Chapter 3

Chapter three is here!! *dances* It is! Honest!! Much later than I intended, but still here. ^^;;

Anyway, I promised to thank everyone who reviewed, and I will!!

So~ A big thanks to: Vilyia, Lady Tsuru, Raven haired saiyan, EtherealShadow; who is now one of my betas, Jessica L. Young, Riona, Malon1031; who read it even when they don't normally do so, HappyGlow, Fhulhi the Crazy, Demz; my wonderful other Beta!!, Karr and Von! Thankyou all of you, you make me so happy! ^^ I'll see about doing more detailed thanks in the next chapter... >

Also, don't be afraid to ask questions about the fic people! I like readers who think about what they read. If something doesn't make sense, or you think I've done something wrong with the cast or setting, tell me! Just expect me to argue my point if I think I'm right, or at least explain where the idea came from.

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Daxter glanced out the side of the zoomer and gulped hurriedly. The buildings were flashing by in a strange blur of grime and neon, too fast to make out details- like where in this god-forsaken city they were.

'Jak does know that this is dangerous, right?!' Daxter thought frantically, his eyes dragging themselves back towards the road before them, as if he could keep them from crashing simply by concentrating hard enough.

A corner loomed ahead, and Daxter almost stopped breathing as Jak swung the zoomer around sharply, barely checking his speed.

"Jak! I think it's about time that you SLOWED DOWN!"

More buildings were flashing by, and another corner loomed ever closer ahead. Daxter thought he recognized a distant, but rapidly approaching, sign. They were in the slums. He swallowed again. Why the slums? The one area with way too many twists and turns for Daxter's liking at the moment. Was Jak trying to kill them?!

Metal screamed as the zoomer almost didn't turn fast enough, leaving a line of paint and metal on the side of a building, but still Jak didn't slow. A brief, morbid vision made Daxter wonder what the walls would look like with a line of.... bits.... along it.

'We're going to die.' Daxter thought, his eyes still glued to the road ahead. 'He's not slowing down, and this is the slums, and we're going to DIE!'

Jak's hand moved, and for a moment hope shone for Daxter, hope that Jak had finally come to his senses and was slowing the vehicle down before they missed a turn....

He was speeding up.

'Does he think this is some kind of race?! We could die!' But still, the city flashed past. 'We are going to die. We are going to die. We are going to die. We are going to die...' The words rang as a litany in Daxter's head. It did seem a little unfair though; he at least thought he could die in his original form.

Not even racing had been this bad. At least while racing everything was well lit, not soaked in rain, barely visible until you almost hit it....

At least the racing zoomers were built for these speeds....

Unbidden, Daxter's eyes were dragged around to stare at the smoking engine. They really were going to die. All because Keira had made Jak mad.

The dead end almost seemed to materialize in front of them, and the zoomer was aimed straight for it....

Time seemed to slow, becoming painfully detailed in the tiniest ways, and Daxter seemed aware of how distant everything seemed. So extremely detailed and real, it was too real, too much to take in all at once. Like it was happening to someone else.

The steel wall, looking extremely solid and hard, rain making a soft sheen to it's surface; the hiss of the rain contacting the heated case of the zoomer engine; the street itself, drenched in moonlight; the tortured scream of metal on metal as Jak hit the brakes, frantically, but too late... much too late....

And they were flying, Daxter was wrapped in strong arms, guarding and protecting him as the ground....

The ground appeared out of nowhere, rising to meet the falling pair with a resounding thump, then they were rolling over and over and over....

The world stopped.

------

Daxter opened his eyes to an ocean of blue.

'Jak's tunic', part of him supplied.

He looked up, blinking a few times to focus his eyes, and found Jak's face. It was still fastened to his body, as much as Daxter could make out, which was a good sign. Jak's eyes were also open, which was a better sign. He was looking at something.

Daxter turned to follow Jak's gaze, feeling a little surprised to see the crumpled remains of what he guessed was a zoomer, though it could have been a metal pancake. Daxter's mind wasn't too sure at the moment. There was also the wall that had most likely caused the pancake-like appearance of their zoomer. Jak was staring at it.

Daxter looked at the wall again, while his mind quickly cleared away the rest of the cobwebs over his memories and handed him the results.

'We should be dead.' Daxter thought. 'I didn't think there was enough time for him to jump out, but he did it anyway, and the zoomer is a pile of scrap metal now and it's still pouring rain and we should be dead.'

Jak reached out very gently and touched the wall, almost like he was testing if it was real or not.

Daxter stared at his hand, then at Jak's face, then back again. Finally, he got up the courage to say; "Jak?" in a nervous and uncertain voice.

Jak blinked and looked down at the ottsel, for once jokeless, looking forlorn and... vulnerable. Not to mention terrified.

