A Most Hallowed and Important Day

Many things happened on this day in history, but possibly the most important one to Chuck fans is that it's Yvonne Strahovski's birthday.

Wepdiggy and mxpw have responded:

 Interludes from Double Agent

Alone on Her Day

As has Crystal:

Chuck Vs. the Spotless Mind

And even Daddy Liam Justin stopped by to say hi on the blog, a momentous occasion.

I figured I don't have the internet being down excuse like Chris, I'd better get cracking, only I'm still buried in Fates and not showing that to anybody on the blog yet.  So I found this short little scene on my hard drive, and, given that it's Yvonne's birthday and that's like a national holiday to us, I thought I would share...

A Star On a (Kicked) Wall

She felt him kick the wall. He’d done that a lot. Fourteen times. She’d counted each individual kick, just a little thud and the tiniest vibration through the cell wall each time. Since she knew the detention center—fancy digs for a couple of spooks accused of treason—was tucked far away from the main strip at Langley, those little interludes of sound were the only things that really shook the walls at all. No heavy trucks unless a prisoner was getting unloaded or taken away. Nothing to break up the dead quiet at night, except the breathing and sleep muttering of the other prisoners.

“Hear that?”

Yes, she’d heard it, damn it. Her ears worked perfectly fine. Sarah didn’t open her eyes. “What?” she asked, though she knew exactly what Chuck was talking about. She hadn’t heard a car pull up outside of the detention center, but the movement echoing along the corridor told her that somebody was indeed coming.

Maybe this was it.

Maybe this time, she would lose Chuck.

Maybe it was another Smith.

She still wanted to beat the hell out of Smith. She hadn’t had the time to sharpen her knives while on the run, but that was just fine. She could kill Smith with dull knives. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d take pleasure in it, the way she’d have to work just a little bit harder to slice off bits of flesh—

“Something’s happening,” Chuck said, interrupting a delicious vision.

She leaned her head back against the wall and stared at the other wall. She’d memorized every detail about her cage in the first two minutes of being trapped, but she’d stopped seeing anything not too far after that. “Something’s always happening,” she said, her voice sounding bleak even to her ears.

Something was always happening. She’d spent a week on no sleep and even less food, since her stomach couldn’t have handled much, running away from the same agency that had saved her from an ambiguous fate after high school. All because of Bryce Larkin, who hadn’t even had the decency to let her know that he might-sort-of-maybe harbored thoughts of becoming a traitor. It had been a week full of second-guessing. Second-guessing herself. Was she really that great a spy if she hadn’t seen Bryce’s play for the Intersect coming? Second-guessing Bryce. Was that really his entire plan? Send the Intersect to Chuck and disappear? The other shoe had to drop sometime. Second-guessing Chuck.

Caring for Chuck. Making sure Chuck didn’t simply curl up in the fetal position and start gibbering.

Letting her heart break for Chuck.

Doubting Chuck.

Hating herself for doubting Chuck.

Chuck.

“I think it’s time to face the firing squad.”

Sarah blinked, the room swimming back into focus. The CIA didn’t send a firing squad when they burned you. It was a lone gunman, it was a dark alley, and it never ended with a star on the wall unless they really wanted to cover it up.

She’d probably get a star on the wall.

Chuck wouldn’t.
 

Yes, that's a little bit of Sarah POV from chapter seven ("Good-Bye, Sarah Walker"), written in response to something Chris wrote.  If you want to see a little more of that, you'll have to bother mxpw to finish Double Agent by October 9th.

:)

Happy Birthday, Yvonne!!!

Frea