The Mission – July: Sarah Interlude

Carina is called in to meet with her Director, and get to shake hands with many of the participants of their video meetings. Her career is stellar. She is a respected peer amongst the top echelon, her reputation now is someone who finds actionable solutions to complicated problems.

In the past, her goal was Station Chief, hopefully someplace not too dreadful. That was small potatoes. Now her career would end up in Washington, special advisor to someone important. Hell, she would end up as the important someone.

After the day's meetings, her attention turned to Sarah. I have never seen her so,….her, as she was in the bar, turning her kick ass energy back on herself, trying to suppress feelings like she always did, with more intensity than I ever saw before. Is she really this sprung about a guy? Chuck? I guess I can see it.

No matter what we did, what kind of craziness we got into, it never seemed to fill some void. If you watched her, you could see it, in her quietest moments, a longing for something that she never had.

Holy crap, that's what it was. Her energy was all over the place, I guess from trying to be Super Spy Sarah, while battling her feelings about Chuck.

In the hubbub, I couldn't put my finger on it, but now I see it clear as day. She smiled. While we were getting ready, in those moments when she normally would have defaulted to her serious, semi-glum face, she had a soft smile instead. And she had the same soft smile when she was doing her final look over, in the mirror, and she had the same soft smile….when she saw Chuck.

Hell, I get it, I can't help smiling thinking about him too, and his cuddling, and his kissing, and his….down girl. This ain't about you right now. It's about Sarah.

For me, it's like he is a great wine, to be savored, but there are many great wines out there.

For Sarah, it's like Chuck is water.

Fuck, I hope she is coping better now. Let's see if she managed to finally burn him out of her system.

All information indicated that Sarah was between assignments and should be at her apartment, but she wasn't answering her phone, and voicemail got no reply.

Sarah was her friend, Carina's best friend, even though they hadn't talked since last Thanksgiving. Carina cared about her, and now was worrying about her.

So, Carina found herself at Sarah's door, mumbling about "mountains, Mohammad, somethin', somethin'". She knocked. No Answer. She thought she heard something rustle. She knocked again, this time calling out, in a moderate voice, "Sarah. It's Carina, are you in there?"

This time she swore she heard a chair creak, but again no answer. This is bullshit. She pulled out her tools and made quick work of the lock. Slowly opening the door, she called out again, "Sarah…"

Stepping into the room, semi-dark, from dusk and being unlit, she spotted Sarah, sitting in a chair looking out the window. "Hey, Carina." she answered, not turning her head.

"Are You OK?" Carina inquired. No answer.

Carina flicked on the light switch and surveyed the room. It was undecorated, with non-descript furniture, nothing unusual for a spy apartment. They were rooms, used in transit, not a home. A place devoid of the detritus of life, and this place felt empty of life itself, even though it contained the blond agent.

Carina noticed that the room seemed kind of gray, and then realized it was dust. Now that her brain adjusted, she could tell that a fairly substantial layer of dust covered everything; everything but paths from the front door, to the kitchen, then from the kitchen to her chair, and from the chair to the bedroom. It was a well-worn path to nowhere. It provided evidence of a life of routine, and only routine.

She tried again, "What's new?"

"37 red cars passed on this street today, 23 blue, 53 black, 62 white, and 52 of various other colors." Sarah paused, "I guess that isn't new, that is pretty normal for a weekday."

Carina quietly approached her side, and looked at the window at the activity of life, down below. She's watching life, not participating in it. Carina recognized. In the past she at least participated, even if she couldn't fully embrace life.

Carina moved to the kitchen, for a glass of water, and looks out the kitchen window, over a window box containing the withered remnants of some ill-fated attempt to bring some life into the apartment. "I can effectively snipe 9 windows from that window," Sarah mentions, off hand, from the other room.

WTF Walker, is that what passes for light conversation with you now?

Carina steps back to the living room, and finally gets a look into Sarah's eyes.

