A/N Why would Shaw save the footage that proves he's a traitor in canon? Did he want to get caught? Just another instance of his self-destructiveness? Who knows? I know I don't. Here's part 4 of 6.

"Have faith in your partners."

"One, please."

"You completely ruined my trap."

"You go first."

In Castle, post-mission…

General Beckman was less than pleased. "Agent Shaw, the purpose of this mission was to embed you in the Ring as a double agent, not to eliminate the Director. This wasn't a Red Op."

"I understand that, General," said Shaw, "But Agent Bartowski deployed new tech that wasn't in the plan. As more and more wheels came off, the Director eventually drew his own gun against my partners." Which was also not in the plan. "I did what I had to do, to protect them."

Beckman unbent a little. "Your concern for your team is commendable. Fortunately, they also managed to secure an asset of equal if not greater worth than the Director himself."

"The secretary or the Cipher?" asked Shaw.

"The secretary. The Cipher is undergoing analysis, but even a cursory examination has shown that the technology involved is greatly lagging. I'm told Mr. Depak burst out laughing. When he calms down I'll have him prepare a full catalog of its deficiencies."

"I would advise against that, General," said Shaw. "For two reasons. One, such a catalog would likely not be something anyone other than Mr. Depak or members of his team could understand, so the value of such an artifact would be minimal. Second and more important, there's an old Klingon proverb. 'If you don't want a thing heard'–"

"'Do not say it'," finished Chuck. "Shaw's right, General. If M's team can understand the catalog so can the Ring's team. Let's not do their work for them. Bryce could steal the Intersect because all the data was in one place, ready to be stolen. I say we learn from our mistakes."

Beckman nodded. "Very well. The catalog will be prepared but no one person shall have access to all the parts." She made a note. "Now, about the secretary…"

"Yes, ma'am," said Sarah, taking the hint. She glared at Shaw for trying to implicate Chuck in this fiasco. "First, I should point out that M's new darts worked extremely well. Not only was she paralyzed, but when the dart wore off she was still too weak to resist, or even to self-destruct. I found several such devices on her person during scan, and removed them before she could muster the strength to activate them."

"I'm sure Mr. Depak will appreciate the feedback," said Beckman. "Has she been interrogated yet?"

"Not yet," said Shaw suddenly. "I was able to get a confirmation that our mole was in Paris, but she wasn't able to say more."

Sarah bristled. All interactions with a female prisoner should have gone through her, the only female agent on the scene. "When did you ask her this?"

"While you were taking her gear for processing and destruction," said Shaw calmly.

"You questioned a female prisoner without Agent Walker present?" asked General Beckman severely. "Agent Shaw, you are suspended. You have five minutes to leave Castle. Agent Bartowski, see to it."

"General, what will that accomplish?" said Chuck, trying to inject a little reason into her entirely understandable anger. "We can't throw him in a cell, not for this, and we all know where he'll go the second he's off the premises, so why not use that? I would recommend instead that Agent Walker be assigned to escort Agent, I mean, Mister Shaw to Paris."

Sarah rounded on him, frowning. She said nothing, but Chuck could practically hear the Thanks a lot, Chuck boiling out of her ears. He understood. Now that they were together, any chance to be together was to be seized with both hands, and he'd just thrown that one away.

"Why not you?" asked the General.

"I have a project I need to monitor here," said Chuck, hoping she would remember what that project was. "Plus there's a good chance Agent Jones is the mole. If that's the case–"

"We'll need Agent Walker in Paris to take her into custody," finished the General. "Very well. Agent Walker, you will turn over monitoring duties on the prisoner to me until I can delegate those duties to the LA team. You will accompany Mr. Shaw to Paris and find the mole. You will then return Mr. Shaw to Washington to face a departmental hearing and whatever charges may result. Dismissed." She stabbed the button with what seemed to Chuck to be an extra measure of venom.

"Good work," he said to Shaw, collecting his weapon and ID. It wasn't in his nature to call anyone 'numbnuts' or 'moron', but he thought it very, very hard. It usually didn't work for him, though. Maybe it was a girl thing.

"It doesn't matter," said Shaw. "This is my last mission. I'm done here."

