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abvjSummary: Sara breathes the fallout in.
Rating: PG-13 (for Violence and Language)
Author's Notes: 3,400 words. Set in season two. Veers off slightly into the land of AU after 2.06 - "Subdivision". Started before I reverted back to being a spoiler whore and read the BIG spoiler for 2.10 so I tweaked certain things. Hope you enjoy. Concrit = Love.
Disclaimer: Prison Break and all related elements, characters, and situationsare © to Paul T. Scheuring and Fox Television, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction, no infringement is intended, no profit is being made.
After the breakout Sara’s life is a blur of meetings, depositions, coffee shops. She breathes the fallout in and it is so bitterly cold that it burns her throat, her lungs, something deep inside of her and she finds herself feeling like she will never find warmth again. Her father is mixed up in something she can’t even begin to fathom and she wants to help, but doesn’t know how. She’s jobless, penniless and while she has been at the bottom of that same proverbial hole countless times before, Sara’s not quite sure how to claw her way out of it this time.
Her heart aches at night with a familiar sort of longing and Sara thinks of Michael as she drifts off to sleep, her fingers curling into the cheap cotton sheets as she dreams of his touch, of holding his hand.
She meets Lance, who seems like a nice enough guy, and he buys her pie and makes her laugh and Sara can almost remember what it feels like to not be so alone.
Then Michael calls and throws her life into a tailspin for the second time in the course of a single week.
Sara hates feeling as though she’ll never be able to gain control of it again.
+++
It starts with a phone call from her father: Don’t trust your new friend.
He winds up dead and Sara starts fingering the origami cranes in her pocket during NA meetings (which she frequents more than once a day out of fear of backsliding and just plain fear of being alone) and ignores the blabbering of her co-addicts as she consumes herself with trying to figure out Michael’s codes. She has them memorized backwards and forwards and she remembers the riots, Michael’s arm reaching down for hers from the ceiling, and her, stupid, hesitating, not quite trusting him. He saved her then and he must think that is what he’s trying to do now, but from what? The people who framed Lincoln? The people who killed her father? Herself?
Sara wonders if she’s next.
She starts to go over the million and one different ways these people (whoever they hell they are) can kill her and make it look like an accident. It exhausts her.
+++
One night she returns to her apartment to find Lance there, waiting. She’s scared enough because she knows he is who her father was warning her about, and tries to get rid of him. I’m tired, call me tomorrow and we’ll go out for some pie? She uses that smile guys love, only it’s laced with uneasiness and uncertainty and they both know it.
Lance repays her by shoving his way into her apartment, clamping a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. Steel against her temple and her eyes widen as she prays over and over, please God, in her head.
“Where is he?”
He’s desperate and shaking and Sara knees him and twists out of his grip, elbowing him in the stomach. He’s quick and grabs her hair, pulling her back. She screams and he smacks her against the face with the butt of the gun. He shoves her up against the door, her head slamming against the wood with a resounding smack.
“Where the fuck is he, Sara?”
Lance points the gun at her forehead, right between her eyes, his hand on her arm, twisting, and Sara is very afraid he might snap her wrist in two.
“Who are you talking about?” She cries because her head feels like it is splitting in two and she is very, very afraid that he might actually kill her. In-between praying for her life, the only coherent thought that crosses through her mind is who the hell did I let into my life?
A hit to the face and she feels her lip break open, tastes the bitter blood on her tongue. “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me, Sara. Scofield. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she answers honestly and he looks her face over, trying to decide if she’s telling the truth. She takes advantage of his distraction and struggles once more. Kicks and hits and knees with everything she has in her.. Sara manages to get away, takes maybe three or four steps before he tackles her to the ground. Lance grabs her roughly and turns her onto her back. Another hit, this time a backhanded slap to her face and she feels tears in her eyes at the contact.
There is more struggling. Sara punches him in the face, knees him in the stomach, the shin, everywhere she can manage. The gun falls out of his grip; she clamors for it. He pulls her back, grabbing her with so much force that she swears the wooden floor cracks when he throws her against it. For a second she can’t breathe, can’t see. His hands around her neck, bruising, squeezing and Sara gasps for air.
