A/N: The Hopes and Fears arc continues.

The Missionary

Up the stairs to the landing
Up the stairs into the hall, oh, oh, oh
Take oasis, Marat's bathing
We walk through the wood, we walk
Up the stairs to the landing
Up the stairs into the hall, oh, oh, oh
Take oasis, Marat's bathing

— REM, We Walk

Chapter 48: Up the Stairs

Casey chewed on the inside of his bottom lip, fretting it until he faintly tasted blood. Keeping The Nod's van on the highway was increasingly difficult; the weather had worsened to almost mythical levels, wind and snow whipping mixed and almost blinding, and the shocks on the van kept it bucking, the effect worsened by gusting sidewinds. The van seemed to be trying to move in multiple directions at once.

But it wasn't the challenge of the weather or the rodeo bull van, it was worry that caused Casey to chew his lip: worry about Irma and about Carina and about Chuck and Sarah and himself and about, well, the future.

He feared for Irma. She had known what she was volunteering for, but that was proof of her stubborn courage, and not a sop to Casey's guilt for exposing her to danger and, mostly, for leaving her unaided. Despite what Casey said in justification for leaving her, he fully understood Chuck not wanting others to run his risks.

Especially non-combatants, so to speak, civilians, like Irma.

He feared for Carina. Tyger was no joke, zero, not a man Carina could twist around her finger, not even if she were willing to…you know…in order to power the twist.

And, even if Casey understood, intellectually, the argument in favor of the...you know, his chest constricted when he drew the conclusion, a corset of jealousy and loathing. The thought of Carina having voluntary sex with anyone else made the snowstorm tinge over with red, but the thought of her having involuntary sex with Tyger made Casey want to scream aloud.

Fear. The problem was that he feared for the future. Now, he was worried about it, his worry like weak headlights beamed into a swirling, snowy dark, revealing only danger. Years ago Casey had taught himself to squelch his sense of futurity, allowing himself only as much looking ahead as the in-hand mission demanded — and no more. He had only a professional future, not a personal one. Tutoring himself to give up on a personal future had been difficult, and bitter. Still, he had done it, schooled himself into accepting that this mission or the next would be the end of him, his personal future never extending beyond his professional future.

Believing that he might outlive his missions, outlive his spy career, no, hoping he might outlive it, had seemed counterproductive, unprofessional, a source of distraction from the in-hand mission, a standing temptation to think about himself as if he were not exhausted by being a spy (exhausted, he thought and rubbed his eyes with his hand), as if he might have something to lose unspecified by mission objectives. Something to lose: Irma, Carina, Chuck and Sarah, Ellie and Devon, himself.

The whole list was news but the last one was new news.

Casey's burner buzzed. He glanced at it. Stanfield's number. Casey answered. "Sir?"

"Casey, how is the trip going? The weather's a bitch."

"Roger that, sir. But we're closing on Richmond."

"Good, be careful. I have some more instructions. The back gate to the estate will be open, I've told you how to find it. But once you're inside, park in the garage you'll see on the left; a door will be open too. Then you'll have a short walk through the woods to the main house. Go up the stairs and to the landing. I'll meet you there. I have security cameras all over the estate; I'll know when you're here." Stanfield paused. "Anything you need when you arrive? Medical? Food?"

"No, sir, but could you make some discreet inquiries with DC police about a woman, Irma Furst, who runs The Wink Inn Nod…" he gave The Nod's address, "...I'm…we're…worried about her."

"Discreet. Yes, I can do that; I have friends on the force, people I trust. I'll hope to have some information for you by the time you arrive; see you soon, Casey."

"Yessir," Casey said. He glanced up and saw Chuck staring at him in the rearview mirror. Walker's head was on Chuck's shoulder; she was looking at him too and then she closed her eyes.

Casey shifted his gaze to the highway; he couldn't stop looking ahead.

Carina stood looking at the folded clothes.

She had panties on, barely, a red thong, beneath her shorts, but nothing under her top, not that the top hid much as it was, baring her middle as it did, and with its scoop neckline.

