AN: Of course this is a post-finale story. It's been several months since I saw the last half of Season 5 because of those few frustrating episodes, but just now I had the realization that those events likely were meant as a cliffhanger and Season 6 opener before the show was canned. I don't have the time to write a full season, but this story (of which I have no idea yet how long it's going to be) is how I think they may have dealt with the memory loss in a hypothetical Season 6. Bear in mind that I am a massive trekkie, so it may have influenced some decisions. The first scene is basically how I would imagine Season 6 to start.

Also, this is un-betaed, since my usual one is unavailable for the next weeks. All mistakes are mine.

Disclaimer: If I owned them, there would have been the proper seven seasons.

Chuck vs Infinity

Chapter One

Chuck was freaking out. But to be fair, what man in his situation wouldn't? Sarah leaned back from him, and he could see on her face that she didn't remember everything, and he knew her well enough by now to be able to tell.

Yet at the same time the shy, hesitant smile on her beautiful face told him that there was... something, and that stopped him from...

"Chuck, don't freak out."

He grinned in response, trying hard not to feel too hopeful, and said: "So, how much..."

"How much do I remember?" Sarah asked, "something. I remember that you are familiar to me and that..."

She almost choked on what she wanted, no, needed to say next. "I...remember that I love you."

Chuck couldn't help his wide smile, in spite of the tears that began to run down her face.

"And..." she said, swallowing hard, "something about a broken phone."

He sighed, and decided that it could have been worse. That way at least they had something to work on.

"Let's go home. We can talk there." Chuck rose to his feet and offered her his hand. Sarah glanced at the wedding ring, remembering that she too owned one just like it, somewhere, before taking it and letting him pull her to his feet. It would be tough, it would take forever, but as he smiled at her and that smile caused a rush of affection and love, she knew that whatever her life had been like before Quinn, it was worth the effort she would have to put into finding out.

Chuck was about to let go of her hand, but when she instead held onto it and intertwined her fingers with his, he stopped walking up the beach and instead turned to stare at her. Neither of them said anything, but for the both of them it was a sign of hope.

They had barely turned onto the freeway when Sarah couldn't help but ask a question.

"Chuck?"

"Yes, dear wife of mine?"

She chuckled, knowing that he'd said that so that she would. After a few seconds she sobered up and asked her question, it being one that had crept up on her since they had left the beach.

"Why did you fall in love with me, Chuck?"

Insecurity about oneself was not something they taught you at the farm, and Sarah Wa—Bartowski was confident to the point of foolhardiness at times. Yet now that she could only remember who she had been five years ago and only feelings of the time in-between, and that together didn't make her comfortable. Chuck was a sweet man with a heart of gold the size of Mount Everest, and yet she knew that she had to have been cruel to him back then. So how and why did he fall in love with her?

Chuck meanwhile almost drove them into the concrete dividers on the side of the freeway, because that had been the last question he'd expected from his awesome, confident super-spy wife. 'But then,' he reminded himself, 'this isn't quite the woman I married.' In some of the worst ways imaginable, Sarah had been reset to where she'd been when she'd first walked into the Buy More, and he knew better than most people how she'd been back then. It saddened him, but at the same time he knew that he would love her however she felt, and the last thing he could do was to try and answer the question.

"This isn't a car conversation, Sarah." he replied, and both were quiet until they reached a service station. Chuck steered the Lotus to the curb near the first pumps and turned in his seat. "Now, how's about some Coffee?"

Normally that would have been accompanied by a smirk, but his tone of voice and the look on his face told her clearly that he was as aware of the seriousness of it as she was, and once more she was struck by how well her... her husband seemed to.. no, he did know her that well.

Which didn't exactly make her feel any better about it all. "I...I don't deserve you!" she blurted out, and once more Chuck was rendered silent by what she'd said.

She never saw him move, but suddenly he hugged her tight over the centre console of the car. "How on earth can you think that's true, Sarah?"

Sarah relaxed in his arms and the stiffness left her, but she said nothing. Chuck wondered how her mood had changed so quickly, from the cautious hope on the beach to...to this. Of course with what she'd gone through in the last few days would throw anyone off kilter. Even a person not given to mood swings was allowed to be so when he or she had the last five years deleted.

