This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

-Hamlet – William Shakespeare

1) Time Shall Unfold What Plighted Cunning Hides

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides,
Who covers faults at last with shame derides.
Well may you prosper.
-King Lear, William Shakespeare

She was sleeping, her hand under her pillow, sprawled on her stomach, beneath her quilts and sheets and looking warm and delicious. He'd noticed she slept like that more often than not these days. He wondered if it meant she was finally healing from what the mercs had done to her. He hoped so. It was getting more and more difficult to keep his brain off thoughts of sex when it concerned his diminutive partner. Especially when he saw her sleeping like that. The old thoughts of how gorgeous she was and how much he'd like to have her in bed with him would come creeping into his mind unless he choked them back.

Compared to the way she'd slept when he first met her, curled in a ball like a beaten animal or an abused child, this was a vast improvement. Unfortunately, she looked entirely too much like a woman for his peace of mind. He wasn't used to curbing his thoughts or behavior, but he'd learned that he was liable to get things thrown at him for lustful thoughts, at least for the first six to seven months with her. Kitten always smelt amused when she did it but with an undertone of annoyed. She hadn't done it at all lately, not for four or five months, though her amusement remained constant, the annoyance had faded.

It had been the nightmares that had really put paid to his inappropriate thoughts. He knew the sound of a woman begging for mercy, praying for death, for any respite from torture. That had pretty much killed any lust he felt for his little partner in the first month. Well, it had killed his thoughts and fantasies, he'd probably lust after her until the day he died, but he could stifle those for her sake. At least while he was awake. Asleep was another issue entirely.

Kitten shifted and sighed in her sleep and he shut her door. He didn't like to intrude on her sleep but it was habit to check on her. The nightmares didn't come as often but they still came. It was hard to believe they'd lasted a year. But then he'd never met anyone like her in his life. He'd never have thought there was anyone who could keep up with him, match him for brains and mule stubborn, but she managed.

He'd learned the hard way that he shouldn't touch her when she was asleep, only his quick reflexes had kept her from opening his throat. Generally, that hand under her pillow was clutching a knife and he had the scar on his shoulder to prove it. She'd been apologetic, stitching him up and worrying over him like she'd maimed him for life. She'd gotten better; they both had, since he was no safer to wake suddenly than she was.

At least he hadn't drawn blood though his shiv had ended up at her throat. But then, he had a little more experience than she did and nobody had made him a slave for a year and a half. He chuckled ruefully and looked at Dog, "How old are we now?" He shrugged and headed for the bridge. Mentally he tried to calculate the answer to his own question and came up with a number of around thirty-five, possibly. It was probably closer to forty but since he really couldn't be sure when he'd been born he split the difference. Kitten could probably tell him, but his actual physical age wasn't determined by his birth year since he'd spent so much time in cryo being transported one place or another.

Funny thing about cryo, it kept the body young but in cases like him and Kitten? Their minds...well, she'd called it going wobbly. Riddick knew that he went bug house crazy after too much time in cryo. Something about being awake and not feeling yourself breathe or your heart beating only once a minute, everything physical dull as a butter knife. And the dreams didn't help. Even he had to sleep, even if it wasn't a cryo sleep and Shirah loved to come and fuck with his head.

Kitten was murmuring in her sleep, nonsense mostly, sometimes it included his name. Most of the time actually. He got the impression that sometimes she Read more in her dreams than she did awake. She never sounded pissed though, never said his name like she was afraid and dreams would be where fear would show up, if it was gonna show up at all. Riddick smiled slightly as he took over from the autopilot and checked their course. A year ago, sailing the merc boat and landing on a tiny weird ass moon hidden in an ion cloud, he would never have guessed their unlikely partnership would last.

That had been a very strange day.

Riddick looked over at Kitten as she rechecked her weapons and frowned, "You're that worried? What's on this tiān shā de moon Kitten?"

Her mouth twisted wryly, and he could smell her nerves and a little embarrassment, "Should be nothing here. Opened the channels wide, let the tide come in, no voices to be heard. But the dead still speak. And sometimes they are quiet until they are seen with the eyes."

"Lotsa dead here I guess?" Riddick set the boat down on the very banged up looking landing strip and looked at Dog. It was sitting next to his bunk but looked up eagerly as it heard the engines shut down, hoping for time in real gravity.

