A/N A little early. I had a holiday this week and got a lot done. This episode is being driven by the Vivian side of things, with lots of room for some Charah fluff and family good times.

"I'd like to see my father, please."

"We've really got to get you a more cheerful outlook on life."

"I'm just vibrating with positivity over here."

"Take him away."

The sun rose. Birds chirped, as they often do at that hour of day.

Chuck lay in bed, warmer on one side than the other, but today he wasn't wrapped in Sarah's arms as he so often was. He reached out a hand, and found her not far from him, but something was wrong. He ran his hand over her body, the planes, the curves, especially the curves, and then his sleeping mind caught up.

It wasn't the shape–well, for some things it was the shape–it was the texture. Not skin, not one of his T-shirts, not even a nightgown.

He rolled over, eyes shut, and brought a second hand into play. What a delightful puzzle she was. Waist, hips, upper thigh. Aha, that was definitely skin.

"I'll let you keep doing that, but you'll have to buy me breakfast later," mumbled Sarah.

"Maybe I should make you breakfast now," said Chuck, kissing her neck. "Sounds like we'll both need our strength."

She rolled over and pinned him to the bed, both with her body and with a patented Sarah glare, probably more frightening. "You've got quite strength enough, I'd say, and if you think you're going to wake me up like that and then just walk away, I'll take you back to see Dreyfus this time."

"Sounds like somebody didn't get a good night's sleep," said Chuck. "That's what happens when you sleep in your party dress. They have these things called zippers…"

Sarah leaned down and kissed him while he demonstrated. When she sat back up she found she was bare to the waist. "Wow, you geeks are good," she said, pulling her arms free.

He sat up and kissed her back. "Nerds," he said afterward, and in between, "We prefer nerds." He rolled her back over, and suddenly she was bare to her knees. "Let me show you why."

For the umpteenth time, Vivian flicked a glance at her companion.

"Is something the matter, ma'am?" he asked.

"No," she replied. "It's just that…you bear an uncanny physical resemblance to an American agent of my acquaintance. Lose the mustache and you'd be him to the life."

"So that's why you plucked it." Impersonation possibilities revealed themselves. "Interesting."

"He used to be known as Agent Charles Charles, of the CIA."

Or perhaps a beard. Shaving his head sounded increasingly attractive. "Perhaps madam would prefer a different bodyguard?"

'You cannot conquer your fear unless you experience fear,' as her father used to say. Her real father, not that physical shell. Agent Charles may have breathed more easily that Winterbottom still lived, but he was a murderer in her eyes. "No," she said again, her rising anger overcoming her fear. "I think you'll suit my needs quite well, Mr. Carmichael."

"Very good, ma'am," he said. "Then as your guard let me remind you that the First Bank of Macau caters to all of the high crime syndicates and organizations. If you show weakness they will eat you alive, and I cannot go beyond the gate."

"I thought they knew you."

"They do, but that cuts both ways. I'm what is known in these parts as 'rental meat'. They won't even acknowledge me directly. My reputation gets you to the gate, but no further."

"Yet you seem quite knowledgeable."

"I've escorted a number of persons to these offices, ma'am. Including Georgeanna Huxley."

Her father had coached her extensively on possible rivals and allies. "I've never heard of her."

"My point exactly," said Mr. Carmichael. "If you fail their tests no one will ever hear of you, either."

Chuck settled back on his side of the bed as Sarah pushed herself upright with trembling arms. "Oh, Mr. Bartowski," she groaned. "You have just…redefined the word 'quickie'."

"Only in the kitchen," he said, tapping his head.

"You're telling me the Intersect has breakfast chef skills in it too?" said Sarah incredulously, picking up a perfectly cooked slice of bacon. "Look at all this!"

Chuck shifted the tray onto her lap and stole the bacon from her fingers with his teeth while he was at it.

"Hey, get your own," said Sarah.

"I did," said Chuck, after a proper bacon-appreciating interval. "You took that from my plate."

She looked at him suspiciously. "How much of this is for you?"

He took his plate, and one of the glasses of juice.

