A/N: Wow, it's been a minute. Sorry about the delay. I never got Covid, but I fell and messed up my hand pretty good, so typing was out. I couldn't do my real job, let alone my FF. I tried a vocal translator but it was borderline ridiculous, so here we are almost a week late. Part 2 of Nemesis. There is a third part, almost all written as well, which I will publish very soon. 10,000 words is too long for one chapter. The trust question. Chuck trusts Bryce before Sarah does. She only calms down once she knows Chuck believes him. That says volumes. Hope my rational of the kiss flows with this work. Here goes.

Ellie planned on serving Thanksgiving dinner in the early evening, around five. I think it was later than she normally would have done, but I also think it had something to do with Chuck having to work at the Buy More, something about training for Black Friday. I called Casey when I woke up, once I realized Chuck was at work and no one was there to protect him. Strangely enough, it sounded like I had woken Casey up when I did. He was just as sleep deprived as I had been, or mostly anyway. His lack of sleep was all work related, as I'm sure once he was actually able to sleep, nothing disturbed him. He assured me that because the Buy More was closed, the risk to Chuck was minimal and Casey was monitoring Chuck's location from his apartment.

I spent an inordinately long amount of time trying to decide what I was going to wear. I had never been at anyone else's home for any type of holiday celebration. What was too casual? What was too dressy? Other than ruling out an evening gown, I was uncertain. I realized as I sifted through my drawers that I didn't have very many in-between outfits, as I called them in my head–something in between an evening gown and jeans and a t-shirt. I did have a few skirts, however. I ended up choosing a flowy red blouse and a black skirt. I spent almost an hour doing my makeup, working hard to apply makeup in such a way that it appeared as if I wasn't wearing any. Seems crazy, but that is a thing. Most women learn how to apply makeup from their mothers. I learned in the CIA. Not sure which way was better.

I didn't want to show up to Ellie's house empty-handed. I thought about bringing a bottle of wine, but by late afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, I couldn't find an open liquor store. I ended up buying a bouquet of flowers from a man selling them out of the back of his minivan on the side of the road. I was amazed at their beauty and freshness despite sitting out all day in the California sun.

As I was walking into the courtyard at Echo Park, Morgan and Anna approached from behind. I turned and offered pleasantries, wishing a generic Happy Thanksgiving to both of them. It did strike me as odd that Anna Wu, one of Chuck's direct reports at the Buy More, was coming to dinner at Ellie's house. That is, until I saw her grab Morgan's hand in a very protective way the second my eyes lingered on him for longer than a few seconds. Apparently during the whole Lou debacle, Morgan and Anna had gotten together as a couple as well. I wasn't sure how much Chuck had explained to Morgan about him and me, so I tried to be as neutral as I could be.

"Hey, Sarah, nice to see you," Morgan said with a friendly smile. Morgan had yet to grow into himself at this point, but even at his goofiest, he was still genuinely warm and friendly. I could tell he was honestly happy for Chuck, that I was here, and that whatever issues Chuck and I had were workable, at the very least. Anna gave me a leery look, but she was polite anyway.

What I knew about Anna I knew from the background check Casey ran on her at the beginning of Operation Bartowski. She was a year younger than Chuck and Morgan. She had been the first person Chuck had hired when he transitioned from a Buy More green shirt to a Nerd Herder after he'd been there for a little over six months. She had grown up in Taiwan and had come to the United States to attend college, USC, with a degree in computer engineering. She seemed to stand out from the other Buy Morons, not on the same level as the under-achieving group who probably could never do better than a job fixing computers at the Buy More. I wondered back at the beginning about her, suspicious as to why she stayed working at a job that was beneath her. According to Casey, in the initial report he filed, she was on a student visa while in college. She took the first job she could find after graduation so she could stay in America, which happened to be the Buy More. Chuck had read her resume and hired her on the spot.

She was separate from her family, alone on the opposite side of the world. She lived with three other girls, friends from college, so that she could afford to live in southern California while she was working at the Buy More. Chuck always told me he thought Anna was cool, which meant at least to him, she wasn't like the girls who had always intimidated him once his spirit had been crushed by Jill Roberts. She was unique, I will say that. She dressed crazily while she was at work–short skirts with mismatched tights, clunky high-heels, bizarre jewelry and crazy hairstyles mixed with overstated makeup. She dressed more conservatively outside of work, the couple of times I saw her outside of the Buy More.

