PB Fic: The Most Beautiful Flower On Earth - Chapter Seven (Part Two)
Title: The Most Beautiful Flower On Earth (7(2)/8)
Author: burntcircles
Characters/Pairing: Michael Scofield/Sara Tancredi, Jane Phillips, Original Characters
Genre/Rating: Gen to Het / R (for language)
Spoilers: S1, S2, S3
Length: ~ 7,400 words
Disclaimer: Prison Break and its characters are a property of Fox Studios. The original characters and this AU storyline are mine.
Summary: Michael's journey, years after the escape from Sona, through the eyes of an original character.
Author's Note: First work of fan fiction. Another long chapter, so I've cut this into two.
Previously: Chapters 1. Joe, 2. Us, 3. Confluence, 4. Remembrance, 5. Michael (Part One), 5. Michael (Part Two), 6. Ann, 7. Down the Saddle Path (Part One)
By the time I stood at the foot of his bed, looking down at the heavy lock of the blanket chest, I was so drained I had to sit.
“Are you all right?” she asked from her place by the door.
“Just give me a moment.” Squatting, I braced an arm against the chest to steady myself. I closed my eyes, and as I willed myself to relax, I heard an unsteady gasp for air that wasn’t mine. I looked up just in time to catch the tight grip she had on the doorjamb before her hand fell away.
“Well,” I said slowly, “are you?”
“Yeah.” A mask had fallen over her face. She stepped back and walked out of sight.
The front door we’d left open admitted a squall into the house and into the room, bringing in the memory of a June afternoon in Joe’s hut. He was sitting in the hammock with a sheet of white washi, but instead of folding it--on various occasions he’d produced a Mama Bunny and a Baby Bunny, a lotus flower with its own leaf, and, by special request, fancy book covers for Raul who, upon receiving them, would promptly swoon--he was writing on it, the pen making brisk staccato sounds on the crackly surface. One leg was tucked under him and the other, with its three toes wriggling every now and then, swung slightly as he scribbled away. Deep in a proof, I barely caught the studied nonchalance in his voice when he spoke. “Consuelo?” he said. “Yes?” “When I die, I want you to get everything I have.”
He went on writing, perfectly calm, while I glared at him so hard my eyeballs were ready to pop.
“You haven’t forgotten the code to the chest, right, this chest I bought?” he continued. He glanced at me, took in my indignation, then looked down at the washi again. “Consuelo, don’t be like that. Just answer the question, please? You still remember the code?” “Yes.” “Tell me what it is, then. Consuelo, please.” “Okay, Joe. The code is five-zero-one.” “Good. Very good, Consuelo.” “You are not going to die, Joe.” “Everybody dies, Consuelo.” “You know what I mean.” “I know. You only like to think about death, not talk about it.” “Great, you’re making things so much better now.” “Sorry.” “And I’ve never, you know, tried the code, in case you’re wondering.” “I know.”
Swing, swing.
“Consuelo?” “Yes, Joe?” “Consuelo, listen. When the time comes...” “Okay, Joe, I promise to keep the chest.” “No, it’s...I have nothing but letters. Everything else in there you can throw away. They’re tied together, and there’s a paper rose...Look, you’ll know when you see them, okay?” “Okay.” “Thank you, Consuelo.”
He was right. I opened the lock, lifted the lid, and there it was, separated from the rest of the contents by a beautiful batik coverlet: a bunch of letters tied together, the unassuming twine contrasting with the elegance of the neatly folded washi, the red and green of the paper rose under the bow faded with age.
The air, suddenly venomous and stale, seemed to press on me from all sides. These were the few things I’d held on to--friends I thought I’d keep well until I’d grown old, the sight of a falowa in the horizon after four days of waiting, grown, healthy, hungry men sitting down enthusiastically to a hearty meal I’d prepared with my own hands--only to be snatched away like I’d taken them for granted, teaching me a lesson that I did not have to learn. “Thank you, Consuelo,” I heard Joe say in my head, but denial came swift and strong. I slammed the lid down, stormed out of the house and fled, leaving Joe’s visitor to stare after me as I pedaled away like a lunatic.
The sunflowers on the corner by the bakery nearly met their end under the wheels of my bike as I turned sharply into the cobblestone lane that led to town, the blue envelope with the list inside burning a hole in my pocket. It made sense, every item on it, and the underlying level-headedness hit me, right where I thought I’d remained untouched. Did the four of them sit down one afternoon while I snored through my siesta to plan for this contingency, keeping their voices down so as not to wake me? Did they joke about last wills and testaments, about never going away without a good lay because heaven forbid they should die without the fresh memory of slick, willing flesh...and did celibate Joe get a brutal teasing? Did they laugh because they thought it would never happen, but it was fun to think about it, anyway? Did they laugh because that would be better than wavering before the immovable truth of a basic mortal fear?
Did they say, “Don’t worry, Ann will take care of the rest, she’ll know exactly what to do”?
Logic finally won out and I skidded to a halt, out of breath. I turned and headed back; out there somewhere was another Ann who knew what to do, and I had to meet her as soon as I could. I strained against the handlebars as I propelled myself back up the slow rise of the hill, trying not to think about ravines and broken bodies, about my battered boys huddled under a lean-to, trying in vain to stay warm, to stay awake.
And that was how I drew blood. I caught her standing in Joe’s room holding the paper rose, the blanket chest open at her feet. She hardly flinched when she saw me by the door, blazing with a fury I didn’t bother to hide. She was not quite there, in fact--her face was pale and her mouth had set in a hard line, as if she had slipped into another time and place.
“Put that back,” I said, my voice shaking. The letters were still in the chest, unopened, and I rushed over to take them before she did more damage. But there was no need for haste. She did not move, and she did not speak.
I held out my hand for the rose, and I was horrified to find that my arm was trembling. My whole body was trembling. “Give it to me.”
She just stood there, frozen, staring at the rose in her hand.
“That isn’t yours,” I told her, and at that she finally looked at me, a palpable defiance in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking, and I dared her to say the words, to give me an excuse to hit back with full force.
Come on, say it. Say it isn’t mine, either.
There we were, two grown women in the midst of a crisis staring each other down over a worn-out paper rose and an inscrutable man. It was not our shining moment, and she knew it. Her face softened. “You’re right,” she said quietly, as if she’d just had a secret epiphany. She gently placed the rose on my palm and left the room.
She was waiting for me by the hibiscus when I went out, tall against a sea that had gone the color of slate. Without a word I walked towards Jay’s house, and she fell into step beside me. “I’m sorry,” she said, and I found that the simple, humble apology was exactly what I needed to hear.
This is what the boys had known, and this is what they’d prepared for. Should the world finally hit upon the location of a famous elusive escaped convict just as he goes missing, the press would go crazy, as much from the irony as from the information. They would descend on the island and scrutinize not only Joe’s life but also theirs. From this inevitable violation some things must be kept sacred, and that possibility must have subjected them to a soul-searching the likes of which I would not have thought them capable. How else could I explain the small pile of unfinished manuscripts, well-kept journals, pictures, and mementos that they asked me, like Joe, to take and guard with my life? Even the tools of their trades, expensive and outwardly indispensable, were conspicuously absent, perhaps not worthy of remembrance and safe-keeping. They left me a list of what they believed were important, and with their hearts laid out before me, it would take so little to tip me over--certainly less than the sight of Esther, with Mario in tow, showing up at the door to announce that someone from Vavuudis had in fact come to the port the night before to say that the boys would be late, but Mario, tasked with bringing the news to me, had been waylaid in town by two full jars of tuba and forgot all about it--that is, until he woke up, nearly a day later, to a godawful hangover and the wrath of his wife.
I thanked Esther, patted Mario on the shoulder, and showed them out the door. Everything went well until my eyes fell on a small white envelope on top of the heap that belonged to Ed--Ann, it said on the flap. It was unsealed. Inside was a rubber band that suspiciously looked like the one I’d tied my hair with the night I almost drowned. Then, que horror, I howled like a baby that just got a shot in the arm, and as I blubbered, “Idiot kept the rubber band, he actually kept the rubber band,” my visitor led me to a chair, took my hand and held it in quiet understanding.
“I learned the hard way,” she said once my sniveling died down, “that one should never presume to know what people think, no matter what their actions are.” That was all she said, and it was enough.
