Chapter 18 - Judas Kiss
Jack tried to sleep that night, but it just wouldn't come. She ached, wanting to be with Riddick. She was cold without him. But above all else, she hurt. She hurt so much she couldn't even cry. Even now, even after the afternoon they'd spent together, he was going to leave her here like yesterday's trash. How could he do that? At least when he'd left her before he'd had the guts to look her in the eye and give her the reasons why. She sighed heavily, throwing a forearm over her eyes. *Didn't he try to do that?* she asked herself, *and you weren't listening.* How could she have been so stupid, had she really thought that sex with her would be so wonderful that he'd decide he couldn't live without her? She laughed at herself, the sound ringing hollowly in the darkness. That had been exactly what she had thought. Punching her pillow, she tried once again to get comfortable, but sleep continued to elude her.
When the alarm went off the next morning, Jack was already awake, or rather she was still awake. All night she'd been thinking about Riddick and so many other things. The fact still remained that even if he had lied to her, even if he didn't feel the same, she loved him. She couldn't just turn those feelings off like a faucet. Thirteen years was a long time to love someone, it didn't go away over night. She had decided something, though. He was not leaving this station without her unless he could give her a better reason than 'it's for your own good.'
Dressing hurriedly, she made a quick call to her supervisor explaining that she wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be coming in. In the six months she'd been there she'd never once called in or been late, so he didn't give her much hassle. Throwing her jacket on and hitching her backpack over her shoulder, she hurried to the dock, hoping against hope that Riddick hadn't left yet.
Riddick was just finishing the final checks on the ship when he heard the warning bell telling him that someone was entering the airlock. Sitting in the pilot's seat, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cushioned headrest. *Fuck! She certainly is a persistent little shit.* He was still like that when Jack sat down in the co-pilot's seat.
"You feeling ok, Riddick?" Jack asked as she settled herself in. *Don't have a case of guilt over lying, do you?* A part of her hoped he did, though she seriously doubted it. He'd see guilt as a waste of time.
Opening his eyes, he slowly craned his head to look at her, a scowl that might have made someone else cower on his face. "And just where do you think you're going?"
She met his stare with one of her own. *I'm not that easy to back down, you should know that by now.* "I'm going with you."
This was the reason he hadn't wanted to get involved in the first place, he knew it would come down to this and he knew that this had only one possible outcome. He would be leaving the station alone, and she was going to hate him for it. "No, you aren't."
Still meeting his gaze, she cocked her head to the side. "If you can give me a good reason I should stay on the station, something beyond 'it's for your own good' then I'll leave and you'll never have to worry about me bothering you again." She held her breath, feeling some of her resolve falter. What if he just told her he didn't want her?
Riddick had been up all night getting things ready to leave, and avoiding his bed if the truth be known, he was tired. Swiveling the chair to face her, he looked into her eyes and saw all the pain and hope and longing and felt his walls starting to waver again. Gripping her by the shoulders he shook her a bit, hoping to shake some sense into her. "You can't come, I'm not going to let you fuck your life up like that. It's got nothing to do with me, it's got everything to do with you. Here you have a chance, if you stay on this ship you won't. I'm not going to let you throw your life away." He wasn't angry, and he couldn't find it within himself to dredge up any anger. Only a bone deep tiredness spread through him.
Jack's voice was soft when she spoke. "That's not a good enough reason."
"It's the best one I've got," he said simply.
She hated herself for her weakness, hadn't she promised herself she wouldn't beg him again? But she found herself doing just that. This was too important for pride to get in the way. "Please, Riddick. Don't leave me again. I'm not strong enough to live through it twice."
Riddick sighed heavily, shaking his head. *You're the strongest person I know, Jack, and the most stubborn. Time for a change of tactic.* "C'mon." Standing up abruptly, he pulled her up out of the co-pilot's seat pushed her ahead of him down the corridor and out of the ship, stopping just long enough to pick up something and tuck it into the waistband of his jeans in the small of his back under his jacket. He was glad for the darkness so Jack couldn't see the pulse pistol.
"Where are we going?" she asked, holding back a bit as they walked down the gangplank that led to the dock floor. She couldn't quite keep the tremor out of her voice.
