TITLE: A Walk-On Part in the War

RATING: R

PAIRINGS: Michael/Alex, Michael/Sara, Lincoln/Jane

SPOILERS: It goes AU immediately after 'Rendezvous', but select elements from the rest of the season wound up finding their way into the work, great, sprawling thing that it grew into.

SUMMARY: A conscience is a hard thing to get rid of.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This fic started as an entry for Foxxcub's DrunkFic project, and the hysterical thing is, it was supposed to be light, fun caper porn. Then the writers went and decided that Alex wasn't complicated enough with a drug addiction and an undiscovered murder, and off we go! Suddenly, I'm writing an S2 AU.

---

Before Shales, Alex had never felt claustrophobia before in his life. There had been one closet in particular that his old man had been fond of, before Alex had gotten first large enough and then determined enough to fight back, draw blood, and win. There were first cramped military bunkers and then cramped stakeouts after that, during which he would stay so still for so long that he didn't only forget how to move, he forgot how to I want /I to move. Alex adapted to his physical surroundings in whatever way was necessary to do his job, and he was proud of that. He was also proud of the attention that it began to attract from his superiors, all of whom praised him for his cool, steady competence in conditions where virtually every other soldier or agent would begin to make the small mistakes that snowballed to become cataclysmic. Alex shaped his body until it was suited to meet any conditions that he required of it and shaped his character, too, going from the headstrong kid who would pick a fight even when he knew that he could not win into a man who could watch and wait and knew how to find his way towards the right, just course of action through thought rather than blind, passionate impulse. His superiors noticed and praised this change, also, and Alex was again made proud. More to the point, he thought that he would still feel proud even if there was no one around to notice at all. He was well-used by the time that he reached the age of majority to forcing both his body and his mind through tight spaces and hard fits, through crucibles designed for reaching towards better. Without it, he never would have been able to become the man who could, nearly three decades later, throw all of it away.

Before Shales and before the Company had come around to his door and made their careful, precise threats, he had been secure in his ability to emerge truer, stronger, better on the other side of any struggle that was placed before him. Immediately after Shales, Alex began to wonder if he could still even breathe.

The same thing was happening to him now, and it had nothing to do with the propane that was filling the room. The thick, heavy feeling had started to evaporate from the air soon after Scofield had smashed the window so that he would not suffocate. Scofield had looked much younger and much more defiant as he had done that than was his usual wont. Alex had almost expected him to stick out his tongue afterwards and say, "So there." As if Alex had not already known that Scofield abhorred violence, and had known it from the moment in the elevator days before when Scofield had had a perfect opportunity to fire upon him and had not taken it. There were be no surprises coming from that corner, only the depressing certainty that there was only one way for this to end.

It was purely psychological, this tightness in Alex's chest, even though it was worse even than the headaches that would rip through him when he went too long between one pill and the next. It was made of walls that were not there and at the same time were much tighter and stronger than the chain link which surrounded him. It had come and gone ever since he had first lost control, since he had slipped away from the man that he had forged himself into and back into the stubborn, violent, stupid kid that he had been, when he had pulled the trigger on Shales. This time, however, the beating of ghost wings belonged to more than one person.

Alex made a snarling sound that he scarcely recognized as himself and that might have worried him if he had not already felt his true identity slipping away from himself for months now. He resumed his pacing. A humiliating phone call had already been placed to Agent Kim, detailing how Alex's attempt to break ranks and complete his mission once and for all had come to a dismal failure. Kim had assured him that help would arrive whenever the Company could spare it, which meant that it would be there whenever Kim was good and sure that Alex had learned his lesson and would not be disobeying orders again. Perhaps a few hours or days after that to ensure that the lesson had truly had time to sink in. Alex was half tempted-more than half- to simply raise his gun, point it at the lock that was keeping him imprisoned, and fire. Maybe there was still enough propane in the air to turn a spark into an inferno. Maybe there was not. He had no way of knowing until he found out. And if he was right in what he really thought would happen, that Scofield did not leave things to chance and there was still more than enough propane in the air to explode himself and half of the factory as well, then it would be done. There would be nothing left for the Company to twist its hooks into, as even in his most wildly optimistic moments he could not bring himself to believe that they would release him voluntarily.

It was a thought that was still appealing enough to make Alex put his finger against the trigger in a gesture that was nearly a caress and would have set all of his internal alarms to ringing if he had been in his right mind. Alex was not a stupid man, of that much he knew very well, and he also knew that he was not one of those rare few who seemed to understand everything in the universe save for themselves. He did not believe that he had been in his right mind for some time. When weighed against the final analysis and most likely outcome of his entire mess, he could not say that the thoughts were as unappealing as they ought to have been. The Company would be deprived of their weapon. Scofield and his brother, should the latter truly turn out to be innocent, would still be alive to give the Company something to worry about as they laid awake at nights and wondered what else the brothers knew. That was the worst-case scenario. In the best, Scofield might even develop a streak of civic duty to match his impressive ones for self-preservation and take them all down. Even in his animalistic pacing, Alex could feel the corners of his mouth turning up and into something that desperately wanted to be a smile as he contemplated that possibility.

