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fictionadventurer · 11 months

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The Shocking Redemption Arc of Chester Arthur

To my great pleasure, I get to tell you about Chester A. Arthur. If you don’t know his story, that’s a surprising statement, because most people don’t even recognize his name as one of the presidents. That’s a crying shame, because this guy has the most fascinating character arc of any president I’ve come across so far. He entered the presidency as a despicable, corrupt, conniving political lackey, and left it as--

Well, I’d best get on with the story.

Chester Arthur started out as an idealist. He was the son of an abolitionist Baptist minister, and though he dropped the religion in adulthood, he remained devoted to abolishing slavery. He became a lawyer with a New York firm that argued several civil rights case, and he rose to fame in 1854 when he served as the defense attorney for Elizabeth Jennings, the Northern version of Rosa Parks. Arthur’s victory in her case led to the desegregation of New York City’s public transportation.

During the Civil War, Arthur got an appointment as New York’s quartermaster general. After the war, Arthur returned to civilian life and became a Republican “party man” who worked behind the scenes to draw in voters, funding, and supporters. He and his wife Ellen (called Nell) both loved the finer things in life, which drove Arthur to do whatever he could to gain fame, wealth, and social status.

This is where I need to explain the spoils system. For the first hundred-plus years of American politics, all federal positions were filled by appointment. When a new president came into office, he could award government positions to his supporters--"to the victor go the spoils". Federal employees were required to donate money to the ruling party. There were no requirements for education or relevant experience. Any job could be filled by anyone with the right connections. If you think that sounds like a breeding ground for corruption and cronyism, you’d be absolutely right. By the 1870s, the system was getting extremely corrupt, and there was a growing push for reform.

But not by Chester Arthur. He owed his career to the spoils system. Through his work in the party, he became the right-hand man of Roscoe Conkling, New York’s senior senator and the state’s “political boss”. Conkling was a flamboyant showman, a magnetic politician, and a ruthless man. He had been a major supporter of Ulysses S. Grant’s presidential campaign, so Grant gave Conkling control over all the federal appointments in New York. Conkling used his power to fill positions with his friends and supporters, and he was brutal in attacking anyone who got in his way.

Because Chester Arthur was Conkling’s most loyal supporter, he got the best federal job in the country—Controller of the Port of New York. Before income tax, around 60-70% of federal funds came from the tariffs at this one port. The controller got a salary similar to the president’s, plus he was able to take a percentage of all the fines they levied. At the height of his power, Chester Arthur made $50,000 a year, which is a lot when the average skilled worker at the time made $500. (A rough estimate puts his salary at $1.3 million in today’s dollars.)

Arthur was living the high life. He racked up huge tailor bills. He had a gorgeously furnished house. His job allowed him to force his employees to donate a percentage of their salary to the Republican Party, which gave him even more power within the political machine. He bought huge amounts of wine and cigars that he handed out to people he was wining and dining for the good of the party. His wife resented that he was rarely home because of his political work, but Arthur loved the machine too much to stop.

After his 1876 election, President Rutherford B. Hayes desperately tried to reform the spoils system, but was blocked every step of the way by Roscoe Conkling. Finally, in 1878, Hayes managed to remove Arthur from his position as port controller, under suspicion of corruption, which allowed Arthur to spend more time working for New York’s political machine.

In January of 1880, Arthur was in Albany working for a political campaign when his wife caught pneumonia. By the time Arthur got home, Nell had fallen into a coma, and he wasn’t able to speak with her before she died. He felt guilty over her death, and especially the lack of closure caused by his devotion to politics. But instead of changing his ways, Arthur moved in with Conkling and became more devoted to politics than ever.

Which brings us to the 1880 Republican Convention. The Republican Party was split between two warring factions—the Stalwarts like Conkling who wanted to keep things the way they were, and the Half-Breeds who wanted civil service reform. President Hayes refused to seek re-election (partly because Conkling had made his life miserable) so these two factions somehow had to agree on a new candidate. Conkling supported a third term for Ulysses S. Grant. The Half-Breeds supported James G. Blaine of Maine—who happened to be Conkling’s mortal enemy.

