Here is chapter 21, posted quickly before I run out to work. Thanks again to cateyes for helping me with the proof reading. Hope you all enjoy and do please send in reviews. It'll give me some more inspiration I'm sure.

Kayla

Chapter 21: The Lady Truth

There was silence in the living room after the Marks' left. Candace stood in the doorway, her blue eyes wide as she looked at the woman who had become a friend as well as a guardian. Jack just sat on the couch where Kelly had left her; lost slightly in her mind and the things that Riddick would undoubtedly give her a dressing down for. Riddick said nothing, he waited for her to speak but he wasn't happy, but then maybe she wasn't about to speak. Jack may have always been the one seeking out conversation, but she had also been known to go for a long time without talking if she got it in her head that she didn't want to for whatever reason. Once the silence had lasted for five weeks before she had put it to an end.

Maybe she had been right, maybe she hadn't been given much of a chance to do anything but follow his orders, he had seen how second nature it was to her, even now, two years having past since they had spent any substantial amount of time together. Maybe he hadn't been all that good at teaching her how to depend on herself but that was beside the point. He would certainly have liked to know what he was walking into before he found himself there. It seemed that she had more secrets then she had wanted to let on and yet all the clues had been there when she had spoken to him.

Jack had been stupid, instead of keeping moving and hiding like she had been doing with him, she had settled down, built a life for herself. Only, she wasn't being allowed to keep that life. She was always being tracked down and someone she cared for had already been killed. How long would it be before another one was hurt or killed? The ironic thing was that he had always wanted her to have something that resembled a little bit of a more normal life, but he knew that she would never really have it and that it was his fault, now that she was associated with him.

But then that knowledge came with experience and Jack hadn't been through the same shit that he had. She might have become tough, even cold and mean but even if she had killed, she obviously had been greatly upset by the consequences if nothing else. She wasn't heartless yet and he couldn't see her turning that way. The girl had too much heart for her own good at times, though he wouldn't have her any other way.

It was a strange bunch of people that she had allied herself with. The married couple and their kid looked like they had pulled through some bad times, the lanky man looked like he never came down from a buzz and the red head wasn't to be trusted with shit. They were a strange bunch; she would have been better off without them, although, Jonathan looked like he could handle himself. But obviously Jack had never come to the same conclusion.

"Did you really kill someone Jack?" Candace asked softly, her voice breaking a heavy silence that perhaps would have been better left intact until a better moment.

"Aww shit." Jack breathed, as if noticing the kid for the first time, breaking her code of silence as she turned and looked at the teenager.

"Jack?" Candace looked at her, her brows furrowed, concern on her face. Jack said nothing; she looked at
her for a moment before looking away again.

"Jack?" Riddick turned his shined eyes on her, waiting for her answer but she didn't look like she was going to give one, she had gone back to silence and he didn't like it.

"Do we have to do this now?" She asked not looking at either of them. Riddick nodded and she tried one more time to delay the inevitable. "Are you sure that you want to know what happened because once I tell you I can't take it all back or tell you it didn't happen."

"I need to know what I'm dealing with here." He answered her.

"What? So you can split and save your own skin?"

"You should know me better then that by now." He growled at her, wondering why she had gotten into the habit of writing him off over the past week or so. It was strange considering she had always been the one to trust and believe in him. But that was another issue for another time; he had other things to deal with at that moment in time.

"Lang had me in a situation that I couldn't seem to get my ass out of, which is an unusual situation for me to be in. It was two nights after Bret proposed to me. Basically Lang was beating the shit out of me and the harder I fought him the worse the whole thing seemed to get, but I had no information on you to give him, I told him you were dead but like every other god damned sucker on your trail. He didn't believe me. How come they knew what I didn't?" She shook her head. "Anyway, Bret walked in on him. There was a huge fight, Lang made all sorts of accusations, told Bret who I really was and Bret, faithful to the end didn't believe him. I don't remember too much of what happened after Bret hit Lang for the first time, I got thrown pretty hard into the living room wall; the only thing I can remember clearly is the gunshot. The short of it is that Lang killed Bret and then split.

