Sandcastles (Prison Break Fanfic)

Chapter Sixteen

Sandcastles/The Bars Between Us

Part Three – Forward

Final Chapter – Part One

One thing that Michael didn't know was that Sara made an exception to her resolve to never lie to him. There was a business trip scheduled for late September, plane tickets bought months before the incentive to never leave home and a hotel room reserved when all beds were as soulless as the one he called his own. He would cancel it all without a second thought, for a week away meant seven days without his family. Sara wouldn't hear about it, of course, at least not now when she needed him out of the apartment for a couple of days. It would be a welcome break, she said, a breather to help them get used to their new routines.

Bryce had just started school, with a whole new set of classmates and a new path to school to get used to. To be fair, though, he didn't worry about the transition half as much as his parents did. The asphalt under his feet was the same color as the sidewalks in Lille, and with his kind predisposition, he made friends quickly. There was no need for Uncle Lincoln to keep his promise to, well, talk to parents of any kid who would be mean his nephew.

Lincoln's hand was the first in the air when the school asked for someone to volunteer as baseball coach on Friday afternoons. "Family involvement is an integral part of the educational process," he cited the words he read in one of Michael's parental guides. He cursed a little too much and was definitely too emotionally invested in the games, but his rockstar swagger enamored the mothers and the fathers wanted selfies with the Lincoln Burrows.

Sara started helping out at a downtown clinic. It was only during the clinic's busy hours, but the patients and the staff all loved her as much as she relished in wearing a lab coat with her name on it. It would easy to make it a permanent job someday – if, clearly, someone more important would come into their life first.

"Really. It will do us good," she assured Michael for the third time, hoping he wouldn't nitpick the logic so flawed in her eyes.

She didn't expect him to be gone for the entire week and indeed he returned on the fourth night. By then, the envelopes in which a certain something had been delivered were already disposed of, and if she were a cunning woman rather than a woman in love, she would pat herself on the back.

He tiptoed toward the bedrooms with as little sound as only a life on the run could teach. Peeking inside their boy's room, his eyes landed on a bed that was made but not slept in. In another world, his heart would pound in frenzy and his hands would lose their cool, but the bars on the windows were no longer needed and the calm was now their life.

So he made his way to the master bedroom. As expected, there was a mug on either of the nightstands, some books on the edge of the bed and about to slide off it, more of their peers already scattered on the floor. Their son slept on his father's side of the bed, only the top of his head not hidden by the covers. As though Sara had expected him to come home tonight, she lay in the middle of the bed, offering him half of her pillow. Without wasting any time getting out of his suit, he lay down next to her, on top of the covers so as not to wake either of them up. Before he could lose his fight and let his arms rest on her body, she turned to him, her eyelids still laden with sleep.

"Go back to sleep," he whispered. Kissing the side of her face, he wished she would not hear of it.

It was still too soon for him not to be in awe when his wish came true.

She rolled onto her back, the light of the night having nothing on the brightness of her eyes. He was about to lean closer, cover her lips with his after having been denied for days he would not be ashamed to admit dragged like years. Her fingers, though, were faster and reached to loosen his tie, then pull it over his head.