A/N: More story.
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter Seventeen: Once
Chuck sat beside Sarah, slumped, exhausted, staring at the back of the driver's seat. He had not said a word to Sarah since asking about the watch, the governor.
Mary had checked the rearview regularly, always looking first behind the car and second at Sarah.
Mary's eyes were capable of a coldness Sarah imagines others have seen in Sarah's own. Mary speared her with icicles each time she looked back. Sarah shuddered: she had the feeling that Mary was looking back in time, not just in space — that she was peering into the past.
Something about her eyes told Sarah that Mary had been a spy forever. Her eyes were haunted by old hurts. Her eyes are blue like mine. But they are paler, almost gray. For a moment Sarah's eyes locked with Mary's. She sees herself in the mirror when she looks at me.
Sarah turned to Chuck, trying to get his attention. He glanced at her blankly.
"Did Shaw escape?" Mary asks, breaking the long silence in the car.
"I guess so. I kept expecting Bryce to show up. He was supposed to be my back-up. He could have cut off a retreat by Shaw, maybe taken Shaw out."
"Bryce," Mary said slowly, her eyes in the mirror shifting from me to her son, "right, the back-up Amy tranqed at the beach...Some back-up..."
"He's a good spy," Sarah said, keeping herself from glancing at Chuck, "most of the time, but he has...lapses."
Mary sat straight. "Wait, in the bathroom, you mentioned Stephen and Ellie. Were they with Bryce?"
"Yes."
"Shit. Maybe Shaw did something to them? When Chuck stomped the brooch, that broke communication?"
Sarah reached up and touched her ear. The earpiece was still there but she had forgotten it. "It should have stopped them from seeing and hearing what I saw and heard, but I should have been able to hear them. In all the insanity, I never noticed they were silent."
Mary turned the car sharply. They were in a poor section of town. Mary parked the car in a short driveway, the concrete cracked, spring grass shooting up through the cracks. Sarah looked out. They were parked beside a small house, drab and decrepit, white paint peeling and green shutters falling off one window, another covered by a plywood sheet, itself marked with graffiti. A porch, bare, extended from the front of the house.
Mary turned quickly, and she put a key in Sarah's hand. "Help him, if that's what you're here to do." Her voice was reluctant — and carried an unspoken warning. "I've got to go back — I can't not-know what happened to Stephen and my daughter."
Mary's phrasing struck Sarah. She took the key and got out. Stephen. 'My daughter' but not 'my husband'? Sarah held out her hand. Chuck looked at it and his gaze climbed her arm to her face. But he took it. He got out. Mary reversed the car out of the driveway and left, gaining speed.
Sarah led Chuck up onto the porch. She unlocked the door and they went inside.
"This is an old safehouse. Mom used it back in her salad days as a spy. We've been using it as a base of operations. Not exactly Castle, huh?"
The inside was bare but clean. A workbench was in the center of the room, covered with pieces of computers, electronics, wires, a soldering iron.
On a coffee table was a profusion of weapons, ammunition, spyware. A threadbare couch and an old armchair, the arms worn and dirty, completed the room.
Chuck went to the couch and stretched out on it, staring up at the ceiling.
"Can I get you anything, Chuck? Water, aspirin, anything?"
He held up his hands. "A warm washcloth? And, yes, some water, some aspirin. A Large Mart bucketful of aspirin is in the bathroom. I've been chewing them like Chiclets."
Sarah went into the bathroom. A giant bottle of aspirin was on the sink. It felt half full when she picked it up. She put it back down so that she could wet a washcloth. A stack of them, white, folded, was on a shelf next to the sink. Sarah wet the cloth and wrung it out. She grabbed the aspirin. From the bathroom, she went to the kitchen. She put the washcloth down and filled a glass with water. She retrieved the cloth and carried it all to Chuck.
He sat up on the couch as she approached. She handed him the washcloth and he wiped the blood from his hands, the washcloth pinkening as he did.
"I knew her, you know. Amy."
Chuck looked at Sarah. "Yes, she told me. Some kind of all-female spy team?"
"Some kind…" Sarah shrugged. "It ended badly. Hurt and betrayal."
Chuck gave her a look and she realized what she had said. "But that one wasn't my fault, Chuck. It was Amy's, I think. She betrayed us."
Chuck nodded. "That's right."
"You know?"
He tapped his head. "The Ring version has...um...different versions of things in it, not just the CIA or NSA version. It's the reason why it came with programming. They weren't about to put their secrets in someone with blissfully free will."
"So, that's how you know Amy was the traitor?"
