Meme...
Written to this meme.
Five things that never happened to Richard B. Riddick on an island*
*if you count the fourth as two given its excessive length. now full length and better than ever.
i) Early Arrival
He came out of the caves like a bat out of hell, a young man, built like a linebacker but wearing shattered handcuffs and a dull blue uniform that said Interstellar Survey. The name sewn to the collar was Riddick.
When he talks-- that's not often-- he talks about the Bay, and how they put him in there for something he didn't do. He sleeps with the lights on. Sometimes he talks about the dark, too. Real dark, things after him. He'd been holding his own but they were wearing him down, and god, he only wanted light... He feels like he missed something, some opportunity that would have let him be all right.
He's an excellent tracker, the kid. He tracks and kills and he survives. But don't put him in the dark.
Shelly thinks he's sweet, the barely-twenty boy with his curly brown hair and big brown eyes.
He likes her hair. It's like light. When they talk--that's not often, either-- they talk about God.
ii) Belief.
It's a dance through the darkness-- his leg's bleeding out, and the Hammerheads can smell it. Fry's between him and them, keeping them circling, confusing them until she can get him back to the Prowler and off this goddamned world.
She's not doing it because she likes him. She's doing it because she needs him to pilot-
Only she's a pilot. What?
He realizes this as a barbed tail jams into her-- he grabs for her and-
She collapses into his arms as he slams his eyes shut in pain. They're still standing on sand, but the whoop of the Hammerheads is gone and it's so fucking BRIGHT.
"Riddick?" he opens his eyes at Jack's urgent voice, sees her bouncing down the steps of the Prowler, into the light, Imam behind her. "Where are we?"
There are people running down the beach, a man with a whip at his side and a stern look. "She is bleeding. She must to the clinic come-"
"I got her," Richard says, hoisting Fry into his arms.
He doesn't completely follow the explanation given, the Blank Slate island and you come here and you don't leave, but..
Jack's making friends with a wolf. Imam's talking God with some woman.
"This doesn't mean I like you, you shiny-eyed motherfucker," Fry says weakly when she wakes up from her two-day recovery. "...but thanks."
Allahu Akbar... He doesn't argue about God anymore.
iii)Life
"So this is why I didn't switch back," She mutters, voice not gravelly anymore so much as sandy. One hand over her stomach, rounded out. "One night of fucking unprotected sex."
"I really hadn't expected to be a mother this way," Bridget says fervently. She claps her hands together. "STILL, though. It will be all right, there's loads of doctors, and... yes. Doctors." She smiles. She's a little fragile about this whole thing.
She .. she still loves Richard. Richard is pretty sure of that.
(Ri, they've started calling her, because they get tripped up when they peg the name Richard to someone with tits like hers.)
But Bridget's very straight. And a new arrival in the fucking UGLIEST sweater anyone'd seen swept Bridget's feet right out from under her, and.. Ri doesn't mind, not so much. Bridget's still her friend.
Still. She misses sex more and more. Get a little, you get hooked.
"You are very beautiful," Faramir tells her one night when she's feeling swollen and homicidal.
Her mouth goes dry. And suddenly the nasty joke doc House made about sex until the last trimester has just stopped being funny.
Her mouth opens to say you marry Eowyn and is covered with his.
She wraps her arms around him and shuts up.
Little Audrey's first word is Daddy.
iv) Double Feature
The Theater appeared as if it had always been there. It showed... whatever it felt like. Old movies. New movies. Fast cars, tragic romances. But other than that, it didn't seem weird.
They didn't figure it out until Lucy went to see Chronicles of Narnia. Halfway through, the other people there looked around and... gone. Thought she was uncomfortable, thought she left. But then they hunted the island, and she was gone, and they were terrified and she was gone and Richard and Faramir and Galahad and Tristan and all the Stark wolves combed the Theater and they swore she hadn't gone out the door.
There wasn't a trail leading away from her seat.
Then two weeks later, it was back to back episodes of House, MD. Doctor Cameron went to see them. Doctor Cameron disappeared. She'd been sitting between Kosciusko and Reid, and they'd sworn they took their eyes off her for a moment, and she was gone.
