A/N: Final chapter. (Not counting the coming Postscript.)
I part with this story reluctantly. I have enjoyed telling it. I hope that has been palpable. I have enjoyed your responses to it and have tried to respond to them. Again, thanks, everyone.
And, again, I don't own Chuck.
CHAPTER 17 The Weight of the World
Chuck was in a coma. He was in a bed in Beckmann's infirmary. Ellie, Orion and a Healer team were attending him.
The infirmary was state-of-the-art. Ellie took a look around when she arrived and decided that Chuck would be better off there than at the hospital. Especially given that he was suffering from something otherworldly, not something this-worldly. After consulting with Sarah and Orion and the Healers, Ellie decided that the problem was the darkness inside of Chuck. He was clearly fighting it, but the battle was a close-run thing. It could go either way. Chuck had frequent coughing fits, and each ended with him spitting up more of the ichor that kept leaking from him. It still ran in a slow syrupy stream from his nostril and from his ears and occasionally from the corners of his eyes. He moved very little, although it was clear that his eyes were moving rapidly behind his eyelids. Sarah feared even to imagine his dreams. She knew they were like her memories, except worse and more plentiful. He moaned a little between coughing fits. A few times he said Sarah's name.
Sarah had been examined by Ellie. She was bruised and battered, but nothing was broken. Except maybe her heart. She had cuts and abrasions, but nothing that required stitches. Except maybe her heart. She had come through the battle intact. Except... She sat constantly at Chuck's side, whispering his name, telling him about the wedding preparations, rubbing his hands and arms. Kissing him. She had refused to cancel the wedding preparations when Beckmann and Ellie pulled her aside to advise it.
"No," she said simply, "Chuck will be awake in time."
Ellie gathered every light she could find in Beckmann's headquarters and in the Shop itself. She even borrowed lights from a small independent film group that had an office nearby. She had then had the lights rigged together so that they all shone at once directly onto Chuck. The hope was that the light would help Chuck to defeat the darkness. After all, Ellie had argued, if the darkness takes a material form, presents itself as ichor, why not fight it with actual lights? Think about The Gobbler. The scene had upset Sarah when she first saw it: Chuck in a white hospital gown, under a white blanket, lit up by dozens of white lights. It was like he was already gone, transfigured to some new, perhaps heavenly plane. The only darkness in the room was the infernal liquid that stained Chuck's gown and blanket when he coughed, and that oozed from him as he slept.
"Chuck," Sarah began as she sat down in the midst of the light, "come back to me. I know that Graham showed you things no one should see, things even Graham could not bear to see. Things that destroyed Graham. But I know you and love you, Chuck. You've never lost faith, you've never lost faith in goodness. Not when your parents left you, not during those long years after Jill you spent in the Buy More. Darkness only wins if you choose it, Chuck. Graham chose it and it consumed him, consumed him inside out. Evil always eats its own. But you did not choose it. You won't choose it. I know you, Chuck. Choose yourself, Chuck, choose me, choose us."
Orion had come in as Sarah spoke. When she saw him, and when he realized she did, he looked around awkwardly. She gestured to him. He came in and took a seat on the other side of Sarah.
"Let me tell you...both...a story: it goes back into immemorial time.
"Magic has always been a dependent thing, dependent on love, "an efflux of love", as one great ancient Caster, a Seer, put it. As such it was tied to persons and to their love, their proper loves. The people to whom powers were granted did not inherit them. The powers were granted because the people were virtuous: wise, just, courageous, self-controlled, generous-minded. Virtue itself is a condition of love. A virtuous person is someone whose life displays the ordo amoris, that displays properly ordinated loves. Put it like this: the virtuous person loves each thing with the kind or degree of love appropriate to it.
"There were in those days no distinctions between Casters and mortals, no distinction of our sort; the distinction had nothing to do with heredity. It had to do with...human merit. Here's what I mean. The word 'aristocracy' comes from Greek. It meant something like "rule by the virtuous'. The only superiority of the virtuous was the superiority of their well-lived lives. But over time the term has come to mean 'rule by the superior' where the superiority, so-called, is just money or titles or birth. That shift in meaning happened in the history of Casting in a dramatic way.
"A few virtuous Casters over time began to backslide, corrupted, in important part at least, by power. It's always power. They began to think they were just better than those without power. They conspired and worked and began to embrace the darkness. Eventually, after many years, they mounted a great Casting that cast a shadow across magic itself. They were able to wrest magic from its tie to virtue and tie it instead to blood. Magic could be handed down, like money and non-magical power, and often with those things.
"That new tie of blood to magic greatly increased the darkness, and the number of dark casters, since it was now possible to be granted powers without virtue, in fact, powers could now be granted even to the vicious (think of the Belgian). Before, dark casters were a rarity, because typically virtuous people do not backslide into viciousness. It happens but is a phenomenon to be explained and regretted, mercifully rare, not to be accepted.
