Rainbow risin' over my shoulder
Love flows gettin' better as we're older
All I know all I want to do is
Hold her
She's the life that breathes in me
"The Biggest Part of Me"
Ambrosia
June 4, 2012
Echo Park, Los Angeles, California
"Morgan!" Chuck called from the sofa, raising his coffee cup in the air. His other arm was draped across the back of the sofa, behind Sarah, who sat close, snuggled up to him, her legs curled underneath her.
"Greetings, Bartowskis," he called as he walked in and shut the door behind him. He pulled the strap of his bag, positioned diagonally across his chest, over his head and set the bag down on the floor. "It's day 111 of the Charles I. Bartowski unemployment plan. But we're on the way, I promise." He stooped, pulling a file folder and a white three-ring binder from the bag on the floor at his feet.
"Find some promising leads?" Chuck asked him, smacking his lips gently as he sipped his hot coffee, then placed it down on the table.
Morgan walked to the sofa, plopping down next to Chuck, smiling at Sarah as she swallowed a bite of croissant, pointing to her full mouth as the reason for her silence. "The space Sarah found, you know, Reagan's old office building." He took the binder, flipping it open to rest on his lap. "It's semi-leased."
"What does that mean?" Chuck asked, one side of his mouth slightly curled.
"They have a tenant, at will. But I talked to the real estate firm and they are willing to ask the current tenants to vacate, provided we do a full year at a time. Even better, because we can pay cash, up front, for the entire year. That gives us the right of refusal, pretty much. But we only have 48 hours to decide yay or nay."
"Casey must have lit up like a Christmas tree," Chuck said with a laugh, his mood uplifted at how easily it all seemed to have come together in such a short time.
"Yeah, you know, I told Casey to wait in the car. We would have had to pay more than asking if the agent saw how gung-ho Casey was," Morgan quipped.
Sarah laughed. "I can't imagine Casey gung-ho about anything. Except maybe Gertrude."
"Casey had photos of Reagan in his apartment like other people have pictures of their kids," Chuck laughed, inside feeling the same little pull when he realized she didn't remember the inside of Casey's apartment, how it would have looked before it was Alex and Morgan's.
"They're still in a box in the extra bedroom," Morgan added, pointing out of habit the way across the courtyard, but stopping as he saw the crease on Sarah's forehead, knowing she was concentrating on something. Morgan watched as she splayed open one hand, looking at the back of it.
That caught Chuck's attention, as he looked down at her hand as well, then up to her face. Before he could open his mouth to speak, Sarah beat him to it. "Did Casey used to touch one of those pictures on his way out of his apartment?"
"Yes," Chuck and Morgan said in unison, both smiling.
Sarah's lips twisted to the side, hiding her smile, as she continued thinking. "Did we…ever…use his hand print to…break into something we weren't supposed to?"
Chuck's smile only widened, as one eyebrow raised, then lowered. That made Sarah smile wider as well. "Yes, we did."
"You did? Where was I?" Morgan feigned ignorance sarcastically. "Oh, wait! Now I remember! You tranq'd me," he said tightly, punching Chuck's shoulder, winking at Sarah as she burst out laughing.
"Do you remember anymore?" Chuck asked expectantly.
She concentrated, but shook her head, as nothing more was forthcoming. Chuck sighed, but he didn't have great expectations anyway. It seemed it was strong emotions that triggered the most memories. Aside from being sidelined temporarily while Jane Bentley attempted to build an Intersect army, that entire incident had been lackluster, comparatively speaking.
Chuck followed her gaze as it settled on the actual binder Morgan was flipping through. She reached over, grabbed the front of it, and partially flipped it closed, so she could see the front of it. "No acronym?" she asked, not even sure why at the moment she had.
"I couldn't decide on P.O.S.S., you know Potential Office Space Site, or H.O.C.I., home of Carmichael Industries. What do you think, Chuck?" Morgan asked, stopping himself when he saw the long, silent look Chuck gave Sarah, as he realized she was remembering something.
Sarah's eyes had glazed with tears as she met Chuck's. The silence was heavy.
"Oh!" Morgan suddenly exclaimed. "You wouldn't have known about that…unless you remembered," he concluded with wonder.
