A/N: Hold on to your hats. This requires an explanation. Over the holidays, I ended up watching a James Bond movie marathon, had a dream that scrambled Chuck and Bond...and voila, this story. It's not as ghastly as The Darkness, but be forewarned, you will not like Sarah or Chuck at the beginning of this. Sarah lives in guilt and regret and Chuck, well, Chuck is Bond, the way the Intersect was supposed to be. As un-Chuck-like as you could imagine. I promise it gets better. I haven't given up on SvsHL, but this has been taking up too much space in my head. A huge thank you to nevr for previewing it, as well as offering candid opinions about where the line should be drawn before no one cares about my two characters. A side note: movie Bond is suave and quippy, but unlovable, while book Bond is tortured and silent, only slightly less unlovable. I don't think I ever realized how much until I had this dream. I'm thinking about 15 chapters. Let me know what you think, as this is a risky direction to go in, I think.

I wake, bleary-eyed, with a screaming headache. The daylight is blinding, the brightness making my eyes throb in their sockets.

I'm on the left side of the bed, but I'm alone. The man from last night, whose name I never knew, has gone. I say a silent thank you as I rub my eyes.

Mindless fucking in the dark is one thing. Seeing him, speaking to him in the light of day is too much. That requires more than I am capable of.

Wherever I am, whatever city my mission may find me in, I always find time to drink myself into a stupor. And as long as I can speak the local language rudimentarily, I could almost always find a man in my hotel willing to take me upstairs and fuck me.

I wasn't always this way. It's been a long time, so long…since I was a different woman. A woman who was capable of love. More importantly…a woman worthy of love. I don't know if she's somewhere lost inside me…or if she's dead. All I know is she gave up on life when she foolishly threw away the greatest gift of her life. I drag her zombie body in and out of random beds, searching for a way to feel…something, anything. Physically satisfying sex is as close as I can get—but it isn't enough. Nothing is.

I shift, feeling an uncomfortable burning between my legs. I'm sticky, crusty. He was rough…and didn't use protection. I had been too drunk to insist, beyond caring, and fucking him just as hard, oblivious to the price I would pay in the morning.

This is what you want, isn't it? Enough pain to balance the pleasure you don't deserve.

I hate that voice…mostly because it's the truth, the darkest of truths that I drink so heavily to avoid.

I stagger out of bed and into the shower. I start with a blast of cold water, gasping as it pelts my skin. It has the desired effect, shocking me awake and clearing my hangover haze.

Paris. I'm in Paris. I am due to meet Carina at 11 this morning at the Louvre.

An unfortunate circumstance with drastic alertness—the pain under the numbing alcohol roars full blast inside me. An enormous hole with jagged edges—the agony of it is unbearable. It's self-inflicted, the tragic consequence of running from love because it frightened me. Guilt catches in the hole, keeping it open and unhealed.

The pain steals my breath anew, worse than the cold. I'm so sorry…I say the words in my head, directed at everyone I've hurt. The person I hurt the most is Chuck.

I'm sorry, but I'm sure he hates me, that he would never forgive me for leaving, let alone the debauchery of my life since I left.

I wake from that reverie, fumbling with the faucet, turning the water to warm. I wash myself, scrubbing away the remnants of Mr. Last Night.

He was blond, green-eyed, with a plastic smile. Impatient, no foreplay, just stuffing himself inside me while we were still half-dressed. An intense, burning orgasm rewarded me for my labors. The rest doesn't matter, one ugly blur of two naked strangers, the stench of sweat and semen and stale alcohol.

I've scrubbed myself raw. But I'm not clean. I haven't been for a very long time.

~O~

It's easy to blend into the throngs of humanity in the Louvre. Even on a Tuesday, in the late morning, it's so crowded it's difficult to navigate to where I must go.

Winged Victory. I'm to meet Carina there, beside the statue.

It's an ancient Greek statue, headless, exhibited at the top of the main staircase. Not as famous as the Venus de Milo, the armless statue also exhibited elsewhere in this museum, but well-known enough that it is roped off. Popular enough to attract people to provide herd camouflage for two agents conducting a clandestine meeting in a public place.

I've always wondered why so much of the priceless treasure in this museum is displayed so proudly when so seriously damaged. Of course, it would be stupid to expect two-thousand-year-old sculptures to remain in pristine condition, considering all the calamities humans have wrought, through which these items survived. The curator would say they are ancient monuments to achievement, artistic perfection, primitive people creating beauty that lasts into today. I see disfigured perfection, proof that we do more damage than good in the world.

How many other beautiful statues lay smashed to piles of gravel, reduced to nothing under the wheels of humanity's progress?

Am I like these disfigured statues? Or am I too broken to fix?

