A/N: A slightly different sort of chapter but a highly important one.
The Missionary
I sit at my table and wage war on myself
It seems like it's all, it's all for nothing
I know the barricades
And I know the mortar in the wall breaks
I recognize the weapons, I've used them well
This is my mistake
Let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
I've a rich understanding of my finest defenses
I proclaim that claims are left unstated
I demand a rematch
I decree a stalemate
I divine my deeper motives
I recognize the weapons
I've practiced them well
I fitted them myself
It's amazing what devices you can sympathize
Empathize
This is my mistake, let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
Reach out for me
Hold me tight
Hold that memory
Let my machine talk to me
Let my machine talk to me
This is my world, and I am the World Leader Pretend
This is my life, and this is my time
I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit
It's high time I razed the walls that I've constructed.
— REM, World Leader Pretend
Chapter Thirty-Six: Preparations for Confession
Casey was in his bedroom, making a lot of noise, banging and clanging and cursing, digging for various "essential supplies" as he had explained to Sarah, and throwing stuff around.
Sarah had walked, stunned, through Casey's DC apartment.
It was homey. Homey. Human, inviting, comfortable — it was the interior decorating contradictory to her mute gray DC apartment. His Burbank apartment had been what Sarah expected, unadorned, but she now realized Casey had simply expended no effort on the Burbank apartment. Unlike this apartment. Omitting the vaguely shrine-like collection of Trump memorabilia on the living room wall, pictures and posters all tastefully accented in orange, the apartment was one that would have impressed Ellie Bartowski. Impressed her.
The world truly was a strange place. How the man could live like this, and dress like that was past understanding. He so often seemed like a pig — Sarah had called him that in Chuck's bedroom, the night all this really started — and yet he lived in no sty. Yet again, Sarah felt herself a failure as a human being.
She knew she was in comparison with Chuck and Ellie and Devon. But in comparison with Casey?
She was seated in Casey's kitchen, a glass of water in front of her, her hands pressed palm down on the tabletop. She was staring absently at her hands.
She was upset, terrified for Chuck, furious with Graham, and concerned about the ramifications of all this for Casey. But Casy had made her jumbled emotions messier. That comment about hump dumplings…
God, leave it to Casey — tell the truth in the crudest possible way.
But he had told the truth.
She had not allowed herself to dwell on it, she had carefully left it untouched in a soft, hidden spot in her heart (my heart!), swaddled and hidden, but something had taken root inside her when they saved Natalie in Mexico — a desire, bone-deep, primal past all explanation, not a desire of which she was conscious, but a desire that reshaped her consciousness.
The cause of the desire was not simply little Natalie, not simply little Natalie in Sarah's arms, but little Natalie together with Sarah and Chuck, Natalie in Chuck's arms, the oneness, if only temporary, that three of them had shared as they made their escape from the cartels. Casey was right: Sarah wanted children, Chuck's children.
She wanted to marry him and have babies and be a family.
She wanted that as she had never wanted anything else in her life.
She had never formulated all that in so many words, never admitted it to herself, but she did now. She had done it to herself in part — that prank on Carina that had ramified in all sorts of ways, into Casey, into Chuck, into Sarah. Maybe even into Carina. But Chuck had started it, first by just being Chuck, lovable, but then by talking to her and kissing her as he had at the El Compadre, and especially by carrying her over the threshold of Appocalypse. She had tried to put that action out of her mind, tried to dismiss it as insignificant, but Chuck's armful footfalls had echoed and echoed in Sarah's memory, opening up a path in her life she had taken for a dead end.
But it was not. It was the path to the living life for which she longed, away from the dead-end life she had lived for so long, her Langley life.
As much as she wanted that living life, as much as she wanted to take that now-open path, she wondered if she would be permitted to take it. It would be a cruel irony — but perhaps one she deserved — if she should catch a glimpse of the life she wanted, to be shown that it was possible, only to have it denied to her. It wasn't just the Intersect or Graham or Fulcrum, each bad enough and awful all at once, but it was also the weight of her past. Chuck carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, but Sarah carried the weight of her past on her heart and her soul. She did not remotely deserve the life she wanted. What she deserved was a lonely grave in some dark, dirty foreign city, a fate she had narrowly escaped several times, but one that would make sense as the final curtain of her life. It would be fitting. A home with Chuck, and children, would make no sense at all; it would be — what was the concept? it was not one that she normally employed — pure grace, entirely unmerited favor. Cosmic injustice, for a woman like her to find happiness with a man like Chuck.
