He stands determined before the wall, a vast and blank canvas stretching out before him. The blueprints are resting on his shoulders and it feels like the weight of his brother's life, so he chokes a breath in and starts his work.
"I'm sorry". It's the only emotion he has words for, so it is the first thing he says in the room where his brother will spend the last hours of his life. Here, in the wake of just one solution too short, the overwhelming ache in his heart is regret, and he wants his brother to know that he tried. It doesn't count for anything, not now, but he did try. His brother nods quietly and answers. "I know you are. It's okay." But it's not. Nothing is even close to okay...
Instead of talking about that, they sit down and play cards together. He fingers the paper in his hands while his mind traces every pathway of the maze that is staining his body in desperate hope for some other way. He thinks to himself that this maze is staining his heart too, and it is just as permanent. His brother looks up and meets his eyes for a brief moment and he sees the blank canvas of his apartment reflected there, an empty wall preparing to bear the weight of a life. Is this really how it ends?
He folds, knowing he could win; because cards don't matter and life doesn't matter if the map in his head can't generate a plan, right now. His brother is gently rebuking him for his lack of effort to win, and he wants to say that winning is the only thing consuming his thoughts right now because can't he see, only one thing could ever qualify as winning. But he doesn't say anything, because his brother has pleaded to be spared the terribleness of hope and he can't deny him this last wish.
"I'm sorry," he says instead, because it seems to fit. His brother sighs and leans back in his chair in understanding resignation, as if he is not the one preparing to die. They sit in silence for a moment, and he fiddles his fingers together in anxious thought. His brother finally speaks up - thoughtful, serious. "You're gonna be okay."
He looks up and tries to say that he isn't, that nothing is ever going to be okay unless this last desperate hope of the lawyers comes through somehow, because the map in his head is going nowhere. But instead he meets his brother's eyes and sees that they are not a blank wall anymore - they are full of emotion and pleading and too many things to untangle...he nods his head and swallows down his sobs and lets go of the incessant tracing in his mind. The maze slips away quietly and his fingers still and his brain settles and even his breaths pause for a moment - and that is how it ends.
Five hours later his brother is dead, but the moment it truly ended for him was the moment he allowed his thoughts to be still and silent and gave the hope permission to slip away.
Three months later he stands before a blank canvas in Mexico and chooses a new person to fill in the empty spaces. He walks into a room as Michael Scofield and exits as Lincoln Hughes, and as he walks away down the street with his hands in his pockets, it feels like the weight of a life.