Prison Break - Story of Faith (13/27)
Title: Story of Faith (13/27) - Story index
Author: clair-de-lune
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael, Sara, Lincoln, Paul Kellerman, Sofia Lugo, Jane Phillips, Michael Jr., LJ Burrows, Original characters
Pairings: Michael/Sara, Lincoln/Sofia (background)
Categories: Gen, romance
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~ 2.390 (this chapter), ~ 60.500 (total)
Author’s notes: This is canon compliant and a fix-it story. In other words, I tried to take into account most of the canon, including The Final Break, and give it a different ending. See chapter one for thanks and beta-readers.
Summary: He had thought that death was black. Dark, at the very least. It was dark at first, after the fireworks he’d created had subsided and their imprints on his retinas had faded. After that, though, there were colors.
After Miami Dade, while Sara, Lincoln and Sofia settle in Costa Rica and try to build a new life, Michael awakes far away from them... (Post-series, canon compliant, fix-it story)
Chapter 13
Yoki was sitting beside him when he opened his eyes, displaying her time-for-a-reality-check face. A replay of his early days at The Foundation. She looked up from her laptop, alerted by the change in his breathing or by a damn medical sixth sense - go figure - and the lecture started. At least, she kept it short.
“All right, Michael. I’m going to go through it for you. Acero killed Chopra. A few other people died during the op. None of them were our operatives. It could happen, your plan took this into consideration, you warned us, and it did happen. No amount of freaking out or remorse is going to change that.”
She handed him a glass of water.
“You slept for almost three days.”
“Nice trick, doc,” he said grumpily. Throwing her an accusing glance, he rubbed his shoulder where she’d dosed him, and drank his water.
“Cat and I used that time to do some research,” she continued, not impressed by his display. “I owe you an apology. I should have done that long ago. I took for granted what we thought we knew when I should have known better.”
She leaned down to pick up something on the floor at her feet, retrieved a five-inch-thick file, and dropped it into his lap.
Christina Rose Scofield, written in silver-white letters on a gray cover.
He stared at it for several seconds, frozen with hate and fear, flabbergasted that something related to his mother could still get to him so easily. Then, slowly, cautiously, he put the file aside, pushing it off his knees and on to the mattress.
“You’ve wasted your time. I already know everything I need to know about my mother.”
“Do you? You don’t. You know what she told you when you met in Miami and what The Company wanted you to know. Tell me, do you remember how she was when you were a child?”
He couldn’t do that, bring up those memories, think about the fakeness of his youth, about the lies and the deceptions, about the revelations Christina threw in his face after twenty-five years.
He tried to move in the bed and get up, only to find out that whatever Yoki had administrated to him hadn’t totally worn off. His head was still spinning.
“Lie down and answer my question. Don’t make me shoot you up again,” she threatened with a hint of humor.
There was only one way out when she sported that kind of determination. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere at the moment anyway.
“Fine!”
The images and sensations came back easily, assaulting him. They were vivid and felt like they could break his heart and his mind all over again - sweetness and nostalgia of the memories that were nothing but fantasies, bitterness of the reality.
“She was affectionate and patient,” he said softly, looking into Yoki’s supportive eyes. “She was brave, kind, and she loved us - both of us, Linc and me - more than anything in the world. She had the strongest sense of what was right and wrong. She taught us how to be good people.” He tapped his fingers on the gray file and his tone hardened. “She was a fraud.”
“Or maybe she wasn’t.”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Please. Don’t make up a story about how her actions three years ago were some... act. She said awful things. She did awful things. Nobody forced her to make me choose between Sara and my brother. Nobody forced out of her mouth the things she told me about Linc. She chose to say and do that.”
“She did,” Yoki admitted gently. “She was the woman you remember from the last time you saw her, but she was also the woman you remember as a child.”
She grabbed the gray file from the bed and set it on the small desk at the other end of the room, out of his reach.
“You know what, you don’t need to read this now. You’re going to listen to me and if you decide that the time Cat and I put into that research was worth it, then you’ll delve into it. Study all the info and details.”
