A/N the First: I'm baaaaaack. Happy anniversary, quistie64.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. — Oscar Wilde

Absolution

22 JUNE 2008
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
14:07 EDT

They'd scattered the team—not far, of course, but a little farther apart than they had been in Burbank, which meant that it took a little more planning and time to get between the sets of apartments. It had made sense for Chuck and Casey to live together, as they were used to each other, but Ellie and Devon had needed a place closer to St. Lucy's, and their own CIA escort. This meant that Chuck and Casey lived on one side of I-95, and Sarah had an apartment that adjoined Ellie and Devon's on the other side.

Chuck pulled his car up to the curb in front of Ellie's place, and tried not to stare too hard at the Porsche in the next driveway. Apparently, Sarah hadn't had time to get rid of it after all, like she'd said she would in December. Granted, come February, she'd been rather busy tracking him across the globe, so he could understand why she hadn't sold the car yet. It made him think of their first date, and the white-knuckled drive back to Gwen Davenport's he'd made with the car while Sarah stayed behind at the Smithsonian. He'd been freaked out the entire time that he would scratch the car, so much that he wasn't entirely sure how he'd made it back in one piece.

Those had been the days.

He pushed thoughts of Sarah aside. He'd spent most of the night before in deep contemplation after their conversation in the bar, and he still wasn't entirely certain how he felt about it. But that was for later. He needed to talk to Ellie now. Her schedule meant that she'd be home right now.

He knocked on the front door and froze when he heard low giggling from inside. He'd sent a text, but...apparently Ellie hadn't checked her phone, and he was going to interrupt something he'd worked hard to never consciously think about. He shot a wary look at his car, gauging the distance and trying to figure out if he could make it, start the engine, and drive away before Ellie realized he was there.

Ellie pulled the door open, putting the kibosh on a mathematical equation that had ironically taken longer than it would have to actually run across the yard. "Chuck! Hey, did I know you were coming by?"

"Um, I sent a text. I'm sorry—is it a bad time? I can come back later."

"Of course not. Come in, come in." Ellie tugged on the sleeve of his T-shirt to ensure that he would. She gave him a hug, her usual greeting. "What brings you by?"

"Chuck, hey!" Devon wandered in. Of course, he was shirtless, wearing only his scrub pants and sneakers, but Chuck figured that was probably how he spent most of his existence. Chuck decided to stop analyzing it, as his brain would probably do something it had avoided through every Lincoln and Intersect reveal, and melt. "Welcome to our humble abode! I'm just about to mix up some energy shakes. Want in? It'll do wonders for your colon."

"I think I'm good, thanks," Chuck said, as he'd been subjected to quite a few colon-cleaning shakes in California. It was another thing he put a lot of thought into avoiding.

"You sure? It's delicious."

"Really, I'm good with water. But thank you."

"C'mon," Ellie said, jerking her head. "Kitchen's this way. I thought you were usually deep in some kind of quest with Morgan at this time of the day."

"Just wasn't feeling the need to own some noobs," Chuck said. "And I had something I kind of wanted to talk to you about."

"Is this about Sarah?"

Chuck glanced instinctively toward the front yard and Sarah's Porsche. He covered the gesture by quickly scratching the back of his neck, but when he turned, Ellie had her eyes narrowed. He faked a smile. "What about her?"

"Just wondering. She took off kind of fast yesterday. Is something going on with you two? Again?"

Now there was a question fraught with danger, sand-traps, and possibly poisonous snakes, Chuck thought. He answered it with a shrug. "It's not about Sarah, actually. It's about—" He shot a look at Devon, working at one of the kitchen's counters to assemble what looked like the most disgusting energy shake on the planet, decided he couldn't really care about national security, and went on anyway. "It's about Lincoln."

Devon's head shot up. "Should I be here for this, babe?" he asked Ellie. They'd agreed as a team that it was better for him if he only knew sketchy details about the properties of the Lincoln project.

"It's fine with me," Chuck said. "Go on making your shake. I'm the one who's interrupting."

"You're not interrupting. You're always welcome here, you know that." Ellie patted his shoulder and moved around Devon, pulling a box of crackers out of the cabinet. "I haven't had a chance to begin evaluating the data from the tests we ran yesterday, though."

"It's about something besides that." Chuck took a seat at the kitchen table. He recognized some of the décor around the kitchen as being from the Burbank apartment. He and Casey had just gone with whatever furniture the housing company had picked. Ellie had put up pictures and paintings—there were even a few snapshots of him on the refrigerator.

"Chuck?" Ellie asked, and Chuck blinked to realize that he'd drifted off into his own thoughts. It had happened to him more right after the bunker. Over a month later, it was still perturbing. "What is it?"

"Oh. Um, sorry about that. I just wanted to know—why didn't you tell me about the running?"

"What running?"

Chuck looked down at his hands. Talking about Lincoln wasn't as physically impossible as some of the things he'd listed the day before, but it was still hard. "Sarah told me that the reason I ran after Piute and back in February was because it was a Lincoln condition."

"Well, yes, of course, that's part of the…you didn't know." Ellie frowned, and looked down quickly. Almost too quickly, Chuck thought. On the heels of that thought came the idea that maybe he was being too paranoid. Casey had made that accusation three times in the past week, after all. Maybe the other man had a point. Ellie looked back up. "I don't understand. You know more about Lincoln than any of us. You're the one that read the few documents there were."

"I did. That wasn't in any of the paperwork."

"That's odd."

"So that's why you didn't tell me? Because you thought I knew?"

