"You should get a couple of hours," Paul suggested, which wasn't unlike him at all.
Sara knew if a sudden apocalypse struck the world with living dead or some more original scourge, Paul Kellerman would be among the survivors, because he had based his whole life on preparing himself to survive unimaginable situations – he'd be the sort who forced himself to get half an hour of sleep every six hours instead of those who keep on going until their bodies collapse, the sort who'd eat half an inch of bread for breakfast and an equally small portion for dinner, because he knew just what amount of food he needed to keep himself functioning.
It's a good thing he's on my side, she thought, not for the first time.
In the case of an unforeseen disaster, Sara would probably come knocking on his door (pointless; he'd know how to find her).
"Sleep?" Sara shrugged. "After a night like I've had?"
"It's important to keep your mind sharp."
"Well, I'm not like you, Paul. Can't just turn myself off when I need it. I'll sleep when this is over."
He didn't prod her any further.
She and Kellerman were still at his office, had been going over the interview with Abruzzi and Bagwell for the past few hours. Kellerman had phoned his assistant and asked for coffee refills and a couple of bagels from a small bakery not discouragingly far from his building.
"You do know there's a Starbuck right next door?" She said.
"Big corporations are evil."
That got her laughing for a full-blown minute – exhaustion made it harder to keep herself in check, and it was better she should laugh, in such times as this.
Sara made no comment as Paul's assistant delivered the errand. She was a young, pretty thing, with a blonde ponytail and appropriate knee-skirt, you'd think she was trying to embrace the stereotype.
Probably not much younger than me, Sara thought. Smiled at the girl to signify hello, thank you and goodbye at once.
"Do you think that's the reason why all this happened?" She asked. Met Kellerman's brown-blue earnest eyes. "That people like Senator Bagwell and John Abruzzi are just too used to women like me being their assistant, that they can't stand losing to someone who looks like the person that brings their morning coffee?"
"If you'd been a man, they would have tried to tear you apart all the same. No quarter. All that matters is you're standing between them and power."
"It's not all that matters."
Paul gave no answer. They ate breakfast in silence. The bagels were greasy with fat, tasted overly rich; she could feel it going down like a tight lump in her stomach.
At Starbuck, Sara thought of saying, you can get fruit salads and French toast.
But she didn't.
Big corporations were evil.
"We can work on this all day," Kellerman said. "There're a couple appointments too important for me to cancel. I can clear the rest of the day."
"Thank you."
When Sara looked up from her bagel, she saw Kellerman was looking strangely at her. Don't thank him for doing something that's as natural to him as breathing. Still, it mattered to her, that she still saw what he did for her as services he was under no obligation to give her, even if he didn't.
"I'd rather ask you this after you've slept, but if you say your head is clear, I trust you. Just so you know… I can deal with this however you wish me to." Then he said the thing Sara knew was inevitable. "There are other spheres in your life to consider. If you say we take the deal, I'll write you the most convincing story you've ever read about sudden illness making you indisposed for four years. Hell. I can write you into a kidnapping story and make you an American hero before you can snap your fingers, and you'll be sipping martinis in a sunny island for the whole of Bagwell's term. There'll be time to fix his mistakes later."
"No point." She said. "No deal. I'm sure about this. If Bagwell runs the video, I'll handle it as I've handled everything in my campaign – with directness and honesty. I can look at the people in the face and tell them I have a sex life that's unfortunately become public. If they won't elect me because of it, so be it – but that's on them, not me. What I can't do is lie to them so I'll fit more perfectly in the box of great world leaders. The rules haven't changed, Paul. And I'll play the game until I'm buried."
Kellerman put down his bagel, like such speeches required solemnity.
He didn't need to say he'd follow her to the world's end.
"So," he said, "we work on how we'll take this. Your response to the video – your accusation on Bagwell."
"They're going to be back here again tomorrow morning. Maybe if we've got enough to show them what a bad idea this is, they'll back down."
Kellerman didn't nod at this, and Sara wasn't expecting confirmation.
Both of them knew when people have gotten this far into the game, no degree of dirty-playing is out of the table.
They'd see it through to the end.
One way or another.
…
Around lunch time, during which neither she or Kellerman thought of pausing for food, Sara excused herself to the bathroom for a few minutes and, trying not to feel like a sneaky teenager, she dialed Michael's number.
Huddled in one of the cabins, with her fist pressed to her forehead, her other hand holding the phone to her ear. No amount of reasoning would quiet her hammering-heart, beating against her ribcage.
Sara reached voicemail and dialed again. Please leave a message after the –
"Damn it," she sighed.
However hard it was for her to take a step of distance from this whole thing, Sara could see, very soon, it would strike her, how damaging for Michael this had to be.
His brother.
The very brother he'd painted to her as an incredibly kind-hearted man who'd made one bad choice after the other, the brother she'd understood had been the center of his life for so long –
Some people live a whole life without witnessing such devotion.
And of course, Michael didn't do things halfway. The love he'd shown her was so unconditional and absolute, the greatest, most complete thing Sara had ever known.
