Within The Absence of Light:: Part One

Time seemed to pause, giving us a few precious moments to breathe each other in. Allowing us enough time to imprint this into our memories... To know that at one point in our screwed existence... We were loved.
 
It hurts me now to think of what transpired not more than a few hours after that single moment of peace. He not only dragged me away and threw me on the transport to another part of the 'verse... But as I sat in my quarters and stared out onto the dock... I watched the hounds descend. A group of bottom feeders, Mercs... Led by the Devil himself; Johns.
 
The engines starting up drowned out my screams as I witnessed them beat him down and put him in chains. I didn't feel the pain as I slammed my small fists into the metal siding of the view screen, nor the warm trails of red that streamed down my wrists from the cuts I'd inflicted out of despair.
 
I bellowed out his name, my vocal chords straining, but knew no one would hear me... Yet, for just a moment, he turned his head toward the transport I was trapped on and our eyes met. It was barely a few seconds, but I felt something rush through me.

This wasn't the End. There was no way in hell I was going to give up on him. No matter how long it took... I would find my way back to him.
 
Somehow...

*  *  *  *
 
Heh, how young and naive I had been... I had no idea what was ahead of me. The trials I would face that would change who I am. The innocence that died the day I witnessed him taken away from me. The heart that was ripped from my chest, leaving nothing more than an empty shell.
 
It's funny how things change. The terrified whispers of a New kind of Monster that Stalks the Darkness. An evil that at first was blamed on those shined eyes...until a handful of survivors saw the beast for what it really was.
 
I'm not saying I'm proud of the thing I've become, but what did you expect? For me to just give up? To just fade away? No...not hardly. I took it upon myself to Hunt those blood-thirsty bottom feeders that took my light away. One by one I've watched them fall... And after each Kill, each one that met their fate by the end of my blades... I realized it just wasn't enough. It would Never be enough. Their screams would never sate the hole they'd created by taking the One thing that gave me a reason to Live. They took his light away...plunging me into a darkness from which there is no escape.

So I've made it my personal mission to take out as many of those sadistic Merc fucks as I possibly can. And I gotta say... I'm havin' allot of fun doing it. I was sloppy at first, didn’t quite have the edge to sink the blade just a few more inches. Damn near got myself ghosted in the process. It was half-assed in the beginning being that I was still too wet behind the ears to understand how bad it really gets. One night the fates decided for me. Got jumped by a bounty hunter named Scarz (yes, that’s how it was spelt) basically using my inexperience against me… He had that do-right smile and devil blue eyes; which should’ve set the warning alarms off in my head, but I was young and very naïve. Exhausted from going on 72 hours without food or sleep, I let my guard slip and almost got raped in the back of an alley at a trade post station in a system I can’t even remember. It was in that moment of clarity, knowing that this was my reality…that something snapped inside. It didn’t register that I’d reacted until I felt something thick and coffee hot spill down my hand and along the front of my shirt. I’d grabbed the first thing to my right when he pinned me against the ground behind an old dumpster and jerked my arm in reaction. I honestly don’t remember the moments between the panic and then the frightening calm that consumed me.

My heartbeat was slow and steady, my breathing even. Everything had a crystal intensity to it. I could see the look of shock in his blue eyes as he wheezed, his blood bubbling over the gaping wound just beneath his jaw line as I jerked the jagged piece of steel from his paling flesh and pushed him off me. I was standing over him before the light drained from his eyes. I wanted to watch his last moments…I wanted to be the last thing he saw before hell opened its jaws and swallowed him.

After that moment, I finally understood what Riddick had tried to tell me. Killing wasn’t something you did for sport… He was good at what he did because he was forced to. He’d never wanted that for me, knowing it would kill something fragile inside me I could never get back. Thing is…can’t lose what you never had. Lost that when he was taken from me. The moment I had to kill to survive, something else woke up and moved in; replacing that innocence Riddick had fought to preserve.

Been Ten years since I watched them drag him away in chains…Seven after my first real kill and now, I go from planet to planet, picking and choosing the worst of the bottom feeders. Sick fucks that prey on the innocent; women, children and animal. The ones that should be in a different line of work generally get a pass…with a warning. I keep a few alive so the rumors can continue to spread. Gotta keep’em on their toes… Besides, nuthin’ spooks a Bounty Hunter more then a good ole fashioned ghost story about a monster that’s out for blood. Especially theirs.
 
I wonder...what would Riddick think of me now? To see the young woman he once watched over, the one he kept close to him, tried to protect against all the hate and all the pain, turned into a heartless predator. Nothing more then a shadow of the soul he once knew. Ya…I’d love to see the look on his face. Heh, too bad that’ll never happen…

But a girl can dream.

-End Part One-