A/N: So, there seems to be a lot of confusion! Lol. I'm sorry. I know that people usually italicize flashbacks but I personally find that to be too distracting, especially when the flashbacks are very long. Please remember that past tense means flashback.

For those who need it, here's a little "previously on" to try and summarize everything that's happened in the story so far:

In the flashbacks: Chuck and Sarah were happy; on a standard mission the gang encountered Sarnov, a Bad Guy who got away; Sarah tells Chuck she's pregnant and he proposes; Sarnov comes back, gets a hold of Chuck and Sarah, and kills their unborn child.

In present time: It's been a year since it happened and Chuck's on a vengeful quest to find Sarnov; Ellie and Awesome think that Chuck and Sarah were violently mugged and that Chuck has been traveling to try and cope; Bryce is helping Chuck by feeding him info about Sarnov's whereabouts; Sarah has moved to Virginia where she now works at CIA headquarters; We learn that in the year since she left LA Chuck has been coming to visit her every couple of months; Before leaving again Chuck leaves her a note promising that next time he'll stay with her for good.

And now, onto the chap! This was supposed to be a short flashback but it turned into a whole chapter. Let me know what you think!

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She felt like she had been awake for hours, just sitting there with a pillow propping her up on the upright hospital bed. They said she had only been there for a couple of days but it felt like a lot longer.

It's like there's a new light and under it everything looks so foreign.

When Chuck walked in she couldn't recognize him for a moment. His hair, so short, shocked her silent.

He sat beside her on the empty chair. "I would've come sooner, but," he stared down at his hands and Sarah looked at them with interest, trying to see what he saw. "How are you feeling?"

It was an interesting question considering she was in a hospital, hooked up to tubes and wires and beeping machines. She knew she should be feeling something but she also knew of pain killers and sedatives and that what she was feeling was nothing.

"What?" she asked.

"How are you feeling?" this time more concerned.

There was a tube pinned into the back of her hand and the more she stared at it the less she could figure out if it was digging into her or sprouting out of her. Around the tape she could see the start of a bruise.

She knew she felt something but exactly what evaded her. She flexed her hand slowly. "I'm fine," she heard herself say.

"I would've been here sooner but I had to... I had to have some things done too." He pointed to his shirt, a sky blue one with a large GameBoy graphic in the center. His finger hovered close to the B button. "I had Morgan bring me some clothes... I came as soon as they let me go."

He talked like he had a frog in his throat. He had a frog in his throat and such short hair. She couldn't stop staring at it. This consumed her more than anything.

He didn't say much after that but with every passing moment she could see him crumbling, right in front of her. First he hunched over, elbows on knees, then his chin started to quiver, then one hand went up to rub his forehead and then the other hand went up to cover his face. She didn't hear any crying but she saw the way his back heaved up and down. None of this was very clear.

She thought perhaps she was supposed to comfort him but all she could think to say was, "I've been taken off the assignment." Which was a sort of comfort because it got Chuck to stop for a moment.

"What?"

"I have to report back to DC," she said, repeating it just as it had been told to her, the same words, the same emotionless tone. "As soon as I'm released from here."

"You can't go."

"I can't stay." Like she'd really be able to stay here. When you boiled it down he was just the beautiful promise of a normal life. A normal life looming overhead, forever out of reach now.

She said it like it was obvious, like she was insulted he'd even suggest otherwise.

"But I proposed to you and we're getting... we were going to be together."

It went so quickly from we are to we were.

She looked down at her hand again, the one with the IV coming out of it. There was no ring there. No proof to back up anything he was saying. It was like none of it ever happened.

Chuck began crumbling again and put his head down on the side of her hospital bed. Taped to his crown was a small square of gauze. She wanted to reach out and touch him but her fingertips repelled, like opposite sides of two magnets. His hair was so short, the image of him so jarring she still couldn't comprehend it.

"Why'd you cut off all your hair?"

His voice came muffled because he still wouldn't lift his head. "I couldn't get all the blood out."

He sounded like some knockoff Lady Macbeth, so guilty and pathetic, she had to hate him a little bit for it. When he finally looked up his face was creased and damp. "I'm so sorry, Sarah."

It came out like a sob. With what looked like much effort he came to sit on the bed beside her, facing her.

"I'm so sorry, Sarah," he said again, anguished. Like he was begging her. The more he cried the more the tubes became clearer, the bandages more real.

"I'm so sorry, Sarah."

Her breath was so rapid she almost couldn't catch it. Her arms around him, she frantically tried to take hold of him, pulling on fistfuls of his shirt but it was like there wasn't enough of him to grab.

"I'm so sorry."

She only knew she was crying because the fabric of his t-shirt, on his shoulder, was turning a darker shade of blue with every drip. But she could finally formulate the feeling that had escaped her before.

She felt empty.

He held her and she wailed.

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She's up before the alarm clock, sitting cross-legged on the bed and staring at the note in her hands.

Next time I'll stay.

It was the first thing her eyes saw when she opened them and it is what she will be thinking about the whole day, and probably every day until it comes true. She wishes he hadn't left a note at all but she's beginning to understand that he writes down the most important things to him. He wrote her name into his chest. He asked her to marry him with words scrawled in his handwriting.

Anyway, it's better like this. Like this the freshest memory of him in her mind isn't of him saying goodbye. It's of the feel of his stomach under her palm as her eyes blinked closer to sleep. Of his lips on the top of her head. Of his fingers curled around the back of her arm.

She stands up and heads for the kitchen to start the coffee but on her way there she notices that the light in the livingroom is turned on, and then she notices that it's brighter than before. She looks up at the new light curiously. Realization dawns on her face and she smiles.

The alarm clock in her room buzzes and just like that it's a new day.