A/N1 Greetings from Pensacola, the beach. More story.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the responses. Please keep them coming!

Don't own Chuck.

Sarah vs. Omaha

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Reel Around the Fountain

It's time the tale were told
Of how you took a child
And you made him old
You made him old
-The Smiths, Reel Around the Fountain

Chuck stood still, flash-frozen. Anders' body was mostly in the fountain, the water still sloshing around, although Anders' ankles and feet were sticking out of the fountain, propped on the edge, pointing skyward like his sightless eyes. He had on argyle socks.

Thorne shoved her pistol in the bag hanging from her shoulder and dug out a phone.

"June Thorne. Cleaners needed. Echo Park." She gave the address. "Get here fast." She ended the call.

Chuck was still glacial, in and out. His vision dimmed, then brightened, dimmed and brightened. He heard a noise. Shoes slapping pavement. Casey. He was running toward them, the Crown Vic's engine running behind him, the headlights on, showing him, a running man, in silhouette. The driver's side door was open, the dome light glowing weakly.

"What the fuck?" Thorne calmly faced Casey; she was apparently unfazed by anything that had happened, or that was happening, around her. She was back on the phone.

"Don't know. Saw the man leave, tailing the asset. Arrived at Echo Park. The man had a gun. Got here just in time. He was about to capture the Intersect, Director." Graham. She was now talking to Graham. Shit all around. Just...shit. As Thorne talked, she reached into the bloody water and fished out Anders' gun. She put it down carefully beside one of his feet.

Casey hustled to Chuck. "You're ok?"

Chuck began to unfreeze. He looked himself over before he nodded. He grabbed Casey's hand. "In the guy's car, a notebook. Get it. We can't let June find it, Casey." June was still talking on the phone, still talking to Graham. Casey glanced at her; she was not watching them. He nodded to Chuck and started toward his car. As he passed June, Casey gestured at his car. She looked at it and went on with her conversation, turning back to Ander's corpse. Chuck watched as she put her hands back in the water and rifled through Anders' pockets, but she found nothing. Shifting attention, Chuck peered out into the lot. Casey got to his car then ducked and scooted to Anders'. He was in and out in a second. Back at the Crown Vic, he put something inside just after turning off the headlights and just before shutting down the engine. He walked back to the fountain.

ooOoo

Sarah watched the elevator numbers click to eleven, hating each one. She got out. Each step seemed harder to take than the last. Each floor, each step took her farther from Chuck. Each floor, each step returned her to her cover assignment, trapped her more completely.

Unlocking the door, sighing sadly, she went inside. Damn. Lights are on!

Bryce was seated on the couch, glaring at her. He had his legs crossed and had the Chuck Taylors on. Sarah bit the inside of her lower lip. Chuck!

"Where the hell did you go, Sarah? I expected you back hours ago. You never answered your phone." True. I did not answer your calls. Bryce's voice would have driven away the enveloping seductive sweetness of Chuck's kisses and she had wanted to linger in that as long as she could.

She shrugged. "Forgot my charger. My phone died."

Bryce gave her a suspicious look. She glanced at his shoes and he noticed. A light clicked on in his eyes. His brows went up.

"You!" He pointed at her but forgot to fully extend his finger, so it was more like he half-pointed. "You are the one who keeps hiding my shoes from me. Putting them under the bed."

Sarah gave him nothing but a flat glance in response. But he was growing more certain. "I know it. It was you. I gave some poor guy in housekeeping a dressing-down, but it was you."

Sarah was tired. She was brokenhearted about leaving Chuck, leaving him without everything between them more stable and settled. Bryce's accusation went through her. The shoes (Those goddamn shoes!) made her crazy.

"Why the hell are you doing wearing those? Like they match your hundred-dollar t-shirts or your designer jeans. Or your goddamn Omega Seamaster watch! Your whole 007 ensemble! Except that yours is masterminded by GQ, not Q."

Bryce was stunned. He had not expected to get the tongue-lashing, he expected to give it. He glanced at the Omega on his wrist a little self-consciously.

"I can wear whatever I damn well please. I saw Chuck wearing these Chucks and I…Wait. Huh-uh. Q? Bond?"

Bryce stopped. Just stopped. Sarah closed her eyes. She could hear it; there was no need to watch. Incoming!

"Chuck. It's been Chuck all along. Chuck! I sent him the Intersect and sent him you... and you...you fell for Chuck Bartowski." Bryce's voice was a complete blend of anger and befuddlement. "And you've been to Burbank. You've been to see Chuck."

