A/N I'm going out on a limb here and I'm publishing this chapter super fast because it's ready fast. Which means several things: most notably is that my story wont show up as updated on the main Chuck fiction page, as it only shows up once every 24 hours, so I will probably get far less views for this Chapter, so I'm trusting in the followers of this story who get email confirmation to help me out by leaving feedback on what they think.

Marking the Tenth Chapter, I would just like to pay special thanks to all of the regular reviewers, and I hope that you continue to enjoy the ride throughout the coming weeks as we work to try and get Charah back on good terms. And stop some bad guys ooh rah!

Chapter Ten

He Still Loves You

August 24th

Virginia Beach

Virginia

United States

19:00 hours

Chuck, Sarah, Morgan and a massive group of twenty had just arrived at a large bar & grill restaurant that the troop use fairly often for gatherings and had booked a week in advance. The men of the group were all off duty and dressed in civilian clothing. Chuck's troop came to this place a lot as big groups, and it's probably safe to say that they are the restaurants biggest customers.

Chief Miller and his wife Sophie were here in attendance, as was Master Chief Garcia and his spouse of twenty years Jane Garcia. Chief Rodriguez and his long term partner Rebecca were also in attendance and more.

Morgan, Chief Miller and Master Chief Garcia had all begged Sarah to come along, seeing as though she was deploying with them, they wanted her to get to know a significant portion of their troop better.

Sarah was wearing her favourite leather jacket, a black shirt underneath and pants. While Chuck was just wearing a navy blue dress shirt and pants.

Once more, Chuck held no feeling of malice or a holding of a grudge towards Sarah tonight as it wasn't about him or Sarah. Tonight was about friendship and if his team wanted her to come along he had no issues with that. One thing Chuck was thankful of was that he didn't have to sit next to Sarah, or that would have been pretty awkward. The feeling of that was mutual as Sarah felt the same, though they were almost seated facing each other, which was almost as bad and they had already glanced at each other several times rather awkwardly since arriving.

The team were now ordering food and the next few minutes passed by without significant incident until now, as it was Sarah's turn to order, and what happened next, nobody in the room would have guessed...

"What will you be ordering ma'am?" The waiter had asked Sarah.

Sarah taking her eye out of the menu began to order.

"Vegetarian pizza, no..." Sarah was unable to finish her order.

"olives." Chuck finished for Sarah, while still glancing at the menu while he was waiting to order.

This caused most of the group sitting near to the former lovers to all turn and look in the direction of Chuck including Sarah, visibly shocked.

"Woah, how did you know that Commander?" the Master Chief asked his CO.

"Huh?" Said Chuck, not realizing his blunder for a brief moment before he realized what he had just done "Oh, calculated guess." He said as he laughed to try and cover up his blunder, before glancing at Sarah who was still looking at Chuck pretty shocked that he still remembered that particular thing about her after all the years that have passed.

"This man is a genius." Chief Miller exclaimed as he too had heard his CO.

Jane Garcia was paying particular attention to how the young Commander and the attractive blonde were behaving around each other.

The big group had now finished with their meals and were all engaged in multiple conversations. Sarah had been introduced to everybody at the table, as she is the only one to have not been involved with the group before.

Suddenly, the CO stood up and began to ask for the attention of the group as they all stopped talking to listen to the CO.

Chuck began to speak "Firstly, I'd just like to say how great it is to have you back here with us John. We have all missed you the past four months and I would also especially like to pay special mention to Sophie, who has been extremely brave and resilient in the absence of her husband while the lazy sod was recovering in hospital!" He finishes jokingly as he then shakes the hand of his great friend John.

The entire group roared in agreement with Chuck.

"Sophie has also informed me that she wants to convey a few words of thanks, so I now pass the stage over to Mrs Miller." Chuck finishes, as he begins to then applaud the Chief's wife, followed by the group hastily joining in the applause.

Sophie Miller then begins to speak. "Thank you Commander, firstly, I would just like to offer my thanks to the Commander himself, who without him, I don't know how me and my two young boys would have got by these last few difficult months. He's been a real sweetheart." She pauses, as tears begin to fill her eyes "And I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart Chuck. What you did for my John, me and my boys will never forget. We owe you our lives." She says emotionally.