Pam would be hurt when she received the news of his death, and angry. Alex could not quite bring himself to believe that she would be devastated, not after all the terrible words and incomprehensible actions that he had hurled at her over the past year, but neither in his darkest moments could he bring himself to believe that she would be truly unmoved. She would be hurt that he had not warned her in the same way that she had been hurt when the man that she had married had done an about-face into a violent, moody stranger. She would bet that line between her eyes that Alex always joked could precede the throwing down of lightning bolts from heaven. Pam would storm and rage and cry, would change her mind about going to the funeral a half-dozen different times before she would go in the end by telling herself that she was doing it for Cameron. She would kneel down in front of their son and tell him that his Daddy had been very sad for a very long time, a different and more dangerous kind of sad from what she and Cameron were feeling right then, and that was why he had gone away in the first place. Alex had no idea what Cameron thought of him, as he had seen the boy rarely since he had thrown Pam out of the house and informed her that he did not intend to fight for custody, and he hardly been a father in the weeks and months before that. Whatever Cameron thought or felt, Pam would take care of it because that was what she did. She would hold the two of them together with the force of her indefatigable will until they had all healed and moved on.

Until one day, when a man or perhaps a pair of men wearing nicely tailored suits would arrive on her front doorstep. Alex paused. Pam would let them in, of course, after politely inquiring to see the identification that they would be happy to provide. Her ex-husband had accustomed her to men in suits arriving at all hours of the day and night. Pam would ask them if she could offer them anything to eat or drink, they would decline in tones that were the very definition of etiquette, and then, after a few more polite questions, they would put a bullet into her head and carry her body out in pieces. Transport was made much easier that way, and the chances of the neighbors noticing anything amiss were less. Probably they would kill Cameron, as well. You never knew what Dear Old Dad might have let slip to the little tyke during a game of catch in the front yard, and there was nothing that a jury liked more than an earnest young witness. He was still so small that they would probably not need to dismember him. That was the thing about the Company's brutality: they kept it civilized. They committed no more atrocities than were needed to further their final goal, whatever it was, as Alex was being kept on the very shortest of need to know leashes and could not say. They did not understand that this almost made them worse.

Alex realized that he had begun to pant, though his prison was no hotter now than it had been a few moments before and the air was becoming sweeter by the moment. A cold prickle of sweat had broken out along his shoulders and down the line of his spine. He resumed his pacing. This time, Alex kept his finger as far away from the trigger as he could possibly manage. That was unacceptable. He would not allow that anyone other than himself should pay for his mistakes or find themselves dirtied by his mess. He had no choice, then. (And damn the voice of Pam in his head telling him that there were always choices, some of them just more difficult than others.)

There was a second voice in Alex's head as well, slyer and more subtle, terrifying because it rang with rationality. It said that the same logic applied to Pam and Cameron even if Alex spent the rest of his life doing exactly what the Company wanted, descending to an even blacker level of hell each time. He would always have to wonder when some bright young agent would finally decide that no one could keep a secret for that long and it would be more cost-efficient to take out the entire Mahone clan at a go. That voice tended to sound like Pam, too.

His incessant pacing to and fro was making him feel less like a man, not more. Alex spun and lashed out violently at the gate with his foot before he could halt himself. He had thrown his full weight against it earlier, when Scofield had still been there and so frustratingly close. Alex did not actually expect that this fit of pique would be any more successful than the last one.

The deep, angry creaking sound that emerged from the lock was new.

Alex paused and stared hard at the door. He exhaled a breath that might have been a laugh or even a sigh as he realized that the solution might really be just that simple. It was almost enough to make him take up religion again.

Alex set his gun carefully to the side so that he would not (accidentally) do anything stupid with it and wiped his palms off against his slacks. The tightness in his chest was almost entirely gone. Alex preferred to think of this as a result of the clean, fresh air that was blowing in through the window that Scofield had so helpfully broken for him. Certainly the other reasons that he had for being unable to breathe had not abated.

The lock made another one of those satisfying sounds of protest as Alex reared back and struck at it again. Scofield probably would not have worn that look of mingled smugness that quickly became frustration when he could not woo Alex over to his side if he had known that his prison was not as secure as all that.

Alex exhaled a long stream of air through his nose and kicked at the lock for the third time, harder than he had even thought himself capable. His leg was beginning to ache, but the way that the door was starting to rattle back and forth in its hinges was encouraging.