James Garfield was there to nominate John Sherman—the Secretary of the Treasury and the younger brother of the famous Civil War general—and I can’t go any further in this story before I tell you a little bit about him. James Garfield is one of the most ridiculous overachievers in the realm of American politics. He was born into a dirt-poor farming family (he’s the last president ever to have been born in a log cabin). At sixteen, he left home to work on a canal boat, but quit after he nearly drowned, and his mother and brother scraped up enough money for him to go to school. His first year, he paid for his tuition by working as a school janitor. His second year, the school hired him to teach six classes (while he was still a student!) and then added two more because of how popular he was. By the time he was twenty-six, he was president of that same school. He became a lawyer and was elected to Ohio’s state legislature. During the Civil War, he became the youngest person to earn the rank of general. While fighting in the Civil War, his friends put his name in as a candidate for the US House of Representatives, and Garfield won even though he refused to campaign. He then served several terms in the House, where he became popular, but he refused to seek the presidency, because he’d watched several friends become warped by their presidential ambitions.

At the 1880 Republican Convention, Garfield was the more popular Ohio candidate, but insisted he was there only to nominate Sherman. At one point in his nominating speech, Garfield asked the audience, “Now, gentleman, what do we want?” To Garfield’s horror, one man shouted, “We want Garfield!”

Garfield remained loyal in nominating Sherman, but the spark had been lit. The voting went round after round after round for two days, with the votes being split between Grant, Blaine, and Sherman, with no one getting enough to win the nomination. Garfield got one vote in the third round. In the thirty-fourth round, Garfield suddenly got seventeen votes. Garfield stood to protest, saying no one had a right to vote for him since he hadn't consented, but the president of the convention--who was secretly thrilled because he liked Garfield more than any of the other candidates--told Garfield to sit down.

By the thirty-sixth vote, Garfield had won the nomination.

Now they had to choose a vice president. Several of the delegates got the idea to throw a bone to Roscoe Conkling. He was furious that Grant had lost the nomination, and he was vindictive. Conkling controlled New York’s political machine, so without him, the Republicans would lose New York, and without New York, they’d lose the election. He had to be placated. So the delegates nominated Chester Arthur, his right-hand man, as vice president.

Conkling told Arthur to refuse the nomination, but Arthur accepted, saying it was a greater honor than he had ever hoped to achieve. That's putting it mildly. The only position he’d ever held was port controller, and he’d been removed from that. Plenty of people thought nominating him was a horrible idea—a man like Chester Arthur only one step away from the presidency? But other people thought it was a shrewd political move—it would placate Conkling’s faction of the party, and Garfield was young and healthy and would rule in a time of peace. It wasn’t like there was any chance he’d die in office.

After Garfield was elected, Arthur immediately started causing problems. He all but openly boasted of buying votes in the election—which was not a great look when it had been a close race. He was completely on Conkling’s side in his war against Garfield. After Garfield appointed Levi Morton, a Stalwart, as Secretary of the Navy, Conkling sent Arthur and another lackey to drag Morton out of his sickbed--forcing him to drink a bracing mixture of quinine and brandy--and bring him to Conkling’s house to get chewed out, which caused Morton to resign. Conkling forced another Stalwart Cabinet nominee to resign on inauguration day.

Then Conkling went to war over the federal appointments. At first, Garfield placated him, appointing several of Conkling’s candidates. But then Garfield nominated Judge Robertson as Port Controller of New York Harbor. Conkling was livid. That was the prime federal position, a major source of Conkling’s power in the party, and Robertson was one of Conkling’s political enemies. In Conkling’s mind, Garfield had stabbed him in the back. Arthur agreed, and openly bad-mouthed the president to the press.

Conkling and the other New York senator resigned their Senate seats in protest—a dramatic political move. In those days, state legislatures voted for senators, and Conkling believed that since he controlled so many New York politicians, they’d easily get re-elected to their old seats. Unfortunately, the legislature was sick of being under Conkling’s thumb. The election became a drawn-out battle, and Chester Arthur went to Albany to help Conkling in his campaign.

While he was there, the unthinkable happened. On July 2, 1881, James Garfield was shot at a train station by Charles Guiteau, an insane office-seeker. Guiteau had come to the White House every day for months seeking an appointment under the spoils system. When that failed, he decided God wanted him to get Garfield out of the way so the spoils system could continue. After he shot the president, Giteau shouted, “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be president!”

