A/N1 So, here I am again, more story in hand.

Those last two chapters, geez, huh? We are now in the middle of our final arc. Your generosity in reviews and PMs has been wonderful. Thank you! Please stay in contact. Keeping this story going and teaching my classes has meant that my days start early and end late. You folks have helped keep me at it. (And yes, I could slow down, except when I get involved in a story, I can't focus on anything else until the chapter in my head is out, and then the next chapter starts to form, and...and, well, I am the slave of me. Oh, and I fly to Leipzig in a week, and I'd like to have the story done before going to Germany. So there's that.)

Don't own Chuck.

Sarah vs. Omaha

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Obsession

"Some are of the opinion that there is no gate
That is their opinion
There is no way of knowing except to go
Through it"
-R. D. Laing, Knots

She woke up feeling a contentment physical and emotional, radiating outward from two loci, one, her heart, the other, a sensitive place...lower...than her heart. She yawned and then giggled her way out of it, images of last night replaying (Oh, oh, in technicolor glory, in languorous slow motion, and with theme music! Sixpence None the Richer, 'Kiss Me') through her head. She rolled over, not caring that she was naked and had rolled from beneath the covers. She kissed his lips as softly as she could. His tousled mop of hair was pushed to one side by the pillow, making a funny shape. She giggled again, weightless and free. He smiled, then slowly opened one very blue eye.

"Good morning, Susie."

"A very good morning, Dan."

ooOoo

The night before, LA

Drumming her fingers on the armrest of her seat, Jan Summer tried to relax her mind, quiet the pain. It would not work. One face, one name, one destiny, one destination: Sarah Walker. She had, of course, stashed a go-bag in Burbank. She had money, credit cards, enough for weeks, even living high. But that was not her plan. Her plan was to kill Sarah Walker. No, it was less a plan than a physical need, like thirst, but far, far worse. She could think a little, consider tactics and plots, but only for so long as they took her toward Walker, oriented on her.

One day at the group home, when she was a child, she had played a video game someone had donated. She was flying...an X-wing fighter, trying to get a shot into...a ventilation shaft. Details are foggy. Can't think straight. She remembered the feeling of being in the tube or tunnel or whatever it was, of being forced along a particular path, unable to veer away without destroying herself. That was how she felt now. She just had to follow the path, she could not veer from it. Compelled. Obsessed. All that mattered was the target. Oh, yes.

A flight attendant stopped by her seat. "May I get you something to drink?"

Her head was on fire, inside. She had chewed all the Excedrin she had put in her purse for Chuck. It was not helping. She felt like she had only radio-control of her body, as if it were in the first-class seat and she was really somewhere in coach with a transmitter.

She nodded. "How about bourbon ?" Maybe it will help. He smiled at her and went to get it. A bourbon for Burbank. She knew would never be back.

Six hours in the air. A few more hours to gather weapons and supplies. Then the hunt would begin.

ooOoo

Chuck was in the Crown Vic. He and Casey were almost to the airport. He had called Sarah with his old cell phone as soon as he realized what was happening. He still had the cell number from when she was in Burbank. He prayed she had kept the phone.

She had.

ooOoo

"Chuck? Is that you?"

"Thank God, Sarah." He could have called her all along, but he had assumed she destroyed the phone. She hadn't. Another significant fact. Still, it was like Sarah to buy the burners and use them. It was her way of starting over; she was a complicated woman, and he loved her and her complications.

"What's wrong?" He could hear her fear for him over the line.

"Long story. Casey and I are coming to New Orleans. Thorne...Thorne has the current Intersect prototype. It's made her crazy. I am sure she's coming for you."

Sarah was silent for a moment. "But Thorne, she's already…"

"Yeah, I know...crazy. She found my burner. She must have seen our texts." Chuck glanced at Casey, leaving it at that. "She tranqed me and shouted your name. We found her CIA Jeep at a hotel near the airport. She's gone under, switched identities. We don't know if she is flying direct or taking some more complicated route. But my gut tells me…"

"I trust you, Chuck. If you think she's coming, then she is. We're in the middle of things here. We just got an important lead on Fulcrum. Maybe the biggest we have ever had. We are going to have to follow it up. I can't exactly go into hiding." Silence for a moment. "I get that this is bad, Chuck, but...you're coming here?...I get to see you? See my boyfriend?" Pause. Then, experimentally: My...husband-to-be?"

Chuck's felt warm all over in the midst of his panic. "Yeah, about how you would expect this to go for us, huh?"

Sarah laughed softly, bells giving Chuck wings. "Par for our course, I would say…But, Chuck, why is Graham allowing this? Has Beckman gotten more control of the team or something?"

