The Unheralded Savior
Title: The Unheralded Savior
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Michael, Veronica, Lincoln (M/V)
Category: One-shot
Rating: PG-13 (sexual themes)
Summary: A mostly pre-series fic with some post-escape Fox River, that is totally AU from end of S2 that gives a possible arc for a Michael/Veronica relationship that is somewhat different from the other M/V stuff I’ve written (or am currently writing).
Author’s Notes: Written for the pbfic_exchange2 on chanchito_z’s prompts. She loves M/V like crazy, and can’t get enough of them! ;-) Betaed by the lovely miss_mazzie.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
~Albert Pike
“Tell me a secret, Mikey,” Lincoln whispered. “Anything you want.”
Michael shifted his face against his brother’s shoulder, burrowing closer in the process. Sniffing, he said, “I’m scared, Linc.” Even at nine years old, Michael didn’t think it was really a secret, at least not from Linc. Linc always knew how Michael felt, especially when they left the hospital after visiting their mother.
There was a moment of silence and then Lincoln asked, “You want to know my secret?”
Michael nodded, clinging more tightly to his brother.
“I’m scared, too.”
~~~
Michael didn’t know what had happened exactly; but something had ‘happened’ and now Veronica Donovan was officially Linc’s girlfriend. Michael was 12, so he had a guess, but he didn’t know for sure, since he’d never had one himself. He didn’t know what happened when someone became your girlfriend.
There must be some kind of ceremony or something, though he couldn’t imagine Linc knowing anything about that, or being willing to participate if he did know.
“Tell me the secret,” he whispered that night when Linc crawled into bed with him after Veronica had gone home.
“What secret?” Lincoln mumbled sleepily, a smile in his voice.
Michael elbowed his older brother. “You know. The secret of how you get girls.”
~~~
Sitting in the living room of Veronica’s father’s house, amid piles of wrapping paper, Michael glanced up just as she walked in from the kitchen. She smiled when their eyes met and asked, “Did Santa bring you everything you wanted?”
She looked beautiful, and that distracted him for the moment from the fact that she had addressed him as though he were much younger, and much stupider than his nearly 14 years should have indicated. Right after they had opened their gifts, Veronica had made Lincoln tie a green ribbon from one of her presents around her head and now the big bow flopped over the right side of her head. The bright color brought out her eyes and they sparkled and snapped with happiness.
Michael felt a stirring in his gut he had never felt before, at least not when he looked at his brother’s girlfriend. He’d known Veronica most of his life, so having her around was fairly normal. Regardless of his and Lincoln’s ever changing circumstances, Veronica was a stalwart part of their lives, the one thing that moved with them wherever they went. She always came to visit Michael, even when Lincoln had been in Juvenile Hall the previous autumn.
Michael had slept with his head in her lap on more than one occasion. She had taken him shopping, spent time with him on his homework, and sometimes, like on his birthday or the anniversary of his mother’s death, she made special arrangements to spend time with him-especially when Lincoln hadn’t been around on those days.
He’d often thought that if he’d had a big sister instead of a big brother, Veronica would have been perfect. Not that he wanted a sister over a brother, because Lincoln was the best brother in the world, even if he got into trouble from time to time.
But Veronica was so nice and so thoughtful. And now with a giant bow on her head and a smile on her lips that Lincoln captured with his own mouth, Michael had an inkling of what she made his brother feel.
It was a rather stupendous feeling.
There were several girls at school that Michael liked, or at least thought were pretty. He sometimes thought about kissing them, or what they looked like without clothes. He knew it was inappropriate, but the one time he’d asked Lincoln about strange thoughts like those, his brother had pounded him on the back enthusiastically and said, “Ask me anything!”
That’s when Michael realized the secret he hadn’t been allowed to know 18 months before had suddenly happened to him. Lincoln gave him all sorts of crazy instructions like, “Be really nice and flirty to the girl, but then the next day, act like you don’t know her at all. Chicks eat that stuff up. The less you act like you like them, the more they want you.”
Michael’s brow had puckered at this strange proclamation. “That doesn’t seem right,” he’d said, watching Lincoln intently.
“How do you think I got Vee?” Lincoln had asked, winking.
~~~
So Michael had observed the proceedings for a long time, but he started paying close attention after that. He saw the things Lincoln said or did that made Veronica smile, or frown, and he especially noticed when things his brother did made her cry. But Veronica never cried in front of Lincoln. In fact, it seemed as though she were more likely to leave the room and seek privacy if driven to tears.
Michael could discern just what it meant when she came out of the bathroom and her eyes were red or her face was blotchy. If Lincoln noticed, he never said anything. He never apologized, either, ever, not that Michael saw. Although one time when it was just the two of them, he accused Lincoln of treating Veronica badly, and Lincoln had gotten a look on his face, an expression Michael had never seen before (and he was very intimate with all of his brother’s guises). The softness in Lincoln’s blue eyes and the gentleness in his tone was at odds with the grip of his hand around the back of Michael’s neck, but he squeezed until Michael’s skin pinched in the gaps of his fingers. “There are ways to say you’re sorry without words, Mike.”
Michael had paused, soaking that in. A sudden, vivid idea of what that meant filled his mind, revolting him. He did not want to think of Lincoln touching Veronica, of his brother saying he was sorry with actions instead of words. He didn’t want to think of Veronica in a sexual way, unless she was with him.
It was a very disturbing realization.
Disturbing, because he imagined Lincoln would pummel his face beyond all recognition if he knew about it. Disturbing, because it would never happen. Disturbing, because Michael suddenly could think of nothing else.
What struck him most funny was that Lincoln had been right. If he gave Veronica the cold shoulder, she was more demanding of his attention. She seemed to need Michael’s eyes on her, and his snide remarks about Lincoln that were said softly where Lincoln couldn’t hear them. And when Lincoln was in jail overnight for public drunkenness or for six months for assault and battery, Veronica spent even more time with Michael than she did when Lincoln was at home.
It was bound to happen eventually. He didn’t even plan it, and one thing that could be said of a nearly 16-year-old Michael: nothing ever happened in his apartment with Lincoln, the first place they’d lived together just the two of them, that Michael didn’t plan. Order was very important, and now that he was in an environment that he could control-that Lincoln would let him control because he didn’t want to see to all the details the way Michael could so effortlessly-it had become quite easy to keep things just how he wanted them.
But Veronica happened to him. In a way he couldn’t have anticipated, in a way he hadn’t dreamed. And it changed everything.
~~~
It was common knowledge amongst Lincoln and Michael that Vee’s dad was a drunk and, that if provoked when drunk, he would hit her. It hadn’t happened too often, because his drinking developed in Veronica’s early teens not long after her mother had left him, and she quickly learned to get out of the house when a storm started to brew.
