A/N: Welcome back to our tale.

The Light of the World

Chapter Five: Belief

This time, I don't answer his question. That Chuck asks it proves he heard my question, heard me say his real name.

He blinks several times and I can almost hear him thinking, wheels grinding. He believed I knew nothing about him except what he'd told me since we met.

"You know…me?" He finally says, the words starting as a statement but ending with a question. I walk to the couch and sit down, crossing my legs in the soft pajamas and enjoying the still-befuddled look on Chuck's face. I wave the foot of my crossed leg in the air and grin at him mischievously.

He shakes his head. "How? How is it possible you know me?"

I let his question hang in the air for a moment, then I tilt my head. My festive mood has intensified, and it's fun taking my turn stumping him, even if he didn't know he was stumping me. "I haven't studied you, Chuck, but I remember you. And, hey, you're the one who pointed out that Company records don't tell the whole story, that there are 'details that are not a matter of Company record', right?"

He nods slowly. "That's right but, still, how? I wasn't joking about being a secret. How can you remember me? We've never met."

"I remember you from a photograph." The photograph of Mom and Molly is on the arm of the couch and I gesture toward it. Tit for tat, photograph for photograph. "When I returned from Budapest…Tucson…I met with Graham. He offered me you as my new mission. Burbank. Told me about you and about a computer program that Bryce sent you, the one he died — the one I thought he died — stealing.

"The aftershock of Budapest, and the added news about Bryce. It was too much. I begged off the mission. I never thought you were Bryce's accomplice; I figured the mission would be a nothing mission, a cakewalk. I assumed Graham sent someone else. He gave me two days to gather myself then he sent me to Poland. I've been out-of-country most of the time since then." Another omission. The times I was in-country while Graham was still alive were mostly for psych evals, brief but invasive. "But I remembered you."

I omit how often I remembered him in the past two years, the circumstances of my remembering, the twinge of regret that I could neither explain nor escape each time I remembered. I don't tell him how much I liked the face in the photograph or about my sneaking conviction that going would have changed things for me. Changed me. For the better.

He's still nodding but more slowly. "So — you, you might have been in Burbank?"

I shrug, half-smiling. "Almost."

He frowns. "Instead of you I got Agent Rye. Jim Rye. Later."

I uncross my legs, staring. "Rye? Did Graham send Rye to Burbank? Rye is a clown."

"Was a clown," Chuck says.

"He's dead?"

Chuck sighs. "He's dead. It happened almost a year after Bryce sent me the program. A Shawarma Girl killed him. Casey killed her. Long story."

I sit forward, puzzled about the story before that long story. "Why would Graham have sent Rye of all people? Me, I get me, why he would send me. Him, not at all."

There's a taut silence between us for a moment and then Chuck stares at me, a hint of trepidation in his eyes.

A moment ago he rued the fact that I could have been in Burbank. Now, he changes his mind. "If he was going to send you, his…enforcer, then…"

I feel my face go slack, expressionless. What's he implying? My pulse quickens.

Enforcer. I haven't heard that term in a long time, not since before Budapest. Budapest and my refusal of Burbank ended that role for me with Graham. I haven't been anyone's enforcer for a long time. But I once was, and it hurts to hear that title from Chuck's lips.

I don't have a history. I have a tapestry of interwoven regrets, regrets big and small.

The enforcer to Burbank. I didn't consider it at the time or later, and Graham never mentioned it in the initial briefing, but Chuck's right — if Graham wanted to send me to Burbank, he anticipated giving a termination order. I'd have been there on the scene, his enforcer, his best agent for such a job already in place.

Buy More wetwork.

Could I have done it, if Graham had given the order? Pull the trigger, sink the knife? The baby, Molly, caused me to go rogue. Would Chuck? Did Graham worry I would, is that why he let me refuse, no real argument?

