Just Say the Word, Trouble
25 NOVEMBER 2007
HEARTBRAKE HOTEL ROOM THIRTEEN
14:53 PST
Sarah reacted with catlike grace. Before Chuck's words were even fully out of his mouth, she bounced forward, ricocheting off the motel room window, and in one smooth movement, spun and drove her fist into Jill's stomach. Jill crumpled forward. The phone clattered to the floor loudly enough that Chuck heard it even outside the motel room.
Sarah followed the sock to the gut with an overhand swing of the left arm. The side of her fist chopped against the side of Jill's chin.
Jill hit the ground with a thud, out cold.
Chuck stared in shock at the vapor smudges Sarah's hands had left on the window when she'd smacked into it. Oh, crap, was all he could think. Sarah had moved like the freaking wind. Somehow her contained, controlled takedown of Jill Roberts, PhD in training, was more frightening than killing four men and knocking another two unconscious.
He was never, ever, ever going to cross Sarah.
Inside the room, Sarah shook her fist out once, the only sign that hitting Jill might have hurt. She knelt next to Jill, grabbed the other woman's lax hands, and yanked them behind her back. Only then did she look up and meet Chuck's gaze through the window.
Odd, he thought in that first split second. He'd expected her to look fierce, pissed off, like a vengeful goddess or one of the Furies. Instead, she looked weary. She jerked her head at him once: get inside.
He fumbled for the room key in his pocket and hastened to obey. "Is she dead?" he asked as he came in, fear for Jill, fear of Jill, a healthy, respecting fear of Sarah all mixing to form a potent brew in his stomach.
"No, she's unconscious. She'll be out for another thirty seconds or so. Any longer and we'll call the paramedics." Sarah scowled and settled back on her haunches, Jill's hands still pinned. "I didn't want to actually hit her."
"She was about to club you with a phone!"
"I knew she was there."
That made Chuck blink. "How?"
"I heard her coming. She's pretty quiet, but I have ears like a cat. Crap." Sarah slapped Jill's face again, scowling. "I really, really didn't want this to happen."
"Then why did it?"
"You startled me." Sarah looked disgruntled as she transferred Jill's wrists to one hand. She leaned over to tap her fingers against the uninjured side of Jill's face, trying to rouse her. "I almost had her, and you startled me. Her jaw is going to hurt like a bitch."
Chuck sucked air through his teeth. "She's Fulcrum, Sarah," he said, trying hard not to stare at Jill's body on the floor. No matter what Sarah said, she looked dead.
"I got the memo, trust me. Do me a favor and strip the sheets off the bed."
"Wh-what?"
"I need some way to bind her."
"Those sheets haven't been washed in forever!"
Sarah gave him a level look. "Then it's a good thing we're not hopping between them. The sheets, Chuck."
Put like that, there was little way he could argue, so Chuck, after another uncertain look at Jill, rose to do her bidding. Gingerly, he pulled back the paisley-patterned bedspread. His ex-girlfriend was Fulcrum. His ex-girlfriend had joined the same organization that was out to get him, that had tried to turn his best friend into a double-agent. What were the odds? When the hell had that happened? Jill Roberts wasn't evil—save for trying to clock Sarah with a phone—so she didn't fit. Were they wrong about Fulcrum?
Six men had driven them out to the desert and tried to kill them.
No, they weren't wrong about Fulcrum.
He grabbed the corner of the sheets and tried to simultaneously not freak out and to keep his face—well, any exposed epidermis, really—away from the bedclothes.
For sheets that hadn't been washed in his lifetime, however, they smelled surprisingly strongly of Downy.
"Heh," he said without meaning to.
"What is it?"
"Apparently they do have housekeeping here. Guess it might not be a bad thing to jump into bed with these sheets."
"Just say the word, Chuck."
"Wha-huh?" Chuck, the sheets halfway off an oddly-clean mattress, whirled.
Sarah tossed one single, searing look over her shoulder. "The sheets," she said, nodding at them. "She's waking up, and I want to tie her up before she's too coherent."
But Chuck didn't move for a minute. Just say the word?
Just like that?
What the hell?
It was stress, he thought. It had to be. Sarah was normally a very touchy-feely type person, and they'd been fugitives for a couple of hours, and captives for hours before that. She'd taken out six people in the desert. She had a Fulcrum agent to handle and Chuck to keep calm, and Casey was still awhile away. And that wouldn't be the end of things. Who knew how far word of their identity had spread throughout Fulcrum? There was no way to know if Chuck was safe.
It had to be stress. Right?
Eyeing her, he turned back to do her bidding, yanking the rest of the sheets off of the mattress and bundling them up. "Got them," he said, turning back to her. "What do I do with them?"
"Tear off long strips, six inches wide." Sarah tossed him a knife. She lifted an eyebrow as he fielded it easily. "To get the strips started," she explained.
"Oh." He ripped the first strip and passed it over to her. She seemed to be deliberately avoiding his gaze, and that puzzled him.
Stress, he repeated to himself. Sarah didn't mean "Just say the word" literally. She was Sarah freaking Walker. He'd seen her do about ten million epic things in their short time together, and not just when he'd been monitoring and doctoring surveillance for the Walker-Larkin Wonder Team. She flew planes through Eastern Europe, she knocked him unconscious in the middle of one of the busiest sites in Athens and she got away with it, she baked meringue pies, she could single-handedly take on the entire cast of Mortal Kombat. There was no way that Sarah Walker could possibly want him. So she was just reacting to the situation with a bad joke, even if she'd seemed serious.
