A/N: Okay, so there's some stuff in this chapter that, well, I'll address it more in the second note, after the chapter, so as not to spoil anyone who reads this first (as is intended). Suffice it to say, that things get a little wacky here. But would it truly be one of my stories if there was no wakiness? I think not. Now, one of the advantages to writing a slightly less popular story? I can address my reviewers right here in the A/N! And so I shall.
KryptonitePoison: Mhmm, that's the long and short of it. Though, as you'll see, things are more complicated than that, but Sarah was deciding, in the last chapter, to make a sacrifice to get the thing (or person) she wanted most. Therein lies the inherent drama.
P.J. Murphy: No worries, dude. You still reviewed, and for that, I'm am very grateful.
Devangel6: Thanks for reading! Glad you're digging the story!
Zerectica: Oh, Z. What would I do without you? Thank you SO much for your support of this story. You and I definitely see eye-to-eye in our adoration of Anna Wu, and yes, the visual of Sarah-as-Anna leaning out a window to steal a kiss from Chuck is amazing. It would've made a GREAT icon!
Michael66: Heh, courage or not, it was appreciaed. And it's appreciated again, here, as you managed to catch a number of my foibles. You rock, good sir, and thank you for editing my flub-ups, and then for reviewing on top of that! Maybe one day we'll get that musical…
And now, onto the story!
Chapter 12: Why the Caged Sarah Sings
Sarah sat in the Castle holding cell where Casey had her locked-up. With her back against the wall, her legs dangled over the edge of the bench, a good three or four inches off the ground, which was a feeling she could get used to, quite frankly. It made her feel like a little girl, again. Like the Sam she was before her Red Test, before the CAT Squad, before Langston Graham ever conscripted her into the CIA, and even before she went on the run with her dad when she was ten years old.
She'd hit a big growth spurt at twelve, and spent the rest of her teen years as an awkward, gangly, Amazon of a young woman—at least compared to her peers.
That was one of the things she loved about Chuck. He was actually taller than her. He made her feel like a girl. She had to stand on tip-toes to kiss him. She could wear heels without dwarfing her man. Now, he was way taller than her. She loved that, too.
Love, love, love.
It felt good to say it, now that it was out there. True, she'd quietly admitted to herself, in the privacy of her bedroom that she was in love with her asset, but to tell him to his face—to tell the world that she loved Chuck Bartowski, well, it was like a huge burden had been lifted off of her.
Intellectually, Sarah knew she should be freaking out. Anna had told her that revealing their secret switch to anyone would doom them to spend the rest of their lives in the other's body, but she had done it anyway. She'd sealed her own fate. She'd insured that the rest of her days would be spent as Anna Wu.
But for whatever reason, Sarah was fine with that. In many ways, she was quite happy about it, in fact.
First of all, by becoming Anna Wu, she was free to love whomever she chose. And she chose Chuck, who would've been absolutely off limits when she was still Sarah Walker.
Also, it felt empowering to know that she and she alone had decided her fate. It wasn't an order from a superior, it wasn't some stupid rule, put in place by people she'd never met, and who didn't know her situation from Adam. It was her. She'd decided how her life would turn out, and all the bureaucrats in Washington could piss off with their regulations.
And finally, it felt good to know that she would never have to change identities again. While it had been exciting in her teens, and a source of familiar comfort in her early twenties (odd though it may have been, finding a sense of familiarity in the unfamiliar), she was ready to just be herself. And now, she could be only who she was: Anna Wu.
When she was first locked away, Sarah had tried to eavesdrop on the conversations going on in Castle's main room, but whatever could be said about their secret base, one couldn't deny that spoken word was secure. At least in the central chamber, when the potential eavesdropper was in the holding cells. She didn't hear a peep. So she just sat and twiddled her thumbs in her cell, contemplating her new life, and what was to come.
Thankfully, they'd at least removed her blindfold before locking her away. Otherwise, Sarah was sure she would have fallen asleep. Sure, there was a lot going on, and she'd gotten a major rush, revealing her identity and the truth of her feelings all in one fell swoop. But still, it had been a long night, and it was all starting to catch up with her.
Sarah was just finishing a yawn when she saw Anna, in Sarah's former body, walk onto the hall of cells with a phone to her ear. Finally, something Sarah could listen in on.
"Amy?" Sarah heard Anna say. "Yes, I know it's late. Early. Whatever. But it's an emergency."