Exhausted by the day’s events, we settled for a simple meal--fried fish, soup, and steamed rice. When she set the pot of masala tea on the table, the strongest sense of déjà vu hit me, and then I realized this was exactly how Joe and I broke bread on another day I thought I’d lost him. As the thought came to me I didn’t cry--impossible, really, as I was all dried out. Either that or, with my newfound sense of peace, relief finally burst into joy as I sat before an achingly familiar meal, strangely comforted by the woman sitting across me--this unforeseen visitor with her furtive glances and fits of impulse, this quietly beautiful woman with her simple, unexpected ways.
oOo
After 12 more hours of waiting Raul and I finally decided to return to town. It was a tough hike, took twice the time it normally would have, plus there was this incident involving a yellow orchid and a snake. We were surprised (but relieved, of course) to find the guys waiting there. “Explosive diarrhea,” was how Ed explained Jay’s situation to us, and finally we all had a good laugh.
I read yesterday’s letter again. Overreacted, didn’t I? Sorry about that.
Friday morning we went back up again, on the north side this time. This is the shorter side of the mountain (elevations of 600 meters at most) and we expected to descend on the east side by Saturday afternoon. Raul confirmed that the two species we’d found were not new, so we weren’t expecting much this time, just aiming to simply cover as much of the mountain as we could.
I’m doing such a poor job of telling you this. I suppose I should just say it straight, so I shall.
Sara, I think we’ve found it.
A local boy, Pepe, and his father, Elias, were bound for the tiny town, Malinaw, on the eastern slope, and they came with us on this trek. Elias also said that he knew of this spot a few miles from Malinaw that was filled with flowers. Or so he claimed. Anyway, we saw no harm in letting them come with us. And Pepe is a good boy. He put a green banana in my hand when I first met him. Reminded me of Esther. And the way he looked at me reminded me of Consuelo. The clear, unabashed eyes.
It was mid-afternoon, and we were struggling with the undergrowth. Then came the sound of flowing water and laughing women. Like they were taking a bath. The guys wanted to investigate (I did not, I swear). I felt quite uneasy, to be honest. There are stories in these parts about spirits, engkantos and engkantadas, living in trees and around bodies of water. I can see you laughing at me, but there it is.
Anyway, they wanted to check it out. Elias and Pepe didn’t say anything. They just led us to the mountain face where Elias pointed to a narrow ledge below us. The sounds did seem louder there, so we assumed it was a path to a waterfall. It was not a long way down, but it was steep, an angle of inclination of nearly 75 degrees. We descended, hugging the earth, grabbing onto roots and stems. Pepe and Jay stayed behind, but they had a good line of sight to the ledge, and Elias said we wouldn’t be walking far.
As soon as we stepped onto the ledge the sound of running water and laughter disappeared. We all heard it. How could that have been our imagination? It was eerie, Sara. It was a hot day, but down there it was cool, and it smelled of rain. Still, Elias did not say anything. He just kept on walking and after going a little further he stopped to face us. This was the ledge he talked about, he said. I could clearly see behind him where the path ended, the ledge merging with the cliff once more. We were midway through. The ledge was narrow, no more than two meters wide. On one side was a sandstone cliff face that was unremarkable, and on the other was a sheer drop bordered by weeds and grass. It was a disappointment.
Then Raul walked to the edge, looked down, and yelped. “Cried out like girl,” the guys said at dinner tonight, laughing. But at that moment nobody laughed, because Raul looked like he had seen the face of God. And then we KNEW.
Now it gets more bizarre. According to Elias, we had to ask for permission from the engkantadas before we could take anything, unless we wanted to be cursed. And since it was me the engkantadas had wanted to lure, permission would surely be granted if I asked for it myself. Meaning, I had to rappel down with Raul. Ed asked Elias how he could be so certain the engkantadas were after me and not, for example, him. I do believe the guy was slighted. I didn’t quite catch Elias' answer. There was more discussion, but in the end we asked Jay to come down and all four of us decided to go, to cover all our bases. A final tip from Elias (Raul translated): “Don’t forget to say thank you.”
Once we pushed off the ledge and started making our way down, we finally began to understand. Immediately below the ledge the mountain face caved in slightly, and blooms covered every inch of it. Mostly weeds, but beautiful nonetheless. Raul muttered their names under his breath as we came upon them (we had to be very quiet so as not to anger the engkantadas): dandelions, ground ivy, white clover, wild violets, the unexpected clematis. As we slowly proceeded, trying to do as little as damage as possible, it was like skimming a soft bed. “Straight out of a fabric conditioner commercial” is how Jay puts it.
And then, ten feet down, there it was. Pure white, with a touch of green at the spur. Until now Raul can hardly believe he found it there - too much rain and wind and not enough bright light. The odds were simply against it.
We asked for permission. We said our thanks. Raul handed the gardening shear to me. “Cut it at the inflorescence, below the bract,” he said, as he’s told me so many times. There were only two blooms, and suddenly it did not feel right. “Which one?” I asked. Just then the wind blew, and a flower fell off. This time everybody yelped. Luckily it got caught in the leaves and the force of the wind pushed it into the nook between a leaf and the stem, anchoring it. Then the wind let up and it finally broke free, dropping lightly into my palm.
Instinctively, my fingers curled around it. “Careful!” Raul whispered. But I was gentle, and for the few seconds I held it it seemed happy enough to stay where it was, in the hand of the one who deserved it least.
oOo
Thursday morning I woke up to the strains of Thelonious Monk.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I went down to find her humming along to ’Round Midnight, the smell of coffee slowly filling the house. She’d stacked the CDs side-by-side on a free bookshelf, and that must be how she’d found it. “You like this music?” I asked her warily.
She was perched on a stool before a window, stringing up a new set of curtains. “Yes,” she answered, “it reminds me of my mother.”
Finally, someone who appreciated the nostalgic quality of good jazz. I wanted to twirl. The only thing Monk ever did for the boys was drive them crazy--except, of course, Joe, who’d always claimed that the ostinato backing up the piano solo improvisation around the four-minute mark made a proof so much easier to understand. I looked at her, bobbing her head slightly to the beat of the double bass, and I felt inordinately pleased.
But not for long. Having last played the disc of self-assembled tracks a long time ago, I’d forgotten what else was there, and when minutes later Monk suddenly gave way to Abba’sGimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight) there were no words to describe my embarrassment. “Take me through the darkness to the break of the day,” Agnetha crooned, plaintive beneath the deceptively bouncy rhythm, and it sounded so inappropriately promiscuous in the pristine early morning light that I wished the world would swallow me up. She took one look at my face and laughed.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s so wanton,” I quipped, opening the refrigerator and, under the pretext of looking for Yakult, hid my red face in its depths.
“But it’s quite thematic, really,” she replied, and her voice held a smile. “’Round Midnight, then A Man After Midnight. Pretty consistent, if you ask me.” Then I was pleased all over again.
We discovered another shared love around lunch time. Feeling particularly cheerful, I’d said, “I’m in the mood for a Napolitano, is that okay?” and the speed with which the grin broke out on her face was enough of an answer. All those days slaving over complicated dishes that barely compensated for the ulcers that had come, absurdly, with our tense stand-offs in the kitchen, and it took the humblest of pastas to seal a truce. It boggled the mind.
“That’s why I’ve been checking the tomatoes,” she explained as we took out pans and opened cans with renewed vigor. “I wanted to see if we had enough for a pot, because--"
“Because you think Napolitano tastes best with cherry tomatoes, too,” I finished for her, and at that we both beamed so brightly, the glow from our faces must have cleared a swath of blinding, antiseptic light across the kitchen tiles.
“Too bad we don’t have any yet,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I said before I could stop myself, “we’ll have the perfect Napolitano, one of these days.”
She didn’t even glance at me, but I caught the slight upward tug on one corner of her mouth before she turned away. One of these days.
Later, with the worst of the day’s heat behind us, we made our way to the beach, walking on opposite sides of the narrow road. (Addressing her from that distance meant I did not have to look up at her as much, significantly de-stressing my neck.) We came upon a group of men harvesting coconuts, and the eagerness with which they stripped a couple of their husks and lopped off the tops to create wide holes out of which the water inside could be drunk was rivaled only by the haste with which they ran after us with their offering. I’d known it was coming the moment they caught sight of us marching down the road, their mouths dropping open. And I’d known it wasn’t because of me.
