Hi everyone,
sorry this took so long! I hope y'all haven't stopped reading already :)
And I'm so sorry for the length again! I am clearly out of control. The chapter is in numerous sections, so just read as much as you feel like it at once. It may be for the best to not just devour it in one go ;)
As always, if you have any questions, etc, you can reach out either here or on tumblr (link in bio).
Thanks for reading and all your encouragement! It means the world!
I hope you enjoy this and please please review!
much love, winter.
PS: sorry for any mistakes!
Sandcastles/The Bars Between Us
Chapter 10
They didn't see her watching them.
Sara had been looking for Bryce (an escape artist, just like his father, she couldn't help but smirk as she was passing through corridors), and as she came from around the corner, there they were, right by the elevators. Doors were opening and closing around them and people were walking past them, but neither noticed any of that in the moment the two of them finally, finally shared. There was a row of chairs free to occupy just a few feet away, but they remained glued to the spot that had first brought them into each other's arms.
Michael was on his knees, one of his hands placed on Bryce's upper arm, the other in Bryce's tiny hand. Their son's mouth was moving rapidly, and even though she was too far away to hear, he must have been comparing their wristwatches. The expression on Michael's face was so serene that as much as she wanted to walk up to them, she didn't dare to dispel it. He knew about Bryce for mere minutes, but there was already such gentleness in his mien that she couldn't believe the pile of broken dishes after she had seen him for the first time in six years. And love that emitted from him was so clear and unquestionable despite the distance between them, and it shamed her to remember the spite she had felt for him, however fleetingly.
It wasn't fair, it suddenly struck her, that he had learned without her words. Back in Costa Rica, she had wondered whether he'd notice the curve underneath her t-shirt right away. She imagined his eyes crashing with hers in wild disbelief before he'd pull her into an embrace just a little bit looser than in Gila, for it wouldn't be just the two of them anymore. Or should he miss the greeting of the little one, she pictured them taking in the colors of the sunset and how she would add another one by placing his hand on her belly. Even after being told there would never be the three of them, she had refused to let go of the reverie.
But perhaps there was no better way for Michael to find out. It was the way they had always done things; they were willing to die for each other before they were properly in love and then followed it without rearview mirrors. They had their life planned out before they even properly kissed and their every separation left devastation in its wake. Everything had always been fast, aside from the love they made, and unexpected, nothing more than the boy Michael now held in his arms.
It was so easy to let herself hope that maybe she would get to tell him about a life, another life that they would have created in their madness. But now that they were in the same building once more, the man in front of her was nothing more than a father of her child. For all she knew, he might have tucked in a little girl last night, and someone may have kissed him goodbye this morning before he left to face a fragment of a life he had already recovered from. It had been transient and so long ago, and unlike her, he hadn't had anything to remember her by, not even a photograph taken just for him. Of course she would fade in his mind as the months idly passed by until it had been over half a decade.
Bryce was the first to notice her.
"Mom, dad's tattoos really go all the way to his wrists!" he exclaimed, and she blinked away everything but a couple of tears. She turned her eyes to the walls, so beautiful in their plainness, just as Michael's eyes finally found hers. The two paths crossed, for a moment so fittingly fleeting that her face erupted in a smile, because it was as if despite the brutality of time, nothing had changed.
"I told you they do," she said, fighting her eyes to no avail. She saw that he didn't rise. He kept his hand on Bryce's shoulder, as though to steady himself. As if he couldn't move, and god, she couldn't, either. Not closer, at least.
"I, um, I'm gonna get our things," she somehow managed to say under his eyes. Turning on her heels, she walked down the corridor and then another. Maybe her feet knew when she was headed, but her mind didn't. After more than six years, the sobs finally weren't what convulsed her body, and her hands reached for her temples to remind her that this was real.
Abigail nearly crashed into her. Her cheeks were flushed, and there were Sara's purse and Bryce's backpack in her hands.
"Where's Bryce? I've been looking all over for him. Michael's…" she started, then cursing upon seeing Sara's face. But the reunion was one of those plans that would be joyous even in their derailment, thus laughter overtook her as well.
"I am so happy for the three of you," she effused, and when Sara's mind was capable of producing a coherent thought again, they headed back toward the elevators. Michael was now standing, just as tall as she remembered him from the days she had stealthily watched him waiting in front of her infirmary.
