A/N: The first of two chapters that covers the span between January and September, ironic as this original hiatus was caused by a writer's strike. This is the shorter one. Sorry for the brief delay. Work...and being cross-eyed from writing and rewriting for work. Enjoy.
After the Lizzie incident, as it ended up being called, Casey and I worked almost for a week straight tying up all those loose ends. We had to be sure that the potential leak had been contained–that no one in Fulcrum knew that Chuck was the Intersect. What we had done by emptying out the Buy More seemed mild in comparison to the extensive surveillance sweeps we had to do following that incident.
We checked Chuck's apartment, his vehicle, Ellie and Devon's vehicles, the common areas in both the Buy More and at Westside Medical for starters. We swept Casey's apartment, Casey's vehicle, my hotel room at Maison23, my vehicle, and both inside and outside the Wienerlicious. We literally went through what felt like the entire city of Burbank with a fine tooth comb, but at least we could be sure–we had caught all the spying done on Chuck by enemy agents. Once everything was clean, we ramped up our security and surveillance capabilities.
During this time, the decision was made to create a more permanent solution to the haphazard equipment we had installed at the Buy More or in the Wienerlicious. The CIA purchased the building where the Wienerlicious was located, under the guise of a shell corporation. The transition was slow, but to the outside world it appeared that the Wienerlicious had gone out of business, and a frozen yogurt shop, called the Orange Orange, was opening in its place.
The Wienerlicious was an actual private business, hence my having to deal with Scooter, who had continuously complicated everything. The Orange Orange was a front, fully owned and operated by the CIA. I still appeared like a worker, but I was the only on-site employee. We could close and lock the door, close the business…not worry about innocent bystander customers or co-workers. The job was easier to do, less labor intensive, than the hot dog shop. The only real work I did was fill the topping bar, fill the machines, and clean the machines daily. The CIA had actually made the comical argument that working at the Wienerlicious was too much, too distracting for a cover job. Sometimes I have to laugh out loud…it really was that ridiculous.
Someone was paid probably a lot of money to write a report about me cooking hot dogs while trying to protect the Intersect. And on top of that, it had to be classified as Top Secret, too. Whenever I hear conspiracy theories being tossed about, people believing all this elaborate stuff about the government, I think about this instead. Don't get me wrong, there was always a lot that we knew as operatives that the general population just wasn't privy to. That's the nature of classified material. However, to counterbalance that, remember the government can't effectively deliver mail more than 75% of the time…and they spent more time analyzing my hot dog cooking than they did Director Graham and whatever it was he was doing with apparent impunity. Laughing yet? Because you should be. It's a lot nicer than crying, let me tell you.
In addition to the Orange Orange, the CIA and NSA started building an underground substation accessible through the yogurt shop. The size of a football field, but 100% subterranean, the base was to be elaborate, eliminating the need for any above ground apparatus that had the potential to be surveilled or recorded by anyone else. No more interrupted conversations.
At the same time, the level of video surveillance we were conducting on Chuck increased. We used Casey's apartment until the base was completed, but the amount of audio and video footage quadrupled in a very short period of time. There was literally no place Chuck could go where he wasn't being watched by someone by the time we were through.
Knowing what I know now, the entire story that was unfolding behind the scenes, I wonder what the true purpose to all of that really was. Before the CIA purchased the building, the elimination order for Chuck was known, and had already been communicated to Casey, although the point of completion of the next version of the Intersect was the deciding factor. The construction didn't even finish for good until after the Intersect computer was completed. Whatever it was, it couldn't have involved Chuck, considering Graham expected him to be eliminated before that base ever went into use. I never knew for sure, but things got stranger as time passed.
At the beginning of the second week of February, Lizzie, the Fulcrum mole, was found dead in her holding cell before she could be moved to a secure facility for questioning. Graham had told me they were ruling it as a suicide–that she had sacrificed herself per orders before she could be tortured for information. I got a random call in the middle of the night three days after Lizzie died, from Bryce.
I know it was Bryce–I recognized his voice. I never actually got to speak to him, for he hung up before I could say anything other than hello. The number was from a burner phone and untraceable. All he said: Lizzie didn't commit suicide, Fulcrum still officially believed he was the Intersect, and not to trust Graham with anything. Then he hung up. I never told Chuck or Casey about that call when it happened, not being sure what it meant. I don't even know why I was so sure, but I convinced myself Bryce did that, not out of mission specifics, but personally. He wanted me to know whatever he was out there doing deep undercover, he was still thinking about Chuck, running that same type of interference he had done at Stanford. It was an extension of the discussion we'd had that night after he'd returned from the dead, only without the words. I remained vigilant…and continued to be extra cautious wherever Graham was concerned.
