Life Lessons
Title: Life Lessons
Author: wrldpossibility
Characters: Sara Tancredi/Michael Scofield
Word Count: 550
Rating: PG
Spoilers: I guess just in the most general sense for The Final Break.
Warning: None! It's canon, but it's happy. I promise!
Summary: "Teach me how?"
Author's Note: This is a one-shot set in that short window of time between the exoneration and the wedding. It was inspired by a scene in The Final Break, but it stands alone. You do not have to have watched TFB to follow this. Nor does it elude to any unhappy times. I believe that because Michael is alive, it fits the criteria here, but if not, mods, you know what to do.
“It’s looking a little worse for the wear.”
“It’s just well-traveled, that’s all.” She holds it up for further inspection: the rose has been torn, flattened, stained, and pulled apart at the crease, but it’s retained its shape, albeit at an angle that suggests strife, or perhaps, Sara amends, long life, like the bowed line along an aged palm. If she squints, the light from the window and the colored tissue meet in the middle to set the room awash in red, and she’s right back in the Fox River infirmary, falling in love all over again.
Michael leans up on one elbow, plucking it from her fingers. “The key is superior engineering, of course.” He twirls it in front of her face; the paper catches the breeze from the ceiling fan and flutters briefly before her eyes. “That and a lot of blind luck.” His hand closes over the tip of one bent petal, smoothing it before he lies back down, his cheek settling onto the pillow. His lips are close enough to feel his breath on her neck.
She turns her head and kisses him, just because she can. “Teach me how?”
She loves the way one half of his mouth always decides to smile just before the other. “And reveal my secrets?”
She calls his bluff. Of course, he’d be expecting nothing less. “This time tomorrow, we’ll be married. Lay your cards on the table, Scofield.”
He grins outright.
*****
It takes her several attempts. A few more than several, if he’s counting. He’s not counting.
He’s busy tearing rectangular sheets from the pad of hotel stationary they’d found in the bedside table drawer. The find was not only convenient, but also complied with their impromptu rule for the past two days: if they can’t reach it from the bed, they don’t really need it. The only exceptions? Answering the door for room service. Walks on the beach. Bathroom breaks for the mother-to-be.
They chat idly as he watches her fold: half, quarter, invert. “Boats,” she’s saying. “Hats.”
He chuckles. “Only when he’s old enough not to decide to eat them.”
“Zebras…giraffes.” She pauses mid-crease and shifts toward him. “Why do all children love safari animals?”
He’s at a loss. “Do they?”
For a moment, she’s wearing the same chagrined expression he’d seen when he’d asked her when they learn to walk, and then she laughs. It’s an abrupt shift from contemplation to mirth; with her, it always is, and the sound takes hold of him and shakes him the way it always has, from the moment he’d first heard it. Of course back then, his poker face had been flawless:
That was you? This whole time I was thinking it was Gandhi.
You’re very funny.
She puts the final twist in a cream stem. “I guess that’s another question for the baby books.”
She still grinning. She’s happy. She holds up her latest attempt, compares it to the original, now in her opposite hand, then laughs again, this time self-depreciatively. Against her white palm, the red blossom bleeds into the green stem and he thinks: Christmas has come early.
Author: wrldpossibility
Characters: Sara Tancredi/Michael Scofield
Word Count: 550
Rating: PG
Spoilers: I guess just in the most general sense for The Final Break.
Warning: None! It's canon, but it's happy. I promise!
Summary: "Teach me how?"
Author's Note: This is a one-shot set in that short window of time between the exoneration and the wedding. It was inspired by a scene in The Final Break, but it stands alone. You do not have to have watched TFB to follow this. Nor does it elude to any unhappy times. I believe that because Michael is alive, it fits the criteria here, but if not, mods, you know what to do.
“It’s looking a little worse for the wear.”
“It’s just well-traveled, that’s all.” She holds it up for further inspection: the rose has been torn, flattened, stained, and pulled apart at the crease, but it’s retained its shape, albeit at an angle that suggests strife, or perhaps, Sara amends, long life, like the bowed line along an aged palm. If she squints, the light from the window and the colored tissue meet in the middle to set the room awash in red, and she’s right back in the Fox River infirmary, falling in love all over again.
Michael leans up on one elbow, plucking it from her fingers. “The key is superior engineering, of course.” He twirls it in front of her face; the paper catches the breeze from the ceiling fan and flutters briefly before her eyes. “That and a lot of blind luck.” His hand closes over the tip of one bent petal, smoothing it before he lies back down, his cheek settling onto the pillow. His lips are close enough to feel his breath on her neck.
She turns her head and kisses him, just because she can. “Teach me how?”
She loves the way one half of his mouth always decides to smile just before the other. “And reveal my secrets?”
She calls his bluff. Of course, he’d be expecting nothing less. “This time tomorrow, we’ll be married. Lay your cards on the table, Scofield.”
He grins outright.
*****
It takes her several attempts. A few more than several, if he’s counting. He’s not counting.
He’s busy tearing rectangular sheets from the pad of hotel stationary they’d found in the bedside table drawer. The find was not only convenient, but also complied with their impromptu rule for the past two days: if they can’t reach it from the bed, they don’t really need it. The only exceptions? Answering the door for room service. Walks on the beach. Bathroom breaks for the mother-to-be.
They chat idly as he watches her fold: half, quarter, invert. “Boats,” she’s saying. “Hats.”
He chuckles. “Only when he’s old enough not to decide to eat them.”
“Zebras…giraffes.” She pauses mid-crease and shifts toward him. “Why do all children love safari animals?”
He’s at a loss. “Do they?”
For a moment, she’s wearing the same chagrined expression he’d seen when he’d asked her when they learn to walk, and then she laughs. It’s an abrupt shift from contemplation to mirth; with her, it always is, and the sound takes hold of him and shakes him the way it always has, from the moment he’d first heard it. Of course back then, his poker face had been flawless:
That was you? This whole time I was thinking it was Gandhi.
You’re very funny.
She puts the final twist in a cream stem. “I guess that’s another question for the baby books.”
She still grinning. She’s happy. She holds up her latest attempt, compares it to the original, now in her opposite hand, then laughs again, this time self-depreciatively. Against her white palm, the red blossom bleeds into the green stem and he thinks: Christmas has come early.