Hey all, this is a quick update to say that I haven't forgotten about this story and that it is still in the works even though I haven't the time I thought that I would have to write it. But that doesn't meant that I haven't been jotting down a sentence here and a sentence there.
Feedback as always is very welcome.
Kayla
Chapter 24: A Teacher's Lesson.
Joe looked over at his quiet and grey-faced companion. It was neither a happy nor a worried look that graced Jonathan Marks' face as he got back in the car from paying his last respects to a friend that had died trying to hurt another friend. The middle-aged man looked old as he buckled up his seatbelt and Joe could understand how he was feeling.
They had moved Kevin's body and buried it in a secluded plot of land in the middle of nowhere, in an unmarked grave that they would probably forget the exact location of with the passing of time. It was not a way that a friend should be buried and yet at the same time Joe wondered if they could actually call the man a friend anymore.
Riddick had carried an extremely pale and cowering Jack out of Zion. That was a fact that did not escape the man whose senses were only made more alert by the drug that he made, distributed and was high on himself most if not all of the time.
What had Kevin done to her before Riddick had disappeared outside, following the girl that he had been like a shadow to for as long as he had been visible to the stung out man?
Shit is hitting the fan!
The realisation had dawned on him then as Riddick had walked past him and was only continuing to be reinforced in his head the longer it took them to find Jack, for all they knew, Jack could have been dying herself when Riddick carried her out of there, she hadn't said anything and she was already greying in the way that people who had either lost a lot of blood or had been out for the count greyed.
"We have to find her Joe." Johnny said, his voice, as soft as it was, was loud in the silence that had been laying oppressively around them since they had cleaned up the ally and carted the body away. It was as if their makeshift leader actually could read his friend's mind.
"I know Johnny but I don't know where to look anymore. We've tried the apartment, we've tried my apartment block, we've called the airfield and Cody assured us that neither The Chancer or The Gemini has departed and yet both her and Riddick are still missing." He said as he started the pick-up truck's old engine and pulled away from the spot that they had buried their friend.
"Kelly is beginning to think the worst." He said shaking his head and then letting it fall into the hands that were resting on his lap. The emotional strain of the last few hours were taking their toll in a way that Joe had been expecting and yet at the same time he hadn't thought that Johnny would crumble as quickly as he was crumbling at that moment.
"And what's the worst J?" Joe looked at him as he reversed out of the gates and spun his beat up truck away from Kevin's last resting place.
"Dead or they've ran and taken a chartered ship out of here." Johnny said from where his head was resting in his hands on his lap, making his words come out slightly muffled and more then a little strained.
"I don't think she's dead Johnny, we'd know about it if she was dead, Riddick isn't so heartless that he would make her family worry and suffer wondering if she was dead or alive and for her really to have passed away. That and I think he'd come back for the kid if Jack was dead." Joe said. "And I know that if Jack feels as responsible for this kid as I know she does that they wouldn't leave her behind if they were skipping planets."
"Jack will follow Riddick probably to the grave Joe, and I can assure you that Riddick will be taking hold of the reins as far as decision making from this point until Kevin's death is dealt with." Johnny shook his head and looked at his most trusted friend with a look that almost pleaded for relief of some sort.
"And how do you know that?"
"Because Riddick and I have a few things in common and one of those things is the need to keep those we love close and safe. I have a feeling about this that I doubt will be wrong. Things are not going to turn out well if he decides that running is the best option."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because I know Jack well enough that I know that running will not sit well on her, not when she has other responsibilities in her life that she'll be running from too."
"Or she'll need to run."
"That's not like Jack Joe." Johnny shook his head.
"More like her then I think most of us like to think. Remember, she ran away from foster services, ran away with Riddick as a kid, hopped planets living the life of a runaway through her teen years, ran again when she though that Riddick died, hid her real identity and went underground every time some Merc came looking for her ass. If she's not a classic runner then I don't know my own kind. She's trying to escape what she is and the only way she knows how to do that is to run." Joe analysed as he took a turn that would lead them onto the main road that would lead them into the centre of the city.
