he liked the thought of Jak being an entire floor away, considering his penchant for rash decisions, but it was worlds closer than a room rented in the West Market. Damas resolved to set a crew working on the room the moment he was finished with the metalpede debrief the following morning. 

Maybe he'd ask Jak if he thought Daxter would prefer a bed or a hammock. Involve him in the process, let him feel some ownership over the space.

"Done with that?" Damas turned and eyed the bowl.

Jak scowled and pulled the bowl closer. Food in Spargus wasn't nearly as scarce as in the poorer districts of Haven, but Jak still knew to guard every crumb. Even if he didn't have much of an appetite at the moment, he didn't know when he would eat next. He couldn't afford to waste a drop.

Thankfully, Damas didn't take the broth away. He made an inscrutable face and went to go sit on the edge of his bed. He sat there for a while, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely laced together. He seemed to be deep in thought.

Jak twitched when a dragonowl screamed from right outside the window. Shrill little beggars. He was never ready for the hunting screech. Damas didn't seem to be fond of the noise either. He made a sound that, at some point in its life, might have been a laugh.

"Yeah. My son used to hate that sound, too. He wouldn't sleep unless I put music on to drown it out."

Jak lost his grip on the bowl and barely caught it before it flipped. Broth sloshed back and forth, over the edge and onto his lap. He barely noticed.

"You...have a...kid?!"

What was Damas doing wasting his time with Jak if he had his own kid?! Who was he? Had Jak met him?

His racing thoughts screeched to a halt when he saw a raw, naked pain flicker across Damas’s face. 

"So-rry, I-"

Damas shook his head. "No, it's alright, it's...hard to talk about, but you would have found out sooner or later."

He paused, as if to gather his composure, then sighed.

"His...his name was Mar. He would have been five this year. He...I think he would have liked you."

Jak felt as though he was going to throw up again. Would have been. 

"Mar was a, a channeler. Like you. Not just dark eco, all eco. As if he were a living prism. That hadn't- hadn't been seen in my family for generations. I didn't know what to expect."

Damas’s eyes unfocused, staring into a past he could never change. 

"I put my trust in the wrong person, Jak. I believed Onin when her familiar told me all would be well if I brought Mar to her to be tested."

Jak swallowed hard, winced, and set his bowl down on his sticky legs. 

"Onin sent me to the Baron’s labs," he said with shaking hands, " She told him where I'd be. That I was good with eco. Found out the last night before they banished me. Daxter heard something he wasn't supposed to and told me."

Damas groaned and dropped his head into his hands. " Rot that witch," he cursed, "Rot her with acid . I thought- I thought perhaps if I kept her familiar here he might slip up and tell me something about Mar. What truly happened the night of the ambush. Whether he lives at all. But he is very good at deflecting questions with sheer idiocy."

Jak bit the insides of his cheeks. He had always known Haven was a deeply corrupt city. He'd known it wasn't safe for children -- he had a wealth of personal experience on that front. Damas’s poor kid, if he was alive, was probably in prison with the other children the Baron had been rounding up while looking for Jak's childhood self. 

"Is that why you had Sig spying on Haven?" he asked.

Damas nodded. "It may be a fool's hope to think he can find my son. I am aware that- that he may only find-"

His voice cracked and he cut himself off.

"...I just want answers."

"I'm so sorry." Jak looked away and fidgeted with the bowl. "If I could help-"

"No." Damas finally looked up, and Jak was shaken to see moisture in the man's eyes. "I- it is not that I think you can't . I know you are capable of things grown men can only dream of. Someday, you may even rival Sig’s reputation. But I cannot lose you like I lost my son."

Much quieter, almost below the edge of Jak's hearing, he added, "I already came too close to it today."

It took four or five seconds for the words to sink in fully. They circled his mind and then settled heavily, dropping through his brain to sink like a stone in his gut.

Damas actually cared.

Damas cared like Daxter cared.

Or, well, a little different, but only a little. 

"Why?"

Damas narrowed his eyes, puzzled. "What do you mean why?"