When he'd ripped up most of the sheet, he moved to Jill's other side to help Sarah bind the Fulcrum agent, sneaking looks at Sarah every once in awhile. She either didn't notice, or she ignored him.
Until she cleared her throat. "A little tighter on the bindings, Chuck."
"I don't want to cut off her circulation."
"You won't." When Chuck hesitated, Sarah reached over and tightened the straps holding Jill's wrist herself. She didn't jerk them or seem overly impatient. She merely tugged until the straps were snug, and tied them off. The action put her face close to Chuck's. He could smell their day on her: sweat, dust, motor oil from the trunk, and the ever-present underlying scent of apples from her shampoo. Her eyes cut up, met his, and she raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"
"Nothing." Belatedly, Chuck realized that he had started to tilt closer to her. He pulled back.
"Okay." Sarah's eyes lingered on his for a second longer before she focused her attention back on Jill. She frowned.
"How long do you think she's been Fulcrum?" Chuck asked, not looking at either Sarah or Jill. They both felt like they had minefields surrounding them and if he just looked at them the wrong way, things might explode in his face, horribly.
Sarah was too busy pulling up Jill's eyelid and shining a penlight from the stolen van keys into the other woman's pupil. "Long enough to have a set cover story in place," she replied after a minute, distracted. "Why don't you go grab us some waters from the machine by the lobby? I don't trust the pipes here."
"Yeah, probably don't want to die of lead poisoning after all we'd gone through today. Do you think that would count as ironic?"
Calling the motel's squat office a lobby was a bit generous, in Chuck's opinion. The room smelled like dust, cats, and sour milk, and the décor had been designed by either a colorblind, drug-addled Martha Stewart, or a vengeful '50s housewife out to slaughter good taste. When the desk worker rolled his chair away from a computer that looked like it had survived the Nixon era, Chuck figured out where the smell of sour milk was coming from. He tried to silence the instinctual gag as he set the twenty Sarah had given him on the desk. "Need some change for that," he said, purposely breathing through his mouth.
"Sure, no problem." The worker blinked red-rimmed eyes that made Chuck wonder which room housed the meth lab, and grabbed the twenty. "You need what, fives? Singles?"
"Singles and two fives."
The worker pulled out an ancient cash box and brushed irritably at the cobwebs. He kept sneaking looks at Chuck. Chuck kept breathing through his mouth.
Finally, the worker cleared his throat. "You tap that?" he asked.
Chuck coughed. "Excuse me?"
"The blonde." A wolfish grin spread over the worker's pasty face. "She said you weren't to be disturbed, you lucky dog."
Probably because there was a Fulcrum agent tied to the desk chair with bed sheets. Had Sarah known even then that Jill was Fulcrum? Had she figured that something was going to go down? It made more sense than any "tapping." Chuck took the stack of bills from the worker, trying not to frown. "Uh, yeah," he said. No harm in letting a complete stranger think the wrong thing.
"Sweet!" The worker held up a hand for a high-five.
Chuck stared at it. Given the reek of eau de motel worker, he had no idea how long it had been since the man had seen the inside of a shower, much less where that hand had been. He covered by giving a rueful smile and backing away, his hands held up in apology.
The worker shrugged and dropped his hand. Given the cocktail of hallucinogens and other mind-altering chemicals no doubt swimming in the man's bloodstream, Chuck didn't figure the disappointment would last too long. He gave another apologetic smile ad headed for the door, only to be stopped by the worker's, "Hey, dude?"
Chuck turned slowly. "Yeah?"
"How much do you have to pay for a woman like that?"
Just say the word, Chuck.
"Uh." Chuck cleared his throat. "Not enough."
"So, like, two hundred?"
Chuck had to laugh as he left. Since Sarah's orders had been to hurry, he headed to the vending machine right away. He shook his head as he fed the first dollar in. You tap that? That was an absurd question. Okay, granted, it wasn't in this case, since the attendant had actually thought Sarah was a call-girl, but still. Even if he hadn't been locked away from civilization for five years, he would never have had a chance with somebody like Sarah.
Just say the word, Chuck.
The first bottle hit the receiving basket at the bottom of the vending machine.
Chuck thought of the security console outside of Sergei Ezersky's estate again. He fed the second bill in. Sarah's body, so perfectly aligned to his, so hot and fierce that he was still surprised nothing nearby had burst into flame. The second bottle hit the basket. Why had she done that? It was just…random.
She had cuddled up against him in Poland, though that might have been exhaustion or just a subconscious move toward warmth, as he was sure he was more comfortable than the hayloft floor. But she'd been embarrassed about it upon waking.
She'd joked about visiting the Scary Stacks at Green Library. Granted, that didn't mean visiting the Scary Stacks with him.
A water bottle hit the stack in the receiving basket and bounced against the vending machine glass, making Chuck look down. Why the hell had he put five dollars into the machine, he wondered. While his brain had been playing the "Most Innocuously Confusing Behavior Patterns of Sarah Walker," his fingers had apparently been busy. Five water bottles stacked up in the basket.
Might as well keep going. Since it was there and he was a little hungry, he moved over to the next vending machine and picked out the Sun Chips Sarah liked, Doritos for himself. Attraction made no sense on either side of the equation, he thought while he debated which items Jill would be able to eat with her jaw aching as it no doubt would. And, oh, God, he wasn't ready to think about Jill being Fulcrum yet. So he focused on Sarah. By all rights, she wasn't his type. Sure, she was so beautiful that even a corpse would react to her, but she just wasn't a nerd. They had so little in common, and he'd always gone for women that he could talk to for hours, usually about nerdy subjects. Sarah had her moments, but she was only a nerd because she took the time to learn something to—
Impress him.
