A/N Wow, I never really understood what people were talking about when they said they were looking at their inbox for reviews... but it is SOO addicting! :o) Thank you to all who reviewed!

As someone pointed out, I suppose I should give you some idea of where I'm going with this. I'm planning on keeping the canon characters and all their normal interactions with each other, but Sarah's mission will involve one (possibly two) new characters. They won't interfere too much with the Charah/angst thing that much.

I don't know if I'm going to update every few days or not, but I have the next couple of chapters finished, and I feel bad about leaving it at a cliff-hanger! *apologetic face* Since it's summer and I have nothing else to do, I'll try and get most of the story done before summer is over because when school starts, it will be hard for me to update. Thanks again for reading! Enjoy! :o)

Six Months Later

Everything seemed to be falling apart for Chuck. Sarah's abandoning him had escalated to affect his job (as a spy and as a Buy More employee), family and friend relationships, and now the controller of his play station. Ellie and Devon, well, Devon at least, had given up on Chuck's anti-social behavior.

When Chuck mysteriously disappeared for several months, the happily-married couple assumed Chuck had run away with Sarah. They both realized how wrong they had been when Chuck appeared out of nowhere at the breakfast table one morning.

"Chuck! When did you get home? Where were you? Why didn't you answer my calls? Where's Sarah?" Ellie started.

Chuck choked on his orange juice and made a face at the mention of Sarah's name.

"Whoa, bro. Swallowing down the wrong pipe has ruined many tracheas of homosapiens," Devon joked. Chuck rolled his eyes at Devon's attempt at humor and went back to reading the cereal box.

Noticing Chuck's reaction to her name, Ellie asked again, "Chuck, where's Sarah?"

Still not getting a decent response from her brother, she tentatively said his name, "Chuck?"

Chuck still refused to talk to either is bother-in-law or sister about what had happened during the months he'd left Burbank. He even got to the place where he ignored Morgan's insistent phone calls, and more recently, his visits to the house.

Chuck didn't like to think of everything that he had failed.

For starters, he had epically failed spy school. Getting kicked out after two months of training had set a new record at the academy. Casey had had a lot of good jokes from that.

Next, he had failed at the Buy More. Somehow, under his careful eye, the store had been put on probation and was currently in danger of closing. Chuck personally blamed himself since he had been the one who spilled coffee on the regional manager's suit, ordered the wrong un-Kosher Subway sandwich, accidentally dropped a lethal television set on the manager's little Chihuahua, Ronnie, locked the manager in the bathroom with Jeff and Lester for a disturbing 20 minutes, and dropped a faulty camera that happened to blow their new 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo.

Chuck was just thankful he hadn't been fired. Yet.

His family was next on his fail list. He hadn't talked to his dad in a long time; his dad had dropped off the face of the earth again. Devon was frustrated that Chuck wasn't doing anything with his life. Ellie was freaking out because she didn't want him to waste another five years of his life on another girl, which, ironically, was next on his list.

He had failed his girlfriend. He considered her his girlfriend, even if she was technically only his part-time girlfriend and only then an under-cover girlfriend. She would have wanted him to get it together and be a spy, the kind of spy that didn't fail his country. Even if she had fallen in love with someone else, he still owed her that. It was just hard to be a spy when you couldn't make the most basic part of the Bartowski cover work: his flash.

It wasn't for lack of trying that Chuck couldn't flash. He had tried, unsuccessfully, during spy training, after he was fired from being a spy, and he still tried to flash in his everyday-civilian life. It just wasn't working.

Chuck blamed it on the new intersect download. He reasoned that Casey would blame it on not having enough motivation. She would have pinned it on his emotions.

Over-all, Chuck's life was going just as he had expected it would when he had first been tranqed and forced into that black sedan all those months ago.

It was likely the fact that Chuck had failed miserably, after looking at his limited supply of left-over spy papers once again; to flash that had driven him to re-play Final Fantasy VII for the fifth time. Video games were the only thing Chuck had motivation for these days.

"No, no, no, Aerith don't do that. Go back!" Frustrated, Chuck had thrown his controller across the room, resulting in his current state of depression. His controller had been his best friend for a long time, and he had unintentionally broken it, like everything else in his life. He picked his controller up, cradling it, and headed to his desk to try to fix it. If he could fix even one thing, maybe he could try to fix the rest of his broken life.

Chuck hated his dorky metaphors.

Several hours later, Chuck was still engrossed enough with his controller that he didn't hear the rap on his window. It wasn't until the rap became a constant tap that he realized there was a noise other than his occasional curse word. Assuming it was Morgan, he hollered, "Come in!" and returned to his work. He tweaked a few more wires before he said, "Morgan, I broke my controller. Is there any way I can borrow yours for the next couple of days?"

All of a sudden, Chuck heard his floor lamp crash to the floor followed by a loud thud. Thinking Morgan had tripped climbing into the room, breaking the first thing he came in contact with while trying to catch his fall, Chuck spun his chair around to scold his best friend. Who he saw was definitely not what he expected.

A brunette woman was leaning heavily against his wall, staring down at the lamp like she hadn't quite registered that she had caused it to fall. Her right hand was clutching just below her left shoulder. Blood was smeared across her clothes and face. Chuck's eyes widened as he tried to remember what little self defense she and Casey had tried to teach him.

"Er, hi there," Chuck began nervously, "Are you okay?" Chuck slowly began inching his hand towards the cell phone in his pocket. "You kind of have blood on your… well, actually, you kind of have it all over you. Maybe you should…"

The woman looked up at Chuck, startling him with her dazzling green eyes. They looked oddly like.. "Sarah?" he asked, baffled. It was the first time he had said her name since that awful day.

"Chuck," she said. "Help me."

Sorry about another cliff-hanger! The next chapter should be posted Mon/Tues so you don't have that long of a wait :o) I need your advice: do you want me to use Shaw as the baddie in this fic or would you prefer a new baddie? I'm leaning towards a new one because if I use Shaw, I might have to change his story line a bit, or else it'll be a boring read since we all know his story already! Any and all suggestions are welcome!