I talk too much about Jak & Daxter.

They were still no closer to finding out the truth behind how much Praxis had been doing in his prison labs, nor whether any of the agents that never reported back from Haven had been present in that terrible place. The Guard — who was no closer to being ready for the Arena and seemed to be making use of that fact — claimed ignorance at every turn. It was all "the Council doesn't tell us about Praxis's classified projects" and "I didn't know he'd made an eco freak until he started slaughtering Guards in the streets".

And the boy simply refused to talk about it.

Tam insisted he wouldn't be ready for trauma narration and acceptance for at minimum another week.

Damas stood in the ward hall, just out of sight of the occupants of C-Ward's dormitory. He watched Jak endure a heel-stick -- one of the accommodations by Leon to avoid the ptsd triggers -- with eyes squeezed shut and headphones clamped to his ears. Nothing about the vulnerable posture even suggested the monster the guard had claimed he was. Damas may have sensed hints of dark eco building back up around him now and then, but nothing he couldn't balance out with regular exposure to light eco.

Even having seen Jak partially transformed, the boy was hardly what Damas would have classified as an "eco freak".

It was a thought unworthy of a good Wastelander, but Damas found himself hoping that when Macon was released, he didn't make it through his first Arena trial. He had no desire to deal with such an unpleasant person.

He didn't think Jak wanted to see him again, either.

The nurse set down another of the protein mixtures that the boy hated so much and sternly warned him not to leave half of it behind this time. As if that wasn't going to just make him more stubborn!

Jak, naturally, pretended not to hear Becca.

Damas intervened when he heard Becca becoming audibly frustrated. He cleared his throat and gestured towards the door in a polite dismissal.

"I'll take it from here, thank you."

Jak wasn't impressed. He still had little thought for kings and thrones. Pointedly ignoring Damas’s presence, Jak rested folded arms on his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes. If Damas strained his ears, he could just barely make out Jak humming under his breath. He'd almost memorized that entire guitar sonata. An impressive feat in and of itself. Even so-

"We can probably find you some other music chips if you get tired of that one."

"I like this one," Jak grunted after a moment.

Well, he was answering today. That was a good sign.

Damas pushed the hated pink drink towards him somewhat unceremoniously.

"I know, no one likes these. But you need to keep the electrolytes and glucose balanced, and you need the protein."

"Rather eat shoe leather."

It would have been counterproductive to laugh, but Damas was sorely tempted.

"Well if you've ever had to eat the trail rations Sig makes, you probably already know what that tastes like."

Jak actually cracked a smile at that.

"It's not great," he admitted. "Usually he just stole pub food for us. Also not great, but at least you could chew it."

Damas was surprised that the boy was willingly talking to him about Sig. Thus far he'd been tight-lipped and tighter-fisted about anything to do with the beacon and how he'd gotten to the desert. Damas decided not to call attention to it, lest Jak clam up again.

"Well," he said, taking on an air of nonchalance, "You'll never get to see what the matter-formers in the Arena are capable of if you can't get up to a healthy weight."

Jak narrowed his eyes.

"What matter-formers?"

The king flashed a sharp grin. "What, did you think I made everyone do trials on flat sand? Bunch of gladiator battles?"

Jak waved a hand from side to side. So-so. He'd somewhat assumed the quadruplets were just talking up a plain old gladiator ring.

"No no no, think more creatively," Damas scoffed. "Wasteland terrain is only flat in the badlands. Moving platforms -- not as soft as sand dunes, but close enough -- obstacle courses, lava-"

Jak's head shot up. "Lava?!"

"Mhm." Damas folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "If you keep up with your nutrition plan enough to get out of here and earn a gate pass, lava is going to be an issue more often than you'd think. Tends to happen when your island formed over a volcano."

The boy looked...a little too interested.

"Is it active?"

"No, thankfully. The monks hundreds of years ago built structures inside to alleviate pressure and halt eruptions. But that magma didn't go anywhere -- except through underground passages to a few calderas."

