A/N the First: Your complimentary torches and pitchforks can be found at the end of the chapter. The management thanks you for your readership.

Just kidding. Sorry, bad joke. Either way, loads of thanks to go around today. First to mxpw, the awesome Maximus, still betaing this story even though I regularly make his life difficult out of sheer and total boredom. Thanks to Ayefah and quistie64, two of my favorite people. Loads of thanks to Chris/I Am Not Amused for his Firefly knowledge. Thanks to Leslie Knope for ensuring I haven't gotten more than five hours of sleep a night as I chew through all of Parks & Rec at frightening speeds. Thanks to my awesome roommate of a sister, just because.

And thanks to you. For still being here and reading and reviewing.

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rock Bottom

12 JUNE 2008
BACHELOR PAD 2.0
15:38 EDT

Chuck stepped inside the apartment he and Casey were sharing and immediately felt a new coat of sweat drench him, going over the first coat already in place. For once, it wasn't agoraphobia—another Lincoln instinct, they'd discovered, that could be turned on and off like a faucet, as who wanted their "on hold bunker assassins" to suffer from a debilitating mental illness when they could be out garroting dictators?—but rather genuine heat and humidity making him sweat. Maryland in June was the equivalent of a swamp. His California blood ultimately preferred, he'd discovered, dry heat and nothing else.

He ripped out his earphones and tossed his iPod on the table. Taking a walk after his appointment had been a bad idea, no matter how much he'd needed it. "Damn it, Casey. Is air conditioning too modern for your Cold War sensibilities or something?"

Casey, sitting at the dining room table in their modest kitchen, a glass of lemonade in front of him, didn't even look up from Modern Sniper. "Waste of money. Weather's nice."

"For hell," Chuck said, and stalked to the thermostat.

Casey flicked the magazine to the next page. "Go figure," he said. "Bartowski's cranky again."

"Being boiled alive tends to get me in a mood."

"Spend a week in Afghanistan in July and then you can talk to me about being boiled alive."

"Pass." Thermostat adjusted, Chuck moved to the fridge and poured himself a glass of water. He gulped it down as he loosened his tie, and then refilled the glass from the pitcher. His walk really hadn't done a thing, he thought. He was still unsettled and vaguely angry in that way he always seemed to be lately, and couldn't control.

Behind him, Casey cleared his throat. "I see the meeting with the shrink went well."

Chuck said nothing.

"And your sister dragging you to the hospital definitely cheered you up, I can see."

"My knee's fine, if that's what you're getting at. But we'll be adding physical therapy to our list of weekly appointments."

"Oh, goodie." Casey dog-eared a page and kept going as Chuck sat down at the table. "Just what I wanted. More time around you and the happy couple."

"In their milieu, too. Don't forget that." Devon had transferred to the same hospital where Chuck would be attending physical therapy for his knee, which meant that Ellie would be tagging along with Chuck for those visits when she wasn't busy at the same hospital, studying Chuck's brain.

Casey looked up from the magazine with a sour expression in place. "Maybe Walker can handle those appointments."

"No, she says she already drives me to one kind of therapy. This one is all you."

Casey considered it. "I'll allow it," he said.

Chuck snorted, and only shrugged, completely unrepentant, when Casey glared at him. They all knew who truly gave the orders on the team, and it wasn't any of the men.

Casey's face settled into a mutinous scowl. "So that's why you're cranky," he said, returning to his magazine. "Your biweekly awkward silence session with Walker went well."

He couldn't deny it, though he wanted to. Ever since it had been decided which guard duties each agent took (Casey lived with Chuck, Sarah drove him around), Chuck had dreaded therapy appointments. Today had proved him right. Sarah had made chitchat—chitchat of all things, about the weather, Ellie's wedding, even the Orioles—all the way to and from Chuck's therapy appointment, like they were virtual strangers, stuck in a car together. Like Sarah was actually his bodyguard in anything more than name. Like they were…nothing. It hurt, a dull ache that never seemed to leave and that he could never seem to do anything about. It had no sharp points and still hurt interminably. Even worse, he'd found he actually wanted to talk about it during his therapy sessions, but he never seemed to find words to describe it, leaving him without options.

Sarah wouldn't look directly at him anymore.

"No," Chuck said, a blatant lie. "I'm cranky because the air is soup outside and a furnace inside. Why can't we be civilized?"

"Waste of money."

"Then they can bill me. God knows I'm rich enough." Chuck set his empty glass in the sink and went upstairs.

