So I discovered that Wentworth Miller is one of the guys in the "We Belong Together" music video by Mariah Carey. It made me laugh, and I wanted to tell everyone who doesn't already know, because I just thought it was so funny.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, none of the presents I opened on Christmas contained the rights to Prison Break.
Just to clarify: the part in the last chapter with Lincoln and Kate takes place the day after Michael and Sara talk about Gila (at the beginning of the last chapter). The part here at the beginning of this chapter with Sucre, Michael, and Sara takes place the same day as when Lincoln and Kate went shopping. The Lincoln and Kate part of this chapter occurs immediately following their adventures in the store.
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"You wanna tell me where we're goin', or do you want me to guess?" Sucre asked Michael, who was sitting in the passenger's seat. Sara was in the back, leafing through a magazine they'd found in their last motel room.
"We're going to Minnesota." Michael replied, examining the USB chip.
"What's in Minnesota?"
"Rain." Michael said, smiling cryptically.
"There's rain everywhere!"
"Not this kind of Rain." The man with the tattoos insisted, still smiling as though at a private joke.
When the sun began to set, Michael asked Sara to stop at a small gas station. She began to fill up the tank, while Michael headed off to the pay phone in the back. Sucre followed him.
"You should stay with the car." Michael said, not turning.
Sucre shook his head. "I trust you, Papi, but I want to know what's going on." Michael started to object, but thought better of it and remained silent. When they found the phone, the Latin man leaned against the brick wall while Michael dialed.
"What?" The voice on the other end asked, sounding annoyed.
"Hello, Bobby." Michael said, smirking.
"Who is this?"
"You remember my voice."
"I do?"
"You should."
"Sc-"
"Yes." Michael said, cutting him off. There was no way for him to know if this line was safe or not.
"You've been in the news a lot."
"I know." Michael paused. "I need a favor."
"Oh, no. No, no, no. No. You're not getting me involved. Do you know what I could get for helping you?"
"Yes. But there are bigger things at stake here. I need someone with your expertise."
There was a silence. "What do you need?" The voice sounded resigned. Michael grinned.
The sun was lingering halfway over the horizon, bathing the land in golden light. For all that the town claimed to have a population of nearly twenty thousand, there were only a handful of people in sight. A blue neon sign lit up abruptly, revealing the words, "The Cacti Hotel" next to an old, dusty looking building. A dark car pulled into the parking lot, reflecting both the light of the sun and the light from the sign, and parked in an empty space near the entrance to the lobby. Two people exited the car, but only one of them went inside.
As Kate walked out of the building, she pulled her sunglasses off, looking around. After a moment, the doctor stepped forwards a few feet, and discovered that Lincoln was just hiding in the shadows between a column and a wall. "They didn't recognize you." Lincoln remarked as they walked towards their room.
The blonde woman shook her head. "They didn't even have a picture of anyone at the desk." She replied, adjusting her dark baseball hat.
Upon entering their room, which Kate noted contained two queen-sized beds, she turned on the tv. She wanted to know how things were looking for her, how the search was going. Kate still didn't have a clue as to how she was going to get herself out of this; for now, she was just trying not to slow Lincoln down as he tried to avoid the authorities. The doctor was no longer so certain that her word was enough to clear her name. She suspected that she needed much more solid, tangible evidence, but she wasn't going to find any considering she was willingly staying with one of the infamous Fox River 8 now.
"They think that you, Michael, Sara Tancredi, and Fernando are trying to get across the border." She said. Lincoln nodded. Then a silence set in, as neither of them could think of anything to say. This was particularly ironic, given how much they had talked during the past 48 hours, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier to start another conversation now. Both of them started to say something several times, but changed their minds before they finished the first word.
"I'm going to shower." Lincoln announced finally, shattering the silence. Kate nodded, not moving from her spot on one of the beds except to change the channel on the television.
Ten minutes later, Lincoln emerged from the shower. Kate couldn't help but notice that he hadn't put his shirt back on yet as he crossed the room. "Why do you always do that?" She asked, a bit crossly. Kate already was uncomfortable with how she'd felt earlier, in the store, and then again in the car, and seeing Lincoln half naked was just giving her more distressing thoughts, which, aside from him being one of the most wanted men in America, was a problem because she was engaged.
"Excuse me?" He glanced over his shoulder at her.
Engaged. "You did that at the Pink Sunset, and you did it again here." Kate replied. "You could put your shirt on in the bathroom, you know."
"Oh." Lincoln paused as he lifted the plastic bag containing their recently purchased clothes off the ground. Engaged. "I don't know, just a habit, I guess. Plus, this was out here still, so..."
As he rummaged through the bag, Kate shook her head slightly, more in frustration with herself than in exasperation with him. She wasn't supposed to feel anything towards him. The doctor stood up and walked over to where Lincoln stood with the bag, deciding that she might as well change too. "Here..." Lincoln handed Kate her new pair of pants when he encountered them in search for his clothes.
"Thanks." She murmured, as she accepted them. So very engaged. As Lincoln dug through the bag, their shoulders brushed together. He stiffened, as though burned, and stepped away from the bag. "Lincoln...?" Kate said, voice questioning.
"No. I don't...I shouldn't be thinking like this." Lincoln replied, turning away from her. "It's wrong."
"Thinking, like what?" Kate asked tenatively. Engaged?
He sighed irritably. "Like... like..." Lincoln was having difficulty finding a way to put this into words. "Like this." He quickly closed the distance between them again, and kissed her on the lips. "But that's not okay. It's just ridiculous." He said, when they broke apart. She stared up at him, too surprised to move. Lincoln began to pace, trying to think of a solution.
Kate watched him for a moment, dazed. "Lincoln..." She said, as she approached him.