There were so many things she wanted to tell him that she didn't know where to start and she wanted to throw her arms around him but didn't know whether it was still a prerogative of hers. So she stood there, in the safe vicinity of the agent, who was saying something, but she didn't discern a word. This should be easier, she thought, and hated herself for making it harder. There was Bryce, wise beyond his years, so childish in his happiness. He held dad's hand so confidently, as if it wasn't their first time meeting, as if they hadn't lost six years.
I won't be that woman, Michael.
If there was a ring, Bryce knew about it by now. She wanted to know just as badly as she didn't. She had never asked Abigail about it, even though the agent would definitely know. Back in Paris, it had been simple to convince herself that it didn't really matter; she had just wanted her boy to meet his dad.
Now she wished she knew for sure. Then maybe she could look at him, for she knew his eyes were pleading her to turn to him. But her hands fumbled with the handle of the purse that kept slipping off her shoulder despite and because of her inattentive attention.
"Well, I guess that's all for today," Abigail said, her eyes alternating between the three of them. No one could ever guess that she glanced around for Lincoln, but of course he was nowhere to be seen. She couldn't believe she expected anything else. When had that man done anything she had asked of him? Absolutely unbelievable, his stubbornness.
Her eyes then focused on Sara, who was more than happy for an excuse to evade Michael's unwavering stare.
"I will have to talk to you in a bit more detail, though. But it can wait a few days," she smiled reassuringly before biting her lip, unsure of how to phrase the imminent question. "Where, um, can I reach you?"
"They are staying with me," Michael answered instead of her so resolutely that Sara would believe there was no one if he was any other man; but he was Michael Scofield. Of course he would let them stay in his home, even if someone else lay in the bed she had belonged to that one night and Bryce met a new set of siblings at dinner, the ones that unlike Selena shared part of his blood.
"I don't want to impose…"
"Stay with me," he said, and the plea that nuanced his tone left her defenseless. Wait for me. Make a mistake. Forget to lock up. Leave the door open. Every request he had made to her pulled her to the rock bottom, was the death of her and her new beginning. All these lessons marked her skin, yet saying no was never on the tip of her tongue.
Bryce let go of his father's hand and stepped to the agent.
"Thank you, Agent Abigail," he said, and then, when she squatted and hugged him, whispered, so that his parents wouldn't hear, "You were right about dad."
"I told you," she winked at him. "Now make sure he buys you ice cream."
By the time his phone rang again, Lincoln had been on the road for over twenty-four hours, drunk more coffees than he could count, and was yet to see the fucking storm.
That's what Laeticia, a lady at the airport counter, told him (Lincoln didn't know this, of course, but it was supposed to be her day off. At six o'clock, one of her coworkers had phoned and implored her to cover her morning shift. So Laeticia sprayed a bottle of cheap perfume all over herself to cover the fact that last night she had opted for catching up on her favorite soap rather than showering. The absolutely last thing she wanted this morning was dealing with a belligerent man in an Aloha shirt with pineapples).
No flights to New York until further notice. Big storm coming.
"Okay, it doesn't need to be New York," Lincoln said. "What about, I don't know, Texas? California?"
"All to north, canceled."
Then he got a brilliant idea.
"What about Argentina? Brazil?" he asked, but Laeticia's fingers didn't start moving across the keyboard and her eyes indicated that they wouldn't spring into action anytime soon either. "I guess I can't get to New York from there either, huh?"
But Lincoln had spent more than enough time on that thin line between what was legal and what would get you thrown in jail to know that there were always people who asked only for a reasonable price.
And Lincoln was a millionaire.
He walked to the back of the airport and found a guy who had his own plane and offered flights. He told him he needed to get to America and was willing to pay double. The man, leaning on the side of his plane and with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, just pointed to the sky and shook his head.
"Look, man, I give you half a million, okay? You can take my house. Just get me to America."
"What am I gonna do with a house if I'm dead?" the guy barked.
Clearly the world wasn't the immoral place he had always considered it to be, so Lincoln did the only reasonable thing. He got behind the wheel of his 1972 Vista Cruiser and started driving. The first six hours, his wrath was keeping him going. Then there was coffee. He cursed when some acned motherfucker overtook him just miles into Costa Rica and he had to brake and half of the steaming coffee poured down his shirt. Lincoln would speed after the kid and beat the crap out of him, but he was already pushing the cruiser's limit.
