A/N This story is a one shot that developed out of a discussion over at the ChuckThis blog. It's an idea I simply couldn't put down without writing this story. It centers around the Easter egg the writers and director of Chuck vs the American Hero left us in the scene where Casey comes to see Sarah to tell her he killed the mole. That Easter egg is the "safe, comfortable" pic on her night stand that has been a part of the show since it was shot in Palm Springs in Seduction. I believe the focus on that pic by the director as that scene opens is a clear clue as to the fact that Sarah had already decided to meet Chuck at the train station and fore-go going to DC with Shaw. That decision had already been made when Casey showed up. He just reinforces that decision and her faith in Chuck still being the man she fell in love with. It's especially clear to me because it wasn't there in the similar scene at the end of Final Exam. Also combine that with the fact that the clock shows 6:10 in that scene and she is supposed to meet Chuck at 7pm and we understand why she is in such a hurry packing.
I love it when little clues are left for us to find. This story is about what went on in Sarah's mind after she left Castle where Chuck declared his love for her and before Casey knocked on her door. It's about why she put it there for us to see.
Don't own Chuck but I love them just the same.
Sarah vs the Easter Egg
Maison 23
Room 832
Sarah sat on the side of her bed staring at the object she held tightly in her hands. She had been staring at it for the last twenty minutes ever since she took it out of the drawer in her night stand when she arrived back at her hotel room. As she glided her finger over it tenderly, she couldn't stop thinking about the events of the last seventy-two hours. Her emotions had been on a roller-coaster that seemed to have no end in sight.
In reflection, like Prague, her heart had been ripped apart once more by the scene she thought she had witnessed that night on the train tracks. She had heard the distinctive sound of a gunshot, a tell tale report she immediately knew came from a Government issue Sig Sauer, the same model gun she had handed Chuck at the restaurant just a few minutes earlier. When she turned the corner around the freight car she saw a sight she had hoped and prayed she would never have witnessed in her life. The man she knew in her heart she still loved was standing with that Sig Sauer she had given him in his hand. It was pointed just like she and Casey had taught him, directly at the center mass of his target who lay motionless on the ground. Sarah's heart broke into a million pieces. Chuck had killed someone. The man she loved was gone and she had been the cause. She had allowed Shaw to manipulate Chuck into completing his Red Test with her as the bait. Shaw knew the only person who could get Chuck to kill was Sarah and she had fallen victim to Shaw's trap just like Chuck had fallen victim to hers. Chuck was gone and the only thing she could say was "Chuck is a spy" when Shaw asked her what happened. Mission accomplished.
But in the hours that followed she tried to come to terms with what happened. She had hoped and prayed that Chuck wouldn't do it but her own eyes were telling her he had. She couldn't escape the pain it caused her knowing she was responsible. She had completed her own final mission that night. The Intersect was a spy, not Chuck Bartowski. Sarah had willingly placed the final nail in the coffin of the nerd she once knew. The funny, adorable, honest, kind and wonderful man that captured her heart the moment he knelt down to help a young ballerina and her dad.
After the Red Test when Shaw had asked her back at her hotel room if she was still in love with Chuck, she answered "No, not any more". But that wasn't true at all and she knew it as soon as she said it. She was still desperately in love with the man she met three years ago but unfortunately she thought that man didn't exist any more. She was in love with a ghost not the man who was now getting his badge. So instead of answering her phone or picking up the several messages Chuck had left for her, she allowed herself to fall into the arms of the man who had manipulated her, the man who always put mission above everyone and everything. She spent the next day in his loft hoping that somehow he could take away the pain in her now shattered heart and maybe fill in some of the void that the events of the prior twenty-four hours had caused. That maybe she could connect with someone, anyone and have them lessen her grief at the loss she had allowed herself to cause.
But there at his loft as she lay next to a sleeping Shaw, she felt nothing. She was numb. She felt no warmth, no comfort, no affection and definitely no love. Sarah had never felt so unsatisfied by an intimate moment in her life. She was as empty as she had been on those train tracks. Shaw was simply there and she thought she had nowhere else to go. He couldn't ease the ache in her soul because he simply didn't have one. Maybe she had lost hers as well.
