A/N1 Some dastardly reflections, some sisterly conversation, some Team colloquy...
Thanks for all the reviews and PMs. Writing stories like this is exhausting. I won't deny that a review is a welcome pick-me-up.
Don't own Chuck.
ACT V
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Pattern Recognition
Huntaker shut down his computer.
Madeline had taken her final breath. She'd died like the betrayer she was, if not exactly as Huntaker would have liked. Her body had been disposed of, no corpus delicti to create complications. Archeus would be in place in DC soon. Everything was working out; the schedule was being kept.
Huntaker took a moment to enjoy himself. Just a smidgen. He knew he had made a mistake with both Madeline and Chuck Bartowski. He had let it become personal. But it didn't matter anymore. Madeline was...encorpsed. Huntaker assumed Bartowski (and his knife-weilding, blond nightmare of a wife) was too. Encorpsed. Ha! Stop. Be serious, Olin.
Bartowski.
Huntaker had worried about him from the first. A rotting Boy Scout, a do-gooder, oblivious to reality. Huntaker embraced the necessities of realpolitik, one of which was that power gathered into fewer and fewer hands...well, unless there was an elaborate set of checks and balances in place. Huntaker had spent his life undermining and subverting those checks and balances; he had gathered power.
He had used Madeline to play the US intelligence community against itself. That was one reason why he hated the Intersect. It represented an actual coming-together of that community, a chance for it to sort itself out and to overcome the jealousies, the misinformation and the misdirection that characterized it. That chance grew when the Intersect ended up in someone like Bartowski, who actually used the damnable thing for good, instead of to empower himself, as Larkin would have inevitably done, as Shaw did. As any full-of-shit normal spy would have done.
The Intersect transfigured Bartowski into a check-and-balance all by himself, and he frustrated and sometimes stalled Huntaker's gathering of power.
But Huntaker (and Madeline, curse her mercifully unbeating heart) had not just played the US intelligence agencies against each other, they had also played Fulcrum and eventually the Ring against the agencies, exponentializing suspicion and mistrust and confusion. Huntaker had pocketed almost all of the Ring Elders, but they had not known it about each other, or knew whose pocket they were in. They knew that someone was privy to their secrets and would use the secrets against them.
Well, all but one.
One had an inkling, somehow, that it was Huntaker whose pocket she was in. She had somehow gotten suspicious, and found a slip-up, a loose end, a person That person is now missing...dead. She managed to collect information on Huntaker and had, it turned out, fed the information into a Ring database. It ended up, by a bizarre series of translations, in the Ring's Intersect.
But she had not been willing to let anyone else know. She was worried that other Elders might have been colluding with Huntaker against her. So much welcome dishonor among thieves. So, she had stored the information in an unnamed file. She did that before Huntaker had been able to put her in an unmarked grave.
Huntaker could not retrieve the file, not without too much risk. Luckily, no Ring intersect had flashed on the information. In particular, Shaw had never flashed on it.
Of course, Shaw was so far gone by the time he got the Intersect, and the Ring's Intersect had consumed so much of the little of him that was left so quickly, it probably wouldn't have mattered if he had flashed on it.
A recent report Huntaker had seen on Shaw said that Shaw'd been reduced to gibbering in a padded cell; no threat to anyone but himself. Huntaker laughed out loud. Shaw!
Anyway, the information was buried, and, on its own, it was far from damaging. But it could lead someone to suspect Huntaker's larger purpose.
It might never come to light. But its mere existence made Huntaker mad, in both senses of that term, angry and a smidgen crazy. He hated vulnerabilities, hated them, even merely potential ones.
He had also been worried that somehow Bartowski would figure it all out, discern a pattern that Huntaker had not realized was there, a pattern he'd made inadvertently and could not erase because he did not see it. At a deep level, even a primal level, Bartowski felt like a threat to Huntaker, the threat. Bartowski was Huntaker's nemesis, at least that is how it felt to Huntaker, the foe fate threw inevitably into the path of anyone daring enough to dream of power on a truly grand scale.
Fate! A grand scale! Huntaker realized he was getting a mite giddy.
He needed to remain calm for a little longer. He took a deep breath. Then another.
But Bartowski!
Huntaker had long ago discovered the secret to bearing the pain of your victims. Don't care. He didn't. But Bartowski cared, about everything and everybody, seemingly.