How can I sanely hope for it?
Yet she did. All of her yearned for it. She was not only asking for more than she deserved, but she was also far, far ahead of where she and Chuck were. They hadn't slept together. Marriage had never come up, except in the hazy ambiguity of Chuck's threshold action.
She had certainly never mentioned that she wanted children.
But her new and urgent knowledge was this: she loved Chuck Bartowski. Her mission to protect him, her self-assigned mission, had been her still confused, CIA agent's management of feelings she did not quite understand, did not quite recognize that she felt.
At first, she had been able to love Chuck only as a missionary, as someone devoted to missions — spy missions, of course, not religious missions, but missions that had required a similar devotion from her, but heartless devotion. The heartless devotion's effect was a pervasive, unrelenting, all-permeating sadness.
That sadness was lifting.
Since assigning herself her mission, she had slowly, painfully, come to grips with what that mission really meant. With what she really meant.
"I love you, Chuck," she'd said intently to herself as she sat at Casey's kitchen table, his pink Tupperware salt and pepper shakers on guard, flanking a yellow vase of plastic flowers in the table's center.
She dropped her head into her hands, overcome by self-understanding and by fear.
She heard Casey clear his throat. He had heard her.
He loomed in the kitchen doorway, his ill-fitting polyester suit gone, replaced by a black sweater and black jeans.
She had gotten so involved in her thoughts that she did not hear him leave the bedroom.
"Got my guns and gear. Save those words for the kid. Tell him when he's safe."
Sarah nodded with grim determination and stood.
Deserved or not, cosmic injustice or not, she was not going to allow grace to slip through her hands.
Her hands. She looked at them again. There were shaking and she fisted them to hide the fact from Casey. They hadn't shaken in weeks.
She inhaled and remembered Chuck holding her hand on the plane to DC, and the shaking stopped. She would not allow it to restart.
This is my life, and this is my time.
Chuck lulled in his seat. It was hard to hold his head up, although he could manage it. He felt warmer than when Astley left his cell, felt all sloshy inside, a human hot water bottle.
The door opened again and Chuck lifted his head, expecting Astley. But it was Langston Graham. Chuck forced his neck to hold his head steady. He had never seen the man in person before. Graham was not quite as tall as Chuck's imagination had made him, but then again, no one was that tall. But his suit was more impressive in person than on a screen.
Graham was carrying two plates. Chuck blinked, worried that whatever Astley had given him was causing him to hallucinate, but after several blinks, Graham still stood there, short but dapper, carrying two plates.
"I thought you might be hungry, so I had the kitchen make us a light dinner. Scrambled eggs." He held a plate out and Chuck took it. He was still seated on his bed.
It was indeed scrambled eggs, a yellow pile of them, and a slice of buttered toast. A fork. Chuck sat the plate on his lap.
"Um, thanks." The whole scene was so odd, and the drug made Chuck feel so yielding, that he had no idea how to respond.
Graham sat down, balancing his plate in one hand while he crossed his legs at the knee. Seated, he put the plate on his lap, picked up his fork, and took a bite of eggs.
As he chewed it, he studied Chuck. Chuck made himself look away, down at his plate. He took a bite of the eggs, creamy and warm.
"Good, aren't they?" Graham asked as if they were chatting in a DC diner on an ordinary weekday morning.
"Uh-huh," Chuck agreed. He was hungry despite the drug. He took another bite.
"I would have had them make coffee, but that's counter-indicated for the drug the good doctor gave you."
"What was that? Truth serum?" That was Chuck's guess, what he believed.
Graham shrugged. "Call it a distant cousin. And of course, 'truth serum' is a misnomer for all in the family. No drug can force you to tell the truth. But there are drugs, like the one you've been given, that make you compliant, make it hard for you to resist what is asked of you, action or question. Of course, you can resist, but it requires you to summon a monumental amount of willpower, and most people just don't have the grit it takes, so they surrender."
"What is it you want to ask me, make me do? I'm already your prisoner, sealed down here. With you. And eggs." Chuck's loopiness was starting to creep into his talk.
