Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak
Somewhere in this town

Chuck has seen too much, he's not the wide eyed boy he used to be.

Usual disclaimer, no rights to any of the characters.

While Casey organised the support team for the operation, Chuck and Sarah ran Carmichael Industries, and Chuck kept an eye on anything happening around the installation that they hoped his father was in. They knew that General Beckman and the powers that be would be unhappy and suspicious when everything was destroyed in the operation. They laid down a solid cover story that the place was mined to be taken out in the event of it being breached, and Orion was trapped in the building and wiped out along with everything else, but they had no expectation that everyone would believe the story, especially when one of the people they were hoping to convince had worked with them long enough to know them and their motivations.

Back at CI, Chuck was running his investigations with Jeff handling the non-classified and less sensitive elements (for now at least), Sarah was reviewing the security structure of their clients to identify and provide advice on weak points and Alex was trying to get up to speed in the various areas. With the exception of the aspect of the operation to retrieve Chuck's father, the situation in CI was the most frustrating for Alex, she was intelligent and driven, and had formal training in most of the key areas (she'd actually completed more of the standard pre-requisites to become an agent than her father, Sarah or Chuck had, but she had no real world experience to make it workable as yet, and her father, Chuck and Sarah were all worried about her moving into their world as they knew how dangerous it was).

Thinking about Alex and the dangers she would face if she went into that side of the business, Chuck uncharacteristically swatted a pen set off his desk, to be sent crashing into the wall. Sarah jumped up to run into his office and see what happened, only to be met with an anger that she'd seen very rarely on Chuck's face in the years they'd been together almost constantly. He looked up at her and that expression changed to consternation immediately as he got out of his chair to come to her and apologise. When she asked what was wrong the words came from him in a flood as he explained that he was thinking of Alex and the dangerous business she was getting into, which led to thinking about the fact that they'd agreed that they wanted to change the business to get OUT of that sort of thing, and now less than 2 months into the new business, he'd dragged them back into it to try and rescue his father, IF he was where they thought he was. Then he repeated what he'd said when they were going over it with Casey, that he thought that the whole thing may be a mistake, as it was putting everything that REALLY mattered at risk for someone who'd walked away nearly every time he was needed.

Sarah wasn't sure what to say at first, she could feel how this was tearing him apart while he held her. She could understand that he felt a duty to his father, but that he categorically opposed any plan that would put her, the baby, and Casey (in that order, basically) at risk to try and save him, which was why he tried to sneak off to organise something himself before she stopped him. She sat him down to talk to him about it, re-iterating her point up front that there was NO way that she would let him try and do this himself, and that if she had to go in after him alone she would, which would put her at greater risk (knowing that that brain of his had already analysed all the variables and probable actions and that he knew, logically, that that would happen if he tried it, but looking into his eyes as she told him, herself, she made sure that he knew that on every level). She then pointed out that they had to do it, as the guilt he'd feel if he didn't would fester away at him and that would taint their life together. He did suggest an alternative, that they just hand over the intel to General Beckman and let her send strike teams in to get his father and the Intersect, it should be enough to save his father and keep her, and them, out of harm's way, but as he said it he knew that it couldn't be done that way.

The Intersect was the current equivalent of nukes when they were first available, something that was so powerful that it could be used as a deterrent for defence, or a weapon of destruction, the axiom of the ancient Greeks came to mind, that the only ones who could be trusted to wield real power were those who didn't WANT to wield power. He did enjoy the cool things he could do with the intersect, but he was very cautious about using the information in there more than absolutely necessary, whereas the people selected by governments would not have any compunctions against using that power for their masters' ends, or their own, and there were 1001 things in the Intersect which could bring down governments all over the planet, including their own. The fact that as yet, no-one but him had been found who could host and utilise the Intersect without going into brain melt-down was a definite home court advantage, but they couldn't rely on it staying that way, they had to accept that sooner or later the governments would manage to identify and acquire their own people who could use the Intersect reliably. That was why they couldn't afford to let any government or other organisation get their hands on the Intersect research, or his father, so they were back to the point where THEY had to mount the operation to recover him and destroy all the information etc about the Intersect, then help him disappear forever. At that he stood to go over to the cupboard to pour himself a rather large drink.