As wacky as I make her sound, she was still more mature than Morgan, in most things. Her jealousy and strange need to test Morgan balanced out that overall maturity, which I think made them compatible enough to date for the amount of time that they did, almost 18 months of real dating, compared to Chuck and me and our fake relationship that broke up twice in the same amount of time. She was just one piece of the puzzle that contributed to Morgan's finding his maturity.

Both Chuck and Ellie answered the door. I put on my most radiant smile and focused on her, just casually breezing by Chuck and barely acknowledging him. I could see out of the corner of my eye…he was looking at the floor, purposely avoiding interacting with me. I'd had all day alone in my hotel room to stew over the current situation, and I was still lost. It had taken me a while to finally accept that Bryce was dead…and now he wasn't. I would feel that shrill shock, that rush of my blood in my veins, when I had to remind myself that he wasn't dead. None of my questions had been answered, and now I had even more…now that I knew about Stanford and Omaha and the Intersect in a way I hadn't before.

I had told Chuck it didn't matter, that Bryce was gone and we were all just carrying on as we had been doing. That wasn't enough for him, I knew, but all of this was new and needed to be processed by both of us. I told myself my goal at this dinner, with Chuck's family, was to reestablish our cover as boyfriend and girlfriend again, while at the same time realigning the way I had been handling him, as my asset. As appealing as it had been, as easy as it had been for me to just lose myself in the pretending, I couldn't afford to do that anymore. I had to take this more seriously. For god's sake, Casey knew I kissed Chuck after I recorded that stupid log while I was out of my mind. I had to right this ship, for it was listing drastically off kilter…all that meant was it was prone to sink. It was my job to keep it from sinking.

I walked into the apartment with the flowers still in my hand. Ellie had said Devon was inside, I guess a way to ask me to give them to him. She was dealing with Anna, so that was understandable. That entire interaction was just extremely strange.

I was startled when I saw Casey in the kitchen with Devon. Casey was holding a giant fork which had pierced through the golden brown skin on the turkey. While Casey held it, Devon was spooning stuffing inside the turkey from a glass bowl. I recovered quickly, making small talk with Casey, like he was just a random acquaintance of Chuck's that I sometimes saw. He was cool and reserved. I couldn't read him at all, which was unusual for me. I held out the flowers to Devon and repeated my felicitations. He put down the stuffing and thanked me, pulling a vase from the cabinet and setting them inside.

Casey was looking at me, but his gaze didn't stay on me long. I realized I had interrupted a rather in depth discussion about the safe handling of poultry on Thanksgiving. Devon was a doctor, and Casey was doing a fantastic job of looking interested when I knew he couldn't have cared less, but going on and on about bacterial food poisoning before we were all about to eat was a little much. I quietly excused myself and turned to go back out into the living room. I almost collided with Chuck as he stood in the doorway.

It was awkward…the way he couldn't quite look at me. He looked lost and terribly upset. Part of me wanted to just talk to him, but I knew in the current state, talking to him would get nowhere. There were no answers I could give him that would be sufficient. He wanted answers…and I had none. The other part of me, the rational part, knew that I had to do something to overcome that awkwardness before it attracted too much attention from the others. I put on the happiest face I knew how to make and pretended to have a good time.

It wasn't as much pretending as I told myself it would be. Aside from the unease with Chuck, I was having a good time. The food was fantastic as always, anytime that Ellie cooked anything. Everyone was in a good mood and talking…even Anna. I was seated directly across from Chuck, so I focused a lot on my food. But the company was nice. I felt like…I belonged there. I tried to suspend my disbelief, even just for a little while, trying not to think about the lies we had told Ellie, and how she would feel if she knew who I really was.

We were probably more than halfway done with our first helpings of turkey, sweet potatoes and the like, before any of us came up for air to talk again. Chuck asked me if I "did" Thanksgiving. He seemed calm, genuinely inquisitive when he asked. I had the feeling he really wanted to know what the answer was, rather than just making small talk. He had no idea about my life, or how painful that topic was for me. I gave him a rushed answer and continued eating.

