A/N the First: Here it is, the chapter delivered on Tuesday as promised. This weekend, I decided sanity was a luxury I could ill-afford and entered into a challenge with the wonderful KateMcK, whom I have nothing but respect for even if she is as mad as a hatter. Either way, we decided that we'd really like to post on Leap Day, given that this is a leap year, and that meant two chapters in quick succession for me and two chapters of her two awesome stories in quick succession for her. If you happen to see the well-rested version of Frea around anywhere, could you possibly say hello to her for me? It's been awhile since I've seen her.

People to thank: the wonderful, multitalented, triple award-winning beta mxpw, my marvelous and fantastic pre-readers, everybody who left reviews, encouragement, bemoaning, and whatnot on previous chapters, everybody still reading this labor of love, and everybody that voted for me in the Awesome Awards. I'm truly touched by each and every one of you. Yes, even the bemoaning.

PS — if you're not reading Spies and Nerds by quistie64 and myself, you're missing out on some fun stuff. SINGING. And CHARAH.

Etiquette requires us to admire the human race. — Mark Twain

Crossing the Rubicon

14 MAY 2008
BUNKER 77142135
07:45 OMST

The roar of the snowmobile seemed to chop the Siberian silence in half. Chuck heard it even before Casey came into view, a distant buzz that grew closer with each passing second. He calmly set his goggles around his neck and stared at the tree line. Casey roared into sight; Chuck took a deep breath that shook, but not with the cold. He didn't have a choice, he told himself. The email had made that, if nothing else, perfectly clear.

Best to get it over with.

Carefully, torso so erect that he felt robotic, he lifted the pack so that it was over one shoulder. He waved.

Casey cut power to the snowmobile. He took his time settling his feet on the snow, lifting his goggles. His scowl could be read for hundreds of miles. "Couldn't you," he said, "have found some bolt-hole on American soil?"

"Sorry," Chuck said, his voice surprisingly normal. "Nostalgia wins out against practicality every time."

Casey blinked at him, as though Chuck had grown a second head instead of a beard. The NSA agent looked exactly the same as he had three months before—or even eight weeks before. Truthfully, Chuck hadn't gotten too good of a look at Casey then; he'd been too busy running through Barcelona's red light district to really study Casey, or Sarah. Though later on, he wished he had. The real thing had nothing on the photograph buried in his pocket.

He missed her like somebody had actually carved out a piece of him.

Casey cleared his throat. Chuck pushed those thoughts away. "So that's it," Casey said, nodding at the passageway behind Chuck.

"Cozy, right? You want a tour?"

"I want to get out of this damned country, Bartowski."

"Fair enough," Chuck said. He adjusted his grip on the remote in his hand before he pulled his goggles on. It cut into the bright dawn light—dawn light that had been around for over six hours, as Siberian summer meant the coming of the midnight sun—making him squint less. It took his legs a moment to remember how to function and move forward. He almost expected to hear creaking as he propelled himself toward the snowmobile, climbing on behind Casey and grabbing hold of Casey's parka. Without waiting for Chuck to say anything, Casey revved the engine.

The snowmobile took off, almost seeming to leap into action as though it were channeling Casey's impatience to be off of this continent. Chuck began counting in his head, following the equation he'd worked out a couple of days before. When he reached eight-Mississippi, he pressed the button on the remote.

The bunker blew up. He didn't even have a split second to imagine three years of his life as pieces of rubble, like he'd thought he would while carefully lining the walls with C-4. He'd spent far too much time doing that, he knew, thinking about how the office where he'd spent so many hours of slavery would go first, followed by the bunk room, and finally the kitchen. The same kitchen where he'd once shared a drink with Sarah, with its little shelf where he'd stored the munchkin bottles of Tabasco sauce that came in the MREs, all lined into rows like the soldiers they would never reach, as they were forever stuck in the bunker with Chuck.

All of it, he'd imagined flying at the camera like a Hollywood model set in a soundstage

In reality, there was a popping noise like pressure being released, and then the ground shook beneath the snowmobile. Chuck glimpsed only one fireball blooming orange behind them before Casey cursed and jerked the snowmobile hard to the left. For a second, Chuck thought they would tip over, and wondered if it would hurt.

