A/N1 So, two chapters to go, one to end the story proper and then one as a coda. Thanks for reading. Thanks for reviewing. Thanks for PMing. Just thanks! If you've been reading and haven't left a review, how about at least one here at the end?

I got this idea at my local pizza shop, talking to my wife. I read Ludlum's The Bourne Identity while a boy, seated in a metal chair leaned against a wall of the barn. I re-read the book several times during my boyhood. It became a definitive spy novel for me. Chuck, of course, is a definitive tv show.

Eating with my wife, a particular passage in Ludlum's novel came spontaneously to mind, tying the code name for the amnesiac Bourne ('Cain') to the letter 'C', and 'C' to the name 'Carlos' and thus to (in English) 'Charlie': and I thought of Charlie, Chuck, Charles Bartowski, and I looked at my wife, and said, "Ok. I will write another story." And thus, this.

I hope you've enjoyed and are enjoying it.

Don't own Chuck (or, inspired by halfachance) the letter 'C', sniper scopes or moving vans or pocket protectors. Well, um, I do own a pocket protector.


ACT V

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Raising the Dead?


Sarah was perched on a stool near the large wall of windows at the NoSlumber Coffee Shop, just up the street from The Excelsior Hotel. She had a knit cap pulled down on her head, brown, and it almost hid her chopped red hair from view. She had on a tan leather jacket, zipped, well worn, and ill-fitting, a size or two too big. They'd bought both the cap and jacket at an Army/Navy surplus. With her large dark-rimmed glasses on too, she did not look like Sarah Bartowski or like Rebecca Franco. The stool allowed her to see up and down the street, and she was looking around apparently casually, but in reality, intently.

Chuck was at the counter, getting them coffees, one decaf, one regular, and a couple of the croissants Sarah had seen and actually drooled over as she passed the counter. She cast a glance at him, hoping he'd add to the order since both croissants belonged to her.

They were taking a chance even being there, but they had to be. They had to see Archeus, had to figure out where she was going to position herself, but they had to do it while the street teemed with Secret Service personnel and others there to guard the President. The fact that the streets were teeming with such people meant that she and Chuck had foregone carrying weapons, other than the knives strapped to her calf and the Intersect bolted to Chuck's mind.

The President's motorcade was due to arrive in a little more than half an hour. It was time: if Archeus was going to do this, she had to make a move soon.

Sarah could feel Chuck's eyes on her from the counter; she nodded to him and shrugged. Nothing yet.

ooOoo

It was still early, but Olin Huntaker had poured himself a scotch, from the prized bottle he kept for special occasions. He was sitting in his study, the tv on, watching news coverage, waiting for the President to arrive. His wife, Janice, came into the room. She was a tall woman, her figure in late middle age had rounded and plumped, but nevertheless, the North Carolina beauty queen she had been when she was younger was still detectable in her graceful, upright bearing and her handsome features.

Huntaker grimaced. Janice was the most annoying piece of furniture in his stately home, and once today ended, he'd begin the process of extricating his life from hers. Huntaker had long ago lost the energy even to hate her. He now felt only a barren contempt for her. The simple facts that she had aged, and that she was a genuinely sweet woman, were more than enough for Huntaker to find her useless, except as part of the life he carefully presented to those who knew him in DC. There were so many other women, younger or...more willing to satisfy his lusts...And soon there would be more. Huntaker wasn't sure if he meant more lusts or more women, but either or both would do. He leered to himself.

He settled onto the couch, registering that Janice had spoken to him but not expending the effort to understand what she had said. He sipped his scotch. If he said nothing, she'd soon leave, and then he could watch his masterwork unfold.

Today.

At last.

ooOoo

Janice waited for Olin to answer her question about the dinner party they were to attend that night. As usual, he ignored her, her question, her.

It had been months since he had so much as touched her, and years since he had touched her with desire. Her life had become an empty rotation of duties, each required but meaningless, like her breathing. She looked at Olin's stony, impassive face and sighed despairingly to herself.

