summary: Looking for a fresh start after some tough times, Sarah and her three-year-old daughter move to LA. When they meet a sweet curly-haired nerd who lives next door, though, Sarah realizes they might just find more happiness than they'd ever imagined, if only her past doesn't catch up to her first. AU.

a/n: And we're back! I figured it was finally time to stop dragging my heels and post something else here for you lovely lovely people. I've spent a long time trying to work out which fic to post next, but it essentially came down to something with drama and the spy life, or something with heaps of warmth and family and love. I looked at the world, and my last multi-chapter, and chose the warmth and family and love for a change of pace and to, hopefully, make some of you smile. I started writing this just before Christmas last year after wanting to for ages, and in many ways it's sort of become my baby. I got so into it I'm pretty sure I spent some of Christmas Day just glued to my screen, writing. This is also from Sarah's POV, which Fall With You wasn't, and I loved getting into her head for a long period of time and figuring her out, so I really hope you guys all enjoy this. Because there's quite a few chapters, I'm hoping to update twice a week if I can—both so I don't string you guys along for months, but also because come mid-September I'll be moving to LA! It's as bizarre and scary and fun to say as it sounds, but I also don't know how long it might take me to get settled in, so I thought I'd get as much of this out there before whatever craziness next year is going to bring sets in.

Before I stop talking, a couple notes.
First, one of my favourite Chuck stories on this site is WestieHopper's Little Girls, Paper Wreaths, & Choc Chip Cookies. I've always thought it so sweet and warm and such a great concept, and I've always been a little sad it's just the one chapter, and the story is one of the reasons I always wanted to write my own story where Sarah has a child and meets Chuck. When I started writing this fic, I realized there were gonna be some initial inescapable parallels between it and Little Girls, Paper Wreaths, & Choc Chip Cookies, so if you spot those, that's why, and I wanted to be upfront about those before we really get into this story. However, that story and this are pretty different, and everyone has their own different backgrounds that led them to where they are at the start of this story. The main comparisons are just that Sarah has a daughter, Chuck is their neighbour, and sometimes there are baked goods involved, and the rest is pretty different. I just couldn't get those concepts out of my head, and while I hoped to write it away quickly, I've ended up with over twenty chapters, instead. That being said, go read that fic! It's great, and I'm sure you'll see why I fell in love with it so.
Second, thanks to my dear friend Sophie for helping me settle on a title here. Also, thanks to David Carner for offering to take the blame for my not being able to choose a title if I couldn't think of one, and also sorta being the reason this fic has chapter titles.

Okay! After that mammoth note, imma shut up. I really hope you enjoy this fic, and as ever, if you do, please leave a review and let me know!

disclaimer: I do not own Chuck, hot chocolate and movies, or bubblegum flavoured toothpaste.

May your walls know joy, may every room hold laughter, and every window open to great possibility.

Mary Anne Radmacher

The Meet

Elevators, Sarah's noticed, always seem to climb slowest when you want them to go fast. When you want to get out, get somewhere, run outside or dive into your home. And right now, she's heading for the latter. For her home, her new home, in fact. A small two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. A fresh start.
Feeling the soft warm tiny fingers clutching her own, she smiles at the thought, sad as it is. Aware that it's the third fresh start she's gone through in four or so years.

"Almost there, okay, baby?"

Amy rubs a hand over her eye when Sarah looks down, nodding as she does so and humming in quiet assent. The sight, her daughter so sleepy, so tired, and yet increasingly more her own person, growing so fast, makes something familiar tug inside of Sarah.
The little girl is worth it, every bit. Every fresh start.