Casey righted the vehicle and leaped off, gun in hand. "Get down," he said, grabbing Chuck's shoulder to shove him behind the snowmobile. "I don't know how many of them there are—"

Chuck's hand stopped working. He dropped the remote on the snow.

It was done.

"What the hell—" Casey broke off with a swear and stooped to pick up the remote. He whirled on Chuck, fury clearly evident on his face. "Did you do this, Bartowski?"

"It's gone," Chuck said, staring at the burning smear on the horizon. "It's all gone."

His last haven. His prison, now reduced to a black line of smoke and burning debris.

"Bartowski!" Casey grabbed the front of his parka and hauled Chuck around to face him. He filled Chuck's vision, but Chuck just replayed the explosion—the Hollywood and reality overlapping each other until one became the other—over and over again in his head. He'd done it. He was free, clear of the bunker, and there was nowhere left to go but forward; his lifeline and his limitation had gone up in smoke.

Casey shook him, hard. Chuck looked at him.

"Bartowski, answer me, dammit. What the hell did you do that for?"

"It's gone," Chuck said.

Casey gave him a disgusted look. "Great. If I'd known this was the Bartowski I'd be going to collect today, I'd have packed a goddamned straightjacket."

"You don't understand," Chuck said, ignoring the way his brain told him the words should hurt. Nothing was allowed to hurt or touch his emotions now. That risk simply wasn't allowed.

"You're damn right I don't understand. Get on the snowmobile. Nobody probably noticed the blast but there's no reason to chance it and stand here with our asses hanging out. Move."

"No," Chuck said, staring at the landscape and all of its Siberian glory. "You don't get it. I can't go back."

Before Casey could bodily haul him onto the snowmobile, he lurched away. He dropped to his knees and unceremoniously upended everything he'd managed to eat in the past twenty-four hours onto the snow.

14 MAY 2008
SIBERIA
09:57 OMST

The sound of the snowmobile engine being cut made Chuck's brain catch up with the rest of him and politely inform him that they'd been slowing down for awhile, and had even come to a stop. He cursed; that kind of lapse couldn't happen. He had to stay aware and alert, always focused, always on edge in case his suspicions were wrong and somebody did know the Lincoln trigger phrases. But it was hard to do when his brain felt a bit like it was rattling around inside of a bowl of soup instead of inside his skull and his body felt so weary and so food-deprived that every limb weighed more than the snowmobile, upon which he was currently sitting behind Casey.

Cautious, he forced himself to lift his head. He hadn't huddled into Casey for warmth—he was brain-damaged, not suicidal—but he'd kept his head down, hoping to avoid windburn on the parts of his face exposed around the goggles and the face cover. He blinked furiously, as his eyes had watered up with the cold, but the sight didn't change. Casey had pulled the snowmobile up in front of a house. It was ringed with wooden fences for miles, though Chuck didn't see any livestock. Or anything else, really, but snow and trees.

"Casey?" he asked.

"It's a restaurant. We need to eat."

Chuck hesitated.

"Relax," Casey said, pulling his own balaclava down so he could apply chapstick. "Nobody in the government knows we're stopping here."

Casey swung off of the snowmobile and headed for the front door. Belatedly, Chuck realized that there was a sign over the door. Since he couldn't speak Russian without somebody misquoting Wordsworth at him in a Southie accent, and he'd never remember it anyway if they did, Chuck gingerly climbed off of the snowmobile and pushed himself to his feet, stumbling a little dizzily. The minute he straightened, he reprimanded himself. No matter how he felt, he had to stay in control.

Inside the restaurant, it was cold, but not the same burning cold as outside. Grateful for that much, at least, Chuck pulled his face cover down and dropped his goggles around his neck once more. It allowed him to get a much clearer picture, though there wasn't much: two long tables, lined by low benches rather than chairs. Lanterns instead of electric lighting, a giant fire roaring at the hearth. The far left corner of the room seemed to be a tiny kitchen, as there was a cooking fire and a woman in a bright red sweater manning a stove.

"Sit," Casey ordered, pointing toward the fire. Chuck was only too happy to oblige, as he'd lost feeling in his fingers and toes six weeks before. Casey headed for the kitchen. Chuck didn't bother to listen too closely, though he figured Casey was probably ordering them food in a local dialect of some type.

He sat and stared at the fire. It was soothing.

