A/N1 More story. Some backstory too. So, some things become clearer, while others darken.

Thanks for the reviews!

Don't own Chuck.

ACT IV

CHAPTER 12

A Presence, with Secrets

"Chuck, am I in the Intersect, your Intersect? Can you remember for me?"

Chuck glanced away. He stared ahead. His mouth worked a little, his lips compressing and decompressing. He turned toward her, rotating not just his head, but his whole upper body.

"I don't know if you are or not. There was a little about you in the first Intersect. I flashed on some of it because of...external stimuli. It...well, it created problems between us for a while.

"After that, I tried to avoid...flashing on you. I didn't want to know about you if you didn't want me to know. I came to realize I didn't need to know about your past. Your present was enough…

"I don't know if you are in here," he tapped his head, "or if you aren't, but I am willing to...look. For you. Are you sure you want me to?"

Sarah paused. Was she sure? She had been excited by the possibility when it struck her. Asked without thinking. But if she was in the Intersect, she couldn't find out about her past without Chuck finding out about it too.

Did she want that? Had she wanted it before?

"So, even after we got married, I still hadn't told you much about my past?"

"Not much." Chuck came to a complete stop. Then he went on quickly. "But I didn't ask. Or I stopped asking. Sometimes you would tell me little things. Once in a while, something big. I figured some things out just inferentially. Carina...well, she likes to talk about you...

"But I was happy being with you in the now, in the present. I am happy with that. But, if you want to know, I can...see...if you are in the Intersect."

Sarah bit her lip. She had an anchor in Chuck. But she was still at sea. He loved her. She loved him. Why couldn't I tell him I loved him at the motel?

Why hadn't she when told him her past she had the chance? She must have had so many chances? Why had she let them all go by? If she had been willing to marry him, to promise him her present and future, why hadn't she shared her past?

What makes a person your asset? Imbalance of power. It is not just that you have a weapon and your asset doesn't.

It is not just that you have training and skills and the asset doesn't.

It is primarily that the asset is ignorant and you keep him or her ignorant. Information is power. In particular, never let the asset have information about you unless that information is part of the structure of the manipulation.

Chuck was her husband. Chuck was not her asset. But hadn't she been treating him like her asset? Even if he didn't want to know, didn't believe he needed to know?

Sarah took a deep breath. "I don't know why I didn't tell you, Chuck. I...really don't. First my dad, then Graham...Telling me never to let anyone know me, or that I was nothing more than a cover...I...I'm sorry. But I...I want...no, I need to know, even if I don't remember myself, I'd need to know. So, please, tell me."

Chuck said nothing for a while, then she saw him put one hand on each leg, sit up straighter, and take a deep breath.

"You are in the Intersect, Sarah."

The air in the car thickened. She kept driving. Chuck swallowed hard, then cleared his throat.

"Maybe we should find a place to pull over…"

ooOoo

Huntaker finished the call and blew out a breath in palpable relief. He sat down the phone. Beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead. His hand was trembling.

That woman scared the bejesus out of him. What the damn hell is 'bejesus', anyway?

Talking to her was like talking an echo from the crypt. Her voice was cool and dusty, alive only in that it responded in real time, relevantly. Otherwise, it was far, far less alive than a mechanized voice on an elevator.

It was positively...creepy. That was not one of Huntaker's words, 'creepy', but she forced him to use it.

Huntaker did not scare easily. In fact, he would have said he did not scare, period. But that was before his master plan, and in particular before his realization that he needed the best, the deadliest assassin on the planet. With Madeline's help, he had found her. The woman's list of probable kills was long and spectacular. She had assassinated people who were thought to be secure, absolutely secure, from any and all attacks.

And she not only always escaped. It was always like she had never been there. She made ghosts seem substantial. Only the corpse, if that, was left behind. Her methods were varied, fitted to circumstance. Gun, bomb, knife, injection, poison, strangulation...gas. She killed from a distance; she killed cheek-to-cheek.

He had no name. No one knew her name. No one walking on daisies, anyway. Presumably, there were folks pushing up daisies who knew, but they were keeping their secret. All Huntaker had was a code name: Archeus. And that voice. Bejesus.

The code name was itself a marker of arrogance, assurance; it was a boast.

'Archeus', the active principle of the material world, the chief cause of things, the plastic power of the old philosophers. The Cambridge Platonists. Cudworth. Huntaker dimly remembered the term from a course in the history of ideas he had taken at Johns Hopkins as an undergraduate.

