The Twilight Zone marathon day went wonderfully yesterday. We all had a blast. OK, it may not be the typical Christmas, but it's ours. And Sarah fit in beautifully.
I still can't get the image of her standing with a smoking gun out of my head, though. I am trying to find a way to accept it – a way to deal with it. It's hard to do, but I imagine she had to have had a reason – a good reason.
The last thing she'd said to me before leaving the Buy More was that she would protect me, never let anyone hurt me. Mauser was a threat to me. I mean, he knew that I am the intersect and that information is pretty closely guarded. Mauser isn't the first fulcrum agent to ask about Bryce Larkin. If their resources are tied up in searching for Bryce, I suppose that's less danger for me and my family.
But Mauser knew. He knew I was the intersect. He knew they didn't have to go after Bryce anymore. Even inside a secure CIA facility, would that information leak out? If fulcrum has agents on the inside, might one of them eventually talk to Mauser? Or hear about him telling everyone that Chuck Bartowski is the intersect?
Seriously, if Mauser made it his mission, even inside a secure facility, to spread information, could it be stopped? I don't know. Sometimes the powers of the CIA and NSA seem almost magical. And sometimes they seem to be impotent about things. I have to guess that, eventually, that news would get out, if Mauser kept trying.
And if that news got out, that would be the end of my life, wouldn't it? Whether it would literally mean death or imprisonment by either fulcrum or our government, I don't know, but my life, as I know it, would definitely end. That's a scary thought.
Is that what Sarah was saving me from? Did she know that? Did she pull that trigger, possibly at great cost to herself, to save me? To protect me? She probably put all this together faster than I did. So, she did what she said she would do – she protected me.
And lying? Was that also for my protection? Probably, in her mind. She knows how much I hate killing and thinking about death. She's trying to shield me from the ugly side of her job and the reality of my situation, isn't she?
Because, now, what worries me is that I'm the direct reason that Sarah had to kill someone. And shoulder the deception burden of keeping things from me. I have to be stronger than that. Sarah shouldn't have to bear that burden alone. She already bears too many things alone.
Or should I just give up and protect Sarah from that ugliness by volunteering to go into protective safe-keeping? Or would the pain of separation be real for her and the best thing to do for her is to let her protect me, even from the ugliness she has to do on my behalf? No wonder she always says things are complicated. This is making my head hurt.
But I need to understand. I need to find a way to make sense of this. It wasn't senseless killing. I believe that now. I know that now. It was killing to protect me. I always knew, intellectually, that was part of the job. I guess it just wasn't a part I expected to ever see or have to deal with, personally. How naïve of me. I probably have no idea how lucky I've been so far.
The problem is, that image is still burned in my brain. And it still hurts.