Posted August 25, 2021

A/N: One Last Mission. No problem. Right… Right? Don't freak out.

Sarah's a Bartowski now. Is she actually going to stay in the car?

November 8, 2014
DARPA Headquarters
Los Angeles, CA

Chuck crawled through the air duct. Crawling through air ducts was one of the things that spies (and their assets) did a lot. It wasn't comfortable for a tall person's knees or shoulders. He was lucky he was only a spy (and asset) for a handful of years and didn't have to do this much. One of the problems was he didn't have something attractive to look at. Most other assets probably didn't have to crawl through air ducts. Sarah always told him that he wasn't normal. Sometimes there were perks like a tandem shower at the end. Maybe tonight. He could get Sarah to stop at the store for some Rootin' Raspberry powdered fruit juice.

When he reached his destination, he released the sleeping toxin from the canister he had been lugging, through an air vent and into the room below. He didn't know if it would work, more than two and a half years after the last time he did this. However, the government kept doing the same thing over and over with Intersect rooms that kept blowing up, so it was worth a try.

Chuck heard someone below say, "Not again," before he heard several bodies hit the ground. No alarms for a foreign substance in the air. Seemed like it worked. He knocked out a ceiling tile and dropped to the floor of the room below.

While he waited in a gas mask for the device he held to say the air was clear, he heard Sarah in his ear. "What was that Chuck? Are you alright? Do you need me to come in? Or should I stay in the car? I can stay in the car."

Chuck tried to keep the frustration out of his voice when he said, for the eighth time in the last five minutes, "I'm alright, Sarah."

"What was that noise? Did you flash?"

Did he flash? Of course he didn't flash. "No, I didn't flash. I haven't seen anything to flash on. I just successfully released the toxin into the same lab we hit last time." Chuck did show some sense by not saying, "That was right before you betrayed us." That was after Sarah lost her memories, so she remembered everything from then. She simply didn't know any better at the time. Speaking about the so-called "security experts" in charge of making sure these scientists had a safe work environment, he did say, "They never learn. Carmichael Industries specializes in computer security, but there's a lot to do in physical security. We know that from when you break into computer data centers and install our devices to let me hack in more easily. I'm not surprised they've ever caught you, but I'm a little surprised they've never found one, even months later. Now I just need to go to the place they are keeping the glasses."

According to the floor plans he had reviewed this morning, they were in a room off a hallway that started just before the Intersect room that Quinn blew up. The room he was in now was where all the cool toys were tested. Almost as if his wife could read his mind, she said, "No sightseeing. Just destroy the glasses and get out."

She couldn't have known what he was thinking about, but who knows? Sometimes it seemed like she could do that. Chuck said, "There's nothing here to see. It's just more of the same futuristic things. The glasses wouldn't be here. I don't see the grey ghost for the visibility cloak, but it's been a couple years, so maybe they've perfected it, and it's out in the field."

"Or maybe it's in the room but invisible, over the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone, the two other Deathly Hallows. You're not here for those."

Watching the Harry Potter movies with Sarah paid off. She didn't know the joke when Morgan made it the first time. Now she was riffing on it. "It's so sexy that you thought of that."

"That sounds fun, but mission first," Sarah said. What sounds fun? … Oh, sexy…sex. Yeah that. Sarah said, "Your heart rate just spiked. Are you ok Chuck?"

That was nine, but this should have been unexpected. Casey warned him three years ago. When he first "tried to get intel" on Gertrude and Sarah quarterbacked from the car in the van, she could tell Casey's heart rate increased after seeing his future girlfriend. For Chuck, having Sarah talking in his year was bound to do the same thing. It'd be a much bigger jump for Casey, concerning how repressed he was and how not repressed Chuck was. But with Sarah, it's not like he could control his emotions like that.

"It's through these doors," he said. He had to put a stop to that train of thought in which he was constantly thinking about the sexy woman in his ear, so he could focus on what he came to do. Chuck said to Sarah, "I'm going to go radio silent."

"Why would you do that?"

Why would he do that? Isn't that what spies did all the time? He explained to her, "It's like Alias, when Sydney was a double agent at SD-6 for the CIA and was about to get a Rambaldi artifact. She'd go radio silent in case anyone would detect her second signal, but in reality, she'd talk to her CIA handler, who was her future husband."

"But we're secure. Are you saying you're a double agent, or are you saying your other wife is in your other ear?"

If Chuck didn't know better, that was a joke. Sarah's dry humor was always funnier than she gave herself credit. "Of course not. I was never a married agent and that's the only type of 'double' agent I want to be. Yours. I'm not a single agent anymore, and I was only that for a couple months. You always made it very clear I wasn't an agent before that. We weren't really together anyway." He should stop talking before he put more of his foot in his mouth.

Fortunately, Sarah didn't dive into their time BC (before Charah). "You said Alias. That's some TV show, isn't it? Should we watch it together? Long series give us lots of time to snuggle and get distracted," Sarah hinted with a little suggestion in her voice.

As much as that would be fun, "No. You wouldn't like it." He shouldn't have brought it up. When that fictional spy went radio silent, she was probably breaking protocol. "It's a spy show. You'd had a fit over the protocols they broke left and right. It starts off fantastic, though by the last season, you are only watching to see what happens. In that season, they make the worst bad guy, who had reformed, be really bad again. They had him talking with some lame new bad guy who for some reason hadn't been around for the first four seasons, so there wasn't a point of including him. He wasn't a good bad guy anyway. Another villain in the show is the main character's mom. First, you thought she was KGB and evil. She shot her daughter like Mom shot me. Then you thought she was good, like Mom. Then she ended up being bad."

