Sarah vs The Caveat Emptor (PG version)

by Rachel Smith Cobleigh

* Former CIA agent Sarah Walker has been cut adrift. Her memory of the previous five years was erased, and then she was lied to and sent to kill a man whom she discovered was her husband. This is the story of the day he tried to win her back. [Canon-compliant follow-up to the series finale] [T for references to sexuality, discussions of faith, and prior violence]

2. Chapter 2

2

Sarah frowned. How had he known where to find her?

"This place is important, isn't it?" she asked, looking at him.

Chuck raised his eyebrows and nodded, still not meeting her eyes. "Yeah, yeah... very much."

Her heart had led her here, to this spot, where he would find her. She wasn't sure how to feel about that yet.

He turned to look at her. "This is actually where you told me I was going to be okay," he said, and she met his gaze, wondering what he meant. "That I could trust you... and that's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm asking you to trust me."

Could she do that? She didn't know him, not really.

"Sarah, I don't—" he began, "—I don't want anything from you. I... I just need you to know that wherever you go, I'll always be there to help you."

And she nodded, knowing it was true. She wasn't alone. God, after how she had treated him, she didn't deserve him, but here he was, again, offering her the world.

"Someone you can call." His voice broke a little. "...whenever."

God. She was crying. She looked at him, and saw tears reflected in his eyes.

"Trust me, Sarah," he said. "I'm here for you always."

Oh God, could she do this? Chuck did things to her, made her feel so intensely alive, and safe, and loved, that she couldn't bear his gaze any longer and she looked away, letting out a little breath of disbelief.

They sat in silence for a long moment, and Sarah decided. She wanted to know. It wouldn't be the same as remembering, but if she heard it from him, maybe... maybe it would be enough.

"Chuck," she said. He turned to look at her, and she braced herself. "Tell me our story."

She watched his features begin to relax, until he gave her a tentative, closed-lipped smile. She answered with an encouraging one.

"Yeah, yeah, ah... Where to begin?" He looked down. "Well, ah, it started—" He blinked, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "—with a guy who worked at a Buy More."

She laughed softly, imagining him standing at the Nerd Herd desk, tall and gangly and self-deprecating, with a pocket protector and an easygoing nature, entirely oblivious to the world that was about to descend on him, and that Chuck made her smile.

"And then one day, an old college friend of his sent him an email that was filled with secrets." Chuck paused, as if steeling himself. "And then the next day, his life really changed, when he met a spy named Sarah..." Chuck looked up at her. "...and he fell in love."

Tears stung her eyes.

"It was just another day working the Nerd Herd desk at the Buy More," he said, "and I was on hold with some vendor when you walked in. You were... you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. But more than that, it was the way you looked at me, like you really saw me, and you liked what you saw. You had loosened a screw in the battery compartment of your phone—not that I knew at the time that you'd done it intentionally—" Chuck smirked at her. "—and I fixed it for you. Then you made eyes at me, which I was pretty sure I was imagining." Chuck shook his head and laughed, looking down. "It was a textbook seduction. Anyway, another customer needed me, so you left your business card. If it hadn't been for Morgan, I would have thrown it in the trash. I had fixed some pretty girl's phone, and that was the end of it."

Chuck lifted his head and looked at her. "But that wasn't the end of it... because you came back the next day, and you said, 'I'm not sure if I'm able to receive calls, 'cause I never got one from you.'"

Sarah laughed. "I actually said that?"

"Word for word." Chuck grinned.

She briefly widened her eyes. "That is so cheesy. Did you laugh?"

"What? No! No way. I just stared at you. Morgan answered all your questions on my behalf."

Sarah giggled.

"Then you asked me out, and I must have said yes. I don't remember. Frankly, by the time you left the store, I wasn't even sure if I had woken up that morning." Chuck smiled and shrugged. "It had kinda been a weird twenty-four hours. I was getting flashes from the Intersect and they were pretty disorienting."

"What is the Intersect, anyway?" Sarah asked.

Chuck laughed, but it was without humor. "Ah... how do I describe it? It's a top-secret, experimental, massive, combined U.S. intelligence database that is designed to be loaded into the human brain via subliminal encodings in a series of images. Well—" He twitched his shoulders. "That's what it was then. Now..." He shook his head and laughed. "God, this sounds so crazy. Now, it's that, plus something out of The Matrix. You know that scene when Trinity downloads the helicopter-pilot skill pack, and suddenly she's an expert at flying a helicopter?"

Sarah shrugged and frowned. She had never really been into watching sci-fi movies.

Chuck's eyes widened and then he chuckled nervously. "Right. Yeah. You—you saw The Matrix for the first time last year, with me. Sorry. Not thinking." He waved a hand. "Anyway, around the time I downloaded the Intersect 2.0, I found out that it wasn't just a passive database, but an active computational engine." He gave an admiring shake of his head, his smile lopsided. "It's pretty freakin' amazing, actually." His smile fell away. "And it's a huge pain in the ass."

At Sarah's questioning look, he shrugged and explained, "The technology is incredible. I went from being an awkward nerd to being an expert in kung fu, parkour, a couple dozen foreign languages, marksmanship..." He caught her confused expression and put his hands out, palms up. "Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit." He flashed her a grin that made her smile back.

"Okay, so. Our first date. Well, it was for me, anyway. You were still just being a spy. Although..." Chuck's brow furrowed slightly. "You once told me that you fell for me some time after I fixed your phone and before the end of our date, when the two of us and Casey defused a bomb, so maybe you weren't just being a spy." Chuck gave a soft laugh. "Huh. I never really thought about what you meant before... because when you told me that, I was too busy being stunned that you had just said you loved me." His gaze met hers, and then he suddenly squeezed his eyes closed, his hands briefly tightening into fists. Flinging his eyes open, he said, "Sorry. Sorry, I'm just scrambling this all up. I'm—I'm nervous."

She gave him an encouraging smile.

His features relaxed slightly, and he went on. "I was nervous that evening, too. You were so amazing, I was certain that you'd suddenly stop and realize you were sitting across from the wrong guy. But, miraculously, with each thing I said, you seemed to relax and enjoy yourself more. You kept smiling, and laughing, and your eyes made me feel like I could do no wrong. I even said some wince-worthy stuff, but you didn't laugh at me."

She gave him a half-smile. "Like what?"

"You want me to repeat my most embarrassing material?" he asked in an incredulous, half-offended tone, but he was smiling at her.

"Well, apparently it didn't put me off at the time."

He tilted his head down and eyed her. "I was just an assignment. You were being paid to laugh at anything I said."

"But didn't I say I fell in love with you then?" She arched one eyebrow and let a tiny pout tug at her lips.

He gave her a knowing look, then sagged. His capitulating expression made her fight to keep a smile off her face.

"You said that you'd left D.C. to escape the bad end of a long-term relationship, and you had a lot of baggage. So I offered to be your very own baggage handler." He started to wince, but she only smiled.

"That's sweet."

He waved her off. "You're just saying that."

"Okay, yeah, it's a little bit cheesy, but... it's sweet. Bryce's betrayal hurt. You turned an awkward, painful memory into a moment of acceptance and support."

Chuck's eyes narrowed. "You remember...? Oh, of course you do. Bryce left before you ever found out about the Intersect. Those memories are still intact?"

She hugged herself tighter and looked out at the ocean. "Yeah. But they don't feel... fresh. They feel like an old pain that's faded." She drew in a deep breath. "How did he die?"

Chuck took a moment to respond. "He died trying to protect us." Chuck sighed. "Our friendship had its ups and downs, but at the end of the day, I think he was trying to do the right thing. You and I just didn't understand until it was too late. I don't think he ever wanted to betray us." Chuck swallowed, then went on. "He was supposed to be the guy who got the Intersect 2.0 loaded into his head, not me, but he was shot by some rogue agents, and it was up to me to complete his mission. I was with him when he died." Chuck swallowed as he looked at her. "I'm sorry, Sarah."

She sighed, glancing briefly at him before returning her gaze to the ocean.

"Ah, so, yeah..." Chuck continued. "Let's see. The CIA and the NSA had a joint task force that designed the Intersect Project after 9/11, to comply with Bush's request that the various agencies cooperate more. But they didn't want to sacrifice the security and separation of their individual databases, so the plan was to entrust only elite agents with the combined intelligence, in the limited fashion that the Intersect allows. Bryce had been on the short list for the CIA, and just before he emailed me all of the encoded images, he blew up the only Intersect terminal in existence. I opened the email, spent something like eight hours involuntarily staring at thousands of images, ended up with a splitting headache, and passed out. Then the program fried my computer's hard drive."

Sarah blinked. "So that's how you ended up with all that intel!"

Chuck nodded.

"Why didn't they immediately transfer you to a secure holding facility?"

Chuck pressed his lips together, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head. "They wanted to. I refused to go. I didn't want to leave Ellie. We'd already lost our parents without any explanation. I couldn't do that to her, too. And it wasn't my fault that I had ended up with all of these secrets in my head. Why should I have to be imprisoned for it? You guys needed me more than I needed you. Casey wanted to just tranq me and drag me there anyway, but you decided to take responsibility for me."

Chuck frowned. "After we defused the bomb, I drove here, to this beach. I spent the night just sitting here, trying to figure out how I could possibly keep this from Ellie and Morgan. Trying to understand why Bryce would send the Intersect to me. None of it made sense. I was a nobody. And now, what, I was going to be hunted down, by my own government or by somebody else? Lots of somebody elses? I couldn't decide which option was worse, and who could I talk to about any of it?"

He smiled. "Just after dawn, you came down here and sat beside me. It turned out you'd tailed me, and you'd been watching me the whole night. Or—" He exhaled a soft laugh. "—you'd been watching over me. My own personal guardian angel." He gave her a lopsided smile, his eyes warm, and she swallowed. He looked away again. "You told me that I could go home to my family and friends, and that I'd work with you guys. That was when you asked me to trust you. So I did."

She blinked and followed his gaze toward the ocean, then frowned. "They must have tried to get the Intersect out of your head as soon as possible."

"They did, but the scientist they sent turned out to be a traitor who just wanted to sell me to the highest bidder, and despite you and Casey trying to hide me, I was an idiot and exposed myself—not, that's not what I meant. I kept my pants on—"

Sarah laughed.

Chuck dropped his head.

"It's okay," she said, smiling. "Keep going."

