"What the hell was that about?" Jak asked. It was now that he was realizing Emery's hand was clawed around his upper arm, digging in painfully. He didn't take it away.

Emery's mouth was trembling like she might not know what to say or how to say it; her bright eyes were wet but she refused them the satisfaction of blinking; her face was drained of all color, leaving her looking ghostly. Finally she blinked, but it was hard as she swallowed the lump in her throat. "Nothing. It was nothing. Razer's just an ass."

"Well yeah," Jak straightened himself up, "but anyone could see that from a mile off." Her lightning gaze pierced him, but alongside the anger there were still those damn tears. Clearly, this wasn't what he was supposed to say. "What I mean is, uh..." Never good with words, Jak struggled to convey what was swimming around in his brain.

"Look, I'm having an off day. Go home."

He wasn't used to being dismissed. A spark moved within him before he could even have a say in the matter. All his careful sentences, so cautiously chosen, so preciously picked, were traded away for four stock words: "See you tomorrow, then." He watched her turn and leave him behind.

oOo

The place was crowded; heads turned in a sea of acrid smoke, music glided delicately through the speakers. Plush seats and golden filigree – it wasn't Emery's typical haunt, but she'd agreed to meet him here and, true to her word, she joined him at the polished bar in a little black dress, her hair pinned up. Two pearl drops hung from her long ears, looking out of place.

"You look ravishing." Razer sipped easily from an angled martini glass. He beckoned to the bartender, nodded at Emery and said "Get her something lady-like."

But she objected, "Actually, get me the hardest, driest thing you've got."

"Watch it," Razer warned, inspecting his cuticles, "I'm paying for that."

Emery leaned next to his ear and whispered, "We both know you owe me more than a lifetime of bar tabs."

He chuckled. Emery's gut twisted in knots. "I'd be happy to repay my debt. Although, if I recall correctly, it was you who stood me up." He chased the olive around his glass lazily. "Now, to business," he commanded.

Emery settled stiffly on a barstool.

"What are you doing with that Jak? He's bad news, you know." Taking out a sleek silver cigarette case, he lit one up and gazed at her.

"I guess if I was ever going to trust you about something, bad news would be it," she spat, gulping down the hard liquor. She waited, gathering her thoughts. "He wrecked a car. One of mine. He owes me."

"Do you always coerce adversaries into making up for damage done to a car? Is that what you had me doing all those –?"

"Stop," she cut him off, and she watched him blow smoke out in self-satisfied rings.

But after only a moment's hesitation, he trudged onward. "Because if you're holding him to the same bargain, then I suppose I'm too late." Razer punctuated his sentence by draining his martini and pushing the glass across the bar to its harried tender. He posed Emery with a mockingly concerned glance.

She cocked her head to the side and facing the gleaming bar, said, "You're as spiteful now as you were a year ago, aren't you?"

"Aren't you?" he returned nonchalantly.

"I think I have a little more reason."

He didn't chuckle this time. For a moment, all the noise, all the chaos that surrounded them appeared to have died, and they were alone in the bar. For a moment, it was how things once had been, save for the mood was now sour rather than savory and sweet.

But in another moment, everything returned to normal. "I take it you're not giving him a tour beneath your hood, then?" Razer started in on another martini. "A shame really – he's rather good-looking; a nice addition to your collection."

"Collection?" she growled, cocking a slim eyebrow.

"You man-eater, you," he teased, lifting her chin with his index finger. She tore it from his touch. "Pity, you always used to like it when I did that."

"That was before I knew you had a hand in my vendetta with Mizo."

Razer shifted uncomfortably against the bar, cigarette going out from inattention. "You're not going to settle that debt with me, are you?" His voice teetered on the brink of anxiety. He knew her well enough by now.

"No, not since you retired." And this was two things at once: an answer to Razer's inquiry as well as a blow to his ego. "I'm not a murder," she finished, simply to drive the point home.

"Oh? Really?" He was on the defensive now. "Your score earnings speak otherwise, my dear."

"Racing is different!" Emery's infamous temper flared and she knocked over her drink. The bartender toweled down the pungent puddle and fetched her a new glass. "That isn't murder, that's competition – that's fair." Now she was on the defensive. "That's in the contract."

"I see," he shrugged, flicking his cigarette her way. "So because there's a signature and some fine print at the bottom, that means it isn't the destruction of a life. Hmm, interesting."

"I don't know why I agreed to see you tonight!" she snapped angrily.

"I think you do." Razer's lips curled into a sneer, and he ran his fingers down the pale length of her arm.

