A/N1 Making quick progress toward finishing the final chapters, so here's an update. We begin Act IV.

Thanks for reading and for the enthusiastic reviews.

Don't own Chuck.


ACT IV

CHAPTER 10

Afterglow?


Madeline Upshaw sat perched on her chair at her large chrome desk. Her office was lit only by a single desk lamp, her curtains drawn. In the glow of the lamp, Madeline was leaning forward, although her back was straight. Her elbows rested on the surface of the desk, her fingers were laced together, her chin resting atop them. Deep in thought, she stared straight ahead, seeing but unseeing.

Her mind was spinning, revolving possible scenarios. She was playing the most dangerous game of her life, playing both ends against the middle, as her grandmother used to say. She supposed that she was in something akin to love (call it 'lust plus pinches of both respect and fear') with Olin Huntaker, and had been for years. She had not intended to be anyone's mistress. But Huntaker had unromantically swept her off her feet. He was a complicated man. But it was his power that had overwhelmed her. Power unchecked by justice or mercy. Raw, naked power. Madeline wriggled in her chair.

An apparent straight-shooter, apparently simple, Huntaker was the most devious man Madeline had ever met. But his deviousness was not so much exhibited in deep, long-term planning, although he excelled at that, it was rather in his uncanny sense of people, place and time, his ability to position himself in the right place at the right time and beside the right people.

Huntaker was a man who cared only about power, real power, the having of it, not fake power, or the mere trappings of power. He didn't care whether or not other people knew he had power; he cared only to have power. And slowly, over the years, he had come to have power, lots of power, and few, maybe only Madeline herself, understood the extent of the power he had. He was the most powerful man in Washington, although none of the other candidates for that title, like the President, recognized it. She recognized it because she had helped him to acquire it by slow, calculating steps over many years. She also knew that that had been her primary attraction for him. The delights of her mind and body he co-opted and enjoyed, but she had no illusions that she was anything but his favorite...utensil.

Over time, that knowledge began to chafe. To be used, never to even be contemplated as a person in her own right, a woman with gifts and desires of her own, gifts and desired perhaps not destined to be suppressed and preserved in his gifts and desires…'Suppressed and preserved', Huntaker's actual damn phrase.

It had finally become too much. And so she began playing her dangerous game, trying to help Huntaker all the while hoping to outsmart him in the end.

Playing both ends against the middle. Grandmother's phrase. I sound like Diane Beckman, old before my time.

Beckman. Speaking of things that made Madeline chafe.

Roan Montgomery had been Madeline's target, her fascination, when she was a young spy, the man she most wanted for her own. The allure and challenge of seducing and laying claim to the 'master of seduction' drew her in, but before she realized it, she had fallen for him. Although Roan was never simply a one-woman man, he had fallen for Beckman just before Madeline could make her play. Since then, he had been, in some complicated sense, Beckman's friend, partner, and lover. Hers. Not Madeline's. Nothing Madeline did tempted Roan, and she had made some very overt...advances. Madeline had nursed her disappointment and envy for years. She coveted Roan.

So when Huntaker began to plot seriously with Madeline against the Intersect and the Intersect Committee, Madeline came up with a way both to keep Beckman at bay, off-balance, and to torment her: Madeline fabricated a torrid affair and 'leaked' it to the gossip mongers at Langley and elsewhere. She knew Beckman's pride and rivalry with her would prevent any confrontation, confrontation with her or with Roan. And she knew she could count on Roan not to deny it to anyone else who might mention it; he was always happy for rumor to notch his bedpost, inflate his reputation. And once it had been established as a 'fact', that very reputation would seem to confirm it to everyone else who heard it.

Madeline had enjoyed her recent chance to torment Beckman face-to-face. To tweak her in the coffee shop and on the phone. But now it was time to use Beckman and Team Bartowski to finish Huntaker, so that Madeline could ascend to his place. Her place. It was time for Huntaker's political man-spreading to take a serious kick between the legs. Huntaker had made a crucial error. Madeline had already planted the seed. Soon, soon. She was looking forward to wiping the supercilious smirk off Huntaker's face once and for all. For. Damn. Ever.

ooOoo

Sarah had not wanted to get out of bed. Still, she had known it was necessary. But as she feared, what had been so very good and so very right while they were (mostly) horizontal, became strained and awkward when they got out of bed. It was not that Sarah regretted what had happened.

Not at all. Not the least little bit.

It had been sweetness and light and heat in a long bitter darkness, one that seemed longer to her because of her memory loss, not shorter.

