A/N A reprise of my most popular episode (Larger Than Life), followed by my version of a comedy routine I heard a long time ago, no idea where. A says 'you're gonna hate this part' and describes the situation, and B says 'you're right, I do hate it', and A says 'no, you really love that, because...', and then B says 'you're right I love that', and A says, 'no, you hate that, because...' and it goes back and forth like that for a while.

It was a great relief to me to do the DVD scene at the end, finally letting Carina see all those little bits that she had somehow managed to miss.

Lub. Dub.

Lub. Dub.

The woman who would be known to the world forevermore as Sarah Lisa Bartowski sat next to her husband's bed, head on her husband's chest, listening to his heart beat, slow and steady. Her hand, on his chest. His ring, on her hand. A gold circle, deathless and endless.

So calming.

Chuck had made her a promise, with that ring, and he always kept his promises. He made her face up to the things she did and had done, swallow the pain, absorb it, grow from it. Chuck made her what she was, a real girl with a real life. He could never be gone from her world.

She didn't deserve him, but who could? In the great cosmic game of Spin the Bottle, she'd simply gotten lucky.

She took his hand in hers, his ring between her fingers. "Round and round and round it goes, where it stops..." She took her hand away. "Hey, look at that. I win again." Give me my prize, Chuck.

He took a breath. His heart beat. Prize enough, for now.

She needed more. She wanted more. She put her fingers over his, pressed 1-2-3-4. Status?

Lub-Dub-Lub-Dub, his heart beat back. Green.

She trembled. She could do this. She would do this. Failure was not an option.

Thank God for Orion.

"What am I not going to like this time, Colonel?" asked General Beckman.

Where to begin? "Well, General, we were conferring with Orion."

"You're right, I don't like it."

"Believe me, General, that's the part you like."

"Let's be precise, Colonel. It's the part I'm going to dislike least."

"Uh…yes, ma'am. Anyway, Orion contacted us in the Intersect area."
"I don't like that even more. The Intersect area is supposed to be the most secure intelligence site in the world."

"If it is, it's Orion's doing."

"That's the worst news so far."

"Not at all, General. He observed the construction remotely, and put back doors in the design that no one noticed even as we built them for him. This way he kept others from doing the same."

"At this point, Orion himself is just a pimple on the ass of the things I don't like."

Casey brought all his skills as a combat Marine to bear, not to laugh out loud. "That's actually a good thing, General, since it means our communication with him was about as secure as such things could be. Anyway, he hacked Shaw's computer while we were talking."

"That's terrible news, Colonel. All of our most secure intelligence is now in the hands of a reprobate, rogue scientist."

"It could be worse, General. It could be in the hands of the Ring. As it is, Orion has his own version of the Intersect chewing on the data now."

"This day just gets worse and worse. Here I thought we had the Intersect under control."

"It's not that bad, General. He is the inventor, and there aren't too many more people more committed to Chuck's well-being, and they all work for you."

"I see your point Colonel. A back-up to Chuck himself is a necessity. You're right, I should be glad this whole mess is in his hands and no others."

"Well, ma'am, that's the part you're not going to like."

Casey tried his hand on the door, but the scanner didn't have his biometrics in it, so he was reduced to pounding on the door to get their attention.

"Hi, John. Come on in."

Casey entered the room as Ellie went to the console, looking around at the unfamiliar room with no small degree or wonder. He'd been in rooms like this one before, stark, sterile, blazingly white when they weren't spewing chaos into unsuspecting minds. He'd seen several after having been blown up. He'd never seen one like this before, panels folded out, revealing masses of circuitry and wiring as Manoosh tinkered, head and shoulders inside the wall. "What are you doing in here?"

Ellie started typing. "It was the one room in the complex where the paint wasn't peeling off the walls." Beckman hadn't taken Orion's analysis of the Ring's actions very well. The thin doors of the recovery room allowed them to hear every scorching word, every oath. Chuck wasn't conscious of them and Sarah would not leave him, so Ellie stayed too, until Orion gave her a reason to honorably flee the field for the most insulated room on the continent.

Yeah, I learned a few new words myself. "I told her us talking to Orion was the part she was gonna like, but what I meant was, 'what are you doing? In here.' Sarah's nodded off in there." He pointed back to her office and the recovery room beyond.

"Oh. Well, Dad gave us some code for the upload that he thinks should help Chuck regain consciousness, in combination with the emitters Manoosh is adding to the panels."

Taking a big chance with his own son. "How does he know it'll work?"

Her fingers accelerated, the keyboard like a minigun of characters. "The Ring needed a way to restore Charles Carmichael for interrogation, if they had him that long. Dad stole it from them."

"How'd he do that?"

Her breathing slowed, her fingers didn't. "Shaw."

"I thought he said he wouldn't work with Shaw."

