I don't own Jak.
Vacation or War- Return
Chapter Fourteen- Restraint
When Jak returned to the room, Loor had a phone pressed to her ear. She was once again flopped back on her bed, staring at the ceiling while talking to someone.
"Yeah, I need to talk to you man. You free today?"
He came over to the bed, shutting the door behind him at he entered the room before sitting down by her feet and watching her. She looked exhausted, but it sounded like she was already making plans other than going back to sleep.
"I can bike over. I'm serious, I need to see you... like now. What's going on over there? I can hear your hand sliding over the speaker. Did you think you were being sneaky? Who else is there?"
Another pause. Jak could hear a male voice on the other end if he listened hard enough. It had to be her friend, Damian. He was somewhat curious about the people she hung out with, seeing as she used to be the most socially awkward thing on earth. Daxter had joked that out of her, but he wondered just who got to be friends with a shut-in.
"Dude, I don't have time. Mom and Dad will be coming home tomorrow night, school starts the day after, and two days after that..." She cut herself off, coughing slightly. "That's what we need to talk about. What the hell are you so freakin' worried about?"
Jak moved slightly, leaning off to the side before flopping down next to Loor. This was in part because he didn't know what else to do with himself while he waited for her to be done on the phone, but also because he wanted to hear what was being said on the other side of the line. He was so used to comm. units and being able to hear the whole conversation. Getting only half of it was weird to say the least. Sadly, even at her side, he couldn't hear the voice much better.
But Loor could hear it just fine, and started laughing. "Oh, I'm sorry." She said with true humility. "Dude, all you had to say was that you had a girl over and I woulda backed off. No, it's cool, it's alright. When she going home? I can trot over then... okay. What time is it now...? Mmmhm... so a couple of hours. Alright, it won't be dark yet, I can still bike over. Great. See you then."
"Your friend?" He asked.
"Yeah." She answered, putting the cordless phone aside and resuming her staring contest with the ceiling. "Who'd a thunk that he'd dive right back into romance before school started? Kid likes the notoriety... won't say so directly, but he likes his lady-killer rep. Still, he usually likes it when I know who he's going out with so when he comes to me for advice I got a better grip on the situation... must be someone I already know."
He had no idea what to say to that, and it seemed he didn't actually need to talk. She had enough words for the two of them, puzzling the trivial situation out loud before looking over to him.
Of course, finally making eye contact with him brought her to notice that he was staring at her intently. He was being patient, but there was something on his mind.
She had to laugh at herself, giving a light hit to her own forehead. "Food?"
He cracked a small smile, giving a nod. With her sister safely out of the house, Loor had no apprehension as she got up and opened the door again, leading the way upstairs.
The main level of Loor's home had linoleum floors with what might have once been a floral pattern but had been walked on so much it was just off-white with flecks of green and swirls of faded red. It was an open room, the entry way to the house and the big heavy door anyone could hear opening and closing hedged off by a small hallway. The sliding door was on the other end, the glass offering a view of the back yard over the rear deck from the dining table. Beyond that was the kitchen, only slightly separated from the rest by an arm of counter space reaching in and making the division.
Coming up the stairs, Loor's eyes caught on the large mirror that was hung just short of the entry hall. She saw herself, wearing a baggy T shirt and night pants, black roots growing into dirty blond hair, a single glove on her right hand, and multicolored eyes staring back at her. She was a strange thing to be seen in her own home, and this was the first time she'd glanced into that mirror without all of her things to hide what she really looked like. It was disturbing.
A moment later, he stepped up behind her. He didn't see what made her stop at the top of the stairs at first, instead looking around the main floor and enjoying the fact that he could actually see what her home looked like now in full light. It was only when he was thinking to give her a push up the final step that he noticed the large reflective surface.
He didn't take too much time with his own reflection; not much had changed about him in the transition. Hair, skin, and eyes had all remained, his ears just looked funny and short... and he was walking around without a shirt and in a borrowed set of night-pants. All he could say about that was it was better than how he had arrived.
But she was quite clearly focused on her image in the mirror.
"What's wrong?" He asked.
She blinked, shaking her head and mounting the final stair. "Not wrong. Just different."
He nodded slightly at she entered the kitchen and began busying herself. He thought to follow her, but figured he'd just get in the way. Instead he stood in the middle of the main floor and looked off to the right. There was the mirror she'd gotten caught in, the entry hall, but also a rail along the wall that led back to another set of stairs, right next to the ones going down, going up. With nothing else to do and a small measure of curiosity, he continued to the upper floor.
