Breaking the Cycle

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, the game, or anything affiliated with Jak and Daxter. Also, Dax has a bit of sailor's tongue, and, yeah. That's it.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm on one big wheel, trapped in a cycle, ya' know? Sure, when we're kicking metal head ass or shooting up Krimson (what, was C not good enough for 'em?) Guard, I can get caught up in the moment. Even if Jak goes dark, I'm so full of adrenaline that I'm just thankful that I'm not the one that pissed him off to begin with, and I just enjoy the show.

It's when we get to the base (we can never seem to think of this place as home, no matter how much we probably should) and lay down for the night that I'm forced to remember, that no, this isn't Sandover, and the Jak who use to smile and laugh, even if he never talked, is gone forever.

Most nights, I don't go to sleep, can't. I pretend long enough to convince Jak that I'm off in dreamland, but after that, my eyes are wide open baby. From then on, there's nothing left to distract me from everything else. It's a set routine by now that never seems to change.

First, it's always a wave of homesickness. It's like the precursors took everything about Sandover, and flipped it to make New Haven. Instead of green trees and a blue sky, there are dark buildings and an even darker smoggy cover. At the very least it's so different and foreign, that most things don't bring with them a pang of people missed and gone. Sometimes though, it is the sheer not rightness that reminds me that Samos and Keira aren't here, and they never will be. It's usually around the time that I have crushed all these feelings to somewhere behind my spine that Jak's own demons start stirring up trouble.

I always walk up to Jak's head (you never sneak up on a soldier, especially in their war zone) since it's the safest place to be, and I start patting and touching anywhere I can reach. Sometimes I'll start whispering stories of the good 'ole days, or I'll just ramble on about my day. I know that Jak doesn't need anything specific, he just needs to know that he isn't strapped down to a table anymore with things sticking in him. Even when he starts kicking and punching, I don't even try to hold him down. That would just open up a whole 'nother can of dark eco worms that he don't need to deal with.

After he's done tossing and turning, (a serious understatement as we're on our third bed already) that's when stage two kicks in for me, and it's a whole helluva lot worse than stage one. It gets so bad sometimes, that I can't even look at him. Other times I can't take my eyes off of him, like a train wreck. It's even worse though, because I'm not just a bystander, I'm the guy at central station that could stop the train if he wanted to, but only did after half the train's already engulfed in flames.

Jak sleeps with less clothes on then he wears when he's awake. Don't get me wrong, guy's still layered like there's a blizzard outside, but you can see more skin than usual. After he kicks off the blankets you can see some of his legs, but his neck is the worst. There's a reason why he doesn't like people touching the scarf, and it ain't because he likes to make a fashion statement.

What's even worse is that everywhere you look, there's a scar screaming 'look at me' so loud that I can't turn away. Whether Errol, Praxis, or just a random metal-head made it, doesn't matter, because Jak has it. The only place that is scar free is the worst place to look. No matter what though, my eyes always end up there anyways; his face. The face of a seventeen-year-old boy that in his short life has seen and been through more horrors than most adults would ever know. This face that used to smile at seeing nearly anything, which used to laugh at everything, is now stuck with only a bitter laugh and a ruthless sneer. The thing that breaks me though, that sends my paws shaking and my eyes blurry is that it's all. My. Fault.

When he was captured, it took me two years to get him out. If it was me who was captured and Jak the one being the hero like he always was, I would've been out of there in a week, a month tops. It took me two years. In those two years they locked him a box, tortured him, and experimented on him with anything that popped in to their twisted minds. If I was capable . . . no, not even that, if I was a good friend, I would have been able to save him. I would still have a Jak that knew how to smile. A Jak that people wouldn't treat like a rabid dog that might turn on them at any second.

All night, the 'what if's' and 'could have been's' relentlessly claw at me, until I finally curl up and sleep, a few house before dawn. It was a constant routine that happened every night that we had enough energy to not just collapse on the bed. Well . . . it was a routine until Jackie boy broke it.

It was another of the tattooed wonder's missions, having us go out into the middle of a metal head nest because they were doing something to the blah blah blah. What was important was that I lost count of how many metal heads we killed, ten minutes into the mission. We eventually wiped the entire base out, it took two hours and all our ammo, but we beat 'em, and then for good measure, blew their asses to next Friday.

It was already well into the night and Jak had just gotten over a rough batch of nightmares, when I couldn't hold the thoughts off any longer. Torn had made a comment earlier in the day about how, what was the word he used, feral, Jak acted, and seeing him fight today had only reaffirmed that fact. A whole host of thoughts, comments from others, and looks from the boy wonder himself, kept flashing through my mind, giving the dark claws guns and ammo as they tore down what little defenses I had left. And hot damn was tonight bad.

I don't know if I was shaking more than normal, or if I made a noise or something, but all of a sudden there was a gentle hand on my head. For some odd reason, that seemed like a perfectly good reason to bolt to the foot of the bed and try to hide behind his size 20 feet. Once my mind actually caught up to what happened I looked up to the head of the bed to see two blue eyes looking down at me and a hand that was still slightly raised. Surprise and concern were warring for dominance on Jak's face, though it was obvious which won.

"Dax . . . " a quiet and concerned voice drifted down from the front of the bed. He went from just propping himself up to actually sitting, while still keeping eye contact with me. I flinched slightly at the steady gaze. It was always hard to lie to Jak, but even harder when he looked at you. I swear, no boy should have such big eyes.

