I don't own Chuck

Three weeks later found the two of them very slowly walking through the park. Chuck had to sit down for a moment, holding a small pillow against his stomach as he coughed.

"Hey, don't over do it," Sarah warned him, sitting down beside him.

"I mean, are you at least a little sore?" Chuck asked, grinning at her.

She bounced a shoulder and grinned at him. "A little, but I'm so excited to have the cast off that I don't care."

"Yeah," he said, looking a hair uncomfortable. He blew out a breath. "You know I'm lucky, if that bullet had gone much either way…I'd have on a colostomy bag right now."

"That would be a shitty situation," Sarah told him. Chuck looked at her, and she began to laugh, her tongue stuck out between her teeth. "Do you want to talk about why you're nervous about me having off my cast?"

"No," Chuck replied, standing and grinning. Sarah burst out laughing as he slowly began to head down the path. She stood up and started after him.

}o{

She came back from Ellie's having spent some time with Molly and Ellie. Chuck was acting nervous around her, and she wanted to give him a break. She walked in and paused, seeing the worst day of her life on the big screen, and Chuck and Morgan on the couch watching it. She didn't say anything, she couldn't.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Morgan said, pulling her thoughts off of that day. "Three different forms of martial arts."

"You sure, you thought four a minute ago," Chuck reminded him.

"No, three, and you have them all written down there, now what?"

"Now I program four robots," Chuck said. "Three of the robots will have one discipline each, and the fourth will have all three, and a random number generator changing the discipline at a random time."

"Chuck, that's gonna take a while."

"I know," he said softly.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked, watching the two turn towards her, fear in their eyes.

"Shit, I'm so sorry, Sarah," Chuck said, standing quickly, and wincing just a little. "I was trying to do this where you would never see it. I never wanted to relieve this day again."

"Okay, but what are you doing?"

"I'm preparing for us to beat Bryce," Chuck explained. "I was watching the footage, looking for an advantage."

"How can you watch it?" Sarah asked.

"You know what, I'm gonna go," Morgan said, and he fled from the apartment. Sarah walked up to Chuck, and squatted a little moving her head around to catch his eye.

"How can you watch it?"

"I had to be Agent Carmichael and shut everything off," Chuck told her. He saw the pain on her face with his answer. "I had to analyze the footage, to find a weakness, to figure out where, or even if there was a weakness."

"And you found one?" Sarah asked. Chuck nodded. "Okay, show me."

"No," Chuck said shaking his head. "I watched it, you don't have to, I can tell you."

"Show me," she told him. He swallowed, a little scared and maybe, a hair turned on…okay, more than a hair. He started the footage, and it was where he was fighting Chuck. "Okay, what am I looking at?"

"I don't know the names of all the fighting styles like Morgan did, so I wrote them down." He grabbed the notebook and handed it to her. "If you watch him, he's robotic, and I know Bryce, he's lazy. He'll use the Intersect as a crutch."

"How does one person beat someone who has this style memorized and is like muscle memory?" Sarah asked.

"One person doesn't," Chuck told her. She looked at him, but he was looking straight ahead at the TV. "It would take two people, completely in lockstep with each other. It would take two people that absolutely knew exactly what the other was thinking and could anticipate their next move. It would take two people days, weeks, months, hell, maybe years."

"But two people could do it?" she asked gently. "Two people being that in tune with each other…that's quite….intimate."

"Very," he said, his voice rising an octave. He cleared his throat. "And the trust you'd have to have in the other person…"

"You might not know where one ends and the other begins," she finished the sentence for him. He turned to her as he spoke, their eyes locked. "That would create a type of bond that I don't know could ever be broken."

"It could…it would be very dangerous, and I don't know if I have the right to ask someone to help me." Sarah reached down and took his hand. He licked his lips and continued. "Especially if I cared and loved that person."

Her eyes held his. "I would think if I was a person who was loved and cared about by someone I might be a little upset if I wasn't asked by said person." Chuck thought that over in his head. "Do I need to rephrase it?"

"No, I got the gist of it," he told her.

"And of course, you have four robots?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, those I'd have to build, that would be no big deal," Chuck said, thinking about how he was going to ask her to help him. She just stared at him a little gob-struck. "What?"

"Of course, you can just build four robots like it was no big deal."

Chuck grinned, and scratched the back of his neck. "So, I need help Sarah."

"I'm in," she told him. "Now, first things, first, I need to work with you on your footwork." Chuck arched an eyebrow. "I gotta see what I'm working with."

She took the remote from him and clicked a few buttons, and a song came on. "You're not near as non-tech savy as you make out."

"I don't have to be, my boyfriend is," she told him. Chuck smiled at her and then she stretched up on her tiptoes and gently kissed him on the lips. "I've been wanting to do that for a while, but I wasn't supposed to put any pressure on my leg."

"Is this gonna fall into the hug category?" he asked, as he took her in his arms and began to slowly dance with her.

"That's probably a good idea," she told him. "Don't worry, I'm gonna wait until you heal up."

"I don't know what you mean," Chuck said. She gave him a look through her lashes. "Fine, I know exactly what you mean, but do you mean physically or mentally?" Sarah shrugged. "That could take a while."

"Worth it," she said, shutting her eyes, lying her head on his shoulder as they swayed to the music.