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jaybee65Title: Ceremonies
Fandom: Prison Break
Rating: PG
Category: Het, mild angst, character study
Characters: Sara, Michael
Summary: Ten years later, Sara copes with the loss of her father
Author's Notes: Originally written as part of the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pbficexchange2 for wrldpossibility, who asked for Michael and Sara (either together or apart), set either 10 years post-series or 10 years pre-series, but based on canon as it applies, and including: (1) a map; (2) a toast; and (3) a phone call with disturbing news.
One humid afternoon when she returns from the market, Sara finds a thick letter with American postage stuffed inside the mailbox along with the magazines and bills.
Balancing her bags, she dumps the letter on the kitchen counter. She lets it sit there while she puts away the fresh fruit and vegetables. She continues to let it sit there while she opens and sorts the rest of the mail. And then she turns her back to it and walks away.
Letters from America are always unpleasant. Some come from reporters, wanting to schedule interviews. Others, from freelance writers offering to ghostwrite a tell-all book that they're just sure will be a massive best-seller. Then there are the conspiracy theorists who've fantasized some tenuous connection between the Company and the Freemasons or Area 51 (or both, with the Bermuda Triangle thrown in), and who think she'll want to read the hundreds of pages of documentation they've meticulously collected - and underlined, with notes in tiny printed handwriting up and down the margins - to prove it. Worst of all is the fan mail: people who write her poetry or who send her pictures of pets they've named after her, or Michael, or Lincoln. Letters from America may not be as bad as the phone calls - like the one she received last week, informing her that a childhood friend had died without a chance for Sara even to say goodbye - but they're still always unpleasant. This one can wait.
It still sits on the counter a week later, when it occurs to her that it's been about a decade since the nightmare finally, finally ended, with all the fanfare and celebrity attention that she's come to hate so much that she now lives half a world away. It's no doubt a journalist, looking to put together some tabloid true crime, "where are they now?" retrospective. That's easily dealt with: a one-line email saying, "no, thank you" to an interview, and the letter flung into the trash with the orange peels and the damp coffee grounds.
She glances at the return address. The Office of the Dean of the School of Law, it says, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. How odd. She doesn't know anyone there, hasn't ever visited there that she can recall, can't think of a single reason why they would want to write her. She slides a letter opener into the envelope and slices it open.
The law school is naming a new wing after Frank Tancredi. The dean requests the honor of her presence at the dedication ceremony. In February.
"Do you still have a winter coat?" she asks Michael.
He looks up from the sofa where he's watching television, his forehead scrunched in confusion. "No. Why?"
"Because we're flying to Illinois next month," she says.
He nods without even asking her another question.
#####
Their plane is two hours late getting into O'Hare, and traffic out of the city is snarled with commuters. There's a small airport in Champaign, but she insisted on driving from Chicago instead: it's the first time she's returned to her home state, to the state she once bitterly accused her father of caring more about than his own daughter, and she wants to see more of it than just a downstate college town. She wants images to remember it by, even fleeting ones from the window of a car speeding down the freeway, because she knows in her heart she's never coming back again.
Once past the city and the southern suburbs that tangle like knobby branches in every direction, the interstate shoots ruler-straight across the prairie. It cuts through black soil spotted with white remnants of melting snow, shoving aside row after row of drooping, straw-colored corn stalks that measure the flat expanse until the horizon.
They stop for coffee just outside Kankakee. A wisp of steam rises from her cup as they stand in the truck stop parking lot, and she breathes in the cold, crisp air to the sound of semi engines idling.
It's here that Michael finally voices the question.
"You've never wanted to come back before. Why now?"
"Because for once, it's about him. About his legacy as a man. Not about what happened."
"Maybe," replies Michael. The tone of his voice sounds optimistic, but he avoids her gaze as he says it. He tosses his own cup into the trash and heads back toward the car.
#####
Once they reach their destination, the car's talking map guides them to the hotel where the university's booked a room for them. Virtually devoid of other guests, it sits isolated on a windswept edge of town, nothing within sight but a massive sports stadium across a six-lane boulevard and three ice-filled parking lots. They stay in the room that night, sustained by room service sandwiches and TV news as long as they can stand, until jet lag forces them asleep hours early.
