A/N: We ease into our next arc, The Will to Believe.
The Missionary
Tell me all the things you would change
I don't pretend to know what you want
When you come around and spin my top
Time and again, time and again
No fire where I lit my spark
I am not afraid of the dark
Where your words devour my heart
And put me to shame, put me to shame
When your seven worlds collide
Whenever I am by your side
And dust from a distant sun
Will shower over everyone
— Distant Sun, Crowded House
Chapter 17: Tell and Show
Chuck dropped his head into his hands.
His eyes were blurry; his forehead throbbed, as if tiny prisoner miners with contraband pickaxes were inside it, whacking away in unison at the interior of his skull, determined to escape, to bust out.
He used his thumbs to rub his temples, and his fingers to press back against the miners — and allowed himself to indulge in a long, weary sigh.
Sarah's chair turned behind him; he could hear it, not see it, but he knew the sound. She'd been concerned about him for the last couple of days.
He'd been concerned about himself.
Sarah's eyes lingered on for a moment then he heard her stand. "I'm going for coffee, Chuck."
"Okay, thanks."
The raid on Mattress Bob's warehouse had taken place a week ago. Since then, Graham had been on some tirade, grinding out some personal vendetta against Chuck, as if the escape of Bob and Bryce had somehow been his fault. Beckman did not seem to believe that, despite the fact that it had been her men — and one woman — who had been casualties of the raid. She had sat quietly while Graham stormed.
The next day, the emailed file for Chuck was larger than any had been before, and Graham made a point of attaching a terse note, explaining that Chuck and Sarah needed to process it all, every last piece, before going home.
The resurrection of Bryce Larkin seemed to have driven Graham right to the edge; Bryce's duplicity he took as a personal affront, and that made his escape unforgivable. But he irrationally blamed Chuck for it — or seemed to do so. At any rate, he had been driving Chuck and Sarah relentlessly.
Driving the Intersect relentlessly.
In an effort to cope with Graham's task-mastering, Sarah had added a second coffee break to their day.
Just another break, to give Chuck and herself a moment.
She would walk to The Staff of Life in the midafternoon and come back with two coffees.
She did it the first day after the warehouse when she saw Chuck struggling to complete the file, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. She suspected that he had not slept much after he got home from the warehouse mission; she knew she hadn't. The carnage at the warehouse, the escape of Bob and Bryce, that flash of a smile on Bryce's face had conspired against Sarah's sleep, and she believed all but the last had conspired against Chuck's. But at least she knew that Bryce had not seen Chuck, even if Bryce had seen her. In hindsight, she thought Bryce had seen her; that smile did not seem to be a coincidence, it was a reaction.
It bothered her. She knew Bryce and knew that smile. Bryce was the master of the supercilious smile, and when he smiled it, that meant he liked his circumstances, his chances. It meant he expected to succeed. To win.
But at what? What was Bryce's game?
Why had he shown up in LA? Was that a coincidence?
Sarah asked herself the questions as the bell atop the door at The Staff of Life tinkled at her entrance as if it was both delighted to see her — and as if it harbored secret answers to her questions but would only share them in its native tongue of tiny tintinnabulations.
Margie, the owner and head baker, smiled, floury. Her face was bedaubed with white, and it stood out against her glowing black skin. "Hey, Sarah! The usual?" Margie grabbed a cloth towel as she asked the question, wiping her hands but oblivious to her floury face.
"Yes, Margie, please."
Sarah liked the baker and enjoyed their few minutes of conversation each day.
Margie nodded and put down her cloth. She began the order — two Americanos, one with a pump of sugar, Chuck's. "So, how's life in the computer game? Murphy was by this morning, said he spoke to you two as you came in."
Sarah was almost certain Margie had a thing for Murphy. But Margie had never admitted it, and it was unclear whether Murphy returned the feelings. Sarah was content to play along with it and see what happened. She found it funny the way that Margie and Murphy's situation mirrored Ellie and Devon's, but in a newer, less high-stakes way.
Devon had still not proposed and Ellie was getting antsy. She had finally asked Sarah to ask Chuck if Devon had said anything to him about proposing. That seemed like the long way around to Sarah, but she told Ellie she would do it. That was yesterday evening.
