Match, point... game

Chapter ten:
Headaches

Space was beautiful. It always had been. No matter how many times she took off into its depths and was forced into the quietude that it possessed she was always awestruck by how powerful and vast it was… Floating pitch blackness with studded stars, shinning and shimmering in the far distance, each one of those stars a system and each of those systems with planets and life of its own. It was hard to imagine that there was that much life out there, that there was once a time when the world didn’t think that there was anything out here, out in the vast vacuum that made her feel like she was home… The jewels that hung around them were wise, ancient, older than she would ever be, had seen the birth and death and new races coming into the fray far more times than she could even start to understand. There was nothing like the brilliance of space to calm her down and make her life feel so small that she felt like an insignificant speck in the grand scheme, whatever the hell that was. Not to mention… now she was finally out among the spaces and planets and stars once more after six months on a desolate planet in a Slam, starving and weakening steadily over the days. Freedom had never tasted so sweet…

Her thoughts turned darker as she lowered her head and stared down at the controls next to her. She still had things to take care of. Now that she was out of Brigitus then there was the little matter of the man that had snitched her location out, and then there was also the merc that had caught her, and then the job that she had left undone by getting caught. There was also… the matter of her brother. She winced and put a hand to her forehead when a throb of angry pain ran through her temples, threatening to make her remember her humanity and to make start to have a migraine. She got them, yes, but most of the time it was a simple question of mind over matter when it came to these. They stemmed from her refusal to go back, refusal to accept her old reality, and immersing herself in who she was now; an animal, a killer, someone that the rest of the universe despised. Better to be despised than to bend, she thought bitterly.

Her brother’s familiar face came crashing into her thoughts and the twenty five year old woman drew her knees up to her chest, scowling darkly. His betrayal ran deep in her soul and was slowly turning it black, seeping poison into it that was only equal to her hatred of the necromongers. How could Noah do such a thing? She had done her best. She had done her fucking best to provide for them! George slammed her palm to her forehead to stop the pain that was now pounding through there, memories of her childhood, of helping her brother, of running with his little hand in hers from their dying planet just as the
Necroshit’s took it over. That was over with, that life was gone!

Deciding that thinking on this was only going to cause needless pain and agony she turned her attention back to the void of space. Almost instantly she felt the rush of cool and calming throughout her form, her head slowly becoming less indignant, and the past falling from her body like a piece of clothing. Tossed aside, forgotten, on the floor and trampled on where it should be. Next to her she could hear Riddick pressing buttons still, plotting their course and glancing up at the signals and readers that were ahead of them. She wondered just where he had learned to pilot so well. She hadn’t even began to think of what brand this ship was, what model, what year, what kind of engines it would have, and what kind of cells it would run on, when he was at the front in a flash and was switching things on and had it purring like a cat within minutes. All she had to do was strap into the copilot’s chair and brace herself for the blast off.
She also wondered… how the hell had someone caught him? He was the Riddick after all; some illusive shadow on the wall, that no one could get a grasp of. From the small scar on the back of his head she had spotted a few times she supposed that it was because they had played dirty. She supposed you had to in order to catch a killer, including herself. She was still peeved off that she had been so stupid as to want to hunt down a wolf rather than buying a pelt. The thrill of the hunts was fantastic, yes, but her liberty and livelihood were not worth the risk. Arrogance was a hard lesson learned.

Finally, after a few hours of baited silence, listening to the engines hum and Riddick work diligently to turn them toward the Ihram system while at the same time trying his best to mask their ion trail, George heard him shift in his chair and lean back, a sigh lifting from his chest. Yet another escape, she thought with a grin. What was it like to be Riddick and have escaped every single slam you’ve gone to? Did it make you confident? Or was every escape as harrowing as the first? She knew she would never know the inner workings of his mind, just like he would never know hers… they would never get that close after all. All they were now were former inmates and occasional fuck buddies. As soon as she was in Ihram they would separate and she would be nothing more than a memory. She would do what she did best, the only thing she knew how to do… she would leave. Then again, there wasn’t any reason to stay after all. It wasn’t like her and Riddick actually meant anything to each other.

“What planet ya heading to in the Ihram, Georgie?” his deep and gravely voice broke through her contemplation and she jerked her head in his direction, her eyebrows raised in surprise that he had been the one to break the terse silence.

