Fight or Flight - Michael/Sara (1/1)
Title: Fight or Flight (1/1)
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael Scofield, Sara Tancredi
Genre: Het
Pairing: Michael/Sara
Length: 1,879 words
Rating: PG-15
Summary: A lot of things have changed since Fox River. This is set during #411, "Quiet Riot" and contains dialogue from that episode that does not belong to me. It contains spoilers for #411 and speculation for #412 that I've kept deliberately vague for the spoilerphobes. This is also my 100th story in this fandom (not counting the special bus to hell fic) and that seriously makes my head go boom. Thanks for being such a supportive readership, you crazy funsters. Written for all the Prison Break November birthday babies with much love and the profound hope that you don't mind sharing.
~*~
A lot of things have changed since Fox River.
As she studies the contents of the envelope Michael’s just given her, the words he’d uttered the day before suddenly take on a whole new meaning. Suddenly she’s back in the infirmary, staring at Michael as he pleads with her to understand. I’m getting my brother out of here, tonight, and I need your help.
“All that avails is flight,” he murmurs now as he turns to face her. “Maybe my father was onto something.”
She never had the chance to meet Aldo Burrows, but if she ever encounters him in the afterlife, she’s going to make sure he knows what his sons have been prepared to sacrifice in order to fulfill his unwanted legacy. She thinks of her father, and what she’d do if the tables were turned. She likes to think she’d honor his every wish. After all, she never seemed to get around to honoring them while he was alive.
“If they all die because we tried to take down the Company, and I survived because-” he hesitates, his gaze flicking away from hers, “because I called in sick.” He looks at her, one hand coming up to graze her arm, as if needing to touch her before he can go on. “How am I gonna live with myself?”
She knows what he wants to hear, but she’s not prepared to give it to him. “And what if you go with them and you have a seizure at the wrong time in the wrong place and you never come back?” The dock seems to sway beneath her feet as she says the words, and she tightens her grip on the envelope in her hand, trying to center herself. “How am I supposed to live with myself, knowing I could have saved you?”
“Sara, listen to me.” He catches her wrists in his hands, pulling them up to cradle them against his chest. If she closed her eyes, she thinks, she could isolate the sound of his heart beating beneath her hand. “My life is not more important than the bigger picture here.”
Her vision blurs hotly, but she can still see the dark circles beneath his too-bright eyes, like smudged bruises made by a brutal thumb. “It is to me.” She doesn’t care if she’s being selfish. She wants him alive. She needs him alive.
His eyes are glittering now too, and she hates that he’s looking at her as though asking her permission when they both know he’ll do exactly what he thinks he needs to do, just as he always does. “If we don’t finish what we started, even if you and I survive, we will never be free.” His grip on her hands tightens almost painfully. “Never.”
They look at each other for what feels like an eternity, but she knows it will never be long enough. “Please don’t ask me to make this decision,” she finally whispers. “I can’t do it.”
He relaxes his grip on her hands, his fingertips brushing the envelope she’s still clutching. “This information from Gretchen? This is why I need your help.”
Once again, she stares down at the photograph in her hand. “What is this?”
“The General’s one remaining Achilles heel,” he says succinctly, and yet another piece of the puzzle clicks into place in her head.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Give us a bargaining chip.” His fingers are hot against her wrist, and she realises his temperature must have risen dangerously once again. “Something to keep up our sleeves if this doesn’t go exactly to plan.”
She wants to refuse. She wants to throw the envelope and its contents into the river and pretend it never existed. She wants to put Michael in the back of the SUV and take him to hospital and sweet talk her way into saving his life.
“I can’t do this without you,” he whispers urgently, his voice barely audible above the clanging horn of a passing freighter. “Please, Sara.”
She closes her eyes, pushing aside her anger and her frustration as best she can, desperately drawing on the medical instinct that is still as natural as breathing. “How long will it take you to get through those walls and get to Scylla?”
“Two hours, three at the most.”
She opens her eyes to give him a piercing stare. “You sure about that?”
His throat works as he swallows hard. “No.”
She thinks of everything she knows about seizures, and from the recesses of her medical training, something sharpens into focus. In theory, she can buy him enough time to get this done. In practice - well, she doesn’t want to think about that. But she has no choice. He is going to do this with or without her blessing. “There might be another way I can help.”
“Thank you.” The uncertainty in his answering smile wants her want to weep, but she chokes back the impulse.
