A/N1 The transition from Gobbler to Push Mix is one of the most bizarre in the show. We go from Sarah lost in despair, believing she has killed Casey and cost herself her future, to Sarah seemingly okay, working composedly with Frost to find the location of Hydra.

When Beckman shows on a Castle big screen and tells Chuck that she has talked to Sarah and that Sarah will be in the field a while longer, the obvious inference is that Sarah has been told that Casey is okay and has, presumably, re-established contact with Chuck. So…

The entire Volkoff infiltration is a case of the show chickening out, deciding to tell a dark tale, but only sub-vocally, as it were, never quite stating it aloud, leaving it to the reader to suss it out, work it out. I suspect that it was not just the darkness of the tale that kept it sub-vocal, but also the brute unbelievability of it. Anyway…

More than one kind of chapter-break in what follows. This chapter is much more episodic than the last several. We here end this long Darkened Engagements story.

Don't own Chuck.


The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Darkened Engagements (Part Eleven):

Full Circle


These are they who devote their whole lives to each other, with a vain and inexpressible longing to obtain from each other something they know not what; for it is not merely the sensual delights of their intercourse for the sake of which they dedicate themselves to each other with such serious affection; but the soul of each manifestly thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire.

- Plato, The Symposium (Shelley Translation)


I am in Volkoff's car, along with Frost and Volkoff and a driver. We are the first car in a string of cars - henchmen and lackeys, luggage and equipment.

The last few days have been an odyssey within my odyssey. I stare out the window as the road winds down to the sea, my mind adrift.


After returning us to Moscow, Volkoff jetted off again on business he would not describe. Frost accompanied me to my room and stood beside me as I opened the door. She put her hand on my shoulder.

"I will be in my quarters if you need...anything. Need to talk." I could tell she wanted to do more but was unsure what would help. I had no suggestion.

I nodded while staring into my dark room. She turned to leave. I wanted to thank her but my throat would not open.

I went inside and I fell into bed as if it were a grave.

The room was frigid, so cold I was surprised not to find frost on the blankets. If the lights had been on, I would have seen my breath, proof that I was alive, dead though I felt.

As it was, I subsisted in the dark for a moment until I passed out or went to sleep, mortified exhaustion a gaping maw that consumed consciousness.

I woke to vibrations. The secure phone, still in my pocket. I fish it out, unwedging it from my pocket. I am still prone on the cold bed.

Chuck. Chuck again. And again. He has kept trying but I must have slept through several attempts. My eyes filled with tears. My hands were so numb from the cold of the room that I could only stab at the phone with my frozen finger, unable to feel the contact, only to see it.

Distance. Distance was fine; maybe it was the answer for Frost. It was for a long time my answer.

No more. I was not going to lose Chuck to keep from losing him. That - that certainly - was a losing strategy, a doomed turn of No But Yes. If I had lost him, I would face it and face the searing pain of it. Besides, my life, Frost's life, they were both proofs that distance did not solve problems, it just kept you from confronting the consequences of failing to solve them. It kept you from witnessing your children's lonely, motherless misery. I think of Chuck and Ellie and their 'Mother's Day'. Or, it would keep me from acknowledging my broken heart, the wreckage I would have to live with if Chuck didn't want me back.

I love Chuck. I didn't know what he then thought of me and I feared to find out as I could not remember fearing anything before.

But I could, I would not just close myself off. That was Agent Walker's way; it took me forever to unlearn it. I was not going to staunch the new life that was in me. No matter what Chuck believed he saw, I was no longer a killer, even if I killed Casey.

I was numb from the cold; I was not numb.

I was not dead, not a corpse. Obviously.

I saw Chuck's messages, displayed from most recent to least recent. I did not read the most recent, I scrolled quickly to the first, the one he must have tried to send me while I was on the plane, the one I refused.

I love you, Sarah. I trust you

I blinked at the message in disbelief, shock.

I shook my head, certain I was dreaming. But, no. The message abided. It was still there, Chuck's first communication with me after what happened with Casey. Those words in that order, those precious words.

I felt warmed, heart-warmed. But all over.

I had done it again. Taken the limits of my imagination as if they determined the limits of Chuck's. There were many things I was better at than Chuck, he and I both knew this. But not that, not at imagining how it is with other people. I was making progress, but I still had a long way to go. We taught each other; he taught me then, with his text. I read the second.

Casey still alive. At the hospital. Doctors cautiously optimistic

I scrolled to the third message.

I'm okay. Tell me you are okay. I know what you must believe, and it is killing me, imagining that you believe you killed Casey

The fourth.

Casey, stable. Me? Unstable, going crazy. Please, Sarah, are you okay?

The fifth.

Casey is going to make it! Bed rest, but full recovery possible. He's as tough as he thinks

Told me you gave him the Hydra info. Please respond, Sarah. Please. I'm going crazy

Thrilled, joyous, so relieved I was weeping, I typed a text and sent it.