Georgina put a finger to her lip, tapping it there in thought, before she sighed and ran a hand through her loosed and wild hair. “Ihram four, Pletiam, I have a snitch to talk with,” her face darkened and she could feel it. Her anger had not subsided over the months but gotten worse. Oh she was going to kill the fucker, slowly, torture him, make him suffer.

Riddick nodded, his goggles still on his head and staring at her with those fascinating silver eyes. She wondered… why his eyes were silver. Sure, she had heard what a shine job did, essentially, but that didn’t account for the paradoxical coloring it had become. Or, were those the natural color? When he noticed her inspection he quirked a brow at her in that cocky way that only he could do and not get smacked.

“See something you like, Red?” he questioned in a deep purr that he knew would get shivers to go down her spine. And sure enough they did. She grumbled at him and waved her hand dismissively, turning back to space and tilting her head, watching the stars in the distance.

“It can drive you crazy… staring out at space like this… That’s what they say at least, I’ve always liked it. The fact that no matter how far you go, there’s still so much, you can never get to the end of it all, there will always be more stars, more systems, more galaxies. Space in infinite, space is like change, it’s the only constant there is in life,” George suddenly found herself spilling. When it was out she cast him a sidelong look, gauging his reaction. She had never really held a conversation deeper than ‘we’re getting out and this is how’ with the burly man near her. She pondered how he would handle it.

Riddick blinked a few times at her before turning back to the darkness that awaited them outside, the only light for hundreds of thousands of millions of miles that of the stars and the dimmed ones of the ship. She watched the way that his jaw twitched in a way that she had come to know as him thinking deeply on something and found herself brimming with pride at coming up with something he had to brood over before answering. At least he wasn’t as all knowing as he acted. She was starting to wonder if he was human at all.
“I can agree to that,” he stated simply and George felt slightly disappointed. Then again, it was Riddick. What had she expected? Some kind of philosophical bull shit? George glanced at the charts and readings then pursed her lips.

He surprised her however by putting his arms behind his head, the thick muscles moving over the bone in a wave like pattern. She was enamored for a moment before his voice broke her daze, “though how crazy can you make people like us, Georgina?”
George froze in her spot and cast him a hideous, murderous, scathing glare, her lower jaw jutting out and her teeth showing in a powerful snarl. How the hell had he known her real name? The momentary fear that came when one was found out to be something they weren’t was pressed down by overpowering, red hot anger at him for being so damn cocky as to use her real name right in front of her! She was about to start yelling at him before he gave her one of the cold, calculating, withering looks he gave to someone before he was about to shove a shiv in their back and she slammed her lips shut together, eyeing him suspiciously. “Why’d ya lie, girlie?”

George snorted ungracefully, rolling her shoulder before getting up with a huff. Flicking him off she stormed down towards the medic bay, where she could give her arm a good wrapping and cleaning before she set about raiding the female merc’s clothing and taking a nice, long, hot shower with soap and shampoo. The last thing she needed was to drudge up the past when she was trying to forget it for good this time, much less tell it to someone that was no better than a perfect stranger.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” George asked indignantly, shoving her hands into her pockets. Her brown orbs watched as her brother, a full fucking age of fifteen, stuffed his bag full of clothing and started to put prepared food stuffs and dehydrated meal plans into the growing container. She noted with a grim look that Noah appeared to have been planning this for some time… it was the kind of bag she took on her jobs.

“I mean I’m leaving, sis! I’m sick and tired of watching you go off and do god knows what. You don’t think I haven’t heard the news lately, that you’re some thug, some killer for higher? What happened to being a-” he didn’t get to finish his sentence before his sister, who was still taller than he, grabbed him by the collar and glared him down, her jaw in a tense and tight line.

“Everything I have done has been so that we can live in this apartment, so that we can eat, so that you can fucking have a life. Are you telling me that you would rather starve, be homeless, and watch each other slowly die out there, because you don’t like what I do? Jesus Noah, do you know how pathetic you sound??” George snarled at her brother before tossing him away from her. She turned her back to him and ran a hand down her face, trying to calm her raging emotions. Betrayal was something bitter to swallow, even more so when it was family. That and she had yet to find the guy that had tipped off her last job and who had managed to shot her full of holes. She would find that guy and rip his throat out…

Noah grunted and slammed his fist down on a nearby table, rounding on his sister with fury in his eyes. He gestured to the several blood stains on the old jacket that her father had given her in their final moments with him on their home planet and then to the shinning silver daggers that still hung on her hips. His rage and annoyance, hurt and grieving, hung in the air like a visible curtain, separating them, and yet neither moved to draw it back, to reconnect… somehow, someway, they had both seen this coming.