"Probably more self-contained than flying over a magma gorge then," Jak mused, missing Damas’s jolt. "Sounds like a Babak village."

Every word out of this kid's mouth just added to the riddles to untangle. How did he know what a Babak village looked like? And he'd called them by their proper name, not Lurkers.

"And you've been to one of those villages, have you?" Damas asked.

Jak barely nodded. "Sure, couple times. Me and Daxter, we're not registered members of the Bluefeather band, but they act like we are."

Well. There was another reason Haven probably wanted him dead. Damas studied him in silence, chin propped on his fist. The weight of his gaze left the boy fidgety and uncomfortable. Finally he met the stare head-on.

"What."

"You're part of the abolitionist movement."

It was not said as an accusation, nor as a question. Damas said it as a simple statement of fact.

The bewildered face the boy pulled was nearly comical in its elasticity.

"How'd you figure?"

Damas shifted his weight comfortably and raised his eyebrows.

"The Babak do not share their clan names with hu'mens -- drink your protein, Jak, you're stalling -- and they certainly don't take them to their villages. Not unless that person has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they can be trusted. For a hu'men to earn that distinction, you'd have to accomplish some great work on their behalf. Hence my suspicion."

Jak gave him a look of equal scrutiny as he begrudgingly swallowed some of the artificially flavored liquid. He made a face and shuddered.

"Gah. They couldn't put this stuff in coffee or something?"

"I suspect they fear the idea of you on caffeine."

Jak almost cracked a grin. "They should."

Then he raised a hand to point at Damas.

"You helped them too."

"Hm?"

"The Babak." Jak gave him a shrewd, knowing stare. "You helped them too, or you wouldn't know any of that."

The grin was out before he could even consider being serious. Damas smiled down at Jak ruefully.

"It was never enough, but I did what I could when I was your age. Cleared out some roads out of the city from under the north agricultural sector. You could see me coming and going from the stadium, so how the Guard didn't catch me in the act I'll never know unless there were some choosing to look the other way."

"I actually used some of those!"

"Did you!"

Damas couldn't help feeling a little pride.

"Then I am glad my work was of some use to you."

Jak's enthusiasm popped like a balloon when Dr. Leon entered the dormitory and laid eyes on the single most infuriating patient he'd dealt with in all his years: Damas of Spargus.

"You."

"He has diplomatic immunity," Jak said flatly.

By his bewildered expression, Leon could tell Damas didn't know what that meant any more than he did.

"Yeah, I question that immunity since he's a month late on vaccinations."

"I've been busy," Damas grumbled.

"Very convenient for you."

Jak held up the bottle threateningly.

"If the needle comes out, the bottle goes in the trash."

Both men's eyes widened.

Damas leaned down, harshly whispering,

"Are you seriously trying to blackmail the doctor, kid?"

Leon did not negotiate with blackmailers.

"If you drop below sixth percentile again, you'll wind up right back in Ward 2 again," he said calmly.

"And who do you think Nurse Tansy is going to blame for it?" Jak countered.

...Leon negotiated with some blackmailers.

"Counteroffer," he said archly, "The shot-dodger in chief reports to the clinic for the white flu vaccine by no later than tomorrow evening, and you can skip the shakes for one day."

"So do I get a say in this?" Damas asked, "or-?"

"No."

"Not really."

"Ah." Damas wrinkled his nose. "Lovely."

"What is white flu, actually?" Jak asked, "Why's he need a shot for it?"

The doctor looked at him with a muted exasperation. He pointed to a poster near the door -- an enlarged copy of a handwritten notice.

"It's right there, you didn't read it?"

In the span of a single second, Jak's entire face went blank.

Not the reaction either man had anticipated.

It was a carefully controlled non-reaction, like he was trying to feel nothing.

Rot.

The doctor sighed in a very put-upon manner.

"It's the handwriting, isn't it? Rot, my wife is going to be absolutely insufferable when I have to pay for an actual print."

The handwriting was large. Clear block glyphs, no ligature-writing or slants. In fact, it was more legible than Damas’s own writing, and he was responsible for keeping the minutes in senate meetings!

