A/N: The first chapter in our new arc, Past into the Present.
I've mentioned some characters will be different. Keep that in mind. Some changes to cannon history are made here too.
As usual, we ease our way into the arc.
The Missionary
When you looked at me
I should've run
But I thought it was just for fun
I see I was wrong
And I'm not so strong
I should've known all along
That time would tell
A week without you
Thought I'd forget
Two weeks without you and I
Still haven't gotten over you yet
Vacation
All I ever wanted
Vacation
Had to get away
Vacation
Meant to be spent alone
— The Go-Go's, Vacation
Chapter Twenty-Four: Visitation
Graham shut the thick file.
He'd phoned the DEA's Administrator earlier. Graham did not like the Administrator, Janet Mulligan, but luckily, she owed him a favor, a debt he had not let her ever forget, and so he was able to call the favor in. Mulligan did not like it, but there was precedent and no current obstacle to Graham's request — and he could tell she was glad to have the favor returned, the debt paid.
His intercom sounded. "Director Graham, Carina Miller is here to see you." Graham stowed Miller's file in his desk and met her standing up. She had worked for him before, some years ago, and had worked with Agent Walker. They had been part of a four-woman team. The other two women on the team were now dead — only Walker and Miller had survived the betrayal of the group, a betrayal that led them into a deadly trap.
When working together, Miller and Walker had not been exactly friends, not exactly enemies. They had arrived at a workable detente, an armed but inactive hostility to each other, a pact of mutually assured destruction should one of the two transgress the other's boundaries.
Miller had a long history of transgressions, of pushing boundaries but also pushing anything else she could find to push. Her file's thickness was accounted for mostly by reprimands and complaints. She was a loose cannon but she was effective enough to be forgiven for it. Miller got things done; she had a genius for destruction.
Graham needed a push in Burbank. That is, Walker needed a push. Miller would be that push. He also needed to know what was happening among the three in Burbank, and how things stood. Graham knew Casey was withholding facts from him but Graham was increasingly worried that Walker was too. She had said nothing that indicated disloyalty, but Graham nonetheless felt as if a distance had come between them. In the past, Walker had always been a responsive weapon in his hands, no will of her own but to perform as Graham's will ordered. Yet, since the Mattress Bob mission, Walker had seemed altered to Graham, as if she had changed — as if she had become self-aware, or even worse, self-determining. It was in Walker's attitude, even her posture, although Graham could not name the change. Now that he had noticed it, it seemed to have been present, at least in germ, since the night Walker and Bartowski saved Stanfield.
Reflecting on it, he'd gone back and re-examined the logs of video meetings and they had suggested he was right.
— And something else was bothering him, nettling him.
Walker had taken orders from someone else, Beckman.
Since Graham recruited Walker, certainly since she finished at the Farm, she had taken orders only from him. He was jealous of her as an agent, unwilling for her to answer to anyone else. Your Director is a jealous Director. The time in Tijuana felt like a betrayal, infidelity.
Stanfield and his family were bad omens.
Carina Miller walked into Graham's office, stopping his reflections.
Miller seemed thinner than he remembered, much more Hepburn than Monroe, but she was dressed very much as he expected — her clothes business-appropriate and yet subtly revealing, edgy. She always seemed like she was clubbing, wreathed in invisible smoke and inaudible dance music.
Graham gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk and she sat down lightly, crossing her legs. She leaned back, relaxed, waving one green heel in the air and appraising him with cool, green-blue eyes. Graham was not used to Miller's sort of gaze — frank, equal, and unimpressed. Her lips curled slightly. He felt strangely judged.
Graham pulled on the bottom of his suit vest, straightening it, and removing the wrinkles that resulted from sitting.
"If I were you," Miller said, her tone a smirk, "I'd find a tailor who doesn't believe men's fashion peaked on Saville Row, at, say, Gieves & Hawkes, in the middle 1960s. You look like an ad for a preening Sean Connery Bond villain."
Graham had expected something like her remark. With Miller, any conversation was a contest; she was determined to be on top, no matter with whom the intercourse. Graham decided to dispense with any formalities.