There was a minor incident involving miniature marshmallows. Apparently, Ellie's usual preparation of Thanksgiving sweet potatoes involved toasted miniature marshmallows. Morgan's favorite. He commented on the absence of said marshmallows when presented with the dish, which I thought was perhaps a little rude, although the nuances of close friends and family being comfortable with each other was outside of my understanding. Chuck had bought them and somehow they must have fallen out of the grocery bag in his car. He left the table to go outside and get them.

Chuck never elaborated about what happened in between going out and coming back, but I know Bryce confronted him in the courtyard. What Bryce would have done had Chuck not needed to go outside, I have no idea. All I do know–the interaction Chuck had with Bryce when they were alone in the elevator, the one he had told me was strange and that keyed him into the fact that something else was potentially going on here, had tempered his initial terror about Bryce and his rogue spy status. Enough so that Chuck listened to Bryce–he trusted Bryce–whatever it was that Bryce had told him.

Chuck and I had both been betrayed by Bryce, at least that was how it seemed that day, but Chuck still trusted him. Chuck always looked for the good in people, even when it was dangerous, even when he had a hard time remembering that he had been pulled into a world where giving the benefit of the doubt could prove deadly. He had been burned already before, but he chose trust here again. This time he was right…I'd like to say Chuck could have been wrong, that it was just luck that Bryce didn't kidnap him or kill him. But as naïve as Chuck could sometimes be, he possessed a unique ability to almost see into other people.

It was why Casey no longer frightened him, why he tolerated the crazy antics at the Buy More, and why he covered for Morgan's immaturity. I didn't know it yet, but it was also why he fell in love with me. Because he could see me, not just the outside shell that everyone else saw. He saw something in Bryce during that confrontation–something real that I was certain had been just an act that he had fooled me with before.

I noticed right away that something was different when he came back inside. He handed the bags of marshmallows to his sister, who took the whole casserole dish back into the kitchen to fix the sweet potatoes. He was tense, his shoulders pinched upwards towards his ears. He dove right back into his food, but I could see his hands trembling when he held his fork. His breathing was ragged, like he had run back from his car. I asked him if everything was ok, because he had kept his gaze averted the entire time I was studying him. He denied anything was wrong, but I didn't believe him. I was a little worried.

Anna and Morgan focused everyone's attention over her green bean casserole and Devon was talking to Casey about working out. That was when Chuck mouthed, very specifically, that Bryce was in his bedroom. I almost dropped my fork. My brain made the connection–Chuck's strange mood was a direct result of him somehow interacting with Bryce…but in a cooperative way, if he was somehow inside Chuck's bedroom, courtesy of the Morgan door. I excused myself from the table. Fortunately, Chuck's bedroom was across the hall from the bathroom, so I didn't attract any undue attention.

The room was dark. I reached in and flipped the lightswitch on, scanning the room. His room was tidy, tidier than usual, as I crazily thought Ellie must have asked him to clean for company coming over. The last time I had been in his room had been the night Ellie was poisoned. The whole room smelled the same. I had to tell myself to look for Bryce…to be extra cautious. I didn't see him anywhere. I wondered if he had escaped back out through the window.

He had climbed the wall and was using his weight to suspend himself in the corner, up at the ceiling, something I had seen him do once before. I heard him jump down behind me, as he shut Chuck's bedroom door with his hand, although not all the way. I spun around in shock…and I was face to face with him again. Had it only been three months ago? It felt like years and years.

He smirked and told me I was getting rusty…that he had been able to sneak up on me.

I reached back behind me. Breathlessly, I told him, "Bryce, I have a gun. Do I need to use it?" I asked him that way because of what Chuck had told me, not about anything in particular that I felt from him. I was very leery.

"I'm unarmed," he said, opening his palms at his sides.

Why did he say it like that? It was so…cold, so impersonal. Why did it bother me? He was a rogue spy who had betrayed me. Right?

He was an old friend of Chuck's…who had saved him from a terrible fate. Chuck wasn't convinced that I should be so distrusting. Was that it? Had I wanted proof right away that Chuck's hypothesis had been correct? Of course I did, I know that now. I was too confused then to know that. But it's human nature…to want to belong, to be accepted. I wanted him to tell me that he had lied in Mexico to protect me, that he had a very good reason for leaving me and stealing the Intersect and everything after. Telling me he was unarmed like I was no one…it stung.

