A/N: Onward.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cleaners
Tears on her cheeks, Sarah stepped to Chuck and gently put her hands on his tensed shoulders.
He was still leaning against the sink, watching the water spin as it drained. Rubbing softly, she whispered to him: "I'm so sorry, Chuck. I...I had no idea."
He faced her. She dropped her hands to her sides, unsure about whether to continue to touch him. A confusion of pain, old and new, showed in his eyes. He nodded, noticing her tears.
"You couldn't have known," that strange matter-of-factness again, "we, they, the CIA, kept it quiet."
His pause sounded more a comma than a period, so Sarah kept still, waiting.
Chuck swallowed hard then picked up the dishrag, wrung it out, and walked past her, head down.
He began to scrub the table with the rag. As he did, he spoke, exertion in his voice. "My fault. It was my fault. You left Burbank and I...I went into a tailspin, so much worse than after Jill. Dad stayed in Burbank with me, set up a workshop, wanted to start working together, programming together, reclaiming the tech Roark stole from him, perfecting new tech.
"It should have been great. Dad was back. Ellie was married; she and Devon moved to a new apartment and Dad and I took the old one. I wasn't working at the Buy More." His voice was slowing, lowering.
"But — Dad, he wasn't...right. It took me a while, but I realized that he had the Intersect. An old, really old version — one he'd had since back before he left us, Ellie and me. He downloaded it to hunt for Mom after she disappeared. But it didn't work; he couldn't find her.
"Anyway, he was cagey about all of that — about Mom, the hunt for her. — I don't know why he couldn't find her, where he thought she went.
"The Intersect had started to cause him problems, so he built a governor, installed it in a wristwatch. It helped, but it only slowed and couldn't stop the encroachment of the Intersect on his mind. It was bad by the time you and I found him. It got worse. Then we started fighting. I didn't want to do that work, the programming. My time as the Intersect misfit me for that life." He wrung the rag again, scrubbed. "I wanted to be a spy. It pissed him off— beyond all reason. He kept telling me I couldn't make it, couldn't survive the Farm, couldn't stomach a life like yours. It would be my ruin. He told me that I was thinking with...well, not with my head."
He paused, glanced up from the table, the spot he was obsessively scrubbing — but he did not hold her eyes.
He went back to scrubbing the spot. "He had an advanced version of the Intersect, a secret. It inscribed skills, not just information. He tried to hide it from me, but I discovered it.
"It was in a secure lab beneath our old house. In Tarzana. I didn't let him know I had found it. I stewed for a while. I admit, I feared he was right, that I couldn't cut it as a spy, that I'd be a Farm reject, so I decided to download the new version myself, take a shortcut. — A shortcut to Langley, and to…"
He stopped scrubbing the spot and started rearranging the chairs, pointedly not-looking at Sarah.
Sarah stood, watching. He started scrubbing again with more exertion. "So, Chuck, did you download it, the new Intersect?"
"Yes. But I did more, and worse." He stalled for a moment, hands on a wooden chair back, rag still in one, then went on with his answer.
"There was a rogue CIA agent, a man named Quinn," he paused, looked at Sarah with a raised eyebrow, and Sarah shrugged her ignorance of the name, "he was a shadowy figure before he went rogue; the CIA — Graham — used him but never wanted to parade him. Anyway, sometime, years ago, he found out about the Intersect. Don't know how. All I know is he wanted it. — No, wanted is too weak. Lusted for it. He'd chased it like it was his damn Horcrux…"
"What?" Sarah asked, bewildered by the unexpected word.
Chuck's face pinched. "Nevermind. — He just wanted it badly, somehow thought of it as rightfully his, his due. He'd found out about me, knew about Dad, by code-name, as Orion. Quinn was in Burbank — and I didn't know. I led him right to it, right to the new Intersect, the lab."
"But I downloaded it before he was able to break into the lab. We fought: my new, downloaded skills made me more than his equal." For a moment, Chuck's voice swelled. "I beat him. And then I beat him some more." The sound of pride sank into self-loathing. "I didn't realize Dad had just entered the lab. Quinn was desperate. He pulled a grenade from beneath his coat. I had been so...drunk...with new power, with what I could do, I hadn't noticed Quinn had it." His voice dropped. "Even worse, I didn't notice Dad come in. Quinn pulled the pin. I hit him; he dropped the grenade and I dived behind a metal table we'd knocked over."
He stopped but Sarah knew what was coming. She put a hand to her mouth to stifle her reaction, but could not stop her tears. "I didn't see Dad until after the explosion. He was dead. There was nothing I could do. Quinn was dead. I was fine. I...I couldn't think. I called Beckman. She called the Director. They controlled the scene, the LAPD. Cleaners came. Fucking cleaners…" He looked at the rag in his hand, the wet tabletop.
Sarah started toward him but he put out his hand, stopping her.
"No, no. — That's how I became a spy. The Director flew me to DC. She arranged for Dad to have a private service. That's how Ellie found out about me, about you and Casey, about what had been going on all along. Beckman didn't know, still doesn't know, I have the Intersect. I don't know what the Director told her but we've never talked again.
"The Director put me through a series of tests, all very secret, and then made me an agent. No Farm, all Intersect. No one knew I had it — Dad and Quinn were gone. Beckman didn't know. Only the Director. I was under strict orders to tell no one. Especially you."
He cleared his throat, stared at the rag as if he'd only just noticed it, then dropped it, and sat heavily at the table.
Sarah wiped her eyes. "Why me?"
"She thought you'd feel it was your job to protect the Intersect again, that you'd want to be assigned to it, to me, to be my partner. But I didn't need protection, that is, the Intersect didn't need protection, and I didn't want you with me again...out of obligation." Sarah felt the room enlarge somehow, cool. Chuck continued, talking through clenched teeth. "You left me as soon as I got rid of the Intersect. After everything...I would've been finished if you came back to me only after I had it again, if you came back to it, so I agreed."
He smiled a non-smile, a straight razor, mordant, bitter.
Sarah longed to sit with him and weep, take him in her arms. But she was unsure how to embrace his grief, and his eyes were obscure again; he radiated polar distance. She did not know how to approach him.
She faltered. She hated herself for it.
"I wish I could tell Ellie how sorry I am about Stephen," she finally offered. It was true but she watched for his reaction.
She got none. He sat staring at the damp tabletop. She needed to keep him talking. His withdrawal from her was palpable. Soon he'd be the man in Seattle again.
She decided to ask him about Carina when he suddenly stood up.
"I'll get the file on the Fulcrum agent who's coming tomorrow. We can prepare. Maybe...maybe what happened this morning will turn out to be good for something…" He gave her a direct glance, his eyes on hers but unavailable, "...you know, good for the cover."
He walked to his bedroom and Sarah numbly followed. Now, her head was down.
She'd heard those words from him before, at Ellie's wedding. And she had often dismissed her own actions, and dismissed him, and distanced herself from him with those words — when they were a fake couple in Burbank.
That morning, she had planned to turn the tables on him. But he had done it to her, more completely than she would have thought possible.