Chuck is trying his best to shrug off Sophie's praise as nothing.

"Stop doing that to yourself Chuck." Sophie orders him. "You should be proud of what you did for my John." She says, with the group roaring in agreement with the Chief's wife, before she finishes "I would like you all to please raise your glasses, to the Commander." Sophie finishes, as she raises her glass in the air to pay homage to the CO.

"The Commander." Everybody says as they stand to raise their glasses to toast.

"I know John would like to say a few words of thanks, so I will now pass you over to him."

"Speech, speech, speech!" Morgan suddenly starts to chant, followed by everybody else joining in the chanting.

John then stands up, thanking his wife before continuing "I don't know where to begin." The Chief jokes followed by laughter.

"Firstly I'd just like to thank Jane, Rebecca and all the other wives and girlfriends of the guys in my troop. I'll never forget the friendship that you showed my wife and my two beautiful sons. And to every one of you guys, and all the other guys from Gold Squadron who were there for my family while I was away, thanks." He says sincerely before continuing "And now, to the man whom I owe my life to," The Chief pauses, choking back emotions as he thinks what he wants to say. "I remember telling him to leave me and the stubborn bastard wouldn't." The Chief pauses to laugh, followed by everybody at the table joining in.

"I'm sorry I didn't!" Chuck says during the mid group laughter.

"I'm bloody glad you didn't!" John retorts as the group laugh once more, before continuing, "I'm finding it hard to put into words how I feel, so I will keep it short, to the bravest man I know, to Chuck Norris." Chief Miller finishes as he raises his glass in the air.

"To Chuck Norris." The group laugh as they raise their glasses in the air once more.

Chuck rounded off the speech with a final message as he stood up once more. "To our fallen friends who didn't make it home. To Bryce, Ray and Sean." Chuck says as he raises his glass in the air.

"To Bryce, Ray and Sean." The group all follow up.

Roughly twenty minutes later

Chuck was now at the bar chatting away with Morgan, the Master Chief, Chief Miller and a couple other guys from his troop and Sarah was at the table of the group. Sarah was pretty zoned out as she was glancing in the direction of Chuck, who would occasionally meet her gaze briefly.

"Old flame?" Jane Garcia suddenly asked Sarah, who snapped out of her gaze on Chuck to look at the Master Chief's wife.

"Is it that obvious?" Sarah asked laughing.

"Only to me, I've been married for twenty years hon." The much older experienced lady replied.

"We ended pretty sour." Sarah replies, as she shifted her gaze back to Chuck once more, who was now looking right back at her.

"There's still something there." the experienced lady continued "I've never seen the CO look at another woman the way I've seen him look at you tonight."

Sarah had now turned her gaze from Chuck to look back at the much older woman who continued.

"If I had to bet, I'd say he still loves you." Jane says to the much younger woman.

"I crushed him." Sarah admits dejectedly.

Jane rubs the shoulder of Sarah comfortingly. "Nobody is perfect in life darling, we all make mistakes. God knows, I've made many of my own, but I still love my husband, and he loves me."

Sarah's heart strings begin to pull as the much older ladies words begin to have an impact on her as she drifted off into thoughts again as she gazed into the eyes of the man standing at the other end of the restaurant looking back at her.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, as the group stayed in the restaurant sharing each others company until departing roughly after 23:00 hours.

August 25th

Dam Neck Annex

Virginia Beach

Virginia

United States

It was now the morning after Chief Miller's homecoming, as activities returned to normal on the base of the elite DEVGRU squadron, as they continued to prepare to deploy on counter insurgency operations in the Middle East.

Chuck as the squadron's CO had an incredible amount of paperwork to catch up on. When Chuck is deployed he doesn't get much chance to do it, so it builds up into a huge pile when he's back on base. Coupled with his responsibilities of leading the Squadron, Chuck's secondary responsibilities are that of troop leader, and he also has team exercises he needs to oversee, and training, training and more training.

Chuck was presently in his quarters working through his paperwork when he noticed a pretty big fracas ongoing between at least ten guys of his troop. Quickly getting to his feet, he runs outside and towards the facility where the loud discussion was ongoing.

