Hello! Well, we're on to Chapter 2.

Thanks for the feedback on Chapter 1. I love the reviews! Please keep sending 'em!

Thanks to my wife and Anon for editing brilliance, as always.

On with the show.

Oh, I don't own anybody in the Chuck universe. Think I neglected to mention that last time.

________________________________________________________________________

My God. How did this happen?

Chuck Bartowski lay in bed, contemplating the form of the beautiful sleeping woman; her head nestled in the crook of his arm, one of her hands lying on his chest.

That was the problem. He couldn't quite figure it out. He relived the glory that was the previous evening. Everything from her reassurances at dinner to the torturous but exquisite mini-golf game, to what took place in the car and at home, afterwards. Things like this happened to others, not him.

When he strained his mind to its utmost, Chuck could just about accept that he had simply hit the lottery. In spite of the edicts of reality, a woman such as Sarah Walker could actually fall for him.

How on earth would he be able to keep her, though? Patient, Sarah might be, but not infinitely so. They were in the honeymoon phase of their relationship, and Chuck had already done what he could to sabotage a time in which they should only be experiencing joy together. Chuck was well aware that all honeymoons must end, and not necessarily at the same time for each member of the couple. Chuck thought it seemed likely that Sarah would come down to earth a lot quicker than he would. At that point, the problems posed by him and the new Intersect would not seem quite as insurmountable. If he didn't get his act together, sooner or later, Sarah was going to move on.

While keeping their relationship intact was foremost on Chuck's mind, it was hardly the only reason for him to wrestle the new Intersect and himself into shape. If you were looking at this from the viewpoint of one John Casey, the Chuck / Sarah relationship was the least important reason. Chuck reminded himself that he hadn't uploaded the Intersect for Sarah. He had done it because it was necessary to fight the Ring, and to protect the country.

Yet, it had been almost two months since the upload and the waylaying of Miles' crew. Chuck's attempts at activating the Intersect since then had been failures, with the exception of beating on Casey once, and the horrible seduction mess.

Chuck's mind and emotions were the key to making this Intersect work, but he couldn't get a handle on it. Hell, he couldn't even come to grips with getting his conscious mind in line with the needs of the job!

The time spent in the bogus Downtown office hadn't been completely wasted. Chuck was getting into much better shape. If the new Intersect should suddenly activate and he went into Kung Fu mode, at least he'd be less likely to hurt himself as much as he had on the first outing. But Casey wasn't a glorified gym trainer. He was trying to make Chuck a viable agent. Chuck was failing him.

Their bitter exchange yesterday flew through Chuck's mind, especially the last crack about Chuck's willingness to let the others kill for him, but not vice-versa. Was that true? When Chuck had first met him, he was intimidated by John Casey and his reputation. Casey had demonstrated from the beginning his ability and willingness to kill on the job. Though initially horrified, Chuck quickly came to reluctantly accept that Casey was only killing the bad guys, the result being that Chuck's life was regularly saved. He had looked past Casey's exterior, and come to consider him a friend, much to the Colonel's periodic chagrin. Accepting Sarah having to kill took much more time, mainly because Chuck had difficulty reconciling his rapidly growing feelings towards her with the needs of her job. Even the Mauser incident was eventually resolved with a brief conversation. Chuck had wished the Fulcrum agent's death hadn't been necessary, but once Sarah explained it, Chuck hadn't felt himself mourning the man's demise as much. Sarah had acted to keep Chuck safe. He knew both Sarah and Casey would kill to keep him alive. They should expect the same of him. It wasn't like he was completely innocent, either. To save himself and Sarah, hadn't he worked with Casey to bring about the brain-frying of multiple Fulcrum agents during the suburbs mission? So, what was stopping him now? Chuck had tried to keep a firm moral high ground for himself. He wasn't so sure that was an option anymore.

"Hey."

Chuck glanced down. Her eyes were open. She was smiling at him.

"Hey," he said, softly kissing her. "Good morning. It's almost 8. We need to get ready for work."

________________________________________________________________________

They unlinked hands as soon as they arrived Downtown. They had long agreed that public displays of affection would not occur on the job, except as necessary for the job. Part of this was out of respect for Casey, who was clearly uncomfortable with such displays. On the other hand, this was the same man who seemed to freak out that they weren't all over each other in the week following his favor to them. Chuck and Sarah had both found that quite funny, and agreed that there was just no pleasing some people.

The main reason for the decision though was to ensure that the relationship wouldn't interfere with the job. Sarah had done her part, and Chuck had tried to do his, but….

