Kellerman took a detour before he made his visit to the oval office that day. Being ten minutes early, he could afford it, and he didn't like to see the president before he took his morning coffee. Since Sara had returned to the White House, Kellerman had not gone back to his apartment. If the president could work with a bullet hole through the chest, surely he and everyone else here could do without sleep.
Naturally, Sara's return had been an affair of national security. The longer she stayed in the hospital, the longer people like Bagwell and Mahone could jump at the opportunity to make her look weak. The White House was the safest place for her now. If Kellerman had been her head of security, he wouldn't have let her leave these walls till the end of the term.
Barely six a.m., and the coffee pot was already half empty. Kellerman poured two fingers into a plastic cup and downed it, cold and unsweetened.
"Paul, glad to run into you."
Kellerman's fist tightened. The plastic cup gave in with a weak crack.
"Morgan," he said. "Exactly when did we go on a first-name basis?"
"Don't take me for an idiot."
"I wouldn't want to take you for anything."
Gretchen ignored the jab. She had her arms crossed on her chest, her chin raised defiantly. "We both know you've been avoiding me since the hospital."
"Wrong," he said. "I've been avoiding you since the president first hired you. Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but I'm not your biggest fan. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a meeting with a very important woman."
She stood in his way as he made for the door. A dart of anger shot to his heart. One of the side effects of going without sleep, it made every emotion feel so much… sharper.
"Move," he said. Thinking: Don't make me make you.
"I'll unjam your memory for you," she said. "The other day, we were at the cafeteria, when suddenly I said the name 'Michael Scofield' and you took off running like there was a fire or something."
"No fire." It hurt to keep his smile on. "You know, I just had a furious need to pee."
"Right."
He shrugged. "All done, are we?" He brushed past her. A warm glow of satisfaction tingled his chest when she winced at the impact. "Have a nice day, Morgan."
"Fuck you too, Paul."
…
Sara applied a second layer of makeup over her face as she waited in the oval office. Even as a teenage girl when her friends offered glitters or lip gloss over a bathroom sink, Sara had never been much into makeup. Lately though, it'd become part of what she hated most about her presidential duties – keeping up appearances.
Presidents didn't look their best ghost-white and hollow-cheeked. Truth be told, she didn't feel at her best. But what she felt didn't matter, got lost in the great scheme of things.
Her fingers brushed her side, where Michael's origami rose lay in her inner pocket, close to her heart.
Until recently.
Knocks on the door. Sara said, "Come in."
Kellerman strode into the room, a displeased air lingering about his face. "Madam President." She sat at her desk, he on the couch. "Did you see the news?" he asked.
For an answer, Sara turned her laptop so he could see the screen. CNN's front page buzzed with headlines:
Bruce Bennett Hires 'Vigilante' Michael Scofield As Legal Aid.
The Dark Knight Of Lawyers Goes Mainstream.
"You know what really kills me?" Sara said. "It's that they keep comparing him to Batman. I always hated Batman."
Kellerman chuckled. It didn't reach his eyes. "A millionaire who's content to wear a suit at night and arrest bad guys? I can't see why."
"What's up?" she said, meaning, What's wrong? After that short burst of honesty at the hospital, she and Kellerman had lapsed back into their habit of keeping things unspoken.
"Bad news first?"
"Like you need to ask."
"Jacob Ness wants to meet you."
Sara locked her fingers on the desk. Of all the things she didn't look forward to, a face to face with the head of the NRA made the top five.
"So that people can think we're on good terms and that he didn't just try to have me killed?"
"We don't know who's behind the assassination attempt, Sara," Kellerman said. "I don't trust Ness any more than you do. If you ask me, he looks like the kind of guy who knocks ice cream out of kids' hands when nobody's looking."
"But?"
"But we don't want to be hasty about this."
Sara laughed without humor. "For months, everyone kept saying that I was crazy to take on the NRA, that these people didn't mess around and I was going to get myself killed. Now that I almost did, you think it's wrong to point fingers?"
"Not wrong. Beneath you."
She sighed. "Okay. Explain."
