The cocktails had been the real mistake.

Sara could handle shots – vodka, rum, tequila – had bested many a contester sometimes twice her weight, always considered it a pleasant (if a little bitter) personal victory when she could make it through the night in a better state than whoever had been her date for the evening.

(There's easy and then there's easy)

Maybe it was vain to try and make a difference, but Sara had been swimming these waters too long not to know how things worked. When you looked drunker than your partner, and you were a woman, you opened the door wide for the man to act like he'd played some game (the old-as-time game of lady-hunting in bars?) and won.

Everyone had pet peeves, and this wasn't a particularly embarrassing one to Sara's mind.

People could say and think of her what they wished.

It hadn't mattered since her sophomore year of high school, when Gretchen Morgan had sprayed the bright red-paint letters WHORE on her shirt after gym.

Heap the dirty names of bitch and slut on her shameless doorstep. Sara wore them with pride and defiance and (most often) a grin.

The only thing that irked her, that could get on her nerves for real, was when men made her out to be some sort of victory. Like they'd been in control, like she hadn't taken them home – or to some nearer half-appropriate setting – of her own will.

So, it was a matter of principle that she should hold her own when she was out partying.

It was the cocktails' fault that tonight went out of tracks. Cocktails, all innocent-looking and sweet-tasting, peach syrup or coconutty pineapple blurring her alarm signals – that was it for her. Oh, Sara hadn't bought a cocktail in years, but now – bare knees turning raw against the slimy bathroom tiling, the sound of her throwing up not quite covering the copulating couple in the next booth – now, Sara reckoned she was also past accepting them for free, be they offered to her by strangers who would look passably cute even without a drink.

"A'right," she muttered, flushed with one hand then leant against the slightly sticky wall of the booth, and pressed her forehead to her knees for a second. In these moments, she found talking to herself was the likeliest thing to put her back together. "Failure happens to the best of us."

The couple next door moaned their complete agreement.

"You call it a night." Sara went on. "Get a ride home. Sleep for nine hours."

The plan sounded good when she heard it out loud. If she remembered to take off her heels and tiptoe her way to her apartment, there'd be no witness to her embarrassing inebriety at all, save possibly the neighbor's cat, who she sometimes found wandering in the halls.

"So, we'll both be caught doing things we shouldn't be. Won't tell on him if he won't."

With a long sigh, Sara heaved herself into a standing position and stumbled out of the booth, not bothering to so much as glance at the bathroom mirror for damage-control. Tonight was past saving, anyway.

In the bar, one of her least-favorite 80s love song was playing, loud, not even the original but a bad cover that had not even the advantage of nostalgia.

'Ooh in my life, there's been heartache and pain…'

Presently, Sara couldn't think of much past her own headache, blurring even the remainders of nausea and the bilious taste in her mouth.

She walked out of the bar like a professional, eyes down, her purse pressed to the side of her face, determined not to stop if the cocktail-luring stranger called out her name.

The night air outside was uncomfortably cold but an immediate relief, even as her bare arms broke into gooseflesh. Sara was vaguely aware she'd been wearing a shawl, earlier in the evening, but was past wondering where she'd left it or why it mattered.

The parking lot before the bar was neither deserted nor disproportionately shady. No drunk kid puking all over his Nikes, no creep waiting to cup a woman's breasts or ass. Around, Sara could hear the music playing from inside the bar, a couple of groups chatting, no inebriated slurring but casual, articulated talk.

A blush crimsoned her cheeks. It might have been the cold.

(except it wasn't)

Well, Sara said to herself, you can't win them all.

She could be in control next time. Yes, and she never had to see any of those people again –

"Careful."

Sara had little time to heed the warning, much less to identify its source, before the world swept from beneath her feet, as if she'd taken a step into space.

The damned step.

For chrissake.

Right when she'd entered the bar – whenever Sara entered somewhere where she intended to drink in general – she was always careful in analyzing her environment, putting pins on all the things that were likely to turn into vicious traps as her drunkenness advanced. Slippery flooring. Foot-tripping carpets. And sure enough, when she'd arrived here some two hours ago, she'd taken careful note of that step, filled with a superior feeling – oh, yes, some dumb fool's going to break his neck falling because of that step, sooner or later.

