A/N: Happy Thanksgiving, if you are celebrating the holiday. A great Thursday, if not.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A Woman in Full
Sarah knew the drill.
Except, this time, she didn't.
New territory. She was doing what she used to do, except she wasn't. The motions were the same but the meanings had changed.
She was driving the SUV, bouncing and bounding down a mountain, the engine screaming. It was as if the engine gave voice to Sarah's fear.
A mission. A spy mission, the last one she hoped ever to undertake, and the one with, for Sarah, the highest stakes.
Her own heart was clear to her for the first time since childhood. Her mission objectives were her heart's objectives — she was integral, united, for what felt like the first time. She was obedient again — but this time she was obeying herself.
Behind her, vanished now from the rearview, was the cabin. In it, tied, was Randolph Clarke. Ellie had tranqed him, shot him, after Sarah had forced him into a scalded re-confession of what he'd confessed to Chuck. Devon was scheduled to collect Clarke and dump him, making sure the CIA knew where to find him.
It turned out that Team B knew that drill well.
Sarah shook her head. The Ellie and Morgan she knew in Burbank existed no more. The Ellie and Morgan sitting in the SUV — Ellie in the passenger seat, Morgan in the rear — were recognizable, but each had been fused with adamantine.
Morgan had become a man; Ellie was right, but it was obvious to the eyes; Sarah could see it. Ellie had become complicated, stronger but less self-sure, less self-righteous. Whether these were net gains or losses, Sarah did not know, but she was now sure of one thing: people change.
She had changed in a short time, coming to clarity about herself, and what she wanted, had wanted all along.
She did not want the spy life. She wanted Chuck. She wanted Jack safe.
She wanted to live as a human being, a human life.
People change.
She could do it, Chuck could do it. She and Chuck could change together, grow together. She believed in her potential, their potential.
Jack, evidently, had done it, changed.
But she and Chuck might not get their chance. — Why didn't he see that his changes after Barstow, his vigilante life, was not the final judgment on who he was? If Sarah's CIA career was not the final judgment on her, if it had not forced Chuck to make a final judgment on her, why make one on himself?
Sarah knew the answer as soon as she asked it, knew it because of her own recent changes.
Chuck was still and had always been, integral, united. Unlike Sarah, he lacked the capacity — the flaw? — that allowed her to distance herself from herself, to put off self-reckoning, to allow a part of herself to suffer while other parts of her remained impassive. She had somehow constructed a slow-drip misery release, experiencing her misery one drop at a time, incessant, over many years, but never enough to compel her to acknowledge it.
But Chuck was all acknowledgment. Chuck felt it all, felt it all immediately, felt it all over, everything that he did — every action, every choice. He must have felt crushed, constantly crushed, by it all.
Such integrality, such unity, was new to Sarah, but, bouncing down the mountainside, she could see what it meant: it was a terrifying and dizzying prospect, but she wanted it, she had achieved and was still achieving it: a woman in full, fully her own person, fully one.
She embraced herself.
She was finally fit to be a match for Chuck, no longer a mismatch.
Chuck just needed to be alive. Sarah just needed to be in time.
She tried to distract herself. "How far to the location Clarke gave us, once we make the highway?"
"An hour," Morgan said, glancing at his phone, the GPS. "We should be on the highway in twenty minutes or so."
"So, Chuck had a car nearby?" Sarah asked.
"Yes, he did. We passed the spot where he hid it a few minutes ago."
"How do you think Jack figured out what Chuck was really planning?"
Ellie shook her head. "They've been close, even closer lately. I don't think he told Jack, but I'm guessing Jack understood that closeness better than Morgan or Devon or I did, and he must've eventually figured out what it meant. That Chuck was preparing himself for something."
Sarah remembered Chuck with his phone in his hand after she had attacked him. "Did Chuck call Jack again, I mean after the 'ransom' call?"
Morgan nodded. "Yeah, he did. But Jack played it off as Chuck checking in, even though check-ins weren't part of the plan. But I'm sure Chuck didn't tell Jack what he was really planning. Given Chuck's note, I suspect he told Jack that things between the two of you had shifted. As I said, that must've confused Chuck."
Sarah dropped her eyes from the rearview. Had Chuck told her dad about her tackling him, about what followed? The thought embarrassed Sarah, made her blush despite circumstances.
Morgan noticed and grinned, then looked out the side window, his grin disappearing. " And I'm guessing that after the call, Jack began to see the angles...I should've guessed it. But Ellie and I — well, we had less faith than Chuck did that you would listen to him, be pliable. We were afraid…"
"Of what I might do to him? Even though he has the Intersect?"
"We might not have seen this all coming, but we know Chuck well enough to know this, Sarah," Ellie broke in, "we know him well enough to know he would never have fought back if you had attacked him. He was angry with you, no doubt, and...maybe he said some things…" Ellie paused and glanced toward Sarah. Ellie had been staring straight ahead until then. Sarah nodded. "...He's had stuff bottled up since Devon and I got married, since the wedding, since you left.
"So, yeah, we were afraid of what you might do to him — not so much afraid of anything physical, but more afraid that you'd figure out how he felt, how he still felt, and leverage it against him, lure him in and then turn on him, give him up to the CIA as a double-agent."
Sarah then understood the shared looks between Ellie and Morgan. They had been checking with each other: do you believe her? Sarah was doubly thankful Chuck left the note.
Sarah soon saw the highway. It was still distant but they were nearly there.
She punched the accelerator.
The anxiety in the SUV was a fourth presence, and it crowded the interior.
A few minutes later, in a cloud of dust and a squeal of tires, Sarah whipped the SUV from the dirt road and onto the asphalt.
A/N: Nearing the end.
