That Which My Heart Desires
18 NOVEMBER 2007
CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS
19:41 PST
Chuck felt much more normal, like a shroud had been lifted, when he emerged from the locker room. Definitely more like himself. So much so that he smiled when he saw Sarah sitting at the conference room table, one leg folded under the other. She played with the ends of her hair while she studied a file spread open before her.
He paused in the doorway, grateful he'd talked himself into pulling on a shirt. "Sorry I called you perky earlier."
"Mm. Don't worry about it." She glanced up to smile at him, and went still. "What did—"
"You like it?" Chuck ran a hand over the new buzz-cut. "It was getting too long again."
"Oh." Sarah stared at him for another second before her smile returned. It didn't seem to be full force this time, and he could sense a hesitation behind it. Still, she crooked a finger at him. He tilted his head forward and obediently let her rub a hand over the crew cut. She laughed. "Next time at least give me some warning. I almost thought there was an intruder in Castle. Why didn't you just get it trimmed?"
Chuck shrugged and lifted his head. "Less fuss this way. Hey, El."
"Is that my little brother?" Ellie grinned from the infirmary doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. "No curls. Makes it hard to tell."
"They'll be back," Chuck sighed.
"You know, Chuck, sometimes the ladies do like curls on a man." But Ellie smiled and held out a hand.
Chuck tilted his head forward again. "Is it lucky to rub my head?" he wondered. "Am I Buddha-Chuck?"
"It just feels good. Speaking of, you must be feeling better." Ellie glanced between Sarah and Chuck. "Both of you."
Though it was still a bit warm for his tastes in Castle, Chuck assured her that he was fine, and that he had nothing more strenuous planned than a video game marathon with Morgan, so he should probably just head out. He underestimated Ellie-the-overprotective-doctor, though. She accepted no resistance as she ushered both CIA agents back into the infirmary for one final check-up. "Devon called with the tox screens while you were in the shower," she told Chuck as she fitted a blood pressure cuff around Sarah's arm. "While there's nothing in them that's a danger to either of you, I don't want any nasty surprises. So you'll just have to deal with it."
Chuck and Sarah rolled their eyes at each other. "I'd better at least get a lollipop out of this," Chuck muttered.
"If you're good," Ellie said, activating the pressure in the cuff.
He'd heard that one before, which meant there was really only a fifty-fifty chance of getting said candy. Chuck sighed and leaned back against the wall in defeat. As Ellie turned away to grab something from the cabinet of medical horrors, he felt something land in his lap. He picked it up: a grape lollipop.
Sarah gave him the secret smile. He grinned back and stashed the contraband before Ellie could catch either of them grape-handed. When she turned with tongue depressors in hand, both Sarah and Chuck gave her innocent looks. She squinted, but apparently decided to let it go with a shrug.
"Okay, you two are fine," she said after going through the motions. "But you're both on notice. If you feel even the slightestbit wrong, you tell Devon or me right away, got it?"
Chuck swore to do so right away. Sarah's promise was a little more reluctant.
A thought occurred to him as they all rose to their feet. "Hey, El, you've got access to all of our medical files, don't you?"
"Yes. Why? Are you worried about something?"
"Nope. But maybe you can settle a bet." Chuck slanted a sideways look at Sarah; she returned it with suspicion added. "How many ribs has Sarah Walker cracked?"
"Oh, God," Sarah said. "Not this again." When Ellie gave them puzzled looks, she sighed. "Bryce and Chuck had this bet going, back when Chuck was our tech support. About how many ribs I've cracked."
"That's…a strange bet."
"It has something to do with, um, what was his name? Tolkien?"
Chuck nodded. Ellie blinked. "Tolkien," she said. "What the…"
Sara gave Chuck a final stink-eye. "Bryce and Chuck have been arguing about whether I'm more like Arwen—"
"Bryce."
"Or Eowyn—"
"Me."
"Since we all started working together. The only way to tell is by figuring out how hardcore I really am, apparently." Sarah waved it off. "And the number of ribs I've fractured will apparently tell them that."
"Well, I can't tell you," Ellie told Chuck. "Doctor-patient confidentiality."
"Not like it really matters," Sarah added. "As, even if you're right, Chuck, Bryce is never going to come back on the grid just to deliver a comic book."
"This isn't just any comic book. This is Miller's 'Dark Knight Returns,' limited edition—signed." Chuck glanced between the two women as he pulled his shoes on. "It's something of a big deal. Besides, Sarah, you'll find him, and I'd really like that comic book when that happens."
"What makes you so sure you're right?"