He was rich. Filthy rich. Richer than Midas. Money leaking out of his ears, even, however the saying went. It just didn't feel like it when he was living in a three-bedroom apartment in the greater D.C. area with his very own NSA bodyguard, but that didn't change things. Gwen had argued furiously on his behalf, so furiously that ten million had become 11.2 million. Of course, in concession, Chuck had to bow and scrape to the government's will for what they predicted to be six months longer: bodyguards, therapy, occasional missions as the only working Intersect while the government put a new Intersect into rotation. Also, they wanted to study both the Lincoln and Intersect parts of his brain, so Ellie would be leading that team.

Even though he'd personally seen his bank account statement, he couldn't help but feel that they were right back at square one. Even the therapy had reset itself. Chuck sat for three session a week with Dr. Evelyn Johnson, who was working with all of the ex-Lincoln subjects freed from their bunkers. For bodyguards, he had Sarah and Casey. For brain science—and general medical nagging—he had Ellie. All they needed to do was transplant Morgan from Los Angeles to the eastern seaboard and it would be hail, hail, the gang's all here, he thought.

He glanced at his computer as he walked by the den, where his RPGs mingled with Casey's first person shooters. Morgan might be online and up for a couple rounds of gaming, but Chuck wasn't feeling up to it. He wasn't feeling up to much of anything lately, actually. In fact, lying spread-eagled on his bed and staring at the ceiling seemed like a worthy pastime at the moment.

He took a shower first. It dropped the temperature from broiling to sauna. Wearing gym shorts and a Patriots shirt—his clothing had been picked rather haphazardly, as he simply didn't give a damn—he collapsed onto his bed, rolled over, and stared at the ceiling. He willed time to pass faster, though he had no idea why. It didn't mean anything.

Nothing meant anything anymore.

Dr. Johnson said he was making progress. No more catatonic fits, at least. He still flinched at open spaces, and he couldn't think about Sarah without feeling a swirl of hurt and confusion and a thousand other unidentifiable emotions, each as complex as the next. Of course, he'd started waking up on the floor of his bedroom or even standing in the kitchen, which freaked him out more than he wanted to admit. Even though he'd sleepwalked as a child, could it be the Lincoln programming? He'd figured out through careful thought in the bunker that his first instincts would always be Lincoln-enforced: reach for the weapon, case the room, attack the attacker. Could Lincoln be taking over his mind in sleep as well?

No. He'd woken up in front of the fridge. He'd sleepwalked as a kid. It probably didn't mean anything.

Progress. Chuck snorted again. Yeah, right.

Casey appeared in the doorway. "Dominos or Chinese?"

"I take it the ladies and Awesome aren't joining us tonight, then."

"Nope."

"Chinese. Extra wontons." Chuck never looked away from the ceiling. "Thank you."

"Welcome." Casey disappeared.

Ellie was happy, Chuck reminded himself. Sure, she was pissed off beyond all reasoning on his behalf, and she had let everybody know it. But she was also leading a team of researchers to get to the bottom of how his brain worked. The Intersect, to her, was something fascinating, the next step of human evolution. So no matter how disgusted she was by the things it and its predecessors—for the Intersect and Lincoln had to be related—had done to Chuck, she couldn't help but try and solve the mystery.

"We'll get it out of your head and then you can shrug off the bullshit once and for all," had been how she'd put it to Chuck over coffee the week before.

Chuck didn't ask her how she felt about the fact that her research was clearly helping the government build a new Intersect. He imagined she felt torn. After all, the minute the Intersect was uploaded into anybody else, Chuck was free to go build that house in the mountains he'd told Sarah about. He'd still have to wear some kind of tracking device beyond that point in case somebody tried to use a Lincoln phrase on him or the Lincoln programming took over, but he'd be free, in a way.

He rolled over onto his side and put his feet on the floor. Freedom. Not something he'd ever really have. Not while he had the Intersect, or Lincoln. But he did have wontons coming, so he headed downstairs to watch the Fox News Network with Casey and spend another night turning his brain off.

21 JUNE 2008
ST. LUCY'S HOSPITAL
11:17 EDT

"Well, this is your brain," Ellie said, pointing at a chart, "and this is your brain on drugs."

"Very funny," Chuck said.

"Oh, c'mon, I've always wanted to say that." Ellie sat down on the one spinning stool her office—or at least the office she'd appropriated by using her NSA credentials—contained and looked up at Chuck. Due to lack of seating, he'd taken up residence on the examination table, the tissue crackling beneath him. He'd dropped by for physical therapy on his knee, which meant that everything, not just his knee, ached, so he was hardly in the mood. "And it's true. That is your brain on drugs."

