Well, change of plans. I know I said I only had two chapters left, but I have pretty much semi-retired from writing recently :) The next chapter was originally supposed to have four sections, but in all honesty, I have no idea when I will get around to writing them all. So I decided to just post the opening section, something to prove I am still alive :)

Thanks for reading! Thanks to those of you taking time to review! I wish you knew how much it means to me.

I hope you like the fluff of this :p pleaaase review.

much love and enjoy your December, winter.

PS: if i screwed up the date, my apologies. It seems like not even the canon could make up its mind.

Sandcastles/The Bars Between Us

Part Three – Forward

Final Chapter – Part One

One thing that Michael didn't know was that Sara made an exception to her resolve to never lie to him. There was a business trip scheduled for late September, plane tickets bought months before the incentive to never leave home and a hotel room reserved when all beds were as soulless as the one he called his own. He would cancel it all without a second thought, for a week away meant seven days without his family. Sara wouldn't hear about it, of course, at least not now when she needed him out of the apartment for a couple of days. It would be a welcome break, she said, a breather to help them get used to their new routines.

Bryce had just started school, with a whole new set of classmates and a new path to school to get used to. To be fair, though, he didn't worry about the transition half as much as his parents did. The asphalt under his feet was the same color as the sidewalks in Lille, and with his kind predisposition, he made friends quickly. There was no need for Uncle Lincoln to keep his promise to, well, talk to parents of any kid who would be mean his nephew.

Lincoln's hand was the first in the air when the school asked for someone to volunteer as baseball coach on Friday afternoons. "Family involvement is an integral part of the educational process," he cited the words he read in one of Michael's parental guides. He cursed a little too much and was definitely too emotionally invested in the games, but his rockstar swagger enamored the mothers and the fathers wanted selfies with the Lincoln Burrows.

Sara started helping out at a downtown clinic. It was only during the clinic's busy hours, but the patients and the staff all loved her as much as she relished in wearing a lab coat with her name on it. It would easy to make it a permanent job someday – if, clearly, someone more important would come into their life first.

"Really. It will do us good," she assured Michael for the third time, hoping he wouldn't nitpick the logic so flawed in her eyes.

She didn't expect him to be gone for the entire week and indeed he returned on the fourth night. By then, the envelopes in which a certain something had been delivered were already disposed of, and if she were a cunning woman rather than a woman in love, she would pat herself on the back.

He tiptoed toward the bedrooms with as little sound as only a life on the run could teach. Peeking inside their boy's room, his eyes landed on a bed that was made but not slept in. In another world, his heart would pound in frenzy and his hands would lose their cool, but the bars on the windows were no longer needed and the calm was now their life.

So he made his way to the master bedroom. As expected, there was a mug on either of the nightstands, some books on the edge of the bed and about to slide off it, more of their peers already scattered on the floor. Their son slept on his father's side of the bed, only the top of his head not hidden by the covers. As though Sara had expected him to come home tonight, she lay in the middle of the bed, offering him half of her pillow. Without wasting any time getting out of his suit, he lay down next to her, on top of the covers so as not to wake either of them up. Before he could lose his fight and let his arms rest on her body, she turned to him, her eyelids still laden with sleep.

"Go back to sleep," he whispered. Kissing the side of her face, he wished she would not hear of it.

It was still too soon for him not to be in awe when his wish came true.

She rolled onto her back, the light of the night having nothing on the brightness of her eyes. He was about to lean closer, cover her lips with his after having been denied for days he would not be ashamed to admit dragged like years. Her fingers, though, were faster and reached to loosen his tie, then pull it over his head.

"I didn't expect you home so early," she said, her hands enveloping his neck, doubtlessly feeling the effect her smallest gesture had on him.

"Liar," he smiled. He would be perfectly content just lying next to her as they both slowly drifted off to sleep, lulled by the warmth of each other. But the longer her eyes stayed on his, the more of their sleepiness disappeared, and underneath her fingers, she must have felt that he understood her insinuation.

"Shower with me?" he finally relented. They sneaked off to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, where she took off his clothes, layer by layer until it was only the two of them.

"I missed you," she told him as the water ran down their bodies, washing away the days they had been apart.

If Michael wondered what incentive she could possibly have for lying to him, he got his answer on October 8.

He was still asleep when a pair of tiny feet entered the parents' bedroom, the lack of betraying sound comparable to that of his father. Bryce shook his mom's arm to wake her, keeping a forefinger on his lips in case she had forgotten in her awakening why they needed to get to the kitchen just after the hands of the clocks moved past four. But how could she possibly, after years of making plans for a date she had thought would only take place in another life the melee of this one forced her to believe in.

