chuck fic: not a robot, but a ghost [3/3]
not a robot, but a ghost
3/3]
at night, see, they're just sarah walker and chuck bartowski and the world's going to shit and, oh yeah, people are probably after them. life post-intersect. chuck/sarah, pg-13, 4097 words. spoilers and au for chuck vs. the ring.
part one
part two
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
- Pablo Neruda
The wedding band on Sarah's finger glistens as she poses in the doorway of the church. Chuck's supposed to be taking the picture, posing as Frank Dawes on honeymoon with his new wife, a week into enjoying the sights of Warsaw.
During the day, Chuck loves this cover. He uses his savings to take Sarah places: pirogi restaurants, Chopins house, the old town square. On their first day sightseeing he buys her this cheesy pink scarf from a street vendor. She's worn it every day since, laughing whenever she catches her reflection. Their rings glimmer in the occasional November sunlight. They tell anyone who asks that they're on their honeymoon, they're from Florida, they somehow didn't realize it'd be so cold. On the second morning in Warsaw, they'd stopped at the hotel gift shop and bought gloves. Later Sarah had gone into a store and made him wait outside.He'd scanned the streets for Ring thugs, tapping his foot against the pavement. But he hadn't seen anyone when Sarah came out with a brand-new digital camera. Now he spends the days taking pictures of everything. They smile like everything's so amazingly incredibly perfect.
But at night they check the BBC website -- the New York Times got hacked on their fourth day in Warsaw -- and for at least an hour afterward they can't talk. Sarah fights the coffee maker and he resists the urge to plot a map of the catastrophes. The president held at gunpoint, then kidnapped. The Statue of Liberty bombed. Bodies found on beaches in all five Great Lakes. The exchange rate's gone crazy, but that hardly registers.
Once every article's been sorted through and every drop of coffee gulped down, Sarah gives him this look he doesn't understand. And his eyes are so sad that he always kisses her. She wraps her arms around him. They undress each other like it's some kind of race. Last night he tore off almost all the buttons on her blouse. she holds his wrist so tight she leaves bruises, right before she comes. At night, see, they're just Sarah Walker and Chuck Bartowski and the world's going to shit and, oh yeah, people are probably after them.
Now, though, it's only the afternoon and Chuck finally remembers he's supposed to be taking Sarah's picture He glances at the image on the screen. There are other tourists behind Sarah, now, and one of them is super tall, maybe he's a football player or something. And then it hits him. Sarah said they had a week. The Ring's here.
"Run!" he mouths at Sarah. He probably looks crazy but he can't see anybody's reaction because they're on the sidewalk now, racing towards the hotel. A few blocks away from the church, Sarah pulls him down an alley, through a huge H&M, down a street he's never seen before. He can barely see straight, and if anybody's following them, he wouldn't be able to hear it over the pounding of blood in his ears. They're in another unfamiliar alley when Sarah finally stops and leans against a dirty brick wall, panting to catch her breath. Somehow the crazy pink scarf is still wrapped around her neck. She presses it to her sweaty forehead.
"You need to get rid of the scarf, don't you?" Chuck can barely get the words out. "Next time --"
She cuts him off by kissing him, her lips salty with sweat, and god, he can't help but relax against her.
"If no one comes in five minutes --" She pants to get the words out, slipping her hand inside his coat and sweater. Her fingers are still cold and he tries not to shiver. "Then we have to get out of here, Chuck. We'll figure out where later."
He tries to nod but her tongue is in his mouth and that'd probably go horribly wrong somehow, so he settles for holding her closer. There's no sound in the alley except for their breathing, which only gets more ragged when Sarah's hands slip under his waistband and seriously, that girl has magic fingers, because it's not just anybody who could give Chuck Bartowski and hand job while they're hiding out from international terrorists. Maybe the Ring agents stay away for their own safety.
Their breaths ago against the brick walls of the alley, safe and desperate.
Sarah watches the way Chuck's fingers press against the airplane windows and not for the first time regrets that they'd spotted a Ring agent after only three days in Paris. Somehow the agent hadn't seen them -- she has a feeling she's far from their top priority, now that they have Bryce -- and they'd rushed to the airport. More and more flights are getting canceled. Yesterday two planes in South America were hijacked. But they'd found a flight for Prague with a few seats open.
The cabin is a little too warm. She shrugs her shoulders out of her peacoat.
"Tell me about Prague." Chuck's making a half-assed attempt to smile. She can't blame him; her own lips seem to all but refuse the expression.
"It's a little touristy but it's beautiful. The city's like a giant bowl, and if you go out on the edges, you can see it all laid out in front of you, hundreds of roofs and spires."
"Unless the Ring's gotten there." The words are hardly above a whisper. There have been more bombings in the US, but the news is getting increasingly unreliable. Yesterday the BBC reported fires in Paris when there wasn't even a hint of smoke. They can't confirm the reports of deaths in Warsaw, but Sarah has a sinking feeling that those are true.
