At first, Michael had looked at the pain as a necessary evil. To get a tattoo, one must endure considerable pain. That's what all his research had told him. They were basically jabbing a needle into your skin, over and over. Injecting dye into your body. Scarring you. In a pretty pattern, but still. Pain was to be expected.
But as the hours wore on, he stopped looking at it as a necessary evil. It became a penance for him. Michael's mother had been Catholic; Michael believed in God, in a fashion. He had chosen this particular motif for his tattoo for a reason; he found it slightly ironic, but completely fitting. Angels and demons, battling for dominance. The story of Michael Scofield's life. He still wondered who would win.
He knew he had sinned. Was sinning. Would sin more, as he continued on his plan to save his brother. All for the greater good, all for a necessary reason. Lincoln could not die, not for something he didn't do. Not like this. He was saving him, and that was a good thing. But it was still sinning.
So it was his penance. And it hurt.
Michael was no stranger to pain. There were plenty of dark places in his past, physical and mental. He'd been beaten up by foster parents, beaten up by his brother, beaten up by other kids at various schools. But this was a different sort of pain.
He lay flat on his stomach, his hands propped under his chin. Above him, he could hear Syd preparing to do another section of the tattoo. "This one's going over your left shoulder blade," she told him as she pulled on rubber gloves. "It's gonna hurt like a mother."
Michael nodded. He knew.
The bones were the worst. Over the spine had been agonizing, especially the first time. Afterwards, it had hurt to put his shirt back on, even with the bandage between his skin and it. He was pretty thin, and sometimes it hurt over his ribs as well. And now…the shoulder blade.
He inhaled sharply as she made the first mark. It always surprised him, just a little. It was an amazing kind of pain. Sharp, burning, hot, cold, and just below the point of crying out. He gritted his teeth around a piece of gum. Michael didn't chew gum; he only had it when he got work done on the tattoo. Syd had joked once that he was probably wearing his teeth to nubs with all that squeaking he was making, and after that, he'd made it a point to have gum in his mouth, to cushion the impact a little.
"Relax, Michael," she said. They knew a little bit about one another now. He hadn't told her much, just the barest of details about his life. Some of them had been blatantly false; others had merely not told the entire truth. She'd told him more about herself, from why she'd become a tattoo artist to the reasoning behind each tattoo, something he found interesting. She'd put a lot of thought into each one; perhaps not as much as he had, but then again, there was no great escape hinging on the sun on her throat.
As far as he knew. She might have secrets too, he supposed.
The burn got stronger as she moved across his shoulder, and Michael pressed his palms against the surface he was laying on. "You doing okay?" she asked, pulling the tattooing needle away.
"Yes," he said. "Keep going."
After all, just because it got painful didn't mean you could stop doing penance. That was the point, wasn't it? And he still had so much left to do.