Promise - PBFE Fic (Lincoln, Sara)
Title: Promise
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Lincoln Burrows, Sara Tancredi (implied Michael/Sara)
Length: 3,061 words
Rating: PG-15 for strong language
Summary: Promises made in haste are not always regretted.
Author's Note:Written for the pbfic_exchange2 for antoine_baros, who wanted Lincoln and Sara meeting up after Michael is sent to Sona, and Lincoln talking about how Michael was when he was a kid. Spoilers for S1 and S2 and mild speculation (no spoilers) for S3. Contains dialogue from "English, Fitz and Percy" and "The Rat". Pretty much everybody guessed that I wrote this, so I doubt this is a shock 'reveal', lol!
~*~
“What if something happens to you?”
“You just have a little faith.”
- “The Rat”
~*~
“Sara!”
The blood is pounding in your ears, but beneath it you hear the whisper of your name, a whisper that turns into a harsh bellow. “SARA!”
Turning in disbelief, you stare at the man behind you. A man you’d thought had been lost to you, along with his brother.
“Lincoln,” you say in a voice choked with tears and dust. You want to reach out and touch him, if only to make sure you’re not imagining him. “They told me you’d been arrested.”
His face darkens. “Who told you that?”
You lift your hands, touching your fingertips to your hot face. Nothing is making sense, your jumbled thoughts stabbing at your temples. “The police.”
His eyes widen. “They told me that you’d given a statement and left.”
“I did.” It’s suddenly very important to explain exactly what happened, because you are free and his brother is not, and the silent accusation in his eyes feels like a barbed hook beneath your skin. “I told them exactly what happened. They told me they’d already arrested the killers and I was wasting their time.” You stare at him in horror, delayed shock kicking in. “And if you're here-" The small comfort you'd managed to find in the hope that they were together crumbles away, panicked words tumbling from your lips. "Oh, God. Michael's alone.”
Lincoln flinches, as though recoiling from a slap to the face. “Maybe he wasn’t arrested either.”
“He was,” you say, hating yourself for killing the hope that had blazed briefly in his eyes. “I saw it happen.”
Lincoln’s face crumples, hands fisting in the air. “Man, this is bullshit!”
His rage washes over you, strangely soothing. It helps you remember that this is not simply a nightmare from which there is no waking. “I know.”
He squints at you through the dust and the sun. “I need a drink.” After the words leave his mouth, he looks at you, stricken, remembering the last thing he’d said to you on the boat. The last thing before everything had gone to hell.
You shake your head as the craving for oblivion burns the back of your tongue. “I can’t be in a bar. Not right now.”
He frowns, then nods, understanding as only someone who’s found that same oblivion can. Five minutes later, he’s pulling you into the relative cool of a café, his fingers curled tight around your arm. His touch feels nothing like his brother’s, but it’s enough to steady you as you walk on legs that feel as though they’re crumbling with every step.
You sit at a table hidden in the shadows. "Tell me everything that happened."
You stare at him, overwhelmed by the thought of making sense of the insensible and distracted by the urgent need to find help. "I have to get to a phone."
"Soon. First, you have to tell me what happened to my brother." He touches your shoulder awkwardly, lightly, as if you’re made of spun sugar, then goes in search of cold drinks and information. You watch him with dull eyes as he speaks to a dark-haired man behind the counter, gesturing with his hands to help the impact of his words. When he returns, he clunks two cans of soda onto the table as he sits across from you, his whole body stiff with anger.
“The closest prison is a pit called Sona.” He jerks his head towards the counter. "From what that guy said, it makes Fox River look like a summer camp."
“I know. I heard them talking about it at the police station. Penitenciaría Federal de Sona,” you mumble, and his eyes widen.
“You speak Spanish.”
You nod, your fingers twisting together coldly. “Since high school. That’ll help, right?”
“Yeah.” He stares out the café window, his gaze sharp and narrowed. “Five million dollars would be a big fucking help, too.”
You frown, confusion staining your thoughts. “What?”
He brushes aside your question with an impatient wave of his hand. “We need to get Michael’s backpack.”
“Where is it?”
“Bottom of the river next to the boat.” His eyes flash at you. “The Company guy kicked it into the water before-” He stops, suddenly ashen, and you feel your stomach roil.
