This one is a few snippets of my view of Sara dealing with Bryce in the series (pretty much fluff again).
Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters portrayed.
Sarah Walker stood back from the group at the grave as she watched (she thought) her old partner and ex-lover being buried. She wasn't really sure why she was there, he had betrayed her and left her for dead on their last mission, but on the other hand he HAD been the closest thing to a real relationship that she'd ever had (well it was as real as she thought she could ever get to have with the life that she'd been forced to lead). She shouldn't have looked though those pictures of their holiday at Cabo, they just brought back memories of the good times with him, even though the "good times" were probably just all part of his scheme to get what he wanted out of her once he'd played the good boyfriend for a while. So here she was, crying over the death of the man that she desperately wanted to put a bullet into less than a couple of months ago, she was a mess.
She thought back to the two years that they'd been working together as the Andersons, if you paid attention to the "for better or for worse" part of marriage vows, for the most part it was definitely worse, for the first year she could hardly bear being in the same room as him, and of course they were supposed to be a married couple. They worked well enough together on missions (aside from his pushing the limits of PDA all the time), but he had expected her to jump in bed with him whenever he wanted it between missions (and he ALWAYS wanted it), so they'd have to have it out every time and he'd storm off to find someone else to screw, then he'd come back afterwards and expect her to have forgotten the argument and act as if it had never happened.
After a year of that she'd gone to Graham and demanded a different partner, Graham told her that he'd straighten Larkin out and it seemed to work. Bryce stopped demanding sex between missions and they eventually (after four months or so) became friends, and even more. Without all the tension between them because of Bryce pushing for sex all the time, the partnership was working far better than it had before, because without that tension they were a solid team on the missions, and their success rate went through the roof. He still took things further than she thought was necessary "for the cover", but it wasn't as bad as throwing her on the bed and expecting her to screw him on his whim like he did before.
Over the eight months that things were better between them, they laughed and had fun, and even became affectionate with each other for much of the time. They got close enough for her to fool herself into believing that she hadn't been seeing the real him before, and think of him as her boyfriend (her first boyfriend, really), maybe even to think that she loved him. He seemed to accept her issues around personal intimacy after she told him what she'd had to go through in training and on her missions and be prepared to take the occasional adrenalin fueled session in bed after they'd been in action as enough, because even though things got steamy when they were making out, he was prepared to stop when she indicated that she couldn't go any further. Up until they finished their holiday they had at Cabo, she was actually happy, and thought he was too.
Her first indication that things weren't right was when Carina told her that he'd hooked up with her again after Cabo. Sarah had just finished telling her about the great time they had at Cabo, how well things were going and how happy she was when she realised that Carina was looking at her with a distraught expression on her face. She knew that Carina had slept with Bryce quite often when they crossed paths previously and she didn't have a problem with that because what was between her and Bryce at the time was purely work related, but at Cabo and for months before that they had supposedly been in a relationship that was separate from the Anderson's cover. Bryce had been telling her how much she mattered to him and how they could work things out. That was why Carina's news was such a kick in the guts, her issue wasn't with Carina (they hadn't had a chance to talk in months and she hadn't told her anything about her and Bryce while it was developing because she wanted to make sure that it was real before she told her friend), but she felt betrayed personally and humiliated professionally by Bryce (because he'd managed to play her so well without her realising what he was doing).
After Carina's bombshell Sarah had pulled away from Bryce again, she would accept a little kissing and cuddling, but stopped things much earlier than she had before, and the occasional adrenalin fueled sessions in bed stopped altogether. Things started getting difficult on missions from then on as he was getting increasingly petulant and demanding again as far as PDAs "for the cover" went, and sloppy and careless as far as what he was actually supposed to be doing for the mission, and they just went downhill until the mission in the Ukraine where he walked away and left her for dead.
So why was she here at his funeral? She looked away from the people at the grave to collect her thoughts, but stopped when she saw Chuck. What the hell was he doing there? He had even more reason to loathe Bryce Larkins than she did, and yet he put himself through the angst of coming to the man's funeral, in a suit? When she stopped to think about it though, she realised that she shouldn't be that surprised, she'd already seen (and been affected by) what an incredibly caring and forgiving heart this man had, she'd never met anyone remotely like him, he was the closest thing to a saint that she ever thought she'd meet. Looking at Chuck, she felt a warmth rising in her that she couldn't handle, especially here at her ex-lover's funeral, so she turned to leave, only pausing to confirm that Casey was there to watch over Chuck and that she wasn't leaving him unprotected.
