AN: It's Torn. It's Jak. It's yaoi (if you couldn't tell that by the summary.) If you're stupid enough to continue to read this after I've warned you twice, and then proceed to flame me because of the pairing then I will have a good laugh at your expense. This story was inspired by Blink 182's song 'All of This', but is not a songfic. Oh yeah, and there's spoilers for the third game in here.
Disclaimer: You will note that this is published on a fanfiction site, meaning I am a fan and do not own anything to do with Jak and Daxter. If i did, it wouldn't be Ashelin Jak kissed at the end of Jak 3.
All Of This
Chapter One
There were cuts and bruises all over his hands and face. A drop of blood trickled down from a rather large cut on his forehead, and he brushed it off angrily.
You've been through worse than this before, Jak told himself, but it didn't cheer him up in the slightest.
The journey back into Haven City had been far more difficult than Jak had expected. Of course, no-one could have guessed that he would have needed to face a Precursor robot before he could get back into the city walls.
Now, all Jak really wanted was somewhere that he could rest without fear that he would be killed by metalheads or KG robots while he slept, preferably curled up beside someone who wasn't Daxter. He cared for his ottsel friend more than anyone else in the world, but was too tired to appreciate Daxter's seemingly never-ending supply of humorous nicknames and innuendos.
He knew, however, that another person's love and comfort was one thing he would never be able to receive. He, who had killed hundreds and injured or traumatised thousands more; he, who had become both saviour and destroyer, both angel and demon; he, who was both cursed and gifted because of the dark one inside him, knew that he would never be able to find love.
When Keira had first seen Jak's darker form she had screamed, and while after she recovered from the shock she had promised Jak he would always have her friendship, he knew Keira was no longer romantically interested in him.
It wasn't just people's reaction to him either that forced Jak to realise that he would be alone forever. He'd lost count of the amount of innocent civilians he had accidentally killed when he let his darker self take over, and there had been that one time when he had wounded Sig so badly…
Jak shook that depressing thought away. That was one mission he didn't want to relive.
Perhaps, with his new light self balancing the darker one however… Jak stopped that thought from going any further. It was best not to get his hopes up.
Jak's heart skipped a beat as he caught sight of a familiar looking structure. Hidden behind an old piece of wreckage was a blue question mark. Jak smiled and approached it casually.
"Ya don't think," Daxter began. "Na. There's no way the tattooed wonder would still be setting up these things for you… is there?"
Jak shrugged. "It's worth a try."
"But you were just complaining you were tired!"
Jak smiled as he remembered the 'tattooed wonder' Daxter had mentioned, deliberately ignoring the ottsel in the process. Torn, one of the key figures of the old rebellion, was one of the first people Jak had met here in Haven City, yet he still couldn't tell whether or not the dreadlocked and tattooed man considered him a friend.
Either way, it seemed that one of Torn's favourite pastimes was to set challenges for Jak, usually to test Jak's speed or knowledge of the city. The challenges had originally been part of Jak's training in the rebellion. They had still continued after the rebellion was long over, however, Torn saying that it kept both Jak and the Krimzon Guard from getting out of practise.
Jak wasn't really expecting the challenge to activate when he stepped up to it, but sure enough, Torn's familiar voice came from the speakers, perhaps a little more bitter than Jak remembered it, but nevertheless, it was Torn's voice.
"Jak," the (for once) pre-recorded voice greeted him. "Get to this spot before time runs out and I'll be impressed."
Jak smiled at the familiarity of the situation as he was shown a place somewhere nearby; before he ran off as fast as his legs could carry him.
The city had changed a lot in the few weeks Jak had spent in the wasteland, but not so much that he didn't have at least a general idea of where Torn would have hidden the orb. There was also the fact that Jak had never failed at one of Torn's challenges before, and he had no plans to start now.
He spotted a flash of bright orange to his left, and picked up his pace. He jumped up; grabbed hold of the ledge the orb was sitting on and pulled himself up, touching the orb just in time. This orb was only an illusion, but a handful of real orbs swiftly transferred themselves from Torn's account to his own, as a sort of congratulations on rising to the challenge, and Torn's voice erupted from the speakers once more.
