Genre: Romance/Angst
Pairing: Erol x Maia
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IMPOSSIBLE UNCANON
Chapter 3: Aftermath

The man spat and hissed like a cat, when the stinking water filled his throat and nostrils. Eliding a guttural noise he bent forward and coughed up the unhealthy liquid, all while Jak’s mind inevitably arose from the dark pit it had fallen into. Had he really…?

Precursors, this couldn’t become undone. As the dripping of water slowly tuned out, all that could be heard was Erol’s laboured breath. He snapped his head up to look at the boy, whom had shrunken back to his usual insecure, silent self. Every fibre in the commander’s body quaked, as he burst out in a fit of insults.

“Imp! Devilry! Monster! Adder bait!”

Jak’s apathetic expression scrunched up in angry wrinkles. His already crumbling mercy and patience completely withered - after all Erol had degraded both Maia and him. It didn’t even soften him when the commander during exasperated sobs began yanking at his tattered clothes. In a heartbeat rage blazed up, and Jak’s dark form attacked.

He never heard when Erol’s taunts shifted to plagued cries and shrieks. It felt like his head was under water and the rest of his body inside a thundercloud with electric signals flashing back and forth through the muscles. Fingernails tore ground scratches at his victim’s neck and cheeks, soon entering and exiting them as charcoal claws.

“You! Let me go!” The red pain from every Eco stained wound wedged into Erol’s skin, almost driving him further out of his mind, as every ounce of sanity fled. A new round of furious swipes with all claws out, before a finishing kick in the guts made Erol bow and sink forward to the floor.

It took a while to realize the maltreatment had ceased, that no rough fangs ripped at his skin any longer. But when Erol grasped the situation, he instantly bolted up.

Rills of crimson branched over his smooth jacket, and dripped from the hem down to the floor. Fazed with the scenery, the commander gaped and stared until his eyes traced the blood trails to his attacker, the boy returning to his normal form. Their gazes met, and Erol gripped harder around the doorframe he supported onto, opening and closing his mouth like a fish partaking air from water poor of oxygen. At last the redhead realized there was nothing to use as a psychological striking weapon - if he threatened to use armed violence or more powerful Eco injections, what plague would Jak suffer that he hadn‘t suffered before?

A whining snort, and Erol stumbled out of the sullied cell. It ended with an aria of screams tonight.

Jak’s shoulders heaved strainedly at every inhale, before the blonde eventually retired into a dry corner. Huddling his arms around himself, the boy fell into a dozing state.
So Erol thought he loved Maia - or at least her visage - truly and faithfully. Well, better hope he was proven otherwise tonight. Hope the penny dropped.

You couldn’t love Maia entirely unless you had seen all of her sides. Not just the dark, withering plant of a madman’s experiments - Really, once upon a time she had been an angelic woman from the North. He could still recall how she, during the most insipid Sages’ Council ever witnessed, slipped out of her chair to play with the children gathered.
Neither of them had seen any adult woman like Maia before; White and mystic, dressed in azure blue cassock, she simply thumped down on a log and taught them how to play at marbles.

With snowy blonde hair and chestnut irises - Goddammit, she had resembled a divinity, and Jak had been enchanted of her for the rest of the meeting.
“Did you notice the lad’s fascination with Maia, Samos?” The Yellow sage asked while they waited in the line for the teleport home.

“He was literally struck by her appearance!” The man continued chuckling. Samos, tired by arguments over the council table, grunted something halfhearted.

“Which one of the kids wasn’t?” He swung his staff in the air, “I guess they’d be magnificent babysitters, but Gol has a tendency to go on the rocks with his Eco!” The staff eventually lapsed, and hit Daxter’s head.

The Yellow Sage didn’t say anything, but the twist of his lips was talking enough.

“Well then, it’s up to you how you raise Keira and the boys, but I would never doubt to acquaintance them with fine old lineages like Acherons…”

Six years later he was among the first to get captured by the Dark Ones, while Samos made it as far as to Fire Canyon before his overpowering.