“Don’t. Fucking. Lie. To. Me.” He is frantic, and he punctuates every word by lifting her head and slamming it against the wood underneath her. In-between flailing hysterically, grabbing for anything and gasping for air, all Sara can think is please, please, God, do not let me die.
A touch of cool steel against her fingertips and Sara’s hand wraps around the gun the moment she starts to see black. She puts it against his temple. Her hand is shaking, trembling and he freezes, tempting her, daring her, looking at her as if to say you don’t have it in you.
In-between gasping for breath she manages to say, with crystal clarity: “Get the fuck off of me.”
Lance squeezes harder.
Sara pulls the trigger.
+++
Sara checks into a crappy, rundown motel in New Mexico almost a day later under an alias she can’t even pronounce. She hasn’t slept in days, hasn’t eaten, hasn’t drank anything but coffee. Her nerves are shot, she’s exhausted and her reserves are exhausted and there is blood on her hands that no matter how hard she scrubs just won’t go away.
Flicking on the light to the dusty old room, Sara sheds her jacket and tosses it onto the bed. The keys come next, landing on a nearby dresser and she follows it by falling soundlessly into a nearby chair. The gun peaks out from her jacket pocket, the sliver of silver such a sharp, glaring contrast to the dark bedspread. A shiver runs up her spine and Sara thinks of Lance, sprawled on living room floor, blood gushing from his temple and staining her pristine white rug, his eyes lifeless as they stare at her.
Bile rises in her throat and she swallows it down, her jaw aching in the process.
She’s been running on adrenaline for the past eighteen hours, consumed with a go-go-go mantra that won’t allow her to slow down. She has killed a man, stolen a car. Fled Chicago even though the police and FBI gave her strict instructions not to.
The sun begins to rise and streams into the room through the cracked curtains, bathing her in an almost goldenesque light. She digs into her pocket and pulls out the crinkled origami cranes, her fingers trailing over the familiar scrawls. She draws in a shaky breath and tries not to let the gut-wrenching panic that flows like ice through her veins consume her.
Sara waits.
+++
When she wakes nearly two hours later, Michael’s face is the first thing she sees. The curtains are fully closed and the only source of light in the room is coming from a flickering lamp in the corner. He looks tan and tired. Sara muses briefly in her half conscious state that in the flickering light he seems even more beautiful than before. He’s tapping his knees with the tips of his fingers, his shirt is wrinkled and as Sara’s eyes focus in on his staring right back at her, her first reaction is to smile.
The origami cranes are still fisted in her hands.
She feels safe.
+++
His first words are “I’m sorry” and they come out quiet but rushed. Clumsy. Perhaps the first uncalculated thing he’s ever said to her, she can’t help but muse.
Hers are “What the hell took you so long?” and she smiles at him as she crosses the room, stuffing the cranes in her pocket. The light catches her face and his darkens, noticing the bruises on her face, on her neck. The blood on her shirt. Michael stands and meets her half way.
“I’m okay,” she tells him even though she’s really not, fears she may never be, and his hands are on her face, soft, as if afraid she will break and she folds into them. Feels sort of like crying as a thousand different emotions storm her at once.
There is anger, at him for betraying her, for lying to her; at herself for falling for him, for trusting him in spite of it all. There is comfort in his touch, a promise and she lets herself believe it for the briefest of seconds. She wants to hate him for what he did, wants to yell at him and stomp her foot and tell him that for somebody so damn smart he sure can be stupid. She wants to ask about Lincoln, but she’s too exhausted. Too exhausted to fight, to question.
Kissing him seems like a better alternative at the time and as his lips move against hers in the most glorious of ways Sara knows she could never hate him.
He did it all in the name of saving his brother. If Michael hadn’t done what he did, Lincoln would be dead. Executed for a crime she was now knows in her bones he didn’t commit.