When the title Pitch Black flashed up on screen, Richard hit the door running, and went and climbed the highest tree he could, clinging, so the Theater couldn't send him back.
One by one, people he cared about started to go.
Apollo checked the Theater every day. Richard was with him the day it was his movie. No production company anybody else had heard of, no actors they recognized.
"You're sitting through, ain't'cha?"
Apollo nodded, his face bright.
Richard kept his eyes on him until a bright flash from the screen made him wince off-- and Apollo was gone.
He couldn't bring himself to ask Faramir not to go home. He sat through Lord of the Rings. He was glad when Boromir died and he looked over and Faramir wasn't there to see it.
It snowed again, so hard that it trapped even the Starks inside the Theater. Leoben's eyes were wet as he told the others how it'd gone down-- the wolves whined and cried and tried to dig out, but Song of Ice and Fire was already on screen.
Richard never saw Arya again.
Wallace and Marv both had their own reasons to sit through Sin City. The toasters wanted to go home, too-- they sat peaceful with Helo and Thrace through the BSG eps.
Smith surprised him. Smith backed up when he saw the green text on screen, he slammed his hands against the door-- jammed. Locked. Something. Richard tried to help him, remembering his own panic, but in the end...
When the Theater wanted you, it took you.
One by one.
So fast. One by one could go so fast.
Bridget and Richard stayed out of the theater. Richard lost a hand killing a raptor that tried to trap them inside. They stayed out, kept to the compound.
And then one day they walked through a door together, heading outside, and they were there.
The doors were locked. There was popcorn.
Bridget kept a bright face through it, eating popcorn, holding his hand. "Yes, and you see, before that she'd said Mark's first wife was Japanese and they were a cruel race." and "Oh, dear, and here's the bit where I get rather high," and then "Oh, and here's the bit right when I came to the island!" and he was holding thin air.
Now he checks the Theater every day.
Because there are no new arrivals on the island, and nobody left. And all he'd wanted was to be left alone, didn't he spend five fucking years on UV 5?
But he's lonely. And he never leaves the Theater, now, not for more than an hour, because he's scared he'll miss his only way out, because right now Vaako and the Necromongers would be better than this big, empty island.
And the Theater plays Bridget Jones' Diary. And Lord of the Rings, and Hornblower and Sin City and Jurisdiction and Song of Ice and Fire. And by now he's seen every movie the Gasoline-action-bitch ever made (Iron Giant was the only one he liked) except three. Once he woke up and thought he saw Fry, but it was some woman named Rose in a horror film.
He's lonely and he wants to go home. All his friends are just in pictures.
And now, I Can Count To Five!
v) Career
Banners snap, underscoring the cheering of the people-- the Steward has brought his Lady home.
And his lady's friend, an advisor, they are not as sure what's to be made of him, but he seems a fine man. Qui Gonn, his name, and regal and kind.
And the Steward seems not to be displeased.
But when Qui Gonn is settled in the tower, and the Lady and Steward are mostly in privacy, the Lady shifts and seems nervous.
"Do you blame me?" asks the bright lady, the golden-haired shield-maiden. "I know not how to send him home, and he is dead there at any rate..."
Her lord smiles at her and shakes his head.
"It would be to his own discredit if he did," comes a soft voice, the guard by the door speaking. "If you can pardon my familiarity, my Lady. It has been some few years, now."
But Eowyn laughs. "That voice I remember, although with harsher words. Will you take down your hood?"
The face is as she remembers, although somewhat civilized by a head of curling hair and a dark beard. There is, of course, no helping the goggles.
"My Lady." He bobs his head and smiles. "And, if I may say it, Lord Faramir has no room to speak. He has not tried to send me home, after all."
"Of course." She gives her husband a wry look, that tells him in some detail what punishment will be exacted for his failure to warn her. "You are much changed, since the island."
"I have been here six years. They have beat civility into me," he says, a smile in his voice. "Tho I could talk like this again, if ya wanted."
She laughs, shakes her head.
Faramir gives his friend a glare, and he subsides back into his post, smiling slightly at them both. He is no longer jealous. His Lord is home, and all is well.
