Archive of Our Own

{buy the truth, sell a lie}
title: {buy the truth, sell a lie}
fandom: Chuck
summary: She had to make herself believe in never. (Sarah walks through a few key moments of 2x18, then several other moments that change her perspective on things between her and Chuck.)
character(s)/pairing(s): Sarah, Chuck/Sarah
genre: Angst/Romance
rating: T
note: Dedicated to the awesome torigates . Major props to mini_miss  for the lyrics she gave me (quite a handful of lyrics), & it may not be clear where I used what lyrics, but the influence is there (esp. the lyrics to "Modern Myth"). Thank you! I spun the lyrics into my own meaning, & thought it worked as a title in that way, so we'll see if it actually does! Okay Tori, here goes my fic. Enjoy. ;)~*~
She had to make herself believe in never.

The never say never phrase had to fade away and cease to exist, just so she could give herself the peace of saying never and meaning it, even though technically she wanted the never to be an always (not that she could or would ever admit this). But, those dreams just hurt and above all, drove her to brink of insanity with the infinite “ifs” and  “maybes”.  So instead, she had to go with forcing herself to believe that said “ifs” and “maybes” would never come to actual realizations.

“You’ll never have that,” is what she told herself (on an all too constant basis), and that was that--case closed.

Except that sometimes, the never would not work. Despite all the drilling and all of the daily reminders, the part of her she suppressed so well the majority of her life, made it past the line of “never” and went “possibly”. The same part of her that wanted to tell him goodbye when her services were terminated.

*

She walked head above shoulders, arms at her side, head held high, stony smile. The look of being mighty high. So untouchable. Bullets flying around her. Kicks landing on, not pushing against, her ribcage. Blood running from her nose, not falling down her lips. It was all a lie. A façade. An act. But simple and easy and she never really thought twice about any of it because it was her life.

But Chuck would walk beside her, bump into her side, walk backwards as he spoke to her. He would make her laugh, and she was done thinking as she walked. And when they stopped (got to their destination or per chance were attacked by some enemy or another), she would realize that their walk together was just that - a walk. It just was. A life like any other’s.

She couldn’t count it on her hands and toes put together - she couldn’t account for how much she would miss such things (like walking with Chuck) on just her hands and feet. She would miss it an infinite amount that would cause her life to surreally pass on forever if she had to leave that behind.

And realizing that, she put pen to paper, hardly wrote a lot or even enough, but she wrote him a letter, put it in an envelope, and sealed it.

*

She ripped the sealed envelope between her fingers, letter still inside, listened to the paper rip, felt the formidable words painted on the paper canvas break apart so easily (the paper, not the words). And when the letter and envelope with the name of Chuck strewn across it being ripped wasn’t enough, she threw it into her fireplace, watched it all turn to dust.

Her heart did this thing she was getting accustomed to, but not in the “okay, I know this feeling and it’s getting easier to let ride out” but rather in the “God, is it just me, or does this feel stronger - hurt more - than the last time?” way. Her heart did this thing where it felt like it was being squeezed for ten million seconds, and for a brief two seconds, it felt like it was released and was flying outside the confines of her chest, and in the last stage it was being clutched until it finally ended (for the time being). Most times she hated when her heart did that thing. Rarely did it feel nice to finally feel that alive.

It always had to do with Chuck.

*

Three, maybe two seconds, more and their lips would have met. The thought haunted her to sleep, causing her to readjust her pillow several times as she turned every which way in bed. It was the thought that she was no longer terminated--the fact that she was still Chuck’s handler and she wouldn’t be leaving him or this life behind that finally allowed for her to fall asleep.

*

One day, extraordinary like every day of the past year had been, extraordinary like every day until he’s rid of the Intersect in his head, amidst his chaos that was what mattered, he took her hand in his when her father was being shoved into an ultra-secure truck, two field agents going in behind him, guns holstered at their sides.