She'd had many opportunities to take lovers; men were often making it clear that they were interested, but she'd stayed stubbornly faithful for these all these years, all these gray years, hoping that eventually the man she thought she married would return to her. She'd made herself believe Olin had done the same. But, late at night, as he snored in their pointlessly shared bed, she wondered…If he was sleeping with other women, then the slender thread from which her hope for her life dangled would...snap. She would plunge into the dark abyss that tried to swallow her whole every day.

ooOoo

Archeus sat in the front passenger seat of the Two Men and A Truck moving van. It had stopped at a distance up the street from The Excelsior.

The man driving, in her employ, shut off the engine. She scanned the street. No one had moved toward them. Everyone was where her expectations told her they would be. Huntaker had managed to get her all the information about the President's security detail and so far the information had been correct. The helicopter in the sky would make its final pass in a few minutes, and then be gone. The President did not like blatant security of that sort defacing his public appearances, concessions to terror.

She pulled the company hat down as far as she could. Her hair was up, inside it, and she wore the overalls required of company workers, along with a company jacket. She jumped from the cab, her heavy, soft-soled boots hitting the asphalt soundlessly. Her ribs screamed in pain but she shut it out. She'd have to survive it. Drugging herself now was not permitted. She needed every nerve on alert despite the agony of it.

She kept moving, not allowing herself another glance around, affecting the tired, bored gait of someone who moved heavy furniture for a living. The other man opened the back of the truck and jumped inside, sliding a large, rolled-up rug to her. She took one end and drew it to her. He jumped out and grabbed the other end as she pulled. Inside the rug were her rifle, her stand, and her other weapons. She turned, her ribs screaming again, and hoisted the rug laboriously onto her shoulders. Together, they started toward the lobby of a tall apartment building, just beyond the point at which a Secret Service man and two others were putting a large sawhorse into place, marking the edge of the on-ground security perimeter. Forcing herself not to look at them, and swallowing her desire to moan in pain, she got to the door, and reached out a hand to open it. There would be more security people in the lobby, and then two on the rooftop. She needed to get past the ones downstairs and then to kill the two on the rooftop.

Then she would assassinate the President. 1, 2, 3...

ooOoo

Sarah sipped her coffee and continued her visual sweep of the area. Chuck was doing the same. He spotted the moving van and bumped her shoulder. She saw it. They watched two people emerge from the cab and move to the back of the truck. It all looked normal. She turned her gaze back up the street, as did Chuck.

Then she had a nagging feeling. Something... But as she turned to look back at the moving van, three large men entered the coffee shop. She realized that she knew one of them: he'd been with the Secret Service when she had, and they'd been casual friends, going out occasionally for drinks on Friday afternoons with other members of their detail. She turned her face to her drink, putting it up to her lips to obscure her face. Chuck saw her maneuver and looked at her.

"I know him," she whispered urgently. "He can't see me." Chuck got up immediately and stood between her and the group of men, who were looking around at the customers. The man Sarah knew looked a second time toward her. Chuck walked to him, talking, pulling a tourist map out of the Army backpack he'd bought and had slung over his shoulder.

"Hey, buddy, can you help me for a minute…" The men tensed and turned their attention to him. The man she knew turned to Chuck too.

Sarah looked back up the street to the moving van. The two people from the van were carrying a large rug, oriental, toward the door of the building. When the smaller of the two, a woman, reached out for the handle of the door, Sarah knew: Archeus. Something about the way she reached for the door, a wince in the motion, recalled Archeus' swipe at the light switch when she escaped in LA.

Chuck had kept moving when he had the attention of the men, and had as a result caused them to turn their backs on her. She looked up at Chuck and their eyes met. He knew. Knew she knew, that she had spotted Archeus. His eyes showed that realization, then a following panic, then resignation. Then everything he felt for her. He'd have to keep the attention of the men. She'd have to go. He nodded one time, so subtle only she would have seen it, and smiled at her. So much in that smile, the most complicated she had ever seen…

She got up and left the coffee shop, moving quickly but not so as to draw attention, up the street, toward the building Archeus entered. Sarah pulled her knit cap down, as if against the chill of the DC air and she gave chase, although she looked like nothing more than a tall woman with a destination in mind to anyone who might have given her a thought.