"He didn't, but Shaw used a smartphone app to find Chuck, and Dad piggybacked off of that. He was able to use the phone to hack the machines, enough to get them to restart Chuck's nervous system, but he burnt out the phone doing it. The code is Ring code, but without their hardware we have to use the emitters in an upload to do the same thing for his higher brain functions."

"So he doesn't know."

"No, John, none of us know," she shouted, her fingers typing with furious speed. "We do what we can and we pray it's enough."

"What can I do?" I'm already praying.

Fingers stopped, head dropped. "Help Manoosh. It'll speed him up if he has someone to hand him things."

Anna stayed in her seat as the plane taxied off the runway. The flight had been smooth enough but riding on solid ground was a bit bumpy. The city looked a lot darker from ground level, and she wondered how hard it would be to get something to eat.

Finally the plane stopped, and the sound of the engines changed, and she guessed it would be safe enough to stand. As she walked to the front of the plane something went thunk! against the side, and the door popped open. A man stuck his head in the opening and looked at her. "Agent Ling?"

"You can call me Julie."

"You don't look like a Julie."

God, she was so tired of that code phrase. Sarah and her idiot friend what's-her-name had said the same thing back in Hawaii months ago, and the guys in the front seat thought it sounded cute. Heartily bored, she gave the response. "That's what I said."

Proper signals exchanged, he smiled. "Welcome to Washington. The Agency sent a car." He noticed the bag in her hand. "Can I take that for you?"

"No you may not."

No surprises there. "Any other bags?"

"Nope," she said, "Not staying long."

"Very good, Agent." A limo drove up, windows dark. "I believe that's your car now." Not that either of them were willing to trust to mere belief when perfectly good code phrases were handy. Her escort satisfied, he opened the door for her himself.

Anna looked inside the car and froze. General Beckman sat there, waiting for her. "Get in, Agent Ling. We need to talk."

John Casey walked around the corner the next morning, pushing a TV monitor on a wheeled cart, and Carina sat up at the sight of him in his coveralls. "What's this?"

"Couldn't sleep. They're gonna try bringing Graboid back today, Doctor and her pet nerd were up all night in the lab. They're catching a few while Orion gives their changes the once-over."

"And where were you?"

"Not in the lab, that's for sure." He shuddered, not only at the memory of suddenly finding himself taking orders from the little guy but at how badly he'd botched the job. Give him a squad at his back and a clear field of fire any day. "I kept myself busy, though." He positioned the TV in front of her cell, plugged it in, and held up a DVD. "Made this for you."

"What is it?"

"Season finale for Downton Abbey."

"You're joking."

"Ya think? Watch it and find out." He inserted it into the built-in player and placed the remote on the floor by her door before stepping back to hit the door control.

By the time she stood up with the remote in her hand he was gone. She clicked the remote, and the TV lights came on. The screen only showed a few words, though, identifying the recording as one of Casey's after-action reports, with a date stamp. She didn't have time to interpret the date before the audio started.

"…could've gone better, but I have to say that that was a brilliant piece of improvisation by Agent Miller."

"You say that almost as if you mean it, Colonel." Beckman's voice.

"I do mean it, and I'm not ashamed to say it. She saved the mission and myself. I'm only sorry I didn't say that to Agent Miller directly, as Agent Shaw did. Knowing him, I don't think he would have said anything either if it hadn't been for Agent Bartowski. She rightly pointed out that I would have said as much to Chuck, and I couldn't in honor refuse to do so to Agent Miller."

"Sarah was quite right–"

The audio stopped and the words disappeared, replaced by a still of General Beckman's face in mid-word. New text appeared, again specifying the event, date, and time, without any other hints. Carina paused the disk. She knew the when and where of the last recording now. Shaw had said something nice, after the bar fight. Casey had agreed with him, in a back-handed, 'grunt, grunt, sneer, sneer' John Casey sort of way, and Sarah…Sarah had a phone call, the first word out of her mouth was 'Hannah', and she'd slammed the van door in her friend's face in disgust.

She felt that same disgust now, but not for Sarah.

She unpaused the recording, and General Beckman started to speak. "Where is Agent Miller? Her report of last night's action hasn't yet crossed my desk."

Sarah spoke up from her inset, looking unhappy. "None of us knows, she just walked away and left the clean-up to us. But I'm sure she'll be here, General."

Beckman looked something other than unhappy. "Your loyalty does you credit, Agent Carmichael, but 'just walking away' is not acceptable behavior for an agent on scene."

No, it isn't, and Carina knew it.

"I've known her for years, General, her best and perhaps her only friend, and last night the role she was playing required her to almost kill me."

Nothing 'almost' about it. Carina remembered the rage that consumed her that night, but it meant nothing to her now.

Beckman nodded. "That can't have been easy, even for as loose a cannon as Agent Miller is known to be."

"She's not that loose, General." Thank you, Sarah. "Something happened to her last night, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it, if I may."

