A/N: Thanks for reading.


CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Filed Down


Chuck walked to the head of his bed.

The bed was still unmade, the covers twisted and wound, the sheets showing the impress of their earlier passion. It rushed back over Sarah, and she blushed when Chuck caught her staring at the bed. He avoided looking at it after looking at her — other than looking at the edge of the mattress.

He lifted it and pulled a file from beneath it.

"Impressive spy hiding spot," Sarah said, trying to get his face to change, to soften.

He shrugged, unconcerned. "Suppose so." He stepped closer to her but was careful to leave a distance. He stared into her eyes.

"So — you're on my side?" he asked, holding the file in front of him, continuing to stare. "If so, then you can help me. This file is a Fulcrum file — Randolph Clarke's Fulcrum file. But you've seen — no, you've studied his CIA file. I know your methods, Walker. You're prepared. That room was well-chosen: I can't fault your planning. Except you didn't see me coming."

No, Chuck, I didn't, but I was wishing for it, secretly. Secret's out.

"Let's go sit down. I'll tell you what I know about him, some of what I know about him, and you'll tell me what you know."

Sarah returned his stare. "I'll tell you — if you also tell me about Carina. How it is you've talked to her, what you two talked about. I'm not asking as a CIA agent, Chuck, I'm asking as me, as Sarah." She said her own name with urgency, as if doing so might make him start to use it. He did, once, a few minutes ago, overcome by guilt about his father. He didn't realize he had done it but Sarah did.

It was an anchor for her, one she needed. Chuck had to exert himself to keep his distance from her, whether keeping at a physical distance, or preserving the psychological distance of her last name.

He walked past her, careful to turn so as not to touch her. He went to the table and sat down. He checked the tabletop to see if it was dry, then he put the Clarke file on it and opened it.

Sarah sat down across from him. With the file between them, the moment felt a little like Burbank, like Castle, preparing Team Bartowski for a mission.

Chuck flipped pages in the file; it was thick. He stopped, studied a page, and looked at her. "What do you know about Clarke and Fulcrum?"

Sarah answered simply. "I know he has rank in Fulcrum, that he's their go-to for kills. He's killed at least three CIA agents, executed them. The last one was a woman I knew a little. She'd been at the Farm with me.

"The CIA picked up chatter about a new termination assignment. I was going to finish him before he finished someone else. The CIA hoped that his termination might shake something loose with Fulcrum, force them into a mistake. The CIA doesn't know much about the hierarchy that replaced Roark, his officers."

Chuck listened carefully. He nodded.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "So, Carina? Partner? Does she know you are Fulcrum?"

She had not meant to sound jealous — she had not been aware of being jealous, only of being puzzled — but she was jealous.

A couple of years ago Carina had confessed in passing (the only way Carina ever confessed) that she had attempted to seduce Chuck in Burbank, in the early days of the Intersect. That confession had angered Sarah, hurt her, although she'd swallowed the anger, the hurt, fearing to admit it to Carina — and to herself.

Admitting it would have meant admitting so much.

But she had admitted it now, at least to herself. All of it.

If Chuck noticed the green tinge of her questions, he gave no indication.

"No. — It was about a year ago. She told me you'd just visited her, after Reno," he paused, searching Sarah's face, "before the mission she and I were on. The mission turned out to be a bust — the informant the DEA and CIA were relying on was misinformed." He frowned. "Anyway, we had a lot of downtime, stuck in a surveillance van…"

He stopped, smiled in recollection. Sarah felt another spike of jealousy. She had felt so many things in so short a time that her heart seemed to be panting inside her, out of shape, barely able to keep up. She had neglected the health of her heart forever.

"...We started talking about her visit to Burbank," Chuck gave Sarah a glance, and she knew he was recalling Carina's attempted seduction. He had never told her about it. But then she knew why: in Burbank, he had been trying to preserve her friendship with Carina, and perhaps he'd intuited enough of the truth to know that Sarah would have been furious, even if he had not clearly intuited why. "And so, we started talking about you. I'm not sure what prompted her, but she volunteered a lot: about you and her, about you." He glanced away.

"What about me?" Sarah asked, chasing a smile but failing to capture it.

"Your history with her — the colorful details."

Sarah blushed. "You can't believe Carina — half of what she says is outright falsehood, the other half gilded and stained almost beyond recognition."

He grinned, visibly relaxed. "Oh, I know. — I've known about her from the beginning really. I was never as naive as she thought," — his grin tightened — "or as you did." He twisted his smile to the side of his face. "On top of that, by the time I talked to her in that van, I knew all about you, had for a while. You were in Dad's new Intersect. Your file." He glanced at Clarke's. "Not the redacted version of you in the first Intersect, but the...well, the unabridged you."

Sarah's blush deepened and her heart pummelled her chest. Did he know? I left to keep him from knowing and, in short order, he knew?

She swallowed hard, felt seasick for a moment: the tabletop seemed to rise and fall, rise and fall, undulating.

"All of it?" She finally asked, speaking while not breathing.

"All of it," he said with a finality that created certitude. "You see, I'm not the first Bartowski with a complicated relationship with your Company. Dad found a computer pathway to the darkest CIA files, to the Unholy of Unholies. I know...Let's just say I wish I didn't know what I know."

Sarah felt herself liquify, all hope lost. "About me?"

He looked at her for a long time without speaking. "No, not about you. I wish you had been given other choices, but no, not about you."

"You despise me?" She couldn't repress the question.

Another long look. "No, I don't hate you. I hate what you've done, but I don't blame you for it. Your freedom was compromised, muzzled; you were compromised."

She believed she saw sympathy and empathy show in his eyes. "You don't despise me? But what I've done…"

"And what I've done. I'm a double agent. I've helped the very organization we fought in Burbank. I'm not your judge, Sarah Walker." For a moment she saw the man she first loved in Burbank, albeit a haunted version of that man.

His voice softened. "How could I be? Even if things weren't as they are, even if…" He paused, glanced aside, and cleared his throat.

"I understand now there's no evil in the wills of others that doesn't have a counterpart in mine. That's neither an excuse for others nor damnation of me, it's just...fact. The evil that's done is done by people who are undeniably like me, and that evil is not completely foreign to me, to things I have myself willed to do."

Sarah shook her head. "You have been reading those books in your room."

His resulting smile was a few degrees from a grimace. "Yeah. I've spent a lot of time out here — alone." He added the last word quickly.

He knows. He knows all I was afraid for him to know and he does not despise me. He made love to me, knowing. He loves me and he knows.

Hope returned. Returned and grew. Her heart caught its breath. Chuck knew her. She would know him.

Patience.

She nodded at the Clarke file. "What else can I tell you? What do you need to tell me about tomorrow?"


A/N: I've started a new story, a Christmas one, Her Gift. Holiday fun!