Within thirty-six hours, he'd be back in Washington D.C., he thought, and the back of his throat felt sticky with nausea. It was universes away from a tiny Russian restaurant, but here he was, nonetheless, watching the movement of the fire, and knowing he couldn't go back.

"Here." The bowl hitting the table at his elbow sounded unnaturally loud. Chuck looked away from the flames.

"What's this?"

"Shchi," Casey said.

"Bless you," Chuck said.

"Shut up. It's local food. Eat."

It was soup, Chuck could determine, but beyond that, all bets were off the table. He poked curiously at the top layer of green—with brown bits bobbing about in it that had to be some kind of meat—and sniffed. "Don't do that," Casey said. "You'll offend our hosts. Just eat it."

Chuck scowled, but picked up his spoon, which looked hand-carved. He scooped up a steaming spoonful, took a bite, and had to clench his fist to keep from gagging.

"What's your problem now?"

"It's sour."

"So?"

"So I don't think this much acid's gonna go well with my stomach." Chuck gave the green and brown soup a nauseated look. "Casey, I can't eat this without tossing my cookies again, which will probably offend our hosts even more."

Casey turned toward the woman in the corner and called out something in Russian. She nodded and disappeared through a doorway—apparently there was a second room after all. It made Chuck uneasy to realize he'd missed that detail.

"What'd you say to her?"

"That my delicate princess of a traveling companion needs something to settle his precious stomach."

Chuck scowled. "Thanks, Casey."

"Anytime."

The woman appeared back in the room and hurried toward Chuck and Casey with a wooden cutting board in front of her. On it...Chuck's mouth began to water. That was actual, homemade bread.

"Tell her thank you?" he asked Casey when the woman set the bread on the table.

Casey rolled his eyes, but whatever he said to the woman seemed to work, as she inclined her head and left them in peace with the bread. "Well, go on. Eat up."

Chuck didn't reply. The bread tasted too heavenly to waste time on conversation, especially given the nature of Casey's current mood. Chuck had already plowed through three pieces by the time his head began to feel less fuzzy and disconnected. By that point, real appetite, not just the need to feed his emptied stomach, had returned. He dug into the Shchi with a little less trepidation, though the flavor hadn't improved much. Casey, across the table, didn't seem to mind: he polished off a bowl and requested a second, which the proprietor was all too happy to bring over, all smiles.

Chuck had a second bowl, too. It wasn't out of a desire for more food: he simply didn't wish to offend complete strangers with the fact that he found their food disgusting.

"Do we need to go soon?" he asked as he dug into the second bowl.

Casey shrugged. "Whenever. We're early, and nobody's going to trace that explosion back to us for a while, the lazy commies."

"I burnt any ties to me before I did it," Chuck said, intending only to be helpful.

The attempt failed. Casey glared at him. "What in the good name of Archibald Henderson, may he live forever, did you do that for, Bartowski? You know we're on enemy soil."

"Enemy soi—really?"

"What of it?"

"It's just a bit...dramatic, isn't it?"

"I'm not the one who blew government property sky-high!"

"A government prison," Chuck said between his teeth.

"Nobody put you in there the second time, Bartowski." Casey ripped a piece of bread off a little too viciously for Chuck's comfort.

Chuck, meanwhile, took a deep breath. Don't get angry, he told himself. He needed to remain on an even keel or blowing up the bunker and destroying his last safe haven would have been completely for naught. If he let control slip, truly slip, for too long...

"I'm sorry about Barcelona, Casey," he said. "But I couldn't go back until I knew for sure."

"I told you things were fine," Casey said, glaring. "Nobody would touch you. You had my word."

Chuck reminded himself that he needed to stay emotionless, though he wanted to argue. "I'm sorry," was all he said.

For a moment longer, Casey continued to scowl at him, and Chuck empathized with any enemies the Marine had faced in battle. He also wondered how many of them had wet their pants, but eventually Casey just scowled and mopped up the last of his Shchi broth with a bit of bread. "I guess you found what you needed."

"As much as I could," Chuck said, which was the honest truth.

Casey grunted for the first time in Chuck's company, and the noise was almost a homecoming. "Sleep at all? You look like crap."

"Some. And thanks." Chuck rolled his eyes and turned so that he was staring at the fire, his arms crossed over his chest. He huddled inward, somewhat protectively, and tried to ignore the assessing look he could feel Casey giving him. His hands were shaking, but that wasn't anything unusual. His hands were always shaking these days.