He blew out a sigh and lifted his head to look at her with a rueful smile. "In a misguided attempt to save you, I accidentally revealed myself to be the Intersect, and Dr. Zarnow kidnapped me, flying me off in a helicopter. They thought I was tranqed, but I had just fainted. I woke up, saw my opportunity to get the upper hand, but then accidentally shot both him and the pilot with the tranq pistol..."

Sarah winced. "But you had the, the... Trinity helicopter skill pack, right?" she asked, sitting forward.

"No, this was way before that," Chuck said. "I just had a passive database in my head that triggered flashes whenever I ran across something that was already in the database. I had no clue how to fly a helicopter."

Sarah frowned. "So how did you survive?"

"I called you, and you kept me calm and talked me through the controls until I landed safely." He was looking at her with warm admiration in his eyes. "I was so buzzed when I climbed out of that copter!" He gestured excitedly. "I had just flown a helicopter!" Chuck dropped his hands with a grimace. "...and then you tore me a new one."

"Damn straight," she muttered, and he laughed, then sobered.

"It took me a while to understand why," he said. "I eventually realized that you were using anger to hide your fear and your relief. But at the time, I just thought you had really wanted to drive home the point that I wasn't prepared to survive in your world, so I had to obey you and Casey and stay safe, away from the action." Chuck linked his hands and worked at them. "I never entirely learned that lesson, though, because if either of you were in danger, I couldn't stay in the car—not to mention that it was never safe in the car, anyway." Chuck shook his head, exhaling a wry laugh. He lifted his eyes to meet hers. "I knew that you guys were great at your jobs, but if you had come to harm because of my inaction, I would never have forgiven myself. Because the whole reason you were putting yourself in danger in the first place was to protect me."

She shook her head. "I would have just been doing my job. If it wasn't you I was protecting, it would have been someone or something else. It wasn't your job to protect me. It was your job to stay safe."

Chuck gave her a lopsided smile. "I know that. We've been over this ground before."

"Sorry," she said.

"No, you don't need to apologize. You're right. But put yourself in my shoes: I had fallen in love with you, and watching you run into danger was just torture. I couldn't sit still. Sarah, it was you."

Speaking of torture... She swallowed, and thought about her video self in the mission logs.

As if he had read her mind, he said, "Speaking of torture, let me tell you about our cover relationship."

She laughed, then sighed.

"Yeah..." he said, shaking his head, but he was smiling. "The thing was, it would have been a lot easier if you weren't so nice to me."

Sarah looked down at the sand in front of her.

"But you were," Chuck continued. "Even when we were alone and no one was watching, you still treated me with kindness and laughed at my stupid jokes. You went out of your way to show me that I was important to you, not just as the Intersect, but as a person." He smiled, a faraway look coming into his eyes. "You even put on a Princess Leia metal bikini for me once, for that first Halloween, because you had known it would make me happy, even though you had never seen Star Wars and didn't understand why it mattered so much to me.

"Being in a cover relationship with you worked out okay, at first. I mean, even being in a fake relationship with you was pretty amazing. I got to see you every day. We worked well together. I made you laugh." He smiled and looked at her. "You made me laugh. You have a great sense of humor, Sarah. Don't ever let anybody tell you otherwise."

She gave him an incredulous look. "I don't make jokes."

"No," he corrected. "You don't make obvious jokes. You make quiet, elliptical ones. You have a dry, subtle sense of humor that requires a significant degree of intelligence to appreciate, and it's sexy as hell."

"Did you just compliment yourself?"

He chuckled and tapped the side of his head. "To match you? I'd have to be a certifiable genius."

"Nice." She smirked at him. "You're not so bad, yourself."

"Thanks." He grinned. "But really, I love it. The way you'll march me right off a cliff, and I won't realize it until I'm already well on my way to face-planting. That delayed reaction—it's brilliant." He chuckled, shaking his head fondly. "You'd think after this long, I'd be able to see it coming, but I still fall for it, every time." He narrowed his eyes. "Maybe it's because you make jokes with exactly the same face as when you're being completely serious..."

She smiled and looked out at the waves.

"I get the sense," he said softly, and she looked at him, "that not many people understood your jokes before—or even knew when you were making one."

She shook her head and looked away again. "When nobody laughs, you start to think you're just not that funny."

"But it's the furthest thing from the truth. Even Casey likes your sense of humor."

She swallowed, blinking something back, and smiled at him. "I guess I finally found my tribe." She sighed and looked down at the sand. "I just wish I could remember you all."

"I'm sorry. We can stop if you want to."

"No," she said quickly. "I want to hear more."

"Okay." He suddenly chuckled. "Well, it had been a few months, and we'd been through a bunch of missions and cover 'dates', which were occasionally awkward but never awful. It was just friends going out to dinner and a movie, and despite your best efforts to hide your true feelings, you still gave me hope. You have a great poker face, Sarah, but your eyes can't hide a thing. At least, not from me." He gave her a sad smile before looking back out at the ocean. "We enjoyed ourselves, most of the time. Then Ellie and Devon wanted to go on a double date with us, and we found out they thought we were going the 'traditional route', taking it really slow, because you hadn't slept over yet." Chuck rolled his eyes. "Captain Awesome tried to give me a pep talk about having sex—I think it involved a bicycle metaphor or something?—and you overheard the conversation."

"'Captain Awesome'?"

"Oh—heh. That's what Morgan and I used to call Devon."

Sarah chuckled, recalling the first time after waking up that she had met Devon. Yeah, even with Clara strapped to his chest in a BabyBjörn, Devon Woodcomb had managed to look like a poorly-disguised superhero.

"So after he left," Chuck continued, "you brought over a couple mugs of fresh coffee and announced that, to protect the cover, you thought we should make love. I inhaled the coffee and burned the inside of my nose."

She laughed and looked down.

"You didn't mean for real, of course."

"Of course."

"But the next night, you slept over. And to sell it, you wore this—this..." Chuck's gaze grew distant and he shook his head. "...this sheer, deep purple negligee, and you were... well, it felt like you were trying to kill me."

Sarah smiled.

"It was not fair." He pouted. "In one moment, you'd tell me that we could never be together, it was just a professional relationship, we were just doing cover maintenance, and then in the next moment, you'd do something like that, and I'd lose my train of thought and wish I could disappear into the nearest bathroom without everyone knowing exactly why I was in such a rush to get there."

She laughed with him.

"Well, actually," he mused, "I didn't really want to find myself alone in a bathroom, but..." He suddenly cut himself off and smiled.

"What?"

He shook his head.

"What?" she repeated, more insistent this time.

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

She gave him a look. "You're talking about jerking off in a bathroom because of me," she said dryly. "How much worse can it get?"

He looked hurt, but she just grinned, so he laughed, then sighed.

"Well..." he answered, squaring his shoulders and resettling his elbows on his raised knees. "After we got married, and bought the Buy More and Castle..." He gave a small shrug, and the corner of his mouth tugged up. "Well, we owned the place, didn't we? So we couldn't get in trouble for misusing government property..." He raised his eyebrows and his eyes twinkled. "Let's just say the storage closet has gotten a lot of extracurricular use."

Her eyes flickered away from his and then back again, and she gave him a contained smile, her lips pursed. "I'll bet Casey loved that."

Chuck laughed. "Oh, yeah. He's gotten his revenge, more than once."

Sarah shook her head, really wishing she could remember some of this.

"I'm going out of order again," Chuck sighed. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay. So we had a cover relationship?"

"Yeah." Chuck sobered. "It stopped being as much fun after that first night you slept over, though. It all just really sank in: I couldn't be in a real relationship with you, but because we had to maintain a cover, I couldn't be in a real relationship with anyone else, either. Sure, the physical frustration wasn't much fun, but what was worse was that I couldn't talk to anybody about it all. Only you and Casey knew the truth, and neither of you wanted to listen to me unloading on you. Oh, and that night was the first time one of our spy missions collided with my private life. Ellie ended up in the hospital because of her proximity to me."

Chuck frowned at the tossing waves. "I hadn't chosen this life, and I couldn't escape it. Dr. Zarnow had been the leading NSA scientist on the Intersect project, and he was the best hope for getting the thing out of my head, but after he tried to kidnap me and sell me... well, there went any real hope of getting rid of it. It seemed that they had put so much effort into figuring out how to get the Intersect into someone's head, they hadn't really thought much at all about how to get it back out again. I mean, they hadn't expected it to end up in the head of a civilian with no combat training.

"And since I couldn't be trusted to protect myself, I was tracked, bugged, taped..." Chuck's nostrils flared. "I had to ask permission to do even the smallest things, and I had to have a constant escort for everything."

Sarah nodded and frowned.

"I tried to be a good sport about it all, but it kind of sucked."

"So I tried to make it easier by being nice to you."

"Yeah." He smiled. "Honestly, despite my complaining, you were one of the few highlights of this crazy life I'd fallen into. So much about the situation was just stressful and confusing. I was the only one with all of these secrets in my head, and thus the only one who could perform the cross-referencing analyses, so it's not like Graham or Beckman would let me just live out my days in peace. No, they kept putting me in dangerous situations and expecting me to flash on things, assuming that you and Casey would protect me—and you did, but things weren't always in your control, or in mine. I had no control at all over when the Intersect made me flash on something. Anything—a face or a voice, an image, an object, a snippet of audio—could trigger a flash. The flashes would leave me disoriented for a few seconds, and if enough of them occurred close together, I would end up with a headache. And me with a headache is a pissy, disagreeable me who isn't inclined to do what you or Casey say, which just meant I created more problems than I solved, half the time. Also, I often had my own ideas about how to do things and I didn't ask permission, because there wasn't time for it. Since they usually worked out—mostly—I got more confident about refusing to do things the way I was supposed to."

Sarah winced. "And Graham and Beckman let you keep roaming free? I'm surprised they didn't put you in a bunker."

"Oh, they wanted to," Chuck admitted. "It was a constant threat. But nobody understood how the Intersect worked—at the time, I was the only known person to successfully make use of it—and the intel I provided was too valuable to discard, so until they had built another Intersect terminal and gotten the project properly off the ground with trained agents, I was all they had."

