A/N: More of our tale — done scenically.

The Light of the World

Chapter Six: Fruition

I can't remember a joyous Christmas.

I had a few maybe when I was very young and before my home disintegrated and before Mom and Dad's mutual unhappiness eclipsed their concern with mine. I can dimly recall excitedly creeping down the stairs of our house, a little girl on little bare feet, teddy bear clutched to me, close to my chest, staring at the tree below, colored bulbs flashing in the half-light of dawn, the tree surrounded by presents and red ribbons and an aura of mystery and innocence.

But that's all I have.

Although now that I work at remembering, consider what I remember — I have for years worked at not doing either — I realize that holding that teddy bear to my chest, coming down the stairs, foreshadowed Budapest, coming down the stairs, a woman in boots and trench coat, the baby against my chest, the flash of my guns in the half-darkness of the twilight mansion, surrounded by other guns' flashes, by ribbons of blood and aura of misery and innocence.

Budapest did not happen on Christmas but the similarities discomfort me.

Or they would if anything could now discomfort me. But nothing can.

Nothing can. Because right now I know joy. Merry Christmas to me.

I'm half-awake in this massive, massive bed. Naked, deliciously naked, flushed, and warm. Warm, warmer, warmest. Chuck sleeps in my arms. I can't let go of him. I pull gently him to my breasts, feeling him alive and asleep against my still-tingling nipples, against the tapering but tell-tale throbbing of my middle.

I've had sex before. Of course. With Bryce, primarily and mostly, but with two other men before him— one in a hurried high school mess, virginity hijacked by an unremarkable, unpleasant, immediate grunt, one at Carina Miller's instigation, a drunken and lengthy and clumsy two-person gymnastics event I still shudder to remember.

Compared to those two times, the times with Bryce were all good. Fine.

But what just happened in this massive bed is incomparable; or, it's comparable — if the butterfly is experientially comparable to the caterpillar. What had been earthbound has reached the sky in a sudden blaze of ravishing colors.

It's no use trying to say more, to describe it. All I can do is hold Chuck to me and refuse to let go. Breathe deep his scent of innocence and bay rum and recent exertion.

This is how I am supposed to be, this is how I am supposed to feel before and during — and after.

This.

Him.

Me.

Us.

Here.

In this bed, on this night, he proved I am no monster.

I am a human being, a thoroughly human woman. Whatever may have been true in the past, I am human now, body and soul integrated, one. On Buffy, Angel was cursed not only to have a soul but to lose it again if he knew any moment of perfect happiness.

He made love to Buffy and lost his soul.

But I am not Angel. I made love to Chuck and my soul returned to me, came back, and came in a moment of perfect happiness. Moments. I am not Angel. I am not a vampire with a soul — and the warm life pulsing through me reminds me that I am not a zombie with a soul either. If called on to sort monsters again, I will no longer worry that I am among them.

I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I mean I know we are supposed to go shopping, and put on a show as a happily married couple. After tonight, that won't be any stretch for me.

Not the happy part.

And not the couple part.

Chuck stirs in my arms. Without opening his eyes, he encircles me in his and kisses my lips. I taste myself on his lips, musky traces of passion. He slowly opens his eyes and slowly smiles as he pulls back from my lips.

"So," I whisper, the first word other than his name I have spoken since the overflow of mulled wine, "I understand why Mrs. Black is a happily married woman."

He chuckles softly. "And I know why Mr. Black is a happily married man."

He squeezes me, the hug intimate but not sexual, an expression of pure fondness. I hug back the same. The sort of action that Bryce never once managed. Orgasms ended our physical contact, they did not enrich it or create a deeper emotional contact.

There was no emotional contact.

Our physical contact was limited to what was necessary for orgasm. There were no caresses, no kisses, nothing lingering and fond, nothing playful, nothing that was not a means to an end, the end, finishing. And that finish was what Bryce wanted, not me. Or he wanted me only to the extent that I made the finish better for him than others had.

I might as well have been his favorite screwdriver.

I have been used in so many ways and so many times, girl and Company woman, that I allow myself a moment to marvel at my mattering to someone as an end and not a mere means, as a human being, and not as a tool, a con or a spy or sexual aide.

Mrs. Black. So damn different from Mrs. Anderson. Mrs. Anderson never knew what it might be to be happily married.

Chuck's hand moves to my face and he traces the outline of my lower lip with his finger. "I didn't expect this, Sarah. I didn't expect you to walk out of the bedroom — "

"With your present already unwrapped?" I ask feigning an innocence that…I feel.

Is it possible to feign what you actually feel?

Innocent. New.

I feel different than I did outside Urania and before Chuck appeared.

From innocence to innocence. A crooked journey that began in Budapest — or maybe on those childhood stairs — has reached its destination. I have reached my destination. My past has passed. Chuck is my present, my Christmas present.

My future?

