"Driftwood"
Sara dreams of angels.
They trace themselves over the insides of her eyelids and dance through her veins, painted in shades of blue and green and shadow. They run across her skin and make her think of Michael with every demon that they cut down, until she thinks that she can smell his aftershave and would see him sitting by her bedside if she could just force herself to wake up, wake up, wake up. It's a metronome chime inside her head, and the angels dance in time, their movements lazy and deliberate and their wings inked in such intricate detail that Sara can see the feathers fluttering at the tips. Wake up, wake up, wake up, as they circle around the dark, ugly bruise on her forearm that seems to grow larger by the moment, at alternate points resembling both a mouth and an eye.
"Wake up," Sara tries to whisper, and almost panics when a spike of pain shoots through her throat and she cannot. She tastes plastic. It feels as if she's been forced to swallow acid. Even though her thoughts are still coming fuzzy and unfocused, Sara is sure that these two sensations are related.
When Sara opens her eyes, there is nothing marking her arms except for the faint, silvery speckles of old needle tracks and the purple-blue bruise of the fresh one. No angels. No demons. Adrift, Sara thinks that she would even prefer the latter to sitting here alone. She raises her hand and touches her throat, only to wince and jerk her hand away quickly. She must have been on a breathing tube. Sara is more surprised to discover that she is not handcuffed to her bed on charges of aiding and abetting than she is to learn that she was on artificial respiration, and even more so when she turns her head and sees Warden Pope sitting by her bedside.
The warden smells of aftershave and stale cigarette smoke. Of course he does. Sara closes her eyes and lets her head sink further back against the pillow. Michael might have worn aftershave before his incarceration, but every time that he had come to her he had smelled of soap and a faint, heady undertone of male.
Warden Pope reaches out and takes her hand very gently in his own. Sara appreciates that. He has always been kind to her, rewarding her frankness about her past problems with a level of trust that she had certainly not been expecting when she had been given the job. Even the kindest of her rejections before she had applied to Fox River had still been rejections, those that had cited the cruelty of asking an alcoholic to work in a brewery rather than attacking a doctor who had allowed herself to abuse her power.
The warden continues to hold Sara's hand in his own as he tells her that she has been fired, and the only reason that she's not in cuffs right now is as a favor to her father.
---
Four days after she is told that the breathing tube was removed, Sara swears that she can still taste the plastic every time that she swallows or tries to speak. Her father might care enough to ask that she be left unrestrained until she can check out of the hospital and a more discreet location can be found, but that is where his concern ends. The silence created by his absence is deafening. Sara occupies her time by staring at the ceiling, sneaking discreet glances at the guard who has been posted at her door to ensure that she does not go running off down the hallway in her hospital gown, and wonders if Michael would have come up with a plan to tunnel beneath his bed using nothing more than IV tubing and hospital jello. A moment later, she throws Michael straight out of her head and feels the world list back and forth around her, like the movement of the sea. More than once, she has to fight to keep herself from crying.
Sara doesn't dream of angels that night after she finally wakes. She doesn't dream of anything at all and suspects that she might be getting some pharmaceutical help in that regard. Sara can only imagine the look that the disgraced junkie doctor might be given if she were to ask. The bruise on her arm is still only a bruise, not an eye or a mouth or any type of portal that could get her the hell out of here. She remembers now how safe she felt while she was dreaming, as if by carrying a tattoo like Michael's she could bring him close to her again, and feels her lips press into a thin line. Anger is so much better than despair. She treasures it. Sara pokes at her new bruise and swears softly at the pain. She thinks that she's really swearing at Michael-okay, she knows that she's really swearing at Michael-if only the son of a bitch was here to hear it.
"Well, you did stab yourself pretty hard," a gentle doctor who won't meet her eyes tells her the next day when she remarks on how dark the mark remains. "Broke the needle off." He doesn't ask her whom she was that angry with. You don't inject yourself with that much morphine because you're having a bad day. When the doctor tells her that she drifted in and out of consciousness for nearly a week before she opened her eyes and found Warden Pope sitting by her bedside, Sara tries not to let too much of her shock show. She pretends that she is still mulling over this fact and thus does not hear him as the doctor asks her, always so gently, if the overdose was accidental, or if she was really trying to hurt herself. This way she does not have to tell him that she still does not know.
