A/N1 Before you read this, you may want to check and make sure you read Chapter 24. I posted it inside the twenty-four-hour window (after posting Chapter 23), so it did not move the story back up the boards. If you haven't read it, please do, and please review it. And this chapter too. Curious what people are making of all this.

We are heading into a section of the show that seems to make Sarah especially easy to dislike. I hew close to details in several scenes so as to try to make sense of them and of her. She has no good options, really. But you will see what I mean…

Chapter structure is a bit complicated. Again, I assume familiarity with the relevant episodes, especially Nemesis.

Don't own Chuck.

The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part Three):

Escape Clause

In so far as man rests satisfied with the things that he experiences and uses, he lives in the past and his moment has no present content. He has nothing but objects. But objects subsist in time that has been...The present is not fugitive and transient, but continually present and enduring...True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past.

- Martin Buber, I and Thou

Part One - Omaha?

Sarah shut the door behind him. Bryce was gone. To 'Omaha'. Alone. She had made her choice. She was staying in Burbank. But Burbank was a mess. She had messed it all up. She had kissed Chuck and then everything...well, then...everything. The anti-Midas touch. It turned out to work with her lips, too. Gold to lead.

Her lips. They had caused her problems.

In the initial shock of discovering Bryce's body, or rather, discovering Bryce, Sarah had simply been numb. The numbness had settled on her before the discovery. It had settled on her after the kiss, during the awkward moments with Chuck during which they - during which she - avoided eye contact, had met his attempts to talk to her with silence.

Why had she done that? Reacted to the single greatest moment of her life like that?

Because she had no clue, none, what to do. She was in the future. Her not-so-brave new world. Clueless. And then Bryce. And suddenly all the questions, and the unfinished business between them, surged up, swamped the kiss, Chuck, Burbank. Pulled her under. But through it all, she was numb. It was as if her emotions had ceased to exist. Two massive upheavals in the space of a couple of hours. It was like having glanced into the sun, twice, and then being unable to see. She had felt so much with Chuck, a seismic emotional event. The basic structure of her life shifted at that moment - the lines were redrawn, the limits changed - but she did not understand the shift: it bewildered her. It robbed her of speech, almost of thought. And then she saw Bryce. And the changed landscape of her life suddenly had the past superimposed upon it.

When she saw him, before they took him to the hospital, she felt nothing but shock. But slowly, as she rode with Casey in the Crown Vic to the hospital, she began to react.

Her first reaction was to Chuck and the kiss. He had called her. Left a message. She understood. He knew. She had revealed herself. He had seen her. Now, he wanted to see her. He wanted to know what the kiss meant. She had no answer. Listening to his message, she could tell that her intuition had been right. She had at times wrestled with the idea of telling him how she felt, really telling him instead of giving him the calculated vaguenesses, ambiguities and elasticities she normally gave him, all the things designed to keep him feeling what he felt for her, but to keep him from knowing she felt it too. It was fine if he suspected; she wanted, needed him to suspect. But that was why her truth-serum-"No" was such a disaster. It killed the suspicion. It broke them up. The kiss had been a contradicting, underlined "Yes". What the truth serum could not do, the bomb (the apparent bomb) did. Her lips confessed. Her heart had been in them, on them, behind them. Pressed against Chuck's.

Yes, it was fine if he suspected, only suspected. But if he knew, and she let them act on that knowledge, let them be real in any way, he would never be able to hide it. The phone messages proved it. More than that, Sarah had no idea how to be in a real relationship. The closest she had come was with the man in the ambulance, Bryce, and that relationship had never been real, not as it could have been. Could it have been? There were no handler/asset obstacles for it to face. But is spy/spy less of an obstacle to reality?

