A/N: More of our story.
Maintenance
Chapter Four
Choices
Sarah's shoulder burned.
It burned. The lava spread beneath her skin, across her shoulder, down her arm.
Burning.
Hell of a birthday. Birth of a hellday. Forty and dead.
Like many CIA agents, Sarah had been required to build a resistance to sodium pentothal. Her first dose was at the Farm — during her training, under laboratory conditions. Lab coats. They were as interested in her reaction to the drug as in the drug's effects on her.
The first drugged experience was strange: a cool, slushy relaxation followed by a sudden flux of razorblade images, some remembered, some created, all clear and distinct. When she was interrogated, she answered, her words seeming to speak themselves, unpremeditated and self-active, and she could not seem to stop answering. Each answer seemed knotted to another; they all emerged, one after another, like the rainbow, knotted handkerchiefs pulled hand-over-hand from a magician's stovepipe hat.
Over time, with repeated doses, she learned control under the influence, learned mainly to keep herself from talking, and, learned how, on occasion, and with tremendous concentration, to lie under the influence.
Whatever Javier dosed her with, it did not feel like sodium pentothal. No cool, slushy relaxation — instead it burned — an infernal, slow-moving ooze. Her bonds ate at her wrists and ankles while the medicine ate at her insides the way lava ate a landscape.
The stinking gag turned her gasp of agony into an agony of choking.
Javier's cigarette burned brighter, dimmer, brighter, dimmer, the smell of his Turkish tobacco filling the darkness, while the medicine melted Sarah inside-out.
She shut her eyes.
Her mind burst with images, the images so incandescent they made her mind feel blinded, a sun-stare, images delineated and demanding all her attention: past missions, details she refused to remember, bobbed to the surface, bright corpses in dark floodwater. Executions, seductions. Burned assets. Dead marks. Collateral civilian casualties, casualties psychological and physical, broken spirits, and broken bodies. Her own deep scars: bullet wounds, stab wounds, and resulting plastic surgery — often more painful than the scars it hid. Pervasive, crushing loneliness, strategies and tactics to ignore it. The slowly increasing disrelish, flavors, colors, and odors weakening, fading, vanishing from her, her world a world away, and still receding
A life fabricated out of unrealities.
Her head sank.
The conversation with Mary returned in surgically isolated clips and phrases.
Harbinger. Death. Service. Biblical sense. Mother. Squealers. Survival. Beyond salvage. Wife. Husband. Children. Surrender. Love.
Two muffled shots.
A deal old woman.
But Sarah was not Mary. The similarities of their pasts did not necessitate a similar future. Mary's made Mary's choices, not Sarah's.
And just the night before, Sarah had chosen Chuck. A choice against who she had been and who she was, a choice against who she expected to be. An enlivening choice.
Images of Chuck possessed her mind, her night with Chuck, her body intertwined with his atop his bed, the dim light from the bathroom making them just visible to each other, warm skin and long shadows. The delights of mutual acknowledgment, of touch requiting touch. Gentle, then demanding, then gentle again, coaxing Sarah out of Sarah.
She had been resurrected, a resurrection of the body, but not of her body alone.
And then the images, old and new, bad and good, sank and vanished.
She opened her eyes, lifted her head.
The fiery end of Javier's cigarette still hung in midair.
"Good, good. You're ready," he said, his accent more noticeable in the dark, under the drug.
She did not answer. All of her fought to keep from answering. She had trained for this, undergone doses and doses, interrogations. But whatever this medicine was, it overwhelmed and compelled her as no other had.
She had already been answering questions that for years she had not dared ask herself, telling herself the truth.
Surrender. Love.
"I'm ready." She no longer had a body. She co-existed with the darkness, surrounding Javier's cigarette
"Good. Answer yes or no." Javier's voice became neutral.
He knew something about interrogation. Uncontrolled tone often distracted the person under the influence, led them on tangents, produced too much information.
"You are Rita?"
"No."
"You are Agent Sarah Walker, CIA?"
"Yes."
