AN: I really enjoyed watching Michael and Sara see each other again on last week's episode. This is just a different version that I had in mind, from the beginning, because I had imagined that Sara would be so angry at Michael, for what he did. I hope you enjoy this and let me know what you thought.
WARNINGS: some swearing. Sexual situations.
….
What strikes her is that this is taking place in such an ordinary setting, where Mikey eats his bowl of Cheerios every morning, where she heats up the not-so-occasional ready-to-eat dish for dinner; it's also where she asks her son about his day and lets him fill her mind with juvenile details of pre-school. Jackson crushed a glue stick in his hand then tugged on the ponytail of a girl that was sitting in the front row. The schoolmaster put him on the naughty step for the rest of the afternoon.
Somehow, it's always those anecdotes that Sara gets, and not anything that has to do with the lessons. Mikey is bored to death, waiting for the rest of his class to get through their ABCs. She gets it more than he can guess – she was an early reader, too.
The man that she named her son after stands still, without motioning to sit down or opening his mouth to speak, right where Lincoln left him, a few moments ago.
Michael cannot mingle with the site of her enjoyable everyday life, so commonplace and unlike all they have shared and based their relationship upon.
It won't always be like this. In this place, in this room.
The voice slithers in like an awaking ghost, distant, surreal even, as if this other life in which they fell in love happened in some faraway place, out of space and time.
The blue of his eyes is too cold for her merry-yellow walls. It strikes her suddenly, nonsensically. Before she knew Michael, Sara was keen on being surrounded by warm colors – hazel-brown, purple-red. Not really because she enjoyed them, but as a way of showing optimism, somehow. A display of good intentions. The first week after she had come home from rehab, she had painted her entire bedroom orange.
"I don't know where to begin," he says.
And all that she can think of is where they left off.
The rush of escaping prison was still vibrating through her system throughout, all so that when he brushed his knuckles over her tummy, kissed her goodbye, the reality of it all could not fully pierce through the wall of adrenaline.
Run, Sara, he told her.
But he's been running.
And now, here they are.
"The medical report I arranged for you to read was forged. The tumor is gone –"
"I don't want to know how you did it." She interrupts.
Speaking to her dead husband is like hearing herself speak, in some other dimension. He does not belong here, in this kitchen. It is ridiculous that she has spent the past seven years wishing that he would be a part of her life, and now she cannot shake the feeling that he is an intruder, into the cozy happiness that she and Mike managed to survive on.
"I want you to tell me why."
She watches as her words weigh down on him, mentally confirming the anger which he's been preparing himself to face. That he was expecting this reaction from her feels cruel, somehow, crueler than anything else. The wife you haven't seen in seven years is bound to be a little worked up, she imagines Lincoln telling him. Just let her get it all out, wait for it to pass.
"He threatened to send you and Linc back to prison. We would have been on the run, for the rest of our lives. I didn't have a choice –"
"You chose, Michael."
"I chose to protect you."
This is perhaps the hardest blow that she needs to face. It is the truth. She knows that, of course, without needing to think. She knows her husband would sacrifice himself for his family without blinking, carry the weight of guilt for as many years as it took, become a slave to the government that never served him well. And for that, right now, she hates him.
She doesn't want to think of what he's endured, because what she suffered these past seven years is unthinkable, unparalleled.
"I thought that you were dead."
"It had to be that way."
"We had weeks, Michael, before the wedding, before they took me to jail – we only had a few weeks together, where we were happy, where we were free, before it was over. You disappeared for years."
She doesn't know how she expects him to make it right, somehow, to measure up with his deceit and those seven years of mourning that she's been through.
"I grieved for you." She says.
"I did too."
For a second, she can't believe he would dare to say something like his. Then it makes sense, almost immediately.
The grief she's been carrying all those years is an abyss too dark for anyone to understand. How she loved her husband and lost him is something that she's never been able to fully share, with anyone, not even Lincoln. Lincoln too lost his brother and loved him perhaps as much as she did. But the way in which Michael upset her life, stole her from the continuous course of her existence and gave her a glimpse of something so sudden, so strong and magical, only to disappear, in just as surreal a fashion –
No one understands that.
How it feels, to be left in ruins, alone to rebuild on the broken pieces of your body and mind, after such a rapid, ravaging storm.
The look in his eyes that first she mistook for coldness is weary with pain. When she first set eyes on her aged husband, Sara thought at first that she was looking at something from the past. She now knows she isn't.
Though they have been through different hardships and should not possibly be able to understand each other, they have grieved for the loss of their wasted life together in exactly the same way.
That sorrow, that pit of darkness and emptiness that Sara has had to live with, all this time, has kept them connected in a way she does not need to verify. She knows, looking into those deep, faded blue eyes, that as she suffered the unspeakable void of his absence, he was out there, invisible, sharing the burden of her terrible loss.
"You always told me we would find a place where we could be together. One day," she reminisces, and wonders if he expects her to break down – if he's been expecting tears. Over the years, the abyss in her has sucked in all of the emotions that time could not have quenched. Like a black hole, it drew in the pain of all of their hopes and memories and left her dry as stone. "I hated you so much for making that promise." She says.
Somehow, he hazards a smile – it's the same one that charmed her so easily, back in Fox River, and she is both outraged and relieved that it still exists.
"So much that you won't allow me to try and keep it?" He asks.
"You feel now is a great moment for jokes, Michael? Really?"
