Disclaimer: Dialogue is taken from Chuck vs. the Final Exam, written by Zev Borow. No copyright infringement is intended.
-C-
March, 2010
"What I was going to ask you a minute ago, or—or what I was going to say, anyway, is that I've been, um…I've been thinking about what it was like between us. Before Prague. And, uh, thinking about what life would be like for us if we'd made different decisions back then. If I'd made a different decision back then. Look, I know we couldn't be together before because I wasn't a real spy, but if I pass this test, then we wouldn't have to choose between the job and us. If I pass this test, we could be together. That is, of course, if you're willing to give it another shot."
Numb. She was completely, utterly numb, could feel the debilitating deadness that had once characterized her every action of every day, every thought of every moment, now returning from its long absence to flow through her limbs with leaden silkiness, weighting her so heavily to the ground that she couldn't move at all, frozen in this instant of time. And how ironic that the once-familiar numbness should accost her now, so unexpectedly, when she no longer wanted it even though she had been seeking it, courting it, ever since Chuck had placed the proof of her love for him—those precious tickets to a life where the real her would be free to shine beneath an alias, continually and daily strengthened and invigorated by his presence and devotion—placed them back into her hands and then shut his eyes against her heartbreak.
He had made her feel, had woken long dormant sensations and birthed never-before-felt emotions, had ripped her from a life of duty only and country first, coaxed her from her walls with a joke and a grin and an invitation and his hand in hers…and then, when it mattered the most, when she had risked everything and given up all, he had walked away.
That had hurt. Oh, how it hurt. She had tried hard to convince herself that it didn't, tried to pretend she could still subsist on national obligation alone, had dived into her assignments in an effort to reclaim her long-lost agent mode…but it had been useless. Once the emotions had been torn from their Pandora's box, they could not be shoved back inside and locked away in the dark. Just one sight of Chuck, walking across that dance floor toward her in the Nerd Herder uniform she had feared he would never wear again, had brought all the painful, conflicting emotions back in full force and no amount of brutal slaps or bo training sessions or quick, disdainful exits could keep her safe behind walls that had long since ceased to shut him out or masks he could so easily see through or shields his smile could cut through like paper.
Only…this new Chuck—this Chuck 2.0—didn't smile like he once had, so uninhibitedly, so easily, so frequently. He didn't laugh as much either, a strain of tension or confusion or desperation always tainting that once-free sound that had rang like a melody in those days that, in hindsight, seemed so beautiful despite their complications. This Chuck didn't want a normal life, didn't talk about revealing his secret to Ellie, didn't wax philosophical about video games, didn't see past her façade like he once had. This Chuck wanted to be a spy, voluntarily attended training, forced flashes, burned assets, and thought a pill that could erase his personality was something to be desired.
In short, this Chuck was a complete stranger.
Or so she had thought. But now, with nothing inside her to cloud her vision—no spark, no reaction, no emotion, just that utterly cold numbness lining her bones and clogging her veins and tightening her skin—now she knew that he was still Chuck. Still eager, still awkward, still nervous, still wholehearted, still…innocent.
Trapped by his words, unable to move even an inch lest the moment disappear and this familiar Chuck vanish like a mirage in the desert, she felt as if she might shatter, break into a thousand pieces right in front of him, and slip like dust through his fingers. That was such a terrifying mental image that she couldn't even lower the binoculars from her eyes, could only continue to look through them as if she were still interested in this test, still concerned about helping Chuck eradicate all the things that made him great, still able to think about the newest in a long line of missions that made the world a better place and slashed her insides to finer and finer shreds. She wondered, with all the cool detachment the engrained numbness provided her, if maybe this hadn't been her problem ever since that day in Prague—frozen in place, looking far away at things that didn't matter at all while she missed all the important details sitting right next to her.
He was looking at her, she knew—he always was. His eyes burned into her as if they possessed literal heat, as earnest as always but warier, more tentative and yet assertive at the same time, trapped in that fateful moment just as she was. They were begging her, she knew without even looking, begging her wordlessly just as he ever had, and she thought she might split into two from the differing thoughts within her head.
He was still the old Chuck—loving her, wanting her, inviting, asking, pushing, teasing to disguise how much he wanted, surprising her with the unexpected sizzling shrimp and champagne and music, always going ten steps further than anyone else would.
And yet, simultaneously, he was so different—so ably setting up surveillance on a mark, working so hard to become a spy, lying so easily to everyone, pursuing a normal girl without once complaining about lying to her, burning an asset that could have easily been his friend, prepared to leave his friends and family for an assignment in Rome.
It seemed the glimpses of the old Chuck—the one she had sworn to protect and save from her cold, dead world—became fewer and farther between every day…but she hadn't exactly been looking, had she? She had left him, had walked away just as he had, hoping against hope that if she did to him what he had done to her, the pain would miraculously disappear. She had been trying to reclaim that cool, sharp aloofness for months now, throwing herself back into the spy world she had thought she had left behind forever, obeying every order given her by the government she had betrayed for nothing, throwing herself into the arms of a spy who would never need protecting, who knew how to use a gun, who would never break under torture, who was good and heroic and admirable and did it all without ever once doubting his own abilities or worth.
