A/N: First half of the Pilot. This took a bit longer than anticipated, partially because of the holiday, but also because we lost power and also the website I use for Chuck transcript dialogue for some reason only had the Pilot in French. I needed to wait until I could literally rewatch and write down the dialogue, which is in part included here. There is nothing new here, only canon, with my interpretation of Sarah's thoughts interjected. That being said, here goes.

I left Graham's office and went straight to the airport. I didn't even change my clothes. I thought about it, but realized my jeans and leather jacket, plus my high-heeled boots, were perfect. My generic plan was to use my appearance, so my wardrobe choice was appropriate. Based on his file, Chuck seemed stereotypically primed for that type of interaction. I also knew from his file that he was tall. I wasn't ridiculously tall myself, but taller than average for a woman. Nothing was worse than trying to prop up a man's ego while dwarfing him as you stood next to him. It's stupid and it doesn't matter in the slightest—at least not when feelings are real. I wasn't thinking about real feelings, so at least then, I was glad for his height and being able to mix it with my heels.

I don't think Bryce's death hit me full force until I was back in the air. My flight was to Bob Hope Airport, not LAX, but I had literally just left California, and now I was headed back, to work an hour's drive from my mother and Molly. The loss of that relationship, just barely resurrected and then forfeited almost in the same breath, left me raw. Finally letting it hit me, that Bryce was actually dead, poured a cup of salt on the raw edges of me.

I was hurt and angry…at him but also at myself. How had I not seen that? How had he been able to so easily disrupt my ability to read people? No one in my life had ever been able to do to me what he'd done...blindside me the way he had. Even my father, for all his faults and failures, had never shocked me like that, even at his worst.

I wanted answers. I wanted to know why. Who was he working for? And for how long? Was it all a lie, everything he said? Everything he did? I thought I had pegged him correctly, that rich kid with a chip on his shoulder and dreams of heroism. That part of him had seemed real. What had been the tipping point? What had made him choose a nefarious purpose, after he had already seemingly sacrificed a normal life for something greater?

My mind pulled me back to that night in the hotel in Lisbon. He had come looking for me…and he'd found me literally in pieces, scattered about on the floor. I tried to banish the other memories…how he had touched me and kissed me afterwards, the intensity of that sex. I knew I wasn't wrong or misguided, not about that interaction, anyway. I told myself that was real. I at least would have known if he had faked it. In fact, I recalled that I had sensed the change in him, and it hadn't been that long removed from the current moment. For whatever unknown reason, he had turned recently.

It was so little consolation, but I clung to it. It was all I had left of the only thing that had helped me keep my head above water in the sea of loneliness in which I was slowly drowning.

Other memories followed. I did care for him. The jarring thought that I would never see his smile or hear him laugh again assailed my composure…but I was out of tears. I had cried them all on my way across the country just a day ago. However much I felt gutted by that, he had chosen to do what he did. He had chosen to leave me alone, just as he'd found me in Lisbon…with the same broken pieces scattered around…just in a different pattern, perhaps with a few more pieces this time.

I thought about my mission. It had been such a long time since I had done a mission by myself. I wasn't nervous, but my tension was high. I knew what I needed to do. I was worried at least a little bit at what I would find, what information I may learn haphazardly from my mark about Bryce and things I just didn't know. I couldn't let anything I learn shock me, or throw off my equilibrium. I told myself that, over and over.

My equilibrium was permanently put off kilter regardless of that internal pep talk. Not because of anything I learned or anything my spy skills told me. It was just Chuck, plain and simple.

The plane landed and I rented a car, the same make and model I had used to drive Molly to Riverside. Then, it had just been a natural progression of thought. I had been driving an expensive sports car all the time we were stationed in Mexico, so I perpetuated the choice. It wasn't the exact same car I had previously rented, but the interior was almost indistinguishable from my previous rental. I even once glanced in the rear view mirror, expecting to see the car seat. It made those raw parts of me burn, like alcohol poured on an open wound.

I had the location from the file memorized. Nine thousand Burbank boulevard. It was a shopping plaza where Buy More was located. My mark worked the full-time day shift because he was the supervisor. Nine to five thirty. My GPS had my arrival time at 10:30 am local time. I pulled into the plaza and parked.

I called my field contact, someone assigned to me, since I was working on American soil. The CIA generally has no jurisdiction in the U.S., but there were ways Graham got around that. Just one of those was having a field contact who was FBI. It helped to smooth over blips in the chain of command, who reported to whom, things of that nature.