She practically jumped out of her skin when the one of the men ran up to her from behind, her startled eyes flitting from the machete slung from his waist to the peeled coconuts he held out to her.
“It’s okay,” I reassured her, biting my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. “They’re gifts.”
She exhaled loudly in relief. “Oh, thank you,” she said, blushing. We took the coconuts and she bestowed a smile on the bearer, who visibly reddened under his deep tan. “Thank you,” she called out to the others who had gathered by the side of the road, awaiting her response, and we were rewarded with the widest, most earnest smiles this side of the planet.
Her blush took a long time to fade. “They’re so nice to foreigners,” she said, drinking happily from her coconut as we walked on. “No wonder you have so many for a place so remote.” She laughed then, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “And there I was thinking they were going to kill me.”
A breeze blew in from the water, unsettling her hair and stirring the branches of the coconut trees. The motion played with the sunlight’s path to her face, and once more her eyes danced. She began poking at the coconut meat to dislodge it from the shell with her bare hands, child-like in her fascination, and with that gesture my infantry, artillery and squadrons returned to base, my armor fell away, and my generals folded up their maps and went home.
In dynamical systems, there exists a nifty concept called a “saddle path”: choose a vector that hits the sweet spot close to this path or, better yet, lands right on it, and you are led to equilibrium. The process is unstoppable, the forces of the system make it so; the outcome, blissfully inexorable. But the starting point has to be just right. Miss the crucial area by even a breadth of a hair, and you are doomed, drifting further and further away with no hope of return.
Is there a single incident in a person’s life--a moment, a decision, a gesture, a thought--that is one’s event horizon, one’s shot at hitting the saddle path which, once taken or chanced upon, turns a mere consequence into fate? Can one thing, so seemingly small, be in fact providential? Jay wanted to go joy-sailing on a stolen falowa, and Joe became our friend. A wind knocked me into a wall, and a dark seed took root in Joe’s mind. Had I been bigger, stronger, or walking behind the boys so that their bulk blunted the force of the impact, we would have ended somewhere else, the little girl wouldn’t have found Joe, and the seed would have been blown away to the sea. A boat not taken, a well-timed trip to the balcony in the middle of a storm, a spur-of-the-moment tactic with a butcher knife--did all these conspire to fill a simple question (“So what made you so sad, Joe?”) with enough power to beget a revelation?
Was it Thelonious Monk? Or the charming way she defused my embarrassment in the wake of the fiasco that was Gimme Gimme Gimme? Was it the unaffected ease with which she took the elaborate along with the simple, the pull she had on people, like the moon on the tide, and her obliviousness to this elemental power? Was it the fact that she was able to convince me to take off my slippers and wade into the sea until I’d gone so deep I had to stand on tiptoe and then let go, succeeding where even Joe, eyes unbelievably blue in supplication while saying, “Please, Consuelo, you must learn how to swim”, had failed? To this day, I’m not certain. All I know is that, floating on my back in the sea for the first time, my skin going as pink as the bathing suit I’d never thought I’d buy, I realized the day was ending, and between Theolonious Monk and the sea lapping gently at my ears, I hadn’t thought, not once, about the peerless creature that was Dr. Sara Tancredi.
Tatay, I would write to the general later that night, in my most careful script, I am sorry for the terrible way I treated your friends’ sons the last time I was home. I would gladly make it up to them the next time I’m there, that is, if they would let me. Just do this one favor for me, if you may be so kind: please get me all the information you can about a Ms. Jane Phillips. I believe she’s a friend of Michael Scofield. Please send it as soon as you can. Thanks. Ann.
The second thing I asked for, oddly enough, was virtually an afterthought, coming to me only as Lando was about to board the flight back to the mainland that Friday. Given more time, I could have explained to the general how I was left with no choice but to ask him to find a hard copy for me, given that either access was restricted or the information no longer available wherever I checked online: Northwestern, the AMA, the Illinois DOC, even the archives of broadsheets and magazines. But once again, it was time to leave and the ground crew was behaving as if it was Christmas Eve in JFK, so I could only scrawl a few words at the bottom of the page and close my eyes to the way they clashed with the earlier meticulousness I’d worked so hard to achieve.
I watched the passengers spill out to the tarmac and walk to the awaiting plane. A hush seemed to descend as daylight faded, and I felt as if a sort of end had come. P.S. I need a picture of the doctor, too, I’d written, and the reason was clear. Poised on the cusp of possibility, I suddenly wished to see her face, because I wanted to say goodbye.
oOo
We’re going home. I cannot wait to see the look on Consuelo’s face when she sees us. She’ll be surprised, I’m sure. And I’ve never seen Raul this happy. And that makes me happy.
You can just imagine how relieved I was when everybody showed up for breakfast today. We kept on thanking them until we got to the foot of the mountain, but all this talk about vengeful engkantadas coming for you in your sleep and snatching your soul made me so nervous I did not want to go to bed last night. Made the guys nervous, too, but they got so drunk they just passed out. As for me, I just thought...I’d just come to the infirmary for my shot, you were sitting at your desk with your back to me, then you turned and said, “Mr. Scofield”, so serious in your white coat...and before I knew it, it was morning.
But for the first time in years I didn’t dream of you. I knew it as soon as I opened my eyes, and I missed you right away.
oOo
Jerry arrived on Monday with the rations and the parcel from my father, a tightly sealed envelope. It felt light in my hand. Expecting a meaty dossier on Jane Phillips, I’d prepared myself for something hefty and thick, and I couldn’t deny the keen stab of disappointment upon seeing that it was not. But then, it didn’t have to be. I sat in Raul’s study with a cup of coffee, pulled out the doctor’s picture, and oh yes, it didn’t have to be.
I suppose I should have been happy. I should have cartwheeled around the room, run down the stairs, out the house and up and down the beach, smiled my gratitude into the air. In a simple universe, yes--but there had been far too much fear and pain and doubt in this one that nothing hinting at so much happiness would ever be taken at face value again, and so there were no cartwheels, no running, no knee-jerk jubilation.
Instead, I remembered all the times the children ran up to her, stared and then ran away shouting, “Matang alak, matang alak!” as if they’d been sent by their more timid elders to find out. Whiskey eyes, whiskey eyes...I recalled the times she looked at me, her face drawn, as if the deception had gone on too long for her and she was on the brink of surrender. “Ann, I--” she would begin, only to change her mind. Ultimately, she did yield: one day she started talking, over dishes, about a distant father, a mother whose madness so terrified her that she’d fled, using a worthy cause to mask the betrayal of her desertion, about her regret at all the time spent on enmity and detachment that she couldn’t get back. But it only seemed she was talking, not about herself, but about me--a little investigation into my life done on the sly and there she was, criticizing me, underhandedly to boot, telling me how to live it. I exploded. “You’ve got some nerve,” I snapped at her and walked out. I caught the look of confusion and hurt on her face before I turned, and a full day passed before she talked to me again.
No whoops of joy; instead, there was much self-flagellation (all this time and I didn’t know, I should have been protecting her and oh my God I need a gun) and disproportionate self-defense (the glass panel at the airport was foggy, time tarnished the memory, a mind conditioned to believe one thing was quick to jump to conclusions...). When that waned, the pessimist in me saw an opportunity to contemplate the many ways something this beautiful could still go so wrong and seized it, spinning one disaster after another in my head. And after the forgotten coffee went tepid and my tremors ceased, I stood by the window, looked down at her in the yard as she took down the dry sheets from the clothesline, and thought, finally allowing myself to smile, E pur si muove.
Lies and pain and goodbye. And yet, it moves.
Soon enough Fur Elise rang out, snapping me out of my thoughts; it was time to make dinner. On the kitchen counter was my half-written menu for tomorrow’s homecoming lunch for the boys--Mario had conveyed the news of their arrival promptly this time--and the sight jolted me. Someone should tell Joe, I thought with alarm, and I was ready to hop onto the first falowa I could get, giant waves be damned. But it was too late.
As I stood by my newly-delivered box of rations, she who moved and lived rushed out of the greenhouse with her harvest, crying, “Ann, look! We have tomatoes!” Just then, as if by thinking about him I’d conjured him up, the very person I was fretting about rounded the corner into the yard, and in that way beheld the impossible before I could warn him. Or maybe he’d entered the yard well before she emerged but never made it to the kitchen door, paralyzed by the sound of her voice. Perhaps the air crackled as whiskey met cobalt; voices, breathless with shock and then joy, whispered names and disbelief as her hands sought his, and he retreated. Or, possibly, they collided and promptly leapt apart, overcome by the contact, after which they regarded each other with tense caginess as they backed further away.
