Chapter 8
The piercing screech of his daughter's terror sizzled a straight line up Riddick's spine. Moira dislodged herself from his embrace and hit the ground running. "Nightmares," she called over her shoulder in a reassuring tone.
The word did little to quell his disquiet. He followed Moira down the short hall, not realizing that he had held his breath until it exploded from his body in a great sigh of relief when they reached Alexis' room. Moira knelt at Alexis' low bed and pulled the child into her arms.
Immediately the girl's cries turned to sobs. Moira rocked her on the ground, holding her very closely. Riddick stood helplessly above them. He watched Moira's expertise with their daughter with a degree of awe. He'd seen men who could kill in three seconds flat and go back to eating dinner but he'd never seen anyone treat another human being with anywhere near the amount of tenderness to which Moira regularly treated their daughter. It disturbed him more than any act of violence could.
Riddick had always thought that he knew everything that there was to know about life - and he hated it all. But he'd never known that humanity like Moira's existed. Even though he'd spent two years with her he had not seen it. Maybe it had taken Alexis to bring that part of Moira to the surface - perhaps he just had not looked deeply enough. Either way, Riddick had missed something...profound.
Eventually Alexis' tears turned to an uneasy sleep in the protective circle of her mother's arms. Riddick leaned down to Moira, his hands almost covering her shoulders. It was the stance of a vigilant guardian, something he could not ever be to her. "Why?" he asked softly, one hand leaving Moira's shoulder and settling on Alexis' soft curls. The girl's tiny head fir neatly into his palm.
Moira turned her face just enough that the tears streaming her cheeks glistened in the moonlight. "I don't know. It happens less now but...I don't know where it comes from." Her voice quivered and Moira took a moment to compose herself. "She's our daughter. Sometimes I think that these nightmares are the price she has to pay for her mother's crimes." Moira rested her head heavily on Riddick's upper arm. "I built happiness from the life I lived before. Maybe I have no right to be so blessed."
Riddick sat, enfolding them both in his embrace. "It isn't your fault."
She settled her head into the crook between his neck and shoulder. "I know but it's my responsibility to care about it, to make it go away."
Moira did not resist her natural inclination to be close to him this time. Whatever happened, wherever they each ended up, Moira knew that he had given her all that he was capable of giving. She would not punish him for it not being enough. "You asked me a question and then didn't let me answer."
Riddick took a deep breath. The question he had no right to ask. He certainly had no right to hear the answer. But he wanted it - wanted to hear her whatever she might say. "Was there a time when you would have died for me?"
"Yes." It was not an admittance or a confession. Moira had simply assumed that he had always known. To her the way she had felt was much less embarrassing than the way her body reacted to him still. No one can help who they love, Moira knew this well. It was the reason she could not blame Riddick for not loving her - emotions did not come on command, they existed...or they did not.
They sat like that for the better part of an hour, clinched together - a family by genetics and little else. Moira wondered, absently, if two more dissimilar, ill-fated people had ever produced offspring. Possibly. Fate had a sick sense of humor sometimes. Besides, something more than luck had drawn them together. There was reason behind their unlikely courtship, a method that surpassed the madness. Riddick had been given to her when she could not have survived without him and taken away when she could. Her impact on him was less obvious. To her.
Riddick knew well why he had been gifted to him. She was his sanity. Not love or compassion or understanding or any of the things that she had given so freely. Riddick had not much cared about those things. But Moira had represented to him the one thing that he had prized and almost lost: purpose. In his life there had always been motive, direction even if it did not conform to social norm or law. Riddick had never moved beyond his own code of conduct - everything that he had ever done had been done with inducement and consideration. But there were time that he had almost lost sight of that. Moira had pulled him back from the brink. Even when she had been gone for so long that he could not remember if she was a blonde or a red-head, Riddick had only to think of her to remember that he was not an animal. Not completely.
It was the Moira in him that sent him back to Jack and Imam. It took Fry to find that part of him but it was there all alone. Buried deeper because of his terror that Johns might have told the truth - that the one who had given him license to his own soul, his Moira, might have suffered for her kindness. Riddick was a better man for knowing that Johns had never touched her.
But being a better man did not make him good enough for her. "Moira," he waited for her to turn her head to the right, to gaze into his eyes.
"Moira, I have to go as soon as Gary can get me the ID."
"I know."
She let him kiss her temple, nuzzle her ear before she stopped him. "Not here. I need to put her to bed."
"Let me." He took his child from her mother's arms, amazed by how little she weighed. Holding her was something he knew he would never do again. But he would remember it. Her little girl warmth and the constant thrumming of her heart. She was his no matter what she would believe. Gary might be a better father figure but nothing could change the fact that Alexis was a part of him.
No one could take that away - no merc,
no officer of the court could undo his fatherhood.
When she was tucked in, kissed by her mother, Riddick took Moira's hand.
"Come on."
Chapter 9/9
She let him lead her back to the room she'd slept in for two years. She'd slept every night there alone and, after he was gone, she knew she would spend many more years that way. And it had never occurred to her to mind until he came back. Moira walked under the arched doorway and closed her eyes against the sight of the familiar surroundings. "It won't change anything," she pronounced.
