A/N: Canon backstory now undergoes alterations.

The Light of the World

Chapter Four: Blue Lemon

"An expert? On me? What do you mean, Agent Carmichael?" I use the title and name to push him away from me for a moment so that I can orient myself. When he offers no response, I go on. "You've studied me? Like a stalker?"

Chuck looks startled by my word. He waves both hands in front of him.

"No, no, Agent Walker, not like that. I wanted to be a spy and I — I had a certain skill set, but I had no experience, no depth of field. I knew how to do the job but I didn't understand the job. Not enough context. I had access to Casey if I could get him to talk to me, but I wanted to know more than he would tell me. So — I had heard of you from him and I started…collecting information…on you, your missions, and so on." His voice dropped as if he wasn't sure he even wanted me to hear what he went on to say. Reluctant. "I found out about mission details that are not a matter of Company record."

My heart thumps. "Like what?" Over the years, I've sometimes been forced to cut corners, take liberties, and violate protocol. Almost every agent has, and few have faced the mission exigencies that I often faced, up to and including Budapest.

"Like what?" I repeat and stand up.

Chuck drops his hands and his eyes. After a moment, he finally looks up. He walks slowly to the closet and opens it. He reaches into his coat as it hangs there and he takes out a photograph from the inside pocket. His expression eludes description as he crosses the floor and hands the photograph to me.

I look and gasp.

All my training. Years of steeling myself, of learning to eliminate, suppress or slow my natural reactions, my reflexes — and I gasp, immediately. It's a photograph of my mother and the baby. — Only the baby's not a baby anymore, hardly even a toddler. She's a little girl.

She's on a tricycle and my mom is behind her, both pushing the tricycle and securing the little girl to her seat. My mother's smile is large and joyous, but the little girl's smile is larger and more joyous. The photograph shows a telephoto time slice of a happy childhood. But the uplift I feel in seeing it — it's been two years since I left the baby with my mom and I've never seen either since — the uplift sinks when I wonder what it means that Chuck has the picture, that he's showing it to me.

"How did you get this?"

I step toward him, thrusting the picture out as if it were a gun in my hand. An icy slush of terror mixed with anger fills me. I thought the baby was safe, Mom was safe. I've stayed away, refused my ache to see them or contact them so as to insure their safety.

And now, this photograph.

"How?"

Chuck steps backward. I can see he's struggling with himself but observing me too. His face still wears a complicated expression, not the same as before but just as indescribable.

"How?"

"I took it," he says finally, "and they're safe. I've been checking on them — from a distance — for a while. Tucson. They have a nice little house. Molly's safe — and she's a beautiful little girl."

Molly. That's what Mom named her. Molly. I like it. Molly.

I start to drift, animating that photograph in my head, imagining myself in it, there, in Tucson and sun-washed, playing with Molly and with Mom. Mothering. The scent of innocence.

My imagination is out of control. Discipline your wretched imagination, Sarah. I hear those words in my head. Orders from the Farm where they worked to inhibit the spontaneity of my imagination, to shackle it, so that it became the slave of my mission, was stirred by nothing but my mission. I was allowed, encouraged to be imaginative for the sake of the mission but never for my own sake or anyone else's. But the spontaneity of imagination, and the deliberate follow-through, continued imagining, is one thing that makes us human, humanizes. Dogs dream but they don't daydream. The Farm let me dream but ended my daydreams.

And now Chuck had started them again.

"You've been checking on them?" The icy slush begins to drain from me, partly as a result of what I've imagined, sun-washed Tucson, partly because of what I see, Chuck's face. That face from the photograph but with a different haircut.

Those that have the power to hurt but will do none.

That line comes back to me. It's Shakespeare. A sonnet although I forget which one. Once, when I was Bryce's partner, I bought him a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets. I found it in a used bookstore in London. I had ducked inside to get out of a rainstorm. The book was small, it would fit in a pocket, and gilded, lovely. I bought it for Bryce on a whim.

Looking back, I realize it was the only romantic gesture of my life. We traded orgasms but not gifts. At some level, I knew there was no romance between us and I must have wanted it.

Buying that book was a romantic gesture. My only one. Bryce smirked beneath raised eyebrows when I gave it to him. He would have left it in our London hotel if I had not seen it and picked it up. I carried it around in my suitcase for a while, loathe to part with it but also unwilling to return it to him when he'd shown how little it meant. I read around in it now and then until one day, I abandoned it in another hotel's lobby, hoping someone would find it who could love it.

All this rushes through my mind as I wait for Chuck's response.

