A/N: Part One of the flashbacks in vs Baby. Explaining not only my interpretation of Sarah's inner thoughts, but attempting to patch some plot holes as well. Ahem...Chuck did have just a few, IMHO. That was only the secondary reason for my love of Chuck. This includes dialogue from that episode.
I knew the instant that I arrived that something wasn't right. At times, literally all I had to rely on were my instincts, and over the course of time I had learned to trust those instincts–perhaps the only thing I truly ever trusted. Everything about this mission was wrong. I had never worked in an asset-handler type of scenario before, but that was a classic dynamic that we studied and learned while at the Farm. I still had no legitimate reason why I needed a handler. Graham's reasons were thin and didn't hold up to scrutiny very well. Then, in Hungary, nothing that Ryker seemed to be doing, the way he was handling things, pun definitely intended, was unorthodox.
My finely honed skills at burying my emotions…presenting a stoic mask to the world…were insufficient. It was a shock when I realized this, not understanding until after the fact how Bryce's inexplicable departure and betrayal followed by that interrogation had left me ravaged inside. It was why I reached out for my mother. I tried to force it to the back of my mind, but thoughts of my mother had completely disrupted my very foundations, all the way to my core. Nothing I did, nothing I touched, seemed the same now that I felt she was part of my life again. Yes, it had only been one phone call…but it had been the most important phone call of my life.
She knew my job and what it entailed from the brief description I had given her. But the actual work…the granular details…she only just imagined. I was Sarah Walker. Even my mother agreed that she would call me Sarah. But my mother knew Samantha…the girl I hadn't been since Graham followed me into the woods in San Diego in 1998. I didn't know how to be both of them at the same time…Sarah and Samantha. It almost felt like I was carrying my mother with me…that somehow she would know, would see, maybe even feel whatever it was I was about to do. I couldn't clear my mind and focus on the mission. It was a dangerous place to be…distracted the way I was.
My sixth sense, if you will, was not immune to this distraction. The whole thing did feel wrong…but nothing felt right anymore. I eventually convinced myself that all of that distraction, that constant replaying of my mother's words in my head, was what was making me feel the way I did. It made sense to me. Everything would feel off…because I wasn't completely alone, lost, unloved…like I know I had been. I needed time to think…but it would have to wait. As always, the mission came first.
The mission.
Per protocol, because the mission was Ryker's and I was his asset, Graham told me next to nothing. I was on a need to know basis. Do what I was told. Those were my only distinct orders. Ryker decided the best way to "handle" me was from a distance. It was unusual, but not unheard of. Keeping us separate increased the chances for escape, the ability to institute a backup plan if the original one failed. I had instructions at my hotel, as well as all the equipment I was going to need.
I was due to meet Ryker at the proper coordinates at nine in the evening local time, using all of the gear he left for me. Body armor and two pistols, not just one. The bullets for the gun were armor piercing, able to penetrate flesh through a protective vest. It made me worry. I donned all my gear, pulled my long hair back into a braid, and left to meet him. I had no idea what Kieran Ryker looked like. All I had was an earwig, which activated the moment I put it in my ear. He never spoke to confirm the link, but I assumed it was active. Testing the connection was his responsibility, since he was technically my backup and I was in the field.
I stood in the darkness of the night, alone on the sidewalk. The area was totally deserted. I could see the distant lights from Budapest on the horizon, turning the sky milky gray in the thin strip between the speckles of light from the city and the blackness of the sky, all the stars hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds. It was the very end of summer, the last few days of August.
I wasn't used to the seasons, forgetting after having lived in warm climes like Mexico. Summer here was taking her last breaths, though the true end of summer was weeks away. My earliest memories were from Idaho, where winter is long. Every other season arrived later than expected and faded too soon. The first day of spring and the first spring day are two very different things. Something I remember my grandmother saying. Summer started when it still felt like spring…summer was gone before it turned to fall. Fall was the shortest it seemed, beautiful colors fading to rusty orange almost before my eyes as I watched. Winter came early…stayed late. I hadn't thought about winter in such a long time, but I was thinking about it now. I felt like it was inside me.
My phone rang.
