Chapter 16

"You look like shit," Microbe stated blandly.

"Thank you, captain obvious."

He rolled hit eyes. "Seriously, what happened to you?"

"I got tossed around by a giant scorpion. My fault, really." I must have said it a little too flippantly, because he didn't look convinced.

"A giant scorpion?"

"Yes. It obviously didn't go over well."

"Apparently."

I shook my head but opened my arms for his embrace, smiling as he wrapped his arms around the small of my back. "It's still go to see you," he said into my hair.

I almost giggled. All things considered, he could be pretty romantic. "I wish I could say that it was good to be back."

He pulled away to look at me. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

He opened his mouth to say something but decided halfway that he had forgotten. Instead he just shook his head. "You want to go back?"

I felt almost bad, he sounded so dejected. I nodded nonetheless.

"Alright, but I need some time."

"For what?"

"I need to retrieve it."

I looked up at him suspiciously. "From where?"

"I work for some very important people." Microbe was one of those loser kids that boasted that he worked for the government. I knew he was smart to, but nobody ever believed him. I wasn't going to start now, but I would play along for his sake. If he got me the portal, then by all means, he could believe anything he wanted.

"I gave them the portal, because they monitor everything I do, everything I make." He paused, as if he wasn't sure how to continue. "I had no choice."

I waited for a moment, a little angered by the guilt on his face. I kept myself neutral however, not letting my emotions slip past. "Okay," I answered. I turned and went back inside my house, leaving him standing at the top of the drive.

"Tosca, wait!"

I turned, flinching when I heard my real name. It never lost it's shattering effect on me. "What," I snapped.

"Why did you return?"

I paused. He just the very question that had been plaguing since I woke up. "I don't know." I had to squint to look up at him, standing at the top of the slope, the sun behind him.

"Don't you think we should try to figure it out before you just go right back in?"

I just stared at him. He had a point but the thought of staying in this world any longer than I had to was painful. "I'll figure it out on the other side," I lied. But maybe it wasn't a lie.

He wasn't satisfied but he didn't press me any further. He turned and disappeared onto the street, over the slope.

/-/-/

I groaned, feeling worse than I had when I took my jump through, but more like myself. I heard shuffling all around me, but it was all so jumbled, I couldn't tell where it was all coming from. I could hear voices but they all sounded slow and underwater. I tried to focus on them but it was just so hard.

One thing, one voice kept coming through. It was the clearest, the loudest, the most familiar. My mind latched onto it, trying to discern that from all the rest.

"Tox, can you hear me?"

I tried to reach out, to grab him, so that he could anchor me in. "Jak," I tried to call out, but I don't think his name ever reached my lips.

I hear my name. Both names, my real, and my true name. It's all jumbled, garbled, unclear, chaotic. I was afraid, confused. My mind was flooded, and I was drowning.

I could feel myself sinking down into darkness, and so desperately clawing to the surface. It enveloped me, and I was falling so far, sinking so deep. I knew that no matter how much I struggled, I would never reach the surface, I would never breath again.

/-/-/

Jak didn't wait for gaits to open before he vaulted through the opening, carrying the limp body in his arms. The hospital attendants rushed him, lifting the body out of his arms and fetching a gurney at the same time.

There was desperate questions thrown at him, Jak couldn't keep up with half of them, trying too desperately to keep track of the limp form on the gurney, bleeding and broken, and dying.

"Is she going to be alright?" He demanded. There was no answer, the gurney had gone out of sight. There was only questions, endless questions. He demanded again, but it rewarded him no better of an answer then the first time.

They ushered him into another room, where he was told to stay put. Jak hated waiting. He had always hated waiting. And where was Daxter? Daxter was always there to defuse a tense moment, but he wasn't anywhere in sight. He wanted to get up and move around, find Daxter, make sure Tox would live, anything but sit here in the confined space, just waiting for something to happen.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a hospital nurse finally came into the small waiting room, and told him that Tox had been stabilized. She was in an a coma, three broken ribs, a shattered clavicle, severe bleeding, and a dozen or so hairline fractures. She was in bad shape, and they had almost lost her, but they thought that she might survive.

Jak moved quickly into the room they indicated, where he found Tox, bandages and only kept alive by a small army of machines. They all beeped and clicked to a certain rhythm. He pulled up a chair by her side, and settled in for a longer wait then before, but this wait for more easily occupied.

Daxter joined him not long after he had started his watch, strangely somber. Jak was disappointed but understood why the ottsel remain quiet. This was his friend lying in the bed, and no one knew if she would survive.

The second, Jak was forced to leave the infirmary, to attend to missions the king had assigned him, but every evening and morning for eight days he came and visited and her condition never changed. Her face never changed from that empty, expressionless. Jak knew she wasn't there anymore, but he could only wonder where she had gone off to.

On the evening of the ninth day, while Jak and Daxter were getting ready to leave for their apartment in the west side of the city, Tox suddenly groaned. Jak was at her side in a second, asking her question. Was she alright? Could she hear him? Did she need a nurse. Regardless to if she needed one or not, several suddenly came in, having been alerted by all their fancy machinery.

They all ran about the room, shoving him aside, working with the machinery. The elf had no idea what was happening, and Daxter was becoming annoyed by their lack of attention.

Someone had tried to push them out of the room at one point. Jak was about to protest heavily, when he realized he didn't have to.

"That is our friend in there, and if I know anything, she would like to wake to two friendly faces, not a hundred she didn't know!" Daxter yelled over the general commotion. "So move, or you'll be forced out of the way." The ottsel, who the man had never in his life would have expected to even talk, let alone give him orders; jabbed his thumb in the general direction of the door.

The man seemed to make good on Daxter's advice, and as soon as all the nurses were done in the small room, they all filed to the door. Jak moved in, swooping around to her side, where he asked again if she could here him, if was still in there.

She lifted her hand up, searching for his face, trying to say his name. Only a whine came from her dry lips, but she found Jak's hand, and she held onto it like it was her anchor. She eventually fell back into unconsciousness, but this time, Jak knew she would make it. He had faith that she would be string enough.

XXX

A/N: That was actually a fun chapter to write. Sorry about the time skip, I hope you picked up on that kind of okay. I'm also sorry about the horrid long wait. School has started again, and writing falls to second loved, once again.

Broken Wolf/D.R.M.