"Let's hope not." He places his hand over hers and she concentrates on the pressure of his fingers against the back of her hand. It's getting harder and harder to separate the strands of this life, she keeps losing track of her cover names. Now, she reminds herself, she's Christina Smith. How long will that last? Chuck rubs his fingers against hers.
"At least I've got you."
She looks at him then, sitting in the window seat, shoulder pressed against hers. He's really smiling at her, and dammit, she's been a CIA agent for over ten years and she can't help but melt a little.
"It could definitely be worse."
The heat is making her drowsy, so when she nestles against his shoulder she falls asleep almost instantly. Her sleep is blank and dreamless.
She wakes up to Chuck's hands on her shoulders.
"--going to want to see this, Sarah. The tone of his voice disorients her. Where were they flying, again? Blinking, she remembers: the Ring, Paris, Prague. But isn't Chuck always excited by new scenery? Why does he sound so worried?
It's obvious once she glances out the window. They've landed on a field of grass, not a runway.
Because the runway is gone, and all that remains of the airport is blackened rubble and ashes. There are the remains of fires peeking out of broken windows. She blinks, but she knows already that this isn't some nightmare to escape from by pinching herself awake. This is much worse.
Her purse is at her feet and she pulls it to her lap, hugging it towards her.
"Once they get the emergency doors open, we need to run, Chuck. We'll be fine, just grab your duffel bag and follow me. I don't know if the Ring knew we were on this flight. It might've been coincidence. But we don't want them looking into our identities, because..."
Chuck squeezes her fingers. She can hear people screaming, beating against the small windows. Maybe one of them is with the Ring.
But before she can decide on possible candidates, the flight attendants manage to get the emergency doors open. There's a rush of cold air and Sarah manages to angle through the aisle and out of the plane, Chuck behind her.
It's almost too easy to sneak past the flight attendants, into the nearby fields. What if the landing was a Ring plot, too? But five minutes, ten minutes later, nobody's following them. They're on the edge of a forest. There could be someone hidden in the trees, and of course, she realizes, adjusting the strap of her purse, she put her guns in her suitcase.
"Sarah, I, y'know, really hate to freak out while we're in the fields of Bohemia, but do you maybe know what happens next? Because I--"
"I don't know." The words come out more clipped than she intends, and the silence is awkward as they weave their way through the trees. But seriously, is she supposed to have a plan every single second? "I don't have a gun."
She doesn't look at him. She's looking into the spaces between the trees, ahead of thm, but she can practically hear his features forming into a panicked expression.
"Okay," he says, "Maybe I'm freaked out and imagining things, so let me check. Can you run that buy me again? Did you just say you don't have a gun?"
Her fingers ball into fists, and she forces herself not to snap. This isn't his fault.
"I have to check my weapons, Chuck. Do you think I can afford to tell airport security I'm a CIA agent on the run? For all I know, they'll just call the Ring."
It's silent for a little while, except for the crunching sounds of dead leaves and twigs under her feet.
"we can't go back and grab your suitcase, can we?" Judging from the tone of his voice, he already knows the answer, but she still shakes her head.
"It's probably swarming with Ring agents." But there's a weight on her elbow -- Chuck's hand. Maybe everything will work itself out.
"Casey gave me his phone number, if there was an emergency," he says a few minutes later. There's no tinge of panic in his voice. "He said not to call him unless my fingers were on fire but I figure, airport on fire, same deal, right? My phone's going to die in a few days, anyway."
She could stop him. There are so many good reasons: the call could be traced, it could put Casey in danger, it could make the two of them easier to locate. Casey could be dead already, for all they know.
But she hasn't got a gun and if the Ring finds her... She hears Chuck dial the number, pressing the buttons like a sigh of relief.
"Casey, oh my god, I -- I'm in Prague with Sarah and we're stranded."
There's a familiar growl, audible even over the cell phone speakers.
"No, the airport was bombed. And we wouldn't hitchhike! People are after us, Casey! This is fingers on fire, okay?!"
If someobody's really following them, they can so easily find Chuck, the way his voice bounces off the trees. They stop and she rests her head on a nearby trunk, the bark catching on her gloves. It's too easy not to care about being followed. Isn't the world ending anyway?
"Can't you just track us with the phone signal?" Chuck says, still completely out of sync with spy technology. "Well, of course we have to move around Casey. People are following us. Big, scary people with guns. Did I mention they were scary?"
There's a pause, a low rumble on the other line. Chuck presses the phone against his collarbone.
"Hey Sarah, do you maybe have a GPS in your purse? Casey wants to try a meet up."
She could fumble around dramatically, but she'd only come up empty-handed, so she just shakes her head. "Tell Casey to track your cell phone signal and meet us in eight hours. If he can't do that, we can arrange a meet-up." She keeps her voice low, barely above a whisper, just in case the Ring's put in recognition traces on her voice. But there's something resonant about the way the words roll off her tongue. This was her entire life.