The name was a claim to status, the best, and an announcement of the ability to become, tranform into...anyone. No one had the slightest idea what Archeus looked like.

The only constant was the claim that she had black hair, but that might have simply been part of the legend she had built so quickly, the hair color one would imagine a female killer to have. Many were convinced that she had come from Southeast Asia, a child of poverty and desperation, driven into her life by the brutality of her childhood. Others were equally convinced that she had been a child of privilege born in Paris, but who turned savagely on the world she had been born into.

She was supposed to have been a student of Carlos the Jackal. She would never have known Carlos personally, of course (he was serving three life sentences in a French prison), but the rumors were that she had found men and women who had known him, even some who had worked for him-or so the stories went. All that was sure was that she was a master killer, a retailer of death, and that she had made the study of assassins both her vocation and avocation, if she could be said to have the latter.

She had become truly famous (at least in the relevant circles) only three years ago, after a series of spectacular kills, all in the space of a month. It was only barely possible to imagine her having gotten from place to place to do what she had done; how she had done it and planned such clean, perfect kills was a complete mystery. She had so far confined herself to Europe, Asia, The Middle East. She had not been linked to any kills in North America, although there were rumors of kills in South America, but the rumors still were wispy, even for rumors.

She was contacted by phone or intermediary. No paper, no texts. She initiated contact when word that contact was hoped for reached her and she found the contact worth her while. Huntaker's money had attracted her attention, as Huntaker knew it would.

What he wanted her to do had made her willing to come to the US. Right now, she was still in LA. Huntaker had no idea where she was in LA exactly, of course, where she had gone after she bombed the DARPA lab and killed everyone inside. He had made sure she had Sarah Bartowski's fingerprints to use as well as her DNA. For some reason, the DARPA assignment had enlivened Archeus' voice for a moment, as if she was pleased by it for personal and well as professional reasons.

She had not been similarly enlivened by the prospect of killing Quinn and his henchmen. But she had done it, and with 'extreme prejudice', just as Huntaker ordered. Quinn. Moron usurper. Delusional. Huntaker chuckled as he thought about Quinn's likely final moments...

Well, whatever. The really important assignment was still to come. Huntaker needed to be patient. He was good at that. In the meantime, Huntaker needed Madeline to isolate Team Bartowski. He needed Archeus to finish Sarah and Chuck Bartowski. Huntaker needed to be sure they were finished. Huntaker could not rest until Chuck Bartowski was in his final rest.

And then Archeus could do the thing Huntaker most wanted to be done.

ooOoo

Archeus hung up the phone, disconnecting it from the vast, intestine system of routing and rerouting that kept her untraceable, a ghost, omnipresent and nowhere all at once.

So, she was to kill the Bartowskis.

Fascinating. Fascinating. Fascinating.

Even a bit...exciting. Archeus trilled aloud. Huntress hunting huntress.

Her father would appreciate the irony.

She had studied Carlos the Jackal, adopted his methods, assumed his place in the world as the foremost assassin-for-hire. She was the second coming of the Jackal, the assassin of the future. But she had learned nearly as much, maybe as much, from studying Sarah Walker as she had from Carlos. A woman was always a woman's best teacher.

Archeus had always planned to kill her teachers, as her father had known she would.

Graduation day.

She would be valedictorian.

But Carlos was unreachable, at least for now. Luckily, he wasn't going anywhere. She could plan that kill at her leisure, perform it during some otherwise slow period. She would end Carlos and save the people of France the expense of keeping the Jackal fed and clothed.

Sarah Bartowski, however, had just fallen into Archeus' hands. It was time for Archeus to tame Graham's Wildcard Enforcer, time for the pupil to teach the master the final lesson.

It was a shame that Sarah Bartowski had lost her memory. It would make killing her less satisfying, perhaps. But still, she would kill Sarah. Facing her. She would meet her so as to say goodbye. And she would kill Sarah's husband first, letting Sarah watch. Maybe that would...jog...her memories. Sarah's death would be more satisfying if she knew she had taught Archeus without ever intending to teach her or anyone. That she had taught the killer of her husband. Her own killer.

Graduation day.

Valediction. The saying of farewell.

She brushed back her long, black, straight hair. Picking up the phone again, she called the old woman who had found the Bartowskis.

She would meet with her. Archeus needed every detail: check and double-check. And then the old woman would have to die. She could not live after seeing Archeus.

