"Morning, sir," the young lady said, her pleasant head floating behind the reception counter. Her eyes matched the blue of her uniform, her smile taken straight out of a travel brochure. "What can I get you?"
"I'll take the next flight to Washington D.C., please."
"Will there be a return ticket to go with that?"
Michael didn't answer for a while, the memory of his last trip to Washington flashing before his eyes.
Kneeling at Sara's feet, in the garden of the White House, laying before her the notebook that represented a year of industrious work –
But he was only dressed as a guard, only playing the knight in white armor who gallops away into the kingdom of night.
"Sir?"
"Sorry. One-way."
Michael killed time at the airport with the paperback edition of the Constitution, which he knew by heart at this point, but it was good now and then to give himself a refresher, to quiz himself and make sure he had the exact wording.
Meanwhile, he tore small pieces out of a triangle ham sandwich and forced himself to eat when it felt like the lights in his brain were going out.
It was only a couple hours' wait before he was queuing to go through customs, squeezed between tuxedo-clad men who carried a briefcase in their hands, and who might have been twins, except one was wearing a blue suit, the other a black one.
You're going to fit right in, Michael told himself, and it's all going to be perfectly fine.
Honestly, the decision to leave his life in Chicago behind and move to Washington made surprising sense, considering how sudden it had been, and that it was only as old as last night.
The graveness in her eyes, as Sara gave her speech, her evident willingness to do everything in her power to dismantle the NRA, as well as any other organization who put profit ahead of the lives of American citizens.
That's what had triggered it all, and in the blink of an eye, it was absurd that Michael was still in Chicago to begin with, that he was so remote from this woman who had become the center of his life, and all the distance in the world would not have stopped this revolution in its fateful course. Michael had switched off his television, had a couple of sips of coffee and thought: I'm going to Washington, and it had seemed the most logical thing in the world.
Maybe because he'd known it even before.
From the moment he'd seen her again, last December –
Maybe part of him had known there was nothing else for him to do, eventually, but join her, even if he could never be with her.
I'm not going there for more secret rendezvous, for selfish reasons.
She doesn't even have to know.
Concretely, there might be nothing more Michael might do to save Sara in Washington.
But he could shadow her.
(She used to call him her shadow-friend, did she not?)
When there was a meeting, a public convention or speech giving, he could be there, among the crowd, watchful of her surroundings.
Maybe he would not have an opportunity to catch a bullet for her, but the odds were higher than if he were to remain at home and watch from his TV set, surely.
Besides, it was high time Michael moved on to the next stage of his plan.
Hadn't he prepared the terrain, so to speak, created a network of professional relations who were looking forward to making his acquaintance, in Washington?
Even lawyers with years of experience were startled with Michael's capacity to memorize the law.
Already, he'd made a few friends, fewer than he'd made enemies, and if he organized himself well enough, his first week in Washington should be a busy one.
"Hey, wait a second, let me through!"
Someone shouted at the beginning of the queue.
Michael had no problems identifying the voice as his brother's, and he pivoted with a look of surprise.
"Lincoln?"
He almost wanted to laugh at the sight of his brother trying to shuffle through the line of businessmen. Lincoln looked extraordinarily out of his habitat, as he used to look when his parents were having 'fancy people' for dinner, and Lincoln would more often than not be sent to his room halfway through the meal after having piled blunder upon blunder.
"I wanted to – hey, let me through!"
He panted a little when he had reached Michael's level. It wasn't hard to ignore the snotty stares cast their way.
Michael hadn't expected his brother would come – realized that, in his mind, he had already left Chicago.
"Boy, we're not getting any younger are we? You know at twenty I could beat Stu Randall racing around the neighborhood. Earned me a hundred and fifty bucks just like that. He was such a sore loser, we must have done the whole thing three times over before he decided he'd had his share."
Lincoln was bent his half, palms pressing against his jeans.
"But that was peanuts compared to chasing you all around the airport. Maybe my job's making me a little too soft."
"For some, middle age comes early."
"Jesus, Mike. Go easy on me."
Their eyes met, and Michael didn't try to resist the immediate complicity that passed between them, easy, helpless, like wires connecting.
"What are you doing here?"
"I had to see you again before you left. I had to stop by my apartment, first –" He pulled a brown Kraft envelope out of the pocket of his jacket.
Just from the way he handled it, Michael could tell what was in it was special. Not like the cash-filled envelopes Michael had accepted, not so much as peace offerings than ways of Lincoln to ease the weight of guilt on his conscience. Michael hadn't had the heart to refuse them, could tell Lincoln was already struggling to keep his head out of the water. And he had to meet him halfway, if not to extend his hand and draw him out on the dry land, at least allow him to swim his way back, one painstaking effort after the other.
"Here. I had to give this to you."
"Linc, I don't want presents."
"Oh, it's not a present. Really. It's yours."
Michael's brows furrowed. "What –"
"No, no, please. Wait until you're on the plane to open it."
He stared bemused at his older brother for a moment, trying to figure out what Lincoln might have possibly wanted to borrow that would fit in so thin an envelope, why he hadn't asked, and why he thought now was the best time to return it of all.
"Is this a joke?"
"No."
"This is the reason why you absolutely had to see me before I left, and you're not going to tell me what's in it?"
"Er – no. I just think it's better to leave you alone with it."
Michael remained fixated on the odd demand for a few more seconds.
Yet again, over the past year, stranger things had happened to the brothers.
Michael took the envelope cautiously and slid it in the inner pocket of his coat.
"Thank you," Lincoln said.
"You're the one giving the present. Shouldn't I be doing the thanking?"