Chuck's fingers froze on the "D" key of the machine.
She'd looked up what a Bacta Tank was because he'd made a joke on the plane. She had watched a Bond film solely because he had quoted it. No, Chuck corrected, a little frantic now. She had watched a Bond film that she had hated because he had quoted it. She was always touching his arm, or bringing him food.
"Oh, my God," Chuck said aloud, nearly dropping his armful of water bottles and snacks.
Sarah liked him.
It wasn't stress. It had never been stress that made her say, "Just say the word, Chuck." She'd meant it. And she'd been dropping bigger and bigger hints over the past few weeks to prove it.
She'd dressed up as Tatiana Romanova for Halloween, for crying out loud.
Either move, or don't. Her words from earlier suddenly made sense, as had her rueful laugh. She hadn't wanted him to get out of the way. She'd been daring him to make a move. I should know better by now.
Oh, God.
How the hell had he missed the signs? Sarah Walker liked him. The only way she could have been more obvious about it, Chuck thought, was if she had rented out an airplane and written it in the sky.
He rested his forehead against the vending machine glass and tried not to freak out.
25 NOVEMBER 2007
ROOM THIRTEEN
15:07 PST
Sarah yanked open the door and lowered her gun when she saw that it was just Chuck. She gave him a puzzled look. "Why didn't you just use your k—oh."
"Delivery," Chuck said weakly, his arms full.
"I see." Sarah stepped to the side to let him in. Chuck glanced over at Jill as he made his way to the bed to drop off the loot from the vending machines. She was still semi-conscious.
"Why are you dripping?" Sarah asked as she tucked her gun away. It was actually her gun, Chuck realized now, which meant she'd gotten it back off of the dead guards. He felt strangely comforted by that fact.
Chuck held up a baggie. "I got ice for Jill's jaw."
"Okay…"
"And I stuck my head in the ice machine."
"That's sanitary," Sarah said.
Chuck shrugged.
"Why would you do that, Chuck?"
Chuck sorted through the pile on the mattress and tossed her the bag of Sun Chips. "Remember earlier, when you asked me how much I was freaking out and I said four?"
"And then three," Sarah said. She tossed the bag on the desk.
"Well, now it's more like an eight. Or a high seven—no, definitely an eight. Creeping up towards nine, actually." Chuck knelt next to Jill and put the ice bag against the injured side of her jaw. When she tried to move her head away, he grabbed the other side of her head with his free hand to steady her. "I figured, you know, if I stuck my head in the ice machine, maybe it would stop the freak-out."
Sarah raised an eyebrow. He wasn't looking at her, but he could practically hear the motion. "And did it?"
Chuck paused. "It works in cartoons," he pointed out, almost feeble.
"Uh-huh. You know you're not in a cartoon, right?"
"Which must be why sticking my head in the ice machine did absolutely no good." Chuck kept his eyes on Jill's face. He was almost afraid to look at her, to see just how pale she had grown, but he was more afraid of looking at Sarah. Logically, he knew somewhere very, very deep inside that nothing had changed. She must have liked him for a long while, if she was going to dress up as Tatiana Romanova for Halloween.
Maybe he was being vain, and stupid.
He didn't think so. Things added up a little too well with Sarah's actions, now that he was really thinking about it. Okay, so maybe he was stupid, but he was hardly vain. He still thought Sarah was crazy for even considering him…in that way. There were so many other better candidates out there for her than some agoraphobic loser with a computer in his head.
"Is Jill really okay?" he asked. "Does it usually take people this long to wake up?"
"She's semi-conscious, which is a little worrisome, but her pupils are dilating regularly. We'll give her a couple of minutes."
Behind him, Chuck could hear Sarah sifting through the pile on the bed. "Are you okay?" she asked. "I know Jill being Fulcrum is a big deal, and if you think you can't handle it, or you need to contaminate the ice machine again, you let me know, okay?"
He wanted, desperately, to be reassured the way Sarah had always managed to do even as early as their time on the run through Europe. But it was hard to be calmed by the same woman freaking him out. He kept his eyes on Jill's face, watching her eyelids twitch. "To be honest," he said, "I haven't even gotten to that part. Processing, I mean."
"Oh. Are you still working on the desert thing? Because they were going to kill us, and I just got to them first. That's all it was." A water bottle opened with a hiss behind Chuck.
"It's not that." Chuck didn't dare look at Sarah. He licked his lips, took a deep breath, and found that did absolutely nothing to help his nerves. Another deep breath bolstered him somewhat, and another until: "You meant it, didn't you." It wasn't a question, but he looked at her imploringly anyway. "When you said, 'Just say the word, Chuck.' You meant that."
Sarah didn't so much spit-take as she seemed to simply forget drinking. Water dribbled down her chin, making her swear and hurry to stanch the flow with the heel of her hand. Her eyes had gone wide. "Oh, Chuck," she said, almost a sigh. She set the bottle down on the desk behind Jill, and he could see that her hand was shaking.
It actually made Chuck's rioting stomach feel somewhat better.
"Of all the times…" Sarah rubbed hard at the back of her neck and cast her eyes to the ceiling. "I shouldn't have said anything."
"I make your head hurt, right? That's what move or don't move meant." Chuck slowly set the ice bag down on the desk and rose to his feet. There was only Jill between them now. "I didn't lie to Jill. You're very careful about what you say."
