A/N: An On-Demand Story. I asked for prompts of a sci-fi sort. I got one of that sort but it was open-ended. I got a few others of a non-sci-fi sort. All were good. I chose the one about the prenup episode from S4, and, well...you will see. This may make no one happy, but, three hours later, it is what my fevered brain coughed up.
Sorry for that image.
PNUPPED
An On-Demand Story
Sarah tossed.
Sarah turned.
Sarah stared at the poster of Tron. She huffed silently, trying not to wake Chuck.
She was anxious, irritated. The glowing blue numbers of their alarm clock read 3:07 am.
Irritated with herself. For what she had done, planned to do. And she was irritated with herself for being irritated.
Of course, part of what irritated her was that she was keeping yet another thing from Chuck.
The money.
She had money she had set aside during her years in the CIA. A fund she had carefully built up against the rainy day when her father inevitably ran afoul of the law yet again. That money had been a comfort to her. It had been her father's legal troubles that led her, almost shackled — she thought she would be shackled, for a moment — into the CIA. And although her hands had not been shackled, cuffed, when she joined, the truth was she had been shackled far more effectively by that choice than she understood. For years. She had begun to understand finally in Budapest, had made what was her first genuinely free choice in years, even if it was still a constrained choice. But it was a choice constrained by her desire to save a genuinely innocent life.
That choice had broken the ground deep in Sarah, proven that what she thought was bedrock was instead just hardened soil. It had broken ground in her at a depth far beyond her comprehension, farther than her feelings could fathom. She was still — even as an engaged woman — understanding that shift, that breaking of ground, the new life that meeting Chuck caused to take root in that soil, her soil, almost as if it had spontaneously generated there.
She knew it had not. She was capable of love — and it was love, love of Chuck, Chuck's love for her, it was love that had taken root there and grown despite her regular neglect of it, her frequent mistreatment of it. Still, it had grown stubbornly, refusing to die, like bamboo or kudzu, something capable of irrepressible growth, incapable of being uprooted.
Sarah's face burned in the darkness when she thought of how she had tried to deny it, stunt it, kill it. Bryce. Cole. Shaw.
And now.
She had been seated earlier in the day in the office of Sheila Bungel, senior partner in the firm of Bungel, Wrangle, and Swurve. Sheila was a fast-talking, blunt redhead who Sarah knew she had hired in part because Sheila reminded Sarah of Carina.
Sarah was in a chair in front of Sheila's massive desk.
"So, Sarah," Sheila said, putting both her hands down flat on the document on her desk, her massive engagement ring and diamond-encrusted wedding band glinting in sunlight from the window, catching Sarah's eye, "I have the papers you wanted, drawn up just as you wanted, as you specified. The account you need to protect will be protected." Sheila leaned down a bit to catch Sarah's gaze. Sarah was staring at Sheila's left hand. "Sarah?"
Sarah looked up. "Sorry."
"You know, Sarah, you don't have to do this. You've told me about your husband-to-be. Admittedly, anything could happen, but do you really think he would ever touch your money, anything of yours that you did not permit him to touch."
Only my heart.
Sarah forced herself to smile, to try to hide the shame she felt from Sheila, from herself. "No, no, not really. It's just that my life...The people I have known...Trust doesn't come easy to me."
"So you don't trust Charles...um, Chuck?"
"No! I mean, yes. I mean I do trust him."
"So why do this? I've seen engagements shattered by such decisions, even when the document originated bi-laterally, and not unilaterally."
Sarah nodded. Her heart was burning. Can my heart burn with shame? "I understand. I just...have to do this."
Why?
Sheila held Sarah's gaze. "Does Chuck trust you?"
Sarah felt herself smile, forgetting herself. "Yes." He does. After everything I have put him through. All the lies. All the secrets. She still had told him so little. He was still floundering in her mystery.
Mysteries.
"He does."
Sheila nodded, her eyebrows knitting. "Will he still trust you after you...serve...him with these?" She patted the folder with both hands.
"Serve? Is that the right...verb?"
"It might seem like the wrong one to you but will it seem that way to the man you love? And you do, you know, love him. I can see it on your face anytime you say his name, think of him. Are you sure?"
Sarah thought of Craig and Laura Turner, their dysfunctional marriage. She thought of her parent's marriage, its far-flung, scattered wreckage. She included herself in that wreckage. Anything could happen, right? The only sure thing was that her father would screw up again, need money for legal fees. She could not imagine Chuck hurting her on purpose, but what if she hurt him, what if they ended up in some mess like Prague?
Prague.
"No, I'm not sure. But — that's it — you can't be sure of anything. I'm not."
