A/N: Thanks for reading!
The bruise on her shoulder hurt enough that she'd had to pop a few aspirin once they got onto the plane. Zondra stayed outside on the tarmac to give the extraction squad instructions over the phone. They were already in the air, transporting Manoosh Depak back to D.C. under heavy guard.
Sarah took the opportunity to move in close to Chuck, watching his face closely. "You doing okay?" she asked quietly so that only he'd hear. The flight crew was moving down the aisle towards the cockpit to get them in the air.
He looked up at her, shrugging his bag from his shoulder and tossing it up into the bin over their heads. "Hm? Yeah. How about you? How's the shoulder?" He set a gentle hand there, his brow furrowed in concern.
"It hurts, but I've had a lot worse. The aspirin will kick in and I'll be fine." She kept her eyes glued to his, watching for any sign of newly coined NSA agent starting to rip at the seams or fall apart. Looking for any sign he was crumbling after what had just happened.
He'd made a promise to Manoosh. Not just that, he'd befriended him and made him feel safe. He'd lied to him to get him to drug himself. And then he'd thrown him under the bus while he was unconscious.
Sarah wasn't sure leaving Manoosh behind would not have been worse, though. The Ring agents would've known it was him when they woke up. And he would've been killed. No questions asked. At least this way he'd be alive, even if he was put behind bars.
She wondered just how much of a kinship Chuck had really formed with his fellow hacker, at least on the surface level.
There'd been a flash of surprise, and maybe even one of those What have I done? looks, but then Chuck had folded into himself in the van and went quiet. He'd stayed quiet through handing the now free hostages off to the extraction team, and he'd ended up just standing there watching as they carried a still unconscious Manoosh away.
And now as she watched him, she saw his jaw clenching, his eyes darker than usual, his brow wrinkled. She didn't know what she was seeing. Was he as miserable as she expected the Chuck Bartowski she knew so well to be after what he'd done to Manoosh? It was almost the antithesis of who Chuck was as a person. Was he wracked with guilt? How much was he hurting right now?
She couldn't get a feel for it, and that made her unsettled. She didn't like not knowing where Chuck's head was at. Or how he was feeling.
All she could do was imagine he was hurting and was attempting to cover it up. For Zondra's sake? For her sake? ...Maybe his own? Whoever or whatever it was for, he was doing a pretty good job of it.
Before she could say anything else, or even touch him, Zondra strolled into the plane. Sarah took a half step away from Chuck and turned to face the other CIA agent.
"Well, that's that. They're gonna be in D.C. well before we are. And then I'll be handling the kid's witness testimony before we build the case against him." She clapped her hands together as though this was all a job well done. And Sarah understood it in a big way. Manoosh Depak wasn't just a criminal, he was an entitled criminal who hadn't blinked before joining a terrorist organization.
But he'd trusted Chuck. And Chuck had taken advantage of that trust.
Zondra clapped Chuck on the shoulder. "Good work, Carmichael." Then she brushed past them down the aisle. "Hey, wheels up, we've got a schedule here," she called towards the cockpit.
"You got it, Agent Rizzo!"
A few hours into the flight, Sarah turned to look over her shoulder to where Chuck was spending the journey, draped over a few of the seats with a pillow under his head, his jacket off and having fallen on the floor under the seats. He was out cold, one of his hands having fallen off of his chest, dangling down onto the jacket.
How close was he to just snapping underneath everything he was showing to the rest of them? She knew him well enough to know it was there, somewhere. He wasn't Zondra. And he wasn't her. He wouldn't be able to just brush off his hands and forget about Manoosh Depak, a criminal who absolutely deserved prison for what he'd done.
Did he see himself in Manoosh? Did he wonder where in his life he could've taken another path and ended up in the same boat? If he did, he was wrong. She had the words he'd said on the cruise ship over a week ago emblazoned in her brain now. "You can't pick who you fall in love with, but what you do with it is entirely in your hands. And I can't see any reason to aid a terrorist organization like the Ring, even if it was just for someone I love." That was Chuck Bartowski down to his very soul. And it didn't matter if the NSA had given him a different moniker, if Zondra and other agents knew him as Agent Charles Carmichael, because that was the heart of Agent Carmichael, too.
She was ninety-nine percent sure that it always had been.
He wouldn't have gone down the path Manoosh had taken, no matter what happened to him. God, so much shit had happened to Chuck, and he'd stuffed his days as Piranha into a proverbial safe and locked it up tight, not taking it out again until the Intersect had happened to him.
She hated that Zondra was sitting towards the front of the plane, awake, and not seeming like she had any intention of sleeping anytime soon. Because the one thing Sarah Walker, agent with the CIA, wanted to do more than anything was to find some way to offer her partner some semblance of comfort. Even if it was while he was sleeping.
At the same time, she had no way of knowing whether or not she was just projecting an idealized version of him she'd been keeping in her head onto this real version who was stretched across the seats sleeping off a difficult mission as they flew from Prague back to D.C. where they would eventually debrief with General Beckman.
Sarah knew she'd been idealizing him, just like Chuck'd had to tell her over and over and over before it sunk in...and she probably still did idealize him, if she was honest. But it was hard not to with the way he was just better than everyone. Objectively better than everyone. Even with his faults.
But the first step to recovery was recognizing the problem, right?
