Ch. 7

A/N: As the travels wrapped up ahead of schedule, we can bring you another chapter of the story. As it has been 36 hours since the last update, a brief recap: communicating by text lacks any sense of context, so in a twist that stunned pretty much no one, there was a simple misunderstanding over Chuck's present of blue light glasses; realizing that her non-seduction mission flirting skills were sadly lacking, Sarah has called in the unparalleled master of flirtation-Carina.

Ever since she had started receiving the text messages, Sarah had unconsciously shown a more open personality in her daily life. As a result, she had gotten a lot more guys asking her out on dates. But she said no every time. It felt like dating any of these guys would be cheating on someone who she had never met.

Carina blew into town like a hurricane. She had been mounting an op to acquire a diamond from a drug cartel middleman at his Malibu beach house. She refused to believe Sarah when Sarah declined to join the op, as she was benched. Her studies at Stanford were a cover in that she was planted there by the CIA, but it was to keep her sidelined rather than collect intel. But when Carina sent a request up the chain of command, she was ordered to have no contact with Sarah.

Carina grudgingly accepted that her one friend wouldn't be helping out with her mission. But, as she bluntly told Sarah, the IC could kiss her perfectly sculpted ass if they expected her to abandon her friend when they were relatively close to each other.

Carina vanished for a few days before popping back up with a tale of seducing a human sweater before making off with the diamond in a jet ski while avoiding a hail of gunfire. Somehow, Sarah wasn't surprised in the least.

To celebrate the fact that she had successfully completed the mission without getting killed, Carina had dragged Sarah up to San Francisco for a dinner at Alioto's with a view out over Fisherman's Wharf. During the meal, Sarah decided to check her email regarding a group assignment in one of her courses. Without thinking, Sarah put on her blue light glasses before looking at her phone.

"Ooh, Sarah, trying to land yourself one of these Silicon Valley billionaires? Any of these geeks see you looking like that and they'll start drooling on their computers."

"Nerd," Sarah corrected Carina while focusing her attention on the email.

"Say what now?" Sarah was staring intently at her phone and missed Carina's stunned look.

"They prefer nerd to geek." Sarah was nearly finished responding to the classmate's email when she froze, realizing what she had just said, and who had she said it to. Yep, Carina's got that cat that ate the canary look.

Carina slowly pried the story from Sarah as she accompanied her back to Palo Alto. They then looked over the messages together. The next day they were walking across campus when Carina spotted some fraternities. "Trust fund babies. Trust me, they're fun to play with." Sarah just shook her head and kept walking as Carina wandered off to toy with the boys.

The following morning while Sarah was in class, Carina again amused herself by winding up one frat boy after another. She had found a couple to be cute, but nothing worth her time. Once Sarah's class let out, Carina set up to tail Sarah in order to confirm that her "admirer" wasn't conducting physical surveillance. They were both confident that Sarah didn't have a tail, but verification never hurt.

Carina didn't know what to make of the situation. The texts were sent to Sarah's spy phone, so they had to come from someone in the IC. But they were from a local number that Sarah determined wasn't connected to her CIA contact on campus, Professor George Fleming.

Then there was the phrasing of the messages themselves. They didn't have the cocky confidence of an agent. But most troubling to Carina was Sarah's reaction to the messages. She was acting like a schoolgirl with a crush. Carina could understand a level of unease about her career status with the swirling scandal of the downfall of Director Graham. But Sarah wasn't focused on her status with the Agency at all.

}0{

Chuck turned to his laptop when the alert came through that the facial recognition program had located Sarah. He wondered if this how addicts felt. He hadn't gotten to see her over the weekend at all. She must have gone out of town…or on a date…although he hadn't seen anyone really connect with her…not that it was any of his business.

"Annnnnd, I'm officially a stalker," he muttered to himself. He shook his head at himself. As he watched her make her way across campus, he tried to see how she was. The week prior, she had seemed very distracted. He wondered if she had heard from her old job, or if maybe a class was giving her grief. Or maybe…maybe what he had done had upset her. He blew out a rough breath. He was supposed to be helping her, but he felt like he hadn't at all. If anything he was making her life harder.

Chuck had just turned back to the program he was working on to include a skills pack in the Intersect download when he realized that something felt off about Sarah's stroll across campus. Any thoughts of the Intersect fled from his mind and he focused all of his attention onto the security camera feed on his laptop. He thought that he spotted a flash of red a ways back from Sarah. He rewound the footage and realized that he was right. There was a woman following Sarah at a distance. Wherever Sarah went, the woman followed. Was that what had her bothered? Did she feel someone was following her? His mother used to…still did…have a sixth sense about her and know when things were off and from what he had learned about the CIA from his mom, that was the sort of thing that was trained and worked on with agents.