"You were sent here to infiltrate my organization?"
"Yes."
The world shrank to the end of Javier's cigarette.
"The CIA intends to interfere with, stop, my arms deal."
"Yes."
Javier paused. "Henri was your informant."
"Yes."
Sarah felt the hands on her from behind again.
Her chair was tipped backward, then spun around, tipped down. Javier walked slowly past her chair; she heard his step. A moment later he lit another match.
By its flame, Sarah saw Henri on the floor. His normally spotless clothes were filthy, his gold glasses broken on the dirty floor. The end of his red tie was obscured by a blackened puddle of his blood.
Javier's cigarette had obscured the stink of blood, of death.
A part of her, deep inside, cried out but the drug kept it subterranean.
Instead of a cry, she offered an observation: "He's dead."
"Yes," Javier replied. "Traitor."
Sarah's stomach knotted. Henri had bad breath, but she had liked him nonetheless. He was clever, funny, odd. As Chuck said, a Hitchcock spy movie character. Bile rose in Sarah's throat.
Javier shook the match and everything was black again. His cigarette end reappeared. Sarah felt a twinge inside her, a twinge of resistance. The drug had overwhelmed her, but her training was beginning to gain traction, to push back. Weakly.
"Did you fuck him to lure him into betrayal?"
"No." He hated you, Javier.
"He thought you beautiful."
"Yes,"
"Fool." It was not a question; she did not respond.
Javier stepped to her, the cigarette closing on her. He dropped it and stepped on it, standing just in front of her. He lit another, the flame showing his face, Henri behind him. He shook the match, killing it.
"It's a shame. You are a good interpreter. Gifted even. If Henri had not made mistakes, I would never have suspected you." He paused for a pull on the cigarette. His tone was no longer neutral. It was angry.
"You should have chosen your cover as your career. Being an interpreter would likely not have ended in a dark basement, not ended this way." He leaned down. His cigarette was very near her face. She could actually feel the heat from the end as he took another drag.
"I'm sure you were very beautiful, once." Chuck thought me beautiful now.
Javier was quiet for a moment, then his cigarette moved. He pressed it into her cheek. She felt it burn her. The drug slowed her reaction, but she jerked in the chair, moved her head, trying to get away from him.
He stepped back. Her cheek still burned but the cigarette was no longer touching it.
"Now, tell me about the old woman my men killed. Was she CIA?"
She could still not resist the question and so she did not really try. She did not want Javier to suspect she was recovering from the injection.
"No."
"But you had a gun?"
"Hers."
Other than Javier's voice, and Sarah's, the room had been deathly quiet. Whoever was behind her, he was quiet. Javier seemed to be framing his next question.
Sarah pulled against her bonds, trying to free her wrists, the effort a torment to her already tender flesh.
"Did you hear something?" Javier asked, but not of Sarah.
A male voice from a pace or two behind her answered. "Yes, what was that?"
Sarah had missed it, concentrating, struggling against the ropes.
And then she heard the sound of guns.
"What the hell?" Javier asked.
A light came on, momentarily blinding Sarah. She blinked furiously, trying to regain her vision. As she did, she heard more shots, the sound of splitting wood.
A door burst open.
She could feel, smell a gust of fresh air. A gun in the room fired. Others, outside the room, answered.
Sarah lowered her head in the crossfire.
More shots rang out in rapid succession, so many that Sarah lost count of their number, whether they were fired inside or outside the room. She could hear ricochets off the floor, the walls.
She had been in firestorms before, but never unarmed, temporarily blinded. Blinking in a maelstrom.
And then the shooting stopped.
Silence filled the room for a second, then Sarah heard her name.
Sort of.
"Rita!"
"Chuck?"
Sarah blinked. Her vision cleared. Chuck Bartowski was kneeling in front of her.
He looked pale, terrified. "Damn," he said quietly as he fumbled with her ropes. Finally, he untied them. Her hands were free. He moved to one foot and she untied the other.
Her feet were free. She looked up into Chuck's face. Tears streaked his cheeks. Sarah realized a woman was standing beside him.
