A/N: I know, I know. This story should have come with a complimentary scorecard, like at baseball games. Hang in there; it's not quite as complicated as it seems and it is about to come into focus. We aren't all that far from the end, although it is not imminent.

Thanks for sticking with another slightly oddball story.

Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy

Chapter 18: TL;DR

I just told Chuck I love him. In the most unromantic way possible. Under interrogation.

Jesus, Sarah, can't you ever get your emotional life to work? But what Chuck said: I think he told me too, in a backhanded way. Maybe that's how it was always fated to go for us.

Sarah looked at Chuck, waiting for him to explain his mother, the Ring.

She knew he had never answered her question about Amy, although it was clear her death had affected and was affecting him. But he had not dodged the question: he had kept her from dodging his, forcing her to speak out her heart and mind, even if it came out wrong.

She had imagined being naked in his arms, in the throes of love-making when she first whispered those words to him. They had been on her heart, unspoken, for so long. But she said them like an accusation, and as if they explained her choice to leave him and go to DC. Chuck was angry but he was not unfair about one thing: the way she told him made the words hurt him. Nothing could have been further from what she wanted.

What an epic fail.

A noise, a car, from outside.

Chuck ran to the window and moved the curtain aside, just barely. "It's Mom...and Dad. And Ellie." His voice blended disbelief and excitement. "Mom and Dad. And Ellie," he repeated. A moment later the door opened and they came in.

Mary led the way and stepped aside. Orion rushed to Chuck. Ellie glanced cooly at Mary and then followed her dad to her brother. Sarah watched Mary as her daughter and husband left her. A line of pain crossed Mary's face and then she erased it.

Sarah knew the maneuver well, although she wondered if perhaps Mary was even better at it, more practiced. Sarah had spent her life erasing her pain, but, like every erasure, marks were left behind, legible to a sensitive eye. Chuck's eye had seen the leavings of Sarah's erasures, even when he was one of them. Maybe especially when he was one of them. She had tried to erase him, her feelings for him, but the erasures never worked. And now he knew. Even if she said it wrong, she had said it, and that was right. She had owed him those words for the better part of two years.

Maybe for two years. She had fallen for him before he disarmed the bomb to save the General. She fell for him when he fixed her phone. Her baggage handler, her repairman.

Stephen was tinkering with Chuck's watch, the governor. Ellie had hugged Chuck and then stepped aside, but she still had her hand on Chuck's arm, reluctant to lose contact with him. There were tears on her cheeks as he observed her dad, and looked up at her brother.

Sarah smiled at Mary and Mary frowned at her. Mary turned and went into the bathroom. Stephen snuck a look at his wife as she did, but moved only his eyes, not his head. He refocused on the watch.

"So, Chuck, is it helping? It looks like it's maxed out."

"It's helping. But the programming is getting harder and harder for me to resist, Dad. You bought me some time, but the pain...My head is killing me." Chuck laughed bitterly, glancing at Sarah and then speaking to the room. "Put that on my tombstone. 'Here lies Chuck Bartowski. His head killed him.'"

"I told you not to do this, Chuck, when you asked. I told you that it would be...malignant. You have a special relationship with the Intersect, but this is the black sheep of the Intersect family. You should never have let that Amy woman upload this into you."

"Dad, she's dead. Don't talk about her that way. She made some bad choices, but I believe she wasn't beyond salvage. I know she wasn't."

Sarah heard Mary huff softly and felt Mary's eyes on her; she hadn't heard Mary leave the bathroom. Sarah realized Ellie was looking at her, Sarah, too.

Orion had a small tool out and was twisting it, adjusting something on the watch. She saw Chuck's face respond, relax a bit. "That's helping, Dad."

"Good, but it's going to use up the battery fast. You have maybe two hours before you will need a new battery. Is that enough time?"

"I think so. Sarah," Chuck looked at her, "I want you to drive me. I need to explain some things. You deserve to know what I've been doing and why, why I've done it this way. Ellie and Dad should be safe here. Where's Bryce?"

Mary spoke. "He's gone, chasing Shaw."

"Why didn't he come when Shaw was in the ballroom?" Sarah asked.

Orion turned to look at her. "My computer went wonky. When Chuck stomped the brooch, we lost the ability to see and hear and then the computer went down and we couldn't talk to you. We didn't know Shaw was in there until it was too late. Bryce went in but got there after everyone had escaped, including Shaw."

Sarah shook her head. "Did he have any idea where Shaw was heading?"

"He mentioned your apartment."

Chuck looked at Sarah. She shrugged at him. "It makes sense. If Shaw's lost Holt, I'm next, I guess. But I thought he wanted to kill you, Chuck."

Chuck shrugged at Sarah. "I was trying to bait him, to get him focused on me...But this all happened before my entire plan had been put in motion. I guess he doesn't see me as a real threat. He doesn't realize I have an Intersect. He didn't know it was me on the motorcycle. I guess I didn't piss him off enough..."

"Your plan, " Sarah said slowly, "so, the parting shot on the Miami beach, the fake women…"

Sarah's voice dropped at the end and she saw Chuck drop his gaze. After a second, he looked back up.

"Yeah, I was hoping to get Shaw fixated on me before he found out about you, maybe to keep him from finding out about you. At least divide his attention among targets." Chuck grinned, the first genuinely silly, old-time, Buy-More-trickster Chuck grin she had seen since before she left Burbank. It stole her breath. "I had a great knock-out-pie-in-the-face gag planned next…"

Sarah shook her head, returning his grin. He held her gaze, then he sobered. "Okay, we need to go. We're on the clock...er...watch."

