A/N: More of our story.


The Missionary


...It's just some lights on the TV
There's a vision in some gold

You're tuned to the visionary
Life's long when you have it all
Your heart beats for a missionary
When the summer's long

— The Brothers Martin, The Missionary


Chapter 3: Executioner's Song


Chuck told Sarah the way — he claimed it would only take five minutes or so to get there.

"It's an old building, condemned, about to be torn down. There's a construction fence around it, but one panel of the fence can be moved."

Despite her worry that making him talk without her hands on him might result in his ardor cooling, she asked: "How do you know that?"

"A guy at work. Weirder than Morgan. Jeff. He basically lives in his van, moves it around, looking for places to park it where the police won't hassle him. He told me about it."

She accepted that despite it sounding slightly deranged.

But she felt slightly deranged.

She had taken one gulp of her drink, but she felt like she had drunk it all. And maybe another. When she had turned up the seduction, she had meant to turn it up a notch or two, dole it out, to set the stage for more outside, a planned ramping up in the parking lot. But she had turned it up all the way, immediately. She'd approached seduction in the past only in measured steps, in inches and quarter-inches, deliberate peek-a-boo. Control, always control. Seduction offers control of another only insofar as you remain in control of yourself. That was what she was taught at the Farm; that was her constant practice.

Until tonight.

Seduction was a matter of control, controlled. Lead the mark to the right point, and no farther, else matters could get…ugly. She had been told over and over in her training, had been careful of it on missions.

The ploy was to offer sex so that the mark believed, to use the offer to manipulate the mark, but the point was never having sex — God, no.

The thought of sleeping with a mark had always nauseated her. She'd given almost all of herself away for the job, irretrievably. That was the one part of herself she'd kept, preserved.

She did not understand what was happening until the kiss.

She should have known when she touched his leg with hers; she had felt a tremble in that touch, and it had not been Bartowski's. But she ignored it. And then the seduction was full-on.

But that was still all she thought was happening until that kiss. Seduction, and nothing more, but seduction fast and furious. She had started it still under the illusion that she was in control of herself. But by the time it ended, it was not only Bartowski's body that had responded to the kiss, the contact. It was also hers. When she pulled back and he looked into her eyes, the moment instantly, irrationally (she knew that), became the most romantic moment of her life, the only truly romantic moment of her life.

Romantic.

That's crazy.

It was crazy but it was how she felt, and how she still felt as she wheeled the car to what she intended to be the killing ground.

Sarah Walker, CIA, did not do romance.

Her time with Bryce was her one extended relationship — was it a relationship? — she had ever had, and it had been wholly unromantic. Bryce had kissed her in a darkened bedroom, during sex, but never in the dark, under a full moon.

She had kissed marks in what would have been romantic scenes, outside fancy parties, in fancy clothes, but they were marks. She had felt nothing for them, nothing in those moments, beyond a desire for them to end.

But Bartowski was a mark. She was driving to a secluded spot to terminate him. She'd never terminated anyone she liked.

Until tonight.

She stole a glance at Bartowski. He was pointing to a building up the street, looming black in the night: "There!"

She had lied when she said she liked Bartowski. But not just to him. She lied to herself without knowing it because she believed her own lie. But it was a lie.

She liked him. And she was going to kill him.

"Stop here. Pull up to the fence." Bartowski gave her a nervous smile and jumped out. He jogged to the fence, just a few yards away. He grabbed a piece of wire wound around two support poles and quickly unwound it. He pushed one of the poles forward, opening the fence. When the opening was large enough for the car, he gestured for her to pull through it. She did. She stopped the car and he pushed the fence back.

He jumped back in the car, breathing heavily. He had the wire in his hands. When he saw her notice it, he chuckled. "Didn't want to wind it up again now, and didn't want to hunt it in the dark later."

She nodded, reached out to him, and, smiling, caressed his thigh.

I like him.

Caressing his thigh reminded her that she had earlier cupped his groin, and caressed him even more intimately. She had never taken seduction that far before. She had allowed a few touches, a grab here, a pinch there, part of the job, but she had not touched a mark like that.

She liked Bartowski.

She was under orders to kill him.

