A/N: Little drabble. I just now saw this episode for the first time, and it's been in the back of my mind. Hope you all enjoy!
L.J.: Let me get this straight. You paid that meth head to whoop my ass?
Lincoln: Yeah. Feds were waitin' for me to come get you. It was the only way. It worked, didn't it?
L.J.: Yeah, it got me four stitches.
Lincoln: Adds character.
-2X08: Dead Fall
LJ rolled his eyes with a scoff as Lincoln responded with a half grin. Two hands on the wheel, but he still makes time to lean over and ruffle his son's hair. He's been doing it since LJ was little, something that happened when he just couldn't tell him with words that he loved him.
LJ leans back in the passenger seat, his eyes closed as he rests the ice pack on his eye, and his father realizes his boy must be exhausted. He turns his gaze back toward the road, slipping his shades on over his eyes, and turns the radio a little louder. He spent 3 years in a cell by himself, so it's no surprise that he's not a big fan of silence.
3 years in jail. He glances at LJ, who he knows isn't asleep, but merely resting, and mentally kicks himself for what feels like the millionth time in just that day. 3 years he's missed out on! 3 years of LJ's life, 3 years of time with his brother and Veronica, who he can never see again...he closes his eyes at the thought of it.
Not to mention the years before that; all of his adult life, all of LJ's life and probably even most of Michael's. Always in trouble, in and out of juvie, then small time stuff throughout the rest of it. Jumping from job to job, never able to nail one down, Lincoln Burrows was a deadbeat in every sense of the word.
But 3 years; 3 years will change a man. He'd like to think it was one specific moment, like the clouds had opened in heaven and God had sent him a sign, but it wasn't. It was the little things over his 3 years at Fox River, even before then maybe.
Like when Michael had found him the morning before he walked into that parking garage and told him that he wished he didn't have to be Lincoln's big brother. The shame in his voice, the anger and disappointment on his face. He'd been dragging his brother down for years!
Or the look on LJ's face, on Michael's face, when he was sentenced to death.
The first riot he experianced, or the times he would meet convicts, and swallow bile as he heard some of the atrocious crimes they had committed. Because that wasn't him, at least that's what he told himself. But what if he was? Maybe his desire to be better seperated him from the rest.
Or the moment he saw Michael in the prison chapel and knew, in that second, that his brother had something cookin' in that head of his.
The moment LJ told him he was already dead to him. That'd been it, the last straw.
He knew he had to be better.
Prison is good for a few things, if the system isn't abused. A lot of empty time, quiet time, used for thinking and learning from your mistakes. A lot of growing up, maturing and become better; that's why they called it a correctional facility. Those 3 years were the hardest of his life, he'd admit in a second, but they were also some of the greatest because he was a changed man now. He'd risk everything for the ones he held dearest, and he'd fight tooth and nail not to screw it up again.
He had let too many down in his life, had made too many wrong turns but now...it was a clean slate. They may always be running, until they get to Panama, but they'd be together. He'd make amends, make it right. He couldn't take back what a loser he'd been, but he could be what LJ and his brother deserved and that's really what mattered.
A slight groan emitted from his son to the right of him and he glanced over, seeing him shift uncomfortably in the seat.
"How you hanging in there, kid? That ice helping?"
LJ raised his seat, sitting upright and shrugged. "Yeah, kinda. I just wish this character building didn't hurt this much."
Lincoln chuckled. "I totally agree, son. Totally agree."