Chuck Versus the Gift
Chuck surveyed the scene before him. The party had continued after his impromptu speech and Sarah's crowning as reunion queen, the humdrum of chatter and laughter having returned to its normal level, though the world's most unlikely DJ was no longer providing a soundtrack for the event. Casey had left a few minutes earlier to escort Heather Ratner to a secret CIA holding facility for interrogation. Her husband Mark, in shock over the revelation that his wife was the behind-the-scenes broker for his fighter-bomber plans, had left as well to be present at his wife's interrogation. Although Chuck had a feeling the marriage might just be coming to an end fairly soon.
He continued to look around the room, before his eyes finally settled on the person he'd been looking for. Sarah Walker never failed to take his breath away. Someone had gotten her a towel which she had used to dry her hair and dab away her running makeup, leaving her looking cleaner and more natural, albeit still somewhat dishevelled. She had also yet to recover her high heels from wherever they came off, leaving her barefoot. Chuck thought she was absolutely beautiful.
Sarah was talking animatedly with a shorter, raven-haired woman; an old friend, it seemed. She noticed him watching her and smiled softly. Her friend apparently noticed Sarah's brief distraction, as she turned around to look in Chuck's direction too. Her eyes widened slightly before turning back to Sarah, saying something Chuck couldn't hear which made Sarah's soft smile widen into a grin. She looked at him again, for longer this time, giving him the time to smile back, before she returned once more to her conversation.
Chuck decided to bow out of the gym at that point, leaving the Class of '98 to their big re-union and Sarah to her more personal one. He wandered the halls of the school for some time before coming across a wrecked display cabinet, its contents strewn over the floor. Sarah and Heather's fight, cathartic as he was sure it'd been, had left quite the trail of destruction. He was about to move on when something caught his eye; a framed photograph of the school band.
He picked it up, gently brushing the broken glass away, to take a closer look. In the bottom right-hand corner of the picture was a girl with large braces and mousy hair, just like the one in the class photo he'd been temporarily stunned by when they first arrived. Rather than her overall appearance, it was the small, shy smile that made Sarah stand out in this photo, contrasting with the prouder, exaggerated and toothy smiles of her classmates. She was clutching a violin and bow together in front of her, along with a well-worn case for her small instrument by her feet, tucked just under her chair.
He couldn't believe it. Sarah Walker played the violin; Agent Sarah I-don't-really-like-music Walker, played the violin, and in her school band no less. It was probably a small revelation, he knew, given all he was sure there was to know about the great and mysterious Sarah Walker, his spy protector. Nonetheless, it felt significant to him - a part of her past and personality which she had not yet shared, either because she didn't think it important or conversely because it was particularly important to her.
"Chuck!"
He was pulled from his musings by the woman in question calling out, her voice echoing through the halls of the school, coming from the general direction of the gym space he'd left previously.
"Coming" he called back, looking around hurriedly for somewhere to put the picture, before settling it on the shelf from which it had presumably fallen, rather than back amongst the debris. He stood back, taking one last glance at the girl in the photograph, before making his way back to the gym and his secret violinist-cover girlfriend.
Sarah closed the file on the bedsheet in front of her, fell back on her bed and sighed.
This last mission – with Chuck posing as a German businessman called Lichtenstein and her father as his listing agent – had been a tough one. Not the toughest physically or strategically perhaps, but emotionally. Seeing her father was always difficult, but having him become intertwined with her work as a spy had made things even worse. Chuck's comfort and counsel after Jack Burton had skipped town yet again just ahead of the authorities, had helped some, however. A shoulder to cry on was something she'd never had before, and although she hadn't shed tears as she'd leaned against him that day, it was nice to know she could've had she needed to.
Unfortunately, Chuck had not been able to provide as much assistance in completing the paperwork that followed the Lichtenstein mission, which had taken her and Casey most of the week. Part of the reason it'd taken so long was covering their, or rather Sarah's, tracks after aiding her father's most recent escape from the law.