It startled me, even panicked me. Ryker had me on the comlink. Even if he wasn't somewhere he could see me, he would almost certainly have heard that. I answered quickly to stop it from ringing, clicking the decline button, but placing the phone to my ear to hear the message as it was being left. My mother.
Hey, honey. I haven't heard from you for a while. I miss you. Wherever you are, I hope you're ok…safe. I want you to know, if you ever feel like you need a place to come home to, well, you have one.
Those words made my chest ache. She didn't understand when I'd called out of the blue, not understanding why I wouldn't stay in constant contact now that I'd found her. She was merely reiterating the offer she'd made…stressing it, it seemed. It was complicated, beyond complicated. Another distraction, I told myself in alarm. All of those thoughts flashed in my head like lightning, in between my clicking off the phone quickly when I heard the soft clicking of approaching footfalls and what I knew was Ryker's voice in my ear.
"Who was that?" he asked as he approached.
"Nobody," I told him coldly. It took all my strength in that moment to pull down the stoic mask, not let him see anything but deathly still calmness on my face.
"Are we a go?" he asked, never getting any closer to me than the gap where he stood.
"Affirmative," I confirmed. I armed myself and made my way to the building I had been instructed to infiltrate. Fundai Mafia. That was the only additional information Ryker had provided. The Hungarian Mafia. Something in general that would have been handled by Interpol, or their partners in the National Central Bureau in Europe. If the CIA was involved, it meant more than the local criminality–drugs, sex trafficking, money laundering and petty theft. Ties to terrorism or some other political influence that could threaten the security of the United States or her allies. It was not my job to ask questions.
I had no specifics. The building was large and ornate from the outside. It was separate from the surrounding buildings cramped together with very narrow alleyways in between. It was boxier as well, an indication of a new construct. The main entrance was relatively easy to breach. It was when I was inside that I realized I was in a private residence, the most opulent mansion I had ever seen with my own eyes and not in a photograph in a magazine. It looked like a palace. Before me in the foyer an enormous crystal chandelier hung over an ornately crafted staircase made from gleaming marble.
Everything was still and unoccupied. I could hear the quiet rumblings of a gathering of people in another area of the house. "Ryker, I'm in," I told him quietly.
I approached the occupied room. It was a banquet hall, probably just the dining room in this mansion. A noisy, sloppy group of men, all speaking Hungarian, were feasting around the table. It reminded me of paintings I had seen of kings and queens. I could smell the alcohol, open bottles galore, all the way to my quiet observatory in the entryway.
"How many?" he asked crisply.
I scanned around the table with my eyes. "I count 11," I told him.
"Copy that. On my word, take them out, all of them."
I stopped breathing for a moment, struggling to keep myself collected. Eleven men? With two handguns? By myself? He knows you're the best. Graham's words, echoing in my head. I had no room to doubt myself, not here.
Did Ryker sense that miniscule hesitation? That ever so slight change in my breath? He continued. "The men in that room just slaughtered the couple that lived in this house." My eyes scanned the room, flickering to a dark corner where I knew I saw their bodies, face down in pools of their own blood. "Give them the opportunity, they'll kill you, too. Now move."
The Ice Queen was suddenly there, freezing my insides solid so I could do what I needed to do. I shot the first two men before anyone knew I was there. I somersaulted onto the top of the banquet table and began making my way down, shooting one after the other, alternating between the right and the left side of the table. I know that the alcohol I had smelled saved me a bit, for the last four men, if they had been sober, would have had time to draw their weapons and kill me. They didn't. They were fumbling, swearing in Hungarian, even trying to dive for cover like cowards. I exhausted my supply of bullets and discarded both useless guns. Nine were dead. I crouched, pulling the knives from my leg holster, and shot one out from each hand, impaling the last two and killing them. I landed on my haunches, knuckles on the carpet to balance myself.
"Next?" I asked him, my voice bland and steady. I saved the panting for when he couldn't hear. I didn't trust him, I told myself, and letting him know I was even winded was like showing a vulnerability I didn't feel comfortable knowing he would see.
"Double doors. Three o'clock," Ryker's voice said in my ear. I stooped to retrieve another weapon, an automatic weapon fallen from the hands of one of the dead men. Guns they had used to kill the owners of this mansion.
