Disclaimer: I don't own TCoR, and I'm making no money from this fanfic.

Fic/Chapter Warnings: Disregards TCoR, DF, and... basically all canon except most of PB, so rather AU. Language. Some non-graphic violence in this chapter. If any of these things bother you, don't read.

Author's Notes: I've never written for this fandom before, but I adore Riddick, and Jack, and rather detest TCoR, despite the presence of Vaako, whom I also adore. So I decided to do the selective canon thing and write a little reality of my own. No real, y'know, noticeable plot yet, or anything, but it's just for fun anyway, so it doesn't matter. (I repeat: this fic is written strictly for fun. It is not meant to be taken seriously. The characters are not, necessarily, meant to remain IC, if I happen decide that switching them OOC would serve my amusement better. I am writing it for fun.)

Do please review and tell me what you think!

o.o.o.o

Prologue

She'd been fifteen when he, a twenty-six year old convict desperate to outrun the mercs on his ass, had left her in New Mecca with that holy man. She'd managed to keep him there for a year, a whole year, and despite his promise to stay, that had been more time than she'd expected to get. She'd been desolate after that first departure, not even his promise to come back soon making her feel very much better.

But he had come back: once every year, he'd miss her so much that he'd dare the mercs finding his weakness, just so that he could see her. He never stayed long, only a few hours really, but there wasn't a year she didn't see him, even after she moved out of the holy man's house. He snuck in through her window under the cover of darkness and held her, his promises that someday he'd be free of all this and they could be together again, mingling with their heavy breath in the dark room.

Then one year he didn't come.

The next he came, but didn't wake her.

Then he didn't come.

And he didn't come.

... And he didn't come.

She started keeping careful track of every time his name was mentioned in the interstellar news, and in rumor, and everywhere. Fear crept up on her as it never had before; she was convinced that something awful was going to happen.

Which, of course, it eventually did.

°

Richard B. Riddick opened his eyes and only just managed to turn his head enough that he could blearily survey his surroundings. He was in a locked cell, which wasn't a particularly new experience for him, and he was exhausted, which wasn't anything new either. But he was also injured to the point of being barely able to move, which would have been impossibly anyway as he was chained to the stone floor, and that was.

He groaned, realizing belatedly that he didn't have his goggles and his eyes were exposed to the full force of the light in the room, which was, actually-- none. Hm. That probably wouldn't last very long, given all of the high-intensity lamps he saw positioned around the room.

He let his head fall back to where it had been before, closing his eyes. Listening to the blood pound through the veins in his temples, he tried to remember where he was and how he'd gotten here. Minutes passed, what could have been hours, and he could come up with nothing. The last thing he could remember was preparing to land on Degadron 6 and feeling as if there were something about to go totally, catastrophically wrong.

Which, of course, it obviously had.

°

"Uh-oh," she heard, and glanced over at the young man who'd been diligently scrolling the news. His eyes met hers, and they were filled with apprehension. His brow was furrowed.

Her heart stopped for a moment. "What is it?" she demanded urgently, crossing the room as she spoke.

"It's Riddick," he answered, unnecessarily, because he'd been searching for any mention of the escaped convict, and wouldn't have stopped unless he'd found one. "He's been captured."

"Again," she snorted contemptuously. Whether the unpleasant emotion was directed at Riddick or the people who'd captured him, was not entirely clear, unless you knew her.

"They're sending him to the quadruple max slam, this time," said the young man, because it was important.

Her forehead creased as she frowned. "That's not going to be good."

There was a pause before the young man added, almost reluctantly, "And he's hurt."

She froze.

He sighed, apprehensively. "He's hurt bad, they say," he explained, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

"Fuck," she swore, her hands clenching into fists. She looked as if she wanted to hit something.

He pushed the holo vid projector toward her.

"There's a picture," he whispered. She leaned closer, focusing on the small, suspiciously grainy image, and blanched.

"FUCK."

The young man eyed her warily. "What're we gonna do?"

