PB Fic - Again Ch 1
Title: Again
Authors: volatile/becisvolatile
Rating: PG-13 (As always, this will probably change)
Chapter: One
Characters: Sara, Michael, Lincoln, LJ, Kellerman, Katie…
Genre: Drama, Humor, Romance, Angst, You-Name-It.
Summary: Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, someone was chanting badideabadideabadidea. Of course, she’d heard that one a million times before.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Especially not anything related to Prison Break.
Notes: Uhm. Yeah. I’m back at it.
Before Sara had even settled across from him, his expression grew… stormy. Sometimes he was smug, sometimes even guilty. But always an absolute bastard. She watched him for a moment through the Perspex before picking up the handset. He did the same.
‘Sara. Again,’ his voice was flat.
‘Paul,’ she shifted in her chair, the buckle of her brown leather belt digging into her stomach. She never dressed up to come and see him. That day she’d dragged on old jeans, worn leather boots, a singlet and a faded Henley top. She wore her hair longer, often tied back, a massive purse was slung over her shoulder, she shrugged out of it and let it fall to the floor.
‘What is it this time, Sara? Closure? Do I know who killed you father?’
‘Prison treating you well?’
‘Ah… that one.’
Sara almost smiled, ‘I’m not here to gloat, Paul.’
‘Doesn’t bother me either way, Sara, it’s been… what a year?’
‘Two, and you know it.’
Kellerman smiled and nodded softly, ‘How can I not know it, Sara? Michael Scofield put me behind bars and… oh… I guess you know the rest… he left you behind too, huh?’
Sara’s hips shifted as she sought a more comfortable position on the hard visitation chairs. Kellerman liked this conversation. The one where he reminded her how Michael had left her behind… for Panama.
‘He’s safe.’
‘And how long since he’s been proven an innocent man? Not much less than the time he’s been gone.’
It was true that Michael was pardoned in Absentia, alongside Lincoln Burrows and LJ Burrows. But while Lincoln and LJ had returned to live in the very same city as her - or so she’d heard - Michael Scofield had not come back. Not that it mattered, because she had a life now. And what did a fumbled kiss and a relationship built on adrenaline amount to anyway? No, she’d played her part in Michael’s life and he’d moved on.
Sometimes, she even told herself that it hadn’t even hurt.
Mostly, she acknowledged that it had been her choice to let him escape without her. Sometimes she didn’t mind using the word ‘choice’. Sometimes, she did, because ‘choice’ implied that it could have gone any other way. Sometimes, it was enough to pretend that she was peaceful, and felt nothing more than happiness for his triumphs.
But mostly wasn’t always, and Kellerman liked to find those not-mostly moments and pick at her insecurities and grievances. Which, she supposed, after two years, she still had entirely too many of. Especially since she still insisted on visiting Kellerman whenever the mood struck her.
Possibly her continual visits with the condemned man were reflective of her spectacular lack of self-preservation. She actually felt sorry for him. He’d been alone at his trial. There were rumors of a sister, but she’d never seen her. Sara knew what life in prison could do to men, had seen it. Even worse, she knew what serving that sort of sentence without anyone could do to a person.
Mostly, they didn’t talk. When they did it was, more often than not, to throw verbal barbs at one another. Or make jokes about bathtubs and irons.
Sometimes seeing Kellerman as low as he was, she felt better. Then, she felt bad about feeling better and by extension… felt worse.
‘They tell me they might let me give you a birthday present this year,’ she informed him, before adding, ‘A pre-approved one. There are lists. Things I’m allowed to give. You must be behaving.’
He shrugged, his face softening a little as it usually did when the conversation began to flow, ‘I’m not a thug, Sara. I only ever fought with men who could handle it.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘No. It isn’t. I killed the people who couldn’t handle it.’
‘So what you did to me? What’s that called?’
‘Hedging my bets.’
Sara nearly snorted, too accustomed to their verbal sparring to take him all that seriously, then began to talk about her life… because that was what they did.
Ten minutes later she wound up, picked up her bag and said, ‘Till next time.’
He gave her a mock salute and waited until she was almost out of earshot before calling, ‘He’s coming back.’
Sara turned back to him and clutched her bag a little tighter, ‘Pardon?’
‘I still have contacts, Sara. It’s on the wire, Scofield is coming back and any authority that doesn’t play nice with the All-American Hero is asking for an early retirement. Just a heads up.’
Sara blinked, then nodded quickly, ‘Thanks. But I don’t think I need the warning.’
*****
Which, as far as she was concerned, was the absolute truth. She needed no warnings where Michael Scofield was concerned. She already knew the dangers. Besides, she wasn’t going to see him. He’d had a little under two years to see her and now? Now she was closing her doors to him. No hard feelings, no… no anything. She liked to think she lived as though she’d never met him.
But that didn’t explain why she hadn’t been able to bring herself to install a bathtub in her new place, or why trains made her head ache and swim, or why the light scars on her arms buzzed sometimes, late at night.
‘Thinking?’ Katie asked as Sara stepped into the building.
‘Wallowing,’ Sara replied as she dropped her bag behind the desk.
The office sat just off what had been the foyer of her father’s old home. Everything had been left in trust to Sara, and unable to stomach the thought of ever living in her father’s home she’d done the only thing she could think of. She’s turned it into a rehabilitation center. Mostly they catered for teenagers, cases under the age of 21. Sara remembered that as an age when her addictions had really taken a hold of her, she believed it was an important time to make or break life-long habits. Refitting the house had been a nightmare, and financially draining. But the Tancredi pockets ran deep and Sara’s resolution to be the change had hardened. Sara herself now lived in a small building in the backyard, fenced off from the rest of the estate. The two floor, renovated, brick home was big enough for her to pretend that she had plans, but small enough that her footsteps didn’t echo. And she was always on hand for emergencies.
Poaching Katie had been easy, recruiting staff? Not so easy. Even establishing the estate as a viable center had taken time and massive amount of PR. Who wanted to put their child into a clinic run by a woman with a fluid notion of social responsibility, a penchant for bad men and scars that marked the places track marks had once held court on her body? But tenacity had won out, tenacity and clean outpatients.
‘So… today’s agenda?’ Sara asked.
‘You’ve missed half the day,’ Katie noted and Sara gave her a watery smile. Katie made no secret that she disapproved of Sara’s visits with Kellerman. Katie said it was because it bought the clinic into disrepute. But Sara suspected that the older woman was concerned for her wellbeing.