He didn't stop cursing for an hour because it fucking burned and there was no way in hell he was stopping for some ice and all the windows were rolled down and the sky was clear blue without a single fucking cloud in sight. The pineapples on his shirt looked rotten, and he reached behind his seat to search for an extra shirt, but all he found was his cigarette stash for emergencies from back when he had still smoked.
As the night fell, he picked up his phone to call Abigail and tell her it might take a while for him to get to New York. Maybe it was just his weariness, but he definitely wouldn't be above begging for her to get him home, somehow. He never got around to actually calling her, of course, for he figured she'd think the impending storms were just a lame excuse, and looking through the window and seeing all the stars, he couldn't blame her.
In the morning, the cruiser was still going strong. He had to stop to cool off the engine about every two hours and he barely broke thirty miles per hour and people were sounding their horns, but he was still going. Then all of a sudden, he wasn't anymore.
It was somewhere in western Nicaragua. Or maybe he was already in Honduras, what the fuck did he know. All the roads had started to look the same to him and there was always the ocean to his left and the smell of bananas didn't leave the air and the asphalt was still dry. For all he knew, he might as well just be driving in circles.
A flock of sheep blocked the road and he hadn't moved for fifteen minutes, despite his yelling (the horn of his cruiser was broken). All the sheep did was bleat in response, with one ram in particular being very vocal.
He didn't look at the name of the caller when his phone rang. Of course he knew it was Abigail and the last thing he wanted was to hear her asking him where he was in that voice whose sweetness was most deafening cursing he could ever imagine. But somehow that stupid ringing managed to be louder than that stupid ram, and it prompted him to pick up the phone anyway.
Michael.
Lincoln hit the wheel with his fist. If his brother was calling him, then Sara had to be in New York already. As happy as he was for Michael, he knew Abigail was fucking pissed at him. What had he been thinking, not letting her know about the fucking storm? Seriously, the amount of time he spent thinking about her these days would be alarming if he didn't find it surprisingly soothing.
"Hey, man," were his first words to his brother after over a year.
"What are you doing?" Michael said, his voice pensive in that way of his that Lincoln knew and missed hearing so much.
Coming home. I'm sorry I'm not there yet. I'm sorry I have left in the first place.
But he couldn't say that, of course.
"Just chillin'," he said instead. The last lie, he promised himself. Damn it, from now on, he was going to be the best brother – or at least as good of a brother as he could make himself be. They were given a second chance – again. He had learned his lesson the last time around. He chose to have learned his lesson, right there, with the ram baaing him into reason. "It's um, semi-final day. So I'm hosting a barbeque. With beer and all."
"I need to tell you something," Michael said, once again completely disregarding his reply. The tone he used would never make Lincoln guess his brother was having the best day of his life. But that was his little brother. The fancier the suit, the cooler the voice, the more he was overwhelmed. It must have been a control thing, Lincoln decided. Why else would anyone choose a suit as their attire while on the run? It still cracked him up to this day, just thinking about it.
"What's up, man?"
"Linc… Sara's alive. She's here," he let out in a quiet, overwhelmed voice that would make Lincoln ask for a repetition if, of course, he hadn't known before Michael already.
I know, man, I know. I'm on my way. I'm sorry I was giving you hard time, man. I didn't know. I just wanted you to be okay.
"What?" he resorted to what his usual response was in any situation that involved emotions. He had more than enough practice but still didn't think he sounded at all convincing.
But Michael didn't repeat his words. In fact, Lincoln doubted he had even heard him. He continued gushing, and Lincoln struggled to follow the mumble but figured he knew most of what he was saying anyway. Until a certain word, a completely absurd, impossible word, crept in there, not once and definitely more than twice.
"Wait – you have a what?"
"A son. Lincoln, I have a little boy. Bryce. He's incredible, Linc. He's so smart. He can read …"
Holy fuck.
He turned the key in the ignition.
"I'm on my way, Michael. I'm coming."
"Linc…"
"Go be with them," Lincoln said, like a big brother should. "I'll be there soon."
He hung up and put the car in reverse. Then he remembered that he had no idea where exactly he was and he couldn't recall how far back the road had last split in two. The only thing he knew was that going forward meant reaching home, and he was done putting miles between his home and himself.
