Twenty One
“He’s bleeding, Shazza.” Jack had felt the blood against her leg, and knew right away that it had to be serious. Shazza still looked a little dazed, as though she wasn’t quite sure where she was, but Jack held her arm and shook her gently, until she looked down and saw all the blood. Her face grew hard; she would not lose Riddick too, not after all this, not after he had risked so much to come back for them.
“Help me, Jack. Over there, next to the booze.” Shazza was still shaken, but this was something to concentrate on; if she could just do something she would be okay. Riddick leaned heavily on them both as they stumbled across the room and helped Riddick turn around and sit with his back against the bulkhead. He had hardly made a sound, and he never once complained about the pain, but Shazza knew that he was hurt badly. Without his goggles it was easier to read his expressions. Not by much, but enough to know that he hid a lot.
“Damn, that’s deep, Jack, pass me that bottle.” Shazza pointed to the box of booze beside Jack and nodded when Jack pulled out a bottle of whiskey. The cut was deep but it looked clean, or at least not ragged; whatever else could be said about the creatures, the weapons nature gave them were effective, and they kept themselves clean.
She swallowed hard against the need to cry when she saw Riddick clench his hands into fists at his sides when she touched the skin around the slash. “Give me your knife, Riddick.” She didn’t need to ask whether or not he had one, she just held her hand out for it. Riddick reached behind him, pulled the makeshift blade from where he had secreted it earlier, and handed it to her; he held it by the blade edge, so she wouldn’t get cut. It was such a simple thing, a small gesture of kindness, but it had her look up at him and their eyes met again.
Shazza’s smile was fleeting, a ghost that flickered across her ashen face and then she looked back down to his wound. She took another deep breath and then sat back on her heels for a moment and reached for the bottle Jack still held and took a deep pull from it. Riddick chuckled at Jack’s shocked face; after all of the things that had happened today, this was the first time Jack looked truly surprised at any of it. “I thought…I thought it was for his leg?”
Shazza looked up and grinned at Jack before she answered, “It is, but it’s about the only thing that’s going to settle my nerves right now. Here, I need you to hold his pantleg out of the way, like this…so that I can clean some of this blood away.” Riddick took the bottle from Shazza and took a pull as she pressed carefully on the wound and cut the fabric away until the slash was exposed.
Her fingers touched some of the weird blue blood from the creatures before she shuddered and reached for the bottle Riddick still held. “I don’t have anything else for the pain, Riddick. I’m sorry.” He read compassion in her face, and a gentleness that all the dirt and grime and tears couldn’t hide; he wouldn’t cry out no matter how bad it hurt, because it would hurt her if she knew.
“S’okay.” He looked at her as she held her breath, before she poured the whiskey over the wound. His leg felt like it was on fire, a thought he quickly banished from his mind, as he thought of Imam. His jaw clenched hard enough to hurt, until he thought that he wouldn’t be able to help but cry out.
Shazza’s knuckles were as white as his own were, and her voice shook as she said she would have to do it again. She didn’t ask, she told him. It hurt her but she did it anyway, and soon the wound was clean. It still gaped however and Shazza asked Jack to try to find something clean to bandage him.
Shazza looked up, puzzled, when Jack hadn’t moved. “Jack…?” Riddick watched as Jack’s face went red and she took a quick breath; her eyes darted from Riddick to Shazza, before they settled on Riddick. Riddick tilted his head as he watched Jack pull at the bottom of her shirt and suddenly he realized what had made her so uncomfortable.
“You don’t have to Jack, we can find something else.” Shazza watched the silent conversation the two seemed to have, touched by the gentleness in Riddick’s voice when he spoke to Jack. Shazza whispered Jack’s name again, more puzzled than before, as she watched Jack’s chin dimple. She couldn’t understand what had made the boy so upset and looked to Riddick, whose hand held Jack’s arm.
“No, Riddick, it’s the only thing here that’s probably stayed clean. It’s okay, it doesn’t matter…” Riddick watched Jack a moment longer and then closed his eyes while Jack lifted her shirt and began to unwind the cloth she had used to bind herself. She dropped her shirt again before she was completely bare and handed the relatively clean band of cloth to a stunned Shazza.
She didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before; Riddick’s gentleness with Jack, his affection for her, and her, her, hero-worship of him. She wondered for a moment how long Riddick had known, and then realized it didn’t really matter; that Riddick had known, and had protected the girl and kept her secret was enough for her.
