A/N: Our final chapter.

Burying Dirt

Chapter Thirty: Days to Mine and Nights to Shore

Chuck sat on the porch.

The porch of Sarah's cabin.

Alone.

The cabin where he and she first made love. "We made love." The thought made his chest feel like it would collapse. Brittle. Empty. They would never make love again.

The woman he loved was dead. Buried in Omaha.

Graham was dead too. The man responsible for the death of Chuck's parents — and of the woman he loved. Sarah, the assassin, Chuck's shooter, lover, and savior.

Chuck wanted to dig Graham up and kill him again and again and bury him.

Bury dirt. Graham was dirt. A high-rise but low-level bureaucrat with zero sense of the value of any life but his own.

Chuck thought of a line from a Robert Ludlum novel, read long ago, high school: 80% of all intelligence is a chess game played by idiots for the benefit of paranoid morons.

Bitter, nothing to make it better.

Chuck's hands shook with rage and grief. Impotent against the past, against explosion and flame and rock.

He hated that he had made that grim Hellmouth joke before they went down into Omaha. Cursed himself for cursing them all.

He talked too much.

ooOoo

He had finally had time to himself, and he had gotten Carina to tell him how to get to the cabin. He was not sure he remembered. He had other things on his mind. His wound, having slept with Sarah.

He had no idea who owned the cabin now, but it was as the three of them left it when they left with Carina three months ago. Chuck thought he could still smell Sarah on her pillow.

He had dreamt of her as he slept in their bed, alone, last night.

Alone.

Being there made being with Sarah seem so recent, and so long ago. So long. So long, Sarah. I love you. So close yet an eternity away.

He had felt alone for three months, although Ellie and Devon and Morgan — and even Carina — had tried to make him feel less alone, to make him feel better.

They were kind and sweet. But it was still so bitter.

ooOoo

The first few weeks had been an unending exercise in numbness.

He and Ellie and Devon had pieced together the story from the notebooks of Jerrod and Chuck's Dad. They had stayed hidden until it was done, afraid that Houghton would attempt to do what Graham had failed to do. Carina stayed with them to watch over them and to help.

They had run from West Virginia, all of them together, shaken and broken. Sarah had died below ground, with Graham and his men. She saved them by sacrificing herself.

Saved him. Saved Chuck. The woman who shot him had saved him again and again, the last time by paying the highest possible price.

In a small town in rural Ohio, Carina had somehow found an empty farmhouse, owners away, and they pieced Omaha together there from the notebooks and from Piranha's thumb drive. Finished, they copied all the information, and sent copies to lawyers in various places around the country, with specific instructions for the copies to be mailed to media outlets should any of various contingencies occur.

A copy was mailed anonymously to Houghton and to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The existence, distribution, and conditions of the revelation of the other copies were made clear to the SSCI. Houghton resigned two days later. Health concerns.

The SSCI never publicized the matter, but over the next few weeks, the CIA got a new director and underwent extensive internal restructuring. Graham's death and the death of the agents was reported as an accident during a routine inspection of a CIA safe house. The burial covered up. No surprise.

When they returned to Burbank, no one bothered Chuck or Ellie or Devon or Morgan. Evidently, the SSCI was hoping to let Omaha rest in piece, no reanimation.

And then a large sum of money appeared in Chuck's bank account and in Ellie's. A large sum. They were both instantly wealthy.

The money came from an account Chuck could trace to Switzerland. But the account was a numbered account; no names. Chuck bought a burner and called the Swiss bank. He gave them the account number and was immediately transferred to the bank's manager.

The manager was polite but adamant in refusing to say anything about the owner of the account. Famous, tight-lipped Swiss. But he said there was a flag attached to the account, a note to be read should anyone call, asking about a particular transfer of funds. The manager read the note: "A small recognition of your parents' massive sacrifice for their country. We have added their anonymous stars to the Memorial Wall at Langley. Tell the Piranha to stop fishing."

