You sound like an old joke
You're worn out and dead broke
And asking me time and time again
When the answer's still the same
"See the World"
Gomez
July 8, 2012
Oak Park, Illinois
"I'll send over all the information we have. Contact me once your party arrives, Mr. Bartowski," the General said dryly.
"Can I ask you, uh, actually a few things, before you go?" Chuck asked her.
A tilt of her head was a cue to proceed. "Does Bentley know Agent MacArthur could be the lost Intersect?" The two discussions did not quite overlap in his head.
"No," Beckman said crisply. "I thought it best if you confirm or deny those suspicions first. We will inform her when we know for sure."
"I made that recommendation, Chuck," Ellie told him. It made sense, and he felt a small blip of relief that his sister still had enough wherewithal to not completely trust her. "She is less, what's the word, benevolent? If Corrine has it, and she's been in the field for 23 years, with memory loss, she needs you, not Bentley."
"Me?" he asked, unsure of her reference.
"Someone who cares about her as a person first. That's you, Chuck. There's more than one thing that makes you special," Ellie said, her eyes shining with admiration for her brother.
"I couldn't agree more," Sarah said, with such conviction Chuck turned around to look at her. He had seen the look on her face, her unwavering belief in him, hundreds of times. Seeing it now, after its acutely felt absence, made him stand straighter, as the weight he carried suddenly felt lighter.
Turning back to Beckman, he asked, "So, house party at my sister's? Casey, Morgan and Alex are all on the way here? For real?"
"While your sister's house may appear to be just a cookie cutter house in the suburbs of Chicago, it is at the current time, the safest place for any of you to be. She has 24 hours around the clock security detail, in case you might missed that, Mr. Bartowski. Her house is acting as a CIA safe house," she finished.
"With a two year old inside? Ellie, why am I the only one who thinks this is crazy?" he asked, raising his voice slightly.
The same distressed, conflicted look on her face that had been there when he'd first arrived reappeared. "This isn't ideal. I know that, believe me I know. My daughter is in the middle of this. But Devon and I agreed. I had to do this. I accepted all of this," she said, waving her hand around the room, meaning it to encompass all of what Beckman described, "because I didn't have a better option. I owed it to Dad."
"Chuck," Sarah said, standing and walking towards him, "if your sister needed protection, even if she weren't working for the CIA, who would you trust to make sure she stayed safe?"
"You, and Casey," he said, without hesitating. "Although, currently, you're out of commission, but I assumed you were asking, you know, generally." He cleared his throat.
"Well, we are. Or we will be. Once this is done, finished, this all goes away, and your sister goes back to her normal life. With research grants from somewhere other than the U.S. government," she assured him.
"You heard my mother before, and she was right," he said, gesturing to her, seated away from the computer. "You're never done. Everytime we thought we were, something came back to bite us. My parents were where we are right now, 25 years ago. And here you are, Mom, still dealing with this," he said, quickly looking at his mother, to include her in his discussion. "I let Quinn go in Vail, when we could have gone after him, because I wanted to be done. And you know what happened then," he finished, the bitterness saturating his voice.
Like a whisper in the back of her mind, Sarah found herself back there, in the Vail Buy More, crouching behind a stack of boxes, a gun in her hand. Listening to that voice, taunting her husband, feeling the rage inside her at the notion that any of her feelings for him had anything to do with the Intersect. She was pulled out of her desolate recollection by Ellie's strident voice.
"So we just give up? Leave this poor woman alone for the rest of her life? Never try to make Sarah completely whole again? I don't know about you, Chuck, but I'm not giving up. And if I know anything about you, it's that you don't either. We will get through this, the same way we got through everything else. Together," Ellie said adamantly, reaching for her brother's hand.
Mary was teary-eyed, watching them, and then added, "Your father never wanted to leave you the way he did. He didn't have a choice. He always took comfort in the fact that you had each other. Be the team he knew you could be, and nothing will ever get in your way. Not now, not ever."
Beckman had been listening quietly to the entire exchange. "Would it be possible for me to speak with Chuck and Dr. Woodcomb privately, just for a moment?" she asked.
Mary nodded, and moved to leave with Sarah. His wife looked over her shoulder at him before Mary shut the door.
Chuck waited nervously for her to explain. "The Intersect. I wanted to explain, Mr. Bartowski."
Ellie watched as the cloud came over Chuck's face. "How long have you known? That I have it?"
"Since the beginning of March. Once we got the autopsy report from your sister, I realized what must have happened. You downloaded it to save my life."
He looked down quickly, then back up at her. She continued, "The least I could do was protect you and your secret. The rest of the world believes the last working version of the Intersect died with Nicholas Quinn. I don't have a problem with that. Have you flashed at all, since the concert hall incident?"
His complexion faded three shades whiter, to a sickly pale, as she asked him. He felt his sister, holding his hand. "It's ok, Chuck," she whispered. He looked at her, the furrows on his forehead deep as he struggled to acknowledge that after yesterday, his sister most probably understood what had happened to him in the early spring, after Sarah had gone.