I don't know if I would have thought this regularly, or if it was my heightened emotional state that was so tenuous, but my mind was racing. Ryker already knew they were dead inside. He had used the word "just." If these people were the Fundai Mafia, why wasn't I here to stop this couple's murder? Had he literally been ordered to wait until they had been murdered? In the dark world in which I lived, that was a real possibility. The end always justified the means in the CIA. If Ryker's orders had been to retrieve the package alone, the lives of the owners of the mansion were collateral damage. That was, initially, why I didn't question it.
Cautiously, I made my way through the doors, wielding the large and imposing firearm in front of me. I could hear the high, mewling noise of a baby crying. It got louder as I approached. I was in a nursery…like the kind I imagined must have existed in old fairy tales. It was as ornate as the rest of the home…but it was a room for a child, an infant. There was a stuffed giraffe almost as tall as I was guarding the entrance. A white crib was positioned in the center of the room. I walked closer, until I was leaning over the crib rail.
"The package is inside," Ryker told me.
The baby was a girl. She was dressed in a pink onesie, covered in a pink blanket that rose and fell as she kicked while she was screaming. Her little fists were raised in the air, clenched, as she cried and cried. Those were helpless tears. I had never been around a baby longer than it took to steal something from a distracted mother…but still, I knew what helplessness sounded like. This baby was crying for parents who could never come.
"Ryker, th-the package…" I stammered, wondering what in the world to do about this baby, alone in a house full of dead bodies.
"The baby is the package. Grab it and get out of there," he ordered.
The baby? I felt my blood turn to ice. Why was a baby, a human being, the package the CIA had sent Ryker, who had then sent me, to retrieve?
"But what am…what am I supposed…?" I didn't know how to finish. Just pick up a baby and do what…exactly? I had never even held a doll, let alone a child.
Ryker's voice was tight and flat in my ear. "Move, Walker. I'm your handler and that's an order," he demanded. Follow orders. There was no or else or…anything.
I shook off my daze, my terror, and reached down for the baby. Maybe I was a bit too rough, I don't know. I was rushing, and I grabbed her from underneath with both hands, jerking her. I had no way to gauge at the time how old the baby was. With the knowledge I have now, I think she must have been five or six months old. Old enough to support her own head, fortunately for me who unknowingly grabbed her like a rag doll, but not old enough to sit up on her own. I made her cry harder, startling her, this unknown person who wasn't her mother.
I held her against me with one arm while I unfastened the velcro on my body armor. I tucked her inside and refastened the velcro firmly around her, pressing her against my body in the front like I had seen other parents do in public with a carrier, like a Native American papoose. She was secure and she had miraculously stopped crying. I don't know if it was the proximity to me, or just her curiosity on such strange sights, but it was better. For some unknown reason, listening to her crying bit into my nerves like nothing I had ever known, pushing insanity in a relatively short period of time.
"There are more men coming," Ryker said crisply in my ear. My adrenaline surged, and I channeled it into my focus and my determination to get the baby out of there safely.
"Get the package and get out of there," he demanded again.
"It's going to be ok," I whispered to the baby, who looked at me curiously. She had the most extraordinary blue eyes, visible to me even in the dimly lit hallway of the mansion. Something deep inside me, some part I had never known was there, surged with a fierce protectiveness. I needed to get her out there safely. All she had in the entire world at that moment was me. I hadn't fully accepted it yet, but it turns out, she was all I had in that moment as well.
I walked towards the exit, towards the marble staircase. I could hear the noise on the lower level, more than one person charging to stop me. I had one automatic weapon in each hand, and a baby strapped to the front of me. She was tucked into my protective vest, but her head was vulnerable. I thought vaguely that the rapid machine gun fire could very well damage her hearing. We as adults work with ear protection when we are shooting firearms. I froze the worry, knowing there was no better option. Deaf was better than dead. I shot at least another six men on my way out of the mansion. I would shoot, and then check her, shoot, check, all the way out the door. Whoever they were, they wanted the baby alive.
I didn't have even an estimated guess as to why at this point, but those who saw I had the baby with me were reluctant to fire at me. They ended up dying for that hesitation, but they would have killed me without a second thought, so I merely used that to my advantage.
"I'm clear," I said to Ryker, needing to shout over the sound of the baby crying, for all the noise had seemed to terrify her.
