Fic - Grey Matter (Veronica, Lincoln/Veronica) PG-13, 1/1
Title: Grey Matter
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,000 or so
Summary: We'll make it work. Five things that never happened to Veronica Donovon.
Spoilers: General Season 1
Author’s Notes: Five things fic. Big thanks to stealmy_kiss for the beta and handholding. Title taken from a fabulous song by Jewel. Like it? Love it? Hate it? Let me know, but most of all just enjoy. Con-Crit/Feedback = ©
Disclaimer: Prison Break and all related elements, characters, and situations are © to Paul T. Scheuring and Fox Television, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction, no infringement is intended, no profit is being made.
i.
She spends her time during college, drinking, trying desperately to forget about Lincoln. To forget what they had, what they could have had. There had been a plea, an awkward request for her to stay one time, after moans and frantic touching had turned tender and sweet breaths filled the air around them. Her fingers had smoothed down his chest, following every contour, every dip and scar like brail; like a map she had memorized a lifetime ago and would never forget. The temptation was great, palpable, but she had ultimately replied with a soft ‘no’ because deep down Veronica, smart as she was, knew if she was ever to make anything out of herself she had to first find herself and doing that meant being as far away from Chicago (from Lincoln) as possible.
Veronica had been finished with letting the men in her life define her (her father, boyfriends, Lincoln ) and she sets out to finally define herself. She embarks on a journey of self discovery, a search for self worth and it is, perhaps, the hardest thing she has ever done -- finding something that has never really been there in the first place.
When she returns for the first time (a different person to what feels like the same old world) Lincoln is there, forgiving, slightly guilty for things he has done in her absence, and he picks her up from the bus station, his smile as blinding as the morning sun. His hand slides into hers and it feels right. Sort of like perfection even though she knows such a thing does not exist. She knows who she is by then, she accepts who she is, and the knowledge that the person she is will always be irrevocably intertwined with Lincoln is imbedded into her mind, her skin, her entire being.
Lincoln kisses her, soft and sweet and tainted with a delicious urgency and it tears her world apart just like it had many moons ago. Instead of falling back into old patterns, they start new ones. It’s anything but easy, but Veronica knows hard, and has survived worse, so she fights like hell to make it work.
“Lisa” and “LJ” and “I‘m Sorry” fall out of his mouth a jumbled, scared mess one cold night. Lincoln is looking at her, baiting her, waiting for her to yell, to leave; ever so certain that he is unworthy.
Veronica does neither. She grabs Lincoln’s hand and holds on, offers him a reassuring smile. She doesn’t like it, but understands.
“We’ll make it work.”
They do.
ii.
Veronica has stumbled down empty hallways before with men she had only known for hours. Men whose names she sometimes never bothered to learn or perhaps ended up forgotten come morning. Men who were all intertwined, used for the same purpose: to forget. But it had always been about laughter and alcohol and falling down and not wanting to pick herself back up. Not wanting to think about all she had lost, let go of.
Michael’s hand is on the small her back, offering an insurmountable amount of unwavering strength that only he can begin to manage and it is so, so far from all the times that had come previously. So far from them. She spouts off nonsense about shoes and men, laughs at her own joke and memorizes the lines on his face as he smiles at her. Veronica tries, but fails miserably, not to list off the differences between his and Lincoln’s smile in her head. How Michael’s smile is smooth and beautiful and one side of Lincoln’s mouth quirks upward and is more of a smirk than anything. How Lincoln’s eyes shine with a striking gleam when he is actually, truly, smiling. She tries not to remember how a long, long time ago Veronica used to think that it was just for her.
Veronica tries not to think of Lincoln at all.
It’s wrong to be there, wrong to be so close, to ignore the undercurrent that would always be between them, binding them together. Wrong to be there when she was so inexplicably, devastating in love with the brother of the man whose fingers were trailing up her arm, cupping her face, so soft, so tender, so overwhelmingly foreign.
But Veronica is hurt, and distraught, and so tired of the loneliness and longing. So tired of living a meaningless life because the only ounce of meaning it had ever held had pushed her away and she had stupidly let it. She wants to hurt Lincoln like he hurt her, to make his heart ache with the same longing she will never admit she still felt.
Veronica kisses Michael and Michael kisses her back and it is different and awkward. So dissimilar from what she imagined it would be, so different from Lincoln. She kisses him with a numbing, furious urgency, hoping against all hope that occupied hands and lips meant not thinking about the mistake she was making that could never be taken back.
