Seven (1/7)
Title: Seven
Author: wrldpossibility
Characters: Sara Tancredi (primarily), Michael Jr., Lincoln Burrows, mention of Michael Scofield, ensemble
Chapter: 1/7, Shock
Word Count: 1000
Rating: PG
Warning: Some sadness, for now.
Spoilers: For the series.
Summary: A lot can happen in four years...
Author's Note: I've had lots of inquiries about this fic, as in people wondering where it's going, and how much canon it follows. I want to thank all of you who have taken a chance on it. I do understand the tenderness of many of us post-finale, so continue to feel free to email or PM me if you need a reassurance, a hint, a bit of hand holding. I get it, I really do. I won't, however, be giving away my plot. ;) You all know by now that I'm writing this in tandem with rosie_spleen. We will be posting mirroring chapters throughout, so look for her Chapter 1 in a day or so! Another individual deeply involved with this fic from its conception is linzi20. Much thanks to them both for the beta of this chapter. And check out the shiny banner! It was made by the lovely and talented lauratnz.
Chapter 1
Shock
Someone has to stay here, and someone has to open the hatch, and that someone is going to be you.
Fate is a funny thing.
For enough days to fill a week, this is all she knows, and this is all she needs to know: she’s here, and he’s not. The thought occurs to her--in the slow, deliberate slide of all her thoughts these days--that she’s drawn the short end of some cosmic stick. Or else, that Michael had cut them all the same length, because really, that’s the sort of thing he’d do, isn’t it?
Go, Sara. Go, go!
She hasn’t stopped moving since that deafening smash of glass as the building went dark, since shoving the heavy door ajar and pushing open the wire gate leading from Miami Dade, fueled by some stubborn streak of denial lodged in her brain that told her he’d be there, just behind her. Perhaps she thinks that if she’s still following his instructions, then somehow, somewhere, he’s still calling the shots. So she’s in a van, Sucre silent at the wheel, then she’s at a marina, staring at boats gently bumping their pilings in a Floridian breeze. She’s on a yacht, cutting across the Caribbean at a quick clip. She’s not really sure why she’s doing any of these things, except that he told her to.
Then suddenly she’s still, watching him address her on a video clip. It’s bizarre, so bizarre, to see him like this, when instead, the only place he should be is on this seat beside her, sailing off to points unknown. This makes her smile, and then she realizes she shouldn’t smile, but by then she can’t stop.
I wouldn’t have had much time anyway. I made my choice, and I don’t regret it.
Is he giving his blessing? Or is he asking for hers? After Lincoln leaves the cabin, she watches it again.
You know we spend so much of our lives not saying the things we want to say.
His voice is so close, his face within reach.
We speak in code, we send little messages, origami. So now, plainly, simply, I want to say that I love you both. Very much.
She starts smiling again. She laughs, a rough, bitter sound, but it ends up as a sob. Or maybe she sobs, but it comes out as a laugh. She rewinds it. Once. Twice.
And I want you to tell my child every day how much they’re loved, and remind them how lucky they are to be free. Because we are. We’re free now. Finally. We’re free.
That night, she falls asleep with her cheek pressed to the polished mahogany of the fixed captain’s chair. With each swell of the ocean, her mind tumbles:
We. Not ‘you’. Not just me. We. Are free.
*****
They criss-cross the Caribbean as though connecting invisible dots, sailing from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica before finally seeking harbor in Cristóbal, Panama. Lincoln's been here once before, disembarking from a freighter into heat that rises in waves. Today, a breeze stirs the palms dotted between the warehouses and cargo containers. The unspoiled land north of the city is less vegetated than Sara'd imagined, a narrow spit of brush and sand tipping out into the gulf as though thrust there by some invisible hand. Her first impression: she feels exposed. Adrift. It’s not that she’d expected Michael to be there to greet them--she‘s not delusional--but something about the flat expanse of sand giving way to sea marks his absence in a new and harsher way. She can feel her disbelief thinning by slow degrees, burning off in the tropical heat like the gradual lifting of anesthesia.
She blinks into the sun. It hurts like hell.
But the single fact that this place was a cog in Michael’s original plan, conceived long before their child and long before she herself had ever set foot on Panamanian soil, makes her want to lay claim to it.
