Ok, sry it's kind of been a while. School and softball have been keepint me busy.

Sry if this chp isn't all that great. It just explains a couple things and gets them off the planet, and it forshadows a little i suppose... But anyway, i'm gonna put another chp. up tonight but right now i have hwk and i guess that's kind of important...meh

The Moosey> haha, thanks for all the reviews. Yea, i did know Nouvelle meant new. I just flipped open the dictionary and pointed at a word to use for a planet and that was the first one that sounded good. lol. How do they get intouch with Riddick?...it's explained in this chp and probably some more later. Yea, that damn age difference. I just decide to make Riddick mid 20's and then ignore the ages. After all, age it just a number.

Thanks to everyone for their reviews! I appreciate them all very much. keep 'em coming.


PACKING AND LEAVING

Jack jerked awake in the early hours of the morning and sat up quickly. The pain in her side from the sudden movement assured her that everything from the night before really had happened.

"Ugh," she groaned and rubbed sleep from her eyes.

"What's the matter?" Riddick sat up just after she did and looked her over.

"Nothing... we're leaving?" She suddenly remembered him saying they'd been there too long.

"Yea, once we get everything around"

Jack nodded and turned to that her feet were over the edge of the bed.

"I'm gonna take a shower"

"Ok. I gotta make some calls to find out how much fuel the ship will need and all that good shit"

"Stayed up all night?"

"Yea"

Jack nodded. Figures he'd stay up and plan. "Can you tell me something? Honestly?"

"Course"

"How bad does my face look? I'm gonna see it in the mirror anyway, so don't lie"

Riddick sighed and tilted her chin up to inspect the side of her face. Surprisingly, it really didn't look too horrible. Now that he thought of it, he should've put some ice on it for a while, but it honestly wasn't as bad as Jack probably thought it was going to be.

"It ain't that bad"

Jack nodded and got up and went to the bathroom. Riddick sighed and shook his head. Yea, it could've been worse but it shouldn't have been there in the first place. Her once flawless skin now had a dark bruise on it, along with a small cut. It was wrong and out of place, and she'd gotten it because of him. He knew worse would've happened if he hadn't come home and that actually scared him. As much as he loved her loyalty to him, it made him nervous. He knew she'd never give him up, no matter what, and that meant he'd have to be more careful from now on. He'd never forgive himself if something worse happened to Jack because of him.

Pulling on some normal clothes, he went to the kitchen to start making some of the arrangements. The people at the docks refused to do the refueling unless he was there to pay for it in person, so that was one thing he wasn't able to scratch of his mental list of things to do. He was, however, able to get other supplies sent to the ship, like some of the food they'd need and those sorts of things. That was definitely a relief, since him and Jack having to go get it all themselves would've been a drag.

Jack came out of the bathroom about 20 minutes later in loose jeans and a dark blue t-shirt. She got some coffee and took a seat across the table from Riddick.

"What do I need to do?" she asked. Surprisingly, Jack didn't feel sorry they were leaving. Catileen was a nice enough place, but Riddick was right, it was time to move on. If mercs were coming around then, yea, they had been there too long.

"Pack up whatever you want to keep"

"Ok"

"Mind packing my shit too? I have to go into town real quick. There are a few things I couldn't get sent to the ship."

Jack nodded and Riddick was surprise, but relieved, that she wasn't going to mind being left alone. She was growing up though, and wasn't the 15 year old who'd freaked out the first time mercs tried attacking their ship. She accepted this part of his life right along with the rest of it, and she better understood it now. It wasn't something that was going to go away, not with the huge bounty on his head. He wondered what it was up to now...

Jack got up from the table and headed back to the bedroom, so Riddick took it as an ok to leave and he did, after grabbing a coat.