He shook his head firmly. "I've already made an idiot out of myself." The man replied, pacing faster.
"Lincoln!" Kate snapped. He turned and stared at her. "Maybe... maybe it's not as ridiculous as you think." She took a few slow steps towards him.
"What do you mean?"
"Just this." Kate delicately placed her hands on his shoulders, stood up on her toes, and returned the kiss. As she made to pull away, Lincoln wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. They kissed for several minutes, both exploring and testing their feelings. Kate allowed Lincoln to lead her to one of the beds, and they collapsed onto it, their lips never breaking contact.
But then suddenly, Kate gave a muffled protest. He immediately froze, and shifted so she could sit up. "We... I-I need to think." She said, softly, making and maintaining eye contact.
"That's always the problem with intellectual people. They always need to think." Lincoln replied, equally as quiet and smiling faintly to indicate that he wasn't serious.
Kate shook her head. "I don't sleep with men on the first date. Never. Adam and I didn't do it for months. I need to think. This is just..."
"Too fast." Lincoln finished. Kate nodded. "All right." He stood up, but sat back down immediately. "I'm not like T-Bag. I'll never force you. I want to do this, but not if you don't want to. It should mean more than that. I'm not trying to pressure you. So, bearing that in mind, just listen, okay?" Lincoln paused, allowing her to nod. "When you're on death row, eventually you make your peace with what's coming, because you don't have any alternatives. And even though prison life hardly compares to life outside those walls, it's something. People die there, every day, in fights, in accidents... in electric chairs. While you're there, especially when you're sentenced to death, you realize how important it is to live for today, that you can't get by just by planning for tomorrow. Because if tomorrow doesn't come, if today's all you have, you better have done something with it. We're on the run right now. If they find us, they will kill us. I'm not trying to scare you, but it's the truth. If they find us tomorrow, that's it." He hesitated momentarily. "We're short on time, so if the possibility of you and me is something that you think you might want to pursue, then you need to make sure that you don't only live for tomorrow. Sometimes you gotta live for today." With that, Lincoln stood up and crossed the room. He stayed standing for a moment, before finally laying down on the other bed.
Kate stared straight ahead, thinking. Thinking about herself, about Lincoln, about what he said, about the possibility of them. She glanced over at the man, who was laying on his back, one arm over his eyes, most likely thinking about what had just happened. Kate bit her lip anxiously, trying to make a decision.
"Linc?" Her voice startled him out of his thoughts. Lincoln slowly lifted his arm, and peered under it to where she now sat on the foot of his bed. "I want to live for today."
He was sprinting through the forest, running from someone... someone with a gun. "You can't run forever, Scofield!" Alexander Mahone's voice shouted, seeming to come from all directions at once. "And when you stop, we'll find you!" Michael paused, between tall, thick trees, catching his breath.
A gun fired, the bullet narrowly missing his head. Michael took off again, but before he'd gone ten yards, he tripped over a fallen tree branch, which sent him sprawling into a pile of leaves. When he had brushed the foliage out of his face, the agent was standing in front of him, gun poised.
"Michael?"
Michael's eyes fluttered open and he sat up immediately. Sara's face loomed in front of him. "Are you okay?" She asked, noticing the alarm on his face.
"Yeah... just a nightmare."
"It's one thirty in the morning. I'm too tired to drive anymore. If you want to take over, that's fine, but I don't want to end up in a ditch." Michael yawned, stetching stiffly. "Do you want to drive?"
"Nah... find somewhere out of the way and park. Sucre's out too. We can all use some rest."
Sara nodded again, and shifted the car out of park and into drive. "Michael?" Michael transfered his gaze from out the window at the dark landscape to her. "Who is your contact?"
"A man named Rain." He replied.
"Can we... can we trust him?"
"I think so."
"How do you know him?"
"He was my roommate, in college." Michael smiled at the memories.
"Good times?"
Michael laughed. "Terrible times. We were both overworked, exhausted, and broke."
Sara smiled faintly. "Why are we going to him?"
"The computer chip you gave me contains audio recordings of important figures in the government that proves that the Company has corrupted much of Washington."
"Which does what?" She asked as she parked the car next to a tree a couple hundred yards away from the road.
"Well, if we can get the general public to believe this, we stand a good chance of proving that Lincoln was framed by this conspiracy."
"And this Rain can help with that?"
"He's a computer genius. If anyone can find a way to get these recordings out there, and make sure people hear this, he can." Michael explained.
The sun had set a long time ago, leaving the hotel room completely dark. At some point in the future, whenever housekeeping came to pick up the room, they would no doubt think it was strange that only one of the two beds in the room showed any signs of use, but the two people currently laying on their backs on one bed in the room weren't thinking about that. Indeed, they weren't thinking of the future at all.
'I just slept with a convicted killer!' Kate thought anxiously, rubbing her fingers along the edge of the sheet where the blanket was wrapped around her.
"Three years was a long time." Lincoln remarked, staring at the ceiling, hands behind his head.
"Yeah." She replied sleepily. "No decent food, no holidays, no contact with the outside world for three years."
He turned his head towards her. "I meant to not have sex." He said, grinning.
Kate laughed softly. As they sank back into silence, T-Bag's words came back to her. "He wouldn't have shot me anyway, Lovely. This 'un ain't a killer." "Lincoln?"
"Hmm?"
"You didn't kill that man, did you? Terrence Steadman?" She asked, rolling on her side to watch his face.
He turned his head, looking her in the eye. "No." He answered somberly.
Kate maintained eye contact for another moment, before moving closer to him and snuggling up against his chest. "I'm glad." She murmured. He smiled tiredly, and rubbed her back with one hand. Within a few minutes, both of them were asleep, too exhausted from the events of the past couple of days to stay awake.
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