My my it has been a while... sorry for the wait, but I think I'll be updating more regularly now.

LeytonTilEnd, I'm very glad you like it, and I hope that you continue to.

Saismaat thank you again for your amazing reviews.

Also thank you, everyone who's just lurking around reading my little story.

(Disclaimer: Don't own anything from the Riddick series.)

They had been on Lupus 5 for a total of a day and a half, but it was the first time Jack had gotten to leave the ship, and something was already wrong. Riddick looked at Jack through his welder's goggles as they stood towards the back of an alley, out of the way of the hustle and bustle of the people in the market. Jack was shaking, the bag they had bought to carry everything they were buying was crushed to her chest while she stared aimlessly in front of herself. He had tried to pat her shoulder, comfort her at least a little, but she had jerked away from him mumbling something about someone not really being somewhere.

"Jack," Riddick said with a deep frown, "You're not making sense."

"He's supposed to be gone! Lost, dead, something, he's not supposed to be here!" Jack finally exploded, words just flowing out as fast as possible, as her eyes flew up to look at Riddick. She lost her grip on the bag then and it lightly thudded to the dirty ground beneath their feet. Jack looked at the bag for a moment, like she didn't understand how it got there before she murmured pleadingly, "Riddick, tell me you didn't see him, tell me he wasn't really there."

"I don't know who you're talking about, Jack," Riddick said calmly as he leaned down and picked up the bag for her. Jack looked back at him before she reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt, but Riddick didn't move to do anything about her grip on him. Not even when she started pulling on the shirt trying to get him closer to her. No, he just watched as she prattled on…

"Pip, Riddick, I fucking saw Pip!" Jack shouted her large eyes desperate. Though, whether she was desperate for Riddick to believe what she saw, or desperate for him to say he hadn't seen the boy, she didn't know. Jack just wanted an answer. "Did you meet Pip on Freemont? Did you see him in the market just now? Please Riddick just answer me!"

"Yeah, I met Pip, Jack. He was down in The Pits, he took Tasha to kill the lights," Riddick said as he pushed the bag up onto his shoulder, letting Jack hold onto him still, "But I didn't see him out there." His answers were merely met with a shaky "you're sure?" and Riddick insisted firmly, "Jack I didn't see that boy out there." It only took a second for Riddick to realize she was going to question him again so he grabbed onto her shoulders saying, "Jack, no one from Freemont is on this planet."

Jack finally nodded then, but Riddick could see the doubt swimming around behind her eyes. He didn't want to keep Jack locked up on the ship every time they docked, but she'd just draw too much attention to them if she saw those kids from Freemont in every person they passed on the planets they landed on. Even as she let her fingers slip from his shirt Riddick wondered if he should have been walking her back to the ship right now so this couldn't happen again. They had her clothes; all they had to do was restock the med bay and the food, and Riddick could do that himself.

"Riddick, can I go back to the ship?" Jack said unknowingly making up Riddick's mind for him. She watched him nod before Riddick started back out of the alley.

ooo

"I'll be back, Jack," Riddick said after he watched Jack sit on the couch, and pull her knees up to her chest. "Don't go anywhere."

"Okay," Jack mumbled as she looked back at him. He nodded at her reaction before he walked back off the ship and closed it back up. As she buried her face against her knees Jack tried to collect herself. She needed to make herself believe she would never see those people again, that she needed to stop looking for them. It was easy when it was just her and Riddick, but she couldn't go through life living on whatever ship Riddick had at the time and never leaving.

However, forgetting the people she had lived with for so long and left for dead seemed to be harder then fighting Riddick. This had to say something as she had yet to make the man submit, and their last fight after she tried to defy him had stopped them from sparing until last night. Even then it hadn't been a long or heavy spar.

"There must be something wrong with me… I'm an assassin… I just need to add them to the list," Jack muttered to herself before she forced herself to get up and move over to the ladder. Right now sleep seemed like a decent idea despite the threat of nightmares, so she climbed up the ladder and almost literally crawled over to and onto the bed. She left the covers bunched and crumpled from when she first got out of it and just laid down. Jack only reached up and pulled the pillow under her head because it was in her line of vision before she just curled up and closed her eyes, hoping that sleep would take her.

Eventually her breathing slowed, and she closed her eyes waiting for her brain to let go of conscious thought so she could sleep. However her mind just wouldn't let go of the thought that one of them might be alive, even if it was just Pip. The guy that wanted to throw her out on her ass when she was too injured to move or think properly, the bastard that reminded her of Johns.

If just one of them could be alive, then maybe the others could be too…

Jack only just began to teeter between awake and asleep when she finally settled on letting memories of the group setting up their home float through her mind. Victor and Gigi had fought over what to call it, because apparently "home" was not good enough. Pip dragging furniture around according to Tasha's directions while the girl set up her computer. (It had been a single monitor system back then.) Jack had been in charge of hanging up the sheets because even if she was the assassin she was also the safest choice to use the staple gun. It was one of the few times the group was all together. It was also just about the only time they had all been happy while they were all together.

Jack could remember Gigi's purple and black hair, and the girl's unwavering smile. Victor, was a good guy even if he only really talked to Gigi, he had puppy dog brown eyes. The two were a couple, a good one at that considering that there was nothing keeping them together. Gigi was loud, Victor was quite, both were stubborn in their own ways and they always disagreed. Pip had insisted to her once that they must have stayed together because they had great makeup sex. Jack had hit him for saying that about their relationship, but didn't doubt that the two must have had great makeup sex. (She had walked passed Victor's room one night and was suddenly glad she gave them the rooms in the back of the building.)

