A/N: DC here….*grins evilly* You know what? Just enjoy.
Disclaimer: We don't own Chuck or its characters.
He'd found his dad's suit at the back of his closet, trapped in a white plastic bag tied at the bottom, on a wooden hanger that was shoved behind everything else he never wore. It was the only suit he had because what kind of a Buy More employee could actually afford to buy a suit? Not to mention the ones he'd worn at Stanford to various important functions...Well, he'd sold those for video games and comics, and another one had gone into purchasing Comic-Con badges. But that was neither here nor there.
The suit was a little bit baggy in the shoulders, which was kind of demoralizing. On top of how demoralized he already felt, and had felt, since a few nights ago. He'd somehow screwed up everything more than it was already screwed up. And he'd managed to alienate the government agents who were supposed to be sticking close, protecting him.
He hadn't seen Sarah since that night, at least, not up close. She hadn't been at the Wienerlicious yesterday the two times he'd gone to talk to her, and when he'd tried to ask Casey about it at work, the NSA agent's only response was to laugh at him—as much as the man could laugh—and say, "Oh, what? She hurt your feelings, moron?"
And while, yes, Sarah had hurt his feelings a bit, Casey's response hadn't exactly been a balm.
So he'd just stayed back today, on this, the day of Bryce Larkin's funeral. Agent Bryce Larkin, because that was a thing.
Also a thing? An apparent database of government top secret shit crowding his brain that was triggered by...he still didn't know what. That nobody was actually explaining to him, in spite of it being in his head, and in spite of some turncoat mad scientist trying to kidnap him for it.
And now he was wearing an old suit of his dad's and having a stupidly difficult time with this damn tie, getting ready to go to the funeral of the man who'd put those secrets into his head, and for all Chuck knew, had changed his life irrecoverably. In the worst way.
This time, though, he did try to stem the self-pity. Because first of all, it got him nothing and nowhere. Secondly, he'd royally messed up. Part of him wanted to say Casey took some of the blame for his loss in trust with Sarah. But he knew it was his own fault. She'd asked him to trust her, and she'd given him no reason not to, that strange flash of information and images he'd gotten in which he'd seen her murder people aside. She had never given him any reason not to trust her. She'd saved his life. And this had to be the thirtieth time he'd had to remind himself of that, and that just wasn't right.
"Dad's suit?"
He finished tying his tie and smiled a little to himself at his sister's voice, fixing his hair and turning to look at her. "Yeah." He scoffed a bit. "It's my only one."
She walked further into the room and crossed her arms, tilting her head as she smiled. "I'm quite certain he wouldn't mind, though."
He just ducked his head and nodded, his smile dimming a bit. She closed the distance and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. "You mind if I ask you something?" He glanced at her, raising his eyebrows. "Why you doing this? Going to Bryce's funeral...after...everything?"
"Uh...I guess we were...buddies. Friends. Once. Close friends. Best, best friends." He shrugged. "And I guess...with everything he did to me…" And Ellie didn't know the half of it. She couldn't know. If she did know, her life would be in danger. "I just wanna make sure that someone's there, you know? Someone...um...someone real."
Ellie looked a little confused by that, but he couldn't explain. She couldn't know Bryce was a CIA agent. Now that he knew he was in the CIA, now that he'd seen some of the agency in action, and because he'd seen enough movies, Chuck could just tell that the blurb in the paper about Bryce's death had been fabricated by people who knew the agent, who didn't want anyone else knowing he was an agent...people who hadn't known him. And he wondered if the people at the funeral would be other agents, or paid actors…? He was making unfair assumptions about the CIA, maybe, and about Bryce.
But he still felt like someone who knew him back before the CIA stuff should be there. The guy who'd attacked the nasty troll with the nasty knife at his side. Or whatever. And the water balloon fight they'd had that nearly got them banned from Stanford's on-campus church.
Chuck decided to focus on that while he got ready to see the guy off. Even if he had ruined his life three times over. And in only 5 years. That had to be a record.
He fought the gloomy look off of his face and smiled at Ellie as she squeezed his shoulder. "You know something, Chuck?"
"What?" he asked teasingly.
"You deserve so much. The best. Definitely better than what you ever got from him, from...her," she growled with a dark frown, "from a lot of things. From, um, from our parents."
Chuck furrowed his brow. "Hey, where'd that come from, sis?" he asked with a bit of a chuckle, sufficiently heart-warmed.
"Nowhere special." He snorted at that. "You're just being an exceptional person today and I guess I'm proud of ya."
"Thanks." He cupped her elbow and squeezed. He turned back to the mirror and tried to fix another errant curl falling over his forehead.
"Chuck, you realize that you don't have to go to Bryce's funeral?" she said, seeming to feel the need to reiterate that for him, just in case.
