Chapter 1: Don't Look Back
"Open up on visitation room four!"
Mahone hated being made an example of.
"Wait – wait, I don't understand. I thought visitors were allowed at least half an hour. I didn't come all this way for even less than that."
"Lady, the prisoner provoked a fight outside the mess hall this morning. The warden considers ten minutes a favour. Take it or leave it."
Shifting on the metal chair he was restrained to, Mahone resisted the urge to glance around as the soft voice took a breath.
"Fine. But tell that jackass I want to speak with him after this."
Mahone hid a smile as the clack of high-heeled boots approached from behind him. Without even having laid eyes on her, he was already glad he had held out for so long since learning that she was flying out to visit.
The guard repeated the time limit to them both before shutting the door. Mahone hid his cuffed hands further underneath the table and blinked his unease from his eyes as she came to a halt opposite him.
Gripping the back of the chair opposite, she allowed the silence to play out the emotions neither of them could express. Finally, she seated herself.
"Do you want to die in here, Alex?"
Mahone's face fell as she pressed her doe eyes closed with the palms of her hands. Leaning in so that he could take a closer look at her, he felt the helplessness he had come to fear seep through him again.
"I didn't start the fight," he said, trying to catch her gaze. "Inmates were going to find out sooner or later that there was an FBI agent incarcerated in here for the murder of a fugitive. Rumour got out. Three of them ambushed me."
"And you fought back."
"Well … yeah."
His weak protest flattened into a sigh as she raised her head again and stared at the security camera hanging in a corner of the ceiling.
"Who's watching us through that thing?"
He followed her gaze. "Nobody."
There was a dry laugh, followed by the scrape of metal as his visitor stood. His senses were assaulted by her perfume before he realised with a start that she was in front of him.
He shivered as she placed a hand on his face. It dimly occurred to him that the coldness of her skin was impossible in light of the heat permeating the room.
"Always the skeptic," she said, brushing her lips over his nose. "You really think there's no-one looking over us right now? Just think – if I could get you out of here. Are you telling me you think there'll be nothing waiting for you?"
"I wouldn't deserve it if there was."
"That's your problem. You don't have enough … faith."
He inhaled sharply as she wrapped an arm around the back of his head and pulled him into a crushing kiss. The perfect taste he'd never expected to savour again was interrupted just as suddenly by a salt and copper tang.
Drawing back, he realised that his tears had intermingled with a crimson streak that wasn't his own. His eyes widened in horror as he took in the blood trickling down her beautiful face.
"That's why this happened, Alex," she whispered. "It's all going to be on you."
The scream that fought its way out of Mahone's throat died halfway as his eyes snapped open, leaving nothing but a panicked croak.
He struggled with his sheets for a few moments, before throwing them off to the side. Touching his lips with a shaking hand, he felt a tremor run through his body.
It was so easy to go back to the fantasy that she was still there.
He thumped his arm back to his side again, letting out a long sigh. Sweat poured from his forehead as the image of her hateful stare seared into the edges of his memory. If there was one overwhelming drawback from giving up midazolam, it was that every single nightmare he'd had since had been harder to let go of.
A rustling noise jerked him further awake.
Turning his head to the side, his eyes flashed, and he scrambled upright. Pressing himself against the wall, he watched as a mechanical pair of hands finished folding the covers he'd discarded. Meeting cool hazel eyes, he adjusted his own gaze, searching for his voice.
"What the hell are you doing?" he rasped.
Michael smirked at him through the semi-darkness.
"I'm sitting on the floor watching my cellmate shout in his sleep for the fifth night in a row." Tilting his head to the side, Michael took on the expression of an artist studying a ruined canvas. "I don't usually recognise the names – but I think I have a pretty good idea who Pam is."
Mahone didn't move except to raise a hand.
"Get out of my face or I swear to God I will hurt you."
"No, you won't," Michael replied, almost cheerful.
Mahone blinked as the younger man stretched his legs out and folded his sleeve-covered arms over his chest. Studying Michael, he kept his body tense in direct contrast to his cellmate's relaxed demeanour.
It was true – he'd barely given the former engineer any thought since arriving at Elderach State Penitentiary. Half of his first week had been spent attempting to get into contact with Jack. The other half had involved him lying unconscious on an infirmary bed.
When Mahone had bothered to pay attention, however, he had sensed Michael's satisfaction at their reversed situations. Michael had been the one in hiding on the outside, constantly looking over his shoulder, reviled and hunted down.
