"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friend." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Morgan and The Ninja
18 OCTOBER 2007
BURBANK BUY MORE
10:40 PDT
"And just like that, they let you come back?"
"Well, yeah, sort of." Chuck tucked his hands into his pockets as he strolled past the Beastmasters in the home appliance section. They'd already made a few laps around the Buy More since the break room had been full of people staring at the famous Chuck Bartowski. And frankly, Morgan's shrine of all things Chuck gave him the willies. He was only marginally more comfortable in the airy store, but it sure beat staring at his second grade class picture.
"I'm contracted," he said, "to code for some local virus protection companies, and the threat's over with now, so the good old US Marshals didn't have a problem with me moving back to Burbank. They even helped me set up my new office. And they didn't care when I crashed one of their trucks." He waved at the bandanna-covered goose-egg on his forehead.
"Man, that's so cool." Morgan waved his hands in the air happily. Very little had changed about his friend in five years, Chuck had been relieved to see. He'd cropped his hair short, to almost a military cut, but the beard lived on, as did the crazy shoes. "The only way you could get any cooler is if you turned out to be a secret agent or something. But witness protection works. Raw deal, though, witnessing a mob hit on your first night on the job out east."
Chuck felt a greasy film coat his stomach at the lie. "Yeah. The Marshals wouldn't let me contact anybody, so I'm sorry, buddy."
He hated lying to Morgan. He hated lying to the guy who had had his back at every disaster from the age of six to the age of twenty-two. But Ellie (and by extension Devon) had known that he had left California to work for the government. He hadn't even been allowed to tell Morgan that much.
So witness protection it was.
"Lucky break," Morgan went on as they made a lap through the DVD aisles, "that the guy who wanted you dead got offed."
"Concrete shoes," Chuck said solemnly.
"So cliché." Morgan shook his head. "You'd think they'd find newer and more creative ways to go about these things. Although the classics…they're classics for a reason."
"You're thinking of the piranha tank, aren't you?" Chuck accused.
"Nothing more demoralizing than being eaten to death by tiny fishes," Morgan said, nodding sagely. "What was your new identity, anyway? Something cool like Chase Headroom or Charles Rambo?"
"Pete," Chuck said. "Pete Rogers."
"Well, that's inconspicuous." Morgan wrinkled his nose as they made a left into the video gaming section, an old standby. "You should've requested something like…Charlie Calrissian. Or Drake Mallard."
"Wasn't my choice, buddy."
"Oh, well. Either way—now that you're back, Halo tournament, my place, dude. Tonight. You, me, all the grape soda we can drink, it's going to be epic."
Chuck flinched. "No can do, I'm afraid. I've got plans tonight."
"No big deal. Tomorrow night, then. It's on."
"Ooh, buddy, I really can't. Dinner at Ellie's."
Morgan looked so depressed that Chuck scrambled to make up for it. "But Saturday night," he said, holding up a hand. "Saturday night, I am all yours." Barring a major national emergency, of course.
"Fantastic! I'll get your old controller out of storage, get it polished, cleaned up for you."
Chuck had to laugh. "That would be great," he said, meaning every word. "But enough about me. I've been living the world's most boring life for the last five years. I want to hear all about you, little buddy. You seem to be secretly running the Buy More."
"More than secretly running." Morgan leaned in close, lowering his voice as he did so. "One of the other guys just got promoted to Assistant Manager, and he's a real tool. You probably remember him. Harry Tang."
Immediately, Chuck groaned. "He's still here, too?"
"Don't worry, man. BuyMoria stands up for its own." Morgan put his fist over his heart, looking as somber and severe as a Marine in full dress uniform. "We're staging a revolt, man. Next week, Harry Tang…is…going…down."
"Call me when that happens. I'll bring popcorn."
"Popcorn? Hell, bring your paintball gun."
Chuck chose to take Sarah's usual reply for that one. "Um, okay. But what else have you been up to? Buy More days, nights with your lady friend?"
"As if." Morgan snorted. "I've got my dream job, man."
