Remembrances Of Angels
by Lapin Diable
Nightfall always makes him think of The Eclipse.
The sudden disappearance of day on this planet has something to do with it. Close to ten in the evening there is a quick dip of the sun, the great circle of light suspended at the horizon for an hour or so, then ten minutes of visibility before the world disappears and the monsters come out to play.
Of course, the monsters here are different to the monsters there, but they eat you up all the same. Drug dealers, pederasts, rapists, torturers, kidnappers, killers...the world after dark is a haven for vice and evil. Kind of reminds him of home.
Skulking along the streets on the wrong side of the morning and he knows where he's going. Pretends that he isn't, refuses to nod to the knowing smirks of the greeters at the door, but hikes two-step up the stairs anyway. Madame LaFaye's. Most famous brothel never to ask for ID.
Most expensive too.
But he knows that the money goes a long way here. You get the night. You get a personalised service. No quick fuck in the back of a hover-car, and certainly no dirt or disease or squalor. The girls here are clean and the boys smell of soap and alpine cologne.
Nadia smells of musk. Natural. Woman smell. Fresh dewy hair scent and vanilla skin, rounded with the spice of her desire. He doesn't like fragrances so she doesn't wear them. He wants her to smell like she's real. Like she's a docking pilot who has no time for female frippery. Like she's a cow-eyed young teenager who doesn't even know such things exist.
As he sits, waiting for attendance on a plush purple sofa, he lets his mind wonder. Thinks. Remembers.
So many things swirl around his brain these days that it's difficult to separate each strand of thought into something he can wrap his psyche around. There was a time when he was focussed. Or he thinks he was. Can't quite remember anymore. Anyway, from what memories he *can* recall, he remembers being focussed. There was always a lot going on in the brain of Richard B Riddick, but he lived in the present. One minute, one thought, one decision. Make no mistakes. Worked to not get him caught for years at a stretch.
That and owning the swiftest fucking shiv strike in the known universe.
But now...now he just can't seem to *concentrate*. Every time he tries he loses his thought, slipping from his grasp like soap in the shower. And he doesn't even *want* to try and retrieve it, because delving into his mindset is just asking for trouble. Might wake the tiger.
Might wake the pain.
Well, the tiger he can deal with, just about. Years of labour and practice and waking up not knowing who the bodies were have trained him enough to push the tiger back when it tries to get out of its cage. If he's not looking and it *jumps* out...well, then he has a problem. Everyone in a five-mile radius pretty much has a rather big fucking problem, 'cause he's not responsible when the animal gets out, dears. Your bleeding daughter and your injured son mean nothing when the redhaze comes down. He's just going to kill. Sorry. Goodbye and goodnight.
But the pain...the pain is a bitch. He hates the pain almost as much as he hates the image of them, those two, imprinted in his brain and tattooed on the backs of his eyeballs. He hasn't felt pain in ever such a long, long time. Liked it that way, too. Didn't want to remember daddy's harsh words, Juvie Guard's wandering hands and questing tongue, Prison Warden's heavy open-palmed strike. Used to get worked up about it, but he learned how to forget. Shove it down, seal it up and don't ever *ever* frickin' well think about it, okay? And kill anyone who dares to make you feel.
That's been his motto ever since they threw him in his very first hellhole, and he's stuck pretty true to it. Until Them. Maybe it was because of the situation. Maybe because Johns was finally, *finally* dead. Maybe because they believed in him after it all, even when he wouldn't have touched his *own* odds with a fifty-foot pole. Whatever it was – and he had given up trying to explain it – they had stirred something. They awakened his soul.
He feels almost dirty just thinking about it.
His attraction to Carolyn was undeniable. Instantaneous. She was everything a woman should be: spirited, fiery, sexy, but without losing an iota of femininity. He remembers the curl of her hair about her neck, soft and tickling like swan feathers or goose down. Remembers her voice, a cocksure amalgam of accents, and her eyes...eyes like fire. She was so brave when he cornered her, so desperate to keep control, but he could smell the fear on her as though it was a cheap perfume. Heady smell of her fear, the way she tried to hide it electrifying his nerves, and under it all...oh, under it all that faint scent of her desire. Her body wanted him, no matter what her mind was telling her, and it had taken all his effort not to ravage her right there.
He knew she wouldn't cry rape; thirty seconds of work and he had no doubts she would've caved in and lain back willingly. No, he wasn't worried about her, but Johns. Not a physical anxiety – Johns needed chained prisoners and a bigass gauge to feel like a man – but he knew that pseudo-lawboy could turn the others against him, and he hadn't particularly felt the urge to set up home on a cosy, alien-infested rock in the back galaxy of nowhere.
