AN: Hey, so it's been ages since I last updated this story, I know, but I felt inspired all the sudden so here it goes.
…
'But above his bed, just awaiting for the dead, was the devil with a twinkle in his eye. "Well God's not around, and look what I found: this one's mine!"'
Spanish Train, Chris de Burgh
Each day that went by was a day that Sara Scofield blossomed more through the unfolding of her pregnancy, at least it would have been Paul Kellerman's opinion, if it had been appropriate for him to have an opinion regarding such a bold subject. His friendship with Sara was unreal, not in the way that she did not need him in a real manner of genuinely appreciate his presence, but in the way that it did not seem to be part of the real world. He stopped by, more and more frequently, and each time she showed less and less reluctant, and for as long as their interview would last, the young widow was cut off from each routine that made up her every day life. In Kellerman's presence, she did not think about her brother-in-law or his family whom she loved, she did not think about the six-month-old unborn child she was carrying or about her ex-husband.
During these visits, Sara Tancredi forgot the world and discovered herself as a woman again. She forgot about her life and unconsciously began wanting another one. Maybe the want was not explicit or solid enough for Kellerman to make his move yet, but he had planted the seed and he knew it was sprouting and would soon blossom just as well as the woman he was to seduce. Every time they spoke and he forced an illicit smile on her face, he presented her with a bait too enticing to be left unattended. He was aware he was very much like the snake that convinced the first woman to take a bite into the forbidden fruit, only Sara Tancredi was not a naked naïve starry-eyed girl with no sense of wariness.
She was a careful woman.
That was why, for the time being, Kellerman was okay with sharing with her a relationship unreal on many levels. Besides, one once said that if something looks real and feels real, it really does not matter if it is real.
At the strike of six p.m., Paul Kellerman was still at the Scofield house, sitting on an armchair of the living room. Sara was in the kitchen, making some more coffee, and perhaps it was this detail which led Kellerman to realize it was the first time he stayed here so late, barring the time she had called him past ten in the evening. While she was away, he paced around the room and smiled when he caught a photograph of Sara and her late husband, and given the indistinguishable baby bump on her stomach, it dated from a week at most after their wedding. The frame alone decorated the stone fireplace, and Kellerman figured that the precocious death of the husband had not left the widow with many memories. The effort she made to hold on to them still was just enough to make him grin.
He made sure the smile was gone by the time he heard Sara's footsteps in the corridor. He sat back on the couch quietly, and folded his forearms on his lap.
"Sorry." She apologized for the delay, and that half-nervous expression on her face looked delicious. "I made some extra," she said while sitting opposite him, "Linc is stopping by for dinner this evening."
"That's no trouble at all."
Out of politeness, Sara almost added that he was welcome to join them if he cared to, and she barely bit her tongue in time to hold back the words. Frankly, she could not imagine a scenario that would be more awkward than a dinner with Paul Kellerman and her family-in-law. Supposing that Lincoln could behave in the man's presence, LJ would probably attempt to kill him sometime during the evening. He had killed her nephew's mother. The thought struck Sara almost despite her will, and this was the kind of thoughts that she generally avoided – the real dimension of their relationship. The man sitting in her dead husband's living room and cordially having coffee was a former spy who had tried to kill almost everyone in her family, herself included. It just felt as though, at some point, she would need to convince herself that either one of these elements had only been a dream.
Kellerman tilted his head to the side when he noticed the young woman's bewilderment. "So, we were talking about…" He feigned not to recall and only spoke to distract her. "I think it was your childhood." He said it to tease, because he knew it would sound unlikely, because Sara Scofield had never once mentioned her childhood in his presence. It would have come out far too cliché.
"I highly doubt that." She sounded rather calm now, but the confusion had been there in her eyes and Kellerman had seen it. The more she pondered on the irrationality of their relationship, the more there were chances that she would rule it as a folly and try to put an end to it again. It meant he would have to make his move, and ensure that scale would tip in his favor. He would have to do it soon.
