Title: c'mon, show me some teeth

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Rating: T

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the 'verse is not.

Summary: Johns had been right; he should have paid more attention to those sensor ghosts. "Son of a bitch. Have you been following me?". 5700 words.

Spoilers: Riddick (2013)

Notes: So this started out as an exercise in exploring unexpected Foe Yay in the manliest manly-man movie of the year. Um. Warning for my usual subthemes about grief and being who you are; surprise yes-that's-them, nope-no-details-yet fusion characters; a lit reference or two; and alas, fade to black. Originally posted to LJ on September 24.

After leaving the no-name world that hosted Co-op Station P7 behind him, Boss Johns hadn't expected to ever see Riddick again. Not in person; not as anything more than a scowling face attached to yet another bounty sheet, and he'd had his fill of chasing the man for a lifetime.

He didn't feel any particular need to see him punished anymore, and he didn't envy the next man who tried to match wits with the famous escaped convict. In a strange way, he even hoped Riddick stayed uncaught; now that Johns had bested his white whale and saved the man in turn, it was as if all that driving rage had just... burned itself out of him.

Ironically, Dahl seemed to think that meant he was going through some kind of delayed masculine grieving process, and her chosen antidotes were cheap alcohol and lurid 'what I bet really happened' tales about the greatest hits of Riddick's record. Perversely enough, after having lived through one of his own, Johns did find the stories mildly entertaining; even the ones that covered his son's adventures with Riddick before M-344/G. Back then, they'd played cat and mouse from system to system more than once, even breaking each other out of slam on one infamous occasion. The vidcall after that one had been... memorable.

That might have been part of why Johns had taken Billy's death so hard to begin with; because he'd actually rolled his eyes when his son had called to pass on the transit details for the Hunter Gratzner. Johns hadn't taken the situation seriously; hadn't told him to take care, or even asked if the wound Billy had taken on their last encounter was healing well. No two guesses why he'd ended up a hype, if what Riddick claimed about the morphine was true. And that was the last time Johns had ever spoken to him.

Dahl had even turned up the old Earth motto associated with Riddick's surname: tu ne cede malis, Yield Not To Misfortune. Johns had never heard anything more redundant in his life.

He debated with himself several times about what to report to the guild, but ultimately settled on emphasizing the planet's dangers and minimizing their contact with Riddick. He started with a series of very scathing and specific notes on the meteorology and zoology in the vicinity of the station to add to the guild's shared files; if whoever had built the thing had done the same, it would have made dealing with Riddick a lot less disastrous for his crew, if not Santana's. If they'd bothered to include a selection of massive predator restraints, they should damn well have made a note of what those restraints were intended for. In the section where he mentioned signing Luna, Johns also noted that Riddick had wiped out the majority of the mercenary crew that had arrived before his, and had taken their ship. End of story. The only ones who knew different were hardly going to contradict him.

Next time, he'd all-but-promised Riddick; next time he wouldn't be able to overlook the man's kill count. But there wasn't going to be a next time, and Johns was a man of his word.

Whatever Dahl had said to Luna seemed to have settled the kid, at least, and he'd come to contract without a quibble for the ethical guidelines Johns insisted on, few as they were. That brought them back to three; and Johns filled the crew out during the stopover on Lupus V with two more experienced gun hands between jobs, one with a secondary specialty in nav and the other a decent back-up medic for Dahl. They'd served together before, according to their jackets, and seemed a fairly competent pair; Johns set them to training with Luna under Dahl's supervision whenever they had sufficient downtime. He'd have preferred to have kept Moss and Lockspur, but Reynolds and Alleyne would have to do.

After that, it was back to routine. He picked out a few smaller bounties to warm up the crew, then went back on the hunt, the pursuit of high-risk felons that had marked both Johns' career and his son's. Urban planets, pioneer worlds, a few slams; bar a few sensor glitches that kept cropping up in the flight data, it was almost a vacation in comparison to those brief hours in the stormy dark. Johns told himself he'd finally put his decade long obsession with Billy's death behind him, and tried not to think too hard about the uncharted future stretching out in front of him.

