A/N: A big huge thank you for the reviews :) So nice to read! And thanks for sticking with this crazy fic (which is just about to get even crazier.) There's about two chapters left after this one so I'll be finishing it up soon.

Thanks again!

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Chuck fires once.

He flinches and weighs the gun in his hand as if noticing it for the first time.

"Concentrate!" Casey barks, and Chuck can hear him even through his gigantic earmuffs. "You can shoot someone's eye out with that!"

"Right. Sorry."

He and Casey are at an indoor shooting range where Chuck is taking part in another spy training session: How to Kill Paper People With Guns. It's fun. Except for the part where he has to try to kill paper people with his gun.

Chuck points the gun straight out, grips it with both hands, makes sure to keep his elbows straight (or is that a golfing technique?) and then shoots again. He squints through his yellow-tinted lenses to try and see if he hit his mark but the paper target is too far to tell.

"Aim for the heart!" Casey shouts.

"I'm trying!"

Sarah's isn't there. With no missions coming in and Chuck delegated to mostly training and studying, Team Bartowski has been taking it kind of slow, and so Sarah has the morning off. Chuck briefly wonders what she's doing with her day. He thinks that if Casey had the morning off he'd be at the shooting range anyway.

"Or the head!" Casey continues. "One shot between the eyes will get the job done!"

"Well that's a little cold-blooded, isn't it?"

With his own hand Casey points Chuck's gun back in the target's direction. "I said concentrate," he says through gritted teeth. Chuck hadn't even realized that he'd turned towards Casey to speak.

"Just flash and get this over with. The less time you have with a gun, the better."

Chuck agrees with this statement very much, and he actually makes an effort to flash this time, concentrating really hard and squeezing his eyes shut in the process. The only thing that comes is the sound of a bullet bouncing off something metal in the distance.

Casey wastes no time in taking Chuck's gun away.

He sighs and takes off his hearing protectors. "Sorry, Case. My sleeping's been a little off."

"Well, maybe if you spent less time playing video games at all hours of the night with that human garden gnome you call a friend—"

"Hey!"

"-- you wouldn't be a prime candidate for friendly fire."

"Human garden gnome? Really?"

"He's short, has a beard, and if you had a garden he'd spend the majority of his days standing in it."

Chuck considers this for a moment. Then, "Touché. But it's not that. Actually, I've been getting too much sleep."

Casey grunts. "Gee, Chuck, I know what you're going through: I fought in three wars."

Chuck rolls his eyes and though Casey raises his gun to continue shooting Chuck doesn't take the hint. He commences with the conversation anyway. Casey's still wearing his own earmuffs but Chuck knows enough to know that the man has highly-trained skills of his own; lip reading and crazy-scary super-hearing among them. Just in case, Chuck shouts.

"I've been having these really vivid dreams! They feel real!" He's not sure why he's even talking to Casey about this, but he can't talk to Sarah, so Casey's his newest confidante by default. "I don't understand them at all but Sarah's in all of them!"

Casey stops shooting and gets the sort of look in his eye that Chuck understands to mean, I am trying to shoot something and you are ruining all my fun. Not to be confused with the I am this close to killing you with my bare hands look, which is quite similar. He takes off his muffs, clearly meaning business.

"Listen, Numbskull, I get enough of you swooning for Walker in the flesh, I don't need to hear about the deluded fantasies you harbor for her while you sleep. Next time you have a wet dream roll up your sheets and hand them to your sister. She still does your laundry, right?"

"No, she doesn't. And ew. Anyway, they're not those kinds of dreams. In fact you were in one of them too."

"Ugh this is worse than I thought."

"Just for a second," Chuck counters quickly. "You were in this purple baseball uniform and you were looking through my window and you were watching me and Sarah make out and you called me a nerd so don't tell me you're not interested because clearly, if my dreams are any indication, you are."

"Really. A baseball uniform?"

"I know what I just said doesn't make any sense but my dreams are so vivid that—"

"What kind of baseball uniform?" Casey interrupts.

