A/N1 Welcome to another crescendo in our story. We've had one, back in Chapter 9, now we reach the next.
Likely some of you are frustrated with Sarah (or me (inclusive 'or')) by now. But remember, although we are seventeen chapters into the story, Sarah's had very little time to adjust to her discoveries about her past, particularly her CIA past. Oh, and part of that time she has spent unconscious or understandably preoccupied with other things (Cough! Archeus. Cough!).
One of the fascinations of working close-up with the characters is that you get a chance to ride the characters' pulses. But it is easy to lose track of how much time has actually passed when your primary clocks are the 'internal clocks' of the characters, not their wall clock. As the phenomenologists say, lived-time differs from mathematico-physical time, or, as XTC puts it in a memorable lyric: "Clock in my head/clock on the wall/somehow the two of them/don't agree at all."
Thanks for reading and reviewing. Thanks for the PMs.
Don't own Chuck.
ACT V
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Creation and Re-Creation
Huntaker was frustrated, frustrated with a smoldering, galling frustration.
He couldn't get the information, the confirmation, he needed. Archeus told him she was on her way to DC, but she didn't tell him the Bartowski's were dead. He couldn't imagine that she had failed. She was too good; they must be corpses by now. Dead. Maybe she just expected him to infer it from the fact that she was heading to Washington.
But he also was frustrated that Madeline had escaped his grasp.
He'd take the chance, certainly not something he normally would have done, and went to her because he wanted the pleasure of having her once more before the men he sent killed her and destroyed her body. That last mattered; Huntaker did not want any trace of the nature of his relationship to Madeline to be discoverable. He needed his wife by his side, the gullible cow. She was an important piece of camouflage. But not only had Madeline escaped, no one knew where she was, no one could find her. Huntaker was unsure how much of his plan she knew, but it was more than anyone other else. He needed her dead. She should be dead. Dead.
Huntaker had done what Archeus asked; he'd steered the search for Sarah Bartowski toward San Diego. And the searchers had found nothing. If Sarah Bartowski and her eternally annoying husband were dead, as they should be, dead, then it didn't matter. But if not? Maybe he should steer the search back to LA? No, he would wait; the Bartowskis must be dead.
Huntaker's final frustration was the Beckman had vanished too, as had the rest of Team Bartowski.
But now was not the time to pull back, even in the face of uncertainty. Now was the time. What did they say? Go big or go home. Huntaker was going big. It was almost all in his grasp.
He'd spent years and years deforming the mind of Samuel Gordon, the Vice President, years and years twisting Gordon into the shape he desired, and then years and years pulling strings to get his misbegotten puppet into position. He was in position.
Once the President was dead, Gordon would, of course, take over. And that meant that Huntaker would take over. Huntaker did not care to sit in the Oval Office; he didn't care about titles. He just wanted to control the person who sat in the Office and bore the title. Huntaker wanted the power, just the power. Everything else was dross.
Huntaker had long ago decided that getting his person in the Office via regular means, by running a candidate and chasing votes, was too risky. The better, surer way was to (in this create the perfect political non-zero zero, the perfect vice presidential candidate, rich, handsome, bland. A person no presidential candidate would ever worry about stealing the limelight or being any sort of competition or problem.
When Huntaker met Gordon at the Augusta National Golf Club years ago, he knew he had found his man. Gordon was handsome but not too handsome, bright but not studious or reflective; he was self-centered in a vague, smiling way, and mostly lacked a will of his own.
Huntaker dictated the mind and will of Gordon, and he supplied shaped Gordon's appetites-for sex, for possessions, for drink and drugs. Huntaker had done it all in a way that shielded Gordon from discovery or from collapsing so completely into his vices that he lost his Vice Presidential promise. As a result, Huntaker had enough on Gordon to ensure that if Gordon suddenly grew a pair, a mind and a will, Huntaker could take them in hand and squeeze until Gordon surrendered. Huntaker was a dark wizard at blackmail.
Huntaker had made it happen: he'd contrived to get Gordon into position and the candidate for president took the bait, chose Gordon as a running mate. Won. Now it was time to change the administration. It was time for the Huntaker presidency to begin.
Of course, no one would know, but that was fine. The facts were what mattered, not what people believed.
