A/N: Another challenging chapter, so thanks for your patience. For those thinking at the beginning of this...how would these two ever overcome the past, I hope this path makes sense. Three more chapters to go, but they are intense. A huge thank you to nevr for previewing-keeping me in the right tense, with appropriate character reactions and wording. I promise I haven't abandoned SvsHL, but this story is taking most of my writing energy. I will get to all of it.
It's morning. I test my voice, relieved that the paralytic drug Chuck gave me has worn off. The truth serum has worn off as well.
I hold the fake documents in my hand. Chuck wants me to run. Now.
He knows the truth…about how he's been lied to and abused. And Chuck's mission has reached critical mass now that the mole has been exposed.
Chuck needs me more than he ever has. There is no way I am leaving him.
I have to find Casey! I have to find Chuck!
I struggle to remember more, but it's blank, thanks to the X-13 derivative. I'm lucky I remember anything…or unlucky, from another perspective.
I roll, struggling to get out of bed. I'm not just achy, I'm raw. It hurts to move. I grimace, disgusted with the reason. The night with Chuck, in my room, didn't leave me feeling like this. Only with Chuck, there is no painful consequence of pleasure. My clear memories of him from last night are only pleasurable.
Who dressed me and took me to my room? I wonder as I hurry to the bathroom. Right after I've showered and dressed, I hear a knock on my door.
Hoping that it's Carina, I rush to open it.
It's Casey. My features show my disappointment. "Nice to see you too, Walker," he clips, tense, not at all his usual grumbling self.
As I let him in, I say, "I was hoping you were Carina. Where is she, Casey? I haven't heard anything from her in over 24 hours."
"That's not important now," he says crisply, dismissing me, though something in his tone worries me. "I know you were tranq'd. What do you remember from last night?"
"Not very much," I tell him meekly. It occurs to me as I'm talking that we were under audio surveillance last night. We would have to have been. Which means Casey listened to all of that.
I flush fire-engine red, imagining everything he must have heard during the night.
"I wish I was that lucky," he grumbles. "I thought four hours about sandwiches was torture."
A careless reference, typical Casey, but the wave of nostalgia from that Halloween party hits me hard. Chuck and I were both so innocent then. Each in our own way. I push those feelings down, telling myself now is not the time.
"He knows about the laudanol. Apparently that was Gerard's mission. Recover the pills for the Ring."
"That I do remember," I say gravely, my worry increasing.
Casey's fidgety. I do a double take, sure I have never seen this. I could never have imagined this. He continues, but he's unsettled. Troubling to note.
"Bartowski's methods are unconventional, but he got everything he needed from Gerard. The Duchessa is working for the Gentle Hand. She knows where Kradetska is because the Ring put a hit on Chuck. He's in Bulgaria, which is where we are headed once we get the mission specifics. And on top of all that, Walker…Graham's working for the Ring."
Chuck got the confirmation he needed.
"Beckman gave us all the authorization we need to go after Kradetska. She's taking care of Graham on her end, at least for the time being. Bentley's been placed on administrative leave pending further investigation."
Chuck really did get everything he needed from last night's assignment. I wonder about the deadly weapon the Ring is after, though I say nothing. But Casey is still troubled and the fact that I can tell is worrisome.
"What's wrong, Casey? What aren't you telling me?"
"A lot. Look, Walker, I need your help. And I need your A-game."
Now I'm frightened. I don't know how much A-game I have left. But for Chuck, I will certainly give it everything I have. "Tell me, Casey."
"Carina and Gino were doing reconnaissance yesterday and into last evening. They missed check-in at 1700 hours and haven't been heard from since."
My fear comes to life, my worries made manifest. Please, let her be alright. Let them both be alright.
He's not done with bad news. An expression I can't discern crosses Casey's face before he's stoic again. It troubles me more.
"Gerard's got bruises all over her throat and a crushed windpipe. I take it you stopped him from killing her."
He sounds weary, unaware that his words hit me like a bucket of cold water. Chuck…is not a killer, and I had to stop him from killing her?
I must have, although I don't remember. Casey wouldn't have heard anything from me as I was mute. The thought is terrifying.
