Loser

Vanity

"Hey, beautiful," said Jak with an indulgent laugh. "Like what you see?" He leaned casually against the door jam, rubbing his small greenish goatee thoughtfully.

"Oh, hell, yes," said Dax.

He barely afforded Jak a glance before turning back to admire his own face in the apartment's narrow bathroom mirror. "Why didn't you say that my teeth were normal?" Dax opened his mouth, and there they were, straight and flat, right where they should be. He closed his mouth and holy cow, his lips met and his teeth disappeared. They'd never done that before. Thank you, Precursors!

"I did say you looked different. And I wouldn't call those exactly normal. They are still too big for your face."

"Big, yes, but they aren't sticking out of my mouth like I'm some backwoods hick who sucked his thumb until he was fifteen."

"If you'd stopped sucking your thumb like everyone told you to…"

"Yeah, yeah… bad habits aren't that easy to toss, Jak. Just be glad you don't have any."

Jak turned his head away, thoughtful. Dax shrugged and went back to looking at his marvelous mouth. It looked great compared to what it had been, but Jak was right, the teeth were too big. Dax felt a fluttering in his stomach.

"Do ya think Tess'll like me," he asked, stepping back from the mirror and nervously straightening the collar of his new shirt. "She's never seen the real me before. What if she thought I looked like you?"

Even with the normal teeth, Dax wasn't exactly handsome. He wasn't ugly either. But his face was a bit thinner than fashionable, his mouth a lot too wide. He had a chin, but it wasn't nearly as strong as he would have wanted. Though adulthood had put a bit of noticeable muscle on his limbs, he still was narrow-shouldered and gangly… and wow, he had a lot of flaws.

But he did have character in spades. Chicks liked that, didn't they? And hey, compared to being furry, he was dazzling. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Dax.

"Why would she think you looked like me?" asked Jak.

"I don’t know," said Dax with mild irritation. "Because we came from the same village."

"Keira comes from the same village, I don't."

"Of course not, silly me." The only native Sandoverans in Haven City were Keira and himself. Tess was aware of this, just as she was aware of pretty much every detail of Dax's life. Except for Keira's obvious girl parts and her dark hair, there was a definite cousinly resemblance between her and Dax. Which kinda sucked for poor Keira. Compared to the other teenage girls in Sandover Village, she'd had been a knockout – but put up against City folk, she was really nothing spectacular to look at. Calling her ugly was unfair, but the move had been a major comeuppance. Dax felt a bit sorry for her.

Jak and Seamus, on the other hand, were only Sandoveran by adoption. They came from no-where at the time of the fourth great Elf/Lurker war, when orphans were plenty, and confusion high. Jak fit right in, in every sense except that he was much more eye-pleasing than any kid Sandover had ever put out.

Dax felt a pang of jealousy.

"She'll like you just fine," said Jak. For a moment, just a moment, Dax saw an odd kind of bitterness in his eye. What was up with that? Dax shrugged it off. Jak was phenomenally good at being enigmatic. It was best not to read too much into the occasional broods.

"Besides," Jak continued after a pause, "It's just as well you don't look like me. I don't appear to be her type."

"Yeah," said Dax, relaxing. It was true and one of Tess's endearing traits. Most chicks at least turned their head when Jak walked into a room. Not Tess – her eyes had settled on Dax from the start, and they'd never strayed. Tess had chosen him over all the elves in the city.

"Well, okay, I'm as gorgeous as I'm ever going to be," said Dax, smoothing down his thick red hair until it brushed against his shoulders in a style not too different from Jak's. He gave a symbolic tug to his new, properly fitting pants, making sure that they held to the proper spot on his jutting hipbones. "Let's go do this."

Jak nodded, picking up the backpack with the changing device and several packs of light eco. "Tess'll be happy when she learns she can be an elf again."


But Tess wasn't happy. No, that's an understatement. Tess was devastated.

