Title: Drowning
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael, Lincoln
Prompt: 051: Water
Word Count: 4,669
Rating: Pgish/PG13ish
Summary: Lincoln dreams before the escape
Disclaimer: Paul Scheuring and a whole lot of other people who aren't me own Prison Break.
-
The first time he has the dream is exactly a week before the escape.
He's sitting in front of a river, one near his grandparents' house that he's only been to a handful of times, and not since he was about nine years old. He sits and watches the river, everything around it blurred – but clear at the same time, crystalline and familiar. He's sitting in a chair in front of the river, a large chair, wooden and solid but not at all comforting. He's watching the river, beginning to rage now, and suddenly his brother's head is poking out of the water. He watches his brother sputter and struggle and drop beneath the water's surface, then emerge again a moment later with a long arm that reaches out towards him. He continues to stare, does nothing but watch as his brother flails and dips beneath the surface again, and this time he doesn't come back up.
Lincoln springs awake, jerking off of the cold bunk and spinning his head around to see where he is. He blinks a few times, eyes bleary in the thick darkness, and it takes him a few more moments to realize that he's alone in his cell, not out on a riverbank in the woods. Not watching his brother drown.
He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees and breathes a shaky sigh, then runs a hand back and forth over his head a few times, trying to slow down his heartbeat. This is nothing, Lincoln tells himself, just a dream, no big deal, nothing to worry about. His brother's stuck in a cell somewhere else in this building, but he's alive and probably asleep and maybe snoring, but he's definitely not drowning, nowhere near it.
It's just a stupid, fucking dream that's freaked him out a little in it's strangeness, but it's nothing to go to pieces over.
Lincoln releases a burst of air to put a period on his slight bout of panic and stretches his arms over his head for a moment before flopping back onto his bunk with a thud. His eyelids start to feel heavy and by the time they fall closed he can't even remember what it was he was so afraid of.
-
The second time he has the dream is five days before the escape.
He's sitting in front of the river again, and again he's not doing much of anything except watching the water get higher and rougher and angrier, waves slapping against the shore near his feet but never touching him. He can see wind tossing the branches of the trees across the river but he can't feel anything. Looking back down to the water he spots Michael again, dark head shooting out of the water with a wide-open mouth taking in huge gulps of air before he disappears back beneath the surface. His hands grasp and claw at the water, trying to pull himself back up, and when he finally does come back out LJ is with him. The pair of them push against the raging water, search for shore, breathe in desperately, and sink back down, water crashing over their heads. He continues to sit and stare out at them, feels no urge to rush in after them, even when he sees his son crying out for him before disappearing finally. The only discomfort he feels is the harsh stiffness of the chair he's sitting on.
Lincoln falls halfway off of his bunk when he wakes jarringly, bracing himself with a hand on the floor, the shock of which alerts him immediately to where he is. He knows everything's okay – relatively – but that doesn't stop his heart from fluttering and his stomach from flipping over itself.
After pushing off the floor he settles onto his back and stares up at the shadows spilling across the ceiling, resting one hand on his stomach while the other is tossed above his head to hang off the bunk. He stews over the dream for a while, wondering what it could mean, besides the obvious. He's worried about his family, he knows that, but there's something else about this that he can't quite get a hold of. He turns over the dream, has already forgotten most of it already, but can see clearly in his head Michael flailing, can hear LJ screaming, and remembers his own calmness as he'd watched them. He can't figure out why he just sat and let his brother and his son drown.
He feels almost like he's killed them even though it was his subconscious and he'd had no real control over it. And, he reminds himself, they're not dead, either of them. He's never as certain nowadays about LJ as he is about Michael, who he sees every day, but he keeps his sanity while locked away in here by reminding himself that he just talked to Veronica, just a few days ago got a message from his son, and he knows LJ's still breathing.
But there's still something about this dream, something else that he's not placing. He can feel it, like a memory just beyond his reach and he can almost grasp it, except his eyes are falling closed again and he's drifting off and maybe, he thinks with his last fleeting bit of awareness, maybe tomorrow he'll think of it.
-
The third time he has the dream is three days before the escape.
