Merry Christmas, all.
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The way he looks at her scares her sometimes. It's not that he leers or stares; it's more that he doesn't. It's when he sees her slice a burger in half with a knife, or when they're out for a run and he's cramping up, or when they drive by the strip mall where Chuck – and she – spent so much of their lives.
It goes like this: he will glance at her, and he'll smile, and he'll look like he's about to say something. But then he always looks away, and more often than not he cheerily changes the subject.
It makes her want to scream at him: What? What don't I remember? Please, just tell me, and if I can't remember it now I'll commit every detail to memory so at least we'll always have the memory of the time you told me about it.
He always mutters under his breath when other men gawk at her. She thinks his irritation is cute, but she wishes, just once, that he would look at her with that same lust and interest. Instead, when she walks to the shower in just a towel he keeps his eyes on the TV, and his gaze never lingers further south than her face when she leans over the table when they're at a restaurant.
It's maddening. He's so good at talking, and she knows that she's already told him everything but she can't remember how she did it. She's always spoken better through action; there's a certain economy to the interplay of violence, the chaos of sex.
Because words aren't working for her, but she wants, needs a way to tell him: You're the only thing I believe in right now. She wishes she could smile or grab his shoulder or just look at him and he would know, that anyone would know: I'm falling in love with Chuck Bartowski and I don't know what to do about it.
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She doesn't think he knows. He's figured that out by now, at least.
She goes on a few missions, a month or two after the beach. She doesn't give much of an explanation, only that she'd spoken to Beckman and that it was something she needed to try. When she'd told him, it had felt like she was asking his permission. He could tell she expected him to be hurt, that she was afraid that she'd started to tear his world apart again.
"I understand," he'd said.
She hadn't been able to hide her surprise: "You do?"
"I do," he'd said, and for the most part he meant it. He'd cocked half a grin at her. "But on one condition."
He quarterbacks the missions from Castle, with some help from Morgan. It's different, watching her go through the paces from half a world away, and when the gunfire starts it feels like he can't breathe and Morgan has to put them on mute to prevent his stifled yelps from distracting Sarah from the mission. But she gets through all right - she always gets through all right - and when each mission is over he laughs and pops a bottle of champagne next to his mic so she can hear the bubbles fizzing through her earpiece.
Each time she comes back is different. The first, she'd slipped into the apartment quietly as Alex wiped the floor with Morgan and him in Morgan's beaten old copy of Star Wars Monopoly. She'd stood there near the bar, hands clasped in front of her as she waited silently for him to notice her, bag strapped over her shoulder. It occurred to him that she must have come in through the Morgan Door.
"Need a fourth?" she'd asked, almost too quietly to hear, and he hadn't been able to stop his grin.
After the second mission, he'd come up into the home theater room of the Buy More from Castle and found her pretending to peruse the iPhone accessories on the rack outside. She'd had a cut above her left eyebrow and had grabbed his hand without any prompting and said, "Lunch?"
The third time, she'd been waiting for him when he'd gotten home. She'd stood from the kitchen table and stutter-stepped before nearly falling into him, arms pressed to her chest as she let him fold her into his embrace.
She'd been shaking. Cold. Pale.
Then she'd looked up at him, bitten her lip, and said, "Hi," and when he opened his mouth to respond she'd kissed him with a thirst that nearly knocked him over, scratched his back and torn at his clothes and pulled him toward her with a desperate resolve that seemed to beg him to hold her together.
Yeah, she doesn't think he knows, and it's killing her. He can tell that she wants to tell him, that she thinks she's letting him down. That she's letting herself down. When they'd met five years ago she'd struggled to express the depth of her feelings, and he can see her undergoing that same struggle now.
But it's not a battle he can fight for her: he's tried that play before, thank you very much. He knows that Sarah Walker (the spy) had to become Sarah Walker (the person) all on her own.
She's not the woman she was three months ago. She's not Sarah Bartowski, and it's killing her to think that she's letting him down, to think that she can't tell him.
But she doesn't need to. She may not be Sarah Bartowski, but he knows what Sarah Walker looks like in love.
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Casey comes back for Alex's birthday, and hints once or twice that he might stay.
Sarah thinks she wouldn't mind that. She's only started to recover memories, in sudden and dizzying flashes that approximate how disorienting she'd expect it would feel to rediscover a piece of yourself you'd dropped along the way. Most have to do with Chuck - a charm bracelet, the floor of the Wienerlicious supply closet, an empty hospital hallway - but she's had a few other ones. She remembers eating Chinese with Casey in vans and in Castle, arguing over the advantages of a Smith & Wesson, and when she sees him now she remembers him leading her high school reunion in a rousing rendition of "MMMBop".
He grunts and scowls and pretends to not have missed them, but he doesn't try too hard to keep up the front, and any time he sees Alex the facade drops entirely.
"It's been good to see you again, Walker," he says as they sit in her kitchen long after Chuck has gone to bed, sipping the scotch she keeps in the top cabinet.
"Same," she says, honestly.
He swirls the liquid in his glass. "How's Bartowski?"
She doesn't know how to answer. Impossibly forgiving? Warm? Hurt? Patient? Haunted by insecurity, though he tries not to show it?
She settles on, "Good, I think."
"Hope so," Casey grunts. "Imagine it's been hard on him."
She doesn't know how to respond to that, either.
"Kid's the best of us," Casey says.
"I know."
Casey downs the scotch in one and sets the glass on the table.
"Good. Just make sure you remember that you are, too."
Sarah really hopes that Casey will stay.
