Siren: Well, we decided to delete 'Fear'. We re-read it and...ugh.

Muse: We just didn't like how it turned out. Instead, we started a hopefully better fic.

Siren: About Damas!

Muse: ...

Siren: ...

Muse: So you noticed it too.

Siren: That we have an unhealthy obsession with father-son relationships in video games?

Muse: Yeah, that. Disclaimer!

(poof) Fortune Cookie: Sirens & Muses don't own the Jak Series.

Siren: What's our fortune?

F.C.: ...That wasn't chicken. (poof)

Siren: I'm so glad I ordered pepper steak.

Muse: I'll be over here vomiting up sweet and sour chicken.

Siren: Review please?


As with many of fate's mysteries, it begins with but a small act of disobedience.

"Damas, pay attention!" The seventeen year old snatched his hand off the desk before the ruler smacked him. He looked up at the elderly teacher staring down at him in disdain.

"You," she said sternly, "are in no position to slack off. You have much maturing, much learning, before you can become king."

Damas sighed and stared at his textbook again. What was he supposed to be learning? Oh, yeah, the history of Mar.

"Now," the teacher said, keeping her beady eyes on him, "tell me, why did Mar build the canal system in the industrial district?"

"Because…" Damas sighed and rubbed his eyes. "…the agricultural district needed water and that was the fastest way through."

"Correct." The teacher turned back to the blackboard, filling in a timeline. "Now, when Mar was faced with the task of…"

Damas started to tune her out again and stared out the window. Outside, the sun was shining down on the citizens of Haven City. He could see the kids below, laughing as they played a game. There were people milling around in the bazaar, chatting and haggling for items. He sighed wistfully.

"We're done with this lesson. Take lunch," the teacher said. Damas didn't even hesitate in rushing out the door.

As the prince and heir of Haven City, Damas lived a restricted, scheduled life. From the time he woke up to the late afternoon, he was immersed in his studies: the teachings of Mar, the ancient scriptures of the Precursors, the science of eco, and anything else his father deemed important. After his tutoring, he was free to roam Haven until dinnertime. Then he got to go to sleep so he could do it all over again tomorrow.

The weekends, however, were his time to be free. Or, rather, as free as the King allowed him to be. Damas was forbidden to race in the stadium, to eat food prepared outside the palace, to enter the slums alone, or to be wondering after dark. And those were only a few of the set rules his father, who was probably afraid of his own shadow, imposed.

He was, to put it lightly, sheltered.

After his lunch, he trudged back to the classroom that had been designed solely for his tutoring. Once he entered the room, though, Damas cheered up. There was a royal guard waiting for him, and the only reason he would be here during school time was when Damas was going out somewhere in the city. Usually the library or a museum to study some more about, shockingly, Mar; but occasionally, his father would arrange a visit to Onin, the blind soothsayer, or Samos, the…Damas wasn't quite sure what Samos was, aside from old. Sometimes, he didn't even know where he was going or why, just happy to get out of the palace.

Today, he was sure, he was headed for the library. The teacher was accompanying him, which she didn't do unless he was going somewhere scholarly. Silently, he followed the teacher and bodyguard out of the palace and through the streets of Haven City. He was never allowed to ride in a zoomer, another of his father's insane fears. So instead, he walked through the street, getting odd stares from many people.

They reached the library, a huge, archaic building with elegant decorations adoring its entrance. Damas had always found it ironic that, while many people saw Mar's greatest and most important structure to be the library, there were no statues of him near it. Instead, the stadium displayed his likeness outside it.

"Ask the librarian," his teacher said, pointing a bony finger towards the desk, where an uptight, older librarian sat at the desk. "You need any text on the structure of the city Mar built."

Damas exhaled as he headed up to the desk. "Excuse me," he asked politely, and got a 'shh' noise instead. "I need to know-" He once again got the 'shh' and a finger pointing at the card catalog.

"Great," Damas mumbled. He passed a giggling group of girls sitting there and winked at one of them. They giggled harder and blushed, waving.

"Stop flirting," the teacher said coldly from behind him. He frowned and went back into the shelves of books. There was, he knew, an entire section on Mar, and that was his best bet to find the books he needed. However, he got sidetracked.

In the fiction section, there was a young woman, about his age, who was reading alone. She looked like a younger version of the librarian: glasses, hair in a ponytail, intent and focused on her book. However, this girl was marginally better to look at. Particularly her hair. He'd never see anything like it. The roots were a marvelous green color, but it faded to blond the longer it went. Damas glanced around to check where his teacher was (examining a book on…something) before walking over to where she sat.