She snorted. "Oh come on. You can't tell me that someone like you, an open, kind person, would go for..well..." her voice broke, and Chuck's heart with it as he listened to her. He held her tighter and stroked the back of her head, giving her the power to continue, yet at the same time making her feel even worse.

"Like me." she ended the sentence. "A spy that's never been in one place for long, a cold-blooded killer, an..." she hesitated for a moment, fighting back a bad memory from the Farm, "an [I]Icequeen[/I]. For years I've seen people have it all, and I was standing outside and looking on. You changed that for me and I..."

Chuck said nothing for a moment, before pushing her back so that he could look her in the eyes. But instead Sarah looked away, staring at the dashboard. He placed both his hands on her cheeks, forcing her to look at him.

"Sarah, I've told you this before, and I will tell you again, and if it takes the rest of my days to convince you it will take that long. Sarah Walker, I love you, I will always love you for who you are, who you were and who you might be. All and everything of you."

A tiny, almost...shy smile appeared on her face, and she tentatively looked into his eyes. She said only one word: "Bartowski." she almost whispered.

"Huh?"

She smiled, broader this time. "My name is Sarah Bartowski. I don't remember how it got that way, but what I do remember is that it's the right thing and what I want to be."

Chuck brightened visibly at this, and smiled the crooked smile she'd always loved, before pulling her closer for a searing, deep kiss.

Minutes or hours later, she rested her forehead against his. "But I'll need your help to find all that out, Chuck. I'll need your help with all this."

"Consider it done." he replied, smiling again.

Then she decided to say something more.

"Help me, Chuck Bartowski, you're my only hope."

Chuck put a fraction more distance between them. "Sarah... this is excellent news."

She frowned, and said with a slight tinge: "What? That I can't re..."

He shook his head without letting go of her.

"No, what you said. Not why, but that you did. You never saw Star Wars until after we met."

An explosion of images raced through her mind at that.

/- "Chuck, Beckman needs that report!" she said, even as the giggles Chuck's suggestion had caused were bubbling to the surface.

"Probably, but we have tomorrow off, and I for one don't want to do anything even remotely related to work. Instead, we will be fighting the forces of the dark side from the comfort of this here couch. Ellie and Awesome are on that trip until tuesday, and I will take advantage of that."

"What," she asked with a wicked grin, "booze, loose women and party?"

He chuckled. "None of that. No. Star Wars. And you, Agent Walker, will be watching all three with me."

Chuck held up the DVD pack, and between those eyes, those incredible puppy-dog eyes and her own aversion to paperwork, she sat down on the couch without providing another answer." -\\

Sarah sucked in a deep breath and leaned back against her seat. Chuck, worried and at the same time excited, looked at her. "Are you ok?"

She closed her eyes, taking deep, steady breaths. "Now I am... I think." Opening her eyes wide, she looked at her husband. "I just remembered something!"

Chuck reached over and squeezed her hand. "Let's get out of here. I feel the need for a good cup of Coffee."

The rest of the week was both rewarding and depressing. Rewarding because Sarah recovered several more or less minor memories, but depressing because it also hammered home again just how much she'd forgotten. On Monday, while he was making pancakes for breakfast, they had started to talk, and somehow Carmicheal Industries had become the topic.

"Wait... how much?"

"Near nine-hundred million." Chuck replied, "Though most of what's left is still frozen. When you were in the shower Í talked to Beckman, and she said that she was going to suggest un-freezing at least some of it in exchange for us keeping mum about the various black eyes the Agency gave itself over the last few months. I don't know what's going to come out of it..."

"Chuck..."

He turned towards her and said: "Don't worry, Sarah. We will figure something out."

Sarah jumped to her feet from the couch. "Don't you tell me not to worry, Chuck!" she yelled, "The Agency owes this to you."

He turned, and could see that his wife was genuinely angry. And the next thing he realized was that she meant it. "Sarah..."

Chuck sighed and lightly pushed Sarah towards the couch again. "At least we have the Buy More. That's the one thing Beckman was able to do for us right away. It's not much, but it should keep us going until the company turns a profit again."