I wished I could have been able to tell him that Graham knew everything, thanks to Beckman. I often wonder if it would have made a difference. Maybe not to save Graham's life, not that I ever believed his life was worth saving, not now that I know what I know—what he tried to take from me. But could it have expedited our search? Would we have moved onto the Ring from Fulcrum sooner? Useless pondering, but the human mind is never completely immune to that kind of thinking.
While the Wienerlicious was out of commission, while the Orange Orange was being renovated, all of our spy business was conducted out of Casey's apartment. What did that mean for me? Casey was Chuck's shadow at the Buy More…and I hung around Chuck, pretending to be his unemployed girlfriend, more than I did anything else.
I visited the Buy More about once a week as a shopper. I came to have lunch with Chuck every other day. I was at his apartment almost every evening, eating dinner with him or his sister and Devon. I don't know what it was that Chuck said to Devon about why I never slept over in Chuck's room, but I know he said something.
The first time I saw Ellie and Devon after they got engaged was actually on Valentine's Day. She planned a couple's dinner, with Chuck and me. I was a bit surprised, but Chuck told me she wanted to spend time with us. I had been super busy with the sweep and all. Two weeks was a long time for me to not see Ellie or Devon.
If Christmas usually passed without acknowledgement, you can imagine Valentine's Day was almost nonexistent to me in the past. A holiday filled primarily with romantic love ideas–not anywhere near the purview of a spy, for any reason. But, Chuck and I had been fake dating for almost five months. It would have been strange if we ignored the day.
Chuck bought me flowers…a beautiful bouquet of roses that I left in a vase on the table in my hotel room until they were dried husks. I loved looking at them every day when I woke up. The gesture appeared typical, almost perfunctory, but I know nothing was ever so simple. He bought me red roses…it had real meaning behind it. I bought him several CDs that he had been waiting to be released.
I congratulated Ellie the moment I saw her, and I asked to see her ring, even though I had seen it up close before she had. Objectively speaking, it was a beautiful ring, oval cut in a thick platinum setting. The ring looked beautiful on Ellie's long, tapered hand. I gushed like I thought any girl would do, like any friend would do. No one I ever knew had been engaged for real. I remember thinking the twinge of jealousy I felt looking at her newly adorned hand would have been normal too, if anything about what she thought about me would have been remotely real.
Maybe I was a little different. I wasn't envious of the size of her ring, or the price of it, or even that she had gotten engaged and I wasn't, or wasn't yet, or whatever a normal girl would feel. No, I was envious of her situation. That she had found a man who loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her…that she was able to have something so simple that was forever to be denied to me. I wasn't envious of the ring–I was envious of what it represented. A home, a life, love…forever.
All of that flashed through my head as I stood there, holding Ellie's hand in mine as I examined her ring. My smile never slipped. But it was only then, looking up from her hand to see Chuck smiling at me, that beautiful smile that turned my knees to rubber, that I realized the whole truth. The envy, where it sprang from–it was all about Chuck. I wasn't thinking white dress, diamond ring here yet–the thought still frightened me beyond reason–but I was thinking about him, how he made me feel…and how I felt about him.
Later, while Ellie and I ended up alone in the kitchen as I offered to help her, it was when she told me she had seen the ring before Devon had given it to her, thanks to Morgan's idiocy. I already knew most of it from Chuck, as he'd heard it from Morgan, but I acted surprised all the same. She told me something very important during that hushed conversation. She never wanted Devon to know that she saw it, or that she knew it was coming. She didn't want to spoil it for him. It made sense the way she explained it to me–it was so stressful for him, worrying how to do it, wanting everything to be perfect…and none of the details really mattered all that much. She loved him, and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. It didn't matter if he asked her while they were skydiving or in line at the Buy More. Letting him do what he wanted was important to her, letting him create that perfect memory for her. I was mentally, subconsciously, taking notes here, for my own reaction to being accidentally informed about Chuck's impending proposal to me a few years later.
It didn't matter to me if Chuck asked me in a French castle, in a fancy restaurant, on the beach…while I was chained and handcuffed in a cell…or in the hallway at the hospital while a janitor was buffing the floor. The answer was yes, yes, yes…no matter the place or circumstance. I didn't even need to say yes…he knew. We were married in our hearts long before we were married for real or on paper. It was realizing that fact that helped me to stop being afraid of what that meant…both then, and later, once I didn't remember him.