Sarah said, "I remember Alex telling me about this show when she explained that I should watch out for your mom, in case she was KGB. If so, she might end up being bad again. There was also a scene about the Alias spy fighting on a plane and falling out. I've done that, hitting my head and falling into the ocean. You're right. I don't need to see the fictional version."

Chuck had the biggest crush on Sydney Bristow when he was in college. Now he had more than a crush on someone much better who was real and his wife. Hearing her talk about fighting on a plane… Chuck had heard the story. That was right before Sarah came back into his life at the Buy More.

His heart rate had to have just doubled. He needed to stop listening to Sarah so he could focus on the mission and not her. He was only supposed to talk to her about this mission and not give her more chances to make him think about doing other things with her, so he turned off his earpiece and mic.

Sarah was probably flipping out, but she deserved that, after what she said last night. Any problems from here on out were all her fault, for saying what she said.

Chuck headed down the hall and came upon a door with a window over it—the same one Super-Sarah had broken through last time. It was vulnerable next to a locked door. Security's more important that aesthetics in a internal hallway in a top secret area. It wasn't much to look at anyway.

Through the door, on his handheld, Chuck checked for guards. He saw… no one. That was odd. He opened the door and saw just ahead that the main hall was blocked. Years later, they were still doing repairs. They probably hadn't had the budget to do them right after the Intersect room exploded, so they had just roped it off, leaving this area unguarded.

He walked down the open, empty hall to the right, to a door. It has a keypad and a hand scanner. That would work for most people, but they weren't expecting the one and only Intersect. Chuck stared at it and forced a flash. The flash told him the override code, so he punched it in and went inside. No handprint needed. That was surprisingly easy. Now for the point of the mission…

Out in the car

What was Chuck doing? Sarah thought.

She deserved this. She's the one who said, "One last mission," so she thought it best that she stay out of the mission to avoid the jinx. In a way, him being in the car was still him being an important part of the mission. She knew that, even if she didn't tell Chuck enough that he was important on every mission. That meant the jinx was still in effect, even though she was in the car. Chuck was the most important thing to her. She couldn't have anything happen to him. That meant the jinx was affecting her by doing something to him. Maybe she should stop thinking those words.

The one time she actually clearly remembered talking to Chuck about the car, Sarah remembered asking him why he didn't stay in the car. He justified his behavior by saying it's never safe in the car. He had just been hung off a construction site, but he was thrown inside while the bad guy escaped, and Chuck had what they were looking for. Still alive, she had wanted to to run her hands through his unkempt curls (his style at the time) and properly thank him for finishing the mission and staying alive.

Now she was in the car. With no word from Chuck, it didn't feel safe for her in the car, either.

Fortunately, Chuck's heartbeat monitor still worked. After she lost sound, his heartbeat had gone back to a normal level, and he freaked out about everything, so he had to be ok. After ten minutes of no sound from Chuck, though, she had had enough. Should she go in? Not yet. She started the car and slowly drove up to the front of the building, looking inside. She might find someplace to ditch the car and go in after him.

Slowly moving by the front entrance, Sarah looked into the lobby. There was Chuck! She stopped and waited as he casually walked out the front door like he didn't have a care in the world. At least he wasn't running from people that were chasing him. Something was wrong, though. He was wearing his black tactical suit where anyone could see him, but that wasn't the problem. He was wearing sunglasses. It was a mostly sunny afternoon, but the sun wasn't shining around this side of the building. Why would he be wearing sunglasses? This mission was about destroying sunglasses. He should never wear sunglasses like those.

Sarah didn't know what to do as Chuck walked up to the curb. She unlocked the passenger door, but Chuck didn't get in! He walked in front of the car and started toward the street. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous, but Sarah did the fastest thing she could to get Chuck's attention. She lightly honked the horn.

Chuck stopped and looked at her car. Then he ducked and looked through the driver's-side window, straight at her. She saw him mouth, "Wow!" Then he spoke loudly enough so she could hear. "Do I know you?"

The blood drained from Sarah's face. This was possibly the worst thing that could have happened. Chuck didn't remember her! When she didn't remember him, she did horrible things. She almost killed him. Then she left twice. Her future was only saved because the man she loved did exactly what she needed and said exactly what she needed to to hear.

Last time Chuck saved Sarah. This time it was her job to save him. She couldn't wait for weeks like Chuck did with her. She needed him now. There was only one thing she could think of that might work. She rolled down the window and told Chuck to get in.

A/N: Sarah stayed in the car, but it still didn't go well because that's never the safe thing to do. The worst thing that could happen to Sarah was for something to happen to Chuck. Chuck doesn't know Sarah, so now what?

Chuck and Sarah talked about Alias, so in case you're not familiar with the show… It was another spy show (2001-2006) with a post-Super Bowl show. (Chuck was a little different because it's show was the next day and was 3-D. Alias was the marquis show immediately after the game.) Since Alias was a spy show, Chuck and Sarah didn't (re)watch it together. That show started really well in its first episode, like Chuck did. It sunk really low by the end. (Imagine Sarah being off the show for a year while we thought she was dead.) The actor who played Casey's sensei was a regular on it. The poisoner/gymnast in "Chuck vs the Truth" was another regular. When Tuttle/Volkoff and Chuck were prisoners on the plane in "Chuck vs the First Fight," Tuttlef mentioned the Alias Super Bowl episode Most ironically, in its last season, the actor who played Quinn got Alias's biggest villain to work for that season's big evil cabal. In Chuck, he is more than merely a liaison like he was in that show.

Since Sarah didn't see the show, she doesn't know this, and maybe now Chuck doesn't.

Song: "One Last Mission" by Niklas Johansson