A/N: Thanks to everyone still reading and reviewing. For those who messaged me and others who scolded me about the last chapter being a bridge chapter, there's plenty going on in this one. I suppose I'll hear about it if it's not enough.
Disclaimer: I don't own CHUCK and I'm not making any money for writing this story.
Last time: Well, it was just a bridge chapter, y'all, so not a lot really happened. (Hahahahahahahahaha!)
Casey's hulking form slammed into her and knocked her to the ground as something sailed past their heads, over the deck, and disappeared again.
He rolled off of her immediately with a curse.
"What was that?" Sarah gasped, sitting up.
"Came from down below us some'ere. Spotted us from the ground. Now they're shootin' at us. Where are we?"
"I don't know!" she snapped. "I've been asleep!"
He growled impatiently and pushed himself to his feet, running over to the wheel and grabbing it. "Git the map from below, so's I kin see where we are!"
"Why?"
"'Cause if we're where I think, we're in deep shit, Walker! Now git th'map!"
"GOT IT!"
Sarah spun around from where she sat and watched as Chuck swung the hatch open, slamming it against the deck and rushing up the ladder. "GOT THE MAP!"
She and Casey exchanged a quick look as Chuck duck-walked the entire way across the deck to where the bounty hunter stood at the wheel. Shaking her head at his precautionary ridiculous antics, Sarah stood up and followed. They each held part of the map down as Casey opened it over a nearby crate.
"Compass," he said, holding a hand out. Chuck seemed to have that, as well, for he fished in his vest pocket and placed it in their makeshift captain's hand. Casey opened it and stared down for a moment, glancing at the map again. "Shit. God save us."
"That does not sound good," Chuck murmured.
"It ain't good!" Casey snapped. "We're over one of the rebellion territories. You know that revolution they're sayin' migh' 'appen down 'ere? It's these guys. I dunno 'ow it 'appened. I was tryin'a avoid it!"
Sarah didn't miss the way the man was readily holding himself responsible for the mistake. She tucked that away for later. "So what's our course of action, then?" she asked.
This time bullets whizzed past them, and she heard the sickening sound of a few of them sinking into the hull below them. If any of those went through and hit one of the ballast tanks that helped keep them in the air, they'd be in deep trouble.
Chuck covered his head and knelt down on the deck, his face white as a sheet. "YES, PLEASE HAVE A PLAN!" he practically shrieked.
"We, uh, get higher…th'higher we go, th'more cloud cover we… oh…oh not good."
Sarah didn't like his tone. She followed his gaze to look out at the bowsprit. There were emerging into a clearing, and not just a clearing, it seemed. The thick layer of soot and cloud that seemed to hover over the sky in the more densely populated Southern U.S. Empire and Northern Mexican territories didn't exist here. She glanced at the map…the nearest large city was Monterrey, far towards the South. Which meant they were over the Mexican rainforest, and whoever was down there shooting at them would have a completely clear view of their dirigible.
"Errrr…Hold on?" seemed to be Casey's only solution.
"WHAT?!" Chuck screeched, prying his hands from his head and sending a terrified look up at the bounty hunter. "We don't have…things we can shoot back at them?!"
"From up 'ere? We don't even know where they're shootin' from! Take a gander down'ere, you idiot! Nothin' but trees far's th'eye kin see! Perfect coverin' fer 'em! An' meanwhile, we got nothin'—"
He was cut off then as more bullets peppered the hull of the ship. She heard another sound, a metallic thunk belowdecks, and she felt the dirigible shudder.
"Oh no…" she breathed. "Casey, did you hear that?" she asked, looking up at him.
"A tank…" His eyes widened.
"Seems like we might've needed that."
Right on cue, the dirigible started tipping forward. "Well, we're definitely gonna wanna hold on now!" Casey bellowed, grabbing the wheel.
"Chuck, hurry!" Sarah dove towards him, and dragged him to the nearby mast. The ship was tilting fast without those tanks. She heard the slow putt putt putt of the engine coughing, the loud cracking screech of the propellors halting. She pinned Chuck to the side of the mast that faced the stern of the dirigible and made him wrap his arms around it. "Hold on!"
He nodded as she staggered across the deck, her boots sliding along the tilting floorboards. A large crate slid towards her and she heard Chuck yell her name just in time to grab one of the rigging lines and swing her body upward just enough to miss having two hundred pounds of wood and whatever was inside of it slamming into her. It would've been death.
Letting out a harsh breath, she swung herself up to grab onto another part of the rigging, screaming as the dirigible made a full nose-dive and hurdled towards…She refused to look. She could just imagine the treetops, so beautiful from above just minutes earlier, but now a tableau of death as they came closer and closer at horrendous speed.
