Chuck Versus the Birthday
By Steampunk . Chuckster
Summary: Agent Bryce Larkin's puzzling attempt to look up an old college friend after he disappears with U.S. Intelligence's top secret Intersect sends Larkin's betrayed partner Agent Walker to Echo Park, Los Angeles, California as Chuck Bartowski's birthday approaches. Slight AU of the pilot.
A/N: I am very appreciative of the reviews so far. Thanks, everyone!
Disclaimer: I don't own CHUCK or its characters. I'm not making money posting this.
Agent Sarah Walker couldn't read the look on the director's face when he glanced up from his computer to watch her enter his office. The last time she was here, she was embarking on a mission she knew would be a cinch.
Simple. Easy. In and out.
Instead, she'd gotten a nerdy comic-book loving charmboat lodged deep, deep under her skin. One she'd fallen asleep thinking about, only to think about him again when she woke up. And as she hurried to Langley once she landed in D.C., the external drive with the Intersect on it heavy in her bag, she thought about him some more.
But she had a job to do.
And now Langston Graham was gesturing for her to come closer, turning his chair to face her and leaning back, folding his hands together on his desk.
"Agent Walker… How was your trip to Los Angeles?"
"Caught some sun." And the Intersect.
He smirked and rose to his feet. "Sorry I sent you on a wild goose chase. We were sure we had the right target, but we must've spooked Larkin enough by sending out the dogs." He stopped. "No offense." Sarah shrugged. "We have it back."
This time she stopped.
"What?"
"Agent Larkin gave the Intersect back to us, fully intact. He sent an encrypted message to me. I took it to our scientists and they dealt with it, opened it up, found the Intersect there. Just as it was when he stole it."
Sarah frowned deeply. "He…gave it back to us?"
"Mm." He nodded and gestured for her to sit. She set the bag down at her feet and moved to sit in the chair beside it. The Intersect sat snugly in her bag, transferred into an external drive by Chuck Bartowski himself. Unless what Bryce sent Chuck hadn't been the Intersect after all…?
And she'd just assumed…?
They'd been very careful not to open it.
"No evidence of tampering on it. I think he took it with the intention of selling. And then…feeling the heat get too intense, knowing selling it safely would be extremely difficult, he pulled back. Maybe he thinks sending it to us will mean we forgive him." He snorted. "My superiors aren't quick to forgive."
"I can't imagine they would be," Sarah muttered, confused out of her mind. "Where's Agent Larkin then?"
"We don't know. He went to ground. We tried to track where he sent the message to me from. But when I sent agents there today, all they found was a completely abandoned trailer in the middle of the woods in the San Bernardino mountains. No listing. It was just…there. No prints. Cleaned down, spotless, practically bleached."
Sarah raised her eyebrows. "You think he's been hiding out there? He had a whole op going from that trailer?"
"Don't know. But we collected evidence. Either way, the most important thing is we have the Intersect back."
"And it's…the only one of its kind?" she asked slowly. "We're sure about that?"
"Yes, of course. It took us years to build this one."
Sarah nodded.
Director Graham's Wildcard Enforcer, the so-called Ice Queen other agents avoided in the hallways of Langley, would have reached into her bag and said, "Well what about this one?", setting the hard drive with the Intersect on his desk. A servant of the CIA, through and through.
But there was something else in her besides that Wildcard Enforcer, and maybe it had always been there, waiting to be unlocked. There was a man…the same man who sat on that beach the other night, who apparently believed in magic, who took it on the chin when she told him she was a CIA agent and not just a woman at his birthday party who had romantic interest in him, turned it around, and helped her. He existed. He was real.
And he was worth protecting from all of this.
At the risk of everything else.
Including her career.
And perhaps even her own freedom.
So she didn't reach into the bag at her feet. She just stared at the director.
"So now what?" she asked.
Graham sighed. "We still have agents out there looking for Larkin. We'll bring him in eventually." She wasn't sure they would.
And she wasn't sure she wanted them to, either. Which left her feeling extremely conflicted.
"…Agent Walker?"
Sarah shook herself. "Yessir…"
"I asked how you found Mr. Bartowski in Los Angeles. What'd you find there?"
"Sorry, sir. There was nothing," she said with a shrug.
"Anything strange? Any reason why you think we might want to continue keeping an eye on this guy?"
Sarah shook her head, wondering if Bryce had made a copy of the Intersect without the CIA knowing, or if there was more than one Intersect and Graham just wasn't telling her.
