A/N1: Ownership of Chuck is like the weather. We talk about it, but never do anything about it.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Stephen, holding a bottle of wine, said to Emma, "Thank you so much for having me over."
Emma, with a huge smile, gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Of course, Stephen. We're family. Someone has to watch over these two." She gestured at Chuck and Sarah. "No telling what trouble they might get up to without their parents around. And thanks for the wine. You know it won't survive the afternoon."
It was election day 2008. By the end of the day, the world would know if John McCain or Barak Obama would be the next President of the United States. Most of Emma's guests had voted in the morning, but Stephen hadn't. His cynicism about government was pegged at eleven on a scale up to ten. With offices closed for the national holiday, Emma had invited people over for a pool party.
Chuck and Sarah, Ellie and Devon, Casey and Eileen (although Eileen would have to leave early to work at O'Malley's), Stephen, and Zondra. Molly toddled around the pool area in her bathing suit playing with any adult who would pay attention to her. The adorable little munchkin wasn't lacking in attention.
The day was sunny with the temperature in the high 70's or low 80's. Molly was thrilled to spend time in the pool with Chuck and Sarah, who were patiently teaching her to swim.
Stephen sat with Emma, sipping wine and watching his son and future daughter-in-law with the small child.
"My God, they are going to make wonderful parents," he said quietly, with a small smile.
"Yes," replied Emma. "You think you can't love any more than you do, but when you have children your love expands and expands. You just want to wrap your arms around them and never let go."
"Yes," said Stephen, forlornly.
With a gasp, Emma put a hand on his arm and said, "Oh, Stephen. I'm sorry. That was so thoughtless of me."
Both of them looked up at the sound of Devon yelling, "CANNONBALL" as he jumped high off the diving board, tucking his knees to his chest and generated an enormous splash when he hit the water. Molly's joyful laughter was like the most wonderful music.
"No, Emma. No apologies necessary. You're right. The kids deserve to be loved. I...I made some decisions long ago. Some hard decisions."
"Do you regret them?"
"I don't know." He paused for a long time, thinking. Finally, he said, "It's a counterfactual. I know the decisions I made and what happened. I'll never really know what would have happened if I'd made different decisions. It's only speculation. It might have worked out better, but it might have been much worse. I can only guess. Charles and Eleanor have turned out to be wonderful amazing people with fantastic lives. And they did it without me around. Would they have been better or worse if I had stayed with them? Would they even be alive if I had stayed? I don't know."
"Alive?" asked Emma with a bit of shock. "Literally? That's pretty dark."
Stephen seemed a bit startled by what she had said, "Oh, no, no, no. I didn't mean it literally, of course. Just an expression."
"Humm," said Emma.
"What I mean is things can happen that you don't expect. The world can throw you surprises. Coincidences. Suddenly, for no good reason, three different biographies of the King of England's second cousin are released in the same month. Things that shouldn't be happening and yet somehow do. God only knows what is going on with my family in alternate universes."
"Alternate universes? Ok, I guess, but at least in this one, your children are here with you. They seem to have forgiven you your absence."
"Forgiven? Well, yeah. Charles has, I think. Eleanor? Maybe. Maybe somewhat." He gave a wry smile. "At least she's not yelling at me anymore."
"I hear you're spending a lot of time with her," said Emma, taking a sip of her wine. She watched Sarah jump high off the diving board and do a tight flip in the air before slicing cleanly into the water.
"We have a project together and the more we bounce ideas off each other, the more ideas we come up with. She's brilliant. She has one of the best minds I've ever encountered."
"The apple and the tree?" asked Emma with a smile.
Stephen gave a quiet chuckle and sipped his wine. "Nice thought, but not quite. I'm an engineer. To me things are on and off. Black and white. Mathematical. I'm pretty good at what I do. Eleanor is a brain scientist. Maybe one day we'll know enough about the brain to be able to reduce it to math, but not yet. There's much more gray area than black and white in what she does. And she has the imagination and the brilliance to make intuitive leaps, to follow hunches, to get around problems in ways that would never occur to me.