For so long, his main goal in life had been the need to find justice for his son. Without that motivation, with his wife long gone and no other children in the picture, who would write the final chapter for him? Dahl? He'd rather she sold out before she slowed down, and set up as a trainer or something back on Lupus V. Luna could be her second, and maybe she'd find some rich merchant gal to spoil her rotten. Johns was long past any desire for domesticity for himself; he figured he'd keep chasing bounties until someone managed to turn the tables on him, find his comfort where he could from others as rootless as he was. Ships passing in the night. He'd already had a longer run than most hunters got.

It took another few months, and an unexpected shadow stretching out beside his chosen perch during a slow hunt on a scrubworld, to snap him out of that self-defeating mindset. A tall person's shadow, smooth crowned, with curves suggesting eyewear bracketing its face: a shape that had been stamped on his memory long before he ever saw it in person. All at once, every emotion Johns had gone through on that hellish night grounded through him like a lightning strike. The dread, the anger, the hatred; the disgust, and the reluctant respect. The pride- and sacrificing that pride to necessity. The white-hot blur of adrenaline-fueled survival. And something like recognition, there at the last.

The hair stood up on the back of his neck: and just like that, Johns' life snapped back into sharp focus.

"Riddick," he said, gruffly, without bothering to look up from his reclined position on a convenient rock formation.

"Hello, Johns," that familiar, gravelly voice drawled, close enough to take down with a kick, if he cared to try. If Riddick cared to stand there and let him. "Still keeping that spine strong, I see."

Johns closed his eyes, taking a calming breath through his nose as facts flashed through his mind. No contrails recently, no signals detected since landing; Riddick must've already been on-world when they'd arrived. No sign of the bounty yet either, bar a few traces several days old at a minimum; none of the obvious hidey holes had panned out. And the bounty was known to have crossed paths with Riddick during one of his brief triple-max incarcerations.

"Tell me this, before you say anything else: is my bounty still alive?"

"Your bounty? I thought possession was nine-tenths of the law," Riddick replied, in a wry, considering tone. "Though I suppose I would have a problem trying to collect."

Johns sighed, then shot a glare up at the inscrutable, looming figure. The handmade leather gear was gone; Riddick was all in shades of black, clean-clad and clean-skinned, a little less feral but even deadlier for it. A blade oiled and sharpened, rust scraped away. If that was a front, as Dahl claimed, it was surely a paper-thin one. But if that was all there was to him, what the hell was he doing there?

"My bounty?" he repeated tersely, refusing to flinch.

Riddick chuckled, the corner of his mouth curling in what might charitably be called a smile. "Don't get your shorts in a knot; he's still in one, breathing piece. Ain't even buried."

But he did have an exchange in mind, apparently. Johns had been right; he should have paid more attention to those sensor ghosts. "Son of a bitch. Have you been following me?"

"Guilty," Riddick's grin widened. "Got a question to ask you, merc."

The sight of the man, there under the bright, bluish sun, was almost surreal. Something between a nightmare and a fantasy come back to haunt him. Or the punchline from one of the stories he'd had at his mother's knee: some people exist just to test us, dear. Johns frowned and climbed to his feet, unwilling to yield the unspoken high ground any longer, and stowed his monocular in a pocket.

"Even if I wasn't in the middle of a job here, in case you've forgotten, there's still the matter of my dead crew. I haven't forgotten them. And I'd really prefer not to have to break in any more."

Riddick snorted his opinion of that. "Your guys went out fighting. Died quick, and not at the hands of their fellow man. We should all be so lucky. But don't worry; aside from your crew, and your other friend with the rap sheet, ain't any predators on this planet worth the name."

"Of course, coming from you, that don't mean much," Johns replied, then crossed his arms and sighed. No point drawing it out. "Alright. What's the question, then?"

