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.

"Is that all you got?"

"Amazing coincidence, isn't it?"

"I do so like a woman with manners."

"Welcome to Volkoff Industries."

Volkoff HQ, Moscow...

Alexei turned to his right-hand woman. "Some cognac, please, Frost," he said, not quite an order. "We need to determine how best to utilize our new employee's particular skills."

Frost collected the fallen guards' guns, but didn't move toward the sideboard. "May I have a word with you, Alexei?" she asked. "In private."

Volkoff looked a bit sulky, to Sarah's amazement, but he complied with his aide's polite...request, as she sat to wait. The two of them went to an alcove, not far away, but it must have been designed to warp sound somehow, because Sarah could hear their voices but couldn't make out anything they said.

Frost kept her face turned away after securing the guns in a drawer, the tone of her voice calm. "Alexei, are you out of your mind? She's a psychopath!"

He kept the same tone. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

Frost tried again. "She's going to betray you."

"Well, probably, that does seem to be her history," said Alexei. "But it all depends on how she defines betrayal. And whose purposes that betrayal serves. You read that psychologist's report."

Alexei had forwarded the file on Rebecca Franco to her as soon as his people inside Interpol sent him a copy. "Seemed like a lot of New Age gobbledy-gook."

"Not her report, dear, yours. They predicted you were going to betray me too, and look at you now. You're my strong right hand."

Frost shrugged. Her supposed report had been crafted to make a betrayal seem inevitable, and it had worked beautifully. She recognized the style in Sarah's file, hopefully the author hadn't lost his touch. "Well, I betrayed somebody..."

"Exactly," said Volkoff happily. "I just had to take that impulse and aim it elsewhere, a most enjoyable task. You know I take great pleasure from bending people to my will."

She knew. Unlike him she took no pleasure in it. "I do."

"Have dinner with me."

"No." Frost looked back at Rebecca, looking at them. "I'm trying to think of how your pet lunatic could be useful."

Alexei looked mildly insulted. "That's harsh."

"You're calling that harsh?" Frost said, glad she no longer had to keep her voice down. "Aren't you the one who had your own bodyguard..." She paused.

"Yuri," said Alexei right on cue, drawing out ever syllable. "Yuri the Gobbler."

"Yes, him," said Frost, rolling her eyes. Alexei loved that name. "You had him broken out of an American supermax prison, and you didn't even ask how he ended up in an American prison. You just had him brought back here into this office, and why? So you could shoot him. In the head. Yourself."

"Not just in the head," growled Volkoff, remembering the scene. He'd embraced Yuri, and Yuri's regret and apologies had been most sincere. It almost made him sad. "In the eye."

"His glass eye," added Frost. "There are fragments still stuck in the wall."

"And the ceiling," said Volkoff with a grin. Frost gave him a sharp look, and he huffed, "It's not my fault the housekeeping staff are all so short."

"Buy a ladder."

"I'm testing their resourcefulness," said Alexei. "And on that note, what do you suggest we do with my pet lunatic, as you so charmingly describe her?"

Frost blew out a sigh. "Well, having her free Yuri is out, so the next best thing I can think of is to test her with gusto."

"That's what I'm trying to do," said Volkoff, "But you keep, what do you Americans call it, 'raining on my parade'."

Frost closed her eyes, gathered her strength, and drew upon her enormous reserve of patience. "No, Alexei, not with gusto, with gusto."

For a second Volkoff looked blank, but that second only lasted a second. Then he grinned. "Oh, now that is a wicked idea."

Frost tried to look pleased. "Thank you."

"Poor Gusto," sighed Volkoff. "I shall miss him."

Rebecca looked up and stood as her new employers came out of the alcove, all smiles. "Rebecca, dear," said Volkoff, as Frost went to the sideboard to pour the cognac. "We've come to a decision about how best to make use of your talents." He didn't go on to say what they'd decided, though.

Frost came up to them with a tray holding two filled glasses. "We're going to send you to meet with Augusto Gaez, leader of the Gentle Hand, to express Alexei's unhappiness at their recent...falling out."

