A/N: Thanks for being patient guys and reading despite the fact it's a chuck/sarah fic without sarah (she'll appear again, i promise). I've finished a rough outline of the whole story and just realized that this is the halfway point so from here onwards, those burning questions you have should start getting answered. If they aren't..then i've probably failed.

Chapter 7:

After a breakfast punctuated only by the sound of crunching cheerios and slurping milk, Carmen left for work promising to return for dinner by five. Chuck still didn't know where work was and his girlfriend was strangely oblivious to an office phone number and address. Though after last night, Chuck knew that nothing was strange anymore.

Once Carmen was gone, Chuck snuck back to his room and pulled out the photos of Sarah. He looked them over again, trying to jog his memory. If he even remembered just one minute detail it would be enough.

Chuck could recall with startling clarity the first time he saw her. She hadn't mentioned anything about a relationship then. Even when he pressed she had consistently denied knowing him.

Why?

Why would she do that?

Chuck studied the photos again. They looked so happy together; he just couldn't understand.

He traced the outline of her face with his index finger, trying to place those same features on the sad, lonely woman who held a bedside vigil for him. He remembered Sarah looking pale and exhausted, always with tears or the traces of tears in her eyes—nothing like the way she did in these photographs.

Chuck grabbed a phone and dialed the number he had long committed to memory.

"Hey Ellie?" Chuck stared at a photo of him and Sarah smiling into each other's eyes. "We need to talk."

_

"Sit down," Ellie said after opening the door to let him in. She didn't wait to see if he would follow her and walked off into the living room to occupy one of the seats.

Chuck closed the door behind him and made his way into the living room. It wasn't like Ellie not to smile, which meant she probably knew what Chuck had come for.

"I need you to tell me everything, Ellie. No holding back. I need the truth."

Ellie's jaw clenched and she looked slightly defiant. "Chuck…" she said. "It will all come back to you. Give it time." She patted his knee the way she used to when they were kids but reassurances had been so much easier then.

Chuck shook his head. "I don't have any more time." He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out the photographs. Laying them out in front of her, he heard Ellie gasp. "I need you to explain this to me. I found these in my apartment."

Ellie sighed. "Oh, Chuck."

"Please, Ellie, I need to know."

She avoided Chuck's gaze, knowing she'd already given too much away. "How did you even find them? Did you get your memory back?"

"Is her name Sarah?"

It must have been, because Ellie finally relented. She picked up one of the photos. "I remember this one. You took her to the beach for your anniversary. You planned for weeks. You had me teach you how to make these mini sandwiches so you could impress her with your culinary skill."

Her smile quickly faded as she looked at her younger brother. "It's probably better that you don't remember."

"She was my girlfriend?"

Ellie nodded. "You met her not long after your twenty-sixth birthday."

"Why did we break up?"

She shrugged. "You never said. Next thing I knew, you were dating Carmen."

The implication stung. Chuck had taken nearly five years to get over Jill. To think he could get over Sarah in a matter of days was hard to fathom and it certainly didn't say a lot about his character.

"And you weren't going to tell me?" His sister's silence told him all he needed to know. "How come we aren't close anymore, Ellie?"

Ellie placed the picture back down, and stared at the collection on the coffee table. She had to ruminate on the thought for a long while before she could give him a response.

"Even from the beginning you always told me that your relationship was complicated. I couldn't understand it. You two looked so in love."

Chuck agreed. Since Jill he'd never seen himself look happier.

"I don't know what went on with you and Sarah, but you would come home high as a kite one evening and sulking and moody the next. You two were together for almost four years but it just never seemed to go anywhere.

"I was kind of relieved when the two of you finally broke up. She was holding you back. Once the two of you were over, you moved out, found your own place. Quit the Buy-More, found an office job. You found a new girlfriend—"

Chuck held up his hand. This was all getting to be too much.

"You haven't answered my question. Why aren't we close anymore, Ellie?"

Ellie sighed. "After you two began to date you became secretive; always late, breaking promises, lying-" Chuck couldn't believe it. He never lied to Ellie.

"Because of Sarah?"

"That wouldn't be entirely fair for me to say, but yeah." Ellie hastily wiped her eyes. "You were growing up and I couldn't be the only woman in your life anymore, but I can't help but feel like I lost you to her. We just talked less and less, and you were always so evasive."

Chuck flinched. Carmen was the definition of evasive and he didn't want to think he ever talked to Ellie that way.

"You were always so busy, but you would never say what. Something was obviously upsetting you but you wouldn't talk about it. You wouldn't let anyone in. I just…I lost you for awhile there, Chuck. And when I received the phone call from the hospital, I just felt…" Ellie's face scrunched up with guilt. "I felt so relieved that you could forget everything to do with her."

Chuck's heart broke to see her like this. "Ellie, please don't cry." He moved across the table to sit beside her. "Ellie, it's okay. Don't feel bad." She leaned on his shoulder, the tears now soaking through his shirt.

"It was so wrong of me to be happy. It was an awful thing to think."

Chuck hugged his sister close. "I can understand, Ellie. It's okay." Staring down at the pictures with a different set of eyes, he wondered just how bad things had been for his sweet sister to want him to forget five years of his life.

Chuck took one last look at the photos before gathering them up and shoving them back into his pocket, out of sight and with any luck, out of mind. It was just as well that he couldn't remember, he didn't know if he wanted to.

A/N: How was that? I'd love to know what you think of chuck's relationships with sarah/carmen/ellie based on what you know or have figured out.

Also on a completely random tangent, does anyone know how to make larger spaces between paragraphs? Everytime i save an edited document it minimizes all the spaces and it's driving me nuts.