Chuck squinted. "Taste-testing for Baskin Robbins?"
"No, no, no, nothing like that." Morgan grabbed a microphone from a shelf as they passed, and tossed it from hand to hand. "I'm a DJ, man. DJ Starr Killer, with two Rs instead of one. Also, it's two words."
Chuck tilted his head. "Your DJ name is…"
"Uber-geeky, I know, but what can I say? The babes love it." Morgan drew a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and smiled winningly. "I'm DJing next weekend, you should totally come. I'll throw some Coulton on for you, it'll be fantastic."
Though he could think of nothing better than seeing DJ Starr Killer in action, Chuck knew better than to think he could handle being in such a large, dark space with so many people around. "I don't know, man. Maybe sometime soon, though?" After he beat this debilitating curse the government had laid on his doorstep by shoving him away from society for five years.
"All right. Soon. But I am so glad to have you back!" Morgan went in for another impromptu hug, bouncing around like a sugar-hyped toddler before he reverted back to the DJ Starr Killer mode. "And Saturday, let the ownage begin."
"Right. But in the meantime, I kind of need a computer."
"Well, you came to the right place, buddy." Morgan grabbed Chuck's arm to steer him into the computer aisles, discreetly waving off another approaching green-shirt as he did so. Chuck had noticed him doing that a few times during their stroll. He didn't know if it was Morgan just wanting Chuck all for himself, or if Morgan had picked up on the fact that public places made him a little twitchy.
Knowing Morgan, it was probably a little of both.
"So what are you looking for, exactly?" Morgan asked.
Chuck told him. And Morgan's eyes lit up with glee. "Oh. Oh, we can do that. We can definitely do that. Right this way, my friend."
18 OCTOBER 2007
THE BACHELOR PAD
13:22 PDT
He needed three trips to haul his new loot inside. The trips themselves took only about five minutes—walk to the car, retrieve the bags, walk back to the elevator and to the fourth-story apartment. Simple. Easy.
Still, the task ate up more than an hour. Chuck spent most of it standing in his own apartment doorway, staring out into the world and wondering if it had always been that huge and daunting. Had he just never noticed? So much possibility seemed to exist in every cubic foot of space. But possibility was also a double-edged sword. Possibility went hand in hand with disaster.
And a lot of disaster could occur in all that forsaken open air.
The first trip was okay. He forced himself not to flee upstairs and hide beneath the covers as he would have liked. And so what if he took a minute in the doorway to steady himself before setting out? A guy had to breathe, didn't he?
Fifteen minutes to talk himself into the second trip, thirty-five for the third. By the time he returned from his car on the final excursion, he was dripping sweat and openly trembling.
"God, Bartowski, you're pathetic," he told himself in Casey's voice as he hauled the last of his supplies up the stairs. "Too damned scared to even go to your car in the middle of a parking lot in freaking broad daylight. Moron. Coward. Idiot."
"You know, that's my friend you're insulting."
Sarah's voice from the doorway made Chuck whirl—and nearly fall down the stairs and break his neck. He fumbled and caught himself, wincing when he jarred his scraped palms. "Ow—ouch! Sarah? What are you doing here?"
Apparently she'd opened the front door. It shouldn't have surprised him that she had keys. Now, she held up a sack. "Lunch. And what are you doing? You're supposed to be resting."
"Ah, mother hen Sarah. I've missed you." Chuck turned and trudged up the final two steps. "Why don't you come up? It's not restful for me to keep climbing these gorram stairs all day."
She made no reply. Chuck shrugged to himself and dumped the rest of the bags on the bed, trying to ignore his pounding heart. Between the trips outside and Sarah's startling him, that poor over-abused organ was clocking way too much overtime.
When he turned, Sarah mounted the last step.
"Gah!" Chuck thumped on his chest to get his heart started again. She hadn't made a noise on the staircase. "I'm getting you a collar with bells on it!"
"Wouldn't do anything. I can move just as silently with bells on."
"Great. That trick will come in handy when you're recruited to join the Foot."