A couple of days later they got the word from Casey that the operation was ready to go, so they left Alex and Jeff to hold the fort and headed to the staging point, just outside Russia. There were quite a few looks when Sarah turned up at the camp, but the ones who'd been in the previous team quickly circulated what happened to anyone who stepped over the line in regard to her, and what she did to anyone making cracks about her husband, so nearly all of that dried up very quickly. They went over the plan and activities again and then geared up for the drops, boarded the planes and took off.

Casey was going in with the strike team first, if at all possible they'd take the external guards out and gain entry to the installation quietly, to avoid putting the entire base on alert, and reduce the death toll on both sides, as once they were alerted, it would be an all out war. By the time Chuck, Sarah and the extraction/scuttling team landed, the strike team had cracked the facility without setting off any alarms, so they went straight in and began threading their way through the corridors/tunnels to where they thought his father was, taking out anyone they came up against as silently as possible and hiding the evidence as they went. In addition to holding the entry point and setting up a protective corridor behind the extraction team to ensure an open/safe way out, the strike team were also setting scuttling charges throughout the installation on key structural points, to help bring the whole thing down. The plan was, the scuttling charges in the Intersect area would wipe out all the records and equipment (and personnel, but they were trying to avoid thinking about that, the only thing they had to hang onto in that regard was that very few, if any, of them were innocents), and then the structural charges would bring everything else down on top of the remnants and bury it, also burying the evidence of Orion that was supposedly in there.

The extraction team got to the Intersect area, sweeping that part of the facility and setting scuttling charges as they went. It didn't take very long to locate the lab where his father was working, even though it was one of the last areas they looked into, due to the fact that their method of cutting his father off from the outside world meant that they had to have all the equipment, and him, in one area.

When they located him, Chuck was nothing but business, motioning to the team to set the charges as he walked straight up to his father. When his father started to talk, "Charles, what are you doing here?", he just said "Getting you out of here." as he grabbed his shoulder and started pushing him to the door. His father was baulking and trying to talk, so he just said "There's no time, shut up and do exactly what you're told, I need to get Sa.. us out of here.", but his father just dug his heals in and started to say "But Charles...". What happened next was a shock for Sarah, Chuck drew his dart gun and put 2 darts into his fathers' carotid artery in under a second, and before he'd hit the floor, he pointed to two of the team with the dart gun, saying "Take him out of here, if he doesn't get out, neither will you." in a tone that brooked no argument, and left no doubt as to his intentions. Looking into Chuck's eyes, Sarah truly saw for the first time what the last couple of (few?) years had taken out of him, and she started thinking about that as he waved her out after the men carrying his father and he rounded up the rest of the team to get out.

The exit from the facility was uneventful, Casey called in the helicopters when they indicated they were coming out, so they landed just after they got outside. As they were taking off, they heard the first of the charges go off, and the series was so close coupled that the last had gone off and the buildings were starting to settle by the time they'd got up to altitude, they saw Casey and the rest of the team load up and leave on the ground transports before they'd left the area. Sarah watched Chuck on the way to the airstrip and he remained in operational mode, closed down, for the entire time. When they landed, Chuck organised the sentries and defensive ring around the planes, and the loading of the planes with a brutal efficiency, the only break from that was when he held her for a few seconds and begged her to get on the plane to watch over his father, after that he stood and watched the road that Casey and the rest of the team would be coming in on. As the trucks came roaring in, he directed the men onto the planes, calling in the defensive ring and sentries as the last truck arrived, he and Casey jumped onto plane carrying Sarah and his father as it started rolling on its takeoff run. The planes were well on their way before any of the vehicles chasing them arrived, and they'd scuttled their helicopters and trucks to prevent them being used, and destroy the runway.

On the plane, Chuck remained closed off, when she went to him, he kissed her and desperately begged her to give him a bit of time to settle down, so she kissed him again, looked into his eyes as she told him that she loved him, and then did so, snagging Casey and all but forcibly dragging him into the soundproofed command room. As they sat down, she jumped into it, explaining what she'd seen when they extracted his father, and asking what happened to do that to him, Casey looked at her for a minute or so and then said "OK", before laying out the traumas that had been heaped on Chuck since they (she and him) got together. He touched on Shaw trying to kill her and Chuck having to kill Shaw to save her, but she waved him off to say that she knew that, he went on, "Then they had the meltdown that was coming from the early version of the Intersect, he handled it better than she and Grimes had, but it got him committed to a CIA asylum and left him a bit fried for a while." "The next hit was Shaw coming back from the dead, with the intersect, getting us (pointing to her and himself) arrested, killing his father as he stood next to him to compromise his ability to use the intersect, and took Chuck and them off so he could "kill them while they were escaping"." He briefly related how Ellie had followed them and how Grimes and Devon had used his car to blow up the transport they were in to get them out and then went on to describe how they (mainly Chuck) had exposed the Ring and taken it down, and beaten Shaw in a fight to get him arrested and thrown into a CIA black site (with the Intersect intact, unbeknownst to them), and Chuck got out of the CIA to honour the promise he'd made to Ellie.