"Maybe," I say, finally responding to one aspect of Chuck's implication, "maybe Graham anticipated that, but if he sent Rye, then — "

Chuck interrupts. "He didn't send Rye, not immediately. Casey got there first. He had orders to capture me — " He breaks off as if he interrupts himself and walks to the chair and sits down again. He rubs his face with his hands for a moment. His earlier reluctance has returned.

"How much did Graham tell you about me, about that computer program?"

Graham had been vague and now I wonder about that. Had he worried that I would refuse?

I look Chuck in the eyes. "Not much. He told me a little about you, your education and employment and living arrangements. Stanford and the Buy More and your sister and her boyfriend."

"Husband."

"Oh." I hitch for a moment. "Husband. — Anyway, Graham was vague. He told me details but never brought them into focus, never gave me the bigger picture."

"That sounds hard, on the heels of Budapest. After hearing that Bryce was dead."

I nod but I also shrug. "Bryce abandoned me months before that. Hearing that he was dead — that was hard, and I grieved for him, but I grieved for other things too, for myself."

I stop. I don't do this, talk like this, about myself to others, any others. Not to Bryce. It wasn't until the baby that I started to talk like this to myself. But I see that Chuck is nodding, see the empathy in his eyes (the hint of trepidation is still there too) and I go on.

"A minute. I needed a minute. To catch my breath. Saving the baby, maybe it saved me. She was dead in Ryker's hands. I was dead in Graham's. Molly and I resurrected each other."

Chuck stares at me again. I still haven't told him what I knew about the program. "He didn't tell me anything about the program except that it provided access to some intelligence.

Chuck closes his eyes and shakes his head, smiling a bitter smile. "I see. So, you know who I am, who I was, Chuck Bartowski, but you really don't know how I became Charles Carmichael?"

"No, I have no idea how to connect the dots. The Chucks."

He stands and looks at me, surveying me, damp hair to bare feet. "Gertrude chose well. That robe and those pajamas. You look great."

My festive feeling rises again. I smile, despite the complicated conversation. "Thank you, Mr. Black. I'm so pleased you like Mrs. Black in blue."

I'm not funny and I prove it to myself every so often by hazarding a joke that falls flat, and I expect this one to fall flat or even to offend, but Chuck shakes his head and laughs. He sits down beside me on the couch and puts out a hand to touch my leg, stopping his hand just above contact. I put my hand on top of his and press his to the soft fabric. I feel the warmth of his hand through it. He gazes into my face and I have the decided impression that he has imagined a scene like this, with me, before. He seems to be as I have been, toggling between imagination and reality.

There's a knock at the door. We both jump. Chuck shakes his head. "The mulled wine; I forgot."

The magnetic moment has passed but I hope we can recapture it.

Chuck stands and walks to the door and checks through the peephole then opens the door. The woman who enters is a tall redhead with jade eyes and pale, translucent skin. I've rarely seen a woman more elegant. She seems less to walk than to float, although she's pushing a service tray. When she gets it into the room, she stands straight, her posture perfect. On the tray is a large white decorative thermos of mulled wine. Its scent already permeates the room — cinnamon, clove and anise, a tincture of orange, Christmas airborne. Flanking the wine are two mulled wine glasses, clear, with handles and wide brims. Stationed on a gleaming silver tray are cheeses. The woman sees me look at them.

She gestures with a slight flourish and a reserved smile and nearly perfect English.

"Roquefort, Wensleydale, and Comté cheeses, Mrs. Black." She lifts a cover from another small tray. "There's also pickled fish and crackers. And may I say how lovely it is to meet you. Finally."

"Sarah," Chuck says, "this is Gertrude." He misses or ignores Gertrude's edgy intonation of 'finally'.

"Hi," I say to the woman who is very curious about me but who is trying not to reveal that, "thanks for this — and for the pajamas. They're wonderful."

She nods and seems less pleased with her choice than I am or Chuck is. That's because she's not entirely pleased by how pleased Chuck is.