"Thank God, I'm starving!" She started in on the rest of the tray.

"You didn't come home for dinner last night," said Chuck. "I thought Hannah would have fed you."

"Oh, she did," said Sarah, after she drained her juice glass. "But Carina was there too, and she brought Zondra with her."

"I sense a cat-related pun coming up."

"That name was not our idea," snapped Sarah. Well, as much as one can snap with a mouthful of scrambled eggs. Chuck grabbed a napkin and wiped off the bits that sprayed his way while she swallowed. "Sorry. No, no catting about, not with two of us spoken for."

Chuck pointed at the crumpled dress. "Clubbing? Partying until all hours?"

She made a face. "You weren't there. This was just us, you know, being us again. Normally we like to hang around coffee bars and scare the shadowy figures, but this time we did a good bit of fence-mending."

"Oh, yeah, your so-called friend Amy."

"Who you knew was a traitor and let her lead you into a trap anyway." She stabbed a slice of melon and started chewing it into submission.

"Zondra wouldn't have believed me if I'd just told her, although Casey did," said Chuck. "I was your husband, of course I couldn't be trusted to be impartial about that. I had to let Amy have her moment." After a moment or two where the only clattering of silverware was his own, he looked up.

Sarah sat there looking at him, eyes glistening. "You walked into a trap for me?" Zondra was one of the few friends Sarah had, and now had again.

He reached out a hand and caught a tear. "Us, wife. Us."

On the other side of the world…

When Mr. Carmichael walked in the door of the First Bank of Macau, underlings took notice, and word spread quickly. Guillermo Chan himself came out to deal with his newest guests. "I'm afraid we are not accepting new accounts," he said to Vivian.

"I'm already an account holder," she replied. Carmichael, playing his part, held out Miss Volkoff's card to one of Mr. Chan's underlings, who delivered it to his superior.

Mr. Chan scanned it. "We had heard rumors that this account had changed hands. We expected someone to come and claim it before this."

"I knew my father's account was safe here, Mr. Chan. I had some…housekeeping chores to attend to first. You understand."

He understood. Transitions could be messy. He bowed slightly, and gestured. "This way, Miss Volkoff." He would lead this new and potentially valuable client personally. Carmichael took up an alert stance, but she never looked back.

In the kitchen de Bartowski…

"Mom?" asked Chuck in surprise, as he and Sarah came out of their room, ready for the day. "What are you doing? You're our guest, you shouldn't be making your own breakfast."

"Chuck, I've had servants making my breakfast every day for the last twenty years," said Mary. "And your soundproofing isn't complete." Any excuse to leave the room next door was a good one.

"Ah," gurgled Chuck, turning red. Sarah continued past him as he fumbled with a suddenly-tight collar. "Um…"

Mary ignored his discomfort. "It's honestly a bit refreshing to find out that I still know my way around a kitchen." The smoke alarm started beeping, and Mary turned back to her work. "Chort vozmi."

Chuck turned away , more than willing to break up the uncomfortable scene, and saw his wife at the table, scanning little pieces of paper. "What's that, Sarah?" he asked, walking over.

"Reports, Chuck," she said quietly. "Notices of reprimand for guards we don't have. Your mother must have walked the perimeter last night." In her sleep. She looked over her shoulder. "At least she's not armed. What if that guy down the street decided to walk his dog?"

"Don't worry," said Chuck, with a calming wave of his hand. "I'll take care of it."

"You'll take care of what?" asked Mary, coming towards them with a tray in her hands.

Chuck turned around. "Security logs," he said quickly, feeling Sarah slide up behind him, slipping the papers in his back pocket. "They need to be reviewed and Sarah wasn't here yesterday, so I was just saying I'd take care of them, and let the two of you catch up."

"Sounds lovely," said Mary, putting the tray down, as Chuck left the area. "Sarah, have you eaten yet?"

Sarah was spared the necessity of answering by the triple-chime of an incoming connection, in the living room. Since the division between the living and dining spaces of their house was basically imaginary, they all heard it very well. "One second."