She smirked to herself, before sobering up just as quickly, taking one last glance at him.
There was a quiet whistle from the front of the plane and she jumped, frowning at Zondra's attempt to get her attention.
The brunette raised an eyebrow and smirked. "He's fine," she hissed then.
"I know that," Sarah groused in a whisper. She crossed her arms and looked straight ahead. "I'm the one who took the brunt of the attacks anyway." She rolled her shoulder as proof.
"Need some ice?"
"I'm fine."
Zondra raised her hands in surrender and widened her eyes, whistling low. "Well, okay. Touchy touchy. Just trying to help. Why don't you get some sleep? Might be in a better mood if you do."
Sarah frowned darkly at the other woman. "My mood is fine."
"Right," she snorted. But then she got up and strolled slowly over to where Sarah sat, plopping down in a nearby seat and hanging her arms over the back so that she could prop her chin on her bicep and just look at her steadily for an uncomfortable amount of time. "What's his deal anyway?"
Sarah merely shrugged with her one good shoulder. She didn't want to have this conversation.
Zondra rolled her eyes. "Oh come on. He just admitted to me over the comms in plain English that he's Piranha. The Piranha." Sarah felt nerves cascade through her as she raised her blue eyes to fasten on Zondra's. The brunette just snorted again. "I'm not gonna sell the guy down the river. He took a risk and I respect that. No reason for me to throw him under a bus. He's on our side now." She scoffed then. "Anyway, if I did tell the brass he's an infamous hacker they were never able to catch, you'd probably hunt me for the rest of my life and murder me when you finally found me."
The way she shrugged so matter-of-factly…
Sarah did her best not to blush. She had intensive training, years of it, under her belt. So she didn't blush. She just glared. "I don't know what stupid ideas you've got in that head of yours, but bury them, whatever they are," she muttered darkly. "I wouldn't go after you, but his family would. Specifically his sister. And you'd better not underestimate her, either." Zondra raised an eyebrow. Sarah just nodded. "Yeah, he has people. Maybe that's why I get a little protective here and there. But he came into all this different from me and you. He's different."
Realization came over Zondra's face and she nodded slowly. "Oh. Okay. Well, that explains why he's a little…" She wrinkled her nose. "Squishy? Yeah. Squishy."
Agent Walker couldn't help letting out a one syllable giggle. "That'll be the reason."
Zondra gave her a long look, and then she nodded once, emphatically. "Interesting," she drawled, then she smirked, eyed Sarah one more time, and then moved back to her old seat. "Get some sleep, Blondie. Seriously."
Sarah sighed and grabbed one of her packs, putting it on the seat and pulling her legs up to curl into a ball across the seat and pillow her head on it.
She hadn't meant to fall asleep so quickly.
But just like that, she was out cold.
}o{
At first he thought that someone was shaking him awake. Something had happened on the ship again and Sarah was shaking him awake. Someone else had died or…
Oh.
He wasn't on the cruise ship anymore. And nobody was anywhere near him, but the plane hit a pocket of air and it rocked a little as he opened his eyes and blinked in confusion at his surroundings.
Turbulence.
That made more sense.
Because he was on an airplane that was headed back to D.C., thank God. He slowly pushed himself to sit up and yawned, covering his mouth politely with one hand and stretching his other arm up over his head, feeling the pops and snaps in his bones in his shoulders and back.
He checked his watch and realized how stupid of a thing that was, checking the time. Time didn't exist when you were in a plane crossing time zones like they were hurdles in the one-hundred meter dash. He'd learned that from watching a lot of Twilight Zone.
Yawning again, he swung his legs down, planting them on the firm flooring, and then he looked down and saw his jacket had fallen on the floor.
Chuck reached down to swoop it up and scratched the itch at the back of his head.
There was a thump somewhere towards the back of the plane. He blinked and spun to look as Zondra stepped out of the bathroom. Maybe it was just his sleep-addled brain acting up, but the way she strutted down the aisle towards him, one thumb hooked in a belt loop of her pants, made her look like some sort of old-timey cowboy.
"Well, well. Sleeping Beauty is awake." She glanced to the front of the plane, then to the back. "Where's his princess?"
"Haaaa," he groused sarcastically, making a mocking face at her. "Hilarious."
Agent Rizzo snickered then and plopped heavily into the seat next to his. He hadn't remembered inviting her to sit there, but either way she would've anyway so he supposed he'd just let her have it for now. "How you feelin', kid?"
"Fine! Fine. Totally good. Fine. I'm fine."
She raised an eyebrow and reared her chin back. "Are you fine?"
He sent her a dirty look. "I'm just peachy. We were successful on our mission. And-And anyway, we…" He mouth went dry and he continued on anyway, trying the nonchalant shrug, not sure if he'd done it well enough. "We have someone who was on the inside in our grasp. So if we...if we play our cards right, he'll put the finger on a whole shit ton of Ring agents he came into contact with."
"Right. He definitely will. And it's what had to happen, because it's your job to make calls like that," she said. And he wondered if he ever stood a chance with these women and their uncanny talent at pegging his every thought. Or just about. "And for the record, it was the right call. You made the right call."
"I know I did. Pfft." He shrugged. "Which is why I'm telling you I'm fine."