One thing’s for sure, though: one Monday afternoon at the edge of the world, Michael Scofield, a day early, and Sara Tancredi, four years late, saw each other again; as for the finer details of the exact moment that they did, I could only surmise. All I heard were her voice and his gasp, and all I saw were tomatoes, rolling slowly on the ground past the open kitchen door.
Oh, my God.
The second I was out the door Michael reached for me, the fingers of one hand closing hard around my wrist. He extended his free arm before him as if to push her back. “No,” he choked out, and his eyes were stones of murderous rage.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, but instantly I knew it wasn’t true, neither for him nor for Sara. She had withdrawn all the way back to the greenhouse, the canvas flaps of the entrance behind her beating from an erratic breeze, and for a few long seconds it seemed to be the only sound for miles around. “Michael?” she whispered, her head tilting slightly as she looked at us, stumped by his reaction. And then her face fell, wounded confusion all over it, as if she’d just spilled out her life to someone only to be rebuffed again.
It was not the happiest reunion. But then again, reunions had never been kind to these two.
oOo
The second she was led to a room and LJ to another in the new building they’d been transferred to after the failed rescue attempt by Lincoln, Sara Tancredi knew that she would pay for her defiance in the sickest possible way. Oddly enough, when she was later pushed by two men into a van all alone, she started crying, convinced they were going to kill LJ, when in fact they were going to kill her. In a surge of courage she never thought she had in her, she managed to escape--specializing in trauma for years taught you exactly where to kick--with the intention of coming back for him. But with a gunshot wound in her stomach that proved to be impossible. She barely made it to the first clinic she could find, was barely alive when she finally talked to Bruce. And when Bruce came to take her back to the U.S., telling her in so many words how that was for the best, she felt like she’d turned into the worst kind of turncoat--the professional deserter--and no amount of assurance that LJ was safe eased the pain from that knowledge.
With Bruce’s help, she'd gone into hiding. All online records of her life were cleaned. The anti-Company, in the wake of Aldo’s death, had split into multiple factions, each suspecting the other of leaking information to the enemy. Deciding to make herself useful, she stayed with the group Bruce trusted, moving from one safe house to another where she tended to the wounded, and for years she saw men and women die before her eyes and under her hands no matter how hard she tried. Occasionally, some rumor would come to her--a Michael sighting, at times with a blond- turned dark-haired woman whose loyalties they could only hope were with Aldo Burrows--and it would fill her each time, unfailingly, with anticipation. He’ll come looking for me, anytime now, she would think in the few minutes of exhilaration she allowed herself to feel in the aftermath of a successful attempt to save an agent’s life, and it would take a year of such wishful thinking before she finally gave up.
Then one day, Bruce came to her to say that everything was all right. Exactly like that--“Everything’s all right now, it’s over”--and she refused to believe him until he showed her pictures, legal documents, proof of life. She soaked up all the information about him--no known lover, it said in his most current file (that, in particular, seemed important)--and, emboldened, she knew she was quenching a thirst she could no longer deny.
And so Dr. Sara Tancredi surfaced akin to a hermit stepping out of a cave. She hopped on two planes, a boat, and a falowa, endured the company of a hostile-turned-appraisive female for more than a week, and tried to look as pretty as she possibly could, all for the satisfaction, she told herself, of rendering Michael Scofield speechless when she faced him and said, “I thought I’d drop by, was wondering how you were. You did tell me to wait for you.” (Last part unsaid, of course, but so heavily implied by everything else that they’d shared, unless the genius had totally, irretrievably forgotten.)
Weeks later, she would finally admit to me that she had been driven by something much simpler: he might have forgotten but she hadn’t, and she just wanted to see him again.
oOo
So there she was, gloriously alive. Always had been, but Michael Scofield hadn’t known, so he didn’t gather her up in his arms. Instead, he stared at her--certain, I would find out, that she was a trick the engkantadas were playing on him as retribution for insufficient gratitude. I wanted to crack a joke to ease the tension somewhat, but as my hand turned blue and numb in his grip, I began to get scared.
Sara looked at his face to my hand with apprehension. “You’re hurting her, Mi--” she said, and at her mistake she looked at me, an apology in her eyes. “Ann, I’m sorry, there’s something you need to know--”
“I already do,” I interrupted her, nodding quickly in assurance. “I just found out. Later, I’ll explain later.” She started to move forward. “No,” I told her, “just...just stay there.” Michael had gone too still for comfort. His eyes held a look I’d seen in my mother’s own eyes, and the fact filled me with dread. He began to mumble.
“Joe?” His grip didn’t relax. My wrist locked in place, I tried not to grimace as I turned to face him. My elbow stuck out unnaturally and a jolt of pain ran up my arm to my shoulder, but I clenched my teeth and sucked it up. He repeated the words, still unintelligible, and he was looking blankly in the distance. He was slipping away.
There is a kind of courage that comes with knowing that there is a responsibility that is yours and yours alone, and this knowledge makes this courage impenetrable to doubt. Mothers know this best, I think--you’ve got this young life on your hands, and suddenly you’re stronger, there is nothing you wouldn’t do for this being you’ve brought into existence. My sister, at fourteen, knew this, too. For some reason, it came more easily to her than it came to me, but in that afternoon with his hand clamped around my wrist as if I was his lifeline, I was brave enough to deal with something I did not fully understand.
I lifted my free hand to his face. I stood on tiptoe, my body stretched to the limit, and pressed the palm of my trembling hand to his cheek. “Michael?” It was the name of a stranger. “Michael,” I repeated, firmly this time, “Michael, look at me. Look at me. Please, Michael. Look at me.”
My arm was on fire. My legs felt like they were about to give out beneath me. Vaguely I was aware of the boys reaching the yard and freezing in place. But you had to hand it to them: most times they were so dense it seemed I had to draw charts from one of the wall to another before they got my point, but at that moment the grasp was incredibly quick. By the time Michael and I were okay, they’d not only managed to get Sara into the house with minimum fuss, they’d also put the kettle on the stove for the masala, remembered to pick the prized cherry tomatoes up from the ground and wash them, and resisted the urge to quiz the doctor, choosing instead to keep a respectable silence.
Finally Michael’s grip on my wrist relaxed, and his breathing slowed. His words became clear. “I lift my lids,” he said, meeting my eyes, “and all is...and all is...”
I knew it. He’d been reading The Bell Jar. I would not have been surprised if he’d read Mad Girl’s Love Song so many times he could recite it by heart. When everything settled down the first thing I would tell Raul was, “How many times have I told you to throw away the Plath?” because I really had asked him to, countless times, back when Andy had just broken up with him and by some masochistic urge he would repeat the poem to himself ad infinitum. “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead, I think I made you up inside my head” recurs all throughout the damn gloomy thing, but Michael had chosen to latch on the single hopeful line in there: I lift my lids and all is born again.
Oh, Michael. I couldn’t help it. My eyes welled up, but I managed to compose myself quickly, and only a tear or two managed to escape. “I know,” I told him. Lies and pain and death, yet always, hope. “I know.”
Later, Michael would stand at the foot of the stairs, breathe in to steel himself, and call out, “Sara?” As she walked down to him he would look at her with so much reverence that my mouth went dry just watching them. It would be touch and go for a while, but in time they figured it out--this rare, invariable thing between them--and they would start thinking of the future, steady as they went. Much, much later, one golden afternoon, I would find myself standing in the chancel of St. Dominic’s, filled with misgivings; Ed’s heart would be broken; Raul would get his name in the books; Michael and Sara would leave; and I would be entrusted with the history of a life.
But for now, Michael and I sat on the kitchen doorstep and simply took it all in, one at a time. An eagle soared overhead and settled on a branch of an aryus tree. The gap in the hedge was widening. The low voices of the boys carried over from the living room. Thunder rolled in the distance. The wild violets changed color in the fading light. “It's lavender, I think,” I said. “More like heliotrope,” Michael replied. Call it orange and it would have been fine with us; there were more important things to consider. Like making the perfect Napolitano, and holding your woman, kissing her with your soul. The smell of the sea drifted in, strong and comforting.