"And I'm sorry," he added. He meant it, of that I was certain. It was a gut reaction, but I learned to trust my gut when I was very young and it had never failed me, ever. Nevertheless, I wanted answers.

"Why shouldn't I arrest you right now?" I asked him.

He still held his hands out at his side, to show he wasn't a threat to me. "Because I'm not a rogue spy," he told me. "Because the Intersect was a mission." He had started to walk towards me. He stopped when he was inches from me, meeting my gaze. "Because, Sarah, you're still in love with me."

I mentioned this before, I know. If ever a person could be summed up by the way they said something, there you go. That sentence was Bryce Larkin, in a nutshell. Telling me that I was still in love with him. Because he assumed that I did. Or he thought that if he believed it, it had to be true. Turning it on me, without giving any of himself away.

I had no idea what love was…only what it wasn't. I didn't love Sam…and I didn't love Bryce. I had never done a single thing that would have ever led Bryce to believe that I loved him. I never said it or even implied it. It bothered me that he was so presumptuous. But I won't lie…hearing him say it like that…using those specific words…did something to me on the inside. It wasn't like questioning what I believed or what I felt…but it made me wonder about what it was that made Chuck so different.

What those words actually stirred in me was a desire that it was real, or that it could be…that somehow those lost hopes and dreams could be sifted from the ashes of my life. I reached out to who was there, in the moment, rather than who I wanted…because he was someone I couldn't have. I actually did that several times…with Bryce was just the first time.

I was just staring at him. He reached for my face. His hands were cold when he touched my skin. His hands had always been cold, I remembered in a flutter, as it came back to me. He was cautious, hesitant…waiting for me to give him his cue to continue. I closed my eyes…and I surrendered. I use those words because I let him kiss me. His kiss was familiar, comforting…akin to seeing that demolished building in my perpetual metaphor suddenly there again on the same street corner. I kissed him back.

I had kissed Bryce hundreds of times. He had been the first one who had ever really kissed me like that, not counting the one time Sam had done so before I never saw him again. It was as sensual as I remembered, every bit as pleasant. I forgot everything else and just kissed him.

And the entire time we were kissing…I couldn't keep Chuck out of my head. Had Bryce kissed anyone since the last time I saw him? I didn't know about him…but I had. I had kissed Chuck three days earlier. Even as I languished in Bryce's kiss, I was composing an essay in my head…about how different those two experiences were.

There had never been any real emotion behind any of the kisses between Bryce and me. It was physical. Intimate, perhaps, but still physical. A prelude to fucking…how it always started. He never kissed me when we weren't in bed or on a mission; I had never wanted him to. It was merely one place where our bodies connected while we were in the process of satisfying ourselves.

Sure, I kissed Chuck, thinking it was the last thing I was ever going to do. But he kissed me back. Chuck didn't just kiss me with his lips. He used his heart and his soul. All of his emotion spilled from him, into me, while we were locked together like that. And when I had kissed him back still…my crazy jumble of emotions had spilled from me into him. That had never happened before. And I know I was hungry for it again…because as long as I kissed Bryce, it felt cold, empty, devoid of anything other than familiarity.

That was why I was the one who pulled away from him. I was breathless from kissing him, but because it had been physical, like exercise. I regretted the entire thing, realizing I should have stopped myself before I let it get as far as it did. I said something flippant to minimize my seemingly eager response.

He told me he needed my help. Before I could respond, we heard noises in the hallway. Someone was coming. I asked Bryce not to run.

Casey came charging in, and though I tried to tell him everything was under control, he ignored me and continued to charge after Bryce. He leapt out the window and disappeared before Casey could give chase. "Nice work, CIA," Casey jabbed at me. I was properly chastised, and somewhat upset that he spoke so condescendingly, making me doubt the progress we had made as partners.

I was still reeling when before I knew it, Chuck was there too. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Chuck had told Casey that Bryce was there as well. My mind was working in the background, but I came to the conclusion that somehow Chuck had seen Bryce kiss me. It made sense.

All three of us climbed out Chuck's window. Bryce was nowhere in sight. We stopped and stood still, playing dumb, as Morgan and Anna rushed by, apparently arguing. Once they had passed, Casey left to go call in the sighting.

