AN: Special warning, the word "nigger" will be used in that chapter, as well as homophobic slurs. I guess there's not too much suspense as regards which character will be using that language, and I felt queasy just having to write it down so I prefer to give you a heads up. It serves its purpose so I couldn't take it out of the story either. That's all I needed to say. Enjoy your chapter :-).
…
When Michael got home, that first of November, which seemed but a cruel prolongation of an endless Halloween night, he was surprised to find his brother Lincoln, waiting for him in the living room –
Except surprised wasn't the right word for it.
"I thought I'd made myself clear."
Though Michael's voice was certainly earnest, it was free from the earlier frustration he'd experienced, in the motel room.
Fate was no longer crumbling out of his hands as he tried to grasp it. Rather, Michael felt cool, the soothing mechanisms of his inner reflections steeling his confidence.
Yes, certainly. Things were going to change. Things had begun changing.
It was a little over seven p.m.
As he hung his coat on the rack, in the hall, Michael felt deep in the recesses of his body how he would have enjoyed this – Lincoln coming back here despite his clearly-stated wishes. Anything that would begin to even out the huge disadvantage that had settled between the brothers, the unmitigated weakness Lincoln had plunged him in, head first (what cold, shadowy waters these were).
But now, there was nothing like satisfaction in Michael's breast – the icy coldness that had permeated his whole frame last night hadn't thawed, although the birth of a specific purpose had made it more tolerable.
"I came here to talk," Lincoln said.
"What is talk going to solve?" Michael stepped further inside the living room but didn't sit down. "How will it make any difference?"
He walked past his brother and into the kitchen, as if Lincoln had been a piece of furniture. On his counter, the coffee machine hummed to life as Michael switched it on – Linc had teased him about this. You know this is theft, right? Charging you – what? – one dollar fifty, two dollars for a cup of coffee you make in your own home? My dear Michael, Lincoln had sighed, like his brother had fallen prey to the evil of capitalism and western society at large.
Of course.
If crime hadn't been a way for Lincoln to live outside the box, to evade some of the wrongs the very structure of government condones, he would have been a lawful man in the first place. On your own, without anyone to push you in narrow path of normalcy, what are the odds you'll do greater wrong than the average Joe? That everyman who walks by hungry people in the street without blinking, who makes a fifth more money than his girlfriend, who finds employment when his darker-skinned neighbors don't – but what can you do?
What can you do? Michael thought again, and reflected that his brother had probably asked himself that same question. Only, over the years, the both of them had come to radically different answers.
"Coffee?" Michael offered. "For the road, I mean. If you're driving."
"Mike –"
"I don't think I'd like to talk to you right now, Linc. Not for some time – you understand that, don't you?"
Michael sipped the foam that had gathered at the brim of his cup. The hot, bitter liquid revived his stomach to life – the thought of food or drink had made him queasy all day.
"How much time's appropriate, do you think for what happened?"
Laughter rose to Michael's lips, surprising both the young man and his brother. Somehow, the laughter was genuine, amusement but with roots so deep into the newborn coldness of his heart, Lincoln felt his brother's pain, and could not take it with full impassiveness, like he would have done his own.
"I remember when you were seventeen, and I walked into your bedroom without knocking –" Michael shook his head. "I wanted to show you my new science project I'd just finished – it was huge, so I just didn't have any hands to knock. Remember?"
Lincoln didn't nod, but a sore softness in his eyes answered he did.
"'Course, I didn't know Veronica was in your room, that you'd been helping her sneak in there however often you could for the past weeks."
It was the first time Michael had seen a naked girl and, for that matter, the first time he saw his brother naked since his toddler years.
The unapologetic crack as his science project collapsed on the ground replaced any sound Michael may have chosen to vocalize his burning embarrassment.
"How long," Michael said, "after that moment, until I could bare to look you in the eye? I think at least a few weeks. Can't you even give me that, Linc?"
"I have a solution."
Michael drank his coffee, unimpressed.
There was no difficulty in holding his brother's gaze.
"I called a friend of mine."
"Heaven."
The hot coffee gliding down Michael's throat was less bitter than the irony.
