"It's been a rough night..." he offered finally when she didn't say anything.
Fantine was almost too tired to think clearly. She hadn't expected Scarface to try that old playground trick. She hadn't expected anyone to think of that, it usually required more brains than most of the bruisers in the arena fights had to try and kill someone with their own outfit, their own weapons. She hurt all over, both from the beating she'd taken and the running she'd done afterwards on an ankle that was probably at least sprained, if not broken. "Yeah..." she sighed ruefully; she just wanted to sleep so bad... "Yeah, it has."
They sat there in uncomfortable silence for a couple minutes more. "I guess you got out okay, after..."
"After the hood came off and everyone saw that the Emperor had no clothes? Yeah, pretty much. Everyone was so shocked that I was a woman that they didn't think to stop me." She dug the palms of her hands into her eyes, leaned back against the wall. "It's not tonight I'm worried about, it's tomorrow. What happens when people actually start thinking about what happened. They'll either love me to pieces or hate me and be out for my blood." She laughed bitterly. "We'll see what happens, I guess."
He didn't seem sure how to respond to that. "For what it's worth, Lawson and Keyes don't hate you. They're kind of annoyed at me for not telling them, but not at you, for some reason."
Fantine laughed again, less bitter this time. "I'm just too cute to stay mad at," she grinned up at him.
"Something, anyway..." he gave her a wry look, which she interpreted as a sign that he still didn't know what to do with her. After all that time, all the conversation and fighting and sex, he still didn't know what to do with her. She wondered if she should be proud or worried.
"You'll figure it out," she murmured, half to herself. She wasn't sure what to do with him, either.
"Hmm?"
"Nothing."
More uncomfortable silence. She wondered where the rest of the gang was, especially Doc Weller. It wasn't like him to wait this long – or at all – before barging in to check up on her after a fight. And usually he'd have a lecture for her about how dangerous it all was, and she'd make snide remarks about being a good girl and getting lollipops. If she was really irritated she'd comment on how he didn't tell Riddick to be more careful. Of course he didn't. For all that both of them were masters of the cool demeanor, she was much more brutally pragmatic than Riddick, who was inclined to give into whim a little too often. If she had ice water flowing through her veins, he had liquid fire.
And after that thought, suddenly it was too much just to be sitting next to him. She flushed hot red in the darkness, stood up, and had to grab onto the bunk to keep from falling over from exhaustion and pain. Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth.
"You need to see the Doc..." Riddick caught her even as she tilted downwards, not falling but definitely not staying upright either.
"What was your first clue."
"Don't get snappy." He chuckled. "You shouldn't have gone running out there anyway. I saw you limping."
She shrugged. "Better run and make the ankle worse than stay and take what the crowd probably wanted to give me."
"Good point." He was quiet for a second, and then he carefully pushed her back down onto the bunk. "Sorry."
"Sorry... there's a word I haven't heard out of Richard Riddick's mouth very often..." she chuckled, and so did he. "Don't worry about it. Nothing to be sorry for, not from you, and we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I probably would have preferred the later, but..."
"Mmm." A non-committal noise. He probably would have preferred later, too. Keep things simple. When he didn't say anything after that she glanced up at him. His expression was an unreadable kind of tight, his eyes reflecting the candlelight from far-off pods like a cat's. The shine job didn't help her trying to read his expressions any. "We were worried about you."
"Why Richard," she smiled, teasing. She never called him by his first name, and he glanced at her in some mild startlement. One out-of-character remark deserved another. "I think that's the first I've ever heard you admitting to worrying about anyone."
"Yeah, well, if you tell anyone I said that..."
"I know, I know, you'll kill me." Fantine rolled her eyes and tucked her legs back up onto his bunk, then bit back a scream. She'd forgotten about her bad ankle again. "But before you do, could you get the Doc? No point in killing a weakened and wounded opponent."
"Sure." He slipped off the bunk and out of his pod without further word.
She tipped to one side and fell onto the semi-soft padding, exhausted. The fragments of conversation they'd just exchanged were finally starting to penetrate the fog around her mind, and she was more surprised than she expected that he'd been worried about her. No, not that he'd been worried, that he'd actually come out and said so. Riddick... none of them were really the kind to go all mushy on each other. The few words of tenderness either of them had exchanged were the generic sorts of endearments that seemed almost dutiful in bed, in the darkness. Never outside of sex.
