4.

Later on, he was not so surprised that she had betrayed him. He had seen the weight of her understanding when he had last talked to her. Had seen how she had struggled under that final straw he had put on her. He had done it purposefully, pushing her over the edge where she would have to finally make a choice.

He had been expecting it her betrayal, but hadn't wanted to stop her from making her own decision. Allowing her that freedom had been purposeful, a calculated risk.

If she stayed told his father about Lucas' intentions, Taylor would know she was the spy, and his dear Bucket would know what it meant to bear the never ending weight of Nathaniel Taylor's disappointment. She would strive for his forgiveness and would grow hopeless once she realized that his father was incapable of it.

Or, she may also chose not to betray him, to remain silent. That would have been a much preferred option in Lucas' book, but he had known that the probabilities were thin. She loved her mother dearly and she had sacrificed three years of her life for that love… but she also loved Terra Nova, it was her home. He knew her fierceness, the strength of her: she would never allow him to burn that colony to the ground without a fight.

Still, whichever choice she made, Lucas won.

So he had allowed her a choice.

And she had betrayed him for his father.

What amused him most was the fact that she had managed to somehow get her mother out of there too. She had managed to do what Lucas hadn't been able to do and that somehow numbed the edge of his irritation.

Despite his careful planning, he had been angry at first that she had betrayed him, it was true. But he had understood. She was loyal, she was true to her beliefs. He liked that about her. It made her real, even though she was such a skilled liar.

So when he saw her again, he had not hesitated, not felt any trace of resentment. He had almost jumped out of his chair to go to her when the soldier had brought her to his door. The strength of his relief upon seeing her walking with her own legs had been immense, so much that he had only realized how worried he had been when he saw she was well again.

She had been found under the ruble of one of the buildings, a breath away from being crushed to death by the cement, a head wound that had oozed blood around her wild hair like a hellish halo. She had been unconscious for three days, and it had taken her almost another three to be able to walk again without being lightheaded.

And now she was right there, within his range of sight, and Lucas couldn't help but spring from his seat and walk to her briskly. His own enthusiasm leveled him again, but he accepted it, embraced it. As he embraced everything that shifted inside him whenever she looked at him with those intense eyes.

He had cut to the chaise – mostly because he didn't like the way she looked at him with such apprehension. She feared retaliation for her betrayal, but surprisingly, she was also collected, controlled. The look on her still pale face was resolute.

Lucas couldn't help a smile. Years as a spy, growing up in the middle of mind games, having her life depending on swift reaction and reading people, all that had shaped her into a very quick, instinctual creature. She was good at reading people's intentions so she had understood him from the very first moment he had stepped in front of her.

He was not there to hand out punishment.

At least that was the appearance his relaxed manner and casual smile said. But Skye knew that he could appear just as comfortable making death threats, so she was unsure what to believe.

"You betrayed me to my father." He stated simply.

She responded just as lightly, even a little tauntingly. "Yeah, I kinda did, didn't I."

It amused him, her speed, her confidence. He made his closeness known, standing barely a breath from her and saw how despite her coolness, his being there in her personal space disturbed her – it was in the way she frowned every so lightly, even though the rest of her face remained smooth. She read his intention - no doubt he was not the first to give off these signals in her direction – but she was confused. Because he was not like any other that had tried to lure her in, to take her over.

He was unlike anyone she had ever met and Lucas was conscious of that – and of the fact that he could make it work to his advantage.

But there was plenty of distance to close, Lucas was aware of that also. He was the enemy, for one, and that made her doubt him. He was the man who had threatened the life of her mother, and that made her cold to him. He was the destroyer of her home, thus alienating her to the very core.

She didn't know, off the bat, how to counteract this closeness, the attention he showed her and he found amusement in confusing her. Scrambling her brains was the only way to get her to think about him in terms that did not involve fear or dread. He knew that she doubted every word that came out of his mouth, every move he made. She only knew him as the manipulator, as the one who played the mind games and pulled all the strings.

He decided this was a good moment to share that bond that they had, to make her understand part of what tied them together, a small part that would help her realize this was real, that it was true.

