A/N: More of our small story.

A Comet Appears

And if the old guard still offend
They got nothing left on which you depend
So enlist every ounce
Of your bright blood
And off with their heads

Jump from the hook
You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life
And they got no right
As sure as you have eyes
They got no right

Just put yourself in my new shoes
And see that I do what I do
Because the old guard still offend (their pudgy hearts and shiny hands)
They got nothing left on which we depend

— Sleeping Lessons, The Shins

Buzzards

Chuck gazed down into deep blue eyes in the gray dark. Sam's taut stomach was beneath his, warm and alive, moving up, moving down; she was panting, and so was he.

Never in his life had he been so exquisitely alive.

He was a furnace of heat, of desire interpenetrated by emotion, heat and heart merged, two one. Lost in Sam.

Refusal was his initial response to her arrival in his bed, to her warm, wet lips and probing tongue. But she had vetoed his No, her hands refusing his refusal gently but insistently.

He was now all Yes, as he wanted to be from the first. Yes, yes, yes!

She was too, chanting the word softly in rhythm with their movement.

He did not know if Ellie and Devon were in the next room, and the question was too distant from the focal point of his consciousness, the ocean of Sam's eyes, for him to be now concerned with the answer.

Sam was unprepared, absolutely unprepared for this. Whatever her past, whatever it had included, it had not included this or anything that could have been called a foretaste of this. She was all responsiveness, not just her body but her soul, her all.

Each touch of Chuck's hand called to her, beckoned a new need and a fresh uprush of feeling from her. His fingers enlisted every ounce of her blood, bright with her love for him.

Love.

She had not known it could be like this.

It made zero sense. She did not know who she was, beyond a name that felt both close to her and distant from her, a name that was hers but that did not seem to attach to her life. She barely knew Chuck. But she knew what she knew; she knew that she was dependent on him and his touch and wanted him as dependent on her.

Chuck collapsed onto her chest, his weight heavy and welcome on her, substance and life.

She had not known it could be like this.

Later, Sam lay close to Chuck. He had fallen asleep, arm around her, his body curved around hers.

She was still — but everything inside her was moving.

Making love to Chuck had turned her upside down, shaken her up. She had become a conundrum to herself, and not just because of her amnesia.

Whatever had been her supports in the past, those realities that she had rested the weight of her past life upon, whatever that life had been, those supports had crumbled: they were disintegrating.

She could never reinhabit her previous life but could she escape it?

Escape? It needs to be escaped. I need to escape from me.

But how could her heart escape her heart? If she tried to escape herself, wouldn't she hunt herself down?

Hunt me down…

And then she remembered: a scene, a bedroom, similar gray dark. She was in a long, silky nightgown, blowing snugly around her legs in the breeze from the window.

Her arm was outstretched, a gun at its end.

A man was dead on the bed, a self-satisfied, anticipatory leer on his face for all eternity. A growing blood stain reddened the expensive, expectant linen.

She had killed him. No, I terminated him.

The memory went from gray dark to black, gone. But Sam had gone stiff beside Chuck.

She rolled off the bed, her hand clamped over her mouth, and stumbled into the bathroom. She bent over the toilet, sickened. But the wave of nausea subsided, leaving only a sheen of cold sweat on her forehead.

A moment later, Chuck hurried into the bathroom immediately after a soft knock. Concern shaped his features.

"Sam?"

She did not answer.

She did not know who she was, but she knew that she had at some time stopped being Sam, and had become somebody else.

A killer. Chill certainly gripped her, despite no new memories returning.

"Sam?"

"Sorry, Chuck, I just felt sick."

"Oh, no. Was it the chicken pepperoni? I've only made it a couple of times before, and, well, Ellie was there to supervise those times. This was my first solo."

Sam flushed the toilet as she stood. Until the sound died, she did not speak. "No. I…I had a bad dream. It upset me."

Chuck opened his arms and gathered her to him. Shivering involuntarily, she put her arms around him and borrowed his warmth. She could feel that he expected her to tell him the dream, but she said instead: "Take me back to bed."

He did and did not ask about the dream. And he fell asleep again not long after he made sure she was doing better.

But she wasn't. As Chuck slept, Sam stared up at the white ceiling, afraid to think, afraid to recall anything else, afraid to breathe, afraid to be.

It was very late when Devon and Ellie got back to the apartment. Ellie had kept them there finishing up paperwork while Devon dozed in a chair.

They tiptoed in, Devon first, hoping to keep from waking Sam.

Devon stopped in front of Ellie and she ran into his back.

"Dev!" she whispered in irritation.

He turned to her, eyebrows up, then turned again and pointed to the empty couch. It had been prepared for sleeping and was rumpled from occupation, but it was not now occupied.

Ellie's eyes narrowed. "Oh, no. Chuck." She pushed past Devon, and, still tiptoeing but not all that quietly, she reached Chuck's door. It was closed. She turned the knob slowly and cracked it. Chuck was in his bed — and Sam was too.

Ellie shut the door softly, shaking her head.

Devon had walked up behind her. "The Chuckster's got company?"

Ellie faced Devon and nodded. "Yes, Sam."

Devon smiled but the smile died when Ellie frowned gravely at him. "So, that's a bad thing?"

