A/N For the benefit of those who don't know, there's a Facebook group for Chuck Fanfiction, and we'd love to have some new members.

From here out the story should get a little strange. It's taken me a month to get even a little handle on where it might go. Thanks to those of you who waited.

"I'm kissing you."

"Something called Project Beacon."

"We're the good guys."

"Mom?"

Chuck, Sarah, and Ellie piled into the bedroom where Chuck kept his computer. Chuck was looking at the tablet more than his route, flipping back and forth between the first new pictures of his mother that he'd seen in twenty years. "With all the people that all the governments of the world have on the case, I find it hard to believe that Turrini was the only one able to get pictures of Volkoff's agent." Sarah steered him into his chair, and he finally put the tablet down on the desk.

"What are you saying, Chuck?" asked Ellie as he brought his machine out of sleep mode, not as well-versed in the subtle nuances of spy-ese. She picked up the tablet to get her own look, now that her brother had finally let go.

"He's saying that someone's been protecting her," said Sarah, not wanting Chuck to be distracted from his goal. "Someone inside the CIA, who could intercept any images our agents managed to get." With 'master-spy Turrini' out of the picture there really weren't that many options left, and most of those were too unlikely.

"This guy Volkoff has a mole in the CIA too?" asked Ellie. Casey had, under orders, told her about the others. So many. "Are there any agents in the CIA who actually work for the CIA? Present company excepted, of course."

"Thanks," said Sarah. "Most of us are loyal, but since we've mainly been dealing with the ones who aren't since you met us, it's easy to get a skewed idea." She took the tablet and put a hand on Ellie's arm. "Come on, this will take even Chuck a while. I have to alert General Beckman."

"Actually, Sarah," said Chuck, calling up a fairly standard search engine. He typed a line of characters at lightning speed and hit 'Enter'. "I think it'll take about five minutes."

"What do you mean, Chuck?" asked Sarah, not well-versed in the subtle nuances of computer nerd-ese.

Chuck's computer beeped. "I mean," he said, "That I think it'll take less than a minute. The old Star Trek engineer gambit, works every time." The screen went black.

She must have missed that episode. Ellie seemed to be equally clueless. "The what?"

"Never tell them how long it'll really take," said Chuck. On the screen the words WHAT DO YOU NEED SON appeared.

"Who's that?" asked Ellie, feeling more and more left behind.

Chuck typed HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PROTECTING MOM, DAD and clicked enter.

"Our dad?" asked Ellie.

"Do we have another?" asked Chuck.

HOW DID YOU FIGURE IT OUT?

"How did you figure it out?" asked Ellie.

Chuck looked up at Sarah. "You want to take this one?"

"Sure," said Sarah. Chuck started typing out the highlights as she talked. She pointed at the image on the tablet. "Okay, A, that picture isn't anyplace a real spy would put it. B, there are no photos of her in places where real spies would put them, in our or any allied database. C, it's your mother, and your father is one of the greatest hackers in the world." Simple, really. Blazingly obvious, once you factor in the 'mother' angle.

CLEVER

"Thank you," said Chuck and Sarah together.

"He's WHAT?" shrieked Ellie. Something Casey hadn't gotten around to telling her.

I HEARD THAT

Chuck went to check his settings. "You have my microphone on?"

NO, BUT I'M IN THE SAME STATE

"That'd do it."

"No, it wouldn't, son," said Orion from the speaker. "Of course I have your microphone on. Hi Eleanor. Good evening, Sarah. Congratulations on the engagement."

Sarah smiled. "You're in favor?" He'd been so against them when they first met, but she guessed that being there to save Chuck that time must have thawed him a bit. Going from 'handler' to 'fiancee' was still a bit of a leap, though.

"You've kept my son alive when I couldn't," said Orion. She'd kept him alive too, but that wasn't what mattered. "How could I not be in favor?"

Old news, as far as Ellie was concerned. The engagement, at least. As for the rest, she filed those questions away for later. "You're a hacker, dad?" she asked.

"I wouldn't say so, Eleanor. Chuck's the hacker. I'm just a computer engineer doing what needs to be done."

Happy engagement-mood completely gone. "Who decides that?" asked Sarah, no longer smiling.

"Their mother," said Orion. "I've been a spy for twenty years, but only because I had to be. I did it all for her."

Not good enough, from Sarah's point of view. 'Her' in this case being the top agent for the world's most notorious arms dealer. True, the world hadn't blown up yet, but a little confirmation would be nice. "Why for her?"

"Because she's the spy," said Orion. "It's how we met."

Chuck looked at his fiancee, standing there, if not with a satisfied look on her face, at least a not-unsatisfied look. He was used to those. "Why does that scenario sound so familiar?"

Something sounding suspiciously like a chuckle, adjusted for bandwidth limitations, came over the speaker. "You're handling it better than me, that's for sure. I would never have done any of this if she hadn't needed me."

A computer engineer she could trust implicitly. "Needed you for what?"

"Her last mission."

Okay, 'mission' she sort of expected. Last mission, though...Sarah winced. "Oh, God."

Something sounding suspiciously like a groan, adjusted for bandwidth limitations, came over the speaker. "You know about those?"

She nodded. At a speaker. Who knew, maybe he had the camera on too. "Only hearsay at the moment, but what I hear said sounds pretty bad."

Ellie looked unhappy. "How bad?"

"Poorly-written soap opera."

Sarah pointed at the computer. "What he said."

