A/N: Thanks for your patience with this. Full disclosure–my pre-reader HATED the first version of this and I had to rewrite it almost from scratch to address most of the issues with this, mostly technical having to do with the mission as described. A mutual viewing of "Chuck vs the Helicopter" was needed to smooth it over.

Anyway…this is the second to last chapter of Brarah. The pilot episode begins at the end of Chapter 17…and we move into canon Charah.

The Anderson years.

It was strange nomenclature, but a favorite of Graham's, so it stuck. There were only two of those actual years, though, which puts it in perspective, leaving it far less grandiose than how it may appear at first. July of 2005 to early August of 2007. That was the extent of our association, both professional and personal. We worked almost non-stop that entire time, staying undercover and following our orders as missions were issued to us in the field. I had gone 25 years without a vacation, and after those glorious two weeks, the CIA was ready, it seemed, to have us go another 25 without a break. I was used to it, but Bryce wasn't.

His work before with his partner had been a lot of paper pushing and digital spying, something newer to the agency and something they trusted to more technically seasoned operatives. Bryce's engineering background had been that catalyst. He worked missions as well, similar to the one he had been sent on when I met him. But the frenetic pace that I had been maintaining was something he had never experienced. It never seemed necessary for Graham to work us as hard as he did, and I always kept it in the back of my mind, wondering at his motivations.

Graham would brief us together almost always, but there were distinct instances where he would brief us separately. He always started with me. It was never mission specific, rather sometimes extraneous or superfluous intel that he thought may or may not be relevant. He was feeling me out, I soon surmised. As creepy and uncomfortable as it made me feel, I knew he was trying to figure out the extent of my relationship with Bryce. I never gave anything away, ever. I was calm and cool, no matter what the topic of conversation. He would tell me things in a way that made me think he was testing to see if I shared intel from my private briefings with Bryce. I was never ordered not to. He did the same to Bryce, I also soon found out.

If that underlying relationship hadn't been there, Graham might have succeeded in the mission of driving the wedge between us. I know now that had been his intention all along, although back then it was just my number one suspicion. We told each other everything after those briefings, then made sure we were prepared to pretend we didn't know certain pieces of information. I never knew the whole story, all of Graham's reasons for why he did all of that. Maybe he was trying to sabotage our entire partnership for some political or professional pressure or blackmail…or maybe he just wanted to split us up to have me for his personal use again.

Graham never found out that Bryce and I were a real couple. He may have had suspicions that we were indulging in the physical aspects of our cover as a married couple, but he never brought it up in any discussion we ever had, other than a very generic and nonspecific statement that I know he made to other agents in similar covert operational situations…about not letting personal entanglements interfere with the mission. That was never a problem for either of us, regardless of Graham's advice, so we mostly ignored it.

The closest I think Graham ever got to even being suspicious was after Bryce had been supposedly killed by John Casey. He had sent me to Burbank immediately to investigate the location of the Intersect files. When I reported the computer had been destroyed, and he ordered me back to D.C., I got a little heated with him on the phone, insisting I could fix the problems Bryce had created with his rogue stunt. I defied his order to return, and went on my own to fix it. I was furious at Bryce, hurt and betrayed and angrier than I have ever been at anyone in my entire life…but even just one day after I had met Chuck for the first time, that vehemence Graham heard in my voice wasn't even about Bryce. It was about Chuck.

What I was told…and what I had found when I went into the Buy More, treating him as my mark, made no sense. I thought I knew what to expect after I read Chuck's file. But Chuck was…unique. Incredible to me, even after just a quick five minute conversation. A conversation that was cut short…because he had to go help a young ballerina whose father had accidentally erased her recital tape. Criminals, miscreants, menaces to society and dangerous actors did nothing of that sort, in any version of reality I knew about. Something wasn't right and Graham's dismissal, telling me that it wasn't my fault, like I was some guilt-ridden teenager, had gotten under my skin. I needed to stay to figure out what was really going on. It was about protecting Chuck, although I didn't make that split decision until we were already on our date. Back to that a bit later.

All I do know for sure about the weird way Graham interacted with us was that it helped to solidify that working relationship Bryce and I had. We were in sync and on the same page with everything. We developed a professional rhythm of sorts, to the point where we could almost read each other's minds when we were on a mission. We worked well together, a perfect yin and yang that got immediate results. We trusted each other, and almost no one else.