“Do I have a choice?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“No, not really. Better me than Mrs. Jamison, though, don’t you think?”
How funny that the two women used one another as a scarecrow. He wondered if they knew, if they did it on purpose, or if they genuinely had this respectful/cautious relationship to each other.
“Now, do you know how complex, resilient and yet fragile, the human mind can be? Perhaps brilliant minds like yours and your mother’s even more so? It’s a cliché, but the line between genius and insanity can be so very fine. You should know, shouldn’t you? Been there, almost done that.”
He’d never deluded himself about the fact that she knew everything she had to know about his medical history.
“Are there answers at some point or do you only have questions, Yoki?”
“Cute. When you arrived here, hurt and sick, half-dead really, do you have any idea of what I could have done with you? To you? I could have shaped you to my will; to my employers’ demands; to Kellerman’s requirements.”
“Maybe you did for all I know,” he spat before quickly grumbling an apology.
A few things he learned during his stay here: he could trust Yoki - reasonably; she wasn’t working for an organization running a charity business; despite said organization, she wasn’t the mad scientist kind; last but not least, she wasn’t prone to blather aimlessly, which meant she was onto something.
“What are you trying to tell me, that The Company... brainwashed her?” he said with derision.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that The Company picked a dying woman from the hospital, saved her and had years to do whatever they wanted to do to her. To model her brain, her mind, her opinions. Her morality. Her memories. Didn't they try to do exactly that with you?”
(He shouldn’t have listened to her. It could only lead to disappointment and more heartache.)
The rational part of his mind flipped through her assertions, questions-that-were-answers, and hints. It was a nice story, one that he wanted to believe. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be convinced that his childhood memories weren’t, in fact, an imposture?
“Think, Michael. Occam’s razor. What sounds more logical? A criminal playing a part for over twelve years, passing for an exemplary mother and never slipping the slightest bit out of character, or the explanation I’m bringing you?”
The room was spinning and, this time, it wasn’t because of the drug Yoki had given him.
“You said it yourself. She was a brilliant mind. She could have done it.”
“You’re a brilliant mind. During the couple of months you spent in Fox River, you never slipped?”
Go figure whether she actually knew something or she faked it. She had a pretty good poker face.
“She might have been a sociopath,” he said desperately. “She might have had proper training and...”
He didn’t finish his sentence or his train of thought. It was silly, crazy, to hold on to a vision of the world that he had rejected so hard at first. It had changed during the first months of his recovery. The rejection had morphed into acceptance, and eventually, he’d wrapped himself into his newfound knowledge like he would wrap himself in a blanket. He’d found comfort in his hate and contempt for Christina, the comfort that sure things provided when your whole life was upside down.
He looked into Yoki’s eyes. He needed something to anchor him. He needed to have reality sink in, to adapt and re-adjust to it. Not a sure thing, her allegations, but if he considered it coldly and logically, knowing what The Company was capable of, he had to concede that it was a possibility.
He wasn’t questioning the value or accuracy of Yoki’s research; he’d seen what The Foundation was able to dig up when needed. But he could not, absolutely could not afford to nurture false hopes.
So convenient for Kellerman and The Foundation, what Yoki was implying. Just at the right moment to refuel his hatred for The Company when he’d weakened a bit too much for their taste.
(Yoki wouldn't lie to him, though. Use any and all intel she could get her hands on, yes; lie, no.)
“She was an operative of The Company right from the start,” he insisted feebly.
“No.” Yoki pointed her forefinger at the gray file, implying that its content invalidated Michael’s objections. “No. Up until her thirties, she was just a nice girl trying to raise her kids right. She... I ran a DNA test of samples from her, you and Lincoln: she lied to you about Lincoln three years ago. Or perhaps she’d been convinced it was the truth, but it wasn’t.”
She waited for him to say something, anything. He couldn’t. His mind was filled with white noise; too many thoughts whirling at the same time, threatening to overwhelm him.
“She was a too-smart woman caught in a terrible game. Who got caught in a terrible game because of her intelligence. So, in that regard, I guess you’re right when you say that you are like your mother, huh?”
