Disclaimer: Dialogue and plot points taken from Chuck vs. the Tooth, written by Zev Borow and Max Denby. No copyright infringement is intended.

-C-

May, 2010

The sterile surroundings, smelling heavily of hospitals and mothballs, seem to close in around me, shrinking inward to the cadence of Casey's heavy footfalls as he walks away. My fellow inmates fade into the background as if they don't exist, and I can't even admit to myself that I fear my fate will be the same as theirs. The table beneath my hands is firm—the only solid object that registers—but it offers me no comfort, and I don't dare reach out and take hold of Sarah's hands.

I'm afraid.

Afraid that I really am crazy. Afraid that the Intersect I've only just been learning to accept and embrace is destroying me from the inside out. Afraid that I'll be stuck in this mental institution forever.

Afraid that Sarah doesn't trust me. Afraid that she will leave me. Afraid that she pities me.

Afraid that she doesn't love me enough.

Things had finally been so perfect, so right, so everything I never thought could or would happen to me. Sarah was with me, smiled at me, laughed with me, even agreed to move in with me, spent her evenings with me not because she was required to but because she wanted to. Everything wrong in my life had disappeared…and now this. Betrayed by my own mind, by the Intersect I'd learned to think of as mine alone, by the dreams I'd believed in.

But I haven't given up. I don't dare allow myself to even consider the possibility that Dr. Dreyfuss is right. Because I need to believe that I'm okay, need to believe that this will all be over soon, need to believe that the tooth tucked away in Sarah's hand will be the answer to seeing me out of here and back in the apartment I share with her.

But…what if she thinks I'm crazy? I know how I sound, know what Casey was thinking when he looked at me with such uncharacteristic sympathy, know why the orderlies watch me so carefully. I don't believe that I'm crazy, but if Sarah looks at me as if she does…well, I think that then I might believe it. I think that then I might just stop trying, might just get used to wearing pajamas and a robe all day and start making friends here among my fellow ex-spies, might give myself up to the Intersect and its effects.

And so I avoid her gaze for an infinitesimal moment, looking after Casey, scanning the claustrophobic surroundings, watching the doorway where Casey, free to leave whenever he wishes, has disappeared.

I can't lose her. I know that more surely than I know anything else. I've already seen just how far I will fall without Sarah, just how much I'll lose all sense of purpose, all will to continue, all hope of a future—and that was when I still had Ellie and Morgan and Awesome. Now, not even Morgan knows where I am, and Ellie and Awesome have no idea that I'm in trouble at all. All I have is Sarah, but that's okay because when push comes to shove she's all I need. I came to that realization weeks ago on a train outside France.

So finally, daringly, I look at her.

And I don't see her distancing herself. I don't see her pulling away. I don't see her erecting her walls once more and putting them between us.

Instead, I see her looking straight at me, connecting with me, reaching out to place a gentle hand over mine. Her eyes are sky-blue, the shade they always assume during her most tender moments, but touched with a hint of gray, the gray that appears whenever she's sad, mute sign that she wants to cry but won't allow herself to. Her hand on mine is steady, but she clasps my fingers with an almost desperate grip.

"Chuck," she says, and there's a touch of panic there buried deep in her voice, submerged beneath reassurance and a plea for my full attention.

"Sarah," I say before she can continue, before I can hear whatever she might say about my desperate plan and my stubborn refusal to give up on my tooth theory. I want to appear strong, want to assure her that I'm fine, want to allay all her worry. But I can't. I'm not calm, not strong, not fine. I'm terrified and lost and very, very close to breaking, and only my conviction is keeping me upright and smiling and trying.

Sarah meets my eyes without flinching, her one hand curled around the tooth I'd given her. She waits for me to speak, and I find myself falling in love with her all over again—still, continuously, always.

"You can't give up on me, okay?" I try to smile at her, feel its grimness, attempt to firm it up with the hint of a chuckle, but even that fails.

Who am I to ask this of her? I'm nobody, a nerd who worked at the Buy More and had no aspirations until fate intervened. I'm not even a real spy, not really, not like Bryce Larkin or Cole Barker or Daniel Shaw. I feel inferior and lacking on my best of days, and now, dressed in the prison garb of this institution and with my very sanity in question, I don't even feel qualified enough to look her in the eyes, to hold her hand, to say her name.

And yet, I'm the one she was willing to run away from the CIA for. I'm the one she agreed to move in with. I'm the one she's sitting with right now, even though it means she's surrounded by lunatics and madmen. I'm the one who can make her smile even when the world is all wrong. That has to mean something, doesn't it?

I don't know how long it will take to get this all sorted out. But I do know that as long as she's with me, I can figure this all out. I can get out of here.

So, no matter that she deserves better, I ask her. No matter that I'm afraid of what this will mean for us, I ask her. It's the same plea I've always made, the first heartfelt request I can remember ever asking, silently repeating it over and over in my mind in the days after my mother left and then again after my dad disappeared.

Please don't leave me. Don't give up on me. Don't leave me alone. Please let me be enough, faults and all.

Sarah smiles at me, and I almost think she can see all of that in my eyes, can hear me voicelessly begging her to love me enough to get us through this, to believe in me no matter what, begging her not to throw the tooth away and cut her losses.

"I won't," she promises me, and instantly, relief floods through me like the waves of the ocean. "I'll get it tested," she adds, and I trust her implicitly.

