Author's note: sorry it's been so long since I last updated this fic, been through a lot this summer and there was a lot on my mind, this came a little late : )

…

'Tell me, Clarice. Would you ever say to me: "Stop. If you loved me, you'd stop."?'

Hannibal

Sara Scofield was a careful woman.

The words seemed so old and threadbare right now she was having a hard time sinking them in.

Sara was a well-educated aware woman, and she had been warned various times about the possible dangers of seduction. Both envy and lust made the capital list of sins.

Yes, at this point, Sara was beginning to identify Paul Kellerman's behavior, his want for friendship and claims to be a changed man – above all, that kiss which he had stolen inside her husband's living room – as seduction.

Short of being cautious anymore, Sara Scofield was not yet an idiot.

And yet, part of her knew that for the past few months, she had not been very smart either.

Sara closed her eyes wearily, and thought about Michael. She didn't think about their relationship as husband and wife or about the closest stage of their intimacy, almost like friendship, which would have no doubt started an ache inside her chest, but about the beginning – she thought about that confident handsome con that had stolen her heart, in Fox River.

Lost in her reminiscences of the dead, Sara wondered what her father would have thought of their wedding if he had been able to witness it, and then how Michael would react if he could see her in her current predicament.

A long forgotten time ago, Sara Scofield was a careful woman.

But eight months pregnant, waiting for the ambulance as calmly as she could while about to give birth to a slightly premature child, as Sara reflected on the recent mistakes of her past, she reckoned that careful was no longer what she was.

Careful had ended the moment she had realized she needed to end her relationship with Paul Kellerman, if she wanted to preserve the steadiness and safety of her life, and had still unreasonably decided to do otherwise.

…

The first time had been three weeks after the kiss. It had been out of passion, frenzy, and something that altogether escaped Sara Scofield's rational understanding. She had stood there, in that same living room, pacing around it as though it would get her to forget Kellerman pinning her into her armchair. Her fingers were drumming against the plastic side of her telephone, and at this point she was still half convinced that she wouldn't call.

If she wasn't going to call, she wouldn't have picked up her phone in the first place.

The funny thing about it was it wasn't funny at all. She didn't feel nervous like a teenager or even ashamed or guilty.

For the first time in a long time, Sara Scofield felt out of control.

Every bit of her gut and every bit of reason was urging her not to and she dialed the number anyway. It was then that it first occurred to her that she had no power over what was to happen. People always tell you that to resist temptation is hard, they don't describe it as impossible. They don't tell you that when desire eats you up so much it feels like a need, it doesn't feel like you get to choose at all.

She heard his breathing on the phone, and didn't say anything. During the full length of that first conversation, Sara didn't speak a word. She was still too startled to have called despite her own decision and logic.

Ten seconds went by, then thirty. Kellerman didn't say 'hello', but she knew he was there. She could hear him breathe. Right now, the only real thing to Sara Scofield wasn't her conflicted feelings for a man she wanted, but the fact that there was a man out there wanting her, and he was breathing. She wanted Michael to be alive so hard she thought she might cry. She wasn't certain whether she would want him to hold or slap her.

"Sara?" Kellerman said, after a full minute. His voice was familiar and tainted by the same intensity of her own torment. Desperate. Urgent.

It was the only word she allowed him before she hung up her phone.

One word was all she needed, before rationality tore through her inner battle and she threw the phone away with a cry.

One word was all it took.

At first.

…

She attempted everything that she could think of about self-reasoning to try and give him up. She spent as much time as she could with her family-in-law and occupied herself well when she was alone. It wasn't even as though she missed Paul Kellerman. When she would ponder on what she missed exactly, she would ultimately end up thinking of her late husband and cry.

She would cry, not because injustice had made her a widow too soon, but because she wished she had been left with peace – since Kellerman had walked in and then out of her life, there had been no peace of mind for Sara Scofield.

She didn't know why this was beginning to feel like a craving, or like a wicked kind of addiction that she wouldn't know how to quit. Keeping Paul Kellerman out of her life shouldn't have been hard, there was a time when she would have wanted the man as far from her as possible, and even dead. Why not? Hate may be a sin, but isn't coveting a sin too, and far worse of one?

Sara didn't know. These days, she didn't seem to know much anymore.