"Just like that?" Riddick arched his eyebrows. "Not even gonna make me buy you dinner first?"

Did the man have to make everything sound like either a come-on or a death threat? Or both? "You telling me you've got something more palatable than the Three Lies on offer?" he scoffed.

"The Three Lies? Ah, you mean Meals, Ready to Eat?" Riddick smirked. "Yeah, I opened one of those packets from the locker at P7, called itself crab somethin' or other. Not even the dog would touch it."

The wry smile faded at the reminder of his pet- and so did Johns'; frankly, he hadn't given a damn one way or another about some native animal, but Riddick's absolute determination to stop Santana from killing the thing had led to a desperate few minutes where he wasn't sure whether Dahl's horse tranq would ever kick in, or if it would even matter, if Johns couldn't stop Santana and Diaz from plugging his quarry full of holes. Riddick hadn't been the only one waking up afterward with a busted forehead. And it was a pretty direct line from there to Diaz shoving Johns' jetbike off a cliff the first opportunity he got. That last march would have gone much easier if they'd had all three bikes at the dig site.

Johns blinked away a wry image of Riddick being forced to ride bitch seat, scanning the con's face for evidence of wounds long since healed, and offered an apology to break the tense silence. "Sorry about that, by the way. It was all I could do to keep them from killing you."

"At the time." Riddick tilted his head, eyeing him shrewdly. "Would you really have let 'em chop my head off, once you got me in those chains?"

"If you recall, I was pretty fuckin' pissed with you. At the time," he shrugged. Having the answers he needed held just out of reach after so many years of pursuing them, he'd been too sick with fury to object. Unpleasant or not, he'd just wanted some kind of closure. "And I'd made him a deal."

"Man of your word," Riddick nodded, as if that made it all right; and hell, maybe in his world, it did. "Thought you were just another coward with a nickel-slick badge, at first. But you got steel."

"So glad you approve," Johns replied, dryly. "Speaking of words. The question?"

Riddick nodded, then made an after-you gesture back the way Johns had come, a narrow, weed-choked trail winding up the side of a hill between scraggly bushes. The whole landscape was a wrinkled cloak of anemic greens and dusty browns, full of nooks and crannies big enough to hide a man- or a ship. "More of a quest. And I'd prefer not to have this conversation while we're skylined. Not that I think there's another sniper out here apart from yours, but I didn't survive this long by taking chances."

"Ah, so you want me to buy you dinner," Johns snorted, but took the hint and led the way down the hill. The back of his neck itched at Riddick's proximity; but he hadn't seen a holster anywhere in Riddick's gear, and if the man had wanted to knife him he'd probably already be dead. "I think that's going a little fast, don't you? How's about we make it tea."

"Tea? Sure," Riddick replied, a note of amusement in his voice. "I killed a man with a teacup once."

Was he supposed to take that as casual conversation, or a threat? With Riddick, it was hard to tell. "Any particular reason? Or just for shits and giggles?"

"'Cause he wouldn't take no for an answer. Don't doubt she'd have preferred to take care of it herself, like your Dahl; but there was a pack of 'em, and they had the advantage."

Johns would call bullshit, but he had chased the guy for ten years; that was actually one crime Riddick had never been accused of. Whether he bought the man deliberately interfering on behalf of someone else's victim, though-

He was abruptly reminded of their conversation about his son again, and shut down that train of thought in a hurry. "Doesn't exactly square with your fearsome reputation."

"Scared guys stop thinking. Dull their own edge," Riddick shrugged, pacing forward as the path widened to come up level with him. He lifted his goggles as a cloudbank ghosted over the sun, and shot a silver-eyed, knowing glance in Johns' direction. "I think that's worked on you about as much as it's going to."

A shiver went through Johns at the look, a faint echo of the lightning flash earlier, and he snorted in lieu of a reply, still parsing his own reaction. Riddick might not have killed his son, but he'd sure as shit stood back and watched it happen. That should still fucking matter, but the old outrage just wasn't there anymore.