Sarah's first instinct was to deny it. And then she thought of Chuck. She had denied him the first time after the kiss, then she denied him a second time when she ran. She would not deny him now. Not a third time. She was not ashamed. Not in the least. The reverse. Chuck Bartowski loved her. Chuck Bartowski, a man in full. The only one she had ever known. A man out of myth. (Even if he doesn't know these things about himself. But I will teach him.) "Yes, Bryce. I went to Chuck. I left him...in a mess. I needed to talk to him. You told me you did not need me as a backup today, so I don't know what you are so upset about." She stopped, dropped the intensity of her voice. "But yes, Bryce, Chuck and I, we're together. Exclusively." Bryce dropped his head at that word.

ooOoo

Chuck was still watching the reel around the fountain. June finished on the phone. She put it in her bag. Looking around the courtyard, she checked to make sure no one was around. Chuck looked too. No one was. It was typically quiet there at the time of the night. June marched to Chuck and handed him her bag. He noticed for the first time it was hot pink. He took it and stood there with it in his hands. She motioned to Casey and each one of them grabbed a foot and they pulled Anders from the fountain and drug him over to the bushes, shoving him abruptly inside. They left a trail of bloody water.

The phone in June's bag went off and she came skipping over. She reached into the bag while leaving it in Chuck's hands. The cleaning team. They were on their way. June told them where the body was hidden. "Eight minutes, right."

She dropped the phone back into the bag but still left Chuck holding the bag. She returned to the fountain and got Anders' gun. Holding it by pinching the handle, she came back to Chuck and dropped Ander's gun into her bag too. Finally, she took the bag from Chuck, slinging it over her shoulder.

Her phone rang again. She dug it out. The whole scene was becoming a macabre comedy skit. "Yes, sir?" She listened closely. "Give us just a few minutes."

June dropped the phone in her bag. She turned to Casey, who had been standing watching the whole routine wordlessly. "Director Graham wants an immediate conference in your place." With that, she started toward Casey's door.

Casey looked at Chuck and shrugged warily. Chuck glanced at the bushes obscuring Anders. Because Chuck knew where to look, he could make out one argyle sock through the heavy leaves. A man usually didn't choose clothes to die in.

Inside Casey's, the three of them gathered and waited for Graham to call. No one spoke. The atmosphere in Casey's apartment was syrupy. Thick and amber and slow-moving. No one made eye contact with anyone else. Chuck knew things had taken a very bad turn. He tried to get his thoughts to pick up speed, return to his full control. Ever since Anders' head had...well, ever since then….

Graham's face appeared on the monitor. "I will dispense with pleasantries."

Chuck wondered when Graham had ever offered any. Hard to dispense with what was never present.

"I have chosen to let General Beckman sleep; I will inform her of matters in the morning."

Chuck thought he heard a nearly silent curse from Casey.

Graham went on, cold and insistent, almost automated. "Intersect, did you flash on the man June shot?"

Chuck stood gripped by the vise of circumstance. Screws tightening. "Yes, His name is Max Anders. Fulcrum." Chuck felt like he had pronounced his own sentence, his own doom.

"Did he say anything to you?"

Chuck's mind finally and immediately came fully back online; it began to whir. Protect Ellie. "Yes, he told me that Fulcrum would be overjoyed by what he had discovered when he reported it to them. Would be, not was. He clearly had not told them about me yet. I don't...I don't think he was sure about me, just suspicious." Chuck felt his teeth clicking as he lied through them. He hated the taste of false words; they tasted like rotten peaches.

"Graham shifted to Thorne. "Did you hear any of the conversation?" Thorne shook her head. "No, I saw the gun and I ended the threat." Simple, clear.

Graham looked at each of them in turn, thinking. "Mr. Bartowski, perhaps this Anders did not contact Fulcrum, but I cannot risk the Intersect. You are going in a hole. Agent Thorne, prepare the Intersect to be bunkered."

Chuck's mind was still whirring, and now his heartbeat was a series of barely-controlled explosions. Thorne started to turn to him and Chuck heard someone respond to Graham, hatefully.

"No, Langston, the Intersect is not going in a hole." The respondent was Chuck.

Thorne gasped. Casey stiffened. Graham's eyes became embers.

"What did you just say to me?"

"I said, Langston, that the Intersect is not going in a hole. The Intersect will not be bunkered."

"And you get a say in this, why? I own you." Graham's voice was all jagged edges.

"You know, Langston," Chuck was enjoying saying the name; adrenaline was coursing through him, "You ever asked me a question you should have asked me a long time ago. A very important question...

"And what question is that?" More jagged edges.

"You never asked me if you were in the Intersect...because you are. Extensively."