“Excuse me,” you mutter, fleeing to the sanctuary of the tiny, dirty bathroom to be sick, your aching body heaving over and over again, feeling the jerk of the gun in your hand, remembering the smell of gunpowder and blood in the air. When it’s finally over, you wipe the sweat from your clammy face, wishing you trusted the water enough to rinse your mouth. You look at yourself in the cracked mirror, at your papery white skin and empty eyes, and think you finally know what grief looks like.
Lincoln is where you left him. You take one look at his face, and know that his grief is more than a match for your own. “This is a fucking nightmare.” His elbows are on the table, his head in his hands. “Tell me exactly what happened at the police station.”
You reach for the can of soda, needing to chase away the sour taste from your mouth. The fizzy liquid slides down your throat, settling uneasily in the pit of your stomach. “Michael signed a sworn confession an hour before they’d even let me talk to someone.” Exhaustion is chipping away at you, making your tongue feel thick and clumsy. “He confessed to that man’s murder and nothing I did or said made the slightest bit of difference.” You don’t want to think about those hours in the police station, knowing that Michael was somewhere in the same building but that he may as well have been on another planet. “Then they told me that you’d been arrested as well, and that if I didn’t leave immediately they would charge me with making a false confession.”
He looks up at her from beneath dark, scowling eyebrows. “How could you-” He stops abruptly, closing his eyes.
You stare at him across the table. “How could I what?”
He doesn’t look at you. “Nothing.”
Stung, you let yourself slide beneath your fear and your own anger. “How could I let him do it?” You snap the words at him, and it feels much better than it should. “How could I just leave him there?”
Opening his eyes, Lincoln glares at you with such force that you lean back in your chair. “Forget I said it.”
You want to tell him how you’d pleaded with his brother until your throat was raw, that you’d immediately left the station, intent on finding a telephone line you could be sure wasn’t tapped, knowing your only chance was to call Bruce and ask him to contact the Embassy on your behalf. But heads have started to turn in your direction now, and you force yourself to stay calm. “You blame me for this, don't you?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t.”
You push away your almost-full can of soda, uncaring as dark liquid spills onto the table. Your hands are shaking. “If you and I can’t be honest with each other, Lincoln,” you say in a voice roughened by the anger you can no longer hide, “we may as well go our separate ways.”
“I don’t blame you.” His voice is stretched too thin, a hollow echo of itself. “I blame him.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, a sudden fury firing in his eyes. “I blame his goddamned sense of honor. For always thinking that he has to be the one to make things right.”
“Don’t. Don't say that.” You can’t let him keep talking like this, because if you do you might find yourself agreeing with him. “We have to think about this calmly. I need to contact my father’s colleague in the States-”
He cuts you off, shaking his head. “What we need to do is get that money.”
His jaw is clenched, his stubborn expression suddenly painfully familiar. There’s only the two of you now, and if you can’t work together to make this happen, there might only ever be the two of you. “Maybe we should try to do both.”
“Yeah.” He stares down at the table between you, then lifts his head to meet your eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Maybe later, when this is all over, you can bask in his apology. Right now, all that matters is that you're being straight with each other. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay.” He scrubs his hands over his face, fingertips rubbing his closed eyes. “I owe you my life twice over. Michael’s too.”
“Tell me about Michael,” you say abruptly, not wanting to think about the second time you’d saved Lincoln Burrows’ life.
“What?”
“Michael.” You can’t begin to explain why you’re asking. Maybe you want to make sense of why he did what he did. Maybe you want to say his name, to hear Lincoln say it too, if only make it seem as though he’s still with you. “Was he always like this?”
Lincoln stares at you, his eyes dark with pain. “Pretty much.”
~*~
“You close?”
She doesn’t know that her words are like a knife to your heart, but how can she? Shit, how do you even answer that? Do you tell her that sometimes you feel as though you barely know the man your brother has become? That in your head, he's still a kid? “We were.”
“How about now?”
He was always so much shorter than you, you think suddenly, remembering how his head had barely reached your shoulder for so much of your lives. It had been a shock to embrace him that last day in court, find his shoulder almost level with yours. “Huh?”
Her expression is serene, like the undisturbed surface of deep water. “How about now?”