"I really thought you did. It should have occurred to me that it probably wasn't obvious until you looked at it from a bird's eye view." Ellie gave him an apologetic look now. "I mean, they kept you guys in these bunkers that were equipped for everything, it looks like. You weren't exactly like Kleenex—use once and toss. You were expensive to train and to upkeep. I would think that there would be a 'once your mission is done, return to base' trigger somewhere."

"Oh." Chuck rolled that through his brain and picked up a cracker, though he didn't eat. Casey was right; Ellie's glance down hadn't meant anything and he was being too paranoid. "Yeah, that makes a scary amount of sense."

"I'm sorry. It does. Just out of curiosity, Sarah didn't tell you? I thought you two talked about what happened in Piute last month."

"Not in enough detail, apparently. That's why she won't use the phrases on me. She's worried I won't be able to overcome that conditioning and I'll take off again."

"I doubt you'd get past her again," Ellie said, smiling a little, though Chuck noticed she didn't precisely deny that Sarah's worries weren't accurate. "I think she sleeps with one eye open and on your watch tracker."

"Yeah, no kidding. Casey's the same way." Chuck swallowed the cracker whole.

"They care for you. In their own, strange, spy ways."

"Yeah. Ellie, weren't you worried?"

"About what?"

"That I was going to run again if there was a phrase used on me? I mean, I've run twice."

"The first time, you only went to the Grand Canyon and you came out of it quickly. That was with a mild phrase, like the one we plan on using if we can figure out how—don't look at me like that, I already brought it up with Sarah and got my head bitten off for my efforts. We'll find something else."

"Yeah, but then I ran away to Siberia," Chuck said, forcing the scowl away. He loaded up another cracker with cheese and some of the summer sausage Ellie had set out.

Both of them jumped as the blender started up. Ellie covered with a laugh, shaking her head as they turned back from where Devon was focused on his art. "Yes, you did," she said, sobering again. "But you came back, you never fully lost touch the way Lincoln-conditioned training would have had you done. And you're forgetting two key factors."

"Which are?"

"First, you know about the running now, which means I think you can overpower your own thoughts, like you've been doing with the rest of the—" The blender cut off, making them both jump again.

"Sorry," Devon called.

"Like you've been doing," Ellie said again, "with the rest of the automatic Lincoln instincts and impulses. And secondly, I think you burned that bridge, too."

"How?"

"I think part of you recognized why you'd run on a subconscious level and where you would run to again, if you were given the choice, and I think you—quite literally—blew it up."

"The bunker," Chuck said, frowning. He sagged against the back of the seat, letting that one sink in. "I don't think that's the reason I blew it up, El. I mean, it's a little poetic when you put it that way, but I was mostly just angry. That was the best way I could give them the finger. So I did."

"Sure," Ellie said. "But maybe some of it was subconscious, too?"

"Maybe." He wasn't sure. Ellie's theories had always made him think. They had such different ways of looking at problems: Ellie saw the big picture, he fixed small details. They'd probably had more of their fair share of fights as kids because of it, but as adults, sitting in a kitchen while Devon made what looked like the world's most disgusting smoothie, the differing philosophies came in handy. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Maybe you're right."

"See? It's like I always tell you, you're smarter than you think." Ellie bit into a cracker.

Chuck wrinkled his nose at her. "I thought what you always told me was that I'm too smart for my own good."

"The two are not mutually exclusive. And you're forgetting what would happen if you did run."

"Sarah chases after my car like the T-1000?"

"Pretty much. Want to stay for dinner? I was going to go over those results from yesterday, but I can blow that off, we can watch a cheesy sci-fi movie for old times' sake."

The offer was more tempting than he'd expected it to be. Chuck hadn't had much desire to do anything as of late, but the idea of watching a silly movie with Ellie and Devon actually sounded nice. On the other hand, he'd been up all night thinking and if he didn't act on it, he might never do so. So, regretfully, he shook his head. "I left things in a weird place with Sarah. I need to go talk to her."

"Oh, sure."

"Sure you don't want one for the road, buddy?" Devon asked, holding his shake aloft.

"Devon, I mean no offense at all, but that smells like soup."

"So?"

"So smoothies shouldn't smell like soup. But thank you, anyway." Chuck pushed away from the table and started toward the front door, nerves jumping in his belly.

"Be faster to try the balcony, bro," Devon called.

Chuck turned. "Sarah's on your balcony?"

"Not quite. Go on, you'll see." Confused, Chuck let Ellie push him back through the apartment and out the sliding glass door off of the kitchen. The balcony overlooked some kind of communal lawn. His and Casey's place had a similar setup, though it was mostly retired folks in the apartments around them, so the playground there was sparsely used. Such was not the case here; he could hear children's shouts the minute he stepped out onto the balcony, which apparently was shared by Sarah's apartment with only a rail between them. Both balconies were empty.

A pair of shapely calves dangled over the side of the roof, solving the mystery of the missing Sarah without a single phone call to Ned and Nancy. Chuck stared at them for a second—the woman's legs were a work of art, after all—before craning his neck to look up. The rest of her was out of sight.

"Uh, Sarah?"

The rest of Sarah appeared. She was in her off-duty clothes—a tank top and very short shorts. "Chuck? What are you doing here?"

He attempted a smile, though the light hurt his eyes. The sun wasn't directly overhead, but the change from outside to inside still made him squint. The doctors that had examined him after Lincoln had told him he would be a little more sensitive to light for some time, thanks to the years underground. "Came by to talk to Ellie. She said you might be out…up here."

"Oh. Well, here I am. What'd you want to talk to her about?"

"Lincoln. Mostly about the running."

Sarah's face grew unreadable, as it was wont to do these days. "What was the verdict?"

"She thinks it's not a problem anymore. My blowing up the bunker may have been some kind of psychological sever. And it really was a miscommunication, apparently."

