As usual, no rights to any characters not created here. Thanks Wilf.
Sarah had started ramping up her training again within a few weeks of coming home with the twins (she had been incredibly frustrated about being kept from doing any serious training for almost six months, so as soon as she could she go back to it, she did), once she was back at it, it took less than a month for her sisters and Zondra to get tired of getting beaten up in sparring sessions with her, and they (well, Carina mainly but the others agreed) "suggested" that, as it was Chuck who caused the break in her training, he should be the one to help her get back up to speed. Kate thought that the gleam in Carina and Zondra's eyes when Sarah wholeheartedly agreed was just downright vindictive and mean, but she was taken aback when Carina responded with a soft smile, "No, just watch, it's a beautiful thing."
Sarah had Chuck down there and on the mats later that night, neither of them apparently bothered that the rest of the team made sure that they had ringside seats, as it were. They started out slowly, Sarah throwing test kicks and punches and Chuck deflecting them easily, but as Sarah increased the speed and power of her strikes, Chuck still remained on the defensive. As Sarah ramped up her attacks, the thing that amazed Kate was how rapidly and fluidly they could transition from one style to another, Sarah would launch a Muay Thai attack, Chuck would meet that with a Wing Chun bridging contact, transitioning into a Hapkido throw that Sarah would convert into a Capoeira move and come back with a Karate strike that he'd counter with another Kung Fu response, which would then transition into something else. The fluid moves and changes made for a dance that was, as Carina said, beautiful, and she'd never seen either of them this free or happy before, either. The fact that anyone without their level of mastery of so many differing forms of martial arts could have been easily killed in that dance of death (because the strikes were coming at full speed and full strength) wasn't lost on Kate either, she'd never seen her sister this close to her normal levels before, and because of that, she hadn't seen Chuck working at anywhere near this level either (only Sarah at her best was capable of really giving Chuck a good workout). It was even more interesting to watch them doing this with one eye on the double bassinet off to the side where their babies were, and to see the way they'd tenderly kiss and embrace whenever Sarah stopped trying to knock Chuck's head off.
As well as the frustration from the extended forced break in her training, Sarah had another reason to be pushing herself, the new charter for the Intersect team had been signed by the President when the General presented it to him, so she'd been reinstated as Special Agent Sarah Walker in the Intersect team under the umbrella of the NSA (she, Chuck and Casey were Special Agents while Carina, Zondra and Kate were Agents), for the next six to nine months at least (they'd make a decision together about what she was going to do after that) she would be restricted to remote support while she was looking after the babies, but her identity as an agent had been returned to her, and she no longer felt that something was missing. While she happily agreed to the operational restrictions (she loved being a mother to her babies), she was determined that she was going to get back to full operational fitness and capabilities as soon as possible, hence kicking off her accelerated training schedule.
Aside from being initially aggravated with Chuck about the lack of consultation with them before proceeding with the changes to their status (which they'd accepted once he'd explained that he'd really started out trying to negotiate something for Sarah and the change to include the rest of the team only came out of the General's doubts of whether they could introduce special conditions for one agent, and he'd been so tied up in brainstorming a viable solution that he'd forgotten to stop and think about the ramifications of the fact that he was now including all of them in his plan), the rest of the team were all quite happy with what the changes to the charter and their status meant for them, especially the women in the team. Up to that point, they'd been subjected to the petty and vindictive (if not sick and malicious) whims of their "superiors" in the intelligence community, and the structure meant that any refusal to comply with those whims (no matter how irrelevant) could potentially mean that they were subject to punitive action, or even sanction, from those "superiors". With the change in the Intersect Team's charter and the fact that they were no longer directly attached to any of the usual agencies, they weren't held to that any more, they were only answerable to the head of the Intersect Team and Chuck had ensured their right to refuse (with reason) any requirements that they considered unacceptable, he had even managed to add a clause (accepted as part of the charter) which gave them all the option of resigning and leaving, free and clear, at any time as a reward for their exceptional service to their country.