Sarah just managed to get a hold of another mast and strained to curl her body around it as the dirigible smashed into the trees. The sound was deafening, a million fingernails dragging down a chalkboard all at once, cracking and creaking, leaves whooshing past, twigs scratching at her.
She screamed.
But she didn't let go. She refused to let go.
Even as there was a sickening crunch below and the harsh lurch of the airship coming to a stop, she didn't let go.
There were a series of quiet cracks, the sound of things settling, dust, wood, the trees…
"Everyone alive?!" came Casey's loud bellow after a few moments.
Only then did Sarah open her eyes. The deck wasn't vertical anymore, instead tilted at an angle towards the ground. And her feet were steady on it as she eased them down from where she'd wrapped them around the mast.
Finally, she unclamped her fingers from around the mast and pried them away. "Yes," she gasped, falling backwards and landing hard on her backside, wincing. Instead of getting up again, she just let her body slump to the side. "Thank the merciful heavens," she breathed to herself, turning her face into the wood and grinning a bit maniacally.
And then she realized she was the only one who had responded.
She pushed onto her knees. "Chuck?! Chuck, where are you?! Answer me!"
Nothing.
"Casey, can you see Chuck?" she asked, crawling along the nearby deck, throwing tarps away and shoving crates to the side, hoping he wasn't under one of them. If he'd been thrown from the deck in any way before they'd landed, he was dead. He was surely dead if he'd let go of that mast. "Chuck?!"
"Quick! Up 'ere!"
Her heart was in her throat as she scrambled up the deck on her hands and knees, skidding to a stop next to Casey. Chuck was slumped forward, still curled around the mast, his legs and arms splayed out limply.
"Chuck!"
Without thinking about it, she pushed Casey out of the way and positioned herself behind Chuck, easing him back away from the mast and cradling most of his upper half in her lap. She slapped his face lightly a few times. "Chuck, c'mon. Chuck. Please don't be dead. Please…"
But Casey already had the toymaker's wrist clamped between his fingers. "He ain't dead. Jes' unconscious. Most likely fainted like the precious flower 'e is."
Sarah was too relieved and didn't have it in her to glare at the bastard. But if she had, she would've noticed the same relief that spilled over the white face of the bounty hunter.
"He didn't faint," she snapped. "Look at this welt on his chin. He was knocked out. Chuck?" She nudged his face again. "Get some water from somewhere," she commanded, and Casey took only a moment before he dumped a canteen over Chuck's face and in her lap.
Chuck woke up immediately, sputtering, coughing, his eyes snapping open. He brought a shaking hand to his jaw and winced. "Are we dead? Have I somehow made it to Heaven even though I lied to Sister Brunhilde about washing my underthings?"
Sarah frowned down at him. "What?"
He seemed to realize, then, where he was and he blinked, shaking his head. "Nothing. Pretend you didn't hear that. What happened?"
"We crashed. Something knocked you out and you missed the worst part of it."
"I feel…blessed? I suppose?" He blinked again and she had to giggle, looking up at Casey as he crawled back with a potato.
"This." He snorted. "A potato. You were knocked unconscious by one of the potatoes that came out of the sack."
His derisive tone irked her but she chose to ignore it as she helped Chuck out of her lap so that he could sit up. He shook himself a bit like a wet dog and blinked again. "Yes, well…it isn't a cooked potato," he reasoned, making a face at Casey. "Which means getting hit by that is about the same as getting hit by a solid rock, so…nyeh."
Well, at least he was back to his old self, she thought silently. She spared a quick roll of her eyes as she climbed past them and made her way to a railing carefully.
"We're not on the ground just yet. About a ten foot drop. The trees caught us…" She looked up and saw the deflated balloons snagged in the tree limbs. "Unfortunately."
"Fortunately," Casey corrected, nearing her. "If we'd hit the ground as fast as we were goin', this whole thing might'a exploded."
"Not very good with physics, are we, Major?" Chuck chimed in sarcastically.
"Well, our balloons are popped so I'd say that's still unfortunate." She pointed up.
Casey tilted his face up and groaned. "Damn it."
"Well?" Chuck asked, looking left and right across the deck as he slowly stood to his full height, holding onto the mast that probably saved his life to keep his footing as he worked his jaw. "How do we get down from here, then?"
Casey had since moved to the railing and he held one of the snapped ropes from the balloons in his hand. He tossed it over the side and held onto the part still attached to the ship, then climbed up to stand on the railing as they watched. "How's this for physics?" he sneered, dropping down out of sight and climbing down to the ground, Sarah assumed.
"That's not physics. Should we tell him or … ?"
Sarah sent Chuck a look and then shook her head, going to where Casey had left the rope.
}o{
"It's only thirty-five miles to Monterrey."
