A/N: By the way, I never said there was an isomorphism between the number of occurrences of 'spy' in the title and the number of spies in the story. The emphasis is on the repetition and on 'vs.' Think of the title as ending in an implied ellipsis…
In this chapter, Sarah finds things.
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter 10: Riptide
After a distance, once past the Zoo gates, Sarah pulled her arm from Shaw's hand.
"Enough! Don't manhandle me, Shaw. I let you get away with this to keep from making a scene. All those kids...those people...and you acting like a possessive boyfriend, not a professional spy...You are not my boyfriend, not now, not ever. — Has Beckman called us in? I thought we had the day off, that we'd start again tomorrow with a new list of Ring leads since we finished the other?"
Shaw stared at her, the glow in his eyes unabated, maybe more heated.
Sarah then regretted the white dress, the sandals, letting Shaw see her in them. The woman, not the spy. She had imagined Chuck's eyes on her while she was in them, not Shaw's.
The dress and shoes had been for Chuck's eyes only; he was the intended viewer.
Shaw's eyes ran down her body, twin rivulets of boiling water. He sneered. "No, there's no Beckman-called meeting, not for all three of us. But there will be one tomorrow, mark my words. And we will talk about what you were doing here. You don't give a shit about pandas."
Sarah desperately wanted to ask Shaw if he had seen the woman behind her. But she could not ask, not without giving Shaw information, confirmation, things Sarah did not want him to know. She unzipped her small white purse and took out a package of tissues.
She pulled one from it and began to dab at the blood on her knees.
Shaw huffed. He huffed again. Sarah kept dabbing. Eventually, Shaw marched away. She heard a car door slam and then car pulled away, engine gunning.
Sarah's knees were only scraped, not cut. They were oozing blood, nothing more.
She stood up and walked to a nearby trash can, dropping the bloodied tissues in it. She looked back into the Zoo. She did not see Chuck. The woman who had spoken to her could have been any of the women she saw but none seem to be looking at her.
Sarah let her eyes linger on the mothers and kids, the families, wandering the pathways.
Imagining herself as a mother earlier had left Sarah a mood lingering on Sarah, despite the woman, despite Shaw.
Sarah had cared for an infant in Budapest, mothered it, but had never imagined herself the little girl's mother: Sarah had been intent on keeping the child alive, on saving it, not raising it. That task she left to her mother when she took the baby to her. She wanted the baby to have a good life, but that required that Sarah not be part of the baby's life. She had nothing to offer a child; she was nothing but a spy. An unhappy spy. Nothing more.
Did she actually want that, to be a mother, or was it just a momentary, idle fantasy, the by-product of her long sadness?
— She dropped the question like the bloodied tissues and headed to her car. She unlocked the door as she walked up, and got in.
In the passenger seat sat a small stuffed panda. It was holding a folded piece of paper in its lap.
Sarah picked it up. It was a copy of a single page of a CIA file, Agent Evelyn Shaw's file. There was no photo. But at the bottom, in Graham's dead-man handwriting, was the notation:
Termination ordered. Double agent. Terminating agent: Sarah Walker (Red Test). Successful.
Paris flooded Sarah.
The face behind the veil, lept from behind it, into focus, the features distended by terror as Sarah pulled the trigger, ending the life of a woman-she-knew-not-who. Then. Now, she knew the woman's name. She knew the woman's husband.
Evelyn Shaw supplied the red in Sarah's Red Test. The Eiffel Tower, skull and crossbones, a wedding photo. Sarah's first termination.
Shaw's wife. I killed Shaw's wife. Bile torched the back of Sarah's throat, reflux.
Does Shaw know? — No, he'd never be able to conceal it if he does. He'd kill me.
Her hands were shaking. She turned the sheet of paper over. In the bottom corner, in Chuck's handwriting, were two words:
Meadow Branch.
Sarah took a breath. She turned the key far enough in the ignition to activate the electronics and put her window down. Another breath.
The suburbs, again? Why was Chuck intent on that painful mission? Sarah had shut the mission down, overseeing the dismantling of her 'home' with Chuck and she had been filled with a longing so visceral she almost sat on the floor of the house and cried.
A home. A mother.
She shook her head, trying to focus.
"We never had a honeymoon, did we? Ours was over before it started."
She still did not doubt the grudge in Chuck's eyes, the pain, and anger. But what if he had mentioned that mission for another reason, two tasks, one set of words?