"What the fuck's going on here!" Chuck yells as he gets within distance of his men as Chuck and his experienced NCO Master Chief Garcia begin to start pulling the angry Sailors apart from each other.

Having not had an answer from any of his men who were busy tearing at each others throats, he asks once more in an almighty roar.

"I SAID WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON HERE?"

"Training fuck up sir." One of his men finally replied.

"Third Class Perez grazed Second Class Walker." The experienced Master Chief informed his CO.

Chuck grabbed hold of both the instigators and threw them in the direction of his quarters.

"LT, on me." Chuck calls for his LT to follow him and the two frogmen about to be reprimanded by their CO.

Chuck, Morgan, Second Class Walker and Third Class Perez had all arrived in Chuck's quarters.

"Sit." Chuck commands, as he throws the two operators onto waiting seats before proceeding to reprimand them.

"If I ever see that again, you're out!" Chuck yells down the throats of the two frogmen.

"I will NOT lose another man under my command, especially not because somebody forgets to watch somebody else's back because you're fucking holding a grudge against him!" He yells at both of them.

Pausing to try to regain his calm levels, which was unsuccessful, Chuck continues,

"For the next 7 days you're going to be running, together, 10 miles full gear each day and you better believe it's going to involve a whole lot of added rocks, because I'm going to be putting them in my self!"

Not done yet, the CO continued, "And when you're done running, you're going to be fucking cleaning the base, and if its not spotless, you're going to be running some more! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?"

"Sir, that's a bit harsh it's the first time they've fucked up." Morgan tries to defend the two troop members.

Chuck points his hand at his XO warning him not to say another word.

"Now get out!" He says to the two frogmen he just reprimanded.

Morgan was about to leave with Walker and Perez when Chuck called his XO.

"LT, a word."

Shutting the door after the two frogman who had exited Morgan turns to his CO.

"Take a seat." Chuck says as he tells his XO to take a seat at the other side of his desk.

Waiting until his XO sits Chuck continues "Don't ever undermine my authority like that again." Chuck warns to his XO.

"I'm sorry sir, it's just..." Morgan paused as he let out a deep sigh. "It's the first time they fucked up sir."

"If we don't come down on them, and we're in the middle of fucking Baghdad or on the Afghan border and we get engaged and they aren't willing to run through hell for each other we're fucking finished." Says Chuck.

"We can't tolerate in house fighting Morgan, it will destroy us."

"They were just a bit pissed off sir, it's nothing more than that."

The two best friends continue on with this heated discussion for the next few minutes...

"Commander, can I speak to you off the record, as your best friend?"

"Very well"

"Okay, hear me out before you dismiss it," He pauses "I think you're letting your emotions with Sarah cloud your judgement. Ever since she's arrived on base you've changed man, maybe just hear her out, listen to what she has to say, surely you owe her that much."

"I owe her nothing!" Chuck suddenly snaps on being told he owes the woman that left him and broke his heart something.

"As your best friend, and your XO, I think you're wrong sir ok, I just think you're wrong."

"That will be all Lieutenant." Says Chuck, unwilling to talk any further.

"Aye sir." and with that, Morgan got up to leave.

As Morgan left his CO's quarters he began to head towards his troop. Pausing to sigh, he spoke to himself. "If Chuck wont do it," pausing to sigh once more, he continues, "then I'll have to."

Later that evening

Quarters of Lieutenant Grimes

"Admiral sir, I know we both care about Chuck and love him and this is why I'm doing this."

"Go on son?" The Admiral said on the other end of the transmission.

Morgan sighs, before continuing, "I believe Chuck is holding a personal grudge against Agent Walker and I believe it's impacting his decisions. It's certainly impacting his professional relationship with her and he's not been the same since she arrived on base."

Sighing on the other end of the transmission, the Admiral agrees. "Leave it to me son, and thank you." The Admiral says to the junior officer.

"Aye sir." Replies Morgan.

And with that, the Admiral ended the transmission. Leaving Morgan to pray he has done the right thing

A/N- It must have took a lot of courage for Morgan to do that.

The next chapter is going to be HUGE, as we finally find out just what happened six years ago.