Chuck just barely resisted the urge to complain. There was nothing else for them to do but walk to the nearest city. Through a rainforest. A hot, damp rainforest that already had his shirt sticking to his back uncomfortably.
"That is all well and good, Casey, but without that dirigible in working order, we have no way to get back to Los Angeles," Sarah said from where she walked to Chuck's right. She readjusted her bag over her shoulder and pushed some of the hair that escaped her braid back from her beautiful but obviously frustrated features.
"We'll tackle that when we get to it, Walker. Top priority is gettin' to Monterrey. Findin' Ruiz is next priority. Gettin' wut we can outta 'er is next. Then we'll worry 'bout the rest."
Sarah huffed and Chuck was grateful she was keeping whatever she was going to say to herself. It wouldn't do to argue with the bounty hunter, and she must have known that. But the toymaker also liked to think he knew the con woman well enough by now to know exactly what was bothering her about all of this.
She liked having a plan. She liked knowing what she was going to do every step of the way. She liked having control, having a handle on things. Playing it by ear wasn't her usual way of doing things and it probably upset her, or at the very least made her a bit nervous, to do things Casey's way. Even if she'd proven she was fantastic at thinking on her feet.
"Wait…How long will thirty-five miles take?" Chuck asked.
"We'll probably arrive sometime tomorrow night, if we're even going the right way," Sarah said, directing the last part at Casey with a bit of a snappish tone.
"Tomorrow night?"
"Wut? You think we kin jes' snap our fingers an' appear in the city?" Casey turned from where he was leading them through the dew-soaked brush and walked backwards for a moment. "Ain't no way we're continuin' walkin' through th'night." He shook his head. "Think you'd enjoy the kind o' strange creatures wut come out at night in these parts?" He turned back around to walk facing forward again and kept talking. "I was in a forest jes' like this'n years ago. Thought I could trek through the night. Ended up runnin' into a jaguar. Not the best time I've 'ad. Found a cave an' stayed'ere 'til light."
Chuck's eyes widened. "A jaguar. Really? Are there jaguars here?"
"O'course there are. Ya gotta be very still, though, an' ya definitely don' wanna make eye contact." He paused as he pushed through what seemed to almost be a curtain of vines, holding it for Chuck and Sarah to move through after him, before continuing. "But if'n ya see a wild boar, jes' run. Fast as you kin. Those li'l bastards are vicious."
The toymaker couldn't help snorting, trying to exchange an amused look with Sarah, but she was looking off to the other side, her eyes scanning the trees around them. So he just looked at Casey again. "A wild boar? Aren't those basically glorified pigs?"
Casey scoffed, smirking at him over his shoulder. "You ever even seen an actual pig, ya idiot? They're big as a wagon full grown. Kid, you go through life with that kind of stupid thought, yer gonna end up gettin' mauled ta death. They're violent. I seen wut one o' those kin do to a man."
Chuck opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when Sarah grabbed him suddenly, her fingers tightening around his forearm as she hissed a short, "Sh!"
"Is it a wild boar?" he whispered, but she ignored him.
Casey suddenly went rigid as well, eyes scanning the forest. He grunted softly, then exchanged a quick look with Sarah.
"What—"
Men suddenly burst out from behind the brush around them, charging the three of them. Their loud whooping and hollering was loud and sudden enough to startle Chuck, and he stumbled back, away from Casey and Sarah.
He saw a knife sink into the chest of the man nearest him, compliments of the only woman in the party.
But without a weapon of his own, Chuck was helpless against the three other men who grabbed him and slammed him into the ground hard. He cried out in pain as his cheek cracked against an upturned root, and he felt blood wet his face immediately.
He heard the thumping sound of fists meeting meat, accompanied by an enraged growl from the bounty hunter.
But soon, there was nothing but the fast murmuring of the men who had overpowered them. He didn't know Spanish well enough to understand them with how fast they were speaking, but he recognized the language at least.
What were these men? Military? Rebels? He knew there were multiple rebel factions who'd opposed the Mexican government and the alliance with the rest of the Central American Union. There were separatists, and then those who just wanted to see the administration burn. He'd read all about it in the paper a few years back. There was a revolution brewing in Mexico… Were these the rebels?
As his wrists were tied behind him by one man, another went through his pockets, murmuring "nada" to the rest of them. He figured Casey and Sarah were being trussed up the way he was, but he was still blinking dirt and grime from his vision as he was hoisted back onto his feet by his bound hands, his pack grabbed from the ground and hoisted on one of their shoulders.
"Ay! Careful wit' that!" Casey half-roared somewhere nearby. And Chuck was better able to see the hulking older fellow this time as he looked over his shoulder. They were taking the pistol he'd had in his holster from him, as well as the shoulder holster he'd been wearing fit with two more larger guns, and the rifle he'd slung over his back.