She tried to shut it all off, to isolate whatever was happening to her internally. That she liked Bartowski was immaterial. It did not change her orders.

It was just an additional hurdle, another obstacle to overcome, like a change of timetable, the mark deciding to wear a bulletproof vest, or the unexpected arrival of a bodyguard. She liked him. That would make following orders more difficult — but it would not keep her from her objective.

It wouldn't.

She always succeeded, always secured her objective. She'd never failed in a mission, never failed to carry out a termination order.

She drove around the building, dilapidated and sad in the dark, and was surprised to find behind it a parking lot the far edge of which was overhung by trees. Ignoring the building, the spot was sort of…nice.

She turned to Bartowski, making herself smile, the smile made difficult by her steely grip on herself. Bending her lips was like bending rebar. But she needed to re-involve Bartowski. He was being too quiet and she had been too much in her own head.

"Here?"

He nodded. She drove beneath the overhanging branches and stopped, shutting off the engine. Then she immediately launched herself at Bartowski. But she knew she could not chance much physical contact. As soon as their lips touched, she felt her response as well as his. She put her hand on his chest, rubbing it softly, and she ended the kiss quickly.

She needed to end this quickly, or she wouldn't end it at all.

"Let's get in the back."

He looked at her for a long moment, indecision in his eyes.

Tactically, she should kiss him again, but she no longer felt like she could risk that. His lips were a weapon against her, her mission. More kisses would soften her resolve.

"Please?" she said, breathing out the word, making it sound as promising as she possibly could.

He nodded. Turning, he slipped himself between the seats, working himself into the back. Sarah was happy that the rental was full-size. He pulled his legs into the backseat. Her purse was on one end of the seat, Bartowski's head on the other.

Taking a breath, trying to blank herself, Sarah followed, squeezing between the seats and onto Bartowski. Once she was on top of him, she had to kiss him again, but she made it quick, little more than a peck, then she sat up.

She put her hands to the top button of her blouse and began to unbutton it. Once Bartowski's eyes were fixed on her unbuttoning, she switched to one hand, her left, and slowly reached behind her with her right, into her purse.

Her right hand found her gun, slipped the safety, as her left undid another button.

She could feel Bartowski hardening beneath her but she ignored that, her dampening response, and she adjusted her grip on the gun.

"Sarah," Bartowski said, his controlled tone surprising her, "you are the most desirable woman I have seen, and I am sure, sure, that someday when I am old and gray, I will curse myself for saying this, but — I'm okay with not doing this right now.

"We could just, you know, kiss, caress, get to know each other. You live here now, there's no hurry. We could date, date some more?"

Sarah had him in the position she planned. There was no reason to extend the seduction, and urgent reasons not to, but disappointment and…rejection…seized her. But she had not intended to actually go through with it, see the seduction through to its natural, not its mission end.

Had she? No, but she wanted to.

She used the disappointment and rejection to her advantage — they covered her other responses to Bartowski. In one smooth movement, she pulled the gun from her purse and lowered it into Bartowski's face.

His eyes widened in shock.

She pressed the gun to his forehead, compressing her lips and hardening her gaze, trying to amp up Bartowski's fear, surprise.

"Where is it? Where is the Intersect?"


Chuck's mind was racing, his heart pounding.

This couldn't be happening. Yes, he had once had a woman show up at his door wearing only an overcoat, but Morgan explained that.

This, Sarah Walker kissing him, fondling him. This. Nothing explained this.

It could only be an act of God, some kind of miracle. Once in a blue moon.

She was driving faster than she had to the restaurant, following Chuck's instructions. It wasn't far; the route was simple. She wondered how he knew about the place, and he told her. That meant mentioning Jeff, his coworker, and mentioning Jeff slowed Chuck's mind and pulse.

Jeff had not just told Chuck about the place, Chuck had visited Jeff there once. Jeff had called the Buy More, giving his address and claiming to be too sick to drive himself to the doctor. Big Mike had chosen Chuck, surprise, to go and check on him. Chuck had found him parked under the trees, behind the condemned building.

It had struck Chuck as a pleasant spot, as long as he faced away from the building. Jeff was asleep by the time Chuck got there, and after waking him, and talking to him for a few minutes, Chuck was sure Jeff had intended the call as a drunken prank. Chuck stayed long enough to see Jeff sober up a bit and to make sure nothing was seriously wrong, then he left.

