A/N1 Exploring a new formal twist here, first-person present tense POV that represents the past. Framed by a new bit of section-break typography.
Don't own Chuck.
The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part One):
Auld Lange Syne
She keeps it simple
And I am thankful for her kind of lovin'
'Cause it's simple
No longer do we wonder if we're together
We're way past that
And I've already asked her
So in January, we're gettin' married
She's talkin' to me with her voice
Down so low I barely hear her
But I know what she's sayin'
I understand because my heart and hers are the same
And in January we're gettin' married
And I was sick with heartache
And she was sick like Audrey Hepburn when I met her
But we would both surrender
True love is not the kind of thing you should turn down
Don't ever turn it down
I hope that I don't sound too insane when I say
There is darkness all around us
I don't feel weak but I do need sometimes for her to protect me
And reconnect me to the beauty that I'm missin'
And in January we're gettin' married...
- The Avett Brothers, January Wedding
I am standing in the Buy More, just inside, preparing to walk toward Chuck Bartowski. I have read the file, been briefed. I know him. I push my recent troubles with Graham aside, make myself forget about Mom and the baby. Mission. Mission. Focus, Sarah! This will be a piece of…
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...Wedding cake.
I am standing in the aisle at the church, just at the beginning. Bells are tolling, music begins to play. Everyone stands. I am preparing to walk toward Chuck Bartowski. I know him; I love him. I push my recent brush with death aside, forget my residual weakness. Life. This is my life. I am going to marry Chuck Bartowski. Focus, Sarah!
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I gaze down the aisle. Chuck is standing there, gazing back at me with the same wonder I know fills my gaze. His tux is beautiful; Chuck is beautiful. I feel like a princess. I feel like a woman. I feel like a human being.
I am not alone in the world.
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I start toward the Nerd Herd desk Chuck is standing at. Beneath my confidence in my mission, my abilities, I feel an ache, one that I stopped ignoring when I cared for the baby in Budapest and that grew more intense when I left her and my mother behind. Acute loneliness. I have worked for years, mostly alone. But not because I am a loner. It has been necessary, given the job; I have just grown used to it, the barrenness and the emptiness of my life.
I am alone in the world.
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Across the aisle from Chuck - Ellie and Carina and Zondra. Ellie, soon to be my sister. Carina and Zondra: here, at my real, honest-to-God, in-front-of-God-and-everybody non-cover wedding.
My sister, my friends…
I am not alone in the world.
Chuck decided to invite the CATs for a bachelorette party. Without asking Sarah, of course: a surprise. Sarah had not gotten to the CATs in her storytelling to Chuck. She was still telling him about Leipzig, a little at a time, once in a while.
When Sarah found out that the CATs were coming, she panicked. (A little like her reaction when Chuck pushed about high school after Heather Chandler came to town. But, this time, without a pencil daggering any pictures.) Chuck thought it was because the CATs had been wild - and while that was true enough of Carina and Amy, it really had not been true of Sarah and Zondra, both of whom were too 'business' for partying. Sarah had never been comfortable with that. She had always felt too exposed, too vulnerable. She could do it as a cover and had done it, but as herself, not really, not much. She would not only have felt exposed to strangers, but to the CATs themselves.
Although she had hoped for it with Bryce, she had never been willing to open herself at all to anyone else - and that included the CATs. Despite her personal hunger for contact, she feared it - and it was a professional anathema. She had shared time with the CATs, but barely any information that was not an operational necessity.
Carina had made various correct, educated guesses about Sarah, but Sarah had confirmed few, if any, at least back in those days. Sarah and Zondra had always been focused on preparation, training, competing, on missions. They had not spent time in girl-talk. True, they had come to regard each other as friends, but it was a shared-activity, push-each-other, John-Casey-no-goddamn-ladyfeelings friendship.
Snake-blood sisters.
Perhaps, if everything had not gone south, their friendship would have changed character, ratcheted down, grew close, but it had not. Things had gone south and their parting was bitter, an old regret of Sarah's and one she took to be irreparable.
No, Sarah's panic was not because she feared the CATs would tell Chuck stories of non-cover wild partying, but in part, because they could tell Chuck more than Sarah so far had managed about Agent Walker, her past - they could say things about who she was, her reputation, the way she had been, or the way they thought she had been.
It was also in part because of things going south. Sarah had been AIC; she regarded the CATs' failure as hers, and she hated to fail. She still believed, half-believed anyway, that Zondra had betrayed them, her.
But her panic was also in part because she had changed so much, and she was unsure what the CATs would make of the new Sarah.
Her changes had never been on display before anyone but enemies from the old days (Heather Chandler) and she was immediately worried about it, and about Chuck's reaction if the CATs were disenchanted with the new Sarah, and blamed him for changing her.