"Walker, secure," I said into the phone.

"Field Ops, secure," he answered, not telling me his name on purpose. "It shouldn't be hard to make the connection. He's a textbook malcontent."

"Copy," I replied firmly, feeling my gut reel at his words. He was that…on paper. He was something else, too. I just didn't know what. Yet. I didn't like that quality of uncertainty.

The phone was still on, but I opened the back and jimmied the screw that held the battery in place. I needed the phone to work…but I needed to be able to break it relatively quickly. I closed the phone and got out of the car.

I walked through the glass sliding door. It was surprisingly busy for a weekday morning, but as I scanned the store I saw the Nerd Herd desk clearly. Field Ops spoke again, "I'm sending you his photo now."

Standard procedure, but not necessary. I pulled the phone down to check, but I already knew his face. I couldn't unremember his face. It was absolutely unnerving.

It was the photo from the file, which was his badge photo for his job. He looked younger than he was now. He had been working here since being expelled over four years ago, so it made sense. "Piece of cake," I said to myself out loud.

I have never been more wrong.

I slipped my finger inside the battery compartment and jiggled the screw until I saw the light on the phone wink out. The path in front of me cleared and I had a perfect view of the desk. Chuck was there, in a white, short-sleeved button down shirt and a steel gray tie. He had the phone receiver cradled on his shoulder, pressed against his ear, flipping through a manilla file folder. He hadn't seen me use my phone. The broken phone ruse was still a go.

Chuck's best friend, Morgan Grimes, a co-worker, was standing at the desk chatting with Chuck as I approached. Morgan saw me first. Apparently he thought I resembled Kim Basinger from her role in Batman (although I didn't learn those specifics until years later.) Chuck started singing the Prince song from the movie in a silly, high-pitched voice. He stopped when he saw me.

Actually, he stopped singing, then dropped the phone and the file. He reacted to my appearance just the way I thought he would, at least at first. I leaned forward like I always did…but something extraordinary happened. He never let his eyes drift downward. He was nervous, even flummoxed, but not rude. A gentleman. Those words, in my grandmother's voice, from a random conversation about all the things that my father was not.

Chuck was quick to tell me it was a Batman reference. I teased him. I should have realized at that point, I was already a goner. You see, if I was trying to insinuate myself into his life…get him to tell me things…making him feel self-conscious was not the way to do it. I should have been more charming, more flirty, maybe even ditzy, like Amy. I couldn't think clearly, which was part of the problem. That overall muddled sense was making me behave…like me, not necessarily like Agent Walker. The fact that I was unsure who I actually was didn't help.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," I said, smiling and flirting mildly.

"No. Not at all," he said quickly. Stammering a bit, he explained, "That's…it's from Batman."

"'Cause that makes it better," I retorted. He laughed, forced and nervous, maybe with a little embarrassment.

"Hi. I'm Morgan," Morgan said to me, beaming from ear to ear. "This is, uh, this is Chuck," he offered, like he was giving his friend a verbal pat on the head.

"Wow, I didn't think people still named their kids Chuck, or Morgan, for that matter," I teased, wondering why those words were my reply. He fiddled with his tie, smoothing it out, then shuffled his hands, like he didn't know what to do with them. I watched those actions out of the corner of my eye as I looked at Morgan. He was definitely the more outgoing of the two.

"My parents are sadists…and carnival freaks found him in a dumpster," Chuck was quick to reply, a gentle smirk on his face. He was getting back at his friend, I thought, while he was chatting with me.

"But they raised me as one of their own," Morgan replied, a flatness in his voice that told me he was less than amused at Chuck's ribbing.

"How can I help…you?" he asked, reaching out his hand as he gestured to me. I was trying to focus, but I have to admit even here, a minute after I first met him, he was distracting me. Like I had said, the picture on his badge was old. His curls were longer and more unkempt, curling in crazy directions. His eyes had looked brown in the photo I'd seen, but standing as close to him as I was, I could see they were actually hazel. The kind of hazel that is mostly brown, just flecked with streaks of dusty green. His eyes never wandered from my face so I got a very good look, even as I continued to flirt with him.

My past experiences were creating a bias in my head as I realized I had been anticipating how he would act based on his profile. Every additional word he said put more space between what I was expecting and what I was experiencing.

"Sarah," I told him quickly. He repeated my name, almost before I could finish. "I'm here about this," I said, spreading out my broken phone on the counter in front of him.