‘We’re interviewing cleaners at twelve.’ Katie said as she dropped a bundle of manila files onto the desk in front of Sara.
‘Cleaners?’
‘You asked. Last week.’
‘I did?’ Of course she did, Sara dropped into a leather wingback chair and picked up the files. One by one she threw them into piles, ‘No. No. N-maybe. Yeah. Yeah. No. Wait.’ Sara held out one resume, ‘This guy is way over qualified. Christopher Lake. Community certificates in bricklaying, metal work, God, a dozen things.’
‘He has a record. You said to keep an open mind. He HAS held a job for the last year, but the company he was working with folded. References are good.’
Sara sighed. She walked a thin line in her staffing choices. She liked to give ex-convicts a fair chance, but she couldn’t risk exposing her clients to undesirable elements from the outside. ‘We’ll interview him, see how we go.’
‘I thought you’d say that, he’s booked in at three.’
*****
By three, Sara was fairly certain that the first, third and fourth candidates had the job, but Christopher Lake had interested her and it was only fair that she hang around for the interview they had planned.
When he stepped into the small drawing room, which they’d used as an informal venue for the interviews, she was first struck by how immaculately he was dressed. The clean lines of his dark suit and the folder tucked under his arm spoke of a man who fought for the things he wanted.
What struck her second, was how much he looked like his father and uncle. ‘LJ,’ Sara said, trying to conceal her shock.
He wore his hair much shorter these days, and she wasn’t sure if it was the cut, or life in general that had added years to his demeanor and pushed him into adulthood.
‘Sara,’ he said, his voice a little lower than she recalled. They’d met, briefly, on the run and she’d seen him again, later, on the news story that documented his return to the US with Lincoln.
‘Sit down,’ she said, pointing to the sofa across from her own arm chair. Katie shifted next to her and seemed to have finally placed where she’d seen LJ’s face before. ‘Oh. Oh, I’ll go make… uh, coffee? If that’s okay with you Sara?’
Sara nodded, but paid little attention to Katie’s quick retreat.
‘Wow’ was the first word that came out of her mouth as she shifted on the sofa.
‘Dad was going to call you. We read about the clinic last year, it’s… good. I mean, Dad was happy to see that…’
‘I could still find gainful employment?’
LJ smiled shyly and nodded, ‘That too.’
‘I’m doing well. And you? I don’t…’ Sara looked around the room and dropped her voice, ‘They let you keep DB Cooper’s money, why are you looking for work? Did something happen? Did Michael need it?’
LJ shook his head, ‘Money is fine, but I can’t spend my entire day sitting on the sofa in my underwear watch TV with Dad, that just isn’t healthy. Dr Phil does something to a person.’
‘So you… work?’
‘And study trades. Work… it’s hard to come by when you’re high profile.’
Sara snorted, she couldn’t argue. If her father hadn’t left her so much, she’d be on the streets.
‘So… you want to be a cleaner here?’
‘Yes please,’ LJ held out his CV.
‘I’ve read it LJ, it’s impressive.’
‘Then hire me.’
‘No.’
His face dropped and for a second he looked younger than she had first guessed, ‘No, but I do see you have some training in landscape gardening?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have… there’s this lawn out back and it just does nothing. Could you make me a pond?’
LJ’s eyebrows rose.
‘A big pond,’ Sara confirmed.
*****
‘A pond?’ Katie asked.
‘A big pond,’ Sara confirmed.
‘Since when do we want a pond?’
‘Since… LJ was hired to make one? And keep the gardens? I grew up here, Katie, and this place? It was amazing once.’
‘It’s still amazing. The gardens are-’
‘Manicured to within an inch of their lives. Pristine, perfect, like a picture. But… our kids? Maybe they need more, I’ve been reading about different approaches. Bodies of water, sensory replacement. A herb garden for scents. Shaded areas for pain management. It could help.’
‘I thought you disapproved of holistic approaches,’ Katie noted.
‘I do, but that doesn’t mean other people won’t benefit from them-’
‘Like Burrow’s boy?’
Sara flopped into the leather chair and threw her legs over one arm, ‘Maybe he needs to benefit. What chances does he have? Did he ever have? God, even you have trouble finding sitters since that news story about how we work together was published. How do you think this affects a young man at its heart?’
Katie stopped what she was doing and treated Sara to a great lifting and dropping of shoulders, her ‘If this fucks up, your name is ALL over it’ shrug.
‘I trust you, Sara. And I don’t have time to argue. Mackenzie wants to talk to you about dosages on the new kid. And they have inpatient applications. Six, Sara, we can take six. No shuffling and shifting to take more. We’re at capacity, okay?’
Sara sighed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Duty called. And it was a good thing, because these days she was starting to think duty was the only person who had her number.
*****
That night they’d had a movie night, something with Matthew Mcconaughey, which as far as Sara’s waning libido was concerned, was a nice kick in the ass. But the desire didn’t outlast the movie, half of which she’d spent at the back of the room holding the shaking hands of one of the newer patients. While the projector made the images perfectly large, the volume had left a lot to be desired. So Sara only had generic conventions to suggest that the movie had ended well. And with the main characters together. Instead of, you know, one leaving the country and staying gone.
Not that she was hung up on it or anything.
Sara unlocked her front door and kicked her flats off in the hall.
No, ‘hung up’ implied that she let herself think about it. Which, until that morning with Kellerman, she hadn’t done in almost thirty-six days.
She eyed a clock by the door, ten pm, another day gone. God, she was getting old. That had to be it, because she went to work, came home and went to bed. That was her life.
She didn’t feel old, she mused, as she took the stairs two at a time and entered her bathroom stripping off her clothes. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. She didn’t look old.
By the time she’d showered and dressed in a pair of panties and an old college shirt she’d made up her mind. She leaned across her bed and picked up her phone to call Katie.
‘Wha? Jesus, Sara, middle of the night.’
‘It’s ten-thirty.’
‘Says the woman without kids.’
‘Katie I need help.’
Sara heard sheets shifting as Katie grew serious, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh no, not help, help. Just help.’
‘What do you need?’
Sara sat on the edge of her bed and tucked one knee underneath her chin. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to say this… but I really need a man. Like, to date.’
‘What else would you use him for Sara?’ Katie joked, ‘But oh, this is worth
getting woken in the middle of the night for.’
