Oh my God! I'm so sorry that it's been so long since I updated. Don't worry I'm getting back to it now. I've just been commissioned to do a painting though so I'll see how it goes.
Wow what a mad few weeks! The weather is amazing over here in old Blighty (wonders will never cease!) but I seem to be the only person who can get a virus in this heat. I spent a whole entire week in bed surrounded by mountainous piles of snotty tissues (eww!). I didn't even have the drive to do any writing on any of my fics, I just kind of slept and sat there.
Then it was my birthday on the 26th. Woohoo, I am now 21! Yay! And I got the Rob Dougan album 'Furious Angels' that this fic is inspired by. That man is a genius when it comes to music…and he's hot too! Lol! You guys should check out his stuff, it's so inspiring! 'Furious Angels' the song is still my fav track though. Check out the words…wow…
I also now have my own little convict running around somewhere, watching out for me…no I'm not making it up. I met a guy on the train station…he was a little…ahem…drunk shall we say, but he didn't scare me like the other drunks that I've unfortunately met on the train. I felt quite sorry for him, I think he just needed someone to talk to and so I listened. I'm a very good listener. Agony Aunt Gem, that's me! It's quite touching that he felt he could tell me his problems and I gave him some advice. His train came before mine and I got a kiss on the cheek (not that I make a habit of letting random drunk men kiss me) and the promise that if we ever met again and anyone was messing with me, he'd go after them with a crowbar. I think that's sweet...in a weird, twisted kinda way…I didn't even learn his name…I hope he's okay.
Anyway, onwards! Sorry this chap is a little on the short side. They'll get longer again soon.
Happy Reading!
Gem
xxx
Chapter 5: From Darkness to Light.
The brightness around him was dazzling. Excruciating. Blinding. He could barely see at all through the lights. He was sweating, hot from the thick, heady air that hung like a smog throughout the Necromonger Flagship. Every breath that he took filled his longs with stale, used oxygen, too warm to be refreshing, too old to help his troubled mind work any more clearly. The fog still hung in his head.
And so he stood, eyes aching from the blazing lights that stabbed into his pupils relentlessly, assaulting his brain in great, throbbing waves of viciousness.
His punishment was hard to bare, all of it self-inflicted, but bare it he did and bare it he would continue to do, for the pain, the tiredness that laced it's way through his body, mapping him out, that made his limbs heavy and unyielding, his movements sluggish, all of that was easier to shoulder than the dreams. It was the dreams that he feared the most.
Following the first as he had sat beside Kyra's body in the medical room, the dreams had come every night. Once, twice, three times. The longer he slept the faster and the more furious they came, seeping into his unconscious mind, claiming his thoughts. Disturbing his peace…or what little peace could be had by a man ruled by death. For he was. It consumed his every thought. Kyra's death, the death of his victims. Every single death he had every witnessed fluttered through his thoughts, followed for the first time in his life, by the tingle of regret.
Sleep had never before been a problem for him. Never. Not even following his first ever kill at the tender age of thirteen. Not even in the belly of Butcher's Bay. He had always had the knack for escape and absconding from dreams and nightmares was no different. His sleep had always been darkness. Impenetrable by all, even his blackness invading gaze. It had always been a comfort to him. To be blind to everything, to the constant liquid mercury and crystal white that he usually saw the world in, was a gift from above, it seemed. It was almost as if God had taken pity upon Riddick and his plight and said 'Hey, why don't I give this poor fucker a break?'
Riddick snorted to himself in slight amusement. It seemed that now God had decided to torture him a little more. Taunting him with what he could not have. With what he wanted so desperately. Tearing emotions unwillingly from his heart that he had not felt in years, if he ever had felt them at all.
Suddenly the calmness, the peace of the darkness was tainted. The black was interrupted. A thunderous sky split in two by the startling jade lighting that flashed in her eyes.
She was haunting him. Every night as he slept she would invade his dreams, begging him to heed her warning. Imploring him not to venture through the Threshold. And every night he would argue. He would tell her not to worry, that he would come for her no matter who was waiting for him when he got there.
Every single night it was the same. Every single God damned night they clashed and every single God damned night her beautiful, pale emerald eyes shimmered with unshed tears that he had caused, just as he had caused her death.
He hadn't lied when he'd told Imam that she had needed to stay away from him. He had ruined her. His influence upon her had made her kill Chillingsworth. His dumping her in New Mecca and then cutting out fast had made her leave in search of him. His return, his saving her again had indebted her to him. His simply being himself had made her feel for him again, enough so that she sundered her own life to save his. He had made her die for him…she had told him as much in the dreams…
Fucking hell…God was really pissing down on him now.
