A/N: For those of you ready to smack Chuck after the last bit, you weren't the only one. Haha.

NOW

I can imagine the moment

Breaking out through the silence

All the things that we both might say

And the heart, it will not be denied

'Til we're both on the same damn side

All the barriers blown away

"Come Talk To Me"

Peter Gabriel

May 3, 1952

Worcester, Massachusetts

Standing alone on the back porch, watching the sky slowly blacken as night fell, Chuck lost track of time. An evening breeze chilled him, unprepared in just his shirt sleeves. Shivering slightly, defeated, Chuck finally walked back into the kitchen. Sarah and Casey were long gone and his jacket lay folded over the back of a kitchen chair.

Gertrude was waiting for Chuck. She leaned against the sink counter, arms crossed and, as he came through the door, her foot began tapping. Chuck wondered what had transpired after Sarah had darted inside, what Sarah might have said.

Gertrude stopped leaning. "Have you completely lost your mind?" she demanded in exasperation.

He wished the floor would open and swallow him. He felt out of control, like a ball bearing bouncing down a steep incline. Gertrude's anger shocked him, although Chuck didn't have to wonder about the reason. How much did Casey tell her about my plan?

"I think so," he murmured, after a demoralized shrug. He sat at the kitchen table, dropping hard into the chair and his shoulders slumping with exhaustion.

Unsympathetic, she marched a few steps towards him. "John told me what you were going to talk to Sarah about," she explained, each word underlined with disbelief. "Maybe he's just as crazy as you …for actually letting you do it!" She was livid, panting, her nostrils flaring.

Chuck was depressed, aching with the knowledge of the pain he had caused Sarah during their entire discussion. He wanted to bang his head against the table, punish himself for his failure.

"What else was I supposed to do, Gertrude?" he asked helplessly, still cowering a little before her. "I am out of options and almost out of time."

Gertrude's hand rose to her mouth quickly, biting into the side of her index finger in an attempt at self-control before losing and flailing both hands, her eyes flashing. "Marriage is a holy sacrament, Chuck! A sacrament! What you're proposing is profane, mocking the church! What priest would marry you two, knowing it's just a paper marriage, only entered into for money?" she demanded.

"I wasn't expecting a church wedding," he said flatly, defensive.

"I should hope not," she snapped.

Chuck bristled, stiffened in his chair. "You and Casey were married by a justice of the peace!" .

An angry finger jabbed in the air towards him, the same one Gertrude had bitten. "That's not the same thing and you know it! We had nothing! It cost almost ten times as much to get married in a church as it did for the license and a justice of the peace," Gertrude told him. "God isn't looking down with a clipboard and a stop watch. It's about what's in your heart. Sincerity! Truth! Going into a marriage deceitfully is wrong."

"I'm trying to help her, Gertrude!" he shouted in frustration. "I'm literally all she has…and my hands are tied unless I have that money… to help her."

She stepped closer to where he sat, leaning into his personal space, some of her anger gone. "Yes, you are all she has. You are all she ever really had." Her voice softened. "But also all she ever really wanted. Chuck, you hurt her, can't you see that? You proposed marriage like you were selling her a used car with good trade-in value, talking about the odometer, kicking tires. Like she was a complete stranger, like she means nothing to you, like the marriage would mean nothing to you, except in dollars and cents."

"Stop! Everyone needs to stop doing that, ok?" he growled angrily. "Everyone, including the mailman apparently, knows everything about how I feel. They know everything about how she feels." He paused, looking into Gertrude's eyes and softening his voice to match hers. "Have you ever, once, heard Sarah say anything that would lead you to believe she had those kinds of feelings for me?"

She was quick to retort. "No. That girl was a mystery of silence from day one, Chuck. She barely talked to us, even though she was here almost every day. But I know what I saw," Gertrude argued.

"No, you don't!" Chuck groused back, too tired to be more than petulant.

Gertrude lowered her voice further, a tactic she used frequently, for it demanded focus and quiet attention. "You two being apart for so long while you were at school was torture for both of you, I know that. You had college to focus on, but she was…alone. She was like a raft floating on the ocean…lost. It wasn't your fault, Chuck. There was nothing you could have done, but still, it hurt her."

"Until she started seeing Bryce," he whispered, shifting his eyes to the floor as he named his rival.

Gertrude sighed, then growled, a tamer version of her husband's habit. She regarded Chuck silently, eyes narrowed, as she internally debated. Chuck could see her reach a resolution. "If this is where this has to go, then so be it. It's time."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Bryce Larkin. Your supposed nemesis," she said, a finality in her tone. "Let's get this out in the open, Chuck."