The stairs going up, and the upper floor, were hard wood. There was a rail on either side, the banister under his left hand being the one he'd seen along the wall, the one on the right facing the room and open air. The upper floor was not separated from the lower floor by a wall, the railing on the right just making a square turn and keeping the edge of the upper floor safe. Looking back down, he could see Loor in the kitchen, pulling things out of the refrigerator before pausing to turn on a small TV that was next to the stove.
Turning forward once more, the upper floor was a living room. There was a couch and a large cushy chair in front of another large sliding door, leading to an upper level for the back deck. A rug sat in the middle, a large TV across from the seating, and another hallway off to the left of the stairs.
Jak had been about to look down this hallway when he noticed the photos hung on the wall. The hall had pictures of several people, and he skimmed over them while looking for something interesting. There was a boy with long hair pulled back into a straight pony tail with extremely blue eyes, a girl with bronze-blond hair hanging down to her tush and a stunning smile, a blond man and a black haired woman with glasses sitting together...
And a blond girl with intense blue eyes, a big smile and a strong jaw line. Jak could surmise that all of these were family photos. The man and the woman were Loor's parents; Loor had a face very similar to her mother's. The others were pictures of herself and her siblings.
The long haired girl was her big sister, Ann. The boy, her elder brother; Paul.
Which meant this little blond girl in the photo had to be her, once upon a time. It took him a few moments to see it, but the face was the same. So was the smile. Even if the eyes and hair had changed so dramatically, and she'd grown older, he could recognize her.
No wonder she'd stopped and stared at the mirror. She was probably struck with the differences every time she saw any sort of reflective surface.
Loor hadn't been paying the slightest bit of attention to where Jak got off to once she started cooking. She'd started a pot of water that she'd added flavor packs from two packages of ramen to, and just turned on the TV while fetching a pan from under the stove. Being a few hours after noon there wasn't much on, but changing the channel over to PBS let her catch the tail end of a news hour.
Not that she had much interest in current events, but it gave her brain something to pay attention to as she got the pan to warm up and got the eggs out of the refrigerator, along with mushrooms and green onions.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a set of hands on her shoulders. Perhaps she should have been getting used to it, but she'd thought she was alone in the house again for just a moment. She was so used to being alone. After a gasp of surprise and nearly dropping the eggs she looked up to find Jak behind her, chuckling at her dramatic reaction.
She giggled at herself, shaking her head and returning to her culinary work.
"It's gonna be tough leaving all this behind, isn't it?"
She didn't answer at once. She'd cracked two eggs into a measuring glass and gotten a whisk to beat them into orange goo, reaching for the spice cabinet to add salt, pepper, and a little curry. The pot of water had begun to steam.
"Not as hard as I thought. Before I left, the idea of running away was insane. I knew I couldn't make it on my own, and I love my family very much. It's more than a roof over my head, the people here..." She put the beaten eggs aside, starting to chop mushrooms after pulling a knife from a nearby block. "Now, I know I can't live with them. I was going to leave this life behind either way... last night..."
She trailed off, focusing on slicing the last of the mushrooms and dumping them into the now simmering water.
"The eco made my body grow up, but the war matured my mind." She finally said. "I've always been about what needed to be done, but now I have the resolve to do it. Before... I would know what had to go down, but I'd just hide under my pillow and wait for someone else to do it, tell myself it was too big for a kid like me. And in Haven I tried to do that. I tried to back off on my first missions... but somewhere in there a shift happened. I didn't have the comfort of being a child anymore."
He nodded, holding her shoulders again. They both knew where that shift happened; when they'd been ambushed by the KG and she'd been forced to take her first human life. A lot of things had changed about her that day.
"I just wish..." She stopped, checking the mushrooms and dropping the noodle block of ramen into the broth. She waved a hand over the frying pan, which was on a low burner, and gave the eggs one last stir before dumping them into the pan. They sizzled quietly, and she added another puff of curry to the top.
"What?"
"I've seen the end of this world, in a sense. Between research with Vin and some of my own puzzling, I know that the world as I know it is going to destroy itself. Armageddon. Rapture. I don't care what you call it, it's coming. I'm getting out of here, and that's fine for me, but... I wish I knew when it was coming. I want to see my friends and family safe. There are survivors, they go on to make the future you're from. Sandover, Rock Village, and then go ahead another few hundred years and there's Haven..." She started chopping the green onions, taking a wooden spoon and stirring the noodles. "I have no idea if my family survived. I could have nieces and nephews, so many generations down it would make my head hurt. I wish I could somehow see them safe."
