A/N1 Okay...after a brief intermission for a one-shot, now back to it.

Thanks for reading, and especially for the reviews and PMs.

Don't own Chuck.


ACT V

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hole, Hold, Whole


Russia. Another memory. Another dye job, black. Miserable heart-grinding loneliness, aching for Chuck. Volkoff. Saving...Chuck's...mother. A spy? A spy. Poor Chuck, his life is a Robert Ludlum novel. She saved his mother. Frost. The birth of Clara. Family.

Sarah's engagement ring. An open red box in a hospital hallway. Perfect. Janitor waxing the floor.

Sarah's life waxing, no longer waning. Fully alive, not half-alive, not a quarter-alive, no longer gibbous. A full, harvest life. Hers for the taking. She took it.

"I spent some time in Russia." Sarah tried to keep Archeus talking. I don't remember enough to carry the conversation far.

"I know about that." A sneer. "For a while, when you worked to attract Volkoff's attention (and yes, I know of him too, of course; he tried to enlist me once, but I refused, I do not work for anyone)...well, I began to think I would have to kill you then. I should have. It would have kept you from...falling. You could have died doing what you were born to do."

"Really?" Sarah asked. She was going to continue but...

Another set of memories of that time. Rushing across Europe, from place to place. Putting her hands around the neck of a man recently dead, but not by her hand. Leaving a trail of plausible 'kills' that were not kills. Just as the whole thing started with a 'betrayal' that was not a betrayal, started in France. Beckman.

..."My kills in Europe, in Russia, were faked, Archeus. Or I claimed legitimate kills that had not been claimed or creditably claimed. I left evidence to make it look like…"

Of course, Archeus is responsible for DARPA.

"...Anyway, I haven't been in our business for a long time."

No actual termination missions since…Chuck.

"You can have it. I'm not your competition. We aren't in the same business. I'm out."

I really am. We were quitting, starting our own business. A place with windows, above ground.

"And I cannot forgive you for that." Acidic, hateful, intense. Archeus' voice fully human for a second. Silence. The voice dialed back: dried, cooled, entombed again. "What do you do when your hero has feet of...clay?"

Sarah huffed, an acoustic smirk in the dark. "Let me get this straight. You have to kill me because I am this great...assassin. And you have to kill me because I...failed to be this great assassin."

"Yes." Darkness. No elaboration.

Sarah heard Chuck in her head: "Twisty!" Then she said it aloud.

And suddenly, Archeus' hand was around Sarah's throat, her face close, although Sarah could not see it. Sarah could smell...perfume? She sniffed again, audibly, even as the hand tightened on her throat.

"Is that Guerlaine? Le Petit Robe Noir? It is. Really?" She rasped this out through Archeus' grip. The grip tightened more but Sarah went on. "An assassin who leaves a scent trail?"

"And one that I could follow in the dark," Chuck spoke. And there was light.

ooOoo

Madeline Upshaw looked at the cipher from Beckman again.

Good. Beckman had figured it out, or part of it, anyway.

Madeline was in her apartment, in her robe and silk pajamas. Huntaker had come by earlier and had...gotten what he wanted. She had taken a bath and was now trying to decide her next move. It was nearly dawn.

Huntaker had been less gentle than usual, and that was saying something. There was no intimacy in their sex, but this time there had been...enmity. Enmity? Did he suspect her? Now that she recollected, it had felt like he did. It would be just like him to have her one final time before having her killed.

Just like him.

Oh, no. Shit. He knew. She knew he knew.

It should have been clear from when he first put a cold hand on her. Arrogant fool. He thought he could play the part, but he couldn't. He'd have been a lousy spy. That hadn't been love-making, but she hadn't expected, hadn't wanted that; it hadn't even been sex; it had been subtle...violence, a prelude to...her death.

One for the road.

She imagined Huntaker thinking that as he had grunted behind her, smirking to himself.

Shit. She jumped up.

