Darkness, Be My Friend
Chapter Eleven : Graveyard of a Dream World
Jack's eyes fluttered open slowly and for a second she was unsure of where she was; all she knew was that for some reason she felt safe and comforted, content in a way she hadn't felt since her parents had died. Right at that moment she knew nothing was going to hurt her, but it was a strange knowledge after having had so much hurt and hardship. She still was rather tired, but she forced herself awake, shifting and turning her head to find out where she was; the lights were out, so she couldn't see, but her other senses were working just find.
She heard a heartbeat other than her own, stronger than her own, the sound of it right next to her ear, and she felt as if she were being held close to that sound by two equally strong arms; this, of course, was the truth. Slowly raising her head, Jack looked up to see a pair of silver orbs staring down at her, watching and waiting for her reaction; she stared back, unsure of what to say or do. He was just holding her, she realized, nothing but just that; he wasn't pinching or poking or touching like¼
Like them...he's not like them...
One of her hands was clamped into a fist, the fabric of his shirt grasped tightly in it; she released the fold of it and realized something. This was the first time since leaving the dark planet that she hadn't had a nightmare, the first time she'd actually gotten more than three hours sleep; Jack found herself giving him a hug before she knew it. Riddick seemed surprised at first, tensing, but after a moment he relaxed and hugged her back; it only lasted a second, then he was standing up and she was scrambling out of the way.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see his outline as he stretched his arms out then tilted his head to the side, cracking his neck. His eyes were still there, disappearing only when he blinked; they were mesmerizing.
"Can I ask you a question?" she burst out, not thinking; he looked at her, nodding almost imperceptibly. Jack paused before voicing her inquiry, unsure of how to phrase it; finally she just gave up and said the first thing that came to mind. "I like your eyes."
"That's not a question," Riddick pointed out with a slight laugh that faded almost instantly; she caught the almost inaudible edge in his voice, a serious edge, like this was maybe not a good subject to talk about.
"Sorry," she said softly, looking away.
"For what?" he inquired; she could feel those eyes boring into her. "Been waiting for you to ask."
He's been waiting for me to ask?
"Really?" she asked, looking back at him in surprise.
"Yeah," Riddick responded and Jack could of sworn that he was smiling. "Ask me anything you want, kid. Told you before, I'm not going to bite your head off if you talk. Same goes for questions too."
"Okay," she breathed; she was still sitting on the edge of the bed, feet now tucked under her as she looked up at him. "So...where can I get eyes like that?"
He seemed to lean away, regarding her or quite possibly just thinking about how she had asked the question.
"You got to kill a few people," his voice rumbled in answer after a moment, sounding contemplative and slightly amused.
"I can do that," Jack told him as boldly as she could.
Got a whole list of people too...
He was watching her and it felt almost as if he were observing her thoughts; that idea chilled her for a few seconds, what if he could read minds?
"Then you got to get sent to a slam," Riddick continued, the amusement even more evident now. "One where they say you'll never see daylight again. You dig up a doctor, and you pay him twenty menthol kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs."
"So you can see who's sneaking up on you in the dark?" she asked with a grin, feeling a surge of nearly overwhelming awe.
"Exactly," he said with a voice that was half laugh, half growl; but the laugh faded not a moment later and Jack felt the atmosphere grow serious, reflecting the look that now overtook Riddick's eyes. "You don't want one, kid."
It wasn't a question or even a command to deny the fact that, yes, she did want that same silver sheen for her own eyes; it was a carved in stone declaration that she couldn't argue with out loud. She watched him walk from the room feeling slightly disappointed; why, oh, why couldn't she get eyes like his?
Riddick wasn't entirely sure why he'd told the kid the same half-truth he told every other person who asked; maybe it was the fact that surgery was a more logical explanation than waking up to find the darkness as bright as day. Or maybe it was the nightmares that plagued him whenever he found himself letting his guard down enough to get a decent night's rest; buildings burning, people screaming, and an endless field of white marble headstones under a sky that was both strange and familiar. The first time he'd dreamt of that place was the first year in Altair, the first time he'd ever been put in cryo before; it had been a living nightmare, finding that he was both awake and dreaming while all around him the other prisoner's of the company slept in a state of slumbering death.