"Strange?" she repeated. "I mean, yeah, the guy reads comic books and he does some weird thing called LARPing that I had to Google." She raised an eyebrow as Graham snorted. "But Charles Bartowski is essentially just a normal guy. Seems like a good guy. Doesn't seem like the type to go off joining some terrorist organization. And for how many rough turns his life has taken, he has a good support system around him and generally seems to have a pretty good outlook. Not disillusioned, doesn't blame women or even society for his problems. He's just a little down on his luck. In a slump. If Larkin had tried to go to him, I don't think he would've gotten his help."
"Hm. An upstanding citizen, huh? Those are few and far between."
Graham didn't know the half of it.
"You're sure he isn't going to be a problem?"
"I'm certain we can write him off, sir. He's clean as a whistle."
"Good enough for me," he said emphatically. "Stick around D.C., huh? We're going to be sending you some new coordinates soon. Another mission. The ambassador of…" His voice faded as he caught sight of the look on her face. "What? What is it?"
"Director Graham…sir." She swallowed hard. "Everything that happened with…Ryker."
"That was over two months ago."
"Yessir. I know. And still, it… I don't think I ever properly…dealt with it. The…betrayal. And the aftermath of it all. I'm not sure I'm in the best state of mind to go out in the field." She winced. "I think if I was properly…erm…recuperated from Ryker's actions, Agent Larkin—my sometimes partner—stealing the Intersect…" She huffed. "I dunno, maybe I might've been observant enough, not distracted, and I would've seen that coming."
He just stared at her. "You think you're a liability right now, Agent Walker?"
Sarah bit her lip. "Yessir, I think I might be. I need a break. I need…space away from…the spy life. Some R&R. I have shit I need to work out on my own."
Graham pursed his lips. "Agent Walker, we…have systems in place to support our employees in situations like this. In times of loss or…confusion…"
"I know. Thank you. I don't think I need a shrink or anything. I just need time to figure everything out, make peace with it. Recuperate. And I didn't give myself that time when I should've. I'd like to take it now, if you'll let me."
"Ryker… What he did, it's weighing heavily on you, isn't it?"
"Very much so, sir." And that wasn't a lie. None of this was a lie. But she also had decisions to make about…other things. Things she didn't want Graham to know about. "And…guilt about not catching Agent Larkin," she added. "I need to be one hundred percent before I come back to work, before I go out in the field. These missions are too important for me to be distracted. If I slip, I don't know…what might happen."
Graham sighed. "I suppose I feel like perhaps I should've known you were struggling earlier than now. Perhaps I've taken things for granted—you for granted. I apologize, Agent Walker. Sarah." She looked at him with wide eyes, surprised. "I guess I assumed you wanted to run from mission to mission."
And it never occurred to him to ask, she thought to herself with no small amount of frustration.
"R&R granted."
Sarah lifted her eyes to his face, trying and failing to disguise her shock.
"I know. Me? Capable of humanity? Who'd have thought?" he snarked, giving her a flat look.
She bit back an apology. He'd earned her shock here.
Instead, she said, "Thank you, sir."
He watched her for a long time, thumping a stack of papers against his desk in the meantime. "You're going off-grid, aren't you?"
Sarah pursed her lips, picking a bit of lint off of her jeans. "If I don't want anyone to find me, they won't find me."
"You sound like Larkin."
"You taught us both well. Me, even better than him."
Graham snorted and nodded. "Fine. As long as you come back. Eventually. Dare I ask for how long?"
The CIA agent nibbled on her bottom lip. "If I give you a timeline, I'll feel honor bound to keep to it. And I don't want to put that pressure on myself. Not right now. When I'm this…" She hated saying this but whatever got her what she needed. "…fragile."
"When you come back, you'd better be the best damned spy I've ever seen in my life."
"I'm not already?" she asked, not a shred of modesty in it.
He seemed unable to keep from chuckling. "You are a force, Sarah. Fine. I'll be here with missions lined up for you when you're ready to return."
With a nod, she picked up her bag, the weight of the external drive not quite as weighty suddenly as she shouldered the strap and turned on her heel, walking out of Graham's office, and out of the building altogether.
}o{
It wasn't that Graham wasn't capable of humanity, it was just that he tended to shove it down under duty and whatever else, the way Sarah'd always done it.
Only he hadn't met Chuck Bartowski.
And she had.
And now she was here, standing on a bridge overlooking the Potomac, her suitcases all packed up and ready in her apartment in D.C…. Not sure what the fuck to do. What did she do now?
She had what was potentially highly classified, sensitive info in a hard drive shoved in her jacket pocket right now. It'd be so easy to let it just slip out of her fingers into the water below.
Lost forever.
