A/N: Christmas Challenge! I keep getting mailings declaring today the beginning of Black Friday, so...
For the sake of some Christmas fun, we revisit the downer-iest of Seasons, Chuck S3, more or less assuming its events up to the time Sarah and Shaw return from DC. But imagine that the return is at Christmas time. Canon-ish.
Our story focuses on John Casey, although we will spend some time with Chuck and Sarah too (in Chapter 3). And keep in mind that when we are in Casey's POV, we are really in it, so brace yourselves for some rough-and-tumble.
'Twas the night before the night before Christmas, and all through Echo Park...
A Year Without Christmas?
Prologue: Hatching
Casey leaned forward, clicked off the closing credits of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Still leaning forward, he put his drink down on the table beside him, then put the remote beside it. He wiped the corner of each eye with the back of his wrist, then looked around his empty apartment.
Yep, still empty.
Still sitting forward, Casey shifted his thoughts from the Whos of Whoville — to Bartowski and Walker.
Estranged.
Casey had had enough. Officially had enough.
Hell, he had officially had enough and unofficially had enough. Enough, shit, enough!
A Roto-Rooter tank-truck shitload more than enough. Gawddamn it.
He had no clue what happened between Bartowski and Walker, why she had come back from Europe so icy that she made her previous stint as the CIA's Ice Queen seem like a she had been gawddamn Heat Miser.
Casey had always liked that Christmas show, The Year Without Santa Claus.
Heat Miser's flaming orange hair...
He'd watched it again yesterday, his blinds down, as they were now.
Both Bartowski and Walker were acting like they had coal in their stockings. Bartowski finally wised up and dumped the tiny computer woman he'd been dating. Walker was still hanging on with Shaw.
Shaw.
Casey laughed internally.
He rarely laughed externally.
Shaw. Shaw was so stiff that, by comparison, Casey himself, no poster boy for the graces, was gawddamn Fred Astaire. Hell, gawddamn Ginger Rogers. He laughed again.
Internally.
Shaw.
At first, Casey had thought Shaw might be good for Bartowski. Untie the kid from Walker's apron strings. But then things between the kid and Walker got worse, with Bartowski Reese's-Cupping the tiny computer woman and Walker apparently doing...whatever the hell one did with Shaw: mitosis, maybe?...some term from a junior-high science class, some term Casey couldn't quite remember but a term that had to do with reproduction among low-life forms...lower-life forms...
The problem. The problem was that this was shaping up to be The Year Without Santa Claus for Team Bartowski.
Walker was planning to go to DC. With Shaw. Bartowski had dumped the tiny computer woman, but he had also — sorta, anyway — passed his Red Test and was on his way to some cushy assignment in Rome.
Bartowski in Rome. An innocent abroad — with a gun. Mark Twain meets Ian Fleming. Gawddamnit.
Casey did not want Team Bartowski undone. Hell, no.
They had been...were...too good.
He had been proud of the Team, proud of himself, gawddamn it, as part of the Team. But the Team needed Bartowski and Walker to be together. Not just professionally teamed together but personally teamed together. A twosome in order for there to be a threesome.
That sounds wrong — but I know what I mean. The team is a set of two sets, one set, Bartowski and Walker, the other set, singleton me, and together we make a larger set, Team Bartowski. Right? Shit, I should leave the set theory — and the junior high biology — to Bartowski. Is it mitosis?
Christ, the two of them were dumb as stones! Dumber.
They'd been Casey's ladyfeelings cross to carry for two-and-a-half years. He'd lugged it along, mostly uphill, but it was time to drop it. It was time for them to carry it themselves or this whole Team B thing would collapse.
Casey had to admit he had in the past danced on both sides of the double yellow line between Bartowski and Walker: sometimes wishing it would just become clear to them that it was impossible, sometimes wishing that they would just go to Walker's place and play Hide The Little Spy, Ha!, until one of them was brave enough to speak the words: "I love you." — Hell, Casey had less emotional subtlety than King Kong — hell, Kong at least sorta had Fay Wray, but what do I have? — and Casey knew Bartwoski and Walker were in love, knew it from almost the first night. Hell, maybe from the first night.
He was sure that Ellie, Bartowski's sister, knew it.
Casey was sure Shaw knew it too.
Shaw. Casey had finally recognized that Shaw's training of Bartowski had two goals — one in view, the other hidden. He was training Bartwoski to be a spy, but he was also prying Walker's heart loose from Bartowski, one new Bartowski mission at a time. Casey's missing teeth were a great example. Shaw hadn't known Bartowski would turn dentist, like that kid in Rudolph, the elf, the friend of Yukon Cornelius, Hermey, — Shaw hadn't known that would happen but he knew something like it would, eventually, and how it would hurt Walker. Hurt me too.