When the President signed off on the new charter and the terms of the charter were made known to others in the Intelligence community and government circles, the expected furore wasn't long in coming, and they closely monitored all the reactions, because some gave them pointers on where to launch their investigations, especially when loud arguments were suddenly silenced (as if they had been told to shut up by the people they were being controlled by). At that point they still had the four fire teams for local security, and they were on full alert, as they expected that if the other side were going to be goaded into attacking again, finding out from an official mandate from the President that they couldn't get access to the team via the previous protocols was likely to be the thing that did so. There didn't appear to be any immediate signs of action against them, and they thought that the other side was keeping its head down, until they got a call from the General to advise Sarah that Daniel Shaw was asking to see her, saying that he had some information that she'd be very interested in.
For the obvious reasons, Sarah wasn't at all interested in seeing Shaw, but the possibility that he may actually have important information made her agree to the visit, especially when Chuck hacked into the prison systems and found entries for both Clyde Decker and Kieran Ryker on his visitors list (both authorised by Lewis Goodman, of course). Sarah went white when she saw Ryker's name, and when Chuck asked her what was wrong she explained that Ryker was the corrupt handler that she was working under in Budapest, and who she'd spirited the baby that they'd named Molly away from. They looked at each other and Chuck brought up Shaw's records, looking for any evidence that the CIA had suppressed Shaw's Intersect when he was imprisoned, but as expected, there were no entries relating to that, which meant that he probably still had it, and therefore may have been able to tell Ryker where Emma and Molly were. Casey could read enough from their expressions to know that something was seriously wrong, and when he heard Molly's name he grabbed his phone and called Barstow to get a half strike team dispatched immediately to Emma's house. Bryan had the address and he would insist on staying with Emma until they were certain that there was no threat, and a half strike team would be more than capable of dealing with whatever force was sent there, if nothing else it would be a good rapid deployment test.
Casey waited until Chuck had settled Sarah down a little and then told them about the team on its way to her mother's with Bryan, which got a teary, thankful hug from Sarah. When she knew that her mother and Molly would be safe (as Bryan wouldn't let anything happen to them), Sarah looked at Chuck and said that she needed to go see what that bastard Shaw had to say. Of course he said that he wanted to go with her to make sure she was OK, and she smiled gratefully, saying that she wouldn't have it any other way. With that, as soon as they'd made arrangements for the girls to look after the babies they headed out to the nearest field that a Valkyrie could land on with Carina (who wasn't about to take no for an answer), as one had been dispatched there as soon as they'd decided to go. Obviously they didn't expect Shaw to talk if Chuck was in the room, so he would be in the next room with Carina monitoring them via the security feeds, ready to come in immediately if Sarah needed him. The Valkyrie was on the ground by the time they reached the field and the door was opening as they ran to it, dropping into the seats in the cockpit, they didn't bother with any check lists, just took off and blasted off to the prison where Shaw was. On the short flight over, while checking through the Prison records (he was getting Sarah to fly in an attempt to keep her occupied) Chuck stumbled onto other possible complications, Sarah's father and Morgan were also in the same prison as Shaw (they both smelled the other side's hand in that, courtesy of the CIA), so they'd have to talk to both of them to find out whether they had talked to Shaw at all and, if so, what EXACTLY they'd talked about.
They landed near the prison and drove up in the minivan, only delaying long enough for Sarah to get her game face on before they went in. Sarah had dressed to distract Shaw (and any other warm blooded male), and the only thing that stopped the leers as they moved through the prison was the look on Chuck's face, as fear of death trumped arousal in rational men. Sarah waited for Chuck to get set up with the security feeds before entering the room, and the prison personnel were shocked by the kiss they watched them sharing before she composed herself and went in, but none of them were brave enough to say anything, because the second she stepped into that room Chuck became something to be feared.
As soon as she entered, Shaw tried to get control of the situation, using the old chestnuts straight out of the CIA manual. He replaced his leer with an oily smile (which was supposed to be charming) as he said "Hello Sam, it's great to see you, though I am a bit disappointed that it's taken you this long to come see me." Sarah managed to suppress her shudder as she replied in a mildly friendly tone. "You asked to see me Daniel, what did you want to tell me?" She had to struggle to suppress the shudder this time as he leaned forward, his leer returning as he devoured her with his eyes and said "Do you really need to be that cool with me other after all we went though together Sam, after everything we did together?" She turned to walk away and he said (a touch of desperation in his voice) "I can't believe that you went back to him after he left you for that other woman, Hannah, was it?" She turned her head to look at him and he continued, more confident now as he thought that he had her "I hear you even married him and had his children, I never would have pegged you as the type to go that far to fulfil your orders Sam, but you must be, otherwise you would have had to have fallen for him, and that couldn't happen, could it?" At the anger in her eyes he thought he was on a roll, so he laughed as he kept on "Don't tell me you actually fell for THAT, did he tell you that he loved you, did your ticking biological clock make you actually swallow that line? Do you know what he was doing while you were home, waddling around playing Mary home maker?"