And all of that…all it had succeeded in doing was making the pain worse. All it had done was rip her heart into tinier and tinier pieces until she feared that it didn't even exist any longer.
She had even told Shaw her real name because, after all, it wasn't real anymore, was it? Sarah Walker was who she really was, a silhouette that had grown into so much more—grown to become all that she was—the real her that had thrived and grown and developed and glimpsed a chance for happiness that had so quickly been doused. She had thought that if she reclaimed her name—the first she had ever been given, the one on her redacted birth certificate—she could make Sarah the unreal, could make Sarah Walker fade back into the realm of aliases, taking the pain and regret and bittersweet joy and Chuck and closing it all up in a file of a past mission.
But it hadn't worked because Sam was a fake, a relic of the past, something that no longer fit her—maybe never had…just like Shaw.
He was good and perfect and whole and so far removed from the asset she had been assigned three years ago…yet his flashes of humor and his kind gestures and his forthright manner reminded her of Chuck. In fact, sometimes she couldn't tell whether she was with Shaw because he was nothing like Chuck at all or because he was so similar to Chuck. And the similarities were growing, weren't they? Chuck was embracing Shaw's guidance, delighted to find someone that believed in him, determined to live up to Shaw's expectations of him, listening to everything the special agent taught him, accepting every mission he gave him, doing whatever he was told. Including now, this mission—this final test to become a spy.
To become her.
Her finger twitched on the binoculars, and she fought the urge to scream out her denial, her horror, her anguish.
It was true—Chuck was turning into her. She had left her spy life and gone to make a semi-normal life with him, give him everything he had said he wanted, but their timing had been awful because he had taken her ill-advised compliment as advice and chosen to be a hero and downloaded the Intersect 2.0. Just as she had finally chosen his life, he had chosen hers, and now they were trapped once again on opposite worlds. And she was watching him from afar, day by day, as the openhearted nerd was submerged beneath a field operative, conforming bit by bit to the Intersect programming in his head and the orders given him by Beckman and Shaw and even Casey…and the example she had left him.
And now, with his words echoing through the abandoned floor he had claimed for their stakeout, now she knew that all of it—the loss of his goofiness and his simple happiness and his aversion to violence and his desire for normalcy—all of it was her fault.
The ease with which he could lie to everyone he met and everyone he loved…her fault.
The solitude that engulfed him as the spy life pushed away all of his friends and family…her fault.
The desire to leave behind all that had made him into the best man she had ever met and immerse himself in the world of espionage…her fault.
Her fault. It colored every aspect of her life, made it impossible—even more so than it usually was in his presence—to snatch hold of a coherent thought, to lower the concrete barrier, the binoculars, serving as a mask over her features, to face him and see just how much of his life she had destroyed by leading him on and then walking away.
Her fault. All her fault.
She had known it before, tried to deny it, to ignore it, but now it was inescapable, spoken in his voice so that she couldn't help but hear it, couldn't help but give it greater credence than she would have had it been uttered in anyone else's voice, couldn't help but recognize it as truth. She had destroyed Chuck Bartowski, had fashioned him into another her—cold and dead and aloof and purposeless and so, so lost—and now he was destined for the same agony that had consumed her since he had mouthed his apology to her over Bryce's dead body.
"If I pass this test, we could be together," he said, as if it were that simple, as if she hadn't condemned him to an emotionless death by stringing him along, never quite strong enough to disavow him completely, never quite brave enough to claim him as her own. As if he would still be the same Chuck when it was all said and done. As if she could still be with him even after ruining him.
"That is, of course, if you're willing to give it another shot," he said, doing as he had always done, leaving himself open to painful rejection and terrifying vulnerability, leaving it up to her even though he expected disappointment. Yet still he asked, still he laid his heart on the line, still he couldn't quite give up that hope he hadn't fully lost yet.
And so she was finally able to lower the binoculars, finally able to turn her head to look at him.
And she was right—meeting his eyes was like being kicked in the stomach by Mauser again, a blow with enough force to send the breath crashing out of her and to dislodge that numbness before it could once more consume her completely.
And she felt again. Felt—not pain—but hope. Sheer, unadulterated hope. Because when she looked at him—really looked, with eyes that were Sarah's, not Sam's, she saw…she saw Chuck.
He was still there.
As if death and deception and missions and tranq guns and conscience-killing pills and assassin aliases and a broken heart couldn't touch that inner strength of his. As if nothing had changed between them at all in the last year. As if Shaw didn't exist.
And for that moment, while she looked into his desperate and sincere eyes, she believed him. She believed in that world contained in his eyes, where grim cynicism and harsh realities couldn't touch them. Believed that they were the only two people in this world where Beckman was far away and Shaw meant nothing and Casey wouldn't turn them in and there was no need whatsoever for a final spy test.
