Chasm, Chapter 3: Under the Skin

Disclaimer: I feel affection and respect for these characters in my clavicles and in between my knuckles and in the points of my elbows, but I don't own them. I don't want to; they're a rambunctious lot, for sure.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

Franz Kafka

Carolyn Fry couldn't remember ever having been in such a situation in her life. Her plan had been simple, foolproof. She would be a docking pilot and coast through life as easily as a ship cutting through the black.

Having grown up in a foster home on a planet of no pressing significance, she'd only ever wanted to be away. Be out. Escape and bask in the loveliness she found out in space.

And somehow, it seemed to her that every single choice she'd ever made had sent her hurtling uncontrollably to the cracking surface of this place. Now that she was here, she couldn't imagine not having reached this point.

Somehow, she'd crashed into perhaps the most important event in her life, her biggest turning point, a hazardous feeling rising in her stomach and permeating her lungs and her breath. She couldn't shake the feeling that M6-117 would unmake her bones and she would be helpless to stop the process.

Her instinctive fear of her own feelings of foreboding and the anger flowing strong through her veins at the temper tantrum of the lawman carried her to him. He stood, one broad hand on the rib of one of the huge mammalian skeletons, staring into the distance and the prolific rays of three suns.

Having reached him, she watched him watch the sky for a silent moment and then asked, "What was that?"

Johns heaved a sigh, knowing how to cut his lies and lace his words, and said, "Carolyn, do you know how long I've been chasing Riddick?"

He turned his head and his body followed, slow as his drifting high, and upon receiving no answer continued, "Eight months. I've chased a psychopath for eight months, fast but never fast enough. Smart but never smart enough. The casualty of my catching him…a child died before I could cuff him. And now he's out again."

She leaned heavily against the bones, her shoulder blades touching ivory ribs and something about it felt hypnotic. Felt like a dream she'd forgotten but treasured. Suddenly, all of her feelings seemed muffled as if they were passing through the thick fabric of many veils.

Carolyn said, "I don't know what to say."

"Not much to say about sociopaths," Johns replied, kicking up dirt. By her lax pose, he could tell she'd forgiven his momentary lapse in temperament.

An emotion flickered across her face, somewhere between confusion and resistance, and she said, "I thought you called him a psychopath."

"I did," Riddick's jailor told her without a hint of hesitation, "And most criminals fall into one category, but Riddick, he's a special case. Psychopaths want to watch the world burn. Sociopaths see the opportunity to destroy in every individual person."

This time, they watched each other; Carolyn's face golden with light as shadows washed over Johns' like the tide.

"And Riddick?" she breathed, words damp with shock and terror and a numb sort of acceptance, an expectant anticipation.

He plucked his cap off of his head and slid it onto hers, adjusting it for a few seconds before nodding approvingly and letting his hand fall.

He smiled a little and to her it spoke of the exhaustion of sleepless nights spent polishing guns.

He said, "Riddick lives for one thing: to make God bleed."

"What does that mean?"

"He'll make sure to take away your faith before he takes your life. He'll feed on your hope just to watch the light die in your eyes and then he'll slit your throat."

Carolyn's existence had never been perfect or ideal. She'd had her fair share of heartbreak from failed relationships to the revelation that without any family, without any real friends, she was alone in the universe.

But the enormity of the ugliness that Johns was proposing was incomprehensible to her. She had no naivety about the goodness of people—she'd encountered her fair share of greedy liars and had proven herself to be one of them by nearly being responsible for the loss of an entire load of passengers, but to think that one body could contain all of the cruelty he was suggesting didn't quite match up with her understanding of the man named Riddick.

He was a criminal, sure. But completely heartless?

Johns picked up on her inner struggle and thought it best to leave her to stew on his last words on his wayward prisoner. He thought it might be time to change the subject, moving fluidly from the morals of his bounty to his suspicions about her role in their survival so far.

"Hey," he prompted her to turn her attention back to him, "what'd Owens mean? 'Bout not touching that switch?"

As if a dam had burst, Carolyn was bombarded with the ferocity of her guilt and her confusion over the murderer on the loose and her strange connection to the man in front of her.

If she were to look back later, she might have said it was the illusion of trust that had her admitting what had really happened, but deep down, she knew she wanted a confessor.

She wanted redemption.

"You can't tell anyone, Johns, not a damn soul."

