Hi everyone,

thanks to those of you still following the story :)

A couple of replies to your reviews -

Jane - thank you for your kind words, but my verbal incontinence IS embarrassing :)

Dominique - thanks for reading and reviewing! I love how passionate your response is! But you have the wrong brother in mind. The agent won't have anything with Michael, I promise :) As for Lincoln believing Sara is alive ... Nope, he doesn't think so. Everyone believes Sara is dead. He just wants his little brother to move on. On one hand, Lincoln thinks that by finding Sara, Michael could finally have some sort of a closure. On the other hand, though, he is afraid of Michael's reaction if they do find Sara. He's afraid it would more than Michael could take. So he isn't really sure what to wish for :(

If anything is unclear, feel free to message me here or on tumblr (same username), or just leave it as a review and I'll respond when I post the next chapter.

Well, those of you impatient to read more about Sara (so, everyone, then) - only one chapter to go and then I'll be done with the first part of the story and we will move on to what Sara is up to and their reunion (thank god)

As always, thanks for reading & apologies for the grammatical errors.

Please review :)

love, winter.

PS: dont be too mad.

Sandcastles

Chapter Five

Michael met Jessica at a fundraiser organized by the school in the Bronx at which he was volunteering a couple of times per week.

It had been five months since the last Scylla card was analyzed in detail and subsequently destroyed to prevent its content from ever running amok again. The two brothers were running out of the events to describe (Lincoln was without words altogether, taking up his little brother's habit of wearing a wristwatch and fumbling with it rather than making eye contact with the agent in charge of their case. She didn't seem to mind the inattention, as she barely registered his presence anyway), and Agent Spencer struggled to justify their daily presence to her superiors. They eventually settled for biweekly meetings; other days she was assigned to other cases. She was apologetic when she told him, but Michael just shook his head. While looking for the Scylla cards, all he had wanted was to focus on what truly mattered to him. Now that he had been immersed in it for a few months, he realized he had no other plan and had passed the end of the road a while ago.

He got an apartment in New York City. The distance he put between himself and the room with maps, printouts, photographs, and pain was large enough to let him breathe, yet he was close enough should anything happen. After five months, he finally acknowledged that he was starting to lose hope.

Michael barely made it to the fundraiser in time. That morning he had been at Langley, cooped up in his room where gigantic maps served as his windows. It had been weeks since he last drawn a line, circled a place, calculated the distance. There were no files still waiting to be deciphered, no names to familiarize himself with, and no staring at phone records or credit card statements could yield a new lead. These days he just stood, paralyzed by the immensity of the collage in front of him. The downfall of the Company still dominated the headlines and wherever he looked, he saw praise. He had taken on the world and won. He was the smartest man in America, perhaps the world. He was invincible, a superhero without a cape.

But he could not find Sara. The one thing he wanted for five years, the lone rope that kept him above water, and he was failing her, once more.

That morning, he snapped. He reached for the center of the map, grabbed it and pulled it off the wall. He kept tearing everything until the emptiness of the wall matched his feelings. His merciless hands tore the months' worth of work apart, demolishing it all like it was just one of the bricks of the future he had held in hands that one night.

When there was nothing left, he collapsed to the floor and buried his face in his hands as the pieces of the collage still rained down around him. His breaths were still broken heaves when Abigail found him. She glanced at the pieces of paper that now served as the carpet and sat down next to him without remarking the blank walls.

"She wouldn't want you to be killing yourself like this, Michael," she eventually said. By then, she had known him long enough to know when not to expect an answer. She started picking up scraps of the map. Northern Arizona, most of Utah, a bunch of little dots whose annotations she didn't recognize. When she held them like that, she could almost be hopeful. "There is no right or wrong way to deal with the loss of someone you love. But guilt and hate will get you nowhere, Michael. Letting go of them, and perhaps letting yourself love someone else, does not mean that you have forgotten her. That her death no longer affects you. Or that you no longer love her or maybe have never loved her at all. Love is a very peculiar, yet simple thing. It is never more or less. It is just there. It's what makes it so precious, its inclusiveness."

He still gave no sign that he was aware of her presence, let alone that he heard her words. She bumped her shoulder into his, playful in her desperation.

"Come on. I'll help you make a new one," she said, and this time he reacted. While still avoiding her eyes, he mimicked her earlier gesture. The piece of the map he had chosen was the one with the red circle around Gila. He followed the red curve with his fingers so carefully as if it was the last time. His eyebrows were knitted, the only sign of the struggle raging in him.

"Don't bother," he said.