"You're done there, too," said Sarah, shoving him toward the nearest stair. "Interfere with me in the performance of my duties again and I'll kill you myself."

Morgan wouldn't have thought of what he was doing as 'laying in wait' but that's what he was doing, sitting in his darkened living room, listening for the distinctive stomp of a prey that knew it had nothing to fear here. He waited for a second, to let his prey get settled, then went for the door.

Casey opened said door. "What do you want?"

"Can I talk to you?"

"No." Casey started to shut the door.

"Good." Morgan slid in between door and jamb as they came together, feeling more than a little like Indiana Jones escaping from some death trap. Except he was escaping into this one. "It's about Alex."

Casey's hands paused on their way to Grimes' throat. "What about her?"

Morgan gulped, looking at those big hands with big eyes. "I just thought you should know, that we're officially official."

Casey turned away in disgust. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" He put his computer on the desk of his empty front room, next to his bonsai plant.

"Chuck did tell you that the laudanol finally wore off, didn't he? No, of course he didn't, I'm sure he had more important things on his mind."

"Like our mission," said Casey, opening his computer and calling up his files. "The one the General will want my report on real soon, so how about you let me get started."

"Whoa," said Morgan, staring past him. "That was a huge kick!"

Casey looked at his screen. Dammit. He'd closed it with the recordings from the security feed still playing.

"Where'd you get this?" asked Morgan. "I don't know this movie, and I've seen every Hong Kong chop-socky fight film ever made. I know fake, but this looks real."

"That's because this is real," said Casey, watching it raptly. "Footage from the mission. I won't say I like Shaw, but he's got a hell of a roundhouse." He slowed it down. "Check this out. Moment of impact. Bam!" Casey came to his senses. "Get out of here, Grimes, this is classified, and you never saw it, understand?"

"Okay, fine," grumbled Morgan. Spies got to do all the cool stuff. He put a hand on the doorknob.

"The laudanol wore off, huh?" said Casey behind him.

Here it comes. "Yeah. A couple of hours ago."

No wonder Big Mike was freaking out. "So that was you who pushed your way in here just now, to talk 'officially' about my daughter."

Morgan couldn't make the knob turn. "Yes, sir. I found some…gas still in my tank, I guess."

"That's good," said Casey absently, zipping back and forth through the recording. "Keep it up."

"Sir," said Morgan. He turned and snapped off a salute, grinning. "Yes, sir!"

Casey glared at him. "Don't ever do that again."

Back at the Casa de Bartowski y Grimes…

Morgan came back to find his hetero-life-partner standing in his room, staring at his bed in the dark. It looked rumpled. "That's not my fault."

"What?" said Chuck, looking up. "Oh, the…thing…no, I wasn't thinking about that at all, although I'm pretty sure I didn't leave it this way…" He bent over to tug the covers smooth. "But I do have this odd feeling that something's wrong."

"I know what you mean," said Morgan. "Casey's over in his place, watching a fight scene straight out of Hong Kong and acting like a human being. Is your bedroom still bugged?"

"Of course not, buddy." Chuck looked up at the corners of his room. "My good friend John Casey would never bug his partner's house!"

Morgan laughed. "That's a good one, Chuck. No, you're right, not even John Casey is that paranoid."

"It's not paranoia," said a voice in the corner, "It's just a hefty dose of self-preservation instinct."

Chuck flipped on the lights.

John Casey stood revealed, wearing his best black sneaking-around-in gear. He sighed. "Which you obviously don't have."

"You bugged my house?" asked Chuck.

Casey folded up his ski mask, revealing his face. "Of course not."

"Then how did you know we were talking about you?" said Morgan.

"Lucky guess." He looked at Chuck. "Shaw bugged your house, nimrod, I just never got around to un-bugging it." He jerked a thumb toward Morgan. "Tweedle-Dumb was just over at my place, telling me that was officially carrying on with a girl two-thirds his age and still more mature than him. You can imagine how much I love that."

"You said I was good."

"I said you managed to exceed my expectations, and you did, although in your case the bar is kind of low." Somehow Casey managed to loom over Morgan without moving from the window. "What I meant, and I wanted to make sure you understood the depth of my feeling here, is that if you break her heart, I will break your everything. I just want to be clear about this."

