...as unseen events conspire around them and their cover relationship seems to be coming to its inevitable end, Chuck and Sarah each contemplate what they want most...

Canon Reference: End of Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: Two chapters; a short one (2K), then one around 5K (then another 5K one to follow in a separate installment)

A/N: FINALLY, the end of this episode... And approaching the end of "Book One". Although split into one more installment after this (this damn Doc Manager, grrrr) and expect an additional collection of epilogues (yes, plural) to round it out.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs - for this installment and next: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK or Tron is asserted or implied. Also in these installments, no ownership of The Godfather, Die Hard, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Whole Nine Yards, Sin City, The Green Mile, The Chronicles of Riddick or any songs by Megadeth, AC/DC, or Iron Maiden is asserted or implied.

Like the prior use of the Kurt Russell collection (and there is another passing reference to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), there are several references herein from movies featuring the late, great Michael Clarke Duncan (the very imposing Mr. Colt) though not necessarily lines spoken by his character. The Whole Nine Yards (revisited), Sin City (extensively), and The Green Mile (a blink-and-you'll-miss-it). I wish I could have wedged an Armageddon one in there...

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Part XXXVII: The Beast of America, Part 8

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095: Elegance in the Execution

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"You take a mortal man...

And put him in control...

Watch him become a god..."

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Megadeth, Symphony of Destruction

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Office of the Director of the CIA, Washington, D.C.., Thursday May 28, 2008, 10:35 pm ET

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Director Graham returned briefly to his office after confirming that John Casey would execute his orders and lying to both Casey and Beckman about Agent Walker being recalled. He tidied his desk before opening his desk drawer to reflect on the long road to obtaining this kind of power.

He stacked the remaining Omaha playing cards - less than half of the original deck - on their edge. He flipped through them until her found the King of Spades, tearing the card in half and throwing it into the pile next to his shredder before rapping the remaining deck sharply against the surface of his desk. He reordered them until the Joker card with the CB crossed out in one corner and the SW in the opposite corner showed on top. He then moved to place those remaining nineteen cards back in their weathered, original box.

He then glanced at the other stack of cards. A prototype "kill switch" of sorts developed by the Intersect research team in case any Intersect Agents reacted badly and needed to be subdued. Much larger than playing cards and metallic in appearance. Ornate holograms etched into them. Once Walker, Larkin and the others were recalled, their already-existing base Intersects could be manipulated with the cards. With an additional upload of the new Intersect they would be completely within his control but this fail safe could reset any Agent if they became too aware of what had been done to them.

The time-loss associated with each card varied with the individual but they were designed in graduated increments. The base unit card intended to suppress one month of memories with results varying, theoretically depending upon how hard the subject fought against it. Whatever the result, the next holocard doubled the base unit of memory suppression. The next, five times and so forth.

Just the largest increment should be enough to squarely put Walker and Larkin back on track as the spy couple they were before all this nonsense with Bartowski. Graham would then be able to sell any story about Larkin's old friend... and a lowly retail electronics-store worker. A man Walker would have never met.

Graham left the two very unconventional decks of cards in his desk drawer and headed toward the rooftop helipad. Everything was falling into place. Ever since he had the obnoxious Orion removed from the project for demanding access to old files best left alone, Graham had thought he was in control.

Then for the past year he had been trying to regain that control after what he believed to be Larkin's first betrayal, Larkin's story being he stole the Intersect to keep it out of Fulcrum's hands. Only to later find it was a second betrayal in which all of the players were complicit.

But now he had everyone right where he wanted them. Lined up like John Casey's infamous over 1,000-yard, triple-kill sniper shot from three years ago. It was perfectly planned. As elegant an upheaval as the baptism scene from The Godfather.

Soon enough he would have Intersect agents of varying capabilities and purposes placed strategically abroad and within his own government. While the politicians continued to flounder, he would strike; strategically scoring victories in the wars against their enemies and digging out just the right leverage against so-called friends.

