20. Red Light
"You scared the shit outta me." Riddick spoke under his breath once they were away from the police station and the over-zealous Deak.
"Don't say that bad…" But Riddick squeezed her arm painfully. Zemma dropped the Min voice. "Damn. I was just kidding."
Riddick grumbled in response.
"How did I scare you?"
Riddick didn't answer her.
Zemma noticed they weren't heading up, back towards the docks. "Where are we going?" She wondered if once again they were on a trek for Jack.
Like this whole damn trip.
"Check something."
"Uh-huh."
He glanced sideways at her.
"We off to help Don hide the body?" Her voice was amused, facetious.
He almost chuckled. The corner of his mouth tweaked up, and he snorted a bit. "On a moon base you just blow 'em out the nearest air lock. Don't even have to pre-kill em."
Said in his deep dead-pan voice, Zemma wanted to laugh out loud. "So, where is she?"
"I don't know yet."
"Liar," she smiled when she said it. He never did anything without purpose.
They kept on a steady, deliberate track. Zemma noticed most of the businesses here, at this hour, were mostly closed up. The few that remained open were well lit and included a red lamp over the front door.
Riddick halted their course, staring at another building with a red light.
"You think she's in there?" It wasn't really a question.
"Maybe."
"Are we going in?"
"Not we."
"Nuh-uh. I owe her the kick in the head before you cycle her out the nearest lock."
"You think I'd kill her…over this?" He sounded mildly offended again.
She didn't think he would. But it was one more unnecessary frustration caused by Jack for just that purpose: to piss Riddick off. Zemma wondered how the girl had lived so many years with that kind of attitude. Maybe she only did it to Riddick?
"I wouldn't want you to," she told him seriously.
That made him look at her again, search her face a moment, before looking back to the building. "Why do you protect her? You don't have history with her. She seems pretty willing to screw you over at a moment's notice."
Hhmmn. That sounded like he hadn't been expecting this. Jack had fooled him too.
He took her arm, and led her away from his surveillance of the building.
"I don't know why I like her." Zemma only knew she did like the foolish and reactionary girl, most of the time. Riddick was a new entity in her life, a lover. Jaron was a familiar one, like a father. Don, well, Don she hadn't figured out yet, but he didn't appear to hate her and that was novel in itself. Jack… Jack was no Dame Vaako. Zemma couldn't see Jack as an enemy. When Riddick wasn't around Jack was almost…
Zemma didn't have a good concept of 'friend'. Her mother had kept her separate from the other children for the most part. Her father, and their secret, had kept her completely isolated. Zemma thought about Kyra sometimes… her immediate craving for a friend when the guards had said 'her Furyan was dead'. It had been irrational to reveal herself to someone just because she knew a Furyan.
But the compulsion to connect to someone had been so strong. Was that blinding her to Jack's true nature? Zemma glanced up at Riddick's rough face, and thought about the poetic horror story he told of his first meeting with Jack on the planet full of monsters. The bond of the survivors had transcended their completely different natures and backgrounds; their need to connect to each other after the terror had been strong. Was it blinding Riddick to Jack's true nature?
"She's not evil." Zemma finally said aloud. "She's out of control and self destructive, but she's not evil."
"She tried to kill you once."
"Fear, not malice." Zemma saw Riddick nod ever so slightly just once. She thought he'd wanted to forgive her for that, because he'd saved her once, and he wanted her to stay saved.
"She's been acting strange just lately. Have you asked her why?"
Tension in his clenched jaw. So he hadn't come right out and asked her? Zemma would have liked to laugh at her stoic lover. "You've been talking to her privately so much lately, but you didn't ask her what was actually on her mind?"
Riddick threw her a glance that said, "Yeah, so?"
Zemma had been jealous of the overheard conversations that ended when she entered the room. She'd been jealous of Riddick's outright protectiveness of the girl to Don. She'd pushed those feelings away right along with her feelings of friendliness towards Jack. And where did it leave Jack?
It left her alone, and scared, again.
Instead of being happy she had Riddick's undivided attention, she'd been pressured by it. Zemma could see it now; the tension between them had grown, not improved. Jack had been trying to be friendly to Zemma, and not piss Riddick off anymore. Zemma must have seemed cool towards her; their burgeoning friendship had fallen off not because of Jack's sharp wit, but because Zemma was holding back, trying to give her space and time with Riddick.
And Don just made everyone think he hated them.
Zemma thought about her first weeks on the frigate. Zemma had felt left out, and angry about it. Now the dynamic had changed subtly and Jack was feeling it. No wonder she…
"She was just trying to run away." Zemma knew, from her own experience, how Riddick felt about that.
"I know."
"Are we gonna eat, before we go bring her back?"
"You're going back to the ship. I'm going to go talk to her. Then we're off this chunk, with or without her."
Zemma kept her mouth shut. More Riddick talk was probably exactly what Jack didn't need. She needed forgiveness. She needed a friend.
And another kick in the head?
That too.
Zemma still thought the young woman was afraid of something scarier than the soldier of death who walked beside her. Jack would just keep running, hiding inside that mask of callousness, until that was somehow resolved. An awkward overture of parental interest on Riddick's part wasn't going to solve it. If he wanted her to stay saved…
…then Zemma would try to save her. For him.
-
There. He'd said it.
