174A/N: My other Christmas Cheer offering. A Year Without Christmas? is well underway. This is a little candy-cane treat.
Red and Green
Chapter One: Stirrings
Sarah Walker sat down at the bar, The Night of Joy.
The bartender approached her quickly and Sarah felt herself sink a bit, facing the prospect of yet another bartender deciding he was what she really needed. That little farce played out again and again, and it always ended with the bartender having to choke down a stiff rebuff.
She was out in DC and out of Langley, out of the CIA. She had been an agent for five long years, the end of her teens and her early twenties. The job had stretched her out, thinned her psychologically. She had known she needed to quit but lacked the fortitude to do it. She had grown used to it and grown distant from normal life, normal people. Her childhood had been irregular, her recruitment into the CIA illegal, and her years in the Company interminable.
Until today. She had walked out earlier this very afternoon. Quit.
She had been called in on Christmas Eve, not a tragedy since the holidays held nothing for her but bad memories. She and her father had been homeless for a time and had spent holidays in soup kitchens or in Salvation Army Centers. Later, when they had 'gotten on their feet' — which for her father meant they found the resources to start running more ambitious cons — they had stolen money from a couple of the very places that had sheltered them from the cold. Sarah still felt her cheeks blaze red with shame when she thought of it.
"Must be cold out, got your color up," the bartender said, leaning on the top of the bar and toward Sarah, his smile too friendly.
Sarah fought back a grimace and gave the man a face of inexpression. "Yes, cold out there, and it is cold in here too." She gave him a direct glance with her blue eyes, emptying them of warmth, an old trick of hers. He leaned back, chilled.
"What can I get you?" His tone now dialed back to customer setting.
"Just a beer, lager, on tap. Nothing," she added, then repeated, "nothing else."
Sarah wanted to have her beer in peace and consider what she had done. She felt surprisingly okay with it, although she was unsure why she had entered the bar. Today had been the second time she walked out of work — the first time, she walked away from her father's cons, and the second time, today, she walked away from spying.
Langston Graham, CIA director, found her not long after she had walked away from her father and his cons. She had been driven by need, hunger, into shoplifting at a grocery and been caught. Graham had somehow found out about her, and her conning work with her father, and judged her to have 'real potential' (his words) as a spy.
He offered her a deal — a clean record in exchange for joining the Company. She was too young to think it through, too afraid; she had no one she trusted to advise her. It actually seemed like a good trade at the time. Dishonest living for an honest living. But that had not been the trade. She went from amateur liar to professional liar, from amateur thief to professional thief, from her father's cons to government-sanctioned cons.
Until today.
She tried to reel in her thoughts, get control of them. The Director had told her it was time for her Red Test. She was assigned a double-agent to eliminate. She was to board a plane, fly to Paris, find the woman, and kill her.
Sarah had hesitated.
"Agent Walker," Graham intoned in the silence of his office, "is there a problem?"
"If I do this, will this sort of thing become...my new sort of mission?"
Langston nodded. "Not solely, but, yes, it will become an important part of what you do. This is a promotion, Agent. You and I have worked together often enough in the past, and you know that I have been grooming you...At least, I think you know that?"
Sarah nodded back. Graham continued: "But to promote you, to make you my good right hand, which is my intention, I need to know that you can do what needs doing…"
Sarah nodded again, but she did not speak. She had killed four times on missions, but always in self-defense or defense of another agent. Nonetheless, each of those times had weighed on her, sent her into depression. She recovered and went on, but still…
To pull the trigger in cold blood, to kill on command, — was that something she could do?
And then she told Graham no, and told him she was done. She left Langley, leaving behind her badge and gun.
The truth was that she had said no to Graham because her answer to herself had been yes. She could kill on command. She was sure of it. She was...wired that way. But that was why she said no. She could do it, but she knew the price it would demand: the complete erosion of herself, and so little of her was left as it was.
There had not been much to start with.
And now she faced starting over with less. But not with nothing. She still existed, still some self remaining, a remnant that had been enough to speak no to Langston Graham.
The bartender, now not seeking eye-contact, brought her beer and stayed on his side of the bar.
Sarah glanced around. A couple of couples at different tables. An older man, glasses and beard and book, on the far end of the bar. But it was still early evening. And it was Christmas Eve. Lots of folks at home, probably, with family.
Home. Family. Two words from a foreign language, one of the few Sarah did not speak. Languages. The CIA had done that — schooled her, after a fashion. She was agile where languages were concerned, blessed with a retentive mind. She had to figure out how to take those skills and turn them into civilian employment. She took a small notebook from her large purse and grabbed a pen from the purse's interior pocket.
