I'm tired of being lost
It's time I control
As my crew flies like
Astronauts
I watch as we get old
We'll meet again some other day
"Freeze and Explode"
Cassettes Won't Listen
July 11, 2012
Bucharest, Romania
Corrine backed away from the computer, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist, as if she were hugging herself. "Stephen Bartowski is your father?" she asked in shock.
Chuck and Casey exchanged a strange look, but he answered, calmly, "He was my father. He died about two years ago."
Her hand flew to her mouth, her strong composure melted away as she stood there. Odd, Chuck thought, even after 30 years, it hit her this way. "Oh my God," she breathed, holding her chest, making a very visible effort to pull herself under control.
"He was killed by an organization called the Ring," Chuck said, still feeling the poignant pull when he spoke of the man.
"By Daniel Shaw?" she almost shrieked. Chuck and Casey exchanged another glance, trying to silently communicate about these reactions.
Before Chuck could even confirm, she shot out, "He has an Intersect."
"What?" Chuck said, flabbergasted. He heard Casey grunt quietly to himself.
But she wasn't listening. She seemed to eye him up and down, her hand still over her mouth. "You're Charles, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah, yes, I am," he stuttered quickly.
"The last time I talked to your mother you were seven years old," she said, still transfixed in wonder. "And now you're a spy?" she asked, almost with disgust under her breath. Shaking her head back and forth, she told him, "They never wanted this life for you. You have to know that."
He felt his face flush. "It's not something I chose, at least not at first. It definitely chose me." he said softly. He heard Casey grunt behind him.
Shaking herself out of her reverie, she realized her time had ticked away. "I'm pulling the security grid back up. I haven't given you any real reason to, but please, will you trust me?" she asked.
His silence served as affirmation. "I hope you're right, Bartowski," Casey said quietly.
The moment Poshenko was visible on the security monitor, her demeanor changed. Still a spy, at least, he thought. He wasn't sure of anything yet, except that for whatever he knew, she wasn't the next Volkoff. He took pleasure in the small things.
The door opened, Poshenko stepping through the threshold. All three of them turned at the loud cracking sound, as his body flung forward, splayed out on the floor. "Chuck!" Morgan, called as he stepped over the prone body in the doorway. He sprinted into the room, a long flashlight in his hand, that he had clubbed Poshenko over the head with.
"Morgan!" Chuck called. "How did you get all the way up here?"
"Time's of the essence, people," he said, rushing towards them and slashing through the restraints on both he and Casey's wrists. "Is she coming?" he said quickly to Chuck, gesturing at Corrine, who stood watching.
In response to Morgan, Corrine ran to the prone form on the floor and disarmed him, tucking the gun into her belt. "I can't leave, not yet," she insisted.
"You can't stay here. Come on, you can explain once we're safe," Chuck insisted as they ran out the door and down the hallway.
"Why only one guard?" Casey asked as they continued.
"They're on the perimeter. I can get you out," she confirmed.
She ushered them out, quietly, through the alley, and into their van, and drove away.
July 11, 2012
Oak Park, Illinois
Ellie tried to contact Chuck via cellphone, but she had gotten no response. Some part of her felt uncomfortable, rifling through Chuck's things left behind in the bedroom. But her ultimate purpose, her end result, was so crucial, she convinced herself that he wouldn't mind. Would he have it on him? The thought twisted, making her anxious, although she knew, if he did, she would have to wait until he returned. Her entire process was long, longer than she had hoped, and delaying only prolonged the misery that she was almost certain she had the power to cure.
He hadn't needed a jacket, being the middle of the summer, she thought as she scanned. Maybe his luggage? She asked herself again. She reached beside the bed, lifting his duffel bag onto his bed. He had started thinking he was spending two or three days with Sarah in St. Louis, and now he was traveling the world again. But he had left the bag here. She unzipped the top, and reached inside the side pockets on both sides, as well as both ends. Nothing, she thought in frustration. It was the last pocket she checked, the small square zippered pocket beneath the handle, where she found it.
