A/N Some very silly and very serious stuff ahead. The amazing thing is that sometimes it's the same stuff. Coming up with all the different ways that Sarah and Casey between them could spoof the system so as to give C&S the maximum time to get to Vegas and get married was a nice challenge. I wish my ability to describe certain things was better. I really didn't know how to describe the way Chuck says, "It frightens me that you know this." Chuck would get a more breathy, higher-pitched ton e to his voice when he was talking through his fear.

When Chuck got into the Intersect Room at the end of season 2, somehow he'd managed to lose the wrist computer his father gave him. There was no good explanation for that except that the producers (and the people they had to answer to) wanted to limit his choices, I think. If he'd had access to his father's wisdom and experience, I think canon would have gone very differently (along the lines of this story, I like to think). Which is why he had to be denied access. Or possibly they simply forgot.

Carina shook her head, amazed. "Chuck, what were you thinking?"

He opened his eyes, utterly serene. "What do you mean?"

"Your wife, the woman you married, is in bed with you."

"Yes, thank God." The shape that was Sarah moved under the blankets.

Carina watched the hands. "I just gave her her two knives back."

"I know. A daring and gutsy move, I might add."

"Not as gutsy as talking about your marriage that way when she's lying next to you with two knives in her hands." She took a bite of his sandwich.

Chuck smiled at her. "The only thing more wonderful than my marriage is the woman I married," he said, "And I've devoted my life to making sure she knows that every day. And she does." Suddenly Chuck looked concerned. "At least, I think she does." He looked down. "Do you know that?"

A feminine giggle, a deep breath, and a soft 'mm-hmm' drifted up from somewhere down by his chest.

He stroked her back. "My woman of action. Not so big on the words." Chuck looked back up at Carina again. "But she'll be the first to admit that the circumstances surrounding our union were…less than ideal."

Sarah started to laugh.

"You see?"

Carina saw. "She did say something way back when about you stupidly doing the right thing."

Chuck said nothing, his eyes glazing over, and she wondered what he was looking at. No, she knew what he was looking at, and wondered what it was. Sarah raised her head again in his silence and stillness, a look of concern on her face.

His grip on her shoulder tightened, and he looked down at her. "I don't know if it was stupid or right. But it was my thing, my choice, one of the few that I've ever had in my life, and I wasn't about to waste it."

"You were free," said Sarah. "You were safe…"

He raised a hand to stroke her cheek. "Like I could ever be free or safe when you were neither. You had to help Bryce, and I had to help you."

"Now that I can believe," said Carina. "No way even you would help the man who stole your two best girls, three times over."

"Bryce did none of the things we thought he did," said Sarah to both of them but still looking at him. "We spoke to Orion when you were gone."

"The two of them were in it together, huh?" Chuck's face hardened. "I had fewer choices than I thought."

She moved in for the kiss. "You made the right one when it counted."

"With what alternative?" asked Carina. "Oh that's right, all of you dead. Some choice."

Sarah gave Carina a dirty look. "I think he's a hero. Only the skills saved us and he didn't know about them when he did it. What he did know–"

"Was that Beckman would have him locked down the second she heard about it, if he lived. Same old same old. I'm surprised you didn't just run."

Run. Run away, taking her brother with her, leaving her alone. Ellie looked at Beckman. "Would she have?"

"That sort of thing takes planning," said the General. "Sarah would have known this. She wouldn't have run now, but she might have tried later. I'm glad it never came to that."

Sarah said nothing, her eyes moving, her gaze sweeping the room, and Chuck knew. Actions, not words. "The thought occurred to us, in a moment of traitorous, disloyal panic," he said. "But fortunately we had an alternative, and wiser heads prevailed. Orion gave me his wrist computer before we left. He has a lot of experience staying out of the CIA's hands. We sought out his wise and sage counsel."

"Which was?"

"Run," said Sarah.

Carina huffed out a laugh. "That's helpful."

"To Las Vegas and get married."

"And Casey let you?"

"We didn't tell him, of course," said Chuck. "That would have been a terrible dilemma to put him in, after all he'd done for us. He told Sarah to take me off grid, just in case, since he had to stay and deal with the Ring agents we'd just captured. By the time he'd gotten them carted off, the site secured, the official reports written, a late night snack–"

"He likes pancakes," put in Sarah, as a bit of corroborative detail, "But there aren't that many late-night pancake places in Burbank."

"–his teeth brushed–"

"Because you know that syrup is terrible for the teeth if you leave it on too long."

"–and his weapons cleaned and properly racked, well, by then it was just early enough in DC that he could think about maybe catching the General in her office. He knew that for a CF of this magnitude she would want a face-to-face report. I don't think he had to wait more than half an hour to make that call."

"Colonel Casey always did his duty," said Beckman. "Although he could be more…creative in the way he went about it than I might sometimes have wished."

"Was this one of those times?"

"Not at all. He was just positioning himself so that I could make the landslide fall on him if I needed it to. He was always so worried about whether Sarah was compromised that he never looked into his own mirror until they forced him to."

"So basically you're saying Casey ratted you out, the bastard," said Carina, smiling.

"Come on, Carina, it was his duty," said Chuck, smiling back.

"All right, I'll forgive him," said Carina magnanimously, "But just this once and only because you say so. So how'd you get to Nevada before your first check-in? That's got to be some pretty fast driving, even for you."

Chuck looked at Sarah. "Um–"

Sarah looked at Chuck. "Well–"

Ellie moved her hand.

"Doctor Woodcombe, , if you touch that dial I swear I will have you drafted, just so I can court-martial you. I've been wondering about this for months. Stand down!"

The bright red Porsche screamed through the desert night. Actually, it wasn't the car screaming so much as the passenger.

