A/N: Like on tv, with a two-hour finale, I give you the two-chapter finale of Spy. Enjoy!
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter Twenty-Three: Reconciliations
No one could find the governor, the watch. Orion hacked the hospital's security log, the video, and he reported it showed no one entering or leaving Sarah's room.
The watch's disappearance was the loss of her last contact with Chuck. Staff was questioned, the room searched, but the watch never reappeared. Beckman fussed about it, fretted, but to no result.
For a while, Sarah held out hope that it had been Chuck, that he was alive and had stolen into her room to take the watch. But the thought of that, of him taking it and not waking her, telling her he was alive, turned the hope into a torment too.
Sarah began to heal physically.
She spent long hours alone in her room. Sometimes, Ellie would sit with her, sometimes Carina. Casey took a few shifts. Orion spent most of his time by Frost's bed; he checked on Sarah often but rarely stayed. She thought maybe he blamed her somehow for Chuck.
That made two of them.
Gradually, Sarah came to understand what happened with Shaw, although no one was entirely sure how he had found them on that side street. He had rammed them with his car. Frost had turned enough to leave the street, and then the car struck a bus stop enclosure. The airbag deployed but Frost struck it awkwardly, and it jammed her neck, her back. She had been cut in multiple places by glass, including a hard-to-explain deep cut on her thigh. She had almost bled out before the medics found her.
She had recovered from her blood loss and cuts but she was unable to move her legs or her right arm. The doctors did not know if it was permanent or not. She could speak but would not, at least not to Orion. She talked a bit with Ellie, Ellie said, but the talk was always about her condition or Sarah's, medical facts not emotional expressions.
Beckman had decided not to pursue Frost's time in the Ring. She decided the Bartowskis had given enough for their country. She shut down the Intersect Project and gave all the data, files, and hardware to Orion.
He destroyed it all. The loss of his son, Frost's refusals, weighed heavily on him, and it showed on his face during his check-ins with Sarah. The dynamic, or lack of it, between Orion and Frost, rendered Sarah's regrets about her time in Burbank more acute.
Sarah was not Frost but she had treated Chuck so frostily so often.
Once she was mobile, Sarah paid a visit to Frost's room. She was no longer in ICU.
Frost looked up at Sarah dispassionately when Sarah came into the room. Sarah shuffled to the bedside.
"Frost, um...Mary, I hope you are doing better."
Frost had faced away from Sarah as Sarah began talking. She rotated back to her slowly.
"Better?" The question was not bitter but rather defeated. "I've done three good things in my life. I married Stephen, I had Ellie and I had Chuck. And now I can't bear for Stephen to look at me, I don't have anything to say to my daughter that I can make myself say, and my son is dead. There's no better for me. I fucked it all up, fucked it all up, for a job that I didn't love and didn't believe in but couldn't stop doing. The shadows are an addiction, Sarah, and I beat them back for a few years, but they reclaimed me. They won. I can't quit them."
"I did, Mary. I told Beckman. It's official, paperwork processed. I'm free."
Mary had turned away again as Sarah spoke. She returned to her, her eyes full of pain. "Are you, Ice Queen, Sarah? Women like us…" Frost looked down at her right hand, useless at her side. "...the choices we make, can't be undone, and they scar us, mentally and physically. Steal us from ourselves until there is nothing left to give anyone else."
Her face softened a little, her voice too. She spoke more to Sarah and less to herself. "I hope you can do it, Sarah, quit. For real. Not just professionally, with a letter of resignation, but personally, with a change of your will. Resign from living like that, break the habits. Stop working as a spy and stop living like one. That second was what I couldn't do and it led me here..." She gestured awkwardly, left-handedly, at her empty hospital room, immobile legs.
Sarah started to respond but Frost turned away.
On the day of her discharge, Carina came to pick Sarah up and take her back to her apartment. They drove in silence until Carina spoke, her eyes on the road.
"I'm sorry, Sarah. About all of it. About the lingerie-ing Chuck up, about what happened...to Chuck...but also about the way I've treated you over the years."
"I don't understand, Carina."
