A/N: More questions answered or partially so...
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter Nineteen: Doomlight
Chuck truncated his tale under Mary's intermittent, frosty mirror-gazes.
"I seduced Amy back. I don't think she knew I had it in me. I manipulated her wooing of me," he glanced at his mother's eyes in the mirror, "or her seduction, into a seduction of her. I hid it all from Casey, as much as I could, kept her away from Ellie altogether. I could tell she was building to something, doing or asking me something, but that she was also becoming more reluctant to do it."
Frost cleared her throat.
"Anyhow," Chuck said, "I finally figured out that she was Ring, and that her double-agent mission was to get me to download the Ring's new Intersect. I hadn't talked to Dad much since he left Burbank for DC," Sarah saw anger in Chuck's eyes, "for a lot of reasons, but in part, because I didn't want to hear about you...your new team or Project...or whatever. But I got in touch with him and told him what was happening. He wanted to go to Beckman but I said no — I was sure I could do it, download the Ring's Intersect, and then infiltrate them from the inside. Amy would be recruiting a double-agent, and the Ring would create their destroyer."
Sarah couldn't stop herself. Her stomach was knotted thinking of Chuck seducing Amy, but then to hear that he 'volunteered' himself for a new download, of an Intersect with unknown properties: "What were you thinking, Chuck?"
Frost huffed in agreement with Sarah.
He looked at Sarah and the grudge from Miami Beach showed itself for a moment. "You left me, Sarah. Alone in Burbank. I know I said I wanted a normal life, but you changed all that, you...created a new normal. What I wanted was to be with you, have a life with you. — I couldn't just tuck my tail between my legs and go back to the damn Buy More, hoping to be Employee of the Month again, or Ass Man…"
"What?" Mary said, her eyes confused in the mirror.
Chuck ignored her. He stopped himself for a moment. "Sorry, that's not the very short version. Asking me for the short version...Anyhow, I made it clear to Amy, without letting her know that I was onto her, that I was willing. I wasn't sure if she would go through with it, but she did. She did what the Ring wanted. She took me to a back room at a club, enticed me back. A laptop was there; I pretended to be drunk; she asked me to watch a...video. And that was the first part of the upload. She tranqed me and when I woke up, I was in a lab. I seem to end up in labs a lot.
"But you see, I had been working with Dad — I would go down to Castle. He told me some things about me...about when I was a boy. This is now my third download of the Intersect."
"Third?" The two, Mary and Sarah, spoke as one.
"Very short version: when I was a boy, I downloaded a prototype version, a skeleton, Dad calls it, of the Intersect. No flesh, data, on its bones but the architectonic was there. Dad thinks…"
"I'm gonna fucking kill him," Mary growled in interruption. "Who lets a kid download the Intersect?"
Chuck glared into the rearview. "In his defense, Mom, by then he was a single parent."
Mary shut her mouth.
Chuck went on. "While I was in Castle, I downloaded some programs Dad created when he realized he couldn't talk me out of it. Prophylactics." Chuck glanced at Sarah nervously as they both thought of Barstow. "They were meant to protect my mind, my brain, from the download, and also meant to make it easier to get the thing back out of my head."
"So, I end up in this lab. Ringed by Ring scientists. And then the agent in charge of the mission, Amy's handler, comes in and, of course, it's my Mom. Because — Chuck's life. Suffice it to say that the Ring's Intersect worked but Dad's...prophylactics did too. They expected the first part of download to render me docile, suggestible. I figured that out and played along. They thought they controlled me. Amy took me back to the Buy More and sent me home in a Nerd Herder." Chuck looked at his mom.
She went on. "I was there, outside the apartment, hidden, waiting for him. You see, I've been Ring for a long time now. I left home on a CIA assignment. Infiltration and seduction, long-term. In Russia. The mark was a rising, dangerous arms dealer. But I got in too deep." Mary blushed and the blush reminded Sarah that spies did blush, just as they did fall in love, "and I lost my way. He ran the Ring. It was his 'export to America', his 'Agency within the Agency'. I went in as a double-agent and then remained one, but my loyalties shifted across my doubleness…"
"The very short version, Mom," Chuck insisted, and Sarah saw how much hearing Mary hurt him, although he obviously already knew her story.