"Not even of Chuck?"
Sarah did not know what to say. This was about her dad, not about her, not about Chuck.
Sheila waited for an answer but Sarah said nothing.
"Okay, Sarah. Well, here you are." Sheila put the papers in an envelope. "Let me say one last thing, Sarah. I am, as you've noticed, a married woman myself. It is not easy for a woman who does my job to keep her heart...pumping...to avoid falling into cynicism, to avoid applying what I know, the statistics, the scenes, the nastiness, to my own marriage, and deciding the whole thing is a stupid, Sisyphean blunder. My heavy rock up and up an endless hill.
"But I don't. Because I believe that what I believe about marriage makes a critical difference to what my marriage can be and is. Those things I know do not determine my marriage's fate. I do. My husband does. What we say and do to each other determines that, our first-person and second-person reality, 'I' and 'thou', not 'he' and 'she'.
"Don't think about Chuck as him, yourself as her. Make it I, me, and you. Those pieces of paper, the prenup, they're for you, Chuck, not him, Chuck. Be sure you know that." She gave Sarah a long, significant stare. "That's all I have to say to you, Sarah. Good luck."
Sheila extended the envelope to Sarah and Sarah took it.
The envelope was in Sarah's purse, on the dresser.
Chuck was asleep beside her as he had been the night she had told him — told him while he was sleeping — that she loved him and nothing would ever change that. That she would say yes if he proposed.
She did love him. He had proposed. She had said yes.
And now.
She looked at the Tron poster. She had watched the movie one night with Chuck. Mostly, she remembered the colors. If it had a plot, she did not remember it, not clearly. She remembered motorcycles — or something like motorcycles…If there was a plot, she could not figure it out...
She would give Chuck the papers in the morning. She had to. He would be upset but they would talk. She would get him to understand. It would be okay...
Chuck turned to Sarah.
He was wearing a helmet, a glowing helmet. Sarah reached up, touched her own head. She had on a helmet too.
Chuck held out his hand. "C'mon, sweetheart, Sarah, we have to go! If The PNUP finds us, we'll be derezzed! Sarah, please, I love you."
His hand, glowing blue in the strange, ambient green light, extended to her, open, the way it was always open. She reached out for it and took it, she saw her own hand's blue glow intensify as did his when they touched each other.
He started running and she stumbled, righted herself, and followed.
They ran and kept running. The ambient glow of green surrounded them, neon and nauseating all at once. They seemed to run in straight lines, always in straight lines, and around corner after corner, each ninety-degrees. It was like a perfectly ruled city, drawn with a straight-edge or a slide-rule.
She felt Chuck's grip on her hand, firm, always firm, but gentle too, despite his urgency. She firmed her grip on his hand. Chuck, her Chuck. Always finding her no matter how lost, no matter where she was lost.
— Where were they? And then Sarah somehow knew the answer: NGAGE. They were inside NGAGE. Sarah pulled Chuck to a halt.
"Chuck, what is happening? How did we get here?"
He looked anxiously down the hallway behind them. "JAK. He's chasing us. He works for PNUP. They're going to destroy NGAGE. Shut down all the tandem programs. We have to save it, save ourselves, save us." Sarah realized he was wearing a uniform or a suit, something that matched his helmet. She was too. He started to turn. "No, wait, Chuck. I don't remember any of this." She pulled her hand away.
"That's because PNUP got you, somehow, pulled you in here, in the NGAGE mainframe. Inside it, Sarah. This virtual reality is our reality now." He took her hand again.
She pulled away again, her blue light dimming. His too. "I don't understand. Who activated PNUP?"
Chuck gave her a look, deep and dark, his brown eyes hurt. Angry. His voice was soft as he answered, however. "You did, Sarah. I don't know when or how, but you did. JAK showed me the upload."
Chuck looked over her shoulder, his eyes going wide. "It's JAK, he's here!" In the distance, Sarah heard a digitized whir, a synthesized motorcycle engine. A red light began to glow in the green ambient light. "It doesn't matter now, Sarah. C'mon." He grabbed her hand, that same firm, gentle, urgent grip, and she followed as they began to run again.
They ran and ran. Lights blinked in the distance, reminding her of computer screens in Castle. Her lungs burned. Or her heart burned. The red light kept growing in intensity, until it became the ambient light in which they ran, the green gone.
Chuck kept looking back. Sarah finally did. A motorcycle made of light, glowing red, a rider perched on it, helmet low, his face just above the glowing handlebars, was gaining on them.
"Just a little farther, Sarah," Chuck panted. His blue light was dimmer still.