Chuck stared at the grayish mass on the slides. There were colored patches that he supposed were mental activity, or as Ellie had teasingly told him once, "proof that you're actually using the thing between your ears." They looked bluer than the patches on the brain without the drugs.

"And did it prove anything?" He'd willingly allowed somebody to give him psychotropic drugs. He must have gone insane. Granted, he'd spent the entire experience watching his own hand and quoting Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so nothing had really come of it. But it still gave him pause. Of course, what gave him more pause were some of the other tests: his brain activity while solving math problems, while watching footage from a skirmish in Vietnam, even watching porn. He hoped a different scientist had analyzed that particular test, and not Ellie.

"We're still working on correlations," Ellie said, waving a hand. "It'd be more useful to have a control group for all of this, but…"

"Yeah, I'm still the only one." Chuck squinted at the screens. "Still, isn't there anything you do know about it all yet?" After all, they'd been sticking him in an MRI tube and attaching nodes to his head and giving him weird fluids to drink and weird shots for nearly a month now. If Dr. Johnson said he was making progress in therapy, and he was barely doing anything there, they should be able to tell him legions about his brain already.

"These things do take time. We've gathered some data, Chuck, but we're still working on comparing it. Like I said, the lack of a control group…"

"Yeah, yeah," Chuck said, and slumped.

"Here." Ellie handed him a grape lollipop.

Chuck gave her a stink-eye.

"Isn't grape your favorite?"

"It is." With a sigh, Chuck unwrapped the sucker and popped it in his mouth. "Thanks," he said around it.

"No problem." Ellie went quiet for a minute, her face sobering. Chuck heard a warning klaxon go off in his mind. Surely enough, his sister didn't disappoint. "Chuck, there's something that will help our research."

Chuck crunched on the lollipop, his eyes narrowing.

"If somebody, maybe…read you one of the phrases? While we had you under observation?"

Chuck went cold. "No way."

"Wait, hear me out." Ellie held up a hand. "I'm not saying use the full phrase on you. We know from Sarah's statement about what happened in Piute—"

"Where?"

"At that hotel, the one where she used the phrase on you."

The knots tying Chuck's stomach together tightened, threatening to strangle him somehow. Still, he managed to say, "Oh."

"Sarah told us that the phrases are less effective when you don't use the associated accent. So maybe, if we just used one of the calming ones or one of the ones that allow you to speak another language…"

The knots tightened further. Chuck figured that if he threw up, at least he was already in a hospital.

"And if we analyzed a flash against a Lincoln response side by side, I think we could really make a leap forward in this research. And maybe see if there's a way to remove both from your head."

A spurt of hope shot through Chuck at those words, but reality quashed it, mercilessly. He highly doubted that Ellie and the others could simply remove or overwrite something that had taken two years of subliminal messaging, threats, and other exercises to put inside his head. Not when most of the government hadn't had the first clue these sorts of trials were happening in the first place.

"Ellie, I don't want to do that," he said. "I don't…I don't want somebody else having that kind of control over me. There are only two people that know any of the phrases."

"Besides you."

"Yes, and there's something to be said about two people only being able to keep a secret if one of them is dead."

Ellie flinched. "But it's me, Chuck. You know I wouldn't ever—"

"I know. But nobody else needs to know the phrases."

"Can you trigger yourself?"

"No." Chuck pushed at the bridge of his nose. "It doesn't affect me to say the words aloud, when I can."

"When you can?"

"It's hard to think even the words. I learned to approach it by thinking of half of a phrase at a time when I was writing it down after I flashed on all of them. Then I wrote them down in pieces and tried to read the pieces aloud. It didn't do anything to me."

"Oh, wow. I didn't realize the mental subversion went that deep."

"It probably goes deeper," Chuck said, shrugging. "But I just don't know about it because it's too effective. Trust me, I've been forced to become something of a curbside philosopher over the last few months. Descartes apparently didn't foresee the Intersect or Lincoln when he said 'I think, therefore I am.' Or maybe he's right, and now what I am is a mindless killing drone."

Ellie hit him.

"Hey!" Chuck stuck the lollipop back in his mouth. "Ouch. Mindless killing drone or not, that still hurts me."

"Good. None of that now, do you understand me?"

Chuck sucked on the lollipop and gave a vague thought to sulking. Since it would do absolutely no good, he decided against it. It wasted too much energy, besides.

"If you won't tell me a phrase to use and you can't use one on yourself, there is another option."

"What?"

"Sarah."

Chuck's first instinct was to glance at the door, to see if Sarah had joined them in that soundless way she had of moving. But the door remained shut. "What about her?"