It wasn't that the office of president had more power than Huntaker, but it had powers Huntaker did not have, and could not scheme to reach, not for sure, not quickly. Huntaker was running out of years. He couldn't wait forever.
He couldn't wait. It was all too close, too near.
Madeline. He'd find her, make sure she died for her betrayal. He'd believe the Bartowskis were dead until he had a reason not to.
It was all so close, so near. It would happen. Soon.
Archeus had planned it. She did not fail. Huntaker didn't either. Not unless Chuck Bartowski and his maddeningly competent wife were involved. But they were dead. Dead.
ooOoo
Chuck gently shook Sarah awake. Roan had parked the car and had already gone inside to find Beckman and the others. Chuck had wanted a moment with Sarah. She had slept peacefully against his shoulder and he had spent his time talking to Roan but looking at her.
She was so precious to him. Would she end up deciding to leave him? He'd worried about that for so long, years, really, and had never gotten over the worry. The last few weeks had only made exacerbated it.
He couldn't make her stay, wouldn't dream of it if he somehow could. He always wanted to be her choice. He hadn't tried to convince her to leave Shaw and Beckman and her commitments, he'd just stated his case and made his plea.
Of course, she had left him standing at Union Station, but that had been Shaw's doing; she had been on her way to Chuck. He'd found that out later as they lay exhausted in the hotel bed in Paris and worked out and worked through some of what had happened to them.
ooOoo
Sarah woke up. It was daybreak. Morning. Beginnings. She was in Roan's car. Chuck was carefully, softly shaking her awake, looking at her.
He began to talk in a whisper.
"Sarah, I just want to say one thing, and then I will let you decide whatever it is you have to decide. Here's what I want to say: the past is fixed in one way, and not in another.
You can't change what happened in your past, but you can change what it means, at least within certain limits. You already have. You have changed, and so what your past means has changed too.
"You are not the same person who did those things, but even that person had her excuses for what she did. You are not and you have never been Archeus, no matter what you fear, no matter what she thinks.
"Those excuses matter even more because of what you did for Molly, then what you did for me, and for my family, and what you did when you took the chance to be with me, to tell Beckman that we were really together, to accept my proposal, to become my wife, to start...planning a family.
"You really did all those things, Sarah, they were your choices. Even if you don't remember them, they were. And they show the person you really are, the person you have really always been." He looked deep into her eyes, and she lost herself in his for a moment.
"They were all hard for you, those choices, they required you to go against handlers, rules, your bosses, your own insecurities, your father's and Graham's indoctrinations. I helped you, but you did those things, you did the heavy lifting...
"What yesterday means is partly decided by what you do, or..." he looked even more deeply into her eyes, "...or don't do today, Sarah."
He stopped himself with a visible jerk, determined not to go on. He'd had his say.
She touched his lips just barely with the tips of her fingers. She didn't know what to say, so she let her lips replace her fingers, opening her lips slowly to his. When she pulled back from the kiss, Chuck's eyes, so close to hers, were impossibly full, full of faith, full of hope, full of love, but also full of fear. She did not know how to make the fear go away. She couldn't get clear about herself, about what she was.
She wanted to stay; that was all she could say: "Chuck, I don't want to go. I want to stay."
His eyes stayed fixed on hers, steady, and still full: then he looked away.
After a moment, he looked back. "I get it, Sarah. I've said what I have to say. If you do leave, know that I will be here, and that I will always be here, always be willing to talk or…" he twisted his lips, smiling and frowning simultaneously, "...or not talk, if you want to just be. I love you. Not just you-with-me; I love you."
He broke Sarah's heart.
Everything he did to keep her made her feel less like she had any right to keep him. He was out of her league, human to a degree she could never be, regardless of what he thought.
She couldn't choose him; it wouldn't be fair.
Would it? All's fair...
She wanted to kiss him again. And again. To find some comfortable, flat surface, even as tired and groggy as she was, and to let the kisses take their inevitable course.
But sleeping in the car seemed to have unsettled her stomach. She realized she felt slightly off, nauseated.
They climbed out of the car and she took Chuck's hand. Roan had come back and was holding one of the building's side doors open, gesturing for them to follow him. Ellie (Sarah took it to be Ellie, she looked so much like Chuck and she looked...familiar) appeared beside him, her look of worry transforming into relief as they got nearer and she could see them up-close.