"Sarah! Are we on the ground yet?"

She laughed, so, so happy. Speed, love, and unity of purpose. She'd never felt so complete in her life. "We never left it, silly."

"It sure felt that way." He opened his eyes, not that it made a bit of difference.

"At these speeds a worm cast feels like lift off."

"It frightens me that you know this."

He looked green to her. "This isn't my first trip to Vegas, Chuck."

"Which explains how you know how to get there with the lights off?"

"No, that's what the night vision goggles are for, so I can see, but no one sees us. The road retains the heat more than the sand, may as well be noon."

Chuck only knew where she was by her voice, not even the instrument lights were on. "To you."

"Would you rather it was you? We've only got the one pair."

"No! No, that's fine. You know what they say, what I don't know can kill me, but at least I won't see it coming."

"Who says that, Chuck?"

"I don't know, I saw it on a tombstone, so 'said' might be stretching a point…"

"Uh-oh."

"Sarah, these are not the kind of circumstances where a driver is allowed to say 'uh-oh'!"

Something lit up behind them.

"Uh-oh." He was the passenger, so he was allowed to say it.

"Chuck?"

"Yeah?"

She handed him her gun. "How good a shot are you?"

Carina sank into a chair without noticing. "You had to shoot someone?"

"Something. It was a police car of some kind, I think. Lots of flashy lights, and a searchlight that really made it hard for Sarah to see, and since we were going so fast that really wasn't a good thing."

"He was trying to get my plates, since I had those lights off too," added Sarah. "Once Chuck shot out his searchlight-with one shot, I might add," she said proudly, "I was able to outrun him easily."

Chuck smiled. "Well, not easily. This guy was pretty determined. I think shooting out his searchlight made him mad."

Carina wasn't impressed. "Marksmanship like that, under those conditions, should have made him scared, the dumbass."

"Aha! Here it is!"

Ellie looked up, saw the General watching another screen. "What's that, General?"

"We got an RFA that night, a request for assistance pursuing a vehicle close to state lines at high speed. It mentioned shots fired."

"What happened?"

Beckman smirked. "As the nearest Federal substation, the call was routed through Castle. Colonel Casey handled it, not as politely as Agent Miller just did."

"He killed it?"

"Of course not, Doctor. As a Federal Agent it's his duty to render assistance to state authorities upon request. Naturally he forwarded this on to the Nevada station. Eventually."

"Eventually?"

"Yes, it seems there was a…communications issue of some kind. By the time he resolved it and passed on the request, the Nevada substation determined that no meaningful action could be taken and took none."

"What was the issue?"

"It's not in the Nevada report. I'll have to check Casey's report. Probably it's buried in, I mean, located in some footnote or other."

"You haven't answered my question."

"Which question?"

"Your first check-in? You should have called in an hour, but unless you were doing two-fifty on winding mountain roads in the dark with the lights off–"

"The Terminator did it."

Carina held a hand to her ear. "Hello, is Chuck there? This is real life calling," she said.

Sarah fixed her with a look. As his wife, making fun of Chuck's nerdiness was her job. "I told you it was a tiny border town."

"You also told me you'd never get married, so you'll pardon my lack of faith."

Sarah slammed her head down on her husband's chest, knocking the wind out of him. "Fine."

The 'Welcome to Nevada, the Silver State' sign was long since lost in the darkness behind them.

"I can't believe we made it," said Chuck.

"We haven't yet," said Sarah. "We only made it to Nevada, but unless we get married before they catch up to us we may as well have stayed in Burbank."

Chuck heard the change in the sound of the car's engine. "So what are you slowing down for? Let's not let them catch up to us!"

She sighed. "I have to stop for gas sometime, Chuck. And I have to check in with Casey, get a sit-rep. If he gives us the all-clear, we have to turn around."

"So we could still lose?"

"It was always a long shot. They only have to give out licenses from 8 AM to midnight, so unless we happen to meet both the county clerk and a wedding officiant at that gas station up there we still have a way to go."

"Can I see your phone?"

"No, you can't throw it out the window."

"Why must you be so good, honest, and honorable, always doing the right thing?"

She lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. "I think we both know the answer to that." The car slid into place next to the pumps. "Here's your hat. Keep your face hidden while you fill up. I'll hit the bathrooms and (sigh) call Casey."

"Feel free to drop it in." She didn't dignify his wit with a response, so he did his part in feeding the machine.

In no time at all she was walking back to the car, smiling. "Chuck, I have terrible news."

Hope bloomed. "You…suddenly discovered you have epilepsy, and you dropped your phone in the outhouse during a seizure."

"Um…no."

Hope withered. "Then I give up."

"I have the wrong phone." She held up the device in her hand, with an American flag and a picture of Reagan on the screen.

The image froze his brain. "You what?"

"I have the wrong phone. In all the confusion dealing with those Ring Agents and getting our gear, I ended up with Casey's phone, and he probably has mine."

"What's so terrible about that? Just check in with Casey's phone."

"I can't do that, Chuck. If I use his phone, it'll look like he called me, which is a violation of protocol. The only thing we can do is wait until he realizes he's got my phone, and initiates the call himself, pretending to be me."

Catch-22. "That could be a while," said Chuck thoughtfully. "Casey's awfully honest, and not very clever about such things. Duplicity just isn't in his nature."

"That's so true." She sighed. "Well, nothing to do except keep moving forward."

"If we must." Suddenly Chuck smiled. "Can I drive?"

"No," she said firmly. "But I'll let you upgrade the playlist on this phone if you like."

He took it from her hand. "Deal." He got back into the car much faster than he'd gotten out of it.

The red Porsche screamed through the Nevada night, this time with joy.