Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, not Prison Break, not Michael, not Sara … lame but true.
Spoilers for all the first season.
Dedicated to Lisa, who makes it possible.
Thank you.
Note: All the reviews are welcome.
Title: Some nights.
By Lylou
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"I shouldn't be here".
Those words where lazily repeanting in his brain, over and over again so much, that he thought that soon they would stop having any meaning and they would become just a tongue-twister of dark and empty sounds.
But he was already accustomed to that, and he almost didn't care about it.
It was a very small price to pay to be there.
And in any case, he was willing to pay it because now, he no longer felt anything.
It had been almost two months since the last time that he saw her, every day slowly connected to the previous by the blurred and distant line of the early morning.
Always, since he was just a little boy, Michael had never slept too well, the nightmares found him every time that he was dreaming, and now, after have been in that horrible place…
When he entered in Fox River he left out even the memory of how sleep used to be.
And every damn night that he wasn't able to sleep, he was thinking in her.
Thinking about what she was doing now.
Maybe, ritght now, she was thinking about him too.
He used to torture himself with the memories of them in that cold and sad infirmary. Michael liked the memory of her warm and small hands through the latex gloves, over his arm, to put him sooths that he had never needed, or upon his back, to heal the burn that he had caused... or over his face, after he had kissed her, just one and desperate time, thinking then that maybe, it was going to be the last time.
All those memories were like a death trap for him, but he couldn't stop the memories from coming.
They weren't able to walk away and let it go, and if they had been, they didn't want to do it.
It had been more than ten months since he was out, and Michael had seen her almost every week.
It was like if both had some kind of secret and tacit agreement; they never talked about it, but Michael knew the conditions very well, or at least, he thought that, maybe it all was just a big and awful misunderstanding.
But it was hard, and painful.
Seeing Sara, sleeping with her and smelling her skin, it was like some type of volunteer torture for both of them, especially for her, because always, when she wakes up the next morning, he wasn't there.
He never was.
Some nights, when he wasn't able to sleep in his new bed, he liked taking a brief look at the big terrace at midnight and listen to the sea in the complete darkness , because his new and impersonal house, was near the sea.
And just be there, letting that the warm wind, poisoned by the sea salt, pass off his lungs, until that finally he may feel the invisible salt crystals opening a million wounds, also invisible, in his internal issues..
Of course, something like that could never occur, but thinking of the unbearable pain of what that would cause him, distracted him of that voice in his brain.
Sometimes.
That distracted him of the memory of the last time that he spoke with her, in that horrible and cold infirmary, of the silence among them then, just like the other people in that room with them, it almost distracted him of her confusing and betrayed look that morning, when finally she figured out what had been happening.
Michael liked to suffer with those memories. They were like the metallic and addictive taste of the blood in the mouth, it was like some kind of warm poison, spreading slowly on his sanguine torrent, every day a bit more until he didn't left anything.
Because breaking out of a high security prison, wasn't the most difficult thing that Michael Scofield had done in his life.
That had been just calculations, obsessive study, and a couple of toes, organization and control.
Control.
Absolute control above the other ones implicated, on every small detail of the plan, every wall, every possibility, every contingency... Control above himself.
And there he had failed painfully and he would have laughed in the darkness if he would have been able to do it.
To keep on plan had been easy, looking toward another side while someone else's life was vanishing from the drainage, also he was relatively easy, and it had been simple also to keep his own panic under control. But after a time there, after entering every day in that little and cold infirmary, and feeling her warm fingers on his skin through the glove... That was when the plan stopped being simple, and the worst thing of whole, it was when Michael Scofield stopped being sure to be able to do it.
To be able to vanish from that window in the middle of the night, through a cable, dangerously tended to the abyss, and disappearing forever, to never see her again.
That was the hardest part of the plan by far
Seeing her auburn terrorized look, fixed on him, while she was attempting to get back her breath, over a dirty and old set of pipes, dark ceiling full of dust, while the rest of the prison was burning like hell at their feet, that neither was easy, neither listening her voice, soft and strangely familiar, close to his ear, or feel her warm breath upon his own skin, as it was a permanent check mark underneath his tattoos.. He never had a contingency for that.
