AN: Thank you, once again, to everyone who reviewed, and to everyone who alerted or favorited.
I should also make note that I made an error in dating last chapter. The main part of the chapter happened on January 1, 2008 not 2007. Thanks to centauri252000's sharp eye it has now been correct.
Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck.
Sarah versus The Subdivision Part II
January 4, 2008
For the third day in a row Sarah was woken with a kiss. Unfortunately it wasn't from her boyfriend. Peaches III, as the dog was currently dubbed, had apparently decided that she was her primary caregiver. As such, P3 had started each of Sarah's days at Meadow Branch by covering Sarah's face with her tongue. The first two days, Sarah quietly slipped out of Chuck's arms, washed her face in the downstairs bathroom, and given the golden retriever her breakfast, then slipped back into bed with Chuck. Chuck had ended up running late to work both days.
Today they both had a morning meeting with Beckman, so she decided to work on breakfast instead of heading back to bed. Eggs were one food she could cook without issue; you could make them on a hot plate. Halfway through cooking an omelet, she heard Chuck's footstep on the stairs. She fought her spy-honed instincts to react as his arms reached around and encircled her waist.
"I missed you this Morning." He told her, leaning over slightly and planting a kiss on her temple.
"We can't be late." She reminded him before giving him a gentle push back.
"Sit." She told him. He pulled away and walked around the kitchen's island to sit at the breakfast bar. Turning around herself, Sarah began chopping up green onions. Glancing up she noticed his amused smile.
"What?"
"Nothing, it's just I'm trying to wrap my head around how much you seem to be enjoying this Martha Stewart thing." She gave him a teasing glare.
"You do realize how quickly I can turn this frying pan into a weapon, right?" Chuck held up his hands in mock surrender.
"Fine. You are very un-domestic. Especially with your frying pan ninja skills." Sarah took the pan off the heat, sliding the omelet out onto Chuck's plate before adding some of the chopped up greens on top.
"Eat your breakfast." She told him. "I'm going to go upstairs and get ready so we can carpool in."
"You sure you don't want me to join you?" He asked. "I could make this into some sort of hand held egg wrap thing? " He pointed down towards her omelet.
"Eat." She told him. "That may very well be the only breakfast I'm ever going to make you, so you should at least eat it hot." Chuck rolled his eyes, but she could hear the scrap of silverware as she turned around to head upstairs. At the foot of the stairs, she glanced back towards the kitchen. The smile that had pulled across his face when he took his first bite was almost enough to make the early morning wake-up call worth it. Almost.
XXX
Originally the CIA had believed that one terrorist had chosen to live in Meadow Branch subdivision. When they had found the fingerprint of the man then going by the name Cliff Arculin on the bug and identified him as former CIA PsyOps member Cliff Siljak, they had assumed they had their man and gone directly after him. This time, they were all aware that Meadow Branch and its inhabitants were far from the normal and Team Bartowski's goal was not to trap one terrorist, but investigate why Fulcrum had created this enclave of former government scientists and spies. That involved more than just invading one house.
Chuck and Sarah had spent the last few days ingratiating themselves with the Meadow Branch residents as much as possible. Sarah had managed to get into half of the street's houses through clubs and other social invitations, and planted bugs in each that were far more discrete than the one Siljak had used. She had also been able to let Casey know when an activity had left a particular house empty so he could go in as a cable guy to plant bugs and sweep for evidence there. Despite covering a surprisingly large amount of ground over the last three days, they had yet to find what they were looking for.
"Nothing?" Beckman asked them incredulously. "You've found no evidence of what Fulcrum is planning here?"
"No ma'am." Sarah said. "But we have yet to be able to search Siljak's house. Sylvia doesn't seem to participate in the neighborhood activities and there's always someone home."
"Which would suggest it should have been the first place to check." Beckman pointed out, a sour expression taking over her face. "What option do we have to enter Siljak's home? Would it be possible to do so without compromising Agents Walker and Bartowski?" Casey let out a snort.
"Do you have something to add Major?" Beckman asked. Chuck bit his lip to keep from smiling as Casey squirmed slightly and cleared his throat.
"Siljak's wife had expressed a romantic interest in Agent Bartowski which we might be able to exploit, General." On the screen Beckman's frown deepened.
"Are you telling me that Cliff Siljak's wife propositioned Agent Bartowski?" Chuck, Sarah and Casey all shared a look before answering in staggered unison.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Why wasn't I informed?" Beckman asked brusquely. Sarah and Chuck shared another look before Casey appeared to grimace and stepped forward to answer.
"We didn't believe it would be of interest, Ma'am." Chuck hadn't thought it was possible, but Beckman's expression turned even more sour.
"Major, did it not occur to you that the woman pretending to be Sylvia Arculin is, most likely, a trained Fulcrum agent, or that the only reason she would proposition someone such as Mr. Carmichael was because she had already deduced he was an agent." She said, anger and irritation rising in her voice.