He knew it, and Leon knew it.

But Jak didn't.

What kind of life had he led before Praxis had him kidnapped? Could he read at all?

Leon cleared his throat. "Rather than wait for replacement posters: white flu is a viral infection of the nose, throat, and lungs. It is extremely contagious. And if you've never had the vaccine, it can be deadly. You had yours administered upon entry to the hospital, all newcomers do. King Damas, on the other hand, was supposed to voluntarily get his last month."

The boy was still closed-off. Damas needed a way through that wall he'd put up.

He'd given up pretending he didn't monitor the boy's recovery closely. Jak was still A Political Situation to some of his government, given that his story was thus far inextricable from intel the Gilas had been gathering on Haven. But Damas’s investment had become rather more personal. The kid was technically under his roof, anyway. Perhaps he could try -- just try, and see if Jak responded well -- to take a little more active of a role in his recovery and integration into the city.

"Alright, alright," he said begrudgingly. "I'll do the shot tomorrow. The kid can skip the liquid chalk."

"Or you could get it over with now."

Well, at least it wasn't interrupting his schedule if he did it now. He hated taking time out of his work to go get checkups. He had too much to do!

"Fine, fine," Damas sighed, "Get it over with, then."

Leon nodded sharply. "Wise choice. I'll be back."

Jak relaxed just barely when the man left. Damas pushed a curtain aside to take a seat on the unoccupied bed adjacent to Jak's. The kid was looking at the poster with the same face he wore when he was trying not to show emotions he considered too vulnerable.

"Which language are you used to?"

Jak jumped and looked at him a little nervously. Damas wasn't even slightly bothered.

"You sign, fluently. SparSign has a completely different grammar system than Curiash. I was just wondering which one was your first language."

"I can read!" Jak responded hotly.

Damas raised his hands. "Well I didn't say you couldn't! I just asked what language you usually read in!"

For three awkward minutes, Jak refused to answer. He put the headphones back on and glared at the floor.

One step forward, two steps back.

"Shorthand," he said abruptly.

"You read Curiash shorthand?"

"Curian shorthand. The really old glyphs."

Despite the situation, Damas was a little impressed. Nobody taught shorthand these days.

"Been a while since I met anyone who could do that."

Deciding that it couldn't hurt to feed the kid's bruised ego just a little, he added, "I suppose, to be fair, that I don't know many people who can memorize a sonata in only two weeks, either."

When Leon returned with the vaccine, Damas took it without reaction. Given Jak's scars, it was better not to make a big deal out of shots.

"You know, if you wanted to pick up writing in some other languages, I can think of a few people who enjoy teaching," Damas remarked.

Jak grimaced. "They wouldn't enjoy teaching me."

"Bold assumption, but alright." Damas shook out his right arm, rolled his eyes, and dutifully presented his left for one of the other vaccines he'd forgotten about. This hadn't been part of the deal, Leon was striking while the iron was hot.

"Still going to need to get someone to teach you though. You're still in the age range for compulsory education in Spargus and I really don't think you'd appreciate getting dropped in a class full of unhinged teenage Wastelanders in the middle of the school year."

"What kind of "compulsory education"?"

Jak was tensed again.

Leon answered in Damas’s place.

"Mathematics, history, very basic science and technology, and language arts, primarily. The sorts of things that keep a Wastelander from getting swindled out on jobs."

Jak's cringe deepened. Damas guessed the kid had been swindled a time or two.

"There are arts too," he grumbled at Leon, "We're not barbarians."

"Arts fall under the history classes."

"That doesn't make any sense at all. It's a subject of its own!"

The doctor waved a dismissive hand.

"Well what am I supposed to do about that? I'm a doctor, not the department of education!"

"Oh who asked you," Damas huffed.

