"Chuck… Chuck! Wake up, Chuck!"

Chuck slowly swam upward toward consciousness. His eyes cracked open, and he saw two blurry John Caseys looking down at him.

"Hi, Casey," he slurred drunkenly. "Did you know that Sarah has really big boobs?"

The NSA Agent looked upward, then to the right at Sarah Walker, whose face had taken on a look of pure astonishment. Unbidden, his eyes flicked downward toward Sarah's chest. Her look of astonishment changed to a look of annoyance.

"Move," she growled, pushing Casey out of the way.

As Chuck's senses returned, he realized that Sarah was now standing above him, and also what he had just said out loud. "Aw, crap, I said that out loud, didn't I?" he muttered.

Choosing the better part of valor over the shallow comments and actions of the two men, Sarah pressed on. "How's your head, Chuck?" she asked, concern clearly present in her voice.

"It's felt better," he replied. "What happe… oh, yeah."

Turning his head, he winced, the motion making his brain feel like it was rattling about in his skull. "You," he said, pointing at Ned. "You need to be more careful when you're around people you've brou-"

He was cut off suddenly as a strange woman covered his mouth with her hand. "You can't say anything," she whispered in his ear. She pointed at the short blonde woman who Ned had called "Olive." "Olive doesn't know."

Chuck nodded, and the woman removed her hand from his mouth. "My name's Charlotte Charles, but people call me Chuck," she said, extending her hand.

Chuck unsteadily got to his feet. "Charles Bartowski," he replied. "People call me Chuck too."

"So I gathered," she replied. "I will say, this could get confusing real quick."

"Not as far as I'm concerned," Casey cracked. "I'll just call him Ugly Chuck."

"Because you have so much room to talk," Sarah Walker snarked at him. "Moving on… Chuck, how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," he said. "I feel a little dizzy… but otherwise okay."

"I think perhaps we all need to sit down and have a little chat," the voice of Emerson Cod drifted into the conversation. "It sounds like our stories are all interconnected-like, and we should probably figure out how this all works."

"Agreed," Ned said.

"Oooh, do I get to play too?" Olive Snook asked, the glee evident in her voice.

"No," Ned and Emerson boomed simultaneously.

"I need you to clean the place up," Ned continued. "Make it look like it did before the terrifying pie monkeys came to play."

And so, Olive Snook found herself not only shut out of the conversation, but once again, spurned by the Pie Maker. She had found that her interaction with him had been cut to a minimum as of late. Was it perhaps due to her harboring of Chuck whilst she was upset with Ned? Or was she simply being punished for defending herself in an unorthodox manner against the rather unfriendly men of Fulcrum?

Emerson seated himself in his customary booth by the window. Sarah started to slide in after him, but Emerson stopped her.

"Uh-uh," he said. "I do not share a booth with the undead. Both of y'all can sit on the other side."

"Both?" Chuck and Sarah echoed, the two women looking at each other.

"Wait a second," Sarah said.

"Are you telling me –" Chuck was interrupted.

"He brought you back –" Sarah replied.

"Why didn't he touch you again –"

"I had a gun the size of a sixteen inch cannon from the USS Iowa to my head, that's why!" Ned snapped. "And to answer your as yet unasked question, the person who died was a car thief who was trying to steal Emerson's car."

"That doesn't make it any better!" Chuck replied, her voice taking on a tone of disapproval. "Somebody still had to die!"

"Uh, that would be my fault," Chuck Bartowski said sheepishly. "When he brought her back, there was no way I could let him kill her again, so I held a gun to his head and threatened to kill him if he even tried it. I didn't know that somebody else within the general proximity would die."

"But wait," Sarah said. "He brought you back, too?"

"Yeah," Chuck replied. "I was killed on a cruise –"

"Oh yeah!" Chuck Bartowski interrupted. "I knew you looked familiar! You're the Lonely Tourist!"

Chuck sighed in disgust. "You see?" she snapped at Emerson. "I TOLD you that's how everybody was going to remember me! Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles. I'm so sick of that!"

She took a moment, and breathed deep. "Sorry. Anyway. Ned brought me back to life to try to figure out who killed me, but when he saw me alive, he couldn't bring himself to send me back, and, well, now I guess I'm kind of… well…"

"You're his girlfriend," Emerson huffed. "Good Lord, are you two lovestruck or just stupid?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Casey said, a look of confusion on his face. "If you're his girlfriend… but he can't touch you, lest you die again… then, how do you… well…"

"Casey!" Sarah admonished him.