Fuck ketchup, he thought as he looked for spots of black asphalt among the puffy white in front of him. The one thing he missed most about America was that there were no fucking sheep clogging the road.
So he got out of his car and took a deep, resolute breath. Then he shut the door and headed toward the sheep, because he was Linc the Sink, for fuck's sake.
Of all places Bryce had read about in his books, he wanted to go to Central Park the most. As they were walking to Michael's car and his tiny hand was safely in his dad's, he effused about all he had read: the carousel from the book that was on Selena's reading list, a little castle ("Its name means beautiful in Italian," Bryce incidentally said just as Michael looked over to Sara, and god, she was beautiful), the zoo and the penguins, paths with statues of more people from Selena's reading list, open-air theaters.
But as they reached dad's car, Bryce bit his lower lip and his steps froze.
"What is it, baby?" Sara asked him, but he only stared at her in response, as though expecting her to know. She should have known, clearly, for mothers were supposed to know these things, but for the first time in years the sun on her skin didn't remind of Costa Rica and she couldn't decide whether to feel euphoric or timorous.
"I can't get in, mom," Bryce finally relented, keeping his voice quiet as though he didn't want his dad to hear him. But Michael heard everything, standing between them. "I need a kid seat. It says so in the book. Kids under eight need a booster seat."
I don't want us to get in trouble, he added, but Sara knew whom he meant. The beads of sweat that appeared above her lip weren't a result of the sun. She had never needed to know things about booster seats in France, as they always took the bus, but she would never admit it aloud; not today and especially not with Michael standing so close to her that she could wrap her arms around him without fully extending any of her muscles. He seemed to be getting closer to her with each corridor they had passed and every step down the staircase, even though she kept her feet in a straight line without any deviations. It unnerved her, just as much as it made her belly burn.
"Then we're gonna get you a booster seat," Michael casually said, and just like his son, he too only meant one person with his words. She had totally not thought this thing through, she berated herself. All her plans had ended with them entering the embassy in Paris. She hadn't expected anything but the switch of the sides they had occupied back in Fox River. But somehow all the charges that had awaited her disappeared and there was no barbed fence to dictate their actions. She hadn't brought any money with her, let alone clothes. What would she have done had Michael not come? It had never crossed her mind that he wouldn't, and she hated herself for loving him even when everything was against him.
In the store, Michael headed straight for the booster seat with the most exemplary safety features, without any regard to the price tag. Bryce knew big numbers like that one and looked up at her questionably. She just shook her head, praying Michael hadn't noticed. It wasn't just the freedom and the freshness of parks that they liked; unlike cinemas or most museums, parks didn't ask for an admission fee.
She knew she should pull him aside, tell him that she couldn't scoop up enough change to get their kid an ice cream cone, but that would require touching him, and she didn't want her first words to him be an admission of her shortcomings. Maybe he sensed her hesitation, or was simply the better parent so effortlessly; as Bryce was picking the strawberries for their picnic in the park, determined to find the perfect ones, Michael called her name. If it was anyone else, his voice would meld in the ocean of people passing by them, pushing shopping carts and deciding aloud what they were going to buy, but that voice was meant only for her. The way he pronounced her name, even in the early days of Fox River when both had still been firmly on their side of the fence, it was as if he was addressing someone else, not a governor's daughter with faded syringe marks all over her arms. It never failed to make her wish she would never hear herself treated in any other way again.
Just like all those inappropriate times before, she couldn't stop herself from looking at him. His forehead was furrowed and a wallet was in his hands. He was staring at it, and she followed suit before his eyes could level with hers.
"Sara, buy something for you and Bryce. Whatever and as much as you need," he said, holding out a credit card with his name splashed across it. It didn't escape her alert eyes how his fingers only held the edge of the card, as if eliminating any possibility of an accidental contact between the two of them. Yet at the same time, she realized, offering her a touch should she want one. He sighed when the distance between them remained unbroken.
"We'll get the food," he said, and his eyes glanced upward, yet never quite settling on hers. She had told him once that she was a careful woman; was he wondering if during their years apart she had learned to be careful around him as well? Or was it that there was someone she needed to know about, and he couldn't find the right words? It must have been intentional, the way the part of him with the answer was always out of her eyes' reach. What's her name, she barely stopped herself from asking.
