A/N: Previously on Second Chance: Sarah returns to LA after 5 long years on a mission to prevent an exchange of sensitive information. She's asked to resume the "cover" of wife to Chuck Bartowski, who happens to be her estranged husband. Prior flashbacks reveal that while their marriage was real and they were happy for a short period of time, Chuck left the spy world behind and Sarah couldn't. The loss of a child and friend took its toll on their marriage and Sarah left for DC and her job, cutting off all contact with him. In present day, through some questionable spy-skills Sarah discovers that Chuck's program SIMIAN is the sensitive information she must protect and she has until Friday, the last day of the convention, to figure out who the real culprit is. Oh, and Chuck's filed for divorce.
So to the five people who may still remember and be willing to read this mammoth fic, I hope the summary jogged your memory a little. It has been awhile and for that I am sorry; you must thank Altonish for his herculean efforts in helping me produce this and the next two chapters. He pretty much wrote most of the last part of Thursday, and it's for the better because really, I couldn't do it adequately. So please thank him because he's awesome.
And thanks mxpw for your continued support (or lack there of) for Chuck/Sarah. It's a good thing...most of the time. =)
Okay, just remember that it's been awhile and that i just got back on the horse so be nice!
Chapter 37:
Sarah and Sophia walk slowly back to the table and Carl stands to his feet once he sees them approach.
"Let's get you to swim practice, shall we?" The girl rolls her eyes at her father, but she nods. She hesitates just for a moment and then throws her arms around Chuck's neck.
"It's good to see you, Uncle Chuck!" She gives the first true smile Sarah's seen since she bumped into them earlier. The little girl whispers something into Chuck's ear, making the man blush, but he grins at her as she pulls back.
"It's great to see you too, Star Fighter."
Sophia giggles madly at the moniker. Then, as if remembering something, she frowns.
"Dad says I can't play your new game, Uncle Chuck."
Chuck makes brief eye contact with Carl before focusing his gaze back on Sophia. "Don't worry, Star Fighter, you're not missing much."
Sophia sighed dramatically. "You'll come play games with me soon, won't you?"
Chuck hesitates just a beat before he says, "I'll try." It's a signature 'Sarah' response; Chuck's learned well.
"Come on, Soph, you don't want to be late," her father prods.
The little girl launches herself at Chuck again and gives him one more hug. "Bye, Uncle Chuck!"
Sarah feels a momentary pang in the chest as she watches the easy rapport the pair has with one another. In another lifetime, Sophia could so easily have been their own little girl.
"Don't forget Sarah," Chuck prompts.
In a far more subdued and timid manner, Sophia turns and hugs Sarah gently around the waist. "Bye, Mrs. Bartowski."
The surprise of the warm affection is offset by the nature of the formal salutation. Chuck had barely known Carly before she left.
"Bye, Car—Sophia." Sarah runs her hand down the little girl's dark curly locks. "It was nice to see you again." She turns to Carl. "Both of you."
Carl nods. "Don't be strangers," he replies and then puts his arm around Sophia's shoulder, guiding her out of the diner.
As they walk out the door the little girl looks back at her and once again Sarah's struck by the familiarity of her look. She's seen that look a million times in this diner before. Sarah shakes her head. Since she doesn't believe in the supernatural, she must just be going crazy.
Sarah sighs and slumps into the booth across from Chuck. He keeps his gaze focused on something outside the dirty window so she's free to stare at his profile without notice.
"So, what are you doing here?" she asks. "Shouldn't you be at the conference?" Then, remembering the conversation from the morning, she adds: "And didn't you promise not to go anywhere without letting me know?"
She tries not to sound too irritated, but Chuck's usually good on his word and she honestly expected him to know better considering all they've been through this week.
"Carl called me." Chuck finally turns his gaze back to her and she's saddened to see just how troubled he looks. "He said that you needed me."
Sarah feels the heat rise into her cheeks. "I-I-I went to visit Sophie and I bumped into him."
Why would he think I needed help?
"I didn't mean for you to get called out of the conference. I didn't even know he called you. If I had I would never have let him."
Chuck shrugs and his troubles seem to fade for a second when he smiles. "It's okay. I'm glad he did."
"What? Why? Don't you have events you need to attend?"
Chuck shrugs again. "It doesn't matter. I started to worry when you missed our last check-in so I wasn't really concentrating anyway."