A part of her thought it was better this way. Her father and the CIA both had taught her attachments and feelings only made you weak and brought you nothing but pain. That she could keep the walls around her heart so high no one could get past them. But she had learned with Bryce even keeping him outside those inner walls she still was hurt by his betrayal because she had allowed herself to care at least a little. Whether it was just caring for her partner or her lover she wasn't sure, but she did care about Bryce and even if he never knew the woman behind those walls, she still got hurt. Shaw had learned the same lesson even more vividly with the death of his wife. It left him cold and emotionless with no ability to connect with another person.
So with Shaw it was even less complicated than Bryce. He had no interest in her other than as a spy and as his bed warmer. It was simply physical and even then she didn't understand why she did it. Why she let herself fall victim to him. He wasn't charming like Bryce, he wasn't rugged and manly like Cole and he certainly wasn't anything like Chuck. That was about the only reason she could come up with for accepting his advances. He was there and he wasn't Chuck. Was she really that pathetic?
Then when Chuck returned from DC and asked her to come with him to Rome, she lashed out at him for what she had manipulated him into doing. She was angry at him for doing exactly what she told him to do. She was angry at him for becoming exactly what she never wanted him to become, her. But most of all she was angry with herself and when Shaw interrupted and talked about how Chuck shouldn't have come to her but to him for advice on Rome, she was disgusted. She hated Chuck, she hated Shaw and she hated herself. She wanted to be anywhere else than in Castle at that moment.
Sarah closed her eyes for a moment remembering that feeling of how could things have gone so wrong. It wasn't supposed to be that way and so she accepted Shaw's date for dinner as he was far far less complicated to deal with than the emotion filled morass that was Chuck Bartowski. If the Chuck she knew and loved was gone she couldn't bear to see what she helped replace him with. The empty suit that was Daniel Shaw was simple.
But then in a moment of bravery on Chuck's part, things began to change. She remembered the look on Chuck's face when he asked "is this seat taken?" It was full of honesty, determination and yes quite a bit of nerves. As she listened to him speak so eloquently about how he had changed and what he wanted in his life, her heart began to open up once again. The spark she thought or actually told herself was extinguished by what he had done at the train tracks suddenly began to smolder again.
Sarah closed her eyes and ran her fingers lightly over the objet in her hands once more. It was almost like she was caressing it. As she touched it, she reveled in its effect on her, much like the man who had been speaking to her from his heart that night across the table at that restaurant. It was in such stark contrast to the phony attempt at sincerity the man that had occupied that seat a few minutes earlier had displayed. She had tried to get herself to believe that Shaw meant what he was saying but it all felt so much like he, and she to an extent, were playing a mark. It was all for show and nothing was real.
But when Chuck was there she knew without a doubt he meant every word he was saying. He wasn't playing her like Shaw had been, rejoicing in his success in making the Intersect a killer and full fledged Agent. He had exerted his control over both Chuck and Sarah and in his mind he had won and the gorgeous woman across from him was the prize for his success.
But even after she had treated him so badly in Castle, Chuck was still there opening up his heart to her one more time. When she asked him what he was truly saying, she knew/hoped that he was about to tell her he loved her. And in that moment she knew once again what she had told Shaw in her hotel room was a lie, she still loved Chuck. She still loved him with all her heart.
But then Devon and Shaw came crashing through the window and the moment was broken. She never got to hear what he was going to say, though what she thought and hoped for was confirmed the next day.
Sarah then thought back to that moment in Castle when Shaw told Beckman he was sacrificing himself to take out the Ring Director. His actions were reckless and suicidal. Also when he told her he would give up his life for a chance to take down the man who had killed his wife, she knew what she had always known if she had let herself step back from the trance she had allowed herself to be in when she got involved with Shaw. It was all a singular focus for him. It was all about avenging his wife's death. She meant nothing to him but a final goodbye kiss. Shaw was acting foolishly and was going to die for quite possibly nothing. They had no intel the Director would actually be there or that it was anything but a trap yet Shaw was determined and exerted his superiority over her and simply said it wasn't her choice. He was being anything but the great spy they were told he had been at one time. He was an obsessed and almost suicidal spy that would quite probably get everyone else around him killed as well.