The nights we spent together only added to our cohesion. The stress of our lives brought on by mission after mission with no break in between, high adrenaline situations where life and death hung in the balance every day, was eased by rigorous rounds of sex. But it was more than what Sam and I had done when we were training, that orgasm swapping as a bedtime ritual to release tension…the briefest respite from loneliness that didn't last longer than the act. Bryce was someone to cling to, like a life preserver floating on the sea of loneliness where before I had been treading water and barely keeping my head above the surface. Not warm or safe or dry, but protected, at least for a while.

There were times when, for the cover or the mission, we would pretend to be cheating, looking to cheat, or prowling for some extra-marital excitement. It was the perfect way to use our seduction skills while maintaining the cover of married people. There was no jealousy involved with either of us. Above all else, we were doing our jobs. I never experienced jealousy in my entire life until I thought Carina was trying to seduce Chuck. It was something I would struggle with, about him, even after we were a couple. But with Bryce, it was no issue. Our emotional attachment was tenuous at best, so worrying about what he was feeling while he was kissing some other woman never even entered my mind.

There were other times we would use our covert marital status to be overly affectionate with each other in public, as a way to create a diversion, or sometimes to blend into the background, depending on where we were or what we were supposed to be doing.

All I can say is that we always stayed focused on the mission, even when physically we reacted to what was happening with us in the moment. The way Bryce kissed me while we were spying…or the way he kissed other women…it wasn't the way he kissed me when we were in private. Spying, he always had one eye on our surroundings, checking for surveillance, egress, or someone else's whereabouts. It took time, but I learned to stay focused on what we were doing, even when the physical contact between us was extreme…his hand inside my blouse or up my dress or his lips on my neck. I stayed focused, but there were times when that much stimulation needed to be relieved immediately, usually in the vehicle we were driving. A few times another woman had worked him up physically like that, but he always waited and released the tension with me.

Normal people couldn't function this way…but we weren't normal. We were spies. The fact that no matter who we were touching or touched by, the only sex we ever had was with each other was perhaps somewhere in between normal and spy life, at least as close to normal as I ever thought I could hope to be. There was even this strange conversation he would start with me sometimes while we were having sex…explaining how or why something that had happened with someone else was so awkward or clumsy. She scratched my cock with her fingernail when she was trying to reach into my pants…She bit my lip so hard I thought she was going to give me a hickey…

I don't know if he had ever wanted me to reciprocate in that scenario, but I never did. I was the quiet one. Sometimes I wondered if he did it because he wanted me to know exactly what had happened…maybe he thought I was jealous, or maybe he wanted me to be. There were, numerically speaking, more instances of women groping him than men groping me. That was merely because he was suave, a fluid talker, and I was the quiet spy sneaking around. My body was a better distraction overall, but his seduction skills were better than mine. As a good team, we always used our best attributes in tandem, complementing each other in everything we did.

Truth be told, I still clung to the belief that my body belonged to me, and I wasn't giving it away for the sake of my job. I had given it away in the past for far less, but I kept that line in the sand as a way to gauge myself, something akin to my redeemability, if you will. Carina was the benchmark. If I had ever progressed to the point of wanting some brutal killer to fuck me before I killed him…well, then it would have been time to call it quits. Even if that "quits" was a bullet in my brain, delivered by someone else in the CIA or even my own hand.

Arousal was such a strange beast to grapple with. I couldn't fake sexual arousal. Being pawed by someone for a mission was uncomfortable. A hand on my breast, pinching my nipple, felt grotesque when it was someone I was using to get information out of, while the same exact motion and sensation could make me dripping wet when it was Bryce. Some drunken floozy could reach down Bryce's pants and make him so hot he would have to pin me against the steering wheel of his car in an alley somewhere and fuck me right there. My only comfort in that situation? He could have let her finish…but he waited for me, and as close to exploding as he could get, he made sure I was satisfied before he finished. Not very romantic, but part of our life in a relationship and a spy partnership.

Late in 2005, at the beginning of November, Bryce and I received an unusual mission. It was the only time we used different aliases while we were spying together. For this mission, we were Elana and Pierre Truffaut, the cover of French nationals exiled in Mexico. Graham specifically told us the CIA had a tip from the partner of an NSA agent killed in action. The agent had been killed during a sting operation at the border, caught in the crossfire when Customs and Border Patrol engaged human traffickers. That same cartel was also responsible for weapons moving across the southern border of the United States, procured from arms dealers all over the world. Our mission was to interrupt the weapons pipeline by infiltrating the cell.