Thank God! I love you, Chuck

I'm okay. Home soon, I promise, with your mom

I rolled over, hugged my phone to my chest, pedaled my legs in the air like a little kid. I giggled and kept giggling. I was giddy with relief about Casey, about Chuck.

Casey, alive!

And Chuck, Chuck held onto Sarah when I was ready to let her go. I love that man so much! He kept faith in me when I lost faith in myself. He kept me close to himself; he kept me close to me.

I was warm against the cold.

I reached over and turned on the lamp. I was in the light again.


Volkoff was still on his trip. I found Frost, and after we were back in her quarters, I shared the news. She brightened, grabbed and hugged me. She pulled back, smiled at me, then grabbed and hugged me again.

"Sarah, I'm so glad, so relieved! The thought that you might be stranded here too, here without Chuck, him there without you...It was too much to bear." I read her Chuck's texts and her eyes filmed over, pride and shame causing the tears. "That's my Chuck,"-sudden, self-conscious pause-"What a job my daughter did, raising my son." We stand silent for a moment, both overcome by emotions difficult to combine.

Frost's face begins to harden again as her gaze grows calculative. "Volkoff is still gone. We need to take the chance and see if we can find out where the secure server with Hydra on it is. If we behead Hydra, we behead Volkoff Industries…"

We began to make a plan. We executed it and found that Volkoff sent Hydra to someone called 'The Contessa'.


But The Contessa is not a someone, it is a something, a ship. That is where Volkoff has taken us. Where Hydra is not secured. We get out of the car and, after enduring a commercial for the ship from Volkoff (ice cream?), Frost turns to me, tells me that we have to find Hydra, get away. This is our chance.


That night Frost tells me that I am getting off the ship, getting away, whether we find Hydra or not. She is not going to let me become her or let Chuck become Stephen. I know the parallel is there, of course, but until she says it I don't think I had quite thought of Chuck as occupying Stephen's place, even though I recognize that I occupy Frost's.

I should never have done this alone.

My desire to protect Chuck physically, always so strong, has led me to risk harming him in other ways, perhaps almost as permanent, certainly as painful or more. I worry so much about him that I forget he worries as much about me. I keep forgetting that we are one, truly together. If I am at risk, he is at risk. It is hard for me to remember that he loves me; I went so long with no one around who did. It is not that I forget it, exactly, it is that I become so involved in loving him, in the miracle of him, that I forget he is equally involved in loving me, that I am his miracle.

Almost as if I conjured him by thinking of him, I hear Chuck say my name. "Sarah!" Chuck is on board. Morgan is with him. I am so happy to see him that I follow his progress across the walkway above us and down the stairs, willing him to me. We kiss. I taste him again, feel him against me. I'm here, Chuck, I'm still your Sarah.

But as so often, I fall back into habit, start to recoil from his exposure to my risks, forgetting my own recent thoughts. But Chuck will have none of it. He has come for his family - and that clearly includes me - and Chuck has a plan.

I consider how I would feel if our roles were reversed (and something like that happened with the Belgian) and I recognize how desperate I would have been (how desperate I was). (What did Casey say? That I carved Chuck's name in Thailand's backside.) Chuck methods are less combative, but he has come for me, just as I came for him. He has been desperate.

I will follow Chuck's plan.

ooOoo

In spite of Morgan - or maybe because of him, we are able to get into the heavily protected part of the ship where Hydra is kept, the server that houses it. Frost attempts to get the system uploaded onto a CIA server. Chuck tinkers with a bit of the hardware. I can't see what he is doing. I end up giving Morgan my coat, my black coat since his wet suit was destroyed by the lasers protecting Hydra.

Frost realizes that Hydra can only be activated by Volkoff's voice command at almost the same time as Volkoff voice rings through the room: Volkoff arrives with henchmen in tow. We are taken captive.

Volkoff begins a version of the "I am disappointed" speech that ended with Yuri ended, bullet embrained. I am immediately afraid for Frost, more than I was when Volkoff first entered. But Volkoff is overconfident, and he has never faced Frost as a known adversary before. Quicker than Volkoff can react, Frost pushes him and takes his gun from him. She wheels, putting her back to the wall and pulling Volkoff against her. She tells us to go. Chuck dithers but she tells us again. Volkoff reminds her that the cost of us leaving is that she must stay. It occurs to me as we go that he really does not understand her. She has been paying that cost for almost two decades. She will pay it again.

I have the strongest feeling that Volkoff will not be able to kill her, and I wonder if that is connected to his other troubles where she is concerned.

ooOoo

We make it away from The Contessa, Chuck, and Morgan and I. Beckman has a car waiting to take Chuck to his father's cabin and Morgan back to the hospital. She is following Chuck's plan too. But there is now a serious wrinkle. Volkoff still has Frost and we need Volkoff's recitation of a line from Stalin to get into Hydra. But Chuck is oddly quiet, confident. Confident of his plan - and of all of us. He believes we can each do our part.

