A/N: Thank you everyone for the awesome reviews. I'm far too lazy to review individually, I am an awful person (lol) but I do love every one of you for the continued support. Extra love to vaarna who is the unspoken queen of Lucket, to Em and AlexisSalvatore17 and everyone else who's hopped on board. I'm glad you're all enjoying the storyline, 'BAMF' Skye (ha ha!) and the impending showdown of Taylor vs. Taylor (which is coming next chapter!) but until then... anyone for a chapter of Lucket interaction?
Keeping Distance
Chapter 2;
Lost and Found
The main door to the Brig creaked a little as Skye opened it and stepped through into the main area. Inside stood Reilly and Dunham, deep in one of their usual conversations about nothing, the younger soldier holding his ground though Reilly clearly had the upper hand. "What are you arguing about now?" Skye asked with a smile, picking up the medical supplies that had been left on a bench just inside the doorway. She checked everything she needed was inside as the pair finally drew their conversation to a close.
"We're playing 'would you rather?'" Reilly replied. "And Dunham just had a go at me for choosing 'be eaten by a Carno' over 'kiss Casey Durwin'."
"It just seems unfair, that's all – choosing death over a simple kiss." Dunham replied, shrugging lightly. Skye grinned despite the sombre mood she'd just been in. "Would you choose death over kissing Casey Durwin Skye?"
Skye nodded. "Any day." Reilly laughed and Dunham shook his head. "My turn for you Dunham: would you rather… kiss Casey Durwin or kiss Tom Boylan?"
Dunham just frowned. "You suck – I'm not playing anymore." He slunk back to the other side of the door they were guarding and stood there silently, not looking at either of the girls.
Reilly just laughed. "You here to make sure the captive hasn't died on us?"
Skye smiled. "While quietly hoping he has? Yeah, pretty much." Hooking the supplies bag through the crook of her elbow she stepped back as Reilly opened the door, glancing into the darker room, seeing the figure laying on a slab just to the right. "Thanks."
"Just yell if you need us. Dunham will burst in there doing his best superhero impersonation." Despite Reilly's comic tone, and Dunham's frown, Skye knew she just had to say one thing too loud and they'd bust in. No one trusted Lucas Taylor – with very, very good reason too.
"I'll remember that." She touched Dunham's arm with a smile and he managed a small one back as Skye glanced at Reilly. "Don't make him cry." She said quietly before she stepped inside. She waited, watching Lucas' still form, until the door slammed shut behind her and woke her from her reverie. Then she stepped towards him and crouched down beside him, finding his arm and attaching the blood pressure monitor to it. She turned it on and the blue screen sprang to life, showing his heartbeat, giving her his blood pressure. It was a little low but on the normal side, more like resting than unconscious, and she let go of his arm quickly as she realized that. He was no longer unconscious. Tentatively she spoke. "Lucas?"
He was laying on his front, face turned away from her, arms hanging over the sides of the slabs. She didn't hear him at first. "Hello Bucket." Then his head turned and he faced her, jade-green eyes staring at her, malice evident in them. "Checking to make sure I'm not dead?" Skye frowned as she realized he must have heard her. "You must be so disappointed."
She managed a light scoff despite her uneasiness under the gaze of his eyes. "Please," then, resolutely, she went back to work. "If I wanted you dead then guess what – you'd be dead." She fished into the supply bag for a stethoscope. She put the buds in her ears and pushed herself to her feet. "All I did was knock you out so we could get you back here, that's all."
"Oh I know that now." There was a tired slur in his voice and he was groggy. His hand didn't move as she stepped towards him and lifted the back of his collar, sliding the stethoscope inside so she could listen to his breathing. He didn't flinch at the cold. She guessed he was so numb still that he didn't actually feel it. "But when you were plunging that needle into my arm I thought maybe this clean slate was all an illusion."
Skye just shrugged, hearing his lungs were working fine, and pulled the stethoscope out of her ears, dumping it back in the bag. "Maybe it was just the shock you were outsmarted again?"
As she glanced down at him she saw his cold smile. "It wasn't smarts, you've been getting lucky, and that's all." She glanced away with a light shake of her head but he wasn't done. "I know what you are Bucket," she looked back at him with a cold frown. "You're just a scared little girl who's in way over her head."
Something in Skye snapped at that and she retorted just as harshly. "And you're just a lonely little boy who hopes that his desperate moves will one day bring his mommy back."
They were both silent for a moment and then a dangerous tone came to Lucas' voice. "Don't you dare bring my mother into this."