“He's been abandoned his whole life.” You don’t know why you’re telling her these things. Maybe it’s the need to tell someone, anyone, before it’s too late. “Dad, Mom, she died young, and now me.”
A tiny ripple darts across the smooth surface of her skin, a frown as she considers your words. “Do you think that's why he's here? Because your death would feel like it's happening again?”
“I abandoned him a long time ago,” you mutter, the sound of the truth in your ears draining the smallest measure of poison from your heart. “That's why he's here.”
~*~
“He was always different to other kids his age.” He looks at you, a fleeting smile touching his mouth. “Smarter. Softer.”
“Was he bullied at school?”
His smile vanishes. “Not if I was there.”
Your heart sinks, understanding the truth behind his simple words. “Was it bad?”
“Sometimes, yeah.” His face darkens, his gaze escaping to the window once again. “Didn’t stop me from skipping school, though.”
“You were only a child yourself.”
He shakes his head. “I knew he needed me and I did it anyway.”
You study his face, the heavy features that are both the same and utterly different to his brother’s, and wonder if either of them will ever forgive themselves their imagined sins of the past. “How old was he when they diagnosed the Low Latent Inhibition?”
He turns to look at you, his surprise obvious. “He told you about that?”
“I needed to consult his psychiatrist over his medical insurance.” There are bigger things to worry about than your professional reputation, but you still find yourself retreating behind the excuse you gave both Pope and Katie.
“It wasn’t until after Mom died that they came up with a name for it, but he’s always been that way.” He looks at you, but you have the feeling he’s not seeing you at all. “Always cared too much, even about stupid stuff.”
You can’t believe you’re sitting here, talking about Michael as though he’s already dead, but you open your mouth and ask the question anyway. “Stupid stuff?”
“Yeah. Mom always tried to keep him from watching the news because he would get upset any time there was a story about people being hurt or dying, which of course was all the fucking time. He used to give away most of his allowance to any ‘feed the hungry’ charity that came knocking, even though we were the ones with hardly anything in the goddamned cupboards.”
Your heart, already raw, twinges. It’s too easy to imagine the words made reality. “Any particular obsessive compulsive behavior?”
He looks at you incredulously. “You’re kidding me, right?”
He’s right, it’s a ridiculous question, given what you know about Michael, and you turn the conversation back to the past. “That must have been tough on your family.”
He tilts back his head as he drains his can of soda, then shrugs. “It was Michael. We were family. We did what we had to do.”
You think of your father, all the time you’d both wasted resented each other, and instinctively slide your hand across the table to cover Lincoln’s. “You’re a good brother.”
He looks down at your hand, frowning, then his fingers tighten around yours. “Thanks, Doc.”
~*~
Your hands are twisting and turning, handcuffs sliding loosely around your wrists, rattling loudly in the quiet room. Her hand covers yours, stilling them. She has the softest skin, cool like the steel of the cuffs.
“How’s Michael?”
“He’s anxious to see you.” Her voice is calm and soothing, but it does nothing to settle your nerves. “Unfortunately, we’ve been told that’s not possible until final visitation.”
She doesn’t look at you as she says the word ‘we’, and in the midst of the darkness in your head, a thought sparks into life. You look at her hand, tightly gripping yours, her thumb rubbing gently, a competent mother comforting her frightened charge. “You been through this before?”
“No.” She looks embarrassed by her answer. “Uh, just so you know, a doctor needs to be present. So, for what it’s worth, I’ll be there tonight.”
You see the pain in her eyes, and suddenly you know that it’s not just for you. “Can I ask a favor?”
She answers almost before you’ve finished asking the question. “Yes. What?”
“When I’m gone, can you-” Christ, those words shouldn’t be this hard to say, three years on Death Row and you still can’t say it, and that’s why hope can be a fucking dangerous thing. “Can you look out for my brother?”
She doesn’t respond with empty platitudes or reassurances. She merely stares at you, her eyes wide with something that looks like shock, then you feel her grip on your hand tighten. “I’ll do what I can.”
“He’s a good man, Doc.”
Her full lips flatten into an unsteady line, then she nods. “I know.”
