Chuck vs. Hector Calderon
Part 1
Author's Note: I might be alone in this, but I felt like Season 3 began a bit out-of-character. Chuck kept insisting that he's not a real spy; he just wanted to have the Intersect out of his head and live a normal life. He was obviously in love with Sarah and wanted to be with her. Yet he suddenly turned all of that down to be a spy. I love that he wanted to help people, and that's a great thing to want, but to me, his choice still didn't seem totally consistent with his character. So here's my take on how things could have happened…
"We could run. Together. You and me. We go now, and we never look back."
As he strode to the Nadrazi Station, Chuck's mind flitted back to that moment three weeks ago, when Sarah had first made the offer.
"I have some money saved up. I'd have to get us some new identities, create an escape route… or now, go to the training facility in Prague. Meet me at the Nadrazi Station in three week's time at seven o'clock. I can figure the rest out later."
This conversation had filled his thoughts constantly for nearly a month now. He didn't have to have an Intersect flash to suddenly Sarah's face, as it had looked in that moment, before his eyes: her smiling but hesitant mouth; her eyes, so lovely and hopeful.
"What are you saying?" he had asked.
"I'm saying I want to be a real person again," she had said. "Will you run away with me?"
He had said yes, of course. How could he not? This was Sarah. This was the woman he loved - the woman he had loved for two years.
For those two years, she had been protecting him, helping him, caring for him. She had saved his life numerous times. She had helped him find his father. She had disobeyed orders from the CIA, all for him. And now she was saying she was willing to do it again, so that she could have a normal life with him.
And so he had slipped away after his day of training, and headed for the station in Prague, just as he had promised her.
She was waiting for him, just as she had promised.
She had looked beautiful. It was the first time he had seen her in three weeks. That was the first time that they had been apart from each other for so long in almost two years. The realization of how much he had missed her struck him at once.
When she smiled at him, he tried to smile back. The sight of her, the thought of really doing this - running away with her, running away from the CIA - caused a flutter of nervous excitement in his stomach.
"Here is your ticket, and your new passport," she began without so much as a hello. She spoke rapidly. "Your name is Hector Calderon."
She held the passport out to him, and he took it tentatively, letting go of the handle of his suitcase. Hector Calderon…?
"Sarah, wait," he started.
"We'll have plenty of time to talk on the train. Right now, we have to act fast," she insisted.
There it was again - that fleeting, nervous smile. Chuck searched her gaze, trying to read the thoughts behind it.
"Trust me, Chuck, it's all going to work out fine."
He hesitated, and despite the apparent hurry, she leaned in to kiss him, cupping his face gently between her hands as she pressed her lips to his. Instinctively, his fingers moved to her waist, holding her close.
When she drew back a moment later, she stared at him, worry furrowing her brows.
Chuck wet his lips anxiously.
"Sarah, I… want to be with you," he assured her first. "But are you sure you want to do this?"
For her whole life, she'd been on the move - new cities, new schools, new names. Her dad had made sure of that when she was a child, and then she'd simply traded in that life for more of the same with the CIA. Giving up the CIA would mean being on the run, and it would mean giving up the only life she'd ever known.
Looking up at him, Sarah reached for his free hand. "I'm sure."
Slight anxiety lingered in her expression. Chuck realized with a start that she was sure - that she really did want this. She was really willing to give it all up to be with him, and to have a real life.
"Are you?" she asked.
"I'm sure," he said quickly.
The look of relief that passed briefly over her face did not escape Chuck's notice.
"Then let's go," she said with a smile.
He nodded, feeling strangely numb and euphoric at the same time as he grabbed the handle of his suitcase.
Sarah rolled her suitcase ahead of him, and he gripped his ticket and passport a bit tighter as he followed.
After watching Sarah show her ticket to the conductor, he did the same, and they were allowed to board. Chuck exhaled shakily.
"I can't believe we're really doing this," he breathed, half to himself.
"I know," Sarah said with a smile.
She moved to put her suitcase on the luggage rack, and Chuck remembered himself.
"Oh, here, I've got it," he said.
Though Sarah raised an eyebrow in amusement, she allowed the chivalrous action. He placed her suitcase on the rack, then lifted his to set it beside hers.
"Thanks," she said with a smile.
Though Chuck was tempted to grab her hand again, it was then that the train lurched into motion. He stumbled, and needed both hands to steady himself on the chairs on either side of the aisle. The people sitting in those chairs did not look amused by his clumsiness.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly, before repeating himself in Czech. (That was a word he'd had to learn rather quickly in the local language, as he used it often.)
"I should have warned you, these go over a hundred miles per hour," Sarah informed him with a smile. "Just a few more rows to our seats. We're in 18."
Finally Chuck staggered to his seat. Sarah settled in behind him.