As he gazes at me, she gazes at him. Charmer. Like Hilda, Gertrude is lost in Mr. Black, smitten. I sympathize. As much as I like the pajamas, as comfortable as they are, I want Mr. Black to remove them from Mrs. Black, I want to grant him his conjugal rights and to assert mine.

Gertrude sees that and I see that she does. Currents eddy between us to which Chuck seems oblivious.

"I'm glad you like them. The Park Hyatt takes great pride in our guest's satisfaction."

The mismatch between her words and her underlying attitude irks me and I decide to return serve. "Yes, the pajamas are wonderful. So soft. I'm sure they'd be wonderful to sleep in but I sleep naked."

I see Chuck stiffen. My words electrify his imagination. He has studied me and more than studied me, just as I remember his photograph and more than remember it. Action at a distance. Magnetism, to mention what I was talking about earlier. The non-local interplay of objects separated in space. Contact is not necessary for causation. Oddly enough, I was taught that in seduction class at the Farm. Strange instructor, Montgomery was his name.

I wonder if he taught Chuck, although Chuck betrays no trace of Montgomery's handling. Nothing about Chuck's more intimate interactions with me has been calculated, manipular. His touch, like his touch on my leg just before Gertrude's arrival, was pure non-Montgomery. Hesitant, waiting for permission, with no slide farther up my leg, no pressure.

The pressure came from my hand on his. If Gertrude had not knocked, I would have pulled his hand farther up my leg. Encouraged him to find my center, to center me.

Gertrude looks down at the service tray to keep me from seeing her reaction to my words and to the way they straightened Chuck.

"Shall I pour the wine, Mr. Black?" Gertrude asks, trying to shift Chuck from imagination to reality. No doubt, she has rarely had any difficulty securing a man she fancies. Although she is more refined, more European, she reminds me of an old friend of mine, Carina Miller — allowing for a certain elasticity in the meaning of 'friend' — and I would bet Gertrude as able a seductress as Carina, although I would also bet she's not as athletic about it. I suspect Carina would be all shouted dirty talk and burning overhead lights and that Gertrude would be all whispered nothings and flickering candlelight.

Gertrude's more Chuck's type, although she seems to have made less progress than she hoped.

"Yes, please, Gertrude," Chuck responds. "What about Mrs. Black's bag?"

Gertrude answers carefully as she pours the wine carefully. "I wasn't able to go for it myself, sir. Something came up downstairs, a problem with the economics convention in the hotel. I sent Hans. He called from the airport. He has it and is on his way back. It should be here soon."

"Very good, Gertrude, thanks. I'll see that you are both compensated for the extra trouble.

Gertrude gives Chuck a warm glance that suggests non-monetary compensation but he turns from her to me and misses it. Gertrude moves the glance to me and it cools and surrenders. Her toothy smile and shake of her head is her white flag. A moment later she glides from the room.

Chuck picks up a glass and hands it to me. "You know, Chuck, a spy ought to have more situational awareness."

He turns and picks up his glass and then faces me again. "Awareness?"

"Gertrude wants more than a tip, Chuck, she wants you. She's not at all happy that Mrs. Black arrived or that she is as she is." I hold out my arms and turn in front of him, devilish, dervish.

"Gertrude? Really? Huh. She's lovely, sort of dreamy, gossamer. But I never thought of her that way." As unlikely as that might sound to cynical ears, I believe him. Innocent.

But I can't leave him alone; I twist him. "You mean you've never imagined her sleeping naked?"

Chuck has no idea what to say. He hasn't — as I said, I believe him about Gertrude — but he was just imagining me sleeping naked and my question has crossed his wires.

I sip my wine and look at him above the glass. After a moment of my prolonged sip, I wink at him. His slow grin is like a caressing finger on a secret, sensitive spot. "You're an evil woman."

I laugh. "Maybe I'm just a bit jealous and a bit envious."

"Both?"

"I'm jealous that she was making Swiss doe eyes at you right in front of me, and I'm envious that she's known you in person longer than I have."

