A/N: I never understood why nothing changed after Sarah watched the recording Carina had given her in "Chuck versus the Three Words." Why didn't she go and talk to Chuck about it? Why didn't they reconcile and become a couple? This one-shot isn't a rewrite but an extension from that point. Obviously, it is 100% Charah.
Thanks to Capt LiL for the beta. Much appreciated. I hope you are reading his "Chuck vs The Corporate Pilot." His Sarah Walker is absolutely adorable.
The Recording
When Carina gave her the memory stick containing a recording, Sarah never expected it to be what she had just watched. A confession from someone who thought he was about to die and felt it was his last chance to say it.
As she sat and watched it again, for the sixth time, she realized she hadn't moved from the seat for the last half hour. She had either played it back again or just sat thinking about his words.
No. There was something else she had done. The pile of soaking tissues next to her attested to that. Chuck Bartowski had made the CIA's best operative cry. A lot. She had been the agency's coldest assassin, one who had coldly carried out some pretty horrific assignments without any compunction. She had been tortured and never shown any emotion. She hadn't shed a tear since her dad was arrested. Yet here she was, a sobbing mess.
He had now done this to her twice, the first time being in Prague. That time she had cried for sorrow, for the loss of what she thought they could have together. This time was a mixture of happiness and regret. The latter was because she now realized how blind she had been.
When she had suggested running, she had just thought of how she would save him from becoming like her, along with how happy she thought they could be together. She hadn't considered his needs, other than his desire for her and the fact that killing people would hurt him.
She sat back and berated herself. She knew Chuck and his sister had had a traumatic life together when they were younger. Abandoned by both of their parents at a very young age. They had stayed together and bonded far more than normal siblings. Sarah had never had a sibling, so she didn't relate to that. In fact, she had never had anyone to bond with other than her slippery father.
Chuck had bonded strongly with Morgan, too. Another soul in need of companionship that he met at a very young age. That bond seemed strange to Sarah as well. She had never had such a friendship. In fact, never had friendship at all. What she had with Carina was more of a shared trauma bringing two very different people together. Their shared experiences made them relate to each other sometimes, and compete at others, but it wasn't a true friendship like Chuck and Morgan's.
Leaving situations and places was normal for her. It was what her life had been about since age seven. She had no concept of home or people to stay with, so it wasn't surprising that she thought it was the right thing to do.
Chuck, however, had no concept of doing that. The bond with his sister and her now husband, was part of his foundations. Part of him. Leaving that would have broken him, but not only that, the abandonment trauma he and his sister had suffered would make him determined not to do that to her again. He wouldn't even be able to think of doing it because of how much it would hurt her.
Sarah should have understood that pain now. She had done exactly that to her mom all those years ago and felt terrible about it, and yet she'd had no hesitation over inflicting it on Ellie, someone she thought of as a friend now. She had gone back into the cold, hard spy again.
She felt terrible. She felt unworthy of this man who she had repeatedly watched declare his love for her on this recording.
She knew she loved him too, but her love didn't seem to have room for others, unlike his. Could she change? Could she become more like him?
As she sat and contemplated that, she thought about how much he had already changed her. How she no longer blindly followed orders. How she could no longer close down all feelings for an assassination. How she did care about people like his sister and her husband, although obviously not enough, but far more than ever before. How she had experienced friendship for the first time in her life, not just with him but with his family too. How someone had cared for her, as well, making her open up to experience it.
Could she continue without that? She was finding it hard.
She was no longer the person she had been on arrival here in LA two years ago. Maybe she was redeemable. Maybe she could become worthy of him. But first, she had to admit her faults to him. Open herself up and make herself vulnerable again.
She had closed down after he'd walked away from her, so it would be hard, but she now knew she would have to do it again. Watching this recording and her thoughts about it and what had happened between them in Prague had made her realize, once again, that he was worth it. Maybe she herself was, too.
She watched the recording again.
A very distraught Chuck Bartowski was standing just inside the door of the vault. The camera was obviously above him.
"Look, Sarah, I know... I know that you're probably very hurt. You're probably hurt that I didn't run away with you in Prague. I did that, and I'm... I'm sorry.
"You have to know that you were everything that I ever wanted. But how can I do that? How could I run away with you? How could I be with you, knowing what I'd turn my back on, you know? Knowing that what I had in my head could help a lot of people?
"And you're the one that taught me that... that being a spy is about choosing something bigger. It's... it's about putting aside your own personal feelings for the greater good, and that's what I chose. I chose to be a spy for my friends and my family and you. I chose to be a spy because..."
The door to the vault opened as he finished. "Sarah, I love you."
He then fell through the door and she remembered catching him, shocked at those last three words which is all she had heard at the time.
"Chuck, we need to talk," she had told him over the phone. "Can you come over to my place?"
He sighed. "We never talk," he replied. "You lecture a lot, but never really talk."
