PART IV: MENOETIUS
The Canyon Is Not Enough
27 NOVEMBER 2007
GRAND CANYON, YAVAPAI POINT07:02 MST
Over the past hour, the edges of the sky had slowly, subtly taken on various shades of first a lighter purple, blending easily into pinks and blushes that signaled the oncoming sunrise. It was almost like watching the sun melt from the sky, but in reverse. After the snowstorm the day before, a snowstorm that had ripped briefly through Colorado, lost steam through Utah, and finally peppered down across northern Arizona, Chuck hadn't been sure he would actually see the sun rise this morning. Clearly, he wasn't the only one that had wondered, as there was not another soul at the outlook to watch the world light up. Everybody else was still in bed, he figured, probably snuggled up warm, while he sat in the couple of inches of snow at the outlook and watched the sun rise.
He didn't mind the solitude. People made things tricky.
In some corner of his mind, he could hear Ellie's voice, nagging at him to get inside, to go get out of the cold before he caught his death of fever or the flu or various other ailments. The coat that had luckily been stashed in the back of the FBI SUV he'd taken from the Heartbrake Hotel wasn't nearly warm enough to hold off the elements, especially not with the biting wind.
He'd spent five years in Siberia, always frozen. In a way, feeling that again, after the warmth of Burbank and southern California, was comforting. He kept his hands tucked in the jacket pockets since he didn't want to lose fingers to frostbite. Toes were a little less important, and he'd stopped feeling them ten minutes after stepping from the stolen—borrowed, he reminded himself. He was going to return it—car so it wasn't like they mattered much to him one way or the other.
What was he doing? He was agoraphobic, and he had a life and people that loved him, so why the hell was he out here, all alone, with all of this space around him, and nobody to protect him?
Chuck pushed the questions away and climbed to his feet. Yavapai Point Outlook, one of the few he could park by and hike to without worrying about a shuttle bus, faced east, so he would get to see the sun's virgin rays strike the canyon that spread out majestically below him.
He had never been to the Grand Canyon before. He and Ellie had tried to talk their dad into taking them as kids, but he had always been so busy, so wrapped up with his work. He'd said, "Next year" until they had learned to stop asking, that "Next year" would never come.
One more thing to cross off his list, Chuck thought. Sarah and Casey were going to murder him. Casey would do so overtly, possibly choking him to death, while Sarah…after her first angry outburst, she would say something encouraging and supportive, but her eyes would clearly broadcast her unhappiness and distress.
He wasn't looking forward to either reaction. Neither of them, he knew, would quite understand that he had needed to get away, to think and do nothing but think and evaluate and compare and contrast, all of those things he had forcibly stopped himself from doing ever since he entered that line of Zork text and Sarah had shown up in the bunker.
And now, here he was, at the Grand Canyon, of all places. He wished Ellie was there, even while he dreaded seeing her again, knowing that she would well and truly flip her lid. Hurricane Ellie left very few survivors. But still, Ellie would have liked to see sunrise at the Grand Canyon.
He didn't even have a camera to take pictures and show her later, once her wrath burned down to embers. All he had was a borrowed laptop that had run out of juice after he'd sent a short email, the jacket on his back, a borrowed car with its emergency food-stash, and a five dollar bill, all that was left of the money Sarah had handed him to go get change at the Heartbrake Hotel. It was almost peaceful, being without a cell phone, even while it was terrifying.
Chuck wasn't sure why he heard the rustling on the trail behind him, given that he was fairly positive most of his hearing hadn't returned, but he turned his head nonetheless, curious as to who else would be out on this windswept outlook in the bitter dawn cold. Certainly somebody better prepared than he was, given that his jacket provided very little warmth in the overall scheme of things.
When the gun came down the path before the person holding it, he yelped and immediately threw his hands in the air. "Federal agent! Don't shoot!"
The gun lowered. Belatedly, he realized it was a very familiar Smith & Wesson 5906, instants before the white face behind said gun confirmed the identity of his visitor. He froze. He hadn't expected Sarah and Casey to show up for at least a couple of more hours, but now it was clearly time to face the firing squad.
Sarah, still on the path down from the Rim Walk, didn't move, save to lower the gun limply to her side. She seemed absolutely stunned to see him. "Chuck?" she asked, and her voice sounded strange, like she hadn't used it in a while.
Chuck winced. "Um, hi."
Now, he thought, was the part where she tried to kill him for directly disobeying orders and vanishing off the face of the earth and stalking his ex-girlfriend and nearly getting them killed several times and lifting a stranger's cell phone, and about a million other misdeeds. She would remember the gun in her hand at any second and simply shoot him, making her life ten thousand times easier, so she could jet-set off to go murder prime ministers with eating utensils and…
Sarah dropped the gun. Chuck watched it fall in absurdly slow motion, watched the silver catch glints of the early morning sun as it tumbled the couple of feet between Sarah's limp hand and the snow.
It hit the snow without a sound. Chuck only had time to blink before Sarah herself seemed to collapse just like the gun had, only this time it wasn't in slow-motion. Sarah's knees hit the ground and she crumpled forward, her shoulders already beginning to shake. If Chuck moved, he didn't remember.
One second, he was up against the rails, the next, he had vaulted over the rise that split the middle of the lookout point into two tiers. "Sarah! Oh crap, are you okay? Oh, crap, crap." Had she been hit? Was she shot? Injured? Dying? What the hell had happened after he'd left? He tried to grab her shoulder, to see where she had been shot.
Sarah's hand, ice-cold, grabbed his wrist, and he half-expected to go flying. Instead, she yanked, and he went forward onto his knees. Before he could react, she had burrowed against him, wrapped her arms around his middle, and just clung.
It took Chuck's foggy brain a second to catch up. Sarah Walker wasn't injured.
She was crying.
Oh, hell.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
GRAND CANYON, YAVAPAI POINT07:23 MST
It took a long time for the sobs to break down to tears, which eventually became sniffles. Chuck knew to the second just how much time elapsed because he spent that time crouching in the snow, counting every damned second while his brain tried to scrabble for an explanation, any explanation as to why Sarah would be bawling. She didn't seem willing to help him much, either. He'd tried to make sure everybody was okay, but she had just tightened her grip and cried into his shirt.