"Let's sit, Sarah, I need to explain this better. I mean them no harm. Much the opposite. I've not been watching them so much as I have been watching over them. For the last few months, anytime I have a chance, I travel through Tucson, make sure they're okay. It's not much but…" He shrugs.

Those that have the power to hurt but will do none.

"You've been…protecting…them?"

He shrugs again. "As I could. I haven't been able to do much. I've never made contact with them," a small smile starts on his face, "although I've wanted to. But I was careful, as careful as you. They seem happy and I've wished I could be happy with them."

The confluence of Chuck's imagination and mine pleases me. Rewarms me. I do trust this man, although I don't know how to explain it. His photograph, his scent, his careful manners — but none of that is exactly the explanation. It's chemistry, beneath or below explanation, and not just physical.

I don't just want him, I want him — all of him, heart and soul, strength and mind.

I feel good near him.

All registers of that word, 'good'. Silver and gold and red and green. Carnival and carousel. Christmas. Innocence and desire.

"How did you find out about Mom and the baby? I did all that off the books, there's no record."

I trust him but I still don't understand him. Bartowski and Carmichael. I still don't understand any of this. How is it possible?

"Not easy to explain." He looks down, clears his throat, and continues with his eyes on the carpet as if its design were legible. "No, there are no records. None that mention Molly or your mother. None that explain why you did it," his eyes flick up toward mine for a moment, then back down, "but there are records of you traveling to Budapest on the Company dime, and there are newspaper accounts of a…massacre (he winced, trying unsuccessfully to hide it)…in a mansion there a few days later. Eleven dead. Blood and destruction. A baby missing. No record of your Company return travel. I put it all together. That's the primary skill in my skillset — putting things together."

I struggle to process that. He put it together? Even Graham, CIA Director, did not put it all together. Chuck believes he can fool a graphological scanner and he can put Budapest together.

He's asked me a question indirectly, I realize. He wants to know why I did it. Have I ever explained that to myself? The baby smelled innocent; the baby was innocent. But I basically went rogue temporarily in Budapest and rejected my orders. I would've killed Ryker if I could have gotten to him. I've considered hunting him down many times but that would require me to go rogue again. He disappeared and I decided to let skulking dogs skulk. No reason to stir the pot when you did not know what was on the bottom. But I've had my head on a swivel since Budapest, worried that he might have considered hunting me.

My head's been on the swivel but I've seen neither hide nor hair.

Why did I do it? My father and then Graham both taught me to deny the existence of innocence. We're all guilty, darlin', of one thing or another. Ain't nobody innocent. That's Dad, not Graham. But Graham often told me the same thing, especially after the baby, when I began to struggle with my soul. We never mentioned the baby but we argued about her without mentioning her. About innocence and guilt. I've never really been to church, but it occurred to me not long ago that my father and Graham both held to a dogma — original sin — although they did not understand it the way some churchgoers did.

Theology is not my thing, so not my thing, but I've wondered about that. All I know for sure is that the baby was innocent, that she bore the scent of her innocence. That innocence was a fact. It existed. Its existence changed me, recalled my soul out of the shadows it had been lurking in, out of sight, watching me.

Why did I do it? Because I knew it was the right thing to do. That knowledge was my motivation. I didn't calculate means and ends, lesser goods and Greater Goods. I just did the right thing. It was a truly free action, maybe my only one. I acted on my own knowledge, not on orders.

Chuck is looking at me; he's been looking at me for a while, watching me process. Again, he does not seem to be in a hurry. He's just waiting. Waiting. For me.

"It was the right thing to do, that's why I did it."

I expect Chuck to boggle at that, to treat it as if it were insufficient, to demand more, a Company explanation, but he doesn't. He accepts it as complete and he nods and slowly smiles. His smile brightens the room; it's like a glow we're both standing in.

I suddenly see everything — everything — in the light of that smile and I smile slowly too.

"You did a good thing, Sarah, and I wanted to help it along, help you along." The reluctance I've sensed seems to have left him. His shoulders relax.

I stare at the photograph again wishing I could spend Christmas with Mom and Molly. Imagining it. Imagining Chuck there too. This time I don't try to rein my imagination in. I indulge it for a moment, let it take the reins and run.

"Did you leave your bag at the airport?" Chuck asks after he lets me stare at the photo for a while, after tactfully allowing me time in which I could imagine.

I raise my eyes, realize we are both still smiling. "Yes, in a locker there."

He takes his phone from his pocket and he sends a text. "The concierge will send someone to pick it up. Is it a key lock or combination?"

