The evening that followed the meeting with Abruzzi and Bagwell, Sara sat in her car, waiting. The lights from the streetlamps were enough for her to see clearly the charity center, on the other side of the street, where she had met Michael Scofield.
Something like another lifetime ago.
It was he who'd suggested they meet here tonight.
They'd spoken briefly over the phone, although the relief of hearing his voice could hardly temper with the ice-stiff knot in her stomach.
"Charles lets me close the center on most nights." He said, which didn't surprise her – Michael no longer slept as much as your average American (and she was to blame, of course, late night rendezvous weren't exactly the doctor's order for a good night's sleep). "You can come around midnight. It'll be empty." There'd been an odd touch to his voice, a fondness for the past that couldn't qualify as nostalgic, when he added, "We're done with motel rooms, don't you think?"
Sara didn't know what to think.
Didn't know what she was doing there, silent in her car, watching the place where it had all begun, trying to determine –
What?
Did she regret it?
The immediate awe in Michael's eyes, as if he was ready to worship her before he even met her, and how safe it had felt to smile and be charming to him. They were from such different worlds, she had felt it was impossible for her to love him, had only known her mistake when he was kissing her in the back of the storage room, and all her years of training at controlling the flow of emotions in her had been no use at all.
It's not the worlds we're from that matters, but that we're one and the same kind.
And she had recognized him, right there and then, as he looked into her eyes – yes, part of her must have known from the first something about this shadowy stranger belonged to her, without need for words. The small talk and polite exchanges had been but pointless attempts to ignore the deeper calling in her soul that claimed Michael Scofield as her own.
But what was the point, if she could never be his, if she had already given herself over to the people –
The people.
Love in America was a thing of many shapes and guises. If someone could be born again through love for Jesus Christ, Sara couldn't see why it shouldn't make sense for democracy to have been her first love –
It had happened early on. Already, as she saw her father fling its principles aside, as she understood how 'democracy' was just a pretty word to be brandished by politicians during heated debates, Sara had felt wounded, as if each insult was personal; which, in a way, it was. Hadn't she been born free and happy and equal to all citizens when she was born an American? Weren't these her birthrights?
There had been men, relationships, but the only thing Sara had truly loved, for most of her life, was the idea of making the world a better place. How could any person, let alone pimply teenagers, compete with that?
But then came this stranger, at ease in the darkness, who watched from the shadows, whose love was sudden and silent, unconditional.
It had been easy to let herself be worshipped – at first, there had seemed no wrong in it.
Yet again, she didn't think she could love him back, could love anyone, when democracy had already claimed her heart almost from the start.
Almost like I didn't choose. Like it chose me.
In all this time, it had never occurred to her that she could choose otherwise – that there was another sort of life for her to lead.
Sara stepped out of the car and started walking towards the center. The door proved unlocked when she tried it and opened with a soft push, soundlessly.
Outside, the street had been bright enough with streetlights and advertising panels – Chicago, like most big cities, slept with its eyes wide open – but Michael hadn't switched on the lights inside the center, must have finished working to the light of only a handful of candles, whose flames still gleamed feebly in the ambient darkness.
He'd said something about this to her once – how he never used the lights in his own apartment. Environment-related reasons, of course.
But as Sara spotted him, standing at the other end of the room, a dark figure cut out of darkness, she knew there was more to it – that he preferred the shadows, found it a more fertile ground for a quiet life… maybe for other things.
The candles were enough for her to make out his face fine when he stepped close enough to her.
Without thinking, she reached out for him – his face.
It looked so different from the one she had kissed, all but forty-eight hours ago, she felt she needed to make sure she would encounter his warm skin and not something other, unknown.
Michael didn't flinch as her fingertips brushed over his shaven cheek.
"The scandal?" He asked.
"Averted."
"Definitely?"
"I should hope so. Your brother had a hand in it," the words ran out of her, not because it was important for her that he'd forgive Lincoln, or because she'd forgiven him herself, but out of a commitment to truth.