"One way. The other way was one that will surprise you," he paused and looked at her, the grudge from their spear-gun-beach conversation reentering his eyes, "she told me."
"She...told...you?"
"Yes, after I let her upload the Ring version into me...I'm assuming Dad told you some of this?" Sarah nodded and Chuck continued. "After that, well, even before that, I could tell she was conflicted. You see, she...um...she had feelings for me."
Chuck stopped, huffed. "Funny, I went from a CIA handler-slash-cover girlfriend whose feelings were a constant puzzle to me — to a CIA-cover Ring handler whose feelings weren't."
"Is that why you let her upload the Ring Intersect into you — because she loved you?"
"No, but it was part of the reason why. I knew she would have a hard time handling me. I've been down that road before."
Sarah blushed and looked at the floor, turning the aspirin bottle in her hand, the aspirin making a sound like gravel in a can. "Did you…?"
"Love her, Sarah?"
Sarah nodded without looking up.
Chuck did not answer; he asked a question. "Do you love Bryce?"
"No, Chuck. I thought I did once, a long time ago. But...I since learned that what I felt wasn't love, and…"
"So, when we talked on the Miami beach, you really didn't go to DC with Bryce because you were in love with him?"
Sarah shook her head, finally lifted her eyes to Chuck's. "No, that's not why I went, Chuck."
He shook his head, flummoxed. "Then why? Why make me think that Barstow, the line about one bed...all that...why leave me to conclude it had to be an act, that you were going to sleep with me in Barstow while you preferred...loved another man?"
"But, Chuck, didn't I make it clear the second time Bryce visited, that you wouldn't always finish second to Bryce? I thought you knew I left because it was my job, not because of Bryce, because you lost to him."
Chuck dropped the pink washcloth on the arm of the sofa as he stood, his face instantly red, anger-energized. "Damn you, Sarah Walker! I am so sick of hearing you blame the job. So sick I could vomit.
"You know, I'm smart. I'm clever. I listen, especially to you, even though I could only believe a small percentage of what you said and of what you didn't say — if that makes any sense. For two years I listened. And here's what I heard," His hands were waving, clauses spiraling, "the fact that there was never an us, that you would never come clean and once, just one goddamn fucking time, just once, admit, without ambiguity, without qualification, without joking or relying on implication, ...if just once, just once you had told me, ...the reason why there was never an us wasn't because of your job, it was because of you!"
He fell back onto the couch. "Just once, tell me the truth, stop asking me to trust you but not believe you and just once talk to me, to me, straight out, speak out your heart and mind." He dropped his head in his hands for a moment, then looked at her, his voice softer. "Here's the thing, Sarah; I know. I know it all. It was in the Ring Intersect. If you kept us apart to keep me from knowing you, about you, it backfired completely, because I found out, found out in brutal black and white and Graham's fucking officialese. Not from you, in whispers, with you cradled in my arms, telling me because you love me and because I love you, trusting me to bear your burdens for you, with you...If just once...But instead, you leave me alone in Burbank, go with Bryce and leave me to believe the worst."
He leaned forward and snatched the aspirin bottle from Sarah's hand. He turned the top but it did not open. "Goddamn childproof bottles." He tried again, frowning in frustration and finally got it open, dumping a pile into his hand. He put them in his mouth and then motioned for Sarah to give him the water. He gulped the pills down.
"How many are you taking, Chuck?"
He shrugged. "Why did you leave, Sarah?"
"Chuck, you've got the watch, do you need a fistful of aspirin?"
"Why. Did. You. Leave?"
"How long have you been taking aspirin like that?"
"Why, Sarah?!" Chuck stomped his foot despite being seated.
Sarah jumped. "Because I love you, Chuck Bartowski!" She slumped in the chair, spent, overwhelmed.
Chuck stood up and headed toward the bathroom. "Funny," he said, glancing over his shoulder, "I never imagined hearing you say those words would hurt." He went in and slammed the door.
Sarah cried into her hands.
A phone rang in the bathroom and she heard Chuck speak. A few minutes later, he came back into the room.
"That was the Ring. They think I failed because Shaw interfered. They know Amy is dead." Chuck paused, glanced at the floor, his eyes sad. "They've ordered me and Mom to report back to them."
"Your mom is Ring?"
He gave her a flat, hard look. "It's complicated. There's a lot you don't know and I don't have long to tell you."
Sarah looked at him and felt the corner of her mouth twitch as her spirits rose. Chuck's phrasing, during the shouting: 'because you love me and because I love you'. Not past tense. Maybe he misspoke. He had been spiraling. It was not much — but it was not nothing.
A/N: Thoughts?