He's leaning forward this time, elbows on his knees and hands clasped in front of him, breathing out a peaceful sigh while the chaotic river churns in front of him. It only takes a moment this time for Michael to turn up, caught in the middle of it with LJ popping his head out just after him. Michael's holding onto LJ's sleeve, thrashing and fighting to keep both of them above water but he can tell his brother is loosing the battle. LJ scrambles like a fish, pushes against the bursts of water trying to force him down and both of them are screaming, looking out towards the shore, but somehow they don't seem to see him sitting up in his uncomfortable chair several yards away. Michael looses his grip suddenly and LJ is lost to the whitecaps spilling over him. Another moment and Michael is gone from sight as well, the only trace of him a brief swirl of water that gets lost quickly amidst the angry river. Lincoln watches the spot where his brother and his son were a few moments before and wonders why there are pieces of medal jutting out from this big wooden chair.
This time he jerks awake so hard that he tumbles out of bed to the floor, smacking his head on the cold concrete. He knows immediately that it was just a dream, but that doesn't stop his breathing from coming in short, panicked gasps, his chest rising and falling like a bouncing spring.
The next morning he asks the doctor while she takes his blood pressure if she knows anything about dreams.
She frowns and replies, "Not much. I took a few psychology classes in college and did a stint in the psych ward during my residency, but that's about it. Why do you ask?"
"Nothing, nothing," he replies quickly, waving a hand heavily through the air. "Just been having these, uh… I don't know, having some weird dreams lately. But that's probably normal, right?"
He's trying to be casual about it but she doesn't smile at him when she replies, "Yeah. I'd expect it is." She's quiet for a moment and he's starting to wish he hadn't brought it up, not sure what exactly he was expecting – for her to listen to his dreams and have some miraculous insight that will make them go away, he guesses.
"Would you like me to give you something to help you sleep?" she continues, drawing out her notepad and jotting a few things down.
"Nah, thanks," he replies with a shrug, and suddenly he really wants to not be thinking about these dreams anymore. "It's nothing really. No big deal." He flashes her a quick smile and she looks at him like she doesn't believe him, but lets it pass with a nod and starts to gather up her things. What does it matter anyway, he's sure she's thinking. Dreams might freak you out a little, but they can't kill you.
-
The fourth time he has the dream is two days before the escape.
He's back in the chair, that hellish, awful chair that he hates, but watching the river is soothing. He feels completely calm when he sees the horrific stream of water rising into whitecaps that break with crashing noises at random, seeing his brother and his son fighting for lives amongst them. And Veronica is there now too; it's the first time she's there with his family, but at the same time it feels like she's always been there. Michael and LJ cling to each other while she floats nearby, her hair a deep ebony and plastered to her pale face. She chokes down gulps of the river while LJ screams and slips below the surface. Veronica follows a few moments later after flailing about some, but Michael remains for a moment longer, yelling out Lincoln's name in a strangled sort of gasp that Lincoln can somehow hear over the rushing water. Michael does his best to push himself up out of the water, but the current is too strong and finally wrestles him down below, never to return.
Lincoln hates himself when he finally tosses himself awake, arms flailing about wildly. He's not sure why he should make such movement when he wakes, he does nothing but sit in these dreams, but now he's almost glad for the ugly feelings he keeps waking with because he deserves them. He's drowning his family each night in his dreams and doesn't seem to care until he wakes up and can't do anything about it. He still knows that there's something there, something he knows he should know about this but just can't quite remember. He spends much of the rest of the night trying to figure it out and drifts off hours later staring at the bars on his cell's window with the river raging through his head.
He wanders over to his brother that afternoon in the midst of repainting an anonymous hallway in the bowls of the prison and lets out a sleepy yawn by way of greeting.
Michael grins at him for a moment, then seems to sober up when he asks, "Having trouble sleeping?"
"Eh, nothing I can't handle," Lincoln replies, cocking his head to the side and trying to brush away his brother's concern. He pauses for a moment and dips his paintbrush into the bucket of white paint at Michael's feet, then asks hesitantly, "Do you remember much about Grandpa?"
Michael looks startled for a moment by the question, brush pausing in mid-stroke, but Lincoln can see him thinking it over as the expressions change on his face. Finally he tips his head back a bit and says with a furrowed brow, "Not really, only a few things, I guess. I was only six or seven when he died. I remember… he liked John Wayne movies. And he always smelled like raisins. But that's about it, I think. Why?"
