A/N: Looks like this is a three-parter, and here is part two, of DeLorean. This word count is smaller, but it broke nicely where I broke it. Finishing it in this chapter was way too long. A LOT is going on in this episode, most of which we as viewers had to infer, which is what I have done, seeing it from Sarah's side. Think about it. Jack thought Chuck was her mark. Yet, the next night, he is telling Chuck all about their grifting during dinner. Somewhere, he realized she was with him for another reason. Also-Chuck knew her father was a criminal, both from the past and his flash, but that conversation is where he learns that Sarah was his accomplice. I can't imagine how hard that must have been for her. Chuck does not disappoint here, even though we don't see it. He never flinches, and then changes the subject when she's uncomfortable. He redeems himself big time from that last spying debacle. So, part, two. Part three is almost complete, so expect that later this week.

Chuck's sweet words at my door had calmed my jitters, momentarily, but in no time they were back with a vengeance. I don't know why, but I thought my father would have held back, at least a little, before he just blurted everything out the way he did. I think back now and I can make better sense of it. If my father had actually been right about Chuck being my mark, telling Chuck all about the way we swindled unsuspecting people out of their hard earned money would not have been the way to go. Somewhere between this morning and now, my father had started to believe that Chuck was actually my boyfriend, or at least, that he wasn't my mark.

Instead, my father assumed Chuck knew all about my past, which was also strange, considering how tightly I held onto myself and my feelings, courtesy of his careful tutelage.

My father started when we were in the car, talking about how our cons had progressed over the years. Our. He was proud…that I was a con artist, just like him.

Chuck and I were in the back seat, my father in the front. It was dark, and my father spoke to us by looking in the rear view mirror, not turning around. I was glad for the dark, sure my face was on fire, the heat on my cheeks unbearable, each word feeling like it added a wedge between Chuck and me. I may have even shrunk down in the seat, leaned towards the window, for I know my only wish during that entire ride was that it ended, that I could just fly away, out the window, and be spared this humiliation.

I couldn't see Chuck's face in the dark. That mystery, that unknowing about how he was reacting, terrified me like nothing in my life ever had. This was make or break. He was learning the truth about me, the most intimate part of my life that he would ever know before we were together for real, and it wasn't even something I told him. He heard it from my father.

I didn't say anything at all the entire ride. Out of nowhere, just as the taxi was pulling up outside the restaurant, Chuck grabbed my hand as it rested on the seat beside me. He didn't turn his head, never even looked at me, but he squeezed my hand twice, in rapid succession, and then let go.

I don't know what was on my face when we finally were on the sidewalk under the lights. I used to be able to mask my emotions fairly well, but somehow, I had never been able to do that around him. Now, I was sure he could read me like a book. It could have been any of the emotions I was feeling…scared, angry, embarrassed, sad. I know I was afraid to look at him, sure this time, he had moved past his ability to forgive me, that this was too much.

I wish I had a better vocabulary, so that I could accurately describe the look on Chuck's face when I finally saw him. It wasn't pity, I know that. He didn't feel sorry for me.

He hurt for me.

It was like he was looking at me, seeing that girl he had only gotten a tiny glimpse of when I went to my high school reunion, and telling her he was sorry for what happened to her life. Chuck is very intelligent–I'm sure he could put two and two together and figure out what had happened to me. He knew my father went to jail while I was in high school. He now knew I had been running cons with my father almost my entire life before that. He had wondered what changed me from normal high school student to CIA agent…and now he had a pretty good idea. He didn't know what Graham had done, his illegal recruitment of me, but Chuck knew for sure that, like his, my childhood was cut short, ruined, by the adult or adults in my life.

In all honesty, the way Chuck looked at me did change that evening. But not in the way I had feared, or expected. The admiration, the adoration I could see in his eyes only deepened after this incident. Like he lived to stand in my light, and now appreciated that light even more, knowing the darkness I had to grapple with before I could shine.

There was more darkness I was still fighting, that I would continue to fight, before my demons were exorcized forever. I couldn't have won that war, even one battle of it, without his conscious choice to fight beside me. And I think this was the first time that Chuck realized the darkness that had claimed me was through no fault of my own. He forgave me without me having to ask him for it, without any words at all. He just understood.

Once my father was paying attention to us again, as we walked in the restaurant to be seated, Chuck had his game face back on, mission focused, or at least as mission focused as Chuck ever was back then. Chuck smiled along, pretended that nothing my father said shocked him, or could ever have been an issue. He joked about it.