Zondra just made a face and then nodded. "Okay, then, kid." He thought for a split second that he was maybe free of this conversation finally, but then she turned back to face him just as quickly. "It's okay if you aren't okay, Carmichael. And whatever it is you're trying to do…?" It wasn't working, he knew. That was why both Sarah and Zondra had been eyeing him a certain way and asking questions about whether or not he was okay. "Never mind," she said then, shaking her head and backing away from him. "Just know, I don't give a shit if you don't do everything by the book the way most spies do. The way me and Walker do. I saw you getting results on this mission because you thought outside of the box. Your tactics are batshit crazy, but they get us from Point A to Point B. That's all that really matters."
But then the brunette leaned forward. "Talk to your partner about this." He stared and then blinked. "This is what partners are for."
Chuck wet his lips thoughtfully. That was an unexpected turn of events. "Well, I would talk to you about it if it—"
"Not me, you doofus!" she hissed, then she pointed further up the plane where he saw a pair of boots sticking out from a row of seats. "The blonde! Jesus Christ, you two are so wrecked. This is what I get for trying."
She brushed him off with a wave of her hand and left him alone in the back of the plane, disappearing into the cockpit, most likely to dress the pilot down or something. Chuck widened his eyes and puffed out his cheeks, pushing himself to his feet and ambling down the aisle, slowing as he approached the boots.
Sarah was fast asleep, her head on one of her bags instead of a pillow, in spite of there being a pillow right there within reach, her legs curled up against her so that she fit on the seats, her hair falling over her face.
He peeked up towards the cockpit, then towards the back of the plane, and then he inched closer and grabbed the folded blanket, shaking it out and gently draping it over the CIA agent's body, fixing it here and there, before he rocked back on his heels and regarded her for a moment.
Chuck wasn't sure he'd ever really understand what had happened in this woman's life, the things she'd gone through in her twenty-something years on this earth, that she continued to put herself in uncomfortable positions when she slept, with non-pillows, all scrunched up, not using blankets…
Like she slept better when she wasn't comfortable. Or maybe she made herself uncomfortable on purpose so that if something happened, she'd be able to wake up easier, faster. He was making assumptions about her life, he knew. About why she did things the way she did.
And maybe she was perfectly comfortable, and that was why she was asleep now.
Either way, he grabbed onto the seat and leaned down carefully, using his free hand to tuck her hair away from her face and behind her ear. Then he chanced leaning down even more to brush her temple with his lips.
He walked back to where he'd made camp, so to speak, in the plane, missing the way her lips turned up, her eyes still shut, pulling the blanket even tighter around her.
}o{
Zondra strolled up to where they waited by the van, Chuck loading their bags into the back of it as Sarah stood leaning against the back door, arms crossed, watching as the sun slowly rose up from the horizon.
"So. I guess we head to Langley, debrief with the general, and then I'm on prime Manoosh duty until…" Zondra huffed and shrugged. "Well, until we get what we need out of him."
Sarah subtly eyed Chuck again to watch for a reaction, and she didn't see any as he loaded the last suitcase and shut the doors. The way Zondra had phrased that wasn't… well, altogether morally sound. And normally, she might expect a shiver from Chuck at a comment like that.
Instead he came around and nodded, the wind out on the tarmac whipping at his curls appealingly. Then he stopped for a second, as if what she said finally computed in his brain, and he pulled his hands out of his jacket pockets. "Wait, debrief? Now? It's, like, the asscrack of dawn!"
"Mhm. Great. Tell the General that, Agent Carmichael. In those exact words. See what she says." Zondra raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.
"I...probably won't...do that." He cleared his throat and pressed his lips together, looking down and off to the side.
Sarah snorted and pushed off from the door, opening it and holding it open. "It won't last too long. Don't worry. She just wants to hear the rudimentaries, give us some orders, and then she'll release us to get some R & R until tomorrow. That'll be the long one." She gestured for him to get into the van with a flick of her head.
"R & R? Oh thank God." Chuck sent her a secret look that was full of exhaustion and relief, then climbed into the van.
"Tired, Nerd?" Zondra asked, smirking as she shooed Sarah into the van before her.
Sarah crawled into the roomy back of the van and slid in next to Chuck as he answered. "Yeah, actually. If it's all the same to you. Planes aren't easy to sleep on. Got woken up by turbulence, like, seven times. And a half. I didn't wake up all the way one of the times, but I still felt it, I was almost there…"
Zondra shut the door behind her after she crawled in and plopped into the seat across from them, reaching back and slapping the tinted window between them and the driver. Then she pulled her legs up to drape over the rest of the seat, reclining back into the corner and folding her hands on her stomach. "Good luck being a spy if a little turbulence wakes you up. You aren't going to be finding many nice places to sleep in this line of work. I had to sleep in a tree once. Fuckin' branch was only, like, this much around," she added, holding her hand up with her thumb and forefinger curled to make a circle that was about the size of a softball. I'm sure Walker's got her stories too."
Chuck seemed to decide to just ignore Agent Rizzo it seemed, and she found herself grateful to him for making that decision. She wasn't in the right frame of mind for banter, even if it was just good-natured teasing. There was a thread of respect between Zondra and Chuck, it seemed now. Maybe Zondra had even seen his worth as a spy, as her old friend's partner, in the last few days the three of them had spent together.
She was glad, as long as the other woman didn't also see the way Chuck had leaned over and kissed her on the head during the flight, when he thought she was fast asleep.