"After that, Chuck got a message that his father arranged to be sent in the event of his death, and went back to their old house to find a private records repository of massive proportions underneath the house. He found that his mother was apparently still alive and decided to go hunting her, with Grimes, without us (again pointing) knowing about it, as Ellie was pregnant and he thought she needed their mother, with their father dead. We crossed paths in Volkoff's headquarters in Moscow when we (pointing) were captured, he rescued us and then told you about the search, but he had to trigger the EMP and wiped out the files that he was there to get to save you (us). Of course, being Chuck, whenever you had a tiff he'd be convinced that you were going to leave him and he'd fall apart, I guess that was trauma too."

At that point he stopped to look at her. "You haven't forgotten that you are the whole world to him, and that he would, and has, turned over everything in the world to get to you and save you?" She shook her head "Or that you've done similar things to save him when he was taken?" She shook her head again, wondering where he was going.

"Anyway, his mother contacted him and came to the US, supposedly to sell a chemical weapon that induced terror to the CIA to get it off the market, she shot him in the chest.." She looked at him, shocked, he nodded and went on "He was wearing a vest, then she left him with the scientist and the terror weapon, you guys found that the crazy scientist had built up an immunity to the drug and he set it off in Castle, Chuck implemented quarantine to protect you but he got the full brunt of it, he finally managed to take him down and you got the antidote to him before he went crazy, but it hit him pretty hard. THEN, he set up a meeting between his mother and Ellie, and all the evidence we had was pointing to his mother being rogue, so you and I arrested her, because he'd already told you that his mother was his blind spot, and his judgement was impaired when it came to her. That was obviously a trauma for him"

"So, he went to her when she was in the holding cell and she fed him a line that Volkoff was her MI6 handler who could clear her. He went and met with Volkoff under the assumed name he was using, got taken and then they "escaped" to get back to LA to get the "proof" that his mother wasn't rogue, meanwhile his mother conned us (pointing) into believing that she could take us to the point where we could get Chuck back. Anyway, to shorten the story, there was a bit of a fight at the bank and then you guys took his mother and the "proof" back to his father's bunker to read it, only to find it was blank, his mother used a suppression device on him and Volkoff turned up, they tied you guys up, set explosives all over the place and left you to be blown up, but she slipped you a razor blade and you got yourself and Chuck out, without the Intersect, so he was ripped apart by that, and the fact that she'd helped Volkoff try to kill you both."

"After that, the CIA hit Chuck with all sorts of crackpot scientists trying anything to remove the block on the Intersect, ending with one idiot who decided that the secret was "Pure Fear of Death", he convinced Beckman and the CIA to let him do whatever he felt necessary to unblock him, that was bad enough, but he got Chuck taken by The Belgian. The CIA couldn't or wouldn't do anything You went crazy, back to the woman you were before Chuck, you locked me in a cell and stuck a needle full of ammonia in one of The Belgian's lieutenants' neck to get him to give up where they were." She looked at him wide eyed, and he nodded "You left me in the cell and headed off to Thailand to find him, fighting you way across the country and terrorising all the mercenaries and warlords there. We found you just as you got the actual location of the Belgian's hideout and helped you get in there. The entire time we were doing this they were trying to rip the Intersect secrets out of his head, using more and more intrusive methods, when we got there they'd almost wiped his mind to release the blocks on the Intersect, but you got through to him and brought him back."

"Then his mother came back, we took her and Volkoff came in to get her back, he threatened me, you, and Chuck, and forced you to take him to a dinner at Ellie's, so everyone in his life was threatened. The only upside was that you got his father's computer back off Devon after Ellie had worked out some of the problems on it, and it unblocked Chuck's Intersect."