"Was he under orders to, once he had the information?" I ask softly. Did I interfere with something I shouldn't have? The ghost of an image dances behind my eyes…Chuck with his hand on Amy's throat, tears streaming from her eyes as she choked to breathe.
Darkness swirls inside, mixed with a blank stab of fear that seems to have come from nowhere.
Casey nods just once. "I know this is hard for you to hear, Walker, but Chuck's kills are clean. Quick, painless, and efficient. He does what's necessary, no more, no less. In that situation, he would have tranq'd her before he shot her. Not…strangle her with his bare hands." He looks up at me. He's frightened.
If John Casey is frightened…God help us.
"I think as far as Chuck was concerned, ignorance was bliss. Or at least enough to keep him from thinking about himself. The blinders are off and I'm not gonna lie, Walker. I'm worried." I assume he means worried about Chuck's mission against the Ring. He closes his eyes tight. "I can't watch what happened to those men happen to Chuck. I can't." He's worried about Chuck. It's sobering.
There's an odd tenderness underneath his words, so strange coming from Casey that I question whether I'm imagining it.
"My experience with the drug is limited, but none of what Chuck was portraying made sense based on what I know. What you described…what I heard," he clears his throat, uncomfortable, "Isn't either."
I try to explain. "It's like…the laudanol, in him, kept him…regulated. Not emotionless, not robotic, just controlled. Uninhibited. But then he…lost control. He got angry, furious…and he lashed out."
I'm telling him what I have secretly started to believe on my own. What other explanation is there?
Casey looks at me, studying me, like he's trying to decide to say something.
"What, Casey?"
"His voice, when he was talking to you. I haven't heard him sound like that since…Burbank and the Buy More. That tone of voice."
My cheeks are so hot, they're making my eyes water. When he was talking to me? What Casey would have heard…Chuck talking about how much he liked fucking me. I wish the floor would just open and swallow me.
I push on, trying to ignore what I know he knows. "Casey, Chuck said when he was near me…he felt like he was losing control." I keep my eyes closed when I'm talking, forcing myself to push through. "Is it possible it was me, breaking through the drug? So that he couldn't control his anger when he confronted Amy?"
I almost kick myself for the way I phrased it, waiting for Casey's retort about thinking too highly of myself, or something similar. What he says instead hits me like a lightning bolt.
"If anything on this earth could, it would be you." He sighs. "It makes sense now, why he's dosed so high. It took all that…to make him forget…how he feels about you."
What? I'm so utterly thunderstruck I feel like I leave my body for a second. What is Casey saying? Not his own morals, his personal beliefs…but his feelings for me.
"That's why I need your help. I need you to assess him, talk him down…do whatever you have to in order to keep him in one piece. This thing cannot go south. Not now…with the entire house of cards about to come down on our heads."
Anger flares inside my chest. Damn Casey and damn the mission! This is Chuck. He's more important than anything. He's everything.
"Chuck is more important than whatever it is you think he needs to accomplish. He's not their property and damn you for even thinking it!"
He stares at me for a long time. I'm anticipating an angry retort, but he's silent. "There's more that you don't know. He wouldn't even tell me. To be fair, I don't think he could. But everything is at stake now. And I think you're the only one who can help." The stillness in Casey's voice chills me.
"Where is he, Casey?" I ask, steeling myself. Fresh fear for Carina washes over me. I need answers. But Chuck needs me. I won't let him down.
"Level G. In the substation below the villa."
Hearing Casey's tone as I walk away, I just as well could be headed to a morgue.
~O~
The base under the villa is state of the art. Sprawling, so that it seems to go for miles in every direction. Computers, cells, all manner of different specialized areas–armory, interrogation, satellite integration...it goes on and on.
My credentials are enough to gain me access. Agents working down here are moving with purpose, barely glancing at me as they pass.
"Halt, Agent Walker!" An armed tactical officer bars my passage. "Only a minute, ma'am."
He's secured the passageway. I stand behind him and I see Amy. Transfer in process. They are moving her from an interrogation room to a holding cell. It's strange but I focus on her.
