Seven convicts and a man from death row escaping a maximum security prison is nothing short of a miracle. Mahone has been doing this job for nearly twenty years and he's seen major bank robberies pulled off with less precision. It's smart, it's planned, it's precise. Oh, it's sentimental, because there's no concrete reason for it except love or an extremely overblown sense of obligation, but it's not stupid. Just like he told the Burrows kid – he's never seen an escape like this. People with minds like Scofield's should be SWAT Team tacticians and NASA engineers. There'd be fewer mistakes.
Mahone's superiors usually send him after serial killers. He's the best they have, a master at putting himself in their minds, figuring out what they're going to do, where they're going to hide. Mahone chases them, catches them, files the paperwork, and does it again. He never takes a vacation, and his boss lets it slide because Mahone never gets squeamish or scared. The only time he has a bad dream is if he eats bad Chinese.
Michael Scofield might not be a murderer or a rapist, but the ease in which Mahone slips into Scofield's mind surprises even him.
A college girl turns over Apolskis four days in, and he tells them everything in exchange for a reduced sentence. They nab Franklin and some of Abruzzi's lackeys in Utah. Scofield's probably prepared enough without Westmoreland's money and he's definitely too smart to show up there. Abruzzi isn't stupid enough to get caught again, and from what Franklin tells them, Bagwell is probably dead all ready. Sucre isn't a threat, and Patoshik's all ready been spotted. All the ends tied up except the two most important. The two most elusive. The only two worth catching.
Mahone is in his element.
Mahone sends pictures of the tattoos out to every expert he has, tells them to bounce him back any information, anything that the tattoo has the most tenuous connection to. He runs every inked word through search engines – places, people, drugs, anything. Scofield thinks sideways, clever and cautious, and now they have to. Mahone's got an office filled with information; all the pieces of the puzzle, he's certain, but there are a million more useless pieces besides. But something is bound to click sooner or later, and when the first puzzle piece snaps into place, the trap snaps on Scofield.
Mahone knows that Scofield has three things in the whole world that matter – Burrows, LJ, and the tattoo:
Burrows, because Scofield loves him. Because Burrows was set for the chair. And Burrows is the biggest weakness, because he's the one who would make the mistakes. All brawn and no brain. He was the one who'd fuck up.
LJ, because Scofield had all ready proved he'd go too far for family.
The tattoo, because it was the only lead Mahone had.
Three things, three weak spots as big as the broadside of a barn if Mahone could only get to them.
Trying to snatch LJ was a ballsy move. Risky, and stupid. Obviously Burrows' idea. Mahone also knows that if Burrows had the gun he'd be dead. Burrows would have shot first and asked questions never.
Mahone has to reevaluate Scofield after the elevator. Scofield let Mahone live because he knew it was smarter not to, not because he didn't have it in him. Killing Mahone would have sent the public into a bigger frenzy, put even more men and heat on their trail. LJ is Burrows' weakness more than Scofield's, and Scofield only plans on dying for his own sins.
Sometimes Mahone thinks about a career change. It's not that he doesn't like his job. There isn't an agent in the world who thinks putting criminals behind bars isn't satisfying. But most agents are paper-pushers. They might carry guns, or see criminals face-to-face, but most of them never fire those guns, or see the crime scenes those criminals leave behind. Mahone isn't an ordinary agent. He's the link between the two. This isn't ordinary burnout. He's crossed the line between 'them' and 'us' too many times, and he can't always remember which is which at the end of the day.
Eventually Mahone realizes that the Burrows isn't one of Scofield's weaknesses – he's the only one. The escape wasn't about freedom for anybody – it was about love. LJ's an extension of that weakness; the tattoo's a manifestation of that love. Mahone doesn't know what kind of love – if Scofield sees Burrows as a father, a brother, a lover, some combination of the three. It doesn't matter. He knows Scofield loves Burrows in a way most people wouldn't see in twelve lifetimes. He knows that of all the motives people give for their crimes, love always pushes them to the greatest extremes.
It's a month before there's a real sighting of Scofield and Burrows, weeks before a decent lead. Mahone's getting ulcers. He can't sleep. His superiors are pressuring him, their superiors are pressuring them, and somewhere at the root of it all there is a very uncomfortable government official with the new president's conservatively stylish high heel digging into his throat. Mahone feels the pressure from the public â€" their outrage, their fear. He has to find them. This is his job. This is what he signed on for.
Sometimes he wonders if this is how Scofield feels, backed into a corner.
Scofield's thought process is a thing of beauty – streamlined, pared down to details and necessities, what he knows and what he needs to remember. Everything they need is in that tattoo, written out in black and tan, but it's like everyone else is still in kindergarten reading Dick and Jane books and Scofield's picking his way through Shakespeare. It's there, and they should be able to see, but they can't. Mahone can't. Every time he looks at the pictures of the tattoos, all he can see is Lincoln Lincoln Lincoln stamped all over Scofield's skin in whorls of black ink.