But what if Agent Larkin was caught? What if they threatened, bribed, or even tortured the truth out of him? He sent the the Intersect to Chuck Bartowski in an email. Chuck would still be in danger if they knew that, and they would likely also know Sarah had betrayed them. Maybe they'd know she stole it. She'd be in some deep shit. She'd have to go underground too. And Chuck might end up in a bunker.
What if they started looking deeper into Chuck Bartowski's performance at Stanford? What if they discovered his talents, how brilliant he was? Would they pick him up, haul him into their labs, and stick the Intersect in his head anyway? That would make him a prisoner of the CIA, if it didn't scramble his brains the way it already had multiple other agents.
Sarah shut her eyes and took a deep breath.
Until the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She froze, not moving a bit. She'd made sure she hadn't been followed. No CIA tails. She wasn't about to be seen if she decided to throw the Intersect into the river, drowning it forever.
So who was it?
Agent Walker went into the back of her pants, yanked her S&W, and spun to point it at her stalker.
Bryce Larkin stood twenty feet away, his blue eyes going wide, hands up on either side of his head. "Whoa whoa. Ooookay. Hi there…" Sarah just grit her teeth, cocking her gun. Bryce winced. "Still not over the whole… eating your cupcake thing? I should've asked, I know. It was yours. You bought it for yourself. I was just hungry and it was there…on the table…"
"Shut the fuck up. I'm not in the mood to play your little games. What are you doing here?"
He took a deep breath, dropping the snark. But when he started lowering his hands, she stepped closer, pointing the gun even more rigidly. "Keep your hands up, God damn it."
He did, eyes wide. "Okay, okay. They're up. Sarah, I'm not gonna do anything to you."
"Sure. Says the guy who stole the fucking Intersect from U.S. Intelligence, right out from under their noses," she hissed.
"I deserve that," he said with a shrug. "But please don't shoot. I come in peace."
"I don't. You could've fucked up a lot of lives with what you did. Including an innocent guy just trying to pick up the pieces of his life."
There was also the fact that he knew he sent Chuck something, and that something was in her pocket right now. He had to know somehow. Bryce always knew things like this, difficult things to figure out. He was good at that. But if she was miffed about something shitty he'd said, he was clueless.
There was no way Bryce didn't know she had this copy of the Intersect or whatever it was. That Chuck had given it to her. And now he'd followed her here to retrieve it from her. She shook her head slowly. "This isn't yours. You can't have it. Over my dead body."
"Jesus, Walker." He huffed, shaking his head. "You're always so intense. There aren't gonna be any dead bodies, okay? Least of all yours."
"Jury's out on yours."
"Fair." He shrugged. "I'm not going to harm you. Or anyone else. I don't want anyone hurt, which is why I stole the Intersect from the CIA in the first place."
"Graham told me you sent the Intersect back to them."
"I notice you didn't tell Graham about the Intersect I sent my ol' buddy." He took a step closer and she let him, but kept her gun pointed at him.
Sarah felt heat rise from her collar. "Yeah well…I'm not sure what it is I have now. I thought it was the Intersect, and now, I—"
"It's a copy," Bryce interrupted, stepping just a little closer.
Her jaw fell open. "What?!" she snapped. "A copy? Impossible. It took multiple Intelligence agencies working together, the best scientists in the country, working on this thing for years to get it to where it is now," she emphasized. "And you want me to believe you were able to copy it just like that? In a week?"
His eyes flicked to the side and he swallowed thickly. "Yeah. That's what happened."
"You sent Chuck the copy and the original to the CIA. Why?"
"I wanted the CIA off of Chuck's back. I didn't want them looking at him anymore. I want them to leave him alone. It's what I've always wanted. For them to leave him the fuck alone."
"So you sent him a copy? Are you hearing yourself?" She uncocked and lowered the gun, but kept it in her hand. Just in case.
"He's the only person I trust to have it, Sarah. The only person. I thought he could keep it safe, and they'd have their own, and they'd stop looking for him. But with Chuck having a copy, we have the ability to stop them if they start using the Intersect…in the way I fear they might use it."
Sarah frowned deeply. "You think our Intelligence community would use the Intersect for bad? To start wars, pour money into our coffers on the backs of third world countries?"
"There's precedent there, Sarah. You and I both have done our fair share of awful shit. Am I off base?"
He wasn't. She just frowned even harder. "So you'd use Chuck to counteract it? That's a lot of fucking pressure for a guy just trying to live his life."
