Okay... okay... it's up! I win! *twitch*
It's offically one something in the morning, but I finished it!
I don't know about how I ended this chapter, but it works with how I want the next few chapters to go... It's like my story got up and ran where it wanted to go, and not where I originally though it would go... that ever happen to you? Anyways... feh...
Also yes I actually have the next like... six or so chapters planed out... there is some kind of method to my madness...
Finally, Saismaat, again thank you for your reviews you're amazing. To your review on the fourth chapter I never got to commenting on, yeah, I wanted to tie the the first movie in (mostly because it was my favorite installment) and as for Riddick, yeah he wanted to play that roll but at the same time he didn't want to play the hero and save everyone this time, he just wanted to save Jack and get out, which he did.
For your review on the fifth chapter thanks, I try, but really I'm just kind of bad at writing fight scenes, and I find that though they're interesting to watch in movies they're not always that exciting to read... and just thanks again.
And of course thank you to everyone who reads.
(Disclaimer: Look in the first few chapters.)
"I miss you Jack," Imam said his face only slightly fuzzy on the screen in front of Jack.
"I know Imam, I miss you too," Jack said, her head lowered as she sat in the pilot seat that Riddick had abandoned for her.
"Are you going to come back?"
"Not right now… It's like Riddick said, things are too hot."
Jack sighed as she curled up tighter on the couch. It had been a few days since Imam called, and he had looked so concerned, so worried. Still, she had lied to him just like Riddick had told her to, because Imam did want her to go back to New Mecca to try living there again. Jack had tuned things out after a while, but Imam might have said something about her not needing to be jealous of Ziza, not that she ever had been. No, Jack just hadn't wanted to change, not that it mattered because Fremont had changed her anyway. Just Freemont probably changed her for the worst when Imam and his wife had wanted to change her for the better.
"Come on Jack it's time to spar," Riddick said as he moved to stand in front of the couch, and looked down at Jack. Her back was to him, so when she didn't move he leaned over her to see her face making sure that he wasn't talking to a sleeping girl. One hand rested on the back of the couch, and the other sat on the armrest just above her head, effectively having him looming over her when Jack turned her head slightly to look up at him.
"I don't feel like it Riddick," Jack said before she let her head relax to look at the fabric of the back of the couch again. "I'm an accomplished killer; I think I can take a day off from training."
"You can take a day off when after I don't hand your ass to you in sparing, now get moving," Riddick said as he glared down at the girl. Jack didn't move though, she just kept staring at the back of the couch. "No?" Riddick questioned after that, wanting to know if she wasn't going to listen.
"No," Jack said shortly.
"Have it your way," Riddick grunted before he reached down and plucked Jack off the couch. He then hefted her up onto his shoulder before be started walking towards the door that led to their little gym. Hopefully she had learned on Freemont that the more she struggled the more he'd jerk her around…
Jack didn't move for a second and merely growled at being thrown over his shoulder again, at being treated like she was still a child. She was grown; she was seven-fucking-teen. She had a mind, and the ability to put it to use and get a right answer more often than not. She was not some child that Riddick could boss around. More to the point she was not some child who was willing to indulge his every whim, every time boredom stuck him.
This all prompted Jack to reach down into Riddick's back pocket, ignoring the fact that she was basically touching his ass and that he had paused because of it, to pull out a smallish, and slightly dull shiv. She had seen him working on it earlier before he carelessly dropped it in his pocket. Jack vaguely remembered hoping it would stab him when he sat down for being a jerk. Now though she just pressed it to his back none too gently, and ground out, "Riddick, if you don't put me down, right now, I'm going to shove this shiv so far into your sweet spot no one will find it."
Riddick stood there for a moment feeling the tip of the blade just barely bite into his skin through his shirt before he said, "Jack I know, just as well as you do, that you can't kill me." He then paused for a moment as he felt the unfinished shiv shudder lightly against his skin, and felt Jack shake in his arms and against his body. "I'm the only thing you got."
Jack groaned as she warred with herself. The only way to prove him wrong was to kill him, and even then it'd only come out half and half. She'd be all alone, with no one unless she went back to Imam. They both knew she wouldn't do that though, that she wouldn't go back and face Ziza a killer, especially if Jack ended up the murderer of the hero in the child's bedtime stories.
Finally Jack dropped the shiv to the floor and instead just gripped the back of Riddick's shirt as she cried, "You're nothing but a selfish beast!"
Riddick didn't move for a moment. He sat in his bittersweet victory with his trembling prize. Once he did move however he carefully slid Jack so he was holding her with an arm under her ass and his other braced against her back to keep her from pushing too far back from him, them for once eyelevel with eachother. Then when Jack finally looked towards his eyes Riddick growled, low, rumbling, "That's right Jack, I'm a selfish beast, but I'm all you got. I suggest you get use to it."
"What if I don't feel like it?" Jack snapped as she glared at him.
ooo
Now if one could imagine two animals stalking each other, circling and circling, waiting for the other to make the first strike, then you'd have a very good idea of what this fight looked like. Both held shivs, both relatively the same, though Riddick's was more curved then Jack's. The two wouldn't take their eyes off each other, and they had been moving around in a circle for the last five minutes. Neither noticed, they were waiting for an opening.
The person who lost would see the room upstairs turned into a med-bay if the other got too zealous.
This is what Jack's question brought them too. Riddick had locked her in the gym, after almost literally throwing her in it, for a few minutes before he came back with the shivs. He dropped hers at her feet before backing up. That question had been the last words spoken between them.