"Yeah, I know. I realize." He gave her a sad smile. "I sorta want to. Closure, maybe? I don't know. Or maybe it's just the right thing to do." He shrugged. "Even if he did get me kicked outta school and steal my girlfriend."
"Well…" She made a bit of a face, almost as if she wasn't sure she should say it. "You've moved on to bigger and better girls." Chuck felt a pang in his chest and he winced. She must've seen it because she moved to put both hands on his shoulders. "I know, I know. With the other night...Well, that didn't go the way I wanted it to."
"Uh, yeah...me, neither," he said, bobbing his eyebrows and puffing his cheeks out. Nearly dying in a helicopter crash, getting kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder for whatever the secrets were in his head… But oh right, Sarah, his cover girlfriend, seemingly pissed off at him. That, too. And that was obviously what Ellie meant.
"Hey, but listen. I really like Sarah, Chuck. I mean, I didn't get to have any quality time with the woman the other night, but I mean, she showed up with a soufflé, first of all. Which is so fancy and awesome—"
Chuck widened his eyes and pointed at her. "Ah!"
"Don't. Don't tell him I used that word." They chuckled together. "No, really, Chuck," she said, crossing her arms again. "She seems so nice. And God, she is gorgeous. That's not super important obviously, but dear God it helps."
Chuck laughed outright.
"I hope you guys work things out," she said when he sobered up a bit, fixing him with that sincere green-eyed look of hers that got him through a lot of shit in his twenty-six years of life, especially the last ten. "Preferably before the next dinner party," she said hopefully.
Chuck huffed and dropped his chin to his chest, sticking his hands in his pockets. There was a good chance he'd blown any goodwill between himself and Sarah the other day, when he chose not to trust her, when he all but accused her of being a traitor to her job, her country...to him. But she was most likely still charged with his safety, and with the way the director of the CIA guy and the general woman had seemed like they weren't great at listening to their operatives, he doubted the cover dating thing was going to stop.
But Ellie didn't know that. Ellie didn't know Sarah was stuck here. Stuck with him. And he felt an ache at the thought of Sarah thinking that. That she was stuck with him. That hurt worse than he wanted it to.
"I don't know," he admitted truthfully. He walked past her and picked up the suit jacket. "I don't know, sis. I think I blew it."
"Well, what happened?"
He couldn't tell his sister that the CIA agent had asked him to trust her after he'd defused a bomb using the weird government secrets thing in his brain, and that'd he'd betrayed that trust, suspected the worst of her, and had nearly gotten them all killed in the meantime.
But what he could tell her was…
"I don't know. She is...great, you know? And I've got all these issues. Everything that's happened. Mom, Dad, Bryce, Jill...I've got this new girl in my life who is so great and it's hard for me to...believe it." He sighed and shook his head. "I'm not making any sense. She asked me to trust her and I didn't. I didn't trust her, I freaked out, acted like a total jackass, and I think it...hurt her."
That last part felt right, even though he was ninety-nine percent sure it wasn't true. She hadn't been hurt. She'd have to have some sort of personal attachment for that to be the case. But Sarah was a good agent. An amazing agent. And she'd already saved his life in the last few days more times than he could count probably. Because she had a job to do. And he'd made her job so damn hard two days ago, when he chose not to trust her anymore. He'd made her job so much harder than it needed to be. He felt terrible. She'd been tortured for him. God.
He suddenly felt a little woozy.
"Yeah, you really lost your mind a bit there, brother." She winced. "It was...hard to watch."
"I'm sure."
"But listen...Like I said, I really don't know her. But what I saw of her, she seems so great. Really. And I bet she's going to listen if you apologize." He gave her a narrowed-eyed, doubtful look. "Just apologize," she repeated. "An apology can really go a long way. Right? Remember when Devon spilled muscle milk all over the backseat of my car? That was when we'd first started dating. He apologized. And also paid for like...three car details in a row."
They laughed together. "Listen to me. You've got nothin' to lose. And I dunno, don't you think a girl like that is worth it?"
Chuck smiled. He was pretty sure she was. But more importantly than that, she deserved an apology. A sincere one.
"Sarah's special. She's different from your Stanford friends." She stepped in and tightened his tie a bit, fixing it, smoothing the collar of the button-up over it.
"Yeah….yeah." He smiled again and leaned in to kiss Ellie on the forehead. "Thanks, sis. I better get goin', huh? Love ya."
"Love you, too. And think about what I said."
He just nodded with a smile over his shoulder. He didn't have to think about it. He knew what he was going to have to do. But first, he had to pay respects to someone. Because he supposed everyone deserved some semblance of forgiveness, or at least, he thought...maybe someday, he'd get to a point where he could offer Bryce his. Maybe someday.
