A/N: Last chapter.


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


La Vita Nuova


"I say that, from that time forward, Love quite governed my soul…"

Dante, La Vita Nuova


Casey stopped. He squinted, his eyes adjusting from the darkness of the mine.

"Goddammit, Walker; you ain't dead. I figured."

Casey lifted his chin, dark with dirt and blood, shifted his eyes, and glared at Morgan. "If you shoot me, dickhead, we're having words."

Casey shoved his pistols into his belt. "Ellie." He nodded, then looked down. "How's the kid, Walker? Your old man?"

Sarah put her hand on Chuck's chin, turned his face carefully toward her. His eyes had closed again, but she could feel him breathing with her other hand, lightly placed on his chest. His respiration was quick, shallow. "He's hurt. Dad too. Dad's worse."

Sarah wanted to know how Casey was standing there.

It was raining Burbank. First Chuck, then Ellie and Morgan. Now Casey. Every time she thought she had caught up with herself, her situation surged ahead of her, and she was behind again.

But she could not worry about it now. "Casey, will that copter carry us all?"

Casey glanced at it and nodded. "Yeah, as long as no one locked the goddamn doors. Morgan and I can manage Chuck; you and Ellie bring your dad. Lucky for us all, there's a secure facility not far from here. Beckman guessed right."

Sarah did not know what that meant but she moved immediately to help Ellie. Ellie had bandaged Jack's wound and had been holding pressure on it. She would have to release it to help Sarah carry him.

She nodded and Sarah lifted her dad's shoulders, Ellie his feet, and they carried him laboriously but hurriedly to the helicopter..

Casey and Morgan did the same with Chuck. The helicopter doors were unlocked. A few minutes later, they were airborne, high above the now barely smoking mine.

Sarah flew the helicopter. Morgan helped Casey with his leg wound, a gash in his calf, bloody and messy but not life-threatening.

Casey gave Sarah the coordinates. Once she had them on course, she glanced back at Casey. "How are you here, John?"

Casey looked up at her. "I've been...watching the kid, Chuck."

"Watching him?"

Casey nodded. "Yeah. For a while now. Off and on. Beckman knew — knows — what Chuck, what Team B — has been up to." Casey was wrapping a bandage about his leg. As he talked, both Ellie and Morgan froze.

"She knows?" Ellie asked, after a moment of no sound but the beating rotors.

"She knew Chuck joined the Company, of course. She was involved in that, behind the scenes, in his skipping the Farm. But even though he wasn't working for her, she kept tabs. Knows what's what." Casey tapped his temple while looking at Ellie and then Sarah. "Beckman likes the new Company boss as well as she liked Langston Graham. She figured it out, that he'd gone rogue, gone double. She thought about stopping him but I...suggested she watch, see what the kid would do.

"I told her that he was not a double agent; he was a triple agent, that his real boss was his conscience. He was doing things that I'd do, things that Beckman would do — if I could, if she weren't answerable to shithead bureaucrats."

Casey stopped talking and looked up from his bandage. "She...eventually agreed with me. And so I started doing extra, off-books work, spying on the triple agent and his team, making sure things...worked."

Ellie had gone back to tending Jack, but it was clear she was hanging on Casey's every word. But it was Morgan, who had been sitting, mouth open, since the Beckman revelation, who finally asked the question. "You mean, you knew what we were doing and didn't stop us. — No one knew."

"Someone always knows, numbnuts. — But there's no proof we knew, knew. And why stop you? I'd rather trust the kid's conscience than any DC intel committee vote."

Sarah was occupied with the controls but she was listening, thinking. It was all incredible.

Chuck had been watching her. Casey had been watching Chuck. Beckman had been watching them all. A watcher watching the watchers of the watched.

Meta-meta-meta, the rotors seemed to say as they beat.

"But how are you here, Casey, right now?"

"When you died, Walker," Casey scowled, "Beckman couldn't figure it out. Explosions, fire, — they were never your thing. Rifles, knives, — they're your thing. The CIA found your blood, Clarkes's, but the fire had burned so hell- hot nothing was salvageable; the goddamn ashes were vaporized. But I wondered; Beckman wondered. It was clear to us the kid was up to something, something big. We knew he'd infiltrated deep into the Ring. Clarke proved it.

