He still hated Bryce. Even after finding out this best friend tainted his college reputation to keep him out of a life he didn't have the heart for, he still hated him. Chuck didn't understand why Bryce couldn't have found a way to tell him what was going on.
The video that was found in the Stanford Library answered quite a few questions, but more took their place.
It was a confusing time for Chuck. He wanted more in a relationship with Sarah than the CIA or NSA were ever going to allow. He knew the twins wouldn't mind. They liked Sarah.
He had to find some semblance of happiness for himself, though. Chuck thought he could handle his own hopes and wishes being crushed at every turn with the Intersect in his life and agents watching and following his every move. But he couldn't let the same thing happen to his kids.
If he was under more surveillance than he now knew about, he wasn't going to look anything up online without receiving questions from Beckman, Graham, or his handlers. The possibility of them mirroring his desktops and cell phone was ever present. Anything he looked up had to be Ellie or Awesome's doing.
Finding a school where the twins would be safe from their own government was not going to be an easy task. He didn't like the idea of sending them away. He didn't know who else was aware of their being Intersects, besides himself, and now his handlers.
But that wasn't the only thing racing through his mind. It had been from the forefront due to events he had yet to tell his kids about. It was one of those events he couldn't figure out for himself, and if he couldn't tell himself the story without getting confused and raising his own hopes, how was he going to tell them.
It was a kiss. One that Sarah probably regretted as it could terminate her position with the operation. But he didn't. His only regret was asking if their relationship could be terminated so he could have a real relationship. No cover, no lies. Something that was exciting, but for the reasons he would have thought could make a relationship so before he entered the world of spies.
And due to the previous day's events, Lu, the woman he had been dating for at least a week ended things. At least his kids hadn't met her yet. That was the only bonus to that breakup.
The kiss. The kiss he shared with Sarah was the one that reignited his desire to be with her, and he really wanted to talk to her about it. But she wasn't answering her phone. And he didn't know she was on her way to collect him.
Bryce is alive. It played over in his head all the way from Buy More to the facility where they were holding a man who was supposed to be dead. He didn't believe Sarah until he saw his ex-roommate with his own eyes.
"Sarah, you told me Bryce was dead. I read his obituary. We went to his funeral. How is this possible?" Chuck asked, seeing things in this world that would only be seen in his video games or on TV.
"We don't know, Chuck. He won't talk to our people," Sarah answered.
"Not even you, Casey?"
"He hasn't seen either of us."
"Why?"
"Because he asked for you."
"We want to know what happened to him. We think he'll talk to you."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on a second. Well... You want me to go in there and ask him what exactly? Just so we're on the same page. "Hey, Bryce, why did you send me the intersect? Why did you choose my life to ruin?" How exactly do I start that conversation?"
"Just talk to him, okay? Be a friend, you're good at that."
"Remember, he's rogue CIA, trained assassin... So be careful. And don't mention the twintersects," Casey reminded him.
"Thanks," Chuck answered in both fear and sarcasm.
The door opened for him to enter Bryce's chamber. Bryce was restrained to a chair that had doubled as a bed earlier. His head was down.
"Who are you?" He asked Chuck. In his line of work the possibility of the agency attempting to fool him wasn't anything new and something he was trained to spot.
"Hey. Hey, Bryce, buddy. It's me... Chuck."
"I don't believe you. What did you do with the real Chuck?" He asked whoever was behind the glass.
This scared Chuck, so he asked to be let out, but no one responded. They weren't going to let him out under the assumption that he was safe.
"Fantastic… All right, well... Unless we're in the twilight zone right now, and there really is another Chuck and I'm his clone, the answer to your question is- yes, I am Chuck."
"Prove it." Bryce retorted before changing to Klingon, a language neither agency expected their employees to know.
Chuck didn't want to answer in Klingon. He felt embarrassed with Sarah watching., Eventually he caved.
"Your Klingon's a bit rusty, Chuck."
"Yeah, I've been kind of busy lately... Ever since I got your e-mail."
"You opened it, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Your computer?"
"Destroyed."
"So, you're the only one."
The only one? Of what? "I don 't get it, Bryce. Why'd you do it? Why'd you send me the intersect? Then, why did you destroy it? And last up: how the hell are you still alive?"
If Chuck thought he was tired of giving the 'it's complicated' speech, he was certainly tired of hearing it.
A cryptic they did was used in answer to his many questions. He wasn't willing to give a name or place just yet. Not until he got himself and Chuck out of what he assumed to be a rogue facility.
Chuck backed as far away as the elevator would let him. He leaned over with his hands on his knees. He had already told Bryce the Intersect was in his head and that he would have these flashes.