Michael made love look easy, like some people do religion. Something that at once takes possession of you without it being of any use to struggle.
If he's lost Lincoln, he needs to know he has me. That he won't lose me.
Jesus, and I left that motel in such a hurry –
How selfish. Worrying about my career. Where is he what is he doing?
Please let him be at work with his phone turned off, or so sound asleep he can't hear the ring –
The thoughts struck not one after the other but all at once, until Sara needed to shut all of them out. She tried Michael's phone one last time and didn't leave a message, not even just call me back. Messages were unsafe.
When she returned to Paul's office, he didn't comment on her short absence, and she knew no crack in her face betrayed concern or disappointment. But there was a shift in the air, an ungraspable hint of unspoken-ness in their silence, and she knew he'd picked up something about her below-surface disturbances.
He isn't through with this, caution reminded Sara. Don't you fool yourself. Paul was by rule the least pleased person about any harm coming to her political career, and that secret boyfriend of hers had been a nasty pill to swallow.
He's not swallowed it yet.
Bad surprises might still come out of this.
"While we're talking," he said. She knew, from the tone he used, that he was going to broach the subject. "When you consider making the video public, you don't think that's something you should discuss with someone else."
Sara took this with composure but directness – meeting Kellerman's gaze. "You know as well as I do the video's not enough to identify him. Maybe if you knew him really well," only as well as she or Lincoln knew him, "and of course, there'll be some buzzing about it – people will look for resemblances with celebrities, he'll be a famous actor or rock singer or one of my main opponents. The more scandalous, the better. But he'll remain unidentified," as always, her man of shadows, her lover-in-the-dark. "Let's not pretend you haven't tried looking for him."
"And a bad job of it, too." He answered. "But I've watched the video once, in your company, without screening through every person that's ever been in contact with you. If Bagwell goes through with this, people are going to get the chance to watch it again and again, until they find him."
Ah. Clever.
She could see what he was doing there.
There was no risk of Michael's identity being discovered, she knew. But if he made her think there was, if he made it look like he could help her protect him, like he was on her side –
But he would never be on her side about this.
If he knew who Michael was, if he even had suspects in mind, he'd take them down one by one – Sara's mind didn't shy away from devising in what way he would do that. Blackmail. Threat. Coercion.
They both knew there were no lengths he wouldn't go to.
"I won't tell you who he is, Paul." She said.
There was no reason this shouldn't be simple.
"I didn't ask."
"And now, you won't have to."
Though they said no more about this, and Kellerman proved as efficient as ever in establishing a counterattack plan, Sara could feel this wasn't over (the pill hasn't been swallowed) and knew she should be careful about it coming back to blow up in her face.
It was a little over eleven p.m. when they decided to call it a night.
She'd been so vehement in preparing a solid response to her upcoming disgrace, Sara could almost swear all of it had already happened – the paparazzi firing questions at her, hisses from the crowd, Bagwell's feignedly shocked speech on television. It had happened, in some lesser reality, in the myriad extrapolations Sara's own mind created for her to watch unfold.
All the while, part of her was still focused on getting only Michael's voicemail –
Please let him be all right, please don't let him hate me for this.
"You know, I actually think we can pull this off," Kellerman told her. Sara met his gaze with ready alertness. "Pitting you against a crowd of evil puritans. If someone can sport a scarlet letter and come out all the more glorious for it, it's only right it should be you – I can't think of anyone else."
Whether tiredness had made him blunter than usual, Sara couldn't say. For the sake of knowing what he'd say next if she urged him, Sara arched a brow.
"Oh, I don't mean because I associate with sexual scandal in general –"
It was rare enough he should get so tangled in his speech. Sara smiled, failing not to enjoy this.
"You know, how when it's time for a radical change, people need to gather around a figure, someone who'll embody a transition between the old order and the new."
"Jesus, Paul."
"Well, not Jesus exactly."
"I expected you'd handle the lack of sleep more impassively."
He smiled, too, at her teasing. "And I'd expect you were better at taking compliments."
"Oh, was that what you were going for?"
"I don't have to say I believe in you." Now, he sounded a little irritated – this was getting a little sentimental to his liking. "And before you, I had no strong opinion about any sort of real change that this country's politics needed. There are surprisingly few presidents who've actually changed the way things were done in this country, Sara – Abraham Lincoln, FDR. I'm inclined to think the social system in America will remember you forever."
Sara shrugged with humility. "Not every president had a sex tape going viral on the net."
There was no time for further banter before Sara's cell phone started ringing – graveness returned to her face as fast as it had left.
Michael.
Her own pulse was deafening at her temples. Before she could help it, she'd reached for the phone inside her jacket and unclasped it in one motion, pressing it to her ear under Kellerman's watchful gaze.
"Hello?"
Hope was still raging in her breast when a deep voice answered at the other end of the line, "It's Lincoln."
…
End Notes: Let me know your thoughts as always. The title is an obvious reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter.