A/N: More of our Christmas Tale.

Bite the Hand

I still don't know what I was looking for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet

So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer one
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different one
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

David Bowie, Changes

Chapter 4: Changeful

Los Angeles, CA
December 23
Later Evening

Corpse.

The word seemed to chill the twinkle lights on the balcony, making the meal grave.

Sarah watched — glancing up periodically, surreptitiously from her plate — as Chuck stared down at his, eating without looking at her, chewing on what she had said as he chewed on his burger.

Finally, he muttered around the remains of a bite: "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."

Sarah simply stared at him in response.

"Shakespeare," he commented, his tone apologetic, as if the quotation were not conversation, "Measure for Measure, Act Three, Scene One."

"You have a good memory."

He shrugged. "A trick of the brain. Lately, I haven't had anything happen worth remembering — even though I do remember it, all of it, the whole weary rotation of days and Buy More shifts. Remembering the unmemorable, a Chuck Bartowski specialty." He looked down again, grabbed his fork, and picked at the salad she had ordered him. For his sister's sake.

Sarah looked down too, and backward.

Memory. She had spent a lifetime teaching herself to remember and to forget. The first was easier than the second.

She raised her eyes and gazed past Chuck toward the twinkle lights, wishing she could see them with the same innocent eyes that had gazed at the first Christmas trees she remembered, lit up in the only home she remembered.

Memory.

She hadn't intended to tell Chuck anything other than that she was working for the CIA.

But he relaxed her so much she got the tense wrong — or rather got it right.

She worked for the CIA — but she no longer did. She certainly hadn't intended to tell him the circumstances, that she had been retired, or to imply that her retirement meant her death.

But her life had changed. It had changed more than she knew: everything she had done, from wrapping Morgan in the blanket to talking with Chuck over dinner, it was all actions of a sort that would previously have been out of character. Her decade in the Company had garnered her neither a reputation for kindness nor one for talkativeness.

Not remotely.

Everything changed — or began to change — in Hungary, outside of Budapest, in that bone-white, massive, isolated, castle-like country home — Forgacs Mansion.

Sarah should have known there was something wrong.

Her mission briefing with Langston Graham, the CIA Director, had felt off. She could not isolate what was wrong, but something was. In the past, when he called her in to give her a new assignment, there was a subtle but real feeling of…camaraderie.

Maybe that's a stupid word, but it fits. Or maybe it just shows how stupid I was.

For ten years, that subtle feeling of camaraderie was what she more or less lived on, the little of it that Graham doled out in their briefings before missions and in their debriefings after missions. It was like baneful manna, a drug — Graham never gave her enough to store, and what he gave her barely sated her, always left her hungry again soon. But it was almost all she had, the only good-seeming thing in her life. She worked alone; she lived alone. No friends, no lovers.

Almost no friends.

For a brief time, she worked on a team of other agents, three other women, and women she began to consider friends. But that had ended. Badly. A catfight, bared claws, bloody scratches, and mistrust all around. Only one of the women remained any kind of friend, Carina Miller, and she was the worst kind of friend: selfish and unpredictable, interested in friendship mainly when it benefitted her. Sarah had done her best to forget that time, the other women.

Almost no lovers.

A few years later, she was assigned a partner, Bryce Larkin. Their professional partnership eventually became personal, somewhat personal. As personal as she would allow it to be, given who she was. They began sleeping together — and kept at it. And for a moment, Sarah thought that perhaps her life would change, even that it had changed, that what they had could become and was becoming…more. That she could and was allowing it to become more, be more. Until she found out that Larkin was a double agent, and that she was his mark.

It was a complicated, depressing story, but she eventually trapped him in his trap for her, reversed, and killed him.

One quick shot to the head before he could shoot her.

Before Larkin, she had a few, one-night encounters with men, usually men she met during her occasional short breaks between missions. Met at a bar, a restaurant, or a store. A few. Ordinary men who, because they were, seemed extraordinary to her. Her life normalized abnormality. Larkin had been her only long-lasting affair, and her only one with another agent.

