What if River and Riddick shared a bond? That even though they had never met, they were somehow connected, and could see glimpses of each other? Set after Chronicles of Riddick in the Riddick (film) timeframe/ Firefly (tv show) timeframe. Like my other Riddick/Firefly crossovers, this one is going to have music woven through out the story.

Chapter 1: There are bad days, and then there are legendary bad days

Song: Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson

XXX

River's POV

She watches as a flying predator swoops down and walks towards something…a hand…sticking out from underneath the rubble. It cautiously hobbles towards it. When the hand doesn't move it tentatively pecks at it, trying to see if it's something it can eat. It keeps pecking at it for a few moments before the hand grabs it by its throat. It struggles for a few moments before an audible crunch breaks its neck.

Sweet dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree?

"Don't know how many times I've been crossed off the list and left for dead. Guess when it first happens the day you were born… you're gonna lose count…. So this… this ain't nothing new."

Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

"RIVER!" Simon yells through the door to her room. "River, it's time to get up!"

Her eyes snap open at the sound of her brother's voice. She exhales and answers him as sweetly as she can. "She will be out in a minute ge-ge."

"Don't take too long, Jayne may eat all the food." He say through the door as she hears his footsteps retreating.

She begrudgingly sits up in bed and looks around the room for something to wear. She spies a dress hanging across the back of the chair and moves towards that. They had been on Serenity for almost two months now, and the ship had started to feel like home, but… Simon still looked at her as a thing to fix… instead of a person. At least she had her dreams.

She doesn't know when they started…the dreams… as far back as she can remember she has always seen…glimpses of different…things. Worlds, people…monsters. And a voice… always the same voice. She had never seen the man the voice belonged to, but it mattered little to her… the voice was the one thing that kept a shred of her sanity when she was in the Academy. The one constant she could hang on to when everything else seemed to be spinning out of her control.

She had tried to tell Simon about the voice, but he had insisted that her mind was manifesting it as a vestige of her childhood to act as a coping mechanism for the trauma she had suffered in the Academy. He tried to give her an anti-psychotic to help her sleep, but she never took them… she preferred the voice to the drug induced fog Simon constantly tried to push on her.

She finishes dressing by throwing on a pair of boots and quickly leaves her room. If she takes too long she knows that Simon or one of the others will just come looking for her. They all treat her like a porcelain doll…something fragile and barely held together. They would never tell her this, but she hears them… hears what they think of her…and other things.

But like the other voice, she can't tell Simon about them… the one's that seep into her mind when she's around people… he isn't ready to know about what they did to his sweet baby sister. And she isn't ready to embrace what they made her…yet.

She walks towards the common area, and can hear the crew's laughter getting louder as she draws closer. But this isn't the world she wants to be in right now…no, she's world's away from them by the time she gets into the common area… still thinking about that voice.

XXX

Riddick's POV

After what feels like an hour, I manage to free myself from the rubble on top of me. Every inch I move makes me feel like a fuckin' freight train hit me. At least four of my ribs are broken, and my left leg is twisted out of place and broken. Fuckin' Necros. Never could trust them to keep their word…and look where it's got me now. Stuck on NOT-FURYA.

I crawl up to the nearest ridge and peer over. The sun is so bright on this godforsaken planet I can barely distinguish anything from the purple I normally see. Just fuckin' great, another planet with terrible fuckin' sunlight.

I make out what appears to be water and I drag my sorry ass towards it. But when I get there the smell of sulfur is so intense I know I ain't goin' to be drinking this water any time soon. Figures. Least I don't need to worry about some predator I hear howling in the distance coming up and tryin' to take a drink while I'm here.

I move over to a small rock overhang to try and get some shelter from this blistering sun. I'm drained from the amount of energy it took to drag myself over here, and I figure I can at least sleep for a little bit before worrying about what might be out there.

It doesn't take long for sleep to creep over me…and even less time for the dreams to invade my mind. It's always the same… the same slip of a girl. I never see more than a few moments in the dreams…just enough to study her.

She's standing in front of me… like she's waiting. Her hair is long and hangs down her back in soft waves. I can tell it's dark, but I couldn't tell what color because of my eyes. She's small…like Jack was…but you can tell her size is deceiving, that her willowy arms and legs are from conditioning, years and years of conditioning. Looks like the body of a dancer. And as I get closer to her she smiles…like she knows me. But her smell is what's the most unique… a perfect mix of blood, gunpowder, and cinnamon. It's intoxicating and I'd know that smell anywhere.

But that's all I get before the dreams end, and its fuckin' infuriating. When I wake up it's dusk, and I hear the sounds of howling in the distance. Need to set my leg if I am going to have any chance up against whatever is out there.

I move some rocks from a nearby crevice and break off a piece of my armor to bite down on as I move my leg into the crevice. Ain't the first time I have had to set my leg, and I know this is goin' to hurt like a bitch. In one quick motion I twist the leg back into place and pain is blinding as I bite down hard onto the metal, hard enough that I even taste blood in my mouth. But at least I won't have to crawl everywhere now.