"Um...Yeah. But probably not the way you think. Graham had everything set up to force me to download the prototype. June blew his plan to hell, and they both got what was meant only for me. He's in a coma at the hospital. No one is….optimistic."

"Oh, my God! You are really ok, Chuck? Oh, my God, I could have lost you….Too bad about Graham, I guess…."

Chuck waited a second. "That's one funeral dad's suit will stay in the closet for…"

Sarah paused. "I could have lost you...before we...you know." Her voice was small and intense.

"Before I get to wear you." Chuck had now forgotten about Casey behind the wheel.

"Listen to me, Chuck Bartowski. Once you...put me on...you'll never take me off."

"Wash and wear?"

"Something like that."

"Look, you need to explain this to Bryce. You two need to make sure you are as secure as you can be. Beckman got Thorne's file, the real one, I think. She's a marksman...um...markswoman? Anyway, stay away from windows."

"Ok."

"Call you as soon as we touch down in New Orleans. Our flight is a red eye. We'll be there in the wee hours. Be safe, Sarah."

"You too. I love you so much, Chuck."

"I love you so much too."

Chuck remembered Casey. Casey was pulling the Vic into the parking garage, a grin on his face in the midst of grimness. Chuck only then realized that they were driving without headlights.

ooOoo

Beckman finished the second call with the President. He had spent most of it backtracking while trying to seem nonetheless presidential, like he was not partly to blame for Graham's wild stunt. Whatever. The team was hers again, if it could survive June Thorne. She had all her agents in New Orleans on the look-out for Thorne. A team was outside the hotel Chuck told her Sarah and Bryce were using.

Beckman had talked to Susie before the President. Beckman did not understand the differential responses to the Intersect. Why had it cored Graham and not Thorne? Why was Thorne up and running, running amuck?

"Educated guess? Each mind is unique, General. From what you have told me, Thorne has already had or been living through some kind of psychological break. Graham's mind was dark but orderly. Brittle, I guess I'd say. Thorne's been functioning on the edge for months or years. Her mind must be particularly strong, even if not orderly, perhaps because it isn't orderly. Deep existential shocks have already been endured. She can't last long, a few days perhaps, and she won't be exactly high-functioning, although the prototype will allow her increased adrenaline, increased strength and tolerance for pain and injury. She's like a wounded animal, much more dangerous because of her wounds. Her sense of self will come and go. She will know little but the mission she seems to have assigned herself…"

"So, Walker is in real danger, and anyone with her?"

"Oh, God, General, yes,"

Beckman gave Susie Lou Ellie's number. Susie Lou and Dan would fly to Burbank later in the day.

ooOoo

Bryce was throwing things around the room, but he had helped Sarah close the blinds, at least. He was far worse than he had been about Joe. The mission had come off the rails. A whole new threat, a wild card, was now part of the game. And just when the game had gotten...delicate. Bryce had extracted himself from the tea without allowing Garland all she wanted. But she was not going to wait long. She would almost certainly be pushing for consummation tomorrow. Evidently, she had more or less told Bryce that as he said goodbye to her.

Sarah was unsure what Bryce was really doing with Garland at this point. It was not that Garland could not go to the Executive Meeting...unfulfilled. Bryce seemed to want to sleep with her. Nothing he said made it necessary that he do so. They might even be able to use Josephine to keep Garland occupied somehow. How had she kept herself from facing this fact about Bryce in the past? Garland was part of the outfit, the watch, the clothes, the gun. This was all part of some script Bryce was following in his head, part of him as the dashing star of a Bond film. Garland was his next Bond girl, this installment's Octopussy. Sarah's stomach flipped when she realized that she had been that in earlier films. Jesus. Some men. Some spies. Ellie was right. I am brilliant at lying to myself. Thank God for Burbank. Thank God for Sam.

ooOoo

June pushed the wad of cash into the man's hand. He slowly let his gaze run up and down her, suggesting that there might be...other forms of payment. She thought of Bryce, of Chuck; she thought of Walker. Marry me? She pushed the cash at him again, making him take it, foreclosing on other possibilities. He handed her the pistol and the rifle, the boxes of ammo. She would not be in any bed until this ended. Until Walker was asleep, underground.

ooOoo

Joe was sitting in the garden. She had positioned her chair so that the dawn light reached her. Gretta came out, carrying a coffee tray with cups and a pot and a stack of beignets. She put it down on the table. Joe reached for a beignet and knocked her sweater off her lap as she did. Gretta picked it up. Ping, ping, ping. The key to Gretta's office plinked onto the ground. Joe leaned over quickly, just able to reach it, palmed it and then took a beignet. Gretta gave her a curious look, then she started pouring coffee for both of them.