"Ohhhhh, I am so not telling my kids about this," Chuck blurted before he could stop himself. Casey was going to kill him for mentioning the mini intersects.
"You tell your seven-year-old kids about your Intersect missions?" Bryce found it odd that Chuck's handlers would be okay with that. But he didn't have time to make any comments. Now that he knew Chuck was safe with Sarah and Casey as his handlers, he was ready to leave without Chuck. "This is my stop," he said right before giving Chuck a drug. It was temporary, but they still had to let it go through his system.
Bryce hadn't given Chuck a full dose of the drug. It was just enough for him to get out of the elevator right as the door opened for Sarah and Casey to find the asset.
Sarah walked Chuck home from her car, letting him know the dose would be out of his system in a few hours.
"Thanks. I think I can handle it from here. So, are you and Casey gonna go after Bryce?"
"No. Bryce is probably halfway around the world by now. It's someone else's job to find him."
"Sarah, this is Bryce Larkin we're talking about here- your old flame, my old nemesis. A potential danger to the girls. We have to do something."
Chuck wanted to continue his conversation from before the Bryce bomb made its way back into his life. Sarah understood what he was asking, but she was playing dumb. She had to for the courtyard cameras Chuck clearly didn't know about.
"Ellie, could you watch the girls for me, tomorrow? I was gonna do it myself, but I have to go in for Black Friday training. Big Mike wants us working crowd control and I promised you I'd never leave them home alone again even for a minute."
Ellie was always trying to best herself. It wasn't going to be an easy task with two kids running through the house.
"It's not a problem, Chuck. If you weren't doing everything you could to support them, I might have said no."
Chuck couldn't express enough gratitude to Ellie. If only he could have told her why he couldn't hire a babysitter or let them go to a friend's house.
It was Thanksgiving Day. Chuck and Morgan had done their Black Friday training with Morgan as the trainer. Chuck had left early to make an emergency run for some things Ellie had either forgotten or went into panic mode because either the twins got into something, or she felt she messed up and started over.
Once everyone who had been invited was around the table, it was soon discovered that the sweet potato casserole didn't have the mini marshmallows Morgan liked. And Chuck volunteered to go and get them from his car.
Bryce surprised him in the courtyard, and he threw the bag of marshmallows off to the side as a result.
"Hello, Chuck."
"Sarah and Casey are right inside. One girlish scream from me, and they go into combat mode."
"This your place?"
"Ellie and I live here, yeah."
"You... live with your sister? What happened? Chuck, what happened to you? Guy who wanted to be the software billionaire- Bill Gates with style."
"You got me kicked out of Stanford, Bryce."
"Daddy?" they heard from the door. "Aunt Ellie wants to know what's taking so long." The voice belonged to Maya.
"Just had a hard time finding the marshmallows, May (My). I'll be there in a minute. Daddy needs some fresh air."
"Is that Maya?"
Bryce watched the interaction. He noticed the subtle closing of the eyes as Maya came into the courtyard against Chuck's wishes.
"Daddy? Didn't you go to his funeral?"
"Maya, go back inside. And don't tell anyone."
"More secrets?"
"Yes, more secrets. Now," Chuck found the marshmallows and placed the bag in her hand. "Go tell Aunt Ellie you need something for a headache."
Maya rolled her eyes after turning to face the door.
"Headache? Chuck, did you let her… let them…"
Chuck didn't answer. Bryce was going to figure it out eventually whether he told him or not.
"You let them watch the screen?!"
"They were asleep when I got you e-mail, Bryce. And how was I supposed to know it contained something they shouldn't have seen?"
Chuck had him there. With no communication from either party for five years, there weren't many inside references Bryce could have used to let him know this wasn't something for young eyes. And It's hard to say goodbye was almost as cryptic as they.
"I need to talk to Sarah. Can you bring her to me, without Casey?"
"Why would I help you?"
"Because of fulcrum. That guy in the elevator today, he works for them. And they want the intersect, Chuck. They want you… And if they find out about the twins, they'll want them, too."
Chuck waited until he had returned to his seat before mouthing Bryce Larkin is in my bedroom so that Casey and everyone else couldn't hear, but Sarah could read.
Devon was talking white water rapids with Casey and said he had given Chuck some brochures. He was about to go get them from Chuck's room when Kelley excitedly said she would go get them.
"No, no, no, no. No, I'll... I'll get 'em," Chuck said as he reached for Kelley's arm to stop her. "Please. You guys keep, you know, talking."
He turned Kelley around and nudged her toward the table. When he came back empty handed, he was down, relieved that Kelley hadn't seen what brought this bought of disappointment.