Chuck looked at her. "Actually, I suspect that I owe my continuing freedom more to you than to anything else. You argued that because no one knew what could trigger a flash, or how I did what I did, it was best to keep me emotionally stable, surrounded by my friends and family, and the familiar. Thank you for that." He gave her a sad smile. "Sometimes, it felt like you were the only one who remembered that I was a human being, not just a computer on legs."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that I was little more than an annoyance to the higher-ups," Chuck replied. "For example, they referred to me—even in my presence—as 'the asset' and 'it'. At first, you were the only one who insisted on using my name when talking about me."

Sarah frowned. "Seriously?"

"When I got a bit belligerent once with Beckman, Casey took me aside afterward and showed me the documents that had been hastily drawn up about me, in case I tried to mount a legal defense against being used or imprisoned." Chuck's face tightened. "Legally, as long as I was the Intersect, I wasn't an American citizen with all the usual rights. I was the property of the U.S. government. They could do whatever they wanted with me, and I couldn't stop them." Chuck frowned. "I was pretty sure it wouldn't hold up in court, but I was making eleven bucks an hour at the Buy More. I didn't have money for a lawyer, not for something this big."

"Didn't the government pay you for your service?"

"No, not at first. You don't have to pay property." Chuck gave her a cold smile. "I eventually received two years' worth of back pay when my father got the Intersect out of my head. The U.S. government settled its debt quite handsomely, actually. I have no complaints on that score."

Sarah smiled. "Did you go on vacation or something to celebrate your freedom?"

"I wanted to. I even invited you to come along, but you had already been offered a new assignment back in D.C., and the thought of going on a vacation without you..." Chuck grimaced. "It wouldn't have been much of a celebration for me, honestly."

"So what did you do with the money?"

"Well," he said, his answering smile warm now. "Since the spy world had managed to completely destroy Ellie and Devon's wedding and reception hall—again, because they were unknowingly getting dragged into the whole mess surrounding me—I used the money to put together a beachfront wedding for them the next afternoon." Chuck looked up and pointed. "It took place right over there, actually."

Sarah glanced toward the spot, but of course there was nothing to see now, except sand and boulders.

Chuck smiled at her. "You helped me make the arrangements. I couldn't have done it without you." He paused, growing serious, and his eyes were a little damp. "I couldn't have done any of it without you, Sarah. I couldn't have coped with all the repeated traumas and upheavals. But you somehow made it all be okay. You defended me, and you were kind to me when that was what I needed. You were cool and distant and professional when that was what I needed. You protected me, rescued me, taught me, and angrily corrected me." He smiled at her through his tears. "You made me want to be better, to do something that mattered, to rise to meet and exceed your expectations."

He swallowed and exhaled a shaky breath, looking out at the ocean. "You saw something in me when everyone else just saw a loser who worked at a Buy More, and I wanted to be that man you saw, the one who could do anything, have anything, that he set his heart on." He gave her a sad smile. "But when it came down to it, as cool as the Intersect and the spy world are, the only thing I really wanted... was you."

She looked away, a lump in her throat.

"Working together wasn't all bad," he said with a smile. "In fact, sometimes it was a lot of fun. I remember there was this one day, early on, when you brought me into the back storage room of the Wienerlicious, where you worked your cover job—"

Sarah winced. "I hate the Wienerlicious uniforms," she said. "The girls always look like dominatrix Heidis or something."

Chuck laughed. "Well, you looked great in yours."

"Yeah, I bet I did." She shot him a look, and he grinned, unfazed.

"That Wienerlicious got a lot more business from the adolescent male population of Burbank after you started working there."

"Oh, God," she said, rubbing her forehead.

He chuckled and nodded. "But you hated how your clothes smelled after working there all day, so you got the CIA to change it to a frozen yogurt shop about six months in. I like froyo. I took a lot of my lunch breaks there." He smiled. "So anyway, we were back in the storage room, figuring out an alibi for why I'd disappeared to help you and Casey the night before, and you suddenly heard your manager coming. So you kicked my feet out from under me, unbuttoned the top few buttons of your shirt, climbed on top of me, and started kissing me." Chuck's eyes went wide and he sat bolt upright, his arms as straight as boards. Sarah giggled, and he laughed with her, relaxing again. "It was the first time you'd ever kissed me, even though it was just a cover kiss. Then the manager opened the door, saw us, and said something—I have no idea what it was—" Chuck pouted. "—and you pulled back. But, wow! Best. Escape. Ever."

She laughed.

"Speaking of close shaves..."

And he launched into a tale about Morgan, and Casey; about the weirdos at the Buy More, fellow Nerd Herders Jeff and Lester, and green shirts Skip and Fernando, and the whole oddball family of Buymorians for whom he had a strange affection; and about Devon proposing to Ellie. The story involved the sudden disappearance of every single thing that wasn't bolted down at the Buy More, the theft of the store manager's mounted blue marlin, Devon's lost family heirloom engagement ring, a rogue Fulcrum agent who discovered that Chuck was the Intersect, Sarah's desperate play to keep Chuck from being imprisoned by the CIA 'for his own safety', the freezer of the Wienerlicious, Jeff and Lester's pervy stalker videos of busty female customers, and Morgan's well-meant, but utter, cluelessness. By the end of Chuck's tale, he had reduced Sarah to guffaws and tears of laughter.

Seen through his eyes, with his way of describing things and caring about people, and always narrated with his self-deprecating sense of humor, the story made her laugh helplessly in one moment, then ache in the next, because she could see how much pain the humor masked.

It was shortly after that, he said, when they had ended up trying to defuse a bomb and failing, and, thinking they were going to die, Sarah had kissed him for real. The bomb didn't explode—it turned out to not even be a bomb—but they had avoided talking about the incident for a while.

Not long after that, they had another mission, and part of the mission prep had involved their performance kiss for Roan Montgomery—she marveled at that: they had gotten to work with Agency legend Roan Montgomery?!—and how the kiss had started out with Chuck, at Roan's command, merely aiming to prove to Roan that he could handle the upcoming honeypot op, but then it had almost immediately dissolved into the both of them forgetting themselves—and Montgomery—for a moment too long.

Sarah had a moment of recognition and blinked, then laughed softly.

"What?" Chuck asked, pausing in his storytelling.

She felt warm all over. "I think I remember that."

He turned toward her with a look of delight. "Really?"

"Um." Her cheeks felt hot. "Yeah."

He narrowed his eyes—she could tell that he knew she was hiding something. Still keeping his eyes narrowed, he tilted his head down toward her. When that didn't work, he wiggled his—rather thick—eyebrows, and she giggled.

Pleased, he grinned and sat back up. "If you don't mind my asking, what do you remember?"

"I remember..." She closed her eyes. What was it? It was a feeling of the world unexpectedly spinning, and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her with such confidence and skill that she had to hold on to him to stay upright. He had made her world spin? "You just... took me by surprise, and you were so... good... that I—" She clamped her lips shut. God, she never talked about this sort of thing with anyone, never mind admitting it out loud to a man she barely knew!

But she did know him. That memory was real. Her body remembered him.

It was proving that to her right now, and she had to shift to dispel her—not entirely unwelcome—discomfort.

Chuck made a noise. "It's okay, you don't have to—"

"You made me soak my underwear." She immediately turned to watch his reaction, which was well worth the price of admission.

He froze beside her, his mouth dropping open and his eyes growing round, and then he burst out laughing and his whole face exploded into a smile, his nose even wrinkling in a way that made her insides flip over. Not that she needed much prompting for that at the moment.

"You—?" he exclaimed. "No wonder you ran out of there so fast!"

She didn't remember that part, but she could easily imagine it, and she grinned.

He was still laughing softly, and she saw his hand twitch toward her—but then he stilled it and grew quiet again, shifting and resettling himself. He hadn't touched her since he had sat down beside her, and for the first time, she found herself wishing that he would.

But he just continued his story. "A few months later, just before Christmas, actually, we found ourselves in a hostage situation. It turned out to be coordinated by Fulcrum—by then, they had figured out that the Intersect was somewhere in the store, but they didn't know I was their target—and during a quiet moment, I found you and gave you your Christmas present."

"You gave me a present in the middle of a hostage crisis?"

"Well, I didn't know if we'd make it out of there alive," Chuck said quietly. "It seemed as good a time as any."

"So... what was it?"

He smiled. "My mother's charm bracelet."

Sarah frowned. "But I thought you said we weren't together yet."

"We weren't," he said softly. "But I wanted you to know, even if I wasn't allowed to say it, that you had my heart."

Sarah looked away, recalling the mission log she had recorded that night. It had been obvious that he had her heart, too, but she couldn't say it out loud then, either. In the video, she had tried to recount that whole horrific evening—she had come so close to losing him—in a dispassionate tone, but it had been an exercise in futility, and her voice had eventually choked off. Finally, she'd just held up the wrist with the bracelet, smiled through damp eyes, then dropped that hand with a sigh and reached up with the other to turn off the camera.

She was sure that night was when she had finally begun to realize she was in love with him, and that she had no idea what to do about it, even if it had taken her another six months to say those words out loud.

"A few months after that," Chuck continued, "when I was searching for my father—who had been kidnapped by Fulcrum because he was the original creator of the Intersect—I was finally deemed too uncontrollable and a liability, and you and Casey were ordered to deceive and sedate me, so I could be transported to a secure underground bunker where I'd probably never see the light of day again." Chuck turned to look at her. "But when you came to get me, you couldn't go through with it. So instead, we went AWOL and followed a lead to find my father. You committed treason to protect me and help me find some closure—and possibly my freedom, because my father had said he knew how to get the Intersect out of my head."

Chuck looked at her, his eyes bright. "You sacrificed everything to help me. I felt so bad for putting you in that position, but you just brushed it off. You kept putting my needs first." He frowned down at his hands. "The lead seemed like a dead end; there was no one there. So we got a room at some seedy little motel in a nearby town. One bed, of course. It would raise fewer eyebrows if people just thought we were a run-of-the-mill couple. But you wouldn't let me sleep on the floor, because you said it was gross." He smiled. "And the next morning... well, I woke up to you spooned against me, still half asleep, just... unconsciously caressing my hand. I'd never been turned on by that before, but somehow, discovering that you do that when you're half awake, and you were comfortable with me, and you wanted to touch me—God." He laughed. "I had never been so turned on in my life!"

She shifted and smiled. Her hands... yeah, they were sensitive. She loved the feeling of someone stroking the backs of her fingers.

