TITLE: Mirror
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: PG
PAIRINGS: Smidgens of Michael/Sara and Mahone/Michael
DISCLAIMER: Ain't my sandbox.
SPOILERS: Through 2.03
SUMMARY: It is his job to build, rather than to break.
Mahone is a man who appreciates structure, and he does not apologize for this. Chaos makes his teeth ache. Some would say that he has entered the wrong profession, then, as his hours depend upon who has escaped and when, and his location depends upon where in the nation that the latest emergency has erupted. He has not been inside his own apartment for more than an hour in the last three months.
They do not understand. Mahone looks out of his office window every day, down at a block of people as they carry out their myriad daily tasks, and he sees strata. He sees an interlocking web of people, each one completing his or her own small task that in turn triggers another series of events, one stacking onto another like bricks, until a society is made. People like Scofield, his brother, and his friends are bricks that work themselves out of the wall, and it is Mahone's job to put them back in. If enough bricks are allowed to fall out, the society crumbles. It's not about chaos. It's about its exact opposite.
This scene, this one that he is trapped in now, this is a frenzy, and it is making Mahone's head ache and his skin itch. It is wild, pointless, without rhyme or reason and directed towards no purpose except furthering its own ever-widening circle of influence. It is not the gun that he can still feel against the back of his head, pressed so tightly that there will be a bruise beneath the hair later, that is making him hold his body so taut and rigid. Scofield is not a killer; Mahone has known that since the first day that his file was pushed into his hands. Now, he knows that his brother is not one, either. It's that it's all so random.
Scofield can feel it, too, Mahone sees at a glance. His spine is tight, and there is a muscle jerking in his jaw that Mahone does not believe Scofield realizes is moving at all. Every careless, uncalculated gesture is a betrayal of the image that he is trying to put forth. Mahone's own head is aching with the effort that it takes to prevent thoughtless movements of his own and with the new revelations that he was introduced to only hours before via another man, another gun. The man said that his name was Lance. Mahone is certain that this is a lie. When he realizes that thinking about the amount of time that he has spent inadvertently pulling bricks from the wall while he believed that he was putting them back in again is only causing his head to hurt that much worse, he switches to watching the events taking place around him instead.
Scofield rubs his hand over his short-cropped hair, eyes closed, as the women on either side of him pepper him with him with questions. Burrows, who is standing directly behind Mahone and is the owner of the gun that he is finding it within his own best interests to pay very, very close attention to, is all but vibrating with a dangerous and tightly fettered tension. For the moment, Scofield is ignoring them all, though Mahone has no doubt that both the doctor and Mahone himself are foremost on Scofield's mind. After all, neither one of them were a part of the plan, and there is nothing more frustrating than watching something that has been so carefully constructed fall apart again at the loss of a cornerstone.
He and Scofield are very similar in that regard, Mahone realizes. Nietzsche would be so proud. Mahone feels his mouth twist into a sardonic smile before he can halt himself.
Scofield catches the end of the expression as he glances up again. His eyes darken; his lips press into so thin a line that they nearly disappear. "Enough," he says finally, much louder and more harshly than he likely intends. Mahone sees the regret in his face as the redheaded woman, Dr. Tancredi, pulls back as swiftly as if he's slapped her. Michael reaches for her arm, only to drop his hand back to his side as she flinches further back out of his reach. He glares back at Mahone instead, as if this is somehow his fault.
Mahone still remembers how the doctor felt pressed up against his chest when he grabbed her by the waist and whirled the two of them around, "Lance's" bullets cutting the air around them both, and he knows that it is not. He meet's Scofield's gaze without flinching.
"We're not going to kill you," Scofield says to Mahone instead, nodding to his brother over Mahone's head. The press of the gun barrel leaves the back of his skull. Mahone relaxes by a few inches before he can halt himself, even though he had already known that Scofield never had any designs on killing him to begin with. Injuring him, perhaps, if it came down to that, but Mahone is an agent of order, and above all else he can see that Scofield has respect for the role.
"I appreciate that," Mahone says dryly, though he expects Burrows to bring the butt of the gun around and into contact with the back of his skull at any moment. When his hands are instead released from the bonds that they had been held in until that point, he blinks. Surprise is not an emotion that comes often to him.
"You're on the wrong side," Scofield tells him flatly, as if Mahone has any room to doubt that. As if he did not see a government agent do his best to kill a woman who is guilty of, at most, aiding and abetting only a few hours before.
Mahone rubs at the burns on his wrist and thinks about bricks in the wall and how many he must have pulled out while he was operating under the impression that he was putting them back in. "I know," he says. The eyes of everyone in attendance widen in surprise, save for Scofield's. He deals in order and structure, as well, though Scofield's bricks are more literal. He knows. He understands. "Let's talk terms."
End