A/N Last Chapter was all about Sarah, Ellie, and Carina. This time it's Chuck's and Casey's turn.

"First, do no harm."

"Plant it on Sarah."

"The plan's changed."

"The cavity check was his idea."

At a CIA Psychiatric Facility…

Leo Dreyfus looked up as his office door opened, and his most interesting non-patient came in. "Good morning, Chuck."

Chuck noted the empty chair. "Ellie's not here yet?" he asked as he sat in his usual spot, on the edge of the couch.

"She's not coming, Chuck," said Dreyfus. "I told her to take some time away from your case yesterday, but apparently she just got onto your wife's case instead. She left for Oregon this morning as part of an interception team." He didn't bother to ask how that made Chuck feel.

Chuck set his elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his clasped hands. "They took my sister on a mission? Interesting."

Chuck's lack of reaction was more interesting to Leo. "You don't seem especially alarmed by this, or even upset."

"Oh, I'm upset, all right, but the only way to fix that is to be there myself, and the only way to be there myself is for you to sign off on my release, and the only way to do that is not…seem… upset." Chuck took a breath. "But I'm really not alarmed, I know that Casey and Carina will take good care of her."

"Casey's not with them."

Chuck shot to his feet. "Okay, now I'm alarmed."

"You have doubts about Agent Miller's ability?"

Chuck waved that away, pacing. "No, I don't have any doubts, which is actually, um, part of the problem. Where they used to call Sarah a 'wild-card enforcer', they just called Carina a 'wild card.' That's not how my sister rolls."

"They worked well enough together in your rescue."

"Casey was there," countered Chuck. "He would have supported Ellie. What the hell are they thinking?"

"I think you might be underestimating Agent Miller, but the real question is, what are you thinking?" said Leo.

"I'm thinking I need to get to Oregon as soon as possible," said Chuck, running his hands through his hair. He walked up to the desk, leaned his hands on it, and loomed. "Tell me how I can do that, Doctor."

At NSA Headquarters…

Someone tapped on her door. "Come," said the General. Colonel Casey entered the room, one of the few people she actually wanted to see that day. "Everything go smoothly, Colonel?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. A federal agent and a neurologist should have had no trouble boarding a flight all on their own, and didn't. It was the 'all on their own' part that bothered Casey, and it showed in his voice.

"They can handle it themselves, John," she said suddenly, putting all other concerns aside. "The training wheels have to come off sometime. Which is why I need you here."

"'Special Agent Bartowski', ma'am?"

"Exactly." She handed him a folder, with all sorts of warning labels on it. "Dr. Dreyfus believes, and I concur, that his sister's engagement actively in the field might be enough to push Chuck over the edge. If that happens–when that happens, we'll need you…ready to hand."

"To do what, ma'am?"

She opened a desk drawer, and took out a small pouch, about the size of his hand, and pushed it across the desk at him. "What you do best, Colonel." He looked at it with distaste, and made no move to pick it up. She forced his hand. "Dismissed."

He picked up his package, tucking it away where he wouldn't have to see it, and stood. "Ma'am."

Manoosh was in his motel room, screwing desperately.

Tomorrow he would be back in DC. His self-imposed deadline to fix the Roarke Seven he'd found under the driver's seat in her father's car would expire, and then, well…

Well, nothing, really, but it was a pride thing. He should be able to fix one of these in his sleep, but this one just threw up one roadblock after another. He'd actually had to stop and get parts, so he probably already lost his bet with Sam, too, but really this stupid machine–

It beeped at him. He didn't drop his screwdriver, but it was a near thing.

He carefully set his tool aside, and checked to make sure he hadn't left any screws lying around. Then he turned over the computer.

KNOCK KNOCK, said the screen in familiar block letters.

He typed Orion? but the screen simply cleared his entry. He typed Who's there? but the screen cleared his entry again. He typed–he erased everything and sat very far back from the machine. This was sooo not his business! Orion's computer in Orion's car for Orion's daughter? What was he thinking?

He reached out and shut the laptop, relieved that it closed obediently. He opened the lid and the screen lit again with the same prompt. He closed it. Yeah! It worked! He fixed it.

He high-fived himself, and went to bed.

John Casey sat in his chair, tired but not ready to sleep. That sort of thing happened, when he wasn't where he needed to be. Tomorrow two teammates dressed in scrubs with not a single weapon between them would enter a maximum-security prison that he could have infiltrated in his sleep, hoping to find a homicidal maniac waiting for them. And even if Sarah wasn't there, they still had to deal with the Gobbler.

Life just wasn't fair, sometimes. He flipped another page in Chuck's file, getting more concerned with every line.