“Promise me, that the very second this is done, you’ll go to straight the hospital.”
He lifts one hand to her face, his palm gently cupping her chin. “I promise.”
The touch of his mouth on hers is soft, almost hesitant, but it makes her want to wrap her arms around him and sink to her knees, holding him so tightly there is no longer a boundary between his flesh and hers. When he lifts his head, she presses the envelope against her heart, knowing he’s asking more of her now than he ever did in Fox River. “I just have one request.”
“What’s that?”
If it were any other moment in time, she might be tempted to smile. “You can be the one to tell your brother.”
~*~
The trip to the GATE building is mostly a quiet one, as if the men are practicing for the enforced silence that will soon be required of them. Michael answers their last minute questions, talking about sensors and drill bits and exactly how high to spray the liquid nitrogen into the air, his voice showing the strain of the invisible storm taking place inside his head.
He doesn’t speak to her, nor her to him, but his shoulder is pressed hard against hers, his hand close enough to her thigh that she feels the brush of his knuckles every time Lincoln takes a corner. We can get through this, she tells him silently, wishing she could believe her own mantra.
When the car pulls up outside their target, Alex and Lincoln are quick to climb out, leaving her and Michael alone with Sucre. She hesistates, then reaches for the syringe in her bag. Whatever secrets she’s about to impart, she knows they will be safe with him.
“If I still had my medical license, I’d lose it over this.” Those words shouldn’t still hurt to say, but God, they sting like hell. This isn’t about you, she tells herself, and reaches for the alcohol swab. “This is usually given to epileptics.” She swipes the cotton across the smooth skin of Michael's forearm, trying not to remember the dozens of times she’s done exactly this, his hand resting trustingly in hers, his eyes studying her far too intently. “It will suppress the rapid firing of neurons for the next three hours, making it unlikely that you’ll have a seizure in that time.” Perhaps one day, she’ll tell him that smoking a joint might have had a similar effect. Maybe, she thinks, they’ll even laugh about it.
As she slides the needle beneath his skin, her memory spikes, throwing up vivid images of the last time she’d done this to him. She’d been angry, so angry, her hands shaking as she shot his body full of the insulin he’d never needed, furious with him for his lies, with herself for believing them, with the woman who had the legal right to call herself his wife.
She’s angry now, but her hands are as gentle as she can make them as she injects him with the nerve suppressant that was once used only on rats. Another thing they can laugh about later maybe, she thinks, a heavy knot of apprehension sinking to the pit of her stomach. “But Michael, any added mental or physical stress-”
“I get it,” he interjects quietly, and she wants to shake him, because she knows him too well.
“I mean it.” She presses a clean swab over the injection site. “I don’t want you to move unless you absolutely have to.” Without saying a word, he presses his thumb down on the swab, holding it in place, the way he always used to do in the infirmary. The innocuous gesture sends a wave of despair through her, so strong she almost feels it crack through her bones. “And soon as this is over,” she says, grabbing the envelope and her purse with shaking hands that want to reach out to him and pin him against the seat, anything to stop him from taking the risk he’s about to take, “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
When this is over. Not if. Never if.
Her eyes are dry as she looks at him. She can’t touch him, can’t kiss him. If she does, she lets in the possibility that it might be for the last time. I love you, she tells him silently, her smile feeling as though it’s peeling away at the edges. He says nothing, his dark eyes swimming with the same emotion that’s almost drowning her, his thumb still pressed hard against the last place she’d touched him.
She doesn’t cry until she’s out of the car, her dark sunglasses firmly in place, hiding her fear from the world. She delays taking up her mark, instead watching the four men as they walk towards the entrance of the building. Michael is the last one to enter, and as he takes that last step towards the automatic doors, he turns his head in her direction. He’s too far away for her to see his face clearly, but that doesn’t matter. She’s seen that expression before, too many times to count. You and me, we’re not done yet. Then he’s gone, vanishing into the depths of the building that will either be the scene of their final triumph or a soulless glass and steel-lined grave.
Swallowing the sudden bubble of nausea that stings the back of her throat, she makes her way across the square, taking up her position on the park bench Michael had mapped out. Her purse bumps against her thigh, the added weight of Alex’s gun making its usual graceful swing feel awkward and clumsy. She sinks down onto the hard wooden seat, Gretchen’s envelope tucked neatly beside the firearm she will have no hesitation using if it means saving a life that deserves to be saved.
A lot of things have changed since Fox River, Michael had told her.
