#reteo

they can be your butler or your ... y,,y,our...;; my end of an art trade with @cisphobicfives o7″!

Months later, the sight of empty bunks in their barracks still aches. It's worse when he remembers the drawings Atla used to have pinned to the wall or the projects Cable would leave scattered across the floor. Some nights he can't push down that horrible throbbing pain in his chest and it wants to bubble out in ugly, heaving sobs he'd have to muffle in his pillow. He knows, because he's done it once and Jak caught him when he wasn't quiet enough.

He hasn't lost control like that ever since, but Jak still refuses to speak to him.

Their squad barely talks anymore, not when Jak ignores Splat and Nyx, well. Nyx has retreated so far into themselves they don't speak much at all. His last two squadmates didn't die at the hands of the Jedi like the rest did, but sometimes he feels like they might as well have. He lost them all the same. I love you, he wants to whisper into the darkness when their absence starts to choke him and hot tears well in his eyes. I miss you. Please come back.

He doesn't, of course. He can't talk to the ghosts that haunt him, living or dead. To do so would be to lose control once again, to admit weakness.

Sharp GF-800z Portable Stereo (1986)