Thanks so much for the reviews! You guys always make me smile :)

This story is getting out of control, haha. This chapter only covers ONE day and it's 500 words longer than the first chapter…I'm SO sorry this is taking so long. I really shouldn't have posted anything before I left for my trip! Lesson learned, haha.

I feel like I should warn all the fluff lovers reading this that you guys aren't going to be very happy with me in about 5 minutes BUT hang in there! The summary for the story says "the ups and downs" of the honeymoon…this is the big down. But please hang in there because I promise everything will be okay!

The honeymoon came to a screeching halt on Day Three. Chuck and Sarah were pulled from their slumber by a strong, insistent knocking on their front door. Their visitor arrived at an hour that could be considered nearly ungodly on a normal day, let alone a vacation day. The couple's previous night had consisted of a late return to the hotel, quick showers, comfy pajamas, and lots of late-night snuggling after a long day exploring the city, and neither were yet ready to rejoin the conscious world. Sarah pulled a pillow from under her head and placed it over her ear as the knocking continued.

"Chuck," she grumbled. "Someone's at the door."

"Ignore it," Chuck sleepily mumbled. "It's probably just the maid."

"There's a 'do not disturb' sign on the door," she reminded him.

"Sarah, ignore it," he repeated, rolling over to go back to sleep.

Sarah willed their would-be invader to go away as she tried to go back to sleep, but once the knocking began again, she groaned a little bit louder and threw back the covers on her side of the bed. She pulled a robe from the hotel over her short and silky lavender nightgown and headed for the front door of their suite.

"This better be good," she muttered under her breath.

"Sarah…" Chuck groaned as he felt her leave the bed and walk away.

Sarah reached the front door and rose to her toes to peer out the peephole on the door. An official-looking man in a suit stood on the other side, a large briefcase in his hand. With a puzzled look, Sarah opened the door.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Sarah Walker?" he asked in a hard voice, skipping any semblance of pleasantries.

"Yes," she said slowly. Sarah's instincts told her to be suspicious of their early-morning intruder. She and Chuck were supposed to be the only two people in the world to know they were in Australia instead of France. How had someone managed to find her here?

"Is Charles Bartowski here as well?" the man asked.

Suddenly feeling defensive instead of simply on-guard, Sarah stood up as tall as she could in bare feet and crossed her arms over her chest. "Who wants to know?" she asked.

She tried to look as intimidating as possible as Chuck appeared in the doorway separating the bedroom from the living room. The man glanced up at the new arrival before turning his attention back to the feisty blonde in front of him.

"I'm Agent Eric Hunt of the CIA," he said.

"I've never heard of you," Sarah said with a dismissive nod of her head.

Agent Hunt pulled out his badge. Sarah looked it over, decided he was legit, and looked back at him without diminishing her protective stance or the hard-boiled expression on her face.

"I'm here to finalize your departure from the agency," Agent Hunt said.

The smug look on Sarah's face disappeared; it was instantly replaced with a look of absolute alarm. "I'm sorry. My what?" she asked.

"Oh crap," Chuck muttered as he realized his wife was about to be completely bushwhacked.

Sarah briefly shot a troubled look in Chuck's direction before turning back to her new adversary. She laughed nervously and said, "I'm afraid there's been some mistake. I have no intention of leaving the CIA."

"No mistake," Agent Hunt said. He pulled two files out of his briefcase. "I have severance packages for you and Mr. Bartowski right here."

"Severance packages?" she exclaimed with wide eyes.

"Oh, crap," Chuck muttered again, earning him another lethal look from Sarah.

"I'll also need to collect both your badges before I leave," Agent Hunt said.

"That won't be happening," Sarah told him with a fake smile. "I have three and a half years left on my current contract."

"You have been released from your contract, Ms. Walker," Agent Hunt said.

"Agent Walker, and by the orders of whom?" she asked through gritted teeth, her hands balling up into fists against her breasts.

