Special, Not Crazy
A/N: Written for pamalax's challenge of a Sonafest. I took Lincoln. If this depresses you, I blame miss_vacant. That is all.
“Oh, my God, Bruce. Lincoln’s a free man!” ~Sara Tancredi, Sona
“Is he crazy, Mom?” Lincoln asked in a hushed whisper, even though his sleeping brother was heavily medicated in his hospital bed.
“No, Linc,” his mother’s soothing voice replied. “He’s just special.”
*
“Am I crazy, Linc?” Michael asked, huddled against his brother’s side. His small body shook, but from what Lincoln could tell the worst of it had passed.
“No, Mikey. You’re special, remember? Just like Mom said.”
*
When Lincoln saw Michael standing in the chapel in Fox River, he stared at the truth they’d glossed over all of Michael’s life.
Of course he was crazy. Who got themselves thrown in jail to save their worthless brother?
It was the only possible explanation.
*
Listening to Mahone talk to his wife makes me feel sorry for him at the same time I want to beat the holy hell out of him. The defeat of him getting the upper hand over me is softened by the fact that Michael really had a chance to get T-Bag. If he could do one thing to ease his conscience, getting T-Bag is it, and that will be worth it to me. I’ll figure some way out of this hell hole. I didn’t get this far to let this guy steal my life. Because that’s what he’s planning. He says to his wife, “I know what’s important now; I know what matters.”
Bullshit. If he had any clue, he would never drag her into any of this. I wanted to tell Michael that too, but it would only have added to his guilt. Let Sara stay as far away from this as she can. If I’d only realized what we were up against, I would’ve told Vee to run like hell. Any man claiming to love a woman ought to do just that. Do whatever he can to keep her safe, give up whatever he’s got to give up to make it happen.
That’s what I’d do if I had it to do over again. “Stop the cancer of your life from spreading to theirs,” is what I tell Mahone. He’s got a boy too, I heard him saying something about a son. LJ’s last words ring in my ears. He was right. As far away from me as he can be, that’s the best place for him. For now, forever.
Mahone hasn’t learned a damn thing; he’s operating on pure desperation. He’s hoping she can save him, when he’s far past saving. I know. I was past saving, yet Michael swooped in to fix things one way while Veronica tried another way. In case you missed it, neither way worked out too well, not that that’s their fault. We couldn’t know every corner turned would hold new, bolder enemies.
As slowly as I have to twist the pipe to remain undetected and get myself loose, I should be ready to free myself by the time Michael gets here. One more time, Michael, I swear. One more time, you’ve got to save my ass, and then we’re out of here. We’re out of here, and we’ll never look back. It will be just how it was 20 years ago when Mom died. Just me and him. That’s all we have, and it will have to be all we need.
*
As Michael and I get closer to the boat, I say it out loud to make sure we’re on the same page, “We get outta here and we never look back.” It might be a question. It might be the beginning of another argument, but this time I’m going to win, even if I have to knock him out and drag him on this boat he says is waiting for us.
“We never look back,” he agrees, barely nodding.
He continues down the path. I know that, for him, accepting what I just said, and believing it’s true and what’s best for everyone is the hardest part of all of this, but if I can give up my son, he can give up Sara. We can do this. We really only need each other, right? That’s why he showed up at Fox River in the first place. We are all we have at the end of the day. We’re all we’ve ever had.
I hurry to catch up with him, to thank him. I say the words that have never been said, and though I know he’d say he doesn’t need them, right now, he needs them. I need them. And it’s all I have to give him. In reality, it’s all I’ve ever had to give him. Promises, reassurances, lies. Never once did he let the weight of my words be the thing that tipped the scales permanently. He’s always been so smart, able to figure things out on his own. When he was old enough, and financially stable, he was smart enough to break away from me. I guess that was what I’d always intended with the 90 grand. It would let him escape my shadowy world.
In the end, it just drew him right back, deeper and darker than ever before.
If we can get on the boat and get moving, maybe things will start to make sense. We’ll find a way. We’ll find a way to be Linc and Mike again, the orphan boys who clung together through everything. Or maybe out there on the open sea, we can find a way to stop being that.
