A/N: Ah, Barstow, fabled in song and story!
Continued thanks to those who are reading and especially to those who've taken the time to review.
The sci-fi story Chuck kinda remembers in this chapter is by the amazing Kit Reed, and can be found in her The Story Until Now. The story served as both inspiration and warning to me in my own youth. I can still remember reading it, sitting in a metal chair propped against a wall of the barn. That was a good day. Funny, the stories that leave their fingerprints on your imagination.
Reminder: No ownership of Chuck, no ownership of anything. Nada dollars made. Doo dah, doo dah...
CHAPTER 3 Along Came a Spider?
Their omelet eaten and their plates pushed back, Chuck drank his coffee and looked at Sarah. She had turned her chair slightly, so that she could look out the back windows. The day had grown warm, but it was not hot. Sarah had her coffee cup in her hands. Every so often she would turn from the scene outdoors and glance at Chuck. Someone needed to say something, and it seemed unlikely to be her.
"So, Sarah, maybe you can help me to understand...all this. You are not a mortal? What does that mean? Are you immortal?"
She giggled, a murmur of music. "No, Chuck, I am a human being. We belong to the same species. Had we...uh...finished in the motel room, it would not have been cosmic miscegenation. I am not an alien or some kind of divinity. I am a human being with powers, what you would call magical powers. These powers are (well, normally) passed down from parents to children. Casters are the children of Casters. Sometimes Casters have children who do not inherit the powers, but (well, until you) no human being ever acquired powers except by inheritance. That is one reason why we differentiate ourselves from others, 'mortals' as we call them. Our powers make it possible for us to extend our lifetime somewhat, if we live to die of natural causes, but we are not close to immortal. We are just not quite as tightly bound to the biblical three score and ten as most humans are. But if you cut me, I bleed. I can be killed. I age."
"Oh. So your dad and mom?"
"Were Casters, yes." Sarah's tone had shifted from amused lecturer to guarded. Her parents were not up for discussion-Chuck could hear that in the tone.
"So, do...little Casters know how to do magic from the time they are born?"
"No. You come into your powers around the same time as puberty. That is a miserable time for most of us," she shot Chuck a look, and he nodded, grinning wryly, "but it really sucks for Casters. Your power is tied to your body, to your sex, your stamina, your health. Like your physical energy, your power gets restored in sleep and spent in use. The power I used the other night in fighting with Casey had nearly exhausted me. I don't know how long I could have lasted against him on the roof. In absolute terms, I am more powerful than he is, but if we had to fight a prolonged battle and my early attacks failed, he could probably outlast me. He is bigger than I am, stronger. Anyway, it would have been a near run thing, that battle, had it happened."
"You say it is tied to your sex? What do you mean?"
"Female Casters can draw some power from the moon, restore themselves over time, even without sleep. They can draw more power the closer they are to it. That is why we went up the fire escape when Casey was chasing us. I knew I had a better chance of winning up there."
"And you say that only works for females?"
"Yes, men have no access to power from outside themselves in that way."
Chuck was puzzled. He knew that he had been able to draw power from the moon. Sarah had no idea he had done so, and clearly regarded it as impossible. He decided to keep that piece of information to himself until he understood everything better.
"What? What is it, Chuck?"
"Nothing. I'm just trying to process all this. So, your powers are sort of like bullets. You only have so many and you can run out? Unless you're a woman, and you use the moon to...reload?"
"You could put it that way, I guess." Sarah grinned at him.
"So, what do Casters do? Do you have jobs?"
"Well, most Casters live the lives of mortals, at least to a degree. Most Casters have jobs, ordinary jobs, houses, and so on. It is best to blend in. You know, burnings and hangings and all that tend to result from failing to blend in."
"Right, like Monty Python. 'She's a witch!'"
Sarah looked puzzled. "Who is Monty Python? Was he a Caster?"
Chuck waved her past the question. "Doesn't matter. I can tell you later."
