A/N1 And...we're back.

Thanks for reading. How about a review? Lots of you out there silently reading. I'd love to know your thoughts or reactions, even if brief.

Don't own Chuck.


ACT IV

CHAPTER 11

Reddened


Sarah sat back down on the motel bed.

It was time for them to check out, but she figured the motel was unlikely to insist. Virtually no one else seemed to be staying there. She put the newspaper down. She would think about that with Chuck in a minute. Right now, there was a delicious odor in the air and her mouth watered.

"What's in the bags, Chuck?" She looked at his hand. He looked down as if he was discovering them there. She realized he had been so lost in thought that he was. He separated the bags, now one in each hand.

"Oh! I grabbed some fresh croissants, chocolate." He nodded at one bag. " And then I saw the paper. So I bought…" He nodded at the other.

She took the bags from him when he finished and put them on the bed. Greedily, she reached into the one from the bakery, grabbed one of the two chocolate croissants and bit into it, indelicately. She moaned low in quiet response. Chuck grinned at her, enjoying her reaction in spite of the situation.

"What?" She asked with chocolate in the corner of her mouth.

She felt like she was on a first date, but a topsy-turvy one, having the meal after the sex.

That was mixed up, and even worse, she had a strong feeling that she was not a first-date sort of girl, at least not under remotely normal circumstances.

But this isn't remotely normal. Or is it? And it isn't a first date.

Or is it?

Chuck reached out to wipe the chocolate from her mouth, still grinning. As his fingertips touched her gently, she was struck by how ordinary yet intimate the gesture was, and by how comfortable she was with it, how much she welcomed it, despite the strange familiar novelty of everything between them.

"That's...like the third time I've heard that this morning." Chuck's grin widened.

"More like the second-and-a-half time. The croissant is good, and I am ravenous, but...earlier was most definitely better. Of course, I was ravenous then too." She smiled shyly.

Banter? I don't do banter. But I guess I do. And I like it.

"Chuck, did we...um...on our first date?" She finished the croissant after she asked, and she put the bag down.

Chuck's eyes closed for a second as if he were savoring a joke. "Which one?"

"Huh?"

He handed her the other bag with a flourish. "Supplies for a disguise. It's not safe for me to be seen with Rebecca Franco." He grinned, then frowned at himself.

"Sorry, Sarah, not really a good idea to joke about any of this." He looked at her but she just shrugged slightly and took the bag. She looked inside.

"Hair color. Red. Really?" She looked up at Chuck, rolling her eyes. "Something about you and Carina I need to know?"

More banter? It feels natural. I'm not supposed to be funny. But maybe I am, a little...

She grinned, pleased to see Chuck's ears match the hair color box. "No. I mean, I love Carina. But you know, not that way, never that way. And anyway, she scares me." Chuck looked down for a moment, partly feigning embarrassment.

"And I don't?"

Chuck looked up. "Oh, you scare me. But I know you love me."

They both froze. Chuck's blush deepened for reasons having nothing to do with Carina. Sarah could tell he was wishing he could chase the words down, capture them, before they reached her ears. Sarah looked back down into the bag and for the moment went on with the list of its contents. "Scissors. Glasses. Dark lipstick..."

She looked up and she could see he was still kicking himself. She had hoped he would let it pass. Words were never easy for her, especially emotional words, but now...

"I'm sorry, Sarah. I don't mean to...um...presume. To slip into the present tense. Just pretend that I said that in the past tense. No, wait, that's not what I meant, either. I meant I know you...I knew...I know you like...I know you liked...No. No. Damn." His spiral ended in frustration, his hands tensed in front of him, frozen in an inarticulate gesture.

Sarah made herself hold his gaze. "Chuck," his name came out softly, just right, "I basically demanded that you make love to me as your wife. What happened in this bed was...eloquent with your love for me." Pause. She took a breath.

"I hoped...I mean...I wanted...I hoped what happened would...Chuck, I know I am your wife. I feel it. I don't exactly know how or why, but I know it is real, I have never felt anything more real." She sighed, knowing that her situation made that sound weaker than she meant for it to be.

"And what happened in this bed helped me with the how and the why." Her voice sank to an intense whisper. "I do...I...I...you know...But Quinn," her eyes narrowed and her voice rose, "Quinn stole you from me. I am going to get you back, get us back. All the way back."

She was quiet for a second or two. Chuck's hands relaxed. He knew this Sarah, as he had known the one who made love to him.