"You know how after George Floyd died, Obama had to do anything possible to avoid looking like the angry black man?"
"And you're saying, this is my moment not to be the hysterical woman. To show I have my head on my shoulders and everything's under control."
"You're a politician, Sara. You know the rules."
"So, you think I should meet him?"
Sara licked her lips. Part of her was still stuck on the sound of breaking glass at the cathedral, how something cold and sharp had knocked the speech out of her mouth. Her team had insisted she see therapists to deal with PTSD, but her symptoms seemed mere physical inconveniences. Tremor in her hands, cold sweats. Especially, a ruthless inability to sleep.
The reality that she might have died had washed out shortly after she left the hospital. Maybe it was the effect the White House had on her. In here, she only felt the irritation of her new weaknesses. But maybe this didn't have to be a weakness.
"What if I don't?" Sara said. Her eyes focused on Kellerman again. "What if we seize the opportunity to take the NRA by the throat?"
Kellerman arched a brow. "You want to use your own assassination attempt to pass your legislation?"
"The NRA must have had a hand in this. You know it, Paul."
"I can't know. You may not have noticed, but you angered a lot of people in the past two years."
"Please, you were the first to say that pushing for gun reform that hard verged on suicide."
His eyes darkened. Sara couldn't feel sorry for him somehow. Sleeplessness always made her more pragmatic, rubbing the soft edges of empathy out of her.
"You almost died," he said.
"I'm the president. Everything I do, including dying, is spectacle. Don't pretend not to know this. How much did my approval ratings go up in the past week?"
He admitted, "A lot."
"If I'm ever going to get Congress onboard with real reform on gun control, it's now or never."
"What do you propose?"
She sat back in her chair. "I don't meet with Ness. Instead, I shoot a speech here in the oval condemning everything he stands for. I won't have to accuse him to be behind the assassination attempt. People will come to their own conclusions. We play on people's soft spots. If I'm willing to sacrifice myself to change my country for the better, people need to pull their weight. Put pressure on their legislators, march, whatever it takes."
"Can I put in a word as a friend as well as your chief of staff?"
Sara pretended the request didn't make her wary. "Go ahead."
"You just took a bullet to the heart. With all due respect, don't you think you should take it slow? If it was the NRA and you don't back down – I mean, what if they strike back?"
Sara sighed. "If I lay my arms down now, we both know I'm committing political suicide."
"You'll still have your life," he said. "For what it's worth."
Sara's mouth hardened. In her head, the great windows at the cathedral shattered, gravity sucked her toward the ground. "If the NRA wanted me to stop the fight," she said, "they should have hired a better shooter."
Kellerman nodded.
"Is that all?"
He briefed her on a few more issues. Bagwell's advances with the most far-right wing of the country, how he somehow managed to sell the theory that Sara had been shot by radical Muslims who sought to invade the country. His efforts to paint Sara as a saintly woman who needed protection were ludicrous – but not unseductive to some Americans.
"There's one more thing," Kellerman said when they'd reached the one-hour span their meeting usually took. He had gotten up from the couch and turned toward the door, like he may not be able to say this looking at her.
"What?"
He took a note from his pocket and put it on the piece of furniture by the door. "The address of a hotel where three bodyguards will escort you tonight."
Sara said nothing for a while. "You didn't have to get involved," she said.
"If you're going to take risks that could blow your career away, I'd rather help you get away with it."
That was fair enough, Sara supposed, still she didn't feel comfortable. A few weeks ago, Kellerman was throwing Michael's wedding in her face to draw a reaction from her. Now, he was arranging a secret rendezvous in the middle of the night. He'd gone from trying to discover her secret to becoming her secret keeper, and she still couldn't grasp what his agenda was.
"Anything else?" she said.
"No."
"I'll see you tomorrow then."
He disappeared outside the door and Sara relaxed slightly. Her fingers fumbled for the first drawer beneath the desk and she pulled out a set of vitamins, pain medication and caffeine pills. At least he hadn't asked her the dreaded question, Are you sleeping?
…
Sara sat in her car, nervously moving the ring on her middle finger back and forth. Her eyes kept tracing the walls of the anonymous grey Audi she'd selected for her meeting.