"Oh, yeah. The Intelicel. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh, this model has a little screw that pops loose right in the back here," he said, looking away from me to work on my phone. His eyes were on the phone–my eyes were on him. He wasn't disgruntled, like a National Merit Scholar would have been working at the Buy More fixing my phone. He wasn't arrogant either. He was just explaining what he was doing…and he seemed genuinely happy to help me. Like he was making the best of the crummy job he was working.

He put the case in his mouth, pressing his lips over the plastic as he mumbled to me, "Just go ahead and give it a couple of quick turns…and…good as new," he finished, taking the piece out of his mouth and clicking it back into place. He wasn't just fixing it, he was telling me how to fix it in case it happened again, literally trying to save me from needing his services again. "No problem," he added, looking up at me. He handed me back the phone.

"Wow. You geeks are good," I replied with a smile. I only realized afterward, that the intentionally high-pitched, dumb-blonde tone to my voice I usually added was absent yet again. This was just my voice, how I would have talked to him if I was a normal person.

He looked nervous, amused, as he looked quickly at his friend. "Nerds. I would say nerds probably more…" Morgan was muttering something unintelligible at the same time. Morgan was dressed differently, in his green polo shirt. Not an actual nerd then, just a salesman it seemed. They were still muttering when we were interrupted by another customer.

"Excuse me. Excuse me," a man said as he rushed towards the desk. He was wearing a button down plaid shirt and khakis. With him was a young girl, probably about ten years old, in a pink ballerina recital costume. "I have an emergency. I don't know what I did wrong," the man lamented to Chuck, while his daughter looked worried, maybe a little sad. "...but I shot the entire recital, but, um, now it…now it won't play back," he added, handing the camcorder to Chuck.

"Ok. Ok. We'll just take a look and…you don't have a tape in here," Chuck said, his voice deflating as he opened the side of the camcorder.

"But…it's digital," the man answered cluelessly.

"Oh, boy," Morgan moaned and rolled his eyes. That was a reaction I might have expected from Chuck, had I believed Chuck's profile. He didn't even look like he was thinking of a retort, let alone biting his lip to hold one in.

"Right. Yes. But you still need digital tape," Chuck explained patiently.

"Oh, no. Her mom's going to kill me," the man fretted nervously. The little girl looked forlorn, eyes fixed on the floor. I saw Chuck look at her. He looked troubled, almost as troubled as she did. He turned to look at me. I was smiling with my mouth closed, doing my best to hide my surprise. What was that look? An apology, I thought, for his abrupt dismissal of me.

"Uh, Morgan, I need the wall," Chuck said with a confidence in his voice I had yet to hear before this point.

He excused himself and apologized. What was he doing? I thought to myself. But I stayed and watched, too fascinated to walk away. I watched as Morgan cleared a spot in front of the display televisions on the wall. He left, then returned with a tripod and tape for the man's camcorder. A short Asian girl dressed in a uniform similar to Chuck's was enlisted to help. She was asking the girl and her father about music. All in all, it took about ten minutes to set up. I stood at the Nerd Herd desk the entire time.

I was a bit of a distance away, but I could see the young girl, standing awkwardly nervous by herself in front of what Chuck had called the wall. I don't know what he said to her, because I was too far away and I didn't lip read all that well. He crouched down so his face was level with her, which was far because he was so tall. He looked concerned…and he was talking to her. He smiled…this warm, brilliant smile that lit up his face and made the young girl stop fretting and smile beautifully in return. Genuine, I thought. I realized as I was doing it that I was standing on my tiptoes to watch him.

The little girl danced. She radiated confidence and joy. What had he said to her? I wondered. I felt my cheeks achy in the strangest way. I was smiling, a wide, beaming smile that had happened almost unconsciously. My facial muscles weren't used to me smiling like that. I was still beaming when I saw him making his way back to me. He smiled back directly at me. I think that was all it took, to be honest. I felt my heart flutter when he smiled at me like that. It was the strangest feeling I've ever had.

I had to forcibly remind myself why I was there. Bryce had sent him the Intersect. Bryce, a rogue spy killed on U.S. soil by an NSA agent. Most likely working with this Chuck.

This sweet, genuine guy…who had walked away from a flirty blue-eyed blonde to help a little girl redo her ballerina recital on tape.

I was still trying to reason with myself when I saw someone else block the way. That was Harry Tang, although I was never properly introduced to him then, or ever, in fact. He was a co-worker of Chuck's, a salesman like Morgan based on his uniform, who was probably ten years or more older than Chuck, working a position technically beneath Chuck…who thought he was in charge. Bossy and nasty, he always seemed to me. I heard him start to berate Chuck for what he thought was Chuck wasting time.

