Chapter Text
~ Walter S. Landor
The first time she thinks she sees him, she blames the complimentary Mai Tais.
She's been at this godforsaken conference for two days. Two days of sitting through lectures on subjects that have no relevance to her current role. Two days of making pointless small talk with people who rarely venture out of their gilded private practices. Two days of avoiding the less than subtle advances of ego-inflated, BMW-driving idiots hoping for a bit of 'away from home' fun.
This conference was not her idea. The last thing she wanted was to spend half a week with nothing to do but think about what had happened at Fox River three months ago.
The Pope, however, had thought it would do her good to 'get away'.
Needless to say, the irony was not lost on her.
After the first day, she learns that the quickest way to cripple an unwanted conversation was to answer truthfully when asked where she worked. Only the most ill-bred – or drunk – fellow conference attendees would dare voice the questions she can almost hear humming at the back of their throats. Pity wars with curiosity in their eyes, and it is always a relief when the subject is clumsily changed to the latest advances in MRI technology.
To make matters worse, the conference schedule includes an inordinate amount of downtime, which means empty hours that need to be filled with meaningless tasks. She's not immune to the beauty of her surroundings, but she's hardly the most appreciative audience. She resents the handsome, seemingly carefree men and women she sees strolling along the streets and the beach, hates the easy atmosphere of sun and sand and sex.
Despite this, she's still driven by a need to escape from the four walls of her hotel room. Her skin is pale, bordering on pasty, and she distracts herself from her resentment by taking great care to cover every inch of exposed skin with sunscreen whenever she ventures to the hotel pool. The sun bites into her skin, making her restless, and she keeps to the shade as much as possible. She doesn't swim or socialize; both would require baring herself in some way, and she is ready for neither. She stakes out a claim on a recliner in a particularly secluded spot and tries to convince herself that she is interested in the romance novel she bought at the gift shop.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, exasperated with the idiotic musings of her book's heroine, she looks up to see Michael Scofield walking across the manicured lawn between the pool and the hotel restaurant.
She sits up, her novel tumbling from suddenly nerveless fingers, her thin white shirt sticking coldly to the hot skin of her back as she scans the casually dressed human traffic ambling along the lawn.
He's not amongst them.
Of course he's not, she tells herself. How could he be? Why would he be?
Picking up her book with a trembling hand that owes nothing to the alcohol she's consumed, she slowly gets to her feet. Her face is hot, her scalp itching with what feels very much like mortification. She smiles politely at the desk clerk as she passes, but forgoes the ritual of asking if there'd been any messages left for her. It feels too much like tempting fate.
That night, despite the combined effect of cool sheets and four Mai Tais, she can't relax, her mind and her body whirring with a dozen impossible things. When she does finally drift into an uneasy sleep, she dreams of blurred lines and the feel of smooth skin beneath her hands. When she wakes, it's to the taste of stale rum and the realization that she is as far from forgetting him as she can possibly be.
The second time she thinks she sees him, on the afternoon of the third day, she blames the sun.
It's a poor excuse for logic, considering that her sensible straw hat hasn't once left her head, but what other explanation is there? What possible other explanation could there be for the fact that she has just seen Michael Scofield in a small local market in Barbados? She pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head and glares into the light of the afternoon sun and the milling crowd around her, her heart suddenly hammering.
He's not there, just as he wasn't there the day before.
But if he's not there, she wonders, how can the fleeting glimpse of his profile be burned onto her retinas, much like a foolish child's eyes after having looked too long at a solar eclipse?
She sucks in a deep, shaky lungful of warm air, then realises belatedly that she is on the receiving end of an indignant glare from the stallholder whose brightly printed sarong she is now twisting in her hands.
"You like that one?" he asks politely, his expression making it quite clear that a purchase would be highly desirable.
"Yes, very much, I'll take it," she mutters as she fumbles for her purse and hands him too much money, her eyes still frantically searching the crowd around her.
She makes her way quickly back to the hotel, smiling blandly at the people she recognizes from the conference, her heart pounding in time with the slap of her sandals on the hard ground.
It's not possible. There's no way he could be here. No reason for him to be here. It's been three months and there's been no sign, no sightings, no word whatsoever.
It's not possible.
It's only when she reaches the sanctuary of the hotel foyer, her skin still jumping with the odd, lingering sense of being watched, that she finally allows herself to accept how badly she wants to be wrong.