Lincoln shakes his head and looks at the blank wall in front of him. "Just trying to remember something. Something he told me once. Thought maybe you might know."
"Are you okay?" Michael asks him and Lincoln glances at him with the briefest feeling of guilt flashing through him, like someone raking their nails across his stomach. As soon as he can place the feeling it's gone and he looks away from his brother with a noncommittal shrug.
"Yeah, yeah, just one of those things you know. Like when you can't remember the words to a song and they're right there on the tip of your tongue, like you can taste 'um or something, but just can't quite get 'um. Been driving me crazy trying to remember what it was he told me. Something about dreams, and… swimming or something, I don't know."
"I'm sure it'll come to you," Michael says automatically, the kind of unhelpful thing you always say in this kind of situation when there's no real advice to give.
"Yeah, I know. No big deal." Lincoln gives him a half-smile, putting an end to the brief conversation, then elbows his brother and nods towards the wall. "You know, you missed a spot."
"What? Where?" Michael turns to look where Lincoln is pointing and Lincoln takes the opportunity to brush paint across Michael's cheek.
Michael turns and glares at him, rubbing his shoulder across his cheek to wipe it off while Lincoln laughs at him.
"You're such a jerk. Seriously, how old are you?"
Lincoln just chuckles and moves down the wall while his brother glowers after him. His laughter fades quickly as he gets a flash in his mind of Michael struggling and sinking, and the worrisome ache from the middle of the night settles itself back into his stomach. He trusts his brother implicitly, but something about this situation feels wrong, and awful, more so now even than a month ago.
-
The fifth time he has the dream is the night before the escape.
The river is furious now, destroying anything and everything in its path, except Lincoln, who remains somehow immune up on the shoreline, watching everything below like some sort of weary god. He watches his family fighting, gasping, clawing, sputtering in the water while he sits up in his chair, leans against the stiff back and brings his arms up to lay them on armrests that, for some reason he's not entirely sure of, have heavy leather straps. Veronica emits a few wordless cries before succumbing to the heavy, angry water, long hair the last evidence of her to sink down beneath the surface. LJ bobs up and down several times, choking and spitting out water each time his head emerges. His eyes are closed, like he can't quite get them open with the thrust of waves upon his face, and Michael's next to him, trying to hold them both up above the water. But ultimately, just like each other night, LJ slips through Michael's fingers and disappears from view despite Michael's best efforts. Lincoln is still sitting far away, up in the distance above it all, but somehow he can see the tears streaking down his brother's face amidst the torrent of river surrounding his head, he can hear his name being called in that strangled gasp again. But it feels okay, he feels remarkably calm, a tranquility he hasn't felt in years – maybe ever – watching his brother drown.
Awareness comes to Lincoln easily on this night, slips in before his eyes are even open, and he sighs as sharp fear worms into his stomach and refuses to let go of him no matter how many times he says no big deal and just a dream in his head.
Realization hits him suddenly, frighteningly so, coming out of nowhere when he wasn't even pressing himself to think of his grandfather and that twisting old river by his house. His eyes snap open and he feels like he's been punched in the stomach as he remembers standing out there one day as a child with his grandfather nearby explaining to him about the Scofield family and luck. He still can't quite get at the exact words, but he knows it had something to do with dreams. His grandfather had had these same types of dreams – he'd dream of the people he loved sometimes, he'd told Lincoln. They always would drown in his dreams, and when it happened, it meant something for them.
Lincoln never believed in anything like fate or premonitions, probably why he had so little memory of this particular conversation. As a child he'd listened to his grandfather with rapt attention and filed the story away with a label of bullshit and never returned to it.
But lying here in the darkness of his cell, less than twenty hours from an attempt to escape prison using a plan he hardly understands, he begins to breathe more and more heavily, his heart starts hammering frantically, and he wonders if maybe his grandfather wasn't as senile as he'd thought when he was nine. He feels for all the world like this is the stupidest theory he's ever had, but he can't stop his mind from pouring over the idea that maybe these dreams are going to come true – what's going to happen if they try this today?
