Flashback24
Bear Island
Strait of Juan de Fuca
November 3 3:30pm
The red Cessna 150J floatplane eased onto the water about 200 yards from the shore and the floating dock. The water was mildly choppy and the wind was gusting to 20mph. One of the NSA security staff was vetting the arriving aircraft with the usual sign/countersign and flashed a light to his partner hidden onshore behind a Barrett 50cal. Sniper rifle.
The pilot cut the single engine and then stepped out on the float to catch the line thrown by the handler. Sarah stepped onto the float behind the pilot and jumped to the floating dock, flashed a 1000-candle power smile and ran up the path dragging her wheeled suitcase behind her.
The sniper stepped out from his blind and nodded to her but also held a 9mm and went through the sign/countersign authorization even though he'd known Sarah for years. Another mark of the degree of professionalism these security people maintained.
She passed through a gate in the chain-link fence and then walked down a paved pathway to the small cottage that was carefully concealed from view. She felt a strange sense of coming home even though it was not their home nor did either of them want it to be, but 'home' was wherever he was. It didn't matter to her one damned bit.
Pulling her Pea Coat tightly around her as a gust of wind blew the drizzling rain almost parallel to the ground, she dragged her suitcase up onto the covered porch and used her passkey to open the electronic lock.
The fire had warmed the living room and she threw her pea coat onto the love seat and went in search of the fabled 'missing Chuck'. He wasn't in the kitchenette nor was he in the bathroom. That left only the bedroom. Grinning at the prospects of waking a sleeping Chuck she started undoing the buttons of her blouse in preparation for the bone-jumping that was shortly to commence but to her disappointment – no Chuck.
Stripping off her clothes and promising herself that she'd hang them up properly later, she opened the closet and took out her robe and the furry slippers Chuck always teased her about. Checking out the refrigerator and grabbing a beer for her and one for him when he finally made an appearance, she scootched down on the love seat and tucked her feet under her and waited, unconsciously mimicking her husband's position of the night before.
Chuck was finishing his first-ever complete jog around the entire island perimeter on the jogging path. He'd never been able to do it before but he'd set a goal and now he'd bettered the targets set by Sarah and his physical therapist. Seeing the cottage ahead, he felt buoyed with the prospects of his wife's arrival later that evening and he sprinted the final 50 yards and slipped his keycard into the lock and walked briskly into the cottage, failing to note Sarah on the couch.
Raising an arm and sniffing he decided that 'manly' might be fine for him when he was alone but with the prospects of a hot blonde arriving, he felt duty-bound to shower. And shave. He hadn't been intimate with a razor since she left. There was no point. Other than the security detail he was the only inhabitant on the island until she came home.
Having adjusted quickly to bachelorhood again, he took off his clothes a piece at a time leaving a trail of sweat socks, shorts, t-shirt, sweatshirt and rain slicker leading to the shower.
He'd just shaved and was washing his hair when he felt the air pressure in the room change as someone opened the bathroom door. He reached up on the ledge above the shower and took down a .22 magnum derringer that he'd taken from the armory. He was learning, slowly, painfully, but he was learning.
He pointed the derringer straight-armed at the heavily frosted shower door and as it slid open he thrust the weapon up under the jaw line of…Sarah!
"Oh, shit! I'm sorry, babe. You surprised me, that's all. Sorry. That's going to bruise. Does it hurt?"
"Shut the hell up and kiss me, Chuck. I've been waiting for you for almost an hour. Sometimes I miss my couch potato although this new version is looking really good." She ran her hands over his chest and down over his slowly-at-long-last-developing six-pack and lower still.
He put the pistol back on the ledge and pulled her into the warm shower and as close to him as possible. He ran his lips over the red mark where he'd jammed the derringer and then down her neck until he reached the hollow formed by her neck and shoulders. She shuddered and attacked his ear with her lips and tongue. She couldn't believe how much this man affected her. Talk about incredible surprises. The first time they'd made love, she found out the hard way that Bartowski did not merely have sex, and it had left her shaking and unbelievably desiring more…no, needing more.
Nothing had changed. She still needed him with the same urgent intensity she'd felt that night in Burbank when she'd proposed. Even now it was just like the first time.
