The long awaited meeting between Chuck and Sarah. My first attempt at this was less brutal but it sent the story off in the wrong direction.

Chapter 4

When she regained consciousness cuffed and manacled to an operating table Sarah felt a brief wave of comforting nostalgia, like she was an agent in the field again. She moved her jaw experimentally and verified that the bruise she got after she stabbed her attacker wasn't a dream. A heavyset man with a buzz cut came in and landed some hard punches to her abdomen, cracking at least one rib, but didn't ask questions. She didn't really expect any, he was just softening her up for the main event. A blonde man was her next visitor, several hours later. He casually opened a medical bag and laid out his instruments, clearly a man who took pride in his work.

"Well now," he said with a cruel smile. "Are you ready for a chat? I'd like you to tell me a story. I'm interested in everything you know about a technology called 'The Intersect.'"

"That was years ago," Sarah replied truthfully. "Anything I can tell you is old news."

"Consider me a historian, then. I want to understand the early versions and you were there, were you not?" her interrogator was far too at ease for Sarah's liking. She thought about lying but decided her best defense was a poor memory. She wondered what accident she could tell him about that would have resulted in brain injury.

Sarah's reverie was broken by a sharp knock on the door. Her interrogator sighed and opened it. He was instantly greeted with what Sarah recognized as two shots fired from a pistol with a silencer. He crumpled to the ground and as his head ended up pointed in her direction, Sarah could see that the man had been shot through both eyes. A man in black walked in took out what looked like a water bottle with a large needle on one end. He wound up and stabbed the needle into one of the ruined eye sockets with brutal force, then shoved the body against the wall. As the attacker stood and turned toward her she was shocked to see that it was Chuck.

Chuck pulled a tool off his belt and made short work of the restraints. As he helped her to her feet she winced in pain. "Can you walk?" he asked. It wasn't the voice of the man she remembered. It was the voice of a squad leader evacuating troops under fire, not really interested in her condition beyond what was relevant to the logistics of moving her.

"Yeah," Sarah affirmed. "Broken rib, can't run but fully mobile."

Chuck hustled her out, stopping to take down two guards converging on them with trank darts. Something inside Sarah just melted at the sight of Chuck using a trank gun. They met up with a handsome young man with long jet black hair pulled back in a ponytail, shepherding Carina and Zondra. They exited the building and passed another corpse with a water bottle stuck in his eye socket. The corpse looked somehow familiar but the water bottle was doing something awful to the face and it was only vaguely human. Sarah, Carina, Zondra and the young man piled into the back of an armored limo Sarah recognized as belonging to Grandmother Shang. Chuck got behind the wheel and they were off.

As they sped along, Carina asked the young man, "So what's your story, tall dark and handsome?"

"I work for Signore," he shrugged and extended his hand, "He calls me Vincenzo."

"Carina," she accepted his hand with a smile, gripping and pulling hard. Vincenzo executed a twist and slip and Carina's elbow struck Zondra's shoulder.

Before Zondra could protest, Vincenzo's other hand lashed out grabbing a handful of Carina's shirt and bringing her face right up to his own. He raised an eyebrow and smiled, holding her for a moment, then kissed the tip of her nose before letting her go.

"Hey you kids," Chuck scolded. "Am I going to have to pull this car over?"

"No papa, we'll behave," Vincenzo said, making a face at Carina.

Chuck soon brought the limo into a garage beneath a large office building. He took them to a private elevator and when they came to the floor he had selected, a nurse took Sarah off to tend to her injuries. An attendant guided them to a lounge and took drink orders.

"Zondra and Carina have a decision to make," Chuck said seriously. "At this point, you've both been abducted by one group, then abducted again by Vincenzo and myself. Now you can either leave and have some deniability or stay voluntarily and be considered part of my team by your initial abductors. As I already told Zondra, the other team are CIA working off book."

"Fuck the CIA, I'm staying," Carina said. "Besides, I think I'd like a chance to go another round with Vinnie here."

Vincenzo grinned, clearly looking forward to the opportunity.

"I'm in too," Zondra said. "It's not like I'd have much deniability after you told Grandmother Shang I was your friend anyway." Carina raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing.

"Glad to hear it," Chuck smiled. "I'll be back as soon as I check on Sarah."

Sarah's nurse had just finished with her when Chuck walked in.

