A/N: Aaaaannnddd it's finally finally done!  Okay, I'm just lazy.  It sat in my notebook for some two weeks, finished and everything, just not typed.  But anyway.  Take it as yaoi, don't take it as yaoi, that is totally up to you.  It certainly works for the former and can be made to work for the latter if you're that opposed to it.  And if you don't like blood, you won't want to read the last part of this chapter.  Okies?  Oh, and thanks for helping with the title, Krin! :D

Disclaimer:  I don't own this.  Duh.

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Daxter didn't miss the fact that Jak didn't come home that night, nor the next night, nor two nights after that.  The ottsel feigned indifference, teasing his friend mercilessly, all the while annoyed with himself for caring.  Each time that Daxter bugged him about it, Jak's reaction was the same- he would squirm, blush, try to brush the ottsel off, never once suspecting, never once looking deep enough into the ottsel's eyes to see what Dax knew he wasn't hiding well.  Then the elf would tease the ottsel in turn about his relationship with Tess.

Yeah.  Right.

Daxter knew full well that Tess thought Jak to be the greatest gift that the Precursors had ever given their race.  But Keira had rapidly made it clear who Jak belonged to, and it hadn't been hard for the ottsel to realize how hurt she was.  But he said nothing when the blonde flirted shamelessly with him, playing it up, both using their friendship as a cover.

People in this city weren't very good at hiding their feelings.

Kinda like him.

Oh, sure, Tess was hott, and she had a particularly lovely habit of leaning down onto the bar and thus giving him an excellent, eye-level view straight down her low-cut shirt.  Besides, she was one of the very few people who didn't look down on him because of the way that he looked.  And he did like girls; it was just that… well, it was Jak.

Jak…

Daxter had nearly died when Jak was taken away from him.  He was foolish, he knew, for thinking that they would never be parted.  But they had been together for so long, ever since Samos had wandered in one day with the little blonde kid in tow and Daxter had approached him, stared for a moment, sucking air in around his infamous buckteeth, and poked the boy, causing Jak to run and hide behind the egg-headed Sage.  They had been together through all of their childhood to the wild mess with Gol and Maia to… here.  To the place where they had been separated and Jak had been changed irrevocably.  Dax knew full well that he hadn't been there when Jak needed him most, but… he had done everything he could to help his friend.

It was hard sometimes, too- Dark Jak was more hateful ad evil than any Metalhead could ever be.  He wished that he had never been with Jak when he transformed, had never known about the Dark Eco that ripped through his friend's body.  There was no possible way to describe the feeling that he got when Jak unleashed his demon on the world.  Every single time, Daxter relived the pain of his transformation over and over and over again as the darkness that danced over Jak's flesh seared through his own, twisting, writhing, burning away all that was human about him, pain and horror hitting him in a torrent that nearly made his laboring heart burst with the pain.  But the pain and terror always faded away just in time, replaced by a twisted sense of pleasure.  The Eco played over his fur, seeping in through his pores and slowly wending its way through his body, slipping over and around everything under his skin, encasing it all in a dark murk that slowed down his entire form.  There was nothing in him that did, nothing in him that even wanted to try resisting the flow of the Dark Eco to his mind, the Eco that wrapped him up completely until he was nothing more than a grinning shell, staring out at the world through an oddly pleasurable fog.

It disgusted him, repulsed him.  But it was like one of the addictive drugs that teens would pass to one another when the Krimzon Guards had their heads turned.  Despite his abhorrence of the phenomenon, there was always that part of him that responded favorably to the Dark Eco.  And it kept him alive, dulled his life, making him so like the demon inside Jak that Dark Jak had no desire to squash out his life like he did anything else that happened to be in his range of view.

Sometimes, he almost hated Jak for doing this to him, for putting him through all of this.  But so long as he was with Jak, he was okay.  So long as he was with Jak, he would go through anything.

Anything.

And right now, he hated Keira more than anything in the world.  Oh, Precursors only knew what Jak had been through those two long years, knew that he, more than anyone, deserved to finally find comfort and acceptance.  But…

That's what Daxter had been offering him all along.