If he had to rank it, this moment would probably be in his top ten scariest scenarios. It would have been just in the top twenty, but he could officially knock "being near a meth lab when it explodes" off the list, since he'd survived that. And it was, in hindsight, far less frightening than having his tough-as-nails, can-handle-anything, super-secret-CIA-agent of a partner literally break down in his arms.
But now, nearly twenty minutes—each of them a dragging, doubtful eternity in its own—later, the sobs were gone. She was barely even sniffling anymore.
Finally, she unlatched one of her arms from around his torso and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Chuck didn't point out that it was essentially a useless gesture, since his shirtfront was pretty much soaked through. He blamed it on being too petrified to speak.
But he cleared his throat. "Let's try that again. Um, hi."
Her shoulders shook. Though Chuck tensed, this time it was a humorless laugh as Sarah rubbed the base of her thumb under both eyes. "Hi," she said, and her voice sounded rusty. She didn't look up at him.
Since he figured it was safe to actually move, Chuck eased one leg down so that he was sitting rather than crouching, as he'd stopped feeling his legs sometime before. Though it was frigidly cold, and he only had now-soaked sweatpants to protect his legs, it had the added benefit of putting him on eye-level with Sarah. She shifted so that she was burrowed into him again, as she didn't seem to want to let him go, even though she picked her gun up out of the snow and put it away.
Body heat, Chuck figured. It was freezing.
It was probably a stupid question, but he had to ask it. "Are you okay?"
Sarah, her head now against his shoulder, nodded.
"Are you, um, sure? Because…" Chuck waved a hand at the front of his shirt, not really sure if he should actually use the words "crying" and "Sarah" in the same sentence. It felt like it was breaking some sort of...spy code.
"I'm fine," Sarah said, and now her voice sounded testy. "I'm more worried about you. You're okay? You're not hurt, are you?"
Well, he was achy, remnants from the fight at the Heartbrake Hotel, and she had pushed up against the bruise on his chest for twenty minutes straight, but Chuck didn't feel it was important. "I'm not hurt," he said. "I'm okay."
"Good. Then…" Sarah didn't give him any warning at all. She just slammed her free fist into his shoulder with all the force she could muster.
Since Sarah regularly put pro wrestlers to shame, it wasn't surprising that Chuck's shoulder nearly exploded with pain. He yelped. "Ow! What the hell, woman?"
Sarah lifted her face and glared. With the tear tracks still very prominent, and her eyes scarily blue from the crying, the glare was even more frightening than usual. "You deserved that," she said, and wiped angrily at her nose. "Don't you ever, ever do that to me again, do you understand me? Ever."
Chuck tried to pull away to massage his sore shoulder, but Sarah was not interested in letting go. "Ouch," he said, grumbling.
"Promise me," Sarah said.
"Sarah—"
"Promise. Me."
"Okay! I promise. Just don't hit me again! Sheesh."
In yet another lightning-quick change of temper, Sarah burrowed against his side. "Good," she said, and let out a long, shaky breath.
Chuck, by now, had learned to be on his toes. He tried to twist to where he could see her face, but Sarah hung on like a barnacle, her face pushed into his now-throbbing shoulder. He would have shrugged, but that would have just hurt worse.
So instead he cleared his throat. "Where's Casey? He's not waiting in the car to shoot me, is he?"
"Burbank." The word was slightly muffled against Chuck's shoulder. "He's bringing Ellie and Awesome out to DC later."
He had completely forgotten about DC, even though he remembered Casey mentioning it now. His stomach pitched a little bit. Going to DC meant facing the big bosses, and it was scarily close to Langley, where he and Sarah had been kept in the detention facility.
They could lock him up again.
"Oh," he said, and kept his voice even. "We're still going to DC?"
Sarah nodded against his shoulder again. "My job is to get you on a plane today."
Chuck swallowed. "Will you at least be on the plane, too?"
"After the stunt you pulled? You'll be lucky if I let you go to the bathroom on your own. I need to know some things." Sarah pushed herself away from Chuck. With the sun well on its way into the sky, he could see that her face was red, either from the cold or the crying jag. Her breath flumed around her face, water vapor vanishing into the air. And her eyes were still impossibly blue. She also looked, Chuck thought, exhausted, her skin drawn and tight, like she hadn't slept for a couple of days.
The guilt bubbling in his gut threatened to boil over.
"What happened?" Sarah asked. "I turned my back on you for one second, and then I came out and you were just…gone."
Chuck turned back to the canyon, wishing he could focus on how the sunlight hit the strata, bringing out the deep jeweled tones of the desert. "I don't know what happened," he said without looking at Sarah. "I don't…I don't remember a lot. I remember seeing Leader stand over me, and he had a gun in his hand, and I remember..." He swallowed hard again, but barreled on, well aware that Sarah was watching him carefully. "I remember the knife, and how you shot him so that I wouldn't be the one to kill him, and I remember trying to save Jill."
Sarah was silent for a moment. "She made it," she said.
Relief did very little to alleviate the pressure the guilt was building behind Chuck's sternum. "Good," he said, but it sounded dull in his ears.
Sarah squinted at him. "She's going to be fine. It'll take some time, the bullet did quite a bit of damage, but there's something of a happy ending for her, especially since she's already come to and is willing to tell us everything she knows about Fulcrum."
"Okay."
"You don't seem very happy about that."
Chuck picked up a bit of snow and played it between his fingers, watching the falling pieces create near-invisible indents in the ground. "She got shot because of me."
"She got shot because Leader shot her, not because of you."
"She got shot," Chuck said, his voice deceptively quiet, "because I was stalking her and I stupidly thought maybe she was in trouble. Well, she was, but not until I came along. Just like you were nearly killed, by Matching Pocket Square or Lawrence or whatever his name was, and you and Casey and Jill were nearly blown up. All because I couldn't be normal enough to not stalk my ex-girlfriend."
Next to him, Sarah put her palms together and laid the side of her index fingers against her nose, almost like a prayer. She blew out a gusty breath. "I should never have gotten on your case about the stalking."
Chuck goggled at her. "That's seriously all you have to say to that?"