Veronica tires to ignore the blatantly obvious fact that all paths in her life seem to always, without fail, lead her back to the start, back to Lincoln. Veronica tries to forget how this changes everything.
iii.
“Miss Donovan?”
Veronica’s fingers continue their clickety clack movement against the keys as her eye sight flicks towards her assistant. “Yeah?”
“I have a Lincoln Burrows on the line,” the clickety clack stops short around the same time her heart stops beating. “I can take a message for you, if you’d like.”
It takes her a second to realize what her assistant is saying, and before she can think her hand is reaching for the phone, stopping short the moment the numb tips of her fingers feel the coolness of the plastic. “No, I uh… I got it.”
“Line two.”
It takes her a second to grasp the handle of the phone, even longer to actually pick it up. There’s a deep breath as an effort to calm her racing thoughts. Lincoln? Calling her? She hasn’t talked to him in years… hasn’t seen him in longer and the last time she had seen him they hadn’t left things very… friendly. There had been an argument, harsh words, accusations that left a gaping void she refuses to admit still threatens to swallow her whole in the middle of lonely nights.
It had taken just as long to get her life back on track, to get over him. To move on to a life that was completely independent of him. It’s not much of a surprise to her that those same old feelings begin to break to the surface at the mere mention of his name. Lincoln has always, without a doubt, had that effect on her.
“Hello?” The word is croaked out, rough, so unlike the polished person she has become.
“Veronica?” He questions, like he can’t believe it’s her and his speech is slurred and desperate and it is so far from the Lincoln she remembers. “Oh, God, Veronica, I’ve… I’ve fucked up bad. And I --”
“Linc--”
“Mike’s not answering his fucking phone… I didn’t know who else to call.”
There are sirens in the background, the sound of cars whipping by and Veronica tries not to let the fact that she is his last resort stir at something she had, up until moments before, been fully convinced was no longer there. Tries to see the bigger picture. “Where are you, Lincoln?”
There’s a pause. “Downtown… I… Jesus, Vee, I’ve... I’ve gotten mixed up in shit I don’t know how to get out of.”
“What kind of stuff, Linc?” She questions, worried. “What’s going on?” There’s another long pause of silence, nothing but the sound of her heart beating in her ears, the sound of his frantic breathing on the line. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, seeing the mistake she’s about to make before the words even have time to process and leave the tip of her tongue. “I’ll come and get you, okay? Just tell me where you are.”
Veronica scribbles down the address and is out the door before she even thinks twice. Goes because there are some lines that no matter how hard you try, can’t be erased, some things she has never been able to let go of. She finds him forty-five minutes later, sitting at the bottom of a phone booth outside of some parking garage, shivering off a high in the bitter cold and staring up at her like she was some sort of godsend. Looking at her like he used to, void of the anger for leaving him, the anger for not trying harder to make it work. For giving up.
Nothing is said as she pulls him up and links her arm through his, offering him body heat, comfort, guidance as she leads him to the car. As she watches him slide into the leather seat, the flash of silver catches her eye; it’s blinding in the darkness and she stares at him in question, in shock, furious.
“Lincoln…”
He looks at her and she tries to see past the broken man before her and remember the man he once was. The guy who helped her way back when, when she was young and desperate and her father was slowly ruining her. The guy who selflessly raised his brother in the wake of his mother’s death and in his father’s abandonment. Tries to forget how much she still loves him even after it all -- after Lisa and the baby and the broken promises.
Lincoln rubs his dirty hands over his face, over his smooth head, sighs heavily. “They wanted me to kill someone. God, Vee, I came down here tonight ready to kill someone.”
There is utter disbelief on her face as she stares wide-eyed at him. A furious, blinding rage ignites something within her. “Jesus Christ, Lincoln. How could you even… why… what about LJ? You do remember him, don’t you? I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but is it honestly worth losing your son over? Doing to him what the father you hate so much did to you and Michael?” Veronica points a high and mighty finger in his direction. “This is hypocrisy at its worst, Lincoln, and you know it.”
He bangs his head against the headrest, closes his eyes and breathes deeply and the guilt overcomes her at the sight of him, tired and a broken mess in the front seat of her fancy car.
