A/N I got a few comments back when I released the first chapter, that Chuck being a janitor would draw more attention to him, not less. My response to these comments was to invent the whole 'Charles Carmichael' fake husband for Sarah. That plot grew, developed, and ultimately drove the entire season, and I hadn't even thought of it when I started this, so I have to give thanks to those who've commented on my stories. I had a bunch of other stuff in here, like Base, and the whole process for getting into the lab, that disappeared as soon as I got around to actually rewriting episodes. Kaleidoscope stayed, though.

I don't know where the schtick about Sarah being jealous of brunettes came from, but I made a deliberate point of throwing it overboard in this chapter.

Sarah Walker saw them as she signed in at the front desk of the NSA building, her wonderful, wonderful husband making even the institutionally ugly décor of the NSA lobby look pretty as he sat on the uncomfortable chairs talking to an attractive brunette caretaker.

Sarah's eyes narrowed.

Naturally the two were best friends by now, Chuck did that to everyone. Naturally the woman placed her hand gently on his arm as she laughed at some comment he'd just made, his very being invited such casual intimacies. Naturally the woman was looking Chuck over, from his warm brown eyes to his lovely collarbones and all the exposed parts in between, parts that she herself spent much of her time kissing.

"Chuck!"

Instantly Chuck's gaze left the woman, forgetting her instantly, his face lighting up as it always did, only for his wife. She stalked up to them as they rose, glaring, and his face fell just a bit. "Sarah! We were just waiting for you. This is Agent Swanson–"

"Kimberly," corrected the young woman, holding out her hand.

She smiled back, and clasped the offered hand. "Sarah Walker. A pleasure. Thank you for taking such good care of my husband."

"The pleasure was mine. Goodbye, Chuck." Agent Swanson vanished inside.

Sarah frowned at her husband. "You. Car. Now."

Chuck waited until they got outside. "What did I do?"

Sarah let out an exasperated sigh. "The same thing you always do, Chuck. It's just more noticeable when women like her are around!"

He smiled. "Sarah, are you jealous?"

Now she looked confused. "Me? No, why would I be? I own your smile." She smiled.

He smiled back automatically. "Which smile?"

"That one. Hordes of beautiful ladies throwing themselves at your feet but you smile like that for me. Only for me. I'm not sure whether to thank Jill or deck her."

"You did worse than deck her, you arrested her."

"She deserved it, for breaking your heart, leaving you stuck in a hopeless, ambition-less rut at the Buy More. Maybe I'll thank her next time. If she hadn't broken your heart I'd be five years too late. I've seen how many have started lining up since I got here."

"There won't be a next time for Jill, but aren't you afraid that one of these hordes of beautiful ladies will sweep me off my feet?"

"Me?" Afraid? "You?" Swept? "Please."

He blushed. "I'm just a guy, after all."

She stopped in her tracks and turned, stopping him with a sharp finger planted against his chest. "No you are not! You are a man!" Her fingers went up to trace those lovely lines of his neck. "My man, Chuck Bartowski. I've seen enough guys to know the difference."

"You stole that from Say Anything!"

"It's a good movie!" He broke into a grin. "What?"

He kissed her on the nose. "Somewhere along the line I turned you into a real girl."

She hugged him. "Somewhere between saying 'I do' and carrying me across the threshold, I believe."

Chuck stood there a moment just enjoying the feeling. "So–?"

She pulled back enough to look him in the face without totally letting go. "So what?"

"You're not afraid of the competition, and you have total faith—completely justified, I might add—that I won't give in to temptation. So why were you mad at me?"

She made a face. "And what makes you think I'm not still mad at you?" Breaking her embrace, she took his hand and towed him off.

"If this is you being mad I must remember to do it more often."

"Don't," she warned, "The make-up sex might kill you."

"Okay, rethinking my devious plot. Why are you mad at me?"

"Agent Swanson was ogling you." She got into the car, just a government-issue POS but he assumed there was a reason for it.

He got in too. "Aha, so you are jealous."

"No, I'm annoyed that you took your tie off when I told you not to. I don't care about the NSA so much but now we're heading for where I work, and I want to show off my man looking all spiffy."

Her man, the new, incompetent Interior Maintenance trainee. Apparently she hadn't been read in on everything. "Uh, Sarah…"

One reading her in on everything later…

"I swear I will shoot them both! Let the new janitor dispose of the trash!" She pulled out her pistol and the silencer, started screwing it on.

Chuck laid his hand over hers. "Now, sweetie, that sounds like a great plan, really it does, but I honestly don't want all of our children to be born in between conjugal visits."

"Fine," she snarled, putting the weapon down. "Can I torture them a bit? They won't miss a few what do you mean 'all'?"

Crap. "Did I say 'all'?" Chuck smiled weakly. "I meant 'any', it just came out 'all'."

