I don't own Chuck

Sarah opened the door to their apartment, and stopped dead in her tracks, seeing something that made things inside of her lurch.

"Something wrong?" she heard the brunette ask behind her. Sarah moved out of the way and let Ellie the rest of the way into the apartment. There sat Chuck on the couch, asleep. Molly was curled up in his lap, his arm wrapped around her in protection, asleep as well.

"You really need to finish this Bryce thing," Ellie told Sarah. Sarah nodded. Over the last eight months Chuck and Sarah had been practicing continuously against the first robot, to the point Morgan told them it was time for the second.

Neither of them had said anything when Morgan first started watching them fight, but after several practices where they had both gotten through it "alive" but had sustained some damage, they had heard Morgan making a "tsk" sound.

"You're starting to low with your arm angle," Morgan told Chuck. Sarah snickered. "And you're putting too much weight on your front foot," Morgan told Sarah, making Chuck snicker.

"If you think you can do better, you come do it," Sarah told Morgan.

Morgan held his hands up defensively. "Oh, I cannot," he admitted. "But, I have watched so much fighting over the years…" he shrugged. "Obviously you two are fighting perfectly." He turned to walk away.

"Damn it," she muttered. "Morgan," Sarah called after him. "Where?" Morgan was confused. "Where is my arm angle too low?

"Start the program again, and I'll yell out when you make a mistake," Morgan told her. Chuck and Sarah shared a look. "I can't tell you where, because its moves are random."

"If we can't master one discipline, how are we gonna master three, Sarah?" Chuck asked. Sarah shook her head, and then gestured toward the robot. Chuck turned it back on and they began again.

After a few minutes, Morgan stopped the program and walked over to Sarah, showing her footage from his phone he had recorded of her. "Sonofabitch," she muttered, watching herself putting too much weight on her front foot. It was the tiniest bit, but it was enough to throw her off. "Chuck, you need to build some kind of recording system so we can watch what we are doing wrong."

Morgan's eyes lit up as Chuck turned to Morgan, a grin on his face. That had set them back a week in training as they came up with the perfect way to film and Morgan study it to find the mistakes they made.

The mistakes were tiny, but that was the point. Bryce had a computer in his head having his body reacting perfectly, and it would only take the tiniest mistake for Chuck and Sarah to be not only hurt, but eventually beaten.

After the mastery of the first and second style of the fighting robots, Chuck went to program the third, when Morgan threw them off. He had been watching them, and while they weren't cocky, their confidence seemed to be a little much. Morgan suggested the new robot be program with the two fighting styles they knew and randomized.

Sarah argued it was a waste of time. Morgan finally got his way after asking Chuck if it would be difficult to add the third style to the fight matrix. When Chuck answered it wouldn't take any time to add the third style, Sarah relented.

A few days later when Chuck and Sarah went to square off the new robot, they were confident, very confident. Morgan wasn't surprised at all that they were beaten within minutes.

"What in the hell happened?" Sarah asked.

"You compartmentalize everything," Morgan explained to Chuck and Sarah. "That's how you were both taught. Everything in section A goes in box A, everything in section B goes in box B. You see something from A, you start looking for signs of other things from A, and when you get something from B it takes your brain a second to realize it."

"I think I get it," Chuck replied, nodding. "So your saying once we see B, if another punch from the B style is thrown, we're good, but if it's A…"

"You toast," Morgan finished for him. "You have to decompartmentalize."

"So are we hurting ourselves by learning each discipline?" Sarah asked.

Morgan shook his head. "No, you have to learn that style first, how to combat it, before you can figure out how to combat all three."

Sarah and Chuck shared a disappointed look. "You two thought you had this, sorry. I hate to be the one to tell you, but no one else here understands what you're doing. The rest of the agents are trying to find Bryce, and Ellie and Devon only know that you're practicing fighting."

"You've always been insightful, Buddy," Chuck told him. "You probably are helping to save our lives."

"Remember something else, Bryce was trained the same way, so that is your edge," Morgan pointed out. "Does he have an edge with a computer in his brain, sure, but you two have a greater edge." Morgan looked from one to the other and grinned. "Each other."

Sarah shook her head, pulling herself out of the thoughts of training. "Ellie, I want that."

"I know," Ellie replied. "So does he." Ellie put the bags she had on the counter. "Now, I want to be loud and wake him, but I don't want to wake Molly."

Sarah walked over, gently pulled Molly from Chuck's grasp, grinned at the woman she was considering her sister, opened the door and went outside. Ellie picked up the bags off of the counter, and dropped them, making a loud clanging noise, bringing Chuck off the couch.

"Molly!" he yelled, looking around. The door opened with Sarah having a finger to her mouth admonishing him. "Sorry, when did you two get back."

"Just now," Sarah told him, walking over and sitting on the couch beside him, the two looking down at Molly. Ellie stood in the kitchen, shaking her head. She walked over to the door, opened it, and left, leaving the family to themselves. Dinner could wait until later.