Characters are blah blah Naughty Dog's. Except for the ones I made up. But Naughty Dog can have them if they wish to so I guess it's fine blah blah. I just so –heart- these dull copyright-licence-depsy-dupsys, does it show, eh? –smile-

Afeenaninganing, I'll see what I can do… I like Keira+Jak –pair, too, but you see, Keira has got lots to forgive… Perhaps too much. Time will show… -evil grin- Bwahhahhahhaa! And yes, milk rules! Thanks for the review!

jaklover123, oops, sorry. Bwahhahhaa! I'm evil… Okay, it's wonderful to hear that someone feels bad for something I've written for a character. Like… eeh… Am I the only one who thinks my words get pretty tangled now? And there's too much of tripleperiods. Oh well… Thanks!

LunarSquirrel, SQUIRREL! Wow! –a pretty big chipmunk scene including some pop music and flying pieces of dried papaya- Thanks for your review! You've added me in your favourite stories! Omigod, I think I'm gonna faint… -eeeekkk! more flying papaya-

Tank, you love us? Wow… Wooonderful! Thank you for reviewing!

(the usual means a lot for me stuff which never changes – love you all!)

Da: "People seem to like us."

Lucius: "Wow! I love them, too, then!"

Sipuli: "That's just great! But think of the pressure!"

Da: "I'm getting gray hair!"

Sipuli: "I'm losing my pollen!"

Lucius: "I eat too much of almonds!"

All three: "EEEEEEKKK!"

maestro: "Quiet. We will update as soon as we can. Now we have had some problems with the chapter five."

Sipuli: "And still have. That's why we postponed the chapter four, although it was ready as the chapter three was online."

Da: "Really really really sorry to keep you waiting!"

maestro: "And also we have written a quite huge chapter of twelve pages –"

Lucius: "Sorry about that. You won't be able to read til the end, unless you'll read inside a fridge –"

maestro: -wham- "- but you will not see it yet. Here comes the chapter four and warning –"

Lucius: "Includes some language I like!"

maestro: "He means rude."

Lucius: "Yeah!"

maestro: -wham-

4. Rain & Pain

It was raining. What a surprise.

The people had either umbrellas or then they wore slickers. Except for one girl. She rode her rainbow coloured zoomer through the torrent wearing blue bikini with white polkadot pattern. People looked at her, the aspect depending on the viewer's sex. The driver didn't care. It was her zoomer and she for sure drove it in clothes she wanted to – and she loved rain! Rain was one of the things that Haven city had not spoilt. Haven had started to feel more and more like her home, but she still missed the little village everything had started…

Torn stretched his limbs and yawned heavily. It was only midday. The Return of Mar surely had got his circadian all mixed up. He had slept only for six hours! And all for that reasonless lachrymation. The younger faery had fallen asleep soon after he had returned to his bed, a thin mattress on the floor. Torn, on the other hand, had stayed awake for time that felt like decades, thinking. Thinking about himself and Haven. The past and the future. Jak and Ashelin. The furballs.

He found it hard to imagine that he actually could stand being around the orange lump of hair. That he could actually live together with him and his girlfriend. Torn had never liked Daxter. For most of the time he had hated the rodent. But since Jak had gone to Spargus and Torn had become a tenant to Ottsel, he had gotten to know Daxter better. The ottsel was a lot more than what he let show. But wasn't everyone? Torn thought about the image he had given out and shuddered with a smile. Being that Torn had been quite hard sometimes, but sometimes quite satisfying, too.

"And it was a must", he told himself. Being the Underground commander. The war otherwise. The turbulence in his relationship with Ashelin. That Torn had been an excellent shield to keep the emotions inside, although sometimes Torn had just wanted to run away and hid under a mountain. And probably he had done it, if he hadn't had enough of the instinct of self protection. You see, Metal Heads and mountains made quite a couple, didn't they?

However the boy who had walked into his "office" seemed to have a serious lack of the abovementioned. More than once had Torn given him tasks he hadn't expected him to be able to tell the tale about - and more than once had he passed them with flying colours. The boy had become more close to him than the other men under his control; first because he had been such a wonderful soldier, then because he had stayed around Torn, kind of craving for a contact or at least a teeny weeny spark of… something. Friendship? Needless to say, the commander had never given him anything else than missions. If he hadn't been that busy with the war, he had surely stayed by his side when he was injured and unconscious, and if it hadn't been for that war, he had perhaps sometimes talked to Jak in a friendlier way. Maybe that was why Jak had searched for intimacy from Ashelin's direction. All the closer options had rejected him: Daxter was an ottsel, and he was like a brother to Jak, but brothers needed friends, too. Keira had rejected Jak because of the monster in his head, and later when she had been ready to support him, Jak had rejected her helping hand.

"I rejected him, too", Torn thought, but didn't feel too guilty about it. The circumstances…

So it left him with Ashelin.

