A/N This opening is from the Anniversary, the first case of me robbing one episode to fill in the holes in another. Similarly, Morgan demonstrating the behavior of the wait staff in his restaurant is a scene from Suitcase, I think. The banter in the horse stall was pretty spur of the moment, and led to me painting Vivian as a lonely girl with a crush. Vivian was never very well drawn in canon, so her motivations were obscure and she was hard to care about.

When Ellie says, "I don't know what I'm thinking", I actually had something in mind, but I've long since forgotten what it was. I've also added a little text here, indicating time and place. Some of the scene shifts are a bit jarring. Did anyone notice the sudden disappearance of the horse, once the gunplay started?

"…And so, with the good king free and safe on his throne, the Frost Queen returned to her own land and family once more, a hero. And she promised her children that she would never, ever, leave them again." She closed the book. "Good story?"

He snuggled down in his bed, warm and safe. Any story was a good story when she was telling it. "The best, Mom." When she got out of his bed he suddenly felt cold, even as she was pressing the blankets closer around him. "Are you going away again?"

"Yes," she said from the doorway. "But only for a little while, then I'll be back home with you and Ellie forever."

"I love you, Mom."

"Chuck?"

"Not nearly as much as I love you." The door closed with a boom, and his mother was gone. Little Chuck leapt from his bed and opened it. The hall was long and empty and his mother was already far away. With every step he took toward her, the farther away she got.

"Mom!"

"Chuck!"

She opened another door at the far end. "Hello, Alexei. My name is Frost." In spite of the incredible distance between them, little Chuck could hear every word.

A man's hand reached out from the darkness and took hers, leading her away, into the darkness with him. "Hello Frost. Welcome to Volkoff Industries."

The door slammed shut behind her with the sound of doom.

"Ahhh!" His eyes opened wide as he shouted, his arms flailing about. Fortunately his chair was tilted back, otherwise his keyboard would have gone flying.

"Chuck, answer me!" shouted Ellie over the speaker.

He was…in his room. The Intersect room. His little bunker away from home. "I must have fallen asleep, El," he mumbled, tilting his chair vertical again. "Sorry. It was just a nightmare."

"No it wasn't, Chuck."

Not even sisterly authority stretched that far. "Sis, I've seen enough nightmare dream sequences to recognize the special effects–"

"The scanner showed no alpha activity, Chuck. You weren't asleep, you weren't dreaming."

"That was a flash?"

"I would assume so. What was the content? You were thinking about Mom?"

He nodded, not that she could see it. "The night she left."

"So it was a memory?"

"Not unless our house had expanding corridors." He got up to get a drink. "I don't think Dad had invented those yet."

"Expanding corridors?"

"And a door, with Volkoff Industries on the other side."

The speaker made a noise, like someone humming.

Chuck knew that sound, although it usually had more frequencies than a standard speaker was able to transmit. "What are you thinking, sis?"

"I'm thinking…" she drawled out, and he imagined her writing something down on a piece of paper, even with a computer and three word-processing apps available. "You know, I don't know what I'm thinking. Who's Vivian McArthur, Chuck?"

"Why do you think I would know?"

"You wrote down her name while you were thinking about Mom."

Chuck went back to his chair. Sure enough there was the name, along with a bunch of other words and phrases. Unlike the others, though, which he would flesh out and eventually release to the analyst's pool for further action, he couldn't attach a meaning to it. It hung there, in his mind and on his screen, alone and unattached. "No idea. Have you tried Google?"

The briefing, part two.

"Volkoff Industries, through a variety of shell companies and other fronts–" Chuck put a graphic up on the screen that illustrated the complexity of the network "–is the sole owner and support of an English estate." More pictures, probably from a realtor's listing. "The manor is in Somerset, near the Welsh border, with no direct connections to London or the British political establishment, or any political establishment, for that matter."

"Safe house?" guessed Casey.

"Residence."

"For who, Chuck?"

Another graphic, a girl's outline, a white silhouette on a black background, with only a name.

"Who the hell is Vivian McArthur?"

"That's exactly what we need to find out, Colonel Casey," said the General. "We ran the name through every database we have, CIA, NSA, ATF, DMV. She has no Facebook page, no twitter handle, and while Google has several listings, none of them are hers."

"If it is a her," added Chuck. "In England Vivian could also be a boy's name."