"And what makes you think that you know her better then Kelly or I?" Johnny had a slightly hostile tone to his voice that his old friend just shrugged off, uninterested in his behaviour, he was tried and under a lot more pressure then he really needed to be but that was Johnny, always shouldering burdens that he didn't have to and Joe understood that.
"She hangs about a lot. Doesn't say a lot but gives enough to give me food for thought and I have a lot of time for thought J." Joe said not even blinking as a peacekeeper's red car drove past, causing Johnny next to him to shudder. The peacekeepers were the law in their parts and Joe had had more run ins and near misses with them then he cared to count out loud.
So far he had been lucky.
"I'm worried Joe."
"We all are J." Joe said and carefully manoeuvred the truck back into the city limits.
She could be really quiet if she wanted to be, deadly quiet, but she didn't know how she managed to slip out of bed, grab a change of clothes and leave The Gemini without waking the super-sensitive Riddick but either he was getting less aware in his old age or he was getting too comfortable with her and she knew that probably wasn't a good thing for him. He could barely afford to trust her the way that their lives were working out; she was still the main target for any Merc coming after him.
She knew the airstrip like the back of her own hand and it helped that her old teacher from the academy owned and ran it. It made her assess to certain places easier and her approval to take off and land as she pleased that much easier too. Bill Cody was an old man who was as tough as old boot nails and took no shit from anyone much less his students, old or new. It was probably the reason that she learned so well from him, after the way she had been taught by Riddick anything less then tough as nails would have been useless to her.
She shifted her bag over her shoulder and looked around, a nervous habit that she had only reinforced in the last few weeks. The sun was just being to rise in the sky, the clouds that dotted the area reflecting it in oranges and pinks but as of yet what there was of sunlight wasn't really enough to lighten the area by that much. It wasn't cold but she found herself shivering anyway as she wrapped her arms around herself and hurried along to the tower, hoping that Bill had gotten over whatever bug he had had.
"Sarg.?" She tapped on the buzzer at the bottom of the tower that was situated right by the door with a security camera pointed right toward it so that the paranoid bugger could see who was trying to get into his tower.
"David said that you were back." Her old teacher's voice crackled out of the loudspeaker and she smiled for a moment. "Number's 547369, let yourself in."
Jack didn't bother responding instead she punched in the code, careful to make sure the door closed and the lock click before she made her way up the winding staircase to the glass doomed room at the top of the tower. Where she was sure the old man was already in the process of changing his security code.
"Pour yourself a coffee." Was how she was greeted but she had been expecting nothing more. Bill was not a man to stand on formality and he was not the type of man that did small talk well. He had boldly proclaimed after their first meeting that that was all the small talk that they needed during the remainder of their relationship, if neither of them had anything meaningful to say then they could both live in silence, he did not need to hear about weather that he was well aware of. She smiled, she knew about the double meaning to his greeting too. When he said, 'pour yourself a coffee' he really meant for you not only to pour yourself one but him one also.
"Thought you never got sick Sarg. That's what you told me at the academy if I remember correctly when you dragged my ass out of bed after I had spent the night being sick." She said as she poured the coffee and creamer into two mugs, adding one sugar to his and then it was passed to him.
"I'm getting on a bit Jackie." He answered.
"Bullshit, you'll never get old, you've already spat in old age's face twenty years ago." She sat down next to him and sipped at her coffee, only to make a face that brought a momentary smile to the old man's face. "It's tar Sarg. not coffee!"
"Good isn't it?" The man who though he was in his early sixties didn't look a day over a slightly grey forty-five shook his head smiling. Bill had always made coffee so strong that it tasted thick and he made it clear that he would A. be offended if you didn't have a cup and B. be offended if you didn't finish your cup.
"Whatever you say." She rolled her eyes and closed her eyes for a moment as she sipped again, secretly she really did like it in some strange sort of once and a while kind of way.
"Your family gave me a small call last night around four in the morning Jack. They were trying to find out if you had jumped planets. They're really worried about you or at least it sounded that way." He said after a few minutes of silence, a silence that she knew he was enduring until she was ready to talk to him seriously.