"Um, thanks for rescuing me, Chuck," Sarah started uncertainly. She looked up at him, remembering the last time she saw him. She remembered 'Defending the Nest' and Zondra describing his expression then. Now the deep brown eyes she remembered were a bottomless well of pain. He looked away.

"Damn. I hoped two and half years might have taken the edge off," Chuck said quietly. "You don't owe me any thanks, Sarah. Technically I didn't rescue you. You can consider yourself my prisoner."

Why was he holding her prisoner? Was he angry she had rejected him? No, his expression held plenty of pain but no anger. Was he planning to turn her in for the reward? That would explain the pain. That must be it. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for weapons.

"I heard what Von Hausor asked you, Sarah," Chuck explained. "You were abducted by Ring agents who want to recreate the intersect. You know the standard CIA playbook. If an unaffiliated informant has critical intelligence being sought by the enemy..."

"Eliminate the informant," Sarah finished automatically, her blood ran cold. "So you're going to kill me?"

"Of course not, Sarah," Chuck said patiently. "But I can't have you running around where you can be picked up by the Ring and mined for information about the Intersect either."

She breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't going to turn her in. So where was the pain in his eyes coming from? He talked about two and half years so it must have been pain from their last meeting, when she refused to go to Rome with him. She HAD to say something. "I never meant to hurt you, Chuck," Sarah's words came awkwardly.

He stared at her hard, then turned and grabbed a penlight. He took a close look at each eye then frowned as he gazed at her thoughtfully. "I understand that what you said wasn't meant to hurt me," Chuck said with quiet firmness. "Your job was to destroy me. You needed to burn all that I had been to the ground so I could be made into something else."

Sarah was stunned. She couldn't process what Chuck was saying.

"Looking back it should have been obvious," Chuck said with a shrug. "It's the way basic training works. You have to tear them down and build them back up again. My emotions and my qualms about killing people were keeping me from being the spy the CIA wanted me to be so they had to go."

Sarah thought back to that time. She remembered the intense debates she had with Daniel in DC. She argued that Chuck wasn't ready to be a spy. She was certain he was already being pushed to the breaking point. Daniel argued that the only thing keeping Chuck from being a spy was her and her refusal to challenge him. He tried to soften the intense disagreements in their working sessions by wining and dining her in the evenings. He told her he understood she was being protective of Chuck because she cared about him. He reminded her that caring too much could compromise her judgement. He asked her to consider Chuck's career and how awful she would feel if she were the one keeping him from being the spy he wanted to be. In the end their argument came down to the final exam. She was certain Chuck wasn't ready. Daniel was adamant that he was. Chuck's red test proved Daniel was right and she was wrong.

"I still don't know how you were able to put those qualms aside and pass your red test," Sarah shook her head, remembering her disbelief.

Chuck winced, looking like he had been struck by a sudden headache. "My red test was traumatic but it was a LONG way from breaking me," he sighed. "I didn't really break until you told me you couldn't trust me or work with me any more."

That couldn't be true, Sarah told herself. It HAD to be the red test. She remembered what her red test had done to her. That had to have been Chuck's breaking point. Then she started to remember bits and pieces of the debates in DC. Daniel had repeatedly insisted that Chuck had to stand on his own two feet, that he would never really be a spy if he knew Sarah were there to catch him when he fell. He came back to that point again and again. Sarah realized that he had just been repeating what he said in his initial assessment. Sarah was the reason Chuck washed out of spy school. It hadn't really made sense to her at the time but now it all came into focus.

The sweet nerd herder she had fallen in love with would have been eaten alive by the CIA. She told him to trust her that day on the beach and she had earned that trust as his protector for two and a half years. She did the things that needed to be done and he somehow managed to continue seeing the best in people despite all the lies, deception and fear for his life. He had been in WAY over his head the whole time but he didn't drown. He always found a way to survive and stay himself against all odds. Then she betrayed that trust in the most brutal way imaginable. She had refused to talk to him when he desperately needed a friend after the trauma of his red test. She remembered his anguish when she refused to join his team. No the red test really hadn't broken him. The distraught man she refused to join and turned her back was still her Chuck. Her Chuck didn't die until she murdered him by telling him she couldn't trust him any more.