And a week after he would have disappeared forever from Fox River and all his shadows, Michael found out what had occurred, how she had gotten pricked with a hypodermic needle in the arm and had filled her body with hot poison, letting it consume her slowly, almost like what he was doing nightly, when he was thinking about her, except that then, Michael did not see it that way.
Then, that rainy and grey Tuesday when he found out about what had happened to her, Michael rented a car with his new and false identity card, and drove back to Chicago during hours, alone, without music, only with the sound of the windshield wiper against the crystal, he didn't even think that maybe a policeman would recognize him at the hospital, or that she wouldn't want to see him, or that perhaps, she wouldn't be able to.
That maybe that hot poison and the rest of his secrets, would have done forever with the control of her warm and small body, and now, maybe she was no more than that shell, precious but empty forever of her, on a hospital's bed.
He didn't come up with anyone of those options; Michael only drove in silence until the parking lot of the hospital and entered into the white and aseptic building through the front door.
And backed up in the door's wooden frame, he saw her at last.
Sara was sleeping underneath a green blanket, her body was rising up and going down slowly, with the rhythm of her breath, and that would have been enough proof to anyone, but not for Michael Scofield.
No.
He entered softly at the room 309, with his feline and silent walks, and stopped next to her bed, she was breathing by herself, without a respirator connected to her body, but she was really pale, much more than all those cold mornings when he was observing her with disguise, while she was moving with efficiency and provisional in that, now distant, infirmary.
Her hair was spread on the pillow and Michael thought again about how it would be to smell that on his own pillow, in his bed, have the smell of her raspberry shampoo at his side while he was sleeping.
But no, she was in that hospital's small bed, while he only could be there, looking at her in silence.
"I shouldn't be here".
That voice was repetitive time after time in his head and maybe it was right, perhaps having sold his soul in that place have a much more high price of which he never thought.
Because Michael would have done anything, whatever would have been necessary then to save his brother life, he just couldn't go on and let him die there.
Michael could load up with the tattoos impressed to fire in his skin and below it, with the scars, burns and with two less toes, any thing.
He could be sure that he would roast in hell forever if would have been of the ones that believe in it, but, regardless of everything, he couldn't get used to the idea of that, the sensation that he had then, next to that hospital bed, that he never was going to see her again.
It was that, above the rest of all things.
Above his burning fault, above the worry for her shape, over the illusion of being able to explain to her why he had done it, above all this, there was always the need to see her again.
"Just one more time"
Actually was him the one that was sounding like a damned drug-addict, as if she was some kind of secret and mortal addiction, because it was the desperation of not seeing her ever again, the one that made him drive through two countries and enter at full hospital in the daylight.
Actually Michael was there in that room less than ten minutes, but it seemed like ten lifetimes him, because Sara never woke up .
He waited during a long time until she finally opened her eyes, slowly and confused to see that he was there, to tell her that not all those cold and grey mornings, close to her at that infirmary, had been a lie, to say to her that he would have liked to tell her the truth then.
But he didn't do it.
In another life, surely he would have known her in the blockbuster of the corner of his block, close to the apartment building where she was living, he would have seen her, silent and distant, choosing movies for a rainy afternoons, and probably he never would have dared to talk with her.
But fate was a bitch and that had never occurred.
That rainy morning at the hospital brought him the faraway memories of his childhood again, Michael had spent years having nightmares with that, and in a moment, there they were again saying "hello", all those memories of white and long corridors, with the penetrating smell of the disinfectant caught in the empty walls, the silence everywhere, like an invisible creature about to devour all, the white plastic chairs on what he and Lincoln waited while their mother was dying in a very similar room.
Then he was only six years, and he just could sense what was happening, but Michael saw it clearly in his brother's eye.
Because he was afraid, and Michael never had seen Lincoln scared.
But now, he was there, again, in her apartment, very near his former neighbourhood, in a warm room full of shades and with her familiar and addictive smell among the sheets, how if an invisible and almighty powerful force drags him always there.
How if it drag the both of them there.
-"Sara... I shouldn't be here."
