Well, crap.
Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck, the man or the show.
Sarah lay on the ground of the men's restroom.
Given more time, she could have probably found some better place to hide than the floor of the men's restroom, but the current situation had forced her to make a split-second decision. That decision manifested itself in laying on the floor of a bathroom that was frequented my such people as Jeff and Lester.
The thought sent shivers down her spine. But she tried her best to ignore it.
So, she found herself sprawled out on the floor, gripping the handle of her pistol tightly. The tile was cold, stealing any body heat she had left. The entire store was freezing, as if it was overcompensating for the extreme heat and humidity outside. Thankfully, Sarah was wearing a leather jacket. Unfortunately, it was a leather jacket, and it didn't give as much warmth as she would have preferred.
She was also extremely aware of the fact that she was on the ground in front of a urinal. When she first ran in, her first instinct was to hide, so she got low. Specifically, ground level low. In approximately five seconds, she realized that the ground she had chosen was a strange off-white color, as if it had been so vigorously scrubbed that the color of the tile was rubbed off as well.
Footsteps had been pacing back and forth in front of the bathroom for the past few minutes, but they were finally fading away. Sarah took the chance to get off the floor. She glanced to the side and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty. Her white shirt, the only one she had had on hand in Castle, still had a little bit of Chuck's blood on it from his emergency surgery. Her hair was still pulled back in a tight ponytail, although it wasn't nearly as well kept as it had been when she left Castle.
The thought reminded of the fact that Chuck hadn't gone off to get himself killed. He had really surprised her. She would have bet money on the certainty that Chuck would disobey direct orders to try to help someone and put himself in the line of fire without fail. She had tried not to really show it to him, but she had been so certain that he would abandon her to go initiate some half-baked scheme that would get him killed. Sarah had already been berating herself for leaving him alone. But instead, he actually stayed put for once like he was told and now Sarah didn't have to worry about him getting shot. She could focus on the mission at hand without worrying about keeping him safe.
Even so, it felt like something was missing. Maybe it was just the lack of a partner in general, but Sarah had gotten used to someone following her lead, or at least talking incessantly in her ear. She had already realized that Chuck was insufferably endearing, two words Sarah had never had the occasion to use together until this assignment. She was glad Chuck was safe, of course, but she found herself wishing that, for once, he would disobey orders and join her.
She blinked hard and turned away from the mirror. That was crazy talk. Chuck never listened when they told him to stay put. She should be grateful and move on. She couldn't afford to distract herself with these kinds of thoughts. So she quickly fixed her ponytail, because it was really bothering her, then slid up to the wooden door of the bathroom.
After waiting for a few moments and hearing nothing from the other side, she carefully opened the door and slipped out, closing the door softly behind her. She checked the hallway behind her and walked forward stealthily, both hands wrapped around the grip of her pistol, one finger hovering over the trigger. She reached the end of the hallway and glanced around the corner.
She saw no movement and stepped forward.
Honestly, she was kind of proud of Chuck. He was acting like a mature adult for once, something he seemed to straddle the line on. He was a generally responsible person, especially when compared to his friends and coworkers. There was the small detail that he lived in his sister's apartment, but that wasn't completely his fault, since he lived on a Buy More salary. He had his good days and his bad days, which could manifest themselves in a variety of ways. Sometimes he was as childish as Morgan, sometimes he was the one coming up with a brilliant plan to save the day.
More often than not, it was the former and not the latter, but it wasn't unheard of.
Sarah peeked around another corner, saw no movement, and moved forward.
She knew that Chuck had attended Stanford; it was in his file. But it also said he was kicked out before he could graduate. Sarah had never gathered the courage to ask him what happened. It was probably a painful memory. But she just couldn't imagine him doing anything worthy of expulsion, after almost four years of incident-free learning. It seemed very unlike him. But Sarah never met college Chuck; maybe that experience was enough to scare him straight.
Sarah checked around another corner, saw no movement, and rounded it quickly.
Ellie had never talked about Chuck's rebellious years, so Sarah had assumed that he never went through them, but she couldn't think that. What she should think was that…
...she was way off topic and would get shot if she didn't start paying attention.
