A/N: More of our tale.

The Light of The World

Chapter Three: Chemistry Class

Chuck takes my hand with his hand and he raises his other hand.

A heavy black Mercedes emerges from the alleyway I had been standing in earlier. I look at Chuck, seeing his breath form a cloud and then mine do so as I speak.

The temperature keeps dropping but I remain warm.

"You were already there, in the alley? In a car? I thought you were cold?"

"I was cold. And I waited outside the car. In the next alley over. I couldn't sit there any longer. I wanted to be sure you weren't tailed and get a good look at you before I approached you. To watch you wait. You shouldn't have had time to arm yourself between the airport and here, but I wanted to be sure."

"You can tell I'm unarmed?"

He nods. "Except I'm not positive about your calf, the knives you sometimes carry there. Those jeans are loose enough to make me unsure."

That sounded like a complaint, but not for safety's sake.

"How do you know I'm not carrying a gun?"

He does not answer. Instead, he opens the car's rear passenger side door, and motions for me to enter. I don't, not yet. I think I trust him but —

"How do you know about my knives?" I ask in a quiet voice, leaning toward him. His earlier, broken-off comment about me being beautiful returns to me. "I'm not wearing them."

He seems almost disappointed.

How does he know about me? — The Director?

"Wait until we get to the home, to the hotel," he whispers back with a quick, unexpectedly intimate smile, answering my lean with one of his own, and he kisses my cheek. I assume he does it to obscure our exchange and for the sake of our cover, perhaps we're under surveillance, or perhaps it's for the driver.

The spot on my cheek where his lips landed begins to glow. I touch it with my hand. His scent, noticeable when he was so close, is a masculine variation of the baby's scent, recalling me to Budapest Innocence. Innocence and Bay Rum. Heady.

Chuck helps me into the car and that's good because his scent liquifies my body for a moment, and my mind evaporates. I'm no longer in a solid state. I'm in flux, unstable.

Unlike myself.

I'm alive all over. Not a zombie.

Not a monster, not for the time that scent permeates me.

How can a spy smell innocent? How can a scent, invisible, ephemeral, barely there, affect me so?

Once in the large backseat, I can see the driver, a woman. She's wearing a chauffeur's uniform. A hat. Her long black hair is in a heavy braid.

She's heavy-set — not fat but squat, powerful. She fills the driver's seat. Her eyes, black onyx, assess me as I straighten my coat. She has small, square teeth, and it takes me a moment to realize that she is not grimacing but smiling at me, albeit warily.

In the rearview.

"Hi," I say, softly, looking into the mirror and keeping the single word neutral enough in accent and tone to go in any direction when Chuck supplies some sort of introduction, some signal about how to relate to her.

Chuck slides in. "Hilda," Chuck addresses her, "please take my wife and me to the hotel."

The woman nodded. Her nod was almost a salute. "So, all is well, Mr. Black?"

Chuck smiles and puts his arm around my shoulders. "Yes, she's been fed and she's forgiven me. I'm a lucky man." The driver gives me another look in the rearview, but I bury my face in Chuck's shoulder, nuzzling his neck and inhaling him, playing my part — but also wanting to check myself. The same scent. Except with the baby, her scent made me feel motherly, like a woman with a child. Gravid, in a way. Chuck's scent does not make me feel motherly. Not at all. It makes me feel womanly, like a woman who wants her man. Wifely, you know?

Chemistry. This is what it's like. It must be.

Bryce smelled nice, flashy, expensive aftershave, but that scent remained nasal, superficial. It belonged to the bottle, not to him. Olfactory only. It did not sink to my core, play havoc with me, remind me of an unknown personal destiny.

More paradox.

How can you be reminded of what is unknown?

Chuck's other arm moves around me and he cuddles me against him.

Cuddled. I relax, breathing out slowly, and let my head rest on his shoulder. His arms are warm around me, committed, and I forget that this is all a cover for a moment and I forget that he is an agent and I am an agent and this is a mission, and I am for the moment simply a woman held by a man by whom she wants to be held.

Bryce was always an agent and I was always an agent, even when we were in bed together. We could have taken our CIA badges to bed and it would have changed nothing. It would only have made tangible a psychological fact.

A part of me always knew that, knew we were not really together. Sex extended our covers; it did not take place outside our covers, not even on their margins. Company sex.

Reluctantly, I break the embrace. Chuck looks at me as I lift my head and his gloved hand comes up under my chin. He cups my chin, thumb on my chin, fingers beneath it, and stares into my eyes. I'm being asked a question he does not articulate and that I cannot supply for him, but I close my eyes and feel his lips on my forehead. Gentle. Gentle but with the potential for hunger. His eyes are soft and hazel and bottomless and I want to tumble into them.