Even now, it brought tears to her eyes again, as she unfolded the glossy magazine page, Japanese characters visible on the side folded out. She unfolded it all the way, careful not to rip the folds, as it had been tucked away folded for a long time. It was the magic marker drawing he had made, while he and Sarah were on the train, when he had feared she was going to forget her life, spread out delicately on the bed. Ellie had seen it only once before, but secretly suspected he never left it far from himself. It was so close now, this vision he had hoped for, but had been denied at the last moment. He had told Sarah not to forget this, she remembered. Everything hinged on this, she knew.
It was bittersweet, because she couldn't help but remember the first time she had seen it, on what had instantly become the new worst day of Chuck's life.
January 28, 2012
Burbank, California
"She's gone," he struggled to say, pain in his chest to speak, and pain in his heart to acknowledge. "Sarah's gone," he admitted, his double meaning not lost. She had left the house, but he was also acknowledging that what Casey had said earlier- Sarah as he had always known her didn't exist anymore.
"Casey, call an ambulance!" Ellie yelled, as she knelt beside her brother as he lay on the floor in the dark in the empty house where she knew he would have taken Sarah. She pulled at his clothes, moving gingerly as he cried out in pain from her ministrations. ""Are you shot?" she asked, scanning over his body armor with her hands, feeling for the point of impact.
"My back," he winced, through gritted teeth.
She reached underneath him, stopping as he gave a sharp cry of agony when her hand reached the spot. Thankfully, when she pulled her hand away, there was no blood. She pulled at the armor, undoing the bindings, so she could reach her hand inside. He was bruised, but nothing felt broken, no danger of punctured organs.
He looked away, grimacing in pain. Ellie could see the dried streaks of tears on his grimy and bloodstained cheek. "I think you're really banged up, but nothing life threatening. The ambulance will be here soon," she soothed.
She had stayed with him, in the ambulance, through the emergency room, then to x-ray. Once they released him, she had been waiting in his room, as he'd gone into the bathroom to get dressed again. He had a soft gray sweatshirt in place of the black jacket he had worn earlier. She found the jacket, started folding it into his plastic bag issued by the hospital. Folding it over, end on end, she had seen the piece of paper fall onto the floor. Stooping , she lifted it, gently unfolding it to make sure it wasn't just trash she needed to throw away for him.
She heard him turn the door handle, turning to look at him as he limped his way out. "What's this?" she asked, holding it out for him.
One glimpse at the expression on his face and she wished she had just put it away before he saw it. What was worse? Watching his guarded movements to protect against the damage Sarah had done to his body, or watching his eyes radiating the pain Sarah had done to his heart?
"I didn't want her to forget. I didn't want her to lose that," he said, gesturing to the paper with his palm, "When she flashed." He limped forward, taking it from her, folding it back up. "But it doesn't matter now, does it?"
Tears stung behind her eyes as she saw what he had drawn, knowing why and feeling her heart break now, knowing it hadn't been enough. She wanted to cry, but one look at the devastation on his face, and she felt the steel harden inside. He needed strength right now, as his world had started crumbling. And in this moment, she was all he had.
She feared, in his despair, that he would throw it away, but was heartened when he tucked it back into the bag that sat on the bed. "None of that can happen now, can it?" he asked her, defeatedly, because he knew the answer already.
"Let's get you home, so you can rest," she said softly, knowing focusing on the one thing she could actually help him with was what she needed for her own sanity. "Devon's waiting."
July 11, 2012
Bucharest, Romania
"Morgan, what were you thinking? A flashlight?" Chuck asked.
"He acts first, thinks later, Bartowski. You haven't figured that out by now?" Casey said.