"What the hell do you think we're gonna do?" she snarled, the expression on her face making it clear that she was already thinking furiously quickly. "Tell the others to pack, then take Caro and Shaz down to the spaceport."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, already logging off the news feed and shutting down the holo vid, slipping it deftly into its case.

She was pacing, hunched over, lips pursed. A moment later she declared, "It's a two week flight to Quantos Two. Prep the ship; I want us ready to get off this rock yesterday. Understand?"

"Perfectly." The man was on his feet, sprinting out of the room practically before the word left his mouth. "Shaz! Caro!"

She straightened. Her eyes, directed at the wall on the far side of the room, were unfocused. "As for me... I'm going to go say goodbye to Imam."

°

He heard the bars of his cell rattling, the door opening, before he was fully awake. It was probably the guards again, come once more to beat him into continued submission, so he kept his eyes closed and tried to go back to sleep.

The one pleasant thing he could say about the guards at Quantos Detention Facility (such a godawful, sanitary name for a slam) was that they were so bloody inefficient when it came to roughing up their prisoners that he could sleep through it. The beatings were almost like receiving a massage with large metal poles, actually. Not bad, if you went for that sort of thing.

Suddenly, the manacles holding his limbs to the floor unlocked and snapped open, freeing him.

And then he heard the voice.

"Get up, Riddick."

He recognized it immediately, but it took him a moment to react.

His eyes flew open, exhaustion be damned, and he stared at the figure -- figures -- in the doorway of his cell. There were two of them, both dressed entirely in detail-concealing black jumpsuits, both wearing masks and helmets. The female one, the one that had to be her, was standing just to the left of the cell door, holding a massive gun pointed down the hallway. The other was either male or the most truly androgynous person he'd ever run into.

Riddick closed his eyes for a moment, but the figures hadn't gone away when he opened them again.

Clearly, he was dreaming.

"The fuck'd they do to him?" demanded the male figure, entering the cell and surveying him. A light flashed in his eyes, and he growled, causing the unknown man to immediately switch his beam to the ceiling. "Ah, sorry."

Riddick grunted. It was all he could manage.

"I said, get up, Riddick," she snarled again, still not facing him. The gun in her hands was tracking back and forth slowly, presumably to keep someone away from the cell, probably the guards.

He grunted again.

A low chuckle reached Riddick's ears, and the stranger grabbed his shoulders, pulling until he reached a sitting position. "Up you get, pops," said the stranger, throwing one of Riddick's arms across his shoulders and heaving the older man up to stand, leaning heavily against the stranger. He felt something being put on his head, and was immensely relieved when tinted plexiglas was put over his eyes and he realized that it was only his goggles.

Then he was being dragged out of the cell.

Riddick had been surprised, on reaching something resembling his feet, at how large the younger man was. He was even more surprised as it slowly became apparent that most of that size was muscle. Christ, he thought, while they hurried down the hall to the stairs, this guy's almost as big as me.

She was following, Riddick could hear her close behind them, could smell her concern (obviously for him) and excitement. There was no fear, not from either of the people rushing him through the prison to the main level. He wanted to scream at her that she shouldn't be here. It was astonishing; the last thing he would have expected was for her to rescue him, and now that she had, he could only be angry that she'd put herself in danger.

Riddick's cell had been on the bottom floor of the slam, four stories underground, and just the thought of going up that many flights of stairs to get to ground level made all his leg muscles scream. After the first dozen steps, he was very glad for the young man holding him up -- even if the guy couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"Shit, you weigh a ton, pops," the stranger was mumbling behind his helmet, his voice so low that Riddick wouldn't have caught it at all except for his exceptional, animalistic hearing.

Deliberately, Riddick started to drag his feet.

He appreciated being rescued but, hey, if they weren't going to be gracious about it, neither was he.

"Damn it, Riddick, move," she cried, somehow having passed them on the narrow staircase without him noticing. The next thing he knew they were in another hallway, and she was barreling them toward and through the main entrance.