There's a howl in the distance and I peer over the edge of the ridge nearby to see some type of predator in the distance. I see them perk their heads up and look in my direction.

Just great I am upwind of them. I quickly hobble back towards the sulfur water and submerge my body into it. Might be able to lose these things if I can hold my breath long enough for them to leave.

XXX

River's POV

Simon had tried to drug her again, and wasn't listening to her protestations. All he said was "It will help mei-mei," but she knew better. Now she's hiding in one of the ventilation shafts, hoping that her brother will eventually give up and go talk to Kaylee. She had been in there for nearly an hour when she begins to nod off into sleep… his voice filling her ears.

She sees a planet…it's rocky and desolate. It clearly hasn't been inhabited for a number of years…and the rocks almost look more like ruins in some areas…they are ruins… maybe to gods long forgotten, she couldn't say.

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you

"There are bad days, and then there are legendary bad days. This was shaping up to be one of those. Whole damn planet wanted a piece of me. Can't stay in the open. Can't risk another attack."

She sees flashes now… markings on walls… a stone dias… but it's jumbled. His words and thoughts are focused on something else.

Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

"It's always the punch you don't see coming that puts you down. But why didn't I see it? But why didn't I see it? Of course they were gonna try and kill me. Death is what they do for a living. So the question ain't "What happened?" The question is "What happened to me?"

And now the dream is frenetic… images and voices flash in her brain before she can fully comprehend what she is seeing. Grey warships… space…. dark planets… dead eyes…. daggers… blood.

I wanna use you and abuse you
I wanna know what's inside you

"Some wanted to put a crown on my head. Some wanted to put a noose around my neck."

"…So what is the best way to a man's heart?"

"Between the fourth and fifth rib. That's where I usually go. I'll put a twist at the end if I wanna make sure…"

I'm gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside

And now she feels it… feels the dagger pierce his side. But it's not between the fourth and fifth… it's the fifth and sixth… body cavity… but it still hurts none the less.

She wakes up to screaming and hands grabbing at her. Her mind is still disoriented and she doesn't know what's going on. It takes her a minute to realize that she's the one screaming. But that's when she sees who's trying to pull her out…back into the light of Serenity's hallway… and who's waiting nearby.

"NO! NO!" She screams and shrieks as she flails around.

"Gorramit Moonbrain! STOP!" Jayne screams back at her as he tries to yank her out of the ventilation shaft with Mal. She can see Simon standing nearby with a syringe of what she expects to be a sedative.

"NO! You can't just dig into me, shove twenty needles in my eyes and ask me what I see!"

"Shh, it's alright mei-mei. It's just something to help you sleep." Simon says as he comes forward and jabs the needle into her skin. She continues to flail though, now out of sheer annoyance at being drugged yet again.

"Stupid son of a bitch, dress me up like a gorramn doll!" She screams and thrashes around. "Don't make me…sleep…again." She says as the drugs take hold of her system and she's purged into a dreamless sleep.

XXX

After a few moments of the sedative in her system River stills and Mal and Jayne carry her to the infirmary, Simon following directly behind them. They set her on the exam table and Simon goes about prepping other meds for her.

"So, she's added sneaking about, cussing, and hitting people to her repertoire." Mal says as he watches Simon and glances at the unconscious River.

"She's liable to go wooly and kill us all in our sleep." Jayne says as he stands to Mal's right.

"Jayne." Mal says in a warning tone.

"What? Just speakin' plainly." He says as he huffs and leaves.

Mal waits until Jayne is out of earshot before he asks his next question. "Could she do that Doc?"

Simon exhales. "I don't think she's dangerous. One moment she seems perfectly cogent, the next...she speaks nonsense, like a child. So difficult to diagnose… this is just a bad day." He says as he injects another medication into her arm. He dabs a swab over the injection site and holds pressure on it for a few moments before turning back to his supplies.

"No, a bad day is when someone's yellin' spooks the cattle. Understand? You ever see cattle stampede when they got no place to run? It's kind of like a… a meat grinder. And it'll lose us half

the herd."

Simon loses his temper at this. "She hasn't gone anywhere near the cattle!"

"No, but in case you hadn't noticed, her voice kinda carries. We're two miles above ground and they can probably hear her down there. Soon as we unload, she can holler until our ears bleed. Though I would take it as a kindness if she didn't."

"This is paranoid schizophrenia, Captain. Hand-crafted by government scientists who thought my sister's brain was a rutting playground. I have no idea what'll set her off. If you have some expertise…"

"I'm not a doctor. And I'm not your gorramn baby-sitter, either. Gag her, if you have to. We got trade to be done." Mal says as he storms out of the infirmary.

XXX

AN: And I'm back with another Riddick/Firefly crossover! As I watched Riddick again, I really felt that if I wanted to use in in a fanfic, it would be better to start over and zero the clock, as Riddick would say. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this new fanfic. Reviews will be greatly appreciated ;)