Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck, but in a little less than a week, I may own a nifty new set of Season 3 DVDs. :)
A/N: Just a drabbly thing to get my creative juices flowing. I promise there's more Collide coming eventually, hopefully soon. :)
The first time Sarah takes him to the shooting range, she doesn't even let him touch a gun.
He's all wide-eyed awe as she demonstrates, leaving him in no doubt of her deadliness. This all is, he supposes, a chance for her to prove that she'd be only too eager to fix the situation if he ever crosses a line again. Because he was stupid to not trust her, to believe for one moment that she was the double.
She tilts her head down to aim, and a strand of blond hair falls into her face, over her goggles. He smiles at the sight, but nods as if he's been paying attention all along when she says, "Between heartbeats. That's when you have to shoot."
His awe turns to admiration as the bullet hits straight through the heart of the target. Because not only is this stunning woman armed and agile and deadly, but she's here to protect him.
He's been tossed adrift in this new world of spies and deception, but she's on his side, which gives him the advantage over any bad guy.
The next time she takes him to the range is after the freezer debacle.
She doesn't say, but he can tell that he's not being taught to shoot a gun in the hopes that he will become an expert marksman and actually be able to contribute to the missions. No, he's being taught to shoot because never again does Sarah Walker want to be trapped in the freezer of a Bavarian-themed fast food restaurant with only him as her savior.
Because he may boast awesome Call of Duty skills, but put a real gun in his hands and he becomes hopeless.
And he doesn't ever want to let her down.
During his six months of training, he gets tutelage in modern weaponry. The instructor is a middle-aged, bespectacled man by the name of Mr. Moorland. He barely speaks except for a few mild critiques uttered in his soft baritone, and he never goes so far as to illustrate technique himself. Even with his teacher's preference for observation over actual instruction, he gets the impression that he isn't doing everything exactly right. He misses having her beside him, misses her hands-on methods and the way her arms folded over his as she showed him the proper way to aim, misses the crease that would form in her brow when she concentrated.
And he misses how easily she could pierce his heart, as if she didn't even need to aim.
After he gets rehired by the agency, after the team gets reinstated, no one offers to take him to the shooting range anymore, and he doesn't ask.
The first time he fires a gun - really fires one, out in the field, at a person - it's one of Sarah's. The metal is warm in his palm, but his hands are shaking in the sultry Paris night. It's so balmy, and they've got coats on, and he starts to sweat in his vest just at the sight. His pulse is racing, the blood coursing through his veins until he can barely focus.
Except she needs him to focus right now.
Between heartbeats, she had said.
So he takes a deep breath, and fires.