A/N: Still Chuck's POV.
Bite the Hand
O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.
Myrrh is mine: Its bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.
— We Three Kings, Traditional Carol
Chapter 6: Myrrh
Los Angeles, California
December 24
Very Early Morning
He kissed her. But she kissed him. The woman.
His kidnapper.
She squeezed him hard against her, against her strong, firm body. He squeezed her against him.
Reciprocal.
Mutual.
She tasted wonderful, the missing element his body desperately needed. Missing forever, a blank spot on his Periodic Table. Water in the desert, Arrakis. The Water of Life. She — Sarah, Sarah — believed her only gift was death but she was life — life for him.
Chuck knew it unmistakably by the taste of her.
As she kissed him, she poured into him, laving his waste, and then he could feel himself pour back into her. He could taste the life on her tear-damp lips, the life he'd been waiting for.
Kidnapping him, she had freed him. The prisoner released. King Tut disentombed. He would have gone on and on, the same, the same, always more Goddamned sameness, more and more of the Buy More.
His head was full of twinkling lights although his eyes were shut, stars, constellations, lights in the dark and unknown space that cradles the world.
His father had taught him. A vision of the heavens, steered by a starry destiny. Westward leading, still proceeding… But he had doubted that destiny, doubted what his father taught him. Doubted his father.
But, his lips to Sarah's, his doubts washed away. When he ended the kiss, he leaned away from her slightly, so that he could see her blue eyes, lighter now, baby blue. But her eyes held doubts.
"Chuck, I…"
"It's okay, I wanted…needed…that. You."
Her eyes darkened, sapphire, jewel-hard suddenly. "But you don't know me, what I've done. I kidnapped you."
Chuck gave her a deliberately cheeky grin. "Thanks, I needed that. Needed you." Desire rendered his voice husky, deeper.
She heard it and gaped at him. And then her eyes softened again, lightened. They moved to his eyes, and then she turned her head, looked out at the balcony. The twinkle lights, their reflections in the jacuzzi. She turned back to him, her full bottom lip between her teeth, desire in her eyes but uncertainty in her posture.
"I've never…in one of those, a jacuzzi…" She let the statement trail into a silent invitation.
"Never? You? A beautiful spy?"
"Never. My life's not been a TV show, Chuck, not been a movie."
Everything with Jill had happened so fast — but this was light speed. Collideascope. He thought the speed of everything with Jill had doomed them. What could this mean?
Sarah leaned closer to him, her eyes in direct contact with his, her doubts more apparent but her eyes still soft. "If…we do…It'll only be tonight, Chuck. There's no future for us. After tonight, I'll be gone. I don't want you to misunderstand. Despite the tree, the lights, the silver and gold, there's nothing to hope for…Nothing."
Chuck swallowed hard. He was not a man who did things like this. He and Jill had been together, a couple, for weeks before they slept together. Sex required context — and context required time. Sarah's eyes were still holding his, somehow enveloping him: he was tangled up in their mobile blues, her bottom lip still between her teeth.
He took a deep breath and reached for her again, his hand first on her waist and then trailing up to cup the side of her breast. "I understand."
She stared at him for a moment longer, her breathing speeding up again, and then she stepped back and took his hand in hers.
He was tugged toward the balcony, out under the twinkle lights.
Guide us to thy perfect Light.
Twice. It happened twice before they slowed, stopped. Their clothes were on the chaise lounges. Water had splashed from the jacuzzi onto the balcony, and now the lights reflected not just in the jacuzzi but all around it. Lights above and around them.
Sarah was holding Chuck close, and she was sobbing. The gasps of her second orgasm had transfigured into sobs, and she had tucked her head into the crook of Chuck's neck as her sobs intensified. Chuck had spoken her name, suddenly distressed, and she had pulled him closer in answer, although her sobs continued. One of her hands rubbed the back of his neck softly though her sobs were hard.
Chuck was unsure what he had done. Well, I know what I did, but I don't know what it means for my life. Unsure — but he could not regret it. Not even if the night became a treasured sadness in the years to come. A woman whose mere presence was worth his whole future.
He held her there, immersed in the warm, bubbling water, her tears. Life, not death.
"Sarah," he said carefully but insistently when her sobbing ended, "are you okay?"
