Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Chuck

Chapter 5: Standing on My Own Two Feet

"Where's Carmichael?" General Beckman asked as she looked amongst the group of people gathered. The NSA and CIA assault team were once again back at their staging area, facing the monitor that had both General Beckman and Director Graham staring back at them. They had only initiated their debriefing.

Sarah was about to make a comment when Agent Woods spoke up, "He's crashed on a cot in the back. He's not doing too hot."

Sarah and Casey were looking at Woods, not too pleased with him or Kramer at the moment. After she and Casey had supervised the securing of the pulse power generator onto a guarded truck for transportation to a NSA facility, they got into their Suburbans and headed back to the staging area to meet up with the mobile command group. After getting out of the car Sarah noticed that mobile command was already there. She started sprinting to the door when she noticed that Agent Woods and Kramer each had one of Chuck's shoulder slung over theirs as they helped him into the building.

She had demanded to know what happened but was only greeted by a non-committal promise to explain later, they needed to start setting up for a debriefing. Her attention had been drawn away when Casey shouted at her; he was staring into the back of the van. Sarah's eyes had bugged when she saw the amount of blood stained tissues. She had been like a Valkyrie riding into war as she stormed into the warehouse, about to demand an immediate explanation when the large display lighted up with the faces of their superiors.

"Explain." Graham's tense voice commanded.

"I don't know what type of analyst he is, but he's one of the best I've seen. Ever." Woods began, causing Sarah's and Casey's face to quirk in shock before settling into proud smiles; Casey's was more a grimace.

Woods continued on with his explanation, "Carmichael was able to provide effective and immediate on-site intelligence about hostiles, their background, techniques, and possible partners. This allowed us to defuse multiple explosives. Towards the end of securing the ship, he started to have a nose bleed.

"He didn't take time to take care of it and let it bleed out for another five minutes as he was so busy recording data and providing intell. When the ship was secure he was able to finally grab a tissue to try to stem the flow of blood. He kept bleeding for another 10 minutes. We noticed that he had a bottle of Aspirin and he had downed some during the mission.

"When Agent Kramer and myself asked him if he was ok, he complained of a migraine. We noticed that he took another two Aspirins as we were waiting for the cargo containers to be moved. After he identified the package, he had closed his eyes and we had let him sleep. He was pretty loopy when we roused him and had to carry him to the cot. We're not certain but we think his blood may not be clotting properly if he's taken as many Aspirins as we suspect."

Director Graham was on the phone halfway through Woods' explanation. When the explanation was done he said, "You should be expecting a CIA doctor very soon." He nodded to the General.

"Proceed with the debriefing."

Ten minutes into the briefing the doctor had arrived and she was escorted to where Chuck was lying. The complete debriefing was over in 30 minutes and the doctor was waiting to provide the directors and update of Chuck's status.

"He's dehydrated, malnourished, and suffering from blood loss. Though not enough blood was lost to be too dangerous, combined with the dehydrated and malnourished state his body just shut down. He was lucid enough for a few seconds during my exam, although he may have confused me with someone else." The doctor looked at Sarah before facing the screen again. While the doctor did not share any resemblance to Sarah, she did have long blond hair. Sarah's face scrunched into an frown.

"He was able to tell me that he's used the maximum allowed dosage of Aspirin, for the past 3 days." The doctor continued, her eyebrows scowling a little, "It was indeed the Aspirin that prevented his nose bleed from clotting."

The doctor held up a sheet of paper, "I've hooked him into a saline IV treatment that will need to be replaced periodically. I have instructions written here on how to change the saline bag. I also suggest that he refrain from taking anymore Aspirin at the moment, at least till his system flushes out what's currently in there. I've told him that much before he went back to sleep."

Sarah reached her hand out and took the instructions.

"Thank you doctor." General Beckman responded. The doctor nodded her head as she headed out the door. Once the room was secure again General Beckman continued, "We still have one more shipment that we need to secure in 3 days. Luck, it seems is with us as the cargo ship is arriving at the same pier as today's shipment. We can obviously expect heavier resistance on the ground once the people that the package was meant for find out that it's been intercepted.

"Rest up tonight. We'll meet again tomorrow evening at 0100 Zulu. Agents Casey and Walker, we have issues to discuss tomorrow morning at 1500 Zulu. Make sure to bring Carmichael. Also, Make sure to keep eyes on the location."

Later that evening, Sarah opened the door to her hotel room, quickly going back into the hallway to help Casey's burden. Casey was supporting Chuck, Chuck's one arm slung over Casey's shoulder as he was practically lifting Chuck up. Sarah, with one arm holding the Saline bag went back to help support the unconscious man.

"Put him on the bed," Sarah said as she brought a lamp closer to the right side of her bed.

Once Casey had placed Chuck on the bed, Sarah hung the Saline bag onto the lamp. She tapped the bag a few times to make sure that it was still flowing. She sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand looking like it wanted so badly to touch her charge. Casey took a seat at one of the chairs facing the large window. They had put Chuck in the back seat of the Suburban, hanging the Saline IV on the hand hold. Sarah had followed in Chuck's Nerd Herder.

