I Can't let you go
Title: I Can't Let You Go
Author: Pamala
Category: Future/Angst/Brothers
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I know they're not mine. I'm old and tired so, PTB,
please don't slap me around for playing with your toys.
Authors notes: This was written for the fantastic prompt of a reunion
with lots of angst put up by coppala. Thanks for the inspriration.
We rarely talk and, when we do, it’s not like it should be.
Now that it‘s over -all of us free men, watching him over the past year go about
making a life for himself has taken me down a long road of curiosity, confusion, and
the flat out worry that has me pounding on his door in the middle of a Wednesday
afternoon.
Hearing footsteps approach, then stop, on the other side of the door, making no
move to let me in, I lay one last forceful closed-fist knock high - roughly where I
know his gaze will be leveled - on the door as I make my point as clear as I can.
"Open up. I want to talk to you and I'm not leaving until I do! Open the goddamn
door, Michael."
Opening the door slowly, planting himself firmly in the entrance to keep me out,
he mumbles the same old excuse. "Just because I work at home now doesn't mean
I have the time, Lincoln. You wouldn't come barging into an office like this, would you?"
"If I had to ... if I couldn't pin you down any other way..."
Shouldering past him, moving quickly through the hall, into the living room, planting
myself firmly on the couch, I lay it all out nice and loud so he - still lingering at
the door, choosing not to follow - can hear me.
" If I had to I would! Lucky for me that's not necessary. I can push my way in, sit,
wait as long as it takes until you get it through that thick head of yours it’s easier
to talk to me in the privacy your apartment."
Listening to him close and lock - using several locks - the door behind me, my vision
of Michael, the one I had before all that has happened - sitting up on high, above it all
in his fancy loft looking down on me, down on the rest of us - shifts to a far more likely
reality that it was all a lot less about him being on his high horse and more about him
building up walls, hiding away, doing what it took to insulate himself as much as
possible from the outside world.
Watching him walk into the room neat as a pin in his crisp blue, likely professionally
laundered and pressed dress shirt, looking down on me, arms crossed over his chest,
standing at a distance a good ten feet away, I can see in him the need for control that
I can't begin to imagine how he lived without all those months.
I'd always known he was different, but sitting there, staring up at him, I feel shame
admitting to myself that, apparently, over the years I was too wrapped up in myself
to see just how different he really was.
He's tucked himself away, safe in something that resembles the life he lost. He's
shuttered all the windows, rolled up the rugs, pushed everything and everyone as
far away as possible, and that thought scares me more than anything I watched
him go through at or after Fox River.
"What do you want, Linc? I've got work to do."
Glancing around the room, everything in it nearly a mirror image, save one wall filled
end to end with a long flat desktop brimming with computer equipment, of the loft I
hardly ever saw the inside of all those years ago, I dismiss his irritated plea over my
shoulder on my way into the kitchen. "At the moment I'd like a beer.... As for work
to do, well, web building ain't quite the same as architecture. You can work anytime
you want, around the clock even knowing you - so your work can wait, Michael."
When I come back into the room, the fact that he's standing right where I left him,
hasn't moved a muscle, almost frozen in place, startles me, yet serves to strengthen
my resolve.
Watching me walk in, it is only his face that changes. Eyes dipping low to the bottle
in my hand, his nose wrinkling ever so slightly in the disapproval he simply cannot hide.
"I'm not a drunk anymore, Michael..."
Looking past him to a well stocked bar cart near his desk, I can't help noticing a
tumbler - basically empty, a single ice cube near melted diluting the amber liquid
that remains - sitting next to a bottle of fine scotch that is near empty itself.
"I've got my shit together, Michael. No drugs, hardly ever drink..."
Twisting the cap from the bottle, tossing it on the coffee table in front of me, I nod
at the glass - his drink - across the room behind him. "Sometimes, for whatever the
reason, a man needs a drink. Why don't you go top that one off and sit down so we
can talk."
Resistant, just as I expected him to be, he stands there, unmoving, glaring at me as
if he can get me to walk out the door by sheer will alone. "You want me to leave. You
need to be alone. I understand that, Michael. What I don't get, since you're genius in
this family, is why you can't figure that since I haven't left yet - you can't psychically
make me - the best and easiest way to make me go away in to give in and sit your
ass down and talk to me."
