Disclaimer: Dialogue is taken from Chuck vs. the Cliffhanger, written by Chris Fedak and Nicholas Wootton. No copyright infringement is intended.
-C-
May, 2011
"Uh…right. My vows. My turn for vows. They just don't cut it. I'm sorry, Sarah. How do I express the depth of my love for you? Or my dreams for our future? Or the fact that I will fight for you everyday? Or that our kids will be like little superheroes with little capes and stuff like that? Words can't express that—they don't do it justice, they just don't cut it. So no vows. I'll just prove it to you. Every day for the rest of our lives. You can count on me."
Beautiful. Absolutely, wholly, flawlessly beautiful. Never in her life had anything even come close to achieving this level of total perfection. From the white gardenias scenting the open air to the tears glistening in Morgan's eyes as he struggled for the composure necessary to finish the ceremony. From the flower arrangements held in the hands of her bridesmaids—her friends—to the stolid, reassuring presence of Casey, who had walked her down the aisle, providing her back-up even here. From the dress that draped her form in pristine white to the unabashed fervency in Chuck's eyes as he swore his eternal love—the love he had already given a hundred times over and proven just as many times—to her. From the smallest detail to the largest, this moment was absolutely beautiful.
He was beautiful. Tall, not nearly as gangly as he had been when she had first met him, trapped behind the Nerd Herd desk, unsure and awkward yet so giving and empathetic. He had a confidence about him now that he hadn't possessed then; the strength he had finally realized had always been within him now showed apparent in his controlled movements and steady gaze; the shadows in his eyes that had come from expecting disappointment had been banished, allowing emerald-copper to shine undimmed.
The words he spoke were beautiful. They outlined a life she had never thought could be hers, a life she had, outside of a few melancholy daydreams, never really thought she'd want, a life that wouldn't even be possible for them if any of a hundred—a thousand—factors had gone differently in the past four years. A life that was in and of itself inherently beautiful.
And she…she felt beautiful.
The CIA had taken her in as a homely teenager and transformed her, under their protective care, into their changeling, aesthetically pleasing and polished, sophisticated and graceful, educated and competent. Men the world over had told her she was beautiful…but they complimented only the window dressing her country had issued her for those missions when Kevlar vests and camouflage uniforms and hand-weapons weren't possible. It wasn't until he had looked at her, dropping the phone from his ear in shock, his eyes telegraphing his awe, that she had felt as beautiful as she had been told she was. Maybe because he looked at her and really saw her—her, not the agent or the socialite or the waitress or whatever other cover she had been assigned. He looked at Sarah Walker and thought her beautiful, whether she was dressed in a belly-dancer costume in order to seduce him or lying in a hospital bed due to the painful, debilitating effects of the Norseman device.
His hands were steady in hers, and they weren't moist in the least, as if he wasn't nervous about this moment, this decision, this oath, at all. As if he had never been more certain of anything in his life. And it was fitting that he should be fearless here, in the realm of vulnerability and emotion and eternal devotion, unafraid in those places where she trembled and hesitated, just as she protected him during those ever-dwindling moments when he faltered.
But then….she wasn't afraid either, was she? What, after all, did she have to be afraid of? Only losing out on this chance to bind her life and heart to his. Only missing out on the opportunity to be forever loved, openly and uninhibitedly, by Chuck Bartowski, to swear her own unending love to him. She had already glimpsed what her life would be like without him, already knew just how far she would slip without his smile to light her days, already understood just how brittle and fake she became when he wasn't there to turn her from a shadow into a real, live person. One glimpse of that horrifying fate, that dreadful non-life, was more than enough for her.
So this moment, beautiful and brilliant…it was everything she wanted. It was enough to dull the sting of the lingering weakness brought on by Vivian's unreasoning hatred. It was enough to soothe the ache of losing the CIA and the validating work they had given her. It was enough to drown out any possible fear of the future.
It was enough, period.
No doubts, no hesitations, no fears. The dry run he had suggested a week before was still fresh in her mind—the fluttering in her stomach subtly different from that felt while walking toward his balcony proposal, the lightheadedness that had spun the room around her as if she were hanging upside down to infiltrate another hotel's grand suite, the way she hadn't been able to stop smiling despite the absurd silliness of making twist-ties into rings and using a paper doily as a veil and seeing Chuck's suit coat over his pajamas. A combination of physical effects and inward bliss so unfamiliar that it had taken her a long moment to realize that what she was feeling was joy, unfettered and real and liberating.
The same physical effects and inward bliss she felt now with the coolness of his wedding ring against her skin, the sight of his earnest face lighting her world and silhouetting in sharp relief all that he had given and brought to her, the happy tears that threatened to burst from within her.
He smiled at her, and that…that was more beautiful than anything else.
