UNLIKELY ASSISTANCE
Description: post-finale: Lucas receives help from an unexpected source.
AN: Semi-inspired by a fan vid I watched upon the recommendation of Chaotic-Theoretician. (If you haven't read her fic The Traitor and the Pariah you totally should.) Any ways, here is the very interesting vid. - youtube(.)com/watch?v=KUr5V4t4mLs I'm not sure about the romantic aspect of these two (Maddy and Mark are so cute together) but the idea won't leave me alone, so here is my attempt at a Terra Nova one-shot.
They were supposed to be out collecting samples for Malcolm, at least, that's the story that they used to con their way out of the confines of the gates…
It had only been a few days since the colonists had retaken Terra Nova and tensions were still high even though there had been no sign of the Sixers and company since they took off for the badlands. OTG missions were highly restricted and the patrols were on double duty until the commander felt it was appropriate to stand down a bit. This meant that the colonists, mostly the younger crowd, were getting a bit edgy and Maddy hardly got to see Mark at all. That's how her brother and Skye managed to get her on board.
At dinner two nights ago she just happened to mention that while working in the science labs, helping to clean up the disaster Phoenix Group had left behind, that Malcolm did nothing but incessantly complain about all his destroyed samples. How he needed new ones, all his poor plants, no appreciation for the finer sciences, didn't understand why the commander wouldn't let him go collect more (ok, so she was complaining, not her fault if he kept following her around hoping she could put in a good word to her dad about Malcolm's terrible state of affairs) and Josh and Skye had taken way more interest than her parents. An hour after dinner Josh had pulled her away from her plex so he could explain the plan to her.
If she could just convince the commander of the importance of an all new biological sample series, without having to take Malcolm away from more important tasks, then perhaps he would sign off on a short OTG mission. Just one afternoon to do a preliminary search of the surrounding area. The idea was actually pretty sound. The lab did need new plants, Malcolm really was too busy to go collecting himself, and most importantly, there was a chance she might bump into Mark while he was on patrol.
So obviously Maddy knew that they each had an entirely selfish reason for wanting to leave the gates. She also knew that once out there she would be doing all the sample collecting herself, but there was no way they would be able to convince the commander without her, and it was unlikely that she would get to see Mark for more than 5 minutes in the next week if she didn't get outside the gates.
That's how two days later she ended up wandering through the trees around Terra Nova alone. Shortly after leaving the confines of the colony she had been summarily ditched by her brother and Skye. They told her that they had some 'stuff' to do and they didn't want her to be witness incase they got caught. Its not like she didn't know they were going to check out their old still. She wasn't a complete idiot, but she had ideas of her own and started heading in the direction she had heard Mark's patrol was going to be for the day. She split her time daydreaming about her boyfriend and diligently collecting the plants, leaves and bark that Malcolm would want for the lab.
She was humming an old song to herself and following a rather fascinating trail of toadstools into the thicker brush when she heard a very distinct cracking noise, like the snap of a thick branch. She looked down to see that she had stepped onto some sort of trigger. She looked a little harder and saw there was vine netting concealed under the leaf litter all around her. Her eyes got wide as she realized that lifting her foot would release the trap she had sprung. She practically had a heart attack when she heard a harsh weezing chuckle from behind her.
"Turn around very slowly."
Maddy did as she was told and slowly swiveled, careful to keep her foot planted on the cracked branch, and found Lucas Taylor slumped on a dead tree behind her. The first thing she noticed was the knife in his hand. It wasn't raised in a threatening manner, just resting on his thigh, but it was pointed directly at her. She slowly raised her hands to show she was unarmed (stupid really, but she didn't think she would need to be to pick flowers). "Please don't hurt me," she whispered, voice shaking, eyes wide. She hadn't met Lucas when he had control of Terra Nova, but she had seen the aftermath of what he did to her brother and her father. Heard the shot as he killed Lt. Washington and watched her mother sew up the commander's stab wound. This was a very dangerous man, wounded or not.
"You're the sheriff's daughter…" Lucas said speculatively, wiggling the knife in a thoughtful manner at her. Maddy blinked hard, but didn't respond. "The doctor's daughter…" She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry with fear. She tried to think. Her eyes flashed about a bit as she tried to see anything that would get her out of this situation unharmed. From what she could tell now that she could see the trap was there, it was too big for her to try to jump out of the way of the net. The thicket she was in was extremely dense and she doubted anyone would hear her scream. There was no way anyone would see her from the outside.
Her eyes came back to the man in front of her and she did her best to make an assessment of him without seeming to do so. His skin was pale and pasty, his eyes glassy (probably with fever she noted). Of course the front of him was coated in blood and what had to be the river mud Mark had slathered on her during their night OTG. She couldn't see the bullet wounds, but Skye had said she had shot him twice in the chest. Frankly, Maddy was surprised he was still alive. She realized when she looked at it from a strictly scientific point of view it wasn't as hard to get her fear under control.