When a hand comes down over her mouth in the small hours of the morning, the only thing that keeps Sara from screaming before she manages to wake up fully is the belief that it's Michael, somehow, that he's come to rescue her. If nothing else, she should probably not scare him away before she has the chance to tell him off first.
But the hand does not belong to Michael, Sara realizes as she shakes the last shrouds of sleep from her brain. It belongs to a much older man, in his late fifties or early sixties even though he still looks hale and strong, and he has thick silver hair. His eyes are a sharp, distinct shade of blue, but so are a lot of people's. This does not stop Sara from shrieking against his hand and flailing for the nurse's call button. The palm over her lips only clamps down harder, and Sara can feel her eyes go wide with terror. As if leaning over panicked women is as everyday to him as stopping by the convenience store on his way home for a pack of cigarettes, the man says in a conversational tone, "Miss, I'm here to help you a lot more than I am to hurt you." He pulls out her IV and, grabbing her thrashing fists and holding them together with one hand, lifts her from the bed as easily as if she weighs nothing at all.
Sara draws her breath in for another scream that would bring the tile down from the ceiling when she sees her guard, unconscious at best or dead at worst, dragged into the room and dropped just a few feet from the door.
"I didn't hurt him," the man carrying her says before Sara can make a sound. "I need you to make a decision here, Ms. Tancredi. Tell me that you want me to put you back, and I will. You can serve out your sentence for the role that you played in the escape, and I can guarantee that it will be a long one. They need to punish someone for how badly their plans are going off of the rails now. You've read my son's file. You know exactly what I'm talking about."
His son. Sara takes a closer look at the man's face and notes again those blue eyes. It had always struck her how Michael and Lincoln could look so alike and so different at the same time. Michael must have a great deal of his mother in him.
"Or you could come with me," Michael's father-the abusive drunk, though his hands are steady and his breath does not reek of alcohol now-continues. "I've been told that you like to help people, and we can use that right about now. Your choice, Ms. Tancredi. Unlike them, I don't put a bear trap at the end of each option."
"I could still scream," Sara says, though right now she's so astonished that she thinks she's doing pretty well when she manages a whisper.
"You could," the man agrees. He doesn't seem inclined to actually introduce himself any time soon. "And it would be a real race to see if I could get out of this hospital and far enough away before the police are called." He pauses and scrutinizes her face. "If you're waiting for me to tell you that I'll hurt you if you don't keep quiet, I won't. Might drop you on your ass pretty hard if I have to move quickly, but that's about it. I'd suggest making your decision quickly, though, because someone's bound to wander by sooner or later."
Sara looks back at her hospital bed. She could go back, as he says, and take her punishment like a good girl. Or she can struggle. Sara finds that her eyes are drawn towards her inner arm as if they've been pulled there, where her bruise is a big, ugly brand. If she squints hard enough, she thinks that she can even see the needle mark itself, impossible as that is after this much time, as if the flesh has reached the point where it's refusing to heal what she does to herself any longer. She isn't good with struggle. She never has been.
Sara has also never been any good at convincing herself that things won't finally be different if she gives it one more shot, tries to hang on just a little longer this time.
Sara tugs her wrists free from the man's grip, noting as she does so that he's still watching her to see if she's going to strike out again, and puts her arms around his neck so that she no longer feels as if she's going to fall. There are enough things happening to make her feel as if she's being tangled over the edge of a cliff as it is. "My rear is hanging out," she informs Michael's father solemnly.
It shocks the first smile that she's seen yet onto the face of the man who might be her rescuer and who might just be transport. There's enough of Lincoln and Michael in his eyes and the line of his jaw to make Sara think that he's not inclined towards hurting her, but she's not willing to extend her full trust to him quite yet. Not with the way that the instincts that have warned her off of many a bad boyfriend before her actual mind was willing to listen fell suspiciously silent as she fell in over her head one inch at a time with Michael and didn't even realize it until she was gasping and unable to find the air.
