A/N1 The beach has me moving a little slowly. Add in a sinus infection...and no promises about daily updates for a while. Thanks, thanks, thanks for the reviews and all the PMs.

As is often true for me when arcs begin, some more context and backstory. Our players reconsider their places on the board. Matters become clearer. Lots of POV-with all that implies.

Keep responding, please. It's so much fun writing to an audience you know is out there. I'm about to get caught up on responses to you.

Don't own Chuck.

Sarah vs. Omaha

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Double Agent

"I say now: every being that cannot act otherwise than under the idea of freedom is just because of that really free in a practical respect, that is, all laws that are inseparably bound up with freedom hold for him just as if his will had been validly pronounced free also in theoretical philosophy."

-Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals

June opened the door and walked in, telling Chuck to "Enter!" as she did. He knew that June had 'inherited' Sarah's place, but he had not been there since Sarah left, never since June moved in. The first thing he noticed was not the greenness of the place, but its odor. Lysol. Vaguely nauseating and gross, like someone had scratched a scratch-n-sniff urinal cake.

"Smells clean," Chuck offered, trying to think of something to say when June rotated to face him and gave him a look like she expected a comment on the place.

"Yeah, it was hard to get the odor of skank out after the previous tenant, but eventually I did."

June waited for a response, but Chuck just walked in. "Very green," he finally added.

June shrugged. "Came that way. Don't expect to stay long enough to need to decorate."

The place had been bare enough when Sarah lived there. Not much had marked the place out as a home at all. It really always seemed like a hotel room, not an apartment. But with June there it felt even less homey. Chuck knew the apartment had smelled of Sarah, and that was always one of his favorite things anytime he visited. Now the place smelled like Aisle Twelve at Large Mart, the disinfectant aisle. June continued to watch him as he looked around and put down his bag.

She walked to him and put her hand softly against his chest, then she pulled at his Herder tie. He had forgotten he was still in his work clothes. She held the tie in her hand for a moment, almost as if she were weighing it. When she looked up at him, her strange eyes looked almost soft. "Brave boy tonight, Intersect. You stood there while a man held a gun on you and you watched me kill him. Then you stood up to one of the most powerful men in DC. I did not know you had it in you." She ran her hand up and down the length of his tie, her gaze turning speculative. "There may be more to you than anyone expects, and I don't just mean the computer in your head...Maybe there's more to me too." The speculative look in her eyes died away, and her eyes hardened. "But maybe not."

She dropped his tie. "Unless you plan to screw me, you sleep on the floor." Her tone was now blunt and transactional. "So, what'll it be?" She turned her face up at him, an attempt at a grin on it, but there was a darkness behind it. A need.

He recoiled. "The floor! The floor." Her eyes sequenced through anger, disappointment and hurt.

"I'm going to shower." She grabbed some things while Chuck got a blanket and a pillow from the closet.

He had made his pallet and finally got comfortable when he heard the shower start. He let his mind relax, images of the day running through it at random but always ending with Sarah's face as they said goodbye. Sadness gripped him, hopelessness nipped at him. He felt like crying. Then he realized that the feeling was in part caused by June. He could hear her sobbing in the shower.

ooOoo

June had not cried since Cabo. Cabo. At some level, she knew that following Bryce and the blonde there had been crazy. But she had not been able to help herself. From the first time she saw him in Langley, she had been filled with a desire to have him. Not just to sleep with him, but for him to be hers. And for her to be his.

It had been like the feeling she had when a girl and the stray kitten followed her back to her house, the home of her foster family. She had snuck it into her room. Fed it watery milk from an eyedropper, petted and cuddled it. She had wanted it for her very own. Her kitty. Something that belonged to her and that she could belong to. She had come home from school one day and the kitten was gone. She had searched everywhere while being careful not to seem like she was searching. But all she found was the purple ribbon she had tied around the kitten's neck, a ribbon smaller and thinner than the one June wore every day, but the same shade of purple. She found the ribbon in the shed, next to a stack of burlap sacks her foster father kept there, bags potatoes came in and that he kept in case they came in handy. She had a horrible feeling. She ran from the shed to the creek near the house. She found her kitten in a bag floating in the water. It had drowned in the sack, no way to escape the water.