All of the information we had obtained from multiple sources pointed to the fact that most of the members of the cell were French diplomats. Their credentials were bonafide. There were seven people of interest, all working in some official capacity in the French Embassy in Mexico. Some were low-level attaches, all the way up to the personal assistant to the French Ambassador to Mexico. Bryce and I crashed a party at the Embassy and struck up a conversation with the man we believed was the head of the weapons smuggling cell. Both Bryce and I spoke fluent French and Spanish, but I was the much better linguist between the two of us. I could speak Spanish with a French accent, despite the fact that I was a native English speaker, which is a challenging task. In order to not emphasize Bryce's inability to do so, he spoke only in French, and I acted as his phony translator.

We were able to convince him that the Truffauts were seriously interested in investing in their business ventures, how Henri had euphemistically described his work. We knew he was selling illegal weapons, but we pretended to be ignorant to specifics, and not adverse to illegal activity if it meant hefty profits. We met with them several times on various different occasions. After a few weeks, we were let in on the secret, the truth about what it was we were funding.

Bryce and I met Henri in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Mexico City. It was meant to be the final inspection. We had already given Henri almost $200,000 in American money by this point, and we were about to double that amount after this meeting, as he was due to hand off his shipment and ensure it was ferried across the border into the U.S. Henri was cocky, walking with this faux debonair swagger that made Bryce's dashing spy routine look legitimate. His hair was oily and combed exaggeratedly across the top of his bald head. His eyes were dark and beady and he wreaked like he had doused himself in an entire bottle of cologne before meeting us.

Men like Henri were power hungry…used to getting whatever it was that they wanted, whenever they wanted it. All throughout our interactions, I had felt those eyes on me, almost reaching up under my clothing to grope me with his eyes. As the Truffauts, we weren't working any seduction angle particularly for this mission. We were a married couple…not intentionally straying, nor overly affectionate. Just together. I don't know what Henri sensed between the two of us, why he even said what he did, other than he thought we were desperate enough at the point we were at that we wouldn't let anything interfere. Or that he could get what he wanted, no matter what.

"Quelle est l'histoire avec vous deux?" Henri asked us both, his eyes darting between us. What is the story with you two?

I looked at Bryce and smiled, faking it, trying to make it as playful as I could while still maintaining our cover. He never flinched, though I knew he was trying to think fast. The tone of his voice and the way he was leering at me was leading us to a place we hadn't prepared to be for this mission. "Etions maries," I nearly purred. We're married.

"Fidelment?" Henri asked suggestively. Faithfully? He was about to proposition Bryce about me. I was certain. We didn't have enough information yet, and our mission wasn't complete. We needed the next step in the process of flushing out the pipeline. We needed access to the rest of the ring of diplomats if we were ever going to have any chance of taking them down. If Henri thought he could ask Bryce nicely if he could fuck me, we were on dangerous ground. Losing the deal, getting ourselves killed, or blowing our cover.

I wasn't fucking anyone for my spy work. I had already been abundantly clear, and Bryce knew that. Not that he would have condoned it, or even thought that was the easy answer to the problem, although it was. It flashed in my mind that had Carina been here in my place, she would have let Henri fuck her while Bryce watched. Before that image burned itself irrevocably behind my eyes, I struggled to focus on the situation. "Cela depend de ce que vous avez en tete," I replied. It depends what you have in mind.

"Elle n'est pas a vendre," Bryce interjected. She's not for sale. It wasn't harsh, but it was firm.

"Ah, mais que dit-elle?" Henri answered him. Ah, but what does she say? To me, he added in a deep voice, "Depuis combien de temps votre mari ne vous a-t-il pas satisfait dans la chambre?" How long has it been since your husband satisfied you in the bedroom?

"Il y a moins de 12 heures," I cooed back at him. Less than 12 hours ago. It was, all other things aside, the truth.

"Vous n'avez jamais fait l'amour avec un Francais?" Henri practically drooled. Have you never been made love to by a French man? He reminded me of old Pink Panther movies I had seen when I was small, waiting alone in a hotel room for my father to return from somewhere. Odd too was his phrasing. He was French, after all, but nothing about what he was proposing was even close to "making love."

Before I could answer, Bryce interjected again. "Elle reste en dehors de ca ou l'affaire est annulee." She stays out of this or the deal is off. He was risking a lot, making that threat. I wasn't sure why exactly he was taking this course of action. I told myself it was to protect the cover, buy some time until we could figure something else out. Thinking Bryce was actually jealous fluttered into my mind, but then out again before it almost even registered. He had seen me kissed and groped by a lot of different men. This was no different. It was just too much, and too soon.