"We'll get you some clothes," the man promises her instead as she twitches her gown further closed to protect her dignity.
We. Sara supposes that this could mean that Lincoln alone is traveling with his father, but she doubts it. Lincoln might owe his freedom to her in a large, abstract way; it is Michael for whom the debt is personal. He'll want to pay it back and won't be able to relax until he does. Sara hates that she knows this much about him.
An older man carrying a much younger woman-and a woman who has become an overnight national sensation at that-through a hospital during those hazy hours that do not know whether to be night or dawn should instantly attract the attention of everyone within the hospital, but Michael's father is a cautious, clever man who takes the staircases rather than the elevators and displays an uncanny ability to duck out of a hallway seconds before it would have been occupied by someone with a mind to sound the alarm. Sara is struck, suddenly, by the realization that he has done this before, this or something near enough like it not to matter, and she wonders what she has gotten herself into. Her arms tighten around the man's neck unconsciously.
"I'm not going to drop you," he says, feeling the gesture but misinterpreting the meaning.
'Why not?' Sara thinks. 'I'm already falling.' She casts her mind back, almost longingly, to the coma dreams where Michael was so close that he was etched into her skin and the very thought of him didn't make her head ache and her heart thud.
All other things being equal, if this is what consciousness is like then Sara thinks that she prefers the angels.
They're out of the hospital within moments, bypassing three members of the hospital security staff and two legitimate police officers while attracting no more attention than that which would be granted to a passing shadow. Sara tries to reconcile the man carrying her with the man that Michael mentioned to her and finds that she cannot. The old mental image and the new refuse to merge into one, like two magnets with like charges being forced into the same space. Sara has dealt with drunks, when she still worked at the prison and before Michael made a simple, safe existence complicated and sharp again. There are a great many crimes out there whose ultimate cause could be traced back to alcohol's door, and even after the abuse itself had stopped the signs would remain in the hands, in the eyes. Sara wonders who this man carrying her is, and wonders if Michael and Lincoln really know him at all.
There is a moment of awkwardness when they reach the car, which is an unremarkable sedan flecked with the large rust spots that are the casualty of too much time spent unprotected in Chicago winters. Lincoln's father cannot open the back door of the car while still holding her in his arms, and all of Sara's steps since waking have been short, necessary trips the bathroom, as even the smallest of movements have left her feeling cranky and lightheaded. The realization that most of this fatigue is in her head does nothing to make it go away.
Sara wonders if the reason that she's so willing to wander along with this insane plan rather than staying in her hospital plan and awaiting censure like a good girl is because she has so many words trapped inside of her that will only be served by spitting them directly into Michael's face. She has never before thought of herself as being an altogether vengeful or vindictive person. This new well that she has found herself tapping into, this thin, rotten covering of anger over so much hurt shocks her and leaves her struggling to breathe with its intensity. 'Like water closing over my head,' Sara thinks. That's her past few months, really, perfectly sanitized, encapsulated, and waiting of her to take apart and rationalize away everything that happened between Michael and herself.
Upon second thought, Sara thinks that she would really rather not.
"I can stand," Sara says finally as Michael's father cannot seem to figure out a way to open the car's back door without dropping her on her rear as he had promised to do within the hospital. 'Well, I can,' Sara only just stops herself from snapping when all that she receives in return in a dubious stare. June or not, there's still enough of a chill in the night air to make her very aware of the fact that she is wearing what essentially amounts to a pillowcase, and that it will not be long before she is a mess of gooseflesh in places that she would rather not show in public.
Promises or not, Sara does not stand so much as she leans, car's metal skin cold even through the hospital gown, as Michael's father opens the car door for her. "What's your name?" she asks suddenly as she realizes that she cannot keep using such a clumsy moniker for him, even within the confines of her own head. His glance is surprised, but sharp: Sara wonders how anyone could see the silver-haired man, watch the way that he moves and carries himself, and be fooled even for a second.