}o{
He stood in the back, off to the right, with a tree behind him. For some reason that comforted him, to have something at his back. He looked over the small gathering, probably all CIA agents, and realized Sarah wasn't there. He looked over to his left and saw her. She was by herself, and there was sorrow on her face. Chuck realized why he needed the tree against his back. It was because his bodyguard wasn't there right now, and frankly, he couldn't blame her.
He knew how betrayal felt. He knew how trusting someone and having them turn on you felt. He thought about the games he and Bryce played with the nerf guns in the Stanford library. He thought about the Quad and how they met. He thought about Bryce introducing himself to Jill. He thought about how much it hurt and how HUMILIATED he felt having to leave Stanford because of Bryce. He glanced at Sarah's face, and while the mask was still in place, he saw a mirrored reflection of how he had felt then.
She began to look around and Chuck kept watching her. He needed to be supportive. He understood what she was going through. He was, after all, the one who had offered to be a baggage handler, and he hadn't done the best job so far. She turned and they locked eyes. The look on her face didn't change. The hurt didn't leave, the betrayal. He began to raise his hand to wave in case she didn't see him, but she turned away. Tears began to fall down her face. Why…?
As he looked back at the coffin and saw his friend being laid to rest, a realization slammed into his chest that nearly knocked him over. This was his fault. This, right here, right now, was on Chuck Bartowski. He didn't trust Sarah, true, he didn't know all the facts, but that was part of trusting someone. For all Bryce did, getting him kicked out of college, sleeping with Jill, sending him the Intersect, Chuck's major problem right this second had nothing to do with Bryce. Chuck hadn't trusted Sarah, the person who kept him alive. Sure it was her job, but so was being a police officer, a firefighter, or any other profession that required you to put your life on the line for someone you didn't know.
A second realization hit him and he felt shame like he never had before. Sarah had been betrayed by two people….Bryce and Chuck. He had accused her of going rogue. Chuck didn't know how many people she had in her life but with the kind of life she had, it couldn't be many. He had made her job harder, physically. He had made her job harder, emotionally. He told her he could be her baggage handler, and he had not done a good job. If anything he had added to the weight.
She turned and left quickly. Chuck watched her go, ashamed of himself. He always prided himself in being the good guy. He knew he hadn't been in this entire situation. All she had asked him to do was trust her. She had his back; she had told him that on the beach. All he had to do was trust her, and he didn't. He had hurt her. With a determined look on his face, he made a vow to himself. Sarah was trying to do her job. THIS wasn't her fault. None of it was. Chuck Bartowski caused this mess, and Chuck Bartowski had to fix it. It was the absolute least he could do.
}o{
Sarah set down her hairdryer, unplugged it, and left it on the sink, not caring enough to put it away at the moment. What she really wanted to do was crawl inside of her bed even though the sun had only just barely gone down, throw her sheets over her head, and stay there until she was absolutely forced to emerge to save the country.
She fluffed her newly dried hair after what had been a long, hot shower—a shower she'd used to let herself grieve over the life of someone who'd been a big enough part of her own life, as a partner and as someone she'd formed a bond with, even if the crux of it was physical.
Bryce Larkin, Agent Larkin of the CIA, hadn't been her rock. He hadn't been her tether to humanity, or the thing that had kept her grounded. They'd shared nothing personal. He knew nothing about her, save what he'd witnessed during missions. And she knew nothing about him. He'd never mentioned Stanford, he'd never mentioned Chuck, or anyone else, really. She didn't know he was from Connecticut, even, like Chuck had told her on the rooftop that first night.
And she's definitely never told him even a single thing about herself. Not one thing that wasn't in the heavily redacted file he was given on her when they were first paired up for field work.
But they'd worked together long enough that the betrayal had hurt. The lack of trust had hurt. The fact that he could have potentially dragged her own reputation with the agency into it because she was her partner. She knew she was lucky she wasn't pegged by the CIA as a co-conspirator. He could have ruined her life with his treachery. And when Graham told her Bryce had died, that had felt even worse. Because she'd cared. Of course she'd cared.
She hated him now. Like she told Chuck, he betrayed everything she believed in. And he'd pulled the wool over her eyes—nothing pissed her off worse than that.
But seeing that smattering of CIA agents who'd been tasked with going to the funeral, being appropriately somber, if only to give the appearance of normalcy to the life of a man who'd cut himself off from the civilian world, as most of them ended up doing...God, she felt sick inside. And maybe it was self-indulgence, but she couldn't help thinking there'd be a time when the CIA set something up for her like that.
People she never knew, people who'd been called away from their nearby posts for a few hours to sit and pretend to mourn her. They'd call her...a businesswoman or a real estate agent. They'd bury a casket, empty or otherwise, depending on the situation of her death. And she'd disappear.
She'd caught sight of Chuck right as she'd been thinking that, too. The cold, dark fear of dying alone and just disappearing like she'd never existed in the first place, leaving absolutely no mark on anyone or anything, no mark in the world, the way Bryce had just done, was crashing through her just as she spotted him leaning against a tree off in the distance, away from the actual funeral...just like her.