She hears Chuck relaying her instructions to Casey and the extended rumble of his response. There's nobody lurking in the trees around them, at least not yet.
"Casey says to keep heading West," Chuck reports, sliding his cell phone into the back pocket of his jeans. "We'll hit a small town in maybe four hours. There's an inn and he's going to meet us there at midnight, so that gives us about... nine hours to make ourselves pretty for our buddy John Casey. I mean, you're good, but yeah. We'll be meeting up with him in nine hours."
He laces his fingers through hers and she concentrates on watching the trees, on walking towards the west.
The sound of the shower cuts off and Chuck sits up on the bed, trying to ignore the lumps in the mattress. The room was cheap, and anyway they probably won't be spending the night. Casey should be here in two hours, give or take, probably with enough guns to blow up the entire Czech Republic or something. It'll be fine. At least, as fine as anything can be in the middle of the world ending. His standards have actually gotten pretty low when it comes to state of being.
There's a click as the bathroom door opens. Sarah steps into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around her. Her hair hangs down her back in bronzed tendrils and he feels his breath hitch before he can stop himself.
She stops and just looks at him. He can't read the expression on her face, so he settles for noticing how toned her shoulders are. Many a football player would be proud to have muscles like that under all the padding. When he looks back at her eyes he still has no idea what she's thinking, but there are tears in her eyes. Unless her eyes are extra watery from the shower or something.
"Chuck," she starts, "I just wanted to say that I'm, really I'm so, so sorry for all this. You had this amazing job and your life was going just the way you'd always wanted and then there I am, on the run from the Ring and --"
She stops and he realizes with a start, just how very close she is to sobbing.
"I just -- I'm so sorry and Casey's coming soon and if there's any way at all that he can get you back to Burbank or Seattle or even Hawaii with Morgan, then he's going to do it. You deserve at least that much, Chuck." She smooths her palm against the towel, and he can see her fingers shaking.
He pats a space on the bed next to him. The bed creaks as she sits down and she thinks he can see the hint of a smile on her lips. Maybe he's imagining it, but it's something.
"I could've walked away." He rests his hand on hers. It's still wet and warm from her shower. "I was the Intersect for two years, Sarah. I knew what I was getting into. Okay, well, not the whole world-ending thing, but wouldn't it have ended anyway? Somehow we got a chance, Sarah. I wanted to take it." He can see the muscles in her face relax as he talks.
"Wanted?" Her eyebrows are raised.
"Want." He smiles.
Because she smells like soap and her eyes are wide and beautiful and really, Sarah Walker isn't the kind of girl that guys like him really ever get to kiss, ever in the history of the world.
So when they do kiss, he notices how soft her lips are, the way the wet strands of hair feel coiled around his fingers, and the exact sound her towel makes as it falls to the floor, that whispery thump.
He can forget how weird it feels, that a girl this amazing never stops protecting him. He always forgets to apologize for that.
Her skin is warm and slides so perfectly against is, it's pretty much the only thing Chuck can focus on.
John Casey always seemed more than a little inhuman to her, so Sarah starts when she sees the lines etched in his forehead and around his mouth. It doesn't help that the light is so dim in his room or that he's frowning at her so deeply that the expression is practically audible.
"So while the world is ending, you're hotel-hopping with the nerd? I thought you were better than that, Walker. Actually, I thought you were dead."
The way he looks at her, Sarah knows he thinks that would've been a better alternative. She looks down at her hands in her lap, the lattice formed by her intersecting fingers.
"I was late to work in the middle of October," she says, so low she's not really sure if Casey can hear her. "I think I set my alarm wrong. It doesn't matter. We'd known for months that the project was going nowhere. Bryce was so unstable. We were stalling, maybe Beckman figured somebody would have an epiphany eventually."
She keeps her eyes on her hands as the words spill out of her. Chuck knows parts of the story, but not the whole thing, start to finish. How long has it been since she'd talked to another agent?
"When I got to work that day, there were no security guards, which was weird. So I went to report to Beckman, to see if she'd called off the project and I'd missed the announcement. But when I got to her office, she was, oh god, she was dead. Slumped over on her desk. And when I arrived back at Intersect project headquarters, there was blood everywhere. Bryce was missing. I ran." Then, it had seemed like the only possible option.
"You ran?"
"What else was I supposed to do? You know how big an organization the Ring's turned out to be? Did you want me to go back and what, swing my fists at them when I ran out of bullets?"
"So instead you've gone off grid and run away to tourist traps with Bartowski." Casey recrosses his arms. "Great plan, Walker. Weren't you the CIA's best agent? For all you know, you could've recovered Larkin." He pauses. "Sure sounds like you were in a hurry to get back to Burbank."
"You seriously think I wanted the world to end? What do you think I was doing for ten years?"
She can hear the springs creak as Casey leans forward on the bed. All she wanted was a gun.
"Well," he says, "Whatever that was, I'm pretty sure you're not doing it now."
