A/N1 Our scene shifts in space from San Diego to the woods of Virginia, Camp Peary, the so-called Farm, the CIA training facility. We also shift in time, a couple of weeks forward.

Don't own Chuck.

The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker

CHAPTER TWO

Girl in the War (Part One)

Peter said to Paul,
"All those words that we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"
But now talkin' to God is Laurel beggin' Hardy for a gun
I gotta girl in the war, man, I wonder what it is we done.
-Josh Ritter, Girl in the War

Sarah Walker sat on her bed. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her chin resting on one of her knees, her arms clasping her ankles to her. She had on a grey sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. She was barefoot.

Staring blankly at the empty, unmade bed on the other side of the room, Sarah wondered what had happened to her. What am I doing here? Who am I? She started to rehearse it all again as the door to her room opened and her roommate, Hannah Traylor, walked in.

Hannah had just come from the showers and she was wrapped in one towel while using another to dry her long, red hair. She stepped gracefully to her bed (the one Sarah had been looking at but not seeing) and unfastened the towel she was wearing, letting it drop to the floor. As she stood there, naked, she turned her head and shot Sarah a smirk.

Hannah relished Sarah's discomfort. Sarah neither wanted Hannah to dress in front of her nor to dress in front of Hannah, but Hannah, knowing this, engineered opportunities for one or the other or both. Sarah had quickly realized that there were Heather Chandlers everywhere, of all ages and sizes. It was a Heather Chandler world. Just Sarah's luck to have gotten a more toxic version as a roommate.

Sarah dropped her forehead onto her knees so that she no longer could see Hannah. She heard Hannah bubble out a little laugh.

Hannah did not know Sarah was seventeen, but she had quickly figured out that she was inexperienced in many ways, easily embarrassed, unprepared for certain situations. Hannah had done all she could to exploit and torment that embarrassment, that lack of preparation, to put Sarah in uncomfortable situations. Like this one. Or the one the night before: when Sarah had come back to the room and entered, only to find Hannah on her hands and knees, another recruit behind her, lustful concentration consuming his face. His eyes were shut; he had not noticed Sarah enter the room. Hannah had, however, and she calmly watched the mushrooming of Sarah's horrified expression, all while the guy continued to thrust away behind Hannah.

Sarah had bolted from the room, chased by the guy's sudden, deep groan and Hannah's cheeky laughter. Sarah had sat in the dim hallway for a couple of hours, waiting for Hannah to dismiss the guy, which she eventually did in the doorway to their room, giving him a peck on the lips as she showed him out. He left without really looking at Sarah, and Hannah watched him go, then turned to Sarah: "Next time, feel free to stay and watch. You need the education." She went back into their room.

Sarah, tired and angry and deeply humiliated, got up and muttered to herself. "Next time, put a sock on the doorknob."

Hannah overheard her. "I prefer the knob without a sock." More cheeky laughter.

Sarah let it go; she was no good at talking in general, much less mean-spirited banter.

Her life had gone like that, more or less, for the last couple of weeks.

Hannah was the de facto beauty of the new class of recruits. She was medium tall but maximum curvy, with deep, forest green eyes beneath long, wavy red hair. Sarah was almost sure Hannah was married, but nothing in her behavior suggested that she had any ties to anyone at all. She had been occupied almost from the first night at the Farm, but luckily for Sarah, the scenes of occupation were often the guy's room or some hideaway in the building.

Hannah was also scarily good in the Farm classes. She was a crack shot, had been into gymnastics when younger, and had taken classes in martial arts. Bright and retentive, she was able to do as well with the paperwork and books as she did on the range and in combat classes.

Unsurprisingly, Hannah ruled the seduction class. She was often picked for exercises and was the one the men seemed to all hope to be paired with in the exercises.

The seduction classes: Sarah's special hell, the special hell away from the hell of rooming with Hannah.

ooOoo

"Welcome to seduction class. Let me say this first. This is not whoring school. I am not here to teach you special techniques for the bedroom. If that is what you expect, well, that says more about you than it does about me. I am here to teach you about the nature of human desire-but this is a class in psychology, not pornography, a class in manipulation, not copulation. Sorry if that disappoints some of you. You will have to conduct that research on your own time."

That was how the instructor started the class back on the first day.

Sarah had heaved a huge inward sigh of relief. She had no idea what the class was supposed to be, and Hannah had realized that and understood Sarah's fears, and so began to tell Sarah all sorts of things about what she would be expected to do in front of the class.

