Disclaimer: This is the part where you figure out that I don't own Chuck. You already knew that? Good, then we'll skip that part.

Chapter 10: Trauma

Sarah and Chuck started their furniture shopping at ByKEA. It was huge. Chuck was somewhat overwhelmed by just how much stuff there was. Sarah wasn't really finding anything she liked. "I don't like any of this stuff."

"We could go to a different store."

"But everyone loves ByKEA! I should be able to find something I like."

"Everyone loves Largemart, that doesn't mean I shop for my clothes there."

Sarah eyed Chuck's outfit critically for a moment. "You know, it couldn't hurt."

"Hey!"

Sarah smirked. She reached over and took Chuck's hand. "I think I've had enough of the Swedish, lets go upstairs and get some lunch and then we can get out of here."

"You want to eat here?"

Sarah shrugged. "The Salmon Caesar salad looked good…do you want to go somewhere else? I'm sure there's a Weinerlicious or an Orange Orange around here somewhere."

"You know someday I'm going to take you on a successful date that costs more than ten dollars."

"Really?" Sarah grinned. "But who would you have do your scout work for you?"

"I didn't say it'd be good, just a successful date."

"What constitutes a successful date?" Sarah asked as she led Chuck to the cafeteria.

"Well let's see." Chuck ticked off on his fingers. "Um absolutely nobody can try and kill us."

"I don't know, I've had some pretty good dates that included people trying to kill me," Sarah replied.

"Second, nobody cries."

"Hey, I only cried that one time!" Sarah objected as they waited inline with their trays.

"And, there has to actually be a promise of another date afterwards."

Sarah gave him a lopsided grin. "It really seems like we should have been able to figure that out by now. The criteria certainly aren't that hard. Maybe we could spice it up an bit and put in a requirement for reaching third base?"

"If it were that easy, you would have thought it would have happened before now."

"Well we don't have the security of the whole nation hanging over us now."

Chuck and Sarah were just sitting down at a table and the people across from them gave them a very strange look.

"I hope you still think I'm cool."

"Oh come on, you were never cool," Sarah teased.

"Hey! That's not nice." Sarah covered her mouth with her hand as she started giggling.

"You said you weren't funny," Chuck said petulantly. "Then three years later you start cracking jokes."

"Maybe I'm learning," Sarah shrugged. "It's weird, ever since I picked you up at the airport I feel like the weight of the world is suddenly off my shoulders. I'm practically giddy."

"Really?" Chuck asked.

"Yes, really, can't you tell?" Chuck turned his gaze and looked out into the giant sea of cars in the parking lot. It was so big he couldn't even make out Sarah's Porsche from here. "Hey, where'd you go?" Sarah questioned.

Chuck brought his attention back to Sarah. "It's nothing."

"What is?"

"Nothing, I swear." Sarah gave him a reproachful look, but she didn't push it further.

"Where do you want to go next?" Chuck asked.

"I was thinking we might stop by that Blowe's down the street. We need a washer and dryer and some yard implements, oh, and maybe some patio furniture!"

***

Later that evening found Chuck and Sarah strolling through a Bullseye Department Store. They picked up a lamp and some decorative accessories. Chuck couldn't believe all of the stuff they'd bought. There wasn't exactly a lot of room left in Sarah's Porsche, all things considered it was not the perfect car to take with you on a home decorating run.

Chuck stopped in the bedding section and looked over some sheets. "You don't like my sheets?" Sarah asked.

"No, they were fine," Chuck waved Sarah off. "I was thinking of getting some new ones for my bed. I've had the sheets I brought with me since college, they're kinda thread bare."

"Oh," Sarah said flatly. She stood and watched him while he looked them over. When he picked up a striped blue set, she said. "I'm sorry about this morning. I can tone it down a little if it bothers you. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable…"

"It's not you." Chuck shook his head.

"Well then what?"

"I just think it would be best if I had my own place to sleep while we work things out."

"While we work what out?" Sarah replied indignantly.

"Us," Chuck said waving his arms helplessly.

"What is there to work out?"

Chuck hesitated and in the moment of hesitation Sarah spun and around and walked away from him. "Sarah, wait." But she didn't wait, Chuck pushed their cart full of items after her. She was a trained spy however and she lost him in less than a minute. Aggravated, Chuck wandered around the store looking for her, but didn't find her. He'd been circling around the store for almost thirty minutes when his phone rang.

""Where are you?" Chuck asked.

"In the car, waiting for you, stop going around in circles and hurry up, I want to go back to the house."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, just hurry up." The phone connection dropped as Sarah hung up on him.

Chuck sighed and pushed the cart towards the registers. "Nice one, Bartowski," he muttered.

Chuck's attempts to get Sarah to talk on the way home were met with short responses that she was 'fine' and that nothing was wrong. But Sarah felt a million miles away as she drove the fifteen or so miles back to the compound. When they arrived back at the house, Sarah threw her keys on the counter and immediately walked to the back of the house. Chuck sighed and carried in the rest of the purchases they'd bought from the car.