"It's best that you don't know that, miss," he tells her. There is no threat to be found within the deep rumble of his voice, but Sara feels as if she has been nudged back a step all the same. "For your own safety."
For her own safety. The father of the two men who have changed Sara's life so dramatically, in a few select ways for the better and many others for the worse, is either hopelessly dense in a way that Sara is not willing to credit to him, or his sense of humor is twisted. She knows where her money lies.
Sara glances once at the looming hospital, frightening to her now even with the glow of the lights and the hustle of vehicles coming and going. She used to delight in that energy, in taking all of the chaos and pain and making it go away. 'For her own safety.' Sara wishes for a moment that she could go back to sleep, and dream.
These are dangerous thoughts. Sara can only remember a few snapshot images from that night after her breakdown in the parking lot, but she has a feeling that the chain reaction that ended with her in the hospital began with an innocent thought that became cancerous.
She sighs and, making a conscious effort to root up this train of thought and throw it completely out of her head, scoots in the backseat. Sara is for the moment so preoccupied with keeping her gown wrapped around everything that needs to stay covered that she does not realize that the member of the Burrows-Scofield clan that she was hoping for and loathing in equal measure is not the man who is sitting in the front seat. Lincoln his hunched low against the canvas, his distinctive profile recognizable to Sara even though care was taken to park the car far away from any streetlights that could have drawn curious stares towards the single most wanted man in the country.
"Hi," Sara says stupidly when Lincoln glances back at her. Faced so suddenly with the tangible proof that she did at least one worthwhile thing that night, she is at a loss, and feels some of the anger that she has been nurturing beginning to siphon away for parts unknown. Without that to drive her forward, she feels empty and adrift, being cast along without anything to hold onto. Sara pulls her gown more tightly around herself and pushes self-consciously at hair that has only seen the touch of a hairbrush twice since she was admitted into the hospital. Take away the very real fact of a nationwide manhunt and the conspiracy that Lincoln's lawyers alluded to and that Sara is coming to believe in more and more by the day, and they are only one or two steps removed from an actual French farce.
"Hey, doc," Lincoln answers back. His tone is friendly, but his eyes are distracted and restless. Sara can well imagine.
"I thought you would be out of the country by now," Sara says to Lincoln as his father comes back around and enters the driver's door. Immediately, the temperature in the car takes a dramatic plunge, and Lincoln leans back further against his own door. All three of them do their best to pretend that nothing happened. Sara thinks that it's almost funny, that they'll do this when everything else is happily going to hell all around them. She cannot imagine what would possess Lincoln to not only stay within the country and the state, but even within the greater Chicago area, especially when there's a brand new administration that would dearly love to skip over due process altogether and get straight to the part where Lincoln Burrows' head is handed to them on a plate. If this is some kind of secret plan of Michael's, then the workings of his mind are even more subtle than Sara was previously willing to give him credit for.
"We should be," Lincoln mutters darkly, just loudly enough for her to hear, and throws a glance around the car that includes his father and Sara both. Sara thinks that the person he would really like to be growling at is someone who is not there at all, and she has never felt closer to a convicted criminal in her life.
Scarcely ten seconds go by before Sara realizes how poorly she chose her words. She sighs and drops her head into her hands for a moment as the car is started up and Lincoln's father pulls them away from the curb. "I'm sorry," she offers even though she has no idea what she is actually apologizing for, other than a vague idea that she needs to keep everything that she's feeling under control until she has it pointed at the right person and not send it flying out to strike at innocent civilians in the meanwhile.
Lincoln apparently has the same idea, because the second glance that he turns her way is much more kind than the first, though there's still enough tension thrumming through her shoulders to make her think of an animal that's been held in a cage for much too long. "It's not your fault," Lincoln says in a grudging tone. "There are some clothes back there for you." He's grinding his teeth against one another so hard that it's a wonder that he's not snapping them off at the gums. Oh, yes, he and Sara are definitely on the same page right now.