Bryce nodded. "Yeah, but he's…kind of special." He was. He was so special, it was almost hard for her to fathom. And she missed him like crazy. "Look, he wasn't in the right place to make the decision then, but now he can. Now he can decide if he wants to save the world or not. The Intersect would corrupt anyone else, but not him. You can't corrupt this kid."
Kid?
Weren't they the same age?
"You act like he's a child, stupid and naive to the ways of the world." She scoffed, shaking her head. "He's lived through some real shit, Bryce. I…I read his dossier. His parents walked out on him and his sister when they were kids. They raised themselves out of that somehow. He's not naive, and he's certainly not stupid."
"I don't think he's naive or stupid! But he hasn't seen what we've seen." He gestured between them, stepping in even closer, a mere two feet from her. And she had a thought that it'd be so easy to step in against him and shove, sending him over the railing and into the water below.
She stayed put.
"He doesn't know what we know. And I'd like to keep it that way. I knew that if I sent it now, he'd be more prepared for…this choice. He's older, better able to make the decision—"
"That's so rich," she interrupted with a scoff. "You slept with his girlfriend at Stanford, Bryce. You don't get to say jack shit about who Chuck was back then or what he was capable of."
She didn't mean to snarl so viciously, and she definitely didn't mean to let him see that it meant something to her. But he'd seen it. She spotted the way his eyes widened, his chin pulling back, the corners of his lips turning up just slightly. Shit. Shit fuck shit. There was no way she'd be able to convince him otherwise now. The damage was done.
"So you met him, did you? Talked to him? All you gotta do is spend about five minutes with that guy…" He got quiet then, turning to lean back against the railing, sticking his hands in his pockets. "He has a way of making you feel like you could blow up the world if it means protecting him."
Sarah turned wide eyes on him. He was right. She would blow up the world to protect that man. Without blinking.
"I'm not surprised to find Chuck's still the same guy he was then. Like I said, the guy's special. It's why I knew I didn't want the CIA getting their grimy fuckin' hands on him back then."
She sighed, and then what he said dawned on her and she turned to face him head on. "Wait. What are you going on about? Are you talking about Stanford?"
"They tested him." Bryce looked extremely uncomfortable, and she felt a horrid tingling sensation in her gut, a fear she knew where this was going. "Back at Stanford. He took the same test I did. Only later. They found me first, freshman year. It took them a bit longer to find Chuck because he's an underprivileged kid without connection, harder to get on their radar. It took our prof singling him out after having him in a class. They administered the test and he got the highest possible score there is. Fuck, I mean, he blew everyone out of the water, Sarah."
She almost felt a little faint as she propped her hands on the railing to hold herself up.
Bryce leaned even closer. "He was in already. Nothing was gonna stop them. They'd already stuck the Intersect in a few other people's heads, agents who'd volunteered, and they ended up God damn vegetables. It was a done deal. Someone who scored that high? If anyone could take the Intersect, it was him. And I knew they'd force him into service. Into the field. That guy? With what he's got in here?" He thumped himself in the chest. "No fucking way is he gonna reach twenty-five without getting cut down by someone he chooses to trust when he shouldn't."
Sarah swallowed thickly. "They were going to recruit him into the Farm?"
"The Farm? Nah. They weren't gonna put him through the Farm." Sarah sent him a startled look, knowing what he was getting at. "They would'a fast tracked him, hid him away, stuck him in a bunker 'til they brought him out like a tool to use when they needed him to dig in that Intersect brain of his, and then back into the hole he'd go. To be by himself. 'Til he wastes away. And that guy?" He pointed away from them. "That guy needs to be with people. His people. He can't be stuck in a hole with no human interaction. He can't function like that. It would kill him." He pushed away from the railing, visibly upset. "What I did saved his life. It meant losing a friend I…cared about, but it saved his life."
Agent Walker thought about what Bryce just said, and the vehemence in him as he said it. She thought he actually believed what he did was the right thing. The only right thing to do. "What if you'd talked to him first, given him a choice."
"He wouldn't understand the nuances of it. The guy was raised watching bad spy movies. He thinks everything is James Bond. He'd think it was super cool, a great opportunity, and he'd dive right in and wouldn't realize what he'd gotten himself into until way too late, Sarah."
She seemed to remember Bryce doing the stupid Larkin. Bryce Larkin. Shaken not stirred bullshit on more than one occasion when they were partners, but Chuck was getting slighted for his James Bond thing?
"And still," she said in the silence. "It would've been his decision."
"Okay. So what are you doing out here on this bridge?" She wanted to punch him so badly her fist ached to crash into his jaw. She felt her fist twitching in ache. "Not gonna answer?"