Then again, they'd never had a night quite like this one. Everything was different now; the rumors would be spreading like wildfire of her secret identity, the fight and the unmasking. If she was very lucky, no one would have been able to put a face to the woman who had appeared from under the Fury's hood. It would mean the end of her pit fighting days, at least in the most grueling arenas, but maybe that was all to the good. That one last fight with Riddick, and then maybe it would be time for her to retire as a fighter. Maybe. If she was lucky.
If not...
Riddick loomed up out of the darkness, so quickly that she sat up again and hissed in pain. Doc Weller pushed past the larger man at that noise and knelt down next to her, muttering something about fools and fighting. Behind Riddick she could see a familiar shock of red hair and worried eyes. Keyes probably wasn't far behind.
"Ow!" Doc Weller had started to poke and prod at her injured ankle. "Jeez. Give a girl a little warning next time?"
"It never ceases to amaze me," he snapped, "How you can be so brave and suffer all kinds of indignities and insults upon your bodies in the ring, and yet be so cowardly of a little recovery-room pain. If it hurts that much, don't get yourself into those damned fights."
"I'm glad to see you too, Doc," she teased, apologetic and wondering what had gotten the Doc so worried. Had Riddick been more right than even he knew? Or were they all just anticipating the kind of trouble she was going to get now that she'd been revealed as a woman in a brutal man's world?
"Well." The Doc made an indelicate snorting noise. "It's not broken, and you should thank your luck for that. Let's see the rest of you."
Fantine shrugged and pulled her shirt off right then and there, just as Riddick was crossing over to sit next to her on the bunk. Keyes and Lawson gaped from the doorway, and as though he was wary of her naked flesh even Riddick changed course in mid stride and went to lean on the wall at the far end of the room. She tried not to laugh at the obvious discomfort in all three men at her matter-of-fact disrobing.
"Oh, grow up. All of you. This can't be the first time you've seen a half- naked woman before."
Doc Weller smacked her leg. "Don't tease them. They've had at least as bad a night as you have."
Everyone gave him skeptical, quizzical looks for that remark, which he didn't clarify. Instead he poked and prodded around her ribs, listening to her breathing and scowling over any wincing she did. He shone a light in her eyes, checked her vision, asked her all the usual questions about dizziness or headaches. Fortunately, she thought, she'd actually managed to escape this fight without a concussion. Trade-off for the sprained or broken ankle, probably.
"Well, Doc?" she asked finally. "Is the patient going to live?"
"Not if she keeps this up. Put your shirt back on." He creaked to his feet. "That ankle's not broken, although from what I saw of the fight you should consider it a miracle that it's not crushed. You don't seem to have a concussion, although I'd still consider it advisable to stay awake for the next several hours, just in case. I'd like to get you back to the infirmary to tape up those ribs you've managed to neatly crack..."
Lawson and Riddick both took a step forward.
"... but I could probably manage to bring any equipment I'd need to patch you up back here."
"Will you two stop hovering around me like someone's grandmother?" she snapped. The Doc looked over his shoulder and gave a short, sharp laugh. "Honestly. You'd think this was my first fight the way you two are acting. Settle the hell down or get the hell out."
"Of my pod?" Riddick asked, but there was amusement in his tone and he did seem to relax a little. Lawson nodded tightly, clearly still unhappy about something.
"I'll leave her in the capable hands of the three of you, then?" Doc Weller asked, half-glaring around at the men. Lawson finally held up his hands, as if to indicate surrender, that he'd be on his best behavior. It was enough, apparently, for the Doctor. He nodded and left without further word. Fantine looked from Riddick, to Lawson, to the fidgeting Joey Keyes, and back again to Riddick. No one wanted to break the silence that seemed to choke them all. Fantine wasn't sure they could.
"What..." she finally asked, and it came out strangled and thick. She tried again. "What happened after I left?"
"Not much..." Keyes started, and nearly jumped at the sound of his higher- than-most voice in the darkness and uncomfortable silence. "Er. Not much, really. Everyone was shocked that it turned out to be you... I mean, that it turned out to be a woman... I mean..." he tried to recover, gave it up as a bad job and pushed on. "No one really said anything and then the Doc said he had to find you and Riddick just tore out of there like his feet were on fire and neither of us knew what was going on so we just came with..." he trailed off.
