Disclaimer—Characters belong to Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Author's Notes—Um... Yeah. Not beta'ed per se, but I'm gonna give credit to the birthday girl, Jellie_RayneLuv, and SunshineAli for taking a peek of it over on livejournal. Up later than I really should be writing this and yet... here I am.
Distance—Sarah clings on to hope from 30,000 feet. Post-ep for Chuck versus the Gobbler.
Forty feet was all he was supposed to fall. Four stories.
It was a good plan, a clever one. She should've known he'd come up with something that was perfect. He was, after all, the game theorist, the tactician. One of the best, in fact.
More than that, though, he'd become like her big brother. And she'd never had one of those before.
She'd had numerous partners. Ones she trusted, ones she loved, ones she barely tolerated. Granted, even their relationship had started out rocky. Jurisdictional entanglements didn't help them get off to a good start, long before either of them had even heard of the Human Intersect Project.
But, bit by bit, piece by piece, she learned that Casey was the way he was because that was how he protected himself. Gruff, keeping everyone at arm's length. It made him a better spy because of it. Only after nearly constant wearing and weathering did she find a chink in his nearly impenetrable armor, one just right for their partnership to take root and grow.
As she glanced, unseeing, out the window of the plane, she wondered if she should've taken him up on his first offer. If she should've shot him.
Her worst fear would've been Volkoff coming in to finish the job after seeing a fairly common and totally survivable hole in his shoulder. She wouldn't have put it past the mastermind. Or, for that matter, past Mary Bartowski. While she wanted to believe her potential future mother-in-law, she didn't trust the elder spy with the life of someone she cared about. Not her own, not Chuck's, not Casey's.
Not yet.
The hardest part of the night hadn't been seeing Chuck's face. Chuck would forgive her. He would know that she was playing her part. He might forget for a while, but he would know that, in her heart of hearts, she could never hurt any of them.
The hardest part of the night had been seeing Casey fall.
She'd seen him fall any number of times. Usually there was rappelling gear or base jumping gear involved. There was never a time where he had to fight gravity, straight up, from that height.
Even closing her eyes, she could see his attempts to do something to prevent the inevitable.
Taking a slow breath, she tried to calm her frazzled nerves. She wanted to talk to Chuck. She wanted to go running into Chuck's open arms as they waited for news at Westside Medical. Because, surely that's where they would've taken him, where Devon would've worked on him, where Ellie would've fretted, even in her condition, over all of them, already in mama-bear mode.
Chuck would say something oddly endearing for being a nerd. He would tell her that it's okay, because Casey's a fighter. But, mostly, he's a Klingon. Even if... even if the worst would happen, it wouldn't matter. Casey would want to go out in battle.
Morgan would pipe in with his best Worf impression: "Perhaps today is a good day to die."
Alex would cry. And Morgan would pull her close.
And Chuck would hold her tightly, whispering that it would be okay to cry, to let go. That she should do so while Casey was still passed out, so that he wouldn't get all grumpy about all the concerns over his health and well-being.
Because Klingons wouldn't like that.
But, she didn't have the support of her de facto family. She wasn't with Chuck, making deals to whatever deity might be listening to save her partner. She was sitting alone, on a killer's plane, trying to remind herself that all she needed was distance. That distance would make everything all right, that it would make everything better.
Distance. It was too great to overcome, both for her and, she feared, for Casey. He fell nine stories, stopping only briefly on his journey down.
And it all might be for naught, if the fall managed to destroy what was left of the Hydra computer. She might've killed her partner for no reason. It wouldn't be a Klingon death, a warrior's death like the Marine deserved. It would be for nothing.
And it would all be her fault.
End.