______________________________________

Finding a tutor for the boy was not as simple as process as Damas had hoped. Pick someone impatient or sarcastic, and they could lose any progress they'd made with Jak. Pick someone shy, and it might seem like they didn't know what they were talking about. Leilani had a roster of candidates for Damas to look through -- and the Bureau had a few too many questions about his involvement -- to sort through. Damas hadn't even known Spargus had that many remedial tutors.

Ultimately, Damas chose someone from the division that handled children and adolescents rescued from Marauder labor camps. While the circumstances weren't exactly the same, that department of Leilani's staff at least knew how to handle complex trauma.

By all accounts, Chiron made an...okay first impression on Jak. He hadn't gotten more than a couple words out of the kid, but his fluency in SparSign had at least piqued Jak’s interest a little.

That was another enigma about the boy.

He spoke a Wastelander dialect, but behaved as though he knew nothing about Spargus.

The initial assessment wasn't as dismal as Damas had been afraid of.

The boy could barely read Curiash, he couldn't write at all. As expected, he knew nothing of Spargan history. But neither did he know much about mainland history. On the other hand, his grasp of math wasn't behind his peers at all. It might not have been in the same branch of mathematics other teens were usually learning in his year group -- geometry and cartography over calculus -- but he was quick with his answers.

"He's had terrible teachers," Chiron reported. "Absolute incompetents gave him a terrible perfectionist streak. Kid thinks he's stupid because he can't immediately understand something he's never studied."

More uphill battles.

Well, Damas was already in too deep. The kid had at least one more month in C-Ward before the Bureau would consider him for a barracks placement. That made him more Damas’s responsibility than anyone else's.

"Alright. Let me know what he needs and I'll try to get it to you."

Chiron nodded.

"We'll start small. Kids' books. The Glub in the Tub is a decent reading primer."

More than just a "decent" primer, evidently.

Jak had a reasonable grasp of sight words by the end of the week. Grammar? That was going to take a while. But he seemed to respond well to encouragement.

Within the month, he was reading on his own. It wasn't perfect, but he was self-motivated.

Chiron started asking for harder materials.

Geography. Children's history books. World maps.

His test scores were still abysmally low, but Damas didn't understand how that could be when the kid seemed to have a near photographic memory. What were they missing?

Brother Tam was the one to figure it out.

He'd been working through Jak’s story, little by little. Jak was reticent. The only things he was willing to talk about were his experiences in Haven, and even then it was clear that he was holding information back. Tam was confident that he'd come to a place eventually where he felt safe enough to talk about it, and so he never pried.

It helped Jak trust him. The kid actually looked forward to his rambling walks through the tower with Tam in the evenings.

"Oof, these stairs are always colder than I'm expecting," Tam had remarked on one of the evenings.

"It's 'cause the water," Jak had responded unexpectedly.

"Oh? How's that?"

And Jak had seemed so unbothered as he skipped a few steps.

"Throne room's up there, pipes are in the walls. Water's a better thermal conductor than air."

He hadn't been thinking about it, he'd just repeated what he'd read. It had given Tam an idea. As he followed Jak between levels, he'd started periodically asking questions.

"How does that work, anyway?"

"Do you know how many years it took to carve the citadel into the cliff?"

"How much water do you suppose gets filtered through the throne room water wheels a day?"

And Jak had answered every single one. His answers weren't always fully correct, but he was relaxed, and even a little confident.

Jak needed verbal tests. Not written ones.

The revelation had been a bit of a game changer for Chiron. Jak's assessments took an almost overnight leap from 50% accuracy to 85% accuracy. And all they'd needed to do that whole time was adjust the method to suit the student better.

Jak, for his part, appreciated the distraction from his situation.

He couldn't leave. He didn't know where any of his friends were. He had lost muscle mass. But when Chiron showed up with more of those flimsy books, he could pretend he was somewhere else for a while.

He'd always been told to stick to fighting. To leave the thinking to people like Samos. That he was all muscle and no brain. And yet here he was, actually learning. And the people here actually believed he was capable of learning!*

And Jak...

Jak actually liked knowing new things.

Sure, he was no genius, and he never would be. But he liked learning. And he was good at memorizing things. It had been a survival tactic in Haven. He'd never expected it to apply to something that normal people got to do.