They ate in silence.

ooOoo

Sarah heard a knock at the door. "It's...uh...Charles Carmichael." The voice came through the door. Sarah almost ran to the door and pulled it open. Bryce was immediately beside her, and he slipped his arm around her.

"Hiya, Chuck,not-so-long-time, no see," Bryce said, as he looked pointedly at Sarah and gave her his Farmer Montgomery smile. Chuck's grin froze.

Casey, standing beside him, grumbled immediately. "Son of a bitch."

ooOoo

Dan had her suitcase in his hand as Susie Lou locked her apartment. They'd crossed town so she could get her things. She now was, she realized, working for the NSA, for Beckman. She and Dan were heading to Burbank to provide support for the team in New Orleans. Susie Lou was going to be working with Chuck Bartowski's sister. The Intersect's sister. If Graham had told her, Susie Lou could have done so much more, maybe so much better with the prototype. Well, she wasn't sorry to hear Beckman say that the Intersect Project was being scrapped. The only Intersect was Chuck Bartowski. Her job now was to make sure he was ok, and to help him and his sister understand the thing in his head. Beckman had given Susie Lou copies of Ellie's notes. Clearly, the sister-Bartowski was a brilliant woman. Susie Lou was eager to meet her. She planned to study the notes more on the plane. When she was not kissing Dan.

ooOoo

Sarah elbowed Bryce in the stomach hard. How dare he? He doubled over and she launched herself bodily into Chuck's arms, her lips on his. Chuck! He's here. She pulled back a little and looked at Casey.

"Hey, John. Great to see you. The team's back together, I guess."

Casey nodded, watching Bryce. "Yep. But make sure Larkin knows he's the fat kid we chose last."

Bryce was wheezing, still trying to breathe.

ooOoo

Casey was in the hallway, a few doors down from Chuck's room. Even though neither Chuck nor Casey had slept on the plane, Chuck had shown Sarah the room key and the two of them practically ran from the Anderson's room to Chuck's. Casey kept watch over them. But he made sure he was far enough away that he would not...overhear. He was happy for the kids, but he was not ready for an earful of...Reese's Cup-making.

Love. Not really something Casey had reflected about much, not since Europe and his loss of the beautiful, raven-haired photographer. He had given up Kathleen long ago, and it was foolish, a sentimental indulgence really, to stand there regretting his past. But he was; he did. He had made his bed and he would sleep on it alone. But as he got older, his gut had told him that his decision to put duty ahead of everything else was an empty one. Duties were not abstract. They existed, if they existed, in the barnyard of fleshly human relationships, not in some icy realm of pure logic, strict law.

And letting petty bureaucrats and paper generals decide your duty for you was a coward's way out, fucking farming out your backbone, no matter how much your chest swelled when they praised you. How could a man like Graham know anything about duty; he had no god-rotting clue how to be a human being. Casey hated to think it, in a way, but the moron, the kid, was right. People mattered. Not as some aggregate, another abstraction. But as the people they were, individually. Hang the goddamn liars. Hang their goddamn compromises. Casey wanted to find June, stop her. He wanted the team to go back to Burbank. He wanted to work with Chuck and Sarah. No, not with them, beside them. Bartowski was some kind of bureaucrat-free zone. Beckman gets it, at last, I think. I hope. Godddamnit.

ooOoo

Chuck was seated on the bed. Sarah was standing in front of him. She felt nervous, shy and tremulous, like a girl. His eyes were full of warmth and desire. She knew what she wanted. But Sarah had to make herself say this.

"Chuck?"

"Yeah, Sarah?" He reached out and took her hand, rubbing it while she drummed up her courage.

"About...that text. If you aren't sure. If you've had second thoughts. I...I would understand. There's so much about me you don't know. My childhood, my years with the Company, my time as Graham's Enforcer."

Chuck nodded. "True. But, Sarah, there's so much about me you don't know."

She huffed and giggled at the same time. "What don't I know, Chuck?"

"Um...my locker combination in junior high. The name of the teacher I had a crush on my freshman year of high school. She...um...she taught physical science."

"Of course, she did."

"You don't know all about my time with Jill, what I felt or thought I felt. You don't know my favorite snack when I'm depressed."

"Buy More cheeseballs."

Chuck stared at her. "How?"