An important thing to be committed to – the only way for a politician to stop himself from becoming a liar.
Sara removed her hand from his face and took a step back.
This was not one of the times when their impulses would get in the way of serious conversation. Desire inside Sara lay cold, like a sleeping princess waiting for resurrection.
To kiss Michael would not bring back the magical simplicity with which they'd defied the rules (the laws of the jungle). Even as she touched him, Sara had felt Michael was as remote from her as if a pane of glass stood between them.
"I shouldn't have left the way I did," she said. "After Lincoln showed up at the motel room."
"You had things to take care of."
That his voice was free from reproach didn't save her from remorse.
If I had stayed, we could have coped with what had happened together, and it would have fused us like two pieces of metal plunged into fire.
Instead, they had each emerged from the experience changed in their own way, hardened, so that the way they used to fit together had somehow expired.
"What happened to you?" She asked. "Lincoln told me you quit your job."
"I didn't see the point in it anymore."
"As opposed to what?"
He watched her in silence for a while. Despite the changes that had taken place in each of their lives, their words were unclouded by embarrassment. Whatever shame they might have felt as a result of Lincoln's violation hadn't impacted the way they viewed each other.
"It's not working for me anymore," Michael said. "The way we used to do things. You fighting the important battles and my watching from home in front of my television screen."
"Michael, what happened the other night –"
"It hasn't been working for a while." He cut in. "Maybe if I hadn't met you, it would have been enough all my life, small-scale efforts – but not after this. Now, I don't think I can ever stand it again. To watch. To do nothing."
Sara was cautious with her response, was always cautious – suddenly, she could feel his awareness of it, how alertly she always treaded the ground between them, like he was an opponent to be carefully handled. So far as she could remember, there had never been relationships in which she had been able to act differently –
(Everything's about power, whether or not people know it or are willing to acknowledge it)
She tried to strip herself clean of it, to make it so nothing remained between them but affection and honesty. But the fences wouldn't drop, like they'd grown into her skin.
Suddenly, she wished Michael would stay away from that world, for his own sake – that world which got into you, which melted into your bloodstream.
"You don't have to fight my battles, Michael."
"They're not yours," he said, without sharpness. "You're just one of the few people who's decided to take them on. Every one of us should feel concerned."
"Okay, but what you said when we started this. That this wasn't for you."
"I meant it."
Michael leant against the counter behind which Charles usually stood when he greeted her, in the day. How strange, to have this place for themselves, like a theater at night, whose props and settings all lose their functional appeal – where things ultimately become whatever you want them to be.
They could make love on that counter, right then, without a thought for caution or consequence.
Somehow, Sara felt that it would not change anything.
"But how much can a man take, Sara?" He asked. "How long can he stand powerless and wait and wait–"
"I didn't ask you to wait for me," she interrupted, before she could stop herself. "You said you would, but I didn't ask you."
"I didn't realize how much it'd cost me." Though he spoke with his usual softness, the words cut into her, past all defenses. "I didn't think of how involved I would be, just by loving you. When I watch you, with Bagwell or others – it's like I'm there, Sara, like I'm everywhere you look, only I can't help you, and you don't see me."
Shadows swallowed his face as he lowered his eyes.
"It's one thing to choose pacifism over war when you don't have to watch it unfold, when you don't have to see the people you love out there on the battlefield. So, I can't do it anymore."
"What will you do?"
A shudder crept down her spine as his direct blue eyes met hers again. "These past weeks, I've been reading a lot about law. It's insane, the injustice people get away with because of one silly clause – or because the evidence disappears. No one bats an eye, right? Because we expect the good lawyers will work for the bad guys, and the mediocre ones will let them win if they can get a nice bribe. But what if it stopped working that way? What if the corruption all got exposed –"
"Is that what you're offering to do?" She couldn't find anything to do but stare in startle. "To become sort of justice vigilante? You're not a lawyer, Michael –"
"I could be, in three years' time. And there're a lot of things I could do, in the meanwhile. Learning's easy for me, Sara – it always was. In class, I could always remember the things the teacher had to check the textbook for. There's no reason why I shouldn't use it to try and make it so the right people are jailed, and the innocent are protected."