His best friend was by far the bravest person he knew, having thrown himself into the middle of danger multiple times to save them, including offering himself as bait for a live Bengal tiger, intentionally electrocuting himself, or a hundred other examples escaping him at the moment. "Some things never change," Chuck said with a smirk.
To Corrine, Chuck said, "We need to talk," as she sat in the van with them. "That was too easy, getting you away from him. What gives? What is this all about?"
"I chose to do what I was doing. Look, we knew who Charles Carmichael was, all right? I just had no idea who you really were. I just can't believe after everything Stephen and Mary went through to protect you from this life, that it found you anyway."
"Look, that isn't a bad thing. He's one of the best," Casey said tightly.
Praise from Casey, even after all this time, still surprised him. But he smirked, gently, turning away so Casey couldn't see him.
"What were you doing with Leonid Poshenko?" Chuck asked her, point blank, a thousand other questions battering his thoughts, but knowing this was where he needed to start, missing all the rest of the information.
"Do you know what he was talking about? The Intersect?" she asked, lowering her voice on the last word.
"Yeah, yeah, you could say I'm, you know, pretty well versed on it, you know?" he stammered, making eye contact with Casey.
"Poshenko knows what it is. He blamed his father's death on it. And he has been trying to obtain the technology for himself, since he left Russia, in 1985," she said sharply.
"Why did I never hear his name before a few days ago, from my mother no less?" Chuck was asking Casey and Corrine, at the same time.
"He's been working behind the scenes, working with people better known, but keeping his identity out of it," she informed them.
"What were you doing, all this time?" Chuck asked, not able to get the picture of his mother, working for Volkoff for 20 years undercover, out of his mind.
Corrine stopped, a determination on her face that stopped him short. "Everything within my power to make sure he never obtained it."
July 11, 2012
Oak Park, Illinois
"Ellie, this is going to take hours to configure. Not counting the test phases. Are you sure you should do this now?" Alex asked her, as they sat side by side in Ellie's office.
"I have to see if I'm right. If this was the answer all along. Getting her memory back, completely, was my goal, from the beginning. The Intersect in her head is dormant. We have time to deal with that later. If I'm wrong, then I need to go back to the drawing board. But here, while she's with us, is the safest place for me to try," Ellie insisted.
Ellie left her office, Alex trailing closely behind. Sarah was seated on the sofa, her feet raised on the coffee table. When Sarah turned at the sound of their approach, Ellie stopped, seeing the evidence that she had been crying. "Are you ok, Sarah?" Ellie asked.
She nodded, not trusting her voice to explain the things she had felt while she had been alone in Ellie's living room. Wary, but feeling the need to continue, Ellie said, "There's something I want to show you. Something that you remembered under hypnosis."
"Ok," she said hesitantly, not remembering herself what Ellie was referring to. Ellie reached out and handed Sarah the folded page from the magazine.
Sarah started to unfold it, a strange sensation that time had slowed down almost distorting her vision. She saw the Japanese characters on the paper, felt her heart start racing. Line by line, the drawing made in sharpie came into focus. She gasped loudly, then Ellie watched as her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped sideways on the couch.
Alex rushed forward, grabbed her, propped her back up against the cushions on the back of the sofa. "Ellie, what happened?" Alex asked in concern.
Ellie was overcome with emotion, unable to answer her for a moment. If only they had known what had happened, really happened, the solution to the problem of Sarah's memory loss had been simple. But they hadn't. It had taken all these months to learn, to understand the true nature of the program her father had designed. But now she knew, better late than never. She had regained so much of her memories already, to the point where this may have not even been necessary. No matter what, making Sarah whole again had always been the ultimate goal.
"She had control, even when she didn't know she did, like Chuck did before. She somehow locked the Intersect down, almost subconsciously, so it suppressed her memories, before he could remove them all. She focused on things he didn't know. Things that someone as twisted and heartless as he was couldn't possibly understand," she affirmed.
Ellie stepped forward, sitting gently on the other side of her. "Sarah?" she asked.