I shake my head to rid my maudlin thoughts, at the same time I wonder what Winged Victory's head would have looked like.

I wear sunglasses indoors, both to hide my bloodshot eyes from the public as well as to protect my head from the glaring sunlight that fills this atrium. I had to have drunk an exceptionally significant amount last night to still feel this hungover at almost noon. I must have originally been turned off by my bed partner…They usually buy more drinks to persuade me when that happens. I'm only vaguely troubled by the idea that I'm not the least bit discerning any longer. Anyone willing is my new standard, it seems.

The din from multiple conversations in multiple languages, here and there punctuated with louder tour-guide speeches, bang inside my head like a drum, worsening my headache.

"Look at what the cat dragged in."

I stay gazing at the statue, though the voice is familiar. "That's not the code phrase, and you know it."

"I wonder what she looked like," Carina repeats, her voice affected by childish sarcasm at my comment.

"As beautiful as you are." My voice is equally sarcastic.

These old-school code phrases and secret meetings seem ridiculous to us, but part of the standard procedure that we follow.

Carina and I are on the same team, the CATS. There are two other agents, Amy Gerald and Zondra Rizzo, on the team with us. Amy, Zondra and I are CIA and Carina is DEA. I had started my career in the CIA with the CATS, after a brief sojourn in the U.S. Secret Service for a mission. The team had split after conflict as suspicion drove a wedge between us. I was partnered with a different agent, Bryce Larkin, and soon after, the team was reassembled as a trio.

I was pulled back in by Director Graham after Bryce was killed in action. I was highly adverse to the idea, but Graham had laid down an ultimatum. I work with the team…or I retire. I used to be the best, Graham's Enforcer. But after a disastrous mission in Budapest where I had to go rogue to save an innocent infant, a short mission in Burbank protecting Chuck Bartowski, the human Intersect, and a long, difficult undercover mission against Fulcrum that ultimately resulted in the death of my partner–I was beyond burned out, useless, dangerous even.

I always had the distinct impression that Graham's version of "retired" was me six feet under with a bullet hole between my eyes. I knew too much and was subsequently too self-destructive to be let loose in the world. In truth, I can only guess why he gave me a second chance, perhaps hoping interacting with the women who had been my only friends again might help me back to functioning.

However, too much had happened, too much that Graham didn't know about, couldn't know about. I had only been in Burbank for two months, but I had fallen head-over-heels in love with my asset, the culmination of which was a desperate, passionate kiss seconds before I believed we were both about to die. That same night, I found out Bryce, whom I had believed to be dead, was in fact alive.

The CIA sent Bryce deep undercover to root out the Fulcrum infiltration of the CIA. I wasn't supposed to go with him, but Bryce made it clear he wanted me to go, that he wanted to pick up where we had left off; we had been together, in the way that only spies could be—loosely, physically, and temperamentally. Like the coward I am, I never even said goodbye to Chuck; I just left in the middle of the night the day after Thanksgiving. Bryce smoothed it over somehow, protecting me from the consequences of abandoning my asset. I never looked back.

Or at least I thought I didn't. I reasoned with myself quite a bit over that. Of course I should go with Bryce. We were lovers, or, at least, mutually exclusive bed partners. I did care for him, and maybe at one time I thought I loved him, but in truth, I didn't. I only knew that because I did love Chuck, and those feelings were nothing like anything I had ever experienced before.

So revolutionary, in fact, that they scared me to death. I wasn't running to Bryce as much as I was running away from Chuck and what that represented–a confusing, agonizing predicament where I constantly battled my feelings and warded off his growing feelings for me.

I still love Chuck, three years later, after pretending to be his girlfriend for a mere two months. My love for him is like a disease—all consuming, incurable, slowly ravaging me. It has no outlet and no reciprocation. Alcohol is an analgesic that helps me forget, temporarily.

Bryce had no idea I felt that way about Chuck. That I would close my eyes while we were having sex and I would imagine it was Chuck touching me, kissing me, fucking me…

Although that isn't right. What I did with Bryce, what I do with strangers…it wouldn't have been like that with Chuck. I'd dreamed about being with him, and even my dreams were better than anything I had ever experienced in real life.

Bryce and Chuck were as different as night and day and my memory wouldn't allow me to forget that. Bryce didn't know why, only that I was different and he couldn't figure out why. We were never much for talking, but I think he thought I harbored some ill will because I had suffered as a result of his fake death.

Bryce and I worked well as a team; we always had. Our sexual relationship served as an extension of that yin and yang. It worked for us, helped us succeed in the field where others had failed. But after leaving Burbank, that yin and yang was disrupted, off balance. He used to know what I was thinking, what I was going to do by how I poised my body. Once I built the wall between us, mostly to disguise the internal preoccupation I had with Chuck, we were no longer in sync.

