A/N: Sarah's still delaying our progress through the story. She has a mind of her own.

The Light of the World

Chapter Eight: Do's and Don'ts

Although we are both eager to return to our room, to do again in greater comfort and at our leisure what we did in a cramped but delicious hurry in the Blue Lemon, we do not rush as we buy clothes for me.

I assumed we would buy only one outfit, an outfit for me to wear to Credit Suisse — a mission outfit — but Chuck has instead led me from shop to shop, helped me make choices, sat waiting while I tried things on, and gave me his (usually excited) reaction.

We buy tops, pants, skirts, dresses, socks, and underwear. (I don't model this underwear. By unspoken agreement, we're struggling to contain ourselves so later will be even better, but it's hard.) We even bought me a new hat.

My curiosity grows as the bags and boxes we've bought multiply, but I ask no questions.

I simply enjoy it, basking in the attention and appreciation. It's like Christmas — the way I imagined it as a little girl. What I hoped for at the bottom of those stairs.

On past missions, marks have bought me clothes, but they were always, in reality, buying the clothes for themselves — to show me off as theirs in the clothes and so bolster their standing, boost their ego. They chose the clothes, not me.

Chuck instead internalizes what I like; he asks questions and notes my expressions, my posture, and my reaction before the mirror. He's engaged, and involved, not with himself but with me. He's learning me, not as an object, a thing to be studied, but as a person, a human being, a subject.

All the men I've known before, and this certainly includes Bryce, were objective with themselves and objective with others. With me. Very objective with me. Chuck is subjective with me and with himself.

It's so…un-spy-like. I feel so un-spy-like.

On my first day at the Farm, I was told and told again and again that spies do not fall in love. Do not. Fall in love.

But it wasn't only love that was being ruled out. It was any emotion that involved being vulnerable to another person, to another person's subjectivity.

Love. Kindness. Mercy.

To feel any of these I realize involves opening yourself to someone else.

That's not a consequence of the emotion. It's part of it; it partly constitutes the emotion. The tax on making yourself invulnerable to the subjectivity of others is to become invulnerable to your own. To lose it. When you harden yourself, you harden yourself.

To everyone. Including you.

But Chuck seems soft, so soft. How did he hold onto that at his special Euro Farm? He's so soft toward me. (Well, not always, but you know what I mean.) I feel soft toward him in return. So soft. Open.

Vulnerable to him. I should be terrified but I'm not. Abstractly and hypothetically —

No. No. To hell with abstractly and hypothetically, to hell with it.

I'm done with that way of thinking, that tactic for running from myself, my own reality.

"Sarah?" Chuck asks softly, "are you okay?"

I'm standing in front of a full-length mirror in a black pants suit, standing on a dais. My eyes are on myself in the mirror but I'm not paying attention. We're now choosing clothes for tomorrow, the mission outfit.

"Sorry, Chuck, I'm just having a good time and — and last night and today have me so…excited…that I can't seem to focus." I look around. The saleswoman has momentarily disappeared. "I know It's not very professional," I say in a quieter voice.

I look at myself. I look nice.

He's standing on the floor, lower than me and to one side, but I can see him in the mirror. He smiles at what I say. "It's okay, Sarah. Enjoy yourself. I'm enjoying you enjoying yourself. Sufficient unto tomorrow is the evil thereof."

I stare at him in the mirror, tugging on a sleeve. "Isn't that today? In the quotation?"

His smile grows. "Yes, but in our situation, no. Today is all good."

The look he gives me in the mirror makes my stomach somersault but in the happiest of ways. "I like this, Chuck. But do you think I should wear something, well, sexier?"

Another look replaces his smile. Sober. "No. And for two reasons. First, we're going to a bank, not a nightclub, visiting Herr Blickensderfer, not Le Petit Prince — "

"Le Petit Prince?"

"A new, exclusive club in Zurich."

I turn to him, looking down at him from the dais. "Have you been?"

He shakes his head. "Me? No." He taps his head. "But I have a long list of clubs in my head."

"My friend would love that about you." Carina.

Chuck tilts his head. "But she wouldn't love me?"

"Oh, she'd try," I say, feeling a pang of jealousy accompany my laugh, "but I'd end her if she touched you."

"And this is your friend?" he asks, his eyes catching mine.

"As close as I have to one." I shrug. "Can't friends be like horseshoes and hand grenades, close enough still counts?"