Once, when she hadn’t been able to escape, she’d shown up at their foster home with a black eye. Lincoln had been almost 18 then and already over six feet tall. Though slender-he didn’t lift weights like his buddy Derek Sweeney-he was very scary when he was mad. He’d been in more than his share of fights by then, though mostly with his peers. So when he went to Veronica’s house and beat up her dad-promising the man that if Veronica ever showed up again with bruises on her, the next beating would be much more severe-Michael had felt a great deal of anxiety as he awaited the penalty of those actions.
Michael had never seen Lincoln that mad before, and that was saying something. Strangely, that had not been one of the times Lincoln ended up in Juvi, but Michael worried that would happen and they’d have to leave yet another foster home. After some time pondering the situation, he realized Veronica’s dad must have been more afraid of the consequences of his own actions than he was worried about getting Lincoln locked up for doing the same to him.
Soon after that, Lincoln turned 18 and got out of foster care. It had taken almost another two years for his brother to get it together enough to prove to the State that he could care for Michael properly. But what a joyous day that had been, and the six months that followed had been the happiest that Michael had known since his mother died-he and Linc together in their own house with Veronica there more often than not. On the nights she stayed over, Michael slept with his Walkman on because he didn’t want to hear anything going on in the next room.
When Linc got sent to Stateville to serve a 6-month-long sentence for the actual crime of carrying drug paraphernalia, Veronica and Michael had commiserated together, but both of them were waiting. Waiting for Linc to get out and come home; waiting for Linc to stop doing stuff like that; perpetually waiting.
One night, four months after Lincoln’s incarceration, Veronica showed up at Michael’s apartment. Her eyes were wide with fear and her bottom lip bled copiously from where it was split. He could see a bruise forming on her pale cheek and rage entered his heart in a way that made him understand entirely what had driven Lincoln to beat her father before. Michael asked, “What happened?” as he ushered her into the bathroom to clean her wound.
“He found out that Linc’s in jail. It was like he was just waiting for a chance to smack me around when there would be no repercussions,” she said as Michael gently shoved her down on to the closed toilet lid before turning to fish in the medicine cabinet for supplies.
“How’d he find out?” Michael asked, dumping a generous amount of peroxide on to a washcloth.
“Derek Sweeney. He came by because he couldn’t get a hold of Lincoln. Figured I knew where he was.”
Veronica’s eyes watched the yellow colored fabric as Michael brought it to her face. As he tenderly dabbed her lip, he said, “Oh, great, this is my fault then. I wouldn’t tell him where Linc was. I figured it was his fault somehow Linc got caught, so I wouldn’t give up any information.” Michael said this with some sarcasm, but he felt the blows that had bruised and bloodied Veronica’s face upon his own heart.
Wincing, she played along with his tone. “Oh, yeah, totally your fault. I mean, you made my mom walk out, and you made my dad turn into an abusive drunk, and you made sure my boyfriend was in jail so that there’s no one to protect me.” Her eyes still sparkled at him, even though he knew how truly scared she must be.
“I’ll protect you,” he said calmly, brushing his fingers over her swollen cheek. “You can stay here, Vee. You should just come here and live with me. Your dad won’t be able to find you. He certainly won’t be looking for you in the projects, especially with Linc in jail.”
Veronica scoffed. “Michael, you’re barely making ends meet as it is. I can’t stay here.”
“You have a job,” Michael pointed out, which was true, she worked after school at a convenience store, but it was only a full-time, part-time job. “You can help out a little. And it’s really not so bad, not with my mom’s social security.”
Tears formed in her eyes as she looked up at him, but she didn’t say anything. “You should move in,” he said again, and this time it was the only possible solution.
~~~
The ease with which they began living together seemed preposterous. Michael waited for arguments to erupt the way they did between he and Lincoln, but usually when he thought she might be mad because he’d left a mess in the kitchen, he’d get home to find her already cleaning up while Madonna blared from the tape player that sat on the kitchen window sill.
She would smile at him and make him dance to “Into the Groove” with her before they settled down to do their homework. Then they’d make dinner together, things like macaroni and cheese or spaghetti with tomato sauce poured over it, except that Vee could make it all taste good. He wasn’t really sure how she did it, but he sometimes suspected it was like the food his mother had fed him when he was small. He couldn’t remember anything specific Christina had cooked, he only remembered it tasted so good.
He was pretty sure the flavor was love.
At night, she would sleep in Lincoln’s bedroom, and Michael would lie awake in his room torn between utter contentment and total torment, because while Veronica made him feel the fulfillment of familial love, it wasn’t a maternal touch he craved in the dark of night. He wanted her there the way she was, but he also wanted so much more of her. There were moments when he thought she might have suspected that, or she might have even reciprocated; times when a look between them lasted too long in the silence, or a hand lingered upon another hand, and Michael noticed it even more when it wasn’t he who came up with reasons for them to be close together. Scary movies on TV on Saturday night, or a tornado warning for the Chicago area were good enough reasons for his roommate to huddle up next to him; if she had been any other girl, he might have assumed she was really scared, but she was Veronica, and he had been around her his whole life and this was new behavior. She never did anything more than that to prove his theories right, and most often, she would slip off to bed early, always telling him how many days they had left until Lincoln came home.
That had been a fun conversation. When Michael went to Stateville for visitation without Veronica right after she moved in, he’d expected Lincoln to be thrilled to hear how he’d rescued her from her father’s evil clutches. It hadn’t gone exactly like that. Lincoln had, of course, been grateful Michael had been so quick to find a solution, as he had not been there to do anything himself. However, he’d promptly instructed, “She can’t be living there when I get out, Michael. You have to make sure she knows she’s gotta go back before I come home.”
“Why?” Michael had asked, truly perplexed. He couldn’t imagine anything better than living with Veronica, though he could certainly see how he’d enjoy it more while Lincoln was at Stateville. However, the bottom line was Veronica’s safety, and since that had been the original reasoning for her moving in, Michael couldn’t see the sense of her ever moving out.
“Because I’m over 18. And now, I’m a convicted felon. Until she turns 18, she can’t be living there, or I’ll just be back in jail quicker than you say, ‘fuck me,’” Lincoln said, his eyes earnest. He leaned forward, gripping the phone in his hand and then he rapped his knuckles on the window between him and Michael. “Do you understand? As soon as she’s 18, it’s fine. But we’ve got more than half a year until that happens.”
“Nobody will know,” Michael said insistently.
“People always find out secrets, Michael. You know that. We can’t take the chance. That’s all we need is me back in here because of something else stupid.”
Michael bit his tongue not to point out that at least Veronica would be worth going to jail for. Instead, he told his brother he’d take care of it, and then he trudged home, miserable. He couldn’t imagine telling Veronica she had to go back to her dad’s, and now, almost five weeks had passed, and he had Lincoln placated on the one side, believing he’d told her the situation, and Veronica happy at home, completely clueless. Nobody except Michael knew that with each day she crossed off on the calendar, the closer their domestic bliss was coming to an end.