"You never said," Casey said.

"Said what?"

"Why you blew up the bunker, moron."

Chuck shrugged and looked harder at the fire, though he had no idea what he would find there. He finally looked away, but it was only to pick up the mug of coffee so black, it left soot on his esophagus all the way down. He took a long sip and hid his grimace at the taste. "Because I can't go back," he said, setting the coffee down.

Casey rubbed a hand down his face. "And it never occurred to you to just say, 'Hey, I should just not go back to the bunker?' You had to involve munitions?"

"Well," Chuck said, "I can't let you have the market cornered on being a drama queen."

He received only a grunt in reply rather than the threat he expected. After a long silence had stretched out between them, Casey cleared his throat and fiddled with his coffee mug, a twin to Chuck's own. "Why come back?" he asked.

"Email said I had to." He'd monitored his email carefully, using mirrored IP addresses and a thousand other hacker tricks to keep them from triangulating his signal to the bunker. The email from the Office of General Diane Beckman had startled him: he hadn't expected such a blatant move. He'd checked to make sure that there had been no audio attachments to the email. There hadn't been. There had only been a date and an "I expect to see you in D.C. by then, Agent Bartowski. We have much to discuss."

How the woman could drip authority from plain text, Chuck didn't know. But he got the feeling that Beckman knew exactly where he was the entire time. And on the heels of that suspicion had come the thought that missing this meeting with Beckman would be very bad indeed. So he'd contacted Casey.

The same Casey that now let out an actual snort. "Cut the bull, Bartowski. You evaded two highly trained intelligence operatives for over three weeks and vanished completely off of the map. Ignoring one, and pardon me for saying so, old woman's email would be the easiest thing in the world for you to do."

"Maybe. Have you met Beckman? She's scary."

Casey glared at him, and continued to glare for so long that the levy wall of humor that Chuck had tried to build up during their meal crumbled further. He sighed. "Just because I can do something doesn't mean I want to."

"So you want to come back to the people that—"

"No," Chuck said before Casey could say it aloud. He lived with incontrovertible proof of what the government had done to him—his knee would probably never fully heal, and the memories would never leave—but he still didn't want to hear it spoken aloud. "No. But I don't want to keep running."

"So what do you want?"

Chuck thought of Orion's offer to remove the Intersect. "I want to be left alone," he said at last. "I want the things in my head to be only the things that belong there. Things that came from me. I have...pieces in my head that aren't me. Other people did this, and they changed who I am and what I do without me having any control over it." A hollow laugh barked out of him, surprising him, but he pressed on. "Do you know what the medical term for that is?"

Casey met his eyes. "Schizophrenia."

"I signed up to help my country and they gave me brain damage." That rage that never seemed to go far threatened to swell. Chuck clenched his left fist and released his fingers one at a time, counting them in his head, slowly, until the rage subsided. It was never fully gone, as the embers remained, but it could be subdued. "So what I want is to be left alone with whatever pieces of me I have left, and that's all."

"I guess you have a plan," Casey said.

"Depends." He had contingency plans in place. Paranoia would demand nothing less. But it relied on one fact. Even though there had always been insults—some more serious than others—and Casey had once threatened to put a bullet in his skull, the NSA agent had always been straight with him. And there wasn't a single shred of evidence that pointed to Casey or Beckman or even anybody in the NSA knowing about Project Lincoln.

It wasn't much, but it was all Chuck had. So he stared hard at Casey. "What's waiting for me in Moscow, Casey?"

He almost expected a heartfelt and sincere statement that Chuck wasn't walking into a trap. But Casey scowled. "Two of the biggest pains in my ass," he said. "What else?"

"What?"

"Your sister and Walker insisted on coming as far as Moscow. That's the party waiting for us when we get back tonight."

"Oh." The entire restaurant grew even colder. Chuck kept his grip on the coffee mug, but only through sheer will. He'd genuinely thought he would have another twenty-four hours before he would have to face Ellie's wrath or...whatever Sarah had in store for him. The thought alone made nerves spring to life, stark and colorful and terrifying in their intensity. That evening would come all too soon. It also couldn't arrive quickly enough.

And all of it might be a trap. He swallowed hard and hoped he wouldn't have to relive the Shchi the same way he'd relived the MREs from the day before.

"If there are agents waiting for me in Moscow, Casey, I will run," he said.

