The Love Boat

A/N: Been a lot of well-written HEAVY stuff lately. And look, that is needed. But, I know I always get PMs of people thanking me for my stuff as a pallet cleanser after reading said HEAVY stuff. So if you want something HEAVY…this ain’t it. I’m not even gonna say it’s well-written. Let’s be honest, for the last six months I haven’t done much, and by now most of you know why. Life is ebbs and flows, right? So, I’m gonna dust off my chops and give this one a whirl. All apologies to Marshall…Guess who’s back? Back again? David’s back. Tell a friend.
Disclaimer: I do not own Chuck
As she sat in the chair, across from her boss, she wondered how many times she had been there before. She knew this time…it felt different.
And it should.
Each time she had a mission, a part of her…changed.
In the past, she had always thought that was good. With each experience there should be knowledge gained. And knowledge should change you. Whether those changes were profound or subtle had to do with not only the person experiencing said changes, but also how much one let themselves feel the change. It also mattered how much one ignored or didn’t ignore their feelings in general.
If she wasn’t sitting in the CIA Director’s office, she would have smiled. And she did smile, just not a full smile. A tight, controlled smile. But that was enough. Langston Graham saw the smile, and if he had looked….troubled….that was the word she was going with….troubled…if he had looked troubled before he looked shaken now.
Not that anyone else would have noticed it.
But that was her job.
She was the best in the CIA, not just because of her training in the CIA, but her training before….her environment before the CIA.
The things she learned from her dad before she had been old enough to walk. Were those skills genetic or taught, or both…she would never know. What she did know was she had the ability to make a read on someone on the spot and that had saved her life more times than she cared to count.
The very reason she had survived the last mission was because of those said skills.
She couldn’t help but think of the last time she sat in this office.
}o{
Then
“I need you to go to [redacted],” Graham told her as she entered the office. She had seen Graham troubled before, but for him to begin telling her the mission before she had even sat down…this was new. She sat and he handed her a folder. It was the thinnest file she had ever seen. She looked up at him, pulled out the one sheet of paper. “I know.”
“Director, I need…something,” Sarah insisted.
“Here’s what I can tell you,” Graham said, leaning forward, his hands clasped together, his brow furrowed. “We have a problem in the CIA. I thought I was being paranoid, hell, maybe I still am, and this is a wild goose chase but…” He was silent for a moment. “Azerbaijan.”
Her face tightened. “I-”
He held up his hand. “Easy, agent,” Graham said. Sarah relaxed a smidge. Just one. “There have been little consistent inconsistencies popping up in assignments the past few months.”
She was silent as she processed this. “A mole,” she said, not asked.
“Not just one,” Graham answered. Sarah sat back in her chair. For anyone who would have glanced at the room, nothing seemed amiss, but Graham new she was shook. “We have moles in the CIA, and this contact says they have a USB drive with all the names.”
“What is my mission?” Sarah asked.
“Extraction,” Graham told her. “Both the drive and the contact.”
“Just me?” Sarah asked. “How many are in this network?”
Graham was silent for a moment. “We believe between twenty and thirty agents, analysts, and other staff.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Graham huffed a laugh. “That’s why you’re the best,” he said softly. “We think our enemies are financing all of this.” Sarah stiffened. “I have no idea.”
“This could be suicide,” Sarah replied.
“I know,” Graham told her. “I don’t take this assignment lightly.”
“And my choice is this or…resign?”
“Agent Walker…Sarah…I can’t trust anyone else.” She sat with that. “If you succeed, you will have saved hundreds of lives.”
“But if I don’t, I’m dead…or worse, and this is completely solo.”
“It is, there is no one, no one I trust,” Graham told her.
}o{
Now
She reached into her bag and pulled out two items. She put the first, the USB drive on his desk. He looked up from the after action report she had filed last night. He grasped the drive like it was toxic. “We will get our best people on it.”
“It’s already been decrypted,” Sarah told him. His eyes went wide. “Forty-seven names.”
“Sarah.”“Jim Teller. Eagle Scout,” Sarah said, looking him right in the eye. “My analyst in Azerbaijan.”
“Damn it,” Graham muttered. “Wait, who’s-”
“The only other person who’s seen this list is the only person I trust, and if anything happens to him….” She trailed off, and if Graham had looked rocked before….she had no good metaphors for this. He was off balance.
She laid the paper on his desk. He looked at it, and then looked up at her. “What is this?” he asked, pointing at the paper.
“My resignation letter,” Sarah told him.
“I see that, but what is…THIS?” he said pointing at the bottom.
She stretched her neck to look. She knew exactly what he was pointing at, but she felt like be a bit performative today. “My signature.”
“You have excellent handwriting,” a voice beside her broke the silence. She turned, and this time, she didn’t bother hiding the smile. “It’s not just legible, but very precise and elegant.”
“Thank you,” she said somewhat shyly in a slightly lower voice, but one more full of life.
For the first time since she had sat down, Langston acknowledged Chuck Bartowski was in the room by looking at him. Langston looked back over at Sarah, then back to Chuck, and then back to Sarah. “I know it’s your signature,” Langston said, barely keeping his composure, still pointing at it. “But…that’s not your signature.”
She slowly turned to look at her scrawl on the paper. “It says Sarah Bartowski.”
“That’s not your NAME!” he said.
Chuck leaned over. “There’s a vein pulsing in his neck.
She patted his leg, never taking her eyes off of Graham. “I’m married. I’m resigning. That is my resignation letter. This is my husband. The man I trust.”
Langston looked like someone had dropped a rabid squirrel in his pants and forgotten to tell him what to do about it.
A/N: I know, it’s got soooooooooo much angst. What happened between then and now in [redacted]? (David, did you use [redacted] so you don’t have to look things up and just worry about the fluffy nonsense? *Puts hand to chest, looks offended as possible and says* ME??????
Yep.
Come on back next time for how they met, and how they fell in love. Again, the only heavy thing about this is the fluff.
Thank you all for all the support my entire time here, but especially the past six months. You’re the best. Love y’all
David