He didn't smile in return, in assurance, and maybe that cinched it for her.

"I swear on my badge," he replied solemnly with the knowledge that his badge, picked off the body of a real law enforcement agent off planet Lucresia three years back, meant absolutely nothing.

"Owens was at his best during the crash. I was at my worst. He stopped the docking pilot from dumping all 50 of you."

"And the docking pilot was…" he trailed off, not really needing confirmation other than the wretched shine of her eyes.

"Do you really need to ask?" Carolyn returned, refusing to flinch away from her guilt.

Johns didn't speak for several heartbeats.

She licked her chapped lips and asked, "Does that make me a sociopath or a psychopath?"

He saw it, her question, as a chance to solidify her trust in him.

He said, "That makes you a scared person who almost made a mistake. It makes you human."

She exhaled shakily, "Oh."

And then a man screamed, loudly, as if he were being torn apart.

Riddick bore his imprisonment with the poise of a man under fire and accustomed to it. Johns hadn't been gentle in the securing of his captive, hadn't even been in the mood to gloat. 'Course, that could have been his unmistakable high clouding his arrogant nature, the belligerent fuck.

But, all things considered and according to what Riddick had found out, he was no safer out there than in here. This was obviously not his first choice (his first choice would be a small ice planet where he'd never have to look at another human being again), but it would do.

It had its benefits.

"You know something," Carolyn Fry told him with absolute certainty. She could see it plain as day in face; his expressions and demeanor were now not merely guarded, but smugly so.

For one thing, entertainment came to him.

He couldn't open his eyes. A few well-aimed punches from Johns had deliberately broken the lenses of his goggles before they'd been stripped off and flung onto the floor, just out of his reach. Seemed to him that junkie asshole was feeling a bit vindictive after being reminded that he'd made a huge mistake which had almost cost him his b—

He cocked his head to the side, playfully, "What makes you say that?"

She took two bold steps in his direction, though he could tell she'd deliberated over them since she'd stepped into his cage, since she'd worked up the nerve to enter and then worked up the nerve to speak.

"Call it women's intuition," she spat sarcastically, "You escaped and came back. Johns said you shimmied out of one of the big Slams and you sure as fuck didn't turn tail then. And you didn't make a huge effort to run once everyone heard Zeke scream."

She was bold and blonde. Pretty enough. Pretty desperate, too, like she could scent the mounting jeopardy in the air.

"So that means…" he smirked, drawing out the interaction for the hell of it. He knew what was coming. She didn't.

Fry's face, feminine and ragged, turned to stone.

"That means," she intoned evenly, "that whatever it is you saw in that pit made you realize one thing: being out there or in here makes no difference."

See, he liked that she just assumed he wouldn't make a mistake after he'd ditched Johns. Because if she was convinced of his invincibility and his intelligence, then every one of those miserable bastards out there believed in it.

And that was more powerful than the truth.

He should have moved. He should have fled. He'd crept up on the free settler dumping bodies, intended to observe a minute or two and then move on, but then the corpse of a woman had rolled off the top. She'd landed in a heap at the edge of the pit, one arm falling into the hole in the side of the mass grave up to her shoulder and without warning, something had pulled her body in and released a snarl he'd never heard before.

Not something. Oh, no. The scientists called them "bioraptors" in their notes.

And he hadn't fled. More than anything, he'd wanted to understand the creatures he'd only read about. They couldn't enter the light without burning, the notes read, but if that was the case, why was everything on this fucking planet dead and dried out as a husk?

Why weren't the scientists still puttering along on this godforsaken ground? Why was the journal he'd nicked from one of the more sentimental researchers so unsettling by the time he'd reached the last page?

His curiosity had given him pause and he'd paid for it. He'd even dropped the journal in his struggle with the merc.

Simple. Stupid. But she was right, he'd concluded free or not, dead was dead was dead. And something was going on here.

His animal side, the one that never slept, told him so.

"Give me my goggles if you want answers," he replied after minutes of contemplation. He could enjoy the power struggle between them and gain minimal protection for his eyes if he played his cards right.

And besides indiscriminate murder, there wasn't much else to do in the Bay besides enjoy a round or two of poker.

Fry snapped back, "Why should I do anything for you?"

Riddick laughed briefly, incredulously, wondering if she'd appointed herself group diplomat or if everyone else was brain dead.

