A/N: All of First Kill in one chapter. A ridiculously large percent of this episode is Buy Moron antics, so there's that. I believe the beginning of this episode is Day 564. Lots of controversy there, but this is my interpretation. Nothing in canon refutes my hypothesis. A few a-ha or wtf things in this episode. The whole engagement party thing seems wild-but whatever. I also contend that Jill was only in it for herself, up until she hears him call for help as she's escaping. As far as we know, Sarah has no idea that Chuck was the one who let Jill go. Part of her anguish at the end is because she felt responsible for causing Chuck to be pulled underground. Let's not forget-Chuck is about to take off on SARAH at the end when she goes to the Buy More. He LIES to her face about a computer emergency. And the million dollar question-when did Sarah decide to tell him the truth? I contend it wasn't until he told her he thought he couldn't trust her. It snapped her out of it, letting her heart take over. My opinion anyway, and this is my story, and there's nothing in canon that refutes that hypothesis. Anyway-debates are fun. Enjoy the story. My favorite episode, and a little taste of the M Charah to come, is next!
It was a dark time for us, once the truth about Chuck's father came out, once Orion was taken and we knew Ted Roark, head of one of the largest, richest companies in the world, was in charge of Fulcrum. Everything felt like it was coming to a head, not in a good way, and it was all pointed directly at us.
Chuck was lost, beside himself with worry and confusion. He was trying to be strong for his sister, all the while harboring a terrible secret he wished more than anything he could tell her, for her own peace of mind. His father's life was in peril. Any answer Chuck could have hoped to get from his father wasn't possible, maybe never would be if we couldn't find him.
Beckman put it in our hands, because of Chuck's eloquent plea.
I hate to vocalize it here, only because in current times, General Beckman is a family friend. My children know and love her. But back then—I had my doubts about her, and it turned out to be a wise deduction. We knew Beckman's plan for success involved Chuck staying the Intersect. The only thing Chuck wanted, his end goal, was getting rid of the Intersect–and his father could do it.
So why would Beckman try so hard to find Chuck's father, if she knew those two goals contradicted each other? True, Orion in Fulcrum's hands was not ideal. But somewhere deep inside Beckman's mind, I wondered if she weighed both sides equally. I'll never know, of course. And I would never ask her now.
The way things worked out even after I defied the government sort of shut down that part of the conversation. The fact that I was never completely sure—about that or about anything—contributed to my decision, years in the future from this point, to not rejoin the CIA, once we were invited. But I digress.
Chuck's days were dark, but so were mine, for a totally different reason.
I had finally lost my ability to deny my feelings for Chuck.
I woke up and…there it was. I actually admitted it on camera in my video log. I was certain now that Casey was doing some serious editing–and it wasn't like Casey didn't know I loved Chuck. It seemed I was the very last one to know, for sure at least.
I loved him. I loved him…and we were doomed and lost and hopeless. But I loved him.
During this incident, at this time, I knew that he loved me too. Later, I would tell myself this was wrong, that I had misinterpreted what he was really feeling during all of this. I can't begin to express how much I hate the fact that I ever doubted his love and what it meant.
Chuck's feelings for me are, and always have been, the strongest, most powerful thing I have ever known. To doubt it was like doubting the existence of a hurricane—while you are hunkered in a flooded room full of broken windows.
Love was something new, something I knew of, but never really knew…until Chuck taught me. I didn't always recognize it, what it made me think or do. It was this unquenchable fire that lit me from inside. Only that. The power of it, the depth and breadth and reach of it…I could only imagine.
Loving someone means you want to be with them, share your life with them. A very simplistic interpretation. But it can also mean letting someone go, because you must…or taking the brunt of pain and sacrifice for the person you love. Being unselfish for someone else's benefit, someone else's need, is the ultimate act of love.
I was about to learn this here. As crazy as it sounds, it never registered with me, that that was what was going on with me. I did learn that from Chuck, but how quickly I forgot when it was him doing the sacrificing. How quickly I took that as proof that he couldn't possibly have loved me the way I thought he did.
And even still, it was a hard lesson for me to learn here. But I did. I had no other choice.