He was glad of the distraction when a startled Luna suddenly popped up out of the brush ahead of them; the kid had been setting sensors to give the crew a warning if their quarry circled back, to prevent an end-run like the one Riddick had pulled after disabling the Cyclops. Anchored on their ship, the sensors Luna was setting could be isolated without shutting the whole system down. He gave the kid a signal that he wasn't under duress, then touched the comm at his ear.

"Dahl, Reynolds, Alleyne; get your asses back to base, the bounty has been located, repeat, the bounty has been located. We got us a visitor." He carefully didn't clarify who; he didn't want to hear it from Dahl, and whichever way Reynolds and Alleyne jumped would just complicate matters.

"Copy that." "Copy," his men- or, more accurately, man and women- reported back, and he dropped his hand.

"Luna?" he continued off comm. "Riddick says he knows where Herton is; we're going aboard to negotiate terms. Keep setting the sensors, just in case, and report to Dahl when she gets back. Got it?"

"Got it," Luna nodded, still staring at Riddick, eyes wide. "Did you know he was going to be here?"

"He don't appreciate being discussed in third person," Riddick raised an eyebrow at the younger merc. "And I should hope I'd know better than to report my location on an open frequency."

Luna swallowed visibly, one hand automatically going to the Bible in his vest pocket. "Yes, sir. Uh, Riddick." He shot a worried side-glance at Johns.

Johns just sighed, aggravated, and gave the kid a get-on-with-it wave as they passed him, approaching the ship.

Riddick chuckled again, the sound low in his throat. "As I was saying."

Johns slipped the keyrod out of his pocket and set it to trigger the lock- then paused for again and glanced over his shoulder at his nemesis turned uneasy ally or whatever the hell else he was that day. "Don't make me regret this," he said. "Fair warning."

Riddick's grin widened, every millimeter more of teeth that showed a challenge. "You got no imagination, Johns," he drawled. "If I'm gonna give you something to regret, it's gonna be a whole lot more interesting than this." He took another step forward, far into Johns' personal space, and set his hand over Johns' to turn the rod and open the bay.

Between the suggestive grip and the suggestive words- Johns opened his mouth, then closed it. Pick your battles, he told himself, and gestured inside as the ramp hit the ground. "Be my guest."

"Don't mind if I do," Riddick said, and turned away, striding up into the ship like he owned it.

Johns shook his head, then closed up the ramp and followed Riddick into the ship's galley and storage area. He was pretty sure he'd seen Moss shove a few packets of some minty green blend to the back of his private food locker a few months before; it had come in a care package from his family, not because he actually liked it, but because his sister had wanted to remind him of the civilization he'd left behind. The idea of serving some to Riddick tickled some long-buried facet of whimsy in Johns, like Dahl painting her toenails a pretty shade of 'predator' pink. He needed that touch of lightheartedness at the moment.

Riddick leaned against the opposite wall while Johns rummaged around, watching the whole process with a sphinxlike smile. "Don't remember the last time someone served me tea," he said as he took the cup a few moments later, then took a deep breath over the rim. "Takes me back to New Mecca."

"Moss's sister was from that neighborhood. Helion Three," Johns nodded. The stuff smelled like grasswater to him; he'd take kaf any day, but he knew how strong a role scent played in memory. And vice versa. He could almost taste the foul scorpion blood and mineral-rich rainwater from their last encounter, as though it hadn't been half a year. "Expensive commodity, now; most of the system's resources are going to the rebuilding on Prime. So I'd appreciate if you didn't kill anyone with it."

"Got no reason to," Riddick shrugged, and took a measured sip.

"Remember that when Dahl busts in here, in about eight minutes," Johns snorted, leaning against the wall opposite him and crossing his arms over his chest. "So. About this quest of yours."

"Yeah, about that." Riddick set his cup down on the narrow serving surface, half emptied, and gave him a long, scrutinizing look. "Furya."