Torn wasn't mad about it. He had been bitter, he had been angry. But he understood the situation. Ashelin was a kind of a woman who didn't rest on her laurels. Jak was looking for closeness. Torn and Ashelin had broke up quite a while before it. Torn couldn't blame the young faery for stealing his girlfriend, as she hadn't been his girlfriend anymore. Surely he had still cared about her, but it was just life to see your ex moving on. It had to hurt, but a little needle in your heart doesn't kill you, doesn't it?

However, Torn wasn't sure about the Jak plus Keira –situation. Keira hadn't just been bitter. Nor angry. Nor furious. She had been outrageous, dangerous and unstable. Torn had seen Keira only a few times before meeting her "new anger issue self"; he had thought she was a happygolucky country girl who had survived in Haven only because he's father was The Shadow Senior. Then, he realised that she really was an ammo dump already on fire - after rejecting Jak for such a monster, she had become one herself. It was such a fortune for Ashelin that the newly formed couple had decided to move to Spargus; Torn was sure that otherwise Keira had snapped sooner or later. Even so the ex-commander wasn't sure if the mechanic and the hero had been a couple. Daxter skipped the question if he was asked, and the redhead had no guts to ask the girl herself. Keira had gone through it so well - she wasn't a package of dark eco anymore. Torn was afraid to ask her anything green-goatee-related… He had got to know Keira, too, and she really was a sweet girl, unless someone brought Jak up. She didn't even explode anymore if she heard Ashelin's name; her tone of voice stated that she took pity on her, which had surprised Torn, and instead of saying her name Keira usually used a word "bitch". But when the topic became Jak, Keira started resembling an active volcano.

Torn had never seen a volcano, an active or not. But he had read that their continental plate used to be full of volcanic action and magma. Keira had told that the land had been full of volcanic cracks – Torn had finally understood that the blonde, the aquahead and the rodent had came 400 years from the past – 437 was the exact amount of years if you could rely on Onin. Torn didn't want to think about the shock the whole new yet still whole old world must have been…

"Let him catch some z's", a faery dressed in a brand new light green jacket said, "I kinda kept him awake last night. He's deserved some good sleep." For once the both voices in his head were quiet. One because just seeing blood was enough to satisfy his sic mind. One because Jak was cleaning the red stripes and spots.

"How did you succeed in that?" Daxter asked and 'ice skated' into the other corner with brushes attached to his paws, "remember when he didn't sleep at all? Nowadays it's hard to keep him from sleepin'."

"He has a right to do it", Jak said chuckling, watching his friend making a pas de chat. He dipped his brush into a bucket, "without him the Haven wouldn't exist anymore."

"Oh yeh, all honour for him, Mar!"

"Thanks, Dax", Jak smirked smiling at some en dedans pirouettes, "without you I hadn't done anything."

"Without ya I hadn't become a beautiful creature called Precursor."

"Sorry, Dax…"

"What! I'm an ottsel and fine with it", Daxter smiled, "honestly! I've got Tess in my life and in a way I shall thank you about it. I'd probably be -"

"Tess?" a speakerbox sprang to life, "Torn? Daxter? Anybody home?"

Jak dropped the brush. It made a louder-than-what-it-really-was sound as it hit the floor.

The time stood still.

Jak could have recognized that voice whenever and wherever, although he hadn't been able to do it years before and he still felt like he should have.

"Are you guys gonna let me in or not! It's freezing here!"

"Just come in!" Daxter said, got to the door with a few petits sautés and started yelling as he saw the one behind it, "ya sure are a great mechanic, but just how prudent you are? It's been raining for decades and you go out in ya bikini."

"More clothes, more stuff to get wet!" a girl with an aqua-like hair and amazingly thin waistline entered the room. Suddenly she gave a gasp and glowered, staring at the middle of the Ottsel.

Jak opened his mouth but couldn't utter a voice.

They stared at each other…

"…"

"…"

Keira closed her mouth and tilted her head a little letting a smile awake on her lips.

Jak smiled back, a glorious feeling growing within him.

"So you came back", the girl said her hoarse voice blowing up the feeling of his like a balloon, "I should have known you'd come. Where's the bitch anyway?..."

"In Spargus, they broke up",Daxter explained and Jak gave him an angry look, "eeh, I mean –"

"Wonderful", Keira laughed honey oozing out of her voice, "so you just tried her out, dumped her and then came back to try something – should I say? – older. Oh, I might be flattering myself now."

"Keira…" Jak began.

"Jak", Keira snapped and her eyes silenced the green-haired faery completely, "don't expect me to become your friend again. Goodbye."

Jak watched how the girl turned her back hurling water drops from her hair, rushed out of the door, jumped into her zoomer, and drove away through the pouring rain.

Did the rain really sound that loud?

Did the scent of hers still float in the room?

"You never know what you've got until it's gone", Light preached.

"Exactly", Dark continued, "so get in Haven before it's too late!"

"SHUT UP!" Jak screamed, making Daxter bounce approximately seven feet in the air.