Mary followed, so all three of them were there when General Beckman's image came through. "Agents Bartowski," she said, as if pleased that three greetings could be efficiently summed up in so few words, "I'm sorry to intrude on your family time, but we have a situation in England."

"Hydra?" asked Chuck.

"Hartley?" said Mary.

Beckman nodded. "Hartley Winterbottom's transport was attacked last night, and he was extracted by hostile forces–"

"General, we have to get him back!"

"Relax, Chuck," said the General. "SIS reacquired him within minutes, unconscious in a doorway. Unharmed, aside from the usual injuries from the extraction itself, but he'd been shot with a tranq dart."

"Do we know what happened to him?" asked Mary.

"No. He was very confused when he regained consciousness and has only become more agitated and upset since. They were forced to sedate him. He mentioned a woman."

"Vivian?"

"Almost certainly." A grainy picture from some security footage appeared on the screen. "This was taken just hours before the incident."

"She's looking for her father," said Sarah. It's what she would have done.

"But then why did she leave him?" wondered Chuck.

"He didn't know her," said Frost, remembering Vivian's desperate question on board the Contessa. "His memories of Volkoff are gone."

Beckman looked grim. "That appears to be correct. Specialists in MI5 attempting to debrief him report memory loss starting shortly after he would have uploaded the first file, and gradually increasing. Ellie has been correlating the dates with uploads after that. Orion's program appears to have erased Volkoff completely."

"That's awful," said Chuck. Poor Vivian. The body of someone she loved still walking around, but with what was effectively a different person inside it. No wonder she'd left Hartley behind. "Did I do that?"

Mary put a hand on his shoulder, as Beckman said, "No agent operates alone, Chuck. We did that, Hartley most all, and it gets worse. On an operational front, Vivian herself was last seen in Moscow, but has since dropped off the radar."

On the vault level of the First Bank of Macau…

"We must stop here, Miss Volkoff."

Vivian looked around. The hall was empty, with just two doors, like an airlock, with a red light over one, while the one they'd just come through was green. "Why?"

Mr. Chan indicated the light. "The hall beyond is occupied. We must wait until it is clear before we can proceed." Just then the light changed. "We may go."

Only once did they encounter another person. A red-lit door popped open, and a man came through, staggering to the far wall and gasping for air. "What do you think you are doing?" asked Mr. Chan severely. "Red doors must remain closed at all times."

"My apologies, Mr. Chan," said the man, "But the halon system went off."

Chan couldn't sound less interested. "So?"

"The respiratory equipment has not been installed. I would have suffocated."

Chan swiped his card on the door, overriding the seal, and the door opened. "An unfortunate accident." The guard accompanying them shoved the technician back into the room, and Chan sealed the door again. He turned to his client, who stared at the door with an expression of grave concern. "As you can see, Miss Volkoff, our client's privacy is paramount."

"Yes, of course," said Vivian. "Thank you."

In the lab, with Mom...

Once out of the elevator Chuck removed the hood from his mother's head. "Sorry, mom, but until you have your clearances restored…"

"It's all right, Chuck," Mary said. She was so proud. She needed clearance to see her son's job. "Show me."

"Right this way."

The Intersect room was closed, as always, and he put his hand on the scanner with a flourish. The light turned green and the door opened. Chuck waved his mother inside. Mary looked around at the room's paneled walls, the chair where her son did most of his work, the exercise equipment. The cot. "Who's that?"

"Who's what?" said Chuck. "Oh. That's Ellie's assistant. He practically lives here."

Mary dismissed him from her attention. "When I think of the equipment your father started with…" She sighed. "One little screen."

"I wonder sometimes why we have so many," said Chuck, looking around. "It's not like I can see them all."

"Did you ever ask?"

"No. I always figured that, maybe it was for more eyes than just mine, or maybe they didn't know about the paralysis, so they wanted global coverage. Maybe they thought they needed something they could show off to big shots, so they made it look really impressive. Whatever the reason, it looks cool, so I don't care."

His mother smiled. "Spoken like a true nerd. I wish I could see it," she said wistfully.

"It would kill you."