In a flash it occurs to her that it's probably for the best that she's unarmed.
Sarah's purse is half open. The zipper catches Chuck's attention as he halfheartedly flips through the channels in the room's banged-up television. They're all in Czech. Any zipper would be a lot more interesting. But Sarah's always had a million secrets, a thousand things she doesn't want him to know. But on the other hand, if they're dating or whatever they are, and if this is the apocalypse, does it really matter if he fixes the zipper on her purse? He must be really tired if he's thinking about it this much.
He walks over to zip it up. It's the logical thing to do. But when he bends over, a gleam inside catches his eye. There's something familiar about it: a flash of silver, a gleam like --
Like a disc. He saw them every day at the Buy More. But why would Sarah have a disc sitting inside her purse? There's only one way to find out. Without thinking, he pulls the disc in its clear plastic case from inside the purse, remembering to pull the zipper shut. That's one mission accomplished.
There are just two letters printed on the very edge of the disc in tiny letters: i.p.
The Intersect Project.
So that's why the Ring has found them, no matter where they go. That's why she's always told him to leave her. Even if the Ring doesn't know about the disc now, between Bryce and their scary spy techniques, they're bound to find out eventually. They'll never be safe.
He fumbles around his duffel bag until his fingers slide against the lenses of his sunglasses. How can they get the entire Intersect on a four gigabyte disc? Figures the CIA would be using better encryption than Apple. It still goes in his disc drive fine, though.
Why didn't she tell him she had the entire Intersect sitting in her purse?
Only one file comes up. Well, he figured. He slides on his sunglasses and opens up the source code. There's a pop-up asking him for a password. Dammit.
Sarah was in charge of this project, though. He could figure this out. What would she have used for a password? What was their cipher? He taps his fingers against the keyboard. Suddenly a possibility strikes him.
3-8-1-18-12-5-19-3-1-18-13-9-3-8-1-5-12
The source code appears. Chuck feels a flash of something like disappointment. Wouldn't the Ring have guessed that? But Charles Carmichael was never a real spy. And he has bigger picture concerns right now.
He's seen his dad's coding and this is unmistakably his. Chuck scrolls through it as easily as reading a book. It's beautifully written.
Halfway through, though, there's some coding that doesn't make sense. It's actually familiar, he realizes. They ran into something like that at Apple when he was working on the image-encoded operating system. It was a seemingly minor glitch that would nonetheless make the computer randomly turn on and off for no reason at all.
Out of habit more than anything, he deletes the bug and types in the fix. His dad coded this new Intersect in a hurry. He probably didn't notice the glitch. But was that why Bryce's flashes were so weird?
There are a few more problems with the source code. Somehow he's worked them all out already, at Apple. There's this complex section near the end, like nothing he's ever done, but the coding all makes sense. Dad always liked to make sure the tricky parts were perfect.
So what does he do now? He leans back against the headboard of the bed, almost like he's waking up from a dream. Hasn't he just made the Intersect even more valuable? Isn't this the time when he destroys the disc, or --
Before he can steel himself to think it, Sarah walks into the room, her key clicking in the lock. The light catches on her, making a halo of her hair. And it makes her look so tired, too, there are shadows under her eyes and Casey can't have given her a pat on the back or she'd be smiling and relieved. The way she looks, who knows if he even gave her a gun.
She once asked him if he was ready to be a hero. Then, his mind was full of images and secrets. He'd said yes, but really, what did it mean? And hasn't she been the hero ever since? Every time he gets captured, even when it means treason, even when he freaks out over his first real kill, no matter how lame or stupid he's been, no matter what. When they check up on each day's new catastrophes, when they moniter the demise of civilization via his laptop, she looks at him after every single article to make sure he hasn't fallen apart. Always, always.
"Chuck --" Sarah starts, but he doesn't hear whatever she says next. Because her voice sounds so tired, so gorgeous.
One click, and the first Intersect image appears on the screen of his laptop.
It'll be all right.
Sarah throws herself to the floor as soon as the images start flickering on the screen of Chuck's laptop. It seems like hours pass before she hears Chuck slump back against the headboard of the hotel bed, the hissing sound as the disc self-destructs.
But when she runs over to him, he's smiling up at her. She wants to shake him, make the Intersect come clattering out of his ears. After Bryce, he goes and does this?
He's still smiling. What can she say? She stands over him, just stands and looks.
"I fixed it," he says. His voice is raspy but it seems to echo in the room.
"You what?" More than anything she wants to wrap her arms around him and fall asleep for a solid week. "What did you do, Chuck?"
"There were bugs in the source code. I fixed them, Sarah. And now it's in my head again." His eyes are half-closed.
"Why'd you -- Chuck, you didn't want this life. I could've -- I can keep you safe. And I promise, as soon as we can, we'll find your dad and we'll get it out and --"
There's his hand on top of hers, each finger warm against the back of her hand.
"It's going to be okay, Sarah."
She looks at his face again and he's still smiling at her. She smiles back.
