Title: War is Ugly
Author:
Fandom: Chronicles of Riddick
Characters: Riddick, Vaako, OC
Pairing: Riddick/Vaako
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my OC, the plot, and the general idea. And all the made up words, I own them too.
Summary: "We are called Nevi on this planet, but we've been called other things: seers, prophets, witches. We are persecuted no matter where we go."
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. – John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873)
The planet is like any other backwater chunk of earth: a dark, swirling mass terra, villages carved out of mountains and pelted by rains that lasted for cycles without end. Rainforests crop up in any open area, making farming impossible. Fantasy-like creatures swarm the forest, with gnashing teeth and poisons that would invade the senses and drive a person mad, and made the perpetually dampened soil a place no man dared to tread.
It is a distrusting planet. The populations are rugged and overtaxed and so poor they birth children for the sole purpose of selling them into slavery. Those who are kept by their families, the boys as the females fetched a higher price at market, are put to work at an early age and taught to hunt and kill all manner of creatures, but most of all humans: the main source of meat on such an isolated rock. And the first rule of the world that any child learned: every man for himself, lest he become another's meal.
There is one city on the planet, a trade stop, the halfway point for thieves and murderers on their way out into the black and slavers looking for fresh and exotic meat meant to liven up foreign markets. They call the city Omega and, while most of the populations venture there merely to sell those unwanted, others stay and enjoy the lawlessness of the atmosphere, for, with none to govern them, the criminals run wild and unkempt.
He knows this; the scanners aren't telling him anything new. He gazes down at the planet, dark goggles gleaming with artificial light that just barely reached him from the far corners of the room. Consoles line the walls, each tended by a tech trained in their use, quiet soldiers that never would have made it on the battlefield, and lights blink in and out of existence in the corner of his eye. He turns his attention back to the holo-table and the three men standing to the side and opposite him. The two in front of him are generic soldiers, commanders, whose only purpose in life is to follow his orders and try to kill those above them to further themselves the in the chain of command. Unfortunately for them, he made it very clear very quickly that the next step up was off limits to everyone.
They are arguing with his decision to take the planet and how. He doesn't blame them. He doesn't like it, but he doesn't blame them. He's been making major changes since he killed that half-dead bastard and he's been met with opposition every step of the way. Well, almost every step. He looks to the man standing at his side. He is tall, broad, and no doubt a killer in every sense of the word. Beautiful. Pale skin and irritated circular scars are the only indication that he isn't just in the religion for the slaughter. Even when he had revoked the Law of Mandatory Purification, his First Amongst Commanders continued to visit the Purifiers. It has been six months since he had usurped to keep what he killed and the First still doesn't go a week without renewing his dead-ness. Strange.
He orders the commanders off and to be ready to take the planet within the half-cycle. His First stands, habitually quiet, and continues to stare at the holo-table, the planet's terrain projected by lights into an almost lifelike quality.
"Vakko."
The Commander 'hmm's in acknowledgement, but doesn't life his eyes from the table.
"What's up, Vaako?" he askes.
"Nothing, my Lord."
Riddick growls at the use of the formal term. It has taken him since his official coronation to get the commander to call him by his name, not his title.
"Something's up. What's got your attention?"
Vaako hesitates before he says, "The planet seems very familiar for some reason, though I know I have not been here before."
Riddick raises an eyebrow.
"Never been here before, huh? You sure?"
"Yes."
"What about before you got snatched as part of the Ghost Horde?"
"I-," he blinks and shifts somewhat in the Lord Marshall's direction. "I do not remember anything from the time before my first purification."
"Nothin' at all?"
"There are," his voiced softens and became so quiet Riddick has to strain to hear it. "I dream sometimes, about a planet I've never seen before. About being some place dark for a very long time, but if I ever dream more than that then I do not remember it."
Riddick leans a hip against the holo-table in thought.
"Got any records?"
"No. I didn't even have a name before I was converted."
Vaako finally moves his hazel eyes to meet the black glass of Riddick's goggles and shies away from the table.