"Someone who can go just about wherever from the screen of his laptop. He's agreed to go after Bagwell –"
"Yes, by all means. More scandals. More tricks."
Michael laughed.
That country he lived in was enough to drive one berserk. Like at a parade, the spectators knew they had no impact on the action – the vote, yes, democracy, but can anyone pull out of their hats a clear explanation for what it really means? – but they came and shouted their approval or their rebuke, and that was enough, for most. All of the strings-pulling and decision-making took place backstage – not in the spotlight, not on live television, but in the shadows. Really… Where Michael had been most comfortable all his life.
"He'll find something, Mike. Something we can use to fight back, to stop them from ever airing that video –"
"Sara's decided on that yet, has she? You've seen her?" Michael asked with a new voice – it wasn't cold, but it wasn't exactly his own, and he couldn't connect with it, couldn't feel whatever emotions it triggered. "Right," he said. "She would have wanted to see you. You're a part of this, her world, though you're on the wrong side of it."
Although Sara had tried calling him today, Michael hadn't wanted to pick up. When he spoke to her, it should be with his own voice, or at least one he could understand. She mattered too much for him to allow her to glimpse the ruling chaos in his brain.
"I know it won't take back what I've done."
"No," Michael agreed.
Drained what was left of his coffee, then shifted on his feet to carry the cup to the sink –
A rubbery squish accompanied Michael's footsteps, which drew Lincoln's attention to the state of his brother's shoes. The weather had been bad that day, all rain and few intermissions. Lincoln himself had gotten soaking wet in the few minutes it'd taken him to go from the underground station to his brother's apartment.
But Michael's shoes, ordinarily black, had turned a faded in between of brown and grey, like he'd been out in the rain all day.
Without another word, Lincoln shoved his hand into his pocket and took out the key to his brother's apartment, which he lay on the coffee table.
Michael didn't acknowledge this with a nod or a word of approval.
In his pocket, Lincoln's fingers brushed against the origami flower he'd picked up in the motel room. He could have left it beside the key, but right now, in the state his brother was in, Lincoln didn't think it safe, feared the flower might end up in the trash.
That was the word for Michael, really.
He seemed in a great spring-cleaning mood. Like he was in the midst of a mental clear-out.
Lincoln headed towards the door, but glanced again at his brother's face, then at his ruined shoes. Last night, he had lost all claims to brotherly worry, but that didn't stop him from feeling it – indeed. Lincoln was worried.
"How was work?" He ventured to ask.
Michael answered immediately, without any audible emotion. "I quit."
…
Some five hours later, when Lincoln found himself in Paul Kellerman's office, for the second time in twenty-four hours, that interview with his brother still hovered like a black cloud in the back of his brain. He didn't take Roland with him – he had promised him absolute secrecy – but carried the USB stick which the kid had given him when they'd met up, around eleven p.m.
"You'll see," Roland had said, "it's good."
There was effort to convince in his tone, enough to make Lincoln cautious. They played the recording a first time in complete silence. All the while, beads of sweat were rolling down Roland's face, so Lincoln had to attribute this nervousness to a fear of his own reaction –
Does the kid think I'll bash his head in if what he's found isn't good enough?
Lincoln had never so much as raised his voice on the kid in his life. But he had that effect on people – the effect most tall, bulky, untalkative men have, he assumed.
There was no need for any browbeating, anyway.
The recording was good.
Lincoln listened to it a couple more times, and even gave Roland his best shot at a smile, so he'd relax.
"Thank you," he'd said, when he took the flash drive out of Roland's computer and put it in the inner pocket of his jacket.
"Now we're even," Roland answered, like he worried Lincoln might take it back.
"Sure. We're even."
There was no such hope of complete absolution as Lincoln played the recording for Sara and Kellerman, that same evening, nearing midnight.
The both of them sat in silence, while Lincoln stood (he'd politely declined the seat they'd offered), hands behind his back, trying to carry himself with more confidence than Roland had, when their positions were reversed.
But though it was the fourth time Lincoln listened to that unpalatable recording, he felt no awkwardness – there was no need for him to fake it.
