A/N: Welcome back to something much nicer than Season 3. Beard isn't nearly as bad as the other 3 after it, but it's still bad. Sarah is not in it much. And, brace yourselves, I believe it is where Sharah started in earnest. Look for that later this week, and not before Chapter 4 of this on Thursday. Enjoy!
Work Number Two: Visit with the Imprisoned
He swallows, and I can hear it. He rubs his hands on his thighs, a nervous habit I have seen him do in the past as I'd watched him from afar. "I don't have any reason to doubt you," he says softly, never looking away from my face. "Barney can spot a liar a mile away." A soft, crooked smile.
It does not escape me…that he is not questioning what I've said. He is merely curious, waiting for the explanation. It's so strange, so unexpected, that I forget everything I've rehearsed to say to him.
Suddenly, I hear the clicking of the dog's paws on the hardwood floor as he comes to find us. For whatever reason, Barney walks straight to me and drops his head into my lap and then looks up at me with sweet, soulful eyes. His tail thumps against the coffee table.
"See?" Chuck says, an odd breathiness to his voice that I can't reconcile with the smile on his face. "You've got a friend."
I place the tea cup on the table and reach to pet him, getting a lick on the hand first. "I guess so," I say, talking softly to the dog. Tears are gathering behind my eyes, but I fight them. The dog leans against the sofa, but close to my leg, like he is protecting me. His warmth is pleasant against me.
I tell myself to start at the beginning. "I work for the CIA." It's the simplest place to start.
I hear him swallow again and watch as his eyes narrow, only slightly, before his face reverts to neutral. "The CIA has no authority on U.S. soil." It's not defensive, just facts stated neutrally. He sighs. "And, yet, in practice, that seems a little more…fluid…than one might think." It's a very cryptic thing to say.
I start to worry. What if I have misjudged him? I start to panic. I remind myself that I don't know how much, or what, he knows. I tell myself to go slowly, to not blurt it all out at once.
"I've been…surveilling you for almost three years." Chuck looks down into his lap, clasping his hands together and tucking them between his knees. Nerves again. "I've been…following you…since your sister was seriously injured in that car accident about a year ago."
He squints, pressing his eyes closed tightly. I see his pain, realize what I've said, and panic anew. "I didn't cause that accident, I swear." I sound defensive, but his trust in me is most important. I can't convince him of anything if he believes I intentionally hurt his sister.
"I know." He looks up sharply, his tone almost insulted, as if he is offended that I believed he could maybe think that I had. Why is he so sure?
And then I question what he is replying to. That I didn't cause the accident, or that he knew I was following him. Had he known he was being followed? I didn't know how that could be. I wasn't infallible, but I was the best. That was why Graham had assigned me to begin with. My surveillance had never been detected before. Chuck had given no outward signs that he knew someone was watching him. People always had a tell, I had learned, and I would draw back before suspicions were raised.
"They know that you're the Piranha." I am dropping information, one bomb at a time. Incredibly, though he is outwardly nervous, Chuck is only minimally affected by my words.
He blows out his breath, his lips burring with the sound. "Is that what they told you?"
I'm rattled. Was he going to deny being the Piranha? I needed him to believe me, but, somehow, I had never imagined this conversation would contend with Chuck being dishonest. That's the most common instinct of human nature, to deny, and yet, I know Chuck is honest to a fault. I am momentarily stunned, no contingency plan in place for this.
"Are you denying it?" I counter.
He looks down again. "If I were, why would I admit it out loud…to a CIA officer?"
I wince, cursing myself for raising his defenses when I am trying to put him at ease, to get him to trust me. I have to make him understand, even if that means divulging a lot of information all at once, with the hopes of getting him on the same page. I'm still not sure how I am going to proceed, but I certainly don't have time to manage subterfuge.
"Langston Graham, the Director of the CIA, knows you are the Piranha. He gives me my orders. He sent me to find you."
"What proof did he show you? How did he explain what he knew?" Chuck asks the questions like he already knows the answers. I feel off balance, out of my element. The more he speaks, the more I believe I have underestimated Chuck. My only comfort is in knowing my sense of him, as a person, is correct. He is not pretending–how he is before me is how he is. I'm certain. More certain than I have a right to feel, yet, I do.
I look away, absently stroking the dog's head as he leans against the sofa. "My job is to follow orders, not question their validity."
When I look up again, Chuck is looking at me sadly, pity in his eyes. I can't reconcile it, can't understand it.
