A/N (1) Previously on Chuck versus The Journey: Chuck and Sarah successfully managed to convince everyone that they are honeymooners by faking their conjugal duties, but it came at a high emotional price for Sarah, who is suffering from haunting memories of her past. Spending the night together in total innocence and a peaceful snuggle in Chuck's side of the bed, Roan Montgomery liberates them in the morning from the camera watching them and has an agent's heart-to-heart talk with Sarah. Meanwhile, Chuck was supposed to check back with Casey for updates, but we can safely put our money on the fact that he rarely stays in the car or does as expected.

A/N (2) I'm here for a Monday update as there will be a second update this week.

Warning: There is a lady named Carina C-rated Miller in this chapter. Strong language is coming your way.

How many arms have held you and hated to let you go?
How many, how many I wonder, but I really don't want to know.
How many lips have kissed you and set your soul aglow?
How many, how many I wonder, but I really don't want to know.
So always make me wonder, always make me guess.
And even if I ask you, darling, don't confess.
Just let it remain your secret, but darling, I love you so.
No wonder, no wonder, I wonder, no, I really don't want to know.
"I Really Don't Want To Know" (Howard Barnes & Don Robertson)

Chapter 18: Chuck vs. The Cat Squad

"You have a woman like Sarah Walker in your bed, who, by the sinful way, is the second-steamiest sexpot on the planet, are expected to fornicate till the cows come home - and nothing happens with that SILF De Luxe?"

The stunned amazement on Carina's face – the first time Chuck saw that expression – distracted him from the fact that she wore nothing but a silky short nightgown that failed to hide her legs as much as Chuck was unable to hide his apprehension. Possibly it had not been his brightest idea to stop by her room before checking with Casey for updates.

"What's a SILF?" he queried nervously, anticipating more of Carina's hearty language, and was not disappointed.

She smacked him lightly on the head. "Spies I'd like to fuck - Casey knows why he calls you moron," Carina explained. "At least you didn't insult me by asking who's the top steamiest sexpot."

This conversation will be labeled with one of Sarah's favorite words… complicated, Chuck thought.

"You had the wrong woman with you," Carina snickered. "You know we have an outstanding score from last year – no man ever said 'No' to Carina Miller. If we had been here as planned before Larkin took himself out of the game, you would have had no chance to escape our marital bed. But Larkin fucking it up deprived me of fu-"

"Carina! Stop acting cheap!" Chuck exclaimed. Her hand was on his neck in an instant and pressed hard. Her voice was a hiss.

"You can call me a lot of things, and to your surprise, I'd be honored. But no one calls me cheap. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, yes, sorry," he croaked, and she let him go. He massaged his neck gingerly while watching her cautiously.

Who would have thought that there are things Ms. Miller is sensitive about?

He took a deep breath.

"Now that we've exchanged niceties, I want to ask you something."

Carina yawned.-

"That's what you think. What did you do all night? And how did you make them believe you were at it? These are the questions to be discussed," she set the rules.

"We faked it," Chuck said uncomfortably. Strangely he felt it was the gentlemanly thing to do not to talk about what happened. Then, since nothing had happened, he realized that he wanted to keep Sarah's condition last night to himself. Chuck eventually told Carina how they played the charade.

"If you were a spy, I wouldn't believe you. But I think you're telling the truth," she stated with another yawn, apparently still wrapping her mind around it. Not having sex when the opportunity arises was like refusing a Mojito offered to her - out of the question. "Now, tell me why you didn't grab that chance? All you had to do was to reach out and take her. Trust me, she would have screwed you all night long."

"Why?" he asked in an explosively aggressive tone that stemmed from helplessness about the assertion Carina's words made. "Why would she do that? Would she just sleep with anyone if it was convenient to further the mission?"

"No!" Carina spat back angrily. "No! Because she's into you, idiot. And she shouldn't be because it may cost her her life one day, and your miserable one as well. It's the cardinal sin of a spy to fall in love."

"But-" he began, only to be interrupted by her. She was feisty enough to let him forget what he wanted to say.

"Why can't you simply take what she can give? Why do you need to push for something you'll never get? Don't put her on a pedestal. She's a woman. W-o-m-a-n. Fuck her brains out, she will love that, but she will never love you!"

Chuck was shocked and confused. He expected Carina to be blunt and coarse, but he had not foreseen the intense emotion she displayed.

Was Carina protective of Sarah? Did she honestly believe that love – by his definition more than fun in the sack – would be dangerous to Sarah? What narrow path of personal life would such a philosophy allow for spies in general?

"She said some things that make me believe she has feelings for me," he began thickheaded. "When we prepared for the mission where I had to seduce Sasha Banacek, I told Sarah I doubted that Chuck Bartowski could charm anyone, and Sarah replied, Why not, worked on me."