She'd retreated to Mitch immediately, a little ball of gold and red curled tight on the shelf of his shoulder, her tiny paw splayed out, claws caught into the weave of the gunsmiths shirt.

She refused to recognize Dax. Not even when he spoke, which Dax thought would be a dead give away. The one thing about him that hadn't changed when he'd fallen into that pool of black eco was his voice. Dax knew ottsel body language well enough to tell that she was tense. The hair on her back was fluffed out. The way she twitched her tail suggested deep agitation.

The machine room of Mitch's gun smithy seemed to grow colder. This was a fucking nightmare.

"Tess, babe, say something."

"It's not a funny joke." Yeah, that was definite hurt in her voice. And anger, too.

"No joke babe, It's me," said Dax, reassuringly. "It really is. Why would we kid around about this? If you don't believe it's me, then ask me a question. Something only you and I would know."

Tess didn't say anything, but her tail flapped once against Mitch's thick neck. Mitch reached up a hand and very gently caressed her back. The moment stretched… and stretched. Everyone held still. Jak, blank faced, held the device at his side in case Tess wanted to see it. Mitch sat splayed-legged on his bench, eyes cast down to the floor, petting Tess's fur. Dax just stood, quivering on his two legs, feeling more desperate with every second.

"Why?" she said, finally breaking the silence. "Why would you do this?"

Dax's heart broke. "Tessy, you know that I've wanted to be an elf again. You've known that the entire time I've known you. Jak and I have been searching for this since… way before we met. Tess, this is my dream."

"Well you never gave me that impression," said Tess. The bitterness was thick. "You mentioned it once or twice, but I thought you'd given it up. I thought you were happy with me."

This was beginning to sound a lot like one of those awkward relationship moments Jak had right before the girl threw up her hands and walked out. Dax was very aware of Jak and Mitch sitting there in silence listening to this romantic failure go down. He reached up and pulled a bit at the tight collar of his shirt. "Tess, why don't you let Jak change you. We can talk about this afterwards."

"No, Dax."

"Why not???"

"Maybe I don't want to be an Elf."

Dax became exasperated. "Tess, you don't want to be an ottsel! Aren't you tired of being dependant? Aren't you just sick of people treating you like an animal?"

"Not everyone treats me like an animal," said Tess.

"Yeah, those who don't treat you like you are some godly being, and put you up on a pedestal. Don't tell me you actually like that." Oh, that came out well… Dax grabbed his hair and made to tear it out. "Come on, Tess – everything you want, you can have. You can be a smith again. You can go where you like. I can finally take you out to a decent dinner–"

"You think I'm ugly like this." She buried her head in one of Mitch's mutton chops.

"No!" said Dax. "You are beautiful in every form. But Tess, you gotta know this limits you. I know how hard it is to be an ottsel. I've lived the life longer than you."

"I'm a Precursor, Dax. You were too! Do you know how special that is? What a privilege?"

"Oh Tess… Tess." Damn that fucking lie! Dax wanted to just squeeze the life out of those thieving bastard ottsels. How to spin this? Because something told him that Tess was not going to accept the truth. "Being a Precursor was fun… but their time is gone. They had their run a thousand years ago, and a good run it was. But now's the time for Elves. This world is just not made for Precursors anymore."

Dax came close and reached out a hand to pet her, but Tesses fur bristled and she scrambled away, off of Mitch and onto a nearby lathe.

"Tess, I love you. And I know you aren't happy being an Ot—Precursor. Please, let Jak change you, and we can be together, the way were meant to be."

"You don't know anything about me," Tess said, her voice a wail. "You just think I'm some silly girl who made a bad decision. Maybe this is the life I always wanted. I like being a Precursor. I've always liked the way they looked. I like the way I can climb, and how cute and small I am, and that people cherish me. Why should I give that up? For you?"

"I thought you became an ottsel because you wanted to be with me," said Dax.

