A/N: 315 Kelvin 110 Fahrenheit 43 Celsius

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Riddick stepped out into the slanted sunlight, painfully straightening his back after having to stoop under low outcropping of rock. Contrary to his demeanor and public rumor, Riddick wasn't a monstrously huge guy, but the space was still too small. But while the word 'cave' was far too generous, it was probably the best they would get that night. Riddick knew that he was far too tired to guard all through the coming night, and his mind managed to get about halfway through considering the likelihood of predators in their sleep, when his eyes found the girl.

She was sitting with her back to him, just barely over the ridge of the next dune. He had told her not to wander… But, watching the girl's silhouette as he approached behind her, he restrained himself from correcting her again.

Riddick stopped just a step behind her left shoulder, and Jack sort of quarter-turned her head to acknowledge him. She was watching the day end. After a long moment, Riddick moved to sit beside her on the sand, big boots set in front of him and arms resting on his knees. He was sure there must be color in the sky, but all Riddick could see through his filtered eyes were the blue and purple that he always saw, although the madness of light was tempered by his goggles. In accustomed silence, Riddick watched with her.

The approach of night is a slow affair, and after a time Riddick's attention drifted to the girl. His head hadn't moved and his goggles were on, but she noticed anyway.

"What is it?" She asked quietly, without looking away. Whether she was lost to memories of their last desert sunset or just exhausted, Riddick didn't know. But Jack was unusually mild.

Riddick considered answering, then considered lying. But something in him, a different part of him to each proposition, wouldn't have it. So he didn't answer. Jack sighed to herself, but she couldn't say she was surprised by his silence.

"It's like it's only pretty at the beginning and end…" Jack mused out of the blue, filling the silence herself. Riddick's eyes cut to her again, and by an infinitesimal move of his head acknowledged that she was speaking. But by no means did Riddick betray that he was all ears. Something was being said here, something that felt too deep to be said directly. Jack gestured her chin at the skyline, and Riddick turned his attention back to it as well. "But the day is never called that."

There was a long silence. Jack seemed to be considering and weighing her words on the spot, but when she spoke again her words were slow but deliberate.

"The beginning is celebrated, and the end is a ceremony, but what about everything else? What's there to celebrate if everything after it is just… has to be endured?" Riddick turned his head to her; the kid seemed to have given up on the sunset and had her eyes focused on the barren sand in front of her. The kid raised her head to meet his eyes, or at least try to. With the goggles between them, as always the eyes searched his face, groping for a focal point somewhere besides the impersonal plastic. Riddick could see that her face now almost casually sported a rising bruise on the corner of her mouth, and a hint of his humor must have reached his face. Jack interpreted it as offered comfort and leaned against him in a tired, one-armed hug. Riddick returned the gesture, unsure really of what else to do with it. By this time he supposed he should have gotten used to it, but Riddick had never really warmed to the idea of non-violent physical contact. By now he was too used to his cold ways, it would likely forever feel to him both useless and dangerous.

"I'm sorry…" She muttered half into his chest. Riddick didn't know how to answer, or even exactly what the girl was referring to. The sun sank slowly, and the temperature followed. Riddick wasn't sure when it was that the kid fell asleep against him, sitting up on the open sand.

Riddick carried her in his arms, back to their rough but warm camp for the night.

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The trek to where they ended that day was far harder than it had to be. Riddick had done research on the planet, and had passed on some of the information to the girl, but he made one miscalculation in planning their trip out to the desert. They hit city limits late morning. They felt it.

The line where climate control ended was sharp, within ten steps man and child knew that they were outside of civilization. Suddenly the heat fell down on them like a heavy wool blanket. And it built. The sun rose ever so slowly, screamingly white in the sky, glaring down at them and back up at itself, reflected in the sand. Under clothing, the body felt as if it were being viciously steamed, but every uncovered inch was just as mercilessly fried directly by the sun. By the time they passed 315 Kelvin what breeze the pair caught as they trudged the deep, shifting sand between dunes, rather than offering even its usual paltry relief, only kicked up more acid sand and pushed the dry, hot air at them. Jack, without the benefit of goggles, felt her eyes were baking inside her skull.

Jack knew she shouldn't be tired this early. It couldn't have even been an hour yet. She knew she was spoiled, she was so used to traveling light that the muscles of her back were already seizing up in protest to the weight she had to carry. The packs they carried were roughly fashioned from the two pelts they had stolen, and it dug uncomfortably into the flesh of her shoulders and back. But Jack didn't complain, and she held on to that. She didn't complain.