Riddick went into town and the first thing he did was get some new shit for the ship. He bought some up-grade parts to install once they found a spaceport to stop at. It'd been a while since they'd used the ship and, if Jack agreed to an idea Riddick got during the night, they'd be using it a lot more, so they might as well have top of the line technology. After paying for it all, he threw in some extra creds to get it sent to his ship in a couple hours.

He was heading to find a Cred Machine that wasn't busy, so he could do some things with his account, when he passed a store with new laptops in a window display. 'Perfect...'

He went in and bought one that was the same as the displayed one. After purchasing it, he went right back to the apartment. That would take care of what he wanted to do, and took less than half the time.


Once Riddick left, Jack found their bags and tossed them on the bed. She threw in their clothes, not bothering to properly fold them and be neat because they'd just be unpacking them in the not-too-distant future. Then came all their other things, like toothbrushes, hair brushes (for her, obviously not for Riddick) and things like that. She tossed some books into her bag and some movies and a few more random things she had lying around. After double-checking what she had in the bag, she zipped it up and put it out in the hall. She left Riddick's where it was, in case he wanted something she didn't grab.

She grabbed a small bag out of her large duffle and went to the bathroom. Riddick had been right when he said the bruise wasn't too bad. Honestly, she'd been expecting a whole lot worse. It still looked pretty bad though, so she went about covering it up the best she could with some make-up. You could still tell it was there when she finished, but it wasn't as pronounced.

She went back to the kitchen, satisfied that she was good to go, and made a sandwich since she hadn't really eaten breakfast. She was putting everything away when the sound of a key in the lock was heard and then Riddick walked in. She turned and gave him a smile before turning back to her sandwich.

"Got something for ya," Riddick said, hanging his coat on the back of a chair.

Jack turned at that and saw a plain brown boxin his hand. She frowned in thought. It wasn't her birthday, that wasn't for a few weeks, so she didn't know what he'd be getting her or why.

"Um...ok..."

She eyed it curiously as he brought it over and handed it to her. She raised an eyebrow at him and he just shrugged and nodded for her to open it. She ripped the tape on one end and slid something out of the protective Styrofoam surrounding it.She set the box on the counter and looked at what she held in her hands. It was a thin, new silver laptop. She smiled up at Riddick with gratitude. She hadn't had one for quite a while now and had always meant to get another one, but never had for some reason.

"Thought you'd be able to use it," Riddick said quietly.

"Yea, thanks"

He nodded and gave her a careful, one-armed hug and a lingering kiss on her forehead. He stepped back after a moment and remembered what he was going to ask, getting his mind back on track and off of kissing her somewhere else.

"uh...Got everything ready?"

"Yea, I think so. I left your bag out incase I forgot something..."

She followed Riddick back to the room and stood in the doorway while he looked through his bag. He nodded with a small smirk when he found what she forgot, almost as if he'd expected her to forget it. He went back to the closet and pulled up a loose floorboard in the back corner, to get out a small box that had an extra gun and bullets. Riddick was more of a knife man himself, but had a few guns. He'd taught Jack how to aim properly, and they had two in the apartment. One was in the drawer of the bedside table, and the other in the closet. Jack had forgotten the later of the two.

Riddick put the small box in his bag before zipping it up and putting it with Jack's.

"Go finish that sandwich, and then we're outta here ok?"

Jack nodded and went back to her food. While she ate, she wondered where they were going to go. She didn't mind traveling and going from place to place, she liked it actually. When she was a kid she'd always wanted to travel the universe and see what there was to see, which was why she'd taken to sneaking onto ships after running away from her dad.

She didn't mind new places, and had never had a problem meeting new people when they settled in. Leaving old friends wasn't particularly fun, but she told the people she knew well that she moved around a lot. That way they wouldn't be surprised when they got her e-mail that she'd had to leave abruptly. She always made up some sort of story, once they were off-planet, and sent it to whomever she thought might miss her so that they wouldn't put out an alert that she was missing.

"Ready?" Riddick asked once he saw that Jack was done.