"Well, we could talk about it." He pointed out – during the conversations they had shared, Sara would often talk to him about anything. Her view on politics or justice or redemption or whatever else, and he would listen and argue and pretend that nothing made more sense in the world than for them to be talking about it. To talk about abstract things was easier than to discuss actual personal issues – for instance, how could she talk about her ex-husband without becoming vividly aware that, if Michael could see her now, he would shout at her to run for her life.
"My childhood?" Sara raised an eyebrow without lingering on the subject. "No, thank you. There is not one part of it alone that I'd like to relive. You can always tell me about yours if you fancy it." She figured it would do just as well as any of their usual topics.
She didn't think that he had brought up personal matter for a reason. She didn't it was so that she would get to know more of him, whether she liked it or not. So that, before she knew it, when Lincoln Burrows or Sofia would warn her about Paul Kellerman, it would feel as though she knew better than both.
Kellerman shrugged, seemingly casual, and she was actually surprised that he answered. "I had a little sister. Two very normal parents." She opened wide eyes, and he let out a subtle laugh. "That surprises you?"
"I didn't peg you for the type who has family."
"What did you peg me for? Only child, orphan, or a traumatized boy who tortured animals growing up?"
The instant blush that covered her face brought him to feel a sudden arousal which he found inexplicably hard to repress. He needed to dig his fingernails into his own palms. "No. No, I –" She fumbled, as though this had offended him and their relationship wasn't far above offense. She inwardly cursed her deeply incrusted manners and education. "I mean, I just didn't imagine you would have chosen this kind of lifestyle if you had any ties holding you back."
Kellerman waited a few minutes before giving her a reply. It was not just because he delighted himself with her nervousness but because he felt it was time they should get to this stage. She should start acknowledging the past of the man whose presence she was in and whose company she enjoyed, because for her to have her head buried in the sand could only last up to a certain point. It also made for a better game.
He didn't want to seduce her as a stranger. He wanted to seduce her as everything she stood against and hated, and everything that her husband had hated before he died.
And even at this stage, he still couldn't really tell you why.
He sat back into his seat before he answered, slowly, like a reptile settling in its hole. "It wasn't difficult to cut the ties." He said for a justification. He could have given her a sad childhood story which, careful as she was, she would have no doubt believed, but it was not the point of his game either. She wouldn't love a poor man to be pitied who has made bad choices for any kind of reason. She would love him bare and inexcusable. "It's not like I didn't have any options, Sara. I didn't grow up in a penniless family or without love, I could have become a model son and gone to college, and made my family proud or whatnot. Even in a democratic country, not everybody is born with enough tools or luck to make all the right choices, but I could have."
She stared into his blue eyes. She still held a mug of coffee in her hand, but it seemed to have been entirely forgotten. "Why didn't you?" She asked, and again didn't expect an answer.
He smiled, to surprise her, but it wasn't devious. "Why does anyone?" He replied. But what he meant by that was: maybe for the same reason that you became a morphine addict and worked in a penitentiary when you had a financial situation that would have enabled you to have it all. A kind of cold resent pervaded her eyes. Kellerman supposed she must have read the unspoken answer in his smile.
"Well." She retorted, sounding dry. He thought her dryness was a delight. It made him think of draining it from her voice by doing to her a number of various enjoyable things. "Not just anyone becomes a Vice President's hit man."
Oh. So now she was more than willing to acknowledge his status. What anger did to women.
"Now, Sara." He said with a reprobating tone. "I was hardly a hit man. If you would have called me that last year, I would have probably taken it as an insult."
"Insulting you is not beyond my capacities."
"Actually, at the time, it probably would have been." He shrugged and didn't specify that it was a joke. "I don't respond well to insults, I might have decided we had a problem." He feigned not to hear the humorless scoff she let out, and she didn't look amused at all, as a matter of fact. She looked just about serious enough for him to add. "You're not usually so worked up, Sara. The pregnancy hormones must be killing you."
He was half-expecting her to throw her coffee at him instead of the earnest look she gave him. Deep. Intense. Unwavering. There was a kind of unspoken, beautiful resistance in her eyes, a paradoxical strength in her defenselessness. The kind of beauty that brutally bends you to its will. The kind that summons respect and shows you it is exactly because you could show cruelty that you can't.
