"Don't!" Michael screamed as Sara hurried to Kellerman.

It was a sheer reflex. Part of her didn't really care if this man bled out in the hall of her building, but her brain ran without her. Shots to the leg could be fatal if you didn't stop the blood flow soon enough.

Michael walked past Sara all the way to where Kellerman lay collapsed on the floor, and he used the butt of the pistol to knock him out. Then he picked up the handcuffs and tied him to the stair railing.

"Now," Michael said, "you can help him."

Sara knelt by the man's side. The disgust she felt at being near him wouldn't stop her from doing her job, and it would be pointless to consider leaving him to die. She refused for this to become a moment that would haunt her for years to come. Careful not to look at Kellerman's face, she went to unbuckle his belt and take it out of his pants, until she could tie it around his leg. She made the knot as tight as she could. It was the only thing she could do without proper equipment.

"Come," Michael told her. Sara looked back, and their eyes locked for the first time since he had arrived. "We'll call an ambulance in the car. Sara, I'm sorry I got you involved in all this, but you have to come with me."

Sara's eyes lowered to the gun Michael was still holding. He realized this, clicked on the safety and hooked the gun around his belt.

"I'm not threatening you," he said. "I'm not trying to kidnap you. But if you don't come with me now, more people like him will come."

"Where would we go?" she said.

"You'll have to trust me."

She laughed, though frankly she was rather in the mood to cry. "Can you give me one reason why I should?"

His eyes darkened slightly. Maybe she wasn't being fair with him. But he had sent her life off the rails without leaving her a choice. Whether he'd meant to or not, he had sent a trained killer to her door. Sara knew that Michael liked her, though it had been nothing like what Kellerman had suggested. She knew this without needing confirmation, the way unspoken messages get sent between two people. He liked her and he had ruined her life, and there was nothing fair about that.

He opened his mouth, and Sara thought he was going to say he had come here to save her, after all. But he said, "Because I trust you. I've trusted you even when I couldn't trust anyone else."

Kellerman stirred mildly on the ground and Sara jumped back a step. The look in Michael's eyes was clear when she looked up. They didn't have time to argue.

…

"We could go to the police," she said when she followed him outside.

Now that the adrenaline had worn down, she was aware of the fact that she was barefoot and naked under her bathrobe. The feel of the asphalt against her feet wasn't enough to shake how surreal this all felt. Maybe she was going to open her eyes and realize she'd fallen asleep in her bath, and all of this was just an especially unpleasant nightmare.

Then she felt her swollen lip with her tongue, felt the blood caking around her eyelid when she blinked.

Michael looked back at her. He was ahead of her and turned around to check how she was doing. The state she was in seemed to hit him all at once. Like he, too, had been too absorbed by their confrontation with Kellerman to notice.

"I'm sorry," he said. He took off his jacket – tweed, and slightly oversized – and gave it to her. "I didn't think."

"Never mind that."

True, had it happened at any other time, Sara would have felt quite embarrassed at standing almost nude in front of one of her patients. The very thought of wearing Michael's clothes was incredible, seeing as part of her still couldn't picture him wearing anything other than his inmate's uniform.

She slid on the jacket and held it closed with her fist. "We can't just stay here in the streets," she took a look around. Her neighborhood was fortunately desert in the evening. Still, if the occasional passerby was taking a stroll, she doubted they would go unnoticed. Mostly though, she was worried that Kellerman would wake out of his daze and call for backup. Maybe more people like him were coming, anyway. Maybe –

"Don't worry," Michael said. "I have a plan."

The sound of a vehicle riding down the street made Sara's heart race. "Michael –"

"It's okay. He's with us."

Sara turned around. The car stopped at their level but didn't park. It was an old thing. She could hear the motor running even from the sidewalk.

The car door opened and Sara looked inside. The man at the driving wheel was bulky, with green eyes and a face a little too red, but that might be from the heat of the moment. His skull was completely shaved, still Sara recognized him perfectly from the pictures in Michael's file. He was Michael's brother.

"Get in," he said. "There's more of them coming."

Sara let Michael usher her into the backseat, her eyes frozen on Lincoln. It wasn't until then that she realized the implications of everything that had happened.

Michael's mania about the men in black and his brother's being alive was real. After all this time, here was the answer to the Michael Scofield enigma: the man was just as sane as she was.

…

The car smelled like cigarette smoke ad juicy fruit gum. Somehow, Sara could not picture either man as responsible.