"I could punish you, make an example out of you… but I won't. Because I understand." At this point, her eyes snapped to is, not with doubt, but full of questions, curiosity.

"He is like a father to you, isn't he." He stated softly.

Her security faltered then, because she had no longer been able to tell where this conversation was going and how to draw a line between his manipulations and his truths. Her brows had drawn together a little, confused.

"Yes, you could say that." She had answered tentatively. Was she afraid of giving anything away?

She didn't know that he already knew everything.

He smiled at her words, adding to her confusion.

"Do you know what that makes us?" He hinted, lowering his voice, leaning a little closer - which seemed impossible, seeing that he was already standing so very close - unequivocal in his intention, ecstatic that she hadn't pulled away or flinched at his presence, not even for a moment.

"Brother and sister." He whispered, looking at her in the eye.

Her brows furrowed further, her eyes showing a hint of the emotions she was not voicing: she was conflicted, disturbed. Her reaction was a tornado of feelings, and none of them clear because they kept mixing in her eyes too fast for him to track.

"And how could I ever hurt my sister?" He stated in a low voice - his words saying something, his tone hinting something else. When he reached to tuck a strand of her wild hair behind her ear, she didn't move, but eyed him suspiciously, without knowing what to make of him at all. He let himself feel the silkiness of her hair between his fingers, and purposefully touched her ear, skimmed his fingertips over that so impossibly soft part of her neck that was directly under her ear.

And when his eyes bore down into hers, she was the one to look away first. She denied him her eyes, choosing to look down and hide her emotions under her lids and long lashes. Her jaw was tightly clenched, her lips pursed.

She didn't like being touched without her permission.

Always so inscrutable, Lucas noted with a smirk.

He enjoyed that moment, soaked it in, before shifting into the other thing that needed to be said. His stared had became icy then and her focus instantly sharpened, picking up on his change of mood with a swiftness characteristic of her.

At that point his closeness had not been about intimacy anymore, it was about threat.

"Don't betray me again." He warned, and felt her stiffen. With a small nod, he signaled the soldier to take her away. "Next time I won't be so forgiving."

She had looked up at him surprised, not at his words, but at his lack of action.

She had not believed him when he had told her that he wouldn't hurt her. She had thought this was all a ploy, a way to manipulate her, taunt her before the inevitable retribution came. The genuine surprise in her eyes was gratifying when she finally understood that he meant to do no such thing, not now not ever.

He had meant every single word. It was time she got used to that.

He could never do her any real harm, he realized the extend of this truth just now, as she was dragged away and looked at him with surprise ad disbelief: He cared about her too much to actually hurt her.

Skye didn't even have time to fully process what he'd told her when the soldier was dragging her away. She kept looking back to him, as if wanting to understand, wanting to ask. The confusion looked good on her, he thought. Lucas had wanted to do just that, to keep her wondering, to throw off balance every scheme she fit him in.

He wanted her to think about him. Ultimately, to get her to see him differently.

oOoOoOo

She had left with that soldier, didn't resist the hold he had on her upper arm as he escorted her into a safe distance from the Commander's base. Then he left her there in the middle of the street and got back to his duty without a word.

Skye stood there, feeling lost as she looked around and took in the destruction around her. She could hardly bear to look at the people of Terra Nova – her people – as they tried to find some semblance of their previous lives under the occupation. There were soldiers everywhere, people looked over their shoulders every five steps, their faces etched deep with worry and suffering. 26 fresh graves were still on their minds, the grief aching in all their hearts.

Every time Skye closed her eyes she saw the bursts of fire and cannons razing her home to the ground, still heard the commotion of the battle, the screams of people caught in the rubble. She could still see it all as if it was happening before her eyes – it wasn't that hard since the remnants of the battle were still all around her, the destruction of Terra Nova like an open wound even though it had been almost ten days since that night.

That night…

Skye couldn't close her eyes and hope to sleep without having nightmares about the night of the battle.

Wash hadn't wanted civilian population anywhere near the line of fire, but Skye had not been able to keep to the undergrounds when all this was her fault. She couldn't even breathe in there, the guilt was strangling her.