She got to the building and went into the lobby. Archeus was nowhere to be seen. Sarah spotted the security personnel, but none of them seemed especially interested in her. Not yet, anyway. She knew that she could not hesitate, could not do anything that suggested she did not belong there. She made her way to the elevator, passing inches from a woman who was part of the security team, although she was, as the others were, in plain clothes.

Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out the receipt from the surplus store, looking at it as if it had an apartment number on it. She stepped onto the elevator, and made herself wait, looking at the receipt, until the doors closed.

When they closed, she released her breath slowly. She thought about the look on Chuck's face, his love for her and hers for him.

That look.

Her life in his eyes.

And then, as the elevator began to climb, she remembered Chuck. Everything about him, about the CIA and about Burbank, Larkin and Shaw, and Lou and Jill and Hannah, and Morgan and Ellie and Devon, and Casey and Carina and Graham and Beckman.

Sarah recalled the old adage, the one about how, just before you died, your entire life flashed before your mind's eye. Hers did.

Her father, her mother, Molly. Cons and missions. Darkness, danger, and death, so often death. Budapest, death, and life. Paris and the Eiffel Tower, and the train. That sweet train trip. Thailand and a cobra. Snake. Quinn.

But the connective tissue, somehow even of the parts before she knew him, was Chuck, holding her, holding it all together.

Bringing her back to life.

Helping her find...herself.

It all had a meaning, a meaning she had not understood until Burbank, until Chuck, when she had found a way to live with it all, with the past, and to live forward, into her future with Chuck. As the elevator climbed, her mind reeled, her heart rose and fell, and rose again. So much, so fast. Images. Bleakness and hope and frustration and then...love and life.

A real life.

A new heart.

Chuck.

Live, and learn, and love...with Chuck.

They were bringing a life into the world together.

Always, everywhere, warm and kind and full of love for her, always, everywhere: Chuck. Without knowing it, she had lived her life toward him, found him, fought to have him. She was not going to lose him, her life, hers, with him. With their child. Her family.

No. She was not.

The phantasmagoria of whirling, tumbling images, some shadowed, some shimmering, torrented on; she slumped against the wall of the elevator, panting, dizzy, tranced...but suddenly...herself. Fully herself. She was still reeling when the elevator reached the top floor. She had no time to adjust to it all, to reckon with it.

Archeus was up there, on the roof. She had to get there too.

I have to stop her.

I have to get back home. I have to get back to Chuck.

She steadied herself against the elevator wall, pressing her hands against it, its coolness against the palms of her hands helping her struggle to focus her mind. She stumbled into the hallway when the elevator doors opened, her vision of the hallway still partly overlaid by moving images from her past.

ooOoo

Chuck saw Sarah leave the coffee shop. He wanted to stop her, run to catch her, but he couldn't extricate himself from the conversation he had started, not for a few minutes. When he finally did, he forced himself to amble (Damn, the torture of it, when he wanted to run) to the door. He saw the direction Sarah had gone, but he did not see her on the street.

As Chuck looked up the street, he noticed that the moving van was in motion. The man who had been driving it was back in it, and was turning it around. Chuck peered past it, up the street, hoping that perhaps it had obscured Sarah from view, but she was not to be seen. She must have gone into a building, but which one?

But then Chuck remembered. There had been two people in the moving van, not one. Where had the other one gone, the small one? The smaller one. Smaller. Archeus.

Chuck swung the backpack he'd been carrying in his hand over his shoulder and started up the street, just as he heard the distant sound of sirens. He looked at his watch. The sirens were a sign of the impending arrival of the President's motorcade.

Chuck walked past the street barricade and headed toward the building, praying he was right.

Amble, Chuck, amble. Slow and easy.

Sarah!

This all got turned around. My amnesiac and pregnant wife is closing in on an assassin and I'm too far behind. It was supposed to be me, with the Intersect, who faced Archeus. Amble, Chuck, slow and easy. You. Can't. Run. You. Can't.

Sarah!

He made it into the lobby. That walk had been Lawrence crossing the Nefud Desert. But in the lobby, no Sarah. No Archeus. Security. Everywhere. He headed for the elevator, but a woman in plain clothes, stopped him and asked to look into his backpack. There was nothing in it to raise alarms, and to after a few minutes during which Chuck stood still but fought to keep from shaking in frustration and anxiety, she let him go on. He got on the elevator and headed up.

