Work Text:
He watches the sun set beyond the tree line, blood red streaks of light playing hide and seek between the foliage.
It’s peaceful out here, a place where he can think clearly. Perception of the outside is limited only to the beautiful landscape beyond his garden, and the house which seems to have been made especially for him. It wouldn’t surprise him if that were actually true. They have a lot of power, he should know. He is part of the bigger picture now, too.
A glass of lemonade suddenly appears at his elbow on the small table.
He turns his head and sees his mother smile down at him and take a seat. She’s still wearing her lab coat as she takes her break from her experiments downstairs. She is busy these days, with the final stages of the project underway, but somehow she still makes time to come up and chat, to make him lemonade and share a sunset together. Michael is grateful for that, grateful to have her in his life.
They don’t talk, they just share a companionable silence beyond words. They don’t need them anyway. They know they’re not supposed to talk about their work, even to each other, even though they share the same house and the same blood, and everything else goes unsaid. They know and understand each other and there is nothing else they need to add to that.
They sit like that for what feels like forever, until the sun has set and the woods outside are veiled in darkness. She stands up, kisses his cheek and goes back to her lab. Routine, like clockwork, predictable and safe. It’s their ritual, their mutual understanding. In a few minutes, Michael will go back to his own work, to the blueprints and models that clutter his loft, to his own dream of the future. Architecture that will revolutionize the world.
Just a few more minutes.
He sips at his drink.
Something catches his eye at the far end of the garden, right where the tree line begins. He squints his eyes, waits for it… There it is again.
Michael gets up from the table and steps outside through the French windows, into the night.
Mullberry and Scott, the Company’s bodyguards, nod at him as they pass him by on their scheduled patrol. He nods back and waits for them to round the corner of the house. For some reason, he doesn’t want them to see where he’s going. He knows he’s not allowed to leave the grounds or wander off too far unless accompanied by one of them, and he has no desire to do so anyway, he has everything he needs right here. But he just wants to take a look, that’s all.
As soon as the coast is clear, he makes his way towards the tree line where he’d seen movement before. He scrutinizes the shadow of the forest in front of him, but nothing seems out of place. The only sounds are those of nocturne life stirring awake beneath the grass, the soft rustle of wind through the trees. He must have imagined it, that’s all. He’d better get back to work before the guards spot him here and get the wrong idea.
As he turns to head back to the house, he feels something crunch oddly beneath his right foot. He bends to pick it up and is surprised to see the contours of a black pen in the dim light.
For one strange moment, he feels a sense of disconnect, like his mind has chosen to split itself in half, like he is in two places at once and there is something important that he has to do, something he has forgotten, just lurking beneath the surface. It lasts for a fraction of a second and then it’s gone, just like that.
Michael stumbles forward, unsteady on his feet, as he gets his mind in order once again. What is he doing out here? There is so much work to be done, and he had a deadline to meet.
Shaking off his confusion, he pockets the pen as an afterthought and heads back to the house.
Tonight he will solve that structural flaw in his design, and by morning, his masterpiece, his own contribution to the plan, will be complete.
He doesn’t get any work done that night, though. His thoughts keep skittering back and forth, disorganized, relentless. He thinks about going downstairs to look for his mother, maybe talk to her, figure out why his own mind has turned against him. She always knows how to calm him down, she’s been his safe haven ever since he can remember, after his father died and his brother got thrown in jail for armed robbery a few years back. She is the only family he’s got. He decides against it, in the end; he doesn’t want to interrupt her from her work.
He spends the rest of the night in a fitful sleep, haunted by dreams about a Purgatory made out of heat and stench, high walls surrounding him on every side, and he is trapped, he needs to get out, he needs to dig his way through to the other side. He sees flashes of rain pouring down from the sky and two men caught in a battle to the death in the middle of the yard, then he is one of them and he is fighting for his life as well. He feels his own back pushed against a wall, cold metal glinting off a blade pressed to his cheek, and there’s a pair of crazed blue eyes staring back at him, flaying his soul from the inside out.