Sarah lurched to the floor and managed to vomit into a wastebasket. She continued to heave long after she stopped being able to bring anything up. Eventually she lost consciousness. As she drifted she heard sharp guttural tones and found herself in a bright room. Bryce and Chuck were playing a holographic video game and speaking Klingon to each other. They saw her and paused their game, greeting her cheerfully. They each gave her a big hug and she felt very loved.

"What is this place?" Sarah asked.

"It's heaven obviously," Bryce teased her. "Where else would you find two dead guys playing holographic video games?"

"But you're not dead," she said to Chuck staring at his familiar pocket protector with his Nerd Herd badge.

"There is still a version of me walking the earth but the CIA put a stake through the heart of this version," Chuck pointed to himself. "No extra lives, no respawn."

"I really miss you guys," she blurted without thinking.

"We really miss you too," said Chuck fervently.

"We wish you could stick around but I don't think the Big Guy is going to allow it," Bryce added with regret.

She felt hands grip her ankles and pull her sharply down. She fell for quite a while before hitting the ground with a sickening thud. She was surprised to find she had no broken bones and could actually stand. Lt Frank Mauser greeted her with a smug grin. "Welcome to Fulcrum HQ," he drawled.

Ted Roark sat at the head of a long table of revelers. He stood and shouted, "Someone get this lady a drink!"

A waiter handed her glass of deep red wine and Mauser said, "Go on, drink up!"

She took a sip and was revolted to find the glass was filled with blood. She spat it out in disgust.

"Careful, Sarah," Mauser said with a smirk. "You don't want to offend our host." A giant horned figure stood forth and pointed at her. Flames sprang from the ground and she could smell her own flesh burning. She awoke with a scream.

"Easy Sarah, it's OK," Zondra said, squeezing her hand. "You're safe."

Sarah pulled her friend to her and gratefully wrapped herself around Zondra. The memory of her meeting with Chuck hit her and her body spasmed in pain. Zondra made soothing noises and stroked her back. It was a long time before Sarah felt able to let go of her friend.

"I honestly thought I could never feel worse than I did when I realized Shaw had burned me," Sarah said, shaking her head in exhaustion.

"It's OK," Zondra said. "You survived. Chuck survived. You live and you learn, right?"

Sarah gave Zondra a look so dark she took a step back. Sarah was surprised, that wasn't something Zondra ever did.

"His body may have survived but I killed the man I loved," Sarah growled. "He trusted me and I destroyed him."

"Charles said you were probably going to need some serious therapy," Zondra said quietly. "I told him he didn't know you as well as he thought. Now I'm starting to think I'm the one who doesn't know you as well as I though. Are you thinking about hurting yourself?"

Sarah hadn't really thought about it but now that Zondra brought it up, the idea definitely had some appeal. "Maybe," she admitted.

"Don't do it, Sarah," Zondra said earnestly. "Everyone here wants you to get through this."

"Even Chuck?" Sarah asked darkly.

"ESPECIALLY Charles," Zondra emphasized. "I've never seen him this intense. It's kinda scary. He's here if you want to talk to him but he thought you'd rather not see him right now."

"He thought right," Sarah nodded. "Not unless he wants to see me hurt myself."

"He wants to take us to a place he owns in Italy where he can get you some help," Zondra told her. "I offered to stay with you for as long as you need me to."

"I'll do whatever he wants," Sarah said dully. "God knows I owe the man more than I can ever repay."

Zondra got them to bring in some tea for Sarah. She sat with her for long while occasionally speaking in low tones about mundane trivia in the life of Family Shang. Eventually a nurse came in to sit with Sarah and Zondra took her leave, promising to return soon.

Zondra, Carina, Vincenzo and Chuck met up in the lounge. The mood was subdued. Chuck said, "I need to give everyone some background on my relationship with Sarah so you can understand what's going on now."

"It all started five years ago when a mild mannered nerd herder working at a Buy More got an email from his old college roommate. The email contained a huge number of specially encoded pictures in a video. When the nerd herder watched it, the encoded images downloaded the entire database of everything known to the CIA and the NSA into his brain. The program was called the Intersect and for the next two years, whenever the mild mannered nerd herder saw anything in the Intersect database, he would recall all associated information. He became the primary asset of a joint CIA/NSA task force. The nerd herder was myself and Sarah was my handler."