He opened the pouch the General had given him, pulled out the gun inside. Not his usual make or model, but that was only to be expected. The less this business could be connected to John Casey the better, as far as John Casey was concerned. He couldn't imagine ever using it, and what would he say to Sarah if he did? He shoved the gun back into the pouch, and put the pouch and the file it came with into his safe.

He had to get out of here, take a walk, clear his head. He had to go somewhere, do something.

Chuck waited until that night to make his move. With his sister gone, he'd been able to take a paperclip from Leo's desk the day before, not that he had any plans to use it, just…because. He hadn't even meant to take it, he just noticed it on the desk, and then on the way back to the day room he felt it in his hand.

When the guard made his latest pass Chuck was ready, improvised lockpicks in hand and the door already open. Two doors down on the left, another patient with curly hair. With a thumb to the neck Chuck made sure his sleep was dreamless and uninterrupted, then carried him back to his own bed, just in case some guard got curious.

Whoever had installed the cameras had done with an eye to security, but whoever had installed the furniture didn't have that eye. The two cameras should have covered for each other, but the table along the wall blocked the view for one. As the other panned away, Chuck ran and slid under the table to get past the sensor. He bounced off the wall, then the table, and perched himself–thank you, Serenity–above the door, braced against one wall, one camera, and a light fixture. He waited.

The door beneath him opened, and a janitor walked through, pushing a bucket with a stick. Chuck put a long arm through the doorway, reaching for the camera strut on the other side, and swung himself through, reaching for the next light fixture. The hall was clear and clean, but he felt, he knew, something was wrong. He looked down, back through the door.

The janitor stood there, looking at him. He mimed a gun, pointing it at Chuck–bang!–blowing imaginary smoke from the pretend barrel–Gotcha!–before he turned away and started to mop. The door closed between them and Chuck dropped down, trying to remember Pebbles' password algorithm for the next door.

On the front walk of a nice looking house in a nice DC suburb…

Casey moved like a man in a dream, or a nightmare. What am I doing here? The middle of the night was no time to be making a house call. Well, not on the good guys, anyway. With the good guys you rang the doorbell, like so.

Dr. Dreyfus was surprisingly alert, and answered the door promptly. "Colonel…Casey," he said with mild surprise.

"You remember me?" said Casey.

"The events of that day are burned into my memory, Colonel," said Dreyfus with a chuckle. "And if need be, I have the DVD to bring it all back."

Casey had no desire to remember that afternoon, one of the most uncomfortable of his life. He recalled getting beaten up by his own daughter with more pleasure. Fortunately Carina got tranqed too, so she didn't bug him about it much. "May I come in? I really need to talk to you about Chuck."

Leo opened his door wider. "I would be very interested to hear it."

"Just so you know, Colonel," said Leo, leading his guest into the living room. "I may not be Chuck's physician, but I am evaluating his readiness for the world and the world's readiness for him. Anything you have to say to me will factor in that evaluation. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly, Doctor."

"Call me Leo. Please, sit." He subtly influenced Casey's choice by pointing to one chair while seating himself in the other. "What's on your mind?"

"You just said it. Chuck's readiness for the world."

"Interesting," said Leo, with a slight smile, quickly quashed. "You don't think he is?"

Casey looked uncomfortable. "He's got the skills. You can't question his ability."

Casey's reservations were in the file. "You still question his attitude?"

"I wish I could."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning…" Casey took a deep breath. "Meaning I've been a soldier, most of my life. I've seen things, hell, I've done things that changed me, left me a different man on the other side with no way to get back."

"I understand," said Dreyfus, and he did. Not the soldiering part, of course, but every man has that sort of experience if he's paying any attention to his life at all.

"I'm not a good man, and I know that," said Casey. He looked down at his hands. "You can't do what I do, as long as I have, without being good at it, without enjoying it, even just a little bit, and no good man should enjoy what I do."

Dreyfus withheld comment on that. Not that he agreed with it, entirely, but the Colonel Casey Chuck often talked about wasn't a man to reveal himself too much, or too often. Now was a time for listening, not talking.

"I was turned down for Special Forces training, you know. I walked out of that tent thinking maybe I should just go home, but how could I go home after that? Then Keller came along and gave me a way out." Casey looked down at the carpet, and the patterns in it. "I wonder sometimes what my life would have been like if I'd gone home to Kath instead."

Dreyfus wasn't privy to the Colonel's file, but from Chuck's description of their early days together, he had no doubt that John Casey would have been a happier man if he'd refused the offer.

"Keller reeled me in like a fish. For all I know he had me rejected, just so he could get his hooks into me. My daughter grew up fatherless because of him."

"Your situations are hardly parallel," said Dreyfus. As he expected, the sound of his voice had much the same effect as a bucket of water.

"Our what?"

"Chuck isn't like you, Colonel," said Dreyfus calmly. "For one thing, he's got people like you and Agent Bartowski looking out for his interests."