Sarah glanced over at Chuck out of the side of her eye and took in his profile as he watched the early morning scenes out of his window. She felt a warmth go through her at how effortless his thoughtfulness was. And then there was the way he'd expressed how much he cared about her by kissing her on the temple even while thinking she was sleeping, such a heavy and intimate gesture that made her have to take a deep breath…and be subtle about it, just in case.
It took no time at all for them to arrive at Langley headquarters, unloading their bags and trudging inside, swiping their cards, piling into the elevator, and slumping against its bleached walls as it sailed up to Beckman's floor.
As much as Zondra had teased Chuck about the turbulence waking him up, she looked pretty exhausted herself.
They shuffled through the labyrinthian hallways until they arrived at the conference room where both General Beckman and Agent Shaw awaited them, Shaw with his arms crossed at his chest expectantly, and Beckman just looking...like Beckman.
"Ah, good. Here they are," she announced, pushing up to her feet.
The three of them stood at attention, but Chuck slumped a bit to put his bags down. He was beat. She could feel it wafting off of him in waves and it was somehow making her even more tired.
"Good work, team. I'll even go so far as to say this was excellent work."
"Thanks, General. Wow." Chuck stood a bit straighter. "I mean, well, it was a team effort. The three of us really melded, I felt. Like, there was a definite jive. Don't tell Casey I said that, though, I don't want to hurt his feelings. You know. 'Cause he's probably feeling…" He must've noticed everyone was looking at him at that point because he swallowed thickly, looking back at them, before finishing. "...left out. Ahem."
"As I was saying," the general emphasized, giving Chuck her signature flat look. He pinked appropriately, poor guy. "The Lius are in our medical facility being checked out, as there was some minor malnutrition and dehydration when you found them."
Sarah spoke up before Chuck would have to. "And do they know? About Hannah?"
General Beckman's face sobered and softened, both at the same time, as she folded her hands together behind her back and lifted her chin. "They know. We're keeping them in our care until we can figure out how to handle the potential of a security detail to make sure the Ring don't have the opportunity to start what they finished. By now, the Ring also know about Hannah Liu's untimely death, and we should assume they've also figured out that we have both the briefcase...and now the key."
"Feels good to have a couple of wins," Zondra murmured, tilting her head and crossing her arms.
Beckman's only response was a quick raise of her eyebrows, but before she could continue, Agent Shaw cut in.
"Agents Carmichael and Walker, we're going to need you both to do your evaluations and write-ups of the mission. Agent Rizzo is going to have her hands full with Mr. Depak," he said, casting his eyes to Zondra. The brunette merely nodded.
"The evaluations and write-ups can wait until the agents get back to Burbank," General Beckman said, returning the favor of cutting in. Sarah wanted to leap across the distance between them and high five the NSA general for that. "After this mission, I think it's only fair they're given a chance to take a breather until tomorrow morning. Dismissed." Before they could even break formation, she held out a hand. "But keep your phones on. Just in case."
"Yes, General," they chimed.
Sarah snuck a glance at Shaw who just stood there looking like someone had just trashed his favorite 'nineties boy band in front of him, but it was the coolest kid in school who'd done it so he didn't dare say anything about it.
They slipped out into the hallway and Sarah watched as Chuck shouldered his duffel, fixing his grip on the other bag in his hand. "I'm headed back to my hotel. I'm, uh, I'm beat."
When they got to the elevator, Chuck turned to stick his right hand out towards Zondra Rizzo, that warm smile of his on his face. It was genuine, and in spite of the years of distrust and strife that had unfortunately existed between her and her fellow CAT Squad member, seeing the crooked smirk on Zondra's face as she shook Chuck's hand gave Sarah quite a bit of satisfaction.
"It was a pleasure, Agent Rizzo."
"Eh, you're not too bad, Carmichael. A little squishy, soft in the middle, but ya kept me on my toes." It went unsaid, but Zondra knew all three of them understood the extra meaning. Agent Rizzo respected being kept on her toes.
"Uuuuuh, thanks, I guess." He chuckled, gave her hand one last squeeze, then turned his brown eyes to Sarah. "Share a cab?"
"Um." Sarah gave him as subtle of a look as she could muster. Maybe it was an innocent enough offer, but Sarah wasn't playing with fire. "We're going in opposite directions. You go ahead."
He squinted. "Oh. Oh, right. True. Hope to see you again sometime, Zondra."
"Yeah, same. Hopefully in different circumstances."
He smiled one last time and turned to face the elevator as it dinged, the doors sweeping open. He pointed into it. "My ride."
Zondra just shook her head and sent Sarah a look as Chuck got into the elevator and the doors shut. "Really weird dude, that one," she said then. Sarah didn't respond. "So you're stuck with that now? For a while?"
Sarah shook her head. "You saw how much of an asset he is to have around on a mission." She shrugged, still one-shouldered. "I don't always know what's going through his head or what he's going to do but he's brilliant. And I can trust him."
"Come on now. Not like you can trust meeee," Zondra drawled, and Sarah smirked at the self-deprecating jest, an inside joke passing between them.
"You know what's happening, right?" Zondra asked then to fill a slight lull in the conversation.
Sarah just frowned wordlessly.
"You see it. I know you see it. You don't miss anything, Walker. Need I remind you of the tracker you found in my boot?" She gave Sarah a droll look.