Sara leans over to examine a bag placed in the floorboard and discovers a pair of well-made if not terribly expensive jeans and a loose, long-sleeved shirt. Michael remembered that she prefers long sleeves even if she pushes them up in the end, lingering anxiety over her track marks, except in cases of extreme heat like the one that ended in the riot. Over the past day or so Sara has had cause to wonder if even that might have been calculated, if he had only rescued her so that he would not have to take the time required to shape another cog to fit into his machine. She sets her jaw and very nearly throws the bag as far across the car and a way from her as she can manage before she comes to her senses and pulls the clothes out. Lincoln already has enough to deal with without the extra attention that would be drawn by a woman wearing nothing but a hospital gown. It's not his fault that she and Michael are having something that she refuses to think of as a lover's spat.
Sara was gawky well into her junior year of high school, so she understands how to change in front of others while revealing as little skin as possible. Lincoln and his father share a chivalric streak with Michael, as they keep their eyes fixed firmly ahead, not even using the rearview mirror to keep an eye on the flow of traffic behind them. Sara finds herself feeling relieved that that much of Michael, at least, was real. Within moments, she has the hospital gown balled up and shoved into the back, along with a pair of shoes that were a size too small and would have had her feet aching within an hour. It's strangely comforting to know that Michael is not entirely omniscient.
Wearing clothes that fit her very well and make her feel immediately better and more alert than she had while wearing the hospital gown, Sara sits up and begins to take a greater stock of her surroundings. They're leaving Chicago, thank God. At least Sara can now stop wondering if Michael has tripped over the line between genius and insanity. As they drive, she notices that Lincoln's father carries out the same nonchalant evasive maneuvers that got them out of the hospital unnoticed while he's on the road, frequently switching lanes and taking ill-lit side roads rather than the freeway or other, busier thoroughfares. It takes them an hour and a half to get out of the city, and another hour of driving before they finally reach a motel that almost makes Sara laugh to see it, so perfect a cliché of flaking white trash does it turn out to be. She pushes it back down her throat as she has all of the other rare bursts of the laughter that she has been inspired towards since waking up, where it's bitter and sharp. Sara clamps her hand over her mouth to stifle any sound that she might make and sees Lincoln looking at her in the rearview mirror, his expression as bemused as it can be while the rest of his face is so heavily etched in lines of worry. He flips the hood of his sweatshirt over his and exits the car quickly, going in a moment from the most wanted man in the country to just another ex-jock, a big man with a shambling walk who is either down on his luck or has terrible taste in where he puts his head at night.
Sara steps from the car herself and grimaces a little as she feels the sticky pavement beneath her bare feet. She looks carefully for broken glass before she sets her feet down, already brushing her hair forward to hide her face even though the sun is just now beginning to extend golden fingers over the horizon and whatever search is getting started to find her again cannot yet be far along. Lincoln disappears quickly into one of the rooms, a vampire retreating into its coffin at the first touch of the light, and Sara realizes that he might have his freedom in theory, but he does not yet have it in fact. The slam of the door behind him conveys all of the disgust that his words have been struggling to do full justice to for the past two and a half hours.
Lincoln's father pauses before he does the same so that he can give Sara a long head to toe once-over. She's aware that she must make a pretty poor Helen at the moment, with her hair a rat's nest and her feet bare and that damned bruise the most colorful thing on both her face and body, for Michael to put all of his plans on hold for even a week so that he could send people to extract her from the mess that they had both created. Sara lifts her chin and matches him stare for stare all the same, and the man must like what he sees, because his lips lift up in a small smile and he jerks his head in the direction of one of the rooms. "Michael's in there," he says.
That's all that Sara wanted to hear. She forgets to be careful as she stalks across the rest of the parking lot and doubts that she would even notice if something did pierce her foot. The door of the room is unlocked. Sara's entrance would be fairly spoiled if it was not. She cannot help but wonder if leaving it unlocked is Michael's way of sacrificing security temporarily as a salute to her temper, putting the situation back into her control after he had spent so much time manipulating her. This does not mollify Sara, but instead only makes her angrier, as she can still feel her strings being pulled at even this distance. Her hand is shaking as she lays it against the doorknob, and she intends to fling it open and then slam it shut behind her again.