I pull myself back but smile to make it clear that I am not refusing. Not absolutely. My hand encircles his neck and I caress him. I have no thought of our cover, no thought of him as an agent or of me as an agent. I've lost my grip on professional categories altogether.

I never do that.

But I have. I do.

I hear the driver sigh. She's driving. The car's moving. She's been peeking at us in the mirror. She clicks on the car's stereo.

But I register all that dimly, marginally. I keep asking how all this is possible, but instead of answers more impossibilities keep being added to the question.

The all keeps growing. I'm on a merry-go-round and the music is subtle but delightful and the herd of statuary pastel horses keeps multiplying.

Round and round, lights and music. Carnival.

It's the stereo inside the car and the lights of Zurich, Christmas-decorated, outside the car, but it's all been transported inside me.

Chuck breathes out a sigh himself, a long one. "You're not what I expected." His voice is low and there's an undertone in it now that reveals that he is as affected by this — whatever this is — as I am.

Chemistry. Sudden and undeniable.

I smile but I fear the answer to the question I now ask. "What did you expect?"

He holds my eyes with his as he continues to hold me against him. "Harder. I expected you to be harder."

I fight against it but I stiffen in his arms. That's the way I'm known. Hard. Cold. A killer's killer. For most of my life, I have felt encased in ice. Like those cavemen they find in remote caves, eyes frozen open. Staring out of their tombs for eternity, and staring into the dark until someone drags the ice block into the light.

Now that I consider it, I'm not sure they've really ever found such a fossil. Maybe that's just movies. But it doesn't have to be fact to symbolize my spiritual plight.

Spiritual plights are never literally materialized.

Hard.

I was hard. Or I had made myself hard. I was hardest in Budapest, carrying the package, the baby, from that mansion, the baby strapped to my chest, crying, guns in each of my hands, blazing. But the baby softened me almost immediately — and permanently. Like I said, she introduced me to my soul.

My soul has been following me around since. Graham noticed. He had me evaluated and reevaluated. I talked to psychologists until I was blue in the face and they were green with nausea. Even spook psychologists were spooked by my stories. Be careful what you ask for applies even to psychologists. I don't know what their verdict was, but my termination missions ceased. For a little while, all missions ceased. Graham seemed to have put me to pasture, speaking of horses, which I kind of was. Carousel.

But when Graham died, the new Director sent me back into the field, but still no terminations. I became a courier mainly, sometimes I directed ops, and occasionally I went into deep cover, but for the most part, my missions became perfunctory. I minded and I did not mind. The primary problem was that my new mission profile left me too much time on my hands, and my soul not only followed me into those missions but insisted on talking with me about my past. My soul had witnessed awful things and shared them with me, forcing me to reckon with myself.

Maybe if I had gone to Burbank, and had Chuck near me, had him to talk to, interact with, I could have reintegrated with my soul more completely, more successfully. Right now, it still follows me around, visits me at night, or on eternal stakeouts, like Scrooge's ghosts, shaking my chains.

I'm not hard anymore. But I don't know how to be soft. I'm not cold but no one's taught me to be warm.

I'm warm in Chuck's arms. "Reputations are mostly bunk, Mr. Black," I offer softly, but trying to sound like his comment does not bother me. I'm not a killer's killer, despite that happy hour.

His reluctance, the reluctance I felt in Urania, returns. He whispers, still looking into my eyes, although the intimacy of a few moments ago has receded. "I'm not relying on your reputation or…scuttlebutt, Mrs. Black. Langley's as full of shit as any workplace — fuller, actually, and I may not be a lifer, but I'm well aware of that."

"We're there, sir," Hilda says from the front.

Chuck takes his arms from me and I miss them around me. Was the action a judgment?

Hilda pulls to the entrance of the Park Hyatt and stops the car. "Do you need any assistance, sir?"

"No, I have all I need now. Thanks, Hilda." Chuck drops a roll of Swiss francs into the front seat.

Hilda looks slightly offended. "The service pays me."

"I know but you are a wonder, and I may need you again. Call this a downpayment. Do you work tomorrow?"

Hilda nods.

"I'll ask for you. My wife and I need to go shopping, and I'm sure you will know where we should go."

"Yes, sir." She seems pleased, the offense forgotten. Chuck has a natural charm. I wonder how he fared in seduction class at the Farm.

Before I can give that any thought or wonder about the twinge of jealousy the thought creates, a Park Hyatt valet opens the door. Chuck gets out first and I follow. He reaches in for my hand and holds onto it as I step to the sidewalk. The entrance is brightly lit, lavishly decorated. Silver and gold and green and red. It's like arriving at the North Pole, especially with the flying snow. The valet looks at me. "Mrs. Black?" he asks. "Mr. Black told us you were arriving. He did not overstate your beauty."