"There are things to be prepared for the invasion. Until then, Riddick," the Commander excuses himself.
The Lord Marshall watches the man as he flees.
Interesting.
The invasion goes nothing but smoothly. The criminals on the planet are unprepared and unorganized, making their defeat quick and imminent. There are a few problems, as there are with everything, but nothing for the First Amongst, and certainly not the Lord Marshall, to deal with personally. But, the first time Riddick steps foot on the terran soil, he knows something is up. Maybe nothing with the people or the troops, but something is wrong, off. It seems almost as if the planet itself is alive under his boots and humming, micro-vibrations that tickle his nerve endings and set his teeth on edge. But he has no proof other than his gut, and he wonders when that stopped being enough. But then he catches sight of possibly one of the strangest things he's seen since his "conversion" to Necroism.
There's a soldier, and that by itself is not strange in the slightest, he's surrounded by them all the time; it's the child that's the strange part. The boy is pale, thin, no more than bone really, and he looks like someone's sick idea of a living doll as he rides the soldier's shoulders. He sits comfortably on the soldier's armor, small hands occasionally petting uncovered hair. As they drew nearer, the solider drops the boy from his perch and leads him to the Lord Marshall. Vaako, seeing the soldier approach, moves to intercept them, but Riddick shakes his head, a minute movement of muscle, and instead the First Among alters his path to join them.
"My Lords," the soldier says, saluting them with a fist to his heart.
The boy looks up at the two killers through hauntingly mismatched eyes and shaggy black hair that falls just over his brows. The right eye, a mute color as black as a starless sky, seems to match the boy's age; it gleams with naivety and childish wonder at the invaders. But the left eye, as blue and empty as a turmoiling sea, speaks of acquired knowledge and wisdom beyond anyone else on the planet. Apart from the frank oddness of the situation, the military leaders are mindful of the lack of fear in the boy's eyes, the boy's scent.
"Lord Marshall, First Among," the boy greets with his own, almost sarcastic, bow.
The boy demands more observation than either of them had originally intended.
Crude knife scars, a testament to a harsh life, drag across the boy's neck, like someone had tried to cut him open from ear to ear. There are bruises on top of bruises lining the child's arms, hands and neck and, if Vaako has to guess, he thinks there are more bruises hiding beneath the rough tunic that draped over his malnourished frame. With his inspection of the boy over for the moment, the First Amongst Commanders turned his attention to the soldier that accompanied such a kreatin. He is broad, as most of the Legion Vast is, with buzzed black hair, another common train among soldiers, clear, brown eyes, straight nose, and wide mouth. The armored patch on his chest designates him as a Sargent.
"Do you have a report for us, Sargent - ," Vaako asks.
"Jarz, sir," the man says, as if he is just realizing who he stood in front of. "And no, sir. I have no report."
"None at all," Vaako asks quietly. "We've been planet-side for nearly an hour now; how can you have no report at all?"
"That's my fault, I'm afraid," a small voice says, drawing the attention back to the smallest form of the group. "He's a bit confounded, truth-to-tell. He'll be back to normal before you can ask why he's like that in the first place."
"You some kinda witch?" the Lord Marshall asks gruffly.
The boy chuckles, though it is a hollow sound.
"No," he says, "but we've been called that before."
"We?"
"My people," the boy explaines. "We're persecuted everywhere as some kind of witches. It would be funny, really, if so many people hadn't've died."
The atmosphere around the boy chills, not physically, but Riddick can practically feel the ice dusting over his skin. The boy has dropped off, like he's remembering exactly how his people were persecuted, and he begins to hum quietly. Riddick isn't fazed; he's been to too many slams with too many kinds of creatures and people to be concerned about some humming. But strangeness comes again when the same tune, distinctly quieter, floats to his other ear. He takes his eyes off the boy for the first time to look at Vaako. The man is standing like nothing is wrong, feet braced, balance steady, hands draped to his sides, but no less ready to take action; but in his eyes, it's like the man is gone, hazel orbs blank and distant. He's humming the same as the boy. But then Vaako blinks and snaps out of whatever trance he was in and Riddick is quick to turn back to the boy. The child is grinning, a wide cracking of his face that seems unnatural, and it's almost like he's gotten some kind of gift.
