Title: Brother, You Know It's a Long Road
Word Count: 319
Rating: G
Summary: He's thirteen and angry when he decides to runaway.
Disclaimer: Paul Scheuring and a whole lot of other people who aren't me own Prison Break.
A/N: Fifth part of a series of pointless, semi-fluffy childhood drabbles/short ficlets.
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He's thirteen and angry when he decides to runaway.
He's angry at his mother for working too much, he's angry at his teachers for giving him bad grades, he's angry at Veronica's father for being a jerk, he's angry for a million imaginary reasons, and he decides he's had enough of this life.
So he sets out one afternoon, White Sox cap pulled low down on his head and sleeping bag stuffed into his backpack, along with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a stash of cookies.
He's halfway down the block when he notices Michael following him, trotting along with his green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack bouncing behind him.
Lincoln tries to be patient when he explains to his brother that he's going away, he's not coming back, but Michael just smiles brightly and says that he's going too.
Lincoln finally relents, and they walk side-by-side down the block, Michael animatedly describing a book he read about siblings who ran away and hid in a museum, and wouldn't that be cool?
They get as far as the park before the anger starts to burn away and Lincoln is left with nothing but a sick feeling of guilt – he glances down at his brother, jabbering away about dinosaurs and that time that Mom took them to the natural history museum and they saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, and Lincoln doesn't want to be the one who takes Michael away from his mother.
So it's Michael that makes him reconsider his plan, and nothing else. It's not the fear of his mother's panic when she finds out they're missing, or the rolling of his stomach every time he imagines never seeing her again, or even the slight panic over where on earth are we going to go? that he's trying to bury that makes him stop and tell Michael that they have to go back.
Really, it's not.