"So doctor's daughter, what are you doing out here all by yourself?" His voice startled her from her analysis. He was looking at her with his crazed, glassy eyes. His focus seeming to come and go with the fever.
"Jus… just collecting some, some plant… samples," she stammered, gesturing to the bag slung across her chest.
Lucas blinked hard at her for a moment. "Toss it over here. Now. And don't try to run, you won't get far," he ordered with a hard laugh.
Maddy slowly raised the bag over her head and very gently swung it over to him. She might be in danger, but the last thing she wanted to do was break her plex because of the commander's insane son. She watched as he riffled through the bag, grabbing her plex first and setting it aside (gently she was relieved to see) and then pulling out the plant samples. At first he just pulled them out one by one. Some were just leaves or bits of bark in containers, others were whole seedlings, the roots carefully wrapped in damp cloth until they could be replanted in the lab. Eventually his searching got more frantic and he dumped the entire contents on the ground. "Hey!" she shouted, frustrated at her situation and all her hard work gone to waste.
His head jerked around towards her and she fell silent. "Something to say? No? Well, perhaps you will be better with your hands than your words. There should be some fairly common plants in here that work as natural fever reducers and some others with antibiotic properties. You're going to sort them out for me and get me fixed up."
Maddy was stunned. She wasn't even sure what she had expected from this situation, to be a hostage perhaps, but not to play at being a doctor. She had barely lasted one day as her mother's intern. The sight of blood made her queasy and, well, she definitely didn't want to help someone that had done so many horrible things.
Lucas obviously could read some of what she was thinking on her face if his pained smirk was any indication. "Don't bother saying no, I'd only have to kill you and I'd still be better off than when you wandered into my little hideout." Maddy's face switched back to a look of terror in a fraction of a second. He was absolutely right. He could kill her and still have what he needed to start healing.
"How do I get over there if I'm standing on the trigger mechanism?" she asked, voice steadier than she expected it to be. Likely a side effect of the adrenaline pumping through her system.
Lucas lifted his right foot a bit and set it back down on another branch than was hidden in the underbrush. He lifted the knife and jerked it in the general direction of the pile of samples on the ground before him while picking up her plex in his other hand. She winced when he touched her most prized possession but gingerly walked forward and kneeled by all her hard work and started sorting out what might be useful.
She kept glancing at him, looking for an opening when she could make a run for it, but his eyes watched her carefully over the edge of the screen. He finally seemed to find what he was looking for and flipped the screen over for her to see, causing her to flinch violently at his sudden movement. She noted his amused expression before he pointed out what was on the screen to her. It was all the plants she had already sorted out as potentially useful as well as a few she didn't have because they just didn't grow that close to Terra Nova. "These are the ones I'll need, the ones that aren't harmful," he started to explain only to be interrupted by Maddy's 'duh' look. It was something she was so used to doing with her family she hadn't even thought to control the expression here. His face got the hard look of barely controlled rage before deflating. Apparently rage took a lot of energy and it was easier to simply look at what she had laid out it front of her. "Well aren't you the smart one. With a brother as foolish and impulsive as yours I wasn't expecting much. Glad to see you exceed expectations."
He seemed practically jovial now, obviously pleased with her work. He grabbed a section of bark that was known to help with fever and started chewing on it while looking at Maddy in a considering manner. This went on for a few minutes with Maddy nervously trying not to make eye contact before she couldn't take the silence anymore. "How did you even find this place? And why did you stay near Terra Nova? Why didn't you leave like all he other bad people?"
Lucas took as deep a breathe as he could under the circumstances and broke out of his thoughts to look around him. "I lived out here for 5 years on my own. I know lots of secret places," his voice was vaguely musing as he said it, but got harsher as he turned his eyes back to Maddy. "And given my state of being shot in the chest. Twice. Going anywhere has been a bit difficult."
She swallowed hard and nodded her head in agreement. "I suppose you're right. I'm surprised you are even still alive with all the factors against you. Patrols, bullet wounds, hungry dinosaurs…"
Lucas stared down at her face for a moment when she finished talking then seemed to come to some sort of decision. "I'm not going to kill you, and you are going to remove these bullets. If you don't do exactly as I say, I will hurt you, so don't get any bright ideas. I know how you Shannon's are." He emphasized his statement by waving his knife gently under her chin. Looking down she could see it still had the commander's dried blood on it and that did nothing to ease her fear.
"I don't think this is a good idea. I don't have any real medical tools and I get nauseous at the sight of blood. Really, I'll probably just make things worse."