He did stop. He did not know if Sarah had a star or not.

Hush money, yes, but Chuck had no desire to make noise. Neither did Ellie. They had lost so much.

ooOoo

Carina went back to work in DC only to find that she had been promoted and given a generous raise.

She eventually discovered that it was the DEA agent who saw Ellie in the restaurant near the Canaan Inn who had decided that he would double-dip: he told Carina, but then he told Houghton, who told Graham.

That was how Graham found them in Omaha. Carina fired the man. She wanted to do worse but Ellie talked Carina out of it. Or Ellie hoped she had. She and Chuck were not quite sure.

ooOoo

Chuck sighed, gazing into the woods where Sarah and Carina had emerged that morning when Carina came to the cabin. He willed Sarah to walk to him again — but his will produced nothing but fresh, frustrated tears.

All these things had slipped by him while he was so sad he could hardly hold up his head. But he had refused to just go to bed and stay there, even though that was what he longed to do: to stare at the ceiling and relive his precious days with Sarah; to curse himself for losing the days they spent driving from LA to West Virginia; to be thankful for the time they had there, the stolen moment while Carina showered, the brief talk in Omaha saying I love you's face-to-face.

He refused to become comatose with grief because that would be a betrayal of her. Of her sacrifice. Sarah's. She had thought him worth dying for — he could not stop living as a result.

He quit the Buy More and despite the windfall of money applied to and interviewed with Apple. A few days later, they hired him. He moved out of Ellie and Devon's apartment and found a place in Cupertino, near Apple headquarters. A nice apartment with two bedrooms and a small backyard.

The job was good. Research and Development. He had already been promoted twice, clickety-clack. No end was in sight for his rise. He had had a personal meeting with Tim Cook just a few days ago.

He was glad of the job, excited by it — but in a distant way. His unendured grief kept everything at a distance. His thoughts and feeling slipped through his hands, lubricious, unhandsome. He could not get his life close to him, could not feel it.

He had driven to the cabin in hopes of returning to some intimacy with himself, even if it meant he would finally have to endure the grief, accept that the woman he loved was gone, and to console himself that they had, indeed, loved a lifetime's worth in just a few days. Console himself despite the fact that he felt the loss of that life so deeply; despite the fact that he felt so cheated.

He looked down at Bumby in his lap.

The worn teddy bear had been a comfort to him, a tie to the woman he had glimpsed, slowly emerging in the days he spent with Sarah, a tie to the child that woman had once been and who Chuck had glimpsed too, near the end. Agent: woman: child. All different yet somehow all one.

He did not know her whole history, of course.

Ellie had told him what Sarah told her, and it helped Chuck piece some things together, but there were gaps.

Mostly, there were gaps.

Sarah was discontinuous in his knowledge of her, fragmented. He was not sure how a little girl who could not sleep without Bumby became the CIA's top terminator, a woman of forty-nine kills.

A woman whose targeted fiftieth kill was alive because of her, seated on the porch of her cabin, cuddling her teddy bear, and missing her so overwhelmingly that his whole life, and not just his bed, seemed deserted, permanently deserted.

The sun now rose and set on Sarah, gone.

Her absence was the ground on which his whole world stood, stood shaky and bewildering and so gray.

He was excommunicated from himself.

He straightened Bumby's crooked, smudged tie and smiled back at Bumby's red-felt grin. Chuck's smile was red too — but not felt.

Sarah!

Sarah did not die.

Outran the fireball, gouged leg and all, bruised and battered. Swung herself into the crematory, feet first, the gauge as a handle. Had not planned it.

Heard Graham's word, 'cremated' in her head as she ran. Made it. Shut the door, holding it closed. As much as she could. The fireball, the sun, supernova, a worlds-consuming blast of heat.

Stunned Sarah.