"You may, Sarah. Her work yesterday was exceptional and has earned the benefit of your doubts, as well as my own. The Intersect Project has tolerated some pretty loose cannons already, it can tolerate another, but try to tighten her as much as you are able. You seem to be good at that."

"I will, General."

"Good. Moving on–"

Another inset window opened. "Agent Miller reporting."

Just in the nick of time.

"Good morning, Agent Miller," said the General. "Agent Carmichael and I were just discussing your absence. I trust you are fully recovered from the events of last night. I understand they were more than a little stressful."

"Last night was hard on me, I will admit, but we each have our own ways of relieving a little stress, and I found the cure for what ailed me."

The playback stopped, but not her memory of the rest of that awful meeting, when she'd accused Sarah of not having her back. She'd almost assaulted a fellow agent, and she did abandon her, but all Sarah wanted was to understand…

Chuck's face appeared on the screen, and she realized that she'd forgotten to stop the playback. He looked a little spacey, his face slack, as he spoke to a man sitting with his back to this camera. "I was juggling grenades."

The man sounded like he was talking to a child. "Yes you were. How many grenades, Chuck?"

Chuck sounded drugged, or hypnotized. "Six. That way the others had their hands free. But the ceiling was too low, I couldn't take any more."

"Did you drop the grenades, Chuck?"

Now Chuck's face twitched, emotion leaking through. "Casey was hurt, I…threw them away to help him. He knocked the last one out of my hand."

"They went off, didn't they?"

His face was calm again. "Yes…"

"Do you remember what happened after they went off?"

"No."

"We need to know what happened after they went off, Chuck. Do you want to help us?" The man made a gesture to someone off-screen.

"Chuck, we need to know, Carina's in danger." Sarah's voice.

Chuck's face came alive, distressed."I have to help Carina."

"Yes, please, Chuck." Sarah sounded frantic. When was this? She skipped back to the beginning, noted the time. Where had she been? She couldn't remember, though, and skipped back to where she'd been.

"What do I do?" He sounded so desperate, so willing.

"You listen to my voice, Chuck," said the man, waving again, probably to Sarah. "Listen to me as I count backwards. I'll start at fifteen, you remember fifteen, you were there. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Eight. You are there, Chuck, you are there on level eight, you are in that stairwell, Chuck. What happened, Chuck?"

Sarah yelled from off-screen. "Now, Chuck!"

Chuck slumped in his chair, his head hitting the table.

The man looked at Sarah, and reached out a hand to touch Chuck. As he touched two fingers to Chuck's neck, Chuck's head came up, his expression firm and cold. He pushed against the table, knocking the man away. Chuck leaped over the table in a handspring and came down on top of the man's chair, pinning him against the floor with his own pen pointed at his eye. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dr. Dreyfus," said the doctor as calmly as he could. "Who are you?"

"Charles," said Sarah, and Chuck's head turned . "Charles Carmichael, we meet at last. It's your plan Carina's following, isn't it?"

Wait a minute. What—? Carina reversed back to the point where Sarah said "Now!" and watched the scene through again. She reversed again, and watched Chuck's face as his head came up. That was the face of the man she'd spoken to in the vault, but it wasn't Chuck.

"—isn't it?"

He knelt there, unmoving.

"Isn't it?" yelled Sarah.

Carina smiled at the tone. Don't piss that woman off, Chuck, Charles, whoever you are!

Charles nodded once, slowly. "I'm sorry, Sarah." He slumped once again.

Sarah came into view and pulled her husband over to lie on the floor as Dreyfus retrieved his pen and stood up. "What was that?" he asked.

Sarah pulled out her phone. "Keep the pen, doctor. You're going to need it. Ellie…?"

The playback skipped itself, a different scene from the same night. Sarah and General Beckman shared a screen.

"But Charles Carmichael doesn't exist," said Beckman.

"He does now, General."

Good God. She hit rewind, listened to that part again.

" And Carina's out there, following a plan than no one knows about but her and a figment of Chuck's imagination."

Beckman looked…flummoxed. "Colonel Casey, your thoughts?"

"'Mad Dog' may be madder than we thought, but as far as Carina's concerned, this changes nothing. She's out there with dangerous intel, and we need to bring her in before they do. The treason issue is secondary, and I'm inclined to agree with Agent Bartowski that it's a ruse. Let Ellie worry about how many Intersects are bunking together."

"But General, if we issue a BOLO all that will do is convince her that she's been abandoned by us."

Carina rested her head against the glass, shutting her eyes. It had convinced her. She should have known Sarah would never do that.

"She's expecting some kind of contact signal from Chuck–"

"And she won't be getting one any time soon. I'm sorry, Sarah, but Colonel Casey's right, we have to worry about the effects here, not the cause. You'll have to kiss and make up later."

The disk was blank after that. She went back to the beginning.

No time like the present.

She hit play.