Escape

Cierce

”Get a hold of yourself dammit. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? You wanted them dead, and now they are going to be dead,” She told herself, feeling so angry, and yet so sickened and sad. She expected to feel anger, and it felt good, but she hated this sick feeling in her belly. It was sour and she could feel it rising, bile that burned her throat.

She buried her head in her hands, raking her fingers through her hair. She could smell Riddick on her, and the smell was almost a comfort. On this fucked up ship, he was quickly becoming the only thing she could count on. She let out a rough laugh, one that tore itself out of her throat. What was she playing at anyways? She could have gotten out of this situation on her own without killing them.

Now you’re really kidding yourself, she thought. Once they found out I have a bounty on my head, I’d be in serious trouble. Didn’t matter that I killed the fucker out of self defense, and out of self preservation. She had sort of lied to Riddick about the shithole family. Sort of. Her mother had been blessed with money, and had married her father just to spite her family. She was the sole heir and stood to inherit everything. A few years into the marriage, her mother had given birth to her brother, Joren. Four years after that, and she was born. Joren and her had been close, and in the first twelve years of her life, she had been almost happy.

Until her mother died. And her father realized that he stood nothing to gain. As soon as he heard that the kids would be getting everything once they hit the age of 20, he became livid. She remembered with a growing sickness how at first he tried winning them both over. Bought her brother hookers and brought her dolls that she had later found out he had stolen. Her brother hit the age of 20, and his portion of the inheritance was given to him by some lawyer their mother had appointed. Their father had come into their shared bedroom, and told her to leave. She obliged, settling herself just outside the door with the seven inch fixed blade her brother and her had just been sharpening and cleaning. She played her fingers over it as she listened intently through the now closed door. She remembered angry yelling, and a sharp yelp. Cursing. An awful screaming that made her heart start to pound, and then an even more sickening sound of it being cut short.

By the time she had though, get the fuck out of there, it was too late. The door and swung open and there her father stood, covered in blood. She had screamed, too, then. He had a look of murderous rage and she scampered back as quick as she could. It was then she saw the glint of blood coated steel in his hand.

“Little bitch. Now you get everything. I’ll teach you whose boss, I will,” He snarled. He had rushed forward and grabbed her roughly by her arm. It was too easy for him to block her feeble attempts at defending herself. He dragged her back into her brothers room and she closed her eyes at the first glimpse of blood. “No, you don’t. Open your eyes and see what happens when you forget who the fuck owns your ass.”

He had smacked her then, hard, and her eyes flew open. He gave her a shove and she landed on the bed. It squished beneath her and she had to fight not to throw up. Everything was coated in her brothers blood and all she could think of were candied apples. When she heard a groan, she whipped her head up to find her brother still alive, gasping for air. Her eyes dragged down his chest to his belly, where so much blood and viscera slithered out. His intestines looked likes snakes, writhing along with him as he shuddered in agony. She screamed again and tried to scamper away. Her father had grabbed her again.

He had pushed her onto her face, smashing it into the blood soaked blankets, and slashed apart her pants and panties. She flung herself around, kicking and screaming, until a sudden and harsh blow on the back of her head silenced her. Dazed and disoriented, she could barely see straight. The only thing she felt was ripping pain as her father slammed his cock into her, ripping away her virginity.

But I’m here, on a ship, a million miles away from all that, she thought to herself. It had taken another two plus years of mental, physical, and emotional abuse until she had finally snapped. Countless beatings, countless rapes later, and she had become some lifeless doll. A creature her father used and abused on a whim. But one day, while cleaning, she had found one of the knives her brother had been making especially for her. It had woken her somehow. She couldn’t live like this anymore. And she wouldn’t live while that bastard was still alive. It was either her, or her father, and she sure as fuck, yeah, thats right, FUCK, was not going to let that miserable piece of shit live anymore!

She had waited for him to drink his fill as he did every night. And then she went after him. She was way out of practice with what little teachings her brother had given her, but her father was clumsy and an oaf. She managed to slice him good once before he was on her. He had tried tying her up, but she struggled, rubbing her wrist raw in the process. He had slashed at her with his own knife, managing to slice a good mark along her throat, where the rope like scar sat now. But in the end it didn’t matter. She stuck him like the pig he was and in the end, he died choking on his own intestines.

She had immediately packed up and left the shithole apartment. It didn’t take her long to realize that her father had thought it through when he had killed Joren. It was all over the news within days… Cierce Duval, daughter of the Dame Olivia Marquet, had brutally murdered her brother Joren in a jealous rage over his inheritance. Only trying to save his beloved daughter, Federick Duval had covered up the murder until her rage killed him, too.

It was a scream that shook her out of her reverie. She covered her face with her hands and couldn’t hold back the sob that came out of her. So much death and violence in this damn world! She heard a thud on the door and it wooshed open in a gust of air. Jameson stood there, covered in blood, and it only served to remind her of her father.

“This was all you, wasn’t it you bitch! Knew we should have used you and killed you!” Jameson screamed. He threw himself at her, but Cierce was ready. She had trained with her knife well in the past few weeks and it was so easy to dodge out of his way, slashing through his stomach as she went. She turned around as she landed behind him, watching as he fell to the ground in a puddle of blood and worse things. She fell to the ground, wordless, and simply starred.

Then someone grabbed her, and she screamed bloody murder all over again.

