They came together before it could be helped. Maybe there was a question in Michael's eyes, some request for permission, buried into the wild rush that made his head spin, and there must have been an answer in Sara's, the right answer, because their bodies fell into an embrace the way planets naturally follow the course of their orbit.

Sara sat up. She was half-aware of a sharp sting in her breast, low and underwater, beneath the numbness of drugs. He walked to her – though she was so little aware of anything outside his presence at the moment, he may have well have floated to her hospital bed.

Her hand reached out when he was close enough to touch. Pain stabbed from her chest down to her fingers. She could see an imaginary bullet travelling through her flesh with every move.

In her haste, she reached his cheekbone but lost her grip before she could draw him closer. Like he needed her help for that.

A delicious thought shot through her mind, He's real.

One second more and he closed in. His hands were on her face. The present crumbled into the past and Sara saw the stranger she had met at Charles's foodbank, and that private world she and Michael made in those motel rooms; a world that was like Penelope's tapestry, because they worked at it only to destroy it night after night.

His face was so close that she kissed him, maybe to see if he would taste of dreams. Maybe because it couldn't be helped, right at this moment.

Her thoughts weren't quite in order yet. To kiss Michael yesterday would have felt impossible, but yesterday was another lifetime ago. Now, Sara remembered the past two years in the White House as a haze of dark blue. Cold like the depths of the ocean. And so alone. So very alone.

He tasted of summer and resurrected memories. In a second, it came back to her how natural it had once felt to touch him. So natural neither of them had been able to help it. How her fingers would travel across his warm skin when they made love, and this spot in the crook of his neck that she was sure had been made for her face.

She wanted to touch him again but she knew the bullet would wake up inside her if she moved her hands. So she only kissed him. Lost herself into feeling. Thought: this is real, then this is a dream, and each side seemed to have its own share of validity.

The fact that she was president of the United States didn't seem like an obstacle anymore. Death would have been the true obstacle. She could feel that in the urgency with which he kissed her, the way his hands pressed tightly against her face, and in her mind she said, Don't let go. Don't let go. She was sure at the moment that he could hear her.

She wanted to cry, just at the thought that that spot in his neck still existed and that she had forgotten it for so long, the warm patch of skin where she buried her moans, and her teeth, when pleasure swelled into her hugely.

I'm alive, she thought. Finally. He's –

"Hum-hum."

They tore away, and as Michael moved, Sara saw her old friend, standing uncertainly by the door.

"Bruce!" she said.

She had utterly forgotten his presence, and really, the fact that anything existed right here and now except for Michael.

Bruce stared uneasily at the wall. "Believe me," he said, "I would love nothing more than to leave you two alone. Heaven knows you deserve it. Sadly, I can't leave this room without your advisors outside wondering what you're doing with my associate."

"Your associate?"

Sara's eyes darted back to Michael, and for a second, her body forgot why they had stopped kissing, why Bruce couldn't leave them alone, to hell with what everyone thought. I'd own up to it, she thought. They can't crucify me just because I have a lover.

But she managed to keep her body in check, and slowly, she remembered that every one of her actions would have consequences that would touch the whole country.

And she remembered, like a painful afterthought, that Michael was married.

Michael's face was a bit red. It could have been from the kiss, but she could guess that there was a bit of shame in it.

"We had to come up with something, so I could be here," he said.

Sara closed her eyes. His voice. After so long, to hear his voice –

So, he was real.

"How did you even meet?" Sara asked. That didn't really matter right now, but she couldn't do what mattered. The fact that Michael should be here when she had almost died made all the sense in the world, to Sara-the-woman. Sara-the-politician, however, needed an explanation.

Bruce and Michael exchanged a glance. There was still awkwardness, so she could tell they hadn't known each other for long, but it was overwhelmed by a deeper sense of understanding.

"It's a long story," Bruce said. "Probably better to save it for later."

He took a few steps closer. Sara wondered if he would have come to her bedside if the spot wasn't already occupied by Michael, and pink flew into her cheeks at the thought that what may have been the most intoxicating kiss in her life had taken place in front of him.

"We don't have much time," Bruce said. "Any minute, your father's going to be here."

"My father –"

Sara wanted to slap herself. It had been a long time since she'd played the part of the clueless girl parroting what other people said.

"All I mean to say," Bruce went on, "is that very soon, it's going to become much harder for the two of you to see each other. Whatever you need to work out, you need to do it now."

Sara's eyes flew back to Michael. He hadn't stopped looking at her.

His eyes were drinking her in, like a child who's entered a magical kingdom and who knows this whole world will disappear if he blinks.