The boy who got us the boat says, “It’s the best I could do with the money you gave me.” It’s a lot smaller than the Christina Rose, but in that moment all I think is please, let it have a cold beer somewhere, and I’ll be good. Just let me have a moment. Somewhere there’s got to be a moment of peace, for both of us.
“That’ll work,” Michael says, handing the kid some money. “Gracias.”
“Gracias,” the kid says, moving to walk around me. “She’s very pretty.”
I look back at the boat and wonder what the hell he’s talking about but Michael responds with, “She’ll get us where we need to go, right?”
“Not the boat, senor.” The kid giggles. It’s the giggle that tips me off.
We both pivot towards it, and I know a split second before I see her. No looking back always had a plan. If I could begrudge Michael anything, it might be this, but there’s something about seeing her shake out a rag and look up at us that doesn’t allow for that. Maybe it’s the softness of her expression in seeing him, or the way he stumbles forward without his normal grace, and that isn’t caused by the 75lb. bag on his back.
If Michael’s crazy, Sara’s crazier. Why else would she be here? They’re perfect for each other. And maybe that’s what he gets for all the shit I rained down over him his whole life. If Sara is the first mate on our little boat, maybe we’ll find some universe where we’re normal, and we’ll forget that he saved me from the Electric Chair. And that our Dad died trying to show us love he never gave us. And that everyone I could have ever loved is gone from me forever except Michael.
I take the bag of money from him and climb on the boat while they hug and whisper to each other. But Sara’s voice gets louder, stronger and her words seem to work like a stun gun on me. Everything freezes when she says, “Michael, Lincoln’s free.”
“What?” jumps out of my mouth. I look at her, I look at my brother, but nothing seems to move. My chest has a lead weight on it. My lungs constrict in disbelief. This was always the fleeting hope, escape Fox River, clear my name; give up Panama, fight to clear my name; get the proof, clear my name. When Caroline Reynolds resigned, I let it go. I was never going to be free. All I could ever hope for was some tropical paradise with my brother. Nameless senioritas who cared even less about my name than I did theirs. Margaritas with enough salt on the rim to chase away dreams that could never happen. In that moment I decided to be happy with the crap that I’d have because I was alive. My brother had accomplished the one thing he’d set out to do, and to honor any of that had to start with my being happy about it.
So bananas were going to be my favorite smell and I would take up surfing and I’d forget everything about Chicago.
Sara is explaining something about Paul Kellerman, but it’s hard to hear anything except the roaring of blood in my ears. I find myself repeating one of the words she’d said, as though some other part of my brain was actually comprehending her words. “Everything?”
“Everything,” she says again. “All charges.”
My legs start wobbling, so I move over to the edge of the boat and sit down. “Whoa,” I say. Whoa, I think. There’s nothing else to say or to think. It’s a scramble in my head and I don’t have a clue. I can’t formulate any sentences, but Sara is still looking over her shoulder at me. I just stutter uncontrollably.
“It means you don’t have to run anymore,” she says when it obviously isn’t going to come out of my mouth.
I look at my brother, but he’s looking out at the horizon, as shell-shocked as I am. My brother. My brother who held up a bank to break into prison.
“What about Michael?”
Sara explains-some friend of her father’s-but it’s her tone of voice, this certainty that it’s over. That we’re both going to be able-LJ. My son. I think about that phone number I memorized, Jane’s cell phone that I only called once, even though I thought about it everyday. LJ. If I’m free, I can have my son. If I’m exonerated, there’s no reason to keep him half a world away from me. Oh, God. I feel my throat seizing up, and I swallow convulsively, trying to keep myself from shouting something insane like, Free at last, free at last. “I need a drink,” is what I finally say and nothing could be truer. I need the hardest, richest liquor to equate the buzz that’s already roaring through me.
“I’ll see what I can find,” Sara says.
