Daxter and the others had heard Jak's screams and had sped through the tunnels with the fear of arriving too late haunting them.
But they were shortly met with a small group of metalhead grunts that almost managed to take Daxter down on the spot as he'd rounded a corner only to run straight into one of the large beasts.
Luckily, Karidi had been close behind him and had fired off a shot with her gun straight on into the monster's chest after having pushed the shock-stricken redhead down on the ground.
The encounter had been unexpected, but was shortly ended by one of Jinx's bombs, scattering metalhead remains and dark eco all across the tunnel in one blast, but without making the ceiling cave in on them.
Daxter had barely managed to stay put with the others during the short battle, knowing they were losing precious minutes while Jak had to keep up the fight against the monstrous Acherons alone.
As he heard one final scream of pain from Jak somewhere close by, Daxter forgot all about the others and darted out towards that sound, feeling in his very bones that something had gone very, very wrong.
"Hey, hold it, chilli pepper! We can't keep up with you in that speed!" Sig called out for him from somewhere behind, but Daxter ignored it. They'd find their way anyway, since it was only a straight road from this point.
As Daxter came to the end of the tunnel though, he slowed down before peeking out to take a look at the scene.
And choked at what he saw.
The first thing that caught his eyes was the sick glow of the bluish wings of Jak's, lying thrown on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Next off he spotted the heap of Gol's mutated dead limbs.
And then he finally saw Jak, lying on the floor and writhing under the remaining Acheron sibling, who tickled his throat with the poison stinger on the tip of her tail.
Daxter felt his voice stick in his throat and couldn't get himself to voice out his terror.
When Jak suddenly made a move and the light of the eco blast lit up the cave for a short moment, Daxter was close to cheering and felt a short surge of relief, taken away almost instantly as he saw the way his friend forced himself up on his feet, with blood pouring from several deep wounds on his body.
Daxter heard the others coming behind him, but he couldn't move.
Every muscle in his body seemed to protest against what he was seeing, almost willing it to be untrue.
"Hey, what are you just standing there for? Get going!" Jinx mumbled as he was the first one to get to him.
He laid a hand on the redhead's shoulder and pushed him aside to have a look and froze as well as he saw Jak transform and seemingly teleport to a spot behind the monstrous woman's back.
As the last blast was set off, Daxter finally found his ability to move again and sprang forward as if shot out of a canon, and the sudden movement made Jinx wake up from the daze to follow him the very moment that Sig and Karidi reached the opening as well.
Daxter didn't care about the small risk of the enemy not being completely defeated.
All he could see was the sloped down figure of his best friend lying motionless against the wall, open wounds pouring out precious red liquid by the second.
When he reached him, Jak's eyes were closed and the breathing shallow, a thin trail of scarlet leading from his mouth and down over his chin.
"Jak?" Daxter whispered out with a trembling voice, not wanting for one second to believe his eyes.
He carefully put a hand behind his friend's neck and with extreme tenderness moved him to lie down on the floor, his head in Daxter's lap as he stroke the blood dampened hair away from his face.
A flutter of his eyes told Daxter that Jak had heard him and his heart made a jump at the small sliver of hope that this supported.
"Jak? Buddy? You need to wake up and tell me you're alright, or I'll slap you silly!" Daxter mumbled with a hint of panic as no further signs of life was shown.
Jak then slowly opened his eyes, trying hard to focus before he finally recognised the blur of red hair and the voice that whispered so softly to him.
"Hey," he voiced out, barely making a sound and coughed hard as the breath drawn through his mouth had once more torn at the poison fretted throat.
Once the coughing stilled, he tried to speak once more.
"Boy, that stung," he said with a raspy voice, mimicking his friend's old statement after the first contact with dark eco.
Daxter felt something stab at his chest as a smile forced itself upon his lips.
"This... This is no time for joking, big guy," he answered him and tried to ignore the bad look of the wound piercing his friend's shoulder.
Jak stretched his lips in a thin smile and made a vague movement of shaking his head.
"I... I just wanted to say... I'm sorry, Dax."
Daxter looked at him with a puzzled expression.
"What do ya' mean 'sorry'? You've got nothing to apologise for!" he replied with tears pushing their way up his eyes. "Don't talk rubbish!"
