"You know, Jack," Riddick was standing at the controls and looking out at the endless map of stars.
"Yeah?" Jack managed to ask after sliding out from under the control panels. She had a tangle of colored wires in her hand and a silly grin on her face.
"You hit Rieder perfectly. It wasn't an accident."
"Yeah, I know." Jack sat up and sorted through the wires. She needed the orange one, and separated it from the others. Before she could disappear under the black control panel Riddick leaned over and snagged her ankle.
"Been practicing?"
"I figured out why I can't aim." She admitted.
"And..?"
"I'm left handed. You kept trying to teach me how to fling with my right."
"But that's the hand you punch me with when we fight."
"Because that's the hand that hits harder." She shrugged, "I don't know why."
"We're going to get into this in practice."
"That's fine, but for right now, I have a com system to repair." She ducked under the controls and disappeared into a world of wires that gave Riddick a headache.
"Have fun." He muttered with only the clank of tools as his answer.
The door opened, Riddick stepped inside, Rieder looked up and groaned.
"I don't want to talk to you right now."
"You don't get much of a choice Bounty Hunter." Riddick pushed the door closed and leaned against it. "How did you find me?"
"It's not hard."
"Really? Indulge."
"A trail of bodies is a pretty simple thing to track Riddick." She shrugged, "I know you, patterns are easy to recognize."
"Anyone on my trail but you?"
"I doubt it. Everyone else who knew you as well as I do is dead." She looked over to the wall and scoffed gently to herself, "you know Riddick, James always thought he'd be the one to catch you." A single tear fell from her cheek, Riddick looked away.
"When?"
"Two months ago."
"I'm sorry Patty."
"Now you say my name, after you find out my brothers dead… You feeling sorry for me Richard?"
"Uncomfortable, maybe, never remorseful."
"Of course not. The great Riddick has never felt anything for anyone ever."
"Shut up."
"So when you said you cared about me, you were just shitting in the wind?"
"That was a long time ago."
"We were different people then Richard. But some things stay with you for a long time…"
"I spent a long time trying to forget shit like that, don't make me…"
"Feel again?" A long pause followed her question, and the glare in her eyes as she smirked at him made him hunch his shoulders defensively.
"I didn't mean it." He muttered finally.
"What was that?"
"When I told you that… I didn't mean it. I just said it because…"
"Because why?"
Riddick opened the door with a slap of his palm rebounding off the metal plate.
"It doesn't matter why. It was impulse."
"Coward." She shot out. He stopped in the doorway for a beat, then walked down the hallway after once again, closing her inside.
"You told me that if I told you how Riddick and I met, you'd tell me what he took."
"That was never an agreement, it wasn't a deal. I don't have to tell you shit."
"Fine, don't tell me." Jack shrugged as she leaned over for Rieder's tray. "But I would like to know how you met, if you want to tell me, that is."
"Why?"
"One story for another, fair trade."
"All right. I'll tell you a story." Rieder leaned her head against the wall across from the door, and the flicker of a smile moved over her face.
"We used to call him Rick. I was thirteen when he and my brother started hanging out, fixing old motors and installing them into these crap pieces of machinery they found in junk yards all over Ricker 8, small planet, lots of junk. Rick lived by himself, which wasn't unheard of for a sixteen year old male. My brother, James, and I lived by ourselves too. Parents tended to ship off and leave unwanted children behind. One day I was grabbed by hunters, looking for labor to sell off as slaves for the wealthy that lounged on one of Ricker 8's moons. Rick found me, saved me, I thought that he had just slipped past the gaurds at first. As we were running through the gated in junk yard I started seeing bodies, left and right, pools of blood running and bumping into my shoes. It was obvious that the men had all been killed, and I wondered how it happened. It never occurred to me that Rick had done it all. He was arrested soon after wanted on thirty-six counts of murder one, not all of them on our planet. I was with him when the bounty-hunters came. Eight of them. He told me to close my eyes. I did."
"And he killed them all."
"Every last one of them."
"And you helped him escape."
"Not right away, I asked him why he had saved me, if it was going to bring him to the ears of any who wanted him. He told me that he cared about me, and stayed with us until the next ship of hunters landed. He left without saying goodbye, he was just there one minute and gone the next. He had a habit of doing that."
"I know."
"So in the thought of maybe finding him again, James signed out on the next merc ship as a mechanic. Fifteen years of searching and he didn't find Rick again. But I did. Several times." She shook her head. "And it always ends with him leaving again. Without a word, here one minute, gone the next."