No, it was the disappointment that her memory had not come back to her while they made love, that was what made things strained and awkward. She felt so much, but the structure of the emotion seemed to have no scaffolding of memories around it, at least no memories that were available for recall, for conscious review.

She also knew that Chuck had hoped for the same thing, that he had looked into her eyes after the first time, hoping to see confirmation that her life had come back to her. She had not wanted to do so, but she had looked away from him for a second before she had looked back, smiled and kissed him. He knew it hadn't, then.

In that bed, she knew she could live without her memories, but she could not live without him. But she wanted her memories. She did. Desperately. But she wanted her husband most of all. What she had felt in his arms, the feeling of homecoming, that was irreplaceable. Her memories were irreplaceable too, in their way, but as they had just done together, it was possible to create new ones. There was no replacing Chuck, no way to create a new one. She was sure of that even if she couldn't remember how he had come to be so irreplaceable, couldn't relive any of their shared history.

They were gathering up their things and trying to decide the next step. They needed to contact Beckman and Ellie, that was a given. But the best time to do it was not a given. They needed to know more about what was going on.

Chuck left the room and went in search of a newspaper. Sarah had everything ready for them to leave. She sat down on the bed for a second, waiting for Chuck. Her head was aching dully. It still hurt to look at Chuck, but the pain was less intense, constant and blunt, not blazing and blinding. She wondered what was taking him so long.

She had been waiting...waiting for Chuck. At a train station. Someplace overseas. Prague? She saw him. The memory hurt, squeezing her mercilessly. But it hurt everywhere, head and heart. He...he left me. He left me! She couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. He walked away. He left me standing there.

Her first re-lived memory of him was of him leaving her. She panicked. Maybe he was leaving again? Maybe he had left! She jumped up and...

The door opened; Chuck came in. He looked pale. He saw that she did too. But she spoke first. "What is it, Chuck?"

"You're all over the papers. They say you are a terrorist. You bombed a secret government lab. There are fingerprints and there's video and there's DNA...But you were in San Diego, not LA. What the hell?"

Sarah grabbed the paper from Chuck's limp grasp. He had the paper in on hand, two bags in the other. He was staring into space, trying to figure it out. She read the story.

Former CIA Agent Suspected in Terror Attack

There was a picture of Sarah, black and white and grainy, but recognizable, beside the story, and above the fold along with the headline. Sarah stared at herself. The name beneath the photo was Rebecca Franco.

Chuck refocused and looked at her. "Did you see the name?" Sarah nodded. "The story is full of circumstantial evidence and quotations from unnamed sources. Spy innuendo. There's even an indirect gesture toward Team Bartowski," he looked at the article, reading it upside-down, pointing to a line. Franco is suspected to have confederates in Burbank.

"What the hell?..." He asked the question again.

Sarah read on.

Law enforcement and the intelligence community have banded together to in a massive search for Franco, who is suspected still to be in Southern California. She is wanted not only in connection with the bombing, but she is also believed to be in possession of crucial intel, information of importance for the safety of the nation.

Sarah wasn't sure if it was her earlier panic still affecting her or if it was the story, but she felt light-headed, dizzy. Chuck was right: what the hell?

"At the motel, the first night, the first night I remember, I used the name 'Rebecca Franco'. It attracted attention, drew Carina…"

"Yes, and Carina said it drew someone else."

Sarah shot a glance at Chuck. "What?"

"Yeah, she saw a man standing outside your motel room door when she arrived. It's why she had her gun out…"

"Oh, God. I thought she had it out because of me, for me. It must have been the man I heard sneaking around my motel door, not Carina. I thought maybe that was true. " Sarah hugged Chuck, burying her face in his chest. "I nearly killed her, Chuck." She told Chuck, in hurried, broken phrases, about the attack on Carina.

"It's ok, baby, you didn't. You wouldn't. I know you." He held her carefully, his hand rubbing her back.

After a moment Sarah stepped back. "She and I, we are friends?" It wasn't entirely a question. She could feel that they were.

"Yeah, yeah. Old friends. Good friends. You worked together as…"

"CATS." Sarah wondered at the word from her mouth. "What's that mean, Chuck?"

"You were part of a team of agents, all female, with Carina and…"

"Zondra!...And...Amy! But Zondra was a mole...No, no, she wasn't...I can't remember." Sarah looked at Chuck, unsure of herself.

"Actually, you are remembering. For a long time, you thought Zondra was the mole, but you later found out it was Amy."

It all meant something to Sarah, but she could not quite clarify it for herself. She just knew she had felt...betrayed...Betrayed.