“Pathetic? You think it’s pathetic that I hate that my sister goes out every night on some assassin mission, or leaves offworld, and I know what you’re out there doing? You’re killing people, Georgina, as in dead, as in they are no longer living! Do you know what you must be putting their families through? You’re as bad as the Necro’s!” Noah shouted at his sister, throwing his hands by his side finally.

When she stared at him as if he had stabbed her and ensured her own demise he winced and looked away, biting his lower lip in a habit he got from his older sister. She growled low in her throat and turned her back to him, closing her burning brown eyes with a snarl. She pointed to the door with a calloused finger, pointing the way out of the small apartment on Helion Prime, of all places, her shoulders shaking with both ire and sorrow. “Get out then, Noah. If you dislike it so much then go and find a way to support yourself. You’re of age, after all,” she snapped before walking off and slamming the door to her room.

Noah stood in the middle of the living room with a stunned but somber expression. He glanced down to his own hands, once so small, and remembered how big and strong Georgina’s had felt when they fled, leading him away from certain death. Even now… she was so strong, and he felt so weak. The silence ripped through him as he glanced from the door to the apartment to the one his sister had slammed and finally came to a decision. She was right, after all. He was of age; technically he should have started out on his birthday and become his own man. So, he bent down and picked up his bag, gripping the handle hard, and made his way with leaden feet from the apartment and from his sister’s life. With a click, the door closed, and the chasm opened.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

George bit into the end of the bandages, holding it in her teeth sternly, before she started to use her free hand to wind the white gauze around the still seeping red wound. She had cleaned it mere moments before and the bloody rag next to her, still reeking of alcohol and antiseptic ointment, was staring with violent red up at her. She focused at the task at hand, trying her best to apply the right amount of pressure with just one hand and not move her injured shoulder; years of practice of doing this very thing had made it like second nature. Yet today, her mind wasn’t in it, and neither was her heart.
Damn Riddick… she thought with a grumble. When the bandage slipped again, over her small but hard shoulder and the wound was scrapped uncomfortably she hissed and tried again. With the same result she stopped and threw the gauze from her hand and kicked over the medical table next to her. If he had just let it rest, if he hadn’t called her by her real name then this wouldn’t be a problem! There were reasons why she wanted to be known simply as George, and not Georgina Collins, survivor of the Necromonger hordes, and yet another charity case of the state in the beginning. She was a survivor, she was a fighter, she was a damned murderer, and it was what she was good at. Georgina was dead… she had died with her first victim. Or was it that she had died when her planet had been taken over?

When she sunk back onto the bed, putting her forehead into her index finger and thumb, sweat running down the side of her face, she mentally began to recant just what had turned her into what she was now. Such painful memories were meant to be locked down with a key and chains, but no, not now, not after years of isolation. She didn’t like people. They were too sporadic, too unpredictable, and too expendable, she hated them, and yet sometimes she wanted to integrate back, wanted to become someone normal and start over again. But she knew it was impossible. The animal in her wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t allow her to be happy like that, and she was fairly sure that such a boring life would drive her insane and would make her just snap. No, the life of a killer, of a drifter, was the right one for her. Sometimes the universe created people like her for a reason, and she liked to think that she was a form of population control.

It was a copout, she knew it, but it was all she had. The med bay was dark and lit only by dimmed lights above her, dimmed because Riddick had said that after months of having his goggles on he needed to have them off for a while. She supposed she should thank him for not just telling the computer to turn the lights off completely. The only sounds throughout the entire metal grated floored area was that of the drip of a sink in the corner, using recycled water in a continuous loop, and that of her own panting breath. No windows improved the feel of being confined here, and she remembered all at once why she had always hated the med bay on any ship or even on a planet or station. They felt so sterile, so wrong, and so clean. It was ungodly to be that clean.

