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~~~***~~~
He watched Jack with the other children in Mecca. She stood apart from them even while trying to fit in. But she was a quick learner and she could become someone. A citizen of Helion Prime; even a doctor or teacher with the right guidance. Not another nomad, or worse a convict running for her life.
He was not the right guidance. He would just bring her down. Make her like him.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
Riddick turned to look at the Imam. "It's for the best," he answered.
The Imam snorted. "You have heard the saying, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'?"
He said nothing. He knew he was already going to what the Imam defined as hell, whether the Imam believe him or not, and he had no intentions of dragging Jack along with him.
"Riddick," the Imam repeated. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," he growled.
The Imam shook his head. "Is it what you want?" he asked, and Riddick saw the change in tactics by the Holy Man.
"Wants and needs. I'm on the run with a bounty on my head. Needs are the only things I have to worry about," Riddick answered, softly. "I'm way past wants."
The Imam sighed. "You have become her family," the Imam reminded him. "And she yours. The older brother who protects her from the Universe. She'll try to find you. That I can promise you." The Imam paused for a moment. "I will not be her jailer," he finished.
Riddick titled his head slightly acknowledging the comparison the Imam was trying to make. He also understood it. The Imam was all for free will, and even if Jack was still a child she had already experienced more than most on this planet.
"I will stay for as long as I can," Riddick said, knowing that Helion Prime would be the last place any merc team would think to look for him. If he kept his head and eyes covered he should be able to blend in for a few months.
Besides, he could use the downtime and the regular sleep and meals to strengthen his body and mind.
~~~***~~~
Instead, he had followed most of the boys from the fostering home into the military. He'd actually enjoyed his time in the military as it had helped hone his natural skills--tracking, hand to hand combat, and piloting. That had all changed when he'd been thrown into his first slam for doing the right thing. For the first few months he'd had hope that he'd finally be found innocent and could return to a new unit. That hope had died pretty quickly when the evidence he had gathered had gone missing and the "judge" in the case had been one of the people he'd accused of human slaving.
All this meant was that he knew no one would look for him in the archives of the main library. No one but one of the librarians. Vaako had a knack for finding him. Not that Riddick minded. If he was staying on Helion Prime, if he didn't have the bounty on his head, Riddick would try to pursue something with the other man. As it was, he and Vaako just continued to dance around each other.
"Are you hiding from your sister again?" Vaako asked him, handing him a blue data crystal that marked it as belonging to the library. He knew it was the last crystal in a set--The History of Furya. He also knew that one of Vaako's grandmothers had been one of the historians on the four crystal set.
"Perhaps," he answered, taking the crystal from Vaako and watched as the other man smiled softly.
Vaako didn't leave right away. Instead the other man stared at him. Riddick stared back. Whatever Vaako was looking for he must have found it. "This one is mine," he said, handing Riddick an amber colored crystal. "I would like it back tomorrow."
Riddick took the crystal and before he could offer up a thanks or a question Vaako was already walking away.
~~~***~~~
Furyan. Furya. Alpha. It explained so much. His silver eyes, hyper senses, strength, and agility. How he could be just as comfortable in the military as he was on the run. How he picked up on information and could read people. He'd been fighting his own instincts for the last seven years and every time he did he ended up in trouble.
His dreams of a planet full of graves and a woman standing guard over them weren't dreams or prophetic visions. It was a memory from the last ship of survivors to leave Furya. He'd been two. He knew that now. That the story of male children being killed with their own umbilical cords was real but he wasn't one of them. He'd been hidden, secreted away. His mother killed before giving birth to his baby brother. His older sister left on the planet as temporary protector.
Shirah. His older sister. He had a flesh and bone sister, if she was still alive, waiting for him to return home. It did not change how he saw Jack, who in the last month and half had let her hair grow out further and was looking more and more like a young girl and less like a boy. She'd finally told him her real name, and since then the Imam and himself had taken to calling her Kyra. Vaako as well, when Kyra deemed it worthy of her time to follow him to the library.
Riddick paced around the roof he was standing on. The mark on Kyra's back marked her as a Daughter of the Soulkeepers, just like his sister. Kyra had much to learn and much to live for.
