Eye of the Beholder - Prison Break (Michael/Sara)
Title: Eye of the Beholder (1/1)
Fandom: Prison Break
Genre: Alternate Universe
Characters: Michael Scofield, Sara Tancredi, Lincoln Burrows, Veronica Donovan, Sid the Tattoo Artist
Pairing: Michael/Sara
Length: 2,060 words
Rating: PG-15.
Summary: People see what they want to see.
Author's Note:This is written for the Skin Deep Challenge at pbhiatus_fic, and ignores Season Three, as usual. Any dialogue taken from the pilot does, of course, not belong to me. However, as my betas are asleep at the moment, any mistakes that remain are all MINE. *g*
~*~
Show me a man with a tattoo and
I'll show you a man with an interesting past.
~ Jack London
~*~
For Sid, they were something to admire.
“That’s it.” She sighs dramatically as she blots the last of the excess ink from my bicep. “Can I just, you know, look at it for a minute?”
I wonder how long it will be before another woman touches me so gently, then smile at her. “You're an artist, Sid.”
She looks at me wistfully, like an artist reluctantly letting go of one of their pieces. Which, of course, is exactly what she is. "You’re telling me you’re gonna walk outta here and I’m never gonna see it again."
"There’s a good chance of that, yes."
"Most guys, you know, for the first time they start with something small.” Her gaze runs lovingly up and down my arms, but I know it’s not me she’s admiring. “Mom, girlfriend’s initials, something like that. Not you.” She sounds surprised more than impressed, and I know she still thinks of me as a desk jockey looking for a quick dose of street cred. “You got a full set of sleeves all in a couple of months. It takes guys a few years to get the ink you got."
I shrug into my white shirt, wishing I’d thought to wear a darker colour today, thinking of the inevitable flecks of blood and ink. I’m not supposed to be here today. She’d had a last-minute cancellation, and had taken it upon herself to call and let me know she could fit me in a day earlier. My unexplained sense of urgency has not been lost on her, and I briefly regret the fact that I will never see this woman again. She has become, much to my surprise, something almost approaching a friend. "I don’t have a few years.” One day, when this is over, the enormity of my understatement might make me smile. “Wish to hell I did."
I pay her for the last time, giving her a generous tip, wishing it felt more like a thank you than an admission of guilt. “Keep the change.”
She grins. “Just remember, you can’t ever stop taking care of those.” As she does after every session, she hands me a tattoo after-care sheet and a tube of cream. “You want them to last forever, right?”
I look at her, wondering what she’d say if I told her I only need them to last until my imprisoned brother and I step onto a yacht in Panama. “Right.”
~*~
To Veronica, they were another sign I was keeping secrets from her.
“What the hell?”
I try to pull away, but it’s too late. Her hand is tightly gripping my left forearm, her gaze locked on the indigo patterns I hadn’t realized were visible beneath the cuff of my sweatshirt.
“Michael, what is this?” She stares at me across the visitation table, her brow furrowed in confusion, her eyes filled with the same confusion I remember all too well from the courthouse. “Tattoos?”
I shrug, finally succeeding in jerking my arm away from her grasp, uncomfortably aware that she is not going to believe any story I might tell her. She was there the day Lincoln came home with his first tattoo. She heard me ask him why he’d done something so stupid as to mark his skin for the rest of his life with something he probably wouldn’t even like in a few weeks. “They’re nothing, Vee.”
“What is going on, Michael?” she asks me for the thousandth (or so it seems) time since I was first arrested. “Please tell me.” Her eyes are glittering with tears now, crystal glistening on her dark eyelashes, stark against her shocked-white skin. “Please.”
“Don’t worry about them, Vee.” The CO is walking through the tables now, breaking up the huddled visitation groups, and I know it’s time to go. For once, I’m glad. “I’ll tell you all about them one day, okay?”
Her mouth sets in a mutinous line as we both rise to our feet. “Whatever it is you think you’re doing in here, Michael, you need to stop.”
“I can’t.” Enveloping her in a brief, tight hug, I silently tell her that when this is all over, she will understand the need for secrets. When Lincoln is free and this is nothing more than a bad memory, she will understand the need for lies. She pulls away, opening her mouth to speak, but I don’t give her the chance. “Thanks for coming, Vee.”