"Kelly turned up a while later, she was coming round for dinner. But I couldn't speak to her; I couldn't explain what had happened. I was in a rage and I was grieving, I wasn't thinking, if I had, it would have probably been a whole lot worse. I grabbed the closest weapons to me at the time, namely the shiv you made me before I thought you died and a blaster, then I tracked Lang down. The guy was a fucking amateur; I had found him within two hours. The stupid fuck went to a bar before going home, I followed him and he never even noticed me until I was inside the room with him. Kelly was close on my heals but didn't arrive until after Lang was dead but she saw the aftermath and I can assure you that it wasn't pretty."

Jack swallowed and bit her lip. Riddick had nothing to say but it didn't mean his mind wasn't turning over the information. Jack had killed, tasted the power of the hunt, the kill, she would be considered highly dangerous by any merc or cop patrol, that was if they knew who she was, what she had done and who she had been trained by.

"Where does Kelly fit into all of this?"

"Kelly was the only person seen leaving the scene of the murder, not that I think it's much of a shame that I killed Lang…it's just, I wish Kelly had never gotten involved, that she hadn't taken the rap for me." Jack said. "Two other mercs who have come sniffing around me for info on you have turned up mysteriously dead. Mercs aren't human." There was a strangled gasp from the doorway and Candace turned on her heal, flying
along the hallway, her bedroom door slamming shut behind her.

With that last comment hanging stiffly in the air of the living room, she stood up and left the room, leaving him alone to think, to make something of what she had told him.

---

Jack closed the door to her bedroom and set the lights on medium as she started Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" playing in the background. The music blended in with her memories as she moved around the room looking at things, making sure that the memories that she had cherished were still there where she had left them before she had left the planet.

Then she opened the duffel bag that Riddick had found for her on the planet. She lifted the clothes out and placed them neatly on the bed, they would be taken care of later, though she was still unsure of what to do with them. She pulled out her mother's journals, her father's letters, the photo albums and put them on a shelf that already had notebooks and photo albums on it that had been filled by her and Bret, some of her own dating back to just after the crash on T2.

She ran her fingers over the bindings, feeling the page, the thoughts and the emotions behind them. It was almost sad looking at them and knowing that she would probably never read her own again and that reading Bret's as many of them as were addressed to her would be like trying to re-live the past. Part of Jack knew that she shouldn't keep her's, that they could be dangerous to her but also to Riddick, but she didn't have the heart or the strength to get rid of them.

"You like to play with danger." A voice in the back of her head said softly as she paused on the one that encompassed the time she was with Riddick.

"It's all about control." She whispered as she picked up her mother's jewelery box, opened it and played
with all the different pieces as she chose which ones would be put back in their original box and taken to
safety and which would join her engagement ring in her own jewelery box. With her chosen items in hand she pulled her drawer open and took her jewelery box out, her fingers still playing with the links and smooth
surfaces.

Jack dropped the pieces in and picked up the only piece that had been in there before. A simple white gold band, extremely thin with a blue topaz set elegantly in the center…

"Alanis again? Was your day really that bad?" Bret walked up behind her as she looked at the ring, still snug in it's box, safe among the green velvet, safe from her emotions and the reality of the situation that it had been brought into unwittingly.

"When don't I listen to Alanis? Doesn't always mean that my day was bad." Jack answered him and a smile came across her lips as she felt his lips brush the side of her neck, felt the slight scratchiness of a day's growth of stubble against the sensitive skin on the back of her neck and his breath across her collarbone.

"Did I ever tell you that you're beautiful, Kit?" His voice reminded her of silk as she turned in his arms so that she was facing him, the box still held in her hand. She smiled at him, she could see the desire in his eyes, the fact that it was her that he desired was the fact that brought that smile to her face. Someone actually loved her, it didn't cease to amaze her, everyday to turn and remember that the man with her loved her completely and totally.

"Did I ever tell you that you need to shave?" Jack reached up and touched his cheek with one hand, the stubble rough against her hand as he pulled her close and she wrapped her arms around his neck. They were both smiling. The whole thing was part of their routine, the light banter, the reassurance. It was more for her then for him but it made their relationship all the more comfortable.

"It's only a five o'clock shadow."