He had thought he'd been going insane, hearing voices and seeing a world he didn't know razed and ravaged repeatedly inside his head; that more than anything had led to his escape from there. One of those dreams had snuck up on him inside Butcher Bay before he had broken free of that hellish hole; he'd been knocked, had heard the same voice that had plagued him so many years before, and had awoken to find the darkness as easily navigable as the light had once been. The first nightmare since then had come the night he'd found out about Jack's past and, in effort to avoid it, he'd started sleeping less and less.
His eyes had still been brown back then, it wasn't until getting tossed in the hellhole known as Slam City that they'd made the transition to silver; this was the surgery he had told the girl about, it existed in the way that the homeless dregs of society existed, real but not largely spoken of unless it became a problem. He'd been attracted, he supposed, the way the guards had shied away from the darker portions of Ursa Luna, fearing the wrath of the few other shiners that ran the murky depths; he had wanted to see that fear in every other living soul he came across, wanted them to fear him when he looked them in the eye. It had never occurred to Riddick back then that he'd ever run across someone who wasn't afraid of his shine, let alone wanted one; it was sometimes more of a hindrance than an asset.
He knew the specs of it, had looked them up after stealing that shuttle and breaking free of the orbiting facility some eleven hours later; it had come as a bit of a shock. Only two percent of patients had ever survived the procedure, that alone was enough for him to berate himself for being so reckless; but even less than that came out of it with their vision intact, in fact the odds were one in ten million.
And the kid fucking wants one...
Riddick shook his head, staring out the window at the stars, one of which was now bright enough to be blinding if looked at straight on, the planets around it giving off radio signals that kept the usually silent hum of the comm unit buzzing; it was nearly a week later and a half since she'd finally asked about his eyes and he couldn't stop thinking about. Oh, she'd asked other questions since then, like how he'd ended up on the Hunter-Gratzner; he told her about Johns and how he'd been caught, leaving out no details. She'd looked like she was going to cry upon hearing that the merc had shot two kids to draw him out; then she had asked if Riddick had killed him.
Damn if I wouldn't have liked too...
A slight sound reach Riddick's ears, breaking through his thoughts; he didn't need to turn his head to know that it was Jack, she always made a slight bit of noise while walking, no matter how quiet she tried to be. And she had grown to be pretty damn quiet when she wanted to be; there were times when he could almost forget she was even on the ship save for the incessant thrum of a pulse other than his own. He'd have thought that, what with the training regime he had set her to, she'd have been out like a light but apparently this wasn't so. She walked up to the copilot's chair, having grown used to the fact that he could always sense her presence; she climbed into the seat and looked out at the approaching system.
"Almost there, huh?" she asked, glancing at him; he nodded. She seemed troubled, but was trying to hide it; he could sense it anyways, he'd always been able to sense any emotion related to fear and 'troubled' wasn't too far from that.
"What's wrong, kid?" Riddick asked, turning from the window to look at her face. She was much paler than she should be, reminding him much of how she'd looked on the skiff, helpless with fever; there seemed to be a trail of dried tears on her cheeks.
"Nightmare," Jack answered, the one word summing up pretty much everything; Riddick nodded, understanding. She'd more than likely been having them every night since they'd left the dark planet, even though he hadn't heard her scream or anything like that. She was more than likely the kind of person who never screamed due to a dream; hell, the only time he'd ever heard her scream was when that creature had her trapped beneath the floor of the crashed ship. She kept on staring out the window, whispering an aside that he heard anyways. "It won't go away."
"The nightmares?" he prompted, leaning forward in his chair, frowning. Something about the fact that someone besides himself was plagued by recurring bad dreams struck a chord, even if hers were nothing more than memories of that planet or her past. Jack nodded and brushed at her hair, which was getting in her eyes; it had grown a little in the past month, enough so that it had become an apparent annoyance. "Happens sometimes, kid, you got to live with it."
"But it's..." she started to say, glancing sideways at him. "It's different...never used to have this nightmare before, used to just be...them hurting me or..."