"Eventually, I want you to record a voice message for me, one that I will be sending to your sister as if it came from you. But we will work up to that. You heard the recording of the conversation that Agent Walker and I had in my office?"
Chuck delayed answering just to see if he could. He felt as if percolation was going on in his brain and nervous system. He could. But he didn't, not for long. Hiding the fact from Graham, he nodded as he spoke, allowing his features to reflect the feelings he experienced when he first heard it. "Yes."
"Good. Then you know where you stand, and where you and she stand. Nowhere. This is now your home. If you want to live and to live pain-free, and if you want your sister and her fiance to live, and to live pain-free, you will comply with all that I ask."
Graham took another bite and chewed and put the plate on the arm of the leather chair. He leaned forward and swallowed before he spoke.
"You are to continue the same work here that you were doing at Appocalypse, except you will also submit to Astley's psychological and physical exams, whenever she needs to run them. Resistance and complaint with alike be penalized, and if the penalties you suffer do not sufficiently motivate you, others will suffer for you."
He leaned closer and Chuck caught a whiff of bay rum cologne and more than a whiff of malice. Scrambled eggs and brimstone.
"The CIA has a long arm, Mr. Bartowski, like the fabled arm of God. I can reach any corner of the globe. Burbank is no challenge, your sister and her fiance's hospital, for example, or their apartment. I can make their lives difficult if you make mine difficult. There's no place where you or they can run from us."
Chuck nodded, fighting back an urge to punch Graham. Chuck felt like someone was administering him an antidote to the truth serum.
It finally occurred to him that the Intersect was fighting the serum.
But why hadn't the Intersect fought with the injection at Langley?
Chuck did not have time to answer; Graham was talking again.
"I hate to threaten your family, Mr. Bartowski, but I refuse to leave you in the dark about how important to me, to the CIA, to the country, you are, and your work is. You are saving lives and, what comes to much the same thing, saving money." Graham spread his hands, palms up, then he shrugged.
"I could appeal to your duty, I suppose, but I am unsure that would move you, and, anyway, I mistrust anyone who claims to be motivated by duty. You and I are realists, aren't we?" Chuck nodded. "We both know that self-interest is the true motivator in human life. So, I am appealing to your self-interest."
Chuck took another bite of the scrambled eggs, chewing it instead of scrambling Graham. "Come with me, if you're done, and I will give you a tour of some of the remodeled Intersect Lab. It won't take but a minute. All you need to see is the part devoted to you."
Graham stood up, straightening his vest beneath his suit jacket by tugging on its bottom. He raised an eyebrow and Chuck stood as if the eyebrow lifted him. He tried to keep his motions soggy, like before, and to hide his increasing clarity, his increasing determination.
"Follow me, Mr. Bartowski. Did I ever tell you that I knew your father?"
"No. Wait. What?" Chuck said, halting mid-step.
Casey pulled his MAGA hat down farther on his head.
The snow outside was accumulating fast, and the temperature was dropping. The radio was talking about a blizzard. The MAGA hat — red with white lettering — was not a good choice for winter camouflage, or for any camouflage, unless Casey was planning to hide in a field of fire engines, but he wore it just to annoy and so distract Walker. He would take it off when they arrived.
He could tell how worried Walker was.
She had finally admitted to herself she loved the kid. It had taken her long enough. Of course, it had taken the kid long enough too. No surprise in his case, given what Walker did to him, given how the kid already felt about her when she did it. And no surprise in her case, either, given how her years in the CIA had twisted her around, made it almost impossible for her to face herself. Casey knew the problem — sometimes he thought the spy life had obscured his facial features and what he saw in his reflections was an erasure of the human, not an exposure of it.
Casey wasn't sure if it was the spy life that was allergic to love or if it was the people who gravitated to the life who were allergic to it. In his own case, he thought the blame was his. He had found it easier to avoid ties than to cut them, and he had always had to cut them. His tie to Carina had just happened, and he had not cut it, but it was possible that she had.
He prayed she hadn't. Since that first snowy night they spent together, he had found features in his reflection each time he faced a mirror. She had given him his face back and he did not want her to take it from him again.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. No one was behind them, no one ahead of them. Other people had the good sense to be indoors, near a fire, baking pumpkin pies, preparing to give thanks.