"Well then you are just full of yourself!" Tess said, and then leaped from the lathe and scrambled away across the parts-strewn floor. She was out of the open door and up the stairs before anyone could say anything.

"Tess… for Gods sake…" Dax took two steps, but Mitch blocked the way.

"Give her some time," he said in his deep gravely voice.

"Come on," said Jak, grabbing Dax's shoulder and pushing him away.

Dax's mind was reeling. It made no sense. None at all. It was impossible. He'd seen the misery Tess had been in the last year. She should have been just as happy as Dax. It was their dream come true. How could she choose to stay a fucking animal?

Was it because of how he looked? Was she repulsed by him now that he was an Elf? Was this some safe way for her to reject him? That was his secret nightmare in a nutshell. It was hard not to look at Mitch. Damn it, the only elf Tess had actually shown any sort of interest in, and you couldn't get more opposite and still be within the same species. Maybe the problem wasn't handsomeness, so much as it was bulk. Was he just too wimpy for Tess?

Dax blinked back tears of frustration and hurt. It just wasn't fair. After all this time and effort. It just fucking wasn't fair.

Jak was pushing him out the door. Dax let himself be pushed, he wanted to get out of the situation and he wasn't thinking straight. But in the empty reception area Jak paused, pulled Dax's face up. Jak had that guilty look on his face, that real, heart on his sleeve concern. He reached up and wiped Dax's cheek with the ball of his thumb.

Dax slapped the hand in anger and jerked away, ashamed that Jak had noticed his weakness. "I'm not one of your girlfriends, Jak," he said.

Jak said nothing, just got all stony and stoic, the way he always did when faced with a situation he didn't know what the fuck to do with. Well, good for him, that made two of them. Dax had no fucking idea what to do either.

He spun away, stalking out the door, painting a "do not talk to me" look on his face so strong that the passers-by on the street actually jumped away as he passed.

Wanna hear a joke? After years of hard work and risk, a Loser finally gets the one thing he wants more than anything else – and all he wants to do is toss it away and go back to how he was.

Sometime later Dax found himself walking down a narrow pot-holed street near the lake. The sun had fallen behind the tiled roofs of some nearby row houses, and blue shadows stretched across the road into the water. The normal traffic of the day had finally calmed down, and for a bit the city seemed peaceful. Dax abruptly stopped near a pile of broken cement pillars. Finding a flat spot, he sat down and watched a lone workman struggle to resurrect the roof a bombed out building.

Dax was exhausted.

The City looked exhausted too. Three years of almost continuous civil war had left a messy footprint. Now that there was something of a truce, people were doing the best they could to rebuild. Every bent girder, and broken brick was just one more thing that needed to cleaned up. Piles of new rubbish sat along piles of old, making ever-larger mounds of debris. And there were no guarantees that the current guys would be able to hold on to power long enough for the rebuilding to be finished. Even a year after the last war ended, there were still periodic bombs being set off and random gunfire bursting out in the night. Who were the current sides these days? Dax didn't know.

Was any of this worth it?

Dax missed Sandover. He missed the warm water, the swaying palm trees, the bright green pastures and pocketed cliffs where birds nested. There had been a sense of peace there. He remembered the comfortable banality of rushing through his chores and lessons to get to the brief but sweet afternoons. In those hours he and Jak explored all the tiny, insignificant mysteries a tropical sea village could muster up. And when he came home, hungry and nursing scratches, it was to the comfort of a large dinner and the quiet simple acceptance of his elderly foster parents.

Of course Sandover hadn't been peaceful. Sometimes you could actually hear the Lurker's crude canons echoing off the cliffs. Dax had just been less aware of the war. When his parents had been caught in the first disastrous push he'd only been a toddler and Elf/Lurker politics were far beyond his grasp. His foster parents were frail and retiring, but kind hearted in their own way and did their best to steer him away from anything they thought might disturb or scare him. They fretted a bit over his minor boyhood adventures, and admonished him to stay away from the precursor ruins. If only he'd listened to them.

