As if by instinct when Fantine woke up (finally) she didn't move, barely breathed. She was trapped between the wall and the man next to her, a big man, his arm thrown over her waist and weighing her down. Fear coursed down her body in rivers of sweat. She could smell it all over herself. Panic made her shake, fear kept her still. Self-preservation said that if she didn't move she wasn't going to get hurt. Rodent in the eyes of the raptor. But the stink of fear was all around her and making it so hard to think. Agonizing minutes later she realized that she could also smell something else.
Riddick.
It was Riddick in the bed with her. It was Riddick's arm over her waist, Riddick's hot, soft breath on the side of her face. She blinked a couple times just to make sure she could see, then looked sideways. She could see a couple of spots where he'd missed with the shiv the last time he'd shaved. When he spoke she almost screamed.
"For the last time, I don't want any bananas in the damn sandwich. No bananas. You put bananas in that sandwich and I'll shoot you with this fucking fork."
The words were in English but they didn't make any sense when strung together. And then she realized he was still fast asleep.
She'd never slept with him, ever. They'd always dozed off but then crept out of each other's bunks after sex, leaving the other's pod for their own. They never stayed through true sleep, woke up with someone else in the bunk next to them. She would have had no way of knowing if he talked in his sleep, if he snored or drooled or stole the covers or any of those embarrassing, profoundly intimate details. His voice was completely clear but his eyes were closed, his body relaxed. He talked as though he could have had a perfectly coherent conversation, but he surely didn't know what he was saying.
"What do you mean I can't fire you? You're a fucking fork."
No, he didn't know what he was saying. It was almost enough to make her smile.
She wondered why he was staying now. Her mind could conjure up memories of the last twenty four hours but they were distant, like a tri-d program she might have watched in childhood. She was aware that he had tucked her into bed (Whose bed? His bed? Hers?) but she didn't know why he'd stayed. She resented him a little for that, for being condescending and treating her like a child. He never had before. It was part of what she liked about him.
Fantine St. Germain was not made to be tucked in like a child. Even as a child she hadn't needed it. But now she was pathetically grateful for Riddick's presence even as she resented it. The furnace-like heat of his body wrapped around her ice-cold shockiness. The safety of his familiar scent at her back, knowing that he was between her and the door. Knowing that anyone who walked by on the other side couldn't see her, it made her feel safe. She had never had to feel safe before. The intimacy of what they were doing struck her again, somehow so much deeper than all the sex they'd had before. The fact that she welcomed it was terrifying, adding to all the other feelings that were ricocheting around in her body like ball bearings.
The nightmare was still fresh in her thoughts, too; she wasn't going to get back to sleep anytime soon. Rather than stare at the ceiling that was too gray for her tastes she turned towards Riddick, tucking her head under his chin. He woke up, of course, with a jerky movement that knocked his forearm against the side of her head as he reached for a shiv out of instinct.
"Riddick." She didn't know what else to do but lie perfectly still, in case he did grab something sharp.
"Fantine." His voice was still gravelly from sleep. More gravelly than usual. He blinked, sending little lights dancing over his eyes. For a second she was hypnotized by the different ways the shine reflected the light as he moved his head. "Are you..."
She pressed in close, trying to hide between his body and the blankets. "What are you doing here?" It came out muffled.
"Doctor's orders." He slipped his other arm underneath her, wrapping her up tight. It felt good. "He said you shouldn't be left alone."
"Fuck that," she said, but there wasn't any conviction in her tone. Even Riddick's voice hadn't been as rock steady as it usually was. She could feel that something had snapped inside her, although she didn't know what. And she was afraid that it was audible in her voice, especially to Riddick. Richard Riddick, who had picked her out of a crowd full of people and a fight full of bodies for not being what she pretended to be. Who had "Doc's just worrying."
"Fantine..." Riddick said, and then stopped. He was silent for a worryingly long time.
