A/N The show never really went into any detail about Sarah being an assassin, too many people saw her as the romantic interest. The few times it came up, in the Helicopter, for example, were mostly meant to play up Chuck's innocence rather than her actions. He lets her off far too easily in canon, all things considered. I've addressed that a bit more in this story, as in Casey's actions being in defense of other people's dreams. Chuck is as accepting of Sarah's actions here as he was in canon, but with better reason. He also offers her forgiveness, something she desperately needs. Once she's 'confessed' this shame she's able to become more deserving of him in her own mind. Maybe that's why she lets Carina live, once the heat of the moment passes, but that's for next episode.

I remember that the folks on the Chuck This Blog were discussing the Santa Clause while I was writing this, and some of what was said there made it in here, as often happened. In this case it was the reference to Chuck having ruined Sarah for killing even people like Mauser.

Chuck sat in his seat, eyes shut, wishing his ears had flaps so he could close them too. For once he even wished she'd drive faster, get the trip over sooner. That hoped died at the first, tiniest imperfection in the street, magnified into groan-inducing discomfort by the speed at which they hit it. She'd kept to the speed limit since then. "I'm sorry, Sarah."

"You're sorry?" she almost shrieked, but she remembered at the last minute and kept her voice pitched low. "For what? For being the most amazing, wonderful man on Earth, for giving me new reasons every day to be amazed and…humbled, that you'd let me be your wife? If that's what you're sorry for you're just going to have to get used to it, because I'll never forgive you."

"But we were too late…"

"You can't know that, Chuck," said Agent Carmichael. "If we'd watched the recording forward from the beginning, yes, you would have hit the pattern faster but we can't know if it would have helped at all." Her face fell, Sarah taking over where 'Agent Carmichael' left off. "But what I do know, and this I blame myself for, is that even after you went through that terrible pain once, you went through it again because I wasn't recording you the first time. I'm the one who should be sorry. You are in this pain right now for Carina's sake, and I couldn't love you or be more proud of you than I am right now."

"I can hear your carpal tendons flexing, you must be crying."

She laughed, she cried, she did something in between. "You're such a goof." After a while spent driving in silence, she asked, in a very small voice, "Chuck?"

"Hmmm?"

"You haven't asked, but I know you must be wondering. About Shaw." Oh how she hated Diane Beckman right now!

He didn't jump on the invitation. "Does it matter to the mission?"

Even now he's trying to save me, spare me…"No. But it matters…about me." What sort of thing I am.

He gave her a second chance. "Is this the right time or place?"

We can't feel much worse. I can't. "Like Carina said, I'm not sure there is one for this."

"That bad, huh?"

She nodded so hard he could feel it.

He overcame his pain so hard she could hear it."There's an old saying, isn't there, about pain shared?"

"Pain shared is halved, joy shared is doubled," she whispered.

"Well, there you go. What are you waiting for?" Chuck opened his eyes, and his ears.

"I guess I was waiting…to know that you could hear it. To believe you could. After what I saw you do for Carina, I'm hoping you can do this for me."

"Anything I would do for Carina I would do a thousand times over for you."

She took a deep breath, so she wouldn't cry. "Shaw's obsession is for his wife. She was shot and killed on a street corner in Paris, five years ago."

When she stayed silent for a few seconds, Chuck said, "I'm not really sure why Beckman thought you were the go-to girl for this."

"I could say it's because he told me about her, just a few days ago…"

"That's a good reason, I guess."

"But I'd be lying." She ducked her head (keeping her eyes on the road, of course), and bulled on through. "I know about it because I was the one who shot her, Chuck. When Shaw told me his story I finally knew who I killed that day. My worst day."

"You didn't know before?"

"No. They gave me a picture, and told me what to do."

"Did they tell you why?"

"No." She swallowed, anything to make it easier to get the words out, her throat was dry. "They were testing me, Chuck. Testing my ability to kill simply because I was told to." And there it was…

Chuck sat up straight, in spite of his mere pain. "You're telling me it was deliberate?"

"It's called a Red Test, Chuck. Every spy takes it. It's why both Casey and I, and Beckman too, kept you away from Prague. You could have done everything but that."

"But you could." He didn't sound angry, or accusing. He sounded sad.

"'How come you never learned that it was wrong?" she said quietly. "'That there are some things you do not do in a civilized society.' You remember that line, Chuck? What do you always say, right after it?"

"'Who was there to tell him?' Or you." He took her hand, so cold in his own.

"I'm a con artist's daughter, Chuck. I've lied for a living since I was nine, but that night was real, that was true." She'd shot someone right in the heart that night, she wasn't sure who. "It was…just another con, that's all. I pulled it on myself, easy to do when everyone around you is doing the same thing. Let my soul go to that numb place where you found me."

He hated that song, hated that she had ever spent time in the dark. Luminous beings are we… "It may not have been a lie, you know, they may have had a reason that they simply didn't tell you."

"That's what I tell myself, Chuck." Every night. Every time you look at me like…

He sighed. "I knew you were in pain. I knew you were hiding something all this time."

"I was so ashamed. I thought I buried it, but then you—and then we—and then I was terrified that I'd lose you, when you found out your wife was a killer…"

Unfortunately the world sometimes needs killers, he thought but did not say. She didn't need to hear that right now. "I'm sorry I was such a baby about all that, freaking out about everything when you're out there trying to save the world–"

"Not the world, just you." She gave him a shaky smile, daring a small hope. "Tell you what. I'll d my best to save the world, Chuck, as long as you'll be there to save me."

