We're not indestructible
Baby, better get that straight
I think it's unbelievable
How you give in to the hands of fate
Some things are worth fighting for
Some feelings never die
"No Easy Way Out"
Robert Tepper
October 1, 2021
Carmichael Industries, Los Angeles, California
"Morgan, what is going on?" Vivian asked as she walked into the office space, Carter close behind her. It was so late, moving towards the night now. The darkest corners of the office were unlit and deserted. The main, secure conference room was full, she guessed, the lights on inside and filtering out through the closed blinds against the window. All she saw was Morgan, seated at a table with a woman Vivian had never seen before.
Morgan stood, walked towards them. "Thanks for coming back so late, guys," he said with a soft smile, looking between the two of them. "Oh, and, uh," he started, gesturing back towards the woman he had been sitting with. "This is Hannah. She's an old friend of ours."
Vivian, Carter, and she exchanged pleasantries. "The…uh…you know…?" Vivian started, but didn't elaborate, not really knowing Hannah's place or what she knew.
"Oh, I uh, I sort of have some information because I was involved in a lot of this. But I don't have any clearance or anything. I'm good with computers. And they needed my help," Hannah offered, her voice quiet in the surrounding room.
Morgan walked them towards Chuck's open office door, the only other swath of light on the gray carpet stretching out from the doorway. Speaking sotto voce, Morgan told them, "Cole's agents in England were attacked. And that, unfortunately, was the better news."
Vivian's attention drifted away, as she heard a crescendo of voices, signs of an escalating argument coming from the conference room. She couldn't make out any words, but she knew the most dominant voice in the conversation was Chuck's. Angry, but shrilly, a desperation behind the anger. "What are they arguing about?" she whispered, leaning closer to Morgan.
Carter had remained quiet, standing behind her. But he offered softly, "Who's in there?"
Morgan sighed, replying to Carter first. "Casey, Sarah, Cole, and Chuck." Looking over to Vivian, he added grimly, "You don't want to know."
The office door opened, and Chuck leaned out the door frame, beckoning for Morgan with a tilt of his head. Morgan put a hand on Vivian's arm as he walked past, no more explanation offered.
XXX
"What's the matter?" Carter asked her once they were alone. "I mean, aside from the obvious…whatever that is all about," he stammered, pointing towards the conference room. They hovered outside her office door, knowing there was more work they could do that had been interrupted by the shut down.
She wasn't certain what he saw on her face, but she could imagine. Most of her discomfiture came from seeing Chuck, his face haggard and pale, his shoulders pulled up tight around his ears.
Murmuring, almost as if she was talking to herself, she said, "Charles." As if that should be enough for him. He looked confused, so she continued. "He's…overwrought," she added, searching hard for the last word, trying to be precise.
"I can only imagine," Carter said in reply.
"No, no. You don't understand. At least, not like I think you think," she answered. She was quiet, thinking to herself for several minutes before she continued. "I've only ever seen him like this once before. Long time ago, before you started working here."
Carter just stood there, his arms crossed, waiting.
She sighed, knowing she could trust him, knowing the reference was best understood with the background. "Their son was just a baby. Sarah was pregnant. Like, showing pregnant, almost five months along. And she had a miscarriage. With a…rare, horrible, life-threatening condition that happened right afterward as a result. The last time the office was on a communication black out. She started hemorrhaging, home alone with the baby." She raised her hand to the base of her throat, her green eyes misty with tears.
"Just by accident, the baby somehow got a hold of Sarah's phone and called me. I was able to call an ambulance. I also got to their house first." She swallowed hard, covering the break in her voice on the last word. Her voice turned to a harsh whisper as she continued. "I have never seen so much blood in my entire life. The baby was there, clinging to her…absolutely covered. I actually thought she was dead. That she was already dead…and I would have to be the one to tell Chuck that she…" She paused, then shook her head hard, as if the images in her mind could just be shaken away.
Carter put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She smiled through her tears, looking first at his hand and then into his kind face.
"They don't know how she survived. Every doctor in that place kept telling him she wouldn't survive. Seven days like that, jumping every time the phone rang, not sleeping, not eating. Waiting for her to die. Only she didn't. It was a miracle. But then she was…so sick. Sick and weak…grieving over the loss. He dealt with all of that–working, taking care of the baby, taking care of her. He had to be so strong for her…and I don't think he ever really processed all of it. But he…looked like that," she said, her concern in her eyes as they drifted towards the closed door.
