Hi all,

well, I hope the wait wasn't too long :) This chapter is mainly about Sara's life after Gila, but things speed up toward the end, I guess. The next chapter might be up in a couple of days already, we'll see.

Thanks for reading and for your wonderful reviews. I'm so happy you guys like this.

If anything in this chapter *sounds* familiar, yeah, I took it from the series. And I changed a little something, I hope you won't be too mad

I hope you'll like this! Please review :)

much love, winter.

Sandcastles/The Bars Between Us

Part Two

Chapter Seven

There was nothing about that July morning, six years after Gila, to indicate that the evening would end with smashed dishes on and around the counter.

This should be harder, Sara thought and the glass of orange juice was in her hand. She was a wanted criminal after all; she had aided and abetted the most notorious prison break in recent history, then got unlawfully out when the flames were still raging. She had left it all behind, along with the documents of her real identity, when she boarded that ship in Costa Rica. Well, all but her little miracle.

She wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been for their little boy. If it had been just her, alone in Costa Rica after having learned of Michael's death, she would have gone back to America and faced the consequences of leaving door open. Michael might have wanted her to be free, but what kind of life would that have been, weighted down by guilt and obscured by constant looking over her shoulder? Sara had been used to new beginnings, but that one daunted her. Without her father, without her medical license, without Michael, what excuse could there be for evading her warrant until someone recognized her or her heart tired out?

When she had been a little girl, changing the world was her goal. The six-year-old her would raise the tiny eyebrow at what her years of medical school had been reduced to now. But lofty ambitions didn't matter to her anymore. Now she was a mom, and it was a mystery to her why she had ever wanted to be anything more or else. Maybe it was presumptuous of her to claim freedom for herself in the name of their son. But her father had never been around and her mother had only been around bottles; giving her kid anything but all she could was out of the question. If she had gone to prison after Michael's death, their perfect baby boy would have ended up in the system, the same system that had inflicted so much suffering on Michael. She must have been the only person in the whole world who interpreted that as a noble excuse for avoiding the prison sentence that had awaited her.

After she learned about Michael's fate and realized their baby would only have her, she remembered a woman she had never expected to see again. Sara had met Geraldine when they were both doing volunteer work in India. They had never been exactly friends and never kept in touch, but Sara knew of Geraldine's work through mutual friends. Geraldine had opened up a center for women who were victims of domestic abuse and needed a place where they could be safe and figure out their next step. With a growing baby bump and scars all over her arms, Sara was just one of dozens of women who passed through Geraldine's doors every month. Thank god she had taken French in high school.

Sara stayed in Lille, and with Geraldine. Geraldine knew her real name, of course, but never asked why her documents now gave her name as Karen Williams. She never asked those questions, not when children were involved. But she knew that Sara used to be a doctor and that since she didn't have a license with her new name on it, she could no longer practice medicine. The center needed a doctor, and with her gentle, compassionate nature, Sara was a perfect fit. She patched up women brought in by the police in the middle of the night, consoled and counseled them, distracted their kids. Geraldine's work had been recognized by and thus financially supported by the government, so Sara's little infirmary was remarkably well stocked and was just like any other doctor's office she had worked at.

The center also had a block of apartments for women in distress to stay in. Sara and her little boy lived in one of them. As other women and kids were coming and going, some before the bruises could fade, Sara and her boy stayed. The only woman living there as long as Sara had was Moni, her next-door neighbor. Their apartments were the only two on the top floor, and that was probably just one more reason why over time they became a family.

Moni used to have a bright future ahead of her, like most of the women Sara was meeting these days. But one wrong decision when it came to love that could show her the world had left her with a young daughter and more broken bones than she could remember. Now, almost seven years later, Selena, her daughter, was already in high school and the bones no longer ached. She worked as an accountant for Geraldine and served as an inspiration for women who kept arriving, their cheeks still wetted with tears and their minds already on the way back.

