544A/N: A new story. It won't last long. A handful of short chapters but not a typical novella from me. Its differences will emerge in due course. Here, we are just getting started.
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter One: Safeway
Sarah Walker stood tall and blonde in front of a pile of pomegranates.
Her shopping cart was beside her. Glancing down at herself, she noticed her short, shiny black trench coat, and she thought about its sharp contrast with the round pink-red of the pomegranates.
It was just the sort of thing Chuck would have noticed, commented on. As careful as Sarah was in her dressing, in color-coordinating her outfits, she lived in an outer world whose colors were desaturated or achromatic — either eye-glazingly flat and dull, or fifty-gazillion shades of gray.
Chuck. Damn, damn, she missed him. She missed Burbank.
Outside, the late afternoon darkness had fallen cold on the DC December day. Washington had never felt like home to Sarah. But since she came back with Bryce to work on the Intersect Project, she had felt away-from-home there. The zero-point of her three-dimensional coordinate system, of her grid of the world, was Burbank.
Chuck.
Bryce did not help her feel at home in DC. He had wanted — expected — that when she was no longer in Burbank, Chuck would evaporate from her mind, her heart, a vapor, and that she would be ready — gung ho — for the Andersons Part Deux.
Part Deux. Chuck, again.
She missed him so acutely that she permitted herself do what she often did at such moments, now more frequent than when she first arrived: she pretended she was talking to him.
Like a chess player playing herself, Sarah had to make the conversational moves for them both. But trying to imagine what Chuck's endlessly plastic and richly fertile mind would come up with made her feel closer to him, even if she knew that she was not really holding up his end of the conversation.
She actually spoke the conversation softly to herself, under her breath.
"Hey, Sarah, what the heck is a pomegranate, anyway?"
"It's a pomegranate, Chuck."
"Yeah, yeah, I get that. But is it a fruit, 'cause if it is, I don't know what kind of fruit it is. And the things inside, the little ruby, juicy bits, are those the pomegranate, or are they the pomegranate's seeds? Cause if they're just the seeds, then we don't really eat the pomegranate, do we? We chuck it, no pun intended."
"I think it's a fruit, Chuck, a berry."
"A berry?"
A woman walked past Sarah and gave her a long, unsettled look. Sarah blushed and looked away.
"Yeah, Chuck, a berry."
"It doesn't look like a berry. Is the whole thing the berry or just the ruby, juicy bits inside?"
Sarah felt an ache run through her as she laughed to herself. She did not laugh much in DC; not at all, in fact. Except when she played this Conversation with Chuck game. Somehow, even imaginary Chuck could make her laugh, even on a dark, cold DC December afternoon.
She should have stayed. In Burbank. With Chuck. But the superspy had proven once more, as she had repeatedly, frequently, in Burbank, that she was, at heart, a coward. A woman who lacked fortitude. She knew what she wanted and she would not make the changes that would allow her to have it.
Him. Chuck.
Instead, she was standing, talking to herself, acting a slightly crazy, in a poorly lit DC Safeway.
Safeway. That was what she had chosen. The safe way. The way that did not require her to change, to grow, to face the hardship of becoming a human being, to risk the exposure of being in love. In love. But she was. She knew it now. And not just past tense: present tense. She had loved Chuck when she left and she loved him now, still, more than ever.
And so he scared her worse than ever too.
She reached for a pomegranate and her phone rang. She dug it out of her purse. It was Bryce.
"Hey, Bryce," Sarah said as she answered, trying to keep the mild annoyance she felt out of her voice: she had been with him, working all day, "what's up?"
"Dinner? No, I'm not up for it. I just bought some things at the store and I'm going to go home and put my feet up. My eyes are nearly crossed from all the files we looked at today."
"Yes, thanks, but I am sure. Some other time? Um, yes, maybe. No problem. I'll see you on Monday."
She dropped the phone back into her purse, shaking her head.
She was going to have to stop dodging the issue with Bryce and just tell him that she was not interested. But telling Bryce that, given what Bryce believed about Sarah's feelings, would be tantamount to confessing to him that she was still in love with Chuck.
And that could cause Sarah problems. Not just with Bryce, who would undoubtedly sulk and complain, make unwanted overtures, but it would make problems with Beckman too. They were trying to identify new possible hosts for the Intersect. A new version was nearly ready. But Sarah had found a reason, some reason, to reject each candidate that was identified. None were Chuck.
Sarah was not just frustrating Bryce and Beckman, she was frustrating the unexpected member of the Intersect Project, Orion, Chuck's dad, Stephen Bartowski. He had shown up out-of-the-blue not long after Sarah and Bryce returned to DC. Those had been fraught days, because Bryce's Intersect was malfunctioning, causing him massive headaches, blackouts. Orion had succeeded in removing the Intersect from Bryce — over Bryce's protests. The procedure had ruined Bryce for any subsequent upload. He would never again be an Intersect. That had made the workaday life of the group...tense.
Bryce resented Stephen, Sarah ached for Chuck, Beckman demanded an Intersect, and Orion...it was unclear what Orion wanted. Some days, he seemed crazy, albeit likably crazy. Other days, a genius, dazzling. But every day he reminded Sarah of Chuck, of what she had abandoned in Burbank.
He had only spoken to Sarah of Chuck once. The only personal conversation they had.
It was after he had removed the Intersect from Bryce.
Bryce was unconscious in a hospital bed and Sarah was standing beside him. Orion came into the room, humming to himself, reading off a clipboard. He glanced at Bryce and then he studied Sarah.
"I talked to my son today. He didn't say so, but he still loves you. It's killing him, believing you chose Bryce over him. Why don't you at least call him and tell him that's not the true story? He's stuck in Limbo. He can't get over you."
And then he left the room.
Sarah went home and raged at herself, picked up her phone, put it down, raged at herself, and did it over and over until she fell asleep without ever calling Chuck.
She still had not called him. To call him and tell him that she had not chosen Bryce over him, would be to concede that she had run from him, not with Bryce, not to DC; it would be tantamount to telling Chuck that she loved him.
Loved him enough to cross the country to avoid facing that fact, truly revealing it to Chuck.
But earlier that day, she and Bryce had found a file, a candidate that Sarah could not find a problem with, a candidate who seemed...almost perfect.
His name was Daniel Shaw.
He was supposed to report Monday for preliminary in-person tests. Orion said that the new Intersect would be ready in just a few more days. It looked like the Intersect Project was about to begin in earnest. Sarah hoped so.
She had examined enough files. She needed to stop longing for Burbank and the man she left behind. Assuming Shaw worked out and Orion had the Intersect ready, Sarah would be the Intersected Shaw's first partner. Back in the field, it was possible that she would manage to get Chuck out of her system, stop aching. Forget being human. Forget being in love.
She picked up the pomegranate and put it in her cart — in the top basket, the child seat up, near the handle, beside the eggs. She wanted it to be safe.
At the checkout, as the young woman rang up Sarah's purchases, Sarah held up her hand as the pomegranate was scanned. "Say, can you tell me? Is a pomegranate a berry?"
A/N: So much for the prelude.
A little more about the story can be found on the Chuck Fanfiction FB page.
