Riddik's Story: Escape

For the first time in twelve days, Riddik was too late.

For the past week and a half, he'd been keeping Gara alive, relatively safe, and away from... "them", whoever "they" were. Experimenters, mages, captors, he supposed it didn't really matter; Gara didn't like them, and they were controlling his life, so they deserved to be deprived of their fun. Every time Gara faltered from exhaustion or overwhelming odds, or just made a stupid mistake-- not that those were many; the kid was decent with his magic, his only weapon, maybe better than decent-- Riddik was ready and waiting to sweep in and take care of the rest, sometimes with Big Girl, sometimes just with the little guy who wasn't on guard-duty at the time.

He'd only had to interfere a handful of times, really. But it was enough to keep him entertained, keep the kid wondering about him, and let him learn the kid's style. Learn his blind spots. Learn his strengths. Learn his weaknesses. And Gara did have weaknesses. He never seemed to fly-- unsurprising, given that great awkward barrel-of-sand on his back-- and while he did all right with things coming at him along a horizontal plane, he wasn't so good at the vertical plane. The only time Riddik had needed to protect him from something he simply hadn't seen, it had been something coming from above.

Obviously, he also had no idea how to fight as a unit. Riddik did attempt, now and then, to fight with Gara to save his tail instead of just for him, and the kid had no idea how to coordinate, and Riddik had even gotten a faceful of sand once for his trouble-- on accident, he imagined, but still. That was relatively unsurprising, if he had spent all this time in battles of one against many, but it was still something to be remembered. On the flip side, while Gara was a whirlwind with many attackers, he seemed to have forgotten how to handle a single one with actual skill.

The boy had plenty of weaknesses, really, for all he was good at what he did. He never moved, holding completely still as he worked. His sand was his only weapon, and though he controlled it well, without it he was helpless. He controlled it with his hands: stop his hands and it stopped the sand. The sand required conscious thought and focus, so keep him off-balance and distracted and he didn't have any control over it. Wear him out and he didn't have any control over it; that had been the first one he'd learned.

All useful bits of information to know, and keep in mind.

But this time when Gray-- the current little grue on guard duty; Riddik switched them out each time he came to the rescue-- called for his bond's help, all he had to go on was a burst of panic and an even briefer locational beacon before the beacon vanished and all he got was pain and terror and fury and the sense of a small, enclosed space. When he got back to the place he'd last heard from Gray, it was empty, without even signs of a struggle.

And despite prowling the whole of the Chosen desk, reaching the edges of where he'd stretched the geas to and pushing past them, he couldn't find Gray or Gara. When night-shift fell, Big Girl joined him and Brown-- the latter hidden in his feathers-- and they prowled the halls together. Again. And a third time.

Big Girl had finally given up on complaining about his weakness, his attention to Gara; perhaps she admired his strength, despite being young like she was. Perhaps she had gotten bored with the complaints and decided to make the best of the situation. Maybe she just let it go when, in response to her suggestion that they eat Gara once when he lay prone and dazed on the ground from an attack that knocked him back, he'd kicked her across the corridor and badly bruised her earstalks.

Yeah, that was probably it.

Regardless, she actually helped him look, though there didn't seem to be anything to find. Riddik was starting to get... annoyed. Even if he couldn't find Gara, he at least wanted Gray back.

He was so annoyed, in fact, that he didn't actually register the "threat" until it hit him. For a split second he was actually startled, and he was pretty sure that sound Big Girl was making was laughter, or what passed for it in her species. There was a tiny little thing clinging to the band of his goggles chattering wild nonsense and, he realized, radiating relief and indignation and relief and owthathurtness and relief and affection and relief and--

"Get the hell off of me," Riddik snorted at Gray, plucking him from his head and holding him up in front of his face, scowling at him. No wonder he hadn't registered any threat; there wasn't one. While Big Girl or Brown flying at him might have been dangerous, Gray was about as harmless as a grue could get. "Shouldn't you be watchin' somebody, little guy?"

