Revelations
By MySoapBox
Chapter 11: Saved
After the dinner check was settled, the trio drove back to Charlie's apartment so that he could change for his night shift at the fire station. While he dressed, Sarah and Chuck found themselves waiting, once again, in the small student apartment.
A few moments later, Charlie came out of the bedroom wearing his blue uniform. For the second time that day the sight of him took Sarah's breath away. They had talked so much today about the little Charlie; that little wide eyed boy that held her hand on the airplane all the way to L.A.. But the person that stood before her now was Charlie the young man. The young man that was California State Junior Kung Fu Champion. The young man who at sixteen came home from rock climbing with his Uncle Devon and announced that he was going to be a doctor. The young man that worked late into the night to ensure that he would get into Stanford. The young man that gave up his first summer at college to get his EMT certification. The young man that was thinking about becoming a spy.
Considering him now, she knew that she and Chuck had made the right decision in coming here today; in finally revealing to Charlie the truth about their past – about his past. He needed to know his family's history. He deserved to know, before he took this next big step in his life, so that in looking back, he could make the best decision for his future.
Sarah approached Charlie and straightened his collar. The eyes that looked back at her were a mirror image of her own; but when she rubbed a smudge off his chin, the smirk on his lips was his father's.
"Mom," Charlie complained, "I'm not three."
"I know," she said, feeling nostalgic.
Charlie glanced at a clock on the wall. "I'm sorry. I only have twenty more minutes. Is that enough time to finish the story? I'm dying to find out what you did to that computer, Dad."
"I think that should be enough time, don't you think?" Sarah looked over to Chuck.
"I'm actually glad that we don't have much time to tell this last part. It's going to be hard telling it as it is," Chuck confessed.
"It's okay, honey, it was a long time ago," Sarah comforted.
"You're right," he agreed. "But it's not a place I like to go, you know. The memories sometimes feel so fresh."
Sarah nodded. "I know. For a moment there, I thought it was the end…"
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Nicole put her hand on top of Blackhawk's weapon. "No. Don't kill them. The Intersect may still be salvageable. Take Mr. Bartowski to a holding cell. See if you can get him to enlighten us on what went wrong."
Sarah moved forward to protect Chuck, shifting her weight in preparation to strike. If they wanted to take Chuck, it would be over her dead body. The last thing she remembered was a sharp pain on the back of her skull, and then all went black.
When she regained consciousness, she could feel someone stroking her hair. She opened her eyes to see Chuck above her. One of his eyes was swollen and red, and there was a gash in his bottom lip. Blood was smeared across the side of his mouth where he must have attempted to wipe it away.
"Oh," Sarah moaned. "Are you okay?"
"I could ask you the same thing." He continued to stroke the hair from her face. "You've been out for awhile."
"How long?"
"Thirty minutes, maybe more."
Sarah started to sit up and immediately regretted it as a sharp pain shot through the back of her skull and down her neck. "Whoa," she put her hand on the back of her head and felt the large lump there. "What did that guy hit me with? A two-by-four?"
"They got you pretty good."
Sarah reached up and gently touched Chuck's bruised face. "Looks like they got you pretty good, too."
"Me? Nah. That Blackhawk is really a softy at heart."
"You know, it's okay; even the best talk during torture."
"Who said I talked?"
Sarah beamed at him and leaned forward and delicately kissed his battered lip.
"Ah…ow!" Chuck complained.
"Sorry, I just can't resist you when you play the hero."
"Well, I'll plan on getting beat up a little more often if it's such a turn on."
Sarah smiled and then looked around the small room they were in.
"So, what's our status?" she asked.
"Blackhawk was called away from our little 'talk' about ten minutes ago. Some sort of problem out in Fulcrumland. We're locked in some kind of holding room. The door is dead-bolted from the other side."
Sarah stood and tried the handle. She stepped back and threw all her weight behind a running kick at the door. It didn't budge.
"Together?" Chuck asked. Sarah, feeling a little dizzy, agreed.
They stood side by side and counting to three and kicked simultaneously at the door. The whole wall shuddered but the door held firm.
"It's no use," Sarah panted.
"Maybe not," Chuck agreed, "but there's always hope."
