Long Time Coming

She keeps me cool at night.

This place swelters once the sun goes down, like meat cooling in the oven. It stays hot for hours. It's been almost ten years since I became Lord over the Necromongers, and only two since the last one of them died at my hand. The universe is free and for once, so am I. Every one in this galaxy and every one you can get to by ship knows my name. The name's Riddick.

I first saw her in the company of Aereon, a small and demure girl with dark hair and eyes the color of oceans. When she looked at me and met my own eyes without fear, I felt myself drowning. She was an Elemental of Water. We didn't speak to each other until a year later. After the Necros were erased I decided it was time to visit the past, back to where it all started. I was alone on that cursed planet, seeing the sun bleached bones of Johns and the others. I never saw anything left of the one who forced me to rejoin the human race. Caroline. I still remember the look on her face when that fucker speared her through the middle. I wonder still if she thought it was me.

I retraced my steps through the canyon and when I came out the other side, she was there. "I've been waiting for you," she'd said. The sun was murder, but the second she touched my skin, I was cooled. Somehow she could see inside my head, but without invading I waI was my usual charming self, but she paid me no mind and spoke of how she could see things, from the past and the future. Her pale hand coiled around my throat like a snake, but I knew there was no threat. She was gentle, more so that any other living person's been with me. I won't lie, it scared me to death.

"The Necromongers had been to her world already, they couldn't take her soul because you were already inside, growing. She escaped, but there was enough Necro inside her from their failed experiments to do what she did. She fought it, as her hands wrapped the chord around your throat. She cried for you, for her own sins, but she didn't want your death. She gave you life, she never wanted to take it."

I wanted to shut her up, so I didn't have to wonder if maybe my mother loved me after all. It was over as soon as it had begun when she took her hand away.

"I said I'd die for them, not for you." She repeated Caroline's last words to me and then I knew there was no foolin'. Then she promised to teach me about myself, about my race, about the Furyans. I never much cared about where I came from, not usually about where I was going either. I agreed, but only because I wanted to learn more about her. It had been a long time since I'd smelled beautiful, let alone touched it.

Never did she show fear when faced with the reality of me. When I was an animal she accepted it, then she showed me there was another way. The first time I felt my soul burn was when Lord Marshal tried to highjack it from me, the second when was she showed me the act of love. To someone like me, it sounds pathetic, ridiculous, alien. And as far as I was concerned it was until it happened. In hindsight I think I had a love for Jack...Kyra. She was the first person who was with me, watching my back. But with this woman with snow white skin as soft as a still pool and eyes that don't flinch when they locked with mine, that's a whole 'nother story. To feel her surrounding me, moving slowly over my body with her hand and her lips, worshiping me - it was better than a good kill, or a hard earned victory. It was better than the silence I'd be craving since as long as I can remember.

We moved together slowly, and she made me feel every molecule of our bodies. For a while she morphed into a mist and then she was inside me, in my cells. I felt like I touched Heaven. And then she was over me again, her breasts at my mouth, begging for my attention. I rolled us over and her knees pressed into my ribs. Something was awakened inside me when our eyes met. The room was dark, save for the luminescence of my eyes and the reflection in hers. Like a moon on the water. It was the first time I knew what love was.

We haven't spent a night apart in over a year. When my freedom was a guarantee and my name synonymous with the word hero. I took my mate and we disappeared. On this mostly barren outer world, we live on the outskirts of a small city that is on the perimeter of a larger one. We don't see many people, but she can't help but make friends. The winters are wet and I know that's when she's happiest. I've always liked the heat and the summers scorch the earth.

She keeps me cool at night.

After we make love, she stretches out across my body and her element soothes me so much so, I don't feel myself falling asleep until I'm awakened by her leaving me. I know when it happened, realizing that I couldn't live without her. One day when she'd gone into the city and not returned by nightfall as she'd promised. I searched for her, frantic, all civility and domesticity evaporated from me. I became a hunter again, an animal and it was fueled by fear. When I found her, walking the road homewards, I cried. I almost cried once, when Kyra died, but then I realized I was seated on the throne of the Lord Marshal and could show no weakness to my new army.

She led me home and told me why she'd been so late. There was going to be a child. At first I found the idea abhorrent. No one deserved to be saddled with me as a father. She read my emotions as clearly as she ever had. She put a vial in my hand and told me the decision was mine. If I didn't want this, then she'd swallow the poison and it would be over. I wondered if this was a test, but she'd never played games with me before and I didn't believe she would now. A few hours later I smashed the bottle against the wall.

I couldn't live without this would-be child of mine anymore than I could live without her. She was the blood in my veins. And now my blood flowed in hers.

Now months later I awake alone, the bed and the side of my body still cool from where she'd been moments earlier. The panic rises in me again for aent ent and then I see her in the dark in all her shining beauty, walking back towards me. She's opened the window and the first rain at the end of summer has begun. I open my arms and invite her into my embrace. She pillows her head against my chest and shoulder and I pull her close. I can hear her heart beat in synch with mine and the movement of tiny bones under the roundness of her belly. It won't be long now and my life will undergo another dramatic shift. I breathe in her scents and it both thrills and terrifies me.

"Was this what you saw?" I ask suddenly.

"When I first looked in your eyes?"

"Yes."

"No. What I saw will not occur for decades to come. We're not going anywhere. You can rest." I listen as her breathing slows and I know she's asleep. She's mysterious and cryptic on any given day. It keeps me interested in something other than that gorgeous body. When the silence is perfect inside my head, I can almost snsidnside her mind as she can with mine. Our child is half Furyan and half Elemental. That's gotta be something special. I rid the universe of the Necromongers. Imagine what my son or daughter could do? As I feel sleep upon my again, I remind myself ask her about it in the morning. But my thoughts dissipate into dream images and all I feel now is peace. It's been a long time coming.