Sarah tried to prepare him for all this, telling him that Carina (the only CAT he knew) had been 'the mellow one' (Sarah's usual gift for unhelpful understatement, especially about her past). There was truth in it: despite her wildcard ways, Carina (whatever her regrets about her own past) had been more settled, more completely comfortable with her chosen life and station in it than the other three had been: Amy felt type-cast, Zondra underutilized, and Sarah exploited. Only Amy ever gave insistent voice to her feelings, but the feelings of the other two were detectable in their behavior, at least to the other three CATs
And Agent Walker had certainly never been mellow - that would have been among the final adjectives applied to her.
Although I admit, standing there, at the end of the aisle, preparing to walk to Chuck, I felt...mellow.
Ready, absolutely ready to do this, ripe - and ready. An apple, reddened by the sun's sweet kiss, heavy and...mellow. So very ready.
This was what I have always dreamed of, even back when I kept myself from knowing my dreams. Even back when my only acknowledged dream was my corpse dream. That dream is now far from me. I am gloriously and finely and sensitively alive, about to walk down the aisle, to become Chuck's wife.
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One line, the woman at the Farm tells me, if I want to walk in heels as the CIA would have me do, made-over as I am. Heels a part of my arsenal.
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But the heels I am wearing now are not part of an arsenal, they are for me and my husband-to-be. Still, one line, the line that leads me to him - not a thin, blood-red line, as I imagined when Volkoff sent me to kill Casey, but one bright, golden thread, leading me home.
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Casey steps to me. He offers to walk me down the aisle. My breath catches. Another friend, forged of combat and difficulty, mutual respect and understanding. I am not alone in the world. Dad is not here but Casey steps into the gap. I take Casey's arm and I notice Carina smirking at the other end of the aisle. At Casey. Prague, I guess. Chuck and I have come so far since our Prague.
There was nothing Sarah could do to stop it; Chuck had set it in motion; there was no recall.
The CATs helicoptered back into her life. Literally. They dropped a rope; Sarah went up and away, leaving Chuck staring blindly but happily into the helicopter's lights.
On board, Amy gave Sarah an immediate hug, gushing her name. "Sarah!" Carina grabbed her next and hugged her too, whispering in Sarah's ear loudly enough for her to hear it over the rhythmic thump of the rotors, "So you did it?" Carina released Sarah and gave her a look. Sarah nodded shyly. Carina smiled despite shaking her head.
Sarah smiled and used Carina's words from long ago. "Don't let anyone have the final say on you but you, right, Carina?"
Carina threw her head back and laughed. "Exactly, Headstone." Carina then looked at Sarah again, really looked at her. "I guess that nickname needs to be deep-sixed, huh, Walker?"
Sarah nodded happily, glad to put 'Headstone' behind her.
Amy had sat down and been listening without quite understanding. Zondra, unlike Amy and Carina, never stood. She looked away when Sarah turned to her.
"Zondra."
"Walker."
"Not for long."
"Hard to believe."
"That I would get married?"
"That anyone would marry you."
Sarah winced internally. She had expected this. Zondra passed the lie detector test, but she and Sarah had no interaction since then, zero. Zondra's words stung. Sarah recalled the last words Zondra had said to her:
"But we are done, Walker. I was wrong about you. I thought there was a core of something, something real, in you. Maybe you don't like the job, but I now know how you can do it. There's no one at home, is there, Walker? You don't like the job - but that hasn't stopped you from becoming the job."
Sarah had carried those words like a curse since Zondra spoke them. They had come back to her often during the long, lonely nights of her first two years in Burbank. Haunted her and tormented her. No one at home. Empty. I am the job.
Zondra turns away and Sarah lets her, still unable to shake the combined notions that there had to have been a mole and that the evidence pointed to Zondra.
The rest of the evening rapidly became a blur. They landed, went to a shop, bought Sarah a party dress. They went to the first club. Amy and Carina became the party directors. Alcohol rivered over Sarah; she went under, repeatedly. She was never a serious drinker. Maybe the last time she had really drank a lot was the night after the CATs fell apart.
Sarah was unsure why Zondra had come. Zondra drank - but more beside the other three than with them. Sarah felt Zondra's eyes on her all evening, increasingly skeptical, puzzled. Zondra was having a hard time with Sarah, with the changed Sarah. She seemed to both dislike and disbelieve the changes, but it was unclear how those attitudes could be simultaneous. Maybe they were rapidly alternating. Sarah was too woozy to decide.
They went on from club to club, state to state, the blur became a blur, Sarah lost track of where she was, almost of who she was. At one point, she was dancing with a short, heavy-set older man who looked like he once ran Russia, but that could not have been right.
But Sarah knew Carina was watching over her, keeping tabs on her and what was happening. And so, despite the constant, not-so-subtle waves of hostility radiating off Zondra, Sarah gave herself over to her bachelorette party, CATs-style; she had a good time.
