Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 8

2:35 P.M.

February 15th, 2008

The TARDIS

Mulholland Dr. & Laurel Canyon Blvd.

Duchy of Los Angeles, California Province

Imperial States of America

Sarah studied the Doctor for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “So I have to terminate the discrepancy. What exactly does that mean?”

“Quite simple, really,” the Doctor replied, almost flippantly. “You just have to kill Chuck Bartowski.”

Sarah’s eyes went wide. She tried to form words, but words wouldn’t come. She just stood there, opening and closing her mouth for a moment, before she was finally able to form one solitary word.

“WHAT?!”

The Doctor looked at her curiously. “I thought I was pretty clear there,” he said. “It’s not a confusing issue.”

Sarah held her hands up. “Just stop. You don’t understand.” She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “In my reality, Chuck is a national security asset. I’m his handler.”

She took a breath. “And his friend. I can’t just kill him.”

“But it’s not him,” the Doctor said. “It’s Emperor Charles Bzechewski.”

“Yeah, but, but,” Sarah held up her hands, “you yourself said that when I come in contact with people and places that they’re going to start to turn into what they are in my reality. What if that happens to Chuck? What if he turns into MY Chuck, and then I still have to put a bullet in him? How do you expect me to do that?”

“It’s not like it’s a huge deal,” the Doctor protested. “You shoot him, it terminates the discrepancy, the timeline goes back to the way it should be, and when time corrects itself, it’ll correct itself all the way back to when Reinette touched me. It’ll be like nothing happened.”

“So Chuck will still be alive then, back to normal.”

The Doctor’s head bobbled around on his shoulders a bit. “Yeah, um, probably.”

Sarah blew out her breath in disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘probably’?”

The Doctor started almost speaking with his hands. “You see,” he began, “time… it’s not… it’s not linear, like people seem to think. It’s like it’s this big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… um… stuff.”

Sarah stared at the Doctor. “Are you sure you’re ‘brilliant’?” she asked, disgust laced in her voice.

“Well, I just… you know, I just…”

“Because you’re starting to sound like a total FUCKING IDIOT,” Sarah grated, beginning to lose it. She grabbed the Doctor by his lapels and pushed him against the wall.

“Let me tell you something, Time Lord,” she rasped. “I’ll do what I have to. I’ll kill Chuck Bartowski to correct time.”

Sarah released his collar. “But so help me,” she growled, “when time corrects itself, if he isn’t alive, I will find you, and I will END YOU.”

---

Charles Bartowski stared at the monitor. “What do we know, General?”

General Beckman looked back at him. “Not much, your Excellency,” she replied. “We’ve got these anomalies occurring worldwide, but they are mostly centered around Los Angeles.”

She stopped for a moment. “However, there are some very disturbing ones occurring on the East Coast. Washington –“

She paused, and then shook her head. “Washington D.C. keeps appearing and disappearing on the former site of the city. People are appearing. There have been sightings of what appear to be a Presidential convoy with old United States flags traveling through Texas.

“There’s one more thing, which, sir, I cannot emphasize enough that this is an anomaly, and you can’t concern yourself with it,” General Beckman said.

Bartowski raised his eyebrow. “What?”

General Beckman closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “There have been intermittent sightings of… well, of Bryce Larkin around the OSS complex.”

“WHAT?!” Bartowski bellowed. He jolted upward, knocking his chair over. “HE’S FUCKING DEAD!”

“I know that, sir,” General Beckman replied, seeming to steel herself in her chair.

Bartowski gathered himself for a moment, closing his eyes and pointing a finger at the computer. “Find him. Take care of him.”

General Beckman blew out a frustrated sigh. “We’ll do what we can, sir, but given that he just seems to come and go at random times, I can’t make any guarantees.”

“Take care of the situation, General. I would say you can consider it a major career opportunity.”

And with that veiled threat, Bartowski closed the link. He picked up his chair, sat down, and exhaled slowly.

“Shit.”

---

Sarah and the Doctor were going over the infiltration plan – the plan on how Sarah was going to get into City Hall, and terminate Charles Bartowski. The TARDIS had projected a 3D model of City Hall in thin air, and it cut away layers with each maneuver, taking them deeper into the building.

They were concentrating so intently on what they were doing that they both almost jumped through the ceiling when somebody knocked on the door.

“What the hell?” Sarah said.

“I don’t know!” the Doctor whispered. “It’s impossible for anybody to know we’re here!”

Sarah drew her gun and flipped the safety off, moving to the door as the Doctor moved around the console to check the monitor. He looked at the screen, and then looked up in disbelief. “It’s Colonel John Casey. Charles Bartowski’s right-hand man.”

Lifting her gun so that it would be leveled at Casey’s forehead when she opened the door, Sarah reached out and slowly turned the knob. The door swung open –

And registering absolutely no surprise when he saw the gun pointed at him, Casey said the last words that Sarah expected to come out of his mouth.

“Hello, Walker. Put the gun down and let me in.”

Sarah’s eyes went wide with shock as she did just that. Casey stepped around her, into the interior.

“Well, what DO you know,” he grumbled. “A bona fide TARDIS.”

Then he saw who was standing at the console. “Hello, Doctor. Fancy seeing you here.”

“John,” the Doctor replied laconically, with nothing more than a nod.

“Wait… wait!” Sarah nearly shouted, shaking her head. “How do you know each other… and how are you the Casey I know?”

“Well, I met the Doctor a few years back. He was causing trouble in San Francisco, and I had to straighten him out a bit.”

“The MASTER was causing trouble,” the Doctor protested. “I was trying to stop him!”

“How, by shutting down the atomic clock?” Casey sneered. “Give me a break. You were a national security threat, and if you hadn’t left when you did… well, let’s just say there likely would’ve been trouble.”

The Doctor grumbled something under his breath that Sarah didn’t quite make out but sounded a whole lot like fucking savage. “And as for you, Agent Walker,” Casey continued, “you may have noticed that there’s a lot of things around here shifting between one appearance and another.”

“Uh, yeah,” she replied. “I’m, um, apparently responsible for it.”

“Well, that’s fantastic,” Casey said sarcastically. “You see, I apparently shifted to being Major John Casey – the one that knows you – and instead of shifting back, like everything else is doing, I got stuck. There were reports of somebody who matched your description being near the anomalies, so I tried to track you, and lo and behold – here you are!”

“Here I – wait a second. Track me? How?”

“Every set of earrings you have has GPS tracking devices on them,” Casey smirked. “I’ve been able to track you everywhere you go since the day we met.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch sometimes, John,” Sarah grumped. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

“Sticks and stones, Walker,” Casey replied. “Now, can I assume that the two of you have been here cooking up some plan to correct all these issues?”

“Yes indeed we have, Major Casey,” the Doctor spoke up from the other side of the TARDIS. “Seems we have a time paradox on our hands. It’s simple enough to fix, really – just have to terminate the discrepancy.”

“’Terminate the discrepancy’? What the hell does that mean?”

Sarah sighed deeply. “It means… well, it means I have to kill Chuck.”

Casey cocked his head and looked at her a moment. “If that causes time to correct itself, will he still exist, as his normal self, where we’re supposed to be?”

“Probably,” Sarah replied.

“Ninety percent probability,” the Doctor interjected. “Most likely.”

“I like those odds,” Casey said, his face breaking into a smile. “And heck, it’ll be therapeutic. There’s been more than one time I’ve wanted to –“

“God DAMN it, Casey,” Sarah snapped at him. “You really ARE a son of a bitch sometimes.”

“Oh, come ON, Walker,” Casey groaned. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. You have totally lost the ability to separate your professionalism from your personal feelings. It’s almost sad, really – you came so highly recommended, and yet some twenty-seven year old nerd has turned you into a shell of an agent.”

Sarah didn’t say anything. She just looked at the floor. Silence filled the TARDIS for a moment.

Finally, the Doctor spoke. “If I may interrupt this awkward silence,” he began, “there’s still a mission that needs to be carried out.”

“Like I said,” Casey replied, “I’m happy to help out.”

“Well… it’d be great if you could help Sarah get inside City Hall,” the Doctor said, “but in the end… well, you’re not technically from her timeline.

“In order for this to work… she has to be the one to pull the trigger.”

Chuck vs. the Pie-Maker, Chapter 6

I'd like to apologize for the fact that it's been three weeks since the last time I updated this story... my life's been a little nuts lately, and quite honestly, working in Phoenix in the hospitality industry right now is a little insane, what with the Superbowl coming up here this coming weekend.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and as always, reviews are welcome!

---

As the morning continued forward, across town from where the intelligence agent sat in a hotel, her mind adrift in a sea of confusion, two women were preparing to begin the day at the Pie Hole.

Charlotte Charles and Olive Snook, having bonded over their late night mischief at Bitter Sweets, quite possibly worked better together in the kitchen than any other two pie makers in the history of pie making. Of course, it might be difficult to find any well-known pie making duos, but that fact remains irrelevant in the face of such extraordinary camaraderie.

Of course, the bond had only been strengthened by Ned’s truly insensitive way of revealing his deepest secret to Chuck. Olive had harbored Chuck after she discovered the true nature of her father’s death, and had, in fact, grown warmer to Chuck as of late than she was to Ned.

None of this mattered, however, to the two armed bastards who were about to come bursting through the door of the Pie Hole…

Chuck had just finished rolling out a large sheet of pie dough, and Olive was preparing the fruit filling for the pie, when the front doors of the Pie Hole crashed open. Two men burst in, guns in their hands.

“Don’t move!” one of them yelled, seeming to try to fake a Manchester accent. “You’re surrounded by armed bastards!”

The two women looked up at the men, a look of determination crossing Chuck’s face and one of disbelief crossing Olive’s. “My God,” Olive said, “I really hope that wasn’t supposed to be your Gene Hunt impression, because if so, let me tell you something – you’ve got NOTHING on Philip Glenister, boyo.”

The man looked at her, confusion crossing his face. “What the hell are you gibbering on about, tiny?”

Rage flashed across Olive’s face. “Don’t call me tiny, bitch,” she snarled, a large knife seemingly appearing out of nowhere in her hand.

“Drop the knife, TINY,” he replied, a caustic laugh tinging his voice.

The unmistakable ratchet of a pump shotgun interrupted his concentration. “I think she can hold onto her knife all she wants,” Chuck informed them, the shotgun held in her very steady hands.

The eyes of the two men from Fulcrum went very wide as they put their hands in the air, weapons clattering to the floor. “Good,” Chuck said. “Now, step toward the counter.”

“Don’t listen to her,” came a male voice from behind them. The two women whirled to see Frank Mullins approaching them from behind, a gun in each hand, aimed at their foreheads.

“Dammit,” Chuck breathed. “And I was doing so good.”