A number of the missions Team Bartowski successfully undertook scuttled or damaged plans of Huntaker's, plans for accruing more power. (Or money, but money was always ultimately power.) As Chairman of the Intersect Committee, Huntaker had to sit on his hands and watch it happen, smile, even; otherwise, he would have risked exposure.
Always Bartowski, always Bartowski, always the burning, itching thought of Bartowski. Psychological hemorrhoid!
Considered singly, Huntaker hated Bartowski more than the Intersect; but he hated the Intersected Bartowski most, with a perfect hatred, lacking nothing.
Bartowski was a fish hook lodged deep in Huntaker's flesh and every effort Huntaker made to dig him out somehow drove Bartowski deeper still. But when Bartowski last lost the Intersect, Praise be and Hallelujah!, Huntaker began to feel like maybe he was safe.
And now that Bartowski was dead, Huntaker knew he was.
Archeus did not fail. It was all going to happen. The final blow against checks and balances, the replacement of the President with Huntaker's puppet.
Still, still...
A nagging doubt, a small, inflamed, dubious voice that kept him from being able to fully turn his thoughts from Bartowski: Am I sure he is dead?
Why hadn't Archeus declared the Bartowskis dead? Why hadn't she talked to him?
Judging from the small signals Archeus let slip, she'd been as intent on killing Sarah Bartowski as Huntaker had Chuck Bartowski. Both wanted the couple dead, but each had a special hatred for one of the two. The other needed to die just because they were so damnably, ably and completely a unit, stronger together.
No. No.
He blew out a breath in a blustery sigh. Just let it go, get over it. Bartowski is behind you. His nemesis, his arch-enemy was dead. The pristine Intersect was destroyed in DARPA. The faulty one was destroyed in Sarah Bartowski.
No more Intersect. No more Bartowski.
A newer, better future was about to materialize.
The Day of the Intersect had ended; the Night of Huntaker was about to begin.
Soon, Huntaker would not even remember Chuck Bartowski.
ooOoo
Sarah went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Ellie had been scribbling, evidently organizing her thoughts, her questions. "Let's start with the big question: Do you remember Chuck?"
Just a couple of minutes earlier, Ellie had grabbed a pen and some paper. Then she looked up, remembering something. She had fished a toothbrush, still in the protective wrapping, and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste from her pocket. "Thought you could use these. Got them from a store room upstairs. You can answer in a minute."
Sarah finished and then rejoined Ellie, sitting down. "What do you mean, Ellie? 'Do I remember Chuck'? I have some memories, images, a few on-going bits, like little movies...But I have this conviction, this deep conviction about him, about how I feel about him, about how he feels about me. When he told me I was his wife, I didn't really remember any of that then. But I knew it was true. I knew I was his wife, he was my husband. We…um...in the motel…"
Sarah stopped. Her color rose.
Ellie noticed but pretended not to, even as a smile snuck onto her face. After making a note, she doodled on her pad, giving Sarah a chance to go on.
"Anyway, I feel it, I believe it, but I can't recall it, or much of it, our marriage. I remembered a little of our wedding, our vows, both practice and actual vows. I remember bits and pieces of missions, dating...or cover dating."
"Is there still pain when you remember things about Chuck?"
Sarah's gaze turned introspective and retrospective. "A little, I guess, but nothing like what it was at first. It seems to be going away, in fact, it's disappearing faster than my memory is reappearing."
Ellie made more notes. "A little while ago you remembered The Tick," Ellie shook her head, "remembered watching it with Chuck. Remembered details of an episode. That memory didn't seem to hurt you; in fact, you didn't even seem to register that you were remembering. You just did it. Has that happened any other time?"
"I don't...Wait. Our hug. And...on the way here, in Roan's car, I fell asleep. As I did, I was thinking, remembering, that he liked making speeches. I just did it, I didn't realize it. But, yes, that was a memory, no pain."
"Good, Sarah, any others?"
"Um...yes! When I was numbed by Archeus. I remembered her. I mean, not her, I've never seen her that I know of. I remembered hearing about her. Reading about her. While I was here in Burbank. Oh, oh, I also remembered a bit about when I was in Russia, trying to free your mom from Volkoff."
Sarah wasn't sure what it meant, but it was a pattern of memories without pain, and Ellie seemed to be excited by it. Sarah was getting excited too.
"What's it mean, Ellie?"
