A/N I was going to post this last night, but with the Chuck This Blog rewatch of Phase Three I thought no one would see it. I can only hope the rest of the story talks to me as much as this part has.

"A pillow, Chuck?"

"Boys who cry wolf have nothing on spies who play dead."

"He left us to protect us."

"It's Mom!"

Ellie pointed at the little stylized boy figure in Chuck's hand. "Didn't we fix that?"

"We were kids, El, I'm surprised I didn't hot-glue it to my nose." He ran a finger over the little stump of a hand, no longer connected to anything. "I think Dad soldered it after we got done, but it got broken again."

"That's Dad," she said, taking it from him, "Always trying to patch things up."

Chuck noticed the box she'd been holding. "Mary Bartowski. Missing?" He opened the box, scanned the items inside but nothing jumped out at him. A lot of stuff that an agent going into deep cover would leave behind. "All this time we thought she left us…"

"She did leave us, Chuck." Ellie put a gentle hand over his. He'd loved his mother so much. "Perhaps this will tell us why she didn't come back."

He looked around at all the racks and boxes. "All of this…"

Ellie sighed. "Eventually," she said, taking the box firmly, tucking the medallion pieces inside. "Food first, and a room." The livability of the house would have to wait.

"Check in so we can check in?" Beckman would want a sitrep ASAP.

Ellie imagined a big pit where her childhood home used to be. "We have to tell her something."

"I…don't think the truth will go over too well, sis."

"We don't know what the truth is, Chuck. Anything could be in these boxes."

His smile grew more genuine. "That's true, isn't it? Anything. Or nothing."

"Good morning, sweetie. I hope your yesterday was better than mine." Sarah yawned into the phone.

Chuck winced, sitting in the car outside the diner. Ellie was inside, ordering dinner, but they agreed his conversation with his wife was not for public consumption. "Oh, crap, I woke you up, didn't I? I'm sorry."

An understandable mistake. "Don't be silly, Chuck, it's not like we've ever had a planet between us before."

"It just felt like it sometimes."

"Yeah, it did," she recalled in not-so-fond memory. "But really, we just got home from here, so getting readjusted was a snap. What's up? You have the ticker going?"

Chuck pushed a button on the little box on the dash, and the ticker started, pulsing randomly. Spies could use lasers to read vibrations from window glass, but the ticker threw off the vibrations. He told her every detail. No secrets, no lies. "I can only imagine how Beckman will take it."

A short, unhappy laugh barked into his ear from a world away. "So can I, and believe me, 'take' is a well-chosen word."

"I know, but don't worry, I have a plan."

"Oo, I like your plans," she said, then put on her Mrs. Charles voice. "And what do y'all want me to do, Charlie baby?"

Chuck smiled. She knew him so well.

Ellie called while on line. "I need your help, Aunt Diane."

Beckman was prepared to offer anything up to and including a general mobilization. "In what way, Ellie? Where are you?"

"On line at a diner. The house is a mess, completely unlivable. Dad really let it go these last years. His 'mission' all this time has been to find our mother." Three people within earshot winced at this additional frisson of torture to what was obviously a trying time, but one guy just wished she'd shut the hell up and keep the melodrama to herself. "Now that he's gone I'm afraid Chuck will–"

"Resign his position, abandon his country, and go off on some hare-brained scheme to find her himself?"

"You know my brother so well." The three people still listening nodded sympathetically. Typical loser brother, always having to prove himself. The guy in front started shouting his order at the clerk, to drown out the soap opera.

"Ellie, do the words 'stay in the car, Chuck' mean anything to you?"

"No."

"They didn't to him either. Don't worry, I'll come up with something in time for your formal check-in. We'll keep him in line."

"Actually, Aunt Diane, I had an idea already." Her audience smiled in approval. This Chuck guy didn't deserve such a good sister.

"I'm going to guess it's not one you can describe in detail, standing in the middle of a Denny's, or wherever you are." No one heard Beckman's sigh except Ellie. "Well, if it keeps him happy and out of harm's way I guess I can support it, and you."