Never before have I thought about 'destination' sharing a root with 'destiny'.

Changes that began in me two years ago have at last reached fruition.

I laugh to myself at that word 'fruition'. I didn't know I knew it.

Chuck has brought me to fruition in this bed twice already.

Chuck laughs with me but raises an eyebrow. "What?"

I tell him and he kisses me in response, laughing against my lips.

As the kiss deepens, his finger traces a path along my jaw and down my neck and over one breast and across my belly button. The path ends with his finger slipping inside me, slippery. I gasp his name aloud, reveling in his touch and the depth and spontaneity of my reaction to it, verbal and non-verbal, physical and emotional, and we begin again.

Fruition.

Morning comes some hours after I do.

I leave Chuck asleep after kissing him and walk to the shower.

For the first time I can remember, I ignore the mirror. I do not need to see my reflection to confirm my reality. I am real and I know it.

When I leave the bathroom, the bed is empty. I'm wearing only the navy robe and I pad barefoot into the living room to find Chuck seated at one of the computers.

His fingers move across the keyboard like an old-time secretary, a clicking blur.

He notices me entering the room and he keeps typing for a second, then he stands, wearing only striped boxers, shutting the laptop.

"Good morning, Sarah."

He's dropped the 'Agent'. So have I.

"Good morning, Chuck."

"Do you feel like a day of extravagant shopping?"

I nod. Cover or not, I'm excited about the day and spending it with him as Mr. and Mrs. Black. We both know what's under the covers.

"I do. But I need breakfast. Last night…"

He laughs and walks to me. He kisses me good morning. Bryce never kissed me unless we were undercover or I was naked. Chuck gives back the kiss I took as he slept. At least that's how it feels to me.

So many feelings, so much to feel.

So little time. What happens after this, after this mission? Last night I refused to ponder the implications: destiny.

Can I go back to my life before last night? What does Chuck want from me, from us, past this mission?

I compose my face and myself. Time enough to face whether there's time enough later. I'm going to enjoy this.

"Yeah, last night…" Chuck says, shaking his head and slipping his arms around me. He pulls me into another hug and holds me tight for a few moments. I lean into him, the hug, the morning.

"I ordered breakfast already, it should be here soon."

"So, today," I start as the hug ends, "tell me again what we're doing."

He blows out a breath. "Credit Suisse treats three-zero accounts delicately. They're overprotective, even by Swiss standards. You can't just show up for a three-zero account, no walk-ins. We won't just show up. I made the appointment for tomorrow over a week ago. From what I've been able to discover, it's routine for them to vet putative account holders ahead of the visit if they can. It's not just the graphological scanner that you have to convince, as it were, it's the three-zero folks themselves."

"So you expect them to be watching us today?"

"Maybe, although I doubt we'll be under constant, active surveillance. More likely, they'll know when we go out and where we go, then they'll make calls to businesses to find out about us, what we've done, spent, and so on. I hope to make them believe that I am who I say I am, we are who we say we are, and to prevent any red flags from rising before I face the scanner."

I nod. "So, today should be easy. I'll just pretend to be Mrs. Black, enjoying a shopping spree, and looking pantingly forward to bedding my husband at the end of it?"

"Pretending all that?" His eyebrows lift with his inflection.

"I'll only be pretending the Mrs. Black part — the rest won't be pretending. That's why it'll be so easy."

A knock on the door interrupts another kiss. Chuck grabs a robe I hadn't noticed from the back of his computer chair and crosses the room and opens the door. It's not Gertrude and I am both happy and unhappy about that. I don't like her but I would like for her to see me standing here in nothing but a robe, after a night of mouthwatering, heavenly lovemaking. Mine. That's what my posture and expression would tell her if she were here — he's mine.

Have I ever been jealous before? I didn't think about that last night. I was then when she was here and I am now when she is absent.

The man wheels our tray in and quietly leaves. Chuck smiles at me when the door closes. "Let's eat. We're going to need our strength given the big day we have planned."

"And the big night," I add with a smile that reveals the nature of my plans for it.

As Chuck predicted, Hilda takes us to the Bahnhofstrasse for shopping. She's been observing us in the rearview as she could during the drive, and she seems to see in me what I would have shown Gertrude if she had brought breakfast. Hilda sighs but I'm the only one who hears her, or I think I am. Chuck's arm is around my shoulders but his eyes are closed. He seems to be concentrating on something.

The Intersect.

I haven't thought much about that since he told me about it last night. Other things have fully held my attention. Absorbed me. But I now stare out the window and consider what Chuck has told me, reckon with it. Abstractly and hypothetically, I ought to be skeptical but I am not. And I ought to at least be worried, uncomfortable with Chuck knowing so much about me, more, in some ways, than I know about myself.