Chuck manually took control of one of the cameras in order to track the woman after Sarah. She was very beautiful…almost reminded him of a Swedish supermodel, but there was an intensity about her that had Chuck on edge. Before he knew what he was doing, Chuck had his burner in his hand:

I know that you don't want to hear from me, but there is a woman following you. Be careful!

He added a screencap of the woman following Sarah. He blew out a rough breath and watched the monitor hoping he had helped her in time.

Sarah felt her phone vibrate, and she scrambled to pull the phone from her purse. She reached up to cover her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. He was watching, and he was worried about her. There was a warmth in her that she hadn't felt before. She held her hand against her mouth so he couldn't see how pleased she was that he had texted her.

Chuck felt fear grip his chest as he watched her reaction on laptop. He had no idea how badly he was misinterpreting what he was seeing. He thought Sarah was worried, and all he could think if the superspy that was Sarah Walker was worried about the redheaded woman tailing her, she must be dangerous….deadly in fact.

Chuck found courage he didn't know he possessed as he ran out of Gates at a dead sprint. He knew that it was foolish. He was a professor of computer science, she was one of the best spies who had ever lived. He didn't know what he could do, but he had to do something. There was no way he would stand by and watch something happen to her.

As he ran as fast as he ever had in his life, he felt a burning sensation in his lungs. He reached the Quad faster than he knew possible. As he arrived there, chest heaving, he got his first glimpse of Sarah Walker in flesh and blood. She was one hundred yards away, but he knew that it was her. Even at such a distance, her beauty stole his breath.

A moment later he spotted the red haired woman standing casually next to her. He instantly realized that the other woman was dangerous because she too was an agent, but she wasn't dangerous to Agent Walker. She was working with Agent Walker. Sarah wasn't in danger. She was in the middle of some mission, and he was about to ruin it.

Shame flooded his system. He rushed over to her for what? To save her? She was not only a CIA agent, she was reportedly one of their best. He was an academic living in a proverbial ivory tower. How could he be of any aid to her? Chuck pulled out his phone to call Roan Montgomery to let the debonair agent know that a little heads up would be appreciated that Agent Walker was once again active. Chuck was pretty sure that he was supposed to help Sarah fit in to college life, not to blow an op.

He processed this all in the span of a moment. If he left now, he might not blow her op. Chuck paused before dialing Roan. Neither of the spies had seen him, and any student would write off his odd behavior as him finally adopting some of his father's eccentricities. He turned to leave, but just then she looked his way. Their eyes locked and he was powerless to move. Just as he froze in his tracks, a group of high school kids and their parents walked across the quad on their tour of the campus. The group blocked her from his sight, and he was once again able to think coherently. He needed to get away from her before he ruined her mission.

Chuck spun and headed into a nearby building. He ducked out the other side and quickly made his way to the library all the while mad at himself. He remembered thinking of her as Sarah, rather than Agent Walker. He berated himself. He had been asked to help her not feel isolated, to engage her, to help her immerse herself in collegiate life. But all he had done was distract her from her work…and develop a crush on her…like some damn schoolboy…or nerd lusting after the head cheerleader.

He blew out a rough breath, knowing he needed to back off. He had to give her space before he got her hurt, or worse. Thinking about her talent as a spy made Chuck divert over to the reference desk to use one of their computers. Despite his young age, he didn't have any trouble getting access to a computer. He hadn't realized that the younger Professor Bartowski was well known to the librarians. The librarian on duty introduced herself as Hannah and was very accommodating…in fact, she seemed to go out of her way to help him. Despite his frustration with his gaffe on the quad, Chuck flashed Hannah a smile of thanks.

She was then distracted by a student who needed help. She seemed furious with the interruption, which Chuck found quite weird. She had been nice to him, but looked like she was going to kick the other guy's ass the interrupted her helping Chuck. Perhaps he was a weirdo and had bothered her in the past. Chuck watched the guy carefully, but he seemed to be a student who was confused and just needed help finding an article for the paper he was working on. Chuck shrugged, and went into the security camera system and looped the stored footage in case Sarah…Agent Walker…decided to check the footage for herself.

He remotely accessed his backdoor access to check the cameras, looking for Sarah and her fellow spy. He found them heading away from his current location. He signed out, thanked Hannah, and left the area. He knew that he should get back to his office to resume work on the Intersect 2.0, but right now, he felt perhaps it was best he laid low.