Sarah gave him a weak smile and slid her back down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. She lowered her head. "I'm so sorry."
"Sorry?" Chuck asked, "For what?"
"For getting us into this mess. For thinking we could beat Fulcrum."
"You mean we still can't? Don't you know that this is all part of my ingenious plan?"
"Cute." Sarah smiled at his attempt at levity. Chuck came and sat beside her on the floor. Sarah looked up into his face. "You know...the day Nicole approached me about joining, I just knew."
"Knew?"
"That we would never have peace. As long as Fulcrum was a power and you had the Intersect, they would never leave us alone…not Fulcrum, not the CIA…I thought if I could save you…"
"Hey…hey…" he lifted her chin with his hand. "You did save me: ever since the day you walked into that Buy More and gave me that lame line about your phone not being fixed because you hadn't gotten a call from me, you've been saving me."
"You thought that was a lame line?" she asked, her face serious at first and then the corners of her mouth inched up.
"And you saved me from execution three years later…let's not forget that."
"Yes."
"And then you saved me again," Chuck's eyes softened as they searched hers, "the day you gave me our son."
"Mmm," Sarah murmured.
"God, I miss him. Do you know it's almost been a year since I've seen him?"
"I miss him too; every minute of every day I've been away."
"Sarah, even if it all ends now, even if they burst through that door and shoot us right here, I want you to know that my only regret is that I won't live to see Charlie grown. I'm just glad that I got to spend that last six years with you. You saved me, Sarah."
Sarah loved how he could make her heart flutter even now, even here; in the most dire of circumstances; he could still make it all feel alright. Chuck closed his eyes and leaned in to kiss her, when suddenly they heard a loud crashing sound, like thunder.
"What was that?" Chuck asked.
"Sounded like some sort of explosion. A big one," Sarah said.
Chuck smiled. "It looks like the cavalry has finally arrived."
"Cavalry? No one knows we're here!"
"They do if they got my message in a bottle," Chuck said grinning.
There were shots fired, and scuffling in the hallway outside the door. More gunfire followed and a man cried out. Then there was an eerie silence.
Chuck got up and pounded on the door. "Here! We're in here!"
A voice came from the other side, "Stand clear!"
A few seconds later a small explosion showered them with debris. Sarah looked up to see a small section of the door had been blown away where the door latch had been.
A soldier in full combat gear pushed his way through the twisted metal door. "Are you the Bartowskis?"
Chuck managed to cough a "yes" through the settling dust.
"Colonel! We've found them!" the soldier shouted down the hallway. He reached out his hand and helped Sarah stand. "Lieutenant Wheeler, First Marine Raider Battalion, at your service."
"Thank you Lieutenant," Sarah said, brushing herself off.
Chuck was doing likewise. "Are we ever glad to see you!"
A large hulk of a man, flanked by a special ops team in full gear jogged down the hallway towards them. Chuck recognized him immediately. After all, he had saved Chuck's life more times than he could count. "Where the hell have you two been hiding?!" Casey shouted at Sarah and Chuck when he saw them. "Were you trying not to get rescued? We've only got fifteen minutes!" Casey put his hand up to his helmet. "Sergeant, get some gear up here! We've found them," he said into his radio.
"What's the situation?" Sarah said, switching into agent mode.
"We've secured half the building. Unfortunately, the way we came in has collapsed; we have to shoot our way out. Apaches are due in fifteen to blow this place to kingdom come. We have to get the hell out of here before that happens!"
"What?" Chuck stammered. "Casey, this is suicide. The odds of us making it out alive…"
He slammed a fresh clip into his M16 automatic. "Never tell me the odds."
"Chuck's right, Casey. You never should have ordered these men to risk their lives just for us."
"We volunteered, ma'am," the young Lieutenant Wheeler responded.
"That's right. When I told my men about you two, they volunteered," Casey replied.
Another team member came sprinting down the hallway towards them and slid a bag to Casey. He ripped opened the bag and tossed vests and helmets to Chuck and Sarah with a, "put these on." Once secured, Casey handed an M16 to Sarah who took it deftly.
"You got a side arm for Chuck?" she asked him.
"What? For the geek? I don't want my men loosing any appendages," Casey protested.