Casey kept careful control of the car; the road was growing slick. As they got further from DC, the roads became more treacherous, and when they reached the mountains, the roads would officially be a nightmare. That was good in a way. It meant that few vehicles would be coming in and out — if any, only those deemed utterly essential. If the weather stayed bad, the snow kept falling, visibility would be severely diminished, making it easier to get near the Lab without detection.
Casey doubted that Graham could have overhauled much of the Lab in the time available. Casey had seen the rubble above ground. He had assumed that the below-ground sections had been similarly destroyed. But evidently, Casey assumed wrong.
Walker was staring out the passenger window. Casey glanced at her, seeing his own very faint reflection alongside her faint reflection in the window.
He thought he saw tears on her face. He looked away before she knew he saw.
He wondered where Carina was, what she was thinking. He focused on the road and pulled his MAGA hat down even lower.
Carina was holding on to the armrest, holding on for dear life.
The man she had met was taking her to a rural CJNG camp, a stronghold. It was in an area from which Tyger was rumored to have come, a place where he had spent a portion, maybe all, of his childhood. The old truck was bouncing violently down something the man called a road, but Carina thought it seemed more like an assembly of potholes. She had no idea how the truck was holding together. It squealed and squeaked and groaned as if the next pothole might be the last.
Carina was wearing a tight black midriff and short denim cutoffs, and leather desert boots. A camera hung around her neck. Her jeep was behind them a few miles, purposely parked on the side of the road, purposely disabled. The man was going to introduce her as an American nature photographer whose car broke down. He had picked her up as he brought supplies to the camp.
From that thin story, Carina was going to have to try to infiltrate the thick of the cartel. Her hope was that the story would get her in, get her among the men. The rest would have to be done by her bare abs and her long bare legs.
She shuddered. There had been a time when this sort of assignment did not distress her, when she would have seen it as a test of her skills, her ability to manipulate men, to use what they wanted against them. But today the assignment made her stomach ache vaguely. She was going to try to do this without her hole card, as she called it.
Casey had made her loyal. She had fought it only to lose. But that loyalty could get her killed.
Chuck forced his feet forward. "You knew my father?"
"Yes, I did. He worked for the CIA for a time."
"No, he didn't. He was a professor at UCLA. He never left California."
Graham chuckled. "He was a professor at UCLA. But who do you think funded his research, and supplied the grants? And, as to his never leaving California, that's not strictly true. He spent some time in DC. He met your mother here. She worked for the CIA too — she was our best analyst."
Chuck shook his head. The drug was not influencing him any longer, but Graham's words made him feel lost. His mother, CIA? And, his father in DC? The story he knew about his parents had them meeting on campus at UCLA. He knew the whole story, a family legend, a meet-cute.
"I see you are confused. I'll explain as we look around. You see, Langley is the real beginning of the Bartowski story."
Bryce had sent Bob out for food and he was standing in the seedy hotel bathroom. The bedroom was dark. Over the mirror in the bathroom, only one of the four bulbs was working.
He rubbed his temples. The headaches were so much worse, and they lasted so much longer. But the Intersect allowed him to do so much more, keep up with so much more than he could on his own. He had no choice but to use it, despite the damage he knew it was doing to him. He had risen to run Fulcrum, but his position was under constant challenge. If he could capture the CIA's Intersect, or better yet, if he could use the CIA's Intersect to correct the Fulcrum one he had, to create more Fulcrum Intersects, he would have an iron hold on the faction.
It was too bad that the CIA Intersect was Chuck Bartowski. Bryce had managed and manipulated Bartowski in college — but he had always respected the guy then, and liked him then too. But not enough to stop the management and manipulation.
He didn't like him enough now to do more than regret the necessity of what would happen to Bartowski once Fulcrum had him.
Neither Fulcrum nor the CIA was interested in Bartowski living much longer. When Bartowski paired with the Intersect, he turned onto a dead-end street, picking up speed and now moving too fast to turn again, and it was only a matter of time until he slammed head-first against the concrete bollards posted where the street ended.
Bryce would rebuild himself from Bartowski's bits. Two Humpty Dumptys enter, and one Humpty leaves.
Bryce shook his head. He heard Bob at the door. "Huevos Rancheros!"