His hope in irreparable shreds, he had more time on his hands than his mind could handle. A school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx greeted his offer to tutor kids with open arms. He was there three times per week after the regular classes ended. Jessica taught third grade. She was usually already on her way home when he arrived at school. Perhaps she had one day been running late and saw him, but he hadn't seen her until the fundraiser.

Her knee-length cocktail dress in the color of champagne didn't catch his eye any more than the dull black most attendees had opted for. Her face, the curve of her lips delicately emphasized with a light shade of pink and her eyes carrying just the right touch of mascara, melded in the ocean of others. Most men would appreciate the proximity of her, but not him. He was broken that way. Then she struck up a conversation with him for the third time and conveniently, the fundraiser ended and they exchanged numbers.

He forgot about the exchange and Jessica altogether until she called him up a week later and invited him to lunch. He said yes. He needed to celebrate anyway, he told himself, for he had just gotten a job in the leading New York engineering firm. With a reputation like his, his desk was brimming with potential clients before his first day was over. He spent the next two days just looking at the growing pile, wanting to tear that to shreds as well.

The following week he returned the invitation, just because it was the polite thing to do.

He took her to a restaurant three blocks from his firm. Whether it was the food or the way the early afternoon sun reflected off the wine glasses, something made her laugh a bit too loudly for comfort, and her knee brushed against his one time too many. They talked about charity work, a passion they shared, such a gorgeously impersonal topic for him.

Desserts were brought, and the end was nearing. He didn't plan on seeing Jessica again unless they bumped into each other incidentally in school corridors. The future was a vague concept to him these days, yet it was clear to him that it did not have a place for someone like Jessica. Regardless of the devastation he had caused, he remained presumptuous, he later mused; he still thought he had a right to expect things to go the way he ordered them to.

He was reminded of his haplessness when his brother walked by.

Lincoln had moved to New York as well. There were just enough blocks between them to give them an excuse to hang out every other day. Lincoln was working with C-Note now, in an import business the latter had set up since his clemency. LJ, still contemplating what to do with his life, lived with him.

Michael wondered who was surprised most by the encounter, Lincoln, LJ, or himself. He introduced Jessica as a teacher in his school, but LJ's face remained aghast. Lincoln, on the hand, sported a buoyant grin that perturbed Michael. He could swear that when the two walked away after a couple of agonizing minutes that dragged like hours, his brother's walk was that of a man half his age.

Now that Jessica had met all the family he still had left, he couldn't think of a reason not to sit next to her at the baseball game held at their school that weekend. Some of the kids he tutored were on the team that challenged a school from the adjacent neighborhood. Jessica had probably taught some of them when they were younger.

He hadn't invited her, and they had made no plans to meet. He saw her sitting on the bleachers, wearing a rosy summer dress despite menacing clouds gathering in the sky. She waved at him and he had no one to use as an excuse for not watching the game with her.

As the kids from their school raised their victorious hands and their mothers Facebooked it to all their friends, Jessica leaned closer and kissed him on the lips. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, he thought as he tasted the cola on her lips. Maybe he did.

He kissed her back, wrapping his hands around her waist under the autumnal afternoon sun. He was polite like that.

The sex was good. He felt her smile against the ink carapace of his heart. His fingers played with her hair that was of too light a shade to captivate him. His fingertips traced the pattern of the moles on her upper arm, a pattern they had no recollection of and no desire to memorize.

Was he really that good of an actor, he wondered. Sometimes he had to remind himself that she was more than a casual acquaintance, given the time they were spending together. He should feel abashed, but the nimiety of guilt had been marring him for almost five years now and he was tired. He couldn't feel anything but emptiness anymore. There was no attempt to hide it, but nothing about her demeanor suggested she took any notice.

How could Jessica not see that she was not a velleity? Was it him who was supposed to crack the shutters that kept her in the dark?

Maybe this was his nadir. Not the moment he found the shopping bag, and their perfect plans were scattered around it. Not the agony he felt watching the blood spill across the skin too graceful to describe. Not the shame of pushing his brother without an explanation. This. A woman, naked in his arms, building castles in her mind, unaware of how weak the bricks she was using were, how they were nothing but mere sand about to be retaken by the ocean as soon as the tide came. And he would let it transpire without an intervening word.

It had started with the blueprint in his office. He had brought work home without remembering they had plans, but she didn't seem to mind his indiscretion. She watched, perched on his desk, as he put the blueprint he was perfecting on the wall. He had been commissioned to design a new building for the leading insurance company in Boston. It was the biggest project his firm had undertaken in two years, and he volunteered. Unlike anyone else, he didn't feel the pressure of expectations.

He took two steps back to study the plan, his fist under his chin.