"It's a good sign. You can remember, and remember without pain. It suggests to me that your procedural memory, your embodied skills, are beginning to make contact with your representational memory (images, pictures, from your point of view). You seem to be able to remember when you aren't the one asking yourself questions, when you aren't specifically trying to remember, not thinking about what you are doing as remembering.
Ellie tapped her pen on her pad, a small smile on her lips. "That's good. But we need to do some tests. I'll keep asking questions while I run them."
Ellie attached wires to Sarah's head in a colorful array, and hooked the wires to various machines. The machines whirred, chirped and blinked quietly.
Most of the time, she had Sarah talking, telling her about what had happened since she woke up on the dock. But sometimes she had Sarah stop talking to perform other tasks, visual tracking, focusing, reciting the alphabet, counting, pattern recognition, and so on. By the time she finished, Sarah was sure she'd either become a cyborg or been inducted into Mensa.
Talking as she had, Sarah had told Ellie the whole story, minus a few intimate details that had been gestured at, so to speak, but left unrelated.
Afterward, Ellie sat for a long while looking at readouts and the computer screen. Sarah was lost in reflection.
Ellie eventually spoke. "The good news, Sarah, is that I don't see any evidence of any physical problem. The bad news is that none of this tells me anything new about the nature of the memory loss. I have theories, but this data neither confirms nor disconfirms them. I didn't expect there to be major physical trauma, brain trauma, but I was hoping the data might suggest something to me about how best to treat you." Ellie tapped her pen on the counter unconsciously, reflecting.
"I tell you what, Ellie, why don't you tell me some memories, some of your memories of me and of Chuck. It doesn't have to be in order, or big things, just things that stand out. It might help me to hear about myself from you."
Ellie looked at her watch. "We should hear something from upstairs soon. But we have some time to wait yet. Ok. I will tell you some stories, but…" Ellie smiled dangerously, "I warn you. It's all...complicated…."
Ellie focused on the almost three years of unclarity in Sarah's relationship to Chuck. Most of the stories were about the host of mixed signals, hesitations, near-breakups, and actual breakups the two had gone through. Some of the stories were funny, but most struck Sarah as bittersweet, and some as just...sad.
As Ellie talked, Sarah got images, mostly isolated. She did not remember any story Ellie told in its entirety, and most of the stories prompted only an image or two. But some came to her in large part as Ellie narrated.
When Ellie finished, Sarah looked at her earnestly. She finally picked up on what Ellie was doing, the embracing point Ellie was making, by telling her these particular stories.
"You are worried that I might leave Chuck, aren't you, Ellie?"
Ellie met Sarah's gaze and held it. "Full disclosure? Yes. I love you, Sarah, and I'm certain you love my brother. I don't doubt that. But you have a tendency to slip back into being his handler instead of his wife.
"Mostly he defers to you. And I get it. You are an amazing woman. Truly amazing. But tell me the truth. Since Chuck told you about your CIA history, you've been thinking about leaving, right?"
Sarah nodded, looking away from Ellie's gaze. Ellie went on. "Did you discuss that with Chuck?"
Sarah squirmed a little. "Sort of...No. Not really. He...knew. I did tell him, just a little while ago, that I wanted to stay."
Ellie was clearly troubled, hesitant.
"Look, Sarah, I know the last few days have been beyond crazy, and I am not forgetting all you've been through, really, I'm not...You've been forced to process in hours what you had years to process before. I can't imagine it...But...
"But did you ever suggest to Chuck that he really had a say in whether you left or not?"
Sarah looked down at her bare feet. After a few seconds, she shook her head. "But, Ellie, I am not going to leave, I know that now."
"Good. That's so good. But listen, If you know you are his wife, if the feelings are there, Sarah, then share your life with him. Even as it is, gaps and blanks, and regrets and remorse. The hard stuff. I know that's what you want."
Sarah glanced up at Ellie. "We've had this talk before, haven't we?"
"Do you remember?" Ellie asked.
"Yes...No...A definite feeling of...familiarity. Was I worried about this...before?" She looked down again.
Ellie confirmed it. Then Ellie gathered herself: "As hard as it must have been for you to hear the things Chuck told you about yourself, Sarah, do you know how hard it must have been for him to tell you?" Sarah jerked her gaze back up to Ellie. When Chuck told her, she had been so blinded by her shock and misery...