"But some Casters, like me, Enforcers, serve as, well, sort of like Military Police."
"Huh?"
"Look, Chuck, not all Casters are good people. There are dark powers as well as light ones. There are Casters who use their powers against other Casters, and against mortals. There are Casters who find pleasure in evil, in pain, in death. My job is to stop such Casters. And the dark things they create."
"But you don't wear a uniform?"
"No, you could say that most of my work is undercover or covert. 'Underworld', in one sense of that term. Often, I have to insinuate myself into the lives of these Casters or of mortals who are leagued with them, so as to stop them."
"Like you insinuated yourself into mine…?"
That question hung there, giving voice to the shadows and doubts that flitted around all that had happened between them. Chuck wondered if she would answer it or bail on it. Emotions swirled in her blue eyes, but so many and so quickly that he couldn't discriminate them. She looked down at her hands for a minute. Then she lifted her eyes to his, blue to brown.
"Chuck, I know I have confused you and hurt your feelings. I know I have run hot and cold, sometimes from minute to minute, hot one minute, cold the next. I am sorry about that. I am going to try to do better, but I am going to have to ask you for some patience with me…"
"Oh, yeah, like that movie, The Philadelphia Story: 'With the rich and mighty, always a little patience.'"
"Movie? You are feeling better." She smiled, half amused indulgence, half annoyed exasperation. "Look, Chuck, this is hard for me. All this is hard for me. But although I admit I walked up to you in the Buy More planning to play you, to manipulate you, from the moment I touched your hand, I was no longer planning to do that, no longer doing that."
"So when you kissed my neck just before Casey…"
"I kissed your neck-that was...real."
Chuck decided to let it go. Patience, always a little patience. Like Jimmy Stewart with Katherine Hepburn.
"You are sort of like...a spy?"
"Yes, sort of."
"So, what can you tell me about the book, about The Intersection? What have I done to myself? What has been done to me?"
"Well, before anything I should tell you that one of the costs of power is clarity about your own free will. Most Casters believe that all humans have free will; although, there are dark Casters who deny it. But a Caster's power works,...this is hard to explain...a seer would do a better job…, a Caster's power works above their will. It is tied to the body, as I said, but it is also tied to the Caster's character, good or bad, strong or weak. Your power reflects what you are and what you do more than what you think or believe-at least consciously. It responds to what you really want or need, not to what you think you want or need. Because that is true, power is revealing. Using it, what it does, how it does it, all is a commentary on you, the Caster, on the kind of person you are."
"Sort of like a Caster would be surrounded by, say, a glow? A glow whose color was sort of like the color of...a mood ring? So that the Caster was, like, color-coded, good or bad or whatnot?"
Sarah looked at him in puzzlement. "Yes, I guess so. Except it doesn't work like that, really. Caster's don't glow when casting."
Again, Chuck debated about how much to tell Sarah. Again, he decided to keep the fact that he had seen her and Casey aglow to himself. He still felt too lost to know what it was safe to reveal and to whom. He wanted to tell her. He would tell her. He just needed to find the right moment and to leave this gnawing doubt behind.
"So, let's talk about what happened to you on the roof. When you accessed the power, did you feel it physically?"
"Yeah. Yeah, my eyes sort of rolled back in my head and I felt a sudden...fullness, kind of like I had good news I couldn't wait to share with someone else."
"Really?" Sarah paused and looked at him with wonder. "You felt like you had good news to share?"
"Yeah, all tingly and excited and bursting to tell…"
"So, there was no pain?"
"No, not exactly, I mean, it felt strange but not bad in any way. At least not until it was over and the headache set in. It was like I was awake, fully awake, for the first time in my life. 'The sleeper has awakened!' I saw things as they are, I guess I was...disillusioned but not disappointed."
"Did you have to strain to use the power?"
"No, although I could feel it begin to weaken. And I could, if I chose, turn it off. That's the phrase. Like when I released you."