Chapter Eight (Part One)
Author: burntcircles
Characters/Pairing: Michael Scofield/Sara Tancredi, Jane Phillips, Original Characters
Genre/Rating: Gen to Het / R (for language)
Spoilers: S1, S2, S3
Length: ~ 7,400 words
Disclaimer: Prison Break and its characters are a property of Fox Studios. The original characters and this AU storyline are mine.
Summary: Michael's journey, years after the escape from Sona, through the eyes of an original character.
Author's Note: First work of fan fiction. Another long chapter, so I've cut this into two.
Previously: Chapters 1. Joe, 2. Us, 3. Confluence, 4. Remembrance, 5. Michael (Part One), 5. Michael (Part Two), 6. Ann, 7. Down the Saddle Path (Part One)
By the time I stood at the foot of his bed, looking down at the heavy lock of the blanket chest, I was so drained I had to sit.
“Are you all right?” she asked from her place by the door.
“Just give me a moment.” Squatting, I braced an arm against the chest to steady myself. I closed my eyes, and as I willed myself to relax, I heard an unsteady gasp for air that wasn’t mine. I looked up just in time to catch the tight grip she had on the doorjamb before her hand fell away.
“Well,” I said slowly, “are you?”
“Yeah.” A mask had fallen over her face. She stepped back and walked out of sight.
The front door we’d left open admitted a squall into the house and into the room, bringing in the memory of a June afternoon in Joe’s hut. He was sitting in the hammock with a sheet of white washi, but instead of folding it--on various occasions he’d produced a Mama Bunny and a Baby Bunny, a lotus flower with its own leaf, and, by special request, fancy book covers for Raul who, upon receiving them, would promptly swoon--he was writing on it, the pen making brisk staccato sounds on the crackly surface. One leg was tucked under him and the other, with its three toes wriggling every now and then, swung slightly as he scribbled away. Deep in a proof, I barely caught the studied nonchalance in his voice when he spoke. “Consuelo?” he said. “Yes?” “When I die, I want you to get everything I have.”
He went on writing, perfectly calm, while I glared at him so hard my eyeballs were ready to pop.
“You haven’t forgotten the code to the chest, right, this chest I bought?” he continued. He glanced at me, took in my indignation, then looked down at the washi again. “Consuelo, don’t be like that. Just answer the question, please? You still remember the code?” “Yes.” “Tell me what it is, then. Consuelo, please.” “Okay, Joe. The code is five-zero-one.” “Good. Very good, Consuelo.” “You are not going to die, Joe.” “Everybody dies, Consuelo.” “You know what I mean.” “I know. You only like to think about death, not talk about it.” “Great, you’re making things so much better now.” “Sorry.” “And I’ve never, you know, tried the code, in case you’re wondering.” “I know.”
Swing, swing.
“Consuelo?” “Yes, Joe?” “Consuelo, listen. When the time comes...” “Okay, Joe, I promise to keep the chest.” “No, it’s...I have nothing but letters. Everything else in there you can throw away. They’re tied together, and there’s a paper rose...Look, you’ll know when you see them, okay?” “Okay.” “Thank you, Consuelo.”
He was right. I opened the lock, lifted the lid, and there it was, separated from the rest of the contents by a beautiful batik coverlet: a bunch of letters tied together, the unassuming twine contrasting with the elegance of the neatly folded washi, the red and green of the paper rose under the bow faded with age.
The air, suddenly venomous and stale, seemed to press on me from all sides. These were the few things I’d held on to--friends I thought I’d keep well until I’d grown old, the sight of a falowa in the horizon after four days of waiting, grown, healthy, hungry men sitting down enthusiastically to a hearty meal I’d prepared with my own hands--only to be snatched away like I’d taken them for granted, teaching me a lesson that I did not have to learn. “Thank you, Consuelo,” I heard Joe say in my head, but denial came swift and strong. I slammed the lid down, stormed out of the house and fled, leaving Joe’s visitor to stare after me as I pedaled away like a lunatic.
The sunflowers on the corner by the bakery nearly met their end under the wheels of my bike as I turned sharply into the cobblestone lane that led to town, the blue envelope with the list inside burning a hole in my pocket. It made sense, every item on it, and the underlying level-headedness hit me, right where I thought I’d remained untouched. Did the four of them sit down one afternoon while I snored through my siesta to plan for this contingency, keeping their voices down so as not to wake me? Did they joke about last wills and testaments, about never going away without a good lay because heaven forbid they should die without the fresh memory of slick, willing flesh...and did celibate Joe get a brutal teasing? Did they laugh because they thought it would never happen, but it was fun to think about it, anyway? Did they laugh because that would be better than wavering before the immovable truth of a basic mortal fear?
Did they say, “Don’t worry, Ann will take care of the rest, she’ll know exactly what to do”?
Logic finally won out and I skidded to a halt, out of breath. I turned and headed back; out there somewhere was another Ann who knew what to do, and I had to meet her as soon as I could. I strained against the handlebars as I propelled myself back up the slow rise of the hill, trying not to think about ravines and broken bodies, about my battered boys huddled under a lean-to, trying in vain to stay warm, to stay awake.
And that was how I drew blood. I caught her standing in Joe’s room holding the paper rose, the blanket chest open at her feet. She hardly flinched when she saw me by the door, blazing with a fury I didn’t bother to hide. She was not quite there, in fact--her face was pale and her mouth had set in a hard line, as if she had slipped into another time and place.
“Put that back,” I said, my voice shaking. The letters were still in the chest, unopened, and I rushed over to take them before she did more damage. But there was no need for haste. She did not move, and she did not speak.
I held out my hand for the rose, and I was horrified to find that my arm was trembling. My whole body was trembling. “Give it to me.”
She just stood there, frozen, staring at the rose in her hand.
“That isn’t yours,” I told her, and at that she finally looked at me, a palpable defiance in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking, and I dared her to say the words, to give me an excuse to hit back with full force.
Come on, say it. Say it isn’t mine, either.
There we were, two grown women in the midst of a crisis staring each other down over a worn-out paper rose and an inscrutable man. It was not our shining moment, and she knew it. Her face softened. “You’re right,” she said quietly, as if she’d just had a secret epiphany. She gently placed the rose on my palm and left the room.
She was waiting for me by the hibiscus when I went out, tall against a sea that had gone the color of slate. Without a word I walked towards Jay’s house, and she fell into step beside me. “I’m sorry,” she said, and I found that the simple, humble apology was exactly what I needed to hear.
This is what the boys had known, and this is what they’d prepared for. Should the world finally hit upon the location of a famous elusive escaped convict just as he goes missing, the press would go crazy, as much from the irony as from the information. They would descend on the island and scrutinize not only Joe’s life but also theirs. From this inevitable violation some things must be kept sacred, and that possibility must have subjected them to a soul-searching the likes of which I would not have thought them capable. How else could I explain the small pile of unfinished manuscripts, well-kept journals, pictures, and mementos that they asked me, like Joe, to take and guard with my life? Even the tools of their trades, expensive and outwardly indispensable, were conspicuously absent, perhaps not worthy of remembrance and safe-keeping. They left me a list of what they believed were important, and with their hearts laid out before me, it would take so little to tip me over--certainly less than the sight of Esther, with Mario in tow, showing up at the door to announce that someone from Vavuudis had in fact come to the port the night before to say that the boys would be late, but Mario, tasked with bringing the news to me, had been waylaid in town by two full jars of tuba and forgot all about it--that is, until he woke up, nearly a day later, to a godawful hangover and the wrath of his wife.
I thanked Esther, patted Mario on the shoulder, and showed them out the door. Everything went well until my eyes fell on a small white envelope on top of the heap that belonged to Ed--Ann, it said on the flap. It was unsealed. Inside was a rubber band that suspiciously looked like the one I’d tied my hair with the night I almost drowned. Then, que horror, I howled like a baby that just got a shot in the arm, and as I blubbered, “Idiot kept the rubber band, he actually kept the rubber band,” my visitor led me to a chair, took my hand and held it in quiet understanding.
“I learned the hard way,” she said once my sniveling died down, “that one should never presume to know what people think, no matter what their actions are.” That was all she said, and it was enough.