Rebecca took one of the glasses. She hadn't been able to understand the words but she'd heard the yelling and seen Volkoff's 'unhappiness' from across the room. "So it is a suicide mission." She didn't seem displeased.

Volkoff took the other, since Frost didn't drink. "I wouldn't say that." There was definitely a very slim chance that she might survive.

Rebecca snorted her amusement. "Any man who has a falling out with you is committing suicide," she said. "I am just the bullet."

Ah. A woman of wit as well as manners. "You're an extraordinary bullet, my dear," said Volkoff, touching his glass to hers. "Nothing 'just' about you."

"You're sweet," said Rebecca in her dark, flat voice. She put her glasses on. "Tell me more."

Echo Park, after dinner, but not long after...

Ellie sipped her water, wishing it was wine but that was out for the duration. "So, Chuck, how are the wedding plans going?"

The question shouldn't have caught him off guard like that. It was Ellie, after all. "Uh..." How were the wedding plans going? He started to check his pockets. Wedding plans, wedding plans... wedding planners. Oh. Right. "Wedding planner. I said I would get one, but she said that field was full of con artists and she would do it herself."

Ellie looked impressed, and doubtful. "She's going to plan her wedding?"

"No, she would find an honest wedding planner."

"Have you considered eloping?" asked Devon, remembering his own big day, both the morning and the afternoon. Wedding planners and the CIA don't mix.

"Honey," said Ellie in a voice dripping with poisoned, um, honey, "Have you considered sleeping on the couch for the rest of the week?"

Devon blanched, which, considering his fair coloring, was quite an achievement. "Sorry, dude, you're on your own." He took his plate into the kitchen and never came back out.

"Now that that's out of the way," said Ellie, folding her hands on the table and fixing her steeliest gaze on her brother, "What are you planning for the engagement party?"

"Um..."

"Chuck!" snapped Ellie, remembering what Sarah had said long ago. Of that half a pew not telling her she was making a mistake, how many were female? "However Sarah wants to get married is her business, but I do not want to be her matron of honor by default."

Assuming Sarah even wanted one, which apparently his sister was. "Um..."

Ellie made it simple for him. "Gather her friends. Find them, gather them, have a whole great party, and then let her pick me. Got it?"

Rebecca Franco stalked the compound, her eyes no longer covered by the dark glasses. The guards knew of her, though, and stayed out of her way. Sound and shadow combined to warn her of one who was approaching quickly.

"Rebecca, stop exactly where you are," said Frost in English.

The black-haired woman stopped, automatically scanning the spot she stood on for some special quality but seeing nothing.

Frost came closer. "There is one square meter in this whole compound that is never under surveillance, and we're standing on it."

Sarah nodded. "Okay."

"Who is Sam?"

Sarah expected the code phrase, it was her idea. With one hand she gripped the sleeve of her coat, and held out her wrist. Frost ran her fingers over the charms on the bracelet, stopping at the two hearts. "These are new. Who is Sam?"

"I am," said Sarah, pulling the bracelet back under cover. "I was. She might be me someday, I hope so."

Frost nodded slowly. "Your mission has two parts," she said. "First, you will have more freedom of movement than I do, so you will be my point of contact with Orion."

"Understood."

"Second, no matter what you may think your orders are, you must under no circumstances kill Augusto Gaez."

"Thank God," said Sarah. It was like the universe had been conspiring against her lately. "Why not?"

"Alexei believes Gaez is double-crossing him, and wants him killed with no links to himself. He can't let his other customers know he had anything to do with it. The second you kill him, you'll be killed yourself."

She was a cutout; Volkoff would cut her out himself unless someone else got to her first. "That's a good reason. But?" asked Sarah, who knew that nothing was ever that simple.

"But I believe that Gaez is being manipulated to lure Alexei into a trap. What do you know about my mission here?"

"Uh, contact killed, mission files lost," said Sarah.

