He Didn't Come

Her reaction startled him, though he refused to show it. “I hate him.” Her face held none of the fear that was present while she was dreaming. Rather, she looked ready to ghost this Seth person, whoever he was.

“He’s the one who started…” she shut her mouth abruptly. Riddick knew from the way she went strictly silent that she thought she wasn’t supposed to talk about it, whatever it was. He knew that she didn’t want him to know. She didn’t want anyone to know. Whoever he was, and whatever he had done to her, Riddick was willing to bet that he held some sway over Jack at one point. She’d been brainwashed real damn good, and while he wanted her to believe that Seth’s rules didn’t apply on his ship, training from her time as a little girl still held sway. He hadn’t been able to help her combat it. Yet.

His voice turned gentle. “Jack, it’s okay. Tell me.”

“I- I can’t.”

“Why not, kid? Whatever it is, you can tell me. Please.” He touched a hand to her cheek, but withdrew when she flinched. She shook her head erratically. “What did he do to you?” She lowered her eyes to the ground and refused to meet his eyes. “Jack, look at me. Jack!” Finally Riddick barked her name. He needed to get her attention.

She jerked when he snapped at her, and stared at him with wide eyes before fleeing toward the couch. He followed her and when he saw her pick up a safety pin from behind a cushion, he growled, “Jack, don’t you dare.” She was fucking hoarding those things. She must be. Where else was she getting them all?

She ignored him and started tearing at the back of her arm between the bandages. He ran to her and grabbed her arms. “Jack. Jack! Fuck, kid, stop it!”

She struggled and swore, and finally he forced her onto the cushions. She squirmed and almost wriggled out of his grasp. He trapped her legs with his, pressing them to the couch, hindering their movement. He lay fully on top of her, not really having intended to do so, but she wouldn’t stop fighting him. He only wanted to subdue her struggling, but she went into a full-blown panic.

“Get off, get off, now. Now, Riddick, get off me, please, you need to get off me, please, Riddick, you’re scaring me….”

He sat up, drawing her up with him, but didn’t let go of her wrists. Her tears upset him, but he kept his face a trademark deadpan. “Why should I let you go, if all you’ll do is hurt yourself some more?”

She didn’t answer, but stared at him with those big, haunted eyes.

“Now listen here, little girl,” Riddick began. “I’ve had enough bullshit. I want you to come clean. Tell me what the fuck is wrong with you.” He let her sit up, but didn’t let go of her wrists.

She looked at him for a long moment before replying, “I’m a mental hospital escapee, remember? Even I don’t know what’s wrong. Those hospital workers were full of shit. Post-traumatic-stress disorder. That’s what they said. You tell me.”

“Who is Seth?”

She didn’t answer, and he shoved her back on the couch, hating himself for using such a cruel method to get her to spill. It was the only thing that would work.

She silently fought his hands, but he glared at her. “Don’t forget who you’re dealing with, Jack.”

She snorted. “What are you gonna do, torture me until I talk?”

“No, but I will take you back to New Mecca if you don’t let me help you.”

“You wouldn’t,” she gasped, looking suddenly unsure of herself. He knew the last thing she wanted him to do was ditch her. He had no intention of doing so, because he knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it. But if it would get her to be honest with him, he’d threaten to kill her himself, and make her believe it.

“Wouldn’t I?”

They stared at each other for several seconds, a battle of wills raging silently between them. Finally the kid caved, and Riddick didn’t bother to suppress his triumphant smirk.

“Seth was this older guy in the foster home. When I was eight years old, he started molesting me. He messed my mind up real good. He didn’t ever… you know. Have sex with me. He just touched me… a lot, and made me touch him. He liked it when I... anyway, when I was nine, he sold me to Jason for fifty UD.”

Riddick absorbed this quickly and quietly, filing it away to sort through later. “Go on. Tell me about Jason.”

Her voice lost some of its rage. The anger faded, replaced by a flat, detached non-voice that made Riddick’s skin crawl.

“He was a hype. He raped me immediately that first night. It hurt….” Her voice trailed off, but before Riddick had to prompt her to continue, she went on speaking. “He taught me how to pickpocket, too. I had to give him all the money I stole, so he could always afford his next spike, but I kept some for myself. We never had a lot of money for food and stuff. He OD’d after a while, and I slept at a few shelters sometimes, when they had room. After a couple of months I tried to pick Charles’s pocket. You know the rest.”

“Why didn’t you run away from Jason?” he asked.

“I was just a little girl. I had always been with somebody. Even if they were hurting me, they were there. I was scared of being by myself. I didn’t know how to think that way. I just….” She finished the thought with a shrug. “Existed.”

Riddick could do nothing but look at her. She had been through so much… he’d gone through worse, but he was a grown man. Jack was still a child. “How do I know that if I let you out of my sight, you won’t cut?”

She said, finally getting a bit of her insolent fire back. “I guess you don’t.”

Riddick’s sympathy quickly vanished and he tried very, very hard not to strangle her. Making a split-second decision, he ordered, “Get your stuff together.”

She looked at him curiously. “Why?”

“Just get your stuff together. Move it into my room.”

Jack stared at him, looking angrier and angrier as the seconds ticked away. “You can’t be serious.”

Riddick tried not to yell, with marginal success. “Damn it, kid, don’t push it! If I can’t trust that you’re not going to hurt yourself, then I’m not going to give you the opportunity. Now, get your ass moving.”

He climbed off the couch and stood a few feet away with his arms across, purposely putting on his ‘I’m a big badass’ face. “Move.”

