Since Chuck had uploaded the Intersect, people had pointed guns at him far more often than he cared to remember. It was a far different experience when Sarah was the one sighting him down the barrel.

Sarah had always displayed a certain level of humanity around him, even under the most extreme of circumstances. The woman pointing the gun at his head did not. This woman was efficient and ruthless and cruelly beautiful. This woman could poison French diplomats, or infiltrate paramilitary camps, or assassinate visiting dignitaries without a second thought.

This woman was a stranger.

In a brittle, hollow voice, he said, "Tell me, Agent Walker: is this what ends up happening to everyone you get to trust you?"

It was frightening how completely unaffected she was. She just stood there, a strangely empty smile on her face, pointing her gun straight at his chest. Unmoving. Unwavering. Constant as the North Star. Just not the way he had thought.

He asked, "How can you do this?"

"I thought you'd prefer to have me carry out the order rather than somebody else."

"That's considerate of you, but I'd really prefer it if nobody kills me."

She said, "Unfortunately, that isn't an option."

"Sure it is. You put the gun down without firing it. Seems like a perfectly good option to me."

"We appreciate your service to your country but if you fell into the wrong hands, the consequences would be devastating. I'm sorry."

Thing was, she didn't sound sorry.

He said, "So I'm no longer an asset. Guess that makes me a liability. I'm just another number to be balanced in Graham's ledger."

"Something like that."

His face darkened. "After all I've done for Graham, this is how it ends?"

"I guess so."

"And after all that we've been through, you and I, this is how it ends?"

No response. None. Just icy blue eyes staring over cold steel.

He stared back at her. "I don't get it. How can you stand there and point your gun at me, as if I was just another random faceless terrorist instead of a guy who, up until earlier today, helped you fight them?"

"It's nothing personal."

"It's pretty personal to me."

She said, "The job always comes first. I told you that."

"Then you told me the job wouldn't always come first."

"This isn't one of those times."

"Well, it damn well should be."

If anything, her stance strengthened and her aim tightened. More vicious. Less Sarah.

"You know, I thought I did everything right," Chuck said. "Fulcrum keeps growing more and more powerful, Beckman and Graham keep growing more and more paranoid, and the data in my head keep growing more and more stale. I'd always been afraid that the end game for me was getting poked and prodded in a lab in some underground bunker, but the watch was a wake-up call. It crystallized things. The end game could be a fake heart attack or a bullet in my back or poison in my coffee, and if Ellie or Awesome or Morgan ever happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, their lives would be in danger too.

"So I left. I left and I tried to take everyone dangerous with me. I sent Casey and Fulcrum chasing shadows to Seattle and Stanford and Texas and anywhere else I could think of. But you, Sarah, you I trusted."

He laughed, a bitter, lifeless sound. "It's ironic. I thought I'd make a lot of mistakes when I ran, but it turns out I made only one. The only mistake I made was trusting you."

He heard his heart breaking in his words. He thought that, at least, might provoke some reaction. The Sarah he knew would have shown some small sign of remorse. But not Agent Walker. She didn't twitch a muscle. She just stood there, in her sensible white blouse and her sensible pony tail, doing the incomprehensible.

He grasped for something, anything, to fill the emptiness inside of him. "Tell me I was at least right about the watch. Tell me you didn't plant the chip."

"What makes you think I didn't?" she asked.

"It wouldn't make sense. You spent months gaining my trust, and if I ever found the chip, I would never trust you again. Besides, if you really wanted to kill me, you could get me alone easily enough. So that means Casey planted it. It gave him a tracker and a way to execute a kill order, and if I found it, he'd figure that I'd blame you."

The corner of her mouth turned up slightly more, just for an instant. It was easily the oddest gesture of respect he had ever received. "Nicely done, Chuck."

"Guess I picked up a few things from you guys. Not enough, apparently."

There wasn't much she could say to that.