She was still pondering whether she had done the right thing a few minutes later when there was a knock at her door. Sighing once more, she got up and made her way over to answer it. As always, before opening the door she removed her trusty Smith & Wesson from her bag hanging from the coatrack and placed it on the small table next to the door. She looked through the peephole but was pleasantly surprised by who was there. She replaced the gun in her bag and swung the door open.
"Hi, Chuck. What's up?", she asked, smiling softly.
He was wearing an untucked dark grey dress shirt, blue jeans and his signature Chuck's. More interestingly though, he was carrying a fairly large, gift-wrapped package.
"Hi there", he replied, smiling somewhat nervously. "Happy birthday!"
She gave him a flat, faux-disapproving look "You know today's not my birthday either, right?"
He looked even more sheepish, but also slightly mischievous, then "No, I know. Or rather, I don't know, which is why I'm…okay let me start again", he took a breath. "Okay, I know today probably isn't your real birthday, but according to the James Buchanan High School yearbook for the Class of '98, which I was able to find a copy of online, it is Jenny Burton's birthday today. I figured that as long as I don't know the real date I might as well use this one as a stand in."
She tried to be annoyed at his compassion-driven digging but found she really couldn't. In fact, she was rather touched by it.
He glanced over her shoulder, and presumably saw the many files scattered across her bed.
"I uh, I can come back another time if now's inconvenient", he offered.
"No, no, it's fine. Please, come in", she stepped back so he could enter the room, and he promptly made his way over to the bed-turned-workspace so he could deposit the parcel he was cradling under one arm. She quickly swept up all the files and dropped them in a semi-neat pile on the coffee table by the window.
"Thanks" he said, carefully placing the mystery package onto her bed, and pushing it slightly in her direction.
"Happy Birthday", he repeated.
"Thanks" she said as she accepted the gift, still feeling slightly unsure. "Please, sit down, if you like"
He perched himself on the edge of one end of the bed as she did the same, simultaneously starting to tear away the wrapping paper. The package wasn't quite rectangular as she'd first thought when she saw it, but rather was narrower at one end and had more rounded corners. She finally tore off the last piece of thin paper, exposing what she realised was a case for a musical instrument; but not just any musical instrument…
"Open it", he encouraged.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she lifted the lid of the case, revealing what she had already guessed was inside.
It was a violin. It looked old, but very well looked after, and was presumably a beauty to play. It took her breath away just looking at it.
"It's beautiful", she managed to say, still in shock. "Thank you".
"You like it?", he asked, still sounding slightly unsure.
"I love it", she replied vehemently, "But wait, how did you…" How did he know? She was sure she'd never told him.
"Uh, maybe you don't remember but during the mission at your high school reunion, you and Heather smashed up a trophy case"
She nodded, indicating that she did remember. Boy, did she remember.
"Well, um, in it there was a picture of the high school band..."
He didn't need to say anymore. She remembered the picture, remembered sitting for it to be taken. She'd been so nervous, worried about what her father would've said if he'd found out about in it – that she'd left even more photographic evidence than just the obligatory class photo Chuck had seen when they'd gone to the reunion. But she'd wanted to be in it, wanted some trace of her to be remembered and preserved. A trace which showed she'd at least once been part of something bigger than herself, something besides one of her father's cons.
"I've haven't played in years" she said finally, after sitting in stunned silence for a little while.
"Yeah, I thought that might be the case, so I bought some sheet music books to go with. They're in the case", he gestured to the instrument's housing discarded on the bed. "I figured if you ever wanted to pick it up again, you'd need an instrument to play and some songs to start out with"
Examining the vintage instrument more closely as he spoke, she lifted it up to eye level, examining the whole exterior before peering through one of the F-holes to read the print inside denoting the maker and model.
She almost dropped her now treasured gift in shock.
"Chuck, this is a Stradivarius"
"Yeah, that it is" the equal parts sheepish and mischievous smile was back, though this time the mischief had the edge over the sheepishness.
"Chuck, these things cost millions of dollars, how on Earth did you get a hold of one?"