"Because you asked Ellie not to tell me. Clearly this is so I won't become insufferable and gloat, and you two have a very obvious tell. I bet your blood type's A positive." When Ellie and Sarah exchanged yet another wary glance, Chuck smiled to himself. "See, that was a total guess. And you just proved me right. Thanks."
"On that note," Sarah said, "I'm going to head out before Chuck figures out my entire medical history. Will you both be okay getting home?"
Once they assured her they were fine, she bade them good-night and left. Chuck finished pulling on his shoes. "Guess we're debriefing tomorrow," he said as he and Ellie walked back to the locker room. He ran an absent hand over his buzzed head. It always took him a few hours to get used to feeling air on the back of his neck. He'd left the shaver on a different setting—slightly longer—as a concession, but now he felt normal once again.
Ellie frowned as Chuck opened his locker. "You have to work tomorrow?"
"Probably just the debriefing, and then I'll get to play with the data we copped from Sergei Ezersky. Or at least I hope we copped it from Sergei. Seems unfair that we'd face down a tinker toy army of death and not get any data. And that's even if they let me play with it. They still haven't let me touch my old hard drive, the one with the Intersect virus on it." The thought rankled somewhat. If Bryce had designed that virus, and Chuck fully believed he wouldn't have outsourced that important of a job to anybody who might be bought, then Chuck would be one of the few people on the planet able to crack that virus. He frowned at the thought, ignoring Sarah's "You're trying to do too much warning" at the back of his mind, as he collected the wallet and keys from the top shelf of his locker. Something fluttered to the ground.
Ellie bent to grab it before he could. Still kneeling, she paused. "Chuck, what is this?"
He glanced down. "It's nothing, just…" Ellie was holding the cracked, faded, and ancient picture of Jill he'd carried inside his parka for years. He hadn't wanted to take his pictures with him into Sergei Ezersky's estate in case something had gone wrong, but he hadn't noticed the lack of either picture until now. Very gently, he reached down and pried the photograph from Ellie's grip. "It's…"
"You kept this with you, didn't you? All this time? In Switzerland?"
Nice one, Bartowski. You're having a decent time and you have to drag everything down, Casey's voice scolded him. He picked up the second photo from the shelf and wordlessly showed it to his sister.
She let out a noise somewhere between a choked sob and a laugh, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. "I'd completely forgotten about this picture. In fact, I can't believe you still have this. Wasn't this your high school graduation?"
"Yes."
"God, look at how young we are."
Chuck smiled and handed her the picture. He shoved his hands roughly into his pockets. "It's good to know some things don't change." Though they had. It was impossible not to go away for five years without everything on the planet changing. Morgan's beard had been just a soul patch in that picture, and Ellie had still been gangly. Since she'd met Awesome and had started working out regularly, she'd lost some of the Bartowski gawkiness. Chuck couldn't help but be jealous.
Now, her hand shifted so that it was cradling her face. A tear slipped down her cheek, but she knuckled it away and quickly glanced at him. "I'm sorry."
"Why are you sorry?" Chuck took the photo back and tucked it in next to its mate in his pocket. "It's not like any of this is your fault."
"I know that. I just…I promised Sarah that I wouldn't bawl all over you, so I won't." It seemed to take a Herculean effort, but Ellie fought back the tears and swallowed hard.
Chuck frowned. "Sarah made you promise that?" It seemed out of character.
"Breaking down in tears all over you all the time doesn't help anything." Ellie grabbed a clean towel from the rack to dry her eyes, shaking her head when Chuck frowned. "She put it nicer than that, I swear. But she had a point."
"Weren't you the one that taught me that we feel how we feel and there's no changing that?"
Ellie smiled. "That may have been me, yes."
By mutual and silent agreement, they started toward the exit, pausing every few feet so that Chuck could power things down and shut off lights. The government may not have seemed to care about pesky little things like power bills, but it felt irresponsible to leave everything running. Ellie was quiet as he went through the motions, shutting off monitors, killing the overhead lights and switching over the auxiliary power. She was perhaps too wrapped up in her own thoughts to intrude on his, so he didn't mind.
Would it ever not hurt where his sister was involved? He knew Ellie had a thousand questions: what had it been like? What had he been doing? What about the others that had been in seclusion in Switzerland with him, what were they like? What had he missed most? The doctor side of her had to have even more questions about the specifics of his agoraphobia, how he handled the bouts of it. Those were easy enough to answer: pretty damn specific down to open and new spaces, and he didn't. Sarah just distracted him until he didn't have to think so much.