"Yes, I am." Now Sarah did meet his eyes. "And yes. I meant it. But now is really not the time. Jill's almost awake and you've got to interrogate her."
An entirely new sort of fear flooded through Chuck now as his brain sped through his own personal horror movie of torture scenes from TV and movies. Suddenly the thought that Sarah might find him—oh, God—attractive or…his brain couldn't quite go there yet. The thought that Sarah might like him didn't seem to matter as much as the fact that the woman tied to the chair, the woman who worked for the evil government agency, was his ex-girlfriend. "Me? I've got to interrogate her? Why me?"
"Because she won't tell me anything now." Sarah leaned over and grabbed a second water bottle from the bed. This one she handed to him. "I'm the other woman."
"Oh, God."
"Relax. Nothing's changed."
Except everything had. He'd potentially screwed up Operation Prometheus in ways that meant life-changing things, his ex-girlfriend wasn't just the cold-hearted woman who'd dumped him via Dear John letter but evil to boot, Casey was going to kill him, Ellie was in a safe-house, and Chuck had a hot, blonde CIA agent that wanted to jump his bones.
This was one of those situations that led to things like spontaneous cranial combustion.
Because Sarah gave him a significant, almost threatening look, Chuck swallowed the nausea and wiped most of the terrified expression from his face. Two seconds later, Jill blinked awake. He knelt down by her chair while Sarah took up her post at the window behind him.
Her eyelids fluttered as she came to, her skin pale and her look pained. Immediately, her eyes wheeled around the room, obviously taking in details. Agent instincts, Chuck realized with a sickening jolt. Jill had had some sort of training. Her eyes paused on Sarah and finally rested on Chuck.
He opened his mouth to say something—though he had no earthly idea what—but Sarah beat him to the punch.
"Morning, sunshine. Have a nice nap?"
Realization seemed to come in stages for Jill. Her eyes started to narrow, but the pain must have slammed into her then, given the grimace that swept over her face. She tilted her head a little, possibly trying to assess the damage, air hissing through her teeth.
Chuck had to hand it to her. If it had been him in that chair, he would have been screaming.
Jill's eyes traveled down to the ripped motel sheets holding her wrists to the chair and kept going until they landed on the straps binding her ankles as well. Her glare immediately cut up to Sarah. Chuck was positive he had never seen that much hatred in her eyes before.
"What the hell did you do to me?" she demanded, her words a bit slurred through the injured side of her mouth.
"Tied you up." Sarah turned her attention back out the window, once again keeping watch for Casey. "Nice trick with the phone. You almost had me." She rolled her eyes.
The venom in Jill's expression rose to levels that made Chuck's stomach hurt. Fulcrum, he reminded himself. She worked for the bad guys. Still, he deliberately placed himself between the women. "How's your jaw?" he asked, since he had no idea how to start an interrogation.
Jill merely transferred the glare to him for the barest of split seconds before it changed to a pleading look. "Why are you letting her do this to me?" She sounded truly pitiful.
"Um, probably because you tried to hit her with a phone." He hated to point out the obvious, but it felt necessary in this case.
"I was trying to protect myself! She's a killer—she murdered those agents in the desert this morning, and she's going to kill you and me the first chance she gets. I recognize her type, Chuck."
"She might kill you," Chuck said, reaching up to put the ice bag against Jill's jaw. She jerked her head away, so he shrugged to himself. He couldn't really do much in this situation, even if he wanted to. He set the ice bag on the floor, where it would probably leave a mold spot in the carpet someday. Well, another mold spot. "I don't think she'll kill me. She likes me."
And now was really not the time to think about that. His brain was already hurting.
"You can't trust her!"
"No, it's you I can't trust." Chuck rubbed his hands up and down either side of his face; he was very, very tired. Was it really only just after three o'clock in the afternoon? He felt like the day had already stretched on for weeks, possibly months. He focused his gaze back on Jill. "Jill, just stop. I know you're Fulcrum, okay? I figured it out."
Jill's face went through a fascinating myriad of emotion. If he hadn't been frazzled and tired and confused himself, it might have been interesting to watch hues of dislike, fear, rage, and anger flicker across in quick succession before Jill finally settled on puzzled. "What happened to you, Chuck? You're not the guy I remember from Stanford."
"What happened to me is classified," Chuck said, and nearly blinked at how cold his voice sounded. Even Sarah seemed surprised, given the way she tensed. It was a micro-movement, but he still noticed, so he made an effort to ease his tone back. "And no, I'm not the guy you remember from Stanford. Just like you're not the girl I knew either. When did you really join Fulcrum?"
"I told you—"
"Lies," Sarah said.
"I wasn't lying, I was—"
"Giving a really well-rehearsed cover story."
Jill glared, flinching when the movement apparently hurt her jaw. "You're doing really well at this good cop, bad cop routine."
It was more like weary cop, sarcastic cop, Chuck thought. "If we were cops, maybe," he said. "But we're not, and we want to help you, Jill."
"We do?" Sarah asked.
"Yes. We do." Chuck turned to give Sarah a look. When he turned back to Jill, he'd managed to wipe most of the exhaustion from his expression. "Sarah's right, you know. Your cover story was a little too set. So I want to know, what's the real story? What happened to you? The girl I knew at Stanford would never have been a part of anything like this. So what happened?"