So he had stepped back. Stepped out. Directed the doubt onto Johns and walked away.
The preoccupation with Jack had started soon after. That beguiling obsession with him. Copycat haircut accentuating her huge eyes. She was pretty, he gave her that. Too young, but pretty nonetheless. Saved her life, twice thank you, and got some death for Johns out of the bargain.
And then it was back to Carolyn and her glowing bottle of goddamn *insects* for fuck's sake. Which was just ridiculous. Endearing and pretty fucking useful, but still ridiculous to be wondering round a death trap brandishing only a bottle of slugs. And she had come right up to him, right in his face, talking like she knew shit about his life, his world, his mind. Like she cared what he thought. And he had almost snagged her, talking about getting out of there alone. She had almost caved in, and he hadn't even known at the time whether it was a test. Hadn't known whether he'd have left pretty little Jack out there if Carolyn had gone girlie and stepped in the skiff.
Took the decision out of his hands with a tackle like a tank.
Of course, she was half his size and sobbing like a child, and in two seconds he had a shiv at her neck in the rain. But the look on her face...oh the look on her face had been mountains and fires, impassioned obstinate will and immutable compassion. Desperation and unshakeable faith in the goodness that had to lie somewhere inside him. You *must* be in there, Richard. Help us, help me. Help yourself.
So he did. Went back for them and lost her. Shocked minute of silence before he watched her go, falling to his knees in the rain and open to emotion for the first time in twenty long years. Nearly gave up right there, for what can an escaped convict with a newly reacquired heart do after the loss of the one who has freed him? Pain, that forgotten and burning elixir, speeding like poison through his veins...
And then he had heard Jack's voice. Now, sitting in a brothel in the most metropolitan area of the galaxy, it is clearer than it has ever been. He can feel the scar on his leg and the biting cold on his skin, hear the rain like a drum beating in his ears and he can see...
He can see her face.
Properly see, no distorted reflections of red and purple blaze, and full of light and shadow. Has no idea how he knows all the tones of her skin or the shade of her eyes, but he does. Knows it so well he could draw her from memory with colours he cannot even name. Beauty. Perfection. That one moment when she looked at him with all the hope of her youth and the sorrow of her loss, and she was the most ethereal thing he had ever seen.
An angel. And he doesn't even *like* God.
So now it's six years on and she is gone, like Carolyn. Taken from him because of his own blind stupidity and her unwavering stubborn belief in him. Taken because her love for him wouldn't let her leave.
Yes, Jack had loved him. Her crush had grown and matured with her body and by the time she passed the age where he was able to think of her without wanting to scrub himself clean, she was hopelessly in love with him. And he had loved her, in that way of his. In the way that made it impossible to say a word, and ran deeper than life or blood or forever. The way he had loved Carolyn, and had never been able to realise. Love because she made him want to better himself, and because she made him believe that he could.
Fear of losing him made her stay when his rivals closed in. Hope for a life with him made her hold him when she should have run away, and love for him made her smile as she bled her last onto the cold steel floor of a skiff, while a man who had once vowed never to feel again cried silent tears into the warmth of her last embrace.
He is almost crying now, remembering. He hasn't lost his knack for recollection after all. Jack is his thought, his one focus that will never go away. When her memory comes she is in the finest of detail, and all else fades to grey.
"Sir?" Realises he is being called, and he's been dreaming so long that it could be for the twenty-third time. Looks up and sees an assistant, hip flung casually against the wall, arms crossed over breasts that may as well be naked, so flimsy is their covering.
"Yes?" His voice sounds foreign even to him, thick and low, almost like a smoker's rasp. She seems to find it appealing somehow and drops her eyes to half-mast, lips pouting and chest seeming to expand three inches with some well-practised posturing.
"Nadia will see you now." Her voice has dropped too; husky whisper.
He makes no sound, but gets up duly. Despite swaying highly suggestively along the corridor, her efforts are having no effect on the mean-looking man and she sighs, knowing that with a service-provider like Nadia, no one in any galaxy would be looking around for anything extra. Smiles brightly and leaves him by the woman's door.
He watches her go, barely registering the change in demeanour, mind fixed solely on the task in hand. Seems like he has got his focus back after all.
How appropriate.
Nadia looks the same as ever when he opens the door. Amazing how much she looks like...her. Same almond eyes and chestnut hair loose down her back, almost-invisible highlights picking up golden glimmers in the half-light. She is wearing a red dress, cut to the waist and slit to the thigh. Obscene really, except this is hardly the place to be complaining about immodesty.