As Sarah plopped onto her bed and scooted back against the headboard, she thought about the look on his face again. And she actually let herself think about the fact that he was there in the first place. He'd been surprised to see her, just as she'd been surprised to see him. They'd both been betrayed, hadn't they? In different ways. And yet, Chuck had shown up to the funeral. Who had told him about it? How'd he find out? The paper, maybe. And then he'd donned a suit, made himself look respectable, and showed up.
Sarah bit her lip as she realized something. She didn't know what she believed about Heaven, Hell, the afterlife in general. And who knew if Bryce Larkin—wherever he ended up—would even know what kind of a send-off he'd gotten? But there was something real there in the midst of the fake tears and empty grief of the attendees sitting in the chairs. Someone real. Someone who'd known Bryce before, in college. Someone who had known real things about him. Bryce had made a mark on at least one person. Granted, she wasn't sure if the mark he'd made on Chuck Bartowski was strong enough to counteract the email he sent him the other day. Because, as much as she was willing to do whatever she could to protect Chuck and try to help him get back to his normal life, there was a good chance the damage Bryce had done to Chuck's existence was irreparable.
And yet Chuck stood there. Why? She really didn't know. And she wasn't about to let him see her like that, with tears pooling in her eyes—whether for Bryce or for herself, it didn't matter—so she turned on her heel and left quickly, ignoring his attempt at a wave.
Part of her felt a little bad, but he'd made her change her mind about him with his behavior the other day. She still couldn't let herself forget how hard all of this must be for him. He hadn't asked to have those secrets sent to him, somehow implanted in his brain by whatever those images Zarnow had shown him were. He hadn't asked for her to show up out of the blue, ask him out on a date, and promptly rock his entire world in the worst possible way with the admission that she was a CIA agent. If he knew even the half of why she was there, what Graham had hinted at happening to him if she hadn't acted as quickly as she had on his behalf...God, the poor guy.
And yet...in spite of this being overwhelming, in spite of whatever he had in his head, he didn't get an excuse for acting like a complete jackass. He'd proven to her that he was like any other mark and asset—and she'd been so quick to put him on some kind of a pedestal because of how he'd come off those first few meetings, and then the date. Unassuming, sweet, thoughtful, kind, funny, self-deprecating. And she was sure he was all of those things.
But he had shown her beyond all doubt that he not only didn't take her seriously as an agent, as his protector and handler, but that he also didn't have much respect for her. All Casey had to do was tell him a lie about her murdering French diplomats, gently steer him with the fact that NSA incinerators were available on the black market, and he'd dropped any and all pretenses that he actually trusted her. Like it was a hot potato.
What did he expect, for her to sit down with him and give him her whole life story before he could trust her? You didn't do that with accountants before entrusting them with all of your finances, even. And she worked for the CIA! Her damn director didn't know her whole life story. Her damn parents didn't know. She was willfully foggy about her own life in places, for God's sake.
Did he need her to fucking notarize a statement for him? Did the director himself have to sit down and vouch for her?
She'd gone above and beyond, more than she was willing to admit to her own damn boss, to keep this guy safe, to keep him from being separated from his family and tossed in a windowless bunker where he'd never see the light of day again. She'd saved his life, nearly been shot, run over by an SUV… She'd been tortured by a middle-school caricature of a Bond villain, subjected to an incredibly embarrassing scene at Chuck's hands in front of his family and friends… And in spite of all of that, she was still here in this damn hotel room, prepared to continue doing her job, protecting him, keeping him safe from the harm that seemed to be crashing towards him from all angles. She didn't have to be here. Like Casey said, they could just toss this nerd in a bunker, leave him there to rot, and go on with their lives.
But she wasn't going to let that happen. Ever. In spite of him being incredibly stupid and suspecting her of being a rogue agent, someone who meant him and his family harm. He didn't deserve a windowless life, without sunlight, without his people. His soul would die in there. She wasn't letting this man's soul die. She'd seen too many souls die, including her own most likely, to let it happen to him.
Sarah knew she'd been foolish. She'd given him too much credit at the start. She'd let his softness make her think he was better than everyone else. And he was still better than a lot of people, she was sure. He was worth protecting because he was a human being who didn't ask for any of this. But she was done suffering with a mixture of empathy and awe over just how good he was.
That show he'd put on after he'd climbed out of the helicopter, being a goofball, dancing in celebration, trying to high five her. He took none of this as seriously as he should, and it pissed her off, because she'd taken him so seriously. She'd given him respect. She'd given him kindness without infantilizing him or dehumanizing him the way her superiors and Casey had.
And he'd repaid her with that bullshit the other day. It had rubbed her in the wrongest way to see him celebrating after he'd barely survived, thanks to his inability to trust her, to fucking just listen when the professionals told him to do something, damn it.