Recognizing the dismissal, her face falls. A dozen unasked questions in her eyes, she steps back, and lets me go.
~*~
To my brother, they were a promise I almost couldn’t keep.
My hands shake as I unbutton the blue prison-issue overalls, feeling like an amateur magician about to face his first live audience.
“You’ve seen the blueprints?” The question is barely a mumble as he turns towards me, then his eyes widen, the guarded expression falling away from his face. It is the same way he’d looked at me in the chapel, when the enormity of what I’d done had hit home for both of us.
“Better than that.” I let my hands fall to my sides, clinging to the bravado I’ve spent most of my life perfecting. “I’ve got ‘em on me.”
“Are you kidding me?”
For a brief second, he sounds impressed, almost approving, and I feel myself smile for the first time in hours. Then he frowns, confusion clouding his eyes as he stares at my chest. “Am I meant to be seeing something here?”
“Look closer.”
He does, his frown deepening as his gaze sweeps over my torso, taking in the images that are at once a demonic nightmare and our salvation.
“I’m sorry, man, I don't see anything but your tatts.”
Biting my bottom lip, I reach for my discarded undershirt, pulling it over my head with hands that are still shaking. His eyes follow me as I move back to his side, like a child waiting for the punch line to a joke they don’t understand. “The blueprints,” I say softly as I sit beside him, my peripheral vision straining to detect the first hint that we might not be alone. “They’re hidden underneath the artwork.”
He stares at the front of my shirt, then he lifts his eyes to mine. “Blueprints are one thing, Michael.” The hope I’d fleetingly seen in his eyes is gone, replaced by the stoic acceptance I’d grown to despise more and more with every new visit to him at Statesville. “But this place,” he hesitates, as if grasping for the right words. “This place isn’t one of your fancy model buildings, filled with little stick figures of people and cars.” His eyes darken, and I feel the fear I’ve fought so hard to quell begin to claw its way back into my head. “This is prison, man. A prison filled with a whole lot of people you don’t want to know.”
“I know.” I tug the sleeves of my overalls back into place, feeling an unexpected calm come over me. The sense of inevitability, perhaps. “The tattoo isn’t the only homework I did.”
Lincoln’s gaze narrows. “What do you mean?”
“Those people you said I don’t want to know?” I smile, but it feels brittle and tight on my lips. “They’re the ones who are going to help get us out of here.”
Disbelief flashes across his face, but whatever he’s about to say is lost, the CO’s voice slicing harshly through the warm air like a ratchet. “Let’s go, Sink.”
“Trust me,” I whisper urgently as we both get to our feet, then he’s stepping away from me, putting an acceptable distance between us, two inmates who’ve only just met. I watch as my brother is led away, taken back to his solitary cell, and the patterns inked across my skin suddenly feel as new and tender as they did the instant they were etched into my flesh.
“I can do this,” I whisper, this time to myself, and realize that for the first time in days, I truly believe it.
~*~
To Sara, they are something that has always been a part of me.
She asks the meaning behind each tattoo - I suspect for as much for my sake as her own curiosity - and I tell her everything. I tell her of the weeks spent hunched over my desk, fine-tuning dimensions and details, the seemingly endless search for the tattooist who would be able to do justice to my creation.
One day, months after it’s finally over, I finally tell her of the moment I’d stripped off in my own bathroom and seen the full effect for the first time, something I'd only brought myself to share with Lincoln a few weeks ago.
Her gloved hand sweeps down the length of my arm. “How did you feel when you saw it?”
I catch her hand in mine, tucking it into the pocket of my overcoat. Dublin in November is as about as far as you can get from Panama in August, but neither of us care. “As though I’d just signed a deal with the devil.”
Her smile takes nothing from the sadness in her eyes. “Fresh ink will do that to you.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes, and I wonder what she’s thinking. After weeks of a life spent peeling back each other’s layers, she is still a beautiful contradiction, enigmatic and candid in the same heartbeat. “Have you heard from Lincoln today?”
I smile into the cold wind. To her, my tattoos and my brother are forever linked, the before and after of my short-lived prison career. Perhaps she’s right. “He called last night,” I tell her, my smile growing as I remember Lincoln’s parting words. “He said he’d see us at Thanksgiving.”