Such moments leave such short time for a reaction.

In maybe a second and a half, Sara dropped her purse, moved her arms in front of her face as her body swiveled. There was no up or down or left or right, no hope whatsoever of her finding balance, merely of landing in the least painful way as possible.

A ridiculous gasp rounded her lips into an O, as Sara felt a man's hand grab her forearm – firm, and too caught up in urgency for gentleness. Though he was strong, he'd reached for her late enough that she nearly drew them both down, and he had to slide another hand around her waist.

It flashed through Sara's head they must looked like a waltzing couple in a music box.

Then, a sillier thought –

I've never danced with a man.

For a second the world around them was whirling, then Sara breathed in. The subtle aroma of lemony hair-wash, one she remembered filling the closed space of an elevator cabin a long, long time ago –

No way this is happening. No way.

Sara looked up just as the man did and their gazes were like two cars at a crossroads, shooting in the same direction –

(Sara actually heard it, in her head, felt the heat spread through her chest)

– Bang.

"Are you okay?"

"No."

But she was still thinking No way.

She was in no state to determine whether he looked surprised. "Not like this."

"What?"

"I walked out. I won."

Sure enough, it was the same ridiculously handsome face staring back at her – very close to her now, he was still holding her waist – as it had been in that stupid elevator, the stranger she'd met on her way out of her father's building, some six or seven months ago.

Michael Scofield.

The name flared up in her mind, swift as a cut, you know it's going to leave a mark even if you hardly felt the blade sink, you see the blood before you feel any pain.

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.

Once or twice – well, a whole lot more than that, but there was no mind-police in Sara's brain to call her out on the lie – she'd looked back on the encounter, its strange coat of magic and chance, how it glowed with the charm of all fleeting things.

Sara was actually pleased with how things had ended.

Of course, she would be.

Hadn't she walked out of here holding her head high as a marble statue, tall, invincible, inscrutable (he'd asked to see her but she'd given nothing away, not one truth, not even a name).

Sara liked walking out on people when she held all the cards. Over the past few months, there'd been comfort in the thought that when the stranger – Michael – looked back on their encounter, it was worse for him than for her.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"I'm okay."

In her mouth, words tasted stale with vomit and booze. Her black dress didn't cover down to her knees, red and raw from the half-hour she'd spent in the bathroom.

That was too unfair, that chance should take back every advantage it'd given her before – that they should meet again now, when she hadn't been in such a humiliating state for years.

A thought crossed Sara's mind and she was prompt to crush it dead –

How intolerable it was for the tables to turn on her like this and how, if there was any mercy in fate's plans, they'd have to meet again.

Sara withdrew her arm from his grip. The warmth of his hand on her waist was a little harder to part with – cozy and snug, what a nice hand it must be to fall asleep in…

Sara you idiot you move away from it right now.

Michael's direct blue eyes scrutinized her under furrowed browns. Sara took a couple of steps back – careful not to trip on the step he'd been so chivalrous about rescuing her from.

"I'll, uh – I'll go home now."

"I just called a cab," Michael said. "Why don't you take it? I can wait for the next one."

Sara considered this, through the haze of drunkenness. The weakness in her knees suggested it was best to sit down, which she did with care and caution; the ground was cold beneath the material of her light dress but mercifully dry.

"Sure," Sara gathered her knees against her chest, gave off a loud sigh – gave up on pride entirely. "Why not?"

After a moment – only a few seconds to Sara's mind, but she might have passed out – Michael sat down next to her.

"So," Michael started, with no aftertaste of mockery or amusement. "You come here often?"

Why, Sara wondered, would it get him to come back here if I told him I did?

In truth, it was a really lousy bar. As if to prove her point, the incompetent singer on the CD player inside was still howling about how much he wanted to know what love was.

"If you're trying to determine what the odds were that we'd meet each other here," she said, "I'll save you trouble – they were slim."

Sara didn't look up from the ground for a long while, not in shame but in a practiced pose of cynical cool, the sort that looks ridiculous on young adolescents who dye their hair black and smoke cigarettes – but Sara was a natural at making cynicism look well. It was possibly the only thing she was natural at.