They opened the fridge to get the eggs and the milk, the cupboard to fetch flour and sugar. Bowls of all colors and sizes were lined in a row on the counter and they preheated the oven, all in their quest to start dad's birthday with a perfect breakfast.

"I should have gotten up at three," Sara sighed at the sight of challenge in front of her.

But of course in their world, plans were a fickle matter.

Michael had been alone for too long and loved too much not to sense there was no one in their bed for his arms to embrace, despite still being caught somewhere between sleep and consciousness. There was no alarm in his eyes, though, as he looked over his shoulder and toward the bathroom, fully confident he would catch the clue of light under the door. Any remaining sleepiness was discarded when he realized she was not there either.

Trying not to think too much into it, for everything that might have once had a reason to harm her was now over, he rolled back onto his hip to recapture sleep that would erase the fleeting reminder of a life without her.

The air was too quiet, though, as if one was exceedingly diligent when it came to closing each door.

He felt asinine for getting up the moment his eyes fell upon their son's empty bed, unmade in the way that revealed its owner didn't sleep but rather waited under the covers.

He knew he should return to bed, go along with their ploy, since if he hadn't picked up on it earlier, a lot of careful thought had to go into it. As he walked toward the kitchen, toward hushed sounds he, now fully awake, discerned, he would freely admit his pace was imbued with selfishness. But if wanting to be with his family every second of today, of every day, was selfish, he for once didn't mind being the most self-absorbed man in the world.

He let the door frame hide him as he watched them, Sara's movements still burdened with somnolence, her eyes still red and puffy in their lack of focus. If their boy felt an ounce of tiredness, he responded to it with surplus energy, the excitement being intoxicating even from across the room. He chatted about Uncle Fernando who was coming over later (Sucre disliked being called by his first name, but of course Bryce was the only exception) and LJ's new camera which would capture their day. Michael knew he would have to sport his best surprise face today, but his joy that still hadn't shown the slightest sign of leaving gave him the confidence no tattoo could ever convey.

Finally, it made him lean a little bit too forward and the boy's loud gasp should probably induce a little bit of guilt in him.

"Dad, you shouldn't be up for at least another hour!" Bryce scolded him, the spoon falling from his hands and making a splash in the chocolate mixture that sent blots to the front of his pajamas. Michael met Sara's eyes, but there was no alarm to be found. Buoyed up by her smile, he walked up to them.

"What's all this?" he asked, and from the way the boy curled his lips he knew it didn't trick anyone into believing the question was anything but redundancy.

"Happy birthday, dad!" Bryce then exclaimed, laying the bowl on the counter with speed that prompted Sara to reach out and steady it before chocolate could be sprawled across the floor.

Bryce threw his arms around dad's neck and was no longer the only one with chocolate smudged on the front of his clothes. But no one minded, of course, not now when the apartment was no longer a place of existence but the home of a family.

They might have never been a couple of saccharine words, but grand gestures had been their companions since day one. Now, when any other couple would celebrate with a kiss of the kind just before the fall of the curtain, it was like they had done this, wished each other a happy birthday, countless times. She leaned closer, put her hand on his chest and gave him a peck on the lips, long enough to taste all the muffins already out of the oven (chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, something else with chocolate), yet quick enough to be considered routine, the unceremonious manner of it all being all he could possibly want.

"You needn't have done all this," he remarked, glancing at the table. There were four kinds of muffins and five flavors of pancakes, a pair for every birthday they celebrated apart. The remaining ones were either still in the oven, pan, or not yet mixed.

He reached for the bowl on the counter, but Sara was quicker. He wanted to argue, cite without words the tiredness in her eyes, but before he could claim his right to make the call, just today, for he was the birthday boy, a key turned in the front door. The familiar sound of Lincoln's gait joined them, together with the sound of bags hitting against his knees as he hurried toward the kitchen.

"Alright, let's do this before he…" Lincoln started before realizing that his little brother beat him to it. "Fuck, man. Can't you for a change let others make and actually go through with their own plans?"

"You said a bad word, Uncle Lincoln," Bryce reminded him.

"Baby, if you ask him for a dollar every time he says that, I guarantee he will stop soon," Sara smirked, then laughed when Lincoln kissed her cheek before locking his arms around his little brother. He held him for probably longer than most brothers would, but they were no ordinary set of brothers.