And for an immensely startling moment, Paul Kellerman only felt like an impish fool inappropriately disturbing a woman's life.
"Are you trying to anger me?" She asked without sounding authoritarian, and yet her words vibrated with authority.
He swallowed before he could help it. The next instant, he banned his own nervousness before a trace of it could be found as evidence.
"It seems you know which buttons to push." She added before he could answer. "Why are you trying to push them?"
Kellerman got up, and watched her slightly tense in her own seat. It was the only thing he could think of doing to reverse their sudden position of power. For some reason, Sara Tancredi had been the only person capable of unsettling him this way. Of oddly bringing him to her mercy, when she was supposed to be at his. Of holding power over him when he was the one in power. The last time had been in a motel bathroom, in New Mexico, after she had signed her death warrant and told him to go to hell.
He took a step closer to her even though he knew she had to be scared enough as it was. Scared, and not merely intimidated, because she knew what he was capable of and this time, she really only had herself to blame. Inviting a wolf inside your house when he wears a sheep's mask is excusable, but invite him in again when his mask is dark as coal – she really would have done this to herself.
He waited until they were less than a meter away to answer her. If she had gotten up right now, their bodies would have been close enough to touch. She was probably frozen into her seat.
"You really want to know?" He asked calmly, intending to be merciless to get revenge for that quick-fading powerlessness she had overwhelmed him with. He answered before she said yes. He figured this would work fine, to unhinge their overly-friendly routine. "You're the only person I can't scare away. True, I haven't honestly tried to scare you away. I've done quite some work for you to tolerate my presence, but the reasons why you wouldn't have me in your life weren't that you were afraid of me. You were angry at me. Understandably angry." He smiled at the way she forbade herself to break eye-contact. "You want to know something, Sara? I kind of love it that you hate me."
And again, he knew she could read the unspoken message in his sentence – that most of the people you torture and bring to the brink of death only become submitted puppets, but not her.
"The majority of my acquaintances ended up fearing me far too much to hate me…" He said with a shrug, and a kind of casualness he knew she would resent. "It's actually relieving to catch a bit of anger, here and there."
Her lips tightened into a thin line as she clenched her jaw. He knew she was uncomfortable with his proximity. "Is that why you were so desperate for us to be friends?" She asked, cold enough to veil most of her nervousness. "Because you found it amusing that I didn't fear you?"
His lips broke into a chuckle. "Oh no, Sara, I never said you weren't afraid of me. You wouldn't be fooling many people with that act and least of all I. On the contrary, the fact that you hate me still and hardly hesitate to show it demonstrates a kind of bravery I admire."
He pinned her shoulders into her seat when she made a move to get up, and the porcelain mug of coffee fell on the floor with a dull sound. It didn't break, but the content was spilt on the carpet. Kellerman didn't seem to notice it. It made Sara's breathing hitch. It just seemed to be evidence for the reality of the situation she was suddenly in – one second, she was drinking coffee with a man who she knew wasn't one hundred percent innocent, and the next she was reminded that predators never become anything other than predators.
All snakes ultimately bite. Even if they could grow to like the helpless white mice, even if they could feel affection and sympathy and remorse. It's in their nature.
"No." Sara told herself she spoke the word as a command and not as a plea. Also, because she was trapped in an armchair under Kellerman's hold, and it seemed in order.
"No?" He echoed, and didn't lower his eyes from hers – he was careful to sound calm, to remind her that although he wasn't lying and she was afraid of him, fear was not the dominating emotion here. He aimed to remind her that he had come here today as her guest, and that this was seduction and not assault. He didn't take into account the fact that she was six months pregnant and utterly defenseless against him. He had promised himself not to be merciful.
He watched her swallow again. She tried to think that this very same man had tried to kill her. She tried to think of what Michael would say of her if he saw him in their house. She tried to listen to the voice of rationality but it seemed that she had neglected to listen to it for so long that now, when resistance was desperately needed, it was nowhere to be found.