~~~
The torment of Veronica on just the other side of the wall generally culminated in the nightly ritual of his hand wrapped tightly around his cock, but on one particular night Michael had fallen asleep with his fingers still resting loosely inside his boxer shorts. He’d been exhausted, having studied for 5 hours straight for a Chemistry mid-term, though not so tired that Veronica walking around the house in a pajama shorts outfit hadn’t stirred him up plenty before he headed off to bed.
He had, unfortunately, fallen quickly to sleep afterwards, which was very unusual for him; he always cleaned up before he eased into slumber.
When he heard her voice, he thought he was dreaming. But then his bed shifted as she slid under the covers with him. Again he heard, “Michael?” only this time her voice was right in his ear and his hand attempted to slide out of his shorts without drawing too much attention to that fact.
He was very relieved to open his eyes and see that she had shut the door behind her, so there was hardly any light for visibility. Her legs scissored under his blankets, her bare skin brushing his and he remembered he had only his underwear on. “Whassamatter?” he muttered, still not completely awake.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice low. He had to strain to hear her. Or maybe every muscle in his body was straining on instinct, he didn’t know, because he felt feverish and hard everywhere, not just the obvious place.
Her hand moved under the sheet, easing over his chest, down his belly, and, he was very much afraid, headed for his damp shorts. He grabbed her hand and asked, already panting, “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said again, but then her lips were on his, and Michael was pitched fully into the world that constituted male adulthood. Lincoln had asked him several times since he’d turned 16, “When’re you gonna get laid already?” The irony that he could never tell Lincoln his biggest secret pulsated through him with the spasms of the first orgasm he ever shared with anyone other than himself.
In the aftermath, Michael realized lying in the shared fluids of someone you loved was somehow not gross at all. He’d always imagined it was imperative to shower right away, or at least wipe yourself clean from such an act, but Veronica stayed laying on top of him, and he wouldn’t have moved for anything. This was heaven, and as long as he had it, he planned to enjoy it.
Her lips moved against his shoulder. “I have to move out.”
Michael’s fingers were memorizing the terrain of her back and bottom, but they didn’t stop moving as he asked, “Because of this?”
“Partly,” she said, easing their bodies apart. He feared she was leaving, but instead she just settled next to him in the twin bed, and he turned on to his side so there was more room for both of them. “I love Lincoln. I love him,” she said softly, “but living here with him isn’t a good idea. Living here with you isn’t a good idea either, for that matter.”
Michael ached to ask her why she had come into his room, why she had done this, but as much as he wanted to know why, he also didn’t want to know why. Not when she’d just declared her love for his brother only moments after he’d come inside her. So he asked an ambiguous, “Why?” and waited to see what she would respond to.
“He wants to get married,” she confessed, and Michael felt shock ripple through him. He had no idea Lincoln wanted to get married at all, much less marry Veronica. Though, as soon as she said it out loud, it felt like a truth he had long known, just never acknowledged.
The only question that could be asked then was, “You don’t want to get married?” Michael could have worked up more incredulity if they weren’t lying naked together in his bed in the dark.
“Someday, I do. But I want to go to college first.”
“Married people go to college,” Michael reasoned.
“I want to go to college away from Chicago. I want to go places and do things. At least for a while. If we get married when Lincoln wants to, that will make all that impossible.”
Michael remained silent for a moment and moved his hand up so that he could stroke his fingers through her brown hair. “Are you sure he wants to get married soon? I mean, it seems a little…un-Lincoln-like, if you ask me.”
She laughed; a small, painful sound that hit his face in short puffs. “I know, it’s crazy isn’t it?” Shaking her head, she maneuvered closer, and edged her face into the cove of his chin and shoulder. “As soon as I’m 18, that’s when he wants to do it. But I just can’t. Do you know when my parents got married?” Michael shook his head and she went on immediately. “The day after my mother graduated from high school.” The bitterness in her laughter now made the word an oxymoron. “She got pregnant on their honeymoon. Then 14 years later, she left. She hated her life. And I can’t imagine ever hating Lincoln. I can’t do that.”
Michael couldn’t help himself when he asked, “What if he hates you for leaving?”
Veronica sighed, a shaky sound that made Michael hurt for her more than he could ever hurt for himself. Whispering, she said, “I’m more afraid of marrying him than I am of that.”
~~~
So Veronica moved out, and Lincoln came home. Things seemed pretty much the same as they had before, except that Michael knew everyone’s secrets, including his own. It was a strange thing to sit in your living room with your brother and the girl you both loved, knowing that they were happy now, but they wanted different things and they weren’t talking about it.
He found himself resenting Veronica’s easy smile and the free kisses she distributed on Lincoln’s face, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that he would have liked to have them for himself. It was one thing to have a secret from Lincoln that you kept because you knew it would hurt him; it was another thing entirely to harbor a secret, waiting for the time to come when you would unleash it on him.
He didn’t tell Lincoln about him and Veronica because he loved Lincoln. (Well, he was rightfully afraid Lincoln would beat him up. That had happened before, for other reasons, but it was never a good thing.) Veronica didn’t tell Lincoln she was applying to colleges at least three hours away because she didn’t want him to try to stop her.
The day she finally told him was two weeks before she turned 18. She told him because Michael told her Lincoln had been ring shopping. She told him, and promised him they would still be together even though she was far away.
Lincoln never believed that, though; Michael, on the other hand, actually did. He knew that Veronica just wanted to stretch her wings a little, but she would come back. But Lincoln didn’t wait, and soon after that Michael became an uncle and a brother-in-law.
Three years after that, Veronica got accepted to law school in Texas. She came back to Chicago to say goodbye, but Lincoln was still in his on-again, off-again marriage to Lisa, and Michael was the only one available.
It didn’t strike him as ironic that she fucked him for the second time when what she was really trying to do was say goodbye to his brother. Because by then, Michael understood what had happened in the dark several years before. He’d been gaining something, but she’d been trying to lose something, and he was her proof that she could.
Michael knew he would tell Dr. Brighton all about it in their next session, how everything had become crystal clear as he held Veronica down on his bed, how his fingers had left bruises on her wrists, how his hips had worked violently, trying to absolve both him and his brother of the stain of Veronica Donovan. How she had given back to him just as hungrily, until he too bore the physical imprints of her anguish.
Dr. Brighton would tell him that he had lost his power by giving into her in the first place, but he didn’t care. It would be the last time. This was a severing of permanence, for all of them.
~~~
The day Lincoln and Veronica decided to give it another go-she had just graduated from law school and Michael had mistakenly taken Lincoln with him to Texas for the event-Michael wondered if his greatest secret could ever be revealed.