"Morgan was newly married back then, but he never let Chuck out of his sight. He let it slip to me about something that had happened before that. When Sarah and Chuck were…estranged for a brief period, while she was actually pregnant with their son," she explained.
Carter's mouth dropped open, then closed, then opened again. "What? Are you kidding me? What?" he stuttered. It was like telling him they were on Mars, or unicorn farmers, some other ridiculous impossibility. "How is that possible?" Vivian thought how true that was in that moment, knowing how unbelievable a force Chuck and Sarah were–for anyone to believe they could have been separated, not with each other.
"A long story, really. But the point was…something happened to Chuck, when he was alone. His sister and her husband were in Chicago with his mother, Casey went to Germany. No one was here but Morgan. He…came apart, from what Morgan explained. He thought that might happen again, when Sarah was so sick. Maybe if she hadn't legitimately needed him back then, it might have. I don't know. But it seems…like it could happen again. I guess I'm just worried is all. I just wish I knew how bad this is. What's really going on. Or if there was some way we could help."
"Well, Chuck's not alone. I think if we make sure he knows that, it'll be easier," Carter told her.
The conversation inside the conference room heated again, as the volume increased. This time, it sounded like Chuck and Sarah were arguing. Her stomach twisted inside with worry, feeling that of all things yet, this development was the most troubling.
XXX
"What kind of spy will is encrypted like that? With no identity attached to it? Not addressed to anyone?" Chuck demanded, stopping his pacing, tucking one hand on his hip and the other outstretched. "Casey?"
"It's highly unusual. But some spies just don't have anyone they trust enough with that kind of information. No family, no one…close." He cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable in the moment.
How Casey's would have been the day I met him, Chuck thought instantly. Of course he had Gertrude now, and for a long time. But in 2007, who would have been privy to Casey's spy will? General Beckman? It made him sad, for the past, but relieved at the same time, because it had changed for him. For all of them, now that he thought about it.
"So it's basically addressed to whatever intelligence agency issued the orders that led to the agent's demise. But why no identity?" Chuck asked.
Casey didn't answer right away. "That's what's odd. That's usually reserved for instances where the identity being revealed would compromise someone else who may still be alive."
"But the person didn't even have someone close enough to deliver this to, never mind someone who could be connected to the identity somehow," Chuck reasoned.
"That's why I said it's odd," Casey grumbled.
Chuck's eyes kept shifting towards Sarah, sitting at the table, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, eyes fixed on the floor. Her face was streaked with tears, her eyes pink and puffy. "Someone whose death is important to the agency. But whose life was important to someone who still needs protecting," she muttered, almost to herself.
Chuck felt her words, as he digested them deliberately and analytically, as revved up and focused as he was in the moment. She's thinking of Bryce, he thought quickly. Strange how that had never come up in conversation before. But he knew, without a doubt, that Sarah had received not one, but two spy wills from Bryce. The first very early in their relationship, before they had discovered he was actually still alive. The second once he had died, given to her while Chuck was training in Prague.
In 2007 Sand Wall had been in effect. A secret mission within a mission. Only a select few people were even aware of Bryce's true status. So his spy will had been given to Sarah. But he remembered her telling him, much later, how odd she thought it was, because it seemed incomplete. Her words rang in his head like a gong– If that was every last thing he ever wanted me to know, his whole life, why did she feel like something was missing? She hadn't realized until after they had found Bryce alive the real reason, and it made perfect sense.
Bryce's real spy will had been something she never talked to him about, rightfully so. She had been traveling with Bryce's ashes, as per his final wishes, included in that document. He knew before she had ever come to Prague to meet him that she had already been to Lisbon for that reason. Whatever else had been contained within was between her and her old partner, and he honestly had never wanted to know. He had history, she had history–and history was the past. That had always been enough for him.
Thoughts were gnawing away in the back of his mind, something he was trying to reason out that was being transferred to his subconscious processing. He let it go, having faith in his own abilities, that somehow whatever it was that he was thinking would work itself out in the background. He focused quickly back to the present, the adrenalin surging through him as he thought again about the implications of what he'd read in that document.