That hurt, especially after what he had done in Prague. "Says the man, who wouldn't talk on the platform and just walked away," she snapped.
That obviously got through to him as she heard him wince. He sighed again, probably expecting this to be another ear lashing. "I'm sorry…. Okay. I'll come now."
That was twenty minutes ago and he had just knocked.
She rushed to the door and opened it for him. She felt very nervous about what she was going to say, but determined too. She pulled him in and sat him at one of the chairs at her desk before sitting at the one in front of her laptop.
"What do you want to talk about?" he asked, looking like he was dreading it.
She held up the memory stick. "This."
His confusion was as expected. "What is it?" He wouldn't know.
"A recording Carina gave me of you in the vault," she explained.
Realization appeared in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I thought I was about to die." He looked like he was horrified that she had been subjected to his ramblings that he thought she wouldn't want to hear.
She was about to insert the memory stick into a USB port on her laptop, but stopped and grabbed his shoulders. "Chuck, it's good. It's what you should have told me on the platform."
He looked at her for a while, then said, "You're right. I am so sorry."
"It made me realize something about how different we are," she confessed.
She turned back to her laptop and pushed the drive in.
They sat together and watched the recording play out. "I hadn't realized how high pitched my voice was."
She ignored that and said, "Chuck, I've never had people I care about, before coming here. No one I needed to have around me or who needed me around them. Listening to this reminded me that you do. I appreciate your words about me, but you also have family and at least one friend who you care about deeply and who care about you just as much."
"I do," he said. "I couldn't just disappear and leave Ellie like our parents did. She'd be devastated."
"And you'd miss her." She then said what she thought would have been the result of that. "You would come to resent me for taking you away from her."
He looked shocked at the suggestion. "No. I would never re-"
She cut him off, saying emphatically, "You would."
He sat and stared at her for a minute, but finally nodded. "You might be right."
She then said, "I didn't think. I just wanted to save you from becoming like me." He went to interrupt but she held up her hand. "Please let me talk. You said I never do, but you often don't give me the chance."
He winced at that, knowing she was right. He gestured for her to continue.
"I was being as bad as Bryce," she told him, hating that she had been like that. "Not giving you a choice, but I didn't want you to become a killer."
He did interrupt then. "It would only be to protect others," he pointed out.
"Each death by your hands darkens your soul, Chuck, but that's not all. The final part of the training before you become a full spy is the Red Test."
His brow crossed. He didn't know what that was, so she explained it. He looked at her in horror. "I couldn't do that."
She grasped his hands. "That was what I was trying to protect you from, Chuck."
"Well, I won't do that." He got lost in thought for a minute.
Sarah gave him time. She hadn't gotten to the main part of what she had asked him over for yet.
He finally looked at her. "Is that what you wanted to talk about?"
She looked down. "Partly, but also about us."
"Us?"
She looked him in the eyes again. "You said you were doing it for me, which I didn't fully understand. Is that because you think this new Intersect gives you the ability to save people and I need saving?"
He blushed, but they were both being honest here, so he replied. "Partly, but I thought me being a spy made it possible for there to be an 'us.'"
She hadn't thought about that. "Because you were no longer an asset," she surmised out loud.
"Yes, but I would be worthy of you, too."
She frowned. "Worthy of me?"
"We'd be equals," he replied.
She still wasn't completely sure she understood. "Both spies?"
He spelt out his thoughts to her. "I would no longer be this worthless underachiever."
That angered her a bit. "You are not an underachiever! There are hundreds of spies who will never achieve what you have done."
He tried deflecting, "We both know that is because of you and Casey."
She replied, "Like defusing that bomb before we even started working together?"
"Okay, there's that," he conceded.
"And you didn't even need the Intersect for that Chuck."
"Hmm."
She grabbed the sides of his face. "You are a hero, Chuck. Never forget that." She needed to move to what he was here for. "You are my hero, Chuck. I don't feel worthy of you, but I want to be." She stopped there, because she didn't want him to argue with her about that. She pulled him slightly closer and kissed him.
Chuck was surprised by this, but, like in front of the Bryce bomb, he responded and kissed her back.
Both poured their feelings for each other into the kiss. It lasted for well over a minute and both were breathless when they separated. Unlike that kiss in the warehouse, there was absolutely no discomfort. In fact, Sarah now knew that she was right about what she wanted to tell him. She held his gaze. "Chuck, you said you loved me on that recording… I love you, too."
His smile lit up the room and he swept her into his arms again for another kiss.
She let herself sink into the kiss. She felt it could have been like this if they had talked on the platform, but that was in the past. Now, she could start imagining a future. A future with the man she loved.
A/N: This, in my mind, is what should have happened, either at the end of that episode or the start of the next one. Sarah was obviously very emotional as she watched the recording, but then nothing happened. If she had gone and talked to Chuck about it, all the pain of seeing him go off with Hannah and then Sarah giving up on him and ending up with Shaw in the early part of Season 3 could have been avoided.
What do you think?