She was a creature of cons, covers, rules, lists. But none of that would help her. And Chuck would give them away. She could not let him have the kiss. She would have to find some way to take it back, change its meaning, throw it under suspicion. Return to status quo: Limbo. Or she would lose what she had with Chuck. It would be taken from her or she would ruin it.

ooOoo

Inside the hospital, Bryce refused to talk. He demanded to see Chuck. Neither Casey nor Sarah revealed themselves to Bryce. For very different reasons. Sarah could have talked to him. Casey pressed her to do so. Casey knew about her past with Bryce, of course.

"Rogue agent or not, Walker. You used to sleep with the guy. He'll at least listen to you. I don't like the idea of giving him access to the Intersect." When Sarah narrowed her eyes, Casey grunted, "To Bartowski."

"No, Casey, I don't think I will be any help. He went rogue while we were...together...and he told me nothing. I don't know why he would talk to me now."

"Then I guess it will have to be Bartowski. We need to know what's going on. We need to know what's on Bryce's mind."

What is on Bryce's mind? What was on his mind - back then, when he left? Do I really want to know any more?

Casey dropped Sarah at her place and she went in an got a quick shower, changed. She was ready to see Chuck, to take him to Bryce.

But when she parked the Porsche outside the Buy More, her hands began to tremble. It was all catching up with her now. She was going to have to face Chuck. He would want to talk. What if he grabbed her and kissed her? Would she stop him, could she, or would it all happen again, and would she find herself unwilling, unable, to stop it? She had to keep him at arm's length until the lingering effects of that kiss dissipated. They had not dissipated yet. She had been forced to turn the shower to cold, to very cold.

Cold. She needed to be cold. She needed to make Chuck unsure of what he knew. She retreated to her agent tone when they met in the aisle inside the store. Ice Queen. And before he could say it, she did: "We need to talk." But she said it in a tone meant to warn him, not warm him. He started trying to talk to her anyway. He mentioned the kiss and Sarah felt herself warming. She fought it back the best way she could. The coldest water she could throw on Chuck: Bryce. "Chuck, Bryce is alive."

ooOoo

Chuck was looking at Bryce through a one-way glass.

Sarah was on the side with Chuck. Casey was there too. They sent Chuck in to talk to Bryce. But Bryce got free, grabbed Chuck. Without thinking, automatically,Sarah rushed in to save Chuck. She pulled her gun and aimed it at Bryce. She had to save Chuck. "Bryce, No!" She did not want to shoot Bryce. But she was not going to let him hurt...her asset. She realized that she was going to have to be careful around Bryce too, and not let him see what was really (Ha!) going on. Or let Chuck see it (again).

Bryce escaped. And Sarah was able to exhale. She had questions she would like to have asked him, but she had new problems, more pressing ones. She took Chuck back to his place after Bryce escaped and after the initial search for him turned up nothing. Chuck, of course, still wanted to talk, but now not just about the kiss, but the kiss in light of Bryce's return to life.

Sarah loathed herself for it, but she saw an opening. Her old intuition. She could use Bryce's visit to walk back the kiss. She could put Bryce, in a sense, back in between them, where he had been from Carina's visit until the kiss. Sarah knew it was cruel, truly cruel, to make Chuck think he had lost to Bryce yet again. But she would not have to say that to him, she could keep Chuck suspicious of it, as she had kept him suspicious of her feelings for him. Chuck's tendency to make assumptions where she was concerned would help, as would his long insecurity where Bryce was concerned. So, she forced herself to say very little to Chuck, and what she did say was said as a special agent. When Chuck asked to know about the situation, Sarah's curt answer was: "You're protected." A handler talking to her asset. Sarah felt her stomach rise and her heart sink. She wanted to cry but she hardened herself, iced over. I'm good at that. Ellie appeared, asking about Thanksgiving. Sarah answered Ellie, saying that of course, she would be there. For the cover.

ooOoo

Sarah was not the only guest at Thanksgiving. Casey was there, Morgan and his girlfriend too. But the unexpected guest was Bryce.