"You'd think the Intersect 2.0 would include some basic balance," he said good-naturedly, keeping his voice low enough so that no one else would hear the Intersect part… just in case.
"I'm just glad we made it on the train," Sarah replied, glancing around subtly.
"It's alright," Chuck murmured. "No one followed me."
Sarah finally looked back at him after her visual scan of the train. "You're sure?"
Chuck shrugged and gave her a little grin. "I left my watch in my room. You think this is my first time to the rodeo, Walker?"
Finally, Sarah allowed herself to relax a little, apparently reassured.
"That reminds me," Chuck continued, with furrowed brows, "what am I supposed to call you now?" If they were on the run, he couldn't exactly throw Agent Walker around.
"Right." Sarah flipped open her passport book open with a smile, and held it up for him to see.
Chuck raised his eyebrows with a grin.
"Elisa Calderon, huh?" he looked up at her face as she flipped her passport closed again. "Don't tell me we're brother and sister."
"No, Chuck." She laughed a little and leaned in to kiss him. "We're newlyweds."
As Sarah pulled away, Chuck's eyebrows lifted once more in interest. "Are you telling me we're on our honeymoon, Mrs. Calderon?"
Another smile spread over Sarah's face. "I do feel like celebrating, don't you?"
Chuck had to admit that he did - especially when Sarah leaned in to kiss him again, with a kiss that was even more tender and more intimate than the last.
"But from now on," Sarah said a moment later, "as long as we're in public, you should call me Elisa or Mrs. Calderon. Okay?"
"Okay." Chuck could do that. It would be weird, yes, but it was a small sacrifice to make for all that he would be gaining.
Once the initial euphoria and nerves had worn off, Chuck had settled into the quiet lull of the train. Sarah was right that they would have had plenty of time to talk on the train, but it soon grew dark, and more and more overheard lights on the train were switched off as people began to try to get some sleep.
"You can sleep if you want," Sarah had offered. "I'll keep an eye out."
Chuck had admittedly forgotten that they actually would need to 'keep an eye out.' He had sort of hoped that living a real life would mean that they didn't have to do that. But they were still only an hour or two from Prague, and he wasn't sure how soon General Beckman and team would discover he was missing.
"I'm okay," he decided.
Truthfully, there was too much on his mind for his thoughts to let him go to sleep, anyway. So he left the overhead light on, just for now.
"We should be in Vienna in another hour and a half," Sarah murmured. "I'm sorry it'll be so late. I thought it would be best for us to travel this way."
"Sure. Yeah." Chuck folded his hands. Darkness would provide some cover for them, and hopefully no one would notice he was gone until morning.
Sarah looked away from him again, glancing into the dim aisle. A few rows away, a man was snoring loudly.
"So… where are we going after that?" he asked.
Glancing back at him, Sarah smiled. "First Munich. Then there's Milan, Paris, Barcelona… we can go anywhere you want."
"Really?" Chuck's eyes widened, and he felt like a little kid. He had always wanted to see Paris.
In his years working at the Buy More, he hadn't exactly saved up a lot of money for travel. He had thought, while he was back at Stanford, about getting a job in tech and maybe seeing the world someday, or at least Paris, but that had been a long time ago. Now, he realized that dream could become real.
"Of course," Sarah replied warmly. "After all, this is our honeymoon, Mr. Calderon."
A grin tugged at his mouth - because that, being with Sarah, was his real dream.
"But you're going to be tired in the morning," Sarah pointed out. "So you should get some rest."
Chuck's eyebrows shot up; he was intrigued. "Oh yeah? What are you going to do to me, Mrs. Calderon?"
Though she rolled her eyes, Sarah was smiling. "I meant you'd be tired from being on a train til midnight," she insisted. "But… it is our honeymoon..."
She met his gaze in the low light, and she bit her lip in a way that was… quite suggestive. Chuck felt his heart rate pick up a bit.
"So rest up until we get to the hotel," she whispered finally, and gave him one more kiss before turning aside.
Chuck swallowed. Right. For him, there would be no sleeping after that little comment.
In his defense, he did try to sleep for a little while. He even turned the lights down in their row. It seemed rude not to, since nearly everyone else on the train had. Yet his mind wouldn't rest.
When he thought about everything they'd be seeing, all the amazing places they'd be going, he wanted to be able to share that with his friends and family. This was the first time that he'd done something like this with Sarah, and now their relationship was suddenly real. Now he could tell Ellie, and Awesome, and Morgan about his travels with Sarah, and finally, he could rejoice that this relationship was real.
"Sarah?" he said finally, softly, hoping she wasn't asleep.
She turned - okay, she was awake - and looked at him pointedly. Right. He was supposed to use her fake name. Well... he supposed Sarah was a fake name, too, but at least it was the one that he was used to.
"Elisa," he emphasized, suppressing a sigh.