She's dressed in drab gray, chains around her wrists and ankles. Without makeup, with her hair in a simple ponytail, she looks young and helpless. Her throat is reddish purple, a fresh bruise. I can see the outline of where Chuck's hand must have squeezed.
She flashes me a forlorn look. The whites of her eyes are red, full of broken blood vessels. Sickness flips my stomach. How close did he come to killing her before I stopped him?
Chuck spared her life, at least for the time being. If she was in an interrogation room, he must have needed something more. But she must know she's marked for death. In spite of Chuck's decision to keep her alive, he can't remand her to custody. It would give too much away, in order for his plan to work.
I wait for the tactical team to clear the area with the prisoner, then ask someone else where Agent Bellini is. He directs me to a room adjacent to the armory.
On my way, I feel the trill alarm of fear nagging at the back of my brain. Nerves I would expect, thinking of my approach to handle Chuck, the way Casey explained I needed to. But this isn't nerves…it's fear. I'm not afraid of Chuck; how could I be?
I don't know why, but I tap the flesh on my neck below my ear. Tender. It's odd, but what's worse is that the twinge revs up my fear, stopping me in my tracks.
A memory flashes behind my eyes. Chuck…his hand on my neck…my own terror, wondering if he was about to choke me…
He rendered me unconscious by pressing on that pressure point! Sickness swirls in my stomach at the idea that even for a moment, I had been afraid of Chuck, of what he could do to me. And my addled mind is holding on to that incomplete recall.
What had happened to him? What had Casey seen this morning? I'm desperate to know, desperate to help him.
I'm at the room to which I was directed. I can see Chuck through the bullet-proof glass partition that creates the room. He's alone, seated at the table in the center. His elbows are on the table and his head is bowed forward into his hands. My heart breaks anew as I regard him, feeling his anguish and pain inside myself as it radiates outward.
I take a deep breath and walk through the doorway. I touch the button on the wall panel that opaques the glass, giving us privacy. He doesn't acknowledge me. I can see as I move closer than the hands holding his head are shaking.
"Chuck." My voice is gentle.
"You should be gone. I gave you a way out. I wanted you to take it." His voice is deep, low, and gruff with pain.
"I know you did. But I can't leave." I move closer, inches from him. My hands twitch, aching to touch him, comfort him, but I'm afraid.
"Sarah, please. There's still time." He turns his face towards me. The pain in his eyes takes my breath away. He rises to his feet and I step back.
"Chuck, I know what they did to you. What the medication was really for." He searches my face, questioning. Does he think I just remember? It's worse than that and I have to tell him. "I knew after the night you stayed in my room."
He scoffs, shifting his eyes away. "Couldn't risk my ability to interrogate the mole." His words hisses out.
"Casey told me to not tell you." He jerks his head up to look at me, his eyes narrowed to slits. "He was worried about what would happen to you if we did." I wait as that information processes.
"You still agreed to that threesome mission?" he asks curiously. "Knowing that?"
I keep eye contact, telling myself again to take down the wall. To let him see, let him know. "I did it for you. Because you asked. Once I knew the truth, there was no way I was going to leave you alone to face it."
He's looking at me like he can't believe what I said. He doesn't blink for the longest time and when he finally does, tears slip from the corners of his eyes.
I fight the urge to hold him, kiss the tears on his face away. He needs my strength. "I would do anything for you. Anything except leave."
He pulls me to him roughly, burying his face in my hair. I grip him tightly, resting my head on his chest and breathing him in. I can hear him breathing–rough, ragged, heaving breaths that tell me he is just barely holding himself together. "I'm not asking anything from you. You don't owe me anything, Sarah."
"But you have my heart. You always have. That doesn't change. Ever."
I hear the soft sob, feeling him pull me closer and tighter. "Sarah," he sighs. " I don't even know who I am. How can you say that?"
I pull back to see his face. "I know who you are. The fact that they drugged you so that you would do their bidding, do your job without troubling your conscience…that's not your fault. And who they tried to turn you into isn't who you are."
