A/N: So it's been uh… two and a half months since I last updated… cringes My muse decided to take an extended vacation, and with finals, finals, graduating, and a lot of drama, my life was a mess for a while there. But I finally made myself update, and the next chapter should be along soon as it's almost written now and all I have to do is type it.

One thing, if anyone feels that they can get Pecker's dialogue down right, please e-mail me, because I need HELP! I don't like the way I have his dialogue now, it just doesn't seem quite right. So I'd love you forever if you'd assist me! If not, then you people will just have to deal with an odd bird for a while! ;)

Disclaimer: Yeah… no.


Daxter's eyes slowly opened. The room swam for a moment, then came into focus. With a groan, he pushed himself up and off of the soft bed, wincing as his stiff fingers finally unwound from around Jak's stuff. He drew a shaky breath as he thought of Keira and Jack. He wanted so badly to believe that it wasn't true; but deep within, he knew without doubt that it was.

Precursors, he was worried about Jak.

The door to the room opened, and for one wild moment he thought that it was Jak that popped his head into the room. But when he blinked, the blonde mop lightened and the face changed into the familiar feminine features of a very worried Tess. Seeing that he was awake, she walked fully into the room and sat on the bed.

"Heya, sweetcakes," Daxter managed, though it sounded terribly false and weak to his ears.

She only smiled.

"Wha-"

"You've been out for half the day, Dax… It's already all over the city. Mostly rumors, but there is some of what I assume is the truth out there. If Ashelin hadn't been assassinated, the Guard would have broken down our door by now." Daxter said nothing, only covered his eyes and shuddered at the memory. Tess's voice became softer, a warm hand came down to rest upon his trembling form. "Daxter… what happened?"

He didn't answer her immediately but got up and struggled down the stairs, hands finding and winding their way around a bottle. It was only after a few swigs of alcohol burned their way down his constricted throat that he found that he could speak. Slowly, haltingly, the little ottsel told her what he had found. The more he spoke, the paler Tess became until her face was as white as the moon and her wide eyes were filled with horror.

There was complete silence for nigh on ten minutes as the blond stared at the rodent and Daxter stared at anything but her, lost in horrific imaginings of what was happening to Jak out… there.

The door slid open and someone entered; who, Daxter didn't know, didn't care. It whirred, a glitch, unable to close and block out the slivery moonlight that had managed to find its way through the haze enshrouding the city. The great orb hung just inside the boundaries of the doorframe, icy demeanor gloating haughtily at Daxter, mocking his pain.

He turned his back on it.


The same harsh moon lit Jak's path as the darkness, both real and intangible, swirled around his form. He walked hunched over, gasping for breath. His feet hit a rock, his body turned, eyes connecting with the outline of the massive city.

Close… he was still so close…

The ground shifted under his feet, abruptly sending him cascading down an incline. The serrated edges of what little flora there was cut deeply into his body. Hot bile rose in his throat as the scent of fresh snaked up into his nostrils, lying heavily upon his tongue as fresh mingled and slipped over old, wetting the crimson anew. His head connected sharply with a rock, his chest landed heavily on another stone, knocking what air there was out of his labouring lungs. Down, down, so far down he recklessly tumbled until the earth spat him over another ledge and down onto the dark ground below. He lifted his head, trying to see what lay before him.

All life had ended. The moon shone its cold light down on a vast sea of nothing. The wind lifted dirt off of the barren surface and bore it up into the firmament above until all the strength was gone and it came raining back down to clog Jak's mouth and nose. With a groan, his head slumped back down to the ground and his eyes, weeping tears that even he did not realize were there, shut.


"Jak! Jak, where are you?" There was no reply, only the deep darkness that muffled and enveloped his words. "You have to come, you know! Big hero, loud music, hot babes… ALCOHOL… even you couldn't refuse that one, buddy!"

But there was no reply. He eventually began to stumble along blindly, growing scared for his friend. The shadows pressed in on him, endeavoured to flatten him, enclosing him on all sides until he felt as though he were trapped in a box, knowing that Jak was facing the same from the malevolent mass all around him. He screamed his name, over and over until his voice was hoarse, terror overflowing from his small body. There had to be a sign, any sign at all, that Jak had not succumbed to the darkness like all of his fears howled at him to do.