"Sorry."

"It's okay." Chuck looked down to rest his eyes a bit. "Sometimes I wonder how much the two of us are preconditioned not to tell and how much of that is CIA-influenced."

"A lot. Maybe less than you think."

"Maybe. Can I…can I come up?"

Sarah's head swiveled so quickly, Chuck nearly felt a twinge of sympathetic whiplash. "What? Was there something you wanted to talk to me about? Is something wrong?"

"No." The intensity had come out of nowhere so fast that he blinked and took a half-step back out of surprise. "I just wondered if you wouldn't mind company, that's all."

"Oh. Sure. Come on up. Just be careful. Actually, do you need help? It's not the easiest thing to get up here."

"I've got it." After a second of deliberation, he climbed up onto the railing separating the two balconies, using the drainpipe to steady himself. It only took a little upper body strength—which he had kept, thankfully, as Casey insisted on daily trips to the gym and he regularly met Russ Davenport for boxing practice—to pull himself up onto the edge of the roof. It burned through the seat of his shorts. "Oh, Ellie's going to kill me if she finds me up here like this."

"She regularly comes out to scold me," Sarah said, giving him a small smile. "And then she climbs up here, too. The view's decent."

"Most people would just buy deck furniture," Chuck said, though he found himself nodding. The view wasn't all that bad: the roof overlooked a playground and a bit of the trees in the forest spreading around them, painting a somewhat bucolic scene. It wasn't anything comparable to the views he imagined she was used to seeing as a jet-setting spy, but it was peaceful, in its own way. "This is nice. All it needs is a zip line."

"Maybe. I've had my fill of those."

"Oddly enough, me, too."

"Gee, really?"

Chuck attempted a smile, felt it fall flat, and decided to let the sarcasm between them fade away. They sat, taking in the view with the humid, warm Maryland sunshine beating down on them. The back of his T-shirt began to stick; he cast a surreptitious glance at Sarah's knees, but they didn't seem to be red. She'd apparently put on sunblock.

Screaming from the playground made him jolt and look over, but it was only some kind of game, not the bloodcurdling death rattle he imagined. "They always this loud?" he asked.

"You get used to it."

"I guess you do." Chuck watched a boy and a girl chase each other. "My God. Ellie's getting married. If she follows her life plan, she'll have one of those in a couple of years."

"And you'll be Uncle Chuck. Going to create a fun game room for said niece or nephew in that big mountain fortress of yours?"

Chuck's stomach pitched at the thought. "I dunno. I guess."

"You guess?"

"I never thought much about the mountain house and kids. Together. At all."

"Oh."

"It wouldn't be a good idea to have kids there. Not while I'm…" Chuck gestured vaguely at his face with his left hand. He saw Sarah's eyes cut to the loose bandage on his wrist. "Like I am."

"I see."

"Yeah. Who knows? Maybe by the time it becomes an issue, I'll have already snapped and the kids won't be able to visit me until they're eighteen because of prison rules anyway." Chuck attempted to put humor into his voice. It fell short of the mark. By about ten miles.

Sarah turned and stared down at the playground, saying nothing.

"That was a joke," Chuck said. "A terrible one."

"Not funny at all."

"Sorry." He felt like shrinking into himself, though she wasn't even looking at him. "My therapist has been recommending that I try to find more humor and…I'm sorry. That wasn't a good joke at all."

"Forget it. It's fine."

Chuck watched her out of the corner of his eye, but her face didn't give anything away. "If you're sure."

"What are you doing here?" Abruptly, Sarah turned to look at him, her face cold. "You're usually playing your video games at this point in the day, right? Don't tell me you just came by to practice your stand-up comedy routine."

"I came by to talk to Ellie," Chuck said.

"Then what are you still doing here? You've talked to Ellie."

"I wanted to see you."

"Why?" Sarah asked, her face never changing.

"Because I was up all night, thinking about yesterday, about the bar and I want…"

"Want what?"

He sighed. "I don't know. Something. I want things to not be weird between us."

"We were together, Chuck, and you found out I lied to you about being a sleeper assassin. There's no way this can't be weird."

"Don't you think that's a little depressing? Can't we be friends?"

"I don't know," Sarah said. "Have you forgiven me for what I did?"

Chuck hesitated.

"See?" Sarah raised an eyebrow and turned to face forward again. She sighed. "That's why it can't not be weird. We can't be friends with our history and with you feeling the way you do. One—or both—of us will get hurt. And I don't want that for either of us."

Chuck stared at her. "I forgive you," he said, his mouth hijacking itself away from his brain.

Sarah went deathly still. "What?"

Apparently, now that his mouth had a mind of its own, it was on a roll. Chuck listened with some kind of detached—horror? No, that wasn't quite the word he needed, as it wasn't horrifying. Intrigue? Fascination? Something. Chuck listened as his mouth continued, "I always understood it, you know. I never really blamed you after I put it all together, what had happened. I still don't blame you."

"I wish you would, sometimes," Sarah said, her voice too quiet.

"I wish I weren't a less handsome Bennett Marco, but you know, can't have everything."

Sarah gave him a flat look. "Another bad joke."

"Sorry. Gallows humor is the only humor I've got left." What was the saying? In for a penny, in for a pound? He didn't understand it, but the floodgates had been broken, and he might as well just go for it. He sighed. "Look, it hurt, knowing you'd been part of what happened to me and that you didn't tell me about it. But I get it, like I said. So I forgive you, and I'm sorry it took this long."

"You needed time."