Her eyes are glittering with tears now, and you almost regret pushing the subject, but you have to make her understand, that she needs to do what you won’t be here to do. LJ will be with Veronica, but Michael will be alone, and you’d promised yourself you’d never let that happen again. “He doesn’t belong in here.”
“I know,” she says again, her voice dropping to a low whisper, her eyes not quite meeting yours. “And neither do you.”
~*~
“We need to make that phone call.” You pick up your empty soda can (in the end, it had been easier to simply drink it), tapping it listlessly against the table. It’s only been thirty minutes since Lincoln found you in the street, but it feels like it’s been much longer, as though time is moving faster now that Michael is gone.
He nods. “The cops might still be watching the boat. We’ll need to wait until things have cooled off a little.”
“They said-” You clear your throat, but the vision of a shocked face and a flowering bloodstain isn’t as easy to dislodge. “They told me they’d recovered the body.”
“They also told you I’d been arrested,” he points out darkly, and you shiver despite the heat.
“They wanted us out of the picture," you whisper and he nods again, his expression bleak.
“And they wanted Michael on the inside.”
“But why?” The pounding in your temples has begun again. “I don’t understand.”
“I guess it’s not over until the Company says it’s over.”
The thought makes you feel sick. The three of you had run thousands of miles to find freedom, only to have it snatched away in the roar of a single gunshot. “We need to call Bruce.”
“What if he says that the best thing for us to do is leave the country?” He’s watching you carefully now. “I’m not leaving Michael behind.”
You look at him in astonishment, amazed that he feels the need to actually say the words. “Neither am I.”
A look of grim satisfaction crosses his face. “Whatever it takes, then.”
You return his gaze steadily. “Yes.”
You study each other, and for a brief moment you have the ridiculous urge to put out your hand for him to shake. Instead you push back your chair and get to your feet. “Let’s find a telephone.”
He follows you to the door of the café, then you feel the brush of his hand on your arm. “Thanks for keeping your promise, Doc.”
You stare at him, confused until you remember a promise made on the eve of his execution, the vow that had made you feel like the worst kind of fraud. Maybe you should tell Lincoln you'd been trying to keep his brother safe from the monsters long before that night, but maybe he already knows that. Maybe he’s known all along. “You’re welcome.”
~*~
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Lincoln Burrows, Sara Tancredi (implied Michael/Sara)
Length: 3,061 words
Rating: PG-15 for strong language
Summary: Promises made in haste are not always regretted.
Author's Note:Written for the pbfic_exchange2 for antoine_baros, who wanted Lincoln and Sara meeting up after Michael is sent to Sona, and Lincoln talking about how Michael was when he was a kid. Spoilers for S1 and S2 and mild speculation (no spoilers) for S3. Contains dialogue from "English, Fitz and Percy" and "The Rat". Pretty much everybody guessed that I wrote this, so I doubt this is a shock 'reveal', lol!
~*~
“What if something happens to you?”
“You just have a little faith.”
- “The Rat”
~*~
“Sara!”
The blood is pounding in your ears, but beneath it you hear the whisper of your name, a whisper that turns into a harsh bellow. “SARA!”
Turning in disbelief, you stare at the man behind you. A man you’d thought had been lost to you, along with his brother.
“Lincoln,” you say in a voice choked with tears and dust. You want to reach out and touch him, if only to make sure you’re not imagining him. “They told me you’d been arrested.”
His face darkens. “Who told you that?”
You lift your hands, touching your fingertips to your hot face. Nothing is making sense, your jumbled thoughts stabbing at your temples. “The police.”
His eyes widen. “They told me that you’d given a statement and left.”
“I did.” It’s suddenly very important to explain exactly what happened, because you are free and his brother is not, and the silent accusation in his eyes feels like a barbed hook beneath your skin. “I told them exactly what happened. They told me they’d already arrested the killers and I was wasting their time.” You stare at him in horror, delayed shock kicking in. “And if you're here-" The small comfort you'd managed to find in the hope that they were together crumbles away, panicked words tumbling from your lips. "Oh, God. Michael's alone.”
Lincoln flinches, as though recoiling from a slap to the face. “Maybe he wasn’t arrested either.”
“He was,” you say, hating yourself for killing the hope that had blazed briefly in his eyes. “I saw it happen.”
Lincoln’s face crumples, hands fisting in the air. “Man, this is bullshit!”