Burned her fingers, the immediate searing heat of the metal. Shrugged off her backpack in the small space, rolled over. Seconds later in an oven, cooking — baking — alive. The Brazen Bull of Phalaris. Where did I hear that?

Looked up in the darkness.

She saw still-darker darkness. A chimney. The chimney!

The ground shook again. The chimney could collapse. Maybe it had, further up.

But she was short of breath, sweating. The room around her, around the crematory, burning. Must be. Temperature climbing.

She had to too. Climb. Chimney small. Backpack shoved up first, Sarah followed. Stretching her arms above her head, pushing, her feet. Serpentined into the hole.

Claustrophobia, not normally a problem but she could take no deep, full breath. Wedging herself upward, cooler, but tighter. Every breath felt too shallow, like the last. Dizzy.

Escape — only to die in the gorge of an earthen tunnel. No.

Up, suffocating, up. Up.

Tunnel not completely vertical, diagonal. Backpack first. Up, blacking out. Up.

Up…

Out. Out!

Fresh, cool air. Gulping it down like cold water. All thirst, all suffocation. Air!

Out.

Flat on her back among pine trees. Diamonds of blue through the needles. Sky, still there, not falling.

Chuck, I'm alive!

Maybe that was how Stephen and Mary and Trina Jerrod got out, the disc and notebooks dropped as they escaped...

Rose to her feet, stumbled. Stopped. Returned. Grabbed the backpack, slung it on.

Chuck.

She ran. Her native sense of direction, unerring, compass-like. Late afternoon. Long shadows of pines. Her pants leg bloody. Hands, burned, scratched by thorns.

Edge of the clearing. The door to Omaha. Smoke and dust rising into the air.

Stopped.

Saw them, her heart leaped. Up, almost out of her chest. Up. Chuck, Ellie, Devon, Morgan, Carina — all safe. Morgan sitting on the ground, shaking his head, Ellie caring for him.

Chuck was staring down into the rubble, waving the smoke and dust away. Devon was holding him in place. Chuck was weeping.

Started to step into the clearing, to wave. I'm alive! She had done it. Saved him. Saved Chuck. Everyone. Even herself.

Herself. Herself? Wasn't she beyond salvage, the assassin?

Now, what? — Offer Chuck the assassin, the woman with 49 target kills and who knew how many others? Ryker, the two other agents from the hospital. The guards of targets. Possible collateral damage, foreseen even if unintended. Sarah trailed so many bodies.

But Frost...

Frost had chosen Stephen, been chosen by him.

She had not shot him, intended to kill him, been sent to kill him. Frost had not been Stephen's assassin. They had not had that to come back from. Chuck had forgiven Sarah, she felt it in his embrace in the motel bed, his words in Omaha, but how could he forget?

How could she?

How could she forgive herself?

A few days with a good man. She had had them.

Enough.

She had been prepared to die, to give him up so that he could go on. What was different now, even if she was alive?

He could go on, now, without her. Unencumbered by her past, the trailing corpses.

She stayed hidden. Sarah did. Eyes filling with tears

Stood at the edge of the clearing, in the brush. Watched as the group gathered themselves up, headed down the overgrown road. Chuck stumbling, Carina rubbing his arm. Devon, one arm around Ellie, the other steadying Morgan.

Watched until they disappeared. Then started, slowly, making sure she was not seen. Aching, her injuries, made it easy to go slow. Aching, her heart.

Tears blinded her as she stumbled along.

They were gone when she got to where the car had been parked, Chuck was gone.

Everyone.

Graham's large, heavy sedan, black, was there, and a Jeep, unlocked. The agents'.

Backpack in the Jeep, passenger seat. Took the driver's seat. Hotwired it and drove away.

She had kept Chuck alive. Now she would give him his life. Free of a former killer. No place in his life, no matter how much she desired it.

Judgment Day. Come and gone. Sentence first, verdict afterward.

Drove to the storage facility. Took all the money, IDs, her box that had housed Bumby. Parked the Jeep and rented a car. Drove.