I had been there too long, I thought to myself. There was nothing I had learned here that would help me find the Intersect files. Graham said in an email. I would need to check his computer at his residence. I had an address for that too. He was here all day. The sooner I left, the sooner I could get to his computer. I left my card on the counter. I turned and hurried towards the door as Harry Tang blocked Chuck's view of me. I heard the edges of the conversation between Harry and Chuck.

I thought Chuck would have been just as rude, considering the way Harry had spoken to Chuck. All I heard was a snarky joke but in a very calm voice. Just one more strange thing that surprised me.

It took me about 30 minutes to drive from the Buy More to Echo Park, where Chuck lived with his sister. He had already seen me, so I couldn't take the chance of anyone else seeing me, especially breaking into his apartment. The intelligence I had said both Chuck's sister and her boyfriend, who lived there as well, were physicians and their work schedules confirmed they would not be in the apartment until very late in the evening. I covered myself from head to toe in black and crept into the apartment through the open window accessible from the courtyard. I was surprised that the window would be wide open like that when no one was home, but the neighborhood looked secure, so perhaps it wasn't as crazy as it could have been in another part of the city.

I spent far too much time gazing around Chuck's room, even though I was working with a limited amount of time and a highly complicated task of breaking into his computer to retrieve the files Bryce had sent him. He was a grown man…but his room looked like it belonged to a teenager. There were movie posters on three out of four walls. The shelves behind his bed and extra racks under the window were cluttered with books and knickknacks. There was a random pile of junk, some boxed, some loose, wedged into the corner under a shelf that was built into the wall. Like an overgrown junk drawer, it seemed. There were what I now know were multiple video game consoles stacked on top of one another, along with an expensive, relatively new model of computer. He had a post-it note attached to his computer monitor that read "I am a professional nerd."

I snickered when I read that, giggling like a child. My cheeks ached with the same unusual feeling. Chuck was just a little younger than me and yet, he lived in this room in his sister's apartment. That malcontent picture the CIA had devised and showed me fit better as I looked all around me. This was what the Chuck in the file's room would have looked like. But the room was neat, and though it was cluttered, it was organized, all but the jumbled pile under the shelf in the corner. Beside his computer, there was a framed picture of him with a woman who looked similar. The sister, I thought.

They were both wearing college t-shirts. His shirt said Stanford, hers UCLA. She was a doctor, I thought. UCLA made sense. The computer I needed to access was right in front of me, but I couldn't pull my eyes away from that photograph.

I was an only child, and sibling relationships fascinated me. Chuck looked even younger in this photograph, maybe just 17 or 18. Considering his attire in the picture, I surmised that it had been taken while they were in college, before Chuck had been expelled. What 17 year old boy would have hugged his sister like that? I thought. My understanding of brothers and sisters was only from what I had seen on television…an unrealistic portrayal, and I knew that. But this photo was unique…and it bothered me. They were pressed close together, and his sister's head was angled towards his shoulder instead of just neutrally or away. Like she had been resting her head on his shoulder, and he had snapped the photograph as she'd pulled it away.

I would later learn just how close Chuck and his sister, Ellie, were. Part of that lesson would come later the next day, after the truth was known, but here, it struck me as strange, just one more thing that contradicted what I was supposed to believe. Was the room just a red herring? A sign of immaturity or stagnation, rather than his discontented view of his life?

I had to, again, forcibly shake myself out of the cloud of thoughts circling inside my head and focus. I had already wasted almost an hour…just standing there and studying Chuck's room. I had been completely unaware of the passage of time as I'd done so, which I couldn't remember doing before. I began instead to try and access Chuck's computer.

I was very easily frustrated at my lack of progress. Bryce had always been the one to do things of this nature when we were on missions, because of his past expertise. I felt that burn in the pit of my stomach like I'd swallowed a lit match. I didn't want to think about Bryce at all…but I couldn't help it.

I had no idea, nor did in fact the U.S. government at any point, that I was trying to break into the computer of one of the most successful hackers the U.S. government had ever seen. I feel fairly confident to say that even if Bryce had been there, he couldn't have broken through the security Chuck had in place on his computer. But leave it very clear–I was out of my element. I tried everything that I knew, but I couldn't progress past the first login screen. This was the only computer in the apartment, so this had to be where the email had been sent. My only option after so much failure was to leave with the actual processing unit and hope that some of the computer geniuses at Langley could crack it.