Jak couldn’t stop himself -- neither could the pain shooting down his throat.

"Why d- you wan' me? I'm. No' a. H-ero. Any-more. F- freak. Sp- spare... key!"

Each syllable clawed its way out of his esophagus more painfully than the last, and the amount of his voice that had rallied grew fainter. His stomach lurched the second he tried to swallow again.

Not again, please not again-!

At least he was holding a bowl. At least it all had somewhere to go.

No, he couldn't! The bowl was seaglass, it looked expensive! Jak would never be able to afford something like that. He didn't dare ruin Damas’s, did he?

But he said- he said I'm kinda like his kid, a plaintive little voice inside him reasoned, He won't be mad, right?

Jak clenched his jaw and hunched down until the decision was made for him. He retched, and then the broth shot back out through his teeth. It dripped down his chin, into the bowl and down his neck.

His face was on fire. Once again, he'd lost control of his own body. He'd probably ruined the chiton, and drool and vomit stained the corners of his mouth like the first week of the dark eco injections. Shame pricked at his eyes, and for a mortifying second his breath hiccuped.

"Ohhh..."

Damas stood with a jerky motion.

"Oh no...was it too soon for the broth?"

As if he didn't even see the mess, Damas took the bowl gently from Jak's trembling fingers. "I'm going to wash this out, hold on. I'll be back."

Jak barely noticed, too focused on subduing his rebellious, leaking eyes, until a wet cloth touched his face. Without comment, the king of the Wastelanders wiped the puke away. Jak lost the battle against his overwrought emotions. 

Who was he that the king of Spargus should notice him? Who was Jak that such a hardened warrior would stoop to clean up after him when he was sick -- even wiping vomit from his face! He didn't understand!

Damas watched tears slide down the boy's cheeks, and wished he couldn't guess why those tears were shed in complete silence. He hated it; he hated himself for being the catalyst that brought Jak to this state. But at the same time he understood the necessity of catharsis -- while no more desirable than vomiting at times. How long had Jak bottled everything up inside? A few tears were alright- healthy, even. Of course, Jak had probably never been told that. Even Damas hadn't learned the good of tears until he'd been out of Haven's grasp for a year. 

He hesitated for a moment, then brushed the hair from Jak's eyes. "Is this inside hurt, or outside hurt?"

He was met with the most miserable, questioning face. Fair enough, Jak wouldn't know what he meant; that was something he'd always asked Mar when he'd been too young to give good descriptions of pain.

Jak was young, too. So young to have lived through so much.

So he gestured to the boy's tears.

"Does your body hurt, or is this an injury of the heart?"

Jak covered his face. "Dunno why'm cry'n," he gasped between silent tremors. 

"Perhaps," Damas suggested, leaving his hand over Jak's head, "it's simply what your body needs at the moment."

It was more than that. It was a tidal wave of emotions too jumbled for Jak to sort through. Confusion and disorientation when the loathing he'd internalized was challenged. Pain driven by the realization that no one had treated him like this since he was too young to train. Anger while reckoning with the knowledge that he'd gone a full lifetime deprived of the kind of care other children knew to expect. Jak wanted to scream. He wanted to shake everyone he'd ever known by the shoulders and ask "What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I good enough? Why was nothing I did ever enough for you?"

Because if someone like Damas could set aside crown and command for the moment to sit with him at his lowest, why couldn't Samos? Why couldn't Torn? Why couldn't Uncle?

There was a part of Jak that was afraid, too. He didn’t want to let his guard down, or grow used to this kindness, lest it end abruptly once he was deemed recovered. But on the other hand, what did he have to lose if Damas was being genuine? Would that empty place that had plagued his heart all his life finally stop whispering questions without answers? Could he pretend, just in the privacy of his mind, that he sort of had something almost like a father?

Damas’s hand pressed down on his hair, as though he were trying to embed his words in Jak’s skull.

"You don't have to justify your existence, kid, or be…perfect or something, just to "deserve" to be cared for. Life isn't a Spargus citizenship trial. I don't calculate my worth by how useful I have been to others, and neither should you."