She dug a hole in the creekside with her bare hands and secreted the tiny wet body in it. She covered it over. She never went back. She never had another pet. She never had even had a houseplant. That night, she crawled into her foster father's bedroom and slipped her ribbon around his neck. She drew it tight before he could awaken. He had finally fought her off: he was too big, too strong, she, too small, too weak. But she would have killed him and been glad about it. The next morning she was back in the foster system. Her foster father had not told them what she had done, perhaps because he was worried about the consequences for what he had done to the kitten, perhaps because he was ashamed of what he had done to the helpless little thing.

She had not wanted anything else as her own until Bryce. Then she found him at the club. She took him home, and they had sex again and again. Each time she felt like the furnace of darkness and despair inside her, always raging, died down. Each time, she felt less miserable just being alive. She clung to him, trying to cling to that feeling. But it would always pass, and then she would push him away in disappointment, until the furnace began to burn hot again, and she would pull him to her.

When he told her to leave Cabo, that it was over for good, she had gone and found a place to buy a rifle. Black market, untraceable. She had found a vantage point on the room that Bryce was sharing with Walker, and she had sat through an evening, moving the scope's crosshairs from one to the other, always on the verge of pulling the trigger, never able to do it. It would not get her Bryce. She could not bear the thought of him dead, like her kitten. And although she could bear the thought of Walker dead and welcomed it, she knew Bryce would become just as unreachable for her if she killed Walker as he would have if she had killed him. She had wept then, the gun still in her hands, Bryce still visible through the scope. As darkness fell, she had wiped the gun down, left it on the floor of the room that had been her vantage point, and she left Cabo.

Why was she crying now?

The hot water in the shower was pounding on her, almost scalding. Her skin had turned pink. Maybe it had something to do with Anders, shooting him, but she knew it had more to do with the look in Chuck's eyes when she offered the backhanded invitation to him to sleep with her. He had looked neither aroused nor intrigued. He had not even looked embarrassed or intimidated. He had just looked afraid. Afraid. Bryce had looked at her like that the last time they were together in Cabo. He was afraid of her. The man she wanted and needed, feared her. She could inspire fear, not love. She did not want only to inspire fear. Chuck's eyes had told her what Bryce's told her at the end, and what her foster father's told her that night long ago.

You are a monster.

Some days, she...coped...with that, ignored it, or observed a stretched and rigid détente with it. Other days, most days, she embraced it, welcomed it; she unbridled the monster, or kept the reins loose, gave it its head. Some days, though, it rose up and hunted her, found her, hurt her... The only constant was the monster's restless hunger for pain. Anyone's pain. Even hers. Some days, especially hers.

She got out of the shower, and, standing with a towel in the thick steam, she dried her eyes as she dried the rest of her. I am a monster. She wiped the mirror with her towel and stared the monster down.

ooOoo

Beckman's Gallon-o'-Coffee was still hot. The sun was rising outside her window. A new day. One Beckman would begin by being ashamed of herself. At about this time yesterday, she had thought of one of her NSA analysts. Dan Ansley. A good-hearted kid from the Midwest who came to Washington hoping to do his country some good. He had not been able to meet the physical requirements to be an NSA agent, but Beckman had liked him so much during the interview, and was so impressed with his good manners and quick mind that she had offered him a job. She knew he came to work while it was still dark, so she called him to her office and she told him what she wanted.

She wanted Dan to go to a particular nearby McDonald's, order a breakfast burrito, and wait for Susie Lou LaRussa to show up. He was to approach her and make conversation. Just be friendly. But the goal was to get her to talk about what she was working on for Graham. She would be reluctant but she was also very, very lonely. Dan really did not seem to understand exactly what he was being asked to do. He had been overjoyed to get a chance to do fieldwork. He had agreed immediately. He called last night to say that he and Susie Lou had talked for a long time after an awkward meeting. She had met him later in the day, after work, and they went to a restaurant together. Susie Lou drank some wine, not much, but too much for her, and she had whispered into Dan's ear about her work as he carried her into her cramped apartment.