He pushed away the thoughts. Continuous dwelling on the events of the D.C. mission was not helping anybody. Casey preferred to act like the whole fiasco hadn't happened. Sarah had agreed to move on. Chuck needed to do the same. Focusing on his failures was not going to help him overcome them. Probably seeing his distress, Sarah shot him a look of concern, but Chuck slowly shook his head and smiled reassuringly. They entered through the back warehouse entrance into the Castle.

Casey was already there, setting up the chairs for the meeting. They handed him a coffee to which he grunted his thanks. He didn't bring up the talk of the previous day.

Beckman was onscreen five minutes later.

"Good morning, Team," she said crisply. "I trust you've been keeping busy since your return to Burbank?"

"Training, training, and more training, General!" Chuck sang out without thinking about it. This elicited a small smile from Sarah, and a cock-eyed look from Casey. Chuck realized that he might still be a bit giddy from the prior evening. The General remained expressionless. Chuck thought that she just might be getting used to him.

Casey cleared his throat, and said, "We've been stepping up Chuck's regimen. With the amount of hours we have him putting in, we're halving the amount of time required in most normal physical conditioning."

"I see. And have we been able to uncover any new features of the Intersect, or been able to revisit the fighting capabilities in the system?"

Sarah stared straight ahead. Chuck couldn't help nervously turning his eyes toward Casey. "We have not, General," said the Colonel. "While Chuck has been able to demonstrate the continued ability to flash on various types of documentation and visuals, none of the new features of the Intersect have lately presented themselves."

"That's a problem, wouldn't you say, Colonel?" Turning her attention to Chuck she sternly continued, "Mr. Bartowski, we are not paying you a full agent's wages so you can continue to function at the level of an Asset. It is a full agent we need. The Intersect is supposed to make you that, but if the Intersect proves to not be a working mechanism, we are going to need to revisit our arrangements, do you understand?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Chuck said, trying not to break out into a sweat.

Sarah chose this moment to interject, "General, if I may ask, has the intelligence we secured in D.C. from Langus Greene borne new fruit?"

Chuck squirmed a little. Did she have to bring that up?

Apparently, Sarah did have the right idea. Beckman seemed more pleased, anyway. "As a matter of fact, on deeper inspection, we think that the Greene data may have brought us more than we had originally thought. It was hard to tell on first inspection. The Intersect has yet to give us a direct Ring link." The General's gaze flashed irritably to Chuck, then she continued, "However, enough research can uncover more ties. We were able to find a series of warehouses cross-country. We've already had some of them explored. In some cases, the areas are vacated. In others, there are no people, but there have been residual files that our best have been able to recover from wiped hard drives from servers located there that are indeed useful. There have been a couple of places where there is both data and enemy personnel to be found. We've made a couple of arrests, but we've also lost some of ours in the process, and some of the enemy have been able to escape or take their own lives before they've been caught. Locating the warehouses has taken extensive time and we didn't have the ability to go after them all at once, so unfortunately, the Ring is aware that we have some knowledge at this point, making operations all the more dangerous."

"This brings us to you. We've just located a warehouse in Los Angeles. Contracts indicate that it was in the process of being renovated into an office building, but that the project wasn't completed. It's in a fairly deserted section of the city; strange place to develop an office. The three of you are to go this evening at the address I'll provide. Even if the place is deserted, maybe Chuck can flash on something after the fact. However, in the event that the Ring has not cleaned out that location, take care. Again, they've managed to do damage to us already. Understood?"

All three nodded. The General signed-off.

Casey looked around to them and growled. "Normal training schedule today, 'cept we'll break at five, so you can have dinner, take a nap, or something. We'll reconvene at eight."

Sarah nodded, then made her way back to the upper office. Chuck was about to get his training togs out of his locker when he said to Casey, "Hey, about yesterday's discussion…"

"Don't worry 'bout it, Bartowski," interrupted the Colonel. "We see anybody, we capture them. You can bring your tranq gun."

Then Casey walked away with Chuck thinking, Guess I deserved that.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The three arrived in the van a little past 10 p.m. The warehouse in question was located off of a dirt road. The building appeared to cover a block of territory. It was two stories. No lights inside. No signs of life, anywhere. This part of the city was closed down. No open businesses within five miles. Another five miles to the closest residence.

"Yup," muttered Casey. "This looks like a great spot for an ambush." Sarah and Chuck nodded in agreement.

"Why'd we get so close to it?" asked Chuck. "Aren't they going to be alerted now?"

Casey said, "My guess, if they're here, they've got alarms far out that would catch anybody trying to walk in. So we might as well save ourselves some time. One way or the other, they'll know we're here."