"Well, it's the truth. We've all expected too much of you too, way too fast." Sarah hugged her knees to her chest and sighed before she rested her cheek on her knee, her head pointed toward him. "Chuck, if the worst thing you do is sit in your car and make sure your ex-girlfriend is safe in her apartment after five years away from society, then…well, we're probably lucky, considering."
"Even though it blew up horribly in our faces?"
"Even then." Sarah turned her attention toward the canyon, just like Chuck had. "And to top it off, the whole…Jill thing was like lighting a match and throwing it into a tub of napalm that we thought was water."
"That's an apt description."
"There was no way to know it would turn out like it did. Even so." This time, when Sarah punched him, she didn't use all of her force. But she hit him in exactly the same spot.
"Hey!"
"You still should've brought that cell phone to Casey and me."
Chuck rubbed his shoulder. "At least hit a different place next time."
"No promises." Sarah wrapped her arm around her knees again and sighed. "I was jealous."
Chuck's head swiveled. "What?"
Sarah glared at him. "Don't make me repeat it. That's why I got on your case about the stalking."
"Oh." Chuck mirrored Sarah's pose, though he didn't curl up into a ball. He rested his forearms on the tops of his knees. Given everything he had discovered about Sarah, all of her crazy antics and the things she did that had made absolutely no sense, it shouldn't have surprised him that she could be jealous over Jill. But he figured the day Sarah stopped surprising him would be a long way away, if ever. "Sarah, about that…"
"About what?"
"About you like liking me—"
Sarah's eyebrows went up. "When did we go back to middle school?"
"You know what I mean." Chuck licked his lips, wincing when he realized how chapped they were from the cold, but thankfully Sarah somehow missed the move. "You liking me. When…when the hell did that start? And why?"
The last thing he expected was for a slow smile to overtake Sarah's face, even while she leaned against her knee, looking up at him. "That's easy to answer. I think you're neat."
He had to have heard wrong. "Neat?"
"Yup."
He hunched his shoulders forward. "Gee. Thanks for making me feel like I'm eight."
"Trust me, Chuck." Sarah leaned toward him a little, her smile just slightly wicked. "You don't look eight."
Chuck felt the flush start at his collarbone and rise.
Sarah's expression sobered. "And you still haven't told me what happened to you after I turned my back on you at the motel. It took us a little while to put it together that you took Agent Sanderson's car, but I still can't figure out why. Why didn't you come to me or Casey? We could have helped." She looked around. "And why here?"
"I don't know, and trust me, I've been asking myself the same thing."
Instantly, concern sprang up. Didn't she get tired, Chuck wondered, jumping around the emotional spectrum like that? "Are you handling it okay?"
"What? The space? Yeah, it's fine. I'm not thinking about it. I promised myself I'll freak out later." Chuck waved his hand vaguely toward the canyon. "And it's worth it, I think, for the view."
Sarah's eyebrows went up.
"I don't know what happened," Chuck repeated, and rubbed the back of his neck, something he did when uncomfortable. "I think I was just standing outside the office, and I couldn't feel anything, you know? I'd just killed Leader—"
"I killed Leader."
"Okay, fine. I'd just stabbed a man, and I'd tried to stop my ex-girlfriend from bleeding to death on the skuzziest carpet on the planet, and I…didn't feel anything. At all. And I was looking at all of the people who were wandering around and how they were just so…blasé about cleaning it up. And I didn't want to be there…so I wasn't."
"But, taking federal property from a crime scene, Chuck?" Sarah asked. "Why do that? Why not just sit in the Crown Vic and close your eyes?"
"I don't know. I wasn't thinking. And believe me, when I figured it out that I had taken some stranger's car, I about had a freak-out on the spot." Chuck scrubbed both hands over his hair and left them on the back of his neck, his elbows still on his knees. "I kept it really clean and I didn't crash it anywhere, I swear. It's just like I found it, except the gas tank is almost empty, and I may have disabled the GPS tracker on it, but I don't remember. I'm pretty sure I can turn it back on."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "I'm not worried about the car. I'm just trying to understand. Why didn't you call?"
"I wanted to think."
"You can think in Burbank."
"But I wasn't in Burbank, and I was already gone, and what does it even matter?"
"It matters because I had no idea where the hell you were! I thought Fulcrum had broken into the crime scene and taken you." Sarah abruptly dropped her knees, sliding down to the bottom tier, where she could pace, her boots leaving prints in the snow. She didn't pace far, just a few steps away, before she stopped and put her hands on her hips, looking out into the canyon. Her shoulders were tight again. "I didn't know where you were, and it scared me. You can't do that."
"I've already promised you I wouldn't."
"No, I mean, you can't do that, Chuck." Sarah whirled to face him. "You're the Intersect, okay? That means you literally cannot pull another stunt like this. They will throw you into protective custody so fast—"
Chuck scowled, the thought of protective custody automatically shooting a dart of fear through him. "And what do you call having to stay within twenty miles of you and Casey at all times?"
"A compromise." Sarah's eyes narrowed. With her hands on her hips, she looked like Wonder Woman, but Chuck figured she didn't know that. There were vital differences, of course. Diana Prince could look angry, but she would never match Sarah's pissed off expression for sheer vehemence. "Have you been struggling with that, Chuck? Was that what the disappearing act was about?"
Chuck's face set mutinously. "I wanted to think."
"And you can't think within twenty miles of me?"
"It wasn't like that!"
"Twenty miles is a lot of space, Chuck."
Chuck's aggravation deepened to a scowl. "Are you freaking out on me because your boyfriend didn't call in, or because Agent Walker lost the Intersect?"
"Where the hell does it say I can't do both?" Sarah glared right back. "Also, why does it matter which version of me is worried? I was worried. You vanished. You, Chuck, the Intersect, Agent Bartowski, whatever the hell hat you want to wear right now, you were gone, okay? And God, this makes us both sound like we have multiple personality disorder." Sarah threw up her hands and turned away.
"I've wondered."
"And I take back what I said about you not being eight," Sarah muttered, mostly under her breath, but Chuck still heard it.
He opened his mouth to refute the point, but stopped. A half-laugh, nothing humorous in the noise escaped him, making Sarah half-turn to give him a "What the hell?" look. Warily, he climbed off of the second tier, down to join her by the railing. Sarah watched him just as warily, her eyes guarded.