Her 'go bag': she grabbed it; other things in were her other car in another bag. Without waiting to change or even to put on shoes, she fled from her apartment. Her bare feet slapped the tiled floor of the apartment building hallway. She pushed open one stairwell door and began to descend. As she did, she heard the other stairwell door, the one on the other end of the hallway, open. A cold certainty gripped her. A killer was on the way to her apartment.

She'd gotten lucky. She'd chosen the right door.

Entering the sub-basement parking garage carefully, she walked quickly, quietly in the opposite direction from the car she normally drove and went instead to the other car she kept there. One no one knew she owned. It was a black minivan.

She unlocked the door and got in, throwing her 'go bag' into the seat beside her after grabbing a hat from it. She pulled the hat low on her head and she drove out of one exit from the parking garage into the darkness. No one tried to stop her.

Luck was with her. Again. She hoped that was not all her luck gone.

Looking at her watch as she headed away from her home, she thought silently: If I am alive in two days, I might just survive this.

ooOoo

"But, Ellie," Devon said, his voice tired, enervated, "Sarah's forgotten Chuck, her time with all of us."

"But that's just it," Ellie declared, making her point by jabbing her index finger at Devon, "she hasn't 'forgotten'. That's the convenient word, but it is not the right one. There isn't a right one, not a single word, anyway. Her memories have been...hidden from her, but not taken from her. Functionally, it is like forgetting, but, well, physically and psychologically, that's not what happened. She has the memories, she just can't remember them." Devon raised an eyebrow, so she slowed down. "Think about trying to finish a sentence. You know there's a perfect word to finish it, and you know that you know it, but you just can't dredge it up…"

Casey stopped his obsessive gun-cleaning and walked over to join them. "So, 'on the tip of your tongue', that kind of thing?"

"Yes, John, exactly. Chuck is on the tip of Sarah's tongue." She saw Devon and Casey exchange a look. She sighed. "And I know how that just sounded, or how it sounded to two boys…" She glared at her husband and he gulped, nervously.

"Sorry, babe. You can take the boy out of the frat…"

"Don't I know it." Her quick smile erased the glare and undercut her exasperated tone. Devon relaxed. A little.

"As I was saying, Sarah does remember, in the sense that the memories are still there. So far as I know, whatever Quinn did was unlikely to have physically damaged Sarah's brain, and we know from the time when Morgan had the faulty Intersect that it does not cause much irreparable damage either, as long as it doesn't flash often. And Quinn suppressed it in suppressing Sarah's memories. She is no longer flashing in the Intersect sense of 'flash'."

Ellie paused, her engrossment in the problem eclipsed for a moment by an intense rush of worry about her brother and her sister-in-law.

"My problem is that I'm going to have to re-engage the faulty Intersect in order to allow Sarah to re-access her memories. And then I'll need quickly to remove it before it can do any more damage, preferably before she has another Intersect flash."

Beckman had also joined them. Casey and Devon both looked worried, thoughtful. Beckman looked hesitant.

"Then we have a problem, Ellie. I am sure that there is something in the faulty Intersect that is crucial to whatever it is that is going on, whatever Huntaker is planning. I need Sarah to flash on Huntaker, or maybe something connected with Huntaker. Huntaker always required that the Intersect Committee be kept behind the scenes, that he be kept behind the scenes. I now realize he had lots of reasons for doing that…

"So, we need Sarah to flash at least one more time. How dangerous will that be for her, Ellie?"

Ellie couldn't hide her concern. "I don't know. I'll have to think about it. I'd really hoped we could avoid that. The trouble is that no single flash is likely to cause severe damage, but any flash could be the one that does, the flash to end all flashes, as it were, the straw that breaks…well, you know..."

Alex and Morgan had joined the group and heard the last of the conversation. But Carina was nowhere to be found. Beckman noticed it first.

"Where's Carina?" No one knew. She'd slipped away at some point.