He wanted what Lincoln had. Or maybe he just wished he saw the world the way Lincoln did. A love that time could not erase-no matter how ill-matched Lincoln and Veronica were now; a child, though born out of inconvenience and error, who adored Lincoln as only small boys can worship and love their fathers, however imperfect they may be; the ability to have absolutely nothing to show for his life but still have total security and happiness as long as he had his girlfriend, his son, and his brother. During the honeymoon period of his reconciliation with Veronica, Michael heard that statement again and again. All Lincoln needed was the three of them, and as long as he had them, he was fine. When Michael hinted that a real job and real prospects were going to be necessary both to support LJ and be equally-yoked with Veronica, Lincoln couldn’t have been listening less unless he had been born deaf.
That was what drove Michael to acknowledge the irritation he knew he should feel towards Lincoln’s shiftlessness; he hadn’t actually ever felt it before because he loved his brother too much, but enduring the Linc/Vee cocktail that could only end in some sort of heartbreak for all three of them again drove him to Dr. Brighton’s couch with increased regularity.
His therapist tried to help him with exercises of what he would do and say if and when Veronica showed up at his apartment like she normally did when things went downhill with his brother, and the dialogues worked dynamically in the hypothetical between the two men.
The actual moment when he attempted to say those things to the woman who stood so painfully small inside his wide, gray, dismal loft, ended with Michael mentally undressing her and shoving himself inside her, even as he heard Dr. Brighton’s voice crying, No, no, no!
Later he tried to tell himself it wasn’t Dr. Brighton’s voice, but his own that said no. That was a lie.
He had the decency to invite her in, let her sit on his couch and tell him her worries, her concerns that despite her love for Lincoln, they were too far apart now. Michael knew just what she meant, because his years at Loyola had produced a similar distance between his brother and himself, though he worked very hard not to care about it. In retrospect, he thought them both very stupid to have never considered the consequences of continuing their education. Not that either of them would have changed it, but if Lincoln had never finished high school, how could he ever relate to a couple of college graduates? How had they not seen that coming?
Love was a crazy, blind thing.
She sat there for an hour and 18 minutes before she leaned towards him. By the hour and a half mark, they had both climaxed on his cream colored sofa, leaving a wet spot behind them.
He’d once heard sex referred to as the little death; that at that instant of agonized bliss, your heart stopped for just a moment, and you died a little bit in the arms of your lover. With Veronica, it was a little death of a different variety. Every time he felt he’d had a breakthrough and all the reasons he and Dr. Brighton had worked out in list formation would run through his head-it would kill Lincoln to know, Michael deserved better than someone who came to him only when they were sad, Veronica had to learn she couldn’t behave that way, what would his mother think if she could see him now?-okay, that last one was just one Michael had in his head, he’d never said it aloud, but all the same-when he recited those things, he felt sure that should he ever face the temptation again, he’d have the strength to say no.
But here she was again, and here he was again, and it was like he’d never progressed at all. The little death that stopped his heart also broke it further when it didn’t happen again. Because, deep down he knew it never should have happened at all.
Even as he made love to her, he knew she didn’t think of him; even as he worshipped her with everything inside him, giving her everything he hadn’t known how to give when he was younger, he knew she would leave and not come back.
He imagined Lincoln felt just the same, though his expression of those feelings came in the form of a twelve pack and the gruffly asked question, “You feel like getting loaded tonight?”
Michael waved him into the apartment, the apartment that unbeknownst to Lincoln, had been a refuge for Veronica so she could break away from him one last time. The irony that it became Lincoln’s refuge too eased Michael’s guilty conscience somewhat.
His brother slouched on the too-nice furniture, his boots leaving black marks that Michael didn’t have the heart to care about. “You want to tell me a secret?” Michael asked some time later, several beers behind his brother. One of them had to keep some semblance of control, even if they were just getting drunk and not going anywhere.
“It’s not a secret, it’s never been one,” Lincoln said forlornly, his head lolling against the back of the couch. “She’s too good for me, always has been.”
“That’s not true,” Michael said, and though there might have been times he thought that, he now believed what he said. “Veronica’s not perfect, Lincoln. She made mistakes too.”
“Yeah, and I was her biggest one,” he muttered, turning the bottle up against his lips and drinking deeply.
Michael certainly could argue the veracity of that statement-though to do so would reveal the one secret he hoped Lincoln could never decipher-but instead he leaned over slightly to clink his beer bottle against Lincoln’s. “To a world without Veronica,” he said softly.
Lincoln’s eyes shifted, flickering over Michael’s face sleepily. “If my world could exist without Veronica, don’t you think I’d have a totally different life?” It was a serious question, though Michael wondered if Lincoln would later remember even asking it.
The honest answer was no. The true answer was no. But Michael loved Lincoln, so he lied to him without remorse. “Yes, I do. You’d have a totally different life if it weren’t for Veronica.”
He sipped his beer and contemplated the truth of that for himself. Maybe at one time, his and Lincoln’s futures had been dependent on her, but the past could not be changed. He didn’t know for sure, but he sometimes thought the love between the three of them was the only reason he and Lincoln had made it to adulthood.
~~~
Standing at the makeshift grave, Michael tossed down three yellow roses. They didn’t have her body, so they had taken a framed copy of a photo of the three of them at her law school graduation and put it in the ground in the backyard of their house in Baja.
“You want to know a secret, Linc?” Michael asked as he squatted down and ran his fingers over the freshly turned dirt.
“What?” Lincoln asked, his head lifted towards the high sun, his eyes turned out towards the Pacific.
“I loved Veronica.”
“I know, man.”
“No,” Michael said with a smidge of impatience. “I mean, I used to be in love with her, when we were younger.”
“I know, Michael.”
Michael watched his brother. “How did you know?”
Lincoln didn’t turn his head, but the light caught his chiseled face just so, showing the tears on his cheekbones. “Because I know you. And I knew her. And how could you not have loved her? She was all we had.”
Michael fell momentarily silent, turning his eyes away from the cracked stoicism before him. It had been his great confession, but one he now knew he’d never needed to make.
It was all over; they were alive, safe-what most people would even call well. LJ was with them, out surfing everyday, as he was now, and somehow they both managed to find women along the way that had chosen to stay with them. Sara and Jane were now in the house, giving them their moment to remember Vee privately-remember all she had been to them, all she had done for them. It didn’t seem right to Michael that all they had of her was her memory, yet at the same time, the recollection of her seemed to make everything else possible.
Maybe Lincoln knew the whole secret; maybe he had always known it. But like other vitally important, life changing events, he’d never said a word about them, and Michael doubted that would change now.
“You know the real secret, don’t you, Mikey?” Lincoln asked, his voice choked from the emotion wrapping about them.
“What?” Michael queried, looking back up.
“Without her, we wouldn’t even be here.”
There were too many moments, like a montage across the blue sky behind Lincoln that Michael could have pulled from the well of his heart to use as an illustration. But the one vivid picture that flashed before him involved Veronica following him down a long hallway. She told him that his brother had done the dumbest thing in the world and, some would argue, spurred the beginnings of the craziest idea Michael Scofield had ever had.
Standing up, Michael took his place beside his brother, his arm surrounding Lincoln’s thick shoulders. “It’s not a secret, Linc,” he said softly. “Everybody knows.”