“Shotgun, knife on the counter,” Mullins said. As Chuck and Olive complied, the two Fulcrum men known as Two and Six retrieved their weapons and trained them on the women once more.

Now, if one thing had become abundantly clear to Charlotte Charles in the past few months, it was that the Pie Maker had absolutely disastrous timing in just about every aspect of his life. That had not changed for this morning, as she saw him come staggering through the kitchen, sleep still filling his eyes. Her attempts to communicate with her eyes that Ned should disappear as quickly as possible were, unfortunately, an utter failure.

“Whas goin’ on here?” Ned slurred as he came through the kitchen.

Mullins whirled, aiming both guns at Ned. Ned’s eyes went wide, sleep immediately banished, and his hands flew up in the air.

“Perhaps… I don’t want to know?” Ned’s voice quavered as he began to back slowly away – toward the shotgun mounted in the pantry. The shotgun that he wasn’t even sure would work – it had been placed there when he opened the Pie Hole, never removed, never cleaned.

“Don’t move another inch, pie-boy,” Mullins snapped.

The front door crashed open again. “What the hell?!” The voice of Emerson Cod boomed through the bakery as he grabbed for his gun. Two, turning quickly to face Emerson, squeezed off a pair of shots, the bullets hitting Emerson in his right shoulder and sending him crashing to the ground.

“CEASE FIRE!” Mullins yelled. “STOP SHOOTING!”

Mullins turned back to face Ned again. “Here’s the deal, my pie-making friend,” he sneered caustically. “We’re going to take Ms. Charles and Ms. Snook for a little ride. If you want to ever see them again, you’re going to call up Agents Bartowski, Casey, and Walker, and convince them to turn the Intersect over to us.”

He paused, looking briefly at Emerson. “You might want to see about getting your pal there patched up, but you’ll have to do it in a manner that doesn’t involve calling 911. I have a man nearby monitoring all phone calls – yes, that’s both landlines and cell phones – in a one mile radius. If he detects you calling anybody OTHER than one of the three agents I just named, we will kill these two.”

“I’ve been dead before,” Chuck said flippantly, but Olive’s face went pale, her eyes went wide, and then she crashed to the floor. Mullins rolled his eyes.

“Pick her up,” he muttered. Six moved quickly to comply, and Mullins moved forward, grabbing Chuck’s arm.

“Remember what I said,” Mullins called as the Fulcrum men exited the Pie Hole, Chuck in his tow and Olive tossed over Six’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “No calls to anybody but Bartowski, Casey, or Walker, or these two will be as thoroughly cooked as one of your delectable pies.”

Ned watched helplessly as Chuck was shoved into the car waiting at the curb, and Olive was unceremoniously dumped into the trunk. As the car pulled away from the curb, Emerson came to and struggled to a sitting position.

“Ow! Motherf-“ Emerson’s cry of pain was cut off by Ned as he came around the end of the counter.

“Emerson, they’ve taken Chuck and Olive. They said they’re going to kill them.”

Emerson raised an eyebrow. “Is this supposed to inspire feelings of regret or sadness within me?”

Ned gave him a filthy look. “Oh, alright, you big baby,” Emerson groaned. “First things first. I got two bullets in me. Can we possibly get me to a hospital?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ned muttered.

Emerson Cod, private investigator and bullet receptacle, was loaded very carefully into Ned’s Mercedes-Benz. As Ned drove, he dialed the Days Inn, asking for John Casey. He quickly explained the situation to Major Casey, whose voice indicated nothing but that he had just woken. With the promise to get back to Ned as soon as he had briefed the other two, Casey disconnected.

As Chuck Bartowski exited the bathroom, a vicious pounding sounded on the hotel room door. It so startled him that he dropped his towel, leaving himself naked, just as Sarah turned to the door in response to the pounding.

Sarah and Chuck made eye contact, Chuck realizing that he was naked as the day he was born. They both turned bright red, Sarah’s mouth forming a soundless “Oh, my,” as the thoroughly embarrassed Chuck dove back into the bathroom, the door slamming behind him.

Sarah took a moment to compose herself before answering the door. John Casey burst in like a hurricane on steroids.

“Where’s Bartowski?” he demanded.

“In here.”

“Well, get your skinny little chicken neck out here!” Casey ordered him.

“I’m kind of naked, and all my clothes are out there,” Chuck replied. “As is my towel.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Casey muttered, rolling his eyes. He bent down, picked up Chuck’s towel, opened the bathroom door, and threw the towel in Chuck’s general direction, before slamming the door shut again.

He then turned his attention to Sarah. “And exactly what was he doing out here naked, Agent Walker?”

Sarah gave him what could only be described as a “LOOK”. With an exasperated sigh, she said, “He had just stepped out of the bathroom, in the towel, and when you attempted to reshape the door with your fist, he got startled and dropped the towel.”

“Suuuure,” Casey smirked lecherously. “You positive that was all that was going on?”

Sarah sighed, and from within the bathroom, they heard Chuck faintly mutter, “Only in my wildest dreams.”

Sarah’s face turned bright red again, and Casey’s smile grew larger, as he informed Chuck, “We can hear you out here, Chuckles.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment, as Sarah retreated to the other side of the room. Finally, Casey said, “We need to get a move on, Chuck. I just got a call from Ned – apparently, Fulcrum has abducted Charlotte Charles and Olive Snook, and they want the Intersect in return.”

“They can’t have the Intersect!” Chuck called back.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Casey snarked. “I was more thinking we find them and get the women back, yes?”

“Okay, fine,” Chuck replied. “But, could, uh, you and Sarah wait outside for a moment? I need to get dressed.”

Casey sighed. “Alright. Walker and I will be outside.”

Sarah stood silently, and walked to the door. Opening it, she stepped out into the hallway, and then her face took on a look of surprise as Casey slammed it back closed behind her, an evil smile growing on his face.

Hearing the door close, Chuck opened the bathroom door, and stepped out.

“Ah, the Intersect, in all its glory,” Casey chuckled.

Chuck whirled round, covering himself, his eyes gone wide. “You’re insane!” he shouted. “Get out! What the hell is wrong with you?! Get the fuck out!”

Laughing, Casey opened the door, and stepped out in the hallway, to be met with a glare of death from Sarah Walker.

“You really are an ass, you know that?” she said angrily.

Casey cocked his head, a smirk on his face. “All in a day’s work for the NSA.”

Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 7

8:15 A.M.

February 15th, 2008

Banc Français Building

Duchy of Los Angeles, California Province

Imperial States of America

Sarah couldn’t breathe. The image of Chuck Bartowski, dressed in a jet black suit, speaking to the masses from before City Hall – it had stunned her.

She tried to breathe. She sucked in quick gulps of oxygen, but before she realized it, she had caused herself to start hyper-ventilating.

The Doctor’s eyes went wide with alarm. “Sarah!” he said, concerned. “Sarah! Maybe you should sit down!”

And so she did. After a moment, she regained her breath, as Chuck –

NO! she thought to herself. HE is NOT Chuck!

As the version of Charles Bartowski in this reality droned on in the background, her breath returned. However, when she looked back up at the screen, she was in for another shock.

“Oh God,” she moaned, recognizing John Casey standing behind Chuck and to his right. “Not Casey, too.”

“You recognize him?” the Doctor asked, his voice slightly incredulous.

Sarah sighed. “He’s my partner, assigned to me from the NSA.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “REA-lly,” he said. “You see, here, he’s Chuck Bartowski’s right-hand man.”

Sarah’s eyebrows arched as well. “How the hell did that happen?”

“Well,” the Doctor replied, “about a year ago, he uncovered a leak in the OSS. Turns out, there was a renegade agent inside who was trying to destroy a super-computer that contained all of the ISA’s intelligence secrets. It was called –“

“- the Intersect,” Sarah completed, shaking her head. “And the agent’s name, it was Bryce Larkin, wasn’t it?”

The Doctor nodded slowly. “How exactly do you know all this?”

Sarah sighed. “In my timeline – OUR timeline – Bryce Larkin broke into the Intersect in September of 2007, trying to stay one step head of a rebel group called Fulcrum. He downloaded the entire thing and e-mailed it to Chuck Bartowski, just before being shot by John Casey.

“When Chuck opened the e-mail, his propensity for subliminal image absorption caused the entire database to be downloaded into his brain. As a result, he was now the human Intersect, and Casey and I were sent to protect him.”

“Bryce Larkin was shot by John Casey in both universes,” the Doctor mused.

“Yeah, except Casey didn’t kill him, like he thought,” Sarah replied. “Bryce is still alive, hunting down Fulcrum.”

“Well…”

Sarah gave him a piercing stare. “Well what?”

“Bryce may be alive in your timeline, but he’s dead here. You see, Emperor Chuck ordered him executed, a spectacle which John Casey carried out personally, on national television.

“That was what caused him to be promoted.”

Sarah sat down heavily. The rage and frustration built inside her, and as she thought about the situation, they began to boil.

“Son of a BITCH!” she shouted, slamming her hands down on the table.

Immediately, the ground shook. Other people on the underground complex screamed. “EARTHQUAKE!” one shouted.

Sarah immediately dove under the table, the Doctor joining her. The tremor passed quickly, though.

The Doctor looked at her curiously. “That was strange,” he said. “There were no harmonic foreshocks, nothing in the sound spectrum to indicate an earthquake was coming.”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah asked, as she stood up.

“I think you caused it,” the Doctor replied. “It seems to me like you’re the missing piece of this puzzle, the primary link between these two realities. I think your presence here is causing time and space to finally correct itself and merge the two realities.”

“That can’t possibly be good,” Sarah said.

“Oh, no. If it’s not corrected fairly quickly, it could destroy both realities.”

“Oh, great,” Sarah snarked. “Here I am, responsible for destruction.”

She shook her head. “How do we stop it?”

The Doctor shrugged. “No idea. I need to talk to the TARDIS.”

“I thought the TARDIS was offline,” Sarah objected.

“Time rotor’s down, but the computer should still be working,” the Doctor corrected her.

They exited the building, heading back up to retrieve Sarah’s Honda. As they came up to street level, Sarah suddenly felt like the weight of the universe was on her shoulders. She leaned against the building for a moment, and the Doctor’s eyes went wide.

“What?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything, just pointed up. Sarah followed his finger upward, to the top of the building –

The Banc Français sign was disappearing and reappearing. Every time it disappeared, though, it was replaced with the Citibank logo.

“What the hell…”

“It’s you,” the Doctor breathed. “Not only are you causing temporal disruptions, you’re causing spatial disruptions. This building keeps turning into what it is in your reality. Take your hands off it!”

Sarah did. She backed away from the building, and it slowly faded back into being the Banc Français building. “So what?” she asked as she and the Doctor walked toward the street. “Everything I touch, it’s going to do that?”