The next morning, the dean of the law school picks them up herself. A tiny woman in her fifties with an accent that marks her as a transplant from the East Coast, she gives them a tour of new facility before the ceremony begins. She's brisk and energetic in clacking black heels, and she somehow comes across as both chatty and distant at the same time. She seems the most enthusiastic when talking about how much various architectural features cost, as if the more money was spent, the better it reflects on Sara's father. Sara is tempted to roll her eyes and tell the woman how superficial it all is, but she thinks better of it. Instead, she lets Michael do most of the talking; he and the dean discuss the choice of marble flooring material with an intense focus that almost makes Sara laugh.
The ceremony begins at noon, in a glass-enclosed foyer where rows of folding chairs have been set up for the occasion. There's a small group of faculty and state officials, as well as a camera crew from a local TV station. The reporter is easy to spot in her too-heavy makeup and powder-blue suit. The rest of the crowd - and it's actually a real crowd, much to Sara's surprise - must be students, she assumes.
The dean speaks briefly, and then one of the university trustees. Their remarks focus on the school's plans for the future. She had hoped they would mention her father at least once, given that his name is emblazoned in enormous metal lettering on the wall behind their backs, but they don't. Instead, the dean suddenly gestures toward Sara. "And now," she says brightly, "here is Sara Tancredi, accompanied by Michael Scofield, to say a few words about the man this building honors."
The crowd stirs, and the camera swings in her direction. There's a change in mood in the room, a sudden anticipation and ripple of excitement that has nothing to do with the dedication of fancy new lecture halls or libraries, and even less to do with the memory of her father. She sees the expression on their faces and she knows, all too well, what they're thinking.
Oh my God, it's them. The infamous Sara and Michael!
Cameras flash, and she's so furious she's not sure what she actually says when she gets to the podium, other than that she manages to mumble something about Frank Tancredi and a lifetime of selfless public service even as her throat constricts and tears sting the corners of her eyes.
There's a reception afterward, with wine and cheese and baby carrots with vegetable dip, and she greets a blur of faces who mouth perfunctory greetings but then quickly abandon her to circle in a pulsating, just-barely-this-side-of-polite throng around Michael. That's why there was a crowd. That's who they came to see. That's why she was invited in the first place. Her father, well, he's only a footnote to the Michael Scofield story - even ten years later.
Her face flushed with barely contained rage, she sips juice while the dean and trustee lead a toast, and then she elbows her way past the TV reporter - who gives her a dirty look that she ignores - and grabs Michael's arm.
"Let's get out of here."
#####
They drive as far away from the campus as they can get. They find themselves in some nameless area in the north of town where farms have been razed for a sprawl of characterless chain restaurants, fast food places, and shopping malls. There, to Sara's relief, they finally become nameless and characterless themselves: the general public, at least, has forgotten their faces by now, the memories displaced by more recent titillations.
They enter a restaurant. The hostess, a pimply girl dressed in the university's orange and blue, gathers some menus and ushers them to a booth. The room is full of men with bellies spilling over their belts and women wearing sweaters in colors like canary yellow and lime green. A basketball game blares on the overhead TV.
She's angry, so angry that she wants to pound her fists against Michael's chest although she knows it's not his fault. If anything, it's her fault for thinking that anyone could ever forget who and what they are.
"It's never going to be over, is it?" she blurts out, her voice raised a little louder than she intended. The people at the next table glance over briefly.
"No." He doesn't say anything else, but he reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. Tightly. And he doesn't let go, not even when the waitress comes to take their order.
#####
As they check out of the hotel and load their luggage into the car, the anger subsides into something more rational.
She shouldn't have come. No ceremony, no name plate on an expensive building could ever banish her grief, could ever make up for the fact that fate played such a cruel game with so many innocent people - not just her father, but so many others.
But she doesn't need to banish the grief. If it never goes away, that means the memories live on. If it still hurts, that means that it mattered that they lived - and that it mattered when they died. She'll hold on to that grief, as tightly as Michael gripped her hand, because grief is actually a comfort.
She won't come back again. She doesn't need to. She smiles and pats Michael on the arm, and they drive off toward Chicago under the wide, slate-colored winter sky.