*****
Her first winter is ridiculously cold.
Hurricane warnings persist well past the time they customarily desist. When they hit--the last few as late as November--she rides most of them out at home, in her two-bedroom bungalow set safely back from the beach. She stays in bed, mostly, listening to the wind and rain lash the windows LJ has dutifully boarded before each deluge. Storm after storm hammers Lincoln’s scuba shop on the shore twenty miles to the west; the locals tell him if he survives this, he‘ll survive anything the tropics can throw at him.
After the worst of the storms, she helps him with the clean-up, sweeping debris from the deck, reattaching shutters. Other days, she can barely bring herself to get out of bed.
She still watches the video every day. After an incident with a roof leak, she burns herself a second copy, then a third. She stores them in an airtight container bought in Panama City and designed for irreplaceable documents and heirlooms. She has no other photographic evidence of Michael, and she has absolutely no intention of losing what little exists.
*****
On some days, in certain moods, she finds herself working very hard to not think about the baby. She knows Michael would admonish her for this, so she tries very hard not to think about that, either. Lincoln does admonish her. “You’ve got to eat better,” he says, pressing a wrapped plate of Sofia‘s chile rellenos into her hands, or else a tray of cut pineapple or even a cardboard box of pizza. When he gets like that--brotherly--she can only think to retreat as quickly as possible. “And you’ve gotta get to a doctor sometime, Sara,” he calls after her from his deck, his rising baritone easily reaching her over the rev of her engine. “Do you even know when you‘re due?”
She does. She’s a doctor herself, she wants to tell Linc. Or was. Or is? Or is to come? Either way, she’s figured it out on her own, counting back the days and months on her fingers while alone in her bed. Spanning a palm over her stomach at the exact same time each night, she gauges the ever-expanding swell of her abdomen in millimeters.
March. He will be a March baby.
A Piscean. With the endless sea surrounding her on three sides, she supposes it fitting. Her hands stroke in massaging undulations over her skin, and the first time she feels him move within her--just one quick flutter like a fish--she cries until daybreak.
She hears springtime in Panama is beautiful.
Author: wrldpossibility
Characters: Sara Tancredi (primarily), Michael Jr., Lincoln Burrows, mention of Michael Scofield, ensemble
Chapter: 1/7, Shock
Word Count: 1000
Rating: PG
Warning: Some sadness, for now.
Spoilers: For the series.
Summary: A lot can happen in four years...
Author's Note: I've had lots of inquiries about this fic, as in people wondering where it's going, and how much canon it follows. I want to thank all of you who have taken a chance on it. I do understand the tenderness of many of us post-finale, so continue to feel free to email or PM me if you need a reassurance, a hint, a bit of hand holding. I get it, I really do. I won't, however, be giving away my plot. ;) You all know by now that I'm writing this in tandem with rosie_spleen. We will be posting mirroring chapters throughout, so look for her Chapter 1 in a day or so! Another individual deeply involved with this fic from its conception is linzi20. Much thanks to them both for the beta of this chapter. And check out the shiny banner! It was made by the lovely and talented lauratnz.
Chapter 1
Shock
Someone has to stay here, and someone has to open the hatch, and that someone is going to be you.
Fate is a funny thing.
For enough days to fill a week, this is all she knows, and this is all she needs to know: she’s here, and he’s not. The thought occurs to her--in the slow, deliberate slide of all her thoughts these days--that she’s drawn the short end of some cosmic stick. Or else, that Michael had cut them all the same length, because really, that’s the sort of thing he’d do, isn’t it?
Go, Sara. Go, go!
She hasn’t stopped moving since that deafening smash of glass as the building went dark, since shoving the heavy door ajar and pushing open the wire gate leading from Miami Dade, fueled by some stubborn streak of denial lodged in her brain that told her he’d be there, just behind her. Perhaps she thinks that if she’s still following his instructions, then somehow, somewhere, he’s still calling the shots. So she’s in a van, Sucre silent at the wheel, then she’s at a marina, staring at boats gently bumping their pilings in a Floridian breeze. She’s on a yacht, cutting across the Caribbean at a quick clip. She’s not really sure why she’s doing any of these things, except that he told her to.
