He wakes with a start and tries to shoot upright but can't.

He struggles and finally cracks his eyes open and realizes two things.

One: He's in a hospital somewhere.

And two: His hands and feet are cuffed to his hospital bed.

An involuntary whimper escapes his lips as he tries to remember what happened; how he got here, and why he feels so slow and confused.

Chuck closes his eyes and feels...gray. Murky, thick gray coating his mouth and tongue.

That would be the multiple shots of Laudenol he downed in not a whole lot of time.

He starts to breathe heavily; starts to panic, his mind racing fast. His eyes dart around the room, and he takes it all in. The cuffs, the IV hooked to his arm, the television playing the news.

He squints at it, and though his vision is still a little blurry, he sees the date.

His eyes nearly fall out of his head. "A week? A week? what? I was...I was out for a-"

And that's when he realizes that there's shouting outside the door.

"How could you do this? Why didn't you contact me?"

"Oh my god, even if I had, you weren't where you told me you'd be! So what does it even matter?"

"At that point in time I WAS where I said that I would be!"

"And what would you have done, huh, Sarah? Broken cover, left your post? The Agency would have had your ass on a platter!"

"Alexei Volkoff was using my boyfriend as a toy soldier, you better believe I would have broken cover to get him out!"

"I got him out! Me and Casey, we got him out as fast as we could."

"Two months later?"

"Hey! We did the best we could with the resources we had! You wanna be mad at somebody? Go be mad at Frost! She was on the inside the whole time and didn't bother to help her son until we showed up!"

"Wait...Frost is..."

"Mary Bartowski."

"Crap."

"Yeah, crap! You missed a lot."

"I was under cover! And the one time I tried to contact Chuck-"

"To throw him off of your location-"

"I got caught!"

Chuck hears Sarah's voice break and he's had enough. He tugs on the cuffs, and while they're soft against his wrists, they're secure.

"Oh. I really don't wanna break my thumbs," he mutters.

His head hurts and so he doesn't want to flash and there's nothing in his reach he can use to pick the locks.

At this point, Bryce and Sarah are going around in one big circle. Neither of them are at fault for what's happened. If anything, Chuck blames himself. Beckman was right, he's the one who went into Volkoff Industries after his mother. He's also the one who started hunting for Sarah, and on top of all that, he's the one who walked into an obvious trap to see Sarah in that ballroom, and he'd dragged his UNIT team down with him.

The last year and a half had been nothing but one stupid rookie mistake after another, and after this latest flub, he's fully expecting to get fired.

And maybe...

Maybe that's a good thing.

He thinks maybe it's time to call it quits; maybe Bryce was right all those years ago at Stanford, and he's not just not cut out for field work.

The yelling gets a little louder and Chuck groans.

"Hey, guys?" he calls loudly. "I know you can break your thumbs to get out of cuffs, but what about foot cuffs? Would you have to break your ankle? Because that sounds unpleasant!"

The door swings open hard and hits the wall, revealing Sarah and Bryce in the doorway, looking surprised and relieved and still a little pissed at each other.

"Hey," Chuck says softly. "Little help?"

Bryce shakes his head. "I'm gonna let you deal with that."

Chuck watches Bryce leave, and then turns his full attention to Sarah.

She's so close. She's right there. Her hair is longer than he remembers but still blonde, and she seems less pale than she did in the ballroom...not that he remembers much.

Her jeans are soft-looking and her tank top is a plain, dark cranberry.

She steps over to him and carefully uncuffs his hands but not his feet.

He swallows. "Little assist on the bottom?"

"I'm sorry, Chuck, I can't," she says softly, sitting in the chair next to him. "The doctors want you on bedrest a few more days, and they don't want you getting up for any reason."

"Why...why was I cuffed up in the first place?" he asks, sitting back against his pillows, rubbing his wrists.

He watches Sarah swallow and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "We...you put up a fight the first time you woke up. You were still..."

Chuck nods slowly. "I was still gone."

She nods back, not meeting his eyes. "Vivian is in custody. She's being transferred to a secure site, along with half of the people who were at that masquerade. Most of them were weapons dealers...some drug pushers...a couple of wanted terrorists..."

"That's some final mission," he says softly.

Sarah looks up, obviously confused.