When the instructor made the remarks to open the first class, Hannah had shot Sarah a wicked smile, forcing Sarah (who looked away) into acknowledging just how frightened by the class she had been.

The truth was that Sarah had never been kissed. She had never had a boyfriend. She had never gone to a dance or on a date. Never.

She had been too plain, too unnoticeable, too pretend and temporary to have ever been attractive to anyone or to have allowed herself to be, or at least to acknowledge that she was, attracted to anyone. The thought of having a boyfriend thrilled her...and terrified her. She wanted one, desperately, wanted to know what it was like to care about another person deeply. But she did not want to have to lie to him. She could have had boyfriend only by lying: and she did not want to do that. No, I won't do that. Her father had taught her to lie. She could do it. But falsehood was not her native tongue, not like her dad. She wanted something true.

And so, bizarrely, here she was, seventeen, unkissed and romantically inexperienced, in a CIA Farm seduction class, surrounded by people who were all five to ten years older than she, expected to learn about manipulating human desire. She barely knew anything about her own.

ooOoo

As Hannah dressed, Sarah put her shoes on, studying them. Thinking about the overshadowed path that started in San Diego but that had led her here, so unexpectedly.

The afternoon break was over; time for seduction class.

Despite the instructor comments on the first day, Hannah had kept trying to reawaken and increase Sarah's anxiety. Yesterday, she had pointed out that today's class was on Preludial Intimacies. According to the syllabus, it was to be "an investigation of touches, hand-holding, hugs and kisses, the various forms of flirting et al."

Hannah had seized on the description and kept speculating on the 'et al.' Sarah's only two hopes were what the instructor said the first day, and her own wallflower status: maybe no one would notice her. She had gone through high school mostly unnoticed, after all. The seduction instructor had not seemed to notice her yet. She was banking on being overlooked.

As she arrived at class, Sarah's anxiety soared. Her stomach was wound around, a cat's cradle. She was careful to sit in the back corner of the room, and to lean forward, resting her elbows on the table, making herself as small a target as possible.

The instructor came in, walked to the front, and put down his notes on the lectern. Tall and thin, graceless and unattractive, he seemed exactly the wrong person to be teaching the class. After using his index finger to push his glasses back up on his nose, he began without further preamble.

"Alright, folks, let's talk about flirting. Here is the first and most important thing to know: a person can be flirting and be unaware of that fact.

"This unselfconscious flirting is very important. Almost everything people do unselfconsciously is important for you as agents, because, in such moments, they are revealing themselves, giving expression to who and what and why they are.

"You need to recognize such moments in others and learn to read them correctly. But you also need to cultivate a semblance of unselfconsciousness yourselves, a conscious unselfconsciousness that is not easily detectable.

"The reason why should be obvious. Because in your work, marks and assets are generally a suspicious lot. They will be watching you, trying to recognize unselfconscious moments in your behavior and trying to read them. You have to learn to make them think they have recognized such moments in your behavior, and you need them to read in those moments what you want them to read…You want to read but not be read." Stealin', Darlin', never charity.

Sarah relaxed a bit and took notes. It was like hearing her dad talk again, but with an Ivy League vocabulary (and a willingness to add final g's). Sarah had been living out these lessons for a long time. She had a full, practical grasp of the points, she realized.

But the vocabulary was not the only difference. When her father had taught these lessons, partly because of who he was and partly because of how young she was when he started teaching her, he had made it all seem a game, play-acting, fun in its way. But here, it was not a game, not play-acting, not fun. It was weaponized. It was not just about the success of some small con; it was about life and death. A game of sorts, but for the highest stakes. And Sarah worried that the increase in the stakes meant that the rules she understood had changed too. She was caught up in reflection when she realized that the instructor was looking at her.

"Sarah? Sarah Walker?"

Oh, God, he is calling on me! She tried to shrink into her chair, but it was not going to work. He made eye contact with her and gestured for her to come to the front of the class. "Ms. Walker, please come forward." Sarah stood with a sinking feeling. She could see Hannah, turned in her chair, grinning in...triumph? Sarah walked a mile on the green carpet, finally, days later, reaching the lectern.

"Very good. And you," the instructor pointed with a long finger, "James Unroe, come forward."

A short, dark-haired man with a slight overbite stepped up to the podium from his seat near the front. He smiled nervously at Sarah. She looked away.

"Now, here we have two people who, we will pretend, have just met. We will further pretend that Sarah is an agent and that James is her mark. She is approaching him for the first time and she needs to establish significant control over him as quickly as possible." He said this looking at the two of them but then turned to the class. "How should she do that?"

