Sandcastles (Prison Break Fanfic)

Chapter Four

Michael met Jessica at a fundraiser organized by the school in the Bronx at which he was volunteering a couple of times per week.

It had been five months since the last Scylla card was analyzed in detail and subsequently destroyed to prevent its content from ever running amok again. The two brothers were running out of the events to describe (Lincoln was without words altogether, taking up his little brother's habit of wearing a wristwatch and fumbling with it rather than making eye contact with the agent in charge of their case. She didn't seem to mind the inattention, as she barely registered his presence anyway), and Agent Spencer struggled to justify their daily presence to her superiors. They eventually settled for biweekly meetings; other days she was assigned to other cases. She was apologetic when she told him, but Michael just shook his head. While looking for the Scylla cards, all he had wanted was to focus on what truly mattered to him. Now that he had been immersed in it for a few months, he realized he had no other plan and had passed the end of the road a while ago.

He got an apartment in New York City. The distance he put between himself and the room with maps, printouts, photographs, and pain was large enough to let him breathe, yet he was close enough should anything happen. After five months, he finally acknowledged that he was starting to lose hope.

Michael barely made it to the fundraiser in time. That morning he had been at Langley, cooped up in his room where gigantic maps served as his windows. It had been weeks since he last drawn a line, circled a place, calculated the distance. There were no files still waiting to be deciphered, no names to familiarize himself with, and no staring at phone records or credit card statements could yield a new lead. These days he just stood, paralyzed by the immensity of the collage in front of him. The downfall of the Company still dominated the headlines and wherever he looked, he saw praise. He had taken on the world and won. He was the smartest man in America, perhaps the world. He was invincible, a superhero without a cape.

But he could not find Sara. The one thing he wanted for five years, the lone rope that kept him above water, and he was failing her, once more.

That morning, he snapped. He reached for the center of the map, grabbed it and pulled it off the wall. He kept tearing everything until the emptiness of the wall matched his feelings. His merciless hands tore the months' worth of work apart, demolishing it all like it was just one of the bricks of the future he had held in hands that one night.

When there was nothing left, he collapsed to the floor and buried his face in his hands as the pieces of the collage still rained down around him. His breaths were still broken heaves when Abigail found him. She glanced at the pieces of paper that now served as the carpet and sat down next to him without remarking the blank walls.

"She wouldn't want you to be killing yourself like this, Michael," she eventually said. By then, she had known him long enough to know when not to expect an answer. She started picking up scraps of the map. Northern Arizona, most of Utah, a bunch of little dots whose annotations she didn't recognize. When she held them like that, she could almost be hopeful. "There is no right or wrong way to deal with the loss of someone you love. But guilt and hate will get you nowhere, Michael. Letting go of them, and perhaps letting yourself love someone else, does not mean that you have forgotten her. That her death no longer affects you. Or that you no longer love her or maybe have never loved her at all. Love is a very peculiar, yet simple thing. It is never more or less. It is just there. It's what makes it so precious, its inclusiveness."

He still gave no sign that he was aware of her presence, let alone that he heard her words. She bumped her shoulder into his, playful in her desperation.

"Come on. I'll help you make a new one," she said, and this time he reacted. While still avoiding her eyes, he mimicked her earlier gesture. The piece of the map he had chosen was the one with the red circle around Gila. He followed the red curve with his fingers so carefully as if it was the last time. His eyebrows were knitted, the only sign of the struggle raging in him.