Because somehow, somehow it sounds true.
3/3]
at night, see, they're just sarah walker and chuck bartowski and the world's going to shit and, oh yeah, people are probably after them. life post-intersect. chuck/sarah, pg-13, 4097 words. spoilers and au for chuck vs. the ring.
part one
part two
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
- Pablo Neruda
The wedding band on Sarah's finger glistens as she poses in the doorway of the church. Chuck's supposed to be taking the picture, posing as Frank Dawes on honeymoon with his new wife, a week into enjoying the sights of Warsaw.
During the day, Chuck loves this cover. He uses his savings to take Sarah places: pirogi restaurants, Chopins house, the old town square. On their first day sightseeing he buys her this cheesy pink scarf from a street vendor. She's worn it every day since, laughing whenever she catches her reflection. Their rings glimmer in the occasional November sunlight. They tell anyone who asks that they're on their honeymoon, they're from Florida, they somehow didn't realize it'd be so cold. On the second morning in Warsaw, they'd stopped at the hotel gift shop and bought gloves. Later Sarah had gone into a store and made him wait outside.He'd scanned the streets for Ring thugs, tapping his foot against the pavement. But he hadn't seen anyone when Sarah came out with a brand-new digital camera. Now he spends the days taking pictures of everything. They smile like everything's so amazingly incredibly perfect.
But at night they check the BBC website -- the New York Times got hacked on their fourth day in Warsaw -- and for at least an hour afterward they can't talk. Sarah fights the coffee maker and he resists the urge to plot a map of the catastrophes. The president held at gunpoint, then kidnapped. The Statue of Liberty bombed. Bodies found on beaches in all five Great Lakes. The exchange rate's gone crazy, but that hardly registers.
Once every article's been sorted through and every drop of coffee gulped down, Sarah gives him this look he doesn't understand. And his eyes are so sad that he always kisses her. She wraps her arms around him. They undress each other like it's some kind of race. Last night he tore off almost all the buttons on her blouse. she holds his wrist so tight she leaves bruises, right before she comes. At night, see, they're just Sarah Walker and Chuck Bartowski and the world's going to shit and, oh yeah, people are probably after them.
Now, though, it's only the afternoon and Chuck finally remembers he's supposed to be taking Sarah's picture He glances at the image on the screen. There are other tourists behind Sarah, now, and one of them is super tall, maybe he's a football player or something. And then it hits him. Sarah said they had a week. The Ring's here.
"Run!" he mouths at Sarah. He probably looks crazy but he can't see anybody's reaction because they're on the sidewalk now, racing towards the hotel. A few blocks away from the church, Sarah pulls him down an alley, through a huge H&M, down a street he's never seen before. He can barely see straight, and if anybody's following them, he wouldn't be able to hear it over the pounding of blood in his ears. They're in another unfamiliar alley when Sarah finally stops and leans against a dirty brick wall, panting to catch her breath. Somehow the crazy pink scarf is still wrapped around her neck. She presses it to her sweaty forehead.
"You need to get rid of the scarf, don't you?" Chuck can barely get the words out. "Next time --"
She cuts him off by kissing him, her lips salty with sweat, and god, he can't help but relax against her.
"If no one comes in five minutes --" She pants to get the words out, slipping her hand inside his coat and sweater. Her fingers are still cold and he tries not to shiver. "Then we have to get out of here, Chuck. We'll figure out where later."
He tries to nod but her tongue is in his mouth and that'd probably go horribly wrong somehow, so he settles for holding her closer. There's no sound in the alley except for their breathing, which only gets more ragged when Sarah's hands slip under his waistband and seriously, that girl has magic fingers, because it's not just anybody who could give Chuck Bartowski and hand job while they're hiding out from international terrorists. Maybe the Ring agents stay away for their own safety.
Their breaths ago against the brick walls of the alley, safe and desperate.
Sarah watches the way Chuck's fingers press against the airplane windows and not for the first time regrets that they'd spotted a Ring agent after only three days in Paris. Somehow the agent hadn't seen them -- she has a feeling she's far from their top priority, now that they have Bryce -- and they'd rushed to the airport. More and more flights are getting canceled. Yesterday two planes in South America were hijacked. But they'd found a flight for Prague with a few seats open.
The cabin is a little too warm. She shrugs her shoulders out of her peacoat.
"Tell me about Prague." Chuck's making a half-assed attempt to smile. She can't blame him; her own lips seem to all but refuse the expression.
"It's a little touristy but it's beautiful. The city's like a giant bowl, and if you go out on the edges, you can see it all laid out in front of you, hundreds of roofs and spires."
"Unless the Ring's gotten there." The words are hardly above a whisper. There have been more bombings in the US, but the news is getting increasingly unreliable. Yesterday the BBC reported fires in Paris when there wasn't even a hint of smoke. They can't confirm the reports of deaths in Warsaw, but Sarah has a sinking feeling that those are true.