I glance at Chuck and he has colored. More red among the green, silver and gold, and he turns from me to the valet. "Thanks, Hans."

The man nods and Chuck, still holding my hand, leads me inside.

I have been to the hotel before but not during the holidays. Or if it was, I did not notice. I follow along, more interested in Chuck than the scenery. He's clearly a favorite customer. All the employees who see him smile at him or wave. Although I know enough about his background to know that he is not native to such a rich setting, not close, he manages to seem completely natural, at ease. The employees are clearly curious about me, and I wish I had known to wear something more expensive, more Mrs. Black — at least some jewelry. My beat-up beret seems completely out of place in a lobby full of wealth.

We reach the elevator and Chuck leads me inside — the doors open as we arrive as if the elevator likes Chuck too and is happy to see him. No one gets on with us. As the doors close, I expect him to drop my hand but he does not.

"If it's okay with you, we'll go to the Black's room first, so that we can talk. The key card for the other room I mentioned is there, and I will give it to you. I won't keep you long; you're tired."

I nod without looking at him. I'm looking at the climbing numbers on the elevator. "How long have you been in Zurich?"

"Two days. I had prep work to do. I've spent most of my time in the hotel."

The elevator stopped and Chuck led me out into the hallway. We were on the top floor. There weren't many doors. Suites, large ones, I guessed.

Chuck led me to the nearest door. He fished a keycard from his pocket, waved it in front of the gleaming handle, and a lock tumbled over, a green light glowed by the handle.

Chuck opened the door but did not go inside. Instead, he stepped aside. "Enter freely and of your own free will."

The line was odd enough and repetitive, the cadence formal enough to make me guess it was a quotation. "Who said that?" I ask even as I do as he suggested.

"Dracula," he said with a laugh. I turned my head and gave him a look.

"Sorry, it just came to mind. I read that in a Horror Lit class I took at Stanford."

I've been sorting monsters all evening so this seems like a strange place for our interaction to have taken us. I let the quotation pass though without further comment.

Partly that is because of the room.

You don't get many chances to use the word 'palatial' and mean it but this room is palatial. Opulent and tasteful all at once. We enter the living room and there are chairs and a large couch, all in mahogany leather. A desk of tiger oak stands in one corner of the room and two laptops are open on it, both screens dark. In another corner stands a bar of the same tiger oak with bottles and glasses displayed. Between the desk and the bar is a long window, all one pane of glass, that offers a panoramic view of the city. In the dark, Christmas lights added to the normal lights, Zurich looks like a vast dark carpet onto which someone has strewn twinkling, colored stars.

I have the feeling of being on the carousel again, round and round.

A clock sounds and I turn. On the wall opposite the window, the wall behind me, the one with the door in it I had just entered, is a tall, ornate grandfather clock. It looks like it is more than a century old. It sounds eight times then is quiet.

Clocks seemed to be chasing me through the city. First in Urania, now in the Park Hyatt,

Chuck shakes his head when I turn back to him. "It's taking me a while to get used to that, to it striking the hours. I'm not used to hearing time pass."

I am. More each day. But I don't say anything. I only nod. Now that I'm in the room with Chuck my nerves grip me. I'm not sure what he's going to tell me and I'm not sure what I want to happen here. I haven't recovered from the cuddling in the car.

Chuck takes off his coat and hat, then helps me with my coat again. He hangs then in the closet and then gestures me to the couch and he walks to the desk. He leans down and types for a couple of minutes on one of the two computers. I make no effort to follow what's on the screen, but I do catch a glimpse of what looks like security camera footage. He stands up while still looking at the screen. Making a thinking noise, he leans down again, types again.

I take a moment to run my fingers through my hair, smoothing it after wearing my beret. The doors to the bedroom, double doors in white, are closed and I wonder what the room is like beyond them. Chuck turns to me and follows my line of sight but misunderstands it.

"Really, Agent Walker, please don't be uncomfortable. I won't be opening those doors. I don't have any designs on you — well, not of that sort."

He smiles. The comment is meant to assuage me. It disappoints me. I can't deny that I have designs of that sort on him. I cross my legs to try to control the reaction between them. That image returns to my mind: Chuck armed and me naked.

Silence follows. He seems to want me to say something. I want to do something but it would require opening those doors and he seems to want them closed. I imagine more, imagine him carrying me and the doors thrown open.

The silence forces him to speak first. "I owe you more information on the mission, so — "

"How do you know about me, Chuck?" I ask, cutting him off, more interested in that than the mission. "The Director?" I assume this is the answer.

He looks at me then turns away, looks out the window, avoiding my gaze. "I've known about you for a while. I first heard your name from John Casey."

John Casey. The name is well-known to me. An NSA agent. My primary competition as a killer's killer. But I've not heard much about him for the past two years, nothing really. We've never met, not that I can recall.