He shouldn't be jealous; it wasn't like Jak belonged to him or anything.

He just didn't want to lose him again.

So the dejected little ottsel slowly climbed up the stairs and wandered into the lonely room.  He curled up on the empty bed where Jak should have been, coldness settling over him, trying and failing to pretend that he wasn't all alone.

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There was life around him. He could feel it down to the very core of his being, hanging so deliciously desirably before his consciousness.

He wanted it.

His time of wanting was drawing to a close.  His time of starving even as his insatiable hunger grew and grew was over.  No longer would he be subservient to that weak mortal.  No longer would he be forced to sit back when it was past time for him to truly come to life.

At last… life would be his.  His time of feeding on the pitiful metal monsters was done. 

He wanted blood.

And it was high time that he took control.

He loved to kill.  Loved to hunt, feasting on the fear and hate as they flowed toward him from his prey, an intoxicating drought that only left him wanting more and more.  Loved to finally trap his prey, seizing it with his mind and body alike, ripping, rending, finally consuming the life that he detested and envied so, only slowly, so that every second must seem like a thousand eternities of pain.

He didn't like to wait.  But it was necessary for at least a little while longer. The seeds had been cultivating within his host for years now, stretching roots down deep, pushing up toward the surface and forming a bud of darkness ready to throw its black petals open and infect the world with its lovely pollen.  He had been pushing it lately, expending more energy that he ought to have in order to get it to grow more quickly.  He had terrified the mortal in his dreams, sucking up the waves of terror that came from the weakling's mind and hurling storing it for later, though he tired himself in the process.  He was fatigued now, and spent time resting while the incessant hunger gnawed at him without pause.  Already the time was drawing near, and he had to force himself not to ruin all of his careful work by acting in haste.  Once this worked… he would be free.

He would be unstoppable.

No, it would not be long.

And now, it was time to feed.

No one ever said he couldn't have fun.

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A low groan emerged from Jak's mouth as he tried to emerge from the thick haze of sleep.  No… not sleep… from the chill that his consciousness was mired in when his dark form took over.  He couldn't remember where he was or what he had been doing to warrant the use of the dark power that he controlled.

He frowned without opening his eyes as he realized his face was pressed against a firm surface and that, wherever he was, it was rather wet and sticky.  Slowly, his eyelids rose.

His heart stopped.

Memories came flooding back to him: his date with Keira; their return to her secluded apartment, as always; their hours spent in each other's arms; gradually drifting off to sleep, exhausted, wrapped in one another's embrace.

The all too familiar screaming from his nightmares was back again, assailing his ears, horror in every note of the long and uninterrupted sound.  It took him a long time, until his voice cracked and his throat constricted so much that he could barely breathe, to realize that it was him.

Her face was on the ground before him, the cooling, lifeless object that his lips had been pressed against, her face frozen in a mask of terror.  Even as he pushed and scrabbled at the ground, slipping in a futile effort to get away that earned him a face full of her warm blood, he could not tear his eyes from the alabaster face and lifeless emerald eyes that stared off into the nothingness of death.

Her head was completely torn off of her body.

His eyes swiveled around the room, half unseeing yet taking in everything, not needing light to see what he already knew was there.

As he slowly crawled back to her head, some distant part of him wondered at the fact that through all of his screaming, no one had come.  But there was no reason for anyone to, either- the area around her home was always deserted.  That was why they had chosen her place for their nightly courting.

His horror at what lay before him kept him from thinking rationally, kept him from doing what he ought.  As his mind slowly processed what had happened, he wound his fingers around the back of her skull and picked her head up out of the endless ocean of her lifeblood that covered the floor.  He cradled it in his arms, letting her hair hang down, aqua almost completely obscured by crimson.  His lips came down to rest on the top of her head, tongue tasting a mixture of metallic blood and sweat, arms crushing the skull to his body so closely that it seemed he might shatter it.

Eyes dark with pain, heart knowing exactly who had done it, he sat cradling the head to his chest, rocking slowly back and forth in the small, darkened room.