Sarah couldn't hide the her anger now, but Shaw was so arrogant that he thought that she was swallowing what he was telling her, and forged on, and he began putting a series of 8 x 10" pictures up against the glass as he said "He was doing HER, the whole time he was on that mission he was screwing her, while you were sitting at home, waiting for your husband to come home." After the first dozen or so pictures, the shock value wore off and they tended to be pretty much the same, and of course Shaw had no way of knowing that Sarah had already seen these events playing live, with live commentary from both Chuck and Kate throughout, if she hadn't, and didn't have 100% faith in her husband, the images he was shoving up against the glass probably would have been devastating, but as it was, they just angered her. Under the impression that it was working, Shaw kept on. "I hear she's his partner now, so how does it feel to be replaced with a new and better model of yourself? By the looks of it, they spent quite a bit to make her look like you so she could wean him off you. Do you smell her on him when he comes home, or doesn't he bother coming back to you any more?"
By now, Sarah's anger was growing, but Shaw still though that HE was playing HER, and kept going, leaning into the glass conspiratorially as he asked. "Are you going to stay there with your babies and wait for him to come home to you from the one that they created to take him away from you, or do you want to strike back at them, at him?" Sarah managed to push the anger down as she turned back to him, asking. "What do you mean?" He leered at her again as he said "You're still a beautiful woman Sam, you shouldn't let yourself be pushed aside, the people I work for can give you your life back, doing what you do so well, we can look after your babies and you can get back to being the agent that you're meant to be, and you can get back at him and the people who made him replace you." She looked confused as she asked "How can I do that?" He held a piece of paper up to the glass for long enough for her to memorise the phone number, and told her to call the number from a clean phone and they'd tell her what she had to do to get away with the babies. Sarah nodded and turned to leave, but what he said next stopped her. "What is it with you and babies? You were the best, but you almost threw everything away for that brat in Hungary, and now you've actually given in and had his babies, why are they so important that you'd be prepared to give up what you are for them? Well the one from Hungary won't be a problem much longer, Ryker is on his way to get her now, and when I get out of here I'll make you forget about them too, Sam." He hardly had time to finish that before she'd turned and attacked, the "unbreakable" barrier only held for a few hits and then she had his head in her hands, smashing it into the counter, it didn't take many impacts with the counter before it was a bloody pulp, and Daniel Shaw finally stopped being a problem. Chuck was in the room and had her in his arms within 15-20 seconds, picking her up and carrying her out of the room as she sobbed.
Now he understood why Carina had brought a bag with her when they left (and couldn't believe that he hadn't thought of it), she went to get the bag from the van while Chuck asked where he could take Sarah to settle her down and get her cleaned up (as she'd been liberally sprayed with Shaw's blood as she smashed his head in), not about to risk angering him any further after taking in the look on his face, the guards quickly directed him to a suite where he could look after his wife in private and a few minutes later Carina came back with the bag from the van. While he was looking after Sarah, Carina called in the number that Shaw had given Sarah and got the others to start investigating it. Chuck wanted to just take her home, but they had to find out what Jack and Morgan had said to Shaw that may have been passed on up the line, so he and Carina worked out the plan for getting the information out of them. Carina took her father first, to give Sarah more uninterrupted Chuck time, ordering Jack to be brought to an interview room. While she was waiting for him, Carina arranged for any guards or other personnel who'd witnessed what happened to Shaw to be taken away and held incommunicado by trusted NSA agents until they'd managed to clean up the whole mess, some of them thought that they were about to be disappeared, but the NSA agents assured them that they were just being held temporarily. They had to make sure that none of them could communicate with the outside world because they didn't know how many (if any) of them were working with the other side, so they couldn't risk anyone finding out about Shaw until they'd tried to trace the lead that he'd given them with the phone number.