There was a pause, as Anna was no doubt listening to the person on the other end.
"Yes, I know it's weird hearing my words with this voice, I haven't gotten used to it either." Another pause. "Well, yeah, that would be way stranger, but I don't think I could call you if I were a mouse. Look, Amy, I—no, it's just—"
Anna let out an exasperated breath, and brushed the hair out of her face with her hand.
"Amy, I need your help on this, okay? The girl I switched with? She told people about our change." More silence. "Well you said—no, you told me—"
Dammit. Sarah would give anything to be able to hear the other end of that call. Well, almost anything. She wouldn't give up Chuck, now that she could have him.
"Okay, well if you were just screwing with me, then how do I reverse this? Yes, I know you spent years as a mouse, but you couldn't speak. It's not as though you would've been able to speak the words of a spell even if you knew how to change yourself back. I on the other hand—"
No! Anna couldn't change them back now. Sarah had come to grips with being Anna Wu forever. She was going to get a clean break from being a spy, a new start in life, and a chance to be with the man she loved. Anna couldn't take that away from her. Not now. Not ever.
But whatever magics Anna practiced, mindreading obviously wasn't one of them, as she continued to talk to her purported Wiccan mentor.
"Okay, fine. Yeah, I'll come by in the morning." A pause and an eye-roll. "Yes, late in the morning, after you've had time to sleep. Thanks again, Amy."
Sarah walked over to the sliding glass door of the cell, and began to pound on it to get Anna's attention.
"Anna!" she yelled. "Anna, what's going on?"
Sighing, Anna slipped her phone into her back pocket, and dragged her feet over to Sarah's cell.
"I was on the phone with Amy, my mentor," Anna said.
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I gathered that much. What's going on?"
"Well," Anna said, "it turns out we may not be stuck like this after all. No thanks to you. Didn't I tell you—"
Sarah saw red. "First of all," she said, cutting Anna off, "we wouldn't even be in this situation if it wasn't for your meddling."
"Well, yeah, but—"
"No, let me finish," Sarah said. "And second of all, I've decided that I want to stay like this. I want to be free to be with Chuck, and I can, if I'm you. So, yeah, I think you owe me that much, after what you did."
Sarah recognized the scowl on the other woman's face. It was the expression she'd seen in the mirror for the first 28 years of her life, whenever she was in a bad mood.
"I don't owe you anything," Anna growled. "I especially don't owe you my body. My identity. I tried to help you, and it got screwed up, sure, but I'm not becoming Sarah Walker, or whatever the hell your real name is, just because you have your eye on some forbidden fruit."
The implication in that last bit was clear to Sarah. Anna was calling her feelings for Chuck a mere crush. She was trivializing the love she felt for her former asset.
"Don't you dare think that what I feel for Chuck isn't real," Sarah said threateningly.
"Or you'll what? Glare at me through the cell door? Oh wait, you're already doing that."
Anna took a deep breath.
"Look, I'm sorry if you feel like I'm minimizing how you feel. Believe me, I know exactly how it feels to love someone you shouldn't. I mean, I am in a relationship with Morgan."
"That's hardly the same thing," Sarah said.
Anna shrugged. "True, there are no laws preventing me from dating Morgan, but there's the whole social-standing thing. By all rights, Morgan shouldn't even be able to pleasure himself to a picture of me, but I still have feelings for him."
Sarah sighed. "Okay, that's fair," she said meekly. "Look, let's not talk about this through a pane of bulletproof glass. Can you open the door?"
Anna bristled, then seemed to relax after a moment of contemplation. "Fine," she said. "What's the code?"
"It's 447-832-576-5081," Sarah answered.
As Anna inputted the code to open the cell, Sarah went back to sit on her bench. The door slid open, and Sarah patted the seat beside her, inviting Anna over. Tentatively, Anna walked over and took a seat.
"So I take it everyone just thinks I'm a batshit crazy Anna Wu?" Sarah asked.
"Um, more or less," Anna said. "I did as much damage control as I could. I think Chuck believed you. At least a little. He still may have his doubts. But Casey and the mean lady—"
"General Beckman," Sarah corrected.
"Yeah, her—which, she was pissed about being woken up so late, by the way."
"I can imagine," Sarah said.
"Yeah, well they were mad at me for bringing you into the loop. Or mad at you for, well, you get it."
"Right."