"Dax... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put you through that," he said, then smiled wryly. "I guess we'll have to walk back to the Naughty Ottsel."

Daxter made himself smile back, and climb onto Jak's shoulder as if nothing had happened, though the singed fur, hair and clothing testified otherwise. "Forget about it baby, just so long as we can get cleaned up when we get back, I'll be fine."

But he wasn't. His mind kept thinking, 'He only apologized because he dragged me along, not because he almost killed us....' It was leading towards something Daxter didn't want to think about.

'If I hadn't been there, what would he have done?'

------

Tess looked up from wiping the tables down in the closed bar and frowned slightly as the pair dripped mud and water on the freshly cleaned floor.

"I just finished that you know." she said, almost absent mindedly. "Is everything alright? You look like you walked back here, so what happened to the zoomer? Should I ask Keira to look at it?"

She winced a bit as Jak glared. "We don't need anyone to look at it, least of all Keira. I'm going to have a shower."

Tess watched Jak leave, ascending the stairs as if he had a personal grudge against them, then turned questioning eyes on Daxter. It was then she noticed the vaugue look to his eyes, the way he seemed to be blocking something from his mind.

"Maybe you should have a shower too, Daxter. I'm sure Jak won't mind the company." she suggested, keeping her tone light, though her mind was troubled.

Daxter gave a half-nod, and headed in the direction Jak had left, all the while looking preoccupied with something. Tess hoped that the shower would calm the two of them down, then maybe she could ask Daxter what the hell had happened out there.

Still, while she was waiting, the floor needed cleaning, and there was work to be done.

------

Jak stripped on auto-pilot turned the hot water up as far as it would go, then stood under the stream of heat and steam. 'What the hell was I thinking, I could have gotten Daxter killed with that stunt.' he thought to himself. 'As if I haven't already done enough to him, I have to drag him around with me through who knows what, without even thinking about what could happen. What would I have done if I'd lost him?' He sighed. Jak knew that if he was perfectly honest with himself, Daxter was about the only person he could truly call a friend. No one else had stuck with him through everything- not even Keira had been there all the way. Had been with him all the time, through things that were best left to darkness and screams in the night...

He wouldn't have trusted anyone else to get that close to him, not yet. For a while though, Jak had thought that maybe, just maybe, Keira could understand him, could accept him for who he was, and become as close to him as Daxter was. But it seemed like all she saw was a dream, a memory warped by what she desired him to be, not who he really was.

She hadn't been there when the night had last dragged him screaming into an abyss of nightmares and night horrors.

Jak noticed Daxter enter the shower as well, industriously soaping his fur and flinching at the heat of the water. He lowered the temperature a little, letting the ottsel share the warm water, scything cold away from skin, muscle and bone.

Jak could have kicked himself for the number of times he'd overlooked Daxter, the times he'd taken the little ottsel for granted, ignored his ideas and comments, overruled what Daxter had wanted. He'd just been so... obsessed about everything. Taking down the Baron, saving the city, fighting the Metalhead Leader. He'd overlooked everything else, taken it all for granted, and now he'd almost lost it. He'd been a man driven, all that time after he'd left prison, there had never been time for him to think, time for him to plan or feel or wonder, only time to do. And now he had all the time in the world, and not a clue what to do with it.

He started laughing at that, but Daxter started watching him, a strange look in his eye, probably wondering what was so amusing in a shower, so Jak stopped.

Maybe now he should think. Think about how Daxter had always been there, think about all the things everyone had done for him, all the 'thank yous' that were left unsaid.

All the times a soft ottsel paw had soothed the screaming in the night, and held back the nightmares.

Maybe it was time for a change. Jak smiled ever so slightly at the idea, but another, slightly darker one, followed.

'What happens to heroes who are no longer needed?'

-----

Daxter was really trying not to stare at Jak's... well, you know. He was blushing, it was difficult to tell underneath the orange and yellow ottsel fur, but he was definitely blushing, all the while suppressing the urge to stare at Jak, the toned muscles and tanned skin. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't 'silken to the touch', like they always wrote in those romance things. Jak had many scars. Near misses from fights with Guards or Metalheads or racing or brawling. The odd ones from getting too angry and attempting to take his frustration out on a wall. There were even some that Daxter wasn't too sure about, ones that Jak didn't realize he had, because it was the other Jak that had gotten them....

Jak had a lot of scars.

Daxter didn't mind so much, it was a part of who Jak was, and he prided himself in the fact that Jak trusted him enough to let him see him like this....

Butt naked and dripping water and foam....

Dammit! He had just had to look didn't he?!