"Hey." Chuck cried slightly indignantly. The twin glares from Beckman and Sarah quickly caused him to bite his lip and swallow the General's slight without further complaint.
"Given this new information, I'm afraid we simply cannot risk continuing this operation. I'm pulling your team out immediately."
"No." Chuck called out, almost reflexively. They needed to uncover Fulcrum's Intersect. More importantly they needed to obtain a copy of the Fulcrum Intersect so that Chuck could use the information it contained to find a link connecting the organization with Roark.
"Agent Bartowski, despite whatever charms you, may possess," Beckman began, clearly still considering his previous indignation. Chuck took a breath and interrupted her.
"No, General." He said, earning a glare from both Beckman and Casey. "I'm not going to argue that our cover hasn't been compromised. I can't guarantee it hasn't . But even if has been, no one in Meadow Branch has taken any actions against us yet. I think they don't know that we know that they know who we are." Beckman's forehead began to wrinkle.
"What exactly are you trying to say Agent Bartowski?"
"I don't think they know what our operation is exactly and I don't think that they will chance making a move against us until they determine what our goals are and how much we know. We can use that to our advantage. Just give us one more day, General. We can still get the information we need."
"And how do you suppose to do that, seduce Sylvia and fall directly into her trap?" Chuck sucked in his lips a moment thinking before suddenly the answer materialized in his mind.
"Charade night." He told them.
"Excuse me?" Beckman asked. Casey and even Sarah also looked slightly dubious.
"Sarah and I weren't invited to Charade's Night this week. Brad mentioned it but we were never invited." Beside him Chuck heard Casey grumble too low for the General to hear.
"What does your getting your feeling hurt have to do with our mission?" Sarah, however, caught on to what Chuck was leading towards.
"We've been invited to everything else this week. If they were really playing Charades, we would have been invited to that too."
"And even if they are, it's in the evening when Cliff is at home. He went to our Barbeque, he most likely will go to this. And he'll most likely bring Sylvia with him. The house will finally be empty and we can do a sweep and plant bugs. " On screen Beckman let out a slightly frustrated sigh.
"Very well. You have tonight to gain access to Sijak's house and glean whatever information you can about Fulcrum's operation at Meadow Branch. But the Carmichaels are moving Saturday morning, regardless." She said brusquely before reminding them, "You aren't the only Agents we have that can play house." Then clicked off.
XXX
Sylvia and Cliff "Arculin" left for Charade night slightly after eight. Sarah was, somewhat surprised. It wasn't that she didn't trust in Chuck's instincts. She simply didn't trust in their luck.
"What do you think they're really doing?" Chuck spoke and as they began disengaging the house's security system. Putting up her binoculars, Sarah tried to see through the shades into the Dennis and Trudy's house. All she could see was some frantic movements between the window slates.
"Looks like Charades." She said, slightly doubtfully. When she turned back and looked at the boys, all three gave a slight involuntary shudder at the apparent suburbanization of the Fulcrum agents. Chuck worked his way through the Siljak security system, until a series of beeps announced as its various levels and components were disengaged. Sarah then stepped in to pick the lock on the back door. The house, like all of the houses Sarah had been able to see on the block, looked remarkably normal. As their time was limited, the three of them split up. Chuck volunteered to go upstairs, and Casey took the back of the house leaving her essentially with the guest areas in front. After she had performed a sweep of the area, and planted a few bugs, Casey appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living and waived for her to follow him.
Casey had found a hidden door. Behind it was a stairway leading down to a long hallway, down which Infiniband Data Line stretched inside a cage strapped to the ceiling. Sarah signaled to Casey that she was going to go to tell Chuck, then hurried upstairs. As she reached the final landing at the top, she heard a thud. Her heart rate spiked as she ran down the hall towards the noise, gun in hand. Cautiously she peered around the slightly ajar door into Cliff's office. She had to swallow to push her heart out of her throat. Chuck was lying, seemingly unconscious, on the office floor. She dove towards him, pulling his head into her lap.
"Wake up. Please Chuck. Wake up." She said, her voice shaking slightly as her terror rose. She fought off the urge to simply shake him until he woke. Finally, his eyes fluttered open. She felt her own eyes begin to water as her fear and tension were released. She was so relieved, in fact, that she didn't notice as his eyes then grew wide, and didn't realize someone else was in the house until she felt the press of cold against her neck and the electric charge of a taser pulse through her body.