"One of the original developers of the Intersect project was an agent code named Orion. Soon after the project was completed Orion left the CIA and went underground. He was constantly hunted because his skill with computers was cutting edge. Orion was my father, Steven Bartowski. His partner in the original Intersect research was Ted Roark of Roark Industries."

"Nearly two years after I downloaded the intersect, Ted Roark was preparing to launch a new operating system that would covertly gather information from computers worldwide. He planned to use a new version of the intersect that he had developed to download that information into his operatives. Unfortunately his intersect didn't work. He managed to capture Orion and coerce him into fixing his intersect but Orion switched the working version of the Intersect 2.0 with a separate program he had created to remove the Intersect 1.0 from my brain. A desperate battle ended with Roark and the Intersect 2.0 in the custody of our joint task force. The CIA assigned Bryce Larkin as the recipient of the Intersect 2.0. Before it could be uploaded, our least favorite villains, the Ring, infiltrated our base and killed Roark. Ring agents took the place of the escorts that brought Larkin to the upload room. We figured out what was happening and I managed to get to the upload room as Bryce was bleeding out with the Ring beating on the door. He gave me a program to destroy the Intersect 2.0 to keep it out of their hands and at the spur of the moment, I made the rash decision to upload it to my brain before destroying it. The new Intersect included not just information but physical skills programming which was good because it enabled me to overcome the Ring agents after they forced their way into the upload room."

"The intelligence community was not well pleased that it was me and not Larkin who ended up with the Intersect 2.0 but they made the best of a bad situation and built a multimillion dollar training facility for me. Sarah knew I was too emotional and compassionate to be a spy. She begged me to go on the run with her. I stupidly bought into the CIA/NSA propaganda that I could save a lot of lives as an agent and refused. Predictably, I washed out. I couldn't access the intersect when I got too emotional and I couldn't complete a kill order. After leaving me on ice for a month I discovered my old team was still operating near my home and I inserted myself into one of their missions. General Beckman ended up attaching me back to the team. Eventually they brought in a special agent to train me. My new trainer made it a priority to isolate me from my old team and put me in sink or swim situations. It was brutal but effective. The culmination of my training was my red test. Sarah gave me the order but didn't think I would be able to complete it. When I killed my target quite thoroughly I became a field operative and was posted to Rome. I begged Sarah to come with me but she told me she could no longer trust me after seeing me complete my red test. She added that she had absolutely no interest in ever working with me again."

"Losing Sarah completed the 'break them down' part of my basic training. I was emotionally numb and there was nothing to interfere with my access to the intersect. The CIA built me up into the spy they wanted in the first place. Sarah had assumed that I had been completely broken down when I passed my red test and bought the line that she was holding back my career as a spy. When we reconnected yesterday I told her the truth, that despite my red test I could have recovered if she hadn't turned her back on me. So she's feeling a lot of guilt. This story is relevant to recent events in that the Ring are currently trying to recreate the Intersect and Sarah's two and a half years working with me make her an invaluable information source."

"It's been two and half years, Chuckie. Don't you think it's about time you got over it?" Carina asked scornfully. "You didn't need to dump that on her."

Chuck narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. Vincenzo exploded from his seat and was standing between Chuck and Carina saying, "Signore, please!"

"Alright Vincenzo, for you," Chuck nodded. Vincenzo sank gratefully into a nearby chair, still halfway between the two but relaxed.

"What the hell just happened?" Carina demanded.

"Vincenzo knows my tells too well," Chuck admitted apologetically. "I was thinking unpleasant thoughts. I apologize. It was very rude of me. I disagree with your assessment, by the way. Sarah could see the pain in me. I could have tried to hide the truth but in my experience covering up the true source of pain only allows it to fester. It's always better in the long run to simply be honest."

"So you're not looking to inflict a little pain of your own?" Carina asked skeptically.

"God no," Chuck replied emphatically. "Lugging emotional baggage over that kind of distance is exhausting. I'm not a Sadist. I might not be able to be around Sarah without feeling pain but I sure as hell wouldn't wish anything like that on her."

Chuck's eyes lit with grim fury as he added, "My pain was cold-bloodedly inflicted on me by the CIA to turn me into a more effective resource. If I ever start looking for vengeance it will be General Beckman and her superiors who pay."

"I guess I'm glad I'm not General Beckman then," Carina said.

"Me too," Vincenzo added fervently.