She knows that he wants to touch her – ascertain her reality, in a way. She knows this because the need to touch him is so strong inside of her that even that abyss of grief cannot swallow it. She thinks that if she would only press her palm against his chest, feel the warmth of him through his clothes, the throbbing of his heartbeat against her skin, she would forgive everything, everything –
No one can know what everything means, when they have not endured what she has, raised a son by themselves, have every moment of joy tainted by the absence of a husband that she loved, more fleetingly and more strongly than she ever suspected was possible.
Not letting him have what he wants more than anything, at the moment, is a small mercy. The satisfaction it brings her is bitter and hurts.
She cannot say whether it is that part of her believes he deserves to suffer, for leaving her, with whatever noble excuse he had, or if her dignity will not let his victory over her be so easy.
Because he will, win.
She knows that he knows it, just by his patient gaze, and the calm way with which he stifles the love and desire that want to burn and be consumed tonight.
"Sara –"
"Why not a letter, Michael?" Perhaps what she says makes no sense at all. There is, no doubt, a very good reason why he could not let her know that he was alive, but to her grief, to her broken dreams slowly being recalled to life, right now, there is none. "Why not an origami flower, near my window? No tangible proof was possible, I'm willing to accept that. Why not a sign?"
He inhales sharply – painfully, before he answers. Before he even says it, she knows what the words will be.
"You couldn't know, Sara."
"How can you mean that?"
She wants to hurt him, for saying it – do physical harm. If she breaks the distance between them to strike him, she knows, that he will hold her hands against his chest, and draw her against him, and he will win.
"If you had known, if you had tried to contact me, in any way, and Poseidon had found out, he would have killed you."
"You deserve for me to die."
"Don't say that."
She means it. He deserves to feel that burning void inside of him, that'll burn away the tears and happiness and humanity all away, because it's all it can do to prevent you from being erased into your own grief. Until all that is left of your humanity is an aware and alive, angel-eyed boy, who is so much like his father that it simultaneously recalls your pain to life then stabs it in the heart.
Mikey is exactly the argument he brings up.
"For our son, Sara, sleeping upstairs, you cannot say something like that."
"He's all I have, that you left me." She says, not really to agree with him. "That boy, Michael – he's all I have to show for our time together. You took so much from me, without giving anything back – that promise you made, that we would have each other, one day, it felt concrete, at the time, but it collapsed along with all the rest. I gave you everything. Everything I had, Michael. You left me so, so empty."
"So let me give you something, now."
He takes a step closer. She wants to tell him no, to stop him, and she truly thinks she is going to, even though the crumbling resistance and the impassioned look in his eyes say otherwise.
"Let me give back, Sara."
No. She says it, she thinks, with anything but words. He can't win. He doesn't get to fix her, after everything that he's done, to put his own mind at ease.
He takes another step, and still she says nothing, and before she has fully realized that he was in her reach, his hand raises slowly to stroke the curve of her cheekbone –
Then, she doesn't really care about winning anymore. The grief and resent, deep inside of her, begin to melt under the warmth of his touch, and she knows, at that second, that he is going to make her pain go away. That this abyss she has been carrying around will disappear, finally, because it is going to be completed by what it has been claiming back.
"God damn you," she says.
Half aware of the words and even less concerned by whether or not they make sense.
Michael comes nearer until she can feel, through her clothes and his, every particle that fill up the inches of space between them.
Before she realizes that either of them has broken the distance, his other hand is in her neck and she is kissing him, in the desperate, urgent way she hasn't been kissed in years, clamping him tighter against her, until it almost feels as if he isn't going to disappear again, until she's almost convinced that all this is real.
Though Mikey could wake up and make his way downstairs at any second, and she isn't sure whether Lincoln drove home or is simply waiting in his car, Sara hoists herself up on the table while fumbling for Michael's belt, her eyes still closed to fully enjoy the feel of her husband's hands on her body, his tongue inside his mouth.
She appreciates that he doesn't take a second to ask her if she's sure about this or whether or not she's okay. After everything that's happened, Sara would resent it if he were to treat her like crystal – treat her as if she had not been through hell and back, and could not handle rough love-making with her own husband.
"We never fucked enough." She manages, against his lips.
"I'm sorry?"
"So am I," she deliberately misinterprets his question. Leans back on the table and draws her face a few inches away from his – enjoys that she can still taste him in the air between them, hot and thick with their arousal. "We never did this enough," she continues, "even when we started dating. Back at the warehouse, even though there was a houseful of criminals sharing it with us… I started reflecting on this, when I thought I had lost you. It's shame. It just feels like we should have fucked more."
The smile it puts on his lips is Michael at his most handsome – that faint grin that is aware of its impact, while the sweetness in his eyes belie its confidence.
"It's funny that you would say that," he admits. "I always thought I needed to give you space. You'd made so many sacrifices, it felt wrong to ask for anything more. Sometimes, I wanted you so badly I couldn't even look at you."
His hand runs up her thigh, all the way to her hip, until he's pulling her panties down.
He breathes in her ear, "I'm more than willing to make up for that, too."
Then he's kissing her again, and Sara closes her eyes softly.
What she's told him, about him being a taker rather than a giver – it never applied to their intimate life. When Michael makes love, he gives all he has, cares for Sara's pleasure with a keen, unwavering attention, and takes enough to let her know how much he needs it, too.
If this is a new beginning for them, if he is to make up for his absence and lies, for everything that's happened – this is a good place to start.