RICHARD B. RIDDICK,

“Don’t touch me. You still make me sick.”

“Fine. Come with. Just stay out of my way.”

“I didn’t even need your help. You can go, now.”

“I didn’t want to admit it, but you were good in a fight.”

“Yeah, you’re funny. You’re also still a pain in my ass.”

“I think they lied to us. We aren’t that different, after all.”

“I hated you. I think I still hate you. But, I need your help.”

“If I have to rely on you for this, will I be able to trust you?”

“This doesn’t mean I like you. I still think you’re insufferable.”

“Is this what your friends always have to deal with? I pity them.”

“No, no, don’t you die, now, I just started being able to tolerate you!”

“You have a point. And that might be the scariest thing I’ve ever said.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. You still disgust me. But you can be useful.”

“Seriously? You’re gonna finally win me over, then go get hurt like that?”

“Maybe… okay, hear me out, maybe we do have something in common.”

“You think this puts us on good terms? You’re still the enemy. You were just convenient.”

“You’re a lot different than I thought you would be. Still not sure if that’s good or bad, yet.”

“I didn’t think you’d be able to change my mind, but now I’m thinking things I never would’ve.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀-> Class-1 Mercenary, William J. Johns.

"It is disappointing." Vera's a honey-tipped knife in the reckoning, agreeing despite, or perhaps because of, the raw truth of it. "Enveloping oneself in divinity, I suppose, does not an interior decorator make."

How unaffected, how flightless. She’s been adorned silver-spoon, he’s the tarnish she reflects. That’s how it seems, save for the way she’s bruised, catlike when beseeched a sharpened blade. Nevermind the dresses, the wealth that bleeds from her eyes in waterfalls; this decor, at least, has been a longstanding habit long before her father’s father’s father’s conception. Harkonnen to the tar-and-ink roots. Momentarily, she falters, a spectral tilt of the head, but she’s already finished the conversation they never started.

Manthing that he is: an unsmiling mouth full of rumbling threats. There are few joys in a fugitive's life, so Riddick can't help himself but to snatch at the opportunity to insert a little macabre humor.

And it's only that: Hollow words. Entertainment. Something in his humble origins has caught her fascination. Enough to be freed from a cage. He believes she hopes to see what other fascinating, terrible deeds he might commit with this freedom.

Riddick sweeps his face about the lavish, unnecessary trappings, lazily forsaking it all in his silent appraisal. Strolling the aisles with bloodied bootsteps. Least it was old stuff: flaked dry.

Declan drapes himself dramatically over Riddick's cot, the back of his hand laid across his forehead, mimicking a Renaissance painting of a suffering maiden as best he can. Declan is too tired to invade his cellmate's space physically; this is the next best thing. His everything hurts in ways he never knew possible until Umbrella introduced him to the sensation.

"Not any of my killer ideas, that's for damn sure." He wants to adjust, but the pose is too good at hitting the drama notes he wants, so he suffers for the physicality of his art- even if it's for a fellow science project, several security cameras, and at least three armed security in the cellblock at any given time, none of whom really show the appreciation he feels he deserves.

"You missed me." He's sure of it enough that he has to hear at least one of them say it for confirmation. If God can speak things into existence, so can he.

In a rare moment of his body winning out over his theatrics instead of just getting with the program, the bioweapon adjusts: fully on the cot, curled on his side as best the small space allows because his repeated requests for a proper California king keep getting denied, back to the wall and angled so he can keep at least some attention on the door to their cell.

"They can't create perfection twice; buyers want something with my regenerative talents, but production has been at a standstill." Not said to him, but it's amazing what one can hear when the sedatives don't work as well as he pretends they do for the crowd. "So we had a few lengthy conversations about how impressively fast I can regrow a liver. And lungs. A hand. And my tongue, twice." That last one was likely more because of his doctors having terrible bedside manner and an underappreciation for his quips.

Riddick hadn't asked to hear it. People - the other test subjects - they just got chatty when they were scared. He'd tune them out.

Mostly.

Declan's humor seems as regenerative as the rest of his body these days. But there's tremors, catching the faintest of lights on his skin. Subtle. By the brow, in the knuckles. He's hurting.

Riddick turns away. Works his hands. Pressing at lumps of tension. Testing of the bones. Distractions, poor ones at that.

It takes effort to release the pressure knotted in his jaw, to get his voice to come out ungrowled: "Dunno... But I can't wait to get out and ask 'em."

His shoulders roll, turning to look askance at Declan again. It was never a guarantee that either one of them was coming back when a data collection team pulled one or both them out.