So, yeah, it should be harder, being a single mother and a fugitive at the same time, Sara thought. Of course it wasn't perfect. They had a small bathroom that barely had enough hot water for both of them. Their little kitchen was only a wall, not a separate room, the stove was second-hand and the fridge was smaller than the one she had had in her dorm rooms. The living room was also their bedroom, and they had no washing machine and no microwave, something she would have considered mandatory when imagining motherhood seven years ago.

And there was no Michael.

But they had been never given a chance to do this together, so she didn't lament. She refused to lament from the moment she had boarded that ship. It could be so much worse.

They had a little balcony on which they sat and watched sunsets, then counted stars, other days marveled at storms until the wind changed and covered them with raindrops. The kitchen counter was large enough for the boy to sit on it and be with her when she was making dinner. There was a heart made of photographs on the wall of the living room; wherever they went – and they traveled as much as they could – they made sure to take pictures, many of them. Shelves were brimming with books and music, for the music was always playing. The silence reminded her of being underwater.

"What are you thinking about, mom?" her perfect boy asked. God, she still couldn't figure out what she had ever done to deserve him. He was so much like Michael that their alikeness made it impossible for her to avert her eyes just as much as it made them burn. Michael never knew. It was the most important piece of information she ever had, yet there had been no one left to tell, not her father, not the person who should hear it first. They hadn't had long together and their plans for the future never moved past breakfasts in Panama; family was an outrageous topic to discuss for two people who had bumped into each other just weeks prior. But Michael Scofield had always had a plan. Just thinking of what he had planned for them brought tears she detested to her eyes and she hated him for having to do the right thing. But he had given her their boy. He had given her the future just before he had to go, one last parting gift.

That was why she named him Bryce. It sounded so much like prize. She must have had some sort of hunch that the kid would be a spitting image of Michael that prompted her to give him his father's name only as the middle name. Because if someone was to find Bryce's face familiar, the name might be just what tied it all together.

"Finish your breakfast, baby, it's almost time to go," she smiled, but Bryce's eyes lingered on her face for that knowing second. He was growing up too fast. He had already learned things almost-six-year-olds should have no notion of, and she didn't help the matter. There was a difference between being sad and shattered, and while most days her heart was exuberant with gratitude and that little tinge of sadness, on bad days the flashes of what could have been drained her of her light.

The door of their apartment flung open, and Selena walked in, still in pajamas. She was Moni's fifteen-year-old daughter. Her curly hair was just as impossible to tame as her mother, and just like Moni, she had a tendency to sleep in, especially on school days.

"Aunt Karen, I have nothing to wear," she yawned, plumped herself on the chair next to Sara's, and pulled a face at Bryce's almost finished cereals. Despite Sara's attempts to make the girl understand that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, Selena was a firm believer that sleeping until the last minute was much more imperative. Sara couldn't blame her, really; she had thought the same until she became a mom.

"Your closet is fuller than mine, honey," Sara calmly responded like she did every morning.

"Can I borrow something anyway?" Selena asked, then looked over to Bryce. "You ready for school?"

"I've been ready for half an hour," he told her in a voice that didn't at all insinuate that there was only thirty minutes left until school time and she was still in her pajamas. He was polite like that.

"Just wait until you start doing fucking fractions," Selena said, and Bryce pointed out that she had said a bad word, and Sara chuckled into her glass of orange juice.

Sara still didn't foresee a pile of broken dishes when she got a call from Bryce's school.

A young woman had been brought in by the police the previous evening. Her face was distorted by the swelling of her lips and the blackness around her eyes. She had her daughter with her, a four-year-old with butterfly pins in her hair and dressed in a bright pink dress. Neither of them cried, even though the woman had blood clotted in her hair and could barely speak because of the swollen lip. Kids rarely cried, Sara had learned over time. Their movements were always stiff and their backs were straightened to brave themselves up; the eyes they kept wide open, carefully observing everything and everyone around them. There was tension in the corners of their mouths, but no tears ever came. Sara wondered if the shock of what they had witnessed numbed them in some way, or they just tried to be strong for their mother.