"Really? Say anything else interesting?" To her own ears, her voice sounded dull and uninterested.
"Want to explain to me why I should be getting calls like that, that early in the morning?" He pushed.
"Kevin's dead. He tried to kill me so a friend of mine, a very possessive and protective friend of mine, killed him just before he actually slit my throat." She answered with a sigh and shook her head as she looked out over control panels to look at the steadily rising sun.
"A lover Jackie? Not Adrian?"
"Adrian was never a lover, just an engineer." Jack looked at him slightly disgusted that he would even think that she was stupid enough to make a lover out of Adrian, as nice a man as he was and as attractive a man as most women would tell her and each other. "And no, he's not a lover," She said in a frustrated snarl, "he's a… well I don't know what the fuck he is, not anymore, there was a time when I possibly did but not now."
"Ahh, I think I see the problem." He smiled knowingly and she gave him a disgruntled look.
"What? Sexual frustration? I could have told you that." She quipped.
"Don't get crude Jack, you're not as vile a person as you would like people to think you are." He chided and she actually found herself feeling ashamed of herself.
"Sorry." She mumbled.
"You were always a good student, good marks in school, generally an upright citizen?" Bill sat back in his seat, a self-satisfied smirk on his face that used to piss her off when she was studying under him in the Academy.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Jack took a deep gulp of her coffee, not seeing the relevance of the turn of the conversation.
"I'll explain later now answer the questions."
"Yes, I was always good in school, got good grades etc. Never was a very good citizen though, remember who I'm friends with, come on, a known criminal half raised me and I was constantly helping him hide, personally I'd call that aiding and abetting. Come on Sarg. you know all this; you saw my grades when I got to the Academy. I could even already pilot when I was placed in your very competent hands."
"That's cocky bullshit Jacquelyn and you know it! Being able to fly a ship isn't the same as being able to pilot it. When you first came to the Academy you were as cocky as shit with a little talent and a lot of very bad habits." He said strongly and she rolled her eyes at him.
"Too true but I was brilliant after all was said and done." Jack knew that all her words were going to do was piss him off but she didn't care, she liked playing with him sometimes. He made it too easy to piss him off sometimes and as long as you were careful it could be a fun game to play.
"Indeed." He said dryly and let them slip back into silence for a while.
"So what did all that have to do with my fucking problem and you knowing what it is even though I fucking don't." She looked at him expectantly.
"You've got a foul mouth Jacquelyn." Was all he said in reply and no other words left his mouth.
"Always have had, no difference there." She answered.
"You could always change that for the better." He said and was silent again, not even attempting to answer her former question.
"And…" She pushed.
"This is the first time that you've been faced with something that you want and this time you can't have it. It's never happened to you before so you don't know how to handle it." Bill said, "That's why you're here instead of where ever this love interest of yours is."
"Bullshit." She answered.
"Is it?" He challenged. "Don't make me teach you another lesson Jack, you're hard to try and teach a lesson."
"I do know how to handle this shit. I stay the hell away from him, pack up the teenager that he landed me with a few weeks ago and ship off planet, that will sort a lot of problems I think." She said hotly but there was a grimace on her face too.
"A teenager?"
"Sixteen years old." She nodded sadly. "I've got to find her father for her."
"You're not the type to pack up and skip off planet lass." Bill shook his head.
"I know I'm not but it would be the easy option." She sat back in her seat, her shoulders slumped forward and a deep frown on her face. "We spoke about it last night when I was in a blind panic he stopped me from going and getting Candace right then to disappear like so many others do. He doesn't think we should leave at all but I don't think I can stay and face the people that used to be my family."
"I didn't teach you to take the easy option when things get tough because running away is not the easy option."
"I was a star, stop acting like I wasn't."
"I did not choose you because you were going to be the easiest option, I would have chosen Joshua Sparks if I wanted an easy ride, I can assure you that you were one of the hardest people that I have ever had the displeasure of trying to teach. To be honest, I should have picked someone easier to handle but you were a challenge even if you were a total bitch at times."