Fandom: Prison Break
Rating: PG
Category: Het, mild angst, character study
Characters: Sara, Michael
Summary: Ten years later, Sara copes with the loss of her father
Author's Notes: Originally written as part of the
pbficexchange2 for wrldpossibility, who asked for Michael and Sara (either together or apart), set either 10 years post-series or 10 years pre-series, but based on canon as it applies, and including: (1) a map; (2) a toast; and (3) a phone call with disturbing news.One humid afternoon when she returns from the market, Sara finds a thick letter with American postage stuffed inside the mailbox along with the magazines and bills.
Balancing her bags, she dumps the letter on the kitchen counter. She lets it sit there while she puts away the fresh fruit and vegetables. She continues to let it sit there while she opens and sorts the rest of the mail. And then she turns her back to it and walks away.
Letters from America are always unpleasant. Some come from reporters, wanting to schedule interviews. Others, from freelance writers offering to ghostwrite a tell-all book that they're just sure will be a massive best-seller. Then there are the conspiracy theorists who've fantasized some tenuous connection between the Company and the Freemasons or Area 51 (or both, with the Bermuda Triangle thrown in), and who think she'll want to read the hundreds of pages of documentation they've meticulously collected - and underlined, with notes in tiny printed handwriting up and down the margins - to prove it. Worst of all is the fan mail: people who write her poetry or who send her pictures of pets they've named after her, or Michael, or Lincoln. Letters from America may not be as bad as the phone calls - like the one she received last week, informing her that a childhood friend had died without a chance for Sara even to say goodbye - but they're still always unpleasant. This one can wait.
It still sits on the counter a week later, when it occurs to her that it's been about a decade since the nightmare finally, finally ended, with all the fanfare and celebrity attention that she's come to hate so much that she now lives half a world away. It's no doubt a journalist, looking to put together some tabloid true crime, "where are they now?" retrospective. That's easily dealt with: a one-line email saying, "no, thank you" to an interview, and the letter flung into the trash with the orange peels and the damp coffee grounds.
She glances at the return address. The Office of the Dean of the School of Law, it says, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. How odd. She doesn't know anyone there, hasn't ever visited there that she can recall, can't think of a single reason why they would want to write her. She slides a letter opener into the envelope and slices it open.
The law school is naming a new wing after Frank Tancredi. The dean requests the honor of her presence at the dedication ceremony. In February.
"Do you still have a winter coat?" she asks Michael.
He looks up from the sofa where he's watching television, his forehead scrunched in confusion. "No. Why?"
"Because we're flying to Illinois next month," she says.
He nods without even asking her another question.
#####
Their plane is two hours late getting into O'Hare, and traffic out of the city is snarled with commuters. There's a small airport in Champaign, but she insisted on driving from Chicago instead: it's the first time she's returned to her home state, to the state she once bitterly accused her father of caring more about than his own daughter, and she wants to see more of it than just a downstate college town. She wants images to remember it by, even fleeting ones from the window of a car speeding down the freeway, because she knows in her heart she's never coming back again.
Once past the city and the southern suburbs that tangle like knobby branches in every direction, the interstate shoots ruler-straight across the prairie. It cuts through black soil spotted with white remnants of melting snow, shoving aside row after row of drooping, straw-colored corn stalks that measure the flat expanse until the horizon.
They stop for coffee just outside Kankakee. A wisp of steam rises from her cup as they stand in the truck stop parking lot, and she breathes in the cold, crisp air to the sound of semi engines idling.
It's here that Michael finally voices the question.
"You've never wanted to come back before. Why now?"
"Because for once, it's about him. About his legacy as a man. Not about what happened."
"Maybe," replies Michael. The tone of his voice sounds optimistic, but he avoids her gaze as he says it. He tosses his own cup into the trash and heads back toward the car.
#####
Once they reach their destination, the car's talking map guides them to the hotel where the university's booked a room for them. Virtually devoid of other guests, it sits isolated on a windswept edge of town, nothing within sight but a massive sports stadium across a six-lane boulevard and three ice-filled parking lots. They stay in the room that night, sustained by room service sandwiches and TV news as long as they can stand, until jet lag forces them asleep hours early.
