Work Text:
A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.
~ Mark Twain
~*~
She’s spent a long time – a lifetime, it seems – picturing the moment when she might meet Michael Scofield again. When it finally happens, though, it’s like nothing she ever could have imagined.
She could have never imagined that she’d be standing here, in the middle of a deserted inner-city backstreet, with a gun pointing at her heart. She never would have thought that the man she knew as Lance, her newly-made friend, her fellow recovering user who has helped her through so many rough days at the Centre, would be holding a gun in his very steady hand and smiling apologetically. “I’m really sorry about this, Sara.”
She feels the sudden and quite ridiculous urge to laugh because this really, really can’t be happening. “Who are you?”
“Well, that’s a complicated question.” The man – whoever the hell he is, she can’t call him Lance, not now – gives her a warm smile, the same smile he’s been giving her for the last three weeks. “I’m afraid that the answer would take a lot more time than we have at this point, so let’s just say that I’m an interested third party in the recent events at Fox River.”
A cold ripple of fear flutters over her skin and through her stomach. “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
Sunlight glints off the silver barrel of the gun in his hand. She watches it, almost mesmerised, as he chuckles softly. “Come on, Sara. We’re old friends now.” He’s still smiling, and for some reason that worries her more than the gun. “I know he’s been in contact with you. I was there when you took the call that morning, remember?”
Mute with both fear and a growing anger, she stares at him, vaguely registering the distant sound of screeching tyres, the smell of the nearby dumpster, the trickle of sweat tracing the line of her spine. Perhaps it should surprise her that a twenty second telephone call – twenty seconds in which she felt as though her heart was going to burst - could have lead to this, but it doesn’t. Dead or alive, nothing connected to Michael Scofield will ever surprise her again.
“Sara, I need you to take me to him.” Still pleasant, still polite. Still talking as though he’s her friend.
It’s only when she feels the sting of her own fingernails that she realises her hands have curled into tight, angry fists. “I have no idea where he is.”
He smirks. “I’m sure he’d tell you if you asked nicely.”
Her stomach lurches violently, then everything seems to move around her at once, like the shifting of a kaleidoscope’s lens. The distant screech of tyres becomes a dark coloured van that roars past her, clipping her assailant and throwing him to the ground.
The side door of the van is thrown open and Michael is suddenly leaning halfway out of the vehicle, his hand outstretched, his eyes burning into hers. “Come on!”
She stares at Michael in disbelief, then turns her head slowly as if in a dream to gaze at the man lying on the ground. He’s writhing in pain, clutching at his obviously broken leg. Some very small part of her wants to go to him, to tend his wounds, then she hears Michael’s voice once more. “Sara, take my hand!”
She turns back, back to those blazing eyes that always seemed to see right through her, back to the outstretched hand that has already pulled her from hell once. The past rises up like a ghost between them, making her shiver hotly, making her skin tighten with the instinctive urge to reach for him.
“Take my hand,” he says again, his voice breaking, and she feels something brittle inside her splinter into a thousand tiny pieces.
She takes his hand - almost flinching at the feel of his skin against hers - then he’s hauling her into the van as though she weighs less than nothing and slamming the door behind her, plunging them into semi-darkness. The vehicle lurches forward but his arms tighten around her, holding her close, holding her steady.
She has a few seconds to register the warmth of his body against hers, the hammering of his heart, then she’s pulled onto a bench seat. She looks towards the front of the van, sees Lincoln’s familiar profile in the driver’s seat, then Michael’s hands are cupping her face, his eyes glittering in the half-light. “Are you hurt?”
Again she feels the idiotic urge to laugh, because there are so many ways to answer that question that she doesn’t know where to start. “I’m fine.”
It’s not quite true. She’s not fine, not really. She wants to slap him so hard that his teeth rattle. She wants to press her face into the curve of his neck and bury her nose in the scent of his skin. She wants to do a million different things, but she simply wraps her hands around his wrists, holding them to her face. His pulse skitters beneath her fingertips, his lips parting as though he’s inhaling the air between them, his eyes silently pleading.
She lets out a shaky breath, feeling the tension in her bones begin to soak through her skin, feeling as though the gentle touch of his hands on her face is the only thing keeping her from falling. “I’m fine,” she says again, and is surprised to find that it’s suddenly the truth.