"Okay, that's a downside."

"Plus we don't really use it much anymore. We have other, more lightweight methods to do the same thing, now that I'm out in the field. Since we're all here for the wedding, we're going old school, just for you."

Mary fluffed out imaginary skirts and curtsied. "I'm honored."

"I thought I heard voices," said Ellie, standing by the door. "Hi, mom. Across the hall, little brother. Manoosh, chop chop."

Manoosh flipped off the light blanket. "I was just resting my eyes!" he yelled, rolling off the cot and falling on the floor. "On my way."

"Come on, mom," said Ellie with a smile. "Let me show you where the magic gets made."

In Macau…

"You have no idea how relieved I was to see you there, Mr. Riley," said Vivian, as Carmichael drove them back to her hotel. "After I saw what they'd done to my father I was afraid I'd lost everyone dear to me."

"Your venture was rash and ill-considered, Vivian," said Riley, who knew only the most mercenary meanings of a word like 'dear' and assumed she meant one of them. "Your father would have been the first to tell you to cut your losses, and take the battle to the people who made you do it." He poured himself a drink from the limo's bar. She could afford it now. "At least one good thing came of it." He took a sip.

"And what would that be, Mr. Riley?"

Ah, the good stuff. "Clearly they haven't cracked Hydra yet. They have no reason to keep your father so closely held otherwise."

"He's not my father!" said Vivian. "He's a spineless little worm, who dreamed he was a man."

"If you say so, Vivian," said Riley, ever willing to stay on her good side. "But he's a spineless worm who's the key to Hydra. As long as they don't yet have it, that means we can get it back."

"And do what with it? Isn't Hydra as useless to us as it is to them, without my father to unlock it?" And how foolish was she to let him go, when she had him in her grasp.

"I don't believe so," said Riley. "We have one thing they haven't got."

"What's that?"

"You. If there's any hope of bringing out whatever scraps of your father may yet linger inside Mr. Winterbottom, it lies with you."

Of course it did. "We have to get him back."

Riley sighed. "That will be much harder to do, a second time. Much more planning, and a lot more money."

She'd already used up most of her money. "Time is one thing I have in abundance."

Riley reached into his pocket, and pulled out a plastic card. "And funds, Miss. Your father planned for you, in every way."

She looked at the card, so like the other one. "His fortune?"

"Of course," said Riley. "Not everything he did went into Hydra. He also had a few more, hmm, speculative ventures in the pipeline. He tended to scatter those."

"Anything useful to us?" Something to destroy all my enemies, leave me safe and untouchable forever?

"One, if it works. Something he called the Norseman."

Significant, or not? The Americans use a random name generator, so enemies can't learn anything about their operations from the name. "What is it?"

"I have no idea." Not that Riley ever let a little thing like that stop him. "We have to check everything. His compound, his offices. If it's real he'd have left something for us to find."

"And while we're sifting through debris, the CIA gets the business and our rivals get our markets," said Vivian. "I'm not in love with your plan."

"I'm a lawyer, not a businessman." He needed, and got, another drink.

"Well, I am a businesswoman, Mr. Riley, and if there's one thing I know about business–"

Alexei brushed a smudge on Frost's cheek. "Vivian, what have I told you about business?"

Vivian stared at the card in her hand. "It's like war."

"What?"

"Business, Mr. Riley," said Vivian softly. "As my father often said, it's like war."

Riley spread his hands, careful not to spill. "Which helps us how?"

"There are lots of ways to win a war, Mr. Riley, some more useful than others," she said contemplatively.

"What do you have in mind?" said Riley. "I may not have veto power, but I think I deserve a chance to provide input."

"It's very simple, Mr. Riley. We're going to let Agent Charles win it for us."

A/N2 I got the idea for the red-lit doors from the great Sarah-centered fanfic 'Becoming'. I have no idea where Mr. Carmichael came from or what he will do. Vivian had a mustached Chuck as her bodyguard in canon, so I gave her one here, but he isn't Chuck. He's just a guy who looks like Chuck with a mustache, who also happens to be named Carmichael.