When Jack was taken from his cell and chained to the table in the interview room, he didn't know what was going on, but when he heard "Hello Daddy" from behind him, his blood ran cold. Sure enough, the woman that walked around the table and sat across from him was that woman, his daughter Carina. Just as she had back in Burbank, she used a deceptively sweet voice as she spoke to him, but her eyes were as cold as ice. She put a voice recorder on the table and turned it on, starting out with small talk, before she put a picture of Shaw (the way he used to look) on the table and asked her father whether he had ever talked to this man? He looked at the picture, and thought about lieing about it, but the thought of what he was sure she'd do to him if she found out stopped him (he hadn't forgotten the sight of her taking that man down and then pounding his face into the wall while she was saying something to him) and put paid to that idea, so he said, yes, he had talked to him sometimes. Unfortunately that obviously interested her, and that in turn was something that frightened him. Over the course of the next half hour, Carina drew out, checked and re-checked everything he'd said to Daniel Shaw, getting angrier as they continued. Eventually, when he'd told her absolutely everything that he could remember ever saying to Daniel, Jack asked why she didn't just ask Daniel what they'd talked about, and she smiled, saying that that would be difficult as Daniel had had an accident, putting a picture of what he looked like now on the table in front of him. When Jack cried out in horror and tried to recoil from the image in front of him, he knocked his chair over and ended up hanging from the tethers that held him to the table. She stood up and came around the table, dragging him to his feet and righting the chair for him to sit down again, before returning to her own chair.
She smirked as he pushed the picture away in horror, her smirk widening when he managed to squeak out the question "Did you do that?". She continued to smile as she shook her head and replied "No, that was someone else who didn't like what he was saying to her." in a disappointed tone. At that point she wiped the smile off her face as she leant forward, saying "I thought we had a discussion about what would happen to you if you talked about us, Daddy?" He nodded warily "Then what do you think is going to happen about this?" (holding up the voice recorder and making it obvious that she was NOT happy about what she'd recorded on it) He started babbling as he pleaded for mercy, convinced that she was going to carry out her threat to kill him then and there, he said that he hadn't meant any harm, Daniel just seemed to be a nice guy who wanted to talk. He trailed off and looked at her in terror as she pulled out a phone (that she wasn't supposed to have in there) and called a number, saying that he'd compromised their cover and that it was time to go with Plan B, and he was still begging her to spare him as she stood up, picked up the pictures and voice recorder and walked out the door. Personally, Carina would have been quite happy to kill the bastard for everything he'd done to Sarah and her (and the others), but she knew that Sarah and Chuck would ultimately have a problem with that, so Plan B was actually to get him taken to a secret NSA black site where he WOULD be kept incommunicado under a different identity, like he was supposed to be here before the CIA changed the conditions to suit their plans. Just because she couldn't get the satisfaction of killing the bastard didn't mean that she couldn't have some fun with him, though, he'd be shitting himself when the NSA agents came in to drag him away.
When Carina came back, Chuck had gotten Sarah cleaned up and settled down, and she was resting in the new clothes that Carina had brought with her. Carina quietly passed on what she'd gotten from Jack, and told him that he was being taken away to the NSA black site to be locked away properly, before pointing out that it was his turn now. He nodded and stood up, bending to gently kiss Sarah before he left her with Carina while he interviewed Morgan. Carina stopped him and handed him the folder with the pictures and the voice recorder as he was about to leave, and while he grimaced at the "after" picture of Shaw, he took it with him, he may not go as far as Carina had with her father, but he'd push him as far as he needed to to find out exactly what he'd told Shaw.
When Morgan saw Chuck walk to the table and sit down in front of him, he was excited, convinced in his childish naivety that all was forgiven and Chcuk was there to take him home now. Chuck put the voice recorder on the table and turned it on, but eventually he had to cut through Morgan's ridiculous babbling about how he forgave him and they could put all this behind them when they went home by putting the "before" picture of Shaw on the table and asking in a businesslike voice whether he'd talked to him in here? Once again he had to cut off the rambling after "Daniel, yeah, sure, we're buddies, we hang out all the time..." with "Tell me exactly what you've told him, every word!" Morgan finally started to get the point that this wasn't about buddies making up, but he tried to say that he couldn't tell him what he and Daniel talked about, that was private. At that point he saw the face that had terrified all the guards outside, and he pissed himself as Chuck repeated in a cold, hard voice that brooked no disobedience, "Tell me exactly what you've told him, every word!" In small voice (so small that Chuck had to move the voice recorder closer to him to ensure that it picked up everything he said) Morgan spent the next few hours repeating everything he could remember ever saying to Daniel Shaw, and anyone else in there (because with his constant need for attention he'd told anyone who would listen his story).