"Vaako," Riddick snaps without taking his eyes from the boy.
"I'm fine, Riddick," the Commander says quietly, voice broken in some kind of pain.
"This is wonderful, fantastic," the boy is murmuring. He keeps going on and on, but Riddick tunes his voice out, instead listening for anything wrong with his Commander.
Vaako's breathing is quick and shallow and Riddick risks a glance back to see him. He's braced against the hull of the ship they arrived on and his hand is grasping at his side, like he had been struck and is holding the wound.
"What did you do?" Riddick growls quietly, but no less forcefully.
"Never," the boy gasps, his mumbling has turned into full blow laughter. "Never would I have thought that I'd find a brother among the dead! And one so entombed to the ways them."
Riddick lunges forward and violently lifts the boy from the ground by the fabric of his tunic. The boy's laughter is settling down, but it's still not completely gone.
"What did you do?"
"Didn't do nothing'," the boy says. "Jus' woke 'im up is all."
Vaako loses consciousness sometime on the shuttle back to the Basillica and when he wakes up he knows he's in the Medical Bay. The berth he's lying on is uncomfortable, the fabric of the sheets scrapes across his skin and that's when he notices that he's been stripped of his armor. It's dark, quiet, so he reasons that it must be 'nighttime' part of the Necromonger cycle. But, his mind whispers, what cycle is it? It was nearing the end of a cycle when he, the Lord Marshall and the boy, Slade, his mind whispers again, had left the planet to rejoin the Fleet. He's thinking and trying to identify which Medical Bay he is in and then he is all too aware of two silvery orbs floating in the darkness near him. He doesn't jump, it would be undignified to do so, but he does feel his eyes widen, and with good cause; the Lord Marshall has always been a creature of the dark, but the First hadn't even been aware of the man this time. Riddick was happy to be invisible in the blackness.
"Been out for a while," Riddick says, low and thick, like he's close to sleep himself.
"How long?" Vaako asks, and his voice cracks and the dry air in his lungs sends him into a coughing fit.
Something cold and wet is pressed to his lips and he has to struggle not to choke on it. When the ice finally melts and the coughing is quieted, Riddick answers his question,
"Four cycles. Woke up a few times, panicked."
Vaako nods and another question comes to the tip of his tongue, What happened?
"It's the kid," Riddick says and Vaako snaps his eyes to meet the Lord Marshall's; he hadn't realized he had spoken aloud.
"He's some kind of telepath, says you're like him," Riddick continues. "He right?"
Vaako hesitates, then changes the subject,
"Where is the boy?"
"Put him up in a room. Figured we might need him if you didn't wake up."
Silence reigns in the room before it's broken like shattering a sheet of ice.
"The kid's right, innit he? About you being like him."
"Yes," Vaako whispers.
"You ever tell anybody?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"When, when I," Vaako can't seem to go on, caught up in the silence he's held so long over the years.
"Gonna have to tell me sometime," Riddick says. "Gonna figure out what makes you tick."
It's been two weeks since he woke up in the Medical Bay and Vaako still hasn't worked up the nerve to tell Riddick about his ancestry. He's jittery all the time, pacing, unable to keep still; Riddick had banned him from the Purification Chambers since his waking and he doesn't think he's dealing so well. He's sitting in the one of Riddick's rooms; it had been a formal viewing chamber for the last Lord Marshall, but, since, Riddick had stripped the place and replaced everything with simple, efficient furniture. There is a low table through the middle of the room, surrounded with sinfully comfortable chairs and a few more of the same tucked into the corners. One of the corners has been over taken with large, rough blankets and gnawed-on bones; products of the Hellhounds Riddick had retrieved from his past life. The Hounds are there now, six of them, but soon to be more as the alpha female is pregnant, threaded together like some kind of protected puzzle, the pregnant female tucked behind them all in the corner.