The next morning he can see that she is disappointed with him. The higher ups have called in for results and he hasn’t finished his job. Doesn’t he know how important he is to the plan? He swears to get it done today, but all he can do is sit at his desk and twirl the black pen through his fingers for the rest of the day, feeling that the world has just tilted slightly on its axis and he can’t find his equilibrium again.
For the first time in what feels like forever, he is filled with doubt.
When the night comes, Michael doesn’t know what draws him back to the edge of the forest again. He grips tight to the black pen and waits until the guards are out of sight, then makes his way back to the place he’d been the night before.
This time, he doesn’t hesitate. He steps into the darkness, past the trees, and this time it’s too quiet, he can only hear the leaves crunching under his feet and the echo of his own heartbeat in his ears.
He only takes two more steps before a weight suddenly barrels into him and pins his body to the trunk of a tree, a foreign hand pressed against his mouth.
His first instinct is to fight back, but before his synapses begin to form an appropriate response, he finds himself staring into the same blue eyes that had haunted his dreams the previous night. Less crazed now, but filled with something indecipherable and intense, and Michael couldn’t be able to move if he tried. He is prey, part of his mind supplies. And he has found his hunter.
“Who are you?” he whispers, and only then realizes that the hand over his mouth is gone. His entire body seems to have come alive, and Michael can feel the heat of the other man’s body seep into his skin, making him feel dizzy like some kind of heady narcotic he has never experienced before.
The man doesn’t answer, but something flashes in his eyes, furtive and raw and a lot like pain, barely there and gone in an instant, to be replaced by steely determination right after.
“Remember this,” the man says in a low voice, and there is no more room to think, no more place for reason, because the stranger is kissing him, pressing his mouth hard against his, prying his lips open and taking him, drinking him in, and damn if this isn’t the most erotic thing that has ever happened to Michael in his life.
He lets out a deep, rumbling groan and fists one hand in the stranger’s hair and pulls him even closer, pushes against his mouth, fighting for dominance, and it’s wet and hard and bruising, it tastes like blood and life and heat, relentless scorching heat under a tropical sun against a dusty prison wall, and his entire body sings in recognition.
Fragments of buried images, feelings and sounds rise from the depths of his mind, memories Michael never knew were lost until he found them again, and this is who he is, this is where he is supposed to be, not tucked inside a tiny box at the back of his subconscious, not caged behind bars made of iron and rust and the sins of those who came before him, but here, out in the open and alive. So alive. And free.
When he finally disentangles himself from the other man’s lips – no longer a stranger, not even close – those blue eyes are looking just as crazed as he remembers, pupils blown to hell but still able to read right into his very soul.
“Alex,” he acknowledges with a lopsided grin. “I think you dropped something here the other night.”
And he holds up the black pen, the same one Michael had sent Alex Mahone on a goose chase for back in Sona, and the same one Alex had kept as a reminder even months after their escape.
“And it seems to have served its purpose just right,” Alex replies with a knowing smirk as he reclaims the object and tucks it inside the pocket of his jeans.
Then, just in the nick of time, reality spurs them back on track in the form of Alex’s walkie talkie crackling to life.
“Alex, do you copy?”
“Mission accomplished, Linc,” Alex responds. “We’re heading back now.”
“Guards and backup security system dealt with,” the radio crackles again, this time Sucre’s voice. “You’re good to go.”
“Copy that.”
Michael is aware that as soon as he gets out of these woods he will be back on the front lines of the war against the Company, and he still hasn’t processed the fact that his own mother has apparently drugged and brainwashed him into forgetting his entire life and working for the very people whom he wants to see destroyed. But, as he makes his way through the thick forest in Alex’s wake, he takes one moment to breathe in the air of freedom and be thankful that, for once in his life, he is exactly where he wants to be.