A/N: Still don't own Chuck. Still not making money from this. Still like reviews, follows, favorites, and PMs.

May 26, 2022 10:35 p.m.; Casa Bartowski-Woodcomb

"Chuck, got a minute?" Ellie Woodcomb asked, peaking her face into Chuck's room. Chuck was sitting at his computer desk, typing away.

"Kind of beat, sis. Just finishing up some paperwork, and I'm about to turn in for the night. Can this wait?"

"Long day fighting for truth, justice, and the American way?" Ellie inquired.

"Not exactly. I wish. More like a long shift at the Buy More, followed by order reconciliations. We're gearing up for the big Memorial Day sale and Morgan needed my help getting things organized and keeping the Buy Morans in line," Chuck retorted, his eyes droopy.

"You know you don't have to keep doing that job. You've got a real job now. Plus, you've got two other real jobs named Stephen and Diana that you don't spend anywhere near enough time with." Ellie responded, her eyes conveying a mix of exasperation with disappointment.

Chuck sighed, "I know. I've been trying, and I'm making progress with Diana. Stephen is another story. He doesn't forgive easily. As, for the Buy More, Morgan needs me. But I'll look into taking fewer shifts."

Chuck hesitated to say more. He knew that his answer, while not inaccurate, was incomplete. On some level, he needed the Buy More too. It was a place of refuge to him, where the problems were small, the work was easy, life was normal, and pleasant memories flooded his mind. For a few shifts a week, he didn't have to deal with the pressure of uncovering terrorist plots or stopping drug cartels. Nor, while Nerdherding, did he need to address the equally damning pressure of trying to reconnect with his children – the elder of whom seemingly wanted nothing to do with him. He could just sit back, fix computers, amuse himself at the antics of several extremely bright underachieving lunatics, and reminisce of much happier times. But he didn't want to tell Ellie all that. This late at night, or really anytime, he didn't want to face her disapproval for choosing something that took him away from Stephen and Diana. So he used what he called the 'Morgan excuse,' and not for the first time.

"You know, Morgan's over 40 now. We used to call that 'middle-aged.' He can take care of himself," Ellie retorted, to which Chuck nodded in faux agreement.

Ellie dithered a bit, instinctively bringing her index finger to her lip, debating whether to raise the next topic, before taking the plunge. "Chuck, while I've got your attention, there's something else Chuck that I wanted to discuss. Truth, Chuck, what's Project Firestorm? And who is 'Missile Commander'?"

Hearing Ellie's question, Chuck's eyes bulged out of his head, his body froze, and his hands involuntarily tensed.

"How did you. . .," Chuck began asking, but Ellie cut him off.

"A few days ago, I came in your room. You were asleep at your desk, I was going to nudge you to bed. The screen was still on. I saw everything. And I know it's not NSA or CIA-sanctioned. What have you got yourself into little brother?"

"It's not what you think. It's not dangerous," Chuck responded. "You remember I that I briefly mentioned running into Buy More Jeff, and how he designed an 'emotion reading' program?"

Ellie nodded.

"I got to thinking, if Jeff's program could identify and translate non-verbal cues in live video, could it do the same for surveillance footage?"

"Why would you want that?" Ellie asked, her tone displaying a mix of curiosity and confusion.

"Sarah. Her death. I've always had questions. . . . I never quite bought that it was completely natural. We had too many enemies. And, as much as I loved my wife, she always had secrets. I was hoping Jeff's program might give me some answers. So I modified it to read the surveillance footage we have of Sarah. To see if there were any non-verbal cues I missed, which might give me some inkling of what happened . . . whether someone might have done this to her."

"Chuck, what's past is past. Is it really worth your time dredging this stuff up again?" Ellie pleaded.

"I needed to know sis."

Ellie looked at her little brother skeptically. His wife kept secrets, but she knew Chuck did as well. And his story didn't quite add up. "Chuck, I'd like to believe you, that this is all that you're doing but, um, your explanation doesn't make any sense – when I came in, the footage being played was of the two of from over 10 years ago. None of that is going to be relevant to how she died."

Chuck noticed his sisters concern, and sought to address it. "Ordinarily, you'd be right. The program usually translates emotions from live video. It doesn't need to study targets. But Sarah was, um, complicated."