Sarah studied him and then the heaping piles of bags all around the room. Her eyes lingered on the huge box on the desk, and the fact that his government-issued computer now sat in the corner. "You're supposed to be resting. Not buying out…the Buy More?"
Chuck shrugged. "I needed stuff."
"And that meant purchasing everything but the kitchen sink?"
"Oh, no, I got that, too. It's still out in the car."
Sarah blinked at his newest acquisition leaning up against the wall. "You got a white board? What
for?"
"Tic-tac-toe tournaments."
Sarah sighed at him.
"It's the Bryce Board," Chuck said. "Sorry. I'm grouchy—there's just too much…space."
"Ah. Rough day?"
"No. Just…saturation point, you know?" And his room was too open, too wide, too vast, too…much. He'd rather go down into the windowless bathroom downstairs, but he knew Sarah wouldn't stand for that.
"Here." Sarah flicked a switch by the sliding door that he hadn't had time to notice. Blinds lowered over all of the windows and across the sliding glass door, pitching the room into dimness. "Better?"
Oxygen rushed back into the room. The knot tying Chuck's shoulders to each other vanished. He nearly collapsed to the floor, but settled on nodding. "Much. Thank you."
"Probably should have showed you that yesterday, so I'm sorry." He could barely make out Sarah's frown in the dark. "Chuck, promise me you won't leave the blinds closed all the time. I know you'll need them sometimes, but…"
"I won't wallow in the darkness all day," Chuck said. Though the idea was tempting beyond words. "I want to get better, too."
"Just remember: one thing at a time, all right?"
"One thing at a time," Chuck echoed distantly.
"Now tell me why you have a Bryce Board."
Chuck sat on the edge of his bed and watched her take a seat in the desk chair, a safe distance away. "You know how detectives on the TV shows have murder boards? This is my 'Where's Bryce?' board. I need to set up a timeline that I can look at, and assemble all of my clues."
"You can do all of this at Castle, you know."
"And rub Casey's face in the fact that his men let Bryce get away? The guy hates me enough already."
"He doesn't hate you."
"We'll have to agree to disagree."
"And I have to ask—" Sarah nudged the box taking up most of his desk, her eyebrows high.
"My new computer."
"Chuck, you already have a computer."
"With thirteen different ways for the government to track my activities already pre-installed. Pass."
"You found them already? You were supposed to be resting."
Chuck moved a shoulder. "I was resting. Computer work is relaxing."
"Nerd." She smiled.
"Undeniably. I purchased this one with my own money, for my own personal use. I'll view any attempt to hack it, put a tracking program in it, or alter it in any way an invasion of my privacy."
Sarah sighed. "You do know they'll just order me to do it anyway."
"Yeah. It'll be like a game of Spy Versus Spy. You put as many tracking programs as you like on it, I'll take them off, and if you can best me, I'll stop playing this character on the online game, Kingdom of Athinei." Chuck pulled out his new phone and thumbed through the pictures until he found the one he sought. He tossed the phone over.
Sarah wrinkled her nose at the ugly avatar on the screen. "What on earth is that?"
"The evil daughter of a vampire and a gnome, with a few elvish relatives somewhere on the family tree." Chuck smiled. "I named her Schnookie McSarahkins."
"This is supposed to be me?"
"In theory."
"It looks nothing like me."
"I know. But in the back of your head, there will always be that teeny-tiny reminder that somewhere on an online video game, there is a horribly-named cross-breed running around making stupid decisions with your name on her." Chuck smiled. "I do believe I've just insulted you in nerd."
"Even though it's completely ridiculous that there would be a video game character based on me," Sarah said, rising to her feet so that she could return the phone, "I'll tell you what you can do with your nerd insults."
She set the phone on the bed next to him and leaned in close, provocatively. Chuck's mind stuttered and simply went blank.
"A Bacta Tank?" Sarah said. "That's the tank they dumped Luke Skywalker in to heal after he nearly froze to death on Hoth."
He was so distracted by how clean she smelled, and how wonderful, that it took him a minute to process the words. And when he did, something fluttered very low in his belly. He swallowed, hard. "Did you actually watch the movie, or did you just look that up on Wikipedia?"
