"One need not be a chamber to be haunted"
Emily Dickinson
…
Sara had always hated those games in the schoolyard where two teams fight each other in a noisy tantrum of childish anarchy. Cowboys and Indians. Running, hair falling into your eyes, clinging to your perspiring face, your chest hurting with the quick pumps of your racing heart. Why create stress when you don't need it, why imitate danger when there is none?
"Quicker now. Hurry!"
With their dark-blue uniforms, Sara could barely see the inmates moving in the night, could only make out quick dashes darting forward and back, the grass breaking beneath their boots.
Michael's commands were quick, no louder than a whisper, still no one thought to counter or question them.
Least of all her. How would that be in her best interest?
They'd been careful when they approached the house, their progress sure and slow, seeking cover behind a bush here and there, crouching to make sure they wouldn't be spotted out the window. Of course, she'd stayed behind, and Michael had stayed with her. Surprise, surprise.
He didn't trust Abruzzi with her, but didn't he trust his brother?
Or was it just that he felt it was his job, his duty, to watch her? He let me out of his watch once, and look what happened.
Next to her, Michael was remarkably alert, not overtly looking at her, but sure enough he'd spot it if she tried something stupid. There was that fool me once, fool me twice saying running through her head. He only sent Lincoln to ascertain T-Bag was still in the cabin – probably, because Abruzzi might be tempted not to head back and report but instead go straight for it. Not that Michael would be too unhappy for the two of them to be at each other's throats, Sara reckoned. But he needed Abruzzi. Through the fuzziness of the alcohol, she remembered him saying something about a plane.
"Still in there," Lincoln confirmed after stealing back to the wood border.
"You're sure?" Michael asked, ever cautious.
"Absolutely. I saw him through the kitchen window, his brains damned near bleeding out of his forehead." He gave Sara an appreciative glance. "You sure didn't miss him."
Sara shrugged. What was the point in fighting this, the complicity blooming before the threat of their common enemy?
Lincoln sighed. "I can't figure out how the bastard is still standing."
"Only good news," Abruzzi replied. "A couple of days ago, our friend Bagwell was messed up bad. Now he's messed up very bad. No reason we shouldn't be able to take him."
"That doesn't mean he won't cause trouble on the way." Michael said. "If he knows he's going down, it'll give him all the more reasons to kick up a row."
"We can go in through a window," Lincoln suggested. "Try to make it discreet. Catch him by surprise."
"No," Sara interrupted. Cooperating was one thing but outright helping them was odd, like wearing a mask without knowing what it's doing there or when it comes off. Who would she rather be stuck with, them or Bagwell? "No, he booby-trapped the house."
Lincoln arched a brow, silently asking for specifications. There was no point in being mysterious. "You know," she said. "Broken glass on the doorstep, on the window sills."
"You're saying this now?"
She shrugged again. Honestly, she'd just remembered.
Had it happened before or after the actress took over? How surreal, how oddly dreamlike, to spread shards of broken glass around her own house, it must have looked like a superstitious ritual. Like throwing salt behind your shoulder, drawing a cross in the air.
"Then we bloody torch the house," Abruzzi shrugged.
"Yeah, with what?" Lincoln spoke wryly. "And what about Sucre?"
"You saw him?" Michael asked, not without feeling.
Lincoln shook his head. "He's probably still alive. Bagwell must be keeping him as leverage."
Still, there was no misunderstanding, no doubt amongst the inmates and Sara, that of all the things that might happen tonight, a peaceful reunion didn't feature the list. Bagwell wouldn't trade Sucre's life to be part of the group again, nor would they go their separate ways with no more violence.
The time for reconciliation had gone with T-Bag's hand and – Sara realized, half-unconsciously – with her own sequestration.
Yes, maybe the others couldn't see it, maybe even Lincoln couldn't, but Sara was watching closely the wild gleam in Michael's eyes, which he was striving to keep in check. There was something in him being born he didn't yet understand, something he probably didn't think existed until Fox River. The kind of anger that comes from the pit of your belly and eats its way up with a ruthless appetite. Sara was all too familiar.
For a brief moment, she had a strange fantasy in which Michael Scofield was her patient and she could probe the hidden depths of his enigmatic mind, where she had all the time in the world to understand his mechanisms.
"Then we just do as we said," Michael resumed. "Draw Bagwell's attention. Try to get him out of the house through the front door – meanwhile, one of us goes through the back, gets Sucre. The remaining two handle Bagwell –"
"And what do we do with the girl?" Abruzzi interrupted. His voice seemingly casual, nearly a drawl.
A veil of caution dropped over Michael's eyes. Ha, Sara thought triumphantly. She'd like to see him try and convince her Abruzzi was all under control now. When you thought about it, it wasn't much to act smug about, but you had to count each victory.
"Well," John shrugged, "who watches her? Like you said, Bagwell's a sly one, even injured, it's better for there to be two of us when we come against him. If someone else gets Sucre, makes sure Bagwell doesn't make his way back to the house and execute him, what do we do with the girl?"
"I can help." Sara heard herself say. It was still time to be smart.
Michael answered categorically, with that same unwavering suspicion. "No."
"Mike," Lincoln urged, "we don't have time to debate."
"We really don't." Sara argued, feeling emboldened. "Lincoln and I will go get Sucre. You and John can draw Bagwell to the front door and handle him if you can."