She glared at him, but he wasn’t swayed. She had absolutely no choice in the matter, and he wanted to make sure she knew it.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she grumbled and complained as she grabbed her shoes and the clothes she had found stowed in a storage locker. He followed her into his bedroom.

Riddick was surprisingly tidy for a guy. He had always had very few personal possessions, but those he did have, he liked put away and accounted for. Too bad he had to leave his stuff behind when he got caught. He learned a long time ago that if something was worth lugging around, it was worth taking care of. All of the shit belonging to the mercs that he hadn’t found useful had been jettisoned.

Riddick showed her two empty drawers and gestured for her to put her clothes inside.

Jack eyed him with shock. “Where am I going to sleep?” she demanded, an amusing squeak accompanying the words. She looked furious with Riddick, with herself… with everything.

Riddick allowed himself a slightly sadistic grin. “In the bed, with me. No floor space.”

“What?!”

He winced as her unpredictable temper flew in all directions. Though, he reflected, he definitely should have seen this one coming.
“No fucking way! You can’t expect me to sleep in here! It’s not fair. I’m a girl, remember?”

Riddick frowned. “Now, hold on. What’s not fair is me being stuck with a teenage girl who can’t be trusted not to hurt herself. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that shit. You want me to protect you? How am I supposed to protect you from yourself, kid?”

She didn’t have a good answer for him, and he knew it. He watched her impassively as her mouth opened and closed, flapping silently. She didn’t have any room to argue. Her own actions were the cause of it all.

She sloppily threw her secondhand clothes into the dresser and stormed away, utterly fuming. He followed her leisurely, but when she locked herself in the bathroom, he ran the last three steps. As he keyed in the code to undo the electronic lock, he heard the girl begin beating at the walls.

The door slid open, and she stopped her assault on the metal-plated walls. Breathing heavily, she watched him with guilt in her eyes.

He eyed her. “Give me your hands.” When she didn’t respond, he said more sternly, “Give me your hands, kid.”

She reluctantly held out her bloody knuckles for his inspection. They were already beginning to swell. If she was going to be so violent, she really needed to learn to control the violence. She was going to end up hurting herself—accidentally, for once.

“Show me how you hit.”

She cocked her head at him quizzically. “Huh?”

Riddick gave a small chuckle. Oh, that sure was an intelligent response, kid. Slowly, as though he were speaking to a particularly stupid child and trying to keep the condescension out of his voice, he said again, “Show me how you hit. Here.” He held up both hands, palms out front. “Hit my hands.”

She balled up an uncertain fist and leaned back. Her fist flew forward, but her aim was awful and she merely glanced his palm.

“No. Don’t lean back like that. Stand with your feet a bit further apart. Lower your center of gravity. Yeah, like that.” He nodded in approval as she did what he suggested. “Okay, now. You see my hand?” He waited for her nod before continuing. She still looked angry. He tried not to smile. “Hit my palm, but pretend that my hand is back here.” He gestured about six inches behind his raised hand with its mate. “Just focus… and throw me a punch when you’re ready.”

She hit his hand as hard as she could, almost before he had quit speaking. Damn, but she was vicious.

“Better. Again.”

They went on like that for several minutes, as teacher and student. Jack paid attention to what she was doing, and Riddick sensed some of the tension beginning to drain away from them both.

Jack threw herself into what she was doing with a ferocity that impressed even him. He continued coaching her, but when she began to lose energy, he called it quits. She looked absolutely exhausted. However, much of her inherent pissed-off viciousness seemed to have lifted.

She put down the lid and collapsed onto the toilet. Her hands looked like they’d been beaten with bricks, which was actually a fairly accurate description of what had taken place. Riddick’s hands didn’t have much more give than the metallic walls she went after first.

He had an idea, but for it to work he was going to need a much bigger ship. The little two-room transport was fine for the time being, but it was only a temporary thing. He intended to get a larger, more permanent vessel as soon as possible. In the meantime, though, he had an idea.

The next day, Riddick unbolted the couch from the floor and moved it to the other side of the room. Jack stood there staring at him.

“Okay, if you’re going to learn this, I have a few rules.” Jack rolled her eyes, and Riddick sighed. He hated teenagers. “One. No more cutting.” She had to have seen that one coming. “Two. Don’t do any training or exercising without my supervision, at least for right now. You don’t know enough of what you’re doing to do it safely. Three. Don’t do anything stupid once you put this to use. Just because you’re in training, it doesn’t mean you’re invincible. This is supposed to help you learn to control yourself. We clear?”

Jack rubbed her palm over her scalp. There was about half an inch of light stubble covering her head like a fuzzy hat. “Yeah, we’re clear,” she said sullenly. He gritted his teeth at her attitude. This was for her. She could at least not act like it was some hideous torture.

“Good. I need you to start stretching. Start with each arm….” He demonstrated each stretch he used, and helped her get her posture right. She was surprisingly flexible.

He moved her through some pushup sets and other exercises, but he didn’t know how hard to push her. He wanted to exhaust her, yes, but he didn’t want to render her unable to move, either.

He made her stop after an hour or so. She looked about ready to drop. She was strong enough to pull her own weight, but most of it was due to mental stubbornness. She had the wiry muscles of someone who’d lived a life that involved lots of running, lots of kill or be killed. She wasn’t strong, exactly. Just desperate. He ordered her to the side of the main cabin that held the refridge to rest.

“Here,” he said, handing her a bottle of mineral water.

She took it and gratefully gulped half of it down. He sipped his much more calmly, amused by her complete exhaustion.

“I feel half dead,” she gasped, sitting limply on the floor.

“Welcome to my world, kiddo.”