“Lisa has custody and I… I think it’s for the best. He doesn’t need a fuck-up like me as a father,” he turns his head and looks straight at her, and even then, even though so much between them has changed, it feels as though he is looking right through her, right into a soul that was still mostly his for the taking. “I’m poison, Veronica. I ruin everything. Everything I touch crumbles,” he laughs mirthlessly and it chills her to the bone. “It’s a good thing you got away when you did, you know. I know you know I would‘ve ruined you too.”
“Oh, Lincoln,” she whispers, and shakes her head, dismayed. She hesitantly reaches out and lays her hand on top of his, watching as he turns his own palm up, moving his fingers between hers tentatively.
Lincoln looks at her, his eyes pleading with her, saying what he could never bring himself to say out loud. He is asking for her to help him, to save him, and Veronica knows that she will try, desperately, because once upon a time he had saved her too.
iv.
Veronica doesn’t cry, not once, when Lincoln is arrested. Not when he went to trial, not when he was sentenced to death, and it surprises her as much as it does everyone else. There’s a look between them in the courtroom, one of regret and longing; one that simply says “I’m Sorry,” from both of them, and it is enough to almost, almost break her, but it doesn’t. She stays strong. Holds it together for LJ and Michael, the only family she has left.
After speaking with Tim Giles at the courthouse, Veronica takes an extra long lunch break and runs back to her apartment. Hunts through closets, under old sweaters and shiny new shoes, in search of the fading cardboard box she knows is there. Cautiously, she slides open the brown, tattered flaps as she falls gracelessly to the floor and takes the items out one by one -- CD’s, pictures, mementos, an old white t-shirt. She holds it up to her nose and closes her eyes, convinced if she tries hard enough she could still smell him. Her fingers run over the fabrics and smooth surfaces, her heart feeling heavier with each item.
For the first time in years she cries for Lincoln, and that is exactly how Sebastian finds her, on the floor of her closet, remembrances of her and Lincoln’s relationship scattered around her.
“Veronica?” He’s hurt, that much she can tell and as she looks up at him through blurry eyes, she doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know why she’s doing this to herself, pouring salt in a wound that she had long since convinced herself had healed. “Are you still in love with him? Is that what this is?” He asks quietly, all boyish and handsome, looking down at her, trying to understand. He couldn’t, she knows, because she doesn’t even understand it herself.
Veronica shakes her head and pushes away tears, shoves the CDs and pictures to the side and grabs the hand that he’s outstretched to her. “No…” She lies, because it’s easier than the truth, because deep down she knows that she will always love Lincoln, that he will always be apart of her past, apart of her, but with that knowing also comes the knowledge that they can never be together. They are too different, there’s too much between them.
Those hands of Lincoln’s that she loved, that touched her, held on to her own and offered her strength when she felt as though she had none left, killed someone. Murdered an innocent man. Veronica knows better than to let herself forget that, to forget that the man she loved and the man he became are two different things.
Sebastian’s hands frame her face; he kisses her forehead tenderly. “I love you, Veronica. I’ll help you through this, you know that.”
Veronica wraps her arms around his neck. “I love you, too,” she whispers and half prays, half pleads for it to be the truth.
*
There’s a knock at her office door and Veronica looks up, half expecting Sebastian to be there with dinner. Instead it’s Tim Giles looking a little guilty and she motions with a flick of her wrist for him to come in.
“I wanted to apologize for being short with you before.”
“No problem,” she replies, sitting up straighter in her chair. Her head is pounding from all the crying she had done earlier in the day and she silently reminds herself to scrounge up some Tylenol at the most convenient opportunity.
“It’s just, the closer he gets to an execution, the harder it becomes. So that’s why I wanted to give you this.” He holds out a manila envelope, and she glances at it warily for a half a second before reaching for it. “It’s the surveillance tape of the garage that night. It was a closed trial so nobody else saw it. I thought it might help.”
Veronica turns it over in her hands, looking at it as though it could answer all her questions, before looking back up at him. “Help with what?”
Tim looks at her sadly. “Closure.”
He leaves and she stares at the envelope in her hands, soundlessly falling back into her chair. She sits it in front of her and reaches for a letter opener, her fingers grasping the cool brass, but thinks better of it. Veronica knows what’s in there, knows that it won’t hold the answers to her questions, but instead proof to cement her suspicions.
The temptation is there, to let Lincoln Burrows pull her back into the tangled web that surrounds him, but she holds back, refrains. She drops the envelope into the wastebasket next to her desk and watches it fall, in slow motion, into the trash amidst crumbled pieces of paper and old coffee cups.