She hugged Chuck and then Sarah. At first, the hug was awkward for Sarah, but then the feeling of the hug came back to her; she fondly remembered other Ellie hugs, always events in her life, evidently.
When Ellie finished the hug, she took Sarah's hand and led her inside. Chuck followed her, and Roan closed the door and brought up the rear.
ooOoo
Chuck's words were in Sarah's mind as the walked through the deserted hallways. Ellie stopped at a door and turned around.
"Look, you both are clearly exhausted. But I need to get started; we don't have lots of time. I am going to examine Sarah. I'm going to get her before Beckman can. While I examine her, Chuck, go and see Casey. He can clean your cuts. When I finish with Sarah, I will look at them too. I think they will just need bandages, given what I can see."
Chuck nodded and he and Roan went on down the hall, Roan now leading the way.
Ellie waited until they were a distance down the hallway before she spoke.
"Are you ok?" She looked at the vestiges of the wounds on Sarah's wrists. "Come on."
The room turned out to be a familiar sort of hospital room, but stuffed with machines. Ellie waved to the bed in the room. "Sit down and take off your clothes, Sarah, so I can get a look at you." Sarah stiffened. Ellie caught herself. "Sorry, I must seem like a stranger…just think of me as your doctor."
Sarah reddened and nodded. "Sorry, Ellie. I do...and I don't know you. That hug...I knew that hug. I'll be ok."
Sarah started to comply, taking off her jacket, when her nausea returned, much worse than before. She ran into the bathroom and vomited. Ellie was quickly behind her, rubbing her back and holding her hair, talking in soothing tones.
After a few minutes, Sarah stood up and flushed the toilet. When she turned, Ellie handed her a washcloth and was looking at her speculatively, the way Chuck had looked at her when she'd been eating the pickles at the In-and-Out. Then it became clear what he had been wondering then, what Ellie was wondering now.
"Oh, God, Ellie," Sarah breathed out, her feeling that Ellie was a stranger suddenly gone, "you don't think…"
"When were you and Chuck last together?" Ellie grinned. "Oh, I don't mean yesterday or anything, but before all this insanity started."
"In Japan, on the Bullet Train."
Ellie smiled a little. "You remember that?"
Sarah nodded. "Yes, but not...clearly. Through a fog. But I know we made love on the train."
"We'll get back to your memory. So, any other signs that you might be pregnant, other than what just happened?"
"Well, that happened yesterday morning too. But Chuck gave me this concoction the night before; it was to neutralize something Quinn made me ingest so I could be tracked…"
Ellie's eyes got big. "The crazy shit that you two...Oh, never mind; I will ask Chuck about...the concoction. But we know my brother. He'd never give you something he thought would harm you in some way. Anything else?"
"An even-stronger-than-normal desire for pickles? But I like pickles. And I've been starving? But I haven't had...time to eat much."
Ellie was listening carefully. "Are your breasts sore at all?"
"Um…" Sarah thought for a moment, "yes, I guess so, not bad, I guess. But Quinn's men beat me, so I thought I might...have been hit there…"
Disbelief and concern eclipsed curiosity on Ellie's face. "My God, Sarah!" But then she stymied the sister, became the doctor again, although her eyes showed how much she hated what Sarah had endured, how sorry about it she was. "So, have you missed a period?"
Sarah shook her head. "Well, I haven't had one, but I don't remember…"
"Oh, right. Shit. Sorry, Sarah. I forgot that you...don't remember…Look, let's do a blood test. I will take some blood, and then take it upstairs. They have a lab here, it runs 24/7; we could get an answer soon."
Ellie narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, studying Sarah. "But my best guess is that you are pregnant. Don't ask me how I know, I'm not offering it as a medical opinion...yet, but my personal, my...womanly opinion is that you are carrying my niece or nephew. Forgive me, you look bad, but there's an early glow under that exhaustion…"
A glow?
Pregnant?
Sarah sat perfectly still. She had no idea how to react.
A baby? Her? A mother? A baby?
She sat and waited for the panic to rise.
She waited.
She waited.
...
Eventually, tears filled her eyes.
But they were not tears of panic or of fear. They were tears of...joy.
A baby. I will be a mother.
She should have been in a full panic, she should have been screaming inside.