She was planning to ask Chuck today.
She thought she would ask during Tell and Show. That was Chuck's name, Tell and Show, for a game they'd fallen into playing for the last week, during their second coffee break. He would tell her a date and a mission — chosen from his Intersect access to her files — and she would show, that is, she would describe to him what she had been doing on that date if she could remember.
When he had suggested it, while they were having the first of their second coffee breaks the day after the warehouse, Sarah had recoiled. She had taken him to want to force her into descriptions of midnight deeds, to want to highlight for them both the sort of life she had led, the sort of woman she was. But when she balked, he persisted, and she eventually understood that he was doing it for some other reason. She wasn't sure what it was, but when she, hesitating and reluctant, responded to his first request, it seemed to distract him in a good way. His reaction curbed the self-disgust the descriptions sometimes made her feel. At any rate, since the warehouse, Chuck had been different toward her. More talkative, more observant, less defensive. Polite.
She would never have imagined it, but now, a week into the second coffee break and Tell and Show, she had come to look forward to that part of the day above all. The mission stories were not always pleasant for her (an understatement), not always pleasant for Chuck, but, once told, Sarah felt like pieces of herself became prodigals, long on the run but now returning, as if revealing herself to Chuck was a safe way of revealing herself to herself.
Talk about a long way around.
Margie finished the coffees, carefully pressed down the to-go lids, and handed them to Sarah. "Tell Chuck I'm working on a new apricot pastry. I'll have some for him to try tomorrow morning."
"I will, Margie." Sarah couldn't keep herself from asking — "Anything you want me to tell Murphy if I see him?"
Margie looked dumbfounded, theatrically dumbfounded. "No, why would I want to tell Murphy anything?"
Sarah shrugged, grinning with one side of her mouth. "Just asking."
Margie shook her head but grinned back as Sarah took the coffees.
Chuck had not started working again after Sarah left. He took some Tylenol and he found an album on Spotify, The Vigilantes of Love's Summershine, and he started it. The first song, You Know That filled the office. Chuck wanted something jangly and bright. That song always made him smile.
He stood up and began to dance, rocking his head and rolling his neck and shoulders, trying to loosen himself up, to loosen the tightness. Jumping around, he began to sing along.
You're a treasure no one opened
You're that diamond no one found
There's no casual liaison
When your heart is in the clouds
Could have been your bit of style
Could have been your bit of grace
Could have been the way the starlight played upon your face
Starlight played upon your face
Just as the chorus started, he saw Sarah standing, coffees in hand, laughing at him. He stopped singing and went and turned the music down.
"Sorry, adding a little starlight to my coffee."
Sarah said nothing but her smile picked up where her laughter left off. "Here you go." She handed him his coffee.
He sat back down and pulled off the lid, then blew on the still-hot coffee. Sarah grabbed her chair and pulled it into The Studio with Chuck. She did not remove the lid from her coffee until she sat down. She extended one long leg and reached into her pocket and pulled out two plastic coffee stirrers. "Hope you don't mind, these have been in my pocket."
Chuck made a face as if he did, but then laughed and took one, and stirred his coffee. Sarah stirred hers with the other. She gave Chuck an expectant look. "So, more Tell and Show?"
He remained surprised that she seemed to want to play his improvised, reversed-name game. After the first day, especially the first few minutes, he expected her to refuse to play, but she had not. He had come up with the game in an idle moment, looking at Sarah in the front office as she worked, and thinking about the strange duality of his relationship with her. In one way, he knew her almost completely, the Intersect way, on paperish, but in another way, the way a person normally knows another person, he hardly knew her. It was like he'd read the book but missed the movie. Sort of.
Anyway, as he had often thought, he had no idea what it was like to be her. So he came up with Tell and Show.
Listening to her narrate her missions was its own thing. Often, her words devoured his heart; he felt like he was not just feeling with her but sometimes feeling for her. She was telling him what she remembered, but it seemed as if she were telling it to herself at the same time. It seemed like news to her — but it wasn't fiction, it was memory. She wasn't making it up. It was rather that she had lived through it but without gaining purchase on it, ever again recollecting it. It had been isolated in memory, but in a way that kept it from serving as the background, however distant, of the present.