"Don't use that tone with me, Agent Larkin," she hissed, leaning in close.
The crackle and buzz that used to exist between them, even in arguments, maybe especially during arguments, wasn't here anymore. At least not for her. The physical attraction still existed, she wouldn't lie to herself about that, but even that had dulled. He was just a sad man, alone, tragic even. Throwing his friend under a bus to keep him from getting eaten by a horrific monster.
"You still haven't answered. Why are you on this bridge? I'll answer for you. When you get rid of that Intersect copy, is it because you talked to Chuck about it first? And he doesn't want it?" He raised his eyebrows.
Sarah glared out at the water. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"That belongs with Chuck," he said adamantly. She wished she'd stashed it in the pocket that wasn't close to him, and she decided to subtly turn around to lean back the way he was, so that the drive was in the opposite pocket furthest from him.
"You were going to force it into his brain now just like they would've when he was twenty-one," she snapped. "So what's the difference between then and now? Why protect him then, and put him in danger now?"
Bryce shook his head. "No. No, I wasn't forcing anything. The Intersect was in the email, but if he'd opened it, that wouldn't have triggered the Intersect immediately. We…" He huffed, shoving his hands in his pockets, turning to the water. "There was this game we were building together over the course of our time at Stanford. Rudimentary but we had fun with it. And I put it in the email. He had to solve…a sort of puzzle. He had to remember and it… It was like an RPG command and—Gah, forget it. You wouldn't even know what any of that means," he said with a scoff.
And she was struck by his patronizing tone. No, of course she didn't know video game lingo, she didn't watch James Bond, she wasn't well-versed on whatever nerdy shit Chuck loved, that Bryce apparently also loved. But where Chuck had laid all of those weird things he loved out on a table for her the first night he met her, come what may—a sort of "this is who I am, take it or leave it" gesture—Bryce had hidden all of that away. Locked away in a safe. From her, from everyone. Like he was ashamed of it. Ashamed of a part of himself he'd left behind in college perhaps. It was sad. And at the same time, he scoffed at her for not knowing what RPG meant. Chuck hadn't scoffed, or sniffed, or rolled his eyes. He'd just given her more information, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Strange how even just a month ago, she would've deemed Agent Bryce Larkin as the pinnacle of the male creature. Hot, smart, efficient, capable, hard-working, determined, and even funny sometimes.
She'd been so stilted, so cut off from the world.
His shoulders were hunched, his face drawn and tinged with exhaustion, his arms crossed, closed off from her, frustrated and impatient. Patronizing. And tragic. So so tragic.
"Attack troll with nasty knife," Bryce muttered. She was so confused. "That would've unleashed the Intersect. But it was up to him. He had to choose to solve it."
Sarah made a frustrated sound and grabbed onto her head in both hands. "How is that giving him a choice, Bryce? He isn't knowingly deciding to put top secret government intel into his brain, potentially putting him in a prison of the CIA's making. He would've thought he was playing a game!"
"That's still sort of his decision though!"
"Oh my God." She dropped her arms to her sides and huffed, shaking her head.
"Look, Sarah. You-You have the copy now. You took it, saved him from it, whatever. You have it. So now you get to decide what to do with it. I'm not gonna try to take it from you, I know better than to think I can without you sticking a knife in my kidney."
"Good," she said.
She felt him smiling and she had to bite her cheek to keep from smiling too.
"He know about all of this?"
Sarah swallowed hard. She didn't want Bryce to know that she'd told Chuck everything, because that would mean she'd instilled a massive amount of trust in this man she barely knew. And she knew that Bryce would glean something extra from that. He wouldn't be wrong to, either. And he'd know she was vulnerable. He'd have inside info on how to get to her. The only thing was…Chuck seemed to be his vulnerable spot too. Which was interesting…
Sarah went out on a limb. "There was no way to get access to his email, to stop him from opening it…without telling him about me, about you."
The other agent was silent for a while, nearly a whole minute, and then he breathed, "You actually told him the truth, didn't you? All of it?" Sarah felt heat rising from her collar. "So it seems you placed a lot of trust in him too. Heh. The power of Chuck Bartowski."
Sarah didn't respond to that, just staring hard at the glistening Potomac.
"I doubt he knows you're standing here on this bridge, about to toss it into the water instead of giving it to your superiors." Bryce turned to face the water too and leaned in close with his elbow propped on the railing, his chin in his palm. It irked her. "Why aren't you giving it to them? Why did you keep it a secret?"
"You know why," she snapped, annoyed with him.
"Do I?"