For a long, suspended moment, he didn't think it would work. Jill had always found his babbling cute at Stanford—it was why she had kissed him the first time—but sincerity, genuine truth behind his words had always worked a great deal better. He just tried not to use it unless he really meant it, which might have been stating the obvious, but Chuck felt there was enough of a difference. Even so, five years had passed. He had no idea how much had changed, but given that so far he and Sarah had had to survive being stuffed in a trunk, almost executed in a desert, and being knocked out by outdated motel phones—for Sarah, at least—he'd feel perfectly safe betting that it was a lot.
So when Jill sighed, it was all he could do not to sit back in his seat in surprise.
"I didn't want them to shoot you," she said, looking down and away. "I tried to convince them not to, I really did. But they said that too much didn't match up—the government badges, the fact that you two had two different names on your IDs, and they said you were too much of a risk to Fulcrum."
"What is Fulcrum?" Chuck asked, deliberately not looking at Sarah. He had a feeling that if he did, she might not be able to hold back whatever hostile comment she had in store for Jill.
Other woman indeed.
When Jill shrugged a shoulder, though, Sarah apparently couldn't hold it back. She scoffed.
Chuck shot her a look to let her know she wasn't helping. She rolled her eyes back at him.
"Jill," Chuck said, turning back to their prisoner, "I don't know if you realize this here, but you're in some trouble. My bosses aren't exactly the most forgiving people on the planet, and they take employee loss very, very seriously. They're not going to be happy that your friends tried to shoot us." It sounded like something Sarah would say, but he just barreled on. "And by being a part of Fulcrum, you were committing treason. They throw people in prison for that sort of thing."
"Maximum security prison," Sarah felt the need to add.
"But we can help you," Chuck said. "I know you didn't want them to shoot us. That's not you. You're not that person, right?"
Jill just gave him a sad look. "It's more complicated than that, Chuck."
"So you are that person?"
"What? No! I'm not. I didn't want them to shoot you, but I couldn't do anything! I didn't have a choice!"
"You got in the car," Sarah pointed out.
"I had six armed men telling me what to do!" Jill glared.
Again, Chuck shifted so that he was between the women. For the first time since they had begun working together, Sarah was being a little less than helpful. Not that he blamed her, really. But he still wanted some answers. "What's Fulcrum, Jill?"
"I don't know."
"You mean, you worked for an organization for years and you didn't even know what they did?" Sarah asked.
Jill glowered at her. Chuck let that one go since it was a fair question, but he cleared his throat, directing Jill's attention back to him. "Then tell me what you do know," he said, his voice level and sincere. "I assume you had to start somewhere with Fulcrum. Where was it?"
"Where?"
"Fine. When? When did Fulcrum get to you, Jill? And how?"
"You're not really helping your case by not answering," Sarah put in when Jill's silence stretched out
for nearly a minute.
Even though Jill glared, Sarah's words apparently had effect. "At Stanford," she said, and sagged back against the chair.
Chuck felt as though somebody had kicked him in the chest. "At Stanford?" he yelped, and ignored Sarah's warning look to drop his voice back down to a lower register. "You mean, you were recruited by an evil organization while we were still together?"
"I didn't know they were evil," Jill said, her voice steely. "A family friend approached me about doing some research, and he really did make it sound like Fulcrum would be beneficial to the country. He came to me right before our senior year." She kept her eyes steady on Chuck, as if imploring him to understand.
He didn't. He couldn't. His brain felt like a fuzzy mess. Just before their senior year? He had thought they had been doing so well. They had made a pact to make the most of their final year at Stanford, to live it up since they would never have the chance to do so again. And the whole time, Jill had been working for Fulcrum? Granted, he'd been recruited by the CIA, but he had been intending to tell her when he proposed. He had planned to keep that secret for six months at the most. Jill had carried that secret through almost a year in a relationship with him.
It felt very hard to breathe, but he forced oxygen in and out of his chest anyway. Slowly, he leaned forward and shook his head from side to side, as if that would make things better. It really didn't.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" It came out as a whisper.
Jill shook her head, and there wasn't anything slow or sluggish about the movement. "It was better that you didn't know."
He'd been planning to tell Jill, Chuck thought. The instant he returned from Officer Candidate School, before he shipped off to his first assignment with the CIA. He had been going to tell her he worked for the CIA in some capacity, which he would have been allowed to do at that point. He had been planning to propose to her, and tell her that.
And instead, she wouldn't have told him. Ever. Even when she—
His head came up. "Is that why you dumped me?"
Jill didn't look away. "I didn't want to," she said, her eyes bright, which was usually a sign that she was near tears. Chuck hoped she didn't cry. He didn't want to deal with tears right now, not when it felt like his organs were being slowly sucked out of his chest and squeezed. "I tried so hard not to let them know just how serious the relationship was, but when they found out, they said I had to dump you. They said I couldn't have any distractions, especially if you were going to work for the government."
"Work for the—" Oh, right. Jill had thought he was going into the Army to become an engineer for them. Chuck swallowed hard. So that was why. All those years of wondering, and it came down to an organization he hadn't known even existed.
An organization that had managed to change his life in major ways, twice now.
"So you dumped me through a letter?" he asked between his teeth, surprising himself. The further shock was that his voice didn't sound like him. It was frigid, deathly so, and so completely cold.
His hands started to shake. He stared at them.
"I couldn't do it in person." Now a tear did spill, carefully picking its way down Jill's cheek. "I tried, I really did. They wanted me to do it while you were home between Basic and Officer Candidate School, and I tried to end things, but I just…I looked at you and I thought, 'How can I break his heart?' and I put it off until my bosses said it was either you or…well, I put it off until I couldn't anymore. If you were going to hate me, you might as well hate me through a letter."