Yes, he was just like the rest of the marks and assets. He didn't deserve the crap he was dealing with, but she didn't deserve the way he dropped any semblance of trust and respect she'd thought he'd had in her. Not with her actions the past few days. Whatever she'd done before that, anything he might have found out about what she'd done for the job before, anything Casey might have lied about to her, didn't matter. She'd saved his damn life more than once.
Not that he really knew the strings she'd pulled with Graham and the NSA to keep him out of a bunker. She had to grant him that. The guy was flying blind, worse than she was. And she was pretty scarily blind in this, so that was saying something.
All of that aside, it was kindness that had led him to attend Bryce's funeral. She couldn't possibly know the depths behind his decision to see his old college friend off, but she had to assume he was there because he was kind. And that made her chest ache a bit. Was it a good ache or a bad ache? She didn't know.
Either way, she found herself hoping she'd warrant that show of kindness from someone, somewhere, if she ended up being killed in the line of duty. A non-CIA person who saw past any harm she might've done them, hurt she'd caused them, to be kind and stand there to make sure there was at least something real at her send-off.
She needed to reel herself back with this guy, though. That much was evident. It was too easy to let his inherent goodness make her see him as perfect.
The CIA agent had let her walls crumble and she'd attributed too much to him. He was immature, foolish, and incapable of seeing how dangerous all of this was. He'd trusted someone who regularly called him a moron and dismissed his comments and emotions...over someone who'd shown him nothing but kindness and patience. And why? Was it because she was a woman? She didn't want to jump to that conclusion right off the bat. But it had happened often enough in her line of work—constantly being underestimated, not taken seriously, because she was a woman, because of how she looked.
No, it wasn't that. Chuck was many things, but he wasn't that type of a guy. She knew. She thought maybe Zarnow had just done a good enough job pitting Casey and her against one another, and Chuck had fallen into the trap hook, line, and sinker. It didn't excuse his stupidity. And his inability to listen to Casey's commands apparently had to be considered as well. Casey'd apparently told him to stay in the car, as the agent told her later. After Chuck had helped him figure out how to potentially track her down. He'd told her that part a bit begrudgingly, she thought. And maybe being able to figure that out had put some sense of self-indulgent ego into the nerd who undoubtedly watched a lot of TV and movies about spies. So that when he'd been sitting there next to the NSA agent, hearing him say "Stay in the car" hadn't registered. The stupid hero had to get out of the car and rescue her. What actually resulted was that he'd nearly been kidnapped and sold to North Korea, and then he'd nearly died after that.
He was a child in a grown man's body.
She was going to have even more on her hands than she'd thought. And this all just sucked so much worse than she'd feared it would a few days ago when this job first started.
Having to deal with Casey's volatility—towards her and towards Chuck—on top of having to deal with her asset's inability to see the seriousness and danger of his situation, his inability to freaking trust that she knew what she was doing, that she could and would protect him with her life if she had to? God, this was the worst possible operation she could imagine.
And she'd thought it'd be such a cinch.
She'd just been to his damn funeral and her heart still hurt at the thought that Agent Bryce Larkin was dead, but she couldn't help sending him the biggest middle finger. She directed it both upwards, and downwards, just in case, before flopping over to the side and muffling a frustrated groan into her duvet.
That was when she heard the staccato knock on her door.
She lifted her head and looked at it, frowning deeply. And then she slowly climbed up from her bed and grabbed her robe she'd draped over the end of the bed, shrugging it on and tying it shut.
Swiping her trusted gun from the nightstand, she slinked over to the door and stood there silently, listening to whomever it was shuffle their feet. And then…
"Sarah?" she heard muffled through the door. She knew it was him immediately. "Sarah, it's Chuck. I—"
She whipped open the door and furrowed her brow in confusion at him as he stared at her, wide-eyed, and blinked. "Chuck...What are you doing here? What happened?" She grabbed him by the lapel of his suit and pulled him into the room, slamming the door shut and throwing the locks. "Are you being followed? Where's Casey? Isn't he supposed to be watching you right now?"
"I'm not a five year old," he said with a shrug. "I don't really need him breathing in that bullish way of his down my neck every moment of my life. And technically, aren't you both supposed to be keeping me safe?"
That earned him the flattest look she was capable of. "What are you doing here?" she repeated. "Are you in trouble? Danger? Someone following you?"
"Not directly, at this moment. No one is following me. No. No, I just came here because...Sarah, I really have to talk to you. Seriously. Gloves off."
She sighed and pushed a hand through her hair. "Oh... Well… Don't need this then." She raised the gun between them and wiggled it, watching him pale a bit. She went and put it back in the nightstand drawer. "Chuck, I really said everything I needed to say to you the other night."