"The house," she whispered. "You were trying to surprise me. But I told you about the white house…with the picket fence." It was a mix this time, a recovered memory and a real memory overlapping. Sitting up in bed next to him, while he explained what he and Morgan had been doing–looking for a house for them. Telling him about the house, preluding it with the fact that she had never told anyone about that before. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the same house, calling his name, seeing him turn and losing her breath momentarily at how absolutely devastated he looked, the reason he had run out of Castle–hiding that desperate sadness from everyone else. Running away in the dark from the same house, after she had ruthlessly beaten him, then watched him take a bullet meant for her.
His voice faltered, but he eventually formed the words. "I didn't know until much later…that was your mother's house. Or at least, what your mother's house looked like. Why it mattered so much, why you'd never told anyone but me."
She closed her eyes and kissed his cheek. He reached up his hand and caressed her face softly, both completely oblivious to Morgan's presence. Morgan sat quietly, thinking that he should clear his throat to remind them he was right there, but something stopped him. It was like watching them in the courtyard before, perhaps a little impolite, but so intriguing he couldn't look away. Like he was watching the best part of a sappy movie. Only it was real.
Eventually, after almost a minute had passed, he did clear his throat. Sarah startled, pulling away from Chuck slightly. "Sorry, Morgan," she said apologetically.
Morgan smiled. "Awkward Chuck and Sarah moments," he mumbled, still smiling. "Man, did I miss those."
XXX
"Hey, Sis," Chuck said as he heard Ellie answer her phone. "Man, it feels like it's been a million years since I talked to you." He knew it had only been a week ago, when he'd had to call Ellie the morning after Sarah had sleepwalked into the courtyard in the rain.
"You sound good, Chuck. Like, really good. The best I remember you sounding on the phone since we left," she said, the smile in her voice as he listened. "Is Sarah there?"
"No, El, she's with Alex. She's learning how to make pot roast," he said lightly.
"Really?" Ellie asked incredulously.
"Yeah. I can make, like, two different things. We eat at Morgan's one night a week. We need some options besides take out," Chuck laughed. "Although, she did want to let us talk without her, too."
Ellie was quiet a while before she spoke again. "How's the specialist Beckman sent to you?"
Chuck sighed. "He's working on the PTSD first with her. Which is hard, as you can imagine."
"Is he including you in those sessions?" Ellie asked, sensing the added tension in his voice and suspecting the cause.
"Yes," Chuck told her softly. He heard her sharp intake of breath, the long, hissing exhale while she processed the information. "But, El, he's very confident that she actually remembers everything in between downloading the Intersect and waking up in the hotel. That with therapy she'll be able to recall all of that."
Ellie thought he sounded hopeful, rightfully so, but there was a dark side to that, and she knew he must know that too. "It was the trauma of those memories that caused the repression, Chuck."
"I know," he said sadly. "But he can help her deal with whatever she remembers."
"Chuck," Ellie said, her voice suddenly alive despite his subdued tone. "If she remembers everything from that time, then…she…oh, Chuck, those emotions…"
"That's what Dreyfus thinks, El." His voice broke when he continued. "She didn't really remember me, but she remembered those feelings. Confusing. But what ended up saving…well, all three of us." He whispered to finish, "You were right, El. When you woke me up with Devon and Clara." The lingering silence was full of emotion.
"What about memory stuff, Chuck? Any progress in that area?" Ellie asked.
"Every day she remembers something. Dreyfus thinks it'll still be slow, you know, and never 100 percent restored. But he's really encouraged. Staying here with me was the best thing for her memory–we all agree with that," he said.
"I knew it would be, Chuck. I'm so glad things are getting better. You know, moving in the right direction," she said, breathing a sigh of relief that he heard.
"Hey, Bro!" Chuck heard in the background, along with the sound of his niece chattering away in her unintelligible toddler babble. "How's it going?" he called.
Chuck felt the pull, missing his sister and Devon and his niece, wishing they were closer. "Tell him awesome, Sis," he smiled.
Ellie repeated the word, then it echoed in Devon's voice in reply. Followed by what sounded like a toddler "ah-um" that got everyone shrieking happily. Awesome.
XXX
"Ellie," Sarah breathed, as she sat beside Chuck on the sofa, deep into her session with Dreyfus. It sounded sad, distressed.
Chuck wondered if him telling her about talking to his sister earlier had pulled something out that she was now focusing on. He felt Sarah's grip pinch his hand closed. All he could hear was the sound of her ragged breathing and Dreyfus' pen as it scratched along the notebook page.
"What about Ellie?" Dreyfus asked generically.