Michael's going to die. He's sure of it. And he knows that Veronica and LJ will succumb to the conspiracy chasing them. How they've both managed to survive this long caught in such an expansive web he's not sure, but it won't last much longer. Maybe they'll come looking for the escapees and will be caught out in the open, or perhaps Lincoln will lead the amorphous conspirators straight to his son, but somehow it'll happen.
It pains him even more thinking that he'll survive all of this. The dreams are going to come true, he's going to watch his family die, but somehow he'll make it, and the exchange is far too much.
He wants to live, wants so much to survive, but if his life has to come at the expense of his family, he's not sure he can do it. He's mulled this over before, whether Michael's sacrifice has been worth his life, but Michael had appeared before Lincoln knew anything about the plan, and with the possibility of survival waved so close in front of his face he couldn't do much more than give a few weak protests and then trust his brother.
The longer he lays in the dark listening to his own harsh breathing, the bigger the fear grows and the more certain he becomes that they can't do this. He thinks there may still be something else that he's missing, something else about this whole dream thing that is right on the edge of his mind that he's not quite touching. But it doesn't matter really because he can't do any of this if his family is going to die.
He never gets back to sleep that night and when he see Michael later that day he's starting to feel almost frantic, the remnants of terrible dreams mixed with several days' worth of lost sleep leaving him feeling unusually panicky.
"I don't think this is a good idea," Lincoln says when he sidles up the grated fence that separates him from the rest of the prison population.
Michael looks up from the leaves he's been raking with a frown. He looks confused, but seems to know exactly what Lincoln's talking about.
"What's wrong?"
"Dunno, it's just, uh… something, there's something really wrong."
"You're just getting jumpy because we're getting so close," Michael shakes his head, keeping his voice low and looking back down at the rake in his hands as if trying to look inconspicuous.
"No, no, that's not – there's something else about this whole thing, the, uh…" He trails off, not wanting to say the words out loud should someone happen by too close. This really isn't a conversation they should be having out in the open, right in the middle of the courtyard, but Lincoln can't stop when the fear still sitting on his stomach is twisting wildly.
"I've been having these dreams the last week or so," he tells his brother. Michael looks up at him with eyes full of concern and Lincoln worries for a moment that it's concern for his sanity more than his sleeping pattern. But he barrels on, wants to make his brother understand how sure he is despite how ridiculous it sounds.
"In these dreams – it's something Grandpa once told me about, he had the same ones, someone'd drown in them and then – and then it'd come true or something."
"So… you're saying you think something's going to happen tonight?" Michael reasons out slowly, looking like he's not buying a word of this.
But Lincoln nods furiously. "I keep, keep seeing, uh… you and LJ, you drown, and… look, just trust me, I've got this feeling… this thing isn't going to end well."
"Lincoln," Michael says like he's trying to reason with a child and Lincoln has a flare of anger, feeling belittled. "You're scheduled to be executed in a week, you're son's on the run from the cops, we're – I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for you to be a little freaked by it."
"I'm not freaked," Lincoln whispers angrily, forgetting himself and banging a hand against the fence. He remembers immediately where he is and they both look up quickly at the nearest guard who, thankfully, pays them no notice.
"You used to laugh at me for watching The X-Files," Michael says with a soft laugh. "You really think you're… what, dreaming about the future?"
"Fuck, I don't know, and don't be a smartass, alright? I'm just telling you… something's going to happen tonight, I'm sure of it. I'm sure, Michael, and I can't – in my dream I just sit there and let it happen, just sit and watch, I don't know why, and I can't do that."
"Lincoln," his brother says again in that calm, even tone of his that says just trust me. "We're getting out of here. We're getting out of here tonight. I didn't come all this way in here to leave you to the chair. I'm getting you out, and we're going to find LJ, and we'll be okay. Just have a little faith."
Lincoln glares at him, jaw set, but in a battle of wills with his brother, Michael will always come out on top. He's angry for those words thrown back at him, like Michael is daring Lincoln to believe in him, but he won't trust Lincoln's gut feeling.
He finally just gives his brother the barest of nods and turns his back on him, stalking off towards the other end of his courtyard feeling angry and frightened. He's not sure there's much more he can do with Michael so ready and everything set in place. He'll just have to… be extra careful he almost thinks, but that thought in itself is ridiculous; as if he wouldn't be as cautious as possible anyway.