Graham jerked in his chair like it was electrified. "That cannot be true. We built the program. We put the information in."

"Well, I think more got put in than you bargained for. Remember, the Intersect doesn't just retrieve pre-existing data; it finds patterns, 'sees' things in the data that no one puts there. It does not just report on the data. It creates data from the existing data. You ought to be able to understand it when I put it that way. I know all sorts of things about you, Langston, patterns in the data, patterns, Langston, patterns everywhere. Disturbing patterns. Things you do not want anyone to know. I have written those things down and I have made sure that they are in the hands of people who will release the information if something happens to me or if I disappear. Because you see, Langston, the first pattern the Intersect recognized is the pattern of your abuse of power. You are like a Rorschach inkblot of an asshole."

The room was quiet. Outer space quiet. Soundless. Graham stared at Chuck, trying to figure it out, understand. At last, he spoke, chuckling as he did. "You are lying, Intersect. You know nothing."

Chuck looked at Casey. Casey was wiggling a finger that neither Graham nor June could see, urging Chuck on. June was watching Graham and Chuck and listening to it all, enjoying it. She's a loon. She is...a loon. And Graham sent her here.

And then Chuck saw how to flesh out his gambit. A leap of intuition. "Let me start with a small thing, but one that would already ruin your career. I know that you have falsified CIA personnel records for years, Langston. Altering or suppressing reports so that you could manipulate agents or the Agency itself." Graham's face threatened to implode. Chuck had nailed the landing on that leap of intuition. The crowd claps in approval.

Graham sputtered. "You can't prove anything. You have nothing."

Chuck stretched to his full height. Casey mouthed the words. 'We can prove it.'

Chuck pushed ahead. "I can prove it, and more. Don't test me, Director. You wanted the Intersect to be proactive…"

Thorne's enjoyment diminished. Graham slumped in his chair. It was barely noticeable, but he had. Graham was studying what Chuck had said.

"If I leave you above ground, Intersect, it will be with Thorne at your side 24/7. Explain that as you wish, but I want her with you at all times. I will put rotating security teams in place at the apartment complex and at the Buy More. They will blend in, but they will be there. Do you understand?"

Chuck knew that this was at best a stalemate. And unstable, unlikely to last. But he needed time to come up with a better plan. It was not like Graham did not hate him already.

"I understand. I will go on doing my job...and you will go on doing yours...Langston." Chuck could not help himself; he had to say the name one more time. The monitor went black. Blackmail. I just committed blackmail. Chuck's adrenaline decreased. His stomach clenched.

June turned to Chuck, blinking with a begrudging respect. "That was clever but ultimately stupid. Grab some things. I will be waiting in the Jeep." She left the apartment.

Casey shook his head and pursed his lips. "So, you thought that up on the fly?" Chuck nodded. "The patterns, the information written down. All fiction, right." Chuck nodded again. "And the personnel thing? An inspired guess?"

"Yeah, but, I mean, Thorne was standing right there. More like an inference. There's no way she should have been here at all, ever. There's no way she should have her job. She should be in an institution. Do we really have proof, Casey?"

Casey smiled. "Believe it or not, we do. I sent it to Beckman earlier this evening. But she can't have done anything with it yet." He grabbed Chuck by the shoulder, grinning at Chuck and shaking him gently. "Balls out, kid. Balls out. But this cease-fire can't last, you know."

"I know," Chuck conceded, "but at least I'm still above ground."

"What's in the notebook?"

"Ellie's Intersect work. She's been trying to piece how it works together. Understand it. Anders found it. He was going to take her too, Casey. Get it back to her. Make her understand how real all this is, how far people like June and Fulcrum are prepared to go. But don't tell her about the fountain. She loves that fountain."

Casey nodded. "Done. Well, Thorne turned out to be good for something. But I don't envy you now, up-close and personal with her. That's some shit I would not want to be up in, if you know what I mean. Goddamnit."

Chuck grimaced.

"Did Anders say that he hadn't yet contacted Fulcrum?" Casey asked.

Chuck shook his head. "No, my gut tells me he hadn't, but he didn't actually say it. And if he found me…."

"...Someone else could find you. We'll have to make sure it doesn't happen." Casey gave Chuck a long look. "That was one tall glass of lies with a stiff chaser of blackmail you served to Graham."

Chuck returned the look. He gave Casey an unenthusiastic smile. "Yay, me."

Casey grabbed Chuck's shoulder again. "Yay, team."

ooOoo

Graham snapped his pricey fountain pen in two. He had not thought before he did it. Now he had blue ink all over his hands and on his desk. Did he believe Bartowski? No, not really. But it was...just possible. And when did he grow a backbone? That by itself carried the day. Toe-to-toe with the CIA Director. Something had changed. Maybe Bartowski did know something. Graham was not much worried. Not too much. This would all end soon anyway, and it would end, as it had always been going to end, with Chuck Bartowski below ground.

