Disclaimer: I don't own Angel, Buffy, Charmed, Morrowind, or Prison Break. I'm just peeing in a lot of different peoples' pools.

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Michael Scofield woke up wet with a lungful of sea water. Beneath him, damp sand shifted as one wave after another rolled in and then retreated. How had he managed to not drown? With a groan, he forced himself up on to hands and knees and was immediately wracked by a spasm of coughing as his body tried to expel the ocean he'd swallowed.

The sand, he realized, was actual beach sand made by millions of pulverized shells, not the gritty, pebbly stuff that rimmed Lake Michigan. The water was much too warm to be the lake, even in the middle of an April heat wave. Where was he?

Then, he remembered prison and the portal. And with the memories came the ever-present fear for Lincoln. His brother, he saw, was lying only a few feet away, on his back with another man—a stranger—sprawled half on top of him. Frantic, Michael crawled across the sand to his brother and pressed two fingers to the pulse in Lincoln's neck.

The skin of his neck was an absolute mess—it looked like someone had tried to garrote him and failed, and the salt water had only inflamed the injuries—but there was a steady throb against Michael's fingertips. He let out a sign of relief and sank back on his haunches. "Linc, time to wake up." He gave his brother's shoulder a shove.

The sun overhead was already well into its slow decline into night. They had, maybe, an hour or so before it sank below the horizon. The day's heat still hung heavy in the air. Michael tasted sea salt on the back of his throat and really wanted to brush his teeth. He settled for shaking Lincoln again.

The other man—the stranger—woke instead, blinking his blood-shot eyes as he sat up. "Where on God's green earth are we?" He looked around, taking in the small cove they'd washed ashore in. "Maybe that was wrong phrase to use."

The face was unfamiliar, but the man's way of speaking wasn't. "Su…Lindsey."

The man looked over at him with keen blue eyes, the faintest hint of laugh lines in the corners. His dark hair brushed the collar of his button-down shirt and was plastered to his necks and the sides of his face. There was something both arrogant and wary about the way he held himself. Mentally, Michael changed Lindsey's age from late twenties to early thirties. He was already starting to acquire the worn, uneasy look of a man who's seen too much, done too much. So this was the real face of the man who'd shared his cell for the past couple of weeks.

"Good to see you're still alive, Scofield," Lindsey said, giving him a nod. He looked down at himself and his eyebrows shot up. "And it looks like I got my body back." He raised one arm and rotated it, seemed to be studying his wrist. "It's good to be back. I guess the first test must be done. Does this look like Hell to you?"

Michael looked around at the water, the beach, and beyond that, the grass and trees. It seemed very peaceful, untouched by man. "No, it looks more like Florida."

"Without the high-rise condos and the Dairy Queens. Guess I must have passed." He stood, brushing the sand from his blue jeans. The look was sort of urban cowboy, Scofield decided, though there was a hole in the middle of the shirt, surrounded by blood and darkened by gun shot residue.

"Was that what you were wearing when you…were shot?" He'd started to say 'died' but couldn't bring himself to. Even after weeks of sharing a cell with the man, seeing the things that had attacked Linc, it was still hard to process. Michael was going to have to completely shift his worldview to accommodate such things as demons and people who "borrowed" other peoples' bodies. He was going to have to sift through all his memories, questioning everything. That old homeless man who'd lived down the street from his elementary school—horribly disfigured burn victim or badly disguised demon? Or what about the girlfriend in college who had red eye in every single picture taken—even those done by professional photographers? It added unforeseen complications to an already complex situation.

Yes, he had managed to get Lincoln out of prison, but they still had to evade capture. And since they hadn't used Michael's carefully constructed plan, they had none of the provisions he'd tucked away to aid them in their flight. Hell, he didn't even know where they were—Lindsey was right, this area was much too underdeveloped to be anywhere in Florida. Maybe they'd lucked out, and the portal had dumped them out someplace out of the United States, someplace with a nonexistent extradition agreement with the US.

"…this is the shirt." Lindsey had been talking—answering his question—but he hadn't heard any of it.

Something brushed against Michael's hand, and he looked down to find Westmoreland's cat, Marilyn, rubbing up against him. The feline was as wet as the rest of them, but the sea water had started to dry, leaving salt in her spiky fur.

"Is it just me, or does that cat seem too smart?" Lincoln's voice was groggy but strong. His eyes were open and turned to Michael as he lay on his back in the sand.

Michael sagged in relief. Lincoln was all right—everything would be all right. Marilyn made a little hissing noise and moved to rub up against the big inmate. Michael watched as she bumped her head against the palm of his brother's hand, urging him to pet her. "I'm beginning to wonder if that's a cat at all," he muttered.