Lucas smiled grimly "If you don't like blood this really ought to get your stomach churning, but don't fail me now little Shannon, because you don't have a choice in the matter." He switched the knife to his left hand and started working to get his tattered shirt up over his head without pulling too much at his chest. As it was his teeth were gritted in pain and Maddy couldn't help but feel a certain empathy for him. There weren't any pain meds out here and his wounds had been festering for days. She reached forward and helped him pull the ruined shirt off one arm and then down the other.
She almost gagged right off as the smell of the wounds hit her in the face. There was green and yellow oozing from the lightly scabbed areas, some red seemed to trickle through after all the movement too and the whole surrounding area was a swollen angry red. "Mmm, told you it wasn't going to be pretty," Lucas said in a detached sort of way as he eyed the bullet holes in his chest. Maddy wasn't even really sure where to begin. She thought back to her first aid training and all the medical texts she had read over the years. She honestly didn't think any amount of reading could prepare a person for this, but she took a deep breath of fresh air as far away from Lucas as she could and leaned in to take a closer look.
After a quick assessment she removed her extra shirt from the bottom of her bag and grabbed her canteen so she could try and flush out some of the … she refused to use the word, even in her head. It was just… 'goo' she decided. Safer for her gag reflex that way. Lucas winced, then growled ferociously as she started working on him. When she felt that the wounds were are clear as she was going to get them she leaned back and looked up at her patient. It was the easiest way to think of him to keep the fear and hate she bore him from clouding her judgment. "I need to get the bullets out now."
He nodded perfunctorily, his eyes glazed more in pain now than fever. Maddy had tweezers in her bag to collect really small samples, and she dug them out of the pocket. "This is going to hurt." she said simply before she started to search. One bullet was lodged between two ribs, the other had hit his sternum and stuck. It was a miracle he wasn't dead. Upon closer inspection she could see the pattern of bruising that had formed around his chest under the bright red of infection. She was sure that he had fractures, but there was nothing she could do about that. When she tried to dislodge the first bullet he grabbed onto her free arm like it was a lifeline, animal noises being dragged from his throat. Maddy shut down her sympathy. It wouldn't help him and it certainly wouldn't help her. When she was went for the second he almost passed out. She tensed, thinking it was her chance to flee, but his eyes fluttered back open after only a few seconds, his survival instinct winning out.
When it was done she made a paste out of some water and a couple kinds of mashed leaves and smeared it on his chest. He had chewed on some more bark as she did this and was actually looking a bit better than when she had found him. When she finally sat back, proud of her work even if she had just helped a complete psycho, he smiled at her. "Looks like your work here is through. Time to go."
Maddy looked up at him apprehensively, too frightened to move at first. It had to be a trick. Finally she made a move as to collect her plex and supplies and he quickly smacked them out of her reach. Her body locked up, frozen muscles quivering as she waited for him to strike out at her next. "I think I'll be keeping your supplies. But you can go. Tell my father… tell him that I'll be back for him."
Maddy blinked wide eyes at him, hardly believing that he would let her go. And to send her with a message? Didn't he realized that the commander would immediately send soldiers out to find him? "Shoo little mouse, run back to safety. This cat doesn't want to play anymore today." Maddy blinked at him one last time in shock before he roared at her "GO!" and released the catch under his foot. The netting of the trap shot up and leaves scattered everywhere sending Maddy flying out of the small clearing in surprise. Looking back later she could admire the mechanics of his trap. It went up so fast she would have been caught quicker than a bug in a flytrap.
She stumbled blindly for a bit but eventually made her way towards the tree line. She found her brother and Skye in a panic. They hadn't been able to find her and no amount of calling or searching had gotten better results. She breathlessly gave them the quick and dirty version of what had happened and then they did their best to get back within the gates as fast as possible. It was still nearly dark when Maddy got to see the commander. Her parents hovered over her shoulders with worried expressions as she recounted what happened to Commander Taylor.
In the end he immediately sent out search parties for Lucas. Maddy had done her best to describe the location Lucas had been hiding in but it was dark and that night's search was fruitless. Commander Taylor told her she had done the best anyone could in a tough situation and she was lucky she got out ok. He gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder when he said this, but his eyes were far away. Maddy was sent home with her parents who fussed over her for the next hour before telling her to finally get some rest.
The next day Taylor's soldiers found Lucas' hiding spot. It was abandoned with no sign of where he had gone. Frustration marred her father's face when he stomped back into the house later that day. "Maddy, are you sure he didn't give any indication of where he was going or what he might do next?"
She shook her head no. As he started to walk away she finally spoke up. "You won't find him." Jim turned back to his daughter's big knowing eyes. "Why do you say that?"
"Because he's smart. Scary smart, and he knows you're looking." There was a finality to her words and Jim left her to her thoughts as he went to find Taylor and learn more about the killer that had let his daughter live.