He showed up in Chuck's room and asked to talk to Sarah. Chuck let her know that Bryce was there. She went to Chuck's room. It was dark. She turned on the light, crept in slowly. Then she heard a sound behind her. Bryce. He had been above her, wedged into a corner of the ceiling.

She backed away from him, demanding to know why she should not just arrest him. But he kept stepping toward her, listing reasons. He was not a rogue spy. The Intersect was a mission.

And then, as he reached her: "Because, Sarah, you're still in love with me." And then he kissed her. He kissed her. And the past that Bryce's return superimposed on Sarah's present, swept her up. The pain of Bryce's abandonment, the questions, the frustrated feelings. The worry that she was, ultimately, not someone anyone could care for. It swept Sarah away as Bryce swept her into a kiss. She responded. She had been in his arms before, in that kiss before. And he said that she still loved him….

Wait. Sarah pulled herself free of the kiss. They had never once used that word before. Sarah had still never used that word. Not, at least, when she was telling the truth. Neither had Bryce, not at any time around her. For the cover, the Andersons, in public, yes, but neither of them had ever taken that showy commerce with the word to be real commerce. They said it but did not mean it; each knew they did not. Maybe Sarah had wanted to mean it, hoped they would one day mean it, that she would one day mean it, but that day never came. Why would Bryce use that word now? The kiss, the one she was responding to, the love-talk, it was all for a mission, at any rate, for a purpose.

As she pulled herself free, she whispered harshly. "You've still got it."

He had always been good at seduction, the star of his class at the Farm. He knew how to push buttons, especially hers, since they had their past, since she had shown him where some of her buttons were. She responded to the kiss, to him - she was kissing the past, what she had once wanted - and her system was still so keyed up by the kiss, the kiss, the one with Chuck. She was still taking cold showers. She lost herself for a moment - in the moment.

Bryce was good. He knew how to kiss. But she had felt that at the end, felt that he was kissing knowledgeably (a means to an end), not out of need and desire. She had recently been kissed out or need and desire: she remembered all-too-vividly what that felt like. This kiss, while physically pleasant, was not the same. This was not real. Chuck's kiss was real. Too real.

Real. Unreal. My life stretched between.

"This isn't a play," Bryce pleaded, in response to her whispered comment. Maybe. Maybe not. But it is not...real. At best, Bryce had just kissed Mrs. Anderson. He was happy to see Mrs. Anderson. Maybe he even wanted Mrs. Anderson. He wanted Mrs. Anderson's help. But she was not Mrs. Anderson and she never had been. Not really. Only unreally.

Casey showed up and Bryce left through the window. Thanksgiving had ended.

ooOoo

She was in the courtyard with Chuck. Casey was still on the hunt for Bryce. He came hurrying back, and told them to call it in from his place. Sarah was getting angry. Everything was going wrong. She was ping-ponging around. Deliberately hurting Chuck. Kissing Bryce back. Shit. Shit. Shit.

She could not understand how Casey had known Bryce was in Chuck's room, and she said so.

Chuck confessed, more or less. Sarah stopped her march toward Casey's door. She softened her voice a little. "You saw Bryce kiss me, didn't you?"

That had not been the plan. She had wanted to use Bryce's return to throw the kiss with Chuck under suspicion. Not to revoke it. She wanted to attenuate her "Yes" without reverse-alchemizing it into "No". Gold to lead. But, even though she had not initiated the kiss with Bryce, she had responded. It would have been bad enough if he had simply seen Bryce kiss her - the way she phrased it, hoping he might hear, and wonder - but he saw her kissing Bryce too. Why did it happen like this? And now Chuck was hurt. He had lost to Bryce again. After Chuck's kiss with Sarah, he was still the loser. Still a loser.