But the fact — the fact — that Chuck sought me out for this mission, the fact — the fact — that he wanted me before he took me last night, wanted me before he met me, those facts buoy me. I know enough about him now, believed enough before we met, to know that he would not have touched me last night, much less touched me as he did, if he thought I was a monster. He didn't and he doesn't and I don't either. I know I'm not. That Chuck could have spent last night with me as he did has revived my faith in myself, awol since I became part of my dad's confidence-game life.

I do wonder about that thing in Chuck's head, about carrying all that US intelligence distinct from his own intelligence. What's that like? I rest my hand on his thigh and he opens his eyes to smile at me.

Hilda stops the car. "We're on the Bahnhofstrasse, sir. There are many shops and restaurants. Would you like recommendations?"

"No, Hilda, we'll try our luck. But thanks. Am I right that the Paradeplatz is nearby?"

"Yes, sir, the banking center is not far from here. Some call it the heart of Bahnhofstrasse."

I'm certain Chuck didn't need to ask that but he's playing the part of a simple tourist, not a spy with a computer in his head.

As we get out of the car and Hilda pulls away, I give Chuck a look. "I like Hilda," he explains, "but I'm not sure she's not on Credit Suisse's payroll."

"And that's why you didn't take recommendations?"

"I didn't want to seem to be avoiding the places she recommended, just in case. I have an educated guess about what those places would have been."

Good spycraft. I fight to remember that this is a mission and we are not two lovers on a lark. It feels like a lark to me. Chuck takes my gloved hand and the look he gives me is the look one lover on a lark would give another. No pretense.

The day is bitter cold but I barely register it. I'm carrying a hearth fire inside me.

We walk along the shoveled path on the sidewalk. People are out, bundled up, resembling moving piles of winter clothes more than living people.

The stores are opulent, the window displays a testimony to the wealth required to shop here regularly. I can tell that many are tourists, as we are pretending to be, stopping to look through the heavy glass at displays of items they will never own.

Chuck leads me on and I don't worry about where we are going. His gloved hand in mind satisfies me, although I wish our contact were flesh to flesh. But then I notice a sign along the street ahead of us, on a corner of the Paradeplatz.

Blue Lemon.

The store at which Gertrude bought my pajamas and robe. Chuck mentioned lingerie. It occurs to me there might be a way of getting some flesh bared available to me inside. I hasten my step, passing him, and I lead him into the store.

Chuck grins at me but with suspicion in his eyes. "Do you need more pajamas?"

His question's deliberately innocent. I eye him with frank desire. "I have needs. We'll see about satisfying them."

His grin grows and I wonder if other parts of him do too, but his coat is buttoned still, and so my stolen glance reveals nothing. So I just give him a repeat of my revealing smile in the hotel room.

I don't ignore the mirror this time. I stand in front of it. A moment ago, I stood before it bare, now I am bare before it in that peculiar way that lingerie can bare you, make you more naked than naked. I'm wearing a bra and panties, matching, each white but sheer, the bra trimmed along the top with lace so delicate and so open-textured that it appears all but nonexistent. The panties, just above the thighs, are trimmed the same. My hardening nipples are visible but obscured, and so too is the pouting, dampening juncture of my legs.

I'll have to buy these, no returning them now. I've mixed myself with the fabric already.

Chuck's outside the dressing room, our coats and hats and gloves piled on top of him, waiting. "Is anyone out there?"

"No," Chuck says, his voice a bit husky, anticipatory, "the clerk left to give us our privacy. I paid her to make sure she did."

"Okay." I step out and stand in front of him. His face pales slowly and he smiles and I know that other parts of him are changing too. I know where the waterfalling blood is collecting.

I turn and stand with my bottom facing him, and I look back at him over my shoulder, a deliberate coquette. "You like it?"

He growls and stands up. Everything in his lap — everything else — falls to the floor and we both ignore it. He steps toward me in one long step and his hands go around me from behind. I feel his changes pressed against my bottom, the sheer fabric. His hands snake up my bare stomach and encircle my breasts.

We end up together in the dressing room — an undressing room — trying without much conviction or success to be quiet and by the time we finish I definitely am buying the lingerie.

We eat lunch at a historic restaurant, Zeughauskeller. It specializes in traditional Swiss cuisine. It also overlooks the Paradeplatz. As we eat our soup, a warm beef broth with finely shredded crepe, Chuck studies the looming Credit Suisse building.

I am too loose-limbed and too happy and too caught up in memories of the dressing room to study with him. Instead, I luxuriate in the soup and the late morning sunshine that spotlights our table through the large glass window and in the way he keeps his hand on my leg even as he studies the bank.

I should want to know more about the mission, more details, and I am sure Chuck will tell them to me, but my festive, joyous holiday mood is too wonderful not to indulge in it, not to feel it fully. Lean in.

For most of my life, I haven't let myself feel what I feel.

A paradox.

But I'm feeling much better now.

A/N: A shorter chapter but chock-full (Chuck-full) of things that matter. Next time, we will start the mission proper.

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