She was working on an important AI project. She was enhancing the existing technology. It would do more than the original version. It was for..., and at this moment, Dan said, Susie Lou had leaned her forehead against Dan's and put her finger to her lip, unsuccessfully shushing herself ...it was for secret agents. Her boss was going to use it but it wasn't ready.

Susie Lou had wanted Dan to spend the night, but he had managed to leave without hurting her feelings. So Dan said, and Beckman believed him. Still, she hated doing this to Susie Lou. Manipulating thieves or killers, villains, manipulating manipulators, that seemed to Beckman unfortunately required. But Suie Lou was no manipulator, no villain, no thief. Manipulating her was a hateful thing. Dan was willing to continue, although Beckman could sense a newfound reluctance in him, and Beckman knew, sadly, that she would order him to do so. She needed to know more. What Susie Lou revealed confirmed Beckman's guesses, although the shortness of the timetable was news, worrisome news, as was the part about it not being ready.

Clearly, Graham had restarted and intensified the Intersect Project. He had gotten the President's buy-in, no doubt by promising nearly superhuman intelligence agents. And it would be like Graham to try to secure the buy-in not only by promising splashy results but by promising them in short order.

He would need agents willing to take the risk of downloading this new Intersect. Who would he choose? Beckman needed Dan to make quick progress with Susie Lou. She called him and told him to head to McDonald's. Time for Dan to have another burrito.

Beckman picked up copies of the documents Casey had forwarded to her yesterday. Scary stuff. No doubt Graham would have a story about the documents, some explanation or attempt to discredit them. Still, they would create huge problems for him, maybe eventually costing him his job.

The trouble was that the documents were now caught up in Bartowski's uneasy truce against Graham. Showing them to anyone, to the President, would mean that Bartowski had done what he said he would not do. Beckman did not care for Graham's sake. So long as nothing happened to Bartowski, Graham was supposed to be safe. So long as nothing happened to Graham, Bartowski was supposed to be safe. It was maddening. She had the means of seriously wounding Graham but it was not clear when she should use it. One other problem was that if she used it, there would be a serious administrative lag between the presentation of the documents and Graham's eventual punishment, perhaps even dismissal. Who knew what Graham might manage to do to Bartowski in the meantime? The threat was more likely to keep Graham at bay for a while than the presentation of the documents. But for how long? Graham was not a patient man.

Beckman had to count on Dan succeeding at a task she loathed and for which he would almost certainly come to hate himself. She picked up her massive coffee cup-almost a bucket, really-and toasted her reflection in the window. Was she really any different than Graham at the end of the day, or at the beginning? Good morning, you old bitch.

ooOoo

Graham was angry with the sun. He had fallen asleep on his desk and a shaft of sunlight had found his closed eyes. It forced him into wakefulness. Wakefulness tasted of bile and Bartowski.

Bartowski. Graham sent Walker to Burbank to put a bullet in his brain. Graham had been convinced Bartowski was in on it with Larkin (back when Graham thought Larkin was rogue). When Walker told him that Bartowski had blamelessly downloaded the program, Graham was ecstatic for a moment. Then she told him about saving Stanfield, and Graham heard warning bells. Bartowski was a good guy, a hero. But Graham intended the Intersect for agents like Larkin. Idealism and the Intersect were not the combination Graham coveted.

He wanted a self-interested realist. The kind of person Graham knew how to control, the kind of person who would take orders, who would understand the Intersect as an enhancement to a weapon, not as a precious gift-curse from the Universe that required its recipient to become a selfless proponent of The Good. Like Peter Parker-or some other comic hero.

Ha! Comic hero. That was Bartowski.

Graham shook his head. His thoughts were jumbled this morning.