Riddick still hadn't broken the seal on their first bottle of water, so Jack didn't drink either. She didn't know how he had the self-control, but she didn't want to risk his temper or her energy level to ask. Better to concentrate her efforts on keeping up and study him silently. To be sure, that was sometimes how she got the most out of him.

Jack stumbled on nothing, and suddenly realized that as her mind drifted, she had fallen behind. She sped a couple of steps to get back to her accustomed place. She should not be this tired, her mind kept insisting. She tried not to think about it. Jack focused her eyes on the back of Riddick's head, hooded against the glare of the sun, and the distant mountain range beyond. Her eyes didn't want to do that. They kept unfocusing as her thoughts drifted back inside herself, and again her feet stumbled.

Jack licked her lips. She didn't complain. She refused to complain. Her feet failed a third time, and before making the effort to make up the lost space, Jack reached up and firmly bit the meat of her hand between the thumb and forefinger. For a minute that worked, but then it was just something else that hurt. Riddick was going to get mad at her if she didn't keep up…

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…Jack woke slowly, vaguely aware that she had a pretty stupid smile on her face. She still hurt, but at least it was a new day and— The sun glared into her uncovered eyes. Jack didn't understand, she— She could feel the hot sand under her back, and the side of her face hurt something fierce. Her head was propped on Riddick's lap. When she first opened her eyes his body had been twisted away, digging in his dropped pack, and as he turned back to find her awake again, it finally sunk in what had happened. She had passed out. Like any stupid, weak kid, she had fainted.

Jack turned her head away before she had to look Riddick in the face. Of course, doing that brought into view her pack in the sand and the deep, short drag marks between her and it. She must have pitched forward and hit her face on Riddick's boot or something, there was nothing else hard around. Tears threatened, and Jack squeezed her eyes shut against them; being so tired and disoriented, it was a harder battle than most.

Her eyes were closed, so Jack startled when Riddick pressed a wet scrap of cloth against her mouth. Her eyes opened to find Riddick looming between her and the sun, and as far as she could tell, he didn't look like he was angry. Of course that didn't mean much, he didn't often look like he ever felt anything at all. Jack lifted her hands at the ends of heavy, clumsy arms to hold the rag herself and suck at the moisture. The action felt so weak, but she didn't think she was capable of much more.

"What happened?" With his natural tonal quality, the slightest chiding note made Riddick sound murderous. Breaking the silence finally did it: a single pair of tears ran down Jack's face. With Riddick the question was almost always rhetorical. It was one of his ways of gaining control of a situation. But Jack moved the rag from her face long enough to answer.

"I'm sorry…" She managed through her dry and emotion-choked throat. Riddick took the opportunity to extract the fabric from her hand and carefully wet it again. He didn't want to shock her body with too much water too fast. This wasn't the first time the kid had worked herself to collapse trying to impress him. She probably saw that he hadn't stopped for water yet and wanted to match him.

"I'd have stopped, Jack." After wetting it, on impulse Riddick tore the rag in half again. He gave her back one scrap of fabric, and she took it placidly. That shirt Jack stole sure had a short lifespan, between getting slashed and now cut up for scraps. Almost absently Riddick wiped the child's dirty, burned face with the other half of rag.

Jack nodded, more blind comprehension than agreement, but the tears had already stopped. That was a good sign. He did not want to deal with the kid's crying out here in this infernal heat. There was no use stopping here long-term; they had packed bare minimum and had no means for shelter, and without that they would only fry out on this sand. The only option was to keep going and find shelter in the mountains. But now they would have to go even slower than Riddick now understood they should have been going in the first place. The kid would be on the edge of consciousness until they could get some real rest.

God damn kid.

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Okay this was shorter and way later than it was intended to be, but I swear there is a good reason I've taken so long. Being the genius I am, all of my work is kept solely on a flash drive that lives in my purse. Now it seems to have disappeared. So I am in the process of trying to dig up the rough drafts and rewrite those thousand fragments that I had managed to collect. But maybe it's a blessing in disguise, really: the other reason this story is getting so slow is that my mind has a thousand different directions this story could go, and I seem to be having trouble picking just one. Rewriting is giving me some better direction.

Anyway, as always please review! Good, bad, or indifferent, I'd love to hear it.

-J