Johns had seen the scratches in the cave Riddick had used to lure them away from the merc station; the word itself didn't come as a surprise. The Furyans had never been a gregarious people, as dangerous and difficult to pin down as the cursed world they'd settled, but their reputation had been formidable. It explained a lot about Riddick's record that might otherwise be chalked up to exaggeration.

I'll tell you this, Johns, he'd said, the last time they'd parted. Sooner or later we all have to go home. Johns didn't see what it had to do with him, though.

"What about it?" he asked.

"Need its location," Riddick clarified.

Johns frowned. He'd been a young, green soldier when word had filtered through the spacelanes that Furya had been leveled; one of the rare traders who made port on the elliptically orbiting planet had reported arriving to find its cities empty, streets running with blood. Genocide was an ugly word, and one that few had believed at the time, a generation before a dark armada had arrived like a meteor shower and swept legions of highly-trained defenders away like chaff on Helion Prime. The Necromongers had only been a them in the decades between the two events, a dark whisper behind the sudden silence of the Coalsack worlds and the Aquila system, among others. No one knew why they hadn't stayed to finish the job on Helion Prime, or where they might have gone since.

Rumor had placed Riddick there not long before that attack, according to the sheet Johns had seen five years before, advertising an unusually high bounty. He wondered what the odds were that that was a coincidence. He'd joked about Riddick's version of reality being some kind of fucked-up fairytale, but it sounded like there might be more truth to it than not. What did that make Johns, then? Not all that eager to fill one of the traditional roles in some twisted hero's journey, that was for fucking sure.

"I'm a mercenary, Riddick, not a historian or a nav computer," he said, dryly. "Look it up."

"Tried that," Riddick drawled, coolly. "No dice. Tried asking a guy who said he'd been there when it went tits-up, and got shat out on the world you found me on for my trouble. Don't remember being there myself; I was kinda busy being born the day it died, and strangled with my own birth-cord for a chaser. So you'll understand if I don't take fuck off for an answer."

The way the man could ooze menace without even raising his voice was pretty fucking impressive. But it lost a little of its intimidation factor under the lights of Johns' own ship, with his armor still on, his favorite weapon holstered at his side, and his own men outside, riding a world where nothing more dangerous than humans moved under a single, bright sun.

Not enough for Johns to let down his guard, though. Or to explain why it jarred so badly to imagine the escaped con in front of him as ever having been that young and vulnerable. He'd never bothered to wonder what sort of childhood might have shaped a man like Riddick; all he'd needed to know was that he was a villain. No one imagines the monster in the dark as a baby, or wonders if the teenage soldier they'd been at the time could have shielded that baby from harm. And for good reason. The cognitive dissonance was threatening to lock Johns' brain up in knots.

"Maybe I would, if you told me why you expect an answer from me at all," he said, turning back to the lockers for another mug and a packet of grounds. He thought he was going to need that kaf, after all.

Riddick just shrugged. "Still got no reason to lie to me. Can't say that about most folk."

And didn't that just say it all about Riddick's usual contact with other human beings. Fair enough.

"Don't know what you expect me to tell you," he shrugged. "I never saw the place; never had a reason to go there. Few people did, except merchies, or the natives who hired out as soldiers on other worlds. I never met one, and by the time I took my discharge and went merc the rumors said I never would. Some folk said Furya was gone; some said it had never been more than a tall tale in the first place; and anyone who'd actually known someone claiming to be Furyan said they'd all gone AWOL one day and never came back. Pretty damned convenient to the conspiracy theorists. Though having met you, I'd guess they heard about what happened and decided payback was more important than paychecks."

Left unspoken was the implication of what had happened when they'd gone up against a foe powerful enough to depopulate worlds. Johns had never heard of another survivor. Somehow, he doubted Riddick had either, or the man would have gone to them with his questions.

Riddick grunted, but didn't argue the point. "Merchants," he pressed. "Soldiers. Gotta come from somewhere. Gotta go to somewhere. You gotta remember something about where it was. There's no way that fucker Zhylaw got all the records, no matter how good his data techs were. Necros got no imagination; all they really care about is their fucking Underverse."