The woman was giving a statement to the police officer. Sara watched it from her office, with the girl on her lap. She was brushing and braiding her hair, just like she had Selena's when she was younger, and just like she would the little girl's she wasn't destined to have. Then the phone rang and Bryce's teacher informed her that Bryce had been "involved in a disturbance" and asked her to come to school. Before Sara could worry about what had happened this time, Selena reassuringly texted her that the school was filled with fucking idiots and teachers were the worst of them all (Selena had a bit of a foul mouth and nobody was sure whether she got it from Moni or her deadbeat father).

One rainfall, two bus rides and thirty minutes later, Sara found them both seated in front of the principal's office. She was told that a boy from Bryce's class, a kid who knew everything but what was academically required, had informed her son that Selena could not possibly be his sister because they didn't have the same mother or father. Bryce had told him to shut up and when the kid kept talking, he warned him that he was going to hit him. He started counting to three, but the kid didn't take the threat seriously, as Bryce was small for his age and the kid was the tallest and strongest boy in their class.

"Yes, I hit him. I won't apologize," was the only statement Bryce had given to their teacher and principal. The other kid didn't seem so big anymore when he whined to his mother, the teacher, and the principal that there was no countdown, that then Selena showed up and told him she would beat up his sister, and most importantly, that he never, ever hit anyone. All three knew that the latter was absolutely not true, and the principal informed Sara that that was the only reason Bryce and Selena weren't suspended for three days, like they would normally be. Selena was right, Sara smirked. Teachers really were fucking idiots.

"Did you really count to three?" she couldn't resist asking later when the two of them were in the park and sitting on a bench, the one by the pond that was their favorite. There was still wet in their hair from the rainfall that had caught them on their way from the market, where they had bought fresh strawberries from the vender that always gave them extra.

"Yes," he quietly said, then repositioned himself so that he was practically sitting in her lap. He clung to her and his eyes remained fixated on the family of ducks that was swimming in the pond. Mom, dad, and their three ducklings, chasing after each other in the sunlight that broke through the cloudy sky.

"Mom, what was my father like?" he then asked just as quietly, and Sara's heart skipped a beat and she wrapped her arms around his tiny body ever tighter, as if the emerging sunrays could steal him away from her, too.

In moments like this, Sara felt like a fraud. She had never hidden Michael from their son; she had talked about him when the little boy was still in her belly, and sometimes he kicked, as if he comprehended and wanted her to continue. When she first held him in her hands, she told him he had his dad's eyes and how happy his dad would be if he could be there with them. As soon as Bryce understood what it meant to have a mother, he also knew that he had a dad. She showed him the pictures Bruce had given her and told him all she knew about his dad. When she recounted the too few conversations she had with Michael, she went back to the first one, careful to use different words.

The first years had been easy. She had been in control of the narrative. Now Bryce was getting bigger and more perceptive, and soon he would realize that everything she was telling him he already knew. In all honesty, it wouldn't surprise her if he had it all figured out already. He was his father's son after all.

He had already started asking questions, trivial ones but specific enough to break Sara's heart. When Thibaut, his classmate, got a dog for his birthday, Bryce asked her if his dad preferred cats or dogs. She just shrugged. Then when Moni won coupons for a fancy restaurant downtown and they went and Selena got an allergic reaction to seafood, Bryce casually asked if his dad had any allergies. All she could tell him was that he wasn't a diabetic, but Bryce was too young to understand what that meant and it was ridiculous to speak of what his dad didn't have, so she was quiet yet again. And then just months ago, out of the blue, he asked her what his dad's favorite color was. Her lips turned white in the effort to keep in the sobs that threatened to consume her. How could she tell her son that Michael was the love of her life, the greatest man she had ever met, and yet she didn't know something as simple as his shoe size?