The arrival of Amy had been, in no short way, a complete surprise. An accident. A very unexpected result of a very unexpected night, that led Sarah to re-examine every aspect of her life, her job, and start afresh, the first time.
She'd met Amy's father in the downtime between two missions. Feeling the weight of her job, and in desperate need of a night to relax and regroup, she'd headed to a bar, hoping the alcohol and the various people in the place might at least distract her, serve to remind her of why she was with the CIA in the first place. To help keep those sorts of people safe. When she'd started talking to a cute guy named Mark, though, she'd decided to treat herself. A month later she found out she was pregnant, and when she'd used her CIA resources to track down the guy to let him know, she'd discovered he had been killed two weeks before by the very organization Sarah worked for. Though her first instinct was fear that he'd been a target of a CIA investigation, that was carrying the child of the sort of man she'd apprehended on missions so many times before, she'd quickly found him listed as collateral damage in the agency report, which made things all the more awful. Apparently, he'd been at a bar with a friend of his—a friend who, without his knowledge, was a rogue agent. Mark had been clueless, and when the CIA team had ambushed both men in the alley outside the bar, one agent had clipped the innocent man in the side. He bled out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, no idea that the woman he'd met a month earlier was pregnant with his child. His friend, at least, survived and was promptly imprisoned.

The news had stunned Sarah, left her entirely confused, and also completely numb. The life she'd known had taken the life of the father of her child, and though she had hardly known him, had spent all of six hours with him, and really had no idea whether he would've cared she was pregnant, would've stayed or not, she knew she couldn't remain with the CIA. She'd already been questioning the sketchy ideals she'd been drawn into as a teenager, already been feeling more and more worn down with every mission, but she knew such an innocent death had to be the final straw. And she was determined not to have a child while aligned with that history, the agency that cared so little about civilian life that an innocent death was an acceptable loss. And so she'd handed her gun and badge to Langston Graham himself, found an office job in New York, and tried to start over.

It's hard to start over another time, Sarah thinks. But she'd put it off long enough, she'd stayed in New York despite how hard it felt, until she'd finally decided it was time to move on. And having spent the past four days without Amy, while she'd been moving to California and helping the movers shift all their belongings into their new little apartment, Sarah's ready for a quiet comfy evening in their new home, her daughter in her arms, treating themselves to some hot chocolate.

She suppresses a smile as the elevator doors finally slide open. A few years ago, she'd never have imagined she'd be here. Settled. Happy, more or less, or trying to be. A mother.
And yet here she is.

"Alright, Ames, you ready?" she asks, readjusting the tiny green backpack on her shoulder as she steps out into the hall, her little shadow following her like always. Amy looks up at her, eyes wide, beaming, and nods again, enthusiastically this time. Her curls shake atop her head, the pigtails Sarah's mother had tied in this morning still staying fast. "Okay, it's just down here."
When Amy grins a little cheekily, however, Sarah just knows what's going to happen. She squeezes her daughter's fingers, trying to pre-empt it, but Amy wriggles free, giggling as she tears down the hall in a blonde blur.

"Amy- be careful!" With a deep breath, Sarah jogs after the little girl, just hoping Amy tires before she reaches their new apartment, right at the end of the hallway. Just before she rounds the corner of the hall, though, she hears an all-too familiar thud, and quiet whimpers sound out from the space. "Oh, god,"

Hurrying, and turning the corner, she sees Amy sitting on the carpeted floor, back hunched as she faces away from Sarah, hands in little fists by her side. Her cries, however, have ceased before they'd begun. And Sarah's pretty sure that's due to the guy looking at Amy, standing outside the apartment door right opposite the new Walker residence, keys in his hand and his eyes wide.

"Oh. Hi." The guy says, and for some reason Sarah finds herself hanging back, watching as Amy, completely unexpectedly, raises a hand and waves. Sarah gapes. Well, that's a first.
Amy is at what feels like an endless stage of being very shy to strangers. It had started after Sarah had had to give her then very boisterous two-and-a-half year old a talk about not speaking to people she doesn't know, but for months now it seems to have tipped the other way. Amy is often extremely shy, and quiet, and most times takes a good three or four times having met someone to warm up to them. Apart from, apparently, right at this moment.