“Worse,” the Doctor replied. “Everything you come even close to.”

He pointed again, this time at a bus. It was flashing back and forth between the blue and grey color scheme used here, and the orange L.A. County Metro scheme that Sarah was used to. Passengers waiting to board the bus screamed and ran. One woman dropped to her knees and crossed herself.

“We’ve got to get out of here, and get you back inside the TARDIS,” the Doctor said worriedly. “Something very bad is going to happen if we don’t.”

---

8:30 A.M.

Los Angeles City Hall

“Okay, John, what the hell is going on?”

Chuck Bartowski, Emperor of the Imperial States of America, Conqueror of North America, Defeater of the French Empire steepled his fingers and glared at his most trusted advisor.

“I really don’t know, sir,” Colonel John Casey replied. “It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

Chuck leaned forward. “Listen to me very carefully, John,” he said quietly. “I have hundreds of other advisors to tell me, ‘I don’t know’. When I ask you a question, I want answers.”

Casey turned to him, and cocked an eyebrow. “Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah for you, Bartowski,” he snarled. “People in hell want ice water, but they ain’t gettin’ it.”

Chuck’s eyes went wide and his face turned beet red. “WHAT?!” he bellowed. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?!”

Casey’s head snapped back to the left, and his face took on a look of horror. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “No, sir, that wasn’t me speaking. I don’t know what that was, but I would never say anything like that to you.”

Chuck leaned in and looked into Casey’s eyes. “Then exactly what was it, Colonel?”

“If I may, sir…”

A small, mousy scientific advisor spoke. “What?” Chuck asked, as if noticing him for the first time. “Dr… Grimes, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” Dr. Morgan Grimes replied. “I think… I think that whatever phenomenon is affecting the buildings in downtown Los Angeles may also be affecting the people, Colonel Casey included.”

“Then what do we do to stop it, Dr. Grimes?”

Dr. Grimes swallowed hard. “Uh… sir, I really don’t know.”

---

The drive from downtown Los Angeles back to Laurel Canyon and Mulholland had been a nightmare. People, buildings, cars all around Sarah and the Doctor were flashing back and forth between what they were here and what they were in Sarah’s reality.

The worst, though, had been when Sarah was going through the intersection at Cahuenga and Barham and the Civic momentarily turned into her Boxster. The sudden burst of power that hadn’t been there almost caused her to run into the back of a pickup, and the unexpected change had caused the car behind her to run into a wall.

Finally, they reached the TARDIS. The Doctor unlocked it quickly, and ushered Sarah inside. “You have to stay in here,” he said. “You saw it out there – you’re causing chaos.”

He waited a few minutes, and then stuck his head outside. “Well,” he called, “it seems to have stopped.”

“But it’ll start again if I go back outside?” Sarah asked.

“Ah, yep,” the Doctor replied. “So… do me a favor, and don’t.”

“Great,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “Didn’t you say this place has a guest room?”

---

2:30 P.M.

The TARDIS

Sarah awoke to hear a great whooping and hollering. Following the noise, she found her way back to the control room, to find the Doctor dancing around like an idiot.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I’ve figured out how to end the paradox!” he hollered. A rumbling noise passed through the TARDIS. “Well, the TARDIS figured it out,” he said, hastily. “But it couldn’t have done it without me!”

Sarah nodded approvingly. “Great!” she replied, excitement evident in her voice. “How do we do it?”

“Really quite simple,” the Doctor said. “Somebody from the original timeline just has to terminate the discrepancy in the timeline, and it should snap back to just how it was!”

“Somebody from the original timeline,” Sarah replied. “So one of us?”

“Oh, no, I can’t,” the Doctor corrected her. “I’m a Timelord, it wouldn’t work. It has to be you.”

“Okay,” she said. “So I have to terminate the discrepancy. What exactly does that mean?”

“Quite simple, really,” the Doctor replied, almost flippantly. “You just have to kill Chuck Bartowski.”

Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 6

3:10 A.M.

February 15th, 2008

Los Angeles, California

The Doctor was high as a kite.

And it was starting to piss Sarah off. She was very much regretting giving him the marijuana as a pain killer.

He was actually giggling as they stood in front of the Hope Street door to the Main Library – except, it wasn’t called Hope Street. It was called Empire Street. All the other street names were still the same – Wilshire, Flower, and the numbered streets hadn’t changed.

But it was enough to disconcert Sarah, especially since her only company was a stoned alien who was now struggling with some sort of electronic device, trying to open the lock. The sonic screwdriver, he’d called it.

Finally, it clicked open. Sarah yanked open the door – coming face to face with a security guard with a gun the size of a howitzer.

Reacting surprisingly fast for somebody high on marijuana, the Doctor whipped the psychic paper out, holding it up for the guard to see. Immediately, his gun dropped.

“My apologies, Senator,” he said, allowing Sarah and the Doctor to pass.

When they were out of earshot, Sarah turned to the Doctor. “Just why the hell did that make me a Senator?” she hissed. “It’s pretty clear to me that the Sarah Walker of this reality is a fast-food employee!”

“Maybe you’ve just got a politician’s bearing!” the Doctor replied with a laugh. “After all, as a spy, you have to lie all the time, don’t you?”

Sarah didn’t respond, her face turning red as she turned on her heel and stomped off. The Doctor followed hot on her heels as she stormed off to the Tom Bradley Wing – that hadn’t changed, she noticed – to go down to the fourth sub-basement, where the history and genealogy references were kept.

Four hours later, the sun was peeking over the horizon, and library employees were starting to filter in. A few had been surprised to find Sarah and the Doctor, but the psychic paper had kept them at bay.

Sarah was at a loss to understand what was going on. The Doctor, on the other hand, had filled almost an entire legal pad with notes, as he breezed through book after book, absorbing the information within them at an astounding rate.

Finally, he closed the last book in his pile. “Well, I think I’ve figured it all out,” he informed Sarah.

“How?” she asked, incredulous. “It’s been four hours, and you were high as a kite for most of it! How did you go through all those books and figure out what’s going on?”

The Doctor’s face lit up with a thousand watt smile. “I must have forgotten to mention!” he said. “I’m brilliant!”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” she snarked. “Get on with it.”

The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think we should stay here,” he replied. “This is a government building, it’s probably more wired than a Pac-Man game.”

With that, he stood up, shrugged his overcoat on, and swept out of the building, legal pad in hand, his back pains of a few hours prior seemingly forgotten. Now it was Sarah struggling to keep up as he strode outside, onto the plaza on Fifth Street.

He crossed the street, then turned into the entrance to the shopping plaza underneath the Citibank building… No, though Sarah, looking up, the Banc Français building.

Despite the change in ownership, some things never changed. Such as the Starbucks at the bottom of the escalator. That was still there. And so, the Doctor with his tea, and Sarah with a frappuccino that the Doctor had declared “looked revolting”, he began his presentation.

“Somehow,” he began, “when Reinette touched me, it healed something that was wrong with her. She was supposed to die in 1764, but she didn’t. In fact, not only did she not die, but in 1770, when Marie Antoinette arrived to marry the king’s daughter, Reinette was assigned to acclimate young Marie to French culture.

“Reinette insisted that Marie never think herself above the people, and so she was able to convince her husband, King Louis XVII, to institute a series of reforms. These led to a very, very high degree of popularity for the royals, and the French Revolution never happened.

“As a result, France grew stronger and turned into the French Empire. When Reinette finally died in 1797, France had become one of the strongest and most influential countries in Europe.

“Now, in late 1861, French forces invaded Mexico, at the orders of Louis XX.”

“But that happened anyway,” Sarah objected.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied, “but in your timeline, Napoleon ordered the invasion of Mexico because they were behind on tribute. In this timeline, Louis XX ordered the invasion of Mexico because he wanted to expand the French Empire.

“Mexico begged both the United States and the Confederate States for their assistance, but obviously, they were both rather busy fighting the Civil War. Mexico was quickly overthrown, with Mexico City falling on May 5th, 1862.”

“Mexico City fell on Cinco de Mayo,” Sarah whispered.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” the Doctor asked. “The French quickly took over all of Mexico, and then bided their time. They waited until Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9th, 1865, and then on April 11th, the French struck, invading the southwestern United States through Texas, and what we would now consider New Mexico and Arizona.

“What was left of both Union and Confederate forces mobilized, all under the command of Ulysses Grant. Lincoln was not at Ford’s Theatre on Good Friday of 1865, for obvious reasons.

“When Grant was killed in action on July 4th – again, a certain irony – Robert E. Lee assumed command of the forces. French forces managed to surround him on three sides, pushing his armies eastward, until finally, on Christmas Eve 1865, he and President Lincoln were both present at the White House to surrender to General Charles de Lorencez.

“King Louis XX declared the United States of America to be a protectorate of the French Empire, renaming it the Imperial States of America. In an attempt to further project power over the new ISA, he appointed a Polish Duke, Leonidas Bzechewski, of the Warsaw Duchy, as the first Emperor of Columbia, to rule over the former United States.

“After that, things were actually fairly peaceful for about seventy years. No Mexican-American wars, no Spanish-American war, none of that. However, just like in your timeline, in this timeline, a pesky little cockroach named Adolf decided to play genetics games in the 1930s.

“Nazi Germany did rise, and they did start murdering people not of the ‘master race’ in large quantities. However, they were unable to conquer France, and naturally, when they invaded France, the Imperial States of America took exception, and entered the Great War on France’s side in 1939.

“A very weak Tsarist Russia did fall to Nazi forces; however, by the spring of 1945, Allied forces had managed to drive the Nazis completely back into Germany. Unfortunately, German scientists had managed to create a rudimentary atomic bomb, which they detonated over Washington not two weeks before Hitler’s death and Germany’s surrender.

“The Bzechewski family and the government had advance notice of the attack, and relocated to Los Angeles, thanks to Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS –“

“Wait, you mean Bill Donovan was responsible for the CIA in this timeline as well?” Sarah asked. “The more this universe seems different, the more it seems to be the same.”

“Apparently so,” the Doctor replied with a shrug. “Anyway, things were peaceful again for the next almost fifty years. With no Soviet Union, there was no Korean War, no Vietnam War, not even a Desert Storm – the United Kingdom never gave up their footholds in Iraq and Palestine.

“Then, in 1994, Emperor Irving died of a heart attack. His son – who was only fourteen at the time – ascended to the throne. He is an interesting young man. Claims to be an emperor of the people, but British newspapers jokingly call him the Tyrant of America – well, maybe not so jokingly, but they do it nonetheless.

“Anyway, on his twentieth birthday, he took on an Americanization of his last name, started going by a nickname, and dropped the title of ‘Emperor’. The government was shocked, but the people love him.