"Even so. I should have been a better friend, all around. Let's just call this a clean slate. I've forgiven you—" Though his stomach, Chuck realized, was sinking rapidly at the thought and there were warning bells going off in his head to abandon ship, that he didn't want to do this. Even so, he soldiered forward. That was his life now: doing things he disliked regularly, and lying to himself that it was okay, and there wasn't a way out of it in the foreseeable future. And if it would be better for Sarah, then that was fine with him. "I've forgiven you, you'll forgive me, we're on an even keel, tied score, slate clean."

"Are you sure that's what you want?"

"I'm sure," Chuck lied. He plowed on before he could think about it. "I'd like us to be friends again and for God's sake, no more chitchat and definitely no more talk about the Orioles."

"Friends," Sarah said slowly, her face once again unreadable.

Chuck held out a hand. "Friends," he said.

For a second, he wasn't sure Sarah would take his hand. Something indecipherable flickered across her eyes and she opened her mouth a fraction, as though she were about to say something and changed her mind. Finally, she nodded, once. "Does this mean I get to see the designs for your mountain fortress?"

"Sure." He hadn't drawn a single one. "I could use your input."

"Fine, then." Sarah wouldn't meet his eye, but she took his hand. "Friends."

Chuck managed a smile, though he knew somehow that this conversation had not gone at all like he'd hoped. He almost opened his mouth to make exactly that comment—maybe Sarah would correct him that he was just hallucinating things again—but his smartphone buzzed in the pocket of his shorts. His hands were shaking slightly, but he managed not to drop the phone off the roof as he thumbed open his email.

The name on the first message made his jaw drop. "You have got," he said, "to be kidding me."

1 JULY 2008
CHICAGO UNO GRILL
19:17 EDT

Chuck set his briefcase on the floor and tried not to wince too obviously as he lowered himself to sit on the barstool. He swore his joints creaked, and cursed under his breath. A percussive grenade had gone off a little too close for comfort the night before, and his ears were still ringing. Casey had said the sensation would go away.

Casey had also said the building they'd been casing had been abandoned, though, so Chuck wasn't feeling overly inclined to take him at his word at the moment.

They'd escaped with their lives and the intel Beckman had needed. That hardly seemed to matter when he felt like a feeble old man the next day, thanks to the fact that they'd been forced to dangle from a ledge for what felt like an excruciatingly long time to avoid being caught by the enemy. Their first mission back in the field and while it could be considered a success, his joints might argue otherwise.

Chuck looked down, realized that his knee was jiggling, and scowled. He stilled the leg and ordered a Coke. It occurred to him that he'd dropped three hundred on a plane ticket to get past security, just to purchase a flat airport Coke that he probably wouldn't even drink. Six months before, it would have made him cringe. Now, he was a millionaire. Three hundred bucks was a drop in the bucket. Well, six hundred, really. Sarah hadn't let him come alone. But even six hundred felt like nothing now. Besides, it wasn't like he wanted to be here—or even that he should be.

The bartender set the Coke in front of him. Chuck watched a drop of condensation slip down its side and wondered, for the eighth time, what he was doing there, in rumpled slacks and shirtsleeves and carrying a briefcase, doing his best to look like another weary business class traveler?

He didn't owe Bryce Larkin a thing. In addition, it was stupid to be here. There hadn't been an Intersect attached to the email. It had been a simple message: Bryce asking to meet with him on a layover at Dulles. Bryce hadn't even asked him to come alone. Hell, if Chuck wanted to get technical, Bryce hadn't asked at all. The email had mentioned a layover. That was it.

He came anyway. He had relied upon his spy side to blend in, and he had no idea why. He didn't understand why he was here. He didn't even know if he wanted to be here.

Yet, here he was.

"Another?" the bartender asked, and Chuck discovered he'd polished off the Coke. He nodded.

Dr. Johnson had said he was making progress in therapy, though most days it felt like he slid backwards rather than taking the steps forward she claimed he was. The agoraphobia came and went—it was pretty strong now, like a weight between his shoulder blades because he was in an airport with a lot of open space and a lot of people around, people that could be moles for Graham, that could whisper in his ear—and the depression and malaise had started to abate, especially after he'd dropped by to see Ellie and Sarah the week before, and he and Sarah had made their uneasy pact to forge ahead into friendship. Chuck had brought up the topic of Sarah to Dr. Johnson after that, even. They hadn't talked about it again, so Chuck wasn't sure that could be considered progress.

His cell phone buzzed. Warily, he checked the screen: a text from Dave about an expansion pack to a game they both played. He sent back a reply and jerked in surprise when the phone buzzed again.

This time, it was Sarah, letting him know she'd set up in front of the gate opposite the bar. Chuck gave her a small wave. She smiled even as she shook her head and waved back. He wasn't supposed to acknowledge her.

Bryce was going to spot her anyway, so what did it matter? Bryce rarely missed anything.

Movement to his left made him turn before he was fully aware of having moved. That was a Lincoln thing, Chuck had realized early on. It was startling to realize how aware of everything he'd always been, when he'd thought himself rather prone to distraction. But no, now that Sarah had called attention to his Lincoln-trained mannerisms, Chuck couldn't help but be regularly startled by his own powers of observation.

He trained his eyes on Bryce. The other man came up from down-terminal, a laptop bag strapped over one shoulder. Unlike Chuck, who hadn't been flying and therefore really shouldn't be rumpled, he was perfectly put together, suit unwrinkled, not a hair out of place. He certainly didn't look like he had been on the edge of death five months before. He spared Chuck only a split-second glance before turning to the bartender. "Heineken, please."

While the bartender fetched the bottle, Bryce took a seat on the stool next to Chuck's. "You came," was all he said.