They follow Scofield and Burrows for months. No matter how hot the trail or how sealed up Mahone thinks they have them, they always manage to get away. But one step ahead never lasts, and Scofield's next prison will be maximum security. A concrete block. They might even find a way to give him the chair. Some politically enterprising young fuck will find a loophole to strange him with.
Mahone doesn't want that. He doesn't know what he wants, not when it comes to Scofield, but a good man dying like a real criminal isn't what he signed on for.
Mahone checks up on LJ and finds out the kid's in gen. pop, sharing a cell with a guy named Mikhail, an ex-banker with a wife, five kids, and ties to the Russian mob. He does a little background and finds out Mikhail's wife is Abruzzi's cousin. LJ hasn't been to the Infirmary for so much as a scratch. Scofield has every angle covered. Mahone doesn't know how Abruzzi engineered the cell transfer, or what Scofield has that's keeping Abruzzi on his toes, but this is the first time he gets the feeling Scofield might be someone he can't catch.
What scares Mahone isn't how deeply he slipped into Scofield's mind, because he's been in deeper. The part that scares him is how at home he actually feels. This isn't something he can walk away from anymore. He can't shrug his shoulders and move on. He can't point to where Alexander Mahone begins and Michael Scofield ends. He's in Scofield's head, and for Scofield to stay ahead as long as he has, he must be in Mahone's too. It's never been like this before. Sometimes Mahone wants to look into a mirror and find Scofield standing there. He expects it.
Mahone doesn't sleep much. He imagines that Scofield can't either, that Scofield will never be able to sleep soundly again. Scofield's too smart to let down his guard, too smart to leave Burrows to hold it together on his own. He imagines where they might be now – lying lying low in some bush-town in South America, living above a dank bar in Prague. Maybe holed up somewhere in Arizona, plotting to break LJ out. God knows, if Scofield could get the structural design plans, he could probably do it. Michael Scofield, prison Houdini. Mahone thinks he's capable of just about anything.
Mahone resigns without anyone asking questions. Most guys don't last long in this particular line of work, and the red tape and bureaucracy of the Burrows case is enough to choke more patient men than Mahone. He's had an open-ended offer to teach abnormal psych. at Quantico for years. That was the original game plan, after all, and if he's getting to it twenty years late and a little older and a lot wiser, at least he managed to get there. If you plan it right, nothing can keep you from what you love. Mahone learned that much from Scofield.
Now and again people come to talk to Mahone about the case – reporters, authors, agents. The Fox River Prison Break is still famous after all this time, and Mahone is considered the authority on the subject. Some big-shot Hollywood director wants to make a documentary on it – Prison Break -- and he interviews Mahone for nearly two days. Mahone goes through the motions of making the FBI look as competent as ever, but he saves all his praise for Scofield.
"Quite frankly," he says, glasses glinting under the lights, "It was the single-most brilliant piece of planning I'd ever seen."
Three or four months later a contact in Panama emails Mahone about two men living on the outskirts of Yaviza – a carpenter and his cousin. The carpenter always wears long sleeves. They call the cousin Quixote because he is a man half broken, but when he fights he always gives half the money to beggar children.
The attachment contains grainy snapshots, and the curve of Scofield's shoulder is the strongest of siren calls.
Mahone's passport is up-to-date and he has years of vacation backlogged. He can be packed and ready to go in half an hour.
Of course he goes.
The house is two miles outside of Yaviza, close enough to work there everyday, situated near enough jungle and water to disappear if the occasion demanded. It's small, four or five rooms, but beautiful. Mahone knows just by looking at it that Scofield designed it himself.
When Mahone steps out of the car Scofield is lying on a hammock. Mahone is wearing cargo shorts, a white button-down shirt. He's not packing and Scofield knows it.
Scofield waves one callused hand over the porch, perfectly at ease.
"Have a seat. I doubt you came here just to look at my house."
Scofield spends a few minutes watching Mahone stretch his legs, absently adjust a tie that's not there. Mahone waits for Scofield to speak first. He's spent so much time getting to this moment that he has all the time in the world now that it's here.
"How did you find me?" is what Scofield finally asks, but what he really wants to know is if he should be running, if there are people waiting to spring on him.
"I just asked some people to keep an eye out." There's no one here but Mahone.
Scofield nods. "Want to come inside?"
Scofield's house is devoid of anything that could give him away. No photos. No phone. If there's a computer it's disassembled, pieces probably stashed throughout the house. And Mahone doesn't know for sure, but he'd bet there's a gun taped under the kitchen table, fake IDs and cash under the floorboards.