Meeting, she repeated sarcastically to herself. Not like she was on her way to a cabinet council. Rendezvous? Date?
"It's not a date," she said. Talking to herself used to make her feel insane, but she got so little sleep lately, she didn't have much energy to care about how sane she was.
In the car's tinted window, Sara caught sight of her reflection. Her face didn't look pale, because makeup crews applied layers of foundation on her every day. It didn't help with the hollowness in her cheeks, but if the camera was positioned at a flattering angle, America wouldn't know any better.
Her cabinet did.
And she supposed Michael would.
She had never known how to lie to him. One look at her, and he would know. The sleepless nights. The screams that wrenched her back to consciousness when she lapsed for a few seconds.
The car came to a halt. Sara sat glued to the backseat.
One of her bodyguards said, "Madam President?"
Sara opened her mouth to answer, and almost actually spoke the words. I've changed my mind. Take me back to the White House.
They were so close now. Why did she want to run?
Kellerman's words flashed through her mind, You'll have your life. For what it's worth.
Her eyes stared at the hotel on the opposite side of the street. Michael was somewhere inside that building, waiting. Last week, it had felt so easy to kiss him as she lay in her hospital bed. More than easy. Inevitable.
Now, she was back at work. The president had taken firm hold over the woman in her. What did her little life matter? To strive toward her own happiness was selfish, seeing as it did no good to the people who had elected her. If she saw Michael tonight, would she still have freedom to make her own choices? When it came to risking her life or curbing her ideals, she didn't need to choose. She'd made that choice long ago. But if it came to Michael's life? If her life became so entangled with his that she couldn't risk herself without risking him?
Sara closed her eyes. The pictures of all the presidents that decorated the halls of the White House came back to her.
They don't tell you how lonely it is. They don't tell you how to find sleep.
Sara opened her car door and stepped out. Her bodyguards followed. They escorted her inside the hotel, where everything had been arranged. All working staff who might have run into her had been dismissed. This hotel was no stranger to wealthy guests who wished to keep their identities secret. Her heels clicked on the polished wood floor on her way to the elevator.
Surely, before long, she'd start running if she didn't keep her feet careful. Either away from the hotel or toward Michael.
…
Michael had not been able to function properly since he had seen Sara's text. Meet me at the Blue Skies Hotel, Room 201. Midnight.
His eyes had scanned the lines over and over. A sharp pain stabbed his little toe and he realized he had been pacing the living room and walked into the coffee table. It was a Sunday, a day he usually spent at home bent over cases or re-reading law books. Without the possibility to go to work and distract him, Michael had no idea what he could do. He tossed his phone on the couch, deciding a shower would clear his thoughts. He had to return from the bathroom though, half undressed, to read the text again and make sure he hadn't dreamed it. Ice water hit his face and awakened his senses, but it only made him too sharp. His legs twitched with a need to run for miles, his fingers constantly locking into a fist and unlocking. Noon came and went and Michael forgot to eat entirely. He took another shower, this time scorching.
Nika had emerged from her bedroom by then. As she worked late hours, she usually spent the morning asleep and only came about when Michael was at work. They didn't run into each other all that much, except when one of them had a day off from work.
"Think of the electricity bill," she said when he stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.
"Yeah," he said absently. His mind whirled with thoughts of Sara, thoughts that frightened him because they belonged so far into the past. The last two years threatened to fade like a dream of ice. Nika looked at him intently, and he realized she must have said something. "Sorry, what?"
She smiled. "Your tattoo. It's healing all right."
"Oh," he glanced at the rose printed on his shoulder. "Yeah."
"You're seeing her, aren't you? The woman."
"What woman?"
"Don't take me for a fool, Michael. The woman. The one you got that tattoo for."
Michael shrugged. He felt like a jerk for lying to Nika, but there were secrets important enough that your conscience couldn't rival with them.
Nika brought a smoldering mug of coffee to her lips. Michael himself regretted his morning dose of caffeine. It felt like he might pierce a hole through the ceiling jumping up and down from nerves if he didn't watch out.