For most people, for himself, Chuck knew that our memories, even those we do not presently recall, still form part of the meaning of what we presently experience, providing a background against which the present assumes its shape. Chuck found it remarkable: he had what seemed like memories but were not, they were Intersect visions. Sarah had what seemed like they weren't memories, but they were — she had quarantined them in herself so successfully that they barely counted as memories.
Sarah's memories were often less than pleasant, to say the least. But she withstood the unpleasantness with fortitude, and he had to say that, although she clearly took pride in her efficiency and skill, she was often ashamed of the ends to which the efficiency and skill were put. She tried to keep herself neutral, her narration controlled and pointed, but, if nothing else, the way in which the narration sped up or slowed down was revealing to Chuck.
And Sarah seemed like she was profiting from it. She was not as…angular…as she had early on, there were not as many sharp corners, not as many jagged edges. She seemed more like a woman, a person, and less Agent Walker, the woman with a gun to his forehead.
He was slowly beginning to comprehend that for a large part of her life, Sarah had not known what it was like to be Sarah. Comprehending that did help to explain how she could have excelled at a job that was clearly not her dream job. Far from it, it seemed. Chuck had no real idea what Sarah's dreams might actually be, her dream job, her dream anything, but he didn't believe she had any real idea either. Her dreams were more completely isolated from her than her mission memories.
Chuck was about to give Sarah a date and a mission when his computer beeped. Chuck turned his head. It was Beckman. Just Beckman.
Chuck whirled his chair around and clicked the on-screen button and a moment later, Beckman was on the screen. She was seated behind her desk. A man stood beside her, ramrod straight and extra big. He had the look of a man who had been in the weather, who had been here and back.
Chuck knew him immediately, both from memory and the Intersect.
"General Stanfield," Sarah said, saying out loud the words Chuck said silently.
"Good afternoon," Beckman said crisply, "let me introduce you to General Stanfield. He has been hoping to thank you two for what you did last month, but it turns out that he has another reason for wanting to talk to you, one I just found out about a few minutes ago. I have a call into Graham but he has not returned it, and time is of the essence." She looked at the man beside her. "General Stanfield."
"Agents Walker and Bartowski, I want to thank you and convey my family's thanks to you for saving our lives from the bomb planted in my room. What you did — the lives you saved — mean everything to me." Stanfield's voice thickened as his syntax fractured a bit. "But I need to ask you to help me again, I'm afraid. My youngest granddaughter — she's six months old, the only child of my youngest daughter — has been kidnapped. I believe it's the same terrorist group that planted the bomb. I've received instructions; I won't go into them now, other than to say I've been told to fly to San Diego, where I will receive further instructions. But here's the primary point: the ransom is not money, it is me. — That's fine, frankly. I will gladly die for little Natalie — as far as I'm concerned, it would be a good death. But the problem is that, well, as you know, kidnappers are rarely trustworthy.
"My suspicion, seconded by General Beckman, is that their intention is to use Natalie to get to me, and to kill us both. I'm hoping you can help. I just got the call two hours ago. Natalie went missing early this morning. My daughter, Skipper, and her husband, Rob, were drugged during the night, gas, I think, and when they woke up, not that long ago, Natalie was not in her crib. We don't know when she was taken, sometime between when Skipper and Rob went to bed and this morning.
Stanfield paused. "My daughter and her husband live in San Diego. Local law enforcement is on the scene but this is, frankly, likely to be beyond them. I was already scheduled to visit General Beckman, and now that turns out to be doubly advantageous. I'm afraid I'm following up my thanks with an urgent request. Find my granddaughter."
Chuck glanced at Sarah.
"General Beckman, we will be happy to help — of course — but are we the best team for this? It's not our typical mission. Shouldn't the FBI…" Sarah trailed off.
The General's granite hardened. "I want the two of you. Beckman has read me in on Agent Bartowski, his…peculiar…gift. I don't know if it can help me, but I know what I saw on the tape of you two. The beginning of a natural team."