"The Administrator tells me you've been attempting to infiltrate the cartel, CJNG, hoping to discover more about their new leader, this Tyger…"
Miller raised one eyebrow. "You know about Tyger?"
"Actually, most of the recent information you've gotten has come from me, or, more particularly, from a team of my agents, who ended up in Tijuana, in CJNG's clutches."
"I'm sorry about them," Miller said with funereal matter-of-factness.
"They aren't dead," Graham noted quickly. "Surprisingly, given CJNG. It was a complicated, fluid situation. My agents were being pursued by Sinaloa, and CJNG actually helped them, this Tyger helped them. My agents supplied the information about Tyger you've recently received, the description; he decided to step out of the shadows, and he evidently wanted to use my agents, and their…circumstances…seriously to wound Sinaloa and their plans."
Miller nodded once. "Tijuana's been a bloodbath the last two weeks or so. Sinaloa pitted against CJNG, and the government's Special Forces pitted against both of them. I wasn't sure what set it off but it sounds like you know what — and who."
Graham turned and looked out the window, showing Miller his back. "You know who too, at least you know in part. Agent Walker was in Tijuana."
Graham did not turn around, but he smiled to himself when he heard the intake of breath that Carina tried to quiet. "Walker? Icee was in Tijuana."
After a few more theatrical seconds, Graham turned. Miller was no longer leaning back in the chair, both her heels were planted on the floor; she was pitched forward. "It's been a long time…Walker still pulling your triggers?"
Graham clenched his teeth but he endured Miller's flippancy, though it rubbed his fur backward.
He backtracked through Miller's words. "Icy?"
"No, Icee. I-C-E-E. The frozen, carbonated beverage. Gas stations?" She gave him a glance at once questioning and pitying.
Graham shrugged again, not indifference this time, but ignorance.
"Guess you grew up in the wrong time or the wrong place," Miller said, passing a verdict. "Just my nickname for Walker. She's both frozen and carbonated."
Graham cleared his throat, not interested in exploring that comment. "To answer your question, Agent Walker is still…Agent Walker. But she is currently on an extended assignment in California. I want to send you there — first, so that you can talk to her and her partner, a man named Bartowski, about Tyger and CJNG, since you might be able to find out more that you and the DEA need to know from talking with them."
Miller cocked her head. "And second? I know you a bit myself, Director, and I know people who know you better than I do. You don't dole out freebies. What do you want? What's in my trip for you? What do you want to know about Walker?"
Miller leaned back again and crossed her legs, but her eyes showed that she was interested, whatever her outward demeanor suggested. The mention of Agent Walker had hooked Miller, even if she was hiding it. Graham wondered exactly what the story was between the two women. The Administrator claimed to know nothing of it.
"I need you to…observe…Agent Walker. Her partner, Bartowski, is new, unorthodox, and there are questions about him. You may know that I've had a problem with a rogue faction." The Administrator knew it, so Graham took it as likely that Miller knew it too. Miller was a pain in the Administrator's ass, but Miller was her pain.
"Fulcrum," Miller offered, clearly happy to know and supply the name of the thorn in Graham's side.
"Yes, that's evidently what they call themselves."
"Sounds like a high school geometry club," Miller commented, laughing softly. "Doesn't 'fulcrum' mean bedpost in Latin?" She made the question sound salacious.
Graham ignored it. "I need you to tell me what you make of Bartowski, but even more, what you make of Walker and Bartowski together, his effect on her."
Miller frowned. "On her? Walker's never been good in tandem or on a team; she's a lone wolf at heart," Miller stopped, laughed again, "if Walker has a heart in her chest, and not just a spare clip. Do you suspect her partner, Bartooski, of being Fulcrum, being rogue?"
Graham shrugged. He needed to play this delicately. "Bartowski. I don't know; I doubt it — but who knows? Whatever is true, I do worry about his effect on Agent Walker. I'm trying to decide if, and if so, how, they are to continue as a team."