No one could see Archeus and live.

ooOoo

Huntaker was beginning to feel normal again, to get over his post-Archeus dread. The woman was like The Plague, the Black Death. It was hard to recover from even her voice. It was like an infection, crawling, insidious.

Huntaker got up and went to his liquor cabinet. He poured a large whiskey in a heavy tumbler and took a sip. He toasted himself.

He had been the splinter deep under the flesh of Team Bartowski. After the death of Bryce Larkin and after Chuck Bartowski's download of the then-new Intersect, Huntaker had leveraged fears about Bartowski into a new role for the Intersect Committee.

It was no longer merely advisory; it became directive. Beckman ran the Team, but Huntaker maneuvered so that he would run the Committee. The Team knew nothing about this behind-the-scenes goings-on, and that was the way Huntaker wanted things. He wanted everyone to think that Beckman ran the show. Including Beckman.

But Huntaker had realized early on what it took everyone else a long time to realize. The Intersect only worked effectively in Chuck Bartowski, and it only worked effectively in Chuck Bartowski when he was with Sarah Walker.

Huntaker never wanted it to work in him, so Huntaker contrived to get the Committee to insist that Bartowski be trained as a spy. It was a makeshift gambit, but Huntaker knew Bartowski would never make a super-spy, at least not without Walker. So it was important that they be separated. Once Bartowski had proven he could not become a super-spy, Huntaker had every intention of bunkering once and for all. Then, after he'd buried Bartowski, it would have been easy enough to arrange some sort of accident, and really to bury Bartowski, bunker to casket. But that had gone wrong. Bartowski ended up back in Burbank, back with Walker. Damn Chuck Bartowski!

My plans work against everyone but that bungler! Huntaker squeezed his tumbler, imagining it Bartowski's skinny neck. Anyway...

Huntaker knew that Walker did not want Chuck to be a spy, super or regular. Huntaker, through Madeline, knew that Walker had schemed to get Bartowski to run in Prague. Too bad he hadn't done what Sarah hoped, planned. Madeline's team had planted a bomb on that train. If Bartowski and Walker had boarded it together, they would never have unboarded. No one would have. Except in pieces. In bags. And, no one on the Committee would have dared push hard or worry long about the loss of two rogue spies...not even Beckman. But, dammit, it hadn't worked for some reason. Bartowski said No to Walker. And soon after, somehow, Team Bartowski was back in business. Damn Chuck Bartowski!

So Huntaker (again, with Madeline's help, although Beckman did not suspect it) forced Daniel Shaw onto the Team, as its new leader. Shaw was the Anti-Bartowski. Cold, pretty, deadly, and utterly and irreparably broken. (His psych evals had shown it, but Huntaker and Madeline had surreptitiously removed them from his file and replaced them with evals proclaiming him more than fit for duty). Madeline had found out about Shaw's wife and about Shaw's resulting instability, his Captain Ahab-like white wrath against the Ring and his wife's killer. Madeline discovered that Sarah Walker had terminated Evelyn Shaw.

Huntaker had again thought Bartowski would wash out, that Shaw would break him, and so Bartowski could be bunkered without protest from Beckman or the rest of the Committee, but the rubbery guy had bounced again instead of shattering. Like that rubber guy in the Fantastic Four. Mr. Fantastic?

When Huntaker cornered Beckman, forcing her require a Red Test, he was sure he had at last found the thing Bartowski would not do. But, again, against all odds, against all that Huntaker knew of him, Bartowski carried out his Red Test. Huntaker still wondered about that. Dammit!

But in the meantime, Madeline's informants in the Ring told her that the Ring was actively recruiting Shaw. Huntaker and Madeline made sure the Ring delivered footage of Walker's Red Test got to Shaw. (Manipulating the Ring turned out to be so easy.). He had expected Shaw to kill Walker, and maybe to kill Chuck as well, but, again, it hadn't worked out. Bartowski and Walker were maddening. And then they were...together. Damn Chuck Bartowski!

Through the Ring, Huntaker engineered Shaw another shot at Bartowski and Walker, and Shaw did manage to kill Orion, but yet again the plan failed. And yet again, Bartowski bounced instead of shattered.

At that point, Huntaker decided to pull back, bide his time. He thought he had gotten lucky when Team B ran afoul of Volkoff, and that Volkoff would be the one to finally end the Team for him. But even Volkoff was unable to do it. In fact, they turned him (back) into Hartley Winterbottom. Gah!

Damn Chuck Bartowski!