And the glimpse of that world—the sight of his very soul, undiluted and pure, shining from him—was enough to draw her forward. She had no words, just as usual, but this time she didn't need them. She knew how to answer his question, knew how to give him what he had been hoping, waiting, asking for since he had first met her. Knew how to assuage the ache that had grown large enough to devour her heart ever since she had begun avoiding him, knew how to satisfy the hunger within her, knew how to quiet the inward clamor that had started the instant she had demanded he kiss her and then slapped him down for his efforts.
In truth, looking into his hopeful, fearful eyes, it was the only reply she could give him.
She leaned toward him, soft and warm and relaxed, her eyes locked on his, her lips parting.
Astonishment eclipsed the desperation in his gaze, but he leaned forward, too, and she could smell the champagne on his breath, could feel the heat of his hand where he had placed it on the arm of her chair, could practically taste his lips due to the combination of memories and dreams she had silently, secretly treasured over the past few years.
And in that moment, as her eyes fluttered closed and her stomach dropped away and her bones hollowed to leave her light enough to float away, she knew this was right. This was perfect. This was everything she had ever wanted, even before she knew it—or he—existed.
This was right because not only had he made her real, not only had he given her a life worth living, but he also colored her life and her inner self with beauty and passion and hope and sincerity. She had been on hundreds of stakeouts, but only when he had joined her had there been music on any of them. Only with him was there dinner and champagne and humor and songs he chose specifically with her in mind. Only with him was life worth living for instead of dying for.
Sarah Walker was real, no matter how hard she had tried to lock her away, and she dressed in blue because he loved that color on her and she smelled white gardenias because he brought them to her hospital room and she loved brown because that was the color of his eyes and she listened to music because he made her personalized CDs and she wore orange because she had to protect him and she looked at him and saw the world explode from its dim gray-black cocoon in a plethora of colors and scents and sounds she had never known existed. She was more than just a wavering silhouette now; she was three-dimensional and whole and solid and fleshed out.
And all because of Chuck, who was about to kiss her, his lips only millimeters from hers. Kissing him was suddenly the most imperative thing in the world, in all of existence, and there was nothing wrong with it, not now, not when he had once more handed his bruised and battered and broken heart to her, not when she was finally able to forget Prague and remember the words he had blurted just before passing out and falling in a drugged stupor into her arms.
She inhaled the warmth of his breath, all mingled sweetness and peppermint…and then, abruptly, the moment was broken, shattered and vanished and consigned to the past almost before it had even had a chance to be.
The world he had personified disappeared. The colors he had brought to life faded into concealing shadows. The rightness she had felt between them popped as if it were a bubble pricked with a pin.
And just that suddenly, Shaw existed again and Chuck's final test mattered and the target was on the move and the assignment was paramount. Just that suddenly, she was broken again, hesitant and unsure and hurting and so terribly, awfully confused.
She almost wept, almost broke down then and there and crumpled to the ground and demanded that her world right itself. Almost gave up, almost tore the earpiece from her ear and tossed it aside, almost cried out all the things bottled up inside her so that Chuck could finally hear them.
But with Chuck's eyes no longer on her illuminating the real world, her training prevailed and she did none of those things. The very existence of Chuck prevented her from turning back into the frozen agent she had been before Burbank and Bartowskis and charm bracelets, yet the hopelessness of the situation kept her moving in prescribed lines, speaking acceptable words, giving nothing away.
And then he looked at her again, and there was none of the hurt defeat she had grown so used to seeing in those brief glimpses of him she allowed herself; instead, he was determined, bold, resolute, and she couldn't help but notice that her heart skipped a beat or three.
Things were still wrong. He was still disappearing smile by joke by earnest regret. She was still broken, barely holding herself together, faking the things that had once comprised her whole life. But as he stood there and promised that he would not give up, would not disappear, would not let go of her…for the first time since the aftermath of a beautiful wedding, hope suddenly seemed as if it might be as real as she was now.
And she knew—Chuck would never, ever turn into her. But she…she might yet be able to fit herself into his world.
So she smiled. Not a fake smile. Not a cover smile. Not a spy smile. A real smile. Because he had smiled at her, and his genuineness beget her own. Because the memory of the perfection of that almost-kiss dominated her thoughts. Because he hadn't given up on her.
And after what seemed a terrible dream that had lasted forever, she felt herself beginning to wake, stirred by the realization that Chuck could make hope appear as miraculously as he could identify criminals from a flash and learn kung fu in an instant and so quickly form a plan based on comic books and sci-fi movies and fantasy books that would nonetheless rectify any situation no matter how bad.
Nothing was right yet…but now she knew—it could be again. Someday. And she would keep hoping, keep waiting, keep praying until that day came.
Her devotion to him—more real than anything else in all of her existence—demanded no less.
-C-