Author's Note: Sorry it took me so long to update, but I've just gone through my final exams, so the past couple of months were mostly filled with studies! Anyway, here's the final chapter as promised, and I'd like to thank all of you for such kind reviews, which were my motivation to write the story. This was supposed to be a one-shot, and yet I'm sad to see it go. I'll need to get started on a new Sara/Kellerman fic soon if I don't want to get nostalgic; well, here it goes.
…
'Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit. When we meet again, introduced as friends, please don't let on that you knew me well. I was hungry, and it was your world.'
Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman
Sara Tancredi laid her purse on the counter as she stepped inside her empty apartment, and didn't bother just yet to switch on the lights. Her long auburn hair fell smoothly down her back, upon the beige summer-top that uncovered half of her shoulder blades. She removed it in an instant and got out of her jeans too, discarded her bra and slid inside one of Michael's shirts. He wouldn't be here until late tonight; a diamond ring shone on her finger.
She stepped inside her bedroom, still without switching on the lights, and gasped when the door was closed behind her, from the inside.
Surprise died on her face when she spotted him.
He stood still, quiet, and taller than she recalled by the shut door of her bedroom. There was an air of calm on his face, one that according to her memory was often followed by an unexpected burst of rage. It had been on his face when he'd tortured her in New Mexico, and snapped at her before leaving her to drown. It had been on his face when he'd kissed her on that small motorboat, a year ago.
"Goodnight, Sara." He spoke smoothly, as confident as she'd ever seen him, and there was no doubt he was in full control of the situation. She didn't just know that because he stood blocking her only exit, or because of the very probable pistol at the back of his denims; it was because of the look in his eyes. That quiet patient look. He had come here tonight in search of something; and he would get what he had come to collect.
A year. It had been a year. A year since she'd woken up in a dark dusty room, cuffed to a man she was positive to hate. A year since she'd been kissed with more fervor than ever before. A year since the word 'beautiful' had been redefined to her ears by Paul Kellerman.
A year since he'd walked out of that automatic door and disappeared out of her life.
She swallowed despite her will, but figured there was little use in trying to convince him that she wasn't terrified of him. He'd scared her more than about anything ever had in her life, and that was including a three-year job in a male prison, a particularly perilous riot, quitting drugs and being on the run with America's most wanted men.
He'd also made her feel safer than anything or anyone ever had.
"Paul." She spoke, and his name on her lips both felt familiar and forgotten. It seemed to increase the hunger in his eyes, although he remained captured in a frightening control. Oh yes. What he'd come for tonight would not be denied. "What are you doing here?" She asked, but it was vain; he wouldn't answer her – he was the one asking questions – and he wouldn't give her any solid ground to stand on to escape the noose around her neck.
That's what he liked, she remembered; during the few days during which their lives had been bound by a mere handcuff, she had wrongfully believed that he'd grown used to take pity on her and care for her well being – she'd been wrong. Dead wrong. She'd never been more sure of it than now. Paul Kellerman was a predator, and for a little less than a week while she was chained to his hand, he'd enjoyed destabilizing her – watching her choke on that rope a little bit more – and watching her react. Watching her dance.
The look in her eyes when she'd discovered the key to their freedom in his inner pocket.
The outraged blush on her cheeks when he'd called her beautiful.
The betrayed sliver in her gaze and determination in her tone when he'd left her behind, and she'd stated. You're a coward, Paul Kellerman.
And now, she'd asked him what he'd come here for, as though he'd actually changed his ways during the year they'd spent apart. As though he'd actually give her a hint concerning the reason why he was here, when it was much more fun to watch surprise pervade her eyes.
For a brief second, Sara wondered if he had even changed at all. His lips were barely curved, but his grin was just as ravenous as she could recall, his blue eyes as merciless, and the darkness of the room still embraced him like a cloak, it still wrapped around his movements like a lover and almost like he were made of it.
But he looked colder. Much colder.
And this fiery blue gaze of his had learned how to hate.
Oh yes; Sara reckoned Paul Kellerman wasn't beyond hating her, although she'd wonder what would his reasons be. Perhaps maybe her simple words to him; yes. As though it was her who had doomed him not to forget her like an inescapable curse, and not his own actions; his own choices. Paul Kellerman used to believe in making his own luck.
"Well, that's the one milliard dollar question, isn't it, sweetheart?"
Shivers crept down her spine at the hoarse sound of his voice, and the memories it brought back were so vivid they were almost sensations. She remembered words spoken by him into the hollow of her ear, fingertips travelling up her racing pulse, lips wandering across her throat with the passion of an artist, and the skillfulness of an expert.
Now his eyes were burning into her own, and though she held her chin up and her head high, she had no doubt he would make her say and do absolutely anything he desired tonight. Tonight, he would take no pity on her.