"Combination," I say and I tell it to him. He nods, his thumbs moving quickly. "The concierge of the Park Hyatt is willing to be your errand boy?" I ask, tilting my head.

"Errand girl in this case," he says as he continues texting. "Gertrude's very obliging."

"Like Hilda?" His charm again. He's not just a reasonably charming man; he's unreasonably charming. I could see it in the staff downstairs. The texting is further proof. Not that I need it.

I am charmed. Thoroughly charmed.

He stops texting and puts his phone away. "Yes, like Hilda, I suppose." He grins. "People like me," he says through a shrug.

Yes, we do. But I don't say that. "I see that," that's what I say.

His expression changes. "Um, I had Gertrude buy a robe and pajamas for you. I knew you wouldn't have much time from the airport to the meeting. They're in the bedroom — in a Blue Lemon bag."

"Blue Lemon?"

"It's a shop on Bahnhofstrasse, where we'll probably end up tomorrow with Hilda. Blue Lemon is a loungewear and…um…lingerie shop." He glances at the floor again.

"Chuck," I say, finding his hesitance before 'lingerie' endearing and exciting all at once, "did you buy me lingerie? What do you think you know about me?" I let some of the desire I've been feeling color my tone.

He blushes bright and brilliant red, Rudolph's nose atop his shoulders. His hands go up again. "No, no, at least, I don't think so. I told Gertrude pajamas but I didn't look in the bag."

I can't resist; I have a decided feeling about how this purchase went. "Why didn't you look, Chuck?"

He doesn't answer — and that's my answer. Evidently, mine is not the only imagination that's been stirring. "Casey told you I was a good spy. Who told you I was beautiful? I doubt that was John Casey."

He moves to a chair and sits down, looking up at me. After a moment, I sit again on the couch. The light moment, flirty, has grown heavier. "No, not Casey. I did hear it but I already knew it before I heard it. I told myself. I saw you, you know, photographs, video, security feeds…" he waves one hand in a measured, et cetera gesture.

"How did you see those? Did Graham give you my file?"

I can't imagine that. Graham guarded my file vigilantly. There was too much in it that might have caused him to face questions, trouble. Missions that I completed that may not have been officially sanctioned. Work on US soil that was not cleared. I never asked; I just obeyed my orders.

Chuck doesn't answer. That's the third question I've asked that he's dodged. Instead, he gives me a sympathetic look. The clock ticks on the wall as he pauses. "I heard it from Bryce."

That's impossible.

It's impossible unless they were in communication after Stanford and before Graham tried to send me to Burbank. It's impossible because Bryce is dead.

I repeat those words aloud. "Bryce is dead. He's been dead; he went rogue and he died attacking a CIA lab."

Chuck nods and I see a trace of sadness in his eyes along with sympathy for me.

"Yes, he is dead, and he did attack that lab, but it's complicated. And he wasn't rogue — he was a double agent but the CIA didn't know, Graham didn't know. Bryce had to make Fulcrum believe he was one of them, and for a time he had to be one of them, but he wasn't. He showed up in my life later. Casey is the one who shot him at the lab (he glances at me as my eyes widen) and Casey thought he killed him but he didn't. He almost killed him again when he showed up; Casey thought Bryce was there to terminate me. But I stopped Casey. Bryce and I were friends once." The last line is solemn, context for everything else.

I nod. More to process. Bryce had been alive after Budapest, after the lab attack. I never knew. Graham must have eventually known, or the new Director, but no one thought it necessary to tell me. It makes me seethe.

For the Company, I am merely a means to an end.

Chuck watches me observantly but the sympathy lingers.

"You two were together — for a while." His tone's controlled, neither interrogatory nor declaratory but soft, a cat crossing ice.

Of course he knows that. He's studied me. I once believed I was all secrets, opaque. Now, in this hotel room with Chuck, in the glow of his smile that still surrounds us, I feel transparent, like a pane of glass.

Bryce.

A pain of glass, a shard in my skin. Why did Bryce never contact me? Never find me?

Chuck must expect my question although I do not ask it aloud. He answers it.

"I was with Bryce when he died. Bryce told me he was no good for you. That you needed something he couldn't give you. That you wanted to give him things he could not take. He told me all that when he told me to find you. He told me that as he died — that you could help me." Chuck sighed. "I couldn't prevent the Fulcrum agents from shooting him, and I couldn't stop the bleeding when I got to him. He told me to tell you he was sorry." He looks at me, wondering what Bryce meant.