"Great," said Chuck.

They began to gather their equipment. Sarah and Casey got out of the front. Chuck had opened a back side door and was about to exit when Casey came around and stood in front of him.

"Um, what formation do you want us to use?" asked Chuck.

Casey just looked at him. Sarah looked at Casey her brow furrowed.

Chuck looked at Casey, took a deep breath and said, "You're going to ask me to stay in the van, aren't you?"

Casey shook his head. "You got that all wrong, Chuck."

Chuck sighed in relief. "Oh good, I-"

Casey gave Chuck's chest a good shove. Chuck flew back into the seat. Casey slammed the door. Sarah's eyes widened.

Casey said, "I never ask." He pushed a button attached to the end of his key chain. The locks on the van clicked in place.

Chuck sat up and both he and Sarah simultaneously cried out, "What are you doing?"

Casey grinned. "Remember how you ultimately caught your Ex, Chuck? I'm surprised we never thought of that for you. Be thankful I'm not handcuffing you to anything."

Chuck struggled to undo the locks. Nothing. He looked at Casey. "Chuck-Proof Safety Locks?"

Casey laughed. "'Chuck-Proof.' I was thinking 'Child-Proof' but 'Chuck-Proof' is pretty good! Nice one, Bartowski." He leaned in to look at Chuck closely through the window. "I told you awhile back that if you couldn't get it together, you'd have to stay in the car."

Sarah said, "Beckman wanted him with us on this!"

Casey said, "So she did, but his safety is still priority. You and I are going to make sure the warehouse is clear and then we'll bring in Bartowski to check it out. Until then, you can watch us on the monitors, Chuck. If you get bored, shoot yourself with your tranq gun."

"Nice one, Casey," sneered Chuck, "but what if the bad guys find me alone in the van?"

"Let 'em! The glass is bullet-proof. They won't be able to shoot their way in, and any messing with the van from the outside or…" Casey looked at Chuck significantly, "the inside will cause the ignition to turn on and send the van on a preprogrammed and unchangeable route back to Burbank. So, if you think of messing around in there, Bartowski, enjoy your trip."

Chuck and Sarah both glared at Casey. Casey ignored Chuck, turned to Sarah, and said, "You gonna start anything? 'Cuz, time's wasting."

Sarah growled, "We will talk about this later." She looked at Chuck through the window, clearly upset.

Chuck said, "Sarah, it's OK. Go. I'll live. Just don't trip over anything in the dark, OK?"

"OK," she smiled faintly, then turned to follow their partner.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Still fuming about the situation, Chuck pulled himself over the backseat and turned on the monitors. There they were, "CaseyCam" and "SarahCam". They were whispering about their approach, but weren't talking about him. Now wasn't the time, and besides, they knew Chuck would be listening.

There were a number of entrances, but after trying the first three and finding them locked, they determined that all would be the same. Sarah picked her way inside the third door. From there, it was into the dark with flashlights. This whole scenario made him think of Mulder and Sculley, and Chuck began to whistle the X-Files theme, until Casey growled at him to stop.

"Eep! Sorry."

"Try to keep radio silence, Chuck, unless you see anything that causes you to flash," said Sarah.

Chuck whispered, "Understood," and kept his mouth shut.

Almost an hour passed of Casey and Sarah bumping around in the dark, exploring rooms, and consistently finding nothing. The fact that they weren't even talking made the whole experience only that much more boring. Chuck might have thought that tranqing himself wasn't such a bad idea, after all, but he was pretty tired anyway. The prior night's activities had taken a lot out of him, and he had neglected to take the suggested nap.

As a result, his eyelids began to droop.

"Hold it," said Casey.

"Mmm?" Chuck jerked his eyes open.

"What?" asked Sarah.

"Do you see that?" asked Casey.

"No, I don't."

Chuck was trying to focus on the screen though his drowsiness. He couldn't see anything either.

Then the screen went black. Chuck was about to comment on this when he heard Sarah yell in a shocked voice, "WHAT?" then the sound was dead from both of them.

"Guys? Guys?" Chuck was wide awake now, working the monitor controls trying to re-establish audio, visual, anything.

He didn't hear it over the intercom, but he heard it faintly through the car windows. The sound of a gun discharging. He also saw an ever so brief flash though a window in the warehouse.

"GUYS?" Chuck continued to work the controls even more frantically. Nothing. Nothing at all.

They were in trouble. His friends were in trouble. Sarah was in trouble.

When the sensation came, he welcomed it gratefully.

Flash.