Carina rolled her eyes.

"Holy shit, Walker lied. It's her job to keep you in line. She lied. One lie is a lie, two lies are lies, three-plus lies are spies. Don't you get that? Unless you're asking her for the time, she will always lie, out of principle. And I still would carry my own watch, just to be sure."

Chuck could not believe her, a bit shaken but only slightly unnerved because he thought he could bring a good argument forward.

"Oh no, she didn't lie. I usually catch when she lies," he began and raised both hands to emphasize, which kept Carina quiet and listening. "Last year, when you told me that Sarah and Bryce had been a thing, I confronted her about it the next morning. It's not important what she answered, but she lied, and I caught her easily and told her so, and she had nothing to come back with. So, I guess, at least most of the time, I know when she lies."

Carina hesitated for a second before she spoke, seemingly impressed by his words.

"That was early in your career as an asset…" she mumbled and stepped very close to him. She did in a neutral way, not menacing, not seducing, and stared into his eyes for a prolonged time, her mind mulling his words.

Heaven forbid! Walker fails to lie to a civilian. What a bloody shame. There is only one explanation - she got it bad, and that ain't good. She risks her reputation, her career, her life by permitting emotions on the job. I need to talk her out of this, talk her out of him. We never know if we'll meet for another cocktail sometime somewhere, but I don't want to lose my friend like that. What is so special about Chuck anyway? And whatever it is… can I have a piece of that too?

Carina studied his eyes, and, for a change, not feeling intimidated, he held her gaze steadily. She detected intelligence, wit, and genuine warmth. It certainly would be exciting to make those brown eyes burn with lust. Then there was depth as if he could offer way much more than passion – whatever that was, who cares? Walker possibly? As she examined his expression longer, she found something else.

"Fucking hell!" she rasped with sudden understanding. "Brown Eyes, you really do love her!"

She brought her right hand to his face and cupped his chin. "Gosh, Chuckles. I thought that was a crush, and it would pass once you get to know her better."

"What does that mean, Carina?" He had a foreboding that the challenging part of their talk wasn't over yet.

She let go of his chin, now worried what else she would find out. If Sarah reciprocated his feelings, then she was compromised. That spelled complications, trouble, and danger. Sarah needed to be shielded from having feelings - or Chuck should be kept from pursuing her.

"Walker is a complicated person. She's got a lot of baggage - already had when she joined the CAT squad. You don't know her at all."

"What's a CAT Squad?" Chuck asked, hoping to sail into calmer waters. Carina yawned again as if she was tired of their conversation.

"The CAT Squad was like real-life Charlie's Angels, only there were four of us. There was Sarah, me, and two other girls. It was an inter-agency team put together for high-profile missions. They thought we represented the best of the agencies and that an all-female team would form a natural bond that would make cooperation extra smooth and successful."

Something wasn't as bright and shiny in her tone as her words tried to express.

"Sarah never talked about the CAT Squad," he launched a test balloon, but Carina figured it out.

"You don't think I'd ever say something I don't wanna say?" she laughingly asked and patted on the bed. "Sit down, Chuck!"

He carefully observed her as he did, but couldn't prevent her from promptly sitting on his lap and putting an arm around his shoulders.

"Carina!" he protested.

"You want me to spill it about Walker, I get it. So you have to play by my rules. I have a reputation to keep up in case anyone walks in. And I enjoy making you nervous."

She tentatively roamed a hand through his curls.

"Say, what does your barber actually do for a living?"

Chuck took a deep breath. All the things I endure for Sarah Walker! A ripple of laughter almost escaped him as he thought how eagerly Morgan Grimes would love to change places with him. Wherever Morgan was this particular moment, he did not have a foxy redhead on his lap. His bearded friend would be astonished to see any dilemma in such a situation.

"What do you want to know about Walker?" Carina inquired, and if Chuck had adequately listened, he would have heard that this was an offer that came with a price tag.

He could not ask her straight out if there was anything terrible in Sarah's past. And he did not want to dig out dirt. He wished he could have a talk among friends. Heck, if Carina were a true friend, he could simply tell her about his worries, the hints he picked up that something was troubling Sarah, the small panic attack she had, and pull in Carina into the effort to help their friend. But he still wasn't sure what these two were, so he had to tiptoe around the issue.

"Was she like she's today? I mean, the consummate spy, the sharp mind on mission and duty, the merciless fighter?"

If Carina was watching what she said, and she certainly did, he could not notice it. She spoke freely and obviously without holding back.

"Our missions were a bit different. It was dangerous, and we had a lot of action, but the C stands for clandestine so it wasn't that we stormed in anywhere shooting from the hip. We caused some casualties, but we weren't a typical assault team."