"I won't when you stop killing in her name!" Skye's last line burst out too loud and silence fell about the room until the locks on the door clicked and it opened. Reilly's figure appeared in the doorway but before she could even talk Skye spoke again. "It's fine." Again she snapped and Reilly looked a little shocked. Skye's tone softened. "I'm fine Laura, really." She tried a smile and eventually Reilly nodded, stepped back and shut the door. Skye's eyes returned to the heart rate monitor until she managed to find her voice again. "It doesn't matter what you think of me, what you want to call me, as long as you can reopen the rift and re-establish the portal, you can call me whatever you like." She took a seat again on the floor beside him.
"And why would I do that?"
Skye's eyes rose to Lucas' and he saw the dangerous gleam. He knew she meant business. Somehow he knew this was a fight he would not be allowed to win. "I don't care why. I don't care how, where, when… whatever." She glared at him almost without blinking. "None of that matters. The fact is – you're opening it." She unhooked the heart rate monitor and started putting it away, pulling out a notebook and pen and scribbling it what she'd checked and done. "There's no 'why' about it."
"Fine, if I'm doing it then what's in it for me?"
"That's something you can think about tonight before we go through the details tomorrow."
Lucas managed a condescending tone of his own. "We?" He chuckled cruelly. "You and the Commander right?" Skye nodded wordlessly. "Are you his right-hand girl now?" He finally found the energy and lifted his hand, catching Skye's chin as she tried to finish what she was writing. At the touch Skye reacted instantly, whacking his hand away and falling back away from him, brushing herself off and standing quickly as he spoke again. "Your father would be so proud."
The words, so similar to Jim's, suddenly sounded like the world's worst insult. She growled, unintentionally mirroring Lucas' own words from just moments earlier. "Don't you dare bring my father into this." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't know anything about him."
"I know what your mother told me about you and him. The good Corporal, how Sincyllic Fever claimed him, and all that other stuff your mother mentioned in her delirium." He shrugged. "Plus, you started this mentioning my mother, so fair game Bucket."
"Nothing between you and I is fair or a game Taylor." Skye returned, leaning against a post nearby, half hidden in the soft red darkness of the Brig. "I told you I wasn't playing anymore."
"I know… clean slate and all that." He watched her, talking quietly, and pushed himself to sit up. That was when Skye finally noticed the chain around his ankle. He had to pull to get the chain to stretch so he could put his left foot on the floor. He stretched his back but didn't stand. "Problem is that you know owe me a fall."
Skye actually started, frowning then raising her eyebrows again in quick succession, unsure just what she'd heard. "I'm sorry… what?"
"You owe me a fall. We had a clean slate and then you betrayed me. So now you're the bad guy. How does it feel?"
She scoffed softly. "It feels like you're full of it." She stepped forward and picked up her bag of medical supplies. "I owe you nothing." Putting it over her shoulder she glanced at him as she headed for the door. "I'll see what I can do about food for you. Until then you think about how no one around you is ever going to fall again at your command." She was halfway to the door when she heard Lucas' soft laugh. She turned quickly with a frown. "What?"
"You just gave me an idea for a condition Bucket." He raised his eyes to hers with a scary smile and that creepy whisper again. "Thank you."
Disturbed, and worried now what tomorrow would bring, Skye knocked on the door twice to let Reilly know she was ready to get out, as far away from Lucas as she could get; because right now she suddenly felt like she'd betrayed Terra Nova at his command all over again.
…
"Harper, it's Reynolds." Mark lowered his radio and waited for a reply. He glanced behind him at the two others waiting with him beside the rover. It was almost sundown and they wanted to be back at Terra Nova before it got dark – the last thing they needed was a Slasher attack.
"I've got you Reynolds. We've got it."
Mark grinned. "Taylor's hideaway?"
"We haven't got into it yet but there's definitely something here. Hold on." He fell silent and Mark waited patiently, leaning against the rover behind him, kicking back a little now he was the most senior of the men around the vehicle, his senior officer, Harper, leading the group to the west. It seemed he'd been in luck, not Mark who'd spent the last two hours finding nothing but dinosaur footprints and old Sixer tracks. He'd been hopeful they would lead him in the direction of Carter and the Sixer medic but they proved fruitless as they too headed in the direction of the Badlands. Whatever was out there, whatever it had to do with that ship prow, Mark wasn't too concerned. He'd be concerned about the Sixers again when the tracks led their old foe back towards Terra Nova. "Okay, we're in Reynolds. It looks good. Papers everywhere." Harper kept his finger on the call button but seemed to be talking to someone else. "Head back to Terra Nova Reynolds, it's almost nightfall, we'll bunker down here until morning. There's a lot of hiding places in here. I want everything." Reynolds didn't need to question Harper's thoroughness – his sister was in the Infirmary as a Grade Orange patient. "Harper out."
"Good luck sir. Reynolds out." He clicked his radio back into place on his shoulder and turned to the others. "Let's move out. We've got some good news for the Commander."