Jill's words seemed to fall and echo into a void. Hate her through a letter? They seemed all too real and too hypocritical and too—
Something touched Chuck's shoulder. He looked away from his hands, confused, to see Sarah standing over him, looking impassively at Jill. "Take up the watch at the window," Sarah murmured to him, glancing down just once. Even though the look was brief, there was compassion in her eyes. Mechanically, Chuck rose from his spot on the edge of the bed and went to the window.
Sarah took his place. "So," she said. "Let's talk about everything you know."
25 NOVEMBER 2007
ROOM THIRTEEN
15:52 PST
"Casey's here," Chuck said, dropping the curtain back into place and straightening his shoulders.
"You recognized the Crown Vic?" Sarah asked without taking her eyes off of Jill.
Chuck nodded.
"And he's alone?"
Another nod.
"Go outside and wait for him, then. I'll stay in here with the prisoner."
Jill remained silent. She had stopped crying a few minutes before, when it was obvious that her tears wouldn't work on Sarah. It had hurt to hear those sniffles coming from his ex-girlfriend, but Chuck had just maintained his stare out the window, as his brain had fought to process everything Jill was confessing. She had been brought into Fulcrum a few months before the CIA had recruited him. They had spent the last few months of their relationship together lying to each other, each thinking that he or she was doing it for the other person.
It made him want to throw up.
Instead, he went outside and stood on the curb, squinting a little in the mid-afternoon sunlight as the Crown Vic trailed dust across the parking lot. Casey's look was ferocious as he climbed out of the driver's seat.
"Where's Walker?"
"In there with J…with the prisoner." Chuck jerked his head at the motel room.
"She know I'm here?"
Chuck nodded.
"Good." Casey gave the parking lot a cursory look, pulled off his shades, hooked the earpiece in his shirt collar, and startled Chuck by grabbing the other man by the front of his shirt. He shoved Chuck up against the wall above his head so that Chuck's chucks dangled a couple of feet above the sidewalk. "Now let's talk about what the hell you were thinking, Bartowski!"
"Casey, you're hurting me!"
"Good." Casey jerked him so that the back of Chuck's head hit the motel wall. "Maybe something will get through that thick, stupid skull of yours, Bartowski. What the hell were you thinking? You were stalking a Fulcrum agent and you didn't tell me?"
It was a little hard to breathe, even harder with Casey's ugly mug glaring into his from so close. "I didn't know she was a Fulcrum agent!" Chuck protested.
"So you were just stalking some girl that was dumb enough to date your stupid ass? And that's supposed to make it better?"
Chuck opened his mouth to defend himself, but he didn't get the chance. The motel room door flew open, and Sarah appeared in full Fury mode, eyes bright, scowl in place, shoulders back. Avenging goddess, Chuck had time to think, though that may have been the lack of oxygen to the brain speaking. Sarah focused all of her annoyance on Casey. "Drop him!"
Casey glared right back. "But he—"
"I don't care! Drop. The. Nerd."
With a grunt that was more of a displeased whimper, Casey obeyed her orders. Unfortunately for Chuck, it was to the letter. The human Intersect lost his balance and went to a knee in the dirt. He coughed, shoved off Casey's attempt to haul him to his feet, and brushed the dirt from his knees.
"You always take his side," Casey muttered, folding his arms over his chest.
"You were choking him up against the wall," Sarah pointed out, all pragmatism. "And for the record, I'm on your side with this one. What he did was stupid. However, now is not the time. Did you bring the gear?"
Casey grumbled for a minute. "It's in the trunk. And back-up will be here in a few minutes."
Sarah blinked at him. "Back-up? Why would we need back-up for a simple prison transport?"
"Nothing's ever simple when it's Bartowski." Casey glared at Chuck as he spoke. He'd already taken the time to don a Kevlar vest with the words "Federal Agent" in bold white on the back, and he had a hip holster for his SIG. When Sarah sighed at him, he shrugged. "And I brought the change of clothes for Bartowski and the prisoner. Had to use some of the stuff from your stores in Castle."
"It's fine," Sarah said, even though Chuck frowned. Sarah was several inches taller than Jill, not that it mattered. Jill was on her way to a secure CIA detention facility, where she would be wearing a gray jumpsuit for the foreseeable future. "Where is it?"
"Backseat."
"Okay." Sarah grabbed a brown paper bag out of the backseat, pawed through it, and tossed some articles at Chuck. "You boys wait out here. Handcuffs?"
Casey tossed her a pair. With one more "be nice" look at the both of them, especially Casey, she disappeared back into the motel room.
"You can change out here," Casey told Chuck. "Save some time."
"Out-outside?"
"What are you worried about, Bartowski? You see anybody else around?"
He had a point, but Chuck still scowled.
"I won't watch," Casey grumbled, proving it by turning the other way. "No guarantees that Walker isn't peeking through the window, though," he added after a second.
Oh, God, Chuck thought. He would have never even considered that a possibility, but…Just say the word, Chuck.
"I'll change in the car," he said.
Casey shrugged: suit yourself.
The fresh clothing made Chuck feel somewhat better, though he would have preferred the chance to shower. He would do that later, he thought, when they reached the safe-house. He would do a lot later when they reached the safe-house. Part of that, he imagined, would involve the freak-out he could feel coming on even now.