Then suddenly she’s still, watching him address her on a video clip. It’s bizarre, so bizarre, to see him like this, when instead, the only place he should be is on this seat beside her, sailing off to points unknown. This makes her smile, and then she realizes she shouldn’t smile, but by then she can’t stop.
I wouldn’t have had much time anyway. I made my choice, and I don’t regret it.
Is he giving his blessing? Or is he asking for hers? After Lincoln leaves the cabin, she watches it again.
You know we spend so much of our lives not saying the things we want to say.
His voice is so close, his face within reach.
We speak in code, we send little messages, origami. So now, plainly, simply, I want to say that I love you both. Very much.
She starts smiling again. She laughs, a rough, bitter sound, but it ends up as a sob. Or maybe she sobs, but it comes out as a laugh. She rewinds it. Once. Twice.
And I want you to tell my child every day how much they’re loved, and remind them how lucky they are to be free. Because we are. We’re free now. Finally. We’re free.
That night, she falls asleep with her cheek pressed to the polished mahogany of the fixed captain’s chair. With each swell of the ocean, her mind tumbles:
We. Not ‘you’. Not just me. We. Are free.
*****
They criss-cross the Caribbean as though connecting invisible dots, sailing from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica before finally seeking harbor in Cristóbal, Panama. Lincoln's been here once before, disembarking from a freighter into heat that rises in waves. Today, a breeze stirs the palms dotted between the warehouses and cargo containers. The unspoiled land north of the city is less vegetated than Sara'd imagined, a narrow spit of brush and sand tipping out into the gulf as though thrust there by some invisible hand. Her first impression: she feels exposed. Adrift. It’s not that she’d expected Michael to be there to greet them--she‘s not delusional--but something about the flat expanse of sand giving way to sea marks his absence in a new and harsher way. She can feel her disbelief thinning by slow degrees, burning off in the tropical heat like the gradual lifting of anesthesia.
She blinks into the sun. It hurts like hell.
But the single fact that this place was a cog in Michael’s original plan, conceived long before their child and long before she herself had ever set foot on Panamanian soil, makes her want to lay claim to it.
*****
Her first winter is ridiculously cold.
Hurricane warnings persist well past the time they customarily desist. When they hit--the last few as late as November--she rides most of them out at home, in her two-bedroom bungalow set safely back from the beach. She stays in bed, mostly, listening to the wind and rain lash the windows LJ has dutifully boarded before each deluge. Storm after storm hammers Lincoln’s scuba shop on the shore twenty miles to the west; the locals tell him if he survives this, he‘ll survive anything the tropics can throw at him.
After the worst of the storms, she helps him with the clean-up, sweeping debris from the deck, reattaching shutters. Other days, she can barely bring herself to get out of bed.
She still watches the video every day. After an incident with a roof leak, she burns herself a second copy, then a third. She stores them in an airtight container bought in Panama City and designed for irreplaceable documents and heirlooms. She has no other photographic evidence of Michael, and she has absolutely no intention of losing what little exists.
*****
On some days, in certain moods, she finds herself working very hard to not think about the baby. She knows Michael would admonish her for this, so she tries very hard not to think about that, either. Lincoln does admonish her. “You’ve got to eat better,” he says, pressing a wrapped plate of Sofia‘s chile rellenos into her hands, or else a tray of cut pineapple or even a cardboard box of pizza. When he gets like that--brotherly--she can only think to retreat as quickly as possible. “And you’ve gotta get to a doctor sometime, Sara,” he calls after her from his deck, his rising baritone easily reaching her over the rev of her engine. “Do you even know when you‘re due?”
She does. She’s a doctor herself, she wants to tell Linc. Or was. Or is? Or is to come? Either way, she’s figured it out on her own, counting back the days and months on her fingers while alone in her bed. Spanning a palm over her stomach at the exact same time each night, she gauges the ever-expanding swell of her abdomen in millimeters.
March. He will be a March baby.
A Piscean. With the endless sea surrounding her on three sides, she supposes it fitting. Her hands stroke in massaging undulations over her skin, and the first time she feels him move within her--just one quick flutter like a fish--she cries until daybreak.
She hears springtime in Panama is beautiful.