"No, Dax."
Jak's voice was filled with emotion and Daxter suddenly felt the need to scream and shout at the world around him for not ending this elaborate joke upon his nerves. But he remained silent and tried to blink away the tears as he kept his eyes steady upon his friend's pain troubled face.
"I'm not... joking. I'm sorry for all of this... ever happening to you. That time... It was my fault... and this..." he made a movement of his eyes as to point at the world around them, "this time...it's not supposed to be yours. I've failed you as a friend..."
"No, you haven't!" Daxter interrupted him fiercely. "And don't talk like that, 'cause you're scaring the shit out of me! You're going to be fine! You'll see! You'll be up and ready to kick ass in no-time... you'll see..." Daxter's voice trailed off as Jak closed his eyes slowly and shortly moved his head from side to side.
"I'm not..." he mumbled.
Daxter couldn't find the words to express the sudden feeling of defiance and anguish that threatened to burst him open at those words.
He simply stroke Jak's right cheek softly, unintentionally tracing the broad scar stretching from the jaw to his eye. A remembrance of the time they had been parted.
"Y-you c-can't j-just say stuff like, like that and look so fucking c-calm, y-ya' bastard..." he finally stuttered out, forcing down hick-ups, with tears streaming down his cheeks without him noticing it.
"We're supposed to be together, ya' know... I-I can't do anything without you, ya' know that..."
Jak smiled faintly at this and looked up at the blur he knew was his dearest and most faithful friend, his heart aching with the knowledge of the pain he was causing him.
"You can do anything you want," he whispered.
"The hell I can!" Daxter objected and almost hit him in the chest to put force to the statement. "I'm sitting here watching you friggin' bleed all over the place and I can't do shit to stop it!"
"At least you're safe," Jak whispered out and tried hard to focus his eyes as his field of sight grew smaller.
"But...but ya' can't leave me, Jak..." Daxter squeaked out in what sounded more or less like a wordless whining. "I... I love you too much... ya' can't..."
At those words Jak's pained face seemed to relax a bit ad he smiled softly.
"I love you too, Dax. Always have."
Daxter's eyes widened in surprise, but Jak couldn't see it.
He wasn't feeling any pain anymore and though he couldn't see, he could feel the warm touch of his friend's hands on the sides of his face and he felt at peace, knowing he was alive.
---
None of the others felt they had a right to intrude on the moment as they had gotten the situation clear to them.
Karidi had flung her hands over her mouth as she realised what was happening and a needle of pain pierced her heart at the knowledge of the loss she would have to face, all of her emotions towards the young warrior suddenly coming up to the surface.
Jinx simply stood still in pure disbelief of what he saw around him.
The damage to the cave, the blood that was littered everywhere on the floor and walls, and the limp corpses of the mutated siblings that had been the cause of all the trouble they'd experienced lately.
Knowing that all this had been caused by one man alone was hard to accept, but not harder than the fact that this seemingly invincible warrior he'd come to like was actually defeated.
Sig silently went down on his knees, slowly putting down the peacemaker on the ground.
He kept telling himself that nothing could have been done differently, that it all would have ended the same way no matter how they would have done it, but the horror of his doubts on this matter kept talking back to him from the back of his mind.
He didn't want to accept what he knew was happening, but he was going to be forced to do so anyway, and he hated it.
---
Daxter was silent for what seemed to be a momentum stretched out in an eternal track of an ongoing lack of time, while he tried to understand why those sapphire eyes below him didn't open.
Jak looked so calm, as if in a long awaited sleep where all his troubles and pain was finally lifted away from his tormented face and left him looking a lot more like the young boy he'd once known in their shared childhood on the beaches of Sandover. Long before any kind of pain had been known to either of them.
But there was one thing missing in his features now.
Daxter fought the tears back as much as he could, trying desperately to will his friend into moving, into living and breathing.
But he knew it had been over even before he'd gotten over to him.
Jak had known it too as he'd sent him away.
He had said his goodbye.
One man could only do so much, and Jak had done more than what could ever have been expected of him.
Daxter just wished he'd been able to live a little longer.
It was going to be a hard time getting back to the everyday life again after this.