Suddenly realizing she's standing in the middle of the hallway doing nothing, Sarah shakes her head.
"Amy," she calls, sense having returned to her, and Amy whips her head around, pigtails flying, before scrambling up and barreling toward her. She collides with Sarah's legs so quickly she actually lets out an oof before she burrows her face into her mother's thigh. Sarah smirks at the sight. "Oh, now you're shy."

Looking up, she sees the guy, their new neighbor, still stuck outside his door, still looking rather confused.

"Hi." he says again, evidently greeting them both this time, and Sarah grins instinctively at his awkwardness, bending down to scoop up Amy while balancing the bag over her shoulder in a three and a half year practiced move. Once more acting shy and hiding her face in Sarah's neck, Amy clings on like the hug-bug she is (one of the few pictures of Amy that Sarah has actually sent her father in prison over the past couple years, had a one-year-old Amy clinging to her. He'd coined the nickname, and despite herself Sarah hasn't been able to let it go). Undeterred, Sarah steps forward, ignoring the slight butterflies in her stomach. She shouldn't be nervous meeting people, she used to be a spy for goodness' sake, but meeting new neighbors is sort of a big deal if this is going to be her and Amy's new home, which she really hopes it will be. It's a nice place, in a nice neighborhood, she's a little closer to her mother here, and far from the life and the memories of New York. She wants this place to work. And if they end up with an asshole for a neighbor, well, that makes things suck before they've even begun.

"Hey," she greets, heading toward the guy, reaching into her pocket for her keys so he doesn't get the impression that she's just moving to chat for no reason. "I, uh, I see you've already met Amy,"

To her pleasant surprise, he grins, nose crinkling and eyes going all warm.
"Yeah. She, well, she fell and then she didn't look too happy, but I guess she saw this stupid face of mine and immediately got over it."

Sarah snorts, rubbing her hand on Amy's back. The little girl only cuddles in tighter, with such a grip Sarah's sure she hardly needs to hold her up.
"Yeah, she's just a little excited to see our new place. We just moved in?" She points the keys to the closed door of their new apartment, and realization dawns on the guy's features.

"Oh, yeah, I heard stuff the past couple days but I guess I hadn't bumped into you yet."

"I've been here since Wednesday moving things in, but I just collected Amy from my mom's this morning. She slept on the flight so I guess she's still got a lot of energy, but, uh," She lowers her voice, leans in a little conspiratorially. "Hopefully she'll crash soon."

"Nuh-uh." Amy huffs, ever the spy's daughter with her excellent hearing.

Shifting, Sarah nudges the three-year-old back a little, makes her look up at her.
"Bug, d'you wanna say hi to our new neighbor, Mr...?" She looks up at the man, realizing she doesn't even know his name.

"Oh, Chuck." He grins, upbeat, and Sarah tries not to raise an eyebrow at his demeanor and, frankly, his name.

"Mr Chuck?" she completes, smiling encouragingly at her daughter.

Amy just shakes her head, though, burrowing back into Sarah, and she grimaces. Familiar though this routine is, with Amy's little wave earlier, Sarah had hoped a change was on the horizon. Next year, Amy will head to pre-K, and soon here she'll start at a new daycare, and Sarah desperately wants her daughter to have a nice, normal life, surrounded by friends, peers, people to know. Especially now when they're in a new place, and her few friends, kids of other moms from the Mom's Group Sarah tried to get to once a month, other children from the office daycare, are all back in New York. They've had to leave everything behind, but she just wants Amy to be grounded. Happy. The opposite of what Sarah got to be so often as a child.

When she looks up, she sees Chuck eyeing her, kind softness in his gaze, and he takes a hesitant step forward. Turning toward him, Sarah shifts Amy in her grip once more, and taking that as the invitation it is, Chuck moves closer, bending down a little and bracing his hands on his knees, grinning at Amy's head of hair.

