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radioactivepeasant · 3 months

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Free Day Thursday, Part Three

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Jak did not wake that entire day.

Nor the next.

Nor the day after that.

His body was flushed with fever, and dark, angry lines had begun to spread from the double injection over his core. Infection set in so much faster than they could have anticipated.

Was this what his first injection cycle had been like?

No. Even if the symptoms were the same, this was fundamentally different. He wasn't injected while awake and fighting restraints too big for his little wrists. He wasn't dumped in a frigid prison cell to survive the first infection alone.

Jak was constantly monitored, fluids fed into him to compensate for how much he sweated out. Cold compresses pressed against his forehead at all times. Bio readings on constant readout.

And, most vital of differences, the people around him were fighting to keep him alive because they cared about him, not because it was inconvenient to lose a test subject.

Damas barely ate or drank during those two days. He didn't sleep more than a few minutes at a time. Every waking moment was spent at Jak’s bedside, holding his hand or smoothing back his hair.

Sometime after evening meal on the second day, Sister Yan returned with the light eco. That was the first time Jak’s eyes opened, if only for a moment. The light eco did little more than break the fever, but even just that was a relief. Everything else was up to Jak, now. He just had to fight.

"You can do this, little one," Damas whispered, over and over. "Just stay with me, Jak. Stay with me."

By now word had spread: Damas had a child in the hospital. Now was not the time to bring petty concerns to him. The council of advisors appointed Mako as interim steward to seize temporary power in his absence -- how very strange it was to live in a place where he trusted Mako wholeheartedly to make the right choices and peacefully hand over power when he returned! And he would have trusted any of his advisors to be a good steward of the throne!

Perhaps it was because they had all shed blood as equals. They knew what it was to go hungry. To suffer thirst. They each knew what it was to go without a roof over their heads. It was a lot easier to govern a people when you didn't try to balance on a pedestal high above them.

Jak woke while Damas was dozing. His movements were slow, and sluggish, but the faint sound of his bare arm against the sheets was enough to snap Damas back to consciousness. His eyes flew open and he straightened to check the bed.

Confused blue eyes blinked sleepily back at him.

"Jak!"

Damas leaped up, hands hovering awkwardly.

"Are you alright? How do you feel, son?"

Jak squinted against the fluorescent light and squinched one eye shut.

Too tired to lift his hands, he grudgingly used his voice.

"Th. Thhhhh. Hers. Tee."

"You're thirsty?"

"Mhm."

Jak didn't understand why there were tears in Damas’s eyes. Or why he laughed at that.

"I'm not surprised! Hold on, bug, I'll get you some water."

It wasn't cold, but Jak didn't care. He felt like he hadn't had anything to drink in days! He grumbled when Damas made him slow down, and tried to pull away. Something tugged painfully at the crook of his elbow, and he yelped.

"Ouch!"

He turned, and saw a tube. Sticking out of his arm. Sticking out of the skin.

What did that mean?!

Very, very slowly, Jak swiveled back to look up at Damas.

"Tha-at?" He asked nervously.

Damas brushed the hair from his face -- hey! Where were his goggles?! -- and kept making a sad face. Why the sad face? What was going on?

"It's medicine, son."

Damas swallowed hard.

"That's um. It's a special kind of tool for when people can't take medicine like normal. The doctor uses that little- little tube to trick your body into thinking it's part of the bloodstream. The um. The medicine goes straight into your blood to fight infection there."

Jak hastily drained the last of the water in the paper cup and forced out a few lethargic signs.

"It stays there?”

"No, no no no!" Damas took the cup from him and refilled it. "Only until that bag is empty. See?"

He pointed to where the pinkish line sat on the bag.

"Once that's gone, Dr. Rezzik will come take it out. We'll put a little tourniquet on it, and you'll be fine in a few hours."

"Woo. Aye. Nnn-n oh. Ee. Co?"

Damas winced and drew back a little.

"You...need to stay away from eco for a few weeks, son."

A few weeks?! Jak was horrified. What had happened?! He'd just been playing with eco on the beach, with Flick! How did he get to this cold white room, with a medicine tube, and no eco?

Jak wanted to ask what happened. Why he was here. But his voice was tired, and his arms were tired.

"...d...Dad-t?" he asked, trying to pour all his questions into that one word.

Damas’s breath caught. He slowly lowered himself to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Do you remember what happened? When you were playing with Flick?" he asked softly.

Jak tried to remember, he really did. But his brain felt all mushy and sleepy.

He shrugged.

"That was-" Damas sighed and brushed back Jak’s hair again. "That was three days ago, son. You accidentally made dark eco."

Jak recoiled in horror. Made dark eco?! Like the Acherons?! Did that make him bad like them?

Samos would be so mad at him! Daxter would be so mad!