"No, I know." He swallowed so hard she heard it from across the room. "But I have plenty that I need to say. And the first thing I need to say before anything else is that I apologize."
Sarah turned to face him and blinked. Then she crossed her arms at her chest and watched him closely as he played with his fingers, shoulders a bit slumped, shame on his face. She knew he was only twenty-six years old, but God, the way he looked at this moment, he almost resembled a little boy who'd been chastised by a teacher he respected.
He took a few steps closer.
"In just one day, I-I managed to make, like, five billion mistakes. Which is...kind of a record for me." He huffed in amusement, darting his eyes down to his feet and shrugging. "I misstepped, I freaked out, I overreacted, misunderstood—maybe on purpose, I dunno, I—I dunno. This has all been a lot in such a…" He huffed. "Such a short amount of time. I went, like, five years with absolutely nothing happening in my life. Same shit day in, day out. Not that I'm complaining. Not now anyway. If I could go back to that, I dunno, I think it'd be pretty great. But I can't. I can't go back to that."
She could see him working through it all in his head, but then it was also tumbling out of his mouth at the same time, which was...She'd never met anyone like him before. He was so...different.
"And then suddenly—WHAM. You know? An email with government secrets. Somehow they're-they're in my head. And I can see...files and info and weird shit I don't-I don't want to see. I know things I don't want to know. A beautiful woman asks me out on a date, I find out she's actually a CIA agent who's been sent here to watch my ass—" He froze, thrusting his hand out. "Not. Not literally. I didn't mean that—Oh my God, shut up, Chuck."
Sarah couldn't stop the quiet snort, raising her eyebrows. Wow.
"No. God. Um...It's just all been a lot. And I'm not saying that to excuse my behavior, my actions. I was a complete jackass the other day, Sarah. A total and complete jackass. And I'm sorry. Really."
She blinked again, not really knowing what to say to that. Thank you? She supposed she at least appreciated his self-awareness after the fact. And his apology.
"But that's not it. That's not all I want to say." He closed the distance and stood right in front of her. He held his hands out in front of him, not to touch her, like she was afraid he might. But she noticed it was just a thing he did with his hands… And it somehow set her at ease a little bit.
"What else did you come here to say, Chuck?" She raised her eyebrows and posed like she was waiting, lifting her chin, tilting her head.
"How do I say this?" he asked, licking his lips and looking down at his feet for a moment, before he lifted his gaze back up, looking her squarely in the face, his eyes meeting hers steadily. "None of this has seemed...like real life the past few days. What happened to me with Bryce sending me the email, the secrets in my head. God, even getting asked out by a woman like you felt like—I felt like I was in some dream or something. And I think it was all so overwhelming and so...just...out of this world crazy, hard to believe, that a large part of me maybe just...didn't...believe it." He rolled his eyes at himself and looked up at the ceiling, as if asking some higher power for strength. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged, lowering his head again. "The car chase and the death defying stuff that happened and-and you. You being a CIA agent. Having the CIA and the NSA send their best to protect me because I have—I dunno, some government supercomputer in my brain? Whatever the hell this is, 'cause I still don't know."
Chuck sighed and took a few steps back, scratching the back of his head. "Like you said when I was in that chopper, and you were trying to talk me through landing without freaking killing myself...It all felt like a movie or a-a video game. Like I've been in some spy simulator. Or something."
"It isn't a movie. Or a video game," she said, squeezing her arms under her hands and giving him a steady look back.
"You're right. It isn't. I know that now. I wasn't taking any of this as seriously as I should've been. The danger. So much danger." He looked pained at that. "I mean, not that I wasn't terrified through...well, all of it. I've been immature. And yeah, all of this was probably a bit too much for me to handle, but that's what you're here for. And I guess Casey too, even if he is kind of a butthead."
She swallowed a giggle, twisting her lips to the side. "What are you getting at, Chuck?"
Chuck just stared at her for a moment, and then he straightened his shoulders, looking much taller than she thought she'd ever seen him before suddenly. She'd known he was tall, but… How many inches did the slouching shoulders (she suspected from his lack of self-esteem) take away?
"You told me to trust you that morning on the beach. And at that moment, it didn't feel like that big of an ask. It seemed easy enough to agree to that at the time, you know? Because I'd just defused a bomb with a porn virus and everything was up in the air and I was afraid and confused. And you were right there sitting next to me, and that date up until the whole NSA agent trying to kill me with the large sports utility vehicle thing happened was legitimately great. You-You seemed legitimately great, in spite of the stuff that happened after I found out you were CIA—not that you didn't save my life, 'cause you did." He growled a bit at himself, tugging at his ear in frustration.
