A/N: Chuck has refused to follow orders to kill a traitor.
Across town inside Castle, Shaw was waiting for info on the nights events. He was surprised when Sarah rang him later than he predicted. He was even more surprised when Sarah asked him to post bail. Shaw had to go downtown to recover his agent from LA's finest.
What was more pressing on Shaw's mind than bailing Sarah out was the fact that the mark, Perry, was still alive. Perry if he had any sense would go to ground and thus be difficult to find.
Sarah's night was turning into a living nightmare, Chuck had stormed off in a huff and refused to follow his orders, now a fellow detainee decided she waited to talk to her. Sarah was not in the mood but she had nowhere to go to avoid her. Killing her was not an option so she just had to put up with it. She took the course of saying very little and just nod at the required times. This lady could talk and she went on and on about the littlest of things. By the time Sarah decided that killing her was now a valid option Shaw had turned up to get her.
Shaw had made his way to the Central Police Station. He spent a considerable amount of time and persuasion into getting his agent released and then more time for the return of her weaponry. Shaw led a rather embarrassed and glum faced agent to his car.
He offered her his jacket because it was cool outside but she refused it. The pressure cooker inside her head is whistling with the steam escaping, Shaw opts to give her some space as he leads her to his car.
The ride back from the Police station was done in deathly silence. Sarah was in the foulest of moods. It certainly was a day she would like to forget. First issuing the Red test which was against her judgement of Chuck, then Chuck's refusal to carry out that order, followed by her getting arrested so she wouldn't blow her cover, watching the mark escape and finally being put in a cell with other low lives.
When she couldn't believe it could get any worst, it was the sideway glances Shaw was giving her as they drove through the empty streets back towards Castle. Shaw was smirking at her.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Shaw knew it was going to be hopeless.
"No. I just want to go home!" was the snapped reply.
Shaw didn't need instinct to tell him he wasn't going to get any booty tonight so he turned off, he drove to Sarah's hotel and dropped her off.
"We'll report in tomorrow, clear our heads, and decide our next course of action after a good nights sleep."
Shaw drove off and after watching her go inside he smirked to himself, the CIA's best spy sitting in jail, if only he had taken a picture.
Sarah was relieved; she got home, back to her room. It seemed chillier than she normally thought, cold even, perhaps as cold as she was. She had to have a shower, she felt all grimy and dirty because of what happened tonight. The Police cell wasn't exactly clean and then there was what she had asked for from Chuck. The look Chuck gave back at her , she was dirty and she would never feel clean again.
After the shower she dried herself and made her way over to her bed, she turned her alarm off and then she had a thought. She reached into her bedside drawer and pull the picture of her and Chuck out to look at. She had put away after she began to date Daniel Shaw. She studied the picture and remembered when it was taken. She had been out with Chuck and his family walking in the hills when Ellie took. She rolled over onto he back and held the picture against her breasts. She stayed that way hoping that sleep would come easy, but it didn't.
Meanwhile down at the beach, Chuck was contemplating a late night swim, to let the waves wash over him and wipe the dirty business he somehow wanted to be involved in away. He did however throw plenty of flotsam around and back into the ocean.
Now he was alone, he could think about his relationship with Sarah, he was back at his spot, and the waves were working their usual magic. She was leaving with the other guy, just like Jill, they all leave him. Surprisingly though, the pain was intense, he was having chest pains and he really just wanted to cry.
Chuck wasn't sure if he was more upset at the loss of an opportunity with Sarah or wasting three years chasing someone who, in the end, didn't want him. He wondered if Graham had given her secret orders to turn the Intersect into a heartless killing machine, something he clearly wasn't, and she pretended to be his friend in order to mould him that way. Chuck was wondering if that Sarah never cared for him beyond a casual friendship. During his darkest moments in Sarah's first few months in Burbank, when all hope for a normal life or a normal relationship seemed pointless, there were times when Chuck wondered if everything he thought he knew about Sarah Walker was lies.
He pick up a long stick, he was going to throw it away then he thought better of it, he sat back down an started using the stick to tap the sand. He later started writing a list in the sand of the pros and cons of becoming an agent. The list evidently was heavily lopsided for the cons side. When he ran out of options he stood back to look at what he created, one of the pro's he wrote Sarah. He studied it for a while before stomping the letters of her name out. He hated doing that but it was true, he understood what his life had become. He was a fool, he'd been fooled by all of them, Beckman, Casey, Shaw and especially Sarah. He finally saw what for a long time he had been blind too. He had been stupid; a fool to be manipulated for purposes not for his own wellbeing and Jill had tried to warn him.
As the night got longer the temperature started to drop. There was bit of a breeze starting to pick up and Chuck wondered if he should go home. But what was home, his place was full of NSA listening devices, true they were probably turned off since Casey's dismissal, but there was no guarantee the agency hadn't already switched them back on remotely and re-establishing their eavesdropping .He dug himself a hole, large enough to shelter in, to protect him against the wind, here was the one place at the moment where he could feel isolated from the rest of the world. He had his hole, his stick and his thoughts, that was enough for tonight.