Well...here we go! It's been a while since I've written fanfiction, but I was playing Jak 3 again and couldn't help myself. Happy reading!

Of course Jak wasn't going to die like a normal person.

He couldn't die of heatstroke in the desert, no, that would be too easy. Too mundane. He couldn't be eaten by metalheads or fall into lava. That was too glamorous a death.

No, Jak was going to die of the fucking flu.

It had started in the desert, during a scavenger mission with Sig, when he wasn't feeling well—nausea, headache, feeling hot. Jak eventually had to pull over and vomit out the passenger side while Sig drove.

It only got worse once they reached Spargus. Jak was so dizzy that Sig had to support him with one arm. He was practically dragging the boy, half unconscious. The world was going in and out, his friends' voices weaving throughout the noise of the desert city. He struggled to stay on his feet, eventually giving up and just letting them drag on the ground as Sig pulled him forward.

"Hey." Sig shook him gently. "If I drop you off at the palace, you gonna be okay?"

"…Yeah," Jak croaked. "Just need some water."

Sig clearly didn't believe him, but he just made a noise in his throat and hauled Jak onto the lift. It rumbled to life and took them up to the throne room.

Damas was sitting on his throne, glaring at a map as if it had insulted his parentage. He looked up when the trio entered the room. "Ah. You're back, good. I was getting worried, I think a storm might be coming soon." He inhaled sharply. "Is Jak…?"

Damas eyed the teenager. He was pale and shaking, odd for the usually steady Jak. "What happened?" he asked Sig.

Sig dropped Jak beside the pool, where he laid his head back against the stone pillar. Daxter reached down and started to cup water in his hands, urging his friend to drink.

"Dunno," Sig said grimly. "But it's getting worse. In the hour long drive back to the city, he threw up a bunch and then practically passed out on me." Sig nodded to the king. "Any monks around to help him?"

Damas frowned. "Not at the moment. They're all at the Temple right now, meditating in seclusion."

He walked over to where Jak was now pressing his flushed cheek against the pillar. Damas reached down and pressed the back of his fingers to the Jak's forehead. His frown deepened.

"What?" Daxter asked. "What now?"

"He's hot to the touch." Damas swept a lock of the boy's hair back, where it clung to the side of his face. "Do you see? He's sweating like an animal."

"Heat stroke?" Sig suggested. Damas shook his head. "What's wrong with him?"

"Sickness," Damas said simply. "A fever brought on this suddenly is never good. He didn't seem any different from normal before he set out."

"Jak? Jak, are you gonna die?" Daxter wailed and shook his friend's collar. "Oh, the humanity! Who will make me lunch now?!"

"…Ugh…" Jak's eyes rolled and he closed them again. Daxter let out a loud, melodramatic cry.

"Knock it off, furball," Sig ordered. "Jak'll be fine, he just needs some rest. Right, Damas?" Damas was still frowning, which only worried Sig more. "You think he needs a medic?"

"Sig. Take him to Ionna." Damas' voice was low and grim. "It could subside, but I'd rather not take the chance. She'll be able to help him."

"Got it." Sig glanced down. "Uh…I guess I'll have to carry him."

"Hey! Why don't you just get this lady to come up here to help him?" Daxter snapped. Damas' frown turned into a twisted snarl. "Heh heh…just a suggestion, Your Sandiness."

"…Ionna will not come to the palace at my beck and call," he responded. "She has other Wastelanders to attend to, many of whom require almost constant care. Get moving."

Sig heaved Jak up into his arms, surprised by how light the kid was. Sure, Jak had never been a big guy, but he felt like a child in Sig's arms. Daxter climbed up to sit on Jak's chest.

"Check back here to update me on his condition once she takes a look at him," Damas directed. Sig nodded as he stepped onto the lift. The last thing he saw before he left the palace was Damas staring after him, a strange kind of concern on his face.

The world was a swirling mess of darkness and light.

Jak wasn't sure what was real and what was in his mind. He was certain that his eyes were open, but his vision kept fading in and out, swirling around him like a dream.

He was moving, he thought, or maybe it just seemed that way. Hazy voices drifted through the fog, murmurs about monks and water. There were also some ghostly voices, whispering as they spoke of eco and prophecies and sages and…

…and everything went dark again.

The medic center that Ionna ran was a tiny place in the wall of Spargus. Beds lined the main room, with thin curtains that gave the patient a bit of privacy. There was a long counter, with a stone basin in it and a water pump beside it. Sig had been there a few times for some of his nastier encounters with metalheads, as well as once when he'd had some trouble sleeping.

"Sig, surprised to see you." The voice that floated through the room was soft and clear. "Not hurt again, I hope?"

"Not me." Sig grimaced and set Jak down in one of the empty beds. Daxter anxiously hovered on the edge, his head whipping between the two. "Jak here is sick. Anything you can do to help?"

The woman—Ionna—reached down and pulled one of his eyelids open and hummed. "Tell me what happened."