She stared into Kellerman's face, overhanging her, and tried to think of a scenario according to which this evening could end well – while her shoulders were trapped in his fists, she could hardly think of one. She swallowed once more. And as her breath became shriller, she seemed to realize for the first time that her despise for Paul Kellerman had turned into desire. The acknowledgment came suddenly, but without surprise. Maybe because, in an unaware part of her mind, she had known it for a while. Maybe because both the desire and despise had always been there, and it was simply the first time that the first took over the latter.
Without moving an inch from his posture, Kellerman smiled, and she wondered if he could read any of her reflections on her face. The mere thought made her close up like gates. "Please." She said coldly, as if he could be shamed into behaving decently.
He arched a brow for an answer. She should have known never to enter a seduction game again. Players never let themselves be tamed. "First no, and now, please?" He quoted her with a kind of amusement. "What do you think this is, a hostage situation? I have to teach you better ways of bargaining. I'm sure you can do better than that."
And before she could come up with anything to reply, he covered her lips with his mouth. She tasted like sugar and the faint memory of blueberry pie, and something he had longed to taste for far too long a while. He still restricted her to her seat by the shoulders, and she clawed at his chest with her hands; whether it was to draw him closer or away, he didn't know, and had never least cared to know, at the moment. The wetness of her mouth felt soft and immediately sparked up a restless excitement within him, and it felt so genuine that for a time, he didn't wonder if it was only part of the initial game – he didn't wonder if he always got so carried away. At the time, it felt entirely irrelevant.
He briefly decided that Sara's movements felt more like a response than actual struggling, but didn't dare loosening his grip on her shoulders. He tore his lips from hers and listened to the lustful breath of air she inhaled, and kissed her again before she could protest or beg him again, sliding his thigh beneath her knees to part her legs.
The picture that he had spied on earlier seemed to be staring straight at them. Undoubtedly, Michael Scofield's ghost would haunt him if Paul Kellerman believed in such things as ghosts. Right now, he was much more preoccupied with the living, anyway.
"What the hell?"
They broke apart as the loud half-outraged voice sounded, and Kellerman didn't have to try that hard to stifle his smile – a witness was about just what he needed, right now. A kind of timeout for his young widow to think over their whole relationship, breathless and less careful than ever. He caught a glimpse of Sara's flushed face and reddened lips when he pulled away, and lost the urge to grin. When you're starving or when the treat looks particularly delicious, it's almost painful not to eat.
"Lincoln –" Sara uttered with bewilderment and shame, and she straightened in her seat and got up just as Kellerman took one step backwards. Unlike the young woman, his movements were calm and unhurried. He was not a teenager caught making out with a schoolgirl and he would not act like one.
Lincoln Burrows, standing at the entry of the room, closed the door behind him without unhooking his eyes from his sister-in-laws's – yes, it was likely that, right now, the man was trying to convince himself that this had been a hallucination. More likely, he was cursing himself for not chasing the ex-spy who had spent months circling around his late brother's wife.
Before Sara could add a word of apology, Kellerman took a step towards the older brother, still looking calm. The blaze in Lincoln's eyes made it clear that about one single smile or comment would be enough to make him snap, and Paul decided not to disappoint.
"Well, don't act as though it's never crossed your mind, I'm certain you've thought of it, sometimes. In case you were wondering, she tastes like a sweet."
This caused the brother-in-law to attempt a much predictable punch, but what Kellerman said now did not matter and he knew it, as despicable as it was. Because Sara would speak in his defense. Because she had invited him here of her own volition, and she knew what kind of a man he was when she had made that call.
He stepped aside to avoid Lincoln's right hook and ignored Sara's cry, very much like a mother trying to keep her two boys out of trouble.
"And the older brother thinks with his fists." He commented dully. "What a surprise. You know, I sometimes think to myself you would have broken out of Fox River breaking walls with your head if it hadn't been for your brother."
"That's enough, Paul." Sara spoke sharply as ice, with the same unexpected authority she had startled him with earlier – and the strength in her voice startled him again, and made him silent before he could think of why. He really needed to figure this out. When he would come back to Sara Scofield's house, he would be wearing an armor. "You should go." She added on a calmer tone.