He picked the first small thing he could think of to get a grip on reality.
“You had no right to test my and Linc’s DNA without our consent.”
Yoki patted his head, got up, and retrieved the gray file to bring it to him.
“Sue me.”
Her hand on the doorknob, she halted as he was already absorbing himself in the file.
“Michael? Despite its outcome, the op is a success. It allowed us to locate Acero. After she killed Chopra and left, we were able to keep tabs on her. We’re following her. That’s great news. Kellerman is quite happy with you, and I think Mrs. Jamison even cracked a smile.”
Good. Fine. Whatever.
The file. The file was what interested him right now. Not Acero, Chopra or Smythe, not Kellerman or Jamison, not The Company or The Foundation.
It was a very comprehensive file that Yoki and Cat had put together. You could trust Cat with this kind of thing, and Michael ought to know what a driven Yoki could achieve.
Files from the Cook County Hospital where Linc and he were born.
Pictures of their youth Michael had no idea how and where Yoki got. The love and devotion Christina displayed on them could be fake, obviously, but if it was, she’d been one hell of an actress.
(She’d been one, whichever way you looked at it.)
Death certificate established by a Dr. Bowman who did not work at the Cook County Hospital and whom Cat had found out to be linked to The Company.
Dr. Bowman who, by the way, was a neuropsychiatrist, not an oncologist. Of course, just like Yoki, he could have ‘multitasked’.
He sure had multitasked quite a bit according to his reports to The Company, reports retrieved from Scylla and analyzed by Yoki and her team. The man had interesting - as in frightening - theories and, given who he’d worked for, chance was that the theories lead to experimentation and practical application.
Files and files of Christina Rose Scofield’s first jobs in the field. Hesitant and almost harmless at first, less and less as her appointments with Dr. Bowman went on, and months and years passed.
It was all circumstantial.
Reports and more files of Christina climbing the ladder within The Company, rising to the top and gathering so much - too much - power, starting to worry the very people who had recreated her and asked her to become what she’d became.
Michael barked out a laugh at the idea of what The Company had done to itself.
(Should have seen it coming, guys. Mom was too clever for you. Not that it had been a good thing for her boys.)
It was all circumstantial, but the more Michael was reading, the more Yoki’s allegations made sense. They’d fucked her up on purpose and bent her to their agenda - until Christina developed her own, that is. It was stated, neat and cold, in a five-inch-thick file made of grainy photographs, soulless studies and clinical reports.
He read for the whole day and then went back to his office. A pile of red and black files as well as Mrs. Jamison were waiting for him. He grabbed the files and arched an eyebrow at Jamison.
“Mr. Scofield,” she greeted him with a nod of her head. “I see you’re feeling better. After what happened last week, are you ready to get back to work?”
He’d known her for long enough to know what she actually meant. After the way you handled what happened last week, how far are you able to go? Just as he’d known Yoki long enough not to delude himself about her intents: they were good for the most part, but she had her own mission - The Foundation’s mission - and what she’d found out about Christina could only serve it.
It certainly served it. Anger was cold and heavy in the pit of Michael’s stomach, at the back of his head, on his fingertips, in his throat. What they did to Christina, what they did by extension to Linc and him, to Veronica, to Sara, LJ, to his own son... There was only one way to take down The Company for good, and it was to use their own methods. He needed to fucking stop playing by his own rules and start abiding by theirs, the sooner, the better. Any integrity lost in the process would be compensated a thousand times when they killed the Hydra.
“Mr. Scofield? Are you with us?”
Jamison was staring at him, her blue eyes their usual icy cold. For a second he wondered if she’d gone through the same kind of journey he did or if she was just that devoted to her job.
(To each their own reasons. It wasn’t his place to question hers, or Yoki’s or - damn - Kellerman’s.)
“Chopra is done,” he replied, “and Acero might be the General’s designated heir, but there’s another player in that game: I assume Smythe has his own views on the situation. We need to think about what we can do with that.”