And they said he'd never hold down a job.
Five things that never happened to Richard B. Riddick on an island*
*if you count the fourth as two given its excessive length. now full length and better than ever.
i) Early Arrival
He came out of the caves like a bat out of hell, a young man, built like a linebacker but wearing shattered handcuffs and a dull blue uniform that said Interstellar Survey. The name sewn to the collar was Riddick.
When he talks-- that's not often-- he talks about the Bay, and how they put him in there for something he didn't do. He sleeps with the lights on. Sometimes he talks about the dark, too. Real dark, things after him. He'd been holding his own but they were wearing him down, and god, he only wanted light... He feels like he missed something, some opportunity that would have let him be all right.
He's an excellent tracker, the kid. He tracks and kills and he survives. But don't put him in the dark.
Shelly thinks he's sweet, the barely-twenty boy with his curly brown hair and big brown eyes.
He likes her hair. It's like light. When they talk--that's not often, either-- they talk about God.
ii) Belief.
It's a dance through the darkness-- his leg's bleeding out, and the Hammerheads can smell it. Fry's between him and them, keeping them circling, confusing them until she can get him back to the Prowler and off this goddamned world.
She's not doing it because she likes him. She's doing it because she needs him to pilot-
Only she's a pilot. What?
He realizes this as a barbed tail jams into her-- he grabs for her and-
She collapses into his arms as he slams his eyes shut in pain. They're still standing on sand, but the whoop of the Hammerheads is gone and it's so fucking BRIGHT.
"Riddick?" he opens his eyes at Jack's urgent voice, sees her bouncing down the steps of the Prowler, into the light, Imam behind her. "Where are we?"
There are people running down the beach, a man with a whip at his side and a stern look. "She is bleeding. She must to the clinic come-"
"I got her," Richard says, hoisting Fry into his arms.
He doesn't completely follow the explanation given, the Blank Slate island and you come here and you don't leave, but..
Jack's making friends with a wolf. Imam's talking God with some woman.
"This doesn't mean I like you, you shiny-eyed motherfucker," Fry says weakly when she wakes up from her two-day recovery. "...but thanks."
Allahu Akbar... He doesn't argue about God anymore.
iii)Life
"So this is why I didn't switch back," She mutters, voice not gravelly anymore so much as sandy. One hand over her stomach, rounded out. "One night of fucking unprotected sex."
"I really hadn't expected to be a mother this way," Bridget says fervently. She claps her hands together. "STILL, though. It will be all right, there's loads of doctors, and... yes. Doctors." She smiles. She's a little fragile about this whole thing.
She .. she still loves Richard. Richard is pretty sure of that.
(Ri, they've started calling her, because they get tripped up when they peg the name Richard to someone with tits like hers.)
But Bridget's very straight. And a new arrival in the fucking UGLIEST sweater anyone'd seen swept Bridget's feet right out from under her, and.. Ri doesn't mind, not so much. Bridget's still her friend.
Still. She misses sex more and more. Get a little, you get hooked.
"You are very beautiful," Faramir tells her one night when she's feeling swollen and homicidal.
Her mouth goes dry. And suddenly the nasty joke doc House made about sex until the last trimester has just stopped being funny.
Her mouth opens to say you marry Eowyn and is covered with his.
She wraps her arms around him and shuts up.
Little Audrey's first word is Daddy.
iv) Double Feature
The Theater appeared as if it had always been there. It showed... whatever it felt like. Old movies. New movies. Fast cars, tragic romances. But other than that, it didn't seem weird.
They didn't figure it out until Lucy went to see Chronicles of Narnia. Halfway through, the other people there looked around and... gone. Thought she was uncomfortable, thought she left. But then they hunted the island, and she was gone, and they were terrified and she was gone and Richard and Faramir and Galahad and Tristan and all the Stark wolves combed the Theater and they swore she hadn't gone out the door.
There wasn't a trail leading away from her seat.
Then two weeks later, it was back to back episodes of House, MD. Doctor Cameron went to see them. Doctor Cameron disappeared. She'd been sitting between Kosciusko and Reid, and they'd sworn they took their eyes off her for a moment, and she was gone.