"Entirely legally, if that's what you're worried about. A…person with a computer emergency gave it to me in exchange for services rendered. They felt I'd gone above and beyond and wanted to give me more than just a standard fee and good review on a customer comment card"
"What did you do for them that they'd give you an actual Stradivarius?"
"Well, let's just say the work I did for this client was of a sensitive nature", she gave him a dubious look at that. "Again, all legal, just sensitive, that's all. Well, I think it was the work I did and the provenance of this particular piece that made him so eager to offload it onto me"
"Okay, now you have to explain", she stated matter of factly.
"The guy was a businessman from Japan who called the Nerd Herd desk for assistance", he elaborated. "He needed help setting up a presentation for a convention he was attending in town. Problem was he had a really nasty virus on his computer which threatened to ruin the whole thing. It took some pretty tough finagling by yours truly to get rid of it", he looked rather proud of himself at that point, as Sarah supposed he should. "Even with my hard work though, he seemed pretty eager to give it to me, which put me on edge. I mean, even though I didn't know it was a Stradivarius yet, I could still tell it was valuable"
He was wringing his hands, clearly nervous about telling her the next part. "Turns out it'd been stolen from a previous owner in the 1960s, and the guy - the Japanese businessman, that is – inherited it from a distant uncle or something. When he found out what he'd inherited had been stolen he tried giving it back to the rightful owner, but the guy had apparently stopped playing violin after it was taken and didn't want it back, so he gave him his blessing to keep it or pass it on" He paused for a moment, letting her take it all in, before continuing. "Even though it was now rightfully his I guess he still wanted to wash his hands of the whole business"
After he finished explaining, she dropped her head and returned to gazing in wonder at the instrument in her lap. "Chuck, this really is too much", she protested.
"Respectfully, I disagree. Since you came into my life you've saved me from certain death multiple times, put up with my whining and girlish screams, all without any complaint and with a lot of emotional labour on your part. This really was the least I could do"
"Thank you. I don't know what else to say", she breathed, feeling her eyes stinging a little.
"Well, you could say yes"
"To what?", she asked, confused.
"Well, besides the violin, to dinner; tonight's a cover date night anyway, and I thought this time it could double as a little birthday celebration", he paused. "If you're game, that is"
She smiled brightly at him. "Yeah, I am."
"Great", his face split into his signature, nose-wrinkling grin. "And I promise, no gunfights, no car chases, and no wait-staff coming out with a big birthday cake singing happy birthday while the whole restaurant watches".
She looked at him curiously.
"Ellie did it for my sixteenth birthday", he explained. "It was mortifying."
She chuckled, "Well, I just need a few minutes to get ready, I can't exactly go out looking like this", she gestured to her sweatpants and plain t-shirt, before looking at him expectantly. He quickly caught on, his eyes widening, "Oh! Right, of course, I'll just, um, wait outside", he backed out of the room, almost knocking over the small table by the door as he left.
She chuckled again, before turning back to the bed. Carefully, she put the violin back in its case, before taking it over to her wardrobe and stowing it there. She'd definitely need to find a more secure way of stowing it at some point. She then moved on to picking out a new outfit for what was shaping up to be a far more enjoyable evening than she'd bargained for.
A few minutes later she emerged, wearing a pair of tight-fitting jeans and the blue blouse with little white buttons she knew he liked.
"Let's go" she said, beaming at him and offering her hand.
"Yeah", he replied, taking it and smiling softly back. "Let's"
They initially walked the short distance down the hallway to the elevator in silence, before Chuck spoke up. "Oh and by the way, I've been meaning to ask, who was that woman you were talking to at the reunion?"
And so she told him about her old friend - their time together in school, their conversation at the reunion and what the other woman had done in the intervening years - a tale which carried them all the way through the journey to the restaurant, where they moved on to other topics; Morgan, Jeff and Lester's antics at the Buy More, Casey's mysterious and eclectic talents, what was going on between Beckman and Roan Montgomery, and so on. Yes, it definitely was going to be a more enjoyable evening than she'd bargained for.