As you can imagine, that made things really bad for Arthur. He’d just spent months fighting the president tooth and nail, and the assassin had mentioned his name. Plenty of people thought Arthur had something to do with the shooting. He and Conkling both needed police details to protect them from lynch mobs.

Arthur didn’t want to be president; in his mind, vice president was the perfect job—a position with a lot of political leverage, but no responsibility. He went to the White House hoping to convince Garfield that he had nothing to do with the shooting, but the doctors wouldn’t let him in the room. He managed to speak to the First Lady, where he got choked up with emotion and was observed to be in tears. A reporter later found him in the house where he was staying in Washington, and noted he'd obviously been weeping.

To Arthur’s relief, Garfield seemed to get better. The bullet had missed his spinal cord and all his major organs. If he’d been left alone, Garfield would have made a complete recovery. Unfortunately, his doctors repeatedly prodded the bullet wound with unsterilized instruments, and Garfield fell victim to a massive infection. He lingered for months, slowly starving and rotting to death.

Through all this, Arthur stayed in New York and refused to take up presidential duties; with so many people accusing him of the assassination, he didn’t want to make it look like he was preparing to usurp the throne.

It eventually became clear that the assassin had acted alone, which laid the rumors to rest, but no one wanted Arthur to be president. James Garfield had been a man of the people. The working class considered him one of their own, proof that anyone could rise from poverty and become president. He was an idealist, a champion of civil rights, a family man who lived modestly. For the first time since the Civil War, a president had been supported by both the north and the south, and the country had come together in grief. Chester Arthur was Garfield’s exact opposite—a conniving political lackey who’d become a millionaire through corruption.

James Garfield died on September 19th. To the American people, it looked like their worst nightmare had come true. Conkling’s lackey was in the White House, and now Conkling would rule the nation the same way he’d ruled New York.

Yet, to everyone’s surprise, President Chester Arthur became a completely different man. In one of his first speeches, he listed civil service reform as one of his top priorities—a shocking move for a man who’d become president through the spoils system. Soon after Arthur’s inauguration, Conkling demanded he name a new Controller of the Port of New York. Arthur angrily refused and called Conkling’s demand outrageous. Conkling stormed out in fury and never forgave Arthur. (Arthur did later risk his reputation to nominate Conkling for the Supreme Court, but Conkling, ever petty, refused the position.)

Arthur didn’t have a complete personality transplant. He still lived lavishly, hosting lots of state dinners. He still preferred the social duties of the presidency to actual government work, and he was a hopeless procrastinator. Always fastidious, Arthur refused to move in to the rotting, rat-infested White House until they fixed up the dump, and he ran up extravagant bills during the remodel.

Yet, as a president, he was...respectable. He worked for African-American civil rights. He started a major process of rebuilding and reforming the outdated and corrupt navy. He did sign the Chinese Exclusion Act, but he had vetoed an earlier, harsher version and only signed a much-reduced one (that probably would have been voted in anyway if he’d vetoed it). That remodel of the White House, even if it ran over-budget, was long overdue.

Most shocking of all was his unswerving devotion to civil service reform. He continued an investigation into a government postal scandal, even though everyone assumed he’d drop it. He voiced his continuing support for reform efforts. In 1883, Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. As written, the act required only 10% of federal jobs to be assigned based on merit, and even that required the president to take action to enforce it. People assumed that Arthur would sit back and do nothing, so the spoils system would remain in place. Yet Arthur immediately formed a commission to enact the reform, even appointing some of his old enemies. The man who’d benefited most from the spoils system became the one to finally destroy it.

How do we explain such a complete and sudden change? Part of it’s a matter of personality. If I can indulge in a bit of meta, Chester Arthur seems to be a textbook example of the sanguine-phlegmatic temperament—someone who wants to fit in with the crowd, to go with the flow. As a political lackey, this made him self-serving and amoral, but as president, the crowd he had to impress was the American people. After months of getting crucified in the press, with tons of articles saying what they didn’t want him to be, he’d have plenty of motivation to become what they did want him to be.