For one thrumming moment, she stayed exactly where she was, leaning over him, her face close to his, her eyes on his, unreadable and yet somehow still playful. And finally, an impish smile broke through. "Not telling."
Chuck opened his mouth to answer (though what he would have said, he had no earthly idea, as his mind was still blissfully blank), but a buzzing noise cut through the apartment. "What's that?" he asked.
"Sensor alarm." Sarah took off toward the stairs.
Chuck liked to think that for a tall guy, he could move pretty quickly, but Sarah was halfway down the stairs before he even reached the top. He hurried after her, his aching body and their time-stopping moment in the bedroom forgotten.
Sarah crossed the room in two strides and yanked the bottom drawer out from the desk. Then the top drawer, in quick succession. She tapped the space bar on the keyboard.
A panel slid away down the wall, revealing a wall of monitors.
"Now that is just cool," Chuck breathed, staring in wonder at the screens.
"Shh." Sarah scanned the rows of monitors and swore under her breath. She stabbed at the keyboard, cutting the feeds entirely. She keyed in a sequence on the keypad and a panel on the floor slid away, revealing her preferred Smith & Wesson. "Stay here, Chuck."
But Chuck had seen what she had been trying to hide from him. "Sarah," he said in a too-calm voice, "why would there be a ninja in my sister's apartment?"
"I don't know. Stay here."
"Nope." Chuck was already following her out the door. "My sister—"
"Is at work. And I'm not bringing you anywhere near danger if I can help it."
Another alarm, this time a beep, rang out from the monitor wall. Sarah doubled-back, expertly side-stepping around Chuck. She brought the feeds back up—
"Now I'm coming," Chuck said, already running for the door. "And later, we can talk about the fact that there's a ninja, and my sister, in her apartment!"
"Can't wait," Sarah said drily as they pounded across the courtyard, running by mutual and silent agreement for her Jeep.
18 OCTOBER 2007
CHEZ BARTOWSKI/WALKER
13:41 PDT
Chuck was already stumbling out of the Jeep before it had fully stopped moving. He sprinted through the familiar front gates, down the path, hurtling bushes and ducking through the side corridor. It was faster that way. He rounded the trash cans, racing out into the open courtyard—
Only to have Sarah beat him to the door by a full two paces. "Go inside, find Ellie, and get her out of here," she hissed at him. "Take her back to your place if you have to."
She sneaked away toward what had once been called the Morgan Door.
Chuck took a deep breath and knocked. There was a time he wouldn't have had to knock on that door—this place had been part-his—but now…
It was probably less than a minute, but it felt like eons before Ellie opened the door. "Oh, you're safe," Chuck said without thinking, and immediately yanked her into a relieved hug.
"Chuck?" Ellie's voice sounded muffled against his chest. "What's going on?"
Chuck, realizing his faux pas, almost leaped backward. "Wh-what? Nothing. Nothing's going on. I, ah, I just missed you, that's all."
Ellie squinted at him. "Did you hit your head again? Why are you all sweaty and out of breath? Did you have another episode?"
"N-no. I'm just really, really, ah, relieved to be back in Burbank. I ran all the way here. Get the blood flowing, the heart pumping, you know?"
"Geez, Chuck. The doctor said you need to rest! You were in a car accident just last night!"
Chuck attempted to apply a winning smile, but it came out a bit manic, and forced. "What are you doing right now?" he asked, hoping to change the subject. "You maybe up for a little brother sister time? We could, you know, catch a movie, I could maybe show you my place?"
"Right now?" Ellie blinked at him. "I just got off a hellish day at work. We're the closest hospital to that hotel that was bombed a couple of weeks ago, and we're only just now starting to catch up to the workload. All I really want to do right now is sleep for two weeks solid."
"Oh. Um, coffee! Coffee's good when you're tired, right? Why don't we go get some? Together? Outside the house?"