"No, you think?" Lincoln broke out.
"Don't make things worse, Linc. Please."
"What I should have done is break that man's face the first time I saw him at your house."
"It's cute and really self-flattering that you think you can." Kellerman straightened his shirt without expecting another outburst from the brother. It was time he left, anyway. He had been insufferable enough for one day. "I'll show myself out. Call me when you've got a minute, Sara." He added with a smile that could have appeared innocent, if taken out of the context. "I would love for us to finish that conversation."
He feigned not to hear the desperate weary sigh she let out and walked out the front door. After all, maybe he did have no reason of tormenting the life of this one widow barring the one that she was beautiful, but now most of the damage was done and it was too late to step away. Is there even ever a reason, anyway? Does God or whatever higher power is out there, if it is there, merely point an individual to another and say: they shall be yours?
Maybe the reason was just that there was something about Sara Scofield, from the deepest of her core, which belonged to Paul Kellerman.
…
"What were you thinking?"
"Please, Linc. Calm down."
Sara's brother-in-law sat opposite her on a fake-leather couch and feigned to inhale. "Okay, now I'm calm. What were you thinking?"
She let out another sigh, and tried not to think that only ten minutes ago, Paul Kellerman was sitting in that same seat. "Look, it's not – it's not what you think. It just happened."
"You intend to give me every cliché in the book?" Lincoln wondered, oddly without sounding angry, and then she saw his eyes lower to the carpet, where the mug of porcelain was still lying. "Did he hurt you?" He asked when he met her eyes again.
"No."
"Did he make you do anything? If he touched you against your will, Sare, I swear I'll break his smug smirking face."
The young woman held back from sighing again and gave her brother-in-law her best attempt of a smile. "You would like to hear that, wouldn't you? That he assaulted me in your little brother's living room. You've been looking for an excuse to settle the scores with him for some time."
"Don't make this about something it isn't." He replied, calmly also. "I worry about you, Sara. Not because I think you shouldn't have someone special in your life, actually despite what you might think, loneliness is not at all what I want for you, and it's not what Michael would have wanted for you either. You deserve to be with someone who makes you happy, if anyone can ever earn that, you have, okay?" She could tell what he was going to add before the words even left his mouth. "But I don't trust that man. He's not a good person, Sara. I know that in my bones."
She closed her eyes and took a few seconds to stall. "Look, Linc." She shook her head. "With Paul, it's – it's not the way you think. I know who he is, all right? If anybody is aware of what he's capable of, I'm the one. But he –" She bit her lip. "He makes me feel things I know I won't feel again with someone else. Nothing truly romantic and nothing like what Michael made me feel, but something still. Something intense. I just – it's part of what makes me get by, right now. It's not part of my daily routines, it's not part of the safety you and LJ bring me, you're my family. I just need what he brings me to go on and face the rest, at the moment."
"He's a jerk."
"Not always." She wasn't sure why she even bothered denying so she corrected. "Not with me."
Lincoln in turn let out a sigh. "You know, I was afraid we would wind up having this conversation. I meant what I said earlier, Sara, I want you to get what you deserve. I just wish you would get it from anyone except this guy."
"I know."
"You're an amazing woman, Sara Scofield. You deserve a man that is going to respect you and treat you right, and I promise I'll ensure he never treats you any other. I care about you, all right? Hell, if you hadn't been my brother's girl..."
She gave him a knowing eye-roll and he smiled understandingly, as if to say they both knew that in a different place, at a different time, things might have been different for them, and he would have been more than another convict with a crush on the prison doctor.
"Right now though," she stated, "it's not what I need. I had a man who was perfect for me, Linc, and I married him. I don't want to look for another one, that's not what Kellerman is about."
"I know. I'm just telling you to be careful, all right?"
"Of course." She said, and meant it. "And now that you've calmed down, I hope you believe me when I say that what you saw had never happened before, and it won't happen again." She meant that, too.
And yet, there was a look on Lincoln's face that seemed apologetic – a look that seemed to say, he wished her luck.