"She's one of the two that knows the phrases already. Why not have her read one to you? We'd keep the room blocked off, of course, so nobody else could hear it—"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Chuck said. His stomach began a slow roll toward his knees.

"Why not?"

"Why do you think it is? After all, Ellie, you were more pissed at her than any of us for what she did." The amount of anger in his voice surprised him; Ellie blinked, leaning away from him. He didn't care. Fury and fear had already begun to burn through him. "Why are you even advocating this?"

"Look, I have my issues with Sarah, that's true. I don't deny it. But she's here now, at your request. And also at your request, I've backed off. Remember, you were the one that argued her case after you found out Beckman was ordering her to have sex with you."

"Which she never did, though we did get pretty far once on my bedroom floor."

"O…kay. Didn't know that. Wasn't sure I wanted to. But to continue my point, you also insisted on her being part of the party in Russia."

"So?"

"So you're kind of giving me mixed messages here. You either trust this woman or you don't."

"It's not a matter of trust. It's…" Chuck racked his brain for the words to describe it. Finding none, he tossed up his hands.

"It's what, Chuck?"

"It's hard to explain! She used a phrase on me once and it still hurts. I can rationalize it—I know her, as much as I can, and I get why she did it, but it hurts and I wonder if she did it once, did she try it other times? It's not fair to think that and I know that, but it still keeps me up at night, wondering."

"Oh."

"And I trust her, I know I do, and I get it, but I—like I said, it's not rational."

"Do you honestly believe," and Ellie looked him directly in the eye, "that she used a phrase on you more than once?"

"No," Chuck said, and blinked. He hadn't even sounded uncertain. After a second of thought, he realized he wasn't uncertain at all, but: "And yet that doesn't stop me from thinking about it."

"Chuck…" Ellie climbed off of the stool and nudged him so that he could make room for her to sit on the examination table next to him. "Everybody has doubts."

Chuck snorted.

"No, it's true. Some mornings I wake up and wonder why Devon would want to marry some woman who turned into a basket case and put him through a lot of crap when we were dating."

"Because he's lucky to have you, that's why."

Ellie smiled. "He is. But that doesn't stop the doubts, not all the way."

"What does?"

"I don't know."

"Oh."

"What makes them worse, though, is letting them control you."

"How can they not? Ellie, have you seen me? I'm—"

"Doing the best you can with the incredibly awful hand you've been dealt. You haven't given in and you're still fighting." Ellie's voice was firm in that "I dare you to argue with me" way she'd perfected as a teenager.

Chuck looked down. Ellie's face clearly showed all of the confidence in the world in him; it was too bright and too strong, not when he had trouble getting out of bed in the morning and sleeping at night.

"This is why I think you need to ask Sarah to help with this, too."

"Why?"

"Because you want to get past this thing. I don't trust Sarah one hundred percent yet, but if she wants to help you, this is one of the best things she can do. We need to know as much about how Lincoln works as we can, so we can take steps to countermand it. We need to see it in action."

Chuck, realizing belatedly that he'd finished off the lollipop, and there was nothing left, removed the stick from his mouth. He heard Ellie's words and he understood them, but they did nothing to stop the flood of cold water that hit his gut. He'd killed a man using a Lincoln phrase. Sure, it hadn't been his finger pulling the trigger, but it had been his words controlling the finger that had. And Kohl was no different than him. Somebody could do the same thing to him, so easily.

"The atmosphere would be controlled," Ellie said. "The scientists already don't know who you are, and we would block all sound from the room so that nobody would hear the phrase. And if you're uncomfortable, we can have one of these," and she picked up Chuck's hand to show him the now healed tattoos on his wrist, "on a poster on the wall, or we can have some of the aural Intersect triggers ready to go. Like I said, the Lincoln phrase will be milder without the accent, which means you should have cognizance enough to flash and get yourself out of it."

Chuck forced himself to remain calm, though he could see Kohl killing Carver in a loop in his mind. He kept his voice steady. "Can you guarantee that?"

"Not all the way, but my hypothesis is that I'm pretty sure that's what would happen. And let's face it, Chuck, we do need to see Lincoln in action somehow. This is the safest way."

"So you can get it out of my head and Casey and Sarah can go back to their real jobs," Chuck said, his voice oddly dull to his own ears.

Ellie gave him a puzzled look. "Is that what they said they were going to do?"

"Not exactly. It's just assumed."

"Hm. You may want to talk to them. If you ask me, going back to her 'real job' isn't something that woman wants to do."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, Chuck," Ellie said, and sighed. "Try to see a little beyond what you want to see sometime. It'll do you a world of good."