"I ended up...terminating my mark. But I had no home to return to after all those years, even if I could have gone home. I forgot Mary Bartowski and simply became Frost."
Sarah reeled for a second. Frost. A name out of Langley mists and legends. Chuck's mom is Frost. The Original Ice Queen?
Frost was a famous cautionary tale, proof that no one could be trusted. The Agency's best — lost to the enemy. But everyone in Langley believed she was long dead.
As if telepathic, Frost went on. "I faked my death and worked behind the scenes. All I knew...know...how to be is a spy. I couldn't be one for the CIA, and I was...disillusioned with the Agency. So, I became the Ring's. And then I got chosen to oversee the Ring's Intersect project. My life of cruel ironies. I tried to refuse but...And then I realized Chuck was the target. I stayed on to keep him alive. He revealed to me that the programming had not done what we expected, and I made a choice. I became a double-agent again, not Ring and CIA, Ring and...Bartowski. I switched tactics, loyalties again."
"She does that." Chuck looked at Sarah, and she realized the grudge in his eyes did not target only her. "I said the programming didn't do what the Ring intended, and that's right. But it did affect me. I became extra moody, droopy. I think most of my energy was going into keeping the programming at bay, and I was...depressed for real, so that didn't help."
"Chuck," Sarah whispered, aware of how much of a role in the story she had played even while absent from the stage.
"I tried to budget my energies. I spent a lot of time in Castle, talking to Dad, trying to figure out what had been done to me. It got worse — the second part of the programming was downloaded into me, and suddenly I had skills, abilities. Motorcycling, spear-fishing. It started to take all I had to fight the thing. Luckily, Mom faked the results of certain tests, and so neither Amy nor the Ring knew that I was still technically free. And then, a little later, Amy ordered me to fake my abduction, her disappearance. By that point, I was only resisting the programming when it was absolutely necessary…"
Sarah risked the wrath of Frost. "Was...resisting Amy absolutely necessary?" Her images of them together returned. She knew her question was not about part of the very short version.
Chuck gave her a complicated look. Regret was in it and much else. But before he could answer, Frost broke in.
"This story will never get told if you...we...keep mixing the personal and the professional. So, Chuck left with Amy and with me. But he kept making sure you knew where we were." Frost did not report that with happiness. "There was a third part downloaded, and it became hard for Chuck to...cope. For a while, he could hardly do anything that was done on his own volition. It hurt him to exercise agency. Amy and I led him around like we were steering a car."
Chuck took over. "I eventually got some control of it, but it took everything I had to master it, even for short periods. And I was monitored, watched, almost all the time. So, even when I had some mastery of it, I had to pretend I didn't. But the downloads also came with more and more Ring data, and I began to understand their plans, and I learned things about lots of people, including the two of you."
Sarah looked out the passenger window. Frost's shoulders were tenser. And then Frost slowed the car, parked on the street. It was very dark, and all Sarah could tell about where they stopped was that it was in the midst of several looming old buildings, umbrageous, somehow, even in the inky dark.
Frost turned in the seat to face Chuck. "Okay, this is it. The final download. You're going to have to give up the governor, Chuck, put the Ring watch back on."
Chuck looked at Sarah and she gave him the other watch from her purse. Frost hit the dome light and they could see each other in its sickly, peachy glow.
Chuck changed watches and changed faces.
Pain rippled across his features, his lovely face, and then his face slackened. He became...blank. Chuck must have witnessed some such transformation of my face countless times. The transformation unnerved her. Chuck's motions instantly became odd, angular.
Looking at Frost, he opened the door. "Let's go, Mom. They're expecting us. Ring-a-Ding-Ding." He sounded weirdly like a doorbell.
Frost glanced at Sarah and extinguished the dome light. She thinks she knows me. Frost opened her door and got out.
As Frost walked away, Chuck bent down stiffly and gave Sarah an unnerving smile, as if his lips were remote-controlled. "Stay in the car, Sarah."
A/N: Whew. Thoughts?