Title: Humanity

Author: GympIsShort

Rating: R

Fandom: Pitch Black

Summary: Jack doesn't expect to come face to face with her past especially when she has tried so desperately to forget what has gone on before in her life. Will she really be able to deal with the resurfacing of and old friend, one she once thought to be dead?

Feedback: Is VERY welcome.

Disclaimer: no I do not own the characters and places from Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick. I borrow them only for my twisted enjoyment.

Humanity is what everyone takes of granted what everyone already has. No one thinks that it can be taken away, that a person can grow up in the wrong side of that thin line dividing right and wrong. No one knows what it's like to grow up moving from place to place, living one day at a time, trying to make a quick buck off of anything, just to survive. If a person does finally get out of that pattern, that habit of living, constantly on the look out, the only reason is because you're either free, or dead.

CHAPTER ONE: REMEMBERANCE

Looking out at the millions of stars visible on the view screen, Jack was surprised to feel a weight lifting off her chest. She preferred traveling the stars over life in a space port; the stars didn't hurt you in the night. Didn't promise one thing then leave you at the next opportune moment. Didn't say they'd protect you, all the while ready to throw you to the wolves. Above all the other reasons, they didn't, the stars didn't talk, they didn't ask her about her past, didn't question her motives, or how she got her money. And more than anything else, they didn't ask about Riddick. No one asked about Riddick anymore, not after nine long years.

Riddick had been caught shortly after their escape from the Hunter Gratzner crash, while trying to protect her and Imam from bounty hungry mercs. Even though the Riddick the world had known had died on that planet, they still wanted him to pay for his many crimes. So, accepting his fate, Riddick had born the brunt of his sentenced pain and torture alone in a dank and dark cell. He was sentenced to live out the rest his days in the maddening darkness. And he did.

…

Jack pulled herself out of her bad memories and set the ship on Auto Pilot, her destination being a small revolving spaceport above the Venos Cluster on the old trading lanes to Helion Prime and New Mecca. After the accident, Imam Jack and Riddick had been picked up near an outpost on the rings of Tangiers 6. A small planet on the outer boundaries of the system, the three had made up a semi-convincing story of Riddick being a miner from the ore fields off of Serenity 2. Riddick had played the part well, if only his character was a little more reformed. Yet on that small skiff Riddick had learned what it really meant to be human, and learned to love enough to be willing to die for Jack.

Jack had put of all of her slightly misguided trust into him and had fed off of it in the long days of their isolation. Yet when Riddick, Imam, and Jack had been picked up, he'd kept his disguise long enough for the trio to reach spaceport then with a sadness that reached into the depths of his soul, he departed from their little group. Jack had known they would be parting ways, yet the timing was unexpected, she cried when he left. Repeating over and over, "He didn't even say goodbye, he didn't say goodbye."

Jack had remained trapped in her own small world of pity, self loathing, and disillusionment until the news of Riddick's untimely death reached her and Imam. Then all hell broke loose. The famed Killer and Escaped Convict had apparently turned him self in to the actual authorities, and then requested that the bounty on his head be put into an account for one Jack B. Badd. Yet two years later, well after the money had been retrieved by Imam Richard B. Riddick was put to death. The pair had been stunned when they received the news, and shortly after, Jack decided to return to her runaway roots. Taking some Credits she left New Mecca and Imam for a new life on her own.

Power and money can corrupt the mind and disguise the greed for a payday for love. The single sentence was all she had written as a note to Imam the day she left, yet Jack knew that he would understand. He knew she had been itching to get off the planet for months. After being enrolled in a school for mostly Chrislams, Jack had felt suffocated while trying to deal with the free ideas of the planet she and Imam had settled on and the strict beliefs of her teachers and peers. Although it was not talked about, her history with Riddick was no secret to her fellow students, and a high level of tension always followed Jack wherever she went during school. With the death of Riddick, Jack finally forced herself to make a decision, to stay where she knew she would be unhappy, or leave. She left.

…

After a peaceful three month trip through less traveled shipping lanes, Jack and her cargo arrived in the old earth systems. As she approached the small spaceport, she was hailed by the docking attendant on duty.

"Welcome back to Venian Spaceport, Night Hunter." The attendant called over the open communications channel Jack had used to identify her ship.

"It's good to be back." Jack replied as she prepared for a landing inside the Spaceports' docking bay, "I've got a normal cargo, but my baby's got some fluctuation in the engines I want to get checked out while I'm here."

"No problem, I'll call down to the docking bay to ready some service engineers." The attendants reply crackled in Jacks' headset.

"Night Hunter out." Jack murmured into the mic on the headset before flicking off the comms and lining up a safe trajectory for docking with the station.