"No, Sarah, you don't. But I do. I have. That's why I owe you an apology. I tried like crazy to make you think this life was for you, that you were for it. It helped that you were so damn good at it. I've always known that you and I, we're different. For you, life is...I don't know...big and serious and earnest, mysterious. For me, it's a board game. There are rules and pieces and squares and you do your best to win, get the most for yourself. Good times. Pleasure. I did my best to coerce you into thinking that way: to pragmatize, turn life into an amusement. I'm not saying I'm wrong about life and you're right, God, no, but I was wrong to try to...convert you.
"We just don't see the world the same. That's okay. Resigning — that was right for you, as much as I hate it."
Sarah sat quietly. Finally, she looked at Carina. "What brought that on?"
"Because I'm part of the reason this all happened. Part of the reason you made the choices you did in Burbank. I helped alienate you from you — and I knew I was doing it as I did it. But I told myself it was for your own good. I patronized the shit out of you."
Sarah blinked. "Thanks, Carina. But my problems aren't your fault. Still, what brought this on?"
Carina gave Sarah a melancholy grin and confessed. "I ended up in a long conversation with Chuck's dad, Orion, at the hospital. For some reason, he started talking to me about Frost, their life together before she left her family, him. It got me thinking about me. But mostly about you. Well, about you and me. That woman's a cautionary tale."
When Sarah entered her apartment, it smelled lemony. She turned to Carina and Carina held her as she cried.
Six Months Later
Sarah drove her Porsche down into California's central valley.
She had moved from DC to San Diego, and taken a job with Social Services, working as a translator, helping in all sorts of ways in the linguistic melting pot of the city. The work was hard and sometimes sad but it was often visibly worthwhile; Sarah could see the good she was doing some days, on the faces of grateful families or children.
She had taken a few days off and flown to LA. She visited Ellie and Devon, and that visit had been wonderful. Her friendship with Ellie had become real, as strong as she had hoped or stronger, because of their shared sorrow. Orion had moved back to California but was off-the-grid somewhere in the mountains. He reappeared now and then, to see Ellie and Devon, and, twice, to see Sarah, although he still seemed awkward around her, never stayed long. It seemed that he was getting a handle on his grief, and that as he did, he had begun to find ways to talk to Sarah. She had not seen him or Ellie in almost a month, though.
Frost had vanished. One night, she had been in her hospital room, an apparent invalid, and the next morning she was gone. Security video showed her in street clothes — no one was sure where she got them — leaving the hospital under her own power. She had made no contact with anyone, left no trace. Her vanishing angered Orion and bewildered Ellie, but they had been without her so long, with her so briefly, — missing Frost was their default setting and they went back to it.
Sarah liked San Diego.
Moving there brought back memories of her father, the beginning of her CIA career, but she found a certain significance in ending her spy life where it began. She had heard from her father. Briefly. But he knew where she was. She had not contacted her mother, found out about how Molly was doing.
She was still worried about Ryker, and there had been a couple of times lately when she thought someone was following her. No one was, it turned out, but her old habits kicked in now and then.
Mary was right. Spying was a hard-to-kick habit — but except for those moments, she had mostly put it behind her.
She liked San Diego but she missed Chuck every day and every night, especially at night.
She was haunted by their scene in the car, what she said to him not knowing if he heard her, her hand on his hand on her heart, and by the scene before Chuck left, by what he said to her. Sarah had no idea if she would ever love again but she was certain she would never love like that again.
Chuck would always occupy the first position in her heart and her memories.
And so she had begun to live again. The physical pain was gone, the emotional pain constant but bearable. It would lessen over the years; she was human and that's how human life worked, she knew that — but it would never be gone. Chuck had wanted her to be happy and she was going to try.
She pulled into the small B&B at which she was to spend the night. She got her duffle bag — she had months ago trashed her CIA suitcase — and went inside.
After she checked in and put her things in her room, she took her host up on an offer made at the desk. Sarah had a picnic basket with a blanket inside it, a bottle of good local wine, a baguette and cheese. She wandered out into the neighboring orchard, into the rows of fruit trees that stretched on and on from the restored farmhouse that served as the B&B.
The sun was low in the sky and orange, very orange, matching the color of the oranges on the trees.