She still had her face snuggled up to his chest, and when the silence became too unbearable she wanted to see his eyes. She wanted to see his silver shining eyes, nothing less would reassure her. Somehow she had gotten it into her mind as he'd kept quiet and she hadn't been able to say anything that he had been replaced. That it was no longer Riddick holding her in the bed but someone else, some other large, terrifying man. She wriggled around, resisting as he tried to pull her closer until he finally let her up, and then she tilted her head back to stare at him. His lower lip was pushed out slightly, an expression that served for concern on the normally un-softened face.
"I'm fine," she told the worried face. It was true, at least for now. Silver eyes, unique at least amongst all the prisoners in the Slam that she knew, meant it was him. Meant that she was safe. She'd never thought of it like that before.
"I don't believe you."
"No, seriously." She tried to wriggle her way out of his arms, felt panic swim over her at the very idea, and stopped. Her voice, when she could speak again, was weak and thready. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're not even in the same system as fine." The lip remained pushed out, the eyes remained narrowed.
With her arms around his waist she could pull back a little and not suffer the paralyzing fear. It was all good as long as she could touch him. And there were still questions she wanted answered. Fantine tried to keep her mind on the questions and not on why she had to touch Riddick to feel safe enough to speak coherently. "Why are you still here, anyway?"
"Doc's orders. Would you cross the Doc when he's in a bad mood?" He was trying to make a joke out of it, and his mouth was smiling now, but there was still a tightness to the cadence of his words that wasn't going to go away any time soon. Even in the dark she could read him, especially his voice and the way his arms were still so tense.
"Probably not. I didn't think you'd ... you're not exactly the type to obey orders." She remembered something. "Forks?"
"What?"
"You were talking about forks in your sleep. Something about not putting bananas in your sandwich or you were going to fire a fork at someone?" He had to be blushing, even if she couldn't see it between his naturally dark skin and the lack of light in the cell.
"I was going to ..." he turned his head away from her, chuckling. "You must have been asleep."
"You're the one who was asleep, I was awake and listening to you threaten someone over bananas in your sandwich. I didn't even know they put bananas in sandwiches down here." She smirked, knowing he could see it. "What caliber was that fork, anyway?"
"Shaddup." It was relaxing to them both, at least.
She pressed her cheek to his chest again, satisfied that it really was him. "You speak almost like an Aquiline," she murmured, remembering something that had been intriguing her for a long time. "Where did you learn that?"
He was quiet for a little while, and she concentrated on the even puffs of his breath against her skin so she wouldn't have to listen to the sounds of the prison. Sensory input was slowly starting to return for more than just the immediate vicinity. She could see a little further again, hear a little further. The only problem was there wasn't anything nearby she wanted to see or hear. Nothing further than the cell doors. Outside of her and Riddick she just didn't want the world to exist.
When he spoke again she'd almost forgotten the question. "I learned it in school," he said, although she had the feeling that wasn't the whole story. "Believe it or not. I did go to school, for a little while."
She actually chuckled a little bit at that. "Until you got bored and ran off to make your own fun, I'd bet."
"Something like that."
More silence again. She blurted it out finally, curiosity pouring out overtop of all the other emotions, pushed to the surface from what was suddenly an overflowing well. "What did you do? To get tossed in here, I mean." It sounded so schoolgirl. Now she wished she hadn't said anything.
But he only laughed. "Killed a bunch of people. They don't throw us in for parking violations."
"I figured that much out for myself, thank you," she thumped him ever so lightly in the ribs, bringing back vivid memories of happier times and mock- fights in the pod, before bed. "Ka-pow."
He seemed to know what she was thinking, and hugged her tighter for a second. "Let's just say I killed a bunch of people," was all he said, and that after several minutes of thinking, "And leave it at that."
Fantine's thoughts raced. Something Riddick didn't want to talk about. Something bad, from the sound of his voice. Couldn't have been that bad, though, or maybe it was just far enough away in memory that he could talk around it but not of it, not directly. But what had it been? Personal? Or so horrible that he didn't think she could hear it? She was dying of curiosity. "Okay." She knew better than to push.
"I killed a bunch of mercenaries..." he said then, turning and resting his cheek on the top of her head. "That got me on their shit list. The rest was simple."
"Simple." Nothing was simple anymore. She felt as though she'd been split in two, Fury and Fantine, one before that horrible day and one after. She felt as though she was staring at herself from across the Antares Canyons and unable to look away. "I guess."