His mind spins around for a while, thoughts of Michael, LJ, Veronica swimming through his head along with wonders of how to keep them safe and alive and finally Fuck is all he can say in his head.
-
They're driving, zipping down the dark highway that has far too few cars on it tonight for Lincoln to feel comfortable. He'd rather they were able to disappear in plain sight, slip in amongst a bunch of other cars, but so far there's been no sight of anyone chasing them down, so he tells himself to relax.
They're stuffed, the six of them plus their driver – a friend of C-Note's who's name he doesn't know and doesn't much care to even though the fate of the escape lies heavily on this man's driving abilities – into a sleek SUV, and Lincoln thinks he can feel the drumming of his brother's heart through the arm and leg plastered to his own. He wants to grab onto Michael, wants to touch some part of him to reassure himself that his brother is still here, but his arms feel too heavy to move, so he just stares hard out the window next to him.
Red lights flash suddenly behind them, brightening the whole car, and Lincoln can feel his heart stop. The atmosphere in the car is dead for a full minute before C-Note shouts, "Gun it!" and his friend jams a foot down on the gas.
They speed up, but the lights move closer and there's a brief but quiet chase over the empty highway.
Suddenly the window behind Lincoln's head explodes as a bullet rips through the car and everyone scrambles as best they can to get out of the way. Another follows, and a few more, and Lincoln's trying to push Michael down and out of the path of the bullets when he feels pain burst through him, erupting from the middle of his back.
He lets out an unmanly yelp and falls forward, reaching behind him briefly before he discovers how much more pain that causes. But he can feel the blood, sticky and wet and warm at his back, without having to touch it, and he knows this is bad. Nothing has ever hurt this badly, he doesn't know why he's even still awake and he just wants to die in that moment.
But he really, really doesn't want to die either.
"Lincoln," Michael says in a strangled gasp right next to ear, so close he can feel the rush of breath against his face. Michael crouches next to him and peers into his face with a look of fright. "Lincoln?" he says again, starting to sound more frantic. "Lincoln, Lincoln, shit, Lincoln!"
Lincoln shakes his head, doesn't know what he's shaking his head to, and leans forward to rest against the back of the driver's seat, unable to keep himself up anymore. Michael's hands are everywhere, one pressing against the hole in his back while the other sweeps across him everywhere his brother can reach, like he doesn't know what to do. Lincoln wants to smile at the thought that his little brother has finally found something he can't fix or put back together, but he can't muster up the energy to tip up the corners of his mouth.
The car speeds on and he can't hear bullets or sirens anymore, can't see any lights, but really all he can see at this point is his brother's look of desperation and fear and he feels his own fear edge away.
The pain is still there, sharp and acute, but even that's not so bad anymore, he thinks. Michael's crying now, he hates when Michael cries, but he'll be okay. It'll be okay. He's starting to remember that missing piece of memory now, feeling vindicated in a way, though just a little disappointed. Or maybe he would be if he had the strength for it. He really fucking wanted to live, damn it, but now he's sure his brother is, sure his son is, and he supposes that's good enough. He can't really get himself to be as angry as he thinks he should be, soothing calmness is washing over him, he feels heavy and tranquil and he's having trouble seeing Michael anymore, his brother is slipping away, but he's going to live. Lincoln's sure of it. He lets his eyes fall shut with that thought.
"You know, I have dreams about this river sometimes."
"Really?"
"Yup. They're weird ones – hell, most dreams are pretty weird, I guess, but these are… different."
"How?"
"I can't really explain it… been happening for years. I'll get this dream where someone – you or your brother or your mom or Grandma, someone in my family – is out there in the river, and I can't get 'um and they drown.'
"…Woah."
"Yeah, sounds kinda scary, huh? Thing is, though, after they drown, something good happens to 'um. Had a dream about your mom drowning a few days before she got that new job of hers. Had one 'bout Michael once and a week later they skipped him up out of kindergarten to the first grade."
"Weird."
"I know, I know, it sounds a little crazy, right? But it's true, all true. So you know Linc, if you want someone you love to have good luck, you drown them in your dreams."
-end-