She fixed him with a predatory look. "How many is all, Chuck? Eight? Ten?"

Can you blame a guy for panicking? "How high can Colonel Casey count?"

Twenty, if he's naked. She briefly mourned that missing toe. "Okay. You drive a hard bargain, Bartowski, but I won't cut anything off."

She pulled over briefly, just outside the entrance to the parking lot. "Here, put this on."

It looked like a cloth bag. "How?"

"It's a hood, Chuck. No one can be allowed to know the identity of the Intersect, not even the people guarding him. It's bad enough you're as tall as you are."

He put it on. "It's dark in here. Is my seeing eye dog allowed to know the identity of the Intersect?"

She put the car into gear, turned into the lot. "Turn it around, Chuck. There's a thin cloth panel you can see through."

"You're right, there is."

"Don't talk, we're at the booth."

"IDs, please."

Sarah handed over her ID, and a special pass. "I'm in this car alone, understood?"

The guard's eyes bugged out at some of the names on her pass before he handed them back. "Yes, ma'am. Have a nice day. Gate four." Only her pass would open that gate, and if she tried to go through another gate now he or another guard just like him would shoot her.

She pulled up outside the proper door and got out of the car, hurrying over to the other side before the asset could open it himself, like a good handler would. Chuck got out of the car and stood, looking Sarah pretty much in the eye. She flinched. "What the hell have you done?"

His voice was low, and muffled by the bag. "It's an Intersect skill, Agent Walker, you said I was too tall. If my pants were baggier I could drop another inch or two, but this should be enough for now."

She smiled. "Not flashy, but effective. Excellent work, Agent Carmichael."

"Let's go in, this is really killing my thighs."

Once past the inner guard and inside the secure elevator Chuck stood straight and removed the hood. "Damn that hurts."

Sarah snuggled up close in their few precious moments of alone time. "Want me to kiss it and make it better?"

"It's my legs, Sarah."

"So? The halls are cleared, no one will see us. We could get started ransoming Casey's thumb right there in the hall and no one would know."

"Okay, first of all, eww! Second of all, I'd know, and if that's really how you plan to keep track I'm cutting you off at nineteen, because third, eww!"

"You're cutting me off, are you?"

Chuck slapped his hands over his ears. "I'm not listening, la-la-la-la!"

The door opened, and he dropped his hands quickly. "Come on," said Sarah, "Let's get you set up."

The Intersect room was familiar, identical to the one in which Bryce had died. Chuck stood by the monitor while Sarah made a phone call. "Base, this is Kaleidoscope."

"Kaleidoscope, Base. Is the subject ready?"

She gave Chuck a thumbs-up. "Subject is ready, base."

"Clear the room, Kaleidoscope. Upload commencing in three zero seconds."

"Understood, Base. Kaleidoscope out." She closed the phone. "Good luck, Chuck. I'll be just outside." She backed towards the door, trying to keep him in sight as long as she could. She would have preferred to be inside, they were sure the upload wouldn't hurt anyone, but the room had been rigged with remote telemetry and they didn't want extra bodies in there. Once on the other side, the door sealed and the overhead light turned red.

She needn't have worried. After the door closed, Chuck looked back down at the monitor at the message written there: 'Good Luck, Son'. As far as he knew, no one knew his father's whereabouts. He certainly wasn't on the Intersect team. Officially. "Thanks, Dad."

At T plus thirty seconds precisely the walls started to flicker.

At T plus one minute precisely the overhead light turned green again, and the door unsealed. At T plus one minute and two seconds precisely Sarah was standing next to her dazed-looking husband as he wavered on his feet. Her phone rang. "Kaleidoscope, this is Base. What is the subject's condition?"

"Base, Kaleidoscope. Subject is upright and vertical." With a little help.

"Excellent, Kaleidoscope. Bring subject to medical for part two evaluation. Base out."

Sarah looked into her husband's eyes, well, the one pointing her way at the time. "Chuck, can you walk?"

He closed his eyes, shuddering from top to bottom. When he looked at her again both eyes were looking in the same direction. "You're kidding, right? I feel like I can float there!"

"It's a hallucination, Chuck. Believe me, I just kept you from falling over like a board and I know how much you weigh. No floating for you." She took his arm, just to be on the safe side. "Come on, time for your post-dump check up."

"Lay on, MacDuff."

"Isn't that 'lead on'?"

"No. Honestly, no one gets that right."

"Whatever. This way, Shakespeare."

Medical, sensibly, had been placed right across the hall from the Upload Room, for obvious reasons. So Chuck didn't have to stumble very far to make it to the exam room and collapse into a chair. Sarah waited by his side until the doctor finished studying the telemetry results and looked over at the subject for the first time. "Hello, Chuck, Sarah."

Sarah smiled back. "Hello, Ellie."