Drove.

Aching and broken and broken-hearted, drove to Maine, the remote coast. Found a cabin to rent, bought supplies, and settled in, alone. Tears and the cold, grey ocean. Rocky beaches.

Days to mine and nights to shore.

The cold, grey ocean. And tears.

ooOoo

Days later, tears finally slowing, ebbing, after yet another of countless long walks, sweatered but cold, thinking and feeling, Sarah opened the backpack.

Took out the picture of Frost and her family. The Bartowskis. Glass broken.

The picture cut and stabbed. Carefully, full of care, she took it from the frame, taped it back together. Stood it on the mantle over the fireplace in the cabin. Sat in a rickety rocker and looked at it. Was looked at by it.

Ruminated.

Frost. Seemed to stare back at Sarah. "Don't you love my son? — Then love my son."

Hours of staring, two ways. Until the daylight was gone, dusk gray, and darkness stole the picture from her. Finally realized: she wounded Chuck again. Leaving him to mistaken grief.

The picture haunted her.

Stared at her. She stared back. Frost did. Sarah did.

More days past. Weeks.

Still, Frost stared. Finally, Sarah stood before the picture and spoke.

"I love your son, Mary."

— Then go back to him and make a life together. I did it with Stephen.

— Can I go back and face him, make things right even though I left?

She missed him so much that her entire body was a toothache. No relief.

She decided to go back. Face Chuck.

Finally, face the future.

But she was afraid. Before the future had been...blank.

Now, she knew what she wanted, and so knew what she might not have.

ooOoo

The next morning she was sick. Vomited. Vomited again. But it passed.

Tired. Listless. Even more depressed, impossible. Her mood, uncontrollable. More tears, sudden exhaustion. Everything smelled wrong, tasted wrong.

She was packed and ready to leave, but she did not want to start the journey sick, fly while so nauseated. She stayed another day and then another, sick each morning, into the afternoon. She tried not to think about why.

To distract herself, she took Frost's video log and put it in the cabin's VCR.

She sat and watched a little each day, eating saltines.

The video log was all business at first, Frost curt and factual. But later, it became more personal. Spoke of Stephen, of Chuck and Ellie. Sarah saw the agent become the wife become the mother.

And then, this:

"I don't know if Stephen and I will ever get out of here. Maybe we don't deserve to. Yes, we've been coerced, but what we've been coerced to do…" Frost stopped, swallowed. Steeled herself. "We've done it to keep our children safe. Our children. My husband…" She stopped again, smiled, clearly slipping into memory.

"...There was a time I was sure I didn't deserve a man like Stephen. The things I had done. The things I did to myself so that I could do them...When I met him, spent time with him, my world began to change. I changed — but so did the whole, wide world. From sad to happy. A new world. From gauntlet to...Garden." Her mouth crooked up at her imagery, apparently unexpected by her.

"And I loved it, I loved him, so much. And it terrified me. I was afraid, afraid I would be...the serpent in Stephen's Garden. Cause him to fall. Take all that...goodness from him. But then one day he took my hand, and slipped a ring on my finger," tears on Frost, "...and he told me, told me that the misery and the glory of being human was that who we've been never settles who we are, that we are cursed and blessed always to be works-in-progress, projects.

"And then he asked me to be his wife. To be a work-in-progress with him, to work together with him, a joint project. — And what could I say to that but yes?"

Sarah stood and left the cabin. She got in the car and drove to the small town nearby. She bought a pregnancy test and went back. Took it.

Yes.

Her CIA birth-control implant had failed. She had forgotten that it was time to replace it. It had mattered so little for so long. And then in all the fragmented confusion after Puerto Alegre, it had not crossed her mind.

Yes.

Life, I'm carrying a life. Chuck's and mine. Ours.