“You see, even though he invaded Canada and Mexico in 2002, creating a pan-continental American empire, and then in 2004 told France where they could go and what they could do with themselves, the people love him. He’s being called the man who can usher in America’s golden age.”

The Doctor looked up at a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall. “Well, there he is right now. He’s right outside Los Angeles City Hall – just a few blocks away!”

Before Sarah could turn around, America’s leader spoke.

“My fellow Americans,” he began – and Sarah froze.

She knew that voice. She knew that voice better than she knew her own. It was a voice that had joked with her, pleaded with her, shouted at her. A voice she had often imagined whispering sweetly to her.

The Doctor was watching the address, and Sarah turned around, a cold hand of dread gripping her stomach.

“He’s quite a good looking fellow,” the Doctor said, “this Chuck Bartowski.”

Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 5

2:41 AM

February 15th, 2008

Los Angeles, California

The TARDIS materialized, slowly. Far more slowly than was usual. The time rotor sounded like an automatic transmission in dire need of a junkyard.

Finally, the rotor stopped. The Doctor checked the monitor. “February 15th, 2008,” he proclaimed. “About five minutes after we left.”

He shook his head. “But something has to be wrong with time. The TARDIS shouldn’t be behaving this way.”

Stepping gingerly to the door, a hand on his back, the Doctor slowly opened the door a crack. Looking outside, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, and swung the door open the rest of the way.

“It’s Los Angeles!” he announced.

Sarah stepped outside. It was indeed Los Angeles. She was at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Mulholland – right where she had encountered the Doctor.

But something… something was off. She wasn’t quite sure what it was.

She looked back toward the TARDIS – and a street sign caught her eye.

The street sign that should’ve said “Woodrow Wilson Dr.” instead read “Emperor Marcus Way”.

Her eyes wide, Sarah’s head whipped back toward the stoplight. THAT was the problem, the subtlety her brain hadn’t processed before. Instead of being white print on a blue background, the street signs were now blue print on a white background.

“Doctor!” she said, urgently. His head snapped toward her, the tone of fear in her voice catching his attention more surely than a strobe light.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“That time paradox…” Sarah began.

The Doctor’s eyes grew wide, his gaze hooded. “What about it?”

“I think it’s taken hold,” she replied. “The street signs are reversed from what they were when we left, and this street is named for somebody who doesn’t exist.”

“Back in the TARDIS, right now,” the Doctor ordered. “We’ve got to figure out a way to fix this.”

Sarah didn’t argue, just went immediately back inside. The Doctor yanked down a lever to engage the time rotor – and it weakly pumped once, and then stopped. The rotor’s glow went dim.

“No, no, no!” the Doctor shouted. “Don’t you do this to me now!”

Pumping what looked like a priming handle, he pulled down on the lever again. With a wheeze, the time rotor moved maybe a few feet, before coming to a halt again.

The Doctor hung his head in defeat. “She’s not operating properly… we’re out of her time,” he whispered.

“What do we do?” Sarah asked, incredulous that this Timelord, who had just a little while before seemed all-powerful, now seemed utterly defeated.

“We improvise,” the Doctor replied. “We figure out what’s causing the paradox, and then we figure out how to break it.”

Sarah cocked her head. “But we now what caused the paradox,” she said. “It happened when Madame de Pompadour touched you.”

“Yes, but we need to figure out the continuing cause of it,” the Doctor clarified. “That occurrence had to have set off a chain of events that have left us where we are.”

He pulled out his glasses, perched them on his nose, and pulled a legal pad and a pen from one of his pockets. Ignoring Sarah’s incredulous stare, he jotted notes and diagrams.

“We need to find a library,” he muttered, “and a car. We need transportation.”

“My car’s parked back toward Cahuenga about a mile, at a scenic overlook,” Sarah said, before realizing.

“Probably not,” the Doctor replied, shaking his head. “Remember, history has changed.”

“It couldn’t hurt to look, though, right?” Sarah insisted.

The Doctor couldn’t disagree with that. “Alright then, let’s go.”

It took them about fifteen minutes to walk the mile down Mulholland Drive. As they came around a bend, the scenic overlook came into view –

And Sarah breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the jet black car parked in the overlook. She pulled her keys from her purse and pressed the unlock button on her remote. The hazard lights on the car flashed twice –

Immediately, Sarah knew something was wrong. The lights weren’t positioned correctly. She started jogging toward the car, the Doctor painfully struggling to keep up.

As she reached the car, it was immediately apparent to her that it was not her Porsche Boxster – it was a Honda Civic. “Crap,” she muttered, opening the driver’s side door.

She slid behind the wheel, reaching for the gun she had mounted under the driver’s seat. Gone. She looked at the rear view mirror – and there, dangling from the mirror, was an employee nametag for one Sarah Walker, Wienerlicious employee.

“You have GOT to be kidding me,” she whispered. She activated the switches for the wiper spray and the cruise control at the same time. Nothing. A heads-up display should’ve risen from the dashboard.

She leaned her head against the steering wheel in defeat. The crunch of feet on gravel interrupted her self-pity session, though, as the Doctor finally reached the car. “You have something in there in terms of painkillers?” he asked, his voice strained.

Of course she did. Sarah always had something in the glovebox. Reaching over, she popped it open – and the car’s registration, a city map, a bottle of Advil, and a bag of marijuana fell out.

“Oh, come ON!” she snapped, grabbing the Advil and the pot. She handed the Advil to the Doctor, and was about to heave the marijuana off the edge of the overlook, when the Doctor spoke.

“This has ibuprofen in it,” he said. “My system can’t handle that.”

Sarah sighed and rolled her eyes – and then looked at the bag in her right hand.

Turning back toward the Doctor, she said, “I can’t believe I’m about to suggest this… but can your system handle THC?”

---

Fifteen minutes later, Sarah was navigating the unfamiliar Civic through the deserted streets of Hollywood, headed toward downtown and the main library. The Doctor’s face was now free of pain – even a little smile on it – as the stub of a joint dangled from his fingers, hanging out the window.

“I can’t believe I didn’t discover this years ago,” he said happily. “It’s completely taken care of my back pain… although I’m a little hungry…”

“You’re high, Doctor,” Sarah replied. “And you have the munch-“

She cut herself off as she noticed the flash of rotating red and blue lights in the rear view mirror. “Oh, hell.”

Sarah pulled the Civic to the side of Western Avenue, reaching for the glovebox as she did so. Then she stopped.

“My license… it won’t be valid here, will it?” she asked in alarm.

The Doctor smiled lazily. “Don’t worry,” he said, reaching into his jacket. His hand came out holding what looked like a black ID holder. “Use this.”

Sarah took it from him, and opened it. “It’s a blank piece of paper,” she said, confused. “What good is this supposed to do me?”

“Ah, that!” the Doctor laughed. “That is psychic paper. The officer won’t know what hit him.”

Sarah rolled down her window as the officer approached. He was dressed differently than she was used to the LAPD being dressed – wearing a helmet and body armor.

“Papers, please,” he said.

With no small amount of trepidation, Sarah handed him the black booklet. The officer took it, and almost immediately, handed it back.

“My apologies, Senator,” he said quickly. “Do you require a police escort?”

Sarah mulled it over for moment. That could be useful.

Engaging her CIA training, she spoke rapidly and convincingly. “Yes. I’m headed for the main library, at Flower and Sixth Street.”

“I’ll have you there before you know it,” the officer said.

Practically running back to his cruiser, he jumped in, engaged the lights, and pulled out in front of Sarah. Turning the Civic back on, Sarah put it in drive, and followed, handing the booklet back to the Doctor.

He opened it, and laughed. “Apparently, you’re the representative from the Duchy of Los Angeles to the Imperial Senate!”

Sarah’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Just drive, Senator Walker!”

Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 4

Sarah was tired. Sarah’s head hurt. Sarah’s stomach hurt. And Sarah’s heart hurt.

It had been a long and bizarre day, and she just wanted somewhere to lie down. “In and among all this technical mumbo-jumbo you’re spewing, can you answer the simple question of do you have someplace I can lie down?”

“Oh indeed,” the Doctor replied. “The TARDIS is full of many, many rooms… unless… you’d rather just go home.”

Sarah looked up and nodded slightly. “I think that would likely be best,” she said.

“Of course,” the Doctor intoned quietly. “Let’s be on our way, then.”

His change in tone made Sarah examine him closely. There was something very wrong with this man. Sarah had never seen mood swings as wild as the ones he had had in the last fifteen minutes. He had gone from jovial to depressed to jovial again to enraged to just happy to depressed again.

The Doctor was silent as he crossed behind the console. He hit a few switches, then pressed a button, and the green cylinder began to pump again.

Without any warning, a brilliant starburst of light shone forth from the center of the cylinder, and a horrific grinding noise emitted from it. The Doctor’s eyes went wide, and he dove across the console, straining to reach a different switch.

As he hit the switch, the TARDIS lurched unexpectedly, throwing the Doctor across the room and against a railing. Sarah just barely grabbed onto a railing in time to avoid a similar fate.

The TARDIS came to a halt, and the lights went dim. The bell Sarah had heard earlier began to toll again. “Doctor…”

“There’s something wrong with the time rotor,” he gasped, pain evident in his voice. “It’s malfunctioning, and I’m not quite sure why. The computers won’t even tell me where we are.”

With a hand to his back, he staggered to the door. Opening it, he stepped outside, Sarah following in his footsteps. She watched a confused look wash over his face, as though he recognized where he was, and then, almost immediately, a look of sheer horror.

“Oh, shit,” he uttered.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Sarah said. “What’s going on?”

“We’re someplace I can’t be,” the Doctor replied. “This is the Palace at Versailles, in 1758, I’m guessing about five months after the last time I was here.”

Sarah’s curiosity began to get the best of her. “What do you mean you can’t be here?” she asked. “I mean, if you’ve been here before, what does it matter?”

The Doctor looked at her, a look of dead seriousness written on his face. “I came back here, six years later,” he said. “There was a person I came back for, but she had died by the time I returned. I didn’t come back at any point in the interim, so if I encounter her, it will cause a time paradox.”

“Encounter who?”

The sound of a door opening reached Sarah’s ears, and the Doctor’s face went white. With a trembling hand, he pointed. “Her.”

Sarah turned and looked to the door. A woman in her late thirties stood there, dressed regally. Her face was even whiter than the Doctor’s. “Doctor…” she whispered.

And then, before he could say another word, the woman had gathered her skirts and started running across the room toward him. “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!” he shouted. “Reinette, NO!”

She skidded to a stop just a few feet from him. “What… what do you mean, no?” she asked in confusion. “You said you’d return for me, Doctor!”

“It’s… complicated,” he gasped, pain writing itself on his face, his hand returning to his back.

