Chapter 24
Dakota woke slowly, groggily. Damn sedatives, she thought with a foul snarl. He still had the damn vitals sensors hooked up, and… yep… IV was still in. Damn. She sat up slowly, hoping her head wouldn't spin. Glancing around the room, she searched for a way out without sending Riddick into a panic again. She kinda felt bad about that. Granted, last time wasn't entirely her fault – she didn't know who she was, much less where she was and what she was doing there. With a heavy sigh, she focused on the vitals monitor, looking for a way to turn the damn thing off. She finally gave up and just found the plug, tearing it out of the wall, hearing the motor hum as it slowed to a stop. Satisfied, she pulled off the sensors, glad the beeping didn't start again. Grimacing, she slowly drew out the IV needle, tossing it on the bed, still connected to the drip bag. After rummaging around in the various drawers, she found a bandage and applied it where the IV had just been.
The metal floors were cold on her bare feet, and she was sore all over. She shuffled to the door, turning the latch for the lock, and stepped into the hall, taking in the scenery of the ship. Evidently, Riddick had switched them out after she'd left, either that or he did some serious remodeling. She was on the bottom floor, she supposed, of at least a bilevel. The staircase was across a large, rectangular room, which had several doors along the walls. Interesting, she thought. More than two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a dojo, and a med bay. She shrugged slightly and moseyed toward the stairs, guessing the main floor was the next up. The aches and pains grew the more she moved, but she'd never been so hungry in her life. Her stomach agreed with a covetous growl, and she stifled a laugh. It would hurt too much to indulge.
She slowly padded her way down the upstairs hallway, glancing into open doors as she passed. Though it seemed a fairly large ship, it was really on the large side of small, from what she knew. It was definitely a cruiser, but nowhere near luxury or residential. She'd even heard of colonial cruisers, where entire communities lived on one huge ship together. With both her and Riddick, this ship would probably prove to be a little too small, in reality.
He'd heard the door open the minute she disengaged the lock, smirking. Just couldn't take it anymore, huh? He knew she'd have his dick if he rushed down there and forced her back into bed to rest, though it was probably the best idea, so he figured he'd just let her get sore at her own fault instead. He shook his head and returned to his coffee, hearing her bare feet shuffle along the floor. Probably can't even lift her feet enough to walk the right way, he thought with a mental snicker. Her movement paused, and he glanced up. She'd not made it to the doorway yet – What could possibly have her attention? Despite his curiosity, he remained in his seat at the breakfast bar. The old cruiser had had an actual table, but this one's kitchen was laid out a bit differently. Cabinetry covered the walls, floor to ceiling, with a break for a counter all the way around the room. The breakfast bar was on the side of the island facing the doorway, a large window behind it. He'd hung black synthetic curtains to block the light out. Her sigh was audible, a slight whimper breaking through. The curious smirk fell from his lips, but he still didn't move. Her shuffling continued, drawing closer to the kitchen. Finally, she paused in the doorway.
"You handled the steps already?" he asked, slightly bemused, but not looking up from the documents in front of him. She murmured something he didn't catch, but he let it slide. He looked up at her finally, watching her eye the refrigerator door, seeming to contemplate whether or not she could pull it open without hurting herself. "You're hungry?" She glanced over at him, nodding. He smiled, a warm, genuinely sympathetic smile, and stood. "Sit down. I'll fix you something."
"I can fix myself something," she said quietly. He stifled a chuckle.
"You can't open the refrigerator door, Kody. How the fuck are you going to fix yourself something?" She glared at him, and his smile faded. "Seriously. Just sit down." She complied grudgingly, and he leaned his elbows on the back of the chair next to her, just watching her avoid his eyes. "Will you just let me take care of you until you can take care of yourself again?" he asked gently.
"I can take care of myself," she protested weakly. He sighed, turning to the refrigerator.
"Special requests?" He turned back to her with the question, not venturing to ask what the wince was for.
"No meat," she requested quietly. His eyebrow rose.
"You're a vegetarian." He meant it to sound like a question, but it came out more like a challenge. She only nodded.
"Coffee, too, please," she added.
"So you don't eat meat," he repeated.
"No, I don't eat meat," she returned. "Is that such a big fucking deal you can't just let it go?"
"I just didn't expect that," he said quickly. "I never would have pegged you for a vegetarian."
"Why?" He shrugged. "See, growing up as poor as I did, and then losing my providers so early in life, I couldn't ever afford meat, so I never got used to it. Never had the enzymes for it."
"I thought everyone had the enzymes for it," Riddick pondered, half to himself. "I mean, if humans are omnivores, which we are, we've got to have the enzymes for it, right?"
"Your body stops making them if you go without it long enough," she said with a shrug, taking the cup of coffee he'd offered her.