“Wasting perfectly good rubbing alcohol won’t help that wound heal,” George smirked bitterly at his gravely voice from the door to the bay. She glanced up, her eyes barely visible through her hair, though her form was dark and brooding. She sat there, hunched over, looking all the world like some kind of shade and violent creature, the kind that she was. She knew to anyone else she would look intimidating, she always did, but to Riddick it was like her appearance and her rep didn’t phase him at all. She wondered if he had ever even heard of her.

George then scoffed and kicked the pan that was at her feet, the cold and biting liquid that had been used to clean her still stinging wound dripping from the metal bars. “Like I care. Not my ship, after all, baldy. As far as I’m concerned as soon as I reach my planet you can go off and do whatever the fuck it is you do, vessel and all. Now…” she glanced him over with a skeptical look, still untrusting of the massive wall of muscle. They may have helped each other break out of that damn place, but she still couldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. No one could be trusted, no such thing as a friend, even more so when that person was a criminal of Riddick’s caliber. “What do you want?”

She saw Riddick frown from across the room and idly felt a small twinge of, what was that, regret? She hadn’t felt that in a while. He came into the room with audible steps, and she knew that it was more for her state of mind than his and soon within seconds he was before her, arms crossed over his thick chest and silver eyes blaring down at her. This didn’t’ bode well. “What’s your real name, girlie?” he demanded coldly.

George blinked a few times then scowled right back at him. “What should it matter?”

“Tell me, so I fucking know who is on my ship,” he snapped back. Yet again she regarded him with unveiled menace, as if just seeing him for the first time, and she indeed felt this was a side of him she had yet to see. Angry, and angered at her.

George laughed out right, tossing her head back and feeling both the nerves of the situation, the elation of her escape, of the way Riddick was glaring at her, and of her own ripping past, push through her chest in a sickening and awful laugh that wouldn’t stop. It hurt her ribs and caused her entire body to convulse from the shake and soon she was doubled over, trying to wipe the tears from her eyes from the strain. She didn’t know why she was laughing, this wasn’t a funny matter. The way Riddick was staring at her screamed her death if she didn’t answer just right, but in some ways it was comical to think that it would be him that ended her life and over a name. Considering all that she’d done in her life she supposed that she would have died over something much worse. When she had finally calmed enough to where she could speak without wheezing she leaned back on the bed and sneered darkly at him.

“Why the hell would you want to know someone’s shitted up life, especially one like mine? I mean, seriously, what else do you need to know other than I’m a wanted killer, escaped convict, female, and the one that you’ve been fucking twice every day for a good two weeks now? You know my first name, what I look like, what my rough age is, so then why not merely do it the hard way and get it from the net instead of me? It would be more cooperative,” she promised and there was a sharp gleam to her eyes that Riddick caught easily.

He took a few steps towards her. George shut up and her smirk was wiped from her face, leaving only the same defiant and yet blank stare that she had learned to adopt when being stared down by Riddick and any other apex predator. She didn’t dare move or breathe, she could see the glinting of his shiv, as if it were a living thing in and of itself, on the man’s hip and could almost feel the malice rippling from off of his body. What had brought on this sudden surge of ire and ill will baffled her but she didn’t even dare to think on it for that might cause her to blink and cut off the contest. Riddick’s presence became choking again, became something so suffocating that she had a hard time focusing and her mind was fuzzing over with her own prey instinct.

Run, her mind was screaming, but the stubborn beast that she was roared for her to stay. She really needed to learn how to mediate between the two someday, it might keep her out of another slam.

Silver eyes pierced into her soul and George couldn’t help but watch the slight swirling motion that happened when he was locked onto a target. As stupid as it was to think it while she was being pressed into the mattress by his stare and his entire form radiating violence like on the planet she wondered what it was like to see with those eyes. “I’m giving you a chance to tell me willingly, George. If you don’t or won’t fucking tell me I won’t be as lenient as if you told me.”

Georgina held in the urge to laugh nervously but instead wrinkled her nose in distaste of the situation. Caught between a rock and a sharp place she weighed the damages. Then it struck her, what damages? It wasn’t like her and Riddick would see each other again, so what if he knew every single dark corner and detail of her morbid little life, who she was, why she was, what she was, and the cause of it all.