"I'm thankful that Bryce Larkin is dead and is not currently in my bedroom making out with my new girlfriend," Chuck hinted to Casey, who understood and excused himself from the table.
"Wow, buddy…" Morgan said after removing his hands from Kelley's ears. "That was, um, really... dark."
"And specific," Awesome said having done the same with Maya.
Sarah slipped her heals off, enabling her to slip silently into Casey's apartment. Chuck had stayed behind her.
Had Chuck not made a sound, Bryce never would have heard her. All three circled the room. Chuck still behind Sarah because she probably would have done something to him if he hadn't.
It wasn't until Bryce mentioned Operation Sandwall that the Intersect was able to prove his innocence. They believed him, though Casey, who wasn't present at the time, was in a shoot first, ask questions later mind set.
And that's exactly what he did. Chuck's reaction was to faint where he stood.
"Alright, you two," Ellie said to the twins after everyone had deserted the table for very odd reasons. "It's time for showers. You have food all over you."
In the hustle of the day, no one had thought to give the twins rain jackets or ponchos to eat in. Any other day, they wouldn't have been covered in food. But this always seemed to happen around the holidays.
The twins had gone to the front door to wave goodbye to Morgan and his girlfriend. A light from Casey's window caught their eyes. But they had just seen Casey in the courtyard. The glance he gave them said to stay inside.
Do you think he knows? Kelley asked with her eyes.
If he does, somebody else told him Maya reasoned.
They closed the door in response to Casey's glare. He only gave them such a look because they didn't move right away, and because Ellie was almost right behind them.
"Can we stay up until Daddy comes back?" Kelley asked.
Ellie was turning the water to a safe temperature for Kelley while Awesome and Maya picked out pajamas for the twins to wear.
"I didn't say bedtime, Kelley. I said shower time…" she stepped back, holding the door open just enough for her niece to feel the temperature.
"Is there a difference," Kelley inquired. The norm had been that the two happened in sequence. If they showered at night, they were on their way to bed. And it was night.
When Kelley was done, it was Maya's turn. They had quit showering together when they were five. Part of the reason for that was they were getting older and needed more space. However, the bigger reason for separate showers was they got distracted and played with whatever toys they managed to sneak in with them.
"Fulcrum thinks you're the Intersect," Chuck inferred from Bryce's story.
"They brought me back to take it out of me," Bryce confirmed.
He needed to be sure he was turning himself in to real agents, and not members of Fulcrum. Chuck offered to help since he thought every Fulcrum agent was in the Intersect. He also offered the Buy More. It was the most public place he could think of with all their Black Friday shoppers.
"And Chuck; they stay home," Bryce said. "It's the best way to protect them"
"You told him?" Casey seethed. Chuck's shirt was now in his fist.
"He didn't have to. Maya flashed when she came out to see what was taking so long," Bryce explained.
"Daddy, what's Fulcrum?" Maya asked.
Chuck hadn't said a word about the covert enemy agency in this bedtime story. He looked over at Kelley who had almost the same look on her face as Maya had, but hers suggested a flash was occurring.
"It's uh… It's the point on which a lever rests or is supported and on which it pivots," he replied with the dictionary definition.
"Uncle Bryce is an enemy agent," Kelley asked. Since she was the last one to flash on or even see Bryce and hear about his covert operation, she had yet to be told the opposite.
"No. Uncle Bryce is one of the good guys," Chuck answered.
"But you said he shot you," Kelley said.
"He did, but it was Bryce's idea for Daddy to wear a vest. He only asked out loud and in Klingon because he wasn't present when I put the vest on," Chuck replied. Between the two of them, he thought Maya would be the one to have a problem with Bryce since she met him. It was Kelley mistrust that caught him by surprise.
"Does Casey know about us?" Maya asked.
"They had their suspicions, kiddo. But neither of you spilled the beans. I'm afraid I was the one to let the cat out of the bag this time," Chuck confessed. They suspected it for a while. I confirmed it by accident a day before the Halloween party."
"Is that why we can't go to sleepovers anymore?" Kelley asked.
"Yeah, it is. But he's just following orders… anyway. It's time for you two to get in your own beds and under the blankets. This story took longer than I thought it would."
Maya leaped from Kelley's bed to her own. Chuck tucked one child in ending with a kiss on the forehead as he had every night since Jill granted him full custody. Then he went to Maya's side of the room and did the same with her.
They were sound asleep within seconds.
If they can handle the same flashes I have, and not have any nightmares, I can add more details to my stories he thought. They had no problem falling asleep after he told them about Bryce dying, coming back to life, getting shot again, and then Bryce shooting him.
He closed the door to shield their sleeping faces and ears from the hall light and chatter from the living room.