Sara tapped her forehead against her bare knee as she squeezed her eyes shut, ‘Don’t… get out of hand. Nothing serious. Dinner. Maybe.’
‘Wall banging sex?’
‘Not that, I’m not up to it, wall banging or otherwise.’
‘Oh, Sara, honey. That is one thing you need to learn about yourself. You are up to it, you’re built for it. Even Scofield saw that. But don’t worry; I have just the man. He’s just in from Philly and…’
Sara stretched across her bed to reach for the remote on the bedside table. She turned her TV on, quickly hitting the mute button so that Katie didn’t hear the program in the background. She channel surfed for a while, but of course, seeing Michael Scofield’s face stilled her finger as she watched him walking through, what looked like, O’Hare. The sidebar announced, ‘Scofield Returns’.
He looked good. Too good for her sanity. Tanned and long and lean and everything she recalled. He was dressed in a suit, the jacket tucked over the leather bag slung over his shoulder, his shirtsleeves rolled up in a defiant display of ink. His hair was still short, but not as short as she recalled and her hand flexed around the remote, as if it was desperate to run through it. But there was something in his clipped and measured walk, the way he slowed to nod to the press, but not talk to them, that told Sara that this was a man she had never met.
Katie was still speaking, ‘… and Dear Lord he has to be at least six foot four, with shoulders you could-’
‘Katie?’ Sara asked, ‘Can we talk about it in the morning?’
‘I’m on a roll here!’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said as she disconnected the call and dropped the phone, before turning up the volume on her television.
‘… no reasons have been given as to why Michael Scofield has chosen now to return to the country. Some speculation, however, has been made that he has relocated to be closer to his brother, Lincoln Burrows, the subject of a government…’
Apparently the news had needed filling that night, because what followed was a recapping of their adventures, even her face flashed on the screen once. Sara pulled a face and switched off the TV, before tugging her duvet down and sliding into bed.
She didn’t need this. She needed Michael to stay away and let her do… whatever it was she did with her life (for a minute there, she had to struggle to remember what exactly that was).
Of course, if ever there were grounds for a sleepless night, she had them. The… what? Ex? Old flame? Source of a mountain of unresolved sexual tension? Whatever he was, he was back. And maybe it was time to toss and turn and agonize. Sara even wished, briefly, that she had the energy to commit to such a pointless quest. But she didn’t. Instead, she curled the covers about her body, shuffled her legs against the sheets until they warmed and crashed head first into an exhausted slumber.
Romance, or even unrequited romance, was the pursuit of people with time. And energy.
Both of which, Sara Tancredi was fast running out of.
*****
Kate Henderson was curled up on her bed, her face was white, her entire body shook and her too large eyes stared up at Sara, pleading.
Sara snorted and tugged the bed covers off her, ‘You aren’t dying, Kate. You have the flu.’
‘It’s so bad though…’
‘Of course it is. Everything feels bad when you’re withdrawing.’
‘Can’t I just have something…’
‘You can have coffee. Maybe a cough lozenge.’
Kate’s face closed as she mumbled, ‘Bitch.’
‘You’ll thank me later,’ Sara muttered as she walked from the patient’s room.
‘She won’t, you know,’ said Lincoln Burrows from where he stood outside of the door, ‘Our type doesn’t thank anyone.’
Sara stopped in her tracks, ‘Who let you in?’
‘I dropped LJ off, he’s out back figuring out what tools and supplies he’s going to need to order. He’s keen to get started. I just… knew I couldn’t be this close and not visit. It’s rude.’
‘We’ve been in the same city for a little under two years.’
‘You didn’t call me either.’
Sara shrugged and expelled a breath, ‘What could I say?’ she turned and walked down the hall, then took the stairs down to her office, Lincoln followed.
She could almost feel his gentle smile as he close the door behind them, ‘“Hi” is always a start.’
‘Not when out last words to each other were “Goodbye and good luck”.’
‘I’ve never forgotten what you did for us, Sara. What you gave up, what you lost.’
‘Neither did I, Lincoln.’ The answer held a heat she had not given herself credit for and immediately she felt guilty. Not because of what she had said, but because the truth of it was… the only thing she had room left to regret was that it had ended so coolly. They’d walked away and she’d just waved.
He took a seat across from her desk as Sara sunk into her own chair. He looked, if it was possible, bigger. A little older, perhaps, but when he smiled softly, just like he was doing, the years faded away. ‘You look good. You’ve done well with this place, I hear.’
‘You’re here to tell me that?’ she asked softly.
‘No, I’m here to thank you.’
‘You just said our type doesn’t thank anyone.’
His smile widened, but took on an almost sorrowful quality as he held up his hands in surrender, ‘You caught me. I am here for a reason.’
‘LJ?’
‘No. LJ came for that job of his own volition.’
‘Then what?’
‘Michael is back in the country.’
Sara nodded and feigning interest in the laptop open on her desk, ‘I might have heard something like that.’
‘You don’t want to know why he’s back?’
‘If I needed to know why Michael was back, he’d have called me himself to tell me.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’
Sara pinched the bridge of her nose and pushed the laptop away, ‘Look. I don’t know what your point is. I really don’t. I’m busy, I have a job. I have a life. I’m fine and… life goes on.’
‘You never wondered why he didn’t…’
‘Come back for me? Call me? Send for me?’ Sara shot the words out so quickly and truthfully that they shocked them both, ‘Of course. But then a week passed, a month, six months. A year. I figured his mind was changed. I even began to question my own mind. What did Michael and I ever have? A handful of hours spent together? Meaning-heavy phrases and words? That is not a relationship and it was very foolish of me to think it was. I don’t need you to explain that.’
‘He wants to see you,’ Lincoln supplied.
‘Funny. Because he’s not here.’
Lincoln expelled a breath and nodded, ‘He wants to see you but he won’t come. You need to go to him.’
Sara bit off a small bitter laugh, ‘Not a chance in Hell.’
‘Sara, none of this… None of this went down the way you think it did.’
‘Lincoln, I appreciate the visit, I do. But if you don’t have anything else you need to say…’
‘Sara, Michael still l-’
‘Lincoln’ she held up her hand to stop him, ‘I don’t know what you hoped to achieve by coming. But I can’t do whatever it is you want me to do. I have…’ A life, a job, a broken heart, ‘I have someone. I’ve moved on and I’d appreciate it if you and… your brother, would just let me go.’