Killing him had killed her love life. What she had called her love life. She had been with no one since.

The only constant in her life was the camaraderie she felt with Graham. Loyalty. She was loyal to him and he was loyal to her. Professionally.

Maybe the loyalty was an artifact of the age and circumstance of his recruitment of her into the Company. She had been young — just turned eighteen — and her father had just died, been murdered. A con gone wrong, very wrong. She had not witnessed the murder; she had been elsewhere, working another aspect of the con when it happened. But she found him dead in their shared motel room, and Langston Graham somehow found her the next day. The police were suspicious of her — not about the murder of her father — but about the con on which they had been working, about past cons.

Graham swooped in and offered not only to pay for her father's funeral but to give her a job, a way out, an escape.

She had no idea what she would have done without that job, or what direction she might have traveled. She had never known normalcy, never known if it was possible for her. Perhaps she would have gone on conning, but she doubted it. She had conned out of love for her father, loyalty, out of loyalty to him. Personal. That loyalty had slowly migrated to Graham and changed its quality, but it was a crucial part of what she understood as her camaraderie with Graham. Much as she had done when working con games with her father, ignoring the broader circumstances of the con and its consequences for herself as well as others, she had ignored the broader circumstances of her mission and its consequences for herself as well as others. She focused only (or as much as she could) on the mission itself, on its objectives. On doing what Graham assigned her to do. As she had done what her father told her to do.

She tried to narrow the field of her life as a rifle scope narrows a sniper's visual field, doing away with any periphery, any distractions, any context. Depriving what is done, seen, of larger meaning. Reducing it to a flash of light in a nearly durationless present. And, like the sniper's, her attention, her gaze, never settled on herself, never doubled back. No scoping of self. That was her greatest fear, that possible doubling-back, that forced confrontation with herself, her own life.

She kept her eyes fixed forward, avoiding all reflection. She had become a woman hard and cold without ever acknowledging that fact about herself. Long looks into mirrors vexed her.

But that last time in a briefing with Graham, that feeling of camaraderie — or whatever it should be called — was gone, vanished. Outwardly, everything about Graham seemed the same: the same polished manner; the same white, impenetrable smile; the same bespoke, charcoal three-piece suit; the same expensive haircut and manicure; the same high-gloss, black Italian shoes, and the same Rolex.

But the man in the desk chair did not feel like Graham.

Graham was a man of ulterior motives, complex and intensely secretive, a thousand-eyed spinning spider at the center of a vast, sensitive web. She knew all that — but she never felt as though she were the target, instead of the beneficiary, of his motives, his complexity, or his secrecy. The spider never spun in hunt of her; the thousand eyes never regarded her as quarry.

In the past, Sarah and Graham had dealt frankly with each other. There were things they did not talk about of course, for example, Sarah's personal life (Graham had never asked her how she felt about Larkin, or felt about killing him), or, for another example, Graham's larger Company agenda, although Sarah knew he had one.

As crazy as it sounded in retrospect, she had felt safe with Graham and felt her welfare concerned him, even if he would never ask about it.

Since the death of her father, Graham was the only person who seemed constantly concerned about her. Carina cared now and then, a lot or a little, when it was profitable for her to care, but otherwise, Sarah knew, she rarely crossed Carina's mind. Larkin betrayed her, plotted against her. The other women on her team were now deeply estranged from her.

For most of her career, and all of the last several years of it, she had been alone. She slept, she worked, she lived alone. New Year, Easter, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving…

Christmas, alone.

Except for Graham. He was always there, at least between missions, the connective tissue of her otherwise disconnected life, the one witness to who she was — such as she was, there wasn't much to her without a mission — between deep cover assignments. Even 'Sarah Walker' was an alias and not her oldest. Her names had been fake since birth — or it felt that way to her. Nameless child, nameless woman.

Anyway, Graham had given her the only name she answered to when not on a mission, the name on her paycheck.