"We're starting over," Chuck said.
"What?"
"You just came down to the Canyon and found me, you're relieved I'm okay, and I've promised never to do that again. This time, I won't be an idiot. Okay, go." Expectantly, Chuck held his arms out.
Sarah eyed him for nearly a full thirty seconds before the smallest smile cracked through. "You're nuts."
"Clearly." Chuck raised his eyebrows. "I'm sorry I scared you, Sarah."
Sarah heaved a gusty sigh before she moved to hug him, and jumped back almost immediately. "Holy sh—Chuck, you're like ice!"
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not. You could have mentioned you were dying of hypothermia!"
Chuck rolled his eyes. "I'm hardly dying of hypothermia. Don't you think you're being a little melodramatic?"
"You're like a Chuck-shaped block of ice." Sarah stepped closer to rub his arms through the jacket, though she herself wasn't wearing anything heavier than a thick sweater. "You should have said something!"
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine, you're scruffy and you're freezing. C'mon, we're going back to the car. Have you even eaten anything since the last time I saw you?"
Chuck shuffled his feet. "I had a burger."
"When?"
"Yesterday?"
Sarah rolled her eyes and grabbed Chuck's hand to haul him up to the path and back to the parking lot. "We can continue this conversation in the car. With the heater going. Full-blast."
"Sure, but…" Chuck dug his feet in and gave Sarah his best wheedling smile when she turned to give him a confused look. "Can we at least get a picture first?"
She paused. "A picture."
"Yes."
"Of?"
"Us? We're at the Grand Canyon. You've got your phone on you, don't you? It's got a camera."
Immediately, something akin to panic crossed Sarah's face. "Chuck, no."
"C'mon." Chuck threw his free hand out to include the entire, rather spectacular view next to them. "Look at us. We're at the Grand Canyon, Sarah. We need a picture, to commemorate that. Just one."
"Chuck, I just spent, like, half an hour bawling. I'm in no state to take a picture!"
"Then I'll take it. My arms are longer, anyway." Chuck held his hand out for the phone.
Sarah gave him the "not happening" stare. "My nose is red."
"So is mine. It's cold. C'mon. Just one."
"Seriously, did you not see how I broke down in tears for like, over half an hour?"
"Kind of hard to miss. And it's not like you have anything to worry about. You're beautiful. You always are. Now, the phone? Or do I have to pickpocket you?"
"As if you could," Sarah muttered, but she couldn't quite hide the smile as she dug into her pocket for her phone.
"I don't know. I had a good teacher."
"Not that good." Sarah handed over the phone.
It took Chuck a couple of tries to get the picture just right, with Sarah protesting the entire time. She liked the version where he accidentally cut her out completely, but he just kept his arm around her shoulders until he got the cropping right. She could have ninja-fu'd her way out of said hold, which told him she was indulging his whim. It was smarter not to say anything, though, so he didn't.
"You have to send me this picture when I get a new phone," he said, following her up the path to the parking lot. He was grateful to be getting back to warmth and to stop turning into, as Sarah coined it under her breath during the picture, a "Chucksicle."
"Send it yourself. Your new phone and your wallet and your new watch," and at this Sarah sent a pointed look over her shoulder, and Chuck almost rebutted that it wasn't entirely his fault that he had lost the last one, "are in my jeep."
"In your jeep? Wait, you drove all the way out here?" Chuck's steps slowed.
Sarah tugged on his hand. She had said she was only holding on to keep him warm. "Yes, I drove all the way out here."
"What time did you leave?"
"Midnight. As soon as I got that pathetic excuse of an email you sent."
Still furious, Chuck thought, that he had disappeared, and she was likely to stay that way. Still, he felt a stab of insult. "What the hell was pathetic about it?"
"You sent me a clip from a B-movie and the words 'Having a grand old time!'"
"What if your email had been hacked?"
"Then the hacker would have figured it out two minutes later anyway."
Chuck fell silent. It wasn't a terribly long walk to the cars, but Sarah had unfortunately forced him to notice just how uncomfortable the cold was getting with his wet shoes, and his wet shirt, and his sweatpants soaked from sitting in the snow. After a minute, he cleared his throat. "'Witch Canyon' is actually a pretty decent film. Maybe we can get a personal DVD player and watch it on the plane."
"I think I've had enough of canyons for now."
Sarah made him sit in the car and warm up while she went and wiped down the SUV he had taken from the crime scene, and updated Casey and possibly Ellie while she was at it, he imagined. It rankled to have to wait in the car, but Sarah could move faster without him.
And hey, he could always put his time to good use resetting all of her radio stations.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
WALDBAUM'S DEPARTMENT STORE, FLAGSTAFF, AZ09:56 MST
He had thought "we need to get you some clothes" meant one outfit, like pants and a shirt, some fresh underwear and maybe a new pair of chucks since his probably still had Jill's blood on them, and they were soaked through from the snow at the Grand Canyon.
He underestimated the force of nature that was Sarah Walker in a department store.
The hooks in the dressing room weren't enough to hold all of the different things Sarah wanted him to try on, so he managed as best he could and dumped the rest in the corner. There was no dressing room attendant to contend with, as they had most of the store to themselves. They'd come in right after it opened, and Sarah had wasted no time wandering through the racks, shoving different shirts and pants and various items of clothing at him. He hadn't asked how she had known his size. He had just played catch and tried to follow.
Now, he shoved the last of the shirts onto one of the racks and took a deep breath. Thirty-six hours off the grid, as Sarah had put it when she had called in confirmation that she had located "the asset." They weren't calling him Agent Carmichael or Agent Bartowski or Prometheus or Stargazer. Until they knew the full extent of Fulcrum's knowledge of him, he had been stripped of all names, responsibilities, and—he thought of the CIA partner waiting outside of the waiting room now, probably picking up another ten or so shirts for him to try on while she waited—liberties. He was going to DC, where he would be in the presence of one of his Prometheus teammates at all times.
