Jake 2.0 and all associated characters are the property of Roundtable Entertainment and Viacom Productions, Inc., 2003. I'm just borrowing Jake and Diane for a bit, that's all.
Please don't archive or otherwise distribute this story without my permission.
During 'Get Foley' Diane is forced to examine her feelings for Jake.
Jake 2.0
Acknowledgement.
by
Alasdair T. McLean
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I thought I had it under control.
I mean, apart from a few lapses, I thought I had managed to keep anyone from noticing . . . Well, okay, Fran knew, and uncannily perceptive is good in an assistant, really; I'm sure Lou suspected, but Kyle, I don't think he . . . Well, guys tend not to be very good at picking up on things like this.
And Jake was just as bad. Oh, sometimes he would do or say something that would leave me thinking that he had noticed me – how I felt about him – but for the most part . . . nothing beyond friends.
I really, really hate that word now, you know. I mean, before, before Jake, I didn't mind friends. Of course before Jake I . . . the first time we met, I hadn't felt anything like it before. Oh, it's not as if I've never, before, but not that instant recognition of potential between me and someone else. Now, don't get me wrong, Jake as a friend is great, it's just so frustrating to feel this potential every day when we're in the lab running tests or whatever . . .
So I pushed it right to the back of my mind and focused on our friendship as much as I could.
But when I saw him in that bar, lost and fighting brutally in a way that was so unlike him, it was hard, so hard to remember not to know him. I'd seen him lost and uncertain before, over what the nanites and becoming an agent meant for his place in the world and his relationships, but this time it was so much worse. There was nothing there except anger and fear. I was so scared that there was nothing of him left, but in the coffee shop, when he paid for my meal and I called him 'Jake' he was . . .
He was still Jake. Scared, running, lost, but he was still Jake and seeing him like that made it impossible to pretend that friendship was all I felt.
I should have been honest with him from the start.
Well, honest about the NSA and the nanites and my being his doctor and friend.
Okay, maybe not from the start because he would have just bolted the second I said I was with the NSA, but after we . . . I should have, after . . .
We kissed.
Actually, we nearly did a lot more than just kiss, and you remember that potential I mentioned?
Wow.
I wanted to. God, I really wanted to, but I couldn't. It wasn't Jake. Okay, it was, but it wasn't, he couldn't remember anything about who he was before Dumont took him from us.
I should have told him after that, but I was so tired and he was holding me. One night didn't seem too much to ask.
In the morning he wanted us to run away together, far away, I tried to tell him then but that rent-a-thug showed up and Jake had to go work.
Then Lou and Kyle found me and he found out I was with the NSA . . .
I tried to tell him who he was, who I was, that I was his friend but he didn't believe me. He walked out thinking I had betrayed him.
I couldn't let him go.
I'm not sure what happened in that customs warehouse, but he came back to us. I don't know why; if I got through to him or if it was something else, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that he came back to us.
And that he trusts me again.
I find it amazing that, even without his memories, he trusts me enough to sit in the lab waiting while I prep a syringe with a synthesised liquid that will hopefully restore his memories.
I'll have to face him once I've done this and I don't know if it'll work and, if it does, whether he'll remember Philadelphia, the Palace or what happened between us.
But I want his memories back.
I want Jake back.
So, I go to him as he's looking through his file, trying to find out who he is, what he's done and doubting who he is and whether or not he could do those things.
I know who he is to me.
He's my best friend and I love him.
End.