She started thinking about a resumé: how would hers look, what would she say? The one job she had was a job she could not, exactly, explain, and she was sure that putting Graham down as a reference was a bad idea. His reaction to her no had been...unpleasant.
She put the pen on the counter and glanced down at herself. Strange. She had on a red sweater. She had not meant to wear it in honor of the holiday; she had not meant to wear it in honor of her Red Test — God, no, she had not even known that was coming. She had worn it because she liked it, she looked good in it, and December DC was cold.
The thought of going back to her lonely apartment left her chilled, despite her warm red sweater. All these years, she had told herself she was alone, not lonely. But it was time to just face the fact: she was lonely. She had been since her teenage days, moving from town to town with her father. He was no company. And later, there had been the Company. Civilian men were impossible — she hated having to lie to or refuse to talk to a man she wanted to care for, wanted to care for her. Other agents were too...professional. They never seemed like they were genuinely dating her, but rather like the dating was just another cover-assignment. She could not blame them, she had felt that way too.
It was Christmas, almost, and Sarah was jobless and loveless and alone. Of course, she had been two of three for a long time. The first was the only news.
Sarah felt a blast of cold air. She turned and looked. A tall, curly-haired man in a green jacket came through the door. He was standing with it open, looking back over his shoulder. He seemed to realize what he was doing and he closed the door, glancing sheepishly around the room, and making momentary eye contact with Sarah. His sheepish grin in response to the contact caused her to smile involuntarily. He turned and looked back through the glass of the door, then came to the bar, three stools from Sarah, taking a spot between her and the older man at the far end.
The curly-haired man had a small booklet, a program, in his hand. He noticed it and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket. Sarah only then noticed that the words Buy More were embroidered on the jacket in small yellow letters.
The man glanced at her again but not in a bad way. He seemed slightly embarrassed, not like he was planning a line. He nodded to her and looked away.
The bartender approached. "What'll it be?" The man looked out the window of the bar before answering.
Sarah could see him react in relief. "Um...just a beer. Something hoppy. You choose."
The bartender shrugged and walked away. The man climbed aboard a stool. He blew out a breath.
Words were out of Sarah's mouth before she thought them: "Someone tailing you?" She ended the question with a short, musical giggle. Sarah!
The man turned to her, his ears turning red. "Guess I'd make a lousy spy, huh?"
Instead of making her feel defensive, the question sent a thrill of delight through her. "Likely so. Not the right way to check for a tail. Too obvious. You have to use your surroundings to your advantage..."
The man smiled. The bartender brought the man's beer and put it down, noticing the conversation between the two. The bartender frowned and shook his head, walking away.
"Oh…" the man said, grinning, "and I suppose I am talking to a spy?" His grin made Sarah feel warm all over, toothy and friendly and free.
"Actually," Sarah said, "you aren't. But if we'd met three hours ago…"
The man blinked, did an almost cartoonish double-take. He looked around cautiously, checking his surroundings. "Wait, really?" His voice was a whisper. "You are...were...a spy?"
"Yes, five years CIA." Sarah could not believe she said the words. She'd never admitted that to a civilian before, always lying when the subject of her work came up in casual conversation. Of course, she rarely had a casual conversation with a civilian. "Five years CIA," Sarah repeated, "that sounds like the title of a tell-all memoir, huh?"
The man was listening to her with complete attention and Sarah suddenly felt self-conscious. Not because she had told him the truth, but because she could not remember a man looking at her like that before, focused so completely on her, without any hint of awareness of how he stood in relationship to her. He just was not paying attention to himself at all. He had no designs on her or the conversation. She felt another thrill of delight as her self-consciousness passed, and she leaned into his attention.
"It does," the man agreed. He put his hand out. "Um...Hi!...I'm Chuck."
"Hi, Chuck, Sarah."
He shook her hand but made no move to sit beside her. He stood to shake her hand but he climbed back onto his prior stool.
"So, CIA-Sarah," Chuck began, still whispering despite the distance between them, "working on your resumé?" He nodded toward her pen and notebook.
She ducked her head. "Yeah, that's right, I am. Good guess. But I'm sort of clueless about how to put one together. I've had a job for five years, but I've never actually job-hunted before."
"So you just...recently left...the CIA? — God, that sounds weird. Are we really having this conversation? I feel like I'm in the opening scene of a spy movie."
Sarah grinned at him, his playful tone. "No, but you are in the closing scene of one, mine."
"Was it like the movies, really? Spying? I've always wondered. Those Bond films. Fun when I was a boy but, I assume, wildly inaccurate, misogynistic male daydreams?"