A few more seconds passed quietly, with no sounds over the hum of the fan and Jak's soft, hiccuping breaths. Another night bird cooed gently from a windowsill a floor up -- a mournful sound. A lament for a night that would soon pass its midpoint. Damas took in a slow breath and realized immediately that he was going to have to open a window soon if he didn't want his chambers to smell like bile for days.

"Let's get you back in bed," he said, and fought back a yawn. "We'll see how you feel in the morning, alright Jak?"

It took a few seconds for Jak to even process that he was being spoken to. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and gritted his teeth hard. After everything, he was too wrung out to even be embarrassed anymore. In the coming days, his feelings regarding the situation would go in cycles from tentative trust to embarrassment to lingering confusion and back again. But for now, he was so far beyond exhausted that he was starting to have difficulty even stringing two thoughts together. He nodded -- if the downward flop could even be considered a nod -- and didn't protest when Damas helped him to his feet.

He'd always been a fast healer. Shouldn't his energy have come back by now? Maybe not. He had thrown up most of the eco. Ugh. He needed to wash out his mouth. Daxter would be so mad at him for not brushing his teeth. 

Jak wobbled across the room, thoughts beginning to spin in nonsensical circles. He almost didn't notice when Damas let go of his arms and let him drop to sit on the mattress. Red-rimmed eyes blinked back into focus before sliding up to watch Damas. The king moved slowly around the chamber, bending to pick up a dropped pen here, pushing a rug back in place there. His movements seemed to blur and swim, and then it faded away altogether. 

It was a great relief to Damas that the boy slept through the night. There had been no more coughing or vomiting, which was a hopeful sign. And his temperature had gone down somewhere around dawn, which boded well for his continued recovery. Damas, of course, barely slept at all. He dozed in his chair for an hour or two, but for the most part he moved between writing up his briefing and checking on Jak. When he grew too fidgety, he began laying out a clean bowl and an unopened broth packet for the coming day. Jak would still need mild foods, and Damas would have to go back to work. And as Jak would have no idea where to look for food in the apartment, it was best to set it out ahead of time.

This was not coddling. This was being practical.

Even if it was making a kid's lunch before leaving for work.

The moment the battered clock on the counter indicated that the rest of the tower was soon to begin the day, Damas was up and dressed. The talk-boxes would be ready down in Decontamination, and he could finally review that footage for the report! With Jak still sleeping soundly, he wasn't quite as worried about slipping out to visit Decon.

The Wastelander who ran the decontamination office didn't see a lot of activity on a daily basis. In fact, much of the time, Decon was locked up so she could work in the water treatment floor of the tower. Now that everything had been cleaned of poisons, today was no exception. 

A long metal shelf outside the office held a series of shallow bins, mostly empty. One near the door held Daxter's goggles and gloves. Sig's armor and clothing took up a full three bins, talk-box balanced awkwardly on top. Damas scooped it up and dropped it into the bin containing Jak's gear. Sig could always retrieve it later.

Tired as he was, when he returned to his living quarters, Damas didn't really know what to do with Jak's clean clothes. He stared at them for a few seconds, then shrugged and laid them out on the end of the bed. Jak could get them when he woke up. 

The footage from the nest was considerably more detailed than the perspective his own talk-box had picked up. Damas couldn’t help cracking a smile as he listened to Sig’s yelling. At the beginning of the mission, at least, he'd clearly been enjoying himself. And Damas didn't mind admitting that he'd actually hoped that would be the case. 

With Jak's footage capturing the left side of the caverns, and Sig’s footage getting a pretty good look at the right, Damas thought he had a pretty good idea of most of the layout of the nest.

"Don' show that part. I. Was makin' a. Weird face."

The whisper jolted Damas out of his thoughts, and he swiveled in his seat to find Jak peering groggily at him from the bed. He was still somewhat paler than was healthy, and his hair stuck out every which way in uncombed clumps. But he was sitting up without assistance, and he was talking a little, at least. Damas settled back in his chair and offered a nod in the boy's direction. 