"Hi, Miss Amy," he says, and Sarah almost hugs him at his saying that alone, picking up on what she'd called him and adapting it. Along with meeting new people, manners and politeness are still things Amy's grappling with.

The little girl shifts, though, seeming to open up a little, and Sarah rubs her back again.
"C'mon, baby, remember what I said about meeting new people, when I'm here?"

Finally, finally, Amy turns, looking out, blinking a few times at Chuck like the new curious creature he is.
"Hi," she says, voice quiet and still shy, but Sarah grins, pressing a kiss to Amy's crown.

"Well done," she murmurs, and Chuck waves at Amy again before straightening up.

"It's nice to meet you," he says, then looks up Sarah's way. "And you..."

"Sarah," she says, not surprised that it's taken this long to get to her in this conversation. She's used to it, by now.

"Sarah." he repeats, smiling, eyes warm once more, and she smiles back, instinctively. His smile is the kind of smile that requires it, she thinks. "Really. I, uh, I hope you get settled in fine. And- and my door's always open, if you need anything."

She nods.
"Same here."

"I, uh, I better go, I'm meeting a friend. But I'll see you around, I suppose. And you, Miss Amy," He looks down at Amy, who's still just eyeing him curiously, her thumb in her mouth. Sarah unconsciously tugs the little hand down and wipes off the drool without even looking.

"Definitely." she says, and he grins once more before murmuring a goodbye and heading down the hall. When she turns to unlock her door, she sees him look over his shoulder, offering a brief wave and another wide grin before he disappears round the corner.
Well, Sarah thinks. She seems to have one very nice neighbor, at least.

Once she's unlocked the door and pushed it open, she shifts Amy on her hip, the little girl's weight slowly beginning to numb her arm. Amy's tall for her age, with long limbs, the perfect imitation of her mother at that age, and a large part of Sarah misses the time when her daughter was the tiniest little thing, small enough to be cradled in both arms, carried everywhere, never wanting to be put down. Now, Amy wriggles, of course impatient to see her new home.

"Alright, Ames," she says, reaching for the light switch as she steps inside and closes the door. "What d'you think?"

The room gets flooded in light, surfaces illuminating, and Sarah crouches down to Amy's level as the little girl's eyes get wide, looking around. Even though the wonder in her features isn't unexpected- she's three years old, most things impress her- it's still pretty magical.
The place is bigger than their old apartment, partly why Sarah had wanted to move in the first place, and most of the furniture is new, fresh and clean and something to discover for Amy. The shelves and tables are decorated with their own belongings, all already unpacked since Sarah hadn't wanted Amy disturbed by constant boxes being moved in and out, packing paper thrown everywhere, rooms being unliveable, but the rest is pretty new, pretty different. The kitchen counters are white where they'd been black in New York. The couches are brown where they'd been grey in New York. And this is partly why Sarah had chosen this place, it's the most different she could find. For a fresh start. To leave New York in New York, and start LA anew. To make this place a home.

"It's awesome. And it's super big!" Amy breathes, and Sarah chuckles at her daughter's rather overactive imagination.

"It is. Now, how about I give you the grand tour, and then we get into our pjs and have some cocoa and watch a movie?"

Amy beams, the routine a familiar treat to her by now, and Sarah grins, standing and scooping up her little girl again as she goes, reveling in the opportunity to hold her, while she still can.

She sits back, setting the remote on the arm of the couch by her side, the movie now virtually silent. Amy is heavy in her lap, one of her rather pointy elbows nestled all too happily in Sarah's stomach, but she cannot find a single thing in her to want to move.
This, this is heaven. These quiet silent moments she gets to spend, just her, her daughter, now here in their new home, the scent of cocoa still in the air. There's a smudge of chocolate on Amy's cheek that Sarah ignores as she runs her hand through her little girl's hair, now freed from those oh so efficient pigtails. She'll have to wake Amy from this nap soon anyway, make her brush her teeth and wash her face before bed, the routine key to a full night's sleep, but Sarah thinks five more minutes won't matter.