She does. When Sara enters, Michael is on a cellular phone with someone and is talking with an urgency that Sara has only heard from him on those rare occasions when he was not playing a game with her-when she thinks that he was not playing a game with her-though he turns as soon as he hears the door open. Sara shuts the door quietly behind her without any awareness of what she is doing as she drinks him in. Michael's hair is still very short, but he has not bothered to shave in a few days, and the contrast makes his eyes look large and liquid-blue. He looks her over as a man dying of thirst would look over an oasis that he was lucky enough to stumble over in the middle of the desert, so distracted that he allows the phone to fall from his ear for a moment before the female voice on the other end brings it back again. Sara realizes that she's doing the same, unable to keep herself from looking him over to gauge if he's hurt, if he's looking any thinner or if he's getting enough sleep, as if it's been years since they've seen each other rather than scarcely more than a week. She sighs when she would rather curse and leans back against the door. The feel of the cold metal knob digging into the small of her back reminds her that she had a different reason for coming here than admiring the scenery.
Michael tells someone that he calls V to be careful and call him back as soon as she hears more and quickly hangs up before he continues to give her that hungry look. He has eyes made for undoing women when he looks at them like that, and Sara has to remind herself sharply that he no longer has the right to give her that look. Michael's gaze reaches her feet at last, and the corners of his mouth shift into a puzzled frown. "You're barefoot?" he asks, as if he's not quite sure of what he's seeing and thinks that he would be able to understand if only Sara would elaborate a little further.
The realization that she has thrown him off balance, even if it's mild and only for a moment, makes it possible for Sara to push herself away from the door and step further into the room. The way that Michael watches the roll of her hips as she comes closer to him would be almost enough to make her blush, if she was in a better mood. "The shoes didn't fit," she says before she plucks at the sleeve of her shirt. "This is perfect, though. Guess I know where your attention was." It's a cheap shot. It still makes her feel better.
Michael's expression turns briefly reproachful. "Sara," he says.
It's enough to send Sara right back against the door again. She has badly, baldy missed hearing him say her name, and that nearly sends her straight out the door. "No, Michael," she says, sharper than even she had intended, sharp enough to make them both flinch. Michael's is scarcely more than a twitch beneath his eyes, but his face goes tight in a way that is beyond even his usual stillness, tight enough to turn him into a mask rather than a man. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to say my name like that." Like he knows her. Like he has a right to know her, like he's something to hang onto when she cannot stop her head from spinning. Sara reaches behind her and grabs for the doorknob. It feels cool and solid against her palms, and she wonders what's stopping her from rushing back out that door. She was only coming here so that she could tell him off, Sara told herself. She was coming here so that she could lay him to rest.
He really needs to stop looking at her like that.
Michael's face remains set and calm, but Sara can see the cracks spreading beneath the surface. The difference is subtle, but monumental to anyone who knows what to look for.
"Fine," Michael replies, and bites off each word as if he's chewing glass. Sara thinks that he's on the verge of crossing his arms over his chest, if that wouldn't be such a betrayal of his precious self-control. "How would you like me to say your name, then? I tried to call you Dr. Tancredi, and I couldn't, and then I tried to make you stay Sara and only Sara, and I couldn't do that, either." Michael's teeth make a clacking sound when he brings them together sharply. He's not a man who experiences defeat regularly, Sara is sure of that, and he doesn't look as if he likes the taste of it now. "Sara," he says again, in that special tone, almost as if he's daring her to make him stop.
Sara feels like she's spinning again. There's sweat on the doorknob from her palms. "So then what?" she pushes. "I was so special to you because it would have been pretty hard to get Katie to flirt back." Sara's eyes are burning as if sand has been forced beneath the lids. Damn it, she promised herself that if she stayed angry enough she would be able to keep everything else safely under her control. Sara's throat still hurts from the breathing tube, and she touches it briefly before she is able to continue. "Do you have any idea what you've done to my life?"
