"When the Faithless Ante-Up", for lizparker6
Title: When the Faithless Ante-Up
Author: To be revealed
Rating: PG-13
Category: Gen (implied Het)
Characters: Lincoln, Sara, Michael
Requested by: lizparker6
Summary: Lincoln and Sara wait to hear about Michael's surgery.
Author’s Notes: The plot bunny that formed from these prompts [Michael/Sara related fic of any kind, Sara and Self and/or Sucre and/or Gretchen interaction during S4, Lincoln’s opinion of Sara as Michael's new-found love and affects she has on his brother as well as their romance has on the brothers’ relationship] didn’t go the way of including Self, Sucre or Gretchen into the story, though I wish it had. In particular I’d have loved to work Gretchen in somehow, but it just didn’t pan out that way. This goes into an Alternate Universe from the end of 4x14, Just Business.
When the Faithless Ante-Up
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother
~Kahlil Gibran
The last few months of his life had consisted of mostly grim moments, though their increasing frequency still had the power to surprise him. Granted, his own death would have relieved him of all of them, but he knew now with certainty that would never happen. He would probably die a very old man with a very long list of regrets.
He could only hope the same for his brother, and as Michael handed Scylla over to Don Self, and Don Self handed Michael a manila envelope containing the details of their freedom, the word buoyant came to mind. Lincoln Burrows didn’t know a lot of fancy words, but in that moment, that was the only description he had.
He felt buoyant. Like the way Sara’s little boat might look if it they put it in the water and let it carry them away. Forever.
They were free. Finally. Really and truly free. They had done the impossible.
Later, his stupidity at letting himself feel-and define-his buoyancy would slap him upside the head, but right then, he’d never felt lighter.
He’d never been felt more sure.
*
Sitting quietly with Michael, not running, not scheming, not wondering what the hell to expect next, seemed oddly familiar. They had had a life before this one. They’d had a relationship before this one too, though Lincoln liked this one better. He hoped this was the one that stuck.
He patted his brother’s back and told him the truth: he was going to be just fine. It seemed strange to go from a glass half-empty to one half-full in the space of a heartbeat, but Lincoln’s surety that Michael would be okay came out of nowhere. He couldn’t find its source, he could only let it wash over him and trickle from his lips in gentle reassurances.
His brother’s gaze wandered across the pavement to the tall woman standing near the water’s edge.
“She’s worried about you,” Lincoln said unnecessarily. He even thought it-the worry-was unnecessary, but Sara was a doctor. And there was something about losing the one you loved that amped up the fear of the idea. He didn’t blame her for feeling scared. He pointed out the obvious to Michael so he could go console her. They would be at the hospital soon enough and Michael’s treatment would begin, and for Lincoln, it just felt as if the cards were finally stacked their way.
All that initial worry, the decades-old memories that had swamped him when he saw blood dripping down his brother’s face, had subsided. If they could bring down The Company, Michael could be healed. It was as simple as that.
*
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Because if there was one thing he could fucking count on, it was that things could never work out. Things would never end. Forget ending well, sometimes he felt like if they would just end, maybe that was all they could ask for.
There was anger, from all of them, towards Don Self. Lincoln imagined him standing in front of him, and then went to town, thrashing Michael’s bulletin board with a stool. All that planning, all that work, Bellick dead, all for nothing.
The injustices were stacked too high for Lincoln to comprehend anymore, so he beat the imaginary Don Self for Veronica, for his father, for Brad Bellick-a guy he hadn’t even liked-for himself, for Michael, for Sara, whose barely audible response had been “Regardless, we have to get you to the hospital, Michael.”
Lincoln had lived his life enduring Michael’s stubbornness. First there were school assignments he spent far more time on than any other kid alive, and then there were elaborate plans of escape from foster homes that never felt comfortable because Lincoln couldn’t settle down enough not to cause friction with whomever their current guardian had been. Michael’s arrival at Fox River hadn’t signaled something new, it had just been the culmination of years of lesser ridiculous behavior as far as Lincoln was concerned.
Trying to force his brother to go to the hospital wouldn’t be any easier for the Doc than it had ever been for Lincoln when they were kids and Michael’s nose bled intermittently. He’d hoped, at first, that Sara might have some sort of power that he did not-that perhaps a woman of importance could change the tide of stupidity and pigheadedness.
Lincoln knew Sara mattered more to Michael than anything else. He’d seen his face through the fence at Sona. He’d been on the receiving end of unkind words that Michael would never have said if there hadn’t been a deep wound oozing between them. But before that, even, when Michael had gone into Sona in her place, or when they’d arrived in Panama amidst no sense of relief because she was not with them, or even that first moment, in that shack on the side of the road when Michael had kicked Bellick in the head. Lincoln had known then and there that the prison doc had value to Michael, and God help them all because of it.
*
It wasn’t that Lincoln didn’t like Sara; he liked her a lot, actually. He’d always liked her when he was in Fox River and he'd just thought of her as the doc, and he could hardly help but like her after she’d enabled their escape. By the time they’d met up with her in Evansville, she’d lost about as much as they had. But the unexpected rush of pity that Lincoln had felt when he observed her fragile-looking face had evaporated when she tried to kill Paul Kellerman.
He’d found it impossible to pity someone who had had the strength to do something he had barely restrained himself from doing only the day before. His slow response to stop her was partly because of the forward motion of the train and partly because he wasn’t sure he should interfere-that was Sara’s call. In the aftermath it had been Michael’s call to calm her.