Sarah!

ooOoo

The elevator had taken Sarah to the top floor, but she would have to take stairs to get to the roof. Her head was still spinning, although the deluge of memories had slowed. She was still dizzy. Not quite fully present in the present.

She found the door to the stairwell and tried to push it open. It was unlocked. It opened an inch or so, but then would not move more. Sarah pushed hard. When the door opened enough for her to squeeze in, she saw a body, a man, on the landing. He had a bullet hole between his eyes.

Sarah bent down to check his pulse. He was warm but dead. His holster was empty.

She grabbed a knife from the ones sheathed to her calf, under her jeans. As she stood up, she swayed, almost fell, her vision blurred. She did not know if it was an after-effect of remembering, if it was the dead body and the blood she could smell, or if it was her morning sickness. She was nauseated. She felt like she was on a small boat in a choppy sea.

She bent over double and closed her eyes. After a moment, her nausea decreased, although it did not wholly subside. She gripped her knife and started up the stairs. Facing Archeus would have been dicey anytime. But doing it while unbalanced by newly returned memories and morning sick because of...well, because...that was not the best plan. But it was the only plan she had. She knew Chuck would come, she knew he would come, but she had no idea how long it would take. She had to get out on the roof.

Up the stairs. She got to the door to the roof. It was solid grey, heavy. No window. No way of knowing what she would face when she went out. She had to hope Archeus was preoccupied with her objective, the President, and confident that no one knew what was happening. She took a breath and tried to clear her overfull mind.

Sarah pushed on the door. She sighed in silent thanks when the door made no sound as it opened. As she slipped out onto the roof, her natural sense of direction took a beat longer than normal to kick in as she blinked in the bright sunlight.

And then she oriented, turned, and saw Archeus. A body was splayed out on the roof not far from Archeus, bleeding, blood pooling around it. The body was lodged under a piece of roofing, invisible from the air. Archeus had put on the man's hat and coat, leaving the movers hat and coat next to the body, hidden; she looked like a member of the security detail.

Sarah's stomach clenched and her throat tightened. She tasted bile. The light made her head hurt.

Archeus was in a crouch, her rifle to her shoulder, the rifle supported by a stand. An open black leather doctor's bag was beside her. She was engrossed in her rifle scope, peering through it, making minute adjustments with delicate movements of her fingers.

Sarah thought about throwing the knife. But it seemed too risky, too far and too unpredictable. So, slow step by slow step, marathon inch by marathon inch, she worked her way toward the assassin. Out of nowhere, she remembered sitting on the couch in Echo Park with Chuck, watching an old Kung Fu episode, a bald Caine walking a path of rice paper without tearing it. She tried to move that way, weightlessly, soundlessly, almost as if not in contact with the rooftop.

She had closed most of the distance when her nausea lava-ed up again, and she stumbled, just a bit, but enough to make a slight noise.

Archeus twisted around. She saw Sarah. Archeus's face became a snarl of rage.

"You? Here? How?"

Sarah shrugged one shoulder.

Archeus' knife was in her hand as if magic, immediate, and the rifle, left in place, tilted up, its silenced barrel now pointing to the heavens.

"I will kill you this time. I will kill you and then I will kill the President of the United States. It will be the greatest day of my life…" Archeus's words squeezed from her mouth, dark, oily and hateful. A smile then began to curl her lips upward.

Sarah anticipated the strike but, even so, only barely managed to leap back as Archeus' knife scythed by her abdomen, missing only by millimeters. The strike was so savage that it carried Archeus a step or two past Sarah. Without thought, Sarah's hand went to her abdomen, panic overtaking her.

The baby!

Sarah's adrenaline began to suppress the nausea. But she could still feel it in the background, wavy and thick and warm. She had to ignore it.

Archeus adjusted herself, her face a mask of agony. Sarah knew the miss had likely hurt her ribs far more than slicing into Sarah would have. The two women stood silent for a second, appraising each other, one injured, one ill.

"Ribs still hurting? My husband sends his greetings…" Sarah smiled with as much glee as she could muster, but her stomach convulsed and it soured her smile.

