fic: This is not a fairy tale
Title: This is not a fairy tale
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Sara, Lincoln, Michael
Word Count: a bit over 400 (again)
Rating: PG...maybe more for convoluted extended metaphor...who would want their kids reading that, right?
Notes: Um...the music I'm listening to is really depressing and so is Prison Break. Takes place at the bitter end.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.
She feels empty, like glass, see-through and fragile. She is a statuette, a hollow figurine. She could break herself against this shore, these jagged cliffs and unforgiving tide. Her entire being reduced to tiny particles, lost in the swirl of sand and shell and sea.
So she hesitates, catches herself just in time to see it all. She sees inevitability and hopelessness. She sees fate and despondency. She sees destiny and bleakness. She sees everything arrayed out like so many rocks on the shore. Here she has all her answers to all her questions. All her paths put down in earth and water.
Go, and she loses everything, but gains even more. Stay, and she never gains at all. It is not a choice, it never was. She will go, but first she looks. She looks at eyes the color of the ocean in the morning, and skin like the wet rock, dusty looking and vibrantly patterned but silky smooth. She looks into a life unfolding before her: a home and children and laughter so many things that can never be. She looks into a dream, and recognizes it as a dream; the best dream she will ever have.
She dreams with her eyes open, and it fills her like air, her last deep breath. She can taste it all in the wind and the spray from the water. It is love and faithfulness and mourning. It is his hand in hers and the way their hearts break together, and she will give him this, too. She would have given him anything, but instead she will give him everything.
One more moment to look, to hesitate and then she throws herself forward with the force of a tidal wave. She breaks in the water, in the foam on the crest, and shatters into a million little pieces, cast out into the ocean.
***
“Hey, Michael, look at this rock. You can almost see right through it.”
Michael turns from his contemplation of the horizon, and the voice he swore he could hear on the wind. Lincoln is standing on the shore with him, and the waves are lapping gently at their toes. It’s a clear day, with a bright blue sky and an easy ocean.
Michael looks down into Lincoln’s hand, into the cupped palm, the worn and creased skin. It’s a shiny bit, about the size of a nickel. Michael reaches out to take it from him, worries it between his fingers before slipping it into his pocket.
“It’s not a rock, Lincoln. It’s a piece of glass, worn smooth and then washed up on the shore." He looks back out over the water. "It's beautiful.”