"It's well past ten." She laughed but was soon silenced by a lingering kiss that took her breath away. "I'm not kissing you again until you shave." She whispered after that had broken apart, her forehead resting against his as he chucked.

"You sure about that?" He leaned in to kiss her once more but she leaned back in his arms, confident that he wouldn't let her fall, a cheeky grin on her face that made him chuckle again.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I am."

"You really want me to shave that bad?" Jack gave him an impish smile and nodded as she closed the ring box, not having planned on it snapping quite as loudly as it did and she flinched when she heard the pronounced noise. He looked at it and sighed deeply, a frown on his face. "I know you said that you needed time to think Kit but…"

"Then let me think Bret. My life is complicated, more so then you've ever-"

"Kit-"

"experienced. People who enter my life-"

"Kit!"

"What?" Jack frowned and looked at him. He had a way of pulling her up when she was getting carried away but she didn't always like it. Sometimes it was just plain annoying.

"I've heard all of this. I just wanted to make sure that even if you need to say 'no' because you're not ready then you know that you won't loose me. Kit, I love you, you know that and if you're not ready now, there's always later. I'm not going to get all offended and leave you."

"It is a beautiful ring." She said wistfully and opened the box, looking at the ring again.

"You're not ready are you?" He said softly and she could hear the held back disappointment in his words.

"I didn't say that. I just didn't say that I was ready either. You've blown me clean out of the water with this one Bret. I'm a little surprised, in a good way. I just don't know if I'm ready for this kind of step." She took the ring out of the box and couldn't help but notice that Bret was holding his breath as she slipped it on her finger and examined it.

It fit perfectly.

'Mrs. Kit Robson.' Her mind said, testing the words and then the tone changed completely. 'Mrs. Jack Robson.' Then an angry yell broke clean through her thoughts. 'Damn it Jack! He doesn't know who you really are; he doesn't know your name, what you've really done in your life, why you're afraid of the dark! He doesn't know who he proposed to, what are you playing at?'

Jack took a deep breath and slipped it off again, putting it back in the box and snapping the lid shut. It was safe from her sight, safe from her mistakes and still flawlessly perfect, the way it should be for someone who was perhaps a lot closer to perfect then she would ever be.

"Not ready eh love?" He took the box from her and set it on top of the dresser out of her reach for the moment.

"Bret it's not that I don't-"

"Don't worry about it Kit. Later love…"

Jack slipped on the ring and looked at it, it was still beautiful as always. Perfect and flawless, the blue stone almost looking back at her and remembering what she was remembering she thought with a stab of old pain. She wondered for a minute what would have happened if later had actually been allowed to come. Would she actually have let herself become Mrs. Bret Robson? She took it off again, putting it away in the box and the box away in her dresser drawer as 'Head Over Feet' started playing.

She smiled. The words in that song made her think of Bret, more perhaps then she wanted to. She closed her eyes as she sang along.

"…You treat me like I'm a princess
I'm not used to liking that…"

She turned around to gather more of her things, only to come face to face with Riddick. She stopped singing and blushed crimson at the fact that he had caught her. "Music off, lights dim." She ordered rapidly glad to hear that her voice sounded clearer then she was feeling.

"You didn't have to turn your music off you know." He said.

"It's alright, if I honestly believed that you liked Alanis then I'd leave it on, but," She shook her head. "I know you don't. Angry girl music really isn't your style."

"Didn't sound angry to me."

"Not that song, but you haven't heard 'Not the Doctor' or 'You Oughta Know'." She sighed.

"Talk to me Jack."

"About what?" She sat down on her bed and looked at him. "I'm an open book, just tell me what you want to read."

"Interesting thing to say." Riddick watched her cross one leg as she pulled the other up to her chest, her arms wrapped around it, her chin resting on her knee as she looked at him. He had to double take seeing her sitting in that position. He almost could see her when she was fifteen, sitting on the bed while he packed his things, hers already packed and sitting at her feet on the floor. 'Where we going this time?' He could almost hear that young voice, filled with trust and curiosity.