Casey couldn't care less about popular naming traditions in England, or indeed anywhere. Nobody gets to an English estate without a paper trail of some kind, unless they had lots of help. "How'd you twig to the estate, then?"

"Here's something you should appreciate, Casey," said Chuck. "The Orion data had a footnote. A single isolated datum with no connections to anything else."

"And you connected it anyway." Casey grunted, impressed. "How'd you manage it?"

"White pages."

It took them all a few seconds to translate the term. "The phone book?" asked Sarah, incredulous.

"Genius," said Carina. "Who'd ever think to look there?"

"Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best," added Chuck. "You remember, Sarah, how Hannah figured out the Ring was using our own communications protocols against us?"

"Right."

"Explain, Mr. Bartowski."

"Back when Hannah first started with us, General, she was tasked to upgrade the encryption in all the watches, but she forgot Sarah's. As a result, Sarah could hear the Ring agents communicate, using the old encryption scheme. They were hiding right behind us, so to speak. I can think of several other examples, like this comic book I read–"

"Moving on," said the General. "Following Chuck's lead, we have located in the local press a single current reference to the house in question. It will be the site of a fundraiser for a local equestrian charity in two days time. If this Kaminsky person is moving against Volkoff, he will quite likely be moving against anything Volkoff wants hidden as much as Miss McArthur is."

"What's the play?" asked Carina. "Alert Interpol?"

"No, Agent Miller. We'll have to keep them in the loop, obviously, but through slow channels. Let them keep their focus on Europe, and Volkoff's focus on them. We, meanwhile, will secure the party, ascertain the status of this McArthur person, male or female, and if the opportunity arises, take Boris Kaminsky into custody. Any questions?"

"Uh, yes, General," said Chuck immediately. "If they're going stag to this party, they'll have to bring their own gear. What is the dress code?"

Later, at Morgan's restaurant...

Casey sat down at the table where Morgan was enjoying a little pre-work snack. "Okay, Grimes, I'm here. Now let's hurry this up, I've gotta catch the red-eye tonight."

"Sure thing, Colonel," said Morgan, pushing his dinner plate away. It hit the glass, slopping water everywhere. "Walk with me." He stood up, spilling crumbs from his napkin.

Casey followed, watching in disgust as his host absent-mindedly pulled the cloth from his collar and dumped it on some table while brushing his shirt, jacket, and even his beard free of detritus. Silently vowing never to eat here again, he checked six instinctively. "What the hell–?" He stopped short.

Morgan stopped shorter. "They done yet?" he muttered under his breath.

"'They' who?" asked Casey. "There's no one there."

"Exactly." Morgan turned, checking over his spotless domain, every setting perfect, every napkin folded just so, every chair placed with absolute precision.

"Spooky," breathed Casey.

"I bring my dinner from home," said Morgan. "I've been checking everywhere for pods, too, but no luck so far."

"Grow up, Grimes," said Casey. "You're gonna have to someday, may as well be now."

Morgan ducked his head nervously, snatched at his cuffs. "I happen to think looking for pod people is very responsible," he muttered.

"In Washington?"

Morgan knew when he was beat. "Okay, you've got a point. So what do we do?"

"We do nothing," growled Casey. "You will do your job, and pretend nothing is wrong. I will see some people I know."

"Who?" asked Morgan immediately. "Ghostbusters? NASA?"

Casey had about reached the limit of his creative powers. Lying was nothing to him, but lying to Morgan took work. "Top. Men."

"Oh, no," said Morgan, backing away. "That's what they said to Indiana Jones and look how that turned out. No infinite warehouse for me, thank you very much."

"Fine. You win." He pulled Morgan into the alcove by the bathroom, and whispered as much as he ever whispered, "I'm going to NASA to ask about recent impacts near here."

Morgan nodded, slapping Casey's chest in approval. "Now you're using your head."

"You did the right thing, coming to me with this, Grimes. We've got to play this cool, otherwise they'll just invade some other city."

"Now you're just messing with me, Colonel," scoffed Morgan. "You don't get do-overs on invasions, everybody knows that."

True enough. "Fine, you got me." Casey hurried to the door. "I'll be in touch."

"I'll be here," said Morgan. "Just, you know, hopefully not a zombie, or possessed." He was talking to air, and a swinging door.