He headed into the stacks, remembering the path from his undergrad days. He had one destination in mind, the fiction section. They had an excellent collection of Frank Herbert's works and he thought perhaps it was a time for a visit to Arrakis. As he made his way, Chuck wished that he could get his hands on some mélange. Maybe that could help him make sense of the mess he had made with Sarah. He snorted at himself, was it the blue eyes that made him think of her when thinking about Dune?

He shook his head with frustration. She was Agent Sarah Walker, CIA agent. He didn't really know the woman at all. He stopped walking, a thought crashing into him. While he did not know her, he did know quite a bit about the CIA. They weren't supposed to run ops on US soil, especially not on college campuses. When the lid was blown off of Project MK Ultra, the CIA was supposed to give US colleges a wide berth.

Chuck wasn't sure what has going on. Was the other agent with her not in the CIA? Was she working on a mission off books? Or, was the other agent simply a friend, and if she was, then why was Chuck being asked to help Sarah acclimate to college? Of course, if the other agent was just a friend, she might not know how to acclimate herself to college either.

Chuck shook his head. He needed to quit thinking about Sarah Walker, or Agent Walker, or the Swedish supermodel agent who might or might not be Sarah's friend. He began to head for his destination, determined to get lost in the spice of Dune. As he walked past a message board, he noticed a flyer advertising for the Maus Ball. He had never gone during his student days. He had bought tickets his senior year. With a smile, he remembered cobbling together a Paul Atreides costume. But the smile turned to a grimace as he recalled throwing the tickets and the costume in the trash after discovering Jill and Bryce's betrayal.

}0{

(Earlier on the Quad)

Sarah couldn't help the smile that threatened to crack her face in half. As much as she had enjoyed telling Carina that her tail had been spotted, as much as she had also enjoyed watching Carina's reaction to the news, it all paled to the joy she felt in what she had seen with her own two eyes. It was him. It HAD to be him.

She listened as Carina insisted that this was the proof they needed that her "admirer " was indeed a spy, and a really good one at that. It took all of Sarah's spy skills not to roll her eyes. First, it didn't match the tenor of the messages. No, an agent that knew of the Ice Queen would also know that Sarah could spot and shake a tail in her sleep. This was someone who knew of the life of a deep cover operative, but wasn't in the game themselves. Second, and more importantly, this man seemed to care, and to be concerned for her well-being. Not that another agent wouldn't but their reaction…it wouldn't have been what she saw.

She was being watched, she had felt it, she knew it, it was one of those feelings ingrained in her. She had been watched many times in her life, and she knew when she was, but this…this felt…different. As she spun around, she spotted a man her age looking at her from across the quad. He appeared to be almost frantic. She could practically feel the concern in his brown eyes….those eyes, they drew her in. She vaguely noted his height compared to the students around him, and the mop of brown hair with a riot of curls. She cursed herself for not noticing more about him, but his eyes…they had captured her.

As quickly as she had spotted him, her view became blocked by a small crowd, like some scene from a movie. When they passed a few seconds later, the guy was gone. Ignoring Carina mid-sentence, Sarah sprinted across the quad to the spot where he had been. Carina quickly caught up to her, and Sarah wondered if she hadn't lost her.

"Sarah, you okay?" Carina asked.

Sarah quit looking around and turned to her friend. "I don't know, I think I've lost my mind." Carina just stared at her and Sarah continued. "Maybe I have. I've never lost focus that way before."

She looked around again, then pointed to where they were standing "It was my mystery texter. I know he was. He was just here. Right here." Sarah huffed in frustration. "I think…"

"What is it, Blondie?"

"I think that he may have been coming to save me," Sarah admitted in a soft voice. She looked at her friend, at the disbelief on Carina's face. But, Sarah couldn't stop the words if she had wanted to. "I think…that he thought that you were a threat , and he was coming to help." She paused. "He was coming to help me."

Carina let out an indelicate snort. "Me? A threat to you? Has he met you? I mean, it's true that I could kick your ass into next week."

Sarah rolled her eyes at her friend. "Keep dreaming, Red. When's the last time you won one of our sparring matches?"

"Blondie, seriously, are you okay?" Carina asked.

Sarah turned to Carina, a grin on her face. "Oh, I'm okay. I just have to catch him." Carina's eyes widened at Sarah's subconsciously playful tone. "Come on, I have an idea." Carina followed, not knowing when she had seen this much life in her friend, or her showing this much excitement about anything.

A/N2: Does it qualify as a meet cute if they are a hundred yards/meters apart? Sarah now knows what her secret admirer looks like. How much longer can Chuck's identity stay secret? Barring unforeseen issues, we should get some more details tomorrow morning.