His hand moved aptly across the door of her bedroom, and his fingers closed on the lock. She remembered him being quite swifter than this, but it was meant to be slow – he wanted her to watch as he sealed her fate. The lock was closed with a flick of the wrist.
"You expect me to answer it?" He wondered, and didn't move from the door yet. He shrugged, but she couldn't buy it as casual, not when he didn't break eye-contact with her the whole time. "It could be your boyfriend." He conceded; his eyes lowered to her left hand and he chuckled, with something very close to sarcastic amusement, but that wasn't it. "I'm sorry, fiancé. I might be here because Madam President asked me to tie the bow on the Burrows case once and for all. Maybe I just wanted to see how you were doing; how are you, Sara?"
She didn't answer; she wasn't meant to. Without lowering her eyes from his – she'd be burnt if she lowered her eyes from his – she tried to assess her options; there was a window near her wardrobe, one that she was slim enough to escape from, but would very unlikely have the time to reach before Kellerman pinned her to the ground. The more obvious option, the exit door, was definitely blocked as he stood before it, and she didn't doubt he'd beat her to any attempt she could contemplate.
She swallowed once more, and he smiled; his predator-smile. The ones of honesty and almost-joy that she'd made him discover were long, long gone.
He hadn't changed; she had.
She'd spent a year falling deeper in love with her fiancé, and without a doubt a man that she could love all her life. Michael Scofield had cared for her more thoroughly and devotedly than any man had before, he'd put her first since the moment their life together had started, and was attentive to her likes and dislikes and was willing to do absolutely anything to please her. And she loved him; she'd loved him from the moment he'd quoted Gandhi and she'd met his knowing eyes.
He'd asked her to marry him on their six-month anniversary and she'd agreed without thinking; she hadn't needed to think. She had loved Michael Scofield almost at first sight and would love him for the rest of her life.
But throughout a year of life together and many orgasms, never had he made her feel the way she'd felt when Paul Kellerman had run his thumb across her wrist. And not a year with Michael, nor she suspected ten or twenty, would make her forget that flash of a future that had briefly occurred to her, when she lay beneath Kellerman's body.
He stood now slightly over a meter from her, powerful and as dominant as he possibly could have been, and his gaze scarcely lingered on her bare thighs when he detailed her figure patiently – he'd seen her less dressed than this – but although he had full control, she looked at him with knowing eyes. Because the mere fact that he was here tonight betrayed a bit of her power over him; it betrayed the fact that even after a year, even after enrolling back into his life as Caroline Reynolds's soldier, he hadn't been able to get her out of his mind.
"Maybe I will, answer you." He said, and his voice might have been cut into boiling steel; and when he took a step forward, she took one back reflexively; like a habit. Like a dance.
This much made him smile, but it wasn't the honest smile she'd come to recognize and forget. It was a smile that said: over a year since we met, and still you believe you might have a chance to escape me. The next movement he made – the next step he took – permanently annulled the chance of such a thought.
She didn't step back, but swallowed a third time; she merely thought that she'd try to handle this night with as much dignity as he'd let her. When he took a final step forward, her legs started quivering. She could feel the heat emanating from him through his clothes, the desire that ate at him, the desire that had been gnawing at him for a year and which he was finally going to satisfy.
He was an inch away from her, and he could have touched her without trying.
"Really, I thought you might have guessed." He went on – he was referring to her question; the reason why he was here.
Then he finally answered her, and his words were slow and heavy as plumb, articulate as though to describe the sleepless nights he'd spent because of her, the hunger that had increased over the months like an insatiable lust; the words were so massive they were like nails sealing her tomb, and her fate.
"You and I have. Unfinished. Business."
He struck as quickly as she'd once fathomed he could move, as swiftly as a tiger closes his mouth on his prey; one second she was standing up, facing him albeit her wobbly legs and weakening knees, the next her wrists were pinned above her head with a strength that discouraged any struggle, her back brutally met the wall, and he pushed in one knee to part her legs.
The sudden contact was so brutal she couldn't be sure whether he was referring to their reciprocate attempt to kill each other or the numerous moments of lustful passion they had shared.
She still couldn't be sure when he brought his mouth over hers and kissed her.
Stars started dancing behind her closed eyelids, and from the second she opened her mouth she wasn't sure of anything anymore, not even that year spent with her fiancé; for all she knew, they were still trapped in this swaying motorboat, alone in the middle of the sea, with absolutely nothing but time and a growing hunger for each other.
She didn't struggle when he settled between her legs, even though it would make resistance impossible when he'd take things to the next level. The plan had always been to prevent her from thinking, now was no exception, or he wouldn't be creating all sorts of distraction, nibbling at her upper lip and pumping his hips into her once, brutally enough to take her by surprise and let her acknowledge his strength, enough for her to be able to portray how this would go – she let out a small cry when he ripped her underwear.