Disgusted, she turned her back on him and marched out of the bar and into the street, wishing she could go back and level him.

oOo

Why is she looking at me like that? Jak wondered. He was rumbling along a race track, and Emery was in the passenger side seat, her expression terrified and frozen. But when he tried to speak aloud, his words growled off the tip of his tongue like the cry of a caged animal. And in her eyes, Jak saw himself reflected, a monster.

He dared to chance a look into the rear-view mirror and sure enough, staring back at him, there were a pair of black, endless eyes. In that moment, a shriek ripped itself out of his throat and he lost control of the car, and the two went careening off a ledge and into the churning waves below...

When Jak woke up, he was partway normal, partway beast: his skin was transitioning before his eyes and when he glimpsed himself in the reflection of his window, there was a spit-second where his Dark counterpart stared back at him, aghast with his own stricken visage. But the eyes – it was those eyes, so full of hate.

"Hey Jak," Daxter peered from over the edge of the bed. "You okay, buddy?"

Jak nodded, grunting noncommittally. It had been a very long time since he'd lost control like this. And in the back of his mind he could feel himself settling, feel the Light reaching out to balance him. "Just a bad dream. Night, Dax." Jak turned onto his side, but he couldn't fall back asleep. What the hell was that about? he wondered. Moonlight sprawled across his bed, illuminating the crinkled covers in odd ways and creating fragmented shadows and half-monsters.

And then, something deep within him shifted. You gotta' learn how to let me take the wheel sometimes.

Jak cringed, the pain of defeat subduing him into sleep.

Across town, Emery was sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning between the stages of dreams and wakefulness. A pain in her side. A creeping headache. An oncoming sneeze...it was as if her body was fighting her the whole way. Something wasn't right, but as soon as she could identify it, it would mutate and disperse itself to another part of her. Her thoughts dissipated in and out of clarity, but there was one thought that made itself unmistakably and inescapably clear: Jak. It was like a nagging, tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach, like a truly persistent bout of indigestion.

Emery sat up in bed. She rearranged her pillows, removed a few layers of sheets and burrowed back into her bed. Of course, like clockwork, she was dislodged in a matter of minutes, returning the discarded covers and reshuffling her pillows. This time, she also made sure to lay on her side in search of some comfort.

Comfort never came.

The itching and nagging climbed slowly through her ribcage and it radiated down to her ankles, pinching and paining like some sort of stringent disease. The nagging was getting stronger and stronger, edging closer to an unbearable mutiny. With a great harrumph she threw herself out of bed and into the night, Kras laid out below her. In the distance, a huddle of thunderclouds lumbered toward the city, ominous and foreboding. But, the storm was still a good way across the ocean, and Emery wasn't worried about it. Her thoughts were still with Jak. They were stray thoughts, random and disconnected, it seemed to her. Thoughts about his strategies – they were very basic and he almost never thought out of the box. But maybe that was why he was so successful; nobody ever expected an unembellished tactic. Thoughts about his mannerisms – Jak had this way of stretching his neck, cracking it before each and every race. Loosening himself up, she supposed. Thoughts about his hair, his eyes, the sound of his voice...

Emery caught herself, eyes closed, tightly gripping the convoluted rail of her makeshift balcony. These were thoughts she knew, but didn't care to acknowledge. These were the same thoughts she'd once had about another man...

"No." Emery spoke the word aloud, into the air around her, as if to deny both herself and the universe a chance to challenge it. She thought back to a year before, to that white tablecloth and that candlelit dinner and that gloriously beautiful diamond ring...a diamond ring, she reminded herself, that was begotten with criminal money. She'd had enough of that sort of life. Her entire happy childhood had been forged off of ill-gained fortune and ruthless slaughter; bad deals and secret gambles. Nothing of her life had been born of an honest day's work, not until after the 'accident'...and even then, she owned a few possessions reminiscent of her of her roots.

Now, her thoughts left Jak completely, to join the car that sat, unused, in her garage. It taunted her, challenged her to get behind the wheel and dispose of it for good. To race it alone, against only herself and her pride – to drive it off the pier and abandon it in the ocean, bait for the imminent storm.

As if in a trance, Emery followed her own feet down the rickety staircase, into the garage, and into the driver's seat of the red Tempest V10. It was the first time she had ever sat in its black leather interior; the first time she had ever grasped the custom-fit steering wheel; the first time she had ever experienced the mixed emotions of being in a car she did not rightfully own.

She would have to find a way to thank Razer.

thanks for reading; if you want me to continue, you know what to do :)