They were not friends, Sarah and Graham; they were certainly not lovers (the very thought made her blanche); they were not father and daughter.

But they had a relationship that went beyond Director and Agent, although Sarah struggled to capture it in any single word. Camaraderie — that was the best she could do. Graham valued her: he held her skills as an agent in the highest regard, he put stock in her pugnacity and her toughness, her icy calm under fire; he admired her strategic and tactical brilliance.

She knew other agents resented the first place she held in Graham's estimation: they called her his Golden Girl. Was that part of the reason that Chuck's comment about the man with the golden gun struck such a chord with me? Graham's Golden Girl with the Silver Gun? Silver and gold? Graham respected her. She was loyal to him.

Though it sounded paradoxical, there was a professional intimacy between them, camaraderie.

But that seemed somehow missing in that last briefing. It seemed like Graham was going through the motions, taking part in a ceremony in which he no longer had any investment. But all that was clearer to her now than it was then. Much. Then, at the time of the briefing, he only seemed…off.

His actions were normal, the same smiles and questions about her time between missions, questions she never answered straightforwardly since she did not want to reveal the nothingness in which she lived, the suspense of her animation, the emptiness of her between-mission days. She slept and ate, never leaving her apartment. She ordered her groceries or takeout, paid on the app, and had the food left at her door, contactless delivery. Contactless, like everything in her life. To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.

That briefing.

Everything about Graham seemed normal except that his natural reserve now seemed deliberate, voluntary not reflexive. Something was not being said, not being shared. On purpose.

And the mission he assigned her was strange — she was to be partnered with an agent she had never met but knew by reputation. Unflattering reputation. That was the sum of her briefing; the rest of what she needed to know, Graham told her, and in a way that would brook no disagreement, would be supplied by Ryker — supplied in person.

"You will meet Agent Ryker in Budapest. He will be the Agent in Charge. This is a sensitive mission and it is in constant flux. Anything I tell you now may be false by the time you are on the ground in Budapest. Ryker acts with my full confidence." Graham closed the folder in front of him, then tapped its end on his desktop, straightening the papers inside as he cleared his throat, a familiar gesture and sound that signaled the end of briefings.

Graham's claim about his confidence in Ryker surprised Sarah, given Ryker's reputation — reckless, self-indulgent, cruelly, needlessly violent. He cut corners; he cut lots of things: a knife man who favored close-up work. If Ryker could now command Graham's full respect, then it was unclear how Sarah ever had. As agents, they were antonyms, opposites, one a scalpel, the other a jackhammer.

She always thought that she had Graham's full respect. She did not understand. If Graham was telling the truth, he had changed, changed his values. If he was not telling the truth, he had changed, he was no longer frank with Sarah. Either way, he had changed — he had lost confidence in her. But he did not act like he had; he acted like himself.

Sarah did not react to Graham's claim, other than to nod her assent. She had no standing, no precedent, to challenge Graham.

Two hours later, she was on a plane to Budapest, knowing no more about the mission than the little Graham had told her.

She had no clue that the axis of reference of her life was about to turn, one hundred and eighty degrees.

Contact.

"I hope that quotation didn't upset you," Chuck offered quietly, now making explicit the apology that had been implicit in his tone earlier. "I didn't mean to upset you."

What person kidnapped apologizes to his kidnapper? What kidnapper is relaxed by the person she kidnaps? Laughs with him?

"You didn't. It's just that the last few weeks have been…changeful." She paused. "Is that even a word?"

He chuckled. "I think so. And if it's not, it's constructed on an obvious principle." He stopped, and swallowed, although he was no longer eating. "How long did you work for the CIA?"

"A decade, basically."

He looked at her and she saw the lightning-fast calculations in his eyes. "Wow, you must've gotten an early start."

She shrugged shallowly. "The early bird gets the worm."

He chuckled again. "Not a cliche I would have applied to a job in the CIA."

"There are different kinds of worms," she said, her tone more serious, colder than she intended. But the cliche had connected with the quotation, worms with rot.