Ellie agreed, her visible skepticism declining: "Complicated. That she was."

Chuck explained: "What I meant was, she was a spy and, before that, a trained con artist. She was good at hiding her feelings, and putting on a show. It took me years before I could figure out when the inner Sarah didn't match the surface Sarah. Jeff's program needed a similarly large sample. That's why we exposed it to all of the surveillance footage, hoping that – with enough data - the program would be able to assess what's out-of-the-ordinary and what's not."

"And Missile Commander? I take it, it's not some super-secret spy thing with ICBMs?"

Chuck laughed, then responded: "It's Jeff, he's been helping me. The handle is an homage to his old video game prowess."

Ellie crossed her arms, took a few steps back-and-forth, and pondered her little brother's revelations. Finally, she spoke: "So all of this, the late-night computer sessions, the self-writing code, the sneaking around – this is all just some crazy investigation into Sarah's death?"

"Pretty much. And that look of disapproval on your face is why I didn't tell you, 'Chuck, don't waste time living in the past.' 'Chuck, no good can come of this,'" Chuck responded, waving his hands in the air for emphasis, "And the thing is, you're right. . . But it's something I needed to do anyway."

Ellie stepped back, and thought about what her brother said. On the surface, it was directed at her. 'Have I really been that critical of him?, Is that what he really thinks?' she thought to herself. She didn't like the answers she came up with. That said, thinking deeper, she sensed that some of Chuck's antagonism came from his own self-hatred, his dislike of his own inability to let go and move on. And, though she had tried, she didn't know how to help him with that. Acting on instinct, she did what first came into her mind: she wrapped her brother in her arms and gave him a tight bear hug.

"Chuck, if I've made you think that, I'm sorry. If you need answers, get them. For your own sake. I'm here for you, always" Ellie responded, pulling her brother into an even deeper hug.

"Thanks, sis." Chuck responded.

Reluctantly, Ellie pulled away from the hug, but kept her hands grasped in his. "Can you tell me, have you made progress?," she now entreated.

Chuck sighed again. He swung his computer chair about 90 degrees to the left, turning away from Ellie, and towards his screen. "Yes, but not like I expected. Let me show you something," he commented. For about 90 seconds, Chuck clicked through various screens, while Ellie watched patiently. Eventually, he found what he was looking for. "Ellie, watch this, and give me your thoughts."

Ellie intently watched four minutes of surveillance footage. The neurologist recognized the symptoms. "Oh my god. Chuck, when was this taken?," she asked.

"Look at the bottom of the screen. October 2018, about six months before she died. I was visiting you in Chicago at the time, because of your operation. . . . Now, watch this."

Again, Ellie watched the screen, this time for about six minutes. The footage was from February 2019, just two months before Sarah died.

"And now this," Chuck said, directing her to three minutes of footage just a day before her accident.

"They are . . ." Ellie began saying, but didn't finish as Chuck cut her off.

"I know. Jeff's program. It wasn't designed as a medical diagnosis tool. But, somehow, it figured it out. Transient ischemic attacks, otherwise known as 'mini-strokes.' All of them. Basically harmless by themselves, but a warning that a major stroke could be coming. How did I not see it? Was I that bad a husband?"

"Chuck, you were in Chicago for the first one. From what I can tell, you weren't home for either of the other two. And TIAs can pass so easily and resolve so completely that people may not know they had one, or may think that it was no big deal. Sarah was a proud woman, and she didn't always go to a doctor when she should have. She's not alone. Only about 3% of people seek medical attention after a TIA," the neurologist lectured.

"There's more, Ellie. We both had our DNA sequenced by the CIA several years ago. I looked at her electronic personnel file, and her results had been automatically updated with new research. Turns out she had a genetic variant that increases the risk of stroke by something like 40%."

"So what you're saying is. . ."

Chuck exhaled, then answered: "The evidence is pretty clear: no poison or toxin is going to go undetected for months, let alone cause a string of TIAs. There was no grand conspiracy. There's no bad guy to track down and exact revenge upon. No moment where I'll get to swoop in, waive a sword, and triumphantly declare to the six-fingered man, 'Hola, me llamo Inigo Montoya, tu mataste a mi padre, preparate a morir.'"