"Sarah, without her knives and her favorite Smith & Wesson, is hard to imagine."

Even in some of his dreams he would never share with anyone, Sarah Walker frequently appeared with a knife instead of a rose between her teeth, and then she did not rip but cut his clothes off piece by piece. She jumped through his dreams as a blonde Lara Croft. If he was very very lucky, his dream featured Sarah Walker wearing nothing but a gun belt, including the guns. Unfortunately, there was a kind of fog in that dream every time, so he never saw her otherwise nude body, but he knew that she was. Chuck always woke up highly confused. That was not the way he viewed women. Not a stranger to the physical aspect of love, he still had kept a naivety mixed out of respect, education, and a plain good heart that always saw more than the eyes.

"She was our youngest, Chuckles. She did not kill one person as a member of the Cats, but I can assure you she was pretty good with her choice of weapons."

Chuck could only think of movies and shows he once saw as the past year didn't seem to give any indication about Sarah and the Cats.

"So you girls used feminine wiles to accomplish your missions? Luxurious parties, Champagne and caviar, limousines? Dangerous, handsome, well-dressed men you tricked to gain success to hidden safes or passwords to well-protected off-shore accounts?"

"Some of that," Carina unmeaningly yawned once more, before smacking him on the head the second time this morning. "You think it was like Charlie's Angels all the time, and how glamorous spy life is, do you?"

"Well," he stammered, which kept him from yawning himself, "you said so yourself, Charlie's Angels wasn't my idea, and Sarah, Casey, and I had one or the other mission that included posh settings, like this time…"

"How many such missions did you have? How many were at dirty places, cheap and sore spots of society gone wrong?"

He nodded. Of course, real life wasn't a James Bond movie. At least not his life, which had derailed from a spy dramedy into a cynical, still dangerous sitcom.

"I get it. No, I see, it's not a never-ending party. So, with that in mind, how did you relax? What did you do for fun?"

The moment he asked, he wanted to withdraw his question.

"So, what do you think, Chuck?" Carina asked in return with a disillusioned look, wondering how he had to ask. Girls just wanna have fun, Chuck.

Chuck saw and understood the look and stammered. "You… you… going for a burger? Watching a movie? Perhaps a spy movie? Or -"

She interrupted him. "How old are you? Do I need to check on your diapers?"

Chuck looked definitely uneasy, both of the direction the conversation was taking and the vision of wearing diapers and Carina changing these.

"Walker fucked everything that wasn't on the trees by three," the redhead eventually blurted out.

When Chuck visibly paled and began to cough, she put a hand over his mouth.

"C'mon, c'mon, 'twas only a joke! Only a joke! Now don't puke on the carpet!"

"Very funny, Carina, very funny," was all he could groan.

"You're such a sissy!" she exclaimed. "We were four young women risking our lives daily. We wanted to chill out if we ever got the chance. Every night off on a mission could have been our last time having fun, do you get that? Last time as in, tomorrow you may be dead. That changes your whole outlook on life. We hit the clubs for B & B to forget about what we do for a few hours."

"B & B?" Chuck blat dumbly.

"Booze and boys, jackass!"

That was precisely going where he didn't like it to go.

"What else would it be? If I give you another smack, I'm afraid I'll damage the last of your brain cells!"

Chuck looked unhappy and not ready to say something, so Carina proceeded.

"If we had a night off for some reason, we prowled the clubs and bars and tried to blow off some steam, swigging cool drinks and seducing hot studs. We didn't get much chance to scratch the old itch on a mission."

Chuck's head was swirling. What life was that? Like a traveling salesman hoping to have a quick affair with a lonely housewife before leaving for another town the next morning? Like a musician on the road looking for a one-night-stand so he'd have something else than his guitar to hold on to before he embarked for the next tour stop?

"But that didn't happen nearly as often I would have liked. Uncle Sam is a slave driver. More often than not, we toiled and moiled for weeks and weeks and only had the last day of a mission to wind down before we left from wherever we were – that is if they didn't lift us out of the location immediately."

Chuck remained silent. He felt he shouldn't be here. Still, he sensed that Sarah's problems stemmed from her past, so it was essential to understand how she got to the point where she was today. He was determined to help her, but he was a different man than a year ago, reluctant to nose around in her earlier life.

"Sarah was our nestling, but she was the strictest about mission discipline. She didn't allow herself anything but duty those days. She was so zealous to be the best spy, not to fail her beloved Graham."

"Beloved Graham?" he echoed.

"She was really dependent on him," Carina said with an intonation that made it her personal opinion and not a fact. "What little she told us, he recognized her potential and promised her a huge career, but ruled with an iron fist. I guess he was the only person Walker was afraid of."