"Someone who had as much or more intel on the Reizner fortune and the mission Ryker sent Sarah on in 2007 than Daniel Shaw did!" Chuck shouted.
"You said Ryker was your handler, Sarah?" Cole reiterated. "Why on earth did you need a handler at that point?"
Sarah sighed, sounding so exhausted speaking was a great effort. "Once the CAT Squad disbanded, the CIA wanted me for the Omaha project. I was partnered with Bryce Larkin. But he went rogue, or so I was told at the time. Langston Graham assigned me to Ryker because Ryker asked for me." She looked up at Chuck, her eyes wide and doleful. "You know why," she whispered, referring to the conversation they'd had once he'd rescued her from Ryker in Hungary.
Chuck looked at Cole, his eyes on fire. "Because she was alone. No team, no one to miss her."
Cole stayed quiet, thankfully, Chuck thought to himself, but his gaze rested on Sarah for a long time, somehow trying to fathom how the agent Chuck was describing had been the same one he had met when they were hunting Fulcrum together. Chuck, Cole knew. It all centered around Chuck. It always had, it seemed. He laughed at himself, on the inside, for ever thinking he had even a ghost of a chance with her back then.
"Ryker hired Kovacs to kill everyone who knew what he was really doing, including Sarah, once she delivered the package–the baby," Chuck added, knowing how the conversations had occurred, but not willing now to talk about his wife's teenage sister as anything but a person. "Only Sarah ran with her instead, after she shot Ryker. He pulled the kill order, it looks like, once Sarah got away and he still needed to find the baby. Kovacs was just a hired gun, but he knew enough to inquire on his own. That unclaimed fortune is a big deal in Hungary. He put two and two together. But he was eventually arrested. Ryker never counted Kovacs as a loose end. We didn't either because we didn't know."
"I still don't know how many of the dozen people I killed that day were actually a danger or if they just knew too much. But I know he used me in that plan, just like he was planning on using Kovacs," Sarah intoned, her voice flat and lifeless, her eyes still turned away.
"The Sentries arranged Kovacs release, keeping him on their payroll because by 2012 he was the only person left who knew about what Ryker tried to do. They want that money. He was always looking for proof of both things–the Intersect and the fortune. Our mystery spy had all of that information–Kovacs was there trying to stop Carina and Zondra. How that's possible, I have no idea. No one but Kovacs had any idea. And he was looking for the data–he didn't know everything. So who did? And how?"
"Chuck, what if it's really simple? Obvious?" Casey asked. At Chuck's furrowed brow, Casey elaborated. "Shaw."
Despite the heated nature of the conversation, Chuck felt a chill run through him at that thought. He stared, open mouthed at Casey, while he processed it.
"Meriwether's dead. But he was in cahoots with Shaw from day one. In 2010, when he tried to take over the DNI. In 2010, when they started with that idea that got derailed once Kowambe was arrested. Shaw started the whole thing when he told you he knew about Molly, right, Sarah?" Casey asked, turning his attention to her.
Sarah felt Chuck's eyes on her, but she didn't look up. Beckman had told her not to go when Shaw asked for her. But she went anyway, and never told her husband that she had. It had all been for the same reason–why she wouldn't explain anything, even when Chuck and Casey had agreed to help her. She only explained everything much later, once her mother and sister were in immediate danger. And she'd never really told him how she knew Shaw knew. Sarah's face was hot when she whispered, "I talked to him before they moved him out. And yes, he knew everything. I don't know how. I never asked. I don't know if it was in the Intersect or not."
She couldn't look up, afraid of what Chuck's face would look like. She heard him breathing, then noted how his voice was different. Hoarse, rough, but hushed, no strength in his volume. "If it was only in the Intersect, he doesn't remember it anymore. There's no way to retain Intersect information. It's never stored in long-term memory. My sister proved that all those years ago."
"My guess is it wasn't," Casey added. "The guy creeped on Walker from day one. Read every last piece of intel, case file, dossier, you name it, he read it. He was smart enough to fool the big guns in the DNI–twice. I'm sure he figured out just enough to goad you into divulging more than you thought by how you reacted to him. Back then, Walker," Casey changed, directing his words towards her, "your spy sense was diluted a little. Bartowski, you know, doing what he did best."
"So then, he ends up being the only person we know who knows it all, outside of this room," Chuck said, projecting his voice again like he was in complete control. "And that somehow made it onto that data drive."