Deciding upon it the red head leaned back on her arms and cocked her head to the side, her small quirking smile fading quickly. “Georgina Collins and I’ll damn well tell you when I fucking feel like it, Riddick. Until then, mind giving me a hand? I can’t seem to make the wrapping stick,” she grumbled and admitted her defeat to the wound that was still letting out small rivets of red.

The bald lion before her glared a moment before dropping down in a powerful crouch that showed all of the muscles in his arms and stomach moving from under his tank. She was reminded on how he moved purposefully slow when not in battle, as if drawing out each motion, making the most of it, like it would be his last. The true mind set of someone in their position. When you were hunted like a rat by mercs and other varieties of undesirables you learned to savor each moment as your last to some extent. Not to mention, his bulky frame hid a great speed that surpassed anything she had ever seen before. Riddick was truly the top of any food chain anywhere… and she loved the raw terror and fear that always knotted up in her stomach whenever he was around.

He came to a plopping sit next to her, grabbing her arm gruffly and still staring her in the eye. She knew this game and though it had long been established that she was weaker and the slightly more submissive one in this fucked up thing they had going she still stared back in defiance and rebelliousness. That was until his thumb pressed into the stab wound and she looked away with a hiss, gritting her teeth to the point of pain.

Momentary revolution squashed Riddick set about the task of working on her shoulder, where her collarbone met with her arm. The wound wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. It wouldn’t need stitches. It was enflamed and angry, dripping out blood and a clear liquid that would soon form the scab that would turn into, hopefully, not another scar. She tried not to think too much on how her body used to look before it was covered in these markings and instead focused on the soft, slightly grating gauze going over her skin in light layers. She stared down at the ground, refusing to watch Riddick work on her, and refusing to acknowledge the fact that without him closing the wound to the air then it would have gotten infected without a doubt, even in the sterilizes of space and her shots. The medical boosters could only stop so much and should her skin, of all things, get infected and spread into her blood… it wasn’t a nice way to go.

The bald man’s fingers grazed her skin as they worked and George was slightly startled that he was actually being gentle with the injury. The hand that was holding her arm in place was firm and even bruising, but the one that was wrapping the bandage and guiding it along was nothing short of tender and focused, like he was afraid to further aggravate the stab. He leaned down over the wrapping and she noticed out of the corner of her eye, when her sight betrayed her ill want to look at him, that when he was concentrating hard enough that he got a small vein that popped out just left of his temple. When the cotton was wrapped firmly in place he reached behind him to the table that had, somehow, righted itself upwards, and received the ACE wrapping that would go tightly around it and hold it there in a pressure bandage so as to keep all further swelling and possible bleeding to a minimal.

The silence that was around them slipped and slithered, and for the first time in a long while George found herself wishing Riddick would say something, anything. It was eerie, this king of expectant quiet. It wasn’t calculating, it wasn’t intimidating, it was just… waiting. But for what? Now, she had to think of her future, how she would stay out of another slam, and just where to go from the Ihram. When she felt the last of the ACE go on and the throbbing in her shoulder start to disappear she sighed gratefully before standing and flexing her fingers anxiously. Rolling the shoulder and hissing at the now sensitivity of the injury, now that the adrenaline and shock wasn’t running through her, George hoped that it would heal by the time she got to that hole in the universe.

“How long until we reach the quadrant?” she murmured lightly, unnerved by the way that Riddick was still almost seething at her. Why, she didn’t know. Sometimes she wondered if the man had bipolar.

Riddick stood with a grunt and pushed by her, purposefully hitting the injury he’d just closed up for her and causing the red head to snarl in the shiver of pain that racked down her body from it. When he was at the door he stopped and put a heavy hand on the frame, casting a glance back to her with his silver eyes narrowed sharply. “Two and a half months. We have to stop on a near by system to get supplies then we’re going into cryo.”

Cryo… George thought with a wrinkle of her nose, but nodded all the same. With the fellow convict gone she sank down onto the bed and laid there, staring up at the metal ceiling with a pursed look. She hated cryo, it felt wrong, like the machine had her body and not her. But she supposed it was better than spending two months awake and aware of everything, starving, they would go through supplies and life support much faster if they were awake. Then there was the question of why Riddick was acting so surly. He hadn’t minded her name in the Slam hadn’t cared in fact, had merely made fun of her by going by a guys name. But now it was like she had insulted him somehow by refusing to tell him her real, full name. He was an odd one.