He didn't know why the Elementals had made such a far reaching and horrible prophecy. Furya would never have sought out the Necromongers had they themselves not first come to Furya looking to destroy all the male children. Having been led to destroy it by one Air Elemental's prophecy.
Furya was hard to chart, hard to get to unless you knew the secrets of how to navigate through Furya's solar system. An area of space that turned sensors into useless junk and seemed to just tear apart uninvited ships that didn't know the path to take.
"You have scared one of the library guards," Vaako's softly spoken words interrupted his thoughts. In all his life, Vaako was really the only person who had been able to get so far into his personal space that Riddick never knew the other man was there. Vaako stood by the doorway of the stairs that led back to the library and smirked at him. "I stopped them from reporting matters to the local constables," he said. "I thought neither of us needed them involved."
"You thought right," Riddick agreed, looking at the data crystal he had pulled from his jacket pocket. "Is your grandfather the man who pulled me off the planet? Pulled the dozen or so families to safety?"
Vaako stepped forward and took the crystal from Riddick's hand. "If I had to hazard a guess, yes. I believe so." Vaako pocketed the crystal. "He stayed with my grandmother for the first few years of my mother's life and then it is said he was called home and my grandmother let him go."
"You know what I am?"
Vaako smiled softly. "My mother had eyes like the ones I believe you hide under those dark glasses. An Alpha Furyan. A Son of the Wrath."
The Wrath. It explained the intense pressure when he felt threatened or angry. He was going to need to learn to channel it, and pacing on the library's roof was not the location to do it.
"And what are you?"
Vaako laughed. "A simple librarian."
Riddick snorted. There was nothing simple about Vaako, from the man's build to the way he moved. "Librarian I might give you; simple, never."
~~~***~~~
"It will be safer for you here," he answered.
Kyra grabbed his wrist and yanked hard, pulling him off balance. He should never have taught her that trick.
"I will follow you," she said. "No matter what it takes. No matter who I have to barter with to get off this planet. The Imam will not stop me. You'll probably have to rescue me again," she added at the end. "So, wouldn't it just be better if I came with you to begin with?"
"Kyra," he pleaded.
"I'll pilot the ship while you finally have your way with Vaako," she replied smiling up at him, innocently.
"Kyra," he hissed.
Kyra rolled her eyes. "I see," she said. "I see the two of you. It's together or something far worse for both of you."
"Kyra," he said again, looking into eyes that weren't seeing what was around her but into a spiritual abyss that few could look into and return from. He sighed. "You do what I say when I say it, understood?"
"Understood," she said, breaking out of whatever trance she had been in. "I get to pilot while you get Vaako." She laughed and took off running for the space port again.
"Kyra," he said and wondered if it was too late, because having a little sister was almost worse than the merc team that had finally landed on Helion Prime.
He was only seconds behind her when he ran up the ramp to Vaako's ship. "She's coming along," he told the other man.
Vaako gave him a look as if that had ever been in question. "We need to talk later and she can pilot the ship," Vaako said.
Riddick growled. "Don't you start with me too," he said, pointing a finger at the other man before moving into the cockpit and picking up Kyra from the pilot's seat and depositing her on her feet. "You can fly once we get out of the Helion System."
Kyra laughed.
~~~***~~~
He had Vaako; or Vaako had him. It depended on how one looked at the matter. Kyra thought Vaako had him wrapped around his little finger, and only to himself would Riddick admit that was probably true.
Kyra was safe on Furya. His sisters were together and he wasn't sure if that was good or bad for they liked to gang up on him. He had family now. A reason to live and fight. A reason to get the bounties removed; Shirah had resources working on that, and for the first time in a while Riddick believed in hope again.
Shirah had sent he and Vaako on a mission to destroy an Elemental transport ship that carried the Air Elemental that had given the prophecy to Zhylaw. To prevent her from meeting with the Necromonger fleet again. But he and Vaako had other plans. They were going to destroy the Necromonger fleet that even today was moving towards Vaako's homeworld. A planet where Vaako would have been had he not met Riddick in a library.
Furya would have its revenge. The Universe would have a chance, and Riddick would have his peace.
~end~