He lets out a sharp, bitter laugh. "But I am, don't you see? They got exactly what they wanted. It just takes a pill and I lose myself completely. You need to get as far away from me as you can, Sarah." His eyes burn with intensity. "I wanted you to be safe." He grabs my shoulders. "You don't remember last night." He runs the back of his fingers over the tender spot beneath my ear. It sends shivers down my arms. "I saw your face. You were afraid of me."
"Why did you do that? Use a pressure point, like that…"
He closes his eyes tightly, wincing. "I wanted to make sure you…wouldn't have any memory of…" He can't finish.
"You following your orders…and killing her?" My voice is a breathy whisper, shaking, as I finish his sentence. "You didn't, though."
"I had more information I needed." She was interrogated down here…and she was still alive. Something is different, but he's so disturbed, I don't push the issue. "You were afraid…that I was going to hurt you."
"Chuck…" My voice breaks as I say his name. I had been. But it doesn't change anything.
"You aren't safe if you stay here. I'm programmed to put the mission first. Damn everyone and everything else." He tries to pull away, but I hold him fast.
"But that's just it, don't you see?" I exclaim. "The medication was supposed to allow the Intersect to change you. Turn you into a robot. But that didn't happen. Instead, it keeps you regulated. Able to manipulate people and situations without thinking of the ramifications. It lets you—"
"Kill." His voice is cold, like death. He is still trying to pull away, but I hold him against me, unrelenting.
"You were doing your job. What you had to do."
"So that makes it right?" His voice is shrill.
I'm wounded, but I take a chance anyway. "What does that make me?"
His eyes soften. He touches the side of my face with a tenderness that makes my heart ache. "You were just a girl. With no options, no choice. And as much as you didn't think so, I saw what that life had done to you. What it took from you. And still, your heart was kind and loving."
I turn my head and kiss his palm. "I know who you are. The guy who ran into a hotel to stop a bomb from going off, who stayed to defuse it though he didn't know how to at first. The guy who was afraid but still tried to rescue me from Dr. Zarnow. The guy who gave his only hope of survival from a lethal dose of poison to his dying sister. The guy who wouldn't leave me alone to face a bomb that was about to explode." I take his face in my hands.
My vision blurs as my eyes fill with tears. He blinks and his tears run over my fingers that touch his cheeks. "I love you," I whisper. I feel him trembling. "I love you."
He closes his eyes and kisses me. Softly, hesitantly, a caress of my lips with his own. It is only then that I feel the heat. He's feverishly warm…and he's trembling.
I feel an anxious stab of fear. "Chuck, did you stop taking the drugs?"
Rage transforms his features. "I stopped the laudanol. But I had to double the tramalfidrone."
"Why? Why would you do that?" I ask in dismay. He doubled the dose arbitrarily?
"I'm not their fucking puppet any longer."
"Chuck, you're in withdrawal," I say in a measured tone. "The dose is so high you start to come down in the early morning, like you did in my room. If you're six hours past the dose time—"
"No more!" he shouts. I hold onto him tightly.
"Did you need more of the other drug because of pain?" I ask urgently.
"It helped. That's all that matters," he grumbles.
"But it could be dangerous! You just can't—"
"I'm a ticking time bomb and everyone but me knew it. I'm expendable. They're using me, using me up. I wasn't meant to survive this. This is a suicide mission." He growls, breaking from my arms and falling into his chair. He covers his face with his hand and moans, "And now everyone is going to die and I can't do anything to stop it."
My blood turns to ice water. "Chuck, what are you talking about?"
He removes his hand. "Casey briefed you on the intel I got on the weapon?"
"You mean the…the Norseman?"
He pales. "It kills using DNA. From anywhere. Not just me. Ellie. Ellie's daughter. My parents. Bartowski DNA."
The words hit me, each like a blow. Ellie has a child. Chuck's parents? Whom he hasn't seen since he was a teenager?
He notices my shock and confusion. "I can't tell you most of it. But my parents are spies. That's why they left us."
The hit on Chuck is also on his entire family. I'm struck dumb.
"The details aren't important. In fact, you're safer if you don't know. But I can't take another dose that affects my judgment. Some pill is not going to convince me that the mission is more important than my sister." His voice breaks.
He's coming apart. He's warm and shaky like he was that night in my room. How can he function like this?