21 JUNE 2008
ST. LUCY'S HOSPITAL
15:07 EDT

Chuck dragged himself out of the testing room and into the hallway directly outside, where Sarah waited. Most of the scientists were back at the headquarters in Ft. Mead, where they received only the results from the various monitoring systems. Only Ellie had actually been present in the room with him, administering the various tests. Today it had been reflexes. Over two hours of reflexes—after lunch, of course, though he'd barely eaten. Over two hours of bright flashes of light, plush toys being tossed at him, and loud noises.

He now felt a bit like a sponge that had been dropped in a trash compactor. And then set on fire and, after all of that, reincarnated as a dung beetle and stomped to death by somebody wearing size fourteen Doc Martens.

"Good session?" Sarah asked, standing from where she'd been waiting on the bench, reading a magazine.

"If I never see so many balls flying at my face ever again, it will be too soon."

"Erm…"

Chuck's brain caught up with the rest of him. He debated praying for a sinkhole to open up beneath his feet, again decided that would waste too much energy, and sighed. "There were these plushies and they were…testing my reflexes and…"

"Got it," Sarah said. "So…bad session, then?"

"Oh, you know. Testing. Lots of testing. Can we pretend I never said any of that?"

"Any of what?"

"Thank you."

They began walking toward the parking lot, which would require a long trek through a maze of corridors. The first couple of times, they'd gotten lost, but after so many weeks of these various sessions, Chuck was positive he could make the trek in his sleep.

"Reflexes, huh?" Sarah asked.

"They hooked me to monitors and threw things at me. If you ask me, it was probably Ellie getting me back about the toaster."

"The what?"

"I was seven, okay?"

"I…okay. Are they making any progress?"

"Ellie says they are." Chuck shrugged, a quick, jerky motion of his shoulders. There hadn't been too much flashing, so he only had a low-grade headache today, but the rest of him felt drained and tired. "She has a bunch of other tests she still wants to run."

"Oh? Like what?"

Chuck stuck his hands in his pockets and watched the linoleum squares as they passed by below him. "She wants to try using a phrase on me. One of the, um, the calming ones, or the ones that makes me speak another language."

Sarah frowned. "I see. And how do you feel about that? Are you comfortable with it?"

"Hell no." Chuck pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. "I'd rather not, at all. Ever. But I don't know. Ellie's right. The more they know, the better they can understand what those people did to me, and the others."

"Why not just use phrases on them?" The other Lincoln candidates, or victims, had been brought in from their bunkers. Ellie's team was also studying them, Chuck knew, though his sister never talked about it. She always seemed a little pissed off that these people had been left in bunkers for years. He was, too, but he feared Ellie more.

"Well, I think they're going to?" he said, though it came out as a question. "But none of them have the…"

"Intersect, right."

"So I'm special. Speaking of which, erm, I was wondering if you'd mind."

"Mind what?"

"Well, I can't use the phrase on myself, and you're one of the only two people that know it, so I was wondering if you'd help out with that test. I mean, it would be…" Chuck trailed off when he realized that Sarah was no longer walking behind him. Confused, he turned.

She'd stopped walking entirely. Her mouth was partly open, her face mostly expressionless, but her eyes, they were furious. She stared hard at Chuck.

He slowly drew his hands out of his pocket. "Sarah? Is something—"

"How dare you."

Chuck took a step back in surprise. He'd never heard that much frost in Sarah's voice, ever. It contrasted with the stark anger burning in her eyes.

"You've got a lot of nerve, asking me that," Sarah went on, and Chuck had a brief, terrifying mental image of a panther about to rip him to shreds from the way her arms and torso were tensed and knotted up. "How. Dare. You."

"Sarah, I—"

"Chuck!" Ellie appeared around the corner behind them, waving. "You forgot your wallet!"

He'd never seen quite that much anger before. Dread and confusion had frozen him to the spot. Still, not taking his eyes off Sarah, who was staring back, furious, he said, "Ellie, can it wait a minute, I just—"

Sarah turned on her heel and stalked away. Chuck watched helplessly. Should he go after her? Would she turn and shoot him if he did? Her face had certainly promised that violence of that nature was an option. Chuck took a step, remembered her face, thought better of it, and swallowed hard.

He'd really, he noticed, stepped in it this time. He had no idea how, he just knew he'd blown it.

"Chuck? Did you hear me?" Ellie's voice came from right beside him. He blinked and looked over, startled to see her there. "Hello?"

"Uh, hi." He took the wallet she was holding out. "Thanks."

"Where's Sarah going? The parking lot's the other way."

"I don't know." Chuck tucked his wallet away. "But I'm going to find out." Even if he had to sacrifice a major limb to do so. "Thanks for this. Bye."