His rage washes over you, strangely soothing. It helps you remember that this is not simply a nightmare from which there is no waking. “I know.”
He squints at you through the dust and the sun. “I need a drink.” After the words leave his mouth, he looks at you, stricken, remembering the last thing he’d said to you on the boat. The last thing before everything had gone to hell.
You shake your head as the craving for oblivion burns the back of your tongue. “I can’t be in a bar. Not right now.”
He frowns, then nods, understanding as only someone who’s found that same oblivion can. Five minutes later, he’s pulling you into the relative cool of a café, his fingers curled tight around your arm. His touch feels nothing like his brother’s, but it’s enough to steady you as you walk on legs that feel as though they’re crumbling with every step.
You sit at a table hidden in the shadows. "Tell me everything that happened."
You stare at him, overwhelmed by the thought of making sense of the insensible and distracted by the urgent need to find help. "I have to get to a phone."
"Soon. First, you have to tell me what happened to my brother." He touches your shoulder awkwardly, lightly, as if you’re made of spun sugar, then goes in search of cold drinks and information. You watch him with dull eyes as he speaks to a dark-haired man behind the counter, gesturing with his hands to help the impact of his words. When he returns, he clunks two cans of soda onto the table as he sits across from you, his whole body stiff with anger.
“The closest prison is a pit called Sona.” He jerks his head towards the counter. "From what that guy said, it makes Fox River look like a summer camp."
“I know. I heard them talking about it at the police station. Penitenciaría Federal de Sona,” you mumble, and his eyes widen.
“You speak Spanish.”
You nod, your fingers twisting together coldly. “Since high school. That’ll help, right?”
“Yeah.” He stares out the café window, his gaze sharp and narrowed. “Five million dollars would be a big fucking help, too.”
You frown, confusion staining your thoughts. “What?”
He brushes aside your question with an impatient wave of his hand. “We need to get Michael’s backpack.”
“Where is it?”
“Bottom of the river next to the boat.” His eyes flash at you. “The Company guy kicked it into the water before-” He stops, suddenly ashen, and you feel your stomach roil.
“Excuse me,” you mutter, fleeing to the sanctuary of the tiny, dirty bathroom to be sick, your aching body heaving over and over again, feeling the jerk of the gun in your hand, remembering the smell of gunpowder and blood in the air. When it’s finally over, you wipe the sweat from your clammy face, wishing you trusted the water enough to rinse your mouth. You look at yourself in the cracked mirror, at your papery white skin and empty eyes, and think you finally know what grief looks like.
Lincoln is where you left him. You take one look at his face, and know that his grief is more than a match for your own. “This is a fucking nightmare.” His elbows are on the table, his head in his hands. “Tell me exactly what happened at the police station.”
You reach for the can of soda, needing to chase away the sour taste from your mouth. The fizzy liquid slides down your throat, settling uneasily in the pit of your stomach. “Michael signed a sworn confession an hour before they’d even let me talk to someone.” Exhaustion is chipping away at you, making your tongue feel thick and clumsy. “He confessed to that man’s murder and nothing I did or said made the slightest bit of difference.” You don’t want to think about those hours in the police station, knowing that Michael was somewhere in the same building but that he may as well have been on another planet. “Then they told me that you’d been arrested as well, and that if I didn’t leave immediately they would charge me with making a false confession.”
He looks up at her from beneath dark, scowling eyebrows. “How could you-” He stops abruptly, closing his eyes.
You stare at him across the table. “How could I what?”
He doesn’t look at you. “Nothing.”
Stung, you let yourself slide beneath your fear and your own anger. “How could I let him do it?” You snap the words at him, and it feels much better than it should. “How could I just leave him there?”
Opening his eyes, Lincoln glares at you with such force that you lean back in your chair. “Forget I said it.”
You want to tell him how you’d pleaded with his brother until your throat was raw, that you’d immediately left the station, intent on finding a telephone line you could be sure wasn’t tapped, knowing your only chance was to call Bruce and ask him to contact the Embassy on your behalf. But heads have started to turn in your direction now, and you force yourself to stay calm. “You blame me for this, don't you?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t.”