She walked along and started a Conversation with Chuck. She indulged in the game often when alone still. It was sweet-tart, like a navel orange, like life itself, but it made her feel better. Happy-sad and not just sad.
"So, Sarah, how are you?"
"Incomplete...but I'm doing better, Chuck," she kept walking as she kept up both sides of the conversation, admiring the trees.
"Good, good. That's what I hoped, Sarah. That you could do it, free yourself. I love you and I want you to be happy. Remember who I am. Who I was. The man who loved Sarah Walker."
Sarah smiled to herself. "And I am the woman who loves Chuck Bartowski."
She stopped. The trees had changed to tall, rounded shrubs, heavy, pink-red fruit dangled in profusion from the branches.
Almost hypnotized by the fruit, she walked to a shrub and picked one. A pomegranate. She put it down, her basket beside it, and spread her blanket.
She glanced around. She was alone. The path back to the B&B was so long she could no longer see the house. The pathway she had taken was enshadowed by the trees in the slanting sun, but the spot where she spread her blanket, between pomegranate shrubs, was still sunlit.
She sat down and reached into her pocket for the slim pocket knife she carried. She no longer wore her ankle holster of knives but she still had a knife on her. It was not large enough to do serious damage, but it would cope with a pomegranate. She cut into the tough outer skin, working the small knife around until the fruit was halved. She pulled it open, exposing the hundreds of beautiful ruby seeds — arils, she recalled, though she did not remember learning the term. They were exquisite in the slanting, orangy sun. She put one half down and took her knife and scooped out a clump of seeds and ate them, the juice as rich and incomparable as she remembered. She luxuriated in the flavor; juice ran down her chin and she let it.
"Hey, Sarah, what the heck is a pomegranate anyway?"
She smiled and started to answer the question when she realized she had not asked it.
A/N: Thoughts?
Intermissions
{Spy vs. Spy Theme Music: YouTube: (Extended) Spy vs. Spy - Background OST}
And, now, the conclusion of Spy vs. Spy vs...Well, you know...
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter Twenty-Four: Reward
Sarah's jaw dropped.
Chuck was beside her as if he had materialized from nothing. She stared at him. He leaned toward her and she leaned toward him, disbelieving her own senses. And then Chuck kissed her chin, the pomegranate juice on it. She felt his tongue claim it, warm and soft and exciting. Everything was dream-like.
He leaned back, looking into her eyes, smiling. "Delicious. I've been waiting a long time for that." He licked his smiling lips.
Sarah did not understand. She did not know how it was possible. She did not care. She dropped her pomegranate on the blanket and she threw her arms around Chuck, kissing him, her kiss itself a shout of joy. Chuck fell back on the blanket, toppled by her sudden passion. She felt him laugh beneath her. She pulled up, climbed on top of him, and said the words she never imagined getting to say. "Make love to me, Chuck."
He did. Taking his time, he unbuttoned her blouse deliberately. She was shaking with desire and incredulity. She looked around as the last button was undone. They were alone. She took off the blouse and reached behind herself, unhooking her bra. A moment later, she guided his hand to one of her breasts. He cupped and fondled it gently, arousingly. The whole orchard shook. She breathed out, afraid to speak, to dispel Chuck, the dream of him.
And then she saw Chuck check around them. He was not a spy practicing spy-techniques. He was Chuck, on his back, straddled by a half-naked blonde. She couldn't restrain a laugh. He laughed too and she knew he was real beneath her. Hard beneath her. Real. Hard.
Chuck looked up at her. "I guess this is XPDA."
As so often, she was unsure what he was saying. "Huh?" She kissed him and he put both hands on her, his thumbs circling her.
"Extreme Public Display of Affection."
"This isn't just affection, Chuck. This is PDL. XPDL. Prepare yourself."
He smiled at her. She started unbuttoning his shirt. As he shucked it off, she kicked her shoes away, pulled off her pants, and pulled his off by the cuffs. He could not be naked fast enough. A moment later, she sank slowly onto him. A tremble shook her. She kissed him and then the tears came. He looked concerned, started to speak, but she shook her head as she began to rise and fall, putting her finger on his lips. "There's nothing wrong, Chuck. Everything's right. So right."