"Explain it to me," Jessica asked him, reminding him of her presence. He didn't take it as anything but a completely innocuous request, of course. He stepped closer to the wall again and ran his fingers on the paper as he showed her the layout of each floor, explained why that was the perfect location for the staircase, and he caught himself using too many technical terms in a row, but did nothing about it. As he talked, she neared him without a word and without him noticing. Somehow her actions always escaped his attention if he didn't force himself to focus on her.

He still had half of the sentence to finish when she traced his earlobe with her tongue. He didn't find it exactly repulsive but did welcome it with nonchalance. His breathing remained steady as her mouth made its way to his. He moved a stray strand of hair off her face, shunning the color from his thoughts. She moaned as his lips caressed the skin of her neck, and then the hands danced about their bodies, the fingertips left bonfires in their wake, and his heart shut down.

"We should have nicknames," Jessica looked up at him afterward, her chin resting in his chest. The frenzy of her breathing had subsided and only a slight indiscreet blush on her cheeks gave away what they had just done.

"Sorry?"

"You know. Couply nicknames. You always call me Jessica. It sounds, I don't know, formal," she said, and her gaze held his eyes, inviting him to answer. But he was tired, tired of thinking, exhausted by the disjunction between what he wanted and what he said. The weight of her body pressed against his didn't help him one bit.

He cupped her face to buy himself time. He returned the gaze – god knows what she saw in his eyes that stopped her from jumping out of bed and running out with the speed of sound.

It had always been ridiculously easy for him to remember faces. His memorization of her freckles – disproportionately many of them dotted the right side of her face – did not emerge out of his desire for her. To him, she was just Jessica. Their first conversation did not ring out in his mind before he fell asleep, and losing the memory of her taste on his lips was not his biggest fear.

He knew he shouldn't be doing this.

But he was damned anyway.

She still waited for his answer.

"We're talking too much," he said. He shut off his mind for the first time in five years and rolled them over.

Jessica moved in on a Tuesday. Orange pillows now embellished his grey sofa. She had bought new curtains for windows, a brightness he would never choose in his gloom.

About a month ago, she had talked about her rent. It was thrown into their conversation so randomly he didn't think twice about it, and his mind was elsewhere most of the time she talked anyway. He tried, he really did. He was determined to try, to keep trying, even if it ended him for good. He tried for Lincoln, who suffered through cold spells with tickets to Panama in a drawer. He tried for LJ, so that he wouldn't worry about his uncle anymore. And there was Jessica; he needed to try for her, because none of this was her fault. Sometimes he tried to convince himself he did try for Sara, too, for he detested an idea of his suffering being her legacy.

Now, seemingly overnight, the boxes were emptied of Jessica's things and stacked in the hallway. She had packed up her life without his assistance. He hadn't known when she would get everything over to his place until he returned from work, his lateness barely still passing for unsuspicious, and framed photographs of her life peaks were chasing some of the shadows away from the plain walls amongst which he had existed. He was merely an observer of her unfolding plans.

He used to have plans of his own. A whole life's worth of them. They were his masterpiece. He was lauded for having orchestrated a daring prison break and bringing down the Company, but this fell miserably short of the plans that were dearest to him. And yet their glory couldn't bring them to fruition. Why would he bother planning anything ever again? Nothing could live up to what he once almost had. So he let Jessica do the thinking, the planning, the decision-making. In a way, she could really be any other woman. Perhaps, he mused as he watched her rearranged the damn pillows for the millionth time as if her life depended on it, if he lived in her light for long enough, he would actually believe in it himself one day.

Three days later, Abigail came for a visit with her purple folder in her hands. It had been months since he was last in Langley, yet it felt like he could still not escape his little nook there.

From the smile Jessica sported when she offered to bring them coffee, or whatever the agent would like, no one could guess that the day before she had asked him when he was planning on selling his apartment in Chicago. They were having dinner in the living room, the Chinese takeout he had picked up on his way home, and her feet were on his lap. He had never told her about the rent he was still paying for a place in Chicago. No one knew, except the agent in charge of his case. He would never tell Linc, not now when the latter started smiling more and they were finally figuring out their relationship. Michael knew that Lincoln only wanted the best for him. He always did, ever since they were kids, and Michael loved his brother for that. But never until now were their ideas of what was best for Michael so different that they didn't dare to express them in words.

"I wasn't snooping or anything, I swear," Jessica hurried, moving her legs so that there was no contact left between them. It was ridiculous. They were living together, sleeping together, knew each other's quirks and triggers, yet tiptoed around trivial matters. He should probably find it more worrisome than he did. "Your bank statements were on the table, and it just caught my eye."