"I'm not asking for major firepower, but he can handle a nine millimeter."
"Fine." Casey reached around to his back and handed Chuck his standard issue Beretta. "But he still owes me a toe."
"Your trust in me is heartwarming, Casey," Chuck replied, giving the weapon a once over.
"Alright men, let's move out!" Casey issued the command and the small group of Marines headed down the hallway.
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"So how did your old partner find you?" Charlie asked.
"It was your father's worm," Sarah answered, "the one that he uploaded to the network right before the Intersect crashed."
Chuck smiled in satisfaction. "My original plan was to have the worm very quietly and slowly copy files from Fulcrum computers and store them in one hidden place on the system that only I could access. When everything fell apart, I didn't have time for that, so I uploaded a different worm. It was my first design. I took to carrying it around with me in case of an emergency. I originally decided against using it because it was so invasive; even a first year Computer Science major would have noticed its presence immediately. The CIA email addresses I programmed in could be easily identified."
"So you had Fulcrum's computers email all their data to the CIA?" Charlie repeated.
"Yeah, basically. It was a gamble. I didn't even know if it would work, but I figured at that point, why not try it?"
"Luckily, Casey had asked the CIA tech teams to be watching out for us." Sarah said.
"When he learned that we had been kidnapped by Fulcrum he put two and two together and figured we might try to get word out. When fifty gig of Fulcrum data suddenly clogged up the CIA's email system, he got our message."
"But you two weren't kidnapped by Fulcrum. Well…Dad, I guess you technically were… but you weren't, Mom." Charlie said
"If Casey knew that I had joined Fulcrum of my own free will, he never said. It was always Casey's assertion that we were both captured by Fulcrum and forced to work on their Intersect. We never corrected that assumption."
Chuck got a far away look in his eyes. "It renewed my faith in humanity, in a way. Casey could have written us off. He and his team could have let the NSA destroy us, and rightly so - we were Fulcrum after all. I can't tell you what it meant to me…" he looked over to Sarah, "to us…that so many good men would risk their lives to rescue us…"
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Chuck, Sarah, Casey and his handful of men had all converged on small maintenance room that led to the building's loading dock.
As the point man moved stealthily onto the loading dock, shots rang out, and the soldier crumpled to the ground.
The team all scattered for secure locations.
"Fulcrum must have left some lackeys behind to keep us from pursuing them," Casey grumbled. "Are you sure this is the only way out?" he asked Sarah.
"Yes, if the back has collapsed and front doors are blocked. This is it," Sarah answered.
Casey hissed to his team, "This is it boys! Flashbangs on three and then we go."
He put three fingers in the air. Three, two, one. A couple of his men tossed the metal canisters onto the loading dock, while the rest of the team hunkered down and closed their eyes.
Bang! The grenades exploded with blinding light and deafening sound. The small cloud of smoke partially hid the team as they sprinted out of the maintenance room to various points of cover on the dock.
Chuck and Sarah were the last out of the room, and for Chuck, everything started to go in slow motion. At the doorway they had to step over the body of the fallen soldier. Chuck glanced down and saw the empty eyes of Lieutenant Wheeler staring back at him. Refocusing on finding a place for cover, Chuck headed for some nearby crates. He heard gun fire. Just a few more strides and they would make it to safety.
Another shot rang out and Chuck sensed, more than saw, Sarah crumple to the ground behind him. He turned and saw Sarah was down.
He ran back and dragged her the last five feet to safety behind the crates.
She was still. Chuck tore off her helmet. "Sarah, Sarah, are you okay?"
Sarah gasped for breath and moaned. "Yeah…the vest…just knocked the breath out of me." She went to sit up and cried out in pain. "I think I've broken a rib."
Chuck heard the explosive pops of shots hitting on the opposite sides of their hiding place. A nearby soldier returned the fire.
In the lull that followed, Chuck heard the low whap,whap,whap of helicopters in the distance.
"I've got visual on the Apaches!" one man yelled.
"Fulcrum's in retreat!" another called.
"Roger, that!" Casey called back. "Times up! Everybody out of here. Now!"
Guns blazing, the soldiers ran out of their cover locations, off the dock, and into the open parking lot. Casey sprinted back towards the door to retrieve the body of the fallen Lieutenant. Fulcrum agents were scattering from their hiding places in every direction.