A more important motivation, though, was death. His wife’s death was likely the first shock that would make him step back and take stock of his political career. Garfield’s death had an even more profound influence on him. The spoils system had led a madman to murder a president in Arthur’s name; if anything could motivate a man to change the system, that would be it. Even more profound than that was his own death. Not long after entering the White House, Arthur was diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease. He hid the diagnosis during his term, but his actions in office were the actions of a man doomed to die, with a mind toward the legacy he’d leave behind.

Yet there’s another stranger, more mysterious influence that I’ve left to last because of how cool the story is. The day before his death, Chester Arthur—who’d become ashamed of his old life—asked a friend to burn the vast majority of his papers. Years later, among the papers that had been spared, his grandson uncovered a packet of twenty-three letters from a 31-year-old invalid named Julia Sand. Julia came from a family very interested in politics, and her illness meant that she spent a lot of time reading the newspapers, so she was familiar with Chester Arthur’s political career. In August of 1881, she sent Chester Arthur a letter that began, “The hours of Garfield's life are numbered—before this meets your eye, you may be President. The people are bowed in grief; but—do you realize it?--not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor.” Over seven pages, Julia scolded Arthur for his corrupt ways, but assured him of her faith in his better nature, and urged him to reform. She sent letters over the next two years, full of encouragement and scolding and political advice. She called herself his “little dwarf”, because her lack of ties to him meant she could be completely honest with him.

There’s no evidence he ever answered her. But she did offer some rather specific political advice that he seems to have followed. And he did visit her once. In 1882, he stopped by her house in the presidential carriage, surprising her and her family (who had no idea she’d been writing to the president) with an hour-long visit. She seemed to grow more frustrated with his lack of answers after that, and no letter exists after 1883.

There’s no way to say what kind of effect the letters had on him. But amid all the turmoil after the assassination, it must have meant something to have one voice saying she believed in him. She was a voice from outside the Washington political machine, who could serve as a sort of conscience. The fact that those letters survived when so much else burned suggests he considered them worth saving.

No matter the reason, the truth remains that Arthur entered the presidency as an example of all that was dirty and loathsome in the political system, and he left it as a respectable man. In giving up his old ways, he sacrificed connections he’d spent years building. His old friends never forgave him, and his old opponents never quite trusted his reform, yet he did what he thought was right even if it meant he stood alone. In summing up his presidency, I don’t think I can do better than contemporary journalist Alexander McClure: “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired... more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe.” I think that deserves to be remembered.

#history is awesome #presidential talk #i apologize but i really can't see any way to cut this down #i like the detour into garfield's nomination #i can't cut conkling out any more than i have #i can't leave out his wife #i didn't even mention that he was washington's most eligible bachelor during his term but he remained faithful to her memory #or that his sister served as hostess at the white house and helped raise his daughter (who he protected from the press as best he could)#or that he did make a half-hearted attempt to seek re-election so people wouldn't think he was slinking off in disgrace #and there was some support for him #but he didn't mind at all when someone else was nominated because he was dealing with his kidney disease #and he died in 1886 #which means he had the shortest post-presidency life of anyone except james k. polk who died three months after leaving office #i did not come into last week thinking that by the end of it i'd have developed a minor specialization #in the presidency of a guy i knew only for his facial hair and his half-verse in the animaniacs song #i didn't even mention the facial hair!#go to wikipedia and see his glorious muttonchops!#say what you will about the victorians but they had wild facial hair game #but anyway here is the life story of my impeccably dressed trash panda son #who is put together on the outside and a mess on the inside #and still manages to maintain a certain dignity despite how pathetic he is #he's a mess of a human being but i love him your honor

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radioactivepeasant · 1 year

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Fic Snippets: Free Day Thursday

By way of poll, we're back to the Gremlinverse. Damas is now actively involving himself in The Haven Situation

Damas secured the cloth around his head, tightening it over his crown. Just because the Baron was dead, didn’t mean his supporters were. The council that ruled the day to day matters of the city still wanted their previous king dead, last Damas had heard. If they were to discover that not one but three members of the House of Mar lived, they'd be livid.

Securing the turban with a pin, Damas turned to pick up his scarf and froze.