Outside, Casey already had his phone to his ear. "General, we have a problem with Grimes…"

The next night, at the party...

Chuck watched the woman in the mask walk away. "Muddled thyme, Casey? What the hell is muddling?"

"It's like what you do with all our national secrets, Bartowski, only I do it with thyme. You have to know that sort of thing to be a bartender, you know. Now shut up and be British. That's what you're here for."

Just as Chuck was about to point out the difficulty of being British without speaking, a woman appeared, asking for an extra wedge of lime. "Quite so," said Chuck, sounding all stiff and upper-crusty as he produced the requested item with his second-best smile.

"Thanks, love," she said, winking at him.

Chuck shuddered. "Now that's just creepy. Have I told you how much I hate masquerade parties?"

"Only all the way over here on a seven-hour flight."

"White wine? Certainly, madam," said Chuck, walking to the other end of the bar, and Casey left him to it as he checked in with rest of the team, out on the floor.

"I just met Boris," said Sarah, "Green and gold mask. No luck with Vivian."

"No luck on my end, either," said Carina. "And I do mean end. I've talked to a heart, two flowers, and far too many men who think a little mask and a lot of booze gives them license to be all handy."

"You're complaining?"

"Davis likes searching me for fingerprints, and I don't want him to find any."

Chuck felt confident he could handle a simple request for wine on his own. Flashing on bartending skills while maintaining his British demeanor gave him headaches. "Your wine, madam, although I must say I grow concerned about the vintage."

"Whatever for?" she asked. "It's excellent."

"Yet you don't seem to be enjoying the party."

"That's not the wine's fault." She leaned in close, and lowered her voice. "It's the masks. I can't help thinking of that awful movie."

"I agree," said Chuck, not having to fake his disdain. "Both bland and dreadful, and I count myself one of the man's legion of fans. I'd have a word with the hostess, if I were you. Do you know who she is?"

"I doubt anyone does," said the lady bitterly, into her glass.

Suddenly Casey groaned behind him, and Chuck turned, but whatever had caused the sudden fit passed just as quickly. He shook off Chuck's hand. "Boris is here, numb-nuts. We need to find Vivian before he does."

Chuck turned back to look over the crowd, to find an empty wine glass waiting for him. It had been full a second ago. He lifted it. "I think I already have."

One game of hide-and-seek with Vivian later, in a horse-stall with no horse...

"Explain to me why I'm here again?" shouted Chuck, hands over his ears as he hunkered down in the stable. He hoped the wall would be enough to stop a bullet, but prepared to throw himself over Vivian's body in case it wasn't.

"You're not British?" said Vivian.

Chuck shook his head. "I doubt that's it."

Even Sarah got a smile out of that one, but fortunately for her professional reputation she was turned away, looking for escape routes from the stables, and neither of them saw it before she forced it away. That's why. Vivian would hold it together for him, while she did what she did best. Her face, when she looked for targets, was a mask of ice.

Sarah would protect the world for his sake.

"You're not a bartender either, are you?" asked Vivian.

"Was it that obvious?"

"Not to me. This is my first party." A hail of bullets blew chips from the walls around them. "And probably my last."

"Not if I can help it," said Chuck, kneeling in the hay as the bullets flew.

Sarah smiled again, listening to the man she loved, protecting the girl who still wanted to be able to throw a party.

Vivian ignored the kneeling and the hay, even the bullets. "So, you're going to make me throw more parties, are you?"

"I don't think that's even in the CIA's mandate. Sarah?"

"Parties are optional, Chuck." She squeezed off a single shot, her supply of bullets limited, but as long as it was larger than Boris' supply of henchmen she was okay with that.

"Give me the key, Vivian," yelled Boris.

Chuck winced. Things had been going so well. "Now that sort of is. I don't suppose you happen to know what key he's talking about?"

Vivian pulled herself from his witty banter and warm eyes. Right. Bullets. Life. Key? "No."

"Of course you don't. So I guess you don't know why he thinks Volkoff gave it to you, then. He seems to have given you everything else."

Chuck couldn't miss the pain in her eyes, a match for the bitterness in her voice earlier, as she said, "I haven't seen him in years."

Chuck could feel her loss, wondering why. "But you do know him?"

"Of course I know him," she said. "He's my father."