Sandcastles (Prison Break Fanfic)

Chapter Nine

They didn't see her watching them.

Sara had been looking for Bryce (an escape artist, just like his father, she couldn't help but smirk as she was passing through corridors), and as she came from around the corner, there they were, right by the elevators. Doors were opening and closing around them and people were walking past them, but neither noticed any of that in the moment the two of them finally, finally shared. There was a row of chairs free to occupy just a few feet away, but they remained glued to the spot that had first brought them into each other's arms.

Michael was on his knees, one of his hands placed on Bryce's upper arm, the other in Bryce's tiny hand. Their son's mouth was moving rapidly, and even though she was too far away to hear, he must have been comparing their wristwatches. The expression on Michael's face was so serene that as much as she wanted to walk up to them, she didn't dare to dispel it. He knew about Bryce for mere minutes, but there was already such gentleness in his mien that she couldn't believe the pile of broken dishes after she had seen him for the first time in six years. And love that emitted from him was so clear and unquestionable despite the distance between them, and it shamed her to remember the spite she had felt for him, however fleetingly.

It wasn't fair, it suddenly struck her, that he had learned without her words. Back in Costa Rica, she had wondered whether he'd notice the curve underneath her t-shirt right away. She imagined his eyes crashing with hers in wild disbelief before he'd pull her into an embrace just a little bit looser than in Gila, for it wouldn't be just the two of them anymore. Or should he miss the greeting of the little one, she pictured them taking in the colors of the sunset and how she would add another one by placing his hand on her belly. Even after being told there would never be the three of them, she had refused to let go of the reverie.

But perhaps there was no better way for Michael to find out. It was the way they had always done things; they were willing to die for each other before they were properly in love and then followed it without rearview mirrors. They had their life planned out before they even properly kissed and their every separation left devastation in its wake. Everything had always been fast, aside from the love they made, and unexpected, nothing more than the boy Michael now held in his arms.

It was so easy to let herself hope that maybe she would get to tell him about a life, another life that they would have created in their madness. But now that they were in the same building once more, the man in front of her was nothing more than a father of her child. For all she knew, he might have tucked in a little girl last night, and someone may have kissed him goodbye this morning before he left to face a fragment of a life he had already recovered from. It had been transient and so long ago, and unlike her, he hadn't had anything to remember her by, not even a photograph taken just for him. Of course she would fade in his mind as the months idly passed by until it had been over half a decade.

Bryce was the first to notice her.

"Mom, dad's tattoos really go all the way to his wrists!" he exclaimed, and she blinked away everything but a couple of tears. She turned her eyes to the walls, so beautiful in their plainness, just as Michael's eyes finally found hers. The two paths crossed, for a moment so fittingly fleeting that her face erupted in a smile, because it was as if despite the brutality of time, nothing had changed.

"I told you they do," she said, fighting her eyes to no avail. She saw that he didn't rise. He kept his hand on Bryce's shoulder, as though to steady himself. As if he couldn't move, and god, she couldn't, either. Not closer, at least.

"I, um, I'm gonna get our things," she somehow managed to say under his eyes. Turning on her heels, she walked down the corridor and then another. Maybe her feet knew when she was headed, but her mind didn't. After more than six years, the sobs finally weren't what convulsed her body, and her hands reached for her temples to remind her that this was real.