I have loved Sarah almost from the very moment I met her, but I think I love her more in this moment than I ever have before. I wish I could tell her that, wish I had the words I need to convey just how much pure, overwhelming emotion rises within me when I look at her, wish I could give her as much as she gives to me. But there are no words in any language that could possibly say all that, so I say nothing, just look at her and hope that she sees all that I am feeling in my eyes, feels it in the strength of my grip as I turn my hand to intertwine my fingers with hers, knows it through all that I do for her.

We're partners, her and I, and she trusts me to be right just as I trust her to see to it that I'm proven correct. I always knew we worked well together, but it was in Europe, each of us trying to give the other what we thought they wanted, that I realized just how seamlessly we could merge. Now, I enjoy a similar moment of clarity, of unwavering certainty that we are meant to be together, to work together, to love together.

The moment is broken when one of the orderlies, deceptively innocent with his hands casually resting in his pockets, interrupts. "Time to go, Chuck."

I fight back an uncharacteristic urge to snap something mean, to shout out my anger, to take out my own fear and confusion and despair on the man who's just doing what he's supposed to. Grimacing, I look up at him, wondering how he got this job, why he'd want to work here. But then, it wouldn't be as terrifying to be here if I could walk out whenever I wanted.

I wish I could. Wish I could keep Sarah's hand in mine and just stride out the front door with my head held high as if I haven't a care in the world. But I can't. And maybe it's better that the orderly escort me away. Better for me to walk away than to have to sit here, a prisoner, and watch Sarah Walker disappear out of my life as she had almost done just months previous.

When I turn back to Sarah, my heart in my throat, I am taken aback to see tears shimmering in her eyes. The gray has disappeared entirely, released to glimmer in the teardrops hovering at the corners of her eyes, caught by her eyelashes. In its place, there is only blue as clear as cold, crystalline water.

I lean forward to kiss her, needing that connection, that touch, before I can gather the strength to rise and disappear into the bowels of this emotionless, hopeless place. She leans forward at the same moment, cause enough for the stirring embers of optimism within me that assure me everything is going to be fine. The tooth, when tested, will prove my sanity and my verity. Sarah isn't giving up on me. Ellie doesn't know anything, so she can't worry. For the first time since I was dragged, protesting, into this institution, I actually don't feel like I'm just trying to convince myself of the bright spots; I actually feel that they're real and solid, as sure and strong and solvent as Sarah and my trust in her.

But the kiss says something different from Sarah, a more chilling message on her side. I can feel…her fear, her confusion, her panic. And when I draw back to look at her, I see more than just worry behind her tears—I see terror, and I feel her hand almost spasmodically tighten over mine.

I kiss her again, hoping in that instant to reassure her, to strengthen her, to convince her that I am fine, to tell her everything I hadn't even believed myself moments ago. But it's only a kiss, and I don't know how much of my heart she reads in it. It's only a kiss, but it's all I have to give her, and maybe, just maybe, it will be enough.

All too soon, I have to stand up, have to detach my hand from hers, but looking down at her, I know that I didn't misread her, that I did feel panic in her lips on mine. And only then do I realize just how broken and lost Sarah is, perhaps even more so than I am.

Sarah Walker has always been my protector, always stood up for me, always seen to it that I am all right. Even when she herself is hurt or exhausted or angry, she unfailingly checks to make certain that I'm unharmed, and I can't even count the number of times she's placed herself in the path of danger to protect me.

In many ways, I've come to think of her as completely untouchable, as invulnerable as Superman. How many times have I seen her walk right into a hail of gunfire and emerge unscathed, not a single hair out of place? How many men, all larger than her, has she felled without much obvious effort? How many explosions has she escaped from without injury? How many times has she saved my life?

Yet at this moment, she is not invulnerable, not untouchable, not unscathed at all. At this moment, she is struck down by her own weakness—not Kryptonite, but her own fear of abandonment.

Sam. She had whispered her real name to another man, but I had heard her, and through the aid of a rifle scope, I had seen at point-blank range the lost and hollow look that had shadowed her face and tightened her features and sent tiny tremors through her frame. Through the earphones, I had heard the waver in her voice, the tentative wariness in her tone, the tears she chased away through sheer strength of will.

I don't know that she has ever been more broken than she was in that moment, clutching desperately at straws in an attempt to reclaim some stability in her life. I don't know that I have ever been more hurt than I was then, seeing her give away something I had been quietly—and sometimes not-so-quietly—begging for since I had discovered she was a spy. I don't know that I have ever seen that same level of desperation in her since that day…until now.

Before Sarah came into my life, I was stuck, trapped in a moment of time that had passed me by five years before. But Sarah…I think Sarah was trapped, too, frozen within herself because she had nothing to move toward and no experience in ever being loved. Every day, I realize just how much Sarah brings into my life and gives me…but only recently have I begun to realize that maybe, just maybe, I bring something into her life that she needs, wants, craves.

Maybe I'm just as good for her as she is for me.

It's a crazy thought—probably crazy enough to justify my current surroundings. And maybe I'm only imagining the bereft expression painting Sarah's features with loss when I turn to look at her over my shoulder. Maybe her being here at all is only a hallucination. Maybe her very existence is a delusion brought on by stress, wishful thinking, and mingled grief and hope.

If it is, though, if Sarah or Sam or whatever name she calls herself is only a figment of my imagination…well, if that's the case, there are certainly far worse things than insanity. And mental institution or not, I pray that I never recover my sanity should it mean losing Sarah Walker.

-C-

A/N: I'd love to hear what you think of the story-but please remember, I love this show and critical comments about the episodes themselves just depress me and keep me from writing. Thanks!