How much she'd laughed when her colleagues would say she was a 'born surgeon' – yeah, right. Eight years neck-deep in studies, learning the human anatomy through books and cutting open cadavers, living on coffee and calculated sugar highs, but she qualified as a born surgeon.

Sara wasn't of those people who thought you were often born anything. Nurture over nature and shit.

But you wouldn't be so wrong to say she was a born cynic.

Then, the blackness of the sidewalk was getting a little too hypnotic for her – she wouldn't want for Michael to have to wake her up when the cab got there – and she looked up.

Because she feared reticence to meet his eyes would be interpreted as embarrassment, she looked at him, and found he was smiling.

"In the elevator, when you wouldn't give me your name, you said I could look you up."

Ha.

The small victory of his interest in her put a balm over Sara's disappointment.

(But it might be the booze; booze made her over-confident)

"And did you?"

"A little."

Understatement.

"You're pleased about this," she said, "aren't you?"

What with that grin on his face, it would have been hard for him to deny it. "I was open from the first that I wanted to see you again, Sara."

More than that, he was actually acting damn sure that they would meet again.

Their last exchange flashed through her brain –

'Goodbye, then.'

'I'll see you.'

– and Sara would be tempted to think the young man had been stalking her through social networks and staged everything about this unlikely encounter, if there wasn't such a genuineness to both their surprises, something so incredibly authentic about this lucky-unlucky event.

I'll see you.

"And now you know my name," she said.

"That upsets you?"

"Don't flatter yourself."

His laughter was cool, pure startle, and – was she getting this right? – a little joy. Great. Now, she was flattering herself.

"Don't act like this."

"Like what?" He said.

"Like this is all so easy too you. Like you're – in control."

"That matters to you, Sara? Control."

Anyone else could have made it sound like an asshole thing to say.

Fancy man in his fancy clothes, fancily catching me in my fall. Acting like he knows me.

But that wasn't it at all.

Even drunk, and even disinclined as she was to admit it, Sara heard the utter lack of judgement in his tone. There was an overall gentleness to him he hadn't grown ashamed of, hadn't tried to hide, however many bullies must have hassled him about it. This was indeed an unusual man, who ought to have been broken by today's world, and yet, somehow, didn't even look fragile.

"I know you've thought about me," she said, out of nowhere – where he always seemed to come from, anyway.

"A lot," he admitted.

"Why?"

"I can't say, really. Except that you puzzle me. Yes, that's the word for it," he was chuckling again. "In my mind, you're exactly like a question mark, Sara. Only even the questions you raise don't make sense to me."

They fell into a grave silence. It was grave, despite the loud music playing inside, the indistinguishable chatter that came to their ears.

What Michael had just said to her touched her in a way few other things could have. The way an icy rain soaks all the way to your bones. Some people are born invisible, but Sara had needed to work at it, to grow a skin that was like a reflecting surface, that showed no more of her than a mirror could show itself.

For the first time in years, how strange, how baffling, to be seen – to be looked at.

A sudden, disappointing desire in her took grip of her insides and squeezed all in a tyrant fist. That there would be more, that this would go forward, on and on until the want for life in her was resurrected, until she had shed the full of her old flesh and scarred dreams, and she was red and raw as a newborn being.

Heat brightened her cheeks at once – now, indeed, with shame – at the realization that she wanted the things she had herself turned from. That she wanted more from this stranger – maybe as much as he wanted from her. Not only to be seen, but to be touched.

How foolish, she thought. How human.

The men she took home for the night couldn't touch her – when you've grown cold enough, armored enough, the feel of fingers on your skin is like touching glass. There's nothing in it. No life.

I've done this to myself, Sara thought again. I wanted to disappear.

And now what?

"Would you find it insulting if I offered to give you my scarf?" Michael asked.

"Have your own way."

What with the booze, she couldn't feel the cold, but she'd rather not wake up feverish tomorrow.

Michael untangled the red scarf from around his neck and handed it to her. She wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl. The wool was itchy and warm against her skin. It smelled of mystery-man and unexpectedness and fate. And lemony hair-wash.

Michael didn't ask for her phone number again, not for fear of humiliation, or to deny her the pleasantness of regaining power.