Their kiss is all too brief, restrained. Michael is testing his boundaries and Sara just wants to feel. It is every bit as passionate as she imagined it would be. Michael pulls away and rests his forehead against Sara’s, staring at her in a way that steals the breath right out of her.
He saved her too and Sara figures that has to count for something.
+++
“You do realize, though, that even if Lincoln is exonerated you have to go back. The crime you committed to get thrown into Fox River was very real, Michael.”
He looks away and she stares at him, eyes squinting against the bright sun. Her cheeks ache and throat hurts from discussing this thing from every which angle. The set up, the plan, the reasons. She explains the bruises and blood, about Lance and something deep instead Sara twists with guilt as she thinks about the man in her living room, dead at her hand. She is a doctor (was a doctor she muses mirthlessly, because they sure as hell won’t take her back now), she was suppose to help people, and deep down Sara thinks that she will never be able to come to terms with the fact that she killed someone when her entire life has been based on saving people.
The car and gun are gone, disposed by the two of them to cover their tracks and even though they have discussed the why, they haven’t even broached the how concerning the future. They’re sitting on a hill behind the motel, out of sight, next to each other, but not touching and it seems like they have talked about everything except what they should be talking about.
Instead Michael keeps saying he’s sorry, that he never meant to involve her and she’s about ready to tell him to shut the fuck up, please, because she’s in it and it’s done and why can’t they just move on and decide where to go from here.
That seems to be a subject neither one of them seem to want to broach.
Michael opens his mouth to answer her previous question but closes it immediately thereafter. Something dawns on her and her eyes widen with recognition.
“You were never planning on going back, were you.” It’s statement instead of a question because a part of her already knows the answer.
The silence that rings in her ears says all she needs to know and for the millionth time that day Sara is dumbfounded. In awe. She stares at him unabashedly and wonders how someone could love somebody so much that they can just give up everything for them.
“I’ll get you back to Chicago, Sara,” the eventually rings silently in the air and Sara wants to laugh.
What did she have to go back to? She has no job, no family. Nothing to go home to except for a man lying on her living room floor and bloodstained carpet.
“I killed a man, Michael. I can’t go back.”
Even if things were different, Sara doesn’t think, if given the chance, she would go back anyway. There was nothing left for her in Chicago. Michael, however, had everything. When this thing ended, and she prayed with everything in her that it would end in their favor, Lincoln would be exonerated. The truth would come out, it always did. Could he run for the rest of his life, away from the very thing he risked everything for?
“Do you honestly expect to run for the rest of your life? Live on the beach in some hut and waste away your potential?” Michael looks at her with narrowed eyes and she continues, “Let people fix this, Michael. Veronica’s working the case, isn’t she? She’ll get proof and when she does --”
“Veronica’s dead.”
Sara sighs heavily and looks off into the distance. A light breeze whips around them and it flows right through her, chills her to the bone.
Somehow, she isn’t even surprised.
+++
Sara slips back into the roll of doctor easier than she thought possible, inspecting his foot, taking off the tattered bandages gingerly and carefully. It reminds her eerily of memories past -- the two of them, the infirmary, innocent flirting and touches, that kiss. It’s hard to believe the breakout and her overdose were just a mere week ago. It feels like a lifetime, a whole different life, and Sara isn’t too entirely sure it is a life she has any aspirations to get back.
Out of all the things she is going to miss, Sara thinks she may miss that the most: Being a doctor. Helping people. It’s the only thing she’s ever been good at. The only thing she has ever really known how to do. For the longest time it was the only thing that brought any amount of meaning into her life. As she looks at Michael, all serious and exhausted, Sara thinks that may not be true anymore.
“You’re foot is healing nicely,” she applies some antibiotic ointment, re-bandages and leans back on the heels of her hands to admire her handy work.
Michael looks deep into thought, staring at a piece of carpet when he’s not staring at her. It’s a look she’s seen a thousand times before and for the first time she understands what it is. He’s worried. About her. About Lincoln, his nephew, the situation. He’s formulating plans in his head, she thinks, because that is what Michael does, he plans and re-plans, organizes and she likes that about him. She likes it because it’s not her -- he’s cool and calculated and she’s brash and barely ever gives her actions a second thought. Act first, think later has been her motto for as long as she can remember. She thinks it may be time to change it.