Because she never thought she'd get here. Get this. As she'd thought in the elevator earlier, her life could have been so different, was going to be so different. She'd trained and lived as a spy, from the age of 17, and that was all that she seemed to be destined for. It's all people like Graham had wanted her to be. It's, honestly, all Sarah had wanted herself to be. Because though she'd entertained ideas of a normal life, put forward in some impossible someday, thoughts of a white picket fence, a family, kids, despite thinking it, she had never thought she deserved it, never thought she could get there. Spies don't have feelings, spies don't have families, that's what had been drilled into her since late childhood. And yet stepping away had felt like the easiest thing to do, despite the utter fear she felt, still feels, at something so important, difficult, terrifying, as raising a child. Alone. Because despite reaching out to her mother, finding out where her father was, despite trying to settle down, Sarah has basically been alone in this entire journey.

And it's been tough. First the pregnancy, the sickness, the insomnia, the fear at every flip Amy did in her stomach, then the birth, then the frantic crazy early months where she barely slept, then going through it all again when Amy reached two... it was worse than any spy mission, any training drill, any test scenario had ever been.
But, as Amy shifts, elbow digging deeper into Sarah's stomach, it's still so, so, worth it. Impossibly so.

Even if being alone is still something that eats away at her. Even if the ideas of what might have been, could have been, had a CIA agent not been careless in an op and shot an innocent bystander, still fill her mind, a lot. Even if those dreams, idyllic unrealistic concepts of the perfect family in the perfect home, always involving someone by her side as Amy grows, someone to love, someone who would love, are still dreams she secretly wishes she could achieve. Even if the memories of New York, so long ago, still haunt her a little.
She'd been so close, and so fooled.

But she won't think about that. She refuses to. And so she turns off the television, and runs her hand through Amy's hair once more before tickling her side, gently. She's got her mother's reflexes, and any intense tickle fight would lead to a limb thrown somewhere it would definitely hurt, Sarah knows from multiple, bruise-inducing, experiences.

"C'mon, baby, bedtime."

Amy squints, peels open an eye.
"Mhm," she grunts, negatively.

"Yes." Sarah insists, nudging her a little. "Are you excited to spend the night in your new bed?"

"Ooh!" At that, Amy wakes, jumping up, and Sarah catches her in mid-air, just stopping her from landing right on the coffee table. She stands, setting Amy safely on the floor once more. "My bed's big now."

"Yeah, it is. And you've got big new blankets, too."

The little girl frowns a little.
"But, I still got Dog, right?"

"Yeah, Ames, you've still got Dog," Sarah murmurs, walking through to the bathroom, hand-in-hand with Amy, thinking of the old stuffed bunny the little girl adores. It was a gift from Sarah's mother when Amy was born, and the three-year-old hasn't stopped loving it since, even with the animal's fur gradually getting more faded and matted, even with the slightly frayed seams Sarah's stitched up a few times already.

Switching on the bathroom light, she automatically reaches for the bathroom step, moved from New York to here, lifting Amy up and standing her on it before reaching for a toothbrush and toothpaste. Sarah indulges in the bubblegum flavor since it's their first night in the new place, rather than the sickly sweet strawberry Amy hates.

"Here you go," she says as she hands the brush over, and Amy takes it, brushing a few times.

"Thank you," she mumbles around the brush, some paste already making a bid for freedom and running down her chin, but Sarah appreciates the politeness and nods.

"You're welcome."

"I like-"

"Uh-uh- brush for your two minutes, then speak."

With a sigh that almost comes accompanied by an eye roll, which terrifies Sarah, Amy pouts but keeps brushing, and Sarah counts down aloud until she reaches for the brush again and Amy finally spits out the paste and begins to talk.