Chuck's default setting when Bryce came up in conversation was to deflect or change the subject. Evade. He had been doing that for almost three years. Sadly, it reminded him of how he had been when he was little, unable to bear talk about his parents and sister, or the manner in which they died. He had never examined himself closely, faced facts. His jealousy, its intensity, was there because he loved Sarah. He was the only one who had missed that. The jealousy had fueled his avoidance and unwillingness to talk about it in the meantime.

"You know, all the hush and whispering about Bryce is because of John. Personally, he didn't like Bryce any more than I did, but he refuses to speak ill of another veteran, most of all one who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. I don't like it either, but…let's call a spade a spade. Truth. Being killed in action doesn't cover or erase the mistakes made in civilian life. The Lord is Bryce's judge, God rest his soul," she crossed herself, "and it is not my place to judge, but enough is enough. I owe a debt to the truth."

To Chuck, it felt as if Gertrude had suddenly started talking in tongues, forcing him to translate from a strange language. He ran her words backwards and forwards in his mind, looking for something beneath the phrases that could perhaps explain what he didn't understand. Her words ran contrary to everything he believed about Bryce.

"Wh-what are…you saying? I don't understand," he said slowly.

Gertrude was still reticent, Chuck saw; she gnawed her bottom lip. Finally, she took a breath, dropping her hands to her sides. "Bryce was so jealous of you, Chuck…his eyes turned green when he looked at you. He was jealous of how smart you were and especially of how close you were to Sarah. Probably of your kindness and goodness too. You only had eyes for Sarah in those days, and so you never noticed his green eyes, but he was circling her like a vulture, waiting…waiting for you to leave."

She paused, stepping to the side and sitting in the chair across from Chuck. His eyes were narrowed as he contemplated her words.

She sighed. Her voice was gentle and compassionate when she continued. "When you left that first time, when Sarah was 14, she would show up here after school, even though she was old enough to take care of herself. Did you know that? She used to lie on your bed, her head on your pillow. She counted the days until she could talk to you, and suffered until you were back home. Marking days on the calendar like she was counting down a prison sentence. She did that for two years. She lived your absence."

Chuck had been aware of that. She had revealed it indirectly in the letters she had written to him. Things she wrote and did not write. The idea of her there, alone in his room, both comforted and tortured him. Hearing it from Gertrude pierced his heart. He listened in rapt silence.

"I don't know what happened after she turned 16, but something obviously did. It was like she went into mourning…not eating or sleeping, just like when Jack died. Bryce was there, overbearing at times, but he was there. He made her smile. He paid attention to her," Gertrude explained.

She cleared her throat, pondering. "But he was certainly…no gentleman. He was embarrassingly inappropriate with her…in public. Pawing at her. Could never keep his hands to himself. In his own way, he was as bad as Carina. Sarah was a trophy to him, a beautiful girl on his arm like he won first prize." Gertrude looked into Chuck's eyes. "Like he finally beat you at something."

Gertrude's words finally seemed like English to Chuck. But they still ran backward against all he had taken himself to know. He searched his memory, for once facing the scenes he had tried to block out. But he still could not quite manage it. "Gertrude, I saw them together when I was here, both summers."

She chuckled, but there was no humor in her tone. "You were seeing what you expected to see, Chuck. That's human nature. I understand why you lost your objectivity. But more times than I could count, he embarrassed her, humiliated her. I would pull her away to talk, sometimes, because I could sense she needed a break, a moment without his hands on her. He was like an octopus."

Chuck felt nauseated, dizzy, like he was losing his focus on his surroundings. A painting he had looked at his entire life, rotated in its frame, revealed an entirely new scene. Chuck squeezed his eyes closed, recalling the same images Gertrude spoke of, not wanting to remember them but forcing himself.

She continued, stressing her point. "How much of what you thought you saw was Sarah, consenting…and how much was actually Bryce, insisting?" Gertrude prodded. "He was domineering. Coarse though he always thought he was so smooth. Despite all that, at the end of the day, I do think she cared about him, for what that's worth."

"She was with him for two years, Gertrude," Chuck replied, his voice hushed.

"Just as long as you were with what's-her-name," Gertrude replied.

Gertrude pressed on, unaware or unconcerned for his discomfiture. Vehemently, she swore, "And on the happiest of the daysBryce and Sarah were together, she never once looked at him the way she looked at you. Not once, not close. The way she always looked at you…even when she was just 14."

What was Gertrude saying? Why had he never seemed to listen to her about any of this? She had always known how Chuck had felt, even when Casey had still just thought his feelings were platonic, brotherly.

"What are you trying to say?" he asked. "You were the one who told me how hard she took his death."