She picked up her packed suitcase right then and drove to the airport. Left the cabin and put her earlier decision into action.

ooOoo

In Burbank, she drove to Chuck's apartment. Sick with nerves, she knocked. Ellie opened the door and went white. Trembled. Then she threw herself around Sarah, hugging her.

Hugging her. And hugging her. Sarah hugging back.

They went inside. Sarah asked to see Chuck, but Ellie told her he had gone to Sarah's cabin, that he had decided to spend a few days there.

Ellie kept hugging her, crying, as if unsure she was real and as if only bodily contact could prove that she was. Sarah was overwhelmed. She cried too. For a while, they did not talk, they just wept together.

And then they had a long talk. Sarah told Ellie what had happened and where she had been. What she had been thinking and feeling. But she kept the pregnancy to herself. Ellie was the first to know Sarah was still alive, but Chuck would be the first to know about the baby.

Sarah got up to leave. She looked at Ellie. "Will he forgive me for letting him think I was dead, Ellie?" Will he want me, our child?

"You shot him and he forgave you. Go, find him, tell him his love is alive. He'll understand. All he wants is a life with you. A future and a family. — And after you tell him and you two...celebrate, then I want you both to come back here as soon as you can, so we can all celebrate your resurrection properly!"

Ellie hugged her once more at the door and Sarah left. She walked to her rental car.

Arise, walk, in newness of life.

ooOoo

Sarah saw Chuck seated on the porch. Her heart raced.

She saw Bumby in his lap. His cheeks were wet; he wiped them with the back of his hand. He looked unseeingly in her direction.

She stepped out from behind the cover.

He saw her.

He leaped from the chair and ran to her. Bumby in his hand. She opened her arms and Chuck enveloped her in his long arms. So long.

He whispered her name. "Sarah!" Over and over, Sarah. They held each other for a long time, so long, but not enough. Chuck stepped back and looked at her.

"I wanted to believe but it was too hard. I didn't see how..."

"The crematory. It had a chimney. I crawled up and out."

Chuck wiped his eyes again, nodding. "But you didn't come to me…"

"No, Chuck. I...thought it would be better for you if I was not in your life."

"Did I ever say that?"

She reached up and cupped his cheek. "No, you never said that. I just...believed it, or believed that I believed it. And now I don't."

He hugged her again and then kissed her senseless.

She was dizzy when they parted. "I love you, Chuck. I'm sorry about the past few months. I guess maybe I needed the time, to be sure, to be sure that...old life was behind me...and that I was ready for a new one." She looked down, then up. "With you?"

"Is that a proposal, Miss Walker?"

It was, though she had not planned it or quite intended it. Sarah grinned, the tension of the past few months flowing out of her, into the ground and away, ripples toward the horizon. She heard birdsong. Felt the breeze. The rustle of the tree leaves. Chuck was beaming, waiting.

That smile, that really nice smile.

"Well, it's still Sarah, Chuck, but right now it's Miss Watson. Sarah Watson."

"I don't care what my last name is, as long as it's yours too, Sarah."

She laughed. "Why, Mr. Bartowski, is that a yes?"

He nodded. He held Bumby out to her. "I need a wife and Bumby here, he needs a mother."

Sarah gave him a deliberately mysterious smile, taking the teddy bear and cuddling it to her. "About that — I have a secret I need to tell you."

A flash of anxiety. "A secret?"

"Don't freak out, Chuck, this one is a good one."

Zero. The assassin.

One. Sarah.

Two. Chuck and Sarah.

Three. Chuck and Sarah — and a little girl.

The End

Burying Dirt

A/N: And that's that.

I'm done with stories for a while. I have a couple of Chuck-related non-fiction projects to finish up. I mentioned them yesterday on the Chuck Fanfic FaceBook page.

I often write with a guitar in my lap. As I wrote this story, I played and replayed David Gray's song, "The Mystery of Love". It is the song of this story.

Thanks for reading! I'd enjoy knowing your thoughts here at the end. See you around!