Casey snorted. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good thing you left us a nice handy crater to find you in your little bunker again."

"I'm serious, Casey."

"Really? Because taking a trip hundreds of kilometers into the middle of commie territory to collect your skinny ass is your idea of a joke?"

He had to think hard about that one as he swallowed another mouthful of that vile coffee. The disgust so plainly evident on Casey's face almost made him want to smile, of all things. "Touché," was all he said. "There aren't agents waiting for us in Moscow?"

"What could you possibly hope to do if there are, Bartowski?"

"I already said I'm going to disappear."

"Good luck doing that again. You realize there are going to be agents in D.C."

"Yes, I realize that."

"Walking around," Casey went on, swirling the dregs of the coffee in his mug. "Looking at you. Some of them might actually even talk to you." He made an overly shocked face.

Chuck scowled. "Don't be a jerk," he said.

"Don't make me come back to the middle of this pinko wasteland again."

"Maybe I'll feel the need to visit my old home, Casey. Ever think of that? I did spend three years there. A man might get nostalgic."

"Home sweet crater," Casey said, sneering.

Chuck felt twin spurts of annoyance and the same humor from a minute before. "It's like I never left. God."

"Trust me, it's not. Are you ready to go? I want to get out of here."

The thought immediately sobered all feelings of annoyance and any camaraderie. Their next stop would be the airstrip, where the plane that would take them the rest of the way to Moscow awaited them. Moscow, where Ellie and Sarah were.

"Yes," Chuck lied. "I'm ready to go."

14 MAY 2008
HOTEL IZMAILOVO GAMMA-DELTA
18:12 MSK

Chuck stared up at the hotel sign—written in English below the Cyrillic lettering—in dismay. The hotel was located on the outskirts of Moscow, where they wouldn't be noticed, Casey had put it. They'd hop a flight out of Domodedovo in the morning headed for D.C., but for the night, they had to camp with the locals. At the Hotel Izmailovo Gamma-Delta.

Delta.

It made Chuck want to lose his brunch of Shchi and coffee, now a very distant memory. There was no way this could be a coincidence.

Indeed, Casey turned from paying their cab driver, pocketing his wallet. "Like it?" he asked as Chuck continued to stare in mute horror at the sign above the hotel's leaded-glass doorway. "I picked it out myself."

"Very funny, Casey," Chuck said, and gave him a sour look.

Casey shrugged, completely unrepentant. He then shoved Chuck forward by the shoulder. "Let's get this over with. March."

Chuck swallowed hard and allowed himself to be pushed forward. Fear and anger and a thousand emotions that couldn't be quantified coated the inside of his stomach like a sickness. If there hadn't been any turning back at the bunker, there definitely was no escape now. Casey had called from the airstrip where he'd parked the borrowed plane—"Called in a friend from an old...colleague in the private sector. Don't ask."—to confirm that Ellie and Sarah were waiting for them at the hotel. They were inside. They would see him again.

Would Ellie cower away from him? What would Sarah do? Would they be normal, like Casey had attempted to be? Chuck had seen a lot of sidelong glances during the six-hour plane ride from the wilds of Siberia to Moscow, glances that told him Casey wasn't any surer than he was about where they all stood. Casey had tried to put up a good face, Chuck knew. For Casey, that meant sarcastic commentary, mild put-downs mixed in with genuine questions and half-hearted offers of support.

Whatever happened, Casey was on his side. Ellie would be, too, Chuck knew. But Sarah...

They walked past the front desk in the lobby and headed not for the elevator, but a set of stairs. It wasn't terribly well-lit inside the hotel, and nothing was glossy or bright like the chain hotels in America. This was an old building converted to a hotel years before, Chuck determined, though some renovation had been done recently.

Casey nudged him up two flights of stairs. "This is us," he said on the third story. "Stay here. I want to check on something."

"Check what?" Chuck asked, everything going still inside him. Trap, his mind whispered. It's a trap.

"Just check. Stay put." Casey gave him a look and headed away down the hallway.

He told himself to calm down. He'd come back on his own, after all. He had to trust Casey was a man of his word. His eyes cut to the window at the end of the short hallway. They were on the third floor. It was a bit far to jump, and he hadn't seen any interesting architectural details on the side of the building that would allow him to escape like Jason Bourne had from the embassy in Zurich.