I was angry, at Casey and myself, and I was starting to get irked with Chuck as well. I asked him how Casey found out, and he admitted what I had already concluded. Then I asked him if the other part of my hypothesis was true–if he had seen Bryce kiss me. I was angry, but I still phrased it that way. He had kissed me. I had kissed Chuck. There was a difference; I just didn't know if Chuck could see that.

His only reply to me was a dejected, half broken rhetorical question. "I guess this means we aren't getting back together." Not fake, not cover…just not together. The fact that he couldn't separate them was my fault. I was making it worse instead of better, every minute this continued. He walked away from me, but stopped when he saw lights on inside Casey's apartment.

I had a feeling it could be Bryce. I took off my shoes and made a motion for Chuck to be quiet. I opened the door to Casey's apartment and crept inside, as Chuck slowly followed. I pulled my gun as I saw him trying to access Casey's computer. He pulled his gun on me…and we were stuck in a standoff. Chuck was frantic, I could tell, just by the sound of his voice when he said my name, questioning. He stayed behind me, following me, making sure I was always between him and Bryce, which was what I had taught him to do for protection.

We circled each other like two panthers ready to strike.

"I need you to listen to me," he said intensely.

"Just put it down," I ordered him.

He continued like I hadn't said anything. "The Intersect was a mission. I was recruited by an outfit called Fulcrum. A special access group inside the CIA."

"You're lying. We would know that," I spat back at him.

"They knew who I was, my activation codes, my record. They ordered me to shed my agency contacts and go deep. Only then did I realize it was an internal strike to download and destroy the Intersect. Fulcrum had plans for its intel," he explained.

"How can I trust you, Bryce?" I asked, with as much emotion as I would ever let him see. The question burned a hole straight through me.

He never moved his gun, but I saw the change on his face. His eyes shone with sadness, only for an instant, before he steeled himself. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Sarah," he said. I knew that was the truth. He had hurt me, I suddenly realized. That betrayal, that sense of not knowing what was true and what was a lie. We cared about one another, or so I believed, and then I had lost all faith in that. All of that…hurt. Why hadn't I allowed myself to acknowledge the pain and not just the anger?

He shook his head ever so slightly, side to side, and then he lowered the gun. "I didn't know who to trust."

He hadn't meant to hurt me before…only to wound me to my very core with his next breath. He was only telling me the stark truth. He had no way to know if I was Fulcrum, I was a double agent…anything. Mission first, us a lagging second. Maybe if he hadn't said that extra sentence, in an effort to recruit me to his side, he might have actually succeeded. I don't know for sure, but when I finally made up my mind to stay in Burbank the next night, it was that sentence that I couldn't stop hearing.

He couldn't tell that I was telling him the truth? That we knew we could trust each other? That had been the entire basis of our partnership. Sure, I had taken his going rogue at face value, unable to deny what I had seen and experienced and give him the benefit of the doubt. I hadn't trusted him any more than he trusted me. We were spies, though. What was real depended upon the perspective of the perceiver. Whatever trust had been there was an aberration, aside from the norm of every spy for him or herself.

Chuck trusts you. You asked him to trust you…and he did, without a second thought. I heard my own voice in my head, sharply stating my one clear thought.

All of that happened in a split second inside my head. The tail end of that thought prompted my response. "Why Chuck?"

Bryce's explanation was incomplete, of course. He made it sound like he had sent it to Chuck simply because Chuck was a civilian, almost as a kind of safe keeping. I knew it was more than that, because I knew about Omaha and that Chuck was test subject 0326. He did mention an Op code name that made Chuck flash, which erased almost all of Chuck's doubt once it cleared. I could hear it in his voice. It's important to note that the Op was in the Intersect…but Bryce was not. Parts of my file were in the Intersect, but everything about Bryce was glaringly absent. That was also by design, but we didn't know that until much later.

I half turned back to Chuck over my shoulder. Chuck was the one who told me Bryce was telling the truth. It was only then that I put my gun down.

I had no time to ponder all of that, because the next second Casey was back in his apartment. Chuck and I both yelled at Casey to stop, but he shot Bryce anyway…at point blank range…in the chest. The force of the bullet sent him flying backwards and he crashed on the floor at my feet. I was dumbfounded, frozen in shock. Had I just watched Casey kill him for real? I felt like the entire world had shrunk down to a hollow tunnel…somewhere in what felt like the background I know I heard Chuck's body hit the floor…after he'd fainted.