Mahone wasn't particularly enjoying his turn as scapegoat within the confines of a maximum security prison.
"Whatever you want – five words or less," he said with more force, leaving no room for a condescending answer.
"Considering this is the first time you've bothered talking to me since you got here, I'd rather not waste the opportunity. But okay." The smile on Michael's face widened as he raised his eyes to the ceiling. "How about – 'Please stop. Regards, Row B.'"
Mahone glanced out through the bars to his right.
"Come again?"
"'Or we will kill you'," Michael went on, shrugging.
There was a brief thought in Mahone's mind that he had transitioned from a dream to an hallucination. Looking at Michael again and discerning the arrogance on display, however, he shook his head.
"I wasn't giving you an open invitation to be a smartass. Elaborate."
"I'm pretty sure the guys who pulled you aside two days ago would have explained everything. Some advice, Alex? Dislocating the leader's arm and pulling his shank on the rest of them would tend to set them off. Not put them in a talkative mood."
Mahone flinched as he leaned forward, the bandaged gash in his thigh stinging as his weight fell on it.
"Stop overanalysing, Michael," he hissed. "I don't care if the other inmates have put you up on a pedestal. I'm not going to grovel for answers."
"I wasn't asking you to grovel. Although I've seen more disturbing things in prison – okay." Michael raised his hands as Mahone's fingers twitched. "You've been keeping more than a few inmates up at night on our cell row. They asked me to tell you to turn it down. I think they figured the fact I'm still alive meant you'd actually hear me out instead of attacking me."
Kneading his neck, Mahone observed the cell block once more, before muttering, "That's it?"
"Yeah."
"I can't help it if I talk in my sleep."
"You don't talk," chuckled Michael. "You yell. A lot."
If Mahone had never seen Michael this conversational before, he'd also never heard him laugh. The entire facade was unnerving him.
"Sedatives would help," he said, sliding off his bunk and inching past Michael to the sink. "But I wouldn't want to give you another reason to look down on me."
Michael gave another guttural laugh as Mahone funnelled water into his mouth from the tap.
"So long as you didn't try to murder someone in the process, I wouldn't care."
In the blink of an eye, Mahone grabbed Michael by the front of his sweatshirt and shoved him against the wall. His teeth bared in a snarl.
"This conversation is over."
The alarm that shot through Michael's eyes disappeared a fraction later as he was just as quickly released. He remained on the ground as Mahone yanked the covers from his lap and settled underneath them on his bunk.
Mahone allowed his anger to simmer for a full minute before he twisted his head to the side and glared at Michael again.
"What?"
"This is my cell, too. I can sit where I like."
"If you want to prove – unnecessarily, might I add – that you have the emotional maturity of a teenager, try not talking to me for the rest of the month. How does that work out for you?"
Rolling onto his other side, Mahone squeezed his eyelids shut, blocking out Michael's murmured reply.
The resulting silence was shorter than the last. Mahone opened his eyes as he made out a faint tapping noise. He let out a furious exhalation of breath and turned to see Michael knocking the back of his head against the concrete wall.
"You made your goddamned point!" he blasted, exhaustion the only thing keeping Michael from being throttled. "So help me I will become an insomniac if that means you get your precious silence and leave me the hell alone!"
Michael persisted in bouncing his head back and forth. "It's hard to believe you lasted 14 years as an FBI agent when you're so easy to wind up."
"Not with everyone. Just you."
"I take it sarcasm isn't one of your strong points."
"Do you honestly have nothing better to do than sit here and torture me?" Mahone gritted, sitting upright and bunching his sheets in his hands. "There's a reason I haven't been speaking to you, Michael. I hate speaking to you."
"I know." Stilling his head, Michael adopted the impenetrable look he took on whenever he was set on something. "That's what makes this so fun."
Mahone didn't shift his gaze. He wasn't used to having Michael regard him with anything more than curiosity and fear. The reverence Michael had been enjoying since setting foot inside Elderach had no doubt contributed to his shift in attitude, but Mahone would be damned if that gave his cellmate the power to bully him into any sort of submission.
The thought must have shown on his face. Michael's smile faltered.
"I don't know what Jack told you last week," the younger man said, stifling a yawn that made him that much more human and that much more unsettling, "but we have to make this work. This whole situation isn't a coincidence. There's a plan. He put us together for a reason."