I shut off the camera and went to work. Chuck was already at the Buy More and I decided to bring him some frozen yogurt, hoping to cheer him up. He had a short fuse, and got a little irritated that the government seemed to be more concerned with new frozen yogurt recipes than actually looking for Orion. He wasn't wrong. I didn't have the faith in the government I implored Chuck to have–I just didn't know what else I could do for him.
He was quite vocal about not trusting them. I agreed with him, but I made it a point to ask him if he trusted me. Ever since the business with Orion had started, I wondered. I had never questioned it before, even though, like I said, he didn't have any real reason to trust me, not the way I asked him to.
He told me he did trust me, but he paused, maybe too long, while I waited breathlessly. I wasn't imagining that pause–it was real.
I went to Castle, only to have Casey tell me we were awaiting an update from General Beckman, and he was on his way to get Chuck.
Beckman's update was…pitifully inadequate. Why call a meeting to say nothing had changed? All it did was push Chuck to his breaking point. He was beyond frustrated and he let his anger show, even as he directly addressed Beckman.
Casey intervened, reminding Chuck who he was addressing.
Chuck lit into Casey, giving a long list of all the things he had done for the government, because he had to, and never complained. And when he needed something in return, the government came up short.
It had taken me a lot longer to learn that, working for the CIA. Chuck learned in two years, where it had taken me close to ten. I had convinced myself being with Chuck was worth all of that, but the way he sounded, I didn't think he felt the same. He wanted out, just like he had been telling me almost everyday for two years. He wanted a normal life.
He drove the point home with that tirade. And it stuck in my head, though I didn't realize it did as it happened.
He brought up the chance to talk to Fulcrum, to get answers. We had no reason to trust them at all, so it was pointless.
Chuck used the dreaded line about being willing to do whatever it took by any means necessary.
"What if I could get a Fulcrum agent to talk?" he asked, his voice heavy.
Jill. Jill Roberts. I knew instantly that was who he meant.
I felt sick, chilled like my blood had turned to ice. For all the reasons you could imagine, the least of which would be the inexplicable effect Jill seemed to have on him, the pull that just ruined his judgment and his ability to think straight. I was also insane with jealousy when it came to her, and I could admit that too, because I loved Chuck, and he had loved her first.
There were no other options. I tried to talk him out of it, but I realized my reasons were personal, not what was best for Chuck or the mission, so I let it go pretty easily. He wasn't happy about the plan, but he was desperate.
We got him clearance to see Jill in the penitentiary, even though she was in maximum security and had limited visitation rights. We were live on the com, and I tried to give Chuck encouragement because he was anxious. He went to Jill's cell and waited while they chained her, which allowed them to talk privately with just the guards outside the door.
He was nervous, rambling a little. He was proposing a familiarity that was comfortable to him, but the Jill he was with was not the Jill he had ever known. I think he figured that out quickly enough, dropping his friendly demeanor when she was cold and unforgiving to him.
Chuck had specific instructions as to what he was allowed to tell her, and what he wasn't. He told her Fulcrum had kidnapped his father. At no time was he authorized to tell Jill that his father was Orion. There was always the chance that Jill knew that somehow, but my gut was telling me that was information she just didn't have. She probably wasn't close enough to Roark to know something like that. Chuck having his father kidnapped was a believable problem, considering he was CIA, although why, Jill didn't know.
He did tell her too much at this time, though. I'm sure he thought she was going straight back into her cell, so it was moot. It spiraled, of course, but no one thought it would go the way that it did.
Jill was an intelligent woman. When Chuck told her they took his father to rebuild Fulcrum's Intersect, it started her thinking, I know it. Jill knew all about Chuck's past with his parents; they were a real couple for over two years. Jill knew everything about Chuck, more than I did at this point, at least until the point where she left him.
At first, Jill refused to help him. Chuck told it to her straight, even if he was expecting too much of the Jill he knew. She asked for a deal, which no one had authorized him to offer. He agreed readily, even as Casey protested in his ear. I don't know if Chuck lied to her face on purpose, to get what he needed, or if he thought he could talk Beckman into something after the fact. Any means necessary, I thought. Chuck was taking it to heart.
Casey made the arrangements to have Jill remanded to our custody. We took her to Castle. The ride was painfully quiet and tense, the air so thick I could cut it with a knife.