Sarah saw Orion look at Mary, his eyes deep, as Mary turned and went out the door. She did not see the look. Ellie was watching both her parents.

Chuck was looking at Sarah. He gestured for her to go ahead of him. She stepped to the door and paused. He picked up a gun from the table and a box of ammunition. After the grin, it seemed completely bizarre. She shuddered as she watched.

Ellie was watching too. "Chuck?"

He gave her a quick look then moved to the door. Sarah went out. Orion called behind him. "Remember, Chuck, you're special. If all else fails, don't forget."

Sarah gave Chuck a look.

"Dad's...um...playing with a more-than-full deck. His deck has extra cards, all Jokers." Chuck's tone was light but she could tell that he was not simply joking. She knew first-hand how odd and erratic Orion could be.

Mary was in the grey sedan. The engine was running. Chuck got in the rear and motioned for Sarah to sit with him. Mary used the rearview to watch them get in. "So, all better?" Her tone was embittered, aggressive. Sarah did not know what happened when Mary reunited with Orion and Ellie, but given the speed of their return, she was certain it had not been a long, joyous reunion. A subtle but deep tension had filled the safehouse and Mary had brought it with her to the car.

Chuck looked at his mom after she backed the car out of the driveway. "Tell her, Mom, about you, the last...years."

Mary glared at Chuck. "Have you told her about the last...weeks?"

Chuck flicked his eyes at Sarah and back to his mom. "No, not really."

Mary nodded. "Why don't you tell her your story. I can...add things...when my part of the story begins. It's going to sound...insane enough as it is."

Chuck sighed. "I suppose so." He turned and looked out the window on his side. He started talking as he did.

"So, you left me in Burbank. For a couple of days, I didn't even get out of bed, shower, shave. I had lost...you. And then Casey made me get up, go to work. Dragged me 'and my numbnuts' to the Buy More. And at the end of my shift, Amy was standing at the Nerd Herd desk...right where…" He turned to Sarah and did not finish the sentence. "She introduced herself. I don't know why but she felt...off...to me. She was nice. Pretty." He looked at his mom. "Bubbly. She told me she would be checking in on me every couple of days. We chatted for a few minutes and she gave me her card. Morgan thought I was 'back in the blonde business'. I nearly punched him."

Chuck turned away again. "Casey stayed on me. I went back to work the next day and Amy stopped by again. It was almost closing time. She was...dressed to kill. She asked me to go out for drinks with her after work. I said yes and she waited for me. I grabbed my bag and found her fending off Jeff and Lester."

"Chuck," Mary said, "get on with it. We don't need all the local color. Just the facts."

"That started a succession of dates. I guess they were dates. I don't think I know what a real date is anymore. I'm not sure I have ever had one. Jill, you, Amy...Maybe Lou…"

"Chuck!"

"Sorry, Mom. On each of the dates, Amy kept pushing. She sort of looked like you but she acted more like Carina. She was handling me...I finally figured that out. And when I did, I knew you never had." He gave her a vulnerable glance but it passed quickly. "She wanted to talk about the Intersect. At first, I wasn't surprised. I figured she had been read-in. But she wanted to know about its effects on me, what it was like to have it. Day-to-day stuff that you never really asked me about...It was kind of cool, flattering. Especially given how I felt. She treated me like I was a rock star...well, a has-been rockstar…"

"I'm sorry, Chuck," Sarah said. "I always wondered about those things but we… we were already so complicated...and I was afraid...:"

"That if you asked me to share and I did, I'd ask you to share back, and you'd have been obliged to?"

Sarah shook her head. Mary coughed dryly.

"After a couple of date-thingies, she started the full-court press. She would show up late at work to ask me to go out, to go for a drive...drop me at home. She was trying…"

"Jesus, Chuck, just say it. She was trying to seduce you. She was a blonde honeytrap." Mary gave Sarah a blue-gray stare.

"Yeah, that. But I...kept wiggling off the hook. She was pretty, sexy, but, first, I've never been a hook-up guy…" — Chuck glanced at his Mom, blushed — "And second, I had feelings for...Well, I wasn't available. Pathetic, I know."

Sarah blushed but did not know what to say except to shake her head. Mary coughed again. Chuck's eyes hardened.

"And, third, I knew what she was doing. I put it together. I'd been around...better spies. So, I started trying to reverse...the honeypot. Well, that's not the best way to put it, I mean…"

"Chuck!"

"Sorry, Mom. So, I realized that she wasn't CIA. She had another agenda. It was something about the way she talked, the assumptions in her questions. She figured out that I was unhappy and she kept trying to leverage that unhappiness. She didn't try to make it worse but she tried to keep it in front of me. For a while. And then, something shifted. She became...personally...interested...involved...She stopped trying to use my unhappiness; she started trying to make me happy. Not seduce me but to woo me."

"I think she just changed tactics, Chuck; it's what I would have done."

Chuck glared at the back of his Mom's head. She spoke as she drove, without looking at them in the mirror. "Thanks, Mom, just the kind of thing every little boy hopes to hear his mother say."

Sarah saw Mary's shoulders tense. "God, Chuck, get on with it. You're like a garrulous old woman. You blather like your dad. I should have stayed, just to teach you brevity. The short version, the really short version, please. We're almost there."

Chuck looked at his feet. He shook his head. "Okay, so here's the very short version…"

A/N: Next, the Ring. Thoughts?