"Don't say that bad…"
He squeezed where he was holding her arm just above her elbow. It was a control hold every cop used, but it didn't need to look forced if you kept them close to you. Force was something he needed to keep in check right now. He hated that damn little girl voice. He hated the story he had to tell. He hated spending even a quarter of an hour in any police station. He hated trying to be something he wasn't. He was a killer, but he didn't exploit kids.
"How did I scare you?"
Trying to avoid her part in this mess? Didn't she see that she should have just been herself and this would have been easier? Bail or jail break, both were at least… clean.
'The dirtier the better,' she'd told him once when she tried to explain why she'd played her father's feeble minded lover for so many years. He knew it was true, people tended to want to believe the worst before anything else. They'd believe it without any help. Believing in the good in someone was the hard part.
"Where are we going?" At least she sounded contrite now.
She didn't like his answer, but he wasn't in the mood to explain his actions. He'd done enough of that. The relief of just having her back was irritating him. He shouldn't have gotten so worked up in the first place. He didn't need…
Didn't need…but… he still wanted her.
"We off to help Don hide the body?" Her giddy, conspiratorial tone was naïve. It made him smile. He knew she wouldn't really want Jack dead; she was just trying to get him to laugh at her.
He told her, just to see how she reacted, how you'd really do it if you were serious.
She almost laughed. She didn't like killing, but she would do what had to be done, he could see the cogs ticking inside her head.
"So, where is she?"
What he told her was mostly the truth. He only suspected the coincidental use of an old familiar name was Jack's plea to him.
"Liar," she smiled, amused rather than mad, at his evasion.
He didn't take offense to that word, from her. From anyone else it would have pissed him off, for daring to think they knew him. She wouldn't press him for more than he was willing to say, but she wouldn't pretend to be fooled.
They walked on companionably, not rushing, not looking suspicious. Zemma reached for his hand, pulled her arm from his grip and laced her arm through his. Now that they walked like lovers, Riddick felt more conspicuous. He tried to stay focused on their whereabouts, on the addresses, on their course, while Zemma looked around interestedly.
No doubt memorizing where they were and where they were going. He wouldn't pretend to be fooled by her either.
The tunnel lights were all being dimmed slightly, to conserve power and indicate local time. Even people who lived underground wanted their sense of day and night. No doubt the living space on the other side of the moon was being just as slowly brightened.
Riddick halted their progress. The next red-light business should match the address of "Red's Fine Entertainment". Riddick hated moon base architecture. It was all façade; everything being air lockable and pressure stable, there would be no real windows, no unattended back door. But there might be any number of tunnel egresses going deeper into rock and making the size of a place unpredictable as hell. Everything would be electronically controlled with physical back up mechanisms that could be dogged by hand.
At least ships had access panels and crawl spaces that could be opened with the right tool. Not drilling equipment.
"You think she's in there?" It didn't sound like a question, but a request to tell her something useful.
Probably.
"Are we going in?" There was the real question.
I will. Later.
"Nuh-uh. I owe her the kick in the head before you cycle her out the nearest lock."
She was trying to keep it light, but Riddick could hear the stubbornness. He tried to distract her, pretending to be offended.
"I wouldn't want you to."
That didn't tell him if she thought the worst of him. He looked at her to see if he was missing something. How did she really see him? Did she really believe he could kill Jack?
He still didn't understand why she was protecting Jack from him. At first, Riddick had dismissed Zemma's unconsciously maternal reaction to Jack as hormones from the…
"I don't know why I like her." Zemma wasn't looking at the 'building', or him, anymore, but inside herself. Riddick wasn't gaining anything by his surveillance, but at least she wasn't insisting on going in. He took her arm back, like a lover, and led them away.
"She's not evil." Zemma frowned, trying to put something important into words as simply as possible. "She's out of control and self-destructive, but she's not evil."
Not just self-destructive. "She tried to kill you once." And, she killed something of mine.
"Fear, not malice." Zemma was unquestionably forgiving of the rationale, if not the action. They had barely spoken of it, but she'd seemed relieved not to be pregnant. It might not bother her as much as it had him. If she didn't want his baby, then he hardly had any excuse to make an issue of it. He nodded more to himself, than to her. It was the right thing, not to make too much of it. If she didn't feel the same way, she shouldn't know how much it hurt him.
"She's been acting strange just lately. Have you asked her why?"
Riddick didn't respond. He'd asked Jack just about everything.
"You've been talking to her privately so much lately, but you didn't ask her what was actually on her mind?"
Riddick threw her a glance that said, "Yeah, so?"
He'd been trying to reach her. Trying to find that little girl he knew once and make it fit with the young enigmatic woman he saw now. The more he asked, the less she said. There was no reason to think she'd answer the hard questions. He'd just tried to put her at ease, let her know he wouldn't sell her out. That he was here for her now, even though he wasn't five years ago. He was a different person now.
He tried to tell her he'd take care of her now.
She'd closed down to him completely. Pulled away from him completely.
"She was just trying to run away."
He saw that. He didn't understand it, after all her complaining that he was never there when she needed him… that now she didn't seem to need him.
Jack was an adult now. She'd been making her own decisions and living with the consequences for longer than he really knew. If their friendship was really that distasteful now, if all she really wanted was to punish him and move on, then he'd let her move on. But she wasn't going to continue punishing him through Zemma.
"Are we gonna eat, before we go bring her back?"
Zemma's mouth formed into a thin, stubborn line at his answer. She was planning something; to go get Jack and bring her back? Probably. Maybe that maternal thing hadn't worn off.