"Ok. Good enough for now. Keep thinking about it and let me know if you remember anything that seems important. So, back to the book. No one knows the origin of the book. In our time, it has been most closely associated with a legendary Caster, Orion. I'm assuming his name was on the book - or do you not remember?"
"I remember that. His name was there."
"Well, no one knows much about him. It is unclear if he was a light or dark Caster, although I think he was a light one. He had a special sort of relationship with the book. He was not, so far as I know, chosen to read it, but he could read it-he just gained no powers from it. He made certain changes in the text of the book, or so it is said, and no one had been able to do that before. No one knows exactly what he changed, but it now seems like he may have changed the book so that a mortal could read it. He vanished years ago, and most Casters believe he is dead. I guess I do.
"The book is supposed to provide its Reader with a sense of how all things are interconnected, how all things are woven together in a tapestry, and it is supposed to make the Reader aware of the warp and woof of that tapestry. Like you said, the Reader is able to see past illusions, delusions, appearances-able to see what is and what is not. And typically (Orion being the known exception) the Reader also gets powers, powers that are superior to and importantly unlike the powers of Casters."
"What does that mean?" Chuck asked. "Superior to and importantly unlike?"
"It means that the Reader's power normally is too strong for other Casters and that the Reader has powers that no Caster has. Those powers seem to have varied from Reader to Reader. Some Readers could teleport on their own. No Caster can do that alone, and even two Casters together rarely try it. If that spell goes wrong, the teleported person goes splat or goes mad."
"Two not-so-attractive options," Chuck mused. Sarah smiled grimly in agreement.
"Some Readers have been prophetic, able to foresee the distant future. Some Casters, Graham, for instance, are prophetic, but only in a minor way, and a temporally limited way. They can see ahead for a few hours or for a few days, but no more, and they do not see much. Those Readers could apparently see across eons. Other Readers were able to work massive changes in the physical environment, to affect vast tracts of land or ocean or sky. I can affect small bits (you saw that in the club) but not much and not for long. The specific powers granted the Reader seem to be determined by who the Reader is, by the Reader's character. Most Casters can do the sort of thing you did on the roof, but only to mortals, not other Casters. So we have yet to determine what special power or powers reading the book has given you."
"I figure it is the power to say the wrong thing to you at the wrong time. That seems to be my power, unlike any Caster's power."
Sarah laughed and smacked his shoulder softly.
"Chuck, you have yet to say the wrong thing to me."
Chuck laughed too.
Sarah knew she needed to tell Chuck about The One Ring. But she was hesitant. They needed to get clearer out what the book had done to him. She was reticent to leave the ranch house until they knew a bit more. She knew he would be freaked out about Ellie and Awesome and Morgan, but Sarah felt confident that Graham's Casters could keep them safe, at least for a while. They just needed time together.
Sarah knew that a certain measure of selfishness was involved in her decision to stay, but she also knew that she was being honest with herself about the safety of Chuck, his family and friends. Sarah was not perhaps great at being honest with herself about herself, but protecting others was her business, and she knew her business.
Chuck had gone to his room to nap after their conversation, and Sarah had gone out onto the porch to sit on a deck chair and think. Chuck's description of what his empowerment felt like was so, well, Chuck. Nothing he said surprised her, although the basic goodness of the man his powers revealed filled her with wonder. He had felt filled with good news! Her baggage handler, indeed! She had, she now realized, all her life believed that truly fascinating people were always dark or partly dark or drawn to the dark. She had thought goodness simple, boring, predictable. But she now knew that was because she had known only people who were at best partly good or sometimes drawn to the good, but who were not truly good. Chuck's goodness was deep and complicated, not messy or bizarre; rather, it was multilayered and surprising. He was not simple, boring or predictable. She was very curious what powers the book had given him.