They made love there, in the setting sun, twice. They did not speak except in cries of pleasure, or to whisper one another's names. And then they held each other, both trembling, both crying, kissing tears into and out of being. Sarah was exhausted, overjoyed, still afraid the trees were enchanted, that it was all a dream. The sun had set and the glow of early twilight embraced the scene, the two naked lovers.
They still had not talked. Chuck had pushed her pocket knife and the pomegranate halves to the side as their lovemaking began, and he retrieved them, began feeding the arils to Sarah and himself.
She ate and he did too, and he kissed her between bites. They both had juice on their lips, their chins.
They dressed and walked hand-in-hand to the B&B. The proprietor looked at Chuck, surprise in her face. Sarah smiled. "My boyfriend will be joining me. I didn't expect him. It was a surprise."
They climbed the stairs and went into the room. Sarah sat on the bed and Chuck did too. "Where have you been, Chuck?" Sarah asked the question carefully. In one way, she simply didn't care. All that mattered is that he was alive, was with her, had just made love to her twice in the orchard. But he had been gone so long. She had mourned him.
She started to ask when Chuck reached into his back pocket and handed her a leather pass case. She opened it. It was a CIA badge. She glanced at Chuck, inhaling, and he gestured back to the badge. The name beneath the badge was not hers, not Chuck's.
It was Kieran Ryker's. She felt lightheaded. "He isn't a problem anymore, Sarah. But he's a hard man to track down."
"Chuck, did you…" She put the pass case on the nightstand.
He shook his head. "No, it seems Ryker was involved in some shady dealings in Afghanistan. I found out he was there and tipped off the warlord he double-crossed, Bibi Ayesha…"
"Kaftar, the Pigeon?"
He nodded. "She brought me that. I don't know what happened to Ryker and don't care, but the Pigeon promised he will not be seen again."
Sarah shivered. Bibi Ayesha was scary — implacable and violent. It would be best for Ryker if the Pigeon had killed him immediately.
"You know, Chuck, — about Budapest?"
"It wasn't in my data set as such but remember, the Intersect produces new data, correlates, calculates probabilities. Your file, Ryker's, European newspapers...I put it together; it was the best explanation."
He shrugged.
"And I checked on your mom and Molly. They're good. I didn't make contact, just checked on them. I'm hoping you will introduce me to them…"
"You want to meet my mom, Chuck, that's a big step?" She could not keep from smiling.
He smiled back. "I'm here for big steps, no more little ones, no more backward ones. But for now, I want to do again what we did outside."
"Again again?"
"I've been waiting for such a long time, Sarah. And nothing has ever felt so good."
They reached for each other, crashed together.
Later, she rolled against Chuck, pressing her naked body to his. She hoped the other patrons of the B&B had brought earplugs. She had made no effort to contain herself. She had not seen any other cars, so maybe only the owners had been within earshot.
"How are you here, Chuck? I…"
"I don't have it anymore, Sarah. The Intersect. It's gone. Dad says so."
She sat up. "Your dad knows you're alive? He didn't tell me?"
"He only found out a couple of weeks ago. And Ellie knows but only because she had to help Dad. She's been ready to kill me for not telling you; I've had to fight to keep her off the phone. But I wasn't going to come back to you if I was just going to pull you back into the spy life. — You're out, Sarah. You're doing good. I've seen you working…"
"You! Someone was following me!"
"I had to be sure, be sure that...there wasn't someone else in your life."
She was half-angry, half-perplexed. "So, how could your dad remove it?"
"His prophylactics helped. But the main thing was something I realized as I left you that that night, when the ambulance was coming. I made sure you were stable and then I left. I went to the Ring HQ. The last download included that information. They thought I was under their complete control. I wasn't. But that's because of you. I'm not sure Dad's prophylactics or what I realized later would have mattered if you, your voice, you against my hand," he smiled at her, "...hadn't led me out of that maze.