"Next up was partly on you, you told Beckman that you'd do anything necessary to get his mother back, so she set you up as a traitor so you could get into Volkoff as a rogue and work with his mother to help her finish her mission and bring her out. He was OK at first, but the further you went into the role, the more he thought he'd lost you, especially after he thought you'd tried to kill me in front of him." She was actually open mouthed at that one "Volkoff set a test for you, to kill me to prove your loyalty, while we were fighting I told you to throw me out the window, so I'd land on a window cleaning scaffold about 40' down, it worked up to that point, but a shackle broke and I fell the rest of the way to the ground and was out for days, so I couldn't tell him what really happened, he wasn't doing at all well at that point. Anyway, things fell apart and he ran a side operation to take down Volkoff and get you guys home in time for Clara's birth, and you got engaged at the hospital."

Of course, Chuck being Chuck there were all the dramas leading up to the wedding, and then Vivian Volkoff took you down with the Norseman device at your rehearsal dinner, do you remember the Norseman device?" She nodded and he went on. "His world was ending as he held your hand at the hospital, Ellie and Devon managed to slow the spread by putting you in an ice bath to try and give him time to find the antidote. The only way to get the antidote was from Volkoff, and there was no way of getting to him in time through official channels, so he decided to break into the Supermax, I went with him. Problem was, when we got there, Volkoff was gone and we were trapped by Decker and locked out of all CIA resources. We got back into Castle with Beckman's ID so Chuck could steal the Nighthawk (a 250 MPH weaponised bike) to chase down Volkoff's transport and get Volkoff to give him the antidote. Problem was that Decker used a suppression device to wipe out the Volkoff persona before Chuck got there, so all there was was Hartley Winterbottom. Chuck brought him back and he made the antidote for the original Norseman device, but it didn't work with the later Norseman."

"Chuck was going break into Volkoff to steal the antidote for you, but Decker caught him as he was leaving the hospital, removed the Intersect and imprisoned him. I managed to get free and released him and his mother, then his mother and I held Castle to give him and Hartley time to escape. They got to Volkoff, but Hartley bailed, so Chuck surrendered to Vivian and begged her to take him, but send you the antidote. She was sure it was a trick and was going to kill him until her father turned up. She still wasn't prepared to agree until Chuck gave her and Hartley the untraceable Ids that we'd given him for the two of you, so that they could disappear. Anyway, she ended up giving him the antidote and a plane full of special forces troops to ensure that he could get through to you. Chuck parachuted in, diverted Decker's attention until the troops were on the ground and told him that he had all the information on Agent X (the project to create Volkoff) and his involvement and that it would go to all the news channels if they didn't let him through. He got to you just in time and you were married."

"The next drama was after you two created Carmichael Industries with the $877 million that you got from Hartley and Vivian as a wedding present, Decker slipped a set of corrupted Intersect glasses into the box of things for Chuck, but Grimes put them on and downloaded the Intersect. His inner douche wasn't hidden any more, and he screwed everything up, ruined all our jobs, smashed a $6 million Ming Vase, and told everyone he was the Intersect, then he sold out to Gertrude's company and stole the big contract that Beckman gave us. He almost put us out of business and wiped us out. Chuck, and you, thought that his behaviour was due to the bad Intersect, but that was a lie, because you had the same Intersect and you didn't even turn back into the pre Chuck Enforcer Sarah that had come out a number of times."

"Because of him telling everyone that he was the Intersect, Decker managed to get the CIA to put a contract out on him, we tried to get it cleaned up but he'd made sure that one contract was sent out to the Viper, an assassin who couldn't be recalled, so Chuck went out as bait for the Viper, with you. As a result both of you almost got killed before you managed to stop her. Once that was all shut down, I went to clean up the mess and make sure they didn't come after us again, but Decker had cameras set up and managed to get me arrested for murder."

"Decker was still running his master's games, and tranqued you and Chuck to bring you in to make a deal, you get the Omen virus and give it to him and he clears me of all charges. So Chuck hacked into the systems to get the ID of the creator and then you guys tracked him down and went after him, with Gertrude's support, though she kept her clothes on" At the look she gave him, he said with a smirk that they had to go into a pseudo cult compound and she and Chuck had to go in naked, then went on. "You got the guy and half the virus, then Chuck had to go into the Collective, a hacker consortium, to get the other half, well he went in as a prospective hacker to get into the systems and you and Gertrude grabbed the device when he took down their systems. When you tried to deliver the Omen virus to Decker and get me cleared, though, he told you that the whole point of the handoff was to get footage of you with the virus to frame you for releasing it, putting Chuck on top of the most wanted list, and that I'd die in prison. Gertrude stole the virus back and planted a bomb on Decker, then blew him up, so she had to run. She broke me out before she left, with some help."