But Tyger was waiting for her to do as he had ordered. She could feel his eyes on her, not just watching, waiting, eager. She knew it without turning around.

She sighed soundlessly, hiding even the motion, then she unbuttoned her shorts.

She slid them down, knowing that she was exposing her ass to him, especially as she bent down to pull them off her feet. She had used a similar posture and gesture countless times before to lure men, to ready them for her. But it felt different to her this time — as if she were baring herself for the first time — and to the wrong man. She grabbed a pair of folded jeans and quickly stepped into them, hoping that Tyger would not attack her before she put them on.

He didn't.

"Now, the top," he said, his voice thickening with desire, but revealing that he was still standing where he stood when he issued the first order.

She wanted to refuse but could see no way of doing it that would not worsen her plight.

He had left her alone after she took off her shorts, maybe he would do it again. She ran her fingers under the bottom of her top and lifted it in one quick motion over her head. Tyger was behind her and to the side; he could see no more than her naked back and perhaps the side of one breast.

She reached for the folded flannel shirt and grabbed it but Tyger stopped her.

"Turn around first."

She did, but she let the flannel shirt hang in front of her suspended from both hands, covering herself. Tyger stared at the shirt then moved his eyes to meet hers. There was a fierceness in his gaze.

"Move the shirts. Show me your tits." No ceremony, no warmth, just another order.

Carina forced herself to hold his eyes for a moment, then she let hers drop, intending to pretend shame, but then finding that she really was ashamed.

She lowered the shirt, holding it at her side, in her right hand. Tyger stared into her eyes then slowly slid his eyes down to her breasts. He stared at them, hunger added to the fierceness of his gaze.

But he did not move. After a long moment, he pointed to the shirt in her hand.

"Put it on."

Carina held in another sigh. She put the flannel shirt on, buttoning it, but worked to mask her hurry.

It was late in the day to be fearing for her integrity, her innocence, but she did.

Astley stood beside Bryce. He was unconscious on the stretcher. Bob stood on the other side of him.

Astley had answered Bryce's phone when it rang, talked to the person on the other end, asked questions, and gave orders.

She had the phone in her hand and she was staring hard at Bob. "So, you're making the decisions now?"

She smiled, the smile made unsettling by her bruising. "Yes, and you're going to back me up, tell everyone he — " she gestured at Bryce " — told me to step in for him, you know, like the VP when the president is incapacitated. You've been at his side for weeks. They'll believe you."

"Are you just going to let him die?" Bob asked.

Astley shook her head. "No, he's too valuable alive. I need to study him. He has the answers we need. — So, Bartowski got away?"

"Yes, he gave us the slip."

"Go to the analyst room and put them to work finding him. All of them. Every lead followed. And tell them that Bryce has put me in charge until he's better." She stared at Bob again, hard and cold, her gaze a gust across a November graveyard.

Bob did not know what to do. Presumably, there was some sort of hierarchy in Fulcrum, some rule of succession, but he had no idea who the next in line to run the show was supposed to be.

It wasn't Bob; he was not the VP. That was all he knew for sure.

That, and that Astley scared him. She was crazy but, hell, Bryce was — or he had been — too.

Bob nodded and left Bryce to Astley. She was looking at Bryce's phone.

Devon had called the police. They told him he needed to wait twenty-four hours before filing a Missing Persons report. He had argued to no effect.

When he gave up on the police, he tried to call Chuck again.

He had tried Chuck first but got no answer. He left a second message, practically begging Chuck to call him as soon as possible. Devon did not explain; he did not want to speak his fears on a recording. And besides, it was possible that this was all a misunderstanding, that Ellie would be home in a minute, laughing at his worry. It was possible but Devon didn't believe it.

"Call me, Chuck," Devon said to himself, pacing in the hallway of the apartment, "this isn't awesome."

Devon heard a knock at the door. Ellie? He raced to the front of the apartment and yanked the door open.