Various power plays over the years had not quite given him the political traction he needed but now he could easily fight on many fronts to build the political capital he desired. Not for next election cycle, the incumbent had that locked up and he wouldn't waste his opportunity on such a close race. But if he stacked up wins like he knew he could, well, a lot can change in four years and who could really stand in his way?

With Beckman's foolish ambition, he had broken her. Never mind the fact that he had no intention of supporting her candidacy for DNI. She had accepted his proposal to remove the human evidence of the current Intersect in exchange for his support when, in truth, he fully expected her to be removed from her NSA post. Because he would be duty-bound to reveal who ordered the death of the first successful Intersect host.

Beckman's own Wild Card, John Casey - the man who had once disrupted Graham's plans for controlling portions of South America and whom Graham had once thought was taken care of accordingly - was the only one Graham had no leverage over and therefore the only one Graham regarded as likely to implicate anyone or stand in his way in any way.

That was why it had to be tonight. Before anyone else got involved.

The already previously disgraced John Casey left holding the bag. And, when Casey and Beckman foolishly believed that Walker had already been recalled, Walker finding John Casey standing over the corpse of the man Graham had come to believe had somehow become her lover over the course of the past ten months. An enraged Sarah Walker would ensure John Casey never disrupted his plans again.

That would be Walker's punishment for her hand in things. To see first hand what deceiving him brought down upon her. But beyond that, like Larkin once he was recalled and uploaded with the new Intersect, Graham was willing to let her off with "time served". The residual suppressed emotion would help ensure Walker was never foolish enough to fall in love again.

But he wasn't without mercy. Especially if it meant getting his Enforcer back into the fold. Any ghosts of actual memories would not be a part of her conscious thoughts.

Like Larkin, she wouldn't remember a thing.

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The White Room, Classified Location, Northern Virginia, Thursday May 28, 2008, 11:05 pm ET

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CIA Director Langston Graham oversaw the installation of the Cipher. His version of it. His contribution to both Project Omaha and the Intersect program, originally intended as an intelligence comparison machine. Why limit himself to that when the human mind was capable of so much more?

Graham's directives had turned the "brain" of the Intersect into a device capable of scrambling the brains of its recipients in the most amazing ways. Gifting them with impressive physical gifts or bending their morals to the remorseless use of such skills. All with greater control than the original Omaha test subjects, many of whom had succumbed to psychotic episodes and even a few who had disappeared, Graham assuming they had defected.

Graham smiled as the initial group of soon-to-be Intersect agents robotically paraded into the room and dutifully took their places in preparation for uploading the rebuilt and improved Intersect into their minds. They were a part of his original vision for the Intersect. All morally questionable or worse, most were killers for petty reasons. Borderline or undiagnosed sociopaths extracted from the Federal penal system for his offer of a "second chance".

They were heavily drugged to ease, and improve their chances of surviving, the upload process. The scientists trusted with any degree of "assembly-level" knowledge of the Intersect were supervising the process and cared more for the potential scientific achievement than the men who had just entered the room. They optimistically assured the Director of at least 30% survival but hoped for as high as 85%. Ordinarily, an unacceptably wide range with even the best case considered unacceptable by anyone with half a conscience.

Graham would be satisfied with either or anything in between.

Once they perfected the upload process on recruits of this low caliber and easy replenishment, he could branch out to administrative staff of key congressional leaders, maybe even some of those prominently placed people directly if it eventually went smoothly enough. But first, he would finally have his army.

Ideally he could make any number of super agents lacking the empathy to question his directives from men and women with little capacity for empathy who society had even less use for otherwise. Failing that, he would simply use the alternate version of this bastardization of the Intersect to override such empathy in the more gifted candidates already recruited.

It was just a shame that a few of his best face card agents weren't present, the ones for whom this Intersect was designed. Walker, his Wild Card. Larkin, the Jack of Hearts. His Kings of Clubs and Spades. One on another snipe hunt for his wife's killer. The other finally rescued from months of captivity but never to be the same again.

