Everything stopped.
Time froze, as if somehow the bitter howling wind on the other side of the glass had penetrated his entire existence, encrusting time itself in ice.
He felt the cold against his back, having sagged against the window as Sarah spoke, but not remembering that he had done so.
The glass was no longer protecting him, shielding him from the storm outside. Instead it was all around him, inside him, dizzying him. He was deafened, every sound in the room drowned by the pounding of his heart.
He could feel his brain working, his thoughts spidering in different directions, as he worked to sort what he knew from what he didn't. Too many questions, no answers.
Why Fortin, in the Chicago airport, was suddenly after me, when she had just said they were after her?
Why didn't Sarah try to get her Intersect suppressed, especially if that was the reason she was being hunted?
Why wouldn't Veritas have come after me anyway, considering we were still married?
What about Emma and Molly? Were they safe?
What about Ellie, now worried that I am in danger? What about Morgan, worrying because I hadn't called him to report my safe arrival?
Why didn't she tell me any of this before she just up and left?
And then one more, razor sharp, focusing him, making his blood flow again through the parts of him he had believed long dead. Not a question, a declaration.
She loves me.
At the moment, all the other thoughts, the questions…none of them mattered. Those words…he needed to know more, everything. Nothing made sense, but nothing really had since he had convinced himself that whatever it was he thought he had seen on her face, deep in her eyes, back in April before she left, wasn't real. It suddenly clicked, as he understood what he had believed all along, despite her leaving, had been right. He had seen what he had seen. It had been there in her blue eyes — but she could not speak it and he dared not ask.
Thunderstruck, he struggled to make his mouth work, to form coherent words. It took several tries before he managed anything articulate.
"Wh…what…" He swallowed hard. "Did you… remember…something?"
She had said it so effortlessly, without hesitation, like she was telling him about the weather. Repeated it. But now, she closed her eyes, shifted her face towards the floor.
Probably because of what she saw on my face, he thought with chagrin.
"Sarah…" he breathed. He put out his hand, as if he were planning on lifting her head up under her chin, but he stopped, clenching his fist in his uncertainty.
At his utterance of her name, she looked up at him.
And then it all made sense.
There was no more doubt about her actions or her words, her expressions or her tone. What he had seen he now saw again, but no longer deep in her eyes, out of their reach, but on the blue surface of them, available to them both.
She loves me. And she's letting me see that, letting herself let me see that.
Once a leaden anchor, his heart turned buoyant, light as air and dancing in his chest.
She broke the silence, her voice a reverent whisper. "I was there with you for two months. The first time, I loved you after one day. Is it so…unbelievable…that I would fall in love with you again, after sixty days?"
His breathing was labored, winded. He unclenched his hand and reached for her, his palm flat against her cheek, feeling tears wet on her skin. "How…" he stammered.
Her eyes, summer sky blue, so full of love it stole his breath, scanned his face intently. His legs shook as his strength seemed to flow out of him.
"I…wasn't sure. It was all so…new, foreign, so…strange. I felt…something, something growing, overwhelming. I didn't know how to tell you, talk to you about it…when you were so…worried, upset. Especially when I wasn't sure what it was." She leaned against his chest and he warmed from her body heat, the previously penetrating cold from the window forced out, defeated. "I wasn't certain…until I was gone. And then I missed you so much it hurt, like an amputation."
"Sarah…" he breathed again, sliding his fingers to brush the hair back from her face. He was still speechless, dumbfounded by the unexpected tenderness flowing from her, the vulnerability.
"I know I hurt you…when I left. So much. I don't know if you can ever forgive me, but, please, just know that—"
He stopped her apology with a kiss. Her closeness, her breath on his face, the scent of her mesmerized him. He hadn't kissed her since the beach–that delicate, tender kiss. He tried to kiss her the same way, holding his feelings inside, restrained, for fear of overwhelming her, rushing her, asking for more than she was prepared to give.
But she needed more than that beach kiss, he soon realized. She was hungry for him, desperately kissing him in return, her strong arms pulling him close and closer. He almost couldn't remember the last time she'd kissed him this way.
On the train, in Japan…
He pulled back, breathless, holding her face tenderly in his hands.
"Chuck—" She was equally breathless, but hesitant, questioning, talking before he could say anything himself.
"Please, just…say it again," he panted.