But there was a constant state of ache she was in, one that would not leave her, and she seemed to know for certain that Kellerman was the cause. There was no reason why his presence would show soothing whatsoever, but who was she to guess?

Sara was starting to accept being a witness to her own situation.

The ache was not sadness, it was not grief, and there was something furious about it, and it would not be tamed.

Peace. Sara Scofield would give up just about anything in the world, to have it now. She pictured herself dead, with Michael or nowhere at all, and she managed to wish it. Peace was something she would kill or die for right now.

She dialed the number with more resignation than surprise this time.

After the first call, she supposed it was only a matter of time before she slipped again. She was determined not to talk still.

She didn't care that she had no reason to be calling if she didn't want to talk, no – all that made sense to her right now was to think that the man at the other end of the line understood her peculiar suffering. He may not have anything in common with her apart from that, but at the time, it felt like enough.

From the moment that Sara decided to hear him talk, she supposed that part of her had to know she had lost.

"Sara." He said again, right away this time, as though to challenge her to hang up right away this time or hear him out. "I don't understand what I might have done for you to toy with me." He sounded afflicted and angry and distressed and all that she felt at once. "Sara." He called again, his breath hoarse and urging, and she thought that at this moment he might hate her for not saying anything.

That's when it truly started. When Paul Kellerman's truth really started to come out, spoken gentle and ragged through his agony. And the worst of it was, she knew it was a lie. She knew that unconsciously, somehow, from the beginning. She looked down on it with the slightest bit of lucidity and she knew it made no sense. The Rational Sara Tancredi that her father had raised knew that this man was lying, and that every vow of love he made was deceitful.

And for some reason still, she was never able not to believe him.

"Ever since I've left your doorsteps on that rainy day, Sara, I've been a broken man." He stated and sounded true. He didn't sound sad but hysterical, taken over by an urgency that is only experienced by those whose salvation is also their doom, and who are somehow compelled to self-destruct. "I was never broken by pain or by anything before in my life. You've made a misery of me. At times, I hate you. If you knew how much I regret that you were ever brought on my path, Sara, sometimes more than anything."

"Are you expecting me to apologize?" She let out. She didn't sound outraged. She was a twenty-nine-year-old widow with child, speaking with the man that was currently haunting her life, but it didn't occur to her to insult him. When she had failed to find sleep for the past few weeks, unable to grasp the slightest bit of reprieve or rest, she had cursed Paul Kellerman and everything that ever led to their encounter.

She would never love again. It was something that she had told Lincoln, while Michael was first put in the hospital – when the doctors had told them that they could make him comfortable for two weeks at most. When she had said it, exiting her husband's hospital room, Linc had given her a look of both surprise and honest sorrow.

Sara hadn't meant it as a decision or as a promise. She had looked into her husband's faded blue eyes while he rested comatosely, and she had known deep inside of her that her heart had turned to stone. She had looked at Michael attempt a charming smile, and it had been the same smile that had seduced her from the start, and it had broken her.

Sara Scofield would never love again.

"You have no right." She said, and closed her eyes for a moment – she would give anything to sleep now, for a little while.

"That is quite correct, Sara." Paul Kellerman agreed. His words were cold, and harsh, and burning. "I have no right. I thought that I knew what torment was, and yet it seems I can only understand it now – now that I know what it is like to feel as though I will not sleep or eat or think if I don't hear your voice."

"Please don't say that."

"Since you have left me without news I have not been alive. I have not been a man. You've unmade me, Sara. I thought I knew what love was, I had experienced devotion and desire and yet never realized I had not gone below the surface. Now I'm sitting in the bottom of the ocean with my hands and feet tied down and you have cut my strings."

"Please." She said again. She knew what he was going to say next, and knew that her plea was going to be denied.

"I love you." It was spoken harsh and unforgiving, angrier than pained. She knew he might kill her, right now, if they were face to face. "Isn't that what you've been expecting to hear when you've made that call? I have no right into your life, I know that, rationally. I know that it's what you think and what your brother-in-law thinks, and anybody else that you might ask. But trust me when I say that there is an irrational thing in me that owns you, and that owns every privilege into your existence. I can't sleep or be without you and for that, I have every right."

His anger made Sara's throat tighten, and she tried to convince herself that it wasn't fear. Then it occurred to her that it might be lust, and she decided she would rather that it'd be the first.

