Hi all,

I'm not really happy with how this chapter turned out, but I don't really see myself figuring it out anytime soon, so I decided to just post it anyway. If you like it, I'm super happy, and if you don't, yeah, I know.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Please review.

much love, winter.

Sandcastles/ The Bars Between Us

Chapter Eight

Sara heard Bryce's rushed steps before he pushed the door open with the force his childish hands allowed. She turned her head from the television but was not alarmed. That kid always chose running over walking, as if the day didn't have enough minutes and he loathed wasting a single one. Or, Sara thought solemnly sometimes, as though he knew how quickly someone could snatch those minutes away from him.

"Mom, dad's on TV," he shouted without looking at her. He glanced around and he had to have gotten at least some genetic traits from her, for she knew immediately what he was searching for. They spotted the remote control at the same time, but she was closer and grabbed it with all her might. She knew she had done it too fast for it to pass unnoticed by Selena and Moni.

Michael Scofield was like a storm, she recalled her own words. He would show up in your life, out of the clear blue sky.

She had a hunch that this time he wouldn't disappear as quickly.

She knew that this day was coming, of course. The Fox River Eight was too big of a story not to one day appear in a random newspaper article detailing the most daring prison escapes, or be a topic explored in a documentary on a crime channel.

But she had thought they still had time, and explanations of the truth were still only adumbrations in her mind.

"Baby, please don't watch that," she pleaded and knew she wasn't doing this right.

"No, mom, it's good!" Bryce exclaimed. He was a happy kid, well, as happy as their purlieus let him, but she had never seen him this euphoric. She prayed he hadn't heard a thing in his bliss. Then she could still explain it all away, somehow. But he must have, for the next thing he said was, "Dad got an award!"

That paralyzed her, and it was all Bryce, his father's resourceful son, needed to take the remote out of her hand. The commercial for washing powder was substituted for his face as swiftly as everything she had come to believe in the past six years was reduced to nothing just moments later. But first, he took her breath away, still, like no time had passed whatsoever. There were those pristine eyes, so clear when he wanted them to be and so obscure when he refused to let her in. The graceful hands that slid down her forearm with perspicuity she couldn't deny even when it had been forbidden to say it out loud or indecent to put it into words. And his mouth that she had until then believed only lied to her unwillingly.

"Well, if that was my baby daddy, I wouldn't find anyone else worthy of me shaving my legs for every day as well," Sara heard Selena's voice somewhere in the distance, and she wanted to ask the two women if they understood now why she had surrendered herself to loving an angel. God, she had not seen enough of him when they had been both alive. Now she had an impulse to laugh because it had been so long and she sometimes feared his face was skewed in her recollections, and this footage she had never seen before pictured him just the way she kept him in her heart. And then it dawned on her that he looked older; not much, but the lines on his face had deepened just enough for her to notice. This hadn't been shot before their meeting in Fox River; no, this was him now, years after she had first told their son that he was dead.

A short text at the top of the screen confirmed that she wasn't crazy. Earlier today, New York. The simple words reverberated in her mind until they disintegrated into unintelligible sounds, and yet they weren't any less brutal.

"Mom?" Bryce said, his voice now drained of elation. She knew she should do away with the worry that tinged his tone, but it was as if all her edicts of the past six years, that it wasn't about her but about her son, were now belittling her.

"Michael Scofield wins engineer of the year," Moni read out loud the larger text. "They're giving out fucking awards to engineers?"

They were, of course. But not to people like Michael Scofield. Not to people who were supposed to have died six fucking years ago.

So this was what he had meant that night in Gila, when her heart was still racing from their closeness and everything was surreal, as if the desert heat got the best of her. We'll have whatever you want, his words caressed her skin that ached for his touch, I'll give you everything I possibly can. She was such a fucking idiot. For six years, she had been keeping him alive, refusing to make him a ghost to let go of. She thought it was the least she could do after all he had given her and what he would have bestowed on her had he not run out of time. She had clung to his faith in their future when she struggled to have faith in herself.

"Turn it off," said Selena and dashed passed Sara, taking the remote out of Bryce's terrified hands and changing the channel. Sara barely registered the gesture, let alone the trepidation on her son's face.

Sara had always disregarded her own looks, but knew that men's stares flocked to her. There were no plans in most men's heads that extended beyond the night at hand; yet she was damn sure she could find a decent man who would treat her well and accept Bryce as his own. He'd have some boring job, like a professor or an economist, that would never put them on a bullet's path. Together they would give Bryce a childhood every kid deserved, a room of his own and shoes that weren't bought on sale, and, fuck, she would have a microwave.