"Your apartment." He took her keycard from her and scanned them through the airlock. "If you're going with me, you're going to need to pack." He had no intentions of letting her go. His plan was to get her down to her apartment and knock her out long enough to get the Persephone off the station and on it's way to wherever he was going to go from here. He already knew that TO4 was out because she would just follow him there. She had certainly turned his life upside down. He wished there had been some way to keep Jack from being hurt, but he'd known from the beginning there wasn't.
Jack could hardly believe what she was hearing. He was going to let her go with him. He was really going to let her go with him. For the first time since yesterday afternoon, she felt truly happy. She felt something like elation soar through her as she hurried to keep up with Riddick's long strides.
Neither of them said anything as they made their way to her apartment. Riddick was just being Riddick, and Jack didn't want to press her good luck. She was fairly skipping as they got to her door and she let them inside. "I'll just be a minute," she said, dropping her backpack on the chair beside the door as she always did before running into her bedroom.
Grabbing her arm as she started toward the door, Riddick stopped her. He looked down at her for a moment, his thumb grazing over her bottom lip before kissing her one last time. "I'll be waiting." *This must be how Judas felt,* he thought, as he watched her walk away.
He stood in the living room of her apartment as she threw clothes and whatever into a couple of duffel bags. This was so Jack. She was willing to condense her whole life into two bags and leave everything she knew just to be with him. Riddick truly hoped that some day she would find someone who would be worthy of that kind of love and loyalty, but at the same time he felt a twinge of jealousy that he pushed angrily away. Pulling the pulse pistol out of the waistband of his pants, he set it on the lowest setting. The pulse would only disrupt her bio-electrical field for a millisecond, the result would be loss of consciousness now and a raging headache later. He was willing to put her through that little bit of pain now to save her years of pain later. Leveling the pistol at the doorway, he waited for her to come into the room.
Jack packed as quickly as she could, stuffing her favorite clothes into the bag along with the small amount of jewelry she had and a few mementos. Her hand held computer was in her backpack along with her audio player. She would pick some of her favorite discs and books to take with her too, everything else she would have to leave behind. She didn't regret that, it was just stuff, it didn't really matter, the only thing she regretted was not being able to say good-bye to Imam, but she'd find a way sooner or later. He had been a father to her longer than her own father, and he'd been ten thousand times better at the job. He deserved better, but once she stepped onto Riddick's ship she would be cut off from him, at least for a while. "I'm sorry, Imam," she said aloud to no one. Throwing the strap of the duffel over her shoulder, she went back into the living room.
When Jack saw Riddick aiming the gun at her chest, she couldn't figure out what he was doing for a minute. The picture was there, but what it meant was not registering. She searched his face, hurt and disbelief in her eyes. Would he really kill her to keep her from going with him? Did she mean that little to him? "Riddick?"
Before he had a chance to say or do anything, Jack's apartment door exploded inward, the force of it knocking them both to the floor and shattering the fish tank, spraying them with water, fish, and glass. Riddick lost hold of the gun as he rolled to defensive stance. Jack watched in horrified fascination as an armed man came through the door, followed by a very cocky looking Carson, who went straight for Jack.
The armed mercenary drew a gun and shot Riddick point blank in the chest. Jack heard someone screaming as she watched Riddick fall backward over the coffee table and she realized it was her voice. It took a minute for her to register that Riddick wasn't actually dead, as she saw him shaking off the effects of the concussive blast that was meant to stun him. Carson came to her, pulling her up off the floor and holding her arms to keep her back from the fight. She heard them talking, Carson, the armed man, Riddick, but nothing they said made any sense to her. She couldn't think or speak, she could only watch mutely as Riddick lunged at the man.
The computer in the corner took a blast from the stun rifle, sending it into a thousand smoking pieces that rained down on the two men as they fought. The coffee table cracked and splintered under the weight of them as they fell on it together, locked in a dance of violence, each trying to best the other. Riddick managed to pull his knife from his boot sheath, slicing the merc across the arm, but he was apparently wearing body armor and the thin plexi-steel blade shattered as it came down at a bad angle on the nearly impenetrable plated vest.