And she is one of them.
~*~
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael Scofield, Sara Tancredi
Genre: Het
Pairing: Michael/Sara
Length: 1,879 words
Rating: PG-15
Summary: A lot of things have changed since Fox River. This is set during #411, "Quiet Riot" and contains dialogue from that episode that does not belong to me. It contains spoilers for #411 and speculation for #412 that I've kept deliberately vague for the spoilerphobes. This is also my 100th story in this fandom (not counting the special bus to hell fic) and that seriously makes my head go boom. Thanks for being such a supportive readership, you crazy funsters. Written for all the Prison Break November birthday babies with much love and the profound hope that you don't mind sharing.
~*~
A lot of things have changed since Fox River.
As she studies the contents of the envelope Michael’s just given her, the words he’d uttered the day before suddenly take on a whole new meaning. Suddenly she’s back in the infirmary, staring at Michael as he pleads with her to understand. I’m getting my brother out of here, tonight, and I need your help.
“All that avails is flight,” he murmurs now as he turns to face her. “Maybe my father was onto something.”
She never had the chance to meet Aldo Burrows, but if she ever encounters him in the afterlife, she’s going to make sure he knows what his sons have been prepared to sacrifice in order to fulfill his unwanted legacy. She thinks of her father, and what she’d do if the tables were turned. She likes to think she’d honor his every wish. After all, she never seemed to get around to honoring them while he was alive.
“If they all die because we tried to take down the Company, and I survived because-” he hesitates, his gaze flicking away from hers, “because I called in sick.” He looks at her, one hand coming up to graze her arm, as if needing to touch her before he can go on. “How am I gonna live with myself?”
She knows what he wants to hear, but she’s not prepared to give it to him. “And what if you go with them and you have a seizure at the wrong time in the wrong place and you never come back?” The dock seems to sway beneath her feet as she says the words, and she tightens her grip on the envelope in her hand, trying to center herself. “How am I supposed to live with myself, knowing I could have saved you?”
“Sara, listen to me.” He catches her wrists in his hands, pulling them up to cradle them against his chest. If she closed her eyes, she thinks, she could isolate the sound of his heart beating beneath her hand. “My life is not more important than the bigger picture here.”
Her vision blurs hotly, but she can still see the dark circles beneath his too-bright eyes, like smudged bruises made by a brutal thumb. “It is to me.” She doesn’t care if she’s being selfish. She wants him alive. She needs him alive.
His eyes are glittering now too, and she hates that he’s looking at her as though asking her permission when they both know he’ll do exactly what he thinks he needs to do, just as he always does. “If we don’t finish what we started, even if you and I survive, we will never be free.” His grip on her hands tightens almost painfully. “Never.”
They look at each other for what feels like an eternity, but she knows it will never be long enough. “Please don’t ask me to make this decision,” she finally whispers. “I can’t do it.”
He relaxes his grip on her hands, his fingertips brushing the envelope she’s still clutching. “This information from Gretchen? This is why I need your help.”
Once again, she stares down at the photograph in her hand. “What is this?”
“The General’s one remaining Achilles heel,” he says succinctly, and yet another piece of the puzzle clicks into place in her head.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Give us a bargaining chip.” His fingers are hot against her wrist, and she realises his temperature must have risen dangerously once again. “Something to keep up our sleeves if this doesn’t go exactly to plan.”
She wants to refuse. She wants to throw the envelope and its contents into the river and pretend it never existed. She wants to put Michael in the back of the SUV and take him to hospital and sweet talk her way into saving his life.
“I can’t do this without you,” he whispers urgently, his voice barely audible above the clanging horn of a passing freighter. “Please, Sara.”
She closes her eyes, pushing aside her anger and her frustration as best she can, desperately drawing on the medical instinct that is still as natural as breathing. “How long will it take you to get through those walls and get to Scylla?”
“Two hours, three at the most.”
She opens her eyes to give him a piercing stare. “You sure about that?”
His throat works as he swallows hard. “No.”
She thinks of everything she knows about seizures, and from the recesses of her medical training, something sharpens into focus. In theory, she can buy him enough time to get this done. In practice - well, she doesn’t want to think about that. But she has no choice. He is going to do this with or without her blessing. “There might be another way I can help.”
“Thank you.” The uncertainty in his answering smile wants her want to weep, but she chokes back the impulse.
“Promise me, that the very second this is done, you’ll go to straight the hospital.”