"Last time I checked, pilot," he reminded her, "you were looking for information. Which I have."

She didn't do anything but glare at him.

Sensing her weakening, he drove the knife through her ribs a tiny bit more.

"You got to lock me up to feel safe. But you don't feel safe. Don't feel protected. You're scared of me, of those suns, of your instincts, and of what I'm going to tell you. You don't want to know, but you have to. I'm chained to the goddamn wall and I'm more relaxed than you. I just want to ask—"

"Shut the fuck up, Riddick," she yelled, abrupt and shattering exquisitely, "Just shut up!"

But he wouldn't relent. Not when he was so close.

"I just want to ask you one thing, Carolyn. Which one of us, do you think, is more convinced that we're all going to die?"

He watched with interest as, through the veil of her short hair over her bent head, a tear ran over her grimy cheek.

"Your eyes," Fry whispered, "If I'm going to bargain with you and if I'm going to return your goggles, I'm going to look you in the eye first."

When Riddick didn't say anything back, she hesitated and then took a step forward.

Like lightening.

River's interest piqued, she tuned out Wash's words.

"I said," Wash repeated, realizing a stray thought had caught her curiosity, "No fives! Go fish."

Zoe, who had appointed herself referee because her husband couldn't play an honest game of Go Fish if he tried, decided to supervise the game as she read the journal River had picked up in the wake of Riddick and Johns'…tussle.

She didn't need the psychic member of her crew to tell her that Riddick had snatched during a visit to the mining base. She, Wash, and the pilot had only walked the perimeter before she and her husband felt the need to return to the increasingly stable but still erratic member of her pseudo-family.

"What'd you hear, River-honey?" she asked, serene as an undisturbed lake as she cracked open the book, one hand supporting it on the spine and the other idly flipping pages.

River gave a slow, small smile and sighed, "Like lightening," she answered, "I knew it."

A full-blown grin startled Wash as he looked up and met her eyes, "I knew it!"

Before he could ask what the last ten seconds of his life meant and if he was better off not knowing, she stood up easy as curling smoke, threw the cards on the make-shift table they'd been playing on, and calling behind her as she disappeared, "No fours! Go fish!"

Wash opened and closed his mouth a few times and finally decided, in a rare moment of reflection, to remain quiet.

"Hmm," Zoe's full lips quirked, "So maybe playing a game based on luck and hiding your thoughts and, subsequently, your hand with a genius psychic wasn't the best idea?"

Wash raised a hand to his chest and lifted his chin, proclaiming, "Not the best idea, but the bravest. With the odds stacked against me, do I surrender? No! Not everyone is able to do the things I do, sweetcakes."

Provoked into a chuckle, she shot back, "Not many would want to," and her eyes widened as she reached the last page, "Wash, come here. Take a look."

Wash rose and reached her within two steps. He furrowed his brow as he tried to interpret the erratic handwriting.

"Someone picked up the written word late in life. And didn't use their hands."

"No," Zoe said, turning randomly to a page in the middle journal where perfectly legible cursive lay taunting them, "Someone was terrified."

They spent a handful of seconds looking into each other's eyes, sorting through feelings and plans and resolutions. They could come out of this alive, maybe, or they could not.

At least it wasn't a new feeling.

"We've got to tell them, Zoe. When everyone heard Zeke's scream and found him at the edge of the body-pit watching Riddick creepily staring into the hole where River says the freaky monster ate that dead body, they assumed he was about to massacre everyone. You and I, we both know he was just checking out the damage being done. Assessing the enemy. We've got to start planning," he said.

She nodded, fingers still running over the jagged script of the last entry in the leather-bound book, "And you know what else?" she asked, relinquishing the journal to tug at her curls, "We're gonna need Riddick."

Wash sighed, "Do I have to be the one to tell Johns because I have a coin if you're willing to flip on it."

Zoe clenched her jaw to keep from giggling in a most un-warrior-like fashion. At fourteen, she'd joined the resistance fighters. At eighteen, she'd accepted that she would likely be dead by twenty-five, victory or not. At twenty-five, she knew she'd never get married, never achieve that level of comfort or normalcy with anyone.

And here she was, adored by the silliest man alive.

She said, "Wash."

"Yes?"

"Wash?"

"What is it, my butterfly sunset Buddha-woman?"