But instead, inside there was only one word, deep, quiet, gratified: Yes.
Chuck's baby. My baby. Our baby. Our family. My family. Mine. Ours.
And then she realized she was not going to leave, that she would never have been able to leave, baby or not. Chuck was her home. To leave him would have been to become homeless. She was not going to leave. She wouldn't have left. She just hadn't lived her way to a consciousness of that yet. But it had been decided long before.
She had lost that contest a long time ago, and the fast-forward replay of it she had been living through the last few days was not going to change the outcome. She loved Chuck. She wanted him. She wanted to be with him.
And she was going to have his child. Chuck was right. She was not Archeus; she'd never been. And she was not who she was before Burbank, and she never would be that person again. She'd made choices; now she was carrying proof of those choices. Joyful proof.
Ellie was watching Sarah's face closely. A smile, slow but eventually huge, took over Sarah's face, and Ellie grabbed her, and she grabbed Ellie, and they hugged each other...hard. Again, the feeling that Ellie was a stranger was gone.
Sarah was giddy. Overwhelmed, a little, a lot, of course. But giddy.
Sarah pulled free and looked seriously at Ellie. "If this is true, I can't have Chuck find out until he and I have a chance to talk. Don't let on, please."
"Doctor-patient confidentiality," Ellie said, making the motion of locking her lips and throwing away the key, then smirking at her own silliness. But Ellie was a little giddy too. They both sat for a moment, taking deep breaths.
Ellie got a syringe, took some blood, and left.
Sarah sat motionless in her underwear, straining to wrap her mind around what had just happened. Lost in thought and feeling, she had no idea how long Ellie had been gone when she returned. As Ellie came in, Sarah hugged herself. Finally, Sarah was bringing her head up to speed with her heart.
"Sorry. I stopped and bandaged Chuck's cuts. They are long but shallow. No stitches necessary.
"We should know something about you soon. I sweet-talked the tech guy in the lab."
Ellie asked for a brief recap of what happened with Archeus. After Sarah talked about the gas that Archeus had used, Ellie called the lab and gave more instructions to the tech guy.
When she finished the call, she looked around the room, then at Sarah, something on her mind. She asked finally, hesitantly. "Sarah, is there any reason to worry that Quinn or his men…"
Sarah shook her head. "No, I'm positive nothing like that happened. No signs. I checked. Um, ah...that was the only...general area where...I wasn't sore when I first woke up. And I know I would have fought them."
Ellie rubbed Sarah's shoulder and nodded. Then Ellie started the exam. It was thorough. Ellie wanted to be sure Sarah was ok.
"Your bruising is healing well. You are, as always, in amazing shape. I don't think your wrists will scar. Exhaustion, a little dehydration. But otherwise fine, I think. You're a little indestructible, you know." Ellie crinkled her eyes. "What's that phrase Chuck likes?" She looked into the distance, trying to remember.
"'Nigh-invulnerability', right," Sarah offered, "The Tick, the big blue guy with antennae and the moth sidekick, 'the funny bunny man'?" Sarah was shaking her head as she spoke, giggling.
Ellie stepped back. Sarah wondered what was wrong. "Is that not right? He made me watch that cartoon with him. He especially likes the one about the boy with the huge brain in the fishbowl thingy...Brainchild? With the robot dog...Skippy, I think?"
Ellie giggled too, now shaking her head. "You remember that?"
Sarah realized she did. She did remember that.
Ellie sat down. "So, let's talk about your memory."
ooOoo
Madeline pulled herself desperately across the cabin floor, leaving a bloody trail. She'd been shot several times. She could hear a new magazine shoved into the pistol behind her.
Her luck had run out. Huntaker's men had caught up with her. She'd played her game. She had lost.
But Huntaker hadn't won. Not yet. That she lost did not mean he won. No. She'd sent an email, a cipher, to Beckman. Maybe Beckman could stop him. Maybe Huntaker would lose too.
That surge of hope was the final thing she ever felt. The gun fired. Madeline collapsed to the floor, her long red and grey hair hiding her face from view.
A/N2 Big chapter. Thanks for sticking with me. Tune in next time for Chapter 19, "Pattern Recognition". We are closing in on the end; as I'm sure you are, I'm ready for it. Just a few more chapters.