Chuck ran his hands down the front of his grey and white baseball tee, smoothing it, and blew out a breath. Sarah had texted him just before his Buy More shift had ended, asking him to cover over to her apartment, though without specifying what she wanted him to come over for. That was why he was presently in the elevator of her building, nervously bouncing on the balls of his feet, rubbing away what little tread was left on his well-worn black high-tops.
He wracked his brains as to why she wanted to see him out of the blue like this. They had no scheduled cover date tonight, nor did he think it likely they'd been given a mission – Casey could gruffly inform him if that was the case. Unless this was a mission without Casey; a CIA-only mission, perhaps? But no, Beckman was the NSA Director, she wouldn't exclude her agency's only operative on the team from a mission, would she?
Or maybe this was about something else. Things between him and Sarah had been very up-and-down of late, what with the fiasco at Christmas, the aborted stay in the suburbs, and most recently, Cole Barker. Was she upset with him for what he'd said in the courtyard? Had his speech to her been too much?
Maybe he was overthinking. Perhaps it was something simple, like she was having a tech issue. A few weeks ago, she'd come into the Buy More not for him, but rather to buy some new electronics. Chuck hadn't served her or even had time to talk to her – he'd been too busy herding his fellow nerds – but he'd seen her leave with several bags that looked full to bursting with new tech.
The elevator's ding upon reaching Sarah's floor pulled him from his thoughts. He got out and walked the short distance to her door. Before knocking he took a deep breath, trying to calm his rising nerves about whatever might be about to happen.
After he finally did knock, he heard footsteps on the other side almost immediately, with the door swinging open to reveal his handler/cover girlfriend just as swiftly. She didn't even seem to have checked through the peephole in the door, as he knew she usually did before she opened it, prudent spy that she was.
"Hi", she said. "Great, you're here, come in", she walked back into the room, not waiting for him to respond.
"Uh, okay", he stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. "Sarah, what's this about? Is it a mission, an impromptu cover date or…something else?", he asked, wincing slightly as he finished.
"No, Chuck, none of those things", she said reassuringly, apparently sensing his unease. "Well, maybe a little bit of the second one. I actually have something I want to show you, or rather, have you listen to". She gestured over her shoulder, in the direction of the bed.
It was then he noticed that she had a small performance area set up, complete with microphone, portable speaker and live looping pedal, in the middle of the room. Guess that answers the question about what she bought at the Buy More. And just beyond, lying on the bed was the Stradivarius.
"You mean you want to play the violin? For me?", he asked, more than a little surprised.
"Uh, yeah", she sounded slightly uneasy herself now, as though she were doubting calling him over for this. He decided to allay her concerns.
"Yeah, I'd love it"
"Really?", she still sounded slightly unsure.
"Really"
"Okay, great. Please, sit", she gestured to the edge of the bed, pulling up a stool for herself by the microphone. "Now, I just want to say before I start that I've only practiced this with the live looper and everything else twice so far, so this might not be perfect", she warned as she rested the violin under her chin and readied the bow. "I got it just right when I was playing earlier, which is why I called you - I wanted you to hear it while I seem to have got in the swing of it.
"I'm sure it'll be great", he encouraged.
She smiled at him, before clearing her throat, shifting herself in her seat, and slightly adjusting the microphone stand so it was as close to the violin as possible without being an obstruction while she played.
After clearing her throat one more time, she began to play, drawing the bow across the strings slowly to produce the first notes. Chuck recognised the melody fairly quickly but could not remember the name. After the first two bars, Sarah pressed the loop pedal for the first time, and began playing the melody again, this time in a slightly higher register. Another two bars later, and she pressed the pedal once again while continuing the melody, which changed subtly this time, in the next register up.
After the third time she pressed the loop pedal, the melody began to change more noticeably, and Chuck suddenly remembered the name of the piece. Pachelbel's Canon.
He continued to watch and listen, enthralled, as the music became even more complex. Sarah Walker, bad-ass CIA superspy, was playing the part of an entire string quartet. For him. The sheer skill of it, playing the whole piece solo, adding in new melodies as the ground bass melody continued in the background, left him awestruck. He couldn't look away, nor did he want to, transfixed as he was by the sound of the music and sight of her as she played; her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in concentration, yet at once somehow looking more content and at peace than he had ever seen her before.