He should have stayed invisible longer. Not that it would have solved anything. He'd had only the clothes on his back, a little cash, and no gas left. His choices had been to panhandle or starve. And if he'd held off making contact longer, he wasn't sure he would be walking away with a few punches to the arm from Sarah (and he still had Casey's, and then Ellie's, wrath to face).
Chuck stripped out of the FBI T-shirt and held it away from him. He'd never seen Sarah even so much as tear up, but damn, the woman could produce a lot of snot and saline when she put her mind to it. He tossed it in the corner and pulled off the sweatpants.
Of course, that was when the door opened.
"Gah!" Chuck leaped back away and snatched the first article of clothing that came to hand. But it wasn't an assassin—or not one coming to kill him, at least.
Sarah took in the shirt and Chuck's jump and rolled her eyes. She closed the door behind her.
"Sarah, this is the men's dressing room! How did you—" His modesty protected by only his boxers and the shirt he held in front of him, Chuck craned to get a look at the door latch. "How did you get in here?"
"Drop the shirt," Sarah said.
"Sarah, I'm practically naked here—"
"That's the point. Drop the shirt." Sarah rolled her eyes a second time when he gave her a disbelieving look. "I want to get a look at that bruise on your chest, and see if you have any other injuries from the motel. I'm not in here to ravish you."
Chuck couldn't stop the stab of disappointment.
Sarah caught the look and folded her arms over her chest, one eyebrow higher than the other. "The shirt, Chuck."
"No."
"Do not make me fight you for it. You're almost naked and I'm armed."
Chuck clung to the shirt like a lifeline. "That's the problem!"
He could actually see Sarah pray for patience, which might have amused him at any other point in time. Except right now, when he was fighting desperately to keep his modesty. "Chuck, I've seen you in nothing but your boxers before. It's not a big deal."
"You have not."
"Excuse me? What were you wearing when I had to climb into bed with you in the bungalow in Greece?"
The bungalow in—Chuck abruptly flashed back to that moment and went the color of a siren. "Oh crap."
"I'll have you know you tried to spoon me, too."
Chuck flushed deeper. "I did not!"
Sarah just tilted her head, the slightest bit. It was more of a smartass comment than she would actually ever verbalize, and Chuck's red hue deepened considerably. "The shirt?" Sarah asked.
"Here's a compromise: I'll put some pants on and then you can examine the bruise."
Sarah sighed. "Will that make you feel better?"
"Immeasurably."
"Fine."
Chuck waited; Sarah didn't move. "Um," he said after a minute. "This is the part where you turn around."
"You're seriously going to—of course you are." Sarah cast her eyes to the ceiling and spun around on the spot. "There. Satisfied?"
"Immeasurably," Chuck said again, and dropped the shirt. He scrambled into the first pair of jeans he found. He didn't put it past Sarah to turn around before he was ready, but she was evidently a woman of her word, for she didn't turn until Chuck had cleared his throat pointedly.
When she turned around, too, she was once more the clinical and observant Agent Walker. She only touched him to prod at the bruise and to ask him how badly it hurt, and to make sure none of his ribs were cracked or broken.
"That's it?" Chuck asked when she declared herself done.
"I told you it wasn't a big deal." Still, Sarah smirked and glanced down. "Those jeans look good on you. Good fit." And she left him alone to change in peace.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
I-17 S (TOWARD PHOENIX, AZ)10:42 MST
Chuck had been intending to bully Sarah into tossing over the keys, as he'd seen her eyelids droop several times during what he was now calling the Scary Sarah Shopping Spree, so he was startled when she had handed them to him without a word outside of Waldbaum's. He hadn't asked, but it was pretty obvious that she hadn't slept much in the past seventy-two hours, which made a nice little nugget of guilt lodge itself beneath his ribcage as he programmed in the Phoenix airport as a destination into the GPS on Sarah's dashboard. Their flight was a few hours off, but it would take a couple of hours to get to the airport, so it all worked out.
Sarah had practically insisted on a new wardrobe for him, pointing out that neither of them had any idea how long they would be in DC, and if they let Casey pack Chuck's clothes back in Burbank, he'd be living in suits for the next however-long-it-took. When Chuck wondered why Sarah didn't need legions of outfits, she mentioned that she could always go to her apartment in DC to get more clothing.
"You've still got that?"
"I didn't get a chance to shut everything down when the operation was set in Burbank." Sarah said. "Maybe I'll get to this time. Mm, I miss my car."
"Your car?"
"My Porsche." Sarah drew out the word into several syllables, almost a purr, while she arranged the road trip snacks Chuck had insisted on.
"You have a…yeah, I can see it. It fits. Though isn't it a bit cliché?"
"What?"
"Bad-ass spy with a Porsche?"
Sarah leveled a deadpan stare at him. "It goes fast. I like to go fast."
"Uh, noted."
"Whereas," and here Sarah leaned over to look at the speedometer, "you seem to enjoy going the speed limit. Barely." Her voice dripped with disdain.
"We'll get there when we get there."
"Sure we will. We'll just get there slowly." Sarah grinned, good-naturedly, to take the sting out of her tease. He saw her studying him in that way she had. She could get a perfectly good read on him from the corner of her eye, he knew, but when he puzzled her the most, she dropped pretenses, turned her face toward him, and studied until she figured out what it was she was trying to solve. He could ask her what was on her mind, but she was just as likely to evade as she was to answer. The only surefire way to get her to talk was simply to wait.
Indeed, she turned her face back to the windshield. They were heading out of Flagstaff, about to hit the open highway. "You're doing better," she said, mildly, like she was making conversation about the weather.
Chuck shrugged.
"I mean in general. You went to the Grand Canyon on your own."
"I know."
"It's a big deal."
"There weren't a lot of people around at seven in the morning after a snowstorm." Because he wanted to squirm, Chuck kept his spine rigid against the back of the seat. It took only a few seconds to realize how idiotic that was, and he rubbed a hand over his chin. He wasn't used to the scruff of a few days of stubble, not after he'd been clean-shaven for years. "I had a few bad moments yesterday."
"Anything you want to talk about?"
Chuck shrugged. "Too many people, too much space. I curled up in the car and slept it off."
"While it was snowing?" Sarah's eyes widened. "You must have been freezing!"
"It wasn't that bad. I've been colder."
"You should have called."
"I know."