"Uh, no…" Sarah winced a little. "And I don't know what you mean by 'you see it'. See what?"
Zondra rolled her eyes. "Mister Let's Share a Cab?! Really?!" she exclaimed, even as she lowered her voice, gesturing to the elevator Chuck had just disappeared into. Sarah schooled her features, nerves mounting in her. "The three of us cramped into that hotel room planning, I had a front row seat to that guy sneaking little glances at you. And then it was almost like he'd catch himself and look back at his computer. Like a kid who knows he shouldn't have a crush on his teacher."
"Ew, what kind of analogy—"
"Sarah. My bad analogy aside, I called him squishy. He is squishy, and a lot of his...squish...is directed at you, Ice Queen," she said, emphasizing Sarah's legendary moniker. "I don't know what it is he sees in you—'cause I honestly think you're sort of a bitch—" Sarah glared at that, trying hard to keep her discomfort from showing. "But he sees something and I'm not so sure he even knows it."
He knew it, she knew it, and they'd acted on it. Had they ever acted on it.
Sarah swallowed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be." For a split second, she considered the idea of commenting on the fact that a little crush wasn't even worth conversation. But then she thought that was pretty disrespectful to Chuck, condescending, even if it would sell the cover. So she didn't say it. "It really isn't. Whatever you saw."
Zondra sighed and raised her eyebrows. "I hope not. Shit, Walker, I don't even know how you think you're gonna do this. A partnership with this guy. I mean, a guy who looks at you like that." She shrugged. "Not that you aren't used to guys who want to get in your pants or anything, but the guy's got enough squish—"
"Stop saying squish. It's weird."
"—that it makes me wonder if it isn't just about what's in your pants."
"Stop. Look, I know. Okay? It's not the end of the world. However he...looks at me. You saw the way he works. He's a professional when it counts. He gets the job done." He also made them pause in the kitchen for a good couple of minutes so that he could force her to tell him she'd been ready to go AWOL with him and take him somewhere safe and untraceable to keep him out of a bunker. Prime Chuck. "That's all I require right now. A partner I can trust to have my back, and someone who will do the job, even if his tactics aren't the norm."
"Uh huh…" Zondra gave her a doubtful look.
"This isn't the problem you're making it out to be, Riz. I swear."
Zondra shrugged. "Well, fine. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I'll admit I like the lughead. But if his heart-eyes end up getting you killed, I'll probably hunt him down and kill him myself. And you can count on that."
Sarah didn't doubt it at all.
}o{
A thick grey fog had settled over the city in the late afternoon, and it hung there, like a dark and cold blanket, obstructing the usual view Sarah had out of her apartment window. It had been years since she'd seen fog like this, and even then, she'd been in San Francisco on a job. A place known for daily, thick fog that rolled in from the Pacific ocean.
It almost felt like a natural metaphor.
Here she was at half after eight o'clock in the evening, peering out of her bedroom window down into the street she could only barely see thanks to the streetlights being snuffed out by the fog. She couldn't see anything, really. Just faint outlines of buildings and people and cars wafting out of the greyness and disappearing back into it again.
It felt like the fog that was surrounding her brain had somehow transposed itself out into the D.C. streets.
Because her brain was in a bit of a fog.
Thanks to Chuck. Even though it wasn't even really his fault.
She wasn't sure what he was playing at. If he was even playing at anything at all. But ever since they got the Lius out of that safe house, ever since Chuck had both knowingly and unknowingly thrown Manoosh Depak under the bus, Sarah had just been so confused by the newly minted NSA agent.
She was sure that Chuck Bartowski—the Chuck Bartowski she knew and admired, the one who melted her insides on a consistent basis with how much he cared about the well-being of people he didn't even know—would normally be sick with guilt if he'd been the cause of someone else getting thrown to the wolves. Even if said wolves were in the right when it came to tossing the guy into a prison cell. He was a criminal after all, and he'd knowingly joined forces with the Ring, even knowing what they were and what they did.
It didn't matter. The Chuck she knew would feel like crap for it anyway. Especially because he'd lied to him so blatantly, had made him feel comfortable trusting him. And then he'd betrayed that trust.
But she couldn't spot much guilt in him in the hours since they gave the Lius and Manoosh to the transport back in Prague. At least, not in his face. And that was strange, because she could usually see everything in his face. It was like a wall had gone up over his features, though, specifically where Manoosh was concerned. And she felt uneasy wondering if this was what he'd felt like with her all the time, not knowing where her head was, or what she was feeling.
And she couldn't help acknowledging if only to herself that one reason why it'd been so easy to fall for him was that, unlike literally everyone else, he hadn't wondered if she had feelings. He knew she did. And he cared enough to want to know what they were.
What was Chuck playing at now? It made her a little nervous, wondering what in the hell was going through his mind. Was he in pain and getting better at hiding it? Or—and she hated herself for even considering this possibility—had he conditioned himself to compartmentalize pain, push it away, and dismiss it for the good of the mission. The way she'd conditioned herself to handle these situations a long time ago. And God, if it was the latter, it had taken her a lot longer to do that than he was taking. Chuck was barely a month or so into being an agent. It had taken her a couple of years of being out of the Farm before she'd trained herself to be numb...or at least to pretend to be numb.