-"No...You should leave."
Her soft voice slipped by the dark room's walls, as if those words were made out of sharpened shades that were sneaking softly underneath the furniture, waiting to catch and jump on them at the smallest oversight.
And maybe it was true.
Perhaps they were forced to revive that moment time after time, perhaps the goodbyes were their specialty, the words unsaid, the angry and disappointed glances, the silences weighed around them, stealing their air each minute, and poisoning them with doses of slow and warm poison that they were now.
Perhaps they were trapped in that ring of fire forever, without could have had a normal life, and without wanted do it.
-"Sara… "
Her name left his mouth before having thought of how he would finish that sentence, because they both knew what was going to happen now.
What was going to happen again.
- "I do not want to hear it Michael.
Whatever it might be, I do not want to hear it."
Her voice sounded cold and decided close to him, under the blankets, like that last and distant morning at the infirmary.
It wasn't about the forgiveness or the fault, it never had anything to do with it, and it was always the fragile and confused feeling of trust and loneliness between them.
He breathed the smell of her hair spread on the pillow next to him; Michael wished to close his eyes again and just sleep there, to check if the nightmares could also find him there, in her bed.
But as usually, Sara had made a decision, and he didn't have to worry by the impossible work to say good-bye to her forever.
Again.
The one and only light that was at the room, was the one that was filtered for the half-open blind's, yellowish light of the steam-driven sodium lamps at the sidewalk.
All air hung and warm in the room smelt of sex, despaired and possessive, like every time that they saw each other.
Tonight, like usually, he had been expecting during hours in front of her apartment, at the sidewalk, only to wait to see her enter at last, and to see how the light of her room at the fourth floor was lighting up, and then, there was when he was calling to the automatic-doorman and she was not answering.
Because she never was answering, she just was opening her portal's weighed door, and Michael was rising, silent and furtive, at the elevator.
It had been that way since the first time that he appeared there, only a week after having visited her that morning at the hospital.
Michael hadn't planned it and he doesn't even know what he was going to tell her, but he just hadn't been able to more and he had gone back to Chicago.
"Just one more time"
Then he never thought up that it would be so easy, that simply he would call and she would open the door unknowingly that it was him.
Or perhaps Sara knew it; maybe she knew it even sooner than him.
She never was asking around and he never was answering, and they were doing that over eight months.
Every time that Michael couldn't handle it more, he was driving his car at full speed until his former neighbourhood and was waiting hours and hours at her apartment's sidewalk across the street.
Maybe only to see if she would open the door this time.
Each time.
It wasn't a firm norm either. They were having a habitual routine, simply they couldn't avoid it.
And although they would have been able to, they just didn't want to.
"And WHY where you opening the door every time?"
That wasn't a consolation, it was the worse excuse of all that both had invented themselves in all this time, and there had been many.
The fact that Sara opened the door every time that he was calling, without caring about the hour of early morning that it were, knowing that he would get on her apartment and that passion would devour them, dragging them along again and without meaning to avoid it, to that situation of hot- poison on the skin, knowing that they would have whispers broken by the desire, her soft breath in his ear, guilty apologies and furious kisses, knowing that they would make love desperately on the dining table, and after that, there were only weighed silences and cold sweat stuck over the skin, wet sheets...
And after that only would be left the fakes goodbyes and the air burning in their lungs, poisoning the room, and poisoning them.
Again.
All that was horrible, painful and wonderfully addictive, like if no one want to break the circle of fire that had caught them, the words whispered and the inflamed kisses left ardent and invisible marks on their skin during days, the smell of her shampoo caught on his hands, the furious and cold goodbyes that stole them the air every time that it was clearing, but still, regardless of everything, that had become their "relation."
Brutal, needy and desperate, but they didn't have any other option
Maybe they never had it, and the worst thing of whole, was that it didn't care them.
And that used up "If you didn't open the door" it wasn't working anymore, since one night when Michael was at the sidewalk across the street of her apartment, waiting for her, and he saw how Sara was coming into her home with another man.