Her laughter came in quiet huffs, her shoulders shook, and she managed to get out, "I married you," and was helpless to the hilarity of his vaguely insulted expression.

River ran swift and silent to the captive. She wasn't sure which thought propelled her forward more forcefully—the thought of seeing his eyes or speaking with him.

The hope of being understood for the battered thing she was had fled as soon as Simon stopped speaking to her like a sister and more like a patient.

That he loved her was indisputable. That he would die trying to save her was definite. That he would crawl and beg and bleed for the restoration of her sanity was a promise he made to her every time he touched her.

But part of him, for all the affection and diligence, could never see her as she was and willingly dwelled upon who she had been. Magnificent, he'd murmur in his mind as he watched her pretend to sleep, she had been so…magnificent. Bright. Vibrant. Too beautiful to remain untarnished in this fucking 'verse.

There had come a day when he stopped connecting her to the girl she had been because the pain of the difference between then and now was too great for him to behold.

The girl, River Tam, and the woman, River Tam, moved with the same seamless grace and spoke with the same liquid voice and understood the same difficult mathematical equations, but they were the difference between a duckling and a swan. A sinner and a saint.

A hymn and a eulogy.

And most days, she couldn't tell which was then and which was now. The absence of the suffering of millions from Miranda made her progress look like sanity and usually, it was enough, but she knew coping without part of her brain meant learning a new way of living which hadn't yet been invented.

And River felt—not the way she felt thoughts and other people's bullet wounds and their painful memories, but the way she felt Before, the instinctive part of her instead of the Reader—that he could understand her if he let himself.

He was indomitable and riddled with wounds he had hidden from himself. He could escape from damn near anything and merely had to speak with a civil tongue to make goosebumps pucker on a person's arms. He hadn't shown the slightest interest in using her and he hadn't bothered to answer any of the questions she'd asked.

For the first time in her life, River burned with wanting.

For the first time since her innocence and her sense of self had been stripped away, she felt hope.

Contentment and anticipating flooded her system as she entered the room Carolyn Fry had left in a hurry, presumably to inform the others of the beasts Riddick had seen. Her intentions coincided with those of Zoe and Wash, and she wondered how exactly all that would play out.

But for now, she was here.

"Finally got bored out there?" he asked, managing to make his prison into a throne and his voice into a purr.

And so was he.

1. This has been equal parts exhilarating and infuriating to write. I am absolutely in love with these characters, every single one of them. And they are so confused, so desperate to get out of their respective cages. The only one confident in his success is Riddick and his have the thickest chains. Physically, at least.

2. I promise the talk between Zoe, Wash and River will happen next chapter! It will serve as sort-of a re-cap, I think, since I'm obviously diverting from the well-worn path here. Seems more fun this way. I really think the presence of these characters has affected the flow of Pitch Black in radical ways and there's still more to come. Makes me giddy just to think of it.

3. I did in fact leave out the scene with Zeke dying because I kept trying to write it and something someone told me once seemed to be on repeat in my head: If it's not fun to write, it probably won't be fun to read. Writing the Zeke scene just felt like going through the motions and I don't want to feel obligated to write something because that means it's not being done right.

Plus, I would rather him live because I feel like maintaining some sort of element of surprise for the characters. They are finding out, one by one, that all is not well on Hades (surprise!) and everyone possesses a different degree of understanding concerning our carnivorous underground friends.

4. Carolyn and Johns were fun to write; I wasn't sure about them until I realized how vulnerable Carolyn is right now and how much Johns is willing to exploit that. He's not a man who lies-he's worse. He's a man who tells you enough to make you feel safe and then he pulls the rug right out from under you and you fall on a shitload of thumbtacks.

5. Zoe and Wash are still beautiful.

6. River's thoughts taste like a choir mid-hymn. She's fluttery and tangled in knots and I love it.

7. Riddick has chosen not to reveal his thoughts on the matter just yet, which means a certain someone might be getting to him.

8. Memory is, I think, going to be unavoidable as a huge theme in this one. Riddick's got his repressed. River stumbles through hers. It's important to share your memories, even the bad ones, because it means acceptance from both ends. Ultimately, this is what I'm working towards. Also, Carolyn relies on Johns' memories of Riddick as she has none of her own, a decision she may end up regretting because he might just be hand-feeding her false ones.