"We know from the Meriwether incident that there were leaks. That was how Poskenko was able to hack into your sister's computer and download the Intersect that she rebuilt. What if someone in Poskenko's inner circle, the same people who apparently founded the Sentries, got that information from Shaw as well?" Sarah proclaimed, meeting the eyes of everyone else in the room.
Chuck turned his eyes back to his wife, for the first time in a long time, seeing the spy that she had been before she was a mother, looking out through her eyes. She was more clinical, stifling the emotions that had seemed so close to the surface as she'd sat there listening. It was subdued, balanced, but he saw it.
"Chuck, you said they know," Cole said. "That we're out of time."
"The courier was moving all the data at once. Into the U.S. We know there are Sentry operatives here already because of the access required to kill said courier. They already know, based on whatever intel they got from Liam before he died. All of that–everything–is because they have what they need. They know about Molly. And they know about Stephen. They need Molly's DNA to claim the fortune. They need Stephen to act as the blueprint. And then the Ultima Intersectio is in their hands."
"Kovacs was looking for that data drive, and he failed to obtain it," Casey interjected. "If he already knew the intel, why wait in England? What was he waiting for?"
"Maybe he needed proof, physical proof. It's on that drive. Once he lost it, and to the CIA no less, his hand was forced. He knew he would be running out of time," Chuck said.
"The hack that shut you down for almost nine hours," Cole brought forth. "It was enough to almost catch him up. Carina acting before thinking actually put a damper on that. If she'd waited like she was instructed, he would have intercepted the data and we would have no way of knowing."
"We need to find Kovacs, right now," Chuck proclaimed. "After nine hours, he could be in the U.S. already. We lost nine hours of airport surveillance. That's a lot of backtracking to do now," Chuck said with a sigh.
"There's one thing here that doesn't make any sense," Cole interjected.
"Just one? Then you're a freaking genius," Chuck shot back, slightly irritated, his composure slipping at the same time.
Cole pursed his lips, otherwise ignoring Chuck's ire. "Our mystery DGSE man. He had the intel. But like Carina said, he handed it over the CIA, rather than his own government. He's a ghost. And yet he probably saved both of their lives and let Kovacs get away to do it. I just have a bad feeling that if we find Jean-Pierre," Cole added air quotes around the false name, "we find Kovacs."
"Only your team in England is decimated," Casey said, his voice flat.
"They need help. Carina needs help," Sarah said, unfolding her arms and straightening her back as she sat ramrod stiff. "She needs my help," Sarah proclaimed, laying both palms flat on the table.
Both Casey and Cole had started to address her, speaking over each other quietly. Chuck didn't hear any of their words, couldn't process what they were saying. He felt like he had been hit with an arctic blast of air. "No!" It was a gut reaction, so instinctive that Chuck had to stop, listen, to make sure he had actually spoken. Everyone was silent and looking at him, so he must have.
"No, Sarah!" he shouted again, standing over her as she sat, her eyes sharply turned up to his face.
"Chuck," she started, her voice trembling, as she knew the damage the words would do once she spoke them. "There is no one else. You said so yourself, there isn't any time left. We need to find both of those men before it's too late."
"Cole!" Chuck shouted, gesticulating wildly at the man seated across from his wife. "You have another team in position to assist, don't you?"
"I do, Chuck, but they're starting from zero. They're excellent field agents, but you know how it is. Playing catch up. Cleaning up after another team. There's wasted time involved. And you don't have any time to lose now," he added, sounding almost apologetic in his argument.
"Chuck," Sarah cut in again, her tone gentler, pleading. "I'm the only one who knows about the Op with the Szabos. It has to be me. I'm sorry, Chuck," she added in a sad whisper.
"Sarah, you're not a spy anymore!" Chuck shouted, banging his hand down on the table for emphasis, something no one in the room had ever seen him do before. "You haven't been for a very long time!"
"Chuck," she started again, reaching for his hand and blistering inside as he pulled his hand away.
"She's a soccer mom," Chuck shouted at Cole. "You said that to me. Do you think she's field ready? Honestly?"
"She was the best of the best, Chuck. Since she was 18 years old," Cole argued, seeing Sarah turn her eyes away as he spoke. "She gave it up, because she wanted a normal life with you. But that was who she was for a long, long time. It's still a part of her. A part that she has to draw from to succeed. But I think she can."