"Thanks, Aunt Diane. I have to go, I'm at the counter now." She wasn't, but her listeners were more than willing to forgive a little white lie. "We'll speak to you soon."

The motel room had little more than two beds and a desk, but they didn't need more than that. Chuck set up the ticker by the window, while Ellie made the call.

"A secret basement?"

"Yes, General," answered Chuck. "Seems to have been mainly used for storage, though. The equipment we saw was pretty ancient. A lot of boxes on shelves. None of the labels we saw rang any bells, though."

"Nonetheless we should have them brought in for analysis…"

"Already taken care of, General." Assuming Sarah had spoken to Hannah like she said she would, and Chuck made that assumption. "Pending your approval, we've made arrangements with the Castle team to send a crew out and digitize the papers." The ones they were given, anyway.

"I appreciate your initiative, Mr. Bartowski, but the material in those boxes will almost certainly be above their pay grade–"

"But not mine, General," said Ellie. "I'll make sure they only see what they should see."

"You're staying, Ellie? I was hoping we could get together this weekend."

"Yes. As head researcher of the Project I believe it's my top priority to catalog these notes. Manoosh can handle the routine encoding tasks for the uploads, and he's been tinkering on a little side project he thinks I don't know about, for which my brother's mission will be a perfect proving ground."

"My mission?" said Chuck.

"Proving ground?" asked Beckman.

"Correct. We all know that only a bunker at the bottom of the sea could keep Chuck from looking for our mother." Beckman's grunt was perfectly timed with Chuck's shrug. "My idea is to use that to test Manoosh's enhancements to the sunglasses. Wherever Chuck goes he can stop in at a CIA substation or embassy, put on the glasses, get an upload, make his reports, and then do a download again. He looks for Mom, you get your data, and Manoosh gets his field trials. Everybody wins."

"I'm afraid not, Ellie. I can't agree with your plan."

"But…why not?"

"Because Mary Bartowski was a spy. You'll know it as soon as you read your father's notes so I may as well tell you now. You'll understand I can't let Chuck just wander the world looking for her, with no more back-up than Morgan Grimes." Because of course Chuck would ask, and Morgan would be there for him.

"Then call Sarah back, let them look together."

"I can't. She's the only one that gives the team even a shred of legitimacy."

"What about Casey?"

Beckman considered this. At least that's what they hoped she was doing in the time it took her to reply. "I'll see what I can do."

Chuck stood in the airport concourse, waiting for Casey to come out. This was going to become a home away from home, he supposed, but hopefully not too long. Ellie, too, since she wouldn't want to be away from Devon any longer than she had to.

The stream of debarking passengers thinned to a trickle, and still no Casey. I couldn't have missed him.

"Hey, Chuckles," said a female voice, right into his ear.

"Ah!" Chuck shouted, jumping. The Intersect supplied a number of attack patterns but he suppressed them, and simply turned. "Carina! Where'd you come from?"

She laughed at his surprise. "The same plane you were just watching, you even looked right at me but didn't notice me." She tugged him away from the crowds. "That's no good, Mr. Not-a-spy. This is why Beckman wants me to have your back."

He checked six for listeners, but whispered anyway. "Casey is supposed to have my back."

She checked three, nine, and twelve. "Casey is certifiably insane, I'll have you know. The trail led into Russia, and he actually wants to go there."

"Do you even know where I'm going?"

"Do I care? As long as it's not Russia. They have two seasons there, winter and almost-winter, and I left all my furs in storage." She shuddered. "Come on, the sooner we collect my luggage and get to your place the sooner you can brief me."

"Why my place?"

"Duh! My place is for debriefings only, even if you are a boxers man."

"So your father's a geek and your mother's a spy. Why does that arrangement sound so familiar?" said Carina as she read her fashion magazine on the other side of the lounge.

Chuck didn't look up from his crossword puzzle, or bother correcting her choice of word. "Gosh, you're funny, Carina."