"Yeah, well, the man's insane. He's had a worse year than I have. That should tell you something."
"After everything the Company's done to you, there's a plan in place to bring them down, and you don't care in the slightest?"
"No, Michael. No, I don't, and you know what – neither should you. There's a point where you have to stop. Where you have to say that your brother being exonerated is enough, that the fact you can sleep at night because Fernando Sucre's the only one left out there is enough, that the woman you love being alive is enough. Because you can't touch them. It doesn't stop with them. And the sooner you and Jack and whoever else he's roped into this understand that, the better."
Something strange glimmered in Michael's eyes as Mahone trailed off.
It didn't take much for Mahone to lose his temper. His former line of work had required a certain degree of expertise in blowing up at the slightest hitch in an investigation.
But he rarely lost control as a consequence. Michael was one of the handful of people still alive who could do that to him, and the meltdown that resulted was always the starkest. It was the cornerstone of their bizarre relationship.
Only Mahone hadn't cared three months ago whether or not Michael understood that his mere presence was enough to unhinge him. Back then, Michael had always been able to slip away through a dark maze of tunnels, and Mahone had counted on seeing the back of the fugitive after handing him over to the authorities. They had never had to put up with each other for long.
Now, the days of the Fox River manhunt were behind them. Now, they were stuck together. The last thing Mahone needed was to afford Michael any more emotional leverage.
"Not even my brother can match you for optimism," Michael said at last. "Come on, Alex. I thought you'd enjoy the challenge."
"You are an unbelievably pathetic judge of character."
"Or maybe I need to get to know you better." Mahone was about to retort with a few choice swear words when Michael barrelled right over him. "You know Linc and I pretty much grew up in foster care, right?"
Laughing in disbelief before catching himself, Mahone replied, "I could not care less about your unhappy childhood."
"That wasn't my point. As I was saying – the foster homes. We moved around a lot. The carers we received usually didn't have other kids around. But there was this one summer – we swept the lottery. We got this elderly couple. They had this grandniece who was staying with them as well. They were so nice."
The corners of Michael's mouth twitched and he stared off for a moment, as though the memory was particularly deserving of a reprieve. Mahone felt a pang in his chest which quashed the urge to roll his eyes.
"Anyway," Michael continued, training on Mahone again, "the grandniece avoided us at first. Linc teased her a lot, but I knew he was just scared that she was a girl. So I threw a tantrum until they agreed to take me on a campout in the backyard. I came up with a game to get them talking to each other. They were perfect after that – she became our best friend. Linc was the happiest that summer I've ever seen him since. And all it took was a few questions."
"You want to play Twenty Questions?" asked Mahone, voice flat.
"Something like that. We take turns asking questions. Each question can only produce a yes or a no. Each person who produces a yes gets to ask another question. You can't ask a question you already know the answer to. First person who gets three yeses in a row wins."
"Please tell me the winner gets to experience all over again the sheer hilarity your boredom spews forth."
"I'm serious," Michael said, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on top of them. "You get to ask anything you like. You know I won't be able to pass off a lie. And if you win, I'll leave you alone for the rest of your sentence here."
Mahone allowed the temptation of Michael's offer to sink in. He knew his cellmate better, though, and fell back on suspicion.
"What do you get if I lose?"
"I get to ask you one question that isn't as simple as yes or no, and you have to respond with the complete and utter truth."
"Christ, Michael. This is prison, not Scout Camp Redux."
"It won't hurt, will it?"
Simultaneously perplexed and annoyed by the seriousness in Michael's gaze and the loss of the last vestiges of his chance at sleep, Mahone caved. He stopped tugging at the hem of his shirt and gestured with his hands.
"Fire away."
"You sure you don't want to go first?"
Mahone sneered at the challenge in Michael's words. "Since you're so convinced you're going to win this – I am."
"Okay." Michael ran a hand over his shaved head, which was already showing signs of black stubble. "First question. If killing me meant bringing Pam back to life, would you do it?"
Silence.
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm going to say to that."
"I really don't."
Frowning as he sensed that Michael's play on his pride was heading in a darker direction, Mahone waited another moment before saying, "Yes."
"If killing Jack Bauer meant bringing Pam back to life, would you do it?"
"What is this, a Quantico mental health evaluation? Last time I checked, you were a structural engineer, not a psychopathologist."
