Author: Moiranna
Title: The Only One
Theme: Reunite me
Rating: PG-13
Realm: the Chronicles of Riddick
Pairing: Riddick/Kyra (sortakindanotreally)
Characters: Riddick, Kyra, Aereon
Genre: tragedy, general
Warnings: Some language
Word-count: 647
Summary: She was the one he hadn't been able to forget about. The one who kept on creeping under his skin against his better judgement.
Notes: Written for Tumblr-user hatenotbeingthebadguy under the challenge "Reunite me"

Riddick had never had someone to call his own. People came and went, and precious few lingered in his mind. After the Hunter-Gratzner incident he had – against his better judgement dropped off the holy man and the kid in safety, not ghosting them in space and letting their corpses out of airlock while he disappeared into nothingness as he'd originally planned. Not that he really cared whether or not they lived or died, it was just inconvenient to have people knowing about that he still lived. He hated the Mercs chasing him because it always meant that he'd have men like Johns on his back, desperate for some quick cash and an easy fix. In reality he knew that even if he had ghosted Imam and Jack there'd still be Mercs after his ass, because some people – smart people – didn't believe shit until they saw it with their own two eyes.

But the kid had grown on him, even though he knew that it only would bring bad shit, because she was a liability. Too soft. The look on her face after shooting that Chillingsworth bitch had settled the deal. The trip to New Mecca had felt like it'd been ages long, and while Imam had tried to be there for her the man had slept during the nights and hadn't heard her nightmares. Riddick hadn't said anything; he knew better, not even that one time she'd curled up against him when she'd thought he was asleep.

His one instruction to Imam the night they'd landed on Helion Prime, Jack passed out from exhaustion in the house that later on would house Imam's family, had been to keep her the fuck away from trouble. He hadn't looked back at where he knew she was, had ignored the look on Imam's face and just turned his heel and left.

Returning to New Mecca five and a half years later pissed him off. Not because of the Mercs, because as said they'd always be looking for him, but because Imam had been stupid enough to let her go. Riddick who had gone against every logical thing in his brain to try to give them some safety – which he himself knew that he'd never have – and this was how Jack paid him back. By trying to dive back into the fray and get herself killed.

Crematoria told him everything that he should have expected would have happened if he'd kept her by his side. Save from the cynicism and some of the naivety. He could have told her that if she'd stuck around him by the time she'd have died much sooner; that this was what happened when you courted danger. But he didn't, just lectured about that she was stupid for trying to find a ghost and hauling her ass away, intent on setting her back on some backwater planet far away from his life.

But then she died. The only one he'd gone the extra mile to keep safe, since Imam already had bit the bullet back on Helion Prime. There should have been plenty of Necros dead afterwards, but Aereon, that crafty old bat, had approached him and told him that there was a way to bring back the recently departed. Once more, against all better judgement, he'd gone there. To this "Threshold" that the Necros kept on yapping about. Not to become the Lord Marshal in truth. But because he owed her that much. And maybe, somewhere deep inside though so deeply subverted that the sheer thought was practically impossible to make out, there was the notion that there was someone he'd like to keep around, who had his back.

"Are you with me?"

"Always."

AN: It is on purpose that he's contradicting himself. Can't let the big man admit that he has feelings. Also, I know I'm fucking up canon-wise a bit, but humour me.