And among them all, sleeping as if he were at home in his mother's arms, is the boy, Slade. He had been cleaned up, given new clothes, and he has been following Vaako around like a pup since he had been allowed out of his room. The bruises on his pale skin had faded for the most part, his hair was a healthy shade of chestnut brown, only seeming black at first from the dirt and the grime. His clothes had been replaced, simple things that marked him as neither servant, soldier, or noble, and he had filled out, gaining weight and health as he was fed on a regular basis.
Vaako observes him from the chair he's claimed as his own, to the right of the head of the table, and wonders if life would continue on as it had; there had been no Challenges for promotion, no invasions, no trouble at all in the last two weeks, and, as naive as he is to wish it, he hopes it doesn't end. He's given up wearing his armor in Riddick's chambers, so when he sinks further into the chair there is no metal to grind against his bones, no pressure against his joints. He's comfortable, for once, and he doesn't believe he's felt this way ever. But then Riddick drops down next to him, into the seat at the head of the table, and he knows the question that is coming; the Lord Marshall has finally come to the end of his patience concerning his past.
"You gonna tell me?"
"I have to, do I not? You won't be settled until you know, anyways."
"No," he agrees.
"I didn't lie to you, when you asked me about my past. I have never been to that planet before and I don't remember anything before my conversion; I was too young to keep anything in my head. I woke up and I was numb and willing to obey orders. That's all that mattered."
"But you know something," Riddick says and it's not a question. "You do, cause you knew what he was goin' on about."
Vaako nods.
"There was a man taken at the same time as me. He remembered much of his previous life and told me that he knew me, before. He said I was something special and that, if I wanted to live, I had to keep it hidden. I didn't know what he was talking about then, and he died a few cycles later, but when I had been with the Fleet about a solar-cycle I realized what he was talking about. The Purification process, it numbs the soul, disrupts some kind of connection between a soul and it's body, that's why it took so long for me to realize what was going on."
Vaako halts and he looks over to Slade, nestled between the forepaws of the pregnant alpha as she lazily washed the side of his face with her tongue.
"I was about his age, I suppose. I didn't notice it at first, Necromongers being emotionally dead, but on my first invasion I, it just hit me. The screaming."
Riddick is watching his Commander, but he's lost in the memories that so apparently haunt him; his eyes are distant and blank and Riddick is almost ready to shake him from this trance. He's not sure if he's lost the Commander or for how long, but Riddick takes it as a time to think. He tries to puzzle out what exactly Vaako can do, what he's been hiding all these years, and surprisingly comes up with nothing.
"I can't read minds," Vaako says quietly. "We're not telepaths, like the boy alludes to. It's not, we can't help it. It's why I've never had problems with it before, a person has to have a connection with their soul in order for one of us to, to read it. It's like a kind of second sight. We see auras, emotions, sometimes extremely strong or important memories. But it depends on the soul."
"The only name for our people that has come close to true is Nevi(1)," a voice says.
Vaako turns to see Slade climbing into a seat across from him, tunic rumpled and hair sticking up on one side of his head from the tender care given by the Hound, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he settles. Mismatched eyes wash over the two and the First wonders if his own presence was as powerful, when he was fully connected to his soul, anyway.
"It's a corruption of the Terran word 'omnispective', which means 'all-seeing'. It's more accurate than witch, or seer, or prophet."
"Where are our people from?" Vaako asks.
"No clue," Slade says. "As far as my understanding goes, though, there hasn't been a gathering of more than three of our kind for more than sixteen centuries. The last Gathering of the Great Races, on the Elemental's home planet, that held more than three was interrupted and attacked by religious fanatics and the Nevi were never heard from again. Most religions refer to us as heretics, as they believe that we are put throughout the universe to draw them from their paths of righteousness. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that they were all slaughtered, though I wouldn't take it as fact."
Vaako's brows raise at the information that the boy provided and, when the look is caught, Slade merely says,
"I like to read. I figured our ethnic ancestry was a worthy topic to read on."