Hannah piped up from her seat. "Flirt! Make him think he might get...well, call it 'lucky'." Hannah pinched her features dramatically over a frown and the class laughed. Sarah shrank inside to an almost invisible point. She kept her eyes on the floor.

The instructor cleared his throat and she looked up. "So, Ms. Walker, do you agree with Ms. Traylor?"

This had been something her father never asked of her, never even hinted at. He had never asked her to flirt with someone as part of a con. He had taught her about self-consciousness and unselfconsciousness, but he had never asked her to use the knowledge in this way. In other ways, yes, lying and manipulating, pretending to be a girl scout or injured in an accident, but not in any...romantic...way. She had not really thought about it, but she realized that her father did have limits, things he would not do or ask her to do. She felt an unexpected flush of affection for him.

Unfortunately, the instructor saw her flush and took it to have a different meaning. "I take it Ms. Walker does agree with you, Ms. Traylor. So, Ms. Walker, I want to see you flirt unselfconsciously with Mr. Unroe. Do your worst, by which I mean your best." He stepped away from the two of them, returning to the lectern so that the class had an unobstructed view.

Sarah scanned the room furtively. Hannah was now basking in Sarah's quandary. Everyone in the class was looking at her. She was tempted to pray for a miracle, to ask be transported from that room to some other place. But she knew that was not going to work. No escape ex machina. She was stuck.

She thought about her dad again. "Darlin', readin' people is not hard. Remember, all people are like batteries…" Sarah had looked at her father in silent incomprehension. He grinned with one corner of his mouth and went on. "Two poles, a positive and a negative. We all believe there is something that is our long suit, what we are particularly good at or what distinguishes us. A skill, or looks, money...And a negative, a weakness, a tragic, fatal flaw, that we want to hide and keep hidden from the world. To really get somethin' from people, you have to manage to touch both poles at the same time, more or less."

Shaking off the memory, Sarah made herself look carefully at James. He was looking at her, his expression guarded but also somehow expectant. He straightened up as she gazed at him, as her eyes met his. And then Sarah knew. She stepped toward him, swallowing her reluctance and embarrassment, forcing herself forward.

"Hi!" She caught his eyes with hers again, deliberately slumping a bit to make their heights more equal. She smiled, forgetting for the moment about her braces and about being the only one at the Farm with them. She reached out and touched his arm, just barely, her fingers brushing it downward toward his wrist. "I'm Sarah. I saw you from across the room; you...sort of stood out. I was wondering...if you'd like to buy me a drink." Sarah had no idea where that last phrase came from. A tv show? A movie? She'd never said those words before. And her drinking had been confined to a warm beer or two with Gale when they decided to try it together.

But the words, not hers but somehow hers, seemed to stir James. He lost track of where they were; she could see it in his eyes. Already, he was responding to her, not the room. She rubbed her own hand along her arm slowly, upward toward her shoulder, keeping his eyes caught but making sure the gesture was visible. James straightened up even more.

"Good. Stop. Very good. Hold that thought, that moment" The instructor walked from behind the lectern to stand beside Sarah. "Ms. Walker, that was very good. Tell me what you were thinking, responding to." Sarah did not want to answer the question. James seemed like a nice guy. But the instructor was waiting on her, clearly intent on forcing her to talk.

"I noticed that James wanted to be looked at a certain way, wanted someone to hold...his gaze. He has nice eyes, kind eyes; he knows that, I think. And I noticed that he felt awkward about his height. So, I made sure our eyes were on the level...so to speak."

The instructor turned to the class. "That is how this is done. Subtle clues, subtle reactions. Little things do big, big emotional work, folks."

He turned back to Sarah. "Now, Ms. Walker, since you have done so well, I want you to do one more thing. Let's imagine that Mr. Unroe has bought you that drink and that things between you are progressing. You can tell he is interested, interested enough to be pliable, controllable. How do you finalize that, how do you make sure you have set the hook?"

Sarah knew the answer, she realized. But she did not want to say it.

She could feel all the eyes in the room on her still; there was a dense expectancy now filling the room. Some recruits were simply expecting something. Others, like Hannah, were expecting Sarah to fail, to crumble under the pressure and exposure, hoping for it. The instructor was simply looking at her, waiting.

Sarah had never been kissed. She did not want to surrender her first kiss to this. James was a nice guy, but she wanted her first kiss to be a kiss: not a mechanical procedure defined by geometrical positions of two sets of lips, but an event, heart caressing heart through lips.