She presses closer, matching her stride to mine, her boots clicking on the cobbled street. “I guess that means he’s forgiven me for taking you away for a month.”
“I’m sure he has.” She’s exaggerating, of course, but behind every exaggeration is always a grain of truth. Lincoln’s reaction to my announcement two weeks ago that Sara and I were planning to travel to Ireland to seek out her father’s elderly aunt had been unenthusiastic, to say the least. “He’s probably glad to have us out of his hair for a few weeks.”
By now we’ve started to walk across one of the many bridges that span the River Liffey. Halfway across, Sara slows her pace, drawing me towards the carved metal railing. We rest our elbows on the cold metal, her shoulder firm against mine. Her bright hair is hidden by her woolen cap, but her smile is sunny as she gazes down at the water. “It’s beautiful here.”
My throat tightens - the impossible is always hard to believe - but I manage to find my voice. “To be sure.”
She rolls her eyes at my appalling accent, then glances over her shoulder, frowning as she studies our surroundings. “Uh, do you know how to get back to our hotel from here?”
We’ve been walking for an hour, slowly meandering through narrow streets and busy markets, lost in conversation and the simple joy of being together. Anonymous. Normal. Glancing up and down the street, I suddenly realize how far we’ve walked. “I’m sure I’ll be able to work it out.”
Grinning, she slips her hands inside my coat, laying them flat on my chest. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a map of Dublin hidden under this sweater somewhere?”
I chuckle, the sound quickly snatched up by the wind and carried away. She knows every inch of my body, tattooed or otherwise. “Sadly, no.” Covering her gloved hand with mine, I press firmly it over my heart. “I’ll just have to use my finely honed instincts instead.”
She tilts her head to one side, merriment dancing in her dark eyes. “Is that wise?”
Her lips are cold against mine when I bend my head to kiss her, but her breath is warm against my lips. “It worked with you,” I whisper when it’s over, and she smiles, her hand still splayed over the tattoos that are no longer a desperate plan but merely ink beneath my skin.
“It certainly did.”
~*~
Fandom: Prison Break
Genre: Alternate Universe
Characters: Michael Scofield, Sara Tancredi, Lincoln Burrows, Veronica Donovan, Sid the Tattoo Artist
Pairing: Michael/Sara
Length: 2,060 words
Rating: PG-15.
Summary: People see what they want to see.
Author's Note:This is written for the Skin Deep Challenge at pbhiatus_fic, and ignores Season Three, as usual. Any dialogue taken from the pilot does, of course, not belong to me. However, as my betas are asleep at the moment, any mistakes that remain are all MINE. *g*
~*~
Show me a man with a tattoo and
I'll show you a man with an interesting past.
~ Jack London
~*~
For Sid, they were something to admire.
“That’s it.” She sighs dramatically as she blots the last of the excess ink from my bicep. “Can I just, you know, look at it for a minute?”
I wonder how long it will be before another woman touches me so gently, then smile at her. “You're an artist, Sid.”
She looks at me wistfully, like an artist reluctantly letting go of one of their pieces. Which, of course, is exactly what she is. "You’re telling me you’re gonna walk outta here and I’m never gonna see it again."
"There’s a good chance of that, yes."
"Most guys, you know, for the first time they start with something small.” Her gaze runs lovingly up and down my arms, but I know it’s not me she’s admiring. “Mom, girlfriend’s initials, something like that. Not you.” She sounds surprised more than impressed, and I know she still thinks of me as a desk jockey looking for a quick dose of street cred. “You got a full set of sleeves all in a couple of months. It takes guys a few years to get the ink you got."
I shrug into my white shirt, wishing I’d thought to wear a darker colour today, thinking of the inevitable flecks of blood and ink. I’m not supposed to be here today. She’d had a last-minute cancellation, and had taken it upon herself to call and let me know she could fit me in a day earlier. My unexplained sense of urgency has not been lost on her, and I briefly regret the fact that I will never see this woman again. She has become, much to my surprise, something almost approaching a friend. "I don’t have a few years.” One day, when this is over, the enormity of my understatement might make me smile. “Wish to hell I did."