Exhausted by the day’s events, we settled for a simple meal--fried fish, soup, and steamed rice. When she set the pot of masala tea on the table, the strongest sense of déjà vu hit me, and then I realized this was exactly how Joe and I broke bread on another day I thought I’d lost him. As the thought came to me I didn’t cry--impossible, really, as I was all dried out. Either that or, with my newfound sense of peace, relief finally burst into joy as I sat before an achingly familiar meal, strangely comforted by the woman sitting across me--this unforeseen visitor with her furtive glances and fits of impulse, this quietly beautiful woman with her simple, unexpected ways.
oOo
After 12 more hours of waiting Raul and I finally decided to return to town. It was a tough hike, took twice the time it normally would have, plus there was this incident involving a yellow orchid and a snake. We were surprised (but relieved, of course) to find the guys waiting there. “Explosive diarrhea,” was how Ed explained Jay’s situation to us, and finally we all had a good laugh.
I read yesterday’s letter again. Overreacted, didn’t I? Sorry about that.
Friday morning we went back up again, on the north side this time. This is the shorter side of the mountain (elevations of 600 meters at most) and we expected to descend on the east side by Saturday afternoon. Raul confirmed that the two species we’d found were not new, so we weren’t expecting much this time, just aiming to simply cover as much of the mountain as we could.
I’m doing such a poor job of telling you this. I suppose I should just say it straight, so I shall.
Sara, I think we’ve found it.
A local boy, Pepe, and his father, Elias, were bound for the tiny town, Malinaw, on the eastern slope, and they came with us on this trek. Elias also said that he knew of this spot a few miles from Malinaw that was filled with flowers. Or so he claimed. Anyway, we saw no harm in letting them come with us. And Pepe is a good boy. He put a green banana in my hand when I first met him. Reminded me of Esther. And the way he looked at me reminded me of Consuelo. The clear, unabashed eyes.
It was mid-afternoon, and we were struggling with the undergrowth. Then came the sound of flowing water and laughing women. Like they were taking a bath. The guys wanted to investigate (I did not, I swear). I felt quite uneasy, to be honest. There are stories in these parts about spirits, engkantos and engkantadas, living in trees and around bodies of water. I can see you laughing at me, but there it is.
Anyway, they wanted to check it out. Elias and Pepe didn’t say anything. They just led us to the mountain face where Elias pointed to a narrow ledge below us. The sounds did seem louder there, so we assumed it was a path to a waterfall. It was not a long way down, but it was steep, an angle of inclination of nearly 75 degrees. We descended, hugging the earth, grabbing onto roots and stems. Pepe and Jay stayed behind, but they had a good line of sight to the ledge, and Elias said we wouldn’t be walking far.
As soon as we stepped onto the ledge the sound of running water and laughter disappeared. We all heard it. How could that have been our imagination? It was eerie, Sara. It was a hot day, but down there it was cool, and it smelled of rain. Still, Elias did not say anything. He just kept on walking and after going a little further he stopped to face us. This was the ledge he talked about, he said. I could clearly see behind him where the path ended, the ledge merging with the cliff once more. We were midway through. The ledge was narrow, no more than two meters wide. On one side was a sandstone cliff face that was unremarkable, and on the other was a sheer drop bordered by weeds and grass. It was a disappointment.
Then Raul walked to the edge, looked down, and yelped. “Cried out like girl,” the guys said at dinner tonight, laughing. But at that moment nobody laughed, because Raul looked like he had seen the face of God. And then we KNEW.
Now it gets more bizarre. According to Elias, we had to ask for permission from the engkantadas before we could take anything, unless we wanted to be cursed. And since it was me the engkantadas had wanted to lure, permission would surely be granted if I asked for it myself. Meaning, I had to rappel down with Raul. Ed asked Elias how he could be so certain the engkantadas were after me and not, for example, him. I do believe the guy was slighted. I didn’t quite catch Elias' answer. There was more discussion, but in the end we asked Jay to come down and all four of us decided to go, to cover all our bases. A final tip from Elias (Raul translated): “Don’t forget to say thank you.”
Once we pushed off the ledge and started making our way down, we finally began to understand. Immediately below the ledge the mountain face caved in slightly, and blooms covered every inch of it. Mostly weeds, but beautiful nonetheless. Raul muttered their names under his breath as we came upon them (we had to be very quiet so as not to anger the engkantadas): dandelions, ground ivy, white clover, wild violets, the unexpected clematis. As we slowly proceeded, trying to do as little as damage as possible, it was like skimming a soft bed. “Straight out of a fabric conditioner commercial” is how Jay puts it.
And then, ten feet down, there it was. Pure white, with a touch of green at the spur. Until now Raul can hardly believe he found it there - too much rain and wind and not enough bright light. The odds were simply against it.
We asked for permission. We said our thanks. Raul handed the gardening shear to me. “Cut it at the inflorescence, below the bract,” he said, as he’s told me so many times. There were only two blooms, and suddenly it did not feel right. “Which one?” I asked. Just then the wind blew, and a flower fell off. This time everybody yelped. Luckily it got caught in the leaves and the force of the wind pushed it into the nook between a leaf and the stem, anchoring it. Then the wind let up and it finally broke free, dropping lightly into my palm.
Instinctively, my fingers curled around it. “Careful!” Raul whispered. But I was gentle, and for the few seconds I held it it seemed happy enough to stay where it was, in the hand of the one who deserved it least.
oOo
Thursday morning I woke up to the strains of Thelonious Monk.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I went down to find her humming along to ’Round Midnight, the smell of coffee slowly filling the house. She’d stacked the CDs side-by-side on a free bookshelf, and that must be how she’d found it. “You like this music?” I asked her warily.
She was perched on a stool before a window, stringing up a new set of curtains. “Yes,” she answered, “it reminds me of my mother.”
Finally, someone who appreciated the nostalgic quality of good jazz. I wanted to twirl. The only thing Monk ever did for the boys was drive them crazy--except, of course, Joe, who’d always claimed that the ostinato backing up the piano solo improvisation around the four-minute mark made a proof so much easier to understand. I looked at her, bobbing her head slightly to the beat of the double bass, and I felt inordinately pleased.
But not for long. Having last played the disc of self-assembled tracks a long time ago, I’d forgotten what else was there, and when minutes later Monk suddenly gave way to Abba’sGimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight) there were no words to describe my embarrassment. “Take me through the darkness to the break of the day,” Agnetha crooned, plaintive beneath the deceptively bouncy rhythm, and it sounded so inappropriately promiscuous in the pristine early morning light that I wished the world would swallow me up. She took one look at my face and laughed.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s so wanton,” I quipped, opening the refrigerator and, under the pretext of looking for Yakult, hid my red face in its depths.
“But it’s quite thematic, really,” she replied, and her voice held a smile. “’Round Midnight, then A Man After Midnight. Pretty consistent, if you ask me.” Then I was pleased all over again.
We discovered another shared love around lunch time. Feeling particularly cheerful, I’d said, “I’m in the mood for a Napolitano, is that okay?” and the speed with which the grin broke out on her face was enough of an answer. All those days slaving over complicated dishes that barely compensated for the ulcers that had come, absurdly, with our tense stand-offs in the kitchen, and it took the humblest of pastas to seal a truce. It boggled the mind.
“That’s why I’ve been checking the tomatoes,” she explained as we took out pans and opened cans with renewed vigor. “I wanted to see if we had enough for a pot, because--"
“Because you think Napolitano tastes best with cherry tomatoes, too,” I finished for her, and at that we both beamed so brightly, the glow from our faces must have cleared a swath of blinding, antiseptic light across the kitchen tiles.
“Too bad we don’t have any yet,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I said before I could stop myself, “we’ll have the perfect Napolitano, one of these days.”
She didn’t even glance at me, but I caught the slight upward tug on one corner of her mouth before she turned away. One of these days.
Later, with the worst of the day’s heat behind us, we made our way to the beach, walking on opposite sides of the narrow road. (Addressing her from that distance meant I did not have to look up at her as much, significantly de-stressing my neck.) We came upon a group of men harvesting coconuts, and the eagerness with which they stripped a couple of their husks and lopped off the tops to create wide holes out of which the water inside could be drunk was rivaled only by the haste with which they ran after us with their offering. I’d known it was coming the moment they caught sight of us marching down the road, their mouths dropping open. And I’d known it wasn’t because of me.