"Clyde Decker, and you are not an agent anymore," Agent Hunt said.

She nearly punched him right then and there, but instead, Sarah simply stood, a bundle of confusion and anger, in the foyer of her honeymoon suite. She recognized Decker's name, of course. Any long-term government agent would, but she had never even personally met the man. What could he possibly have against her? She was pondering her next move when Chuck appeared beside her, their CIA badges in his hand. Her eyes widened.

"Do not give him those!" Sarah cried.

Agent Hunt took the badges from Chuck and placed them in his briefcase. He handed the severance packages to Chuck and Sarah and pulled a device similar to the ones couriers use to obtain signatures from his bag.

"If you could both sign here to acknowledge you received the paperwork," Agent Hunt said, holding the device and its matching pen out between them.

Chuck sighed and tossed his severance package onto the coffee table behind them. With a glance at Sarah, he picked up the pen.

"I'm sorry, Sarah," he said and began signing.

"Why are you sorry? What the hell is happening, Chuck?" Sarah asked. "Chuck, don't sign that!"

Agent Hunt turned to Sarah after Chuck returned the pen to him. "Ms. Walker?"

"No," Sarah said, settling into her defensive stance again.

"Ms. Walker, if you don't sign this, I'll be forced to apprehend you and take you back to Washington," Agent Hunt said.

"Sarah, just do what he says," Chuck said softly.

Sarah looked at her husband for a moment before exhaling a defeated breath. She briefly thumbed through her severance file before taking the pen and signing her name. Agent Hunt wordlessly slipped the device back into his briefcase and stood up tall.

"Your country thanks you both for your service," he said.

Agent Hunt turned and made his way down the hallway while Chuck reached around a stunned, hurt, motionless Sarah to shut the door behind him.

"Sarah…" Chuck said cautiously after a few seconds of silence.

"Chuck," she said slowly, eyes blazing and voice dripping with fury. "What…the fuck was that?"

"Okay, Sarah, just don't…don't freak out," Chuck said in an attempt to keep her calm. He very quickly realized that was the wrong thing to say.

"Don't freak out? Are you serious right now?" she exclaimed, creeping towards him and backing him into the door as she spoke.

"Um…" Chuck stuttered nervously as his back hit the wood. "No?"

"I just…I don't know where to start, Chuck," she said with a forced laugh. "Who is Agent Hunt? Why did an agent I've never heard of before just crash our honeymoon? Why are you so calm about all of this? Why do you seem to know about all of this, and why the hell did that guy just walk out of here with my career?"

"Right, okay, I guess we haven't really had the while-you-were-sleeping chat yet," Chuck said rapidly. "How could I forget that?"

Sarah slammed her file of CIA paperwork onto the small table by the door so hard the table shook. "Well, let's have it," she sneered.

"Okay, but if you could just back up a bit so I could just…go…over…you know what? Here's fine. Here's good. We can chat here…like this…with you…where you are, even though…you're kind of scary right now, and you have a very deadly look on your face…your…your pretty face," he rambled. The deadly look on Sarah's face hardened. "But yeah, okay, this is…good."

Sarah stared at him a moment longer before backing down and allowing him to move to the couch. Chuck had filled her in on the Volkoff/Hartley Winterbottom side of the saga as soon as she had woken up asking if someone had killed "that bitch Vivian" for her, but with the rush from the hospital to the wedding to the honeymoon and the immense relief Chuck felt over getting to have a wedding and a honeymoon and a life with Sarah, he hadn't yet told her the whole tale. Unfortunately for both of them, that meant he had left out the part that would be directly affecting their futures, leaving her to be sucker-punched with upsetting information in the middle of a foreign country. She slowly lowered herself to the couch and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Okay," Sarah said. "Start talking."

"I haven't met Agent Hunt before this morning, and I had no idea the CIA was going to crash our honeymoon," Chuck said. "And Agent Decker…well, in a way he tried to kill you."