You push away your almost-full can of soda, uncaring as dark liquid spills onto the table. Your hands are shaking. “If you and I can’t be honest with each other, Lincoln,” you say in a voice roughened by the anger you can no longer hide, “we may as well go our separate ways.”
“I don’t blame you.” His voice is stretched too thin, a hollow echo of itself. “I blame him.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, a sudden fury firing in his eyes. “I blame his goddamned sense of honor. For always thinking that he has to be the one to make things right.”
“Don’t. Don't say that.” You can’t let him keep talking like this, because if you do you might find yourself agreeing with him. “We have to think about this calmly. I need to contact my father’s colleague in the States-”
He cuts you off, shaking his head. “What we need to do is get that money.”
His jaw is clenched, his stubborn expression suddenly painfully familiar. There’s only the two of you now, and if you can’t work together to make this happen, there might only ever be the two of you. “Maybe we should try to do both.”
“Yeah.” He stares down at the table between you, then lifts his head to meet your eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Maybe later, when this is all over, you can bask in his apology. Right now, all that matters is that you're being straight with each other. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay.” He scrubs his hands over his face, fingertips rubbing his closed eyes. “I owe you my life twice over. Michael’s too.”
“Tell me about Michael,” you say abruptly, not wanting to think about the second time you’d saved Lincoln Burrows’ life.
“What?”
“Michael.” You can’t begin to explain why you’re asking. Maybe you want to make sense of why he did what he did. Maybe you want to say his name, to hear Lincoln say it too, if only make it seem as though he’s still with you. “Was he always like this?”
Lincoln stares at you, his eyes dark with pain. “Pretty much.”
~*~
“You close?”
She doesn’t know that her words are like a knife to your heart, but how can she? Shit, how do you even answer that? Do you tell her that sometimes you feel as though you barely know the man your brother has become? That in your head, he's still a kid? “We were.”
“How about now?”
He was always so much shorter than you, you think suddenly, remembering how his head had barely reached your shoulder for so much of your lives. It had been a shock to embrace him that last day in court, find his shoulder almost level with yours. “Huh?”
Her expression is serene, like the undisturbed surface of deep water. “How about now?”
“He's been abandoned his whole life.” You don’t know why you’re telling her these things. Maybe it’s the need to tell someone, anyone, before it’s too late. “Dad, Mom, she died young, and now me.”
A tiny ripple darts across the smooth surface of her skin, a frown as she considers your words. “Do you think that's why he's here? Because your death would feel like it's happening again?”
“I abandoned him a long time ago,” you mutter, the sound of the truth in your ears draining the smallest measure of poison from your heart. “That's why he's here.”
~*~
“He was always different to other kids his age.” He looks at you, a fleeting smile touching his mouth. “Smarter. Softer.”
“Was he bullied at school?”
His smile vanishes. “Not if I was there.”
Your heart sinks, understanding the truth behind his simple words. “Was it bad?”
“Sometimes, yeah.” His face darkens, his gaze escaping to the window once again. “Didn’t stop me from skipping school, though.”
“You were only a child yourself.”
He shakes his head. “I knew he needed me and I did it anyway.”
You study his face, the heavy features that are both the same and utterly different to his brother’s, and wonder if either of them will ever forgive themselves their imagined sins of the past. “How old was he when they diagnosed the Low Latent Inhibition?”
He turns to look at you, his surprise obvious. “He told you about that?”
“I needed to consult his psychiatrist over his medical insurance.” There are bigger things to worry about than your professional reputation, but you still find yourself retreating behind the excuse you gave both Pope and Katie.
“It wasn’t until after Mom died that they came up with a name for it, but he’s always been that way.” He looks at you, but you have the feeling he’s not seeing you at all. “Always cared too much, even about stupid stuff.”
You can’t believe you’re sitting here, talking about Michael as though he’s already dead, but you open your mouth and ask the question anyway. “Stupid stuff?”
“Yeah. Mom always tried to keep him from watching the news because he would get upset any time there was a story about people being hurt or dying, which of course was all the fucking time. He used to give away most of his allowance to any ‘feed the hungry’ charity that came knocking, even though we were the ones with hardly anything in the goddamned cupboards.”
Your heart, already raw, twinges. It’s too easy to imagine the words made reality. “Any particular obsessive compulsive behavior?”