Apparently done with Lincoln's attention, the cat made her way across the sand, stopping first to rub along the length of the CO's side before continuing on up into the grass. "Cat or not, that seems like a pretty good hint for us to follow her," Lindsey said, climbing stiffly to his feet.

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Lindsey McDonald had no idea where they were. Obviously not the Earth dimension that they were used to. The air was too clean. He stole a sideways glance at the other men. Both Bob and Burrows looked like someone had put them through a meat grinder. Scofield was in better shape, but even he staggered as they made their way through the tall, unmowed grass. Eventually, Marilyn led them to a road and turned on to it, leading them northwest. At least he was guessing it was northwest since the sun was setting to his left.

The road itself was hard-packed dirt with some gravel mixed in here and there. It didn't look much used though there were several grooves cut by what he guessed were cartwheels. Primitive dimension then. The road was too dry to show the imprint of the cart-animals tracks, but looking around at the alien grasses, he realized that they probably weren't horses. At least not ones that he would recognize.

"Where's she leading us?" Bob the guard asked, a trance of whining in his voice. He was tired and beat-up and far from home.

Michael shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun and peered off in the direction they were heading. "Looks like mountains that way. Maybe she's leading us to a town."

"Or to a rats' nest," Lindsey heard Burrows mutter. He looked back in time to see the big man stumble slightly. Scofield fell back, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder. To comfort him maybe or to keep him from losing his footing again. "I need to get to LJ, Michael," Lincoln hissed.

Bob nodded in agreement. "I need to get home to my family. I've got a wife and daughter back in Joliet. Mandy…Mandy's going to be scared to death when she hears about the riot." He looked around at the grassy fields stretching out for miles ahead and to the north of them. To the south was a dark smudge that Lindsey wasn't quite sure the cause of. To their backs was the ocean. "What's the warden going to tell her when they can't find us back at Fox River?"

Good question. "Well, it's not going to take them long to find that hole behind the toilet," Lindsey answered as he started them moving back down the road. The cat was already a couple hundred meters ahead, twitching her tail impatiently as she waited for them to catch up. "So, they'll say Michael and I escaped. Possibly, T-bag or Abruzzi will talk or someone could have seen T-bag drag you into the cell, so they'll guess we've either taken you prisoner in our escape attempt or that we killed you and hid the body somewhere. As for Lincoln, well, he apparently bled all over the damn prison, so they might think he crawled off somewhere to die."

Burrows snorted.

"Or," Lindsey continued, "That he escaped with his brother."

The cat was still sitting there, washing her fur unhurriedly, showing no interest in going further. The wind ruffled the hair at the back of his neck. It felt strange to have long hair again after living under Sucre's shaved scalp for so long. He raked a hand through it impatiently and frowned—the wind carried with it the scent of wood smoke.

"People," Michael murmured as the brothers stopped beside him. "That way." The tall man pointed off to where a slight rise in the land blocked their view.

"Do you think they're friendly?" was Bob's question.

Lindsey looked down at the cat. Marilyn twitched her tail impatiently. He took a deep breath. "Only one way to find out."

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The rise had hidden the tent from view. Roughly circular with a center pole and six small, outer poles, Lindsey figured it was just tall enough for him to stand up straight if he went inside. The sides were made from brown animal hide. A campfire had been started just outside the tent door, and a figure crouched in front of it.

At their approach, the person's head lifted, and Lindsey started as the firelight caught the eyes and made them flash blood red. Despite the fading light, he could see it was a woman with grayish skin and pointy ears. Some sort of demon, he thought as he raised a hand in greeting. And her eyes were truly red, glowing like two dying coals as she studied them curiously.

"What are outlanders doing this far into the Grazelands?" she asked as he came a stop on the opposite side of the fire. She wore a knife at her waist and a quiver on her back, the long bow lying within reach—he wasn't taking any chances.

Bob came up behind him, practically radiating nervousness, and whispered, "What is she?"

The woman turned her eyes to him. "From what part of the world do you hail that you don't know a Dunmer when you see one?"

"'Dunmer'?" Lindsey repeated. The name rang no bells.

"What you people call 'Dark Elves'," she answered.

Elves…how Tolkien… It had been years since Lindsey had read The Hobbit (he'd never found the patience to wade through The Lord of the Rings), but this woman didn't resemble one of those elves in the slightest. Besides her rather demonic coloring, she was dressed in a tunic and pants of animal hide, decorated with beads and feathers.

"Well, that explains the ears," Burrows muttered. Michael and Bob just gaped.