It was not Mary. It was an old woman Sarah had never seen before, dressed much as Mary had been, coats and boots, a gun in her hand, smoking.
"Hurry, we need to get out of here!" Her Spanish accent was heavy.
"Is she — ?" Chuck asked the woman, his voice thick.
"Yes, she's gone."
Chuck nodded and then reached out to Sarah.
She saw Javier on the floor, staring fixedly at the ceiling, the front of his shirt incarnadine. She stood, taking Chuck's hands, trying to process what had happened, what was happening. He turned, tugging her forward. Her bare feet were numb, her hands too, but she squeezed his hand and forced her feet into motion. The old woman looked around the room, then followed, bringing up the rear.
The medicine had lost control over Sarah; her will was her own, even if her feet were clumsy.
In the hallway, there were two more women waiting. They went ahead of Chuck. As they walked the long hallway, they passed two women dead on the floor and three men.
The sulfur smell of gunpowder and of metallic blood filled the hall, smoke swirling in the air.
The group hurried along, almost running. Sarah's feet were tingling, her hands too. The warmth of Chuck's hand was her focal point.
And then they reached the end of the hall, passing two more men, and he let go of Sarah's hand. He knelt down, lowered his head.
Mary was on the floor. At least, Sarah thought it was Mary. Chuck's leather jacket was over the body, head to waist.
From his knees, he looked up at Sarah. "She saved me. Jumped in front of me when they," he motioned to the dead men, "when they saw me coming. She told me to stay back but I was so frightened for you."
Sarah did not understand it all. She did not like not understanding, but she crouched down and put her arms around him. "I'm sorry, Chuck. I'm so sorry."
"We need to go," the woman said again from behind them, addressing Chuck. "She died to save you, to save her. So, let's get you saved.
One of the women ahead of them opened the door at the end of the hallway. Chuck stood and looked at her; he seemed lost. "She found me."
Sarah still did not know what that meant, exactly. But she knew the woman was right. They needed to get away from — wherever they were. Sarah needed to get to a phone.
"Chuck, we have to go."
"And just leave her?" He looked down at Mary again. "She had on a vest, but they shot her — " He gestured to his head, the gesture dying before he finished it. He looked stricken, sick. "Leave her?"
"She'd understand, Chuck. This — this was her life."
He nodded, and then he gazed into Sarah's face.
"And yours — Sarah."
Sarah pressed her lips into a line and nodded her head. Not the way I wanted to hear my name.
"And mine. So listen to me, Chuck, we have to go. She'd want us to go."
Outside, the women scattered, except for the one behind them. "Follow me," she said as he went past them.
Chuck did. Sarah noted the number on the building they exited, the name of the street, then followed.
She led them through several streets, the sidewalks hurting Sarah's feet.
The section of Barcelona was one Sarah did not know. In a few minutes, they stopped.
A blue Dacia Sandero was parked on the otherwise deserted street. The woman gestured to it. "Your computer and other things are in the car. Take it, here are the keys." She handed them to Sarah.
Sarah took them. "Thank you."
The woman nodded, her face grim. "You can call someone, take care of what happened, keep us safe?"
Sarah understood that the woman meant herself and the other women. "I can. I will."
"Then go." The woman bent down stiffly, unlaced her boots, and took them off. She handed them to Sarah. "Someone will pick me up, take me home. But you can't go back to your apartment. You need these and I believe we're the same size."
"Thanks." Sarah took the boots.
The woman caught Chuck's hand, her face and voice earnest, her eyes damp. "We loved her. And she loved you, and your sister — and your father. She just didn't know how — to live her love. She carried it with her but could not share it with you."
Chuck stared at the woman blankly, then nodded.
Sarah got in the car and started it while Chuck circled the front and got in the passenger side.
Sarah pulled away from the curb. She glanced at Chuck. "Do you have a phone?"
He seemed to come into focus. "Yeah, yes. In my bag." He turned in the seat and reached behind them, digging in one of the bags in the seat. He handed the phone to Sarah.