Hardly the point. "He's a good man, Doctor. I don't want Volkoff doing to him what Keller did to me. He doesn't belong here."

"Maybe not, but it sounds to me like this is exactly the place where he's needed. Your profession seems to be desperately short of good men."

Casey grunted an acknowledgement.

"In any event, Colonel, it's not your call, or mine, to make. Chuck made his choice. He knows what he wants and he's doing what he needs to do to get there. That's hardly the act of a rudderless orphan."

Like Alex Coburn had been back in Honduras, jobless and alone. He'd chosen the easy out, and deserved to die. Chuck had made the harder choice, and even now John Casey was trying to choose the easy way out. You don't honor a man's courage by putting him in a box.

"In fact," continued Dreyfus, "When I answered the door before, I was honestly expecting Chuck to be standing there, not you."

"If that's the case, Doctor, you shouldn't have left your oriole window open," said Chuck, stepping into the room.

The next day…

Chuck walked on board the private plane, took a long look around. "You guys still think I'm that dangerous?"

Casey came up behind him and looked around the flying deathtrap. Chuck was thinking and observing like a spy. On the other hand, now he wouldn't have to hide it or explain it. A net plus in his book. "That sounds like something Carmichael would say, trying to make me feel guilty, get me off my guard," he said, pushing Chuck out of the way.

Chuck sighed. "True enough. Carmichael could say 'Good morning' and make you wonder if it was either."

"You got that right," said Casey. "Now sit down, shut up, and settle in. You want to be ready in case they need us."

Later, in the air…

The noise woke Casey. Gunfire and explosions. No, that wasn't it. He could sleep through an artillery barrage, if it was someone else's.

Laughter, idiot comments, and trash-talking. No one could sleep through that. He looked at Chuck, frantically busy with a tablet, playing some game. "What the hell are you doing, moron?" he snarled. "I thought I told you to settle in."

"I am, I mean, I was going to, but I wanted to chill with some COD and then these new reflexes kicked in and–"

Casey walked right through the monologue and snatched the pad from his hand. "Gimme. Now go to sleep."

Chuck couldn't get angry, his body agreed with his handler. "Fine. Be that way, Mr. Grumpypants." He rolled over.

Casey turned. "What did you just call me?" But Chuck was snoring at the wall and didn't answer him.

The noise woke Chuck. Laughter, idiot comments, and trash-talking. No, that wasn't it. He could sleep through a Halo marathon, if it was someone else's.

Gunfire and explosions, though? No one could sleep through that. He fumbled in his pocket and got out his earbuds, throwing them over his shoulder at the noise.

Unfortunately, when it came to taking hints, Casey went to the same school Carina did.

Chuck flung himself sideways, absorbing the impact with his shoulder while his other hand aimed straight and true, finger flexing. His target didn't fall.

"I dropped an ice cube, idiot," said Casey, waving his glass in the air. He took a sip. "Good reflexes, though, you would've dropped me if you'd actually had a gun."

Chuck pushed himself off the ground, rubbing his shoulder as he reseated himself. "You don't mind that I just tried to shoot you? Isn't that something Carmichael would do?"

Casey grunted an amused negative. "Carmichael would've remembered he was unarmed."

Later, on the ground in Oregon…

FBI Special Agents Charles and Casey produced their credentials at the gate and asked to speak with the warden, but even so were made to wait for the man himself. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

Chuck took point, of course. "We have reliable intel that an attempt will be made to break out one of your prisoners in the near future, a charming fellow named the Gobbler," he drawled in his Mr. Charles persona.

"Try the recent past. Some black-haired bitch in a catsuit just loaded him in a medical van and drove right out the front gate."

Agent Charles looked at Agent Casey. "Sounds like the Black Widow."

Agent Casey nodded silently.

"Who's the Black Widow?" asked the warden.

Chuck turned back to him. "We'll take it from here. Why a medical van?"

The warden wasn't quite so ready to yield. "The guy she took was getting some shots. We're holding the medical team, in case they were accomplices. She also killed a guard. Guy just had a birthday, too."

"That's…not the Black Widow's M.O.," said Agent Charles. "She's no killer, and she works alone. We'll need to see the crime scene, right now."

"We'll have to go the long way around, unless you got a riot squad in your pocket."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The dead guard was monitoring the rec room. Without him things got out of hand. Normally we just let them pound themselves into the ground but that could take a while."

"If your incarcerated population thinks I'm going to wait until they've settled their affairs they are sorely mistaken. Lead the way."

The warden shook his head, but did as he was told. They could have found it without him, just by following the noise. "My, my, my, what a mess."

"That ping-pong table was new, too. Gonna be a while before we can requisition another one."