Fulcrum had uploaded their prototype Intersect into Chuck, and were certain they had brainwashed him. But they had not: Chuck withstood the alien invasion of his brain, fooled Fulcrum and saved Sarah in the process.
Saved Sarah in the process…
Evelyn Shaw.
What if Chuck were trying to tell her that their new situation resembled their old one?
"Nothing happened in the suburbs."
But something did — and something should have happened — she should have gone back to the house with Chuck as he wanted, and done there what they both wanted, consummated them.
Lap each other up. Carina. Make the love she spent almost every day in Burbank desperately unmaking.
She forced herself to focus again, to set aside the personal part of that miserable mission.
What was Chuck trying to tell her?
Chuck had shot at her with a speargun. Not shot at her — but shot near her. When Sarah saw Bryce slumped at the picnic table beside Red Nails, Chuck told her that killing Bryce was not the plan.
Chuck hated weapons, was terrified of even holding a gun. Why would he have approached her with a speargun? Even hurt and angry, that is not something Chuck would do. Firing the speargun, even if he deliberately missed, that was not something Chuck would do either. Unless he was trying to convince someone that he was different, Chuck but not-Chuck.
Fulcrum was the outer ring of the Ring.
Could the Ring have intersected Chuck again, tried to succeed where Fulcrum had failed, a redo of Meadow Branch? And had Chuck withstood the alien invasion again, but pretended that he was brainwashed, under their control.
But who was the woman at the Zoo? She wasn't Red Nails.
Sarah's hands were still shaking. She had killed Shaw's wife. Shaw did not know, but Chuck was evidently worried that Shaw would find out, why else go to the trouble of warning her? Trying to save her? And something had happened to Chuck, something more than being kidnapped for residuals, the memories of flashes past. This was about flashes current.
And that's how Chuck knew: about the Red Test and maybe how the woman knew about Sarah's childhood. Whatever version of the Intersect Chuck had, assuming she was understanding correctly, it contained information no previous upload contained, including, apparently, Graham's personal files.
And that means Chuck does know it all. Everything about Sarah that Graham knew, every single black deed she had done on Graham's orders.
Her white dress seemed to turn transparent. She felt naked, revealed, the white of her dress pretense; her bloody knees were closer to the truth.
Blood.
Chuck now knew how much she had waded in, chest-deep, before she sat beside him on that morning Burbank beach.
Mourning.
She reached for the stuffed panda and hugged it to her, a life-preserver, as the riptide of remembered blood claimed her.
She drove home seasick, nauseated.
Uncertainty crowded around her, not happily, like the people at the Zoo. Miserably.
Was she right about Chuck? If she was, then Red Nails might not have been a confederate, she might have been Chuck's handler.
The Ring thought they had an Intersect, and they were going to pit it against Beckman's. Maybe Red Nails was supposed to be doing for Chuck what Sarah was supposed to be doing for Shaw, helping him learn to control it.
But maybe Chuck had help, an ally. The woman at the Zoo.
Sarah parked in her building's lot and walked unseeingly inside, lost in thought. Lost.
The elevator ride was unnoticed. She got off and fished in her bag for her keys, and then she looked up into the face of Ellie.
Ellie was leaning against Sarah's apartment door.
She seemed no happier to see Sarah in DC than she had in LA.
"Ellie?"
"Sarah." Ellie's voice was monotonic.
"What are you doing here?"
"You didn't know I was coming?"
Sarah shook her head. "No. Yes. I didn't know you were coming here."
"Oh," Ellie shrugged, "thought I'd come and see how the other half lives."
"Other half?"
"Spies, liars, turncoats...people with...bloody knees."
Sarah involuntarily looked at her knees, following Ellie's gaze.
"I fell."
"Huh," Ellie said, a skeptical smirk in her voice, "I guess it is possible."
Sarah looked up and took the sting of the remark.
Ellie continued. "Nice outfit. A wolf in sheep's clothing. With a panda."
Sarah had the little bear in her other hand. "It was...a gift."
"Bryce?" Ellie asked, eyes narrowed, tone now openly hostile.
"No, Chuck."
Ellie stiffened. "You've seen Chuck?"
"No, yes, maybe. Not in person. Not in a while."
"Tell me, Sarah." It was worded as an order but inflected as a request.
"Let's go inside," Sarah said, tired of thinking, tired of running, tired of hiding, handing Ellie the key to the apartment, "I'll tell you...everything."
A/N: Things are about to get Spy-vs.-Spy-ey, to hurtle forward.
Thoughts?