He stared at the hollow of her neck, where the pendant of her necklace usually rested. No longer. "Casey was trying to convince me that I shouldn't trust you. I never dreamed he could be right."

She bit her lower lip, something he'd never seen her do before. Then that strangely empty smile was back. "I guess some lessons are harder than others."

Unreal. Chuck had been deceived by the CIA's best, and what a number she had done on him. As they talked about killing him, she was utterly devoid of anything resembling emotion. Every last vestige of humanity was gone, replaced by an apathy so profound that, for Chuck, it bordered on malice.

Did she have to be so callous about it all? Did she have to strip everything away before she killed him.

The answer ran though him like a shock. No. She didn't.

Why hadn't she pulled the trigger already? Unless...

He appraised her through new eyes, eyes that gleamed with the slightest bit of hope. "So all of it was a lie?" he asked.

"Yes."

"The supposed attraction behind our cover? Kissing me in front of Bryce's cryochamber? Crying on the helipad when they were going to take me away, coming to my place on Valentine's Day, telling me you wanted what time we could have together? All of it was nothing but lies?"

"Yes!"

It didn't fit. Sarah was sympathetic. Agent Walker was pragmatic. Neither was cruel enough to drag things out like this.

He looked down at the floor and saw the two-dollar birthday card lying on the matted shag carpet. Everything became clear. The hurt drained out of him.

His gaze turned back to her. Softly, he said, "You and I – it wasn't lies, was it."

"It was, Chuck," she said. "I'm sorry, but–"

"You're lying now."

Her head twisted to one side. She searched for a rebuttal, and failed to find one.

It was Chuck's turn to be calm, just a warm calm instead of cold. "Why did you bring the card?" he asked.

"What?"

"Why did you bring the birthday card? You didn't need it."

She said, "The card told me where you were."

"No, the note inside the card told you where I was. I can see why you'd bring the note. You didn't need to bring the card."

Her eyes swung away and back. "I might have needed it to get you into the room."

"Then why did you pull it out after you got here? After you got the order?"

Sarah squirmed. She didn't have a clever answer for that. At least, not one she wanted to give.

"You brought it out when you saw the cake," Chuck said. "Yesterday was your birthday. The cake, the card, the clues I left for you and only you – all of it meant something to you."

"You're wrong."

"I don't believe you."

Her aim drifted the slightest bit. She readjusted and rallied. "Of course I lied to you, Chuck. I'm a CIA agent. I handled you. I did what was necessary so you would trust me, and look where you ended up." She almost managed a sneer. Almost. The way it came out, it was more like she was imploring him to believe her.

And he didn't. "Yes, you lied to me. You've lied to me from the moment we met. You lied about being new in town, and how you wanted me to call. When you said you didn't date Bryce. When you said you didn't want to go out with me. You lied to me under the influence of truth serum, for crying out loud. And you're lying to me now. You don't want to shoot me."

The almost-sneer faded. She struggled to keep the gun level. Little cracks formed at the seams, tiny fissures where bits of Sarah seeped out, bits like the sudden glimmer of moisture in her eyes, or the escape of a trembling breath.

He took a slow step forward. She started slightly, but otherwise didn't react.

He took another step. "Don't come any closer, Chuck," she said. He didn't listen. He took another step.

Cautiously, inexorably, he closed in. Her face cried out in denial, but she was powerless to stop him. His hands reached for the gun. Her lips parted in a protest that died on her lips.

He could have turned the gun aside easily enough, but he didn't. Indecision wasn't enough. She had to be the one to make the choice. He could plead his case, but he couldn't make the choice for her.

His hands wrapped around the barrel. Instead of diverting her aim, he steadied it, pointing the gun straight at his heart. Her eyes grew wide.

"This isn't you, Sarah," he said. "As much as I'm amazed at how you can be whoever is needed to serve your country, this isn't who you are. And this isn't what you want."

"Why don't you get it?" she asked. "What I want has nothing to do with it."