Casey had been cursing the weather but he knew it was actually a blessing. The low visibility meant that no one was likely to spot the van even if someone was searching for it.

He slowed the van. General Stanfield's address was Richmond, but it was on the outskirts, in an area that seemed more rural than urban. Casey steered the van, squinting out the window at the long stone wall that ran next to the road.

It was the wall around Stanfield's estate. Casey touched the brakes, and the van rocked. There was a gate, open.

He drove inside.

Trees lined the road, but in a moment, there was a clearing on the left and a large, four-car garage. One of the four doors was up, a light on.

Chuck got out of the back of the van, glad for the chance to stand up, and stretch, and glad to have his feet on solid ground. It had seemed like a boat ride, not a van ride.

He reached in and took Sarah's hand. She looked into his face, hers still showing some trepidation. He had caused that, not speaking much to her during the trip, although he had drawn strength from her touch, her arm around him.

He had been lost in his own head, footfalls echoing in his memory, scenes from his childhood that he had forgotten or that had been somehow screened from him until now.

What he remembered, other than the download in his father's home lab, were not big things, but little ones, seeming trivialities that seemed almost nothing at the time or later (if he remembered them at all), but they now seemed bigger, more significant. He had always been a good student, lightning quick, spongy retentive, but his power of memory seemed to increase after the download. The increase should have resulted in his grades improving, but it didn't. With the increase in his memory came an increase in his restlessness, an inability to focus and stay focused. He remained a good student but he always had potential that outpaced his actuality. It continued through high school — and later at Stanford. Even as an honors student at Stanford, Chuck's professors were frustrated by him, by the chasm seemingly fixed between his promise and performance.

Had it been the Intersect all along, creating and sustaining that chasm, granting him power but making him too restless to use it? How much of his history had that downloaded affected, changed, or redirected? Did he know himself at all? How much of his past belonged to him, and how much to someone — or, rather, something — else?

He took a moment and gave Sarah a kiss, trying to shake off his mood, his intense self-preoccupation. "Sorry, I've been shut in my head. My past…"

"I understand about pasts," Sarah said, "you've carried mine around for months, faced it more than I have for years, and now you have to carry your own too."

Casey shut the driver's door. "Do the Hallmark gab later. Let's find the house. It's fucking freezing."

Sarah looked at Chuck and then whispered. "Irma. He needs news."

Chuck understood and nodded. The thought of Irma pushed thoughts of himself out of his mind. He took Sarah's hand and they followed Casey out into the blowing snow.

The garage door closed behind them.

Ellie woke up, incompletely — but she was no longer asleep. She heard…engines roaring. Jets. She was seated, a seatbelt low and tight around her waist.

A plane. She was flying. She tried to scan her surroundings in the dim light but her body was distanced from her, disobedient to command.

Her eyelids weighed as much as all creation and she could not keep them open. A moment later, she was asleep again, completely.

Officer Whitehouse parked in the hospital lot and hurried in. Her shift was done and she was on her own time, not acting in any official capacity. She wanted to know about Irma.

The dispatcher at the precinct had no news.

Whitehouse walked through the sliding doors, careful on the slushy, slick marble floor. She walked to the lobby desk, smiling at the tall black woman in scrubs standing behind it.

"Yes, ma'am?" The tall woman was tired, her shoulders sagging.

"I'm Officer Whitehouse, off-duty," she showed her police badge. "I'm here to find out about the condition of a woman attacked this evening. She came by ambulance a couple of hours ago. Irma Furst."

The woman nodded and punched keys on a computer. "Yes, Ms. Furst was in OR. She'd been moved to the ICU." The woman took a moment to read the screen. "She's not yet regained consciousness. The doctors aren't sure if she will. The next few hours will be crucial."

Whitehouse swallowed. "Is anyone with her?"

"No record of visitors, no."

"May I go to her room, just sit with her? I know it's ICU but…"

The tall woman smiled at Whitehouse, less tired, standing straighter. "That would be kind, Officer. Above and beyond the call. She's in 312. I'll phone the nurses' station."