"…His life would change forever," she said softly. "They would never leave him alone. Not ever. They'd be on him for the rest of his life. They'd find things out about him, about how smart he is, his talents with technology, his inner strength. And they'd never let him go. Me taking the Intersect from his email and handing it in, allowing our scientists to go into his email account, fuck around with your message and erase it, wouldn't be the end of this. I was walking into Langley, so ready to be the shining star in Director Graham's eyes, his…Wildcard Enforcer who always gets the job done. Redemption for not realizing you were a traitorous scumbag when you were right in front of me."
"Ouch," Bryce muttered. She ignored him.
"And then I realized…I mean, how stupid am I to think they'd let that be the end of it for Chuck? The fact that you even thought of him in the first place as a person who should have the Intersect? That's enough for them to dog that man 'til kingdom come. Or worse, bring him in. And once they do that, there's no going back for him."
Agent Larkin emitted a thoughtful hum.
"So what you're saying is…you're risking your career, your whole career, the one you've been honing with a sharp blade like a fuckin' surgeon for a decade now so that you have more control over your destiny…" That made her clench her jaw. He really wanted to get pushed off the bridge, didn't he? "…and you're doing it for one guy who works at the Burbank Buy More. To keep him living his normal life." She hated the face he made, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows, letting out the little sarcastic "Huh." again. "So I'll ask again. You give Chuck a choice before deciding to toss this copy into the river?"
She didn't answer.
Bryce shook his head. "Okay, whatever. I said it before; I'm not trying to take it from you. It's yours now. And you decide what to do with it. Either give it to him like I was going to or…destroy it. Chuck's safe from the CIA for now, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make sure it stays that way."
Sarah spun to look at him in shock. "So you aren't going to let the CIA know you sent this copy to Chuck…?"
"Way I see it, we're the only three people in the world who know. Me, you, Chuck himself. That's it. And I'm not gonna be the one who spills it. Will you? How 'bout Chuck? He gonna tell 'em?"
Bryce knew the answer, she was sure. She'd take it to her grave and Chuck? Well she didn't know about Chuck. But if he knew the danger this would stick him in, and possibly his family too, he might be more apt to keep mum on the Bryce email.
"He's pretty fucking amazing, isn't he?"
Sarah blinked, and then she looked away from him, shifting her weight, uncomfortable.
Fuck it. "Almost too good to be true," she said quietly, tucking some hair that escaped her braid behind her ear.
"That's the thing though. He is. He's real. The guy definitely isn't perfect. I've seen him eat a slice of pepperoni pizza with Twizzlers on top." Sarah gave Bryce a look. Ew. "I know. I mean, context…he was very drunk. Verging on alcohol poisoning drunk. I think the Twizzler pepperoni saved him from that fate." He smiled, a genuine smile as he looked off in the distance. And she was reminded of his kind moments, when she liked him the best. Those were the moments when she thought he was incredible, the greatest, someone she could be partners with for a long, long time. Who she could be more than partners with, and have it actually be good…functional…healthy.
That wasn't in the cards.
It never had been.
But she'd thought it then.
Now she knew this wasn't ever going to happen. As fun as it had been while it had lasted.
He wasn't a traitor, though. Or, well…maybe he was. And maybe she was too. But he wasn't in the wrong. At last not in her book. Not for taking the Intersect this time. She still had conflicted feelings about his decision at Stanford. Saving Chuck Bartowski from a fate like hers—or worse than hers potentially—was worth anything. But keeping him in the dark, ruining his life without him getting a say in it? She couldn't get behind that.
Bryce Larkin wasn't bad. He was misguided. Full of himself, sure he knew all the answers to everything, and anyone who disagreed with him was wrong. He thought he knew better than everyone in every situation. She'd known that when she was his partner and it had been annoying…
But he'd wanted to protect someone he obviously still cared an awful lot about now, years later.
"I'm not saying this for pity or whatever, but honestly? I look back at the last couple of years and, like…even before college, before the CIA picked me up, I've never had a friend like that. Like Chuck, I mean. He was like a soul-brother. We just got each other. Came from totally different places and just…" He intertwined his fingers. "Found a middle point and stuck to it. Best friend I ever had, will ever have at this point." He shrugged. "But he's no spy. Maybe it's best you just drop the copy in the river. If someone gets their hands on the real Intersect, someone who means to do harm, who wants to use it to conquer the whole world, cause mayhem and destruction, topple democracies in the name of tyranny… I really do believe Chuck would have what it took to fight it back. But…" He swallowed hard. "I guess none of us have the right to put that on his shoulders, do we?"