Skye knew that she could end up killing herself out there, but the thought was to her more bearable than hiding and waiting for it all to pass. She recognized that her desperation and guilt were clouding her judgment, but she didn't care. She still had stolen the Taylor's old rifle and gotten up to the main Commands' roof… and put her training to good use. She had laid on the ground, fixed the rifle, regulated her breathing… and started shooting without giving herself the chance to think about it.

Her targets had been the first line of attackers, those that were throwing the bombs and trying to break through the fence. She got one on the head. Another on the neck, the other was lucky, got a bullet to the chest.

Not one shot went astray and she was the reason eleven Phoenix soldiers fell down. She didn't take the time to think that she probably killed eight of them. She couldn't allow herself that kind of breathing space, and frankly she thought she deserved to feel like shit over it. This was all her fault, she had to take some fucking responsibility and make herself useful for once.

She was about to fire again when a great boom shook the air. It sounded like a thunderclap, except much more ominous and a lot closer than it should be. Skye turned, eyes wide and hear in her throat… and what she saw stopped her hear tin her chest.

Cannons!

Oh god…

They were going to blow Terra Nova apart piece by piece, just like Lucas Taylor had said…

The first explosion came from her right, and Skye felt the ground beneath her shake with its force, the shockwave blasting hot against her face. That's when she realized - they were targeting the buildings, those bastards…

Sky remembered a blur of movements as she had tried to get down from the roof, tried to go to Wash and tell her that she had to surrender, or the whole colony would burn…But then there had been a huge explosion and she had flown off her feet, hit something and the whole world had gone black.

She still had the stitches on the back of her head and bruises on almost every single inch of her back to prove it.

And now, after all that, after she – along with countless others – had been pulled out of the rubles of their very homes – the maniac, the lunatic that was behind all of that violence, who had singlehandedly caused the deaths of 26 of her people… That man considered her his – even as she thought it, Skye stumbled over the very notion – his sister.

Looking into his face, seeing into those eyes that looked down at her so tenderly – it made it all seem so fucking surreal! Skye didn't believe it for a second. Irrational anger burned in her veins, sealing her thoughts in place.

That man was incapable of feeling any kind of affection.

She had made the mistake of believing him to possess some shade of normal, believed him capable of some kind of warmer emotions… and when she had stepped into that trap, he had ended up telling her - with a boyish, soft smile on his lips - how he was going to destroy the only home she had ever known, even at the cost of killing everyone in his path, for the sake of his personal vendetta.

That kind of man, feeling a sisterly affection – any kind of affection - for her?

Skye shuddered, rejecting the idea with all of herself. It was not just impossible, in was incompatible with the very core of him. His brutality repelled her, she scorned his selfishness, his single mindedness on extracting revenge on his father without caring who got hurt in the process. He was ready to sacrifice everything but himself to get what he wanted and he called that justice.

Skye called it hypocrisy.

And she hated him for it.

oOoOoOo

He had been full of pent up rage as he wanted for her at the bar. His victory had waned, his father kept sabotaging him and someone on the inside was helping. He was 94.5% sure that it was Shannon, but the cop was feigning disability and Lucas had no way of making him own up to his very good health that would not lead to alienating the civil population of the colony any more than he already had. Taking the colony had been much more difficult than it should have been and the number of the dead had been considerable before his father's second in command considered surrender.

But as soon as the cannons came out and it was made clear that with or without the people inside, Terra Nova would either burn or surrender, everything had come to a swift end.

After that, things had been pretty standard.

Except for the fact that his father had escaped, slipped right through his fingers and kept attacking his convoys, stealing his materials and damaging resources. Every time Lucas thought about it he could feel the rage in him bubble up and make its way into a scream. The two of them had been playing this game of cat and mouse in the jungle for almost two weeks now and to Lucas' great frustration it was a lot like the games of chess they used to play together when they didn't yet hate each other quit this much as now. It was about planning and anticipating each others moves, but no matter what Lucas did, he seemed to be on the losing side.