"No, no, it's fine," he said, purposely avoiding the answer he wasn't sure he would ever have.

"Well, if you change your mind, just let me know," Jessica now said, and her radiant smile made Abigail aware of an entirely new kind of sadness of the case she was in charge of.

"So she's moved in, huh?" she remarked after Jessica duly closed the door behind her, leaving Michael and the agent alone in his office. It was such a familiar setting for them, an enclosed space with covered walls; only, now there was no obsessive map that led nowhere, only detailed blueprints. She knew that Michael's latest project would soon enter the phase of actual construction. "How do you feel about that?"

"Well she's moved in, hasn't she?" he responded with a tone that reminded her why, despite hating to have a practically closed case left so blatantly open, she enjoyed not having to deal with the two belligerent brothers on daily basis. Some mornings she couldn't decide which of the duo was worse, Lincoln with his murderous energy or Michael with that unreadable intensity.

"I have something good to tell you," Abigail said. "The Morenci Jane Doe? You were right about everything. They identified her. Her name is Linda Alexander. Never reported missing. The DNA confirmed it yesterday."

"Good. Did you locate her family?"

"There's no one left," she shook her head. "No idea who the father was. Single mother, died of cancer a few years back. Been in jail a few times for prostitution. A younger brother, died in an accident eight years ago, just before the last confirmed sighting of Linda. People from her hometown that I talked to all thought she just took off. I had to go through yearbooks to find her photograph, and that's outdated for over a decade. A sample for comparison was from a great aunt who didn't even know Linda existed."

She opened the folder and handed her a yearbook photograph. It was her actual photograph, not the facial reconstruction he had hired an expert to do and had given to Agent Spencer the last time he was in Langley. Now it seemed absurd that there was a moment, however ephemeral, when they thought the woman may be Sara. They may have matched on paper, but they looked nothing like each other.

"You did amazing work, Michael. She had a hard life. What you did for her, fight to get her name back, it was probably the only time she was ever shown grace."

"I'm glad," he said, and it had been a while since he last meant his words.

Sucre had just welcomed his third child, his third baby girl. He had been telling anyone during the pregnancy how he prayed for a boy this time, but Michael knew Sucre couldn't be happier to have another girl.

To celebrate the newest addition to their family, he and Maricruz organized a large party at their new house in New Jersey. As excited as Michael was to meet his best friend's new baby, Sucre looked forward to meeting Jessica just as much.

When Michael had first told him that he was bringing her, Sucre needed a few seconds to find words.

"Yes, do bring her, Papi. Jessica, right? Of course, bring her. I can't wait to meet her. I, um. So it is, you know, serious?"

"She moved in a couple of months ago," he said, and another long pause ensued before Michael changed the subject. If Sucre did feel anything but happiness for his best friend and approval of Jessica, he was careful not to let it show. The following Saturday, he ran out of his house, barefoot despite the rain, his arms wide open to greet Michael before the latter could even stop the car. He held him as if they were still in the world where they might have unbeknownst to them run out of tomorrows.

Jessica had been nervous about the party. What if they don't like me, she kept repeating, then frowned when he laughed at her. She scoured Manhattan for the perfect baby gift, then shopped some more for presents for the older girls. She needn't have worried, of course. She held out her hand tentatively to greet Sucre, but he pulled her into an embrace immediately. At that moment, with rain falling down on him and forcing him to squint, Michael finally saw Jessica for whom she was.

She was a hit with the girls. They wanted to brush her hair and wanted her to do their nails. She was a natural with kids, Michael thought as he watched her glistening eyes. And they were living together.

"You thinking of having one of your own?" Sucre asked him.

"We haven't talked about it yet," Michael said. But he hadn't been thinking of finding someone to play Jessica's role either. They had never outright discussed their togetherness, and yet now she occupied every corner of his apartment while still kept away from his soul. With his mind in abeyance, his life still raced as if he was on the run. He watched the places around him change, people were coming and going, only fragments of their conversations reaching him. Along with his control, he had let go of his decisiveness. If he didn't reclaim himself soon, he may soon end up with something he didn't want and could never get rid of.

Of all things he had known as a child, being unwanted was the hardest lesson to take in stride. Even now, as a man so many considered the pinnacle of success, he felt at times like he only belonged to the darkness where he could cause no trivial problems. What would he be like, with a father around to guide him, without blood on his eyelids too many sleepless nights? The idea of this man he might have become with a family that wanted him was as inconceivable as it was heartbreaking.

How could he be a father he demanded of himself to be if he knew there was a chance, and not a minute one, that he would make his kid feel the same way? They wouldn't even be his backup plan. They would be a pause while his world stopped spinning for a moment, only to continue as if there was never an interruption.