Still, Archeus jerked at the words. But then Archeus began to smile again herself. "You look a little green, Sarah. Admittedly, it could just be that awful red hair, but I wonder…"

Shit. Archeus had seen Sarah's hand go to her abdomen.

"Could it perhaps be that you have known your husband, maybe a little too...well? Did he leave something inside you, a little memento of his coming...and going? Maybe I can carve it out and show it to you before you die, although it won't look like much at this point…Gutting you will be a special pleasure."

Sarah kept herself from reacting. Archeus' knife was weaving, snake-like, in her hand and Sarah kept her focus on it.

"I thought Nerd Herder's wore protection...pocket protection…" Archeus quirked up an eyebrow, waiting for a response.

Sarah remembered the Bullet Train, making love to Chuck. They had not been careful and she had been at peace with that. She was ready to let nature take its course, to let herself and Chuck move on, carried away by their real life past the spy life.

The memory went by. Sarah responded to Archeus, smirking. "Wow. Maybe you are this great assassin, Archeus, maybe...But puns, now, really? Maybe there's a little nerd in you too?"

Archeus smile vanished. She struck again, lightning fast, even with her injury. Sarah parried the blow, the two knives rasping against each other. Sarah could see that Archeus was now fixated on Sarah's abdomen, and the flurry of blows and strikes that followed all had Sarah's midsection as their target.

Over and over, stabs and swipes, aimed at Sarah's life and the new life she carried.

Twice, Archeus blade made contact, swept, shallowly, across Sarah. Her shirt and the top of her jeans was bloodied. She had struck Archeus a couple of times as well; there was an ugly gash on Archeus' forearm, and the knuckles on her knife hand were cut open and spilling bleed on the ground, on Sarah, on Archeus herself.

Backward and forward. The advantage Archeus', then Sarah's, then Archeus' again. Two deeply game, utterly deadly women, each now silently absorbed in her task: kill or be killed. The rasp of the knives. Panting breaths. Grimaces of pain. Backward and forward. Foreward and backward.

Archeus closed on Sarah once more, her eyes black with fury. This was it; Archeus' all-or-nothing attack. The air was now full of loud sirens. The President's motorcade had arrived. The window of opportunity would close for Archeus very soon. If Sarah could keep her fighting for another minute or two, the President would be safely inside The Excelsior.

Archeus' attack was so committed, so violent, that it drove Sarah back several steps. Her foot caught on an uneven spot on the roof and Sarah fell hard, her knife flying from her hand and bouncing a few feet away. Archeus leaped into the air, following Sarah's fall, her knife poised to stab the life from Sarah.

Sarah caught Archeus's arm as it plunged the knife toward her, just as Archeus landed on top of her. Grunting, Sarah twisted beneath Archeus, dumping her to the side, rolling on top of her. The knife jabbed at Sarah but she stopped it. Slowly, almost glacially, Sarah leaned into Archeus, ever so slowly, ever so glacially, she torqued Archeus' arm around, until the tip of her knife was pointing toward Archeus herself.

And then Sarah leaned with the full force of her greater weight and strength, steering the knife into Archeus' chest, while squeezing Archeus' injured ribs with her thighs. Archeus gasped, weakened because of the pain. Sarah felt the sickening friction of the blade as it passed between Archeus' ribs and then plunged to her heart.

Sarah's stomach heaved. She knew she would might be sick when this was all over. But she had to make sure it was over. She drove the point home.

Her face was almost pressed against Archeus'. Sarah's blue eyes looked into Archeus' black eyes. Black and blue. The life was leaving Archeus's eyes, making them somehow blacker.

"You were Sarah Walker! You could have been so much more." Archeus' words came out as a hiss, the last air from a leaking balloon.

Sarah responded softly, seriously. "I am Sarah Bartowski. I am so much more."

Archeus' pupils blackened permanently.

ooOoo

Sarah heard the stairwell door burst open and Chuck yelling her name: "Sarah!"

"I'm here, Chuck! I'm here!"


A/N2 Well. Well. There. Tune in next time for Chapter 22, "Ending, Not Stopping". Review? Pretty please?