There was probably something pithy he was supposed to say to that, Chuck figured. He'd missed out on the James Bond part of spy training, though, so he moved a shoulder. "Yeah."

"Alone?"

Chuck's mouth moved without thought to the rest of him. "Not quite."

"Yeah. I saw her. Just wasn't sure I was 'supposed' to, or not."

Chuck shrugged.

"Thank you for coming," Bryce said. "Wasn't sure you would."

Now, Chuck swiveled on the bar stool and faced his friend, fully. He hadn't been sure what to expect when he saw Bryce again: to say that his relationship with the other spy was tumultuous was a bit of an understatement. They'd been best friends at Stanford, always together, roommates, with each others' backs the entire time. After Stanford, Bryce and Sarah had literally become his only window into the outside world, apart from the Internet. And then Bryce had sent him the Intersect, and there had been fear, doubt, and anxiety, followed by relief that his friend truly wasn't a traitor, after all, when Sand Wall had come to light.

Throughout that entire time, Chuck had respected (or feared) Bryce. And throughout that entire time, Bryce had been holding back a huge secret from him. About him.

Anger felt almost refreshing in light of that realization.

"I wasn't sure I should," he said, staring hard at Bryce. The other man flinched, but didn't look away. "In fact, I must admit, I'm questioning my judgment. Why did you want to meet with me? Why not just let bygones be bygones?"

"I felt I owed you an apology," Bryce said, his voice steady. "A lucid one, this time."

Chuck said nothing.

"And you're not going to make this easy on me, I see. That's fair. I'm sorry."

"That's it?"

"Yes," Bryce said. He never looked away. Chuck wondered if that was something they taught at spy school, that unwavering sincerity. He dismissed that thought: Bryce had always been good at this sort of thing. "That's it. I'm sorry. I tried to keep this life from damaging you, and I'm sorry that my actions led to what they did."

Chuck opened his mouth to retort that by trying to run damage control, Bryce had actually made things worse. But he remembered that if Bryce hadn't changed his results at boot camp, he would have gone straight into Project Omaha instead of Project Lincoln. And he would be either insane or dead.

Maybe that would have been better.

Chuck glanced instinctively in Sarah's direction, in case she could hear thoughts now. No matter how hard they'd tried to be friends, every time he thought something self-defeating or self-deprecating, her anger became a scary thing to behold.

She was still flicking through her magazine.

"Chuck?" Bryce asked.

Chuck jerked his attention back to the matter at hand. His ex-best friend was trying to apologize, very sincerely it looked like, and his attention was drifting.

"Sorry," he said, turning back toward Bryce. "So that's it? You wanted to meet to apologize?"

"Not entirely." Bryce took a swig of his drink before he opened his briefcase. He handed over a small disk. "I need you to give this to Dave. I wasn't sure which couriers I could trust and I know you're not Fulcrum."

"How do you know that?" Chuck asked. "I'd say given what's happened to me, turning traitor makes sense, wouldn't you?"

"You're not that guy," Bryce said.

Somehow, just that offhand, self-assured statement was enough for the anger Chuck had felt lurking inside to begin taking over. Chuck wanted to grit his teeth and start seething, but it would do little good.

He could be that guy. Most days, he wanted to be.

"And," Bryce said, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, "I wanted to give you this."

He set a thumb drive—a silly one, in the shape of a frog—on the bar between them.

Chuck took a sip of Coke and didn't reach for the thumb drive. He pocketed the disk Bryce had handed him, though. The disk was work-related. The thumb drive had to be personal, or another Intersect, and he wasn't falling for that again. "What is that?"

"Relax, it's not an Intersect."

"I didn't think it was," Chuck lied.

Bryce sipped his beer. "The new one's not even ready to go yet."

Chuck's head snapped up. "What? New one?"

"Turns out you and I set something in motion last year, and they've been hard at work on 'upgrades' to the system. They asked me to upload the new one when it's ready."

"Are you going to?"

"Nah." Bryce helped himself to a handful of peanuts from the dish next to him. "I've got other things to do with my time. They need me out there, fighting Fulcrum."

"Out there," Chuck said. The bitterness in his own voice surprised him; even now, was he jealous of Bryce's super-spy-ness? Ridiculous, he thought, but considered. As much as he hated the government, how many times had he read the Bond novels? How many of the movies had he quoted? It would have to be something to think about later. "Where's out there, Bryce?"

"Can't tell you that, buddy."

The endearment made Chuck's fist, out of Bryce's line of sight, clench. Some things never changed. "Figures," he said, and made sure his hand wasn't shaking as he reached for his drink. They were building a new Intersect. Well, that made sense. After all, his contract was that he had to do missions while he was the newest Intersect, which meant they had plans for another generation.

It made him sick to think about it. Did those people know what they were getting into?

Bryce apparently misinterpreted his silence, as he cleared his throat. "Lots of closed doors," he said, apology lacing his voice. "Locked rooms, always the chance of getting caught and killed. I spent more time than I care to remember in a basement once."

"Really?"

"God's truth."

"Playing Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Sure. Or doing real work. I don't think anybody realizes how deep this Fulcrum perversion goes."

Chuck wondered if that was a dig—after all, ever since he'd signed the contract allowing Beckman and Graham to utilize the Intersect in exchange for an unholy amount of money and Ellie's research, his team had only been called out a couple of times, like the night before. The word Fulcrum hadn't even come up on any of their missions.

"It's from Stanford," Bryce said, nodding at the thumb drive. "It's your unedited recruitment interview with Fleming."

"Unedited? Wait, there was more?"

"Why did you think I took that disk from you at the big game?"