“My Doctor, you’re in pain!” the woman he had called Reinette said, reaching for him. The Doctor lurched backwards, away from her grasp, falling over as he did so. His face twisted in agony.

“Reinette…” he whispered. “Reinette… you can’t touch me.”

“Why not?”

“Like I said, it’s –“

“Complicated,” she replied. “Well, Doctor, I am the Marquise de Pompadour, this is the Palace of Versailles, and the last time I checked, I had far more authority here than you.”

Sarah noted that her voice had taken on a hard edge as she spoke. “I would recommend you begin uncomplicating things!” the woman finished.

The Doctor, struggling back to his feet, held up his free hand in defeat. “Alright, alright,” he conceded. “First, though, Sarah Walker, this is –“

“Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson,” Sarah finished. “I know who Madame de Pompadour was, Doctor. I’m Sarah Walker.” She held out her hand to Reinette.

Reinette looked at Sarah, and then to the Doctor. “Can I touch her?” she asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Yes…” Simply speaking made the Doctor wince.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Reinette said, shaking Sarah’s hand gently and in a perfunctory fashion. “Now, Doctor? Uncomplicate.”

“Alright,” the Doctor said. “I said I’d return for you. I didn’t.”

The look on Reinette’s face changed to one of shock. “But you promised me you would return!” she protested.

“I did,” the Doctor admitted. “But you remember how the fireplace had a loose connection?”

“Yes, vaguely,” she replied.

“When I came back through, it was 1764,” he said.

“But that’s six years from now!”

“Yes, it is,” the Doctor agreed. “And I returned…”

He stopped. His heart had grown heavy, and when he spoke again, every one of his 900 plus years became apparent in his voice. “I returned in time to stand next to the King as we watched a carriage roll out of the palace, carrying your coffin, headed back to Paris.”

Reinette’s eyes had widened in shock. “I will die… before I am forty-three years of age?”

The Doctor simply nodded.

“And you cannot touch me, because you’ve already returned to this time, you’ve seen me dead, and should we touch each other, it would create… a time paradox?”

He smiled painfully. “My, but you learned a great deal when you looked into my mind, didn’t you?”

“Oh, Doctor,” she sighed. Then she looked at Sarah again. “And you travel with somebody new. What of Rose?”

The Doctor’s smile faded. “She was taken from me,” he said quietly, barely louder than a whisper. “She’s still alive… but I will never be able to see her again.”

His voice was stretched to the point of breaking. “And I was never able to tell her… tell her that I… that I…”

His voice went dead, and his eyes closed, the physical and emotional pain combining to overwhelm him. And Reinette, forgetting what she herself had said just a moment earlier, dropped to her knees, and embraced the Doctor.

He didn’t resist at first, as though he were lost. But then realization came to him, and his eyes sprang open. “Reinette, no, you ca-“

And then he stopped. He looked around the room. “Wait… what?”

Sarah and Reinette both looked at him. “Is there something that you were expecting, Doctor?” Sarah asked.

“Reinette caused a time paradox by touching me!” the Doctor insisted. “There are these creatures, nature’s bacteria, as it were, that should have appeared, to cleanse the paradox. But… there’s nothing.”

There was a reason. A reason the Doctor would not encounter for several months yet to come. Unbeknownst to him, at the time he had left Los Angeles with Sarah Walker, a future version of his own TARDIS had been converted into what was known as a Paradox Machine.

This Paradox Machine floated miles above the Atlantic Ocean, and the paradox it created extended clear from one end of time to the other. Because it was the Doctor’s own TARDIS, any paradoxes that he could encounter would thus be negated. Though he would not know this for some time yet, the paradox he had created would have no effect – for now.

“Reinette, I must go,” the Doctor said.

“May I go with you?”

The Doctor shook his head, sadness written on his face. “I’m afraid not,” he replied. “If I were to do that, it would not only exacerbate the paradox, but it would change history itself.”

Reinette nodded. “I understand,” she said sadly. She stood, extending her hand to help the Doctor to his feet.

He stood, and she embraced him, holding him. Seeing no harm, since the Paradox was clearly not occurring, the Doctor returned the embrace, not noticing the spark of light that seemed to pass between his fingers and Reinette’s back.

Finally, he released her. Without a word, she backed away, and left the room. The Doctor silently turned and re-entered the TARDIS, Sarah following him.

He pointed to a button and a switch. “Press this button, and hold the switch down. It’s a manual override. You’ll need to keep them engaged until we stop.”

Sarah nodded. She pressed the button he indicated, and held the switch down. Wordlessly, the Doctor crossed to the other side of the console, pressed a few buttons, and pulled down a lever. The time rotor engaged, and they left the eighteenth century far behind.

Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 3

So I realized, as I was approaching the end of this chapter, that it's full of meaningless technical mumbo-jumbo, and I thought to myself, that might not be so good.

Then I realized - I had written ALL of the mumbo-jumbo so that it's coming out of the Doctor's mouth, which is perfectly normal for him. So it's okay.

---

It was several minutes before the Doctor pulled himself together. Finally, he stood, wiping his eyes and sniffling softly.

“My apologies, Ms. Walker,” he said quietly. “I usually am able to keep my composure. It’s just… well…”

He stopped. Sarah didn’t say anything, just looked at the Doctor expectantly.

“You heard about the Battle of Canary Wharf, yes?”

Sarah cocked an eyebrow at the Doctor. “I remember hearing that there was an incident at One Canada Plaza, in Canary Wharf, right after our Thanksgiving holiday,” she replied. “But I also remember that the British government was very, very tight-lipped about it. MI-6 wouldn’t tell us anything at the CIA.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Typical British arrogance,” he grumbled. “Build themselves an empire, then sell it off bit by bit but think they can still project imperial aspirations.”

He stopped, and then looked up. “Sorry, I got off track there a bit. Anyway, I had a friend… a very close friend… her name is Rose Tyler. She was my traveling companion for just over two years. I met her one night in a department store that I blew up. We got into a lot of trouble together, that’s for sure!”

The Doctor laughed at the memory, but then turned somber again. “At Canary Wharf… the reason it happened is because these two cyborg races – the Daleks and the Cybermen – managed to breach the wall between this universe and one of the many, many other universes. They crossed through the Void to get here.”

“The Void?” Sarah asked.

“You’d probably refer to it simply as Hell,” the Doctor explained. “It’s literally nothingness, and everything that exists there is stuck in it for eternity. There’s even a beast there – called Abaddon, which is a mite apocalyptic for my tastes… but, I suppose if he ever got out, it would be a bit disastrous.

“Anyway,” he went on, “up at the top of One Canada Plaza, there was an opening into the Void, and continuing on into the other universe. Well, I opened that door wide, and all the Cybermen and Daleks that had crossed through got sucked into the Void for good.”

He paused again. “Rose and I had both crossed through as well, so we had to hold on to these super-gravity devices. But… Rose had to let go to keep the portal from closing, and she ended up losing her grip on the handle she was holding.”

“Oh my God,” Sarah gasped. “She was…”

The Doctor shook his head. “No,” he said. “At the last moment, her father – or at least, this other universe’s version of her father – crossed through, grabbed her, and safely transported her back to his universe. However, immediately after that, the opening closed – permanently.

“It wasn’t until she was gone that I realized the truth about something – that I had fallen in love with her. I ended up causing a star to go nova just to squeeze a message through to the other universe, to say good-bye – and I got cut off before I could tell her that I loved her.”

As he had been talking, he had circled the console of the TARDIS, and now, as he stopped talking, he came to a stop in front of the bench seat mounted by the console, and dropped heavily on to it, as though he had been drained of all energy.

Sarah was about to cross the TARDIS and sit down next to him, when a change seemed to come over him. “Well, no need to worry about the past!” he chirped cheerfully, bouncing up from the seat.

She cocked her head and looked at him strangely. “Are… you… are you okay?”

“Never better!” the Doctor proclaimed. “So, tell me… how would you like to take a little trip?”

“Well… what?’

“Off we go!” He hit a switch, the door slammed shut, and the green cylinder in the center of the TARDIS began to pump up and down. “Hold on!”

Suddenly, the TARDIS shook as though it had been struck by something very large. Sparks flew out from the console, and a bell began to ring.

“Oh, dear,” the Doctor said, looking frantically at a monitor on the console. He then looked up at Sarah from hooded eyes. “The TARDIS doesn’t like you, young lady.”

Then, to Sarah’s utter amazement, he started talking to the TARDIS. “Behave yourself!” he shouted. “She’s a very nice person, and there’s no reason to be acting like this!”

There was a chirping sound, and a light started blinking on the monitor. The Doctor looked at it, then looked up at Sarah again in alarm. The alarm changed to a look of almost anger. Reaching to his right, he pulled a lever. The TARDIS stopped immediately.

The Doctor charged to the door, and plowed out. Sarah followed him, confused. “What’s going on?”

“You,” the Doctor spat, turning to point at her, “should be dead. You HAVE been dead. Care to explain?”

“Of course,” Sarah said, still confused. “I was on a mission in a place called Papen County a couple weeks ago. I was electrocuted, but there was this guy who touched me, and it brought me back from the dead… wait a second, where the hell are we?”

“It’s an affront to nature!” the Doctor continued, his voice ramping up in pitch and volume. “You’re wrong, you should be dead, and I’m of half a mind to just get back in the TARD-“

SMACK.

With an almighty swing, Sarah wound up her right hand and hauled off on the Doctor, landing an open palm on his left cheek. His head jerked to the right and he staggered backwards. Sarah’s movement continued, as her left hand pulled her gun from behind her back at light speed. By the time the Doctor recovered and was standing upright again, Sarah’s Beretta was pointed directly at his face. His eyes widened, and he raised his hands slowly.

“First of all,” Sarah hissed, “you are not leaving me ANYWHERE. I did not ASK to be brought here, you just ACTED.

“Secondly, I have had QUITE enough of being told that I’m wrong, that I’m an affront, and all that BULLSHIT. I’ve had a VERY difficult last couple of months, and if you think you’re allowed to act like this because you’ve got emotional issues, let me tell you something, pal – you’re not the only person in the universe who’s had somebody you cared about slip through your grasp recently!”

She looked around again. “And where the FUCK are we?”

The Doctor’s hands slowly came down. “Ummm… we’re on Mars,” he replied. “Would you mind terribly putting the gun away?”

Sarah looked around. “No way we’re on Mars,” she stated. “We’re in the middle of a city.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “This is the City of Oklahoma, in the Utopia Planitia Colony, on Mars. The year is 2192. And we are not in Anomaly 6513e, in case you’re curious.”

Sarah’s gun came down as she gave the Doctor a look. “What do you mean, we’re not in Anomaly 6513e?” she asked him. “I’ve been to Anomaly 6513e. I think.”

