Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, not Prison Break, not Michael, not Sara, not even Kellerman… lame but true.
Spoilers for the second season..
Summary: Sometimes, the faith isn't enough.
Title: Some nights
Notes: Although English isn't my first language, Lisa is great and makes this possible.
Thank you.
Any mistakes that remain are my own.
The coincidence between my story, and direction that the show has taken, it's just that, a curious coincidence.
I really appreciate all of the feedback and reviews that I have received... Please keep them coming!
By Lylou
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-"You are not going to tell me where we are going?"
-"Wow... Now I know why you are a secret service agent Paul"
-"Look, Sara..."
-"Believe me, I have heard all that crap of "Look Sara" before... and I don't trust men who say that anymore Paul... You are wasting your time."
He sighed and looked through the small window of the car again.
Outside was complete darkness and the landscape was passing at full speed at the other side of the glass.
They had left behind already two states, and Sara was still driving at lightning speed.
-"But you trust him?"
Sara smiled sadly before answering:
-"You know Paul... Both of you are damn similar.
The two of you have lied and used me, but however, you hope that I trust blindly in you... just like him"
-"He can't make you happy?"
-"If you hadn't still noticed it Paul... I'm not the happiest person in this world."
-"Yeah... I have noticed it...
You want me to drive for awhile?"
-"No, I'm fine"
-"Sara, you are hurt, confused and ..."
-"Stop it Paul... It's not going to work."
-"Why are you mad at me Sara... I mean, you were lying to me too, you knew who I was and what I was doing..."
Sara pressed her lips during a second. Yes, she had known who he was almost since the beginning.
Why was she getting surprised now?
-"Paul... How did you think all this was going to finish?"
-"... It is complicated Sara, when I was with you... I was not thinking thereon, never"
-"Sure... I almost forget the "Being with you" part."
Her voice sounded more hurt than she would have wanted him to know, because Sara could still remember that last and cold morning at the infirmary, when Michael said something very similar to that.
She did not believe in him then, and did not believe in Paul now.
-" Why don't you trust me?
I have risked my work and my life to help you, I have given you a gun... and you don't believe me yet...
What did he do to make you believe him?"
She did not answer.
Sara was feeling stupid enough already, without having to explain it aloud.
-"Then... if I'm wrong Paul, if you are one of the good guys now...
Why are you doing this?"
-"I always had known that Lincoln was innocent but... They never told me Sara, they never told me that Stedman was alive, that all was just a fucking lie."
Sara looked at him in silence, wondering for the first time, if he was telling her the truth.
-"...I have done many things that I'm not proud of but I always believed that it was for my country ... and now, I don't know what to think...
But I know that you don't have to die for a lie Sara."
-"... And Michael?"
Paul looked at Sara in silence during a second, and next, he looked through the window again, without answering.
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Michael was driving his BMW at full speed when he crossed the imaginary line that divided Mexico and US.
He was doing more than eight hours at the wheel and Michael had left behind one whole country.
Michael knew that he could do that journey with closed eyes; he had drived (driven) like a maniac many other nights through the dusky desert only to arrive to Chicago.
But he not always had knocked at her door after; sometimes he stayed looking at her bedroom's window during hours, like a bug attracted by the light.
By her light.
Hours ago, her voice at the other side of the phone line had sounded trembling and fragile, she wasn't terrified then but Sara never would have called him if it wouldn't have been really necessary, specially, after their last encounter.
Michael trembled remembering how had been their last hours together.
He waiting for her, like a jealous boyfriend, at her floor's landing, pushing her against the wall, letting his hands slide softly under her weighed coat, kissing her desperately, embracing her confused and warm mouth with his own, like if it was going to be the last time that he could have kiss her.
It had been like drowning in her, like if all the air trapped in that corridor, smells suddenly like Sara Tancredi, and Michael knew that he would have made love to her just there if she would have let him.
"What do you want from me Michael?"
THAT was the damn question.
Michael thought about his brother again, now Lincoln always seems... sad.
All the time.
Lincoln never talked about Veronica, or about how she was dead and buried somewhere, and about how his brother was a bit dead and buried too since that day.
Now there was something floating always at his brother's glance, a mixture of melancholy and sadness.
Both of them had lost too much.
And Sara... she was the last thing that made him feel like something more than a shadow.
Michael heard his brother's words again, and they scared him.
They scared him, because it was the damn truth.
"-You are burying yourself too Michael... slowly and fucking fine."
He stopped the car.
Michael had arrived finally.
It was cold.
In spite of being New Mexico, the desert wind was sharp and implacable at nights.
Mainly, near the lake.
He had told her that story more than ten months ago, the first time that he had felt her warm and small body upon his own, the first night that he had slept next to her, with her hair thrown around the pillow.
She wasn't there.
Her voice had sounded low and far when he had talk with her before, just like the last night that they had talked at her place, like when she had said: "We need to talk".
But he hadn't wanted to listen to her then.
He only had written a fucking note and to said Goodbye to her forever.
Again.