Jack stayed quiet; she didn’t even breathe. She knew without even the need to ask that Riddick understood why she had lied, but she didn’t know if Shazza would. Her eyes closed and the only thing that existed in the room at the moment was Riddicks’ hand on her elbow. Shazza’s voice brought her back; there was no condemnation in it, no anger. “Sometimes it’s easier not to be a girl, Jack.”
Nothing more needed to be said. Sometimes it’s easier not to be a girl. Jack didn’t know if Shazza had to deal with some of the things she had to deal with but she would bet that she had. They might never talk about them or share them the way some other people might, but Jack knew right then that if she felt she had to or needed to, she could talk to Shazza and Shazza would know exactly what she meant. Sometimes it’s easier not to be a girl.
Shazza handed her the nearly empty bottle while she wrapped Riddick’s leg wound; when she was done she sat back on her heels and looked at Jack, not with a hard glance, but one that radiated determination, a kind of strength Jack had never seen on a woman, and one she never expected.
“Drink, Jack.” Jack gave Shazza a puzzled glance; she had taken a sip or two of beer once, but never anything stronger, and never openly. She looked at Riddick but found no answers there, as though Riddick knew that this had nothing to do with him at all, with any man. Jack took a deep pull at the bottle; at once eager at the feel of something to drink and shocked as the whiskey burned a fiery path down her throat. The deal was made, and sealed. “Your secret’s safe with me Jack, for as long as you need to keep it.”
Shazza ran her hands over her face and squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment, the determination still in her face. Riddick didn’t know for how much longer but it was easier for Shazza when she had something to do to take her mind off what was all around them; she survived because she had to, and she did what was needed, when it was needed.
He looked over at Jack who still looked a little sheepish and unsure and asked her if they had any crackers left. He wasn’t really hungry but the sight of her smile when she beamed at him made it worthwhile. “Something even better…” Jack muttered from her place in front of one of the crates that she and Shazza had brought from Paris’ container.
Riddick shared another of those fleeting deep looks with Shazza while they both waited for Jack to come back. “Look…” Jack came back with her arms full of tins and jars and more things that she had tucked into the front of her shirt which she pulled out.
Pate, caviar, jars of preserved fruit, and more boxes of crackers. There was stuff there that none of them had any idea what it could be, but the pictures on the side looked like it would be good. Jack sat at Riddicks’ side and giggled for a moment before she managed to stop herself, the sound of it was strange given where they were but it made Riddick grin to hear her. She saved the best, to her anyway, for last. A faded, very old, box of something called Peek Freans. There was a picture of cookies on the box.
Shazza looked up from where she sat and laughed out loud, “You’ve brought us a feast, Jack…Wait; I saw the perfect thing to go with all this…over there, no, the other one.” When Riddick saw the bottle of champagne even he laughed out loud.
Riddick opened the tins with his shiv, and they made a feast of pate and crackers, tinned meat and fruit, and saved the cookies for last. They were stale but it didn’t matter. They decided to leave the caviar after a very quick taste. Riddick had eaten some nasty things in his life but the caviar got left alone, put back in the crate with the empty tins and jars.
Riddick got very quiet before he opened the bottle of champagne; Shazza wanted to ask him if he was all right, but she knew he wasn’t, and that maybe he wouldn’t know where to start about what was wrong.
He didn’t know much about religion, but he knew that Imam didn’t drink. Somehow he didn’t think Imam would be offended when Riddick raised the bottle “to Imam” before he took a deep pull and passed it to Shazza who did the same and repeated the toast. Jack still was unsure about the alcohol but Riddick and Shazza both had their eyes closed tight, and she wasn’t about to interrupt. She drank and thought of Imam.
They were quiet for a little while and passed the bottle between them, lost in their own thoughts. Riddick shifted his weight a little so that Jack could rest her head more comfortably against his chest; the champagne had gone to her head, and made her first giggly and then sleepy. Her head would hurt the next morning but that could be worried about later. He held his arm out of the way and looked at Shazza who looked at him for a moment before she rested against his side with his arm around her shoulders. They both looked over and smiled as Jack started to snore softly, she was as exhausted as they were, it just hit her harder.