I disconnected the CPU from the monitor and speakers and pulled it out from under the desk. With the unit in my hands, I heard the soft, mumbling conversation from the courtyard through the open window. I didn't move to the window, for though I couldn't make out specific words in the conversation, I knew it was Chuck and his friend Morgan talking. I quickly looked at my watch. They were over an hour early. I vaguely remembered an annotation in the information file about his quitting time being erratic, contrary to the schedule. I had given myself leeway for that information, I berated myself, but had allowed myself to be distracted in Chuck's room and lost that advantage.

They seemed to be standing around in the courtyard, which was blocking my way back out of Chuck's apartment. Hastily, I ran out of his room and into the living room of the apartment with the CPU. Chuck and Morgan were already through the front door. I had no choice but to confront them.

Chuck seemed very concerned for the status of his computer, much more than his personal safety at the moment, which seemed to reinforce that he knew more than I thought he did, at least at this point. There was a messy confrontation in the apartment, mostly caused by Chuck and Morgan clashing against each other as they struggled with inexperience. I knocked Chuck off his feet, sending him crashing through a piece of furniture. Morgan ended up on top of him, injured as well. I had placed the CPU down…and it crashed to the floor as the shelf gave out, shattering into a thousand pieces from that height. It didn't take a genius to know that nothing was retrievable from that computer, Intersect files or anything else.

I ran, before I had to confront anyone else. No one pursued. I raced out through the gates of the apartment complex and into my car. I pulled off the ski mask once I was behind the wheel, cursing to myself as I drove away. It had been the perfect opportunity to complete my mission exactly…and it was derailed by something ridiculously stupid. All I could do was drive back to my hotel and wait for the morning to contact Graham again and update him on the status of the computer.

I slept very little, but I did manage a little, especially after the marathon stretch of time leading up to this. I was just exhausted enough to sleep without dreaming. Dreams were almost never pleasant for me…either frightening depictions of past horrors or haunting depictions of impossible wishes that evaporated when I opened my eyes. I wasn't used to failing…and I feared already that I was perilously close to failing here.

It was that nagging need to do better, to fix what had gone wrong, that led me to go back to the Buy More the next day. He wasn't inside when I arrived, as I saw when I scanned inside the store with my binoculars. His car was there, however, so I waited. I was overdue to check in with Graham, and he called me while I was waiting for Chuck to reappear. That was the conversation I mentioned before…that heated discussion with Graham, which translated to heated for me, anyway, the Ice Queen herself.

I told him the computer had been completely destroyed. He recalled me, telling me without a way to retrieve the files, that the NSA was sending John Casey. I only knew him by reputation, and I had no idea at that time that it had been Casey who killed Bryce, although from Graham's description I had thought it could be a possibility. It turns out Casey's orders were to just bring Chuck in for questioning, but I also didn't know that. Again, need to know only. What Casey was ordered to do was not in my purview. But I do know that the lit match in my stomach started creeping up into the center of my chest when I thought the NSA was coming to fix something where I had failed. All those strange feelings I had about Chuck were still there too, twitching under my skin, just out of my conscious thoughts.

Graham was trying to excuse my failure, like I said before, telling me not knowing about Bryce wasn't my fault. Bryce had burned us all, the entire CIA. I argued that I could fix it, despite not being aware of it. I think he heard the determination in my voice when I was refusing…and he knew better than to argue anymore with me. He gave me the usual line about being on my own, without backup, because I was acting contrary to my orders. I didn't care. I don't think he ever grasped the reason why. Hell, I didn't even grasp the reason why until later that night. He thought it was about Bryce. Maybe I told myself that…but I'm sure now, it was about Chuck.

Things did not add up. I needed to know more before I could start to make sense of anything. It wasn't cut and dry, it wasn't textbook malcontent like the Field Ops agent had told me. If I left now, I was leaving it in John Casey's hands. Something deep inside me told me that Chuck needed to be protected from John Casey, the same way I had known Molly needed to be protected from Kieran Ryker. My gut was right before…and I was trusting it again.

I got out of my car and walked into the Buy More again, 24 hours after I had first done so. I only had 12 hours to solve all of it, so no more dancing around it. My grandmother used to tell me something to help me remember things when I would forget. She would instruct me to place things in front of the door so I literally had to trip over them to get out of the house. That was what I needed to do. Have Chuck literally need to trip over me before he got the chance to run away again.

I wasn't about to let him get away from me again.