As she climbs back into the hull, I fall back, hitting the cabin wall. I look at Michael, but he’s still too stunned. We’re both crazy speechless. I slap my thigh in an attempt to snap myself out of it; the pinching around my wrist as fine hairs, caught by handcuffs, reminds me of their dangling presence. I follow Sara down into the hull to find something to rid me of them. I slip the gun I lifted off one of those guys Mahone shot on to the small table where some fishing tackle lies.
“Here,” I say to Michael a moment later, who is still just sitting, unmoving and silent. “Help me outta this,” I say, handing him the fish hook to unlatch the cuffs. It’s the last time I’m gonna need his help. It’s the last remnant of all his sacrifice. It’s what Vee and Lisa, and my Dad died for. As the cuffs open and Michael’s fingertips scrape across the inside of my wrist, I couldn’t be anymore jubilant than I am enormously sad. It’s over. I can call LJ. It’s over, we can go home. It’s over. We can rebuild. Right?
“We did it Linc,” he says, his voice a gravelly whisper. “We did it.”
I barely say, “Yeah” in response before a voice says, “No, you almost did it.”
And that was it, that was the moment. That was all we got. Fifty fucking seconds to think we’d accomplished something, that it had been worth it. That I, along with my brother, could finally rest.
Running was all we could do, it was all we knew anymore, and by the time I figured out that if they were at the police station, there was only one thing happening there, it was too late to stop Michael. It was always too late to stop him; I was always too late.
It started raining as the sun went down. Torrential rain, I guess. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. I’d known Michael was crazy, all along I knew it, I just never expected to know how he got that way, and why the way he thought made sense to him. Not until I stood in the rain and watched them pull him off the van and herd him towards a gate that led to only God knows what. But I knew if God wasn’t inside Fox River, He was even further from Sona. And I knew if my brother couldn’t let me die inside that old castle, I wouldn’t let him die in these ruins.
My mother had said special. She’d emphasized that word to the point where Michael and special meant the same things. And I guess Michael’s craziness was what made him special; it certainly was what made him able.
In our family things aren’t passed down, they’re passed up. And if crossing into crazy was how I’d get my brother back, I’d go there. If crazy was the only way to get it done, I would flag the bus down and drive it there my goddamned self.
“Oh, my God, Bruce. Lincoln’s a free man!” ~Sara Tancredi, Sona
“Is he crazy, Mom?” Lincoln asked in a hushed whisper, even though his sleeping brother was heavily medicated in his hospital bed.
“No, Linc,” his mother’s soothing voice replied. “He’s just special.”
*
“Am I crazy, Linc?” Michael asked, huddled against his brother’s side. His small body shook, but from what Lincoln could tell the worst of it had passed.
“No, Mikey. You’re special, remember? Just like Mom said.”
*
When Lincoln saw Michael standing in the chapel in Fox River, he stared at the truth they’d glossed over all of Michael’s life.
Of course he was crazy. Who got themselves thrown in jail to save their worthless brother?
It was the only possible explanation.
*
Listening to Mahone talk to his wife makes me feel sorry for him at the same time I want to beat the holy hell out of him. The defeat of him getting the upper hand over me is softened by the fact that Michael really had a chance to get T-Bag. If he could do one thing to ease his conscience, getting T-Bag is it, and that will be worth it to me. I’ll figure some way out of this hell hole. I didn’t get this far to let this guy steal my life. Because that’s what he’s planning. He says to his wife, “I know what’s important now; I know what matters.”
Bullshit. If he had any clue, he would never drag her into any of this. I wanted to tell Michael that too, but it would only have added to his guilt. Let Sara stay as far away from this as she can. If I’d only realized what we were up against, I would’ve told Vee to run like hell. Any man claiming to love a woman ought to do just that. Do whatever he can to keep her safe, give up whatever he’s got to give up to make it happen.
That’s what I’d do if I had it to do over again. “Stop the cancer of your life from spreading to theirs,” is what I tell Mahone. He’s got a boy too, I heard him saying something about a son. LJ’s last words ring in my ears. He was right. As far away from me as he can be, that’s the best place for him. For now, forever.
