For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.

One of two post-eps for Chuck versus the Hack Off

Additionally... so this is Chapter 50. Holy crap. I never, ever, in my wildest dreams, thought this story would be this long. This is now the longest thing I have ever written and posted. Thank you to all of my Super Friends... Love to you all. ~K

Super Friends... or the Justice League

When Chuck entered his sister's apartment, he was almost bowled over from the scent of baked goods. He nearly choked on the sugar that permeated the air. Glancing back into the sunlight of the courtyard, he took one last, deep breath before plunging in and heading directly to the kitchen.

Ellie surveyed her countertops (as did Downy from the kitchen's window sill). Every inch of workable space was covered with some type of cake. There were fruit cakes, layered cakes, and even tiny petit fours.

"Did you start a catering business without telling anyone?" he asked, smiling a little. He knew that it was difficult for Ellie, since Casey had been arrested. He had hoped she had remained at the cleaning stage. The cleaning stage was the first stage in the Ellie Bartowski freak-out. Once everything was disinfected and purified, to the point where her kitchen could double as a surgical suite at Westside, it was time to move onto stage two.

The one where Keebler Elves invaded and possessed her.

Ellie glanced up, her face dusted with a light sprinkling of flour across her chin. "So, which of these do you think will be easiest to slip past security?"

He blinked. "What? This isn't... this isn't one of your normal baked goods days?" Chuck knew that his sister would frequently donate excess pastries to charities, or drop them off at the hospital or for first-responders.

"No, this is... This is for John," she said, holding up a metal file. "If I send a tray of these bite-sized ones, then it could sit carefully between them... You could slide it out when it goes through the metal detector and then back in again once it's been cleared." She pointed at a fruit cake. "But, that one is so thick, so dense, it might be better. Fruit cakes are typically filled with all sorts of healthier options, so you could tell the guards that it's just... high in iron?"

Chuck shook his head. "You should leave the breaking-out to the professionals. Check this out," he said, pulling out his wallet. "It took some doing but this a miniaturized copy of the blueprints to county lock-up."

She watched as he pulled a tiny piece of paper from one of the card slots and hold it out to her. She shook her head, however. "I can't bake that into one of these... What if he takes a bite and accidentally ingests half of the map? And then what happens?"

"That's not... That's not why I brought it by," he said. "I brought it by because, well..." He sighed. "Ellie, by taking this to him, you realize what it is I'm asking him to do, right? That he'll be escaping. From jail. That what he'll be doing is illegal."

"He's in jail on trumped up charges."

Chuck had no way to sugar-coat what he was about to say. Swallowing hard, he just jumped in and said it. "Sarah's contacts seem to indicate that he... he may have done what Decker says he did."

Downy let out a plaintive cry.

She closed her eyes, leaning against the counter, nearly toppling a three-layer red velvet cake onto a lemony Bundt.

"They would've stopped at nothing to get to us, all of us," he said, glancing at Downy, who lowered her head back atop her paws. "Casey was protecting us. That's all he's ever done, ever since he got here." He left out the part where Casey held a gun on him, mostly because Casey was protecting the United States in general, which included his sister. Plus, that was practically a lifetime ago.

"This just doesn't make sense, Chuck. None of it."

He reached out, squeezing her shoulder. "I know. Believe me, I know. The spy life, it's..." He drifted off, unsure how to adequately describe it. "It's not easy."

"He makes it look that way," Ellie said quietly.

Chuck had to agree. "He has some mad skills, he does. And he'll need to use them all when he breaks out. You need to be prepared for the potential outcomes... all of them."

She leveled her gaze at her brother. She had already thought of all the worst case scenarios she could imagine. Getting shot on his way out of jail. Getting caught and then thrown under the jail. The one that hurt the most was the thought of his successfully escaping and then being on the run. Indefinitely. Forever. Without her.

When she smiled, he could see the steel behind the softness. He'd seen that look, a thousand times before, when they were smaller, when she had to be the adult in the family because they thought their father was just being scatter-brained. "El..."

"It'll be fine, Chuck. No matter what happens... we all know that John's a hero, that he'd never do anything without following his Marine Corps morals."

He nodded slowly. She was taking the news far better than he had imagined. "It's... It's my fault, sis. I got him into this mess. I'm the one who decided we would be better off working for ourselves... but we're out here, we're alone. We don't have the resources that we had when we were CIA."

Ellie's smile grew even more tender and she shook her head. "Chuck, for starters, you didn't force anyone at gunpoint to do this, to join you at Carmichael Industries. You didn't make them do anything. They chose to follow you. They were given the option and they made their own decisions and, in my opinion, they made the right ones. You, Sarah, Morgan... John."

He quirked an eyebrow, but she continued.

"Secondly, and most importantly, you aren't alone. You've never been alone. We may have been a tiny family, but tiny doesn't mean that we aren't mighty. It was always just you and me against the world, right? And Morgan."

"Wonder Woman, Batman... and the Boy Wonder..."

Ellie inwardly shuddered. "It was creepy then and the thought is still creepy now." Morgan had insisted that, surely, because both of their hero names had the word "Wonder" in them, that they were destined to be together.

"Thank goodness he grew out of that," Chuck added, the corners of his mouth tugging into a smile.

"But, now, there's John, there's Sarah, there's Alex... It's like the Super Friends... Or, was it the Justice League?"

Chuck smiled. "Technically, either is acceptable, but Justice League sounds cooler..."

"We can do anything together. All of us, working together, moving toward the common goal... I have no doubt that we can succeed. If that means that John spends a little time in jail until we can figure it out... if that means that John stays away to protect us... so long as we are all in on the plan, so long as we all know what's happening, what's going on, I know we'll come out ahead. We always have."

Chuck had come over, believing that he would be the one to be offering his sister words of advice. He never thought that she would be the one comforting him yet again. Of course, that had always been her super power.

Stay tuned...