Graham would not deny that Bartowski had done some good, that the team in Burbank had done some good. But Bartowski constantly frustrated Graham, and he had basically turned Graham's Enforcer into a full-time babysitter.

One reason Graham had agreed to allow Walker to return to deep cover was that he was certain that going under again cover again, and, likely, getting under Larkin again, would rid Walker of the strangeness in her that only seemed to increase the longer she stayed in Burbank. She would return to the agent, the woman Graham knew before Bartowski. Was Walker compromised? Graham had worried that she was, but her choice to go undercover reassured him. She must have recognized the strangeness in herself and understood that she needed to rid herself of it.

Graham had heard nothing from her or Larkin. But he did not expect to, not until they had results. They were a good team. He trusted them.

But that left him with the problem of Bartowski, trouble with a capital 'B'.

He had planned to have Walker kill him. Then he thought maybe he could use him. But it became clear that was not going to happen. Bartowski had his own agenda, and he had proven to be effective, but not governable, foreseeable ways. Graham wanted Intersects who were predictable, known quantities. And he was worried, deeply worried, that Bartowski's continuing success would begin to make people, most notably the President, wonder if Graham's vision of a cadre of synchronized, controllable Intersects was the best vision, the one to back.

Bartowski's continuing success had clearly made a mark on Beckman. She liked the team, she liked the good they did. Deep down, Graham believed she actually liked the kinder, gentler version of spying that Bartowski advocated (What a joke!), even if Beckman had mostly inured herself to the need for the unkind, ungentle version.

Beckman had an unfortunate tumor for a woman in her position: a conscience. And while it might be worse for wear, it was still capable of action. Graham had been free of that tumor from early on. And he wanted Intersects who were tumor-free too.

Susie Lou did not understand. The Intersect was not supposed to gear into an agent's conscience, because agents of the sort Graham wanted to Intersect would have little, if any, conscience. A conscience individualized a person, made him or her think he or she was in charge of himself or herself, instead of answerable to someone else. In the case of an Intersected agent, the agent was answerable to Graham, not himself or herself.

Graham sent Thorne to Burbank to break Bartowski. That process had gotten started, but it was not working as quickly as Graham hoped, if it was working at all. He wanted Thorne to make Bartowski flash until his brain liquefied. He needed Bartowski to fail so that he could put an end once and for all to the thought that an Intersect like Bartowski was a good idea, a workable idea. She was supposed to push him again today and the day after. A video session was scheduled in two days so that Graham could see for himself what the punishment of flashes had done to Bartowski. Graham was afraid Bartowski would last too long. He wanted Bartowski to have failed before he met with the President again.

So Graham had decided to make a different use of that video conference.

Susie Lou had visited Graham's office again yesterday, just before she left work. Graham had been surprised to see her and by her appearance. Susie Lou had her hair brushed to a luster and pulled back in a neat ponytail. She had on makeup. Her glasses were neither on nor hanging from their usual chain. Contacts. Graham wondered if he had ever looked at her face; she was not as plain as he imagined. She must have had plans after work.

But that was not why she came to Graham, of course. She came to Graham because she spent the day testing with the prototype, running a couple of simulations, and just reflecting more about it. She was almost certain that the current prototype would cause serious psychological and physical harm to an unprepared, untested bearer. Irreparable harm if the agent had it for long. It was not a good idea to test it on an actual agent. The current prototype would work, in the sense that it could be downloaded and functional: provide the agent with the database and imbue the agent with increases in adrenaline and stamina.

"But," Susie Lou continued, looking frightened but speaking nonetheless, "it will scramble the agent's mind, like an egg. I guess...I am not as far along as I thought…" She waited patiently to be reprimanded.

"I tell you what, Susie, have a downloadable version of it ready for me in two days. As is. Don't worry about it beyond that, just keep working to perfect it."

"But, sir…"

"Two days. Now, I believe your workday is over." She brightened at that reminder, more than he had ever seen her brighten, and she left his office.