"Goddamn it," Beckman growled, "she's going to get herself or us into trouble."

ooOoo

For a moment, both Sarah and Archeus were blinded by the light.

But Sarah recovered faster. Darkness was not second-nature to her as it was to Archeus. She saw Chuck take his hand from the switch and then glide toward them. Glide.

Archeus released Sarah and wheeled to face Chuck. "How?"

"Never underestimate a nerd." Chuck swung at Archeus and she danced away from him. She made an inarticulate sound and pulled a long, black knife from a sheath at her side. It looked blacker against Archeus'...coral pink nails. Sarah had no time to ponder that.

Her intense relief at seeing Chuck was replaced by terror. She knew fighters, knew how to gauge them; it was another skill she had but had not yet used. Archeus' nails may have been coral pink, but she was fluid, liquid metal, mercury, impossibly fast, and she was armed. Chuck, God, how she loved him!, was Chuck. She tried to move, to help, but she was still not able to.

Archeus crouched and smiled. The smile was like a wound on her olive face.

Sarah saw that face for the first time. Archeus was beautiful but in a surprisingly non-descript way, her features dark and even, symmetrical. Sarah could see how easily her appearance could be altered with makeup or a wig or glasses. Her height was average, her body slim but powerful, muscular, but not like a bodybuilder, rather like a world-class ballerina.

Her smile was a killing smile. She fully expected this to end with Chuck dead.

"I planned to kill you in front of her, but more...sacrificially. I guess this will do." Her voice was dead again, embalmed.

Archeus uncoiled in an attack. Vicious, immediate, powerful and precise. And Chuck moved away from it as easily as she had his attack earlier.

Archeus' smile vanished. Her black eyes, eclipses, smoldered. "This grows more...interesting. Sarah, did you choose this...boy...out of pity?"

The line was addressed to Sarah but meant to anger Chuck. He blinked but otherwise did not react. He was focused on Archeus, on the knife.

"Shut up, Archeus," Sarah growled. "You don't know the thoughts in my head. You don't know the feelings in my heart. How could you? We are not the same. We are not even alike. We are completely different. You are a monster." Sarah struck with words if not with her hands or feet. Maybe she could anger Archeus.

Archeus cursed under her breath, and the battle with Chuck commenced in earnest. The two moved in a blur, punctuated by grunts, gasps, and epitaphs. Archeus struck Chuck twice, but each time he was able to shift enough to receive only a cut, long and bloody each time, but not life-threatening. Chuck landed a kick that sent Archeus stumbling backward. He stopped for a second to assess the damage. Sarah could feel his revolt against the necessity of the fight.

Sarah watched in utter, immobile horror. Everything that mattered to her in the world was hanging in the balance. She could barely breathe. She could not help her husband. She could only watch. Fighting back a scream of frustration, rage, and terror, she could only watch.

Familiar. Familiar?

Archeus counterattacked. But she remained partially bent over, protecting her ribs. Chuck had hurt her, really hurt her. The battle continued. Chuck was bleeding, his blood smeared on the floor in places and on one of the walls. It was also on Archeus, on the knife.

Her injury slowed her but she remained deadly, and in possession of the knife. She sliced at Chuck in wet black arcs. She swept Chuck's feet and he went down. She leaped on top of him, catlike despite her injury. She brought the knife above her head, holding it with both hands, and then she plunged it at Chuck.

Sarah was sure it was over. She felt a blackness descending on her, a despair so thick and so complete it would never end. She did scream, then, involuntarily. Her fear huge and spiky thing, bursting and alive, and it demanded a voice.

But somehow Chuck moved, faster than he had yet moved, and he was able to twist himself and to thrust upward. The momentum of Archeus' intended coup de grace carried her knife and her hands mightily to the floor. The knife struck the floor near Chuck's head, sending sparks flying. And then the knife was out of Archeus grasp. She let out a cry. It was full of rage, but also pain. The meeting of knife and floor had reverberated violently along Archeus' arms and shoulders, shocked all the way to her ribs. She lost her grip on the knife.