But he didn't. And now he was here. And there was no going back to those innocent days; he'd just have to make due with what he had.

Dax watched the lone worker climb up to the roof of the renovated building. The elf reminded Dax a bit of himself -- wirey and small, but brave in an ordinary way, leaning out dangerously to nail planks over the framing.

Elves may not be Precursors, but they weren't too bad at this building thing. If only they weren't also so good at the tearing stuff down part, too. But who is to say the Precursors didn't have that trouble as well. After all, a thousand years ago there were a billion of them – and then, overnight apparently, there were none. Maybe in order to be a maker you also had to risk being a destroyer, and it was all part of one great loop of creation.

A sharp clanging noise and a curse brought Dax out of his thoughts. The hammer had slipped from the worker's hand and had slid down the slope of the roof and then had fallen onto a metal barrel just a dozen feet away from where Dax was sitting.

Dax got up and walked over, picking up the tool.

"Hey can you throw that up?" asked the roofer.

Dax considered it, if he missed he'd probably end up braining himself. If he succeeded he might end up braining the roofer.

"Never mind, I'll get it," said the roofer, with a weary tone.

"Nah, you stay there, I'll come up," said Dax suddenly. He tucked the tool in the waist of his pants and lept up, catching one of the beams. He pulled up the way he'd seen Jak do countless times before, the way he once had when he was younger. His muscles remembered, and in a minute he'd pulled himself up onto the roof. Not too different from cliff climbing back in the old days, actually. It was kind of nice not to have a bottomless pit under him if he slipped.

The roofer whistled. "I would have used the ladder, but, damn, man, you can climb."

Dax thought about how he'd scrambled up pretty much anything and everything as an ottsel in half the time and with twice the grace. "Not as good as use to be." He handed the tool over.

The elf tucked the hammer back into his utility belt, then scanned Dax over. "Want a job."

"What?" asked Dax taken aback. He looked to see if the guy was serious. The guy looked to be in his mid forties, weather tanned and sweaty, with a short ruff of hand-chopped black hair. He seemed a bit too old and tired to be pulling a practical joke on a stranger.

"Helping me put this roof on," the man said, as if that were the point that needed clarifying. "I lost my apprentice yesterday." He looked serious. "He nearly killed himself in a fall. I could use a guy who's sure on his feet."

Dax barely heard him. His mind whirled. Someone was actually offering him a job! Just like that! Him! Pride stirred warmly in him and his depression seemed to evaporate. He forgot about Tess. "Oh hell yeah. Sure."

"Pay's not great," the guy warned, "And the hours are long, but the work is steady."

My own paycheck, thought Dax giddy. I'm a real Elf. "When can I start?"

"Right now… you can help me get that tarp over this roof. The priests say it's gonna rain tonight." The worker wiped his smudged and sweaty face with an equally smudged and sweaty forearm.

"Yessir," said Dax.



It was fully dark when Dax reached home, with five coins in his pocket that hadn't been there that morning. Actually the pocket hadn't been there that morning, either. Dax paused a moment, dizzy. It hadn't even been twelve hours since Light hit him with that ecobeam, and already he'd waded through more major life changes than he had in the last two years. If anything more happened today, Dax was sure he'd suffer mental whiplash.

Still, he couldn't complain. Those coins in his pocket were his, earned by the sweat of his own brow. Not Jak's, and not charity from Seamus or Torn, either. His legs and arms ached from the exercise, but it was a good ache. An empowering ache. At twenty-one and a half years old, he was finally a man in every sense of the word.

Watch out world. Orange Lightning's gonna take you by storm!Dax grabbed a hold of signpost, swung about and sent himself down the short, private alleyway between buildings that lead to his second story apartment.

Jak was sitting on the steps. As soon as Dax approached, Jak stood up and walked back into the apartment without a word.

Okay, thought Dax with a raised eyebrow. Moody, it is.