She is shocked as to how dead they are. Their blue is of a nighttime sky not the bright afternoon, which was one of Sarah's trademarks. And they were flat, only the surface available. It was unclear if that was because anything deeper was completely covered up, or whether it no longer existed. She has never seen eyes, like that. The closest she can imagine are..Carina quietly gasps, Chucks. She is reminded of her recognition of Chuck's similar appearance.

Oh my god, she thinks, this is what they talk about when someone has lost their will to live.

With Sarah, it was now shockingly evident, and she suddenly recognized Chuck's similar trajectory. All of the activity performing missions simply the actions of animated corpses. Not the living dead, but living, dead.

I've got to quit focusing on our professional successes, overlooking the toll this takes on him, when I get back.
And I need to try to code blue Sarah's heart back to life. Now I just have to figure out how to do that.

Her heart constricts, she involuntarily closes in, taking Sarah into her arms, quietly sobbing, "Oh honey, baby."

Sarah's returning hug was light and distant in response. She patted Carina's back, subconsciously mirroring her, offering her own soothing coos, too closed off to properly comprehend to the situation.

Carina pulled back." I am getting you out of here."

"No, I'm not it the mood to go anywhere." came Sarah's listless reply.

"I know, that is what's worrying me, it looks like it has been too long since you have been in the mood to clean, let alone go have fun. We are going out."

"No, I feel sick, I think I am coming down with the flu. Yeah, I'm certain I'm coming down with something." Sarah resisted

"Well you don't look sick, yet, and I think a couple of shots will knock any germs on their asses. We're going out." Carina repeated, more firmly.

It took a while but Carina finally had Sarah ready to go out, in a basic black dress and some lipstick.

Dragging Sarah out the door, almost needing to move her legs for her, Carina had a flashback to some movie Chuck had insisted they watch, even though they had caught it midway through as they flipped through the channels. Bernie something. Somehow, the leads ended up dragging some dead guy around, as if he wasn't dead.

No matter how similar the situations seemed, Sarah wasn't dead yet so Carina was able to get her to the closest bar, forced a couple of medically required shots of whiskey on her and over a few beers, she pulled Sarah into some happier memories they had shared in the past, even garnering a chuckle or two.

When they parted Sarah seemed to have a little flicker of life in her, her cheeks pinked by some combination of the alcohol, the laughter, and the unseasonably cold evening.

Through the night, while chatting about the past, Carina's mind was also occupied with the future, specifically how to assure a future for Sarah, and apparently that required Chuck. It seemed to be proven that neither Chuck nor Sarah were whole without the other.

It made no sense to Carina. How could someone be so dependent on another? And they seemed to have done OK in the years prior.

While Chuck had been leading a minimal existence at the Buy More he hadn't been slowly dying on the vine.

And Sarah, while closed and controlled, could at least enjoy a happy moment, evidenced by her time with the CATs.

They might have felt unfulfilled, drifting toward some undefined and unremarkable future, but it was acceptable, knowing that there was no hope for anything better.

Then they met each other, and discovered that happiness could exist in their lives.

Then, when they lost that and apparently believed it was unrecoverable, living with that void that had been occupied by the proven existence of paradise, was proving to be an unbearable existence.

How do I get them together? I might lose Chuck, but I never fully had him. As great as it is being with him, I know we are 1 and 1, not 1 plus 1, a couple of people operating in parallel, not a couple operating as one.

While Chuck and Sarah weren't part of each other's lives, they were each other's lives, as necessary as food, as connected as an arm or leg. Carina has seen how well they worked together, and figured that it was substitutable. She now recognized that, for Chuck, she wasn't a sufficient substitute, and Sarah obviously had not ever found even a partial substitute for Chuck.

Carina couldn't exactly kidnap Sarah, so, as they part, she begs her to come visit Rome, be somewhere other than this soul sucking mausoleum that poses as a domicile.

Sarah finally agrees, conditionally. She will stay at a hotel and not come to the villa, and it has to wait until her next assignment is over. Sarah will only reveal that it's in Eastern Europe, so she will be in the region.