Months later...
Sarah looked out the window of her hotel room as she tried to work out what she was going to do, she was so confused at that moment that she couldn't even form a proper idea of what she should do or what she wanted to do.
Having Bryce come back into her life was a shock, she'd accepted back at his funeral that he had betrayed her (personally AND professionally), that he had turned his back on his country and the agency to go rogue and that he was DEAD. Then he came back and when he did he didn't hurt Chuck like she (they) thought he was going to that raised questions, if he was on the other side he would have taken out Chuck and anyone else that got in his way, right? All those issues were compounded by seeing him in Chuck's room and having the feelings she had up until Cabo come back when he kissed her, which made her wonder whether there may be a chance that he was, actually, the man she'd believed him to be when they were together. When Chuck confirmed via the Intersect that what he was saying about Sandwall was right, it raised even more questions and made her hope that he may be telling the truth about following orders to shed all contacts, which could explain what he did after Cabo. Then when they fought together in the Buy More it was just like when things had been great for them, they just meshed again.
She thought about the chance to get back to the only real relationship she'd ever had and at the same time go back to the life she was trained to live and had given up so much for, the one that Bryce had asked her to go to with him. She had her bags packed, waiting for his call, and the logical move was to go back with Bryce, but she didn't know whether the logical thing to do was the right thing to do.
The problem with all that was Chuck, they had only had that one kiss, really, but he was already in her head and in her heart, and she somehow knew that walking away from him would leave a hole in her heart that could quite possibly break her. That scared her so much, she'd thought that she had something with Bryce, but what she felt for Chuck was the first time she'd really felt a connection with anyone since she was a little girl. While she was trying to avoid thinking about it (because it did frighten her so much), she knew in herself (deep down) that what she felt for Chuck was already far more than she had felt for Bryce.
Sarah was still struggling with the conflict between the logical (and "safe") choice to go back to Bryce, and the life she was meant to have, and her heart telling her that she couldn't leave Chuck when the room phone rang. She took that as a sign of the decision having been made for her was moving resolutely towards the phone to find out where she was to meet Bryce when her mobile rang, just as she passed it. She knew before she turned to look at it who it would be, but sure enough it was Chuck. Sarah picked up her mobile and looked at the picture of Chuck, then looking back at the room phone before drawing a breath as she knew what she had to do.
The next morning Sarah killed the alarm clock when it went off, taking out her angst on it as she had no other target available, her bed was still strewn with what she'd packed, ready to run away, and her head was battling with her heart over her decision. When she woke, she couldn't believe that she'd made the choice that she had the night before, she'd given up everything for the life that she'd just turned her back on, to stay with a man who she didn't understand at all! How did he make her do these things? She dragged herself out of bed when she got the message about the briefing, but the battle inside her was still going on when she got to the briefing so she couldn't look at Chuck, she just went through the motions. She got through the mission with Chuck by pushing down her traitorous heart and doing everything by the book, and kept it that way through the follow up meeting with Lon Kirk the next day. After the disaster that resulted from Chuck's flash and the debacle on Kirk's yacht, she took everything out on him when she confronted him at the apartment, even though she knew that what she was accusing him of was crap, she just couldn't drop the shield for fear of letting him know just how much he affected her. It was only when Casey confronted her (away from Chuck) about her being compromised that she could drop the shield and ask the question in her heart, whether there was any chance for people like them to have what she craved so much to have, or was it just her that even considered having that. The sympathy in Casey's eyes as he gave her the "correct" answer almost broke her, so she vowed to try to get things under control, or leave before she was ruined.
Another few months on...
When Sarah got back to her hotel room from capturing Sasha Banacheck she was walking on clouds, as she replayed Chuck's swooping down from the roof of the Buy More to take out Banacheck and save her in her mind. All that came crashing down as she entered her room and found Bryce lounging on the bed.
