Treacherous

Riddick was glowing.

There was really no other way to describe it. It wasn’t a full body thing, but seemed to be rising from his chest to his head. Muscles straining, teeth bared, and his arms slowly rising as the light within him increased.

Jack took a step back from the spectacle. Hell, Bell wanted to. It was strange, it was indescribable. It looked powerful.

The girl must have gotten the same impression as Bell, that this was escalating to something and wouldn’t be pointless. She took another step back, closer to Bell now, and the door. “Fuck you!” she yelled, and fired.

Bell gasped, knowing she was dead, they both were. She couldn’t hear the two individual reports of the gun, but she felt them. Jack had shot Riddick as well.

But as if time had slowed down, Bell could watch it happen. Her eye tracked both bullets from the guns. Was she trying to stop them? Or was she stopping them? That they could be seen was wrong, she knew that. A velocity of thousands of feet per second was not visible. But she could see them. Spinning, pointed, lethal, even the pocket of air before them mushrooming.

Then the power that had been building within Riddick dispelled. It exploded from him in a wave. Bell was rocked back, every cell in her body feeling the energy pass through her. It had a worse affect on Jack. The girl was literally thrown. Feet off the floor, she was flung backwards into the wall. No sound came from her as she hit, and then bounced, landing on the floor in a heap.

Bell ran to her. She kicked the guns out of the way, then secured the girl’s hands before she felt for a pulse. It was there, weak, but there. Bell wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Turning back, she saw Riddick was unconscious again. His apparition was active though, so she had to wonder just how out he was. As she moved to him she stopped and bent to pick up something from the floor. It was the bullet. Either she or Riddick had caused it to stop in mid-air. The one aimed at Riddick was lying near him. She picked it up too.

“Riddick?” Bell kneeled beside him. She pulled a cloth from one of her many pockets for his head. It looked like Jack had taken a whack at him with a cleaver.

“Is she dead?”

Bell squeezed his head to her chest for just a second, dropping a kiss on a spot that wasn’t bloody. “No.”

He raised his arms to hug her waist, letting her coddle him, or maybe even needing it himself. She held the cloth to his head and just hugged him to her.

“She tried to kill you,” he murmured against her.

“Us, actually.”

“We stopped her.”

“You did.”

His hand lifted to hold the cloth in place for himself as he raised his head, pulling away from her. “What did I do?”

She shook her head, “You could feel it.” She knew he had, she’d felt him feeling it, recognizing it.

“Don’t understand it.” He stopped looking around them and just looked at her for a long moment. “Did it hurt you?”

“No.” She smiled slyly, “I kinda liked it.”

He snorted and shook his head a tiny bit before he tried to stand, Bell hopped up to help.

The blood wasn’t flowing from his scalp anymore, had almost stopped on its own before her help. He took the bloody rag down and looked at it, then threw it aside. “I know I could see those bullets,” his tone convinced, but as if he knew it couldn’t be.

Bell grinned, “I think I did that. Weird, like it was in slow motion.” She shrugged, smile still in place, pleased with whatever had happened despite not understanding how it had happened. She held out the bullet that had been aimed at him. “Here’s yours.”

“Hmm,” was all he said as he took it. He examined it, turning its perfect form. It had never hit anything so the lump of metal was still lethal looking. He looked around the room now, mostly at Jack, but she noticed that he put the bullet in a pocket.

“You lived with her for how long and never noticed she was fucked in the head?”

Bell got riled by the accusation. “Me? She threw herself at you?” No quick answer coming from him now. Hands on hips, she waited, a slow smile spreading. “What’s the matter, Riddick? Little kids don’t do it for you?”

He shook his head, turning back to face her finally. “She acted like some damn slut, pawing me an’ shit. Thought it was an act.” He looked back at the fallen girl. “Guess it was.”

Bell shrugged, unable to explain the girl’s crazy behavior. She moved closer to their would-be assassin. “She acted strange on ship, when I started to show. Asked me not to tell Kyra.” She spoke softly, thinking back. “They were gone a couple days later, without a word.”

A hand on her shoulder and she looked up into his sympathetic face. Sympathetic? No. He just cared. There was a softening to his features, an unguarded look in his eyes. She smiled and turned into his arms, more thankful than she could ever say that she was still able to.

His arms closed around her. A genuine hug. His head dropped until his nose was to her ear, and they stilled, just being there together.

“I’m sorry, Bell.”

It was a whisper, almost too rough and low for even her to hear. It was his apparition that gave the full depth of his regret. Not just for her sudden sad trip down memory lane, not just for the happenings of this night. He saw himself as a burden to her, a curse that had put her in one danger after another. His leaving all those years ago was just a nice layer of shame-flavored icing on a guilt cake.

So many words. She wanted to argue his self-condemnation. She’d never seen it like that. Had never put the blame on him. It was all complicated circumstances, well-meant decisions, and unintended mistakes. But her saying it wouldn’t make it true to him. Not at this moment.

“We survived, and triumphed.” She lifted her head to look at him, making him pull back. Did self-preservation that ingrained ever disappear? “I love you, and I’m not gonna stop just cuz you think you did something wrong.”

He did as expected and moved away from her. It was nice while it lasted, but reality was a bitch, and Riddick was a slave to himself.

“So where the fuck is your guard?”

That edge of anger was back, a defense. Bell had to take a deep breath before smiling, “I can run fast.”

A thinning of his lips at the reminder of why she had been running. “That’s no excuse. They were told to—“

“Shut up. I’m not condemning them cuz I ran out while they were catching some Z’s and ran faster than I ever ran before.”

She pulled the comm. from where she’d barely remembered to stow it before taking off after him. “Vaako.”

“Is Riddick with you?” Did no one know how to give proper greetings?

But what surprised her was the use of Riddick’s name rather than title. She didn’t think she’d ever heard Vaako call him by name. She didn’t have to look at Riddick to see that he had noted it too.

“Yes. We’re on our way up the South stairwell.”

“We’ll be there to meet you.”

Comm. over.

“So we’re taking her?”

Bell shrugged, “I don’t give a shit. I would have killed her straight out if she hadn’t been so close to you.” Then she turned to him. “How is it that you didn’t kill her?”

She could feel the rage in response to her question. A tiny vision of Jack acting helpless and calling to him came to her. The bitch had played him. But it made sense. He wouldn’t have fallen otherwise. She would have had to be quick, and even then it was a surprise she’d pulled it off.

Bell stepped over the girl. Fingers to her throat. Nothing. She frowned and checked the wrist as well, but there was no need to. Her apparition was telling her the truth. “She’s dead.”

He looked at her, a crease of a frown on his forehead. “It killed her.”

She stood and shrugged, “Is it such a loss?”

His eyes met hers, a touch of surprise.

“Hey! Don’t be lookin’ at me like that. We got to see what you can do. Not the best circumstance, but it answers a question. And what were we supposed to do with her? She’s not the cute sweet girl we all took her for. Bitch was psycho. I don’t want to cart her around with the hopes of her getting loose and getting even. I obviously stole something she wanted.”

His smirk of a smile faded before she’d really even seen. “We’ll take her body. Bury her right.”

Bell snorted and stepped back, hands up. “You do whatever. You’re the one carrying the corpse.” She headed out the door. Let the dope and his burden catch up.

Riddick caught up to her after just few yards, the body of the girl slung over his shoulder.

“It’s like twenty flights up, old man. Ya wanna wait for your little helpers.”

“Shut the fuck up, Bell. Your smart mouth’s gonna get ya in trouble.”

It was a growled threat, and she truly believed him, but it was still fun to taunt him. How far could she push the killer in him before he snapped?