Yeah, it was a real coincidence that Riddick had been reported on Helion Prime, all right. He could only have picked up those names and terms if he'd been there when the supposedly unstoppable force met an immovable object. Or maybe- another unstoppable force, travelling on an incompatible trajectory.

"I'd ask how you know that, or what the fuck the Underverse even is, but I don't think I'd like your answer much, either," Johns snorted, stirring a spoonful of sweet into the thick, dark liquid the dispenser produced. One of his few indulgences. "Can't tell you what I don't know. But I'll tell you where I'd start, if I was paid to track down the last man to set foot on the planet. Where's the earliest place you do remember? If it wasn't Furya, you had to get there somehow. Babies don't fly ships on their own. Plot that world on a map, then walk back the reports of worlds going dark and colonies failing for the past few decades, 'til you find the point on the path nearest where you grew up. Somewhere on a line or arc between those two points should be the system you're looking for."

Riddick's posture stiffened as he processed Johns' suggestion; his silver eyes narrowed, focused like lasers on Johns' face, tracking the working of his throat as he took a long swallow of kaf. "That simple, huh," he replied, skeptically.

"Take the suggestion or not. Doesn't matter me none," Johns narrowed his eyes in return, lowering the mug again. "But this is what I do for a living. You hide; I find."

"Took you long enough to find me," Riddick challenged him.

"Took you long enough to leave a track," Johns fired back. "Whole planet's a little harder to lose. Wouldn't even have taken me ten years with you if I hadn't already been two months deep into another chase the last time you popped up. Given what happened to Toombs and his crew when you broke out of Crematoria, though, I think I got the better end of that deal."

Riddick curled one corner of his mouth again. "Think I did, actually. You'd have taken the money. No ship laid over in the hangar, no reason to break out, no way to get back to New Mecca even if I still knocked out the Necros that crashed the party. Funny how things work out, sometimes."

Johns couldn't quite decide whether to be amused by the backhanded compliment, or pissed, yet again, at being rewritten as a supporting character in the epic tale of an asshole he'd rather have set on fire for the better part of ten years. Fortunately, his comm took that opportune moment to click three times, and his shoulders relaxed just a fraction more, letting go a tension he'd almost forgotten he was holding. Dahl was back, and she'd brought the new kids with her.

"Funny," he replied with an answering wry smile, saluting Riddick with his mug. "I suppose that's one word for it. So here's a couple more: time's up. I told you what I know. Now's your turn to tell me what you know."

"Or...?" Riddick replied, half-smile increasing to a full-on smirk.

"No 'or'. Dahl's outside waiting for instruction; you give me Herton's location, and I'll send the team out to pick him up."

Riddick shifted his weight away from the wall, stance wide and balanced, one thumb hooked over the hilt of a bone-handled blade at his belt. "Or they'll come in to pick me up?"

"You're the one who said it, not me," Johns shrugged, tone mild as milk to disguise the way his heartrate picked up at the motion. In all his life, he'd met maybe a handful of men who tripped that primitive, fight or flight instinct just by existing; and of those, Riddick was the only one he'd ever seen on his knees in front of him. He still hardly knew what to make of the adrenaline coursing through his system, sure only that he felt more alive than he had in months. "Sure, you could take me; probably take us all, and get out of here for nothing more than the price of breaking your word. But we could make it damn difficult. So let's just avoid that whole unpleasantness, shall we?"

Riddick moved then, taking one slow step after another, advancing across the room. Glacially slow- and just as inexorable. Some part of Johns knew he could get out of the way, if he wanted to. But he'd never been the kind of man to back down. He stared Riddick down as he approached, dropping the mug to free his hands, as though that would make a difference if Riddick chose to attack.