"I'm happy for you," she said. "You deserve to be happy."
The words stayed with Michael throughout the day, even as he sat on the hotel room bed, waiting for Sara.
You deserve to be happy.
Why did part of him refuse to believe that?
Their old hotel rooms had nothing on the one Michael discovered tonight. Sheets smooth as milk, white, nothing gaudy. Paintings dangled from the walls, and the caramel carpet looked so expensive Michael hadn't dared to enter before he'd removed his shoes.
He checked his watch every thirty seconds and gave himself a mental slap every time.
She won't come, he thought. Some emergency would snatch her from his horizon. A flood in Miami, a hacking attack from Russia.
For two years, Sara had been the shadow he never ceased to follow, but that disappeared at the direct contact of light. To reach for. To dream of. Never to touch.
Until he stood in her hospital room last week.
The door of the hotel room opened and Michael's breath turned solid in his throat, his legs like huge tree roots digging into the ground.
A black heel stepped past the threshold, and he willed his eyes to her face before he found himself staring at her legs.
He hurried to his feet. What a stupid thing, to have waited for her on the bed. What would she think? That he expected they'd have sex?
Then he saw her face, and a lump traveled down his throat as the truth appeared to him clear as day. They were going to have sex.
She didn't speak. Her face looked mildly pink under the layers of makeup.
The door closed behind her, and she made her way to him without a word. All the air he could have used to speak turned crumbly inside his mouth.
She looked so little like the woman he had met at Charles's foodbank. How did a woman change so completely in two years? The White House had a habit of turning its inhabitants grey. Though Sara was still a young woman, her hair auburn as autumn leaves, her face had taken on the colors of her office. Before the shooting, if he looked closely at her videos, she had looked tired. Now, without the tricks of the light or her crew to edit out the less lively expressions, she looked –
Dead.
Lovely and dead.
"Sara –"
She pressed her hand to his mouth. Her proximity took away his will to speak anyhow. He inhaled, content to have her smell fill up his mind. Her left palm pushed against his chest and he sat back down on the bed without protest. She sat atop him, straddling his lap. Her fingers moved away from his mouth only when her lips were close enough that he could taste her plum-shaded lipstick.
Lightheadedness gained him. Had he stopped breathing? With Sara's smell deep inside his nostrils, he found he couldn't think.
His arms wrapped around her. Naturally, like finding your way back down a once familiar path. In the fantasies that had unfolded in his mind all day, Michael had told himself he'd be careful. Ask for permission. Wait for her assent before he tried to touch her.
But in the flash of a second, time disappeared in its linear form. It compressed. Shattered into fragments. Ten minutes ago he was making love to her on Halloween night, with the origami rose inside his pocket.
Her back arched as he slid his hands under her jacket and shirt. Their eyes met and he said, "Yes?"
"Yes."
The jacket fell easily, almost without prompting. Michael's fingers throbbed with pleasure at the softness of her skin. They traveled up her back and felt the protruding line of her spine. She had lost weight since he'd last been with her. An image ran through his mind, the White House as a giant toddler wavering on huge fat legs and screaming, Feed me, feed me.
"You're not all right," he said.
"I am now."
He wanted to say, You need to stop. But he had never been the kind of person to tell others what they needed.
Instead, he gripped her closer to him and started unbuttoning her shirt with his mouth. She moaned when his lips pressed against her breasts. A shiver came over her, and he realized he was killing her with want.
Her hands reached for his belt.
He said, "I thought you'd want to take this slow."
She gave him a wry look. "Because getting shot has turned me into a breakable little thing?"
"No," he said honestly. He himself wanted to enjoy every step of their regained intimacy. To kiss her neck for half an hour, to touch her until every inch of her body felt familiar again.
"Haven't we waited long enough?" she said.
He tilted his head, "When you put it like that…"
She kissed him fiercely, hungrily, while working on his belt with her fingers. Then she spoke, and he realized these had been the words that had made him so restless all day long. What he had waited for. Confirmation that they would meet again. That her asking him to meet her here tonight wasn't just about tonight.
She said, "We'll take it slow. Next time."