But because what he wanted was clear enough. There was no need to reiterate.

The cards were in her hands, which was usually where Sara liked them.

But now… Oh, now…

The cab arrived in a steaming flash of yellow, the headlights hitting Sara's vulnerable brain like the rays of the sun, reviving her headache and turning on full volume.

Michael was on his feet in one agile motion, and she accepted the hand he extended without embarrassment.

The walk to the cab was short, might have been tumbling if she hadn't been leaning on Michael's shoulder.

Wasn't it strange she should accept his help, accept that a magical steady hand should just appear out of nowhere when she needed one?

More often than not, help wasn't for free, and sweet strangers who were so willing to lend it did so because they wanted something.

But sometimes you just know something is exactly what you think it is. You just know.

"I'd offer to drive you home," Michael said, "but my brother appeared to have ditched me here and taken my car."

"Joke's on you then, isn't it?"

He didn't answer. The joke, of course, was on those who refused to take what they wanted out of pride, who'd prefer black cynicism to happiness – in cynicism, there's no chance of disappointment, no risk of true despair.

"Besides," Michael said. "I have a feeling you wouldn't let me."

He was right about this.

It could have been pouring hellfire and she still wouldn't have let that stranger drive her home.

If they could chance on each other like this just by living in the same city, imagine if he knew where she lived.

Sara knew herself too well, was too aware of her own weaknesses.

If he'd driven her home, and they'd both been sitting still and silent in his car, after the ignition was off, at the door of her building…

She could already hear herself say it.

I'm on the third floor, first door on the left. I'm going to go clean up and get out of these clothes.

Not outright inviting him to join her. She'd sooner have him ponder on what she meant by volunteering the information – she'd done it before, with many people, people that didn't matter, people that hadn't always waited until she'd disappeared inside the building to hop along.

It's better like this, she thought. No risk. No temptation.

Michael leaned in to open the backseat door for her – not patronizing but good old-fashioned gallantry, she supposed. He would have done it if she hadn't been drunk.

"Your scarf," Sara thought to point out when she slid inside the car.

"Why don't you keep it?"

Like it made all the sense in the world.

"A'right."

"Take care, Sara."

"Goodnight."

The door slammed and Sara was aware of the streets scrolling through the car window in a blend of darkness and shining billboards, restaurant signs that read OPEN!, twenty-four-hour stores, streetlights, and the occasional lamp burning at an office window.

There was a sentence, burning on the tip of Sara's tongue, one of those trite things people said all the time, but she couldn't seem to remember, even as the city of Chicago flashed her by at full speed.

She struggled not to doze off and remembered to tip the cabbie on her way out. Each step she took inside her building seemed to give an echo louder than if she'd been screaming in a megaphone. The elevator in her building was constantly out of order.

"Bloody cocktails," she heard herself mutter once in a while.

Five minutes of delicate clatter as she fumbled to get her keys in the lock.

Each second of it was hateful, of course, pathetic, cliché.

Just as she pushed open the door, a loud miaow took her by surprise and Sara turned round, only to find the neighbor's cat staring at her from the top of the stairs.

Sara stared back in silence for a moment.

"What the hell."

She let the door ajar and waited for the cat to pad its way to her apartment before she snapped the lock shut. Whether her allowing it to spend the night here should fill her with comfort or self-pity, she was too drunk to decide; she'd give it a shot in the morning.

Sara poured the cat a bowl of milk which it lost interest in after only a few licks. It was skimmed milk, and you could tell this cat was used to richer treats – no scrawny street animal but a definitely chubby and spoiled family pet. Sara's fingers sunk into fur and fat when she picked it up and took it to bed. Better company than she'd had in years.

The animal fell asleep quietly at her feet and, just as her own head hit the pillow, Sara thought of the stranger, and of that line that had been teasing at the edge of her mind, knock-a-knocking at the door of consciousness.

Sara's eyes blinked open wide as the words got through, as if reeling from the strength of a breath-stealing blow.

Michael's scarf was still around her neck, red and warm and reminding her she hadn't dreamed all of it.

You had me at hello.

…

End Notes: I had a lot of fun with this. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions. Any improbable encounter for this pair that you might have in mind?