You see me differently

Than I've ever seen myself

You hear me clearly

When I haven't spoken

I wake from a dream when I fall from the doubt

But you say I don't know what I'm talking about

This time that I keep myself from flying

Inside I'm dying

I hide from the light

But you see me beautiful

You see me beautiful

I roar like a lion

An unlovable sight

But you see me beautiful

You see me beautiful

You see the world differently

All the places that you call home

You hear the song clearly

Before it is written

And the morning's another day

Twisting, dodging the drops of rain

Now, I know what I want to be

It's what you already see

"See Me Beautiful"

Sister Hazel

May 22, 2036

Bishop, California

Sarah heard Stephen gulp as he stood slightly behind her. He had misunderstood, she thought suddenly. Instinctively, she raised her arm and stopped Stephen before he completed the lunge he was about to do. She heard the beginning of a word, just a consonant, before he stopped–both motion and speech, as he waited for clarification.

It was so subtle, Stephen must have missed it, but she knew. Chuck's last words weren't a plea…they were a dare. The other personality was speaking, she thought helplessly. Her husband was fighting, but it seemed he was losing. Chuck's eyes were closed, and when he opened them, the look on his face confirmed her suspicions.

She released his knees, sitting back on her haunches. The look in his eyes chilled her to the bone. She swallowed down her fear and told herself she had to do what she had stayed here for. It was all of their lives in the balance.

"You know who I am, don't you?" Sarah asked him, her voice thicker and heavier than her normal speaking voice.

"Sarah," he replied, without hesitation…but the inflection of her name was different than she was used to hearing it. His personality was being undermined, but the emerging one still loved her. She had to remember that. She knew it was important…it could prove to be the solution to getting the codes from him willingly.

She felt the fear surging in her veins, then struggled to calm herself again. The look on his face was familiar, and yet foreign at the same time. This wasn't her Chuck…it reminded her of the way Alexei Volkoff had looked at Chuck's mother, Mary, before the CIA had turned him back into Hartley Winterbottom. She didn't quite know what to do with that information, but she thought it was a good place to start.

"You know why I'm here, don't you?" she asked, fluffing out her voice, almost the way she had so long ago as she had been taught seduction by the CIA.

His eyes darted around, not quite focusing on her any longer. His gaze lingered on his son, but the recognition was gone. "It's not safe," Chuck said, vaguely concerned.

"It's not," Sarah admitted. "You were right about what you said. The CIA knows…the only way to stop you."

Sarah heard an exasperated sigh from her son, but she kept her hand in place, urging him to just let her do what she needed to.

"Then why are you still here?" Chuck growled.

"Because I love you," Sarah declared, tears shining in her eyes.

He growled again, wordlessly. She heard his teeth gnashing together. "You don't love…this…me. You love…who I used to be." He was shifting between anger and despair.

She pushed the fear down deeper, leaning towards him and staring into his eyes. Her head was full of new thoughts, a blazing epiphany that she needed to say out loud. She reached forward and placed her hand over his breastbone, in the center of his chest. "I love you. Who you are…in there. The same way you always loved me." He looked incredulous.

"This is still you," she added weepily. "It's like Laszlo. I know. The CIA ruined…so many things. But you would never hurt anyone. You've been fighting this for…such a long time. All alone, because no one knew. I know now. I'm here. You have to let me help you."

He growled again, squeezing his eyes closed. "You can't…you can't…" he murmured, almost to himself, but loud enough for them to hear.

She leaned even closer, placing her other hand on the side of his face. God, he felt so feverish, she thought helplessly. "Do you remember when you came to rescue Molly in London?" she asked, more loudly, over the sound of his incoherent mumbling. Sarah felt Stephen's hand on her shoulder. He knew what she was talking about, that mission when he was nine and he had, for a time, believed that Chuck was dead. "You killed one of Kovacs' men…to save me."

"You…thought I was…dead…too," he murmured in response. A memory, she thought hopefully.

"And I turned into a cold, vicious killing machine…before you found me there," Sarah admitted, her voice cracking as she knew her son could hear her. "I gave up…retreated into myself after that. I didn't believe I was the same woman that you loved."

Chuck opened his eyes again. It was surreal, she thought, as she seemed able to see both of them there, gazing at her. Cold regard and love…and remembrance, all at once.

Sarah felt Stephen's hand shaking on her shoulder; her words had affected him, filling in facts that he had never known when he was small. She had to keep going, no matter how awful. It seemed she had made some progress.

"You loved me no matter what. You always have. None of this matters to me. None of it. I love you," Sarah stressed. A single tear escaped from each of his eyes as he regarded her. "You have the power to fight this. You have the ability to control the Intersect. You always have. You need to reset it…and we can do the rest. Fight it, Chuck. Just a little bit longer," Sarah urged him.