And so, Riddick had moved from living in the comforting world of the shadows to the blazing lights. The very things that he hated the most, but the lights where the only things that kept away the darkness. They fended back the dreams and the pain gave him something solid to focus upon instead of phantoms in the night.
He would get her back though. Not even Kyra herself would tell him otherwise. He would drag her kicking and screaming from the Underverse if he had to…but should he?
Many nights of little to no sleep had made his mind fitful in it's thinking. Notions that would never had bothered him before, doubts that would have never sailed across his worried mind began to plague him.
What is she does not want to be saved again?
What if she has finally found a peace that he could never give to her?
Did he really want to drag her back into life just to have another chance to ruin her?
Riddick shook his head as if to clear it of such damaging thoughts. He couldn't think like that. He couldn't afford to. It would drive him to distraction, to despair. Kyra seemed to be afraid in the dreams, fearful of whoever the hell it was that haunted her, as she haunted him. He would go to her. He would decided then if she wanted it or not. Either way, if he saved her or let her go from him, maybe he would finally find some peace…
"They are merely dreams, Lord Marshal. Only the over-workings of a troubled mind. Seeing her die has-"
His silent plea for peace was not likely to be achieved anytime soon.
His growl radiated from his body and out into the near vicinity, silencing her before she had the chance to finish her sentence.
"That is fucking bullshit, Aereon. You know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit…" he spun on his heel to face her, glancing away from the view of his ship's Command Room and the many Necro's scurrying about within it, keeping the Lord Marshal's desired course…to the Threshold. "And even Sir Fucking Mullet-head knows it!" Riddick jerked his thumb in Vaako's direction and the Commander's glower darkened at the insult throw at his hair. He regained his upright, stiff composure though, grinding his teeth together hard as Riddick's amused glare goaded him to make one wrong move, one wrong comment. Vaako knew that he was treading on very thin ice, he could be dead within seconds if the Lord Marshal saw it fit. He had never been dispensable before and he did not like the feeling of it.
Riddick snorted, turning his bright gaze away from them both and rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes hard, making the pain already within them explode deeper inside his head. Ah, pain. Pain he knew. Pain he could understand.
"Someone. Some-fucking-one, tell me what the fuck is going on." he growled, his voice deceivingly quiet, belying his controlled rage. "I don't like not knowing what is happening to me."
"Nothing…is happening to you." Aereon remained adamant, shooting a wary glance to her left at Vaako and the other Necromonger Commanders that followed Riddick in a continuous stream when he ventured forth from his chamber, awaiting their orders. They did so, however, leaving enough distance between them and their new monarch so that they were not within striking range. It seemed that the Necro's did not fully trust their leader just quite yet…
Riddick's un-goggled, silver eyes bored into hers, though he couldn't see a lot with the fierce lights. He could make out her staunch face, barely.
"Don't you fucking patronize me." he responded, jabbing a finger in her direction forcefully. "I know when something's going down. And I know when self-righteous old witches are keeping' that info to themselves."
Aereon sighed, tiredly, at his accusations, allowing her blue eyes to fall to the floor in resignation. She clasped her hands, daintily almost, before her.
"Perhaps we could continue this conversation somewhere a little more…private." she opined gently, her sapphire glazed stare flickering up to meet Vaako's thunderous grey, furious scowl, filled with anger and hatred as he glare back at her, before skittering away and back to Riddick.
"I do not think that a mere Elemental has the right to request so much from our Lord Marshal!" Vaako grit out his words from between clenched teeth, spitting them forth, partly in Aereon's direction and partly towards Riddick. The resentment laced through the words 'Lord Marshal' was not lost upon Riddick who's lips curled at the corner betraying his amusement at the other man's expense.
"The Necromonger Commander's should be present at all times to ensure that you, Elemental, are not speaking to our Lord your seditious lies!" he continued, his words seething and writhing all on their once they had fallen from his lips.
Aereon made to snap a regal retort, glancing down her nose at Vaako with a barely concealed contempt that he showed equally as strong for her.
"Shut the fuck up!" Riddick roared in exasperation. Swinging his powerful, clenched hand to point at Vaako, he loosed a vicious snarl. He had little patience for fools, he didn't suffer them gladly and this Vaako was turning out to be the biggest fool of all. Riddick would have respected him a hell of a lot more if he had simply come out and challenged him head on rather than slinking around with his wife, trying to weasel his way into prominence.
"I'll talk to whoever the fuck I want. And you-" he spun back to Aereon who's steady, cool gaze did not falter for a second, as Vaako's had, beneath Riddick's ire. "You better have some fucking good answers after all of this!"
-ooooo-
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