"Now sit down so that I can make the real pancakes," Lincoln instructed them. With Bryce seated on his lap, Michael reached for Sara's hand, enfolding her fingers in his. For the rest of the day, as Sucre's and C-Note's families arrived (Kellerman excused himself, claiming he had an important meeting. "Better be saving the world," Lincoln growled) and a large cake joined the muffins and LJ kept snapping pictures, infallibly making them the center of each, and they danced together for the first time, through it all he barely let go of her.

He stood next to her as Brad got teary embracing his former coworker and a friend after six years, and his arm was wrapped around her waist, offering and asking for her head to rest on his shoulder, when Henry met Bryce for the first time, misty-eyed.

Bryce was just as impressed, his eyes wide open as he watched the grey-haired man move about the room.

"I don't have any grandparents," he whispered to his parents, remembering the tales Thibaut had always been armed with after any school break: how everything his grandmother owned was either in pastel colors or had a flowery pattern; how the air in every room was a blend of vanilla and the soapy smell of old people; how he showed off his knowledge of increasingly large numbers by counting the old people moles on his grandfather's arms and how soft, albeit wrinkly his grandmother's cheek was when he kissed her. Of course most of what Thibaut talked about revolved around the giant boxes wrapped in red that Santa left for him at his grandparents' and the seemingly endless supply of candy in grandmother's cupboards. But Bryce knew that gifts were only things and there was no greater present than presence.

"Maybe Henry and Judy could be my grandparents – or something like that," Bryce suggested to his parents shyly. But this sense of an emerging family wasn't Michael's real present either.

After all the guests had gone home and the sugar in Bryce's bloodstream could no longer fight off sleep, and it was still his birthday only perhaps in Hawaii, Michael lay on their bed, his back propped up with pillows, the book unopened on the nightstand to the right of him. Sara was in the bathroom, and the more minutes he spent wringing his waiting hands, the more difficult it was to banish the thoughts of what was likely to follow. Once he would have been ashamed of the ease with which his mind slipped into the anticipation, but now it elicited a smile, especially in moments when he watched her tuck the strands of hair behind her ear, still trying though they never obeyed. Her eyes didn't bother concealing how elated she was that they were together, that they could be together whenever they wanted, with only the two of them in the whole width of the world to oppose. They were free, so ecstatically free.

They were each other's in body, in soul, in every way that mattered. What was written on the documents mattered, too, but it was eclipsed by the cornerstone. In the previous life, he would care more, but now he was too busy loving to really spare a thought. Besides, he knew, they both did, that it would change, soon.

When Sara finally emerged from the bathroom, there was no skimpy robe tied around her waist, nor was any inch on her skin seducing his attention. The pajamas fell loosely down her figure like it was a night like any other – which, if he was honest, it was. The fact that today marked the day he was born didn't make him want her any more, or any differently from the days when there was nothing to celebrate but their love.

There was a blush on her cheek as her eyes locked with his.

"Ready for one more present?" she asked.

As much as she could make his mind race, she could also bring it to a soothing halt. The excitement that poured from her eyes, the struggle to stop her feet from taking her into his arms – one day it would spell the other thing they both wanted. But for now the time was frozen in their closeness and there was still so much to learn, to enjoy about each other, about the three of them, before they would rewrite their present once more.

"If it's birthday sex, I'm sorry to say but you are a bit late," he teased, and though she didn't want to, giggles escaped her. God, he loved seeing her like this, happy without hesitation, completely in the moment. It made him believe, really believe, that despite everything he had taken from her, there was something he could and did continue giving her.

She opened the wardrobe door and from under a pile of clothing that either fell from their hangers or never had gotten one in the first place (for she was a pack rat; if he had once thought she joked, living with her proved that they had both always meant every word), she pulled a box.

Her fingers could suture with precision that left no scar, but wrapping presents was a skill she hadn't mastered. He loved how the bow was uneven and somehow skewed and how the unconcealed tape glistened in the light, its pieces much bigger than was the need.

She sat cross-legged by his side as he set out to open the present with care he took when folding a crane for her.

"God, just open it," she ran her hand through her hair impatiently, and there they were again, the unruly tresses only his kisses could tame. He smiled, but the speed of his hands remained unchanged.

When he finally opened the lid of the box, he found a photo album inside.

"We never took any pictures, before," she said, as though he needed to be told what it was. "So after I found out we were going to have a baby, I took as many of them as I could. I have boxes of them in Lille, and I know we'll go there, but I wanted to give you this, today. Because I know we are what you want for your birthday."