When he emerged from the backseat, Casey was leaning against one of the posts holding the overhang up, his sunglasses back in place as he scowled out at the barren desert all around them. "We're going to have a talk later," he told Chuck.
"Can't wait," Chuck said sourly.
Casey eyed him. "What the hell is up with you?"
"Oh, I don't know. It could be that nothing in my life ever works, that my ex-girlfriend is not only Fulcrum but spent the last year of our relationship lying to me about it, that I seem to be a failure on every level possible, that I suck so much that the government didn't even want me and threw me away to a bunker in the middle of Siberia. Even on my days off, I manage to screw up even the simplest thing."
Casey was silent for a moment, though he chewed the corner of his mouth in a contemplative manner. "Huh," he finally said, and had Chuck looking over. "It's no fun to put you down when you're already beating yourself up this much. Get over it so that I can kick your ass with a clear conscience."
"Aye-aye, sir," Chuck said sarcastically, feeling bold enough to add an equally sarcastic salute.
"Watch it," Casey said. "You're not off the hook with me, even if you've got Walker looking out for you."
"I screwed up," Chuck said, sitting down on the curb and staring out into the desert just like Casey.
"Yes, you did."
"I should have just dropped off that letter and left it at that."
Casey grunted and reached into his pocket, pulling out a cigar. He took his time lighting it. "Uncovered a Fulcrum cell," he said after a minute, and there was begrudging respect in his voice. When Chuck gave him an amazed look, he scowled. "Not complimenting you, just pointing that out. If you suspected something was off about this character you stupidly robbed, you should have come to Walker and me right away rather than investigating it by your idiot self."
"Trust me, I learned my lesson there." Chuck rubbed both hands back and forth over his scalp. "What are the odds?"
"What?"
"The odds. They're…incredible. What is it, three weeks ago, two weeks ago? Whatever it was, we're handed this assignment, track down this mysterious government organization that wants the Intersect, and out of all of the people in the world—no, let's just make that all of the people in Los freaking Angeles—my ex-girlfriend just happens to not only be part of that same organization, but she was recruited over five years ago." Chuck rubbed his scalp again, this time somewhat frantic. "Forget 'it's a small world, after all.' It's not a small world. It's a subatomic world. Damn it!"
Again, another long silence from Casey as he puffed on the cigar. "Maybe you just have bad taste in women, Bartowski."
Chuck stared at him, baffled, for a full minute before it escaped: a laugh.
The laugh started from somewhere deep inside, and it wasn't necessarily borne of humor, but of disbelief, all of the terror he had experienced escaping from him like an air-leak in a tire. Like popping the latch on the floodgates, that laugh invited a full fit of snickering, snickering that made his shoulders shake, leading to a gush of mirth until he was practically lying on the sidewalk, his ribs aching while he shook.
When Casey hauled him up by one arm and demanded, "What the hell is wrong with you now?" Chuck ignored him. It wasn't funny. He knew that. But something hysterical inside him had snapped, and there was nothing to do but laugh and laugh and laugh.
Casey shook him. Chuck laughed harder. He didn't hear the motel room door open, but it must have. He heard Sarah's sigh. "Casey…"
Okay, Chuck thought as giddy mania danced through him, that was a little funny. Sarah was usually long-suffering with him, not Casey.
"What?" Casey half-turned, pulling Chuck with him. Through watery eyes, Chuck managed to make out the forms of Jill and Sarah in the doorway. The hands on the Jill blob were pulled behind her back: the handcuffs. Even laughing as he was, he could still make out the disapproving look on Sarah's face.
"What did we talk about?" she asked. "Drop him."
"This one's not my fault," Casey argued, as Chuck hiccupped, which only made him start giggling again. "I think there's something wrong with him."
Just something? Like it was only one thing instead of millions? Chuck laughed harder until something scratched at the back of his throat, and he began coughing.
"Here, take this, wait inside." Sarah shoved Jill at Casey and pulled Chuck away. He immediately recoiled and tried to move sideways, only to trip off the edge of the curb and into the parking lot. Sarah grabbed his arms to steady him. He tried to jump backwards. He didn't want to splatter her with saliva, as the coughs were coming harder now. They ripped through him, nearly tipping him forward. Sarah merely tightened her grip. "And no hitting the prisoner!" she called over Chuck's shoulder.
The motel room door shut with a slam.
Something in that slam echoed through him. He dropped down to all fours right there, ignoring the squeak of surprise Sarah made at the unceremonious move. Pain as his knees and palms hit the dusty gravel didn't even register. Nothing seemed to matter but the coughing, great, wracking coughs that made his entire torso heave.
He tried to draw breath, couldn't. The coughing was just coming too strong, shaking and shocking him. Panic began to scrabble across his skin. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He tried to suck in oxygen, but the coughs escalated until he was practically dry heaving. His hands started quivering. A noise like a locomotive filled his head with a powerful roar, warning of oncoming death. Black began to close in at the edges of his vision, making him want to lash out and just try to stop everything…
"I think I'll go…this May…"
Sarah's voice cut through the panic, though he had no idea what she was saying. He gasped—and oxygen flooded his lungs. The coughs died down to hiccup-like motions that shook his chest and esophagus. Gradually, air and time chased away the vignette filter over his vision. His heart rate eased, though the overworked organ continued to thud through what felt like a hollowed chest. In fact, all of him felt hollow and empty. With shaky hands, he pushed himself up so that he was no longer on all fours, but rather crouching in the dirt. He blinked, and Sarah's worried face swam into focus. She grew clearer when he wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his wrist. She crouched in front of him, actual fear across her face.