Chuck turned back to Sarah, "Can you stand? We've got to go."
"Yeah, I think so," Sarah sat up slowly and gritted her teeth. Chuck saw sweat break out across her forehead and one tear escape down her cheek. He put his shoulder under her arm and took her weight as she leaned heavily on him.
As Chuck struggled to get Sarah off the loading dock, he saw Casey hand off the body he carried to another Marine and head back towards them.
"Sarah's hurt!" Chuck called out to him.
"I'm fine…I…" Sarah's eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed; Chuck caught her just in time to lower her to the pavement.
It was then that Chuck noticed the dark red stain at her waist. "Oh, my God! Sarah!" Chuck was frantic. "Casey! She's been shot!"
"If we don't get out of here now, we'll all be charbroiled!" Shoving his M16 at Chuck, he scooped Sarah up and threw her over his shoulders in the fireman's carry.
Chuck and Casey ran across the parking lot into a large corn field that lined that side of the compound. Just as they reached the tall rows, the Apaches launched their missiles. In the distance, the building exploded in a tower of flame and smoke.
For a second Chuck thought about the people he knew that might still be in that building. Chuck shook his head. He couldn't be bothered with that. He had to help Sarah.
Casey removed Sarah's vest. The bullet must have come in right below the bottom edge of the Kevlar. Chuck pulled his off his own vest and shirt and pressed it against the wound to stop the bleeding. They rolled her over and found an exit wound at the small of her back.
Sarah suddenly jerked and coughed. "So thirsty. What happened?"
"Sarah, honey, you've been shot. Help is on its way." Chuck ripped the shirt in half and pressed the torn t-shirt up against the back wound, while Casey got the front.
Sarah opened her eyes, but squinted against the light. "It hurts," she moaned. She started to tremble.
"She's going into shock," Casey said. "Roll her onto her back."
Casey rolled her back and loosened her clothing while Chuck applied the cloth to the entry wound.
Chuck could hear gunfire all around him as the Marines hunted the last of the Fulcrum agents in the corn.
"Hang in there Sarah," Chuck said. "Only a few more minutes."
There was nothing he could do other to sit there and wait while the Apaches performed their aerial dance of destruction on the Fulcrum installation and the Marines fought all around him.
Chuck noticed that the parking lot was mostly empty. "I guess most of Fulcrum got away," Chuck lamented.
"Don't be so sure. When my team got here, Fulcrum was scrambling out of here like cockroaches with the lights turned on. Only, there's no place to go when you build your compound in middle of a thousand acres of Virginia corn fields. Idiots. Why do you think they agreed to give me twenty minutes to get you out? The Apaches had some bug squashing to do first." Casey grunted in satisfaction.
One of his men called out for him. Casey put his hand on Chuck's shoulder. "I've got other wounded to check on," Casey said, his voice thick with regret. He excused himself and disappeared deeper into the corn.
Chuck felt a little better at the notion that perhaps Mr. Nucker had been captured or killed. Their mission was a success. Fulcrum had been dealt a crippling blow.
"Did you hear that Sarah?" He patted Sarah's cheek; her skin had taken on a deathly grey pallor. "We've won. Come on…wake up Sarah…you have to see…"
Casey returned and pushed another t-shirt at Chuck. Chuck hadn't noticed that the one he was holding over Sarah's wound was saturated. "Thanks," he mumbled.
"Chopper will be here in five to extract us. Don't worry; she'll make it until then." Chuck nodded numbly.
Casey stood again, to leave, but then he turned back. "She's a tough one - Walker. Tough as they come."
The corn danced and swirled at the helicopter landed a few minutes later. Casey came to get Sarah, but Chuck pushed him away. He needed to do this. She was his wife. The woman he loved. He picked her up gently in his arms and carried her to the extraction point.
The medic on the Blackhawk went right to work on Sarah. All Chuck could do was sit there and hold her hand. He felt utterly helpless. Casey too, just sat and stared out the window, his face unreadable. The roar of the helicopter was deafening, so they couldn't have talked even if they wanted to. The mood was restrained. The operation had been a success, but they had lost one of their own.