"Listen to your father," Stephen suddenly said. Sarah looked at him quickly, then back at Chuck. "Your father's voice. Try to hear it. It's still there. It's just quiet."

Sarah was close enough to him to feel his breath on her face. She leaned all of her weight against him, closing her eyes, silently willing all of her strength to him. She felt his forehead against her shoulder, heavy, like he had lost consciousness.

She called his name…but he never heard her.

Interlude

Peace.

It surrounded him, filled him, lifted him up. He could breathe deeply, savoring how each lungful of air puffed out his chest, then relaxed again. His skin was cool, no longer feverish. He could think without a painful headache.

He was in a dark room, and before him was a singular cone of light. It was as if he was on a stage, watching a play. The scene inside the light was fuzzy, spotty like an impressionist painting. He focused harder, and saw…that it was him. He was sitting up in a seat, his wrists tied to the arms of the chair. Sarah was kneeling in front of him, holding him, with his head bowed forward onto her shoulder.

The peace inside him shattered. Was he dead?

No, he told himself sharply. This was familiar. He had experienced this before. A long, long time ago…but he could still remember.

Dad? Chuck called out into the blackness, sensing someone else here in the darkness with him.

"I'm here, Son," a disembodied voice spoke to him.

Chuck strained, struggled. He felt the ground shifting beneath him, like he was living through an earthquake. He fell down onto his knees, surprised at the pain that shot through his entire leg. Then a hand was on his elbow, pulling him upward. He was eye to eye with his father, Stephen J. Bartowski.

Stephen looked as he had the last time Chuck had seen him, almost 26 years in the past. His father had frozen in time, in death, but Chuck had not. We're the same age, Chuck thought. Bizarre…Chuck had so much more gray hair than his father ever had.

"Wisdom, Son," Stephen said, smiling crookedly. "You earned that. I never really did."

Shaking himself out of his stunned reverie, Chuck asked, "Dad, why am I here like this again? What's going on?" Chuck clearly remembered the last time he had been here, like this, he had been in a coma and close to death from a serious gunshot wound.

"It's not like that," Stephen answered, like he had read Chuck's mind. "But you are fighting for your life, Charles. Don't doubt that for a moment."

Stephen turned, held out his arm, gesturing the scene before them. Chuck followed his father's hand with his eyes. His head was filled with the sound of Sarah, crying, so loud he couldn't hear anything else, not even his own breathing.

"She doesn't want to lose you, Charles," Stephen told him, his voice trembling with emotion. "She would rather die with you here…then live a day without you."

"This is my fault," Chuck whispered, feeling his own eyes start to sting.

"No, Son, it's actually mine," Stephen said regretfully. "I didn't mean for this to happen to you. But I caused this."

"Dad, you didn't know this could happen. You designed the program when I was a small child," Chuck told him.

"Using your brain as the template. I just never had enough foresight to realize because you were so…special…that your life would end up being what it was. I never doubted you, Son. I was just a little short-sighted…and a lot arrogant," he scoffed bitterly.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Chuck asked helplessly.

"They need the code to stop the nuclear countdown. You know what it is," Stephen told him.

Chuck closed his eyes and the numerical sequence blazed across his mind. He could see them, but he couldn't say them out loud. He couldn't get his mouth to form the words, the numbers. They continued to flash behind his eyes, over and over.

"Dad!" Chuck shrieked. "I can't…"

"Charles," Stephen said sharply, grabbing Chuck by his shoulders. "You need to wake up. You can't say them…but you know them. You can access the computer."

"I can't wake up!" Chuck shouted in despair.

"Listen!" Stephen implored him. It was like the sound of a hurricane wind rushing at gale-force. Sarah…pleading with him to wake up.

"Dad…" Chuck called out, even as he used all his strength to focus on Sarah's voice.

"Follow her voice," Stephen counseled, his physical representation fading, but his voice still loud and clear. "Your son became who he was meant to be. You let him do that…and he can fix everything else. Have the faith in him that he has in you."

The cone of light winked out…and everything faded to gray.

May 22, 2036

Bishop, California

Stephen was overly focused on his mother's voice, near hysterical, pleading with him to get out while there was still time. She had Chuck in her arms, a fierce grip that Stephen couldn't budge.

Chuck's head lolled away from her neck, as she felt a cool breeze against her skin, sweaty from flush contact with Chuck's feverish head. "Sarah…" he whispered, so weakly Sarah thought she might have imagined it.

She whipped her head back, seeing his eyes open, fixed on her. "Chuck!" she gushed in relief.

"Untie…I have…to…hurry," he forced out, his voice still hushed and almost failing.