I pay her for the last time, giving her a generous tip, wishing it felt more like a thank you than an admission of guilt. “Keep the change.”
She grins. “Just remember, you can’t ever stop taking care of those.” As she does after every session, she hands me a tattoo after-care sheet and a tube of cream. “You want them to last forever, right?”
I look at her, wondering what she’d say if I told her I only need them to last until my imprisoned brother and I step onto a yacht in Panama. “Right.”
~*~
To Veronica, they were another sign I was keeping secrets from her.
“What the hell?”
I try to pull away, but it’s too late. Her hand is tightly gripping my left forearm, her gaze locked on the indigo patterns I hadn’t realized were visible beneath the cuff of my sweatshirt.
“Michael, what is this?” She stares at me across the visitation table, her brow furrowed in confusion, her eyes filled with the same confusion I remember all too well from the courthouse. “Tattoos?”
I shrug, finally succeeding in jerking my arm away from her grasp, uncomfortably aware that she is not going to believe any story I might tell her. She was there the day Lincoln came home with his first tattoo. She heard me ask him why he’d done something so stupid as to mark his skin for the rest of his life with something he probably wouldn’t even like in a few weeks. “They’re nothing, Vee.”
“What is going on, Michael?” she asks me for the thousandth (or so it seems) time since I was first arrested. “Please tell me.” Her eyes are glittering with tears now, crystal glistening on her dark eyelashes, stark against her shocked-white skin. “Please.”
“Don’t worry about them, Vee.” The CO is walking through the tables now, breaking up the huddled visitation groups, and I know it’s time to go. For once, I’m glad. “I’ll tell you all about them one day, okay?”
Her mouth sets in a mutinous line as we both rise to our feet. “Whatever it is you think you’re doing in here, Michael, you need to stop.”
“I can’t.” Enveloping her in a brief, tight hug, I silently tell her that when this is all over, she will understand the need for secrets. When Lincoln is free and this is nothing more than a bad memory, she will understand the need for lies. She pulls away, opening her mouth to speak, but I don’t give her the chance. “Thanks for coming, Vee.”
Recognizing the dismissal, her face falls. A dozen unasked questions in her eyes, she steps back, and lets me go.
~*~
To my brother, they were a promise I almost couldn’t keep.
My hands shake as I unbutton the blue prison-issue overalls, feeling like an amateur magician about to face his first live audience.
“You’ve seen the blueprints?” The question is barely a mumble as he turns towards me, then his eyes widen, the guarded expression falling away from his face. It is the same way he’d looked at me in the chapel, when the enormity of what I’d done had hit home for both of us.
“Better than that.” I let my hands fall to my sides, clinging to the bravado I’ve spent most of my life perfecting. “I’ve got ‘em on me.”
“Are you kidding me?”
For a brief second, he sounds impressed, almost approving, and I feel myself smile for the first time in hours. Then he frowns, confusion clouding his eyes as he stares at my chest. “Am I meant to be seeing something here?”
“Look closer.”
He does, his frown deepening as his gaze sweeps over my torso, taking in the images that are at once a demonic nightmare and our salvation.
“I’m sorry, man, I don't see anything but your tatts.”
Biting my bottom lip, I reach for my discarded undershirt, pulling it over my head with hands that are still shaking. His eyes follow me as I move back to his side, like a child waiting for the punch line to a joke they don’t understand. “The blueprints,” I say softly as I sit beside him, my peripheral vision straining to detect the first hint that we might not be alone. “They’re hidden underneath the artwork.”
He stares at the front of my shirt, then he lifts his eyes to mine. “Blueprints are one thing, Michael.” The hope I’d fleetingly seen in his eyes is gone, replaced by the stoic acceptance I’d grown to despise more and more with every new visit to him at Statesville. “But this place,” he hesitates, as if grasping for the right words. “This place isn’t one of your fancy model buildings, filled with little stick figures of people and cars.” His eyes darken, and I feel the fear I’ve fought so hard to quell begin to claw its way back into my head. “This is prison, man. A prison filled with a whole lot of people you don’t want to know.”