Two of the men who'd taken his weapons chuckled at the bounty hunter as he strained against the four men it apparently took to hold him at bay. "That's a Springfield Krag, ya bastard! Mind how ya hold that!"
Chuck whipped around, wincing as the man holding him gave him a rough tug, but he finally saw Sarah standing calmly off to the side, her hands bound in front of her, as opposed to behind her, the way they'd done with Chuck and Casey. It figured. Even though she'd gotten a knife out and had thrown it in the split second it took for their attackers to close in on them, she was deemed the least dangerous of the three.
The man who'd disarmed her only held a pistol and one life, shaking his head at her with a smarmy smirk as he stuck them down the back of his belt. When Sarah cast her gaze over to meet Chuck's, there was a bit of a spark there, and he thought he knew exactly why.
Sarah Walker carried more than two knives and a gun on her person. Wherever the rest of the knives were, these men hadn't checked. That meant there was a still a chance.
That was probably why she was so damned calm. Or maybe that was just her. The way her eyes were darting between everyone, taking everything in, studying.
How many times had she been captured just like this, he wondered, when there should've been no escape for her? How often was she underestimated like this, only to use it to her advantage?
And what happened to her that her existence meant constantly being in a situation like this?
Pushing that thought aside, Chuck grumbled in frustration at the jab between his shoulder blades that forced him to start walking forward. He and the three men around him led the way back through the clearing and onto a semblance of a path that looked to have been recently forged by the men who'd found them.
Were these the same people who'd shot them down?
As they walked, a few of the men exchanged what sounded like jokes, laughing, seemingly not very worried about their prisoners except that the one behind Chuck kept shoving him to make sure he knew who was in control. The mean glare Chuck shot him after each one did absolutely nothing to stop it.
After a few minutes, Chuck grew weary of not knowing what was happening, anger getting the best of him, and he reacted to the shove at his back, throwing his shoulder into the man next to him and nearly knocking the fellow onto the ground. Two more men grabbed at him and forced him down to his knees.
"Chuck, don't!"
Chuck heard Sarah's voice above those of the captors he'd angered, and he calmed down, even as he growled up at the man nearest him. "Who the hell are you? What do you want with us?"
They didn't answer, and Chuck thought by the looks on their faces that they didn't even understand. Could they only speak and understand Spanish, then?
"Inglés?" he asked.
They ignored him.
After they pulled him to his feet to continue the journey to who knew where, the jabs in his back were now hard enough to cause him to stumble a bit each time. He spared a glance back at Sarah and he saw her attempt to reassure him, but he also saw she was wearing that con artist mask again. Which meant she was either planning something, or she was hiding the way she really felt about this situation.
He didn't know which it was.
And that worried him more than anything else.
}o{
Sarah kept her gaze on Chuck's back. Or, at least, what she could see of his back, since the men who'd captured them for whatever reason (she knew the reason) were crowding him and Casey in a way they weren't crowding her.
The man she'd stuck with her throwing knife was holding a hand to his wound as he skulked along behind them in pain, and yet Chuck and Casey were flanked by five men each. She only had one, not counting the injured fellow complaining behind her.
Why don't they just kill these Americans, he kept asking the others. And when he wasn't completely ignored, he'd get a quick response. She knew now that these men were taking her, Chuck, and Casey back to their encampment. Wherever that ended up being.
She figured these were the people Casey had talked about onboard the dirigible when he'd groused about the mistake he'd made, letting them fly over this area. Were they some sort of rebellion force? A clan of some sort? They weren't in uniforms, so perhaps they were mercenaries? Or was this some cause they actually believed in?
When Chuck asked them why they were doing this, he'd received some blank stares, but most of them were smart enough to mask their inability to understand by pretending to ignore him. Not knowing the language their captives were speaking would put the captors at a disadvantage.
They didn't know English and that wasn't something they'd want her and her companions to know, was it?
She inwardly smirked.
Then again, it could have just been that they were ignoring Chuck. But she'd seen the looks on their faces and she was relatively sure Spanish was their only language. They were far enough from the Empire's border that English wouldn't be entirely necessary…especially if they were a part of one of the mercenary rebellions that wanted to move further from western civilization and culturally develop away from English speaking society. There were quite a few of those, she knew. And the more she spent in the Empire, the more she had to admit she couldn't entirely blame their motivation, even if at the moment, she didn't much like their method.
Sarah decided to test the theory, repeating Chuck's questions in Spanish.
A few of the men turned to look at her over their shoulders, apparently surprised she knew their language. They met gazes with one another, and the man who seemed like he might be the leader…for now…gave another man a quick nod.
In Spanish, the other man told her they'd encroached on the air space of Guerrillas de Constantos, a band of guerrillas led by General Constantos. She knew the name. But she didn't know much about what that meant, or what these men might do to them now. She imagined she and her companions were in a lot of trouble, however. Constantos wasn't much of a believer in the U.S. Empire. That much she was sure of.