“You have,” the Doctor affirmed. “But we’re still 184 years after your time. Don’t you think it’s possible that there are going to be other future possibilities?”

Sarah’s hands went up in defeat. “But how is that possible?” she asked. “How can I have been to 6513e, and yet still be here? And how is it, exactly, that a letter that I wrote ended up in 2518?”

The Doctor nodded. “All valid questions,” he replied. “It’s the laws of temporal mechanics. And it sounds like this particular incarnation of you has made decisions that will lead you to end up being in whatever the predecessor to UFA 6513e is.

“Tell me, Sarah Walker, what’s the biggest decision you made recently?”

“Well…” she thought for a moment. “I’d say the biggest decision I’ve made is that I gave my friend Chuck the option to stay in the future – in 6513e – rather than come back to the 21st century. He chose to come back, though.”

“Ah,” the Doctor said knowingly. “You see, that there, that irrevocably tied this particular incarnation of you to the 6513e future. Your willingness to allow somebody out of time to change the future. And I’ll tell you, I don’t fully understand temporal mechanics myself, but they will adjust themselves with your decisions so that this particular incarnation of you presses forward into what will eventually become 6513e.”

“What if I hadn’t made that decision?” she asked.

“Well, there’s a version of you that didn’t,” the Doctor replied. “Just as there’s a version of your friend Chuck that chose to stay in the year 2519.”

“But wait a moment,” Sarah interrupted, “wouldn’t that cause 6513e to fracture itself?”

“Oh, of course!” the Doctor laughed. “6513e might be a fractal anomaly, but it’s still got trillions of permutations! It’s just that the remainder of temporal and quantum space dwarfs that particular anomaly in comparison!”

Sarah put a hand to her forehead. “My head hurts,” she said. “In and among all this technical mumbo-jumbo you’re spewing, can you answer the simple question of do you have someplace I can lie down?”

Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 2

The thin, disheveled man with the wild mop of brown hair just looked at Sarah for a moment. Then, reaching into his grease-stained blue suit jacked, he pulled out his glasses and perched them on his nose. He continued to study Sarah for a moment, and then, as if making a grand proclamation, announced, “I’m the Doctor!”

Sarah stared back at him for a moment, a quizzical look in her eyes. “Um, doctor who, exactly?” she asked.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Ah, if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that… I’d have… hmmm… multiply by five, carry the seven…”

Sarah cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to ask – are you absent minded, or just plain crazy?”

The Doctor looked back at her, a serious expression on her face. “Well, some’d say a little of both, I suppose.”

He continued to study her. “Now, you say you work for the Central Intelligence Agency… you’ve never heard of me?”

Sarah shook her head. “My area of expertise is the Middle East,” she replied, “and lately, southern California. You sound like you’re from England.”

“Only as of late,” he replied. “Like I said, I’m a Timelord, originally from Gallifrey, but I think England’s a jolly old country to putter around in.”

He frowned. “But I still find it hard to believe you haven’t heard of some passing reference to me. Didn’t you hear about the Christmas Star over London, not even two months ago?”

“I heard that that was some sort of fundamentalist Muslim attack,” Sarah replied. “Al Qaida or somebody managed to get a lighter-than-air craft over London and start attacking with focused energy weapons. And then your Defense Minister – what’s his name? Harold Saxon? He blew it up.”

“Yes, quite,” the Doctor replied. “Except, it wasn’t Al Qaida. It was the Racnoss.”

“I can’t say that I fully trust that Mr. Saxon,” Sarah had continued. “He just doesn’t feel ri- wait. The Racnoss? I’ve never heard of them, and I know every terrorist group out there.”

“They’re not a terrorist group,” the Doctor said. “They’re aliens. Millions of years old. Feed on human flesh.”

Sarah held up her hand to stop him. “That’s impossible,” she protested. “There are no aliens. I know this for a fact.”

“Well, I’d say your wrong, being one myself,” replied the Timelord, “but it’s a little bit chilly out here, even for California. What do you say we take this conversation inside?”

“Inside where?” Sarah asked, confused.

“Why, my TARDIS, of course,” the Doctor said. “It’ll be plenty warm in there.”

“Wait, you mean the police box? Sorry, Doctor, but we just met. I don’t think so.”

“Ah, that,” laughed the Doctor. “Remember what I said? Bigger on the inside?”

Sarah gave him a look of skepticism.

“Go on, open her up!” the Doctor insisted. “Take a look!”

Sarah’s skeptical look only deepened, but she opened the TARDIS nonetheless. She stepped inside…

“Oh. My. GOD.”

“Told you,” the Doctor smirked, stepping into the TARDIS with her. “Take a seat, we’ll talk more about alien life.”

Sarah just stood frozen in the doorway, looking around her at the TARDIS. “But… but this is impossible,” she whispered.

“And until a few minutes ago, you thought alien life was impossible,” the Doctor replied. “In fact, you knew it was a fact. But here I am!”

“But, but no,” Sarah replied, confusion clear on her face. “I know alien life doesn’t exist, because I’ve been to the future, I’ve been to the twenty-sixth century. Humans had left Earth, moved to another solar system with literally hundreds of planets and moons. All that time, though, they never encountered any extraterrestrial life.”

As she spoke, the Doctor’s eyes had gone wide. “They left Earth… they never encountered any extraterrestrial life…”

A huge smile grew on the Doctor’s face. “Oh, Sarah Walker, I don’t think you realize how lucky you are,” he enthused. “You’ve been to a place where only a few Timelords have ever been, and that totally by accident!”

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked. “I’ve been to the future. And what do you mean Timelords have been there?”

“I suppose I should explain,” the Doctor said. “First of all, Timelords tend to time travel. This thing we’re in, the TARDIS? Lets me travel through time.”

“Okay,” Sarah replied, “if you say so.”

“Secondly. Have you ever heard of Schrödinger’s Cat?”

“Uh,” Sarah thought for a moment. “That’s where a cat is placed in a box, with a radioactive substance, but we don’t know the decay rate, and whether or not the substance has killed the cat – so technically, as far as we know, the cat is both dead and alive?”

“Exactly!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Now, take that theory, and apply it to every decision ever made by any individual anywhere in the universe. Assume that for each side of every decision, a separate universe split off in another direction.”

“You’d have… trillions of universes,” Sarah replied, after thinking for a moment.

“You’d have infinite universes in infinite combinations,” the Doctor said. “However. Of all those combinations, the Timelords only ever found one where humans never develop faster than light travel, where they move off of Earth permanently, and where they never encounter other life in outer space. We actually had a name for it, because it was so anomalous – we called it Universal Fractal Anomaly 6513e.

“Like I said, only a few Timelords ever went there. And that, Ms. Walker, is why you’re so special – you’ve gone where so very few have been before. Where I will likely never go.”

“But if you can travel throughout time and space,” Sarah said, “why can’t you go there?”

The Doctor fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice had become soft and contemplative.

“There was a time,” he began, “when the Timelords could travel to any point in any universe.

“And then there was a great war. Daleks – these mechanical hybrids – attacked our planet. It was a war that stretched through eons – the Time War, we called it. And they defeated our defenses.

“I had a certain power. I had the ability to destroy the Daleks. But if I did that, it would also destroy Gallifrey.”

He stopped for a long moment. Sarah came up to him and placed her hand on top of his. “What did you do?”

He looked up at her, and she could see years, decades, centuries of hurt and anguish in his eyes. “If you look up to the sky tonight,” he replied, “you will see nothing but a dark spot where Gallifrey once glowed brightly in the sky.

“I am… the last of the Timelords.”

The Doctor fell silent again. Sarah stood next to him, in shock. And then, without thinking, her inner human came out, pushed the CIA agent to the back, and she pulled the Doctor into an embrace.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

The Doctor felt emotions begin to boil to the surface. Years of repressed emotions from the destruction of Gallifrey, the last few months since he lost Rose to the parallel universe, the emptiness he felt when Donna turned down his offer to travel with him.

And as Sarah Walker held the Doctor in her arms, he began to cry, and then to sob.

Sarah truly was a special individual. She was seeing something that so few had seen – the almighty Doctor, reduced to a broken man.

Chuck vs. the Pie-Maker, Chapter 5

The intelligence agents had long since departed the Pie Hole. The bakery-cum-restaurant was dark and quiet, save for a small team of NSA agents which John Casey had requested to keep watch, lest the men of Fulcrum decide to return for Charlotte Charles.

The pie-maker had retired to his upstairs apartment, sleeping once again in a bed separate from the woman with whom he had fallen in love. She was especially quiet this evening, her mind seemingly elsewhere. Earlier that evening, she had pleaded with the pie-maker to put on his bee-keeper’s suit, for the express purpose of her being able to receive a simple hug. He had been happy to oblige, but he was not happy with the current state of affairs.

“Chuck,” Ned said softly.

“Yes?” she replied, her back to him.

“Are you alright?”

She rolled over, and smiled at him sadly. “I could be better,” she admitted. “I just all of a sudden have this longing for you to touch me.”

“Even though I killed your father.”

“Would you stop saying that?” Chuck said, sitting up. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have possibly known, and every time you say it, it just reminds me.”

“Sorry,” Ned replied. “Okay, so you have this longing for me to touch you.”

“More than just touch me,” Chuck whispered absently.

Meanwhile, across town, the only hotel that John Casey had been able to find two rooms at had been the Papen Days Inn. He had, amazingly, been a gentleman for once and offered the room with a single king bed to Sarah Walker, but she had declined, choosing instead to stay in the room with two beds with Chuck Bartowski.

Her reasoning had been that should she have trouble falling asleep, she would like to have somebody to speak with, and with no offense to John Casey, she found Chuck to be a better conversation companion. However, her real reasoning for being in the same room as Chuck was just now taking hold…

Sarah’s sleep was not the peaceful sleep of a calm woman. It had taken her nearly two hours of tossing and turning to finally fall asleep, and initially that sleep was restless. Finally, she had fallen into a deep sleep, but it was a disturbed sleep.

At first, she had a dream that repeated itself, in several variations. She dreamed she was approaching the Toyota Prius that had killed her. The first few times, she found herself touching it, and getting blown across the street by the electric shock, as had truly happened. But then, she found that she was able to open the door, only to find a myriad of horrors inside – a man with a gun, a man with a knife, a snarling, vicious dog, John Casey with a bullet in his head.

From there, the dreams grew even worse. Various missions she had undertaken since meeting Chuck began to play through her head, except they were of the “what if this had failed” variety.

She dreamed of being chased through the streets of West Hollywood by John Casey, except when Chuck told her to go left, she had gone right. The Herder had plunged from an overpass to a freeway below, and exploded, killing them both. Then she dreamed of when Chuck defused the bomb at the symposium with the General – except he didn’t defuse it in time.