Frustrated but able to see the writing on the wall, I watch his every move as he
thrusts his hands into the pockets of the finely tailored dress pants that he's
wearing - starkly out of place as comfortable attire one wears in the confines
of your own home - and shakes his head in obvious annoyance as he crosses
to the bar.
With his back to me the whole time, making me wonder just what look he may
have on his face, he downs what remains in the glass in one gulp before setting
it down hard on the glass tabletop, tossing in a few cubes from the ice bucket and
filling the glass with all that remains - a good three fingers - in the bottle sitting
beside it.
I may not know my brother as well as I should, but I can see how nervous and ill
at ease he is by the way he shakes the tumbler back in forth in his hand, causing
the cubes to clink noisily against the sides, providing the needed steady, predictable
distraction I've learned over the years he needs to keep his focus when he fears he's
on the edge of spinning out of control.
Sitting down in the armchair near the couch, I see the tension - back arrow straight,
his free hand gripping tightly the arm - written all over him.
"Fine! You win... I'm here! What is it you want to talk about?"
Relaxing my posture, leaning back, lifting my feet to the table in front of me, feeling
as free and easy as I look, my heart aches at the pain and loneliness suffered by the
man sitting next to me. "Nothing in particular... Just stuff, Michael. Talk! I miss talking
to you and it kind of pisses me off that I have to twist your arm to get you to do it."
His blank stare, his utter confusion at my words tells me just how right I am about
him and how important it is for me to do whatever it takes to reach him. "Me talk to
you.. you talk to me. Anything! Just talk, Michael. For instance, I was wondering
if you'd heard T-Bag was murdered in prison last month?"
As I'd anticipated, he flinches, even leans away from me, clearly thrown by anything
to do with Fox River or the mere mention of the name.
"By the sound of things he tried cozying up to the wrong cellie and it cost him in
a big way..."
" I don't care ... I don’t give a damn, about what did or didn't happen to him."
Hitting a nerve in him, just as I expected, I watch with relief as he twists uncomfortably
in his seat, tapping his fingertip rhythmically against the armrest as he speaks.
"The past is the past. Let’s leave it that way."
"I'm part of that past, Michael..."
He looks away, across the room, hiding from my eyes.
"You wouldn't have that 'past' without me, now would you? Is that why I never see you?
Why you don't talk to me? Why you won't look me in the eye anymore, Michael?"
The fact that he refuses to turn back, that he can no longer stand to look at me,
tells me I'm on the right track and forces me to push harder.
"How would you feel if I told you I found out about T-Bag from the Doc?"
Without a word he lifts the glass to his lips, tipping it high, gulping it down hard and fast.
"That she asked about you. That she was worried about you. That after everything
she knew you well enough, was smart enough ... cared enough to wonder if you
were alright."
Knowing I’ve touched a nerve mentioning the Doc, I wait.
No more than a minute or two passes but sitting there like that, his silence, his refusal
to even turn around frustrates me to the point it's all I can do not to reach out, grad hold,
and forcibly jerk him around to meet my eye.
"Look at me, Michael! "
No longer willing to let him hide, I kick his leg hard with my foot forcing him off
balance in his seat.
"You're not alright, Michael. And you know it as well as I do. I had to practically
sit on you to keep you from going to that woman after you found out what had
happened to her, yet you haven't made a single move to check on her.... Haven't
tried to see her, tell her you were sorry, thank her like you swore to me over
and over you had to do to be whole, to be human again."
There is out right rage, fury in his eyes as he turns to face me, something
I welcome because it is the first real emotion I've seen in him in a very long time.
"Let it go, Linc!"
I can't help wondering what exactly it is that switches on in that his head of his
as he comes alive in front of my eyes meeting my gaze intently, chest heaving,
growling out the words from somewhere deep inside him.
"It‘s in the past. I'm not fucking kidding, Lincoln. Leave her, leave all of it in the
past where it belongs. "
"You can't just leave it behind, Michael! The past is only the past when deal with it.
It'll never be the past until you face it! "
Seeing denial, fear written all over his face trying to win out, rule over him, I reach
out taking hold of his leg, pulling it up hard, peeling the sock off his foot, setting it,
holding it, holding him down on the table before me. " Look at that! NOW!