"Anyway, he kid was watching you, we knew that, watching every time he had the chance — that was another reason Beckman let him do what he was doing, he was so obviously still capable of loads of ladyfeelings — and it just didn't seem likely he'd let anything happen to you. An accident was possible...but a manufactured accident... seemed more possible. The bloodstains were...convenient. But the CIA bought it. They're planning to etch your star on the Memorial Wall at Langley."

Casey sat back and looked out the window. "We'll be there soon, Walker."

Sarah nodded.

Casey went on. "It took Beckman a while, but she turned up the address of the cabin, the one that had belonged to Stephen Bartowski. She sent me — and a trusted med team to the nearest safe house, our destination.

"I arrived just as your Dad turned onto the highway, heading away. I followed him. He'd been working with Chuck, but...you know that. Anyway, my gut told me he'd take me where I needed to be, take me to the action. My gut was right. As usual."

Casey stood on one leg and hopped forward, standing beside Sarah. He pointed to a clearing ahead, near a low stone building. "There. Put me on the radio." He told her a frequency. "Nice of the Ring to supply a chopper and a radio." Casey mused, frowning. "Dumb, dead bastards."

He was quiet for a moment, then spoke.

"We're coming in by chopper. Six. Three wounded, one seriously. Make sure the OR is ready. Patch me through to Beckman."

Casey was silent for a moment, everyone else was waiting for him to speak again.

"General? I'm coming in. I have...the Team with me, all but the male doctor, as well as...the ghost of a ghost. Yes, she's still casting shadows; she isn't one yet. She's not in the ground — she's someplace else. Resurrected, let's say. Okay. I'll report later."

Casey spoke loudly, to everyone. "When we are on the ground, no names. You hear me?"

Everyone nodded.

Sarah focused all her attention on landing.


Two nurses and a doctor, and two stretchers, met the helicopter.

A short time later, Jack was in surgery. Chuck was going to need surgical attention too, but he was not in immediate danger. He was now in a small room; they were giving him blood. He was still unconscious.

Sarah stood on one side of his bed. Ellie was on the other, double-checking Chuck's nameless chart, shaking her head, and blowing out a relieved breath. "He'll be okay, Sarah. He looks worse than he is."

Casey was standing at the foot of the bed. No one else was in the room.

Sarah was holding Chuck's hand. Casey was looking at that.

She blew out a breath. "So, what happens now, Casey?"

"You're dead. The kid died in the mine, with the Ring leaders. The staff here belongs to the NSA, they don't know who you are. You'll take the kid, your Dad, and you'll get the hell out. Find someplace to live. That's what he wanted, right?"

Casey nodded toward Chuck.

"Yes, how did you know?"

"He's Chuck. No matter what, Walker, bend, spindle, or mutilate, he's Chuck." Casey's jaw was set in concrete, his gaze take-no-prisoners.

Sarah glanced down at Chuck. "I know. I do, Casey, I know. We're together if that's what he wants."

"It's all he's ever wanted, Walker, since that first night in Burbank, with you dancing, wiggling, around him in that goddamn club. All he's done since then has been for you, directly or indirectly."

Morgan walked in. Ever since Casey mentioned shadows, Sarah had that song, the song Morgan and Chuck sang, in her mind. She couldn't remember all the words, just the ones Morgan and Chuck sang, and a few others:

She'll bring out the best and the worst you can be…

"What was that song, Morgan? The one Chuck was humming?"

"Billy Joel. She's Always a Woman. Chuck had that song on repeat...lately."

Morgan gave Sarah a watery smile, and she smiled back at him, her smile watery too.

"Fuck," Casey said, turning and limping out of the room, "when Billy Joel comes on, John Casey goes out."


A couple of hours later, Jack was out of surgery and out of danger.

Chuck was being wheeled in by Casey and Morgan. Sarah was beside him, still holding his hand. The doctor and nurses were inside the doors, in the operating room.

He stirred, opened his eyes. "Sarah?"

"Chuck! I'm here, Chuck, I'm here. I promise: I'm not going anywhere else. From now on, I'm where you are."

He smiled, the smile as deep in his eyes as it was faint on his weak lips. "I love you, Sarah Walker. Still, now and always. — I couldn't do it, I couldn't leave you. If you loved me, I had to be worth saving."

Sarah smiled through dropping tears. "I understand, Chuck. I do."

And she did.

All that mattered.