Sara was aware that her words and his childish loyalty to her would not be enough one day anymore. Bryce would type his father's name in a search box, and there he would be, the Michael Scofield as he was known to the world. His booking photos splashed across pages and pages of hits, the sensational headlines of his pernicious intellect, lurid accounts of his crimes. Sometimes she wondered what they had written about his death. She never looked, of course; there was no need to read about the nationwide jubilation that had taken place in her darkest hours. But she was sure that no intrepid reporter told the public that Michael died clearing his name and that his death was the loudest proof of his being a good man. The government, the Company or however they were called, doubtlessly ensured that no one in America had a nice word to say about Michael Scofield.

Her name and her face would be there, too. Just thinking about what was written about her broke her heart for their son. Not only was she a fugitive; the nature of her relationship with Michael must have been what intrigued people the most. She was probably accused of having had an affair with an inmate, and how could Bryce's existence help her negate that? What evidence did she have that Michael manipulating her wasn't just one more line on his egregious rap sheet?

She had been telling her truth to Bryce his entire life but would be the first to admit how feeble it was. Once upon a time she had thought she knew Michael Scofield – that morning, in the infirmary, when he kissed her. The vulnerability that permeated him, the plea he was scared to utter, it was real. It was real, Sara. Then her damned keys went missing, she was just a page in his plan, and his face was the breaking news and she was heading to jail. It was a pandemonium that wasn't quieted until he was all she could see, the only thing he could feel around her, in her.

How could it be real if in its core it had been a denial of what was all around them? They were fugitives, her father was dead, people were losing their lives because of them, and there was a plane waiting for them the next day.

When she had left that motel room in Gila, he was still a stranger to her; a stranger whose familiarity inebriated her, but in daylight, when his eyes substituted warmth for determination and his hands were too busy fighting to reassure her, he was just a stranger.

Could she blame their son if he felt betrayed to discover that his father was a criminal; if he was ashamed to realize that he himself was an offspring of two fugitives with bounties on their heads? No. She would turn herself in if it came to that. Raising Bryce was the only excuse she had for freedom anyway.

They weren't there yet, though. Bryce's little hand still got lost in hers and he still leaned on her shoulder to shield himself from the sun and she was his favorite person in the world and his father was a hero to him. They had today, and if Michael Scofield had thought her anything, today mattered more than a life of tomorrows.

Sara sighed and closed her eyelids, where he always waited for her.

"Michael Scofield was like a storm," she said, kissing the top of their son's head. "He was beautiful. And frightening; mysterious. And he would show up in your life out of the clear blue sky and then disappear, just as quickly."

Sara didn't even know what she wanted her words to mean, and she doubted that they made much sense to Bryce. But she had loved that man for over six years now, and it still bewildered her. Maybe that was what love truly was – something insane, irrational, devastating, explosive, healing. Six years later, and she was still wondering the same thing.

"Mom, would dad be disappointed in me today?" Bryce asked. It was what troubled him since they had left the school; the reason why his eyes continuously scanned his surroundings, careful to avoid her. "Because I hit Jules, I mean?"

It brought a smile to Sara's face. She hoped Bryce would remember this moment, so that one day, when he would learn the truth about his father, he would have proof of just how much alike they were. Because, yeah, she might not know how many sugars Michael had taken with his coffee, but she knew that family had come first for him. Always, without a doubt. Maybe that was all that truly mattered.

"Baby, your dad would be so proud of you for standing up for your sister."

"Because family is the most important thing?"

"Exactly," Sara nodded.

Bryce might have been almost six years old, but he was a very smart boy (or so everyone kept telling him), and yet there was nothing about the early evening that would make him suspect a storm was imminent.

After dinner, Aunt Moni and Selena came over to their place to watch TV with mom. He put on his sneakers that seemed to get a bit smaller every time he wore them, kissed mom goodbye, and headed one floor below to the apartment in which Karim lived. Karim was a boy a couple of years older than him who had recently moved in with his mom and three younger siblings (everyone seemed to have siblings, Bryce kept realizing. Everyone but him and Selena. That made her that much more important). He had spent the first years of his life in Tunisia, a country Bryce didn't know much about. Even though Karim claimed to barely remember anything, Bryce offered to help him learn French. Besides, his dad would want him to be nice to people – except the people who were mean to his family.