Gertrude bit her lip, crossed her arms again. Chuck couldn't discern the expression on her face. Suspicion, definitely, but…then sadness, almost heartbrokenness. Her voice cracked when she answered, a tone he couldn't remember ever hearing from his stern guardian. "She was never the same once he died. We didn't really understand it, she is a mystery, but, then, grief is strange, and it can take a toll in different ways. She didn't grieve properly, that I'm sure of. She never went to his funeral."

Chuck was reeling. It was such a simple fact, so bizarre to contemplate now. He had never questioned it, never even thought that he needed to. He never spoke of that memorial, not to Sarah, not the Caseys, for the same self-protective reason. He couldn't bear it, combined with the thoughts and images it would have created in his head. How could he not have known that?

"W-why? I know that was her senior year, away at Dana Hall, but…are you telling me she stayed at school even during the funeral?" he asked.

"Chuck, she stayed at school that entire year, including Christmas break. Even when you came back early in March, after you broke off your engagement," Gertrude reminded him.

"I know," he said slowly, as the time circled in his mind. "I guess I just assumed, you know, she would have come back for the funeral. It was only one day."

As she spoke, he relived the time. He had felt like such a failure, his engagement ended, so miserable and dejected, spiraling in self-pity. He had known she was away at school, but he had written to her that he was coming back. Hope of seeing her again had been the only thing that kept him in one piece during the trip home. But she was not there.

Chuck had asked Jack's permission to visit her in Wellesley, once he realized she had stayed at school. Jack had forbidden it, in the smooth-talking way Jack always used, the way that made it seem like it was something both he and Chuck had agreed upon…the importance of her schoolwork, impending graduation, unnecessary distraction after such a difficult year. Etc., etc.

The graduation that she also never attended. She arrived back in Worcester in early May, looking worse than Chuck had ever seen her, even worse than she had just appeared at Jack's funeral. Rail thin, pale…and haunted.

He had assumed that was the perpetual grieving since October, since the news of Bryce's death in Korea. Now, having more facts and a clearer picture, nothing made sense.

Chuck was deep in thought when he heard the door close, Casey standing there with his hat in his hand, shaking his bare head. "Bang up job, Chuck," Casey grumbled.

"Oh, John, leave him be. I've been at him already. Can't you see he knows he made a mistake?" Gertrude defended.

"Did Sarah say anything to you?" Chuck asked Casey.

"Quiet as a church mouse the entire ride. I think Roxanne had company, too," Casey added, stressing the word "company" like it was an epithet. "I told Sarah I would stay, if she didn't feel safe. Carina came outside and got her, and they went inside."

Casey looked between Gertrude and Chuck, quietly contemplating. "Anyway, Kid, we got cut off when we were talking before. I wish I'd had a little warning that you were just plowing ahead full speed. You just blurted it out, didn't you? Gave her a sales pitch instead of an actual proposal." He clicked his tongue in disapproval, shaking his head.

Chuck narrowed his eyes again, his mouth twisting. "What did you say to Gertrude when you proposed?" he asked testily, mocking. "I'm sure it was like a Shakespearean sonnet, Casey." He pursed his lips, grinding his teeth together in irritation.

"That's none of your–"

"What John said," Gertrude replied, raising her voice over her husband's to stop his beginning tirade, "is that he said he thought we were a good team, and we should make it permanent."

Chuck scoffed. "Wow, Casey, eloquence," he added sarcastically.

Casey growled, mocking in turn. "That's because it was me saying it. You don't talk like that. Go with your girlish strengths. Lady feelings, Chuck. Anything less from you comes across as insincere."

"Alright, hush, you two." Gertrude reprimanded them both. "No need to kick Chuck when he's down, and John, I know you're upset too." She folded her hands on the table in front of her. "Although, John's right, Chuck. You need to make this right, as soon as possible. You do that by telling her how you feel. Sincerity. Truth. I know you're terrified to just come out and tell her you love her. Those are just words anyway. Tell her why you feel as you do . That's a better representation of your motives. Words can be lies. Actions never are."

Chuck thought in silence, Gertude sitting across from him and Casey standing behind him, a clock ticking. "Her…reaction was…strange," Chuck eventually whispered. "She didn't say no, or try to give me some flowery let down. She said she couldn't marry me. Like she was a Capulet and I was a Montague."

"From Romeo and Juliet," Gertrude murmured softly to Casey as he stood behind Chuck. Gertrude possessed more literary knowledge than Casey, although neither had any formal education beyond high school. She never condescended when she filled him in on allusions or references he didn't understand. Chuck felt ashamed for his earlier jab about sonnets.

Gertrude's relaxed expression changed as she pressed her lips tightly together, her blinking pattern artificially accelerated. It was distracting, and Chuck looked over his shoulder at Casey, wondering if Casey was communicating something non-verbally to his wife behind Chuck's back. But Casey's face was as stern as always, nothing visible but his exhaustion, worsened by the late hour and the extra driving, and perhaps by all the Shakespeare.