"Let's hope not." He places his hand over hers and she concentrates on the pressure of his fingers against the back of her hand. It's getting harder and harder to separate the strands of this life, she keeps losing track of her cover names. Now, she reminds herself, she's Christina Smith. How long will that last? Chuck rubs his fingers against hers.
"At least I've got you."
She looks at him then, sitting in the window seat, shoulder pressed against hers. He's really smiling at her, and dammit, she's been a CIA agent for over ten years and she can't help but melt a little.
"It could definitely be worse."
The heat is making her drowsy, so when she nestles against his shoulder she falls asleep almost instantly. Her sleep is blank and dreamless.
She wakes up to Chuck's hands on her shoulders.
"--going to want to see this, Sarah. The tone of his voice disorients her. Where were they flying, again? Blinking, she remembers: the Ring, Paris, Prague. But isn't Chuck always excited by new scenery? Why does he sound so worried?
It's obvious once she glances out the window. They've landed on a field of grass, not a runway.
Because the runway is gone, and all that remains of the airport is blackened rubble and ashes. There are the remains of fires peeking out of broken windows. She blinks, but she knows already that this isn't some nightmare to escape from by pinching herself awake. This is much worse.
Her purse is at her feet and she pulls it to her lap, hugging it towards her.
"Once they get the emergency doors open, we need to run, Chuck. We'll be fine, just grab your duffel bag and follow me. I don't know if the Ring knew we were on this flight. It might've been coincidence. But we don't want them looking into our identities, because..."
Chuck squeezes her fingers. She can hear people screaming, beating against the small windows. Maybe one of them is with the Ring.
But before she can decide on possible candidates, the flight attendants manage to get the emergency doors open. There's a rush of cold air and Sarah manages to angle through the aisle and out of the plane, Chuck behind her.
It's almost too easy to sneak past the flight attendants, into the nearby fields. What if the landing was a Ring plot, too? But five minutes, ten minutes later, nobody's following them. They're on the edge of a forest. There could be someone hidden in the trees, and of course, she realizes, adjusting the strap of her purse, she put her guns in her suitcase.
"Sarah, I, y'know, really hate to freak out while we're in the fields of Bohemia, but do you maybe know what happens next? Because I--"
"I don't know." The words come out more clipped than she intends, and the silence is awkward as they weave their way through the trees. But seriously, is she supposed to have a plan every single second? "I don't have a gun."
She doesn't look at him. She's looking into the spaces between the trees, ahead of thm, but she can practically hear his features forming into a panicked expression.
"Okay," he says, "Maybe I'm freaked out and imagining things, so let me check. Can you run that buy me again? Did you just say you don't have a gun?"
Her fingers ball into fists, and she forces herself not to snap. This isn't his fault.
"I have to check my weapons, Chuck. Do you think I can afford to tell airport security I'm a CIA agent on the run? For all I know, they'll just call the Ring."
It's silent for a little while, except for the crunching sounds of dead leaves and twigs under her feet.
"we can't go back and grab your suitcase, can we?" Judging from the tone of his voice, he already knows the answer, but she still shakes her head.
"It's probably swarming with Ring agents." But there's a weight on her elbow -- Chuck's hand. Maybe everything will work itself out.
"Casey gave me his phone number, if there was an emergency," he says a few minutes later. There's no tinge of panic in his voice. "He said not to call him unless my fingers were on fire but I figure, airport on fire, same deal, right? My phone's going to die in a few days, anyway."
She could stop him. There are so many good reasons: the call could be traced, it could put Casey in danger, it could make the two of them easier to locate. Casey could be dead already, for all they know.
But she hasn't got a gun and if the Ring finds her... She hears Chuck dial the number, pressing the buttons like a sigh of relief.
"Casey, oh my god, I -- I'm in Prague with Sarah and we're stranded."
There's a familiar growl, audible even over the cell phone speakers.
"No, the airport was bombed. And we wouldn't hitchhike! People are after us, Casey! This is fingers on fire, okay?!"
If someobody's really following them, they can so easily find Chuck, the way his voice bounces off the trees. They stop and she rests her head on a nearby trunk, the bark catching on her gloves. It's too easy not to care about being followed. Isn't the world ending anyway?
"Can't you just track us with the phone signal?" Chuck says, still completely out of sync with spy technology. "Well, of course we have to move around Casey. People are following us. Big, scary people with guns. Did I mention they were scary?"
There's a pause, a low rumble on the other line. Chuck presses the phone against his collarbone.
"Hey Sarah, do you maybe have a GPS in your purse? Casey wants to try a meet up."
She could fumble around dramatically, but she'd only come up empty-handed, so she just shakes her head. "Tell Casey to track your cell phone signal and meet us in eight hours. If he can't do that, we can arrange a meet-up." She keeps her voice low, barely above a whisper, just in case the Ring's put in recognition traces on her voice. But there's something resonant about the way the words roll off her tongue. This was her entire life.