She stood up. "C'mon, Chuck. Let's see what I look like as a redhead. And you can tell me what that question about first dates meant. Oh, and can I have that other croissant?" She grabbed the bag off the bed before he could answer.

ooOoo

She quickly ate the second croissant. Then she applied the hair dye while they talked about their first date at the El Compadre. They eventually moved on to their second first date, the date interrupted by the looming, mountainous Mr. Colt.

Sarah found the stories funny and moving and sad. And frustrating. How could they have been so close, meant so much to each other, and kept denying it, denying themselves?

And then she heard that voice in her head again.

Share nothing. Feel nothing. Be nothing, be no one. Be nothing to anyone. There is only the mission.

She retrieved the scissors from the bag and, after a deep breath, she cut her hair short, even with her jawline, spiky. She put on the makeup, much darker than she normally used, and the glasses with their non-prescription lenses.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like a stranger, but that had been almost a constant, to one degree or another, since she first saw herself in the mirror of the dressing room.

She turned to Chuck. He had been leaning against the bathroom door frame, studying her reflection while she did. Now he looked at her directly.

"What do you think?"

"You seem like a different woman." They both froze. Again.

ooOoo

They recovered from the moment and got into the car.

The motel parking lot was nearly deserted except for an old bicycle. It was propped on a kickstand. An elderly woman was seated on the concrete beside it, eating out of a mangled styrofoam container. Both Chuck and Sarah noticed her, and she waved at them, grinning toothlessly.

They got in the car and drove away. The old woman reached into her soiled blouse and pulled out a brand new cell phone. "I found them. They just left. Her hair is now red. Interesting choice." She had memorized the plate and she carefully relayed it to the person on the other end of the line. "Yes, you are welcome. The others have been alerted." She put the phone back in her blouse and finished eating the macaroni and cheese. It hadn't been in the trash that long, and she had an iron stomach, even if she had no teeth.

ooOoo

Beckman was about to scream or to pull out her hair.

She was standing in Castle, staring at her phone in disbelief.

She was no longer on the Intersect Committee. She was no longer in charge of anything having to do with the Intersect or Team Bartowski. Huntaker had figured out where she was going and he had gone to the committee. They had voted her out. The President had been informed of the decision. She was to return to DC at the first available opportunity. She remained the titular head of the NSA, but day-to-day operations were going to be handled by others-no one had told her yet who that would be.

Beckman was still staring at her phone as if it could supply an answer to the questions swirling in her head when it rang. Roan.

"Roan! Thank God!"

"Diane, darling, what is happening? I've just been told you are effectively under suspension? Is that true? How can it be?"

"Yes, it is true," she said, nodding even though he could not see her. "I just discovered it myself. How did you find out?"

"Madeline Upshaw called me." Beckman felt her claws unsheath. "She'd picked up on a rumor, done some digging. But she also had other news."

Beckman choked back her annoyance and frustration. It was hard. She was still so tired, and past tired of Madeline. Beckman asked to know what it was. "Nicholas Quinn was found dead, along with four other men. It's been kept quiet, but he's been positively identified. He and his men were found in an abandoned building in LA. Gassed. Nasty stuff, evidently. Let's just say the corpses were ghastly. Pretzelled."

Beckman's mind was awhirl.

What the hell was going on? The charges against Sarah? The manhunt? The stripping away of Beckman's powers? The isolation of the Team? Had Huntaker figured out she'd given Chuck the pristine Intersect? Damn, she hoped not.

"Do you need me to come to you, Diane. I can be there in a couple of hours?"

Yes! "No, Roan. I need someone detached from us, mobile, in case this gets worse. Let me warn you: it might get worse."

Roan went on, undeterred. "Just give me instructions, Diane, tell me what you want me to do."

Tell me if the rumors are true. Tell me you've had nothing to do with Madeline.

"I will. Shift to our burners."

"Will do, Diane. Oh, any luck finding Sarah?" Roan's concern was evident. "Is this all connected to her?"

"Well, yes...I think so. And Chuck is with Sarah, we believe. But he hasn't checked in."

"How is she?"

"Still not herself, as far we know."

ooOoo

Sarah caught a glimpse of her newly red hair in the rearview mirror as she checked again for tails. Milan. Special Bullets. Undressing. Chuck helping…

Sarah felt herself redden. She punched the accelerator. Chuck had the burner phone. They'd been talking about what to tell the Team, about whether it was safe for them to go to Castle.