Another piece of his memory from the robo-rabbit nightmare filtered in. Not from inside the estate, he realized, but from just before, in the security console. When Sarah had climbed on top of him and everything had gone potentially X-rated. Was that all it had been? Just a way to distract him? Had she meant more by it? It had certainly felt like more, the way the curvier planes of her body had fitted up against his, the way she'd seemed to hold his gaze with the intensity of hers. Like she'd been trying to say something to him.
But what?
"Do you still think about her?" Ellie's quiet question startled him out of his reverie.
He almost asked, "Who, Sarah?" before he realized what a bad idea that would be. There was no reason, really, for him to be thinking about Sarah. They saw her day in and day out anyway. And given that she was a constant presence in their lives, it made no sense for Ellie to be referencing Sarah, which could only mean…
Jill.
"I…sometimes." The second-to-last thing he wanted to confess to his sister was that he sometimes sat in his car for hours, just staring at a lit-up apartment window and wondering.
"Sometimes?" They headed up the stairs together, and Ellie frowned. "You carried her picture around with you for five years."
"It's complicated." He didn't want to lie to his sister, but they were rapidly nearing an area of thought he rarely allowed himself to approach, much less let other see. "It's…I've gotten really good at not thinking about Jill Roberts over the years, okay?" It hurt too much.
"Chuck." Ellie put a hand on his arm, turning him to face her. "What happened?"
He nearly started to say that he didn't want to talk about it, but something stopped the words in his throat. They were Bartowskis. Ellie had always read through those weighty self-help manuals, the ones that might function better as doorstops, and she'd declared early on that Bartowskis clearly had soul. And repression was bad for the soul.
So he pushed through the Scooby Door and sighed. "She didn't want me. She wrote me a letter saying that we were better apart, and that she couldn't do the long distance thing anymore, not when she wasn't sure she still loved me as much as I loved her. It wasn't enough." He sat down on the edge of his desk, ignoring the paperwork still covering the surface. "I wasn't enough."
"She wrote you a letter?" Ellie took up Sarah's normal spot next to him on the desk. For a moment, she was silent, and then she made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. He glanced over at her in alarm, but she was already glaring at the opposite wall. "What a bitch!"
"Hey!" This wasn't the way this was supposed to go.
"No, I mean it. That was cold and cruel and completely uncalled for." Ellie's glare took on the frightening sheen of a mother bear protecting her young. He'd always secretly feared that look, though he knew others should fear it more. "God, I just want to punch her for that!"
Bafflement rose. "I thought you always liked Jill."
"I liked that she liked you, but now I just want to cut her. God!" Ellie pushed away from the desk and began to pace, short, choppy strides. The full Bartowski temper, on dangerously clear display. As he watched, simply determined to stay out of the line of fire, she whirled and faced him, her face flushed and her eyes practically glowing. "Didn't it ever occur to you that she might not be enough for you, Chuck?"
That was a fairly absurd thought. "You have to say that. You're my sister."
"I mean it. The woman dumped you with a Dear John letter while you were off serving your country, and you think you're the unworthy one in this relationship?" Ellie went back to pacing. "I wish I'd known this years ago so that I could have kicked her ass when it was still relevant!"
Despite the whorls of ugly emotion that Jill's name brought up, he laughed. It gave him the confidence to step into Ellie's path and surprise her with a hug before she could attack him. "Easy, tiger," he said, still laughing. "It was five years ago, so if there's probably a time to get over it, it's probably now, right?"
Ellie pulled away from him to glare. "But you're not over it."
That particular arrow flew true. Chuck winced. "Well—"
"Why have you never seen what a bitch move this was? I know you feel like Jill was too good for you and you were lucky to have her, but I've never understood that. Ever. It's not true. In fact, Chuck, it's the exact opposite."
Chuck moved back to the desk to buy himself a moment. Ellie's passion had a way of catching up to people and delivering quite the sucker-punch. Not for the first time, he was grateful that she had very early on declared herself to be lawful good. With a woman like Ellie on their side, a group like Fulcrum wouldn't just be hiding on the fringes of the government. No, by now they'd have taken over the country, with world domination well within their reach.
He forced a smile. Time to come clean, he thought. "It's all been a bit of bad timing, sis. That's the problem."
"What do you mean?"
"The letter arrived two days before they shipped me off to Switzerland." It was getting easier, he noted with some distress, to keep up with the lies about Switzerland to his sister. "When I got there, it was just easier not to think about it. And trust me, I spent a lot of time not thinking about it."
Whole minutes that led into hours, eventually days, and finally by the time he arrived in Siberia, weeks and month at a time could pass where the name Jill Roberts wouldn't cross his mind. And then he would be involved in the intricate or the mundane, and there she would appear like some ghost or ghoul or fragment, back to haunt him so that the cycle could start anew. He moved a shoulder. "I guess it's safe to say that I'm not over her, so you're right."