TBC
Previous / next chapters
--If you enjoy the fic (or if you don't, but you know... hopefully if you do ;)), please let me know :)
Author: clair-de-lune
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael, Sara, Lincoln, Paul Kellerman, Sofia Lugo, Jane Phillips, Michael Jr., LJ Burrows, Original characters
Pairings: Michael/Sara, Lincoln/Sofia (background)
Categories: Gen, romance
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~ 2.390 (this chapter), ~ 60.500 (total)
Author’s notes: This is canon compliant and a fix-it story. In other words, I tried to take into account most of the canon, including The Final Break, and give it a different ending. See chapter one for thanks and beta-readers.
Summary: He had thought that death was black. Dark, at the very least. It was dark at first, after the fireworks he’d created had subsided and their imprints on his retinas had faded. After that, though, there were colors.
After Miami Dade, while Sara, Lincoln and Sofia settle in Costa Rica and try to build a new life, Michael awakes far away from them... (Post-series, canon compliant, fix-it story)
Chapter 13
Yoki was sitting beside him when he opened his eyes, displaying her time-for-a-reality-check face. A replay of his early days at The Foundation. She looked up from her laptop, alerted by the change in his breathing or by a damn medical sixth sense - go figure - and the lecture started. At least, she kept it short.
“All right, Michael. I’m going to go through it for you. Acero killed Chopra. A few other people died during the op. None of them were our operatives. It could happen, your plan took this into consideration, you warned us, and it did happen. No amount of freaking out or remorse is going to change that.”
She handed him a glass of water.
“You slept for almost three days.”
“Nice trick, doc,” he said grumpily. Throwing her an accusing glance, he rubbed his shoulder where she’d dosed him, and drank his water.
“Cat and I used that time to do some research,” she continued, not impressed by his display. “I owe you an apology. I should have done that long ago. I took for granted what we thought we knew when I should have known better.”
She leaned down to pick up something on the floor at her feet, retrieved a five-inch-thick file, and dropped it into his lap.
Christina Rose Scofield, written in silver-white letters on a gray cover.
He stared at it for several seconds, frozen with hate and fear, flabbergasted that something related to his mother could still get to him so easily. Then, slowly, cautiously, he put the file aside, pushing it off his knees and on to the mattress.
“You’ve wasted your time. I already know everything I need to know about my mother.”
“Do you? You don’t. You know what she told you when you met in Miami and what The Company wanted you to know. Tell me, do you remember how she was when you were a child?”
He couldn’t do that, bring up those memories, think about the fakeness of his youth, about the lies and the deceptions, about the revelations Christina threw in his face after twenty-five years.
He tried to move in the bed and get up, only to find out that whatever Yoki had administrated to him hadn’t totally worn off. His head was still spinning.
“Lie down and answer my question. Don’t make me shoot you up again,” she threatened with a hint of humor.
There was only one way out when she sported that kind of determination. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere at the moment anyway.
“Fine!”
The images and sensations came back easily, assaulting him. They were vivid and felt like they could break his heart and his mind all over again - sweetness and nostalgia of the memories that were nothing but fantasies, bitterness of the reality.
“She was affectionate and patient,” he said softly, looking into Yoki’s supportive eyes. “She was brave, kind, and she loved us - both of us, Linc and me - more than anything in the world. She had the strongest sense of what was right and wrong. She taught us how to be good people.” He tapped his fingers on the gray file and his tone hardened. “She was a fraud.”
“Or maybe she wasn’t.”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Please. Don’t make up a story about how her actions three years ago were some... act. She said awful things. She did awful things. Nobody forced her to make me choose between Sara and my brother. Nobody forced out of her mouth the things she told me about Linc. She chose to say and do that.”
“She did,” Yoki admitted gently. “She was the woman you remember from the last time you saw her, but she was also the woman you remember as a child.”
She grabbed the gray file from the bed and set it on the small desk at the other end of the room, out of his reach.
“You know what, you don’t need to read this now. You’re going to listen to me and if you decide that the time Cat and I put into that research was worth it, then you’ll delve into it. Study all the info and details.”