"Chuck, look…" She smiled a little to set him at ease. "It's okay. I appreciate the apology. You don't have to…"
"I do, though, Sarah. I need you to know that I do trust you. When we were out there on that beach, I was floundering. I was flailing for something to grab onto. Someone. And for twenty-five plus years, that was always Ellie. Ellie's always been that one person I could grab onto to keep me afloat, the one person I could count on. But I couldn't do that this time. I-I can't. Not with this. Because she can't know about it. So when you asked me to trust you, of course I agreed. I was totally lost...and I needed...something."
So she hadn't expected that. At all. And she felt herself suck in a silent breath, lowering her arms to her sides again. She felt like an invisible train had just slammed into her head-on and she didn't quite know what to do about it, except just stare at him.
"And when things started going...wonky, I guess...with Zarnow being murdered, or I guess fake-murdered, since he ended up being a fucking asshole turncoat—" Accurate description, she thought. "—who faked his own death, I started getting confused. And that whole thing with trusting you sort of—I slipped. I dropped the ball. I lost my footing. I stopped trusting you. Because that's-that's what I do. It's something I always manage to do 'cause I'm such an idiot. I guess I just trust people—the wrong people—and then I get burned. And I thought I'd done it again. Or I guess, the problem was that I'd not taken this or you seriously enough to even trust you properly in the first place. I don't know which it was. I don't. Either way, I was in the wrong. Completely." He looked her right in her face. "I should've trusted you fully in the beginning, because you saved my life. And you haven't stopped saving my life since then, Agent Walker. I had no reason to stop trusting you, no matter what weird shit I saw with the secret flashy thingy in my brain, no matter what seeds of doubt Casey tried to plant in my brain…"
Sarah watched as he took a moment to gather his thoughts. She gave him the time, not interrupting or prompting him. Because it gave her the time to let his words settle in her mind. The meaning in them.
Either way, I was in the wrong. Completely.
When was the last time she'd ever heard someone say that? Let alone to her? When had she even apologized like that? The act of even admitting he was wrong, but then doing it with so much sincerity and honesty that she was almost finding it hard to breathe.
He was currently entrusting her with full honesty, complete candidness, even opening himself to her, showing his vulnerability… And she didn't think there was anything he could do that would better prove he trusted her than that.
"I don't understand what's happening to me," he continued quietly. "It's...scary. I'm scared." He swallowed thickly. "I had someone in you who was going to bat for me. And I just...have this sneaking suspicion, from the way the director, Director...er…"
"Graham," she breathed.
"Graham, right. Director Graham and General NSA Red-haired Woman…"
"Beckman."
"That's it." She felt herself smiling a bit. "The way they spoke to me—or I guess, they spoke over me, about me, like I was an inanimate object. When I was standin' right there in front of 'em. And I have this feeling like neither of them...care much...what happens to me. They care about these…" He tapped his temple. And then he shrugged, meeting her eyes again. "I'm not saying I expect you to, like, care a whole lot about me. And I'm not saying that as a judgment on you. I'm sure your job has required you to protect a lot of people." She nodded mutely. "But from the very beginning, you've seen me as a person instead of as an unwilling vessel for government secrets. And you've had my back." He huffed, shaking his head. "I should've had yours, Agent Walker." He looked at her more closely. "Sarah."
She felt her eyes widen. Her expectations, her realizations, theories, character analysis, assumptions, conclusions...all of it was crashing down around her ears in the face of complete candidness. God, he was so genuine.
"Bryce betrayed his country. He betrayed all of us. He, um...in spite of the shitty stuff he did to me personally, that just never seemed like something that was even remotely in the realm of possibility. I mean, betraying the United States of America, being a rogue spy… It's hard to imagine anybody being capable of that." He tugged a bit awkwardly on the end of his suit jacket. "I'm so sorry that it was easy for me to suspect you were. I'm sorry I let everything pile up and terrify me enough that I lost my faith in you. And-And if you stick around the way I'm pretty sure you might, uh, have to," he winced with that hint of almost humor in his brown eyes and she gave him a bit of an amused side-eye in response, "I promise to actually trust you this time. Not just because I'm scared and freakin' out a little with all of this, not just because I'm lost and confused and floundering—and trust me, I am all those things at once...Nah, I'm gonna trust you because you deserve my trust."
She nibbled on her lip and finally nodded slowly. Then she waited for him to meet her gaze and she lowered her chin, peering up at him through her eyelashes. "Thank you, Chuck. Thank you for saying that. All of it."
"Hey. I'm fully prepared to hold myself accountable for being a jackass." They exchanged amused smiles. "I haven't known you long, Agent Walker, but I can tell you're an incredible agent, an incredible spy. As big of a dunce as I was the other day, I'm not fully stupid. And I know what you were doing when you talked me through the chopper situation. You set me at ease, got me to think I was in a video game. That was pretty freakin' brilliant."