She knew Carina thought she had dulled, softened, lost her edge, made herself dangerously vulnerable. She knew Zondra thought she could do so much better than this top-secret field agent who existed totally outside of her understanding. She knew her dad worried that she would need more eventually, that their love would fade and their promises would evaporate under the relentless stream of life. She knew the CIA had worried that she would burn herself out on this relationship, that they would lose their top agent. She knew that clueless, foolish people from the Buy More or from the spy life or even just from the streets looked at her and Chuck together and thought he was the lucky one.
They didn't understand.
They didn't know what it was to be so completely closed off that even you yourself didn't know what the emotions within you were. They didn't know what it was to suddenly feel a shaft of brilliant warmth cut through that bleak darkness. They didn't know what it was to have a thoroughly good man look at you and see something worth his time and attention and devotion and love. They didn't know what it was to be alone and cut off from everything and then suddenly feel the magic connectivity of his embrace. They didn't know what it was to walk into Castle or the Buy More or any room at all and see him instantly smile and know without a doubt that you were the cause of his incandescent happiness. They didn't know what it was to be trusted despite deception, to be forgiven despite repeated mistakes, to be accepted despite the unbeautiful things within her. They didn't know what it was to be the center of someone's whole world.
They didn't know Chuck.
No relationship Achilles' heel, no precautionary prenup, no emotional reservations. Only him. Only Chuck Bartowski, super-spy, unashamed nerd, reluctant Nerd Herder, brother extraordinaire, best friend anyone could ever hope to have, willing partner, and a man with more love than she had once thought existed in the whole of the world. No cover or lie, no protocol or rule, no broken heart or bout of insanity, no Russian crime conglomerate or Intersect—nothing—had been able to deter or break him. His strength amazed her, even now, and she wanted that next to her, wanted it for herself, wanted it bolstering her every day.
Because, after everything that had happened, she knew that he was safe.
He didn't have the Intersect anymore, and they were outside the protection of the CIA or NSA, and they still had enemies out there gunning for them…but he was safe nonetheless. Safe because she was at his side, because he won friends and allies wherever he went, because they were together.
And safe for her because she knew he would never hurt her. He would never give her up as her mother had, never abandon her as her father had, never disappoint her as the CIA had, never place a mission over her well-being as Bryce had, never turn on her as Shaw had, never let her slip away as Vivien had thought he would. He would be there for her every time, and he trusted her to be there for him.
"How do I express the depth of my love for you?" he asked, as if even his predilection for talking and his verbal eloquence and his habit of spilling out his soul in a constant soothing stream of words didn't express it every day.
"I'll just prove it to you," he said, as if he hadn't already. As if his desire to give her the perfect proposal and his belief in her during her undercover days at Volkoff Industries and his drastic, knight-in-shining-armor actions to bring her the Norseman antidote hadn't been enough.
"You can count on me," he promised, as if she hadn't already known that. As if she hadn't been counting on him for support and trust and truth and love and stability and reassurance and innocence and any of a million other things since the moment she had sat beside him on a beach painted with the soft, fiery beginnings of dawn.
No secrets, no lies, no hiding. There was only him and her. Him—open and unreserved and earnest and sincere and given fully to her. And her…born in her promise to keep him safe, formed around her determination to give him everything he wanted, colored by her own devotion directed solely to him and him alone, and now completed with her vow to be worthy of him.
He looked at her, awaited her response to his vows, and she gave him the only word—the only thought—that could pierce the haze of pure happiness keeping her floating inches above the ground. Gave him the only word that could fully encompass him, encapsulate everything she felt about him, express just how she would describe him if given only an instant instead of the centuries needed for such a pleasing task.
"Perfect."
And his grin exploded brighter than a flash bomb, prompting her own smile, sparking tears to counter the sheer luminescence of his joy, driving away any hint of fear or regret or doubt before they could even begin to form, making her—the real her, all that was left now that her masks and shields and weapons had been set aside—shine so that she was no longer a shadow, no longer a silhouette, but now a light of her own to cast back at him, to give back to him as much as he gave to her.
Perfect.
There really was no other word. No other feeling. No other reaction. No other man.
Only him. Only Chuck.
He kissed her, his smile meeting hers with the contact of lips against lips so that she not only felt joy but tasted it as well. He took her in his arms, and she gave herself fully to his hold because she was safe with him, because she trusted him, because she loved him with her whole being, with all that she was, with all that he had given her.
She gave herself to him because, after all, there wouldn't even be a her, wouldn't be Sarah Walker, if it weren't for him.
And she laughed because there wouldn't be any joy or happiness or bliss without him.
And she gave him her heart because it had been his from the moment it had first skipped a beat at the sight of his hesitant, open smile.
And her life wasn't just beautiful.
It was…perfect.
-C-
A/N: Thanks for reading! I'm going to go ahead and mark this story as complete, but I hope to come back at the end of season 5 and write a fifth scene to complete the arc. Hope to see you then-and I'd love to hear what you think of the story!