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Michael, Veronica, Lincoln (M/V)
Category: One-shot
Rating: PG-13 (sexual themes)
Summary: A mostly pre-series fic with some post-escape Fox River, that is totally AU from end of S2 that gives a possible arc for a Michael/Veronica relationship that is somewhat different from the other M/V stuff I’ve written (or am currently writing).
Author’s Notes: Written for the pbfic_exchange2 on chanchito_z’s prompts. She loves M/V like crazy, and can’t get enough of them! ;-) Betaed by the lovely miss_mazzie.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
~Albert Pike
“Tell me a secret, Mikey,” Lincoln whispered. “Anything you want.”
Michael shifted his face against his brother’s shoulder, burrowing closer in the process. Sniffing, he said, “I’m scared, Linc.” Even at nine years old, Michael didn’t think it was really a secret, at least not from Linc. Linc always knew how Michael felt, especially when they left the hospital after visiting their mother.
There was a moment of silence and then Lincoln asked, “You want to know my secret?”
Michael nodded, clinging more tightly to his brother.
“I’m scared, too.”
~~~
Michael didn’t know what had happened exactly; but something had ‘happened’ and now Veronica Donovan was officially Linc’s girlfriend. Michael was 12, so he had a guess, but he didn’t know for sure, since he’d never had one himself. He didn’t know what happened when someone became your girlfriend.
There must be some kind of ceremony or something, though he couldn’t imagine Linc knowing anything about that, or being willing to participate if he did know.
“Tell me the secret,” he whispered that night when Linc crawled into bed with him after Veronica had gone home.
“What secret?” Lincoln mumbled sleepily, a smile in his voice.
Michael elbowed his older brother. “You know. The secret of how you get girls.”
~~~
Sitting in the living room of Veronica’s father’s house, amid piles of wrapping paper, Michael glanced up just as she walked in from the kitchen. She smiled when their eyes met and asked, “Did Santa bring you everything you wanted?”
She looked beautiful, and that distracted him for the moment from the fact that she had addressed him as though he were much younger, and much stupider than his nearly 14 years should have indicated. Right after they had opened their gifts, Veronica had made Lincoln tie a green ribbon from one of her presents around her head and now the big bow flopped over the right side of her head. The bright color brought out her eyes and they sparkled and snapped with happiness.
Michael felt a stirring in his gut he had never felt before, at least not when he looked at his brother’s girlfriend. He’d known Veronica most of his life, so having her around was fairly normal. Regardless of his and Lincoln’s ever changing circumstances, Veronica was a stalwart part of their lives, the one thing that moved with them wherever they went. She always came to visit Michael, even when Lincoln had been in Juvenile Hall the previous autumn.
Michael had slept with his head in her lap on more than one occasion. She had taken him shopping, spent time with him on his homework, and sometimes, like on his birthday or the anniversary of his mother’s death, she made special arrangements to spend time with him-especially when Lincoln hadn’t been around on those days.
He’d often thought that if he’d had a big sister instead of a big brother, Veronica would have been perfect. Not that he wanted a sister over a brother, because Lincoln was the best brother in the world, even if he got into trouble from time to time.
But Veronica was so nice and so thoughtful. And now with a giant bow on her head and a smile on her lips that Lincoln captured with his own mouth, Michael had an inkling of what she made his brother feel.
It was a rather stupendous feeling.
There were several girls at school that Michael liked, or at least thought were pretty. He sometimes thought about kissing them, or what they looked like without clothes. He knew it was inappropriate, but the one time he’d asked Lincoln about strange thoughts like those, his brother had pounded him on the back enthusiastically and said, “Ask me anything!”
That’s when Michael realized the secret he hadn’t been allowed to know 18 months before had suddenly happened to him. Lincoln gave him all sorts of crazy instructions like, “Be really nice and flirty to the girl, but then the next day, act like you don’t know her at all. Chicks eat that stuff up. The less you act like you like them, the more they want you.”
Michael’s brow had puckered at this strange proclamation. “That doesn’t seem right,” he’d said, watching Lincoln intently.
“How do you think I got Vee?” Lincoln had asked, winking.
~~~
So Michael had observed the proceedings for a long time, but he started paying close attention after that. He saw the things Lincoln said or did that made Veronica smile, or frown, and he especially noticed when things his brother did made her cry. But Veronica never cried in front of Lincoln. In fact, it seemed as though she were more likely to leave the room and seek privacy if driven to tears.
Michael could discern just what it meant when she came out of the bathroom and her eyes were red or her face was blotchy. If Lincoln noticed, he never said anything. He never apologized, either, ever, not that Michael saw. Although one time when it was just the two of them, he accused Lincoln of treating Veronica badly, and Lincoln had gotten a look on his face, an expression Michael had never seen before (and he was very intimate with all of his brother’s guises). The softness in Lincoln’s blue eyes and the gentleness in his tone was at odds with the grip of his hand around the back of Michael’s neck, but he squeezed until Michael’s skin pinched in the gaps of his fingers. “There are ways to say you’re sorry without words, Mike.”
Michael had paused, soaking that in. A sudden, vivid idea of what that meant filled his mind, revolting him. He did not want to think of Lincoln touching Veronica, of his brother saying he was sorry with actions instead of words. He didn’t want to think of Veronica in a sexual way, unless she was with him.
It was a very disturbing realization.
Disturbing, because he imagined Lincoln would pummel his face beyond all recognition if he knew about it. Disturbing, because it would never happen. Disturbing, because Michael suddenly could think of nothing else.
What struck him most funny was that Lincoln had been right. If he gave Veronica the cold shoulder, she was more demanding of his attention. She seemed to need Michael’s eyes on her, and his snide remarks about Lincoln that were said softly where Lincoln couldn’t hear them. And when Lincoln was in jail overnight for public drunkenness or for six months for assault and battery, Veronica spent even more time with Michael than she did when Lincoln was at home.
It was bound to happen eventually. He didn’t even plan it, and one thing that could be said of a nearly 16-year-old Michael: nothing ever happened in his apartment with Lincoln, the first place they’d lived together just the two of them, that Michael didn’t plan. Order was very important, and now that he was in an environment that he could control-that Lincoln would let him control because he didn’t want to see to all the details the way Michael could so effortlessly-it had become quite easy to keep things just how he wanted them.
But Veronica happened to him. In a way he couldn’t have anticipated, in a way he hadn’t dreamed. And it changed everything.
~~~
It was common knowledge amongst Lincoln and Michael that Vee’s dad was a drunk and, that if provoked when drunk, he would hit her. It hadn’t happened too often, because his drinking developed in Veronica’s early teens not long after her mother had left him, and she quickly learned to get out of the house when a storm started to brew.