He chuckles but then his face becomes solemn. "Not to speak ill of the dead, but I feel the same way about you and Bryce, except for the doe eyes part. I've wanted to meet you in person for a long time."

"Bryce was right about us, Chuck, about the give and take; it was never going to be any more than it was. In hindsight, it wasn't much."

Chuck purses his lips. "You don't need to tell me anymore. It's past."

I nod my thanks and then speak to the hint of trepidation that had been in his eyes earlier. I hadn't forgotten it. My thoughts about monsters are too recent.

"So are my terminations, Chuck. They ended after Budapest, and I would not have restarted them in Burbank. If Graham had sent me and given me that order, I'd have run with you like with Molly."

As unlikely as that might sound to cynical ears, he believes me.

I see it on his face.

His smile returns. It's warm and deep all at once. "I'm betting on that, Sarah, betting on you."

He means the mission but he also means more and the more eludes me.

We sit on the couch again, close together sipping the warm spicy wine. For a moment Chuck lets us simply sit there, sipping. It feels like it's his turn to talk so I wait. Chuck eventually turns to face me, pulling up one long leg onto the couch, his knees in contact with my thigh.

"Bryce did send me a computer program. We were not working together. I still don't know why he sent it to me. He died without explaining that. But the computer program was no mere hacker's tool, a way to dredge up classified information. It was classified information itself, US intelligence — all of it. Everything the CIA and the NSA had on file, in the works, all collected in the aftermath of 911. But that wasn't all. The program contained extraordinarily complicated algorithms that collated the data, identified and responded to patterns, gestalts. Cutting-edge AI. The hope was that the program would thus be able to make more intelligence from the available intelligence, and would be itself the best form of interagency cooperation."

He stops and looks at me. I nod but this already sounds like science fiction. "But that still wasn't all. The AI was more advanced than that: it was not only to create interagency cooperation, it was to create an intersection, an intersection of artificial intelligence and natural intelligence, machine brain and human brain. In short, it was designed to be downloaded by a human being. That's what my friend (Chuck smiles bitterly) Bryce sent me. It's called the Intersect. And he did not just send it to me as, say, an attachment to a file (Chuck's bitter smile returns), no he sent it to me so that, in opening it, I would initiate its download into me. Like the idiot I am, I opened it."

He stops and looks at me a second time.

I gape at him. It takes me more than a minute to say anything. "So — I'm supposed to believe you don't just know some of US intelligence, you are US intelligence?" My incredulity is palpable.

Chuck winces. "I have a hard time believing it and I lived it for two years. But, yes. In essence, that's it."

"But what you know (I play along, still trying to comprehend this) is dated, right? Two years old. In today's world, that's ancient history."

He shakes his head. "No, very long story very short, there have been updates. Not just updates, but further advances. When I first downloaded the Intersect, it was all information and one cognitive skill — pattern recognition, putting things together. It made me the world's foremost analyst. But the most recent download contained other skills, spy skills, including physical skills."

"And it made you the world's foremost spy?"

He shakes his head. "Sort of. No. My time in Burbank with Casey — and Rye — we became a team of sorts — introduced me to the rigors of spying, of missions. So I had some on-the-job training. But after the latest download, the new Director and Beckman, they began to work together after Graham died, they sent me here, that is, to Europe, and created a small, top-secret facility in which to train me. A Euro Farm, I guess. I've been training there until recently."

I ponder all this. "When you said you studied me, and I asked if you stalked me, the truth is that you…Intersected…me? I'm in the Intersect. I'm in your head."

As I say this, things pop into my mind, almost all unwelcome. But, in a way worst of all, although in another way best, I believe him. Again. The rumors I heard were not fantasy. He's the computer-aided spy.

I was right to feel transparent. Chuck can see through me.