His eyes show sympathy but he does not pursue the topic. I turn back around.

"So, this suit, then?"

He nods. "It's beautiful on you."

I look at him again in the mirror. "Thanks. Hey, wait a minute. You said I shouldn't buy something sexier for two reasons, but you only gave me one."

"Oh, right," he concedes, his face embarrassed. "Second, I wouldn't like to spend my money for the purpose of making men ogle my wife."

Wife.

We've been playing up the cover, using 'Mr. Black', "Mrs. Black', using endearments, and I've enjoyed it and let myself wish it were true but 'wife' just then sounded real. I catch my breath and break eye contact with him. It's not only the word and how Chuck said it but there's the thought too.

He doesn't want me on display like that. His jealousy mirrors mine.

Bryce would have paraded me around naked on a mission and never cared.

I step down from the dais and give Chuck a quick kiss. "You're sweet, Mr. Black."

The saleswoman returns and speaks to me, her accented English syrupy but intent on the sale. "What do you think, Mrs. Black?'

"We'll take it," I answer, "and I will need some low heels to match it." I tell her my size and she leaves again to bring some options.

I flash Chuck a smile. "Want to come into the dressing room and help me change?" I can't help myself.

He turns red, embarrassed and frustrated. "So much, so much, but I'm not going to. You will pay for this causal, heartless torture when we get back to the hotel, Mrs. Black."

"Very good, Mr. Black," I say. "I expect a stiff penalty." I breathe out the words softly and obediently.

Chuck moves immediately to a chair and sits down and then leans forward onto his elbows. He gives me a pained glance.

"See what you've done to me?"

I look at him closely. "No, I can't see anything."

"Good, I hope the saleswoman can't either."

When we finish Chuck arranges for everything to be delivered to the Park Hyatt and then he calls Hilda.

We stand on the street, the sunlight stretching and thinning in the midafternoon. I lean against Chuck, absorbed in him, the scene around me, the moment. Life is delicious. I don't think I've ever let myself taste it before, let it linger on my tongue. I've always treated each moment as a bridge to the next, each day as the day before tomorrow, and so I've never had a today. A moment like this. A day like this.

Spies fall in love. Sometimes it happens in less than twenty-four hours. I've arrived at a destination I didn't know I was journeying toward. I certainly haven't traveled a straight line or kept a steady speed. But I've been traveling nonetheless. Since I walked naked out of the bathroom last night and into Chuck's arms, I have no longer been a spy. It's not just that I haven't been spying. It's not just that I haven't been doing what I've done for so long. It's that I haven't been a spy. I haven't been a spy since last night.

I've been…Sarah. Just Sarah. It's enough and more than enough.

But I'm beginning to worry as Zurich's shadows lengthen around us, that I'm like Cinderella. That all this magic and splendor, sunlight and laughter, I'm going to have to relinquish it, that the carriage will become a pumpkin again, the fine horses revert to mice.

Tomorrow is the mission. Tomorrow I have to be a spy again. And maybe, after that, Chuck will be gone and I will be left with nothing but the Company to keep me company. My old life come back again.

I pull myself tighter against Chuck and I tremble. He feels it and looks at me, checking on me, as Hilda drives up. I smile at him. I refuse to ruin tonight with tomorrow.

Hilda seems chipper, eager to hear about our day. Chuck lets me tell her, and I do, gushing all of it to her except for the lovemaking in the Blue Lemon. She listens with a smile, commenting on some of the shops, and the sunny weather. Then she asks Chuck a question.

"Mr. Black, how much longer will you be in Zurich?"

Chuck glances at me for a split second then leans forward to answer. "The business that brought me here will be transacted tomorrow. We'll spend tomorrow night at the hotel but we fly out the next day." As he speaks, I know he is lying — but not to me. To Hilda. "Will you be able to drive us to Credit Suisse in the morning?"

"Yes, sir. That's been settled. I will be at the Park Hyatt at 9 am, and we will be at the bank soon afterward."

Chuck leans back but continues the conversation. "My wife will be accompanying me."

Hilda nods once. "Yes, you mentioned to me that she would be with you when we were waiting for her to get into town."

I lean against Chuck and rest my head on his shoulder. Hilda's watching in the rearview, her eyes flicking up from the road. "We miss each other so much when we're apart. I don't think I can bear to be separated from him again."

I say it for the cover. And I say it for me. I feel Chuck's hand on my leg, a gentle squeeze.