Thankfully, Bryce hadn't enraged Henri beyond negotiation. He was silent, but then offered later as he thoughtfully rubbed his chin. "L'affaire reste. Cependant, serait-il-possible de dire un peu de plaisir plus tard? Vous amenez votre femme. J'amenerai un camarade de jeu. On peut échanger la-bas si tu veux. Ou gardez ce que vous avec." The deal stays. After that was a disgusting proposition–a foursome, with some unknown extra woman of his, with the offer to swap partners.

Bryce laughed, even winked at him, and Henri shook his hand. Being that angry and/or protective of me was beyond the cover. We were supposed to be career criminals. The mere mention of an orgy shouldn't have outraged us. I thought overall he played it very well, perfectly, considering how much I now know it disgusted him.

The moment we were alone again, I hissed to Bryce, "I am not having sex with you in bed with that…that…sleaze and whatever prostitute he pulls off the street."

"Easy, Sarah," he said quietly, assuring no one would overhear us speaking English, or his use of my real name. "I was trying to defend your honor without blowing the deal…or the cover."

It hit a little too close to home, reminding me of my past with Carina and that dangerous life I had put behind me. I knew I sounded too angry, too offended, but I couldn't rein it in.

"I won't let it get that far, I promise," he informed me. "But we already…you know, we already have that under the cover. Using it during the cover is not that big of a deal."

"No, Bryce," I insisted, grabbing his arm to emphasize my words. "It's separate. It's going to stay separate. You got that?"

He looked at me, really looked at me, almost completely through me. Some incomprehensible emotion passed over his face, then disappeared before I was even certain I'd seen it. "He's not going to touch you. And he's not watching me touch you, ok?" he explained. The first sentence was all business, cold and factual. When he said the second sentence, his voice was thick like velvet and it made me shiver.

It was the promise of that tryst that moved us to the next phase. Bryce and I were invited to his residence in the Embassy for dinner. All the other members of the cell were due to be present. Henri had ensured that the dinner party would be brief, leaving plenty of time for private entertainment after dinner was done.

His butler had just taken our coats and we stood in the vestibule waiting to be shown inside. Henri made a grand gesture of kissing the back of my hand, murmuring about how lovely I looked. Over my shoulder from behind, he whispered, only for my ear, "Est-ce que quelqu'un de francais t'a déjà embrassé entre les jambes, Chéri?" Has anyone ever French kissed me between my legs was what he asked. It was nauseating and I held in an almost involuntary shudder of disgust.

"Plus tard. Vous nous goutez tous les deux," a dark-haired, heavily made-up woman said, softly but loud enough that I heard. Later. You can taste us both. She sauntered across the vestibule and wrapped herself around him, kissing his neck like no one else was there. I saw an enormous wedding band on her left hand as she slid it under his jacket lapel. His playmate of choice tonight was his wife. It made me feel even sicker, if that was possible.

We went inside and I tried to shake off that feeling, mingling with the strange crowd he had assembled. Everyone on our list, everyone we had been working to bring down, were all in the same room. We just had to bide our time.

Bryce excused himself. Jeanne, Henri's wife, soon followed, saying that she was going to get a perfect bottle of wine from their wine cellar. I listened. Bryce went into the bathroom. I heard the door shut. I heard Jeanne's footsteps, the creaking of another door, more footsteps that gradually decreased in volume. Then the almost silent sound of footsteps following. Bryce's footsteps, indistinguishable to anyone without trained spy senses. The coast was clear, and I excused myself as well.

As I had predicted, Henri followed me to the bathroom, grabbing my elbow right before I entered. "Rapidement. Je dois avoir un échantillon. Tout ce que je veux ce soir, c'est un dessert." He wanted a sample…and all he wanted was dessert. I had to think fast. Bryce was still downstairs in the wine cellar, most likely with this man's wife's hand in his pants. We sort of fell through the bathroom door together.

I have been groped more times than I would like to recall, far more times than I can enumerate, for the sake of my job. Nothing like what happened, so quickly, with Henri had ever happened to me before. The man was a sexual predator, of that I have no doubt. Before I knew what was happening, his hand was under my skirt, tearing the seam on my panties. I squirmed, but not before he had two fingers halfway inside me. That was enough. Groping was one thing. This was assault…and would have led to possibly rape, had I not done what I did. I grabbed his other arm and twisted until I heard his bones snap.