The thought of him just a few rooms away, lying in bed and sleeping, filled her with a warmth that radiated from her stomach all the way to her fingers and her toes. She knew she wanted him, and she was deeply tempted to go to his room and to begin again what she had stopped at the motel. But she had to think about him. Could he handle that on top of everything else? Was she really ready to commit to a serious relationship? She knew that she could not sleep with him until she knew the answer to that question.
She loved Chuck. She had told Graham the unvarnished truth, however unbelievable it was. But was loving him enough for her to commit to him, to face with him what he might be called on to face? Sarah curled her fingers into fists, fighting down her own feelings, her arousal. She needed to stay where she was. Going to his room would be going too far. Maybe that would eventually happen. (Please, please, please…) But not right now. He needed to rest. She needed to be sure of herself.
She also needed to understand his powers, to think of some way of calling out his powers. Well, some other way of calling out his powers.
Chuck tried to nap but his mind was spinning, a whirligig. He had power. He did. Stanford reject, Jill cast-off, Buy More Nerd Herder...loser. True, he didn't really know what power he had, and he had no idea how to control it. But he had felt so powerless for so long that it didn't really matter. But the more he thought about it, the more he thought that the biggest change in him, the real source of his new sense of power, was Sarah. Even with all her changeableness, all the mixed signals, he believed that at some level, she was not only affected by him but that she felt something real for him.
When he was a kid, he'd read a sci-fi story about a man who had been a loser, but who had come into possession of an automatic tiger-a robot tiger. In fact, the name of the story was "Automatic Tiger". Chuck had forgotten the author and a lot of the details, but what he remembered was how the man's knowledge that he had an automatic tiger at home had filled him with confidence, power. He had gotten promotions, began dating the woman of his dreams, and he kept telling himself: "I have an automatic tiger." But eventually the man began to neglect the tiger, began to ignore it, and it moldered. When he wanted it again, it collapsed and would not work. The automatic tiger's collapse foretold the collapse of the man's world. He lost his job, the girl, and was soon back where he had been. Sarah seemed like Chuck's infinitely better version of an automatic tiger, except of course she was also the woman of his dreams, a Caster. The mere thought of her filled him with an upsurge of power and confidence. And he would never neglect her or take her for granted.
Realizing this actually depressed him a bit. He should have told Sarah about being able to draw power from the moon, about seeing her and Casey all aglow, pale blue and fiery red. He would tell her, he knew. He just didn't want to tell her until he knew more about where they stood and more about what it all was supposed to mean.
A little before sundown, Chuck joined Sarah in the kitchen. She was washing vegetables for a salad. He stood leaning against the counter, watching her. He yawned.
"Did you get some sleep, Chuck?"
"I did. Eventually. There's a...bit on my mind." She smiled at that and nodded her understanding. Chuck continued. "What have you been doing? Did you sleep?"
"No, I was reading your book, the Austen, Northanger Abbey. Interesting choice. I hadn't read that one. I read Pride and Prejudice in high school, I think. I hadn't realized she'd written a Gothic romance."
"Yeah, spooky, with an old abbey and mysterious fathers and dead mothers and all that stuff. Of course, most of it turns out to exist only in the heroine's fevered imagination."
"Do you think that all this will turn out that way for you?"
Chuck ducked his head slightly and gave a crooked, unsure grin.
"Maybe."
Sarah closed the distance between them, wiping her hands on a towel. She stopped just short of being pressed against him. She extended one hand and tilted his head back up with her index finger. He was staring down into her eyes. He could smell her, her light perfume, the fresh vegetables. The blue of her eyes flashed.
"I am not a figment of your fevered imagination, Chuck. I do though have some sense of how fevered your imagination currently is."
Just that quickly, she turned and went back to making the salad. Chuck exhaled hard, billowing out his cheeks. He could feel the burning red of his face. Fevered. Oh, yes, so fevered.