He didn't like all the tests. A quiz every other day felt superfluous. (Chiron's own fault for teaching Jak that word, he was absolutely using it against his teacher whenever possible.) And not every day was a good day.

Sometimes the memories were too close for other subjects to distract him.

Sometimes his hands hurt and he didn't want to practice writing.

Sometimes he was just...angry. Without a real reason or trigger.

He knew he was risking that foundling bureau keeping him longer if they thought he wasn't complying with the mandatory counseling. But he couldn't just turn that anger off like a switch.

He knew six weeks in that he'd been pushing it a little too often when Damas showed up with Chiron.

"Chiron told me you've been having a rough time with the nurses today," the king said calmly.

"Chiron needs to mind his own business," Jak retorted.

Damas was not impressed.

"He is, hotshot. You're his student."

When Jak didn't respond, he folded his arms.

"And, as much as you hate it, it's the nurses' business too."

Jak scowled and, ignoring protests, stood up on the cot to hoist himself up into the windowsill several feet above him.

"Yeah? For what?"

"Excuse me?"

Frustrated, Jak glared out the window.

"What's your end game here? Can't fight for anybody if I'm locked up here. So unless you people are running tests I don't know about-"

"You know rotting well no one is permitted to run tests without your permission."

"Permission?"

Jak scoffed.

"Why bother? It's not like I'm ever getting out of here. Can't fight back, there's nowhere to go."

Ah. One of those days.

Damas supposed he could've taken the boy to task over his attitude. Or he could've just let him sit with it. But he was not without sympathy for the frustration Jak had to be feeling.

"You will need some physical therapy before they release you at this rate," he acknowledged. "We should probably find out where your strength level is right now, shouldn't we."

Jak looked down from the window and narrowed his eyes.

"I don't trust that," he said, pointing. "What do you want?"

Oh, Dr. Goad was going to murder him for this. Ironically, Leon would probably be the only one in Damas’s corner this time.

"I'm offering a deal," he said. "You cooperate with the recovery plan as best you can this week, and in exchange, I'll let you do a pre-Trial assessment in the Arena."

"You'll what?!"

Chiron fairly trumpeted his outrage. "You can't just-! He's too young for that! The Bureau will have our heads!"

"I can make a one-time exception," Damas said, hiding his own second-guessing well. "Consider it an executive decision. Most of his peers have their own gate passes, or will by the end of the year. Look, if we want him to get outside occasionally, we're going to have to make some compromises."

Dr. Goad was going to murder him. Entirely possible that Dr. Petros would help.

He'd figured at first that they barely registered his presence. Just some glaring problem patient they could tune out.

But then the oldest of the quadruplets asked if he wanted any of the extra food they brought their brothers, "to piss off old Sawbones".

He'd accepted hesitantly, and that seemed to open a door.

They didn't have conversations, not directly, but the four spoke so that Jak could hear them. They indirectly included him in small ways — Jak was beginning to wonder if that food really had been "extra", or if it had been brought deliberately out of some kind of solidarity.

Solidarity. Yes, that's what it was.

It felt like the occasions when members of the Underground actually treated him like one of them and not a disposable weapon.

He wouldn't have called the brothers friends, but he was growing to appreciate their company.

Apparently, they didn't hate him, either, considering what they'd just given him.

Headphones.

Jak looked down at the cheap plastic and metal in his hands. The shiny blue paint would scratch off easily. And it wasn't likely to work outside of a certain distance from the talk-box. But it was a gift. A true gift, not an investment with strings attached for once. The brothers had given it to him because they could.

"Hey, easy, li'l biter," Cody said kindly, "If you start cryin' again, Dex here is gonna start blubberin, and when he cries he sounds like a beached whale!"

Dex punched Cody in the side. Echo helped.

Fox ignored all of them to hold out a small chip to Jak.

"It's not the best quality, but you stick that in your talk-box and then it plays music over the headphones. I think it's all guitar and harp, but there might be some flute on there. It wasn't labeled at the market."