"Yes, Hector?" she responded gently.
Chuck held her gaze. "I'm not going to be able to see my family, am I?"
Sarah glanced down at the purse in her lap.
"We might have to lay low for a while," she said gently, playing with the strap of her purse to avoid his eyes.
Chuck glanced out the window at the Czech countryside speeding by. "What am I going to tell them?" he asked quietly.
At this, Sarah looked back up at him. She reached for his hand, and laced her fingers through his.
"The truth," she said simply. "As far as they know, you're traveling through Europe. You've just… extended your trip."
Chuck nodded faintly, but he knew he didn't look entirely reassured, because he wasn't.
"Don't worry, Chuck," she murmured, trying to smile. "You can trust me. I'll figure something out."
Though he tried to smile, too, it wasn't so easy. Nor was it so easy just to not worry. He didn't even correct her on calling him by his real name.
"I do trust you," he insisted. "It's just that… the whole reason I wanted to get this thing out of my head was so that I could have a normal life," he replied, keeping his voice low, "and my family could, too."
Sarah's blue eyes held his gaze, understanding and sympathetic.
"After all, it's one thing for my life to be endangered on a regular basis. I'm getting kinda used to that."
Despite the seriousness of the moment, Sarah's eyes twinkled with a hint of a smile. "It would help if you had just stayed in the car."
"Uh, like the time outside the motel when the Fulcrum agents got in the car with me?" he pointed out.
Tipping her head, Sarah conceded.
"As I was saying - it's quite another thing for my friends and family to be put in danger," he continued. "Do you remember the hostage crisis last Christmas? Because I certainly do."
Sarah's glance slid away momentarily. Chuck would never be able to forget the sight of her shooting an unarmed Fulcrum agent. Yet she had done it to protect him.
"Or do you remember when Casey stole Devon's hospital card key and nearly got Devon killed by terrorists?" Chuck continued. "That whole episode with Agent Forrest at the bachelor party, by the way, put a major chink in my sister's wedding plans. I think she's still mad at Devon for the bachelor party, even though we all know he only has eyes for Ellie."
"Chuck," Sarah said softly.
But he was on a roll now. At least he managed to keep his rant to a whisper. "Thankfully, they did get married, but oh, that almost got ruined because of me, too! Why? Because Ted Roark and Fulcrum wanted the Intersect."
Chuck swallowed. That image, too, was branded into his brain: sitting down at a table at Ellie's wedding venue only to see waiters lying dead beneath the tablecloth. He still remembered the cold pit of fear in his stomach as he'd looked up into the face of Ted Roark. It was because of the Intersect that Roark had gone after his family. And if Chuck had anything to say about it, that would never happen again.
"Chuck, I know," Sarah said, finally able to get a word in edgewise. "That's exactly why I wanted to get you out of the program - why I wanted to get the Intersect out of your head."
Nodding, Chuck let his anger abate. She was right.
"But General Beckman was never going to let that happen," she explained carefully.
"Believe me, I know," Chuck muttered. It was only because Sarah had directly disobeyed orders multiple times, including helping him find his dad, that he had been able to get the Intersect out in the first place.
Suddenly, at the thought of General Beckman, Chuck was starting to feel that cold pit in his stomach again.
"As soon as she finds out I'm gone, she's going to have Casey interrogate my family, isn't she?"
There was another pause. "I'm sure Casey will ask them where you are, but only in a friendly way as your co-worker and neighbor. If he goes any further, it would blow his cover."
Sighing softly, Chuck had to concede that Sarah was right about that.
"We're doing this so that you can see your family," Sarah added. "No more late nights sneaking back into your apartment, no more missing out on the important things happening in your family's life. No more threats of moving you to an underground bunker."
Chuck swallowed. That was a fair point. He had been threatened more than once by General Beckman and Casey that he would be moved underground for the rest of his life due to the value of the Intersect combined with his inability to withstand torture. If that happened, that would mean he would never see his family or friends again - not Ellie, or Morgan, or awesome, or Sarah.
Of course, if he and Sarah got caught running away from the CIA, then he would just be put in jail for the rest of his life anyway...
"You'll see them again, Chuck," Sarah promised, thankfully drawing him out of his dark thoughts.
Though he sighed, Chuck knew that he could trust Sarah. He had to.
Despite his worries, despite knowing that he would miss his family, Chuck felt his mouth lifting in a smile.
"I could get used to that, Mrs. Calderon," he replied.
Leaning in, she kissed him softly.
When she drew away a moment later, she rested her head against his shoulder. Despite his concerns, he began to feel his worries melt away. He slipped his arm around her waist and she nestled closer into his side.
Outside the window, the night sky sped by in a blur. Each minute took them farther away from Prague and the Intersect training facility. All of that was over now. A new life was beginning.