"Did I wake you?"

"Yep."

Jak ran a hand over his face tiredly.

"Lemme see it."

Damas blinked. "What?"

The teen scowled and amended, "Please."

"See what?" Damas repeated. He glanced at the talk-boxes. "See the footage?"

"Yeah."

With a shrug, Damas picked up the video communicators and dragged his chair over to the bedside. It was a little overwhelming to watch the side by side footage at the same time while looking for specific details, but perhaps a second set of eyes would help him. He leaned back, studying the formations of the egg clusters, and the bridges of stone made from the tunneling behavior of the adult metalpedes. In the footage, Sig continued to whoop and fire at a rate some would consider reckless if they'd never met the man. Jak, by contrast, was grim and silent. Still stinging, perhaps, from being shouted at. Damas tried not to think about it. Tried not to think of the way Jak had shut down in an instant, going from the eager recruit he'd become familiar with, to a cold, jaded, soldier.

"Hhh." Jak made a sound that could have been a laugh of some kind. He leaned over Damas’s shoulder to point. "Go back. W- watch. Dax."

Obligingly, Damas rewound the footage in time to watch the ottsel man the turret gun and completely obliterate a metalpede egg. Jak nodded in satisfaction. 

"Bullseye."

It was indeed a near perfect shot. And at the speed Jak had been driving, that was fairly impressive. Damas stroked his short beard and made a noise of interest.

"I wonder how he'd fare with a sidearm made to fit his hands?" he wondered.

He glanced down at Jak.

"Daxter will be coming to check in on you sometime today, I expect. You should ask him what he thinks about turret specialist training."

Whether or not Jak heard him wasn't clear. His eyes were still glazed over as he stared at the talk-box projections, and Damas wasn't sure if he was even seeing much of the video at all. He could relate. His own eyelids felt heavy and strained. This was not a morning to skip coffee on.

"How's the stomach?" Damas yawned.

Jak blinked slowly before processing the question. "Sore," he whispered. 

"Think you can handle some coffee?"

The boy groaned. "Rot yes. You got any?"

"I can make some." Damas paused the recordings and hoisted himself out of the chair with a grunt.

It wasn't high quality -- he didn't have time to brew the strength he usually preferred -- but instant would do for the simple caffeine needed. Damas grated a little ginger and nutmeg into the mixture -- so sue him -- and poured two small cups. He usually drank his black, or cut with xocolatl on cold mornings. He had no idea how teenagers took their caffeine these days. Sig had picked up a habit of drinking abominably sweet mixtures from his time in Haven. It was enough to make a man gag just thinking about how much artificial sweetener that waterfront pub probably put in their overpriced frothy nightmares. If Jak drank the kind of coffee Sig did, he was on his own. Damas refused to keep that much sugar on hand for daily consumption. 

Somewhere between lucid and sleep-drunk, Jak seemed to forget that he wasn't with Daxter as he accepted the cup gratefully. 

" Coffee -! Ugh, I owe you my life."

The childish hyperbole hit a little too close to home. Damas cleared his throat and gingerly sat down again. He didn't want to ruin the boy's mood, and so he shoved away thoughts of the previous night's discussions.

"Hmph. Then you'd better be more careful with that life."

Jak seemed to ignore this. He gulped his coffee as if the scalding heat meant nothing, and leaned away when Damas made a grab for his cup.

"Hey! Do you want to throw up again? Slow down!"

Jak made a rebellious sound against the rim of the cup and swallowed. The soreness of his core muscles, unfortunately, outweighed the desire to burn out his headache with mediocre coffee. He nursed the cup with a sulky expression.

"Are you just gonna nag at me now?" he huffed, "What, was "Take responsibility" code for "become Samos" or something?"

Damas gave him a dirty look over his own coffee. " Samos? You equate me with that hippy eco acolyte? What'd I ever do to you?"

"Well, you sent me into a metalpede nest."