As soon as she was in Castle, Casey laid down the ground rules. He asked where Chuck's father was. Of course, she waited until this point to say that she didn't really know, but she knew of someone who might.
I already didn't trust Jill as far as I could throw her; this little omission only heightened the feeling. In fact, one thing after another, each step along the way, the more I became convinced that Jill orchestrated everything, with the intention of thwarting us and eventually escaping. Nothing I saw up to a certain point contradicted this assessment, either.
She mentioned her Uncle Bernie. Casey was appropriately harsh; Chuck looked openly skeptical. He mentioned that she had never mentioned Uncle Bernie.
He ended up being a family friend, the person who had recruited her into Fulcrum. It made sense that Chuck had never heard of him then, since she kept all of that a secret while they were dating.
I asked her how we knew we could trust him. She said he was her father's best friend.
While that may have been true, Jill was either the worst judge of character ever, or she played us. I was biased. Even now, I believe her only intent was to get back into their good graces and screw us over. Chuck being Chuck is what stopped that, in the end, though it took a while and I learned the full story in disconnected bits and pieces.
Casey asked Jill where Bernie was. She gave a list of excuses, that he was guarded all the time, that Fulcrum was always near him. Only at family functions did he show up alone.
Chuck came up with the idea of manufacturing an occasion. He proposed (no pun intended) an engagement party. Jill looked shocked, but she agreed. She called her parents from Castle as we listened and gave them a long, phony story about getting back together with Chuck and how he had proposed and she wanted to see them and show them.
She was lying, but there was just enough truth in what she said that made it sound perfect. I bit the inside of my cheek for how jealous it made me, as Chuck leaned into the phone and pretended to have the same level of happiness about being with Jill. I know it was worse because it was like watching a what-if play out, a scene I'm sure Chuck dreamed of when he was dating Jill.
Jill's mother excitedly agreed and said she would throw a party, and could they both be there for the next day.
We had our in, a fake engagement party, about two hours north of LA. The thought of the pretending they had to do continued to make me sick. I kept telling myself Chuck was doing this for his father, nothing more. But it was so hard, and it became like a mantra in my head, the more I had to hear during that fake party.
I almost died listening to Jill's father toast the happy couple. I could feel Casey looking at me, waiting to see how I was reacting to all of it. He had just heard me confess my feelings via video, after all. Casey needled me, as always, which made it worse.
The moment Bernie showed up, he pulled Chuck and Jill away from the party. Once they explained, telling the truth, Bernie blew everything up. So much for Jill's assurances that we could trust him. Casey was ready to charge in, but we had to mind Chuck's cover, and I quickly reminded him of that.
So we posed as a couple, me being a relative of Chuck's. We rang the front doorbell. We got let in, made all the introductions. We were inside when we heard Chuck on the com, that he was in trouble, on the third floor of the house. We ran, saying we were looking for the bathroom. We ran with our guns drawn, all the way to the attic.
Why was Jill running to the attic to get out of the house? Suspicions nagged at me. It made no sense, but we followed anyway.
By the time we arrived, Bernie was dead. Flat on his back. Chuck was white as a ghost, and I asked him if he was ok. He seemed in shock, slow to answer. Casey made a stupid joke about it being Chuck's first confirmed kill, since Bernie was dead. I thought it could have been a heart attack.
Casey asked him about his girly pose, which Chuck called The Morgan. He was grounding himself, so I went along with that, trying to ease him back to reality. I knew what that felt like, watching someone die. It was never easy, even when it was an accident, or when it was a bad guy.
Then we had to worry about getting Bernie's body out of the house without anyone questioning it. Casey proposed pretending Bernie was passed out drunk. Casey and Chuck lifted his body and the four of us sold that all the way out the door. Apparently, it was a believable excuse.
I eyed Chuck as he watched Jill say goodbye to her parents. He was feeling for her. I mean, that was what he always did, but with her, it really upset me.
We left Jill in the holding cell overnight and returned in the morning. Beckman called and gave the authorization to send Jill back to prison. The sooner I could get her away from Chuck, the better I would feel. She had only made things worse and I had even less reason to trust her.