The man was forced to stop speaking when Chuck's legs almost seemed to collapse from beneath him. He crumbled to his knees, slumped forward, his features pinched in what looked like agonizing pain for a few seconds.
"Chuck? Chuck, what happened?" She tried to close the distance, her heart thudding in her chest. "But she was held in place, even as she struggled to get out of their grip. "Chuck!"
She realized then as he blinked his eyes open and gasped in relief that he must have flashed. Considering his reaction, he must have gotten quite a bit of information from it. He must have flashed on Constantos.
"Constantos?" she asked him.
"Ándale!"
Chuck received a hard clock to the back of his head from one of the guerrillas and winced again. She just barely resisted murdering the man who'd hit him, watching as Chuck was pulled back onto his own two feet and practically dragged along until he could use them himself.
He spared her a quick look that confirmed her assumption. He'd flashed on Constantos.
"Constantos?" she asked the man walking next to her, holding onto her bicep tightly. "El General?"
He ignored her. She kept going, asking in his language what they were planning on doing with them.
This time he responded, telling her they would decide when they arrived at the encampment. She tried to tell him they were just tourists, but he scoffed, gesturing to the armory Casey had with him. And anyway, he said, perhaps they'd provide useful for the Constantos forces after all.
The injured man still walking behind them grumbled something about just killing them.
Useful, Sarah thought to herself? Useful how?
She knew for a fact that there were multiple groups trying to overthrow the government, but Constantos had amassed actual forces. She'd heard of the clashes between the Mexican militia and Constantos guerrillas. It had been going on for almost a decade. That was all she knew, and now Chuck seemed to know much more.
"What is it, Chuck? What do you know?" she breathed, and the guerrilla's hand tightened around her arm. She ignored it. "Where are we going?"
"He was a general in the Mexican militia but was pushed out of the president's inner circle after an unsuccessful campaign to reclaim Guadalupe Island from the Ensenada guerrillas. He secretly took a group of loyal militiamen who served under him and left. Ever since then, he's been leading charges against Mexico, winning small skirmishes up and down the coasts to steal supplies and weapons from militias and missions, but has yet to gain a strong enough foothold to force the president to give him a seat at the table," Chuck rushed out quickly, even while he was being shoved and told to be quiet.
He finally did shut up for a good minute or two, but Sarah knew there was more. She could see it in the way his shoulders were pulled up, the way he kept turning his head a little towards her so that she could see the cut under his eye.
She watched him, waiting.
And he finally spoke up again, this time speaking even faster.
"Constantos has enough factions of guerrillas spread through Mexico that there are fears he might be planning an outright coup against the head of state and executive branch. As Americans, I'm almost certain we're going to end up in the middle. Or used to that purpose. Somehow."
He got hit again, this time harder, and he shut up for good, having to be dragged back to his feet again by two men as he stumbled onto the ground.
The combined effects of his flash and the two hard knocks he'd taken on his head were probably doing quite a number on the toymaker. There was nothing she could do for him, aside from keeping an eye on him as she was pushed along by the man walking at her back.
So she thought about the implications of the information Chuck gave them.
They weren't mere Americans on holiday, and these men knew that. They were definitely not the tourists they claimed to be, thanks to Casey's arsenal of weaponry he liked to lug around.
Was Chuck right? Could they be used to somehow either get Constantos his seat back in the inner circle of the president? If they had Americans to hold for ransom, Constantos could tell the U.S. Empire and the Queen herself to negotiate with the president of Mexico in order to give Constantos power in the Mexican government.
"Casey," Sarah whispered. He was close enough that he could hear her, and she saw him subtly turn his head to her…just enough to let her know he was listening. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"You thinkin' how the hell he know all that about El General?" Casey whispered back.
"No," she hissed. That would be something they'd have to answer for later, though. Casey was probably completely confused by Chuck's flash. Surely, he had no idea what had happened to Chuck or how he'd managed to know so much about the guerrilla leader. "We're going to be used as bargaining chips to get the Empire involved in this rebellion."
"That'll mean the beginning of a revolution," he said.
"Exactly." She paused, licking her lips, her brain going a mile a minute as she felt a bit of panic in her breast. "And that will mean a lot of attention on us that we definitely don't need."
"Silencio!" she felt a sharp jab in her shoulder and winced.
Casey couldn't know, but Chuck had the Intersect in his brain, something the Empire and its intelligence agencies were desperately searching for. He was in so much trouble if he was put in the IEL or IBoMaD's crosshairs. And she'd be discovered as well. She'd be imprisoned, and most likely she'd eventually be executed.
The bounty hunter grunted. "Scared o' prison, Ice Queen?" he whispered.