Lincoln had wondered how-or if-that would work, as he'd never really seen his brother with a girlfriend. Michael had never been one to bring girls home. In fact, for a long time Lincoln had worried his brother was gay, even though Veronica had been quick to describe Michael as a late bloomer. Lincoln had never been too sure what that meant exactly, but since he’d been having sex since he was fourteen, Veronica had also (grumpily) pointed out that it was obvious why he didn’t get it.
The irony that the one time Michael chose to ‘bring home’ a girl was when they had no home didn’t really surprise Lincoln. After Fox River, nothing could surprise him anymore. And he owed Sara just as much as his brother did, so it wasn’t like he would have left her behind if he’d had any other choice. That day on the freighter, though, he’d had to hold Michael back. He’d had to give him a little tough love over the whole thing because-God help him!-Michael just didn’t look at things very logically.
They’d needed to leave Chicago. They’d needed to leave the U.S. They’d needed to leave all that behind them, and truthfully Lincoln had looked forward to the promise of an unfettered Panama. Bananas and margaritas and brown skinned women to burn away the ache of all he'd almost gotten back only to lose all over again. Veronica, his father, even LJ.
Of course, none of that had gone as planned either. He didn’t blame Michael, exactly. He wasn’t one for dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed, but he’d certainly had his moments when he wished his brother could have just let things go with T-Bag.
Then Sara had been dead. Or so they’d thought. Lincoln knew now that he would rather endure anything else-with the exception of his son being dead-than to ever have to face Michael with anything like that again. But the day The Company took Michael off the street on the outskirts of Los Angeles, he found out he would rather anything else be before him than Sara’s tear-streaked face. Her silent sobs seemed to rip at his own tenuously strapped-on bravado, the surety that he might somehow trade his life for his brother’s thrumming at the base of his brain.
He’d promised LJ they would be together, but if all he could do was send Michael and Sara there to be with his son, he would take that option. Because, as he’d told the old fucker, it had started with him and it should end with him. Please, just let it fucking end already.
But, please, let it end well for Michael.
*
“Lincoln, can I ask you a question?” Sara asked.
“Shoot,” he replied, easing one foot up on to the opposite knee.
Sara sighed, her eyes jumping away from his briefly before returning with a forceful glint. “Has he always been like this?”
Lincoln tried to chuckle. It was funny, really it was, but maybe he was past finding humor in it anymore. So his chuckle came out more as half a cough, quickly aborted with a very serious, “Yes.” There was no need to elaborate on his part or for her to specify what she meant.
Michael had always been like this. No exceptions, no way around it. Simply and often stated by Veronica, Michael was impossible. On so many levels. Yet, he was Michael, so there was also no living without him. At least, Lincoln didn’t think there could be living without him. He wasn’t yet ready to contemplate it fully.
“I’d guessed as much. You never yell at him. You never push him to do anything. You never do anything but silently watch, gently suggest and then you just walk away with no arguments.” She shook her head, clearly puzzled.
The room they sat in together was just off the operating room where General Krantz’s goons were supposedly fixing Michael’s brain. The tension in the room was almost as reflective as the large window that showcased the gray hallway that led to the operating room, though neither Lincoln nor Sara spoke with raised voices. They were waiting, patiently. The surgery could take anywhere from two to six hours. They’d been there for 48 minutes before Sara had posed her query. “Have you ever tried to argue with him?” Lincoln asked, cutting her a dark glance. Sara nodded her head, though she remained silent. “Well, then, you know how effective it is. I try not to waste my time. Once in a while, I lose my fuckin' mind and do it anyway, only to be reminded of who I’m dealing with.”
Her eyes glistened in the harsh fluorescent lighting for a short moment; then she blinked and the moisture disappeared. She’d been frantic at the warehouse the day before, but now she was composed. Like Lincoln, she didn’t want anyone in association with The Company to see her vulnerable. It was just another thing he liked about her. Her lips curved up, and he wondered what brought the smile to her face. “I guess there is some comfort in knowing I’m not the only one. I’m not the only one who says something only to wonder if he heard anything at all.”
“You mean, he’s just as big a jackass to you as he is to me?” Lincoln clarified. She was being nice about it, but he saw no sense in that. “I did hope you’d have some kind of influence over him, but when he gets an idea in his head…” Lincoln bumped the heel of his hand against the side of his head as he trailed off, a parody of knocking something lose inside his skull all the illustration he needed for words he did not have. Veronica had always said it best. “Michael’s impossible,” he murmured, dropping Sara’s gaze again when a white-clothed figure passed in front of the window.
“Why did you think I might have influence over him?” she asked, drawing his gaze back when Lincoln determined that the passer-by was insignificant.
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re his girlfriend. He loves you. He cares what you think.”
Sara hesitated, but then her voice sounded with a certain level of incredulity. “And he doesn’t care what his brother thinks?”
Lincoln grunted; no answer was required.
“You’re so far off the mark on that one, I’m a little surprised. You’ve learned the best way to handle Michael, but you have no idea when he’s handling you, do you?”
“Handling me, how?” he inquired, dropping his foot back to the floor and shifting in his seat so he faced Sara.
“He didn’t want to admit he was sick because he was trying to protect you from whatever you went through when your mother died.” Her statement wasn’t accusatory, just straightforward and factual.
Lincoln countered, “He didn’t want to admit he was sick because he’s a control freak who had to get everything handled with Scylla ‘cause none of the rest of us idiots could handle it.” His tone was accusatory, but he didn’t even feel bad about it.
Sara shook her head silently, her lips pursing. Lincoln couldn’t read her, so he had no idea if she was dismissing his opinion or just arguing with it. When she spoke again, her question surprised him. “If that’s what you think, then why are you here? Why aren’t you out with Fernando and Alex finding Scylla and proving you’re not an idiot?”