She then allowed herself a short giggle, shaking her head with a strange smile on her face. He gave her a look, questioning what she found so funny all of the sudden. It usually took someone else to pull her out of her serious mood, and here she was snickering at something that crossed her mind.
She responded to his look, her smile growing twisted. "I once had the off-the-wall thought that Vin and I might've been related. I really doubt it, but it is possible. No way to check, the metal heads probably didn't leave much of him for DNA swabbing, but interesting to say the least."
"Doesn't that mean you could have been related to Errol, too?"
She choked on that one, twisting her head a little bit to stare at him and glare a little. It was a playful glare though. Just seemed a little more dangerous since she had a knife in her hand.
Rolling her eyes, she put on a new smirk. "For all you know, buddy boy, I'm related to you or Daxter. And it's so many generations down it really doesn't matter." She returned her attention to her cooking. The noodles were boiling furiously now, and she dropped in the chopped green onion with another stir of the pot while checking the eggs; a flat patty had cooked through to show brilliant yellow with specks of orange curry powder. Turning away from the stove and breaking his hold, she got a plate to dump the eggs out onto and began quickly cutting them into strips, slicing the whole patty down the middle once the longer strips were cut.
As she stirred the noodles once more, she looked over to the TV which was still playing the news.
"I wonder what started it..." She mused. "A war started that got us all to kill each other, but what would have it been over? Every nuclear nation let their bombs fly, it had to have been for a good reason..."
"You think too much." He now slid his arms around her middle, resting his forehead against the back of her head. "Calm down and just let it go."
"What else am I supposed to think about?" She huffed. "Keeping my mind busy is all I can do to keep from going insane with you around."
He moved his head to rest on her shoulder at her accusing tone. "Me? What did I do?"
She snorted, turning off the burner under the noodles. "Is that a trick question?" She slid the pan away from the hot surface and onto a cold burner so the noodles wouldn't overcook. "Or did you honestly forget where you put my hand last night?"
"I didn't forget." He snickered, bending down to her shoulder and brushing smiling lips against her skin. "I didn't think it would bother you all that much though... you told me you had all sorts of interesting ideas in your head; didn't think I could make you nervous."
"Fantasies are one thing... particularly since I came up with them when I still thought you were nothing but a fictional hero. Actually..." She cleared her throat, skipping around using all of the words. "... touching is a whole 'nother ball game."
Palms flattened on her stomach, sliding up to her ribs and slightly under the doughy mass on her chest. Her body responded with fire, burning up the air in her lungs and making her draw a quick and hardly satisfying breath. He was right next to her ear, having nosed under her hair and still smiling. "Impressed?" He questioned.
She growled softly at her reactions. Somewhere, deep in all of the synaptic matter of her brain, floated the thought that this was hardly the time nor place for this sort of thing... but that thought was outside of her focus and probably being hidden by Lyra, because she leaned back on him while her free hand reached up and tangled in his hair. "... Possibly curious..." She muttered, her other hand dropping the spoon she'd be stirring with to come and rest over his.
Again her breathing seemed inefficient as he kissed her neck. A strange tingle took on her skin that begged for further attention, but he held off and chuckled at her.
"Food?" He asked, releasing her.
She felt like doing a double-take. At once Lyra expressed extreme frustration, and though Loor agreed with her for once he did have a point. What had been threatening to be a glare took into a small smirk. "Proving you've got control, huh?"
"That and I'm really hungry."
She scoffed slightly, turning from the stove to get bowls for the noodles.
She was too, but not exactly for food.
The Author's Corner
Yeah... book 2 was always the biggest cock tease. You know what's fucked up though? It is SCARY how much my actual boyfriend reminds me of Jak. This may be the musings of a crazed fangirl but a lot of what I describe here comes from my own relationship, and IT FUCKING FITS. WTF?
Seriously... I sometimes wonder if I dreamed that man up. He's so perfect to me. Sure we got our issues and the occasional fight, but what couple doesn't? At the end of the day, the days I get to spend with him anyway, he is the most perfect blanket/pillow on the planet.
Oh yeah. If someone see's Loor using the word prodigious, blame it on the fact that I'm WATCHING THE ORIGINAL DIGIMON SERISE. HOLY NESTALGIA.
I was so hot for Tai... and Izzy. Mainly Izzy. Tai was funny but Izzy was smart. I like smart guys.
MEOW!
-Loor