She reached another corner and barely bothered to glance out ahead of her before rounding the corner. As soon as she took a step, she saw the shadow of someone coming around the corner up ahead of her and she froze for a split second before diving back behind the wall.
She pressed her back against the wall and gripped her pistol tightly against her chest, careful to keep the barrel aimed away from her face. She heard soft footfalls coming down the hallway. They were slow and quiet, but not so quiet that she couldn't hear them. They must have seen her and were trying to sneak up on her. Sarah couldn't let that happen.
She edged up to the corner and waited, making her breaths as shallow and quiet as possible. The footsteps got steadily nearer, until they were only a few feet away. Sarah counted to three in her head, took a breath, and lunged out from the wall, swinging her pistol as hard as she could at her own eye level.
Her gun slammed into the man with a loud thud. He was taller than her, so the pistol, instead of hitting him in the face where she had been aiming, hit his chest, around his collarbones. He let out a cry of shock and pain and hit the ground hard.
Sarah stood over him and reached out a hand to the wall to keep her balance. She blew her hair out of her face and stepped forward, over the man, not bothering to look at him.
"Ow."
Sarah froze. She turned slowly, her eyebrows creasing. "What-?"
She turned to see Chuck laying on the ground, clutching his chest tightly and moaning. "Good to see you too," he grunted.
Sarah dropped to her knees beside him. "Chuck!" she hissed. "What in the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay put! And I thought you had agreed to!"
Chuck rubbed his chest in a circular motion. "Well, I had," he agreed. "But then I remembered that those maniacs with guns have Ellie."
Sarah sighed. "I know, but we had decided that I would take care of it."
"Yeah, I also realized that there are a dozen maniacs with guns that have Ellie in there and you trying to take them on without a plan, alone, is an absolutely horrible idea." He sat up painfully.
Sarah sat back on her legs. "I want you to go back. Now."
"And I want to help you save Ellie and Awesome," Chuck replied stubbornly.
"I'm sorry, remind me which one of us is the established spy who has successfully completed dozens of missions on her own?"
Chuck pretended to think about it. "Well, I'm guessing you, since you said 'on her own'."
Sarah gave him a look. "Just go back, okay? I don't want you to get shot. Again. And besides, you'll only make this harder."
Chuck shook his head and started to get up. Sarah reflexively caught his arm when he wobbled halfway up. "We've already been over this, haven't we?" he asked. "No matter what you say, I'm staying with you."
"We have already been over this," Sarah agreed, annoyed, "so you should know what my response is. I'm not going to let you get yourself killed, not on my watch."
"You won't," Chuck said simply.
Sarah couldn't believe that, just a minute earlier, she had been praising him for being a mature adult. Apparently, she had momentarily forgotten how infuriating he was. She clenched her fist. "Charles Bartowski," she said, her voice rising. "If you do not get back into Castle this minute and-"
"I DID NOT CRY!"
Sarah was interrupted by a loud thud and raucous voices coming from down the hall. Chuck spun so fast he almost fell over again, but Sarah grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him over to the side. As the voices grew nearer, she pulled open the nearest door and pulled him inside, closing it again as quietly as possible.
It was pitch dark inside, and quiet except for their breathing. Chuck's was labored, sounding like he was still in pain from earlier. Sarah glanced over at him, guilt tugging at her conscience, but she couldn't see him in the dark. She stepped forward so that her nose was almost touching the door, which was crossed in slats flipped down so a minimal amount of light made it into the room.
The voices neared their hiding place. There were two of them. Both Chuck and Sarah recognized one of them.
"Look, man," Rizzo said in his whiny voice. "All that about me crying is complete bull. Plus, I said I was sorry. It's not like we need those shelves anyway. And no one's shopping, so no one else needs it, neither."
"That's not the point, Riz," a deeper voice said. "You made us all look stupid in front of someone who ended up getting away while you watched."
"Hey! I tried! She broke my nose!"
"She still got away, though, didn't she?"
"It wasn't all my fault! Henry and Bryan were there too!"
"Yeah. She put one of them in the hospital and the other one still isn't walking straight, so they weren't much help."