The last thing she remembered was leaning on Carina, walking to her bedroom in the apartment, having invited the others to sleep in the apartment since it was too late to find a hotel. Carina got her to the bedroom. Chuck was in bed, fast asleep. Carina looked at him, then Sarah, and gave Sarah a final smirk for the evening.
"Guess the spies won't be playing Find the Microfiche tonight, Walker."
The alcohol responded, not Sarah: "Jokes on you, Miller. So not microooo…" Carina gasped and Sarah face-planted beside her sleeping fiancé.
I had not remembered saying that until just now. I can't believe I said that. Drinking too much is a bad idea; I was right about that, even in the old days. Operational error. I can feel my cheeks burning, the blush seeping down my neck toward my bare shoulders.
I put my hand in the crook of Casey's arm and I start walking toward Chuck.
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Chuck and I are in one of the leather chairs in a Listening Room at Pressing and Grinding. The door is locked. We have been...pressing and grinding. I am panting a little; I can't help it. Chuck is smiling at me, as always thrilled by my pleasure as much as or more than his own. I-Jodi seems solidly happy with her new boyfriend. She waited on us at the counter and smiled at both of us. Gave us the Listening Room gladly, winked at me when Chuck wasn't looking.
We have been coming to Pressing and Grinding during slow times between missions, talking about our future and about my past. I do not find the talk about my past easy, although it is easier than I thought it might be, and it gets incrementally easier (at least in general; some parts remain hard to tell). I've been telling Chuck about the Farm. The topic tonight was seduction class - and my time as Hannah Traylor's roommate.
We both squirmed as I told the story, both thinking about past missions, Cole Barker, Manoosh Depak, Sasha Banacheck... Telling him about that also meant telling him more about Dad, about how my time with him prepared me for my miseducation at the Farm. Chuck knows - because I have explained it - what my limits have been, what I would and would not do, have and have not done. But telling him about my training casts a strange light back on our time together. Although I know Chuck trusted me then and trusts me now, telling the story makes my actions seem odd even to me, always dual, always open to more than one interpretation. All my actions, up to an including this one, talking about seduction class. I realize anew how much I asked of Chuck on the beach when I asked him to trust me, the pain and suffering the keeping of his promise to do so has involved.
Catching my breath, I give him a look, slow-burning blue: not seduction, but genuinely seductive. He trusts it. "Chuck?"
"Yeah?"
"Put on that Devo album, you know, New Traditionalists."
He grins but his eyes widen. "I thought you just put up with that album because - because, you know, I like it. And I keep playing it…"
I grin back, feel my heart beginning to pick up the pace again. I drop my hand below his belt. "Let's just say that it's grown on me." Chuck's eyes widen more, glaze, his pupils dilate. "Put on Jerkin' Back and Forth, Chuck." His eyes clear enough to register a question. I answer: "It's time for some interpretive dance."
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My blush deepens at the memory. I am not only ripe, ready for the wedding. I am ready, so ready, ripe for the honeymoon. Our second. We had our first before we got married.
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I look at Chuck as I start to walk toward him. He's blushing too. Good. The dress works.
I've never had anyone look at me with such uncomplicated love.
And then I know one among the countless things that make him so dear to me: despite all my complications, despite my internal crossword puzzle labyrinth of boxes and cells, he keeps it simple:
I love you, Sarah, I trust you.
His text to me in Russia. To Russia - with love. Take that, James Bond.
You too, Chuck, you too: I love you too. I trust you too. Thanks for being strong enough, strong enough to be my man.
A/N2 Slight change of plan. This story will be three shorter chapters instead of two longer ones. I decided I liked the breakdown of the material better that way. Tune in next time for Chapter 53, "For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part Two): Wedding March".
How about a review? Let me know if you are still out there. Oh, and are you seated groom-side or bride-side at the wedding?
Z
A note on formal variations (for those interested in the technical side of things). I haven't been doing this first- to third-person, present to past tense shifting just for the hell of it, or for show. It is internal to my conception of the story. We start with Sarah distanced from herself, aware of herself according to what Arthur Schopenhauer once called 'acquired character', then we gradually begin to find out what it is like in her head, the give and take of her controlled, Spartan, occurrent thoughts. Over time, as her self-knowledge grows, the third-person POV and the first-person POV become more similar, grow fuller, less fraught, less frantic, feature far less doubling-back and second-guessing and self-contradiction. Self-denials continue, but they become more deliberate, less automatic. She begins to own herself and her emotions. And so on, and so on. By the time we are here, we have Sarah in the round, coming slowly into full possession of herself. Early on, the POV shifts also worked to dichotomize Sarah. Later, as she is overcoming her dichotomy (but facing choices that might dichotomize her again), she begins to use the 'Agent Walker' device, dichotomizing herself in a certain way from her past, but not as she did while she was Agent Walker.