The music began to reach its end, and while he was sure it had only been a few minutes, he'd been so immersed in it (and the musician) he felt like he'd been listening to her for much longer. Not that he was complaining, quite the opposite – he was pretty sure she could've kept playing for hours and he still would've been filled with melancholy when she finished.
Eventually, as the looped recordings came to a stop and the last traces of the final high note dissipated, Sarah slowly opened her eyes and let out a breath, before looking to him in anticipation.
"Well?"
"Yea-uhm", he coughed, trying to rid himself of the lump in his throat. "Yeah, that was…wow!"
"Really?", the unsure tone had returned.
"Yeah", he replied breathlessly, still in something of a daze. "That was something else. You were incredible". She broke out into a grin.
"Yeah?"
He just nodded this time, smiling softly at her and taking her hand. He realised at that moment what a big deal this was, her sharing this with him. Before giving her the violin, he'd been worried that she wouldn't like it, or more precisely wouldn't like what it revealed – that he'd found out something significant about her past. And she'd not only accepted it, but been genuinely pleased with it, enough so to buy all this expensive music tech and put on this small performance for him.
"Thank you, for playing that for me"
"S'okay. You did get me the violin, and I wasn't exactly gonna perform for the first time for Casey"
He chuckled. "Yeah, the choir boy in him might've tried to sing along". Just as she rocked backwards laughing, her cell phone rang from the night-stand on the opposite side of the bed. She groaned and crawled over to pick it up before it vibrated its way off the table.
"Hello" she answered cheerily, but the smile vanished from her face a second later and she adopted her neutral 'Agent' mask. Her sudden and often unexpected transformations were something Chuck didn't think he'd ever get used to. "Yes, this is Walker. Yes, General, this line's secure. Yes, we can be there in ten minutes"
He couldn't make out what was said next, but Sarah's eyes widened slightly before she spoke again. "Yes, General, the asset's here with me now. We, uh, had a cover date scheduled for tonight."
Chuck frowned at the lie, as they'd had their scheduled cover date last night. Why would Sarah not want General Beckman to know why he was actually here? Could accepting gifts from assets get her in trouble, perhaps? Whatever the reason, Beckman was apparently satisfied with Sarah's answer, as after that she abruptly hung up. As she usually did.
Sarah took a deep breath before speaking to him. "I'm sorry Chuck, but we've got a mission", she paused before continuing. "And apparently we've going to need plumber's overalls"
He nodded, not really focused on what she was saying, still slightly unsettled by the swift and unexpected change in mood the evening had taking taken. Shaking himself to clear his head, he made for the door before realising Sarah wasn't right behind him. He turned around in time to see Sarah putting the violin away in its place in her wardrobe. She then locked the wardrobe – with a heavy-duty looking lock which had not been there previously to the best of his recollection – before turning to him, face still in neutral agent mode. "Okay, let's go"
Chuck nodded mutely again, and they headed out to face whatever was in store for them this time. And to find out exactly why they needed to be dressed up like plumbers.
The End.
A/N1: The Lamoureux-Zimbalist (1735) violin by Antonio Stradivari belonged to violinist David Sarser before it was stolen from his New York studio in 1962. Sarser was a member of the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini during the 1950s and was also an innovative audio engineer and electronics designer. After its theft, Sarser was advised that his violin had been taken to Japan, but he was never able to determine its exact whereabouts. Police at the time concluded that the instrument was already on a plane to Tokyo by the time it was discovered to be missing from the RCA studio. Sarser said of his instrument, "I have no desire to play any other instrument. It became part of me, and I became part of it". He died in June 2013, having never been re-united with his instrument, and kept to true to his word of never playing violin again after its theft. The violin's location is unknown to this day.
A/N2: A big thank you to Zettel for letting me use an original character of his from The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker. To anyone who's not read that story yet, I highly recommend it.