Lincoln didn’t respond right away, though the answer was readily available. He could have distracted her with the news that Self and Gretchen were also part of his rag tag team, but that didn’t change the reality of his presence here while they were out sniffing for Scylla. He’d come for only one reason, and the battle still raged inside him as to whether or not he could handle it. Whether or not he could survive it. Lowly, he answered her. “I was there when my mother died; and I was there when my father died. If my brother is going to die, and leave me the last man standing, do you really think I can be anywhere else?”
*
She remembers when her life was simple. When her day consisted of patients and paperwork, and a precarious balance of handling the flirtations of various inmates at Fox River Penitentiary. She’d found a rhythm that worked, a way to succeed every day in some way so she didn’t feel like it was the waste of time her father had prophesied about.
It seemed to skitter out of control the day she found out Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows were brothers. Doctor Sara Tancredi, on that day, stumbled figuratively as warning bells went off in her head. Looking back, the caveat could have been about any number of things, like the fact that she was starting to care much too much about an inmate, or that her initial feeling that Michael hadn’t belonged in prison was correct, or that Lincoln, for all his gruffness, had never seemed hardened enough to be sitting on death row.
But it had been a gut reaction; a deep-seated instinctual revolt that what was about to happen because of this connection she’d discovered would affect her in some way.
If she’d been smart she would have run and never looked back. But hindsight was 20/20 and she knew that the feeling of trepidation hadn’t been some sort of psychic phenomena cluing her in to the big fat mess that it would become. It only felt like that now, on the other side of it. It only seemed as though she should have realized everything inside her was shifting permanently, that she was transforming into someone she would not recognize in the mirror if she were to see herself fully formed at that first inclination.
And the truth was, now that she knew how it would all play out, she wouldn’t change anything. How could she? To have never known Michael, to have never felt his love, to have never experienced the transcendent moments that could only come from her relationship with him-to say she would somehow willingly give that up was the biggest lie she could concoct.
And who was there to tell it to, anyway? Lincoln wouldn’t believe her now. He probably wouldn’t have believed her then, had either of them known what was involved in his last request that she look out for his brother. She had looked at a calendar earlier today, for maybe the first time since she overdosed, and it had been four months since then. Four months to the day since Lincoln Burrows had been strapped to the Electric Chair. Four months to the day that she had become inexplicably linked to a man she barely knew.
Sometimes, as she watched Michael work, his similarity to her father frightened her. His focus and singularity of mind sometimes sent chills of memory washing over her skin. She had always thought that adage of little girls growing up to marry their daddies could never apply to her. But there was something about his personality type, and its particular parallel to the other man who’d influenced her life so profoundly that helped her to know him so well.
She had a sixth sense when it came to Michael, but now, tensely waiting for the outcome of his surgery, she felt all the transference of Lincoln’s irritation. She understood it. Michael infuriated her as much as he drove the breath from her lungs or sent her blood pulsing with a soft look. She’d thought privately many times that if they ever had the chance to just be together, they might not survive it. The intensity between them was tempered now by rushed couplings on the small boat on one side of the warehouse, and the fear of failure, and death.
Imagining time to dawdle, hours to explore, days to lose complete track of seemed like the dream that could never happen, and if it did, she’d never wake up from it. If it ever became a reality, she wondered if it would be their reward-their piece of heaven would be totally isolated from anyone else to give them the time there that their earthly existence couldn’t produce for them.
Of course, since she wasn’t altogether sure that she believed in an afterlife, that random idea was as much as pipedream within pipedream as anything else.
Looking at Lincoln, feeling his pain for a split second-for the moment he had opened himself up to her, though not purposely-seemed to create a portrait of Michael she had never seen quite clearly. Lincoln’s perspective wasn’t just to protect at all costs; it was to prove himself.
He had left Michael alone in the past, but this time, he wasn’t making the same mistakes. Different mistakes, no doubt, but not the same ones. Sara had already chewed her thumbnail down to the quick when Lincoln told her he’d struck a deal with the General; that was how this whole thing was happening.
She knew Michael would be furious when (she would not think the word if) he woke up, but she couldn’t fault Lincoln for making a judgment that she herself would have made in the same position. Michael’s life had more value to her than any of the rest of it, no matter what type of brave face she put on when she had to go into a battle zone.
Sara reached a hand out, her fingers curling around Lincoln’s forearm. He was so solidly built that even this platonic, useless gesture made her very aware of his strength. “He’s not going to die,” she said softly, knowing it was as much for herself that she uttered the words as it was for him. It made her feel selfish that she had nothing separate to offer him.
Lincoln shrugged, a movement that might have made an outsider think he was indifferent to the outcome. The curve of his slumped shoulders and the set of his down turned mouth showed another sentiment.
“I’ve thought about it, too many times lately, you know. That he dies, and I live, and after every stupid fucking thing that’s happened, that can’t be how it ends up, Doc. You know how I told you the other day I wouldn’t go back to death row?” He didn’t wait for her to answer; he just kept on speaking. “I’d go back, if it means he lives. That’s why I was there in the first place.” He sighed, the sound wistful, and quite incongruous with his gruff demeanor. “All I ever wanted was for him to have a life, and now here we are. Waiting.”
Sara’s fingers tightened on his arm. Gently, she pointed out the obvious. “Michael would be in this position in any circumstance, Lincoln. He’s sick. He needs this operation. Because of what has happened, you’re still here to support him. To hope and pray he makes it.”
