A/N: More.


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Corkscrew


"Yes," Sarah said, "I love him. I love Chuck."

Morgan ran back inside in time to hear her. He slowed, a beaten black doctor's bag in his hand. He studied Sarah, then glanced at Ellie.

They shared a look, then Ellie extended her hand, making a hurry-up gesture. "Give me the bag, Morgan. Say, can you go into my bedroom, the one Sarah was using, and see if I left some socks in there, a pink one and a blue one?"

Sarah spoke. "I found a pink one just under the bed."

Ellie nodded. "Chuck hustled me out of here so fast the other day that I missed them. I only had two pairs to start with…"

"You were here...earlier?"

Ellie had opened her bag and taken out a couple of vials. She picked one up and carefully read the label, then she looked at Sarah. "I was. Chuck wanted me to be present when you arrived. The drug he used on you — both times — and on Reptile Randy here, is a drug of my own concoction. But we hadn't had many chances to field test it. He wanted to be sure you were okay.

"Also, he took blood from you, and you know how he is with needles. He wanted me to make sure he hadn't hurt you, or taken too much, even though I gave him explicit instructions. I checked you when you arrived, undressed you and washed you, put you to bed."

"So, Chuck didn't undress me?"

"No, in fact, he left the room when I told him I was going to undress you. We forgot to pack you anything to sleep in, and my nightie was getting rank, so I figured you'd be most comfortable nude. And, I will admit, I took a small, perverse pleasure in knowing how uncomfortable that made Chuck, knowing you were naked beneath that sheet." Ellie's smile showed a hint of teeth and cruelty.

Sarah took a deep breath. "Can you explain all this, Ellie?"

Ellie gave her a tired headshake. "All of it, Sarah? No, not even if I had the damned Intersect. But that seems to be my brother's burden, not mine."

"Chuck saved my dad's life? Can we start there?"

Ellie sighed. Working quickly but accurately, she pulled a syringe from the bag, inserted it in the vial she'd chosen, and filled the syringe.

"We can, but tell me again, Sarah — you really love my brother? He finally seems to think so, given the note."

Sarah just nodded this time. "I do. I suppose I have since shortly after I came to Burbank. I fell on that first date, non-date of ours, but I refused to know it for...for forever."

Ellie's eyes flashed, hard. Her gaze became intense, searching, her body tense. She stared for a long moment, then seemed to remember her task, her urgency.

Then she released the tension, satisfied. She rolled up one of Clarke's sleeves, rapidly exposing a badly bruised arm

"I thought so. I told Chuck — but could never convince him. He was sure you loved Bryce or the Intersect, someone or something, but not him. But I told him. You're not as inscrutable as he thinks. Where you're concerned, he lacks the self-reliance to believe his own eyes — if you see what I mean."

"I do. But, yeah," Sarah sighed the word, "he knows. I told him."

Ellie glanced at Sarah, acknowledging what she said, then she pushed the needle into Clarke's arm. "This will take a while, dammit, but if I hurry his awakening too much, I may kill him. It'd serve the bastard right, but I've kneed Hippocrates in the groin enough lately. — Chuck pumped Clarke full; Chuck was making sure you would be the first to wake up."

She bustled to the kitchen and threw the syringe away, talking as she did.

"I don't know the details of the story about your dad. It was, I gather, happenstance. You rescued your dad from mobsters in Reno?" Ellie walked toward Sarah — and Sarah nodded. Ellie turned over the other armchair and pushed it toward Clarke.

Before she sat down, she checked his bonds, continuing: "I gather you intended for your dad to leave Reno, put him on a bus out of town? But he got off at the first stop and hitchhiked back to the city. I guess he thought what you'd done freed him up..." Ellie slowed and Sarah knew then that Ellie knew that much of the Reno story, "...eliminated the threat against him. He was wrong. The new mobster, the one who took over immediately for The Reaper, was worse, and, instead of being happy to have the Reaper gone, he decided to take vengeance on the Reaper's killer. He thought that was Jack. And eventually, he hunted Jack down.

"But it turns out the new mobster, Tommy Chentle, had been dabbling in black market arms deals; he was generally of the ambitious sort, or so said Chuck. Anyway, Chuck was sent to Reno by Fulcrum to broker a deal. He happened to see your father tied up in the backroom of a bar — Chentle was bragging about how he handled traitors, playing the big man. Chuck, um, stopped Chentle."

"He killed him?"

Ellie nodded one time. "With an ice pick, I gather. Chuck was almost killed. Even with the Intersect, there were too many of Chentle's men. Chuck fought them in the bar, and one of the men penned Chuck down, drove a corkscrew into Chuck's temple, into his skull…" Ellie shuddered. "Chuck won the fight but he was bleeding out. Your dad got free somehow and found Chuck, stopped the bleeding, got him out. Chuck should've died, given his wounds, but he didn't. Your dad got an old friend to hide the two of them, and he nursed Chuck back to consciousness. They contacted me and I flew to Reno."

Sarah could barely imagine it, her father saving Chuck after Chuck saved her father. And she knew nothing of it.

"That's how Chuck got the scar?"

"Yes, and Chuck turned the scar in his favor; he's good at that, and getting better all the time. With some medical help from me and some theatrical help from Jack — a long story I won't tell — he used the injury to fake the loss of the Intersect, to convince the CIA that it was gone."

"But, if they accepted that, why keep him as an agent? He had no real training." Sarah asked.

Ellie checked Clarke, felt his pulse. "Because the Intersect implanted the skills. Used, those skills eventually created the infrastructure of habit needed for the skills to belong to Chuck, not the computer. On-the-job training. Think about how practice creates skill, habit. — He convinced the CIA that although he'd lost the data, the information of the sort he got with the first Intersect, he'd retained the skills. And that was true. He did have the skills. But he also still had the data."

Sarah shook her head, trying to take it all in. "But what about Fulcrum, they knew he had the Intersect, right?"

Morgan came into the room, his shirt front decorated by dust bunnies, waving a blue sock in his hand. "Wrong. — Ellie, I couldn't find the pink one."

Sarah smacked her forehead. Shit. "It's in the pocket of the robe — on the bed."

Morgan nodded. "Chuck got Fulcrum to bring him aboard as a double-agent, but they had no idea he was a computerized double-agent. — Say, did Chuck find that box...the box I left him? I forgot to tell him."

He addressed the question to Sarah but glanced nervously at Ellie.

Sarah realized what Morgan meant. "The condoms? Still unopened in the bathroom drawer."

Ellie scowled at Morgan. "Why would you leave a box of condoms here, Morgan?"

"That's a long story I won't tell," he said, with a quick, apologetic nod to Sarah.

Barstow. Morgan was trying to make up for Barstow. Chuck didn't know they were there.

Ellie watched Morgan duck back into the bedroom. She pursed her lips to one side of her face, breathed out. For a moment, the old Ellie, the softer Ellie of Burbank, appeared. "He's twice the man I ever imagined he'd be, he really is, but still somehow just as much the boy. — It's easier if you keep his hands busy, give him something to do."

She turned back and gave Sarah a frank glance. "Condoms?"

Sarah glanced away. "We didn't use any."

"Oh."

Ellie checked Clarke's pulse and nodded. "He's coming around. Not immediately, but soon." Ellie checked her wristwatch, grimacing deeply. "Dammit, Clarke, wake up, you son of a bitch!"


A/N: I'm in the early chapters of a Christmas story, Her Gift. A much, much lighter, far less claustrophobic tale. Take a look if you haven't.