Ellie looked confused as he took off. "Uh, bye?"

By the time he reached the corner Sarah had disappeared around, Chuck was flat-out running, the voice in his head chanting that this was a bad idea. He rounded the corner and nearly cursed. Sarah was nowhere in sight.

21 JUNE 2008
HOPSKY'S PUB AND GRILL
15:19 EDT

It was sheer dumb luck that led him to her: if he'd looked even a second later through the windows of Hopsky's Pub and Grill, he would have missed the sight of Sarah and her distinctive blonde hair going around the corner into a back room, and the search would have continued for a long time before he thought to look for her in the pub by St. Lucy's. It just didn't seem like her place; it was a hole in the wall pub, with a sandwich board out front declaring the specials to be the Reuben and the Rock Bottom's Right on Rye, whatever the hell that was. Chuck stepped inside and felt vaguely sticky from both the humidity and the fact that the place hadn't been mopped in the current century.

A bar ran along the wall, backed by a huge mirror and posters for various breweries and brands. Behind it, the bartender checked his text messages.

"Excuse me," Chuck said. "I'm looking for a woman. Blonde, about this tall? She just came in."

The bartender jerked his head. "Ronny seated her in the back. Good luck."

"Uh, just out of curiosity, why do you say that, exactly?"

"That woman is piss-ed."

"Oh, God," Chuck said. "Yeah, that may be my fault, and…"

"Need some liquid courage?"

"And have her get angrier because I'm drunk? I'm an idiot, I'm not insane."

The bartender laughed and waved him back. Chuck gave one brief wish that he'd taken the man up on his offer, girded his figurative loins, and headed into the back.

They'd seated Sarah in a back corner, dark, out of the way, which would have been at her request. Like the main character of Gross Pointe Blank, she didn't like having her back to an open room. Even from the doorway of the back room—which was mostly empty, thanks to the three o'clock hour—he could see from her posture that the anger hadn't lessened at all. He gulped.

She saw him coming and gave him an icy look.

"Sarah, I am so, so sorry," he said. He'd learned early on when dealing with women that apologizing first and copiously couldn't go wrong.

The icy look didn't soften. Some contrary part that hated the rest of him pointed out that at least she was looking directly at him, something she hadn't really done in weeks. It really wasn't all that helpful.

"Why?" she asked.

That one threw him. "What?"

"Why are you sorry?"

Chuck wanted to say: Because you gave me a look that could kill off most of the vegetation on the planet and then hot-footed it out of the hospital. He got the feeling that that was not the answer Sarah was looking for. "For bringing up the phrases?"

"Oh, my God," Sarah said, and rubbed her forehead. "You have no idea, do you."

It hadn't been a question.

All of the sudden, Sarah went from seemingly pissed to merely looking exhausted. "You should go," she said. "Get a cab to take you back to your place. If Casey has a problem with it, he can talk to me."

For a second, Chuck considered getting up and leaving and bowing to her wishes. It was how they'd existed over the past month anyway. Idle chitchat, empty platitudes, avoiding eye contact. And she looked tired, and he knew that was his fault.

But he didn't move. "What did I do, Sarah? What did I say to upset you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"If looks could kill, I'd be Rancor food right now. What did I do?"

"It doesn't matter," Sarah said again.

"Well, whatever it is, I'm sorry. It was the phrases, wasn't it?"

"Don't apologize unless you know what you're apologizing for."

"How will I know unless you tell me?"

"Because!" Sarah hissed the word, glaring. The glare shifted back to a pleasant look for a second; the waiter appeared and set a glass with clear liquid in front of her. The minute the waiter was out of sight, promising to reappear with menus so he could take their orders, the glare reappeared. "You should know."

This was something Jill had said to him whenever they'd argued, Chuck remembered, as much as it hurt to think of his ex. He knew Sarah wouldn't appreciate the comparison, so he didn't mention it. Instead, looking at Sarah's face and the pained fury, he cast his brain about for what exactly it was that he'd said to upset her.

"Is this because I asked you to use one of the phrases?"

"Yes," Sarah said, biting off the word.

"But it was…for science…" Chuck trailed off and finally looked at Sarah, fully. She was shaking. Sure, the tremors were nearly invisible, but now that he was fully paying attention, he could see them. She hadn't picked up her glass or even moved her hand toward it, another sign that she was trying to hide the shakiness. And even though she met his eye, he could now see the tension running along her neck and jawline. She was clenching her jaw.

He suddenly felt a hell of a lot less lost. And a hell of a lot sorrier.