XXX
Chuck woke up strapped to a chair, his head secured inside a metal and plastic contraption that looked like the worlds least effective headgear.. He reviewed in his mind what he last remembered. He had gone upstairs, hoping to download Fulcrum's test Intersect onto a USB drive for the CIA. He hadn't anticipated Siljak using the Intersect itself as a safety device. The computer had automatically begun the series of Intersect pictures the moment he tried to hack into it. The next thing he remembered was looking up at Sarah's face, then seeing Sylvia move up behind her with a taser. Someone had tasered him from the other side followed by blackness. Moving his head as much as he could on both sides, he felt a rush of relief when he saw Sarah, also strapped to a chair, but looking relatively unharmed on the other side of one of the glass panels.
Chuck liked to have plans. He had learned that the only way to avoid complications in a plan, was to have several others waiting in the wings. Unfortunately, this was one situation in which he had run out of plans. Chuck had planned for contingency on this mission, but while he may have created plans for if Siljak returned, he hadn't anticipated being knocked unconscious, or that Siljak would return at the exact moment when he couldn't defend himself. He definitely didn't anticipate Sarah being taken by surprise as well. Now the only plan he could think of, was to hope that everything went exactly as it had in the other timeline. That placed his and Sarah's survival almost completely out of his hands. The lack of control made him feel more than a little sick. He already didn't know if Casey was still alive, much less in a position to break free and make his way towards the download room before Chuck or Sarah were killed.
More troubling, relying on the events of the original timeline meant that for Sarah to survive Chuck had to not only survive the download of Fulcrum's Intersect but be conscious almost immediately after. At the moment his head was aching, and he wasn't entirely sure that it was due to the taser rather than the test Intersect. Their team's mission to Nice had landed Team Bartowski in Meadow Branch a little over a year ahead of schedule. Fulcrum's Intersect had still been flawed when Chuck downloaded it in the original timeline. He had no idea how many more potentially fatal flaws might have been corrected in the year before he had downloaded it. As Sylvia and Brad began their recruitment spiel, however, he somehow doubted they cared about his concerns.
XXX
"Close your eyes." In that particular moment, those words had metamorphosized into her favorite in the English language. They meant that Fulcrum's machine hadn't damaged or programmed Chuck. They also meant Chuck had a plan. And that meant they had a chance of getting out of here alive.
The fear and grief that had clogged her throat since Siljak had pushed the button, subjecting Chuck to Fulcrum's nascent version of the Intersect began to recede. Following Chuck's slight eye twitch she saw Casey quietly slink into the room. She looked back up into Chuck's eyes, one last time, then followed his whispered directions. A moment later, she felt Chuck's arms wrap around her head, pulling her towards his body to further shield her from the flickering lights bright enough to still be partially visible through her eyelids. The Fulcrum agents were screaming. The room was filled with clattering as knocked over equipment hit the ground and the thud of human bodies falling. Chuck's hand tightened around hers. Then it was over. Chuck let go of her and she opened her eyes. He placed his hands in either side of her face and turned it upwards.
"Are you okay?" he asked frantically. She nodded yes and he reached down, pulling at the straps at her wrists. Once she was free she jumped up, attacking his lips and pulling him into an enthusiastic kiss which He reciprocated. She channeled all of the fear and adrenaline that had begun humming through her body when she first saw him laying unconscious in the bedroom into her lips. Then he pulled away.
She blinked in surprise until she realized that Casey had been making increasingly loud noises to get their attentions.
"We need to call up a cleaner." Casey pointed out through gritted teeth. She took a breath to steady herself.
"Right." She said, somewhat sheepishly. "Maybe you could?" She asked hopefully. He let out a grumble.
"Fine. But some of these need to be handcuffed." Casey said, gesturing toward he still unconscious Fulcrum agents before heading towards the room's entrance.
"Wait." Chuck called. He crossed the room towards where Brad lay. Brad's eyes were still open and cloudy in the first stages of death. Sarah watched curiously as Chuck hesitated a moment before reaching down and taking off Brad's belts. Chuck turned to them with a grimace, pulling at the buckle until he pulled out something clear and card-like.
"He was recording their experiments." Chuck said grimly, holding up the card. Casey gave a nod and turned back towards the door. As he left, Chuck walked over towards her and leaned in. As much as she wanted to continue their previous activities, Sarah still put her hand up before he could kiss her.
"Not in the room with a dead body. Or until you wash off your hands."
XXX
Chuck was standing over the sink, following Sarah's instructions to, when a thought suddenly occurred to him. Rushing out of the bathroom, and towards the secret lab, he nearly smacked right into Casey in the Arculin's former living room. Casey gave an annoyed grunt that Chuck quickly ignored.
"Have you called the cleaners?" Chuck asked quickly. Casey's eyes narrowed.
"Just now." He said cautiously.
"We have to delay them."
"What?" Chuck held up his hand, asking Casey to let him explain.
"I need a bit of time to make a mock up of that card. Something we can track."
"And you need to do this before the cleaners arrive?" Chuck nodded.
"I have a plan." He told Casey. Casey let out a grunt.