“I know.” I tug the sleeves of my overalls back into place, feeling an unexpected calm come over me. The sense of inevitability, perhaps. “The tattoo isn’t the only homework I did.”
Lincoln’s gaze narrows. “What do you mean?”
“Those people you said I don’t want to know?” I smile, but it feels brittle and tight on my lips. “They’re the ones who are going to help get us out of here.”
Disbelief flashes across his face, but whatever he’s about to say is lost, the CO’s voice slicing harshly through the warm air like a ratchet. “Let’s go, Sink.”
“Trust me,” I whisper urgently as we both get to our feet, then he’s stepping away from me, putting an acceptable distance between us, two inmates who’ve only just met. I watch as my brother is led away, taken back to his solitary cell, and the patterns inked across my skin suddenly feel as new and tender as they did the instant they were etched into my flesh.
“I can do this,” I whisper, this time to myself, and realize that for the first time in days, I truly believe it.
~*~
To Sara, they are something that has always been a part of me.
She asks the meaning behind each tattoo - I suspect for as much for my sake as her own curiosity - and I tell her everything. I tell her of the weeks spent hunched over my desk, fine-tuning dimensions and details, the seemingly endless search for the tattooist who would be able to do justice to my creation.
One day, months after it’s finally over, I finally tell her of the moment I’d stripped off in my own bathroom and seen the full effect for the first time, something I'd only brought myself to share with Lincoln a few weeks ago.
Her gloved hand sweeps down the length of my arm. “How did you feel when you saw it?”
I catch her hand in mine, tucking it into the pocket of my overcoat. Dublin in November is as about as far as you can get from Panama in August, but neither of us care. “As though I’d just signed a deal with the devil.”
Her smile takes nothing from the sadness in her eyes. “Fresh ink will do that to you.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes, and I wonder what she’s thinking. After weeks of a life spent peeling back each other’s layers, she is still a beautiful contradiction, enigmatic and candid in the same heartbeat. “Have you heard from Lincoln today?”
I smile into the cold wind. To her, my tattoos and my brother are forever linked, the before and after of my short-lived prison career. Perhaps she’s right. “He called last night,” I tell her, my smile growing as I remember Lincoln’s parting words. “He said he’d see us at Thanksgiving.”
She presses closer, matching her stride to mine, her boots clicking on the cobbled street. “I guess that means he’s forgiven me for taking you away for a month.”
“I’m sure he has.” She’s exaggerating, of course, but behind every exaggeration is always a grain of truth. Lincoln’s reaction to my announcement two weeks ago that Sara and I were planning to travel to Ireland to seek out her father’s elderly aunt had been unenthusiastic, to say the least. “He’s probably glad to have us out of his hair for a few weeks.”
By now we’ve started to walk across one of the many bridges that span the River Liffey. Halfway across, Sara slows her pace, drawing me towards the carved metal railing. We rest our elbows on the cold metal, her shoulder firm against mine. Her bright hair is hidden by her woolen cap, but her smile is sunny as she gazes down at the water. “It’s beautiful here.”
My throat tightens - the impossible is always hard to believe - but I manage to find my voice. “To be sure.”
She rolls her eyes at my appalling accent, then glances over her shoulder, frowning as she studies our surroundings. “Uh, do you know how to get back to our hotel from here?”
We’ve been walking for an hour, slowly meandering through narrow streets and busy markets, lost in conversation and the simple joy of being together. Anonymous. Normal. Glancing up and down the street, I suddenly realize how far we’ve walked. “I’m sure I’ll be able to work it out.”
Grinning, she slips her hands inside my coat, laying them flat on my chest. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a map of Dublin hidden under this sweater somewhere?”
I chuckle, the sound quickly snatched up by the wind and carried away. She knows every inch of my body, tattooed or otherwise. “Sadly, no.” Covering her gloved hand with mine, I press firmly it over my heart. “I’ll just have to use my finely honed instincts instead.”
She tilts her head to one side, merriment dancing in her dark eyes. “Is that wise?”
Her lips are cold against mine when I bend my head to kiss her, but her breath is warm against my lips. “It worked with you,” I whisper when it’s over, and she smiles, her hand still splayed over the tattoos that are no longer a desperate plan but merely ink beneath my skin.
“It certainly did.”
~*~