He never imagined returning to that spot, especially not like this, planning what Sarah was planning.

What was Sarah planning?

Sex.

Chuck gulped to himself. Sarah had excited him as he'd never been excited before. As much as he had desired Jill, it did not compare to the desire he felt now. How that was possible was unclear, but it was true, even if he had no account of it.

He liked this woman.

From the moment she asked him about upselling her, he had liked her. Before that, he had been too stunned by her to sort out any reaction. But their quiet conversation beside the laptops — something about the way she said his name, her asking him about his dreams…

And then what she did to him during dinner. The El Compadre had become a magic world, and Sarah its enchantress, his enchantress. Her leg against his was a cosmic intertwining, the secret, inner meaning of Chuck's whole life.

How could I resist her? And then that kiss, her blue-moon eyes!

He glanced at her, her self-confident driving. He could not read her face.

What's she thinking?

The speed of the car suggested that her desire was as urgent as it had seemed during that kiss when they first got into the car. He saw her smile to herself, then saw the smile collapse into a frown.

What's she thinking?

Chuck felt her glance at him just as he saw the building ahead. "There!" He pointed ahead.

When they were almost to the building, he spoke. "Stop here. Pull up to the fence." She did. He jumped out of the car. When he had been here before, two fence poles had been tethered together only by a wire wound around them. It was still true. He unwound the wire and waved Sarah through, then he got back in the car, keeping the wire in his hands so that he would know where it was later. He explained that to Sarah when she looked at it in his hands.

She nodded and reached out, stroked his thigh. His breath caught. She seemed to blush in the darkness. He dropped the wire in the console, beneath the radio.

Sarah drove the car around the building, and Chuck watched her face as the trees came into view. Her frown softened. She turned to him and gave him a slow-motion smile; it appeared to require some exertion he did not understand. But it bothered him when he noticed it.

"Here?" she asked when the car was beneath the trees. He nodded. A turn of the key killed the engine.

And then Sarah was against him, leaning into him, kissing him. He kissed her back.

The kiss was brief but intense. She rubbed his chest with her hand, then ended the kiss. Her eyes locked with his, she suggested: "Let's get in the back."

The exertion in her smile earlier still nagged at him. He hesitated, unsure.

"Please?" She breathed the request out in a voice that made him inhale sharply. He worked his way into the backseat, managing to twist so that he was on his back. His long legs he angled into the footwell behind the driver's seat. A moment later, Sarah was on top of him, her body pressed hard against his. She kissed him quickly, then she sat up.

She began to unbutton her blouse. Chuck's eyes fixated on the task, first done with both hands, then with one. He could feel her pressing against him, her legs around him, one knee wedged between him and the seat, the other leg propped against the floorboard. He knew she could feel him pressing against her. Even in the dim light, he saw her pupils dilate. She seemed to be shifting her weight, grinding slowly against him.

He wanted her more than life itself.

But he made himself speak, resisted himself. The words were the hardest to speak he could remember.

"Sarah," he paused, gathering himself, "you are the most desirable woman I have seen, and I am sure, sure, that someday when I am old and gray, I will curse myself for saying this, but — I'm okay with not doing this right now.

"We could just, you know, kiss, caress, get to know each other. You live here now, there's no hurry. We could date, date some more?"

Sarah's face changed. Chuck thought he saw…disappointment, hurt. Her face changed again, and suddenly he was staring into a gun. The hand holding the gun was a duplicate of his earlier vision, the blue ring and all, and Sarah's face above the gun was a duplicate of another earlier vision, her lips a hard line, her eyes icy.

She pressed the cold barrel against his forehead, an extension of the iciness of her eyes.

"Where is it? Where is the Intersect?"


The word bounced around Chuck's terrified mind.

Intersect? Intersect? Intersect!

The word flipped a switch…

A sound, like great doors flung open suddenly, filled his mind, and then all the visions of the day reappeared in rapid succession, more vivid than before, less isolated. …

And not just the visions of the day, other visions, new visions, visions numbered like the stars…

This must be what it's like to be God. Everything was arrayed before him, all at once, north, south, east and west, today, yesterday and tomorrow. Like countless facets on some infinite diamond, on each face a vision.