She nodded, her head still hidden in his neck. "Perfect."
After a moment, she lifted her head and separated a small distance from him. Water ran down her chest into the cleavage of her breasts, half-hidden beneath the moving water.
"Thank you, Chuck. You'll never know how much that meant to me. A man like you, a moment like this." She looked away, shyly. "My Christmas. I've never had one I remember."
He decided not to ask. Her life had been a series of depravations, of that, he was now sure. The story of her retirement was the culmination of a trajectory, a telos, not an isolated, one-off event.
She cupped his face in her warm, wet hands. "Once more, please?"
He was surprised to find that he could oblige her.
He gave her everything he had, sharing his life in a moment, all of his heart.
His heart, kidnapped.
No hope.
They dried each other off back in the room, laughing softly at the moment, themselves, the self-conscious awkwardness that succeeded the eager, forceful dance of their coupling.
Chuck began to sing sotto voce. We Three Kings.
The song had been playing in his mind. Sarah noticed it and began to hum along. Chuck toweled her back as she hummed, the hum part song, part pleasure.
"You know that one?"
She nodded, once, quickly. "In junior high, the only time I participated in a holiday event at a school. I sang in the choir. It was one of the songs we performed. It stuck. In my mind. Do you remember the third King's verse, the myrrh-bearer? One brought gold, the second frankincense, and the third, myrrh."
In an uncertain voice, as if singing were nearly forgotten by her, strange, she sang.
Myrrh is mine: Its bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.
Chuck listened closely. Sarah's voice was quiet but grew in certainty as she sang. She finished and turned, taking the towel from him and wrapping herself in it.
"Why did you sing that, Sarah?" Chuck asked but already he knew the answer.
She stepped away from him. "Because — I'm the myrrh-bearer. That's my life. It's been my life. Until I met that little girl."
Chuck wrapped a towel around his waist and sat down on the side of the bed; he patted the spot beside him and Sarah sat down.
"Tell me the rest, Sarah."
She nodded, searching his eyes again. Satisfied by what she saw, she restarted her earlier story.
"I returned fire. I was, as usual, accurate and economical. I managed to kill the mobsters. Every single one of them. They missed me, missed the toddler, as I sprinted down the stairs. I was a moving target, they were stationary — but, as I said, I have a gift…"
She shook her head as if shaking off a sudden, dark enchantment, and Chuck got a glimpse of the woman who had wielded the guns in Forgacs Mansion, her chill intensity. "Ryker came wading out to do his mop up and when he saw me — well, I knew. His face gave it all away. I shot his gun out of his hand. I knew I had one shot left. He sank to the ground, his face a tribal mask of pain, his hand ruined. I put my empty gun to his head and he confessed it all to me. The whole Graham plot against me. But of course, Graham hadn't told Ryker what he thought I knew. He hadn't even told Ryker that he suspected I knew something, but Ryker was canny enough to figure it out. Evil knows how evil goes."
She paused, searching Chuck's eyes again after she spoke. He put his arm around her shoulders. "He thought he could bargain with me. The little girl's parents — later, I found them executed in their bedroom — were gone. All I needed to do was kill the girl and get Ryker medical help, and he would split the money Graham had paid him with me.
"Something in Ryker's eyes while he begged gave him away. He was planning to double-cross Graham just as Graham had double-crossed me. I made him give me the numbers for his account, and then I made him give me the numbers for Graham's. I was guessing that he knew them somehow, and I was right."
Chuck nodded, listening, and then he looked at Sarah. "You made him?"
She shut her eyes to speak. "I still had my hunting knife. Sharp blade, sharp point. The little girl was crying. Dead men everywhere. I kept her head against my chest and — I used the knife to convince Ryker."
Shame and guilt were in her tone but also the resolve to do the needful thing.
"The paper with the numbers, the bloody thumbprint? The account I emptied."
"Graham's number, supplied by Ryker. You moved that money to a Swiss account in my mother's name. To help her take care of Molly, to make sure the toddler has a good life when she's grown."
"What about his number, the money Graham had already paid Ryker?"
"He had paid half. A million dollars. The other half was due when Graham had proof that the toddler and I were both dead. I took Ryker's money, and I used it to buy supplies, a blanket, and to buy identities and get out of Europe, back to the States. Back here."