I may have been a little sharp, when my father started singing my praises about how well I could fake a broken arm while we were robbing armored cars in Montana, and I brought up the one time when my arm was broken and my father delayed my treatment. I was smiling, but tightly. My father implied that I had the most fun childhood that anyone could have asked for.

It was hard to keep smiling when he said that. He actually believed that. Like part of him was still a child, thinking no bedtimes, no school, no rules was the best thing ever. Sure, at eight years old, that was a dream come true. But the dream shattered as I aged. An adult knows that making children happy isn't just about giving them what they want, but what they need, even if they don't understand in the moment what it actually is that they need. Rules, structure, consequences…hope.

That was when Chuck shifted the conversation back to mission specifics, as if he saw how much pain I was in. He did it expertly, better than I had ever hoped he could.

My father asked me if it was ok, if he could trust Chuck.

If only he had known how ironic his words were in that moment, he would have laughed. I, on the other hand, wanted to cry. How dare he question Chuck like that.

I made sure my father knew I had every confidence in Chuck.

So my father started explaining. Rich sheikhs who wanted to buy American. I knew exactly what he was talking about. A Lichtenstein.

Chuck felt left out of our private conversation, so I explained out loud. A German billionaire who needed to sell something fast. Turns out my father was pretending to sell a 60 story skyscraper that he didn't own. That was where all his money came from, how he was scamming the Sheikh. Only my father had no idea the Sheikh was also funding terrorism with that money.

When dinner was over, Chuck and I were walking out to grab a taxi, arm in arm. He asked if I thought my father bought us as a couple. Wisely, Chuck realized that my father was sharp, a good reader of people, and very possibly could have figured out our relationship was not what we were claiming it was.

Chuck made a joke about PDA in the hotel lobby that made me blush. We were on our way out of the hotel when Chuck flashed. Sheikh Amad walked right past us.

I started to panic. He was there for Lichtenstein…who didn't exist.

My father was there, smooth-talking them, maybe surprised that they had shown up, but not all that concerned. He didn't know what he had gotten himself into. I couldn't walk away and leave my father to deal with Amad, afraid of what might happen if they demanded something my father couldn't give and he had no backup, no way out.

I was approaching slowly, trying to hear what they were saying, when my father pulled me into his con, against my will. He introduced me as Lichtenstein's secretary. I tried to defuse the situation, attempting to set up an appointment for the next day.

Amad demanded to see Lichtenstein now…and jammed a gun into my ribs. I wasn't looking at Chuck, not sure where he was, but I know he saw that happen. I know because he immediately called the front desk and asked to leave a message for Lichtenstein, which prompted the clerk to page him as she searched through the lobby. Chuck responded, with a terrible German accent, but he responded. He saw everything going bad and he intervened, afraid of what could have happened to me.

I rushed over, telling Amad that Lichtenstein only spoke German. I was afraid of how bad Chuck's fake accent could be, as well as Chuck saying something wrong that could give him away. He was improvising, jumping in, and I tried to make it as easy as possible for him.

Ironically, that stunt convinced my father that Chuck and I were a con team of sorts. He actually said I couldn't put one over on him. Oh, Dad, you have no idea…is all I thought. And that, once again, Beckman's casual "see if Chuck flashes" mission turned full on dangerous, life threatening work. Exactly what I was supposed to protect the Intersect from. I guess for her, she was always weighing risk versus gain…and she always thought the gain was more important than the risk.

The ride home with Chuck was tense. Maybe if all the problems that happened with Amad hadn't actually happened, we could have talked, alone, about everything that Chuck had heard my father say about my past. Instead, what little conversation we had was about the mission, and what our next steps were now that we were caught up in my father's con. I told Chuck I would contact Beckman first thing in the morning and let her know what had happened.

"You know, he could have disappeared under any alias he wanted…but he stayed Jack Burton. Maybe so you could find him," Chuck offered. Looking for the good.

I wanted to believe him, to believe that about my father. But it was difficult. I didn't say anything in reply.

"You still think I turned out pretty good?" I asked as I finally stood at his car door in the parking lot of the Maison23. I wished I hadn't, after I did say it, but I was tired and I had drunk a lot of wine during dinner to ease my nerves and my words just tumbled out.

He looked surprised, just for a second, but then he smiled. "Amazing," he sighed. I felt his eyes go through me, like he was looking all the way to my soul…and he didn't have to flinch away in horror. It gave me hope. For me, Chuck was always about hope…hope that I could be normal, that I could have what I thought I never could…even as I felt I was hoping against hope sometimes. He made that hope justified.