When Jak had first gotten to know Sig, he'd assumed that the man was a singular individual. That his kindness in a city like Haven was a one-off. A fluke that couldn't be duplicated in other individuals. The world was hard, and cold, and mean. Innocence was hard to come by and harder to keep. Even if he had never left Sandover, Jak had already been past the point of a fully clean conscience. But Sig, Sig lived like he was a law unto himself. He functioned by a code, and by gods he'd tried his best to impart that code to Jak and Daxter.

At every turn, the city of Haven confirmed Jak's beliefs. Wretched souls at the bottom of the pit, clawing and grasping for the means to just survive the day while the privileged few looked down on them from the top of the heap like vultures. Jak broke the rules: Jak climbed out of the pit. And once he'd started gaining notoriety, the other wretches down below began to realize that escape was possible. They could assert themselves. There were more of them than the Council.

So obviously, Jak had to die. And the city shut its eyes and returned to its pit because the world was cold. The one exception to that world was Sig, and Haven made sure he and Daxter couldn't save Jak.

And yet.

And yet here in one of the harshest environments on this side of the world, there was kindness. Generosity. Jak didn't understand.

These people, even the elders, were warriors. Soldiers. A military class, in a brutally pragmatic city, ruled by a warlord who did not suffer fools gladly. And despite their clear superiority in training and combat, despite the power every single one of them had over Jak, they chose compassion.

It wasn't soft. Sometimes it wasn't kind. Often it was very unpleasant so far. But they'd scraped him off the ground and decided that they were going to put him back together come hell or high water. And now these visits from Brother Tam, and the things his "roommates" did-

Echo bringing more food than Cody and Dex needed and pretending it was an accident so that Jak had something other than the chalky protein drinks.

Dex interrupting a panic attack by teaching Jak new curse words in sign.

Someone changing the sheets on his cot every time he left to wander.

"I- you- why did you do this?"

Sometimes it reminded him of Sandover, when they'd still treated him like a child and not a tool for procuring orbs. But more often it reminded him of Sig. These were Wastelanders, like Sig. Was this desert community where he had learned that code? Even with how ready to kill these people were?

Jak looked up from the headphones.

"You don't even know me."

"And our stay's almost up," Cody added. He scratched his stubbly head and shrugged. "Sometimes the quiet's worse. When there's others, you can at least pretend you're in the youth barracks. But once we leave- well, we thought you could use something to drown out the silence."

"I mean, we kind of know you," Fox answered idly, "You been here two weeks with our idiots."

"I don't know what youth barracks are. Just that some bureau says I can't live there until Tam clears me."

It wasn't the first time someone had mentioned youth barracks. Did this city take kids to live and train as soldiers? He couldn't tell if that was at odds with what he'd experienced so far or not.

Cody blinked, and Dex held out a hand.

Echo rolled his eyes. "Youth barracks are just where kids old enough for training squads live one or two weeks out of the month. Well, except the ones without family to go back to, or whose families suck, they're there year-round."

"Pay up. Told you he was new."

That was likely where Jak would end up. If they ever let him leave this tower, anyway.

The four brothers exchanged glances, then looked back at him.

"Who are you fighting?"

Stiff and uncomfortable, Jak gestured to Echo's armor.

"What, like, right now? What do you mean?"

"All the soldiers. Training kids. Barracks. Who are you at war with?"

There was an awkward silence, as though Jak had asked something incredibly strange. The quadruplets poked at each other by turns as if trying to foist the burden of explaining off onto another. Cody seemed to come out on the losing end.

"Uh...the desert, I guess?"

The thin man made a face. "Yop. After Damas overthrew the bloody scumbag who had the Arena built, he changed the rules to give it a purpose."

"The desert."

"A purpose besides bloodsport," Fox grumbled.

"Well, there's a little bloodsport."

"Bloodsport is killin' without a purpose!" Fox argued.

"It's four different sports, people end up losing some blood, that's a blood-sport!" Cody retorted.

