Chapter 1
Chapter 1 – The Roof
Wednesday, January 27, 2008
Los Angeles
Chuck squeezed her hands, committing everything he could to memory. The soul-deep ache in her luminous eyes, the softness where he stroked the back of her hands. The strength as she squeezed him back. Hands he’d held before, clinging with urgency this time. Trembling even. Not the hands of a CIA assassin. At least not in this moment.
He’d never known a person so consumed in contradictions as Sarah Walker. Fierce and frightening, playful and tender. At times almost shy and unsure, which in light of her history puzzled and fascinated Chuck beyond anything he’d ever known.
Chuck wondered for months if Sarah felt in return anything like the adoration he felt for her. Under the weight of their brief, tense, confusing acquaintance, she liked him, at least. He knew that much. Hers were not tears of indifference.
Chuck did not delay any longer than the minute Longshore gave him. He wasn’t resigned to going; he was frankly terrified of what came next. This was killing him, and Sarah didn’t look any better. But he feared what she might do even more if he escalated things with Longshore. He’d seen Sarah’s hand drift behind her back where she surely had a pistol. As emotional as she was, if he clung to her, said the right things, begged even, she was capable in her distress of doing something she couldn’t take back.
Sarah might do it if he asked.
That’s what Graham did, pointed his favorite weapon at a problem with no regard for what it cost her. And this would cost her everything. This was his last chance to be the man Sarah needed him to be, and Chuck didn’t want to be anything like Langston Graham.
He slowly drew their handhold out to their fingertips and made himself let go.
“Goodbye, Sarah.”
Turn. Put one foot in front of the other.
Don’t give her a reason.
The way Chuck said it, so resigned, out of hope and determined to walk away with some dignity and not make it any harder for Sarah opened up a burning pit in her stomach. Not Graham nor Beckman, maybe not even Casey, understood what they were losing here. The only reason they did this job was to protect good people, and one of the best was walking away forever if the higher ups had their way.
Sarah already ached with the loss. Every step he took was like a dagger. Her asset. Her guy. Sarah wanted to do something, give Chuck some kind of hope.
“Chuck!”
He turned back grimly, just barely hanging on. Longshore looked annoyed at the interruption, but Sarah couldn’t care less.
“Save ya later,” Sarah said, wishing it didn’t sound so foolish or impossible.
His expression said he knew it was all that she could give him, and Chuck appreciated the effort, however little it could mean. He watched her across the short distance with a tiny, sad smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Longshore wrapped an iron hand around Chuck’s arm and pulled him across the helipad. Chuck stumbled a bit, stubbornly facing Sarah as he was propelled out of the way of the approaching chopper.
Sarah jogged to her left, outside the circle of the landing zone, far enough that the helo wouldn’t block her view of Chuck and Longshore.
The agent pulled Chuck down and forward at the same time the landing skids touched down.
Chuck grabbed the edge of the door and held fast. He wasn’t trying to get away, only wanting to see her for a little longer. The sob Sarah had been holding in finally got the better of her and she gasped as the steady stream of tears became a flood.
She’d never felt more useless in her life.
Longshore threw his shoulder into Chuck’s back once, twice, and Chuck’s grip on the edge of the door faltered.
The last thing Sarah saw before a hand in the chopper reached out and dragged her asset inside was Chuck speaking, looking directly at her as he formed the words. There was no use yelling over the thunder of the rotors, but he spoke it clearly, deliberately, with no trace of hesitation.
“I love you.”
Then he was gone.
The chopper lifted and banked away from the building. Sarah ran to the edge of the roof, as close as she could get. She saw the pilot and the top of Longshore’s head, but because of Chuck’s little rebellion at the door, it looked like whomever had yanked him into the helicopter had Chuck pinned to the floor, out of sight. In a moment of clarity, she wiped her eyes and squinted at the tail number. N7J1472. She repeated it over and over again as she sank to the ground. It was all she could do. For now.