There was always some sort of congratulations from Torn, or more recently compliments, and on one occasion nothing but a breathy 'Jak' which the blonde didn't know what to make of. Nothing, however, had been quite as bitter as the pre-recorded message that played now. Then again, Jak realised, he couldn't remember a time when it hadn't been Torn himself congratulating him, rather than this pre-recorded voice.
"I lied," Torn hissed over the speakers. "I'm not impressed. Then again, I'm a tough audience."
Jak supposed the last sentence made up for the harshness of the rest of it, or would have if it hadn't been dripping with so much spite, and, Jak cringed as he realised his next thought, what could possibly be hatred.
Then again, what had he been expecting from Torn? A warm welcome?
"Hey look!" Daxter suddenly announced, pointing over in the direction of a large blue barrier. "It's Samos and Keira!"
Jak attempted to smile, an act which he had never found easy, and tried to forget about Torn's welcome, if it could be called that.
"I'm telling ya! I could blow those Krimzon death bots to pieces if I had the right equipment," Jinx concluded, waiting for Torn to give some sort of sign that he had been listening.
Torn simply frowned, and wrote something down on the map in front of him.
"Sure would have been easier if we had Blondie back," Jinx thought aloud, hoping to pry the commander from the unapproachable mood he had been in lately. He wasn't expecting such an obvious reaction as he received.
"Damn it Jinx!" Torn yelled. "I don't want to hear about Jak, do you understand?" Jinx was a little surprised. Torn never showed any emotion apart from a cold, calculating indifference which sometimes stretched into anger, but never had he see Torn so obviously upset, or his emotions so easy to read.
"Just…" Torn sighed, and for a moment, Jinx thought he saw something close to defeat pass over the tattooed elf's features. "Go blow something up, would you?"
Jinx didn't often like to think too much. He left that to other people, preferring to get straight to the action, but as he exited the Naughty Ottsel, also known as the city defences' current headquarters, he found himself thinking about Torn's reaction when he had mentioned Jak. It meant… something. He was sure of it. He would have to find out what that something was later.
Torn paced backwards and forwards across the room, slightly annoyed at himself for yelling at Jinx. He found he was getting annoyed at a lot of things recently, and unfortunately he knew why, and it wasn't just the stress of the war getting to him, or his semi-recent break-up with Ashelin.
He pulled a small communicator out of his pocket and gazed at the blank screen forlornly. The small part of him that clung to hope told him to turn the communicator on, for that one-in-a-million chance that he would be able to loose himself in watching Jak run around the city, if only for a couple of moments.
He wasn't too sure when it was that he had fallen in love with the younger elf, just that it had happened, and what had started out as a way to test Jak's quickly growing skills turned into an excuse for being nice to and rewarding the blonde elf without it seeming suspicious, and on occasion, drooling over him shamelessly. Torn had lost count of the amount of times he had caught himself wishing desperately that he was one of Jak's zoomers.
"No," he told himself. Jak was gone, banished from Haven City. Ashelin had luckily reported that Jak was, the last time she had seen him, alive and, physically at least, perfectly healthy. Torn had debated about going out into the wasteland to check on Jak a couple of times himself, but had a feeling the eighteen-year-old wouldn't be happy to see him.
Torn attempted to put his communicator back down on the table, but found he couldn't do it. Not sure whether or not he should be frustrated with himself or not, Torn flipped his communicator open and pressed the power button.
Hey, a one-in-a-million chance was still a chance, right?
Torn prepared to be disappointed, but sure enough, a little red light appeared on the communicator, signalling that one of the challenges he had set up almost purely for old time's sake had not only been activated, but completed as well.
The chances that someone apart from Jak had found out how to activate the challenge was slim. The chances that someone apart from Jak had actually completed the challenge seemed even less likely than the presence of that little red dot on his communicator.
"Jak," Torn whispered. "You're back."