In truth, just watching the two politicians' faces as they discovered the audio was a show to itself. Lincoln watched Sara especially. Maybe that was wrong, after all that had happened – maybe he should be staring at his own damned feet, like Michael had when Lincoln had finally introduced Veronica to him properly.
But there was no helping it.
He was tired. They were all tired.
And Sara's cool, collected reaction captured his attention, like a snap of the fingers. He saw immediately, how she stood apart from her kind – oh, they told you not to put people into boxes, but most obeyed the invisible commands of their social group, learned to walk in ranks like sheep in daylight and, when there were fewer witnesses around, they'd howl with the wolves and tear a piece of flesh off the singled out victim who'd strayed from their proper place.
Just the way of the world, Lincoln had always thought, with cynicism. The law of the jungle.
But Sara's face alone belied that statement.
True, you couldn't see a lot of what was going on, emotion-wise, but what you did see was real.
The recording was eight minutes long and consisted of a phone conversation – more of a monologue, if you were going to be picky – between Bagwell and some unidentified individual, whose identity made little difference anyhow.
Sara's reaction as she listened was a strikingly honest – and surprisingly charming – brand of disillusioned amusement. She arched her brows at the words "fruitcake" and "faggot", took a sharp intake of air that she didn't let out for a full minute – the sigh had to come out, when the well-known, unmistakable voice of the charismatic southerner suggested a wall was too damned soft. "They should shoot the bloody parasites where they stand."
Kellerman made no comment, but Lincoln could see the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes – and he felt, right away, they were dangerous eyes.
In Sara, the protest was tame, maintained calmly below surface, but it was there, as sure as he was breathing.
She's at war, Lincoln realized, has been at war all her life. Against men like Bagwell, men like her father no doubt – the kind of men that had made Lincoln lose faith in the system in the first place.
No wonder Michael had been seduced. There was enough in just half of that woman to fall in love right where you stood.
Guilt squeezed at his heart in an iron hand.
Later, he thought. Later.
"Jesus," Kellerman broke out, in the last thirty seconds of the record.
The infamous, crucial seconds during which Bagwell used the word "nigger", not once but twice, as he alluded to the country's last president.
Lincoln willed his eyes away from Sara for a moment to look at Kellerman – and discovered, to his dismay, that he was smiling like a shark.
Kellerman didn't wait a second until after the recording had turned silent to say, "We've got him. He's done."
"Paul –"
"America's prudish about nudity, she is, but she won't – can't – vote for a candidate who uses the N-word. Abruzzi will fall in line if Bagwell won't. If this record comes out, he's finished. They'll have to cut a deal with us."
Sara's gaze wandered toward Lincoln, and the latter felt a surprising rush of weakness in his own legs – strong, steady legs that had never failed him before.
But those eyes were a fine juror.
Sharp, not forgiving yet not bitter – prudent.
Lincoln imagined his face turn livid as she scrutinized him – enemy or ally, enemy or ally – and was surprised to see how his pulse quickened with a desire for her to accept him, to grasp the full extent of his devotion.
Because he had wronged that woman, as much as his brother, and the rest of his life would be of no use if he could not make it up to them both.
"It certainly looks like it," she agreed, though without apparent mirth. Her eyes were still fixed on Lincoln, which Kellerman seemed to notice, despite the distracted rush of anticipated victory that had swum to his brain. "Paul, I'm going to leave this with you, all right? You can make as many copies as you want. In the meantime, I'm going to do as you've been suggesting all day – get a few hours of sleep."
"Well, sleep was sensible before, when there had been no new developments –"
"The meeting's at eight, Paul. You and I can rendezvous here at five, there'll be more than enough time to come up with a deal that suits everyone."
Protest threatened to burst out of his lips, but he held it in – didn't want to be like a pleading schoolboy whining pointless 'But's at her.
"You get all the sleep you need," he said. "If you'll wait just a few minutes, I'll call you a cab –"
"No need. My car's parked a couple of blocks from here – some walk will be much welcome, I should think. Lincoln," surprise stabbed into both men's chests, sudden and swift, at her calm suggestion, "I'd like you to walk with me."