"Well, I responded. Hand, and—well, yeah. All of me." He gave her a lopsided smile. "And you woke up, and rolled over, and you looked amazing, all mussed and warm and soft..." Chuck's eyes rolled back as his eyelids fell closed, and he hummed, giving a small shake of his head before he opened his eyes again. "Yeah, one thing led to another, and it was going so well..." He smiled. "So I raced into the bathroom to find my jeans and get the condom out of my wallet—but what I found instead was—"

Sarah was leaning forward, hanging on his words, and he paused.

"What?" she asked. "What was it?"

Chuck made a low sound in the back of his throat and looked at her. "A note. It read, and I quote, 'IOU one condom. Your pal, Morgan.'"

"No!"

Eyes wide and nostrils flared, Chuck nodded. "Yes. Two years spent waiting for this moment, and—" He made a brutal swiping grasp in midair.

"A clear case of justifiable homicide."

"Exactly."

Sarah laughed. Chuck shook his head, dropping it, his whole frame sagging, and he laughed with her.

"So what did you do?"

"The only thing a sane man could do," he said, lifting his head. "I went out to find some condoms." She chuckled as he continued, "Except that the moment I poked my head out of our room, Casey grabbed me. Beckman had sent him to bring us back, dead or alive. Then everything kind of went to hell, because it turned out that our lead hadn't been a dead end, and Fulcrum had found us, too. You'd gotten dressed by then, and we got the jump on them and escaped, and after a bunch of rollicking hijinks, we found my father, got the Intersect out of my head, and barely escaped being bombed by a squadron of F-16s. And then it was back to Burbank, because Ellie and Devon's rehearsal dinner was the next evening, and the day after that was their wedding, when Roark showed up with what was left of Fulcrum and laid waste to the wedding venue, and—"

"Wait, Roark? As in Ted Roark, the founder of Roark Instruments?"

"Yeah, Ted Roark. He used to work with my father. Stole a bunch of his ideas to start the company. Kind of an Edison-Tesla thing, I guess."

"A what?"

Chuck glanced at her and smiled. "Never mind. Nerd reference. Anyway, the point is that between rescuing my father, surviving Fulcrum, and getting Devon and Ellie married by the end of the weekend, we didn't have much time to talk. And with the Intersect out of my head, there was no reason for you and Casey to stay in Burbank any longer, so you had been given a new assignment and were expected to leave the next morning. But then we got dragged into 'one last mission'—let me just state, for the record, that I never want to hear you utter those words—"

Sarah laughed.

"—which ended with Bryce dying and me downloading a whole new Intersect, the Intersect 2.0, which came with all the skill packs. And then I could fly a helicopter if I ever needed to. Not that I did, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was in the 2.0. I mean, it had Spanish guitar, ballroom dance, and Thai in it, and those were just some of the things I didn't expect. I never encountered a foreign language I wasn't fluent in, although most of what I used the Intersect for was martial arts, gymnastics, parkour, and marksmanship. It was such an incredible rush, suddenly being able to do all these insane things at an expert level."

"But it made you dangerous."

"Yeah. Yeah, it did. And it was made worse by the fact that I couldn't entirely control it. Beckman gave me three choices: make the transition into being a full-fledged CIA agent, submit to indefinite imprisonment until a way could be found to remove the Intersect 2.0, or become the focus of an all-agency manhunt with a kill order." Chuck gave a short, humorless laugh. "The choice seemed obvious, but for you."

"But for me?" She frowned. "What did I have to do with it?"

He looked at her. "Sarah, you had everything to do with it. I could have just destroyed the Intersect 2.0 terminal without downloading it into myself first."

"I didn't make you do it, did I?"

"No, no... you weren't even there when I did it. I chose to become the Intersect this second time, because I was choosing the spy life. I knew I could do it, I could be the Intersect. I could help a lot of people. I did it for my family and my friends, to protect them. I did it because I love them. I did it... because I love you."

Sarah swallowed, discomfited, then frowned. "It sounds like the choice was obvious."

He shook his head. "You didn't want me to become a spy."

She looked away, a sinking feeling in her chest. "I was afraid you'd be changed by it."

"You remember?"

"No..." she said slowly. "I just know what this life does to people."

Chuck was quiet for a long moment. "What it did to you, you mean."

"Not just me. But, yeah." She looked down at the sand, then reached for a handful of it. The grains were cool and barely damp against her skin. She let them fall through her fingers and off the sides of her palm, the breeze carrying them a few inches away, until she finally brushed off the last of the grains and sat back up. Rubbing her palms over her thighs, she sighed and settled again. "Bryce... it was just something he said once. Or, rather, he tried to say, but I didn't want to hear it." She looked out over the tossing gray waves. "I think he regretted becoming a spy."

Beside her, Chuck nodded. "It's a one-way trip."

She turned to regard him. "How did you ever manage to avoid making it? You're... different from the rest of us. You still care about people." She swallowed, her voice going quiet. "You still believe in them when everything says you shouldn't."

He smiled sadly. "A lot of it was due to you. I never wanted to kill anyone, but I can do it if I know it's necessary. But being able to kill a person merely on somebody else's say-so... that's a different thing altogether. You never wanted me to pass my Red Test."

Sarah nodded, remembering her own Red Test, the final hurdle required before she would be instated as a full CIA agent. At first, she hadn't been able to kill the woman who was her target, and had just passed her in the street. But then, Sarah had seen the woman reaching into her purse, and panic made her response instinctive—she had spun and shot, a direct hit that brought the woman down instantly. Sarah had started to approach, to search for ID, for a weapon—but there had been no gun in the woman's hand, and then nearby sirens had forced Sarah to flee the scene. Sarah still didn't know who the woman was, or why she had been ordered to kill her.

In the years since, Sarah had always had more information about her targets, and she was confident that her subsequent kills were justified. But that first one...

She turned to look at Chuck. "You became a full agent, though, didn't you?"

"Yes," he answered, furrowing his brow. "But I couldn't kill my target. Not if it meant losing myself... and losing you. Casey knew that. Unbeknownst to me, he followed me. I cornered my target, had him on the ground... but I just wasn't sure, you know? I couldn't—" Chuck's face contracted. "I couldn't do it. It didn't feel right. The guy started to get up—and Casey shot him from behind me. You were the senior agent presiding over my test, and you didn't see Casey. You thought I had killed my target. You turned in your report, and I was instated... and I lost you, because you thought I wasn't your Chuck anymore. And I couldn't tell you the truth about what happened, because then my status would be revoked, and I'd be transferred to a holding facility until they could find a way to remove the Intersect. Not to mention that Casey would end up in federal prison."

Chuck paused and sighed. "Several months earlier, before I started my field agent training, you'd tried to give me a fourth option: go on the run with you. We'd agreed to meet at a train station in Prague, after you scattered Bryce's ashes. You had train tickets, false identification, money, and safe houses all lined up. You were willing to go AWOL with me again, just to keep me safe. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't be selfish and have what I wanted, because it would put you in unnecessary danger. The CIA had spent a couple million dollars building a training facility for me. People were depending on me. I could make a difference. But it meant rejecting your offer. I never rejected you, but it sure felt that way to you. I get that, now. You had gone out on a such a limb, trying to protect me." He frowned out at the water. "So we parted ways, and I spent six months in training."

Sarah followed his gaze, watching the waves toss, until he shifted beside her.

Chuck winced. "I failed out. I couldn't control the Intersect well enough to be a reliable solo field agent. Sometimes I'd have great moments, other times I'd just be seized by the realization of all that I was caught up in—how could I possibly have thought I could do this? And I didn't have you there to tell me not to freak out." He sagged. "You weren't returning my calls or my texts or my emails. I even tried hand-writing a letter and snail-mailing it, but... nothing. I had hurt you, and had chosen to set myself on a path that you were afraid you would lose me to. I didn't understand why you were so afraid of it, but the point was that I had broken your trust."

Sarah played with the edges of her sweater. She would have been pissed off at him, not just afraid for him. Of course she wouldn't want to talk to him; being in contact with her was apparently what had made him want to enter this shadow world in the first place. And she probably would have been angry at herself for falling for him. Offering to use her resources to go AWOL with him was a bad judgment call. Had she really been so far gone? It seemed so unlike her. But she had no reason to believe that Chuck was lying to her, so... she must have done it. She frowned.

Chuck sighed. "Beckman sent me home until they could figure out what to do with me. I was still technically a trainee, so that kept me out of a bunker, but I was directionless. I didn't have a job, I had failed at the one thing I thought I was supposed to become, I had lost you, and... well, yeah. It was a low point. I didn't shave for weeks, and I spent a lot of time on the couch eating cheese balls. I looked—and smelled—like a vagrant."

Sarah exhaled a short laugh. "So what happened?"

"I ran out of cheese balls."

"No, seriously."

"Seriously," Chuck replied. "Ellie refused to get me any more, so I went to the Buy More myself. While there, in addition to being completely humiliated, I discovered that you and Casey were still in Burbank, operating a covert cell out of Castle and trying to crack The Ring, the rogue CIA organization that killed Bryce. It turned out that Fulcrum was only a branch of The Ring, and the infestation in the U.S. intelligence community was a lot bigger than we had thought."

"What a mess."

"Yeah, tell me about it. Anyway, I inserted myself, uninvited, into the op you and Casey were running and completely blew it—which didn't endear me to anyone—but during the course of that mission, the Intersect flashed and gave me good intel, and you got your first edge over The Ring in months. But they got the jump on you and me and knocked me out, then took us down to Mexico to interrogate us. I woke up alone in a cell. I was terrified, and I couldn't flash." Chuck winced. "The first interrogation didn't go so well. But when I woke back up, I heard you calling through the wall. You talked me out of my panic, and you told me I could do things that even the best agents you'd worked with couldn't do. You got me to focus on getting us out of there. When they came back in to interrogate me, they threatened you—and suddenly, I had the Intersect again.

"I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the pattern: when I was uncertain about where you and I stood, about what I was supposed to do with respect to you, my control over the Intersect was spotty. But when I knew what you wanted me to do, whether it was to save you or to let you go, I was okay. There was a logic to it. But Beckman thought I was just too weak and emotional for the job."

"The opposite of a good spy."

"Exactly. But it's not that I can't control my emotions. It's that when you and I aren't... working well together, I'm distracted. It's like, there's always this process running in the background, trying to figure out how to solve whatever problem it is we're having. I can try to shove it back and focus on the task at hand, but it doesn't stay down for long. My inner ferret always comes sniffing back out of the darkness and hands me another idea, and if it's a really good idea, the ferret does a backflip to celebrate."