Because he had a leak. Somehow, Shannon had figured out a way to communicate with his father and no matter how much Lucas had him watched and followed, he couldn't seem to be figuring out either the way of communication, or how to trace the leak back to his father's location.

Time had come to go about this in more traditional methods...

Had it been up to Lucas' temper, he would have shot Jim Shannon dead a long time ago. But this game had rules. He couldn't go about making mayhem. He didn't want chaos. He wanted regulated destruction and most of all, he wanted his father on his knees begging for mercy. Without Jim Shannon, there was no hope of learning Nathaniel Taylor's whereabouts or his plans.

It was getting frustrating, gritting on his nerves and damaging his temper. Lucas didn't want games, he wanted blood. He wanted to strip his father off everything he had ever loved and watch the look in the old man's face as he did so – repaying him in kind.

He wanted his revenge…

He had been running towards this moment for so long that now that it seemed so close, it was starting to become an obsession, a fixed idea that would drive him to the edges of his sanity if he did not fulfill it soon.

His victory seemed so within reach, and yet he could not seem to get a grip on it... it was almost driving him to madness!

And to put the icing on all this fantastic shitcake, apart from all that, there was yet another reasons for Lucas' frustration – something that caused him impatience this time.

She wouldn't come to him.

Why wouldn't she come to him willingly, talk to him? He could feel her eyes on him, when he walked around the colony. Not judgmental or full of hate, like the others. Questioning, quiet, calculating. She thought about him, had countless questions, but she wouldn't come to him and he was losing patience.

A part of her hesitation could be attributed to what he represented to her community: he was the one invading their peace, she didn't want to be seen fraternizing with the enemy. Lucas almost rolled his eyes.

Fine then! He was not a patient man, if she wouldn't come, he would make her.

And promptly, she was at the stairs with her military 'escort' guiding her. He stood up fast, smiling, because at the sight of her, at the prospect of talking to her again, most other things faded in the background.

"Ah, there she is. My beautiful sister." He greeted, and she had the defiance to almost roll her eyes at him. The chuckle bubbled to easily in his chest at that. He was glad she was on longer weary of him. Maybe, he wondered, she had also taken to heart his words, that they were like brother and sister, because he could see that her expression had changed whenever she regarded him.

She looked at him differently now. With purpose. There was caution, because she never forgot how dangerous he could be, but there was also a strange air of relaxation that she could manage around him, as if being there, in front of him was as easy and natural to her as everything else.

He liked that a lot. It was a step in the right direction.

In his direction.

He pulled the chair for her, inviting her to sit, and send the Shannon boy away with delight.

"Do you mind? Three's a crowd." He said smirking right on the boy's face. Provoking him earlier about his lost ones had proved useless, so Lucas would try a different tactic. The Shannons were known for their temper and stupidity when making rush actions. It wouldn't be difficult to get a raise out of this boy.

After that, everything else would unravel on its own.

That plan's importance was of course in par with having his little sister here. Once again, she was the vehicle of his plan. Without her all this would have been much less natural.

And of course, the pleasure in having her look at him directly, as she was doing now, was unmatched really, by anything. Not even the satisfaction of luring the spy out would be able to compare to how she made him feel sometimes. So alive, buzzing with a thousand emotions that he could barely control, but that he enjoyed - that he embraces easily, because it was her.

They talked. She talked. Spoke to him about what he knew had happened. His father had denied her what she had most needed: his forgiveness. And he knew that his father would keep denying her, until she rose against him and rejected him, just like Lucas himself had done.

But his little sister loved so deeply, her rebelling would take a little push or two to get there.

He watched the comprehension sink in her as he spoke about their father. Watched as understanding lit up her eyes. She didn't refuse his words, didn't brad them as lies just because they clashed with the idea she had of his father. She accepted his truths for what she thought they were: his truths. Half of the story.

But by doing that and nothing else, she did more than everyone else had done before her: in her quiet way, she strove to understand, to reach him without trying to rationalize his feelings or judge them. She didn't reject him, she embraced him. Lucas saw the empathy in her eyes, sprung of her own hurts from the very same man had had caused his. She knew what it meant to feel the burden of his father's disappointment.