Miller stared into vacancy for a moment, then her brow furrowed. "I don't get it, Director. Why are you sending me to spy on your spy, your spies? Are you sending a DEA agent to perform a CIA 49B?"
Graham let a moment pass. "If it helps you to think of it that way, do. But it's not a formal 49B. Only a CIA agent could do that. I need to know what is happening there, and about team dynamics. And I need to know from someone who has known Walker, and seen her work, in the past. I need someone who can see not just what she's doing, but how it's changed if it has. You should know that there is a third team member, although he's not really part of the evaluation; I believe I know where things stand with him — John Casey, NSA."
Miller blinked, and the long, taper fingers of one of her hands clenched.
"Do you know Casey?" Graham asked, genuinely surprised.
Miller was annoyed with herself, her reaction. "Not really. We ran into each other on a big assignment — actually cartel related — about three years ago. Big guy, obnoxious, slob? Dresses off the XXL rack at Goodwill?"
Graham nodded. "Yes, — but also competent."
"I suppose," Miller breathed out as if she didn't.
Graham sat down. "The three of them are part of operation Overlook. I've decided to read you in to that operation. That means you are about to be told intel classified at the highest level. Are you willing to do that? Help me with Overlook, and I'll help you with CJNG."
Miller was thinking. "I want CJNG. I want this Tyger. Whatever he did with Walker and Bartowski, he's a stone-cold killer. On a different day, their bodies would've been swelling in the desert sun. Besides," she added this as if it were an afterthought, but the glint in her eyes told another story, "if I can get close to him, take him down, I vault up the ladder at the DEA."
Graham leaned back in his chair. Gotcha. Self-interest, Miller's file said, drove her, not loyalty to anyone else, certainly not loyalty to country. She was ambitious, proud — she wanted to be the Administrator, not just an agent. Graham knew how to manipulate self-interest; it was the one thing he truly understood.
Maybe that's why Bartowski tasks me, his family tasked me. They're so damn disinterested.
"I'll do it. Hell, it'll be fun. No one's panties bunch as tightly as Walker's. — Tell me your secrets, Director, and I'll discover hers."
When Miller left the office, Graham sat down. He took out another file, plans for a new Intersect Lab, studying them. A construction crew was already working on the site, building atop the ruins of the old one, working almost around the clock. Once it was done, It would become Bartowski's forever home.
His intercom sounded again. "Dr. Astley — from NIHM — is here, sir."
Graham smiled. Finding Astley had been a stroke of good luck. Her research at the National Institute of Mental Health was in the uses of AI in the treatment of mental disease.
She was perfectly positioned to take over for Zarnow. Bartowski's success in saving Stanfield, all that Bartowski had discovered or predicted during his work at Appocalypse, it had convinced Graham to invest again in the Intersect.
If it could make Bartowski, of all people, this effective, imagine what it could do for someone who was spy material.
The secret, Graham knew, was in Bartowski's head; it was something about Bartowski's brain that allowed him to have the Intersect and live.
But that something had to be isolable, replicable, maybe by some kind of neurological prosthetic.
And if it took entombing Bartowski in the West Virginia mountains, or even removing Bartowski's brain and slicing it paper thin to figure it out, so be it.
But Graham had another reason for re-investing in the Intersect. Recent chatter suggested that Fulcrum was working on a version of the program, and had been for a long time. Graham kept that intelligence to himself; he carefully kept it out of the files sent to Appocalypse.
It was now an arms race between Fulcrum and the CIA. But Graham had a hole card, a living, breathing Intersect. Graham had Bartowski.
As soon as construction was far enough along, Appocalypse would relocate to West Virginia.
But Graham had faced Bartowski stubbornness in the past. He knew how it went.
He needed an in with Bartowski. He needed Walker to be close enough to Bartowski to persuade him to move to West Virginia, close enough to get him to cooperate and keep him cooperating.
Despite the way things between Walker and Bartowski started, Graham believed Walker could get Bartowski to trust her.
Miller would hopefully confirm that Graham could still trust Walker.
And, assuming he could trust her, Walker had time to work on Bartowski. It would be several weeks before the Lab was far enough along to house the Intersect.