“Do I have a choice?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“No, not really. Better me than Mrs. Jamison, though, don’t you think?”
How funny that the two women used one another as a scarecrow. He wondered if they knew, if they did it on purpose, or if they genuinely had this respectful/cautious relationship to each other.
“Now, do you know how complex, resilient and yet fragile, the human mind can be? Perhaps brilliant minds like yours and your mother’s even more so? It’s a cliché, but the line between genius and insanity can be so very fine. You should know, shouldn’t you? Been there, almost done that.”
He’d never deluded himself about the fact that she knew everything she had to know about his medical history.
“Are there answers at some point or do you only have questions, Yoki?”
“Cute. When you arrived here, hurt and sick, half-dead really, do you have any idea of what I could have done with you? To you? I could have shaped you to my will; to my employers’ demands; to Kellerman’s requirements.”
“Maybe you did for all I know,” he spat before quickly grumbling an apology.
A few things he learned during his stay here: he could trust Yoki - reasonably; she wasn’t working for an organization running a charity business; despite said organization, she wasn’t the mad scientist kind; last but not least, she wasn’t prone to blather aimlessly, which meant she was onto something.
“What are you trying to tell me, that The Company... brainwashed her?” he said with derision.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that The Company picked a dying woman from the hospital, saved her and had years to do whatever they wanted to do to her. To model her brain, her mind, her opinions. Her morality. Her memories. Didn't they try to do exactly that with you?”
(He shouldn’t have listened to her. It could only lead to disappointment and more heartache.)
The rational part of his mind flipped through her assertions, questions-that-were-answers, and hints. It was a nice story, one that he wanted to believe. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be convinced that his childhood memories weren’t, in fact, an imposture?
“Think, Michael. Occam’s razor. What sounds more logical? A criminal playing a part for over twelve years, passing for an exemplary mother and never slipping the slightest bit out of character, or the explanation I’m bringing you?”
The room was spinning and, this time, it wasn’t because of the drug Yoki had given him.
“You said it yourself. She was a brilliant mind. She could have done it.”
“You’re a brilliant mind. During the couple of months you spent in Fox River, you never slipped?”
Go figure whether she actually knew something or she faked it. She had a pretty good poker face.
“She might have been a sociopath,” he said desperately. “She might have had proper training and...”
He didn’t finish his sentence or his train of thought. It was silly, crazy, to hold on to a vision of the world that he had rejected so hard at first. It had changed during the first months of his recovery. The rejection had morphed into acceptance, and eventually, he’d wrapped himself into his newfound knowledge like he would wrap himself in a blanket. He’d found comfort in his hate and contempt for Christina, the comfort that sure things provided when your whole life was upside down.
He looked into Yoki’s eyes. He needed something to anchor him. He needed to have reality sink in, to adapt and re-adjust to it. Not a sure thing, her allegations, but if he considered it coldly and logically, knowing what The Company was capable of, he had to concede that it was a possibility.
He wasn’t questioning the value or accuracy of Yoki’s research; he’d seen what The Foundation was able to dig up when needed. But he could not, absolutely could not afford to nurture false hopes.
So convenient for Kellerman and The Foundation, what Yoki was implying. Just at the right moment to refuel his hatred for The Company when he’d weakened a bit too much for their taste.
(Yoki wouldn't lie to him, though. Use any and all intel she could get her hands on, yes; lie, no.)
“She was an operative of The Company right from the start,” he insisted feebly.
“No.” Yoki pointed her forefinger at the gray file, implying that its content invalidated Michael’s objections. “No. Up until her thirties, she was just a nice girl trying to raise her kids right. She... I ran a DNA test of samples from her, you and Lincoln: she lied to you about Lincoln three years ago. Or perhaps she’d been convinced it was the truth, but it wasn’t.”
She waited for him to say something, anything. He couldn’t. His mind was filled with white noise; too many thoughts whirling at the same time, threatening to overwhelm him.
“She was a too-smart woman caught in a terrible game. Who got caught in a terrible game because of her intelligence. So, in that regard, I guess you’re right when you say that you are like your mother, huh?”