Fantine smiled tiredly. "Thanks, guys." The words were out of her mouth before she thought, before she realized how much of an admission of feeling that was. None of them looked at her anymore.
Doc Weller came back to a deathly quiet room that reeked of self-conscious embarrassment and simmering anger. Riddick was leaning against the same wall he'd gone to when Fantine had half disrobed. Lawson was hunched in the doorway and Keyes was jittering as though he wanted to be somewhere else. He waited until the Doc had cleared the doorway and knelt down beside Fantine before muttering something and scampering out of the pod, out of the cell block. All four of them stared after him for a second.
"What the hell is wrong with all of you?" he muttered. Fantine just shrugged, trying to watch Riddick and Lawson at the same time. "Stay still." The Doc smacked her on the thigh again, and she was still.
"I don't think you two should fight." Lawson finally spoke up when Doc Weller had all but finished binding up her ankle in a walking brace. She could barely feel her toes anymore, but at least the pain had gone down some. As always after one of her fights he refused to give her an anesthetic. It was her own damn fault she was in pain, he'd said, and maybe it would teach her a lesson. Never did, of course. It didn't matter. She hadn't been in enough pain to actually want the mind-fogging drugs.
"What are you talking about, Lawson?" she asked, biting her lip as the Doc snapped the bandage shut. "What fight?"
"Doc told me about this deal the two of you have going. This little crazy suicide pact..."
Suicide pact? she mouthed at Riddick. The large man only shrugged, expressionless.
"This whole thing you two have. Fighting each other in the ring, what the hell is wrong with you?" He seemed to be mostly speaking to Riddick. "Isn't her life going to get tough enough now with everyone trying to get the one woman fighter in all the Ursa Luna Slam? I mean, isn't it going to be bad enough without you beating the crap out of her in public?"
There was probably more to the tirade but it was cut off as Fantine shot to her feet, irritated beyond reason. Doc Weller whipped around, himself, staring at Lawson as though the man had grown a second head. "Lawson, are you really sure..." he started. She interrupted him.
"Considering that so far I've managed to beat the crap out of you twice, and every other limp-dick cocksucker who's jumped into the ring with me, I don't see where you get off..." she glanced at Riddick and stopped that thought in mid-sentence, changing gears. "I'm fine, Nick. I've got a sprained ankle and a couple of cracked ribs, and so far the only thing I haven't had before is the sprained ankle. I'll be good to go in a week, and no one will know anything was ever wrong." She ignored Doc Weller, who was kneeling at her feet and shaking his head in mingled disgust and concern.
"It's her choice, Lawson," the Doc said, although he was looking at Riddick when he spoke. "I wouldn't get in the way."
"She tends to beat people up who get in her way." Riddick sounded more amused than anything else.
"She's also in the room, if you'd care to remember that," Fantine snapped. All three men laughed, prompting more glares from her direction. The angry tension relaxed a little at the sound.
"Stay off that foot for the next twelve hours or so," the Doc warned, standing up and pushing Fantine down as he did so. "I'll tape up your ribs, so stay out of fights..."
She didn't look at him. She didn't look at any of them. The rebuke to stay out of fights was all very well as long as no one had recognized who the woman unmasked in the ring had been. As long as no one connected her with the strange events in the pit fight that night she'd be fine. She wouldn't be able to fight again in the pits without a different disguise, but she'd be fine. But if even a few people had seen her and recognized her from the stands, and if that word got around, there wasn't going to be any stay out of fights for her. She was going to be fighting perhaps as often as every day for her life, for her health, for everything. That was the second-worst extreme of what could have happened, and it surfaced in her mind endlessly when she stopped to think about the consequences. It was enough to make her remember why she'd stopped thinking about consequences at all.
The Doc seemed to have reached the same conclusion. He glanced at her with no little concern on his face, then to each of the men looming in opposite corners. Lawson seemed to deflate as his annoyance and – well, whatever had been making him scowl so furiously seemed to have disappeared. Riddick was impassive as usual, but there was what might have been a clench to his jaw and fists that said he wasn't happy with the situation either. Something she missed, some look she didn't catch or maybe just the unspoken bond of men carried the message through. First Lawson, then Riddick nodded. It seemed to satisfy Doc Weller, who finished taping her ribs and stood up without a word.