"When I first came into contact with The Intersection, I was able to read it without becoming a Reader. I realized after much study that the book had been corrupted. It had been intended to seek out worthy readers, but the great Casting had enshadowed even The Intersection. The book chose only those of Caster bloodlines; originally, it would have chosen only virtuous Readers. I worked many years and finally was able to undo the damage to the book, to restore it. Chuck was the first Reader the book chose after I made it whole again. It chose Chuck to face Graham, I now realize. I think Chuck is the anti-Graham. The book did not choose Chuck because he was a mortal; it chose a mortal because he was Chuck. I didn't know it would choose Chuck - but the choice did not shock me either. He is a remarkable man, Sarah."
"So that's what the Ouija board meant!" Sarah said softly to Orion but with her gaze fixed on Chuck.
"Right, the book chose Chuck. His mortality was not the reason. And I suspect, Sarah," Orion added with a small, almost sneaky smile, "that you and the book choose Chuck for some of the same reasons, although not all, of course. The book is...how should I say this...female, at least this time around. It... she... cares for Chuck."
Sarah smiled lopsidedly. "The cover of the book, Orion, is it dark brown?" He nodded.
"Another damn brunette…" Sarah grumbled.
Orion chuckled. "When Chuck put that engagement ring on you, the two of you reversed the great Casting. Or, maybe it would be better to say that you pulled a string in the knot that will cause the great Casting eventually to unravel. Over time - it may take days, it may take months, it may take a few years - dark Casters will find their power decreasing and eventually disappearing. Had Graham lived, he alone would have had the power to stop what you started, so it was crucial that he be defeated. Dark casters will, of course, come again. They always come again. Even virtuous people sometimes become corrupt. Even at high noon, there are bits of shadow. But if we are vigilant, they will never return in the numbers or with the kind of power they have had."
Sarah listened with a divided heart. What they had done was important. She knew that. Greater good. Future of Casting. She got it. What they had done was great news for the world. But what if it cost her Chuck?
The greater good should never cost anyone her integrity, should never be something a person is obliged to pursue against her having a life, a real life. And it took Chuck, with his love of hearth and home and friends to get her to see that she had not been choosing self-sacrifice in her past, but had chosen not to have a self to sacrifice. Those were two vastly different things, though they sometimes looked alike. Chuck had helped her begin to have a self. She did not want to stop that. She wanted to keep learning from him. She could not bear to lose him.
Sarah tried to think of something else; that thought made her crazy.
"I still don't understand how we defeated Graham. Do you?"
Orion knit his brows together. "I have a good guess, I think. Maybe I even know. I mean, you don't have to know when you know, do you?" Sarah raised an eyebrow and Orion forced himself back on topic. "You and Chuck both like Jane Austen, right? I think Carina mentioned that to me. Well, think about the Jane Austen heroines who are often overlooked or criticized, Fanny Price in Mansfield Park and Anne Elliot in Persuasion." Sarah nodded. She knew the characters even though she had not gotten to those books yet. They were on the list she and Chuck had made.
"Those two characters are often criticized for being passive, wallflowers. But that is a misunderstanding. They are actually courageous. The virtue of courage has two sides, but we only see one these days. One side, the side we see, is the side of attack, the courage of the soldier. But there is another side, the one we miss these days, the side of endurance, the courage of the martyr or the prisoner. Other Austen heroines, particularly Elizabeth Bennet, exhibit a courage more like the courage of the soldier, and so it is easier for us to recognize the virtue of courage in them, in her. But Fanny is courageous too. She endures, and in enduring, she saves Mansfield Park. She suffers but she turns her suffering into good.
"You Sarah, are one side of the virtue of courage, the attacking side, the virtue of the knight errant. Chuck is the other side of the virtue, the enduring side, the virtue of the damsel in distress, held a prisoner in a high tower...or the Burbank Buy More. Only courage, complete courage, could have stopped Graham. The book took Chuck's extraordinary capacity to endure and strengthened it. Chuck's love intensified your capacity for attack by making you whole. When you fought Graham, you two became all of courage. Chuck bore the brunt of Graham, but your power embraced Chuck at the crucial moment, it turned from pure attack to defense. And he encouraged your attack, turning from pure defense to attack. It is because you two complete each other in these ways that your engagement spelled the end of the great Casting. It is why you could defeat Graham. You made him drill down into all the darkness inside him, and it finally consumed him."
Sarah shook her head. It was too much to take in, although she had to admit that in her bones it felt like the right explanation. "So Chuck can draw power from the moon because he is Fanny Price? Chuck will love that." Orion shrugged. Then they both laughed in the middle of the white island of light. As their laughter ended, they both heard Chuck's voice.
"Sarah, Sarah...? Is that you? Orion? Where am I?" Sarah jumped from her chair and put her hands on Chuck's face.
"I'm here, Chuck. I love you. I love you! You are going to be ok. You're in Beckmann's infirmary." Her relief ran down her face.
