I started to think of Chloe's touching letter in the Smallville episode Fever and how a variation on that could be turned into a Chuck fic. This is the result. It is not necessary to have any knowledge of the letter or Smallville in order to understand this story.
A young woman with golden tresses and mesmerizing blue eyes slowly walked the long hall. Anyone could see that she was very beautiful, but today that beauty was all but washed away. Her hair was a complete mess, uncombed and unwashed. There was no light in her eyes. The sparkle they usually held was gone. Large, dark circles beneath had erased their color. Her face held no life and her skin was so pale it was nearly transparent.
Taking a deep breath, Sarah slowly walked up to the large, glass doors, but she couldn't make herself go in. She couldn't even force herself to peer to through the clear entranceway. He was in there.
From her position outside the door, she could hear the blips and beeps of machinery echoing in her ears. The sound tore at her heart. She couldn't bare to see him like this, barely hanging onto his life. He was hurt so badly and hooked up to so many apparatuses that she's not sure she would even recognize him. She wishes it were all just a horrible dream that would go away when she opened her eyes, but it wasn't. It was a nightmare. A nightmare called reality.
She wasn't sure why she had even come here. No wait. Yes, she was. This was something she needed to do. She had to go in.
Sarah pushed her way through the doors and walked toward the bed, unable to look at the man lying in it.
Sarah sat in the chair next to the cold hospital bed. The soft cushy chair mocked both its surroundings and her emotions. She stared at the glaring white tiles of the floor, still not having the strength to look upon the face of the tall, curly-haired man who occupied the bed.
Sarah's emotions were so high that she didn't notice the nurse who entered the room, something the agent in her would curse herself for later.
"Good morning," the nurse responded warmly. She had to really try to keep her voice and eyes from betraying her at the pitiful sight before her. This normally, would be gorgeous woman was falling apart. She even seemed to be in a worse state than the patient.
Sarah glanced up and wiped the tears she had unknownly shed from her eyes.
The kindhearted nurse called upon her cheerfulness and kept it in place, for the duration of her time in the company of the sorrowful young blonde. "Is he a friend of yours?"
"No. Well... Yes. I mean..." Sarah wasn't sure how she should answer the question. Their relationship was so complicated. Finally, she settled on the half-lie half-truth. "He's my boyfriend."
The nurse smiled at the slightly younger woman. "He's a lucky guy to have someone who cares so much about him."
The nurse thought that the increased sadness expressed in Sarah's eyes came from the pain of knowing her boyfriend was fighting for his life. The truth was that Sarah didn't feel that Chuck was lucky to have her in his life. He loved her, but they couldn't have a real relationship and she knew how much that hurt him. Because of her, he couldn't have the life that he wanted. As long as she was around, he would be thrown into dangerous situations and forced to lie constantly. If she had never come into his life, he wouldn't be in this hospital bed right now. He would be at home, healthy and safe. He would be happy. Having her in his life stripped him of his happiness and threw pain and sadness in its place. Chuck wasn't lucky to have her. He would only be lucky when she was gone. Then he could move forward with his life.
She knows she should ask for reassignment, let the agency replace her with someone who wouldn't put Chuck through so much emotional turmoil. She could never force herself to do that however, because she too had feelings for him, deep, deep feelings. She had only recently realized the true depth of her feelings. She... well, she loved him and she needed to tell him.
The fact that for the first time Chuck was hurt, really hurt led her to see this. She had to tell him in case she didn't get the chance to later because of something that may happen to either of them in the future. And now as he lay dead to the world, was the only time she could express her real feelings. He wouldn't hear her declaration. She would be safe to tell him just how much he meant to her.
Usually she was so composed, so in control, but she knew that she would not be able to look him in the eyes when she told him how deep her feelings ran. So before coming down to the hospital, she had spent nearly two days writing out her feelings on a piece of paper. The paper, was almost worn away, through her attempt to get it just right. She went through constant rewrites and infinite re-readings. Reading the truth about her feelings from a piece of paper, was the only way she could ever get through this.
Sarah's eyes lifted to Chuck for the first time since entering the room. Her eyes only lingered on his form for the briefest of moments, but she had seen it all. His face, so beaten, bloody and bruised. He was practically drowning in a sea of wires and tubes. Her Chuck was utterly unrecognizable. For a moment, she let the tears fall from her eyes before she forced herself to regain her composure.
Pulling the note from her jacket pocket with slightly shaky hands she carefully unfolded the paper. "Hi Chuck."
Hi Chuck was all she could say before the pain crippled her heart. She hadn't even yet begun to read the letter and already her pain had swallowed her whole. For a few intensely painful minutes she was completely racked with grief.
Finding her voice, she started speaking again, but her voice was barely able to rise a hint above a whisper. "I have something to tell you. Something I can't tell you, not when you could hear me. That's why I'm going to tell you now. Sometimes I wonder how it is that you haven't seen it, because I haven't done a very good job of hiding it. I don't know if it's because I can't or because I don't want to. I have feelings for you. Feelings I've never felt before. At first I didn't know what they were, but I know now that I love you."
A few tears found their way out of her eyes and her already weak voice started breaking as she continued. "I wish I could let you see how I feel about you, the way I did when I kissed you at the docks that day I thought we were about to die, but I can't. My job is to protect you, not love you. I must keep this truth from you, for your safety. So I will keep this secret buried deep in my heart. I will in the privacy of my heart, carry my love for you forever."
Sarah looked up for a moment to gently take Chuck's hand. His hand too was completely battered and connected to various machines in the room. It pained Sarah to see. Keeping their hands together, Sarah's eyes floated back to the letter as she finished the final bits, not from reading, but from memory. She only looked at the paper so she could make the words flow from her quivering lips.
"We can't be together today, but if some day my feelings are allowed to rise to the surface, I'll be waiting for you. And I fervently hope that you will still be there, ready to accept my love. I silently pray that that time does come, because no one else could even come close to you. You are the only one my heart will ever belong to."
Sarah carefully laid Chuck's fragile hand to rest again on the bed. With the most feather light touch, she brushed her fingers across his. Folding the letter, she tucked it away into her pocket again.
No one could ever see this. No one. Not ever, but with her feelings expressed so freely on the page, she knew she wouldn't be able to destroy it. Doing so would be as though she were shooting a bullet into the very depths of her heart, obliterating her feelings and ending her life.
She would keep it safely hidden away for all time, just like she did her love for the tall, lanky nerd, lying in the hospital bed just inches in front of her. As she hesitantly stood on weak knees, she wiped the moisture from her eyes and slowly walked out of the room.
Chloe's Letter:
"I want to let you in on a secret, I'm not who you think I am. In fact, my disguise is so thin I'm surprised you haven't seen right through me. I'm the girl of your dreams masquerading as your best friend. Sometimes I want to rip off this facade like I did at the spring formal but I can't because you'll get scared and you'll run away again. So I decided that it's better to live with the lie than expose my true feelings. My Dad told me there are two types of girls, the ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. I really hope I'm the latter. I may not be the one you love today, but I'll let you go for now, hoping one day you'll fly back to me, because I think you're worth the wait."