For a moment, Michael's eyes flash, and the façade drops to reveal the man underneath. A few more glimpses of that man, Sara thinks, and she might find herself stepping forward from that door whether she likes it or not. She hates to admit, even to herself, that Michael stopped being a file or even Mr. Scofield some weeks before, and she can't figure out the magic button that will turn him back again.
"Of course I do," Michael says to her savagely. Even anger is not enough to make those eyes of his appear warm, except for someone who already knows where to look. "I didn't think-" He gestures for a moment with the cellular phone in his hand, and Sara realizes that his movements have been larger and more expansive than he has ever seen before, in Michael's case a mark of high distraction. "I didn't think that it would turn out so badly, though."
Sara makes a soft sound from the back of her throat. That's a lie and they both know it. Any man smart enough to use the very structure of the prison against itself is damned well smart enough to understand what kind of charges Sara would be facing for even the tiny role that she played that night. To his small credit, Michael seems to realize the foolishness of what he's said the moment that the words are out of his mouth and turns away, making a disgusted sound of his own and rubbing his hand over his hair.
"Okay, I knew," he admits, "but I hoped. And then I learned some things." Michael jerks his head in the direction of the wall, where on the other side his father is presumably going about whatever business a super spy carried out during the off hours when he wasn't rescuing criminals from hospitals. His expression is still wary. Of the two people in the room, Sara thinks that she's actually the one who has the most fondness for the man who gave Michael one half of his genetic code. "Your life was in danger if you stayed."
Sara's anger does not vanish, nor does it quietly accept being shoved to the side. "In danger?" she asks softly, because there's a note of fear in Michael's voice that Sara has only ever heard before when he was talking about Lincoln. "How?"
Michael heaves a sigh of frustration, of self-condemnation, that has more to do with himself than it does her. He rubs his hand across the back of his neck, over his hair. "You and I were not altogether discreet in what we had," Michael says. It hurts Sara that he uses the past tense, even as she knows that it only would have gotten her temper up if he had used the present. "The same people who framed my brother were going to come after you as a way of trying to get to me. I couldn't let that happen. Not after everything else that has happened to you because of me." Sara wishes that Michael was a terrible liar, so that she would better be able to read if he is telling her the truth now.
She sucks in her breath sharply. Suddenly, her dreams of angels and of Michael coming to rescue her don't seem nearly so romantic. She snorts so that she can hold herself off from an even more undignified reaction, such as cursing or yelling or, God help her, even crying, and rubs her hands over her burning eyes. Sara has gone far too long without sleep that was either chemically induced or plagued by unwelcome visions. "Then I guess I owe you a thank you for keeping me in your plan even if you can't use me any longer," she says. "It's very chivalrous." As hard as Sara spits out the last word, it's a wonder that she doesn't chip her tooth on it. She stalks past Michael so that she can at least use the bathroom and clean herself up a little further. If the rest of her life is going to be yanked out from under her without warning, she might as well take the small favors where she can find them.
Sara sees the muscle in Michael's jaw jump from the corner of her eye as she passes him. He reaches for her and, where another man would have grabbed for her, lets his fingers trail as lightly across the flesh of her inner arm as a ghost's. Sara stops as heat flushes her skin. Goddamn him.
"And I wanted you here," Michael says as soon as she stops. She's so close that she can feel his voice against the side of her face, curling against the shell of her ear. His voice is a rasp far different from his normal smooth tones. "I wanted to take you with me that night. Even knowing that you probably hated me, even knowing that you're not the kind to give in, I wanted you by my side. I only didn't because I thought that I would be taking you into more danger than I would be keeping you out of by leaving you behind." Sara doesn't know that she will ever be able to trust a word that Michael says again, only that she wants to, more than she thinks that she's ever wanted anything in her life.
"Liar," she says softly as her anger deserts her just when she needs it most. Sara feels tired and sick without it. Michael's other hand takes her by the chin, and, without realizing it, Sara cups his face in the same way that she did when he kissed her. His stubble rasps against her palm. His skin is warmer than she remembers.
"I should have come for you sooner," Michael says, and Sara realizes that his gaze has moved from her face to the ugly purple rose that has bloomed across her arm. 'Little to no sense of his own self worth.'