He was omnipresent, omniscient.

Omni.

He knew. He knew. Oh, God! He knew.

He knew it all at once, whatever it all was, all in vast, infinitely fine interconnectedness, a gestalt significant beyond its elements, too vast for him to contemplate entirely, to hold in a single vision.

The largest possible thought. He thought his mind would burst.

And then, in a second instant, after swelling to encompass it all, his mind shrank back.

But still, he knew, — but not all of it, at least not all at once.

He, Chuck, knew she was Sarah Walker, CIA. He was not sure how or why he knew, but he did. Images of her, photographs, documents, records, surveillance footage — back a decade to nothing but question marks, and then forward to…now, to the Intersect.

The Intersect.

He was the Intersect.

He knew himself. The Intersect knew itself. It was self-aware, man and supercomputer, one.


Sarah saw Bartowski's eyes roll back into his head as she pushed the gun to his forehead.

It was like she had pushed a button; it was like she had said 'Abracadabra!" He jerked convulsively beneath her, almost throwing her forward, and he began to whisper, but at an insane auctioneer's pace.

"I see. I see it. See it. I see it all. Everywhere, everything. America. Russia. China. North Korea. Agents. Like ants, everywhere, above and below ground. At war. Treaties. Plots. Strike and counterstrike. Terrorists funded. Children maimed. Smoke and screams. Rape and ravage. Knives in the dark. Oh, God, I see it. I see it. I. See. It. All."

He stopped speaking; his head thrashed from side to side.

Shocked, confused, she pulled the gun back. His eyes snapped open. Their brown was abysmal, changed.

"Agent Walker!"

Flat and mechanical, it was the voice of a GPS. His hand shot out, faster than her eyes could follow, ahead of her lightning reflexes, and her gun went flying into the front seat, bouncing from there onto the floor.

She lunged after it, but Bartowski caught her arms, twisting her down onto the floor. She could not reach for her knives; he was on top of her, had control of her. He was stronger than she expected.

They were face-to-face.

His eyes stared into hers. He seemed to scry all that she was, had been, ever would be. She watched her life pass before his eyes.

And then he blinked. His eyes were the same as before, the same as at El Compadre. But he stayed on top of her, his weight making it hard to breathe, eye-to-eye.

His voice still sounded strange, flat.

"Sarah Walker, birth name unknown. Central Intelligence Agency. Recruited: Langston Graham, still her immediate supervisor. Training, The Farm: Infiltration, Termination, Seduction. Highest overall graduation score among all Farm trainees to date. The highest mission success rate of all current CIA agents: 100%. Twelve terminations, none with extreme prejudice. Current mission…"

Bartowski stopped speaking for a moment; it looked like he was working on a math problem, long division, and then he went on in his normal voice, but sounding somehow surprised and resigned simultaneously.

"...Current mission: retrieval of the Intersect and termination of Chuck Bartowski."

She closed her eyes.

Hearing her life like that, knowing that those few lines were the whole of it — the details didn't matter — demoralized her so much that she went limp.

Bartowski seemed to realize then he was on top of her and he pushed himself up, sat down in the backseat, staring at her like a stranger.

"You were going to kill me." He didn't say it as an accusation, but instead as a brute, indigestible fact. His voice was sad.

"But you can't. If you terminate me, you can't retrieve the Intersect. Because if you terminate me, you destroy the Intersect. I am the Intersect.

"You've been given contradictory orders, Agent. You can't succeed in this mission. So much for your perfect record."

He opened the rear door and stepped out of the car and into the moonlight.


Sarah scrambled between the front seats, crawling forward, and grabbed her gun from the floorboard. She crawled back. Her gun was aimed at his back. But he did not turn around. He was staring up at the moon.

Sarah looked at him standing there, seeming oblivious to her, to her gun, although he had to have heard her get it. She tried to understand what he said. "I am the Intersect."

What did that mean? How did he know who she was? How had he fooled her so completely?