Stanfield stared at them. They were silent for a second, pondering Stanfield's words.
"Speaking of," Chuck finally interjected, "Casey's still in DC for that recertification thing, right? So, the team's not at full strength."
"True," Beckman said, "but Agent Casey will be on his way to San Diego asap; he'll fly with General Stanfield. But the two of you should go now. There's a helicopter readying at the airport; a car will be waiting in San Diego. We will hopefully know more by the time you are on the ground. Tell your sister, Chuck, that your boss asked you both to fly to San Diego for a few days."
Chuck nodded, still trying to process all that was happening, the speed of it. "What about the work Graham's been sending?"
Stanfield answered, shrugging pointedly. "I'll discuss that with Graham."
Beckman glanced up at Stanfield and Chuck thought he saw a glint of amusement in her eyes, on her otherwise grim face.
"Equipment will be in the car, Agent Walker. I will text you the address in San Diego."
Sarah nodded and the screen went blank. Chuck watched as her angularity returned. "Let's go, Chuck," she said, her lips pressed into a hard line. He knew that face: he saw it in the car after El Compadre and again at Providence St. Joe's, both times over her gun.
Tell and Show was over.
Sarah shut the helicopter door, then held up her phone. Chuck was buckling himself into a seat.
The rotors were spinning, sending the dust from the tarmac into the air and making Chuck feel like he had strapped himself to a giant exhaust fan.
He hadn't told Sarah or Beckman or Stanfield, but he had never flown before.
"Beckman sent the address." She said loudly enough to be heard.
Chuck nodded. The helicopter began to leave the ground. Chuck felt his stomach slosh and shiver, and he regretted both the helicopter and his half-finished Americano.
A moment later LA was beneath them and they were flying south.
Sarah had strapped herself beside him. She looked at him and must have seen his greenish complexion. She reached out and patted his thigh. "It'll be okay. Just breathe slowly."
Chuck tried to shift his focus. "So," he said, the sound of the rotors quieter, now that they were airborne, "the terrorist group that planted the bomb in Stanfield's room, why shift tactics like this?"
Sarah answered after a moment. "Stanfield's personal security is even tighter after the bomb. I imagine they chose the weakest link in the security chain — his daughter, the one, I think, who lives farthest from him. And a child — I know nothing about kids, I hardly ever was one myself — but I'm guessing, well, we saw, General Stanfield will gladly sacrifice himself for her. I believed him. The terrorists must understand the kind of man he is."
"I believed him too. But why send us?"
Sarah shrugged. "I'm guessing that Stanfield is hoping the Intersect will discover something on the scene. He never said it directly, but I'm guessing the local law enforcement folks have no idea where to begin."
"I thought the Intersect was supposed to make me James Bond, not Sherlock Holmes."
Sarah gave him a long, inscrutable look.
Chuck's stomach settled during the flight, enough for him to sort of enjoy the view, as long as he did not think about what was happening, why he was in the air.
The helicopter landed. Chuck and Sarah got out. A man in a cart was waiting for them, and he ferried them to a car without speaking either when picking them up or dropping them off.
They got into the car and Sarah handed Chuck her phone. "The address is in Google Maps. You be my navigator. Use your phone to call Beckman; let's talk to her before we start."
Chuck put Sarah's phone on his thigh where Sarah had touched him earlier. He put in a call to Beckman, his phone on speaker.
"We're on our way to Stanfield's daughter's house," Chuck reported when Beckman answered.
"Stanfield and Casey are about to be airborne. They're five hours behind you, roughly. Stanfield's daughter and son-in-law are expecting you. Good luck. Keep me updated. I'm still waiting to hear from Graham. He's in some all-day meeting, it seems, and can't be disturbed." Beckman sounded both frustrated and pleased by this.
"Alright, ma'am. We'll talk to you soon."
Sarah started the car.
As she drove, Sarah thought about how different she felt toward herself than she had roughly a month ago.
The fund of well-worn sadness she never knew she kept seemed to have diminished. She had no idea if she was happy — she had no experience of happiness, not even a working definition. But her hands had not shaken in weeks.
That was something.
A/N: And so the new arc begins.
