People have asked me a thousand times if it was worth it. How anyone could ever be worth it. Those people, when they looked at my family, couldn't see beyond the surface. They saw a screw up brother who destroyed his life and the lives of everyone who cared about him. They saw a noble brother who sacrificed his body, his future, and his freedom, who saved the lives of those who mattered most. And they asked me why Lincoln was worth it.
What they didn't see, could never understand was Lincoln. He was never perfect but he always loved me and what I did for him was nothing to what he was prepared to do for me. What he always did for me.
After our mom died I was terrified. I knew what happened to orphans. We were going to be shipped off to different foster homes and I might have never seen my brother again if he had taken drastic measures.
Linc would have been okay if he'd let go. I know that even if he'd never have said it. He was smart enough would have gotten a dependable blue-collar job after high school, married Veronica, and had some babies. That was the track he was on and before mom died it was all he wanted for his life.
People think that I did a lot for my brother. Hell, he thinks I did too much, another thing he won't say because he doesn't want to be ungrateful for his freedom and for LJ. But when our mom died, Linc became my salvation. He would have been okay for a couple of years in foster care, but I was only eleven. Prime age for perverts and drunks, that was his reason, I heard him tell Veronica one night. He couldn't leave me with the chance that something bad might happen.
In order to make all of that happen he had to get in deep with some bad people. At first it was just some fake ID. If Linc was going to support us he needed to be able to prove he was old enough. Later, even though I didn't know it, he started dealing late at night to pay for all the extra things I wanted. I'm sure his first stint in jail was because of this camp I wanted to go to when I was 13.
Linc had managed to get me into an advanced school district and there were always special opportunities that cost an arm and a leg. He laughed though. The two months he spent in away managed to coincide with camp so I was safe the whole time and somehow for Linc that was all that mattered. That was the first time he broke up with Veronica. She was so made after he was arrested and then they got into a fight right before she left for college. That was another thing he laughed about, bitterly though, that he'd finally managed to get Veronica safely away from him.
That was the first time I think I really noticed a change in my brother. For the first couple of years that he took care of me, I just accepted that this was what brother's did. But after the first time he went to jail, after he lost Veronica, that was when it started to get to him. He was always stressed about things especially when construction work dried up and he had to pick up 2 or 3 jobs to get us through the winter months. One of those jobs was where he started to smoke pot. I was never sure why he started, but he once he said that he needed it to breathe.
He started to ride me about things then too and I started to get mad. I couldn't ask where he was going, couldn't ask what he was doing, tried not to ask about food when we ran out, and got in trouble every time I didn't tell him about something I needed for school. The second time Veronica came home for Christmas was when he was away for three months. She never would tell me the story, and Lincoln always just said that he deserved what he got, but that was the first time I really felt alone.
This time when he got home he started in on me about colleges. I was a year ahead in school and thinking about graduating early, but college hadn't really occurred to me. I was sure that I needed to stay with Linc. The first time I said that to him I thought he was going to kill me, told me that he didn't want to hear another word about staying with him. At the time I thought he hated me, I thought he wanted nothing more than for me to leave him, to go far away. I was wrong on the first and so very right on the second.
I watched my brother become harder and softer all at once. Sounds strange, I know, but that's the way Lincoln has always been. I never met a person my brother was afraid of, never met a person who wasn't afraid of my brother, and they just seemed to get more and more afraid until no one who knew him would talk to me anymore. At home though, after work but before he went out for the night, he seemed to crumble. He'd sit on our dingy furniture hunched over a couple of beers and he just seemed so broken, so weak, that I started to be afraid. Not for me, but for him.
After awhile that fear became anger. How dare he, I would think, be so pathetic? Why couldn't he see that I needed him to be strong, and not just scary enough to keep me safe? Awhile after that I started to feel weak. There I was about to graduate with honors from high school, I was popular, I had been accepted to nearly every school I had applied to, and no one ever dared mess with me.
Even though no one was really safe, I never had to worry, because I was Lincoln Burrows' brother and the last guy to mess with Linc limped around the neighborhood often enough to keep everybody in line. My brother had managed to make me safe and successful in a world where no one ever is, and the best I could do was sit scared doing my homework watching him try not to cry most nights.
I was so surprised when he told me about Mom's insurance money after all the times when he barely slept trying to make rent payments and buy me what I needed. I don't know if I really saw my brother during the next seven months. Maybe not even in the next several years. I saw Lincoln plenty. It was warm out and there was a lot of construction work and we were actually pretty comfortable those last months, but my brother just wasn't there. It was as though I traded my brother for the ninety thousand that was going to change my life. And somehow, because I felt guilty and frustrated and lost I figured maybe it wasn't such a bad trade.
Most people ask me if it was worth it. If two toes and 5 lost years were really things I was willing to lose for my brother. What they will never understand is that there is nothing I could give that my brother hadn't already, and nothing he would take if I didn't force it on him. See, he doesn't ask the question, but he thinks he knows what my answer is. And he never believes me when I tell people that my brother's life is worth everything.
See, my brother would have been alright without me, but I would never have made it without him.
"Lincoln, that beam needs all four support brackets. Then we should take a break."
"Okay Mike. LJ, man, grab some drinks, I'll be done here in a minute."
"Kay Dad." LJ smiled. "Hey dad, remember that dream I told you about?"
They both looked up at the house we were building and I knew that even if Lincoln never believes me, my answer will never change.