"What the hell do you think is going on with him?" Casey asked as he gazed out the window.

"You've been watching him at the Buy More, when did he get a chance to flash on anything?" Sarah asked as she kept her eyes on the man in her bed, her hand unconsciously finding Chuck's.

"He's been holed up in that cage for the past 4 days starting at 5am and arrives home at 1am, when he did get home. I don't think he got the chance to flash on anything."

"You get anything on the Buy More surveillance footage before and after hours?"

"Just our boy in the cage all day and going to the home theater, I guess for a late night nap before he heads home."

"Ok, and how come he went straight to Beckman and Graham? He's always come to us first. And how come they listened?"

"Cuz, I needed to start making something of myself." Chuck grumbled out, his voice heavy with sleep.

"Chuck!" Sarah nearly shouted as she scooted closer to him, "How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been staring at the sun for too long." Chuck responded, moving his right arm and laying it in front of his eyes.

"What do you mean start making something of yourself?" Casey asked as he walked up to the side of the bed, crossing his arms.

Sarah gave Casey a scornful look, obviously not done with her line of questioning.

"Beckman told me you guys thought I was depressed and acting like a spoiled brat these past few days." Chuck continued in a flat voice, not looking at them.

Sarah sucked in a breath, her face going slack with shock while Casey narrowed his eyes, "When did you talk to General Beckman?"

Chuck peeked an eye out from beneath his arm, "You want to keep asking questions or you want me to tell you what's going on?"

Casey seemed to have an internal argument; his hands twitched like they wanted to strangle him, but his curiosity and need to be informed of the situation prevailed.

"After getting chewed out by everyone that last mission," Chuck covered his eyes again, pretty sure that he wouldn't be able to say what he needed to say if he kept realizing he had an audience, "I needed time to myself to figure some things out. Was I depressed? Yeh, you're darn tootin'. I needed this time and I couldn't take the chance to flash on anything.

"I figured that the best thing to do was not talk to anyone, make sure I didn't see anyone, and not see anything that could potentially trigger a flash. The best place for that was the cage. I figured no terrorist would be stupid enough to send their computer with evil plots and world ending contraption designs to a Buy More to get fixed.

"Granted I might have moped a little, but you know what I figured out while I was sitting there, elbow deep into dusty computer parts? I realized that I've been making excuses for the past 5 years. I mean, yes, Bryce was the starting point for each and every major life altering event these past 5 years now. He got me kicked me out of school, good intention or not, that doesn't matter anymore.

"He stole Jill after getting me kicked out and then out of no where he dumps a national top secret database into my head. You know, I almost forgave him for it all too, when I thought I felt sorry for him. But now, you know, screw him. Screw that ass-hat Bryce. Oh I can imagine you're thinking, but he's put himself in danger to go against Fulcrum to save poor old gullible and naïve Chuck. Well, damn straight he is. But he's not saving me, he's saving the Intersect. I'm just a job to him, like I'm just a job to you." Chuck sighed, his eyes still hidden. He didn't see the utterly shocked expressions on both his handler's faces. He didn't notice the lines of anguish and moist eyes that seemed to have captured Sarah's features.

"Anyway, while I can blame him for the triggers that caused my life to spiral down, I have no one to blame but myself for perpetuating it. Instead of putting my boots back on and finding a new horse to get back on, I've allowed myself to wallow in mediocrity. I didn't have to mope over the loss of Jill and I'm not going to mope over Sar…" Chuck stopped himself. He was putting himself out again, letting everything hang but that particular train of thought was something that they didn't need to know.

"So after horribly failing that last mission and with the head honcho's threats, I decided I needed to get my act together. Take responsibility for my actions, pin responsibilities for actions that other people have made against me. I wasn't ready to go into some underground holding facility then and I'm not ready to go now. If either of you decide to leave for a reassignment in the future for one reason… or another, then I guess I can be fine with that. But now, I have to do everything in my ability to make sure that my performance isn't the cause of it."

"Chuck…" Sarah whispered, her face visibly weakening as he kept talking. Casey spared her a glance, his face unreadable.

"You know Sarah, after watching you with Bryce fighting and working together I was so amazed. It's like you both had worked as a team forever. Your talents are wasted here," Chuck whispered, his voice hitching at the last sentence.

Casey's eyes widened slightly, as did Sarah's. Something changed, something about the Chuck they knew was gone, but they couldn't put their finger on it.

"Getting on with it, I decided that there's only one way I could help the team, help make myself worthwhile. I mean, I have no training; I'm not an experienced, hardened, cold, and manipulative agent." Sarah visibly flinched at the comments.

"All I've got is this damned Intersect, so I made a decision that I needed to make it work for me as much as I was being made to work for the government. So, I snuck into the home theater room on after long day and using the key commands that I've remembered Casey do oh so many times," Chuck actually grinned, "I got in contact with the directors. It took some convincing mind you and they were going to call you two up immediately, but I told them that I've been the one to make the mistakes so I was the one that needed to fix it.