When the car was finished being unloaded, he grabbed one of the Bullseye bags and headed downstairs to try and get his bed setup. The bed frame was all the way at the back of the pile of stuff. He'd been working for a good twenty minutes when he heard Sarah say from behind him. "You should come upstairs."

Chuck jumped a bit at her voice, he was really going to have to get used to living with someone who could move silently.

"Hey," Chuck said as he looked over at Sarah. There were no signs that she had been bothered by their earlier incident other than the ultra conservative pajamas she was wearing from neck to ankle. "I was just…"

"I know what you were doing," Sarah interrupted. "It's really late and we've been out shopping all day. You should just come upstairs and come to bed. I promise I won't touch you."

"Sarah," Chuck said pleadingly. "Please don't be like that. I want what you're offering. I am not turning you down. I just need a little time to adjust. I spent three years adjusting to the fact that you and I were never going to happen. I made my peace with it and now suddenly you're here and you're interested. Morgan and Ellie are gone. The Intersect doesn't matter anymore. I start a job on Monday that I don't even know how to do. I live in Maryland and I don't know where anything is. And I feel this incredible guilt that I somehow screwed over two of my best friends and cost them their jobs." Chuck ran his hands through his hair. "You're so incredible, really, you are the only thing that keeps me sane and have been for years now, but I'm hanging on by a hair's breadth here. I really want to know before we jump into something that it's because we love each other and we want to spend our lives together." Chuck glanced away from her briefly before he reestablished eye contact. "Because if it ends up not being what you want, ten years is a long time to have to spend with someone you failed at a relationship with."

"Okay," Sarah nodded stiffly. "Will you come upstairs for tonight, please?"

"Sure," Chuck agreed. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand, Chuck, I'm still not an idiot. You don't feel about me the way that I thought you did." Chuck cringed.

"Sarah, that's soooo not it. I just need some control over my life." Chuck took a few steps over to where Sarah was standing rigidly and brushed her bangs back behind her ear. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

"I'm asking you, not telling you, not to spend all night organizing the basement just so you don't have to sleep with me. It hurts that you'd want to avoid me so much that you'd do this tonight."

Chuck pulled Sarah into a long hug. "Let's go then."

Sarah turned and pulled Chuck by the hand up the stairs. As they walked to the bedroom Sarah said. "It's not like I have anyone else either, you know. You're all I have left too."

When they settled in bed Sarah must have been on the absolute edge, because she seemed a mile away. In the darkness it would have been difficult to tell that anything was wrong, but it was the breathing that gave her away. A full forty five minutes after they went to bed Sarah was still breathing unevenly. Chuck had spent enough time listening to Sarah sleeping, to know exactly what it sounded like. She was still upset, he didn't know how he could tell, he could just tell. "It's not you," Chuck said finally.

"What?" Sarah said.

"My problems with my situation…my struggle with all of this, it's not you."

"I know I…" Sarah started.

"No, you're lying over there blaming yourself because it's not working out the way you thought and you shouldn't. It's not your fault."

"I wasn't!" Sarah protested. "I just can't sleep."

"Come're," Chuck insisted reaching out for Sarah's middle and trying to pull her towards him. He hadn't really considered how strong Sarah was and misjudged the effort required to pull her closer. She was passively resisting him, but she was proving herself to be difficult to move. "Sarah, please." Sarah suddenly slid across the sheets and into Chuck's arms with relative ease. Chuck pressed Sarah's back to his chest and wrapped his arm around her middle. Then tucked an arm under her head and wrapped it around the front of her shoulders so that he had her in a full body hug. Chuck could feel the tension in Sarah's muscles and he knew he had to hurry before she squirmed free. "You are the most important person in my life. You have been for a long time. I haven't forgotten that and I don't want to forget. I'm not good at change. Maybe you never noticed because you made it so much easier when the Intersect happened. I cling to things, I have trouble letting go. I might never have adjusted to getting kicked out of Stanford, if it wasn't for you. I definitely wouldn't have been able to deal with the Intersect without you and I can't do this without you either, please just be a little patient with me." Chuck felt Sarah's body relax bit by bit. She didn't respond verbally, but with each moment she didn't try to escape his grasp, Chuck celebrated a small victory. When he finally heard her breathing even out he tucked her head under his chin on the pillow and fell asleep.

***

Chuck awoke to Sarah thrashing and flinging him out of bed. He landed hard on the floor hitting his head. Sarah was screaming at the top of her lungs. "Okay, owe…" Chuck muttered. "What's wrong?"

At the sound of Chuck's voice, Sarah's scream cut off. "Chuck?"

"Who were you expecting?" He heard Sarah take a large breath and let it out slowly. He could only see her silhouette sitting on the bed, but he saw her shoulders sag.