"That can't be easy for you…to never know what's real." Compassion. Compassion. It blows my mind. I choke as I breathe heavily, tears fresh in my eyes again.
I close my eyes and against the dark background I see faces, lives I have snuffed from existence. How many of them were truly dangerous to the world…and how many were merely dangerous to Graham? How many innocent people had I killed? My job had become my life. My life had become my prison. Being here was the beginning of my escape plan, even if the end was my execution. One way or the other, I would be free. So long as I helped Chuck escape as well.
"I'm not here…in an official capacity," I mutter. "Not anymore." I say that more firmly, though I am still crying.
"Then…why are you here?" he asks, leaning forward.
In his forward posture, he is close to me. The scent of him is surrounding me like an extra layer of warmth over the blanket. "Because…I can't follow my orders." It's not an answer, and I see the furrow in his brow that shows his confusion. I close my eyes and more tears fall. "He sent me to kill you." I hear his breath hitch, almost rattling in his chest. "So I came here…to save your life instead."
I can't open my eyes, horrified at what I might see on his face, the face that I so desperately love. He stays silent and still for so long, it feels like time has stopped. Like we are existing, just breathing, outside of time. I feel his hand curl around mine, squeezing tightly. He is trembling. It is only when I feel his thumb, gliding back and forth delicately on the back of my hand, that I open my eyes.
I can't read his expression. It's too complex, too many emotions expressed all at the same time. But his beautiful eyes seem to glow, radiating a deep warmth that puts me at ease. Amazingly, though he appears shaken, he does not recoil from me in horror. I admitted to being an assassin for the CIA, tasked with ending his life, and he's comforting me.
In another person, this behavior would put me on guard. No one was like this, unconditionally kind. But he was, he is. I have seen it with my own eyes for a year. I see it now, on his face, as he studies me.
His breathing is ragged and uneven. But his palm, against my hand, is dry. He is not nervous or anxious. And not angry, at least not at me. It flashes across my mind—he is holding back extraordinarily strong emotions. Too complex to delineate, but all with a positive connotation. And then I tell myself to stop—it's wishful, desperate thinking to attribute emotions to him I merely wish were there. I am distracting myself and I don't have time.
I feel my emotions surge, my whole body aching to close the distance between us. But I have to suppress it, bury it inside me. All of this is strange, but my incongruous affection will be the thumb on the scale that turns belief into doubt. I cannot indulge my feelings at the risk of him not believing me, thinking I'm crazy. I have to save him, no matter the cost. No matter what I think he might be feeling.
"He doesn't have any proof, because there isn't any," he says confidently, pulling me back to what he has said before, a soft deflection of the intensity of the moment.
I know this. I told myself this hundreds of times. So how did Graham know? It seems Chuck has that answer.
"But you are the Piranha," I whisper.
"Yes, I am." I was not expecting the truth spoken so plainly, not after his verbal dance from before. I'm heartened as I believe that maybe, just maybe, this means that he trusts me, at least a little. He believes at least some of what I've told him.
"You're amazing, can I tell you that?" It is the perfect time to say that, what I honestly believe. Let him think I mean his hacking skills; I mean everything, everything I know about him, everything this face to face has confirmed for me.
He blushes, redder than I have ever seen anyone blush. My heart twists inside me, how utterly endearing he is. He is still holding my hand and I am acutely aware of it, how his skin feels against mine.
"How did Graham find out who you are?" I ask him.
"You know…everything about me, don't you?" He swallows, a quick flash of nervousness, a brief ding in his armor. "I mean, the CIA…they...they would have had you read my…dossier…or whatever…or…" He's spiraling. He is projecting a calm collection of being, but that little bit of genuine Chuck showing through makes my heart leap again.
"Yes." I won't make him more uncomfortable. Just the one word, he knows what I know. It saves him a lot of superfluous explanations.
"Bryce Larkin."
His roommate, the one who had framed him for cheating, the CIA recruit, long dead.
"He…sold you out, on top of getting you expelled?" I ask.
"No," Chuck says, sharply, defensive. "Bryce tried to help me." He closes his eyes again, cringing at some remembered pain. "Graham killed him for it. After he tortured the information about my hacking out of him."
I'd had no part in Bryce's death, but that was only by accident. It was just the kind of assignment Graham would have sent me on. I try to let go of Chuck's hand, an intense feeling of my uncleanliness, the indelible blood on my hands, overwhelming me, but he holds fast.