"Like the house," she says, little hands reaching for her mouthwash, all set up by the sink. Sarah covers her hands with her own and does most of the squeezing for her, watching the pale blue liquid rise up inside the bottle and fill the top of the neck, before lifting it and helping Amy to tip it back.

"I like it too. It's different from New York, but it's nice, isn't it?" Amy hums a mmm-hmm while still swishing her mouthwash around, to Sarah's relief. Once she spits it out, Sarah wipes up her face before lifting her down from the step and following Amy's speedy pace to her new bedroom, switching on the light just as they get there.

"It is!" Amy giggles, leaping onto her bed and writhing about to somehow get herself underneath the covers while being on top of them at the same time, grabbing hold of Dog as she does so. "And I like Mr Chuck!"

Oh. Sarah pauses at that, blinking, watching as her daughter just grins at her all toothily, her squished bunny tight in her hands. For Amy to remember their neighbor that well, to say she likes him this long after, she must really have liked him. In fact, for her to say that at all is a big deal, Amy rarely warms to anyone, any of Sarah's few friends, and back in New York she certainly hadn't warmed to… Sarah won't go there.

Taking a deep breath, she nods.
"Yeah. He's a nice neighbor." It's hardly a creative response, but it's enough to make Amy flop back in bed, actually nestling beneath the sheets, and Sarah smiles as she properly tucks her in, then pulls up Amy's fluffy desk chair and looks at the stack of books at the foot of the bed. "What story d'you want tonight, bug?"

"Hmmmm," Amy drags it out, pretending to think long and hard, but Sarah already knows the major options she's dealing with. She'd stacked the books with that in mind; the ones atop the pile are all of Amy's favorites, and so, are the most worn, the most loved and well-read, with dog-eared corners and split spines. Giggling, Amy nods. "Cind'rella."

"Good choice!" Sarah grins, plucking the book up and wheeling herself across the room, opening the story to the first page to show the pictures Amy knows by heart, the words Sarah doesn't have to even read anymore. They're both fans of any princess with blonde hair, far more than most other princesses, though Sarah can't possibly think why.

By the time Cinderella has left her shoe on the stairs (something Sarah always questions the likelihood of happening, since even if it works for the story she'd had to run with one shoe on a mission once and it was not comfortable), Amy is asleep, breaths heavy, mouth wide open against her pillow, Dog trapped under her arm. Sarah strokes her curls once more before standing up, switching off Amy's bedside lamp to leave the room lit just by the comforting glow of her nightlight. Smiling at the peaceful sight in front of her, she heads back out into the apartment, keeping Amy's door open in case the girl wakes during the night, in a new unfamiliar place, and decides to wander through to Sarah's room. It's likely to happen, she knows.

Yet as she quietly cleans up, then lounges around and watches some TV, Sarah can't stop thinking about her daughter's words, about their new neighbor. About her liking him that much, already. It's nothing short of a miracle, but it's also completely unexpected. And when Sarah hears footsteps in the hall outside, the jangling of keys, just before she heads to bed that night, she can't help but curiously spy through the peephole in the front door, and watch as Chuck heads into his apartment. Just as he unlocks his door, though, he turns around, looks her way, and smiles. Sarah jumps back from the door before she can get any more confused.
He can't have known she was there, watching, there's no way he would have known that. And so he must just have been smiling, at their apartment door, at them.

Because perhaps, Sarah thinks, if they like him, he might just like them too. She walks away and heads to bed before she can ask herself just quite what that might mean.

a/n 2: And that's that! I gotta say, writing kids is fun, I think Amy's pretty adorable even if I do say so myself. And writing Sarah as a former spy, and a mother, figuring out how that changes her from canon-Sarah, is a fun challenge. I really really hope you liked this introductory chapter, I'd love to know all your thoughts on this story, questions you have at this point, so please leave a review! I love them so.
See you in a couple days for chapter 2, 'The Cake', when, yes, those delicious baked goods begin to make their appearance.

-Kiera :)