His eyes flickered, darkness expanding within his gaze, and she knew whatever he thought about now made death row seem like Club Med. His arm twisted out from under her fingers so his hand could envelope hers. “Whatever happens, Sara, the end of this is you and Michael going to get my son. I made promises to LJ that I might not be able to keep, but you two can. You can go be with him, and be the family he needs.”
His urgency was palpable, causing Sara to nod her head automatically. “Yes, of course, we’ll go get LJ. But you will be with us, Lincoln. You’ll be with us. Michael will be with us. We’ll all be together.”
The sudden mania faded from his eyes, and he settled back on the chair, his fingers sliding away from her arm. “Maybe,” he muttered.
Sara felt her own eyes close and a fervent prayer sounded inside her brain. If there was a power to invoke, and that power was so inclined, all she wanted was Michael and Lincoln to get what they’d originally sought: freedom together somewhere.
She had a thought a few moments later that she hadn’t even asked for any of it for herself. Maybe their selflessness had finally infected her too.
*
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed because she didn’t have a watch on, and she didn’t want to pull her cell phone out to check the time. She also didn’t want to ask Lincoln what time it was because he paced the length of the room in front of her, obviously unable to bear the tension by being still any longer. Figuring that as long as he didn’t rip one of the bolted down chairs from the floor and fling it through the window he was somehow holding himself together, Sara leaned forward, pressing her hands against her temples, trying to contain the throbbing in her own head.
Then Lincoln spoke. “Do you really think he ignored his symptoms as a favor to me?”
It took Sara a minute to comprehend what he was asking. Her surmising hadn’t come from anything more specific than Michael’s childlike cries of Linc worries too much! but she knew now the lengths they went to, to protect each other. Lincoln would suggest in his gentle bear way that Michael sit out on a dangerous mission because his head was killing him and Michael would snipe the question at her about why didn’t Linc understand why he had to do what he had to do.
She sometimes wondered if they’d ever had an honest conversation in their entire lives. Maybe when Lincoln was sentenced to death row. Maybe there had been some total honesty then, but Sara wasn’t even sure it was a possibility between the two. She knew Michael regularly kept things from her, not because he was dishonest, but because that’s how he functioned. He protected everyone he loved from the truth, never comprehending that he sometimes believed his own lies.
After all, wasn’t that how they’d fallen in love in the first place?
“No,” she replied, starkly candid. “He did it to protect you, and me, and himself.” She paused, looking up into his face. “But the reason he protected you was because of how your mother died. The reason he protected me was because we just finally found each other. The reason he protected himself is because to face that either of you might die seems to negate the last what? Two years of his life? All this can’t be for nothing, can it, Lincoln? What kind of world are we living in, if it is?”
Lincoln had stopped pacing to stare at her as she explained. Glancing down at his feet, he waited a long time to answer. “Michael’s never lived in the real world,” he confessed, and there was a smidge of admiration in his tone underlying the irritation. “He always been up in his own head, even when the most horrible things were down here happening to the rest of us. Why should he have to start now?”
It suddenly occurred to her that Lincoln’s interpretation of the way Michael’s brain worked somehow put him above everyone else-not just in intelligence. Lincoln had given up everything to provide Michael with a better life-the life he felt he deserved. The life Michael had tossed away on a dime when his brother had needed him.
The level of paybacks were incomprehensible to Sara. Everything either of them had ever done for each other piled up until no one could ever atone properly. No one could ever balance it.
But they would never stop trying. And she had aligned herself with them in such a way that she could never and would never want to escape. She’d found people who had the fundamental thing her father had lacked.
Action motivated by love, and love alone.
They both looked up when the doctor walked in though the door just to the left of the big window. Lincoln’s hand reached out towards her, and she rose to her feet, her fingers twining with his as she braced herself for what would come.
*
Michael had been in the hospital three times in his life. Once, before his mother died, when his over stimulated brain had caused him to freak out. He had learned to control things better after that because the expression on his mother’s face, and especially the one on Linc’s, had been too much to endure, so he made sure he didn’t cause them that kind of pain ever again. The second time had been a few years later when he’d been in Little League, and Lincoln, who was really too old to be on the same team as Michael, had made a running, sliding dash for second base. Michael’s left arm had been the casualty.
And today, he’d had his brain operated on.
His eyes opened slowly, the light over his head a little too bright. Sara’s red hair was splayed across his chest, her eyes closed peacefully. Moving his head carefully since he was unsure of his range of motion, or what might cause himself pain, he saw Lincoln standing on the other side of the room, his back against the wall, his eyes on Michael’s face.
“I’m all right?” he asked, only because he could be dreaming. All of this might be more delusions inside his messed up head.
“You’re fine,” Lincoln’s voice said, and then he moved towards the bed, eating up the distance between them much faster than Michael anticipated. It had seemed like he was much further away, but suddenly he was right there, so close Michael could feel the heat radiating from his brother's body.
Lincoln’s hand took Michael’s gently, his fingers squeezing at Michael’s palm reassuringly. Michael was still so sleepy, he really couldn’t ask all the questions he had, like where was he, and how had he gotten there, and how had Lincoln and Sara gotten there, because now that he was really aware, he knew this wasn’t a hospital, not like the ones he’d been in when he was a kid. “Linc…” he started, licking his lips in an attempt to ask everything he needed to know.
Lincoln’s other hand smoothed over his forehead. “Sleep, Mikey. Just rest. I have to go now, but Sara will stay with you.”
“Wha--? Where? Where are you going?” he managed to choke out.
“I’ve just got a little business to attend to. I’ll be back when you’re good awake and then we’ll talk.”
Michael’s eyes closed, lulled back into sleep by Sara’s rhythmic breathing. Linc would be back later. Later they would talk. Michael could wait until then.