"Hey, Jak," said Dax as he walked in the door. "Were you worried about me?" He turned to kick off his shoes at the door, next to Jak's boots. His shoes. He wiggled his toes within his socks. God, it was great to wear shoes. Even greater to take them off after stomping around in them for a couple of hours.

Jak grunted. He lifted a pot off the stove and ladled something into a bowl. It was some kind of stew, mostly cool and somewhat congealed, but Dax's stomach immediately gave it its stamp of approval. He lit into the luke warm broth, potatoes, and meat with gusto, downing the first bowl before going back to scrape the remnants out of the pot. He noticed Jak's bowl already in the sink. Uh yeah -- Jak.

Jak was still sitting sullenly at the table, staring out into space.

"So anyway," said Dax as if there wasn't a dark cloud of impending doom hanging over the apartment. "Strangest thing happened to me when I was out. Some guy actually hired me. Can you imagine, Jak? Me? Getting a job just like that? I didn't even ask, he just said, 'hey you, wanna work?' and I said 'sure' and I'm employed."

Dax wasn't sure what he expected. Maybe a "congratulations." That wasn't what he got. Instead Jak's face darkened and his glower deepened. Dax knew the look – it was one of those "hey Daxter you really screwed up this time" looks. Honestly they were rare enough that it made Dax's heart stutter a bit, and his mind raced to find anything he could have done to piss Jak off. Was it running off? It wasn't as if they were completely joined at the hip – Dax wandered the City on his own many times.

"What?" Dax said.

"You already have a job," said Jak. "Torn's paying us to find a route to those eco-vents."

Dax put down his spoon. Oh, for heaven's sake. "You have a job. Torn never paid me to do anything."

Jak's head went down. "So, you are splitting up the team, just like that. No warning." His voice was softer, full of deep hurt.

Dax felt his gut tighten queasily around the stew. He hadn't thought of it that way. Honestly, he hadn't thought of Jak's reaction at all. He'd been too wrapped up in his own accomplishment and independence to contemplate the fact that that he could be deserting his friend. "Jak… I…" Dax searched for words and found his brain curiously gone stupid. "I can't sit on your shoulder anymore."

"I don't expect you to sit on my shoulder."

"I'd get in your way, Jak." Dax thought of going back into a precursor ruin and shuddered. Never again. Dax looked down at his reedy arms. "I mean, honestly, Jak, look at me. I'd be a liability like this. You saw me on the way out. I nearly got myself killed – and you were right there with me."

Jak grunted.

"Damn it, Jak, don't ask for me to go risking myself right now. I just got my body back."

Jak got up from the table and put the empty pot in the sink. He turned on the tap and water rushed out.

Fuck, thought Dax. Then inspiration hit. "The job I got is as a roofer. I'll be doing a lot of climbing and physical labor. I'll get strong, sharpen my skills. Maybe in a couple of months I'll be able to jump through those Precursor mazes like you do."

Jak turned off the tap and there was a moment of silence before he started scrubbing.

Dax felt a burn of frustration. "Damn it, Jak. Can't I even have one day to be happy about being and Elf? It's bad enough that Tess is mad at me, now you too? What am I supposed to do here?"

Jak's shoulders slouched. "I'm sorry."

"We'll be a team again, Jak," said Dax. "I promise you. Just… give me a bit of time."

Dax could feel the Precursors invisible fingers reaching out to pull him back in.


That night, Dax nestled down on the couch, wrapping the winter blanket around him like a swaddled baby. His mind and body had been pushed beyond their limits and he was so far past exhausted that he actually found it difficult to settle down and sleep. Little bits of unwanted information kept creeping into his consciousness – the rub of the fabric against his skin, the way his joints bent. Did he like to sleep on his side? Or would he find it easier to sleep on his back? It had been such a long time that he couldn't remember how he slept as an elf, and sleeping with his nose tucked against his ankles wasn't exactly an option. Dax twisted, struggled, unwrapped and rewrapped himself.