"It has everything to do with it."

"I. Am. An. Agent."

"No. You're Sarah. You're my Sarah."

Her face screwed up in anguish. She shook her head again. Chuck wasn't sure whether it was to tell him 'no' or to fight off the urge to shoot.

"Chuck…" she begged, a plea for something to tip the scales, to break the stalemate that was ripping her apart inside. All she had to do was pull the trigger, and it would finish her mission. It would finish him. It would finish both of them.

And he smiled.

He said, "My life has been in your hands since the day we met. I don't see why that should change now." With the gentlest voice he had, he added, "I trust you, Sarah. Just like you asked me to. Even now, I trust you."

Her face went flat, disturbingly so. All the emotion that he had seen in her face evaporated, and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then she began to tremble, and her mask suddenly vanished, ripped away as the conflict swelled within her. She looked at the gun and at him and at what could happen next. With a strangled cry, she yanked the gun away from him. The gun dislodged from her suddenly graceless hands, cart-wheeling across the carpet. It settled on the floor next to the birthday card, the barrel pointed impotently at the wall.

The gun flew away from her in slow motion. As it tumbled to a halt, Sarah's body shuddered under the weight of the emotions. What had she just done? What had she nearly done?

She stared with wild eyes at Chuck, standing so close he could probably feel her ragged breaths on his skin. "How could you do that?" she demanded, almost angrily. "How could you possibly trust me after all the lies?"

He shrugged, a motion more appropriate for expressing indifference between a choice of restaurants. "I'd almost forgotten," he said. "With you, it's never about the words. Your actions are what matter, and everything you did told me that you didn't want to kill me. You just hadn't quite figured it out yet."

The answer floored her. She had come to the hotel in full-blown mission mode, completely intent on killing him, and yet somehow he had still figured out the truth, a truth that she hadn't even recognized. But that was what Chuck did. He saw things in her nobody else could see.

She looked around as if seeing the dingy hotel room for the first time. Her plan was to kill him and then disappear. Now … now there was no plan.

"So what do we do now?" she asked. "Do we go on the run for the rest of our lives?" As if the running was nothing, but the rest-of-our-lives was terrifying.

Chuck took a moment, choosing his words carefully. "Nothing's changed, Sarah. I want what time we can have together. I'm not asking for the rest of our lives; I'm just asking for one more day. Maybe tomorrow one of us changes his mind. Or maybe, we wake up one day and we're eighty, holding hands on a porch and thinking back on our life together. I don't know about happily ever after. I don't want to know. Right now, I just want one more day, and we can figure it out from there."

Deep inside her, something shifted. Something subtle. Something profound.

Maybe nothing had changed for Chuck, but for Sarah, everything had changed. Chuck's words had made the impossible plausible, reasonable, almost simple. He had turned her own rules about what could and couldn't be around on her, showing her a way that maybe, just maybe, they could have a future.

Before, there had been so much in the way, so many reasons to keep Chuck at arm's length. But now those reasons were gone. She had thrown them all aside when she threw down her gun.

A quick step later, her fingers were on his neck, drawing his mouth to hers as she rose up on her toes. Hungrily, she kissed him, clinging to him, pulling herself back from the depths on the strength of his faith in her.

There wasn't anything to keep them apart. Not anymore.

At least for one more day.

End of part one.

Author's note: thanks for the reviews on the last chapter. I reached out to a couple of people and had some interesting discussions about what they didn't like about the last chapter. Like I said, the negative reviews are often more interesting, even though I reserve the right to disagree and argue my case.

Big thanks to Baylink for all his beta help. He probably doesn't recognize parts of this chapter, as I made a few substantial changes behind his back. He's probably used to that by now. All mistakes are my own.

My schedule from here – I probably won't be publishing for at least a week or so. I've got some serious writing to do before I can get the next chapter up, and this week promises to be busy for me outside of writing. Hopefully, though, people will be happy with where I left things.

- sharp