This is going to be a series of one shots. None of them are connected to each other. They each are their own story and universe. Some follow canon, others are AU. All of them feature my favorite character aside from Chuck, which is Ellie.

If you have any ideas for one shots for me, or would like a sequel to one of my previous stories, let me know.

As for my other fic, Chuck vs. the Sins of the Father. A month ago, I had about ¾ of the next chapter written when my laptop died on me. I was dumb enough to not back it up elsewhere, so I had to start from scratch. I'm struggling with rewriting it because the new version seems pale in comparison to the original, which I still mourn.

I will post more of that one. I will. I just need some time. Probably a lot of time. But it will happen.

Dana

P.S. KuryakinGirl is such a bad influence. One or two of my stories may involve some mind cheating on Ellie's part, though I will try to avoid it as much as possible.

Ellie vs. the Traitor

When she had received the news that her brother, her baby brother, whom she had practically raised by herself, was a traitor to his country, Ellie could hardly believe it. In fact, she did not believe it. Not for one moment. Not even upon discovering that he had been lying to her for years about practically everything in his life. His secret, double life, apparently.

"Hello, Ellie," Chuck acknowledged her entrance into the white-walled visiting room that was bare, save for a table and two chairs, with a mournful quirk of the lips, lifting his hands slightly, the chains that held his wrists together and tethered to the table clinking lightly. "I'm so sorry that you have to see me like this."

He may have been a good liar, an excellent one, at that, but he was not a mean spirited one. She had known all along that he was holding something back from her, but during all that time, his eyes had remained as they always had been. They had been soft and gentle and good. A little bit sad and a touch guarded, but there had been nothing to indicate that he was serving some dark purpose. Or that he would eventually be responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent people through his actions.

"Oh, Chuck," was all that she could say as she sat heavily down onto the chair across from him. She leaned forward and was reaching out to take his hands in hers when a burly guard standing behind Chuck cleared his throat, reminding her of the no physical contact rule. In a brief showing of defiance, she squeezed Chuck's hands briefly, anyway, before pulling back. "This can't be happening, Chuck. Please tell me that this is all a mistake!"

She was surprised and hurt when, at first, Chuck had refused to allow her to visit him in the high security prison in which he was detained. But then it had quickly begun to make perfect sense how he would not want her to see him as she was seeing him now, dressed in prison garb, his hands and feet chained to prevent escape, and his face haggard from prolonged imprisonment and a future that held only a death sentence.

Chuck dropped eye contact with her, guiltily, which caused her heart to drop to her stomach. Her slightly bent form straightened; she took in a couple short breaths, her posture stiffening of it own accord.

A sentence that was beginning to look as if it might actually be deserved.

"No," she whispered almost to herself, completely disbelieving, the urge to stand up and flee the room taking over. "No, no, no, no, no. It's not true. It can't be!"

"I'm sorry, Ellie," Chuck responded brokenly, spreading his chained wrists apart slightly in a helpless gesture before clasping them back together. "But it's not a mistake."

"No!" Ellie suddenly shouted as she leaped to her feet, jabbing a finger at Chuck accusingly. She could see out of the corner of her eyes two of Chuck's guards standing at the ready, just in case Ellie decided to try to kill him before his appointed time. She slapped her hands angrily on the table and leaned against them so that she was in his face. "You're lying! You didn't do it. You're not capable!"

"Ellie, please!"Chuck pleaded, his voice low, but loud enough for her to hear perfectly "Just sit down and let me tell you what happened. You deserve to know the truth, to hear it come from my own lips. Please, just settle down and let me tell you everything."

Ellie stopped her rant with some effort, her breathing shallow and labored as she struggled to come to grips with what she was hearing and to brace herself for what was to come.

There had to be some kind of explanation for this; he had to be protecting someone else. Was it Sarah or Casey who really did the deed?

She tried to comfort herself with that. If that were the case, then maybe they could do something to get him out of this treason charge.

'He can't be a traitor. He just can't be,'she thought to herself over and over again as she slowly sat back down on her chair.