During that dinner, Devon brought up my lack of sleeping over again. I think this time he said something about the perfect Valentine's gift. I know I blushed fire engine red, for this time, the picture was vivid in my head…the gift Devon was talking about, whereas before, when he'd pushed us about it a few months back, I hadn't even kissed Chuck yet. I think that blush actually helped, because for the first time he seemed to notice how…uncomfortable his talking like that to us made me. Ellie properly reprimanded him again, this time more forcefully than she had in the sushi restaurant, again, probably because she noticed my discomfort.
When dinner was over, Devon offered to do clean up, since Ellie had done all the cooking. Chuck offered to help. I could see them together in the kitchen; Chuck definitely had words with him. Not hostile, but firm words, complete with gesticulations. Chuck got better at lying as time went on–here, not so much, but I think he must have lied a little. I mean, he would have had to. My mind started running away with me. Did he tell Devon I was a virgin? Or that I was a past victim of sexual assault? Either one would have been enough to stop that supposedly good-natured teasing. Really, what if I had been, and he had been talking to me that way? Devon is a great guy, caring and supportive…maybe just a little extra laid-back sometimes…that muscley child Ellie had complained about to me when she was drunk.
After that night, Devon never said a word about where I slept, ever again, until we were married, well after he knew that Chuck and I weren't really dating at this point. Well, I'll take that back. There was one instance that Chuck told me about in the Costa Gravan embassy, once Devon knew Chuck and I were spies, when he straight up asked Chuck if he and I had ever had sex. But he never said anything in front of me, ever.
From this point, as time went on, I don't believe that Devon thought Chuck and I weren't having sex, not by the time he would have thought we were dating for two years. They knew I lived alone at the hotel, so I'm sure they thought we just had sex when he was gone all night. It was always mission related, of course, but the cover of him sleeping at my place worked perfectly. In actuality, that was always when it was hardest to control myself, those rare times when he was in my hotel room with me.
The hotel room was my private residence…the one place where he wasn't under surveillance or being recorded. If we had been so inclined, we could have been having sex for that entire time, so long as we only did it in my hotel room. We weren't of course, although saying it like that is too simple. The real situation was much more complicated. As I explained before, he was never really 100 percent sure about how I felt about him for all the mixed signals I had given him and resets I'd had to perform over the years. I know this because after everything…he asked me if I loved him, after he had professed his love for me. To me, it was obvious, but he was honestly not sure.
I don't think Chuck would have slept with me unless he knew it meant what he wanted it to mean. That was just who he was, who he is. I know I could have told him how I felt, and that would have made it better, but I didn't know how I could continue to protect him, do the job I needed to do, if we were lovers. Hell, I screwed up missions and almost got myself and him killed because of my feelings and we weren't sleeping together. All I can picture when I think of this is Thailand…that desperate, woman who would have burned the entire country to the ground to get Chuck back…to hell with my orders, my mission, even my own life. Before Chuck could protect himself physically, me like that would have been a complete disaster with the missions we were assigned.
Nothing ever happened…but sometimes I wonder, if things had been just a little different, if something might have. Like…what if Mr. Colt hadn't found us in the Chinese restaurant when we were on our first real date? When I thought Chuck was about to stop being my asset. Would I have just let him leave when he dropped me off…or would I have pulled him inside my room and to my bed? Any time he could have kissed me in that room…I fear I wouldn't have been able to control myself…I wanted him that badly.
I didn't understand that feeling, that desire and what it meant. I had nothing to compare it to; it had never happened to me before. Wanting or needing sex…that was entirely different than this. I wanted him. I wanted to kiss every inch of him, touch him, feel my skin against his…feel him inside me. Barstow and how close we came to being intimate with each other…I believe that could have happened at any time, maybe even before this point, had the situation arisen that was similar enough.
Each day, every moment I spent with him, only made it worse. I was falling more and more in love with him every day, and then the time together would fortify it. I missed him when he wasn't with me. I didn't just dream about having sex with him…I dreamed about the way he smelled, the way he tasted, the sound of his voice…My feelings got harder to deny to myself.
Between February and June, we had about 15 individual missions, almost all of which were initiated from Chuck's flashes. We intercepted intelligence headed into foreign agent hands, we captured terrorists, stopped assassination plots, and even defused a few bombs. With each mission, Chuck gained confidence. He was less afraid, although, to be fair, Chuck was always the kind of guy who would run into a burning building while everyone else was running out. His fear was a result of his overthinking. He was more confident in general, each success showing him what he was capable of, although his self-doubt was still not conquered and could rear its head, setting him back sometimes. I made sure I routinely praised him for a job well-done, for his bravery or his brilliant deductions or his execution. He learned bit by bit what we were teaching him.
A mission at the end of June, involving potential infiltration of Fulcrum into the Los Angeles police department, was the first time I ever thought there was a chance that Chuck had been seriously hurt. It was as frightened as I'd ever been in my life at that moment.