I am a miserable bitch. But what can I say that won't make this worse? Expose me, expose us, get me reassigned? Am I willing to go on hurting him and hurting myself in order to stay? To hurt him this much, in this way? To turn his insecurity against him? To tease myself with what I want but cannot have? It is all so exhausting. Casey told me Chuck ended things with Lou. I know he did it because I kissed him. And so I have taken her from him too. Lou. I guess I know how Chuck felt seeing me kiss Bryce. The way I felt seeing him with Lou. I can't keep making him feel so bad. But I don't want to give him up. I don't want us to be apart.

Pain in his eyes. "I guess this means we're not getting back together." Oh, Chuck, goddamn it! Goddamn it all! If he had looked at me like that for another second…

A light came on in Casey's apartment. Bryce. Sarah crept in more stealthily than she had to Chuck's room. Bryce did not hear her. Chuck followed. Sarah drew her S&W. Bryce heard Chuck make a noise and wheeled, gun up. Sarah trained her gun on Bryce again and she maneuvered Chuck behind her so that he was protected.

Then Bryce finally explained. Sarah got her answers. Bryce was recruited by an outfit called 'Fulcrum'. A special access group inside the CIA; he thought they were CIA. They had given him a mission. The Intersect. Sent him in deep; they knew everything - his activation codes he records and so on. He was ordered to shed his agency contacts (me). He finally realized they were not CIA, but that they wanted to download and destroy the Intersect, get its intel.

"How can I trust you, Bryce?" Sarah needed to know.

Bryce lowered his gun. Changed his tone. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Sarah. I didn't know who to trust."

And there it was; it hit her.

She mistrusted him; he had mistrusted her. He claimed a few minutes before that she still loved him. But that made no sense. If he had believed that she loved him, really had believed that, he would have trusted her. But he had not. And if she loved him, if she still loved him, she would trust him now. But she did not.

She had not loved him. So she did not still love him. He may have believed she cared about him, but he did not really believe she loved him. Maybe it had not been a play. But she was right. It was not real. That kiss with Bryce. Not real. Her response to it had been real enough, for a moment. But it had not meant what Chuck thought.

She was glad Bryce was alive - really glad, and that had played into the kiss too - and she was fond of him still. But it had not meant that she still loved Bryce or had ever loved him. She had not. She was not sure why she was so sure. Maybe it was the passage of time or maybe...Anyway, she was sure. Now.

But so was Chuck. Of the opposite. That she still loved Bryce. That she and Chuck were done.

Chuck flashed on 'Sandwall', a code word Bryce used. Bryce was telling the truth. The tension in the room went down until Casey entered and shot Bryce. Chuck fainted. Sarah stood, wondering what next. She crouched to check on Bryce and found he was wearing a vest. He was alive. He would live.

When Bryce recovered, he continued his story. It turned out that Fulcrum had thought, and still thought, that Bryce was the Intersect. Fulcrum has Bryce confused with Chuck. I don't.

ooOoo

They were transferring Bryce to the CIA. The real CIA. Not Fulcrum. Chuck was on hand at the Buy More. He did not flash on the agents who came. Sarah was going to take Bryce in and finish his transfer to the agents. She looked back at Chuck. He still thought she had chosen Bryce. Still thought they were done. She knew she was hurting him. Again.

One the way, seated in the back of the car, Bryce asked if they were good. Sarah looked around the car, the counter-surveillance was in order. She told Bryce so.

But he meant them. Them. He was asking if they were back together; no, more, he expected that they were back together.

Good. Sarah was good here. In Burbank. With Chuck. She now knew what Bryce meant. But she also knew what she meant. She had thought Bryce was dead. She had moved on. She had found Chuck. And she was slowly - so damn slowly - finding herself. She had her assignment. She had her asset. She had her guy. But she was making her guy miserable. Making herself miserable. Hurting the man who she knew loved her and who she wanted to love her. Can I keep hurting Chuck? How can I live with myself if I do? How can I live without him?

Bryce thought that her problem was that she could not tell him that she wanted to be back together. He leaned in toward her. Before she could respond, the car was smacked by an on-rushing truck. Fulcrum!