Stephen leaned forward, pulling a knife from his boot and handing it to his mother. At the same time, he asked, "Dad? Are you…"

"For now," he gasped. "I don't know…for how…long." Sarah had already cut him free.

He stood, wobbly on his feet. He staggered backward to the computer. He closed his eyes, the same numerical sequence from his dream blazing in fiery effigies against the back of his eyelids. He let his hands do the work, disengaging his brain from any task other than remembering the sequence.

While Chuck worked, Stephen pulled his mother from her knees to her feet and held her by her arms to steady her. He was wary, but his mother trusted Chuck to do what he was doing. That was enough for him. Stephen watched the complex algorithm, amazed that his father could remember something that long, never mind while he was having memory issues in the first place.

Suddenly, the timer on the screen went dark. The satellite image of the missile silo in Montana blinked and then reverted to inactive status. A cascade of numbers flashed…and then everything went dark.

Sarah broke free of her son's grip and lunged forward as Chuck sagged. She grabbed him around the waist from behind, adding the secondary strength he needed to stand as he clung to the edge of the computer. Stephen rushed to assist. He pulled the chair from behind him and pushed it up against Chuck. Sarah lowered him into the chair.

Stephen called Bentley and told her to stand down the air strike. Then he called Casey and told him it was time to put phase two of the plan into action. His aunt and his future father-in-law knew what to do…and he was the key. He couldn't wait to end this once and for all.

XXX

"They did it," Casey told Ellie as he clicked off his phone.

"Oh, thank god," Ellie gushed, touching Jacques on the shoulder.

They were all in the van, crowded in the back with all of the equipment. The van was parked at the end of the gravel road, the safest place Casey could move them, as a safeguard against a surgical air strike like Bentley had proposed.

"Did he say what happened?" Cozette asked as she sat behind the monitor for the main computer console.

"Stephen wasn't sure. Chuck had enough control, eventually, to undue the encryption and relinquish control of the silo. Stephen said he told Chuck to try and access his father's program," Casey explained.

"Stephen thought the only thing that kept his father functioning all this time with that program there was that engram," Cozette said softly. She turned to look at Ellie specifically. "Your plan…you are basically using Stephen's brain scan to make another engram like that. Right?" she asked, knowing it had been explained but wanting for clarification.

"Yes, only Chuck won't be able to interact with it the way he could with my father's engram. The program isn't that sophisticated," Ellie explained.

"It will overwrite the primer," Jacques told her. "That was the plan."

"How dangerous is this, exactly?" Cozette asked her father.

"It's the only way to stop Chuck's brain from completely deteriorating," Ellie said, leaning over Cozette's shoulder.

Cozette appreciated that argument, understanding that the risks of the procedure were worth it, considering the alternative was unacceptable. But she was worrying about Stephen. She was sure it wasn't an oversight, rather a knowledge of the fact that it didn't really matter how dangerous it was to Stephen–it was the only way, so there was no argument. Cozette just wanted all the facts, so she wasn't going into it blind.

"What about Stephen?" she asked. "What are the risks to him?"

Ellie and Jacques exchanged worried glances. Jacques was the one who spoke first. "There is a small chance, very small, that the primer can migrate."

"Migrate?" she asked sharply. "What does that mean? How is that even possible?"

Ellie finished. "For it to work the way we designed it, Stephen and Chuck have to be attached. It's more than just a simple upload. We don't have the capability to store it anywhere. It has to go straight from Stephen to Chuck. One shot is all we have. While they are linked, Stephen's brain could theoretically absorb the primer, the same way Chuck did."

It sounded horrendously bad, Cozette thought. This was the only way? She knew they were running out of time. Chuck had only just been able to fight long enough to disarm the nuclear weapon launch. From what Casey had said, he was out of fighting strength.

"Is there any kind of plan? Any way to keep it from happening?" she asked.

Ellie sighed. She looked nervous, but she gave Cozette a small smile anyway. "He's the Ultimate Intersect. He has been since the day he was born. Every computer program ever written for the Intersect in 60 years…combined…pales in comparison to what Stephen's brain is capable of."

"But it's never been tested, not like this!" Cozette insisted.

"Maybe not," Ellie countered. "But I've been studying my nephew since he was nine years old…once we knew what his brain was actually doing. To Stephen, the Intersect functions like any other part of his brain, almost without his conscious thought. I know, even if something like that does happen, Stephen is stronger than that. Stronger than anything."

Cozette was still worried, but Stephen's aunt's words were comforting. Hearing her talk about what Cozette had known inside her heart all along since she was a small child.

Stephen was all of that and more. Moreover, he was hers.

And she didn't want to lose him.