She had consciously rebuffed every chance of that. She at peace with having loved, and won and lost, both at the same time. Her parents had forgotten how to love each other when she was still very young. Knowing, however distortedly, that she was the obligation that kept them in a loveless marriage contributed to the denial she had sought in morphine. She wouldn't do that to her kid, so it was just her and Bryce, from the day Bruce had told her about the building which, as it now turned out, burned only for her.

She felt like she was going to be sick.

"Mom?" Bryce asked for her again, but the only response he got was her turning around and teetering to the kitchen sink. Leaning on it with her hands, she realized she was too enraged to be sick.

All the while, Michael lived lavishly in New York. The wine red shirt he was wearing probably cost more than she had spent on Bryce's clothes throughout his life. The award he had been presented was just one more immortalization of his name, his real name that definitely hadn't been taken from a death certificate of a girl that had passed away decades ago. Shaking hands with people never made him feel like a liar. And fucking New York! He lived in the center of the world as the world stared at him, completely enthralled. Apparently his plan to make everything right had been victorious – it was just that somewhere along the way, it had stopped including her.

How long had it taken him to forget her? Because even after she had boarded her way out, Michael Scofield could find her with ease. Chloe's father knew she had disembarked in Marseille, and if he had found out about Gandhi, he would know Geraldine helped women who needed to erase their names, and he would connect the dots. He was Michael fucking Scofield. Surely designing award-winning buildings was arduous and time-consuming work, but if he cared like he had led her to believe, he would come to her. In six years, if he loved her like he tricked her into believing underneath the sheets in Gila, he could spare a day. So how long had been until he found another woman to drink fucking orange juice with every morning?

Her life in Lille might not be difficult, but it sure as hell wasn't easy. When Bryce was a little over two years old, he came down with a fever that stayed for a week and no one had an explanation for. He was admitted to the hospital, and there was no one there to reassure her, however feebly, that everything would be okay. He was the only kid in his class whose father was never there to film him at school recitals. She had to be the one to find Mademoiselle Klein and figure out how to pay the bill, because damn it, if her kid did have Low Latent Inhibition, he would get the best help she could give him. And all the while, Michael was in New York.

Selena wasn't sure what exactly Aunt Karen said, but it was definitely not a nice word and Aunt Karen never swore. Together with the word, she pushed a pile of washed and unwashed dishes off the counter, and those she had missed the first time, she returned for just seconds later.

Years had passed since she had last been in the same room as her father, but Selena still remembered how afraid she was every time he had started thrashing around. Her mom had just stoically watched, buoyed up by spirits, much like she was right now when her eyebrows were raised so high it was almost funny. She loved her mom, of course she did, but she was just so fucking useless when it was up to her to step up.

Selena looked at Bryce, who was now in a full-blown screaming mode, and intercepted him just before he could run to his mom. He kicked in an attempt to free himself, but she just clasped her arms around him tighter, just like that police officer had when she had finally had enough and dialed the emergency number. She carried Bryce out of the apartment and across the hall to hers. There she reluctantly let him go and sat down in front of the door so that he couldn't reach for the door handle.

"Hey," Selena said in the soothing voice Aunt Karen always used when women in a fit of hysterics were brought to her. "It's gonna be okay."

"Why is mom so angry at dad?" he asked, and his tiny frame convulsed with confusion.

"Bryce, that video you showed her, of your dad, it was shot today."

"No. Dad's dead," he resolutely shook his head. Bryce was a very smart boy. It was so effortless to forget there were still months to go until his sixth birthday. He knew numbers much bigger than those in his math textbook and could probably name more countries of the world than his teacher. Yet he could not make sense of what had just happened, and he was shaking his head so fiercely that Selena worried he would make himself sick.

How could dad be alive, Bryce wondered. The very first thing he had ever learned about him was that he was dead. That he had died so that Bryce could be with his mom. Okay, maybe not the very first thing, but definitely one of the first.

So why was he now on TV, all dressed up and looking just like he did in the photographs? Why wasn't he here, with him and mom? If he loved them as much as mom always said he did?

Had he lied?

Did mom lie?

He thought of the scar on mom's arm. Mom always said that dad had made sure that the bad guys could never hurt her – or Bryce – like that again. Now he wondered if dad was the bad guy; if dad was the one who had scarred mom.