Mahone hasn’t learned a damn thing; he’s operating on pure desperation. He’s hoping she can save him, when he’s far past saving. I know. I was past saving, yet Michael swooped in to fix things one way while Veronica tried another way. In case you missed it, neither way worked out too well, not that that’s their fault. We couldn’t know every corner turned would hold new, bolder enemies.
As slowly as I have to twist the pipe to remain undetected and get myself loose, I should be ready to free myself by the time Michael gets here. One more time, Michael, I swear. One more time, you’ve got to save my ass, and then we’re out of here. We’re out of here, and we’ll never look back. It will be just how it was 20 years ago when Mom died. Just me and him. That’s all we have, and it will have to be all we need.
*
As Michael and I get closer to the boat, I say it out loud to make sure we’re on the same page, “We get outta here and we never look back.” It might be a question. It might be the beginning of another argument, but this time I’m going to win, even if I have to knock him out and drag him on this boat he says is waiting for us.
“We never look back,” he agrees, barely nodding.
He continues down the path. I know that, for him, accepting what I just said, and believing it’s true and what’s best for everyone is the hardest part of all of this, but if I can give up my son, he can give up Sara. We can do this. We really only need each other, right? That’s why he showed up at Fox River in the first place. We are all we have at the end of the day. We’re all we’ve ever had.
I hurry to catch up with him, to thank him. I say the words that have never been said, and though I know he’d say he doesn’t need them, right now, he needs them. I need them. And it’s all I have to give him. In reality, it’s all I’ve ever had to give him. Promises, reassurances, lies. Never once did he let the weight of my words be the thing that tipped the scales permanently. He’s always been so smart, able to figure things out on his own. When he was old enough, and financially stable, he was smart enough to break away from me. I guess that was what I’d always intended with the 90 grand. It would let him escape my shadowy world.
In the end, it just drew him right back, deeper and darker than ever before.
If we can get on the boat and get moving, maybe things will start to make sense. We’ll find a way. We’ll find a way to be Linc and Mike again, the orphan boys who clung together through everything. Or maybe out there on the open sea, we can find a way to stop being that.
The boy who got us the boat says, “It’s the best I could do with the money you gave me.” It’s a lot smaller than the Christina Rose, but in that moment all I think is please, let it have a cold beer somewhere, and I’ll be good. Just let me have a moment. Somewhere there’s got to be a moment of peace, for both of us.
“That’ll work,” Michael says, handing the kid some money. “Gracias.”
“Gracias,” the kid says, moving to walk around me. “She’s very pretty.”
I look back at the boat and wonder what the hell he’s talking about but Michael responds with, “She’ll get us where we need to go, right?”
“Not the boat, senor.” The kid giggles. It’s the giggle that tips me off.
We both pivot towards it, and I know a split second before I see her. No looking back always had a plan. If I could begrudge Michael anything, it might be this, but there’s something about seeing her shake out a rag and look up at us that doesn’t allow for that. Maybe it’s the softness of her expression in seeing him, or the way he stumbles forward without his normal grace, and that isn’t caused by the 75lb. bag on his back.
If Michael’s crazy, Sara’s crazier. Why else would she be here? They’re perfect for each other. And maybe that’s what he gets for all the shit I rained down over him his whole life. If Sara is the first mate on our little boat, maybe we’ll find some universe where we’re normal, and we’ll forget that he saved me from the Electric Chair. And that our Dad died trying to show us love he never gave us. And that everyone I could have ever loved is gone from me forever except Michael.
I take the bag of money from him and climb on the boat while they hug and whisper to each other. But Sara’s voice gets louder, stronger and her words seem to work like a stun gun on me. Everything freezes when she says, “Michael, Lincoln’s free.”
“What?” jumps out of my mouth. I look at her, I look at my brother, but nothing seems to move. My chest has a lead weight on it. My lungs constrict in disbelief. This was always the fleeting hope, escape Fox River, clear my name; give up Panama, fight to clear my name; get the proof, clear my name. When Caroline Reynolds resigned, I let it go. I was never going to be free. All I could ever hope for was some tropical paradise with my brother. Nameless senioritas who cared even less about my name than I did theirs. Margaritas with enough salt on the rim to chase away dreams that could never happen. In that moment I decided to be happy with the crap that I’d have because I was alive. My brother had accomplished the one thing he’d set out to do, and to honor any of that had to start with my being happy about it.