"I shouldn't have done that, should I have?"

Sarah finally looked away.

Chuck had no idea what to say. Admittedly, this was a more common phenomenon now that he had Sarah Walker in his life and the government had altered his brain, but part of him still noticed that it was disconcerting. After all, he'd talked himself into and out of so many situations, just on the power of his words alone. And right now, he couldn't think of a single thing to say. Mostly he was perplexed, and a bit blown away.

The waiter finally appeared with a menu and a water glass for Chuck. "Need a minute?"

"The Reuben," Chuck said. "And the Rock Bottom Rye whatever the thing on the sign was."

Rock Bottom, after all, seemed pretty fitting at the moment.

"Good choice. And for you?"

"I don't know. The same, I guess."

The waiter departed, taking their unopened menus with him, and leaving the same awkward silence in his wake.

Finally, when the silence stretched out and onward and went for far too long, Chuck cleared his throat. "I'm sorry it didn't occur to me that you'd be upset over that. I really was just asking because of the testing they want to run on me."

"Let's just forget about it."

It would be easier to agree, to let this slip into the woodwork and pretend that this was exactly like everything else they'd been avoiding talking about since coming back to D.C. He was more than tempted to do so: he opened his mouth to agree. But something made him shut his mouth.

"Why?" he asked, instead.

"Because we're better if we forget about it."

"No, not that. I mean—well, you were one wrong twitch from removing my head from my neck back there at the hospital. Why is that?"

"Chuck, I don't want to talk about it."

"I do."

Sarah glared at him.

Chuck sighed. "I'm not a mind reader," he said, frustration making him glare back. "That's not one of the powers the government magically decided to bestow upon me, you know."

"Oh, now you're making jokes about it?"

"I wasn't—never mind." Chuck's glare deepened to a scowl. Why the hell was the woman being so complicated right now? He felt like he'd walked into a den of vipers that had been fed speedballs and then given a whetting taste of his blood. One wrong move and he was toast, but he didn't know what the right moves were. "Glib or not, it still remains that I can't read minds, and I can't fix things unless I know what to fix. I am trying to do the best I can here for everybody, not just me, but I don't know what that is, and I won't until you tell me. And don't tell me I should just know because most days I don't even know what's going on in my own head, let alone yours."

Sarah leaned back in her chair.

"I'm sorry I made you angry," Chuck said, his stomach sinking when there was no response whatsoever on Sarah's face. "I am. But I don't know why. It's just a stupid test—"

"It's not just a stupid test, Chuck! God." Sarah gave him an incredulous look.

"Then what the hell is it?"

Sarah bit her lip.

"Sarah, please. Just tell me."

"You're asking me to break a promise I made."

If Sarah's icy look of death earlier hadn't already plunged the room to Hoth temperatures, this surely would have. Chuck felt his stomach clench. Who on earth had Sarah made this promise to? His traitorous brain threw out suggestions, making his stomach roil. Graham? Bryce? He clenched his fist under the table. "To whom?"

"To myself, to the universe, whatever. Does it matter? I swore after that day in the godawful desert when you disappeared on me that I would never use a phrase again, and you're asking me to break that promise."

No relief appeared. Instead, only bewilderment flooded Chuck. He blinked at her. "What are you talking about?"

"You! You and your stupid—" Sarah broke off, gulping in a deep breath, and Chuck realized that her eyes were shinier than normal. Dread flooded him. "You don't get it. Sure, I used that phrase on you, and you do get that, but you don't get what it did, do you? It was just supposed to be some calming phrase because you were coughing and I was worried you were going to choke and pass out and Fulcrum was going to shoot you, but it was more than that."

"What was more than that?"

"You disappeared on me, Chuck! You disappeared into the desert, and I didn't have a clue where you were or where you had gone, or if you were dead because some Fulcrum agent had shot you. And then, just like that, there you were. At the Grand fucking Canyon, freezing your ass off and not even really seeing anything weird about that. As though nothing had happened. Just there. Sending me emails, even. 'Hi, Sarah, having a grand old time.'"

Chuck gaped.

"I come to find out, that's part of your 'programming.' Yeah. Lincoln soldiers, trained to listen to the phrase and to run once the job is finished. Only, this time, you can't run back to Siberia. You've got nothing on you but a laptop and a borrowed jacket and the programming's less effective anyway because Bryce and I visiting you in the bunker 'broke' something, according to Graham, so you're not as susceptible to the programming as the other candidates."

"Wait a second—"

"But even so," Sarah said, still talking far too quickly and barreling over him as though she hadn't heard him at all, "even so, by using that phrase at the hotel, I did something that left you helpless and you didn't even have the first clue."