Sarah laughed, and Chuck smiled, giving a rueful shake of his head.

"It's true," he said. "This process turned on the moment I met you, and it's been running ever since."

"That's what love is for you? A program always running in the background? Wow, you are a huge nerd."

"Haaaah." He smirked at her, then sobered. "No. That's just one of the things that happens because I love you. I'm that way with everybody I care about. If there's some break in the relationship, I kind of obsess over it until I can figure out a way to solve it." He gave her a lopsided smile. "It's just that I've been through way more drama with you than with anyone else in my life."

She must have looked uncomfortable, because he quickly added, "Not that I'm blaming you for that. It was mostly just due to our insanely-stressful, complicated circumstances."

He fixed her with a look. "But more than that, the stakes are a lot higher with you. You didn't just start a process running in my brain, you woke me up. You made me want so much more, and you made me believe I could achieve it." He turned his gaze out toward the ocean. "It took a while, though, because when we started working together again, you made it clear that you wanted to keep our relationship strictly professional. And despite what it sounds like, I don't actually have an unhealthy obsession with you. I just care about you... a lot."

He gave her a tight smile. "But if you didn't want me to be anything other than a coworker, I was going to respect that. I figured I'd blown my chance with you, and I wasn't going to be a pest. Besides, what you and Casey needed was a solid third partner—or, rather, a fourth, since Beckman had sent Special Agent Daniel Shaw to oversee my training."

Chuck sighed. "Shaw was everything I wasn't: an accomplished, experienced field agent, completely in control of his emotions, with an absolutely phenomenal record. Perfect scores in martial arts techniques and marksmanship. He was the ideal team leader for our cell, since he had been leading the effort to take down The Ring for several years by then. He knew more about how they worked than anyone else in the CIA. He was bullish and passionate about dismantling their operation. And as if that weren't enough, he looked like Superman."

Sarah arched an eyebrow.

"I'm not exaggerating. The guy was positively heroic. He saved our lives more than once, when missions went south."

"I'm sensing a 'but' coming..."

"Yeah," Chuck said with a long sigh. "A really, really big one. You... you were in some sort of relationship with him. I was never clear on the details, or how long it actually went on. I got the sense that it was brief, that you hadn't been receptive to his advances for a while, but I've never asked you about it. Frankly, I don't want to know."

"Well, there's not much fear of that now, is there?"

Chuck gave a short, humorless laugh and shook his head. "No. Especially because he's in solitary, and I doubt Beckman would give us clearance to talk to him."

She turned to look at Chuck. "He is? What happened?"

Chuck tilted his head back and looked up at the overcast sky. "Oh, so much. So, so much." He straightened and frowned at the vista in front of them. "But first, let me just say: I don't blame you for trying to find something with someone else. I tried, too. I met her on my first solo mission. Hannah. She was great, but I wasn't in love with her. I wanted to be in love with her. I wanted to get over you. You had obviously gotten over me." Chuck looked down. "I'm not proud of what I did. I got her hopes up, I slept with her, and then I hurt her when I had to break things off. I couldn't live a double life, lying to her about what I did for a living... lying to her about being in love with her. It wasn't fair to her, or to me."

He squinted, grimacing. "The whole thing with Hannah made me realize that you were right to fear that the spy life would change me. When I finally broke things off, she said that she had a lot of experience with being lied to and that she'd gotten really good at spotting it. But with me, she had really believed that she'd finally found a nice guy. She said I was the best liar she'd ever met. She wasn't just hurling an insult at me; there was a bit of admiration in her tone, amidst all the hurt." He sighed. "Being a spy is all about being a master of deception and, without actually noticing when it had happened, I had gotten very good at it." Chuck's grimace deepened. "I never used to be able to lie before. I used to suck at it."

"She was right," Sarah said quietly. "You're one of the best liars I've ever met. And that's saying something."

Chuck quickly raised his eyes to hers, and there was a mixture of panic, sadness, and resignation in his gaze. "I swear to you: I'm not lying to you now."

"No," she said. "That's not what I meant. Back in the Intersect room, after I'd stolen the glasses and revealed myself to be working for Quinn, you walked right up to me, despite my having a gun on you, and I couldn't look away. Nobody had ever done that while I had a gun on them before. And then it was everything you said, but more than that, it was the way you said it... You were incredible. I even let you lower my gun. I believed that you believed every word. Your eyes... I couldn't even name all the emotions I saw run through them, but I wanted to. It was like you'd put me under a spell—" She straightened with a frown, the dreamy note dropping out of her voice. "—and the whole time, you were switching out the glasses in my hip pouch for a dud pair."

She gave a short laugh and waved her hand in frustration. "I was so focused on your face, I didn't even feel your movements! I didn't realize you'd switched the glasses until I met up with Quinn and handed them over, and he discovered they were empty. Then I was so pissed at myself for letting you get to me. I've been running cons with my father since I was a kid. Nobody cons me."

She frowned and looked away. "That was why I didn't hold back during our fight when we were alone at the house later. You were too good for me to let my guard down again. I couldn't figure out what kind of con you were playing by not interrogating me, and by claiming to love me and then releasing me, but I was sure it was a con."

"Until you saw our names carved in the door frame," he said quietly.

Sarah frowned.

There had been something about seeing those letters—every house she had ever lived in as a child, every time she and her father had stayed somewhere for more than a week or two, she had found a tree and carved her name in the trunk. She had never really had a home, but she could always pretend that this one was finally it. And at least when they skipped town again, she had left a mark that would last even if she never did. There was a trail of trees scattered around the U.S., and even a couple in Europe, with her name on them.

It had always been just her name, alone, in the wood.

But when she saw that door frame, she knew she had carved her name inside a house, and with his.

It wasn't a trick, because he couldn't have carved her name just so, with the way she always made the lowercase 'a's look like tipped-over capital 'A's.

She had carved her name into that door frame. She had marked that place as her home. With him. If their marriage had just been a long con, she never would have made that mark.

She recalled the fleeting impression she'd had in that moment, a sudden flash of memory disconnected from everything before and after it:

Chuck's face was lit by flickering candlelight as he frowned down at her, his arms crossed. They didn't own the house yet, but she had just carved her name into the wood anyway. He was shocked that she would do such a thing, but she had done it because she had faith that they would own the house someday, one way or another. Was he going to have faith in them, too? He hesitated before finally smiling and dropping his arms. She handed him the knife and leaned back against him, smiling as she felt him press his lips to her hair, then reach out to add his name below hers—

And suddenly, despite holding a gun on him at point-blank range, Sarah hadn't been sure of anything.

A gust of wind blew over her, pulling her hair in front of her face, and she automatically reached up to tuck it behind her ear again. She realized she had been sitting in silence, staring at nothing while Chuck waited for her to answer, and she gave him a tight smile.

"Yeah," she said, pulling her sweater around her again. "Seeing that carving changed everything."

He frowned and watched her for a long moment. "You know as well as I do that the best lies are surrounded by truth."

She hugged herself and looked away with a nod.

"I did mean every word I said in the Intersect room."

She nodded, still not looking at him.

Chuck sighed. "I'm not proud of the fact that I'm a good liar now. I used to think of myself as a good guy, but after what Hannah said..." He frowned. "I knew I couldn't do that to anyone else. So I just resigned myself to being alone, and I focused on the work."

Sarah nodded again. Now he was starting to sound like a spy.

Chuck lifted his head, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out. "Not long after that, I had my Red Test, and Beckman decided it was time to promote me. She assigned me a deep-cover op in Rome, where I was going to be some kind of millionaire ex-pat playboy. She told me to choose a team to bring with me. But when I thought about it, Rome, alone—I mean, I'd be there with a team, but I'd be alone—"

"Yeah," Sarah said. "I know what you mean."

Chuck nodded, his voice quieting. "It just finally clicked for me: you were still the most important thing in my life. What was the point of being a spy without you? So I asked you join my team, but you declined. And when I pressed you on it, you said that seeing me kill my target during my Red Test had convinced you that I was no longer the man you'd fallen in love with. It was over between us.

"By then, I had started to suspect that something was off with Shaw, but I had no proof, and if I raised my concerns, I would have just looked jealous. Which I was, I admit, but that wasn't what was driving my suspicions.

"Shaw was completely committed to bringing down The Ring, even going so far as to sacrifice himself just to give us an edge. Knowing that you cared about him, I went after him and rescued him instead. Once everything had settled down and it was clear that he was going to be okay, I finally just laid all my cards on the table and told you that I loved you. I offered to run away with you, like you'd offered me back in Prague. And you let me kiss you.

"But then you didn't show up at the train station at the time I'd said I would meet you. Instead, Beckman called me back to Castle because she had discovered that it was Shaw's wife you'd killed during your Red Test five years earlier, and that he had just recently learned this fact. Since you were missing, my fears went into overdrive."

Sarah twisted and froze. "Wait—what?"

Chuck nodded. "She'd been a double agent, working inside The Ring to bring it down, but Graham had reason to believe she'd been turned, so he ordered the hit, and you were the agent assigned to do it."

Sarah's eyes were wide as she struggled to take in this revelation. "And Shaw was okay just... working with me?"

Chuck grimaced. "He had taken you off alone, unexpectedly, and I panicked and called in a strike team. I led them right to you—except that Shaw wasn't trying to hurt you. He was trying to reassure you that he had forgiven you, and that he cared about you. So I showed up with a team in full tactical assault gear—we even had a tank—and it was all for nothing."

"Beckman must have been pleased."

Chuck barked out a laugh. "I wasted a lot of money with that one. She wanted to suspend me. My feelings for you were obviously clouding my judgment, which she had always regarded as rather shaky to begin with. But, shockingly, Shaw stood up for me. He acknowledged that I'd made a mistake, but he approved of my loyalty and quick thinking. He wanted to keep the team together, despite everything.

"Shaw seemed to be in complete control of his emotions. He was calm, collected, reassuring. Unflapped. He said that he blamed The Ring for his wife's death, not you or Director Graham. Shaw just wanted to take them down, pay them back for all the pain they'd caused."

Sarah gave a disbelieving laugh. "Nobody can be that controlled. I would have been a mess, just being in the same room with the husband of the woman I'd killed!"

Chuck raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in agreement.

"So what happened?"