Sarah shook her head. "Sorry, that was…um…morbid."

"Well," Chuck started slowly, "we were talking about our tree — " he stopped and gestured at the desk, the little tree on it, " — being decorated with guns, so…"

Sarah turned to consider the little tree. Our tree? When she turned to Chuck again, he gave her another smile that she could feel in her body. I should never have touched him, his hair.

But, she realized, she had been intensely aware of him since she had spotted him leaving the Buy More, throwing on his coat. She had been crouching next to the far side of his car, peeking over it. The silhouette of his lean form and broad shoulders against the brilliant Buy More interior lights had registered on her — registered at a level beyond explicit awareness, but she was aware of it now. When she first saw his face, her intense awareness of him had intensified. It had guided her hand into his curls as he slept.

As she looked at him now, she was so intensely aware of him that the awareness was almost a pang. What is wrong with me? What's right with him?

The pink blanket came back to her mind, her regret in the necessity of parting with it. "Do you like kids, Chuck?"

He boggled at her apparently from nowhere question, choking on a cherry tomato. "What? Kids?"

She felt the heat of color rising to her face and she quickly shrugged, and smirked, playing the question down. "It seemed like a cheerful change of topic — less morbid and wormy."

"I suppose," he said after a cough, "but, well, um, yes, I do like kids, a lot." His voice took on a dreamlike quality, and his eyes followed. "I thought by now…" He coughed again. "But, yes, I like kids."

"Boys or girls?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Just…kids. And not or." The eyebrow settled back into place. "Do you have kids?"

She started to scoff then stopped herself. Her life had changed. "Not exactly."

His puzzled look was so dramatic that she laughed at him. "How can the answer be not exactly? Were you only a little bit pregnant?"

She shook her head. "I was not a bit pregnant."

"So this was a more virgin birth than the Virgin Birth?"

It was Sarah's turn to cough. "Does your mind always run to Mysteries, Chuck — Transubstantiation and the Virgin Birth?"

He looked surprisingly thoughtful at what she meant only as a teasing question.

"No — but when you've spent the evening staring into the abyss — reduced to the bore of a silver gun — things take on a religious…coloration, deeper hues. And, it's almost Christmas — the Nativity."

"I apologize for the gun," she offered in a chastized voice, sounding neither like a kidnapper nor a Company woman. Sounding instead like a woman with a heart, a contrite heart.

Silence claimed the room. Chuck pushed his salad away, half-eaten. He looked at her from under his brow and toyed with his butter knife.

Sarah rubbed her palms on her thighs. We need to get back to work. I'm on a schedule, although I keep forgetting. She checked her watch. There was still time. Her mission would take place in the small hours of the morning.

Chuck spoke while still absentmindedly holding his knife in his hand, staring at himself in it.

"The woman at Stanford. I hoped she would be the mother of my children — although I was expecting non-virgin births."

They sat for a minute, then both laughed.

Until recently — changes — Sarah had never imagined herself as a mother.

Never one to meet the notion of having kids with the outraged, energetic contempt of Carina, Sarah would still have scoffed at the idea, as her near-scoff a moment before proved. She not only would make a bad mother, with no skills, but her life rated as a disqualification for any such tender office. Or so she thought.

Budapest had proved her wrong. And right. All at almost the same time.

The last few weeks — and now the last few hours — had indeed been changeful. She no longer knew who she was. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that she now knew she was who she thought she wasn't and wasn't who she thought she was.

Only a nameless woman could manage such a twist-up of something and nothing. Who am I?

Despite her question to herself, and despite how her exhaustion returned to her, she smiled, reached up, and pushed a stray lock of hair behind one ear. "And you couldn't imagine anyone else as the mother of your children?"

"No," he said after a long sigh, sadness and resignation in the eyes that failed to meet hers, "I gave up on myself as their father."

A/N: More soon assuming folks remain interested. We will shift back to Chuck's POV.

I've enjoyed the enthusiastic response to the story and hope to hear more from you and from more of you.