Graham stood up as a tall, gaunt woman marched into his office, her face making him imagine a bespectacled bird of prey.
"Dr. Astley. So glad you could come. Please, sit."
Carina left the parking lot of Langley chewing on her lower lip.
Fuck.
As always, Carina's feelings about Sarah Walker were ambivalent — spying on Sarah was certainly something Carina could do. Nothing inside her rebelled against the assignment. But she didn't feel good about it. The worst part was Casey.
They had talked on the phone a few days ago, and Carina had ended it.
Whatever it was. She did not want 'it' defined.
Carina had told Graham part of the truth. She had met Casey on a mission. Nothing had happened between them, although it had been clear that Casey was interested in her, wanted her. But that was just another day at the office for Carina. Men were sniffing around her all the time, providing a Lazy Susan of bedtime options. Casey was not much of an option, huge and rumpled, and so she passed on him.
But then, a few weeks later, they ran into each other at a bar in DC, a bar new to Carina, and one she ducked into just to avoid a sudden, wet snowfall. Casey was nursing a beer at a corner table, and he had seen her, waved her over. She had gone, reluctantly but with no graceful way to refuse at least speaking to him.
She sat down. He bought her a drink. She sipped it as they chatted, and she was surprised to find that, off-duty, he was personable, even funny — caustic — but funny.
She had another drink and began to laugh with him.
Later, she found herself pinned up against the wall of his apartment, crying out his name, as he held her, thrusting up into her. She remembered the overpowering sensation, the snow whirling outside the window. It had been a memorable, power-lifting, gymnastic night. Casey proved to be an overwhelming lover. Carina was an addict after only one hit.
It made no sense, but so it was.
They did not become a couple. But they spent nights together whenever their schedules aligned. Both of them treated it as if it were only physical — and it was physical; God, was it physical — but it was clear that it mattered to each of them.
But lately, Casey had begun to talk about them as if becoming a couple was impending. Carina had cut him off, told him that no such thing was going to happen, and even told him (lying) that she was still sleeping around, whether he was or not. She demanded that they take a break, and so they had — until he called her a few nights ago, deep in his Johnny Walker cups and aching for her. She ached for him too, but that just made her more awful. She hated herself for aching and hated him for making her ache. She told him it was over.
Over and done. Finished.
Except now she was on her way to spy on her friend and to spend time with her recently jilted lover.
Fuck.
Chuck swirled the after-lunch coffee in the bottom of his cup and looked at Morgan.
Morgan had stopped by Appocalypse for a visit, but Chuck knew it was primarily to talk about Ellie's Halloween party.
Morgan always needed a debrief after parties, usually someone to talk about the women who had rejected him and why.
But today was different. Morgan had, much to Chuck's surprise, had a date for the Halloween party — Anna Wu from the Buy More.
Her baby's father had evidently left her and his child shortly after Chuck left the Buy More. Morgan had asked her to the party hoping to cheer her up, not expecting that she would have any interest in him, but that she might have interest in a night out. She had seemed quite excited about the invitation and had arranged for a friend to babysit.
The babysitter had been delayed, and Morgan had said nothing about having a date, so when Anna showed up at the party a bit late, it was all a surprise to Chuck. Even more surprising was Anna's obvious interest in Morgan. The two of them had obviously enjoyed themselves, and by the last slow dance of the night, they were pressed against each other.
Morgan had been flushed and smiling when he left the party.
But, then again, Chuck had felt a bit flush and smiley after the party too. Finding Sarah in a complementary costume was one thing. Her beauty in that costume was another.
Chuck had tried to forget his visceral response to her during their date, and during the daylight hours he mostly had managed to forget, but his dreams kept reminding him how much he had wanted her on the date, how deeply and completely she had moved him, sparking a desire that roared into a pillar of flame.
Seeing her dressed to seduce Mattress Bob had aroused him and pissed him off simultaneously, and then the mission in Tijuana, his reaction to seeing Sarah and the baby. Well, his head had been spinning.