The impact knocked Sarah unconscious. Bryce too. They came to at the same time, and fighting together, overcame the Fulcrum agents. Bryce looked for their leader. He was not there.

"Chuck!" Sarah needed to get to Chuck. They got to the Buy More in time. She and Bryce found their old Anderson's synergy. They fought together and ended the threat to Chuck. But as soon as they had, Sarah asked about Chuck. He had been on her mind the whole time. On her heart. She was so frightened that something might have happened to him.

It had. Or still might. The Fulcrum boss had him. Through what turned out to be a clever use of Klingon (and a bulletproof vest), Bryce and Chuck engineered a response to the boss. When it was done, and Chuck safe, Sarah found herself confronted by the two men. Too much. It had all been too much. She walked away from them both.

Later, when she had gotten herself under better control, she was standing with Chuck at the Nerd Herd desk. Their spot. Bryce wrapped up a meeting with Beckman and emerged from it wearing a tuxedo. He looked as he had looked on some of their missions. He looked like Mr. Anderson. Carina was right. Bryce was pretty from a distance. But he was a spy. He thought in terms of missions and covers. He could not trust, because trust was never part of the mission. Spies do not fall in love. Spies do not trust. Chuck trusted. But Chuck was no spy. Thank God, Chuck was no spy.

It was hard to watch Bryce go. He was going to disappear. Go into deep cover. He had been an important part of her life. Her first...what was the word? I don't know.

But then, saying goodbye, he told her they would always have Omaha.

Omaha. An old code word. He was telling her where he was going. Back to South America. Colombia. Where Fulcrum had presumably first recruited him. If he told her, then he must have gotten permission Beckman, and presumably from Graham too, to ask her. She could leave Burbank. Her assignment could change.

She had an escape clause. Omaha. She could leave. She could let Chuck out of Limbo. Let herself out of Limbo. She could choose Omaha instead of Limbo.

Part Two - Tracked or Trackless?

Sarah was pacing in her room. She had her suitcase out. She was reviewing her options, trying to keep her head clear of her heart. She had not made a decision - other than to be ready, in case she decided to act on Omaha.

She had her assignment. The Intersect. But to her, that meant Chuck. She could not just leave. Graham had put her here and, until whatever had transpired with Bryce, he had seemed willing to leave her there. She had not been able to leave. She had never been much focused on that, though. Not at all, really. Carina imagined she was - all the Snoresville, Boring, Yawns Yawning jabs at Burbank were because she thought Sarah was trapped there by her assignment. But Sarah wanted to be where she had been assigned to be. She wanted to be there. But maybe she should not be. Maybe she should take the out, the escape clause, she had been given. Chuck already thought she had chosen Bryce over him. It would be cruel to leave him with that belief, but she had been planning to use his suspicion to walk back their kiss. How much crueler would this be really? Wouldn't it be being cruel to be kind? She could give Chuck to another handler. Maybe she could convince them that the boyfriend/girlfriend cover was a bad idea in Chuck's case. Maybe he could move on from her. Forget her.

The thought of Chuck forgetting her caused her a deep, physical ache.

Ache. She had been aching the entire time she had been in Burbank. Maybe leaving would also be cruel-to-be-kind with regard to herself. She was fatigued, exhausted. She had made the situation between her and Chuck unlivable unless she caused them both more pain. Began to reassert their cover as cover dating. Who knew how much more pain she would cause them both?

She was not going to be the one to make him happy. Lou...well, not Lou but someone like her. She, whoever she was, would make Chuck happy. Take my place. My place at his side. Sarah was poison. More poisonous than the truth serum. If she stayed, she would not be able to let Chuck go. She would keep pulling him to her, and toward her world, because she did not know how to leave it. She did not want it but she did not know how to leave it.