"I'm really starting to hate it when you say that." He grumbled.
XXX
Luckily for Casey, Chuck was not the only experiment victim the Fulcrum group had planned to record. Chuck and Sarah had fanned out in the White's house and found a similar secret door. Rather than a whole hidden lab, it contained weapons, equipment and a few blank recording cards. Chuck already knew that the cards couldn't be read without a special reader, which meant that whoever would attempt to retrieve it, wouldn't be able to tell if it was blank. He had jimmied the card open and nestled a tiny GPS tracker inside its circuitry. Slipping it back into the belt was relatively easy. Slipping the belt back onto the now beginning to smell Brad was less so, especially given Chuck's dislike of bodies.
Despite the relatively short period Casey had to delay the cleaners, the look Casey had given Chuck when they were finally allowed to sit back and simply watch the scene be processed suggested Chuck was going to make it up to his grumpier partners, or possibly deal with a few extra bruises after the next time they sparred.
January 5, 2008
Sarah felt her pillow try to slip away.
"No." She mumbled, tightening her grip around Chuck's mid-section. Eyes still closed, she felt the muscles under her fingers flex and tighten as he turned and attempted to peel off her fingers.
"I have to go home and change before my shift at the Buymore." He told her quietly. Letting out a sigh, she opened her eyes and begrudgingly let go. She watched and he slipped away and slid off the bed before beginning to pick through the trail of mission gear strewn out along the path from the door to her bed, pulling on the rumbled clothes as he went. Sarah pulled herself up to lean back against the pillow at the head of the bed.
"I'll see you tonight then?" She asked.
"Ellie wanted to talk to me." He said distractedly, before pulling his shirt on over his head. He turned around as he poked his head through the top. "I'm pretty sure it was brother sister stuff."
"Oh." She said, forcing a small smile. He sat down on the edge of the bed and started lacing up his boots.
"How about tomorrow night? We can go out on a real date, someplace nice?" He asked.
"Yeah. That sounds good." He turned around and smiled at her before leaning in and giving her a small kiss.
"I'll see you tomorrow?" He asked. She gave him a smile and a small nod, and he headed out. After the door closed behind him she lay back down on her pillow, but she found herself staring at the ceiling unable to fall back asleep.
XXX
Ellie wasn't exactly silent when he came home. She spoke. But it was all small talk. She hadn't even asked him how house sitting had gone. Chuck found himself pushing his favorite foods around on his plate as he tried not to stare across the table at her. Finally she gave a sigh and he braced himself for whatever news she was about to share. Even so he had trouble disguising his surprise.
"I'm sorry." She said, with a slightly resigned smile. Racking his brain, he tried to figure out what she could possibly be sorry for. He decided to chance asking.
"Why?" He said, cautiously.
"I'm sorry for the way I reacted when you said you were house sitting with Sarah. I was worried that your moving out would mean you, leaving me behind again and I sort of freaked out. But those are my issues, not yours, and I shouldn't have put them on you. So, I'm sorry." Chuck stared at her a second, trying to process what she had just said. He suspected he looked like a deer caught in the head lights. Ellie's brow furrowed a bit, then her eyes grew wide.
"You didn't even realize I was freaking out, did you?" She said. There was no anger in her voice, only surprise. Chuck could see blood rush to her cheeks, and she looked slightly away. "You know what, let forget it, okay?" She said, glancing around the table as if trying to find a distraction. Her eyes, and hands, finally landed on a one of the side dishes. "Do you want some cheese? Why don't you have some cheese." She said, standing slightly to reach the bowl. The movement cause Chuck to finally find his tongue. He reached over and put his hand on her out stretched one.
"No, Ellie." He said, she seemed to retract slightly, sitting back down in her chair and pulling her hand with her. "Ellie, I'm sorry. I never wanted you to feel like I was leaving you behind. If anything I was always worried I was holding you back." He told her.
"Chuck," She began to argue, but he pushed forwards and interrupted her.
"El, you raised me." He told, emotion raising in his throat. "I'm so sorry I haven't been here the last few years. I missed you so much. And I promise no matter what happens, I'm going to try to be here and be better Brother, Okay?" Ellie nodded and he felt a sort of relief. For all the times he had tried to protect his sister, and all the times he had needed her, she had always been the one that he leaned on. He hadn't really considered that she might need him to be there too. Which, made him feel more or less like a dunce at the moment. Glancing across at Ellie she seemed slightly relieved too.
"Plus, I don't really think you were wrong. As wonderful as house sitting was with Sarah, I think we need a bit more time before it becomes permanent." He said, giving her another slight smile as he reached over for the glass of wine Ellie had poured for him at the beginning of the meal. After a moment a dam seemed to break in Ellie and her words poured through with enthusiasm.
"So, how was it? Was the house nice? Did you have any problems?"