It blows Mahone's mind. Most people on the run get sloppy. They think people stop looking, that they forget. It's amazing. All these years, and Scofield's style hasn't changed a bit. Still so many plans in place. Not an iota sloppier than the day he first planned the escape.
Inside Scofield loosens the top two buttons of his shirt. It's hot here, nearly always, and Scofield's relief is palpable. Mahone's eyes wander across Scofield's collarbone.
"Do you hate it?" Mahone asks. He thinks Scofield must. Having to hide everything â€" wearing shirts like shackles, making a living building houses he could probably design twice as well in his sleep.
"No."
He's not lying.
"Why?"
"Because it was my choice. My decision. Maybe my mistake. But it was mine."
Mahone thinks about Quantico, crime scenes, all the angles. Tattoos and paper cranes.
"Can I ask a favor?" Mahone hears himself say.
"Don't know why it matters so much to see it," Mahone murmurs, fingers hovering over Scofield's skin. "I could draw it. Every angel, every demon, the spire of every tower…" He can feel the heat rising off Scofield's back, see the tiny freckles across the bow of his shoulders.
"I'm hoping you didn't come this far just to look at it," Scofield says wryly, and Mahone watches, entranced, as the tattoo shifts and changes with every breath he takes. It's too easy to touch the tattoos. This is what brought them here. Ink and skin, obsession and brilliance and pain.
They stumble to the backroom, graceless, blind. Although Mahone is obsessed with the tattoo – always was, from the very beginning – he loves what is under it more. He loves Michael's mouth against his neck, the slide of Michael's body against his. The pulse in Michael's neck, wrists, by his hipbones, all the places Michael is most fragile. Under the ink there is skin just like any other man's. Touch came before sight, Mahone knows, and even if Mahone were blind, if Michael had no tattoo, if Mahone had never seen it, he would have learned to love Michael like this.
Mahone spends a week in Yaviza and another in Balboa to pick up stories and souvenirs. He books a flight back to the States, thinks about the note Michael left him –
Not running, but there's something I have to do.
– folded up into a little paper crane on the pillow beside him. Mahone isn't slighted, isn't hurt. This isn't a normal relationship – by anyone's standards – but Michael hasn't lied to him once. Mahone can't think of a reason he'd start now.
He folds and refolds the paper crane during take-off, taking comfort in the postscript.
PS – I'll see you soon.
Mahone steps off the plane into a crowd of reporters and cameras. He hasn't been the focus of this much attention since that first press conference and for one horrible second all he can think is that they've found Scofield. That he gave Scofield away.
The second passes. One ambitious reporter pushes her way past security, reeling off her name and channel number before shoving the microphone into Mahone's face.
"Mr. Mahone, what can you tell us about LJ Burrows' escape from his Arizona Prison?"
It doesn't matter how he answers the question. He knows he's grinning like an idiot.
There are seven messages on Mahone's answering machine when he gets home, all asking him to call headquarters ASAP. He's surprised he still remembers the number. He isn't surprised when the Bureau asks him to head up LJ Burrows' case. He tells them thanks but no thanks, that he's been out of the game too long. They accept his refusal grudgingly. They expected him to come back, to want the glory days back. But Mahone was never in it for the glory.
When the call is over, Mahone isn't surprised to feel a hand on the small of his back.
When Mahone wakes Michael is rummaging around next to the bed, picking the clock off the floor. Mahone runs one hand through his hair. Tries to clear his throat. "How long?"
Michael places the clock on the nightstand before settling back beside Mahone on the bed. "Two hours."
"You won't be back."
"I gave up on proving anyone's innocence a long time ago." His breath is warm against Mahone's ear. "It's not safe to stay."
Mahone pulls the blankets over them both. "I always planned on retiring someplace warm."
Michael's smile is a secret Mahone already knows the meaning of.
Mahone got his first tattoo the week LJ escaped, two days after Michael left. It's nothing compared to Michael's. It's not very big, and there's no artistry to it. Just the word PANAMA in block letters across his back. 'Panama' is all people see when they look at it, but to Mahone it will always mean Michael. It's his very own escape plan. His very own manifestation of love. Mahone knows Michael sees it that way too, in the way his fingers trace it, in the way he always lies behind Mahone, smile pressed to the nape of his neck.
pan-op'ti-kon, n (Greek, pan- all and optikon for seeing) -- A prison where all inmates can be watched from one point; an exhibition room.
For some reason I have this picture in my head of Lincoln fighting all these strangers just to get rid of the demons in his head, and giving most of the money to all the kids who remind him of LJ, or Veronica and Michael when they were growing up. Not sure why, mind you. Just a random thought.