They stayed on the couch for a long time as Chuck told her everything. He told her about how their involvement with Agent X had lead to a wash order and the stripping of their resources, clearance, and access to anything CIA, pending an official investigation into the matter. He told her about Beckman giving him her ID card to help them. He gave her the long version of everything that had happened with kidnapping Hartley from federal custody, and he told her about Decker's constant reassurance to Chuck and Casey that he really didn't care whether Sarah lived or died.

Sarah softened a bit when she heard about Chuck's complete willingness to give up his family and his life and disappear if that's what he had to do to save her. She softened further when Chuck described how he'd been tased and captured outside the hospital. She understood when Chuck told her about Decker ordering the end of their government careers and the Intersect Project once he had Chuck in custody. Sarah steeled again, however, when Chuck revealed his Intersect had been oppressed.

"Are you kidding me?" she cried, forcefully rising to her feet.

"About which part exactly?" Chuck asked.

"You don't have the Intersect anymore?" she asked.

"Well, I don't think it's gone, exactly. Decker called the glasses an Intersect oppressor…those were his words, anyway, so I think it's just buried…again," Chuck said.

"And you didn't feel the need to tell me about this big life change…oh, I don't know…after I woke up and asked what happened? When you were telling me about Volkoff's Intersect? Before we got married?" she asked, leaning towards him as she spoke.

"You said it didn't matter! You said you'd love me with or without the Intersect!" he retorted in an accusing tone.

Her mouth dropped open. "Oh, that's real nice, Chuck!" she exclaimed. She started to walk away, but then doubled back. "Of course it doesn't matter if you have the Intersect or not! Of course I'll still love you! How could you even think that?"

"That's not exactly what I meant…" Chuck said.

"Telling me before the wedding wouldn't have changed anything," Sarah continued. "I can't believe you would even think that. It just would've been nice to know."

"This is our honeymoon, Sarah. I understand that you're upset, but I don't want to fight with you," Chuck said.

Sarah took a deep, calming breath before continuing. "I'm not mad about you losing the Intersect. I'm not even really mad about the CIA because I knew that risk was there as soon as we became privy to the sensitive Agent X information," she said. "I'm mad at you for not telling me and letting me be completely blindsided when he showed up this morning!"

"Sarah, I didn't know that was going to happen," Chuck said.

"I know," she said and started walking towards the bedroom.

"Wait…wait! Where are you going? Don't you want to hear the rest of the story? I'm only, like, half-finished," Chuck said. Sarah shook her hand.

"Not right now," she said, sounding hurt and defeated again. "I just…we're going to be fine, but as irrational as it may be, I need an hour to be mad at you."

Chuck let her go. He watched as she shut the door to the bedroom behind her and listened to her body thump against the white-stained wood as she leaned against it. He was going to leave her be until the sounds of muffled but heavy sobs began to fill the room. Chuck immediately stood, walking towards the bedroom. His hand reached the doorknob, but he stopped himself from trying to open the door. He knocked lightly instead.

"Sarah," he said with a soft, sympathetic voice. He knew that, while she may not be mad about the reasons behind their dismissals, she was certainly grieving over that loss as well.

"Chuck, please…" she cried.

As much as it pained him to hear his new wife crying, she had asked for an hour, and he'd give her an hour. He pulled out his phone and set an alarm for exactly one hour from the time she went into that room. Upon realizing that his laptop was tucked away into his airplane carry-on bag, and that bag was currently resting by the bedroom dresser, Chuck wandered back to the couch and turned on the TV, looking for something to fill his time. He found video game controllers tucked into a drawer underneath the television and figured that was as good as anything. He ordered a video game from the hotel's pay-per-view service and settled onto the couch to kill the next fifty-four minutes.

When the phone went off signaling that Sarah's alone-time hour was over, Chuck immediately paused the video game he had been playing. He pressed an ear against the bedroom door and heard nothing. He tapped the door lightly.