Karim's mom, a woman with hair even darker and longer than mom, gave them a plate of cookies called Ghraiba. She made a fresh batch every day, enough for all children in the building to get at least one. Some moms got cookies as well. Aunt Moni seemed to forget she was on a low-carb diet every time Karim's mom was nearby with a platter in her hand.

Karim's mom spent her evenings in front of a television, but didn't watch junk TV like mom did with Aunt Moni and Selena (Bryce could never understand why mom called it junk TV. It seemed to make her laugh, and she always said that it was healthy to laugh. Food from McDonald's which she referred to as junk food, on the other hand, was full of fat that was bad for you, as she never forgot to stress). Karim's mom watched the news. She claimed it was to improve her French, but Bryce knew she watched to see if her husband did another bad thing.

This evening, just like all previous evenings, Karim concentrated really hard on correctly pronouncing the words and phrases. Bryce was just as focused on his task, but his brain was wired a bit differently (that was what he was told by Mademoiselle Klein, a lady he talked to twice a month and whose office had a wall covered with fancy diplomas, something mom and dad also used to have in America). He could tutor Karim AND hear the reports on television. Kids in his class thought it was weird and told him so, but it was the only way he had ever known. Mom also hadn't been that happy when she first noticed. The following week he had had his first talk with Mademoiselle Klein. He liked Mademoiselle Klein just fine – her office had an aquarium, something he had only seen on television until then –, but he'd prefer to spend those two hours with mom. Mom, though, seemed to think the talking was important, so he went along with it. He figured this I-can-listen-two-more-than-one-thing-at-the-same-time thing was something he had gotten from dad, and that made it very, very special.

By now, Bryce recognized the names of politicians the reporters kept complaining about. They used many long words didn't understand. He listened a bit more attentively when the world reports were on in case there was something new to learn about Panama, but there was very, very rarely anything on Panama.

Most of his friends watched the sports report, enthralled by their favorite soccer players. But Bryce didn't know much about sports, probably because he had no uncle to take him to the matches. He was more interested in the culture/celebrity news, mainly because Selena (and by extension mom) watched so many series and listened to so much music that he, too, knew all the actors and singers. Like most days, there was an extensive report on a family of sisters with a long and complicated name (some of the words the reporter used would probably make mom cover his ears, but Karim's mom either didn't understand them or found them innocuous) and something about a blonde singer Selena didn't like. Then Karim accidentally tipped his glass and the juice spilled all over his notebook and one of his younger sisters came crying to their mother in a language Bryce didn't understand, and in all the commotion, he couldn't hear the television all that well anymore. Out of habit, just out of habit, not because he would feel any differently (Aunt Moni always claimed she could sense in her bones when the important things would take place, but Bryce couldn't recall her ever being right), he glanced toward the television.

And there he was.

His dad.

On television.

He knew it was dad. All he had ever seen of him were photographs, never a video, but there was no doubt it was dad. He knew his face as well as he did mom's.

Mom had told him that this might happen. That dad could be on TV and there would be people talking very bad things about him because the bad guys were very powerful and hated dad.

But now dad stood on a stage, with something that looked like an award in his hand, and he was talking to people who stared at him in awe. And Bryce tried really hard to listen to his father, for he had never heard his voice, but Karim's mom moved and obstructed his view, and Karim's other sister started wailing as well, and by the time he got off the chair and stood directly in front of television, the segment had already finished.

Bryce was a very smart boy. He could read better than anyone in his class and he could tell time accurately. So he must have noticed the small writing at the top of the screen that said his dad, his dad whom he had never met, had made this speech in New York just hours ago. Yet it didn't occur to Bryce that this was very, very odd, for his dad had died before he was born. All he could think of was that it was dad, his dad, and that he had to tell mom.

To Be Continued.

Broughttoyouby:::winter.