"Make sure she doesn't go to sleep for a while. Or walk on that foot," was all he said, and then he walked out.
Fantine started to call him back, wondering if she really wanted to be in an eight by ten by eight foot space with Richard Riddick and Nick Lawson. Too late, though: he was already down the hall and probably out of the cell block by the time she'd decided she wanted a chaperone. It was adolescence all over again. And she was too tired to deal with them.
"Get out," she muttered.
Neither of them listened.
"Out!"
Riddick just smirked. "It's my pod, kiddo," he murmured, which both entranced her and infuriated her. Lawson shook his head and moved over to tuck her into the bunk.
"Lie back..." he said as he gently tried to push her down. "You shouldn't go to sleep but that's no reason to sit there like you're going to leap up and run off any second."
Men were baffling. "Weren't you two about to kill each other a second ago?"
Identical shrugs. "We got over it," Lawson said. Riddick gave her a grin that was full of teeth.
"You two are insane, you know that?" she muttered, but she allowed herself to be laid back and propped up in the bunk with pillows, a blanket, a spare shirt that smelled of sweat and Riddick. It was just distracting enough to keep her from noticing the glances that the two men were exchanging. "Fucking insane..."
"Sure we are..." Riddick grinned, deliberately patting her on the head like a child. She whipped her head around and snapped playfully at his fingers.
"Get some rest, okay?" Before she could react Lawson had leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. She sat up, meaning to do... something. Even she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. She had no idea how to react to that. "Take care of her..." Lawson was still talking. She was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He left before she could say anything.
"Men are crazy," she muttered finally, settling back onto the bunk. Her opinion was only confirmed by how solicitous they were being. Apart from the Doc, they never fussed over her after a pit fight. Never. She would have expected them to fuss over Lawson before they fussed over her; Riddick, of course, would never have tolerated it. Keyes never got into the pit fights; he even tried to stay out of the normal fights in the canteens or ball courts. She'd thought she was becoming just one of the boys, albeit one of the boys who routinely slept with...
Riddick.
He hadn't moved from the wall, not even when Lawson had gotten strangely close. She glanced over at him. "Aren't you going to tell me I should be taking it easy, too?"
"Would you listen to me if I did?" his voice was rumbling, amused. The low and velvet-smooth quality that he got when he was relaxed and even in a bit of a playful mood. At least she wasn't going to listen to a testosterone- driven tirade. Although she still wasn't sure what all the territorial anger had been about, earlier.
"Probably not. Any more than you would listen to me if you were sitting here with bandages cutting off your circulation and I was leaning over against the wall playing post."
He chuckled. The sound teased at her senses like hot oil over her skin. Of all the times to use that voice, he had to pick after one of the most grueling fights she'd gotten into since getting sent to the Slam.
"Riddick, if you're going to play the Dark Seducer, at least get over here so I don't have to hobble to you to feel you up?"
Another chuckle, but he pushed off the wall and didn't so much walk as swagger over to the bunk. She wasn't sure what to expect. She'd half expected, knowing that it took at least a minimal effort to put that kind of smooth, liquid sex tone into his voice, that he'd do something passionate and a little raunchy. She definitely hadn't expected him to tuck her in. "Relax," he told her. "Just relax."
"Riddick..." she wasn't sure what was going on. Hadn't been sure since Keyes had bolted for the door, maybe even before that. Her whole leg was throbbing now, as was her torso. It didn't hurt to breathe, but it wasn't far from it. She wanted to ask him questions, but she didn't know what were the right ones to ask. "Riddick..."
"Relax, Fantine..." he spoke her name almost like an Aquiline. "Just lay back. Just relax. You can figure everything out in the morning."
He was the only man she'd ever known who had that quality of voice, that low and soothing tone that she could wrap around herself like a comforting blanket. His huge and muscled hand stroked over her peach-fuzz hair, delicate and light. His other arm slid around her shoulders and she relaxed into the embrace out of habit. How long had they been sleeping together now? Time had started to blur shortly after she'd gotten thrown down in the giant oubliette of a prison; she didn't know. It felt like forever. And she hadn't even been in the Slam that long. Or had she? That, too, felt like forever. She didn't sleep, but her thoughts began to settle into fuzzy- headed stillness. Slowly, finally, she could relax.