He pushed his hand through his hair, unkempt and a little dirty even. This was a Bryce Larkin she wasn't used to seeing, vulnerable, not well put together, in need of…she didn't know what. Care? It made her chest hurt. She truly felt sorry for him.
"And you don't know him like I do, but…" Bryce smirked at her. "I think you know him enough to know that if the world calls on him to be a hero, there's no fucking way that guy doesn't step up to the plate. It's a hero complex that'll get 'im killed maybe, but it's kinda…inspiring, isn't it?"
Sarah shook her head. "He doesn't have a hero complex," she said steadily. "It isn't a need to be the hero in every situation that drives Chuck. But when something's wrong, I can see him wanting to make it right. And when he knows he's the only one with the power to make something right…"
"So we're on the same page then," Bryce said with an almost dismissive shrug. There he was, not liking to be corrected.
"He's a hero. Plain and simply. No complex exists there. He's just a hero."
"Hero or not, he doesn't have the skills, or the…ruthlessness. He's too moral for this work."
And maybe that was exactly what "this work" needed. For once. Someone with the moral center to ask those questions in the field. A steady head, hand…and heart. Someone who cared about people enough to question orders that put said people at risk.
A heart that helped him find a way to save people rather than taking what the agents back at Langley liked to call collateral damage, which made her feel sick every time she heard it.
And maybe Sarah'd always known that, but spending a night galavanting around LA with Chuck Bartowski, Nerd Herd supervisor, had underlined it with a God damn Sharpie.
"Choice is yours, Walker. Either way. I'm walking away now…" he said slowly, backing up from her, headed in the direction he'd come from.
Sarah furrowed her brow watching him like he was mad. "So?"
"Just…wanna make sure you don't put a bullet in my back." He lifted his arms up by his head again.
She'd holstered her weapon long ago, but she drew it again, leaving it uncocked. "How 'bout your front?" She made a gun sound and limply pointed it at him, rearing it back as if she took a shot.
"Very funny. Hilarious. You know, we learned at the Farm that you never cock a gun or point it unless you're ready to actually take the shot, Walker."
"Oops. Guess I skipped that class at the Farm," she snarked. "Oh wait! I skipped the whole Farm, didn't I?"
She holstered the gun again.
Bryce made a stinky face in her direction, rolling his eyes. But he stopped moving away from her, merely standing, his arms down by his sides, looking at her with an amount of earnestness that verged on longing.
She felt uncomfortable, the dregs of the romantic feelings she'd had for him stirring a bit.
"What're you gonna do now?" she asked, interrupting the uncomfortable moment.
Agent Larkin shrugged, squinting off to the side. "Go to ground. But I'll be around, don't worry. I have ways of keeping an eye on Chuck and I'm gonna use 'em to make sure the CIA stays the fuck outta his life." He looked right at her then. "Which probably means I'll be keeping an eye on you too, Walker."
Sarah did her best not to react.
"…Am I wrong?" he continued. "You're not going off into the sunset 'cause it'd be the right thing for him, the safe thing for him. For you too. It's shocking, if I can be honest with you. Sarah Walker, Wildcard Enforcer…the Ice Queen…" She felt a pang at him using that one. It felt unfair. "This caught up in the curls." He whistled low.
"You're crazy," she said, cutting off his stupid whistle.
"Uh huh. Sure I am." He snorted. She really was gonna punch him. "Just do me a favor."
"What?!"
She didn't mean to snap. Reacting like this was giving him prime evidence that his teasing was getting under her skin, which meant he wasn't barking up the wrong tree. She couldn't help it, though. He was making her feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, weak even.
She was having a hard time reconciling all of it even within herself. It did feel like a weakness, her inability to resist Chuck Bartowski's kindness, his unpracticed charm and thoughtfulness, his sense of humor…his touch, and his kiss. The unending tenderness of him. And the way he felt safe in a way nothing in her life ever had…even as he brought so much danger to her doorstep.
She hadn't been strong enough to turn away from all of that and do her job.
Of course she couldn't let him get fed to the wolves, it wasn't about that. This was right, keeping him from danger, from being kidnapped by the CIA or anyone else who might want the Intersect for themselves.
But the deep feelings, the way she was so inexplicably drawn to him, wanting to be around him, with him, wanting to deserve having him return those feelings…the way she was diving into that instead of keeping herself from it, she felt so weak. Selfish.