"Chuck, this isn't the first time I've had red hair, is it?" Chuck turned his head toward her and smirked, his eyes in the past.

"Um. Yes and no."

She gave an amused and exasperated huff. That huff feels familiar. "Chuck, can you please give me a straight answer?"

He laughed. "Do you know how often I have wanted you to do that for me?" There was no recrimination in his tone. Just surprise and affection. "Yes and no, because you were wearing a red wig. We were in Milan on a mission. You were disguised as a redhead, but your hair was not red. So, yes and no. An exact answer."

Sarah giggled. I just giggled. In the midst of all this. He amused her. "You're funny, Chuck."

Was this how she had always felt around him? Like the demanding voice in her head could be turned off or just ignored. Like her feelings were hers, and not someone else's, or no one's?

Like her feelings could themselves track things that mattered? That they put her in touch with what was real instead of obscuring it?

Like the world had a depth of field and a vibrancy of color that her otherwise well-trained senses simply missed until Chuck came into her life?

She'd had one, two, three, four, five senses working overtime, and had still managed to miss so much of life.

But then the Milan memory fleshed itself out.. A quarrel. About something important, something that made her anxious. Her suitcase. Her suitcase?

"We were quarreling in Milan?"

Chuck moved his lips to one side, compressing them. "Sort of."

"Oh, good, now Mr. Exactly decides to be vague." She smiled.

"No, no, it's just that you had moved in with me. We were together and...happy. But you kept your things in your suitcase, and your suitcase in your half of the closet. I was…"

"...Worried that I was keeping my options open, ready to run?"

He looked sorry, sad. "Yeah. Yeah, I was."

"I nearly ran at the motel. Running from things is...was...something I...well…" She looked at him, trying to reassure him that the woman-with-no-memory was with him, with him for good or bad, better or worse. She wasn't sure he could read her eyes. She wasn't quite sure how to vocalize the reassurance, keep it from sounding empty.

It wasn't.

"You told me later, after you unpacked, that I...that I was your home." She saw his eyes were damp when she glanced at him.

Home. He is home. Exactly. He centers my world. Everything orients around him, around us.

How could someone like me have ended up with someone like him? How was it possible? I am...what I am. But he, he...

"You smell like home to me, Chuck." She said it so softly, Chuck turned to her, gazing at her as if he had imagined it, wondering if he had.

Silence, a warm silence.

"How much do you remember, Sarah?" He was careful with his tone. No demand. But she knew he'd been waiting to ask or for her to volunteer.

"Scraps. Fragments. Crumbs. A few connected bits. Lots of images. Almost all emotionally charged. Good things and...bad. A lot of bad. And skills, methods, procedures. They all seem intact, except that I have...little sense that I have them until a situation calls them into play."

Chuck listened, holding his head thoughtfully.

When he responded, it was again in a careful tone. No blame. "You know, although we have been together for a while now, Sarah, I still know very little about your past. You are the most mysterious woman in the world, you know.

"I get that this might sound crazy, or might...make you angry, but I do sorta know what it's like to be you right now, to be wondering about you and your past. I know you and I know a lot about what you can do. But not much, really, about what you have done. I mean, I know about us, the past five years, so that's obviously a difference between us. But about before us..."

She nodded. He fell for her, fell in love with her, married her, knowing so little? Why? Why hadn't she told him more when she could? Not for her sake now, but for his then?

"Ever since the docks, I hear this voice in my head. A man. He's drilling maxims into my memory, tactics, strategies…"

"Langston Graham."

Chuck said the name reflexively. Sarah swerved on the road but then quickly got back in her lane. She blinked, a pain streak left behind her forehead.

"The head of the CIA. My…" she searched for the right word,"...boss." She knew without any trace of sadness or regret that he was dead. "And he is dead."

Chuck nodded a couple of times and then turned to look at her again. "Yeah. You were his...um...personal project, his...right hand. People in Langley called you his…"

"Enforcer."

She did not ask, she stated. She knew this too. The pain in her head began to recede a bit.

They were quiet. Chuck held up the burner phone. It was time to call. Past time, really. But Sarah shook her head, telling him to wait.

"Chuck, am I in the Intersect, your Intersect? Can you remember for me?"


A/N2 Obligatory XTC song reference? Check.

Tune in next time for Chapter 12, "A Presence with Secrets".

Review? Pretty please?

Hope everyone celebrating in the US enjoys the Fourth, and that everyone else has a great day.