He still didn't know what to think when a while later, mom knocked on the door, with Aunt Moni towering behind her.

She told him they were going to go see dad, and just a brief hour ago, the words would be a miracle. They used that word on the news all the time; it was a miracle when a very sick lady got better overnight and could leave a special hospital and go home. Or when a soccer team was losing 0-2 only to score three goals in the last ten minutes. But the people on TV were always happy when miracles happen to them. Most of them were crying.

Mom wasn't crying.

And she definitely wasn't happy. Bryce could tell she was still very, very upset. She clenched her teeth together, like every time a woman she was treating claimed it was a one-time thing that wouldn't happen again. Her expression didn't loosen even when they were back in their apartment and he was tying his sneakers and she was emptying the mug in which they kept the change into her wallet. It was probably the money for the tickets, he thought, but he wasn't sure how they would get to New York. They always went everywhere by bus, and no buses could cross oceans, Bryce knew that. Seeing dad didn't sound like a good idea at all, and, judging from her discouraging silence, Selena seemed to agree with him.

But mom put on a jacket and asked him if he was ready. Of course he wasn't. Mom wasn't either. They had nothing packed and they always packed before going somewhere. He needed his toothbrush and a change of clothes and the extra pair of socks in case it rained. And then there was the origami. The paper rose and the crane with the code in dots. Should they take them with them to show dad that they had kept them all these years? And what about Bryce's books? His collection was his pride and he wanted to show it to dad! But the thing was, Bryce didn't know anymore whether dad deserved to know about them.

He finished tying his sneakers and his fingers fumbled like they hadn't in a couple of years. Then he got up and made sure his back was perfectly straight, but the cold feeling in his tummy that made it hard to breathe was still there.

"Yes," he said and returned mom's unwavering stare. Then, when she turned around to put her phone and the charger in her purse, he surreptitiously stashed the origami in the side pocket of his backpack.

God, what am I doing to him, Sara thought. They were on the bus heading for Paris and it was past midnight. They had barely caught the bus. If they hadn't, she knew she would make them wait for the next one right there, at the station, even if all the stars would have disappeared by the time it arrived. Tonight she didn't trust herself to get back home.

They had been lucky to get seats. The bus was filled with tourists; their backpacks were stuffed under their seats and opened bags of chips nauseated her. They put jackets under their heads and chatted with each other in frustratingly low tones. Some were watching movies on their tablets and bright screens illuminated their faces in silence. She couldn't get that news clip out of her mind, no matter how much she tried to focus on something, anything else. She had only caught seconds, but they dragged in front of her eyes like hours.

Bryce sat next to her, but his tiny body was turned away from her. He kept his eyes firmly on the passing lights of Lille they were leaving behind. He knew these streets so well; he usually tested his knowledge by predicting which crossroad or which church they would drive by next, and he could recognize them even in the neon lights of the dark. Tonight his lips were pressed tightly together and his back was so straight it had to ache. The driver had advised the passengers to put the seatbelts on, but Bryce was one of the few who complied. Unequivocally doing the right thing was just one more trait he didn't get from her.

What was she doing to him?

She should reassure him, tell him that everything would be fine but what did she know? She had read online that Michael received the full pardon after he and Lincoln had exposed some kind of a government conspiracy. He was now a national hero and worked for an elite engineering firm in New York. He was free, and alive.

She could tell Bryce that, but it didn't answer what they both wanted to know.

Sara Tancredi had been declared dead in absentia. That was all over the internet as well.

It was almost two already and it was a school night. She shouldn't be dragging Bryce to Paris when he should be tucked in. They could have easily set off in the morning, with the mist of the unslept night upon them rather than the unsettled affect still clouding their judgment.

But there was a vial of morphine hidden behind the jars on the top shelf of one of the kitchen cupboards. She kept it for emergencies, just in case someone fell ill unexpectedly. It was untouched, just like she had always liked it, and tonight was a very, very bad night. She knew that if they stayed in their apartment, tomorrow there would be a mark on her arm where the syringe had gone in.

She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't think of Michael, of Bruce, of the betrayal that was cutting through her like the electroshocks when she had been held underwater. Suddenly the scar, the same scar she had come to see as a proof of their love, was hurting again, as if there was still a shard cutting her open, and the chips smelled of blood. As her mind brimmed with want, she focused on the only safety net she still had.