"Yes. Frankly." And though she'd never admit it, not even to herself, there was a deeper fear than even that inside of her. It had nothing to do with her safety, and everything to do with the toymaker.
"You know what we gotta do then," he said.
She did.
The toe of her boot slipped under an uprooted vine and caught there, causing her to pitch forward and land hard. It happened fast enough, and she only had one man guarding her, so it was the easiest thing in the world to come up with the knife she'd had tucked in her boot. She hid it between her clasped hands as she was yanked back to her feet, ignoring the clumsy insult the guard threw at her about clumsiness and stupid women.
She pitched to the side, pretending to be a bit wobbly, and maneuvered herself right up behind Casey, the blade jutting out between her fingers as she cleverly and quickly sawed a few of the ropes binding him.
"Stay on your feet," the guard demanded in Spanish, and she nodded quickly, pretending to be afraid, letting him think he was the one with all of the power. She leaned forward just one more time, the knife slipping out between her fingers again, and she severed the last of the rope binding his wrists. He snagged the knife from her and immediately brought it around to jam it in the crook of the neck of the nearest guerrilla. The man squealed and coughed wetly as he went down.
Sarah paid no mind to what Casey was doing after that, instead spinning to yank her arm out of her guerrilla's grip. She turned to face him as he gaped at the scene in front of him. She swung her arms up and brought them down around his neck, giving him a hard tug down and smashing his face into her knee as she slammed it up to meet his nose. There was a crack and he went down like a limp rag doll as she dashed to the next one and brought both of her fists, still bound, around to crack into another man's temple, dodging a retaliatory swing and slipping her boot behind his, swiping his leg and sending him to the ground. She slipped a knife out of her other boot and stabbed it into his chest, then used the bloodied knife to saw at her own bindings.
Another man came at her then and she nearly stopped to defend herself, but there was a loud bang! and a splotch of red mist erupted from his chest as he fell to the side. Sarah turned to look as Casey smirked, one of the guerrillas' guns in hand, and then she watched as he began picking off the others one by one.
She finally broke the ties around her wrists, and raced to the man she'd first seen Casey shoot, since he was the closest to her, grabbing his gun as well.
"Sarah, duck!" she heard Chuck yell, and she didn't think twice, falling to her knees as a nearby gun fired, the bullet smacking into the tree where her head was a moment earlier. She stood and shot the man who'd tried to shoot her—and he would have succeeded if Chuck hadn't warned her.
"Help!"
God! She'd nearly forgotten about Chuck in all of this. She spun to look, seeing Casey do the same nearby. Five men were tearing at Chuck, slamming their fists into him. Then she saw the flash of a knife.
"No!" she screamed, raising her gun, ready to take the shot that might save his life.
But her finger stalled as she saw the man who'd seemed helpless a moment earlier snap the rope binding his wrists with nothing but a quick yank of his arms. She watched Chuck's hand shoot up and grab the wrist of the guerrilla holding the knife. And with one quick twist, the guerrilla's wrist cracked wickedly, making him scream in pain, falling back onto the ground holding it in agony.
Sarah dropped the gun to her side and watched as Chuck caught another man's fist as it surged towards him, twisting hard enough to break that man's arm even as he turned and landed a violent punch to the temple of a third guerrilla.
One of them managed to crack Chuck hard in the back with a kick and he curled forward, but not for long. He spun on his heel and brought his fist up into the man's jaw then grabbed him by the shirt front and swung him around to slam him viciously into the nearest tree.
Sarah was riveted, even as she watched Casey fall back as he was attacked. She was forced to break her gaze away from Chuck by her own attacker, then, struggling to break the hold the man had gotten on her with his arms around her waist.
She brought her elbow around and cracked it into him, breaking his hold enough to grab him by his jacket and drag him to the ground. Straddling him, she blasted him in the face with her fist over and over until he was out cold.
"Aw shit…!" she heard Casey growl.
She spun to see the bounty hunter had gotten cornered against a tree, one man having snuck up behind him and stripped him of his gun, the other closing in with a gun of his own, sneering hungrily at the prospect of killing.
Sarah spotted the way the man held his chest and knew he was the first one she'd stabbed when they'd been attacked by the guerrillas an hour earlier.
"Casey!" she cried out.
If he could just reach the gun that had been knocked out of her hand—
She gasped as Chuck came out of nowhere, or rather, Chuck's boot. He swiped the guy across his temple with his foot and laid him out unconscious, surprising the guerrilla behind Casey enough that the bounty hunter was able to jab his elbow into his face, spin, and bring his boot up to slam it into the center of his chest, sending the man to the ground gasping for air.
Casey picked up the gun he'd dropped and shot the man without even blinking, spinning around to look at Chuck, his eyes wide.