"I ran into a problem on a project. A brick wall. I've been hitting that wall with everything I had for years. And I haven't gotten anywhere, not surprisingly. Eleanor came into the problem from an entirely different direction and, so far at least, we haven't found a wall. I've been working on this for years and made very little progress, but now with Eleanor helping me...or me helping her, I guess, I have some glimmerings that we may be onto something. There's a ton of hard work ahead, but maybe, just maybe, it will lead somewhere."
"That's great. Can you tell me about it?"
"I'm sorry. I can't," he said.
"No worries. I understand," she said, raising her hand in a stop motion. "I know enough about Sarah and Chuck and their friends to not ask questions."
Stephen started to laugh softly, "Well, yeah. It's part of this life, I guess."
Chuck stood on the end of the diving board, stretched out his arms to his side and slowly fell face first into the water, making Molly and Sarah howl with laughter.
Zondra, Eileen and Casey sat by the side of the pool with their feet in the water and their drinks in hand and laughed along with the rest.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sweating and more than a little sore in her legs, or at least so much of her legs as she still had, Carina was nevertheless having fun. It had been a long day already. She'd been up at six AM and gone for a run, a much shorter run than she was used to, but a run nonetheless. She'd showered, had breakfast and had gone to vote. A bit of time exchanging emails with DC and then off to her class. She knew that fun wasn't the point of the class, but the truth was she'd always enjoyed martial arts and this was no exception.
Sure, she was operating with the impediment of her new leg, but this particular stick fighting class was incredibly exciting regardless. Master Lee was as patient as he was proficient. Hwa Rang Do was a Korean martial art which, among other things, included a special training module on fighting with a cane.
Carina had had a cane built to her specifications and was using that in place of the canes from the bin in the corner. She thought it best to train with the tool she would have at hand. It might end up damaged, but she'd just spring for the cost of another one if that happened.
The student came at her with a low kick, which she blocked with the cane, followed by an overhand knife strike using the training knife. Again, she blocked the knife hand with the cane, twisted it to lock the handle firmly into place on his arm, then pulled him forward while collapsing herself down into a side roll. Her training partner tumbled headfirst over her head and landed on the mats with his knife hand out to the side and locked in place by the handle of the cane. Rolling to her side, she smoothly brought the cane tip up to a stop an inch from his throat.
"Superb, Ms. Miller," said Master Lee. "Superb"
Carina grinned at the praise as she began to rise. Fuckin' A.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
So far, Los Angeles sucked. And not a little bit, either. It really sucked. Tony Loria had come in on the flight from St. Louis. It was supposed to land in the morning, but it had been delayed by weather over the Rockies. He'd managed to sleep on the flight, thank goodness. He'd stayed up late the night before to hear the final election returns. Barak Obama would be the country's next president. An African-American man as the Commander in Chief, in a first.
Coming out of the terminal at LAX someone tried to steal his briefcase, but had misjudged and only ended up tugging at it for a few moments before running off in fright as a security guard came charging around the corner.
Then, getting out of his cab at the hotel, he'd almost been run over by some crazy driver whose car leaped the curb and came barreling at him. He'd managed to dodge back at the last second. The car came so close to him that he felt the wind of its passing.
Hotel employees scrambled to help him, but by then the car had disappeared. He hoped that there was some evidence on a security camera or something. Drivers like that shouldn't be on the road. Or on the grass, in this case.
He checked into this room and left his suitcase upstairs. Then he called a car service to take him to his afternoon meeting. After an hour or so, where he washed up and relaxed, he went downstairs to connect with his car.
The driver, a burly man in his late forties or early fifties, met him in the lobby.
"Mr. Loria?"
"Yes. And you're Mr. Tate?"
"Yes, sir. Burt Tate," said the man, shaking hands.
"Good to meet you, Mr. Tate," said Loria.
"Please call me Burt," said the big man.
"Sounds like a plan, Burt. Please call me Tony," said Loria. "You know where we're going?"
"Yeah. It's already in the GPS. If traffic isn't extra fucked up, we ought to be there in about 45 minutes or so."
"That's cool. My meeting isn't for another hour and a half, so we ought to be in plenty of time," said Loria.
