A/N: Another chapter.

Nothing Like A Train

Chapter Twenty-Two: Ah, Souldier

"It is well done, and fitting for a Princesse
Descended of so many Royall Kings.
Ah, Souldier."

Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra

Mom — no, Frost — no, Mom began to bleed again. Her body shook. The body that gave me birth and the body that abandoned me years later.

With Sarah's help, and Casey's, we slowed it. The helicopter veered away from Moscow, the pilot in rapid chatter with someone, directing him to an emergency landing spot. Medical help would meet us there.

I looked up at Sarah as I pressed the bloody compress against my Mom. "Beckman helped us. Called in big favors. We have a med team standing by." The look in Sarah's eyes, quick, haunted, told me it had been for me, not my mom. Sarah looked down at my mom, Mom's face grey, her breathing ragged. "Beckman wondered…"

Still applying pressure, I wait for Sarah to raise her eyes. "Beckman wondered?"

"If the woman who led the attack on the yurt was...Frost. But Frost is supposed to be..dead. So, Frost is your mom?"

I nod, unable to say anything. Fear and panic grip me, choke me. Frost. Mom. Beckman.

I clear my throat. "Is Beckman going to...take me...when we land?"

A flash of hurt crosses Sarah's face. She glances at Casey, he grunts and turns away. Her blue eyes, soft, settle back on me. "No, Chuck. We insisted that the deal was still the same. You get to decide."

"How are you here? Frost — Mom — said you were coming, led me up to the rooftop, expecting you to show."

Sarah nods uncertainly. "Well, she's a woman of faith, I guess. After Moe drugged you, back at the yurt, a jeep came and Moe took you away. The men and...your Mom...were to wait for another transport, a truck. When Moe was out of sight, Frost used the moment to change weapons. She shot me and Casey and Zariyah — but with tranqs. When she fired, I managed to disarm one guard before I went down; Casey did too." I see Casey nod, listening, although he is staring out the side window.

"When we came to, not long afterward, the men were all there around us, dead. There'd been a melee. But they'd all been tranqed, and then...executed. One bullet to the forehead, close-range. Clean, professional. Your mom was gone. She had smeared blood on all three of us. I also found a note in my pocket." Sarah reached into the back pocket of the black pants she was wearing and took out a folded piece of paper, handing it to me.

I unfold it. It is written in a tight, small cursive script, hurried.

Agent Walker,

Bartowski is to be taken to Alexei Volkoff's headquarters, on the edge of Moscow. The building is heavily guarded; you will never get to him by a frontal assault, not even with my help. I will try to free Bartowski and get him to the rooftop helipad. It is more lightly guarded. There will be too many men in the transport coming for me to fight. I will tell them you are dead and leave. Assuming the ruse works, you should awaken a couple of hours after we are gone.

If you love Bartowski, find a way to be at the helipad as darkness falls. Expect only one passenger.

No signature was on the page, just a heavy line under 'If', in "If you love my son…"

I shut my eyes, trying to understand. "So, she...killed those men to keep you and Casey and Zariyah alive?"

"Yes." Sarah looks at me. "She must have told the men in the transport we'd been killed in a firefight with her and the other men. She also must've estimated that her chances to save you were better this way." Sarah shrugs, then relieves me, my hands, putting her hands on Mom's wound, the motion bringing her close to me. I kiss her lips quickly, softly.

"I was so afraid for you, Sarah. When I first woke up, Mom told me...well, made it sound like you were dead. She told me different later, but…"

I see tears film her eyes. "I know. I.. I can't find you only to lose you, Chuck. We need some way out of all of this. An exit strategy."

"Yeah, I have some ideas about that, but we need to get Mom help, and then we need some time to think, to talk, before we have to face Beckman. She's not here?"

Sarah shook her head. "No, she's still in Prague."

"Where's Zariyah?"

"Safe."

Casey has moved forward and been talking to the pilot. The pilot is pointing ahead. Casey turns, speaks loudly. "We're about to land. There's a van, unmarked, an ambulance. Medics. They'll put your mom in it. There'll be a car for the three of us. We'll head to a CIA safe house, one medically equipped. A surgeon is there, ready. Has the bleeding stopped?"

Sarah looks down. "Yes, for now. But they're going to have to hurry."

As Sarah finishes, I see Mom's eyes flit open. Their blue is so like and so unlike Sarah's. Mom manages to whisper my name, fighting to find consciousness. "Chuck, there are things you need to know…"

"It's okay, Mom, tell me later. We're going to take care of you. Save you."

The blue in her eyes becomes bluer, sad, two blue notes. "Nothing to save, Chuck. Nothing worth saving…" Her eyes close and she loses consciousness again.

I am seated uncomfortably on a black leather and gleaming silver chair. Sarah is seated in a matching chair beside me, in matching discomfort. We are in a narrow hallway, underlit by a lamp with a low-wattage bulb.

Mom is in surgery, a room at the end of the hall. Casey is briefing Beckman somewhere else in the building. My hand is in Sarah's. Her head is turned toward me. "She's going to make it, Chuck."

"But what if she doesn't want to make it? You heard her: 'nothing worth saving'."

"I did. But she also has something to tell you. She doesn't strike me as the type who leaves a mission undone."

I grin, feel the sardonically cast of the grin. "I guess you'd know the type…"

I see a moment of hurt in her eyes again.

"Sorry, Sarah. I was just joking, badly. I'm still trying to get my head around all of this. My mom, the spy. Frost. All along. My dad. Orion. My life is lousy with spies, and then I fall in love with one..."