"But what I realized was that I have had the Intersect for so long without knowing it, without it causing me trouble, and that every successor to it is akin to the one I had as a boy. I completely assimilated the first one, Adam, so to speak. I could assimilate any descendant. It just would take time. — I should have understood that all along really, but there were so many missions, so many distractions. I was such a jumble inside all the time. — When I first got the Ring downloads, I was sort of automatic, catatonic, almost. Mom led me around like I was a silent Tin Man. But over time, with concentration, I could control it. Usually, control first came as motor function, later as speech or writing. That time I cleaned your apartment, I had only motor control. That's why I sent the bracelet, the charms. I couldn't write or speak of my own volition and I still hadn't told Mom what I was doing. She thought you were...a distraction. I had escaped from Amy for a bit."
"Wait, so you cleaned my apartment before you saw me in Miami."
He nodded. "I figured your timeline might be messed up. I got the bracelet then too. I needed to warn you about Shaw, but I couldn't on the beach. Ring agents other than Amy were listening to our conversation, testing me, so I used...my anger to encode a message to you…"
"I figured that out later."
"I tried to get Shaw to fixate on me. I knew what they hoped to do and Dad was trying to keep it from happening. But it happened anyway and I hadn't been able to get Shaw fixated on me. In retrospect, maybe that never would have worked, maybe it was dumb, but he was so stiff and I wanted to save you without having to...kill him. I thought humiliating him might work. I wish it had.
"I was stuck. Amy was almost always with me, or other Ring agents. Or Mom, and I wasn't sure for a while if I could trust her. I thought the Ring might have lucked out and found another handler for me I loved, although in a different way. My mother, my handler."
Sarah looked at Chuck, frowning. "She's gone, your mom, you know?."
"I know. I've tried to find her — that's another reason I was gone so long. But no luck. She's in the wind, gone again. But, who knows, she might show up again. She had some things to work out." He gave her a significant look. "We all do...or did.."
"You said that the Intersect is gone?" Sarah was still trying to get her feet down, find purchase.
"Well, assimilated, that's the better word. It's in me but it has no dictatorial power. I don't flash. Dad and Ellie helped complete the assimilation. The data is now more or less indistinguishable from my memories, and, like my vast trivia knowledge, it is fast becoming outdated. I remember a lot of weird shit…" — he grinned — "remember our second first date? The Lindbergh baby, new Coke?...I'd be hell on wheels on Jeopardy — but I'm no longer of much value to the US Government. Beckman said so."
"She knows too? God, Chuck, am I the last?"
"Only because you come first. I did it all for you, and I had to be sure, Sarah. No more little steps, no more backward ones. I had to come to you ready, ready for what I've always dreamed of, the life I want with the girl I love!"
With that, he got up and grabbed his pants from the floor and shoved his hand deep in a pocket, then knelt beside the bed, looking up at Sarah, holding an engagement ring. He did not speak. Sarah did not speak. She let the covers fall away and she knelt beside him and put on her ring.
Sarah kissed him deeply. When she finished, she gave him a perplexed smile. "But, Chuck, there's still so much I don't understand..."
"Me too," he said with a happy shrug, "like is a pomegranate a berry?"
Sarah shrugged at his question. — What did it matter? What did any of it matter?
He would eventually tell her. All that mattered was that her Chuck was with her — and she was wearing his ring.
The rest was details.
The End vs. The End vs. The End vs. The End
A/N: This bit of stylized lunacy was concocted as a good distraction for myself and you, dear reader, during this lunatic time. I hope it's been that, and I hope all are safe and well. Thoughts?
Writerly Stuff (read if you want): I said back in the very first A/N that this would not be a standard novella from me. It has not been, as I'm sure you are aware.
And, yes, I know there are unexplained things in the story, although most of them can be worked out, I think.
Without falling too deep into the trap of explaining, let me just say that a crucial goal of the story was to create a series of situations in which Sarah comes to understand Chuck by being forced into situations with him or because of him experientially similar to the ones he faced with her or because of her. Since the story is in her POV, the reader is dragged along with her. Within the generous limits of spy-fi, established first and foremost in canon, what happens here is all possible, although I deliberately told the story in indirection and without much exposition until the final chapters — and that is brief and impressionistic. Again, deliberately.
I thank Beckster1213 and Neil Horne for pre-reading and discussion of the story.
Thanks for reading!
— Zettel