"I had to tell her. Everything. She was so upset. Worried about Chuck, worried about me. I don't think I ever realized until right then how much Ellie really cared about me. She was my first real friend. My sister, too, in a way," she whispered.
"Why was Ellie worried, Sarah?" Dreyfus asked.
"Because I downloaded the…defective Intersect. She asked me so many questions I couldn't keep up. Why didn't I black out after I downloaded it? Didn't that always happen to Chuck? Casey told her I did, only after we were safe. I don't remember it, but he carried me back to the car. Then he called her, told her what happened. He knew she knew the most about the Intersect than anyone else," she said, speaking slowly with no inflection.
But her pitch and tone changed with the subject matter. "I had to tell her that Chuck was taken. By a crazy rogue agent who wanted the Intersect for himself. That Chuck's life was in danger." Her voice became strained. "I have a splitting headache, so bad I can hardly think straight. Ellie told me to sleep. That downloading the Intersect was stressful on my brain and I needed time to recuperate. But Chuck didn't have time for that. I told her I would sleep when this was done and Chuck was back with me."
He felt the tragedy of her words in his bones, telling him about what had happened while he had been knocked out. His memory started in Los Angeles, but he had no memories in between his apartment and waking up in a vehicle, his hands cuffed in front of him. He heard a foreign language coming over the radio, sounding like Japanese. His vision had been blurry, most likely an after effect of the drugs, but it was very apparent to him as he gazed at the scenery whizzing by he was in Japan. That had been troubling, and he'd wondered just how long he had been out to have been moved such a great distance. He had worried, wondering how Casey and Sarah would have been able to find him.
Sarah's recount pulled him back to the present. "Ellie told me she could call General Beckman and get the suppression device, get the Intersect out of my head. I told her no." Her voice changed again, taking on the same desperate tone he had heard before. "We don't have any help from the CIA or the NSA or anyone. It's just Casey and me." She was crying. "I told them what I was thinking when I downloaded it. It doesn't matter what happens to me. I need Chuck. There is literally nothing I wouldn't do to protect him. Nothing."
Chuck rubbed at his cheeks, feeling the hot tears as they spilled from his eyes. His sister had told him in the hospital later, after Sarah had attacked him, what she had done and said while she had been at gunpoint in the car with Sarah. He had just never realized she had been repeating Sarah's own words back to her at the time.
"Ellie said instead she was calling Morgan. She would run every test she possibly could to try and research what had happened to him when he'd had the Intersect a few months ago. She understood the Intersect, she said. She would figure it out, to try and help me if she could, since I refused to suppress it. She understood it was for Chuck. She actually tried to thank me, but I told her not to. We both love him."
She started crying again, harder, as her body started shaking as she wept.
"What, Sarah?" Dreyfus asked kindly.
She struggled, sucking in huge gulps of air, clutching her chest as she heaved. "If something happens to me, Chuck will blame himself. I know it. Even though I made the choice." She gulped. "There was no choice, though. Would he understand that?" She breathed heavily, sobbing. "We were so close. And now it may never happen. I have to find him, no matter what."
"What may never happen?" Dreyfus asked.
Another long stretch of crying before she answered. "We were trying to have a baby. We had just decided. And then he was kidnapped."
Dreyfus huffed, soft and sympathetic, saying nothing else as he wrote in his notebook.
Sarah shook herself out of her relaxed state, quickly swiping at her cheeks, embarrassed to have lost so much of her equilibrium. Both of her hands were on her face, but Chuck tucked his finger under her chin and raised her face to force her to look at him. He was weepy, but composed enough to speak. "My sister never told me about that conversation, you know. About you refusing to have it removed."
He moved his hand away, but she stayed locked in his gaze. "I think she thought she should have just tried harder to convince me. That everything would have been fine if I'd just listened to her. But it's not true. I never would have found you without the Intersect. Or it would have been too late. Even if somehow someone could have told me what was going to happen afterward, I still would have done it. It was the only way to save you from him."
He squeezed her to him, burying his face in her hair. He knew what she was willing to do for him had no bounds–he had always known that. He couldn't help thinking Dreyfus was being proven right–she seemed to be recalling things in almost chronological order, pulling from fuzzy nightmare images she had been wrestling with all this time. He was hopeful and fearful at the same time. Full recovery of that time would mean they could start treating the stress, helping her to be closer to healed, at least as much as was possible. But it would also mean they would have to contend with the fully recovered memory of what Quinn had done to her.