----

Jak opened his eyes to find the first sunrays peering in through the barred window.

The entire time until one year ahead of their fall from grace, Gol and Maia had acted like their usual selves, continuing to complain about clogged up Eco vents and maintaining their youthful vivid facades. Yet Jak had felt a twinge during the last meeting; Maia had seemed so taciturn and absent-minded, her eyes bearing a cold and aloof relish.  But when she saw Jak’s knitted and confused face, she burst out in laughter and told him that if he thought she looked awful today, he should see her after a day in the laboratory. Forcefully the boy had shaken his head assuring that no, Maia didn’t look bad at all!


In context, at the background of how Gol had experimented with the vicious substance on himself and his sister, Jak could say she had looked surprisingly healthy back then.  

Though back then, people outside the little two-people Archeronian circuit came to call them freethinking individuals, devoted to their science. To experiment like the Dark Ones was not hazardous as  ‘that old fossil Hagai’ said - it was innovative, and pioneering.

Sighing, Jak twisted on the floor. In spite of a dawning day, it was chilly in here.

The last time Maia had just swiftly showed up in the distance far above, yet undoubtedly she resembled a ghost more than a human. Jak liked the woman relentlessly, while Erol had grown infatuated with solely the dark half. A knifepoint of her personality, one year about. Nonetheless the commander oversaw time, insanity and Dark Eco - but to see what?
Jak bit his bottom lip. Lust. It changed the most genius people to bumbling goofs, and the commander fed a desire, which would break like leaf gold when touched. If he ever had met the living Maia he’d notice that none could own her the way Erol owned people. She would have been too dominant for the power-hungry redhead.

It might have been just a silly childhood crush, still it felt good to know that even if Jak never won Maia, Erol wouldn’t get her either. Finally something the man couldn’t take away from him.

The man will of course treat Jak like air when he returns from his recovery. Not look into the prisoner’s eyes, walk past his cell like any other cell - but ignorantly do it twice, to subconsciously prove himself that he’s unafraid.

That coward didn’t deserve Maia. And luckily he’d never get a chance to her heart.

----

So the woman was too good for Erol. Obviously someone up there thought she had been better off with this - This filthy Jak person!

The glass didn’t break when his fist plunged into it, just swayed back and forth on its hinges, provokingly showing his battered image.

Erol winced when his fingers grazed the scarring flesh on his cheekbones. Tired of nursing his damaged face for tonight, the redhead most of all wanted to stop scrubbing, leave the restroom and peel off his garments. Slip into bed. But he didn’t. That… Monster’s claws had torn his face to slices in moments! Thank Precursors the freak had let go at last, there could not be a death or permanent harm more degrading, more in lack of purpose - of profit - than if it was caused by a random madcap.

Erol was beginning to flare up, but stopped. He didn’t want to. Loosing your temper once was one time too much. There should be grounds to stand on, time to bide before such acts were entitled.

When exiting his bathroom, the commander discovered a paper form on the desk in his room. In blaring letters it shouted out every possible advantage of subscribing to another six months with Weekly Science. Interesting articles, a free guidebook to -

Without a second thought, he scrunched up the offer and threw it in the waste-paper basket.

Then it was done. Better throw away the ad before he got any more absurd ideas, signed up for a continuing subscription and got himself into more humiliating situations like this evening‘s events. Obsession with one face had been the source of an embarrassment Erol easily could experience when these so called troops patrolled the streets.   

Climbing drowsily into bed with a pounding headache accompanying him, the commander shut his eyes. Thoughts floated towards Maia Acheron’s portrait. Such a fool he’d been… Skirmishing over a simple image, what sane person did so?

Maybe the past month’s stress inevitably had gone to his head. Maybe his soldiers did the right thing when they got themselves women from town, or hid pictures of their fiancés in lockers and pillowcases. They might get into fights over these female companies, but at least the reason was something concrete.

Possibly, Erol thought before falling asleep, one should find a lady on home ground.

Like this garage mechanic, she whom used to serve his zoomers.

Fin
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