He only cried out once in pain. My gun pointed at the back of his skull as he lay on his stomach on the bathroom floor and an order to be quiet kept him from crying out any more. "They know you're CIA," he panted, as his breath came in short gasps. "They're assassins. Every last one. You and your husband won't leave here alive." His English was perfect, another sign we were in trouble.

"What was the plan?" I demanded coldly.

"Binary poison…in the food…and in the wine," he huffed. He had divulged that awfully quickly, with very little effort. He continued talking, and I soon understood why. "All of the food is poisoned. If you let me live, I will show you the wine bottle. You can't let them know or you'll lose them all."

He was missing a few pieces of information, it seemed. He had no idea Bryce had followed his wife to the wine cellar with the hope of an illicit tryst. He also was trying to tell me how to do my job…that somehow if he was eliminated, that our mission would fail. A fatal miscalculation–to doubt us when we were at our best, in spy partner mode.

What Henri was describing…it had been a possibility, one Bryce and I had discussed when we were planning the mission. Now I was sure. They were assassins, on to us, and we needed to use Plan B. Which was to kill them all, before they killed us. I gritted my teeth and fired my gun, the bullet entering his head and never leaving it thanks to the small caliber of my gun. Very little blood to worry about. I dragged his body to the bathtub and dumped him inside, pulling the curtain closed. There were only tiny droplets of blood on the beige tile floor and I wiped them up with a wet piece of toilet paper.

It had been a while since my job had required me to kill someone, and I was shaking. I had to stop and collect myself before I went back out of the bathroom to finish the mission. Henri's death was part of the plan, and he was as guilty as the day was long. I could still feel his fingers on my intimate parts and I felt violated in a way I never had before…touched against my will. The hardest part was dealing with the fear, fear that battled with the satisfaction I felt knowing he was dead, especially after he had touched me that way.

I made sure the bathroom door was locked from the inside before I shut it, then I crept slowly down the stairs towards the wine cellar in the dark. Everything was quiet, but the further down I descended, the silence was replaced in my ears with the sound of heavy breathing. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw them. Jeanne had Bryce pinned against the wall, so her back was to me. Her dress was unzipped to her waist, drooping forward over the tops of her arms, and she was reaching inside Bryce's partially unbuttoned shirt. It made perfect sense to think she had expected a quick romp with him, the same way her husband had expected when he'd followed me into the bathroom. Bryce was biding his time, doing a perfect balancing act that allowed him to appear eager to have a quick fuck, while at the same time prolonging the situation to give me enough time to do what I needed to do.

He saw me, shifted ever so slightly to cue me to what he was looking at without distracting her at all. There were two bottles of wine on the counter, the same brand and vintage. One bottle was open and the other still sealed. The open bottle had only enough wine left in it for about two glasses worth. I examined the open bottle closely, seeing the faintest of rings of white along the lip of the bottle. The second part of the binary poison, meant to be delivered to Bryce and I. Everyone at the party would be eating the first part of the poison, which was harmless by itself. We would all eat the same food, so nothing was suspect. The poison in our wine, combined with the poison in the food would mix to create a lethal cocktail inside our stomachs, killing us both in a matter of minutes.

I hurried, listening to the sounds of Bryce and Jeanne, actually worrying that I wouldn't have enough time to finish before he could stop her, and I ended up hearing them actually fucking behind me. It put all kinds of questions in my head. I wouldn't do that for the job, but would Bryce? Would he actually fuck this woman to keep the mission from going south? I don't know what bothered me more…the fact that I would have to hear it…or the fact that I wasn't even sure where he drew the line. It was quite disconcerting.

I opened the fresh bottle, dumped out just enough to leave room, then poured the rest of the opened bottle into the new one, mixing the poisoned wine with the clean wine. Binary poisons were usually so lethal dosing didn't matter, as two separate compounds to dose would be tricky. The lethality removed the guesswork, so to speak.

I don't know what exactly Bryce was doing at the moment I ducked behind the wall once I had finished, only that Jeanne was squealing like a dog in heat…begging for Bryce to hurry in French. Once I was clear, he tranq'd her. She was immediately silent, and crumpled to the floor like a rag doll. Bryce quickly tucked himself back into his pants, obviously uncomfortable. He was a spy, but he was still a man. Not much he could do when he was being groped so blatantly.

I explained what I had learned from Henri…and told Bryce Henri was already dead. He shot Jeanne dead where she lay, one bullet straight into the back of her skull, the same way I had killed her husband. The mission dictated it now…eliminate all the assassins who could compromise our cover.