Then Graham had a thought. It was not his original plan, not quite, but it might be a better variation. Maybe he could kill all the birds with one stone. After wiping his hands, he picked up his phone and made a call. It was going to be a long night.

ooOoo

"Chuck Bartowski!" Bryce said the name as a heavy sigh, neither believing nor disbelieving, but testing it. "So...that's what's been going on?" Bryce shot her a glance. "But why leave with me? I mean, c'mon, Sarah, I admit I've made some decisions that...hurt Chuck, but you leaving? He was obviously crazy about you…"

Sarah sat down heavily in one of the chairs. "I screwed up. But I am trying to make it up to him. I am going to make it up to him."

"How? By being here with me?"

"No, Bryce. I don't have any choice now but to be here. But I went to Burbank to say how I feel."

"And did you? Because the talking-about-your-feelings thing was never your...thing."

"So you've said. And no, it wasn't." She recalled Chuck's bloody lip. "Still not my wheelhouse. But I did say it, I managed to say it."

Bryce didn't ask about the it. He looked at his shoes. "Good for you, Sarah." On Bryce's face, Sarah saw friendship fighting a skirmish with jealousy. "And good for Chuck."

Sarah did not want to keep talking about this with Bryce, so she asked how the day went with Garland and her financier. Bryce seemed happy to change topics too. "Well. It went well. By the end of the day, the guy was talking to me in veiled ways about 'even bigger opportunities'. Garland's getting more intent on...adding me to her collection. You and I are supposed to have dinner there again tomorrow night. I have a feeling tomorrow night may be the beginning of our entry into Fulcrum."

Sarah did not ask to know exactly what that meant. "Ok." She stood up. "I'm going to get a shower." She went to gather her things. Bryce sighed. He started to unlace his shoes.

ooOoo

After Casey helped him get the apartment door open, Chuck went inside. He grabbed some clothes and toiletries and shoved them in a bag. Round the clock with Thorne. The bunker sounded more attractive, frankly. Way more attractive. He scribbled Ellie a note; he'd have Casey stop by to talk to her.

Fulcrum at his door. Sarah in New Orleans. Thorne as a constant companion. His life was completely out of control. More lies and now blackmail.

As he zipped his bag, he noticed something, looked closer: a strand of long blonde hair on his pillow. He reached out and picked it up carefully. With his right hand, he wound it around the index finger of his left. He pulled the circlet off his finger. He walked to his desk and dug around in the random junk that had accumulated in the top drawer. There! A tiny box with a clear plastic top. It had been part of the packaging for some game Chuck bought long ago. He'd liked it and kept it. He put the circlet carefully in the little box and then put the box in the side pocket of his bag. Maybe it was silly, but having found it made him feel better. A lot better. The end of the day had been...suboptimal. But the midday made it the greatest day of his life. Sarah Walker loved him. He would climb out of this mess and back to her. He knew that he was more of a damsel in distress and Sarah the knight errant, but still: that circlet of her hair seemed like his Lady's Favor. He sallied forth to face the Dragon in Her Lair: June was waiting, the Jeep running.

ooOoo

Casey saw Chuck get in the Jeep. The Cleaners had come and gone. He picked up the phone. Beckman needed to know all of this. If she had a play, it was about time to use it. The kid dug himself out of a hole with quick thinking and unexpected bravado. But Graham would not accept the situation. No way in hell. He already had it in for Bartowski. Tonight would make it worse. But Casey knew that Graham had to take the threat Bartowski made seriously. The kid's proven record of unpredictability worked in his favor and against Graham. Graham had to wonder if the kid had seen patterns. Everyone but the kid seemed to forget half the time that the Intersect was not just some kind of glorified recording device; it had records in it, of course, vast records, but it could 'see' things in those records. The kid was right to tweak Graham with 'proactive'. Graham was the one whining that the Intersect wasn't being used preemptively. Well, it had been tonight, sort of, anyway. Casey wished the kid luck as he watched the Jeep leave.

Casey dialed the number. Beckman answered. "General, we have a situation here…Really, and the plan is underway? Excellent. But we need to move quickly."

A/N2 This chapter actually is the end of the second arc, the Look Homeward, Angel arc. I decided the next chapter, Chapter 14 "Double Agent" works best as the start of the final arc, the Heaven-Fallen arc. Drop me a line and let me hear from you. More soon. Don't forget to tune in.