15. Jack: Fear and Shelter

Soon after Riddick showed up for breakfast, Jack decided she'd been imagining his tension from the night before. His legendary composure was back in place (if it had been out of place at all) and he was completely relaxed.

The clinic, it turned out, provided a fairly excellent menu. They'd even been able to arrange for a bowl of pineapple chunks, her not-so-secret vice. Riddick jokingly commented that now he knew where the bulk of her treatment fee was going.

The pain wasn't as bad today... yet. Her physician had stopped by briefly after Riddick had left the night before, to go over the course of the treatment, and had told her that the next session would begin at noon. After what she had been told, she was desperately scared. She hoped Riddick would stay with her through it. She needed him to be there.

Jack waited until the breakfast was almost over before she got up the nerve to ask. Riddick beat her to it.

"Something's wrong, Jack. What is it?"

She took a deep breath. Why was it so hard, suddenly, to ask him to do this?

He reached across the small, portable breakfast table they'd been using and put his hand on her arm. "C'mon, kid, what is it?"

"Today's... treatment... is gonna be bad." She felt like an idiot, saying it.

"Bad?" His voice was gentle.

"Very painful," she whispered, letting her fear show. She was surprised to see Riddick's statement soften.

"You want me to stay with you again."

She nodded, embarrassed. How come she'd suddenly turned into a total chicken about pain? "Please."

He lifted the tray off of the bed and climbed on, sitting beside her. "What did they tell you they were going to do?"

She twisted her hands together. "Dr. Cartwright says this is the main session. They have to inject the tissue into me in several key spots and then activate it. They can't use any painkillers or anesthesia while they do it. Somehow they'd interfere with the regeneration process."

"How long did she say it would take?" His arm came around her shoulder. She leaned against him gratefully.

"Three horrible hours. And she said I'd probably be in a lot of pain for the next six to eight hours after that. They're going to start at noon." She looked up at him, still ashamed. "I don't know why I'm so scared..."

"You'd have to be an idiot not to be, Jack. Sounds worse than what I went through to get my eyes shined." He patted her gently on the back. "I'll stay with you through the whole thing. Promise."

She closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. She'd never had a friend like this before, she realized. She'd never known friends like this could exist. He was an uncanny find, the dangerous killer that she'd once idolized for his take-no-shit attitude and his spectacular clashes with the law. She'd tried so hard to impress him in turn, at first, only to discover that he was the most impressed when she was the most herself.

Back when she'd been passing herself off as a boy, she'd chosen the name "Jack" because it was easy for her to remember. Her mother had always called her "Jacqui," after all, preferring her middle name to the name she'd been given in honor of her intolerant, disapproving paternal grandmother. So when people said "Jack," she never forgot that they were talking to her. And _they_ never considered that they weren't talking to a boy.

After Riddick had "outed" her, she'd considered her options again, wondering if she should go back to being "Jacqui." She'd decided not to, at least for then, since she had no idea what was going to happen once the three of them got picked up. When she'd realized that Riddick would let her come with him, she'd been beside herself with joy. And _he_ called her "Jack," so that's who she was more than happy to be.

He never questioned her choice of "Jack" until two months into their sojourn. By then they'd come to know each other very well, sharing stories of their pasts and speculating on what their futures might be like in an ideal universe.

"So why did you keep 'Jack,' anyway?" he'd finally asked.

"Because," she'd said after a long moment, as truth and wit collided in her head, "nobody in the galaxy knows 'Jack' but you."

He'd laughed and pulled her into his lap, the big brother she'd never had before. There were many moments in those days when she'd hoped he would take a very different role than that one. She'd had a huge crush on him and her nights had been full of breathtaking fantasies about him joining her in her bed, kissing her, touching her...

Funny, those fantasies had disappeared not long after the shooting. Not only the fantasies about him, but about any man. Like some switch had been turned off. She'd hardly ever thought about it, and when she had, she'd decided that it was because she was surrounded by girls most of the time and the only men she ever got to see were complete dicks like Parker and Jarvis.