Once Sarah was bandaged and a saline drip was initiated, the medic moved on to the other wounded soldier. Chuck looked down at Sarah's pale face and thought how he would trade places with her if he could. He would even trade places with Lieutenant Wheeler if he had the power, and then the Lieutenant could go home to his family instead of lying dead in the bottom of a helicopter. Why was the price of freedom always so high?
A gentle squeeze on his hand broke Chuck from his reverie. Chuck looked up to see Sarah's eyes open. Chuck's whole countenance changed, from anguish to joy. Sarah managed a week smile. They held hand the rest of the flight.
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"Your mom was treated at Bethesda. It was touch and go for awhile. But they had top notch doctors there and they saved you mom's life.
When she was well enough, I had her transferred out to Aunt Ellie's hospital in L.A. where Ellie could watch over her and you could visit her every day."
"Hey, I vaguely remember that," Charlie said. His eyes flicked up toward the ceiling, as if looking for the memories there. "I remember visiting you in the hospital, Mom. I remember the smell, and the tubes in your arms. Aunt Ellie told me you got sick on your trip."
"That's right. She brought you nearly every day to see me."
"Yeah, that's the first time I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to fix people like Aunt Ellie was fixing you." Charlie took a deep breath. "Wow, Mom, I had no idea how serious it was."
"You couldn't have known; you were just a little boy."
"We tried to shield you from it as much as we could," Chuck said.
"But now you should know the truth about what we lost." Sarah looked over to Chuck for reassurance. "The doctors said I was lucky. Just a half inch to the right and I would have been paralyzed. At first it was hard to feel lucky, but when I saw you, and knew that eventually I would recover and be able to play with you again, that we could fly kites at the beach, or play at the park, then I started to make peace with what happened.
"Make peace with what? With being shot?"
"No, I'd been shot before. I had to make peace with the consequences of my injury. The bullet didn't hit any bones, but it left bits of shrapnel all along its path. They had to…" Sarah paused and bit her lip.
Chuck moved his hand to hers. "Your mom had to have a hysterectomy, son. The damage was just too extensive and they needed to stop all the bleeding."
Sarah composed herself enough to speak. "I can't begin to tell you how devastating that was. I woke up and learned that I would never have any more children - that I never could give your father the little girl he always wanted." She took a deep breath. "I don't expect you to understand, at least not now, but having you with me every day helped me so much. It helped me focus on what I had, and not the dreams that I had lost."
Silence hung in the air. Sarah sniffled softly.
Chuck glanced at his watch. "Wow, you're going to be late. Can we drop you off at work? There are still a couple more things we want to say."
"Sure, Dad, that would be great."
The short car ride to the fire house was quiet. They arrived and Charlie went in to check in with his supervisor. The evening was warm, and Chuck and Sarah stood arm in arm in the small lawn area in front of the building. In the middle of the lawn was a flagpole and a small memorial to fallen firefighters.
Charlie returned and joined them. "The captain says I can have a few more minutes, as long as we don't get any calls."
"Good. Make sure to thank him for us," Sarah said.
"You need to tell me what happened with the CIA, Dad. I assume they didn't just let you go."
"Between the data that was sent to the CIA by the worm, and the total destruction of the Fulcrum Intersect, Fulcrum had all but been defeated. Over the next few months, teams took out what was left of them.
"I went back to work on the CIA Intersect, this time with a new deal. In exchange for my finishing the Intersect and the Fulcrum upgrades, I would get my life back in full. As soon as the Intersect was complete, I was able to remove the secrets from my head. After that it was just a matter of getting back to L.A. to be with you and your mother again."
"And you trusted them? You trusted the CIA to keep their word?"
Chuck laughed. "Oh no. That's why I built several different, shall we say, security features, into the new Intersect." Chuck smiled proudly. "Of course having Colonel Casey's entire Special Ops team on our side didn't hurt either. I told the government that as long as they left me and my family alone, the Intersect would not be disturbed. And it wasn't."
"Wasn't?"
"It's outdated now." Sarah said. "It was replaced several years ago by some new system your dad and I don't know anything about."
"So it's really over. No more CIA? No more dangerous secrets?"
"It's really over," Chuck smiled reassuringly.