Kitten nodded, "Reavers, and a friend too." She was staring out the window and finally took a deep breath and nodded at him. "Please...if I seem...odd. Don't touch me. I don't know what I'll do."

Riddick looked at her for a long moment and nodded, "Yeah." He looked at Dog, "What about him?"

"Should be fine," She'd smiled slightly. "No experience with animals besides the one within her. Might be better than having you around." She'd moved towards the doors then and jumped down before the ramp touched the ground.

Riddick had followed her, shutting the ship behind him and Dog just as a matter of caution. The landing strip had gouges in it, and the metal hanger had huge dents in the walls and scars like the scraping of steel against steel. A ship had crashed here, it must have taken a helluva pilot to get it this far. "Nobody flies like my mister," Kitten murmured softly in an accent that wasn't her own and threw a sad look over her shoulder. "Friend died on a spear the width of Riddick's arm. It tore right through him, in his moment of triumph." She shook her head and led him down a tunnel into a room with a hole torn right through the wall.

Kitten stopped, and Riddick looked around instinctively taking a deep breath as he studied the place. He could smell old blood; see the stains of it on the floor and walls. It was everywhere, dried into the paint, stuck to the metal, there was virtually nowhere in the entire room untouched by it. He looked up at the windows with the grills torn out, the doors he and Kitten had entered by had been battered down. Some of the walls were blacked as if a bomb had gone off and blood splashed over the charred paint. There'd been evidence of an explosion, or several, in the hallway as well. He looked at her and was surprised to see a smile on Kitten's face. "You were here," He realized, "During the fight."

She nodded and turned to look at him, holding her axe, the wickedly curved blade she was never without. "It was here she became the protector. Here that she proved she was more than the weapon. More than the broken child who saw further than she'd ever wanted. She could take the training, what they made her and use it for something that was not within their aims. Perfect memory, forgets nothing, could break the programing but keep the skills learnt." She motioned him towards the doors across the room and drew her sword.

"Began weaponless," She dropped her blades. "But I learned from the people who'd protected me, from Jayne, Mal and Zoe. If you have no weapon, kill someone and take his." She mimed the kick and punch that had killed somebody and picked up her axe, "Do the same again until you have weapons that suit you. And then..." She whirled, a graceful deadly dance of blades and flying kicks, punches and sword thrusts, recreating her fight from memory. "Then I was alone in a roomful of dead men." She moved towards the doors where he stood and bent to the controls.

"Why were you alone?" Riddick was pretty damn sure he was not thrilled with that at all. Who in their right mind had left her alone in a roomful of men ready to kill her? Where had her brother been in all of that?

"Captain had gone to send the message," Kitten told him gently. "The gap at Thermopylae all over again. The crew fought, made their stand, until they were nearly overwhelmed. Injured, every single one of them, even the healer. My gē ge was belly shot. I wasn't hurt. Hadn't been fighting; the ocean, the tides had overwhelmed me again, couldn't keep everything out. Reavers are made of rage and madness and hearing it…I could barely function. Until Si-, until my brother was hurt. Shock, pain, fear…and clarity in my mind. Could think again, use the programming to my advantage. Then it was my turn, to take care of him, to protect them. Chose to go out, throw the medical bag in, close the doors on them from the outside. Let the Reavers grab me, pull me back, until I was in their midst, and then I killed them all."

"I've really got to read about this Thermopylae thing you keep mentioning," Riddick leaned against the wall and tilted his head, Dog pressing against his legs, "It was Reavers you fought? Not men?" He was trying to picture it in his mind, slender, deadly little Kitten with her big eyes and pretty hands, surrounded by madmen, cutting them down until she was standing in a sea of bodies. She was still too thin to be completely healthy but it was a very pleasing image he'd conjured in his mind.

She nodded solemnly, "They were." Kitten moved down the hallway to a lift and pressed a button. "In order to find the secret, we had to go to Miranda. The Reavers live in the space between the dead planet and the rest of the 'Verse. When we came back, the Operative was waiting, as Mal knew he would be. So we fired on the Reavers before we left them. And many followed us to the moon. That was how they came to be here."

"That's a tā mā de chī xiàn plan," Riddick told her flatly.