"Oh!" Sarah immediately digs her phone out of her pocket. "Chuck, I'm so sorry. I turned it off when I was at the cemetery because I didn't want it to ring—"
Chuck holds out his hand. "It's okay," he says. "I'm glad you went to visit Sophie. I was just a little worried, so when Carl called and said you needed me…"
"You shouldn't have," she says. She's not sure why she's not more annoyed with Carl. He was clearly meddling in matters that didn't concern him. "What would happen if it was all a trap? You promised not to leave without calling."
"Sarah." He silences her with just one word. "I'm here now." He arches his brows as a silent challenge. If she couldn't get him to stay in the car before they married, did she really expect him to follow her orders now?
Sarah sighs and sinks back into her seat. "So you are."
She can't help but smile a little. He's always jumped to her rescue. It's sweet, in a terribly senseless and idiotically gallant sort of way.
Neither of them seems to know how to carry the conversation and so they sit in silence exchanging brief smiles. But it's like an ever expanding ocean gaining between them and the longer they spend in silence, the more Sarah begins to doubt the state of the friendship they've been trying to rebuild.
She blurts out the first thing she can think of. "So…what were you and Carl talking about?"
Chuck's embarrassed smile is answer enough, but he tells her anyway. "It seems we're in the midst of a vast conspiracy."
Sarah arches a brow. "How so?"
"Carl's under the impression that I should be making my move to woo you back."
Sarah blanches. "He said that?" she squeaks, but really what she can't believe is that Chuck is confessing all this to her.
"That's why he called me," Chuck says. He smiles with only the slightest flush in his cheeks. Not only has he become uncharacteristically forward, he's also developed quite the poker-face.
"What did you tell him?"
"The truth." Chuck looks out the dirty window again and the sadness creeps back on his visage. "That it wasn't up to me. You didn't come back to Los Angeles to be with me. And this…" He waves the air between them and it seems like the action sums up their relationship perfectly. Empty. Like they're trying to hold onto something that's no longer there. "Whatever this may be, however real it might look and feel, ultimately nothing's really changed."
Suddenly he smiles his trademark goofy-grin. "He didn't really buy it though."
"He didn't?" Even Sarah has to admit, one look at that heart-warming smile and even she's not convinced that this wasn't anything.
Chuck shook his head. "Nope. He said if Sophie ever came back; it wouldn't matter what her reason, he wouldn't waste one minute for a chance to be with her again. Even if he couldn't keep her, it wouldn't matter; he'd give anything for that one chance."
Sarah isn't sure how she's supposed to respond to a statement like that so she just nods.
"The guy's impossible to argue with. I told him that we were different, that Sophie didn't choose to leave."
"And what did he say?" Sarah asks, doing a poor job at hiding the tremor in her voice.
Chuck examines his coffee mug with a single-minded focus. "He said I was a coward."
"You aren't a coward, Chuck," Sarah says, putting her hand over his.
"Oh, I'm afraid of plenty."
"Maybe, but you've never let it stop you from doing what needs to be done." She squeezes his hand as an encouragement.
Chuck shrugs and the conversation lulls a bit before he takes a deep breath. "So, what are you doing tonight?"
"Nothing specific. I need to find who's after SIMIAN." When she says it like that, the mission sounds almost doable. Only time is quickly running out and she still doesn't have a lead.
"Can it wait?" he asks.
"Chuck…I've only got one more day, two tops, to fix this. Your life is in danger until I do." She doesn't understand how a man as brilliant as her husband can have so much difficulty getting the point. Doesn't he realize what could happen to him if she doesn't find the culprit?
Chuck waves away her concerns with his hand. "I'm with you. How much danger could I be in?"
"Chuck! Tomorrow I need to have an answer for the Director otherwise we're both in trouble."
He gives her a serious look. "I think we're already in a fair amount of trouble. How much worse can it get?"
Sarah looks pleadingly at him. "Chuuuuuuuck…." she intones, dragging out his name.
"Come on, let's go have a little fun." He wags his brows at her and even though she should really know better—
really, really know better—
"Doing what?"
Chuck grins mischievously and Sarah feels herself melt under the heat of his gaze. "It's a surprise."