It wasn't fair for her to judge him if he had figured this part out already. He'd gotten a really good lesson in it from her, she thought rather bitterly. And she didn't judge him. But it hurt to think of him like that. It scared her to think of him like that.
She was almost certain he was just hiding it, that this was all destroying his insides. After all, once Beckman had dismissed them, he'd gotten out of there fast. And maybe he was in his hotel room, trying to deal with the repercussions of his actions, wracked with guilt even though he knew Manoosh was a bad man.
Sarah wandered over to her nightstand and picked up her phone. There weren't any messages on it. She turned it over in her hand distractedly.
She knew what that kind of guilt felt like. She'd betrayed a lot of people in her ten years with the CIA. Some of them had been horrible enough that she'd rejoiced in the sight of them being dragged off to life in prison, or down into a deep underground bunker where they'd waste away just as they deserved. But then there were the ones she did feel guilty about. Even now.
Sarah Walker didn't want the man she'd spent these last months getting to know, growing to admire, and even eventually had ended up pining for to be drowning in guilt and remorse. But if that was his current state, she could at least do something to help him with the emotions, to help him get past them, or at least confront them and deal with them. If he'd found a way to block it all, Sarah wasn't quite sure what she could do about that. Except fear for whatever else he might have learned from her, and from Casey.
She pulled up Chuck's number and sent a quick text. That semi-DB went pretty well. She sat on her bed and nibbled on her lip, watching her phone and waiting for a response.
It finally came a minute later. He wrote, Semi-Diane Beckman? Was that a robot version of General B today? WAIT, was it a hologram?
Sarah just sighed and shook her head tiredly. Why was he like this? You know what I meant, she texted back. DB is DeBriefing. You dork.
She thought about him in his hotel room. Maybe he was just sitting there, staring at the wall, trying to figure out how to come to terms with everything on his own, get past all of it on his own. But she didn't want him to feel like he had to do that. So she added, Are you ok?
His response came back quickly. Too quickly. Like he was trying really hard to convince her. Yeah totally. I'm good. You ok?
Sarah's eyes slipped shut and she sighed. Then she climbed up to her feet and went to her suitcase to change her clothes and shove a few things into a small overnight bag. She went back to her phone to type out a quick, Yes, I'm ok.
She was okay. She was sure the fog still hung in a thick curtain outside of her apartment, cloaking the streets of D.C., but she was clear now. She was no longer lost in a fog. She knew where she had to be, because while it wasn't quite as easy to decipher Chuck's texts as it was to figure him out when he was standing in front of her, flesh and blood, she was one hundred percent sure Chuck was not in a good place.
As well as he'd kept it hidden since the other night in Prague, she just knew it. She felt it.
And while they had a really rough road ahead of them, while they would have to keep on their toes and filter and be insanely careful about what they said and how they said it in front of other people, how they looked at one another—something in which Chuck had already seemed to drop the ball on as far as Zondra was concerned—how they spoke to each other, what they let slip when they were with others, that didn't mean she wasn't going to be what he needed, whenever he needed her.
She wasn't letting him deal with the shit that came with being a secret agent alone.
So she slung her overnight bag over her shoulder, threw the hood on her jacket up over her blond hair, and snuck out of her apartment, down the stairs rather than taking the elevator, and out of the back of the building.
She called a taxi from a pay phone a block away from her apartment, and then she waited in a late night diner, buying two coffees and a large cookie. She'd instructed the cabbie to take the long, roundabout route to Chuck's hotel, and the guy was happy to do it, as his meter ticked up every minute longer she spent in the back of his cab.
She gave him an extra large tip for dropping her at the back of the hotel, and she waited for him to pull away from the curb and swing around the corner before she shifted her bag on her shoulder so that it was more secure and leapt up to grab onto the top of the brick wall, expertly kicking off its face with her foot to hoist herself over. Her shoulder only throbbed a little.
She landed safely, dropping down to one knee, and she looked at her surroundings. Nobody seemed to be on the grounds, considering it was a little after nine, though she could see folks through the floor to ceiling windows that shown into the lobby.
Slinking around the pool and along the back path, she came to a door that required a hotel key. She gave it a tug and found that it opened anyway. She sniffed in bitter amusement and rolled her eyes. Great security at this place. Seemed pretty safe.
Still shaking her head, she made her way up the stairs rather than taking the elevator again.
She peeked down his hallway, seeing that the coast was clear, and then she hurriedly scampered as quietly as possible to his door, eyeing the number first, and then knocking.
It took a few seconds that felt more like minutes as she glanced both ways down the hallway, wanting him to just freaking open the door already and let her in so that she wasn't seen by someone. She didn't want anyone to know she was here, not even a random passerby.
And finally she heard movement behind the door. It cracked open just a bit and one eye peeked through the crack. "Sarah," she heard him breathe, relief in his tone, and the door swung open even more.
He stepped back to let her in, a small, subdued smile on his face.
In one smooth movement, Sarah took a step inside of his hotel room and reached up to round his shoulders in a tight embrace, even as he shut the door and locked it. "Hi," she mumbled into his hair just behind his ear, and she shifted her face to kiss him there.
Chuck held her back. And she knew by how tightly he was holding on, clinging even, that she was right to come. That she was right in assuming he wasn't okay based on just a simple text.
"Hi," he mumbled back, giving her a squeeze. "You okay? I didn't think I'd be—I mean, I thought you weren't going to chance—That we shouldn't chance meeting again tonight."