Once they had spread a picnic blanket near one of the ponds in Central Park and there was so much food around them as if they were throwing a feast, somehow everything was better. Maybe it was just the mere fact that they were in a park, where the calming green, so unlike the desert of Gila, was wherever she looked and the swaying branches above them drowned the fear of car chases. Never before was the feeling of being in the right place, at the right time, as profound as when she watched Bryce fill his plastic bowl with slices of the banana, kiwi, strawberries, blueberries and all other berries he had chosen together with dad. He topped it with cream and a full fist of colorful sprinkles. He laughed as he crunched them with his teeth. Her heart swelled as his father smiled at him.
This was how it was supposed to be. Glancing around, there were other families, just like them. A mom, with her hair down or in a loose bun, a dad, out of his work clothes, a kid – or kids, with sugar between their teeth and endless summer in front of them. It was deceptively easy to forget that they could have had all of this years ago already had she only looked him up. At that moment, it was just the three of them.
Even their voices sounded alike, it dawned on her out of nowhere as Bryce pulled one of the books about New York out of his little backpack and opened it in the middle, where the big map was. He located the Central Park with ease she knew Michael would want to discuss, then asked dad where his apartment was. He marked the spot with a little cross, and it was just one Bryce's fingertip away.
When his second bowl was emptied, Bryce started telling his dad about himself. Michael's eyes didn't spend a syllable off his face and she knew that he was making a list of things he would ask her to explain. Like, the way Bryce kept referring to Selena as his sister. Neighbor's daughter, she quickly provided, hating the idea of Michael getting the wrong idea. Then there were the school assignments and the smiling faces his teacher had been drawing on them throughout the year. The kid he was helping with French. When Bryce started talking about a dog Thibaut had gotten, she knew she should intervene and change the topic before Michael could resolve to get him a dog tomorrow.
It was pleasant enough to take off her jacket and it was beatific enough for her to forget about the scar on her upper arm. She rolled the jacket into a ball and put it under her head as a pillow, never once remembering that there was a pink line Michael had no memory of. She had it for so long and it had come to represent everything but pain that it completely slipped her mind that it may take Michael back to that parking lot in Gila, the last thing he had known about her until this morning.
The moment he laid his fingers there, light as to not cause her pain but too perfectly placed not to be a question, she knew that the panic rippled through him. She felt his eyes once again scanning the available skin, just to make sure there wasn't something else he had missed. She knew better than to think not finding any more would bring him relief. By now, his mind was probably raucous, imagining what they might have done to her, and where.
After her eyes remained shut and her tongue was still figuring out what to say, his fingertips began following the scar. Bryce's voice became a tiniest bit quieter, for he surely noticed that dad was touching mom the way that made her wince sometimes. But it didn't hurt today; not the way and where he thought, at least.
She turned her head, first looking at his fingers, careful like they had always been with her, then chancing a glance at him.
"I'm okay," she said, but his expression remained pained. He lifted his fingers off her skin, held them in the air still close enough she could feel them. As her eyes begged him to look at her, his remained on the scar, doubtlessly maddening him.
"Dad, can I ask you something?" Bryce said, and it tore Michael's eyes off the past they would have to dig up before moving on, again.
"Anything."
Bryce pulled his backpack closer and opened one of its side pockets. Sara sat up and was to put the jacket back on, to at least get the scar out of their visual fields, for she knew that behind his placid expression, Michael's mind was bedeviled with possibilities.
"Can you fix them?" he said, and the jacket remained on the blanket, because when the boy offered Michael his hand, there was the origami on his small palm – both the crane and the rose, the latter slightly flattened from age and travel. Sara gasped, wondering how she could have forgotten to take them.
Michael didn't respond right away, and she knew it was because he recognized them immediately. His head tilted slightly to the right, toward her, and his lips parted, as if he had to remind himself to inhale.
"You kept them," he finally said, and she barely heard him, but knew the words were for her. So she moved closer to him, close enough to lean her head on his shoulder. She could swear that neither of them breathed as Bryce crawled onto her lap to watch his father's unusually trembling fingers do away with the first crease that stifled their future.
"Of course I kept them," she whispered.
Time had settled into the afternoon already, but Michael still waited for the feeling that had been his staunchest companion for six years and would, or so he thought, peak today.