Lincoln blinked several times, his face hardening, ‘Someone?’
It had seemed like a good answer at the time. She had… Kellerman, Matthew Mcconaughey. Hell, she had a pending date with Mr. Six-Foot-Whatever and his shoulders. She had plenty of someones.
And what she didn’t have? She didn’t need.
She was getting on just fine.
*****
‘It’s a puzzle,’ Sara said before she’d even sat down. She pushed the box on the table a little closer to Kellerman, ‘They let you have puzzles. So it’s a puzzle. A big one.’
‘To help me pass time?’
‘I hear in Philadelphia there’s been some research to suggest that puzzles can help manage aggression.’
‘I’m not aggressive.’
‘Fine,’ she shrugged and leaned back in her seat, ‘You can still have the puzzle.’
Besides, she had three loose puzzle pieces tucked in her underwear drawer. What? her mind demanded defensively, He electrocuted you!
‘You know,’ he said, ‘In terms of aggression, I think you’re way ahead of me.’
Her eyebrows shifted a little closer to her hairline.
‘I’m just saying. Burning flesh, strangulation? Not many people have a list of inflicted grievous bodily harm quite like yours.’
Sara’s mind ticked a little. Was it wrong how enjoyable she found these little moments of antagonistic verbal sparring? If she really wanted to strip it down it was easy to see that spending time with someone who had come out of the whole mess worse than she had was almost soothing. Schadenfreude.
‘We’re never going to get bored of this conversation are we?’
‘Oh, sure we are. But we’re not really scheduled to move onto cars and locking doors for another fifteen minutes at least. We might even wind up swapping pie recipes. The fun is just getting started.’
It’s wasn’t quite a smile, and it didn’t go any further than her eyes, but it was there and as she laced her fingers and rested them across her lap, Kellerman leaned back a little in his seat and regarded her. ‘He hasn’t been to see you yet.’
And, really, she didn’t even feel like denying that she knew exactly who he was talking about. ‘No. He hasn’t.’
‘It bothers you.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Yes. It does.’
‘Fine. It does,’ Sara’s face dropped a little, ‘But a lot of things bother me. Global warming, social iniquity.’
‘You could find him. Go visit. Lay some ghosts to rest?’
Sara’s lip lifted a little and her eyes widened.
‘Yeah. Ignore me. They let us watch Oprah sometimes. It isn’t healthy.’
*****
She didn’t shave her legs. Which was probably a key indicator that she wasn’t all that enthusiastic about the date that Katie had organized for her.
Not that it really mattered, she rationalized, she was wearing grey trousers made out of a fine knit cotton, coupled with a white blouse, rolled up at the elbows. She’d chosen some low heels to mark the occasion. Which, she liked to think, marked some sort of progression from her conspiracy days. Running wasn’t the first thing she thought of anymore when she picked footwear.
Katie hadn’t lied about her date, Ryan Blaxland, he was everything she’d promised, and a little more. Six foot something, broad, blonde and quick to smile.
Unfortunately, where Katie had been honest to Sara, she hadn’t been honest to Ryan. Whom Sara approached in the restaurant while watching his face gradually pale. By the time she arrived at the table he’d half risen from his chair with a nervous smile plastered on his face.
‘Uhm… Sara?’
‘She didn’t tell you, huh?’ Sara asked, not even sure if this date was going to progress enough for her to sit down at the table.
‘Well, Katie did say “Sara” just not… “Sara Tancredi”. I should have made the connection.’
Sara winced a little and smiled gently, ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair for you. It’s not nice to find out you’ve been set up on a date with a criminal.’ She was going to kill Katie.
‘No, it’s not… OK, a little. I’m just… professional. I’m a lawyer and-’
‘And it doesn’t look good to be wining and dining a woman who once made someone’s “Most Wanted” list?’
‘Uhm. No?’
‘It’s OK, Ryan. Hit and miss right?’ She turned a little on her heel, ‘Have a nice night.’
‘No. No, wait. You’re here for dinner. I should at least… uh, feed you. Sit down.’
Sara cast her eyes around the restaurant. It was a nice place. Medium lighting, the usual sort of food. Pastels on the wall and college students for waiters. Walking out was likely to cause more of a fuss than their discrete conversation, so she sat. Besides, she was hungry.
Ryan picked up a bread stick and frowned, ‘So the charges were… dropped?’
Sara was almost out of her seat when she realized that he was watching her with a grin through long pale lashes. He was actually making a joke.
She smiled nervously and reached for a bread roll. Ok, maybe shaving her legs wouldn’t have killed her.
*****
‘So,’ Ryan said as he opened her car door and stepped aside to let her in, ‘That was…’
‘Disastrous?’
‘Give me some credit. I recovered nicely.’
‘Oh yeah, really… smooth.’
Ryan’s head dipped as he smiled, hanging on to her car door as she slid past him into the drivers seat, ‘Yeah, because every guy dreams about his blind date having graced the cover of a glossy magazine, Sara. Not so many dream about having seen her before on a wanted poster.’
Sara smiled gently and tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, ‘I know. But, for what it’s worth? Tonight didn’t suck as much as it could have.’
‘Wow. A glowing review,’ he paused as if he were trying to make up his mind before continuing, ‘So… what are my chances of a second date?’
‘Oh, Ryan, I don’t know. I mean, it was fun but…’
‘No. You don’t have to explain, it’s fine,’ he held up his hands and stepped back from the car.
‘No what I mean is… tonight wasn’t fair on you and you were wrangled into this and…’
‘Sara? I wouldn’t have stayed if I really hadn’t wanted to. And, let’s face it, half the women in this town are criminally insane anyway.’
Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, someone was chanting badideabadideabadidea. Of course, she’d heard that one a million times before.
‘Coffee? Next week?’ she offered.
*****
Despite her fears, the center hadn’t fallen prey to any sort of disaster during her three hour absence. So after checking in with the night staff she’d made her way around the back of the center to her home. She stopped when she noticed the long legs sprawled across the steps that led to her front door, then rushed towards them, then stopped again when she realized who owned the long legs. Michael Scofield sat on her top step in jeans and a plain blue cotton t-shirt. Her approaching footsteps had caught his attention and he quickly rose to his feet. He took two quick steps toward her, concern etched across his face, then stopped. His hands balled at his sides and his face softened as he gently spoke.