He took her left hand with his right hand, didn’t say anything even though her breathing was hardening and her hands were ice cold. He took her left hand, squeezed it, rubbed her hand with strokes of his thumb, and waited until the truck closed with her father inside to turn to her. He looked at her face, he saw the lone tear falling from her eye down her cheek, and with the thumb of his right hand, he wiped at it. He caught her gaze, smiled warmly, but sadly, and then enveloped her. He held her until her breathing softened and she grew warm.

*

Four days after her father’s arrest, it was business as usual. Were it a family member of Chuck’s who had been arrested, or God forbid, had died, it would still be business as usual, just less work and less running around.

And she would be there for him, trying to make him feel better, or at least making the “saving the world” thing easier for however many hours possible. It was her job. She had told Beckman this, as well as Casey, Bryce, Jill, and at this point, altogether 17 people she’d told that she went to the lengths she did for Chuck because it was her job. Twelve of these people knew better, and nine of these people told her that they knew better. She knew she was just pretending it was all about the job as well.

But it wasn’t Chuck’s job to do this. To hold her hand, to tell her a few words about him knowing how it sucked and how words hardly ever helped, to sit beside her when the day grew long and she wasn’t shooting so all she could do was sit while trying not to cry because all that ran through her mind was “how long will my father be safe?” or “how long until my dad figures out a way to run away, again?”. It wasn’t his job to comfort her or to tell Casey to back off when he was being the least sensitive person in the world.

He wasn’t pretending either. He wanted to do it, he wanted to care for her. That need and want she understood, and at least on that, they were able to stand together on without pretending, and it was that which comforted her when nothing else did.

*

Ten o’ clock struck and except for a pair of friends on the opposite end of the restaurant, the waiter, and the cook, they were alone.

They had no intention of finishing the food, because she had only taken him into the Denny’s because his sister had nearly died from a gunshot wound which she would always have to believe was from a robbery gone wrong when it in fact was from a shot intended for him.

She took him into the Denny’s, she ordered the first two items on the menu for him and her, and they poked at the food awhile before giving up and sitting still for minutes. He on one side of the booth, she on the other, they sat, staring at the walls opposite to them, until Chuck (seven minutes after not speaking or moving) pushed himself out of his seat and went to sit beside her.

She stared up at him, offering a small smile, and miraculously, he was able to smile in return - and it was a real smile (she had grown to learn what each smile or fake smile of his meant). She felt herself breathe, really breathe, because her uneasiness depended on his.

“I love you,” he said, and that heart thing of hers? It happened again, but it was so different because the flying feeling outlasted the squeezing feeling, and she knew that seconds would follow this moment, and she could seize them or let them pass her by, which would result in her laying awake at night thinking “I could have used those seconds to…”.

So she stopped thinking. She reached her hand up to his neck, brushed the back of his hair with her fingers, and she leaned in.

Their lips met, and all she felt was the skin of his lips and her heart flying outside the confines of its walls.

*

Thirty-two minutes later, she’d said the words “I can’t” and she’d allowed for him to stifle such protests with his lips against her own lips and with his hands brushing up against her stomach.

How they got back to her place is something she’ll never be able to remember. That and the protests and the hesitation and doubt will be the small flashes lost in the bigger picture of them letting themselves fall into their world of always that they ever so rarely divulged in.

*

She can tell you how many seconds their first kiss was--how long their second one was. She can tell you how many seconds their first kiss after his first “I love you” was, just like she can tell you how many hours they spent in her bedroom after that particular first kiss. There are a dozen or other so things she can perfectly account for since meeting Chuck, and a dozen or other she simply cannot, but every moment is built inside of her like a mechanism that’s laid out the foundation of that which she knows above all else--she loves him.

None of this she will tell anyone, not even Chuck. But of those things she knows, one of them is that Chuck is very well aware of all of the above, and because he understands, he’ll only nestle their truths in their rare, but true times.