In an instant, Sarah came awake with a start. She sat forward, placing a hand on each of the woman's arms who surrounded her. She made a strange sound, a guttural cry from deep inside her. Both hands steepled over her mouth, and she was softly crying. Inside her head, the pearls of memory that she had been collecting all these months were all suddenly now linked together with a chain, all in the correct order, with nothing missing, not any longer.
Ellie could feel her trembling under her hand, waited what seemed like an eternity until Sarah acknowledged her name being spoken. The woman Ellie saw, when Sarah pulled her hands away from her face, was completely different. No, not different. In actuality, Ellie realized she was looking at Sarah, as she had always been before. The Sarah she had been before her memory was erased. Chuck's Sarah. It was in her eyes, the curve of her mouth, the set of her expression. Even as she had been getting better, her uncertainty had always left her somewhat off, reminding everyone that she wasn't back to normal.
Ellie started laughing, so relieved she felt giddy. Not a magical kiss, no, but close, closer than any of them had ever imagined. "Are you ok, Sarah?" Ellie asked quietly.
She put one hand against her abdomen, the other on her heart as it continued pounding like a drum. "Yes," she gushed. "Finally, yes, I am." The picture, lying on the coffee table, as Alex had pulled it away when Sarah passed out, was in her line of sight. Whispering, she added, "I promised him I wouldn't forget that. That was the last thing I said to him, before he left the train car and we got separated."
Both of Sarah's hands laid flat against her chest, like she was holding something inside that was trying to burst free, and she was crying again. "Chuck," she breathed, pain saturating the words. "I can't believe what I...oh," she stopped, choking on her words. It was all the pain she knew she had inadvertently caused him during all this time, bouncing off her insides now as the truth was suddenly clear.
"He loves you, Sarah. No matter what," Ellie said, knowing it was more than that, a thousand different words in a thousand different conversations, but all that was necessary here.
Ellie pulled her into a comforting hug. "I can't believe this is over. Really over," Alex said in awe.
"Almost," Ellie said softly. "When my brother gets back."
July 12, 2012
Bucharest, Romania
"Wasn't that a job for the CIA?" Chuck asked, still teetering on the edge, the entire picture not yet in view.
Her eyes hardened like ice, a liquid venom in her voice when she hissed back at him, "The CIA was 100% to blame for all of it, and what did they do? Pretend like it never existed! Left us out in the field alone. Four years, I begged them every day, and they did nothing! Until I had to run, and leave my daughter…" Her breath caught, only for a second, as she pulled it back inside.
Thinking this was an opportune time to let this information be known, Chuck said, "Vivian."
Corrine's eyes flew open wide, the whites of her eyes visible on all sides around her green irises. "How...how…" she stammered.
"It's time to clear the air, Corrine," Chuck said, realizing he had shocked her again with the use of her real name. "A lot has happened since you disappeared. I know all about Project X, Agent X, and what happened. The mistake my father made that caused so much damage. Between my mother and what I found out on my own."
"It wasn't your father's fault, you know that, right?" she said softly. "He blamed himself, but he was pressured. He knew it wasn't ready. He did it to help me, in the end."
"To help your husband," Chuck said sympathetically. "He never gave up on Hartley, and neither did my mother. He left it for me to solve, when he died."
She covered her face with her hand, covering the tears she could not hold back. "Is he still alive? The last I heard he was in CIA custody, but that doesn't always mean he's living."
Chuck, Casey, and Morgan all exchanged confused glances. She was completely unaware, although, he thought, how could she have known? Hartley and Vivian had escaped, essentially disappeared off the face of the earth.
"The CIA removed the Intersect. Alexei Volkoff is gone forever. I met your husband. He ended up helping me save my wife's life," Chuck said softly, preparing himself to have to tell her, later, why Sarah's life had been in danger in the first place.