‘Sara?’
*****
Authors: volatile/becisvolatile
Rating: PG-13 (As always, this will probably change)
Chapter: One
Characters: Sara, Michael, Lincoln, LJ, Kellerman, Katie…
Genre: Drama, Humor, Romance, Angst, You-Name-It.
Summary: Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, someone was chanting badideabadideabadidea. Of course, she’d heard that one a million times before.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Especially not anything related to Prison Break.
Notes: Uhm. Yeah. I’m back at it.
Before Sara had even settled across from him, his expression grew… stormy. Sometimes he was smug, sometimes even guilty. But always an absolute bastard. She watched him for a moment through the Perspex before picking up the handset. He did the same.
‘Sara. Again,’ his voice was flat.
‘Paul,’ she shifted in her chair, the buckle of her brown leather belt digging into her stomach. She never dressed up to come and see him. That day she’d dragged on old jeans, worn leather boots, a singlet and a faded Henley top. She wore her hair longer, often tied back, a massive purse was slung over her shoulder, she shrugged out of it and let it fall to the floor.
‘What is it this time, Sara? Closure? Do I know who killed you father?’
‘Prison treating you well?’
‘Ah… that one.’
Sara almost smiled, ‘I’m not here to gloat, Paul.’
‘Doesn’t bother me either way, Sara, it’s been… what a year?’
‘Two, and you know it.’
Kellerman smiled and nodded softly, ‘How can I not know it, Sara? Michael Scofield put me behind bars and… oh… I guess you know the rest… he left you behind too, huh?’
Sara’s hips shifted as she sought a more comfortable position on the hard visitation chairs. Kellerman liked this conversation. The one where he reminded her how Michael had left her behind… for Panama.
‘He’s safe.’
‘And how long since he’s been proven an innocent man? Not much less than the time he’s been gone.’
It was true that Michael was pardoned in Absentia, alongside Lincoln Burrows and LJ Burrows. But while Lincoln and LJ had returned to live in the very same city as her - or so she’d heard - Michael Scofield had not come back. Not that it mattered, because she had a life now. And what did a fumbled kiss and a relationship built on adrenaline amount to anyway? No, she’d played her part in Michael’s life and he’d moved on.
Sometimes, she even told herself that it hadn’t even hurt.
Mostly, she acknowledged that it had been her choice to let him escape without her. Sometimes she didn’t mind using the word ‘choice’. Sometimes, she did, because ‘choice’ implied that it could have gone any other way. Sometimes, it was enough to pretend that she was peaceful, and felt nothing more than happiness for his triumphs.
But mostly wasn’t always, and Kellerman liked to find those not-mostly moments and pick at her insecurities and grievances. Which, she supposed, after two years, she still had entirely too many of. Especially since she still insisted on visiting Kellerman whenever the mood struck her.
Possibly her continual visits with the condemned man were reflective of her spectacular lack of self-preservation. She actually felt sorry for him. He’d been alone at his trial. There were rumors of a sister, but she’d never seen her. Sara knew what life in prison could do to men, had seen it. Even worse, she knew what serving that sort of sentence without anyone could do to a person.
Mostly, they didn’t talk. When they did it was, more often than not, to throw verbal barbs at one another. Or make jokes about bathtubs and irons.
Sometimes seeing Kellerman as low as he was, she felt better. Then, she felt bad about feeling better and by extension… felt worse.
‘They tell me they might let me give you a birthday present this year,’ she informed him, before adding, ‘A pre-approved one. There are lists. Things I’m allowed to give. You must be behaving.’
He shrugged, his face softening a little as it usually did when the conversation began to flow, ‘I’m not a thug, Sara. I only ever fought with men who could handle it.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘No. It isn’t. I killed the people who couldn’t handle it.’
‘So what you did to me? What’s that called?’
‘Hedging my bets.’
Sara nearly snorted, too accustomed to their verbal sparring to take him all that seriously, then began to talk about her life… because that was what they did.
Ten minutes later she wound up, picked up her bag and said, ‘Till next time.’
He gave her a mock salute and waited until she was almost out of earshot before calling, ‘He’s coming back.’
Sara turned back to him and clutched her bag a little tighter, ‘Pardon?’
‘I still have contacts, Sara. It’s on the wire, Scofield is coming back and any authority that doesn’t play nice with the All-American Hero is asking for an early retirement. Just a heads up.’
Sara blinked, then nodded quickly, ‘Thanks. But I don’t think I need the warning.’
*****
Which, as far as she was concerned, was the absolute truth. She needed no warnings where Michael Scofield was concerned. She already knew the dangers. Besides, she wasn’t going to see him. He’d had a little under two years to see her and now? Now she was closing her doors to him. No hard feelings, no… no anything. She liked to think she lived as though she’d never met him.
But that didn’t explain why she hadn’t been able to bring herself to install a bathtub in her new place, or why trains made her head ache and swim, or why the light scars on her arms buzzed sometimes, late at night.
‘Thinking?’ Katie asked as Sara stepped into the building.
‘Wallowing,’ Sara replied as she dropped her bag behind the desk.
The office sat just off what had been the foyer of her father’s old home. Everything had been left in trust to Sara, and unable to stomach the thought of ever living in her father’s home she’d done the only thing she could think of. She’s turned it into a rehabilitation center. Mostly they catered for teenagers, cases under the age of 21. Sara remembered that as an age when her addictions had really taken a hold of her, she believed it was an important time to make or break life-long habits. Refitting the house had been a nightmare, and financially draining. But the Tancredi pockets ran deep and Sara’s resolution to be the change had hardened. Sara herself now lived in a small building in the backyard, fenced off from the rest of the estate. The two floor, renovated, brick home was big enough for her to pretend that she had plans, but small enough that her footsteps didn’t echo. And she was always on hand for emergencies.
Poaching Katie had been easy, recruiting staff? Not so easy. Even establishing the estate as a viable center had taken time and massive amount of PR. Who wanted to put their child into a clinic run by a woman with a fluid notion of social responsibility, a penchant for bad men and scars that marked the places track marks had once held court on her body? But tenacity had won out, tenacity and clean outpatients.
‘So… today’s agenda?’ Sara asked.
‘You’ve missed half the day,’ Katie noted and Sara gave her a watery smile. Katie made no secret that she disapproved of Sara’s visits with Kellerman. Katie said it was because it bought the clinic into disrepute. But Sara suspected that the older woman was concerned for her wellbeing.