"Sarah, I'm coming in," he said when he didn't receive a response.

He opened the door to find Sarah asleep, curled into a ball in the middle of the bed, the covers bundled around her body. Her robe lie discarded on the floor, so he hung it up and grabbed his laptop before leaving her to rest.

Chuck began kicking himself for not taking just two minutes to check his email as soon as his Inbox loaded. There, in a message marked as 'urgent,' was a note from Morgan warning him that a government agent had been by to officially remove Casey from his job. Morgan went on to say that he had noticed the agent knocking on Chuck and Sarah's door and snooping around the outside of their place as well, and Morgan believed someone might show up at their hotel. After a quick message telling Morgan that his suspicions had been correct and glossing over the morning's fight, he sent another quick message to Ellie, letting her know they weren't in Paris after all.

Once an hour, Chuck ventured back into the bedroom to check on Sarah, and he found her asleep every time. She slept into the afternoon, and Chuck kept himself busy by looking over their paperwork and playing games. He was killing time on the Internet when Sarah finally wandered out of their room mid-afternoon. She walked up behind the couch and leaned over, slinging her arms around his shoulders from behind.

"I'm sorry, Chuck," she said gently, burying her face into his neck.

Chuck set his laptop to the side and placed his hand over hers on his chest. "It's okay. You were right. You were completely blindsided."

"But so were you," she said, coming around to sit next to him on the couch. "Everyone thinks we're in France. You didn't know he'd show up here."

"At least I knew it was coming," Chuck sighed. "And I'm sorry for that, Sarah. Telling you everything should've been the first priority once you woke up."

She shook her head. "You didn't have time. Ellie and Devon hovered over me until they signed the discharge papers, and then your sister and the girls whisked me away from you to get ready for the wedding as soon as I got out of the hospital."

"I should've stopped the wedding until I had the chance to talk to you," he said.

She shook her head again. "No…our wedding was perfect, Chuck. I would've been upset and distracted during the ceremony if you had done that. I'm the one who needs to be apologizing for this morning. Even though I knew it was possible, I'm…really upset about losing my career, and I took it out on you."

"It's okay," Chuck said again.

"No, it's not okay for me to talk to you like that. That's never okay, Chuck. I could maybe get away with it when I was just your handler, but not…" she started. She glanced down at her wedding ring. "Not now."

He leaned over and gave her a soft kiss. "Well, then…I forgive you," he said.

"I love you," she said. "With or without the Intersect."

"I love you," he replied. "With or without the CIA."

At that, her face crumbled slowly, tears filling her eyes again. Chuck instantly pulled her into his lap and began rubbing her back.

"Come here," he said softly, holding her to him. One hand caressed her back, while the other wrapped around her hip. She cried into her hands for a few moments before wrapping one arm around his shoulders and letting him see her face.

"I actually thought I was going to be one of those women who got to have it all…the career I love and the man I love," she cried. "Pretty stupid, huh?"

"That's not stupid, baby," he said.

"The CIA has been my life since I was seventeen. I don't know how…what am I going to do now?" she asked.

"We'll figure it out," he promised. "We're still us, honey. You're smart, and you're crazy talented, and we'll find something."

She tucked her head into his shoulder, hiding from the world for another minute before picking her head up and wiping her tears away. She took a deep breath and asked, "What now?"

"Do you want to have dinner in the restaurant downstairs?" Chuck asked. "Get all dressed up…might be fun."

"We don't have reservations," she said.

"We're in one of the most expensive suites in the place. I think they can find room for us," Chuck winked.

Chuck was right. They were seated at a table that gave them a beautiful view of the moonlit beach after only a short wait. He was dressed in a suit and a red tie to match her long red dress. Sarah had swept her hair into an elegant side ponytail. They took their seats at the candlelit table. Sarah looked at her menu, while Chuck stared out the window.

"What a view," Chuck said. "Doesn't that just make everything better?"