"You should have—" Sarah broke off mid-sentence and blinked at him. His agreeing with her apparently took the wind out of her sails, but he could almost witness the neurons in her brain firing as she regrouped. "I would have booked you a hotel room to wait where you could be warm until either Casey or I could come get you."
Chuck kept his eyes on the road. "But then I wouldn't have gotten to see the sunset and the sunrise."
"We can come back to the Grand Canyon at some other time, Chuck."
"Can we?"
Sarah reached up and turned the radio off. "That's what this is about," she said, crossing her arms. The move wasn't protective or contrary; she seemed genuinely lost in thought. "I should have realized this before. You're worried about DC."
"Worried is a bit of a strong word. Concerned. Mildly concerned." Without the radio in the car, it was far too silent. Chuck wanted to fidget.
"What do you think is going to happen there, Chuck?"
"Look, the last time we were in DC, the last time I saw you…" Chuck's eyes never left the road. "None of it has anything to do with why I left the motel the other night, but now that I've had some time to stop and think, it…" He trailed off and shrugged again.
"You're thinking of the detention center," Sarah surmised. "You think that's where we're going back to?"
"It'd be the smartest move," Chuck said. "Going back into detention, where the Intersect would be safest."
"The Intersect is just one tiny part of you, Chuck, and let's face it, Agent Davenport owns all of you."
Chuck blinked and finally looked over at Sarah. She had pulled her feet up onto the seat and was hugging her knees, just like she had back at the Canyon. "Agent Davenport?"
"Did you completely forget you've got a virtually untouchable rep looking out for you? They're not even putting you up in a hotel. We're all staying at Gwen's house. Ellie and Devon are sharing the guest-house with me, and you and Casey will be roomies in the main house."
"What?"
"Unless you'd rather share a room with me," Sarah went on, giving him the patented "make Chuck squirm" smirk.
"You enjoy making me turn red, don't you?"
"It's a good color on you." Sarah patted his arm. "Don't worry about DC. Casey and I will be with you every step of the way, provided he doesn't kill you first. And from there, well, we'll all figure it out. Together."
"Go team," Chuck said weakly, though he couldn't quite hide the relief coursing through him. He glanced over when Sarah put her seat back. "Taking a nap?"
"It's been too long since I've slept. You'll be okay driving? It's not getting to you, is it?"
"It's fine."
"Wake me if there's trouble." Sarah loosened her seatbelt to get comfortable and, just like that, curled up on the passenger seat of the Jeep, facing away from him. Her shoulders immediately went slack. Agent training allowing her to sleep right away? Chuck figured that was the case.
Still, he cleared his throat and said, mostly inaudible, "I'm sorry I made you cry."
He heard a sleepy sigh and an even sleepier "Don't worry about it, Chuck," and he felt better.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION12:36 MST
It didn't take Sarah long to realize the Jeep was slowing, but then, Chuck hadn't expected it to. He could only be grateful that the prison itself wasn't too far off of the highway, since Sarah didn't seem interested in waking too fast. She took her time stretching her arms over her head, her fingers spread as far as they would go, before she turned on her side to face him. Her smile was slightly drowsy. "We're there already?"
Chuck's knuckles tightened on the wheel. He'd been driving himself to illness second-guessing his decision to change the route, so he simply said, "Not quite."
Sarah's hand immediately went for her gun, but she forced herself to relaxed. Instead, she gave him a wary look and worked the lever on her seat until she was upright. He saw her eyes take in the details of their surroundings, and he saw the instant she twigged to their location.
All in all, he considered himself incredibly lucky she didn't pull a gun on him, or that her hand didn't even twitch toward one of her knife stashes.
Instead, her eyes settled, colder than the day outside, on his face. "You hacked my file."
"I didn't hack your file."
"Then how do you—"
"I flashed on Randy." Chuck turned the wheel to pull the Jeep into the parking lot for the Phoenix Correctional Institution. It looked nice, was his errant thought. Well, on the outside, it looked nice. He had no idea what the inside looked like, as he figured prison movies had been lying to him all of his life. He pulled into a parking spot and rubbed his hands over his face. Driving without music had been boring, but he hadn't wanted to wake Sarah.
Of course, maybe he should have let her sleep, if the unimpressed, angry look on her face was anything to go by.
"I flashed on Randy in the back of that ambulance in Greece, and I didn't think anything of it when I wrote up the flash file later. In Burbank," Chuck said, though he wasn't sure if that was necessary. "But when we got the Sergei Ezersky assignment, you were looking at the file like it meant something, and I wanted to know why, so I did a little digging."
"And it didn't occur to you that that was private?" Sarah's tone could freeze oceans.
This was a really bad idea, Chuck realized. "Yeah, it occurred to me."
"And?"
Chuck turned off the car and stared out at the gates surrounding the prison. "And I thought that since we were driving right by, you might like to stop in and say hi." When Sarah's furious face did not lessen in the slightest, Chuck rubbed his hands over his face again. "Obviously, I know it's your business and you're just generally a private person, so I don't know if I ever would have brought it up. But opportunity presented itself, so here we are."
Sarah unhooked her seatbelt and slammed her back against the seat, her arms crossed over her chest. This time, there was nothing thoughtful about the move. She was pissed.
"How long have you known?" she asked through what sounded like clenched teeth.
"Few days. Back before all of the stuff with Jill exploded."
"How did you even…I'm not listed anywhere as Jenny Burton anymore." Now Sarah sounded puzzled. "The CIA would have removed all of that information."
Chuck swallowed hard.
"They didn't get it all," he said, and deliberately kept his eyes on the scene outside the windshield. Sarah was far too good at reading him. "There was an article about his arrest where they mentioned a daughter, and something…seemed off, so I went looking on the sites for pictures of any Burton girls in that school district and—what? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Horrified" wasn't quite how he would classify the look on Sarah's face, but it came close. "You saw my high school picture?"
"Uh…" Tread carefully, Bartowski, his brain warned, sounding oddly like Casey. "Yes?"
"And you didn't think that maybe the fact that you had found any of this was pertinent information to me?"
"Honestly? It slipped my mind. Don't—don't hit me again." Chuck held his hands up for peace. "It was a very small picture. You were in the middle of a crowd. Very pixilated. There was just enough to tell me that it was you."