"Oh, come on," Chuck scoffs. "I'm...I'm cuffed to a hospital bed! I put my entire UNIT team in danger. Speaking of, they're okay, right?"

"They broke loose before we did and got reinforcements. What are you saying, Chuck?"

"I..." he takes a deep breath. "I'm saying...I'm saying it's not so crazy to think that after everything that's happened...the Laudenol and the killing and the demons and the...the everything, maybe it's time to throw in the towel and admit that the spy life just isn't for me."

Her eyes go sad suddenly. "Killing."

He freezes and instantly feels his hands start to clam up.

They stare at each other for a long moment, the only noise in the room coming from the television.

He feels lost. He's spent so long wanting to see Sarah; dreamed of this moment so many times, and now that he's here, now that she's here...he just doesn't know where to start; doesn't know what to tell her.

Does she know now? Everything that's happened to him? And what's happened to her? Where has she been all this time? Inside Volkoff Industries? And what if he explains everything and she decides he's not her Chuck anymore?

What then?

His brain is going too fast and he knows it. It's part of the Laudenol wearing off. Emotions come at him like a freight train and as he gazes at Sarah's beautiful face, he feels tears threaten him.

"Oh, Chuck."

Her voice is soft and sad and she shifts from her chair to the bed, climbing in and wrapping her arms around him tightly.

He doesn't hug her back, merely lets his head rest heavily on her shoulder. He takes a deep, uneasy breath. "Did I hurt anybody? Did I...?"

Her fingers lightly play with his hair and he feels his eyes drift shut.

"You didn't kill anyone," she tells him softly, stroking his cheek.

He swallows and pulls back to look at her. "What happened? After I got knocked out, what...what happened?"

Sarah closes her eyes and then opens them again. "Uhm...Vivian tried to have Meg attack us."

Chuck frowns deeply. How did they fend off a demon so quickly?

"But...but instead, Meg snapped Vivian's neck."

He feels the color drain from his face as he stares in shock. "What...but...but they were...they were working together. Meg and Vivian they were-"

"Meg is a demon," Sarah says. She takes his hands. "Chuck, Meg doesn't have allegiances to anyone or anything. She has no soul, no good in her. She is evil and she is self-serving. That's what I've been doing undercover this whole time. Volkoff and other agencies like it were using demons to get their work done. Making deals, using them as muscle. I've been trying to stop them, and Vivian Volkoff was the worst offender."

He nods and swallows. His mouth is dry.

"I'm...I'm in a unique position," Sarah tells him. "I grew up with...my dad is...my real dad..."

"I know," Chuck says. "I went to see him. He wanted to shoot me."

She looks a little amused. "He wants to shoot everybody. It's kind of his thing."

"You lied to me a lot."

"I know," Sarah says quietly. "And I'm sorry, Chuck. I'm sorry for all the lies. I'm...I'm so used to not telling people, because who would believe me?"

"Me. I would believe you. Especially after all this...working with UNIT, getting possessed by Meg..."

Sarah stares, shocked. "Meg possessed you? Oh, she's dead."

"Bryce, too."

She's surprised at that. "Wow. He should know better."

They sit in silence for a long moment before Sarah speaks up again.

"So...you went undercover inside of Volkoff Industries when Alexei was still running it..."

"To do recon. See what I flashed on."

"What went wrong?"

Chuck blows out a breath. "You mean the most unprofessional moment of my life? Where I saw my mother, cornered her and had the worst family reunion and then I got caught?"

She squeezes his hand sympathetically. "Beckman's here. She showed me the file..."

Chuck swallows hard. "Look...Sarah, I'm...I'm not the same person I was when you first left."

"I know," she tells him quietly, playing with his fingers. "But you haven't changed as much as you think you have."

He's about to argue with her; about to list off all the ways that he's so much different than he was before, but she stops him.

"Nobody else would have done what you did at that party, Chuck," Sarah says softly. "Nobody would have downed those shots. And anybody else would have let those two months in Russia ruin their life."

She rubs his neck and he lets his eyes drift shut. It feels so good. So like he's finally where he's supposed to be.

"You're still my Chuck," she whispers.

Something inside him snaps then, and all his calm dissolves. Suddenly he's doubled over and Sarah is holding him as he babbles, begging her to stay; to tell him all this is over.

Her fingers stroke his arms and back and hair as she whispers promises in his ear.