Epilogue; Promise me This
Pristine tears shined against the silvery blue of Riddick's eyes. He watched his baby girl as she spoke her vows to Harold.
"I take you Harold, to live life with and to love with. To watch years pass by and to age together and watch our children grow, I vow to never leave an argument unfinished and to never take more than I give. You are my lover and my partner and I take you as my husband" Jack said slipping a silver ring on his finger.
"I'll take you Jaqueline any way I can" he said and grinned and everyone watching smiled.
"You are the reason I smile and the person who can take my breath away by just coming into a room. You are my lover and my life, I place this ring on you each band being a symbol of us. The top band is my life, the middle band is Lissa's and the bottom band is yours, the knot together in the middle is our lives entwined as one and the diamond on top is the jewel I hope to create with you, I take you as my wife" he said and put the ring on her.
Cara let a tear slip down her cheek and Riddick wiped it away. She smiled up at him seeing his own eyes shining with tears. Harold leaned over and kissed Jack and everyone cheered.
Sam sat in the back of the church watching. Her heart ached, she wanted what they had. She watched the exchange between Cara and Riddick and her soul felt a tug. Brianna sat next to her daughter and Dillion on the other side of her.
After the kiss ended Jack turned around and scooped up Lissa and placed her on her shoulders and everyone laughed. With their arms linked and Lissa in tow the couple made their way down the aisle and down to the basement where the reception was set up.
"Open up Jack" Harold said and Jack shook her head.
"You'll shove it in my face and ruin my pretty make-up" she said through clenched teeth.
"Jack it's tradition we have to feed one another" he said while the on lookers grinned.
"You ruin my dress and I'll let you have it" she said.
"Ok" she said and picked up a piece of cake. "On the count of three" she told him and Riddick laughed.
"One, two......three" their audience said and in a flash cake and icing flew. Jack had it in her face, hair and on her dress. Harold had it in his eyes, on his tux and falling down his chest. Jack shrieked with laughter.
"Sucker, never trust a woman with cake in her hands" she told him.
"Yep because she'll find a way to have her cake and eat it too" Riddick hollered and Cara smacked him.
"What I'm just being honest" he said looking down at her.
"Learn to use some tact you idiot" she said grinning.
Harold picked up his goblet of champagne and motioned for Jack to pick up hers. "Nope it ain't gonna happenin buddy, no way am I going to trust you with that" Jack said backing away and bringing a laugh from the crowd.
"Oh come on sweetheart" he said.
"Not happening" she said.
"Jack do it" Riddick hollered at her.
"Why should I?" she asked.
"Because I'm your father and I told you to" he said.
"What if I say no?"
"Then I'm afraid you'll be terribly embarrassed when I take you over my knee and spank you in front of God and everyone, you may have just gotten married but I'm still your father" he told. She stuck out her bottom lip and pouted at him.
"Quit being such a ham for everybody and pick up your glass" Riddick said to her.
"Oh fine, I'm now wondering how I can get to the court house and ask for an annulment just so you know" she said.
Riddick grinned, Jack was eating this up and he knew it. The smile on her face was broader than any he'd ever seen.
The couple finally calmed down and drank from one another's flutes of champagne. It was time for the bride to dance with her father and the groom with his mother. Harold's mother had passed on so he danced with Brianna. Jack walked up to Riddick on the dance floor and looked up at him. Love, love and adoration were in his eyes and it brought tears to hers.
"Dad" she whispered and he placed his hands on her hips and drew her to him. Her arms went up around his neck and she laid her head against his chest. He held her in a tight embrace for the longest time as the music started to play.
"I love you so much" he said.
She nodded her head. "I'm going to miss you when you leave, what I'm I going to do without you here with me" she said tears threatening to fall.
"You're going to be a wife and a mother and damn good one. You'll be here to meet him with a cup of coffee and a smile, you'll love that baby girl and show her the rights and wrongs of life, when she comes home from school crying because someone hurt her you'll teach her how to forgive her trespassers and teach her that it's others fears that make them that way and not something that's wrong with her. You'll show the love and understanding for them that only you can do Jack, you'll love them and you live your life. Not anyone else's just yours and you'll do it just fine, that's what you'll do" he said.
