I can't take back…
The words I never said.
Jak entered the Underground HQ, tired and looking forward to lying down. Samos and Daxter were already there, the former looking concerned and the latter sprawled out on one of the beds. Samos asked Jak if he would go see Keira. He was worried because she seemed depressed lately and when he had gone to see her, she had kissed him goodbye. He was confused but he couldn't get another word out of her.
He asked Jak to go and find out what was wrong. Jak asked Daxter if he wanted to go along, but he refused and said, "This is your show, brother. Besides, I don't want to be messing around with any 'girl problems.'"
Jak sighed and took off for the stadium. He found Keira's workshop as usual, but it was dark and abandoned. Jak gave up and decided to come back later, assuming she had just gone out as he walked through the rain the long way back. He came upon a newly installed bus station and found Keira sitting on the bench.
After a moment, Jak cautiously approached her. She looked up and her heart sank, seeing the last person she wanted to see, but managed to smile anyway.
"Hi Jak," she said, her voice slightly hoarse as if she had just woken up. She seemed awake enough, though, as Jak regarded her warily. He could already tell that something was wrong.
"What are you doing out here in the rain, K?" Jak asked carefully, hands in his pockets as he looked up at the gray, misty sky.
Keira's smile faded as she looked up at the sky to humor him. "It's more like a mist than rain. It doesn't bother me."
Jak looked down and noticed a duffle bag at her feet. Keira looked back at him, regarding him mildly as if she knew exactly what he was going to say but didn't care.
"Vacation?" Jak ventured with a cautious smile.
"You could say that," she replied nonchalantly as she leaned back and draped her arms over the back of the bench. Jak sat down beside her.
For a several very long minutes, neither of them said anything. Never one for words, Jak sat with his hands clasped between his knees, staring thoughtfully at his boots. Keira stared off into the distance in front of her, as if she were looking into a distant world.
"So, where are you headed?" Jak voiced finally as he straightened in his seat to look at her again. She spared him a glance before staring back into the fog.
"Don't know," she said simply. "This bus is going to take me to the other end of the city, and from there, I've got a buggy that will take me into the Wasteland…"
"The Wasteland?" Jak asked, unpleasantly surprised. "That's really dangerous, Keira. You have no idea what it's like out there…"
Keira leaned down and reached into her duffle bag, extracting a short barrel pistol. "It'll be okay," she said emotionlessly, studying the gun. "The world's a much safer place now than it was when we first got here. I guess I have you and Ashelin to thank for that…"
Jak did not seem to notice the heavy implications in her voice when she said Ashelin's name. Instead, he watched her warily as she turned the pistol over in her hands. He had promised himself when he sat down that he wouldn't annoy her by demanding that she tell him why she was doing this, why she had lost all her vibrancy that he loved so much, but he couldn't contain it any longer.
"What happened, Keira…?" he asked quietly, eyes still locked on the gun. She looked over at him and his eyes flickered up to meet her gaze. They stared at each other for a moment before Keira looked away, shoving the gun back into her bag.
"People have to move on, Jak," she said a little more forcefully than she had intended. "I hate this place, I told you that before."
The comment had bitten a little harder for Jak, who had come to feel more at home in Haven than he had even in Sandover. He looked around at the gray concrete walls and the sky that never seemed to shine, and couldn't help but feel that a mess like him belonged in a place like this.
He looked over at her again, a flicker of her old passion in her even as she frowned at the ground. She seemed superimposed, like a flower cut from a picture and pasted over this gray and dreary scene. He knew she belonged in Sandover, but when given the chance to go back, she had stayed…
Jak was suddenly aware of the screeching brakes of a bus as it stopped right in front of them. Keira shouldered her bag and walked toward the open bus doors without so much as a glance back. One more look into his pained eyes and she might fall apart where she stood.
"Keira, wait!"
Jak jumped up and jogged over to where she had paused by the bus doors. He stood in front of her, blocking her way. A few more precious seconds passed as he studied her, suddenly realizing how tired she looked. She averted her eyes, visibly impatient.
Something was swelling in the back of his throat, and Jak swallowed hard to try to clear it away. His head was buzzing with words to tell her, but they never managed to form on his lips.
"I have to go," she finally said, and stepped past him to board the bus.
Jak stood at the bottom of the steps and watched her retreat. He felt powerless, as if in a dream where everything was flashing past him while he couldn't move at all.
Abruptly, the doors closed in his face, and he managed to take a step back from the curb as the bus pulled away. He searched the windows for her, but they were all dark.
/fin/
A/N: I know that the real reason Keira didn't take the Rift Rider back home was because they had to use it to send The Kid back to a time where she didn't belong, but if she still made a choice.
-P