So bananas were going to be my favorite smell and I would take up surfing and I’d forget everything about Chicago.
Sara is explaining something about Paul Kellerman, but it’s hard to hear anything except the roaring of blood in my ears. I find myself repeating one of the words she’d said, as though some other part of my brain was actually comprehending her words. “Everything?”
“Everything,” she says again. “All charges.”
My legs start wobbling, so I move over to the edge of the boat and sit down. “Whoa,” I say. Whoa, I think. There’s nothing else to say or to think. It’s a scramble in my head and I don’t have a clue. I can’t formulate any sentences, but Sara is still looking over her shoulder at me. I just stutter uncontrollably.
“It means you don’t have to run anymore,” she says when it obviously isn’t going to come out of my mouth.
I look at my brother, but he’s looking out at the horizon, as shell-shocked as I am. My brother. My brother who held up a bank to break into prison.
“What about Michael?”
Sara explains-some friend of her father’s-but it’s her tone of voice, this certainty that it’s over. That we’re both going to be able-LJ. My son. I think about that phone number I memorized, Jane’s cell phone that I only called once, even though I thought about it everyday. LJ. If I’m free, I can have my son. If I’m exonerated, there’s no reason to keep him half a world away from me. Oh, God. I feel my throat seizing up, and I swallow convulsively, trying to keep myself from shouting something insane like, Free at last, free at last. “I need a drink,” is what I finally say and nothing could be truer. I need the hardest, richest liquor to equate the buzz that’s already roaring through me.
“I’ll see what I can find,” Sara says.
As she climbs back into the hull, I fall back, hitting the cabin wall. I look at Michael, but he’s still too stunned. We’re both crazy speechless. I slap my thigh in an attempt to snap myself out of it; the pinching around my wrist as fine hairs, caught by handcuffs, reminds me of their dangling presence. I follow Sara down into the hull to find something to rid me of them. I slip the gun I lifted off one of those guys Mahone shot on to the small table where some fishing tackle lies.
“Here,” I say to Michael a moment later, who is still just sitting, unmoving and silent. “Help me outta this,” I say, handing him the fish hook to unlatch the cuffs. It’s the last time I’m gonna need his help. It’s the last remnant of all his sacrifice. It’s what Vee and Lisa, and my Dad died for. As the cuffs open and Michael’s fingertips scrape across the inside of my wrist, I couldn’t be anymore jubilant than I am enormously sad. It’s over. I can call LJ. It’s over, we can go home. It’s over. We can rebuild. Right?
“We did it Linc,” he says, his voice a gravelly whisper. “We did it.”
I barely say, “Yeah” in response before a voice says, “No, you almost did it.”
And that was it, that was the moment. That was all we got. Fifty fucking seconds to think we’d accomplished something, that it had been worth it. That I, along with my brother, could finally rest.
Running was all we could do, it was all we knew anymore, and by the time I figured out that if they were at the police station, there was only one thing happening there, it was too late to stop Michael. It was always too late to stop him; I was always too late.
It started raining as the sun went down. Torrential rain, I guess. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. I’d known Michael was crazy, all along I knew it, I just never expected to know how he got that way, and why the way he thought made sense to him. Not until I stood in the rain and watched them pull him off the van and herd him towards a gate that led to only God knows what. But I knew if God wasn’t inside Fox River, He was even further from Sona. And I knew if my brother couldn’t let me die inside that old castle, I wouldn’t let him die in these ruins.
My mother had said special. She’d emphasized that word to the point where Michael and special meant the same things. And I guess Michael’s craziness was what made him special; it certainly was what made him able.
In our family things aren’t passed down, they’re passed up. And if crossing into crazy was how I’d get my brother back, I’d go there. If crazy was the only way to get it done, I would flag the bus down and drive it there my goddamned self.