She dialed a memorized number and stated the code words after a tone. A human voice finally responded, a man.
She gave him the address and a terse description of what would be found there.
"She saved me," Chuck said at last.
Sarah had been driving in silence, trying to plan what to do, trying to understand what had happened. She wanted to ask Chuck, but he seemed armored in grief, shock
"She never came back to me, never wrote me a letter, but she saved me."
Sarah reached for Chuck's hand, not thinking. "I'm sorry, Chuck. This is all my fault, all my fault."
He looked at her. She could not tell if he agreed or disagreed. He did not let go of her hand, but he turned from her to look out the passenger window.
Sarah aimed the car toward the outskirts of the city. Chuck turned back to her. "It's not your fault; It's mine."
He turned away again and said nothing more.
For the first time, Sarah recognized it was evening, the blue-gray light claiming the city, the same light she and Chuck had walked in.
Chuck had cash and used it to get a room at the cheap hotel Sarah found north of Barcelona. Sarah slipped on the boots as he paid.
They silently carried Chuck's bags into the room. The room was tiny, bare. A full-size bed occupied most of the room. A narrow closet was recessed into one wall. The bathroom was on the opposite side. It at least looked clean.
Sarah locked the door.
When she turned around, Chuck was on the bed, face down.
Sarah longed to go to him, her first, immediate response, but she did not know what to say.
Her expectation had been that she would never see him again.
It was not what she had wanted, it was what she thought was right. For him.
But what she wanted to protect him from had, somehow, found him, and brought him to her. But Sarah had been right to want to shield him from her life. 'A damnation like you." Mary's words for me.
Sarah made herself stop feeling. Chuck needed her now, needed her to be the agent she was.
Think, don't feel.
Mary was dead, but even she could not have died twice.
A vest, Chuck said. That had to explain it. She had a vest on when Javier's man shot her.
Sarah walked to the bed, sat on the edge. Extending her arm carefully, she put her hand on Chuck's back.
"Chuck, I need you to talk to me, so that I can decide what to do next. But I don't understand what happened. How did you find me?"
She realized she was rubbing his back, not intentionally. But it seemed to help. He had been stiff on the bed and she felt him begin to relax, become less taut. She kept rubbing.
After a moment of silence, he turned over to face her. Pallid still, his eyes were soft, more like the terrace. She asked again. "How did you find me?"
He sat up, and now his face was close to hers. She fought back her desire to hug him.
He shook his head, caught his eyes with hers. "I woke up. I woke up and you were gone. At first, I thought you'd maybe just gone to get coffee or pastry downstairs. But you didn't come back. I got up and found nothing, no note. I called the desk, no messages. You were just — gone."
His voice was soft but she could hear, and see, how much her leaving had hurt him. He swallowed, fought for control. "I thought, I hoped — "
He broke off suddenly. "Sorry, that's not really germane is it, not an answer to your question." He turned, pulling his legs toward his chest, and slowly repositioned himself so that he too was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing her.
Putting his feet on the floor steadied him but also made him grimmer. His tone changed, became more objective, reportorial.
"I spent the morning trying to find you, online at first; I told you I'm good with computers. But I could find nothing. Of course, I had nothing but a first name and a job description. Then, I asked around the hotel. I retraced our steps back to the bar where I met you, asked there. No one knew you.
"When I got back to my room, I sat down, and then she walked out of the bathroom. Just materialized."
Sarah nodded. "Mary."
"Mom. She was hurt, but she had come to find me, warn me — about you, about that Javier guy, the dead guy." His hands were shaking as he talked. "She didn't explain much, just told me I needed to go with her. She was hard to argue with, and she was hurting, and she was my mom, so I grabbed my things and went."
"A car was waiting for us downstairs, the one we drove here. That other woman, the one who gave the keys, was driving. I got in the rear, Mom got in front. We drove to another part of town and stopped. The woman left with the car — she smelled like my grandma," Chuck added, then went on. "Anyway, we climbed several flights of stairs to an apartment. I don't know how she did it but she was determined. Once we were inside, the door locked, she relaxed.