He was effectively trapped. A bead of sweat slid from under his hairline into the collar of his shirt.

Casey knocked once at one of the doors down the hallway and listened close. Whatever he heard from inside seemed to satisfy him, for he nodded and gestured to Chuck. "It's safe. Come on."

Shoulders back, spine absolutely rigid, Chuck took one step and then another. Casey watched him walk with upraised eyebrows. "They're women, not a firing squad," he said under his breath.

Chuck gave him a sour look. They were a hell of a lot more than that.

Casey shrugged and pushed the door open with his free hand, inviting Chuck to go first. As much as Chuck would have liked to take a moment, sort out the wriggling nerves in his midsection, he could feel Casey's eyes on him. So he took a deep breath. It was either a trap, or it was his sister...and Sarah. He knew which was the more frightening possibility. With the two pictures burning a hole in his pants pocket, one old and one taken from his apartment, he stepped inside.

The room was nice. He had vague impressions of wallpapered walls, a sofa, a television, the regular assortment of furniture to be found in hotels around the world. If he'd had time to study it, he imagined he'd find it pleasing to the eye. But he ignored all of that, for standing by the couch, hands clasped so tightly together that Chuck could see red and white stripes on her fingers, was his sister.

Chuck tensed. Would she cower away in fear? She should, though he knew if she did, the tension holding him upright might very well collapse.

Ellie gasped. "It's you," she said. "Oh, my god, you're alive. I was so worried!" She shot across the room like a cannonball, barreling at him. He stamped hard on the instinct to recoil away, and instead let her hug him.

Guilt writhed through him. Oh my god, you're alive.

"You...you didn't get my message?" he asked when he could speak.

Ellie didn't let him go. "I did. I got the card, but I was worried sick about you. They said you were okay, but I didn't believe them—I had to see it for myself, and you're here, you're safe." She took a step back, keeping a grip on his upper arms that was a little frightening in its strength, and studied his face for a long time. "You're here, and you're safe. I'm so glad."

"I'm glad to see you, too, Ellie," Chuck said, though it was hard to return her smile, not when it was so full of hope and happiness. The guilt stopped writhing and instead settled like an anchor in his stomach.

He'd had to run. Nobody would have been safe until he knew.

"And now that that's out of the way..." Ellie trailed off and let go of his arm to punch him in the shoulder. Hard. "You jerk!"

"Ow!"

"You left me something from a stupid card game!"

"I told you—"

"You couldn't have picked up the phone and said, 'Hey, Ellie, I'm alive?' That was too hard?"

"El—"

"Your apartment's covered in blood, you're gone, an FBI agent is telling me you had a concussion, and you left me a toy to say you were okay!"

Chuck didn't dare look away from her angry expression, though he wanted to. The guilt and shame were now so heavy, he was surprised he didn't hear the floorboards beneath his feet begin to creak and buckle. He felt his shoulders sag. "Ellie, I wanted to call. A thousand times, I wanted to call, but I just couldn't be sure..."

"Who to trust," said a new voice, and all three of the room's occupants looked up to see Sarah standing in the doorway to one of the suite's bedrooms.

Over a week of lying awake in his bunk in that tiny bunker in Siberia, fretting over this moment, hadn't given him a single jot of preparation. He'd envisioned a thousand different scenarios—Sarah would ignore the government's word and come to collect him from the bunker herself, Sarah would show up in the plane, on the trip, at the airport, on the street. He would turn and she would be standing there and his heart would stop, and he'd finally know how he felt about everything she had done and he had done, and there would be some sort of closure between them.

None of those daydreams and scenarios could hold a candle to this.

His heart didn't stop. If anything, it pounded harder, battering itself against his ribcage and making the blood swim dizzily through his head. Sarah had only gotten prettier. It shouldn't have been possible—she'd lost weight, there were bags under her eyes—but after six weeks of nothing but the photograph currently in his pocket, she was real again, and more beautiful and fragile and strong than ever. She watched him with a reserved look on her face, eyes wary, posture neutral. He'd imagined a hatred growing upon first sight of her. He'd also envisioned falling to his knees in a helpless puddle and forgiving her on the spot.

Neither happened. All he felt was uncertainty, and doubt, and the ever-present fear that had made him throw up on the snow earlier.

He licked his lips and, never looking away from her, said, "Hi, Sarah."