_
They pile into the car with Chuck behind the wheel and head north. The conference center is behind them as is Ellie's and the pier and any other place of significance she can think of. She really has no idea what he has in mind but he looks so utterly relaxed and (dare she believe it) happy behind the wheel that she trusts him implicitly. Considering the strain he was under, she knows this has to be good.
Sarah recognizes where they are headed as soon as they take the freeway exit. The happiest times in Sarah's life have been spent in Burbank and in the twenty square blocks that now make up their old neighbourhood.
Frankly she's not sure she can stand to be here. It represents a perfect spot in her mind that's been unchanged since the day she left. She's not sure she wants a reality check; whatever was here, it would never compare to her memories.
Chuck looks so happy though and she doesn't have the heart to disappoint him. But when she realizes where Chuck's taking them, she relaxes and her gut stops churning on the drop of a dime. She laughs as they pull into the parking lot.
"Piggy's Pizza?" she utters, staring up at the giant neon sign. "We came here for pizza?"
"It's just a stop." Chuck smiles at her and she melts just a bit. He really was just too much.
The pizzeria hasn't changed a bit from the worn linoleum flooring, the checked tiles on the wall, or the portly mascot. In fact Sarah's convinced the greasy, zit-faced teenager behind the counter is the same greasy, zit-faced teenager that had been behind the counter the last time they'd come to Piggy's.
"That's impossible," Chuck whispers, once the cashier takes their order.
"I'm telling you, it's the same guy."
"Sarah, he can't be more than nineteen. That would make him fourteen the last time we were here."
Logic be damned. "I never forget a face," she argues.
"So you're suggesting that this particular pizza parlor exists outside the bounds of normal space and time?"
"I don't really see any other explanation," she whispers urgently.
"So naturally this pizza parlor is the gateway to the Twilight Zone."
"Naturally," Sarah quips.
"Um…" The cashier gives them a strange look. "Actually that was my older brother, Mike."
Sarah bursts out laughing and tries to cover her face with her hand. "I'm so sorry," she utters between gasps for air. "I was just…well…it's been awhile. We used to come here all the time."
The pimply teenager shrugs indifferently. "Pizza's ready."
Chuck quietly accepts the pizza and leaves a tip that should more than absolve them of their embarrassment.
Sarah follows Chuck out into the parking lot and they get into the car. He obviously has a plan in mind because they're speeding out of the lot before she's even had time to put her safety belt on.
"Where are we going?" Sarah asks as Chuck rounds a corner. She already knows where they are heading, but it didn't make a lot of sense.
"I thought we'd go check out our old digs," Chuck explains.
They'd only lived a few blocks from Piggy's so there wasn't a lot of time for her to talk some sense into him. "Don't you think the present owners will mind?" Sarah asks urgently as they pull onto their old street.
"Oh, I think they'll be okay with it," Chuck reassures her. They pull into the vacant driveway and he scoots out with pizza box in hand before she has time to hold him back.
"Chuck!" she exclaims, climbing out after him. "What are you doing?"
He already has his back to her, walking up the steps to their old house. Sarah stops short.
Same color, same planters, same numbers. Sarah's heard of memory lane, but she never thought she'd actually get to walk down it.
"Chuck!" she hisses but he's already walked all the way up to the front door.
"You coming?" he calls, waiting at the door-step.
Sarah looks cautiously around the neighborhood. She can see old Mrs. Crabb looking disapprovingly at her from across the cul-de-sac. Sarah tries to smile at the old crone but she'd never gotten along with the irritable woman when she lived here, why would things change now?
"Sarah?" Chuck stands where he is, still waiting for her to catch up.
Sarah quickly turns her back on their crotchety old neighbor and makes her way to the front door. How many years has she been avoiding facing this very door?
Out here it was safe. Yes, so the world sucked and it was dull, but it made sense. But in there…the parts of her that were still alive had lived behind that door…and in there was a world that had never made sense to her.
Sarah quickly snaps out of her thoughts when she realizes that the front door is already ajar.
"Chuck!" she hisses. "You're going to get us arrested!"
Truthfully she's less afraid of the police than seeing the inside. In there anything is possible and Sarah feels the terror that's kept her away for so long washing back over her. The guilt and fear and pain inside that house could destroy them both. Why would Chuck bring her here?
Doesn't he realize how dangerous all this is?
He disappears inside and Sarah feels her heart lurch. "Chuck!"