She pulled back out of Chuck's arms entirely, her eyes hardening. "You left me, Chuck. You left me...in Prague, at a train station." She hadn't meant to say it like that but it came out cold, an ice-rimmed accusation.

Chuck started to respond. Then he stopped. Then he started again. "Yeah, yeah. I did. That was the beginning of...what I thought would be the end of us. I had the then-new Intersect. It gave me skills, spy-type skills. Beckman wanted to turn me into a spy, a super spy. They brought me to Europe to train me. Huh. Train me." He shook away the verbal accident. "You didn't want them to do it, me to do it. Become a spy. So, you prepared an escape for us, met me in Prague. On a train platform. We were supposed to run together."

Sarah felt her chest tighten, her eyes moisten, her breathing constrict. "But you turned me down. You said no…"

"I did, Sarah. And I did it poorly. I hurt you. I really hurt you. I...you...you thought I had chosen the spy life instead of you...just when you had chosen me instead of the spy life. I couldn't explain it very well, and I…I...

"Well, we ended up back on the team again but everything was shattered, glass shards and slivers everywhere, and nowhere to step without hurting ourselves or each other...So we tried not to be together. I tried, God, help me, I honestly tried not to love you. I repeated it like a mantra to myself. I started seeing someone else…"

Sarah felt her heart skip a beat. Chuck added quietly. "And you did too." He glanced down, away from her.

"Shaw." One word, a certainty.

"Yeah, yeah, and...Hannah."

Sarah felt a melancholy settle on her, a despondency, cloying and damp. "And we were both miserable."

"Right, we were...but we tried to fool ourselves, and each other, and Shaw and Hannah…"

"Is that why I told him my name, why I told him I was Sam?" Sarah could tell that although the hurt of that was old for Chuck, it was still deep. He was struggling, but so was she.

"I don't know...That's what I've always thought, or what I have always told myself. We talked about it a little, later, but you were...reticent...and I wasn't in a hurry to re-visit the memory, really."

He realized what he had said and his eyes turned apologetic. He went on. "I guess I always thought it was an...incantation, an Abracadabra you hoped would conjure up something real between the two of you...using your birth name to create something."

Sarah looked at him, but her attention was focused inward. "I remember enough to know that I told him that out of despair, not hope. Unless it was hope to be free of the pain I remember feeling…the pain I felt every time I saw you or was near you. Not the same pain as now, but...

"I wanted you, Chuck, not Shaw. Given what I can recall," she screwed up her lips, indicating that it was not much, "I never wanted Shaw. I was never drawn to him in any real way. I was just trying desperately to push myself from you. I was running from you, not toward him. I...did try to create something with him, but I conjured nothing." Her memory of the two men both standing before her told her all she needed to know about how she felt, if not about why. "I'm sorry about it all, Chuck." She felt herself blush, and she broke their shared gaze.

Chuck cleared his throat. He waited for her to look at him. "I'm sorry too, Sarah. Those...early years were hard for us both."

She looked pointedly at the newspaper then used it to gesture at the threadbare, barely livable motel room. She smiled a small, wry smile. "Well, the present doesn't seem so easy. But if this morning is any indication, we were worth it. We are worth it.

"Be patient with me, Chuck. I know you, but...I don't know you. It's the damnedest thing: Like love at first sight, even though I know it isn't first sight. But it is too." She shrugged, at a loss for words. Finally, she asked all she had to ask by repeating one word: "Patience?"

"Always, Sarah. Always."

ooOoo

The group in Castle stared at the newspaper online, displayed on every monitor in Castle. The story surrounded them. Rebecca Franco, terrorist. Beckman got on the phone. Everyone else was reading.

ooOoo

Huntaker was pissed. Deeply and still more deeply pissed. The story he had worked to construct and control had something in it he had not put there. The lines about Rebecca Franco having intel important to the nation's security. The line was not attributed to anyone named. Source unnamed. Huntaker had talked to the reporter. He had her in his pocket; she was not about to cross him; she knew better. She had been deathly afraid when he pointed it out. She had no idea how the line had gotten there.

Huntaker knew the endgame was afoot. Now was not the time to have to contend with treachery. He'd make whoever did it an example, the kind of example that would be a powerful deterrent to future betrayal. Huntaker saw red, blood red. He would see more, lots more, if he had his way.


A/N2 To quote a lyric from Nico Stai's song, The Skies Over Your Head, "the clouds are just everywhere". Tune in next time for Chapter 11, "Reddened".