"Let GO of me, Carson!" Jack struggled against Carson's hands as she watched the merc pull something out of his pocket and jam it into Riddick's shoulder, so close to his artery that Jack was sure as he slumped forward that the man had killed him. "You son of a bitch!" she shrieked, finally pulling away from Carson, she launched herself at the merc, hands curled into claws as she went for the man's throat. But Carson grabbed her from behind. He had her in weight by at least fifty pounds and in height by a couple of inches. Distraught and unfocused as she was, she was no match for him as he dragged her back down to the floor.
"Shut up!" he hissed in her ear, warning her. "Unless you want to be charged with being an accessory."
Jack fought against Carson, but it was no use. Her energy was spent, Riddick was dead, and it was all her fault. It puzzled her when the merc started putting chains on Riddick until she saw the hypodermic that had been thrown to the floor. She realized then that the merc had only managed to knock him out. Her heart sang to know he wasn't dead only to plummet again when she saw him being chained like an animal. Shock collar, wrist chains, ankle chains, a waist restraint that his hands and feet could be connected to, limiting his range of motion. *The only thing missing is a bit,* she thought as she watched Riddick begin to stir.
Riddick met Jack's eyes as he started to wake. He could feel the pain radiating from his shoulder where the merc had landed the knockout dose and a dull ache pounding in his head. Trying to move his hands and legs, he wasn't really surprised that he couldn't. Anger surged through him, fear, pain, doubt. He took hold of them and held on. That was all he had now. His face hardening into a blank mask, he looked at Jack being held down by Carson and knew what must have happened. Carson had ratted him out. But how had the little shit known who Riddick was? The only answer was Jack.
The nameless merc prodded Riddick with a stun baton, a gun (a real one this time) clutched in his other hand. "Get on your feet."
After a few prods, Riddick did what he was told, standing awkwardly on his shackled feet. Jack's eyes pleaded with him, spoke volumes to him, but he was blind to the agony in her eyes. The muscles in his jaw worked as he looked down at her. "Is this the part where I say 'Et tu, Brute'?"
Her mouth dropped open, working soundlessly before she recovered her voice. *He can't believe that, I'd never hurt him this way, he has to know that.* Her head shook vigorously from side to side. "NO! I didn't do this, you have to believe me." Struggling against Carson, she tried to go after them, but it was no use. She called to Riddick as the merc took him away, pushing him out of the door. "I didn't do this!"
Jack tried to sleep that night, but it just wouldn't come. She ached, wanting to be with Riddick. She was cold without him. But above all else, she hurt. She hurt so much she couldn't even cry. Even now, even after the afternoon they'd spent together, he was going to leave her here like yesterday's trash. How could he do that? At least when he'd left her before he'd had the guts to look her in the eye and give her the reasons why. She sighed heavily, throwing a forearm over her eyes. *Didn't he try to do that?* she asked herself, *and you weren't listening.* How could she have been so stupid, had she really thought that sex with her would be so wonderful that he'd decide he couldn't live without her? She laughed at herself, the sound ringing hollowly in the darkness. That had been exactly what she had thought. Punching her pillow, she tried once again to get comfortable, but sleep continued to elude her.
When the alarm went off the next morning, Jack was already awake, or rather she was still awake. All night she'd been thinking about Riddick and so many other things. The fact still remained that even if he had lied to her, even if he didn't feel the same, she loved him. She couldn't just turn those feelings off like a faucet. Thirteen years was a long time to love someone, it didn't go away over night. She had decided something, though. He was not leaving this station without her unless he could give her a better reason than 'it's for your own good.'
Dressing hurriedly, she made a quick call to her supervisor explaining that she wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be coming in. In the six months she'd been there she'd never once called in or been late, so he didn't give her much hassle. Throwing her jacket on and hitching her backpack over her shoulder, she hurried to the dock, hoping against hope that Riddick hadn't left yet.
Riddick was just finishing the final checks on the ship when he heard the warning bell telling him that someone was entering the airlock. Sitting in the pilot's seat, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cushioned headrest. *Fuck! She certainly is a persistent little shit.* He was still like that when Jack sat down in the co-pilot's seat.
"You feeling ok, Riddick?" Jack asked as she settled herself in. *Don't have a case of guilt over lying, do you?* A part of her hoped he did, though she seriously doubted it. He'd see guilt as a waste of time.
Opening his eyes, he slowly craned his head to look at her, a scowl that might have made someone else cower on his face. "And just where do you think you're going?"