"It never does, Moira." Riddick wanted her to look at him but he knew that she needed the blindness. She would have to live here long after he was gone. Moira laughed at his words. He was right. Sex was probably the most talked about, written on subject of all time but it could not correct a wrong. It did not save anyone and it would never put goodness where it did not already exist. You could bargain with it, take it with violence, or give it away willingly but you could not make it last and you could not build anything from it. But it could ease the hurt for awhile and Moira knew that nothing that Richard B. Riddick did from now on out could hurt her more than she had already suffered through in silence.
"Will it be all that you remember of me?"
His fingers played over her features. Eyes, nose, lips, chin, cheeks.
"No." He wondered for a brief moment what about her he would not remember this time. Very little. Painfully little.
The kiss was not as restrained as before, they had precious little time and they both felt it keenly. As Riddick extinguished the light, Moira slid her clothes off. He chuckled as she unconsciously began to fold her pants.
"Later, Doll."
She agreed without words. His clothing was next. There was going to be nothing slow or gentle about this and neither of them cared. He pushed her back on the bed and paused unexpectedly. "What?"
He cocked his head, a gesture she could hardly see in the darkness. "Are you on...anything?"
It took her a moment to catch up to his line of thought. "Oh - ah...no. No need, I guess." Birth control was the farthest thing from her mind most days.
"I don't want...it would be...one isn't easy, Moira but two would be impossible." He would leave his daughter because it was what was best for her but it would tear him up, ruin him to have two children he could not ever know. Not knowing Alexis would always haunt him. He could not take the risk of another unplanned pregnancy.
"Wait, bedside table! I think they must be Gary's but..."
"It'll do." He fished around and produced the desired little package. Moira giggled like a school girl - like a virgin. "Hurry up, Rick." Again she giggled. "That would've been a real bad scene."
"I don't think you know how bad." He joined her in laughter.
Later, when she was tucked tightly by
his side, listening to his deep even breathing Moira would stop to consider
how laughter had never been a part of their love-making before.
Something was right about this night, she decided as she fell asleep.
He stood in the entryway, duffel in hand, watching her watch him. "I
won't come with you to the landing platform," she said softly,
"It's too much to ask."
"I didn't ask," he noted.
Moira nodded, "Of course not."
"I can't tell you where I'm going."
"Safer that way. For us both."
Maybe the universe would believe that Richard B. Riddick was dead. Maybe not. Chances were good that they would not -- and every merc in the sector would knock on Moira's door. Better that she know nothing.
He shifted the bag to a more comfortable
position slung over his shoulder.
"But...if you need me-"
"I can find you. Gary has the right kind of contacts. Not even you can hide so well that they can't find you."
One problem taken care of. On to number two. "Make sure the girl knows that, too."
"Jack knows-"
"No. Alexis. Tell Alexis. If she is ever in trouble - I'll make it go away." It was as paternal as he would ever get.
Moira appreciated the effort. "She'll know."
This was not a kiss on the cheek kind of good-bye. That being evident Moira found that she did not know what kind of good-bye it was. She shifted uneasily on her feet. Her body was sore as she supposed his was. How did one have sex all night and disappear forever the next day? What was the proper procedure? "Imam is going to catch the next transport to New Mecca. He feels safe leaving Jack here."
"Good." Riddick did not believe in a benevolent God but the more people who did, the better a galaxy his daughter would grow up in. "She'll be happy here."
"I'll be happy with her here."
"Tell her I said..."
"I will." Moira knew that the words were hard for him. Leaving Jack was not easy but he'd made the prudent decision to avoid formal good-byes with the girl. "Rick..." The words died on her lips. Whatever it was, it was probably best unsaid.
"Maybe, someday I won't have to be so cautious. Maybe I'll come back and..." And what? Barge in on her life again? Disrupt her perfectly set rhythm? Create problems for Alexis and Jack?
"You're always welcome." But she would not hold her breath. She would not wait for him. Waiting for Richard Riddick would end her. "You'll miss your transport. I wish you'd take some money, Rick."
"No. I have what I need." Mostly, he added silently. He turned his back to her. The end. Wasn't that what the last page of great books always said? Great romances. He realized then that Moira was his great romance. Alexis was the proof of that greatness. Something of him that was immortal, something of Moira that he had fertilized and helped to bring to life.
"Moira," he did not turn back but he knew that she was listening, knew it as well as he knew that what he was going to say was the truth of his life. "If I could love, you would be it."
"Travel safely, Rick."
And he was gone. No tears came to Moira but the sadness was not less for it. She watched the door for several minutes, hoping...But he did not come back, he did not even turn around. His path was out there, hers was not. Finally she moved from the door only to collide with Jack. "Do you think he'll ever come back?"
Moira put her arm around the girl's shoulder. "No, I don't. But he's free, Jack, and we have to be happy about that, okay?"
"Are you going to cry?"
Her eyes stinging, Moira laughed. "Probably. Probably a lot. For a long time."
Jack sighed. "Me, too." And she wrapped her arms around the women who were destined to be a better mother to her than her own had been.
"I'm gonna hope he comes back."
Moira squeezed her charge harder and admitted quietly, "So will I."
THE END