May 15, 2012
Moscow, Russia
"I need the antidote. Please, Sarah's running out of time," Chuck pleaded, as they stood there, pondering all the effects of the past few minutes.
"Hurry, Charles," Hartley said, walking him to the door. "I'll get you to the lab."
"What made you reconsider helping me?" Chuck asked as he cleared the door to Vivian's office, on the way to the lab where the iridium 6 was stored.
Sheepishly, something Chuck still was astonished to see from the once malevolent man, he confessed, "A lot of things, I guess." He paused. "Mostly about my friend—my best friend—your father," he said. "We were close, Charles. Two peas in a pod."
It was a strange metaphor, but it turned up the corner of Chuck's mouth just the same. "Your sister was just a baby, you know, when he designed the first Intersect. He and Mary and…" He never finished the sentence. He took a deep breath and continued, "We were a team. A great team. But Stephen always said he regretted staying a spy, after they had children. You and your sister, and your mother, meant everything to him."
It still could stab deeply, when he thought of his father, and the tragedy he had endured despite his heroism.
Stopping as he opened the door to the lab, Hartley confessed, "I can't be the cause of this happening again. I can't let my daughter become what I almost turned her into. I can't let her take from you what I took from your father. You love Sarah, I can see it on your face even when I say her name. I let everyone down before. I can't do it again."
In no time he had the antidote in hand, holding it out for Chuck. "If it's not too late, this will counteract the effects of the poisoning," he declared, watching Chuck blanch at even the mention that this may not be in time to make a difference. "The other half is delivery. I still have some influence here, it seems. I'll get you what you need, get you back to Los Angeles."
"The CIA is trying to take me back into custody. I have to get past them to get this to Sarah," he fretted.
"You gave up your new lives, by helping Vivian and I. The least-"
Chuck cut him off. "Without her, it doesn't matter. Nothing does."
Humbled again in the face of such utter devotion, Hartley was moved. "You are your father's son, Charles. Never forget that." At Chuck's weak smile, Hartley added, "My last act as head of Volkoff Industries will be to make sure you have enough firepower to get through."
"Thank you," he said sincerely.
"No, thank you, Charles. For giving me my life back," Hartley said with a soft smile.
"That was all my father ever wanted, Hartley."
July 12, 2012
Bucharest, Romania
"Removed?" she asked, utter astonishment apparent on her face. "The only removal method I know of was programmed by your father. He sent it to me, in Russia. Volkoff intercepted it, and I spent years trying to get it away from him. Poshenko did. That's why I found him," she admitted.
"Suppressed I guess the correct word is, then," Chuck replied.
"Stephen tried to make a suppression device, but it didn't work," she said in confusion.
Making a decision at that instant, he added, "That version was stored in my father's spy base. It worked on me," he said.
Too many questions floating around her in her bewilderment, it took several beats for her to decide which question to ask first. "You have the Intersect?"
"He did," Morgan answered for him, as Chuck turned and gave him a reproachful look for butting in.
"I do," Chuck corrected him. "I've had three different versions of my father's original design."
"Dude?" Morgan asked, both confused and slightly hurt. "How the hell did that happen?"
"Sarah killed Quinn before he downloaded it. I downloaded it, to diffuse the bomb," he said quietly.
As Morgan seemed to struggle with this new information, Corrine surprised him again by saying, "Nicholas Quinn?"
Dumbfounded, Chuck answered her with a statement he posed as a question. "Yes…"
"Who is Sarah?" Corrine asked.
"My wife," Chuck said softly.
"Thank her, the next time you see her," Corrine deadpanned. Chuck's eyes widened, but he said nothing.
Getting back to her original question, Corrine asked, seemingly out of nowhere, "Did he remember being Volkoff, when it was suppressed?"
"No, he lost thirty years of his life," Chuck told her.
She looked away, crying and not wanting them to see. "Where is Vivian?" she asked, afraid of what he would say, but believing he knew based on his earlier comments.
"With him. With your husband."