(Lucas)

With a squeak, the cell's door opens. When his father comes in, nothing on his face gives a clue to guess if he's bringing good or bad news.

"Was he born?" Lucas asks.

"So it's a male?" the commander replies. "It's been months since Skye spoke to me, she didn't tell me anything."

"Funny, you're such a reliable and sympathetic man," Lucas answers back, sarcasm trickling down his words.

"Son..."

"DO NOT CALL ME THAT!" Lucas screams, moving backwards "You're not even remotely worthy of being my father..."

"Well, well. Don't yell. And speaking of fathers, your son is waiting for you."

"Fine. Take me to see him."

"Not so fast. I don't trust you."

"Good heavens, old man. Whatever you want, but let's go away from here!"

Nathaniel takes a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket. Lucas laughs.

"Fantastic! Do you want me to meet your first grandson like that?"

Nathaniel doesn't reply, manacles him and pushes him out of the cell.

It's almost night, no one's around. The hospital is empty. Skye is alone, no one in her room, no one waiting outside. Lucas immediately notices that there are no flowers or teddy bears next to her bed. She's lying on the pillows, ghastly. She doesn't look at them as they enter the room, stubbornly facing the wall.

No merry family for the arrival of this child. No friend bringing funny toys as a present. No gifts, ribbons or balloons. Where the hell is everyone? How did they, those damned idiots, dare leave Skye alone? Where's her mother?

Lucas would like to shout his frustration and anger out. He takes a deep breath in order to calm down, then approaches her.

He brushes her hand with a caress. She withdraws.

"How are you?" he asks her.

"I just gave birth. Guess how I could feel..." she replies, grimacing. A trickle of sweat flows from her forehead, slowly reaching her neck.

A nurse comes in, holding a tiny bundle in her arms. If she's taken aback at the sight of the commander-in-chief of the colony alongside a skinny, manacled young man looking like he's a beast in a cage, she doesn't show it. She hands the baby to the two men, with the skilled gestures of an expert who has done it a thousand times. Lucas opens his eyes wide. He lifts his manacled wrists and caresses the baby's cheek with a finger.

"His name will be Julius!" he asserts, secure. "It was the name of one of the greatest physicists of the past. Without him, we wouldn't have had any study about particle accelerators and about consequences of using deuterons and…"

"Whatever. Just don't call him Nathaniel Jr.," Skye replies, interrupting him.

The commander winces, but pretends nothing happened.

The newborn opens his eyes and yawns. Lucas's gaze, when he sees him move, becomes huge. His eyes open wide and seem to swallow his scrawny face, emaciated by many months in prison.

The young man turns to Skye.

"I don't even have a ring to give you," he mutters, as if talking to himself.

"I don't want anything from you…"

Nathaniel coughs behind them. He seems uncomfortable. Lucas hates it when his father is present at their skirmishes.

His relationship with Skye has never been easy, it never seems good enough. Nothing he could ever do will be enough to erase the past, the things he did. Or the ones his father did to him. Control the past and you control the future, he said to Skye, like millions of years ago. Such a mocking, bitter irony.

The commander gives Lucas something. His son looks at him, with a crooked grin.

"Did you maybe write off the fact that I'm still manacled?"

So Nathaniel, with an exhausted sigh, stretches his hand towards Skye to give her something he keeps hiding in his fist.

"It was Ayani's, she would have wanted you to keep it."

Skye opens his hand. It's a ring. She doesn't say anything, she doesn't put it on. But she puts it on the bedside table. It's a good beginning.

In that moment, the baby begins to cry.

Nathaniel takes him in his arms. He seems so tiny compared to the big commander.

"Keep. Those. Hands. Away. From. My. Son," Lucas growls.

Nathaniel takes a deep breath and forces his decision out, the one he turned over in his mind during the last weeks.

"You cannot raise him in a cell. And Skye is still a child. I will keep him. I will take care of him."

"Don't you dare. I will make this place rotten away before you manage to steal my son from me," Lucas answers, quickly losing his temper.

"Lucas, use your brain! Skye has to continue her apprenticeship in the hospital. You certainly are not able to look after him. Or do you intend to turn my jail, in which you're pent because you tried to kill us all, into a nursery?"

"YOU SON OF A BITCH! I should have stabbed you harder when I could!"

"You've never even known your grandmother, I wouldn't give such a judgement!"

Lucas rushes into him, trying to snatch Julius out of his hands.

"Stop!" Skye shouts "That's enough!" The two men stop. Skye stretches her arms and takes the baby. She puts him on her shoulder and glares at Nathaniel Taylor. "You won't take this child. He will grow up in a cell or I will bring him with me when I go to the hospital. You've had your trials. You've had your revenge. You won't take the only thing that remains away from me. Now get out. Both of you. Go away!" Skye orders, her voice growing feeble.

(Nathaniel)

Before closing the cell's door, Nathaniel stops to look at his son. After he's freed him from the laces, Lucas sat on the cot. He didn't say a word during the way from the hospital to the prison. Nathaniel tried to say something, to comment Julius's weight or his pretty nose, surely Skye's one, because the Taylors had only prominent noses. Lucas didn't utter a single syllable, but he turned to watch when they met Mark and Maddy laughing, holding each other. They were coming back from Boylan's bar after a clearly successful date. The soldier smiled while brushing Jim's daughter's hair. They seemed so young. So happy. Lucas was so petrified in watching them that the commander had to grab his elbow to make him walk again.

When he closes the cell's door, he gets a last sight of his son. Lucas is curled up, while covering his face with his hands.

While he enters the corridor to leave the prison, he feels as though he can hear a strangled sob. He has to fight the urge to go back and embrace him. That son who hates him so much he even forbids him to take his grandson into his arms. That son he himself has doomed.

When he closes the prison's door, the security guards jerk into a salute. The full moon still enlightens the colony, but Nathaniel knows it's just an illusion. It's already diminishing, it's becoming waning and soon will be just a black hole, empty, just as his own heart seems to be now.