"Want anything in it?" She shook her head no, taking a sip of the steaming liquid, closing her eyes as it burned its way down. "Strong enough for you?" She nodded.
"Perfect."
"Good," he said, turning back to find her something meatless to eat. "So I take it you're feeling better."
"Not really," she said slowly. "I was just sick of looking at the same scenery and never really moving." She rubbed her forehead with a shaky hand. "And I was hungry." He chuckled. "Very hungry," she corrected.
"You don't want to eat too much," Riddick said quietly. "You haven't had solid food in a while." She snorted, then held her side. He noticed, but didn't say anything. She dug in greedily as he set a bowl of vegetable and noodle soup in front of her, and thank god it had more chunks than broth. "Easy," he warned. She ate in silence, ignoring his gaze on her, and finished the soup quickly, leaving the bowl so clean one would have thought Riddick had just pulled it out of the dishwasher and set it on the table with a spoon in it for decoration. She grinned, leaning back in the chair with a contented, albeit pained, sigh.
"Now will you go back to bed and take it easy for a while?" he asked slowly. She glowered at him.
"Do I have to go back to the med bay?"
"That reminds me," he started. She'd known this was coming. "How'd you get the sensors off without setting off the alarm?"
"It's called a plug, Riddick," she said flatly.
"Great." Her eyebrow rose. "Have to reprogram the damn thing."
"Serves you right," she quipped. "Did you really think I was going to fall asleep and not wake up, or have a heart attack in the middle of the night?" He shrugged. "Why the fuck did you use it anyway? Just couldn't resist breaking in a new toy?"
"Something like that," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "Yeah, I guess you could pick out a room and settle in."
"How many do you have?" she asked with a quiet snicker.
"Too many," he answered, rolling his eyes. "It was all Tim could scrounge up at the last minute."
"Tim," she said quietly, her face betraying her overworking mind. "Shit. You have to warn him."
"About what?" Riddick asked, eyebrow perched in a high arch.
"He has to leave Castia before they go looking for you. If they find out he was seen with me, he's in big trouble."
"Don't worry about it." Kody started to protest, but Riddick cut her off. "Seriously. Tim's a big boy. He can handle himself."
"I can't help you save him," she said quickly, before he could interject again.
"Listen," Riddick started with a heavy sigh, rubbing his eyes. "Tim only stopped on Castia long enough to let me take over the ship for him, and he got the hell out of there that night."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Kody." He sounded exasperated, and she wasn't sure why. "Just let me take care of shit and you concentrate on getting better."
"Yeah, yeah," she moaned, shifting in her chair. He watched, the expression on his face telling her he wanted to ask something, so she pressed. "Look, Riddick. I know you're just dying to say something, so fucking spit it out already." He grinned.
"I was just thinking that I should have let you stitch yourself up." Her eyebrow rose. "You know, Twosy was right. You shoulda worked for Doc." Kody's eyes fell at the mention of that name, and Riddick apologized gruffly, but she waved him off.
"Nothing either of us could have done," she said quietly.
"You really think it was Daisy?" She shrugged.
"No telling," she uttered with a sigh. "Is he capable of it? Naturally. Do I really think he'd stoop that low just to get to me? I don't know."
"Does it matter now?" Riddick asked, adding his own question to the pile. She paused, licking her lips and feeling out the stitches in her lip.
"Let's hope not." He nodded, focusing on his coffee instead of her. Yeah, he was definitely glad now that Tim had insisted on getting her out instead of him. There was no telling if either of them would have gotten out alive with what he now wanted to do to the people that had beat her up so badly. But she seemed to be taking it well.
"Riddick, just quit babying me, god damn it." Kody sighed, exhausted from feebly fighting Riddick off. He was busy tucking her in, checking in on her, bringing her water or snacks, adjusting her pillows, changing her dressings, checking her stitches… God he's annoying. He paused mid-motion, finger poised over the room's temperature control. "Jesus. What the fuck got into you?" His eyebrow rose. "You're hovering."
"I am?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up into the air. "Christ, Riddick, just fucking leave me alone." She instantly regretted saying that, the hurt look on his face punching her in the stomach. He shoved his hands into his pockets and glared down at his toes, wiggling them in his socks. "You're driving me nuts fussing over me," she said quietly. "I'm fine, really." His eyes met hers, and she tried to smile. "If I need something, I'll let you know, okay?" He nodded, glancing at the door for a moment before moving toward it. She sighed. "I didn't mean you had to leave."
"Well, what do you want me to do then?" he snapped. Her brow twitched, and he mentally kicked himself.