Author: To be revealed
Rating: PG-13
Category: Gen (implied Het)
Characters: Lincoln, Sara, Michael
Requested by: lizparker6
Summary: Lincoln and Sara wait to hear about Michael's surgery.
Author’s Notes: The plot bunny that formed from these prompts [Michael/Sara related fic of any kind, Sara and Self and/or Sucre and/or Gretchen interaction during S4, Lincoln’s opinion of Sara as Michael's new-found love and affects she has on his brother as well as their romance has on the brothers’ relationship] didn’t go the way of including Self, Sucre or Gretchen into the story, though I wish it had. In particular I’d have loved to work Gretchen in somehow, but it just didn’t pan out that way. This goes into an Alternate Universe from the end of 4x14, Just Business.
When the Faithless Ante-Up
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother
~Kahlil Gibran
The last few months of his life had consisted of mostly grim moments, though their increasing frequency still had the power to surprise him. Granted, his own death would have relieved him of all of them, but he knew now with certainty that would never happen. He would probably die a very old man with a very long list of regrets.
He could only hope the same for his brother, and as Michael handed Scylla over to Don Self, and Don Self handed Michael a manila envelope containing the details of their freedom, the word buoyant came to mind. Lincoln Burrows didn’t know a lot of fancy words, but in that moment, that was the only description he had.
He felt buoyant. Like the way Sara’s little boat might look if it they put it in the water and let it carry them away. Forever.
They were free. Finally. Really and truly free. They had done the impossible.
Later, his stupidity at letting himself feel-and define-his buoyancy would slap him upside the head, but right then, he’d never felt lighter.
He’d never been felt more sure.
*
Sitting quietly with Michael, not running, not scheming, not wondering what the hell to expect next, seemed oddly familiar. They had had a life before this one. They’d had a relationship before this one too, though Lincoln liked this one better. He hoped this was the one that stuck.
He patted his brother’s back and told him the truth: he was going to be just fine. It seemed strange to go from a glass half-empty to one half-full in the space of a heartbeat, but Lincoln’s surety that Michael would be okay came out of nowhere. He couldn’t find its source, he could only let it wash over him and trickle from his lips in gentle reassurances.
His brother’s gaze wandered across the pavement to the tall woman standing near the water’s edge.
“She’s worried about you,” Lincoln said unnecessarily. He even thought it-the worry-was unnecessary, but Sara was a doctor. And there was something about losing the one you loved that amped up the fear of the idea. He didn’t blame her for feeling scared. He pointed out the obvious to Michael so he could go console her. They would be at the hospital soon enough and Michael’s treatment would begin, and for Lincoln, it just felt as if the cards were finally stacked their way.
All that initial worry, the decades-old memories that had swamped him when he saw blood dripping down his brother’s face, had subsided. If they could bring down The Company, Michael could be healed. It was as simple as that.
*
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Because if there was one thing he could fucking count on, it was that things could never work out. Things would never end. Forget ending well, sometimes he felt like if they would just end, maybe that was all they could ask for.
There was anger, from all of them, towards Don Self. Lincoln imagined him standing in front of him, and then went to town, thrashing Michael’s bulletin board with a stool. All that planning, all that work, Bellick dead, all for nothing.
The injustices were stacked too high for Lincoln to comprehend anymore, so he beat the imaginary Don Self for Veronica, for his father, for Brad Bellick-a guy he hadn’t even liked-for himself, for Michael, for Sara, whose barely audible response had been “Regardless, we have to get you to the hospital, Michael.”
Lincoln had lived his life enduring Michael’s stubbornness. First there were school assignments he spent far more time on than any other kid alive, and then there were elaborate plans of escape from foster homes that never felt comfortable because Lincoln couldn’t settle down enough not to cause friction with whomever their current guardian had been. Michael’s arrival at Fox River hadn’t signaled something new, it had just been the culmination of years of lesser ridiculous behavior as far as Lincoln was concerned.
Trying to force his brother to go to the hospital wouldn’t be any easier for the Doc than it had ever been for Lincoln when they were kids and Michael’s nose bled intermittently. He’d hoped, at first, that Sara might have some sort of power that he did not-that perhaps a woman of importance could change the tide of stupidity and pigheadedness.
Lincoln knew Sara mattered more to Michael than anything else. He’d seen his face through the fence at Sona. He’d been on the receiving end of unkind words that Michael would never have said if there hadn’t been a deep wound oozing between them. But before that, even, when Michael had gone into Sona in her place, or when they’d arrived in Panama amidst no sense of relief because she was not with them, or even that first moment, in that shack on the side of the road when Michael had kicked Bellick in the head. Lincoln had known then and there that the prison doc had value to Michael, and God help them all because of it.
*
It wasn’t that Lincoln didn’t like Sara; he liked her a lot, actually. He’d always liked her when he was in Fox River and he'd just thought of her as the doc, and he could hardly help but like her after she’d enabled their escape. By the time they’d met up with her in Evansville, she’d lost about as much as they had. But the unexpected rush of pity that Lincoln had felt when he observed her fragile-looking face had evaporated when she tried to kill Paul Kellerman.
He’d found it impossible to pity someone who had had the strength to do something he had barely restrained himself from doing only the day before. His slow response to stop her was partly because of the forward motion of the train and partly because he wasn’t sure he should interfere-that was Sara’s call. In the aftermath it had been Michael’s call to calm her.