He avoids her eyes, as he always does. She doesn't ask why. Whether she refrains from lack of interest or because she can feel the menace lurking just below the surface...he doesn't know and doesn't care. Content just to let her feel the edge of his potential. Yes, there's anger there darling, and yes I could loose it if it screamed, but now is not the time and this is not the place, and you most certainly are not worthy of it.
My emotion is meted out sparingly, you know.
She watches him move around the furniture, all rippling muscles and grace, smooth like a cobra and five times as deadly. Urban predator. A second's thought that she might be the prey, before his arms slip around her waist and his breath flows soft and hot on her neck.
"Tell me what you want, sugar." Begins the game the same as ever, husky American drawl even though she's never even seen the Earth where it's spoken. Doesn't matter. That's what he asks for and that's what she gives him, and never let it be said that she doesn't deliver on demand. A beat passes in silence. More breath on her neck.
She doesn't feel scared; he always does this. Doesn't talk for a while, not until she does something wrong, or his hands can't direct her on their own, or her job is performed so well that even *he* cannot hold it in.
Gently he turns her to face him, arms smooth and warm and so, so strong. Gazes at her mouth for long moments, his fingers drawing half-circles in the small of her back. The only sound is the rush of her breath.
Eventually she takes the initiative, reaches up and pulls his head to hers, joining their mouths as she closes her eyes. Never can tell if he closes his eyes too, those cursed goggles hiding his expression no matter how low she turns the lights. For some reason she wants to see him. A desperate need to see his eyes and know what he's thinking...Find an answer in his eyes for the reason he treats her so well and why he will never ever forget the girl he simply calls "Her". Search his soul for the reason he is as compelled to come here as she is to not turn him away.
But he has begun his journey now and her mind is powerless to resist. He is truly a master; alternate subtle whisper of feather-light kisses and the rough touch of those stone-strong hands; fast and slow and soft and hard and everything that serves to drive her mad. Sometimes she wonders who should actually be paying for this arrangement.
At some point their clothes came off, but she was too caught up to notice. Settles herself back on the bed and watches him watching her for a moment, drinking her in, and she finally gets it. Of course, and it was so obvious. She looks like Her. Whoever Her might be, but that's why he comes here. He has lost the one he loves and he comes to fill the gap with a lookalike and her costly touch.
For some reason that makes her heart ache.
Gently he settles himself over her, eyes still covered, his heart beating steady while hers races and pounds. His control is marble cold. Callused hands touch her softly, stroking and stoking the fire to a furnace, moist kisses on her collarbone as her head drops back on the bed. Hears the sweet gasps and smiles slightly, rewarding her with a flick of his thumb *there*. Kisses her eyes at the groan in response.
And suddenly she is maddened, lust-crazed animal and needing to feel him everywhere, on and in her and taking control. Grabs him and feels him push her back. Agonised, she waits...waits...biting her lip because she knows he will allow her this in the end. And then the swift movement, his position just so and her body arches upwards, upwards, soft and begging to be taken...
That perfect moment. Agony and ecstasy all rolled into one, flying and falling and he never wants to stop. A tiny cry escapes her lips. Looking down at her he sees the tears on her face, running pale-cold crystal down the roseblush of her cheeks.
"Angel..." The first time she has heard him speak unguarded, and the word is so tender that her tears halt and her eyes are wide. Mouth open, warm, and he places the softest of kisses on it. His voice is soft and sorrowful and filled with an ocean of regret.
"You're not the angel." He is up and off her in a second and air rushes in, cold and covering her sweat-beaded skin. She is bleeding. The shiv is back in his hand but the wound was good. She will not recover from it. Somehow she is all out of tears.
Moonlight bathes his face in half-shadow but she can see his eyes at last, and she wonders whether this is a final gift. And she understands finally, or thinks she does. His eyes are stars in a void that can never be refilled. Her hand clasps desperately to her stomach as she gasps, not breaking his stare, the force of her life running hot red through her fingers.
Soon she is dead.
Riddick does not leave for a long time, covering her in a blanket and smoothing down her hair. Presses a kiss to her forehead and is almost able to smile. A little closer to whatever it is he needs. That night, he dreams of stillness and peace. He dreams of light.
Angels.
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author's weird (and sometimes necessary) post-fic ramblings:
DISCLAIMER: Yes, USA Films owns them. No money made, blah blah.
If I had money I'd be out *buying* Riddick, not writing about him. Nadia's mine, but she's
on sale for five bucks or an ice cream.
ARCHIVE: BOTBG, Fanfiction.net, VDEB, Gunn & Lilith; anyone else just ask.
FEEDBACK: Yes, always. PLEASE! I'll give you cookies. send to lapindiable@yahoo.fr
NOTES: Props to Stéphane who played beta even though he has no idea who Riddick
is.