AN- Well! The First Prison Break fic up! Whoot! Hopefully, you guys will all be adding some soon. There will be more to come on this. I'm just setting it up and delaying as much as possible seeing as only, like four eps have been released to Fox. There are a few things that have yet to be explained and I don't want to insinuate some of the background of the characters.

This is just a few thoughts, or rather, things that I think that Michael would be thinking about while in prison. Wouldn't you be terrified? Especially after getting a pinkie toe chopped off by a pair of garden shears?

Disclaimer- Don't own it. Although, a girl can wish, can't she?

Oh my god,
I'm not supposed to say this
'Cause I know that you're trouble but...
Is that your real name and why are you doing this?
And how did I get here?
Ok..no more questions,
No worries
It's destination unknown
So dive in
The waters great
Listen I'm starting to speak like you
Close Up
By Frou Frou

Michael breathed in deeply through his nose and tried to ease his mind. He had woken suddenly from a dream that he couldn't remember, but he knew that it had something to do with the reason he was feeling shaky all over. It was a shaky in the good way, like after really good sex. Something he hadn't had since his brother had been condemned to die.

He could overcome this. He had no choice. In a prison where there was a pecking order, where it was the big fish eats little fish, one had to know how to control one's weaknesses. He didn't want to end up like some of the men he'd seen, completely broken and under the power of someone much stronger and smarter. Maybe it was his attitude. Being one of the smallest men in the prison had made him stand out but being one of the smartest had made him stick out further. Luckily he had a plan that had circled around the Penitentiary's most powerful criminals.

Every night, just as the bars slammed shut on his cage and the lights flickered off, Michael had to remind himself why he was there. It was particularly hard to do this after being acquainted with Haywire. The maniacal gleam in the insane man's eyes had been the subject of more than one nightmare.

Michael rolled off of his side and stared straight up at the bars that held the mattress over his head at bay. Sucre's breathing was loud, drifting down and mingling with the other sounds of the prison. Sounds of the building's ancient furnaces rattling, of the men around them snoring and shifting in the bunks, farting and belching. The constant tap, tap, tap of the guards' boots at the walked along the platforms, keeping an eye out for any foul play.

'You know, if you keep this up you are going to die here.' Doctor Sara Tencredi's voice broke the grey noise in his mind.

She made him feel scared. More scared than he could possibly get without pissing himself. She made him feel mortal. The way her eyes could completely divest everything that he strove to build around himself was unnerving. He worried that she might be the key to his undoing but his dependency, not on her but on that tiny room, had kept him coming back to her.

It was natural to be sexually attracted to her, he surmised. She was the only female that he had regular contact with. In another world, where he was just a structural engineer and she a doctor who worked at the prison, he wouldn't have bothered with her if they'd met on the street. She wasn't his type.

He ran his hand through his non-existent hair.

What the hell was this anyways? He wasn't here to meet women, he scorned, he was here to save his brother from being killed for a crime he didn't commit.

He and his brother hadn't spoken much in the past few years. They had a falling out after Michael's graduation from university. Actually, it had been more of a fading away. Neither had anything to really say to one another. In a space of three years, Michael had heard from his brother twice. When he had seen in the newspaper that his brother had managed to kill someone, he was plagued with a sense of brotherly responsibility. He knew that Lincoln wasn't capable of something like this, he was plagued with inconsistent bouts of violence, yes, but nothing that could ever cause murder.

It took six months for Michael to realize that something serious was going on. Something far, far more darker and dangerous that both brothers hadn't sensed. His coworkers had watched the degradation of a brilliant mind, or so they believed. What they hadn't seen was the hundreds of hours Michael had poured over plans, of files that held confidential information he had gleaned from nefarious sources. Of the tattoo that he had kept hidden beneath long sleeved shirts.

The moment he had seen the tattoo on his body, from the mirror in that dingy tattoo parlour, he had hated it. He hated what it had represented. He hated the assumptions that went along with such a burden, engraved deep in his flesh. He hated what it was going to make him do and what it reminded him of.

It was easier to hate than to be scared. It was far easier to let go of his fear if he held his hate and anger close to his heart. He wished that he could be more wild and explosive in his hate, more expressive with his anger like Sucre was. Like many of the inmates who he lived with. But he was calm, composed and didn't like to be ruffled. Showing emotion was a waste of valuable energy... and it went back to that predation thing again.

He turned his thoughts back to his plans, meticulously groomed and perfected but with one variable that could either be his success or complete ruin; the participants in his complicated game. All pawns were moving beautifully into place but it was taking more time than he had originally thought— time that he couldn't afford to waste.

'You know, if you keep this up you are going to die here.' She was right. But he'd be damned if he was going to let his brother die for a crime he didn't commit. He'd be damned if he didn't try and help him. But failure wasn't an option, now that he was neck deep in societal filth. If his brother died, he was going to go down in flames with him.

TBC