"But he did. This may sound strange, Sarah, but at some level, you know it is true: my brother has never done anything braver in his life than tell you what he told you. He's smart, that brother of mine, he knew (you said so yourself) what was likely to happen if he told you, what the cost would be to him, but he told you anyway, because you asked him to. Because he loved...loves...you too much not to tell you, to keep it from you." Ellie's voice was soft.
"But I…I..." Sarah started, stammering.
Ellie's cell phone rang. She listened for a moment. When the call was done, she smiled at Sarah. "The lab tech. You're pregnant. I was right. The blood work is all good otherwise." Sarah lunged at Ellie and squeezed her. There was a high-pitched sound, almost a squeal. It came from Sarah. When she ended it, she leaned back so that she could look Ellie in the eye.
"I need to talk to Chuck, Ellie."
ooOoo
Beckman looked around the room. Chuck had greeted everyone and his injuries had been tended. Chuck, Casey, Carina, Devon, Morgan, and Alex were all squeezed around one small table with her. Roan was standing, she knew, just behind her chair.
Chuck had filled everyone in on what had happened since Sarah had forced Carina out of the car. He didn't dwell on Sarah's memory issues. Everyone knew about them. He didn't repeat any of what he had told Sarah about her past. But he talked about the events, particularly about the confronting Archeus.
Beckman was pleased to know that Archeus was injured but newly frustrated that Huntaker had pushed her so far off the board that she could make very little happen. She got a description from Chuck, the first anyone had ever had on Archeus, and, while Chuck talked, she sent it to friends and contacts in the NSA and CIA and other places, alerting them to Archeus' presence, but also telling them to be careful about sharing the information.
It was all she could do. She had no power. But she had friends, like the people in this room. Roan was with her, and she had yet to greet him as she wanted to, although she had held his hand tightly for a few minutes after they hugged in greeting. He had held her hand tightly in return. It had relaxed her and helped her clear her head.
As Chuck finished his story, Beckman leaned toward him. "So, the new Intersect, how has it been?"
Chuck bit his lip, considering what to say. "Seamless. A little scarily so. I have a hard time telling what it is doing from what I am doing. But it's seamlessness takes time. When I started to fight with Archeus, I knew I had it, and that it was working, but...well, it is hard to describe…"
During Chuck's pause, Ellie and Sarah came into the room. Beckman smiled and nodded at Sarah, but Chuck was trying so hard to describe the Intersect's functioning, he didn't notice their entrance or Beckman's response.
"...I kept expecting a flash of skills or something, but nothing like that happened. I started to fight and I was fighting, against Archeus no less (and by the way, she's crazy, but she is...um...legitimately deadly) and at first, I was only able to hold my own. But as the fight went on, I...improved...I started to be one beat, then two beats, ahead of her. She knew it; she felt it. Of course, she was also tiring, but I wasn't, not really, and she could tell that too. The whole fight seemed to slow down to me, the way pro quarterbacks say that plays slow down for them over time...Anyway, I finally landed a serious blow. She was sure then that I had the Intersect; I could see it on her face. She ran."
"Does that all sound right to you, Sarah?" Beckman asked. Everyone turned, and Chuck leaped out of his chair, knocking it over in his hurry to reach her, take her hand. His relief at seeing her was palpable. He looked at Ellie and she mouthed, "She's ok." Sarah smiled at Chuck, then answered Beckman.
"I was still fighting the effects of the gas, and the fight was so fast, and so furious, that I couldn't pick up on all the details. But everything Chuck said fits with what I did pick up on. I wouldn't be in any hurry to face her."
"Well, Chuck, as Dr. Smith may have told you," Beckman's voice thickened at the woman's name, and Chuck and Carina exchanged a glance, "this Intersect takes time to settle in. The combat skills in it take time; it adjusts to the person.
"The lag you felt, then the acceleration, was due to that, I believe. In the ideal case, the person with the Intersect would have time to train, to spar and so on, before facing any real threat, before going 'live'. Your performance with it will continue to improve, if you continue to use it."
Beckman noticed as she talked that Sarah locked eyes with Carina. They stared at each other for a moment and then Sarah dropped her chin, lifted it. Carina nodded. Apology offered and accepted. Carina then gestured at her hair as a way of gesturing at Sarah's short red hair, and she put her finger in her mouth, like she was gagging herself. Sarah shrugged.
