The intelligence agents had long since departed the Pie Hole. The bakery-cum-restaurant was dark and quiet, save for a small team of NSA agents which John Casey had requested to keep watch, lest the men of Fulcrum decide to return for Charlotte Charles.

The pie-maker had retired to his upstairs apartment, sleeping once again in a bed separate from the woman with whom he had fallen in love. She was especially quiet this evening, her mind seemingly elsewhere. Earlier that evening, she had pleaded with the pie-maker to put on his bee-keeper's suit, for the express purpose of her being able to receive a simple hug. He had been happy to oblige, but he was not happy with the current state of affairs.

"Chuck," Ned said softly.

"Yes?" she replied, her back to him.

"Are you alright?"

She rolled over, and smiled at him sadly. "I could be better," she admitted. "I just all of a sudden have this longing for you to touch me."

"Even though I killed your father."

"Would you stop saying that?" Chuck said, sitting up. "It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have possibly known, and every time you say it, it just reminds me."

"Sorry," Ned replied. "Okay, so you have this longing for me to touch you."

"More than just touch me," Chuck whispered absently.

Meanwhile, across town, the only hotel that John Casey had been able to find two rooms at had been the Papen Days Inn. He had, amazingly, been a gentleman for once and offered the room with a single king bed to Sarah Walker, but she had declined, choosing instead to stay in the room with two beds with Chuck Bartowski.

Her reasoning had been that should she have trouble falling asleep, she would like to have somebody to speak with, and with no offense to John Casey, she found Chuck to be a better conversation companion. However, her real reasoning for being in the same room as Chuck was just now taking hold…

Sarah's sleep was not the peaceful sleep of a calm woman. It had taken her nearly two hours of tossing and turning to finally fall asleep, and initially that sleep was restless. Finally, she had fallen into a deep sleep, but it was a disturbed sleep.

At first, she had a dream that repeated itself, in several variations. She dreamed she was approaching the Toyota Prius that had killed her. The first few times, she found herself touching it, and getting blown across the street by the electric shock, as had truly happened. But then, she found that she was able to open the door, only to find a myriad of horrors inside – a man with a gun, a man with a knife, a snarling, vicious dog, John Casey with a bullet in his head.

From there, the dreams grew even worse. Various missions she had undertaken since meeting Chuck began to play through her head, except they were of the "what if this had failed" variety.

She dreamed of being chased through the streets of West Hollywood by John Casey, except when Chuck told her to go left, she had gone right. The Herder had plunged from an overpass to a freeway below, and exploded, killing them both. Then she dreamed of when Chuck defused the bomb at the symposium with the General – except he didn't defuse it in time.

She dreamed of the helicopter crashing and burning, Chuck trapped inside. She dreamed that she hadn't been in time to stop La Ciudad. That Peyman Alahi had simply put a bullet in Chuck's head. That Ben Lo Pan had tortured and executed both her and Casey. That the Herder had exploded under the Santa Monica Pier.

The dreams began to get worse. She dreamed that the Stanford student hadn't reached Chuck in time, and that Sarah had had to watch as the Icelandic assassin put a crossbow bolt through his chest. She dreamed that she, Casey, and Chuck had all been overcome by the pentothal toxin before they could reach the antidote. She dreamed that as she kissed Chuck in San Pedro, Bryce's cryo-chamber really was a bomb, and it exploded.

The worst one, though, seemingly got stuck, and it just kept repeating. She dreamed that when she and Bryce had found Chuck, captive of Fulcrum in the Buy More, and Bryce had shot Chuck, Chuck hadn't actually been wearing a bulletproof vest. The bullet penetrated his heart, killing him instantly.

This scenario kept playing out in her unconscious mind, but it kept twisting itself and getting worse. The last time it played through, Bryce walked up to Chuck, stuck the gun against his chest, and pulled the trigger. Then, he turned around to face Sarah, and started laughing maniacally. At this point, her mind totally lost control. In her dreams, she attacked Bryce and let loose the scream of the insane –

And sat bolt upright in her bed.

The light snapped on, and she whipped her head to the right to see Chuck, awake in the other bed, staring at her wide-eyed. Her breath came in rapid gasps, and it took a moment for her to calm down as the fear receded.

"Good Lord, are you alright?" Chuck asked, concern in his voice.

Sarah didn't respond. She just crawled out of her bed, crossed to his bed, and sat down next to him. She wrapped her arms around Chuck's neck, and buried her face in his shoulder.

"Hey, it's okay, everything's alright," Chuck said soothingly, though he was, in reality, confused as hell. The thought Has Sarah totally lost it? crossed unbidden through his mind as he embraced the troubled CIA agent.