Finally something gave out and he fell asleep -- only to wake up with the sound of a querying whine. Dax's eyes flew open. He was curled on his side, and the noise was coming from the darkened bedroom.

"Da-" it came. "Dax?"

Dax breathed deeply. Shit, Jak always slept poorly when Dax wasn't on his chest. There really wasn't any reason why tonight would be different. Except tonight was different. Dax couldn't climb up on Jak's chest to sleep. He might be small compared to Jak, but he wasn't that small.

"Dax!" there was panic in Jak's voice.

Daxter struggled his way out of the blanket and ran into the bedroom. In the dim light from the window he could see Jak flailing about, patting the bed around him as if searching for something. Despite all this, Dax knew Jak wasn't really awake.

Daxter reached out his hand and patted Jak's shoulder. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I'm just out on the couch."

Jak flinched away and he bolted up in a sitting position looking around the dim, moonlit bedroom. "Dax?" he asked, this time his voice was crisper, the muffled quality of sleep gone. "What's up?"

"What's up? You were calling for me in your sleep!" Dax sat down on the edge of the bed, and propped his forehead on the palm of his hand. Man, he was too tired for this.

"Oh," said Jak. "Sorry." He lay back, rolled over onto his side and tucked his blankets around him.

"S'okay," said Dax. "Get some sleep."

"Mmm." And apparently Jak did just that. Daxter watched the gentle rise and fall of Jak's chest for a minute, then got up and dragged his own weary bones back to the couch. He pulled himself back into the curled up position he'd woken up in, hoping that it would be easier to fall asleep this time. It took a couple of minutes, but he got there and…

He was woken but a muffled but alarmed cry. Blinking he looked around the dark room. Had he gotten any sleep at all? Jak cried out again a soft but frightened guttural grunt. Dax fought gravity that had apparently doubled in strength sometime during the night. Nonetheless, he managed to get to the bedroom before Jak reached a full panic.

"I'm here, I'm here."

Jak snuffled and woke up again. "What?"

"Oh Makers, Jak," said Dax rubbing his face. "I swear, first thing tomorrow I'm buying you a stuffed animal." There went those 5 coppers, but it would be worth it.

"Sorry. I don't mean to keep waking you."

Dax's heart softened. "Hey, at least I feel wanted."

Jak laughed a little. "Okay, you get some sleep, Dax."

"I will if you'll let me."

Dax was in the middle of a dream when he heard Jak crying again. His sleeping mind tried to rationalize it away, turning it into some child in the street, and then to Jak nagging him about putting away his shoes, but finally the sheer alarmed quality of it broke through Dax's inner defenses and he woke up.

"Dax! Dax!" Jak was still asleep.

"I'm just over here!" yelled Dax. "Go to sleep!" The neighbors were not going to be pleased with them tomorrow. But that appeared to mollify Jak and he went quiet for a while.

The next time Jak woke up, Dax pretended he didn't hear, and eventually Jak either gave up or woke up on his own. Dax couldn't go to sleep for a while after that. Instead he stared at the wall, feeling vaguely ashamed of his own selfishness.

Jak fears change.

With good reason, apparently, Dax thought wryly.

Only a real Loser can screw up success this badly.

---

A/N: This is installment 3 out of 8. Yes, there will be exactly 8 chapters to finish the story. This is also the tone, so if you are expecting happy fluffy sex when it happens, er, it's not happy and fluffy.

Kaybrianna: One of the things I worked for was trying to make both of them as realistic as possible given the canon. So yeah, Jak's definitely a sexual being. As for what Jak will do about Dax and their missions, wait and see! The story is really about Dax redefining his relationship with Jak and the rest of the world.

StEMandleaf: No worries. In fact the story is already complete. I'm just betaing the chapters now -- as RL allows me to. Whew. Hard couple of weeks there.