‘We’re interviewing cleaners at twelve.’ Katie said as she dropped a bundle of manila files onto the desk in front of Sara.
‘Cleaners?’
‘You asked. Last week.’
‘I did?’ Of course she did, Sara dropped into a leather wingback chair and picked up the files. One by one she threw them into piles, ‘No. No. N-maybe. Yeah. Yeah. No. Wait.’ Sara held out one resume, ‘This guy is way over qualified. Christopher Lake. Community certificates in bricklaying, metal work, God, a dozen things.’
‘He has a record. You said to keep an open mind. He HAS held a job for the last year, but the company he was working with folded. References are good.’
Sara sighed. She walked a thin line in her staffing choices. She liked to give ex-convicts a fair chance, but she couldn’t risk exposing her clients to undesirable elements from the outside. ‘We’ll interview him, see how we go.’
‘I thought you’d say that, he’s booked in at three.’
*****
By three, Sara was fairly certain that the first, third and fourth candidates had the job, but Christopher Lake had interested her and it was only fair that she hang around for the interview they had planned.
When he stepped into the small drawing room, which they’d used as an informal venue for the interviews, she was first struck by how immaculately he was dressed. The clean lines of his dark suit and the folder tucked under his arm spoke of a man who fought for the things he wanted.
What struck her second, was how much he looked like his father and uncle. ‘LJ,’ Sara said, trying to conceal her shock.
He wore his hair much shorter these days, and she wasn’t sure if it was the cut, or life in general that had added years to his demeanor and pushed him into adulthood.
‘Sara,’ he said, his voice a little lower than she recalled. They’d met, briefly, on the run and she’d seen him again, later, on the news story that documented his return to the US with Lincoln.
‘Sit down,’ she said, pointing to the sofa across from her own arm chair. Katie shifted next to her and seemed to have finally placed where she’d seen LJ’s face before. ‘Oh. Oh, I’ll go make… uh, coffee? If that’s okay with you Sara?’
Sara nodded, but paid little attention to Katie’s quick retreat.
‘Wow’ was the first word that came out of her mouth as she shifted on the sofa.
‘Dad was going to call you. We read about the clinic last year, it’s… good. I mean, Dad was happy to see that…’
‘I could still find gainful employment?’
LJ smiled shyly and nodded, ‘That too.’
‘I’m doing well. And you? I don’t…’ Sara looked around the room and dropped her voice, ‘They let you keep DB Cooper’s money, why are you looking for work? Did something happen? Did Michael need it?’
LJ shook his head, ‘Money is fine, but I can’t spend my entire day sitting on the sofa in my underwear watch TV with Dad, that just isn’t healthy. Dr Phil does something to a person.’
‘So you… work?’
‘And study trades. Work… it’s hard to come by when you’re high profile.’
Sara snorted, she couldn’t argue. If her father hadn’t left her so much, she’d be on the streets.
‘So… you want to be a cleaner here?’
‘Yes please,’ LJ held out his CV.
‘I’ve read it LJ, it’s impressive.’
‘Then hire me.’
‘No.’
His face dropped and for a second he looked younger than she had first guessed, ‘No, but I do see you have some training in landscape gardening?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have… there’s this lawn out back and it just does nothing. Could you make me a pond?’
LJ’s eyebrows rose.
‘A big pond,’ Sara confirmed.
*****
‘A pond?’ Katie asked.
‘A big pond,’ Sara confirmed.
‘Since when do we want a pond?’
‘Since… LJ was hired to make one? And keep the gardens? I grew up here, Katie, and this place? It was amazing once.’
‘It’s still amazing. The gardens are-’
‘Manicured to within an inch of their lives. Pristine, perfect, like a picture. But… our kids? Maybe they need more, I’ve been reading about different approaches. Bodies of water, sensory replacement. A herb garden for scents. Shaded areas for pain management. It could help.’
‘I thought you disapproved of holistic approaches,’ Katie noted.
‘I do, but that doesn’t mean other people won’t benefit from them-’
‘Like Burrow’s boy?’
Sara flopped into the leather chair and threw her legs over one arm, ‘Maybe he needs to benefit. What chances does he have? Did he ever have? God, even you have trouble finding sitters since that news story about how we work together was published. How do you think this affects a young man at its heart?’
Katie stopped what she was doing and treated Sara to a great lifting and dropping of shoulders, her ‘If this fucks up, your name is ALL over it’ shrug.
‘I trust you, Sara. And I don’t have time to argue. Mackenzie wants to talk to you about dosages on the new kid. And they have inpatient applications. Six, Sara, we can take six. No shuffling and shifting to take more. We’re at capacity, okay?’
Sara sighed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Duty called. And it was a good thing, because these days she was starting to think duty was the only person who had her number.
*****
That night they’d had a movie night, something with Matthew Mcconaughey, which as far as Sara’s waning libido was concerned, was a nice kick in the ass. But the desire didn’t outlast the movie, half of which she’d spent at the back of the room holding the shaking hands of one of the newer patients. While the projector made the images perfectly large, the volume had left a lot to be desired. So Sara only had generic conventions to suggest that the movie had ended well. And with the main characters together. Instead of, you know, one leaving the country and staying gone.
Not that she was hung up on it or anything.
Sara unlocked her front door and kicked her flats off in the hall.
No, ‘hung up’ implied that she let herself think about it. Which, until that morning with Kellerman, she hadn’t done in almost thirty-six days.
She eyed a clock by the door, ten pm, another day gone. God, she was getting old. That had to be it, because she went to work, came home and went to bed. That was her life.
She didn’t feel old, she mused, as she took the stairs two at a time and entered her bathroom stripping off her clothes. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. She didn’t look old.
By the time she’d showered and dressed in a pair of panties and an old college shirt she’d made up her mind. She leaned across her bed and picked up her phone to call Katie.
‘Wha? Jesus, Sara, middle of the night.’
‘It’s ten-thirty.’
‘Says the woman without kids.’
‘Katie I need help.’
Sara heard sheets shifting as Katie grew serious, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh no, not help, help. Just help.’
‘What do you need?’
Sara sat on the edge of her bed and tucked one knee underneath her chin. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to say this… but I really need a man. Like, to date.’
‘What else would you use him for Sara?’ Katie joked, ‘But oh, this is worth
getting woken in the middle of the night for.’