Sarah blew out a soft, breathy laugh. "Yes, sorry, the real thing — nothing like that. Lots of long hours, little if any personal life, lots of late nights and sketchy places. Criminals rarely throw cocktail parties or choose to meet at romantic famous landmarks."
"So, if I were in, say, Paris, I'd have been unlikely to run into you beneath the Eiffel Tower, clad in a party gown, gun in hand, chasing some would-be world-despot whose last name is mostly consonants?"
Sarah laughed heartily. "Wow, a daydreaming put-down of daydreaming. Well played, Mister Bond." Sarah ended her comment in a stagy villain-voice.
Chuck laughed in return. "As a baby," he whispered, as if offering Sarah a state secret, "I was shaken, not stirred." He leaned back as she shook her head, laughing more, "The result of the damage sits before you."
Sarah looked at him as he gestured toward himself. She liked what she saw. He was handsome in a non-GQ way. He was tall and lean but wide-shouldered. And his smile, ready and unguarded, was winning. Winning. That was a word she never used — not like that, anyway.
She gave him a wide smile of her own, chuckling at him.
He chuckled too. "So, CIA-Sarah, since you have been so...forthcoming, let me tell you that beyond being Chuck, I am also a Stanford grad and the current Interim-Manager of the Burbank Buy More."
"I saw the jacket. Can't say I'm big on the green."
"Can't say I am either, but, you know, you just find yourself in the world, you rarely get to choose your place in it."
"Wow, are you an Interim-Philosopher, too."
He shook his head. "No, but I've been thinking about leaving the Buy More, maybe even leaving Burbank, although, to be honest, this is my first extended trip out of California. I'm here on a business trip. Buy More managerial convention at the hotel across the street."
Sarah thought about Chuck's glances over his shoulder. "Why aren't you having your beer there? No bar?"
"Oh, no, there's a bar. I just...don't want to be in it."
"May I ask why?"
Chuck gave her an embarrassed laugh. "There's this other manager…"
"A woman?" Sarah asked.
Chuck gave her a brow-knitted glance. "Um...yeah, anyway, we keep running into each other at the convention and she…"
"Took a liking to you?"
"Yes. Not, I admit, a common occurrence in my life."
Sarah let that go, though it surprised her. Why not? You are...lovely, and more than reasonably charming.
"Who is she? Another manager?"
Chuck nodded. "Yes, she runs a Buy More in San Diego, not just Interim, but, you know, the permanent manager."
Sarah was knitting the threads together. "And so you've met her before?"
Chuck nodded, this time glumly. "Several times. Local managerial meetings. She..she…"
"She's interested?"
"I guess. I mean yes. She's asked me out a couple of times but I always had a reason to say no."
"Oh," Sarah said, a change in her tone, "I thought you weren't interested?"
"I'm not," Chuck said quickly, definitely. "Not at all. She's smart and she's pretty. Jill, that's her name, but...not for me."
"What do you mean?"
Chuck took a second. Frowned. "I can't believe I am telling you all this."
"Spy, remember," Sarah said, waving her hand at herself. "We have ways of making you talk. Special interrogation training."
Chuck's smile returned. "You're brutal. Say, I saw a documentary about that once, interrogation. All these techniques. You must really know some, right?"
Sarah shrugged. She knew his 'brutal' had been a joke on the decidedly non-brutal character of her questions, but the truth was that she had been the interrogator a few times when the word would have all-too-accurately applied. She tried to push the memories from her mind, to concentrate on Chuck.
"I do...know some." She wanted to restore her warm mood, so she winked at Chuck. "But I am using the ones from the gentle menu."
Chuck drew his hand across his brow as if relieved. "That's good. So, yeah, Jill. She asked me out but I wanted to say no but without hurting her feelings."
"But if she's smart and pretty?"
"She is. But, see, she dated this friend of mine. She doesn't know I know it, but she did. Bryce. He really liked her but she...It turned out she'd been going out on him. Broke his heart. In fact, he left California. Moved to Connecticut, to an accounting firm out there. That's what he is, an accountant."
"So, you're worried that what she did was maybe part of a pattern?"
"Yeah, I have zero desire to go through what Bryce went through. And I'm the kind of guy who falls…" He stopped and she could see him mentally berating himself. "Sorry, no need to go into all that."
You're the kind of guy who falls in love. Her warm mood was fully restored.
"So, you," Chuck began after clearing his throat, "you left your job?"
"I quit earlier today."
"Had you been planning to do that?"
Sarah started to say no but paused. Had I? Why doesn't all this feel more shocking? More out-of-left-field? Why am I as okay with this as I am? "Not...consciously, no. But maybe I knew, deep down, that I was...running on fumes...That I needed a change of life."