Sarah walked along the inside of the ranch house's fence line in the gathering darkness. She wanted to double-check the fence and the warding spells. She was satisfied. Everything was in order. She turned to walk back to the house, toward the light on in the living room, where Chuck was playing a game on the computer. He was a mortal, a mortal nerd. He was somehow all at once powerful and powerless, confident and diffident. He had changed her life without trying to, just by entering it. She could neither understand that or deny it. Sometimes good things happened. And sometimes they happened to you.
She almost skipped up the stairs of the porch and through the front door. She was going to spend a night here, with him. They had laughed and talked through dinner. They had drunk more wine than was wise. Neither was drunk, but each was warmed through, at ease. Sarah had been careful not to cross the line-she had not drunk enough to affect her judgment or her awareness. But she had drunk enough to allow herself to touch Chuck and to react to him unguardedly. To pat his arm, to bump his shoulder with hers, to smile at him from the very soles of her feet. She had no idea how long it had been since she felt like this. Maybe she simply never had.
With Bryce, there had always been the feeling that he was partly an encumbrance. She had enjoyed him, but there was always a bit of her that was relieved when they parted. There were parts of herself she kept closed when he was with her, closed to him and even closed to herself. She had not yet opened all the parts of herself to Chuck, but she knew she would do so when the right time came. She just needed time, time with him.
Chuck paused the video game when she entered the room. He looked up at her, waiting to hear what she had to say. She waved at him and skipped up the stairs to the second floor. She returned a few minutes later with a box under her arm. She went to the dinner table and began to empty the box. Chuck walked to stand beside her and looked down.
"A Ouija board? Really?" He gave Sarah a disbelieving glance.
"Look, did you know that magic was real a few days ago? No. Don't knock the board. It might just help us figure out what the book did to you."
Sarah put the board down on the table, along with the pointer. She pulled a chair up close to hers and gestured for Chuck to sit down. She sat too.
"I assume you, O Great King of Games, must know how this works," Sarah said, smirking. "You just put your hands…."
"Ok, very funny. Yeah, I know. Morgan and I spent a lot of time over one of these in junior high, hoping for some good word on a date for a dance, any dance. Or maybe on some good word about my parents." Sarah frowned, but said nothing, although she rested her hand on his shoulder for a minute.
Sarah was sitting on the moon side of the board, Chuck on the sun side. They rested their fingers on the pointer and Chuck looked at her.
"Well, ask a question."
"No, you ask."
"But I don't know what to ask."
"Start with something, you know, simple, not anything momentous."
Chuck squeezed his eyes shut in an exaggerated face of hard thinking. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes.
"I have one. Okay. Oh, Great and Mysterious Ouija Board, will Sarah Walker let me kiss her tonight."
Sarah giggled. She actually giggled at that. Chuck giggled in response.
"Wow, Chuck, I said not to ask anything momentous."
Chuck kept his eyes on the pointer. It began to move.
M. A. Y. B. E.
Sarah laughed. Chuck narrowed his eyes at her in mock annoyance.
"So, you couldn't find a Magic 8 Ball?'
The next thing he knew, Sarah was in his arms, kissing him as hard as he had ever been kissed. She tasted wonderful, wildflowers, honey, and vanilla all mixed with Sarah. He kissed her back just as hard. They remained locked to each other for a long time.
Some number of kisses later (who knew how many, exactly?), and with both steadying ragged breathing, they tried the Board again. Sarah asked the question this time.
"What power did the book give to Chuck?"
L. O. V. E.
"Chuck!" Sarah said in a soft but warning tone.
"What? I am not steering this thing. And I certainly never asked any Ouija Board to be my wingman. I don't know what that means."
"Clarify!" Sarah spoke to the board.
They waited but nothing happened. Chuck pursed his lips in disappointment.
"Worth a shot. Let me try something." Chuck looked a bit abstracted for a minute, then spoke.
"Why was a mortal able to read the book?"
N. O. T. A. M. O. R. T. A. L. C. H. U. C. K.
They looked at each other in surprise.