Living without Jak would be hard.
Daxter took a deep breath and finally let the reality of it all sink in as every last bit of his willpower gave in to the shaking caused by his silent crying.
"You weren't supposed to die, stupid..." he mumbled between the hick-ups.
--------
As with all great heroes, the funeral was well visited.
Every friend he'd made was there, even those who'd not really liked him due to some of the less heroic sides of his personality.
Daxter found it pretty darn over the top as even the not so frequent rain decided to pay a visit to the desert city as well.
But he didn't mind it.
The whole world could just cave in on him for all he cared.
He could feel Tess' small and still fur-clad hand pat his cheek softly in a try to comfort him from her place upon his shoulder.
Once she'd learned that Daxter hadn't died, but been returned to his ordinary self, she'd been too happy to even be disturbed by the fact that this made her two or three years of ottselness into a waste of time and sort of unnecessary, not to mention the awkwardness of her still being caught in this small fuzz-covered body.
Instead she'd tried to get to Spargus to see him, only to be informed that someone else had died.
Nothing seemed to be able to lighten up Daxter's mood though.
He hadn't said a single word since they left the cave with Sig carrying Jak's lifeless body in his arms.
Sig himself hadn't said much either.
Karidi had found herself leaning upon him for support, and he didn't quite mind it. He needed the support himself, all though he didn't say anything about it.
Jinx was all but his ordinary trouble free self, but he'd still shown up on the occasion, as had Torn, Ashelin and even Onin with a somewhat punctured Pecker sitting motionless in the bowl on her head.
And of course, Keira was there. Clinging on to her father's short figure and weeping silently non-stop.
Daxter didn't really care who were there.
All he did care about was the one person who weren't.
He squeezed hard at the large jewel in his pocket and felt the sharp edges dig into his palm, but nothing happened.
Somehow the weapon of the precursors seemed to only have been able to be activated by someone from Mar's bloodline alone.
Or at least that's the conclusion Samos had come to after examining the object.
Daxter hated it.
Had they only known about it before, then they wouldn't have tried getting it and maybe Jak would still have been alive...
Daxter was the last one to leave the graveyard.
He stood silently watching the ocean spread out in front of him some distance away.
"You'll catch a cold if ya' don't get inside and dry yourself up."
Daxter looked over his shoulder, surprised to know that there was someone still there with him.
The small girl's freckled face was wet from the rain and her hair was plastered against her head in the same way her clothes stuck to her body like an extra skin.
Daxter snorted at this comment and turned back around.
"Hey, I don't mind if ya' wanna' kill yourself," Fish continued stubbornly, "but your fuzzy girlfriend's getting kinda' agnsty and she's one heck of a fiery bitch when she gets goin'."
This made Daxter smile for a moment.
"I really wouldn't want to be the one telling her you've gone up and died as well. I mean, she ain't all that cute when she's mad..." Fish blabbered on, noticing the small change in the redhead's posture.
Daxter shook his head and turned around to face her.
"You really can't shut up, can ya'?" Daxter said, his voice sounding raspy and out of use, but containing more amusement than he'd expected himself.
"Now look who's talking!" the girl threw back at him with a roll of her eyes. "Welcome back to the world of those who make sounds! Wanna' get inside and get seriously damaged and pampered by a bitchy rat?"
"Ottsel," Daxter corrected her with a growing smile. "Not rat. There's a big difference, ya' know."
"Yeah, right," Fish replied, smiling back at him as she took his hand to lead him to where the others had gathered to get away from the rain.
"No seriously," Daxter insisted as they started walking. "The precursors are ottsels. I've met them. They gave me a pair of really snazzy pants."
Fish wouldn't stop laughing on the entire way back, and Daxter didn't mind it.
He figured he'd gotten his own mission now.
Someone had to tell the world of his adventures and of all the things that Jak had done.
After all, who'd remember the side-kick, if not the hero kept reminding people about him?
-------
THE END
--------
Yes, folks. It's the end of a very long tale. To tell the truth, I started out not meaning for anyone to die but the bad guys, but this ending sort of seemed more realistic to me...and a whole lot more fitting to the otherwise so gloomy and dark story. I hope you've enjoyed the reading!
/Silverspegel