Once, when she hadn’t been able to escape, she’d shown up at their foster home with a black eye. Lincoln had been almost 18 then and already over six feet tall. Though slender-he didn’t lift weights like his buddy Derek Sweeney-he was very scary when he was mad. He’d been in more than his share of fights by then, though mostly with his peers. So when he went to Veronica’s house and beat up her dad-promising the man that if Veronica ever showed up again with bruises on her, the next beating would be much more severe-Michael had felt a great deal of anxiety as he awaited the penalty of those actions.
Michael had never seen Lincoln that mad before, and that was saying something. Strangely, that had not been one of the times Lincoln ended up in Juvi, but Michael worried that would happen and they’d have to leave yet another foster home. After some time pondering the situation, he realized Veronica’s dad must have been more afraid of the consequences of his own actions than he was worried about getting Lincoln locked up for doing the same to him.
Soon after that, Lincoln turned 18 and got out of foster care. It had taken almost another two years for his brother to get it together enough to prove to the State that he could care for Michael properly. But what a joyous day that had been, and the six months that followed had been the happiest that Michael had known since his mother died-he and Linc together in their own house with Veronica there more often than not. On the nights she stayed over, Michael slept with his Walkman on because he didn’t want to hear anything going on in the next room.
When Linc got sent to Stateville to serve a 6-month-long sentence for the actual crime of carrying drug paraphernalia, Veronica and Michael had commiserated together, but both of them were waiting. Waiting for Linc to get out and come home; waiting for Linc to stop doing stuff like that; perpetually waiting.
One night, four months after Lincoln’s incarceration, Veronica showed up at Michael’s apartment. Her eyes were wide with fear and her bottom lip bled copiously from where it was split. He could see a bruise forming on her pale cheek and rage entered his heart in a way that made him understand entirely what had driven Lincoln to beat her father before. Michael asked, “What happened?” as he ushered her into the bathroom to clean her wound.
“He found out that Linc’s in jail. It was like he was just waiting for a chance to smack me around when there would be no repercussions,” she said as Michael gently shoved her down on to the closed toilet lid before turning to fish in the medicine cabinet for supplies.
“How’d he find out?” Michael asked, dumping a generous amount of peroxide on to a washcloth.
“Derek Sweeney. He came by because he couldn’t get a hold of Lincoln. Figured I knew where he was.”
Veronica’s eyes watched the yellow colored fabric as Michael brought it to her face. As he tenderly dabbed her lip, he said, “Oh, great, this is my fault then. I wouldn’t tell him where Linc was. I figured it was his fault somehow Linc got caught, so I wouldn’t give up any information.” Michael said this with some sarcasm, but he felt the blows that had bruised and bloodied Veronica’s face upon his own heart.
Wincing, she played along with his tone. “Oh, yeah, totally your fault. I mean, you made my mom walk out, and you made my dad turn into an abusive drunk, and you made sure my boyfriend was in jail so that there’s no one to protect me.” Her eyes still sparkled at him, even though he knew how truly scared she must be.
“I’ll protect you,” he said calmly, brushing his fingers over her swollen cheek. “You can stay here, Vee. You should just come here and live with me. Your dad won’t be able to find you. He certainly won’t be looking for you in the projects, especially with Linc in jail.”
Veronica scoffed. “Michael, you’re barely making ends meet as it is. I can’t stay here.”
“You have a job,” Michael pointed out, which was true, she worked after school at a convenience store, but it was only a full-time, part-time job. “You can help out a little. And it’s really not so bad, not with my mom’s social security.”
Tears formed in her eyes as she looked up at him, but she didn’t say anything. “You should move in,” he said again, and this time it was the only possible solution.
~~~
The ease with which they began living together seemed preposterous. Michael waited for arguments to erupt the way they did between he and Lincoln, but usually when he thought she might be mad because he’d left a mess in the kitchen, he’d get home to find her already cleaning up while Madonna blared from the tape player that sat on the kitchen window sill.
She would smile at him and make him dance to “Into the Groove” with her before they settled down to do their homework. Then they’d make dinner together, things like macaroni and cheese or spaghetti with tomato sauce poured over it, except that Vee could make it all taste good. He wasn’t really sure how she did it, but he sometimes suspected it was like the food his mother had fed him when he was small. He couldn’t remember anything specific Christina had cooked, he only remembered it tasted so good.
He was pretty sure the flavor was love.
At night, she would sleep in Lincoln’s bedroom, and Michael would lie awake in his room torn between utter contentment and total torment, because while Veronica made him feel the fulfillment of familial love, it wasn’t a maternal touch he craved in the dark of night. He wanted her there the way she was, but he also wanted so much more of her. There were moments when he thought she might have suspected that, or she might have even reciprocated; times when a look between them lasted too long in the silence, or a hand lingered upon another hand, and Michael noticed it even more when it wasn’t he who came up with reasons for them to be close together. Scary movies on TV on Saturday night, or a tornado warning for the Chicago area were good enough reasons for his roommate to huddle up next to him; if she had been any other girl, he might have assumed she was really scared, but she was Veronica, and he had been around her his whole life and this was new behavior. She never did anything more than that to prove his theories right, and most often, she would slip off to bed early, always telling him how many days they had left until Lincoln came home.
That had been a fun conversation. When Michael went to Stateville for visitation without Veronica right after she moved in, he’d expected Lincoln to be thrilled to hear how he’d rescued her from her father’s evil clutches. It hadn’t gone exactly like that. Lincoln had, of course, been grateful Michael had been so quick to find a solution, as he had not been there to do anything himself. However, he’d promptly instructed, “She can’t be living there when I get out, Michael. You have to make sure she knows she’s gotta go back before I come home.”
“Why?” Michael had asked, truly perplexed. He couldn’t imagine anything better than living with Veronica, though he could certainly see how he’d enjoy it more while Lincoln was at Stateville. However, the bottom line was Veronica’s safety, and since that had been the original reasoning for her moving in, Michael couldn’t see the sense of her ever moving out.
“Because I’m over 18. And now, I’m a convicted felon. Until she turns 18, she can’t be living there, or I’ll just be back in jail quicker than you say, ‘fuck me,’” Lincoln said, his eyes earnest. He leaned forward, gripping the phone in his hand and then he rapped his knuckles on the window between him and Michael. “Do you understand? As soon as she’s 18, it’s fine. But we’ve got more than half a year until that happens.”
“Nobody will know,” Michael said insistently.
“People always find out secrets, Michael. You know that. We can’t take the chance. That’s all we need is me back in here because of something else stupid.”
Michael bit his tongue not to point out that at least Veronica would be worth going to jail for. Instead, he told his brother he’d take care of it, and then he trudged home, miserable. He couldn’t imagine telling Veronica she had to go back to her dad’s, and now, almost five weeks had passed, and he had Lincoln placated on the one side, believing he’d told her the situation, and Veronica happy at home, completely clueless. Nobody except Michael knew that with each day she crossed off on the calendar, the closer their domestic bliss was coming to an end.