The other Mar -- the one calling himself Jak -- stood in the doorway, watching him. Now that he'd been noticed, the little boy tensed up.

"Uh-"

That was all Damas managed to get out before the child bolted.

"No wait-!"

By the time he'd rounded the corner, Jak was nowhere to be seen. With no one there to witness, Damas didn’t mind letting his shoulders fall. Mar remembered him, Mar was safe and happy and alive. That was more than he could have hoped for already. But the way this second child flinched away from touch and wouldn't trust more than three people-

It ate away at him. It burrowed into Damas’s heart like a thorn and jabbed deeper with every mistrustful look Jak cast at the world around him.

Sig said this boy had been older before. Something to do with a Precursor -- what a week it had been if that wasn't the most unbelievable part of the sentence -- trying to undo some horrible thing Praxis had done to him. Something about a perversion of time and space: doubling a child and forcing him to grow up unnaturally quickly to become a soldier. Or, that was the gist of what Sig had picked up. It did explain a lot of the boy’s reactions. But to know that someone had done this evil thing to Mar -- even if it was not the same Mar he had delivered and cradled from birth -- filled Damas with a rage that threatened to undo all his efforts to present a non-threatening front.

Praxis was dead, and that was as great an injustice as what had befallen his son. Or sons, rather.

Yet the elder boy, the one Sig was so fond of, he said that he and Jak had been there to watch to life flicker out of Praxis's eyes. They'd stood there dispassionately, listened to his death rattle, and then moved on to dismantle his ultimate weapon, irreverently tossing pieces of it onto his corpse. There was a kind of vindication in that. It still stung that Damas could not have avenged his children himself, but at least Jak had been able to see his enemy brought low.

The sound of a muffled argument down the stairs drew Damas’s attention. He crept down the stairs, deftly avoiding the spots the children had already demonstrated to be creaky. As he drew closer to the back of the bar, Damas identified one of the irate voices as Jak’s.

"-suddenly I've outlived my usefulness, is that it?"

"Stop putting words in my mouth, Jak!"

That one sounded familiar. And irritating.

"You know better than anyone that destiny comes for us whether we're ready or not. But in your...current state...it is better for you to prepare to face that destiny. Leave the ridiculous dangers for when you get some power back."

Damas peered around the edge of the doorway and glimpsed Jak baring his teeth and a short, mossy green man with a hefty piece of wood in his hair.

"There it is. It's always about power, isn't it? Gotta make me a super-soldier again so you don't have to do your own work. I knew you hadn't just spontaneously grown a conscience," Jak said bitterly.

"That's the dark eco talking," the tree stump man said condescendingly. "I told you, you need to learn control, and discipline! But no, no one ever listens to old Samos. He's only-"

Jak interrupted him, scurrying to cut off his approach. "You come near the kid and I'll show you just how "controlled" the eco is. The Precursors erased all the experiments -- too bad for you -- and most of my impulse control."

He balled up his fists and took a ready stance.

"Hand to the Oracles, I will channel a fireball straight into your unmentionables if you say a word to Mar or Daxter."

Damas had heard enough. He stepped down out of the wide stairwell with a noticeable thump and squared his shoulders. As expected, both the two arguers and the girl at the bar flinched or twitched at his sudden appearance.

"Is there a problem here?" Damas asked calmly.

He looked around the mostly empty pub and frowned.

"Where's the gangly boy?"

"He left me behind!" Jak snapped, then retreated into a shadowed booth. To sulk, apparently.

The girl cringed. "There's...Commander Torn sent Daxter out to the North Agriculture sector to deal with some metalheads trying to nest down there. Jak was all ready to go, but they kept giving him the run around."

She aimed a skeptical frown at the little green man. "Samos was pretty insistent that Jak stay and train his channeling, but I'm pretty sure Jak is already an expert. He got shorter, not less skilled."

Damas rubbed his chin. "And Jak and Daxter...they are not often apart, are they?"

Samos made a rude noise. "That little weasel's been riding Jak’s coattails since they were sprouts. He's the sidekick."

"He's my brother!" Jak snarled, coming partway out of the booth.

"And he's a better man than you'll ever be!"