Chuck was upset, of course, because we weren't any closer to finding his father than when we'd started. I tried to tell Chuck that Jill had been the problem, but he blamed it all on Bernie. I had been there and done that, listening to Chuck defend Jill against reason, and I was tired of it.
"Chuck, you have to realize there are some people that you just cannot trust," I insisted.
He grabbed my arm as I tried to walk away, hard, harder than I expected. He seemed to notice his harshness, and let me go. He told me he didn't trust anyone, except for me. And he asked me to trust him. He pretty much begged me to let Jill help him.
I straight out refused.
I had to turn away quickly, because the pain on his face, pain I had just caused, seemed to reach inside me and squeeze my heart until I couldn't breathe.
We were getting Jill ready for transport back to prison. Chuck came to say goodbye to her. I made my face set like stone, afraid all of the emotion roiling beneath the surface would escape and show some of my heart, which I couldn't afford.
Bernie's cell phone, which Casey had forgotten to remove from his body before it was bagged, started ringing. Chuck went after it, opening the body bag and retrieving the phone. He answered the call and pretended to be Bernie. Chuck heard about moving Orion. I instructed him to keep the caller on the line so we could trace the call.
It was a bit ridiculous, but Chuck rambled long enough so that we got the trace to go through. Once we identified the building, Jill said she knew what it was.
I was very leery, even though Chuck was all ears as she spoke. She, of course, made a plea to accompany us. Considering how far south the entire mission at DeStefano Court went, I believe yet again, Jill was just playing us, stalling, looking for a way out, a way to screw us over in favor of herself. Chuck pleaded, and Casey agreed; I was overruled.
I stayed in the van with Jill; Chuck and Casey went inside. Jill instructed them to say they were there for auditing. Again, this plan caused more problems and more damage, but at the time I didn't have a better option. Jill's plan to get them up to the eighth floor failed immediately. Instead, they went for testing. Which gave Fulcrum the ability to scan both Chuck and Casey and run them through the database. Covers blown, thanks to Jill, although we didn't know it yet.
The test moderator took Chuck aside, and Jill advised that the person mentioned would know where Orion was. I told Casey to stand down, listening to Jill, though my spy senses were tingling, none of this feeling…right.
I heard someone address Casey as "Agent Casey." That was when I knew. Casey managed to extricate himself from the situation. I told him where Chuck was being taken.
Then I heard Bergey tell Chuck that they knew who he was, that his father was Orion.
Jill heard that too. So if there was any doubt about what she knew, about the reason why this was all happening, she didn't any longer. There was no way Jill had never heard the name Orion. One of Fulcrum's main goals for years was to take Orion, to rebuild their Intersect. Did she intuit that Chuck was the Intersect, not Bryce, like she had believed all along? I didn't know. From what Chuck told me later, she seemed to not know how he knew about Black Rock, but maybe after those two things, she figured it out. I don't honestly know because the last time either Chuck or I saw Jill, to this day, was that day at DeStefano Court.
They pulled his wire. I couldn't wait any more, and I told Casey I was going in. Jill insisted I take her with me.
One of those moments that I can think back to, wondering what would have happened if I had done something differently. If I had left Jill in the van and gone inside just myself.
We would never have found Orion, of that I'm sure. Roark would have succeeded, and maybe killed Chuck's father too. But Jill would have gone back into custody, and most likely Beckman wouldn't have put the call in to bring Chuck in, which was the catalyst for all that followed. It's too hazy, too uncertain to speculate, but it would have changed the way things happened. Chuck and I were destined for each other, so one way or another, we would have found a way. But a way very different from what happened. We'll never know…because, against my better judgment, I did take Jill inside with me. For all the good it did me, which was nothing.
She may have wanted to help Chuck, genuinely, but her driving purpose was escaping, getting away from me, inside that building. She did not want to go back to prison, especially after the brief taste of freedom we'd given her.
We were already on the 15th floor when the security breach klaxon started to sound.
And then all hell broke loose.
I was double-fisted shooting at everyone coming at us in both directions, for an extended period of time. But that was when Jill got away from me, and obviously armed herself by grabbing one of the dead agent's guns as she went. Eventually, Casey got to me, after I had neutralized almost everyone.
I called for Chuck on the com and he answered. He said he was on the eighth floor and that Orion was already gone. We told him to hold tight and we were on our way.