They leaned back against the bulkhead and listened to the faint cries of the creatures outside. If you could shut out what they were for a moment it sounded almost haunting, beautiful. Shazza looked over at Jack, curled up safely in Riddick’s arms, her face soft and serene in sleep. She wondered when Jack had last felt secure enough to sleep so soundly, and her heart skipped a beat at the thought that she would find safety here, held in the arms of a convict. Not a convict, she told herself; held by Riddick, which was something else entirely.
The champagne had gone to her head, especially given the whiskey before it, but she wasn’t drunk, and doubted that there was enough booze here to do that, given the seriousness of the situation. The mood had lightened, for a while, because if it hadn’t, they would have broken, but the problem of how to get out was still with them. Shazza looked to make sure that Jack still slept before she asked, “What do we do now, Riddick?”
Riddick hadn’t forgotten either, and he breathed in deeply as he looked out over the near distance of the bay. His hand stroked over Jack’s side, and kept her asleep against him. He rested his head back, closed his eyes, and smiled, as he thought of Imam; he knew Shazza waited for him, and he caressed her shoulder to let her know he hadn’t forgotten.
His voice was soft and deep when he answered, with Imam’s enigmatic phrase that had come to mean so much. They were Johns’ last words, said in a pain filled, puzzled voice as he tried to put together what Riddick had just told him; words that made clear what a fool Johns had been. What a waste it all was.
“Blue sun, blue water.”
He was quiet for a moment before he continued, and Shazza waited for him to explain, her own mind filled in the story as he told it, as it started to make sense to her. “Johns didn’t pay attention. All he saw was that fucking solar powered toy the kids found and he didn’t really care too much what else Imam had to say. All he thought of was that someone else had been here. He didn’t listen to what Imam had discovered about the canyon, about the water.”
Riddick took another small sip of the champagne and both of them remembered how it had been, how Imam had come into the crash ship when Riddick was still chained up, and told them. “I doubt Imam even knew why he kept it from Johns, maybe he just knew the fucker was bad news, but whatever happened, he didn’t say anything to Johns about the blue sun. With the model at the settlement broken, there was no way for Johns and Fry to know that the eclipse wasn’t complete, not now, not then. Imam knew though, because he timed it when he was out there in the canyon, ‘screwing around’, as Johns put it. You should have seen that fucker’s face when I told him…” Riddick stopped as he looked at Shazza, and mouthed an apology before he even realized it; he didn’t want her to see him that way. She just shook her head and looked at him, and waited for him to continue. “The days are about forty hours long here, by the blue sun. That’s what Imam put it at. The blue sun set with the others and it will be about a month or so for the other two suns to rise again, but in about seven hours, that blue sun is going to rise, Shazza, and we can just walk out of here.”
It was all so simple, such a small thing that your mind fought against it being real. Johns and Fry had left the safety of the ship and died for nothing. If they had waited, they could have just walked out, the next morning when the sun rose. “You’re sure?” She didn’t doubt Riddick; it was just such a crazy situation.
He grinned at her; he hadn’t read doubt or disbelief in her either. “I trust Imam.” They were simple words, but he had never trusted anyone before.
He looked down and smiled at her then, and held her a little closer. If it was another time and place and he’d had this much to drink, there wouldn’t be much question what he would have done. This was different, he watched Shazza a moment longer as his heart told him one thing and his head told him another.
He leaned down towards her and their lips nearly touched but he was still unsure; he didn’t know what Shazza would do, if she would let him. It wasn’t something he would normally be concerned about, but a kiss was something that had to be given, it could never be taken. No matter how much he pushed, if she didn’t want to, she would never kiss him back. And he wanted her to kiss him back, he needed her to.
Shazza watched the question he could never ask bloom in his eyes; she tilted her head up to him and kissed him first. His lips were soft, and he tasted of champagne and cookies, a thought that would have had her laugh at any other time, but not this time, she could never laugh at the vulnerability she saw in him, as he opened himself up to her kiss.
Her hand rasped over the stubble of his jaw as the kiss deepened and his hand tangled in her hair. Their kiss broke gently; everything bout the kiss was gentle, and that’s something he hadn’t experienced for a very long time. Shazza watched as he sucked his bottom lip in, as though he wanted to taste her for just a moment longer. His hand ran through her hair again and pulled her to him and buried his nose in her hair. Shazza rested her head against his chest and listened as his heart raced and told her all the things he didn’t know how to say to her. He held her and stroked her hair until she fell asleep in his arms, and they waited for the sun to come up.