Your goddamn toes are gone... Do you ever look at it? I bet my bottom dollar
you don't. Bet you dress up in your pressed shirt and your expensive pants - dress
up in your past - in the dark so you never have to look at it? "
An eerie calm comes over him as he takes the sock from my hand slowly, watching
my face the whole time, as he slips it back on covering the evidence.
"You're doing everything you can to slip right back into this protective wrapper of a
life you use to live, so it must be utter hell to have your own body forcing you to face it,
forcing you back to reality anytime you look down at your feet or catch a glimpse of
yourself shirtless in a mirror."
"Get out! Get out and leave me alone, Linc!"
Rising to his feet quickly, turning to leave, I'm up, out of my seat with equal force,
lunging at him, trapping his wrist in my hand, yanking him back before he can
walk away.
"You saved my life, Michael!"
As he struggles to pull away, I bring my other hand up to take hold of the cuff of his
shirt buttoned neatly around his wrist, tugging it with everything I have in me until
the button holding it closed rips free allowing me to push the sleeve of his shirt up
the length of his arm, drawing him into me as I go.
"Look! Look at your goddamn arm, Michael! They're there because of me..."
Turning his head slowly, he looks down at the lines on his flesh for no more than
a moment before his eyes, throwing daggers, drift up to settle on my own.
"You did that to save me, to give me another chance at life. I'm grateful, Michael.
I'll never be able to thank you enough for what you did, but if I had known then that
all you'd done, that this new life meant losing you in the process, I don't know if I
would've done it...."
Still trapped by my grip, his hand - the tight fist pulling and fighting against me -
begins to relax and open with my words. "You've slipped away, Michael. There
is no sentence, no execution date, but you're dying little by little... "
With a deep sigh, his head rolling forward and dipping low against his chest, I feel
the tension, the fight in him begin to drain away to the point I feel comfortable
stepping forward, easing my hold on his hand as I pull his tired, defeated frame
into my waiting arms.
"You wouldn't let me go, Michael.... I can't let you go either...."
The End.
Author: Pamala
Category: Future/Angst/Brothers
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I know they're not mine. I'm old and tired so, PTB,
please don't slap me around for playing with your toys.
Authors notes: This was written for the fantastic prompt of a reunion
with lots of angst put up by coppala. Thanks for the inspriration.
We rarely talk and, when we do, it’s not like it should be.
Now that it‘s over -all of us free men, watching him over the past year go about
making a life for himself has taken me down a long road of curiosity, confusion, and
the flat out worry that has me pounding on his door in the middle of a Wednesday
afternoon.
Hearing footsteps approach, then stop, on the other side of the door, making no
move to let me in, I lay one last forceful closed-fist knock high - roughly where I
know his gaze will be leveled - on the door as I make my point as clear as I can.
"Open up. I want to talk to you and I'm not leaving until I do! Open the goddamn
door, Michael."
Opening the door slowly, planting himself firmly in the entrance to keep me out,
he mumbles the same old excuse. "Just because I work at home now doesn't mean
I have the time, Lincoln. You wouldn't come barging into an office like this, would you?"
"If I had to ... if I couldn't pin you down any other way..."
Shouldering past him, moving quickly through the hall, into the living room, planting
myself firmly on the couch, I lay it all out nice and loud so he - still lingering at
the door, choosing not to follow - can hear me.
" If I had to I would! Lucky for me that's not necessary. I can push my way in, sit,
wait as long as it takes until you get it through that thick head of yours it’s easier
to talk to me in the privacy your apartment."
Listening to him close and lock - using several locks - the door behind me, my vision
of Michael, the one I had before all that has happened - sitting up on high, above it all
in his fancy loft looking down on me, down on the rest of us - shifts to a far more likely
reality that it was all a lot less about him being on his high horse and more about him
building up walls, hiding away, doing what it took to insulate himself as much as
possible from the outside world.
Watching him walk into the room neat as a pin in his crisp blue, likely professionally
laundered and pressed dress shirt, looking down on me, arms crossed over his chest,
standing at a distance a good ten feet away, I can see in him the need for control that
I can't begin to imagine how he lived without all those months.