Fantine was almost too tired to think clearly. She hadn't expected Scarface to try that old playground trick. She hadn't expected anyone to think of that, it usually required more brains than most of the bruisers in the arena fights had to try and kill someone with their own outfit, their own weapons. She hurt all over, both from the beating she'd taken and the running she'd done afterwards on an ankle that was probably at least sprained, if not broken. "Yeah..." she sighed ruefully; she just wanted to sleep so bad... "Yeah, it has."
They sat there in uncomfortable silence for a couple minutes more. "I guess you got out okay, after..."
"After the hood came off and everyone saw that the Emperor had no clothes? Yeah, pretty much. Everyone was so shocked that I was a woman that they didn't think to stop me." She dug the palms of her hands into her eyes, leaned back against the wall. "It's not tonight I'm worried about, it's tomorrow. What happens when people actually start thinking about what happened. They'll either love me to pieces or hate me and be out for my blood." She laughed bitterly. "We'll see what happens, I guess."
He didn't seem sure how to respond to that. "For what it's worth, Lawson and Keyes don't hate you. They're kind of annoyed at me for not telling them, but not at you, for some reason."
Fantine laughed again, less bitter this time. "I'm just too cute to stay mad at," she grinned up at him.
"Something, anyway..." he gave her a wry look, which she interpreted as a sign that he still didn't know what to do with her. After all that time, all the conversation and fighting and sex, he still didn't know what to do with her. She wondered if she should be proud or worried.
"You'll figure it out," she murmured, half to herself. She wasn't sure what to do with him, either.
"Hmm?"
"Nothing."
More uncomfortable silence. She wondered where the rest of the gang was, especially Doc Weller. It wasn't like him to wait this long – or at all – before barging in to check up on her after a fight. And usually he'd have a lecture for her about how dangerous it all was, and she'd make snide remarks about being a good girl and getting lollipops. If she was really irritated she'd comment on how he didn't tell Riddick to be more careful. Of course he didn't. For all that both of them were masters of the cool demeanor, she was much more brutally pragmatic than Riddick, who was inclined to give into whim a little too often. If she had ice water flowing through her veins, he had liquid fire.
And after that thought, suddenly it was too much just to be sitting next to him. She flushed hot red in the darkness, stood up, and had to grab onto the bunk to keep from falling over from exhaustion and pain. Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth.
"You need to see the Doc..." Riddick caught her even as she tilted downwards, not falling but definitely not staying upright either.
"What was your first clue."
"Don't get snappy." He chuckled. "You shouldn't have gone running out there anyway. I saw you limping."
She shrugged. "Better run and make the ankle worse than stay and take what the crowd probably wanted to give me."
"Good point." He was quiet for a second, and then he carefully pushed her back down onto the bunk. "Sorry."
"Sorry... there's a word I haven't heard out of Richard Riddick's mouth very often..." she chuckled, and so did he. "Don't worry about it. Nothing to be sorry for, not from you, and we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I probably would have preferred the later, but..."
"Mmm." A non-committal noise. He probably would have preferred later, too. Keep things simple. When he didn't say anything after that she glanced up at him. His expression was an unreadable kind of tight, his eyes reflecting the candlelight from far-off pods like a cat's. The shine job didn't help her trying to read his expressions any. "We were worried about you."
"Why Richard," she smiled, teasing. She never called him by his first name, and he glanced at her in some mild startlement. One out-of-character remark deserved another. "I think that's the first I've ever heard you admitting to worrying about anyone."
"Yeah, well, if you tell anyone I said that..."
"I know, I know, you'll kill me." Fantine rolled her eyes and tucked her legs back up onto his bunk, then bit back a scream. She'd forgotten about her bad ankle again. "But before you do, could you get the Doc? No point in killing a weakened and wounded opponent."
"Sure." He slipped off the bunk and out of his pod without further word.
She tipped to one side and fell onto the semi-soft padding, exhausted. The fragments of conversation they'd just exchanged were finally starting to penetrate the fog around her mind, and she was more surprised than she expected that he'd been worried about her. No, not that he'd been worried, that he'd actually come out and said so. Riddick... none of them were really the kind to go all mushy on each other. The few words of tenderness either of them had exchanged were the generic sorts of endearments that seemed almost dutiful in bed, in the darkness. Never outside of sex.