It spun all night at the Halloween party. He kept telling himself that she was not for him, wrong for him, he kept reminding himself of what she had done to him, but instead of recalling her gun against his forehead, he felt her straddling him, her warm weight pressing down on him, shifting against him
"Hey, Chuck," Morgan said, waving his hand and snapping his fingers, "ground control to Major Tom, come in, Major Tom…"
Chuck shook himself. He had been drifting. He needed to figure this out; he kept finding himself in this "I don't like her!", "I like her so much!" discord with no obvious way of harmonizing himself, coming into attunement with himself, uniting his heart. The "I don't like her!" was his past self jostling with the "I like her so much!" of his approaching self: he felt stretched across the present, pulled thin, between where he had been and where he seemed to be heading.
"Sorry, Morg. Lots on my mind. Work."
Morgan grinned skeptically. "I think you're having visions of the Invisible Woman."
Chuck gave Morgan a cool, flat look, eyebrows contracted slightly. "Ha. Aren't you clever."
"Cleverer than you. You're in love with your co-worker and won't admit it. Is it because of that first date, her telling you about not dating co-workers?"
"It's about that first date," Chuck said, knowing Morgan would misunderstand, since Morgan believed the lie about that date.
That was one problem with lying. It made it hard to tell the truth, because your lies became part of the backdrop against which people heard you tell the truth, and the lies twisted the truth.
"C'mon, Chuck. The two of you, those two matching costumes — you two need to work this out, find a way to get past the past, so you can enjoy some Fantastic Fourplay."
"God, I hate it when you decide to play with words," Chuck griped.
"All I know is that she's for you," Morgan held up four fingers, "and you're for her," he put them down then put them back up, smiling in satisfaction at himself and Chuck. He had the tone of someone explaining simple addition to a child.
Chuck was and wasn't amused. "So, what happened when you and the Wu got home? Was there wooing?"
Morgan's smile darkened. "No fair, Chuck. You know that she's a mother now, has a baby, and — well, I like her, I always have, although I admit she also scares me — and, I don't know if I'm up to stepping into the family way, if you know what I mean, or if she even would consider me stepping up into that. A baby is a huge responsibility."
Chuck nodded, feeling Natalie in his arms again, his desperation to save her. "That's true. It's good you're thinking about it, Morgan. It'd be wrong not to be sensitive to her situation. Has she talked to you about the baby?"
"Yeah, we've talked about the boy a little, and I've seen him a few times when he came into the store. But I think she's afraid if she mentions him too often it'll scare me off. It must be hard to want someone to want you for you, but to want them to want your child too. Hard to know how to play that. I was hoping she would invite me in after the party — and no, not for that, but so I could see the baby, but she said goodbye at the door."
Chuck leaned toward Morgan. "Did you kiss her? It sure looked like you were going to get a kiss, given those dances."
"I got a kiss. A chaste one but it seemed, I don't know, promising. I told her I wanted to see her again but she didn't say yes or no. I guess if she says yes, we'll face our version of your workplace-slash-dating problem. Not sure how Big Mike will take it"
"Sarah and I aren't dating. We aren't going to date. I don't think. Besides, you keep talking like she's interested but how do you know, Morgan? She and I — we're more different than you think. And she's not easy to read. You can't always take her actions at face value."
"Jesus, Chuck, are you gonna give me the old things aren't what they seem talk?" Morgan asked, stiffening his neck and pinching his expression like an old man. "Things are almost always exactly what they seem, man. Exactly. Have you talked to Ellie about Sarah?"
"I don't think they've talked to each other lately, not since before we had that unexpected trip to San Diego, and even then, I don't think they talked long. Ellie's been slammed at the hospital, not only patients but her research. She's got a grant application for Chicago due by mid-November. I usually only hear her come in at night and leave in the morning. I'm surprised she threw the party, given everything."
"You should think about Sarah, Chuck. I'm telling you."
Chuck shook his head but he had been thinking about Sarah — with the exception of the Intersect, she was all he had been thinking about.
But he had been thinking about the Intersect too, especially about the Intersect in Tijuana, and thinking about that led him back to thinking about Sarah.