She'd spoken his name, not with familiarity or any impassioned outburst – anger or otherwise – yet Lincoln watched as Kellerman's eyes flared with suspicious attention, could almost see the thoughts fusing in his brain.
Though he brought the video himself, and he's been in between friend and enemy, is he the man from the motel room? Is he the secret lover?
Heat rose to Lincoln's face at the explicitness of Kellerman's inner interrogations. It'd been a long time since he'd been caught blushing.
"As you say." He answered hoarsely.
"Sara, I don't think –"
"Thank you, Paul, I don't need your thoughts on this."
She slipped out the door after a final goodbye, and a smile that was neither a thank you for the day's work or an attempt to placate him, but that seemed the natural closure to their exchanges, whether on the side of business or friendship, if ever the two spheres reached full autonomy.
Lincoln wasn't sure what he expected Sara had asked him to walk her to her car for, but the easy, night-clad silence that set between them as soon as they exited the building, sure wasn't it.
Not even a hint as to what she might want him for.
The sound of her high heels on the flagstones, dry, bearing no evidence of the heavy rain that had flooded the streets of Chicago the day before.
He walked exactly beside her, not ahead or backwards, for fear either should be granted excessive interpretation.
At some point, when Sara's car came into view, he dared a first try, "Whatever you want to know –"
"Not here." She unlocked the doors, then opened the passenger door near the driver's seat – held it open, while looking at him expectantly. "Get in."
Oh, Jesus.
He did as he was told without objection. Indebted to her as he was, she might have asked him to jump into the maws of hellfire. Lincoln believed in paying what he owed.
The shuffling in of legs and closing of car doors swept by in the flash of a second, then they both sat, and the heavy straitjacket of silence about Lincoln was so efficient, he was impressed with how easily Sara cast it off.
"What happened with Michael?"
Now, she could ask. If not give full range to the concerns that had spun wild loops in her mind for the past twenty-four hours, at least acknowledge their existence, shape them into an easy question, that still didn't show too much weakness.
Still, Lincoln felt flattered, in a way – not flattered exactly, but like a warm balm around the desperate blackness of his conscience – that she would ask him. There was no one else she could ask, but it was still a mild show of tolerance if not trust, that she would deliberately endure his presence for a few extra minutes, for any motive in the world.
"After I left, that night, did you –"
"We didn't fight." He said, was happy to watch the soothing ease in her eyes, then spread to her whole posture – her shoulders dropped half an inch, and there was something about the breath of air she drew in, like it was a new kind of oxygen than the one she'd been living on for the past day and night.
Finally, to have answers about this, to not have a huge pit of blackness open up in her mind when she thought (Michael), the great, fearful pit of the unknown.
Her relief made sense to Lincoln.
She couldn't go to his apartment and check on him, as Lincoln had done, going against his brother's wishes. Though she was the woman he loved, she had far less freedom to go to him than Lincoln did – and now, it wasn't only a matter of preserving her public persona, the pride of getting elected not only as a woman, but an odd woman. Now, she had to worry about his safety. Because that video had happened (because Lincoln had made it happen) to risk revealing their relationship would be risking to expose him to the same scandal as she would face, if Bagwell refused to cut a deal.
He'll take the deal, Lincoln thought, he'll be reasonable, if I have to knock out a few of his teeth.
He'd show him to be reasonable around the people he cared about.
"Was he all right when he left there?"
"Not all right." It didn't occur to Lincoln to lie. "I saw him again, this evening. He was – different."
"How?"
"I couldn't say. He quit his job," he added, a concrete piece of information at least worth better than his interpretations.
Sara took it in, the quiet line of her clenched jaw like the carving of a statue's face.
A sharp, sudden wave of gratefulness shot through Lincoln's chest, at the idea that this great woman cared for his little brother.
"I can't go to him," she said. "He won't answer my calls."
"He'll be all right. I know." The look she gave him was explicit enough, spared her from asking a formal question. "I said he was different, and part of it was bad – was however he managed to process what I did to him, to you." He said this with a tone that didn't call for pathos or sympathy; and in a remote way, Sara admired him. "But part of it, I could recognize. He was driven."