I'd always known he was different, but sitting there, staring up at him, I feel shame
admitting to myself that, apparently, over the years I was too wrapped up in myself
to see just how different he really was.
He's tucked himself away, safe in something that resembles the life he lost. He's
shuttered all the windows, rolled up the rugs, pushed everything and everyone as
far away as possible, and that thought scares me more than anything I watched
him go through at or after Fox River.
"What do you want, Linc? I've got work to do."
Glancing around the room, everything in it nearly a mirror image, save one wall filled
end to end with a long flat desktop brimming with computer equipment, of the loft I
hardly ever saw the inside of all those years ago, I dismiss his irritated plea over my
shoulder on my way into the kitchen. "At the moment I'd like a beer.... As for work
to do, well, web building ain't quite the same as architecture. You can work anytime
you want, around the clock even knowing you - so your work can wait, Michael."
When I come back into the room, the fact that he's standing right where I left him,
hasn't moved a muscle, almost frozen in place, startles me, yet serves to strengthen
my resolve.
Watching me walk in, it is only his face that changes. Eyes dipping low to the bottle
in my hand, his nose wrinkling ever so slightly in the disapproval he simply cannot hide.
"I'm not a drunk anymore, Michael..."
Looking past him to a well stocked bar cart near his desk, I can't help noticing a
tumbler - basically empty, a single ice cube near melted diluting the amber liquid
that remains - sitting next to a bottle of fine scotch that is near empty itself.
"I've got my shit together, Michael. No drugs, hardly ever drink..."
Twisting the cap from the bottle, tossing it on the coffee table in front of me, I nod
at the glass - his drink - across the room behind him. "Sometimes, for whatever the
reason, a man needs a drink. Why don't you go top that one off and sit down so we
can talk."
Resistant, just as I expected him to be, he stands there, unmoving, glaring at me as
if he can get me to walk out the door by sheer will alone. "You want me to leave. You
need to be alone. I understand that, Michael. What I don't get, since you're genius in
this family, is why you can't figure that since I haven't left yet - you can't psychically
make me - the best and easiest way to make me go away in to give in and sit your
ass down and talk to me."
Frustrated but able to see the writing on the wall, I watch his every move as he
thrusts his hands into the pockets of the finely tailored dress pants that he's
wearing - starkly out of place as comfortable attire one wears in the confines
of your own home - and shakes his head in obvious annoyance as he crosses
to the bar.
With his back to me the whole time, making me wonder just what look he may
have on his face, he downs what remains in the glass in one gulp before setting
it down hard on the glass tabletop, tossing in a few cubes from the ice bucket and
filling the glass with all that remains - a good three fingers - in the bottle sitting
beside it.
I may not know my brother as well as I should, but I can see how nervous and ill
at ease he is by the way he shakes the tumbler back in forth in his hand, causing
the cubes to clink noisily against the sides, providing the needed steady, predictable
distraction I've learned over the years he needs to keep his focus when he fears he's
on the edge of spinning out of control.
Sitting down in the armchair near the couch, I see the tension - back arrow straight,
his free hand gripping tightly the arm - written all over him.
"Fine! You win... I'm here! What is it you want to talk about?"
Relaxing my posture, leaning back, lifting my feet to the table in front of me, feeling
as free and easy as I look, my heart aches at the pain and loneliness suffered by the
man sitting next to me. "Nothing in particular... Just stuff, Michael. Talk! I miss talking
to you and it kind of pisses me off that I have to twist your arm to get you to do it."
His blank stare, his utter confusion at my words tells me just how right I am about
him and how important it is for me to do whatever it takes to reach him. "Me talk to
you.. you talk to me. Anything! Just talk, Michael. For instance, I was wondering
if you'd heard T-Bag was murdered in prison last month?"
As I'd anticipated, he flinches, even leans away from me, clearly thrown by anything
to do with Fox River or the mere mention of the name.
"By the sound of things he tried cozying up to the wrong cellie and it cost him in
a big way..."
" I don't care ... I don’t give a damn, about what did or didn't happen to him."
Hitting a nerve in him, just as I expected, I watch with relief as he twists uncomfortably
in his seat, tapping his fingertip rhythmically against the armrest as he speaks.