His trip to the Grand Canyon had been in response to Lincoln? That…made total sense, Chuck thought. He sat back, vaguely aware that he was dazed and that there was possibly a stunned-stupid look on his face, but unable to do a thing about it.

Oh, God, Chuck realized. He'd run after Carver had tried to control him, too. He'd run all the way to Siberia, to the bunker, feeling vaguely the entire time like it had been pulling him like a magnet. He'd assumed it was just some need to feel safe.

Was nothing in his brain his own?

"Is that why you don't want to do it now? Because you know I'll run again?" he asked before he could stop himself.

"I don't want to do it because I promised myself I never would again. And I'm not going to break that promise for anybody." Sarah's look skewered through him. "Not even for you, Chuck."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me any of this before?"

"I didn't think it would come up."

"You didn't think to mention to Ellie that running was part of the Lincoln programming?"

"I did mention that to Ellie."

"And what about to me?"

Sarah looked down. "I was hoping Ellie would have told you," she said, mostly toward the table.

Anger swirled through him. "Great. Thanks for that."

"Hate me all you like, but you can't deny it's been weird with all of this Lincoln stuff between us. Ellie's the head scientist on the program, she needed to know, I was guessing she'd fill you in. You were going to find out, either way."

"I would have appreciated hearing it from you more."

"Would you have?" Sarah reached into the breadbasket and broke off half of a breadstick, though she didn't eat it. "We both know how well me telling you about the phrase at the Heartbrake Hotel in the first place went over. Are you even trying to forgive me for that?"

"I'm…working on it," Chuck said, which was the honest truth. He didn't expand on the fact that it still felt like a physical pain in his stomach whenever he thought about what Sarah had done. The same pain, he discovered, was beginning to fill his midsection now. He'd run to the Grand Canyon because of Lincoln? Sarah and Ellie had known that fact about him, but hadn't told him? "I really am."

Sarah looked uncertain. "I am sorry about that. And I'm sorry now."

He looked at her, though she didn't look up from her ministrations on the breadstick. Now there were more miscommunications on top of the lies she'd told him. Why couldn't they just have an easy path to walk, for once? "Why didn't you tell me about…about this promise you made about the phrases?" he asked.

"Because I didn't think you'd have believed me." Sarah scowled and continued to break the breadstick into pieces. "I don't see any reason why you do, even now."

"I have plenty of reasons."

"You're a very confusing man, Chuck."

"You're even more confusing, Sarah. What a pair we make."

Sarah was quiet for the longest time, staring down at the mutilated pieces of bread on the table. Finally, she looked up. "Are we a pair, Chuck?"

He answered that the only way he knew how: "I don't know."

They were saved by the arrival of their sandwiches and their beers. The conversation ended and they were left back where they'd started, Chuck thought, neither of them likely sure where they really were at all.

"Chuck," Sarah said, and he looked up from his plate. The emotionless mask of the past few weeks wasn't back in place yet, but it was close, Chuck figured. She'd already siphoned away some of the sadness and weariness. "Do you want me to transfer?"

"What?" He blinked.

"Ellie's going to keep pushing for this phrase thing to happen, and I…I'm not going to change my mind. It'll probably make things worse."

Chuck took a huge bite of his sandwich, surprised to find that it tasted good. He'd have thought all of this emotional anguish would have killed his appetite. "I'll handle Ellie. We'll figure something out. Besides, it's not like they're really going to ever remove Lincoln or the Intersect from my head. I doubt it's even possible."

Sarah gave him a startled look.

"What?" he asked.

It took a few seconds for Sarah to shrug, almost nonchalantly. "If there's one thing I've learned on this assignment, it's that you should never underestimate a Bartowski," she said. "I wouldn't give up hope yet, Chuck. There's some way to get that out of your head. And then you can go build that house in the mountains."

"Yeah," Chuck said, though he wasn't sure he agreed. All he could see was a prison in the mountains, though he tried to push that thought away. If they could really get the Intersect and Lincoln out of his head…

No, he couldn't afford to think like that. It was foolish, and it would only lead to heartbreak. They'd damaged him, and even though they'd thrown enough money at him to kit out his very own Batcave, there wasn't any way to fix him. Believing there was would only mean bitter disappointment down the road. He knew that.

And yet, when they walked back to Sarah's car through the hospital after their impromptu meal, he stopped at the gift shop and bought a copy of the Washington Post.

A/N the Second: if you're confused about the "bedroom floor incident" Chuck was TMI'ing at Ellie, it happens in chapter 48. Before everything went to hell in a handbasket.