I originally wrote most of this way back in 2012 or 2013 and I think I was planning to do more with it at the time, but then I just...never got back to it and kept not getting back to it, even once I realized it was basically complete as it was and it wouldn't take much to get it ready to post. But then I wanted to post something in February and this ficlet for a fandom I'm not really in was the quickest thing I had. So I dusted it off, made some adjustments, added a few paragraphs, and...here it is. I can't guarantee everything in it is completely accurate to canon, because I missed a lot of the final season and haven't rewatched it since, but I still think it's a cute scene and it's worth posting. Especially if it helps with my self-imposed deadlines.
Title is from the generally-appropriate-to-the-situation "After the Storm" by Mumford & Sons.
They don't get a magical Disney kiss there on the beach, of course, and as much as Chuck can be a hopeless idealist sometimes (that much is pretty obvious even if she doesn't have all the memories to back up the assumption), Sarah doesn't think he really expected one. Their world might involve the kind of things most people only see on TV and computers that can download into human brains, but it's still the real world, and the real world doesn't include magical kisses that break evil spells.
But that's not what she's expecting either, so it doesn't matter, and the story and kiss are their own small magic. She leans into him and his mouth opens under hers and his hands are gentle in her hair because he knows her, not because he's a hesitant stranger, and instead of some floodgate opening in her head to release all her memories, she's rocked with something much simpler: the bone-deep certainty that she knows him and loves him, even if she barely remembers him.
It's enough.
The memories come back in pieces.
Chuck wants to do anything he can to help her remember, and she appreciates that and wants her memories back just as much as he does, but she's not convinced there's much they can do. Wounds take time to heal. And she's a little afraid of chasing down the lost connections in her brain, if she's being honest (although it takes her a while to admit this to Chuck), because if they try to revisit some important place or recreate some key event and it doesn't work, then what? Is that memory just lost forever—maybe more so because she tried to force it to come back?
Ellie and Devon give her the Intersect research they compiled on Morgan before they leave, promising to grill their new colleagues in Chicago about memory retrieval, although so far there's not much she doesn't already know. But Ellie tells her to let the memories come back on their own, that the mind is resilient and it can heal itself with enough time, and doesn't add the unspoken probably they both know is there anyway. She thinks Ellie must have taken Chuck aside at some point to say the same thing, because he stops suggesting they retrace their honeymoon and lets them ease back into something resembling a routine.
A Star Wars marathon with Morgan would be pretty routine except, of course, for the fact that Morgan can't remember any of it, but they all need something normal and Alex has only seen the original trilogy once—and anyway, Chuck says, it's too painful to see Morgan going through life without at least knowing that George Lucas used to be brilliant. "Plus Phantom Menace 3D is nearly out and if he goes to that thinking it looks cool or because Casey decides to mess with him again—what kind of friend would I be if I let Jar-Jar Binks" (he says the name in a tone of voice most people would reserve for dog shit or something similar) "be his reintroduction to Star Wars?" So they have a double-date Friday night in, complete with popcorn, cheese puffs, and actual food from Subway, all four of them curled up on the couch to power through the entire original trilogy.
Chuck is already waxing eloquent as he sticks the first DVD in: "See, the thing you gotta remember is Lucas actually knew something about storytelling, before he got too much money and replaced story with CGI, so by today's standards the FX might look a little lame—aside from, okay, the bits they spiffed up recently, and I'll grant you that Cloud City looks nice, but it's just a little addition instead of substituting for the meat of the story—"
"I thought Naboo was pretty," Alex says.
"Yeah, but do you remember anything else besides Jar-Jar and some annoying kid? Trade disputes, seriously—"
"Liam Neeson," Sarah offers. She did see the movies before she met Chuck, all of them, so at least she's got that frame of reference even if her vague sense of appreciation for Star Wars is all from him.
"Point," Chuck says, "but—"
"And you know," Alex says mildly, for a very specific value of "mild" that is just on the edge of dangerous, "the prequels aren't objectively terrible just because you're not papering over their flaws with nostalgia."
"Uh-uh, not possible, the originals are without flaw," Chuck says.