"I can't believe how lucky I am," Chuck says, kissing my forehead. He says that for the cover and for himself, I think. What do you want, Chuck? What happens after the bank?

Chuck then asks HIlda how she will spend her Christmas and she launches into a long, diverting tale of relatives and festive family meals. I close my eyes and listen, the kind of holiday she's describing sounds more like fiction to me than fact, it's so far from the few I had as a child. Mom and Dad fighting. My presents igniting a firestorm about money and our lack of it. Even when I got presents, I wanted to return them, to make Mom and Dad stop fighting.

I drift off leaning against Chuck and the next thing I know is him saying my name softly. "Sarah, love, we're at the hotel."

I blink and smile. I was tired. All the travel yesterday and then all that happened after I arrived. We did not fall asleep until the wee hours and we walked a lot today. Not to mention other aerobic activities. But the cat nap seems to have helped me. And that 'love'.

We cross the lobby and ride the elevator and enter our room.

We're just hanging up our coats and hats when there's a knock on the door. Chuck answers it. It's Gertrude. She's pushing a luggage cart but it is loaded with bags and boxes. All the things Chuck bought me. But there's also a large, leather suitcase, brand new, on the cart too.

"Here are the things delivered, and the suitcase you asked me for. I put the cost of it on your bill. I hope it will be large enough for Mrs. Black's things."

"Yes, her luggage was lost on her journey before she arrived here. That's why she arrived with so little — what was picked up at the airport last night. We bought a lot but it looks like more than it is in all these bags and boxes. Maybe her lost luggage will eventually catch up with her, but she's going to be okay for a while."

Gertrude gives me a look as if to suggest she doubts I deserve this bounty. I simply smile at her. I'm sure I don't deserve it but I am Mrs. Black and she's not.

"Well, I suppose that's the danger of a jet-setting life." She says it as an accusation but I'm not entirely sure of what I'm being accused. She seems to be hinting that I don't take being Mrs. Black as seriously as I should, leaving my husband alone in Zurich for two days before joining him.

Clearly, she wishes I had taken a few days longer.

I walk to the door and open it. "Thank you, Gertrude. We appreciate all your attention but we're tired, and we're planning on going to bed early. And I have all these presents to open." I gesture at the cart but make sure she can see that I include Chuck in the gesture.

My smile as I mention going to bed makes it clear that I am not expecting us to immediately fall asleep.

"When you finish with the cart, just push it into the hallway. Someone will come for it later. Merry Christmas." She bows and leaves the room, leaving the cart inside.

I look at Chuck as he starts moving bags from the cart to the couch. "That woman does not respect the sanctity of marriage, but she has the gall to imply that I don't."

Chuck laughs and moves another bag but then stops. He considers me. Out of nowhere: "Do you respect the sanctity of marriage?"

I freeze.

I was simply talking, joking, façon de parler, venting my annoyance with Gertrude, and I hadn't thought about the larger implications of what I said. Any implications. I'm not sure what Chuck is asking or why he's asking it, but the room's atmosphere thickens.

How to answer?

This feels like our first conversation about the day after tomorrow. About the future. I've been fretting about it, worrying about it, but I've not addressed it. Is this Chuck's indirect way of sounding me out, figuring out what I want?

I go with the truth. "If you mean, do I believe it's an honorable estate — isn't that the phrase? (I was once in deep cover as part of a wedding party, a bridesmaid, and the wedding never happened but the rehearsal did and I heard the ceremony practiced several times) — I do."

Chuck smiles at my words and then I hear them. I do. I've been thinking in do's and don'ts since we met. Mostly in do's.

I go on quickly. "I mean — I respect marriage but I never imagined it for me." I'm twisting around, trying to say this right. "Except when I was with Molly — after I saved her. I imagined it then. Her and me and a faceless him, my…husband. But I gave up on that, and gave her to Mom."

Did I react to Chuck's photograph as I did because his face took that faceless spot in my imagination? Was I too upset, too deeply rattled by all that happened and was happening, Budapest, the baby, Bryce, to understand? To understand that I had prepared a place for him unseen? And that, seeing the photograph, my imagination seized on him, and put him in that place? Is that why the photograph has haunted me, coming back to me repeatedly? Why he always has somehow seemed connected to Budapest, though he was not there, not even imagined yet, not as himself anyway?