With a sigh, the king pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright, I walked into that."

He studied the footage for a few more minutes, making mental notes of the cave features that would be the most relevant to the Hunters Hall and the Warriors Guild. Any vehicles he sent in from now on would need to be heavier classes than the Gila Stomper. Perhaps with some additional armor modifications? A problem for a later hour.

When the projection played a recording of Sig, ducking clouds of gas and snarling "I'm gonna kill Damas for sending us in here!", there was an awkward pause between them. Jak glanced up at the troubled expression on Damas’s face, but couldn't muster enough processing power to say more than, "So has he tried to kill you yet?"

"Not yet," Damas answered ruefully, "Day's still young. He might get me after the briefing."

He reached up to switch off the talk-boxes and sighed again.

"I'm leaving my comm with you again. You don't have to stay in bed the whole day, but I strongly suggest you sleep off the rest of this...adventure...off. If you need it, there's a small shower through the door to the left."

Jak paused midway through another gulp of coffee and stared owlishly at him over the rim.

Hastily, he swallowed and gave an offended look.

"Wait, you were serious about keeping me in here?!"

"Well you don't have a room of your own yet, and I'm not putting you up in a broom closet, so yes." Damas gathered up his written briefing and tucked it into his belt.

"Yet?"

Damas merely hummed an affirmative. "I'll try to check in on you periodically, but getting a team to sweep the canyons for any nests we may have missed is going to take a while. There's food on the table, the instructions are on the packet."

Was he forgetting something? He felt like he was forgetting something.

"Don't set anything on fire while I'm gone."

No, that wasn't it.

"Don't let Daxter set anything on fire, either."

That wasn't it either. Oh-!

"Your gear is on the end of the bed," Damas said, pointing. "I can send Sig to pick up anything you need from your regular quarters later."

"Nah, we don't have anything," Jak rasped, far too dismissively. "Well, ammo, but that won't do me any good locked up in here."

Damas stared at him for a few seconds. Then turned away muttering, "Right. Clothing allowance. I'll...figure that out later."

Memories of the night before trickled into Jak's brain on the heels of the caffeine. 

Damas insisting that he cared about him.

The whole snafu about being technically too young to fight.

Damas...

Damas comparing Jak to his son . It was...a lot to sort through.

After being unwanted all his life, this felt like cheating. He certainly hadn't earned it.

"Do...you...want me to. To do anything? While I'm stuck here?" Jak asked, "I know I...probably messed your schedule up yesterday. If there's work that didn't get done-"

He couldn't help thinking he needed to do something to make up for everything he'd been putting Damas through.

"Rest," Damas answered flatly. "I want you to rest , Jak. There will be time enough to go haring around the desert when you're fully recovered."

The boy flopped back against the headboard and twirled the now empty cup in his fingers. "I'm not good at sitting around."

"I've noticed." Damas’s eyes twinkled as a thought struck him. "Consider it an assignment, then: while you focus on healing your body, I want you to take stock of everything around you as if you were preparing for a powerful sandstorm. If you had to be stranded in one apartment for two or three days, what would you need to get by? What would you want, to pass the time if you couldn't leave?"

If he could convince Jak to do it, the exercise would serve three purposes. First and foremost, it would distract him from his current inability to leave. Secondly, it would give him practice in thinking ahead for once. The third purpose was admittedly a little underhanded: Damas wanted a list of things he would need to put in a teenager's room if he intended to house Jak long-term. Not just necessities like running water and blankets and a cot. He wanted food preferences, opinions on colors, even preferred methods of nonviolent entertainment!

Jak might not have fully understood yet the consequences of the previous day's debacle, but that wasn't going to stop Damas from taking responsibility for his mistakes. He'd gotten them both into this mess, he wasn't going to walk away while there was damage to be undone. The road ahead, Damas was well aware, would be...challenging, at best. But the House of Mar was not a clan of cowards. 

So what if it wasn't going to be easy?

Fatherhood never was.