Chuck turned to Casey. "John, would do me a favor and hold my glasses?" As Casey took them, Chuck added for the warden's benefit, "They break real easy." He waded into the swirling mass of orange jumpsuits.

The noise level dropped precipitously. At some point the melee got below critical mass, and the whole thing just….stopped.

Chuck stood in the center of a sprawled mess. He straightened his tie. "What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?"

For a second no one said anything, then, "Big Lou stole the crip's applesauce!"

"You're dead," shouted someone big enough to be Lou, but 'the crip' was a little harder to spot. Chuck saw bandages on the side of the room, out of the fight. The guy was missing three fingers from his left hand.

Chuck turned to Lou, shaking his head. "As if this little valley in your life's road wasn't deep enough." He walked up to the man. "I hope that applesauce was real good, Lou, 'cause I intend to…study you." He walked around his new subject. "Every dirty secret, every dark deed, brought to light. No more applesauce for you, ever." Lou raised a hand. "Oh, please don't assault me now, Lou, that would just send you down a rat-hole too damned quick." Lou's hand went down. "Much better. See, your valley don't have to be as deep as all that."

Chuck turned his back on Lou. "Gentlemen, you are impeding a federal investigation. A guard has been murdered, so unless you want to be considered accomplices after the fact I suggest you step aside."

The prisoners weren't utter idiots. "Where's Steve?" "Was it Steve?" "The guy just had his birthday! I saw 'em with the cake and everything."

"You saw who with a cake?"

"The other guards."

Chuck turned to the warden. "I trust birthday parties on duty are not standard procedure."

The warden looked his men over grimly. Someone's career would suffer for this, but it wouldn't be his. "No, sir, they are not."

"Probably a diversion," said Casey.

"Of what?" asked Chuck. "To what? And why?" He looked at the inmates. "Well, I doubt we'll find any answers here." Suddenly he stood in middle of a vast empty space, as everyone found something more interesting to do. "Shall we?"

One crime scene investigation later…

The box of bagged and labeled evidence went into the trunk. The two women of the medical team, possible accomplices, were cuffed and stuffed in the back seat, as the FBI agents drove out of the prison to pursue the Black Widow.

Or something like that.

"Can we stop and get these cuffs off, please?" asked Ellie.

Carina brought her hands around front. "Got you covered, Doctor."

Casey looked in the rear-view. "Do you wear those things all the time?"

"Please don't answer that," said Chuck. "Did you get your shot in?"

Carina opened her hand, revealing the mini-syringe. "I hope so. I think it went in when she blocked my punch, but we weren't expecting that leather outfit."

"You'd better have a lot more to this plan of yours than hope," said Chuck dangerously.

"It's not my plan, it's Hannah's," said Carina quickly. Casey got out his phone, and made a call.

Chuck sidelined his angst for the moment. "Hannah's on the team now? Great," he said, smiling. Then he stopped smiling. "No, not great. Now I have to come up with code names for her too."

"Maybe you should let her be 'Bedrock'," said Carina sourly, remembering the codename Chuck tried to foist off on her long ago.

"Hey, don't blame me. How was I to know you were upgrading your banter?" said Chuck. "It's good, though, she seems like a sort of bedrock-y kind of person. But we still need something to go with the whole optical motif…"

"Chuck, focus," said Ellie. "Your wife is at the heart of a criminal's lair, a proper codename is hardly the priority right now."

"She's not at the heart of it," said Casey, putting away his phone. "But she's on her way. Beckman says the trackers you injected her with are moving steadily toward Moscow. Once the antitoxin clears her head, we'll have a perfect mole."

Chuck unsidelined his angst, slapped it around a bit, and stuffed it in a box, next to his concerns about Hannah's other codename. "So what's the play?"

Casey nodded. "We position ourselves for an extraction, and wait for her to contact us."

"Boy, I wish your plan had some specifics to it."

"We check the van they found. Then Ellie and Carina are going back to DC, Manoosh has something for Ellie to look at. You and me? We're going to Prague."

At that moment, in the air over the Pacific…

The guard pounded on the door. "Give suit!"

The door opened, but she already had the robe on and he couldn't see anything, even in the mirror, before she blocked his view. "Take suit," she snapped, shoving it at him.

Disappointed, he stalked back to the waiting techs and threw the suit at them. They didn't bother with a visual inspection, not with the floor show they expected as soon as the bitch came out of the bathroom. Instead they just ran a hand scanner over the outside of the suit. The scanner wasn't programmed for pinholes, nor was it powerful enough to detect the presence of the trackers smeared all over the inside of one sleeve.

Inside the bathroom, Sarah checked the itching spot on her arm, but saw no wound. She scrubbed harder at it, until the itch went away.

A/N2 I have no idea where the riot scene came from. When I was writing Chuck's lines I kept going back and forth between Tommy Lee Jones and Nicholas Cage on the accent.