"What about you? What are you in for?"
She'd expected the question, but she still wasn't prepared for it. "Arson. Armed robbery. Murder. Lots of it. Like you said, they don't dump us in here for parking violations." It was the same flippant answer she'd given Nicole centuries ago.
"And the rest was simple?"
She felt cut open, and everything was bleeding out. "No."
He waited.
"My Mom died shortly after I came to my majority. Drug overdose. We all figured it was coming sooner or later, she had more crap in her wing of the house than a pharmacy. Between that and the twenty different types of alcohol it was even odds which would kill her first. The hospitals wouldn't give her another liver. Said they didn't have the right type, but I knew better. She didn't need a second chance anyway."
Riddick didn't say a word. It made it harder for her to continue.
"I got stupid, then, I guess. All the money in the world and no Mom, no Dad to tell me what to do..."
"Your Dad died, too?"
"Nah, but he was never around anyway, so it didn't make much difference." A beat. She was realizing something. "I never really missed my parents much. They weren't the best parents in the world, although they did keep a roof over my head and food on my plate, but they weren't the worst either. They just... weren't there. I think I missed the idea of having parents more than anything else. Anyway." Riddick surely couldn't have wanted to know that much about her home life. She felt her face burn.
"Anyway...?"
"So after... well, I went a little nuts. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had the fast vehicles and the massive amounts of expensive technology and too much time on our hands. Spoiled rich kids, all of us. Only I had the bright idea, why squander the family fortune? Why not just creatively add to it? All the thrill, all the money."
He waited. "That's it?" he asked finally.
"That's it. Stupid, but not really all that interesting. And probably anti- climactic."
"You killed people for thrills." His voice had gone flat, distant. She would have thought, disapproving, if Riddick had been the sort inclined towards stern disapproval like someone's school headmaster. Damn.
"Well, no. Yes. Sort-of." She sighed. "No. And... let's just leave it at that, okay?"
"Okay."
No teasing, no jokes. It felt strange to miss the jokes. They were usually folded seamlessly into the conversation, light-hearted teasing and quips so obscure that it took some people days to figure out what had just gone on. Then again, the topic of conversation had been pretty hefty. Her fault, she supposed, for giving in to curiosity.
"Doesn't really matter now, I suppose," she murmured. Thinking out loud again, and it was probably a bad habit to get into in the Slam and especially around Riddick but she couldn't help herself right now. She was feeling too much, thinking too much, and it had to come out or she'd explode. "I mean, we're all in here. We're the worst of the worst, or at least that's what they tell us. That's what we tell ourselves."
"Most of us are right about that." He sounded as though he was walking on eggshells. She hated that he had to think that way about her. "We're bad men, Fantine. We're..."
"Stop that. I know what you are. I know what we are, down here. What I mean is, I guess it doesn't matter what we did on the outside. No one's ever going to really know for sure. What matters is what we do here, now. What we're willing to do."
He shifted a little in the bed but didn't say anything. She wondered what he was thinking. Hell, she was wondering what she was thinking, especially now. She half-hoped he didn't ask her what she meant by those words, because she couldn't have come up with an answer for him if she'd tried. And she didn't want to try. She'd rather just babble it all out and get it over with, if this was one of the phases she was supposed to go through after... but she didn't want to think about that, either.
"What are you going to do?" It was a complex question, she could tell that much. He was trying to ask something without asking it. She hated it when he did that.
"I don't know."
They'd exhausted all potential topics of conversation, and neither of them knew what to say. It felt odd, being so vulnerable, so confused afraid. Especially in the presence of the one person who she would never have wanted to show fear to. There was something deeply shameful about being afraid in front of Riddick. In front of anyone, but especially in front of Riddick. She didn't want him to see her like this, and she couldn't pull away. He made it safe. He was part of her, part of her world that could still hold her up. He was safe to trust and to hide behind. But the fact that she was hiding behind him must have said to him that she wasn't what he thought she was. She wasn't what he thought she was, what she had been convincing him she was. The thought latched into her brain like a lamprey and wouldn't let go.