Sarah put her hand over her mouth. She looked only marginally less horrified than she had been a minute before.
"Why do I get the feeling you're angrier about that than the fact that I flashed on your dad?" Chuck asked warily.
"You flashed on my dad?"
"Okay, I take that back, you're equally angry about both," Chuck said. When Sarah's hand squeezed into a fist, he closed his eyes, expecting yet another smack, but Sarah only sucked in a deep breath and hit the side of her fist rhythmically against the door. Hard enough to probably leave a dent. "When I looked up the name, there was a picture, and I flashed on it. I didn't flash on your high school picture, though, so the Jenny Burton connection definitely isn't in the Intersect."
"And you were just never going to bring this up?"
"Well, I'd hoped you might mention that Sarah Walker's not your real name at some point."
Sarah gave him a bland stare. Definitely not the time for levity yet, Chuck decided. "No," he went on. "Not until you did. Except, you know, your dad's in there and I thought you might like to say hi."
"You have to schedule these things in advance, Chuck."
"What's the fun of having a government badge if you can't use it?" Chuck asked. "You don't get to see him very often."
Sarah shook her head. "It's not safe. I don't like to use my Jenny Burton credentials."
"About Jenny Burton…"
"No, I'm not really a Jenny."
"Oh. Good. Because I didn't think you looked like a Jenny and there was a whole disconnect and…you're still mad at me, stop talking, Chuck, got it." Chuck shut his mouth and even mimed zipping up his lips.
It worked. Sarah rolled her eyes, but he could sense a thaw in the iceberg. "He's out in three months."
"Who knows where you'll be in three months?"
"We have a plane to catch."
"Not for hours."
"I don't want to leave you alone out here."
"I'll be fine." He had no idea if he was telling the truth or lying, but when Sarah gave him a suspicious look, he mustered up a grin. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were scared."
Immediately, the suspicion turned to a scowl. "Not scared. Just…it's complicated."
"Oh." Chuck deflated against the seat. "I didn't realize. We can go. You don't have to go in. I'm sorry I dared you—"
"No, it's okay." Sarah took a deep breath and blew it out as she pulled on her shoes. Bent forward so that she wasn't visible outside the car, she began to unload a veritable cache of weapons: her Smith & Wesson, two knife holsters, one loose knife, her earrings—Chuck wasn't sure he wanted to know exactly why that was—and a belt-buckle knife. She loaded these into the glove compartment and pulled down the visor. Chuck would have chuckled at her for wanting to check her makeup, but Sarah twisted a little angel pendant on the visor.
A panel between the seats opened. Chuck goggled to see stashes of several types of currency and a packet of passports tucked in, as well as a couple more Smith & Wessons. "Holy—"
"Emergency stuff," Sarah said. She grabbed the passports and thumbed through them until she found the one she sought, and then a matching FBI badge. When Chuck goggled, she sighed and flipped it open for him to see. "Best to cover all contingencies."
"Let me see that." Chuck snatched the passport away before she could think to keep it out of his reach and peered at the picture. He looked between her and the photograph and said, "Huh."
Sarah grabbed the passport back.
"I definitely prefer you as a blonde than, what is that? Red hair? Ginger? Brown? I couldn't tell, can I see that again?"
"I should've shot you at the Grand Canyon," Sarah muttered, and tucked the Jenny Burton passport into her pocket. "Stay in the car, Chuck. If there's trouble, call me."
"Will do."
"I won't be long."
Chuck watched her walk away and vanish through the front doors of the visitors' complex. She spared one look at the car, and it was only a fleeting glance over her shoulder before she disappeared beyond the guards. The instant she was out of sight, he let out the breath he had been holding and sagged back against the seat.
He had lied. Sure, he had flashed on Jack Burton when he had looked the man up a few days before, but there had been absolutely no mention of a Jenny Burton anywhere in the file, or on the Internet. Chuck might not have even wondered about it if Sarah hadn't stiffened upon seeing the file on Randy. Since there hadn't been anything incriminating on Randy in that flash, something about one of the two listed associates meant something to her. Terrence Jaymer was dead, had been for a few years, but Jackson Burton was still alive and in prison, and had been for the past eight and a half years.
There had been nothing mentioning that Jack had a daughter. Pulling into the prison parking lot had been a gamble, to see exactly who Jack Burton was to Sarah. He'd expected old family friend. He had not expected for Jack to be Sarah's father. But he supposed it made sense. Sarah and even Ellie had dropped hints that Sarah's upbringing had been unique. Still, he'd had absolutely no idea that his gamble would pay off quite like this.
He took a deep breath. Had he screwed up? He should have been honest, and just talked to her about it. But he'd had ample time to think about Sarah the day before—he had thought about little else, save to try and figure out how he really felt about stabbing a man in the liver and killing him—well, almost killing him, since Sarah had taken that burden from him, and Chuck still had no idea how he felt about that and about how Sarah was willing to do things like that for him. He wouldn't be able to sleep easy for awhile, if ever—and it all came down to one thing: what the hell did he really know about Sarah Walker?
But on the other hand, what the hell did he know about Sarah Walker? Not even her real name, apparently. Sure, he knew the important things: small faces freaked her out, she liked adrenaline, she had gone to Harvard, she had a wicked and slightly mean sense of humor, she wasn't a morning person, she hated Red Bull. And now, apparently, she thought he was "neat."
She was beautiful, but that went without saying.
She liked him. She liked him so much, she had broken down in tears because he had vanished off the face of the earth. She liked him enough to drive all night through the desert, and take a picture with him at the Grand Canyon, even though her face had been pretty wrecked from crying (not that he would tell her that. Ever.).
And now, Chuck thought, he knew three new things about Sarah Walker: she hadn't liked high school, her father was getting out early from a fifteen-year stretch in a concrete cage for good behavior, and her name was really neither Sarah nor Jenny.
None of that information did a single thing to explain one important thing: why she liked him.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION13:12 MST
She came out, and her eyes were dry, but Chuck knew better. He didn't say anything as she picked her way across the parking lot, the guards watching her go with an appreciation that annoyed him. Since they were bulkier than two of him standing side by side, he couldn't exactly do anything, and he doubted Sarah even paid attention. Sure, she noticed—the woman could put hawks to shame—but she didn't acknowledge. She had her head down and her hands in her pockets. She walked slowly.