"J-j-jak?"

"Not you", Jak roared jumping up and turning his back at the ottsel, "the monsters", he added apologising, turned briefly at the rodent's direction and then stampeded off passing surprised Torn who was just opened the soundproof door.

The situation had told everything. The pained look in Jak's eyes he had given him had explained the redhead what was going on. The reason for the night time turmoil was Keira. And Torn quite sheepishly admitted, that this time the reason wasn't a thing he could fix.

"You go talk to him!"

"No, you go!"

"You go!"

"Not me!"

"Mar on a Metal Head, you're the same family!"

"I'm not! I'm an orphan!"

"He's your bro."

"He's not."

"He is. And do not ever say "he's not my brother" when he's to hear it."

"Who are ya to talk about our relationship anyway?"

"He has enough handling in the situation: Keira."

"That's not my problem!"

"Correct. But…"

"But what?"

"You are his closest friend, you are his brother!" Torn's voice started growing.

"Don't shout! He might hear!"

"Get on the roof!"

"He's surely flown away!"

"You wish!"

"I don't think –"

"GO!"

"Yeah yeah… I'll raise your rent for this!"

"GO!"

"Give me the fucking wings!"

"My wings make love with no-one."

"Give them to me! Now, come out! Fly!"

"I'm not your aeroplane."

"Please! Pretty please! I want to get on my ledge!"

"No. I won't fly, especially in a weather like this. The humidity is about equal to an ocean from the view of a fish."

"Please? Please come out!"

"Even if I did come out, I wouldn't fly. And that would suck, wouldn't it?"

"You ain't fair!"

"Well, who is?"

"…" Jak slid down his back against the wall and sat on the messy roof, "fuck you!"

"Literature."

"FUCK YOU!"

"Dark", Light sighed, "he amazes us again, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. I'm truly shocked about him", Dark grinned, "has he always been such a softie?"

"You tell me, you've been in longer."

"Shut up again, please", Jak whispered, "I'm really starting to get outrageous on you! Soon I will really want you out of my head!"

"Jak?" someone knocked on the wooden hatch in another gable of the roof, "we need to… talk."

"Come in, Daxter", the faery muttered, "or actually out. Or whatever."

"Jak…" the rodent sounded apologizing already and twiddled his little hands nervously, "you might have noticed, that I have avoided you… a little… lately."

"Yeah", he muttered his forehead against his arms.

"Well… There is a reason to it. And it's also the reason why Onin is on ruins and… I guess it's the reason why Keira's not afraid to drive in bikini!"

"Tell me."

"Well…" Daxter bit his lip – or the place where it should have been, "you know Samos?"

"Of course I do", Jak sounded frustrated, "what about him?"

"Well… The thing is that… Oh well… Beautiful weather isn't it?"

"Daxter, it's raining. Get into the subject."

"Well… Ten months ago… Samos… Fell asleep… And…"

"No Dax!"

"Yes", Daxter sounded tortured, "he… it was so sudden… Within a week, his life-force just disappeared. He was fine with it, but of course we others weren't –"

"No!"

Ottsel nodded.

"NO! Why didn't you tell me?" Jak screamed for both to the angel in his head and his friend in front of him.

"Keira didn't want you to know!" Daxter peeped, "we tried to call you and Ashelin, but your communicator was never on, and then Samos was already dead, and things got all crazy, and Keira wasn't in her best condition and started drinking, and then… Well, after a week from that, we had the funeral. We tried to contact you, but you never were there! Or once you were, but then you said you were too busy and hung up on Keira, and then after the funeral, Keira told us, that if any of us is going to tell you, she'd rip our flesh out of bones, and we valued her wish as she is the only blood relative to Samos, and we did our best to make Keira feel comfortable, as she was in such a fragile state of mind and was drinking and taking some mushrooms and –" Daxter took a deep breather.

"No", the faery squaked, "it can't be."

"I'm sorry, Jak!" Daxter came and hugged his head, "I'm sorry."

"He was our father."

"He was."

"Why did he die?"

"He said that he didn't get enough green eco anymore. It was this world, he said it had drained him from the very beginning."

"Haven killed him."

"Well, yeah… He said something bout that like people these days have dark eco inside them when it used to be green. Like, that dark and white aco are everywhere when the colourful ecos are artificially created or something… I'm sorry, Jak!"

"That's okay, Daxter", Jak felt like he should cry, but after the breakdown last night he didn't have anything in store. "okay… Keira hates me. Samos is dead."

"You've got us."

"And I'm so fucking thankful for you!" Jak whispered and closed Daxter into his embrace.

maestro: "Ommm… Oh, you have read it already? Well. I think you should know that the name of the story will change someday."

Da: "Back To Haven is just a working name, like, kinda, you know."

Lucius: "It won't harm your reading pleasure, will it, eh?"

Sipuli: "We use too much of eh nowadays…"

Lucius: "That's wohoo-sy!"

Sipuli: "Not again… Bye!"