He knows that Volkoff is going to come after him, after me, after the family. He explains the plan - what he was doing to the computer, to Hydra, how it will all work. He's playing chess with Volkoff now, I realize, four-dimensional chess. But unlike Volkoff, Chuck is not willing to sacrifice pieces to win. His strategy has to be deeper than that, and it involves trusting his pieces, not mistrusting them.

God, his brain is so sexy - and his heart, and so is all the rest of him.

I cuddle against him in the car before he leaves, as tight as I can. I am staying here, since freeing Frost is my part of Chuck's plan. We will meet everyone at the hospital. Ellie is there; it is time for baby Clara to join Team B.

We have not talked yet, Chuck and I, and we need to talk. One reason I am reluctant is that Morgan is sitting in the car with us, and I am reluctant to have our heart to heart become a heart to heart to heart, although Morgan has certainly become my friend. But I have things to say to Chuck alone. My time with Frost has convinced me. I don't expect this to happen all at once, but it needs to happen. We say goodbye, but this time we are in this together, each with a part to play other than waiting.

ooOoo

"Chuck," I begin in a whisper as I finish saying goodbye, "I have some things I want to say to you."

He grins at me. "Me to you too. I seem to recall a speech that got interrupted by all of this."

I grin back at him. "It was a good speech, Chuck. I want to hear the rest of it. I will listen to it anywhere, anytime...with joy…"

He kisses me so gently I almost begin to cry. "I love you, Sarah Walker, always have."

"You too, Chuck, always."

ooOoo

The plan works; each of us does what the others trusted us to do. I save Mary. Chuck tricks Volkoff into the individual recitation of the words of Stalin, so that Hydra can be uploaded to servers Beckman has prepared. She takes Volkoff into custody, I find out later, and lets Chuck use a helicopter to get himself and Morgan to the hospital.

Frost and I drive the car Beckman provided for us, and we reach the hospital at the same time Chuck does, jogging toward the door from the helipad. Morgan is behind, talking to the pilot. Chuck sprints when he sees us. He grabs me and hugs me, then he stares at me.

We had time on the way to stop and change. I washed the black from my hair, the dye from me. I am in my clothes, my hair blonde again.

"You're safe?" I nod. "You're you, again." I nod again. "I'm glad you're...back." I nod a third time. He hugs Mary and we go inside.

For a moment, I think I hear a keytar, but then realize I must be mistaken.

I see John. Casey. He bears no grudge. I could cry at the sight of him, up, even if in a wheelchair.

ooOoo

We are seated in a long hospital hallway. Fluorescent lights but no voices. A janitor is polishing the floor, making it shinier.

We stepped out of the celebration of Clara, after taking our turns with the little one. The feel of her in my arms made me think of the baby at the airport in Moscow.

Someday.

Chuck just keeps looking at me, and I am happy to look at him. I finally understand that cliché, a sight for sore eyes. Just looking at him is a balm to my heart, my soul. I do not know what it is about him...I do not need to know. I divine that he is mine and I am his.

Then I see a decision in his eyes. He stands, pulls out the red velvet box, the one he had in France, opening it.

Butterflies claim my stomach, all of me.

I flutter, head to toe.

I do not just have butterflies, I am one.

Metamorphosis complete, caterpillar transcended, even if my wings are dewy and new, my flight erratic.

I do not need the speech; he does not need to give it. I can only watch him, rapt, as he kneels and offers the ring to me, offers himself to me, as he has always offered himself to me, from the first: My personal baggage handler. My guy. My Chuck. I kneel in response, mirroring him. I kiss him yes. My fiancé. My future.

ooOoo

Later, at our apartment, abed, in the afterglow of lovemaking somehow slow and gentle and completely abandoned, I feel Chuck press against my back, reach around to hold me, and I wrap his arms around me tighter.

"I can't do this all at once, Chuck, or on any regular schedule, but I want, I need to tell you some...stories...Call it a story...sequence...Bear with me, please."

With him holding me, but with me not looking at him, I begin. "I told you about when I was seventeen, about breaking into Gail's boyfriend's house, taking Robert's pen. But I did not tell you what happened soon afterward..."

I pause, finding the courage for the words now, after almost four years of knowing Chuck, and so many years after the fact. Chuck's embrace tightens. "Soon afterward, I first met Langston Graham…"


A/N2 Almost done with canon. One story left. Tune in next time for Chapter 52, "For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part One): Auld Lang Syne". Carina returns, Amy and Zondra in tow. CATs. Meow!

Trying to write inside of canon is a little like changing clothes in a phone booth - and keep in mind, I was a serious football player in the day (with the knees to prove it). It's been a particularly tight fit. I will be glad to get to the original, post-finale story. But first, Bell will be two longish chapters.

I know some have undoubtedly gotten fatigued. Thanks to those who have stuck around. I am proud of this long story, a serious story.

Thoughts?

Zettel

Phase Three and the Volkoff infiltration are, in my view, very important to the architectonic of the show. They are Janus-faced: looking back to Chuck's 'darkening' in S3, and ahead to Sarah's 'reset' in the finale.