"We don't know who she is, Devon. She doesn't know who she is. How can this be a good thing?

Devon shook his head. "He's a grown man — and lately he's been acting like one, you said."

Ellie nodded, reluctantly. "But she'll destroy all she's created when she goes." Ellie sighed. "C'mon, let's go to bed. What's done is done."

Sam heard all that Ellie and Devon said.

Ellie and Devon coming down the hall alerted her and she closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. The closed door and their whispers muted what they said, but she overheard it. Overhearing was a skill, another skill she had.

But she wished she did not have it.

I am a bad thing. I'll destroy Chuck when I go.

What's done is done.

She could not change her past even if she did not remember it.

What's done is done.

Ellie was right. Sam would hurt Chuck when she left, but how could she stay knowing what she saw in his eyes and felt in her own earlier?

She was falling and would continue to fall. Chuck was falling and would continue to fall.

A wisp of a memory came to her: falling into a night sky, the sound of rushing wind.

And then the memory was gone.

She wiped at her eyes, tears had formed, fallen.

The best thing would be to leave and limit the destruction. Without thinking about what she was doing, she gently traced the scars on her body with her hand, the scars she discovered in the shower.

Destruction.

She waited until the house was silent, and a little longer, then she carefully got up.

Silently, she crept back to the couch, picked up the folded blouse and pants Ellie had given her, and put them on, slipped on the boots she had been wearing when Chuck led her into the apartment. Reluctance gripped her, and she had to force herself to the front door.

She left the apartment, slipping out of her present for fear of her past.

It was darker outside than she expected.

Lola had finished her task at the LA office. It was nearly 3am, but she was not sleepy.

Part of the reason for that was the wholly unexpected late-night call she had gotten from Langston Graham.

He acted as if he had called out of concern for her, her reaction to the loss of her partner, to Walker's death. But it seemed to her that he had an ulterior motive — hell, the man was a seething, wormy mass of ulterior motives — and that he had called just to make sure that his expeditious declaration of Walker's death. He wanted to make sure she had no reason to question that declaration.

She did her best to play along, to seem deep in grief, needing him to comfort her.

Her play-acting must've succeeded. He seemed comforted by her need for comfort, and he offered her a few stilted words of encouragement before ending the call.

It was a conundrum. Why was the Director of the CIA calling to offer her his cold shoulder to cry on? Why was he so concerned to make sure that Walker was dead, to write her off, to put her star on the Langley wall? He even invited Lola to the ceremony.

Damn buzzard, circling Walker's corpse.

Her mind moving in multiple directions at once, she had pointed her car toward Echo Park. It was far too late to knock Chuck's door, but she thought that maybe she could do some peeping, trying to figure out if Walker was there by means of a lucky glance through a window. She had peeped professionally before; this time she would peep as an amatuer.

But she did not need to peep. As she pulled up to the apartment complex, Sarah Walker, alive, not dead, her cheeks wet, came into view. Her gait was labored, as if she was walking into a strong wind.

Lola swung open her car door and leaped out. "Walker, thank God!"

Walker jerked to a stop and stood, blinking, looking at Lola. And then she shrank a bit, backed away. "Who are you?"

For a moment, Lola stood with her jaw swinging in astonishment at Walker's reaction.

And then, by a burst of mind, she understood. Despite Walker's baggage joke, Walker was no joker. Walker's cringing reaction was no put-on. This was why Walker had not contacted anyone.

Lola put up her hands. "I'm your friend, Lola, your partner. We work together. I lost you the other night and I've been trying to find you."

Walker stood still, staring at Lola as if trying to find her face familiar. "I know you?"

Lola took one careful step forward. "You do. Or you did. Look, come with me and I'll explain. We both work for the CIA."

Walker put her hand to her mouth. "The Central Intelligence Agency?" She spoke the name as if it were her doom.

Lola nodded gently. "Yes, we're both agents. I was your back-up on a recent mission. You stowed away on a plane — "

"A duffle bag," Walker interrupted, offering the words as if she did not understand them..

"Yeah, Walker, a duffle bag. You hid inside one, a gross one."

"It stank."

"Yeah, it did. — Now, will you come with me? You need help, help remembering."

"What if I don't want to remember?" Walker straightened up as she asked the question.

"Don't want to? What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure." Walker's shoulders slumped.

"Just get in the car. You need help."

Walker seemed afraid to get in the car. "I feel like my past is chasing me."

"I don't understand, Walker. Please, get in the car. We'll go to my place and talk."

"Talk about who I am? Try to make me remember?"

"Whatever you want, Sarah."

Walker jolted. "Sarah?" It wasn't a question for Lola; Sarah was asking it of the night.

But Lola answered. "That's your name. Sarah Walker."

"Sam became Sarah?"

"Sam? Who's Sam?" Lola asked, suddenly lost.

Walker's face fell. "I don't know. What's done is done."

A moment later — moving like she was walking the Green Mile, Walker went around the car and got in the passenger seat.

She sat there, staring forward, wiping at her wet cheeks with the fingers of her right hand..

Lola took a breath and got back into the driver's seat. Without speaking, she started the car and left the apartments.

A/N: A couple of chapters to go, according to plan.