Abruzzi arched a brow that seemed to suggest he hadn't realized they were on a first-name basis. "If we can?" He echoed.
"You don't make the calls here," Michael said.
"This is my house." Sara replied without lowering her eyes from Michael's. "That you forced your entry in the middle of the night doesn't give you the right to tell me otherwise. It's my home, and we're taking it back."
Suddenly, it didn't feel like Michael – or even his brother or Abruzzi – could intimidate her. If they threatened to kill her, she'd call their bluff. After what had happened with Bagwell, she realized the fear of physical violence had completely left her system.
What were they going to do? Hit her?
If one of them so much as tried, she'd bet the vein in Michael's forehead would actually burst.
No. Under his watch, there would be nothing like that.
And hell, if it did get down to this, she'd take them on. Strike back, show them what was what. After everything, everything that had happened, she wouldn't go down without kicking up a row herself.
"You heard the lady," Abruzzi broke the silence. His assistance came as a surprise, but Sara did her best to mask it. "We've wasted enough time as it is."
…
Anticipation was rising in peaks in Sara's stomach as they approached the house. She remembered they hadn't neglected the backdoor, when they were spreading broken glass on every entry. Bagwell would hear them come in. Hopefully, by then, he'd be a little too busy with Abruzzi and Michael to do anything about it, but still –
Still a thrill crawled down her spine when she remembered him grabbing her by the hair, his sickening breath on her face. Where you going, honey?
"You okay?" Lincoln asked.
Pointless. They were in too deep to go back.
At the other end of the garden, through the house, Michael and John must be just about to make their move. Sara wasn't only listening but seeing this, taking an imaginary trip through the cabin, each room tainted by Bagwell's presence but also by hers, the ghost of that silent docile woman she'd played.
Suddenly, it didn't feel absurd to think that she'd died in that house, and the inmates would find her naked cadaver among other things.
You don't have to be a house to be haunted.
You could be a cabin.
Or something else entirely.
Finally, there was the signal – unstifled noise around the front of the house. Michael would be aiming for loud but not deliberate, so T-Bag wouldn't know he was being set up. In all likelihood – if he was keeping watch out the window or so much as paying attention, the inmates' presence in the garden would draw him out.
The windows, Sara had noticed while they were going around the front yard, were all open.
"It's taking too long," Lincoln whispered. "He's not coming out."
Sara had no time to reply before Bagwell's voice, from inside the cabin, sounded loud and clear. He wasn't shouting, but it came through distinctly enough. "Before any of you out there try to play smart, you should know I'm not in a particularly clement spirit. I hear you trying to make your way in," and he'd hear them, sure enough, "and I'm slicing your friend's throat."
"You can't win, Theodore." She heard Michael answer. "You're surrounded. But we all want this to be over – you let Sucre go, and you can be on your way as far as I'm concerned. No one'll have anything to say against it. We're all tired."
Bagwell's laughter sounded in the cabin. The hairs in Sara's neck stiffened. When she was little, sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, and the night would fill her mind with terrors, she'd sometimes imagine the house was filled with malevolent creatures – goblins, gremlins, they were the ones that scared her the most, crooked claws on the end of long fingers, their faces elfin but mannish, all sharp edges and angles.
I'll be damned if Bagwell's laugh isn't very goblinlike, she thought.
Did that make her like the little girl who gets stolen by the fairies, who eats their food and stays trapped in their immortal kingdom?
After a good night's sleep, hopefully, she'd have forgotten every nightmarish second of those past few days in that cabin.
"Am I supposed to believe that?" Bagwell said at last. "No, pretty, you might have been an honest man when you came through those prison gates, but they spat you out just as lying and crafty as the rest of us. We both know your lot won't let me go alive. None of you wants to have to look behind your shoulder anymore, checking if that good old boogey is still around."
"Then we settle this right now." Lincoln hissed through his teeth.
Sara darted a furtive look at him – they weren't supposed to give away their position, but something told her Lincoln Burrows had a way of unintentionally messing up his brother's plans.
"Is that you, Burrows? Why don't you come and face me then? How about a fair fight, huh? One to one. Though I'd much rather getting it on with your pretty brother, or with that feisty girl you guys left me all wrapped up like a Christmas gift."
A sensation like vertigo shot down Sara's body. Deliberately, she didn't look at Lincoln and he politely didn't look back.
"You guys ran into her by any chance?" Bagwell's southern drawl sounded again through the cabin. "I would have liked to even things up with her – I do hate having unfinished business."
"You want a fair fight, one to one?" Michael was the one to answer.
Involuntarily, Sara shivered at the primitive anger in his tone. It was all under the surface, but she could sense its might, imagine how deep it ran.
"How about you and me, Theodore?"
"Michael, don't!" Lincoln growled.
His brother paid him no mind. "We let the others get into the cabin. You and I go into the woods, where you can make sure no one's following."
"And then?" Bagwell's tone brightened with anticipation.
Michael's answer came, low and serious – Sara could imagine the look on his face, that cold surface beneath which the stormy waters of anger ran wild and free.
"Then may the best man win," he said.
…
End Notes: I was told it'd be great if I could update this chapter before the end of the week, so you may all comment on my remarkable punctuality ;-). More seriously, I hope you've enjoyed this, don't hesitate to leave your thoughts and reactions.