Then again, they'd never had a night quite like this one. Everything was different now; the rumors would be spreading like wildfire of her secret identity, the fight and the unmasking. If she was very lucky, no one would have been able to put a face to the woman who had appeared from under the Fury's hood. It would mean the end of her pit fighting days, at least in the most grueling arenas, but maybe that was all to the good. That one last fight with Riddick, and then maybe it would be time for her to retire as a fighter. Maybe. If she was lucky.
If not...
Riddick loomed up out of the darkness, so quickly that she sat up again and hissed in pain. Doc Weller pushed past the larger man at that noise and knelt down next to her, muttering something about fools and fighting. Behind Riddick she could see a familiar shock of red hair and worried eyes. Keyes probably wasn't far behind.
"Ow!" Doc Weller had started to poke and prod at her injured ankle. "Jeez. Give a girl a little warning next time?"
"It never ceases to amaze me," he snapped, "How you can be so brave and suffer all kinds of indignities and insults upon your bodies in the ring, and yet be so cowardly of a little recovery-room pain. If it hurts that much, don't get yourself into those damned fights."
"I'm glad to see you too, Doc," she teased, apologetic and wondering what had gotten the Doc so worried. Had Riddick been more right than even he knew? Or were they all just anticipating the kind of trouble she was going to get now that she'd been revealed as a woman in a brutal man's world?
"Well." The Doc made an indelicate snorting noise. "It's not broken, and you should thank your luck for that. Let's see the rest of you."
Fantine shrugged and pulled her shirt off right then and there, just as Riddick was crossing over to sit next to her on the bunk. Keyes and Lawson gaped from the doorway, and as though he was wary of her naked flesh even Riddick changed course in mid stride and went to lean on the wall at the far end of the room. She tried not to laugh at the obvious discomfort in all three men at her matter-of-fact disrobing.
"Oh, grow up. All of you. This can't be the first time you've seen a half- naked woman before."
Doc Weller smacked her leg. "Don't tease them. They've had at least as bad a night as you have."
Everyone gave him skeptical, quizzical looks for that remark, which he didn't clarify. Instead he poked and prodded around her ribs, listening to her breathing and scowling over any wincing she did. He shone a light in her eyes, checked her vision, asked her all the usual questions about dizziness or headaches. Fortunately, she thought, she'd actually managed to escape this fight without a concussion. Trade-off for the sprained or broken ankle, probably.
"Well, Doc?" she asked finally. "Is the patient going to live?"
"Not if she keeps this up. Put your shirt back on." He creaked to his feet. "That ankle's not broken, although from what I saw of the fight you should consider it a miracle that it's not crushed. You don't seem to have a concussion, although I'd still consider it advisable to stay awake for the next several hours, just in case. I'd like to get you back to the infirmary to tape up those ribs you've managed to neatly crack..."
Lawson and Riddick both took a step forward.
"... but I could probably manage to bring any equipment I'd need to patch you up back here."
"Will you two stop hovering around me like someone's grandmother?" she snapped. The Doc looked over his shoulder and gave a short, sharp laugh. "Honestly. You'd think this was my first fight the way you two are acting. Settle the hell down or get the hell out."
"Of my pod?" Riddick asked, but there was amusement in his tone and he did seem to relax a little. Lawson nodded tightly, clearly still unhappy about something.
"I'll leave her in the capable hands of the three of you, then?" Doc Weller asked, half-glaring around at the men. Lawson finally held up his hands, as if to indicate surrender, that he'd be on his best behavior. It was enough, apparently, for the Doctor. He nodded and left without further word. Fantine looked from Riddick, to Lawson, to the fidgeting Joey Keyes, and back again to Riddick. No one wanted to break the silence that seemed to choke them all. Fantine wasn't sure they could.
"What..." she finally asked, and it came out strangled and thick. She tried again. "What happened after I left?"
"Not much..." Keyes started, and nearly jumped at the sound of his higher- than-most voice in the darkness and uncomfortable silence. "Er. Not much, really. Everyone was shocked that it turned out to be you... I mean, that it turned out to be a woman... I mean..." he tried to recover, gave it up as a bad job and pushed on. "No one really said anything and then the Doc said he had to find you and Riddick just tore out of there like his feet were on fire and neither of us knew what was going on so we just came with..." he trailed off.