"Casey!" Chuck implored, turning to his old friend, looking for support in his argument.
"Can you do it, Sarah?" Casey asked her, turning his eyes away from Chuck and waiting until she looked back up at him.
"I don't have a choice. I have to do this. Everything I love is in danger and they won't be out of danger until I do this," she proclaimed, her face set in determination, though her eyes were edged with tears.
"Alone?" Chuck nearly screamed, his voice shrill. "You haven't been a spy for ten years and you're going in alone?"
"I won't be alone. I'll be with Carina," she said lamely, hearing in her own voice how watery her argument was.
"Without the Intersect!" he shouted again, to clarify his point.
"We worked for a year as spies with no Intersect, Chuck. We could still do it," she argued, her voice getting stronger.
"But you weren't alone. You still had Casey and me. How can you go back to just working alone like that?" he pushed.
"Chuck, the kids need you. You can't go with me," she said softly. It wasn't what he had been expecting her counterpoint to be. It actually shocked him into silence. She was right.
But it dredged up so many horrific parallels to his past that he thought he was going to vomit right there on the table, his head spinning. Was this the argument his mother and father had had, before she left to take down Volkoff and never returned? Had his father protested at all, or just let her go, berating himself later for allowing it without a fight?
He saw the determination on her face, knew there was nothing he could say to change her mind in the moment. Her next words to him only solidified the notion. "We fight for our family, Chuck. And now it's my turn."
He sat down heavily beside her, feeling the need to sit before his legs completely gave out. He could hear Casey talking, making arrangements, giving orders. He was going deaf, overwhelmed by the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. This was his worst nightmare, coming alive and now devouring his life, one moment at a time.
He felt Sarah's hand on his, and glanced up to look at her. Already, in that instant, she was different. And by different, he knew it still meant familiar. How bizarre, he acknowledged, that he recognized what was there making him think that. Something in her eyes, the way she held her chin, the tilted corners of her smile. Agent Walker. He had met her long before he actually met Sarah. Sarah had revealed herself to him little by little, all the while during her struggle to keep Agent Walker in control. The end result had been his Sarah and Agent Walker in a symbiotic relationship. It sounded odd, like a science fiction story, but it was, nonetheless, how he perceived it. And Agent Walker had receded once they had settled into this life that now seemed to be disappearing before his eyes.
He examined what he was thinking, realizing how troubling his thoughts were. That his wife was somehow not his wife anymore. But he knew that was crazy, and he told himself that. There was no point on the spectrum, as he thought of it, where she had been someone he didn't love. Holding him at gunpoint on the roof of a building, holding his children against her breast to nourish them. Same person. The love of his life.
Who needed him probably more than she ever had, now that she needed to leave, to do what she needed to do.
Casey and Cole were still talking, and he still wasn't listening. But he pulled Sarah close to him, feeling her arms encircle his waist and she rested against his shoulder. "I'm sorry too," he managed to say. Did she think he meant just for his outburst? Maybe. But he had meant literally all of it–that had led them to this place, this time. For everything he hadn't done, for anything he had, for any and everything that might not ever be, or never be again. For not knowing what the other side of forever would have looked like.
XXX
October 1, 2021
Burbank, California
All three of their children were in bed by the time Chuck and Sarah returned home. Corrine had informed them Hannah had returned to retrieve her children about two hours before they had arrived. She had also left pizza for them in the refrigerator, though the thought of eating anything, let alone something greasy this late at night, was too much for him. She had said goodnight, quietly and politely, seeing the turmoil on both of their faces, but also the fatigue. Anything she needed to know, she could find out in the morning.
And so Chuck had dragged himself up the stairs to get ready for bed, his arms and legs feeling like they were made of lead. He saw a light through the door of his son's room, seeing from the angle where he stood Stephen was flipping through a comic book as he lay in his bed. He could hear soft murmuring, coming from his daughters' room. Everyone had stayed awake waiting for them to return. The girls and Sarah were conversing, which meant Sarah had already gone to say goodnight to Stephen.
The plan had been for her to leave immediately, but Heathrow had been closed for heavy fog. She was due to leave at the break of dawn, when the weather would be forecasted to improve. The rational explanation being that if she couldn't get in, Kovacs couldn't get out.