I don't try to explain. I don't think I can. Hot tears well in my eyes. I have a soul now and tears are part of my bodily responses. Chuck rises and walks to me. He stands beside the couch for a minute, then sits down on it, puts his arm around me. I drop my head on his shoulder again and I weep. I've grieved for Bryce; that's not what this is. These tears acknowledge that he knew his limits, that he knew there was no future for us. He couldn't be the man I wanted, needed but at least he tried to be a man about it in the end.

Chuck holds me. Not too tight, not too loose. Just right. After a moment, his hand moves softly across my shoulders, back and forth, comforting me. This is precisely what I need and something Bryce could never have given me. He was too afraid of weakness to respond to anyone else's hurt. He should have told me what he told Chuck — but at least he told Chuck. And now I've been told.

I lift my head. Chuck's face is next to mine, his eyes fill my field of vision. I lean in and I kiss him on the lips. It's a gentle, exploratory kiss, as much thanks as anything else. He sits back onto the couch, taking me with him, and I put my head on his chest. I blink away my tears and look at the photography of Molly and Mom, still in my hand through all this.

Chuck looks at it too. "Tell me about that day, Mom and Molly," I ask.

He does and he has a gift for storytelling.

I end up falling asleep on his chest as he finishes telling me about that trip to Tucson.

I wake up an hour or so later, feeling better, less raw and exhausted. His arms are around me but he has fallen asleep too.

This posture for each of us testifies to trust.

It's been years since I slept in a man's arms. Bryce and I rolled apart when the sex was done and we slept together alone. I haven't slept in a man's arms since I was little and I slept in my father's arms.

And Chuck has studied me. He must know he's holding a killer's killer. Embracing an assassin.

I ease myself out of Chuck's embrace. He shifts and scrunches his nose (cute!) but he does not awaken.

I study him, my weight on one hand, beside him. The temptation to stand and undress and wake him naked is hard to resist. But I do resist it despite imagining it. My breathing picks up and my body responds to the pictures in my mind as if they were real. With beautiful care, I extend the index finger of my other hand and touch his lips, caressing them delicately.

My whole life feels like it's been reorganized, reinterpreted in the last few hours. The tears and the sleep have carried me past the news about Bryce. Anyway it wasn't exactly new news. Nothing between the two of us would have changed. Perhaps I might have been less resentful after he left me. I shrug inwardly. Once the leaves have fallen, they can't be returned to the tree. That part of my life has ended, and raking the leaves won't make them live again, although it can shift the shape of the piles.

I blow out a slow, slow breath then I stand. I walk to the bedroom, wipe my eyes then roll my shoulders and shake my head, distancing myself from sleep and from memory. I feel better, fresher.

Let's see what's in that Blue Lemon bag.

I open the doors and go inside, closing them behind me. As Chuck said, the bag is there, the store logo face up, a blue rectangle with yellow letters. I peek in the bag. Inside is a robe, royal blue, and baby blue pajamas. I put the robe on the bed and I take the pajamas with me into the bathroom. I climb into the shower, turn the water almost to scalding, and climb in. Standing under the water, I force myself to review the evening, beginning with Chuck walking up behind me and asking me about an angel on top of a Christmas tree and considering all he has said and done and all I have said and done.

I still trust him when the review finishes. I am closer to trusting myself.

I hear music over the sound of the shower and realize it's me, softly singing Wonderful Christmastime.

I didn't know I knew that song and I don't sing in the shower. But I do and I am. Singing. I feel festive. Hypothetically and abstractly, I shouldn't. Perhaps. But I do.

I turn off the water, towel dry in the lingering, wispy steam, and then don the pajamas. The fabric seems made of magic, soft as air. The pajamas fit me perfectly. So does the robe. Chuck has studied me. Wearing the robe open over the pajamas, dark blue over light blue, I walk through the bedroom doors.

Chuck is awake and standing and facing the doors, waiting for me. His hiking boots are off but he's wearing his socks. He smiles when he sees me and holds up his phone.

"I ordered us some mulled wine from room service, and Gertrude will send your bag up in an hour or so."

I decide to surrender my one advantage; there's too much I need to know.

I ask my question, the one I've been asking myself. "How did Chuck Bartowski become Agent Charles Carmichael?"

Chuck's eyes widen and his jaw drops. "What? What did you say?"

A/N: This may turn out to be a few chapters longer than I anticipated when I started. I've gotten engrossed in the character interaction.

Drop me a line, please, especially if you're reading and enjoying the story but haven't responded yet. (Don't be a mercenary reader!)