His brother looked triumphant. It was good to see a smile again on those stubbly cheeks. "And there I was, thinking your sense of humor was lost beyond saving."
"Sorry?"
"Oh, no offense. But nothing but hard work's been turning you into a kind of broody creature, you know. Like these remorse-stricken vampires in Anne Rice books."
"Anne Rice?" Now, Michael was outright astonished.
If he blinked hard enough, he might convince himself he'd dreamed all about Lincoln's last-minute visit to the airport.
Of course, that was not the case.
"Sir, if you're not queuing you must get out of the way –"
"Yeah, in a minute."
"Sir –"
"One minute. Else you can try to move me," he shot the tuxedoed man a defiant wink.
Michael couldn't help smiling, although slightly afraid someone would call security. With his new job, and his new life, it wasn't as though Lincoln needed a little refreshment on how getting arrested worked. And what with his criminal record, Michael would rather not think of the kind of scrutiny Lincoln could draw on himself for making waves at an airport.
Such things, these days, were taken very seriously.
"One minute," Michael repeated, in a tone where neither concern nor amusement could ultimately get the upper hand. "You've got something specific to say?"
Michael locked Lincoln's fugitive eyes into a lasting look, without meaning to.
His own heart squeezed into his chest, at the tormented horrors he could make up into his brother's gaze. He had always been able to feel Lincoln's pain; from his earliest memories, Lincoln's sufferings had been his sufferings. To watch him be punished, whatever the scale, whether it was being sent to his room and confined there without dinner or being whipped with their father's belt, Michael was incapable not to feel that their souls were somehow entwined and that he was sharing into his brother's miseries, not just through compassion or empathy, but physically.
He could feel the pain, and the lashes of the belt, on his own skin, in his own brain.
"Nah," Lincoln said. "No, I think I'm just going to wish you a safe trip."
Michael nodded his head. "That sounds like a nice plan."
"You take care of yourself in DC."
"You too, Linc. I love you," he added when Lincoln was shuffling on his feet, and it looked like he was just about ready to give that queuing line of men what they wanted.
The words seemed like a flash of light that Lincoln was both startled and momentarily blinded by. It penetrated through his flesh uselessly, invisible tokens he was incapable to keep.
"Right. Bye, Mike."
Michael thought of saying something else to hold him back – to ease his torments somewhat.
He must go his own way, he thought, follow his own path.
Though it was true that what Lincoln had done to him and Sara could never be forgiven, and Michael had not forgiven him, it was also true that his love for his brother went beyond notions of wrong or right.
Moments later, Michael was sitting in his seat, watching as the ground outside the window dwindled farther and farther away, scratching his jean-clad thighs with his fingernails; flying had always made him nervous.
He waited a moment, after the cabin crew had shuffled past the travelers' seats offering food and drinks, before he took out the Kraft envelope from his coat pocket and looked at it.
For a flashing second, Michael had a feeling it was going to be a letter, those kinds of letters that mean more than words, where the whole soul is poured without second thoughts or self-consciousness.
Of course, it was not.
Lincoln had never been one to find his way with words, and what dropped into Michael's hand as he emptied the envelope was none other than the faraway-dream and slightly faded-pink origami flower he had himself crafted for Sara's birthday in the fall of 2020.
The sight of it did not magically open up the fragilely stitched up wounds in his mind. Thoughts of Sara's body against his, the warmth of her skin under his fingers, did not start streaming past his defenses.
The feelings were not revived, because they had never died in the first place.
Stroking his thumb against the length of the rose, Michael remembered all the things he had wished for, creating it, how he had wanted to enter her world to protect her – those old ideals of chivalry die hard as the oldest habits – or at least be by her side in those battles.
Yes, you could call Michael old-fashioned, but he thought a world where you couldn't die for the woman you loved would be a cold and pitiful one indeed.
Questions of how Lincoln had retrieved the flower, if he'd had it all along and why he'd saved it until today, found no room in Michael's mind at the moment. They did not matter, as they would have only desperately tried to make sense of something which, inexplicably, made perfect sense to Michael.
Like in a tale of the old days, Michael was willing to accept a little magic – a sword appearing out of nowhere in the hand of a hero worthy of it, or a kiss that could revive a great queen on her deathbed.
"It's beautiful."
Michael turned to his seat neighbor, a pleasant-looking middle-aged man with a thick white mustache, and realized he had been smiling. He made the rose spin softly between his index and thumb.
"Thank you."
"Is she in Washington?"
"Sorry?"
"The woman who gave it to you."
"Yes." He thought of saying nothing more about it, but the harmlessness of the exchange ultimately won him over. "It was a long time ago."
"And you're hoping to give it back to her."
"In a way."
Michael laughed at his own answer.
In every way.
Knights who go on a quest and travel to faraway kingdoms always know why they are going.
"Well, you're young," the man smiled benevolently. "No reason why it shouldn't work out for you."
"Plenty reasons. None I can think of that could stop me."
The man nodded.
They had said just about everything available without crossing the limits of small-talk propriety.
"Well. I wish you luck."
"I appreciate it."
They exchanged no more words for what was left of the flight. Michael was too much in his own thoughts, looking fondly at the flower, surprised at the resilience of hopes he thought he'd been smart enough to kill.
He might not know what expected him in Washington.
But, against all reason, he knew what he wanted – what he wanted, still, no matter how hopelessly.
…
End Notes: as the longest fic I've written to day yet, this story holds a special place in my heart and I'm still enjoying every second of it. Hope you like this chapter. Please let me know your thoughts and reactions.
