Michael

It's been so long since I've been on a bus, I could barely even remember what the interior looks like.

"Hey Dad! Can I go sit with Trevor?" Trevor is Mike's best friend from his class, so of course I'm okay with it. "Sure, Mike! Have fun!" He smiles and races off to somewhere behind Linc and I. A couple of the moms sit in the seat across from us, which makes me slightly nervous but okay overall.

I just noticed that Linc and I are pretty much wearing the exact same thing. Jeans, navy blue t-shirts. Black tennis shoes. The moms across from us seem to notice. "How do you guys know each other?" Linc looks away from the window and directs his eyes toward them. "Brothers," Linc and I saw simultaneously. This answer seems to surprise them. "Did you guys fashion coordinate?" Linc looks at me, stifling a laugh. "No, but it must look like we did!" I'm trying to sound civilian. It's harder than most things I've done, which really says something. When you're accustomed to looking over your shoulder every five seconds, then it seems ridiculous to let your guard down.

It dawns on me that I have no idea where we're going, so I decide to look at the road sign. God help us. "Linc... Street name. Now," I whisper to him. We're stopped, so he glances up and reads the street name. "English. So?" Realization hits him like a brick wall in a few seconds. We share a look that says, "You don't think...?" But as we drive another hundred feet, I see the colossal sand colored brick building towering above us. We're headed to Fox River.

"I can't do this, Michael. If we look at the chair, the cell, even your solitary cell, and they go into detail..." Linc's eyes look wild with fear. "I don't know. Let's just see what they say and then we'll deal with it when we can," I say, attempting to hide my complete horror. My skin suddenly feels like it's on fire. The ink now feels like lava embedded under my skin as I feel more conscious of the blueprints of this wasteland. "Linc, I'm not sure if I can either, but we can't do anything. We'll stick it out together," I reassure him. "Besides. Fear isn't anything, just air. If you open up the industrial size door, the monster will go away," I joke. I give him a fist bump, then we steel ourselves for the field trip from the depths of a pitch black corner of our minds that hasn't been touched in years.

I didn't even know that Fox River has closed until I saw the sign that said it had been closed. The tour guide was a really short guy named Steve. Steve, I'm counting on you to make this the most vague tour of Fox River ever given.

I'm walking the same walk that I took the first time to get into this wasteland when I see a familiar head at the top of the crowd. "Can you stay with Mike?" Linc nods his head and looks at Mike, who's watching his Nike shoes move across the pavement. I'm trying to weave through the group of people when I'm finally right beside the Puerto Rican head that I saw. "'Nando?" He turns his head. "Papi!" I pull him into a hug just as Linc makes it beside us with Mike. "Are you excited, Fernando?" Linc asks the dumbest questions at the perfect time, and somehow they make exact sense. We start walking again when Sucre answers. "I don't know. My daughter is walking with some of her friends up more toward the front. But this should be fun!" Sucre is trying for Mike's sake, but one look into any one of our eyes tells you exactly what's unspoken: We're worried about what the kids will think and say. "And your arms... When did you get those done?" Sucre asks, pretending to not know. "He knows," I reply. We've told Mike most of our story, except for the worst parts. The tattoos are his favorite part.

We get inside the huge door of the prison where we see the spot where I dropped everything for the escape. "Can I go walk with Trevor? He's just up there," Mike asks, pointing. I smile at him. "Sure!" He jogs to catch up with his friend, freeing Linc, Sucre, and I to have a conversation. "Do you think they'll mention..." Sucre's cut off when he sees the "Home of the Fox River 8" sign in the front. Thankfully there are no mugshots anywhere, which would have given us all away. As we keep walking, I notice that everyone in front of us has stopped. "Welcome to Fox River State Penitentiary, home of the Fox River 8. Does anyone here remember that time?" The tour guide is getting a little too close to a touchy subject for my liking. Most of the parents' hands go up, so Sucre, Linc, and I put our hands up tentatively.

"That was the only Fox River escape to ever take place from the time the prison opened to the time it shut down. Does anyone have questions?" I scan the room, trying not to look scared out of my mind, when I see the hand of a twelve year old boy shoot up in the air. "What were their names?" Linc, 'Nando and I all share a terrified look and then go back to being normal. "Well, there were Benjamin Miles Franklin, Theodore Bagwell, David Apolskis, Charles Patoshik, John Abruzzi, Michael Scofield, Lincoln Burrows, and Fernando Sucre," the guide rattles off. He studies his stuff, if he can rattle them all off that quickly. I've tried so hard to forget, but I'm slowly sinking further and further into the abyss of my past.

All eyes focus on us, and the three of us standing in the back try not to blush. The tour guide can't see us, but when the gasps and whispers trail through the crowd, he starts to get an idea of what's going on. "Some of the 8 are here?! Wow! Come on up here," he says with a tone layered thick with awe, fear, and astonishment. He probably still thinks I killed people in a bank, Linc killed the VP's brother, and that Sucre robbed a guy at gunpoint. But hey. You can't blame him. He was just trying to buy his girlfriend an engagement ring. I would do the same thing for Sara.

We nervously walk toward the front of the room, all three of us, stealing nervous glances at each other. The guide tells us to stand in the front of the room. I shoot a glance toward Mike who is beet red and looking toward his new Nike shoes. He looks up at me for a fraction of a second, just enough time for me to shoot an "I'm sorry" glance at him. He looks at me as his friends suppress laughs next to him. "So, introduce yourselves to us," the guide says. This is the worst field trip I've ever been on. Ever. And I'm going to make sure that I know where we're going before I sign up.