~~~
The torment of Veronica on just the other side of the wall generally culminated in the nightly ritual of his hand wrapped tightly around his cock, but on one particular night Michael had fallen asleep with his fingers still resting loosely inside his boxer shorts. He’d been exhausted, having studied for 5 hours straight for a Chemistry mid-term, though not so tired that Veronica walking around the house in a pajama shorts outfit hadn’t stirred him up plenty before he headed off to bed.
He had, unfortunately, fallen quickly to sleep afterwards, which was very unusual for him; he always cleaned up before he eased into slumber.
When he heard her voice, he thought he was dreaming. But then his bed shifted as she slid under the covers with him. Again he heard, “Michael?” only this time her voice was right in his ear and his hand attempted to slide out of his shorts without drawing too much attention to that fact.
He was very relieved to open his eyes and see that she had shut the door behind her, so there was hardly any light for visibility. Her legs scissored under his blankets, her bare skin brushing his and he remembered he had only his underwear on. “Whassamatter?” he muttered, still not completely awake.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice low. He had to strain to hear her. Or maybe every muscle in his body was straining on instinct, he didn’t know, because he felt feverish and hard everywhere, not just the obvious place.
Her hand moved under the sheet, easing over his chest, down his belly, and, he was very much afraid, headed for his damp shorts. He grabbed her hand and asked, already panting, “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said again, but then her lips were on his, and Michael was pitched fully into the world that constituted male adulthood. Lincoln had asked him several times since he’d turned 16, “When’re you gonna get laid already?” The irony that he could never tell Lincoln his biggest secret pulsated through him with the spasms of the first orgasm he ever shared with anyone other than himself.
In the aftermath, Michael realized lying in the shared fluids of someone you loved was somehow not gross at all. He’d always imagined it was imperative to shower right away, or at least wipe yourself clean from such an act, but Veronica stayed laying on top of him, and he wouldn’t have moved for anything. This was heaven, and as long as he had it, he planned to enjoy it.
Her lips moved against his shoulder. “I have to move out.”
Michael’s fingers were memorizing the terrain of her back and bottom, but they didn’t stop moving as he asked, “Because of this?”
“Partly,” she said, easing their bodies apart. He feared she was leaving, but instead she just settled next to him in the twin bed, and he turned on to his side so there was more room for both of them. “I love Lincoln. I love him,” she said softly, “but living here with him isn’t a good idea. Living here with you isn’t a good idea either, for that matter.”
Michael ached to ask her why she had come into his room, why she had done this, but as much as he wanted to know why, he also didn’t want to know why. Not when she’d just declared her love for his brother only moments after he’d come inside her. So he asked an ambiguous, “Why?” and waited to see what she would respond to.
“He wants to get married,” she confessed, and Michael felt shock ripple through him. He had no idea Lincoln wanted to get married at all, much less marry Veronica. Though, as soon as she said it out loud, it felt like a truth he had long known, just never acknowledged.
The only question that could be asked then was, “You don’t want to get married?” Michael could have worked up more incredulity if they weren’t lying naked together in his bed in the dark.
“Someday, I do. But I want to go to college first.”
“Married people go to college,” Michael reasoned.
“I want to go to college away from Chicago. I want to go places and do things. At least for a while. If we get married when Lincoln wants to, that will make all that impossible.”
Michael remained silent for a moment and moved his hand up so that he could stroke his fingers through her brown hair. “Are you sure he wants to get married soon? I mean, it seems a little…un-Lincoln-like, if you ask me.”
She laughed; a small, painful sound that hit his face in short puffs. “I know, it’s crazy isn’t it?” Shaking her head, she maneuvered closer, and edged her face into the cove of his chin and shoulder. “As soon as I’m 18, that’s when he wants to do it. But I just can’t. Do you know when my parents got married?” Michael shook his head and she went on immediately. “The day after my mother graduated from high school.” The bitterness in her laughter now made the word an oxymoron. “She got pregnant on their honeymoon. Then 14 years later, she left. She hated her life. And I can’t imagine ever hating Lincoln. I can’t do that.”
Michael couldn’t help himself when he asked, “What if he hates you for leaving?”
Veronica sighed, a shaky sound that made Michael hurt for her more than he could ever hurt for himself. Whispering, she said, “I’m more afraid of marrying him than I am of that.”
~~~
So Veronica moved out, and Lincoln came home. Things seemed pretty much the same as they had before, except that Michael knew everyone’s secrets, including his own. It was a strange thing to sit in your living room with your brother and the girl you both loved, knowing that they were happy now, but they wanted different things and they weren’t talking about it.
He found himself resenting Veronica’s easy smile and the free kisses she distributed on Lincoln’s face, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that he would have liked to have them for himself. It was one thing to have a secret from Lincoln that you kept because you knew it would hurt him; it was another thing entirely to harbor a secret, waiting for the time to come when you would unleash it on him.
He didn’t tell Lincoln about him and Veronica because he loved Lincoln. (Well, he was rightfully afraid Lincoln would beat him up. That had happened before, for other reasons, but it was never a good thing.) Veronica didn’t tell Lincoln she was applying to colleges at least three hours away because she didn’t want him to try to stop her.
The day she finally told him was two weeks before she turned 18. She told him because Michael told her Lincoln had been ring shopping. She told him, and promised him they would still be together even though she was far away.
Lincoln never believed that, though; Michael, on the other hand, actually did. He knew that Veronica just wanted to stretch her wings a little, but she would come back. But Lincoln didn’t wait, and soon after that Michael became an uncle and a brother-in-law.
Three years after that, Veronica got accepted to law school in Texas. She came back to Chicago to say goodbye, but Lincoln was still in his on-again, off-again marriage to Lisa, and Michael was the only one available.
It didn’t strike him as ironic that she fucked him for the second time when what she was really trying to do was say goodbye to his brother. Because by then, Michael understood what had happened in the dark several years before. He’d been gaining something, but she’d been trying to lose something, and he was her proof that she could.
Michael knew he would tell Dr. Brighton all about it in their next session, how everything had become crystal clear as he held Veronica down on his bed, how his fingers had left bruises on her wrists, how his hips had worked violently, trying to absolve both him and his brother of the stain of Veronica Donovan. How she had given back to him just as hungrily, until he too bore the physical imprints of her anguish.
Dr. Brighton would tell him that he had lost his power by giving into her in the first place, but he didn’t care. It would be the last time. This was a severing of permanence, for all of them.
~~~
The day Lincoln and Veronica decided to give it another go-she had just graduated from law school and Michael had mistakenly taken Lincoln with him to Texas for the event-Michael wondered if his greatest secret could ever be revealed.
He wanted what Lincoln had. Or maybe he just wished he saw the world the way Lincoln did. A love that time could not erase-no matter how ill-matched Lincoln and Veronica were now; a child, though born out of inconvenience and error, who adored Lincoln as only small boys can worship and love their fathers, however imperfect they may be; the ability to have absolutely nothing to show for his life but still have total security and happiness as long as he had his girlfriend, his son, and his brother. During the honeymoon period of his reconciliation with Veronica, Michael heard that statement again and again. All Lincoln needed was the three of them, and as long as he had them, he was fine. When Michael hinted that a real job and real prospects were going to be necessary both to support LJ and be equally-yoked with Veronica, Lincoln couldn’t have been listening less unless he had been born deaf.