The first year in the shelter, she'd decorated her room with every picture of him she could find. It had been a gesture of defiance as well as a mark of her continued love. The other girls had admired the pictures at first, commenting on how _hot_ he was, until they learned exactly _who_ he was. Then they'd thought she was sick. None of them had believed her when she said he was her friend, until Pamela Markham broke into the shelter's file room and read her record.

Next thing she'd known, the whispers had started, the phrase "Riddick's Bitch" peppering them. The girls, all of them, including the two or three she'd genuinely started to grow close to, kept their distance. By the time they got over it, she was fed up and wanted nothing to do with any of them. All she wanted was Riddick. Eventually, however, the pictures had come down off of her walls. They were too painful to look at.

Her dreams of him, when she let them come to her, had been like this moment, dreams of his arms around her, solidly supporting her through any ordeal. There had been little or nothing sexual about the dreams, any longer. She knew that a lot of the girls whispered that she'd been his personal sex toy, especially after Pamela claimed that her medical records said she was no virgin. Wrong, but only on one of the two counts. She didn't bother to correct them. Better if they thought she'd fucked a serial killer and gotten off on it than if they knew the truth and pitied her for it. The concept of them feeling sorry for her was something that filled her with loathing.

That, she realized, was the reason their remarks in the article had upset her so much. She'd hated the notion of _any_ of them thinking of her as "poor little Jack." Not in life and certainly not in "death."

Shit, that was why it had been so hard to ask Riddick to stay with her. She hated being pitied, and desperately hoped that she would never feel _him_ pitying her.

"We have five hours until your treatment starts," Riddick finally told her. "You wanna see if this place has a chess set?"

She was jerked back to reality and burst out laughing. "Jeez, I _suck_ at chess, Riddick! You know that!"

His answering laugh was a deep rumble in his chest. "Which is why you need to keep playing. It's a very good game, you know. Teaches a lot about strategy. And now that we're back together, you're gonna play a lot of it again."

"Now I know the real reason you brought me back into your life," she mock-grumbled. "You just want someone whose ass you can kick at chess."

"That would be practically anybody, kid," he boasted.

The clinic had a decent set. They played four games before noon. Riddick roundly trounced her every time. Big surprise.

"Your problem is that you only think in tactical terms, Jack," he told her after she started coming dangerously close to whining. "You need to concentrate on strategy. See the whole board. Look several moves ahead." He followed it up by "killing" her Queen.

"Jerk," she muttered. He check-mated her two moves later.

They were resetting the board when the knock on the door sounded and Jack knew her time was up. Her hands abruptly began to shake, spilling several pawns to the floor. Riddick calmly moved the board and pieces out of the way and opened up to admit the doctor and her assistants. He frowned when he saw the restraints they'd brought.

"What the hell are those for?"

Dr. Cartwright looked a bit taken aback by his frown. He could throw a lot of menace into it when he wanted to. Jack had forgotten how much he _hated_ restraints.

"It's okay Ri-- Colin," she said in a hurry. "They told me about this. I'm going to need them."

After a moment Riddick stepped back and let the medical team wheel the cart of equipment in. He still looked angry. Suddenly he reached out, snagging the mouth bit on top of the cart. "You are _not_ putting this fucking thing in her mouth."

"She's going to need it, Mr. Tarsin," the doctor said softly. "The pain is very intense. Please, give it to--"

Riddick threw it across the room. "No fucking way."

Jack had forgotten that, too. He'd spent twenty-two weeks fully conscious in a cryo-tube with a horse bit in his mouth; naturally he'd respond intensely. Dumb. She should have warned him. Not that she _wanted_ the thing in her mouth...

The technicians were busy securing the restraints to the head and the foot of the bed. Jack was suddenly aware of how badly she was shaking. She hoped they'd let Riddick sit with her, or hold her hand, or something. She was going to need some anchor against the pain to come.