When the title Pitch Black flashed up on screen, Richard hit the door running, and went and climbed the highest tree he could, clinging, so the Theater couldn't send him back.
One by one, people he cared about started to go.
Apollo checked the Theater every day. Richard was with him the day it was his movie. No production company anybody else had heard of, no actors they recognized.
"You're sitting through, ain't'cha?"
Apollo nodded, his face bright.
Richard kept his eyes on him until a bright flash from the screen made him wince off-- and Apollo was gone.
He couldn't bring himself to ask Faramir not to go home. He sat through Lord of the Rings. He was glad when Boromir died and he looked over and Faramir wasn't there to see it.
It snowed again, so hard that it trapped even the Starks inside the Theater. Leoben's eyes were wet as he told the others how it'd gone down-- the wolves whined and cried and tried to dig out, but Song of Ice and Fire was already on screen.
Richard never saw Arya again.
Wallace and Marv both had their own reasons to sit through Sin City. The toasters wanted to go home, too-- they sat peaceful with Helo and Thrace through the BSG eps.
Smith surprised him. Smith backed up when he saw the green text on screen, he slammed his hands against the door-- jammed. Locked. Something. Richard tried to help him, remembering his own panic, but in the end...
When the Theater wanted you, it took you.
One by one.
So fast. One by one could go so fast.
Bridget and Richard stayed out of the theater. Richard lost a hand killing a raptor that tried to trap them inside. They stayed out, kept to the compound.
And then one day they walked through a door together, heading outside, and they were there.
The doors were locked. There was popcorn.
Bridget kept a bright face through it, eating popcorn, holding his hand. "Yes, and you see, before that she'd said Mark's first wife was Japanese and they were a cruel race." and "Oh, dear, and here's the bit where I get rather high," and then "Oh, and here's the bit right when I came to the island!" and he was holding thin air.
Now he checks the Theater every day.
Because there are no new arrivals on the island, and nobody left. And all he'd wanted was to be left alone, didn't he spend five fucking years on UV 5?
But he's lonely. And he never leaves the Theater, now, not for more than an hour, because he's scared he'll miss his only way out, because right now Vaako and the Necromongers would be better than this big, empty island.
And the Theater plays Bridget Jones' Diary. And Lord of the Rings, and Hornblower and Sin City and Jurisdiction and Song of Ice and Fire. And by now he's seen every movie the Gasoline-action-bitch ever made (Iron Giant was the only one he liked) except three. Once he woke up and thought he saw Fry, but it was some woman named Rose in a horror film.
He's lonely and he wants to go home. All his friends are just in pictures.
And now, I Can Count To Five!
v) Career
Banners snap, underscoring the cheering of the people-- the Steward has brought his Lady home.
And his lady's friend, an advisor, they are not as sure what's to be made of him, but he seems a fine man. Qui Gonn, his name, and regal and kind.
And the Steward seems not to be displeased.
But when Qui Gonn is settled in the tower, and the Lady and Steward are mostly in privacy, the Lady shifts and seems nervous.
"Do you blame me?" asks the bright lady, the golden-haired shield-maiden. "I know not how to send him home, and he is dead there at any rate..."
Her lord smiles at her and shakes his head.
"It would be to his own discredit if he did," comes a soft voice, the guard by the door speaking. "If you can pardon my familiarity, my Lady. It has been some few years, now."
But Eowyn laughs. "That voice I remember, although with harsher words. Will you take down your hood?"
The face is as she remembers, although somewhat civilized by a head of curling hair and a dark beard. There is, of course, no helping the goggles.
"My Lady." He bobs his head and smiles. "And, if I may say it, Lord Faramir has no room to speak. He has not tried to send me home, after all."
"Of course." She gives her husband a wry look, that tells him in some detail what punishment will be exacted for his failure to warn her. "You are much changed, since the island."
"I have been here six years. They have beat civility into me," he says, a smile in his voice. "Tho I could talk like this again, if ya wanted."
She laughs, shakes her head.
Faramir gives his friend a glare, and he subsides back into his post, smiling slightly at them both. He is no longer jealous. His Lord is home, and all is well.
And they said he'd never hold down a job.