That was what drove Michael to acknowledge the irritation he knew he should feel towards Lincoln’s shiftlessness; he hadn’t actually ever felt it before because he loved his brother too much, but enduring the Linc/Vee cocktail that could only end in some sort of heartbreak for all three of them again drove him to Dr. Brighton’s couch with increased regularity.
His therapist tried to help him with exercises of what he would do and say if and when Veronica showed up at his apartment like she normally did when things went downhill with his brother, and the dialogues worked dynamically in the hypothetical between the two men.
The actual moment when he attempted to say those things to the woman who stood so painfully small inside his wide, gray, dismal loft, ended with Michael mentally undressing her and shoving himself inside her, even as he heard Dr. Brighton’s voice crying, No, no, no!
Later he tried to tell himself it wasn’t Dr. Brighton’s voice, but his own that said no. That was a lie.
He had the decency to invite her in, let her sit on his couch and tell him her worries, her concerns that despite her love for Lincoln, they were too far apart now. Michael knew just what she meant, because his years at Loyola had produced a similar distance between his brother and himself, though he worked very hard not to care about it. In retrospect, he thought them both very stupid to have never considered the consequences of continuing their education. Not that either of them would have changed it, but if Lincoln had never finished high school, how could he ever relate to a couple of college graduates? How had they not seen that coming?
Love was a crazy, blind thing.
She sat there for an hour and 18 minutes before she leaned towards him. By the hour and a half mark, they had both climaxed on his cream colored sofa, leaving a wet spot behind them.
He’d once heard sex referred to as the little death; that at that instant of agonized bliss, your heart stopped for just a moment, and you died a little bit in the arms of your lover. With Veronica, it was a little death of a different variety. Every time he felt he’d had a breakthrough and all the reasons he and Dr. Brighton had worked out in list formation would run through his head-it would kill Lincoln to know, Michael deserved better than someone who came to him only when they were sad, Veronica had to learn she couldn’t behave that way, what would his mother think if she could see him now?-okay, that last one was just one Michael had in his head, he’d never said it aloud, but all the same-when he recited those things, he felt sure that should he ever face the temptation again, he’d have the strength to say no.
But here she was again, and here he was again, and it was like he’d never progressed at all. The little death that stopped his heart also broke it further when it didn’t happen again. Because, deep down he knew it never should have happened at all.
Even as he made love to her, he knew she didn’t think of him; even as he worshipped her with everything inside him, giving her everything he hadn’t known how to give when he was younger, he knew she would leave and not come back.
He imagined Lincoln felt just the same, though his expression of those feelings came in the form of a twelve pack and the gruffly asked question, “You feel like getting loaded tonight?”
Michael waved him into the apartment, the apartment that unbeknownst to Lincoln, had been a refuge for Veronica so she could break away from him one last time. The irony that it became Lincoln’s refuge too eased Michael’s guilty conscience somewhat.
His brother slouched on the too-nice furniture, his boots leaving black marks that Michael didn’t have the heart to care about. “You want to tell me a secret?” Michael asked some time later, several beers behind his brother. One of them had to keep some semblance of control, even if they were just getting drunk and not going anywhere.
“It’s not a secret, it’s never been one,” Lincoln said forlornly, his head lolling against the back of the couch. “She’s too good for me, always has been.”
“That’s not true,” Michael said, and though there might have been times he thought that, he now believed what he said. “Veronica’s not perfect, Lincoln. She made mistakes too.”
“Yeah, and I was her biggest one,” he muttered, turning the bottle up against his lips and drinking deeply.
Michael certainly could argue the veracity of that statement-though to do so would reveal the one secret he hoped Lincoln could never decipher-but instead he leaned over slightly to clink his beer bottle against Lincoln’s. “To a world without Veronica,” he said softly.
Lincoln’s eyes shifted, flickering over Michael’s face sleepily. “If my world could exist without Veronica, don’t you think I’d have a totally different life?” It was a serious question, though Michael wondered if Lincoln would later remember even asking it.
The honest answer was no. The true answer was no. But Michael loved Lincoln, so he lied to him without remorse. “Yes, I do. You’d have a totally different life if it weren’t for Veronica.”
He sipped his beer and contemplated the truth of that for himself. Maybe at one time, his and Lincoln’s futures had been dependent on her, but the past could not be changed. He didn’t know for sure, but he sometimes thought the love between the three of them was the only reason he and Lincoln had made it to adulthood.
~~~
Standing at the makeshift grave, Michael tossed down three yellow roses. They didn’t have her body, so they had taken a framed copy of a photo of the three of them at her law school graduation and put it in the ground in the backyard of their house in Baja.
“You want to know a secret, Linc?” Michael asked as he squatted down and ran his fingers over the freshly turned dirt.
“What?” Lincoln asked, his head lifted towards the high sun, his eyes turned out towards the Pacific.
“I loved Veronica.”
“I know, man.”
“No,” Michael said with a smidge of impatience. “I mean, I used to be in love with her, when we were younger.”
“I know, Michael.”
Michael watched his brother. “How did you know?”
Lincoln didn’t turn his head, but the light caught his chiseled face just so, showing the tears on his cheekbones. “Because I know you. And I knew her. And how could you not have loved her? She was all we had.”
Michael fell momentarily silent, turning his eyes away from the cracked stoicism before him. It had been his great confession, but one he now knew he’d never needed to make.
It was all over; they were alive, safe-what most people would even call well. LJ was with them, out surfing everyday, as he was now, and somehow they both managed to find women along the way that had chosen to stay with them. Sara and Jane were now in the house, giving them their moment to remember Vee privately-remember all she had been to them, all she had done for them. It didn’t seem right to Michael that all they had of her was her memory, yet at the same time, the recollection of her seemed to make everything else possible.
Maybe Lincoln knew the whole secret; maybe he had always known it. But like other vitally important, life changing events, he’d never said a word about them, and Michael doubted that would change now.
“You know the real secret, don’t you, Mikey?” Lincoln asked, his voice choked from the emotion wrapping about them.
“What?” Michael queried, looking back up.
“Without her, we wouldn’t even be here.”
There were too many moments, like a montage across the blue sky behind Lincoln that Michael could have pulled from the well of his heart to use as an illustration. But the one vivid picture that flashed before him involved Veronica following him down a long hallway. She told him that his brother had done the dumbest thing in the world and, some would argue, spurred the beginnings of the craziest idea Michael Scofield had ever had.
Standing up, Michael took his place beside his brother, his arm surrounding Lincoln’s thick shoulders. “It’s not a secret, Linc,” he said softly. “Everybody knows.”