But he didn't; he stopped less than half a meter away, looming so close Johns could practically feel his body warmth, boots spattered with the dregs of the kaf, its scent mixing with his spicy, male musk. "Strangest damn merc I ever met," he mused aloud, those silver eyes hypnotic at such close range. "Never heard so many polite words aimed in my direction. What kind of world spawns a man like you?"

"The usual kind," Johns replied, mouth gone dry. "No special history. No special genes. Just a world full of people like any other."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Riddick replied with a chuckle, a low sound that plucked at Johns' nerves like harp strings. "This makes twice now you've surprised me, Johns. Makes me tempted to pry this turtle shell off you and see if I can take you. Make it three for three." He raised a hand, rapping against the pliable armor over Johns' chest with his knuckles, like a civilized man at a door, asking for entry.

Fuck. Fuck. Dahl was never going to let him live it down- assuming he lived through it at all. Johns reached out, bracing a wide hand against Riddick's broad, muscled chest, and pushed back, just enough to catch his attention. "Herton," he reminded him, startled by the rough sound of his own voice.

Riddick threw back his head and laughed, the sound just as wild as it had been in P7, sending an electric jolt through Johns' system. Though he hadn't had quite the same reaction, then; fear and arousal worked the same nerves, but for different ends. "You do know how to keep your eye on the prize. Promising. He's on my ship, locked down in cryo; standard binders. Should be easy to find. I ain't changed ships yet, and the beacon should be lighting up about now. But it's a good two hour walk from here. How long you think it'll take your crew to run it on those bikes of yours?"

Johns swallowed, then reached up with his other hand to trigger his comm. He ignored Dahl's acerbic questions about what the hell was going on; just ordered her to take the others, track down Santana's ship, and report back when they found the bounty- or proof it wasn't there.

"And Dahl..." he added after a moment, settling on a way of letting her know he wasn't in any immediate danger... but to stay on her guard.

"Yeah, Boss?"

"I think you might've been right about the stalking," he said, very dryly, then keyed the comm off to the sound of her steady cursing.

Yeah. So. There was that.

Riddick was grinning; no wariness in his body language, pulse thudding steadily against the palm of Johns' hand. "Woman after my own heart," he said.

"Best hire I ever made," Johns agreed, then shoved again, moving Riddick enough to get his back off the lockers, give him a little room to move. There was one question left to ask.

"One more thing. That kid. Tell me he was one of the three."

"What kid?" Riddick's brow furrowed; for once, he'd caught him off guard.

"The kid." Johns wasn't going to let him play dumb. "Tell me it was worth it."

Riddick's eyes widened, and he went quiet for a long moment, still under the press of Johns' hand. Then he spoke, the words a rumble almost too low to hear. "She. Girl called herself Jack. And she was. Lived another five years- 'til the Necros came." He didn't elaborate on that, but Johns could feel the weight of the words, and the searing light in his eyes was like a brand on Johns' face. "I owed her. And I'm a man who pays his debts."

A man who'd deprived Johns of his son. A man who'd saved a little girl.

A killer who defied armies. And whose life Johns had saved. What kind of debt did that create?

He thought back again to the dull months since their last meeting; the clarity that had burned in his veins at the first sound of Riddick's voice after a subjective eternity of going through the motions. Fuck it. If he was destined to be reduced to a verse in Riddick's edda, it was damned well going to be a memorable one.

Johns curled his hand, digging blunt fingernails into the meat of Riddick's chest. "I find I've lost my taste for vengeance as currency," he suggested.

"Think I could find another way to settle up," Riddick chuckled, tugging his knife from its sheath to drop next to the abandoned mug. As he had once before, on a lichen-covered steppe halfway across the galaxy: a gesture of intent. Not that either of them would ever be harmless.

Johns' holster joined it on the floor a few long seconds later. He felt more naked without it than he would without his armor, but he was long past any point of return.

"Thirty minutes," he said, hoarsely. "There, search, and back? Answer's thirty minutes."

"More than enough time," Riddick said, and bent all his considerable skill to the task.

-x-