"She asked me to help her. She had a vest under her jacket. Bulletproof, she said. We got it off her and she was a mess, bruised horribly, massive purple bruises, one on her chest, the other on her abdomen. She put on a robe over her bra and the bruises and took some painkillers. Then she sat down and pointed to a chair. For a while, we just sat there, sneaking looks at each other.
"I looked around as we sat there. The apartment was plain, barren, except for one wall. On it were pictures, lots of pictures. Of me. Of Ellie. Of dad. All telephoto, I think, all taken while we were unaware. Different ages, different places. I asked and at first, she didn't answer, then she said that whenever one of her friends made a trip to the States if the friend was near one of us, she took pictures."
Chuck's face as he told Sarah this mimicked the wonder and puzzlement he must have felt at the time.
He refocused. "I asked her to explain what was going on, why she needed to warn me about you. Who Javier was. She got some phone calls before she answered, several, reports. They seemed to satisfy her. I was getting anxious. She finally explained."
He looked at her as if she were a stranger.
"She told me you aren't Rita. You're Sarah, Sarah Walker, a CIA agent. Rita was your cover. She didn't give me all the details but she quickly told me a lot about you. About the kind of spy you were, the kind of spy you are." Chuck stopped. "It was a lot, a lot to take in. But she said you were here in deep cover and were working against Javier Coosur, that he was your…mark?"
Sarah felt herself blushing, shame. She shook her head.
"Then she told me she went to your apartment. My mom went to my one-night stand's apartment." He tried to smile but did not manage any namable expression.
"But when I understood what happened there, that they shot Mom and took you while she pretended to be dead, I got — agitated. I told her I had to find you, help you. She said you'd chosen your life and so chosen its consequences. We fought. I haven't seen my Mom in two decades — and we end up fighting about who I'm sleeping with." Chuck stopped, cleared his throat. "But I wouldn't take no for an answer. I told her I would go to the embassy, stir up trouble, do anything if I could just save you."
Oh, Chuck.
"She finally gave in. She started making calls, talking like, I don't know, a general. I got on the computer, hacked Coosur. I found that building where we found you. He owns it. It's due for demolition. I had a hunch. Mom made more calls, discovered activity around it when there'd been none for months. She had this like, army of grandmas, this gray army, Sarah, and they were waiting on us when we arrived, parked near the building. Grandmas with guns. With guns."
"We blitzed the building. And, well, you more or less know the rest. I ran too fast, got out in front, terrified for you, and I didn't see the next set of guards. I stopped when I did. Mom caught up with me and threw herself in front of me. One of them shot her before the women behind us killed them."
Chuck faltered. Blinked. "I found my Mom and lost her again in a half of a day."
"My world had shrunk to half of Volkoff's bed…" Mary's words.
Chuck stood up, waved his arms. "I can't believe this all happened. Can't. Believe. It. You, Mom. — Was that Henri on the floor?"
Sarah nodded. Chuck sat back down — more accurately, he crumpled. The emotional weight of it all seemed to fall on him.
"Jesus! She told me about you but nothing about herself. Was she a spy too?"
Sarah looked down at the bed, back up to Chuck. "Yes, she said she used to be me. She told me her story, Chuck. I can tell you if you want to know. You won't like it."
"Stories I don't like seem to be the theme of this trip."
Sarah told him Mary's story as Mary told it to her.
Sarah found herself identifying with Mary when Mary told the story. Sarah identified with her in another as Sarah told it. She no longer felt like Mary's story foretold the future, Sarah's future, but it made her reconsider her own past and wonder about her present and future, about women and spies and time, their mutual entanglement.
The old woman's words about Mary kept ringing in Sarah's mind. "She just didn't know how — to live her love."
When Sarah finished the story, Chuck stared at the floor, a frown so deeply fixed on his face it threatened permanence.
"So, she went to you to save me from you. To save Dad from her."
Sarah had not given expression to that thought but she knew it when Chuck said it.