"So, you have plans, then?"
"No, no. When I said, 'knew, deep down', I mean really, really deep down. I haven't made any plans. That's why," she pushed her empty notebook toward him, moving herself one stool closer as she did, "there's zilch on the page here.."
Chuck reached out and scooted the notebook to himself, then looked at the blank page. He sipped his beer.
"Well, how about this? Instead of thinking about your resumé, let's think about the kind of job you might want, and then we can more-or-less reverse engineer the resumé." He held out his empty hand. It took her a moment, but she realized what he wanted and gave him her pen. "So, what makes you happy, Sarah? That's the place to start."
Happy? What makes me happy? Have I ever asked myself that simple question before?
Sarah took a moment and looked around the bar. She had stopped there on a whim, parking her car at a parking garage a few blocks away and walking in the brisk air, no plan but to put her body into motion in hopes of clearing her head. She saw herself in the glass window of the bar, and then looked past her reflection, into the bar, and saw the large, beautifully decorated Christmas tree. Since coming in, she had not looked again at the tree, but it was why she'd stopped. It had seemed like...a multi-colored lighthouse, a marker onshore. She had been at sea for a long time.
"What makes me happy?"
Chuck nodded, pen in hand, patient. "I hardly know what to say, Chuck. My job didn't...we were taught to avoid...existential meditation. It only leads to problems."
They sat in mutual silence, pondering that.
"Well, you aren't in that line of work anymore, ex-CIA Sarah, so take a stab at it. Start small. It doesn't have to be anything big. We can work our way up."
"Okay," she breathed out, feeling very on-the-spot and unsure. Chuck was a stranger and yet she felt at home with him. It was bizarre. Bizarre and, well, wonderful.
"What makes me happy?"
Chuck smirked at her cutely. "That is the question, Miss…?
"Walker, Sarah Walker." She arched an eyebrow, spoke in an English accent.
Chuck shook his head, narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "As if that is your real name…" He laughed.
Actually, it isn't my real name, but I think I will keep it.
Her name had been changed often by her father, then often by Langston Graham. 'Sarah Walker' was the name given to her by Graham as part of expunging her record. Graham had not so much expunged her record as recreated her, her old life simply ending, her new life simply beginning. She had never thought about it before, but Sarah Walker had never been anything but a CIA agent.
Until today.
"What makes me happy?" She blushed at herself, again repeating the question. She let her eyes settle on the tree in the corner, the blinking lights and soft-shining red and gold silk ornaments. It still seemed to be beckoning her somehow, as it had when she had been outside. "That tree," Sarah said in a reverential whisper, "that tree makes me happy."
Chuck gazed at her and then at the tree for a long moment. "Ah...Good, that's a good start. Why does it make you happy?"
"I don't know. I normally don't...I haven't got many positive memories of the holidays, to be...honest." Wow. Honest.
"Oh! Yeah, I get that. Luckily, my sister — she raised me after our parents died," Chuck's voice cracked, " — she made Christmas special, eventually...But, the first couple of years...I didn't think I'd ever like it again...But it grew on me again...with Ellie's...she's my sister...with Ellie's help."
Sarah saw Chuck getting misty.
"Why aren't you there, Chuck? At home?"
"Convention."
"Yes, but why a Convention now?"
"Because Buy More Corporate is as cheap as hell. DC is headquarters. And they could get the hotel rooms and convention rooms for almost nothing, since it is Christmas. But they promised us all some days off between Christmas and New Year, so when I get home, I'll have a few days off and celebrate, belatedly, with my sister. Oh, and my friend Morgan."
Sarah smiled at Chuck. "That sounds nice, even if it's not on schedule."
"Yeah, I guess, but I'd rather be there now."
Oh, right.
Chuck reacted. "Sorry, I…"
Sarah understood she had let her disappointment show. "No, Chuck...I…"
"Sarah," Chuck said firmly, "I didn't mean it like that. And...at this moment, I'm happy to be right here on this stool. Well, not this stool, necessarily, I just mean, you know, here, now, talking with you." He looked at the floor, around the bar.
Sarah's spirits climbed again, steeply. "And...being here, now, in this bar, with you, that makes me happy."
Chuck laughed and blushed deeply. "That's good. That's a start."
He turned to her notebook and started to write in it.
Cold air rushed into the bar. Sarah glanced up. A woman in a green Buy More jacket was standing there. Hers had a name sewn on it. Jill.
A/N: Cue tension-creating music. Our villain, such as she is, has arrived. More soon.