Sarah shook her head and pulled back, peering up into his eyes and stroking her cool hand down his jaw, before slipping it to the back of his neck and rubbing there comfortingly. "I wasn't going to come. And then I decided I had to."
Chuck immediately made a confused face. And he shrugged out of her embrace, grinning. It was a big grin, too big of a grin. "Well, I'm glad you came. I got a little single-serving sized thing of whiskey down at the corner store to celebrate Beckman's proverbial pat on the head she gave us for doing so well on the mission. And now I have a beautiful super spy to share it with, so that's good."
Sarah smiled a bit tentatively at first, and then she grinned at him, watching him go to the small table up against the window over which he'd drawn the curtains tightly. Smart man. Even smarter, she saw him pull a weapon out from the back of his pajama pants. She recognized it as a tranquilizer gun immediately. She was proud of him, answering the door safely. She gestured to the gun as she crossed the room and sidled up to him. "You learn well, young grasshopper," she said, letting him see her pride.
"Yeah, well… I'm a spy now. Can't be too careful. I honestly didn't think I'd be seeing you tonight. And I didn't know who else might be showing up at my hotel room. So…" He picked it up and wiggled it.
"Good," she said with an emphatic nod. And then she watched silently, and closely, as he opened the bottle of whiskey with the crack of the cap twisting off. He paused and thrusted the bottle towards her so that she could have the first drink. "Why not?" she asked with a short giggle. And she took a sip, hissing a little. He'd gotten something strong.
She passed it back and noticed how long of a swig he'd taken. He hissed too as it went down, licking his lips. And then he took another.
There it was. Further confirmation. As brave of a front as he was trying to put on.
"God, that's good stuff," he mumbled. He offered it to her again and she shook her head minutely. Chuck nodded and set the bottle down. "Well, cheers anyway. To a job well done. And our partnership, and...you know, other stuff." He gave her a bit of a dreamy smile and she took his meaning well.
"Chuck..." she started then, shrugging her bag off of her shoulder and setting it on the chair pushed up against the table.
"Yeah?"
"You did do a good job. You were a good agent. And a really, really good partner. You impressed Agent Zondra Rizzo of the CIA and that is not easy to do. She's still not so sure about me, if that gives you any indication of just how hard it is to impress her." She leaned against the edge of the table and smiled up at him, raising an eyebrow.
He looked sincerely pleased, but even that was a bit subdued. Less subdued than he'd been during the briefing. "Really?"
"Mhm. And she should be impressed. You're impressive." That got her a toothy smile and a cute shrug, a blush on his face. She paused for a long while, eyeing him closely again. And then she leaned in a bit, caught his eye, and added, "You were great, Chuck. The whole way through."
"It's, uh, it's a lot easier to be impressive when you've got a good team. Good partners, I mean."
Sarah slipped her fingers around his as he grasped the bottle of whiskey so tight she could see his knuckles going white. His grip eased immediately as she stroked his hand, and she took the bottle from him, taking a sip. Then she took his hand in hers and led him over to the bed, sitting down and tugging him to sit next to her.
He plopped down, and she could see it in his eyes. He was struggling, the facade was fractured, the cracks showing, his shoulders starting to slump.
There was a long beat.
And then he sagged, his handsome features crumbling in anguish. "Sarah, it could've been me."
And there it was. She let him take the bottle from her and throw back another long swig, wincing as he swallowed, misery on his face. God, so much misery. She felt her heart absolutely ache.
"That could've been me, knocked out in that van, zip ties around my wrist. Only to wake up in some all-white room, handcuffed to a table or something. Not knowing where I am or how I got there. But just knowing—knowing deep down—that I'd been double-crossed by someone I let myself trust. Getting caught up in all that. Ending up a criminal. Life ruined. Who knows, Sarah? If I hadn't had Ellie, or Morgan, I could've ended up in the spot Manoosh is in now."
Sarah didn't know what to say for a few long moments. So she just slipped a comforting hand over the back of his neck. And finally, she said the first thing that came to her mind, because it was the truth. "I don't believe that." He turned to furrow his brow at her, questioning. "You, Chuck Bartowski, are nothing like Manoosh."
"Not now, Sarah, but I could've been. I was Piranha. I was doing some of the same shit he does back when I was in high school, and I-I felt…" He huffed and shook his head. "There was a time when I felt like I was being shut out of the world, too. Not that I was right in thinking that way, but I still did it. It was how I felt. And after Stanford, after I got kicked out and dumped by my girlfriend, I almost went back into it. I almost slipped into my old patterns. And I was in such a bad place, I could've easily ended up getting picked up by an organization like this, Sarah. I could've gotten snatched away from my life and thrown my lot in with a group like this." He let out a rough breath and pushed his free hand through his hair. "He was trapped. I could've gotten trapped, too. Who knows what I would've done if I'd felt trapped enough?"
"You're ignoring something here, Chuck. Something big," she said, scooting in even closer and sliding her hand to his opposite shoulder, squeezing, leaning in to prop her chin on the shoulder nearest her. "You skipped right over it." He raised his eyebrows at her. "You said you were in a bad place, and you almost slipped back into your old patterns. Well, you didn't. As bad of a place as you were in, as hurt and emotionally roughed up as you were after Bryce got you kicked out of Stanford, in spite of knowing going back into the world of Piranha and maybe doing legitimately bad stuff with your talents might distract you or even feel good—getting back at the world for fucking you over or whatever—you didn't do that. You got your job back at the Buy More, you worked your way up to supervisor of the Nerd Herd, and that's where I found you."