"How long you been on that planet?" Riddick asks.
"Only about six months. I'm from a planet in the Equinox Galaxy. I hitched a ride on a cargo transport to meet you out here."
"Why?" Vaako asks, wondering why a lad so clearly educated would leave to try and survive on a backwater planet just to be taken by the Legion Vast.
"I had a dream," Slade says quietly. "The last time I had a dream like that and I ignored it a building on our block in the city burned. A mother and her six children were lost. I thought it might be a good idea to listen this time."
Vaako nods, "Prophetic dreams happen."
"You ever have one?" Riddick asks his First.
"Once. Just before we invaded Helion Prime."
"Oh, yeah? What about?"
"You. And your friend, Kyra."
Riddick is silent and Vaako understands why; no one had dared to bring up the dead female to the Lord Marshall.
"I only understood half of it and I didn't take the time to figure the rest out," the First says quietly, so quietly it's almost silent. "She might have survived, had I not ignored it."
There is a long, drawn out silence between them, one where Vaako wonders what kind of judgment he's wrought upon himself, but, after the span of eternity, Riddick merely falls further back into the cushions of his seat and a deep release of air escaped from his nose. Slade is very wise in keeping still those long moments; the two killers have shown no qualm with his presence, he might even say that they enjoy it, but he's too new, too unfamiliar to risk being torn to shreds just for the mistake of 'wrong time, wrong place'.
"You said somethin' about screaming. On your first invasion," Riddick says.
His eyes are closed and he hadn't moved a muscle, save for speaking, and Slade almost wants to take that as trust between them, but he's not stupid. Riddick could rip them both to shreds before they took their next breaths.
Vaako nods in agreement with the Lord Marshall.
"I was unprepared. I was used to the occasional whisper of anger or lust or ambition from the other soldiers, but that planet. Its people had never numbed their souls, never broken the connection that we read. Those connections screamed at me, screamed about injustice and revenge and mourning. I don't remember even landing planet-side. The other soldiers in my unit claimed I had some kind of, of fit before I just collapsed. I spent a few weeks in the Medical Bay; the healers explained it away as some kind of backlash to my infrequent Purifications, but I knew what it was."
"How did you keep it from happening?" Slade asks.
"Constant Purifications. That hit during my first invasion was like nourishment to an underfed soldier; the feelings inside my head grew and matured and strengthened until I could even feel the other Necromonger's souls, as detached as they are. Even now, it feels as if they are creeping around in my head."
"So these last few weeks, you've been going insane," Riddick says, as if the man himself is in Vaako's head.
"The first week, maybe," the First agrees. "but now I'm too tired to feel much of anything."
They're in Riddick's personal chambers, Slade tucked away with the HellHounds again, and Vaako feels the warmth he's been denied all day. He's shed his clothing, bathed and clean and smelling of sterile soap, and Riddick is wrapped around him, legs tangled with his and a possessive arm curled tightly around his sharp hips. His back is pressing into Riddick's chest and he can feel the Goddess's handprint beating a kind of rhythm from beneath Riddick's very skin. The Lord Marshall's breath is hot as it brushes over the shell of his ear. For all that he's breathing deeply, seemingly asleep, the man hasn't stopped brushing the pads of his fingers over Vaako's belly, soft and ghosting and just enough to cause involuntary shivers to race across his nerves.
It isn't long before Riddick is done with being still, being quiet, and he whispers into his First's ear,
"Knew you were somethin' special. Knew you weren't just some soldier that won the shiny helmet. Had to know I was keepin' you for a reason."
"Just one reason?" Vaako asks quietly, but then Riddick's fingers are drifting lower and before Vaako can voice any protest, no that he would have, the other man's tongue is meeting with the twisted scars on his neck and he's arching so far off the bed Riddick wonders how his spine doesn't snap and then his brain function ceases to exist all together.
This was inspired by the quote at the top and, however it was going to go, I headed in a different direction. So the quote is not directly related anymore, but I stil think it is a beautiful thing to be shared.
(1) Nevi – Neh-VEE