Rather than getting an answer out of Gray-- not like he actually expected one; the little grue was dangling from his fingers and still warbling away-- he got his answer from that somebody he was supposed to be watching, who Riddik registered as being there a beat before he actually spoke. "No," Gara said from behind him, voice completely uninflected. Big Girl made an almost barking sound at him, tensing, and Riddik opened a wing between her and her potential prey.

Riddik turned, setting Gray onto his shoulder and letting him cling there if he wanted, and arched a furry brow at Gara and folding his arms across his chest. "Really," was all he said, inviting an explanation, and surreptitiously looking him over in the darkness. There was no expression to read, very little body language except bland readiness, exhaustion, and some hints of pain now gone. His eyes were more sunken than before, and there were raw places on his wrists where the fur had been burned away and skin chapped: obvious signs of restraints, probably resisted restraints. His Rune-brand had changed, there was a new slash attached to it, still fresh and looking more like a burn than a mark on a rune. Riddik could almost smell the singed fur and skin from it, and he couldn't imagine why Gara might want to touch it, listlessly running his fingers over it like he was making sure it was actually there.

When Gara spoke, his voice was slow and still toneless, a slight hesitation before each word that spoke of effort to bring it up. "They've been watching," he said. "They've known all along." Ah. Not a surprise, but perhaps a disappointment. Riddik would have liked to think he could have eluded attention for at least the first or second bit of help he'd given. His own expression didn't change a jot; neither did Gara's.

"But they're losing interest," Gara continued. "They'll stop you. Send someone you can't kill." He paused-- why?-- and added, "You're not from home. You're not branded, and not going to be." Hence the pause. The ruse was up, then. Riddik had never actually lied to Gara, just let him make up his own story and never actually contradicted it for him, but that could have been bad enough, to the eyes of a child. His expression didn't change; Gara looked, if anything, more emotionless. "Only a little interesting," he reiterated. "They planned to let you leave. But you have to stop, or they'll kill you."

After a long pause of his own, considering Gara's blank face and tortured-but-not speech, Riddik asked simply, "Is that what you want?"

As expected, it took a moment for Gara to come up with a reply, and this time there was emotion. Just a tremor of it. Fear? He couldn't smell it. Anxiety, perhaps. Stress, surely. Weariness.

Bravery. That's what it was, in the end. "Yes," Gara said, his voice shaking just a tiny bit. With bravery. "You can get away. You should."

Again Riddik considered for a moment, though he already knew what his decision would be. Then he said, "I'm leavin' after the next theurge. That's four days away, now. You keep the brown guy with you--" Grues didn't have names, after all; he just picked a word to assign to them, and never referred to them as named except in his own head. "--until then." He plucked the reluctant beast out of the air as he tried to escape the command. "You wanna see me before then, you ask him. You don't, he'll come find me before I do. But we'll stay out of your fights." He bent down a little, holding out the grue-ling and that much closer to Gara's level, and made it clear: "Because you want us to."

Whether or not Gara would actually seek him out, he took Brown and let him dive into the shelter of his sash. The promise of being left alone-- or the promise of four more days-- or something-- made the slight frown, the consternation and anxiety, melt into blandness once more. Apparently he'd done and said the right thing.

Even more so, when before he could pull his hand back, Gara actually reached out and touched his palm. Riddik kept it there to be touched, mildly surprised by the actual attempt at making a connection. "Thank you," Gara said slowly and haltingly.

Riddik gave him a careless grin and said, "Kept me from bein' bored." But despite himself, he belied the empty words by closing his fingers on Gara's hand gently. He shook it once, then let him go and straightened up. Mushy part over. "Give 'em hell, for me, kid."

"Only fair," Gara answered, back to his flat speech and affect, and he turned away to walk off into the darkness.

With Brown safely tucked away in his sash.

So far, so good. Now it was just time to wait.