Four Snapshots

1.
"What are you doing?"
"I want to remember this."
"No─"
"Oh come on─ come on V just one?"

Her voice is nothing but artificial static in his ear. She sits so close he can see the change in her face; he imagines the razor sharp angles would slice him open if he touched her. There are no tears in her eyes. There is no sheen of sadness, no damp hope.

She is sitting so close he can see the absolute conviction. She knows he is guilty. She's got her elbows resting on the counter and she is leaning in so close her forehead nearly touches the glass. She's so close there's no space between them anymore. When he looks at her now he can't see the tangled sheets and naked skin and the laughter.

He wants to remember her head on his shoulder and her fingers on his chest but she's too close, she is smothering all the warmth between them and there is no space left for his memories.


2.
"Okay but, what if something happens to you?"
"You just─ have a little faith."

When Michael visits he sits a couple of feet away from the partition. It's a deliberate thing, the way he moves the chair every time. When Lincoln tells him that he is going to be executed in three weeks he is afraid that the real meaning of those words is lost in that intentional space.

Because what he is really saying is that only innocent men can be executed. But Michael doesn't hear that and his eyes are wet with a bitter mix of grief and betrayal. Michael asks for a promise and Lincoln wants to give him one but he is afraid it won't make it through all that space.

3.
"I love you. I've always loved you."
"This whole thing─ I don't know if I can take it."

The first time he touches his son it's only pieces of contact through metal bars. But then LJ shifts in his chair and Lincoln is left with only the metal.

He tells his son that he loves him. LJ's eyes water and his breath hitches and Lincoln hates that he understands why he tries so hard to hold it all in. The two of them are strangers related only because Lincoln fucked up once a long time ago and he's only ever been nothing to the son that shouldn't have been his.

So when LJ doesn't say I love you back Lincoln pushes his fingers through the metal bars to find more pieces to touch and he tries not to feel guilty for waiting until he was dying to love his son.

4.
"I'll do it alone."

Lincoln isn't an innocent man. He is innocent of this one particular crime, but he's committed others. He was going to end up here anyways, which is why he gives that piece of paper back to the warden blank. He doesn't want anyone to see him die, he's been dead to everyone he loves for a long time anyways.

They've all seen him in this place, handcuffed in a cage, leaving his fingerprints on the glass with all the other doomed men who came before him. They've all seen him shuffle, they have all seen him pushed and prodded by prison guards back to a cell where he waits to die.

He isn't afraid of dying. He's learned there are worse things than no longer being alive.