Sarah had participated in extractions to no-return clandestine facilities. She had disappeared very bad people forever just like this. Chuck had asked her to take care of his family, in whatever limited way she could, to say something to make it all right. What could she possibly say to Ellie? Nothing could possibly make this right, ever.
Sarah knew Graham would recall her so fast, she might not even see Ellie, leaving Chuck’s family completely in the dark. Her director would absolutely do that, because Graham didn’t care what happened to them. It wasn’t mission critical, so it wouldn’t be a concern.
Sarah typed the tail number into her notes app, saved it, turned off her phone and pulled the battery. Graham would be angry, but it would be the smallest thing they disagreed about when she stood across the desk from him at Langley.
She watched the helicopter strobe lights grow smaller and smaller. The thrumming of the blades faded to nothing.
Sarah heard the creak of the fire door on the lower level, and a few seconds later, light footsteps tapping on the stairs. As much as he tried otherwise, Casey’s footfalls were heavy and distinct. Sarah knew exactly who this was. She crept forward and crouched low as white-hot rage boiled up inside her.
Lizzie’s smug face popped up above the edge of the roof. In one motion Sarah rose and delivered a devastating spinning back kick. Sarah’s foot connected solidly with Lizzie’s head and launched the enemy agent clear over the open side handrail and twenty feet to the roof below.
Lizzie landed in a heap of unnatural angles and lay completely still. A permanent kind of still.
Sarah didn’t even bother to go check for a pulse.
Casey popped up through the open roof access hatch not two minutes later to find the Fulcrum agent he was tailing trending toward ambient temperature. It took no imagination at all to know Lizzie had sailed to her death from the helipad deck above, or to know who put her to flight. Lizzie’s neck and right arm were not at factory settings. Casey poked her with a heavy shoe and put two fingers against her carotid. Nothing.
He noticed a sparkle on her hand. The Fulcrum agent didn’t deserve to touch, much less wear Ellie’s diamond ring. Casey removed it and put it in his pocket for safe keeping. Her pistol lay on the asphalt a few feet away and Casey shoved it in his waistband.
He saw no one from his vantage point, but had a pretty good idea he wasn’t alone. “I’m comin’ up, Walker.”
Hearing on reply, Casey slogged up the stairs with an arm held up between him and the roof ledge, just in case, and paused briefly on the third stair from the top.
He’d never seen Walker look so small.
The fiercest woman he’d ever known sat with her face on her knees, hugging herself around the shins in the most compact package possible. Her shoulders vibrated with the strain of holding it together.
Sarah swallowed hard. “They took him.”
Casey lowered himself to the deck next to her. He hated this, everything about it, more than he ever imagined possible.
“I know it feels all wrong…but maybe this is for the best,” Casey said. “In fact, I promise you this is better.”
Sarah looked at Casey like she’d been slapped. “Are you that tired of selling appliances? Don’t you see how much damage they’ve done? This will destroy him! Ellie and Morgan will never recover.” Tears streamed down Walker’s face. She made no effort to hide her anguish. “What could possibly be better about having Chuck underground?”
That was reasonable, given what Walker didn’t know. Casey flicked away a few pieces of gravel next to his shoe. He was probably getting roofing tar on his khaki pants. Didn’t matter. Everything in Burbank was about to be pitched in a dumpster. Big Mike was going to need to hire a new green shirt, because it was all over. For four months, Casey rolled his eyes at everything he saw around him, but the prospect of moving on to another assignment now didn’t feel the way it should.
“Walker…they’re working toward launching a new Intersect,” Casey said carefully. “They’re scouring the ranks for volunteers. We’re months away. Weeks, maybe. We would be winding down here.”
“Why does that matter?” Sarah said, a little strident. “We could stop relying on Chuck for flashes. We could focus on removing the Intersect. He could go back to his normal life again. That’s. What. Chuck. Wanted.”