'Any ideas?' Alex asked the voice that sounded like Pam as he continued to slam at the door. She had nothing to offer.

---

Sara did not panic. This was the personality trait that she had been praised for over and over again, starting when she was an undergraduate and extending all the way into medical school. 'Sara knows how to keep her head.' 'Sara knows how to work under pressure.' 'A bomb could go off next to Sara and she would still keep doing her job.'

Sara had been mildly to moderately high when all of these events had taken place, so after a decade and on the other side of sobriety she didn't think that they really counted. She thought that she could work herself up to a pretty good head of panic right now, if she wanted.

Lance's gun was the biggest thing in the entire world. Somehow, as Sara watched, it had swollen until it was larger than her head, then larger than her entire car, big enough to eat her up at a single gulp. She hardly heard his gentle greeting of "Hello, Sara," as if they were old friends who happened to be meeting again after a separation of months or years, through the roaring in her ears.

She was not panicking, however. Much as Sara thought that going into full-fledged hysterics would be the best thing in the world right then and that if anyone had an excuse to do it, it was she, outside of the roaring her mind was clear and sharp. Maybe you could only have your life menaced so many times before it became just another day of the week.

"Lance, what you are you doing?" Sara asked, though it was difficult. She was breathless from the adrenaline.

Lance winced for a second, as if something that she had said had bothered him. The movement was so slight that Sara would not have caught it at all if she had not become accustomed to reading the emotions of Michael's unmoving face. She wondered what had set it off. Surely not her question-they both knew exactly what he was doing, and they both knew that her question for exactly what it was, the kind of silly and meaningless thing that people automatically blurted out when their brains refused to process what was in front of them.

It must have been his name, then. Sara realized with a sick lurch that it very likely was not his name at all. The idea of his man being pained by the fact that he had had to lie to her about his name while he was holding a gun on her, presumably completely ready to kill her if she did not do as he ordered, was suddenly so absurd that it was all that Sara could do not to break into a fit of giggles. She wondered if there was a different place, beyond panic but equally dangerous, that could explain why she was so calm now.

"I'm taking you somewhere where you and I can talk," Lance said in response to her question. His tone was level and polite in spite of tension that Sara could not help but hear. She was not sure if it was the gun that was making that tone so ridiculous, or if it was the tone that was doing the same to the gun. Maybe it was purely the fact that she was so scared.

"Could have just asked me out for a cup of coffee," Sara replied in a reasonable tone that sounded nothing like her while her eyes darted up and down the street for help from any quarter. It was broad daylight and while her motel might fall down on the fleabag side of things, it was the single point of blight in what looked to be an otherwise well-kept district. Suited men should not be able to hold women at gunpoint while no one noticed or did anything.

The street was deserted. Of course it was.

Lance's mouth quirked up at Sara's attempt at a joke. Sara wondered if he actually thought that it had been funny, if he was feeling badly for what he was doing to her, or if he had knew about everything that had happened since Chicago and knew that Sara's days of going out for a cup of coffee with a stranger before she had run a full background check and had them followed for at least a week first were long gone.

"Get back into the car, Sara," Lance told her. If he kept using that gentle and terribly reasonable tone of voice with her, as if they really might be going on a date, then Sara swore that she was going to forget the gun and lunge at him. "Put your hands on the steering wheel." Where was his car? Was it possible that he could not drive and keep her under control at the same time? Sara's mind seized upon the first shred of hope and refused to let it go again. "Wait until I tell you otherwise. Don't touch anything else or do anything else. If you do, I will have to hurt you in order to get what I need, and I don't want to do that." If he could sound that sincere even now, then Sara figured that he could lie his way through anything.

She took a deep breath and nodded, casting one final look up and down the street even though she knew by now that no help was coming. Sara hated to turn her back on Lance even for a second, but she ignored the prickle of pure terror that was running up and down her spine and did so all the same. She had a feeling that her back was as straight as any soldier's as she slid into the driver's seat and placed her hands upon the wheel as she had been ordered.

Lance walked quickly around the front of the car. Sara had a sudden image of herself slamming down the gas pedal down to the floor and running him into the pavement before she realized that she had taken the keys out of the ignition when she had gotten out to find Michael again. Lance was watching her too closely now. Traveling through glass might distort a bullet's path somewhat, but certainly not enough to make it miss at this kind of range. Sara's breath made a whistling sound in her throat. She had another idea.

"I'm going to give you some directions," Lance said as he slid into the passenger's seat. He had managed to keep the gun trained on her the entire time. The barrel of the gun was still doing an excellent job of distorting the laws of physics, as to Sara's eye it was so much larger than the car itself in spite of being housed within it. "You are going to drive to them exactly, or else I am going to have to hurt-what are you doing?"