His vision blurred as his eyes filled with tears. She was confused at first, but a soft smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "I love you," she whispered close to his lips, speaking the words softly but with a certitude that filled him with joy.
He pulled her to him, kissing her again. The explanation, the rest of the story, the man chasing them, the danger and uncertainty and confusion…none of it mattered, none of it even existed.
There was nothing but Sarah. His wife. In his arms, kissing him, moaning softly with longing for him, unmistakable need.
He was on his feet, and then on the bed, her body underneath him. His body was a conflagration, white hot, but he lifted his mouth from hers, needing to say something. "I want you so much…but I can't do this…if you're going to leave again. No matter what happens, I want you to stay. Need you to stay. With me."
Her voice was breathy even as the tears collected in the corners of her eyes. "All I ever wanted was to stay with you," she swore. "But I can't let them hurt you–"
"None of that matters, so long as we're together. We'll figure it out together. We've always been at our best together, remember?"
She closed her eyes as he studied her face, tears running from the corners of her eyes as his desire for her threatened to burst his heart while he waited. "I don't remember…but I believe you. And I trust you. I promise," she whispered. "No matter what, we're together."
He forgot the snow and the cold, the misery and the sadness, the loneliness that had rung inside him like a ceaseless bell. All the chill, the ice, melted in the face of the heat created by their bodies, the warmth ignited in their hearts. He kissed her passionately, melting into her.
She told him she loved him, over and over, with each breath until she could no longer speak. He echoed the words back to her, over and over, until finally they laid still, panting, clinging to each other.
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
He looked at the clock on the bedside table. Only half an hour had passed. He had lost all sense of time, sense of reality. Sarah laid curled against him, her skin satiny smooth against his.
They didn't have the luxury of sleep, even though their frenetic, frantic coupling had exhausted him. In a strange way, what happened reminded him of Barstow, how that might have played out without the actual interruption then. It was as though the past had waited until the present to occur, as if Barstow had waited to happen in Chicago.The feeling was the same—being overcome with desire, with need, beyond logic or reason.
A couple of times, they had been like that before. When he had been rescued from Thailand after over a week, when Sarah had returned from Russia after over a month away. This time was almost a year, a year's worth of longing, aching for what had been before but what he thought he had lost.
It didn't matter how they ended up here–the danger, the anxiety of not knowing, of not being safe. His heart was full, beating robustly again. She loved him. She had done just what Ellie had said she would do—she fell in love with him again.
Sarah loved him. And, dear God, did he love her.
All of her. Sarah.
The woman in his arms was complicated, beautifully complex. Getting to know Sarah had been just as complex, and had taken time, when they were first in each other's lives. She was one part insecure young girl, one part ruthless assassin for the CIA, one part generous woman. It had always seemed to Chuck that the CIA agent was the one assigned to protect the young girl, and when the young girl was safe, the woman grew and flourished. It was a strange way to think of Sarah, split into different parts, but it was as close to reality as he knew.
Before her memories were erased, Chuck had witnessed her changes. The agent receded, tempered, the longer she had known and interacted with him. Sarah the agent was unknowable, and the woman she became when she had let herself be known by him was the part that loved him. That part, and the young girl. He loved all of her, even the cold-hearted agent, the one who had remained when she forgot the others.
That was what losing her memory had done in actuality, despite all the different theories he had heard. Without her past experiences, the parts of Sarah had fallen out of balance. More agent, less woman, the young girl forgotten. The past as she had explained it to him made more sense that way. Sarah the agent would have done just what Sarah did in April–leave him in order to protect him, like she had her mother and Molly, believing herself too hardened by her life to be what any of them needed.
He had seen the beginning of the agent receding again. His being in that apartment with her, patient and attentive, had stirred something inside her. Something Ellie heard when she listened to Sarah's voice, something he saw when he looked at her when she thought he wasn't looking. Something he then discredited as wishful thinking when she had said instead that she needed distance to figure things out. A return of balance to the parts of her.
Sarah, his wife, would never have left. He knew that with certainty. Her feelings had only started to intensify, becoming clear to her. All the months in between had only confirmed those feelings. And he knew this, believed this. What had just happened between them was perfect, no different than it had ever been.
He had feared that when she had agreed to stay. How different things could be between them if they were in effect starting over, like he had told her they could do, when she didn't remember the past. Not better, or worse, just different. Because he would remember what it had been like before, and for her, it would be brand new. He was relieved, knowing each kiss, each touch, felt the same. She loved him, and all of that emotion translated into her actions.