The guide looks to Sucre first. "Sucre," he answers plainly and simply, giving Linc the floor. "Why am I doing this?" Linc, this isn't the time for stupidity. Just answer the question, I think to myself. Instead, I just punch him in the arm and give him the Blue Steel. He gives me the look of surrender. "Fine. My name is You Shouldn't Care'." Sucre and I roll our eyes collectively at Linc. "Fine," I intervene. "I'll explain for my brother. That's Lincoln Burrows. I'm Scofield. There we go." Everyone looks as if they never realized this before. I shove my hands in my pockets, just waiting for this stupid trip to be over.

"How did you do it?" This tour guide's utter calmness is about to send me over the edge. Sucre and Linc look to me, because they would be able to name every existing plant by its scientific name before they could answer that. "No comment. And no, not even anything," I reply, trying to keep my cool, but it's not necessarily working. The lid is about to blow off the top.

Everyone is looking more nervous than me. Mike is fidgety, I notice, and then he walks up beside me because he's evidently had enough. "Look, can I just say something? My dad- and uncle - aren't bad people. In fact, they're the literal coolest people you'll ever meet. And you're erasing the past nineteen years of forgetting they've tried to do. So, if you could do them a small favor and stop grilling them- that includes Fernando -," Mike looks to Sucre and smiles, which relaxes Sucre a little bit, "that'd be great. Thanks," Mike finishes. Some of the dads in the back that don't know Sara raise their hands. "And the doctor?" That's the question that makes me the most uncomfortable. "That's not important," I reply. But a few of the moms shoot a knowing glance in my direction. "Fine. We're married," I answer. There's a collective gasp in the room as they realize that Sara and I had Mike. "Great time to keep moving," I say to Linc, who smiles. We start walking again.

The next spot is the cell block. Fantastic.

We look at Abruzzi's cell, and then Avocado's. Linc, Sucre, and I look and stifle a laugh when we remember Tweener and the blade. And then we get to 40.

I stand, and I remember the sheet, the hole in the wall, the half-dead guard during the riots. It's all coming back, and I can't do anything to stop it. Then I remember; what if the hole is still there? "Hey Sucre," I whisper while the guide talks, "do you still have a passion for this place?" He looks at me and smiles, because his head is right by his old bunk. They guide hasn't mentioned that it's our old cell yet, so I think everyone is confused when I lay on the bottom bunk and Sucre climbs to the top. "Man, Sucre, remember all the nights?" He laughs, and then I turn onto my stomach to face the toilet in the wall, and then to the tattoo on the back of my wrist. I get up from the bunk and then go to the toilet, because the group's moved on for a while now. I'm glad no one was here to see Sucre and I literally on a bunk bed. I pull the toilet out, revealing the hole. They must not have cared enough to cover it up.

And then we're going to the hallway between solitary and the cell block. The echoing footsteps on the concrete have a thick, ominous sound, unlike they did when Linc about got himself killed here during the riots. Linc, Sucre, and I are stiffening even more with every step toward solitary. Sucre and I both remember our short time, which was eventful for me. Faking the psychotic break, leaving for the psych ward, that whole disaster. I wonder if my blood is still on the wall...

We stop at Linc's cell, and then the guide starts talking. "Do you know where we are now?" He's asking the dumbest questions, and Linc isn't happy about it. "Yeah, and I don't like it," Linc says.

Mike has slowly drifted away from his friends to walk with me, which, personally, I think is surprising. I thought he'd want to avoid me, but he doesn't. Instead, he's chosen to be around me. The thought makes me smile.

We're in the solitary hallway when I remember the triangular shape that the three of us stayed in in the nightmarish time in solitary. Linc is absolutely terrified out of his mind, because the chair is just on the other side of the hallway. The guide is uneasy now, because he knows that Linc doesn't like it. "This is Burrows' cell, where he stayed before his... supposed 'execution'," the guide carefully continues. Linc gives him a warning look, and it's then that the guard keeps walking.

I've come to a conclusion: this field trip is my worst nightmare.

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Don't ask why or how, but I've spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out the series timeline. This is how I've estimated and inferred the timeline.

XXX

Michael's bday is September 8, 1972 (on his prison registration paper) making him 26 in season 1.

The death date on Frank Tancredi's headstone was September 5, 2005, so Michael's 27th birthday was 3 days after Frank's death.

4 years passes between Frank's death and season 4, because Linc and Sara were talking about the Michael's nosebleeds and Linc mentioned that Michael was just turning 31.

One of the dates mentioned in the show was July 16 (the meeting with all the Scylla cardholders) and that was the date of the day it was mentioned.

The episode which July 16th was mentioned was toward the end of season 4, so I don't think that September 8 passed before season 4 was over.

But I think that sometime during The Final Break his birthday passes, or while he was dead after season 4. That's his 32nd birthday.

He was "dead" for 7 years while he was in Yemen, so that makes him 39 at the end. So, in the entire series, the fictional timeline for the story was 13 years.

There was a hint in season 5 about the timeline (the start of Ramadan, which is May 26th) so by the time they defeated Poseidon, I would say it's about June 5 ish... so Michael's 40th isn't too far off.

A random thought that I had: why didn't we ever find out where Michael was when he "died" between season 4 and Final Break? Final Break seemed to ignore the fact that he had died at the end of season 4, and I was confused. Another thing I thought about: in the last few minutes of 4x22, it showed what happened to the characters, and the General was getting the electric chair. So how did he come back in Final Break??? And then there's the scene in Sona where you're looking at Michael's shirtless back and there's no burn scar. Just some food for thought while we wait for season 6...