"I've seen the way you stare at them when you think no one is looking, Chuck." He laughed. "But, Chuck, those things...they're important, but, you know, not important, like the things you don't know about me…"

"Sarah, there are lots of things about me you don't know, including things I am ashamed of, things I did that were wrong. And I wasn't under orders when I did them. Inattention, unkindness...lies I have told. I can't change those things now. They are on the record. But I do think I've changed, sometimes because of the things I did...I know I have changed, and for the better, because of you." He paused.

He gave her a funny look and she could see he was coming to a decision. "On a mission, just after you left, I found this hacker's thumb drive, Sarah. I took it, an act of rebellion...I looked at it. Your file was on it, the whole thing, I guess. I could have looked, but I didn't." He stared at her, earnest. "I was angry and hurting, but I didn't..."

She felt tears sting her eyes. She bent down to look him directly in the face. "Why not, Chuck? All those things you've asked...you could have known. At least all the Company stuff."

Chuck shrugged. "Sarah, the things Graham ordered you to do, the missions. Are they somehow all you are? Do they define you? Do you right now, here, at this moment, feel like the person who took those orders and did those things? Would you do those things again? Take those orders again?"

She reflected on the question. It took a moment to find herself, her voice. "No, Chuck. I'm not that woman, not that spy. She's part of who I am, but she is not who I am. There is more in me, more to me, than Graham knew, than he would let me find out." Pause. "Than my dad would let me find out," she glanced at Chuck but his expression did not change, he did not ask any question about her dad, "or the Company, in general, would let me find out. There are parts of me that I….lulled to sleep so that I could cope, could survive. But those parts are awake now. And they aren't just...along for the ride. They have changed who I am, changed the spy I was…" She halted, out of words, not entirely sure she was making sense.

But Chuck nodded in understanding. "You can tell me what you need to tell me, Sarah. And I promise to listen and to care, God, I promise to care so much. About you. But there is nothing you can tell me that will make me give you up, give us up. Nothing. I'm not a fool, even if…" he gave her her favorite crooked smile, "even if I act like one sometimes. My eyes are open and I see you, Sarah Walker, and I have since you walked into the Buy More." He looked at the ground, then back up. "Where are we right now, Sarah?"

She was confused. "You mean, here, in this room?"

"No, I mean what city are we in?"

Sarah answered, unsure of Chuck's point. "New Orleans."

"And how did you get here?"

She swallowed, her tongue thick in her mouth. "I left you for a deep cover mission with Bryce."

"And what did you call me on the phone a little while ago?" A smile was lifting the corners of Chuck's mouth.

"My...'husband-to-be'?"

"And how did I get to be that?"

"I said yes when you proposed." She could not fight back the smile. It claimed her whole face.

"And did I ask you before or after you left for New Orleans?"

"After."

"And after you did what?"

"After I returned to Burbank."

"Don't you see, Sarah? You-not Graham's Enforcer-you came back. Came back for me. You. It's you. It's always been you for me. And it will always be you. You are the...the..." he searched for the word, "...the axis of reference for my whole life. Everything turns around you. You, the woman with your past. But that past doesn't change anything. How could it? It's done, gone. It can only hurt us if we let it dictate our future. I let my past steal five years of my life. Let's not let our pasts steal anything more from us."

She wiped tears off her cheeks, a feeling of relief, of repletion, suffusing her head to toe. "'Axis of reference', Chuck? Is that the best you can do, sweet nothings-wise? I've been imagining words maybe...more intimate, even maybe, graphic, but less technical..."

He smiled and stood, unbuttoning his shirt as he walked around the room, checked the locks on the door and tightened down the blinds. When he got back to her, his shirt was open. She slid her hand inside.

"Now, I want to slip into something more comfortable," his voice darkened, deepened with desire.

"I'm assuming that would be me?" Her voice had darkened too, and she could hardly speak at all. Her mouth had better plans.

He put his hand around her waist and pulled her to him firmly. "That's what I'm hoping. Prepare yourself for some honey-sweet sweet nothings, wife-to-be."

Sarah melted into his embrace. Sam melted into his embrace. They melded together, became one in his arms. She was one, not two; she and Chuck were one, not two. After a frenzied moment of clothes-shedding, he slipped into her, preliminaries completely unnecessary. They had been preparing since they first met.

She forgot her past. She stopped worrying about the future.

She was fully present.

A/N2 Ah, the Big Easy.

New Orleans/

A city to walk in/

So a city to write poetry in/

The streets are poetry/

Toulouse/

St. Louis/

Music tye-dyes the air/

Neon

Tune in next time. June locates her prey. Gretta spies on Josephine. Ellie and Susie Lou team up. Devon takes Dan out for drinks (no, really). And more! Chapter 19, "Under the Scope".