He winced at his choice of words and the unintentional pun, but Sarah considered this. There probably was much she couldn't remember, but Chuck had told her a lot over the last few days. "So we're stuck with it."

"The Buy More. God, has it been that long since..."

/- It was a chain store like many others, but the Buy More Franchise was mostly concentrated on the West Coast, and she'd been all over but not much there. If she was to be honest, she hated going shopping, but large chain stores could be a great way to disappear into the crowd or to arrange a meet. Now however she had a different mission all together, and it was not one she looked forward to.

Not that she didn't like to interact with a mark, but doing it with a clock ticking in the form of that NSA maniac would force her to use methods and procedures she was not all that fond of to begin with, creating a combination that left her acutely uncomfortable. But when she spotted the Nerd Herd desk in the middle of the store, she no longer had an excuse and assumed the persona she'd selected.

Her phone had been 'broken' by a professional agency tech, and it would be perfect to make contact with this 'Chuck'. The picture from his Stanford file wasn't all that flattering, but she knew that he was highly intelligent and the quintessential nerd. And he looked it, from the pocket protector to the shirt and grey tie.

The mark stood behind it, talking on the phone, with a smaller bearded guy next to him. Time to get to the counter, the bearded gnome in the green Buy More shirt said something. -\\

Chuck could see how a shadow seemed to fall over her beautiful blue eyes, and he'd seen that one once before.

"Was it a big one?" he asked, but she shook her head.

"A good one."

Suddenly she sprang to her feet, crossed the room and grabbed the lapels of the shirt he was wearing. She stared into his eyes for about ten seconds and then pulled him in for a fierce kiss. He lost track of time and of what she was doing in that instant.

Minutes or hours later, Chuck noticed a set of very nice hands sneaking up his back under his shirt, and as much as he wanted her to go on...

"Sarah, wait." he said, holding her arms in place, "Are you really sure you want this?"

Her face crumpled, and Chuck was sure that she would have withdrawn her arms had he let her, and within seconds he was scrambling for something better to say.

"God, Sarah. It's not that at all. I love you, and I do [I]want[/I] you.. but.."

The brilliant smile he got in return nearly undid him there and then. "No Chuck, it's not what I want. It's what I need."

She kissed him again.

A week passed, during which Sarah spent most of the time re-discovering their relationship, in a frustratingly clumsy manner, which wasn't helped by her still only remembering scraps. Chuck, when not out getting Carmicheal Industries running again (though without much success) she did whatever she could to help speed things along.

Next Sunday morning, Chuck was still in half-sleep when his searching hand registered an empty side in the bed. He jerked wide awake, but then two things registered. First, the sheets were still warm, and secondly, the person that had made them so was sitting in the desk chair on the other side of the room, wearing it seemed his favourite N7 hoodie. She was studying him intently, and Chuck could damn near hear the gears turning in her head.

Something about the picture was surprisingly disturbing, but when what he secretly called her Agent-Face disappeared and was replaced by the one she'd worn on the beach after their kiss or in the car or... he didn't really care. Instead of thinking about it more, he looked at her.

"Staring is creepy, you know."

He was rewarded with the cutest of small giggles, but she didn't stop doing whatever she'd been doing.

With a sigh, she rose and padded over to the bed. Instead of getting back in, she knelt down at Chuck's side, her arms resting on the mattress and her fingers stepled to hold up her chin. "You know, my dad would like you."

Chuck wasn't certain if Jack Burton had really liked him the few times they'd met, but almost involuntarily his brain made him say something else.

"Your dad... strange thing to think about at a time like this."

But then something else registered. "Wait, can you remember how we met?"

Incredulously, Sarah pulled back, and Chuck knew that she was now wondering where she'd gone wrong to allow this meet-up to happen in reality. He decided not to tell her just how that had taken place, but watching her realize that she'd mentioned her father first was well worth it.

"You met him, didn't you? It's not that I remember, but somehow I [I]knew[/I] that..."

Chuck grinned. "Well, the feeling's mutual. In spite of his fiendishly con-man-y ways. He may not have been there all the time, but you turned out pretty awesome anyway."