Chuck shrugged. "Could be worse."

"How?" Disbelief has no bandwidth problems at all.

"Could be well-written. Soap operas are inherently evil, you know."

"I can agree with that," said Orion. "Her last mission and they send her to Russia to assassinate some crime boss."

"How is that CIA business?" asked Sarah. And what did that have to do with Volkoff?

"He was an arms dealer."

Eyes rolled. "Of course he was. No doubt she was tasked to get a list of his suppliers and customers before she deleted him, too."

"That's when she called me. Her target was using bleeding edge technology to keep his empire hidden. Still is. Haven't found the damn thing yet, and we've been trying for twenty years."

Abandonment. Abandonment. Betrayal. Abandonment. The Buy More. "Yeah, dad, we know how long you've been trying."

"Blame Roarke, don't blame me. Every time I got close to Volkoff, Roarke's goons would show up and I'd have to blow up my lab again. And did I mention Volkoff's obsessive upgrading? Made me start from scratch each and every damn time."

Chuck the spy heard something Orion the non-spy apparently did not. "Almost sounds deliberate."

"Except Volkoff kept promoting your mother. Why would he do that if he suspected us?" Orion paused. "Not to mention I checked. Roarke was a loose cannon in every sense."

"So that's where you went after the wedding," said Ellie.

Deep sigh. "I found myself wishing your mother could have been there, and realized with Roarke arrested I could operate freely. This system Volkoff's got now is the worst one yet. Could really use a good hacker's assistance. You know where I can find one of those?"

Sarah actually raised her hand. "I do."

Chuck looked stricken. "You do?" He looked at Ellie, who looked equally flustered.

Sarah brought her hand down and pointed at the computer again. "He just said you were."

Chuck frowned down at the box. "Yeah, he did, didn't he?"

"Sorry, son. I thought you'd told her already, her being your fiancee and all."

Sarah folded her arms and shook her head. If Orion couldn't see it that was his problem. "What kind of a spy would I be if he'd had to tell me?"

"Yeah, dad," said Ellie. "You should see them talk, all half-sentences and grunts. And forget card games."

"Chuck?" said Sarah.

"I didn't," said Chuck.

"Now cut that out!" yelled Ellie.

Orion waited for the echoes to fade. "So I didn't let the cat out of the bag?"

"Oh, you did," said Sarah, "But it was a very small cat. There are a lot of hackers in the world-"

"Unfortunately."

"Unfortunately, and I had already pegged Chuck as one of the better ones. Most of those are either very well-documented or pretty malicious, though, so I knew he wouldn't be one of those. I figured he was most likely the Piranha, and all you really did was solidify that guess."

"Good guess," said the P-man.

"My son is the Piranha? Wow. That's just...wow..."

Chuck looked uncomfortable. "I'm not that-"

"Deep breaths, dad," said Ellie, standing up and leaning over the speaker. "In, out. And while you're at it, try using one of them to tell us what you need the Piranha to do that the Intersect can't?"

"Not what I need, Eleanor. It's what your mother needs."

Chuck stood up and leaned over the speaker, just missing Ellie's head on the way. "You told mom about us? About me? How can she possibly be cleared for that?"

"She's your mother, son."

"And a spy. I'd think another spy named Bartowski would have been flagged by now."

"Her records were never altered, so no one would connect her to me. She's still got her maiden name, and-"

Chuck remembered his mother's maiden name, and flashed. "Disavowed?"

"They had to make it look good, they knew Volkoff was going to check."

"So they turned her into a traitor?"

"It was supposed to be temporary, but the plan went pear-shaped right from the start. No one knows what happened, but her real records are lost and her handler was killed early on. She had no one but me to call on, so I've been backstopping her mission, not the other way around. Why do you think it took so long for me to contact you again?"

He would have had to check with his principal, of course, but..."You contacted us? We called you, dad."

"Only because I allowed it. You would never have seen that image if I hadn't let it remain."

Chuck frowned down at the speaker. "Image? As in 'one image'?"

"Of course it was only one image, son, how many would you need?"

"We saw a lot of images, dad."

"There was only one image of your mother in the Kaminsky file, Chuck. I put it there."

"The what file?"

"Kaminsky. Boris Kaminsky, one of Volkoff's lieutenants. Isn't that what you're calling about?"

"No, dad. We didn't see that file yet. We got some pictures from Alejandro Goya as part of a different investigation entirely."

"Someday you'll have to tell me how that happened, but that doesn't matter now. It looks like Kaminsky's gone off the reservation about something and Volkoff sent your mother to deal with it. That's when I got the image. Sorry about the come-hither look, but it was the only image she let the cameras get."

Chuck closed his eyes. "Please don't tell me..."

"Tell you what? That it's been twenty years? You know that. Whenever your mother travels she lets me know and we...get together."

Ellie grinned at Sarah, because it was just too ewww! to grin at Chuck. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

"You hush. The problem is, the more important she gets in his organization the less he allows her out of the country. So it's been a while. I told her what you kids have been up to, and she decided you could help with her mission."

"Which happens to be our mission."

"Exactly," said Orion. "Better get yourself a pencil, you're gonna need to write this down."

A/N2 Very talky, I know, but it talks about a lot of stuff. I'm tying together three different plots here, while trying to explain Mary's long absence. I have no idea what Morgan and Casey are doing right now either. Hopefully I'll find out by next chapter. Let me know what you think of it.