Interlude
NSA Training Academy Dormitory
Chuck couldn't sleep and he had no idea why not. He felt uncomfortable in his bunk. He was restless and spent an hour tossing and turning without being able to get comfortable. His week in the wilds had made an impression on him. Maybe it was too quiet? No howling wind and no tent flapping?
He finally got up and slipped on sleep pants and a t-shirt and went down to the game room. It was midnight and he expected it to be empty. Maybe a quick cup of coffee and a boring infomercial would make him sleepy. He was certainly tired.
He started for the coffee pot when he caught sight of Miranda Dawson sitting on a couch reading a magazine. So he wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep?
"Hey, Dawson, want some coffee? I cannot sleep and don't know why. Maybe the absence of a howling wind?"
She'd had the same problem only she was a lot less dense than her partner.
"Charles, let's go." She took him by the hand and led him out of the game room and back to her room. She pushed him down on the bed and stripped down to t-shirt and panties and then lay down on him and pulled the covers over them.
"Now go to sleep. You're tired. I'm tired. Go to sleep, Charles."
A switch clicked in his mind. He'd missed her. Her presence. Her warmth and the feel of her body on his. He'd been – incomplete.
She sighed and snuggled against him and he put his arms around her and they both slept.
NSA HQ
FT Meade, MD
Diane Beckman had read the reports from the Winter Survival Training director. They'd passed, arriving before the deadline but spending another night due to intense cold and blizzard conditions. The team had walked from the pickup point to the post main gate and been picked up and then sent back to Baltimore.
Beckman smiled her tight 'I'm so smart' smile. Bartowski was broken and needed someone broken so that he could fix her and help himself. Obviously Dawson had overcome her 'problem' with his help and managed to complete the course. Bartowski was coming along nicely and her choice of his partner had been correct.
The next training phases were simple by comparison and she was amused to read that the two were inseparable since their first night back from Alaska. Apparently adversity bonded these two and that pleased Beckman. Team Intersect needed a strong emotional support ingredient since the intersect host was prone to emotional responses. They'd toughen him up or kill him trying.
Her weekly briefing with Major Casey was more an update of the progress of young Bartowski than anything. Major Casey had spent time in refresher courses and had added his expertise to other operations run out of NSA-L.A.
Joint CIA/NSA/Interpol Operations HQ
Ukraine
Sarah Walker wished for the one-hundredth time that she were still in California. It was warm there. It was sunny there. He was there.
She didn't regret taking on this assignment. It was exciting, challenging and a career building step for her. Besides, she occasionally had dinner and sex with an intriguing MI-6 agent she'd met in California. It was not serious. It was just food and sexual release.
What she did regret was the way she'd left her asset. It had been unnecessarily cruel but she wanted a clean break and wanted him to have no illusions about how she felt. She was not ever going to see him again and it wouldn't have been fair to leave him with false hope. Everyone needed closure.
She was such a liar.
She had loved her dorky nerd from almost the first moment she'd met him and had been touched and thrilled to know he felt the same. She'd died a little when she'd returned the charm bracelet and he'd said he'd given it to the woman he wanted to marry. And then he'd caressed her cheek and left, but not before she saw his eyes fill with tears. Hers were only seconds away.
She spoke with Casey every once in a while and had been shocked to learn Chuck had maneuvered the NSA into agency training. And secretly pleased. He was becoming the man she knew he had the potential to become. And maybe she would run into him again in the course of their careers.
She was such a liar.