She hears Chuck relaying her instructions to Casey and the extended rumble of his response. There's nobody lurking in the trees around them, at least not yet.
"Casey says to keep heading West," Chuck reports, sliding his cell phone into the back pocket of his jeans. "We'll hit a small town in maybe four hours. There's an inn and he's going to meet us there at midnight, so that gives us about... nine hours to make ourselves pretty for our buddy John Casey. I mean, you're good, but yeah. We'll be meeting up with him in nine hours."
He laces his fingers through hers and she concentrates on watching the trees, on walking towards the west.
The sound of the shower cuts off and Chuck sits up on the bed, trying to ignore the lumps in the mattress. The room was cheap, and anyway they probably won't be spending the night. Casey should be here in two hours, give or take, probably with enough guns to blow up the entire Czech Republic or something. It'll be fine. At least, as fine as anything can be in the middle of the world ending. His standards have actually gotten pretty low when it comes to state of being.
There's a click as the bathroom door opens. Sarah steps into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around her. Her hair hangs down her back in bronzed tendrils and he feels his breath hitch before he can stop himself.
She stops and just looks at him. He can't read the expression on her face, so he settles for noticing how toned her shoulders are. Many a football player would be proud to have muscles like that under all the padding. When he looks back at her eyes he still has no idea what she's thinking, but there are tears in her eyes. Unless her eyes are extra watery from the shower or something.
"Chuck," she starts, "I just wanted to say that I'm, really I'm so, so sorry for all this. You had this amazing job and your life was going just the way you'd always wanted and then there I am, on the run from the Ring and --"
She stops and he realizes with a start, just how very close she is to sobbing.
"I just -- I'm so sorry and Casey's coming soon and if there's any way at all that he can get you back to Burbank or Seattle or even Hawaii with Morgan, then he's going to do it. You deserve at least that much, Chuck." She smooths her palm against the towel, and he can see her fingers shaking.
He pats a space on the bed next to him. The bed creaks as she sits down and she thinks he can see the hint of a smile on her lips. Maybe he's imagining it, but it's something.
"I could've walked away." He rests his hand on hers. It's still wet and warm from her shower. "I was the Intersect for two years, Sarah. I knew what I was getting into. Okay, well, not the whole world-ending thing, but wouldn't it have ended anyway? Somehow we got a chance, Sarah. I wanted to take it." He can see the muscles in her face relax as he talks.
"Wanted?" Her eyebrows are raised.
"Want." He smiles.
Because she smells like soap and her eyes are wide and beautiful and really, Sarah Walker isn't the kind of girl that guys like him really ever get to kiss, ever in the history of the world.
So when they do kiss, he notices how soft her lips are, the way the wet strands of hair feel coiled around his fingers, and the exact sound her towel makes as it falls to the floor, that whispery thump.
He can forget how weird it feels, that a girl this amazing never stops protecting him. He always forgets to apologize for that.
Her skin is warm and slides so perfectly against is, it's pretty much the only thing Chuck can focus on.
John Casey always seemed more than a little inhuman to her, so Sarah starts when she sees the lines etched in his forehead and around his mouth. It doesn't help that the light is so dim in his room or that he's frowning at her so deeply that the expression is practically audible.
"So while the world is ending, you're hotel-hopping with the nerd? I thought you were better than that, Walker. Actually, I thought you were dead."
The way he looks at her, Sarah knows he thinks that would've been a better alternative. She looks down at her hands in her lap, the lattice formed by her intersecting fingers.
"I was late to work in the middle of October," she says, so low she's not really sure if Casey can hear her. "I think I set my alarm wrong. It doesn't matter. We'd known for months that the project was going nowhere. Bryce was so unstable. We were stalling, maybe Beckman figured somebody would have an epiphany eventually."
She keeps her eyes on her hands as the words spill out of her. Chuck knows parts of the story, but not the whole thing, start to finish. How long has it been since she'd talked to another agent?
"When I got to work that day, there were no security guards, which was weird. So I went to report to Beckman, to see if she'd called off the project and I'd missed the announcement. But when I got to her office, she was, oh god, she was dead. Slumped over on her desk. And when I arrived back at Intersect project headquarters, there was blood everywhere. Bryce was missing. I ran." Then, it had seemed like the only possible option.
"You ran?"
"What else was I supposed to do? You know how big an organization the Ring's turned out to be? Did you want me to go back and what, swing my fists at them when I ran out of bullets?"
"So instead you've gone off grid and run away to tourist traps with Bartowski." Casey recrosses his arms. "Great plan, Walker. Weren't you the CIA's best agent? For all you know, you could've recovered Larkin." He pauses. "Sure sounds like you were in a hurry to get back to Burbank."
"You seriously think I wanted the world to end? What do you think I was doing for ten years?"
She can hear the springs creak as Casey leans forward on the bed. All she wanted was a gun.
"Well," he says, "Whatever that was, I'm pretty sure you're not doing it now."
In a flash it occurs to her that it's probably for the best that she's unarmed.