He didn't seem to have anything to say to that, his features ironing out a bit. He leaned a bit of his weight against her and she lifted her chin from his shoulder so that she could kiss his cheek warmly.
"You think that could've been you the other night, arrested by the CIA as a criminal hacker who aligned himself with a terrorist organization, Chuck, but the fact is… as many similarities as I know you see between you and Manoosh—and they're there, because I saw some of it too, a couple of geeks who are really good with computers and a lot smarter than the people around them," she said with a small smirk, and because he had some tact, Chuck just pressed his lips together tightly and said nothing to that, which made her smirk harder. "...He made decisions that led him to where he's finding himself now. Those were direct decisions. It wasn't fate, it wasn't some path he was stuck on. Chuck, he made a choice to sign onto a contract with the Ring. And you heard for yourself, he didn't give a flying fuck that they were hurting people, killing people. You offered him a way out of the Ring, and a way to get back at them for using him, and he took it, not because he cared about the innocent people lying dead in the Ring's wake, but because it would fatten his pockets and teach them a lesson. He chose all of this. And you chose differently." She ran her fingers through his curls, watching as his eyelids fluttered. "You chose to be a good man. And that's why you're sitting here, with me, as an agent of the NSA instead of some hack of a hacker arrested for throwing in his lot with terrorists."
This time when he pressed his lips together, it became a tiny smile. And then he nodded, just slightly. "You're right. I made different decisions than he did. And his decisions led him to where he is."
She could still see sadness and guilt in him though as he took another drink from the bottle. This time, however, she noticed it was more of a sip than a gulping swig.
"Hey," she said quietly, tugging on one of his curls to get his attention. He looked at her again, his full attention on her, and she was forced to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing in the world that made her feel the way she felt when she had Charles Irving Bartowski's full attention. It was dizzying. Still. Even after all of these months she'd known him, after that night all those days ago when they'd made love for the first time.
She had his full attention now, and she would take advantage of it. "If you'd left him at that table in the Ring compound that night the way I'd been ready to, if you hadn't gone back for him and carried him all the way back down to our van, they would've known he'd betrayed them, that he'd let the federal agents in to rescue the Lius and kill the Ring operatives." Hurt appeared on his face along with the guilt, wrinkles between his eyebrows, a frown on his lips. "Chuck." He swung his brown eyes up to meet her blue ones again and she leaned in, her face aligned with his. "He'd be dead right now."
Chuck swallowed hard and nodded. "No, I know. I know he would. They would've figured out it was him. Easy."
"So what is this?" she asked, sliding her hand down his chest and rubbing him right over his heart. "Talk to me, Chuck." He just frowned deeper. "Look, I get it. Your only examples of secret agents you've been given since Bryce sent you that email last year have been me and Casey. And Bryce to a lesser degree. Jesus Christ," she muttered, shutting her eyes, "And Beckman and Graham. We're the most...emotionally constipated group of individuals you could've gotten stuck with."
He let out a surprised burst of a chuckle at that, as if he hadn't expected her to say that.
She shrugged, thrusting her palm out to the side. It was the truth. "You don't have to hide it if you're feeling like shit after selling out a mark. You don't have to hide the guilt you're feeling after betraying someone who trusted you, even if the guy does deserve to go to prison for what he did, the decision he made. I get it. I haven't been immune to guilt. If I was immune to guilt, I probably would've jumped your bones the second you told me you weren't my asset anymore."
His mouth fell open and he blinked.
She shrugged again, palm out again. "What? It's true. You don't have to hide the mess of feelings you're gonna have because of the decisions you have to make in this job. They're gonna be big decisions and you're gonna get...big feelings. Especially you. You've got so much…" She wrinkled her nose, amusement bubbling up in her chest as she thought of Zondra. "What did Zondra call it? Squish?" He made a weirded out face. "I know, but it...kinda works." He gave her a dubious look. "Okay, maybe not. The point is, you don't have to suppress it or hide it."
Chuck scoffed. "Really?"
Sarah winced. "Okay, fine. But you don't have to hide any of this from me." He seemed to almost melt and it made something inside of her heat up. "Nobody can know about this, about us. And this shit's gonna be hard. Sometimes it's gonna full-on suck. But I am still here. We're here together. And I don't care if I have to freaking crawl through the plumbing of your God damn apartment to get to you to make sure nobody knows about it, if you need me, I'll be here."
She thought she maybe had more to say, just to drive home the point, so he knew that she meant what she said… that in spite of how weird and not normal this relationship was going to be, she didn't want him thinking he couldn't go to her if he needed her.
But his hands cupped her face and his lips covered hers. And his kiss swept her up so completely that she suddenly found herself on her back on the mattress with his body on top of hers. This hadn't exactly been her plan, but she definitely wasn't complaining.
His lips dragged from hers then and she took a deep, shaking breath as he dotted kisses down to her ear. And she heard him ask, "What about now?"
She giggled breathlessly, already tugging his shirt up his body by its hem. "I'm here, aren't I?"
A/N: Please review. Thanks!
-SC and DC