The next morning, the dean of the law school picks them up herself. A tiny woman in her fifties with an accent that marks her as a transplant from the East Coast, she gives them a tour of new facility before the ceremony begins. She's brisk and energetic in clacking black heels, and she somehow comes across as both chatty and distant at the same time. She seems the most enthusiastic when talking about how much various architectural features cost, as if the more money was spent, the better it reflects on Sara's father. Sara is tempted to roll her eyes and tell the woman how superficial it all is, but she thinks better of it. Instead, she lets Michael do most of the talking; he and the dean discuss the choice of marble flooring material with an intense focus that almost makes Sara laugh.
The ceremony begins at noon, in a glass-enclosed foyer where rows of folding chairs have been set up for the occasion. There's a small group of faculty and state officials, as well as a camera crew from a local TV station. The reporter is easy to spot in her too-heavy makeup and powder-blue suit. The rest of the crowd - and it's actually a real crowd, much to Sara's surprise - must be students, she assumes.
The dean speaks briefly, and then one of the university trustees. Their remarks focus on the school's plans for the future. She had hoped they would mention her father at least once, given that his name is emblazoned in enormous metal lettering on the wall behind their backs, but they don't. Instead, the dean suddenly gestures toward Sara. "And now," she says brightly, "here is Sara Tancredi, accompanied by Michael Scofield, to say a few words about the man this building honors."
The crowd stirs, and the camera swings in her direction. There's a change in mood in the room, a sudden anticipation and ripple of excitement that has nothing to do with the dedication of fancy new lecture halls or libraries, and even less to do with the memory of her father. She sees the expression on their faces and she knows, all too well, what they're thinking.
Oh my God, it's them. The infamous Sara and Michael!
Cameras flash, and she's so furious she's not sure what she actually says when she gets to the podium, other than that she manages to mumble something about Frank Tancredi and a lifetime of selfless public service even as her throat constricts and tears sting the corners of her eyes.
There's a reception afterward, with wine and cheese and baby carrots with vegetable dip, and she greets a blur of faces who mouth perfunctory greetings but then quickly abandon her to circle in a pulsating, just-barely-this-side-of-polite throng around Michael. That's why there was a crowd. That's who they came to see. That's why she was invited in the first place. Her father, well, he's only a footnote to the Michael Scofield story - even ten years later.
Her face flushed with barely contained rage, she sips juice while the dean and trustee lead a toast, and then she elbows her way past the TV reporter - who gives her a dirty look that she ignores - and grabs Michael's arm.
"Let's get out of here."
#####
They drive as far away from the campus as they can get. They find themselves in some nameless area in the north of town where farms have been razed for a sprawl of characterless chain restaurants, fast food places, and shopping malls. There, to Sara's relief, they finally become nameless and characterless themselves: the general public, at least, has forgotten their faces by now, the memories displaced by more recent titillations.
They enter a restaurant. The hostess, a pimply girl dressed in the university's orange and blue, gathers some menus and ushers them to a booth. The room is full of men with bellies spilling over their belts and women wearing sweaters in colors like canary yellow and lime green. A basketball game blares on the overhead TV.
She's angry, so angry that she wants to pound her fists against Michael's chest although she knows it's not his fault. If anything, it's her fault for thinking that anyone could ever forget who and what they are.
"It's never going to be over, is it?" she blurts out, her voice raised a little louder than she intended. The people at the next table glance over briefly.
"No." He doesn't say anything else, but he reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. Tightly. And he doesn't let go, not even when the waitress comes to take their order.
#####
As they check out of the hotel and load their luggage into the car, the anger subsides into something more rational.
She shouldn't have come. No ceremony, no name plate on an expensive building could ever banish her grief, could ever make up for the fact that fate played such a cruel game with so many innocent people - not just her father, but so many others.
But she doesn't need to banish the grief. If it never goes away, that means the memories live on. If it still hurts, that means that it mattered that they lived - and that it mattered when they died. She'll hold on to that grief, as tightly as Michael gripped her hand, because grief is actually a comfort.
She won't come back again. She doesn't need to. She smiles and pats Michael on the arm, and they drive off toward Chicago under the wide, slate-colored winter sky.