The cunning bastard had figured out that doing the first was the key to doing the second: the more heartless, the more numb, he made Bartowski, the further he drove Walker from Bartowski, and the closer to himself. The Red Test, the timing, had been a brilliant tactic on Shaw's part, as had been making sure Walker administered it. Forced her into overwatch as the man she loved destroyed himself — and with her to blame. At least as Walker understood it.
Walker's a gawddamn TI-class supertanker of regrets. Terrified of Bartowski penetrating her hull. She displaces vast amounts of water, she and her payload of regrets. — But how can anyone do this job and not have a payload of regrets, unless she...he…has zero moral imagination or is dead inside, a full-on or a budding psychopath?
I worry about my own regrets, about an accident, a spill. Ilsa. Kathleen. All the lies and compromises that are my life. Oil spill, right from the heart. Gallons upon gallons darkening saltwater. Tears.
Casey cleared his mental throat. Stop! Gawddamn Fa-la-ladyfeelings!
Hate, hate this time of year. Hate it.
Alone.
Bartowski had not pulled the Red Test trigger. Casey had. But Shaw didn't know that. The problem was that Walker didn't either.
And another problem was that Casey was not officially on-the-Team when he pulled the trigger to save Bartowski. That left Casey exposed. He could not claim to have been acting in an official capacity in shooting the gawddamn mole, Perry. Technically, legally...officially, what Casey had done was buried in a grey area, a very grey area, a fifty gawddamn shades of gray area, and Casey was not eager for the shades to be lifted.
That could get messy. No control of the blow-back.
Still, it seemed to Casey that Walker's willingness to believe Bartowski executed the mole, — it seemed that belief was weakening. She had at first accepted it completely. But Casey knew she was asking herself questions about it now. Demanding that Bartowski explain how it could have happened if Bartowski did not do it.
What puzzled Casey was that Walker never checked Bartowski's firearm. He never fired it. The gun would prove it. The unsmoking gun.
Walker was willing at first to believe the worst about Bartowski. Casey suspected that was because of all the painful flotsam and jetsam of her own Red Test, and the way Shaw had stirred that up too, making Walker administer Bartowski's. She could...should have just commandeered Bartowski's firearm and discreetly had it tested, out of the knowledge of Beckman. Easy, peasy.
But Walker had been distraught, ruined by what she thought was the ruination of the man she loved. Ruination for which she felt responsible.
But Walker was softening — it was just not in her to believe the worst of Bartowski for long, and that was why Shaw was pushing hard, pushing fast, pushing Bartowski to Rome and Walker to DC. Shaw, cunning bastard, knew the overwhelming gravity between the two of them would reassert itself. They were like binary stars, orbiting each other. Kepler's Laws — or something. More damn science. — Is it mitosis? — Shit, who cares?
Casey began to think. Ponder.
The gun.
Bartowski's gun. If Casey could get it, he could give it to Walker. Make her realize the gun had never been fired. Casey was certain the gun was still as it was when Walker had given it to Bartowski at Traxx.
But where is the gun?
Bartowski must still have done something with it. — He wouldn't have taken it home. He'd have returned it to Castle. Would anyone have thought to take it, do something with or to it? Shaw maybe? — Maybe, but Shaw thought Bartowski executed Perry too.
The gun was there. Casey's gut said so. In Castle. Could Casey get to it?
Yes. Maybe he could give Bartowski and Walker a Christmas present: each other. But he had to get into Castle. The armory. He had to find the gun. And remove Shaw from the scenario somehow. For a while. Somehow.
Or remove Bartowski and Walker from the scenario. Somehow.
One thing was clear. Bartowski would not give Casey up. He had held onto the secret, never explained the Red Test. Bartowski would let the woman he loved leave him, believing something false of him. Let her go. And all because he was loyal. To a fault.
Loyal. Semper Fi.
Casey needed to fix this. But he needed to do it...artfully. Not only get the two of them together but remind them of what mattered, to each of them. Each other. Chuck did not want simply to be a spy, he wanted to be a spy with Walker. Walker did not want Shaw, he was a complete rebound, a predictable, familiar Larkin-like, sub-sub-Bartowski distraction from her pain. — Likely, that was what Larkin was too, all the men in her life before Bartowski. Kept her mind off her baggage.
The beginnings of a workable plan shaped themselves in Casey's mind.
Hell, if nothing else, it gives me something to do tomorrow, instead of rewatching The Quiet Man. Alone. Casey already knew all the dialogue by heart.
He sat back in his chair since he'd been hunched forward all this time, one elbow on one knee, his chin resting on his fist.
Still thinking, he reached for his drink, the heavy tumbler of Johnny Walker. He toasted himself. Silently.
Silent Night.
Hate this time of year.
He got up and changed DVDs in the player, taking out The Grinch, putting in Home Alone. Tricky: he was a little drunk.
He'd start tomorrow, first thing, first light, before anyone was in Castle.
A/N: This will be short but I will post it slowly. A prologue, three chapters, and an epilogue.