I'm not making it better. She drops her eyes, turns away. "Are you sorry about that?"

She starts to take her hand away from mine but I grab it, hold it tight. "I will never be sorry I fell in love with you, Sarah Walker."

Her countenance brightens as she lifts her eyes. As she lifts them, she looks at my hand, the wedding ring on it. As her eyes reach mine, I reach for her left hand, my left hand reaching across her.

She gives me that hand and I hold it, her ring, matching mine, showing. "When you chose these, were they just for the cover, just to help us run?"

For a moment she seems confused, then hesitant, then the shy smile I have been given so often lately is given to me again and she shakes her head. "No, Chuck. I spent a lot of time...and money on them. I never imagined wedding rings but when I started looking, I found I had...definite preferences."

"So these are real?"

Again, she looks confused, hesitant, shy. "They were...are...intended to be...become real. I mean, I hoped...dreamed..." She drops her eyes again, but not out of hurt, rather, she drops them out of fear of...presumption.

I shake my head and push all the craziness and worry, all the internal Intersect fallout, away for a moment. The woman beside me in that narrow hallway has become both the center and the circumference of my life. Still holding her left hand, I kneel in front of her.

"I know this is backward since we had the honeymoon first — but we could have another, a second honeymoon. I mean, we had a lot of first dates, and so…"

"Chuck!" Sarah narrows her eyes at me, stopping my spiral before it completes its first full rotation.

I swallow, instantly transformed from lanky kneeler to ball of nerves.

"Sarah, will you marry me? I know we can't do it now, here, but as soon as possible?"

If it were not for the rings and for all that has happened since Prague, I'd have thought the proposal ridiculously premature. But as Sarah said to Zariyah, we have, by one way of counting, been together for more than two years. And we've never done things in the right way or the proper order. Too soon or too late has been the order of our days.

Until now. This, despite the weak light and the uncomfortable chairs, feels just right, in Goldilocks' words. Sarah looks into my eyes with an intentness that overwhelms me. Slowly, ever so slowly, she smiles. She leans forward and kisses me with great care and great deliberateness.

"Absolutely, Chuck. I mean, yes."

Our embrace, endless, joyous, ends when the doctor makes a noise behind us. We stand but keep holding hands, holding on.

"Your mother's come through surgery. She's still in a...delicate state but she is doing okay. But she's already awake, she...ah...forced her way out from under the anesthesia, and she's...um...demanding to see you. She shouldn't but I fear she'll try to find you herself if I don't bring you to her. That woman has a will of iron, even if the rest of her is...flesh."

We start in the down the hallway but the doctor stops us. "Just you, Mr. Bartowski. And she made us sweep the room for bugs before she sent me to get you."

I don't want to let go of Sarah's hand, not one little bit, given that I just asked for it, so to speak, and was just given it, but she gives me a small smile and gently lets go herself. "It's okay, Chuck, see what she's so concerned to tell you. I'll find Casey, tell him what's going on, get an update on his conversation with Beckman."

I nod once. "Okay, I'll be quick. As quick as I can."

The doctor stops outside a door and gestures for me to go in. "Talk to her but do keep it brief. Don't let her get excited or worked up."

I walk into the room. It seems like an office converted into a hospital room because it is. Mom is in the bed, wires attached all over her, machines glowing green and bleeping. She still looks grey, not just her hair but her skin, and her eyes are closed. I wonder if she's slipped back under the anesthetic. She looks worn, care-worn, the bearer of the world's weight. Her face is not the blank mask I first saw in the woods. Something of the secret woman, normally hidden, shows in her unaware face, and I see the reality of the woman of secrets. I have a sudden sense, despite her stubborn beauty, of just how much her life has cost her, even if I do not know the currency in which the cost has been paid.

Maybe I can guess: I recall her standing with Volkoff. I shake my head, determined not to travel in that direction unless forced. — She saved me from Volkoff, after all.

As I stand there, I think, or the Intersect supplies, that scene from Anthony and Cleopatra, the scene in which the dying Charmian speaks over the body of her mistress — after the asp had bitten both.

It is well done, and fitting for a Princesse
Descended of so many Royall Kings.
Ah, Souldier.

It's the sentiment, not the defeated, suicidal context, that comes to mind. My mother, a kind of Princess. She was reading me a book about the Frost Queen when I last saw her. There's a nobility about her even there, on the bed, wired to machines, grey from bloodloss, looking so weak. A fighter — a fighter of a long fight. Ah, Souldier.

In that moment, I feel like I could forgive her almost anything — what she did to me, to Ellie, to Dad. What she has done since.

My days on the train with Sarah, in the yurt, have made me understand Sarah better. Her life and my mom's, I know they must have been similar: women under crushing duress, misshapen by a hopeless, hope-killing job. I am in love with Sarah. And I cannot be in love with her and remain angry — and I have been angry, so angry for so long — with my Mom, Frost or not.

Ah, Souldier.

Mom moves slightly, her hand lifting slowly and settling carefully on her stomach. Her eyes open a bit and she gives me a weak smile. "When you were a baby, all you did was kick and kick. Even then, you had long legs. I think you were cramped in me."

I take a step, a long one, to her bedside.

"We need to talk, Chuck."

I shake my head and my sardonic grin returns. Why do the women in my life insist on saying that to me?

Mom takes her hand from her stomach and, with a grimace, grips mine. "We need to talk about your Dad, and about Volkoff. And the damned Intersect."

A/N: Thoughts?