Eventually he ran out of things to say and looked at Chuck fearfully, as he asked the same question Jack had, why didn't he just ask Daniel what they'd talked about? Chuck didn't take it as far as Carina had, but he did smile grimly as he said "That's not possible." and put the "after" picture in front of him. As with Jack, Morgan cried out in horror and recoiled from the picture, but he didn't manage to to knock his chair over like Jack had. Shakily pointing to the picture, he managed to get out "Who did that?" Chuck looked at him emotionlessly and then shrugged, saying "Someone who didn't like what he said to her." Morgan started asking more questions about who it was, was it Sarah? And Chuck cut him of again "Morgan Grimes, you were placed in this facility because of the risk you posed to National Security, unfortunately even being in here, with that strong an indicator of the danger of the things you may have talked about, you have proven (lifting the voice recorder as Carina had) that you cannot be trusted to remain quiet about the things you are privy to, therefore in order to protect the National Secrets that you continue to expose, you will be taken from here to another facility were you will remain in solitary confinement twenty four seven, totally incommunicado." with that he picked up the photos and voice recorder and left. When he got back the the suite where Sarah and Carina were, Sarah was still resting, he handed the pictures and recorder back to Carina, and at the question in her eyes he nodded resignedly, so she pulled out her phone to invoke Plan B for Morgan as well as her father. With that, she packed up what they had in the suite, Chuck picked up his sleeping wife and they left.
On the way home, Carina split her time between talking quietly to Chuck in the cockpit, and watching Sarah as she slept in the main cabin. The fact that Sarah would need to be the one to follow up the number that Shaw gave her worried them, especially Chuck, she'd already been pushed to the limit by today's events and he didn't want her to go through any more. Carina pointed out that there may be a way around that, if Kate was willing to stand in for her. That possibility cheered up a Chuck a little, but he didn't want to put Kate through it either, or any of them. Still, it was another possibility which could spare Sarah more pain and he appreciated it. He also called to check the situation at Emma's and was told that Bryan had taken her and Molly back to Barstow (where they'd have a small army to protect them) and Mary had stayed at the house with the half strike team to wait for Ryker (she'd gone with Bryan and was planning to play Emma when Ryker turned up). Carina had called them when Shaw told Sarah that Ryker was on his way, but at the time there were more important things to address than fill Chuck in on the details of a situation that was already being handled.
Once home, Ellie gave Sarah a sedative and Chuck put her to bed in the Bunkers while he and the others went over what had happened, especially in Sarah's talk with Shaw. While they were disturbed by what she did to him, they could understand after the threat he'd made to her children, Molly and, by association, Emma. Even though he wanted to spare Sarah, Chuck wasn't about to bring up the idea of Kate stepping in for her as they went forward with contacting the people who were behind Shaw, so Carina did, and of course Kate said that she'd do it immediately. They quickly took down the images of Kate and Chuck that Shaw had used in an attempt to turn Sarah, as it made both of them uncomfortable to see them again. Stephen and Jeff had been tracing everything that they could relating to the number that Shaw gave Sarah, but the most that they could determine was that the phone was currently in LA and active. Chuck took over Stephen's role in the investigation and gave him another job to do, creating reasonably accurate facsimiles of Jaqueline and Levi that were capable of fooling your average doctor that they were living babies for a short time as quickly as possible, if Kate was going to try this, she'd need the babies with her, and real children were not going to be involved.
Stephen once again proved his genius in the inventing field by coming up with a couple of dolls that Ellie said would be sufficient to fool a doctor within a day and a half. By that stage Sarah had recovered enough to be able to make the call and hold it together (there was too much chance of the other side using voice analysis to risk anyone else trying to make the call), and they had set Kate up with implanted recording and tracking devices that she could turn on or off in case she was scanned (to go with the communication devices she already had), and suitable prosthesis to convince a doctor that she had had children within the last six months. They also set up the majority of the Council security force to cover any operation, so that they could ensure that help wasn't too far away from Kate if she went through with this.