Her words faded and she closed her eyes, face scrunching into a pained frown; she still hated talking about her time at that fucked up excuse for a foster home. It was just as well, since every time he thought about it Riddick felt like punching something.
"It's scarier..."
"Scarier how?" he asked, wondering what the hell a twelve-year-old would find much scarier than what she'd already witnessed in life.
"I don't know," Jack whispered, squeezing her eyes shut tighter. "It just is and all I see is this graveyard..."
She had continued talking but for a moment Riddick couldn't hear her words; was she seeing the same planet-wide cemetary that kept haunting his nightmares or was it some kind of coincidence?
"...And then there's a voice asking you to remember," he murmured, finishing her statement; her eyes flashed open wide, staring at him. It was enough to confirm everything; she was having the same recurring nightmare. "How long've you had that dream, kid?"
"Since after the skiff," she answered, clearly disturbed by the fact that he knew her nightmare. "You've seen it too, haven't you?"
"Yeah, kid," Riddick muttered, leaning back in his chair, running a hand over his face. "I've seen it too."
A sense of horrible foreboding now settled in the pit of Jack's stomach; her nightmares weren't a lone incidence occurring inside her head, but an experience shared. Before then she had been almost completely sure that Riddick didn't have nightmares; he was so strong and unafraid, how could anything terrifying plague his sleep? But now she realized that, far from sleeping, he'd been staying awake in the cockpit to avoid the dreams.
"What's it mean?" she asked, unable to stop staring at him; the look on his face told her the answer before he voiced it.
"Don't know," Riddick replied with a slight shrug, looking strange with an expression other than his usual stoicism on his face; he looked concerned, confused, and, Jack's eyes widened even more, afraid.
He had fear; this didn't make him seem weak in her eyes, no, it made him seem all the more stronger. It cemented in her head the fact that he was her idol; he was stronger than his own fear even though it was still there and Jack hoped one day she could be as strong as that too. She found herself scrambling out of her chair the next instant and wrapping her arms around him in as tight a hug as she could give the next; it was only the second hug she'd given him and like before, he tensed at first before returning it.
"Kid, you got to warn me before you do that."
"Huh?" Jack asked, looking up at him.
"Not used to people getting this close," he told her with a frown. "Usually a person ends up dead, they try and get this close."
"Oh," she muttered, pulling away. "Sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry about, kid," Riddick said and Jack suddenly found herself cradled in his arms like she'd woken up the week previous. She blinked, startled at first, but soon found that safe, comforting feeling she had felt before, like he was protecting her; she smiled, happy to see him smile back. "Nice to have someone trust me."
Nice to feel this safe...warm...comfy...
"When do we-" she started to ask, but the question was broken by a yawn; sleep was creeping up on her again, but she struggled to finish the question. "When do we get to Dulroon?"
"Tomorrow, by the look of it," Riddick responded and she nodded, laying her head on his shoulder; he shifted and she grabbed up a fold of his shirt. "Kid, you can't go to sleep on me."
"Tired," Jack muttered, yawning again; she felt him sigh, his breath ruffling her hair. He didn't protest again, or if he did, she didn't hear it; she had fallen asleep within minutes, secure in Riddick's arms.
Riddick looked down at Jack's sleeping form, her head using his shoulder for a pillow; he sighed and looked back out the window. He'd decided consciously more than a week ago that he was going to keep the girl with him as long as he could, but only now did he fully realize what that entailed. It was more than just teaching her how to protect herself and it was more than just letting her tag along; he couldn't just do what he usually did when he was on the run.
It wouldn't be just him now; he had to watch out for her, keep her safe from the mercs that would undoubtedly continue chasing him once they figured out he was still alive, even if that wasn't for months from now. More importantly, he'd have to curb his temper in her presence or risk hurting her; he didn't want to hurt her, it was a surprising notion, but then again, so was the fact that she trusted him. He did not want to break that trust; she was already changing him, he realized, for he hadn't killed the original crew of this ship.
Even if it was a subconscious decision, it was a deliberate one now; she was the only person he didn't want to see looking at him in fear and this time the thought didn't bring any confusion to his mind.
Don't want to lose that smile...