"Just talk to me." He stood there for a moment, as though pondering whether or not he would listen. She gestured to a nearby chair. "Pull it up and talk to me," she repeated. Her eyes followed him as he complied, and she smiled weakly at him, watching him watch his fingers. "You're not talking," she finally said, watching his lips twitch in a quick smile.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know," she whined. "Tell me a story."
"You're a little old for bedtime stories, aren't you?" She heard the playfulness in his voice and smiled, this time wide and genuine.
"Indulge me."
"Well," he started, pausing to think.
"Tell me about T2," she requested quietly. His eyes darted up to hers and held them for a moment before he leaned back in his chair and covered them with a hand, rubbing back and forth slowly.
"You don't want to hear about T2," he said quietly, his voice tight.
"Yes I do," she pressed. He sighed heavily.
"I was on Guardia for about a week, laying low for a while," he said slowly. "Saw a kid in an alley getting beat up and stepped in. Didn't know Johns had tracked me down and was watching, and he capitalized on the opportunity." Her eyebrow rose, not in surprise at the content of his statement, but how he'd worded it. She'd decided he took the easiest route in choosing his wording. "Pistol whipped me and then hit me with the fucking taser. Knocked my punk ass out." She grimaced. "Next thing I knew, I was back in a holding cell, blindfolded, tied up, with a bit in my mouth."
"A bit?" she asked incredulously.
"Yeah, a horse bit." He sighed, clenching his jaw as though just speaking of it brought back sensations that it was there again. "Anyway, I could tell I was in a cargo hold or something. Hooked up to the juice, but it never worked." She smiled at his nonchalant shrug, as though cryo not having an effect on him was the most natural thing in the world. "Wound up in a lockout protocol tube on the Hunter-Gratzner with probably forty other people. Twenty-two weeks out, comet swiped us. Knocked us out of the shipping lanes, and straight into hell." She was listening intently, taking in every muscle that twitched, every slight expression on his face, every fluctuation in the tone of his voice. "Crashed hard. Luckily for me, Johns was knocked out cold, and the impact cracked the tube I was in, so I busted out." She smiled. "Unluckily for me, he noticed, and I ended up hog tied and blindfolded again. Bit back in." He sighed, closing his eyes as though he could return to the moment somehow. "Another opportunity presented itself, and I was out again. This time, though, I could get far enough away to sit back and watch again.
"The survivors naturally went looking for water, and, as my luck usually runs, they figured it was in my direction, so I had to find some creative places to hide," he continued. "I tracked different people, started noticing things. Zeke, this New Australian guy. Cocky mother fucker. Never found out where he was going, but he didn't get there. Digging graves for the ones not fortunate enough to make it. Shit hit the fan. He let the natives know we were poking around, and one got to him."
"They blamed it on you," she guessed. He nodded.
"Shiv was clean and so was I, but I was the god damn killer, so it had to be my doing." He heaved another weighty sigh and continued. "Carolyn, the docking pilot. She'd planned on blowing the passenger cabin during the landing. Couldn't get the bitch's nose down and thought she needed to drop more weight." He smirked. "Lucky us. Crewmate stopped her. Anyway, she just had to go looking for Zeke's body and ended up finding a lair of the damn things. Convinced Johns it wasn't me, and he made me an offer. No bit, no blades, no backtalk and he'd let me walk."
"Let you walk," Kody said slowly, sounding unsure.
"I knew the fucker was lying through his teeth. Johns was to fucking greedy to let a bounty as big as mine go. But I played along. Figured if I followed the rules while he was looking, I'd kill him when it was convenient and make good on his deal for him." He rubbed a hand over his head. Need to shave. "Anyway, shit started adding up. I was the only one prudent enough to start putting things together, and by the time they figured out they were in trouble, I knew what was going to happen. Hell, I even had a good idea of when. I'd heard of the transports going missing, never to be heard from again. Johns didn't believe me until the eclipse."
"Convenient to have you around then," she said.
"Well, yes and no. I was planning on leaving them all there so I could take the skiff and get the fuck on with my life," he said with a shrug. "I don't know what happened, though," he added, still mystified. "The kid started getting to me, and Carolyn started getting to me." He shook his head, rubbed his eyes again. "Johns wanted to kill the kid and use… the body for bait. Keep the things off our asses so we could get out. A fight ensued, and he lost."
"You?"