Sarah smirked and crossed her arms again, not used to...well, this kind of praise. Then again, there weren't many who were allowed to know the agent, or see her in action. Unless they were the target. And that was a completely different story. She was the wildcard enforcer, and she was treated as such...or rather, avoided as such… in the halls of Langley. To hear someone call her brilliant, say she was an incredible agent…
"Chuck, it's my job to keep you safe."
"I know it is. But I still appreciate it. And I'm going to be good, I promise." She smirked again at the way he phrased that, making him grin. "I trust you." Then he paused. "And please continue being my fake girlfriend? My sister seems to like you quite a bit from just that short amount of time she spent with you before I came in and acted like an absolute nutcase. So good work there."
Sarah took a deep breath. "Does she? Well, she's nice. They all are. I can see why you want to protect that so much, Chuck." She paused, giving him a serious look. "And I'd never do anything to hurt them. Please tell me you believe that now."
"I do," he said sincerely.
"Good."
A lot of things had just been turned onto their heads, her perceptions of his behavior, of him. And that voice in her head telling her that a pedestal wasn't where this man belonged was fading without her even realizing it. Because what he'd done here tonight felt big. It felt almost a little unbelievable. How eagerly he'd shed his ego, peeled away the veneer of immaturity, stepped up, and not just apologized, but called himself out. He...understood. And maybe that was the biggest part of this.
Chuck Bartowski had no idea what was happening to him. He was scared, in the dark. He'd made the wrong choices, he'd done the wrong things, believed the wrong people. He didn't understand any of what Bryce had done to him, or how they might undo it. But he understood where he'd misstepped. He understood why she'd been so upset with him. He understood.
And he promised to actually trust her this time. To trust her to lead him through this dark maze of uncertainty and danger.
The distance she was prepared to set between them in spite of this whole foolish cover dating thing Graham and Beckman were forcing them to do, because of what she'd felt was the core of him, the immaturity and inability to handle even the simplest instructions without thinking he knew better...that distance didn't feel as...imperative, did it? Or maybe it was even more imperative now that she knew she was wrong when she'd labeled him with all of those words.
He was good. He was the rare kind of good that owned his mistakes, took responsibility, and acted to rectify them. He was the kind of good that exceeded expectations of what good was even supposed to be.
She shook herself a bit and took a deep breath. "Chuck, I was harsh when I yelled at you the other night. I'm sorry about that. You've been through a lot and you are bearing it better than I think anyone else might in your shoes. Honestly. Casey and I have both had a hard time...putting ourselves in your shoes. I sincerely apologize. I shouldn't have been so mean. But I needed you to get it. And I need you to get it now."
"I do."
"Do you?" She sighed. "I'm not meaning that in a sarcastic way, either. I'm really asking. Because I meant what I said. I'm what's keeping you from being shipped out of here and locked up in a windowless underground room. And I'm not saying that because I want more praise from you or anything. I'm saying it because I need you to understand that. Okay? This is...incredibly serious. But if you trust me, if we-if we work together in this, if you do what I say...we can get through it. We might both...misstep. You might make a mistake and I might snap." She winced. "But we need to stick together."
He'd gone a bit pale, but he nodded, pulling his shoulders back and lifting his chin. "Understood. And I trust you." He pushed his hands through his hair then. "You know, with Casey being a jerk who never talks to me or tells me anything and you being rightfully mad at me since the other day, I haven't really had a chance to, erm, to ask. But with Zarnow out of the picture, what's-what's gonna happen to me? I mean, what are the chances I get this crap out of my head?"
Chuck seemed to brace himself for the worst, and she had a momentary urge to wrap her arms around him and squeeze as tight as she had to...to make him feel okay again. To reassure him.
Instead, she sighed, playing with the sash of her robe. "There might be another way, but honestly, I don't know. Not yet. For now, those secrets aren't going anywhere. That's going to mean more missions, more danger…" She didn't want to say it but she had to be real with him, the way he just was with her. "That's more secrets you can't tell your sister or your friends."
He frowned and nodded. "Yeah, I know."
Sarah moved in closer and finally put her hands on his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. "Some people want to be heroes...Others need to be asked." She let that settle for a moment. "So… Chuck, are you ready?"
This was going to be a rollercoaster, she just knew it. It already was. He was a rollercoaster all on his own, but then with the secrets, the inevitability of her superiors wanting to use his flashy thingy...as he'd called it...Oh God, this was going to be insane. But she'd be here. She wasn't going anywhere. And she wasn't letting him down.
Contrary to what she'd thought even just a half hour ago, Chuck Bartowski wasn't the type of guy who'd let her down, either. She knew that now.
He finally nodded. "I'm ready."
"Good."
She took her hands off of his shoulders and lowered them to her sides, taking a step back.
Yeah, this would be a rollercoaster. But if Chuck was ready for it...Well, she was going to be ready for it, too.
A/N: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. (drops mic) -SC
DC here...But the question is dear reader, are you ready? (Because Chuck and Sarah aren't.) We'll be back soon.