"Don't ask," Emerson interjected. "You so do not want to know."

"Let's just say it involves Saran Wrap," Chuck giggled.

"Okay, really, that was far more than I needed to know," Chuck Bartowski objected, getting up from the table. "Seriously. Can we stop talking about the sexual habits of the undead and try to figure out what the hell's going on?"

Chuck returned to his seat at the table, and the six commenced discussing the truth of the matters at hand. It was quickly determined that the men of Fulcrum had found Charlotte Charles, discovered that she was the wrong Chuck, and had threatened to return to kill her if they didn't find Chuck Bartowski. This simply served to increase the Pie Maker's animosity toward the agents from Los Angeles, leading him to feel that their presence was solely responsible for Chuck's life being in danger.

"That could've gone better," Chuck said, as he stood outside, watching the snow fall.

Sarah had joined him outside. Casey was inside, on the phone with area hotels, trying to find a room.

"Yes, well," Sarah replied. "I think it would've been better if I hadn't died five minutes into the mission. Things wouldn't be quite so sticky now."

"It wasn't your fault," Chuck said immediately. "There's no way you could've known that that Prius would zap you."

"No, but I shouldn't have just walked up and grabbed the handle," Sarah said, frustration creeping into her voice. "It's bad form for an intelligence agent. I just feel like I've been off my game lately. This whole Fulcrum thing has me on edge… I still feel confused about Bryce…"

She turned to Chuck, and as she spoke, a frustrated laugh escaped underneath her words. "And let me tell you, this whole 'just friends' thing isn't exactly a walk in the park!"

Chuck turned to look at her, confusion evident on his face. "I… I'm not quite sure I follow," he said.

Sarah put her hands on her hips and puffed her breath out through pursed lips. "Look," she started, "in case you haven't figured it out… I do, actually, like you. When I kissed you at the San Pedro Docks – yes, it was largely because I thought we were going to die. However, it wasn't because you were the only pair of available lips – it was because I didn't want to die without having let you know in some way how I felt about you."

Chuck couldn't believe what he was hearing. "And then, when Bryce showed up, it totally screwed my head up," Sarah continued. "But as much as I still had feelings for Bryce, I had moved on from him, and I couldn't let myself just go back. That actually had a lot to do with why my alarm clock got murdered – I couldn't sleep that whole night, and when it went off – well, I just kind of snapped."

Chuck smiled. "I sort of thought it might've had something to do with that," he said. "But that still doesn't explain…"

"When I walked into the Buy More Christmas party –"

"Holiday party," Chuck automatically corrected her, not even realizing what he was doing.

"Whatever. The Festivus party. When I walked in… I was half hoping you were going to try to convince me that we should be more than just friends…"

Chuck looked at Sarah and sighed. "There is very little I would like more than that," he said. "But it just wouldn't work right now."

Sarah's face seemed to drop a little, and she cast her eyes down for a moment. "I know," she responded quietly, looking back up. "But… it's just so frustrating sometimes, not having somebody to be with… I mean, when Charlotte Charles mentioned Saran Wrap… the places my mind went…"

Chuck's eyebrows shot up like a rocket. "Ooookay!" he said, backing away from Sarah. "Just friends, crazy woman!"

"I know that," she replied, laughing. "But I'm pretty sure that as your friend, I'm still entitled to a hug when I've spent the day dying, being brought back to life, and having to deal with a somewhat… quirky… town."

"Well, I SUPPOSE," Chuck said, stepping back forward.

As Charles Bartowski embraced Sarah Walker, it seemed for a moment that all was well. But they did not go unwatched.

From the window of the restaurant, Charlotte Charles saw them embrace. She sighed, wishing that Ned was able to do that for her.

From the window of her apartment, Olive Snook saw them embrace. She too sighed, wishing that anybody would do that for her – preferably the Pie Maker, although she didn't mind the looks of this Charles fellow.

And from the black Crown Victoria parked a block away, Frank Mullins saw them embrace. He too sighed, rolling his eyes, and asking once again why, oh why, he had drawn this ungodly assignment.

Looking nervously at his Seussian surroundings, Mullins spoke to nobody in particular.

"I do not like green eggs and ham… I do not like them, Sam I Am."