In Larkin's case, the early Intersect had only permitted the now-Director to amplify the more unsavory aspects of Larkin's character. He had been such an idealist once. Then the first Cipher program had allowed him to tweak the personalities of his agents turning Larkin into the predictable narcissist he now was. Once Larkin used his knowledge of Walker's conditioning against her, Graham would always have something to hold over him and this lesser Larkin would never be brave enough to admit that manipulation to Walker once their partnership was restored.

Not to mention his Wild Card, Sarah Walker. Sweet, deadly, Sarah. Agent Zero. The template for Project Omaha and for the version of the Intersect about to be uploaded to these agents. He would like to keep her in his ranks if only for sentimental reasons. His nightmare from a daydream. He had people nearly as lethal but none who could open doors with just a suggestive glance or a flirty smile and then slip away like a ghost after her objectives had been achieved like she could.

None of this would have been possible without her God-given talents. The second Cipher program now incorporated into this latest Intersect, making her skills transferable to anyone he deemed suitable for his purposes. She had clearly been slipping. Somehow charmed by the man Larkin had deemed a suitable recipient for the Intersect.

From what he now knew about the Glass Castle incident, Larkin had known that Bartowski was an ideal Intersect candidate all along. His Agent had hidden that fact from him when the program could have been ready years ago if they had Bartowski's brain to study. That brain could have pushed the program forward so much faster.

He had no more use for the man himself than he did now that his project was complete. His brain tissue was another matter entirely. Graham smirked at the thought that even that was unnecessary now.

Bartowski's brain matter was free to be splattered all over a wall somewhere - and possibly already was - by Beckman's lapdog. The man who had escaped his wrath once after wrecking one of his carefully orchestrated plans to stockpile political capital would do his duty. Beckman would take the blame and Casey would get to finally see why Sarah Walker was his once and future enforcer.

As he bent over the antiquated computer terminal - modeled after the original user interface for the original Intersect - to enter his credentials, Langston Graham smiled wickedly at the dominoes about to fall...

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096: Revelations

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"Rejoice then O Heaven, and ye who dwell therein.

But woe to you, O Earth and Sea

For the Devil sends the Beast with wrath

Because he knows the time is short..."

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Revelations 12:12

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Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA; Thursday May 28, 2008, 8:05 pm PT

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This was different than any infiltration and assassination John Casey had ever executed.

It was technically an illegal order – the murder of a US citizen on US soil – but those types of technicalities had never stopped him before. And both Beckman and Graham knew it.

But then every order he had ever executed that culminated in the pulling of a trigger, a slash of a blade, the incendiary blast or carefully shaped pressure wave of high explosives...

Garrotes, cyanide, high voltage electrical current to be blamed later on faulty wiring...

His uncleanably bloody bare hands...

...he was among the best in the world at ending the lives of those who opposed the forces he represented but they were all killings. All murder.

The rest was just a matter of degrees. Rationalizations. Justifications.

Technicalities.

He was what he was and he had known it was coming. Earlier he tried to reconcile it with his orders upon first arrival. When Charles Bartowski was a suspected terrorist. Or at least a high risk target. His actual orders had been to bring him in. Had a whole impromptu team assigned to assist with the task.

One that the other half of his current team had cut through like butter.

He was among the best; she was the best.

They had never revisited that early conversation but he was certain of it. She was Langston Graham's Wild Card Enforcer. The lethal ghost of the CIA. Despite working alongside her for nearly a year, "Sarah Walker" only existed on paper. And Sarah Walker had once confided in him that her orders that first night were to kill Charles Bartowski - the man who knew too much - if he ran.

They were what they were: Killers.

Except for Bartowski. And Bartwoski, to Casey's constant surprise, had never run. Except in the wrong damn direction.

But none of that had much to do with why tonight was different.

Casey had known it was coming ever since the early days, when the research team began reassembling the scattered fragments of the Intersect Program. Beckman had been preparing him for it almost since he arrived in Burbank. And still he had felt compelled to argue against it.

It was the closest to insubordination he had ever come.