She practically jumped out of her skin when the one of the men ran up to her from behind, her startled eyes flitting from the machete slung from his waist to the peeled coconuts he held out to her.
“It’s okay,” I reassured her, biting my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. “They’re gifts.”
She exhaled loudly in relief. “Oh, thank you,” she said, blushing. We took the coconuts and she bestowed a smile on the bearer, who visibly reddened under his deep tan. “Thank you,” she called out to the others who had gathered by the side of the road, awaiting her response, and we were rewarded with the widest, most earnest smiles this side of the planet.
Her blush took a long time to fade. “They’re so nice to foreigners,” she said, drinking happily from her coconut as we walked on. “No wonder you have so many for a place so remote.” She laughed then, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “And there I was thinking they were going to kill me.”
A breeze blew in from the water, unsettling her hair and stirring the branches of the coconut trees. The motion played with the sunlight’s path to her face, and once more her eyes danced. She began poking at the coconut meat to dislodge it from the shell with her bare hands, child-like in her fascination, and with that gesture my infantry, artillery and squadrons returned to base, my armor fell away, and my generals folded up their maps and went home.
In dynamical systems, there exists a nifty concept called a “saddle path”: choose a vector that hits the sweet spot close to this path or, better yet, lands right on it, and you are led to equilibrium. The process is unstoppable, the forces of the system make it so; the outcome, blissfully inexorable. But the starting point has to be just right. Miss the crucial area by even a breadth of a hair, and you are doomed, drifting further and further away with no hope of return.
Is there a single incident in a person’s life--a moment, a decision, a gesture, a thought--that is one’s event horizon, one’s shot at hitting the saddle path which, once taken or chanced upon, turns a mere consequence into fate? Can one thing, so seemingly small, be in fact providential? Jay wanted to go joy-sailing on a stolen falowa, and Joe became our friend. A wind knocked me into a wall, and a dark seed took root in Joe’s mind. Had I been bigger, stronger, or walking behind the boys so that their bulk blunted the force of the impact, we would have ended somewhere else, the little girl wouldn’t have found Joe, and the seed would have been blown away to the sea. A boat not taken, a well-timed trip to the balcony in the middle of a storm, a spur-of-the-moment tactic with a butcher knife--did all these conspire to fill a simple question (“So what made you so sad, Joe?”) with enough power to beget a revelation?
Was it Thelonious Monk? Or the charming way she defused my embarrassment in the wake of the fiasco that was Gimme Gimme Gimme? Was it the unaffected ease with which she took the elaborate along with the simple, the pull she had on people, like the moon on the tide, and her obliviousness to this elemental power? Was it the fact that she was able to convince me to take off my slippers and wade into the sea until I’d gone so deep I had to stand on tiptoe and then let go, succeeding where even Joe, eyes unbelievably blue in supplication while saying, “Please, Consuelo, you must learn how to swim”, had failed? To this day, I’m not certain. All I know is that, floating on my back in the sea for the first time, my skin going as pink as the bathing suit I’d never thought I’d buy, I realized the day was ending, and between Theolonious Monk and the sea lapping gently at my ears, I hadn’t thought, not once, about the peerless creature that was Dr. Sara Tancredi.
Tatay, I would write to the general later that night, in my most careful script, I am sorry for the terrible way I treated your friends’ sons the last time I was home. I would gladly make it up to them the next time I’m there, that is, if they would let me. Just do this one favor for me, if you may be so kind: please get me all the information you can about a Ms. Jane Phillips. I believe she’s a friend of Michael Scofield. Please send it as soon as you can. Thanks. Ann.
The second thing I asked for, oddly enough, was virtually an afterthought, coming to me only as Lando was about to board the flight back to the mainland that Friday. Given more time, I could have explained to the general how I was left with no choice but to ask him to find a hard copy for me, given that either access was restricted or the information no longer available wherever I checked online: Northwestern, the AMA, the Illinois DOC, even the archives of broadsheets and magazines. But once again, it was time to leave and the ground crew was behaving as if it was Christmas Eve in JFK, so I could only scrawl a few words at the bottom of the page and close my eyes to the way they clashed with the earlier meticulousness I’d worked so hard to achieve.
I watched the passengers spill out to the tarmac and walk to the awaiting plane. A hush seemed to descend as daylight faded, and I felt as if a sort of end had come. P.S. I need a picture of the doctor, too, I’d written, and the reason was clear. Poised on the cusp of possibility, I suddenly wished to see her face, because I wanted to say goodbye.
oOo
We’re going home. I cannot wait to see the look on Consuelo’s face when she sees us. She’ll be surprised, I’m sure. And I’ve never seen Raul this happy. And that makes me happy.
You can just imagine how relieved I was when everybody showed up for breakfast today. We kept on thanking them until we got to the foot of the mountain, but all this talk about vengeful engkantadas coming for you in your sleep and snatching your soul made me so nervous I did not want to go to bed last night. Made the guys nervous, too, but they got so drunk they just passed out. As for me, I just thought...I’d just come to the infirmary for my shot, you were sitting at your desk with your back to me, then you turned and said, “Mr. Scofield”, so serious in your white coat...and before I knew it, it was morning.
But for the first time in years I didn’t dream of you. I knew it as soon as I opened my eyes, and I missed you right away.
oOo
Jerry arrived on Monday with the rations and the parcel from my father, a tightly sealed envelope. It felt light in my hand. Expecting a meaty dossier on Jane Phillips, I’d prepared myself for something hefty and thick, and I couldn’t deny the keen stab of disappointment upon seeing that it was not. But then, it didn’t have to be. I sat in Raul’s study with a cup of coffee, pulled out the doctor’s picture, and oh yes, it didn’t have to be.
I suppose I should have been happy. I should have cartwheeled around the room, run down the stairs, out the house and up and down the beach, smiled my gratitude into the air. In a simple universe, yes--but there had been far too much fear and pain and doubt in this one that nothing hinting at so much happiness would ever be taken at face value again, and so there were no cartwheels, no running, no knee-jerk jubilation.
Instead, I remembered all the times the children ran up to her, stared and then ran away shouting, “Matang alak, matang alak!” as if they’d been sent by their more timid elders to find out. Whiskey eyes, whiskey eyes...I recalled the times she looked at me, her face drawn, as if the deception had gone on too long for her and she was on the brink of surrender. “Ann, I--” she would begin, only to change her mind. Ultimately, she did yield: one day she started talking, over dishes, about a distant father, a mother whose madness so terrified her that she’d fled, using a worthy cause to mask the betrayal of her desertion, about her regret at all the time spent on enmity and detachment that she couldn’t get back. But it only seemed she was talking, not about herself, but about me--a little investigation into my life done on the sly and there she was, criticizing me, underhandedly to boot, telling me how to live it. I exploded. “You’ve got some nerve,” I snapped at her and walked out. I caught the look of confusion and hurt on her face before I turned, and a full day passed before she talked to me again.
No whoops of joy; instead, there was much self-flagellation (all this time and I didn’t know, I should have been protecting her and oh my God I need a gun) and disproportionate self-defense (the glass panel at the airport was foggy, time tarnished the memory, a mind conditioned to believe one thing was quick to jump to conclusions...). When that waned, the pessimist in me saw an opportunity to contemplate the many ways something this beautiful could still go so wrong and seized it, spinning one disaster after another in my head. And after the forgotten coffee went tepid and my tremors ceased, I stood by the window, looked down at her in the yard as she took down the dry sheets from the clothesline, and thought, finally allowing myself to smile, E pur si muove.
Lies and pain and goodbye. And yet, it moves.
Soon enough Fur Elise rang out, snapping me out of my thoughts; it was time to make dinner. On the kitchen counter was my half-written menu for tomorrow’s homecoming lunch for the boys--Mario had conveyed the news of their arrival promptly this time--and the sight jolted me. Someone should tell Joe, I thought with alarm, and I was ready to hop onto the first falowa I could get, giant waves be damned. But it was too late.
As I stood by my newly-delivered box of rations, she who moved and lived rushed out of the greenhouse with her harvest, crying, “Ann, look! We have tomatoes!” Just then, as if by thinking about him I’d conjured him up, the very person I was fretting about rounded the corner into the yard, and in that way beheld the impossible before I could warn him. Or maybe he’d entered the yard well before she emerged but never made it to the kitchen door, paralyzed by the sound of her voice. Perhaps the air crackled as whiskey met cobalt; voices, breathless with shock and then joy, whispered names and disbelief as her hands sought his, and he retreated. Or, possibly, they collided and promptly leapt apart, overcome by the contact, after which they regarded each other with tense caginess as they backed further away.
