Chapter 4

Sara sat on the couch uninterestedly flipping through a magazine. Her visit to the governor's had gone about as well as could be expected; there was polite, formal conversation about the weather and her father's remodeled kitchen, and Sara tried to leave as soon as she could. There was only so much she could take. To be completely honest, she really did want to fix things with her father, but he was just so damn "difficult."

Or maybe she was just so damn difficult.

A growling stomach prompted Sara to get off the couch. As she headed towards the kitchen, she noticed a cell phone on her table that wasn't hers. The only person that had been in her house lately (that she knew of) had been Michael. He must have left it when he came last night. Well, she wasn't about to just keep it, so there were two options. She could call him and ask him to come pick it up, or she just give it to him herself, because after all, she still had his address. After some hesitation, Sara decided to just drop it off herself.

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A knock on the door brought Michael out of his nap on the couch. Christmas at Lincoln and LJ's was pretty exhausting, especially considering he didn't sleep overly well last night. He got up and walked to the door, and paused slightly when he saw who it was through the peephole. Sara was looking down at her shoes and when he opened the door, she looked up and smiled rather uncomfortably.

"Hi, Sara. Uh, come in."

She stepped through the door and stood until he turned around. She shuffled her feet awkwardly before reaching her hand into her purse.

"Michael, um, you left this at my house, I thought I'd bring it by…"

Michael took the cell phone out of her hand.

"Thank you, I was wondering where I put that."

"Yeah, um, I also wanted to thank you again for staying with me last night, and I wanted to say goodbye."

"Goodbye? You're leaving?"

"I just thought I needed to tell you, and this would be my only chance," Sara half-whispered. "I need to get away from all of…this, you know, as long as it's been since the escape and everything, I'm still sort of feeling the effects, and I got a new job at a clinic in Springfield, so I just really want to…start over."

Michael's facial expression remained unchanged, but unknown to Sara, he felt like his insides were starting to dissolve. She wasn't just getting away, she was running away from "him". And he knew it.

"You don't have to leave to start over, Sara. It's been a year already, and you seem to be doing fine."

Sara looked down and didn't respond for a moment.

"Michael, I think I should go, I'm leaving in just a few days, so I need to get home—"

"Sara," Michael cut her off quickly. "When I was in your apartment, I didn't notice any boxes or missing furniture, or anything at all that suggested you were moving, why all of the sudden? Why now?"

"It's not all of the sudden, Michael. I've been thinking about this for a while. I told you already that I even found new work. It just sort of…I don't know…it took seeing you again to confirm this is what I should do. Things aren't going well with my father as you can probably guess and they know who I am at the hospital and they try their best not to let me near any patients, for fear that I might leave the door unlocked and they'll escape."

She paused and Michael swore he saw a hint of a smirk on her lips.

She continued, "And Michael, when you are a part of my life… it seems like a lot of, um…"

Sara closed her eyes and searched for the right words. She opened them again and looked into Michael's. The intensity of his gaze, like many times before, left her struggling with a task as simple as constructing a sentence.

"It seems like a lot of…bad…things happen, for lack of a better word, but, bad things that certainly could have been avoidable from the start. So I think this is better for both us."

She looked at him, almost daring him to challenge her. Michael's brain was in overdrive trying to think of what he could possibly say that would make her stay. Yeah right.

After a 2-minute staring contest and no response from Michael, Sara finally looked down and then slowly turned back to the door, as she had not moved since she stepped inside. With a final "goodbye", she walked out.

Michael spent a good few minutes staring at the door, and then walked back to his couch and sat down, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands under his chin. Sara, "his" Sara, was leaving the city, and he didn't even get to say a proper goodbye. But it was his fault for not acting. The best thing that ever happened to him just walked out his door. And he let her.

He sat and pondered for a while, some plan in the works. He wasn't about to go get a new tattoo, but if there were a way to make this work, he would find it. He loved Sara, no doubt about it, and he wasn't about to just sit around and let her walk out of his life, despite the fact that he was sitting around, and he had already let her walk out. He had "a few days" (the only bit of information Sara had given him) to come up with something, anything that would give him a chance.