It was disturbing, even a little unnerving, to see Sarah in this sort of shape. She was supposed to be the strong, stable one, the CIA agent who could handle anything, and here she was, like a frightened little girl, scared into Chuck's arms by some nightmare or other.

Chuck let her stay there for a few minutes, just holding her, before he spoke. "We should probably both get back to bed," he said softly. "It's very, very late."

"I know," Sarah replied, the first words she had spoken since screaming herself into wakefulness. "But…"

She hesitated, as if trying to put together a sentence that would work, not sound awkward, not make her feel stupid. "Chuck, you don't have to remind me, we're just friends and all, but it would make me feel better if I could sleep in the same bed as you tonight. I promise I'll stay on my own side, I won't get too close or anything like that."

"Yeah, of course!" Chuck said – maybe a little too quickly. "If it keeps you from having any more of the nightmares you were clearly having, absolutely."

"Thank you, Chuck."

And so, the now-quite-vulnerable CIA agent bundled herself up in the covers on one side of the queen-sized bed, while the man with the computer in his head retreated to the other side of the bed. A veritable chasm of sheets and mattress dipped between them, something Chuck considered to be an oddly appropriate metaphor as he drifted off to sleep.

On the other side of town, however, another individual was not so fortunate. The pie maker found himself unable to sleep, but too tired to wander. And so he just lay in his bed, staring across the room…

It simply isn't fair, Ned thought. Another person brought back from the dead, another person had to die in her place.

And it wasn't as though he didn't understand. Ned understood exactly what Charles Bartowski's motivations had been – after all, hadn't Ned himself done almost the same thing with Chuck, short of, perhaps, the gratuitous violence and threats of death?

Ned certainly couldn't blame Charles – Sarah Walker was a very attractive young woman, she seemed like a truly very nice person, and he could tell from the way he looked at her that there was definitely something special between them. The thing was, he couldn't tell exactly what was there – from what he could tell, aside from the occasional hug, Chuck Bartowski touched Sarah Walker only a little more than Ned was able to touch his own Chuck – that being never.

Nonetheless, he was still unhappy about another unnecessary death. What was worse was the cavalier fashion in which Emerson had treated it. Yes, perhaps Emerson had caught the young man trying to break into his car, and perhaps the young man's removal from society wasn't a total loss, but this was still an individual who had been cut down in the prime of his life.

And yet, Ned found that more than that, he was upset about the fact that Chuck Bartowski could have contact with Sarah Walker, and it was clear that he wanted to have contact with her, and yet didn't. For somebody like Ned, who couldn't have contact with Chuck Charles at all, it was aggravating, and even a little bit infuriating.

Little did he know, though, that certain amounts of contact were occurring – albeit unconsciously. As the sun rose over Papen County, an awkward discovery was about to be made.

As the sunlight began to make its way into the east side of the Days Inn, the shafts of light played across Sarah's face, bringing her to wakefulness. Coming to consciousness, she realized she wasn't in exactly the same position as she was when she went to sleep the night before.

Rather than being on the opposite side of the bed from Chuck, she was now in the middle of the bed. Sarah was lying on her side, in a spoon position, nestled against Chuck, his arm wrapped around her midsection.

Instead of moving away from him, however, she just continued to lay there, a small smile on her face. After a few minutes, she could feel him beginning to stir. "Good morning," she said softly.

"'morn'n'," he grunted, although he didn't seem to realize the position he was in.

Sarah turned her head slightly to the right, so that she was partially facing Chuck. With a bit of evil humor behind her voice, she teased him, "Now, I thought we were supposed to just be friends, mister!"

The words pierced through the haze of sleepiness and caused his eyes to fly open. "Oh jeez," he said, rolling away from Sarah. A look of disappointment briefly flashed across her face, but she wiped it away and turned to face him.

"I am so sorry," he apologized. Sarah cocked her head and looked at him. He had a look of utter embarrassment on his face, which for some reason fit right in with the way his hair was sticking up in seventy-three different directions.

"Don't be," she replied, laughing softly. "I'm the one who invaded your bed, and you know what? I slept like a baby these last few hours."

"Oh," Chuck said. He just sat there for a moment, opened his mouth a few times, but never actually said anything. Finally, he said, "I'm going to take a shower. I'll be out in a few minutes."

As Chuck headed through the bathroom door, Sarah had to fight a completely irrational urge to jump up and run into the bathroom with him.

"Get a grip, woman," she muttered to herself.

This was starting to greatly bother Sarah. How in heaven's name was she supposed to complete this mission if she kept having to fight irrational urges to jump Chuck?

It had to be an after-effect from the electrocution and subsequent resurrection. No matter what it was, though, it was going to have to stop.

Or at least be curbed.

Or at least, she was going to have to consider curbing it.

Maybe.

Maybe tomorrow.