Big jewel like tears fell from eyes. "How could anyone ever think you were a monster?"
"Because they never knew what having someone like you in my life could do" he said with emotion.
They stood in place swaying slowly and holding one another. It wasn't a dance of their bodies that the onlookers saw but a dancing of hearts, two hearts that had melted into one over the years and were slowly separating from one another. Slowly the song ended and they looked at one another.
"I'll always be here" he said laying a hand over her heart; "No one can change that" he finished and she nodded.
"Now I think someone else wants to dance with you" he said and she looked over her shoulder to see Harold.
"Dad..." she started to say but he covered her mouth with his hand.
"You are his, I've kept you for myself to long" he said.
"I never wanted to be anyone else's" she whispered.
-----
Cara watched Brianna and Harold dance and then she watched Riddick and Jack. She knew this day was hard for him. His baby girl, the only one who had never left him was stepping away into her own now. He wanted her to go and live her life but Cara also knew his fears. Jack was the constant one for him, the one who never went away and the one who never changed.
He stood a lone figure at the corner of the dance floor watching Jack dance with her new groom. Cara loved him as much in that moment as she did the first day she'd known he was hers.
*****
"Damn it Cara what is it about me that you detest so much? Do I smell, is that it? Do I have some nasty odor that repulses you? Or do I scare you? I mean I never have before, but is that what it is? Are you suddenly afraid of me or is it just everything? Do you suddenly just hate me?" Riddick had screamed at her.
"What the fuck is up your ass today" she asked.
"I'm tired of being treated like the dreaded plagues of Egypt! You act as if swarms of locus are going to spew from my mouth or legions of frogs will come leaping through the back door if you don't slam it in my face" he howled!
"The sun has gone to your head, you've lost your mind" she said turning her back on him.
He took off after her and slammed her up against the wall. "I lost my mind a long time ago that isn't the issue" he said to her.
"Then what is?" she breathed.
"You, you are the issue. That and why you suddenly leave the room when I enter it or scream at me when I open my mouth to scream at you" he said loudly.
"Well why the hell are you screaming at me for? Do you suddenly hate me? Do I irritate you is that it? If so I can leave. I don't have to stay here, I'll find somewhere else to go" she said ducking under his arm and darting towards her room.
He took off after her again and cornered her in her room. "You aren't leaving" he said.
"I think it's best Riddick, we obviously rub each other the wrong way" she told him.
He backed her up against a wall. "That's the problem" he said.
"I am packing my stuff if you'd let me go so it won't be a problem anymore" she told him indignantly.
"The problem here isn't us rubbing each other the wrong way. The problem here is we aren't rubbing each other at all" he said huskily.
"Shut up" she told him.
"Why?" he asked raising his eyebrows.
"Because you're making me crazy" she told him.
"Like wise" he breathed into her ear.
That was all it took.
She roared sounding almost like a lion and shoved him back. Startled he stumbled on to the bed. "God you always know just where to land don't you" she said crawling on top of him.
"Mmm hmm...call it intuition" he said tugging her shirt off.
"I thought it was suppose to be the woman who had the intuition" she said fumbling with his pants.
"Maybe my feminine side is showing" he said and with that his pants dropped.
"That's not all that's showing" she said grinning.
"Smart ass" he said.
"God can't you think of anything else to do with that mouth of yours!" she said annoyingly
"I think I can come up with a few things" he told her.
"I'd say a lot is coming up" she shot back at him.
"You're wearing far to much clothing" he said pulling her pants off.
In moments they were both nude. She looked at his glorious body, hard and muscled from years of labor and training. Scarred from battles no one should go through. She wanted to feel every part of him, to breath him in and memorize it all. She needed to feel him in her body, her mind and her veins.
He was kissing her neck while his hands worked wonders over her skin.
"God Riddick now" she panted.
"No it has to be right" he said.
"Right? Right for whom? For all the standards that say the first time should be slow and soft? Screw that, when have we ever done anything 'right'. I want you now" she told him.
What could he say? He wanted to plunge head long into her and lose himself in the abyss of her being. She wanted to crawl inside his skin and live for a while. They both obliged one another and crashed into a dark void that few had ever known. They fell tangled to the bed both covered in sweat and panting.