She dreamed of the helicopter crashing and burning, Chuck trapped inside. She dreamed that she hadn’t been in time to stop La Ciudad. That Peyman Alahi had simply put a bullet in Chuck’s head. That Ben Lo Pan had tortured and executed both her and Casey. That the Herder had exploded under the Santa Monica Pier.

The dreams began to get worse. She dreamed that the Stanford student hadn’t reached Chuck in time, and that Sarah had had to watch as the Icelandic assassin put a crossbow bolt through his chest. She dreamed that she, Casey, and Chuck had all been overcome by the pentothal toxin before they could reach the antidote. She dreamed that as she kissed Chuck in San Pedro, Bryce’s cryo-chamber really was a bomb, and it exploded.

The worst one, though, seemingly got stuck, and it just kept repeating. She dreamed that when she and Bryce had found Chuck, captive of Fulcrum in the Buy More, and Bryce had shot Chuck, Chuck hadn’t actually been wearing a bulletproof vest. The bullet penetrated his heart, killing him instantly.

This scenario kept playing out in her unconscious mind, but it kept twisting itself and getting worse. The last time it played through, Bryce walked up to Chuck, stuck the gun against his chest, and pulled the trigger. Then, he turned around to face Sarah, and started laughing maniacally. At this point, her mind totally lost control. In her dreams, she attacked Bryce and let loose the scream of the insane –

And sat bolt upright in her bed.

The light snapped on, and she whipped her head to the right to see Chuck, awake in the other bed, staring at her wide-eyed. Her breath came in rapid gasps, and it took a moment for her to calm down as the fear receded.

“Good Lord, are you alright?” Chuck asked, concern in his voice.

Sarah didn’t respond. She just crawled out of her bed, crossed to his bed, and sat down next to him. She wrapped her arms around Chuck’s neck, and buried her face in his shoulder.

“Hey, it’s okay, everything’s alright,” Chuck said soothingly, though he was, in reality, confused as hell. The thought Has Sarah totally lost it? crossed unbidden through his mind as he embraced the troubled CIA agent.

It was disturbing, even a little unnerving, to see Sarah in this sort of shape. She was supposed to be the strong, stable one, the CIA agent who could handle anything, and here she was, like a frightened little girl, scared into Chuck’s arms by some nightmare or other.

Chuck let her stay there for a few minutes, just holding her, before he spoke. “We should probably both get back to bed,” he said softly. “It’s very, very late.”

“I know,” Sarah replied, the first words she had spoken since screaming herself into wakefulness. “But…”

She hesitated, as if trying to put together a sentence that would work, not sound awkward, not make her feel stupid. “Chuck, you don’t have to remind me, we’re just friends and all, but it would make me feel better if I could sleep in the same bed as you tonight. I promise I’ll stay on my own side, I won’t get too close or anything like that.”

“Yeah, of course!” Chuck said – maybe a little too quickly. “If it keeps you from having any more of the nightmares you were clearly having, absolutely.”

“Thank you, Chuck.”

And so, the now-quite-vulnerable CIA agent bundled herself up in the covers on one side of the queen-sized bed, while the man with the computer in his head retreated to the other side of the bed. A veritable chasm of sheets and mattress dipped between them, something Chuck considered to be an oddly appropriate metaphor as he drifted off to sleep.

On the other side of town, however, another individual was not so fortunate. The pie maker found himself unable to sleep, but too tired to wander. And so he just lay in his bed, staring across the room…

It simply isn’t fair, Ned thought. Another person brought back from the dead, another person had to die in her place.

And it wasn’t as though he didn’t understand. Ned understood exactly what Charles Bartowski’s motivations had been – after all, hadn’t Ned himself done almost the same thing with Chuck, short of, perhaps, the gratuitous violence and threats of death?

Ned certainly couldn’t blame Charles – Sarah Walker was a very attractive young woman, she seemed like a truly very nice person, and he could tell from the way he looked at her that there was definitely something special between them. The thing was, he couldn’t tell exactly what was there – from what he could tell, aside from the occasional hug, Chuck Bartowski touched Sarah Walker only a little more than Ned was able to touch his own Chuck – that being never.

Nonetheless, he was still unhappy about another unnecessary death. What was worse was the cavalier fashion in which Emerson had treated it. Yes, perhaps Emerson had caught the young man trying to break into his car, and perhaps the young man’s removal from society wasn’t a total loss, but this was still an individual who had been cut down in the prime of his life.

And yet, Ned found that more than that, he was upset about the fact that Chuck Bartowski could have contact with Sarah Walker, and it was clear that he wanted to have contact with her, and yet didn’t. For somebody like Ned, who couldn’t have contact with Chuck Charles at all, it was aggravating, and even a little bit infuriating.

Little did he know, though, that certain amounts of contact were occurring – albeit unconsciously. As the sun rose over Papen County, an awkward discovery was about to be made.

As the sunlight began to make its way into the east side of the Days Inn, the shafts of light played across Sarah’s face, bringing her to wakefulness. Coming to consciousness, she realized she wasn’t in exactly the same position as she was when she went to sleep the night before.

Rather than being on the opposite side of the bed from Chuck, she was now in the middle of the bed. Sarah was lying on her side, in a spoon position, nestled against Chuck, his arm wrapped around her midsection.

Instead of moving away from him, however, she just continued to lay there, a small smile on her face. After a few minutes, she could feel him beginning to stir. “Good morning,” she said softly.

“’morn’n’,” he grunted, although he didn’t seem to realize the position he was in.

Sarah turned her head slightly to the right, so that she was partially facing Chuck. With a bit of evil humor behind her voice, she teased him, “Now, I thought we were supposed to just be friends, mister!”

The words pierced through the haze of sleepiness and caused his eyes to fly open. “Oh jeez,” he said, rolling away from Sarah. A look of disappointment briefly flashed across her face, but she wiped it away and turned to face him.

“I am so sorry,” he apologized. Sarah cocked her head and looked at him. He had a look of utter embarrassment on his face, which for some reason fit right in with the way his hair was sticking up in seventy-three different directions.

“Don’t be,” she replied, laughing softly. “I’m the one who invaded your bed, and you know what? I slept like a baby these last few hours.”

“Oh,” Chuck said. He just sat there for a moment, opened his mouth a few times, but never actually said anything. Finally, he said, “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

As Chuck headed through the bathroom door, Sarah had to fight a completely irrational urge to jump up and run into the bathroom with him.

“Get a grip, woman,” she muttered to herself.

This was starting to greatly bother Sarah. How in heaven’s name was she supposed to complete this mission if she kept having to fight irrational urges to jump Chuck?

It had to be an after-effect from the electrocution and subsequent resurrection. No matter what it was, though, it was going to have to stop.

Or at least be curbed.

Or at least, she was going to have to consider curbing it.

Maybe.

Maybe tomorrow.

Sarah vs. the Vortex Chapter 1

2:30 A.M.

February 15th, 2008

Los Angeles, California

The last three months had not been particularly kind to Sarah Walker.

In mid-November, she had found herself in a situation where she thought she was looking death in the face. Thinking she had nothing to lose, she had planted a passionate kiss on Chuck Bartowski, which rapidly turned awkward when she realized they weren’t dead. Underneath the awkwardness, though, there was something about that kiss that had haunted her.

At the end of November, Bryce Larkin had come back from the dead to haunt her life again. Just as quickly, though, he dropped off the radar again.

In early December, Chuck had told her that he thought it would be for the best for both of them if they were to just be friends. Sarah, of course, could not argue with his logic, although a little tiny bit of her died inside when he simply shook her hand after Chuck’s drunken co-worker dangled mistletoe over their heads.

About a week after that, Sarah had seemingly been killed on a simple mission. However, an encounter with a baker with a bizarre gift had brought her back to life. During the course of that mission, there had been multiple occasions when Chuck and Sarah had found themselves in positions where things could’ve gotten very hot very quickly, but each time, Chuck had reiterated the “just friends” bit – although the last time, he had almost let it go too far.

On Christmas Eve, Chuck had been abducted. Fulcrum had stolen a bizarre, almost science-fiction device from Area 51, and used it to pitch Chuck far, far into the future. The NSA had whipped up a desperate, shot-in-the-dark mission to send Sarah and John Casey after Chuck, and amazingly, it had been successful. However, although they had returned to California a mere ten days after Chuck’s abduction, he had spent almost two months in the future.

Those two months had been long enough for Chuck to meet and fall in love with somebody else. However, he had made the decision that he was going to have to leave her behind because of his commitments to his family and friends on 21st century Earth. As a result, he had been fairly depressed for the last month or so.

On Valentine’s Day, Sarah had been hoping to surprise him, and take him out for the day – just as friends, of course. However, when she had arrived at his apartment that morning, Ellie had told him that he had left early – around 6:00 – and she wasn’t sure where he was headed to. He wasn’t at the Buy More, and she had gotten to a point where she was worried sick, until she got a call from Casey around 7:00 PM telling her that Chuck had dropped by his apartment.

Of course, Casey had just HAD to tell her why Chuck came by. Apparently, with the knowledge that the NSA still existed in the future time period he had been dropped into, he had put together a valentine for his “26th century sweetheart,” as Casey had insisted on calling her. He had gotten Casey to agree to put the valentine into the NSA archives, in the wild hope that it would be preserved and delivered on Valentine’s Day, 2520.

Having learned that, Sarah rapidly developed a severe stomachache. She blamed it on stress and having eaten something that didn’t agree with her, but the reality was that it was caused by a combination of jealousy, envy, and rage. Jealousy because she wasn’t the person receiving a valentine from Chuck, envy because nobody had ever cared enough about her to create a valentine like the one Chuck had made, let alone plan for it to be delivered years later, and rage, well, just because.

And so she had started walking. And walking. After a while, she found herself walking down Mulholland Drive, along the spine of the Hollywood Hills. Mulholland was dead at this time of night – cars passed by about once every twenty minutes, and one police cruiser had stopped to see if she needed help – and promptly driven away when she flashed her CIA ID and said she was alright.

Sarah had just crossed over Laurel Canyon Boulevard and was approaching Laurel Canyon Park when she heard what could only be described as a ruckus up ahead of her. Shouting, combined with squealing noises and then the sounds of stomping feet. Not knowing what lay ahead, she instinctively drew her gun.

As she continued to advance, a disheveled looking man with a wild mop of brown hair and a grease-streaked blue pinstripe suit came rushing around a curve. He nearly ran into Sarah, skidding as he came to a stop in front of her. In an almost irrelevant flash of observation, Sarah noticed that he wore Converse trainers, just like Chuck did.

“Hello!” the man said cheerfully, with a British accent. “Run!”