He entered easily through the unlocked window. It used to anger him that Bartowski kept it unlocked and that Bartowski's oldest friend used it as a second front door. Now even he and Walker used it – though now all he could think was that its most frequent visitor – a man who had been the target's best friend for twenty years and possibly held Bartowski back from bettering himself for just as long – would ordinarily be the next to enter and first to find the body.

Grimes had some gaming marathon to keep him busy and Bartowski had begged off to spend the evening with Walker. Not knowing what he and General Beckman knew: that Graham had recalled her to clear the killing field.

The other Bartowski, the beautiful, kind, loving doctor - and her fellow-doctor fiancé - were on a date of their own, followed by thirty-six hour shifts at the hospital. Casey knew this thanks to his hack of the hospitals systems to keep track of everyone's comings and goings.

Once he did what he did, he and the NSA's cleaners would have plenty of time to clean up and stage an appropriate death for the female doctor's brother. A death that, while tragic and certain to be heartbreaking for her, would be far more palatable than whatever Graham's vindictive mind could dream up.

Casey advanced carefully across the familiar terrain. He had been here numerous times. They had invited him for dinner, opened up their home to him and now he was here to kill one of them. He knew the floor squeaked in front of the bathroom door. Probably an overflow or spill from a previous tenant had warped the wood. Maybe Devon. Ellie was too meticulous for it to have been her. He had noticed it the first time he had dinner there. And yet he was so distracted by his misgivings on this mission he stepped there anyway.

Casey felt no small surge of pride as Bartowski - hearing the squeak of the warped floorboard - at least paused while setting the table as he ducked into the open bathroom door and waited for the sounds from the kitchen to resume. Bartowski had his back turned to him but, of course, had dismissed the sound. He felt safe and secure in his own home. After all, he believed that his NSA handler was watching over him...

When he processed the scene, Casey realized Bartwoski was putting the finishing touches on a dinner he had prepared for himself and Walker and wondered why Walker had left the kid hanging when Graham had recalled her. He once would have assumed pure callousness but now attributed it to cowardice.

Sometimes Casey didn't know who Walker was trying to fool. Bartowski, into thinking they had some sort of future? Simply playing her part in the carrot and stick Casey had once discussed with her?

Or fooling herself, thinking she could have a real life, being what she was, or that Graham would ever let his best killer go.

Casey was having a hard enough time wrestling with this assignment. But he was glad Walker was not coming. That she would not be the one to find the body. There was barely time for a cleaner crew and a staged disappearance even though Casey had already made arrangements for the pickup crew to be on standby.

With Walker's convenient absence - and the other likely complicating persons otherwise conveniently occupied - he hadn't questioned why it had to be done so damn quickly. Just why it had to be done at all.

Not that even an impeccably staged disappearance would save him from Walker.

It wasn't the fact that doing this would eventually mean a throw down of epic proportions between him and her that gave him pause. Graham recalling her was just a reprieve. He'd be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

But even that wasn't what concerned him about her. He had been hunted before.

It was what he suspected Bartowski's death would do to her.

She was the best partner he had ever had. And he wasn't blind.

She wasn't just throwing the kid a bone by agreeing to this first date stuff. She was trying to figure out how she could stay. If she could stay.

Casey wondered why she still hadn't figured out that was never going to happen as he stalked close enough to hear Bartowski practicing a proposal of sorts...

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Chuck had been honest with Ellie and Devon about what he might like to do and he hoped he wouldn't be alone if he were to do it. He spoke to the empty room to practice his sales pitch.

"So, Sarah. What do you think of um, what do you think of Europe? You. Me. A couple of Eurorail passes? Just seeing the world. Seeing...seeing the world. What the hell? Ask her…"

Chuck smiled to himself at the remote possibility that she might say 'yes'. And then his face fell when it caught his eye. Sarah and Casey had shared a few tricks of their trade and it was one of the first things they had taught him.

Reflective surfaces.