Sarah put her Tupperware container, now empty of the salad she had packed, back in her tote bag. Chuck was at lunch with Morgan and so Sarah was alone in Appocalypse.
Chuck had worked extra quickly that morning, and Sarah had worked extra quickly to keep up. Sarah was worried that Chuck had been working quickly so as to avoid any conversation about Friday, about the party.
Sarah had thoroughly enjoyed that evening. It was so much more than she had anticipated. Maybe it was Mexico, maybe the party, maybe the costumes, but Chuck had treated her the entire party as if she was his date as if she was Mrs. Richards to his Mr. Richards — as if they were Fantastic together.
And they were — or they could be. She just needed to make Chuck believe and acknowledge it. The more she had thought about Tijuana, Chuck's Intersected savings of her, the more she thought he might not only be getting past his anger and humiliation, but finding his way back to the attraction he had felt for her when they met. He had looked at her during a couple of dances — holding her discreetly, to be sure, but holding her — as he looked at her across the El Compadre table. Once, as they danced, they had leaned toward each other, and he had been staring at her lips, licking his own, but Morgan and Anna Wu came dancing up at the exact wrong moment, and the spell, if spell it was, snapped. Chuck leaned back and did not lean forward, not in that way, the rest of the night.
Sarah was doing her best not to run away with an evening of coincidental costumes and possible kisses, but she was having a hard time restraining herself, her buoyant spirits. Stanfield was convinced she and Chuck were a natural team. But Stanfield meant a professional team — a spy team. Sarah felt like they were becoming that already, but she dared at her best moments to hope for more, and the party had encouraged that hope. It might not last; it almost certainly would not last, but for the moment, she felt happy.
She was smiling to herself, idly humming the final song she and Chuck danced to, when her phone rang. She picked it out of her tote. It took her a second to recognize the number. She had not seen it in months and months.
Carina Miller?
"Sarah Walker, secure."
"Are you really secure, Icee, or are you pretending, like always?"
Shit. It was definitely Carina. Sarah hated that damn nickname.
"Carina, why are you calling me?"
"Because I am inbound, on my way to Burbank. I'm about to board a plane here in DC."
"Why are you coming to Burbank? You'd die of boredom here."
"Why haven't you? I'm coming for cartel reasons. I'm working on infiltrating CJNG, I have been for a while, working on getting to know more about Tyger. Word is that you and Bartooski have met him, face to fangs, and in the forest of the night."
"Bartowski. — Yes, but we could just talk on the phone, video chat. You don't need to visit."
Sarah absolutely did not want Carina in Burbank. Carina left nothing but smoke and rubble in her wake, no stone atop another, and there was no way Chuck was ready for one-hundred proof, uncut Carina. Sarah had never liked herself around Carina. Carina had a knack for bringing out the worst in Sarah, for baiting Sarah into acting out.
Talk about pushing buttons.
There was a competition between the two of them, as well as a tragedy. Carina would arrive trailing a part of Sarah's history that Chuck knew nothing about.
"No, the Admin, Mulligan, wants me to sit down with the two of you, in person. She arranged this with the Director, the three-piece asshole himself, so, like it or not, incoming." Carina made a whistling, then an exploding sound.
Sarah was now sitting up straight — as if her chair were electric.
This is not good. Not now. Not when things are just turning right.
"I could call Graham, Carina, convince him that we could do this long-distance, save you all the travel."
"Nope. Not in the cards, Icee. I'm heading west. So, tell me about Bartooski. Is he most memorable for length or width? Slow strokes or fast? — Can't wait to find out. See you soon."
Shit.
Sarah hung her head, and let the phone dangle.
Carina Miller in Burbank was the last thing Sarah needed.
Carina ended the call, grinning at herself, at Sarah's predictable, ill-concealed panic.
But then Carina's smile faded.
She punched her phone, and brought up her contacts lists. She had another call to make.
Carina had to call Casey.
A/N: As you've gathered, this arc does not turn on an Overlook mission, but on a mission to look over Overlook. Hang on, this was just the warm-up exercise.
Drop me a line; let me know you're out there!