XXX
She stopped, holding onto the doorframe. He was asleep, wearing a pair of pajamas she had laughed at, grandfather pajamas, pajamas Casey would wear…His pretending-to-be-a-boring-married-guy pajamas, he'd told her. Was there any way, time, place where Chuck could bore her? No, she knew this now. Even watching him sleep was mesmerizing, tantalizing. She had never seen him asleep, not like that, away from the surveillance cameras. His hair was messy, his face perfectly relaxed. Oh, God, but he was beautiful. Did he know how she felt? Damn it, did she even know how she felt?
She told herself a thousand times that she didn't feel the way she knew she felt right now–dressed in a slinky satin nightgown, standing in his bedroom, watching him sleep, wishing he was awake, so she could see his eyes…so she could feel him touch her. She ached for him to touch her–her hand, her face. She wanted his lips against hers, the memory of the last kiss, the way he'd kissed her in front of Roan Montgomery, making her burn on the inside as her pulse throbbed in other places where, she had to admit to herself as she stood here, she wanted him to touch her.
It had been a long time, she admitted to herself. But this wasn't just physical, she at last allowed herself to acknowledge. It was him, only him, only ever him, that she wanted to kiss her, to touch her, and that she wanted to touch. What would happen if she sat beside him, raked her fingers into his hair, pressed her lips against his? She trembled, her legs shaking, at the thought of what could happen if he woke up like that.
She would be compromised, hopelessly compromised. The despair inside her as she accepted that made her eyes flood with tears. Beckman would know, and send her away from him. They could bunker him, take his life, his family and friends away from him. She had fought valiantly all this time to prove he was safe, living his life like this, so that never happened to him. She couldn't let her inflamed desire take over, cloud her judgment. Already just standing here was dangerous, for he could wake any moment and she knew she couldn't explain this away, couldn't disguise the raw emotion on her face.
She felt gutted, empty, as she turned to go back to her room, like she was leaving behind pieces of herself behind bit by bit the further away from him she moved. Her need for him was absolute, physical and emotional. What was she going to do?
She woke, feeling her pulse in every fiber of her being as Chuck's hand absently caressed her hip under her satin nightgown. How she knew he would have touched her had she climbed into his bed back then. She rolled towards him, kissing him though he was sound asleep. He kissed her back before he completely woke up, a look of sleepy confusion so adorable that all of a sudden she felt her blood flow to every part of her.
"Hi-yo," he breathed out as she flipped him onto his back, pulling at his night clothes at the same time. "Are you–" he started to say. She leaned down, crushing his mouth with a kiss. She left him partially clothed, left her nightgown on, sinking herself on top of him, drenched and slick. That answered the question she had smothered inside his mouth with her kiss.
"And so are you," she said against his lips, moving slowly as he sighed in contentment. It took so very little, especially when she had been so ready before she'd actually woken from her intense dream.
Her voice vibrated with her movements, straining as the sensations distracted her. "The house in the suburbs," she panted. "Did you know I almost went into your room while you were sleeping?"
"What?" he gasped, laboring to breathe during her ministrations. That had obviously shocked him, she thought.
"I was already in love with you. I wanted to just be with you so badly I couldn't sleep, knowing you were so close," she moaned, leaning down against his chest.
"Is that why…you…" he started.
"Yes," she told him, confusing him for a moment. Was she answering? Or–
"Oh, yes," she added afterward, moaning louder, her fingers clutching at his chest as he felt her muscles tightening against him.
He rolled her onto her back gently, cradling her in his arms, crushing her into the pillows. Maybe he was not completely awake, he thought, but he reminded himself to get a clearer explanation of whatever it was she had been trying to tell him once they were awake in the morning. Right now, even if he was half asleep, he was totally immersed in her, and every other thought rushed away as he felt her climax again, only moments before his own, breathing her name as he pressed his forehead against hers.
After, he only shifted slightly to the side, rearranging their arms and legs to a more comfortable sleeping position. He closed his eyes and she lay listening to him breathe until she was confident he was asleep again. So beautiful, she thought, knowing these feelings she had were old, familiar, even when she had thought maybe they could have been younger than his. Everything she remembered now just proved it to her again and again–she had loved him from the first moment she had ever seen him. That was comforting enough for her to sleep again, encircled in his arms.