Chuck remembered the feel of his face being pushed into the cold concrete as Bryce had insisted that he was innocent, and shook it off. They'd recovered the disk awhile later—Bryce had left it in the Crown Vic—to find out that it was recruitment interviews. Bryce and Chuck's had been conspicuously missing. "To keep something in your own interview from being found out, of course."

"Not my interview, Chuck. Yours." Bryce picked up his beer, but didn't drink. "I didn't want this life for you. I tried to help."

"And?"

"I failed."

Rage began to boil behind Chuck's sternum with such intensity that he felt the airport bar around them compact with an audible crunch. Words came spilling out of his mouth. "You never learn, do you? The great Bryce Larkin can do anything, can be anything, and God help the mere mortal that can't measure up."

"Chuck—"

"Did it ever occur to you that it wasn't your place to try and keep me from 'this life,' Bryce? I am an adult. I can make my own decisions. I have been, successfully, since I turned eighteen and earned the right to vote."

"You had noidea what you were getting into."

"And it's physically impossible for you to say, 'Hey, you know, friend, this is kind of dangerous. There's maybe some stuff you should know?' Or was that phrase banned in that prep school you were always complaining about?"

"You wouldn't have listened to me."

"I was your friend. I respected you. I would have listened."

"No, you wouldn't have." Bryce finished off his beer. "You had the drive. If they said something would help others, you did it, no questions asked. I saved your life, you know. If I hadn't done something, you'd be dead right now like the rest of Omaha."

"And you're one hundred percent sure of that fact?"

Bryce had the audacity to look apologetic, as though he didn't like what he was about to say either. "I'm pretty smart, Chuck."

"God," Chuck said. He wondered why there wasn't steam shooting out of his ears like an old cartoon because his head felt like it might explode, and his heart was pounding. He feigned calmness as he pulled out his wallet and dropped some bills on the bar to cover his drink. "Amazing. Just amazing."

"I can't change anything. I'm sorry about what happened to you, but you have to understand, this is precisely why I did what I did. Watch the interview." Bryce nudged the thumb drive toward him. "You'll see."

Chuck didn't reach for the drive. If Bryce kept talking, he realized, he would break his pacifist rule and punch Bryce in the face. He heard his therapist's voice in his head, cautioning that it was smarter to walk away, to say nothing.

Still, he couldn't resist a parting shot as he rose to his feet. "Bryce, do me a favor. Look up the definition of 'irony' in the dictionary sometime."

And with that said, he left. For some reason, he couldn't look at Sarah as he did so. They'd agreed to be friends, but he wanted to be alone.

7 JULY 2008
BACHELOR PAD 2.0
09:27 EDT

Casey knocked once—a rare courtesy for him—and pushed Chuck's bedroom door open. "Get up. I'm going for a run."

Chuck didn't look away from the ceiling. "Have a good time."

"I think you should come."

"I'm busy."

"Clearly." Casey crossed the room in two strides and grabbed the front of Chuck's T-shirt, hauling him up and off of the bed. Chuck, used to being manhandled like this, didn't even stumble upon finding himself abruptly on his feet. He did, however, sit down hard on the edge of the bed, which drew a grunt from Casey. "Move it, Bartowski."

"I went for a run yesterday."

"And you can go for one today. Amazing how runs are so plentiful like that."

"I wouldn't know," Chuck said. "I don't get the runs much. Is this a common problem for you, Casey?"

Casey glared and shoved Chuck's sunglasses into his hand.

"Fine," Chuck said. "Guess I'll go for a run with you."

"Good. Get your shoes on, we're leaving in two minutes."

"Yeah, yeah." Since he'd kicked off his running shoes beside the bed anyway, Chuck reached for a pair of clean socks from a pile of laundry nearby. He'd just jog in the shorts and T-shirt he'd slept in.

He ambled to the kitchen a minute later and found Casey ripping open a Powerbar. He wrinkled his nose, but caught the energy bar Casey tossed him anyway. "These taste like feet."

"You eat a lot of feet, Bartowski?"

"Touché." Chuck caught the second item Casey tossed with his free hand. Casey had apparently read through the Post already that morning, as it had been refolded, and imprecisely at that. "Anything interesting?"

"Still a commie rag. Can't you subscribe to something worthy, like the Washington Times? We'd have less trash in the apartment." Casey sniffed at the pile of newspapers in the corner that Chuck had been gathering to recycle.

"We already have Fox News playing all the time. I need at least one refuge."

"Wimp," Casey said, sneering. Chuck set the Post on the table to read through later. Since the date was a prime number, there would undoubtedly be a new message from Orion in the classifieds. He wondered if it would be a website for hunting gear, a used star map, or a belt this time. He also wondered, not for the first time, when Orion would tire of his silence and give up.

There was time to think about that later. Now, apparently, Casey wanted to run. Instead of taking off down the path like he usually did on their runs together, though, Casey headed for the Crown Vic.

"Uh, Casey?"

"Get in. I'm feeling patriotic."

"Patriotic" meant the heart of Washington D.C., Chuck discovered, and battling traffic to get there, one of Casey's favorite activities. By the time they arrived at the lot—Casey apparently had quite a few connections, as the lot attendant greeted him by name—Chuck's stomach was growling. He almost regretted not taking the time to grab a second Powerbar.

"Any particular reason we're running along here?" Chuck asked as he climbed from the car.

"You'll see." Casey gave a cursory stretch and took off; Chuck rolled his eyes and followed. He'd learned early on that Casey apparently subscribed to Jack Lalanne's theory on stretching. If predators didn't need to stretch before going after their prey, neither did Casey.