"The CIA wanted me for an experiment. One of my professors was a company scientist. Bryce never told me what it was about, only that it was dangerous and that the CIA wasn't going to give me a choice. He explained what he was doing, that if he could frame me for cheating, then the test I had taken would be invalidated, and I would be safe."
He takes a shuddering breath. "I went along with his plan. I didn't need my degree. I didn't even need a job. But I didn't leave well enough alone. I wanted to know the truth. So I hacked into the CIA." He goes ashen. "What I found is certainly what Graham didn't want me to know, what he was willing to issue a kill order for." He pauses to breathe. "You're safer if you don't know the whole thing. All I can tell you is that it was like science fiction, about creating an army of programmed soldiers, completely under CIA control."
When it comes to Graham, there is almost nothing I will not believe. He is drunk with unchecked power, and he has been for a long time.
"Once Graham found out how Bryce and I were connected, he sort of…guessed…about the incident with the test. At least that's what I think. The official record of how Bryce died isn't accurate. He wasn't even in the same country as the report said."
What that means, Chuck continued to hack after he learned of Bryce's death. He had been trying to seek justice for his friend. One more reason Graham wants him dead. Chuck can implicate him in one of his agent's deaths.
I cringe, but interrupt. "Graham sent someone like me after him."
Chuck makes a sound I can't discern. Half sob, half growl…but directed at Graham, not me. I don't know how I know this, only that I'm sure.
His voice is broken when he speaks. "Bryce was my friend. And he died…because of me." He swallows hard. "So I decided to go underground." He looks up at me. "Where I've been ever since."
"Until now," I whisper sadly.
"Hmm…" He doesn't explain himself, his strange reaction to me. His mouth folds into a crooked line. The situation is too harsh for humor, but that noise is a subdued I don't think so. I know what all his sounds mean.
I look at him, curious and incredulous. He looks…contrite. Once again, he has shaken the ground beneath me.
"How do you think you found me?" he asks.
"Your sister's accident. I went to the hospital, sure that you would be there–"
"Sarah," he interrupts, my name soft on his lips, making me shiver. "I've seen my sister hundreds of times since I went underground. That day, I let you see me. The trail you were following was a trail of breadcrumbs that I left for you. Like the one that led you here."
The words and their meaning hit me like a gale force wind. What was he saying? Bile burns the back of my throat and I choke, struggling to maintain my equilibrium. The shaking ground is opening up, ready to gobble me down.
How had I not known? How had I missed so much? Anyone but Chuck could have led me here to kill me, and I would have had no idea. Only, it was Chuck. My feelings for him have occluded my senses, my rationality, every sense I have relied on until now to keep me safe. The shock subsides, and my terror rears its head.
"Why would you do that?" I shriek, jumping to my feet, startling him. "I'm an assassin! Graham knows I'm here and when I don't report back, he'll send someone to eliminate us both!"
He jumps to his feet and stands in front of me. "Sarah," he says calmly. I stop flailing and just look at him. He takes a step closer. "If you haven't reported back to Graham, he doesn't know where you are. I promise. You're safe here."
I haven't reported back to Graham, not yet. He seems certain of this, though there is no way he could know, even if everything else he said is true. He says the words and it's like the fire of panic fizzles out inside me. His voice is a sedative, relaxing me.
"I don't understand…" I say breathlessly. I want to understand. What is happening? Is what I conclude actually true…that Chuck sought me out, invited me inside, knowing why I had come? I feel no threat from him, only concern. No deceit, just a warm blanket and a cup of tea.
I stand mesmerized still as he gently places his hands on my face, stroking my cheeks, soothing me. I stop breathing as he leans forward, brushing his lips against mine, a ghost of a kiss, sweet and chaste. His eyes are still closed as he pulls away.
My world winks off, then on again, as I reel where I stand. How was this happening? It was like the gravity had been switched off and I was in danger of floating up to the ceiling.
"Why…" I croak the word, not willing to accept his kiss as an answer for what I've asked. There is too much to hold inside me; I'm in danger of letting my emotions overwhelm me, which I think might overwhelm him as well.
But he stands back and opens his eyes, regarding me. I can't look away from him, from what I see on his face. I can't explain it, but everything inside me reacts to it. I love him. From afar, up close, outside of place and time. I love him.
"I have something I need to show you."
One hand slides down my arm, sending a delicious shiver up my spine, and pauses at my wrist, holding it gently as he leads me away from the sofa and towards his desk.
He's looking at his computer when he whispers, "I know everything about you, Sarah Walker."