"Well, start thinking about her."
Chuck avoided the urge to clean out his ear, just in case. "Say what?"
"You need to get over this bitch and move on with your life." Ellie rolled her eyes, but when she grabbed Chuck's arms above the elbows, her expression was sincere. "Chuck, the thing I want most for you is to see you happy again."
He doubted he deserved happiness like the kind Ellie wanted for him. He was just too broken. "It's going to be awhile. If ever, sis."
"I know that, but I think you'll be happier if you deal with this Jill thing." Ellie let go of his arms so that she could once again perch on the edge of the desk next to him. "Letting it fester like this…it can't be good for you, Chuck."
"What would you recommend I do?"
"Start dating other people?" Ellie asked, a touch of hope in her voice.
"Oh, yeah, that would work. Say, hello there, woman that would date me against all odds and in spite of myself. Which appetizer would you like to split, the crab dip or the crab-stuffed mushrooms, but hey, excuse me for a minute while I go change into yet another shirt because I've already sweated through this one." Chuck slumped forward and scowled. "Not really an option, El."
"I know."
"Even if a woman were interested. And trust me, none would be."
Ellie cuffed him lightly upside the head. "I don't know about that."
"See, again, you have to say that because you're my sister."
He almost missed the uncertain look Ellie flicked at the door. His eyebrows scrunched together.
"Okay," she said before he could ask, "maybe no dating other people yet. But maybe try something else? Do you still have the letter?"
Chuck shook his head. "I burned it."
"Really?"
"Yeah, when I got to S—Switzerland."
Ellie sighed. "I have my old 'Jagged Little Pill' CD."
"Don't think Alanis is going to help me either."
"You never know. She was pretty therapeutic for me after I broke up with Doug."
"Oh, geez," Chuck groaned. "I remember that. You played that album for three weeks on end. All the freaking time. I thought you were going to waste away and we'd have to blast 'All I Really Want' at your funeral, and holy crap, the fact that I even remember that song title tells me you did play that album too much."
And if he heard any song from it at all, especially the ironically un-ironic Ironic, he would probably hunt down Ellie's ex just to kick his ass for the fun of it.
"It was a rough break-up." Ellie sighed and waved a hand, dismissing what was undeniably a dark chapter of their lives. She looked as if she were contemplating swallowing bitter medicine as she turned to look at him. "You need to find closure. The only way you're going to be able to do that is if you confront Jill about it."
"Five years later?" Chuck hunched his shoulders. "Doesn't that come across as a little…pathetic?"
"No."
"Really? Most people would be over their ex-girlfriend by now, don't you think?"
"Chuck…" Ellie trailed off with a laugh that almost reached actual humor. "What on earth has misguided you so badly that you believe you'll ever be cursed with normality? C'mon. You took apart our toaster before your seventh birthday."
"I wanted to see how it worked. We didn't have Google back then."
"Trust me, I know. Google would have really helped when I had to actually fix the stupid thing for you before Dad got home and saw."
"But you did it so well," Chuck said. "The toast didn't even burn on the one side after you fixed it."
"That's not the point. The point is, you were special even before the government sent you to seclusion and before your best friend dropped this thing in your brain." Ellie knocked once on his forehead. "So there are always going to be extenuating circumstances. We all have our crosses to bear, so to speak, and I think your life will be a lot easier for you without the one named Jill. So go talk to her, get to the bottom of what happened five years ago, get your closure, and move on."
Chuck went silent for a moment. Closure. Talking to Jill. Actually going up to her, face to face, and wondering aloud what had happened five years ago, why she had suddenly seemed to fall out of love with him. He'd thought they'd been okay, they'd been happy, which was why he had put off proposing.
It was possible, he had discovered five years before, to be very, very wrong about things. In a way that could hurt.
Beside him, Ellie sighed. "Look, if it's really bad, you could always write her a letter."
"You think?"
"She wrote you a letter and seemed to get her closure. Why shouldn't you be allowed the same courtesy?"
"I guess." He didn't see how writing a letter was going to help him much. It was just putting words on paper and voicing emotions he wasn't sure he could or did feel. In the end, it was easier just to sit and watch a window and not think about anything at all.
But it didn't make things better. He hated to compare himself to a toaster, but if Ellie could clean up his technological messes as a kid, maybe she could help him now. So he shrugged. "I'll think about it."
"You do that. And you know, I'm here if you need to talk, or Devon is. Or even Sarah, you know. She wants to help."