He didn't need to ask for her to be next to him when he perused the opening page. Her head rested on his shoulder, right where his marked skin met the one only carrying the memory of her kiss, forever renewed.

The first photo she had taken the day she found out she was pregnant. She stood in front of the mirror in her little cottage in Costa Rica, her forehead sweaty from the heat, exhaustion and hormones, the t-shirt pulled up far enough to reveal her belly. She had been too far along already for a doctor in her to be lax, but she did not yet see the curve, not even after Michael pointed it out to her. So he would have known from a single glance, she mused, thinking back to her wonderings about how she would share the news if they were lucky in a different way.

Photos taken on the board of the ship captained by Chloe's father followed, the presence of another life becoming more prominent with each one. Then there was the backdrop of the blank walls of their first home; by the time she needed both hands to cradle the miracle under her heart, the walls had color and she could be any other joyous pregnant woman.

There were videos, too. The last time Michael had held a USB stick with a shaky hand, he thought it carried the only hope of ever seeing her again. Now, though a tinge of regret that he would have to learn what he should have witnessed was incorrigibly present, it was just one more piece he was eager to put in its place in their life together.

The first video explained the change of walls from the undefined white to the warming yellow. She wore a dress that embraced her belly, as big as it got, probably, and there were three sample colors on the table in front of her. It was one of the scarce pieces of furniture in the room, in addition to the mattress on a floor (much like the beds he and Lincoln had grown up on, Michael's brain didn't fail to notice) and a small crib.

With one hand, she ran circles on the belly; with the other, she rubbed her chin, her eyes darting from one sample to another in indecision. Finally, she sighed and looked down at her belly. With a voice sweet without being cloying, she asked, "Which color should we choose?"

After a few seconds, a frown played on her forehead, but her lips were still ensconced in an exuberant smile.

"So you'll be as reticent as your dad, huh?" she might have scolded, but her heart fluttered with relief that the baby was already more like his father than her. I'll give you everything I possibly can, Michael had told her in Gila. And, boy, did he keep his word, giving her all of himself.

Her body suddenly jerked and she inhaled sharply when the baby kicked, as though stating that he could have only gotten good things from his father. Protecting the ones he loved before he was even born.

"Well that doesn't help me with the paint one bit," Sara laughed.

The older their son got, the less his life was documented in photographs, dozens of short videos on the USB stick taking their place instead. There he was, painting with paint of the palms of his hands, making patterns before he even knew what the word meant. He was filmed having his lunch, his eyes bright and clear, and he must have been the only kid in the world who liked the green veggies – or so everyone kept telling her in envy.

As they watched Bryce wander about the zoo, pointing and naming the animals he passed, Michael turned to Sara and told her that he loved her. In all honesty, he could repeat that every day, from the day's silent start to the last second of the waning evening, yet he could not capture just how bright her light was for him.

"Well, there's more," her lips were barely able to withstand the sweep of the smile. But it was not the other videos that she meant. There was a folded paper on the bottom of the box, Bryce's school assignment from the previous year. His teacher had them write down what they wanted to be when they grew up. Unlike his classmates, however, their son did not write about being a firefighter, a teacher or an astronaut.

"In case you still doubt you were always with us," Sara said.

In their boy's handwriting, not yet as neat as the one he sported today and with more cross-outs than what was his average now, it said: I am not really sure what I want to be when I grow up because I have changed my mind a few times and I am pretty sure that will happen again, but I know who I want to be. I want to be like my dad. I want to be brave like my dad. I want to never forget that family is the most important thing in life. I want to never give up and I want to always have faith. And I want people to be so proud of me as I am of my dad.

(Underneath the paragraph, his teacher scribbled down that while it was a very nice tribute to his father, the aim of the assignment was to describe a profession.)

"Nice goals to strive for, huh?" Sara softly said after he reread the writing for the third time. She looked up at his face, watched as his eyes took in every feature of her countenance, in awe as though it was the first time. Whatever he was about to tell her – she had a pretty good idea what it was, though – she silenced by placing her finger on his lips.

It was not about what could be said, either with words, hands, their bodies. If it were, they would forever strive for some perfection of expression, the inexistent race continuously getting in the way of simply being. They had raced against the clock for too long, run for their lives too many times to ever hurry with each other, to ever take for granted one another's simplest syllable. Thus, they would never lose but only keep on winning what was most elusive to most.

To Be Continued.

Broughttoyouby:::winter.