She met his stare with one of her own. *I'm not that easy to back down, you should know that by now.* "I'm going with you."
This was the reason he hadn't wanted to get involved in the first place, he knew it would come down to this and he knew that this had only one possible outcome. He would be leaving the station alone, and she was going to hate him for it. "No, you aren't."
Still meeting his gaze, she cocked her head to the side. "If you can give me a good reason I should stay on the station, something beyond 'it's for your own good' then I'll leave and you'll never have to worry about me bothering you again." She held her breath, feeling some of her resolve falter. What if he just told her he didn't want her?
Riddick had been up all night getting things ready to leave, and avoiding his bed if the truth be known, he was tired. Swiveling the chair to face her, he looked into her eyes and saw all the pain and hope and longing and felt his walls starting to waver again. Gripping her by the shoulders he shook her a bit, hoping to shake some sense into her. "You can't come, I'm not going to let you fuck your life up like that. It's got nothing to do with me, it's got everything to do with you. Here you have a chance, if you stay on this ship you won't. I'm not going to let you throw your life away." He wasn't angry, and he couldn't find it within himself to dredge up any anger. Only a bone deep tiredness spread through him.
Jack's voice was soft when she spoke. "That's not a good enough reason."
"It's the best one I've got," he said simply.
She hated herself for her weakness, hadn't she promised herself she wouldn't beg him again? But she found herself doing just that. This was too important for pride to get in the way. "Please, Riddick. Don't leave me again. I'm not strong enough to live through it twice."
Riddick sighed heavily, shaking his head. *You're the strongest person I know, Jack, and the most stubborn. Time for a change of tactic.* "C'mon." Standing up abruptly, he pulled her up out of the co-pilot's seat pushed her ahead of him down the corridor and out of the ship, stopping just long enough to pick up something and tuck it into the waistband of his jeans in the small of his back under his jacket. He was glad for the darkness so Jack couldn't see the pulse pistol.
"Where are we going?" she asked, holding back a bit as they walked down the gangplank that led to the dock floor. She couldn't quite keep the tremor out of her voice.
"Your apartment." He took her keycard from her and scanned them through the airlock. "If you're going with me, you're going to need to pack." He had no intentions of letting her go. His plan was to get her down to her apartment and knock her out long enough to get the Persephone off the station and on it's way to wherever he was going to go from here. He already knew that TO4 was out because she would just follow him there. She had certainly turned his life upside down. He wished there had been some way to keep Jack from being hurt, but he'd known from the beginning there wasn't.
Jack could hardly believe what she was hearing. He was going to let her go with him. He was really going to let her go with him. For the first time since yesterday afternoon, she felt truly happy. She felt something like elation soar through her as she hurried to keep up with Riddick's long strides.
Neither of them said anything as they made their way to her apartment. Riddick was just being Riddick, and Jack didn't want to press her good luck. She was fairly skipping as they got to her door and she let them inside. "I'll just be a minute," she said, dropping her backpack on the chair beside the door as she always did before running into her bedroom.
Grabbing her arm as she started toward the door, Riddick stopped her. He looked down at her for a moment, his thumb grazing over her bottom lip before kissing her one last time. "I'll be waiting." *This must be how Judas felt,* he thought, as he watched her walk away.
He stood in the living room of her apartment as she threw clothes and whatever into a couple of duffel bags. This was so Jack. She was willing to condense her whole life into two bags and leave everything she knew just to be with him. Riddick truly hoped that some day she would find someone who would be worthy of that kind of love and loyalty, but at the same time he felt a twinge of jealousy that he pushed angrily away. Pulling the pulse pistol out of the waistband of his pants, he set it on the lowest setting. The pulse would only disrupt her bio-electrical field for a millisecond, the result would be loss of consciousness now and a raging headache later. He was willing to put her through that little bit of pain now to save her years of pain later. Leveling the pistol at the doorway, he waited for her to come into the room.
Jack packed as quickly as she could, stuffing her favorite clothes into the bag along with the small amount of jewelry she had and a few mementos. Her hand held computer was in her backpack along with her audio player. She would pick some of her favorite discs and books to take with her too, everything else she would have to leave behind. She didn't regret that, it was just stuff, it didn't really matter, the only thing she regretted was not being able to say good-bye to Imam, but she'd find a way sooner or later. He had been a father to her longer than her own father, and he'd been ten thousand times better at the job. He deserved better, but once she stepped onto Riddick's ship she would be cut off from him, at least for a while. "I'm sorry, Imam," she said aloud to no one. Throwing the strap of the duffel over her shoulder, she went back into the living room.