…
Sara wasn't overly surprised when she found Paul Kellerman on her doorsteps, a couple of days later. She opened her door without inviting him in, even though it was raining and this conversation would be more pleasant somewhere warm and dry.
"You said you would call." He observed for a greeting.
"No." She countered. "You said to call, and honestly I didn't think you expected that I would."
He didn't, really, but it seemed like a decent reason to stop by again. "Well, it's the proper thing to do in order to have a conversation. True, this particular conversation would be better face to face, it would also be better without the rain. Can I come in?"
"No."
The determination in her tone made him arch a brow. He had meant what he had told her during his last visit, he admired the fact that she defied him. He thought it was very fiery of her. "Then come out, and we'll both be soaked."
"There is nothing I want to talk to you about, right now." She said, crystal clear. "You've come to me months ago at my husband's funeral and asked for my friendship, you wanted us to be able to meet cordially and we have, but if I must spell it out, I don't condone any other kind of behavior."
"We kissed." He said it so that maybe at least, she would acknowledge there was something they ought to talk about.
"You kissed me. Which was inappropriate and, if you care about our friendship, something you won't reattempt."
Kellerman had expected something quite different, at this stage, especially from a woman who hadn't been kissed or even touched in six months. He had planned on thwarting a slight resistance, arguments that she would have spoken for good figure, because they were in order, but honestly, he had thought he would kiss her again by the end of their next interview, and that this time he would hardly need to restrict her.
But again, being surprised was part of the deal when you decided to play with people, and not with toys.
And so, since she had gone against his predictions, Kellerman improvised as well.
"And if I can't promise you that?" He wondered. Friendship was never the ultimate goal anyway, and it was time she acknowledged they were beyond that.
"Then I'm afraid I'd have to ask you to stay away from me."
It tore a chuckle out of him, because he expected she was serious so little it seemed like the only possible reaction. "Really?"
She gave him a look so close to the one that had made him feel powerless the other day that he stopped smiling immediately. "You came to my house asking for friendship even though I had no reason to grant it, and now you expect to be granted more? You think that I agreed to meet with you because I was bored or sad enough to be relieved that you cared? And you don't think that, when I did agree, I settled limits that would undo the slightest bit of trust I could have in you, if crossed?"
Paul Kellerman answered nothing, and felt extremely aware that maybe the biggest mistake one could make was stop at the innocent looks of Sara Scofield – perhaps once, it had been enough for a blue-eyed charming convict to seduce her, but not now that she knew what it felt like to be played.
Kellerman remained hesitating, knowing that he only had little time to hesitate. He could agree to her terms now and settle back in as her friend, but it wouldn't get him far if she intended to kick him out at the slightest kiss, and besides, this game was never played by her rules. And so he trenched back into a resigned and devoted coldness, one which looked changed and afflicted and undoubtedly in love.
"Then I'm sorry for misleading you. I did come to you asking to be your friend and now it seems I can't promise to only be that without overstepping my bounds. I respect you too much to make you a promise I'm not entirely sure I can keep."
He watched slight sadness pervade her eyes, and he wondered if she could measure the extent it would have to banish him from her life – probably not just yet. It could take time. He was aware of that. And this would be the hardest bluff he ever had to pull. Staying away from her until she was ready to ask him to come back, not as a friend this time. He hated to leave the dice in another player's hands, especially when he felt this involved. He wasn't even sure he could stay away, but something told him that was all right, because all is fair in love and war, and no one can promise to stick to their plan – because love always makes one unpredictable. Why should love games be any different?
Sara lowered her eyes briefly before setting them back into his. "Then I suppose this is goodbye."
"Will you really let us part with so little?" He said before she could close the door on him – he said it because he needed to hold her back, and not because it was smart. During the following few months, Kellerman figured he would have to learn not to always be smart.
"What else do you expect us to part with?" She retorted, not bewildered and influential but cold. "You came to me asking for something that I could grant you, and now you're looking for more than I can give. It's like you once told me, Kellerman. It's not personal."
She closed the door without another word, and the only sound that could be heard outside was the falling rain.