When we found Chuck, he was alone. He told me later that Jill had found him, helped him, instead of fleeing like she had wanted to all along. All he told us when we found him was overhearing the code name for Protocol 7 and that was where they took his father. He was adamant that we tell Beckman right away, but Casey put him off that, telling him the Fulcrum base being shot apart would require the mother of all cleaning jobs for the NSA and that we needed to sit tight while that all played out. Chuck had no patience for that, but he bit his tongue, I'm sure because he knew where he needed to go; he had hope now, something he hadn't had since his father was taken.
When we finally got back to Castle, Chuck went to the Buy More. Beckman dressed me down pretty badly for letting Jill get away. She expressed how serious it was–that a Fulcrum agent on the loose knew all of their secrets. Casey made a stupid quip about wanting to pull Chuck underground.
Beckman gave the order, serious, though Casey was only half-serious. I was dumbfounded. She went on–the project was over, too hard to control, too tenuous in the field. In my mind, I was back on the roof, waiting for Long Shore to take him from me. I could hardly breathe.
I tried to argue with Beckman…and she ordered me to lie to him, trick him because he trusted me. My absolute worst nightmare…alive and screaming in my face.
Beckman signed off and Casey gave me this nonchalant shrug, then started to grab his gear like it was nothing. I had never been so furious in my entire life.
Casey was his friend! He was my friend! He knew everything about how I felt…and this was how he reacted?
It took all my strength to hold myself back, to keep from jumping onto his back and scratching his eyes out in my fury. I was seething with cold rage when I finally found my voice.
"How can you just stand there and say nothing?"
He gave the counterargument, of course, and he was right. Chuck wasn't safe now that Jill was loose and could be retaken by Fulcrum and tortured. Casey was being logical, following his orders because they made sense to him. Protecting Chuck was protecting Chuck, and in this instance putting him underground was best.
Casey led with his head instead of his heart.
I used to do that…but something had happened to me and now I didn't know what to do.
I'd like to say I went to the Buy More to get Chuck with every intention of running with him, but that isn't true. My head and my heart were locked in mortal combat and I was awaiting the winner as I made my way there.
Part of me, the logical part, knew objectively speaking, Casey was right. My heart couldn't accept that truth. My heart was winning, each step I took closer to Chuck, the stronger my heart became in the fight. But the deathblow to my logic didn't come until Chuck said something very specific to me.
Of course, it's worth saying here, Chuck was on his way out of the Buy More to go to the place he had flashed on, Protocol 7, near Barstow in the desert. Without telling me, without asking me to accompany him. He didn't trust me–for obvious reasons.
I put on my fakest smile and lied to his face, doing just what Beckman had ordered me to do, even as my heart was screaming inside my chest to stop.
"I owe you an apology."
"Why?"
"I was beginning to think that I couldn't trust you anymore, Sarah."
I know he said more, explaining something Jill had said to him, but I couldn't hear it. All I heard was my own heartbeat, my blood rushing behind my eardrums.
He stopped trusting me. And here I was, betraying him.
Something else he said caught my attention, about me always looking out for him. It hit me like a punch in the gut.
I. Loved. Him. I loved him.
How could I do this to someone I loved? To the only person I had or would ever love?
Logic, duty, professionalism–all of it died, right there, inside me, slain forever by my heart, completely surrendered to Charles Bartowski.
I had to save him.
If we could find his father, his father could remove the Intersect, and the life that Chuck had always wanted would be his again. Me, what I wanted, was secondary. Even if I lost him because of it, I could do this, let him keep his life, let him go to his sister's wedding, let him live and love, even if it wasn't with me.
He would have done that for me, in a heartbeat, if the situation was reversed. Of that, I had no doubt.
I turned to look at the surveillance camera. Then I hugged him. I whispered in his ear, "Take off your watch."
"Why?"
"Because it's all a lie. Your dad is still out there. Beckman sent me to get you to bring you back to the Castle. They're going to take you underground. We have to run."
I released him, stood back. I could feel him shaking, see how pale his face had gotten. He was gasping, like he had just run, though he was standing still.
He took off his watch, handed it to me, and I dropped it in the stack of baskets at the door.
We left the Buy More and never looked back.