"Thanks." She said dryly.
"An easy ride isn't like either of us Jack."
"I can't have been that bloody hard to teach Sarg., I was a very quick learner unlike some of them." Jack defended herself.
"You were very hard to teach Jack, I had to teach you. Between keeping your identity and connections with certain criminals secret and trying to correct the flaws in what you had been taught by your previous teacher you were a royal pain in my backside. You had to have been my hardest ever project and I only took you on because you weren't the quitter then that you seem to be turning into now."
Jack sighed and looked at the floor, she wasn't a quitter and the accusation stung. There was nothing that she could do, the circumstances that she had been thrown into were making hell break loose and she was more out of control then ever. She had only two choices, go with the flow, letting Riddick take charge of everything and stop worrying about being in control, or take control of her own life and get out while she still could.
She shook her head.
The easy option.
She took her hair out of it's binding and ran her non-damaged hand through it. Her fingers picked out the knots and she closed her eyes trying to work out what she was being expected to do now. But the more she thought the more she realized that her whole body ached in ways that she hadn't been feeling before.
"How bad was the fight then?" Jack held up her bandaged hand and raised her eyebrows at him. "That the only damage that was done to you?"
"A cut on my stomach, my fucked up hand, I've got a nice bruised back, my ankle hurts and my brain is tired of running everything over and over again picture perfect and not being able to change shit of what went on. Don't you get it Bill?" She said and tears welled up in her eyes. "My family aren't exactly going to get over that very quickly are they?"
"Cut the self pity!"
"I'm not…" She wasn't given a chance to finish.
"You said that he was trying to kill you, it's his own fault, therefore that someone who is protective of you got to him first. If I had been there, or Johnny, or Joe instead of this mysterious friend of yours then Kevin would be more then likely still be dead right now and you I'm sure would not be feeling as insecure about this as you are now." The older man was sure of himself as he spoke, sure in a way that Jack could not be. Would Joe or Johnny really have killed Kevin if they had been stood there in Riddick's shoes at the moment that he had found her?
Something in her made her doubt it greatly!
"You might have but Johnny and Joe wouldn't have. He was their friend Bill, it would have been too much of a choice to make, they would probably just have tackled him and pulled me out of the way." She shook her head. "No, this is just the kind of thing that people expect from my friend and his kind."
"And what kind is that Jacquelyn?" He looked at her.
"Sarg…" She looked pained and nervous all of a sudden.
"You don't have to tell me Jack but I would hope that you have seen how faithful I am to my friends, students and their secrets. As long as this secret is not one that is physically or mentally harming you then I will keep it to the grave." He said sincerely and she smiled, that was the other side of her teacher that she trusted beyond everything else, when he said something he meant it.
"The murdering kind, the convicted criminal kind, the escaped convict type." She said her good hand playing with the bandage on her bad hand, her eyes avoiding looking at him in anyway.
"The Riddick kind?" He said and she slowly nodded.
"You're in love with him Jack?"
"No, not in love with him," she shook her head, unsure of how to explain the magnetic attraction that had been pulling her toward him since the torch that she had momentarily blinded him with had proved to her that he was actually the man that she had been spending time missing. "But I want him. I like him a lot, I care about him like I have cared about very few men in my life."
"And he does not feel the same for you?"
"No, it's not that. It's just that in his life there is no time for the romance and relationship that I want and he will not let me become a 'causal fuck' as he called it." She said and a sad sigh escaped her lips.
"At least he cares."
"Sometimes I wish he wouldn't. If I didn't know that he cared for me then it would be easy to let things slide into the way that they used to be." Jack was sick of analyzing everything that had happened and her relationship with the man whose life was so interwoven with hers.
"Perhaps that is for the best." The old drill sergeant nodded his understanding.
"Perhaps." She gave him a faint smile, which he returned with one of his own. "Another coffee Sarg?"
"I can deal with that." He nodded and handed her his empty mug.