She didn't know much about the Intersect. A program. Top secret. A joint effort by the CIA and the NSA. It involved massive amounts of top-secret data. It was that data that Graham said he was sending her to retrieve, to protect. Otherwise, Graham had kept her in the dark, played everything close to the vest, as he always did. Rumors at Langley linked the Intersect to a superspy program, but Sarah had dismissed the rumors as moonshine.

Bartowski turned to her. He looked frightened for the first time since his convulsions.

She kept the gun on him and got out of the car. "Look, I don't know what's going on, what game you're playing, how you played me so well, but…"

"But what, Agent?" He sounded like Chuck again, his voice normal, the word 'agent' clumsy on his lips, although his verbal cadence was slow. "I don't know what's going on either. I just know things — and I know that I know them."

He looked introspective for a second. "But I don't know how. I know who you are and I know all about you. From the day you joined the CIA until your last mission. For a moment there, I thought I knew all about everything — but that's gone. Not gone, gone, if you know what I mean. It's all in me, like memories, even if I'm not actively remembering them."

Sarah shook her head — at what she couldn't say. "Bryce Larkin sent you the Intersect program. Where is it?"

He tapped his temple as he stared at her gun. "It's in here, Agent." This time 'agent' sounded like a condemnation.

"I got an email from Bryce last night. I opened it. The next thing I remember is waking in my desk chair and Morgan Grimes pounding on my bedroom door. Since then, I've had…visions, feelings…A motorcade, a soldier, a clockface — a time, I guess, and then visions of you, your face, your hand — that ring — and a gun — and a feeling of doom, for lack of a better word." He looked at her hard for a moment. "I guess that feeling was for you."

She shook her head, trying to understand what he was saying, to comprehend the whole situation. She felt like she'd lost her mind. "You're claiming the program — it's in your head? That's not possible."

He nodded as if she had not denied what he said. "And it must do more than supply me with information. I have no idea how I knocked your gun out of your hand." He was quiet for a moment, then he narrowed his eyes. "Maybe the program protects itself."

She'd heard enough. Maybe he's crazy. Waving the gun toward the car, she gave Bartowski an order. "Get in. Drive us to your place, now." She glanced at her watch. 10:04 pm.

Bartowski looked at her, and she realized his object of vision was no longer the woman into whose eyes he gazed earlier. The warmth and longing were gone. Fear and betrayal had replaced them. He looked at her and saw a monster.

They got in the car and drove around the building. Sarah made Bartowski get out and open the fence. They just left it open, and Bartowski started driving toward his apartment.

Sarah knew where it was already; she had him drive so that she could keep watch over him without having to drive as well.

The moon hung heavy over them as they drove.

They passed by the El Compadre. Neither of them turned to look.

After driving for a few more minutes, Bartowski slowed the car. A police motorcycle, lights flashing, had just blocked the intersection ahead of them. Sarah kept her gun on Bartowski as she craned to see what was happening.

A motorcade of limousines flanked by more motorcycles passed them.

Bartowski stiffened behind the wheel. His body jerked again, although not as violently, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

When he opened them — as the police motorcycle roared away from blocking the intersection — Bartowski turned to her, his face white, his breath ragged.

He spoke as if he were reading something only partly legible. "That motorcade. That was…General Stanfield. He's headed back to his hotel after an awards banquet. There's a plot…a plot to kill him and his family at his hotel." Chuck's eyes widened. "An execution by explosive…"

Bartowski sat still for a moment. The sirens grew quieter, more distant. As they did, Sarah could hear Bartowski breathing, almost hear him thinking.

And — he stomped the gas pedal — the car leaped into the intersection.

Horns blared and tires screamed — cars whipped past them, screeched to a halt.

They plowed down the street to the next block, and Bartowski whipped the wheel around to travel parallel with the motorcade; the car fishtailed but Bartowski corrected it just before a collision. They were jetting along at a speed that unnerved Sarah.

Flabbergasted, Sarah jabbed her gun hard into Bartowki's ribs. "What the hell are you doing?"

He glanced at her for a second before he faced the street. She saw hatred, along with fear and betrayal, lurking beneath the urgent resolve in his eyes.

"Saving Stanfield. If you stop me, he's a dead man. Kill me later."


A/N: More soon. Chapter Four: To Be and Not to Be. Drop me a review; I'm always happy to read them.