He picked the first small thing he could think of to get a grip on reality.
“You had no right to test my and Linc’s DNA without our consent.”
Yoki patted his head, got up, and retrieved the gray file to bring it to him.
“Sue me.”
Her hand on the doorknob, she halted as he was already absorbing himself in the file.
“Michael? Despite its outcome, the op is a success. It allowed us to locate Acero. After she killed Chopra and left, we were able to keep tabs on her. We’re following her. That’s great news. Kellerman is quite happy with you, and I think Mrs. Jamison even cracked a smile.”
Good. Fine. Whatever.
The file. The file was what interested him right now. Not Acero, Chopra or Smythe, not Kellerman or Jamison, not The Company or The Foundation.
It was a very comprehensive file that Yoki and Cat had put together. You could trust Cat with this kind of thing, and Michael ought to know what a driven Yoki could achieve.
Files from the Cook County Hospital where Linc and he were born.
Pictures of their youth Michael had no idea how and where Yoki got. The love and devotion Christina displayed on them could be fake, obviously, but if it was, she’d been one hell of an actress.
(She’d been one, whichever way you looked at it.)
Death certificate established by a Dr. Bowman who did not work at the Cook County Hospital and whom Cat had found out to be linked to The Company.
Dr. Bowman who, by the way, was a neuropsychiatrist, not an oncologist. Of course, just like Yoki, he could have ‘multitasked’.
He sure had multitasked quite a bit according to his reports to The Company, reports retrieved from Scylla and analyzed by Yoki and her team. The man had interesting - as in frightening - theories and, given who he’d worked for, chance was that the theories lead to experimentation and practical application.
Files and files of Christina Rose Scofield’s first jobs in the field. Hesitant and almost harmless at first, less and less as her appointments with Dr. Bowman went on, and months and years passed.
It was all circumstantial.
Reports and more files of Christina climbing the ladder within The Company, rising to the top and gathering so much - too much - power, starting to worry the very people who had recreated her and asked her to become what she’d became.
Michael barked out a laugh at the idea of what The Company had done to itself.
(Should have seen it coming, guys. Mom was too clever for you. Not that it had been a good thing for her boys.)
It was all circumstantial, but the more Michael was reading, the more Yoki’s allegations made sense. They’d fucked her up on purpose and bent her to their agenda - until Christina developed her own, that is. It was stated, neat and cold, in a five-inch-thick file made of grainy photographs, soulless studies and clinical reports.
He read for the whole day and then went back to his office. A pile of red and black files as well as Mrs. Jamison were waiting for him. He grabbed the files and arched an eyebrow at Jamison.
“Mr. Scofield,” she greeted him with a nod of her head. “I see you’re feeling better. After what happened last week, are you ready to get back to work?”
He’d known her for long enough to know what she actually meant. After the way you handled what happened last week, how far are you able to go? Just as he’d known Yoki long enough not to delude himself about her intents: they were good for the most part, but she had her own mission - The Foundation’s mission - and what she’d found out about Christina could only serve it.
It certainly served it. Anger was cold and heavy in the pit of Michael’s stomach, at the back of his head, on his fingertips, in his throat. What they did to Christina, what they did by extension to Linc and him, to Veronica, to Sara, LJ, to his own son... There was only one way to take down The Company for good, and it was to use their own methods. He needed to fucking stop playing by his own rules and start abiding by theirs, the sooner, the better. Any integrity lost in the process would be compensated a thousand times when they killed the Hydra.
“Mr. Scofield? Are you with us?”
Jamison was staring at him, her blue eyes their usual icy cold. For a second he wondered if she’d gone through the same kind of journey he did or if she was just that devoted to her job.
(To each their own reasons. It wasn’t his place to question hers, or Yoki’s or - damn - Kellerman’s.)
“Chopra is done,” he replied, “and Acero might be the General’s designated heir, but there’s another player in that game: I assume Smythe has his own views on the situation. We need to think about what we can do with that.”
TBC
Previous / next chapters
--If you enjoy the fic (or if you don't, but you know... hopefully if you do ;)), please let me know :)