Sarah told him to get out, but he told her that he'd been instructed to come back to do a mission with her as the Andersons and therefore they had to stay together, for the cover. They argued for a while and then just sat in a stormy silence until there was a knock on the door. Sarah jumped up and ran to the door, stopping to compose herself before opening it. She tried to think of a way to talk Chuck into leaving before he found that Bryce was there, but then the bastard just walked up to pull the door open and get in Chuck's face. Seeing the look of abject dejection on Chuck's face as he turned away and left was almost enough to make her pull her gun and shoot Bryce then and there, the only thing that stopped her was the job. Even after all that the bastard presumed that they'd be sharing her bed, until he took in the look that told him if he took one more step towards the bed he'd be dead, and was sensible enough to head over to the couch, and stay there for the night.
In the briefing the next day Sarah could hardly look at Chuck, as she knew how devastated he was going to be when he found out that she was going to have to do the mission as Bryce's wife, and even more so how it would hurt him when he had to watch them putting on the show for the mission. The fact that there was no chance to get Chuck alone to try to explain it to him just made everything worse, she couldn't let anything slip in front of Bryce or Beckman, or Casey (though she knew inside that he already knew what her feelings for Chuck were, and somehow knew that he would keep her secret), so there was no way to reassure Chuck or soften the blow for him.
When Chuck met them at her room for the mission it just got worse, as Bryce was baiting Chuck and he had made a point of pulling his bag out and spreading his things around to make it obvious he was staying there while she was getting dressed in the bathroom. She could see that something had been going on when she came out of the bathroom, but Chuck's rejection of her still hurt, she hadn't realised just how much she relied on his smile and the look in his eye that was just for her to make her feel better until he withheld it.
On the mission itself, it just got worse, Bryce was pushing the PDA the way he always had, but this time Chuck was there to see it and be hurt by it (in the back of her mind she wished that it wasn't just Casey who was getting the feeds from their mics, so that Chuck could hear what was being said and know what he was seeing wasn't real). Then when Chuck IDed the microchip they were heading after it until Casey told them that the Fulcrum agent had Chuck and she went to save him, leading to the whole getting blown up thing.
In the hospital she was once again reminded of the many differences between Chuck and Bryce, she'd been with Bryce for two years, over six months of that they were in a relationship (well as far as she knew anyway), but from the brief glimpses of her that Chuck had managed to get in the months that she'd been protecting him in a cover relationship (never really being able to spend much personal time together), Chuck already knew her favourite flowers, that she hated olives and how she liked her burgers (even down to the pickles), in two years, Bryce had picked up on none of those things, or anything else personal about her. So yeah, Bryce may have filled one wall of her room with flowers, but the bunch of gardenias that Chuck brought her meant far more, because as cheesy as it sounded, it was the thought that counted.
If she knew what Bryce had said to Chuck she would have shot the bastard, there was some truth in what he'd said to him, but he was mainly trying to bait him and drive a wedge between him and her. She did know that someone had talked to Chuck, though, when she realised what he had done when he told her that they didn't have a future together. He broke her heart when he told her that but she saw only minutes later that he was feeling even more pain than she was, and that was when she realised that he'd done it for her.
After Ellie's wedding and Bryce's death, again...
Sarah couldn't blame Bryce for the last screw ups relating to him, that was all on her, she should have resigned when Chuck did, but instead she accepted her new assignment to run the intersect project (with Bryce), because duty was too engrained in her to refuse her orders. She saw how crushed Chuck was when she told him that she was leaving with Bryce the next morning, because he thought that she'd chosen Bryce over him, even so, she couldn't make herself tell him the truth and that it was only her assignment that she'd agreed to, NOT Bryce. It was Bryce who'd seen the truth and knew that she was going to leave the CIA to be with Chuck, but she'd even screwed that up and not told him as soon as she could, so she didn't get to tell him that she was staying with him before his father interrupted them with the news that the agent that Bryce had left with wasn't CIA. The final blow to Chuck was the way she reacted when they were dragging away Bryce's body, and the fact that her shock about the fact that he'd loaded the new Intersect prevented her telling him what she felt and wanted with him.
Yep, you really screwed that up big time, you convinced him that you were leaving with Bryce when he wanted you to go away with him (not even leave the CIA, just have a vacation with him like a real couple) and THEN you managed to convince him that you blamed him for Bryce's death by putting on that show and pulling back from him, great work Walker.