Riddik's Story: Escape

Sitting around waiting for a hatching of little chaos-godlings was a rather boring affair. It gave one very little to do to keep one's mind off of what was coming eventually, and wondering-- even fearing-- what that might entail. It gave one very little to do to keep one's mind off other people in his acquaintance were doing. How they were doing. If they were all right. If they missed him.

Twenty-Eight wasn't used to this much emotion. It wasn't even that much, compared to emotional outbursts he'd witnessed and felt, but it was still more than he was used to. He also had never imagined he'd be so much of a worrier-- Riddik didn't seem surprised, though he certainly seemed annoyed, and usually stayed at the edge of comfort, or farther, when he could-- but he was. He worried nearly constantly about Thirty-Two, about how they'd get away from this awful ship when the time came, about the prospect of bonding a deity which might or might not even be something he could affect, much less control.

He reasoned that it was because he'd been tossed into such an unfamiliar and unsettling situation, far from anything he knew. Naturally his thoughts would cling to the familiar, the only familiar thing he could say to care about in any respect. Naturally his emotions would be off-kilter, more amplified by uncertainty.

Neither reasoning actually helped the problem, and he was a little disgusted with himself for the inability to control himself. For a while, he settled for doing the only thing he felt he could: numbing out his own mind and those of anyone he happened to come in contact with, but he couldn't keep himself buried in ennui forever. He had to eat, drink, and groom, after all. Twenty-Eight refused to ever look less than fully groomed, and even when he was displeased with his surroundings he always kept himself in peak shape, out of habit and a vague sense of pride in himself and his appearance.

When he gave up on self-numbing, he played around some with the other Chosen-- Chosen, ha; kidnapped and imprisoned, more like-- and occasionally Custodians and Guardians, letting his boredom and disinterest take affect at particularly inopportune times. It gave him a little entertainment-- a little distraction-- to see potential friendships among other prisoners fall apart, or troublemakers get away with their trouble, or newly-brought Chosen given wrong or incomplete instructions because the Custodian at the time couldn't be bothered to do a thorough job. They were little revenges, all over again, only revenges on a new set of captors. Was the whole universe so focused on capture and incarceration, for one reason or another?

The best part, though, was that he never got into trouble, because no one ever cared enough to recognize who should be in trouble. The air of disinterest around him kept him safe.

And there was always Riddik. Twenty-Eight was still tied to him, and as he was a more passive soul than Riddik was, he generally was the one who followed while Riddik went. Twenty-Eight did try to keep his distance whenever those grue-creatures were about, as he got the distinct impression they didn't like him, and he didn't know if his ability to soothe savage beasts would work fast enough to fend off an attack he probably wouldn't see coming, to begin with.

Besides, he wouldn't put it past Riddik to be foolhardy enough to see what would happen if their geas were broken forcibly-- by the death of one or the other. And Twenty-Eight didn't particularly want to die just yet. Death wasn't something he had ever seriously contemplated, being a very useful and expensive construct that not even enemies would try to bring harm to, but out here no one knew that, there was no one to buy and sell him, and no one to come retrieve him if a mission went downhill. He was forced to wonder, now, about death, and he was quite certain that, in the end, he was just as mortal as any other beast or humanoid on this flying country. And the idea of death at the teeth of a grue sounded very, very painful.

Whenever Riddik went out and about during the "daytime" aboard the ship, though, Twenty-Eight wound up following him about, sometimes silent and sometimes attempting conversation. The not-construct-- Twenty-Eight did wonder now and then if whatever Riddik was had a name, but he couldn't come up with anything, himself, and if Riddik knew, he wasn't forth coming-- might have the little swarmlings with him, but those, Twenty-Eight wasn't worried about. Not enough to keep him away from the only familiar face on this awful ship.

He'd never craved company before, but now he... sometimes did. He'd never wanted to hear the sound of another voice answering his own, but now he... sometimes did. Riddik wasn't often obliging, but he was better than nothing, and at least he spoke the language of Twenty-Eight's world and could be persuaded to use it. That helped, now and then.

Then, after a month and a half of this biding time, the pattern changed. Riddik left one morning very early without alerting Twenty-Eight in any way-- without, in fact, even waking him up. The feline construct woke only when the geas hit him with pain, coming awake all at once with a yowl and a flail right off the bed, half-certain he had been found and captured and punished. He couldn't even comfort himself in his embarrassment with a bout of grooming when he realized he was alone in his room because he still hurt.

It was a pain he recognized, of course, from the geas being too far stretched. It wasn't as bad as the pure, mindless torment of being separated by light-years, but it hurt plenty, all the same. Enough to know the not-construct had gone beyond the "discomfort" range, and by a lot. Why? Twenty-Eight didn't know, and he intended to find out.

That was harder than it sounded, though. Riddik seemed to always know when Twenty-Eight was looking for him, and always had his grue beast with him, or always stayed just out of reach, around the next corner or in the next room. He sensed a mix of determination and amusement from Riddik, which told him nothing except that the not-construct did have a purpose, even if he wasn't sharing it with his keeper. Former keeper.

He finally tracked him down after several weeks of the random, sporadic, not-quite-constant barrage of pain, frustrated and weary but no longer actively angry. Twenty-Eight couldn't sustain anger for that long. The not-construct had returned to his room at the end of the night-shift, taken a shower-- Twenty-Eight could feel the relieved "getting clean" emotions; for a merciless, cold-blooded killer, Riddik was nearly as fastiduous as Twenty-Eight himself was-- and shut the big grue-beast away for the day, and when he turned away from the door, he found Twenty-Eight waiting for him. He didn't look surprised, and he swept off at a brisk walk, rather than flight, to fascilitate talking.

"What are you doing?" he asked first, immediately, before even a greeting.

"Training," Riddik shrugged.

"Training what, your magical pain tolerance?" Twenty-Eight scoffed. "Might I remind you, Riddik, it was made to not be adapted to. It simply isn't possible. Not to mention, your 'training' happens to affect me, as well?"

"Sure does," Riddik agreed, without explaining.

"Then what in the name of all that isn't are you trying to do?" Twenty-Eight demanded, tails flicking with the force of his words, and he was momentarily stymied by the thought that he scarcely recognized himself, sometimes.

Riddik's answer stymied him, too, because it didn't even seem an answer. "Last time the pain kicked in," he said simply, "I was over half a mile away."

Then he took to the air, leaving Twenty-Eight behind and even most frustrated with the lack of response. It wasn't until the next day that he had an inkling of what he meant, and what that meant for both of them.