Lincoln had wondered how-or if-that would work, as he'd never really seen his brother with a girlfriend. Michael had never been one to bring girls home. In fact, for a long time Lincoln had worried his brother was gay, even though Veronica had been quick to describe Michael as a late bloomer. Lincoln had never been too sure what that meant exactly, but since he’d been having sex since he was fourteen, Veronica had also (grumpily) pointed out that it was obvious why he didn’t get it.
The irony that the one time Michael chose to ‘bring home’ a girl was when they had no home didn’t really surprise Lincoln. After Fox River, nothing could surprise him anymore. And he owed Sara just as much as his brother did, so it wasn’t like he would have left her behind if he’d had any other choice. That day on the freighter, though, he’d had to hold Michael back. He’d had to give him a little tough love over the whole thing because-God help him!-Michael just didn’t look at things very logically.
They’d needed to leave Chicago. They’d needed to leave the U.S. They’d needed to leave all that behind them, and truthfully Lincoln had looked forward to the promise of an unfettered Panama. Bananas and margaritas and brown skinned women to burn away the ache of all he'd almost gotten back only to lose all over again. Veronica, his father, even LJ.
Of course, none of that had gone as planned either. He didn’t blame Michael, exactly. He wasn’t one for dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed, but he’d certainly had his moments when he wished his brother could have just let things go with T-Bag.
Then Sara had been dead. Or so they’d thought. Lincoln knew now that he would rather endure anything else-with the exception of his son being dead-than to ever have to face Michael with anything like that again. But the day The Company took Michael off the street on the outskirts of Los Angeles, he found out he would rather anything else be before him than Sara’s tear-streaked face. Her silent sobs seemed to rip at his own tenuously strapped-on bravado, the surety that he might somehow trade his life for his brother’s thrumming at the base of his brain.
He’d promised LJ they would be together, but if all he could do was send Michael and Sara there to be with his son, he would take that option. Because, as he’d told the old fucker, it had started with him and it should end with him. Please, just let it fucking end already.
But, please, let it end well for Michael.
*
“Lincoln, can I ask you a question?” Sara asked.
“Shoot,” he replied, easing one foot up on to the opposite knee.
Sara sighed, her eyes jumping away from his briefly before returning with a forceful glint. “Has he always been like this?”
Lincoln tried to chuckle. It was funny, really it was, but maybe he was past finding humor in it anymore. So his chuckle came out more as half a cough, quickly aborted with a very serious, “Yes.” There was no need to elaborate on his part or for her to specify what she meant.
Michael had always been like this. No exceptions, no way around it. Simply and often stated by Veronica, Michael was impossible. On so many levels. Yet, he was Michael, so there was also no living without him. At least, Lincoln didn’t think there could be living without him. He wasn’t yet ready to contemplate it fully.
“I’d guessed as much. You never yell at him. You never push him to do anything. You never do anything but silently watch, gently suggest and then you just walk away with no arguments.” She shook her head, clearly puzzled.
The room they sat in together was just off the operating room where General Krantz’s goons were supposedly fixing Michael’s brain. The tension in the room was almost as reflective as the large window that showcased the gray hallway that led to the operating room, though neither Lincoln nor Sara spoke with raised voices. They were waiting, patiently. The surgery could take anywhere from two to six hours. They’d been there for 48 minutes before Sara had posed her query. “Have you ever tried to argue with him?” Lincoln asked, cutting her a dark glance. Sara nodded her head, though she remained silent. “Well, then, you know how effective it is. I try not to waste my time. Once in a while, I lose my fuckin' mind and do it anyway, only to be reminded of who I’m dealing with.”
Her eyes glistened in the harsh fluorescent lighting for a short moment; then she blinked and the moisture disappeared. She’d been frantic at the warehouse the day before, but now she was composed. Like Lincoln, she didn’t want anyone in association with The Company to see her vulnerable. It was just another thing he liked about her. Her lips curved up, and he wondered what brought the smile to her face. “I guess there is some comfort in knowing I’m not the only one. I’m not the only one who says something only to wonder if he heard anything at all.”
“You mean, he’s just as big a jackass to you as he is to me?” Lincoln clarified. She was being nice about it, but he saw no sense in that. “I did hope you’d have some kind of influence over him, but when he gets an idea in his head…” Lincoln bumped the heel of his hand against the side of his head as he trailed off, a parody of knocking something lose inside his skull all the illustration he needed for words he did not have. Veronica had always said it best. “Michael’s impossible,” he murmured, dropping Sara’s gaze again when a white-clothed figure passed in front of the window.
“Why did you think I might have influence over him?” she asked, drawing his gaze back when Lincoln determined that the passer-by was insignificant.
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re his girlfriend. He loves you. He cares what you think.”
Sara hesitated, but then her voice sounded with a certain level of incredulity. “And he doesn’t care what his brother thinks?”
Lincoln grunted; no answer was required.
“You’re so far off the mark on that one, I’m a little surprised. You’ve learned the best way to handle Michael, but you have no idea when he’s handling you, do you?”
“Handling me, how?” he inquired, dropping his foot back to the floor and shifting in his seat so he faced Sara.
“He didn’t want to admit he was sick because he was trying to protect you from whatever you went through when your mother died.” Her statement wasn’t accusatory, just straightforward and factual.
Lincoln countered, “He didn’t want to admit he was sick because he’s a control freak who had to get everything handled with Scylla ‘cause none of the rest of us idiots could handle it.” His tone was accusatory, but he didn’t even feel bad about it.
Sara shook her head silently, her lips pursing. Lincoln couldn’t read her, so he had no idea if she was dismissing his opinion or just arguing with it. When she spoke again, her question surprised him. “If that’s what you think, then why are you here? Why aren’t you out with Fernando and Alex finding Scylla and proving you’re not an idiot?”