That Jak was there, mired in the same dark death, he had no doubt. He could sense his friend, smell his pain and fear as though he was only a few feet away…

Then he was there, right before him, just standing, eyes shut, face calm, skin shining in the shadows, unbothered by his lack of clothing. "Jak!" he screamed again, praying that his cracked voice was loud enough to reach Jak's ears. He lunged towards his friend, desperate just to touch him, just to know that he was there.

But he wasn't.

The darkness took him, absorbed him until he stumbled to a halt and turned to find Jak behind him, eyes open, meeting his gaze solemnly, unwaveringly. Again he reached for Jak. Again Jak disappeared, fading into the black mist and emerging again and again each time that he went to touch him, sometimes looking at him, sometimes not.

He froze when he saw Jak for the fifteenth, twentieth time. Trembling violently, fur shaking in rippling waves across his back, he stared at his friend. Jak's arms, skin the colour of the purest Light Eco, shone in the darkness like a brilliant star in the heavens, the single source of light in the desolate wasteland of pitch. His eyes followed the glowing skin as the arms rose, rose towards the sky that they emulated until they were straight out, palms up, eyes liquid, pleading with him to come help him, to save him.

Daxter had never moved so fast.

Jak reached down and picked him up as the rodent collided forcefully into his legs, relief overflowing from his eyes. His skin was so cold that Daxter shivered, and Jak looked at him questioningly. Daxter only sighed and forced himself to relax in those familiar hands, wondering idly why Jak did not speak. But he was here, he was real, and after so long of finding only specters of Jak, he was content just to stay. He wanted to speak, to cry out that he was worried about Jak, but he did not. Something had slowly washed over him; not peace, but a strange calmness, and he was loathe to shatter it. Even the murky depth that they were entombed in no longer seemed so dark.

And then his grip shifted. Jak's hands snaked up his body to wrap themselves around his thin neck, bone-chilling ice suddenly seizing and freezing his heart. The snowy digits rested there harmlessly for a moment, and Daxter slowly looked up into Jak's face to see what he already knew would be there.

A black grin already twisted Jak's face. Even as Daxter watched, his features twisted grotesquely and shimmered, wavering for a moment. And then, with a mighty jerk, they shifted into that of Jak's demon. Black nails, all but invisible in the darkness, came to rest on the quivering skin of his neck, teasing, toying, drawing thin rivulets of blood from his arteries, and he smiled as they threaded their way down his fur. The demon leaned forward, face coming ever closer to his, dark eyes filled with a mix of loathing and hunger as they drank in his fear…

…and Daxter changed. Underneath Dark Jak's fingernails his skin rippled, his body lengthened and grew, the fur all over his body moved and slithered its way up to his head, leaving behind pale skin, pink against that of the demon.

"Plead."

It was a whisper, a whisper that echoed like the force of hundreds, thousands of people screaming at once.

Daxter didn't want to respond, didn't want to have anything to do with the death that gripped him in its claws. Not of his will, his eyes rose from his newly created body to the pits that stared back at him.

Again.

"Plead."

When he did not respond, the demon's hands tightened, nails digging further into the soft flesh of his neck. "Plead. Beg me for you life." Teeth gleamed in the darkness. "Beg me for his life."

His hands tightened more.

Pain… there was so much pain, all over his body and in his heart. He tried to resist, tried valiantly to ignore it. With every passing second those cold hands tightened fractionally.

"Please…" The word passed his lips, nearly soundless as his head burst with pain.

The hands paused. "Say it again."

"Please… let him go…"

The demon laughed, louder and louder and louder until it echoed so in his mind that he could not even tell when the demon had ceased. With one final malicious, gleeful thrust, the fingers pushed through his neck and out the other side before ripping through what remained of his flesh.

The pain escalated a hundredfold; his vision slowly began to fade. He made one last effort to speak Jak's name, screaming it in his mind, though not a sound emerged from his broken body, burning blood slipping down his trachea and into his lungs, replacing the air as he drowned in his own life. He was falling, falling…

Falling…


He hit the ground hard, elbows and knees bruising under the force of the impact. He sat up, gasping for breath, staring fearfully at nothing as the last remnants of his nightmare faded away.

For the first time in years, he put his head in his hands and cried.