Title: Bare
Author: Night_Lotus
Rating: M
Word Count: 342
Chapter: 1/1
Disclaimer: I neither own Chuck nor its marvelous characters, but because of the creative genius of Chris Fedak and Joshua Schwartz, I have the opportunity to play in their sandbox.
Summary: John bares his soul.
Author's Note: I don't know where this angsty little ficlet came from. Goddess, I think one of your angst bunnies escaped and hopped over my fence. I guess it just needed to get out.
He lay naked, wrapped in her arms. He was bare in both body and soul.
He told her, told her everything.
He began with the humble, all-American origins of Alex Coburn in that nearly forgotten small town in the Midwest, to the idealistic act of patriotism that erased all traces of the 19 year-old boy in the rotting, stinking, sweltering South American jungle.
He continued with the genesis of John Casey, the government's super spy, the faithful, obedient, well-trained weapon that never failed to acquire the target and obliterate it.
He detailed, dispassionately, the numerous ways in which he'd killed enemies and innocents alike, some quickly and humanely, others with agonizingly slow violence. He'd simply lost track of how many.
He cynically recalled the dozens of faceless women he'd fucked in the name of freedom.
He shook as he relived the moment he discovered that he had a beautiful, grown daughter, the spitting image of his abandoned fiancé. Pieces of his previous life inhabiting the same space as his current life caused a tempest of bitterness and remorse to roil in his gut.
He ashamedly apologized to her for all of the lies that had effortlessly flown from his lips foremost to protect the Intersect, secondarily to protect her brother.
She cupped his face in her hands, gently wiping away the tears that poured freely down his face, her fingers saturated by his hot, wet admission of guilt.
She knew there was nothing she could say, that this was his cross to bear, but she would be the foundation that he could lay his weary head upon as he stitched together the ragged, torn pieces of his life and forged his true identity.
She pulled the blankets around them, drawing him closer, softly stroking his hair as his head rested against her breast.
She continued to hold him and breathed a sigh of relief as his breathing slowed and evened out, and he finally accepted sleep.
His soul was no longer tortured, no longer bare, not as long as she was there.
~Fin