"Beckman warned us that they were coming after us, so we went on the run, but they grabbed Ellie and Devon and made Chuck trade the Omen virus for them, and then they released it. That's when we found who was behind it. It turned out that Shaw had dirt on Decker via the Intersect and he used that to blackmail him, and one of the functions of the virus was to unlock Shaw's cell so he got out. He got into Castle and captured you, using you as bait to force Chuck to get the rest of what he wanted before he killed both of you. Shaw also dropped the temperature in Castle to let the devices work, so you were freezing to death. Chuck got the Macau device that he needed to compress the data being collected via the Omen Virus. He got Jeff and Lester (mainly Jeff) to reverse engineer the Omen virus to work out what it was doing, which let him put Shaw's plan together. He loaded the Omen virus onto the Macau device so that it would corrupt the intersect when Shaw tried to load the information collected by the virus. Then he sent the device down and drew Shaw up to the Buy More to fight him, and sent Grimes in to release you, I was down there too, but he'd captured me when I tried to get in, between us we managed to release you, and Chuck and Ellie took Shaw down."

"The next one was on you again, Shaw baited you about the baby that you'd saved and left with your mother before you came to Burbank, so you were going to go back to Hungary by yourself to clean up the mess and keep them safe. Chuck finally got you to accept our help, luckily, because you almost got yourself killed a few times in the operation (and you know what that does to Chuck). Anyway, we took down all the bad guys, your mother and Molly were safe and you got to re-connect with them."

"Then we had the final drama, Grimes again, Quinn had come after him because he was telling everyone he was the Intersect, so he captured him using Bo Derek" At the look she gave him, he snorted. "Yeah, she was a second rate spy as well as a second rate actress, anyway, with Quinn's massive ego he told Grimes the plan and showed him the Intersect glasses, but Grimes managed to grab the glasses and escape. We tracked them down and recovered them, but Quinn grabbed Chuck and told you to bring them to trade for Chuck. We went to the swap point but it was a trap, neither of us could get out so you put them on and took out the squad sent there to take us down, then got us shipped to Japan to save Chuck. Quinn used Alex to blackmail me into giving you guys up, sorry, and in the end he tranqued you and disconnected the baggage car to get away. He then used the flash cards to wipe out memories of your life with Chuck, with us, and pretended to be your handler to send you after Chuck, but I don't need to tell you about that."

"So those were the prime traumas Chuck has had in the last few years, the ones that hit him hardest were the ones that involved losing you, saving the world, disarming nuclear bombs and everything else he could take in his stride. The thing was, he thought he needed the Intersect to do great things, but he didn't, it wasn't the Intersect that he used to track you down and save you in Paris, it was him, when we were dealing with that suitcase nuke, the Gretas had the same Intersect he did, but they couldn't work out how to disarm it, he could. He didn't have the Intersect at all when he went into Volkoff to beg for your life, he just walked into a snake's den with a need to save you. I watched you two stop a nuclear strike against the US by giving relationship advice to a stinking commie dictator and his crazy wife, he never needed the computer in his head to be great, but he does need you."

Casey had been talking for well over an hour, and he was mainly talking about the big items in recent years. Sarah had been remembering the events as Casey was talking about them, but without the depth of emotion that came when Chuck told her what had happened. Perhaps that was a good thing, she had been crying since about 10-15 minutes into it, how could he handle all this, and why hadn't he shared this load with her? Scrub that, she knew why, to protect her, the only thing that had taken away from the tears was Casey's heartfelt plea for her not to tell Chuck about "those" things he'd been saying.

Sarah thanked Casey with a hug and they headed back out of the command room, to see that Chuck's father had come out of the tranq, when he saw them, he pointed at them and told Chuck that he couldn't trust them, at which Chuck punched him out, leaning over him to talk slowly and clearly in his face. "My WIFE is the reason that we came for you, I was going to give up on you but she wouldn't let me, and my friend, my partner, ran this operation so we could get you out. These people are the reason that you're here and I've trusted them with my life for over 5 years, whereas YOU left whenever I needed you." Chuck stood up and asked Casey to fill his father in on what they had planned to help him disappear and started to walk off to the command room, wanting to be as far away from his father as he could on the plane, stopping to look back when Sarah called his name, and reach out his hand to her. Sarah ran to him and they went into the command room together.