Sarah clearly wasn't all that certain, but he decided to leave it for the moment. They were far too busy to figure out how to proceed from here to waste time on things that would, if the universe was for once going his way, be fixed in time. He knew there would be a price to pay for that, and he was unsure how Sarah would react to it once it was all over, but he was willing to do it. He knew her well enough to know that she was frustrated to no end that she only remembered odd little bits and pieces, random scraps of information here and there.

What he liked about the situation was that she'd embraced that she was his wife, that she knew she loved him and that she was, well, here.

Instead of telling her that though, he said something he'd considered even before the bomb had changed everything.

Sarah seemed to sense his need to change the subject. "So, what's next?"

"You could either get back in here," Chuck said, padding the sheets, "or we could go and get something to eat."

She threw her head back and laughed. "I..."

The moment was interrupted when all of a sudden music wafted through the appartment. Beckman's ringtone.

Sarah on the other hand had of course forgotten that part, and instead sighed in disgust when Chuck jumped out of the bed with only a short "Beckman" as an apology.

His phone lay where he'd dropped it yesterday, in a pile of clothing near the bedroom door. The General's disapproving frown stared back up at him. It was an old picture, one he'd grabbed in secret with from under the table one day at a briefing.

"Yes, General, what can I do for you?"

If Beckman detected how false his chirpy manner was, she didn't show it.

"Chuck, I know that you and Sarah are probably not exactly well-disposed towards the CIA right now, but could the two of you come to Langley soonest? It's not what we talked about the last time."

"Uh...General, I don't know how we can help you in..."

Beckman must have sensed that he was about to turn her down, because what she said next was, in Chuck's considered opinion as OOC for her as Prequel-Anakin had been for Darth Vader.

"We have a need for the services of Carmicheal Industries, Chuck."

He was worried at that. On one hand, this contract, if it really was one, would allow him to keep the company afloat until the Buy More started turning a profit again, yet at the same time the CIA was at least partially responsible for everything that had happened in his life over the last five years. He glanced at the bedroom door and couldn't stifle a grin. Good as well as bad. Besides, there was something unusually sincere in the General's voice.

"I can't speak for Sarah, but I'll try to get there tomorrow."

Greetings were exchanged and Chuck ended the call.

"Can't speak for me why?"

Normally he loved is wife's awesome mad Ninja skills, but right now he almost jumped out of his own skin.

Sarah was standing in the doorway, and it was obvious that she'd heard most of his end of the conversation.

"She wants us in Langley. Something about a gig she wants us to do."

Sarah frowned, but Chuck was quick to reassure her. "Trust me, honey. If it's anything like the old days, I'll do an about face quicker than the Falcon on the Kessel run."

"Are you certain?"

"Damn right I am, Sarah. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and if that means going back to the Agency for this job then that's the way it has to be."

Sarah was struck again by how big a heart Chuck had. He had been willing to give up everything for her, he'd told her that, but now was the first time since The Beach that she fully, totally and completely believed that.

Yet at the same time there was still an element of uncertainty in her own mind. The CIA had been her life for so long, it was hard to imagine anything else, and she knew that she'd been very good at her job.

She loved Chuck, and she wanted to grow old at his side, yet at the same time the job, the life, her old life were calling her, and the sound was alluring.

"Oh Chuck," she said, trying not to show on her face what she felt, "I love you too. I'll come with you. If what you've told me is anything to go by you're far too accident-prone to go there without me."

She hoped that he wouldn't find out just yet that she was going there for reasons not the same as his own.

"By the way," she added with true humour in her voice, "you do know that a parsec is a unit of distance, not time? And Chuck, Iron Eagle? For Beckman? Really?"

"Hey, it's an 80s classic!"

tbc

AN: If the selection of things Sarah remembers seems random, that's fully intentional. I want to show that for now she remembers bits and pieces and has now control at all over it. It's all a bit clunky, but also my first foray into this particular fandom.

This chapter is shorter than I had intended, but having them fly to Langley in this one felt too rushed when I wrote it, so that sequence has been cut.