In the end, Bryce died because of me. Friendly fire, they call it. He trusted me to make a shot I couldn't make. An inch too far to the left. So stupid, considering how badly it damaged me, effectively ruining whatever remained in my life and left me here, hungover on a mission and perfectly apathetic to my own welfare, or the welfare of my teammates.

"You always say the sweetest things, Blondie," Carina crooned, bumping her hip into mine with a smirk. "Although, I wasn't kidding." Her voice got serious, and she pulled down my sunglasses as if to prove what she already believed. "Damn it, Sarah, you're going to get us all killed. Come on."

She linked her arm with mine, tugging me away from the statue, glaring back at me as I stumbled when I didn't immediately follow. "Come on, Walker. Change in plans. Try being professional."

Her admonishment cut to the core, the fact that she could lecture me was a glaring signal to how far I'd fallen. "What's your problem?" I hissed as I adjusted my gait to match her direct yet leisurely one.

"If you're still half-drunk, how do I trust you weren't followed? I can't."

She was right, of course. Hell, the man I'd been with last night could have been an enemy agent and slit my throat before he left. I felt myself blush with embarrassment. For being called out on it, not for the fact of doing it. She cared, but I didn't. I don't. If Mr. Last Night had been my death, so be it.

We ended up in her hotel room, where she made contact with Graham and lied for me, that she believed she had been followed and aborted the rendezvous. She ordered me coffee from room service while she spoke to him in the other room.

I leave the coffee on the nightstand and recline on her made bed.

"What's the plan?" I ask when she emerges from her conference with Graham.

"The plan was scrapped, thank you very much, Sarah," she snaps. "New plan–-we go on to Rome to rendezvous with Amy and Zondra. They're staying in the villa of the special agent in charge. Carlo Bellini. In the Villa al Chiaro di Luna."

Moonlight Villa, my rusty Italian tells me.

She plops down on the foot of the bed and turns to face me. "I was…trying to keep you out of there." Something odd passes over her features, an unfamiliar expression on her that I can't place. Her eyes shift to far away, but then quickly focus on me again. "Apparently, it's like the Playboy Mansion. Drugs, alcohol, orgies–"

"Aw, you never let me do anything fun," I coo, trying to make light of her bad mood.

She scowls, not amused. "It's a cover, obviously, but you know as well as I do how blurred that line can get between work and play." Her eyes soften with sympathy. "I don't think there is a line with you. I'm not letting you ruin this mission, and I'm not letting you get anyone killed."

I bristle, affronted by the casual way she expresses her disdain. She isn't wrong; that is the hardest part to acknowledge.

"We've been ordered there now, so…I'm laying down the law, Walker. You're on your last legs with the CIA, and you and I both know what happens to you if you flunk out, so to speak. I'll do my best to run interference, but if you slip, I'm pulling you."

"Since when are you in charge?" I grumble like a petulant child.

"Since you can't be," she retorts. She sighs, her demeanor changing to sympathy. "I know how much pain you're in. And I–"

"No, you don't," I snap, my eyes stinging. My anger flares. "You have no idea what I feel."

"Have I ever felt the way you do? No, I haven't," she replies. "But I've seen it in you. Are you forgetting Prague?"

I blush from the roots of my hair to my toes at her reference. A drunken, disastrous threesome between the two of us and Carina's date. Her date had passed out after a lackluster performance, which left the two of us to satisfy each other. Weird for two heterosexual women, but possible with copious amounts of alcohol. I had shattered into a thousand pieces after a potent orgasm, courtesy of Carina's mouth. After that, she listened to the truth as it sputtered out between sobs…about Chuck, about Bryce, about my own self-loathing.

I only admitted to myself how much I loved him once my heart was broken…

I wish I could forget that, because she knows too much now, and she pities me. I hate it.

"Carina…" It's a weak reply, but all I can say, and she knows it.

"I know it's a lot for you, but I want you to not drink during this mission. Can you promise me that?" She is deadly serious.

I can't remember the last time I was completely free of alcohol. Could I just quit cold turkey like that? What is more dangerous on this mission? Me drunk…or me in withdrawal?

"It's been…almost three years…since I've been completely sober. I don't know…how that's going to look." It's cautious honesty.

She breathes out heavily, like the time elapsed shocks her. "I don't either, Sarah. We'll have to figure it out together. But I'll be there."

Her sentiment touches me, but I deflect the intensity of it with humor. "At the very least, I'll probably be a raging bitch. With no off switch."

She chuckles. "Oh, don't worry. You piss me off enough and I'll fuck you until you pass out."

I giggle at that. "Is that a promise?"

She shoves me playfully. "Depends on how cute Agent Bellini is."

Carina is a good friend, but still, in the end, Carina. A sober version of me, a little bit more discerning.