And then the red motorcycle was upon them, at their side. The rider turned to look at her. It was JAK. it was her father. He turned the motorcycle, a blur of red passing between them, uncoupling her hand from his. "Chuck!"
"Sarah!"
And then Chuck was gone. She was on the back of the red motorcycle, her arms around her father, and they were speeding away, lights flashing everywhere. She heard Chuck scream her name and then the lights overwhelmed her and she passed out.
She regained consciousness as JAK stopped the cycle in a vast electronic cathedral. A long shaft of red light, angry and unbearable, ran from the center of the cathedral's floor up and up into inscrutable darkness.
A voice, a woman's voice, familiar but electronic, unreal, echoed in the empty space, the lights on the distant walls throbbing to the voice's tempo.
"Well done, JAK. Well done. You are my good and faithful servant. You will be rewarded. You have saved her. Saved us."
Sarah knew the voice but it sounded...wrong. Not just digital but...alien. Sarah jumped off the cycle. It was throbbing red, brighter now, the color of the shaft of light.
"What have you done with Chuck?!" Sarah screamed the question at the shaft of light. She could feel the heat radiating off it, the only heat she had felt in NGAGE other than the warmth of Chuck's hand.
"Chuck is...eliminated. The threat is gone." She knew the answering voice; Sarah knew it. Where had she heard it? It still sounded wrong.
"No!" She wailed, and the lights on the distant walls blinked, dimmed, for the length of her scream.
The shaft wailed too. "No! He lives. He is coming."
Sarah felt, then saw the blue glow that began to compete with the red glow in the cathedral. She heard...bells.
She turned. In the distance, just entering the vast cathedral was a blue motorcycle, a low wall of blue stretching out behind it. It was coming at her. No, it was coming for her. She saw Chuck's face, intent, committed, just above the blue glowing handlebars.
"Chuck! I'm here!"
The wall lights blinked, their red purpling with an admixture of blue. The red shaft intensified, grew hotter. "Stop him, JAK. He must not touch me. I am PNUP. Do as I say."
JAK, her father, looked at Sarah. "What do you want, Darlin'? It's up to you."
"He loves me, Dad."
JAK looked at her. "That's not good enough, Darlin'." He mounted the cycle; it glowed red, hot.
"No, Dad. No. I love him." She turned to look at Chuck, closing the distance between them. "I love you, Chuck."
She stepped to the side, into the red shaft of light.
It burned, oh, how it burned. Shame, guilt, fear. And then she knew the voice. It was her voice. But it was her voice as it sounded, not when she spoke, but when she overheard herself speak, like on a recording. It was her voice, but the voice of her past. The light burned into her and she screamed. The shaft of light screamed. JAK dismounted, started to run to her. But Chuck shot past him, leaping from the blue motorcycle and tucking himself into a ball. He rolled to the shaft of light and stepped into it, taking Sarah into his arms.
She looked at him. They were both glowing red now, the blue all-but-gone. "Sarah, Sarah." She could hear the pain in his voice. The anger was gone. He pulled her close.
After a moment, she wrapped her arms around her husband-to-be. "I love you, Chuck. Nothing will ever change that."
She saw the blue begin to shine again, glow, around him, her. "I love you, Sarah. Nothing will ever change that. Nothing." He put his face up, allowing the red light to burn into him, shielding her. She squeezed him tight. The blue, their blue, began to glow still more brightly, and she loved him at that moment for all she was worth, held him for all she was worth, all the doubts and hesitations, all the secrets and secret fears, released.
The virtual world around them exploded blue.
Sarah woke up with a start, panting.
She was in their room. In their bed. She looked to her side. The clock glowed blue. 6:07 am. She looked to the other side. Chuck was asleep.
She felt her feet entangled with his. She relaxed into her pillow, caught her breath.
It was not too late.
Carefully, she extricated her feet from Chuck's, still warm, and she got out of bed. She went to her purse and extracted the envelope. She checked Chuck again. He was still asleep.
She padded into the bathroom and quietly opened a drawer. There was a book of matches there, kept for lighting candles. She put down the envelope and lit a match. Holding it in her fingers, she picked up the envelope and lit one corner. She stepped to the toilet and dropped the match in the bowl. She held the burning envelope over the bowl until it was mostly consumed, then she dropped it in.
She took a breath and flushed the toilet.
As she came back to the bed, Chuck woke up. "Hey, beautiful. You okay?"
"I am now. I just had to...relieve myself."
He gave her a goofy grin and opened his arms. She slid into them and hugged him for all she was worth.
PNUP was dead.
She held on for life.
A/N: There you go. My best to all. Hang in there!