She wanted to see him so badly it hurt. She wanted to be with him so badly, it hurt even worse than that. She had this ridiculous thought the night before when she was trying to go to sleep, this glorious, wonderful, ridiculous thought—a foolish vision—of finishing a mission, a hard mission, one that took a lot out of her and made things seem bleak again, showing up at his door, and being enveloped in his arms. The silence as he held her tightly, letting her hold onto him even tighter. Like a buoy in a storm. And then they'd make themselves hard drinks, he'd tell her about one of his coworkers almost burning down the Buy More, she'd tell him what she could tell him about her mission, and they'd just bask in each other's presence, pushing away that bleak sensation, finding hope again in life, in one another.
It was unrealistic, she knew.
And she wanted it so badly she could die.
"Protect him. And I don't just mean from the CIA, Agent Walker. I mean the spy shit. All of it. You're in neck deep. It's hard to imagine you being…around him, erm…" He shifted his weight awkwardly, frowning hard. "With him, without imagining him maybe getting caught up in it. Just make sure that doesn't happen, okay? 'Cause I-I worked really hard to make sure he was kept out of it. I made sacrifices—"
"Yeah, you sure did, sacrificed the guy's future by making decisions for him—"
"—and you're gonna dunk him right back into it," he continued, raising his voice to talk over her interruption. "It'll kill him, Sarah. And if not physically then…it'll destroy the stuff in him that seems to have gotten both of us."
Bryce watched her sadly, and she didn't know where the sadness stemmed from. The end of their relationship (or whatever)? Or was it fear for Chuck? Maybe both? Maybe he knew that if he'd ever had her at all…he'd lost her to a better man now…?
She felt sappy and foolish for that thought, looking away from him, embarrassed, probably blushing even.
"You took away his choice when he was at Stanford, plunged him back into a hard life when he'd been so close to success in spite of everything he'd gone through with his parents, surviving with his sister, working hard to get where he was. And you did it to protect him… only to send what you were protecting him from right to his doorstep yet again a handful of years later. You sent him the trigger that would put the Intersect into his brain. Don't talk to me about dunking him right back into it."
Bryce looked like he was going to argue, and then she saw him give up. It was in his face, in his body language, the way he shrugged and immediately sagged tiredly. "Yeah, good point."
He turned to start leaving again and then stopped one more time, looking back at her. "You know, Walker… Sarah," he emphasized. "I really did what I thought was the best thing. Chuck Bartowski is extraordinary in ways—it's-it's hard to put into words. No one like him in the whole world." She was certain he was right. "I believe with everything in me that he'd keep that Intersect safe. The one person in the world who wouldn't let that power corrupt him. I think the guy's genuinely…incorruptible. There isn't anybody else out there who could be trusted to do good—only good—with something as powerful as the Intersect."
Sarah didn't say anything, merely watching him walk away.
The agent she was supposed to be, the one she was trained, bred to be, would go after him, put him in handcuffs, and take him straight to Langley to face the repercussions of his actions. It would put an end to this nonsense once and for all. If she handed them the copy of the Intersect too, that'd be it. And she would get back the reputation she was sure she'd lost pieces of by not catching signs of Bryce's treachery before it happened.
She didn't.
She let him leave. And she felt a deep sadness. She could've maybe given him something to help him keep putting one foot in front of the other. A moment of humanity to remind him he wasn't a ghost.
And after only a week of Chuck being on her radar, eight to ten hours of interaction with him, her behavior now, her thoughts, couldn't all be just this good man's influence on her. This all had to be in her this whole time.
Sarah turned to the water and reached into her pocket, pulling the drive out. And she glanced at the spot where Agent Bryce Larkin had finally stepped out of view moments earlier. He was gone.
It was just her, this external hard drive, and her decision.
She held the drive in her hand. It's weight there in her palm. And she glanced down at it, then down at the water. How many people had died for the Intersect to exist in its form now? How had Bryce Larkin managed to copy it? For all of his brilliance, his exceptional math brain, he'd never shown the tech genius she'd seen evidence of in Chuck Bartowski. Certainly not enough that he'd be able to make a copy of the Intersect in such a short amount of time.
She had so many questions, and while those wouldn't disappear if she tossed this into the depths of the river below, a lot of her problems would. And more importantly, Chuck's problems, the danger he was in…that'd disappear too.
He'd been scrubbed from the CIA's radar mostly. Just a random guy who had nothing to do with any of this, not worth their time or effort…
Dropping this into the water would go a long way to keeping it that way and she had every reason to just get rid of it.
She set the drive on the railing of the bridge.
She took a deep breath.
And then she picked it up again.
Within moments she felt it slip out of her fingers and she walked away, not knowing if she chose right, and terrified—absolutely terrified—that she hadn't.
A/N: Still more to come. Thanks for reading! Please review.
-SC