"Captain did it to protect me, to confound the Alliance, give us a chance to tell the 'Verse what had happened on Miranda. The secret had driven me half mad. I was in no mental state to plan, or to disagree," The Reader shrugged at him. Her scent was amused, accepting, and a little proud. "But I made sure it worked. Kept most of my crew alive." She shook her head, "But I paid. I paid dearly. Getting the secret out...gave me back my sanity and it cost me everything." She smelt sad now, sorrow washing through her scent until he felt like killing something. He hated that scent on her, wanted to do something to fix it and it wasn't even his fault. Her small hand patted his arm, "It's all right."

The lift arrived, and she opened the doors. It wasn't huge but it was big enough for the three of them, barely. Riddick growled as the doors closed, Dog whined unhappily and she shrugged at them both, "Won't take long."

It had only been a minute or two before they'd entered a room that would have seemed cavernous even without the wreckage of cortex equipment covering one wall. Riddick could smell blood here too. Kitten had headed immediately towards the wrecked equipment, but she'd answered the question in his mind. "The Operative killed Mr. Universe here. With a sword." She grimaced at whatever she found in the cortex innards and motioned him over, "I'll need your help with this."

"It's not all just no good?" Riddick looked at the smashed screens and broken circuitry on the floor.

"Don't really need the screens unbroken," She shrugged. "I just need enough of it working to find his other systems. They broke everything but there should be enough to put one working cortex together."

"Yeah, you said, he's got other backups?" Riddick remembered what she'd said after they'd left Not Furya.

"Yes," Kitten's head was half in the cortex's insides, "Please hold this." She handed him a cord and crawled with the other end to another cortex, pulling something out and did something that made the ends glow. "Is it bright?"

"Yeah, pretty bright." Riddick looked at that curved backside showing through her pants. They were baggy but the way she was bent was showing off a very sweet pì gu. "What should I do with it?"

"Nothing at the moment," Kitten backed out of the cortex and rolled her eyes at him. It wasn't hard to tell that she'd read his thoughts. She began to work on something he recognized as circuit boards, snapping them into place and took the cord from him. "Need to connect it to a screen and keys." She found a screen that was mostly undamaged and grabbed a keyboard ignoring the fact that the back was smashed. In short order she had everything connected. She was frowning at the screen and swiped the dust off it with one hand, "He had a galley of sorts back through there." She indicated an area behind the long curved couch, "Should see if there is any decent food. This might take me a little bit. Also a bathroom back there. We can shower while we're here. Don't know what he has for soaps though."

Riddick chuckled and stood, snapping his fingers for Dog who'd been edging closer to her with intent to tug on her braid. "Yeah, I'll check out the bathroom first, shower if it's possible, wash some of that damn rock offa me." Dog whined at him hopefully and looked at her hair again, but Riddick shook his head, "She just got it unsnarled and braided. You go pulling on it it's worth your life and mine." He grinned as he heard an amused giggle, "You really want her mad at you?"

Dog edged closer to the woman, in blatant disobedience and before Riddick could say a word, she turned and glared at Dog, snarling in her throat. Her fingers reached his sensitive nose and flicked it sharply, "Go with Riddick." She commanded. Her sweet voice was a throaty growl. It made Riddick think of fighting and sex and he took a deep breath before he throttled that shit back. Dog whined and got up to move over to him, its big eyes beseeching.

"Don't look at me," Riddick told him. "You know damn well you should have left Kitten alone. Told you cats have claws. But you just gotta test it don't you." He'd shaken his head at the animal and snapped his fingers again for Dog to follow him.

It really hadn't taken than long for Kitten to figure her way around the cortex. She'd chuckled and caught the protein bar he'd thrown at her back, her hand snapped up without even a look. "We'll have to go to the other side of the complex. He's got a set up just as good as this one. It's underground."

"Fun," Riddick had groused. "Can you cook any of this lè sè?" He'd held up more MREs, a box full of protein packs and cans of food. "Looks like it's still good."

"A man can live on packaged food from here 'til Judgment Day if he's got enough rosemary," The Reader's voice wasn't her own again. But she smiled as she said it even if a tinge of sorrow colored her scent. "She was taught to cook. Old crew had two very experienced cooks and they taught her everything they knew. If Riddick will gather up everything in the kitchen she will find a way to the working cortex. Universe had everything set to voice print or pass code."

