A/N: I wrote this story back in 2022, but put it aside. It is probably the darkest I've written, at least at the start, so brace yourselves.

Not beta'd, so probably full of my mistakes. PM me if any bother you enough to need correcting.

My fears of what all female law enforcers might face have been experienced by Sarah Walker. A broken woman who's treatment at the hands of drug smugglers changed her attitude towards men and made her the perfect assassin. Then, she was sent to Los Angeles…

Healing

Chapter 1: Terrible Past

Sarah had only agreed to go on this mission to fix what Bryce had done and because the mark seemed so easy. It was the first of this type for over four years now. She shuddered briefly thinking about the reason as she flew across the country, and started to read about Charles Irving Bartowski.

She vaguely remembered Bryce talking about his best friend at Stanford. He hadn't named him, but apparently this was him. He had made a huge impression on her ex-boyfriend and partner. Bryce would go all melancholic when he talked about him. There was obviously a bond there, but one that had apparently broken. She suspected it was the spy life that Bryce entered that tore them apart.

As she read the guy's file, she was surprised. Maybe this wasn't the person Bryce had been friends with. This guy was a complete loser. He cheated at Stanford, not something that Bryce had mentioned about his friend. In fact, Bryce had hinted that he was jealous of this guy's intellect. However, this Bartowski had been thrown out and had spent the last five years in a low-paid, dead-end job at a Buy More in Burbank. He lived with his sister and her boyfriend. He was single and looked rather idiotic in the photo in his file. He had no convictions and seemed squeaky clean, apart from what he did at Stanford.

So, a lowly paid loser, probably desperate for a better life. She could relate to the latter. She hated everything about her life. Her past with her dad was almost a highlight now. She'd thought that becoming a CIA operative would be a wonderful change and she would make a name for herself, make the world a better place, but that hadn't turned out well for her.

Reading about this man's miserable five years made her think of her own ten since joining the CIA. It had started well. She was smarter and more physically adept than most at The Farm and had excelled. It didn't make her friends, particularly as she was so much younger than the others there, but she didn't care about that. The transformation of her appearance didn't please the female agents, either. She herself wasn't interested in how she looked, just being the best operative.

She spent a successful year seconded to the Secret Service. That was followed by two years with a mixed female team. That had been interesting and mostly enjoyable, apart from Carina getting them into scrapes with her recklessness and bed hopping. It had ended badly, though.

Then, Sarah had done her Red Test, which, at the time, she'd thought was the worst day of her life. How wrong she'd been. She'd returned from Paris with nightmares about what she'd done there. She hadn't admitted that to Graham, something she was pleased about now, but back then, in 2002, she didn't want to go on those sorts of missions.

Graham had other ideas for her. Bryce Larkin had been with the Company for about a year and a half. For the first year, he'd fitted his assignments around completing his degree. He was bright, very bright and adept. He was also a very attractive man that women swooned over. Graham had decided to pair them up. A married cover for most of the time. Their skills and looks complimented each other.

Bryce's attractiveness did make her change her mind about relationships. They both resisted each other for about six months, but one night after drinking in the bar, they did end up in bed together. They found they complimented each other there, as well.

Bryce did sometimes make mistakes that she had to cover, but that was something she was used to. She'd regularly had to do that for Carina, who was much worse. Overall, Sarah and Bryce had been a good team and worked effectively together.

Then, everything went wrong for Sarah. The mission in Bogotá was a longer one than they were used to. An infiltration one, but they had done well. They weren't using their Anderson married roles, but working in parallel with each other to get the details of the biggest threat to the States. Under the cover of their drug operation, weapons were being smuggled. The partners were assigned the mission to find details.

Sarah had managed to get in with the leader and was leading him on. Bryce was working on one of the women in the finance section.

Bryce managed to get the information needed and let Sarah know it was time to get out, but she was detained. The mission was deemed a success by Graham and the CIA. Bryce had escaped with the intel they wanted. It was the right thing for him to do. The mission was more important than either of them.

Sarah had been tortured to find out where Bryce had gone, and exactly what he took. After two days, they knew they were not going to get Bryce. The torturing stopped. She'd expected to die at that point. It would have been better than what happened.

She was stripped and chained to a bed, spread eagle. The leader immediately violently raped her, and she wished that she'd been killed, but it got worse. His seven men took turns with her, repeatedly. After three hours her body was a wreck.

Her brain had tried to shut down, like she had during the torture. Ignore what was happening to her, but this invasive torture was so much worse. It was affecting her mind too. If she could have killed herself, she would have done it.

They left her naked, suspended from her wrists by ropes, the chains remained attached to the bed posts. The blood from her wrists, as the rope dug in, trickled down her arms, merged with the same from the slashes on her body and the drips from her face. Most of it stopped before it reached the blood from between her legs.