"The past is the past. Let’s leave it that way."
"I'm part of that past, Michael..."
He looks away, across the room, hiding from my eyes.
"You wouldn't have that 'past' without me, now would you? Is that why I never see you?
Why you don't talk to me? Why you won't look me in the eye anymore, Michael?"
The fact that he refuses to turn back, that he can no longer stand to look at me,
tells me I'm on the right track and forces me to push harder.
"How would you feel if I told you I found out about T-Bag from the Doc?"
Without a word he lifts the glass to his lips, tipping it high, gulping it down hard and fast.
"That she asked about you. That she was worried about you. That after everything
she knew you well enough, was smart enough ... cared enough to wonder if you
were alright."
Knowing I’ve touched a nerve mentioning the Doc, I wait.
No more than a minute or two passes but sitting there like that, his silence, his refusal
to even turn around frustrates me to the point it's all I can do not to reach out, grad hold,
and forcibly jerk him around to meet my eye.
"Look at me, Michael! "
No longer willing to let him hide, I kick his leg hard with my foot forcing him off
balance in his seat.
"You're not alright, Michael. And you know it as well as I do. I had to practically
sit on you to keep you from going to that woman after you found out what had
happened to her, yet you haven't made a single move to check on her.... Haven't
tried to see her, tell her you were sorry, thank her like you swore to me over
and over you had to do to be whole, to be human again."
There is out right rage, fury in his eyes as he turns to face me, something
I welcome because it is the first real emotion I've seen in him in a very long time.
"Let it go, Linc!"
I can't help wondering what exactly it is that switches on in that his head of his
as he comes alive in front of my eyes meeting my gaze intently, chest heaving,
growling out the words from somewhere deep inside him.
"It‘s in the past. I'm not fucking kidding, Lincoln. Leave her, leave all of it in the
past where it belongs. "
"You can't just leave it behind, Michael! The past is only the past when deal with it.
It'll never be the past until you face it! "
Seeing denial, fear written all over his face trying to win out, rule over him, I reach
out taking hold of his leg, pulling it up hard, peeling the sock off his foot, setting it,
holding it, holding him down on the table before me. " Look at that! NOW!
Your goddamn toes are gone... Do you ever look at it? I bet my bottom dollar
you don't. Bet you dress up in your pressed shirt and your expensive pants - dress
up in your past - in the dark so you never have to look at it? "
An eerie calm comes over him as he takes the sock from my hand slowly, watching
my face the whole time, as he slips it back on covering the evidence.
"You're doing everything you can to slip right back into this protective wrapper of a
life you use to live, so it must be utter hell to have your own body forcing you to face it,
forcing you back to reality anytime you look down at your feet or catch a glimpse of
yourself shirtless in a mirror."
"Get out! Get out and leave me alone, Linc!"
Rising to his feet quickly, turning to leave, I'm up, out of my seat with equal force,
lunging at him, trapping his wrist in my hand, yanking him back before he can
walk away.
"You saved my life, Michael!"
As he struggles to pull away, I bring my other hand up to take hold of the cuff of his
shirt buttoned neatly around his wrist, tugging it with everything I have in me until
the button holding it closed rips free allowing me to push the sleeve of his shirt up
the length of his arm, drawing him into me as I go.
"Look! Look at your goddamn arm, Michael! They're there because of me..."
Turning his head slowly, he looks down at the lines on his flesh for no more than
a moment before his eyes, throwing daggers, drift up to settle on my own.
"You did that to save me, to give me another chance at life. I'm grateful, Michael.
I'll never be able to thank you enough for what you did, but if I had known then that
all you'd done, that this new life meant losing you in the process, I don't know if I
would've done it...."
Still trapped by my grip, his hand - the tight fist pulling and fighting against me -
begins to relax and open with my words. "You've slipped away, Michael. There
is no sentence, no execution date, but you're dying little by little... "
With a deep sigh, his head rolling forward and dipping low against his chest, I feel
the tension, the fight in him begin to drain away to the point I feel comfortable
stepping forward, easing my hold on his hand as I pull his tired, defeated frame
into my waiting arms.
"You wouldn't let me go, Michael.... I can't let you go either...."
The End.