He would dismiss Thorne from the upcoming video conference, then he would trick Bartowski into downloading the new Intersect. Bartowski would never know what hit him. No one would know that he had downloaded the current prototype. Graham would finally have the result he wanted. Proof that an Intersect like Bartowski was not a good idea. And he would finally be rid of Bartowski. When Bartowski went over the edge, he could be institutionalized, almost as good as bunkering, and cheaper. One way or the other, one version or another, it would be the Intersect that caused the ruin of Chuck Bartowski. Fitting. Bartowski's gibbering shell at the intersection of Intersect past and Intersect future...

...Never, ever, call me 'Langston' unless I invite you to.

And if what happens seems to be of natural causes, no contingency plan of Bartowski's should go into effect, if there really was one. 'If something happens to me' surely did not mean 'If I simply go mad'.

Bartowski was about to lose his mind.

ooOoo

Sarah was finishing her Americano while watching Bryce stir cream into his cup. He had been stirring it in for a long time, around and around with a red stir stick, but he had yet to take a drink. He was brooding, pouting. But she was not going to ask about what was bothering him. She knew, anyway. Bryce never lost gracefully. He had lost to Chuck, and in an arena where he was so certain of his superiority that what he heard last night was clearly becoming inconceivable to him by the light of day.

She wondered, although she had no plans to ask, if Bryce's inability to lose might have been part of the story about what he had done to Chuck. She did not doubt that Bryce had motives that were good, but she also did not doubt that Bryce's motives were impure, mixed. She had not thought about it at the time, and Chuck had never mentioned it, but Bryce had taken those same tests, and he was not the one selected. Chuck was. Chuck's were the higher scores. That had to have rankled Bryce. And maybe that is why Bryce's chosen method for getting Chuck out of what the CIA had planned was so destructive: there had been jealousy and revenge mixed in with the high-minded desire to save Chuck from the CIA's program. Even if Bryce had not wanted to be part of the program, it would still have rankled him that he was not chosen and Chuck was.

She was not sure what Bryce had in mind when he 'invited' her to 'Omaha'. Sure, she knew he wanted to restart the Andersons, completely restart them. But she did not know why he had made it seem like he was willing to make a real commitment to her. Maybe he believed he could actually do it. He was fooling himself, but not her. Even if Bryce really wanted an exclusive relationship, he would never manage one. He would always understand it as giving up something he should not have to give up. He would never understand it as gaining something he could not have otherwise.

Sarah had come to realize at some point, she supposed at around the time she and Bryce first became the Andersons, that she was dreaming of a...relationship. She had never had one. Her life with her father had made a boyfriend an impossibility. The ugly duckling thing, the constant movement would have been bad enough, but the thought of having to lie to someone she cared about made her loathe to get close to anyone in high school.

Once in the CIA, the same problems resurfaced, albeit in slightly different forms and after the duckling had become a swan. Over the first few years, she tried to date other agents a few times, but the dating had been brief and frustrating. As much as she wanted something more than a short-lived fling, she had not been able to have it or see how to have it.

She was a practiced liar by that point, and she found silence or falsehood easier than the truth. The man she was dating, the agent, was usually much the same, so the two of them spent their time saying little and almost none of it true. Those agents she dated were never her partners. She saw them when she could between her missions and theirs. Bryce was the first and only partner she had dated. (Other than her brief stint with the CATS, she always worked alone.) At first, it had seemed like maybe she could realize her dream with Bryce. She tried to make it happen until she finally understood that the Andersons were not a real couple who went on missions together, and had a reality beyond those missions; no, the Andersons were a cover couple who only existed on missions and who turned the time between into more mission-time. In their supposed downtime together, the Andersons never became real, they just did cover maintenance for the next mission. The Andersons existed inside mission parameters and nowhere else. She had felt like giving up the dream.

Chuck had revivified her dream. She did not know how or why, but he had the innate ability to eject her from the mission, to call her back to herself and to him. She went to sleep last night for the first time in her life contemplating a future. Not the mission. The future. Hoping. Her life had been hopeless for so long. She knew what she wanted from the future, although she was still afraid to picture it, much less verbalize it to herself. But it was there, and she was not denying it.