He lifts one hand to her face, his palm gently cupping her chin. “I promise.”
The touch of his mouth on hers is soft, almost hesitant, but it makes her want to wrap her arms around him and sink to her knees, holding him so tightly there is no longer a boundary between his flesh and hers. When he lifts his head, she presses the envelope against her heart, knowing he’s asking more of her now than he ever did in Fox River. “I just have one request.”
“What’s that?”
If it were any other moment in time, she might be tempted to smile. “You can be the one to tell your brother.”
~*~
The trip to the GATE building is mostly a quiet one, as if the men are practicing for the enforced silence that will soon be required of them. Michael answers their last minute questions, talking about sensors and drill bits and exactly how high to spray the liquid nitrogen into the air, his voice showing the strain of the invisible storm taking place inside his head.
He doesn’t speak to her, nor her to him, but his shoulder is pressed hard against hers, his hand close enough to her thigh that she feels the brush of his knuckles every time Lincoln takes a corner. We can get through this, she tells him silently, wishing she could believe her own mantra.
When the car pulls up outside their target, Alex and Lincoln are quick to climb out, leaving her and Michael alone with Sucre. She hesistates, then reaches for the syringe in her bag. Whatever secrets she’s about to impart, she knows they will be safe with him.
“If I still had my medical license, I’d lose it over this.” Those words shouldn’t still hurt to say, but God, they sting like hell. This isn’t about you, she tells herself, and reaches for the alcohol swab. “This is usually given to epileptics.” She swipes the cotton across the smooth skin of Michael's forearm, trying not to remember the dozens of times she’s done exactly this, his hand resting trustingly in hers, his eyes studying her far too intently. “It will suppress the rapid firing of neurons for the next three hours, making it unlikely that you’ll have a seizure in that time.” Perhaps one day, she’ll tell him that smoking a joint might have had a similar effect. Maybe, she thinks, they’ll even laugh about it.
As she slides the needle beneath his skin, her memory spikes, throwing up vivid images of the last time she’d done this to him. She’d been angry, so angry, her hands shaking as she shot his body full of the insulin he’d never needed, furious with him for his lies, with herself for believing them, with the woman who had the legal right to call herself his wife.
She’s angry now, but her hands are as gentle as she can make them as she injects him with the nerve suppressant that was once used only on rats. Another thing they can laugh about later maybe, she thinks, a heavy knot of apprehension sinking to the pit of her stomach. “But Michael, any added mental or physical stress-”
“I get it,” he interjects quietly, and she wants to shake him, because she knows him too well.
“I mean it.” She presses a clean swab over the injection site. “I don’t want you to move unless you absolutely have to.” Without saying a word, he presses his thumb down on the swab, holding it in place, the way he always used to do in the infirmary. The innocuous gesture sends a wave of despair through her, so strong she almost feels it crack through her bones. “And soon as this is over,” she says, grabbing the envelope and her purse with shaking hands that want to reach out to him and pin him against the seat, anything to stop him from taking the risk he’s about to take, “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
When this is over. Not if. Never if.
Her eyes are dry as she looks at him. She can’t touch him, can’t kiss him. If she does, she lets in the possibility that it might be for the last time. I love you, she tells him silently, her smile feeling as though it’s peeling away at the edges. He says nothing, his dark eyes swimming with the same emotion that’s almost drowning her, his thumb still pressed hard against the last place she’d touched him.
She doesn’t cry until she’s out of the car, her dark sunglasses firmly in place, hiding her fear from the world. She delays taking up her mark, instead watching the four men as they walk towards the entrance of the building. Michael is the last one to enter, and as he takes that last step towards the automatic doors, he turns his head in her direction. He’s too far away for her to see his face clearly, but that doesn’t matter. She’s seen that expression before, too many times to count. You and me, we’re not done yet. Then he’s gone, vanishing into the depths of the building that will either be the scene of their final triumph or a soulless glass and steel-lined grave.
Swallowing the sudden bubble of nausea that stings the back of her throat, she makes her way across the square, taking up her position on the park bench Michael had mapped out. Her purse bumps against her thigh, the added weight of Alex’s gun making its usual graceful swing feel awkward and clumsy. She sinks down onto the hard wooden seat, Gretchen’s envelope tucked neatly beside the firearm she will have no hesitation using if it means saving a life that deserves to be saved.
A lot of things have changed since Fox River, Michael had told her.
And she is one of them.
~*~