"I tried to warn Beckman that Shaw was dangerously unstable, but she just saw Shaw's behavior as that of a true professional. She told me she was moving you and Shaw out of Burbank, to head up The Ring task force in Washington. Then she benched me for being the opposite of 'professional'. So I fell into a black hole, sure that I'd finally lost you to Shaw. And then Morgan found me and—well, the Intersect and alcohol don't really mix that well."

Sarah blinked. "What did you do?"

"He tried to take away my whisky, so I used the Intersect to subdue him and tie him up with all the game controller cords we had. In the process, some of the whisky had gotten splashed on my jeans, so I took them off. Then I ate an entire carton of mint ice cream and started 'misquoting liberally from the works of John Hughes', as Morgan puts it." Chuck winced. "Not the best plan. By the time you found us, I was pretty drunk, and sitting on the floor in my underwear with a plastic Guitar Hero controller in my lap. Actually, the ice cream had sobered me up a little by then, and I was just wallowing. I'm really good at wallowing."

Sarah tried to suppress a smile at the mental image that this all conjured.

"But there you were," Chuck said, "and I realized, even if I looked like a complete fool, that this might be my last chance to ask you one very important question." He paused and waited until her eyes met his. "I asked you if you loved me... and you said 'yes'. You, Sarah Walker, the most amazing woman I had ever met, said that you were in love with me... a nerdy guy who worked at a Buy More, a failed spy." His voice was rough. "You said 'yes', and then you kissed me."

She looked down and smiled, almost tasting the whisky and mint ice cream on her tongue, and suddenly there were tears welling up in her eyes. She quickly wiped at them. In her peripheral vision, she saw him swallow.

Finally, when her face was dry, he cleared his throat and resumed speaking.

"That was when you told me you'd fallen in love with me some time after I'd fixed your phone and before we started defusing bombs." He exhaled a shaky laugh. "You said that Casey had just told you the truth about my Red Test, and it was the best news you'd ever heard, because it meant that I hadn't changed, that I was still your Chuck."

Sarah shuddered with an unexpected sob, and quickly pressed the palm of her hand to her eye to keep the tears from spilling out again. Why were his words affecting her like this?

"But we had to go," Chuck continued. "That was why you'd come to my place, to get me for a mission. Some new intel had come in, and you and Shaw needed a third man for the op."

She sniffed and frowned, wiping her hand on her jeans. "What about Casey?"

"Oh—sorry, I forgot to mention that. Casey was just a civilian at that point. It ended up just being a temporary thing, but Beckman had fired him for committing treason a couple months earlier, just before my Red Test. He was lucky that he didn't end up in federal prison. He was trying to protect someone who meant a lot to him, and he hadn't realized he was committing treason at the time, but—it's a long story. Complicated."

"But he was still hanging around Burbank?"

"Well, it wasn't like he had anyplace else to call home. He still had the cover job at the Buy More, although now it wasn't a cover, it was his only job. At least it was someplace to go every day."

Sarah frowned. She knew what it felt like to discover that you'd been cut loose, and you didn't have anywhere to go. Yeah, Casey had taken the path of least resistance.

"So we went to do the op," Chuck said, "but it didn't go so well. Shaw had been turned by The Ring, although we didn't realize it at the time. He tricked us, then planted false intel that led to Paris. Beckman assigned you and him to go, and you guys were on a plane within the hour. I went home for the evening. Then I did something I shouldn't have, because Morgan wasn't working for the CIA yet. I was so impressed with Shaw's hand-to-hand fighting in the surveillance video that he'd grabbed from The Ring compound that I put it on my laptop so I could show it to Morgan. And then Morgan did what he does best: he came out of left field with unexpected insight."

"Which was?"

"Shaw's fight was staged. Shaw had grabbed the video and shown it to us to deflect our suspicion, but when Morgan slowed down the frames, we could see that he was pulling his punches and missing The Ring operatives by a mile. I tried to show the video to Beckman, but the moment she realized I had brought Morgan down to Castle, she suspended me and then blocked my calls.

"So Morgan and I convinced Casey to come out of retirement and help us rescue you, and the three of us flew to Paris, where we got to you just in time, before Shaw had completed the hand-off. He was giving The Ring technical data on the Intersect in exchange for their help with incapacitating you. While Casey took out The Ring's director and his men, I went for Shaw. He had given you some kind of nerve blocker that left you nearly paralyzed, but awake. I tried to take him down, but even though I was using the Intersect, he was stronger than I was, and I couldn't stop him from getting away with you. So I followed you both until he stopped on a bridge over the Seine. I tried to talk him down but he was too far gone, and I had to shoot him to keep him from killing you. He fell into the river, and I brought you back to my hotel room, where you finally passed out."

Chuck smiled and his frame relaxed. "You woke up late the next morning, and I told you what had happened, that Shaw was dead. I was so afraid of how you'd react to the fact that I had shot him... but you were just grateful that I had saved your life." His smile widened into an expression that lit up his whole face as he looked at her. "Very grateful." She chuckled and glanced away, then back at him, her cheeks warm. He continued, "And finally, finally, there was nothing keeping us apart." He gave a happy sigh. "We've been together ever since—" He frowned, making a quick gesture with his hand. "—except, of course, for these last couple of weeks."

She nodded slowly and looked away. It was so much to take in. Then she blinked and frowned. "I thought you said Shaw was in solitary."

Chuck laughed, a humorless sound. "He is."

"But you just said he was dead."

"At the time, we thought he was," Chuck replied. "But Shaw is... resilient. He came back to cause trouble not just once, but twice." Chuck looked skyward and rubbed his eyebrow, exhaling a long sigh. "Can we drop the topic of Shaw for now? Just thinking about him gives me a headache."

"Okay," she said, frowning slightly.

Chuck gave a small toss of his head. "I mean, I can go into all of it if you really want me to, but I'd rather not. At least, not right now." He shot her a pleading look. "I have much happier stories to tell you."

"Okay." She smiled. "Tell me a happy story."

Chuck grinned. "We make a really good spy team. I mean, a really good spy team. Even handcuffed together, we can take out a whole room full of bad guys with guns. It's freakin' awesome."

She laughed.

"So right after you'd woken up and we'd finally made love for the first time—which, let me just say, was totally amazing—we were supposed to report back to Burbank for a new mission. But neither of us was much inclined to do that, so we went AWOL and hopped a train to Zurich. It was dumb, but, well—"

"Sex on the brain," she said dryly.

He chuckled. "Yeah. Sex on all kinds of surfaces."

She whacked his upper arm, and he laughed.

"Sorry."

"No, you're not."

"No, I'm not," he agreed, still chuckling softly. "We had a lot of fun."

He suddenly put his arms out behind him to brace himself and he leaned back, stretching out his long legs and closing his eyes. The sight made something squeeze inside of her.

"God, after three years of waiting," Chuck said with a sigh, "it felt so good to finally just be with you!" He opened his eyes and smiled at her. "And I don't just mean the sex. I mean the talking and the laughing and the finally getting to know you, and discovering things like how you didn't have a favorite song, or even a favorite band or a favorite genre of music. Geez, it was like having a totally blank musical slate on which I could write anything. Huge responsibility." He grinned and sat back up, dusting the sand off his hands as he raised his knees and draped his elbows over them again.

She frowned. She had no idea what kind of music she liked.

"Don't worry," he said, still grinning, and tapped the side of his head. "I've got it all up here."

She smiled and looked away.

"Discovering that was discovering another real thing about our first date," he said quietly. "Part of why we had ended up at a club then, dancing—while you threw knives into assassins—was because you couldn't answer the question about what kind of music you liked, so I took you to someplace where I could introduce you to a style I enjoy." He paused, thoughtful for a moment. "You know, now that I'm telling you our story, I'm starting to think our first date was more real than not. Like, up until the moment you saw the assassins, you were actually enjoying yourself."

"I enjoy throwing knives," she said, and he laughed.

"And you're scarily good at it."

She smiled, then tilted her head and played with one of the ankle hems of her jeans. "You know..." she began softly. "If that first date was going as well as you think it was... I had probably been planning to bring you back to my room."

He gave a short laugh. "Yeah. Textbook seduction. You were trying to find out what I knew about the Intersect."

"No..." she said, turning to look at him. "By then, I would have known all I needed to: that you had no clue what was going on. That you were a sweet, funny guy who deserved to have one good thing happen to you before all the rest of the crap that was coming landed on you."

He gave a slow nod, but he wasn't smiling. "Pity sex."

"No..." She fixed him with a patient look. "Me saying thank you for a fun evening. For one night spent with someone who wasn't keeping a careful distance, or planning to kill me the moment I let my guard down."

Chuck frowned and swallowed.

"If I told you that I fell for you then, I meant it."

"I know."

"If sex had happened, it would have been because I wanted it to."

"Thank you." Chuck was quiet for a short while, and then he said, "That means more to me than you know."

She pressed her lips together in a tight smile.

He shifted and cleared his throat. "Well, the train to Zurich got a lot more interesting once we finally left our room." He gave her a lopsided smile. "I flashed on a Basque terrorist, and you also figured out there was something fishy going on, because of your incredible spy-fu instincts." Sarah chuckled as he went on. "So we each pretended that everything was normal, but went off separately to do a bit of spy work to figure out what was going on with the terrorist. We independently came to the same conclusions about him. Then we tried to hide it from each other, because, earlier, we'd both promised to leave the spy life behind us, to be together away from it all."

Chuck paused and grunted thoughtfully.

"What?" she asked.

"I was just remembering what we said. First, you asked me, 'Chuck Bartowski, do you agree to quit the spy life and be with me?', and I said, 'I do.' And then I said, 'Sarah Walker, do you agree to quit the spy life and be with me?', and you said, 'I do.' Of course, after we sorted out the terrorist and saw that we both really enjoyed our jobs, we each admitted that we wanted to continue being spies, and we realized that being together didn't preclude that. So we repeated... the vows, but said 'do you agree to not quit the spy life', instead."

"'The vows'?" Sarah repeated.

"In retrospect, they sure sounded like vows, didn't they?" Chuck murmured, his brows still pulled down. "Why did I never notice that before?"

Sarah shrugged, looking at him. "Being a spy doesn't leave you with a lot of downtime for contemplating your navel."

"That's true enough." Chuck smiled. "You know, I'm really enjoying this trip down memory lane. I'm seeing things in new ways. It deepens my appreciation for them, now that I can see them with 20/20 hindsight."