"Try erased," said Frost. "I should be dead, but Alexei believed the psychologist's report about me and thought I'd turned." She scanned the surroundings. "So here I am. Orion believes the people who burned my mission want Alexei, but he won't work with them."

"Who are 'they'?"

"We don't know," said Frost. "Hypothetically, if they exist, they're someone in the Intelligence Community, with resources and great patience, but they're running out of time, or think they are. They're tricking Gaez into making this move, so that Alexei will kill him and alienate his allies. This will leave him with no place to go but them."

"And they do what, kill him themselves?" asked Sarah. She doubted that. This plan seemed too convoluted for such a simple goal.

"No. Alexei's empire is virtual, a computer database called Hydra," said Frost, looking around. The mere fact that she kept this spot off of any scans didn't mean that someone might come by who needed to pee. "These Black Hats want what we want, and the second either of us finds it Alexei is a dead man. Why do you think he's so secretive about his technology?"

"You've worked with and for him for twenty years," said Sarah. "Can you simply turn on him like that?"

Frost hesitated. "Is it a good or a bad thing that I have to guess?" she asked, and sighed. "Good, I guess. This duty requires us to make hard choices, the kind we don't recognize ourselves on the other side of. Watch out for those."

Sarah lifted her hand, and its hidden heart bracelet. "Got that covered."

At the casa de Grimes...

Alex lay in the bed, wearing Morgan's never-before-worn, limited-edition Zemeckis-authenticated Back to the Future T-shirt. He was in the kitchen, getting them some leftovers for brunch, when his phone chimed and the screen lit. She turned it to get a look. Morgan, do you have Carina's contact info? Kind'a needing it right now. Chuck.

Wow, thought Alex, Who texts with punctuation?

Then Morgan was there, with trays and food on plates and the implied resumption of snuggle-time.

She held out his phone to him, so he could see that he had a text, if not the actual words. "Who's Carina?"

Somewhere, after Morgan had passed along the requested information...

"No, Chuck, that really wouldn't be a good idea," said Carina, who recognized bad ideas when she heard them. "Sure, there were a few of us, some perv in DC put us together and stuck us in leather outfits with a silly name...No, not the outfits, we had the silly name...what do you mean, 'even me'? I can tell with something is silly. Won't stop me from doing it, of course...Promise you won't laugh?...Okay, it was called the Clandestine Attack Team. CATS for short...You promised!... Squad...No, I know it makes no sense, that's why I said it was silly. I liked the outfits, though...It didn't end well, hard to be friends when you think they sold you out to the enemy. I guess I can reach out to Amy. She can smell a party a mile away, so you'll probably find her in there whether you invite her or not...Oh, I know how you can thank me, Chuckles...Right, engagement party. You remember my engagement party?...we'll see. Toodles."

Rio de Janeiro...

Amy's phone chimed with an incoming message, and she checked the screen.

"You are a popular lady today," said her lover, in his deeply-accented voice. "And not just with me."

"Just some friends from my CAT Squad days," said Amy, with a smile. "One of them is getting married, and another called to tell me."

"That explains the squealing. Yet they continue to call?"

The smile faded. "They're trying to set up an engagement party, all of us CATs."

"Hm, could they be trying to get your band back together?"

"I wouldn't have thought so, Gusto, baby, feelings were pretty hard when we split up, but-" Amy shrugged "-stranger things have happened."

Augusto Gaez smirked. "You must bring your friend a gift."

"What kind of gift do I bring to an engagement party?" Amy had never been to one before.

Gaez tossed her a detonator. "A new car."

A/N2 In my imagination of what they did when breaking up the Rough Draft to become the back 6, S4, and S5, they took the good parts and mixed them with lots of treacle, marshmallow fluff, and a hefty sprinkle of McGuffins to bulk it up. Yuri (and Hydra) are McGuffins in the Gobbler episode, just as Carina was a McGuffin in the CAT Squad episode, so in this revision they go.

This is, BTW, the exact middle of the story, 6.5 out of 13 episodes.

I hope you'll take the time to leave a comment below. It makes the writing process easier. Thanks.