A/N Somehow I forgot to post this on Wednesday, sorry about that. One of my favorite chapters. I always thought Vivian had a thing for Chuck but they never showed it in canon. It certainly would have made her descent into villainy a bit more understandable. Much as I liked the Cubic Zirconium episode, I couldn't think of much to do with it, which is why I made it a background story to the Masquerade, starting here.
Vivian had no idea where she was. The firefight in the garage and the whirlwind escape had left her as drunk as any 'several large glasses of wine' had ever done.
The woman called Sarah, to whose legs Vivian had clung, stabilizing her as she stood in a moving car, seemed unmoved by the carnage. Her partners, the ones who covered them while they ran for the vehicle, seemed to almost take joy in it, if the jokes and insults they traded were any indication. Only Chuck, adding 'professional driver' to his impressive resume, showed any human warmth, sparing her a quick wink while his team dove into the back seats, looking just a little bit nervous. Strangely, that eased her own fears even as her car did things the owner's manual said it couldn't under his hands. He kept it from acquiring any bullet holes, but still she suspected its trade-in value was much reduced.
"You're very good," she'd said, awkwardly twisted around to avoid looking back or especially up.
"Thanks," he'd replied with a grin. "This 'driving on the left' thing is really hard." Under the circumstances, the tired old joke was even funny.
After the escape, the team had taken it in turns, driving through the night. She stayed safely in the back, with an agent on one side and Chuck on the other. He seemed to know the words to every Monty Python sketch ever made, and most of the songs too, but his British accent, so impeccable at the bar, was terribly bad in the back seat.
The garage took her by surprise, as the growing light of dawn was suddenly eclipsed, and the car came to an abrupt halt. "Everybody out!" ordered the big agent, rudely.
Only Chuck seemed as confused as she. "Where are we, Casey?" he asked, courteously offering her a hand out of the back seat.
"Vacation cottage," said the other man. "Your MI6 buddy found it for us."
From the look on his face, and the glance he shared with Sarah, it was quite clear that Chuck would not have exactly claimed friendship with whomever it was they were talking about. Now here she was, sitting at a kitchen table in a nondescript room, her head spinning once again. "My father isn't a psychopathic monster, he's an oil company executive."
"Almost worse," grunted Casey, cleaning his guns.
Another tired old joke, not very funny. Chuck made a little noise in his throat and pulled out his map of the true ownership of her home, while Casey took the hint and left the room.
Morgan went about his business as usual, or as usual as it can be when surrounded by alien invaders. If he still was. How could he know?
He spotted a couple getting ready to leave and went over to thank them for their patronage. As they walked away, he swiped a piece of leftover bread. A few paces later he threw pieces of it on the floor and kept walking. After a five count he turned and looked.
Still there.
Oh, thank God. Well, God and Colonel Casey. "Hey, Sam? We need a broom by table six."
"Sure thing, Mr. Grimes." As Morgan left for his office and a well-earned collapse, Sam called over the busboy. "Okay, now you can clean up the bread."
Casey walked in on a briefing in progress. "How did she take the news?" asked Beckman.
"She seemed genuinely upset, General," said Sarah, answering the real question. "I believe she was truly unaware of her father's real business."
"And now?"
"Bartowski's walking her through it as we speak," said Casey.
"I don't envy him that," said the General. "Now. What's your plan? Obviously she can't go home again."
"I have to go back home," said Vivian.
"No-o-oo," said Chuck, not a command so much as the Universe screaming its denial through him. "Boris knows where you live, he'll be waiting for you there!"
"Why?"
"Why?"
"Yes, why would he be waiting for me there?" she asked reasonably. "You and your team rescued me with a hail of bullets. Wouldn't home be the last place I would go?"
"Unless he thinks that's exactly what we'd think," said Chuck, tapping the table. "But you're right, no real agent would ever go back to a burned safehouse."
Wrong choice of words. "They burned it? I had guests!" And Artemis!
He took her hands in his. "No, no, that's just what they call it when a safe house is no longer safe." He tried to let her go. "Your guests should be fine, better, in fact, once you left. These guys are pros, they had no reason to threaten anyone else." Boris had spent time among them, and had to know how little anyone knew of their hostess.
His words comforted her, but only a little, and she released him. "I have to go back, I have to look after my horse. I have to make the rounds and apologize, it's the done thing." Not that being a socialite was ever high on her to-do list.
"You'll be the done thing!" said Chuck, making several violent gestures in the space between them. "Boris was one of those guests, once he hears you're back he'll be after you like a shot."
"And you'll be there." She gazed earnestly into his face. "Won't you?"
It wasn't hard to catch her meaning. "You'd let them use you as bait?"
No one uses me. "I don't like being hunted, but I've no experience being the hunter." I'm using you. She cocked her head to one side, confused. "What did you mean, 'them'?"
Them? Oh. That them. "I'm…not an agent. I'm just the team analyst, the C-and-C guy. I was supposed to stay behind the bar, but you left the party and I couldn't be left exposed."
His admission recast everything that had happened last night in an entirely new mould. Shock and shame, that she'd pulled him into danger. Amazement at how deftly he'd pulled her out of it. She took his hands in hers. "You didn't look 'just' anything to me last night, Mr. Charles." And if he was 'just an analyst', how good must their agents be?