Sarah made the call, and talked to a man who made every attempt to sound kindly and assure her that they would help her get out of the situation she'd found herself in, and start a new life for herself and her children, he gave her the time and place to meet the people that would get her away from there and they finished the call. On the given day, Sarah took Kate's place at the office, and a bit before the appointed time, Kate took the "babies" out to a minivan that was made up to look like Sarah's Hunter van and drove off, shadowed by one of their security team as always, he ended up in hospital for a couple of weeks when the other side T-boned his car with a truck, but he made a full recovery in due time. When Kate arrived at the rendezvous, she was taken into a large van and found a couple of familiar faces who weren't supposed to be there, Hugo Panzer and Jill Roberts. Panzer and the other men in the van were leering at her and quite looking forward to the expected show when they told her to strip, because they had to examine her to make sure that she didn't have any bugs on her. Kate just looked at them and said that there was no way that she was taking her clothes off with them in the van and the wanton lust on Panzer's face grew as he moved towards her, saying that it he was going to have fun with this as he reached for her. In the space of less than ten seconds Kate broke every major bone in his hand, wrist and arm, tearing loose tendons and ligaments and ensuring that he would never regain the proper use of his right hand or arm, crushing his testicles and doing some other damage for good measure before throwing him back into the other men. They had been gathering themselves to attack her in force to overpower her, but seeing how easily and quickly she'd destroyed the one that they were all afraid of, they all backed off, looking for directions on what to do.
Jill Roberts had gone white at what she'd just witnessed, but she was apparently even more afraid of the ones she worked for than she was of "Sarah" because she told the others to take Panzer and get out before telling her that she still had to examine her, and the babies, to ensure that they didn't have any bugs on them anywhere. When the men had left and they'd covered the windows, Kate undressed and submitted to an examination, but infused her demeanour with enough menace to make Jill do a fairly perfunctory examination of both her and the "babies" before she got dressed in the jumpsuit that was provided and the "babies" were wrapped up and ensconced in the bassinet that came with the van. A few more of the men were killed or seriously injured before Jill told them to leave off trying to shackle "Sarah", and Kate insisted that she wasn't going to ride with sleazebags like that, and that they had to throw all of them except the driver and his off-sider up front out, to find a different way back to wherever they were going. Given that at this rate all the men in the team would be dead or in hospital before they got back unless she did something, Jill told the men to get out and the van drove off, leaving "Sarah's" clothes, the bassinet and what the "babies" were wearing at the rendezvous site.
The Security team snipers had tagged the van and the cars that accompanied it with trackers while they were stopped, along with repeater devices to amplify the signals emanating from Kate's implanted recording, communications and tracking devices on the van. They had UAVs, Falcons and Valkyrie's overhead in full stealth mode and more forces on the ground, if there was any sign from Kate that anything was going wrong they'd be going in fast and hard.
On the off chance that Jill may be able to pick up something out of place in a conversation, Kate just answered any attempts from her to talk with a menacing glare, Sarah's opinion of Jill was well known, so that would be in character for her. Inside, Kate was frightened, she had offered to do this and wanted to help, and she knew that help wasn't far away, but at that moment she was here, alone with the enemy and there was a very real chance that help wouldn't get to her in time if anything went wrong. Chuck and Sarah talked to her and assured her that they were right there and they would be in as fast as they could if she needed them, which made her feel a little better.
When the ride finished, she was let out of the van in a warehouse and directed over to a large flat screen set up on a table (directed as none of the men who had seen her in action was prepared to get within arms' reach of her), she made them all back off and took the bassinet with the "babies" with her, putting it down in front of her when she stopped in front of the table and fussing over them a little before standing to look at the screen, the cameras must have already been active because as soon as she looked at the screen it lit up. The figure of the tall, imposing black man in a suit casually leaning against a desk on screen made her eyes (along with everyone watching the image via the camera contacts she was wearing) widen in shock. She didn't need to act at all to show how shocked she was when the man said smiled and "Hello Sarah, are you ready to work for me again?", because this man was supposed to be DEAD!
A/N: For those who didn't like what Sarah did to Shaw, this wasn't a return of the wildcard enforcer, this was a new mother still dealing with post-natal issues who happens to be one of the deadliest killing machines in the world reacting to a bastard threatening her babies, her adopted sister and her mother, in my world the reaction could be justified.