The saddest part of this for her was that Chuck's belief that she had chosen Bryce would be false. If she left, she would not be choosing Bryce over him. When she stood in the Buy More, looking at them both, she was not choosing between them. That choice was made. Chuck. She was choosing between the lives, the worlds, they represented. The world Bryce represented was hard and cold, but it was also, given Sarah's life and training, easy. There were tracks all across that world, tracks she knew how to follow. She knew how to be Mrs. Anderson. She could go back to being Bryce's partner. Just his partner, even if they used the Anderson cover. Maybe she would change her mind about that, down the road, after time away from Chuck (the thought of forgetting Chuck also made her ache). But they could be the Andersons only as a cover, like when they were first in Moscow. At any rate, she would not be choosing Bryce or his bed. She would be choosing his world, her world, and finally accepting, fully accepting, that it would be the only world she would ever know. That Burbank was a fantasy, an unreality - for her. The part of her that had been hidden away, that part of her that had been in solitary confinement but broken free in Budapest, she would have to track that part of herself down and terminate it. That would be her overarching mission, whatever else the mission with Bryce might entail. Kill that part of her that had never accepted conning or spying, that part of her that now kept her hoping. That part of her that wanted Chuck to love her and could not bear the thought of him not loving her.

But that part of her could not have what it wanted, even if Sarah stayed. She had kissed away her limits, but if she stayed, she would have to re-institute them. With Chuck, she was now in the future she feared. With Bryce, she could go backward, back to the past.

The world Chuck represented was warm and kind, but it was also, given Sarah's life and training, incredibly difficult, overwhelming. Chuck's world was trackless. She had no idea how to find her way in it. She had no idea how to be in a relationship that was not inside a mission, a relationship that defined her life, not just her cover. She had no idea how long she could hold out against Chuck, before what she felt for him overcame her, or her fatigue did. If she stayed, she would have to insist on being the handler, on him being the asset. She would have to make him understand that they could not opt out of that structure. She would have to make him think that she did not care for him - not in that way, at least. But if she stayed, she would be there, be with Chuck. And she was changing. She knew she was, despite the glacial pace of her changes. Maybe one of the things that has to change is my imagination itself. Maybe the future would not seem so trackless one day. That part of her that was free was getting stronger. The kiss proved that. But she was going to fight that part of herself if she stayed, fight it for Chuck's sake and for her own. But she would not have to kill it, track it down and terminate it. She could try to work out some kind of truce, maybe even some kind of cooperation. But until she figured out how to do that, she would have to keep that part of her and Chuck separated.

She stared out the window, pondering the choice, when the landline rang. Bryce. She went to answer it, not sure what she would say, despite being ready to leave. But then her cell rang. Chuck. She picked it up and looked at the photograph of him. Her head was in her suitcase, her head told her to pick up the landline and go to Omaha. Her heart was with the picture on her phone, and it told her that she would never stop regretting it if she left. She stood there for a minute. She put the cell down. Like when she walked away from them both in the Buy More, she let them both go on ringing. She went back to staring out the window.

ooOoo

A few minutes after the phones stopped ringing there was a knock on the door. She heard Bryce's voice. She sighed and went to the door. When she opened it, he was standing there with his phone in his hand.

He held it up. "Thought maybe my phone wasn't working since you neither called nor answered." He walked in and she saw the expectation on his face grow satisfied. He saw her suitcase, gun, passport. He turned to her and leaned toward her, as he had in the car, his hands reaching out for her.

Sarah caught his hands in her own. "No, Bryce."

The surprise in his eyes was obvious. "I thought we were good."

"I never said that, Bryce. You seem to be remembering a number of things I never actually said." She narrowed her eyes at him and dropped his hands, stepping around him and walking away from him, toward the window.

She had not made her decision, but she was getting closer to it. She looked out as she had been at the lights of LA.

"Well, maybe I was interpreting your silence. As you said, you don't talk much."

"I did say that. And you never stop spying."