"Yea"

They grabbed their bags and were at the docks 30 minutes later. They'd barely walked up the ramp into the cargo hold when the new parts for the ship showed up. Riddick told them where to put it before following Jack up the steps and down the hall to their room to put their bags away.

"Ok, I gotta go get the refueling taken care of. Some people might show up while I'm gone with the food and shit. Just have them load it with the other stuff and then start putting some things away, ok?" Riddick explained, heading down the ramp once they were back in the cargo area.

"Yea"

Jack watched him leave and no sooner had he slipped out of sight and some men showed up with a shipment of crates. They got everything unloaded and Jack started rummaging through them. The crates were sloppily labeled, so reading what was in them was somewhat challenging, but once she figured it out she started taking food up to the kitchen area and putting it away in cupboards or the refrigerator.

Riddick came back when she had almost everything put away, and he helped her with the last few crates. By the time they were finished, the ship was fueled up and they were ready to go. All they needed to do was start her up and wait for the tower to give them clearance. That could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on how busy the lanes were.

"Jack, grab your computer and bring it up front with us. I need you to change around my account, k?"

Jack nodded and grabbed her laptop before going up to the front with Riddick and sitting in the co-pilot seat. "What planet do you want the accessing on?"

"Just put it on private user now. You got that thing, so that works just as good, if not better."

"Ok, but what planet do you want it to say your on for people?"

"It's freelancing. Tell them to leave the info and I'll get back to them"

"But, Riddick, what..."

"I'll explain later, Jack. Just do it, huh?"

"Sure"

Jack shrugged and did what she was told, knowing he had his reasons. Once word of his 'work' had gotten around, Riddick didn't need to go look for jobs anymore. Now he had a account set up that was little more than an e-mail account. People that had need of his 'service' sent him what they needed done and how much they were willing to pay. Riddick got back to whomever he chose and got further information on what he'd have to do and sometimes negotiated the price. Once he figured out who he had to X-out, he did the job and collected the money. Simple as that, basically. He'd turned jobs down before because he'd found out that in entailed killing whole families. He stoutly refused to kill kids and women, and that had gotten a few people mad at him but hadn't caused any real problems yet.

Jack changed the information in the account and then changed the password. She changed the password to his bank account too, after rewiring it to be accessible from their computer.

'Mr. Richardson, you are cleared for the take-off of the Eclipse. Have a safe flight, and we hope you enjoyed your time here.' A voice said over the com speakers.

Riddick flipped some switches and a few minutes later they were taking off into space, the force of it pushing them back in their seats. Once they were ascended, the cabin pressurized and everything felt normal. Jack clicked the laptop shut and set it aside to stare out at the stars. She always liked looking at them; there were so many. It was calming somehow and it never really seemed to get boring because you certainly never saw the same thing twice.

Jack gazed out at them in fascination for a while, until she felt Riddick's eyes on her. She turned and met his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing...you ok?"

"Sure. Why?" She shrugged it off and ignored that fact that he could see through the half-lie.

"We never really talked about last night," Riddick said quietly. They probably should, he knew, since it was going to bug her.

"There's not a whole lot to talk about"

Riddick raised an eyebrow at her but let it slide. He'd let her think about whatever she was thinking about alone for a while, but he'd bring it up again if she didn't. He liked knowing what was going on around him and it'd eat at him knowing something was wrong with her that she wasn't talking about. She already was, but he pretty much knew what that was all about. Or at least he thought it did.

Jack sighed and tucked her legs under her. She didn't like lying to Riddick, but it wasn't really a lie. She couldn't exactly put her finger on what was wrong. Yea, last night had obviously scared her, but there was something else about it... Something that bugged her deeper than those men themselves. Whatever it was nagged at her and seemed just out of her mind's reach. She'd figure it out soon though and then she'd talk about it.


Eh, there ya go. Hope u liked it. I'm gonna put the next Chp. up 2night.

R and R