"God no one told me it could ever be like that" he said in awe.
"Few know that it can" she said.
He turned and looked at her. "That lives inside all of us, we can all connect with someone on such a level that we can lose ourselves in them without the fear of never coming back". she said.
"You're not afraid are you?" he asked.
"No I'm not. I have the guts to pull that out of me because I know you'll never use it against me" she said.
"I'm glad you had the guts to force it, it was going to kill us both" he said.
"Riddick you're not..." but he cut her off.
"Don't tell me I'm not like the other guys" he said grinning.
"No you're just like the other guys"
****
She had said knowing she made him feel more different than anyone else! Cara came back from her memories and saw Riddick still standing alone on the dance floor. She slowly walked up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at her and gave her such a smile of love.
"Want to dance?" she asked.
"I don't think I know how" he told her.
She led him out a bit onto the dance floor and put her arms up to him. "Don't tell me that you don't know how to dance, it's just a conversation between two bodies" she said.
"I don't think I've ever known how" he said. She could see all the emotions in his eyes. For someone who wasn't suppose to be able to show them he seemed to do it awfully well. This wasn't a question of his skills in dancing, it was more of the conquests in life. His fears and her strengths, her weakness' and his maturity would they come together?
She placed one of his hands in the small of her back and the other one she led to rest behind her head at the base of her neck. She left her hand on top of his there and then put the other one behind his hand.
"Just let the rhythm come through your body" she said softly "Your feet will follow".
"What if sometimes I can't hear the music?"
"Then let me be it for you" she whispered back. They danced forever that way, molded into one another. Heart against heart and soul to soul shielding one another.
-----
Sam watched the two of them as long as she could but then it got to be too much. She looked up and saw Jack watching her. She nodded her head and then walked out to leave.
"He was right", the thought ran through Sam's mind. He'd found someone to love and she loved him, they didn't have to say it right out loud, their bodies exuded it.
"Poor guy what'll he do when she leaves him once he's to old to please her" she thought to herself for a moment. She felt an icy slap in her face, reality was a bitch.
"Still hung up on sex......more than sex is what factors into a relationship" his voice rang through her ears. Jack watched Sam's internal struggle.
"I hope you find what you're looking for" Jack sent the thought to her.
-----
Cara turned her face towards his and softly his lips brushed hers. "Promise one thing" she said.
"What?" he asked.
"That'll it'll be like this in the end" she said.
"Like what?"
"Just like this, you holding me like you're holding me now, curled up like a baby to it's mother. Sometimes when I was alone and afraid wondering if Jeremy would kill me the next time he beat me I'd remember back before my mother had died when I'd curl up in her arms and she cleaned me up. I remember thinking it was ok, I felt safe and loved and if this was the time it killed me I knew it would be ok as long I could die in my mothers arms like that, then the serenity could take me home" she said choking back the tears.
The words burned Riddick, flames engulfed his heart and soul. The things that had been done to her, memories of the horrendous scar that laid on her face. He remembered the day a doctor told her she could have it fixed. Her eyes had lit up, that was the night she'd told Riddick of her life and the truth of it all. It now brought tears to his eyes that at one time she was ok with dying as long as she could leave this life being cradled to someone who cared for her.
"I think I loved you the day you picked me up in the woods, you're the only one who's ever wiped away the blood and held me until I unfroze myself besides my mother, even she couldn't do it with the love and tenderness you did because her guilt choked her" Cara told him.
"I promise you" Riddick said.
She looked up at him "I promise in the end it'll be just how it was in the beginning, we'll do this right" he said.
She smiled "Right for us and not everyone else".
"I'm holding you now and I'll hold you then" he said.
"So all this violence, sex and tragedy was a love story?" she asked.
"I'd like to view it as a life story not a love story" Riddick said.
"All of this just so we could get a romantic ending?" Cara asked.
"What?" Riddick asked looking back down at her.
"You know cheesy stories where the man and woman end up together at the end" she said.
"The end! Who ever said anything about the ending?" he asked exasperated.
"This is just the prologue, our life's got a whole novel left to write" he told her.
The End