"But anyway, they're both convinced you just had a nervous break, probably because of the mission tonight, so they're going to arrange for you to 'win' an all expenses paid cruise, which will be otherwise filled with trusted agents, and psychology experts who are going to convince you all of this was just your imagination run wild."
"Chuck and Casey thought this was a good idea?" Sarah asked.
"Well, Chuck didn't, of course. But like I said, he kind of still believes the truth. Casey thought it was a good idea, though. He even convinced the lady—"
"Beckman," Sarah corrected again.
"Yeah, convinced Beckman that you should get to take Morgan along. Your sessions with the shrink will be disguised as spa treatments."
Sarah thought about that for a moment. Anna seemed far too calm about having her body set at sea.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"Well, by the time they send you away, I plan to be me again, which means it'll be me who gets a free vacation, with Morgan, and you can go back to doing the spy thing. Everybody wins," Anna explained.
Not everyone, Sarah thought. She wouldn't win in that scenario. She'd have to go back to being in a cover relationship with Chuck. She'd have to hide her feelings again. That sounded awful. Like the worst thing she could imagine. But she had to learn more.
"So how do we switch back?" Sarah asked.
"Oh," Anna said. "So after Chuck and Casey left—"
"They're gone?" Sarah asked, cutting Anna off.
"Um, yeah, they left after the meeting. Casey was driving Chuck home. But as I was saying, once they were gone, I called Amy, and she told me that there's a ritual I have to perform, and everything will go back to normal. She was just screwing with me about the not telling anyone, and the happiness thing. Said she was trying to teach me a lesson about playing around with magic I don't understand."
"So that's it, huh? We'll just go back to our lives like they were before?"
"Pretty much," Anna said, shrugging. "The only catch is, it's time sensitive. I have to do it before midnight tomorrow."
"Oh?" Sarah said. "Are you going to be able to get it done?"
She was afraid the calmness in her voice would alert Anna that she was plotting. No sane human would be so calm in the face of losing their identity forever. Unless, of course, that sane person was in favor of such a change. But fortunately, for Sarah at least, Anna didn't seem to notice anything.
"Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem," Anna said. "Amy said she has all the stuff at her place, and that she'll help me perform the ritual. So we should be back to our old selves soon enough."
"That's great," Sarah said, forcing the biggest smile she could. "Well, it has been an experience being you, Anna Wu."
"Likewise," Anna said.
Sarah opened her arms, and Anna leaned into her, without a thought. It was an odd experience, Sarah decided, hugging her own body. But it was necessary.
Anna was wearing downtime outfit G-17—Sarah had long ago organized the clothing she kept at Castle into a grid-based selection system during one of the many boring, mission-less days she was down there—which featured a rather plain pair of jeans, and a lavender blouse, with pockets on either sleeve. The pocket on the right sleeve, Sarah knew, contained a very small vile of a very potent tranquilizer, designed to absorb immediately into the blood stream when it came into contact with the skin. She knew if she just…
Sarah felt the fragile glass shatter under the pressure she applied, and jerked back from the hug, so not to touch the liquid herself.
"Wha—"
Anna couldn't even get the question out. She tried to stand, but found her legs useless, and collapsed to the floor. With her last ounce of strength, she looked up at Sarah, who was standing over her, and mouthed a question Sarah had no trouble understanding. Why?
"I'm sorry," Sarah said, as she gently liberated Anna's phone from her front pocket before walking to the sliding door of the cell. "I really am, but I can't let you change me back."
Sarah keyed in the first six digits of the code to lock the cell. "I have to go get the man I love."
She punched in the final six numbers, leaving a helpless, unconscious Anna a huddled mess on the floor of the cell, and made a beeline for Castle's emergency exit. She had to get to Chuck and convince him she was telling the truth.
And then, she had to find this Amy and make sure nothing happened to derail her plan.
A/N: Now for this. So before you guys rip me a new one, let me explain. And I hate doing this, but I feel I must. So Sarah may come off a bit unlikable here. That is not, I assure you, my intention. But she's desperate. She has everything she suddenly wants on the table, and as we know from canon, Sarah Walker is not above taking drastic measures to achieve her goals. And she's not above taking what's not properly hers. She was, after all, the daughter of a con man. And she's not a sucker. So there's my qualification, and explanation for Sarah's actions. I do look forward to hearing your take (all of you, of course) on all of this. You guys are awesome. Peace.