He was falling asleep again. Dozing, she recognized the rhythm and the slight twitch of uncoiling muscles from all their previous nights together. But still falling asleep. Eventually she was able to sleep as well. At least until the nightmares came back.
Day was indistinguishable from night in the Slam, a factor which Fantine was sure contributed to the psychosis of the inmates. The only signs that marked the passing of the evening to the morning hours were the guards changing on those areas which had them and the faint brightening of the lights from yellow to white. Not that it made one whit of difference in how much light there was in the prison overall. She figured it was just some long-forgotten designer's nod to the Circadian rhythms by which humans lived their lives.
She hadn't been able to sleep. Eventually she'd just lay there under Riddick's arm and listened to his sleep-talk until the lights changed. There had been more, although nothing quite so humorous as the bananas and the fork. Once or twice she thought she caught something she shouldn't have. By the time he started to stir awake she'd resolved to put it out of her mind, and not to sleep with Riddick again if she could possibly help it. It was too personal, she was hearing too much for her own comfort. Or his, if she heard something and then let it slip out again later in public. Which was all too likely in her current babbling state.
She turned her head again and found herself staring almost directly into open, silvered eyes. Her vision swam as she stopped breathing for a second out of pure shock. "Jesus..."
"Riddick." He smiled.
"Goofball." She punched him lightly in the side again. "Ka-pow," she murmured around a yawn. "Anyone get the tag of that raptor that crapped in my mouth?"
He grinned. And then he rolled off the bed, and suddenly she felt as though she'd been dumped on an ice planet. "Funny..." he yawned, stretched. It was good to watch him stretch, but not as warm. He headed towards the door.
"Hey..." she jumped out of bed, nearly fell as her feet tangled in the blankets, and somehow managed to struggle over to where her shoes were. "Where are you going?"
"Bathroom?" he arched eyebrows at her as though it was perfectly obvious. It probably was. She had something of an aching need to pee, herself. "Where'd you think I was going?"
"I don't know..." She did know; she'd been certain, for one split second, that he was just going to walk right out of the door, the Slam, and her life. Never mind that while the first was probable the second didn't even bear thinking about, she would have laid money on it if someone had asked her. It was embarrassing. "Never mind. I'll come with you." That was even more embarrassing. Men and women shared all facilities almost equally in the Slam. She wasn't going to raise any eyebrows going into a men's bathroom on a men's cellblock, or at least not for those reasons.
"Okay..." he blinked a couple times, shrugged, and started down the hall.
She followed him, trying not to hunch over like someone who expected to be beaten. Going to the bathroom together in the morning and performing wake- up ablutions was something that couples did. Like spending a night in the same bed, asleep. She hated the fact that she was so dependant on Riddick, that she was performing all the actions of a girlfriend out of necessity. But staying in bed would have meant staying in bed alone, and going to the bathroom alone would have meant being alone in a white tile room where anyone could have walked in and...
Fantine hurried to catch up with him. He gave her a quizzical, slightly worried glance, but didn't say anything. A couple other inmates who she vaguely recognized as being on Riddick's block gave her strange glances as she scurried into a cubicle, but they didn't say anything either. It was all very awkward, and she hated it.
It was bad enough that she couldn't squeeze a drop at first. She sat there, cold metal and cold tile underneath her, shivering. The world had narrowed to that little tunnel again, not so far that she couldn't see her way out of it, but close. The sounds echoed in her ears and were distant at the same time, underwater noises. Someone banged on the door, and she screamed something profane and profound at the same time involving horses. She didn't know what she said.
When she was finally able to finish and pull her clothes back on her hands were shaking. Humiliation stained her face red, made her clumsy and oafish. It was almost as overwhelming as when she'd finally come back to self awareness in the quarantine shower, with Riddick sponge-bathing her like a child.
"You okay?" Riddick's voice sounded in her ear as she scurried out. Another jump, another suppressed scream. It was starting to hurt her throat.
"Fine." She swallowed, knowing how blatant the lie was. "I'm fine."
"Okay..." His voice was calm, even, as though they did this all the time. She wished she could be half so calm. "Come on. Let's go get breakfast."