Sarah held Chuck's hand. Casey led the way. The snow stopped falling.

They walked along the road for a few minutes, trees close to the edge, murky and dark. The sky showed that the sun was rising, risen, but the woods kept the light from reaching them.

Around a turn, Sarah looked up, cued by Casey's grunt. A massive house stood before them, looking less like it had been built on the site than like it had thrust itself up, out of the earth.

They were facing the rear of the house, heavy stone. There was a stairway that led upward, toward a landing. Casey was already climbing. Sarah glanced at Chuck. He was staring at the house, struck by it, looming and massive. Sarah went first up the steps, following Casey, Chuck following her.

Sarah recalled the day she graduated from the Farm.

Graham had asked her to visit him. She trekked to Langley. The elevators had been down and she had been forced to climb several floors to Graham's office. She had entered Graham's office winded, despite the peak physical condition she had achieved during her weeks of schooling.

Graham ignored her labored breathing and asked her to follow him. He led back down the stairs to the first floor, to a long corridor dotted with portraits. Despite how much he intimidated her (and, at eighteen, he did intimidate her) she was annoyed. He could have met her on the first floor instead of making her climb all those stairs.

"This is the Director's Portrait Gallery. This first portrait is of Rear Admiral Sidney W. Sours, and the one on the far end is my predecessor. My portrait will eventually hang beyond it, after I complete my tenure."

She managed to keep her annoyance out of her tone. "Why are we here, sir?"

"I want you to understand how important to me you are going to be, Agent Walker. Doesn't that sound good? Agent Walker. You set records at the Farm; more than justified my faith in you, my, um, shoehorning you into the class. Your instructors all believe you have more potential than anyone else who has become an agent. More than any agent who served under any of the Directors pictured here. You, Agent Walker, have it in you to be the best."

Sarah's father had rarely praised her, and when he had, it had been for her role in cons that she could not be proud of. But that moment in the Portrait Gallery had been, for a time, the proudest of her young life. The portraits gave her a sense of place, of history, covering her lifelong melancholy, her constant sense of unbelonging.

Langley became the closest thing to a home she had known. A home in dark symbol if not in fact.

The Portrait Gallery had the effect on Sarah that Graham wanted. It galvanized her and set her on an Unholy Grail quest for spy perfection. She was going to be the best. That had been her conviction, her purpose. But it was hers because it was Graham's, imposed on from the outside, external, not given to herself from the inside, internal. Graham had known what he was doing: he had given a lost girl a goal, an existential target, a scheme for organizing her life, such as it was. For years afterward, daily, she had pushed herself, did all that Graham asked, and more.

She had become the best.

But then, a year or so ago, Sarah's hands had started shaking, and they had shaken off and on until Burbank, until Chuck. She had been the best — she had become all that Graham foretold, actualized her promise. But she became the best at a job that ruthlessly reduced human beings to their worst. Lies, pretense, killing, self-betrayal. There were justifications, Graham was good at giving them. But her hands still shook.

Her shaking hands had betrayed their betrayer; her body itself rebelling against her iron will, her constant self-demand and self-denial She now believed her hands had started shaking to manifest the damage she had done and was still doing to herself. The only form of protest her body could manage. When Sarah gave herself the mission to protect Chuck, she had, without knowing it, started to gather the shattered and scattered parts of herself together, and then Chuck had gently, in a kiln of fired passion, recreated her. Pulled everything together.

Reborn in that cabin bed.

Chuck was her home, not just in bright symbol but in fact.

She was now growing into a new woman, and she knew there would be growing pains, especially since the man she loved was growing too, struggling to cope with his own past and what it meant for his future.

But they were growing together. Sarah was no longer alone.

Even in the spyworld, she had found a true home.

They reached the landing at the top of the stairs. A door opened, and General Stanfield came out into the cold. He was wearing old jeans, faded, and a West Point sweatshirt. He had coyote brown boots on, socks, but his boots were unlaced. A soldier at home. He smiled at them, the smile immediately taking off some of the chill.