He waited, his hands never slowing at their task. The car hood had been far too warm at first, but had cooled enough that he was perched comfortably, his project in his lap and spread all around him. "Hey," he called.
She looked up to smile back, and stilled. "Are you really doing that?"
"Yup."
"You're sharpening knives in a prison parking lot."
The knives had been a personal test, one he had passed. His grin now hid the turmoil, the fact that he'd seen the shocked face of Leader during the first few swipes across the strop. Thankfully, it had faded. "I know, badass, right? You let them get pretty dull, so I thought I'd give you a hand."
Sarah's eyes widened. "Holy hell, Chuck. They're going to body-cavity search you."
"Wh-what? Just to leave the parking lot? Why?"
"He wants to meet you." Sarah looked down and kicked a rock across the pavement so that he couldn't read her face.
The spurt of fear—fear he felt was perfectly natural being so close to a prison—turned into a full-on flood that threatened to make him light-headed and dizzy. That particular terror, however, had nothing to do with hardened convicts and beefy prison guards. He swallowed hard to put moisture back in his throat. "Isn't it a little...soon to be meeting the parents?"
Sarah didn't crack the smile he'd been hoping for. "Probably, but he wants to meet you. You don't have to, you know. If you're uncomfortable, or you think you can't handle it…"
Chuck set the knife collection aside and pushed himself off of the hood. "Um, how do I look? Is this shirt okay? Damn it, I wish I'd packed something better than this—"
"Chuck, it's fine."
"I'm wearing a shirt with Artoo-Detoo going 'Droids do it on wheels!' on it into a prison, Sarah! That's hardly fine."
Sarah smiled—a real smile this time—and shook her head. Without a word, she retrieved something from the backseat. She held out his black jacket.
"Oh, right," Chuck said. He pulled the jacket on and took a deep breath as he covered Artoo's grinning visage.
It did nothing to steady him.
"Are you going to be all right?"
"Uh, yeah." Maybe. No. Probably not. He'd never been in a prison before. A prison containing the father of a woman he was interested in? That threw a whole new Dalek ship into the Time Wars. "He's, uh, he's not going to try and shank me, is he?"
Sarah stepped close so that she could smooth down the lapels of his jacket. "My father abhors violence."
"So…I'm guessing he doesn't know what you do for a living."
Storm-clouds crossed briefly over Sarah's face. "No, he doesn't. So don't tell him."
"What on earth are we supposed to talk about, then?"
"My father's a very personable guy. You'll find something." After she'd stowed her knives in the glove box, Sarah threaded her arm through his and started walking him to the front gate. She paused about twenty feet away from the guards and turned to face Chuck. "Just don't, uh, don't let him talk you out of any money, okay?"
"Don't worry, all twelve dollars in my bank account are perfectly safe," Chuck said, doing his best to look solemn. Inside, he felt as though rattlers had come to life in his midsection, and they were biting. Hard. He took a deep breath before he touched her arm. She was always doing things like that to him, but it was so much harder when he was the one reaching out. He wasn't sure what he was allowed to do. When she didn't protest at the contact, he nearly let out a sigh of relief. "Are you okay?"
Sarah mustered up a smile for him. "I'm fine, Chuck. Thank you."
"For what?"
"You don't have to go in there, but I appreciate that you are."
"Well, hey, you don't get to meet the gir—the partner's dad for the first time more than once." Chuck tried to give her a disaffected shrug, but doubt crept into his voice. He leaned toward her, but only so that he could mutter, "That was a definite no on the shanking, right? Because you didn't exactly give me an answer and—"
"I promise, my dad won't hurt you." Sarah smiled, smoothed his jacket down one last time, and handed him his wallet.
He scowled. "Maybe it's not your dad I should be worried about taking my money."
"Mm-hmm."
"I am going to catch you at it one of these days."
"Sure."
Chuck started to turn away, but something occurred to him mid-turn. He swiveled back. "Um, maybe in the panic, I didn't think to ask, but why does your father want to meet me?"
"He's curious."
"You—you talked about me?" He suddenly felt the need to sit down. He resisted only because the parking lot didn't look comfortable.
Sarah bit her lip over a smile, her eyes never leaving his. "He wants to meet you. I mean, it's partially that he doesn't see a lot of people and he's looking for somebody new to swindle…"
Chuck gave her a sour look. It only made her smile brighten.
"But you're a good guy, Chuck, and he wants to chat. No reason to be nervous."
"Oh, sure." Chuck felt the first stages of the ulcer take hold. "I'm only meeting the father of the great Sarah Walker. No reason to be nervous about that whatsoever." The sour look returned.
Sarah just chuckled and ran her hands up his arms, just once. It sent flickers of electricity pulsing through him. "You'll be fine."
"After this, we're going for ice cream." Chuck shoved his hands into his pockets, gave her a final smile that was more of a pained grimace than anything, and headed toward the visitor's entrance. Of course, he thought as he made the trudge with the rattlers alive and kicking in his stomach, they'd probably have to get ice cream at the airport. If they weren't on a plane within the next three hours, Casey was going to instantaneously develop abilities of flight, soar out to Arizona, and drag them to DC himself. It might be worth it to see Casey fly, but maybe it was better not to tempt fate.
One of the guards reached out to tap him on the arm as he walked by. Chuck tensed and fought down the urge to jump away.
But the guard wasn't scowling or glaring. Instead, he looked inquisitively at Chuck, one eyebrow raised. His eyes cut to something over Chuck's shoulder and back to him.
Chuck looked over his shoulder. Sarah was leaning against the hood of her jeep, her arms crossed over her chest. She gave him a little wave when she noticed the attention.
Chuck waved back and turned to the guard. "Believe me," he said, "I have no idea what she sees in me either."
The guards laughed. Chuck joined them, though it was hard to laugh and hold back to the urge to vomit at the same time. He left them by the front gate, grinning after him, and headed into the prison. He tried not to let it feel like he was facing his doom.
He didn't succeed.
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