Sig explained the situation, while Ionna pumped some water into a bowl. She glanced down at Daxter and frowned.

"No pets," she said firmly. "Sig, take it back with you."

"Hey! I'm not a pet!" Daxter snapped. As people tended to be, Ionna was surprised when he spoke. "Jak's my sidekick, I'll have you know, and I'm not going anywhere."

"…No rat fur on anything, you hear?" She placed the bowl beside the bed and brought out a soft cloth.

"Whatever." Daxter huffed indignantly. "Can you help Jak or not?"

"We'll see." She dipped the cloth into the water and gently placed it on his forehead. "Let's cool him down first."

"He gonna be alright? I think Damas is worried." Sig leaned on his Peacemaker. "I dunno what happened."

"He has some kind of an infection," Ionna said evenly. She reached into a cabinet and pulled out a tin container. "Probably been festering for a while, and now it's gotten too bad for his body to fight off on its own. Like I said, we'll wait and see if he needs more treatment, or if he's okay with rest."

She popped the tin open and pulled out a small pill. "Antibiotics. Do you have to report to Damas?" she asked Sig.

He nodded. "Yeah. Listen, I'll check back in later, but…take care of him. He's a good kid."

Sig nodded to Daxter and left. Ionna put the pill in a glass of water and stirred it, dissolving the pill. She pressed the glass to Jak's lips and he swallowed automatically. As she set the glass aside, she pursed her lips and pressed her hand against his cheek. Daxter looked up at her.

"What? What now?" He paced along Jak's chest, literally wringing his hands. "Ah, geez, he's dying! He's dead! He's a zombie!"

"Does your mouth ever close?" Ionna huffed out a breath of air and stood. "His fever is a little higher than I'd like, that's all. I'd like to bring it down as quickly as possible."

Ionna reached into the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of liquid light eco. Strange, she thought. The eco seemed to be…energetic today. It was hot to the touch and was vibrating in the bottle. "I need you to move away from him," she told the animal. He hurumphed and turned away from her, refusing to leave.

"No way!" he said loudly. She rolled her eyes.

"I cannot treat him if you don't get away from him." She gave the animal a stern glare. He gulped and jumped onto the bedside table. "Thank you. Now, this treatment will exhaust him, so I suggest you be quiet around him, so as to not wake him."

She was wary of giving a person too much light eco—it was easy to overload a body with it. She didn't even really want to give it, but the boy's fever was too high. Whatever infection he had, he needed something stronger than just regular medicines.

Ionna uncorked the bottle.

Like a magnet, without her direction, the eco zoomed out of the bottle. She gasped, attempting to snatch it out of the air, but it was already heading straight for the bed-ridden boy. "No!"

The eco hit his body and sunk into him. Instead of what she expected—a shout of pain, a gasp of breath, she had even seen seizures—the boy just inhaled and exhaled deeply, while the light eco settled in his body.

His breathing eased up and some of the tension in his face dissipated. Nothing besides that happened, and the rat didn't seem to notice anything unusual. Ionna stepped away, the empty bottle in her hand shaking.

Was this the boy Seem had warned her about? The boy who was tainted by dark eco…the one Seem claimed could turn into a monster?

Then…why was he channeling light eco?

The world was blinding.

Jak wasn't really sure where or when he was. There was Samos, sitting by his bed one minute, then a buck-toothed, human Daxter standing with his hands on his hips, then he morphed into Gol Acheron with a harsh laugh, that turned into the cold, cruel one of Erol.

He was hot. He was cold. He was nothing.

Fuck, he was spinning. He felt like he was going to vomit.

He did.

There were several times that Jak vaguely remembered sitting up, leaning over to be violently sick, and then passing back out. A few times, he was awake enough to feel someone giving him water to greedily gulp down.

But he didn't fully wake up for several days, until the bright morning sunlight burst through his eyelids. He gave a loud groan and lifted his arm over his head. Great Precursors, he felt like hell.

"Hold on, child, don't sit up just yet." He heard a woman's voice, followed by some banging around, before he felt a presence beside him.

The woman was gentle, her thin hands wiping his forehead with a cool cloth. Jak blearily opened his eyes.

"..What happened…?"

"You fell ill," she said. "Sig brought you in, said none of the monks were a help to you." Her voice had the coarse, rough quality that all Wastelanders' did, but it was softer and quieter. She reached up and checked his forehead.

"Your fever's gone down, good. It broke last night. You're recovering nicely, I must say."

Jak went to sit up and immediately regretted it. He felt his empty stomach flip and gagged on bile. The woman grabbed a bucket she had set aside and held it out for him. He took advantage of it.

When he finished vomiting, the woman pointed to a small table beside the bed. "Water and a cloth. Rinse out your mouth and spit."

Of course, with his impeccable timing, that was when Daxter decided to wake up and screech, "Jak, you're alive!"

Jak almost swallowed the water, but the woman quickly slapped his back. He spit it out in a spray and coughed. "D—Daxter, geez! Don't scare me."