Sarah could feel Chuck staring at her incredulously in the dark as he connected their words with her. Her cheeks heated, and she shifted away from him slightly, far enough to feel the wall with her hand. She frowned and felt around her a bit.
Rizzo sighed and stopped. "It's not fair that you're all blaming me for this."
"You're the new guy. It's what happens. Plus, you also let the gangly one get away."
"That was Tony!" Rizzo cried indignantly.
"Dude, you didn't even try."
There was a soft thud as Rizzo leaned on the wall. Sarah cursed mentally. She and Chuck were stuck in a closet together. A closet.
"Well, maybe if you would give me a freaking gun," Rizzo muttered.
There was another thud as the second, heavier guy leaned against the wall as well. "Well, maybe if you would actually hit a target every now and then," he replied.
Rizzo sighed. "I hate you, you know that?"
"Yeah. I hate you too," the other man said easily.
"Good. Just so we understand each other."
"Yup."
There was a silence. Sarah waited for the two to move along, but they showed no signs of moving. She stood there in tense silence for what felt like hours until they finally shifted and got up off the wall. Oh, thank God, Sarah thought. They're leaving.
They weren't leaving.
Or, well, the big guy wasn't. Rizzo said goodbye and walked on down the hallway, but the second man just repositioned himself several feet down the hallway and stood there, as if he were on guard duty. There was some rustling, and soon Sarah recognized the sound of paper.
The man was reading a book.
He was reading a book.
Sarah's eyes widened as the realization hit her, and she rubbed her forehead. "Oh, no," she muttered softly.
Chuck had come to the same realization soon after Sarah had, and he was breathing heavily. He backed up until his back hit the wall (which was about a full step back), and slid to the ground. Sarah sat down next to him and crossed her legs, and they sat in uneasy silence.
Chuck took a deep breath. "So, now what?" he asked under his breath. "I'm assuming you have some brilliant plan to get us out of here?"
Sarah nodded. "Yeah," she whispered.
"Great. Let's hear it."
"Okay." She shifted so her back was against the wall and crossed her arms. "We wait until he leaves, then we get out and you go back to Castle while I take care of Ellie, Awesome, and Casey."
There was a pause. "I'm not doing this with you again, Sarah," Chuck insisted, careful to keep his voice low.
"Then don't argue. You're the one who got us here in the first place."
Chuck stifled a cry of outrage. "That's not fair. I just want to help my sister. And I'm going to," he added.
Sarah looked at him, although she knew he couldn't tell. "If you hadn't shown up and made me wait here for so long, we wouldn't be caught in this closet and, who knows, maybe Ellie and Awesome would be safe by now."
"Yeah, or maybe you would be shot dead and the General would be dealing with a hostage situation without her best agents," Chuck countered.
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you."
Sarah calmed herself before their argument turned into a shouting match. "This is getting stupid. Just agree that you'll go back to Castle and we can-"
"You know I'm not going to do that, right?"
"Yeah, I do," Sarah continued, beaten. "There's nothing I could say that would make you change your mind?"
"Nothing short of knocking me out and dragging me back yourself."
There was a silence.
"Don't even pretend like you're considering that."
"Fine, fine." Sarah stared at the door, biting her lip. It was a nervous habit that usually she didn't indulge, but there was no one to see (or able to see). Even if he did see it, Chuck was probably one of the only people she knew who wouldn't mention it.
"So, I guess we just sit here and wait?" Chuck whispered.
"I guess so. Now shut up so Bookworm over there doesn't hear us and shoot us anyway," Sarah ordered. Chuck shut up as she asked, but the silence became heavy and almost as loud as if they had been talking. The AC that kept the building frigid apparently didn't include the closet, and soon the small space was uncomfortably warm. But Sarah never moved away from Chuck, and he never shifted away from where their shoulders touched.
The silence was only broken by their soft breaths and the rasps of paper as the man outside the door flipped the pages.
I apologize for the wait. I'm not quite sure exactly how long this hiatus has reached, but I'm too lazy/embarrassed to find out, so just know that I'll try to get this finished a bit quicker than all that. My family issues are mostly cleared up by now, so it's mostly just a matter of getting back into the swing of things now. Hopefully that won't take long.
Thanks for reading.