It was times like this that Daxter hated Jak for being so, so dense! Hated the way he hid his emotions from Jak, because he was too afraid to tell him. Jak thought this was an innocent shower between two friends, mainly because one was too short to reach everything, and Daxter was determined to keep it that way. He wasn't sure how exactly Jak would take it if he saw Daxter staring at him in the shower. Daxter wasn't sure what he would say to Jak if he was caught staring...

He was doing it again!

Daxter decided that this was pushing things a little too far, and left the cubicle. The basin provided easy to reach taps with icy cold, somewhat clean water, something the ottsel was grateful for at the moment. But that didn't change the fact that he was maybe pushing things too much by sharing the shower. It looked like it would be basin-baths for him from now on. He wondered briefly if Jak would notice, or ask why. Then he wondered what he would say if Jak did.

Daxter dried himself before Jak finished his shower, and headed back towards the main part of the Naughty Ottsel. It was the only area of the bar that had been completely re-done. New paint, a very thorough scrubbing, plus some of the more obvious changes. Daxter had always been slightly nervous about the mess in the Hip Hog, and so he was determined to keep the Naughty Ottsel as clean as possible. It was probably impossible in Haven city. But still, you had to try.

"Daxter? Is something wrong?" Tess called, falling silent as he waved her off and headed to his and Jak's makeshift quarters. Someday soon, Krew's rooms were going to be scrubbed, disinfected, scrubbed some more, and possibly even burned, then refurnished. Then he and Jak would be able to sleep in real comfort. Still, the bed they had at the moment was more comfortable than what they had been used to before, not that either of them had noticed what condition the beds were in, when they had the spare time for luxuries like sleep.

Still, Daxter wished the room was a little more... them. He wanted at least something that said they spent time there, not just a plain brown bed with plain off-white sheets and a brown blanket. It just seemed so drab. 'Heroes of the city shouldn't have to live with drab,' Daxter decided, but it didn't really help. As much as he was trying to distract his mind that night, it kept going back to the near-accident.... And the pancake-zoomer. It was only a small task for Daxter's mind to add in the bits of flesh and gore that would be all that was left of them, after hitting the wall. They would have been unidentifiable, save for the zoomer itself.

Keira would probably cry for Jak. Everyone would probably cry for Jak. After all, Jak was the hero, and Daxter was the furry thing on his shoulder.

And Jak hadn't cared if he hit the wall or not....

But he had cared that Daxter might have been hurt.

Daxter lay long into the night, puzzling over these strange events, reliving the fear of the race, and doing something he was not so well known for, hiding it well with some of his other secrets: thinking. As the night wore on, Jak returned and fell asleep, and still Daxter did not know of what all these things meant. Maybe he never would.

------

Morning sunlight washed the city in dirty golden light and created magnificent visual effects on the smog layer coating the city. It stole into the room Jak and Daxter shared, and lit up the sleeping forms therein. Orange fur glowed slightly in the questing rays, as did pale hair.

Jak stirred a little as the light invaded his sleep, but it was a welcome feeling, often driving back nightmares and reassuring him that that was all they were; nightmares. He opened his eyes, blinking often as he got used to the change in the light, before sitting up sleepily.

Daxter also awoke, as his 'alarm clock' went off. The reason being, if you sleep on someone's chest, then when they sit up in the morning, you wake up too.

"Jak? Isn't this a little early?" Daxter mumbled, then yawned hugely.

Jak smiled slightly down at him. "Yeah, but remember, we have work to do today."

Even though the Metahead Leader, MetalKor, had been defeated a few weeks back, by Jak himself, many Metalheads still roamed outside the city, preventing free travel and expansion from Haven. And so Jak was still able to make himself useful, heading out with the squads of guards and Wastelanders who made it their point to get rid of as many Metalheads as possible. It wasn't that bad, and Jak had plenty of experience when it came to fighting Metalheads, so he often went out with them. It was better than sitting around the Ottsel doing nothing.

Jak then recalled the events of the night before, how he'd almost foolishly tossed Daxter's life away.... Did he want to drag Daxter, possibly against his will, into more potentially deadly zones? At least while they were fighting the Baron, Daxter had been as much a part of it as Jak had, but now? Now Daxter had the bar, had a place to stay, the chance of building a new, better life for himself. Did Jak really have the right to deprive him of this chance?

"Dax... I was thinking." Jak began.

"Don't hurt yourself."

"Funny. But are you sure you want to come with me? We're scheduled to go to the Metalhead Nest remains and clean up what we find there... It'll be more dangerous than any other place. Are you sure you want to do this? You could just stay..."

"What? Stay here? And miss all of the excitement?!" Daxter looked up at Jak, almost calculating. "You trying to keep all that glory to yourself, aren't you? All those babes fawning over you.... Asking you to tell how brave you were..." he nudged Jak. "I bet Keira would be..."