That look she was giving him would have been impossible to tolerate had it come from anyone else. But because it was her, he knew it was not pity. She had suffered, she still suffered from the same burden – coming from her, that look was not about pity, it was about acceptance.

He didn't know what had driven him to touch her then.

It had not been premeditated, not that particular action. Reaching out and caressing her face had been something that he had done before he ever realized fully what he was doing, which was a first for him. But the mere memory of how soft she was, of how good she smelled, it had made him move, made him reach for her, made him ache to have her skin under his fingers again.

Her eyes were so intense, they looked like blue flame.

"You are so beautiful…" Spoken in a whisper, like a prayer. Because she was, because he meant it. Behind those words there was so much more, a depth of desire that a sixteen year old Skye Tate couldn't understand, even after what she had been through in her life. She had never had this kind of explicit attention from a man like him and for the briefest second, it froze her, stopped her reaction.

"Please don't do that."

She had not flinched away, she had simply moved. It had been her choice, to refuse his touch.

And that had been irritating at first. He didn't like to be denied. He took what he wanted when he wanted. But in other circumstances he would have left her alone. He would have spun his game until she was the one that would come begging to be touched… but not this time.

Because her being there served another purpose besides his own entertainment.

In that moment, his persistence had had other motives. He was not as petty as to hurt her for the sake of getting back at her for a momentary rejection. Lucas was holding on to that tiny hand of hers because he needed a specific reaction from a very specific person that was standing right behind him. He had known that this point would come, he had planned it.

But he didn't enjoy the look of alarm in her eyes, the anger, the fear then, when he wouldn't let go. He didn't enjoy the flinch of pain when he held on a little too tightly - It had to be convincing after all.

And he certainly didn't enjoy the metal plate that slammed against the side of his face a moment later.

Ah… right on time then.

But the blows kept coming and Lucas wasn't recuperating fast enough. Mostly because he was distracted by the sharp intake of breath that came from her. Sidetracked by the absolutely distraught look on her face as he got hit over and over again.

Ah, so she did care… despite herself, she cared for him in some form or shape. He could almost laugh in that moment - which would have confirmed once and for all the rumors about his madness.

Someone pulled the boy off him, and Lucas was finally able to get up off the floor. His satisfaction was visible, he didn't try to hide it.

"Hold him up." He told the soldiers. They did. And then, just as he pulled his fist back, she saw it coming and screaming his name.

Sorry Bucked, not this time.

He enjoyed hitting Josh Shannon. Because the kid irritated him, because he was probably part of the operation that leaked information out of Terra Nova to his father, because the stronger he hit this boy, bigger were the chances that his cop father would drop the act of being incapacitated and actually come to his son's rescue.

But also, because this useless kid had felt he had the right to come to her rescue, and save her from him.

The notion was as ridiculous, as it was enraging. Thinking of this kid having any claim on Skye made him hit harder, made his anger stronger. And what fueled him more was her reaction to the tables turning. She had screamed his name when he had been about to hit the Shannon boy, as if the notion alone threw her over the edge of that calmness that she usually prized so highly. The way she was so protective of his particular boy made Lucas irrationally furious to the point of murder.

But then the real source of their problems showed up, in top physical shape, as Lucas has suspected Jim Shannon was, and almost demolished half the bar.

Shannon had come to the rescue of his son, and in the process he had blown his cover.

Now Lucas had his spy.

And maybe just as importantly – he had leverage.

Because - and loathed admitting this, but it didn't make it any less true - Lucas knew that with the Shannon boy in the brig next to his father, waiting for some exemplary form of punishment, it would be just a matter of time before she came knocking on his door.

TBC

AN: As you might have gathered, the next one is about that missing moment when Skye gets him to spear Josh's life. That's a really famous moment in this fandom, so i hope I'll be able to do it justice (Im sooo nervous o_O)
Please tell me whether or not I am making the characters sound like themselves. Im especially concenrned aobut Lucas - i dont want him coming off as too sugary. I really want to write him as dangerous and manipulating as he comes off in the show. Please let me know what you think.