Casey shook his head. She didn’t get it. “That would take time. He’d still need protection.”
“Then we’d protect him! I would stay,” she said, her voice suddenly softer. “I would stay.”
Casey pinched the bridge of his nose. Walker, for all her icy reputation to the contrary was attached to the nerd, hard. Totally compromised. She would go on a rampage over this, and if she wasn’t careful, there would be trouble. And the general would tear him a new one. Every instinct said to get up and go deal with the Fulcrum agent downstairs and leave Walker to sort herself out. But that was the coward’s way out, and John Casey was not a coward. He spared a long, pained look at Sarah.
Man, this was gonna be awful.
“I know you would,” Casey said quietly, his voice devoid of his normal sarcasm. “But they weren’t going to allow that. Chuck drew the short straw.” Casey grimaced and looked away. A cluster of radio towers on the Hollywood hills blinked in the distance and he watched them as Sarah bored a hole in the side of his head with the intensity of her stare.
Casey signed. This might be his career, right here. “However short-sighted it is, right now they’re focused on making Intersects, not un-making them. Once they succeeded…created their little Intersect army, with real spies and not a happy help desk nerd from Burbank, they weren’t going to spend any more time, or money or personnel babysitting an obsolete piece of technology on the other side of the country,” he told her, his voice unusually tight. “This is better…because I no longer have to shoot that sweet kid in the head and walk away like that’s an acceptable loss.”
Sarah’s chest seized. She rocked forward, willing her lungs to do their job. Chuck was never going to walk away. The gravel roof bit into her knees and palms but she didn’t care, because they’d planned to terminate Chuck and she couldn’t breathe.
Sarah had burned assets, but never like this. Never someone better than anyone she’d ever known. She’d burned enemy spies, hitmen, terrorists, human traffickers, political operators who were actively abetting those kinds of people. Sometimes that meant leaving them holding the bag and reaping the natural consequences of their treachery. Sometimes they were taken away. A few times she saved their angry compatriots a bullet and did the bloody work herself, when she needed a quick exit and her mark was in the way. But no one kind and gentle and unfailingly decent. Sarah burned people who had it coming, bad actors who threatened the wellbeing of their fellow man. But not good people. Not people like Chuck.
Casey watched Walker collapse in on herself, and for the first time in more years than he’d prefer to count, his eyes misted over. Without thinking, he placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder.
She flinched and knocked it away. “You knew,” she accused him, her voice increasingly rougher and more tearful. “Every day, for months, while I got to know him. Spent time with his family. Made friends with Ellie. Listened to his worries. Held his hand. Slept in his bed.” She pushed to her feet, putting some space between them. “The whole time, you and your sarcasm and your snide comments…”
“I was keeping my distance…trying to stay objective, not that it did any good,” he admitted with a shake of his head. “Beckman reminded me at Christmas what they expected of me. I told her there had to be another way.” Casey wiped his thumb and index finger across his eyes. “She wasn’t hearing me.”
Not even the uncharacteristic sorrow Casey displayed could breach the flood of anger rolling off Sarah. “You knew for months…and you said nothing.”
“Chuck sees you, Walker. He reads you way too well. How would you have handled Chuck knowing that was coming?”
Badly, she admitted to herself. So badly.
“This assignment is different,” she said, breathing raggedly. “Chuck is different. I think…I think I’m different because of him.”
“Exactly. We only got a completely unprepared, very emotional asset this far because he looked at you and believed he could trust you, and Chuck needed to trust you. Without that trust this whole op would have gone sideways so much faster. He’d have been gone one way or another weeks ago. I know it’s not right, nothing about this is right, but what you accomplished, by not knowing, was to buy him a little more time.”
Sarah stood at the edge of the roof, staring at the dead Fulcrum operative. She killed Lizzie without a second thought. Even now, she looked down on her body without a shred of remorse.
“Would you…do you think you could have done it?” Sarah choked out.