The girl tensed and leaned clenched fists on the bartop. "Mr. Hagai, I've just about had enough of your attitude. What is your deal, dude? I swear, you're physically incapable of seeing Daxter without becoming verbally abusive."

Samos rolled his eyes. How airheaded did this girl have to be to have been taken in by Daxter's wild stories? It didn't bode well for the protection and guidance of Jak's younger self while they scrambled to put the Time Map back together.

"When you're older, and maybe wiser, you'll understand why I have to be tough on them. I don't expect a bunch of kids to know what's best for them."

"Wow." The girl curled her lip at the sage. "Yikes."

"Don't bother with him, Tess," Jak grumbled from the booth. "Getting Samos to say something nice is like talking to a rock."

Damas filed the name away in his head and realized he'd gotten her mixed up with the other blonde that hung around the bar.

Tess was the teenager with the creative weapons, Jinx was the grown man. Not the other way around.

Tess turned towards the corner where Jak had sequestered himself. "Has he ever apologized for any of that?"

"Uh, no. That would require convincing him that he's wrong."

"Mm. That's about what I figured." Tess shook her head and leveled a dirty look at Samos. "Jak, lemme tell you something my mama told me when I was little: never trust an adult who refuses to apologize to a child."

"Oh for taproots' sakes. Daxter isn't a child!" Samos argued.

"He's seventeen!" Tess answered sharply, "And you guys sent him out there without his backup!"

Damas held up his hands as if holding both of them back. "Alright. I've heard enough. Hagai: leave."

Samos turned to squint up at him. "And you are...who, exactly?"

Damas raised an eyebrow in silence and waited for the crabby little man to connect the dots. He turned a gratifying shade of gray when the realization hit him, but Damas wasn't in the mood to answer any questions. He stepped around the bar and crossed the room in two great strides. Taking hold of the sputtering sage's arm, he continued on to the door. As it opened, he swung back his arm and in one fluid motion he flung Samos out onto the street.

"Out," he said firmly.

"I-! You-! I've- why I've never been so insulted!" Samos gasped.

"How lucky for you to have a new experience, then," Damas answered dryly. Then his face hardened.

"I don't know who you think you are, but your meddling is not welcome in my family. And you can tell that Guard commander and the Praxis girl the same thing."

He didn't wait for an answer.

Damas stepped back and keyed the door shut with a smack against the palm pad. Rotting sage. Hagai's grandfather hadn't been nearly so insufferable! Samos seemed to have the idea that he was the main character of some epic tale, somehow.

"Ugh. Thanks for that," sighed Tess. "Usually the old stump's daughter keeps him in line, but she's been busy putting together the fundraiser Reconstruction Race in Main Town. Not easy when you're no longer tall enough to reach your tool bench."

The girl massaged her temples. "Hand to the Oracles, I'm this close to making a rule that Samos can't be in here without a chaperone."

Damas took a seat at the bar and, on a whim, passed a small metalbug gem to her. She took it, smiled softly at the way it reflected the light, and slipped it into a drawer.

"Right, back to business. What can I get ya?"

"Not for me," Damas waved a hand. "Compensation for having to deal with that sort of person. And..."

He looked away.

"And as thanks. For having their backs."

He didn't specify who "they" were, but he didn't have to.

Tess’s face fell a little, and she propped her chin up on her hands. "This whole situation is making everyone act like they've lost their minds," she confessed. "Jak and I have run three different Council Guards out of here at gunpoint already, and I'm pretty sure my apartment is under surveillance."

"Why is there a Council at all? Aren't those Praxis supporters?"

Damas blinked, and suppressed a start upon realizing that Jak had crept out of the booth and was standing at the edge of the bar, scowling. He was only a few feet from Damas now, and Damas kept still. No point startling the boy back into the shadows again.

"Well, according to Torn, we can't just imprison the old regime and start over, or we're the same as Praxis," Tess answered. "Still, you'd think he'd do something to keep you and Mar out of the middle of the power struggles."

Jak scoffed. "You'd think. But this is the guy who sold Mar out when the Baron threatened Ashelin."

Tess went very still, just as Damas stiffened. A coldness flooded the girl's face, and she turned slowly to look at Jak.