"Can't," Cody answered smugly, "You ain't got no hairs to split."

"Don't split hairs," Fox huffed.

Dex reached over to knock the pair's heads together without expression.

"That...makes sense, I guess," Jak allowed, if a little grudgingly.

"Short version," he sighed, "when it's not being used for Raidball, Asocc, or community events, the Arena simulates the main dangers you run into outside the walls. If newcomers want to get gate passes -- or jobs around here -- first they have to prove to the king that they can survive out there. No safety nets: if you slip up, you get injured or you die. So citizens start training early."

but I'm not a citizen. I'm a charity case at best and a prisoner at worst. Will they make me enter this Arena?

Jak slid the headphones over his ears and tuned out the brothers as they began to playfully bicker again. The padded circles weren't the most comfortable, but that was a small matter.

It was far more elaborate than the simple tunes he'd grown up hearing. Long, difficult measures meant to showcase the skill of the person playing some kind of stringed instrument -- if it was a guitar, it wasn't like the screeching things Jak heard on the saloon radio.

It did take some doing to get the chip into the rudimentary talk-box. It had been assigned to him as soon as Dr. Leon realized Jak was going to wander whether he liked it or not, and it was clearly a bare-minimum kind of device. But once it was in, a muffled melody crackled through the headphones and into his ears.

Spellbound, Jak sat at the end of his cot, hands over the earpieces. It sounded like-

The slopes on the way to the mountain temple came to mind. The song had no words, nothing to even hint at mountains. So why did it form a picture in his head? Had music ever done that for him before?

What did it sound like? Not something he'd heard before, but something it made him think of.

Jak blinked startled.

Jak was still sitting there, wide-eyed and silent, when they brought the protein shake. He barely acknowledged the nurse's presence at all. When Brother Tam made his afternoon visit, Jak was in his own little world. He rolled the protein bottle back and forth between his palms -- it was actually half empty.

"Oh. Hello, friend!" Tam smiled at him. "What's that you've got?"

Self-conscious now, Jak slid the headphones off and shifted his weight. He looked down at the protein bottle and made a face.

"Um. Uh it's-"

"Ugh, gross."

Tam stifled a chuckle. "It's quite a texture, isn't it? You know, It's funny that they've never found a way to take the chalkiness out. They tasted like that when I was a boy too."

"S'like prison food," Jak grumbled. "Less lumpy. Still chalk."

Jak gave him a dirty look.

The former monk's brows lifted. "Oh dear. Would you like me to have a word with Dr. Leon about other options?"

"Well now you sound like the king," Tam chuckled. "Leon is a strict man, yes. But he has to deal with Wastelanders, friend. The most obstinate people on the planet. But he doesn't go out of his way to make people miserable, I promise."

"No. He'll make up something worse."

Jak rolled his eyes.

But he was in a better mood than usual. He didn't immediately remind Tam that all his experience suggested that adults were never that trustworthy. He forced another sip down and shuddered.

Jak shrugged noncommittally. He wouldn't get his hopes up.

"Maybe we should try foods with high protein in them," Tam suggested. "I'll bring some next time."

The boy's eyes darted to the men at the other end of the room.

"What are those?" Tam asked, gesturing again to the headphones.

"They um. Gave them to me. For when it's too loud in my head."

"Oh!" The man's eyes crinkled at the corners with warmth.

He looked up, meeting Cody's eyes.

Cody shrugged with half a smile.

Thank you, he mouthed.

This, this was what Jak needed. Random acts of kindness from people with nothing to gain from it, just to remind the boy that he too was hu'men, that he too deserved more than just base survival.

It was a pity the brothers would be leaving soon. Tam wondered if he could convince them to visit Jak after their release. They were neither staff nor authority figures, after all. Jak was, even if just incrementally, a little more open with them.

Imagining compressing all of the hurt and disappointment into a small ball of energy...and then hiding it away deep deep down. Curling around it protectively and soft thick walls to protect it...

.... because I am stuck....and I don't have the strength to leave....