She was enjoying it, too, if she were honest.

Chuck cleared his throat. "Well, anyway, we went back to Burbank and Beckman let us have it all, and it worked out great. Casey got reinstated, and Morgan joined the team as a provisional trainee. We took The Ring down entirely a few months later. Along the way, through a series of missions and misadventures, we moved from dating—exclusively—to you moving in, to being engaged.

"That last one hit some hiccups. I wanted to ask you to marry me, but I was afraid I'd scare you away by being too intense too soon. We had agreed to take it slow. So I went to Morgan for help with planning it. And then once we'd agreed that the timing was right—"

Sarah laughed. "Wait, the two of you decided when it was right?"

"Hey," Chuck protested. "He was my wingman. I was proposing to Sarah Walker, superspy. How do you think I could possibly have sprung a surprise proposal on a professional spy without some outside help?"

She smirked at him. "Well, you are a professional spy, too."

"Exactly!" he replied. "And any spy worth their salt knows that they're only as good as their team."

Sarah rolled her eyes and shook her head, smiling.

"Actually," Chuck said, "Morgan admitted everything to me later. He confessed to being a double agent."

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth fell open. "What?"

Chuck laughed and put up a hand. "I mean, he was working for both of us at the same time. I thought he was just working for me, but you had figured out that I was planning to pop the question—"

"Great team you had there," Sarah said.

Chuck laughed and shook his head. "Yeah, we didn't stand a chance."

Sarah jutted out her chin and nodded.

He chuckled. "God, I love you."

She turned to look at him, but he didn't flinch away. He just held her gaze for a moment and gave her a gentle smile. Something flipped over in her chest.

"Anyway," he continued, "Morgan had both of us on surveillance and on two separate comms, and he did a brilliant job of juggling it all, never once giving anything away to me. You called the shots, Casey provided backup, and Morgan ran comms. And the whole time, I'm only aware of half of this whole drama, and my heart is beating somewhere up in my throat—"

He waved a hand in front of his Adam's apple, and Sarah giggled.

"I stumbled through this whole speech I had prepared, and you were amazing, and gorgeous, and totally reassuring, and just as I was about to pop the question—"

Sarah's eyebrows were high. "...Yes?"

"Beckman sent in a strike team to arrest you for treason."

"Wait—what? I didn't think Beckman was involved in this proposal op."

"She wasn't," Chuck said with a grimace. "She had no idea it was even happening. She was just doing her job, setting you up to be a double agent so you could go into deep cover for a couple of months, to bring down— Never mind. It's a long story, and I can't tell all of it alone. The point is, my timing sucked."

Sarah sagged slightly. "Oh."

"Once that whole mission got resolved, you brought my mother back from her twenty-year exile in deep cover—like I said, it's a long story—just in time for us all to get to the hospital so Ellie could give birth to Clara. And once that whole ordeal was over, and mother and baby were healthy and safe... it was maybe three o'clock in the morning, and the two of us were just wiped. We were sitting out in the hospital hallway alone, nobody but us and a janitor who was buffing the floor.

"And I thought, 'I don't want to wait one more second. I'm not letting anything else come between us.' So I pulled the ring box out of my pocket—I'd taken to carrying it around with me everywhere—and I got down on one knee..." He swallowed and smiled at her. "And you—you looked so tired, but when you realized what was happening, you—" Tears spilled out of his eyes, and his voice broke. "—you got down out of the chair and knelt on the floor with me, and kissed me, and then you let me slide the ring on your finger, and we just hugged. Neither of us had to say a word."

Tears welled up in her eyes and she wiped at them. Watching her, he just smiled through the tear-tracks on his cheeks.

He drew in a deep breath and blew it out, then pressed his lips together and looked at the ocean. "At first, you didn't want a big family wedding. I thought it was because my family was too intense. I mean, Ellie and Devon had just had Clara, and everyone was cooing over her, and they started asking us what our wedding plans were, and my mother offered you her veil, and Morgan started voicing his opinions about theme colors, and then Ellie started contradicting him, and I think that was when Casey fled."

Sarah chuckled.

"Yeah." Chuck shook his head as he dried his cheeks. "They meant well, but—yikes. We begged Beckman for a mission, and she gave us an off-the-books op to go extract Roan Montgomery from Morocco. He was apparently there without authorization, and, well..."

Sarah smiled. "It's Beckman and Montgomery. They're legendary. It's been going on for a long time."

"So I've heard," Chuck said with a smile. "Anyway, you wanted to elope."

She nodded. Yep. That sounded exactly right.

"I definitely did not want to elope," he said. "I wanted us to share the event with all our loved ones, even if they can be a little bit intense. So I went to Morgan, and he gave me some bad advice about how to handle the situation with you. Then, because I tried it, you and I ended up at odds during the op."

Sarah winced, and Chuck nodded. "Yeah, not doing that again. Anyway, once we got out of there, I went to Roan for advice. He suggested seducing you. Something about how all the 'no's fade when sex is in the air."

She lifted her chin and smiled. She had just been thinking the same thing.

"So he gave me some of his more debonair clothing—from his younger days—and I made a dinner reservation and went back to our place to try to set the mood for taking you out. Except when I got there, you came out dressed as a Moroccan belly dancer. You even had bells on your fingers. It was—you were—it was red. And there were... beads..."

Watching him, she smiled.

He shook himself and shot her a chagrined look. "Sometimes you put it on when I ask. I really like it."

"I can tell," she observed dryly, and he chuckled.

"Yeah. You could, then, too. You danced toward me, and you were saying things, and they all sounded like really good ideas, and I just kept saying yes—until I realized that I'd just agreed to elope with you, and then I snapped out of it."

They shared a laugh.

"So we dropped right back into an argument," Chuck continued, regret passing briefly over his features, "and then Beckman called us back to Castle and we spent the rest of the evening planning the op to get Casey out of Morocco—we'd had to leave him behind, because Roan had stumbled into a bigger plot, and Casey wanted to stay and do recon, but then he'd gotten himself trapped inside a wall, caught under some falling brickwork when there was a firefight at the compound, and he needed us to get him out.

"Along the way, I figured out that the reason you didn't want a big family wedding was because you didn't really have any family to invite."

Sarah looked down at her hands.

"When I pressed you on it, you asked me who would walk you down the aisle, and I realized I had been such an idiot. It was never about my family, it was about yours." Chuck frowned out at the ocean. "So I spent the next couple months trying to track down your friends and relatives. I made phone calls. There was no way to find your father, and you refused to tell me anything about your mother, so I let it go. It was your story to tell, or not. At least I found the C.A.T. Squad."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "You didn't."

"I did. And just so you know, Amy is in federal lockup."

"Oh. It wasn't Zondra?"

"No. It was Amy."

Well, there was one more mystery solved. Sarah shook her head in disbelief and gave a short laugh.

"So Carina and Zondra agreed to be your bridesmaids. Ellie was your matron-of-honor. And I found your Uncle Peter and his family."

"Wow. Were they well-behaved?"

Chuck raised one eyebrow and tilted his head as he scratched his ear. "Well..."

Sarah laughed.

"They cleaned up very nice," he offered. "And I found your grandmother, Ella. We went to visit her at her nursing home. She, ah, didn't recognize you."

Sarah nodded and frowned. She didn't have many memories of the woman, but she recalled that her grandmother had smelled good, and she had given Sarah a favorite pink jacket for her tenth birthday. But Nana Ella had never approved of Sarah's father. Understandably.

"We kept working, going on missions, and planning our wedding in between. Ran into a bump or two, but it all worked out. We were both kind of nervous about the idea of standing up in front of a whole bunch of people and saying our most intimate feelings out loud, so we decided to write them down and practice." He smiled. "We rehearsed the walk, and you put a paper doily on your head to be your veil, and I lifted it." He grinned. "You were so beautiful, and you looked so happy, and I was just in awe of the fact that I could make you, Sarah Walker, happy. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world."

Sarah smiled and looked down at her clasped hands.

"I had written out all of this flowery stuff, trying to express how I felt about you. I had even scripted a wardrobe change and left spaces for applause."

She laughed.

"But you wanted to go first, and what you said... your vows were so simple and profound. You choked me up. I realized I had it all wrong. It was a page-one rewrite." He smiled and shook his head. "So you didn't hear my vows until our wedding day."

She frowned. "We didn't try practicing again?"

"Well, we had planned to do it after our rehearsal dinner that night, but a misguided young woman whom we'd been working with on a long-running mission poisoned you during the dinner, and it put you into a coma."

Sarah twisted to give him an incredulous look. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "Seriously. Ellie and Devon were able to stabilize your condition by lowering your body temperature, but it wasn't going to work indefinitely. They didn't think they could keep you going—without causing brain damage—for more than about a day. So all of us put everything we had into finding the antidote. We had some setbacks. We were captured by Decker and his men as soon as we left the hospital, actually. I tried to use the Intersect to take them down, but they tasered me—" He winced.

A chill shot through her. "Wait, did you say 'Decker'? As in, Clyde Decker?"

"Yes."

"How the hell did we end up in his sights?"

Chuck sighed. "It's a—"

"—long story," she completed with him. "Yeah, I'm starting to see the pattern." She frowned and looked at Chuck intently. "Is he still after us?"

"No. He's dead."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah, we watched him die in a fireball right in front of us. Gertrude Verbanski planted the bomb on him. Dead sure."

Sarah relaxed slightly. "That guy was bad news."

"Tell me about it," Chuck muttered.

"So we've worked with Verbanski Corporation?"

He tilted his head and grimaced slightly. "Ehhh... 'worked with' is kind of a strong term. Mostly, Carmichael Industries has just been in competition with them."

She gave a slow nod, her eyes narrowed. "So, back to your story. I was in a coma? Decker's goons tasered you?"

Chuck winced. "Three times, actually. That was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my entire life. I couldn't move. My whole body just froze up. I couldn't even breathe for a little while there."

Sarah frowned. "Why didn't they just shoot you?"

"They were trying to frame us first, so Decker could justify shooting us."

"Why was Decker even after us?"

"We didn't realize it at the time, but Shaw was blackmailing him, keeping him on a leash and using him to harass us into a corner, trying to force us to do something illegal, something that would make us seem like a clear and present danger, so he could kill us without repercussions."

"Yeah, that sounds about Decker's speed."