"They've already eaten the poison. We just have to make sure they drink this before they notice Henri and Jeanne are missing," I told him as we moved up the stairs. The poison was meant for us. We were merely getting to them before they got to us.

Bryce took the wine from me and turned to head into the kitchen. "Charm them like you do so well," he whispered to me before he left. He was going to make sure the butler poured the wine. My job was to mingle and distract them…just long enough for everyone to take one sip. The twist was they were waiting for Bryce and I to drop dead after the same drink. Everything hinged on the fact that no one could see Bryce switch the wine in the kitchen.

The seating arrangement was odd. Everyone was separated from their companion. I was across the table from where Henri was supposed to sit, with his wife on my right. Bryce was on her right. I made general conversation with the others at the table while making sure I told them our hosts were tied up in the other room, but were returning soon. Knowing what they had proposed for us, I was sure these people were probably familiar with their sexual depravity when it came to scenarios like this. Their tight little snickers and eyebrow wags told me they were assuming Henri and Jeanne were fucking somewhere in the middle of their dinner party. I joked about it, doing my best acting.

I started talking about sex in general, even describing certain acts in vivid detail. It was just what I needed to distract them. Every glass at the table was filled with red wine. Bryce rushed back in, hurrying to make sure no one took an aberrant sip and keeled over dead before everyone was poisoned.

Out of breath, he reached for the glass of wine in front of his place setting. "Un toast à nos hôtes…et nouveaux partenaires commerciaux," Bryce said. A toast to our hosts…and new business partners.

They were all still laughing, a few of them parroting back my risque language to Bryce. But they all took a sip. When the first one, the smallest man, started choking, we backed away from the table. We watched from a far as they all quickly died, the poison in the wine mixing with the poison already in their stomachs. Then we left the Embassy, and Pierre and Elana Truffaut disappeared, never to be heard from again.

That is, until I learned part of that mission ended up in the Intersect.

Very early on in our association–the CIA and the NSA, John Casey and I did not trust each other. Most separate alphabet agency officers never did…it was just par for the course. For example, Casey had NSA approval to kill me during that mission I went on to secure the Intersect files, knowing I was full-fledged CIA and legitimately doing my job. So knowing that, you could maybe understand why in the beginning it was difficult to work together. John Casey is like a grandfather to my children now, Morgan's father-in-law and grandfather to his children, one of our dearest friends and part of our family…but 48 hours after our first mission as Team Bartowski, not so much.

When an NSA scientist who was sent to examine Chuck and potentially remove the Intersect seemed to have been killed, it left Casey and I accusing each other, and Chuck stuck in the middle. Casey ran my name through the NSA database, which was very different from what was contained about me in the CIA database, which was also intentionally expunged from the actual data files in the Intersect…and got a hit about the Elana Truffaut alias. Nothing about Bryce, though, from what Chuck explained to me afterward. Chuck is the one who told me, for Casey would never be that forthcoming about anything like that, even 15 years later when it's all water under the bridge now. Casey found the information and just mentioning the alias name out loud made Chuck flash. The fact that I had killed all those French diplomats by poisoning them was Intersect information. The fact that they were assassins was not…not Intersect, and unknown to the NSA. That is a perfect example of why the U.S. government needed the Intersect…to make sense of things like that which didn't quite add up.

It was quite a bit longer until Chuck saw me kill another person in living color, so to speak, but he did tell me that when he flashed, the encoded photo flashed first, then all of the data and related photos afterward, closed out by the picture again. He saw all those dead people around the dinner table, dead in their chairs where we left them. He knew I had killed them all. And he still convinced Casey to go with him to save me from Zarnow and the threat of torture. I didn't know all of that until much later, when I think I finally understood that when Chuck said he fell in love with me when we first met, that he meant it. The real me, the assassin mixed with the girl…that amalgamation that was Sarah Walker. Ultimately, she is who I chose to become, the name I chose for myself…because she was the person that Chuck loved.

To get to that mission, there is still another 18 months of the Anderson years before I met Chuck.

It is true that the next time I saw Carina after we parted ways once the CATs disbanded was after I had already been stationed to protect Chuck in Burbank. But she and I crossed paths, indirectly, on one of the worst missions Bryce and I ever did together.

And I say worse because…well, Carina is…after all, Carina. Once she knew Bryce and I were together together, she made it her sole purpose in life to try and take him away from me. She didn't succeed, but, and I'm quoting her here, she loved taking things that I wanted. Crazy thing is that I still called her my friend…even after all that. Her intentions changed slightly, which was her only saving grace. Only. She was, and always will be still, well, Carina.