He walked to his son's door and rapped gently on the door. "Hey, kiddo. Wasn't sure you'd still be up." He walked into the room, seeing his son as he lowered the comic book. It was like a blow to his stomach, seeing the worry and distress on his son's face. "Are you ok?" Chuck asked him.
"Mom tried to explain. And she said she was sorry," he grumbled, a soft pout in his voice.
Chuck walked to his son's bed, sat down beside him. "She scared you, huh?" he asked plainly.
Stephen seemed to think for a long time, still looking at the pages of the comic book and not his father. "I've seen Mom worried before. Like when I cut my arm with the tip of that arrow and I needed stitches. But I've never seen her…look like that. It freaked me out."
He smiled tenderly at his son, smoothing his messy curls off his forehead affectionately before he spoke. "We're your parents. But we're people too. Emotions like that are real, even when we try to not, you know, show them to you, because it's scary sometimes. Everything feels better when we have control of it, you know? When you know whatever is wrong is something you can fix. Like practicing your archery. If the shot is off, you can alter your stance or your aim, and it gets better. But when the something that's wrong is something that you can't fix yourself, no matter what you do, like the wind, then it can be scary. When the wind is too strong, it doesn't matter how good your aim is, it won't hit the target. That's not scary, something like that. But can you see how it could be? If it's adult problems?"
He stayed quiet, ruminating over his father's words. Chuck knew he understood. He had seen the comprehension in his son's eyes as he'd talked. "Mom said she's leaving tomorrow. In the morning. Is that why? Is there something really scary about that?" he asked nervously.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the image of his own mother, standing in his bedroom door after she finished reading him a story. The last time he'd seen her for twenty years. The last time ever, at nine years old, that he had ever seen that woman, his mother. For even after finding her again as an adult, she wasn't the same. His mother had departed that day and never returned.
He blinked hard several times, resetting his face for his young child. "She has to go. But she'll be back soon. It's something she wishes she didn't have to do, but she doesn't have a choice. She is the only one who can fix what needs to be fixed." It sounded to him like someone else had spoken, his voice sounded so foreign in his own ears.
He heard his son's breathing, sounding labored, his eyes narrowing as he regarded his father. "You purposely answered like that. Not really answering me," he accused.
"What?" Chuck asked, studying his son's face, wondering why he was asking that way.
"Is something going to happen to Mom? To us?" he asked, sounding so small and helpless it literally broke Chuck's heart, to the point that it was physically painful when he took a breath.
"No," he said, pulling his son into his arms and crushing him against his chest. "You are safe. I promise you I will never let anything happen to you. Do you hear me? Never, ever."
Stephen clung to his father, squeezing his eyes shut. He knew his father was telling him the truth. He was certain. But he also knew that everything he had asked that his father had skirted or left unanswered was done for a reason. Because direct answers would have been lies, because his father would never have told him a truth so painful. That was just one way his parents protected him.
XXX
Chuck sat on the window seat of the dormer, his head leaning back against the glass, his hands folded between his knees. His eyes were closed, but his face was not peaceful, Sarah thought, as she approached slowly, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor. Each beat of her heart ached as she looked at him, feeling his distress inside her as if it were her own. She sat beside him, resting her hand on his knee, rubbing gently through the soft, worn flannel pants he wore. She had no words, nothing that seemed right to say to him at this moment.
He broke the silence. His voice was rich with pain, saturated with a heavy misery that made his voice coarse and uneven as he spoke. "I'm sorry I got so angry at that briefing." She turned her head only slightly, watching him squeeze his eyes closed, tears running in rivulets down the cheek she could see. "I just…I'm worried. I took for granted how…comfortable you are, just being a mother. Living this life. I watched all of this…unravel you. Not thinking how different you are than you were not that long ago, when you were a spy. You let your guard down, and just immersed yourself in this. I wanted this for you, more than anything else. It's what I always tried to give you. I'm sorry that it's being taken away from us, and there's nothing we can do now."
"You make it sound like it was a bad thing. Letting my guard down," she countered. He turned to study to her face in the encroaching darkness.
"It could end up getting you…killed," he answered, the last word choking him on the way out, as the enormity and candor of it assaulted his composure.