A bit desperate (in hindsight), Huntaker unleashed Clyde Decker. He thought Decker could get it done. Decker proved effective at stalling and frustrating the Team. Still, he failed too. He even almost gave Huntaker's machinations away in a pointless fit of grandstanding.

So, Huntaker and Madeline oversaw Shaw's escape from prison. Again, failure. But Huntaker's master plan was in place at that point, the clock ticking toward D-Day and H-Hour. He needed Team B, Chuck Bartowski, gone.

He couldn't wait, so he found the Intersect-obsessed Quinn...and that had been a very bad idea.

Huntaker sometimes wished he had trained as a spy. He would have been a great proficient. He could have taken care of some of these things himself. If you want it done right...

Huntaker had always intended to use Archeus for the final part of his master plan. He had not wanted to involve her until then. He should have brought her in much sooner, instead of going through the stooges, Decker, Shaw and Quinn. As it was, she was going to need to kill the Bartowskis, then turn right around and do what Huntaker brought her to the US to do. There was much bigger game afoot. Tick, tick, tock.

Damn Chuck Bartowski!

Once he was dead, it would be hard for Huntaker to resist the desire to dance on his grave. And Huntaker didn't dance. Normally.

ooOoo

Chuck had called Beckman on the burner phone.

She told him of the immediate termination order. It was chilling to hear it, but not a surprise, not after the newspaper. The fact that Beckman had been rendered practically powerless was a surprise. Beckman suspected Huntaker, but she did not think he knew Chuck had the Intersect, so she thought perhaps Huntaker had pushed her out so as to keep her from interfering with the termination effort against Sarah. He and Beckman finished up, then Ellie took the phone.

"Chuck? How's Sarah? You need to bring her to me. I need to see how things are."

Ellie was talking quickly. Chuck couldn't respond immediately. His throat was raw from sharing with Sarah what he had found in the Intersect. She was still in his arms, still sobbing silently.

"She's having...a hard time. She's remembering, but it's mostly fragmented, herky-jerky. Her head hurts a lot. And...ah...She was in the pristine Intersect." Chuck stalled for a second. "She wanted to know about herself, so I told her...I didn't know how to say No to her..." Chuck let that trail off, not sure he could go on.

Ellie let Chuck trail off, but then she asked sotto voce, "Are you two back together?"

"We're together." Chuck did not elaborate. Ellie sighed in relief.

"Good, Chuck, for both of you. But keep in mind: whatever you just told her, she had time to process and your presence to help her, five years of your company and love, even if she never told you much of what she was processing. Actually, I know she didn't, Chuck." Ellie was stumbling a bit. "I think she probably...No, I know she told me more than she told you. Not a lot, but more. How are you, after discovering...all that, discovering Sarah's past?"

Chuck did not answer. Ellie went on. "Don't freak out, Chuck. You love that woman. You know that woman. Being with you changed her relationship to her past once, Chuck, and it can do it again.

"What do you mean, sis?"

"I'll explain more when I see you both. Here's Diane, again...I mean, General Beckman."

Beckman took the phone and talked into it but included Ellie in what she said, looking at her. "Might as well call me 'Diane'. I don't know what good the 'General' is anymore…

"Chuck, we need to find a place to meet. I'm worried about Castle. We're going to get out of here."

ooOoo

They parked the car. Sarah shut off the engine. She didn't look at Chuck. She stared straight ahead. She had parked next to a dumpster. It looked like the one she had hidden in when she woke up on the dock. Chuck began to recite in a soft voice.

"Red Test. Location: Paris…" He paused. Without looking at him, Sarah motioned for him to continue.

...

"Termination Assignment. Cover: Rebecca Franco. Location: Mexico City. Target: Mexican narcoterrorist Fernando Escobar.

"Agent entered Mexico City as Rebecca Franco. She located Escobar and executed him. Clean kill. No connection to the US government. Kill apparently the work of a rival. Mission accomplished in four hours. Recently, two agents were lost trying to terminate Escobar, and neither was able to locate him before being marked and killed.

Note in handwriting: 'Extraordinary result. She was everything I hoped. A gifted killer.' Initialed: L. G.

Termination Assignment. Cover. Rebecca Franco…"

...

Chuck continued. It took a while. At some point, Chuck could see tears dripping from Sarah's jaw, down onto her hands, her hands wringing in her lap. A few minutes after that, she leaned into him, and between sobs, she said one word:

"Enough."

A/N2 More next time in Chapter 13, "Broken, And Still Breaking". Be sure to tune in!