Sara had been reaching behind her to grope around for her seatbelt. Upon seeing the gun move in Lance's hand, she twitched and put her own hand quickly back into her lap. "I was going to put my seatbelt on," Sara said, taking pains to make sure that her voice sounded smaller and more frightened than she actually was. Not by much; Sara was pretty terrified without needing to exaggerate. A germ of an idea was beginning to form in her head. It was probably insane and without a doubt would be painful, but surely it was no crazier than smashing up her apartment, spraying her would-be assassin in the eyes with roach killer, and then making her escape by climbing out of the window and down the fire escape.

Lance flicked his eyes over her from head to foot. Sara could not help but have a moment of grudging admiration for how smoothly he had played her back in Chicago. Looking at those impersonal, just-business eyes now, she could not see how she ever could have mistaken him for anything other than what he was. "We won't be going far," he said, making a minute gesture with the gun to indicate that she should put her hands on the wheel again. As closely as she was watching the weapon, Sara was surprised that Lance was attempting to talk to her at all, rather than simply letting the gun do all of his communicating for him.

Damn it. Sara took a deep breath under the guise of regaining control of herself and considered the option before deciding that this didn't change anything. It was going to hurt, and hurt a lot, regardless of how she did it, but she really would have liked to have that seatbelt. "Okay," Sara said at last in a small voice, and started the car. Her hands were shaking, she noticed. Sara did not have to feign that much. As Lance, or whatever his name would turn out to be on the other side of this, put the car into gear for her, she noticed that a very fine trembling had overtaken his hands, as well. Sara was not feeling inclined towards empathy at the moment.

"Turn left out of the parking lot," Lance said to her. He was speaking in a low voice, a gentle and nearly regretful voice. Sara had to tune it out in order to focus.

"Okay," Sara whispered again. Much like the first time, she was speaking more to herself than she was to Lance, using it as a verbal talisman to keep herself under control. No panic, however, no urge to fly into pieces as most people would have done. Maybe the medical professors that she could barely remember through the haze of whatever drug she had been on at the time had been onto something.

Or maybe, Sara thought as she jerked hard on the steering wheel, to the right rather than the left, at the same time that she slammed her foot down against the gas pedal until she felt it touch the floor, they and she alike were just completely out of their minds. The car lunged forward with a roar that very nearly sounded like outrage.

From the passenger seat, Sara shouted her name and jerked the muzzle of the gun up in what Sara presumed was meant to be a threatening gesture. As if the mere presence of it was not a fairly convincing threat all on its own. 'You don't get to call me by my name,' Sara though on a rush of hot and sudden anger. 'Not when you can't even tell the truth about yours.' She put even more of her weight down upon the gas pedal, until she was nearly standing on it, all the while jerking the steering wheel around as fast as she was able. The cool, split-second thinking that Sara had discovered she was most good at in those moments when her life was in immediate danger suggested that Lance would not shoot her if she could get the car moving quickly enough so that his life would be in danger, too, but that was a hope, not a guarantee.

Sara took a deep breath as she finally got the car turned entirely around and the motel loomed up into view. She really, really would have liked the option of that safety belt. Glancing over once at Lance and seeing the realization move swiftly over his face before he clamped down on it again, she was pretty sure that he would have liked to have a seatbelt, too. "Now, that's not nice at all, is it?" he asked her in a voice that sounded much calmer than Sara imagined her own would be if she was trapped in a car with a driver who was determined to either seriously injure or kill the both of them, almost as if he was amused. Lance grabbed at her arm, his grip shockingly hard considering how calm he was. Only the fact that Sara had more adrenaline in her blood than plasma allowed her to shake him off.

Lance began to raise the gun as soon as he realized that Sara was not going to be brought under control again. 'Oh,' Sara thought in a strange mental voice, 'I guess I was wrong.' She was seeing the world as she would through a series of Polaroid snapshots, clear and sharp and without context.

Lance either did not have time to pull the trigger or was drawn into a last-minute moment of hesitation as he could not divorce himself from his mission (and Sara found that she still had time for her blood to run cold as she contemplated it). Sara instead watched with a disturbing clinician's focus as the front of the car hopped over the curb and met squarely with the hard brick wall of the motel's office. Watching the metal crumble in front of her and feeling her body start to lurch forward, Sara thought she maybe should have chosen the window rather than she solid wall. But that would not have disabled Lance, and she had a mind that disabling Lance was the only chance that she actually had. She could only hope that she would not be disabled too badly herself.

To Sara's left was a great booming noise, the gun going off. 'Wrong again,' she thought, wincing as she realized that her track record for that day sucked just that much, less than a second before her head slammed forward and her forehead impacted the steering wheel. The world exploded first into a bright and painful white, taking her breath away, and then shaded into first the gray and then the black.

End Part One