One shot. S2, slightly askew, slightly non-canon. Chuck finds a new nocturnal occupation.

Vigil

Chuck had seen Sarah use them. Casey too. Observed their hands as they did it.

Chuck had watched as he always watched, a sponge in water, super-absorbent, taking it all in. Later, he hunted on the Internet and found them for himself. He practiced in the apartment when Ellie and Devon were out. He studied diagrams, memorized details, whittled his video-game, fine motor skills into a new shape.

He was good with his hands.

He figured out how to dupe Casey's surveillance and how to get out of the apartment. He would take Nerd Herder home each night and he would sneak out to it and leave. Casey might eventually figure it out. No, Casey would eventually figure it out. But it was worth it. Devotion.

Chuck drove away. He covered the distance quickly. Arrived. Over time, he had become familiar to the building's night staff and no one gave him a second look when he walked in, despite it being so late. They thought they knew where he was going. They did. They didn't. He was unsure of what he was doing; he just felt compelled to do it. Internalized self-demand.

He knew he was risking his life, at least risking what mattered most to him in his life, but he had to do it. He got to the door and looked around. Deserted. Like always. He knelt down, rolled out the leather packet and removed the tools. He worked quickly and silently - at least he hoped he was silent. He had done this enough times to trust himself now, but something could always go wrong. It didn't. Or maybe it did. Maybe it going right was the wrong thing. He did not know; he had to do it. He could no more stop himself than he could stay in the car on missions.

Finally, with a slight click, the lock turned. He put the lock-pick tools back in their sheaths and rolled up the leather packet. He took a deep breath and stood up, turning the knob. The door opened. He walked into the dark.

He found what he expected to find. Sarah was on her bed. She was asleep, a blanket squeezed around her like a python. She tossed and turned. In the clutches of the blanket, of her nightmares. He knelt again, this time by the side of her bed.

xXx

It had been a nothing mission. Casey had not even been involved. The whole plot was to get Chuck into position to get a look at a woman, to see if he flashed. It had gone stupendously wrong and Chuck had been shot. Sarah did not know that Casey had made Chuck wear a vest, mainly because he wanted to torture Chuck, making him uncomfortable on the supposedly non-dangerous mission, and since Casey, not needed, was staying behind to do paperwork.

Sarah thought Chuck was dead. She shot the woman and then rushed to Chuck. She knelt over him and clawed at his shirt, trying to locate the wound. Chuck recovered from his shock just in time to see the raw, animal panic in Sarah's eyes, the tears on her cheeks. Wild grief, overwhelming her. Shattered. He saw it and knew it for what it was. She had turned away when she knew he was okay, but she never denied what he had seen, never tried to explain it away or somehow discount it. It was just there. There. Between them. Heavy, soundlessly stentorian. Brooding and wakeful.

It had an effect. She had gotten antsy, then markedly nervous. Anxious. Constant. She was often pale; she did not eat. Though she had never been one to make jokes, she liked to be around when they were made and she always reacted, even if only with slight merriment in her eyes. No more. She was dour, too focused, too intense. She watched Chuck intently, scanning around him all the time. She looked exhausted.

Finally, one day, Chuck came into Castle and saw Sarah's purse and a pill bottle on the counter. The bottle was empty; Sarah must have been calling in a refill. Sleeping pills.

Chuck knew Sarah. She was never one to take things - not even aspirin. She valued her clarity and took it as a condition of doing her job, of protecting him. Seeing the pill bottle made Chuck feel shaky himself. But he realized it was more than that. It was the pill bottle, the fact that she had left it out where it could be seen - and other changes in Sarah: they added up to something.

Chuck found Sarah asleep in a chair in Castle the next day. Asleep. She began to jerk in her chair, dreaming. Chuck rushed to her and took her hand in his. Almost immediately, Sarah's jerking stopped, her face relaxed and her breathing slowed. She squeezed his hand but she did not wake up. Chuck held her hand and spoke softly to her, not thinking about what he was saying, saying it so low that no one - perhaps not even Sarah had she been awake - could have heard him. He spoke to her of his admiration for her, his respect, his love. She slept.

She seemed better later that day when Chuck saw her again. He had left her before she woke up.

That night, he took his life in his hands and stole into her apartment for the first time. He knew she was sleeping with a gun under her pillow, with knives nearby. She could have killed him if she thought he was an intruder. If she woke up with him there, she might have killed him, not as an intruder, but for intruding on her and her private misery.

He got in. She was sleeping but disturbed, twisting. She mumbled his name in fear. He knelt beside her and took her hand. As had happened in Castle, she relaxed, calmed, and slept. He stayed there on his knees, hoping for peace for her, good angels. He held her hand perhaps longer than necessary, gazing at her lovely face in the dark as his eyes adjusted.

His eyes adjusting to the dark: that was the story of his life since the intersect. But he was willing to go into the dark if she was there. He wanted to be where she was. He wanted to hold her - even if it only meant that he held her hand. He finally put her hand down gently, stood and left silently.

xXx

As she always did, Sarah opened her eyes just a bit and watched his tall form retreat to the door and then out of her apartment. She had awakened the first night, probably not long after he had taken her hand. She had awakened, calm and peaceful and happy for the first time since she thought he was dead, shot and killed.

She had thought him dead before - dropped from a roof, blown up in a car, and those moments had been awful, but she thought she had found a way past them. She hadn't. They had lodged inside her, pulsating, and she had been able just to hold their consequences back. The last one had been the tipping point, and her fear for Chuck was consuming her.

Until he started his vigils. Her hand in his - she woke up then and afterward she could sleep the rest of the night. Sometimes he whispered things to her. So low, so gentle; he whispered soft things. He didn't really tell them to her because he thought she was asleep. It was more like he was praying - to her and for her, and it seemed more like prayer because he knelt as he did it. Entreaty. A sweet ache filed the room. Longing.

She loved the feeling of her hand in his, of his naked concern for her, the sound of his hushed words. She could not be awake for any of it, not that he knew, and she knew she was stealing in a way, just as he knew he was overstepping in a way. From each other, for each other.

She did not need sleeping pills anymore. Her appetite was returning. She was nearly able to relax, at least as much as professional demand allowed. All because he had come to her in the night, been brave enough, reckless enough, to break into her apartment, in hopes of putting her back together.

He had done it. He was good with his hands.