She smiled. "I have to admit…just putting on this dress made me feel better," she said, recalling the way his fingers had danced up her spine as he had zipped the dress.

"And you look gorgeous in it," he smiled.

"Hey, Chuck," she said, biting the edge of her lip. "I think I'd like to hear the rest of that story now."

He quietly filled her in on the rest of what had happened while her body had been racked with fevers and radiation, pausing as the waiter came to take their order and deliver their meals. Sarah leaned back in her seat when he finally finished the story.

"You did a lot for me," she said.

"I'd do anything for you," he told her.

"I'm so sorry I yelled at you."

"Hey," Chuck said, shaking his head. "That's done, okay? First married fight equals over, which is a good thing, really, because now I don't have to dread that happening."

Sarah shot him a big smile and nodded. "Okay," she agreed.

After a shared dessert of chocolate cake and strawberries, they ordered a bottle of champagne to take back to their room. Sarah toed her heels off as soon as they walked back into their suite, and Chuck spun her around, curling his hand around her cheek as their lips met in a fiery kiss. She pulled away and pressed the champagne bottle into his chest.

"Meet me in the bathroom," she purred.

"Okay," he said, a goofy grin on his face.

She turned and shot him a smile before disappearing into the next room. Chuck shrugged out of his suit jacket, draping it over the couch, and made his way into their little kitchen to grab two champagne glasses. He entered the bathroom just as Sarah turned the jets in their hot tub on. Chuck set the champagne and the glasses on the counter and turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" Sarah asked with worry.

"To get our bathing suits," he said as if that were obvious.

"Chuck," she laughed, unzipping her dress. "Private hot tub, sweetheart…I don't think we really need bathing suits, do you?"

"Right…" Chuck said in a strangled voice as the red fabric pooled around her bare feet.

He silently watched with admiration as she pulled the red tie out of her golden locks and shook her head to allow her hair to fall around her bare shoulders. She shimmied out of her panties and slipped into the hot tub, closing her eyes on a moan as the warm jets massaged her skin. She opened her eyes and looked at Chuck, who was seemingly frozen in place.

"Why are you still over there?" she teased.

"Just…wondering how I got so lucky," he shrugged.

She let out a small laugh and watched as he hurriedly dumped his clothes onto the ground. He filled both champagne glasses and handed one to her as he joined her in the water. Sarah entwined their legs as they clinked their glasses together and took a sip.

Sarah held her champagne in the hand further away from him, so Chuck grabbed the one nearest him and brought it to his lips, kissing and nibbling on her wrist and lower arm. He let it fall from his grasp and slowly began trailing his fingers up and down her arm beneath the water. Her legs began sliding against his, her toes tickling up his thigh. After a few minutes of fooling around and teasing each other underneath the bubbles, Chuck set his glass by the side of the hot tub and took hers from her hand, placing it next to his.

Chuck grabbed her hips, the wet ends of her long hair slapping against his chest as he pulled her onto his lap. Her hands curled around his neck, and she softly teased her fingers through his hair; he curled one hand around her ass, and clutched the back of her head with the other. Both moaned as their mouths met in a fiercely passionate kiss. Their tongues played between their joined lips, and Sarah ground her hips into his lap, a move that was followed by another shared moan. He pulled her as close as he could, her wet, naked body pressing up against his torso, and she aggressively ground her hips into his lap again.

"One good thing about honeymoon fighting…" Chuck mumbled against her mouth.

"We get to spend the entire next day making up?" she whispered.

"Exactly," he grinned, bringing her lips to his again.

So…sorry about the fight, haha. One of my problems with the finale (and I didn't have too many) was that Sarah took waking up to find out her career was gone WAY too well. I know they had to gloss over it due to time constraints and such, but I feel like she definitely would've had a reaction to that, so it was something I wanted to include. We really missed a lot in this finale!

Thanks for reading! Please review if you've got some time :)