"Chuck, you're clean enough. Bedroom, now. We'll worry about changing the wet sheets later. I need you now and it's been so long, Chuck."
"Sarah, unless I've been in a coma, it's only been five days." He wondered for the zillionth time how she could ever have fallen in love with him. He'd worked at her barriers, her walls, her time-tested defenses, and in a short time they'd all crumbled and he had absolutely no idea how he'd done it.
A long time later, Chuck was on his stomach and she was sprawled across his shoulders writing obscene limericks with her fingernail on his ass laughing when he'd flex because it tickled. She was fast becoming a perverted and wanton woman. And she loved every second of it.
"Chuck, when I called you asked me something and I answered but I don't think I answered the question you were really asking me. So, big boy, let's find out what you really want to know."
Almost asleep but listening to what she said, he sighed. Women. Everything at their pace and in their own good time.
"Hey, what was that for? You said we'd talk, so here we are, talking. Well, I'm talking you're trying to do anything but."
"OK, it's like this. I'm extremely happy with my life. Probably never been happier. But, here's the thing. I don't think you are. You don't sleep well, Sarah, and you have dreams that wake you but then you say you don't."
He continued. "I wake up after my usual 'theme dream', find you and just move closer and go right back to sleep. You, I don't know about. You wake up, sit up, sigh a lot, look at me and sigh some more and then most times you get up and go…exercise or something. You rarely go back to sleep. I thought we agreed to talk about things?"
She sighed and then giggled which morphed into a chuckle and then a full laugh. She kissed the back of his neck and then snuggled down beside him pulling his arm over her and then dragging the dry part of the comforter over them. It was a sign of progress, according to her therapist/mother-in-law, that she could match her husband in finding humor in the most stressful of times.
"I dream about the assault, the rape, the attack, whatever you want to call it and I wake up afraid you're bloody and begging me not to kill you because you love me. Every time, dearest heart, every time I wake up and dread looking. I spent some time with your mom in DC, as a therapist not a mother-in-law, and she said there were still some 'issues' but that we could explore them together."
"I thought as much, Sarah. You should wake me. Talk to me, let me talk to you, let you know that it was just a horrible dream. Maybe it would have been better if we'd finished, in Belgrade, finished what I'd started. We can still go back, add them to the 'Alice' list. Get you closure, a resolution."
"No. I don't need that. I have all I need right here. Maybe down the road when you're totally trained and competent. You were so lucky in Belgrade. And the crap you pulled in Vancouver, Chuck, if I'd been here I'd have so kicked your ass for going in and popping that guy. What the hell was Casey thinking to let you go in there alone?"
She felt his entire body tense and then slowly relax as if he'd made a conscious decision to avoid a confrontation. She knew the minute she'd opened her big, fat mouth about Vancouver that he'd get defensive but she was pleased he hadn't.
He spoke quietly, almost into the pillow and as if to himself. "But you weren't there, Sarah, you were busy telling a therapist that you wanted an annulment, that you'd do almost anything to get back into field work. Gwen got daily transcripts. I didn't read them all, didn't want to know how far you'd go to get away from me. I realize it was your way of distancing yourself from me, to keep me alive and safe but eventually it all worked out. Just like this will."
There was no rancor, no recrimination, in his voice, just a straight recitation of the facts, clinical and sanitized. How easily he'd gotten over his fear of her killing him. How easily he'd sloughed off the images of her slashing his throat to finish him off after she'd almost killed him with blows to the ribs and temple. She shuddered remembering her call to Casey, the hospital, and Ellie and finally the long trip to DC and Langley.
He rolled over on his side and pulled her closer and whispered, "That was then; this is now. You will wake me from now on, Sarah Bartowski; you will wake me and talk about your dreams. I don't ask much of you, but I'm fucking demanding this. It's what normal people do and we're fumbling our way toward normal. OK?"
Finding his ear with her lips she murmured, 'Yes,' ran her tongue around the edge of his ear, sucking the lobe between her lips just after whispering, 'I love you too, Chuck,' and falling asleep.
A/N: Just cleaning up some remaining issues before driving on to Phase 2: Revenge of Alice. [Insert demonic laughter] Yech – Charrah – gag – spew; can't write it worth crap.
Armor-Plated-Rat