The two animals were silent, they didn't even growl at each other. Both watched for a mistake, an opening, a weakness. Riddick found Jack's first when she hesitated in keeping up their circling. She thought about striking, went to, but stopped. Riddick went instead, their shivs scratched against each other after Riddick cut across their imaginary circle.
Jack ducked out of the way of Riddick's free hand as it came flying towards her face. From her lower position Jack rammed her shoulder forward into Riddick's stomach, but even as Riddick grunted and moved back she could hear the tear of fabric and felt the sting of Riddick's shiv sliding up her back, a few inches left of her spine, just enough to draw blood.
It was a warning that she was fucking up.
They disengaged and Jack ignored the blood trickling down her back. It angered Jack in a childish, and girly, way that Riddick had just ruined the only shirt she had. The day she wasn't wearing one of his shirts was the day they went at it with shivs. And Riddick, well all he was doing was smirking in smug satisfaction. She'd have to sit in his shirts for the next week and then some until he docked and got the cash to buy her clothes. He couldn't help but think that if he ruined her pants she'd have to get creative with how to wear his.
When Jack caught on to what he was thinking her glare hardened. This was a serious fight and he was thinking of ways to undress her with a shiv while they fought!
It prompted her to rush him…
ooo
Jack landed hard on her back, and the air rushed out of her lungs as Riddick kneeled over her, his legs on either side of her body. She whimpered as she felt the cut on her back strain and bleed more, and thrashed her head back and forth once at the feeling of the cut on her hip, just above her pants, sting as fabric rubbed against it. The bruises that covered different parts of her body throbbed, each telling her of a different mistake, each telling her she was lucky Riddick didn't want her dead.
"Well Jack, I think we have the answer to your question," Riddick crooned to her as he leaned down closer to her, his shiv safely put away, hers safely on the other side of the room. He then wiped some blood from her cheek with his thumb, as he answered the question himself, by saying, "That's just too. Damn. Bad."
Riddick watched as she writhed in pain for a moment more before he pushed her hair back from her face. He winced a little after, and then frowned when he saw that he had dampened her hair with blood from a cut on his palm. She had gotten him, more than once, so he wasn't walking away from this clean, just in better shape than his Jack.
"That's right…" Riddick growled contently at the reoccurring thought, "My Jack, I'm all you've got and you're mine because of it."
If Jack thought that the darkness held her leash before, she was dead wrong. It was Riddick that held her leash. It was Riddick that kept her tethered to the darkness that held monsters. Of course Jack knew it was only fitting for him to hold her to the darkness. No matter how much she had adored him when she was a kid, no matter how much she respected him, she had never been deluded into thinking he was anything other than an animal. It was just like she said, he was a beast. Riddick was a monster himself and he had laid his claim on her.
Really Jack could almost hear it…
Somewhere angels were crying at the loss of what she could have been if she had just stayed with Imam, and somewhere else demons were vainly wondering aloud if Riddick would share…
Jack ignored her body's protests and rolled onto her stomach. If she had been stronger at that moment she would have tried to crawl away, to get away from his overwhelming presence. If she had been younger, this wouldn't have scared her, they wouldn't have had this fight in the first place, she would have been perfectly okay with the fact that he was all she had, and thrilled that she was his Jack. Even if a small part of her was still thrilled at the thought, she still shuddered as Riddick leaned his forehead to her shoulder blade. She couldn't find her voice to tell him she was afraid he'd leave her; all she could do was whine.
She didn't even know what being his meant…
Riddick wasn't the type for a cute little family…
Jack wasn't even sure that Riddick knew what monogamy was…
After a few more moments though Riddick stood up and collected her into his arms. She laid her head against him, and ignored that the blood from the cut on her cheek was met with more blood from a cut on his arm, she tried to ignore the pain and the confusion but they just seemed to mingle together. Her vision swam slightly but Jack staid conscious, she even moved up the ladder with Riddick's help. She couldn't stand up off the floor, though, once she moved out of the way for Riddick to finish into the cabin himself, so he picked her up and put her in the bed she had been using.
"You'll be okay," Riddick hummed before he wandered off to the side of the bedroom that contained a door that opened up to reveal the washer and dryer, and above that a load of first aid supplies…
ooo
"What did you mean?" Jack asked after he finished bandaging them both up, and the painkiller he gave her set in. "Riddick, what did you mean when you said I was yours?"
Riddick looked to Jack for a moment before he moved to sit on the bed next to her, leaning his back against the wall. He put his arms behind his head and watched as Jack moved so she was lounging next to him, only with her arms around her stomach. Once they were settled he said, "Jack you've been mine since I saved you from that hammerhead monster. It means I'm going to keep you safe."
Sure he was giving her the condensed version, the version that made it sound like nothing would change between them. He wasn't telling her that as long as he was around she wouldn't be with any other man despite the fact that he might very well entertain himself with whores from brothels. Riddick didn't tell Jack that when she said he was a selfish beast she hit the nail on the head, and that he had been lying to himself when he said to himself he wasn't just being a selfish fuck.
Riddick knew that Jack had found out before he left her on New Mecca that families, and a stable home situation, or even a real non-moving home, were not things that came with him. Still he wanted her happy... listening to him, but happy. There was no reason to make her feel deprived of a life outside of him. Just yet.
"Oh."
It was a simple response but the smile on Jack's face told Riddick that she accepted it, and that it satisfied her curiosity. Then something Riddick had greatly missed happened, she cuddled up to his side, content and quiet. Riddick couldn't help but think that this was more like it. More like it should have been from the beginning.
And Jack, well, she couldn't help but wonder how them beating each other, going at each other with knives, finally calmed them down…
It must have been an animal thing… something she picked up from Riddick at some point…