Beckman refocused. "Since we are all here, we need to face our problem and come up with a plan. A few minutes ago I got an email from Madeline Upshaw. She was an old friend of mine. I won't go into details, some of you know them," she heard Roan clear his throat, "but let's just say she was a spy. She was tied to the person I believe is behind all of this, Senator Olin Huntaker." Beckman stole a glance at Sarah but she did not react to the name. Of course, the faulty Intersect was still suppressed. Still, something might have happened. "Madeline's message had two parts. The first was almost unbelievable, if it weren't for the last few days, the second I still don't understand.
"Let me start with the second Madeline instructed me to call a lawyer's office and to give them a password and a number. I don't know what that will do, but I am convinced that she has been trying to help us, me, against Huntaker, and, after talking with Roan, I decided to trust that. I made the call. I have no idea what the effect will be. I made that choice; I hope I was right." She felt Roan's hand on her shoulder.
"The first was a brief statement. 'Huntaker plans to use Archeus to assassinate an important government figure; I believe it will be the President'."
The room fell absolutely silent.
And then everyone started talking at once. Beckman, with a sonic boom of a grunt from Casey as an aid, got everyone to settle down.
"I believe what Madeline believes. Archeus was, probably still is, here in LA, but she has not operated in the US before, and I don't believe she was brought here primarily to kill Chuck and Sarah. I suspect Huntaker brought her here for one thing, then decided to put her to other uses, really get his money's worth," Beckman smiled grimly, completely without humor. "I am willing to bet that Archeus killed Quinn and his men and that although Sarah's fingerprints were found in the rubble at DARPA, it is Archeus' fingerprints that belong there. Huntaker wanted the Intersect finished. We beat him to it. I have no idea if Archeus had told him that, but we will have to assume that she has.
It seems likely too that the timetable for the assassination has is underway. That may have been a contributing reason for Archeus running. She was saving herself for the bigger game."
Carina piped up. "Why would Archeus agree to that hit? The President? It's a damned suicide mission."
Sarah knew the answer and gave it. "Fame. She believes she is destined, 'damned' might be the better word, for great things, to be this...great assassin. She'd be willing to die if she thought she could pull it off. I have no doubt. 'Death is your gift. And mine'."
"What, Sarah?" Beckman asked, since Sarah added the last phrase so quietly. Beckman saw Chuck squeeze Sarah's hand. "Nothing, General. Just thinking...about Archeus." Then Beckman saw Sarah return the squeeze, and smile warmly, reassuringly, at her husband.
Beckman nodded and Casey spoke. "But why would Huntaker assassinate the President. How does it help him?"
"That's a question we need to try to answer. If we can, we can be sure the President is the target. And Madeline helped with that question too, but not in her email, in a pound-cake conversation we had before I came here. I think the answer to why Huntaker is doing this is in Sarah's Intersect." Beckman told the story, connecting it to the article about the search for Rebecca Franco.
Chuck was clearly getting upset. "But wait, General, to go hunting for the answer in Sarah's Intersect. That's dangerous!"
Ellie joined her brother. "It is. Sarah's starting to remember on her own. I don't know if it will take her to full recovery, but it's more than I hoped for. I believe that if I can take the Intersect from her, without further flashing, she will, eventually, recover most, if not all of her memories.
"But if she flashes again, well, nothing bad may happen, and we may just be where we are right now. Or the worst might happen, and the Intersect could reclaim, maybe even destroy, Sarah's memories, do serious cognitive harm…Do we have to do this, Diane, does Sarah have to flash again? I mean, do we even know what she should flash on?"
Beckman shook her head. "No, but now that I have Chuck here to help Morgan, I hope we can get an idea."
Chuck looked at Sarah, a question in his eyes and fear etched on his face. Beckman glanced from him to Sarah. Sarah still had Chuck's hand.
She turned to Beckman. "I need to talk to my husband." Beckman nodded, and the two of them left the room.
Beckman felt Roan's hands settle on her shoulders, kneading them gently. Her exhaustion was still with her, and the adrenaline spike of Chuck and Sarah's return, and Roan's, was wearing off.
She put one of her hands up on top of one of Roan's, and felt the warmth there. She was tired...and tired of asking people to face such dangers, to make such sacrifices.
Maybe, she thought, thought itself now tiring her, if she ever got her job back, she would quit.
A/N2 The dreaded 'we need to talk'? Maybe, this time, not. Tune in next time for Chapter 20 "Rough-Hewn Our Ends". Until then, be well, and take pity on this poor scribe, and write a few words for me to read.