"Hey, sweetheart," he said softly as he passed her. She jerked her head up, startled. Damas left before she saw him, smirking as he did so. One of his favorite things to do was to tease and flirt with girls, even though he could never get involved with them. His father said his marriage would be arranged, which wasn't exactly what Damas wanted, but since when did the king really care much about what Damas wanted?

He was striding off towards the section on Mar when he heard, quite loudly for a library, "Laying it on a little thick there, Casanova?"

It was Damas' turn to be surprised. Not many girls talked back to his flirtatious remarks. But when he turned, her head was back down over her book. He turned suspiciously back towards the Mar section and browsed. Five minutes later, having found three books on the subject, he turned back around. The girl was now standing beside the shelves, hunting for a book. Her attention was completely focused on authors Au-Bn. He grinned and snuck up behind her, placing his hands over her eyes.

"Guess who, sweetheart?" he whispered, and was answered with an elbow slamming into his stomach. He groaned and doubled over in pain. The girl leaned down to look him in the eye.

"My name's not 'sweetheart'," she whispered viciously. "And I'm not about to tell you what it really is, you womanizing jerk."

Damas tried to recover with a snarky comment, but found himself dumbfounded. He'd never been hit that hard before, definitely never by a girl.

"Do you have any idea who I am?" he said, deciding to pull rank on her. People usually apologized pretty quickly to their leader's son.

"Damas, son of Roma." The girl raised an eyebrow, pushing her glasses up to where they sat crooked over her blue-jay eyes. "I'm sorry, was that a rhetorical question? Meant to make me shake in my boots? Sorry, I forgot." With that, she turned and strode out of the library, two books under her arm, not looking back. Damas shook his head and turned back to his teacher, intending to use his studies to forget about her.

Three hours later, Damas turned to Mattie while sitting on the roof and said, "She's just some stupid girl, anyway. What do I care if she thinks I'm a womanizing jerk?"

"Well, considering you haven't shut up about her since I came up here," the servant said, yawning, "I'd say you care quite a bit."

Damas glared at him, but Mattie just shrugged it off. Mattie was Damas' personal servant, had been since his father had died fighting the Metal Heads. Roma offered Mattie, as the orphaned son of a brave soldier, a home if he served the royal family. Since then, Damas and Mattie had been the closest of friends. Possibly because Damas didn't have any other ones, but friends all the same.

Damas had always been jealous of Mattie. He had earned the admiration of almost every boy who knew him (including Damas) and the adorations of every girl who ever saw him. Mattie and Damas were both physically attractive, but Mattie was the funny, clever one who actually got girls. Meanwhile, Damas couldn't talk to people because, well…

"Did it ever occur to you that she hit you because you have the social graces of a drunken Lurker?" Mattie asked. Damas rolled his eyes. "I'm serious, you have a certain…demeanor about you that scares people away when you talk."

"If that's true, why are you still here?" Damas replied.

"Well, smartass, I was deprived of oxygen at birth. My survival instincts have obviously been hampered. Yet I'm not socially awkward with strange girls at the library."

"That's because you never go in there. I'm shocked you even know what a library is."

"Of course I do," Mattie said, lying back against the glass window panes. "It's a very sweet, yet somehow sour, berry picked from a tree that makes false promises."

Damas snorted. "Shut up, Mattie. Why am I the womanizing jerk? You have a new girlfriend every week."

"Easy. I don't flirt with smart girls. None of my former girlfriends know what the word 'womanizing' means."

"They probably don't even know what 'library' means," Damas agreed, standing up. "Come on, let's get inside before my dad has a fit."

Inside, Mattie bade farewell and headed for the kitchens, leaving Damas alone to contemplate his social awkwardness. He really wanted to go back to the library and apologize, just to prove her wrong. He sighed.
At least, he thought as he crawled into bed, tomorrow was Saturday. A day of freedom, nothing important to do.


Damas loved Haven Forest. It was beautiful and green, always fresh and crisp, easy to breath. No pollution, no books, no mention of Mar, and no people to call him a womanizing jerk, no one to comment on his bad people skills. Just him, alone, in the forest. Sometimes, he ran through it, racing against nothing; he climbed the trees, jumped on the rocks, swam along the stream. And sometimes, Damas didn't feel like doing anything. He'd just sit on the tree stump that sat in the shade on the edge of the water.

He inhaled as he headed for that spot. Everywhere else was too dark, hidden by the trees, but this little stump had it all: shaded, but the sunlight filtered in and sparkled on the water. It was perfect for fishing, dipping your feet in the water, or even just doing nothing.
And reading, apparently. Damas saw her at the same time she saw him. She smirked and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, shutting her book.

"Hey, there, Casanova. Come to apologize?"