"Don't scare you? Don't scare you?!" Daxter leapt up on the bed and shook Jak's shoulders. "You throw up organs out of your body, but I scared you? Gah!"

"You're exaggerating, Dax," Jak said wearily. "It wasn't that bad."

"You should listen to your friend," Ionna chastised him. She stood up and folded her arms. "Fevers like this are nothing to laugh at, especially not in the desert heat."

Jak turned to look at the woman for the first time. She started moving around the room, putting bottles and crates back into the cupboards where they belonged. Jak could only see glimpses of her as she flitted about, quickly getting work done.

She was paler than most of the other Wastelanders, who were usually some level of tan from the desert sun. Her long hair was a sun-bleached blonde, almost white, and was tied at the nape of her neck. Her bangs were pinned back with a headband made of sparkling green seaglass; oddly, she was also barefoot, not wearing the normal boots that Wastelanders wore. It was hard to tell how old she was—much like the other Wastelanders, sun and stress had aged her. However, she looked just as tough as any of the others, with a rifle strapped to her back and several knives on her belt.

"…Thanks," Jak said awkwardly. "Um…what do I owe you?"

Because nothing came free in the world. Not in Haven, not in Spargus. The woman gave him a sideways look.

"It's fine," she said finally. "I owe Sig a favor. I am Ionna, by the way. A medic."

Silence descended over the room as Ionna continued to put things away. Jak shrugged at Daxter and rinsed his mouth out again, trying to get the bitter taste of sick out of it.

"Damn it!" There was the sound of glass breaking as Ionna dropped one of the bottles she'd been holding. Eco spilled out, a silvery-blue puddle on the floor. Jak could sense it and almost gasped.

"Is that…light eco?" The familiar pull seemed to spark through him, wanting to absorb it and take it for himself. He shuddered and pushed the sensation away. "Why do you have that?"

"Healing purposes," she replied. He watched in astonishment as she reached down, gently extended her palm, and picked up the eco. It didn't go into her body, as it did to Jak, but it swirled around in her palm. She guided the eco into another empty bottle with careful, steady hands. Both of the boys were speechless as she capped the bottle and started to sweep up the glass, seemingly oblivious to their stunned faces.

"You some kinda monk?" Daxter asked her.

"Mmm. Of sorts." The woman didn't seem keen on talking about it. "I wouldn't call myself that, however. I'm just very talented with light eco."

"Eh, Jak can do that with his eyes closed!" Daxter nudged his friend. "Right, Jak?"

"…No, Dax." He was still staring, wide-eyed, at Ionna. "I can't."

It was a funny thing, channeling eco. It had always come naturally to Jak, but it was a very…rudimentary type of channeling. Growing up, Jak had always envied how easily Samos could manipulate green eco. Jak could pull it in and let it go through his body, but Samos could move it. He could push and pull it, send it streaming across the room. He could collect it, store it, crystallize it, and liquefy it.

Meanwhile, all Jak could do was use it.

Not even the monks and Onin could control eco like Samos—and Ionna, he supposed—could. They used soft touches, sparks and flits of eco. As if they could feel it and move it around, but never really hold onto it. No, just like Jak, they could only use it, never capture it.

"Are you a sage?" he blurted out. Ionna almost dropped the bottle again. "An eco sage?"

"A sage?" Daxter shrieked. "Ugh, we already got one of those! And let me tell you, he's a pain in my—!"

"I shouldn't be surprised you noticed," Ionna mused. "You clearly have an affinity for eco, as well. But I don't know that you could call me a sage, however talented I am with eco."

Ionna walked over the bed and reached out to check Jak's temperature again. "Hmm…you're still warm, but I'd say you're almost back up to snuff. Three more days."

"Three days?!" Daxter shouted. A loud moan came from another bed and Ionna glared at him. "Heh heh…I mean, three days?"

Three days? Jak shifted in the bed and grimaced. He hated being confined to one spot for too long. The last time had been when he was a child, and Samos had fished him and Daxter out of the sea. He'd been stung by a jelly-eel and was out of commission for almost a week.

"You don't seem to understand, young man." Ionna turned her stern gaze on Jak, who felt like a misbehaving child. "You almost died."

"What was wrong with me, anyway?" Jak grumbled.

"An infection," she said simply. "Probably from a wound you got on a mission. It happens a lot with Wastelanders, but yours was particularly bad."

There was another loud moan and Ionna went to go take care of that person. Jak and Daxter both sighed in unison.

"Well, buddy, I guess we're stuck here for the time being." Daxter hopped up on his friend's shoulder. "Wanna play hangman?"

"This is stupid," Jak said. "She can't stop me from leaving." He stood up—ignoring the fact that his vision spun when he did—and started for the door.

There was a single, loud, echoing clap, followed by a brilliant light flashing in front of him. Out of nowhere, Ionna appeared in front of him. She lifted her chin and placed a hand on his chest.

"Oh, can't I?"