I don't own Chuck, but I was once offered Season 2 of 'Night Court' in exchange for a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card, a stick of gum, and a Han Solo action figure. I turned it down.

Chapter 12

It wasn't that I didn't have anything I wanted to say. It was because I had too many things I wanted to say. So the various questions, heartfelt declarations, angry recriminations, and surprised curse words all ended up doing battle with each other, only allowing a single "Bwah?" to escape through my lips.

Chuck smiled. "It's good to see you too, buddy."

I paused for a moment, letting the war inside my head end in a truce. Finally, I asked a question. "So is this the Batcave?"

Chuck gave me a confused look. "You lost me there, Morgan."

"The last thing I remember was being at the gas station last night, and then I felt something in my shoulder. After that I must have fallen asleep. So it must have been like whenever Batman takes somebody to the Batcave. He puts them to sleep so they won't know where it actually is."

Chuck nodded. "Ok. I suppose it's kind of like that. But believe me, I'm not Batman."

"Well, you must be somebody really important. Because why else would you leave me if you weren't some superhero or something? We told each other everything, man!"

Chuck sighed. "I know, buddy. Trust me, I would have loved to tell you everything. And I know when I left it was…rough on you. I wish there had been another way."

"So who are you then? You and Sarah and Casey and Bryce, and who knows who else. What are you people?"

"Well. All I can say is that we work for the government."

"Oh." I sat there for a moment. "This government?"

"Yes Morgan, this government."

"But what do you do exactly? Are you spies or something?"

"Not exactly. I handle…information."

"For how long?"

"About two years now."

I took a while to let that sink in. Chuck had been lying to me for more than a year before he disappeared. I tried to remind myself that what he was doing must be important, given everything I'd seen in the last two days. But that didn't push the resentment away. "So you've been lying to me all that time."

We sat there in uncomfortable silence for a bit. Eventually, we were interrupted by Sarah walking in. She studied the situation, looking at me briefly. Her gaze than shifted to Chuck and she studies him for a while. She moved over to where he was sitting and softly rested her hand on his chin. "You need to shave," she said to him quietly.

"Yeah I know. I just wanted to be here when Morgan woke up." Sarah smiled at him, and headed back through a door at the far side to the room.

I took a moment to study him. Chuck's hair was close-cropped, merging with the several days of stubble that Sarah had commented on. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt for one of those indie rock bands he used to always try to get me to take an interest in. His eyes looked tired, and he looked paler than usual. I guess he didn't get to go out much any more.

"So you're kind of prisoner here?" I asked.

Chuck thought about the question for a moment. "In a way, I suppose. I know this place doesn't look like much." I glanced around at the sparsely furnished living room, and had to agree. "Still, it could have been a lot worse. It almost was. I guess they need me enough that I have a bit of pull."

"So what you do, you must be good at it?"

"That surprises you?"

Given his recent history, or at least the recent history I'd been aware of up until a couple of days ago, I suppose it might. A Stanford dropout/Buy More Nerd Herder wouldn't exactly inspire confidence. But I knew him too well. "Not at all."

"Well, my bosses aren't exactly big with the positive reinforcement. But they keep me busy all of the time. So I guess I am. And Sarah always tells me I'm doing great."

"So you and she…"

"There are a lot of complicated things about my situation. That may be the most complicated of all."

Chuck left the room for a moment, and came back with two grape sodas. I nodded briefly when he handed one to me. When he sat down again, I asked, "So you'd been doing whatever it was you were doing for more than a year before the accident."

"That's right."

"What changed? Why did you have to fake your death?"

"The smallest thing," Chuck smiled ruefully. "One of the Buy More's security tapes picked up a conversation between Sarah and I that revealed a bit more than it should."

"The Buy More has security tapes?" I reflected for a moment about some of the awkward things that would have been caught on tape.

Chuck chuckled. "Relax, most of the time nobody ever sees them. But we always take them and erase them before anybody gets a chance to look through them, just in case. But one day the tape was left lying out, and fell into the wrong hands."

I thought about it for a moment. "Emmitt?"

Chuck nodded. "He didn't even watch it himself. He just put it into a pile with all of the other recordings he was going to sell. Unfortunately, the buyer, not knowing what he'd found, figured he'd upload it to the internet to see if anybody could tell him what it was."

"So all of this was because some video was uploaded to YouTube?"

"Pretty much. Once it was up there, the wrong people found it, and they knew exactly what it meant. So I had to disappear."

I remembered the name I'd heard Bryce say this morning. "These people are…Fulcrum?"

Chuck didn't answer for a moment. "There are a lot of people that can't know where I am. The woman you met, Randall, was part of only one group. That's why I have to be dead. It took a lot of convincing for Sarah and I to move here, rather than someplace more drastic."

"And you couldn't tell anybody?"

"No."

"Not even Ellie?"

Chuck smiled sadly and shook his head. "Is she…ok?"

"It took her a while to get over things. But she's been better now. She blamed herself, you know."

Chuck looked down. "Yeah. That's been the hardest thing. But one has to erase all contact."

"Then why am I here now?"

"Well, you have to admit, you've kind of forced the issue, buddy."

I wanted to ask him what that meant for us, but Sarah came back in the room, and put her hand on Chuck's shoulder. She said something to him quietly, and he stood up. "Duty calls, I'm afraid. I won't be too long." He headed out through the back door, leaving Sarah and I looking at each other.

"He hated not telling you, you know," Sarah said to me after a moment. "You're like a brother to him."

"I guess I can't understand why he can't even talk to his sister. They've always told each other everything."

Sarah shook her head sadly. "I know what Ellie means to Chuck. Their relationship was something…I'd never seen before. Not being able to talk to her, well it's hurt both of us."

"So what happens now?"

"Well, in most cases, you'd be given a brand new identity, cut off all ties with everybody you know, and start a new life somewhere else."

"I see," I said unenthusiastically. My current life wasn't much to speak of, but I wasn't quite ready to give it up.

"Luckily for you, Chuck can be rather persuasive when he wants to be. He argued long and hard for you being someone who can be counted on to keep certain details to himself."

"And they believed him?"

"Surprisingly, yes."

"So I don't have to go into the Witness Protection Program or anything?"

"Not at this point."

Sarah's eyes didn't seem to exactly be in agreement with her words. "You don't agree with this, do you?"

Sarah shrugged. "Chuck knows you better than I do. You do have to understand how important this is, though. Nobody can know where Chuck is. We don't know how much communication Randall had with her organization. There could be other people still looking for him. And that means you, and Chuck, could still be in danger. And I can't let that happen."

The look she gave me after that last part was slightly chilling.

"I don't want to see you hurt, but Chuck is my priority. Right now, I am all he has." She looked past me for a moment. "He's all that I have."

A few moments later, Chuck returned to the room. "So what have you two been talking about?"

"Oh not much," Sarah replied. "Just you."

"Ha ha," Chuck responded. "Such a great roommate."

"Well, I have to make sacrifices to score such great digs."

Chuck laughed.

"So," Sarah looked at both Chuck and I. "I can't take Morgan home until this evening, so how are you two going to spend the day together?"

We both shrugged.

Sarah shook her head. "Like a couple of eight-year-olds," I heard her mutter as she left the room.

"You know," Chuck said after she left, "I do have a copy of Call of Duty 6."

"Wait, that's not supposed to come out for months!"

"Well, let's just say there are some perks to my current position. It's officially classified as 'training'."

I hadn't really played a video game since Chuck had disappeared. I'd just hadn't had the heart to. Still, I couldn't think of a better way to spend the day.

"You're on!"