"What do you wanna know?" Her voice brought him back and he realized that he was openly staring at her. A light frown of concern appeared on her face. She had changed. She wasn't fifteen years old, she was all woman now, still slim and fit but with the curves and enticing looks of the woman that she was. "Riddick?"

"Yeah Jack." Riddick said, and she got the uncomfortable feeling that he hadn't been with her for a moment.

"You seemed lost."

"Just a memory."

"This place is full of memories, some of them are good some of them are bad." She said and then shook her
head. "Seriously Riddick, what do you want me to talk about?"

"I don't care, anything."

"This is about me killing isn't it?" Recognition dawned on her as she sat there. He wanted her to talk for the simple reason that he wanted to make sure that she was still who he had thought she was. He had known where she belonged in his mind when she was still the innocent, if slightly tough, girl that he had protected and trained. Now that he knew she had killed, knew that she had the guts to protect herself and the rage, aggression and calculation to carry out the act. He didn't know where she fitted and it made him uncomfortable.

"Killing changes a person." He answered her after a moment or two of time where it appeared that he was thinking.

"I'm not a different person from the one you know. I've had people who've kept me grounded. Why do you think I didn't leave here after he was gone? I wasn't stupid, it would have been so much easier and safer to leave, to hide and loose who I am, not to face the people who would be most shocked and hurt by what I had done. I could have done what you did, I could have left the human race far behind, I wouldn't even have looked back, it was the easy way and the fact that at the time I could have actually done it scares me. What would you have found then Riddick? It wouldn't have been Jack."

"I doubt Jack-"

"Don't doubt that I could have Riddick." Jack's tone was aggressive but laced with a pain she was having a hard time controlling. "I thought about it Riddick. I sat in the middle of Lang's rented room and looked at his dead body, I saw what I had done to him, every cut and slash. I was covered in blood, Bret's, mine and his, I was hurting from this wild slash that had come out of nowhere but it felt good to be hurting at that moment. I thought about leaving, disappearing, exploring the new emotions, letting the aggression take hold. I had decided to, just leave, leave everything and everyone behind and then Kelly walked into that room. She changed everything."

There was sudden silence. Her voice just stopped. There was nothing else to say, nothing else to explain, he knew now. He would have to work out what was left of the other Jack, if he couldn't just take her at her word when she said she hadn't changed anymore then in the fact that she had actually killed.

Her eyes lifted and she found that he was watching her, his face in the same expression as always, blank and devoid of emotion or anything else for that matter, only his eyes betrayed him. She could almost see his mind working behind them, processing the information that she had just given him. Just because she could see his mind working didn't, however mean that she knew what he was going to do or say next, but for once that didn't unsettle her.

"You feeling better?" He asked.

"Fuck you!" She answered him, a pointed look on her face. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of thinking that she was confessing to him or anything. She had made the mistake and she had taken ownership of that mistake as well as the others that had followed it.

"He really slice you?" Riddick's question came after a long moment of silence, the tone of his voice aggressive and protective all over again. Jack sighed heavily again and lifted her plain t-shirt to just below her left breast. A thin white scar about four inches long moving diagonally across her ribs and was still clearly visible even though time had dulled it's color. She looked away from him and let her t-shirt fall again, covering the scar and the rest of her flesh. "He's lucky he's dead." He growled and she smiled softly at his proclamation.

"Still so protective." She whispered.

"Why didn't you have it removed?"

"I needed the memory. I needed to remember what it felt like to turn. It reminds me that I don't like that turning, that, that isn't who I am, just something I have to do to protect myself and the people I love. It's not like I set out to actually kill someone. There's always a reason behind it and protecting myself and my loved ones is at the top of the reasons list." Jack explained.

"You wouldn't have this shit hanging over your head if you had kept moving instead of settling down in the first place. Didn't you learn anything from me during those five years?"

"You don't think I haven't thought about that? Thought about the fact that if I had kept moving that Bret
would still be alive, maybe having fallen in love with someone else, made a family that he could still have. I have, I've ran it through my head a million times but I've found peace with it. I talked to Joe once; I was basically hating myself for the whole thing and he told me off, told me that Bret wouldn't have changed anything. Lang would more then likely have found me wherever I was, I would probably be dead now instead of him. Joe was a good friend of Bret's and I knew Bret very well, so when he said that Bret wouldn't have wanted that, I believe him." She shrugged. "I can't live my life by 'what ifs', there have been too many already for the time I've been alive and there will be too many to come. If I lived my life by them I wouldn't be living much of a life at all."