"That's why the two of you have been all Wonder Twins lately?"
Ellie laughed. "Wonder Twins? Wasn't one of them male?"
"Yeah. I'll leave it to you to figure out who is who."
"Oh, thanks ever so. But you know me. When I bought my car, I spent three weeks doing nothing but searching through the Kelley Blue Book before I could even decide what type of car I might want to buy, let alone make and model."
He hadn't known that. It had happened in that horrible five year gap while he'd been in the bunker. But he gave her a smile that pretended he had known that.
"So when I had a lot of questions about this Prometheus situation, Sarah's been on hand to answer everything." Ellie shoulder-bumped him. "Actually, she's pretty fun, once you get past the super-secret agent façade."
Chuck felt the weight of the grape lollipop in his pocket. He smiled. "Mm-hmm. It's a little scary fast how she can bring up 'façades,' though." He used his fingers to make air-quotes. "She went from zero to airhead in a blink once. I swear, I was talking to Sarah and then I was talking to Sarah's valley girl twin."
"Oh yeah?" Ellie laughed and pushed herself off of the desk, evidently deciding that the conversation was drawing to a close. He followed. "That must have been a sight to behold."
"I think Jill was a little scared, yeah."
Ellie startled him by grabbing his arm. "Wait, Sarah's met Jill?"
"We ran into each other at the Stanford game." And that had just been the epitome of awkward, awkwardness that even now made him push his shoulders back. "Sarah went all valley girl right before we ran into her. I think I was more startled by that than by seeing Jill again."
"I bet." Ellie bit her lip, always a sign that she wanted to say something else, but she seemed to let the subject drop as they finally hit the parking lot to leave. "Take your time with the Jill situation, Chuck. I may want to push her off of a building, but this is about how you feel, not me. There's no magic fix here."
Chuck bobbed his chin forward a little. "We feel what we feel and there's no changing that," he said sagely.
"You mock, but it's true." Ellie still elbowed him for taking such a droll stance on the advice she'd been giving him for years. "Promise me you'll at least think about what I said tonight."
"Trust me, I always think about your advice." Chuck twirled his keys around his fingertip as he walked her to her car. "You going to be okay getting home?"
"I should be asking you that. I'm not the one that got pumped full of scary Russian goo last night."
"I'm fine, I swear. Just grateful that I'm not mysteriously covered in green scales or something weirder. Though I wouldn't mind mutant powers showing up."
"I'm sure." Ellie stood up on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Don't forget—dinner's at six on Thursday, and let John know he's invited, too, if he doesn't already have plans with his own family."
Chuck, halfway to his car a couple of spots over, stopped. The concept of Casey having a family, of there potentially being more Caseys running around, terrorizing the world, just seemed completely foreign. Like drinking milk without Oreos, or playing Master Chief without having Cortana's voice nagging at him.
Truly bizarre.
"Yeah," he said. "Sure. I'll ask him."
"Good. Bye!" With a final wave, Ellie climbed into her car and took off. Chuck idled in his own car, just turning Ellie's words over in his mind, and trying his hardest not to think about everything that he could remember about the estate. The few flashes he did were honestly pretty terrifying, so maybe it was better that he couldn't recall.
He should go, he thought as Ellie's car pulled out of the driveway. He had a standing Sunday night date with Morgan to play video games and veg out with grape soda and other unhealthy alternatives. He could go over, get lost in either the new or the nostalgic, just hang out with a best friend that had no expectations of him whatsoever, which was an absolute comfort.
Instead, he reached for his cell and dialed Morgan's number. "Hey, buddy," he said when Morgan answered. "I think I'm gonna need a rain check. Is that okay? Yeah, well, something came up, a coding problem that took awhile to fix, and I'm tired and…"
He trailed off, listening to Morgan's comfortable cadence. Even if Morgan was disappointed, he was still happy to even hear from his best friend, and always happy just to chat for a couple of minutes.
"Yeah, I've got something I need to do tonight," he said when Morgan finally let him talk again. "But is Wednesday good for you?"
He'd need the pick-me-up after his third session with Dr. Anton. He was almost sure he was going to talk this time. His last therapy session had been spent playing Tetris on his phone. So he smiled when Morgan instantly agreed to move his late-night shift at the Buy More to accommodate an all-nighter of Mario Brothers worship.
Chuck was smiling as he hung up.
When he glanced over at the binoculars sitting on his front seat, though, the smile faded completely. He put the car into drive. One more night, he promised himself, one more night to just sit and be himself and watch, and then he would write that letter and try to get better.
He doubted it would work.
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