"Hey, hey, Jak, look at me. Look at Dad."

The words snapped Jak back to the present, and he turned teary eyes towards Damas. Damas didn't look angry, at least.

"It was just an accident, son." Damas reached down and squeezed his hand. "You're not in trouble, and neither is Flick. Not for that, at least. I'm just-"

He shuddered. "I was so worried, Jak! You wouldn't wake up! We had to induce eco overexposure just to correct the imbalance!"

"That's why my core hurts?" Jak felt the spot between his sternum and intestines where the small organ sat. The skin there was hot and tender to the touch. He hissed in pain and withdrew his hand.

"Yes, son. It is. I'm sorry.”

____________________________

There were, Jak discovered, pros and cons of being in "the hoss-piddle". He couldn't run, he couldn't get out of bed, and it was intensely boring.

But Damas was almost always there! And sometimes Jak's friends visited!

Raza even snuck her dogat kitten in under her shirt and almost started a mini riot in the children's ward.

Flick hadn't visited yet.

Damas said shd felt like it was her fault he'd been in a "coma" for two days. That she probably felt too guilty to come see him.

Didn't make Jak feel better about it. How did he know she didn't just want to stay away from dark eco?

Dr. Rezzik said it would never fully go away. Even if it was only a tiny little bit, that dark spot on his chest was probably permanent. They didn't know how he'd done it, but he'd absorbed it into his core.

That scared Jak a lot more than he let on. Would he turn gray and lose his reason, like Gol and Maia?

Emotions sat a little closer to the surface while he was in the hospital. Little things bothered him in ways they hadn't before.

Lights hurt his eyes too much once the sun went down. The sound of the kid in the next bed chewing his food made him irrationally angry for some reason. Sometimes just the chair next to his bed being empty made him start tearing up.

Nurse Brooks called it puberty. Jak was pretty sure he already did puberty. This was something else.

"Hey, kid."

Jak looked up from absolutely mangling a little metal can they'd somehow squeezed juice into. He hadn't even noticed that he'd crushed it into an unrecognizable lump.

Damas folded his arms and looked at the crumpled mess.

Jak's ears drooped. He'd spaced out again. He did that when things got too noisy already, but things were just noisier here.

But Damas just smiled and suppressed a chuckle.

"I bet you're ready to get out of here, huh?"

*"Yah,"* Jak said emphatically.

He looked around a moment, then sheepishly put the mangled can on the little tray his decidedly bland lunch had been on.

Wiping droplets of juice from his fingers, Jak hoisted himself further upright.

"Can I go home yet? I don't like it here!"

He'd repeated the same question almost every day. And almost every day the answer was "no, son, not yet."

More scans. More finger-sticks. More cold metal things against his back and chest so they could listen to his heart and lungs and core. More bedrest.

But today felt different.

Damas set a small canvas bag down on the chair beside the bed and nodded to it. "I brought you some clean clothes. You'll need to wear the pulse-monitor bracelet for a few more days, but Dr. Petros and Dr. Rezzik cleared you to come home."

Jak whooped and pumped his fist.

"Can we go now? Like right now?"

"You don't want to change first?"

Jak shook his head. "No. The longer I'm here, the scarier it gets. I'm gonna fight somebody if I have to wake up for one more night round."

"Please don't fight the nurses, they're just trying to help." Damas held out a hand and let Jak pull himself to his feet.

He examined the dark circles under his eyes and clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

"Nurse Brooks said you haven't been sleeping well even without his rounds at night."

Jak looked away, embarrassed.

"Nightmares."

Tattooed faces and maddened eyes and crackling, arcing, dark eco-

"About when I landed in Haven. And the woods."

Damas pulled him into a very careful hug, avoiding compressing the icky little starburst shape on Jak’s chest.

"Oh Jak. I'm sorry, son. Do you think you'll sleep better in your own bed?"

"Yeah."

Jak took the time to say goodbye to his roommate. It wasn't Beten's fault he chewed so loudly. He didn't need to get so angry about it.

But Precursors he was glad to be getting away from all that slurping.

"Am I allowed to go exploring yet?" Jak asked as Damas walked him out of the ward. Some of the other kids waved to him. Some were only there for bumps and bruises, one or two were longterm residents with chronic conditions.

"We'll see how you feel tomorrow.”

"Aw!"

#fic prompts #writing prompts #jak and daxter au #jak and daxter #dadmas #king damas #fragile things au #Damas is so stressed out #Jak has to get a light eco shot about once a month for the next two years because he gets an unbalanced core very easily now #first it was just mood swings -- all his friends with uteruses were like 'dude same'. but then the claws happened #he doesn't grow the typical DJ horns until he's in Haven -- training with Uncle Sig because Jak Is Grounded #meanwhile the Underground never found little Mar: Daxter and Osmo and Ximon did

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