"Chuck, I met you when I was 26. My guard, as you call it, was up for 26 years, even with people who I should never have had to guard against. You have no idea what it feels like to finally, completely let something like that go after that long. To let you in, so that we could be the way we are. I know you gave me this, Chuck. It's the greatest gift I've ever gotten." He reached for the hand on his knee, holding it tightly. "And nothing," she stressed, adamantly angry for a moment, "is going to take that away from me."
"Sarah, my mother left when I was the same age Stephen is now, and she never came back," he pronounced miserably, his voice shaking with the oldest pain she knew he harbored in his heart. "She promised me she would, but she didn't. We know why. We know the whole, awful, tragic story. But it happened. And now it's happening again," he said, forcing the words out, broken as they were by his unchecked emotion.
"I'm not your mother, Chuck," she stressed. But I could have been. Mary and she were more alike than different, at least the Mary she had known, once Chuck was an adult. "And you are not your father," she added, removing the focus from her previous statement. She was quoting Mary here, she realized.
The pain raged behind his eyes as he looked at her, not speaking. Her eyes misted, but she continued, "No matter what happens to me, you would never check out on them like your father checked out on you and Ellie. They'll always have you."
He groaned like his body had taken the brunt of a physical blow. "Don't say it," he wheezed, pressing his hand against his chest. He had lived that. Seven days straight, praying for her to live, while at the same time waiting for her to die. He honestly didn't know how he could go through something like that again, with children now old enough to know something was wrong.
"Nothing will keep me from coming back to you," she swore, knowing she had said it to him before, meaning it no less now than she had all those years ago.
He remembered, of course. The contrast from then and now stole his breath. She was older, out of practice. He had told Vivian a long time ago when asked about Sarah's wellbeing that she was always alright, always able to handle herself. He wished he was that certain now. He had nothing but faith in her, like always. Sarah could do anything. He had known this as long as he'd known her. Alas, he had always worried, only now it was worse.
He turned, placing both hands against her cheeks and pulling her against him as he kissed her. There was no slow build-up–he was desperate, hungry, and she felt it. Her feet were on the floor, then they fell on the bed together, pulling at each other's night clothes. And then they were making love.
So many scenarios bounced around in her head as they tumbled across the bed. Their couplings had been many things over the course of their love–playful, loving, comforting, relaxing, fun, tender. But this was the only time she could remember in all the time they had been intimate that she would describe as agonizing. And it was both lifting her up and crashing her down, filling her heart and breaking it at the same time. There were plenty of times this could have happened, she knew. When she had left for the first Volkoff mission Beckman had sent her on after he'd quit spying, before he had left for Switzerland with Rye before he had been taken by the Belgian, before she had left after being arrested to rescue Chuck's mother. Only all of those times, she had only known of the impending separation after an intimate encounter wasn't possible. They had gone several times with a span of longer than a month when they had been separated–their coming together again full of joy and relief.
The exact opposite of how this felt now. She could feel his misery, the mournful way he touched her, as if each time could be the very last. He was furious, desperate, yet somehow unable to not focus on her and what she needed, the pleasure he gave her almost painful in its heightened intensity. He was weeping, holding her painfully tight. Her flight was early, she needed sleep, he begged her, but she couldn't waste a moment of this time unconscious, unaware of the sensation of his hands on her body. She had told him she would sleep on the plane, and continued instead to love him in their bed until the darkness of the room faded slowly to gray.
She lay still, her legs helplessly tangled into his, his fingers twisted in her hair, their skin adhered together. She saw the time on the nightstand clock, breathless with pain at the thought of peeling herself away from him and out of his arms. Their children were still asleep, having been told to expect her gone in the morning before they woke. Soundlessly, she moved around to get ready. The car coming for her would be here in twenty minutes. She sat on the bed with him, kissing him, running her hands down his bare back, hating that she was dressed, and unable to feel the warmth of his skin against her. "I love you, Chuck," she finally whispered against his lips. "I always have."
"Come back to me safe," he whispered, afraid to speak louder and lose his voice. "And I love you. More than you will ever know."
It was Saturday morning, he knew. The kids would sleep late. He could catch up on sleep that he'd missed last night. But as he watched her walk out the bedroom door, feeling like she had ripped his heart out and dragged it along the floor as she walked, he knew sleep would remain elusive. Maybe forever, he thought morosely.