Again, Ellie squinted. Her arms crossed, her face took on that mutinous set that Chuck remembered well from their childhood together. It gave him a pang to see it now. "Why are you so dead-set on getting me out of the house?"
"No reason, really." Chuck felt sweat slide down the track between his shoulder-blades. "I just—I missed you so much, Ellie, and I feel really bad…"
"Come inside." Ellie grabbed his wrist, giving him no choice but to be led to the couch. With a ninja—and Sarah—somewhere in the apartment. "Chuck, there's no magic pill we can take. It's not going to be miraculously okay overnight, all right? You understand that, don't you?"
"I know that, I do. It's just…"
"Just what, Chuck?"
Despite the danger, issues floated to the top of his mind. Everything was changed or different, and nothing was the way it was supposed to be. His sister was supposed to be happy. Morgan wasn't supposed to be thinking his best friend had been stuck in witness protection. Chuck couldn't go outside without sweating through his shirt. He had something in his head that he didn't understand, much less trust, something that made him both an asset and a liability to a trigger-happy government that could throw him underground on a whim to rot away the rest of his life.
Oh, and there was a ninja in Sarah's bedroom.
"I just didn't think it would be this difficult," he lied.
"Life is rough, Chuck." Ellie's voice was surprisingly harsh, making Chuck slant an alarmed look at her.
"Oh, believe me, I know that," he said. Why weren't they all dead? Where was the ninja? Had Sarah beaten it?
Could Sarah Walker really take out a ninja?
"You're probably just feeling overwhelmed because your head hurts," Ellie said. "Let me take a look."
Just as Ellie reached for the bandanna, a loud thud from the direction of the bedrooms made both siblings look over.
"That's weird. I thought Sarah said she'd be gone all day." Ellie rose to her feet to check.
Chuck grabbed her arm before she could. "Why don't I? You stay here."
"Chuck—"
"Please, stay there. Please."
Sarah was going to murder him, Chuck thought as he walked through his own old hallway like a man traipsing through a minefield. If she bested the ninja, Chuck would definitely be her next victim. Still, it beat Ellie catching on or getting killed in case Sarah hadn't neutralized the ninja problem.
Chuck's stomach plummeted at the thought.
He knocked on his old bedroom door. "Hello?"
No answer. Wait—another thud.
Oh crap.
Since Ellie stood at the hallway entrance, arms crossed, he didn't have much of a choice. "I'm coming in there," he called through the door, and prayed to any random deity listening in that he might survive the next few minutes.
Before he could grab the doorknob, however, it twisted on its own. The door opened, revealing a panting and sweaty Sarah. "Chuck?" she asked, feigning surprise for Ellie's sake even as her eyes promised a severe and prolonged death scene in Chuck's near future. "What are you doing here? You told me not to come in until Monday!"
"Everything okay in there?" Chuck said in a too-loud voice. He flared his eyes at Sarah, trying to communicate that he hadn't exactly had a choice short of outright kidnapping his own sister and hauling her bodily away across the courtyard. Even then, he knew she wouldn't have come peacefully, so he would have had to knock her out to do it, and he still had yet to convince Sarah to teach him the Acropolis Cold-Clock. "We heard thudding."
"What? Oh, yeah. Just moving some furniture." Sarah peered around the corner, hastily swiping blood away from her nose before Ellie could see it. "Hey, El. You got off early?"
"Another doctor owed me, so he covered the last couple of hours of my shift. Chuck, why don't you help your new employee with that furniture? I'm going to go take a shower and put on some real clothes."
Ellie disappeared into her own room. The instant she stepped out of sight, Sarah grabbed a handful of Chuck's shirt and yanked. He yelped.
The "furniture" turned out to be the ninja, unsurprisingly. Only the ninja had lost some attire in the fight. She was also a striking redhead, model-pretty—save for the pissed off look that matched Sarah's perfectly. She held the ninja mask in one hand and sat on the windowsill, glaring at Sarah and Chuck in turn.
Chuck almost heard music crescendo as the flash smacked him.
A geyser exploding.