Lincoln didn’t respond right away, though the answer was readily available. He could have distracted her with the news that Self and Gretchen were also part of his rag tag team, but that didn’t change the reality of his presence here while they were out sniffing for Scylla. He’d come for only one reason, and the battle still raged inside him as to whether or not he could handle it. Whether or not he could survive it. Lowly, he answered her. “I was there when my mother died; and I was there when my father died. If my brother is going to die, and leave me the last man standing, do you really think I can be anywhere else?”
*
She remembers when her life was simple. When her day consisted of patients and paperwork, and a precarious balance of handling the flirtations of various inmates at Fox River Penitentiary. She’d found a rhythm that worked, a way to succeed every day in some way so she didn’t feel like it was the waste of time her father had prophesied about.
It seemed to skitter out of control the day she found out Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows were brothers. Doctor Sara Tancredi, on that day, stumbled figuratively as warning bells went off in her head. Looking back, the caveat could have been about any number of things, like the fact that she was starting to care much too much about an inmate, or that her initial feeling that Michael hadn’t belonged in prison was correct, or that Lincoln, for all his gruffness, had never seemed hardened enough to be sitting on death row.
But it had been a gut reaction; a deep-seated instinctual revolt that what was about to happen because of this connection she’d discovered would affect her in some way.
If she’d been smart she would have run and never looked back. But hindsight was 20/20 and she knew that the feeling of trepidation hadn’t been some sort of psychic phenomena cluing her in to the big fat mess that it would become. It only felt like that now, on the other side of it. It only seemed as though she should have realized everything inside her was shifting permanently, that she was transforming into someone she would not recognize in the mirror if she were to see herself fully formed at that first inclination.
And the truth was, now that she knew how it would all play out, she wouldn’t change anything. How could she? To have never known Michael, to have never felt his love, to have never experienced the transcendent moments that could only come from her relationship with him-to say she would somehow willingly give that up was the biggest lie she could concoct.
And who was there to tell it to, anyway? Lincoln wouldn’t believe her now. He probably wouldn’t have believed her then, had either of them known what was involved in his last request that she look out for his brother. She had looked at a calendar earlier today, for maybe the first time since she overdosed, and it had been four months since then. Four months to the day since Lincoln Burrows had been strapped to the Electric Chair. Four months to the day that she had become inexplicably linked to a man she barely knew.
Sometimes, as she watched Michael work, his similarity to her father frightened her. His focus and singularity of mind sometimes sent chills of memory washing over her skin. She had always thought that adage of little girls growing up to marry their daddies could never apply to her. But there was something about his personality type, and its particular parallel to the other man who’d influenced her life so profoundly that helped her to know him so well.
She had a sixth sense when it came to Michael, but now, tensely waiting for the outcome of his surgery, she felt all the transference of Lincoln’s irritation. She understood it. Michael infuriated her as much as he drove the breath from her lungs or sent her blood pulsing with a soft look. She’d thought privately many times that if they ever had the chance to just be together, they might not survive it. The intensity between them was tempered now by rushed couplings on the small boat on one side of the warehouse, and the fear of failure, and death.
Imagining time to dawdle, hours to explore, days to lose complete track of seemed like the dream that could never happen, and if it did, she’d never wake up from it. If it ever became a reality, she wondered if it would be their reward-their piece of heaven would be totally isolated from anyone else to give them the time there that their earthly existence couldn’t produce for them.
Of course, since she wasn’t altogether sure that she believed in an afterlife, that random idea was as much as pipedream within pipedream as anything else.
Looking at Lincoln, feeling his pain for a split second-for the moment he had opened himself up to her, though not purposely-seemed to create a portrait of Michael she had never seen quite clearly. Lincoln’s perspective wasn’t just to protect at all costs; it was to prove himself.
He had left Michael alone in the past, but this time, he wasn’t making the same mistakes. Different mistakes, no doubt, but not the same ones. Sara had already chewed her thumbnail down to the quick when Lincoln told her he’d struck a deal with the General; that was how this whole thing was happening.
She knew Michael would be furious when (she would not think the word if) he woke up, but she couldn’t fault Lincoln for making a judgment that she herself would have made in the same position. Michael’s life had more value to her than any of the rest of it, no matter what type of brave face she put on when she had to go into a battle zone.
Sara reached a hand out, her fingers curling around Lincoln’s forearm. He was so solidly built that even this platonic, useless gesture made her very aware of his strength. “He’s not going to die,” she said softly, knowing it was as much for herself that she uttered the words as it was for him. It made her feel selfish that she had nothing separate to offer him.
Lincoln shrugged, a movement that might have made an outsider think he was indifferent to the outcome. The curve of his slumped shoulders and the set of his down turned mouth showed another sentiment.
“I’ve thought about it, too many times lately, you know. That he dies, and I live, and after every stupid fucking thing that’s happened, that can’t be how it ends up, Doc. You know how I told you the other day I wouldn’t go back to death row?” He didn’t wait for her to answer; he just kept on speaking. “I’d go back, if it means he lives. That’s why I was there in the first place.” He sighed, the sound wistful, and quite incongruous with his gruff demeanor. “All I ever wanted was for him to have a life, and now here we are. Waiting.”
Sara’s fingers tightened on his arm. Gently, she pointed out the obvious. “Michael would be in this position in any circumstance, Lincoln. He’s sick. He needs this operation. Because of what has happened, you’re still here to support him. To hope and pray he makes it.”
