A/N: Hold your water.


CHAPTER FIVE


Knowledge


Bartowski punched a few buttons then put the phone to his ear. Meanwhile, Sarah fought to comprehend the situation.

After a moment: "It's me," Bartowski said tightly, "yes, put him on." Bartowski waited for another moment. "Jack, she's here. — Make the situation clear to her."

He held the phone out to Sarah.

She gazed at it, still fossilized in incomprehension. Bartowski sighed and waved the phone as if to get her attention, and she heard her father's voice, tinny and distant between her and Bartowski.

"Darlin', Darlin'?..."

Sarah had not seen her father for almost a year. The last time was in Reno, Nevada. It had not been a pleasant weekend visit. Sarah had stormed from Nevada in a rage, vowing to wash her hands of her father forever.

"Darlin'..."

"Walker," Bartowski said, waving the phone again, this time more insistently.

She took the phone from him, glared at him ineffectually, and put it against her ear. She couldn't wash her hands of Jack. He was her dad, vow what she may.

"Dad?"

"Hey, girl," her father said, the voice unmistakably his but also anxious, "look, do what he says, okay?"

Sarah could not believe her question but she asked: "Has he hurt you, Dad?"

Her stomach had sickened; she tasted bile. She repeated her question. "Has he hurt you?"

"No, no, darlin', I'm fine. I mean, not at liberty, you know, but fine. No one's hurt me. Three hots and a cot. Well, a bed. Pizza. Cable TV. I Dream of Jeannie. I'm fine."

Her stomach loosened; she swallowed the bile, but it burned on its return trip. She gambled. "Where are you?"

Bartowski scowled at her, shook his head. Her father cleared his throat on the other end of the line. "I can't say that, darlin'. You know the drill. I…"

Her father's voice vanished. Someone had taken the phone from him. She heard Jack apologize, his voice faint: "Sorry, sorry."

The phone clicked and went dead.

She took it from her ear. Her eyes filled with tears. She still could not understand, though she understood. It was impossible but actual. Real. Bartowski, Chuck Bartowski, had her father and was using him to blackmail her.

She tried to shunt away her tears. "Bart — , Chuck, goddamn it, he's my dad. You can't...you couldn't...please, don't." She had never begged before, not in all the grim situations of her career, not even under torture. She was begging now. Her 'please' was a prayer.

She was lost. All she thought she understood had shattered, scattered into shards like that window in Seattle.

Bartowski stood up, took the phone from her with his free hand. The gun was in his other hand. He walked to the edge of the porch and gazed out at the sky, his back to her. He slipped the phone into his pocket.

Clouds moved but he did not.

He eventually faced her, the gun still in his hand. "Nothing will happen to Jack if you do as I ask. Believe me. He's comfortable. And, hey," he shrugged and smiled, for a second the Burbank boy reappeared, "at least he's not somewhere in Reno, pissing off mob bosses."

Sarah reeled. Bartowski knew about Reno. For a moment she felt like she was dangling over the mountainside, the foot far, far below. Does he know it all, all about Reno?

She made herself exhale slowly, stop trying to understand and she let her training take over. Reflex, habit.

She could feel her pulse slow, as it did when she touched a trigger.

"What do you want me to do?"

I need to let this play out, unspool, figure out what is happening. Look for an opening, a way to turn the tables.

Bartowski gathered himself, then spoke in a measured voice. "I don't suppose you kept watching television after...Burbank?"

She did not answer directly. This felt familiar — Bartowski on a tangent, asking an obtuse question. "Why?"

"Have you ever watched Firefly?"

"A show about...lightning bugs?"

He winced just noticeably. "No, a space show."

"Like Star Track?"

He looked pained "Trek. — Yes and no. There were cowboys."

"Cowboys?"

Bartowski waved his hands. "Forget it. So, there was an episode, the last one. Maybe the best single episode of a TV show ever. A bounty hunter named Early — a bad man — snuck aboard Serenity, the ship featured in the show, a firefly. That was the kind of spaceship. He wanted to kidnap a girl on board, River." For a moment, his eyes seemed to clear, to shine as he remembered.

But he paused. "Anyway," as he began, his eyes obscured again, "Early told River's brother that he was going to help Early find River — she was hiding — and that her brother would agree to do it because it would give him a chance to turn the tables on Early." Bartowski went quiet and gave Sarah a dark, significant glance.

"This is your TV-aided way of warning me not to try to turn the tables on you?"

"I know you, Walker. You're good. But you are not good enough. Best to do as you are told. That's your real talent, right, what you're best at, obedience?"

The question was a hammer blow. Back in Burbank, he had asked her to go on vacation and she had instead accepted reassignment. At least, that's what Bartowski believed. It was true, true enough, even if it was more complicated than that. But the blow of the question focused her.

She lashed out, leaned forward, her rocking chair a high horse. "You do know that your TV parable makes you that bad man, the bounty hunter, Early?"

Bartowski's mouth snapped shut. His eyes glowed like fanned coals. "I suppose...I suppose it does. It makes me a bad man. So, we're a pair, you and I, aren't we?"

"A pair?"

He stalked toward her, one step for each comment. "I know you. I haven't only talked to your father, Sarah. I've been in Langley, worked as a CIA agent. I've met other agents, gotten to know the Director. I've been partnered with Carina Miller."

"You've what?!" Sarah knew her question was unclear, it singled out nothing, but she saw red.

It was too much. Incomprehension swamped her totally.

Bartowski leaned down, lowered his face to hers, the gun in his hand on the arm of her chair.

For the first time, she could see his eyes, see into them. The knowledge in them overpowered her. She could smell him — warm skin, the faint smell of soap, a muskiness familiar from Burbank, and sweet. In the midst of her anger, her heart backflipped.

"I know you, Sarah Walker, Jenny Burton, Samantha... Whatever the fuck your name is." His voice had dropped low, a rasp. "I know what you were before Burbank and what you've been since. Don't you judge me!"

The urge to touch him was on her again, as urgent as Seattle. But she didn't know whether it was now an urge to caress or kill.

How much does he know about Reno?