Chuck was scrambling for the knife. He got to it, but as he did, Archeus leaped up and ran toward the door. Hunched, she swatted clumsily at the light switch but managed to turn off the lights. Her feet could be heard as she ran down the hallway.

There was a long moment of darkness and then Chuck turned on the lights again. He looked down the hallway. Then he turned and rushed to Sarah. He was panting, bleeding. But he only cared about her.

"Baby, baby, are you ok?" Sarah still could not manage much movement, but she was able to nod. She wanted to hug him, cling to him, but her arms would not work. "Yes, Chuck, ok. You?"

She glanced at his cuts. "I'll live," he offered. "Stay here. I need to see if she is really gone."

Before Sarah could stop him, Chuck took the knife and ran out into the hallway. If Archeus had managed to get to a gun...But Sarah heard nothing. After an eternity, Chuck returned.

"We're in an office building, one that's being remodeled. This is the basement, a storage area, I think. Archeus is gone, as far as I can tell." Chuck put the knife into his belt, then bent down and started rubbing her arms and legs. She was beginning to feel them again. The terror and despair were slowly releasing her.

"So she just...left?" Sarah was incredulous.

Chuck gave her a pained look. "It seems to be the season for leaving." He glanced away from her,

"Chuck," Sarah started but then realized she did not know how to go on. He glanced back, waiting.

He was always waiting for her. Patience. Always patience. Even when she had no claim on it that she understood.

"Chuck, I'm sorry. I was...planning to leave. But I'm...not planning that anymore. I don't know if I will stay, if I can stay, but I am not planning to leave. I just can't...I just can't saddle you with all my baggage. You are not a beast of burden."

"I guess you haven't remembered...that detail, and I haven't told you." Chuck's dark brown eyes darkened further still. He helped her stand as she looked at him.

"What haven't I remembered?" She put her arm around his shoulders. They started walking slowly, Chuck bearing her weight.

"That on our first first date I told you I would be your baggage handler."

Sarah turned to him. "You really said that to me, on our first date, barely knowing me?" She was full of wonder.

"The Bartowski Charm School was once open for business, but closed due to a notorious lack of students…" Chuck smirked ruefully at himself, turning away. She could tell he was still embarrassed by what he had said to her, years ago.

Sarah reached out, she could now move her arm, and she touched his jaw gently, turned his face toward her. "I don't remember it, but I know that must have been the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me." She paused, and they started walking again, more quickly, more steadily, her legs moving more at her command. "But Chuck, I am a killer. I am Archeus."

"No, Sarah. No. Think again. You are not a monster. Archeus is what you fear you are. But you told her, just a few minutes ago, that you are nothing like her.

I know you said that to provoke her, but I also know you. You believed it. You still do. I always have. Could you have become someone like Archeus? I doubt it. But here's the important thing. You didn't. You did reluctantly what she does...happily. She's animate, but she is dead. You, Sarah Bartowski, are the most deeply alive person I have ever known. The most creative, not the most destructive. You are a miracle, a miracle, Sarah." He stalled, his voice wet with tears.

Sarah stopped their walk, despite the danger they were in. She wrapped Chuck in her arms and she held him. Held him as tightly as she could.

He was bleeding. She was partially numb. She felt like they were as whole as she could remember them ever being. Not that she could remember much.

But she was remembering now, little by little. Maybe she would eventually decide she had to leave. Maybe. But maybe not. She was not going anywhere anytime soon. Whatever she was, and she still wasn't sure about that, Chuck was right, she was right: she was not Archeus.


A/N2 No cliffhanger, at least not exactly. Breathe, everybody, breathe. (I admit I've been holding my breath writing these chapters.)

Please take this moment of relative calm and leave a review.

My continued thanks to WvonB, halfachance and David Carner.

Tune in next time for Chapter Seventeen, "Datum Clarificandum".