Just for today, no, he pleaded with his own mind as he held his little boy. Just give me today, he begged as the woman he had vowed himself to sat close enough for his body to shook in unison with hers when she laughed.
And somehow, the guilt never showed up.
He'd be the first to say it should, perhaps with greater force than before. He had abjured the idea of ever having kids, for they would feel like a substitution of a life he hadn't been destined to have. And all along, there was a little boy with his eyes and a heart of his mother. It was a miracle Bryce kept taking his hand, even though he hadn't been there to hold his son's when terrors of the night woke him up. He had been a mystery, just as Aldo had, yet Bryce had no hatred for him on his tongue and apparently couldn't get tired of being encompassed in his arms. As much as he wanted to apologize for not being there for his first walk to school, it seemed like Bryce didn't need to hear it.
This, carefree days under the sun, endless roaming with ice cream cones in their hands, babies, this is what he had promised Sara with those three words in Gila. Somehow he had given her everything but himself, but it could not fool him. He had helped Lisa with LJ during Lincoln's innumerable prison stints and he knew there were days, weeks that Sara had spent hating him for not being there, with her. She had thought he had died, he knew that, but it didn't alleviate his worries. Would she think he hadn't been looking for her? Would she say that he should have seen through the deception, for he was Michael Scofield? He wanted to tell her that from now on, he would be there, every day, give her everything he had and all she wanted from and of him. But every time he was to say it, the air vanished from his lungs and all he could do was look at her. Her hair was longer and darker and she was a bit too thin, but otherwise, she was just as he remembered her.
When she thought his eyes were elsewhere, she freed that smile that had made him so arrogantly, so serenely sure that everything would be perfect. It had been six years since she had given him the privilege of that smile, and he hoped that their boy wasn't the only reason their reunion exhilarated her. Did she have someone whose touch she would choose over his? He reprimanded himself for wishing she had spent the past six years alone, yet his absence of a ring on her left hand made him wild with hope that one day, they would be lost in each other again.
He should have been there, Michael forced a reminder on himself, but his mind, the part of him he always relied on, bar the times it was at its most reasonable, was adamant. It had been out of his hands. No file he had access to, no records he could analyze, no people that still breathed could lead him to them. It would be so easy to feel mad, having been dealt worthless cards, but it was so much simpler to be in raptures, at least today.
It was way, way too late by the time they finally made it to Michael's place. Bryce had wanted to stay in the park until the night descended so that they could count the stars together, and he showed Sara both his and dad's watch to prove it was still early, only past seven. But it was way past his usual bedtime in Lille, and for that matter, hers, but neither could tell while on sly sugar and blinding bliss.
They got into the elevator, and there were more numbered buttons than most of Bryce's peers could count. Not Bryce, though. He asked dad which button he should press and he had to get on his toes to reach it, as it was one of the top ones.
"How long till we get there?" was his next question, and when dad said 23 seconds, Bryce counted the moves of his wristwatch's hands. Thus he didn't see how, once the elevator door closed, his parents' eyes locked in the mirror in front of them.
The three of them, Sara thought. Maybe it was weariness or a simple surrender to elation, but she let her mouth spread in a smile whose width had become obsolete. She might feel its ache if it wasn't for Michael's expression mirroring hers. He was sharing her thoughts in his revealing eyes, not hiding them behind his sunglasses like that time on the Buttercup Road, when the idea of the two of them was out of place just as much as the three of them were now perfect. He hadn't called anyone and made no mention of anyone. Maybe, Sara thought, maybe it was just the three of them.
Please don't be in love with someone else.
The moment she had learned about the avenue where Michael's place was, she knew it would enormous. Yet when he unlocked the door, saying welcome home and letting them in, her jaw dropped. The entryway was practically larger than their place in Lille and the coat closet would easily hold their entire wardrobe.
Bryce ran straight down the hall, with his shoes that had trod on two continents still on.
"Hey, take off your shoes, baby," she screamed after him just before a breath caught in her throat. Michael stood right behind her, his hands lightly on her shoulders. Bryce rushed back in, holding his shoes and putting them down, then rushed to continue his exploration without noticing one of the sneakers was on its side. Sara felt her jacket sliding off her relaxed arms.
"And no running!" she added.
"Let him run," Michael laughed.