Bryce was not sure what she meant by that. He was silent. When she looked at him, she saw his jaw working but he was not sure what to say. After a moment, he gave her his trademark smile. "I am a spy. How can I stop being one? If I stopped, I would cease to exist. It is an essential property. Without it, I wouldn't be me. You're just the same, Sarah. You understand." Sarah glanced at her goldfish when he paused. If I leave, would Chuck take my goldfish, keep it alive for me? "C'mon, Sarah. Let's get going. Time to be the Anderson's. I've been...looking forward to it since I had to leave."

"'Had to', Bryce? You couldn't have stayed long enough to say goodbye?" She turned fully to face him now.

"I told you, Sarah. I didn't mean to hurt you, but I didn't know who to trust. Fulcrum had gotten to me. Maybe they had gotten to you. Maybe they were going to use us against each other. I didn't know who to trust. Everyone looked suspicious."

"Even me?"

He gave her a downcast look. "Even you. But put yourself in my shoes? Would you have trusted me?"

She sighed, a long, deep sigh. "Bryce, that's not my point, or not exactly. I will concede that we didn't trust each other. So, in what sense were we together?" After all this time, I finally ask the question.

Bryce looked lost. "We were together. Don't you remember the bedroom in Moscow? I do. It's been on my mind." She saw his eyes stray to her bed, then return to her.

"I remember. But that is history, Bryce." It is. It is history. I don't know what my future holds. Pain, I am sure. For me, for Chuck. But I think the hope of an us is worth it. I hope that somehow an us becomes possible. I hope he will forgive me one day. Forgive me for what I am about to do.

"Like I said, Bryce. I have my assignment. I am staying."

Bryce looked at her suitcase and things, incredulous. "But you are ready to go."

"No, Bryce, not really. I have a good team here. And unfinished business." Better to hope in pain than to be hopelessly numb.

Bryce stared at her for a minute. He looked at his watch. "Ok. But you know where to find me. I will be there for 24 hours or so before I go under. You can change your mind."

Sarah walked to him and kissed his cheek. "Good luck, Bryce. Glad you are alive. Stay that way." She opened the door and he walked out.

Sarah put her things away then got ready for bed. Even though she had made her choice, she feared it, hated what it was likely to put Chuck through. Put her through. She twisted and turned, unable to sleep. Calling Bryce after all crossed her mind, but never as a serious possibility. When she finally got to sleep, it was nearly morning.

A/N2 Tune in next time for Chapter 26, "My Guy".

A comment.

At the dead-center of the show is the distinction between appearance and reality, and a series of question about the shifty nature of that distinction. The show distributes Chuck and Sarah across the distinction: she on the appearance side (unreality), he on the reality side. But as the show unfolds, it turns out that Chuck's reality (his life) contains far more unreality than he ever knew. It turns out that Sarah is capable of far more reality than she ever imagined.

But the show itself is deliberately deceptive, and it is important to note that. The Nemesis episode is a great example. It lures the reader into thinking that Sarah is seriously tempted to re-join Bryce as a romantic partner. But I think that close attention to the details reveals that to be a mere appearance. She is seriously tempted to re-join the world Bryce represents, but she is not tempted to choose him as a romantic partner over Chuck. Band of Horses is right: Bryce is the ever-living ghost of what once was, the Ghost of Espionage Past. And Sarah is looking toward the future, although she cannot quite make it out. More about that as we move forward.

The show purposely puts the viewer in the position of a spy who has to sort appearance from reality. But if you look closely at the choices Sarah makes - where she positions herself, how she reacts, especially her response to the kiss with Bryce as she disengages from it - it becomes pretty clear what is happening. Sarah is uncomfortable after the kiss with Chuck, but she never for a moment doubts its reality. (It is its robust reality that makes her uncomfortable.) She is uncomfortable after the kiss with Bryce before she disengages from it - because she doubts the reality of Bryce's kiss. Chuck has been and remains her romantic choice. She chooses Chuck's world.

Sarah will begin to pay the price for her choice, as will Chuck, in the events that follow.