He really is in an impossible position. I'm all he has.
But I hope, at least if I try my hardest, that I can be all he needs.
"You're in pain. In withdrawal. And trying to save your family. Will you just let me help you?"
He bows his head in resignation. He accepts my logic, even though it troubles him. "You have to promise me a few things."
I sit beside him and wrap my arms around him. "Tell me."
"You have to go to California with the documents I got for you. When I tell you to go."
No! "I can't promise you that." I struggle to keep my voice measured, while inside the need to scream nearly overwhelms me. "I can't leave you."
Tears are streaming from his eyes as he looks away. "Sarah, the only thing I have ever wanted was for you to be safe, to have your life back."
It sounds crazy in my head, but the words spill out anyway. "What if you came with me? What if we both run?"
He looks at me sadly. "I'm still the Intersect. They won't stop until they find me. And I won't lead them to you. I won't."
It's the same old argument from Burbank, the same chasm we can't ever cross. "What about you?" I ask softly. I see the dread on his face before he speaks.
"The medications are a patch. I know that now. The Intersect is destroying my brain. The medication won't keep the pain at bay forever. They've been increasing the tramalfidrone all along. I'm at the end of dosing possibilities. Whether my brain outlasts my liver is the question, but either way, it won't be long."
"No!" I grasp both of his hands. "I won't let that happen. Do you hear me?"
He wraps his hands around mine protectively. "I've always known that, Sarah. Since I agreed to work for them after Fulcrum Intersected me. It should have bothered me more, maybe, and I never noticed because of the laudanol. I've always been living on borrowed time. I just have to last long enough to protect my family."
No! I can't lose him. I can't. I want to say it, but he's not even mine. He isn't mine to lose. But just give up and let him die? How could I do that?
This has added another layer of complication to this situation. They were headed to Bulgaria to go after Kradetska, to stop him from deploying the weapon against Chuck and his family. Carina and Gino have been taken, maybe killed, maybe subject to torture. And he's taken this as a suicide mission, one he never planned on returning from.
I can only deal with one thing at a time. All of it is too much. But I have offered my help, and I promise I will do whatever I can. I have to start somewhere.
"I won't give up, Chuck. But I promise, whatever you need, you have me. I'll go to Bulgaria with you."
He leans forward and kisses me softly. My heart is broken and aching, but I gently kiss him back. He pulls back, breathing heavily, and rests his forehead against mine. "Why didn't the drug work when I was near you?"
It's an awkward question with an awkward answer. And just a theory. But after everything, he deserves to know. "Casey thought it was…the…strength of your feelings…about me." My cheeks are burning. His fingertips feel cool as he touches my face.
His voice is raw with emotion when he whispers, "I didn't realize how strong they were until I saw you again." Another gentle kiss. "I'm sorry I…poisoned it."
"You didn't poison it," I counter. "There's nothing…poison about how I felt when you touched me."
"Sarah, I–"
The sound of gunfire cuts him off.
"Damn it," he curses, rushing to his feet and towards the door. I follow. He glances at me quickly, flashing me a warning look as he positions himself protectively in front of me. He pulls his gun from the holster under his jacket.
I follow Chuck into the corridor. It's eerily quiet. Chuck is hyper-focused, moving cautiously towards the corridor where the sound came from. He turns a corner and curses under his breath.
Amy's cell door is wide open. Chuck's gun is still pointed straight ahead. As I follow him, I see Amy's body. She's slumped on the cot, a bullet hole in the center of her forehead. Her blue eyes are open, clouded with death.
Chuck is angry, but I see regret, maybe even sorrow, on his face as well. "Inside job. One of the guards," he mutters.
I am still behind Chuck when he turns, pinning me against the wall, shielding me with his body. My ears ring after Chuck fires his weapon at the same time someone fires at us. I hear a body fall.
Chuck walks away to check the dead guard. His back is to me. I see him sag against the wall. His trembling is visible even at my distance. I approach, gently touching his back.
"Are you alright?" I ask.
He turns to me. His breath is shaky. "I am," he assures me. He's forcing it. "But we have to move now. We have to stop the weapon before it's too late."