Their boy's steps became distant enough for him not to hear them and it dawned on her that this was the first time they were alone. Michael must have been waiting for this moment, as there it was again, her name, intoned with the promise of brutal honesty.
"So we are actually free?" she hurried before he could continue. She crossed her arms across her chest, and damn it, there was the scar. She could hide it in the dim light of Lille, but now Michael's forehead wrinkled in that way she hated again. She could barely handle his presence, let alone the revival of what had separated them. "No one will come after us with guns and try to put us away?"
The expression he wore was unreadable. He turned his back to her, vigilant of the mirror on the wall, and slowly hung her jacket in the closet.
"I know I told you this once before, Sara," he said, smoothing out the creases of her jacket, "but no one will ever hurt you again. You, or Bryce. This time, it is really over."
I'm sorry it took this long. She knew he would add that if Bryce didn't call out for her from somewhere inside the apartment. They found him in the kitchen, completely ecstatic because dad had a microwave.
"Okay, let's not pretend we haven't seen a microwave before," she told him, hoping Michael wouldn't add this to the growing list of things he would ask her about later. But once Bryce found a dishwasher, she knew Michael was getting a pretty good idea of how their life in France looked like.
Glancing around the kitchen, the hallways, the living room, she caught herself looking for something a woman may place there. It was ridiculous, for she had no idea what that may be, and it shamed her, for it felt like spying. She felt his increasingly incessant eyes on her, perfectly aware of what she sought, and of course it made her eyeballs more frantic. If there was nothing to find, she didn't want to come across as desperate, and if she was once again the other woman, she didn't want to appear entitled.
Please don't be in love with someone else.
They caught up with their son in the living room. He stood in front of the magnificent floor-to-ceiling windows, enthralled by the city around him. There was Central Park; he could easily make out the ponds. The streets below them buzzed with people walking home, going out, and the sprawling skyscrapers formed the skyline, with millions of windows and thousands of families just like theirs.
Michael walked past Sara and squatted next to the boy.
"Wow," he managed, his eyes dashing from left to right, trying to take it all in.
"Wait till you see it at night," Michael smiled, and Bryce turned his head to look at him. He searched for something on his father's face but offered no clues as to what exactly.
"That's tomorrow, right?" he finally said, but didn't argue. He proceeded with informing Sara that there were one big bedroom and three smaller ones. The emphasis on the latter part was glaring enough for a blush to take over her cheeks.
"You can choose whichever you want," Michael told him.
"And one's for Uncle Lincoln when he gets here," Bryce said, and the existence of the third room and its possible, likely use lingered unspoken. It was insane, Sara thought, not daring to dart a glance in Michael's direction should it uncover that knowing smirk of his.
Bryce took his brand new pajama out of one of the shopping bags and ran toward the bathroom with confident steps of someone who had spent more than half an hour in this place. There was a question on Michael's lips, and she knew he wasn't certain whether it was something he should need to ask.
"Oh, he's fine," she said. "He's started bathing himself a few months ago."
"Sara, there's another bathroom if you…"
"That'd be great," she nodded and followed him down the hall. It didn't seem like her accepting his request disappointed him. His steps slowed down so that they were now walking side by side, still too far apart for their hands to accidentally brush against each other, yet so close his smile lulled her into smiling as well. The walls they passed were all blank, brimming with possibilities. There might soon be a framed photograph of them in a park, smiling into the camera like it was what they had always done as a family. A father and son, with Lego bricks in their hands, putting on display what had never been absent. A holiday somewhere at the seaside once they got used to each other's scars. Birthday cakes with candles marking the years spent together. Christmas trees reminding them of how their apartment would smell of cinnamon for weeks. Maybe even pictures of a dog, she chuckled to herself
Michael kept stealing glances at her, without much attempt to conceal them. So fleeting they were that they may be unintentional and so intense it must have been a struggle to tear away. Maybe, she thought, he did it for the same reason her eyes had been so intent on avoiding him the whole day. Perhaps neither of them could believe what their senses were so unmistakably stating.
They almost walked past the bathroom in their rapture. His arm intercepted her next step, and after the brief contact with her body, he slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, as though he didn't trust them unconfined. As though he wanted them on her as much as she did but was unsure, just like she had been, the whole day.
Sara held her breath as her hand reached out for him. Please don't be in love with someone else, her mind supplicated when a flicker of his eyelids revealed he was aware of her intention.