Chuck suddenly notices that his handler looks like he's interested in what he has to say, for once. He relishes this moment, if only for a second, because Casey takes a step forward and repeats his question. "The baseball uniform. Did it have any insignia?"

"Uh, yeah, it did. I think it said… St. Joseph's… Holy Ballers."

Casey takes a step back and the unusually quiet man becomes even more unusually quiet, if that's possible.

"Sorry for the terrible team name," Chuck tries to explain. "My subconscious has a mind of its own."

"How did you know that?"

"Know what?"

"My senior year of High School I was granted a scholarship as the shortstop for the Holy Ballers. I turned it down to join the armed forces."

"You turned down a scholarship?"

"Serving one's country honorably trumps playing baseball."

"I didn't know you played. You know, Awesome plays baseball too. Granted, he's more of a football guy but he—"

"Chuck, I never told you I played baseball."

"Wait, what?"

"How long have you been having these dreams?"

"Not too long. I guess since I got the…"

"New intersect," Casey finishes for him.

"Yeah…" Chuck is a little late to the party but he finally sees what Casey's getting at.

"You think the intersect is messing with my dreams?"

"Don't sound so shocked. We don't know what this thing is capable of yet. Strange dreams may be a side effect."

"Like drowsiness and upset stomach?"

"What other intel have you obtained?"

Chuck racks his brain. He had no clue that that some of the things he was dreaming about could actually be products of the intersect. "Um," he says, "in that same dream Sarah told me that she broke two ribs fighting Mongolian assassins. It happened in 2005, I think."

"That's true."

"How do you know?"

"I read all the available literature on my partners. That's in her file."

This is all a little much for Chuck to wrap his brain around at the moment. All he can muster is a dumbfounded look on his face as the realization dawns on him. "Oh my God, the intersect has invaded my dreams."

Casey clears their station, putting the safety on their guns and grabbing everything he can, heading for the door.

"Where are we going?" Chuck asks.

"Back to Castle. I'm giving you pictures of every terrorist on the NSA's most wanted list. And then I'm ordering you to sleep."

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In his dream he is in a maze and he knows exactly what he's supposed to be searching for.

Casey had given him a stack of photos to look through but his subconscious mind is only interested in one person. And he can feel that she's close.

"Sarah?" he calls out. Looking around Chuck only sees endless walls and hallways. "A little help here! I'm kinda lost!"

At last, he hears her. "You're lost because you know so little. You need the right information."

"Ok then," Chuck says, taking tentative steps down one hallway. "Let's start with the basics. Your name's not really Jenny, is it?"

In the distance he sees her and she shakes her head before disappearing behind a turn.

Chuck runs toward her, makes the same turn but is nearly knocked down by one of the Big Bad Men in Casey's terrorist photos. Not the most pleasant-looking person to be bumping into. And although he should probably stick around and have a chat with him, Chuck has a more important mission at hand.

Though he'd rather be having this conversation with Sarah in real life, he is determined to find out her real name. He's not sure why it's so important to him, just that it is, and that it's the one mystery about her that he feels will unlock all the others.

"Is it Marion?" he shouts.

At the next turn: Ellie, a pitiful look on her face. "I thought you knew her better than that," she says.

Chuck shrugs apologetically but doesn't stop moving, sprinting through the maze as fast as his legs can take him. "Sidney?" he says.

More silence echoes as he continues to search. "Carrie?"

Morgan obliviously blocks one of the hallways. "Hey Buddy, why the horror movie motif?" Chuck passes him and keeps going, but he doesn't find Sarah anywhere. He's about to give up when Bryce appears. "You're not asking the right questions," he tells him.

Chuck thinks he understands. Even in his dream he's lucid enough to wonder if what he's doing is right. What he's essentially doing is digging up her file, trying to procure personal information about her. He's already abusing a power he just discovered he has. And yet, in his dream, he can't stop himself. When he finally reaches her in the labyrinth, he knows what question to ask.

"Sarah," he says. "What's your name?"

And he gets his answer.