She knew it would all start again the next day, until they tired of having their fun with her and killed her. She just hoped they would decide on that end very soon.

That night, the CIA "rescued" her. Bryce had gotten word out eventually.

Bryce had come and seen her when she got back to the States. He had been shot and nearly hadn't escaped himself, but eventually did. Although she couldn't blame him for what happened, if he had gotten word out a day earlier she would only have been tortured.

Her body healed, although some cosmetic surgery was required, but mentally she was scared for life. The two years of therapy helped her accept staying alive. It had been hard, though. One thing was for sure, though. She never wanted any physical contact with men after that. In fact, she flinched when any came close.

In fact, the experience left her hating men, with a burning desire to hurt them. Her simmering anger was initially held just beneath the surface, ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice. However, much of the time, she had to restrain that anger and tried to bury it, but that was not easy.

She had been treated by female medical practitioners. The male repulsion was confirmed when Bryce visited her after all the therapy and wanted their relationship to restart. She recoiled when he reached for her hand, and even grabbed one of the knives from her recent meal before halting herself. Bryce definitely got the message quite clearly.

When she finally returned to Langley, Graham suggested that she and Bryce work as a team again. She obviously couldn't face doing that. In fact, she told her boss she could no longer do long-term or infiltration missions, and had to work alone.

That, and her hatred of men in general, was how she became Graham's lead assassin. Those missions were easier. No interaction with the marks, apart from occasionally to terminate them with a knife. She did accept simple retrieval missions, but Graham had more than enough people to terminate.

She found that the termination missions gave her some relief from the thoughts still circulating in her head and waking her at night. She imagined each target to be one of those men in Bogotá. Most were the same sort of scum.

The last mission, in Budapest, had been full of scum, men needing to die. She had happily killed all of the mafia men in the mansion and then found out what she'd been sent in for. That confirmed to her that Ryker was just as bad. She'd happily killed him too, before running with the baby. The baby girl was a potential victim of men like Ryker. Of course, she couldn't trust Graham any more than him, so Sarah had saved the baby and left her with her mom.

She forced her thoughts back to the current mission. This one was different to her normal assassination missions. She couldn't just kill Charles Bartowski, she had to get this Intersect off of him first, then terminate his existence. She would have to act interested in him as a man. That would be hard for her mentally. She knew she was still physically attractive, but the mental scars had certainly not healed. It turned her stomach just thinking about having to charm him. If he tried anything, she wasn't sure she would be able to stop herself from killing him on the spot, even if she hadn't gotten the Intersect off of him.

Sarah checked into the hotel she had been allocated to stay at for a couple of days. She didn't care where she stayed, just so long as this was over quickly. It already felt uncomfortable. Charles Bartowski wasn't the scum of the Earth like most of her targets. Killing him wouldn't feel as satisfying as the others.

She thought again that she should use her skills to go to Bogotá and go on a killing spree like the one she had been forced to do in Budapest. Maybe after this one she would get some time to plan that.

Sarah wanted to get this over with quickly, but first she had to do things that she'd avoided for years. She sat on a stool in the bathroom and put on makeup to increase her attractiveness. All she'd worn since that awful experience had been to do the opposite. That had felt familiar. She'd done the same when she'd been at high school. Blend into the background and remain invisible. Now she had to make herself visible to her mark.

As she looked in the mirror, she realized that she'd also have to change her expression. Her normal cold look that faced the world and the glare looking back at her were both wrong. She had to practice to regain the sort of expression that was appropriate for this mission. The woman that had worked with Agent Larkin finally looked back at her.

Next, she had to don the clothes required. She normally wore dark gray or black hoodies like the one she'd taken off, along with black pants. This required brighter colors. She looked at the pink blouse she'd intended to wear and shuddered. She just couldn't go that far. Instead, she put on black pants and a brown leather jacket. She kept the top jacket buttons open so that her chest was visible. No cleavage, but as she looked in the mirror she thought that was good enough, so she headed to the Buy More to meet her mark.

As she entered the store she quickly scanned around to find him. As she stood there, she spotted two men approaching her. They were wearing white shirts and Buy More pocket protectors, but the overriding issues were them coming close and the lecherous looks on their faces. Definitely typical men. Her heart beat faster and she tensed.

"Stop!" she hissed when they were about four feet away. Thankfully both froze. The look of hatred on her face may have been what stopped them rather than her voice, but she didn't care. "Do not come any closer," she continued. Her tone was suitably threatening.

"We only wanted to greet and help you," the long haired one said, sounding, and looking, suitably frightened.

"Just point me to Charles Bartowski," she growled.

"Chuck," the same one said. She noted that. Obviously her mark preferred that name.

They both pointed behind them to below a sign stating the Nerd Herd. She recognized the tall man standing there.

"Get out of my way," she growled, and both men disappeared into the aisles beside them, one each way.

She strode toward her goal.