But then Chuck, crazy, wonderful, selfless Chuck told her that he was willing to risk his life not for some misguided quest for vengeance. That no matter the odds or cost to himself, he would try to save the man he thought she cared about even if it meant losing her to him forever. It was something she had never expected, something she didn't fully understand and something incredibly noble. Unlike Shaw, what mattered to Chuck was Sarah's happiness first, last and always. Even if it meant sacrificing his own. And when she saw him carry Shaw on his back out of the explosion all she felt was pride, admiration and faith in Chuck. He was still the man she fell for and the man he was carrying was nothing more than dead weight in more ways than one. As she smiled at the memory her heart once again filled with joy and pride in that incredible man.
Then after she briefed Beckman on what happened with Chuck and Shaw, he appeared again and confirmed what she now realized she hoped he was going to say at the restaurant and so many other times before. He loved her, Chuck Bartowski had always loved her and she knew that she loved him. Her sense of duty caught her once more just like it had when he had asked her to take a vacation with him before this mess had even begun and she tried to tell him that her commitment to DC wasn't just about Shaw but to Beckman and the greater good. But in that moment she had no defense for the sincerity in his voice. He loved her and it felt really nice to say. Then when he kissed her she felt so much more than she had earlier that day when Shaw had kissed her. In that moment she felt nothing, certainly nothing like this. It brought her back to the difference between kissing Bryce in Chuck's bedroom and kissing Chuck at the docks. One simply couldn't compare to the other and each time it was all about Chuck. Nothing and no one else mattered but him.
Sarah lifted the frame in her hand and gently kissed the face of the man in the picture. The man who was holding her, protecting her, loving her and the only man that ever made her feel safe, comfortable. Sarah thought back to the moment she threw a pencil through his face in that same picture in this very same room when he got too close to her past. But she also remembered that even then he proved to her that if anyone deserved to know about her past, it was Chuck Bartowski.
Sarah remembered watching him walk away after he told her he didn't want to have to convince her, he just wanted her to show up. When he said "I love you Sarah Walker, always have", she knew she loved him too and she always had as well.
Thinking about that moment she realized even if he had killed someone, he simply had done what she, Casey, Bryce and Shaw had done countless times before. He did his job and ended a threat to this nation. She saw in his eyes that she knew could never lie to her that he was still the same guy, he was still Chuck. She had simply stopped looking for far too long. She knew at that moment she was at the cross roads once again. But unlike so many times before the choice was simple, so incredibly simple. She chose Chuck. She chose Chuck above all else and she knew it was the right choice.
Sarah glanced over at the clock on her night stand and saw that it was five minutes past 6pm. She had a little under an hour to get to Union Station to meet the man she loved with all her heart. The man that had always accepted her, warts and all. It was time to show him that she accepted him completely as well. She kissed her fingers tenderly and traced Chuck's face one more time. As she did, she felt a warmth come over her she hadn't felt since that fateful day in Prague. They had come full circle and now it was time to finally board that train to their future, a future with the man she loved by her side.
Sarah quickly placed the picture frame on her night stand where it always should have remained and made a solemn vow that it would never be far from her side again. No matter where she was in the world that picture would be close by.
Noticing the time again she began to gather her clothes for both "summer and winter wear". She chuckled at the memory. God she loved this man and she couldn't believe she tried to tell herself otherwise just a few days earlier. Just as she was placing a few items in her bag she heard a knock at her door. Fixing her hair a bit she walked over to the door and looked through the peephole and was surprised at who she saw standing there. She quickly opened the door and saw her one time partner and yes, her friend.
"You got a sec?"
"Ahh yah sure, come on in."
A/N2 Thanks for taking the time to read this little drabble. If you get a minute and feel so inclined, drop a review. Ch 31 of LL&L is next.