He took a sip of his wine, looked down at the table and refocused on the anomaly in what had until that moment been intended to be Sarah's wine glass. Red wine playing back board and turning the glass into a mirror.

Her intended glass, his reflection. A tiny little John Casey in the curved surface of the glass – reflected upside down and backwards – with a weapon drawn.

Chuck Bartowski looked away from the inverted reflection of his assassin, looked over the last supper he had prepared on the table and inexplicably smiled.

It would have been nice. And maybe he would have had the guts to ask her. To find out once and for all where she stood. After all, she had agreed to tonight. And to a date the night before. He knew he couldn't have her for long but he'd take what he could get.

Now at least he would be spared the heartbreak if she had said 'no'. He wished their second first date last night had gone better. He wondered where they would send her next. He wondered if she would be safe. Of course, she would. She was Sarah. But it didn't stop him from worrying about her.

He looked over the memorabilia in the apartment. Pictured himself backpacking through Europe like he had told Ellie and Devon. Envisioned a picture on the mantle of he and Sarah together in the Swiss Alps. A perfect postcard that would never be. Frozen in time.

It wasn't the worst idea in the world but he doubted Sarah would have agreed to go with him even if things had been different. She was too dedicated to her job. To saving the world. His secret hope was that he might somehow - impossibly - bump into Sarah there while she was off doing... what she did.

Or if she knew where he was maybe... just maybe... she would decide to bump into him.

Chuck hoped she didn't go after Casey.

He was just following orders. Orders that even Chuck knew could come. It was who he was. Chuck really didn't expect anything else of him; he never had.

He just didn't want them to hurt each other. And she couldn't win even if she came out on top. There would be no explanation she could give that their superiors would accept. It would be the end of her and he couldn't bear the thought of him being the cause of any harm befalling her.

Chuck took one last sip of his wine and savored it. One last taste sensation. It was cheap but it was decent. At least his unsophisticated palette thought so.

He focused on the taste, closed his eyes, and waited to see if Casey kept his promise.

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Casey watched Bartowski's hands ball into fists but with his knuckles resting on the edge of the table. His target's shoulders tensed and his arms trembled a bit but he didn't move. Bartowski involuntarily inhaled a deep breath and sighed it out. He knew who - or what - was behind him.

But he didn't run. Didn't flinch. There wasn't much of whatever the stuff was that this kid was made of left in the world and he was here to snuff it out.

"Huevos grandes", Mr. Colt had said when Bartowksi had saved both he and Walker's asses today. The merc wasn't wrong. And Casey had made a pact with Bartowski months ago when the kid had almost casually laid out the possibilities. Even though their talk was more about being irrecoverably taken, Bartowski had foreseen this. Just like that fucking Chinese spook with her ghost stories.

Bartowski's request was simple: He wanted his executioner to look him in the eye... as long as Walker wasn't involved.

The kid had to at least be relieved that she wasn't.

Bartowski hadn't actually verbalized or characterized it this way but what Casey had heard him say was that he wanted to die with honor.

Casey was trying to find the words. He could just cough or sigh instead. But he decided he had to say something.

He had promised.

Casey remembered when Bartowski had left copies of the 'Die Hard' movies in Casey's locker to synchronize up with the surveillance. A strange invitation for the man hiding behind headphones and cameras. Something that had become a bit of a habit whenever he had been unable to conceal his cluelessness in one of the many pop-culture reference laden conversations at the Buy More but often coordinated so he could be included in movie nights. If from a distance.

The note on top of the three DVDs had said: 'Trust me, you'll love them.'

He had.

Casey even thought that a 'Yippie kay yay, motherfucker' would probably get a laugh out of Bartowski even in this grim scenario. But even Casey's sense of humor wasn't that dark. He didn't have Bartowski's quick wit and even if he did he was sure it would fail him now.

The best he could come up with was: 'Chuck, turn around.'

Or even: 'Chuck, it's time.'

But he couldn't make the words leave his mouth.