"So it isn't my being mortal that did it. It is my being...me?"
"I guess." Sarah was clearly trying to figure out what it could mean. "Are you sure you are mortal? Are you sure your parents weren't Casters?"
"Well, no, not 100%. But I don't think so. I really don't."
The pointer jerked under their fingers.
A. S. K. O. R. I. O. N.
"What question prompted that?" Sarah asked. Chuck shook his head.
"I never asked any question."
Sarah removed her hands from the pointer and Chuck followed suit. They glanced at each other but neither knew quite what to say. After a few minutes, Chuck spoke.
"I thought Orion was dead."
Beckmann was impatient, tapping her foot. She wanted an audience with Graham. But this was taking some effort. Communication internal to House members could be accomplished without overwhelming effort, and with a variety of spells or artifacts. But communication with members of other houses was harder. The spells did not always interface properly. The Casters had different habits, different expectations, different pieces of training. It was frankly easier to fight with members of other Houses than to cooperate with them.
But Beckmann had urgent news. She could not get information on where Sarah Walker had taken Bartowski. Beckmann could kick herself. She should have known that the Help Wanted sign being visible to Bartowski meant that Bartowski was no ordinary mortal. But she had taken it simply as another curiosity in the curious history of The Curiosity Shop. She should have known he had read the book though. How could she have let him walk out after that? Why hadn't she felt something? Too much in this whole situation was unknown, and it was driving her a little mad. She needed to talk to Graham. The One Ring mole in her House had given up a final secret before he died. One of the men on Casey's team, the team sent to get Chuck, had lived. Walker's spell killed the other. But the one who had lived had seen Bartowski. The man did not have Bartowski's name. Casey had never used it around them. Still, Bartowski's face was known. And it was known that he had last been seen with Sarah Walker.
Damn Walker. Graham's golden girl. His fixer. Why was she still involved? Why was she, presumably, hiding with Chuck. It was not her style. She was absolutely silent, absolutely deadly, if necessary. But more than anything, she was supposed to be cold. Unmovable. Emotionless. Even so, she seemed to be working to protect Bartowski in ways that were supererogatory, that went above and beyond the call of duty. Casey said she was compromised. He thought he saw her kiss Bartowski just before she had turned to fight. She had whispered something in his ear. And, on top of everything else, Bartowski had released Walker from his hold on her and he had run with her. All the available evidence suggested that something was going on between them.
Did that make any sense? Walker had only known him for a couple of handfuls of hours. And he was a mortal. A big box store nobody technician. Walker was not known for entanglements, and everyone thought it took someone like Bryce Larkin to interest her at all, a Caster's Caster, handsome and worldly and completely sure of himself. Bartowski was a...goof. A mortal goof. Surely, Walker...Beckmann made herself stop.
Had she acted so differently once upon a time? Hadn't she fallen for someone she should not have fallen for, someone everyone around her told her was a bad match, a bad bet? What good was it to have come so far as a Caster only to ignore the reality of the human heart, whether human heart was Caster or mortal? The great mortal philosopher, Pascal, said that the heart has reasons that reason did not know.
Pascal did not mean, Beckmann mused, that the heart kept secrets. He meant that the heart had a logic of its own, that what seemed to theoretical reason to be irrationality was not, in the final analysis, really irrational, except by alien standards, by the narrow, rigid standards of theoretical reason. By its own standards, the heart made steady, sturdy sense. Maybe Walker had found the one. Maybe Bartowski had too. Maybe that made this whole situation less frightening. Maybe it made it more frightening. Beckmann did not know.
Finally, an image of Graham flickered into unsteady life above Beckmann's table.
"Beckmann, is that you? This is Graham. Can you hear me? What's wrong?"