After he'd showered he'd poked at Kitten until she'd gotten up and done the same, going right back to her cortex work with her hair dripping down her back. He'd gone down to the ship and brought up a couple of boxes, cleaned out the kitchen, such as it was, and taken everything down to the ship again. He took everything, pots, pans, it if wasn't nailed down he took it and he seriously wondering if he could pry up the cabinet and bring it down to the ship just for storage when he heard Kitten giggling again as she braided her mostly dry hair back. "He will not need to steal the furniture," She'd called. "She has found the pass codes."

She'd groaned and pushed herself up off the floor but powered the equipment down and rotated her neck. The movement sent her braid swaying and Dog snapped at it playfully. Kitten growled at him and a sharp little finger pointed in Dog's direction. Riddick shook his head at Dog, "The woman's working. Let her be."

She'd taken a deep breath and gotten that far away look in her eyes that meant she was Seeing something and then she'd turned and grinned at him. It was a wicked, gamine look that promised there would be a lot of fun. "How attached is he to the merc ship?"

"Not." Riddick had shrugged at her. "Why?" He loved the wicked little smirk on her face but he wsan't quite sure what she was getting at.

"Need enough fuel to get to Beylix," He watched as she did a quick weapons' check and began to lead them back down to the lift. It went further down than the level they'd entered at when she pressed the keys in a certain sequence. The door opened onto a long dark hallway. Riddick couldn't help but grin at that.

"There any lights here?" He'd asked her and she'd shaken her head.

"She must depend upon he and Dog for guidance until her eyes adjust," Dark eyes were wide as she stepped off the lift. "She can hear no one. Should be no danger."

Riddick had pushed his goggles back and nodded as he looked down the hallway, "Yeah, looks clear." The look she'd given him had been amused and annoyed at the same time and he remembered when he'd used that same phrase on Hades, screwing with Billy Johns. "Cào dàn, this time I actually mean it Kitten," He told her with a chuckle. "Like I'd treat you the way I'd treat that spineless merc."

She'd rolled her eyes but followed him down the hallway, her hand on Dog's back, using the animal as a guide so his own hands were free. It was a courtesy he appreciated, in his experience surprises tended to get you killed if your hands were occupied. Being prepared for surprises of any kind seemed to be one of Kitten's areas of expertise.

But there hadn't been any surprises of the deadly kind waiting for them. Just a room with cortex screens filling the walls and a huskers dream set up. "And he's got more than one of these backups?"

"Told the captain the simple one in his death message," Kitten had replied absently. "The one least likely to be found. Thought the Operative would find this one. But he didn't. Didn't look any further than the obvious. Too preoccupied with catching the girl. And then dealing with a fleet of Reavers. Very effective distraction." She'd illuminated three screens and was slotting data back and forth, her fingers flying over the keys.

Riddick couldn't help but be impressed at the skill she was displaying. There weren't many huskers in the 'verse who could hack the merc databases the way she was. Or the law enforcement servers but if he was reading right that's what she had on another screen. "Nothing stops the signal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere," Her voice was someone else's again but she was still smiling. "The ion cloud is increases the signal strength. So we can reach everywhere. He was right. Nothing is ever lost once it's on the cortex. Here," She sent something to another screen for him to see and he saw a camera feed of a bar.

Kitten was in the middle of it, fighting all comers and kicking major ass. Riddick nearly groaned at the sight of her, hair flying, fists and feet deadly, she was something to watch. Just like him, her entire body was a weapon. There weren't many people who would survive what she did to them and she wasn't even using blades or a gun. There were only two she didn't completely incapacitate. A big guy with a goatee who seemed to know her and a Browncoat who'd aimed a gun at her the very same time she aimed at him. Then someone else had come in and she'd fallen into sleep, dropping like a stone.

Author's Note: So as I said in the summary, this is the sequel to Break the Civilized Chains. Chapters will be of varying lengths as I find good stopping points. It's a lot longer than the first one, because I was doing a lot more character development and it just got away from me. I hope you enjoy it though.

Chinese Translations:

tiān shā de (goddamn)

gē ge (big brother)

tā mā de chī xiàn (fucking crazy)

pì gu (butt)

lè sè (Garbage, trash)

Cào dàn (fuck)