"Driven how?"
Lincoln answered as concretely as he could. "Like the day he got home from school and shot straight to his bedroom, after some teacher did a nasty thing in class – if I remember right, one of Michael's friends had gotten an F on a short story assignment for impropriety, a nice kid whose open homosexuality shocked that particular teacher in real life as well as in writing." Lincoln cut to the chase, to show her he wasn't trying to be clever – that there was point here. "Michael didn't come out of his bedroom for seven hours, not for food, nothing, and he wouldn't open his door. When he did let me in, it was to show me the pamphlet he intended to print by the hundred and hang on every wall at school."
That pamphlet had been a passionate defense of tolerance, and an attack on bigotry rather than on Professor Maynard himself – Michael was always better at raising a sword on abstract words than on full-fledged individuals. Was better at defending than attacking, anyhow.
"A little colder, and a little older," Lincoln said, "that's what Michael looked like."
Sara swallowed. "All right."
Silence was back, smoothening in and fitting them like a glove, yet she didn't ask him to leave. Now, he sensed, they were going to leave Michael off the table – there was no need for her to linger on her concerns or seek reassurance. She didn't strike him as the kind of person who gets quieted by the sound of her own voice – and even if she were, he would probably be last on her list of listeners.
"Where do you fit, now, Lincoln?"
He appreciated her forwardness, wanted to show her he could follow her there, but she left him little time for an answer.
"You're not going to do me or my career any harm deliberately, I don't think."
"No."
"But that doesn't mean you can't cause trouble, even if you don't mean to."
"No more underground jobs. I'm done with that. Abruzzi knows it. We made a deal that this was the end of it and he'll be true to his word. He has no reason to screw me over, unless you want to tell him I brought you the recording of Bagwell's phone –"
"Of course not. That'd be strategically clumsy of me, for starters. And Abruzzi would have you killed, which I want no part of. I just want to know what to expect with you."
"You won't have to worry about me, Governor."
"I believe you mean that."
Though there was much of Lincoln that still eluded her – anything could be hiding behind that layer of matter-of-factness – Sara found it likely that he was loyal to those he cared about. Not because he was Michael's brother. You couldn't find a person who was more skeptical than Sara Tancredi when it came to hereditariness. But because he'd gone out of his ways to try and undo what he had done to her and his brother yesterday night. Because Sara was usually a good judge of character, and she found she wanted to trust the cool, simple promise in his eyes.
Forgiveness had nothing to do with it, didn't even cross her mind, or his, she suspected.
The consequences of his violation might be averted, but the act itself would not.
He would always be the man who had crouched in the dirt and filmed her while she was making love. But maybe he could still be other things.
Lincoln didn't apologize again. Once had been necessary, but the apology in itself was an insult, when the wrong done is so far beyond forgiveness.
"I think," Lincoln said, "in the next eight years, you'll find me a most patriotic American. No trouble." He didn't give her his word, as she had no cause to value it. "If there's ever anything you can use me for, I'll be utterly at your service."
Sara took his words in, took them like an expert sipping wine and trying to detect poison.
"We didn't exactly get an ideal start as in-laws, did we."
He was surprised at where she took this – the sudden, unashamed turn to their personal situation. Out loud, he had acknowledged her only as Governor of Illinois – not his brother's lover.
Unsure what to say except, ultimately, "I won't be trouble in that sphere, either. You won't have to see me again."
"Your brother loves you. And I love your brother."
Words turned to crumbly sand in Lincoln's mouth when he tried to answer.
"Do you need me to drop you off somewhere?"
"Thank you," he declined. "I'll go back the way I came."
He stepped out of the car without waiting for further encouragement, and watched as the vehicle disappeared in the city lights, flashing him by like a dream.
Lincoln stood there, for a moment, dazed by the last day's events. What Sara had said played over in his mind, with a degree of hope if not outright optimism.
Your brother loves you. And I love your brother.
Maybe, after enough time, that would be all that mattered.
…
End Notes: Pretty please let me know what you think ;) I had such a delightful time with this.