He looks at you incredulously. “You’re kidding me, right?”
He’s right, it’s a ridiculous question, given what you know about Michael, and you turn the conversation back to the past. “That must have been tough on your family.”
He tilts back his head as he drains his can of soda, then shrugs. “It was Michael. We were family. We did what we had to do.”
You think of your father, all the time you’d both wasted resented each other, and instinctively slide your hand across the table to cover Lincoln’s. “You’re a good brother.”
He looks down at your hand, frowning, then his fingers tighten around yours. “Thanks, Doc.”
~*~
Your hands are twisting and turning, handcuffs sliding loosely around your wrists, rattling loudly in the quiet room. Her hand covers yours, stilling them. She has the softest skin, cool like the steel of the cuffs.
“How’s Michael?”
“He’s anxious to see you.” Her voice is calm and soothing, but it does nothing to settle your nerves. “Unfortunately, we’ve been told that’s not possible until final visitation.”
She doesn’t look at you as she says the word ‘we’, and in the midst of the darkness in your head, a thought sparks into life. You look at her hand, tightly gripping yours, her thumb rubbing gently, a competent mother comforting her frightened charge. “You been through this before?”
“No.” She looks embarrassed by her answer. “Uh, just so you know, a doctor needs to be present. So, for what it’s worth, I’ll be there tonight.”
You see the pain in her eyes, and suddenly you know that it’s not just for you. “Can I ask a favor?”
She answers almost before you’ve finished asking the question. “Yes. What?”
“When I’m gone, can you-” Christ, those words shouldn’t be this hard to say, three years on Death Row and you still can’t say it, and that’s why hope can be a fucking dangerous thing. “Can you look out for my brother?”
She doesn’t respond with empty platitudes or reassurances. She merely stares at you, her eyes wide with something that looks like shock, then you feel her grip on your hand tighten. “I’ll do what I can.”
“He’s a good man, Doc.”
Her full lips flatten into an unsteady line, then she nods. “I know.”
Her eyes are glittering with tears now, and you almost regret pushing the subject, but you have to make her understand, that she needs to do what you won’t be here to do. LJ will be with Veronica, but Michael will be alone, and you’d promised yourself you’d never let that happen again. “He doesn’t belong in here.”
“I know,” she says again, her voice dropping to a low whisper, her eyes not quite meeting yours. “And neither do you.”
~*~
“We need to make that phone call.” You pick up your empty soda can (in the end, it had been easier to simply drink it), tapping it listlessly against the table. It’s only been thirty minutes since Lincoln found you in the street, but it feels like it’s been much longer, as though time is moving faster now that Michael is gone.
He nods. “The cops might still be watching the boat. We’ll need to wait until things have cooled off a little.”
“They said-” You clear your throat, but the vision of a shocked face and a flowering bloodstain isn’t as easy to dislodge. “They told me they’d recovered the body.”
“They also told you I’d been arrested,” he points out darkly, and you shiver despite the heat.
“They wanted us out of the picture," you whisper and he nods again, his expression bleak.
“And they wanted Michael on the inside.”
“But why?” The pounding in your temples has begun again. “I don’t understand.”
“I guess it’s not over until the Company says it’s over.”
The thought makes you feel sick. The three of you had run thousands of miles to find freedom, only to have it snatched away in the roar of a single gunshot. “We need to call Bruce.”
“What if he says that the best thing for us to do is leave the country?” He’s watching you carefully now. “I’m not leaving Michael behind.”
You look at him in astonishment, amazed that he feels the need to actually say the words. “Neither am I.”
A look of grim satisfaction crosses his face. “Whatever it takes, then.”
You return his gaze steadily. “Yes.”
You study each other, and for a brief moment you have the ridiculous urge to put out your hand for him to shake. Instead you push back your chair and get to your feet. “Let’s find a telephone.”
He follows you to the door of the café, then you feel the brush of his hand on your arm. “Thanks for keeping your promise, Doc.”
You stare at him, confused until you remember a promise made on the eve of his execution, the vow that had made you feel like the worst kind of fraud. Maybe you should tell Lincoln you'd been trying to keep his brother safe from the monsters long before that night, but maybe he already knows that. Maybe he’s known all along. “You’re welcome.”
~*~