"And now the toddler's with your mother?"
"Molly, that's her name. The name I gave her, anyway. Mom kept it. It was on the papers I bought. Easier."
"So — the myrrh-bearer is also the gold-bearer?"
Sarah blinked in pleased and displeased surprise. "I…suppose so."
She stood up without preamble and stalked to the balcony door. Chuck could see her set her shoulders before she turned to face him, pleasure and surprise gone.
"I'm going to get my clothes. It's time for us to finish this." Her hand was on the door and her silent expression was sad and tremulous but resolved.
Chuck offered no argument; he got up and followed her to the balcony to retrieve his clothes too.
His time with Sarah was drawing to a close.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
Resurrection.
He thought of a line of Walt Whitman's. We were together — all else has long been forgotten by me.
Dressed, he sat in front of the laptop, barefoot. Dressed, Sarah stood beside him. But she had a hand on his shoulder. She had checked and reloaded her gun, placed her hunting knife, sheathed, in the waist of her pants. Her jacket was back on, and other weapons were in it. She was holding her phone. Her shoes were on.
"So, what is it you want me to do?"
She glanced at the jacuzzi. "Slight change of plan. I need you to hack the LA power grid, and shut down power to the Marmoreal for about ten minutes."
Chuck felt his eyes widen. "Is that all? That will require me to shut down power on a city block. It's terrorist stuff." He was not refusing; he was trying to better understand her plan.
She frowned apologetically. "I know. But remember: I forced you at gunpoint." Her gun was on the desk beside him, not in her hand. The tranq gun was beside it. "You have to sell it if they ever link this, me, to you. Sell it. My reputation will seal the deal if you play your part."
"Why are we doing this, Sarah?"
"For…my daughter, Chuck, even if she's not mine. Even if I can't keep her. For Molly. She has to be safe. It's not for me. You have to keep her a secret; she's in your hands now and my mom's. I've trusted you."
He looked at her for a long moment, deeply feeling both his ignorance of her plan and his knowledge of her. Her trust was a gift.
It was impossible to feel so intimate with someone he had met only hours ago, his kidnapper. But he did. He felt close to her, as if he knew her despite knowing so little about her.
She had been naked and wet in his arms twenty minutes ago — in moving water, water alive with desire.
She looked at the phone, touched the screen. Then she held the phone out, the screen facing him. There was a picture of Sarah and a beautiful, smiling toddler. Sarah was smiling too. Their arms were around each other, a pink blanket around the toddler's shoulders. He didn't know where the two blondes were, but lights twinkled in the background, reflected on tinsel.
A Christmas tree.
"That was taken a few days ago, at Mom's. I'll call the room phone and let it ring twice. When I do, I need you to be ready to shut down the power."
"What's in The Marmoreal, Sarah? Who?"
Her eyes darkened again, her lips compressed into a boundary line. "No future, Chuck, remember? Start forgetting me now. You don't need to know, but I need to know: Will you do it or not?"
He breathed in and out before answering. "I'll do it."
"Good," she said in thankful sadness. "Put your shoes on. When you shut off the power, shoot yourself with the tranq gun, then quickly toss it across the room. You'll have a handful of seconds before you succumb. I'll make sure someone finds you."
"What?"
Her eyes were dampened with tears but she blinked them back. "We have to sell it, Chuck."
"But, the tranq drug; I'll forget…forget this. All this. You."
"It's best, Chuck. No future is easier with no past."
She leaned over and kissed his lips, then picked up her silver gun and left the tranq gun for him. She almost ran across the room and she did not look back.
A moment later, the hotel room door closed and Sarah was gone.
Chuck blinked back tears and started typing.
But he was not targeting the power grid, not at that moment. Not first. He was targeting the CIA. Langston Graham. The hardest of hacks, a lone, sneak attack on a bristling fortress. The Imperium. The Emperor.
He tried to make his mind go blank and merge with the computer. Speed, I need speed! He was sprinting along a tightrope stretched over the deeps of starless virtual space.
The sleeper has awakened.
Back to Sarah's POV next chapter. The situation becomes clearer. How about a comment as a stocking stuffer?
