Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.
Riddick paused before a bored-looking guard, staring the man in the eye. He glowered darkly, but the guard just shifted his weight to the other foot, leaning back against the wall.
Spook laid her thin hand on Riddick's thick forearm, lightly pulling him on.
"Spook, what happened that night?" The thin form stopped, turning to him.
"They lured you with me. You fought them, then one of the guards slipped. He slipped. Gave me an opening to get away. Then he got a little careless and lost a grenade or two. Blew the room apart as I managed to drag you out." The large man stared down his nose at her, silvered eyes glinting, glowing, glaring. The small girl merely gazed up into his cool face, her own slanted eyes looking even larger with the bottomless shine reflecting off them beneath her raised brows. The pouty lips hinted at the ghost of a smile that so often touched them.
The large man frowned, scowled, sighed, then let the slight touch steer him into the dark hall.
His boots echoed down the cement tunnels, the soft beat of the soles drowning out the silent tread of the pale bare feet before him. He watched the gentle form as she slipped ahead, waited for him to catch up, slunk again into eternal night.
The sweltering, smothering darkness was closer than usual, the creeping gloom stifling the senses, the mind. Spook seemed to flicker while they walked, wavering like a mirage before his eyes, dancing and weaving like a sylph in a breeze. She seemed far distant, yet as if she stood at his shoulder, her breath on his cheek.
Inmates slunk past him, their shoulders to the walls, eyeing him dully, without caring. Women turned to glance at him with wide, startled doe eyes, watching with mild amounts of panic as he passed through a brief patch of light of another guard post, the guard checking his chrono to see how much longer he had to stand at the med bay doors.
Another turn, back into the darkness. The ground crept below his boots, turn after twist, the scent of stale sweat, the faint reek of old blood.
Spook peered around her in the darkness. Ahead was the mess, cluttered with its guards, the press of the teeming masses, the clamoring of the people the rest of the universe wanted to forget. Around her she felt the sighing breaths of slam. Behind echoed the dull boots of Riddick. The darkness seemed lighter about her since the night of the explosion, and more so since Riddick showed his improved health.
His vitality, his restlessness, brought a smile to her pale lips. It was he who insisted upon leaving the hole now, and he who wanted to venture further and further away. She insisted on being the advance, scouting ahead as she was now, watching the eternal night for any who would harm her protector. She ran her fingertips over the harsh cement, smiling, content knowing that none would harm him while she watched his back and he stood ready to fight.
His health had been improving steadily.
He no longer woke her with his sleeping ramblings, his groans of pain.
No longer could she scent the underlying taint of pain and sickness in his sweat, the smell of infection on his skin.
His breathing came unhindered, his sides no longer flaring pain at the lightest touch. In fact, she had found him to be slightly ticklish, a fact that she found great delight in.
His eyes shone alert when he was wakeful, and moved slowly when he slept, when he dreamed.
He was reading again, and had managed to produce another worn book from a mysterious somewhere, even under her watchful eyes. It told the tale of a man who created a monster, and it read as a diary. He had grinned when he handed it to her, finding it to be some source of humor.
His spirits were improved, but so was his caution.
He had been nervous about her leaving the rabbit hole before, and now he insisted that they only leave it together.
But the large man was still anxious. She glanced back at him, watching the steady, alert movements of his body, the way he paced after her like a solitary lion tracking, stalking, striding through the night. His eyes were dark pits beneath his brows. His breath occasionally sucked deeply in, sniffing, testing, tasting the air around him. His shaven head would turn, tilt, as he listened to the still darkness. The dark, chrome eyes peered suspiciously about them. Every living being in the halls brought him pause, his eyes skimming their bodies, his shoulders tightening ever so slightly until their footsteps faded into the night.
Again the smile played over her lips. Her eyes turned back to the winding way before her. The light was spilling into the corridor, staining the cement the pale, sickly taint of halogen lamps. She stood, the light lapping just before her toes, her own silver eyes staring down at it. Riddick stopped next to her, and those eyes turned their quizzical, eerie gaze onto his face, her face tilted to the side, hair falling over her cheek.
There was a strange light in those mercurial eyes, a light that the tall man couldn't place. A light that struck a strange harmony. She gazed up into Riddick's eyes, and those pale fingers lightly touched his bronze arm, the touch feather-soft before departing, leaving a cool spot on his bicep.
Her thin hand gestured to the room, the thrum of voices, the thin scent of the gruel. "We've arrived. But this isn't where you want to go, despite what you said."