It took Chuck nearly a quarter mile to catch up. Evidently, Casey was going easy on him today. Instead of a desultory remark, though, Casey gave him a nod when he fell into step beside the other man. Chuck shrugged inwardly and focused on his breathing, and also his situational awareness. They jogged down the side of the National Mall, past all of the monuments, heading for the reflective pool. In July. Even if it was only ten o'clock in the morning, Chuck already felt like he was running through a sauna. By a half mile, he was drenched and taking heavier pulls from his water bottle than he should have.

"I hate you," he told Casey.

At a mile, he ditched his shirt, tucking it into the waistband of his shorts. He could use the sunlight. Bunker pale might have been a thing of the past, but he was nowhere near the golden tan he'd had as a teenager and college student in California. They skirted around the tourists, and it gave him pause to realize he didn't really consider himself one of them.

That errant thought wasn't enough to distract him from the fact that the temperature was soaring higher with every minute that passed, and there was a message for Orion waiting for him back at the apartment, and he was sweating gallons, a feeling he had never liked. When they reached the reflective pond, his thoughts had descended from annoyed to straight out swearing.

He hadn't been lying. In this moment, he hated John Casey. That hatred only grew with every footfall through the sweaty summer day.

"Doing okay?" Casey asked, giving him a sidelong glance.

"I hate you," Chuck said again.

Again, there was no pithy putdown in reply, only a shrug. "Good."

"Wait." He was gasping a little. It was probably due to the fact that they were running through Mother Nature's version of the Inferno. "Why is that a good thing?"

"Let's rest here," Casey said.

Chuck was all too glad to stop, as his lungs felt rather like somebody had scraped sand up and down the length of his esophagus. He slowed to a walk and glugged down water, struggling to breathe. When he ran the back of his hand over his forehead, it came back dripping. At least, some annoyed corner of his brain noted, it wasn't the damned agoraphobia doing that but an honest workout.

"This has nothing on Afghanistan, you know."

"Good for Afghanistan!" Since the idea of diving into the reflective pool was all too tempting, Chuck deliberately turned his back to it. His eyes drifted up a set of rather impressive stairs across the street, to the familiar building atop them. From this angle, the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln wasn't visible, but he'd seen enough movies—and had visited the site before—to know how it looked.

Right now, he'd rather see an igloo than Abraham Lincoln.

"So I stopped here on purpose," Casey said. "Not because you're obviously dying of a little heat-stroke, Bartowski."

"A little heat-stroke? And why would you—" Chuck's eyes cut toward the memorial again, and the meaning sank in. He thought of the hotel Casey had picked in Moscow, merely because it had had the word Delta in its name. The summer day only grew warmer. "You're an ass."

"Yes. Yes, I am, but I'm an ass you're going to listen to."

Chuck gaped at him. "You dragged me through a tourist-infested, hotter-than-hell morning run to visit the Lincoln Memorial just so that I could tell you you're an ass? Casey, there's like five or six steps you could've skipped in that equation."

"Would you quit whining about the weather?"

"When it stops sucking, I'll stop whining."

"Shut up. I've got something to say, and you're going to listen."

"Well, then, say it already so that I can get inside out of this heat."

Casey looked up at the set of steps leading to the Lincoln Memorial, shrugged to himself, and gestured for Chuck to follow him. Chuck was all too happy to sit down a couple of steps up, though he would have preferred some shade. He fanned himself with his soggy T-shirt.

"The thing I want to tell you is that you're a moron," Casey said, sitting down near him but not next to him.

Chuck turned and stared. Sarcasm was the only thing that seemed appropriate. "No, really, Casey, you're right. I've always felt that the art of kicking a man while he's down really is under-appreciated. I'm glad you agree."

"I mean it this time," Casey said.

"You always mean it."

"No, I don't." Casey paused, tilting his head slightly as he considered. "Well, most of the time, I do. You really are an idiot when you put your mind to it. Some of the stunts you've pulled..."

"I think I got your point, Casey."

"No," Casey said. "I don't think you do."

"Well, then, what is it?"

"You're being an idiot, and both you and Walker are paying for it."

Chuck pushed himself to his feet. The temperature, the fact that he was sweaty and out of breath, the all-seeing stare of Abraham Lincoln on a point between his shoulder blades, all of it combined to make him realize that he really did not have to put up with the insults. He was doing the best he could. Nobody should expect any more than that, though they all seemed to love doing so. "Great," he said. "Thanks. Couldn't see that for myself. Appreciate the talk. I'll see you back at home."

Casey let him get two steps down before the other man called out, "Couldn't ever be honest with yourself, could you, huh?"

Chuck sighed. "Honest with myself about what?"

"That you were pissed at Walker for lying to you. Hell, you still are."

Chuck turned. "That's ridiculous."

"No, it's not."

"Yes. It is."

"It's not. She lied to you."

"Great," Chuck said. "You've joined Ellie in the Sarah-Can-Do-Nothing-Right League. As if it needed any more people."

Casey laughed. There wasn't much humor in the noise, but it was a laugh nonetheless as he took a slug from his water bottle. "Walker and your sister made up weeks ago. Not saying they're best buddies anymore, but they get along. And Walker knows my issues. If she has a problem with me, she can stand up for herself."

"She shouldn't have to."

"But she can." Casey capped the water bottle. "You're a couple of goddamned martyrs."

Had he entered some bizarre alternate universe? He knew that it was Casey talking to him, as the man wore the same black USMC shirt, black shorts, black socks, and black shoes as the sadist that had dragged him on a jog through hell. "What?" he asked.

"The pair of you are so nauseatingly concerned with how the other feels all the damned time. That's fine for some couples. Hell, if more people felt that way, the divorce rate wouldn't be so high and we'd all be living the Reagan dream."