"I know who he is but we've never worked together, never met."

Chuck turns to face me. "No, that's what he said. But you came up once when we were chatting."

I can't imagine Chuck Bartowski chatting with John Casey. I can't imagine Casey chatting — but especially not with Chuck. "You've worked with Casey?"

He nods and the nod is an answer and an evasion. He supplies no more details. "Your name came up much as his just did. He told me a little about you. He had a — grudging — respect for you."

I guess I feel the same about him. But the last I had heard he was heading for burnout. Am I? Thinking of Casey makes me wonder about hardness and softness and the changes in me since the baby.

Maybe this is what a slow burnout looks like — a gradual loss of whatever conviction I once had, a gnawing doubt about sheltering under the Greater Good, a brutally ticking biological clock, and a growing anxiety about my own bitter old age and eventual utter damnation?

CIA protocol is that agents don't share much about prior missions, don't ask much, so I just nod a couple of times and add: "I respect him too. Ex-military, I think."

"That's right. But he's the one who first mentioned you to me."

Chuck walks to one of the chairs, it faces the couch, and sits down. "We were talking about spies, and he told me that many considered you the best. That stayed in my mind."

There's more to it than that; there's an iceberg feel to everything Chuck's been saying; there's tons of stuff out of view. I'm getting the tip.

He changes the subject as if we had finished with the other. "So, our mission is simple.." He took a breath that suggested it was not simple. "I'm in possession of a number that serves as both the number of a bank account and a signature for that account, a three-zero account. It's a long sequence of grouped numbers."

I nod, listening intently. I know the term although I have never dealt with such an account. Three-zero accounts are private, highly confidential, highly protected, almost invulnerable. And they are almost invariably large — lots and lots of money. They are also nearly extinct, a throwback to an earlier time of Swiss banking.

"I am not the real account holder, as you might guess, but our mission is to get into the bank, into the private three-zero account section on the second floor. This account number, assuming I satisfy Credit Suisse's Verification department — "

"How do you do that?" They were now beyond the little Sarah knew.

"I have to write the number of the account a number of times. They'll check the 'signature', the numbers, with a graphological scanner. Again, assuming I satisfy them, they'll then show me — only me, we'll have to part company — into a locked room where I will eventually be given access to whatever is in the deposit box."

"Deposit box?"

"Yes, this is not an account that simply has money in it. This is an account that also has a deposit box linked with it. I'm to transfer the money in the account to another account, but I am also to acquire whatever is in the deposit box. That's the focus."

I listen closely. "But can you fool a scanner? Won't you have to write the number several times?"

"Yes, that's how it works. Normally, a numerical signature like that can be faked once but not repeated times, because on the second or third time the signature will vary inappropriately, a problem, or it won't, also a problem. I'll be expected to provide it five times."

"And you think you can do that? Is it humanly possible?"

Chuck's lips stretch into an ironic smile. "Humanly?" He shrugs but does not go on. After a moment, he says simply, "I believe I can pull it off."

I consider his smile. "Okay, but I still have no sense of why I'm necessary. Can't you do all this yourself, — won't you have to do the last part yourself, in the locked room?"

"Yes, but it is possible that the account is une fiche, that there are procedures attached to the account that the real account holder put in place, or that someone else did, and that will initiate specified procedures if I satisfy the scanner. I need someone with me who can get me out of there if the account is une fiche, and if the procedures are aimed at preventing someone like me from doing what I am doing. That locked room can't be opened from the inside; I could be trapped there."

"But we won't be able to get weapons into the bank, will we?"

"No standard ones. One reason we will have to take the elevator is that it is secretly equipped to scan anyone on it from four different angles. We can't get a gun or a knife up there."

I reflect. I might have an idea about how to smuggle items that could function as weapons inside, but I need to know more.

"So, I'm basically your bodyguard?"

Chuck nods. "Something like that, and one that I hope they will not expect or suspect. That's part of the point of the cover, of tomorrow's shopping expedition. I can take care of myself but there are limits to what I can do, especially with my hands full."

I'd like to test that.

I shock myself with the thought, try to make myself stop thinking it, wrestle with its accompanying images, awash in technicolor. The man stimulates my imagination. I thought my imagination was dead. I want Chuck to hold me again, I want to inhale him, I want to have him and his scent inside me.

Chemistry class.

I've got to stop this.

"Ok, but I still don't see why you needed me. There are plenty of female agents who could do the job."

"Yes, but I want the best, not just any. And…" He stops.

"And?" I ask.

"And I wanted to meet you."

"Meet me? Me? Why?"

Chuck stood. "I've wondered about you for a while — since Casey mentioned you to me. You see, Agent Walker, I've studied you. You might say I'm an expert on you. Or I thought I was…"

I have no idea what he means.

A/N: Happy New Year!