"Huh?" Ellie asked, confused.

"Sorry. For some reason, a complete, bad Spanish dub of The Princess Bride got dumped into the new Intersect. Part of the 'cultural programming.' I think it was some Intersect programmer's idea of a joke."

"Huh," Ellie said, still confused.

"I mean, I suppose the faulty intersect and all the head trauma she's suffered could have exacerbated her genetic predisposition. But there's nothing I can do now about that now, no wrong I can rectify." Chuck added, almost in addendum.

"Was all this helpful then, little brother? Do you think you finally got closure?"

"I suppose," Chuck whispered, his voice devoid of energy.

"And maybe, just maybe, you can now move forward?" Ellie pleaded.

"Ellie, on that subject, there's something I've been meaning to ask you," Chuck queried.

"What is it?"

"Your plan, when she lost her memories, to give them back to her by loading photos and stuff onto the Intersect, would it have worked?" Chuck probed, resonating despair.

"Chuck, this isn't productive. What's done is done."

"Please just humor me, would it have worked?," Chuck asked.

Ellie took a moment to think, then answered. "Knowing what we know now, yes, it probably would have. We now know that her memories weren't gone, just blocked. As you know, whenever the faulty Intersect pulled information or a skill, it didn't pull information intact. As a by-product, it scattered small fragments of data across her brain, a form of 'waste code.'"

"Ellie, you can say 'shit code,' the kids are asleep. I mean, that's what it was, excrement from the data pull process."

"Right, anyway, the 'shit code' was littered throughout her brain, fogging up her ability to retrieve memories. And Quinn had somehow figured out a way, we still don't know how, to concentrate, to dump. . . all that shit into five years' worth of memories," Ellie recalled.

"So the photos, videos?"

"Yes, I suppose they could have helped her brain cut through the fog, allowing her access to the real memories buried underneath." Ellie answered, remaining unsure of why her brother wanted to know all this.

"And if those memories weren't just buried, but erased?" Chuck asked.

Ellie took another moment to contemplate Chuck's hypothetical, then responded: "Then all the photos, videos, documents couldn't have done a damn thing. At most, they could have conveyed basic knowledge: events happened. But the atmosphere, the smells, the touches, the feeling of time passing, the associated emotions, the minutia of every detail experienced . . . you can't get that from a photograph or a video. It's like the difference between seeing a photograph from the Battle of the Bulge, and actually having fought in it like Grandpa did. No matter what we look at or read, none of us can ever truly know what he felt, what he saw, what he experienced."

"Thanks, sis," Chuck said, sighing.

"Now Chuck, why are you asking me all this? It can't do any good. Besides, thankfully, my plan wasn't necessary. She got back her memories eventually, over time, and largely by herself. Her brain, just from living life, being exposed to triggers, it cut through the shit code."

"You helped. You found and removed the last bits of shit code . . ." Chuck noted. He had always been grateful to Ellie for that, for bringing Sarah from about 90% back to her old self again.

"Maybe, but my point remains." Ellie said.

"I've just been going over what I did wrong. Sure, my wife slowly returned to me. But it took almost a year. If we had gotten the 50 or 60 years due us, maybe that wouldn't have been so bad. We didn't. We had such little time, so few good years. And I keep thinking, 'how could I have gotten more'?"

"Chuck, that isn't healthy."

"I know," Chuck said, sighing again, "And I know, from raising me, to bringing Sarah all of the way back, to going to extraordinary lengths for me and my children the past three years. . . I know I owe you so many debts that I can never repay."

Ellie gave him another big hug, and spoke. "Chuck, if you want to repay me, do this: stop obsessing about the past. Find a way to connect with Stephen. Start dating someone, anyone. Move on."

"Ok, Ellie. I'll try. . . I owe you that much."

Ellie softly squealed with joy, kissed her brother on the forehead, then slowly turned around and left the room.

As Ellie left the room, Chuck smiled. He recalled what John Casey had said to him a few weeks ago:

"You're a good liar, Bartowski."

A/N: A rather quiet chapter, but some big stuff will be coming up in the next few weeks. . .

As always, tell me what you like, what you don't. Let me know where you think this story is going. Also please note that I've made some very minor, typographical changes to previous chapters.