That was what she wanted. But it was not what she was going to get. Her first kiss was going to happen here, now, in this small grey amphitheater, beneath these distorting fluorescent lights, with this near-stranger, meaninglessly, or with a meaning that was all wrong. She blinked back herself, her tears.

She was at the Farm, Jenny no more, (or to re-contact her beginning) Sam no more. She was Sarah Walker, CIA recruit, handpicked by the Director, Langston Graham. She had a life to live whether she liked it or not.

She stepped to James and she put her hands gently on his cheeks. She smiled at him, a vague suggestion in her smile but her eyes dark and unreadable, then she kissed him, lightly at first, a mere brush, and then returning with more intensity. She opened her lips (she'd read books, she knew how this was supposed to work, in theory, anyway). James' lips parted in answer and she felt him tense, his body galvanize, his arms move to her arms. And then she pulled back, parted from him.

Her stomach hurt. Her heart ached. She felt a heavy wave of disgust-not aimed at James, but at herself. It crashed over her.

James was standing transfixed, his lips still parted a little, his eyes focused on the middle distance, lost. The instructor snapped his fingers and James returned to the scene, his eyes properly focused. Again, laughter from the class, but mixed with nervousness. They had been caught up in the scene too.

"And that, folks, that is how this is done. Walker has now officially controlled her mark. There's a puppy in her leash." James blushed furiously, as did Sarah. Hannah was scowling at the top of her table. The room suddenly burst into excited talk. The instructor motioned for Sarah to come closer.

"Please talk to me after class, Ms. Walker." Sarah nodded.

She wanted to sprint to her room; she wanted to hide and to cry. My first kiss, stolen, stolen by circumstance. Like so much of what matters or has mattered to me. Nothing is ever mine. She hung her head slightly and retreated to her seat, studying her shoes. She did not notice the fact that the other recruits were all now noticing her. Or that Hannah's scowl was now affixed to Sarah's back.

ooOoo

The class ended and Sarah walked through the recruits who were heading out. She got to the front of the room and waited for the instructor. He was rearranging his notes and scribbling something on a small sheet of paper. She saw that Hannah was talking with James. She shook her head inwardly. Hannah now had something to prove where Mr. Unroe was concerned, poor guy.

"Ms. Walker, that was a powerful display of intuitive seduction, of practical psychology and of acting skills. There's a saying among football coaches: you can't coach speed. I can't teach what you did. When you let yourself go, you knew what to do. Knew it. I believe that you have talent we should invest in. Meet me here tomorrow." He handed her the sheet of paper. "You don't need to bring anything with you. We will have everything necessary." She looked at him and nodded. What else can I do?

Hannah and James had left the classroom. Sarah made her way back to her room. Finding it empty, and with her day of classes finished, she doffed the grey sweats, grabbed some jeans and a t-shirt, a towel and her toiletries, and went down the hall to the showers. Mercifully, like her room, they were empty too. She climbed in one of the stalls and turned the water on, as hot as she could stand. She stood under the water, her skin scalded by it, and she cried warm tears that streaked down her cheeks and streamed into the hot water, tears stolen from her, like her first kiss, by circumstance.

ooOoo

Langston Graham had flown her from San Diego to DC on the jet he had used to make the trip from DC to San Diego. He had been careful with her, explaining to what had happened, how he had come to be in the woods near the rental house she and her father had been living in.

Her father's deep con had gone sideways. Unbeknownst to Jack Burton, his mark was a close friend of an important figure in California-Mexico organized crime. The mark had talked about the con without knowing it to be a con, but his friend's suspicions had been aroused. The mark had been followed and Jack had eventually been identified. But the men following Jack had themselves been followed, acting on orders from Graham. They had come to see the danger Jack was in-and perhaps his daughter too, even though she was not involved in the con. Graham had shut it down, taken her dad into custody as a way of preventing the hit that had been ordered on him.

Sarah had been too frightened by that news and too frightened of Graham to ask the obvious question, so he asked it of himself for her.

"No doubt you are wondering why the Director of the CIA had any interest in the dealings of a small-time con man on the opposite coast? Well, the answer is that I was interested because of his daughter, because of you. You see, a couple of years ago, one of my agents, a deep cover agent, had been on 'vacation' in a small town on the Oregon coast, Coos Bay. Oh, you remember it? Yes, you and your father were there for a while. Perhaps you remember a man, Donald, not his real name, by the way, who was, for a little while, a drinking buddy of your dad's?"

