Epilogue

Former Residence of the Governor Tancredi, Chicago, two years later

They live in Chicago in plain sight.

Sara never thought she would inhabit the residence her father used as a governor again. It's too big and too expensive, but nevertheless, there they are. The new governor chose a new place to live, something more modern and in line with his taste. And the mortgage rate the bank gave them was favorable. Something about the crisis in real estate market, which is never ending these days, as far as Sara can tell.

After Montana, Sara believed Michael might want to move far away. To Panama, to be close to Linc, as he wanted in the times of Fox River, or even further. She was both surprised and pleased when she asked him about it, and he shook his head.

"No," he said. "We will not spend our lives hiding."

So they don't. Sara runs a small medical practice on the ground floor. As a family doctor and advisor to those who are still using, hoping she can make as many of them stop. She's been clean for several years now, but she will always feel a bit dirty when she remembers that time of her life.

Michael runs his own company too, employing a dozen people. He refuses to grow bigger than that. They build family homes and blocks of apartments. There have been many attempts asking Michael to design an institution, a hospital, a prison, but he has rejected them all.

Sara understands why, and she supports him in this decision even if they could use the extra money to pay the bills, and save for the education of their child.

Of their children. The thought feels strange, and it's too early to tell, and so many things can still go wrong with her pregnancy, but it's true nonetheless.

Mikey is doing his homework and she's making some food for all of them. She plans to tell Michael when he comes home. She hopes that maybe the news from the two of them will also make Lincoln change his mind. He has been adamant about not having any more children. He considers himself too old. Sofia disagrees, but so far she couldn't make him see things the other way. It's different with Alex, who has lost a child, and Sara can understand his reluctance about further procreation a little bit better.

There is soft clicking in the door and just like that, Michael is home.

"Daddy!" Mikey screams, "look, I drew a bear!"

The bear looks suspiciously like a kitten, but her husband still tells their son it's a great drawing of a bear, claws and all.

When he faces her, he nervously wrings his hands, and focuses on the carpet between them. That is when she knows he intends to say something as well. She wonders if his news will spoil her dinner, or not.

"Just say it, please," she says.

"What?" Mikey asks.

"I will build a road," Michael says, simply, but Sara knows that there is more.

"A road?" she inquires further.

"Kelly called," he says. "The road is in Mozambique," he clarifies. "So that people from a remote region have better access to schools and medical care. "

"Wasn't she overseeing such work herself? She contracted some local company, didn't she?"

"She was," Michael says, "but she can't do it now."

Then, he gazes at her stomach, and Sara knows what's wrong with Kelly. Or, to put it differently, there's nothing wrong but traveling to certain places can be difficult.

"Well, I couldn't travel now to Africa either," she declares, waiting for the meaning to sink in her husband's head. "Some of the recommended vaccinations are incompatible with my condition."

"What?" he says, "You too?" he stammers.

She nods.

"Well.. Vow... I don't know what to say," he admits. After two years they thought that the years on the run, or Michael's health problems have left a toll. They were never careful, yet Mikey never got a little brother or a sister.

Until now.

"We have to tell everyone," Michael says with enthusiasm. "Sucre and Maricruz will be thrilled. They've been nagging me about it for two years."

"Esperança and T-Bag can build the road," Sara states solemnly, as a judge dictating the sentence. "Kellerman can occasionally travel there to see that they don't screw up if they don't trust them to do it. I hear T-Bag has been stealing change from churches to buy cigarettes in the black market, but that's the worst thing he's done in two years."

"Okay," Michael says, sheepishly.

"Daddy," Mikey asks with apprehension she hasn't seen in her son for very long, since they got altogether again as family in Montana. "What's wrong?"

Sara realizes they spoke too loud and hurries to reassure her son. "Mikey," she says, "what daddy and I want to say is that if all goes well you will get a little brother or a sister in a while."

"I want a sister," Mikey says after some thinking. "Than I can buy girl toys as well, and not only boy toys."

"Good thinking, son," Michael says, chuckling.

"I'm going to tell Daisy," Mikey announces, running to the other part of a house, as fast as only a seven year old can.

"Daisy is getting stuffed," Sara says, slightly annoyed.

"We'll stop buying fish food," Michael agrees.

And then, she sees it's still not everything he wanted to say.

"Tell me," she encourages him to spill it all out for her.

"Kelly has never asked for anything, you know," he says. "Never tried to blackmail me, never put any conditions to setting us free after I murdered a man. Apart from the unorthodox method she used to employ me in St Agatha's, she never demanded anything else. It's just that I have been thinking after she called. I do have these unique abilities and they have been both used and abused in the past. And we know now how she's really working for the good guys..."

"Yes?" she knows where this is going and she sighs. She was always afraid this could happen, and now it's happening, against her wishes for a peaceful, boring existence.

"I mean... I thought... I wouldn't do it now, obviously," he says, crossing the distance between them, bending his head to press one of his ears on her still flat belly.

"One day," she says, halfheartedly.

"One day," he repeats. "It's just that, there are so many terrible people out there, like Ralph, like the guys who framed Lincoln and ran the Company. I should do something to help stopping them if I can."

"I know, baby," she says and she cradles her husband's head against her abdomen. She thinks she might cry because it's at that moment she remembers that those same guys killed her father.. "Don't I know that..."

"We will not hide," she says stubbornly when the moment of weakness is over.

"No," he says, and she can see the tears in his eyes as well.

"You can work for the good guys, Michael, if you wish," she finally allows it, because it's the right thing to do. And it gives her a measure of control: the trouble you start yourself may be more predictable than the trouble that finds you on its own.

"On one condition," she says, pulling Michael on his feet.

"Yeah?" he asks, staring at her eyes, too close to her face for their embrace to remain entirely innocent. And it's too early to do that because it's nowhere near Mikey's bedtime yet so they should better stop it. Now.

"Don't you dare dying on me, Mr Scofield," she says, as if mere words can prevent that from happening.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Mrs Scofield," he says and he smiles against her lips. But then, before he can say anything else, before he can make another promise he can't keep, before they can indulge in unwillingly educating their child in the ways of the grown-ups, there is a splash, and a sound of broken glass. And Mikey, who is not so little anymore, starts crying.

"Mom! Dad! Help! Daisy has fallen out!"

"I will start my new career by saving a goldfish from certain death," Michael says, "how difficult can it be?"

"As difficult as keeping all your toes," she murmurs.

Life cannot be stopped, no matter what we do, it will run its course.

Sara will help Michael when she can, she realizes. Of her own free will.

She is no longer afraid when she follows him out of the room.

THE END

A/N Thank you to everyone who reviewed, read, favourited or followed this story. I really enjoyed writing it. Stay well and god bless.