In the morning I told Casey everything that had happened the night before. I was uncomfortable explaining the whole thing to Casey, too, but he was…surprisingly…calm, understanding, even sympathetic. Mostly. Whatever Casey knew about me in bits and pieces, he understood like never before what had really happened to me, why I joined the CIA. Casey's transformation to a proud member of Team Chuck, instead of a reluctant one, happened slowly, like grass growing, to the point where I can't pinpoint a specific moment or circumstance. I do know this incident brought back that argument he and I had about wanting a normal life and a family.

I think, for the first time, he realized that, although he had made a conscious choice to give up a normal life to serve his country, I wasn't the same. I never had a choice. His understanding made it easier for him to root for us, Chuck and me, to be together for real. It went from keeping Chuck and I in line to running massive interference with Beckman, to prevent her questioning if I had been compromised.

I apologized to Beckman, for my father endangering the Intersect the way he unknowingly had. Casey recommended putting Chuck underground until Amad was out of the country. Once again, Beckman weighed her risks and gains and thought that we should use the opportunity to gain access to Amad's bank account.

Casey bristled, upset that Beckman seemed to be asking us to commit fraud. She made it clear the CIA was disavowing knowledge of the mission, basically that we were on our own, even though it was an order from her. I argued about the impossibility of running the con in one day with so little resources.

"Ask your father."

Beckman was all business, not considering my feelings, but wow, I had never felt like I had been verbally slapped across the face by Beckman before that line. First, I wanted to scream, but I tempered myself, knowing it would only provoke Casey to tell me to get my head in the game, because we had a serious, dangerous mission to plan for.

So I went back to my hotel to try and convince my father to go through with the con, big time, all in for the full ten million. He thought we were splitting it, but I told him we had to split it four ways, not two, because he had to use my team.

That is, Chuck and Casey. The schnook…and copface, as Casey was so called by my dad.

My dad was in.

He spelled out the plan, in the Orange Orange, actually using gummy bears on a map as a means of demonstration. Chuck was worried about his German accent, lack of ability to speak German. Kidding, my father said Chuck had the toughest job…to sit there and not say a word.

Funny, right? My dad had no idea how…ironic that was. Poor Chuck. Anyway…

We went in as exterminators. That got the 51st floor evacuated, which gave us a very short window of time to redecorate inside the office to look like Lichtenstein's office. Painting, reorganizing…it actually went very fast with three of us working and Casey on the look out as security downstairs.

We had just finished when Casey radioed up that Amad and his people were there. We ditched the exterminator uniforms and took our places, all dressed up for the office underneath the coveralls.

I did my best dumb blonde secretary, with a perfected voice and walk. Chuck looked dashing in his dark suit and tie and my dad was talking to people who weren't there. What could go wrong?

Amad brought his own translator. I think I must have been slipping a bit, because it made perfect sense that he would have. Why would he trust me if no one knew what I or Chuck was saying? I cursed myself for creating that weird dynamic in the first place the night before.

Chuck ended up pulling us up from that nose dive. Granted, it wasn't perfect, but it was the best he could do with what he had. Chuck started speaking English with a very bad German accent. However, he pretended to be offended and called off the deal, putting the sense of urgency in Amad's corner. I heard Casey say over the com that he sounded like Colonel Klink.

Well, he did say Hogan's Heroes…ahem.

Anyway, one of the men there leaned against the sign and got wet paint on his shoulder. In the meantime, Casey said the original occupants of the office were on their way back up.

Chuck ramped up the theatrics while my father tried to rationalize. Amad lost his patience with that clown show and demanded to buy the building. He gave his account information for the funds we were asking for.

We went back to my hotel to celebrate. Champagne, cigars…it was nice, while it lasted. My dad kissed me and said he was leaving to get some ice.

Chuck was beaming, telling me that things worked out ok, reassuring the reluctant faith I had placed in my father. I told Chuck that this one time…my father pulled through for me.

The underlying meaning in those words wasn't lost on Chuck, the implication that almost my entire life, my father had never pulled through for me, never been there when I needed him. Chuck was relieved, but also sympathetic.

But it was short-lived.

Beckman called Casey and told him the funds weren't in the CIA account. Chuck looked horrified. I ran out into the hallway, chasing my father, knowing deep down what I would find. He was gone. He bailed, double crossed his own daughter and absconded with all the money.

The ice bucket was left on the floor outside the elevator. The laptop was gone. Even Casey's cigar was gone.

And so was my father. Not even a goodbye, nothing. Just gone. Like always.