"I hoped I could give you this at some other time," he said.

He took something out of his jacket. Sara unconsciously registered how strange it was, to see him in a suit, so different from the young man she'd met.

Then she looked down at his hands. He was holding an origami rose, faded by the years.

"But it could be worse. At some point, I thought Bruce might have to give it to you," he said, "so at least, there's that."

He handed the flower to her. Sara felt the charge of meaning as it rested into her palm.

"There's something written inside," he said, "but I'd prefer if you read it when you're alone."

Sara's throat jammed. "What's in it?"

"My phone number, among other things."

"You put your phone number inside an origami flower?"

"Obviously, it was meant for something else."

She almost asked, What?

But even in thoughts, the question drew her too easily into the past, like plunging into a warm bath. She wasn't sure she had the strength to go back to when she and Michael had last been a couple, to that Halloween night, and whatever he had meant to give her then.

Her eyes studied every inch of his face.

She tried to think of his wife but couldn't, and in some absurd logic, Sara felt certain that he didn't have a wife. Not really. He wasn't looking at her now like a lover, like he had saved some piece of his heart for her all this time. He was all hers. As he had been from the start. She was his wife, and any other attachments he had could not threaten her.

Just like politics was hers.

When I met him, I was already engaged, walking down the aisle the way some walk into a pit of fire. When I was near-married to that world, to the jungle, what could Michael be other than a lover?

Maybe Sara had loved him as strongly as he loved her, but she could never be his as he had been hers.

Though she knew nothing of the particulars regarding his recent wedding, Sara knew that his absolute devotion to her had not been altered.

Her hand was squeezing the rose, and she slackened her hold not to damage it. "You've waited a long time to give me that," she said.

He didn't need to say yes.

She could read the answer into his eyes.

Without being able to stop herself, she kissed him again. Bruce was watching, her heart was on fire, and Michael was married, but somehow that didn't manage to put an end to it.

His hands were on her face again. Less desperate than before, but more urgent, because he knew now that he must leave her as soon as that hospital door opened.

Bruce sighed. "I'm sorry. We don't have time. Sara, you know you can't be found like this."

She knew.

But the kiss was so sweet, flying her away from the possibility of dying, that for a few more minutes, she couldn't resist.

…

Paul Kellerman was buying dinner at the cafeteria downstairs. "Dinner" might be overselling it. A baloney sandwich, with toast chewy as a mouthful of rubber. Kellerman didn't want the food, but he believed in self-discipline. The body needed calories, water, sleep. When you weren't in the mood for it, that was just your problem.

Plus, he needed to give himself something to do while Sara was seeing Bruce. She would need rest, too, and he would need to give her some space. Instead of eating the sandwich on his way back to the waiting room, he sat at a table, trying to drag each bite for as long as he could.

What was he going to do next? Work. Yes, work would probably fill his head with all the distraction he needed. It was lucky he'd need to work double while Sara was recovering, because he didn't know what he would have done if he'd had to go back to his apartment, and even pretend he had a life outside the White House.

"Hey."

Kellerman looked up with distaste and saw Gretchen Morgan, standing before his table. She had a mug of coffee in her hand.

"You're back," he said.

"You make it sound like that's not a good thing."

She sat opposite him without asking for permission.

"What are you doing?"

"Having coffee with you. Come on, Paul, we've been together all afternoon, simmering in our own fear. These are things people bond over."

"I don't bond. And I like eating alone."

She looked like he had told a good joke. "That doesn't surprise me. So, you saw the president?"

"Yes. You should go home, Morgan. You have no business here. The president is resting, she can't see anyone."

"She saw you."

"Let's not get into who's her favorite."

"And she's seeing someone right now, isn't she?"

He sighed. "Bruce Bennett. An old friend of her father's."

"Right, Bruce. Did you see about his associate? It gave me quite a shock."

"What do you mean?"

She looked mischievous. Kellerman wanted to slam her head into the table. "You remember that tall silent guy he came in with?" Gretchen said.

"Yeah, what about him?"

"Apparently, he's some hotshot lawyer-vigilante. Bruce must have just hired him."

"Where did you read that?"

She shrugged. "The news. They sure travel fast these days. I'd heard about the guy before, but I didn't expect him to start working for a public figure – seemed like he valued his privacy."

But Kellerman wasn't listening. His sight flashed red, and his heart was pounding into his chest. "What's the man's name?" he said.

"Jesus, you're into a mood!" She laughed. "Michael. Michael Scofield."

Something exploded into Kellerman's chest. He dropped his baloney sandwich on the tray and started running.

…

End notes: Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Take care!