Although her appetite is vastly diminished, she knows if she doesn't eat she'll regret it later. She orders room service, unwilling to make polite conversation either at the bar or over dinner for the third evening running. She sits alone on the small balcony and picks at the fruit platter, eats a respectable amount of the cold seafood salad and drinks two glasses of white wine. The sun dips beneath the horizon, staining the sky pink and indigo, and although she feels a grudging appreciation for the sight, it's pretty much wasted on her. And that makes her quite angry, but she's not sure exactly what she should do with her anger.
She has a few ideas, though. She closes her eyes against the beautifully streaked sky, her fingers tightening on the stem of her wineglass.
Damn you, Michael.
There are times when her anger towards him makes her uncomfortable in her own skin. He lied to her, used her without a second thought, but he was never anything but unfailingly courteous towards her. From the first moment of their first meeting, he had been charming – all the better to manipulate her, of course, but charming nevertheless – and almost chivalrous in his dealings with her. He risked his life to save hers, and as chivalry goes, that's pretty tough to beat. She shies away from the memory of a hand reaching out of the ceiling, his eyes pleading with her to trust him. It's hard to be resentful when she lets herself remembers that moment, and her resentment has become as familiar a companion as her anger.
Sara places her empty wineglass on the tiled floor beside her with an audible clink, then leans back in the lounge chair, one hand over her eyes. Perhaps she should have gone downstairs to the restaurant for dinner. Perhaps making bland conversation about Botox and celebrity patients would have been preferable to being alone in this room with her thoughts. Sometimes, putting up with bland company is better than the alternative. Sometimes, like tonight, it feels as though she's been angry for so long, she's forgotten how not to be.
Even her dreams have been angry.
Before the escape, she'd dreamed of him. Dreams that woke her with a gasp, tangled in twisted sheets, her mouth dry, her heart pounding, her skin hot and tingling. Dreams that left her feeling as though she had to hide her eyes from him the next day, as though he'd only have to look at her and he'd see what she had seen, that he'd know.
In the first two weeks after the escape, a dark fury had invaded her dreams. She'd started to dream of screaming at him to tell her why, why?, slamming her fists into his chest, pushing him away so hard that he would stumble. But no matter how much she shouted and shoved, he would never say a word. She would wake with a sob rather than a gasp of imagined pleasure, her face wet with tears.
Later - three weeks? Four? - her dreams changed, anger morphing into a sharp, twisted hunger, her guilt and regret and lust mingling and becoming something much more unsettling than anger alone. She began to dream of Michael's mouth silencing her enraged accusations, her pounding fists uncurling to pull him hard against her, her helpless sobs burning silently in her throat at the feel of him deep inside her.
In the real world, Michael Scofield has kissed her only once. It was gentle, desperate, and a lie.
It was a lie, but she can't forget the taste of his mouth and the feel of his skin beneath her palms. She remembers the way he'd looked at her when she'd pulled away, as though he'd just discovered the answer to a question he hadn't realised he'd asked.
In the weeks after the escape, she had spent more time answering questions than she had spent doing her job. That alone had been enough to make her prickly, tempting her to be uncooperative, but she'd known better than to give the authorities - the Pope, the police, the FBI, those damned dark-suited men with shadowy eyes who actually smirked at her when she was foolish enough to admit that her relationship with Michael had been a 'cordial' one – any more reason to put a big black mark next to her name.
And now here she was, three months later, no closer to sorting out her life, seeing Michael on every street corner. If it were happening to someone else, she'd suggest they give Oprah a call.
The phone in her room rings just as she's trying to find room for the remains of her dinner in the bar fridge. It startles her enough to make her stub her toe on the corner of the fridge door as she hastily swings it shut. Swearing under her breath, she walks gingerly across the room, unable to suppress a flicker of concern as to who might be calling her here. Perhaps it was the locum standing in for her at Fox River – he wasn't the brightest person she'd ever met and he hadn't been her first or even second choice for a replacement, but the decision hadn't been hers to make – or perhaps it was Katie. It would hardly be her father, she thinks dryly, given the tone of their last meeting.
She drops onto the bed as she picks up the receiver, absentmindedly smoothing a pillow with her other hand. "Hello?"
There is no answer.
Sara frowns. "Hello?"
There is a faint sound of a cut-off breath, then the dial tone.
She stares at the phone, the receiver suddenly slippery in her hand as a cold wave of intuition twists her gut and she suddenly knows.
She'd been wrong.
It hadn't been the sun or the alcohol.
Michael was here.