She had been disappointed this morning when she had no text from Chuck. She drank the last of her coffee and went to the bathroom. She sent a text to Chuck.

Back in N.O. Missing you.

She sent the message. After a moment, a response.

Missing you. No chance to text. Dreamed of you.

She smiled; it became a smirk. She couldn't help herself.

What was I wearing?

There was a pause, Chuck deciding what to tell her, no doubt. She could imagine the blush. I love him.

Me.

She giggled but felt her body warm to the image. She sent her text quickly before Chuck could second guess what he had said.

Soon, I hope. Text me later? May not be able to respond until late. Mission.

She felt funny, waiting for his response. Breathless, nervous. Maybe this was an intimation of what she had missed in high school.

Yes. Be safe.

ooOoo

The seating arrangements were the same as last time, with the same results. Bryce was responding to a whisper from Garland at one end of the table. Sarah was chatting with Josephine Pollihue at the other.

"Looks like you didn't stop it, Mrs. Anderson."

Sarah glared a little at the old woman. Sarah knew it was time to play her part. "I tried...He's...curious...and insistent."

Josephine laughed humorlessly. "I can imagine. She's all that heat lamps and silicone can make her."

Sarah winced and Josephine held up her hand apologetically. "Sorry. That was unfeeling."

Both women pushed their desserts around fancy plates with no appetite.

"Gretta," Josephine said loudly, unexpectedly. "I am going to take Mrs. Anderson on a tour of the house."

Gretta looked away from Bryce for the merest second and made a permissive gesture.

"Can you push me, dear?" Josephine requested.

Sarah got up and moved Josephine's wheelchair back from the table. She headed off in the direction in which Josephine pointed. They left the dining room and passed into another. Josephine seemed uninterested in it so they went to another. Josephine held up her hand for Sarah to stop. She waved at a portrait on the wall. A good-looking, thick-bodied man. "My son." She gazed at the portrait inscrutably.

Sarah broke the brooding silence. "He was handsome," she offered

Josephine nodded. "Yes, too bad. He attracted Gretta and she ruined him. Turned him into a man I didn't know and didn't want to know. And she murdered him."

Sarah did not know what to say. Garland's file noted that her husband had disappeared and that she had been a Person of Interest for a time, but nothing came of it; there was no evidence against her.

"I know everyone dismisses me. Crazy old bag in a chair. But I know she did it."

Josephine turned her wheels herself so that she faced Sarah and not the portrait. "Why is it, Mrs. Anderson, that you are a happy woman tonight, happier than when I saw you last, far happier, despite knowing your husband is going to cheat on you with an evil woman ?"

Sarah knew her mouth was open to speak, but she could hardly think. Josephine again had shocked her, done something Sarah had not anticipated.

"I'm not happy...I mean I'm not happy about that...I mean…" How could this woman reduce her to stammering? Why wouldn't the lies come?

"You mean that you are in love, Mrs. Anderson, but not with Mr. Anderson. There's a lucky man somewhere out there, I can tell. You were thinking of him all through dinner. The man who should be your husband, not the man who is pretending to be your husband."

Sarah's breath caught. She felt her eyes widen.

"Mrs. Anderson" Josephine pronounced the name with an odd emphasis, "let's stop pussyfooting around. You and your husband aren't what you're pretending to be. I'm certain you're here to take Gretta down. I want to help. I can be your eyes on the inside. Your wheels on the inside." Josephine grinned, then frowned. "I want to ruin her, undo her. I have an idea about the kind of people she's involved with, the kinds of things she's done. Let me help you. I'll be a double agent." Josephine stopped and became introspective for a moment. "Actually, I'm not sure that's the right way to use that term." She shrugged. "What can I say? I'm old, and new to the spy game."

A/N2 A few twists on or disambiguations of canon. Tune in next time for Chapter 15, "Double Vision". File days. Casey has a talk with Ellie. Josephine begins spying. And more!

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