"Glad you made it. I got worried. There was an alert for a van owned by the woman you mentioned, Casey, Irma Furst. Stolen."

Casey shook his head and held up the keys. "No, she's my aunt, mother's side. She lent it to me. Is she — "

"She's in ICU, unconscious. The doctors don't know whether she will make it. — But let's not talk about all this out here, let's get in where it's warm. My study is just down the hall. No one is here but me and the groundskeeper, who opened the gate and garage door. My family is supposed to join me this afternoon."

Casey let out a long sigh. "Okay, sir."

They went inside. It was warm in the room they entered, a fire going in the large fireplace. They took off their coats and shook off the cold. Stanfield led them out of the room and turned down a short hallway. A door was open at the end.

Inside, there were books along all the walls except the one behind the desk. It had a fireplace, a fire, in it. Above the mantel was a painting. It stopped Sarah when she saw it. It pictured a man, stabbed, dead in a bathtub, the water reddened by his blood.

Sarah glanced away and saw Chuck and Casey looking at the painting.

"Marat. Jaques-Louis David's Death of Marat," Chuck said softly, a bit mechanically.

Stanfield turned and raised an eyebrow at Chuck. "People usually notice but few know the painting — although this is, of course, a reproduction."

Chuck shook his head. Sarah could tell it had been the Intersect that recognized the painting.

Stanfield went on. "Did you study art history or French history, Mr. Bartowski?"

Chuck shook his head. "No, I took one art appreciation course, but it was all music, classical, mostly Bach. Lots of counterpoint."

Stanfield chuckled. "I like Bach, and to be honest, I don't like that painting but I keep it as a grisly reminder."

Casey grunted. "Reminder? Of the danger of bathing with a towel around your head?"

Stanfield chuckled again and turned to look at the painting too, his smile vanishing as he did.

"No, nothing about bathing, although I shower, I admit. No, I keep the painting to remind me of the pointlessness of violence, of the manipulation of martyrdom.

"Marat, you see, was a violent man who advocated the deaths of his political enemies, the enemies of the Revolution. For real, not just rhetorically. He was hot to put the guillotine to use. He was a street corner Caligula, a functionary of ruin. A man, unfortunately, like most politicians.

"A young woman, Charlotte Corday, quiet and apparently harmless, hoped she could put an end to violence, or decrease it by assassinating Marat. She snuck into his house and stabbed him to death in his bathtub. She was executed a few days later. Each side claimed one of the dead as a martyr. The people claimed Marat; the aristocrats Corday. They nicknamed her 'the Angel of Assassination'."

Chuck glanced from the painting to Sarah. The phrase cut through her and she winced.

"That's the logic of violence. It starts and then it seems the only way to stop it is to engage in it, but that never stops it — it only adds to it, and continues it. Corday hated Marat but she acted as Marat would act, replicating the very thinking and hopes of Marat. Marat was a devil; Corday was an angel. But she became a devil to end a devil. She killed and was killed to stop killing. It's an important lesson for any soldier, any statesman."

Sarah turned from the painting. The story upset her, bringing back the cold from outside. She felt an immediate kinship with Corday, not by blood, of course, but by age and situation, by plight.

Graham as Marat.

Chuck had moved to Sarah and taken her hand.

Stanfield turned away from the painting again. "Sorry for lecturing. An old man's folly. But that's why I have such a hateful picture hanging over my desk, coloring my study."

"So, my aunt?" Casey said, tearing his eyes from the painting and looking at Stanfield.

"I don't know much more, except that her doctors hope she wakes up in the next few hours. She was strangled, her brain was deprived of oxygen for a long time."

"Shit," Casey said, "shit."

"We can check again in a while, Casey. But right now, you folks have a story to tell me, I take it, one that involves your aunt?"

"Yes," Chuck said, stepping forward during Casey's silence, "we do."

A/N: More soon. Lots of action in lots of places. Some difficult moments ahead.