When Jack saw Riddick aiming the gun at her chest, she couldn't figure out what he was doing for a minute. The picture was there, but what it meant was not registering. She searched his face, hurt and disbelief in her eyes. Would he really kill her to keep her from going with him? Did she mean that little to him? "Riddick?"
Before he had a chance to say or do anything, Jack's apartment door exploded inward, the force of it knocking them both to the floor and shattering the fish tank, spraying them with water, fish, and glass. Riddick lost hold of the gun as he rolled to defensive stance. Jack watched in horrified fascination as an armed man came through the door, followed by a very cocky looking Carson, who went straight for Jack.
The armed mercenary drew a gun and shot Riddick point blank in the chest. Jack heard someone screaming as she watched Riddick fall backward over the coffee table and she realized it was her voice. It took a minute for her to register that Riddick wasn't actually dead, as she saw him shaking off the effects of the concussive blast that was meant to stun him. Carson came to her, pulling her up off the floor and holding her arms to keep her back from the fight. She heard them talking, Carson, the armed man, Riddick, but nothing they said made any sense to her. She couldn't think or speak, she could only watch mutely as Riddick lunged at the man.
The computer in the corner took a blast from the stun rifle, sending it into a thousand smoking pieces that rained down on the two men as they fought. The coffee table cracked and splintered under the weight of them as they fell on it together, locked in a dance of violence, each trying to best the other. Riddick managed to pull his knife from his boot sheath, slicing the merc across the arm, but he was apparently wearing body armor and the thin plexi-steel blade shattered as it came down at a bad angle on the nearly impenetrable plated vest.
"Let GO of me, Carson!" Jack struggled against Carson's hands as she watched the merc pull something out of his pocket and jam it into Riddick's shoulder, so close to his artery that Jack was sure as he slumped forward that the man had killed him. "You son of a bitch!" she shrieked, finally pulling away from Carson, she launched herself at the merc, hands curled into claws as she went for the man's throat. But Carson grabbed her from behind. He had her in weight by at least fifty pounds and in height by a couple of inches. Distraught and unfocused as she was, she was no match for him as he dragged her back down to the floor.
"Shut up!" he hissed in her ear, warning her. "Unless you want to be charged with being an accessory."
Jack fought against Carson, but it was no use. Her energy was spent, Riddick was dead, and it was all her fault. It puzzled her when the merc started putting chains on Riddick until she saw the hypodermic that had been thrown to the floor. She realized then that the merc had only managed to knock him out. Her heart sang to know he wasn't dead only to plummet again when she saw him being chained like an animal. Shock collar, wrist chains, ankle chains, a waist restraint that his hands and feet could be connected to, limiting his range of motion. *The only thing missing is a bit,* she thought as she watched Riddick begin to stir.
Riddick met Jack's eyes as he started to wake. He could feel the pain radiating from his shoulder where the merc had landed the knockout dose and a dull ache pounding in his head. Trying to move his hands and legs, he wasn't really surprised that he couldn't. Anger surged through him, fear, pain, doubt. He took hold of them and held on. That was all he had now. His face hardening into a blank mask, he looked at Jack being held down by Carson and knew what must have happened. Carson had ratted him out. But how had the little shit known who Riddick was? The only answer was Jack.
The nameless merc prodded Riddick with a stun baton, a gun (a real one this time) clutched in his other hand. "Get on your feet."
After a few prods, Riddick did what he was told, standing awkwardly on his shackled feet. Jack's eyes pleaded with him, spoke volumes to him, but he was blind to the agony in her eyes. The muscles in his jaw worked as he looked down at her. "Is this the part where I say 'Et tu, Brute'?"
Her mouth dropped open, working soundlessly before she recovered her voice. *He can't believe that, I'd never hurt him this way, he has to know that.* Her head shook vigorously from side to side. "NO! I didn't do this, you have to believe me." Struggling against Carson, she tried to go after them, but it was no use. She called to Riddick as the merc took him away, pushing him out of the door. "I didn't do this!"