TITLE: Mother Dearest
AUTHOR: Ms Mephisto
FANDOM: Pitch Black
PAIRING: -
RATING: rated R for kinda severe angst
DISCLAIMER: The Characters of Pitch Black are copyright to USA Films. There is no infringment intended by the use of them in this story. I claim none of those characters. The same goes for Disturbed's song "Down with the Sickness"
SUMMARY: I've been playing around with the idea of what would happen if Riddick ever met his mom, after the events of Pitch Black when he has this newborn human side in him. And as I was listening to the glorious soundtrack of a not so good film, Queen of the Damned, the song Down With The Sickeness by Disturbed gave me the inspiration to write it. So basically this is a song-fic. The lyrics can be found at the end or they are woven into the story.
Mother dearest..
It had been nothing but a fluke... to find the human that gave life to him, and tried to destroy it in the same instant. Leaving him to die, with the umbilical cord around his neck to be sure he'd have help on the way to nothingness.
But someone had found him, and instead kept him in this world... this world that never gave him anything but pain. Until her.. she shed light where there had only been a vast darkness. And with it she tried to awaken the sleeping humanity inside him.. the part of him that he never even knew had survived his birth. Something he never imagined he ever had inside him.. and suddenly she had triggered it. Only to die and leave him blinded by her light. Blinded and disoriented...
In a panic of what was breeding inside him he left the others, to get far away from the desire to join them and the human race. The fear of being a part of it scared him more than anything.. cause it meant that he would have something to loose. He'd always looked out for number one.. but only with himself in the bargain, never anything worth loosing or missing. He never had a soul to worry about cause after Slam he was so far gone the path of damnation that his conscience was left so far behind that he imagined it dead and buried. But it had only been sleeping, and she had woken it.. only to not know what to do with the shell it inhabited.
He had fled to known surroundings, to Earth, where his useless life once had been given to him. And suddenly her name was there.. HER.. the reason of his existence, and abandonment in this world. He had triggered the files that told his sad story of life in reality and found that a woman had been looking for a child ... a child that once could have been him.
She had apparently been struck by a guilty conscience in her older age as she had found religion, and was out on a quest to save her soul and seek forgiveness from the one she had given life to..
Through channels he helped her on her way... making sure she was who she was, and then he set up a meeting. Maybe it was his newborn human side, maybe it was simple curiosity... but he wanted to meet the woman who could so that to something as innocent as a newborn child. Cause in the second she wrapped the cord around his neck he was no longer innocent, in that second she had staked out his life as he had lived it. Violence, pain and death followed in his wake.
He had set up the meeting.. and she came. Older and more fragile than he thought she showed up, with a rosary wound tight in her hand.. almost afraid that if she lost it she would be beyond help. Like it was her link to the right path she was on .. justifying herself to meet him. Or maybe she thought it would protect her from him.
She knew who he was.. what he was. The killer born out of her womb. Maybe she tried to comfort herself with the thought that she was saving humanity from what he would become when he grew up... Maybe.
He just looked at her, didn't know what to make of her. It would have been so much easier if she bore some sign of that she was evil, insane.. something that could help him see the reason why she had left the child in the dumpster.
Cause it was the child she had left there, not him. The child, and the innocence with it, had died when she left it. All that was left was HIM; Riddick, the killer, the psychopathic mass murderer .. the shell with no soul.
Her eyes searches the room, and the man hidden in the shadows.. He can see the fear, smell it on her. See the knuckles turn white as she clutches the rosary closer to her bosom. The bosom he never was allowed to be held against.. to feel her heartbeat, to feel safe in the warm love of a mother. No, all he knew was garbage, and the cold metal.. and it's taint that still clings to him. He can feel the hate, the loathing for the human in front of him rising inside.
He let's it flow over him, drowning in it as he steps out of the shadows. The broken child in him, falling to it's knees, clinging to his humanity, feels the pain of abandonment. But as she steps back from him in horror, he can feel it's change inside him. The little light Carolyn lit can't help but flicker and die at the fearful stare of a mother who never wanted her child.
The hate, the demon inside him rises from it's haunches, taking control again. His companion in survival, quenches the softness that only had started to grow. Softness has no place in a world made of shattered glass and broken bones.
He's the one to utter the words first, the ones he cannot stop as they flow to his lips. "Don't deny it mother. You fear your offspring, and I can see the hate in you. It connects with my own... breeds with the sickness inside me. You gave me this.. you made me who I am. Don't you like what you see?"
She backs away from him, suddenly the embodiment of a cornered animal. The change in him scares her... and he enjoys it as the air suddenly reeks with human fear.
"Why?" One word dressed in so much tattered pain, and she shies away from it. That single word is all that is needed between them.
The beast inside him feels her weakness, and rolls in it, soaking up every second of pleasure it gives him. He's decaying on the inside, crumbling to pieces... but it feels so right. The world is a scary place, and he's part of it.
The trembling woman before him doesn't have to utter a word over those white lips, he knows the answer. He can read it in her eyes.. and he fear from saying them out loud.
She never wanted him... never asked for him, and only wanted him to go away like a bad dream. But her nightmare has come to life and is begging for revenge.
"Would you like to see how it feels mommy?"
It's as if he's outside himself.. letting the beast reign free, watching as it winds her rosary around her neck.. tightening it. Maybe he could have stopped it.. himself.. Maybe. But did he want to?
Suddenly the pieces fell into place, and he feels the calmness surround him like a thick blanket. One thought stands above all as he let's the cooling body drop from his grip, one thought that strangely brings comfort.
Madness has now come over me