"Afraid of?" he repeated.

"Yay," she smacked him on the head again, obviously done with caring about his brain cells. "Do I have to say everything twice? Everything centered around whether Graham would be satisfied with a mission's outcome, so Walker hardly allowed herself any liberties. But she had the occasional one-night-stand at the closure of some of our missions in the CAT days."

Chuck didn't want to hear anything more. He hadn't heard anything too specific about her and tried to leave it that way - it was wrong to spy on Sarah. His curiosity was sincere and in the best of intentions to understand her and help her, but he should talk to herself, persuade her to share, and convince her that she didn't have to carry the burden alone. Carina's words were annoying and provocating, and he told himself that Carina will be Carina - but if she really was protective of Sarah, then she had chosen a very strange way to do so.

The redhead warmed to the topic. She seized him.

"Does that hurt?" she emotionlessly asked and poked a finger at his chest. She was sure it did when he didn't object to the touch, but he surprised her:

"I know I'm no spy, and I am pretty naïve compared to what you guys experienced…" he trailed off, to try again: "Every woman has a past. I just wish hers had been a happier one."

"We chose the spy life for the kick you get from the action," Carina surprisingly had the patience to explain. "That doesn't come with regular family life, a husband, a boyfriend, or children. If you want to have any kind of love life, you rely on your partners and one-night-stands. And don't you think that we adapted the old a girl in every port philosophy. For security reasons, you never look back and always burn all the bridges. Even if you go back someplace, you don't hook up again with a former lover, you find yourself someone new if you get enough time."

"That sounds horrible," Chuck honestly said.

"Horrible that Walker's no virgin maiden waiting for Prince Charming?" Carina threw him another provocation.

This time he snapped back. "It's OK, Carina, have your fun. I believe that one's personal past ain't anyone's business - unless you're someone like Hannibal Lecter or Mrs. Voorhees. But in love, we all have our past, and that's not something anyone should judge. I'm worried about her, that's all."

Carina instinctively knew that the choice of his words, even when he was blabbering, wasn't random, so she raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean you're worried?"

He tried to dodge the question.

"I understand all that, and I won't moral finger-point at you or Sarah or any other agent about how you try to keep some human warmth in your cold business. But I would wish that someone as wonderful as Sarah could have a wonderful, fulfilling relationship, be really happy. If I had a magical wish, I would use it for that. Regardless of whoever it is that makes her happy."

Carina eyed him with honest concern. "And if she truly loved Larkin – if you ask me, he was (a) sufficiently handsome and (b) convenient to have around when she got icky and (c) had an unhealthy spell on her for some reason I never found out – would you support her to be with him?"

He didn't hesitate a moment. "Absolutely. Since last night, I would do anything to see her happy, even if she would leave my life for someone else."

Carina showed genuine pity, her features expressing unexpected sympathy. "Chuckles, she is going to hurt you. She's a spy, she will leave one day. And you should consider well what you do, as you are going to hurt her too."

She eventually understood that Chuck wasn't merely trying to hear the lowdown about Sarah's previous love life, but had something else on his mind.

Carina put a finger at his chest. "If she's really in trouble and needs help, don't forget I will help out too."

He gave her a lackluster look. "Last year, I had the impression you weren't inclined to waste a single thought about her well-being."

"Chuck, spies don't have friends, and spies don't fall in love. But the CATs spent a good deal of time together. We saved our respective asses more than once and created a bond. And if you ever tell anyone I said that, I'll rape you and kill you afterward."

"In that case," Chuck commented dryly, "please, kill me first."

"Remember, Chuckles, you owe me one!" she said gravely.

Here we go again! Chuck thought. No conversation with Carina could stay away from her favorite topic for long.

"No, Carina, I am thankful for what you shared, but that is not an option-"

"Moron!" Carina impersonated Casey. "I'm talking about that big head of yours. If I ever need a flash for one of my own missions, you will do so."

Chuck stared at her silently. So that was why she talked. I should have listened to that little warning voice inside my head right from the start.

"Everything comes with a price tag in the spy world," Carina coldly said, but her eyes were lively.

•••••••••••••••••••

A/N (3) So Red tried to protect Sarah or whatever her spy-twisted mind thought she was doing. We'll better bring in Sarah or Casey or both next before our boy gets depressed.

A/N (4) If you want to complain about Carina's crude way of following her strange idea of protecting Sarah from the biggest sin in spy life (falling in love) and pulling Chuck into her antics, you know what to do - let me know. If you feel Carina's misguided, but, well, it's just her to a tee and I was helpless to write anything else, and you want to commiserate with me, again, put in a review.