"No," Sara says sharply, even thought the dreams of his tattoos and what she had believed was his scent surrounding her are still so vivid that they make her shiver. Not and get himself caught, not after the risk that he has already put himself in by staying in the country this long. She will not have Michael be her crutch. "Don't do that. Don't try to take responsibility for my actions." Sara takes a deep breath to steady herself before she says, more calmly than she feels, "You've already taken enough of my life out of my hands, don't you think?" There's still a diamond-sharpness there that she cannot quite control, even though she wants to.
Something in Michael's face tightens at Sara's rebuke, first making him defiant, then even a little rueful. "I guess I have that one coming," he says before he bends his head down and kisses her, finally. His hand leaves her chin so that it can splay across her cheek while Sara moves hers to the back of his neck and pulls him closer. The touch of those slender artisan's fingers is so light that Sara scarcely feels them at all, even though they're causing heat to spread all throughout her body.
"I need to clean up," Sara says nearly a minute later after she finally gathers herself enough to put her hand against Michael's chest and nudge him back. Her voice is far more breathless than she likes, and it is all that she can do not to wrap her arms around Michael and pull him close again. She has no doubt that he would come willingly.
Sara can feel Michael's eyes against her back as she disappears into the bathroom and shuts the door behind her, twin points of heat directly between her shoulder blades. She sighs heavily, leans against the counter, and stares into a face that she recognized just a week before. Sighing, Sara splashes cold water across her face and lets it trickle down the back of her neck.
Michael is not in the room when Sara reemerges. She knows that she is not surprised; what she does not know is whether or not she is disappointed. Instead, Sara sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the wall, her hands folded in her lap, as she wonders if she should not turn around and walk right back out of the door. Sara still has not reached an answer by the time that she lays down and falls into an uneasy sleep.
---
Sara dreams of angels one more time, stretching out over her body in shades of ink and midnight, growing from a starting point at the bruise pressed into her inner arm. Michael's smell is all around her, soap and his own male scent rather than the aftershave that she had mistaken for him before. Sara breathes it in deeply and wonders if she'll even feel the warm weight of the real man at her back if she reaches her hand back for him. With Michael so close, the world stops spinning.
In her dream, Sara frowns and the tattoos disappear within a blinking so that only the bruise is left behind. No more crutches.
Sara still tastes plastic and has an aching throat when she wakes again, still smells Michael's scent close at hand. She stares up at the cracked ceiling for several moments and wonders where she is before she realizes that the beeping of the hospital monitors is conspicuously absent. Sara sits up and, as she stretches, feels an indention on the mattress beside her, still warm from the weight of a body. She lets her hand rest against it for a moment, considering, before she turns her head and sees that the same mysterious someone who had been sharing her mattress has left her a box of throat lozenges and a mug of tea, steam still rising from the top. Sara can remember draining many cups of that same tea on mornings when she could just not seem to get herself started, many times just moments before Michael was brought in so that she could give him his injection. She slips one of the lozenges into her mouth and all but coos as it immediately begins to soothe the lingering pain from her throat, takes her tea, and exits the room. Even though the twilight is growing deep and there are more shadows than security lights, Sara hunches her shoulders and angles her face towards the wall as she hurries to the other room. Michael's father opens the door at her cautious knock and leaves it open just enough for Sara to slip inside.
Lincoln and Michael are sitting on one of the beds, their heads still angled towards one another as if they had been holding an intense, whispered conversation before going silent at the sound of Sara's knock. Sara hesitates for a moment before she walks calmly across the room and takes a seat next to Michael on the bed. The ground is steady beneath her feet.
"Thanks," she says, lifting her mug.
Sara watches as the corner of Michael's mouth lifts into a tiny smile. "On the house," he says. He takes her free arm in his hand, turns it over, and starts to trace absentminded patterns over the place where her bruise is hidden by her sleeve. Sara pulls his hand away so that she can take it in her own, running her thumb over his knuckles, and asks, "So, how deeply am I in this thing?"
At a nod from Michael, Lincoln begins to outline everything that they know.
End