Morgan scoffed, way over there on the other side of the room with Chuck between them. "Tell that to the other guy."

"What other guy?" said Casey suspiciously, taking a large step forward.

"Other-Morgan, the pre-laudanol version of me," said Morgan, backing away. "He's gone, he's out of the way, so far away even I don't know where he is."

"Try Paris," said Chuck bitterly.

"What's in Paris, Bartowski?"

"Sarah. And Shaw. He questioned the secretary on his own, found out the mole was in Paris. He'll help Sarah find her, or him, before he gets tossed out on his ear for breaking protocol."

"Wow," said Morgan. "Talk about not ready for prime time."

Casey rumbled thoughtfully. "It's dumber than I ever expected Shaw to be…"

"I know, right?" said Morgan. "Throwing away your job in this economy? And you know he's not getting a recommendation–"

"He's burned his bridges with the Ring…"

"You can say that again," said Morgan, pounding one fist into his other hand. He shook it out, wincing. "He turned those guys into guacamole."

"What guys?" Chuck asked him. There'd been only one guy at the elevator, and Shaw had turned him into Swiss cheese. Real, body-parts-on-the-outside human remains. The only other place Shaw was supposed to be was in the elevator room. Chuck turned to Casey. "Ring guys? But that fight was supposed to be staged."

Casey shrugged. "He changed his mind."

Yeah. At the elevator. "That's not what he said at the briefing."

"You mean the briefing where he torched his career? That briefing?"

"He had to know what would happen," said Chuck, "Especially when he admitted it in front of the General, so why–?"

"So why would he do that?" asked Casey and Morgan together.

"He wanted to be fired?" said Chuck.

"So now he's not only officially not a spy, he is officially an idiot."

"No, Casey, not an idiot," said Chuck, feeling his way along a tenuous thread of logic. "He got himself thrown out. Deliberately. In the worst possible way. Beckman was ready to bounce him out of Castle." He held up a hand. "No bouncy-castle jokes please, Morgan."

"Awww."

"He'd have been gone and on his way, if I hadn't stopped her, if I hadn't…"

"If you hadn't what?" asked Casey.

"If I hadn't convinced the General to send him to Paris anyway, but with Sarah."

"Oh, well, that's good then, right, Chuck?" asked Morgan. "She'll keep him in line."

Chuck said nothing, looking pretty maybe at the moment.

The computer chimed. "That's the General," said Casey. "Clear out, Grimes."

"You clear out," said Morgan. "It's my house."

Chuck hit the connection, and General Beckman's face appeared on his monitor. She was in a bathrobe, or something else non-uniform. "Agent Bartowski, I'm glad I–what's he doing here?"

"He lives here, General," said Chuck. "He's read in, he knows all the players involved, and he did come up with that successful Large Mart strategy last year."

"A thing of beauty," asked Casey, who had a taste for overkill.

"Whatever," said Beckman. "I was just informed that the secretary you captured went into severe systemic shock."

"She's dead?"

"No, it didn't get that far. Given the circumstances surrounding the case, I assigned a doctor. She was there when it happened and was able to retrieve the patient."

To Chuck's credit, the fact that she was an asset was not uppermost in his thoughts when he said, "That's good."

"Yes, but the secretary then told us that a black-haired man had drugged her, without asking her anything at all."

"Do we believe her?" asked Casey.

"She woke up screaming out of a coma," said the General. "I doubt she had a prepared story."

"So how did Shaw know that the mole was in Paris?" said Chuck.

"How do you think, moron?"

"It was a rhetorical question, okay?" said Chuck. "I'm just processing my horror, that I was a part of sending Sarah into the lion's den, apparently with the lion."

"We're going after her, General," said Casey.

"Of course you are," said Beckman with a smile. She disconnected.

Casey pulled out his pistol, checked the load. "Look at that, already packed." He holstered his pistol, rolled down his ski mask and took a step toward the Morgan Door, but only one. "Oops."

Chuck turned at the unusual sound coming from his partner. "Casey, what–?" He followed Casey's gaze to the Morgan Door. Ellie stood right outside. She'd seen everything. Heard everything.

"Oops."

A/N2 Please drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.