Chuck sighed in resignation, standing. His chair screeched on the floor as he slid it back. "I can't fix anything tonight. I'm gonna try and get some sleep," he announced. He left them alone in the kitchen as he trudged upstairs for bed.

May 4, 1952

Worcester, Massachusetts

Chuck had intended to sleep, but his mind would not cooperate. He lay awake almost the entire night, watching the moonlight fade to gray sunlight through the slits between his curtains. He replayed the scene on the porch: the words he had said, words he wished he had said, words he wished he hadn't said, words he wanted to take back. It was all sludge, sewage that had polluted the waters that separated him and Sarah. There was no easy solution, no immediate remedy. The delicacy of the situation was best suited to patience, a calm approach; but he had no more time left. He'd spent the time in his bed telling himself the only thing he could do during these hours was sleep–but his mind would not shut off.

His entire life with Sarah replayed like a movie, seen from the new perspective suggested by Gertrude.

Standing on his porch on a humid August night, his heart in a thousand pieces and aching as Sarah wept in his arms, telling him she didn't know how she could live without him…

Disembarking from the train in a heavy spring downpour, ambushed by a blur with blonde hair, nearly knocking him off his feet as she launched herself at him… Back at the same station on a cool, late summer morning while Sarah hung from his neck, attempting to disguise her sadness from him with a plastic smile, though he knew the truth all the while…

A gentle peck on her cheek, combined with a birthday wish, that with a slight turn of her head became a passionate, desperately deep kiss, overcoming him with his own need and hunger…then his need to deny her when she begged him for more, heartbroken. He believed the wine he had tasted on her lips had clouded her judgment, muddled her…later, he convinced himself she hadn't wanted him the way she had told him she did, that her words were the effect of the wine, like her kiss.

Reading the letter she had sent him at the beginning of November, when she told him she had gone to the movies to see The Three Musketeers, describing the movie and the actors for an entire page before mentioning that Bryce had taken her…

Another letter in February where she described a new dress in great detail, only to add, almost as an afterthought, that the dress was to wear to Bryce's junior prom in April…

The reserved, almost shy hug Sarah gave him when he returned once more, her out of Bryce's grip to do it, only to be pulled back, away from Chuck, the very next second, the green tint in Bryce's blue eyes…

Sarah's smeared lipstick, disheveled hair, and unbuttoned blouse when she had returned one hour past curfew, not aware Chuck was in her house with her father, talking business…

Had he honestly misinterpreted all of those interactions?

With Gertrude's words in his head, along with his razor sharp memory and his willingness finally to remember, he examined every moment. Perhaps Bryce had made her smile, even made her laugh at times, but the smile he knew–her beautiful, radiant smile that turned her eyes the color of the ocean on a peaceful summer day–that smile had always been just for him, directed at him, when no one else was near. Could it be true that instead of gravitating towards Bryce because of how she felt about Bryce, she was gravitating away from Chuck because of how much pain being near him caused, after his rejection of her, his choice of Jill?

Had she ignored that kiss, not because she thought it was a mistake, but because he had discouraged her, downplayed it? As he reeled from the encounter, he had never clarified that he believed her judgment to be compromised…that a 16 year old girl's desire for a 20 year old man was not appropriate…that he respected her far too much to let things progress beyond the kiss.

Once he was engaged to Jill, once he'd told Sarah about the engagement via a letter, her return letter, almost seven days later, had been happy for him, but the happiness had been expressed in cliches, and the paper inexplicably stained with water droplets he was now sure, looking back, were tears.

The more he thought, the more he tended to believe what Gertrude had tried to make him face. Sarah had been in love with him during all those events. Their fearful hearts, their large age difference and other apparently impassable obstacles had stunted and twisted their relationship, sending her to Bryce, and him to Jill. Now they stood in the tangled underbrush, all that remained when their story had played out in live action. The realization sat like an anvil on his chest, constricting his breath.

Did she still love him?

He had no way to know for himself, like this. He felt as if he were trying to discern minute specifics without a broad understanding of the situation. Something had happened to Sarah, just as Gertrude had explained. For years, he had believed it to be grief over her lost love. Now, he was befuddled, wondering just what it was he had witnessed, what he was still witnessing, almost two years later.

He needed to talk to her again, only this time, he needed to do as Casey had suggested–play to his strengths. Sincerity. Truth. He just hoped Sarah could forgive him, and give him the chance to explain.

A/N: Thanks to Zettel for pre-reading, helping me turn my frequent jumble of words and thoughts into a coherent text. :)