He grabbed Sarah’s hand and took off running, back east on Mulholland. Having no choice but to fall if she didn’t run, Sarah took off running after him. They went running back across Laurel Canyon, and then, with no warning, the man veered onto Woodrow Wilson Drive, nearly dislocating Sarah’s right shoulder in the process.

He pulled her behind a hedge and then peered out. As he did so, what could only be described as a small space ship went streaking by on Mulholland. Sarah felt like she should’ve been shocked to see it, but after all that had happened in the last couple of months – not much shocked her anymore.

“Well, that’s better,” the man said, pulling out a pair of glasses and placing them on his nose. He peered at Sarah. “They’ll be gone for awhile looking for me, and I’ll be able to get out of here.”

Sarah just looked at him. Finally, she spoke. “Who the hell are you, where did you come from, and what the hell is going on?”

He looked back at her, a look of dismay crossing his face. “Quite right, of course! How rude of me, not introducing myself.”

His face shifted into a brilliant, almost manic smile. “That was a Raxicoricofallapatorian, trying to capture me – turns out there’s a gigantic bounty on my head back on his planet. I personally came from the planet Gallifrey, but more recently from that blue box behind you.”

Sarah turned to see a blue wooden box, about seven feet tall, behind her. “POLICE CALL BOX,” the glowing panel at the top said. “Okay, seriously,” she said. “Am I drunk? High? Asleep?”

“None of the above!” the man replied, taking his glasses off and putting them inside his suit coat. “That’s my TARDIS – stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space; if that’s too much of a mouthful for you, means ‘bigger on the inside’.”

He stuck out his hand. “Anyway, it was good to meet you, uh…”

“Sarah Walker,” she replied. “Central Intelligence Agency.”

His face fell as he realized the ramifications of who she worked for. “Oh dear,” he said.

“Now, you want to answer my question about who you are?”

“Oh, quite right!” he said, cheering up again.

What is it with this guy and his mood swings? Sarah thought.

He pulled out his glasses and perched them on his nose again. Looking at Sarah through his spectacles, he smiled, and then, as if making a grand proclamation, declared, “I’m the Doctor!”

Chuck vs. the Pie-Maker Chapter 4

“Chuck… Chuck! Wake up, Chuck!”

Chuck slowly swam upward toward consciousness. His eyes cracked open, and he saw two blurry John Caseys looking down at him.

“Hi, Casey,” he slurred drunkenly. “Did you know that Sarah has really big boobs?”

The NSA Agent looked upward, then to the right at Sarah Walker, whose face had taken on a look of pure astonishment. Unbidden, his eyes flicked downward toward Sarah’s chest. Her look of astonishment changed to a look of annoyance.

“Move,” she growled, pushing Casey out of the way.

As Chuck’s senses returned, he realized that Sarah was now standing above him, and also what he had just said out loud. “Aw, crap, I said that out loud, didn’t I?” he muttered.

Choosing the better part of valor over the shallow comments and actions of the two men, Sarah pressed on. “How’s your head, Chuck?” she asked, concern clearly present in her voice.

“It’s felt better,” he replied. “What happe… oh, yeah.”

Turning his head, he winced, the motion making his brain feel like it was rattling about in his skull. “You,” he said, pointing at Ned. “You need to be more careful when you’re around people you’ve brou-“

He was cut off suddenly as a strange woman covered his mouth with her hand. “You can’t say anything,” she whispered in his ear. She pointed at the short blonde woman who Ned had called “Olive.” “Olive doesn’t know.”

Chuck nodded, and the woman removed her hand from his mouth. “My name’s Charlotte Charles, but people call me Chuck,” she said, extending her hand.

Chuck unsteadily got to his feet. “Charles Bartowski,” he replied. “People call me Chuck too.”

“So I gathered,” she replied. “I will say, this could get confusing real quick.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Casey cracked. “I’ll just call him Ugly Chuck.”

“Because you have so much room to talk,” Sarah Walker snarked at him. “Moving on… Chuck, how are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I feel a little dizzy… but otherwise okay.”

“I think perhaps we all need to sit down and have a little chat,” the voice of Emerson Cod drifted into the conversation. “It sounds like our stories are all interconnected-like, and we should probably figure out how this all works.”

“Agreed,” Ned said.

“Oooh, do I get to play too?” Olive Snook asked, the glee evident in her voice.

“No,” Ned and Emerson boomed simultaneously.

“I need you to clean the place up,” Ned continued. “Make it look like it did before the terrifying pie monkeys came to play.”

And so, Olive Snook found herself not only shut out of the conversation, but once again, spurned by the Pie Maker. She had found that her interaction with him had been cut to a minimum as of late. Was it perhaps due to her harboring of Chuck whilst she was upset with Ned? Or was she simply being punished for defending herself in an unorthodox manner against the rather unfriendly men of Fulcrum?

Emerson seated himself in his customary booth by the window. Sarah started to slide in after him, but Emerson stopped her.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “I do not share a booth with the undead. Both of y’all can sit on the other side.”

“Both?” Chuck and Sarah echoed, the two women looking at each other.

“Wait a second,” Sarah said.

“Are you telling me –“ Chuck was interrupted.

“He brought you back –“ Sarah replied.

“Why didn’t he touch you again –“

“I had a gun the size of a sixteen inch cannon from the USS Iowa to my head, that’s why!” Ned snapped. “And to answer your as yet unasked question, the person who died was a car thief who was trying to steal Emerson’s car.”

“That doesn’t make it any better!” Chuck replied, her voice taking on a tone of disapproval. “Somebody still had to die!”

“Uh, that would be my fault,” Chuck Bartowski said sheepishly. “When he brought her back, there was no way I could let him kill her again, so I held a gun to his head and threatened to kill him if he even tried it. I didn’t know that somebody else within the general proximity would die.”

“But wait,” Sarah said. “He brought you back, too?”

“Yeah,” Chuck replied. “I was killed on a cruise –“

“Oh yeah!” Chuck Bartowski interrupted. “I knew you looked familiar! You’re the Lonely Tourist!”

Chuck sighed in disgust. “You see?” she snapped at Emerson. “I TOLD you that’s how everybody was going to remember me! Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles. I’m so sick of that!”

She took a moment, and breathed deep. “Sorry. Anyway. Ned brought me back to life to try to figure out who killed me, but when he saw me alive, he couldn’t bring himself to send me back, and, well, now I guess I’m kind of… well…”

“You’re his girlfriend,” Emerson huffed. “Good Lord, are you two lovestruck or just stupid?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Casey said, a look of confusion on his face. “If you’re his girlfriend… but he can’t touch you, lest you die again… then, how do you… well…”

“Casey!” Sarah admonished him.

“Don’t ask,” Emerson interjected. “You so do not want to know.”

“Let’s just say it involves Saran Wrap,” Chuck giggled.

“Okay, really, that was far more than I needed to know,” Chuck Bartowski objected, getting up from the table. “Seriously. Can we stop talking about the sexual habits of the undead and try to figure out what the hell’s going on?”

Chuck returned to his seat at the table, and the six commenced discussing the truth of the matters at hand. It was quickly determined that the men of Fulcrum had found Charlotte Charles, discovered that she was the wrong Chuck, and had threatened to return to kill her if they didn’t find Chuck Bartowski. This simply served to increase the Pie Maker’s animosity toward the agents from Los Angeles, leading him to feel that their presence was solely responsible for Chuck’s life being in danger.

“That could’ve gone better,” Chuck said, as he stood outside, watching the snow fall.

Sarah had joined him outside. Casey was inside, on the phone with area hotels, trying to find a room.

“Yes, well,” Sarah replied. “I think it would’ve been better if I hadn’t died five minutes into the mission. Things wouldn’t be quite so sticky now.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Chuck said immediately. “There’s no way you could’ve known that that Prius would zap you.”

“No, but I shouldn’t have just walked up and grabbed the handle,” Sarah said, frustration creeping into her voice. “It’s bad form for an intelligence agent. I just feel like I’ve been off my game lately. This whole Fulcrum thing has me on edge… I still feel confused about Bryce…”

She turned to Chuck, and as she spoke, a frustrated laugh escaped underneath her words. “And let me tell you, this whole ‘just friends’ thing isn’t exactly a walk in the park!”

Chuck turned to look at her, confusion evident on his face. “I… I’m not quite sure I follow,” he said.

Sarah put her hands on her hips and puffed her breath out through pursed lips. “Look,” she started, “in case you haven’t figured it out… I do, actually, like you. When I kissed you at the San Pedro Docks – yes, it was largely because I thought we were going to die. However, it wasn’t because you were the only pair of available lips – it was because I didn’t want to die without having let you know in some way how I felt about you.”

Chuck couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And then, when Bryce showed up, it totally screwed my head up,” Sarah continued. “But as much as I still had feelings for Bryce, I had moved on from him, and I couldn’t let myself just go back. That actually had a lot to do with why my alarm clock got murdered – I couldn’t sleep that whole night, and when it went off – well, I just kind of snapped.”

Chuck smiled. “I sort of thought it might’ve had something to do with that,” he said. “But that still doesn’t explain…”

“When I walked into the Buy More Christmas party –“

“Holiday party,” Chuck automatically corrected her, not even realizing what he was doing.

“Whatever. The Festivus party. When I walked in… I was half hoping you were going to try to convince me that we should be more than just friends…”

Chuck looked at Sarah and sighed. “There is very little I would like more than that,” he said. “But it just wouldn’t work right now.”

Sarah’s face seemed to drop a little, and she cast her eyes down for a moment. “I know,” she responded quietly, looking back up. “But… it’s just so frustrating sometimes, not having somebody to be with… I mean, when Charlotte Charles mentioned Saran Wrap… the places my mind went…”

Chuck’s eyebrows shot up like a rocket. “Ooookay!” he said, backing away from Sarah. “Just friends, crazy woman!”

“I know that,” she replied, laughing. “But I’m pretty sure that as your friend, I’m still entitled to a hug when I’ve spent the day dying, being brought back to life, and having to deal with a somewhat… quirky… town.”

“Well, I SUPPOSE,” Chuck said, stepping back forward.

As Charles Bartowski embraced Sarah Walker, it seemed for a moment that all was well. But they did not go unwatched.

From the window of the restaurant, Charlotte Charles saw them embrace. She sighed, wishing that Ned was able to do that for her.

From the window of her apartment, Olive Snook saw them embrace. She too sighed, wishing that anybody would do that for her – preferably the Pie Maker, although she didn’t mind the looks of this Charles fellow.

And from the black Crown Victoria parked a block away, Frank Mullins saw them embrace. He too sighed, rolling his eyes, and asking once again why, oh why, he had drawn this ungodly assignment.

Looking nervously at his Seussian surroundings, Mullins spoke to nobody in particular.

“I do not like green eggs and ham… I do not like them, Sam I Am.”