Chuck shook his head, but Casey still didn't flicker or anything to prove that he'd mysteriously become a hologram. "Should Dr. Phil be worried about his job?"

"Don't be a smartass," Casey said.

"Sorry."

"Don't be that either."

Chuck gritted his teeth. Annoyance was very quickly turning to anger. But his voice was mild as he said, "I was raised to believe in good manners."

"Well, forget them. In fact, forget them and just admit you're pissed at Walker already, will you? Otherwise we're going to be dealing with you and Walker snipping at each other until we're all in some godforsaken rest home together and when I think about that, I find that I'd rather pull my toenails out one by one."

Grimacing at that imagery, Chuck took a seat on the step again. "I'm not pissed at Sarah," he said. "I'm not. She had reasons for doing what she did."

"So?"

"What do you mean, so? It's unfair to—"

"I don't give a rat's ass about fair. The woman lied to you about what was inside your own head and put others in danger without your knowledge or theirs. For months. While you were," and Casey's scowl deepened into a glare, "involved. For the love of Patton, that still leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think of the two of you being involved."

Chuck's jaw tightened so hard that he could feel his teeth grinding together, but he didn't say anything. Part of it was sheer fury that left him speechless, but another, larger piece of it was that...maybe Casey had a point. And that was an awful thing to think. After all, he'd forgiven Sarah, hadn't he? He'd told her so, to her face.

But part of him hadn't wanted to. And he understood, but there was just that sliver of resentment, the why should I have to apologize? He'd been the wronged party.

So had she, though. She was a victim, too.

"She knew something about your life," Casey went on, and the words weaseled their way through Chuck's ear canal and into that horrible, resentful part of his brain. "And she kept it from you. And then she controlled your emotions with a code-phrase and didn't tell you about it until you confronted her. Months after the fact."

Chuck pushed hard against the resentment that was growing with each word, and found that it wouldn't budge. He clenched his fists, feeling the sweaty bandage on his left wrist tighten in response. When he spoke, it was through his teeth. "What are you trying to do, Casey?"

"I want you to stop trying to be the Everything-Is-Fine-Robot and just be pissed. Not at the government—I've heard all about that since we got here, and frankly, I'm tired of it—but at her. Sarah Walker. Your girlfriend."

"I have no right," Chuck said, "to be—"

"Who the hell cares about rights? For crying out—you have the emotional depth of a stick, you know." Casey glared at him.

"That's rich, coming from the man who has invented his own vernacular of grunts."

Casey scoffed. "You know why you're pissed and you won't admit it?" he asked.

"No. But you seem to be in a sharing mood today. Why not fill me in?"

"It's because your girlfriend's not perfect," Casey said.

Chuck blinked. "That doesn't even make sense. I know Sarah's not perfect."

"Rationally, sure." Casey took a long drink and spat half of it back out onto the steps. A family of tourists gave him dirty looks and a wide berth. Chuck suspected that had been his entire goal. When Casey looked back at him, it was with a sober look. No glaring, no scowling, just the bare truth on his face. "You had her up on a pedestal for all those months after the bunker, and that's fine, it helped you get better. I'm not judging. But she was the perfect thing in your life, and then one day she wasn't. She'd broken your trust and made you question things you hadn't had to question before because she was the perfect anchor-point in your life."

Chuck's stomach sank.

Casey, however, just continued to speak in that low, steady voice. "The thing is, here, you can't get mad at her. Not when you're still Bartowski. After all, you were 'raised to believe in good manners.' You know it's not rational and it's not fair, and you still have that weird Bartowski thing about protecting others."

"Don't you mean weakness?" Chuck asked, his voice bitter.

"No, Chuck," Casey said. "It's not how I do things, but it's not weak. What it is, though, is screwing things up for you. Makes sense, you've got so much going on in that head of yours when it can only handle a little—"

"Thanks, Casey."

"I'm kidding. Mostly."

Chuck glared.

"Either way, you're dealing with a lot. I'm just calling it like I see it."

"Wow, Casey," Chuck said. He was lashing out; he recognized that, but he just didn't care. He was hot and he was tired and Casey was speaking the dead truth, and that just made the anger swell even harder. "I didn't realize you'd put so much thought into this. Did it hurt?"

Casey laughed. "Now you're the one being an ass," he said. "It's because you know I'm right. I got eyes. I can use 'em to see what's going on right in front of my face for two goddamned months. And I'm tired of it, so quit being fair and just admit you're angry."

"I'm not angry." The words were automatic.

"You are. And you think you don't have a right to be. You may not. You may. It doesn't matter: you're angry, either way. Admit that you're angry, for the love of all that is holy."

"And then what?" Chuck asked.

Casey rose to his feet and tossed his water bottle toward the trash can. "And then, Bartowski, do us all a favor and get over it already."

With a final grimace in Chuck's direction, he took off down the stairs at a mild jog. Chuck watched him go in silence for a minute before he wordlessly rose to his feet and jogged after him.

The entire way back to their apartment, neither of them said a word. The stone gaze of Abraham Lincoln followed Chuck past the reflecting pool, past the Capital Building, and all the way home.

A/N the Second: Some people to thank, of course—mxpw, the world's most wonderfulest and greatest and smell-goodiest beta, who graciously let me take a very cheap potshot at his wonderful story, Chuck versus the Double Agent. quistie64, cowriter extraordinaire, and all-around amazing person, who took a look at some of the scenes as I was writing them, and helped me out. TakeItTo22 or Tally for the T2 image I blatantly stole from her review. Ayefah, for being amazeballs. Aardie, for the same. And you, dear readers, for making it to the end of this chapter. You're fabulous. Don't let anybody tell you differently.