"Okay," she said with finality, grateful that her voice sounded more human than she expected. "Okay. Tell me everything, Chuck"

She sat there, enraptured, as her little brother recounted what she might have dismissed as a fairy tale if it hadn't been for the NSA and CIA agents that had suddenly stormed into her life months earlier, tearing apart her home, traumatizing her family, and deconstructing her whole world. The whole time Chuck talked about his journey to become a spy, he sounded almost awed, as if he believed his story to be almost too fantastic to be real.

But then, his voice changed and became more serious when he began to tell her of the events that led him toward treason. Ellie was disconcerted by the change of tone. There was no animation in his voice or on his face that spoke of regret or sadness, which was completely unlike the Chuck she knew, who usually spoke with passion and conviction no matter what the subject of discussion. It was spoken in a manner that was flat and mechanical, as if he had told the same story a million times before and was now doing it on automatic pilot.

He also spoke the words with a familiarity that told her that it was likely to have been put together like a presidential statement and rehearsed repeatedly before he started telling it to anybody else. She was startled by the realization that Chuck wasn't just accused of treason, he had actually confessed to it.

"So, there you have it, Ellie. I sold them the information and they used it for their own purposes. Not a single one of them good."

Ellie just sat there for a long time. She was stunned that her brother, whom she had always known to be one of the most gentle, compassionate people in the world, was looking steadily into her eyes and confessing unwaveringly to have committed treasonous acts against his country for profit.

Again, she did not believe it for a single moment.

Even though his story had a logic to it – this decision led to that action, which led to him meeting with this man, who pointed him to that person, to whom he sold the secrets of his government – the sequence of events Chuck described were to neat and pat for her own comfort. She knew – knew in her heart of hearts – that Chuck's story of treason was the tragic fairy tale. Sure, some of the situations probably happened, but some of the best lies are built on a basis of truth. She would bet her life that the story he told had been fabricated, then scoured relentlessly for plot holes, which were filled so as to make it more convincing to people who would accept his confession at face value, rather than look too deeply into it.

Why he was going along with it, she did not know.

Maybe he was being threatened. Or maybe she and Devon and Carly were the ones being threatened and he was being forced to take the blame for treason to protect his family.

When she had processed all of this in her mind, she refocused her eyes on Chuck, who was looking at her patiently, and expectantly.

"You may have been able to fool others with this ridiculous story," she stated evenly, looking him coolly in the eye. He blinked and his head reared back slightly. His eyes are the same as they've always been. The truth was in his eyes. "But you cannot fool me. I don't know what's going on or why you are doing this, but I assure you, I am going to find out. And I am going to get you out of this hell hole and you are going to come home to us."

She didn't wait to see what kind of impact her words would make on Chuck before she broke eye contact, so she was startled when his hands shot out to grab for her as she stood up. Despite herself, she leaped backward to avoid his touch. She saw the guard behind Chuck lurch forward, but Chuck pulled back and calmed quickly enough that the guard halted, keeping his hand resting against his gun holster.

"Ellie," he said, looking like he was about to lose the calm that had held him together for the longest time during their meeting. "Ellie, please, for your sake... for the sake of Devon and your daughter. Leave. This. Alone. Leave it alone. The only thing that can come out of your meddling is more pain. I am begging you to just let it go!"

Ellie didn't know what to say, couldn't say a word. So, instead, she just turned and fled, with the sound of Chuck calling out her name following her out the door and down the hall and haunting her all the way to her car. She couldn't help but feel effected by his pleas and on her way home, she struggled with the desire to save him and to comply with his wish that she let it go.

The next day, she got word that Chuck had somehow found a way to hang himself in his prison cell, the news rocking her world once again. For several months following her visit to her brother and his death, nothing her husband and daughter said or did could console her. For a long time, she felt like she had died along with her brother.

Then, a year later, she received a post-card from Italy that was dated a few days previously. She immediately recognized the handwriting as Chuck's. There was no mistaking it. Her heart pounded in her chest as she read the one sentence that written on it, of which she pondered the meaning for the longest time afterward until she finally understood it.

It's hard to say good-bye.

"Be safe, Chuck," she whispered to herself in the quiet of her living room. "Wherever you are, be safe."