"Was this car stolen?" she asked.

"Of course not," Michael said.

Lincoln met her eyes in the rearview mirror. "Well," he said. "Not today."

Michael looked annoyed, but not caught in a lie. "Amazing," he said. "So, we steal cars now."

"Hey," Lincoln said, "it's not like that. But you know. Desperate times."

Michael looked back at Sara. He had sat with her in the backseat instead of riding shotgun next to his brother. Had he done it so she would feel safe, or did he fear she would throw herself out of a moving car? Sara hoped it was the former. She was no hysterical girl out of a cheap horror flick. She hoped Michael knew that.

After they had been riding for a few minutes, he said, "You're hurt."

She realized he was looking intently at her face. Her brow bone wasn't broken, but a steady trickle of blood was still pouring down her cheek, getting into her eye. "I'll need stitches," she said.

"Good thing you're a doctor," Lincoln offered.

Sara didn't answer. It was too early for her to be in the mood to laugh, so she went for sarcasm, "Yeah, stitching your own face up is just the best."

"I'm sorry I got you involved into this," Michael repeated.

A sting of pleasure surprised Sara as he said the words. The anger that followed was just as surprising. Michael should apologize. If it wasn't for him, right now she'd be in no more danger than risking to slip out of her bathtub. She would be –

What? Sara wondered. Blissfully ignorant of the fact that a young man had been wrongfully locked inside an asylum under her care? That his brother had needed to fake his death in order to escape corrupt government agents, and these same agents would do whatever they needed to kill him, and Michael, and as of today, Sara herself?

Michael wasn't to blame. He had been a victim of terrible circumstances, and he had done nothing to involve her into this. After all, he could have trusted her. Sara had always felt Michael was different from the other patients, and if he had really tried to convince her, she supposed he could have. He must have avoided it precisely so she would be safe. The only thing he was guilty of was saving her life when Bagwell attacked her.

"Please, don't apologize," she said. "I'm the one who's sorry." She lowered her eyes to her hands. Hopefully, Michael would know it was to stop the blood from dripping into her eye, not because she shied away from looking at him. "You were my patient. I was supposed to help you."

"Don't blame yourself for this," Michael said, more firmly than she would have expected. Though he didn't raise his voice, she could detect the anger below the surface. "The men from the company – men like Kellerman – they did everything to make sure no one would know the truth. They never gave me a chance to speak to someone in a situation where I might be believed. I'm persuasive enough. Maybe I could have convinced reasonable people that what I said was true. So what they did was wrap the truth into one single lie that would discredit me absolutely. You believed I was insane, because everything else in my file was true. I was obsessed with the company. I'd been unable to bear the death of my brother."

Lincoln's eyes flashed to them in the rearview mirror.

"You couldn't have known the truth," Michael said.

"But I did," Sara shook her head. "That's the worst of it. If I'd just trusted what my gut told me –"

"You would have brought your suspicions to your boss. They would have heard about it. Kellerman or someone like him would have gone to see you and staged your suicide."

Sara shuddered. It was all too easy to believe Michael was right.

"Trust me," he said, "neither of us would have been better off."

She was looking at her hands again, and she saw him approach before felt him. His hand brushed hers softly. She could feel how attentive he was to her reaction. If she stiffened, he would withdraw it immediately. But she didn't move and he covered her hand with his.

"You did everything you could," he said. "You brought me – comfort. There wasn't a lot to hold on to in the asylum. Sometimes, I think I could have lost it completely. But you always treated me with kindness."

That didn't make Sara feel better. She didn't think there was anything to be proud of in treating people with the respect they deserved. It didn't erase the fact that a sane man had been under her care for months, and she'd been unable to do anything meaningful to help him. Sara wasn't the kind of person who forgave herself easily. Somehow, she sensed that neither was Michael.

They hit a bump in the road and their hands broke apart. "Sorry about that," Lincoln said. "We're almost there."

"Almost where?"

Lincoln gave her a hesitant look in the mirror. "Uh –" he said, "you'll see."

Not long after, he stopped in front of a big warehouse, rolled down the window and banged on the door. "It's us!" he said.

The doors of the warehouse opened and the car rolled in.

…

End Notes: Please tell me what you thought of this chap in the comment section. I'm open to suggestions if you've got ideas for the story. Or other stories. Some of my favorite fanfics came from my readers' ideas, so don't hesitate ;)