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Riddick

It had gone as well as it could have, really. Except that damn captain… Jameson, or whatever his name was. If he hadn’t hit the alarm early, then it would have been really simple. Except that in the end, he couldn’t just kill them like lambs led to slaughter. So he had decided to wake their asses up, let them attack him, and kill them then. The first of the six crew had been relatively easy. The only thing that would haunt him about that was the fact that whats his name, Clarkson? No. Carlson. Yeah, the son of a bitch who laughed as he died. Even the whore had put up a good fight. But Jameson, dammit. Fucker hide and shot him from behind. Coward.

It wasn’t really all that bad. Riddick just had a large slice out of his right bicep where the bullet had sliced through skin and muscle. Lucky the bastard had gone into cryo sleep drunk, otherwise Riddick might not be standing there now. Damn shameful that a merc had gotten the upper hand on him like that. He had whipped around and gone after the sonofabitch, but he had aleady made it to the cockpit. He watched as the women attacked so quickly. He was sure she had done it before, gutted someone, he meant, but her reaction was one of such blatent horror, he couldn’t help but go to her. But when he touched her she screamed.

And then attacked. She lunged herself at him, her eyes glazed and wide, like a frightened animal. She growled and snarled, slashing at him with a knife he didn’t even know she had. She grazed him good across his chest, but she was running on adrenaline, and he was so the better killer. Not two minutes had passed before he had her held against his chest, her arms crossed in front of her, her knife lying at their feet.

“Shhh,” He crooned, “Shhh. I got cha. I got cha.” He didn’t know what else to do or say, so he continued to repeat the same mantra over and over again, wishing desperately for the first time in a long time that he wasn’t such a useless bastard when it came to people. After a few moments, the snarls and growls subsided and before he knew it, her body was shuddering and huge sobs were ripping themselves out of her. Her legs gave out and he gently lowered them both to the ground. She turned her head and buried it into one of his arms.

He felt so… strange, sitting here, this slip of a women curled into his body, sobbing hysterically, looking to him for comfort. How the hell had he gone from fucking her to ghosting them mother fuckin mercs, to cuddling with her?

“Riddick?” He heard a small voice ask. He looked down at her, meeting her eyes. Hmm, they were a gorgeous blue color. How had he missed that?

“Yeah, kid?” Was all he could say.

“Are they all dead?” She asked. He answered with a simple yes. She shuddered.

“You’ve never killed before, have you?” He asked, finding that his hand had some how started to stroke her hair in a soothing, repetive motion.

“Just once before,” Was her answer.

“Tell me. “ Riddick whispered. And so she did.

It took more than an hour for her story to come out. Most of it was spoken in a spacey, almost dead tone. A tone that said all too clearly that she was reliving it all. At the death of her brother, and that first brutal rape, she had all but dissolved back into tears. All the while, Riddick sat patiently with her, crooning the same quieting mantra he had before, while stroking soft hair. She was curled in his lap, her arms hugging herself tight, her head resting on his left arm.

Riddick knew he was going to have to stitch himself up soon; the wound on his right bicep was left gapping to the world and though the blood flow had slowed to a trickle, he knew that it would need stitches if it were going to heal properly. But he found himself loathing the idea of just leaving the poor girl alone right now. His beast had raged when he heard he depressing story and it just reminded him of how much he despised this world and why, so often, had he taken the law into his own hands.

It wasn’t until the woman turned where she lay did she hit the gouge in his chest. She had gasped and immediately started fussing over him. He tried to brush it off.

“Come on, I’ve had worse. Just point me to the first aid kit, and I’ll fix myself up.” He stated roughly. She moved out of his lap and stood. He watched her as she moved to a small control panel, using touch to guide her way. Dim lights lit up the ship in delicate hues that Riddick could stand even with his goggles off. He watched her rush to and fro in the living space, grabbing this and that, and seriously avoiding the hall way and living quarters. It was all for the better, really. Her room, the crew room, and now the cockpit held nothing but death.

She returned to his side with a small box of medical supplies. He watched as she grabbed a bunch of different sized packets. She ripped open one of the small ones and the smell of alcohol hit his nose. He would have argued with all this… this whole being taken care of think, except it seemed to take her mind off of everything. And, he could admit to himself, he didn’t mind the attention.

As she stitched him up his arm and chest, and then as she bandaged him, she talked about everything her brother had taught her, and what she had learned in the year or so that she had been on the run. He didn’t say much to her in return, then again, he didn’t really need to. If she needed to distract herself, that was fine with him. Once she was done, he settled himself against the wall again and she curled back into his lap.

“Talk to me, Riddick,” She said, pleadingly. He didn’t really know what to tell her. She had just laid out her entire life to him, and he couldn’t really seem to find the words to tell her how much it meant to him that she treated him like a human being. He didn’t want to tell her about his own life… It was too fuckin depressing, and it was too filled with death. So instead, he spoke of the planets he visited.

“And then there was this one planet, U.V. 6. Completely isolated, and so, so very quiet. Serene, you know? It’s a giant ice planet, the surface riddled with caves and these formations that look almost like finger prints. I was there for a week, maybe two tops, but I’d like to go there again. It’s a good place as any to get away from everything. Including yourself,” He stopped. He had been starring off into space, his hand never wavering as it ran the same path from the top of her head to the middle of her back. He realized that her breathing had evened out and that she was now blissfully asleep.

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A/N: More to come soon. And yes. Showering, fluffy goodness to follow!