Jenny did remember the man, but barely. Her dad had introduced her to him one night. She remembered the name more than the face. In fact, now that she thought about it, the man had managed to stay in the shadows when she met him. She'd never really gotten a close look at him. Her dad had gone out with him in the evenings often during the weeks they had spent in Coos Bay, leaving Jenny, as usual, alone in the motel. They had left after a while, and her father had never mentioned Donald again. She had never thought of him again.

"Donald got to know your father, and through him, he got to know about you. I don't know whether your father ever told you this, but your father thinks you have native gifts for conning that far outstrip his own." Jenny shook her head. "And Donald found a way to observe your work with your father. What he saw confirmed your father's opinion. Donald knew I am always on the lookout for...talent...and he told me about you. He was very excited about you. Since then, I have been...keeping tabs. I agree with Jack Burton and with Donald. You have exceptional promise."

He had opened his briefcase and taken out a file, with the name 'Sarah Walker' on it, but with a photograph of her (obviously taken unawares) paperclipped to it.

Jenny finally found her voice. "Who is Sarah Walker?"

Graham seemed to find the question funny. He smiled, then actually chuckled.

"Who, indeed? But the answer, for now, is this: she's you." He opened the file and held it out so that she could see it. Then he put it in her hands.

There were photographs of her and her father. A sheet of paper listing all the towns in which they'd run cons in the last couple of years. There were also copies of documents from various schools-enrollment sheets, report cards, test results (is my IQ really that high?), even a sheet of comments by various teachers from various schools, including the gym teacher who had begged Jenny to come out for the girls' soccer team.

There were also documents that Jenny knew had to be fake because they were false. A birth certificate for Sarah Walker, as well as a social security card, and other bits and pieces of an identity. Jenny had been through this drill often enough with her father, but never with so much resource, never with this sort of reach. She and her father made up names and backstories, but they rarely had the time or money to build the fake identities. They had to rely on themselves, on the lies, on being quick enough to anticipate or divert suspicion.

But this was a fully prepared life, and one, Jenny now was beginning to really understand, she was supposed to step into, like Cinderella into the magical glass slippers and gown. Graham made a strange sort of fairy godmother. But being airborne in a private jet did seem a lot like being in a magical pumpkin carriage, pulled by mice translated into horses.

After letting her look for a few minutes, Graham handed her a small stack of papers, employment papers for the CIA. The name 'Sarah Walker' was already on the top sheet, as was various personal information.

"I can keep your father safe, albeit safe in a cell. You see, the hit is one that could be carried out inside unless your father is protected. I will protect him if you will consent to become an agent. Or, at least, to go to the Farm, the school where agents are trained, and make a determined effort to not only succeed there but to excel. I think your future, Sarah (if I may) is CIA; you are a born spy. I think we will be a great team, do great things together."

Graham fished inside his suit coat and took a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket, clicked it, and held it out to Jenny. Consent? I am seventeen. But this is my life. I have to protect Dad.

Jenny took the pen and Sarah signed her name.

ooOoo

The next morning, shortly after the Virginia dawn, Sarah walked down a long corridor in a part of the Farm she had yet to visit. At the end of the corridor stood the seduction class instructor and two women. They waited for her to reach them. The instructor nodded at her then looked at the women. They stared at Sarah, examining her like a bug under glass, head to toe. They nodded back to him. He opened the door and led Sarah and the two women inside. It was a large room. It looked half like a clothes stores and half like a beautician's parlor.

The instructor led her to a large reclining chair on rollers. "Sit down, Sarah. We have work to do." The two women began to bustle about. Before Sarah knew what was happening, one of the women pulled the chair backwards, stopping next to a sink. She reclined the chair so that Sarah's head was suspended over the sink. And then Sarah heard running water and felt it, warm, soaking her hair. The woman spoke. "I'm thinking...blonde."

The other woman knelt at Sarah's feet and pulled off Sarah's shoes and socks. "I will do the pedicure first, then the manicure."

The instructor grunted softly in agreement. "Good. Then we'll do the makeover, and start trying on clothes. Graham is here today. He wants to see her when we finish." The instructor's tone made it clear Graham had given an order.

A/N2 Tune in next time for more of life on the Farm, Chapter 3 "Girl in the War (Part Two)". Outer changes lead to inner changes?

I'm deciding whether to go on with this or not. If you want it to continue, be sure to say so in a review or a PM. Otherwise, I may decide to shut it down.