"Can't say you're wrong there."

"Have you finished telling me off yet?" She asked after five minutes of absolute silence passed.

"I'm not telling you off Jack, I just didn't want any of this for you. I didn't want you to have to live with the guilt and the pain; I didn't want you to ever have to experience what it felt like to turn. I thought I had protected you from all of that."

"You did. You taught me how to survive it. That was one of the most valuable lessons that anyone ever taught me." She said sincerely, turning to face him as Riddick sat down on the bed next to her. "You can't blame yourself for it, you weren't here. If you had been, I would never have met Bret or experienced what it was to have someone love me in the way that he did. I didn't love him the way he deserved to be loved, I couldn't, but he showed me what it was to love someone with abandon, whether they felt the exact same way or not. I wouldn't give that up for a clean record." She shook her head firmly.

"You didn't love him?"

"In my own way I did, just not like he did. He treated me like I was his everything. It was new for me to be loved and treated like royalty like he treated me. He always had complete faith in me. It was in it's own way very liberating."

"Interesting."

"Any more lessons today?"

"Lessons all done for now." He answered with a touch of amusement in his voice. "I'm not mad at you Jack, I just wish that you hadn't been forced to face that situation."

"It was bound to happen sooner or later. I've always been a little too aggressive, can't help myself so it seems. You know me, I've always like a good fight." A smiled crossed her face. "What's the deal now that you know what it is you have to deal with?" There was a tightness in her throat as she asked the question.

"My plans haven't changed. I've told you I'm going to help you find Candace's father and I will. As for after, we'll see what happens but I'm not going to leave you without giving you forewarning first." He answered her question and watched her face fall slightly. She had been expecting that answer, she had told herself that, but she had hoped that she wouldn't hear it. He would leave, it was inevitable, but at least she would be allowed to prepare herself for it. "You're going to have some work to do when it comes to Candace though. The last thing she heard you say was that mercs aren't human. Her father is a merc and very human to her even if he isn't that human to you."

"I'll work on that. I didn't mean it the way it came out."

"What happened to The Gemini?" Riddick asked her, changing the subject as much for her sake as his own. Jack found herself laughing as she saw the curiosity on his face.

The Gemini had been the rather large C class ship that they had traveled in for five years. It had three bedrooms, a living space and kitchen, a study and even a gym where Riddick had taught Jack how to look after herself in a fight. That ship had been her home more so then any of the dark, nasty, dingy places that Riddick had insisted that they lived for a time while he made enough money for their next time floating in the expanses of space.

"I thought about selling her for a long time. The Chancer is just a far more practical little ship for a
loner like me." Jack got off the bed and moved across the room to her chest of drawers again. She rummaged around in the top drawer for a minute before turn around and tossing him the key that she had found. "Couldn't bring myself to do it, would have been like selling off my very first real home, so I seal her up and locked her in hanger 12 and White Field. She hasn't flown for about a year but even so, she's in good nick, I go in there every once and a while to update things, clean up a little, make sure the drives still work and that the power cells are charged and engine would be ready at a moment's notice to go. Everything is still in there, just like you left it."

"Just like I left it?"

"All your books on the shelves, weapons hidden, clothes in the drawers. A lot of my most important stuff is still hidden in there, that would be the ship I would take if something went wrong here and I had to leave or get Kelly out." She shrugged. "You can go see it whenever you want. Bill knows I wouldn't give that key to just anybody, not to mention the pass codes that you need to get into the ship itself, so you won't have any problems."

"I always expect the worst."

"I know you do, doesn't mean you always should though."

"Did you change the codes?"

"No. Only you and I know them. As far as I'm concerned the ship is safe enough. Remember, I thought you were dead." She answered him and smiled. "The dead can't talk. I'll talk to Candy; I might just be able to explain what I meant to her. As far as where I fit in your mind, only you can work that out."