But now, alone and next to the lake that he would have liked to show her someday, all those memories seemed more and more far and blurred, the notes, the hot whispers under the bed sheets, the invisible trace of her saliva upon his skin, like a warm and addictive poison... his own name in her voice, broken by the desire at midnight...
All of those memories where vanishing, slow and painfully, because she wasn't there.
Michael felt a shiver, like the one that he had felt after picking up the receiver and listened to her pale and distant voice.
He had been an idiot.
What damn importance was having now all the sad looks, all the silences between them, all the sneaky goodbyes at daybreak?
All that was not important now because he had caught his car in the middle of the night without doubting it a second, and had driven during hours, leaving behind almost one and half country, to go to find her.
And Michael knew that he would have gone to the damn hell to find her if she would have asked.
And however, all the sharp silences, all the cold looks and the false goodbyes between them were still there.
But there he was, in the place that he would have like to show her if he would have been a free man.
"-I still owe you a coffee."
Michael had told that to her some nights before, while she was lying naked next to him, then he had thought, for the first time, that maybe there will be a "happily ever after" at the end for them.
But he was wrong.
They didn't have any other possibility, they never had it.
It was that or nothing.
He had spent hundreds of insomnia filled nights trying to understand it but finally he had known it.
There wasn't any hope for them, just... that.
Sadness, desperate kisses at midnights, the long goodbyes...
Suddenly Michael heard the sound of leaves breaking softly under the weight of, at least, two people.
And there she was.
There wasn't any artificial light there, only the one that the crescent moon was projecting on the lake, but it was enough to realize that Sara was having bad face.
She was pale, more than usually; her hair was uncombed and spattered with something that did not seem like blood with the faint light of the moon to Michael.
Sara was cold, she was rubbing her arms trying to heat up, and he could see how her breath was forming little clouds in the nocturnal wind.
And she never had seemed more breakable and lonely to Michael.
He wanted to embrace her and whisper that all was going to be fine now, put her into his BMW and drive, without looking back, until his new and cold house, which could be a little less new and cold with Sara there ...
But he couldn't.
There was a man standing at her side.
But not any man, he was the guy that he had seen entering into her apartment more than two times.
But Michael decided that he could think about that later, when he would have kissed her deeply.
That was the way of Michael Scofield was, just one priority each time.
The unknown guy stopped to a few meters his, and grabbed Sara by the arm, slowly, like if he was accustomed to doing it.
-"Sara... are you okay?"
She didn't answer but Michael knew it.
She wasn't, there was something in her glance, she was scared and cold, and a thousand things more.
The man next to her spoke finally:
-"She is angry. With you, with me, with her dad... with all the men on earth actually."
Michael looked at him in silence, just one second, he wasn't interested in him.
Michael just stretched out his hand to her and talked soft, with the same low voice that he uses to talk to her every night that he was in her bed.
-"Sara... come with me."
But before that she could take just a step, Paul took out a gun of his back, fast and professionally, and then he aimed at Michael and Sara's eyes filled up with terror and surprise.
-"No...! You promised to me Paul... "
-"I promised not to hurt you Sara... and I will want to keep that promise, so let me do what I have to do."
-"Paul..."
-"He deserves it!
He had ruined everything, he had ruined you, me... everything that I believed in...
He had played a game on you since the beginning Sara."
She tried desperately to free her wrist, but it only served to Paul grit her until she felt intensive pain.
-"Why don't you just let her go... I'm not going anywhere."
Michael's voice sounded exceptionally sad when he spoke.
He looked at her again; she was hurt, now he could see it.
She was pale and had dry blood in the hair, but the worst thing, was the way in what she was looking at him, like if she were saying good-bye in silence to him.
Like if, for the first time, they were really going to say Good-bye to each other
But Michael knew very late was going to happen next to stop it.
Sara took out something from her pocket with her free hand, and Michael knew that it was a small gun, when it shone lightly under the moonlight in Sara's small hands, when she aimed at Paul.
-"Drop it! Drop it Paul!"
-"You will not get it Sara, you won't be able to shoot me fast enough... I just have to pull the trigger once."
Then an idea crossed behind her eyes, but neither of the men there found out then.
Sara stopped aiming Paul, and Michael could see how she propped the gun against her own temple.
Paul released her arm surprised and stopped aiming at Michael.
His voice sounded like a scared human for the first time since many years ago:
-"Sara... don't."
-"Sara please... Look at me..."
-"Shut up... both of you!
Drop your gun Paul... or I'll blow my brains all over the lake.
I swear."
-"He isn't worth the pain Sara."
-"It's not your business Paul... not anymore."
-"Sara please, he is right... drop the gun.
Please."
Michael walked slowly until where she was and saw her wet and confusing eyes dives in him.
She was so annoyed with him as usual, she was there, determined to blow off her brains just to save him, but she was keeping on without forgiving him.
That was the fucking essence of their relationship.
Michael stretched out his hand to her and he almost could touch her.
Almost.
Because then Paul turned, and before Michael know what was happening, he heard a shot.
The echo of the shot faded away in the wood and the chilled night time air smelled of gunpowder during a few seconds.
Next Michael saw how terrified Sara was, becoming paler, until he saw the blood that began to soak her green blouse.
To be continued...