Bryce was why she was doing this, she repeated to herself like it was a mantra her sponsor had taught her all those years ago. As far she was concerned, Michael Scofield could rot in fucking hell. But he had a son and damn it, he should know.

She ruffled Bryce's hair, but he barely stirred. The bus was on the highway now, and the only lights were the cars they were passing. Yet his eyes still acknowledged every single one, attentive as if he was counting.

"Go to sleep, baby," she said and kissed the top of his head.

"I'm not tired," Bryce said softly, and somehow he seemed to sit even straighter, just like the kids the police brought in as the snapshots of what they had witnessed still flashed in front of their eyes.

He had no way of knowing, of course, but Michael had said the exact same thing that night in Gila. They were some of the very last words Michael said ever said to her, so trivial yet potent. The heat of the night had been enriched by the burning of their skin and they had opened the window for zephyr to remind them their touches were real. She lay so close to him that only her hair was sprawled across her side of the bed. His arms, darkened with ink yet so light on every inch of her skin, were pressing her closer to him, even though there was no space left for the heat of love between them. Their foreheads touched, and he stared into her eyes as if he saw her for the first time with every blink. Even in her memory, it still felt real.

"You should get some sleep," she told him and tried to match the lightness of his fingers as she caressed his cheek. Under her touch, he finally closed his eyes.

"I'm not tired," he said and inhaled deeply as if her skin still carried a scent other than the one of what they had done.

She knew he lied. He had been on a run for days, and with that agent and a plethora of others chasing him, he didn't grant himself sleep. She doubted he had slept much during his last nights in Fox River as well. But he concealed his tiredness just like he did the pain.

"Liar," she whispered. It seemed impossible, but somehow he managed to move even closer to her. He draped one leg over hers, and her body tensed up again. He had to realize she was starting to agree that sleep was a bad idea, but he didn't act on it. A smile relaxed his lips, and he tangled his fingers in her hair.

"I have you here, now," he said. "We don't need to run, and there's no one pointing a gun at us. Just for now, it's us. It seems sacrilegious to sleep it away."

"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "I'll be here when you wake up. I promise."

She dipped her head, just a little bit, and gently kissed his lips. They were so close to each other that the touch of their foreheads didn't break.

"I promise," she whispered only for him to hear, and she meant so much more than what should be their first morning together.

He must have believed her, as he was asleep within seconds, giving himself over to her in his entirety. Hours later, all he woke up to was a broken promise. Perhaps it was selfish of her to reserve the indignation only for herself.

"Try? Please?" she now said to Bryce, who still refused to look at her. He didn't throw himself at her and wrapped his arms around her with all the strength he could gather. He leaned his head on the wall instead, the curtain offering him a brief pillow. Sara let her hand linger on his shoulder until she was sure that he, too, dozed off in seconds.

When he opened his eyes, it was daytime already, but they were still on the bus.

Mom hadn't slept. He could always tell when she had a bad night. Her eyes were open slightly wider than usual, like she needed more light to see through her weariness. And they were a bit red, as if she had cried. But mom never cried. Sometimes he wished that she did, because he always felt better after weeping in her arms.

She noticed that he was awake and kissed the top of his head, like she had a habit of doing.

"Morning, baby," she said and gave him a smile neither of them believed. "We are almost there."

She needn't have told him; they had been in Paris enough times for him to recognize its skyline against the rising sun, the boutiques they always drove by, and the little park just across the bus station. It made sense that they would go to Paris if they were to see dad, Bryce thought. Wherever they went, Nice, Marseille, Spain, they always changed buses in Paris.

He still didn't know which bus could take them all the way to New York, and that cold feeling in his tummy was back.

But they didn't change buses this morning. They didn't even loiter around the station, as if the bus wasn't there yet. Mom walked straight out onto the street and bought them their favorite croissants at their favorite pastry shop. Then they stopped at the market and bought some fruit. By the time they found an empty bench in the park they liked, Bryce didn't like what the string of his favorites insinuated this morning. He couldn't finish breakfast, and mom didn't ask him if he was feeling weird, like she always did when he barely ate anything. The omission made him feel worse.