"Yes, she was trying to keep her life — my life — distant from you."
He lifted an eyebrow then turned to Sarah, caught her eyes. "The same thing you were trying to do?"
Sarah was not sure how to respond. That was true. But admitting it would be to admit to more than perhaps she should. The way Chuck looked at her told her he understood the subtext of his question: "Do you care about me, Sarah?"
Sarah felt the shift inside her even as she looked away. I think I love you. I think this is what love is.
She took a moment to compose her answer, willing only to commit to so much. For his sake. "I wanted to protect you as she did. I was selfish. I chose — a night, a night for myself — over your safety. I was stupid."
Chuck's face collapsed. But he nodded. "You tried to keep me safe, Sarah. You left. I get it. It was Henri. I didn't recollect it until my Mom asked me, but I volunteered my name to him. 'Chuck Bartowski at your service,' I said, like a fucking character in an old movie. When he gave me the note. All this traces back to me. My name's on the registry at the Hotel Pulitzer."
Sarah went on with the line of thought. "And Henri did not shake Javier's tails, and they suspected his meeting you, suspected you, and so suspected me when they saw you take the note to me."
He looked grim. "I suppose. You know how all this works. I've only seen movies and read books. I never imagined becoming a minor character in one."
Sarah could not help herself. "Minor?"
And then his arms were around her, a question in an embrace, a seeking for comfort. He leaned back and softly touched the burn on her cheek. "Sarah."
She wanted to comfort him, herself. She wanted him. He was in her bloodstream now, and she knew it. His lips found hers as his hand found her breast. He fondled her with heartbreaking gentleness, care. She'd never been touched by a man who she knew loved her and who she knew she loved. She reveled in his touch, the roll of his fingers around her impossibly sensitive flesh. She sank back onto the bed, and he moved on top of her, his hands snaking down her sides and around her waist. A moment later, her sweat pants slipped down her legs, and her panties trailed her pants quickly.
He moved down and began to kiss her there.
She had intended to comfort him; she was going to comfort him, but his ministrations were too intimate, too perfectly paced, too warm and wet for her to do anything but feel them and tremble. Her heart raced as she rapidly approached her peak, then arrived, and rolled down the other side, panting, her hands on the sides of her head, holding it to her body, staring at the ceiling.
After a moment of disembodied delirium, she reached down and pulled him to her, to her mouth, and kissed him.
He was kicking off his shoes as she undid his belt. He pushed his pants down and was inside her. They both cried out, and then he began to move in long, slow risings and fallings, taking his comfort from deep inside her even as she comforted him from her depths. They climbed to the peak together, horizons suddenly expanding wide in every direction, and then they tumbled down together, Jack and Jill inseparable, breathing each other's breaths.
She clung to him, telling him she was sorry. Their eyes met; they both knew. Tears in two sets of eyes, they began again, comforting and being comforted, knowing.
She left again.
She knew he knew she would.
But she left a note this time.
Chuck,
It was not just a night. It was so much more than that. But it can't be any more than it's been.
I'll make sure you can fly home, that there are no repercussions. Between your mother's network and the CIA's cleaners, you should be able to return to Milwaukee, no questions asked.
Your mom made her choices, Chuck. But she choose you at the last and braved the consequences.
Be safe. Be happy. Remember me fondly once in a while.
She had almost signed it 'Love, Sarah'.
But as much as she wanted to, it would have been cruel to do it.
She just wrote 'Sarah'.
She did not want to encourage him to hold onto any hope of her, to wait for her.
She had foreclosed on domestic happiness long ago, her choices making it impossible.
She stood at the foot of the bed and gazed at him, the half of the bed she had vacated. Her eyes filled with tears. I don't know how to live it. God help me, Mary, I don't know how.
Two days into her fortieth year, bereft as she was, Sarah felt younger than she ever had.
She closed the door to the room quietly, kissed her fingers, pressed them against it, a pledge of love and a ward against harm, and, wearing a nameless old woman's boots, she walked away.
A/N: Next time, our story ends.