Sara tapped her forehead against her bare knee as she squeezed her eyes shut, ‘Don’t… get out of hand. Nothing serious. Dinner. Maybe.’
‘Wall banging sex?’
‘Not that, I’m not up to it, wall banging or otherwise.’
‘Oh, Sara, honey. That is one thing you need to learn about yourself. You are up to it, you’re built for it. Even Scofield saw that. But don’t worry; I have just the man. He’s just in from Philly and…’
Sara stretched across her bed to reach for the remote on the bedside table. She turned her TV on, quickly hitting the mute button so that Katie didn’t hear the program in the background. She channel surfed for a while, but of course, seeing Michael Scofield’s face stilled her finger as she watched him walking through, what looked like, O’Hare. The sidebar announced, ‘Scofield Returns’.
He looked good. Too good for her sanity. Tanned and long and lean and everything she recalled. He was dressed in a suit, the jacket tucked over the leather bag slung over his shoulder, his shirtsleeves rolled up in a defiant display of ink. His hair was still short, but not as short as she recalled and her hand flexed around the remote, as if it was desperate to run through it. But there was something in his clipped and measured walk, the way he slowed to nod to the press, but not talk to them, that told Sara that this was a man she had never met.
Katie was still speaking, ‘… and Dear Lord he has to be at least six foot four, with shoulders you could-’
‘Katie?’ Sara asked, ‘Can we talk about it in the morning?’
‘I’m on a roll here!’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said as she disconnected the call and dropped the phone, before turning up the volume on her television.
‘… no reasons have been given as to why Michael Scofield has chosen now to return to the country. Some speculation, however, has been made that he has relocated to be closer to his brother, Lincoln Burrows, the subject of a government…’
Apparently the news had needed filling that night, because what followed was a recapping of their adventures, even her face flashed on the screen once. Sara pulled a face and switched off the TV, before tugging her duvet down and sliding into bed.
She didn’t need this. She needed Michael to stay away and let her do… whatever it was she did with her life (for a minute there, she had to struggle to remember what exactly that was).
Of course, if ever there were grounds for a sleepless night, she had them. The… what? Ex? Old flame? Source of a mountain of unresolved sexual tension? Whatever he was, he was back. And maybe it was time to toss and turn and agonize. Sara even wished, briefly, that she had the energy to commit to such a pointless quest. But she didn’t. Instead, she curled the covers about her body, shuffled her legs against the sheets until they warmed and crashed head first into an exhausted slumber.
Romance, or even unrequited romance, was the pursuit of people with time. And energy.
Both of which, Sara Tancredi was fast running out of.
*****
Kate Henderson was curled up on her bed, her face was white, her entire body shook and her too large eyes stared up at Sara, pleading.
Sara snorted and tugged the bed covers off her, ‘You aren’t dying, Kate. You have the flu.’
‘It’s so bad though…’
‘Of course it is. Everything feels bad when you’re withdrawing.’
‘Can’t I just have something…’
‘You can have coffee. Maybe a cough lozenge.’
Kate’s face closed as she mumbled, ‘Bitch.’
‘You’ll thank me later,’ Sara muttered as she walked from the patient’s room.
‘She won’t, you know,’ said Lincoln Burrows from where he stood outside of the door, ‘Our type doesn’t thank anyone.’
Sara stopped in her tracks, ‘Who let you in?’
‘I dropped LJ off, he’s out back figuring out what tools and supplies he’s going to need to order. He’s keen to get started. I just… knew I couldn’t be this close and not visit. It’s rude.’
‘We’ve been in the same city for a little under two years.’
‘You didn’t call me either.’
Sara shrugged and expelled a breath, ‘What could I say?’ she turned and walked down the hall, then took the stairs down to her office, Lincoln followed.
She could almost feel his gentle smile as he close the door behind them, ‘“Hi” is always a start.’
‘Not when out last words to each other were “Goodbye and good luck”.’
‘I’ve never forgotten what you did for us, Sara. What you gave up, what you lost.’
‘Neither did I, Lincoln.’ The answer held a heat she had not given herself credit for and immediately she felt guilty. Not because of what she had said, but because the truth of it was… the only thing she had room left to regret was that it had ended so coolly. They’d walked away and she’d just waved.
He took a seat across from her desk as Sara sunk into her own chair. He looked, if it was possible, bigger. A little older, perhaps, but when he smiled softly, just like he was doing, the years faded away. ‘You look good. You’ve done well with this place, I hear.’
‘You’re here to tell me that?’ she asked softly.
‘No, I’m here to thank you.’
‘You just said our type doesn’t thank anyone.’
His smile widened, but took on an almost sorrowful quality as he held up his hands in surrender, ‘You caught me. I am here for a reason.’
‘LJ?’
‘No. LJ came for that job of his own volition.’
‘Then what?’
‘Michael is back in the country.’
Sara nodded and feigning interest in the laptop open on her desk, ‘I might have heard something like that.’
‘You don’t want to know why he’s back?’
‘If I needed to know why Michael was back, he’d have called me himself to tell me.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’
Sara pinched the bridge of her nose and pushed the laptop away, ‘Look. I don’t know what your point is. I really don’t. I’m busy, I have a job. I have a life. I’m fine and… life goes on.’
‘You never wondered why he didn’t…’
‘Come back for me? Call me? Send for me?’ Sara shot the words out so quickly and truthfully that they shocked them both, ‘Of course. But then a week passed, a month, six months. A year. I figured his mind was changed. I even began to question my own mind. What did Michael and I ever have? A handful of hours spent together? Meaning-heavy phrases and words? That is not a relationship and it was very foolish of me to think it was. I don’t need you to explain that.’
‘He wants to see you,’ Lincoln supplied.
‘Funny. Because he’s not here.’
Lincoln expelled a breath and nodded, ‘He wants to see you but he won’t come. You need to go to him.’
Sara bit off a small bitter laugh, ‘Not a chance in Hell.’
‘Sara, none of this… None of this went down the way you think it did.’
‘Lincoln, I appreciate the visit, I do. But if you don’t have anything else you need to say…’
‘Sara, Michael still l-’
‘Lincoln’ she held up her hand to stop him, ‘I don’t know what you hoped to achieve by coming. But I can’t do whatever it is you want me to do. I have…’ A life, a job, a broken heart, ‘I have someone. I’ve moved on and I’d appreciate it if you and… your brother, would just let me go.’