She goes over touches and kisses and conversations in her head as she watches his face go through a series of emotions and she has fun trying to decipher between. She thinks of Baja’s beaches and twenty-five cent beers. It makes her want to laugh and cry at the same time because their worlds are rapidly falling apart into shattered pieces around them and she can do nothing but think of what could have been instead of what is.
“Is there any way you can find your way to Mexico?”
It takes her a second to realize he’s talking and by the time she focuses enough to see lips moving, all she can do is question, “Mexico?” in a rough voice that is hardly reminiscent of her own.
Michael looks at her, but doesn‘t really look at her. His face is completely guarded. “Get over the border. You would be safe there. Blend in.”
Sara chuckles because she really can’t picture herself blending in in Mexico (she’s far too pale and can’t speak a lick of Spanish) and she knows he can’t either. “I’m not going to Mexico, Michael.”
There’s a look, hard nosed and she can tell she has pissed him off and she guesses she should care, but she doesn’t (Sara bitterly thinks he deserves it) and it really just makes her want to laugh.
“I’m leaving to meet up with Lincoln in a few hours, Sara. You can’t stay here.”
Sara nods with understanding. “I know that.”
She wants to kiss him, to hear him laugh, to touch him. They’ve been near each other all day, for hours, and yet there has been nothing. No touching. No flirting, just talking. Sara will catch him looking at her and he’ll look away, shy. It’s cute, but it’s been a week since it all happened, and all she’s done in these past seven days is think of him.
It’s not enough and it’s too much at the same time.
Sara wants Michael to hold her, to hug her, to tell her everything is going to be alright even if it’s a lie. Sara wants to be with him, because deep down she trusts him. Always has. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t and Sara knows no matter where she is, as long as Michael is with her, she is as safe as she is ever going to be.
It’s crazy, but when has things between them ever been in the realm of normal?
“So,” he draws out the word, “ then I guess you have a choice: go to Mexico or stay with me.”
Sara sits up straighter. “What’s plan B?”
Michael shakes his head vehemently. “There is no plan B. I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are.”
“I don’t need protection, Michael.”
“Those bruises beg to differ.”
“They’re not your fault,” she consoles quietly as he stares at the black and blue rings around her neck, the cut on her lip, the bruise on her cheek. She’s a mess, and she knows it, and oddly enough she doesn’t care. Like the track marks on her arm that she bares as reminders, the bruises are apart of her, a reminder of what she’s been through. A reminder of why she can’t go back. “You can’t save everyone, Michael.”
“I’m not trying to.”
There is a look of disbelief, and Sara opens her mouth to say something, to rebut, but doesn’t. Michael sighs heavily, his shoulders fall and it looks, for the briefest of seconds, like his is bearing the weight of the world on them. He looks as exhausted as she feels and Sara briefly wonders just how far he’s going to get before the adrenaline high he’s been functioning on runs out.
“So,” Sara draws out the world like he had minutes before, mocking him with a teasing smile. “Where are we going?” She asks, because really, what other option was there?
She hasn’t forgiven him for what he did, for lying to her, for using her so blatantly. Sara is pretty sure she’ll never be able to forget, but that doesn’t erase the fact that she needs him. She has no one else, and she is smart enough to know she can’t do it on her own. It’s with him or without him, and Sara has a feeling that either way she could end up dead. Yet, she trusts Michael, still, even after it all, and it’s a start.
Michael smiles softly, standing on his freshly bandaged foot and reaching for her hand. She looks up at him and it is oddly reminiscent of the riots and his hand reaching down for hers, wanting to save her, asking her to trust him.
Her hand slides into Michael’s, their fingers intertwining. They fit together and it feels like blissful perfection.
Sara does not hesitate.
End.
*sighs* I love this ship.