"Yes, or no, Alex –"
"Yeah," Mahone snapped. "I would do you in, and I would do him in. In fact, there's nothing I wouldn't say no to except hurting my own son if it meant getting her back. So stop asking me about her."
"Fine." Triumph was already written into Michael's features. "Would you choose getting out of here and being with Cameron again over going back and undoing everything that the Company made you do?"
Anger Mahone hadn't felt since his first day at Elderach reared its head as he answered, "No."
"I think you would, actually."
"Look, you weren't the only one who turned himself in, alright? I deserve jail. They didn't deserve to die. Is that what you want to hear? That all the blame shouldn't be laid on the genius who manufactured the escape in the first place?"
The shadows on Michael's face multiplied as he frowned.
"Okay. Your turn."
Mahone sighed. "Were you hit on the head as a very small child?"
"Please, Alex. You tracked me and Linc across the country for weeks on end. There has to be something."
As they stared at each other, something in Michael's expression triggered Mahone's curiosity.
"Do you think you're better than me?"
"Yes," replied Michael without hesitation.
"Do you wish your father was still alive and I was dead in his place?"
"Yes."
Mahone found himself laughing in the face of Michael's earnestness.
"Fair enough. But let me get this straight. One more yes, and we never talk again, right?"
Michael nodded.
"Did you have any idea that Sara was so broken up when you left her that she had to go about saving someone else, and now she's adopting my son?"
Disappointment flooded Michael's narrowed eyes as he whispered, "Yes."
"Great. Have a good life, Michael."
Mahone slumped onto his back. He stared at the wall as Michael finally got to his feet. He could see out of the corner of his eye that a wounded puppy had wrestled control of his cellmate's face.
"There's one more thing I have to say," Michael said, still hushed. "The grandniece I was telling you about. I was going to ask you how she died. Whether or not she suffered."
Mahone scoffed. "How could I possibly know the details of your childhood buddy's death?"
"Because the people you worked for killed her."
The abject shift in Michael's tone from sadness to fury forced Mahone to look at him. He was taken aback by the coldness that greeted his gaze.
"I don't expect you to remember one name out of the dozens of murders they facilitated. But I'll try. Veronica Donovan. She was the one who first told me about the Company. And you know what I did? Nothing. I was so focused on pulling off the escape that I left her to fight them by herself. She got in too deep when I should've protected her, and now she's gone."
Swallowing in spite of himself, Mahone murmured, "I don't know who –"
"It doesn't matter. You keep missing the point. Jack's offering us another chance. If we help him, it might mean Veronica didn't die in vain. That Pamela didn't die in vain. Did you think I like being anywhere near you any more than you do me? The only reason I've put up with you – put up with the constant insults, the death glares, the memory of my father bleeding to death in my arms because of you – is because I can't sleep at night knowing the Company's still out there, and for some reason, Jack thinks you can help bring them down along with me. I know you're going to refuse when he visits tomorrow and tells us what he needs us to do. I just thought appealing to whatever's left of your conscience might improve his chances of convincing you."
Mahone had barely formulated a rebuttal when Michael pulled himself onto the top bunk. Silence reigned.
His eyes burned holes into the mattress above him. He wasn't sure why Michael's spitefulness grated so badly for him. Nevertheless, he opened his mouth several times, trying to find a way to defend himself.
Each time, however, he called back to another instance when he had endangered the life of someone close to his cellmate.
The bruises he had sustained from the fight two days earlier began to smart. Touching them gingerly, he recalled a period years ago when it had been his job to impart the same treatment to Company prisoners. He wondered whether the full circle Elderach represented was a cause for resignation or renewed action.
"Michael," he said, startling himself.
The springs above him creaked as Michael shifted on his mattress.
"Alex," came the stilted reply.
"What's it like?"
Another pause.
"It'd help if you told me what you're referring to."
A metal clang from the floor below broke Mahone out of his reverie. It occurred to him at the same time that he already had his answer. And it hadn't come to him after spending weeks chasing his cellmate across the country. Or obsessing about proving him the inferior man.
He'd had his reason from the very start.
"Alex?"
Mahone shut his eyes and rolled onto his side. His skin crawled as he felt Michael staring at him again, and he spat out his final words.
"Forget it."
Disclaimer: All characters belong to either Joel Surnow or Paul Scheuring … and Fox. None of them are mine. Repeat for all other chapters and Fin.