Lincoln blinked several times, his face hardening, ‘Someone?’
It had seemed like a good answer at the time. She had… Kellerman, Matthew Mcconaughey. Hell, she had a pending date with Mr. Six-Foot-Whatever and his shoulders. She had plenty of someones.
And what she didn’t have? She didn’t need.
She was getting on just fine.
*****
‘It’s a puzzle,’ Sara said before she’d even sat down. She pushed the box on the table a little closer to Kellerman, ‘They let you have puzzles. So it’s a puzzle. A big one.’
‘To help me pass time?’
‘I hear in Philadelphia there’s been some research to suggest that puzzles can help manage aggression.’
‘I’m not aggressive.’
‘Fine,’ she shrugged and leaned back in her seat, ‘You can still have the puzzle.’
Besides, she had three loose puzzle pieces tucked in her underwear drawer. What? her mind demanded defensively, He electrocuted you!
‘You know,’ he said, ‘In terms of aggression, I think you’re way ahead of me.’
Her eyebrows shifted a little closer to her hairline.
‘I’m just saying. Burning flesh, strangulation? Not many people have a list of inflicted grievous bodily harm quite like yours.’
Sara’s mind ticked a little. Was it wrong how enjoyable she found these little moments of antagonistic verbal sparring? If she really wanted to strip it down it was easy to see that spending time with someone who had come out of the whole mess worse than she had was almost soothing. Schadenfreude.
‘We’re never going to get bored of this conversation are we?’
‘Oh, sure we are. But we’re not really scheduled to move onto cars and locking doors for another fifteen minutes at least. We might even wind up swapping pie recipes. The fun is just getting started.’
It’s wasn’t quite a smile, and it didn’t go any further than her eyes, but it was there and as she laced her fingers and rested them across her lap, Kellerman leaned back a little in his seat and regarded her. ‘He hasn’t been to see you yet.’
And, really, she didn’t even feel like denying that she knew exactly who he was talking about. ‘No. He hasn’t.’
‘It bothers you.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Yes. It does.’
‘Fine. It does,’ Sara’s face dropped a little, ‘But a lot of things bother me. Global warming, social iniquity.’
‘You could find him. Go visit. Lay some ghosts to rest?’
Sara’s lip lifted a little and her eyes widened.
‘Yeah. Ignore me. They let us watch Oprah sometimes. It isn’t healthy.’
*****
She didn’t shave her legs. Which was probably a key indicator that she wasn’t all that enthusiastic about the date that Katie had organized for her.
Not that it really mattered, she rationalized, she was wearing grey trousers made out of a fine knit cotton, coupled with a white blouse, rolled up at the elbows. She’d chosen some low heels to mark the occasion. Which, she liked to think, marked some sort of progression from her conspiracy days. Running wasn’t the first thing she thought of anymore when she picked footwear.
Katie hadn’t lied about her date, Ryan Blaxland, he was everything she’d promised, and a little more. Six foot something, broad, blonde and quick to smile.
Unfortunately, where Katie had been honest to Sara, she hadn’t been honest to Ryan. Whom Sara approached in the restaurant while watching his face gradually pale. By the time she arrived at the table he’d half risen from his chair with a nervous smile plastered on his face.
‘Uhm… Sara?’
‘She didn’t tell you, huh?’ Sara asked, not even sure if this date was going to progress enough for her to sit down at the table.
‘Well, Katie did say “Sara” just not… “Sara Tancredi”. I should have made the connection.’
Sara winced a little and smiled gently, ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair for you. It’s not nice to find out you’ve been set up on a date with a criminal.’ She was going to kill Katie.
‘No, it’s not… OK, a little. I’m just… professional. I’m a lawyer and-’
‘And it doesn’t look good to be wining and dining a woman who once made someone’s “Most Wanted” list?’
‘Uhm. No?’
‘It’s OK, Ryan. Hit and miss right?’ She turned a little on her heel, ‘Have a nice night.’
‘No. No, wait. You’re here for dinner. I should at least… uh, feed you. Sit down.’
Sara cast her eyes around the restaurant. It was a nice place. Medium lighting, the usual sort of food. Pastels on the wall and college students for waiters. Walking out was likely to cause more of a fuss than their discrete conversation, so she sat. Besides, she was hungry.
Ryan picked up a bread stick and frowned, ‘So the charges were… dropped?’
Sara was almost out of her seat when she realized that he was watching her with a grin through long pale lashes. He was actually making a joke.
She smiled nervously and reached for a bread roll. Ok, maybe shaving her legs wouldn’t have killed her.
*****
‘So,’ Ryan said as he opened her car door and stepped aside to let her in, ‘That was…’
‘Disastrous?’
‘Give me some credit. I recovered nicely.’
‘Oh yeah, really… smooth.’
Ryan’s head dipped as he smiled, hanging on to her car door as she slid past him into the drivers seat, ‘Yeah, because every guy dreams about his blind date having graced the cover of a glossy magazine, Sara. Not so many dream about having seen her before on a wanted poster.’
Sara smiled gently and tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, ‘I know. But, for what it’s worth? Tonight didn’t suck as much as it could have.’
‘Wow. A glowing review,’ he paused as if he were trying to make up his mind before continuing, ‘So… what are my chances of a second date?’
‘Oh, Ryan, I don’t know. I mean, it was fun but…’
‘No. You don’t have to explain, it’s fine,’ he held up his hands and stepped back from the car.
‘No what I mean is… tonight wasn’t fair on you and you were wrangled into this and…’
‘Sara? I wouldn’t have stayed if I really hadn’t wanted to. And, let’s face it, half the women in this town are criminally insane anyway.’
Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, someone was chanting badideabadideabadidea. Of course, she’d heard that one a million times before.
‘Coffee? Next week?’ she offered.
*****
Despite her fears, the center hadn’t fallen prey to any sort of disaster during her three hour absence. So after checking in with the night staff she’d made her way around the back of the center to her home. She stopped when she noticed the long legs sprawled across the steps that led to her front door, then rushed towards them, then stopped again when she realized who owned the long legs. Michael Scofield sat on her top step in jeans and a plain blue cotton t-shirt. Her approaching footsteps had caught his attention and he quickly rose to his feet. He took two quick steps toward her, concern etched across his face, then stopped. His hands balled at his sides and his face softened as he gently spoke.
‘Sara?’
*****