Ryker's next words to me were the turning point in my brain. "Bring the package to Kavezo Mjelka tomorrow at ten."
"But–" I started, surprised. Twelve hours from now?
"Follow orders, Walker," he barked. I heard a crackle in my ear, and the communication was cut. That was all. No instructions, no communication. Just an unspoken order that I take care of a baby for 12 hours without the slightest preparation or know how.
I was in a daze again. He had literally disappeared. I ditched the automatic weapons into the river, making sure no one was anywhere nearby.
None of this made any sense. Why was taking custody of a baby Ryker's mission? The only logical reason would be for protection, for a baby was otherwise by nature completely innocent. A baby would need protection from kidnapping in most instances like that. I knew her parents had been wealthy. That mansion was their home and it was larger than some hotels I'd lived in over the course of my life. It still didn't make sense. We had been outside while the baby's parents were being murdered. Believing Ryker had been told to move afterward? That made less sense in this case.
An alarm bell started ringing inside my head. That something about Ryker I couldn't quite put my finger on…I didn't trust him. I was almost certain at least part of what he told me was a lie. I knew that–I could read people. I had been so flustered throughout, I had missed the usual signs and my brain was backtracking. If Ryker was lying to me, neither me nor the baby was safe.
I couldn't go back to the hotel where Ryker knew I was staying. Damn, it was so late, but I needed to find another place to stay where he couldn't find me. I calmed myself with the knowledge that he hadn't been suspicious of me at all, trusting me to show up the next day with the baby like everything was fine. My hotel was ten blocks from where we were. I checked everywhere for Ryker, making sure we were alone, and I called a taxi.
Fortunately it was dark, so the driver never questioned why I had a baby strapped inside a kevlar vest and not in an infant carrier. I told him the address, but also asked him in Hungarian if he knew of a different hotel, as close to Kavezo Mjelka as possible. My Hungarian was flawless, accentless, which I know helped the conversation. He knew of a place, a smaller hostel type lodging, run by his cousin. He called for me and arranged it. I asked him to wait for me while I went upstairs.
I grabbed my gear, tossing it into the trunk of the taxi before the driver could see that it was not traditional luggage, but hard cases of tactical gear. He drove the additional five blocks to the new lodgings. His cousin met us at the door, an older woman dressed in her nightclothes and a worn-looking robe. She was thrilled to see the baby, cooing and talking to her in quiet Hungarian, high-pitched like baby talk. Then she turned to me.
"Ugy nez ki, mint te," the woman gushed at me. She looks just like you. The woman thought the baby was mine. Of course she did, why wouldn't she? Why would I have a baby that wasn't mine? It still made me feel so strange I couldn't shake the feeling, even as she walked us upstairs and into the room.
What if she was my baby? The initial thought was frightening. I didn't know how to be a mother, not in the slightest bit, never even having pretended when I was a small child. As frightened as I was, it was more frightening to admit a part of me ached inside at the thought…that she was mine. That she could be. Or…that I could be someone's mother. You didn't join the CIA because you wanted 2.4 kids and a house in the suburbs. Sam's words, haunting me. No, I had joined the CIA because those were things I knew, no matter what, I could never have.
No matter how much I may have wanted them.
As I climbed the stairs behind the old woman, my legs trembling from the exertion after everything else that had happened, I could at least admit to myself that just because I was afraid of something didn't mean I didn't want it. Or even need it. These past weeks, since Bryce had gone, had left me with an empty hole inside, aching like a hole left after a tooth has been pulled. It wasn't Bryce-specific. Only newly apparent, because he had been a temporary bandage on that same old wound…that was exposed to air again, and bleeding anew.
The room she showed me into was dingy and run down, but clean. There were two twin beds and a small table, the beds separated from the rest of the room by a multi-tiered shelf covered with knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. Walking by, I could see perfectly down onto the street in the dark, the cafe where Ryker had instructed me to meet him in full view below. I paid her, watching as she tried to look quickly, thinking I wouldn't notice, at my odd apparel and luggage. I paid her extra, telling her in Hungarian that I appreciated her going to the extra trouble at the late hour. It was, fortunately, enough money to not make her question.
Then she left…and I was alone…with a five month old baby.