Could he teach his children the good things if he longed to be a wanted man again with the Company at his heels and his sweetheart by his side; could they look up to him as an example of a good person if every night when he lay down next to their mother, he wished she was the woman whose hand he would never let go of? Because he would marry Jessica if there were kids. Not doing so was out of the question for him. Whatever it was that he craved and how much his want was breaking him, he wouldn't let it get in the way of doing the right thing.

There had been a time when he could picture a family of his own. A little girl with her mother's eyes. A little boy who adored his mother. He had wanted lavish family vacations with matching outfits and sleepless nights with runny noses; the sound of little feet running on the parquet floors to be what woke him in the morning; a game of hide and seek between drapes as the sun was setting.

But things don't work that way.

There are some things that are granted to you, and then there are others, the ones so real in your heart that somehow just can't make it in the real world. He couldn't make his own kids compete without a chance of winning.

"Well, Papi," Sucre's smile didn't waver. He had been the first to realize that Sara was more to him than just a prison doctor. Perhaps that was why he sounded as if he didn't believe his own words. "I'm happy for you. I really am."

On their drive back to New York, Jessica's recount of the day was louder than the radio. She couldn't stop talking about the little girls' reaction when they opened their gifts and how they had Sucre wrapped around their little fingers. Michael silently acquiesced to her words, aware of what was underneath them.

She was still gushing when they were doing the dishes, their usual routine before heading to bed.

"Anyway, um, my cousin's birthday is coming up. And as it is just like two weeks before they start building the project you're designing, I was thinking maybe we could fly down to Georgia for a little getaway? It's been awhile since we went anywhere, just the two of us."

"I don't think we should be doing that, Jessica. Or anything else, really," he said.

"What?" she said, not giving his words the consideration she should. The warmth of her smile he didn't deserve didn't fade as she put a cup back in the cupboard.

He turned off the water and leaned on the sink with his arms. He couldn't see her, yet could swear the air between them grew colder. He heard her tentatively close the cupboard, and then there was complete silence until she finally called his name.

"Jessica," he sighed and turned to face her. "I owe you an apology. I used to think I could do this. Now I realize I have no excuse to let it go on. I can't keep making you think I am as in this as you are."

"Wait, are you breaking up with me?" her jaw dropped.

"Jessica, you deserve someone who will not be able to wait to marry you, who will want to be the father of your children. A man for whom you will be his first, and only, choice."

"We live together," she was shaking her head as he stood there, completely still, his arms falling down the sides of his body. He didn't have his suit on, his usual body armor, so he had to make do with his posture. Her shoulders drooped in disbelief. "We share a bed. Fuck. How could I not see this coming?"

"Because it has been there since before we met."

He saw the confusion in her eyes dissipate. In the months they had shared, they never spoke of Sara. Michael now supposed it had never been brought up because Jessica didn't figure it mattered. She was, after all, waking up next to him every morning.

"Can't you say you're fucking your secretary or something?"

"I don't want this to go too far."

"Yeah, well, I think we are kind of passed that point."

"I am sorry," he offered, fully aware of how empty his words were.

Jessica ran her hand through her hair. She stared at him with an expression he didn't know how to interpret. That was his penance, he thought, for never properly looking at her until he watched her heart break.

"Yeah. I wish I could not believe that," she finally said.

Jessica moved out on a Tuesday. He helped her carry the last of her boxes to her car. As they stood by the trunk and embraced, he noticed the trees in front of his building had started to bloom. For some reason, it brought a smile to his face. He didn't recall ever before caring about the imminence of spring.

"Well, I hope you find your peace," Jessica said when they were facing each other again.

"Take care of yourself," were his last words to her before he watched her drive away and out of his life. Once he was back in his apartment, alone, he opened all the windows to let in the spring air. He glanced around the living room, now once again adorned in a dull, grey shade.

For the first time, it didn't make his heart constrict and his knees didn't buckle under the remorse.

It was still here, of course. It would never go away. The difference was, he was done fighting it. It wasn't that he was giving up. He wasn't moving on, either. He chose to embrace his loss as a part of himself. If this was all he would ever have, all he would ever be, he was okay with it. He wouldn't have chosen it had he been given a chance, but some things were just out of everyone's control.

He remembered the phone call he had made in a dilapidated shack, just days after the escape from Fox River.

It was real, Sara, he assured her.

Years later, when the days they had shared were painfully outnumbered by the days marred by the loss of her, it was still real. And that was enough for him, now.

To Be Continued.

broughttoyouby:::dbcwinter.