One thing’s for sure, though: one Monday afternoon at the edge of the world, Michael Scofield, a day early, and Sara Tancredi, four years late, saw each other again; as for the finer details of the exact moment that they did, I could only surmise. All I heard were her voice and his gasp, and all I saw were tomatoes, rolling slowly on the ground past the open kitchen door.
Oh, my God.
The second I was out the door Michael reached for me, the fingers of one hand closing hard around my wrist. He extended his free arm before him as if to push her back. “No,” he choked out, and his eyes were stones of murderous rage.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, but instantly I knew it wasn’t true, neither for him nor for Sara. She had withdrawn all the way back to the greenhouse, the canvas flaps of the entrance behind her beating from an erratic breeze, and for a few long seconds it seemed to be the only sound for miles around. “Michael?” she whispered, her head tilting slightly as she looked at us, stumped by his reaction. And then her face fell, wounded confusion all over it, as if she’d just spilled out her life to someone only to be rebuffed again.
It was not the happiest reunion. But then again, reunions had never been kind to these two.
oOo
The second she was led to a room and LJ to another in the new building they’d been transferred to after the failed rescue attempt by Lincoln, Sara Tancredi knew that she would pay for her defiance in the sickest possible way. Oddly enough, when she was later pushed by two men into a van all alone, she started crying, convinced they were going to kill LJ, when in fact they were going to kill her. In a surge of courage she never thought she had in her, she managed to escape--specializing in trauma for years taught you exactly where to kick--with the intention of coming back for him. But with a gunshot wound in her stomach that proved to be impossible. She barely made it to the first clinic she could find, was barely alive when she finally talked to Bruce. And when Bruce came to take her back to the U.S., telling her in so many words how that was for the best, she felt like she’d turned into the worst kind of turncoat--the professional deserter--and no amount of assurance that LJ was safe eased the pain from that knowledge.
With Bruce’s help, she'd gone into hiding. All online records of her life were cleaned. The anti-Company, in the wake of Aldo’s death, had split into multiple factions, each suspecting the other of leaking information to the enemy. Deciding to make herself useful, she stayed with the group Bruce trusted, moving from one safe house to another where she tended to the wounded, and for years she saw men and women die before her eyes and under her hands no matter how hard she tried. Occasionally, some rumor would come to her--a Michael sighting, at times with a blond- turned dark-haired woman whose loyalties they could only hope were with Aldo Burrows--and it would fill her each time, unfailingly, with anticipation. He’ll come looking for me, anytime now, she would think in the few minutes of exhilaration she allowed herself to feel in the aftermath of a successful attempt to save an agent’s life, and it would take a year of such wishful thinking before she finally gave up.
Then one day, Bruce came to her to say that everything was all right. Exactly like that--“Everything’s all right now, it’s over”--and she refused to believe him until he showed her pictures, legal documents, proof of life. She soaked up all the information about him--no known lover, it said in his most current file (that, in particular, seemed important)--and, emboldened, she knew she was quenching a thirst she could no longer deny.
And so Dr. Sara Tancredi surfaced akin to a hermit stepping out of a cave. She hopped on two planes, a boat, and a falowa, endured the company of a hostile-turned-appraisive female for more than a week, and tried to look as pretty as she possibly could, all for the satisfaction, she told herself, of rendering Michael Scofield speechless when she faced him and said, “I thought I’d drop by, was wondering how you were. You did tell me to wait for you.” (Last part unsaid, of course, but so heavily implied by everything else that they’d shared, unless the genius had totally, irretrievably forgotten.)
Weeks later, she would finally admit to me that she had been driven by something much simpler: he might have forgotten but she hadn’t, and she just wanted to see him again.
oOo
So there she was, gloriously alive. Always had been, but Michael Scofield hadn’t known, so he didn’t gather her up in his arms. Instead, he stared at her--certain, I would find out, that she was a trick the engkantadas were playing on him as retribution for insufficient gratitude. I wanted to crack a joke to ease the tension somewhat, but as my hand turned blue and numb in his grip, I began to get scared.
Sara looked at his face to my hand with apprehension. “You’re hurting her, Mi--” she said, and at her mistake she looked at me, an apology in her eyes. “Ann, I’m sorry, there’s something you need to know--”
“I already do,” I interrupted her, nodding quickly in assurance. “I just found out. Later, I’ll explain later.” She started to move forward. “No,” I told her, “just...just stay there.” Michael had gone too still for comfort. His eyes held a look I’d seen in my mother’s own eyes, and the fact filled me with dread. He began to mumble.
“Joe?” His grip didn’t relax. My wrist locked in place, I tried not to grimace as I turned to face him. My elbow stuck out unnaturally and a jolt of pain ran up my arm to my shoulder, but I clenched my teeth and sucked it up. He repeated the words, still unintelligible, and he was looking blankly in the distance. He was slipping away.
There is a kind of courage that comes with knowing that there is a responsibility that is yours and yours alone, and this knowledge makes this courage impenetrable to doubt. Mothers know this best, I think--you’ve got this young life on your hands, and suddenly you’re stronger, there is nothing you wouldn’t do for this being you’ve brought into existence. My sister, at fourteen, knew this, too. For some reason, it came more easily to her than it came to me, but in that afternoon with his hand clamped around my wrist as if I was his lifeline, I was brave enough to deal with something I did not fully understand.
I lifted my free hand to his face. I stood on tiptoe, my body stretched to the limit, and pressed the palm of my trembling hand to his cheek. “Michael?” It was the name of a stranger. “Michael,” I repeated, firmly this time, “Michael, look at me. Look at me. Please, Michael. Look at me.”
My arm was on fire. My legs felt like they were about to give out beneath me. Vaguely I was aware of the boys reaching the yard and freezing in place. But you had to hand it to them: most times they were so dense it seemed I had to draw charts from one of the wall to another before they got my point, but at that moment the grasp was incredibly quick. By the time Michael and I were okay, they’d not only managed to get Sara into the house with minimum fuss, they’d also put the kettle on the stove for the masala, remembered to pick the prized cherry tomatoes up from the ground and wash them, and resisted the urge to quiz the doctor, choosing instead to keep a respectable silence.
Finally Michael’s grip on my wrist relaxed, and his breathing slowed. His words became clear. “I lift my lids,” he said, meeting my eyes, “and all is...and all is...”
I knew it. He’d been reading The Bell Jar. I would not have been surprised if he’d read Mad Girl’s Love Song so many times he could recite it by heart. When everything settled down the first thing I would tell Raul was, “How many times have I told you to throw away the Plath?” because I really had asked him to, countless times, back when Andy had just broken up with him and by some masochistic urge he would repeat the poem to himself ad infinitum. “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead, I think I made you up inside my head” recurs all throughout the damn gloomy thing, but Michael had chosen to latch on the single hopeful line in there: I lift my lids and all is born again.
Oh, Michael. I couldn’t help it. My eyes welled up, but I managed to compose myself quickly, and only a tear or two managed to escape. “I know,” I told him. Lies and pain and death, yet always, hope. “I know.”
Later, Michael would stand at the foot of the stairs, breathe in to steel himself, and call out, “Sara?” As she walked down to him he would look at her with so much reverence that my mouth went dry just watching them. It would be touch and go for a while, but in time they figured it out--this rare, invariable thing between them--and they would start thinking of the future, steady as they went. Much, much later, one golden afternoon, I would find myself standing in the chancel of St. Dominic’s, filled with misgivings; Ed’s heart would be broken; Raul would get his name in the books; Michael and Sara would leave; and I would be entrusted with the history of a life.
But for now, Michael and I sat on the kitchen doorstep and simply took it all in, one at a time. An eagle soared overhead and settled on a branch of an aryus tree. The gap in the hedge was widening. The low voices of the boys carried over from the living room. Thunder rolled in the distance. The wild violets changed color in the fading light. “It's lavender, I think,” I said. “More like heliotrope,” Michael replied. Call it orange and it would have been fine with us; there were more important things to consider. Like making the perfect Napolitano, and holding your woman, kissing her with your soul. The smell of the sea drifted in, strong and comforting.
Chapter Eight (Part One)