Orion retreated to give the couple privacy. He saw Ellie as he walked down the hall. He stopped to tell her about Chuck. She squealed at a pitch that carried through the building and threatened the integrity of every piece of glassware.
"I guess Ellie knows that I am awake."
In the few days leading up to the wedding, Chuck's condition improved greatly. He was no longer coughing up inky darkness and it was no longer oozing from his body. Ellie kept him under the lights. It was clear that although the physical damage was healing quickly, the psychological damage was taking longer. It wasn't that Chuck was despondent or depressed. It was more like he was haunted. He did not seem to have nightmares but his sleep was troubled. Orion speculated that there was still a battle being waged in Chuck's subconscious, a battle to overcome his exposure to the most profound darkness.
"He took on the weight of the world, Sarah. He carried a burden that he did not want to carry, that no one should carry. A burden, remember, that Graham wanted to carry but could not. The burden claimed Graham. Chuck is still standing - although I know that technically he is in his bed. But spiritually, psychologically, he is still standing. He endures, Sarah. Keep him focused on you, on the wedding. He will come around."
Now that Chuck was doing better, Sarah was able to assess what was happening around her: Beckmann's healers, along with Ellie, were able to take care of her hand. She did not ask for any sort of magical healing. She regarded her fingers as the price she paid for not seeing through Graham for so long, for the degree to which he had fooled and manipulated her. "Some people tie a string around their finger to remember; some have them bitten off by monsters." She was a tough lady.
She had also been spending time in whispered conversations with Orion. Sarah began to wonder if there might not be some backstory there. Maybe they had known each other in the past? Of course, it might have just been Sarah's imagination. She was so full of love she was probably just projecting it onto everyone else.
Casey's burns proved not to be too serious. He submitted a gracious letter of resignation to Beckmann, thanking her for all she had done for him. It was to be effective on the day of the wedding. One last mission. Beckmann's House gave Casey a very generous retirement. He was planning to open a shooting club nearby.
When Sarah went in to see Chuck on the day before the wedding, he was up and dressed. The armament of lights was off. The only light was from the lamp on the bedstand. He looked like himself, from his curly hair to his black hightops. There were still shadows in the corners of his eyes, but they seemed no longer to threaten the brown of his eyes. The shadows were losing. Tonight was the rehearsal dinner. Chuck had been up and about for a couple of days and his physical strength was returning apace. He still had a distance to go, but he pointed out that she was the one who was going to have to walk down the aisle. He just had to stand and wait. He could do that. He was good at waiting.
Beckmann came to Chuck and Sarah later that day with the news. The Houses had voted unanimously to turn Graham's House over to Chuck and Sarah. It would be House Bartowski. They could run it from Burbank, if they wanted. It meant, among other things, that they were suddenly wealthy. That was great. But Chuck wanted to go back to school, he was beginning to think a Ph. D. in archeology was what he wanted. Sarah just wanted quiet, hearth and home. Maybe she would eventually want to have a hand in running the House. But for now, she wanted to spend time with Chuck, spend time just being with Chuck, being Sarah, and just being. Carina volunteered to run the House for them. That suited everyone. Beckmann turned Cave over to them as the at-least-temporary headquarters of House Bartowski.
Graham's dark Enforcers were scattered and on the run and steadily weakening. Non-hereditary Casters were already beginning to appear. The distinction between Casters and mortals, the distinction that had shaped Sarah's life and the lives of generations of Casters, was breaking down, vanishing like the Berlin Wall. The world was turning topsy-turvy - but in a good way.
Chuck stood in his suit and took stock. Ellie and Devon decorated the courtyard for the rehearsal dinner. It was beautiful. Everyone was there. Morgan and Lou, Casey and Wanda, Carina, Orion, Beckmann, the Buy More crew, the crew from Lou's.
The big surprise was Sarah's parents, Jack and Emma. Orion, at Chuck's urging, had found them both and gotten them to town in time for the dinner and the wedding.
Sarah was very glad indeed to see her father again, even if she thought it unlikely he could change. But who knew? She had changed in ways she could barely have imagined even a year ago. Her reunion with her mother was tearful and heartfelt. Her mother could not apologize enough for retreating from Sarah's life, and Sarah apologized for making her feel like that retreat was what Sarah wanted. They cried and held each other, and Chuck watched it all with tears in his eyes, and his heart, so recently full of darkness now filled with light.
Tomorrow, he and Sarah would make official what was already true. Each was the other's everything.
"C'mon," Sarah commanded, finding him standing at the side of the courtyard, looking around, "Mom wants to meet you, Fanny." She kissed him briefly but with feeling. Chuck shook his head and followed Sarah as she led the way. They were both laughing.
End of Book Three: House Bartowski?
End of Chuck Vs. The Beautiful Creatures
Chapter-closing music: "Making It Up as We Go Along", The Vigilantes of Love
(Hang around, a Postscript is coming!)