"Nostalgia. My point remains."
"Okay, sure, the prequels aren't that awful, but parts of them are objectively terrible. That's not the point, the point is Morgan and I grew up on the original trilogy and starting anywhere else would be—wrong. It's important." He settles on the couch next to Sarah and reaches for the remote.
Morgan grabs it first. "No way, man. I may not remember watching this movie with you but I didn't lose all of them. You'll be pausing every five seconds to share trivia—"
"Oh, like you don't—"
"Hey, I have a solution." Alex plucks the remote from Morgan's hand and hits play.
They are, honestly, good movies. It's been a while, and although Sarah hasn't forgotten any of the major plot points, watching Star Wars with Chuck is a little like rediscovering it, thanks to his (frankly kind of adorable) enthusiasm. He does interrupt sometimes with behind-the-scenes trivia, which is interesting when it's about the filming process but nearly incomprehensible if it's about the many spinoff novels, but he's too eager to give Morgan a good first experience to get genuinely disruptive.
She does notice how hard he's trying to act normal and not look expectantly at Morgan; he's gotten better at that kind of thing since Sarah met him, definitely, but he's also not the highly trained spy she is, and she's good at picking up tells. For his part, Morgan clearly recognizes the major music cues, although a lot of the plot beats and set pieces seem to surprise him (except, he tells them grumpily, the big Skywalker reveal, because Casey).
Morgan doesn't actually whistle at Leia and her metal bikini, when they get to that point, but he looks like he's about to before he catches Alex's stink eye and wisely keeps his mouth shut. Chuck, on the other hand, looks strangely wistful and Sarah doesn't know why, so she says, "I can't believe they convinced the poor actress to wear that in a desert."
"…maybe she was hot?" Morgan offers.
"It's made of metal, of course she was hot."
"Yeah, but you know, because it was hot outside, so she wouldn't want to wear a lot of clothes, but also as in she's really hot…"
"Yeah, thanks, I think we got that," Alex says.
"But you'd look even hotter in one," Morgan says quickly. "I mean, if you wanted."
"Don't do it," Sarah says without thinking. "Especially if anybody uses the word 'authenticity.' Even cosplay versions chafe like crazy if they're not really well made and I can't imagine how bad a real metal one would be. Drooling fanboys never think about that."
Chuck goes very alert next to her, and she can almost feel him forcing himself not to say…whatever it is he wants to say. His voice still carries a weird note of strain when he says, "You've worn a slave Leia outfit?"
"Before you get any ideas, I should say that once was enough."
"But you remember wearing it," he persists, twisted sideways on the couch now so he can look at her. The hope in his eyes is almost painful.
So that's what this is about. Sarah almost says no, she doesn't, because gently letting him down now is better than disappointing him later if he gets his hopes up too much, but she really doesn't want to see his face do the sad-puppy thing, and the instant of hesitation she takes to gear herself up for that is enough of a pause to realize that she does remember…something. A photoshoot in front of a greenscreen, and—she can't picture the resulting photo, after the tech wizards had finished with it. But she remembers something she can only describe as an emotional flicker, surprise at how realistic it looked with just a tiny bit of wistfulness, immediately buried, that the picture and the relationship it showed were completely fake.
"I'm not sure," she says finally, and at least the sad-puppy thing isn't as bad when there's still a little hope mixed with the disappointment.
The memory of that flicker stays with her for the rest of the movie, and after, when she's trying to sleep that night. She still can't make the actual image appear in her head or remember the exact context, although it makes sense given Chuck's passion for Star Wars and nerdy things in general. The more she thinks about it, though, the more the memory takes shape as something real and right and familiar. It fits, that this would stick with her, given what she knows about the way her relationship with Chuck unfolded—that she would do something to lend verisimilitude to part of a job and pretend not to realize it represented something she wanted, something real. A metal bikini probably isn't one of the more important symbols of their story, but it's still…weighted with meaning.
It's real. She knows it's real, that flicker of wistfulness, of wanting, and with it is the sudden certainty that the rest is there too. It just might take a little while.
She can wait.
Leia's metal bikini is the first memory to come back. It's not even close to the last.