Fantine smiled tiredly. "Thanks, guys." The words were out of her mouth before she thought, before she realized how much of an admission of feeling that was. None of them looked at her anymore.
Doc Weller came back to a deathly quiet room that reeked of self-conscious embarrassment and simmering anger. Riddick was leaning against the same wall he'd gone to when Fantine had half disrobed. Lawson was hunched in the doorway and Keyes was jittering as though he wanted to be somewhere else. He waited until the Doc had cleared the doorway and knelt down beside Fantine before muttering something and scampering out of the pod, out of the cell block. All four of them stared after him for a second.
"What the hell is wrong with all of you?" he muttered. Fantine just shrugged, trying to watch Riddick and Lawson at the same time. "Stay still." The Doc smacked her on the thigh again, and she was still.
"I don't think you two should fight." Lawson finally spoke up when Doc Weller had all but finished binding up her ankle in a walking brace. She could barely feel her toes anymore, but at least the pain had gone down some. As always after one of her fights he refused to give her an anesthetic. It was her own damn fault she was in pain, he'd said, and maybe it would teach her a lesson. Never did, of course. It didn't matter. She hadn't been in enough pain to actually want the mind-fogging drugs.
"What are you talking about, Lawson?" she asked, biting her lip as the Doc snapped the bandage shut. "What fight?"
"Doc told me about this deal the two of you have going. This little crazy suicide pact..."
Suicide pact? she mouthed at Riddick. The large man only shrugged, expressionless.
"This whole thing you two have. Fighting each other in the ring, what the hell is wrong with you?" He seemed to be mostly speaking to Riddick. "Isn't her life going to get tough enough now with everyone trying to get the one woman fighter in all the Ursa Luna Slam? I mean, isn't it going to be bad enough without you beating the crap out of her in public?"
There was probably more to the tirade but it was cut off as Fantine shot to her feet, irritated beyond reason. Doc Weller whipped around, himself, staring at Lawson as though the man had grown a second head. "Lawson, are you really sure..." he started. She interrupted him.
"Considering that so far I've managed to beat the crap out of you twice, and every other limp-dick cocksucker who's jumped into the ring with me, I don't see where you get off..." she glanced at Riddick and stopped that thought in mid-sentence, changing gears. "I'm fine, Nick. I've got a sprained ankle and a couple of cracked ribs, and so far the only thing I haven't had before is the sprained ankle. I'll be good to go in a week, and no one will know anything was ever wrong." She ignored Doc Weller, who was kneeling at her feet and shaking his head in mingled disgust and concern.
"It's her choice, Lawson," the Doc said, although he was looking at Riddick when he spoke. "I wouldn't get in the way."
"She tends to beat people up who get in her way." Riddick sounded more amused than anything else.
"She's also in the room, if you'd care to remember that," Fantine snapped. All three men laughed, prompting more glares from her direction. The angry tension relaxed a little at the sound.
"Stay off that foot for the next twelve hours or so," the Doc warned, standing up and pushing Fantine down as he did so. "I'll tape up your ribs, so stay out of fights..."
She didn't look at him. She didn't look at any of them. The rebuke to stay out of fights was all very well as long as no one had recognized who the woman unmasked in the ring had been. As long as no one connected her with the strange events in the pit fight that night she'd be fine. She wouldn't be able to fight again in the pits without a different disguise, but she'd be fine. But if even a few people had seen her and recognized her from the stands, and if that word got around, there wasn't going to be any stay out of fights for her. She was going to be fighting perhaps as often as every day for her life, for her health, for everything. That was the second-worst extreme of what could have happened, and it surfaced in her mind endlessly when she stopped to think about the consequences. It was enough to make her remember why she'd stopped thinking about consequences at all.
The Doc seemed to have reached the same conclusion. He glanced at her with no little concern on his face, then to each of the men looming in opposite corners. Lawson seemed to deflate as his annoyance and – well, whatever had been making him scowl so furiously seemed to have disappeared. Riddick was impassive as usual, but there was what might have been a clench to his jaw and fists that said he wasn't happy with the situation either. Something she missed, some look she didn't catch or maybe just the unspoken bond of men carried the message through. First Lawson, then Riddick nodded. It seemed to satisfy Doc Weller, who finished taping her ribs and stood up without a word.