"Protected." She repeated in a strange murmur – stun, and a rare fascination.
Had the tables turned, was she the one gazing at him from an awe-struck distance –
"Until I can be a lawyer," Michael said, "I'll find myself a few. Offer my services. A lot of lawyers hire help, you know; most don't find it in their range to remember thousands of pages on cue. My only condition will be to fight the right battles. I've got enough money aside to put myself through law school –"
"Forget the money, Michael." She wanted him to see the fear in her eyes, to know just what a serious mess he was getting himself into – even though, as she watched the understanding in his face, she knew that it would not make a difference. "There's a reason why the people you call bad guys get away with breaking the law. These people are dangerous. You decide to fight them, you're putting yourself in the line of fire –"
"Wonderful. That'll make two of us."
"You know it's not the same for me. When I'm president, I won't take a step outside without a handful of bodyguards following."
"Neither did Kennedy, and he was killed on national TV. Do you know how many American presidents have been assassinated, Sara?" She did and kept silent. "That's what I thought. So don't tell me that it's different for you. I've made up my mind."
She was silent for a short while. "So you have," she said.
"Where does that leave us?"
She shook her head. "When I'm in the White House, sneaking out to a motel room without people knowing," and by 'people', she meant Paul, "will be next to impossible. You were right. Maybe we're done with those."
"With the secrecy, and the lies –" He considered. "Yes."
Then both his hands were on her face, and a sudden flood of emotion brimmed her eyes with tears. Too unexpected for her to fight it, for her to think of anything past the immense relief of his warmth.
"But there'll be a day when it doesn't have to be like this, right? A day when I can knock on the front door of your house and take you out, take us both out into the sunlight?"
The imagery he used didn't surprise her.
"All we have to do is make it to the other side." He said.
Irritation came over without warning. She wished he would not be so dramatic. If this was going to be goodbye, for an undetermined stretch of time, then they should be parting as lovers rather than like-minded spirits. Flesh should prime over ideas – at least right now.
But it was like Michael had departed from the world of the common folk, was slowly soaring above all earthly worries to become only a goal.
It both frightened and fascinated her.
As he held her face close enough to kiss, without actually kissing, Sara slid her own hands beneath his shirt and went over muscle and bone attentively, as if the design in his mind could actually be read on his body.
Surprisingly, she found no pain anywhere, no intolerable hollowness in her chest, at the thought of what was to come.
Those past few months and their magic were already taking the colors of a dream, and the people deserved better than a sleepwalking president.
What she had loved about Michael was partly that he drew her out of her jungle – not further in. She had never imagined they could both become partners in it and help each other survive in this world.
So it was natural – at least, at this second, to her sleep-deprived brain – that they should each pursue their own goals, complete the deep aspirations that gave shape to their identities, before they could fall in love with whatever they had become, in their new skins.
That they had left each other truly entered Sara's understanding as Michael bridged the distance between them with a kiss.
How odd, that it had happened when she had been so busy thinking of the scandal and how to fix it.
Already, when she'd stormed out of that motel room where the two brothers, like Cain and Abel, seemed to wait for something beyond human power – already, they'd left each other.
A wave of regret flashed over her. In her mouth, she tasted bile and tears and Michael.
I'm sorry, she wanted to say, not only to him but herself. What they had had, what they had shared, in the months leading up to the election, had meant more to her than either of them could ever put in words. It was worth grieving – and she grieved it, even as Michael made love to her, on the floor of the charity center that had been their beginning.
End of Part 1End Notes: I'm sorry it took me so long to update, but I've been busy with Part 2 and actually started thinking of making this into a novel (which is just super exciting for me). I'm eager for your feedback as always and hope you've enjoyed this. See you soon ;)