They stood like that for over a minute, Casey not knowing that Chuck had closed his eyes waiting for the inevitable. When Chuck hadn't moved for several seconds Casey was almost positive that Chuck knew he was behind him. Now that the silence and stillness continued interminably, he was absolutely certain of it.

It had seemed such a simple promise, especially for a killer like him.

'I want you to look me in the eye when you do it.'

The kid had served honorably and bravely and now stood proudly - expendable and obsolete - waiting to die. He never did give the kid enough credit for how strong he really was.

Ultimately, the four words that Major John Casey, unrepentant problem-solver of the United States' government on six continents for nearly two decades, came closest to saying out loud were:

'Fuck it, I'm done.'

And he backed slowly away.

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The doorbell rang and Chuck's eyelids flew open. He didn't know how long he had been standing like that or even if one life had been snuffed out and this was the start of some second (or subsequent) existence. One hand moved to the back of his head and the other to his chest, patting and searching for a bullet wound that was not there before looking to the floor to see if he saw his crumpled body lying there separate from his consciousness.

When no blood appeared on his hands or the front of his shirt and no corpse appeared at his feet, Chuck looked down at the wine glass that had first alerted him to Casey's presence and did not see tiny Casey reflected there. He turned abruptly on the spot and found no one behind him in the empty hallway. He wondered if his mind had been playing tricks on him as the doorbell rang again and he moved uncertainly toward the door.

"Hey, Sarah," Chuck said simply after opening the door, soaking her in, having thought moments before that he would never see her again.

"Chuck..." she started without a greeting of her own and with an uncharacteristic tremble in her voice. He had gotten pretty good at reading her but she wasn't even trying to hide that something was wrong.

"What is it?" he asked.

"We have to call off the date," she replied. "The Intersect was destroyed."

"What?" Chuck asked, more from shock than disbelief.

And from confusion at the order in which the two pieces of information were delivered. Shouldn't the CIA Agent lead with the operational aspect? Was he reading too much into the fact that she mentioned the date first? He was also puzzled by another sequence of events...

If the Intersect had already been destroyed Casey wouldn't have been sent. They must have been pretty sure it would work to send him - Chuck had assumed it had been successful - which meant Casey didn't know.

Casey's retreat wasn't because the situation had changed. He simply couldn't do it. Chuck thought he had been getting better at sizing up situations in the spy world.

This was… unexpected.

Sarah misunderstood at least the full depth of his confusion and explained, "The Cipher – it was a Trojan horse, a sabotage device. The moment it came on line, it exploded."

"But that means…"

"You're still the only Intersect."

That wasn't what he was going to say. He was going to say 'Nothing has changed. We can't be together.'

But then he realized that was exactly what she HAD said.

Just in her connect-the-dots way that he had managed to become moderately proficient at deciphering.

"I'm sorry," she said with that same almost-questioning tremble in her voice.

Now that tone he knew. Sincere Sarah. She was sorry. And - he dared to hope - not just that he wasn't free of the Intersect but for everything else that wouldn't happen tonight. Or ever, it seemed. Whatever that may have been. Whatever they may have been.

She lowered her head and turned to leave but he called out, "Sarah, wait."

She raised her eyes and turned half way back toward him but stopped mid-turn. Chuck could tell she saw something off to the side of the apartment that had stopped her from turning completely and fought the urge to peek around the doorjamb at what she was seeing.

Casey had not anticipated Walker turning to leave almost immediately and had just stepped back out through the window. When he did so he saw Walker at the front door to the apartment staring right back at him.

Had he gone through with his mission he had almost hoped she would find him there over Chuck's body. He hadn't planned on fighting back if he could overcome the conditioned reflex of it and didn't expect to leave alive. And from the look on her face, chances were looking pretty slim now.

Again – he wasn't blind.

It was the white bandage on his cheek over the wound from Mr. Colt's ring that gave him away. She was more upset than she was letting on with Chuck about having to suppress her emotions - her ill-defined feelings for the man she was supposed to be protecting - yet again, and probably wouldn't have noticed Casey if not for that flash of white.

She just stared at him and her jaw tightened.