"I'm glad you think so, Chuck, we've got a long trip ahead of us. Your father's itinerary looks like a ping-pong ball in a hurricane. Can't we just cut to the chase?"

"Oh yeah, did I mention Beckman wants us to follow his trail, verify his findings, and see what wreckage he left behind?"

"Wait. She wants me to defuse international incidents?"

He snorted. "That's what I said…" His pocket buzzed.

Carina watched as he pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. Watched as he jerked in his chair, clutched the phone to his chest and turned bright red as she looked around nervously. "What's up, Chuckles?"

"Nothing," he said shrilly into his watch. "Just a…message from Sarah."

Carina smirked at a model wearing something she'd already stopped being seen in. "A message, Chuck? Are you sure it wasn't a photo of a certain tousle-haired blonde, eyes closed in restful slumber, with an expression composed of equal parts desire, pleasure, and satisfaction on her face?"

He sank lower in his chair and pulled the phone away to check the screen.

She caught the moment and sent it off in a quick email. "I take it from the smile on your face that I'm one hundred percent right as usual? I was wondering if she'd have the nerve to send it like I suggested, she's surprisingly shy in some ways."

He flashed a glare in her direction as he shoved the phone in his pocket.

"I took it, you know." She watched him squirm, unable to escape her voice in his ear. "She didn't used to make so much noise. I wanted to get video but dream-Chuck is a pretty fast worker."

"Stop it," he growled.

"That's exactly what she said. I took the picture and it woke her up. She made me email the photo to her and then she deleted it from my phone, the spoilsport." She sighed. "Ah well, at least she punished me for my transgression."

Chuck sat bolt upright in his chair. "She what? How?"

"As only Sarah Bartowski can," she murmured. Chuck practically melted in his chair. "Well, there's my boarding call. Have fun in coach, Chuck, see you on the ground."

First stop: Yucatan

"What do you mean? Of course I remember those riots."

"Yes, well, so do they. Whatever you do, don't use the name Bartowski."

Third stop: Greenland

"Ellie, what are we doing in Greenland?"

"I don't know, Chuck. What are you doing in Greenland?" She sounded more than a little distracted.

"Freezing. Why is this place on Dad's list?"

"It's not." The sound of rustling papers. "Oh wait, it is. Sorry, I thought I'd scratched that out. Your next stop was supposed to be Portugal. My bad."

Fifth (?) stop: Tierra del Fuego

"All right, what's here?"

"Um…fuego?"

Another stop: India

"Watch your step, there's cows everywhere."

Another

"Geez, it's cold!"

Another

"God it's hot."

Another

"Can it get any more humid?"

Somewhere, sometime

"Wait, I can swear that's Russia off to the left. Are you sure we can't stop?"

Washington DC

The grate fell off the vent and a long female body slid out and fell to its, that is, her knees, but she went no further. "Yuck. No way I'm kissing that floor."

Chuck landed lightly behind her. "You already kissed the gangway and the airport parking lot. I think DC knows you're glad to be here."

She pushed away from the floor with vigor. "Yes, well, I just discovered how glad, and it's really not that much." She looked around at the grimy office and its furnishings. "This is a safe house?"

"It was," said Chuck, his attention on the obvious safe set into the wall. "You have that combination?"

Behind another vent, a hidden camera caught most of the scene and relayed the images to a screen a great distance away. A woman watched with no expression, until she saw the long-haired woman shimmy her dress into alignment behind the man's back, displaying a complete lack of both modesty and underwear.

When shimmy-girl pulled the slip of paper out of her top and pressed it into his outstretched hand, the woman pursed her lips. As the man entered the code shimmy-girl blatantly checked him out from behind, secure in the belief that she was not being observed. The woman heard machinery grinding and went to find the source, before she realized it was herself, growling like some kind of animal.

When he sat, dejected by the open and empty safe, shimmy-girl sat by him, hugged him, her hands caressing and stroking. The woman snapped the monitor off. "Oh, Chuck."

A/N2 So here we are caught up to part 1, at the end of part 2. Please tell me what you think, or use the share button down below to tell other people.