"I got them to tell me the name of the pattern mapping algorithm that was used in the Intersect. I flashed on the name, but it was more than just a flash. It was like the algorithm booted up in my mind and for the next few hours it did a brute force query through all the data in my mind.

"The next two days I spent in the cage I've been going over our previous missions one-by-one and documenting all the new pieces of information I was flashing on. It wasn't until I started going through the Bryce and Fulcrum missions did I start getting data inputs about the shipment parts which triggered onto the MLR2G. Now, the algorithm that the Intersect is using is producing so much information that sometimes a good bunch of it isn't really related. I have to do a lot of sifting through to find the relevant versus the junk. And that's about it really." Chuck finally said; he felt drained down to his core.

The two agents were speechless. Sarah tried her utmost to compose herself, "Why didn't you come to us? We're here to protect you."

Chuck slowly got up into a seated position on the bed, his eyes open but dull. He looked around before moving his legs off the edge of the bed.

"You are here to protect me, protect the Intersect. What I did, I had to do for myself. I needed information on how to go about it. You two are just here to protect the physical vessel of the Intersect and I trust you to do that."

Chuck looked at the IV in his arm and slowly pulled it out, giving off a hiss of pain as he did so.

"Chuck!" Sarah shouted, about to stop him but her body stopped. The eyes that he focused on her were ones she had never seen before. There was some righteous determination and fire in them, anger boiling beneath the surface. Chuck tied the end of the tube, preventing it from dripping and ruining Sarah's carpet.

He got up on wobbly legs and headed to her large windows, "I trust you to protect me and the Intersect from harm and for that I'm grateful, but I don't trust you to do what's best for me as Chuck Bartowski."

"What the hell are you getting at?" Casey snarled.

"Who the hell is Charles Bartowski to you?" Chuck shouted back as he looked at his handlers, his eyes wild, "Just some freaky geeky nerd that you're forced to protect because he has all your secrets shoved into his brain? Or is he some guy in a rut that has an absolutely amazing sister that's loved and supported him his whole life, who's been one of his most needed threads to sanity? Is he some gamer that plays way too many games with his equally socially inept best friend that also happens to be his other thread to remain grounded?

"I don't even know who I am anymore!" Chuck's eyes misted over but he wouldn't break in front of these two. He needed them to understand, not to pretend pity him. Chuck bit the inside of his cheek to focus on the new pain. He hated how he sounded, it was so emo.

"I lie hour after hour. I can't talk to my sister or best friend anymore because I can't tell them anything or risk their safety. I can't talk to you two because it's all about the job. I was drowning in a mess that that bastard Bryce put me into. I was drowning because my emotions, which I've always lived by, were failing me again and affecting my second job." Chuck looked directly at Sarah. She averted his gaze, not able to look at him directly.

"So excuse me for wanting to take some control." Chuck sighed, "And as far as I can see, it's paid off so far."

"Paid off? Look at you Chuck." Sarah shouted back, rising from the bed.

"Look at what? My migraines? My bodily weaknesses? So? I'm not a super undercover agent like you and Bryce, fit enough to fight ninjas, run for miles, seduce anyone you wanted. I'm not like mister I like to hurt people over here. All I have is this," Chuck tapped harshly at his skull, "All I can offer is this."

"But migraines, bloody noses, you're wearing yourself out, look what it's doing to you." Sarah was beginning to plead.

"It's for the greater good isn't it? Isn't that what you agents say? Give your mind, body, and soul to the devil for the greater good?"

"But you're not an agent Chuck."

"Didn't I just say that?" Chuck let out small hysterical laugh, he couldn't help himself. This release, it felt like freedom in some parts. At least he wasn't lying to Casey and Sarah now, or hiding anything from them. Tick one thing off of his conscience.

"I'm living on borrowed time right now. This thing, with everything after me, is like a cancer just eating me away. I'll either be carted away or killed soon. I'd rather do something that will make us succeed, do the best I can at it and not come home at the end of the day and keep blaming Bryce or the CIA or the NSA or anyone." Chuck slumped into a chair, "Because at the end of the day, even though they don't know it, I want to make Ellie and Morgan proud of what I've done, if not who I'm becoming."

Silence filled the room for an awkward half minute. Casey seemed to have a smirk growing on his face.

Chuck looked at his watch; it was just past 1am. "Look, I'm pooped, and I'm heading home."

"Chuck, you need to rest. You should stay here, the doctor said you're dehydrated and malnourished, you need…" Sarah tried to reason.

"Our story had us at the beach today. I'll say I was too exhausted and tired myself out. Ellie's a doctor; she can help me with that. And since our cover as just friends, it'd be weird to explain that I slept over at your place. I don't want to get Ellie's hopes up. It's hard enough as it is." Chuck whispered the last sentence, and looked at Sarah; she looked hurt and so sad. His face melted for a few long seconds before closing itself off.

It's all an act he kept telling himself. Beat that phrase into your head.

It's all an act.