Chuck could guess what she saw. He had learned that not everything had to be seen to know it was there and he took it as confirmation that tiny Casey hadn't been a figment of his imagination. But this night had already been hard enough for all involved - he assumed - and he didn't like the murderous look on Sarah's face.

"Have you eaten?"

She whipped her head around to look at him. "What? Umm…no…of course not, I was coming here to…"

Chuck just smiled. He loved catching her off guard. It seemed he was the only one who could and he took some small pride in that.

"Come inside. A girl's gotta eat. You'll hurt my feelings if you don't at least try my cooking. Our third first date."

"Chuuuuuuck." He also loved the way she dragged it out and clicked her tongue over the 'K' like that. It was adorable. "We can't. This isn't real. It can't... If I'm going to stay, it can't go... anywhere…"

"So, pretty much just like our first first date. C'mon. Maybe one day we'll get it right."

God, how she hoped so but she felt pretty hopeless at the moment. All her animal instincts were telling her to run away, or to go beat Casey to death just to have an outlet for the electric adrenaline coursing through her body. But Chuck's hand gently circled her wrist and rather than her combative instincts kicking in she felt that familiar relaxing warmth threatening to fill her up.

She glanced back at the courtyard and saw Casey nod at her before she allowed Chuck to guide her into the apartment before the word had left her lips.

"Okay." she said after she was already inside. Her head was reeling and her mind, body and definitely her heart were not acting in concert.

Chuck led her to her usual seat facing the kitchen, food and wine already in place but she stood and watched him sort out the last few additions to the table. He knew she hated this seat. It left two entries out of her direct line of sight. But Ellie, as hostess preferred the seat nearer the kitchen for smaller gatherings. The head of the table near the patio for larger groups. And, somehow, this tactically disadvantageous seat had become "hers". And she wasn't supposed to be a spy tonight.

As he passed the head of the table, he moved his plate from the head of the table to the seat directly across from her. He had wanted to sit near enough to touch her. Or near enough that she could touch him if she chose. He had seen her walls go up and knew that wouldn't happen but that wasn't why he changed seats. He just desperately wanted to look at her and it was a better vantage point.

"This looks amazing, Chuck," she said looking down at the dinner he had prepared for them. Her voice dripping with regrets.

He looked back at her as she looked up through her eyelashes at him with a quirk of a sad smile bending one corner of her mouth. He just looked back at her in silence and his mind, synapses firing indiscriminately, conjured up a line from Sin City when they had watched it together with Ellie, Devon, and Morgan recently. He knew that she didn't generally like to watch gory movies but she had gleefully noted how perfect it was to watch a movie with him that felt like watching a comic book.

And, as she cuddled into his chest and he knew what was meant by "she smells like angels ought to smell" when he pressed his chin and a ghost of a kiss into her hair, he remembered thinking that she really couldn't possibly be any more perfect.

That, of the comic book women in the movie, she was more than Goldie - the supposed perfect woman, and Nancy - just a glimmer of the child inside he would give anything to protect grown into a beautiful woman, and Gail - the avenging Valkyrie, and even deadly little Miho... all rolled into one.

Something not of this earth. And therefore something impossible to hold on to.

The line he remembered so distinctly was cheesy, as many lines from that movie were, but it had aptly described her then. And even more so now:

"My warrior woman. My Valkyrie. You'll always be mine..."

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"Always... and never."

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Casey had reached his apartment and turned on the surveillance equipment he had shut down prior to his aborted mission, heard the clink of silverware and wine glasses and the dinner conversation about anything but what had almost happened tonight.

"I meant to tell you," Casey heard Sarah say as she finally broke their gaze and took her seat, "that lost agent you were looking for? That latest lead you gave us?"

"Yeah…"

"They found him. Not in great shape but alive. He owes his life to you, Chuck."

"That's- That's good… Right?"

"Very good," Sarah said looking at him admiringly. How could someone so good and kind also be so humble about it?