Veronica reaches for the phone and dials a familiar number.
“Sebastian, hey,” she says absently, her eyes still on the envelope in the trash. “When you get here lets sit down and go over our schedules. Let’s set a date,” her eyesight finally moves towards the open window, away from the trash, and as the sun sets in front of her eyes, casting a beautiful glow over Chicago, she lies and says, “I’m ready,” and foolishly believes it’s for the best.
v.
The sand feels gloriously foreign as it squishes in-between her toes. Her skin is far too pale in the glistening afternoon light, but Veronica does not care -- she plans to spend a copious amount of time rectifying that tiny detail. She thinks she’s earned at least that much. Tipping her larger than life hat back and pushing her large rimmed sunglasses to the edge of her nose, Veronica unceremoniously drops her lone bag to the ground, right next to her sandy feet and breathes in the salty sea air.
Veronica smiles at the man across the way, leaning against the outer wall of a small scuba shop, and it damn near outshines the sun. It’s been months since she has seen Lincoln, weeks since she’s talked to him. Years since it’s been just the two of them, alone, with nothing but themselves and time. It feels, as she begins to take a few steps closer, that it has taken them a lifetime to get to this place.
The past year has been such a hellish ordeal. All the running and lying and yearning and the only thing that has kept her going was adrenaline and the idea of this moment. The glorious feeling of finality that she felt when the exoneration papers were handed down just a mere week ago. Her shoulders stand a little taller, feel a little less heavy at the news and she can only imagine how good he feels.
Lincoln walks like he has a purpose (there’s a bounce in his step that she barely even recognizes from way back when) but stops a mere foot away from her. Pulls at the edge of his half unbuttoned, hideous Hawaiian shirt, and smiles awkwardly. It reminds her of when they were kids, how with other girls he was the big man, the tough guy, but with her he was an awkward teenager who was afraid to go too far too fast.
He nods his head towards hers. “I like the hat.”
The blue irises shielded behind the Hepburn style sunglasses roll. She switches her weight to the opposite foot and rests a fist against her hip, huffing just a little bit. “Don’t mock. You know I’m fair skinned.”
Lincoln smirks and her heart does a somersault. “Then what the hell are you doing on a beach in South America?”
A shrug of her delicate shoulders, a teasing smirk. “I know a guy.”
“Lucky guy,” Lincoln grins, full blown with teeth and all and Veronica can’t help but do the same. The gap between them is finally breached and his hands, slightly unsteady, are on her cheek, delicate and soft, his eyes searching for permission.
“Lucky girl,” she whispers back, taking the final, one step forward so she was flush against him, her heart beating so fast it is threatening to beat right out of her chest. Her arms wrap around his neck, the paleness of them such a contrast to his tan skin.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” his eyes roam hungrily over her face, his hands cupping her cheeks fully.
Veronica looks back and quirks an eyebrow. “You had doubts?”
“I wanted to hope, you know. I pictured you here, dreamed of you every night, but hope…” he trails off, his eye slight flicking to her lips then back to her eyes. “I know better.”
He looks so different, so alive, and it’s hard to see the man in her arms and remember the man dressed in prison blues and who was so, so broken. She tightens her hold on him, traces the lines of his face with her eyes, counts back kisses and touches in her head and can not believe she ever thought she could live without him. That there was anyone else in the world for her.
“Don’t give up on me,” she says, repeating words he’s said before, way back when things were different and she was stupid enough to think she was better than him. That he didn’t deserve her. God, how stupid she had been.
Instead of answering, Lincoln kisses her, full and hard on the mouth, his hands everywhere at once and hers tight around him, never wanting to let go. His tongue dances with hers in a familiar way that she adores and she molds into him, kisses him back with vigor, pouring everything she has to give, to offer, into the kiss. Veronica hopes that it can say everything she wishes she could, but can never find words good enough.
The world seems to fade into oblivion, the sound of waves crashing against the shore ring in her ears briefly before being replaced by a white hot buzzing that accompanies the electricity that spreads through her like wildfire. Everything pulses momentarily, loud and booming for the briefest of seconds, before fading completely until all that is left is Lincoln and Veronica, lips against lips, his hands on her back, her heart in his hands, with nothing but each other and time.
And all is finally right with the world.
End.