"Just forget about Keira. I have." Jak said, a little more harshly than he had intended.

"Whoa! Settle down baby! I just think maybe you're jumping to conclusions! Take it slow... You sure it's over with Keira?"

Jak took a deep, calming breath. "It's over." he said. "I don't know how she sees it, but I can't pretend to feel what I don't. Maybe there isn't anyone for me in this city."

"Don't say that Jak! 'Cause it ain't true! Now let's get down there and kick some Metalhead ass!!"

Jak looked at his friend in surprise, Daxter was suddenly very animated, almost bubbly with happiness.

'Is is because I'm not with Keira? Did he... like her that much?' Jak felt a pang of something. Envy, jealousy, or something he wasn't entirely sure of, but he pushed it aside, as he did with so many emotions, to deal with later. "Well, we'd better get ready."

-----

"Morning boys!" Tess called cheerfully. Daxter had given up trying to figure out how the blonde could possibly be the last to leave the Naughty Ottsel whenever it got around to closing, drive home, then be ready to open the place in the morning. Unless she only needed a few minutes sleep, it didn't seem possible.

But there she was, every morning, breakfast ready for them and the early customers, never a hair out of place. Maybe it was time to give her a raise....

"Hey there sugar-plum! Did'ja miss me?" Daxter called, leaping lightly from Jak's shoulder to land on the surface of the bar. Tess winked at him, and placed an order of the morning's special before them, pancakes with a sweet berry sauce.

Jak nodded his thanks and moved most of the pile to his own plate, letting Daxter have his favourite ones, near the bottom of the pile, soaked with sauce.

"Thanks Tess," Jak said, making a start on breakfast. "We'll need the extra energy for today's work. Sorry we can't help out in the bar."

Tess shrugged. "It's not like the Ottsel gets hugely busy during the morning, plus Daxter hired some more staff to help out around the place...."

Almost on cue, the doors opened to admit a troupe of scantily-clad maidens.

"...which appear to have arrived." Tess finished smoothly.

Jak couldn't help but stare a little, and half wonder where exactly Daxter had found the girls. Maybe at one of those hidden bars with the interesting pictures out front... 'Just like Daxter to find himself a small harem to run the place. Not that he hasn't got good taste....' Jak thought, his eyes flicking over the exposed flesh. "Looks like they only have one outfit between them." he muttered to Daxter.

Daxter had been scrutinizing the new employees, pleased with what he saw. Krew hadn't understood that a bit of exposed flesh here and there brought in more customers than Metalhead trophies did. At Jak's comment he scowled a little, ever so slightly tempted to tell the girls to leave.

But they did need the help, and the extra customers. The attraction of seeing MetalKor's huge head wouldn't last forever, and the Naughty Ottsel also had to battle the left over images from the Hip Hog. Daxter needed to show the city that the Ottsel was different, fresh and exciting. Which meant he could not fire the girls simply because Jak liked the way they looked.

He took a moment to relax back into 'normal' Daxter mode, and turned back to Jak, a slight leer dancing on his lips.

"Yeah! Bet you'd like to show them the ropes, eh Jak?" 'A suggestive wink,' he reminded himself. 'Add a suggestive wink.'

Jak rolled his eyes. "I bet I'm not the only one," he commented. "But we don't have time for this, we're due at the transport soon."

Daxter nodded, pushed the dirty plates aside, and jumped easily onto Jak's shoulder. "Well, what are we waiting for?! We can oogle when we get back... Tell the ladies what danger we went through, let them pamper the hero... I'll even let you stick around too, Jak!"

Jak smiled, a rare occurrence for him, but something he enjoyed. It seemed like Daxter was able to take his problems; remembered harsh words, stupid actions and irrational behaviour, and hide them away for a time. Sometimes he thought Daxter had been the only thing stopping him from going insane.

Daxter, with his fast talking, sharp tongued comebacks and lines, helping to break the tension when Jak needed it. Offering advice, often intended to get a smile from Jak, even while it was helpful.

Daxter was the only person who could get Jak to smile now.

'I don't need anyone else, when I've got him.' Jak thought. 'Anyway, Daxter knows me as well as I know him, he'd be the last person to hurt me, and I trust him more than anyone now. Which is why I have to do this... Why I have to find out....'

A few moments on the Jetboard, long enough to cross the bay and arrive at the transport, and Jak was ready to.... be berated by Torn.

"Jak, you're late." Torn growled, his tone indicating that he believed tardiness to be one of the seven deadly sins. "Don't do it again, or we'll have to leave without you. Get in."

'Next stop,' Jak thought grimly, 'the Metalhead Nest.'

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You like? No preview for the next chapter, I couldn't find anything to put in that wouldn't give away what I planned for the next chapter.... I should be able to do one for chapter five though... *plots*