There was a ship waiting for them on the launch pad right outside the doors. It was a tiny thing, probably couldn't do much more than leave the atmosphere -- how the hell were they hoping to get anywhere in that thing? The hatch was already open and they dragged him in; he heard the hatch closing barely a moment after they entered, as the female with the gun spun around and punched in a code to seal it.

"Go!" someone yelled. The sound was altogether too close to Riddick's ear, sounding almost as loud as the engines that were roaring suddenly. A moment later, Riddick felt the unmistakable vertigo of a hasty takeoff, and focused quickly on the interior of the skiff to avoid thinking about the way his insides were twisting around each other.

Two other black-clad people were in the skiff with them, occupying the pilot and copilot chairs -- the only seats in the skiff, really -- but Riddick judged them to not really be that important, mostly because of the amount of pain this rather rocky flight was causing in his injured body. So he stared past them, out the cockpit window, as they rocket toward the stars.

Before he knew it they were through the atmosphere and heading straight for what was either an asteroid or-- no, it was a ship, in orbit around that hellish little planet for some reason, and they were definitely headed straight for it. They'd obviously known it was there...

He stared at it a bit more.

It was a big ship, especially by Riddick's standards, and he was unreasonably startled to realize that it was their ship. Surely a craft that big couldn't be flown by only four people, could it? Ships of that class required at least a crew of five, he was sure.

The rear airlock door opened as they approached it. The skiff's landing inside was almost smooth, but the almost was rough enough for Riddick to let out a pained, irritated moan. Her hand went to the back of his neck, stroking soothingly, and the sound died in his throat, as the airlock doors closed and sealed. There was a whirring noise from outside; the hold was filling with breathable air.

The man steered Riddick out of the skiff practically as soon as the all-clear light came on and the hatch door opened. The huge hold they entered was dark, which suited Riddick just find, but noisy, which didn't.

"Caro! Shaz!" screamed the man supporting him. "Get us out of here!"

It seemed a hundred voices relayed this message, before it died out and the big ship's big engines kicked them faster toward whatever destination was so important to these people; or maybe they just really wanted to get away from Quantos Two. Riddick certainly didn't blame them if that was the case.

God, he was tired... He slumped further down the stranger's side, the last of his energy leaving him in a rush, as he realized what this all really meant.

He was free, again.

Suddenly she was there, under his other arm, pulling him back to his feet, speaking angrily. "Come on, Riddick, stand up, walk, just a bit further. Come on. Don't you fucking dare give out yet. Come on."

"Move that ass, pops," added the man who was doing most of Riddick's upwardly-mobile work for him. There was a hint of morbid amusement in his voice.

Riddick wanted to remain conscious, just for the pleasure of planting a fist in the face of that irritating voice, but he couldn't do it. He'd spent three weeks in a forced state of mental and physical exhaustion, and he just couldn't do it anymore. His eyes closed and he slipped into an odd sort of waking dream. He was present as she and the stranger half-dragged, half-carried him through the airlock into a narrow hall lined with doors, and yet he wasn't. He could still feel and hear everything going on around him, and yet he couldn't.

Riddick had gone limp.

"I swear to god, Zeke, that med-bay better be prepped, or you'll be confined to your bunk for the rest of your natural life," she muttered, anxiously. Riddick felt her chest heave with exertion as she helped manhandle a person twice her size along a space meant for only one person to travel at a time.

"Don't worry," said the man supporting Riddick's right side, even though worrying was obviously what he was busy doing, judging by the scent of concern wafting off of him. Strange. Why would a stranger be concerned about him? Riddick was fairly certain that had never happened before. Not since T2... and Jack...

They squeezed through a door, and whatever room they were in flooded with lights.

"Oh, thank the fuck," she said, obviously relieved, and Riddick was pulled onto a med table.

He grunted in pain.

"Shh," she soothed, her hand caressing his head, despite the blood and filth mingling with the stubble growing there. Her voice was closer now, her breath rushing past his ear, and full of love. "We'll get you fixed up, Big Evil. You're safe now. Jack's here."

And, finally, Richard B. Riddick drifted away.