Chuck flexed his jaw and nodded. "They brought us back to Castle and put us in the holding cells, and then they used a pair of suppression glasses on me to remove the Intersect.

"The clock was ticking down on your life and I was desperate to get out of there, but we were trapped. They tried to exert pressure on Casey, but he turned the tables on them—" Chuck laughed. "—literally—and knocked them all out, then sprang us from the holding cells."

"Note to self," Sarah said dryly. "Don't mess with Casey."

Chuck laughed, then clearly enunciated, "Ever."

She smiled.

"We only had one long shot at obtaining the antidote for you," he continued. "We had a viable plan, but very little time to execute it. So I went to Moscow with an asset who could get us into the facility where the antidote was probably stored, but he flaked out at the last second and left me stranded. I didn't have the Intersect, I didn't have the asset, and I didn't have any time left. So I did the only thing I could think of: I walked into the lion's den unarmed and just begged for your life."

Sarah drew in a sharp breath, watching him.

He looked at her and pressed his lips together. "I asked the young woman who had poisoned you to help me save you. I tried to convince her that she didn't have to do this—you were still alive. She could avoid having a death on her conscience.

"But she was too angry with me. She thought I had betrayed her—" Chuck grimaced. "—which was technically true, even if it had been the last thing I'd wanted to do to her, but it wasn't my call—and she had her men start to beat me, while she pulled a gun on me."

Sarah swallowed, gripping handfuls of her sweater. He had made it out alive, she reminded herself. He was sitting right here, talking to her. She forced herself to let go of the sweaty clumps of fabric.

Chuck drew in a deep breath through his nose. "That was when my asset came through. He hadn't flaked out after all; he'd just realized, a bit too late, that my plan probably wouldn't work, and he'd made up a new one on the fly."

"Nice."

"Yeah, he's one of the most brilliant men I've ever met. Genius for strategy. Anyway, he showed up and turned everything around, and with no loss of life, to boot." Chuck smiled. "I like him. So we got the antidote, and because I knew Decker would be waiting for us, we brought a couple dozen Russian special forces paratroopers back with us, and I hacked the CIA mainframe during the return flight, so I could grab enough damning intel on Decker to keep him at bay, by threatening to expose his complicity in several illegal operations."

Sarah's mouth dropped open, and she gave a short laugh. "I'm not sure which part of that I find more difficult to believe. It's all true?"

Chuck grinned. "Every word."

"You really hacked the CIA?"

"Yeah, it's not that hard," Chuck said. "Especially if you've got the NSA Director's private key and a little bit of social engineering expertise."

Sarah shook her head, her mouth still hanging open. "And do I even want to know how you managed to get the Russians to invade Burbank without restarting the Cold War?"

Chuck laughed. "I called in a favor."

"That's quite a favor."

"Well, Casey called in one, too. He and Beckman stopped the Air Force from shooting the Russian jet down when we flew into U.S. airspace."

Sarah blinked. "And all of this was done... just to save me?"

Chuck nodded, giving her a small smile.

"Wow," she managed, looking out at the waves and tugging her sweater closer as the breeze blew a chill through her. She realized that the sun had disappeared below the horizon, and now she could only see the fading orange glow of where it had been.

"You're worth it," Chuck said quietly, drawing her back to look at him, and she saw that his eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Her eyes stung, so she blew out a breath and looked away.

"You were still recovering by the next day," Chuck said, "when the ceremony at the church was scheduled to happen, but you insisted that you could do it, and you did." He smiled. "Everybody pulled together, and then there we finally were, standing in front of each other and all our friends and family. When you said your vows, they were just as beautiful and as humbling as the first time I'd heard them, and my rewrite still wasn't good enough."

Sarah chuckled, and he dropped his head, shaking it ruefully. Then he straightened up and looked at her, his eyes bright.

"So I just threw them out and spoke from my heart. No vows. It was kind of rough and disjointed, because I was so overwhelmed, and there was something about picturing our kids running around like little superheroes, with capes and everything—"

Sarah giggled.

He exhaled a wobbly laugh. "—but I promised that I'd prove to you, every day for the rest of our lives, that I love you. That I'd fight for you. That you can count on me."

Sarah swallowed, unable to look away from him.

"And I looked at you, still—still!—wondering if I was really good enough for you, just me, Chuck Bartowski... and you whispered one word: 'Perfect.'" His voice caught as he said it, but he kept his eyes on hers, letting his tears run down his cheeks without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

"So then," he said, swallowing, and he smiled, "Morgan was on the verge of breaking down while he was officiating, and he could barely get the words out about whether I would 'take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife'..."

"Wait, Morgan officiated at our wedding?"

Chuck smiled. "Yeah, he got one of those online officiant-for-a-day certificates, issued by the Intergalactic Federation of Planets..."

Sarah laughed.

"...and he was so choked up by the time he got to your half of the words that you just put him out of his misery and said, 'I do' immediately." Chuck gave a soft laugh, and she smiled. "He declared us man and wife, and said I could kiss the bride." Chuck grinned. "So I said, 'Come here', as seriously as I could manage—"

Sarah didn't bother fighting her own smile, and she blinked, her eyes wet.

"—and you did. But! But—you kept your mouth closed." Chuck pouted, and Sarah giggled. "And there was no way I was letting you make our first kiss as man and wife be some chaste little thing." He grinned. "So I spun you around my hip and tipped you down, and while you were too busy laughing to stop me, I planted a solid one on that spot in the hollow of your throat that you always moan a bit for—" He pointed, and his eyes flickered down to her neck.

She raised her hand to touch it. Oh God, that spot. And in front of everyone?

"—and when I stood you back up, you gave me a real kiss."

Her soft exhalation of laughter mixed with her tears as he smiled at her, his eyes warm and brimming, and she batted his upper arm with the back of her hand.

Chuck fell into silence as he dried his face, and Sarah did the same, then tugged the sleeves of her sweater back down around her damp skin to protect it from the breeze coming off the water. She let out a long, shuddering breath, feeling full to the brim.

Through his eyes, without noticing exactly when, she had begun to see herself not as a spy first, but as a woman of grace and beauty, whose heart was bigger than she had ever thought possible. That was the woman he loved, spy and friend and, finally, wife.

"You know, Morgan..." Chuck gave a slight shake of his head. "...has this crazy idea."

Morgan. This idea was either going to be brilliant and insightful, or completely inappropriate. Sarah looked askance at Chuck and braced herself. "What is it?"

Chuck shifted and frowned slightly as he glanced at her. "He thinks that with one kiss, you will remember everything."

She gave a short laugh and scratched her ear. "One magical kiss?"

"Yeah." He chuckled awkwardly, looking away. "Exactly."

Sarah laughed. There was a certain fairy-tale quality to how she had woken up in this crazy, beautiful, unexpected life. Maybe Morgan was on to something.

Chuck tried to shrug it off. "I know, it's—"

"Chuck?"

He looked at her. "Yeah?"

"Kiss me."

His face slowly transformed into a tentative, surprised smile, his eyes growing damp again, and her heart squeezed. She so wanted to make this lovely man smile, and as often as possible. She ached to kiss him, but not because she wanted to magically regain her memories. She already had flashes of familiarity, and the truth of all that he'd told her was settling deep inside her with a kind of warm relief. Perhaps her memories would return, perhaps they wouldn't, but she felt less adrift now. She was no longer out to sea, because she was sitting next to her anchor.

Chuck had turned toward her, a flicker of caution still in his eyes, and after a moment, she felt his warm hand slide across her back. Do you really want this?

She didn't pull away.

When he recognized that, his smile widened and his brow creased in wonder, and he leaned forward. Her eyes fell closed the instant before his lips touched hers, and although she felt no rush of recognition or memory, what she did feel was exactly right. He didn't push in, and he didn't hesitate. He was just there, as he promised he would be, warm, patient, and... yes.

Nose still pressed to her cheek, he drew his mouth away for an instant, and Sarah's lips parted, already missing him—but he met her again, gentle and firm, and a tremor of desire ran through her. His arm tightened on her back and his other hand came up to cup her neck and jaw, his skin warm against hers, and despite the shiver of the breeze now coming off the ocean, she was warmed through. She leaned into him, and he broke the kiss to change the angle, meeting her again, slowly growing more passionate. She licked out in question and he was instantly there, matching her movements perfectly. He knew what she liked, and he gave it to her. She was known, accepted, loved.

He made a small moan in the back of his throat.

The sound made her want to cry and laugh at the same time, and their lips broke apart. Foreheads, noses, cheeks still touching, they laughed softly. Her skin was damp with his tears, quickly cooling in the breeze, and a gust blew through her thin sweater, making her fruitlessly tug it even tighter around herself. She opened her eyes and saw his hazel ones, filled with so much joy that it made her want to laugh and sob anew.

There was a question in his eyes, too.

She gave him a sad smile. "I'm sorry, I still don't remember."

He exhaled a short laugh, nodding. He pulled his arms back, clasping his hands and resting his elbows on his knees again as he looked down, his brow creasing. "Thanks for giving it a try."

She bumped her shoulder against his, and he looked aside at her with a chuckle.

"Are you sure you don't remember?" he asked, half-smiling. "Because that is exactly what you did to me the first time we were on this beach together."

She gave a soft laugh, then shivered. His expression quickly changed when he took in the way she was clutching at her sweater. He glanced out at the ocean, toward the graying sky.

"It's getting chilly," he said, his eyes drifting back to hers again. There was a new confidence in his gaze that hadn't been there before, but she knew he was waiting for her. Even after that incredible kiss, he still wasn't assuming anything.

She looked at him with a from-her-soul smile.

"Take me home, Chuck."

He released a half-sob of a breath, his eyes bright, and a moment later, he got to his feet and held out a hand, easily tugging her up when she took it. A fleeting wince crossed his face and he drew in a sharp breath, but when she frowned in question, his expression immediately cleared.

"C'mon," he said with a quick grin, wiping the sand off his pants with one hand and holding hers with the other. "Let's go home."

She wiped off her own pants and nodded, happily settling into a stride beside and slightly behind him as they made their way back up across the sand. She pulled out the keys to her Lotus and he released her, going over to his red-and-white Nerd Herder. When he pulled out of the empty beach parking lot, she followed him, watching the unassuming little car with a warm fondness. Unassuming. Yeah, that was Chuck Bartowski. Unassuming and yet utterly extraordinary.