I say none of this out loud. Chuck grins at me slowly, at my obvious difficulty with the answer. He waits until he's sure I'm not going to say anymore and then he speaks with a good-natured shrug. "I respect the sanctity of marriage. But as I guess I sort of told you, I'm not sure my future's going to allow much of what I've imagined for it."

He seems to be telling me something, maybe a lot, but I'm not sure what. I notice that the last bag he moved to the couch is from the Blue Lemon. I walk to the couch and pick it up, making sure he sees the logo on the bag.

"I'm going to put on another outfit from here on — as long as you promise to take it off me." I reach out and run my hand down his chest, dragging it all the way to a spot below his belt. His eyes dilate, becoming almost all pupils, no iris. His breathing hitches. "Stiff penalty," I whisper as I provocatively dance away from him and his hands and toward the bedroom.

As I take off my street clothes, I wonder about our conversation. I asked him about kids. He asked me about marriage.

What are we talking about?

I put on another bit of lingerie. A bit. A baby blue teddy that plunges low in the front and barely covers me behind. I put my hair up, twisting it into a messy bun that I clip into place.

My hands are shaking and my breathing is shallow. I've worked myself up at least as much as I've worked him up. Mrs. Black needs Mr. Black.

I inspect myself in the mirror. My reflection inspects me back. You love him, you know, my reflection seems to say, brooking no disagreement. You do. However improbable that seems. You are capable of loving a man, that man, and you do.

I shake my head, not in denial, but to retard my expectations. Slow myself. I've been a million miles ahead of myself all day, reconnoitering ahead of my present place in my own life, and everything I've felt and thought all day, even if present tense, now opens onto the future. My future. Not the future of a mission, the Company's future.

I'm open to my own future.

I open the bathroom door. Chuck's sitting on the bed, naked and glorious. He's staring into space when I open the door but immediately reorients on me. I stop in the bathroom doorway and pose, smirking, running my slowly hand up the frame, and then standing there, a statue, letting his eyes explore me. I return the favor. When neither of us can stand not touching any longer, he reaches out for me and I reach out for him.

We're in the future tense.

Later, panting, we're entangled on the bed. Chuck's holding me, his eyes closed. As his breathing slows, he opens his eyes. That reluctance I've noticed is back and he is making no effort to hide it. It's time. I finally feel equal to it and I finally ask.

"What is it, Chuck?"

He breathes out a long, long sigh but tenses up. I feel it.

"It's about the mission tomorrow, Sarah. There are things you don't understand and I've intended to tell them to you from the beginning, but I didn't expect — maybe I hoped but I didn't expect — all this." He gestures to himself and to me, naked, to the rumpled bed, the bunched baby blue teddy at our feet.

"But I can't keep it from you any longer. You have to choose. 'Enter freely and of your own free will.'"

I remember the line from when we first entered our hotel room. I stare into his eyes. "Tell me."

"This isn't a Company mission, Sarah. It's mine, all mine. The Company doesn't know I'm here. Doesn't really know where I am although they think they do. What I'm planning to do tomorrow, I'm doing for myself. For my family. My sister and her husband. — And for you, I hope."

I stare at him, trying to understand. "But the Director called me and told me to meet you. Gave me my orders."

He shakes his head and then he speaks to me, but in Director McDonald's voice. The impersonation is exact: "Sarah, this is the Director. I've got a new mission for you. In Zurich."

I shudder; it's like McDonald spoke through Chuck's mouth. Very distant ventriloquism.

I'm gaping at Chuck, trying to understand. "But the Company, the Director, supplied my plane tickets."

"No, she didn't. I did. All of it. I asked you here because I wanted…your help. And because I wanted to offer you a chance to escape, to run. A chance to leave the Company. But now, I want more. You. I want you to leave with me. Run with me.

"You don't have to, of course. It's your choice. It's your choice if you help me tomorrow. I'll understand if you want out. Walk away. Or try to stop me.

"The Company won't hold this against you. I tricked you."

Tension mounts in him, suspense. He doesn't know what I will say, or what I will do.

Do's and don'ts.

I sit up and take his hand in mine. I'm still trying to understand. "Start over, Chuck. Explain this to me — from the beginning."

"I'm on the run, Sarah. I've…stolen away. I've stolen myself from the US government. And tomorrow, I'm going to steal more."

A/N: More soon.

If you've been stingy with reviews to this point, try a little generosity. It's a Christmas story, after all.

My continued thanks to Neil Horne.