"Not, not, you know, for work or for information, or...anything like that," he stammered. "But the upgrade, the suppression device the CIA added, I'm assuming with the key (she nodded once to acknowledge he was correct,) I did. It was...a mistake, that I kept making." He felt his voice start to shake, knowing his first priority was to not dissolve in front of Beckman. He cleared his throat. "But it's under control now, General. I haven't flashed since the middle of March. I can control it, not flash, now."
"The CIA added that after their experience with you, specifically, Chuck. You know that, right? It was never intended to go back into you. You overcame that difficulty on your own, as you developed into the spy that you are right now, standing before me, retired or not. But you are safe. No one will ever come after you because of it."
"What about Sarah?" Chuck asked. "My sister believes she still has the Intersect she downloaded from the glasses. The one that erased her memory."
"I know that, . At least now I do, thanks to your sister. Are you sure she hasn't flashed, at all, since she showed up on your doorstep after her abduction?" she asked.
"I don't think so," he said. "To be honest, I haven't asked her about it at all. I feel like it's a time bomb waiting to go off. She could lose what she's gained, you know, in terms of her memory, if she does."
"I know, Chuck," Beckman said gently. "But that's a conversation you need to have with your wife."
January 11, 1989
Moscow, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Corrine stood, the gun in her hand pointed at the center of Alexei Volkoff's chest. Her eyes ablaze, an angry snarl on her face, she cocked the gun, and demanded, "For the last time, where is she?"
"Someplace you will never be able to find her," he said ominously. "How far do you think you're going to get, hmm? My men are on their way. There's only one of you, and hundreds of them in this compound." He jutted his chin out in defiance, he said slowly, in a low rumble, "There is nowhere you can run where I won't be able to find you."
Fury the likes of which she had never experienced roared inside her. Standing here, her plans thwarted, she knew her only choice was to kill him, in order to escape. If only, she thought bitterly. She had been on her way to retrieve the device she had secured, in order to download the file Orion had managed to get to her inside Volkoff's compound. But now, here with him, without it, she hesitated.
She could kill him, a part of her wanted to kill him for all he had done to her and her daughter in the last five years, but if she did, then the last hope she had, to restore him to his true identity, would be lost. It was only a split second, all of those thoughts, but she knew she was running out of time. "You're not her father," she hissed at him.
"Biology is so...unimportant in matters like this. She is my daughter," he insisted.
"Why don't you remember how you could be? If you are?" she taunted, worrying she was pushing too hard, but beyond the point of no return now.
"I believe I would remember being with you, Darling," he said darkly. She shivered involuntarily. "She is my daughter. And she will always be my daughter."
She fought with all her might to force the picture down, a sweet image of him, as he had been before, holding Vivian in his arms as she slept, her little fingers wrapped around his index finger, one of the last days he had still been Hartley at all. The man she loved, still loved, though he no longer existed.
"Eurybia," she said, alarmed at how her voice broke on the word. They were flowers, wild daisies. In the park in London, the day he had found the courage to tell her he loved her for the first time, he had reached down and picked them, apologizing for their crudity. It hadn't mattered, as she tucked them behind her ear, and kissed him. Even here, holding him at gunpoint, she could remember what he smelled like, what his hands felt like against her skin.
His expression stayed frozen, the slightest flicker of something she almost convinced herself she hadn't seen passing over his face, then vanishing. "The goddess Eurybia, master of the rising of the constellations, with her heart of flint," he said slowly. "Orion, perhaps?" he said, suddenly fiery.
"Agent X," she said defiantly. "Agent X is her father!" Corrine screamed. Volkoff lunged, and she fired.
July 8, 2012
Oak Park, Illinois
"Baby, can I talk to you about something?" he asked, as he sat beside her in bed.
She studied his face, looking for some sign as to what he was thinking about. Ever since she had freaked out on him during the briefing, he was different. And by different, she knew she meant, he was more himself. He had been looser, more his old self, than he had been since finding her again. His joking, sarcastic commentary, all of it, was so Chuck, amplified by the fact that she remembered more and more of how he had been, how they had been together. But there was something he was hiding, albeit better than he had hid his emotions before, that she could see in his eyes, especially when he thought she wasn't looking.
"Look, my sister still thinks you have the Intersect. The whole shebang, in working order," he said in a rush.
"What?" she gasped, her eyebrows lifting up far on her forehead. "How is that possible?"
"You told us Quinn suppressed it. But he didn't have a device in his possession. There was no way he could have. Which, by default, means that you still have it. Please tell me that you haven't flashed at all, since, you know.."
"No, no," she said sharply, shaking her head, putting her hand against her chest. "Flashing isn't voluntary, right? I mean, you could never choose when you could or couldn't, right?"
"In the beginning, no, I couldn't. But my father told me that I could, you know, flash on demand. He was right. After the 2.0 situation, once I had it under control, I could. Although not all the time. I think I learned as I went."
"But you said before that the watch keeps you in control now, so the 3.0 doesn't flash. Is that right?" she asked.
He only nodded. "I know before, at the beginning, not knowing I had it made no difference whatsoever. I was flashing about the general, and L.A. traffic details, and everything, before you ever found me. My sister needs to find out why you aren't. Because if you do, you could start to lose the memories you gained back." He turned to look at her, his eyes on fire. "And I will never let that happen. I am not losing you again. Ever."