"Sorta. See, the things – whatever the fuck they were – had a nose for blood. Slashed his back open, and he was too much of a pussy to take it and move on, so they got him. That was the first time I saved her," he added quietly. Oh, she thought, the kid was Jack. "Anyway, we kept moving, heading back to the skiff." The confused expression on her face interrupted his train of thought. "Oh, yeah, the skiff was out of power, so we had to use the power cells from the crash ship. We were in the process of taking them from the crash back to where the skiff was when the eclipse decided to have its turn." She nodded, her lips forming a silent 'oh'. "Started raining when we were almost there, and by that time, the only light we had to keep the fuckers away from us – they were photosensitive, by the way; light burned them – the only light we had to keep them away was little lanterns made out of liquor bottles." She nodded. "So, conveniently enough, there just happened to be a cave nearby, and I locked them up inside. By then it was just me, Carolyn, Imam, and… the kid." She grimaced. Jack, she thought, correcting him mentally. I was about ready to take off, and Carolyn showed up. They found these little glow worm thingies, and stuffed the bottles with them. A fight ensued – half assed on my part." Her eyebrow rose. "I don't fight women," he added quietly. She thought about protesting, since they'd gotten into a tussle a few times, but thought better of it, wanting to hear the rest of the story. "So she convinced me to go back for the other two and, on the way back, she bit it." He stopped suddenly, shaking his head and licking his lips. She waited, willing him to continue. "I'd never been hurt before." His eyes avoided hers, but she kept watching him anyway – his jaw tightening, forehead scrunched, brows drawn down. "Never felt like I'd lost something when someone else died. I mean, it's not like I knew her, but she took a chance on me. She convinced Johns I was safe enough to let wander around without having him hawk over me all the time."
"She saw you as a fellow human and not an animal," Kody added. He nodded slightly.
"So back to the skiff, and we took off. The end." He sighed, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. She noticed his leg was shaking slightly – like when you have pressure on just the right point of your foot to make the rest of your leg jump in rapid succession.
"Go on," she pushed.
"That's it," he said quizzically.
"Well, you had to get picked up or something. If you'd been knocked that far out of the lanes, you would have been too far out for the skiff's life support system to keep everyone alive."
"We weren't that far out of the lanes though. Three days after we left T2, we were back in the lanes and I shut down everything but life support and autopilot. Saved energy."
"But the life support…" she insisted.
"Fine, fine," he sighed. "We hooked up with a shipping transport. They picked us up and watched us closely until they found a place to drop us off."
"So they knew who you were."
"They had an idea, yeah. But with a mystery alias with no records – and I mean none – they didn't have the grounds to do much except restrict our access to our rooms and the mess hall," he explained with a shrug. "They didn't have access to the biometrics database, so they couldn't check my fingerprints or anything. Just had to take our word and do as much as they could to protect themselves."
"And all of this changed you," she said slowly. He didn't answer. "Riddick?"
"Hmm?"
"Will you tell me about Jack?"
"Some other time, Kody," he said quietly. She nodded. Fair enough. They both fell silent for a while – Kody trying to imagine the events, and Riddick trying to forget them.
"Do you feel guilty?" she asked suddenly. Their eyes met for an instant, but he looked away.
"For what?"
"Anything," she said noncommittally.
"Yeah, I do." She nodded. "Not so much for the people I killed myself, but for the people that got killed because of me." Her eyebrow rose, and he cracked a slight smile. "That didn't seem like much of a distinction, huh?" She smiled.
"I know what you mean," she said. "You don't feel as guilty about killing people as you do about the people who died because of their, um, contact with you."
"Yeah, I guess." He took a breath and paused. "No, actually. Not because of their contact with me." She waited, and it took him a while to continue. "There have been few people I've given into the compulsion to protect."
"You didn't fail them, Riddick," she said gently. He sighed.
"Yeah, I did."
"You couldn't have saved Carolyn, no more than you could have saved the people that died because of the crash itself." His jaw tightened. "And no matter what you think, and how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, you couldn't have saved Jack." His eyes closed. He knew that's where this was going, but he'd hoped she wouldn't bring it up. So much for hoping.
"I could have listened to her," he admitted quietly, suddenly taken with a scratch in the flooring.
"And it would have happened eventually anyway."
"Which is exactly why I should never have went back in the first place," he said quietly. "But I just had to go back and force her back into the mud with me."
"Riddick…"
"I got her out of it at one point." Kody shut her mouth, crossing her fingers that it was now the some other time Riddick had referred to when dodging her request to tell her about Jack. "She just looked up to me so much. Fucking shaved her head and everything. No one ever looked up to me before. And she wouldn't have stayed with Imam anyway. I didn't want her back on the streets to get fucked up again anyway, so I let her tag along with me. And then I realized she could have a better life with Imam or on her own than she could with me, so I sent her back." He smiled slightly. "Well, I sent her on vacation, and then I sent Imam to pick her up." He shook his head. "But that story's for a different day," he finished, somewhat sadly. He knew she'd hold him to the 'some other time' promise. She nodded slowly, and he stood.
"Riddick." He paused in the doorway, not turning, so she continued. "You haven't failed me."
"Yet."