She hadn't realized when his hands have moved from imprisoning her wrists to her inner thighs, but it didn't surprise her too much.
There had only been one moment when she'd escaped the incapacity of thinking in his presence; it had been the moment when she'd been able to think of a future for them; the moment when he'd left her almost nude and sitting on the floor.
He might be in control, he might be drawing loud pleading breaths from her, he was still the one who'd lost. If he'd chosen her, a year ago, there was a chance – a dim chance – that it's not Scofield she would be with.
Now the kisses weren't just meant to stop her from thinking, but from talking too; maybe because he didn't want to hear her say I told you so. He figured it was fair enough. She'd told him to shut up more than a dozen of times, he was yet to return the favor; there were many things he was yet to return.
"God, Paul." Her voice came out in a lustful sigh when he parted their lips in a wet erotic sound, not truly to set her free and nor to let her go. He ran his tongue across her collarbone to taste salt and perspiration on her skin.
She locked her hands around his neck and dug her nails into his shoulder, as though he were her lover before he'd even made love to her. Her body sank further into the wall when he thrust his hips into hers, and kissed her again before she could utter anything else. The taste of her on his tongue made him wonder if he'd missed her – it wasn't the first time it occurred to him; he wondered if maybe he had missed, not only kissing her and making her shudder beneath his touch, but being close to her. Listening to her stubborn snappy replies, watching her try to ignore him, and arguing with her over absolutely anything.
These few days shackled to her wrist had without a doubt been the most insane and mad days he'd lived. Oh, yes; without a doubt. A yet for a second he wondered, if they hadn't been the happiest and realest moments of his life.
By the time he managed to focus back on the present, Sara's kisses tasted like ash.
…
Paul Kellerman awakened immediately, and his eyes opened with the immediate awareness of a reptile. He lay alone in his bed, and the sheets beneath him were damp with sweat. He remained still for a second, in the darkness of his own bedroom, almost as though he was waiting for sleep to take him in again – the dreams never lasted long enough for him to have her.
Desire still pulsated inside of him, and as he closed his eyes with a hoarse sigh, the throbbing urge seemed to swell. Her kisses had felt so real he could physically taste her, in the back of his throat; he could taste the memory of her touches, and the surprising trust she'd come to grant him, at the end of their time spent together. Yes, he reckoned today, perhaps what haunted him most were those trustful eyes.
He got up from bed and put on a pair of jeans, before he exited the luxurious apartment he owned and walked to the balcony, in an attempt to take in more breathable air. He pretended that her warmth didn't haunt him like a ghost, and that her voice wasn't ringing in his ears.
You're a coward, Paul Kellerman.
He dragged in a deep breath and clenched his teeth, as well as his fingers around the white-painted rail.
A year exactly today; it had been a year. A year since, paradoxically, her words had grown louder into his mind at her absence, and not a day had gone by when they had dimmed. He wasn't unused to dreaming of her, but he assumed today made sense more than any other.
A year since he'd walked out on her, while she sat helpless on the floor and her knowing eyes burned like acid on the back of his head; he hadn't heard from her again.
The air of the night was cool, and Kellerman dragged in a long breath again. Choosing a woman he hardly knew over the life he'd always known, wouldn't that have been ridiculous? Wouldn't it have been hilarious?
Oh yes, perhaps there had been fear in that choice – hardly even a choice at all – the oldest and most lingering fear; the fear of being laughed at. The fear of being a fool. Pride, really.
There hadn't been a choice at all.
Kellerman looked down from his twelve-storey building, and Chicago looked oddly brighter into the night. Scofield had done a good job keeping himself and his brother hidden; well, of course, that was: himself, his brother, and her. Kellerman reckoned they were probably hidden somewhere in Mexico, living a cozy enough life under the sun; he wasn't sure where. He had tried to know, but the Scofield boy was good at disappearing, he gave him that.
He could try harder; it had occurred to him. After all, Scofield could be as good as he liked at hiding, Kellerman was matchless when it came to finding things; and yet, even if were to try, even if he were to search for her through every inch of this earth, part of him knew it would be vain. Part of him knew he would never manage to get his hand on Scofield's location and see Sara Tancredi again.
Kellerman had spent his life getting what he wanted, he'd spent his life satisfying whims along the way of his greater purpose, and yet he knew for certain that Sara would remain the exception. She would be the only thing he'd truly wanted that he had never owned. She'd be the one that got away. Because he'd let her get away.
You weren't scared that I'd go back to Michael, she'd said, you were scared that I wouldn't.
Paul Kellerman remained silent, colder than the night. It would have been foolish to choose her; the stupidest thing, really. He knew that very well. Still he looked up at the sky, staring into the darkness, and he wondered.