Deal. He squeezed her hand. "I'm glad you told me, even if it took a General ratting you out to make you do it." He smiled, looked at her like that. "Please don't kill her."

She took it as the joke he intended it to be, and squeezed his hand back. "You spoiled me for that, Chuck. I could hardly bring myself to kill Mauser, and he was a direct threat to you." How strange, it didn't hurt after all.

"I know what you need," said Chuck suddenly. "You need a nice bowl of popcorn for dinner, with a mug of hot cocoa on the side, and then a nap before the mission tonight."

Hey, no way! "I'm supposed to be taking care of you tonight."

"Okay, well, then we'll just have to take care of each other. I'll make the popcorn, using the super-secret Bartowski family recipe, and you can make the cocoa, recipe on the label."

"Chuck, that sounds…awesome. Dibs on the tuck-up."

He groaned. "I was sort of hoping you'd tuck me up."

"That's what I meant."

Daniel Shaw wasn't surprised to get called to join the mission at the staging area that night.

Who gave the order?

He was the logical choice, having been part of the previous stage that day. Still, it was inconvenient. Agent Carmichael would be there too, and Chuck would be alone. That wouldn't happen often.

Who killed my wife?

He went to get ready.

"Sarah?" asked Chuck as they lay there, resting before she had to go. "Can I ask you a question?"

She stopped playing with his chest hairs. "Of course, Chuck."

"Have you ever failed on a mission?"

She lifted her head to look at him. "Well, there was this one mission, they sent me to babysit a geeky guy in LA…"

"That's nerdy, not geeky."

"The orders said 'geeky'. By the time I learned the difference he'd already wormed his nerdy way into my heart and that was it for the mission." Back down for more snuggling. "I blame the pencil-pushers."

He laughed. "I don't think Beckman would really class this as a failure."

"Oh. Then no."

"So this is your first one?"

She pushed herself up over him, not menacing enough to compensate for the lingerie, but it was a good effort. He did look up at her face. Eventually. "What is my first one?"

"You have to admit that General Beckman did give you an order to explain Shaw's obsession to me. You made a good start, but we got detoured off onto the Red Test Super-Highway and never came back. Her death, sanction, whatever you choose to call it, does not an obsession make."

She granted him the point and sank back down into his arms. "He blamed the Ring for her death, and became obsessed with finding and destroying them."

"Useful."

"Not in a field agent, or an analyst. He was too focused on the end goal to see that a tiny sideways step, or even a strategic withdrawal, would win the day."

"It worked for the Spartans."

"Exactly…hey!"

He smirked. "Something tells me you've never played Age of Empires."

"No," she grumped. But I will.

The night was still, the air cool, the streets almost empty. The signs were all in French, and the city was Paris. A young couple came into sight, a man and a woman, strolling like young lovers. The man raised a hand, possibly pointing out some interesting architecture on the building across the way. "You'll take up a sniper position there, while I meet our contact here." They rounded the corner, onto a small outdoor café.

The woman stopped. I've been here before," she said, her gun now in her hand.

"I know you have, Sarah," said Daniel Shaw. "So have I, many times." Her eyes became unfocused, her body wavered. The gun fell away. "And so has my sniper. The gun is heavy, isn't it? Ring drugs are like that. It's useful, in a way. I can tell you why I'm killing you as I do it. Part of my mission." He took the gun from her limp fingers, turned it on her.

The bistro started playing mariachi music.

Chuck sat up in bed, alone, breathing hard without knowing why. He picked up his phone, saw Morgan's name. "What?"

"Chuck, we need you," shouted Carina in his ear. "There's Ring agents everywhere, and I can't find Casey or Sarah."

His hand felt her side of the bed, empty and cold. She'd left long ago for the mission. Her mission. "Is Shaw there with you?" His obsession.

"Uh…I guess so. I think I saw him."

The killer of his wife.

"Just get up here, will you Chuck? We need you. We need Charles Carmichael."

"But…I'm not Charles Carmichael, nobody is."

Fine, be that way. You want the code, I'll give you the damn code. Orange, orange, green, red, orange, red.

Chuck flashed.

The city was dark and cold, harsh and unforgiving.

The running man was a creature of the light. To him this place was as alien a landscape as the Moon, or some other place not a bit like Earth. The night blinded him, spread his scent, carried his sounds, hid his enemies. His allies, and those who worked his will without ever realizing it, could not see him there.

Unsurprisingly, someone had found him, pulled him momentarily from the light, and now he ran, his shoes slippery, the ground stony and uneven. He was in a train yard, walled in by locomotives and vast freight cars on all sides. Clouds of steam obscured his sight, noises buried the sounds of those who pursued him as they echoed his own.

He couldn't let himself be taken, his team needed him. Merely running further was to chance getting lost. Making it to safety would make that chance a certainty.

He had to stay here, out it in plain sight, someplace where those who knew where to look could find him. Only in plain sight could he find safety for himself.

The running man fled, following the tracks and switches as best he could. He'd lost time and ground, and now those who pursued him could track his every panting breath, each stumbling footfall. The ground didn't suit him, he preferred order and precision, but you can't always pick your battles.

"Aaahhh!"

He fell, his pursuers getting nearer as he twisted himself around to look his pursuers in the face. "Don't," Chuck shouted, raising his hands in supplication. "Please don't. You'd do the same as me, you are me."

Someone stepped from the darkness that so suited him, into the shadows. Charles Carmichael looked down on his victim, gun in hand. "I'll do the same as you. I am you," he said in a ghastly echo. "But I need the body." He raised the gun and fired.

Chuck's world went away.