Chuck blushes and one corner of his mouth twitches, as if he suppressed a regretful frown. He doesn't speak; he nods in answer. Yes. I go on my voice dropping. I'm thinking as I speak. "You have access to my file (one more nod), to my missions, assignments and reports, all the paperwork (another nod)." I slow down, not wanting to recognize what comes next. "And so you have access to everything about me, including my psych evals."

He blows out a breath. "Yes." He waits and I can see a cringe in his eyes if not in his posture.

But I don't react the way he fears. "Don't tell me about me, Chuck. Especially not those evals. I don't want to know what the Company thinks of me." I'm only beginning to know what I think of myself.

Chuck doesn't say anything, this time he does not even nod. His eyes as he looks at me seem full of me, of my file, my history. I've been talking about my soul and it's like I find out that he's been carrying around a computer copy of it inside him. He knows secrets of mine that I don't know. Who knows what patterns he's detected in me?

I can't face this right now, so I deflect.

"Rye, tell me why Graham sent Rye."

Chuck blinks and it takes him a moment to shift topics. "Rye had an extensive background in psychology before he became an agent. Casey helped me with the day-to-day stuff in Burbank, protected me, and gave me some basic training, but Casey's deathly allergic to feelings — and I had a lot and no way to process them, no way to make sense of it. I guess he sent Rye to sort of hold my hand. Part teammate, part counselor. I suspect Casey requested someone like Rye. Someone to hold my hand."

I sense that there's a very long story being made short again and I forget about myself and reach out, taking Chuck's hand in mine. "I don't know how anyone could carry the Intersect alone." I can hardly bear the parts of my file I know. He knows it all. And all of everyone else's. Ryker, Rye, Casey. He has the Company keeping him company. We're all crowded in his head. All we are and all we've done.

He gives me a weak, watery smile. "Rye did help. He was a clown, but I have a fondness for clowns. Did Graham mention my best friend, Morgan?"

I shake my head and Chuck doesn't tell me anymore. We sit together, his hand in mine. We finish our wine.

I stand and let go of Chuck's hand. I return my wine glass to the serving tray and I retreat into the bedroom. Chuck watches me return the glass and I can feel his eyes on me as I leave the living room.

I close the bedroom doors behind me and lean against them. My thoughts and feelings are jumbled, confused and confusing. I ought to feel violated — or something like that. Is there a term? But I don't. Abstractly and hypothetically, Chuck knows things about me he has no right to know. But he didn't ask to know them either. Bryce sent the Intersect to him, and sent him after me.

Knowing that Chuck knows me does not estrange me from him. It makes me feel intimate — more intimate — with him. Close to him. He knows all that he knows and he is still betting on me.

I walk into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. My hair is dry now, and I run my fingers through it to fluff it. The computer-aided spy in the living room is my fantasy. I've been fantasizing about him for two years.

My earlier words about sleeping naked have charged my imagination. I slip off the robe and the pajamas. I'm wearing nothing, not even my Company badge.

I can't say what I'm doing but I'm more certain of whatever it is than anything I've ever done. Unlike Bryce, Chuck is weak enough to catch me as I fall. I believe it.

I walk slowly, nakedly to the bedroom doors. I open both doors at once, revealing myself.

Chuck stands beside the serving tray, pouring another glass of mulled wine. He looks up at me and the mulled wine overflows his cup and runs onto the tray with the pickled fish and crackers. I didn't want the pickled fish anyway. I see him swallow as he gazes at me, the sudden movement of his Adam's apple.

I move to him and take his glass. He gives it to me. I take a sip and give him one.

The shared gesture feels impossibly sexy, a ceremony or rite, but between us, for us.

I put the glass down and I offer myself to him, give myself to him.

He reaches out with delicate care, hand near one breast, almost touching it, and he looks at me. He's imagined this. I'm imagining it as it occurs.

I nod and his fingers trace the areola gently. I gasp. He lifts me into his arms and takes me into the bedroom.

A/N: How about a review to go with the mulled wine and pickled fish?