Before any of them could say anything, a twig snapped off to the right. All three spun to see one last man standing there, holding a machete, doing his best to silently inch away, shaking in fear. "No, no," he whimpered. "Lo siento. Lo siento, y-yo…" But then he broke into a run.
Sarah saw Casey lift his pistol, ready to shoot the guerrilla in the back…
But then Chuck slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Casey looked down just long enough that by the time he turned back, he'd lost his chance to shoot the retreating guerrilla. He growled in frustration, but Sarah paid him no mind, rushing to Chuck's side and falling to her knees next to him.
"Chuck?" she gasped out in a bit of a panic. Two flashes in succession like that were obviously too much for him, especially considering what she'd just seen him do. She was still in awe, and unnerved at the same time. But it was terrifying to see him like this, his face pale, his hands shaking so hard she had to grab them to try to make them stop. "Chuck, wake up. Come on."
"WUT IN BLEEDIN' HELL WAS THAT?" Casey barked suddenly, making Sarah jump. She shut her eyes to calm herself for a moment and looked back down at Chuck, gently pushing his damp curls away from his forehead.
"Chuck, wake up. Open your eyes for me."
But he didn't budge, though his hands stopped their shaking, so she let go of them and held his face again. "Chuck, come on!"
"WUT IN THE HELL? WUT IN THE HELL? WHO IN THE HELL?" Casey yelled, pointing at Chuck.
"Will you shut the damn hell up, or do you want more guerrillas to hear and come after us?" she hissed. "We need to get somewhere safe."
"YOU NEED TO TELL ME WUT IN BLEEDIN' HELL THIS ALL IS!" he roared.
Sarah shook Chuck by his shoulder this time. "Chuck," she said with more force. "Chuck, listen to me."
Nothing.
"THE HELL WAS THAT?! THE HELL ARE YOU?!" Casey was still bellowing, and this time he took a step back, training his gun on them, his eyes flicking from her to Chuck. He took a deep breath. "The hell kinda shit was wut I jes' saw?! I'll shoot, I swear it, if ya don't tell me right damn now!"
There was a loud crash of thunder then, and the rain started. Just droplets at first, big ones, but it started to get worse almost immediately.
"Look, I'll tell you, but we need to get to shelter right now!" she snapped. "Help me get him up!"
"No!"
"Damn it, Casey! Help me!"
"The hell is wrong with 'im?" He began to lower his gun a little.
"He's not well," she hissed. "Obviously."
"WELL, 'E LOOKED PRETTY DAMN WELL WHEN 'E SNAPPED THOSE ROPES BY HISSELF!"
But even as he yelled, his voice verging on near paranoia, picked the guns up from where they dotted the ground around him and shoved them wherever he could, then knelt at Chuck's other side, helping her lift him up and carry him through the rain.
}o{
"Careful," she breathed, not realizing the way she sounded as she added a quiet, "Please".
Chuck still hadn't woken up, even through near on ten minutes of searching for shelter. They finally found a small cave under an outcropping and rushed inside, setting Chuck down on the cold stone.
As Sarah shoved her sack under Chuck's head as a dismal excuse for a pillow and covered him with her coat in an even more dismal attempt at getting him warm again, Casey quickly built up a fire beside them. The rain outside of the cave was coming down in a torrential downpour.
She stared at the toymaker's face, noticing he seemed to be getting some color back as she pushed his hair from his forehead and dabbed at his brow with a wet handkerchief.
It took what felt like forever to her, but Chuck eventually stirred. He immediately tried to reach up to grab his head, but the coat impeded his efforts, so Sarah pulled it down enough to free his hand. He groaned and covered his eyes. And when she saw him shiver, she covered him back up. It was useless and she knew it—her coat was still damp from the rain—but it made her feel like she was at least doing something to help him.
"The hell happened to you?" came Casey's gruff voice from the other side of the fire a few minutes later as she helped Chuck sit up finally. Sarah was glad that he'd at least waited a few minutes for Chuck to recuperate somewhat. He was still groggy and in apparent pain, but lucid and more aware of his surroundings.
Chuck turned his pained gaze to her as soon as Casey asked the question. But she had no answers for him this time, and he must've seen that before he looked down at his lap again. It made her angry that he'd seen it, and for a moment, she was angry at him for being able to see things inside of her that no one else saw. She felt a bitterness rise inside of her that the mask she'd successfully used on everyone else she'd met in her life didn't always work on the toymaker.
And then that all faded. Because she remembered that the mask didn't always on him work because he cared enough to look past it. He cared enough to want to know her, what made her tick, what she really felt about everything. And that was discomfiting, wasn't it? There was almost a responsibility that went with that. And she was confused about whether or not she wanted that kind of responsibility in her life.