"At least until we learned about your recruitment," Sarah added.
Chuck put his hand on Charlie's shoulder, "Son, I hope you know that your mom and I love you very much. Now that you know what happened, you can see why we are concerned about you becoming an agent."
"We're not going to tell you what to do," Sarah added. "But we want you to consider the cost. Think of the price that your father and I had to pay to be together – for us to be a family. There are lots of ways to serve your country, ways that don't have such a high personal cost."
An alarm sounded from inside the fire station, and a garbled voice announced the address of an emergency call.
"I've got to go. Sorry Mom and Dad."
"No, it's okay; go and do your job," Chuck waved him off.
Charlie grabbed them both into a quick group hug. "I love you guys," he said fiercely.
"We love you, too," Sarah said. "Be safe."
Charlie turned and trotted towards the ambulance.
"And Charlie," Chuck called after him. "Think about what we've said."
He turned back to them. "I will! I promise!"
A large yellow fire truck with full sirens blazing pulled out of the parking lot.
"Come on, Bartowski!" one of the other EMT's yelled at Charlie, as he jumped on the back of the ambulance. The doors shut and they sped off into the night.
Sarah and Chuck stood and watched until the red flashing lights disappeared into the distance.
Chuck sighed. "I can see why they want him. He's smart and confident and with his Kung Fu and medical background, we've created the ultimate super spy."
Sarah placed her hand on his shoulder. "But he doesn't have the heart for it. He's good through and through, just like his father." She trailed her hand down his back and wrapped her arm around his waist. "And I'm grateful for that," she said in his ear.
Chuck turned around, pulled her against his chest. "He's going to make the right decision, you know."
"I know," she said sadly.
He wasn't sure whether or not she believed it. He pulled back and put his hand around the back of her neck. "Hey," he stroked her jaw with his thumb, "he's a good kid. No matter what he chooses it will be all right. He won't face the same things that we faced. We've given him everything that we never had."
Sarah seemed to cheer at the thought. "You're right. And we trust him."
"We do," Chuck confirmed as he leaned down and kissed her cheek.
She looked at her husband. So often he said that she had saved him. But Sarah knew that it was the other way around. He was the first person to love her unconditionally. And it had been all his years of patient love that freed her from her past and help her live the life of her dreams – with him.
They started walking towards their car, hand in hand.
"You know," Chuck said, "Our story was pretty exciting."
"Yeah, I guess it was," she acknowledged.
"Maybe we should try to sell the movie rights; or it could be a TV series or something. They could call it 'Sarah and Chuck'." He swept his free hand in front of him, as if reading the names off a marquee.
Sarah laughed. "You think so? You really think that people would be interested in watching a story about our lives an hour every week?"
"Yeah, I really do. They could get that one actress; you know that drop dead gorgeous one that we saw in The Canyons last week. She would be a great Agent Walker."
Sarah laughed again. "And who would they get to play you?"
"I was thinking - Daniel Craig."
"Really? I didn't know you were British."
"As much as you are Australian."
"I know, they could have Daniel Craig play Cole Barker, you remember him?"
"How could I forget," Chuck said rolling his eyes. "Hey, how about Scott Bakula? I loved Quantum Leap."
"He'd be a little old, don't you think? You'd have to be…what?...27 or something, when the show started."
"Oh yeah…Well, whoever they get to play me will surely be dashing."
"No doubt."
"And funny, can't forget funny."
"No, can't forget that."
They had arrived at their car and Chuck walked Sarah to the passenger to open the door for her. He paused with his hand on the latch and looked into her eyes. "Do you think people would want to watch a couple that takes three years and a series of tragic events before they finally get together?"
Sarah smiled. "They would if they got their 'Happily Ever After' in the end."
Chuck leaned down and kissed her softly. "Let's go home, Mrs. Bartowski."
THE END
There is a short epilogue in the next chapter and some author's notes.
Many thanks to those who voted in the Awesome Awards for Excellence in Chuck Fanfiction Writing. I was both amazed and pleased when Revelations received second place in the Best Overall Story Category.
Thanks to Sharpasamarble who, as always, did a great job betaing this chapter. Timewalker05 betaed my rewrite and he helped me get my helicopters and military affiliations straight. Thanks TW!