"I have a suggestion for the protection of Bartowski, Graham. I don't think you are going to like it, but I think you will accept it…"
Sarah was tossing and turning. The weirdness with the Ouija Board was part of it, but not the largest part. That they could worry about tomorrow. No, she was tossing and turning because she could not stop replaying the kisses she had given Chuck and that he had given her. She could not stop feeling his lips on hers, his tongue touching hers. She felt like someone had hollowed out her middle and filled it with banks of burning coals, banked it with hearth fires. She thought about getting up and taking a cold shower. That might stop the heat, but it would also wake her thoroughly.
Knowing Chuck was in his bed downstairs was driving her crazy. Knowing what would happen if she got up and went to his room was, well, she just couldn't let herself think about that. The kissing had maybe been a bad idea, but Chuck had been right there, and she had wanted it since they woke up, he had wanted it. And he had asked for it, really. She stopped it before it went too far, but she had not counted on its effects...lingering...for so long. Her body was a toothache of desire. She had never wanted anyone like this. She had never imagined that desire could swell to these dimensions, that it could claim her head to toe. When other people had told her about such experiences, she took it as poetic license, or as an outright fabrication. Now she knew. She was burning. Love was a consuming fire.
Chuck was supine on his bed, stock-still. He feared to move. If he let himself move, the movement would not stop until he was in Sarah's bed upstairs. He forced himself to count the ceiling tiles again. He knew how many there were, 49, seven rows of seven. He had counted them 22 times. This would be the 23rd. He knew he should be thinking about the book, his powers, Orion, Ellie, Awesome, Morgan. Sarah's kisses had blocked everything else from his mind.
He had never before faced a task of self-discipline so intense. He knew that Sarah was the one struggling with all this, that she was the one fighting battles. He was at peace. He was crazy about her. Maybe he even loved her. What did she feel? Something, clearly. Something strong enough to motivate those kisses. Was the problem that she was a Caster and he a mortal? Did that explain the hiccuping hesitancies, the mixed signals? The signals had gotten less mixed as the day went on. But he still did not know what she wanted from him, with him. From his point of view, her feeling anything for him at all seemed crazy. She was a beautiful woman. She was a Caster. He suspected, although she had not exactly said so, that she was a powerful and deadly Caster. She was an Enforcer, after all, the Enforcer. She was clearly special. Her status with Graham proved it. What was she doing in Barstow with him?
Sarah woke up. She did not remember going to sleep. She thought she heard footsteps outside. She immediately leaped from the bed and went to her window. She saw movement. She did not want to use her powers if she could help it; doing so might give her location, and so Chuck's location, away. So she reached into her nightstand and took out a pistol. She padded barefoot from her room to the stairs and then stopped to listen. It sounded like someone was at the door. And, then, there was a knock.
A knock? Sarah went down the stairs slowly. Her gun leveled at the door. A man was standing there, his arms raised above his head.
"I have a gun pointed at your head. There's no way you can get to a gun or cast a spell before I kill you. Is that clear."
"Clear." The voice sounded familiar. Keeping her gun trained on the man, Sarah reached over with her other hand to flip on the front porch light. Casey was standing there. "What the hell?"
"Let me in Walker. Graham and Beckmann sent me. You know that's true because without Graham's permission I could never have gotten to this door. And without Beckmann's order, I would never have come."
Sarah let Casey in and Chuck came out of his bedroom a moment or two later. Chuck looked at Casey, looked at Sarah, and then shrugged and plopped down on the couch.
"Well," he said, "this should be good."
"Why are you here, Casey?" Sarah asked the question flatly, with no particular facial expression.
"Like I said, Graham and Beckmann sent me. They've given me a full briefing on Bartowski. Everything they know, everything you've told them."
"Ok, but why did they send you?"
"I was looking for you anyway, and was not far from here, although I admit I would never have found you without Graham."
"Right," Sarah said, not hiding her impatience. "But why did they send you?"
"To help you with Little Miss Muffet there." Casey gestured in Chuck's general direction.
"Hey!" Chuck cried. "Leave my tuffet out of this."
Casey and Sarah both looked at Chuck. "Ok. Ok. I'll be quiet."