"Yeah babe?" I asked in a shaky voice with a nervous giggle awkwardly clinging on to the end of the sentence. My paws aren't any steadier and he was feeling every shiver since I was practically digging my claws into his foot.

He said nothing, though he moved his foot and used it to nudge me forward, the unspoken request clear as day. Damn him, he wasn't making this easy. We knew each other to good. As much as I knew that me babbling on relaxed him, he knew that him pretending to be like his old mute self relaxed me.

I walked forward, thankful at least that I had an excuse not to look him in the eye anymore. As soon as I got to where I was before, Jak turned up his gaze, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw his head tilt in question.

'What's wrong?'

"Ain't nothin' wrong blondie. Just contemplating the meaning and life and all that jazz." I stared at his eyebrows and I saw them furrow. Unfortunately, he also knew me long enough to be able to tell when I was dancing around a question.

"It's not the first time you've been up." This time I can't cover the wince at his tone. It isn't angry or accusing, it's just stating a fact. I try to keep the facade going for as long as I can, but I can see it crumbling as I speak.

"Sometimes the atmosphere isn't the most conducive for sleep, if ya' get my meaning." I try drag up my old humor, but we both watch it fall flat on the floor, and then burst into flames. Jak sends me a look that tells me that he isn't amused and that frown says that he wants me to stop avoiding his original question, that he still hasn't stopped asking with his stupid girly blue eyes. I'm slightly proud, in a pathetic kind of way, that I haven't really lied to him in the entire conversation. Something in his face shifts though, and I can't help but look up at it. It's the next quiet words that are whisper soft that send the last tatters of the farce shattering to the ground.

"I've seen you tracing them." We both know what 'them' is referring too, and now there's no way that I can convince him that I was just up for some stupid reason so that he can go back to sleep and that I can get back to my self-loathing. He's just sitting there and looking at me, asking the same question that he's been asking for the past ten minutes.

'What's wrong Dax?'

"It's . . . " I trail off trying to find the right words, because I know that he won't let this go until I tell him, so I need this to be as clear as possible. "It's all my fault." I can hear his question in the air, but I ignore it. I've already started, and I don't think I could stop if I tried. "It's my fault that you have all those scars. It's my fault that you have a dark alter ego. It's my fault that your first words were 'I'm going to kill'." I got more agitated with each sentence. My fur is standing on end, and can't tell if I'm yelling or not.

'It's not your fault,' the eyes and hand twitch say, but all I can do is give a short, dark laugh.

"It took me two years to find you. It I was even a fourth as capable as you, you really would've been out of there in no time. I might not have been the one to give you the scars, but it's my fault that you were there to get them to begin with." I'm breathing hard and I still don't know if I'm yelling or not, but the world is definitely more blurry then it's supposed to be.

I don't see his hand move, but all of a sudden it's petting me on the head. Any other time I would have yelled at him for treating me like a pet, but now I ignore it for what he's telling me instead.

'You don't have any fault. You never did. I never blamed you for anything'

"Why?" It's the only coherent word I can get out, but Jak's just as good at reading me as I am at reading him. Even though I haven't told him everything, he already knows every thought that went through my mind during these times. The hand stills and moves to cover my eyes. For some reason, it's more soothing than the petting and I can't tell if his next words are spoken out loud or not.

"You were the only person in the world who was looking for me and the only one that was going to save me." I can hear everything else that he didn't say, and it's those words that chase off the demons deeper than I was ever able to store them.

He waits until my eyes are dry before he lies back down again. Once he's settled, he picks me up and puts me on his chest. I'm so emotionally drained, and actually tired, that as soon as I curl up in a ball, I'm already half way asleep. He taps my head though, and I pry my eyes back open to look at him. He's glaring at me, though it's full of concern and warning, and it adds one more lock to the demons that he chased away.

'Don't ever keep something like that to yourself again.' I yawn, because even if he is a bitter, jaded version of the Jak I lost two years ago, it's still Jak. Best of all though, the Jak from two years ago and the one now, both have the same heart beat, and at this late at night, that's all I need to set my mind more at ease then it has been for years.

When Jak gets up in the morning, we don't talk about last night, we don't need to. As he gets ready, I keep a steady stream of babble, with more insults than usual. My minds never felt so sharp and I'm ready to try it on someone, preferable the tattooed wonder.

Once Jak heads down to get his mission, I'm off like a rocket, and I can hear Jak's eye roll behind me. Apparently, Tattoo isn't too happy about my new found energy though, because it is only thanks to my great ostel skills that the metal paperweight doesn't make me an ostel pancake. All this does though is chase me to Jak's shoulder, and he can tell that that paperweight only made me up the ante. Jak quickly leaves the HQ with a mission in hand. I give out a parting remark and let the door shut on Torn's silent snarls.

Jak's shaking his head at me, but I can also tell that he's smiling at my comments, and is also a bit relieved that I'm acting like me. Besides, I so won this time. Not only did he loose his cool, I was actually able to insult his face, shoes, and sexual orientation all in one sentence. The best thing of all though, is that despite Jak being bitter and angry, and me being two feet tall with fur, and that every time you breathe in the New Haven city limits it takes 20 minutes off your life, it feels like Sandover again. And for me and the big guy, that was exactly what we needed.