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Morgan tries to help her with her memory, but mostly the "lessons" just serve as an excuse for the two to hang out. Chuck appreciates it - appreciates Morgan for making the effort, and appreciates Sarah for being patient with him.
A couple times, she does remember something, and his spirits soar and Morgan runs around the apartment whooping and she sits on the couch red-faced and laughing at the two men jumping around and celebrating something so trivial as being able to recall Chuck's favorite place to get sizzling shrimp.
But mostly they just talk, and Chuck sits at his computer or cleans or Skypes with Ellie and occasionally butts in when Morgan's completely rewritten history or tried to convince her to watch Knight Rider ("KITT is required viewing, buddy!").
Once, when they're playing Mario Kart and Sarah strikes Chuck's driver (Bowser, obviously) with a blue shell, he notices her reach over with her right hand and engage Morgan in their old secret handshake as she continues driving one-handed. And Chuck finds that he doesn't mind losing so much.
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She would have killed them. She would have killed her own sister-in-law. She would have put a bullet between her husband's eyes.
Some days she can't escape that. She and Ellie talk once a week when Chuck's not there. The official reason is so Ellie can monitor the progress of her recovery from the neurological damage she sustained, but Sarah knows that Ellie is just as worried about what is going on in her brother's life. And, more troubling, that Ellie is worried about her as well.
"It was torture," Ellie's told her once (if not a hundred times), "with elements of brainwashing. It's not your fault, Sarah. It wasn't you."
Sarah knows that this is Ellie's area of expertise, but it doesn't make it seem any more true.
Ellie and Devon come to visit every couple months or so, and on those occasions Sarah's shocked to realize how at ease she feels around the both of them. There's something about the two of them - Ellie's boundless ability to care, and Devon's boundless belief in the goodness in others - that puts her at ease, and makes her feel a little less guilty for a while.
She and Chuck go to Chicago six months after the incident. It's summer and the weather's cleared, and they sit in the Woodcombs' backyard and sip lemonade and laugh over stories of Chuck and Ellie growing up. At one point Ellie shifts Clara (over a year old now) into Sarah's arms, and it throws her for a loop: she remembers sitting on the floor of her apartment with Ellie, leaning against the back of the sofa and sharing sauvignon blanc from the same bottle, talking about Clara and Molly and houses with picket fences.
She shifts Clara onto her shoulder as Devon launches into the tale of the first time he met Chuck and she feels… well, awesome, for the first time in a while.
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His mom and Sarah bond again more quickly than he could ever anticipated. Especially considering that the last time they'd seen each other, the Bartowski matriarch had been pointing a Glock at his wife's face.
They don't talk much at first, at least not that Chuck can hear. But they spend the second afternoon of his mother's visit in Castle together, doing God-knows-what (he suspects it has something to do with the shooting range), and by that night they're baking a banana cake together, murmuring beneath their breaths and chuckling about something he can't hear.
It's unnerving.
(The banana cake is excellent.)
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It takes her far too long to realize that falling in love with their family and friends is part of falling in love with Chuck.
It's not that it's a prerequisite or anything - it's not like she couldn't fall in love with him if they were left entirely alone. (She could, and would.) It's just that to truly get to know Chuck Bartowski, you have to see what he means to those around him. He's the glue, as Morgan (and one time, Casey) likes to say when Chuck isn't around.
She remembers now how she'd grown to cherish these moments when they're all standing in the kitchen, talking about their days and poking fun at each other and drinking wine. It's rarer now to have the whole family together, but on this first Christmas after the incident they've packed everyone into their small apartment and it feels right.
Molly sits on the couch making faces at Clara as Ellie and her mother watch on, sharing parenting war stories with each other. Devon has brought his gravity boots and is trying to help Morgan through a situp, though it doesn't help that the bearded man is determined to hold his Christmas frozen daiquiri (a strawberry-and-lime swirl that Chuck had somehow coaxed from the tiny immersion blender Carina had gifted them on their wedding day) upright as he goes through the motions.
Mary has launched into a (heavily redacted, Sarah's sure) story of her last visit to Borneo as Alex listens on, occasionally asking pointed questions about self-defense technique or potential locales for a honeymoon. (The invitation for the wedding just came in the mail two days ago, not that they'd needed it: Sarah had enjoyed throwing herself into helping Chuck and Morgan enact the latter's rather detailed proposal plan, several elements of which had seemed distinctly familiar. She'd especially liked driving the DeLorean.)
Chuck and Verbanski are having what appears to be a rather intense conversation near the tree. Sarah's not sure what shocks her more: how loud Verbanski can laugh, or the fact that she's wearing a Christmas sweater complete with a light-up nose for Rudolph. Casey's rummaging around under the tree and she sees him smirk and hold up a poorly wrapped package and look at her: he's found the 25-year-old Belmore she bought for him. She nods at him and he goes off to find a tumbler, and she wonders if he noticed the package around the back that had been addressed, "For Mr. and Mrs. Schnook".
Verbanski gets drawn into Mary and Alex's conversation - something to do with submachine guns in Belize - and when Chuck notices her standing alone in the doorway of the kitchen he smiles and heads over to her. It feels nice to have his arm around her.
Casey comes to stand to their left, three tumblers balanced in his grip. She takes one and Chuck takes one and they all share a glance and Casey might even smile for a second. They sip their scotch and stand together in silence, taking in the madness before them as Morgan's Official Christmas Mix Vol. 7 booms from the surround-sound speakers Chuck's rigged throughout the apartment. Chuck's hand is warm on her shoulder and this feels like a memory she's never forgotten.
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