That far night Michael had seen how they were waiting in the crystal door of her portal, and how she was looking lazily for the keys in her purse, while he saw the mouth of that stranger close to her ear and his hand around her waist.
Some minutes later, Michael saw how the light in the fourth floor was lighting up, exactly her bedroom's window.
Then he thought about one million different things, in only one second Michael passed to the desperate jealousy at the relief, dark and guilty, of that voice in his brain repeating him without rest: "You shouldn't be here."
He thought that he had to get to that room and have a talk with her, explaining to Sara that he never wanted the things to go in this way, that maybe they may be saved yet.
But he didnt.
Because Michael knew that it didn't care anymore, that it would be impossible that she will understand that this time was different to the others, that the desperate and hot kisses on her skin were not motivated only for the shared loneliness or the conventional lust, he would have liked that she know that he was having just discovered that it didn't matter.
Because at that point he unveiled that Sara could make anything, anything in the world like taking up another man to her home and slept with him, letting those other hands, and not his, get snagged in her hair, feeling another's wet and hot kisses on her shoulder's skin... Anything, and even it nothing would change, because he was still keeping on at her house's sidewalk, in the dark, thinking about that damn and horrible stranger that had dared to offer to her the normal and quiet life that she never would have at his side.
And that depressed him.
Even more.
Michael waited for more than three hours at that sidewalk and he never saw the stranger leave.
Michael left when he couldn't stand more, when he thought that he really would get on that apartment in the fourth floor with the light turned on, and that he would embrace every centimeter of her skin with his hot mouth and with his blurred words, until she would understand.
It wasn't exactly like if that night Michael discovered that he loves her, he already knew that, he knew it since that time in what he entered, covered with blood and broken, at that distant and cold infirmary, and his shaky hands mixed with hers, and he knew it when he said: "Don't make me lie to you... please"
Please.
He knew it then, and he knows it now, but this was nothing to do with love.
He had to do with the instinct, the pure instinct opposed to the logic, in front of the plan.
Because that always defeated him when it had to do with her.
And after that night, after Michael see that stranger going in to her apartment, he took long almost one month in returning there again, in front of her building, close to his former neighborhood
A whole month asking himself what she would be doing now, if she would be lying flat in her bed, undressed next to that man, or if she no longer was remembering how her name was sounding said by him in the early in the morning, among warm and desperate whispers upon her skin, and if occasionally, she would open the door again if he was calling back.
But a month later there he was again, in front of her apartment, and all began in the same way, Michael called and she opened the door without a word.
And there they were again, both dragged along to that obsessive game that they would never be able to win.
When she opened her apartment's door Michael entered quietly and kissed her, he simply closed his eyes and let his mouth return to get accustomed to her familiar and addictive warmth; he kissed her like if he expected for that stranger to interrupt them.
Michael slid his hands over the blue shirt that she was wearing and he felt her warm skin underneath the fabric, his hands climbed her back to her face, he kissed her near her little ear, while he was remembering how that strange man that he saw going home with her, that probably he had done something similar upon her skin; Michael felt furious and jealous, as if he have some right to, like if Sara had promised something to him.
Michael knew very well that every time that she was opening the door in silence, was like a sort of curse, sweet and sticky, but neither of them was wanting to escape.
He was understanding it, he was knowing that that only would last until she want to, that maybe some night Sara wouldn't open her door and he never could have said her "Goodbye".
But even so, he had to know it; although that meant crossing over the tacit limits that they agreed many nights back.
-"Sara… why do you open the door?"
And Michael was surprised at himself when he listened to his own voice, altered by his accelerated and hot breath upon her hair, he sounded quiet and broken, like if he was seeing again that man going in with her at her apartment.
-"Because I know that it's you.
I always know."
And that was the more similar to a confession that they had had until then.
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That early morning, with the warm and familiar shade of her body sleeping at his side, so near that he could smell her skin, Michael kept on thought in what she had said before.
"Because I know that it's you"
Those words sounded like the best silent promise of all, and for the first time he thought that maybe he would be able to sleep there, just to see what would happen after, and after this, maybe some nights more.
And that was when, Michael thought for the first time that maybe, there could be a salvation for them.
To be continued….