Pip was a jerk most of the time, and he did remind her of Johns but that day he had been almost more than decent. Jack had wondered in the beginning if Pip had been a Merc in disguise but had put the theory to rest when he never turned any of them in for stealing. Really she let Pip stay, because without him they wouldn't have enough money to eat right. The soup kitchens always ran out on Freemont, and it was mostly watered down broth and soggy bread anyway. You could live off it if you were desperate… and on time.

The reason Jack didn't want them to live off it was always Tasha though. The girl had the potential for so much. The little blonde was a prodigy and Jack just knew she hadn't gotten the right chance to show anyone. Jack loved the girl like a sister, she wanted Tasha well fed. She wanted to get Tasha off Freemont, Jack had even thought about taking the girl to New Mecca to have Imam take her in. Tasha would like school, Jack knew it, Tasha and Ziza would love each other, and Imam and his wife would love Tasha too. Jack could just never get the money to get off the planet and take her there without starving them for a while, and Jack had been so nervous about seeing the holy man again. She had run out on him when the man just wanted to give her a good life…

Jack just couldn't take trying to be different. She felt like a caged animal, and when she first got off of New Mecca she had wanted to find Riddick so badly… Fremont had just killed her chances. Jack had grown bitter, and scared of meeting her past.

It killed her to leave them there… but maybe if she just accepted their death she could get over this… Maybe all she needed was a job to harden her heart up a bit more. It was hardly as if Riddick would look down on her the way Imam had looked down on him when they needed food back on New Mecca. Maybe Riddick would even agree that it would be good for her in some morbid kind of way…

There had to be something wrong with her, Jack couldn't help but think again…

"Jack," Riddick's voice boomed in her head then, jolting her enough that she came fully back to the waking world. Jack, who was lying on her stomach shifted up onto her hands and knees quickly to find where Riddick was in the room, but she stilled instantly when her back bumped into his chest. Riddick was leaning over her, but when she went to move Riddick's arm slipped around her as he said, "We're going to be leaving for the next planet the day after tomorrow. I got a gig shipping something, it'll get us a better ship, and I'll get you a personal-com so you can have something to keep you busy when you're bored."

"Really?" Jack asked, with possibly the first sign of real excitement Riddick had heard out of her since before he left her with Imam.

"Yes really," Riddick hummed as he lowered his forehead to her shoulder. She was warm, and soft, and Riddick almost regretted that what he was going to say next was probably going to ruin her new found good mood. However if he told her any later, she might be even more defiant and angry… "But you have to stay in the ship until after we get the new one and land again."

"Why?" Jack questioned as she lightly struggled to look back at him. When he wouldn't answer her, and just pulled her so she was standing with her back against him Jack went on slightly more frantic, "Riddick is it because of what happened today? I promise it won't happen again. Please you have to let me go out before then!" She needed to go out before she lost her nerve to do this on her own again.

"I don't have to let you do anything," Riddick insisted as he lifted her head to look down at her, after he turned her around. Her head was lowered a bit and he asked what he knew she was dreading, "But, I am curious, why do you want to leave the ship so badly, after you asked to come back today?"

"I need to go get a quick job…" Jack insisted as she forced herself to look up at him. Riddick, who had abandoned his goggles in his pocket, had an eyebrow raised his silver eyes taking her in.

"You do, do you?" Riddick seemed to taunt her with the question as he let his arms come away from her.

"I killed them Riddick. One way or another I killed them," Jack breathed as she looked away from him. "Now I just want to go get a job and get myself to believe that they were just like everyone else I've killed." It wasn't that she thought he'd be ashamed of her, but more that she was ashamed of herself. She already had Riddick "punish" her for leaving, and she knew she had to get over this. Her friends, feeling bad about leaving and lying to Imam, she needed to get over these things or she'd never be able to keep up with Riddick.

"You're going to have to wait to get your fix Jack," Riddick told her after a second of looking her up and down. Jack sparred with him far better than when she attempted to when she was younger, she had pulled a shiv on him, but Riddick still could only barely see the killer in this girl. The fighter in her was there, but maybe Riddick was just having a hard time seeing his Jack doing in people. She was older, no longer the kid who shaved their head to look like him, but he just couldn't see it. "It's too hot out there, a week from now, I'll let you go out an off anyone you want, I'll even join you."

Jack wanted to tell him that she couldn't wait that long. That she needed to go now, but she held her tongue. She had some control, but a week was long, too long for her really. Still she would have to live. "Who's after you?" Jack asked as she looked back at him.

Riddick carefully composed his face so it withheld anything that might give away him not telling everything before he spoke. She was digging, and she needed to stop or she'd find herself in a whole new state of depression. "Toombs is out there. I'm only leaving to get the package, the food and medical supplies are downstairs. I'm not dropping you off to hide somewhere again, so you're going to stay in here."

"Wait, Toombs, the merc from that crazy bitch's ship, after we got off the dark planet?" Jack asked after she searched through her mind.

"Yeah him and his little team, he's fucking annoying, but if we lay low we should be able to lose him," Riddick said with confidence. As long as she didn't leave the ship until they lost Toombs she'd never have to know why he wasn't letting her leave. Better yet if he killed Toombs and his little tag along the others would flee and Jack could go on believing what she wanted, get her killing fix, and they'd be in good shape.

Actually to Riddick that did sound like a good idea... Kill Toombs and that little Billy Bad-ass, and protect Jack.

Cookies to those who don't need to ask who's following Toombs, as I did make it fairly obvious. (At least I think so)

And so I'll tell you a few things that I've decided for the story. The Necromongers will come in, it'll just take a two or three chapters (four at the most) some of the gang from Freemont will be making appearences. (Though I won't be telling you which ones.) Also Imam will show up as more then a vioce.

So yes... end transmission or something to that extent.