A blue, white, and yellow flag, cross-fading into a passport that read MERCORSUR REPUBLICA ARGENTINA. A map of Argentina.
A passport photo of the ninja herself, but the name read Maria Elena Alberdi.
DEA AGENT: REDACTED.
A shot of cocaine being boiled on a spoon, a syringe.
Another photo of the ninja, looking almost fetching in pink.
A geyser again.
The usual micro-migraine kicked in, threatening a full-blown headache since he still hadn't completely recovered from the previous evening's festivities. "Ow," Chuck managed, and wished that his head would kindly quit splitting down the middle.
"Chuck, this is Carina. Carina, a member of my new team, Chuck." Sarah looked less than thrilled to be making introductions at all, judging by the way that her arms were crossed, and the stony set of her features.
Chuck knew that on first introductions, a handshake or a pithy comment to break the ice was only polite. But he didn't move away from the door. All he could do was stare at first the outfit and then at Sarah's bloody nose. At least he didn't seem to be in any danger of passing out this time. Maybe that was a thing of the past. He hoped so. "Why are you dressed like a ninja?" he asked Carina, his voice distant.
"Because somebody won't give me a damn diamond!" Carina glared at Sarah as she said this.
Chuck stared between the two women—annoyed, live-wire Carina, Sarah's icy fury countering perfectly. "Um, how is it you two know each other?"
"We're supposed to be partners," Carina said, more for Sarah's benefit.
Chuck, meanwhile, heard "partner" and "diamond," and his brain made an unwitting connection. "Wait a second," he said, and turned to Sarah. "You're gay?"
"What?" both Carina and Sarah said. Sarah realized his implications first and smacked him hard, just below the shoulder. "Not partners like that! Carina and I teamed up last week to deprive a drug smuggler of a valuable diamond. Jerk."
"Oh." What had his life come to, Chuck wondered, when multimillion dollar capers caused less of a surprise than sexual orientation in southern California? "Sorry. I hit my head last night and it's making me say crazy things. And hey, Casey. Welcome to the party. How's it going?"
Casey, his gun cradled close to his body, stared at the three of them in the room from outside. "What the hell is going on here?" He drew up short when he saw Carina, a scowl settling stone-like over his face. "Oh. You."
"Agent Casey," Carina said, her voice becoming a purr. "Been awhile. Nice to see you with your pants on."
Casey gave her a look most people reserved for the dentist.
"Casey, get Chuck out of here." Sarah gave Chuck a brief look of her own. He couldn't tell if her annoyance was at him, or with Carina, but he figured it was probably the latter. After all, he hadn't been the one to bloody up her nose. "I'll fill you both in later."
"But Ellie—"
"Will be fine. Carina's no threat to her, right?" Sarah glared at Carina.
"What, like I'm going to start going around torturing civilians for the fun of it?" Carina looked bored. "I'm here for my diamond. That's all."
Still, Casey had to bodily haul Chuck from the room. He went silently only because Sarah's parting glare promised retribution otherwise, but the moment he and Casey were out of earshot, he wrenched free. "Casey, I flashed on her, on Carina. She's DEA, but not anymore—"
"I know." Casey muttered something under his breath.
Chuck still caught a few choice words. "Prague?" he echoed. "What happened in Prague?"
Casey's glare was even scarier than Sarah's.
"Guess I don't need to know."
They climbed into the Crown Vic, parked back behind the apartment complex rather than out on the street. Chuck kept glancing worriedly back toward Ellie's place. "Where are we going? Castle?"
"No, I'm taking you home, and then it looks like I'm babysitting your ass until Walker's done playing patty-cake with the DEA."
"Ex-DEA. And I'm a grown man, Casey. I don't need babysitting."
"I leave you alone for a few hours and suddenly you're in an apartment with Walker and an armed, masked intruder. That sound like somebody who doesn't need babysitting to you?" Casey glowered at the traffic up ahead, but didn't attempt to muscle his way through.
Chuck sighed and sank back into his seat, scowling. He thought he heard Casey mutter, "Ninjas. Amateurs," but it was more likely an auditory illusion.
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