"Wh-what?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "Did you say something?"
That worried line between her eyebrows cleared a little. "I said, oh my God, are you okay?" She paused, peering at him for a few more seconds. The fear seemed to be abating, but that could just be Sarah throwing it all behind a mask. "Are you okay?"
Chuck coughed to clear the last of it from his system. "Yeah," he said, surprised. Even though he sounded like a frog, he meant it. He mustered up a smile, but it fell short of the mark for humor. Still, it did its job: Sarah gave him a shaky smile back. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize, it's okay." Her movements awkward now, Sarah patted him on the arm. "Wait here."
He obeyed, dropping onto the curb while Sarah rooted through the backseat of the Crown Vic and came back with two bottles of water from a cooler. She tossed him one, and he drank greedily, the water cutting at the ache at the back of his throat. "Excuse me," he tried to say—the words came out as a whisper through his abused throat—and made a noise not commonly heard outside horror movies, to clear the rest of the phlegm and panic from his throat.
"It's a lot to take in," Sarah said after a few seconds of silence had passed.
Chuck shrugged. The laughter-coughing-panic-attack had sapped him of whatever strength remained. Given the opportunity, he would curl up on the sidewalk and sleep for a few days, maybe even a month. But they still had to deliver Jill to the facility, and get to the safe-house. And there he would face the recriminations of Director Graham and General Beckman, as well as the full brunt of Casey's wrath. And Sarah's, too, from the sound of her words to Casey.
"I just need you to hold it together for a little while longer," Sarah went on.
Chuck nodded and drained the rest of the water bottle.
"Okay. C'mon, let's get geared up. Do you still have the gun we took off the Fulcrum agents?"
Chuck just hitched up his shirt in the back to show that he did.
"Good." Sarah held out a hand to pull him to his feet. After eying it for a second, he took it, and followed her to the trunk of the Crown Vic. His eyes widened when the trunk opened to reveal a veritable mini-armory, though why he would be surprised by that after a couple of months of knowing Casey, he had no idea.
When Sarah handed him a Kevlar vest that matched Casey's, he pulled it on. An earpiece and a comm unit, familiar from their time breaking into Sergei Ezersky's estate—don't think about the security console—followed since he no longer had his watch, and they hadn't recovered that from the Fulcrum agents. When Sarah gestured, he handed her the Fulcrum gun, but she just checked the magazine and handed it back to him. He gave her a questioning look.
"As much as the thought of you with a gun scares Casey," she said, smiling a little in a way that still fell flat, "it's policy. We're officially prisoner transport, which means we're all to be armed until we hand Jill over."
Chuck scowled at the gun, but obediently donned the holster Sarah handed him. He had a feeling he would have preferred the under-arm holster, but the Kevlar vest made things a little difficult, so the gun sat on his hip like some foreign attachment. His elbow brushed against it when he took a dark blue cap from Sarah, and he jumped. When Sarah gave him a puzzled glance, he shrugged again and pulled the cap on.
Sarah grabbed a shotgun from the rack on the underside of the trunk lid and checked the chamber. Apparently satisfied, she shifted it to her left hand while she loaded ammo into the front pockets of her vest. She sneaked looks at him throughout this whole process, and finally sighed. "Are you really okay?"
Chuck nodded.
"Gonna need actual words, Chuck."
He unscrewed the bottle of water and finished it before he could answer. "Throat hurts," he said, his voice mostly a rasp.
"That's all it is?" Skepticism flavored her expression as she studied him.
Though he knew it was counterproductive, he nodded again. "You said hold off the freak-out, so I'm holding off the freak-out." And he was doing so, he thought, by thinking of absolutely nothing.
"Oh." It seemed Sarah didn't quite know what to make of that. "Okay." She shrugged, grabbed a couple of spare clips for her S&W, and shoved those into another pocket on the vest. After she shut the trunk, she racked the shotgun.
Okay, that was incredibly hot.
Chuck tried not to think about it. His brain felt a bit like an egg that had already been partially cracked, and if he thought too deeply about Sarah or the fact that she wanted him, of all people—Just say the word, Chuck—egg yolk would probably drip out of his ears.
"Let's get inside," Sarah said, but she froze mid-turn.
Confused now, Chuck swiveled to follow her line of sight. Together, they stared out across the parking lot, to the field beyond, to the road beyond that. A convoy of dark cars was heading straight toward the Heartbrake Hotel, an absurd parade in the burning mid-afternoon sunlight, kicking up a flume of dust even more impressive than the trail Casey had left behind. Chuck felt the instinctive jolt of his heart against his ribcage, but he squashed it.
"Back-up?" he asked Sarah. "Casey said they were a few minutes behind him."
"The timing works out," Sarah agreed, but she handed him the shotgun to hold while she popped the trunk again and half-disappeared inside. She emerged holding a sniper-rifle scope. After a few seconds of peering through it, she lowered the scope. She didn't say a word as she turned and grabbed a second shotgun from the rack, and then a third. These she shoved at him.
"Sarah?" Chuck asked, shocked into taking the guns as Sarah grabbed a box of ammo, pushed that into his hands as well. He juggled the armful of weaponry, his eyes bulging as Sarah collected a few flashbangs and hooked those onto not only her vest but his as well. When she reached into the trunk yet again and yanked out an anti-tank missile launcher, his jaw dropped. "W-what's going on?"
She slammed the trunk lid and propped the launcher, which bore the word "Widowmaker" on it in white, over her shoulder. "Get inside. We've got company."
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