a cover that went around tumblr over the summer took over my life as I was revisiting the HD collection and this is the very delayed result. grammar might not be the best; I didn't take english this semester :/

you've got a new horizon, its ephemeral style; a melancholy town where they never smile…

"Feel Good Inc," Celia Pavey

When the Precursor first tells him of the balance, he doesn't hear a word of it.

And how would he? Upon the heels of defeating a centuries-old enemy and fulfilling a destiny that involved time travel? He was having trouble remembering to breathe, let alone taking the words of a glowing blue entity to heart.

At least, until he started to glow.

But that was much, much later. There's a whirlwind that follows them out of the nest, into the city, and back to the bar where they all began. The words fade from his mind with busyness and time. There are metal heads to drive out, breaches to fix, a regime to change, and parties to throw.

They have so much to do; a fade of the darkness is the farthest thing from his mind. And shouldn't it have naturally receded, anyway? His vengeance was got, his destiny had been fulfilled, and he had no need to hold it so closely to him for the moment. For now, for the first time since he had left his seaside home, he could relax.

But as quickly as things could change, they stayed the same.

The metalheads are not completely eradicated. The KG is no longer united. Not everyone blindly agrees with the throne being hereditary. He can stop a dictatorship almost single-handedly, but there's no way he can run a city the same way—not in his form. Not now, probably not ever.

Yet from the moment he awakens in the desert city, he begins to feel lighter. Cosmetic signs pointed to his sheared hair and sleeveless tunic, but its something else, too. Almost as if something in his very blood.

The king tells him otherwise. But he basically confirms it in his own way; Jak had been saved by desert warriors and thus had been reborn as one with a debt to be repaid to them all. Every aspect of his city self was gone—and would continue to fade until a complete Wastelander remained in his place. He believes all of it, because a king is nothing with loyalty, and loyalty is for naught without servitude. And if there was anything he knew well enough in the city to keep handy in the desert, it was serving his purpose.

If he could be reborn into half the man the king was, and all that he stood for, he would be satisfied.

But he is still called 'animal man.' Some shirk away from his presence. They cast dark glances in his direction. Not even the monks can completely comprehend him. I know the precursors, he could say, I've met them, talked to them…. They said I had a light within me once.

Once.

But that was all before he knew the truth. Before he carried the amulet that marked him in a more literal sense than the darkness; the seal that acted like a birth certificate and a key all in one. The trinket alone could say more about him than he would or could.

The monks say similar things again when he enters their temple. But this can't be true; the oracles are just humoring him because he's still doing their dirty work after all these years. He's just their pawn; he doesn't have the light anymore; just strength and darkness and anger. That's all he has. That's all he is.

He is wrong.

This oracle is different. It is almost full-bodied, looming above him as if the Precursors themselves had come back to the planet and made this their palace. Maybe it had been at one point? The temple was certainly big enough. The minute he steps into the room it brightens—as if sensing his presence—and then confirms his suspicions when the statue's eyes crack open and cast a cyan light onto his soul.

"Greetings, great warrior."

The boom of the monotonic voice remains the same as it always has; one of exactly a few things about his experience that had remained unchanged lately. Unlike the shrine in the water slums (now renovated into New Haven, the home of Freedom HQ, he still wonders whatever happened to the thing) who only worsened his dark and twisted him further, this oracle is apologetic.

Apologies? This late in the game? Really?! They had brushed him off and sent him on suicide missions and now they wanted to apologize? Truly, something must have been dire. And it was, mostly from the way it kept mentioning 'critical junctions' and other statements of depth he could never quite wrap his head around. Yet, it pleads with him, almost.

"Look into the light, and receive the power…"

And then the oracle's light brightens to near-blindness…

Daxter's shocked gasp is the last thing he hears. Any words from his motor-mouthed friend drown out of his ears like a steady stream until there is nothing but him and the light.

The brightness lifts him off his feet as naturally as a breeze. He floats and finds himself looking into the very core of the enchanted statue as it lulls him somewhere with a sense of warmth he hadn't felt since his time taking naps on the beach of his home. It spreads to every inch of his being and takes over—takes him—as a willing hostage. It's so warm, so bright, so right, he doesn't even feel the ground return beneath his feet.

Then, he stands. Taller than usual. Impeccable posture that would normally be torture for the adventurous boy from the ocean side village to hold. Shoulders back, arms collected coolly behind his waist, feet together, eyes open. He sees everything.

Well, almost.

Sight wider than he could ever naturally have, he immediately clings to this feeling. He knows this, though. It's familiar in a way that he grasps at mentally, like a man desperate for air. Then he feels it—just like the darkness, but light, so he can see but cannot speak. But unlike dark, he doesn't need words; he doesn't even want them. There's no need at all; there is him and there is only brightness and warmth, unlike darkness and cold.

And then, there is what he can do.

The oracle mentions a power, and a protection—an ability. A sheath of light that responds to his will. Then, gently but powerfully, he reaches out and it spreads. A luminescent glow frees itself from his very palms and spreads out in flares, until he is ensconced in a sphere of azure-white brightness. This blue, the same shade of the precursor from the stone, the shade of the statue's eyes—of his own—was that of his very being in this form.

Then it is gone.

It's as quick as opening his eyes—felt as though, too. And the paranormal clarity leaves his sight before he can even comprehend what he saw with it. But it goes fantastically, in a shower of sparks and flickers that shimmer as if the power were simply leaping from his limbs and into thin air. Disappearing without a host, a means to spread, it shrinks back as if it were never there. Only it was—and is. He was sure of it.

A gasp escaped his lips before he could even feel himself speak. "Dax!" His first sound in what felt like an eon; it was just the beginning of another struggle to regain control of his limbs for a moment. Then he looks—really looks—at his palms, his fingers, both sides. The glow is gone, the light flickered out, but the warmth remained.

Eyes flicking over tanned and callused skin, he feels it; quietly pulsing in his core like a small flame. Its there, he thought, it hasn't left. It was only shrinking away into a spirit of himself that almost felt like home—like it belonged. Like the light was always a part of him, just as the first oracle had told him all that time ago.

"The dark eco…" The words stumble out, and he finds his partner staring up at him, perplexed and awed. Reflexively, and hesitantly, he reaches for the darkness forced into him and forever marked in his very core. It was still there, but…

"It feels…" There, but also not there? It was almost smaller, taken over by the light to a degree. "…far away." Calmed by a small, steady flame. The shadow had been forced to recede to the light; to the far corners of his core. He knew it. He could feel it.

A smile spread almost joy-like on his lips. He was still moving, stretching, and just looking at his self; unchanged on the outside, but irreversibly marked on the inside.

"I feel better," he grinned fully as the ottsel returned the gesture and leapt back into place on his friend's lighter, relaxed shoulder.

His back to the source of the blessing now, he stands tall, breathes, and runs. The light carried with him at every bound, still amazingly stable. Even if he could only hold it for a moment, it would never leave again. This, he now knew.