"Torn did what?"

Jak gripped the counter edge tightly. "And Samos and Kor. Remember when Dax and me busted you guys out of prison? It was Torn’s fault."

For a long time, Tess didn't say anything. She kept an impressive rein on her facial expression, but Damas could see a wealth of pain in the girl's eyes. Anger, shock, horror and betrayal- all too familiar to the former king of Haven. Then she slumped and closed her eyes.

"After the kinds of things I've seen as a spy, I don't know why I'm still shocked," she said in a shaking voice. Wiping her eyes quickly, she cleared her throat. "Gods, maybe Sig was right, Jak. We should've just left when he offered us the out."

Jak slipped around the bar to lean against her in an awkward attempt at comfort. "We couldn't. We didn't have Mar back yet. Daxter says it's their fault, not ours."

"Yeah." Tess dropped an arm around Jak’s shoulder. "I guess."

"If Dax wasn't attached to this place, I'd say we should just go," Jak suggested. "Grab Mar, grab Chopper, and just go."

With a faint smile, Tess nudged him. "Maybe we can convince him to open a sister location somewhere that wasn't just overrun by metalheads. You know he only likes this building because we "inherited" all of Krew's booze and didn't have to actually buy the supplies."

Up to now, Jak had been giving Sig excuses for staying in the city -- some because he didn't trust Damas yet, others for Daxter's sake. This was the first indication he'd given in Damas’s presence that he wanted to leave Haven. If ever there was a chance to convince the boy to go to Spargus, this was it.

Damas stood and stretched his spine with a grunt.

"Alright then."

"Alright then?" Jak echoed, squinting at him warily.

The king shook out his arms. "Keep an eye on your little brother, will you? I shouldn't be gone more than two hours."

Jak wrinkled his nose and looked vaguely concerned. "Where are you going?"

"To retrieve Daxter," Damas replied. "If you truly wish to leave Haven, the middle of a regime change is a good time to do so. Especially if they're already trying to put you under surveillance."

Abruptly, the guarded look Jak had been wearing since his arrival faded. He looked unsure, suddenly.

"You're...gonna help him?"

Damas flashed a brief smile. "Considering he's been keeping up with you all these years, I'm sure he has the situation in hand. But another blade in the fight never hurts."

"Oh," said Jak quietly. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, then closed it again. He nodded sharply, and took a breath.

"Uh...watch your back out there."

"I will, son." Damas returned the nod. "I suggest locking up until I come back, if the place really is being watched. Don't let anyone in."

"Good plan." Tess let go of Jak and fished a keycard out from under the bar. "I'll lock up and we'll post watch in the stairwell. Jak, you go get Pow-Pow out of my gun safe."

"I don't need the smaller gun!" Jak protested.

"It's for me, doofus!" Tess retorted, "You think I'm letting you or Mar put your grubby hands on my custom baby?"

"Oh. Nevermind." Sheepishly, Jak took the keycard and darted up the stairs.

Tess looked back at Damas. "You're really going to get all of us out?" She folded her arms. "Or just the boys?"

"Sig might shoot me if I leave you behind," Damas joked dryly. "If he offered you a way out, it means he's sponsoring you for citizenship."

Growing serious again, he added, "Call me if anyone tries to get in."

"I'd worry more about Jak getting out."

"Well," Damas sighed, "at least that hasn't changed since he was little.

#Jak and Daxter #gremlinverse au #fic prompts #writing prompts #jak and daxter mar #dadmas #king damas #jnd tess #jak and daxter tess #samos hagai #does it count as samos bashing if it's stuff he did in canon?#in this house we side-eye Samos #Dax has the same fighting moves as Jak in the games. he's just not used to some of the monsters being smaller than him.#Veger and the Council really want to get their hands on Jak and Mar for Puppet King and Eco purposes #Tess was planning a last stand and Jak was planning a Boxcar Children style escape #Mar is oblivious to the angst. He's busy teaching the dog tricks.#Damas: if my scientifically duplicated son has a sworn brother do i have custody of all three or just two?#Phobos: you want to run that one by me again??#free day thursday #snippet thursday #added Keira to Gremlin Squad solely because Samos’s conniption fit would be hilarious

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