Casey stood and brushed his hands off on his pants. “I…I don’t know. But what I do know is if I didn’t follow through, they just would have sent someone else…but so we’re clear, I hated the thought of it more than anything else I’ve ever been asked to do.”
Sarah stood with her back to him, eyes closed, processing that. “So…the bunker is the lesser of two evils,” Sarah said bitterly. “Maybe…I don’t know, maybe I can do something. Given enough time, maybe figure something out.”
Casey knew Sarah knew better. Nobody in Chuck’s situation ever left the bunker, it was a one-way trip. But if Walker had to tell herself that to get through the next few days, he wasn’t going to argue.
Casey remembered Ellie’s ring and dug it out of his pocket. “Lizzie had this.”
Sarah took it from his outstretched hand and grimaced. “Chuck asked me to talk to Ellie…he said if…if he’s supposed to be dead now…he wants me to tell Ellie something that will make it okay. Nothing I say can say will ever make this okay.”
“Walker…” Casey gaped. “You can’t. Put the ring in the apartment somewhere they’ll find it, but you gotta leave that alone.”
“You know what they’ll do. Ellie will not be quiet. The agency will plant evidence of wrongdoing or start a whisper campaign and destroy the memory of a good man just to shut her up. Ellie is my friend, Casey. I am not going to leave her to swallow whatever story the agency fabricates.”
“She’ll hate you.”
“Better she hates me than believes the government’s story, that-that Chuck is dead…or did something awful…and abandoned her to save his own skin. That’s all Chuck and Ellie have ever known, being abandoned by people who were supposed to love them. I won’t do it, Casey. If I end up just as buried as Chuck, so be it.” Sarah’s voice faded to naught, and she cleared her throat. “I’ve done so many things I’m not proud of. I’m going to do this one thing right.”
Casey observed his partner carefully. Walker was at an eleven, for sure. Heightened color, irregular breathing, pupils the size of dinner plates.
“Okay…so…how do you do it? You can’t call Ellie, can’t go to the house. There’s cameras and mics everywhere.”
Sarah laughed bitterly with tears on her lashes. “Haven’t you heard? Project Bartowski is over.”
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Stupidly long author’s note:
Some very serious threats were made to Chuck during the show, and this was a big one. If Lizzie was too late to interfere with Chuck’s transfer and Longshore flew away with Chuck at the end of Marlin, how would that gigantic detour set up what came after? Toss canon in the blender.
What might have happened to Chuck in the time between? What would it take to get Chuck back in action? Here the CIA and its officers don’t always tell the truth, and black sites aren’t necessarily nice places, no matter what Longshore told him.
For those who need to know about content, we’ll visit themes including anxiety, depression, loneliness, chemical dependance and the headspace of someone enduring ongoing physical and emotional abuse. A physical assault is described in chapter 23 by way of a secondhand description and surveillance footage, which is not gratuitous but does address specific injuries. Described, not lived through first person. I attempted to not dwell there overlong.
They all struggle and endure over time, and in the aftermath, the family that forms around Chuck, blood and not, works to make him whole and will not accept excuses or half measures in restoring him. That’s the story. It will end way better than it started.
What life can they make together after this hurt? I have kind of semi-sketched a follow up, I’m on the fence about it. What I know is this one fought me the whole way to completion and I clearly don’t need to write sad stuff. It’s not my best work, but it’s been WIP since last August and I need to kick it out the door. The next one, unrelated to Valley Downs, will be better. I have 100k of it written. It’ll be my apology for story.
I don’t use a beta, so all the mistakes are my own, typos which I will notice two seconds after I post, and particularly things I’m certain I got super wrong about the Stephen/Mary/Intersect back story. Sorry.
You can expect 60 chapters/150k words, updates 2x a week as I do final edit, unless a personal situation around here gets more untenable, and then that will take priority. I would love to hear from you as the story progresses.
Thanks for your patience and thanks for reading.