The C-and-C guy stared at her, speechless and thoughtless. "Uh," he said, trying to pull his hands away. He fell back on his usual default, with a number three smile. "Please. Call me Chuck."
No man had ever smiled at her like that, not even her father. "Okay, Chuck. Will you help me, Chuck? I've got to do something, got to…be someone."
He wanted to tell her 'Stay in the car, Vivian', but he couldn't. He just had to figure out a way that no one else could.
"I want you home, Frost."
"I want to be home, Alexei," said the woman called Frost with utter sincerity in her voice. "Between money and Packard's…inventive methods of persuasion, we've gotten just about everything we're going to get here. Three deaths, three bullets. Jurek's car, disabled. Antonia's gun, empty of bullets. And Christoph–"
"What about Christoph?" growled Volkoff.
"He was…sweaty," said Frost. "His dinner was partially eaten, but he reeked of cheap vodka."
Volkoff's voice got so low the phone vibrated in her hands. "Drink is not one of his vices."
Frost knew what those were, as well as he did. "But it is a crutch to a frightened man."
"Not many things frighten Christoph." Volkoff was proud to be one of them. "You think he talked?"
"Of course he talked," said Frost immediately. They wanted him to talk, or at least she did. Passwords could be replaced, but good lieutenants were much harder to come by. "He knew what Boris could be like. The question is, what did he talk about?"
Alexei Volkoff looked at his second screen, displaying a minor sidebar piece about a party in England. Nothing to worry about there, his enemies had that one well in hand. Boris was the wildcard now. "Never you mind. Come home now, Frost. Let Packard continue with this business, you have to take over the Panzer operation. He goes into Yucca Mountain today."
Frost knew all about Boris' operations, especially the secret ones. "The Chandler woman?"
"That wench cost me a half a billion dollars!"
"True, but killing her wouldn't be nearly as soul-crushingly satisfying as letting her live in that hell-hole. You could let her rot a bit, then finish her off."
"I considered that," said Alexei. "But Boris has killed off some of my ablest men, not to mention the loss of Sofia. I need to do some recruiting, and Mr. Panzer will do nicely."
If so, it would be the only thing she ever heard of Panzer doing nicely. "Do you think he has the capacity?"
Volkoff growled contemplatively into the phone. He had quite a variety of growls. "He performed well for the Ring in the past, until he ran afoul of Carmichael. What a blessing for us that those two destroyed each other."
"And a blessing for this Mr. Charles."
If Volkoff was angry at the reminder, it didn't show in his voice. He changed the subject, though. "At the very least, if he is no more than the gorilla he appears, he can free up one of my other men to advance."
"What if he fails?" Not that she needed to ask.
"Then he stays." Nothing like a little incentive.
"Can I just go on record as saying I hate this idea?"
"You said it in front of the General, Casey, I think that's 'on record' enough," said Carina. "If anyone should be complaining it's me. You actually like the dress-up and the face-paint and the lying in grass. I got called out of Monaco to wait in a tree?"
"Dibs!" yelled Chuck.
"Di–Nuts!"
"What?" asked Vivian.
"I got my innuendo first," said Chuck. "Radio silence, people. It's hard to set a trap when the cage is screaming 'look at me' to everyone on our frequency."
"Speaking of frequency–"
"Shut it, Miller."
Miller shut it, and so did Casey. Chuck let out a sigh. "Lesson twenty-two."
"Twenty-two?" asked Vivian, from the shadows of the stable.
"Blessed silence," answered Sarah, adjusting the locket around her neck as she strode up to Artemis . She mounted as Vivian would have, without a block. Chuck moved back into the building as she rode off slowly, taking Artemis for his morning exercise.
"Can I just go on record as saying I hate this plan?"
Vivian frowned. "It's your plan, isn't it?"
"Yeah it is, but it's not the best."
If there was a better one why weren't they following it? "What's the best?"
"Your enemies all have convenient heart attacks while you're home watching Star Wars on the newly re-re-re-re-re-remastered Blu-Ray edition." Sarah was lost in the distance, and he turned his gaze to the woman closer by. "I do what I can to make sure no one on my team gets hurt, but there's always a chance someone out there is more clever than me-than I."
She smiled at his slip, but it didn't last. "It must be hard to care in a business like yours."
His mobile, smiling face went utterly still. "It's harder not to. I don't even want to hurt my enemies, much less my team. They're friends, even family."
"Even Casey?"
The annoying big brother from Home Alone, but yeah. "Even Casey. Just don't tell him I said that."
"Too late."
"Carina!" said Sarah in their ears. "I was enjoying that."
Chuck's hand went to his ear as his face went red. "Hey! What part of radio silence do you not understand?"
"Next time turn off your mike, idiot."
Chuck pounded his head on the stable wall as Vivian sank down on a haybale, laughing.
"I'm at the first marker," said Sarah.
As Vivian watched, the man in front of her transformed with a shiver. No more head-banging, no more jokes. He stood straight, reminding her just how tall he was, and pulled out his gun, checking its readiness.
When he caught her looking at him in surprise, he ostentatiously clicked off his mike long enough to say, "No bullets. Tranq darts." Then he winked at her, the professional driver once more, and turned his mike back on. "Okay team," said Mr. Charles, deadly serious. "Here's where it gets interesting."