"Chuck, I'm so sorry… Are you okay?"

"I think you may have damaged the Intersect, but I don't really need it anymore, I'm fine."

Sarah scrambled out of the bed and knelt beside him. She reached up and clicked on the bedside lamp, but shielded Chuck's eyes from the light. "Where did you hit your head?" She asked in her official Intersect damage assessment voice. Chuck sat up and pointed to the back of his head. Sarah ran her fingers through his hair tenderly until she found a spot that hurt.

"Ouch."

"You're getting a bump," Sarah announced dejectedly. She turned him around. How many fingers am I holding up she asked.

"Er…I know this one…" Chuck pretended to contemplate. "Eighty Seven?"

Sarah smiled and shook her head. "Your brain is apparently still broken."

"Well as long as we have status quo."

Sarah scooched forward and until she had one leg interlaced between Chuck's and the other wrapped around his back. She leaned forward and kissed him tenderly. At the odd angle Chuck could only get one arm around Sarah, but he reached out for her anyway as the kiss extended into a gentle, loving, almost healing moment. When Sarah eventually pulled back from kissing Chuck, she put her head on his shoulder. "I am so sorry."

"You want to tell me what that was about?" Chuck asked.

"I will tell you if you want to know. It's classified and it's not pleasant."

"Do you want to tell me?" Chuck asked.

Sarah took a deep breath. "When I was just a rookie in the CIA, I wasn't even out of college yet, I did a series of missions in what used to be Yugoslavia. Our mission was ambiguous, it wasn't even entirely clear what side we were on. Sometimes we were working to destabilize the government, sometimes we were working to root out insurgents. I don't know whose agenda we were following and at the time I didn't really care. I was just happy to be selected, to be important, to be doing something with the skills I spent all of my free time learning. I was young and brash and well…not very good. I thought my Serbian was better than it actually was. I thought my Croatian was passable, which it was not and I got myself caught.

"When people catch spies and actually figure out that they are spies they don't live very long. If you're lucky they force a confession out of you, use you to embarrass your home country and then imprison you for life. Your best defense against all of this is to keep your mouth shut. If they can't figure out who you spy for, they can't use you effectively. They may still kill you, but they usually want to figure out who you are first. My Russian and French were very good and I used that to keep them confused about who I worked for. There is only one means counter espionage uses to get information out of a subject, torture."

"You were tortured?" Chuck asked

"Repeatedly," Sarah nodded. "I was a woman and so they were 'nice' to me. But they kept me tightly bound pretty much all the time, while they subjected me to whatever torture they wanted to try. I'm not great at being confined. I do okay if I'm awake and can reason it out, but if I have to sleep in handcuffs or shackles or rope, which was the favorite of the Serbs I get agitated. I'm not overly fond of being touched…again…I handle it—"

"But when you're asleep, you lash out," Chuck finished for her.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know that would happen," Sarah insisted. "I mean, I've never let anyone hold me like that and it was nice. I like being held by you. I do, I really do, but it's been an adjustment and I guess I freaked out."

Chuck ran his fingers through her hair. "You don't have anything to be sorry for. You didn't mean to throw me out of bed. And you didn't kill me, which I appreciate," Chuck joked. The joke fell flat however as it just made Sarah look more worried. "Look both of us have issues to work through, that's okay. I look forward to working through them with you. Granted yours are more traumatic than mine, but we'll help each other. You already help me so much, you have no idea. And if I'm being too aggressive with the touching or cuddling, just tell me."

"I like cuddling with you," Sarah objected. "I like it when you touch me, I don't want you to stop, you're the first person…" Sarah stopped talking abruptly obviously not wanting to finish the thought.

"I'm the first person who's what?" Chuck prodded.

Sarah eyed Chuck skeptically. "You're the first person, I've ever felt comfortable with just touching. You know, just because, when there isn't a real reason, when we're not, you know…when we held hands on cover dates…I've never done that with anyone, not just for fun." Chuck reached down and grasped Sarah's hand. But instead she pulled herself closer to him and wrapped her arms around him. "Please don't be self conscious about touching me, I may not always be comfortable right away, but I don't ever want you to feel bad or think twice about it. This morning waking up all wrapped up in you, was wonderful." Sarah looked up at him with a pouty lip. "That's why I don't want you to move downstairs."

"Ah the truth comes out," he chuckled.

"Is it such a bad thing being forced to snuggle me?" Sarah asked meekly.

"It's not bad, it just limits the functionality of the smarter parts of my brain."

Sarah smirked and reached up gently touching the sensitive spot on his head. "I think we got rid of most of that part tonight already."

Chuck laughed. "I hope not, there's a rumor going around that I have to do math on Monday."

Sarah giggled and pulled Chuck into another hug. "Let's go back to bed, we have a lot of organizing and unpacking to do tomorrow."