Fandom: Prison Break
Summary: This is perfect, he thought, but he couldn't bring himself to say the words aloud. He was afraid that if he did, he would ruin it somehow.
Spoilers: Season 1
I just wanted to thank you guys for all your great comments on Past Conditional. They really inspired me to write this piece. Thanks for the wonderful welcome to the fandom!
Friar’s Lantern 
“Sara!” he called. “Can you come in here for a second?”
Summary: This is perfect, he thought, but he couldn't bring himself to say the words aloud. He was afraid that if he did, he would ruin it somehow.
Spoilers: Season 1
I just wanted to thank you guys for all your great comments on Past Conditional. They really inspired me to write this piece. Thanks for the wonderful welcome to the fandom!
Friar’s Lantern
“Sara!” he called. “Can you come in here for a second?”“What is it?” he heard her reply from the kitchen. Lincoln and LJ were coming over later, and she had been slaving away at dinner for hours. He’d rarely seen her cook before, but she had been determined to make this meal special and had pulled out all the stops. He had tried to help, despite the fact that his culinary skills extended only so far as dialing the phone for take-out, but she had shooed him away. Old family recipes, she had said. Very secret.
You are my family, he had replied, siddling up behind her, kissing away the smear of flour he had discovered on her skin.
Not yet I’m not, she had countered as she stirred a creamy yellow substance Michael was unable to identify, an indulgent smile in her voice.
Spinning her suddenly around to face him, she had laughed as he picked up her hand, kissing her fingertips, giving special attention to the finger that wore his mother’s ring.
You will be soon enough, he had said, drawing her close for a kiss. She tasted like chocolate, so he knew she had been licking the mixing spoon.
When he’d pulled away, she had smiled up into his eyes.
Michael, she’d said gently.
Yes? he’d asked, lips still hovering over hers, arms around her waist, unable to stop touching her for a single moment.
Get out.
The smell of food now permeated the little apartment they shared, rich and fragrant and more like home than anything he could imagine. He sat in the living room, which was entirely dark except for the twinkling white lights on their Christmas tree and the orange glow of embers from the fireplace, and breathed it in.
“I need you for a minute!” he called back. She’d been holed up in the kitchen for over an hour, and he missed her more than he had any reason to. Ever since they’d stopped running, he’d gotten anxious and fearful whenever he was alone for too long. He hated the feeling, the embarrassing and crippling dependency it caused in him, but Sara didn’t seem to mind. She was with him whenever he needed her. Sometimes he still stared at her in awe, hardly believing that she was real.
She stepped out of the kitchen, brushing her hands against the dark green apron she wore.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Come sit with me?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
She untied her apron and hung it on the hook just inside the kitchen before crossing into the living room to sink down beside him on the couch. She angled her back into his side, resting her head against his chest, and he draped his arm around her shoulders. She fitted perfectly into him, as though they had been designed to sit together like this their entire lives.
“Ooh,” she said, rubbing her hands together briskly. “It’s cold in here.”
It wasn’t until she said it that Michael noticed the chill in his bones.
“You’re right, let me…” he began, standing up to throw another log onto the dying fire and grab the throw blanket that hung on the back of a chair. He tucked it around her and settled back at her side.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, lacing her fingers with his own.
“It smells amazing.”
“Maybe there’s hope for me as a domestic woman, after all,” she smiled.
He laughed. “I never doubted you.”
They sat in companionable silence after that, staring into the fire as it crackled and danced. Somewhere in the distance, someone began to sing. Carole singers, Michael thought.
“Are you warm?” he asked her, squeezing her shoulder through the woolen thrown.
“Yeah,” she said, turning her head to look up at him. “Are you?”
“I am now.”
Her lips quirked.
“What?” he asked. “Too cheesy?”
“Just a little,” she said, reaching up to stroke a hand across his cheek anyway.
This is perfect, he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud. He was afraid that if he did, he would ruin it somehow. Break the spell.
“I love you,” he said instead, whispering it into her ear, just in case.
“I love you, too,” she replied. “This is perfect.”
Somehow, he was unsurprised that she had said exactly the same thing he was thinking. He took her hand in his, silently running his fingers over the lines of her palm. Long life, he thought, happiness, good health. He went back to the ring on her finger, the object that transfixed him whenever he caught sight of it. He had put the ring into a safety deposit box before everything had happened, never daring to think he might have the opportunity to give it to someone. It had fit Sara perfectly the first time she slipped it on, nearly dropping it because her hands were shaking so badly.
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden jangling somewhere outside their door.
“What’s that?” he asked, turning his head.
“Sleigh bells,” she answered without missing a beat. “Have you been good?”
“I’ve tried.”
She sobered at that, teasing smile slipping from her face as shifted to face him.
“You’ve got to stop punishing yourself, Michael,” she said seriously. “It’s not good for you.”
He sighed. “I wish it was that easy,” he replied heavily, unable to quite meet her steady gaze.
Rather than try to talk him out of his guilt, knowing it would do no good, she simply gathered him into her arms. He tangled his fingers through her hair as she held him close, the familiar smell of her shampoo inexplicably reassuring and tangible. He could feel her heartbeat against him.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.
“You’ll never have to find out,” was her reply.
There was a knock at the door then, and Michael reluctantly pulled away from her, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.
“That must be Linc and LJ,” he said.
She stood. “I’ve got to check on dinner. Would you get it?”
He nodded, watching her walk back toward the kitchen with his heart in his throat. It’s okay, he told himself firmly. She’s just in the other room.
He got up to answer the door. As he approached it, a voice called to him from the other side.
“Scofield!”
He froze and stared at the door, suddenly confused.
“Michael, are you going to let them in or not?” Sara teased from the other room.
“Come on, Uncle Mike!” he heard LJ crow. “It’s freezing out here!”
He shook off the strange feeling that had seized him and reached for the doorknob.
“Scofield!”
And then he realized, hand hovering in the air, that he wasn’t in his apartment with Sara.
That place didn’t exist.
“Yard time, Scofield,” Patterson said as the door to his solitary cell, which had been his whole world since he'd been recaptured four months ago, slid open. He shielded his eyes against the sudden onslaught of light, pupils contracting painfully.
“Let’s go,” the CO said.
Michael looked down and realized he was already wearing his winter coat as protection against the frigid temperature of his cell. Devastated, he stepped over the plate of food he hadn’t touched and followed Patterson mutely, listening to the CO’s keys jangle as he walked. They passed the cell of a death row inmate who killed the time waiting for his inevitable death by singing hymns he remembered from when his mother had taken him to church as a boy.
When he was back in the dark a half an hour later, Michael closed his eyes and waited impatiently for his sanity to slip away from him again.
Friar's Lantern (noun):
1. A phosphorescent light that hovers or flits over swampy ground at night.
2. Something that misleads or deludes; an illusion.
1. A phosphorescent light that hovers or flits over swampy ground at night.
2. Something that misleads or deludes; an illusion.
-the end.
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