For the second time today she recalled the words of the Chinese spy whose brother Chuck had insisted on saving:

"He is a great man. Or will be. Greater than you yet know... But you must keep him safe."

Chuck looked at her looking at him, puzzled a bit by what he saw in her look. As he took his own seat, he had a sudden thought about what might have happened if it were somehow Sarah in that situation and there wasn't someone like him able to leverage the Intersect to help her. The thought took another form and slipped out without his permission as he muttered, "Maybe I'm not done."

Sarah looked up at him questioningly and he tried to clarify.

"I want my life to be mine again but… If there's no other options for the Intersect... If I can help people... Maybe I'm just not done yet."

Sarah marveled at him but held her true thoughts back. About a blank slip of paper inside a fortune cookie. About a future unwritten. About Mei Ling's warning... And the burden of denying ourselves for something more important than our own lives. Or our own happiness.

"You're taking this pretty well." She asked without actually speaking a question as she daintily laid her napkin in her lap.

The thought that such a formidable woman could be dainty amused him. Placing a napkin in her lap was a tiny gesture really. But it was another thing Chuck had planned on doing for her tonight and would have done even in light of the bad news she had brought with her had he been able to cope with the idea of being that close to her and not touching her.

"Well…" and he took a sip of his wine, "first of all, despite the non-date nature of this third first date let me say something I should have said when I opened the door..."

He returned his wine glass to the table, placed his hands to either side of his plate and stared directly into her beautiful cerulean eyes and sole her heart with the sincerity of just his first two words: "You're beautiful. I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner."

Finally, she relaxed a bit and smiled at him. "How much of that wine have you already had?"

"This wine?" and he pointed at the bottle on the table. "Just a few sips. The two bottles in the trash can on the other hand…"

She laughed and he hid how much it hurt his heart.

"I'm sorry you're still stuck here," Chuck offered, "but I honestly can't decide which is worse. Date you for real but only for one week. Or date you indefinitely but not for real."

She hid her disappointment even more effectively. She certainly didn't consider herself 'stuck' here. Of all the frustrating things about this job seeing him every day was only frustrating because of the limits she had to impose on her behavior. It was infinitely better than not seeing him every day. And, oh, if they had only had even that one week.

She thought briefly of the small overnight bag in her car. She had every intention of following the 'three date rule' that Carina had once told her about even if the first two had ended in bedlam. A red nighty even skimpier than the purple one he had already seen several months ago would wait there, unworn and unseen. She had bought it yesterday before their second first date. She had every intention of adopting a two date rule last night.

He turned more serious and answered her earlier non-question. "It's disappointing, sure. Especially the fact that you and I are just two colleagues eating near each other. But I know how important I am to the government."

That he managed that last bit with a straight face was a minor miracle but he was encouraged by what Casey had not done this evening.

"And I got a bit of good news today," he said cryptically while mentally on the subject of Casey. "I wish I could tell you about it but it's really somebody else's secret. Can I just promise that one day I will tell you?"

He looked her in the eye and she stared back until he was sure she had caught all of the subtext and she was sure that he knew that she had. He was sure Casey was listening in by now and he would never address the issue any more directly than he just had. He didn't know if Casey realized that he had been aware of Casey's presence but he hadn't felt the need to withhold any information to try to gain any advantage. He needed friends around him more than he ever realized.

Now each knew where the others stood. And Chuck now knew something about Casey he had previously only hoped.

"So what do you think of the chicken? Ellie didn't seem very impressed. Maybe I'll do better next time."

He looked up at her and she almost cracked. She could see in his eyes how hard he was trying to keep things light despite his massive disappointment that his ticket out of the spy world had been his death certificate and that this date was no more 'real' than the dozens of others that had preceded it.

In which order of importance, she had no idea.

She selfishly hoped he was, like her, more disappointed in the latter but said nothing of the sort. Instead she took a bite of her chicken. "It's lovely. Everything is lovely. Thank you for everything you've done for me."

She hoped he realized she wasn't talking about the chicken.

.

TO BE CONTINUED...