His eyes flickered, darkness expanding within his gaze, and she knew whatever he thought about now made death row seem like Club Med. His arm twisted out from under her fingers so his hand could envelope hers. “Whatever happens, Sara, the end of this is you and Michael going to get my son. I made promises to LJ that I might not be able to keep, but you two can. You can go be with him, and be the family he needs.”
His urgency was palpable, causing Sara to nod her head automatically. “Yes, of course, we’ll go get LJ. But you will be with us, Lincoln. You’ll be with us. Michael will be with us. We’ll all be together.”
The sudden mania faded from his eyes, and he settled back on the chair, his fingers sliding away from her arm. “Maybe,” he muttered.
Sara felt her own eyes close and a fervent prayer sounded inside her brain. If there was a power to invoke, and that power was so inclined, all she wanted was Michael and Lincoln to get what they’d originally sought: freedom together somewhere.
She had a thought a few moments later that she hadn’t even asked for any of it for herself. Maybe their selflessness had finally infected her too.
*
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed because she didn’t have a watch on, and she didn’t want to pull her cell phone out to check the time. She also didn’t want to ask Lincoln what time it was because he paced the length of the room in front of her, obviously unable to bear the tension by being still any longer. Figuring that as long as he didn’t rip one of the bolted down chairs from the floor and fling it through the window he was somehow holding himself together, Sara leaned forward, pressing her hands against her temples, trying to contain the throbbing in her own head.
Then Lincoln spoke. “Do you really think he ignored his symptoms as a favor to me?”
It took Sara a minute to comprehend what he was asking. Her surmising hadn’t come from anything more specific than Michael’s childlike cries of Linc worries too much! but she knew now the lengths they went to, to protect each other. Lincoln would suggest in his gentle bear way that Michael sit out on a dangerous mission because his head was killing him and Michael would snipe the question at her about why didn’t Linc understand why he had to do what he had to do.
She sometimes wondered if they’d ever had an honest conversation in their entire lives. Maybe when Lincoln was sentenced to death row. Maybe there had been some total honesty then, but Sara wasn’t even sure it was a possibility between the two. She knew Michael regularly kept things from her, not because he was dishonest, but because that’s how he functioned. He protected everyone he loved from the truth, never comprehending that he sometimes believed his own lies.
After all, wasn’t that how they’d fallen in love in the first place?
“No,” she replied, starkly candid. “He did it to protect you, and me, and himself.” She paused, looking up into his face. “But the reason he protected you was because of how your mother died. The reason he protected me was because we just finally found each other. The reason he protected himself is because to face that either of you might die seems to negate the last what? Two years of his life? All this can’t be for nothing, can it, Lincoln? What kind of world are we living in, if it is?”
Lincoln had stopped pacing to stare at her as she explained. Glancing down at his feet, he waited a long time to answer. “Michael’s never lived in the real world,” he confessed, and there was a smidge of admiration in his tone underlying the irritation. “He always been up in his own head, even when the most horrible things were down here happening to the rest of us. Why should he have to start now?”
It suddenly occurred to her that Lincoln’s interpretation of the way Michael’s brain worked somehow put him above everyone else-not just in intelligence. Lincoln had given up everything to provide Michael with a better life-the life he felt he deserved. The life Michael had tossed away on a dime when his brother had needed him.
The level of paybacks were incomprehensible to Sara. Everything either of them had ever done for each other piled up until no one could ever atone properly. No one could ever balance it.
But they would never stop trying. And she had aligned herself with them in such a way that she could never and would never want to escape. She’d found people who had the fundamental thing her father had lacked.
Action motivated by love, and love alone.
They both looked up when the doctor walked in though the door just to the left of the big window. Lincoln’s hand reached out towards her, and she rose to her feet, her fingers twining with his as she braced herself for what would come.
*
Michael had been in the hospital three times in his life. Once, before his mother died, when his over stimulated brain had caused him to freak out. He had learned to control things better after that because the expression on his mother’s face, and especially the one on Linc’s, had been too much to endure, so he made sure he didn’t cause them that kind of pain ever again. The second time had been a few years later when he’d been in Little League, and Lincoln, who was really too old to be on the same team as Michael, had made a running, sliding dash for second base. Michael’s left arm had been the casualty.
And today, he’d had his brain operated on.
His eyes opened slowly, the light over his head a little too bright. Sara’s red hair was splayed across his chest, her eyes closed peacefully. Moving his head carefully since he was unsure of his range of motion, or what might cause himself pain, he saw Lincoln standing on the other side of the room, his back against the wall, his eyes on Michael’s face.
“I’m all right?” he asked, only because he could be dreaming. All of this might be more delusions inside his messed up head.
“You’re fine,” Lincoln’s voice said, and then he moved towards the bed, eating up the distance between them much faster than Michael anticipated. It had seemed like he was much further away, but suddenly he was right there, so close Michael could feel the heat radiating from his brother's body.
Lincoln’s hand took Michael’s gently, his fingers squeezing at Michael’s palm reassuringly. Michael was still so sleepy, he really couldn’t ask all the questions he had, like where was he, and how had he gotten there, and how had Lincoln and Sara gotten there, because now that he was really aware, he knew this wasn’t a hospital, not like the ones he’d been in when he was a kid. “Linc…” he started, licking his lips in an attempt to ask everything he needed to know.
Lincoln’s other hand smoothed over his forehead. “Sleep, Mikey. Just rest. I have to go now, but Sara will stay with you.”
“Wha--? Where? Where are you going?” he managed to choke out.
“I’ve just got a little business to attend to. I’ll be back when you’re good awake and then we’ll talk.”
Michael’s eyes closed, lulled back into sleep by Sara’s rhythmic breathing. Linc would be back later. Later they would talk. Michael could wait until then.