A/N: So, last chapter, the kiss didn't work. Sarah told Chuck she had to leave to find herself again. She said she'll come back if she remembers, but he shouldn't wait for her. This chapter we find out what happens to Sarah straight after leaving.

Thanks for the reviews for chapter 1. A common wish is for them to get back together as soon as possible. Well, they will get back together, but it won't be for a while. So many unhappy or angry songs to get through!

I'm always interested in how people see things differently. Personally, I never bought the "selfless Chuck" image; he often didn't seem to care about Sarah as much as she did him. She was also constantly battling with her own insecurities and fears, which seem to get ignored. So, here she's been hurt far more than him and needs time to recover. Being on her own is all she remembers, so naturally falls back to that. Be kind to her.

Again, beta free. Everything you find wrong with it, all my fault.

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck or the lyrics I have used, but I really like all that Peter Gabriel wrote.

After You

Chapter 2 – I Don't Remember

I got no papers show you what I am
You'll have to take me just the way that you find me
What's gone is gone and I do not give a damn
Empty stomach, empty head
I got empty heart and empty bed
I don't remember
I don't remember

I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything at all
I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything
-anything at all

"I Don't Remember"
Peter Gabriel

She'd decided not to leave straight away and had checked into a hotel at the airport.

Now she is lying on the hotel bed, trying, unsuccessfully, to get to sleep.

She's been awake since she'd arrived, all the rest of the day and now into the night. Thinking. Thinking about what she had done in the last fortnight. Thinking about who she'd hurt in that time. Thinking how stupid she'd been, believing the crap story Quinn had told her. Thinking about him. Chuck. Thinking about the kiss.

What she couldn't think was what had happened in the five goddamn missing years. All she knew was the tale Chuck had told her. But those were his memories. They weren't her memories. She had no memories. They just felt like a story to her. One she could have read in a book. A fairytale, for God's sake!

That wasn't true, though. She wouldn't believe in a fairytale. She really does believe him. In a way, she wishes she didn't. Moving forward would be so much easier if she didn't.

She is now wishing she hadn't asked him to tell her their story. Ignorance would be better than almost knowing something, but not remembering it.

God! This is awful!

Not being able to sleep, she rises from the bed and grabs a pen and notepaper the hotel had provided. She'd capture what she does know and see if that would help her decide what to do. Then she rethinks what she is about to do. She'll capture it on her laptop. She puts the pen down and pulls her laptop out of her bag.

First thing she needs to capture is what Chuck had told her about their lives together. These aren't her thoughts. Not her memories, so she wants to capture those while she still remembers them.

That thought makes her wince. She shouldn't forget them, but she no longer fully trusts her memory, her brain.

So, Chuck's story. She starts, as he had, with a guy who worked in the Buy More. He had received an email from someone that used to be a friend. Bryce Larkin. Her old partner. Who is now dead.

She sits back and thinks about what Quinn had said about Bryce. That Chuck Bartowski had killed him. Now that she has spent time with Chuck, and even hunted Quinn down with him, she can see how preposterous that idea really is. Chuck hates guns. Hates blood even. He would never kill someone.

She shakes her head. This isn't getting her anywhere. Back to the notes.

Then she realizes that Chuck never mentioned dates. Dates when things happened. That's not good! How can she build a picture of the events without dates?

Then she remembers her mission log. If she correlates his story with her log, she'll build a more complete picture. She rushes to her case and retrieves the disc and loads in her laptop, in a separate window.

She spends the next hour capturing and correlating up to the point her log ended. She can't go further with the correlation, but she still needs to capture what he said, so she spends another hour doing that.

She leans back and stretches. Then she looks back at the notes and tries to remember what she was doing before these events.

She remembers her last mission with Bryce and how he abandoned her. She remembers getting back to the States after that, but nothing after that.

Looking at the dates in her notes, she realizes there is a missing three months between her memories and the start of the events in her mission log. What was that? What had happened then?

She has no way of working that out, so she would have to park it, but this exercise had at least highlighted that anomaly.

She walks over to the kitchen area and boils the kettle to make a coffee. While waiting, she tries to decide what to capture next. She settles on what she'd done over the last couple of weeks. That would also capture who she'd hurt in that time.

Carrying her coffee over to the desk, she starts to capture what had happened over that two week period.

She woke, in that hotel room in Maison23. Quinn had told her his lies, which she stupidly just accepted.

She stops and remembers those lies.

1. She had been on a 5 year mission

That was the first thing that she should have doubted! She was never assigned missions that lasted that long. It didn't play to her skills. Then she thinks about what Chuck had told her. She believes Chuck. He had also told her she had been with him for five years and for at least three, maybe four, of those had been one mission. The Bartowski mission. Then she remembers what else he had mentioned. They were a team who went on missions. Missions within that larger mission. God, this makes her head hurt!