Sarah's purse is half open. The zipper catches Chuck's attention as he halfheartedly flips through the channels in the room's banged-up television. They're all in Czech. Any zipper would be a lot more interesting. But Sarah's always had a million secrets, a thousand things she doesn't want him to know. But on the other hand, if they're dating or whatever they are, and if this is the apocalypse, does it really matter if he fixes the zipper on her purse? He must be really tired if he's thinking about it this much.
He walks over to zip it up. It's the logical thing to do. But when he bends over, a gleam inside catches his eye. There's something familiar about it: a flash of silver, a gleam like --
Like a disc. He saw them every day at the Buy More. But why would Sarah have a disc sitting inside her purse? There's only one way to find out. Without thinking, he pulls the disc in its clear plastic case from inside the purse, remembering to pull the zipper shut. That's one mission accomplished.
There are just two letters printed on the very edge of the disc in tiny letters: i.p.
The Intersect Project.
So that's why the Ring has found them, no matter where they go. That's why she's always told him to leave her. Even if the Ring doesn't know about the disc now, between Bryce and their scary spy techniques, they're bound to find out eventually. They'll never be safe.
He fumbles around his duffel bag until his fingers slide against the lenses of his sunglasses. How can they get the entire Intersect on a four gigabyte disc? Figures the CIA would be using better encryption than Apple. It still goes in his disc drive fine, though.
Why didn't she tell him she had the entire Intersect sitting in her purse?
Only one file comes up. Well, he figured. He slides on his sunglasses and opens up the source code. There's a pop-up asking him for a password. Dammit.
Sarah was in charge of this project, though. He could figure this out. What would she have used for a password? What was their cipher? He taps his fingers against the keyboard. Suddenly a possibility strikes him.
3-8-1-18-12-5-19-3-1-18-13-9-3-8-1-5-12
The source code appears. Chuck feels a flash of something like disappointment. Wouldn't the Ring have guessed that? But Charles Carmichael was never a real spy. And he has bigger picture concerns right now.
He's seen his dad's coding and this is unmistakably his. Chuck scrolls through it as easily as reading a book. It's beautifully written.
Halfway through, though, there's some coding that doesn't make sense. It's actually familiar, he realizes. They ran into something like that at Apple when he was working on the image-encoded operating system. It was a seemingly minor glitch that would nonetheless make the computer randomly turn on and off for no reason at all.
Out of habit more than anything, he deletes the bug and types in the fix. His dad coded this new Intersect in a hurry. He probably didn't notice the glitch. But was that why Bryce's flashes were so weird?
There are a few more problems with the source code. Somehow he's worked them all out already, at Apple. There's this complex section near the end, like nothing he's ever done, but the coding all makes sense. Dad always liked to make sure the tricky parts were perfect.
So what does he do now? He leans back against the headboard of the bed, almost like he's waking up from a dream. Hasn't he just made the Intersect even more valuable? Isn't this the time when he destroys the disc, or --
Before he can steel himself to think it, Sarah walks into the room, her key clicking in the lock. The light catches on her, making a halo of her hair. And it makes her look so tired, too, there are shadows under her eyes and Casey can't have given her a pat on the back or she'd be smiling and relieved. The way she looks, who knows if he even gave her a gun.
She once asked him if he was ready to be a hero. Then, his mind was full of images and secrets. He'd said yes, but really, what did it mean? And hasn't she been the hero ever since? Every time he gets captured, even when it means treason, even when he freaks out over his first real kill, no matter how lame or stupid he's been, no matter what. When they check up on each day's new catastrophes, when they moniter the demise of civilization via his laptop, she looks at him after every single article to make sure he hasn't fallen apart. Always, always.
"Chuck --" Sarah starts, but he doesn't hear whatever she says next. Because her voice sounds so tired, so gorgeous.
One click, and the first Intersect image appears on the screen of his laptop.
It'll be all right.
Sarah throws herself to the floor as soon as the images start flickering on the screen of Chuck's laptop. It seems like hours pass before she hears Chuck slump back against the headboard of the hotel bed, the hissing sound as the disc self-destructs.
But when she runs over to him, he's smiling up at her. She wants to shake him, make the Intersect come clattering out of his ears. After Bryce, he goes and does this?
He's still smiling. What can she say? She stands over him, just stands and looks.
"I fixed it," he says. His voice is raspy but it seems to echo in the room.
"You what?" More than anything she wants to wrap her arms around him and fall asleep for a solid week. "What did you do, Chuck?"
"There were bugs in the source code. I fixed them, Sarah. And now it's in my head again." His eyes are half-closed.
"Why'd you -- Chuck, you didn't want this life. I could've -- I can keep you safe. And I promise, as soon as we can, we'll find your dad and we'll get it out and --"
There's his hand on top of hers, each finger warm against the back of her hand.
"It's going to be okay, Sarah."
She looks at his face again and he's still smiling at her. She smiles back.
Because somehow, somehow it sounds true.