Chapter Text

There was a solid week of frosty looks and supervised recovery before Daxter forgave Damas. During that time his tongue was sharper than usual, his barbs more pointed than anyone had realized he was capable of. He hovered over Jak, and every time Damas approached them, he puffed himself up and glared. Even without his caustic wit, the young boy-creature wanted to make it inescapably clear: I don't trust you. Don't think you can just pretend nothing happened.

For the most part, Damas gave him his space. He really only intruded during mornings and evenings, nagging them to eat and drink. Jak didn't seem to mind too much, but Daxter knew Jak was used to being ordered around by mentors. It wasn't his fault: Samos had wanted a perfect obedient soldier. And if it hadn't been for Daxter's presence as a child, encouraging Jak's mischief, Samos might have gotten his wish fully. And at first, Daxter had considered Damas to be just another Samos, trying to backpedal on an egregiously bad decision.

Until the fifth day of Jak's recovery, when he woke in the middle of a rare afternoon thunderstorm. 

Sitting up on Jak’s pillow, Daxter looked around for his friend. He wasn't in bed, where was he? Low voices caught his attention, and the ottsel stretched up to peer down to the end of the bed.

There, sitting on the floor in an ungainly bundle of limbs, was Jak. He bent over a picture book, holding a page like it could disintegrate if he looked too hard at it. They'd never had children's books back in Sandover. Jak and Daxter had learned to read from the Explorer's nature journals, and that was a far cry from the modern style of writing.

Damas sat beside Jak on the woven rug, practically leaning over him, and gently corrected his pronunciation periodically. 

"That one's a silent letter,” he remarked, tapping the page.

Jak leaned back against his shoulder and wrinkled his nose. "Why does it need a silent letter?"

"I have no idea.” Damas sounded weirdly relaxed, like he was a completely different person.

“Blame whoever standardized our spelling two hundred years ago."

"Well where I grew up there wasn't standardized spelling,” Jak grumbled.

Damas didn't tell him not to make excuses, or to try harder. He only hummed in acknowledgment.

"That's why we're starting small. Try the next page by yourself."

Jak squinted down at the page.

"’Please daunt- wait- don't- eat me,’ said the caprid," he read, very slowly, "’I am so small and skinny. But my br- brother is just behind me, and he is much bigger’- wow this caprid is an asshole."

Damas laughed and bumped Jak's shoulder with his own. "Keep reading."

“Yeah yeah. Uh…wait, hold on.” Jak grimaced and traced his finger over the page, looking for where he'd stopped.

“Okay. ‘he is much bigger than me.’ The p- the p-”

“The Panic,” Damas prompted, never once losing his patience.

“Thanks,” Jak muttered, embarrassed. “The Panic said ‘Go then, and I will eat your bro- your brother when he comes across my bridge. But if you b- be-tray-?’”

“Good.”

“‘But if you betray your brother, no one will save you when you cross again.’ See, the caprid’s an asshole!” Jak gestured to the illustration, unimpressed.

“He's going to get eaten and I don't feel sorry for him.”

Damas made a rather poor attempt at stifling a laugh. “Well done. I'll read the next page, then we'll see if you're correct.”

Daxter sat silently on the pillow and watched them. The Spike King really was different with Jak now. Like...like...well, Daxter didn't really have a good comparison to make. He was patient, and weirdly thoughtful. Was it all an act? An overblown apology for almost getting Jak killed? Or had he been telling the truth about having always cared? The man was just bizarre.

But...but Jak was softening up, too. He didn't try to hide it from Daxter anymore when he cried after nightmares -- blessedly few though they were these days. And he didn't flinch away from touch as often -- not even when it came from someone other than Daxter! Something had happened during the night Daxter had spent in C-Ward. 

Given past experiences, Daxter would have expected Jak to have become more agitated without him, stuck in a room with the knucklehead who sent them into the nest in the first place. But strangely, Jak was more comfortable with Damas now than he'd been before the Incident!

Jak must've been here too long, because unlike Daxter, he didn't even fuss when Damas casually informed him that they'd be moving in. 

Permanently.