"Make sure she doesn't go to sleep for a while. Or walk on that foot," was all he said, and then he walked out.
Fantine started to call him back, wondering if she really wanted to be in an eight by ten by eight foot space with Richard Riddick and Nick Lawson. Too late, though: he was already down the hall and probably out of the cell block by the time she'd decided she wanted a chaperone. It was adolescence all over again. And she was too tired to deal with them.
"Get out," she muttered.
Neither of them listened.
"Out!"
Riddick just smirked. "It's my pod, kiddo," he murmured, which both entranced her and infuriated her. Lawson shook his head and moved over to tuck her into the bunk.
"Lie back..." he said as he gently tried to push her down. "You shouldn't go to sleep but that's no reason to sit there like you're going to leap up and run off any second."
Men were baffling. "Weren't you two about to kill each other a second ago?"
Identical shrugs. "We got over it," Lawson said. Riddick gave her a grin that was full of teeth.
"You two are insane, you know that?" she muttered, but she allowed herself to be laid back and propped up in the bunk with pillows, a blanket, a spare shirt that smelled of sweat and Riddick. It was just distracting enough to keep her from noticing the glances that the two men were exchanging. "Fucking insane..."
"Sure we are..." Riddick grinned, deliberately patting her on the head like a child. She whipped her head around and snapped playfully at his fingers.
"Get some rest, okay?" Before she could react Lawson had leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. She sat up, meaning to do... something. Even she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. She had no idea how to react to that. "Take care of her..." Lawson was still talking. She was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He left before she could say anything.
"Men are crazy," she muttered finally, settling back onto the bunk. Her opinion was only confirmed by how solicitous they were being. Apart from the Doc, they never fussed over her after a pit fight. Never. She would have expected them to fuss over Lawson before they fussed over her; Riddick, of course, would never have tolerated it. Keyes never got into the pit fights; he even tried to stay out of the normal fights in the canteens or ball courts. She'd thought she was becoming just one of the boys, albeit one of the boys who routinely slept with...
Riddick.
He hadn't moved from the wall, not even when Lawson had gotten strangely close. She glanced over at him. "Aren't you going to tell me I should be taking it easy, too?"
"Would you listen to me if I did?" his voice was rumbling, amused. The low and velvet-smooth quality that he got when he was relaxed and even in a bit of a playful mood. At least she wasn't going to listen to a testosterone- driven tirade. Although she still wasn't sure what all the territorial anger had been about, earlier.
"Probably not. Any more than you would listen to me if you were sitting here with bandages cutting off your circulation and I was leaning over against the wall playing post."
He chuckled. The sound teased at her senses like hot oil over her skin. Of all the times to use that voice, he had to pick after one of the most grueling fights she'd gotten into since getting sent to the Slam.
"Riddick, if you're going to play the Dark Seducer, at least get over here so I don't have to hobble to you to feel you up?"
Another chuckle, but he pushed off the wall and didn't so much walk as swagger over to the bunk. She wasn't sure what to expect. She'd half expected, knowing that it took at least a minimal effort to put that kind of smooth, liquid sex tone into his voice, that he'd do something passionate and a little raunchy. She definitely hadn't expected him to tuck her in. "Relax," he told her. "Just relax."
"Riddick..." she wasn't sure what was going on. Hadn't been sure since Keyes had bolted for the door, maybe even before that. Her whole leg was throbbing now, as was her torso. It didn't hurt to breathe, but it wasn't far from it. She wanted to ask him questions, but she didn't know what were the right ones to ask. "Riddick..."
"Relax, Fantine..." he spoke her name almost like an Aquiline. "Just lay back. Just relax. You can figure everything out in the morning."
He was the only man she'd ever known who had that quality of voice, that low and soothing tone that she could wrap around herself like a comforting blanket. His huge and muscled hand stroked over her peach-fuzz hair, delicate and light. His other arm slid around her shoulders and she relaxed into the embrace out of habit. How long had they been sleeping together now? Time had started to blur shortly after she'd gotten thrown down in the giant oubliette of a prison; she didn't know. It felt like forever. And she hadn't even been in the Slam that long. Or had she? That, too, felt like forever. She didn't sleep, but her thoughts began to settle into fuzzy- headed stillness. Slowly, finally, she could relax.