Later they walked by the Saint Michel Fountain. Of all monuments in Paris, this one was Bryce's favorite. It reminded him of dad. There was Archangel Michael, tall, strong, and with a beautiful set of wide, graceful wings. A sword was in his hand, and he raised it above his head with breathtaking ease. He didn't take pleasure in killing, but he knew that the good was worth fighting for. Archangel Michael trounced the devil, just like his dad had beaten the bad guys. He might have died and become an angel himself, but mom had always said that as long as Bryce and mom were together, happy and healthy, dad won. Two dragons had come to the devil's aide, but they could not conquer the love dad felt for Bryce and mom.

He didn't mind having a dad with wings, perched on one of those fluffy white clouds in the sky from where he could watch him and mom and make sure they were okay, then say hello when the day was almost over and the sky was adorned in different shades of red. Bryce was totally okay with it, as long as his dad was still a good man who loved him and mom most in the whole world. He didn't like this dad who was on television and whom people applauded and who upset mom.

Today Bryce wasn't sure whether his dad was the archangel or the devil. For the first since last night, he grabbed mom's hand and she squeezed it, as if she was tackling the same doubt.

They finally stopped at a building that had American flags in front of it. He recognized it. It was the most American thing he could ever see in France.

The Embassy.

But mom couldn't go anywhere near anything American. She told him that, all the time. People would recognize her and take her away, maybe take both of them away. He loved nobody and nothing more than his mom, and it scared him just to think of losing her, let alone standing so close to a place that could tear her away. Dad wasn't worth this, he decided.

He turned to face mom, only to realize she had knelt beside him and her hands were now reaching for his shoulders.

No, no, no, he wanted to shout. He wanted to plead to go back home. Was Selena up in time for school? He wasn't there to wake her in case she overslept. What if moms came with kids last night? Who would take care of them? He had the appointment with Mademoiselle Klein in two days. The school year was ending in a week and he was supposed to get a diploma for finishing the first grade. Mom said they would frame it and hang it on the wall, just like she had done with her big diplomas in America. How would they do this if mom wasn't around anymore?

And they were in Paris! If mom didn't want to go back home, they could go on a little trip. He loved the sea, so maybe they could head south? Or if the heat was expected, maybe travel up the mountains? They had been to so many places already, but so much more waited to be discovered. They could do it without dad, just like they had his whole life.

"Bryce," mom intoned in a voice that caused pressure to gather behind his eyes, and he wanted to yell even louder, yet no words left his petrified mouth, again. "I need you to listen to me right now, okay? Really listen."

Bryce wanted to shake his head, because he didn't want to hear this, because mom didn't need to say it. He hated his dad for causing all this, he decided. Okay, maybe not truly hated, but he could, over time, if he really put his mind to it. Because he didn't need dad. He didn't want dad if having dad around upset mom.

"Whatever happens today, I need you to remember that I love you. I never knew it was possible to love somebody as much as I love you until you came. I need you to never forget that. I love you, Bryce."

"I love you too, mom," he said and flung himself in her arms. He closed his eyes and really, really meant it. Maybe, he thought, maybe if I mean it strongly enough, mom would realize that we don't need dad and we would go home and no bad guys would ever take her away.

Mom held him, but he hadn't meant it strongly enough because she let go of him way too quickly. She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes, something that only happened when it was dad's birthday and they had traveled for a week to reach a beach in Portugal where the same ocean that rippled on the beaches of Panama now engulfed their bare feet. It was the closest they could get to a life dad had envisioned for them, mom always said.

They walked up the cobbled path to the entrance of the Embassy. It was early, so there was no one in the reception area yet, and they could go straight to the counter. Bryce tried to make himself as heavy as he could, but mom's hand in his didn't twitch, as if his resistance was a trifle she didn't even register.

The lady behind the counter smiled at them, particularly widely when her eyes landed on Bryce. And when she greeted them, she spoke in the same way as he and mom did. It usually filled Bryce with excitement, for it was such a rare occurrence and it always made him feel like he was somehow closer to home, but today it only exacerbated the cold that paralyzed him.

"My name is Sara Tancredi," mom said. He had heard her say the name quite a few times before, but it was always only for his ears. Now that it was directed at someone else, it sounded alien to him, like he was hearing it for the first time. Like somehow, it became real for the first time. "I escaped custody in Chicago six years ago."

The lady (the nametag she wore gave her name as Laura) didn't seem to understand what mom was saying, and he could tell it surprised mom. So she repeated her name again, and this time, Laura's eyebrows shot up. Bryce squeezed mom's hand tighter and glanced around, waiting for bad guys to come.

To Be Continued.

Broughttoyouby:::winter.