Revelation

Zemma was still biting his lip when Riddick asked, "Feel better now?"

Zemma let her fingertips stroke his head and face lightly. Without actually relinquishing his lip she replied, "Not yet." They grinned at each other, nose to nose.

Her hands dropped down his neck and shoulders and crossed to his chest. His came slowly up her back, massaging away her tension. Zemma turned the bite into a kiss. But when she leaned into him, her hands searching to get under the edge of his shirt, he pulled back and caught them in his own.

"Not yet," he told her.

Zemma sat back and looked at him. "What?"

"We still have unfinished business." Firm, but not unkind.

Zemma waited.

"You're still evading me."

Zemma sighed.

"You didn't disappear for fifteen hours over Fury, and not being sure how I feel about you. Is it Jack?"

Zemma choked out a short mirthless laugh. "No, not Jack."

This time Riddick waited.

"It used to be that I would feel overwhelmed, and talk to my ferrin, my father. Later he…was so distant, I would hide or talk to my cats. Jaron, he's like any father a girl could want. You are not like a father to me." Zemma leaned in and kissed him softly. "I want to be strong around you but… you make me feel so weak inside. It scares me. And I don't know how to tell you that."

"You just did." Zemma could hear the smile in his voice.

"All of the sudden I have lots of strange fears. All about the future." She tipped her head into chest.

"Losing me, landing dirt side on Fury, and what else?"

Zemma didn't think, she just spoke, "W'Rdah."

Oh, Zemma, should you?

"All hot air." He murmured comfortingly. When Zemma stiffened in his arms he tipped her face up to look at him. "Came to see me, remember? Dragging Jack by the scruff. SHE says he misunderstood her. You did too." Again, it wasn't even a question.

"You already knew?"

He didn't reply, answer enough.

"You're not afraid of me. I like that. But trust me. Sometimes I do save the maiden."

Zemma gaped. Jaron had been talking! Riddick laughed and closed her mouth with a kiss.

"He loves you. I don't begrudge him that, despite what you think. Just come to me, okay?"

"How do you know what I think?" Zemma couldn't resist teasing him with her voice. "You're wrong about what I think of Jack. I like her… and I think she needs a kick in the head."

Riddick laughed and Zemma's heart soared with the sound. She did feel better, now.

"But, Riddick, she's right about my being your weak spot. It has been the problem from the first. I couldn't bear losing you because of me."

"And in fifteen hours, did you come up with a solution to that problem, that doesn't involve you running away?"

"No," begrudgingly. "I just kept thinking about Nor without Nik. I'm not as strong as Nor."

"You're a survivor. You're stronger than you think."

"I'm not your equal."

Yet.

"You don't have to be."

When Zemma didn't answer he pulled her close and whispered in her ear, as if imparting a secret. "You balance me." Then his lips searched out her neck, as he reached to unbraid her hair.

"Why don't you trust me with the story of you and Jack?" Zemma asked breathlessly before he could completely distract her. That made him pause, but only for the barest second.

"Once upon a time," he whispered against her skin. "Eleven people and a convict lived through a crash, only to discover monsters worse than the murderer among them."

He kissed her where he neck met her shoulder, and finding he could go no further, stopped to unzip her shirt partway. He pulled it partway down, exposing more flesh but not freeing her of its constraint.

"The world passed into darkness and only the man who wasn't a man could see." He whispered in between nips on her shoulder. Zemma shuddered, but not from the story.

"The man who wasn't a man didn't want to save the others, but another man had a gun. And so bargain was struck." Riddick busied himself with the other shoulder for a moment before going on. "When the real villain showed his true colors, the murderer killed him to save a little girl."

"Ah."

"Still, the murderer gave into his animal side and left the others to die." Zemma found her shirt pulled down further as she was pulled up. Where Riddick now spoke against her skin gave her goose bumps. "But a real woman, the hero of our story, did not give up. She made the killer into a man. Then died in his arms. He never forgot her."

This turned Zemma's head from the ceiling to the face of the man before her. He paused to look back at her. "And so a child, a cleric, and a criminal escaped with their lives changed, and a bond formed." Riddick's rubbed his hands up and down Zemma's bare arms as he looked into her face.

"But the new man feared what the change might bring when the child killed to protect him. He ran away to live like an animal, leaving the child and the cleric in God's hands. It was a mistake. God is a sadist."

Zemma was more than a little surprised at the sheer poetry she was hearing, masking what was undoubtedly horror. It was a side of him she supposed no one was allowed to see. She didn't mind being a captive audience, in fact grateful to trust and be trusted.

"And now?" She asked.

"Now." He sighed and rubbed his hands over her shoulders and neck. "Now, the cleric is dead. The child is grown. The assassin is king." He bent back to kissing her neck. "And a maiden has become a real woman."

Zemma shivered.