Shaking all of those thoughts out of her head, she stole a quick look at Casey. He was getting angry again. That was something they seemed to share. Not being in control, confusion, unsureness…it made them both angry.
The toymaker did not share that attribute with them. Instead, when he lacked control, he allowed himself to settle, take things in, think. There was no anger, just determination. He also allowed someone he trusted to take the reins if he didn't know what to do. Like her. He seemed completely at ease allowing her to run things. No one else in her entire existence had ever given her that kind of faith, that kind of respect.
"Just remember, Casey," Chuck said quietly, almost too quiet with the roaring of the rain outside of the mouth of the cave coupled with the crackling of the fire before them, "that I saved your life."
So he remembered what he'd done after he flashed and beat the ever living daylights out of Constantos' guerrillas, then. He hadn't remembered in Coronado, the first time she'd seen him do it. Perhaps he was slowly starting to gain some control over the Intersect. She clung to that theory. It eased the nervous panic in her chest.
Casey merely grunted. "The hell are you? And the hell wus that out there? I've known you fer months, kid, and I ain't never seen you do anythin' like that. So who the hell are ya? Some kind o' agent? You been coverin' for Larkin all this time? Leadin' me on wild goose chases? You his partner? And what the hell you got ta do with this, Walker?" He turned his suspicious narrowed gaze towards her. She also noticed he'd set his weapons away from him to dry out a bit, laying them against the corner of the cave…except for one. That one laid by his hip on the ground, ready for him to use if he needed to.
On them, she thought to herself darkly.
Sarah turned to look at Chuck, waiting for him to feel her gaze. He finally turned to meet it and she nodded slightly. His eyes widened, but then she saw some relief there, his shoulders sagging in what she took to be relief.
They had no choice, but it was what Chuck had wanted to do before, wasn't it?
They would have to trust Major John Casey, a bounty hunter and one of the best shots she'd ever seen in her life. God, was she insane?
Yes.
But she was insane even before she'd met Charles Irving Bartowski. It was best now to just embrace it with both arms, wasn't it? Maybe that was the only way to survive all of this.
"Casey…" She changed tack then, letting out a long breath. "John." By the look on his face, he seemed to find her usage of his first name strange, but she kept on. "You're being lied to by your employer. And deep down inside, you know that, don't you? General Beckman, IBoMaD, they all lied. Or at worst, they told you only as much as they thought you needed to know and didn't trust you with everything. By now, you've figured that out."
He didn't respond, but she could see in his eyes that she was right. Perhaps the general who hired him thought he was a bit of a simpleton, as good of a bounty hunter as he was aside. All of that grunting he did. But he wasn't. Not by a long shot. It was what made him so dangerous, and it's why Sarah was careful not to take that for granted since she first met him, even before she knew he was a bounty hunter using Chuck to get to Bryce.
"They didn't tell you the truth about Agent Larkin. They didn't tell you what he did that required them to hire you."
""Payin' me, aren't they? An' I don't need ta know nothin' 'cept that he went AWOL. That's a bad enough crime as it is," he grumbled, crossing his arms. Still playing the patriot, she thought to herself. He wouldn't be for long. (At least she hoped.)
"If you want to know why you were hired, what made Larkin run in the first place, and why your government wants him so damn bad, I need you to hand me that gun. And my knife you took out of the guerrilla behind me's chest when we were leaving." His eyes popped. "Thought I didn't see you do it?" She scoffed and shook her head as he grunted and looked away. "You have to trust us, Casey, before we can trust you. You have all the weapons."
"Ha. You think I'm the village idiot? I give you the weapons an' then you have all the weapons."
"Trust us."
"An' wut reason do I got to trust either o' you? Apparently, you been lyin' all this time. An' now I'm s'posed ta trust you?" He shook his head and made a pfft sound, crossing his arms a little harder than he'd been before. More emphatic about his stubbornness, she thought to herself.
"We lied because you're a bounty hunter and if—if you knew the truth…" She stopped herself out of habit, expelling her breath and shutting her eyes.
"It could have put me in a great deal of trouble, Casey," Chuck supplied, his voice stronger now. "More than you could possibly even understand. Not just me, but the people I care about. Ellie, Devon, Morgan—"
"Morgan's an android, a machine."
"There's no need to be rude!" Chuck snapped. Sarah reached out to put a hand on his chest and he immediately eased up, almost pouting.
Lifting his chin, Casey grabbed the gun from where it laid beside him and held it up. "Let's try me, then."
He put the gun back down and shoved it across the ground towards Sarah. She stopped it with her hand and met his gaze, scooting it behind her, out of his reach. Then she watched as he did the same with the bloodied knife he'd stolen.
She met Chuck's gaze only one more time, before she started.
She figured the beginning was the best place to start.
A/N: Stay tuned.
-SC