"Good. You ready or you anything you need to do?" asked Tate.
"All good. Let's go."
Tate led him out to the car, a simple black sedan. Loria got into the back seat and Tate took the wheel.
As they pulled away, Tate said, "You in town for long, Tony?"
"Naw," replied Loria. "In and out. Meeting this afternoon and then out for home tomorrow."
"Aw, too bad. It's a fun city," said Tate.
"Yeah. I've been here before. But, honestly, if I came to spend more time, I'd have brought my wife."
"Yeah," agreed Tate. "I hear you. Folks excited about business travel haven't done it."
"True. Luckily, I don't have to travel too much. This is a one off exception," said Loria. "Special client request."
"Client?" asked Tate. "You a lawyer?"
"Yeah. But don't hold that against me," Loria said with a chuckle.
"Nope, not me. I got no problem with lawyers," said Tate. "I know not everyone agrees with me, but whatever."
They moved through traffic, which was heavy even in the early afternoon. Eventually, they stopped at an intersection leading to an onramp for one of the myriad highways in Los Angeles. The light changed to green and the line of cars ahead of them began to move forward.
As the car ahead of them, a black SUV with tinted windows, got to the light it stopped, even though the light was green. After a moment or two, Tate gave a short beep of his horn, to move the car in front of him along. But the light had changed to red and their car was trapped by the other stopped cars.
Suddenly, the driver's and passenger doors of the SUV in front of them opened and two men in dark suits got out. Both men had suppressed pistols in their hands and came towards the stopped car on either side.
"GUNS," screamed Tate, slamming his car into park. "Move over to this side now," he commanded Loria.
Loria, stunned and barely aware of what was going on, obeyed the commanding voice of his driver.
As the man with the gun came opposite the driver's side, he began to raise his weapon to point at Loria. Tate shot him three times in the center of the chest and once in the head on the way down. Then he bailed out of the car. Once outside, he kicked the dead man's gun away, into traffic on the other side of the car, as he crouched down.
He moved so quickly and decisively that he was able to open the rear passenger door and pull Loria out to his side of the car.
The remaining man, on the far side, began to move towards the back of the car. As his head appeared to the crouching men, Tate screamed "LAPD. DROP YOUR WEAPON, ASSHOLE."
The man turned towards the voice and his weapon turned with him. Tate didn't hesitate and shot him three times in the upper chest and throat. The man's lifeless body was blown backwards by the impact of the bullets.
Tate got up from the crouch and moved to the body in the back. After checking it and securing the man's weapon, he came around to the other dead man. After performing his checks and stopping traffic in the other direction with his badge held high, he retrieved the dead man's weapon from the street.
Next, he walked to the car in front of them. He turned it off and then looked inside for anything that might be a threat.
After all that was done, he returned to Loria, who was quietly freaking out. Loria looked at Tate with a stunned expression and said, "LAPD?"
"Yeah. I moonlight sometimes to make some extra scratch to pay my ex-wife. Shit. What a goddamn shit show."
"I think I'm pretty goddamn lucky you were here," he said, shaking with the reaction.
Tate sat himself down on the street next to his passenger. "Yeah. I think you're right. Shit, dude. Who wants you dead?"
"Fuck, man. I have no fucking idea. I'm just a glorified delivery guy for this trip. For fucks sake."
More police showed up. Tate showed his badge and talked to them, handing over his weapon. Within a couple of minutes there were dozens of police officers and several detectives.
One of the detectives came over to Loria and said, "Mr. Loria, right?"
"Yeah. I'm Tony Loria."
"What's your story, Mr. Loria?"
"I flew in from St. Louis today and arrived a couple of hours ago. Checked into my hotel, dropped my bag and called a car service to take me to a meeting. Stopped at the light and these guys came at us with guns. Thank God I was with Tate."
"Who're you meeting with?" asked the detective.
"A man named Carmichael. He's got offices at Castle Studios."
The detective visibly started and said, "Charles Carmichael?" Loria nodded, surprised that the man had recognized the name. "Oh, boy," said the detective under his breath.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A/N2: Wonder what Loria has to say to Chuck? Stay tuned, my friends.