Paul Kellerman drew in a hoarse breath and she swallowed. It occurred to her how much he wanted her, right at this instant, and she wondered if she had ever been more wanted than now. She wondered if any other man had ever felt as though they would touch her or die.

"My sweet Sara." He breathed out, with more compassion than his former harshness, but no mercy. "What you've made of me is a dragon without a plunder."

She was starting to realize that. And she knew it was likely that for this, they would both burn.

…

Every single phone conversations that she had had with Paul Kellerman were on her mind when she was taken to the hospital. There had been many conversations. Some during which she would not talk at all but only listen, while he would describe the terrible affliction that was theirs both.

They had not seen each other since the kiss. They had not seen each other in two months.

This was best, Sara was sure, because she knew that a next interview with Kellerman would not end predictably – it would not end rationally. Because odds were he would get his way and she would let him. She would let him, because since the man she loved more than anything had been taken underground, Sara Scofield had not been a rational woman.

Because she drank Kellerman's words and promises and at a certain stage, what he was telling her began to make sense. Paul Kellerman loved her. The words sank in quicker than reason or sanity. She was crushed with pain and grief and addiction, and there was something out there that could put an end to it and she was avoiding it. This no longer made sense. It didn't matter who he was or what he had done. It didn't matter that he was a monster and she was starting to become a ghost.

Somewhere for them both, there was a way out. An escape.

When a nurse asked her if there was anybody she wanted to call, she said no one. Lincoln would want to be there, but Sara thought that right now his presence might be the last thing she needed. Today, she did not want anything other than the memory of her husband with her, and the part of him that she had carried around for the past eight months.

Sara Scofield had prepared herself to endorse her role as a mother, and yet the reality of her situation did not truly sink in until she was giving birth. Until her child was no longer a part of her, but a full spirit and body of its own.

Then, when she held her son in her arms, only a few minutes old, as Sara stared into those baby-blue eyes, she felt everything begin to change inside of her.

They tell you that having children changes your life. They don't tell you that it changes you.

After holding her baby for the first time, Sara Scofield was no longer the same woman.

…

It had already happened when he came to see her at the hospital. Kellerman had called her twice today hadn't gotten an answer, and when he had gone over to her house for the first time since the kiss, he supposed he had known all along that things would not be the same.

For two months he had only heard her breathe over the phone and utter a few words – most of the time, she told him to stop – while he talked to her about love, and obsession. Regarding the last, he had not needed to lie. The thought of Sara Tancredi had become pervasive to Paul Kellerman. The rules of his game were still the same, of course, but it had taken over most of his life so that he could not tell you how he used to live, before he started seducing that particular widow.

And on this one day, when he decided to go and see her after she left his calls unanswered, there was only one true thought on his mind. It would end today. Whether he needed to use strength or a hundred lies to persuade her. It would end today.

He found her house empty and did not immediately know what to make of this. She could have been at Lincoln's, having an early dinner with her family-in-law, and Kellerman somehow knew that she wasn't. Actually, he could argue that ever since he had heard her phone ring and ring at the other end of the line, he had known that something had happened.

Without much more pondering or hesitation, he drove to the hospital.

Someone at the reception gave him her room number and, as it turned out, he was the first to see her. He wasn't certain why she hadn't called Lincoln earlier today. Perhaps she really only wanted to be alone right now, and his presence could be something else for her to be mad about.

There was no anger on her face to be found when she met his eyes. It had been a long time since he had seen her. Such a long time that, for a moment, he did not pay the slightest bit of attention to the newborn baby in her arms.

There was no trace of the ache that had been tormenting the two of them for months, on her face, either. She greeted him with a smile, such an honest one that he thought he ought to be suddenly blown to pieces for his lies as retribution.

"Hello, Paul." She sounded calm and rather peaceful compared to the tortured soul he had gotten glimpses of those past months.

"Hello." He replied, and lowered his eyes to the child she held against her chest. The baby was not much bigger than one of his hands, he was pretty sure he could even hold it just in one palm. Not that she would let him near it, he supposed. When he looked back at her though, she didn't look willing to throw him out. "It's a cute little bun you got there, Sara."