She decides to move on, to the other lies.

2. In Quinn's mission, she had been observing an enemy, Chuck Bartowski. She had conned him and married him to complete this mission

Another bullshit lie! She had done seduction missions, but would never have married a target! She would never have even have sex with one, unlike her old friend Carina. If she had married him, she couldn't have avoided sex! She should have immediately doubted that one!

3. Bartowski had killed Larkin and Graham
At the time, that could have been believable, but as she sits thinking about it again, she knows there was more wrong with this statement than just Chuck never being able to kill anyone.

If she was with Chuck, how could he have killed them both. And even if he had killed them before she got to him, her mission would have been to kill this murderer, not move in with him for five years!

4. She now had to kill him and get a pair of glasses from him

Why? After five years and marrying him, why did she now have to kill him all of a sudden? Why not before? And where had he gotten the glasses from if she was with him all the time?

God! How could she have been taken in with all that crap?

Anyway, somehow she had, and then started on the mission. She needs to take the notes again.

She'd gone to his apartment. Their apartment. She'd looked for these glasses and found them, but they weren't 'loaded', so she still needed to do that. She couldn't just kill him, unless she had working glasses. So, she had joined his teams' mission to destroy the Intersect.

That was another thing. Why was he trying to destroy it, rather than use it, if he was the enemy?

Anyway, she'd eventually managed to load the glasses and takes his friend, Morgan, hostage. Chuck had pleaded with her to let them go because their relationship was real. She'd locked them in a room and placed a bomb just outside. She'd questioned Quinn on why they didn't hand them over as traitor, but Quinn had just set off the bomb remotely.

She'd been furious with Quinn for that, but gave him the glasses anyway. Ones which Chuck had switched while pleading with her. He was good. She also realized that Chuck hadn't died in the explosion, so the mission was still on.

She'd then gotten to his sister, who she threatened.

She pauses her note taking. She'd threatened to kill his sister! Thank God Ellie Bartowski was able to con her and crash the car!

She'd then woken, tied to a chair facing the supposed murderer. Her doubts started when he talked to her. His voice soothed her somehow and his facts did seem believable, but she'd just mocked him! Then they started fighting. No, she started fighting, he wouldn't fight back. She'd pushed him down the stairs! She'd hurt him. He was still unwilling to fight, which just made her mad. She grabbed a gun and was going to shoot, when she saw their names carved on a door frame. She'd remembered carving it.

She stopped again. She'd remembered something. It was her first memory to come back. She needed to keep this in mind. If one memory returns, they all can.

Quinn arriving and confirming Chuck's story still shocked her. Then Chuck had dived in front of her. Taking a bullet for her. Saving her.

Once she was back at the hotel and getting ready to escape, Casey had brought her mission logs which she watched and she believed everything Chuck had said.

Then they went on a mission to get Quinn and kill him. She had wanted to go alone, but they'd persuaded her they should all go.

After killed Quinn, there was the bomb and Chuck putting on the glasses and saving everyone instead of helping her regain her memories.

Then her decision to leave and that beach conversation.

And the kiss.

She had said the kiss was great, and it was. She could still feel it on her lips. She also knew if she'd stayed, she would have wanted more kisses. Then she would have wanted to stay with him. Chuck and his beautiful eyes and wonderful lips. She'd give herself up to him. She'd relinquish control of her life. That was what scared her the most.

So why hadn't she already left LA?

If she went back to him, she knew he would help her with her memories. She really wants to get her memories back, but nothing seems to be coming.

Thinking about his help, Sarah realizes that if she went back to him, nothing may come to her and the only memories would be his. She'd be living a lie.

She made up her mind. She had to get back to something she knew. She had to return to the CIA.

At the moment, she doesn't even have an identity. Everything would be with him. She'd be Sarah Bartowski. She isn't that person. She is Sarah Walker.

She does have contact details for General Beckman, though. She'd contact her in the morning to get some valid id and get the General to help reintroduce Sarah Walker to the new CIA Director. And she'd tell her not to tell Chuck Bartowski about any of this. She doesn't want to upset him further.

Having made the decision, she is finally able to lie back down and get some sleep.

She dreams of a gorgeous man with brown eyes and kissable lips. A man she could spend the rest of her life with. A man who loves her, in spite of who she is. Somehow this helps her sleep.

A/N: In this version of their story, Quinn also removed the Ryker mission from her memories, so she doesn't know her Mom will know anything about her since she was seven.

Still upset with me? Leave a review and let me know what you think of this chapter.

As mentioned before, if you're not a member of the Chuck FanFiction Facebook group, think about signing up and grumbling about this fic there too!