Author's Note: This is my first foray into writing Prison Break fiction - I'd ask you to be gentle, but I'd much rather you be honest. This will be an alternate take on Season 3, borrowing some facts from S3 canon, but completely ignoring others. Feedback very welcome - thanks for reading!
Forty-three is the number running endlessly through her head today. Forty-three: The number of days it's been since she last saw him. The number of days he's been in prison. Again. This time, his sacrifice was for her, and this time, she knows all too well what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Michael Scofield's apparently boundless selflessness.
She looks at Lincoln across the room as he paces the worn carpet of the hotel room, and she notes - not for the first time - how broad his shoulders are. Surely those shoulders were better able to bear the burden of Michael's grace.
The curtains are drawn, and the midday Panama heat is stifling. Sara knows it would be easy to open a window and find relief, but the thought of suggesting it is anathema. Michael is surely experiencing far worse than a dark, stale-smelling room and a silently furious near-stranger.
If Lincoln blames her for Michael's situation - and how could he not? - he's kept his accusations to himself, focusing entirely on a plan of action to free his brother from the hell that is Sona.
Legal channels were the first thing they tried, and the first avenue they exhausted. First the embassy, where the junior clerk's inability to do more than stammer that he'd "try to help" had Lincoln's hands balling into fists within 10 minutes. Next, the police, only to be told by a smirking sergeant that their only recourse was the embassy.
For the last two weeks, they've been hitting the streets. Lincoln disappears into dark bars and darker alleys for hours on end, making contacts and relentlessly digging for anything they can use. "Stay here," he tells her each time he leaves the room. "Just in case."
Sara nods, and she stays, and she wonders what "just in case" Lincoln is clinging to. Just in case Michael manages another impossible escape, this time via a route not inked into his skin, from a prison he never planned to set foot in? Just in case the Panamanian authorities suddenly decide that Sona is not the proper place for the mysterious, lanky American with the deep blue eyes?
Alone in the room, she fists her hands in the faded, nubby coverlet on her bed and tries not to think. Thinking leads her down all sorts of dangerous paths - what if she'd never met Michael? How would things be different if she hadn't trusted him so quickly, so fully? And wouldn't it be nice to forget about all these dark thoughts and get a fix? It tires her, constantly pushing these thoughts away, and after a time, the weight of her worry lulls her into sleep.
Her dreams are kinder to her than conscious thought, these days. In dreams, Michael is free to walk with her along the beach, the white sand pleasantly hot under their bare feet. He builds her sandcastles, and she watches as his hands mold the sand to his will. He doesn't rush, taking the time to make everything just as it appeared in his mind. It takes hours before he finishes, but when he does, he brushes the sand from his shorts and takes her hand, ready to move on. The first time, she tried to linger, feeling that the least she could do is wait until his work is washed away by the waves, but he shook his head. He grinned at her.
"Don't worry. I'll build you another one tomorrow."
And so they walked on, leaving the waves to first blur, then dissolve his workmanship. The sandcastle dreams are her favorites, because she imagines that Michael has found a way to send her hope - the belief that they will have tomorrow, with spare hours to while away as they choose. Let the waves destroy what they have left behind; they have already moved on, together.
These dreams are the hardest to wake from. But this afternoon, the dream is new. In it, her dress is simple and white, and she is standing alone, under a stone archway that she does not recognize. She can see the sun slipping in the sky, and she watches the light change until the orange-red globe disappears into the horizon.
Then Michael comes, stepping out of a door she has not noticed. The suit he wears fits him well, and she watches him approach as raptly as she stared at the sun. Both, she thinks suddenly, too beautiful to look away from, no matter the cost.
He is smiling that familiar, enigmatic smile as he steps closer, and she extends a hand to him when he joins her under the arch. An answering smile stretches across her face, and he murmurs her name as his fingers tighten around hers.
"Sara." He repeats her name, and it takes a long, unwilling minute before she begins to realize. "Sara! Wake up!"
Lincoln's voice. Not Michael's. She is dreaming of him again. She hears the urgency - and excitement? - in Lincoln's voice, and muzzily, she tries to blink her eyes open.
As soon as she can focus, she sees Lincoln sitting on her bed, and his proximity surprises her as much as the way his eyes are glittering. Something has happened, she realizes, and she reaches out to grab his arm.
"What?" she demands, and though she is still groggy from the dream, the urgency in her voice matches Lincoln's. "What?" she says again, and as her fingers tighten on his arm, he starts to speak.
"I found a guy," he says in a rush. "The guy. He's got connections, Sara - the kind we need. And if we can come up with the kind of money he wants ..."
Lincoln pauses again, and Sara has to force herself not to shake him.
"If we can give him what he wants, he can get you into Sona."