He had the strength to face whatever else she needed to tell him.
"Finish what you were trying to tell me," he said, rolling onto his side to face her as she lay beside him.
She nodded, resting her hand on his bare chest.
"Once I realized they were coming after me, I decided to leave. Draw them away from you and Ellie."
In his clearer state of mind, the questions he wanted answers to were easily accessible. "I…have questions." She paused, waiting for him. "If you knew you had that Intersect, why didn't you go to General Beckman, ask her to find a way to suppress it, so they would leave you alone?"
"I wasn't sure that I could trust her," Sarah admitted. "I thought you no longer had it. That would leave me as the only one, even if it didn't work the way it was supposed to. Even if it was one of Clyde Decker's Trojan Horses. For the same reason no one knows about you. They come out of the woodwork when that word gets mentioned. And she would have to have enlisted help from your sister, considering she is the subject matter expert and something is defective with mine."
"But if Ellie knows, then we can get you the help you need," Chuck insisted.
"I didn't follow you to Chicago to get Ellie involved or put her in danger, Chuck."
"Why did you? Follow me, I mean. If they were after you, and you left to protect me, why then, did I need protecting…again?"
Her eyes glinted as her jaw set in an angry line. "Did Beckman tell you that Shaw is dead?"
Her words surprised him, not for the meaning, but the relation to what he asked her. He answered after a beat. "Casey did, but yes, I knew. All I heard was that he was killed by another inmate at the detention center. I didn't ask for details. I didn't want them." He hated that he felt better knowing the man was dead, but Shaw had been his nemesis for too long, taken too much from him, for Chuck to owe any forgiveness.
Sarah huffed. "I bet Beckman didn't tell Casey the whole truth. I don't think Casey would have lied to you, or kept something from you."
"What does that mean? What really happened?"
"Veritas agents staged a jailbreak of sorts. Until they realized that he no longer had an Intersect. There was no record in his file of you removing the Intersect with the Omen virus. Once they knew he was useless, they killed him. But not before they tortured him. He told them about my memory loss, and that no matter what it might look like, you, Chuck, were still leverage. And if they wanted to get to me, taking you was their best bet."
"What about Molly and Emma?" Chuck asked urgently, remembering his concern from earlier. He didn't know how she knew all of that information about Shaw, but he had time.
"He knew that Molly was alive, but nothing else. As long as I stayed away from them, so did Veritas."
More heavy sadness in her voice. Chuck kept in touch with his mother and sister-in-law, even long after Sarah had gone. Emma would lament Sarah's lack of contact with them; he never had any answers as to why Sarah called him and Ellie but not her own mother and sister. He hoped his frequent contact hadn't unwittingly put them in danger.
"Why did Fortin wait until I was in the airport?" Chuck asked her.
"He was waiting for an opening. You changed your flight," Sarah reminded him. "And before that, you never left L.A."
Sarah grimaced as if she were in pain, resting her head against his shoulder, avoiding his eyes.
"What, Sarah?" he asked, sensing her discomfiture.
So quietly he had to strain to hear, she replied, "There were 12 of them. Veritas recruits. The only ones left are Fortin and Tipton. They're desperate."
He could feel her body trembling against him, the tension in her now rigid muscles. He remembered what that meant, when he had witnessed it last, though she obviously did not. That grim, cold determination after he had watched her shoot Mauser dead in the Christmas Tree Lot.
Ten. She had hunted and killed ten of them…to keep him safe. Him and everyone else he cared about.
Back then, he hadn't understood everything. He had brooded for over a month, pushing her away, shunning her, because of what he had seen her do. When in reality, she felt corrupted, unclean and so untouchable by him because he had witnessed exactly who and what she was–a cold-blooded killer.
But then, just as now, he loved her, all of her, even the darkness. She had done what she did for him, endangering her own soul. She had told him, but then forgotten it, that his love had saved her.
He pulled her closer, held tightly until he felt her relax against him. No words were necessary. She knew he comprehended all of what she'd said, what she'd done.
But she had forgotten that his love could save her, would save her again.
"It's alright, Sarah," he whispered. "You aren't alone anymore."
A/N: Thank you to Zettel for pre-reading once again.