"Love of my life." She said to that, and he reckoned there was a chance she meant it. She had been in love with Michael Scofield and Kellerman had decided it would be a fun game to drive her mad, and now she was no longer tormented or determined to wear black for the rest of her life. She was a mother, and she would be happy. Whether or not he was part of her life would not change any of that, Kellerman could tell. He could tell that the smile on her lips right now was her way of saying she had put the past behind.

It didn't matter that she wasn't ready or even that she was. There was a baby in her arms that had come a month early, and she wouldn't make him wait. The fact that he had made that decision for her didn't matter either.

"I see." Kellerman stated. He looked back at Sara's face and added. "Motherhood looks good on you." He supposed she would have slapped him for saying that if it had been any other time.

"Thank you." She retorted, not docile but calm, and strong.

It was not the first time that Paul Kellerman found strength in Sara Scofield; the kind of strength that would bend you to her will. And today, it seemed to say that he wouldn't torment or madden her any longer.

Just as he became aware of that, Kellerman acknowledged something else.

The fact that she was willing to put an end to their relationship as it had been for the past months was something big. She hadn't just broken his rules, but his whole game. But what struck him was that it didn't actually look like an ending, but an opportunity.

Sara Scofield was no longer just a beautiful woman bound to her husband's grave who he intended to make his. She would not play games of seduction or games of power, or anything that would lead to pain.

She was ready to love him. Kellerman realized that, as he looked at the look on her face. She would either start a healthy life without him, or she would allow him in it, but there would be no compromises. There was no way that Sara could decide not to be destroyed by him, if his intent was to destroy her, and yet something in her eyes said the contrary. Something in her eyes said she could, and she had.

For some reason, Paul Kellerman had expected that this moment would be different. He had expected that she would be filled with sorrow, looking at her child, at the idea that she had somehow betrayed her feelings for his father. Kellerman knew how to go against pain. He wasn't sure how to go against this.

"I won't ask you how you found me." She said at some point.

"It wasn't so hard."

He hadn't meant this to make her laugh, and the chuckle she let out made him feel shaky, as if it had crept into him through an instant of surprise because he hadn't raised his defenses.

"You're a persisting man, Paul." She stated.

"I get that a lot."

For a moment they were silent, and she asked calmly. "Did you just come here to say hi to me?"

Kellerman didn't answer for a moment, maybe only because he reckoned he could have answered anything to her question. He could have said he was tired of living with nothing but obsession on his mind. He could have broken the distance between them and kissed her again. For some reason, he didn't think she would have stopped him.

She could have let him love her. The aim wasn't only to make her feel desire and Kellerman had sworn not to get confused in his own mind games before, and he shouldn't be surprised to have reached such a stage, and yet…

"I came to say goodbye."

She looked surprised at his answer, not heartbroken. Sara Scofield was already broken, and although it had been his initial plan, Kellerman didn't have the will to carry it through – he had sworn not to show mercy on her again, but today looking at her in that hospital room, he thought he would rather leave her mended instead of sticking around to tear her apart himself.

It didn't even feel like mercy.

Right at this moment, Paul Kellerman did not feel anything.

"Goodbye?" She echoed and arched a brow. She was more beautiful with that baby in her arms than he had ever seen her before. The universe really should have thought twice before making her a beautiful woman.

"Don't ask me why, honey." He said, and let out a short sigh – he put on a smile himself, maybe so that she would pay attention. "I trust you've already heard that when you're trapped in an eagle's claw and it lets you go, you must run."

She didn't look surprised at the metaphor. She supposed that ever since she had convinced herself that Kellerman loved her, she had known that she was starting down a dangerous road. It would have been dangerous to believe him and she would have believed him, ultimately. Because when something sounds true and feels true, it doesn't really matter that it's not.

It occurred to Sara that perhaps Paul Kellerman had not loved her until right now.

"Is that your way of letting me go, Paul?" She asked.

He gave her a devious smile. He had to know it was the kind she fell for. "And if it is?"

She smiled back, and it looked knowing. "I would tell you that I've heard that before."

Maybe she said it as a way of wishing him luck. To say that she had tried to let him go before, and it hadn't set her free. Maybe just to say that she didn't believe he would manage at all. Yes. Sara Scofield had realized a while ago that she was bound to Paul Kellerman. At this certain stage, she wasn't sure which one of them held the key.