Dr. Cartwright sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. "Fine. No bit. But I warn you she'll probably scream... a _lot._ That's what it's for, to give her something to bite down on."

Riddick turned to look at Jack. "You really want that thing?"

Jack felt like a frozen rabbit. What she wanted to do was run away and hide. She gave a small shake of her head.

"No bit," Riddick growled.

Dr. Cartwright sighed again and shook her head in exasperation. "We need to get started. If you would lie down please, Mrs. Tarsin?"

"Wait." Riddick turned and stalked over to the bed. "Slight change of plans there, too."

Jack stared in wonder as he climbed onto the bed and lay down on his back. He drew her to him and made her lie down on top of him, so that the back of her head rested on his shoulder. "Now I'll be with you the whole time, kid," he whispered into her ear.

And she'd been hoping he'd do as much as sit next to her and hold her hand. This was the man everyone claimed had no connection to humanity? If he was the only one who truly knew Jack, she was the only one who truly knew Riddick. And even she was constantly amazed by him.

A deeply moved statement had appeared once more on Dr. Cartwright's face. She almost looked like she wanted to cry. Was compassion such a stranger to this place? She nodded to her assistants and they began securing Jack's arms and legs.

A glance at the equipment on the cart made Jack's blood turn to icewater. There were more than a dozen syringes, each one with a traumatically long needle attached. She shuddered, almost seeming to feel them invade her body already.

"Don't look at them, Jack," Riddick whispered, his voice pitched so that the doctor and her orderlies wouldn't hear him. Thank God he could call her by her real name instead of having to say "Rebecca."

She nodded and closed her eyes. She was securely fastened to the bed now, and more frightened than she'd ever been in her life, even when she'd been pinned under a huge bone with a monster from the realm of nightmares trying to smash through it and eat her.

Riddick had been her rescuer that time, too.

She felt Dr. Cartwright lift up her gown, pushing it upward until it only just covered her breasts, baring her whole abdomen.

As something heavy pressed against her belly and began moving across it, Riddick began to speak.

"It's okay. She's running a scanner over you to determine where the injections have to go." His voice was low and soothing, almost hypnotic. She swallowed.

"Alright," Dr. Cartwright said after a moment. "The preparation treatments have achieved the needed results. We're ready to begin. I'm going to mark the injection sites, Rebecca. It'll take a moment."

She felt the light pressure as a marker pressed against various spots on her tummy, leaving dots where injections were to go.

"Now I need you to try to relax, Rebecca. This is going to sting." She heard the doctor lift one of the syringes off of the cart.

"Here we go," Riddick murmured. A moment later she felt the needle break through her skin.

She winced and let out a hiss of pain, hoping the worst was past. But the needle kept pushing inward, deeper and deeper. How fucking long _was_ it? _Oh god..._ A small whimper escaped her lips. One of Riddick's hands came to rest against her cheek and she pressed her face hard against it.

"This is the part that's going to hurt, Rebecca. I have to inject the regen material into you now. It's going to take a few minutes and it will be very painful. You can still have the bit if you want." The doctor paused to give her a chance to respond.

"No bit," Jack whispered. She steeled herself for the pain to come.

Searing, molten fire spread into her belly as the injection was administered. Jack clenched her fists, feeling every muscle in her body tense. She whimpered again, louder. Riddick wrapped his arms around her chest and shoulders and held her tightly. The pain began to build.

"Oh... _god..._" she gasped.

"Try to stay relaxed, Rebecca," the doctor said in what was intended to be a soothing voice.

The agony was spreading, creeping through her whole nervous system. Her hands were spasming and the only things that kept her body from thrashing were the tight restraints and Riddick's presence.

"Oh shit, oh _shit!"_ Her voice broke as she gasped in pain once more.

Suddenly the dam burst and the full, obliterating torment rolled through her body. Jack threw back her head and screamed.