The fear that he may move away after all stilled her just before her hand could embrace his cheek. But Michael didn't leave her in abeyance for more than a couple of seconds. He closed his eyes and a sigh escaped his parted lips. He leaned into her touch, and as one of his hands covered hers to press it yet closer to him, the sight of this man who had taken everything away from her so devastatingly and kept giving her everything in return almost overwhelmed her knees. Her breathing matched his ragged one so swimmingly that she could almost believe they had been one every day of their separation
"I didn't leave you in Gila," she whispered.
"I know; I've always known," he said softly, his eyes still shut with force that left a wrinkle between his eyes. His other hand started caressing her forearm; only with the palm, though, as if the feel of her underneath his fingertips was a claim he didn't dare make. "I found the bag in the parking lot."
A disappointed sigh left her mouth without her approval when he suddenly let go of her. She was about to turn and walk into the bathroom, hoping that ridding herself of the stains of all the places that had separated them would pacify her mind somewhat. But then there was the interruption again, so unforeseen it could only be the work of Michael Scofield. He cupped her face, and his hands and eyes, so gentle yet desperate, so light and urging, begged for her attention, and it was so much she would cry if there was the slightest of caresses.
"I tried to find you, Sara," he said. "I looked for you. And even after…"
"I know," she hurried to reassure him before his mind could take him back there.
"I did everything I could think of. I'm sorry I couldn't get to you. I need you to know that I would have never abandoned you and Bryce. If I had known, Sara, I would be there, with you, every day."
"I know. And he knows it, too," she smiled.
Of course she had seen him smile before, but those smiles with the bars looming around them and peril waiting for them on the other side of the window were smiles of a man who chose to lock away the world. It wasn't that they hadn't been real; it was just that they had been smiles tied indelibly to a specific time and place. They had never lingered after he had exited the infirmary and they had been a weakness once the sun broke through the thin curtains.
This man in front of her now was smiling because of the world, because of tomorrow and every day after that and what they would bring.
"He's amazing, Sara."
"He's just like you."
Michael seemed to have realized he still held her in his hands. Once the words he had been keeping in all day were finally freed, he found the feel of her overwhelming. He moved his hands, but couldn't quite bring himself to let go of her completely.
His fingers touched the ends of her hair.
"Yeah, well," she chuckled, "it's been six years, and I'm still not used to it."
Whatever he may think of the new color, he didn't tell her.
"Go get ready. We have a story to read to our boy," he smiled.
Of the three smaller rooms, Bryce opted for the middle one. He didn't say it out loud, of course, but Sara knew he figured there might be someone, someday, preferably soon, who would need to be closer to their parents than him.
Michael was lying on the right side of the bed, with their son cuddled up to him and a tablet on his lap.
"I don't have any children's books," he said almost apologetically. "So we looked one up online."
"Dad says we'll buy a lot of books tomorrow," Bryce added. Then he informed her that dad also said they would get him a desk for his room and as many bookshelves as he wanted. As excited as he was discussing the very first room that was to be just his, Sara knew the prospect terrified him. Not one night until now had they spent in separate rooms, without the either in sight in case they woke in darkness. But he would never let it show, especially not to his dad and so soon after meeting him. The way he buoyed himself up, she thought, maybe that way he was a bit like her.
"Well, thank god your dad's gonna be here with us tonight just in case any monsters show up," she remarked, getting in the bed and pulling the covers to her chin.
"Mom! There is no such thing as monsters!" Bryce muttered, outraged that she dared to insinuate he might believe there were. Yet, just as she knew he would, he then turned to dad and asked, "But will you stay here tonight anyway?"
And Sara would be lying if she claimed she expected Michael to say anything but yes.
About ten minutes later, when they were done with the first chapter, Bryce remarked that he was pretty sure what was going to happen and turned to mom to ask her what she thought.
She was already asleep.
"Don't wake her," his dad whispered to him. Bryce was about to tell him that he wasn't planning on doing that, but then realized there was something he had forgotten to tell his mom this evening.
But he could still say it to his father.
"I love you, dad," he said, then quickly looked at dad, just to make sure it wasn't the wrong thing to say.
It didn't seem to be. Dad smiled softly before his head tilted to the left and his lips curled inwards.
"I love you, too," he said.
To Be Continued.
Broughttoyouby:::winter.