At six foot and four inches, Charles Bartowski was a lot taller than everyone else in the store, staff or customer. He was standing behind the desk with a phone pressed to his ear by his shoulder. A much smaller man with a green Buy More shirt was standing in front of the desk, listening to the taller man.

Bartowski looked much better than in his photo which must have been from his days at Stanford five years earlier. Thinking that surprised her. This was the first time she'd had a positive thought about a man for years. That was a problem because she needed to kill him.

For now, she squashed both of those thoughts. She had to make this initial contact and gain his interest in her. 'I can do this!' she thought, and continued down the aisle to get to him.

As she approached the desk, the shorter, bearded man spotted her and leaned over to the other and said, "Stop the presses! Who is that? Vicki Vale."

Bartowski started to absentmindedly sing to himself. "Vicki Vale, Vick-Vicki Vale. Vickity-Vickity, Vicki Vale, Vic-Vicki Vale."

Sarah guessed she must look like the woman, whoever she was, but this was just ridiculous. She cut in with, "I hope I'm not interrupting."

The tall man lost his grip on the cellphone which dropped to the floor. He hastily responded, "No. Not at all." Then, flushed, he added, "That's... it's from Batman."

He must have meant the singing. It made her smile. She hadn't done that in so long, it almost hurt. She needed to flirt with him, so this was a good place to start. "'Cause that makes it better."

That floored him. Maybe she'd gone too far?

The other man filled the silence, "Hi. I'm Morgan. This is, uh, this is Chuck."

She surprised herself by being able to continue to flirt. "I didn't think people still named their kids Chuck. Or Morgan, for that matter."

The man she now knew preferred to be called Chuck responded, as if on auto-pilot. "My parents are sadists, and carnival freaks found him in a dumpster."

Morgan added, "But they raised me as one of their own." Definitely rehearsed.

Chuck finally sobered up and asked, "How can I help you... ?"

He was fishing for her name. Without thinking, Sarah told him the name she'd been using as her own since joining the CIA. "Sarah."

"Sarah," he repeated.

She cursed herself for that slip. She shouldn't have used that name, but inwardly shook herself and followed the script for this meeting. "I'm here about this." Sarah showed him the broken phone.

He took it off her, thankfully without making contact with her hand. "Oh, yeah. The Intelicel."

"Yeah," she replied.

He immediately opened it up. That surprised her. She hadn't told him what was wrong with it!

"This model has a little screw that pops loose right in the back here." He continued his words as he worked on it. "I just give it a couple of quick turns and..." He handed it back to Sarah, saying, "Good as new, no problem," he finished.

"Wow! You geeks are good." She had caused the problem, so knew it was easy to fix, but the speed at which he did it was impressive, so saying that didn't feel odd.

He responded instantly. "Nerds. I would say nerds probably more..." He pointed up at the sign above him that said, "Nerd Herd."

Sarah thought she should continue this flirting to insinuate herself into his life, but a man and a small girl ran up, interrupting her. "Excuse me. I have an emergency. I don't know what I did wrong, but I shot the entire recital, but, um, now it... now it won't play back."

Chuck immediately looked his way, ignoring Sarah completely.

What followed was quite amazing.

The man had screwed up a recording of his daughter at a ballet recital. The girl was clearly upset, but the man was more worried about telling his wife about it. Chuck immediately sprang into action. Sarah just stood there leaning on the desk and watched, mesmerized.

He mobilized the other staff, all of whom did whatever he told them. In what seemed like no time, Chuck had the girl standing in front of a bank of televisions facing an Asian-looking woman who had a camera on a tripod pointing toward her.

Chuck knelt down and said to the girl, "You ready?" She shook her head and looked uncomfortable. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I'm usually in the back row."

Chuck frowned. "Why?"

"I'm too tall," the girl replied. "I block the other ballerinas."

Sarah instantly sympathized with her. She could remember that from when she was in ballet before Sarah and her dad left her mom.

Chuck leaned closer and said, "Can I tell you a secret? Real ballerinas are tall."

Sarah's frozen heart nearly burst on her. Chuck Bartowski's comment sent warmth to that heart that hadn't felt anything like it for a long, long time.

She watched as they played the music and the girl danced, while being recorded. It was beautiful!

Sarah couldn't continue here. Emotions she wasn't capable of handling were welling up. She quickly left a card with a note on it for Chuck and virtually ran out of the store to get to the rental car she had parked outside.

On the way, she nearly bumped into a man walking in. As she moved around him, she felt his eyes on her. Not just curious, but lecherous. It was just what she needed to reassert her dislike of men.

She climbed into the car and quickly drove away.

She hoped that by the time Chuck rang, she would have gotten herself fully back under control.

This mission, which should have been so easy, was already challenging Sarah in ways she would never have predicted!

A/N: This Sarah Walker is severely scarred from past experiences. Can a kind IT nerd help her?