"I'm here because one of the members of my team is part of The One Ring. He survived your final spell in the club, and we think he got a good look at Curds and Whey here. We have lost track of him. My job is to join you two on...Team Bartowski." Chuck could hear Casey grinding his teeth. "That's Graham and Beckmann's title, not mine."
"I'm also supposed to help you figure out what...Bartowski can do. I have some experience with that too, as you know."
Sarah kept her neutral expression. She walked over and put her gun on the coffee table and sat down on the couch, near but not next to Chuck. She looked over at him and allowed him to see regret and frustration in her eyes, then it was gone.
"Ok, Casey. There is an extra room upstairs. That can be yours. We will talk more about this in the morning. We will decide what to do about Chuck."
"You know," Chuck interposed, "I am sitting right here. You two need me more than I need you. That's why it's Team Bartowski. Graham and Beckmann get it. I may not know exactly what I can do, but we all know I can do something, and likely something that will matter. So, let's be sure that the we who does the deciding about Chuck includes Chuck." He got up and began to walk toward the bedroom. Casey grunted. Sarah quickly caught up with Chuck.
"Chuck, I never meant…"
"It's ok, Sarah. I know. I'm tired. I had hoped...But now…"
She reached out and put her hand gently on his arm.
"Me too, Chuck. Me too."
She watched helplessly as Chuck went into his room and closed the door. She stood looking at the door for a few seconds, then turned to Casey. She gave him a hard look, retrieved her gun, and then trudged up the stairs.
Casey rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. Eventually, he found the liquor. He poured himself a whiskey and walked into the living room, sitting down on the couch where Sarah had been sitting a little while ago. Casey knew there was no good reason to antagonize Bartowski. He hadn't done anything wrong. He may well have saved Casey's life. Casey knew that Sarah might have killed him on that roof, and after the look she gave him before she went upstairs, he knew she might kill him tonight in his sleep. He had clearly interrupted something. He would ease up on the kid. A little.
Graham had explained that Sarah had made it clear that Chuck, and not the House, was her first priority her only priority. Casey had told Beckmann and Graham he was not going to join the team if the point was for him eventually to try to take Chuck or to kill Sarah. Casey had no interest in the double-agent shit. He was too old for it.
He wanted to do a job that was straightforward, no switchbacks, no curlicues, no betrayals. He had been in the Marines for a while, had been a part of a team-a team of mortals-and he had loved those guys. This lone wolf life Beckmann had recruited him into seemed like the next step, a promotion. And it was at first. But it felt like a demotion eventually. He wanted people around him who depended on him, who believed in him and whom he depended on and believed in in turn. He knew Walker's reputation. She was not normally a team player, but he also knew what he had seen on that roof, and what he had seen just a few minutes ago. Walker was not just on Team Bartowski-she intended to make it the case that there were two Bartowskis on the Team. Maybe she didn't know that yet, but Casey did.
Casey's time in the Marines had broken down the sometimes bitter but mostly casual prejudice against mortals Casters often indulged in. If Walker wanted a mortal, ok, she wanted a mortal. All good. That didn't mean he couldn't give her a hard time about it, of course, or twist Chuck some. The kid practically begged for it. He didn't just wear his heart on his sleeve, he ran around with it in his hands, offering it to anyone who seemed to need it. Casey admired that, at some level, and he had never shaken the memory of the peace and calm he felt when Chuck put him under the spell on the roof. To be honest, that feeling had been so overwhelming for Casey that he had been chasing Chuck and Sarah half-heartedly. If they hadn't gotten away, he would have let them get away. He hadn't really been trying hard to find them when Beckmann contacted him. Whatever the kid could do, he was no threat.
Now, Casey's job was clear, no matter how Graham or Beckmann chose to understand it. Keep these two powerful, lovesick people from getting themselves killed before all this could get worked out. This was it for Casey. He would never say the words out loud, though. One last mission.