A/N: Sorry for that long hiatus. Real job pays the bills and it's been mayhem. Also lost a pet and getting in the mood to watch Chuck was a chore. Better now. So, all of Cougars in one chapter. Not much to reconcile here other than time. Seduction is 24 hours after First Date (Chuck in the parking lot with Casey) and Break Up literally overlaps with Seduction. Time between episodes was still accumulating, so 12 days need to have passed between the end of Break Up and Cougars. Here goes. Thanks for being patient.

Twelve days went by after that talk in the courtyard with almost nothing happening, a very long timespan between missions. Casey and I took advantage of the lull and recertified our weapons training. I forget exactly how it came up in discussion, but for once, Casey was making idle chit chat. More of Chuck rubbing off on him, I guess, because Casey hated small talk more than anyone I knew. Anyway, he was talking about a certain type of handgun that he preferred, and sort of over-explained, thinking I would have been too young to know the model he was talking about. He saw my records when we had to upload the documents from the recertification for the CIA/NSA database, redacted for dates and such, as Graham had made certain. Casey never said a word, but I saw that wide-eyed jolt when he saw that I had in fact first been certified with the exact model of weapon he had thought me to young to ever have used.

Casey was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid. He could do simple math. And what it meant, primarily, was that I was first certified when I was 17. Thanks to Graham and his illegal recruitment tract.

I hadn't thought about all of that for a while, but when I went home that evening, I dreamed about meeting Graham in the woods after my father had been arrested. To add insult to injury, during my drive to the Orange Orange in the morning, I heard the song. I don't remember who sings it. Annoying, to be truthful, with repetitive and somewhat unintelligible lyrics. It stuck in my head because it was the song that I was listening to on the radio the day I pulled up to the house my father and I were renting in San Diego–to find him in the process of being arrested. A crappy song to immortalize a moment, but that's what it was.

Twelve days without missions also meant I was running out of reasons to go into the Buy More…to see Chuck. Keeping up the cover, of course. That's what I told myself every time I made an excuse to go in there and talk to Chuck. Because if I went longer than a day, I would miss him so much it physically hurt. An unwise predicament for a CIA officer to find herself in, with her asset, no less, but I honestly couldn't deny it anymore.

So I went into the Buy More to buy new iPod speakers. Chuck called me out right away, telling me I didn't need to buy anything…that me stopping by was explainable because I was his cover girlfriend. The iPod I had was a gift from Chuck, with a handful of songs he had downloaded for me, his effort to help expand my horizons and my taste in music, which, according to him, was almost non-existent. I don't think I could have used the speakers I had enough that I could have broken them. But I tried to downplay it anyway.

In the middle of checking out, I noticed someone lurking. A female, who seemed overly focused on me, downright staring at me. I went into spy mode, thinking first that I needed to get Chuck to safety. I told Casey and alerted him to the woman's presence. I brought Chuck through the Orange Orange and down into Castle and told him to stay put and not touch anything.

By the time I got back up to the Orange Orange, the woman was on her way in. I had to admit, she did look vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her. Until she spoke.

Heather Chandler. A ghost from the past at James Buchanan High in San Diego. One I would rather have forgotten and an absolute nightmare for an CIA officer undercover. Of course, she was adamant about knowing me, remembering my face. I tried my best to discourage her, change her mind, saying I had been in a commercial, that may have been where she recognized me from. Standard procedure, and it usually worked, considering most people were not that observant. That was how my father and I were able to do the con jobs we did. I relied on that fact in everything I did.

He never fessed up to it, but I'm sure Chuck was eavesdropping on my conversation with Heather, somehow using the surveillance equipment in Castle to do so. I just wanted to get her out of there as soon as possible…but she remembered where she knew me from, shouting out about high school. It must have killed Chuck, his wanting to know everything about me that I just wouldn't reveal. He really bothered me in the moment, but in retrospect, I can understand how desperate he was for information. I knew almost everything about him…and he knew next to nothing about me.

She told me she was married to Mark Ratner, which I found hard to believe. Heather was a popular cheerleader. Not the girl I had overhead having sex in the locker room, but that girl had been most certainly someone she knew. It could have been Heather on a different day. She was the type.

Mark Ratner was a…well, a nerd, probably like Chuck, although I can never seem to think of Chuck the same way as I would have thought about those guys in high school. Mark was bullied quite a bit. I even remember Heather joining in on his humiliation. Why then would she be married to him? Unless he was rich, I thought. That was also her type. I wondered, especially when Mark showed up after a bit. They seemed normal enough. Not head over heels in love, but not many people act that way in front of strangers.

They were calling me Jenny, which had been my cover name when my father and I were in San Diego. Mark brought up the reunion, which was apparently coming up that weekend.

That was when Chuck decided to make his appearance upstairs. I was livid.

He played dumb, and stupid, intentionally calling me "Honey" in front of them, eating yogurt that he had helped himself to. Heather piped up about us being old high school acquaintances. I alternated between wanting to crawl under the counter and disappear…and punching Chuck. He was making a joke out of it, and the thought of opening up that part of my life for him to see was too much. Somewhere in our…whatever it was that we had…I had decided I never wanted him to know about the dark side of my past. Professionally, it undermined the handler-asset dynamic. Personally, it scared me to death to think how he looked at me would change if he knew just how terrible I had been when I was young.

I remember thinking about the defense I always told myself. I was young…I had no other choice…I didn't know better. But that wasn't true. Sure, when I was little, but I continued far beyond when I knew it was wrong. And though I didn't know about it until after we were married, Chuck and Ellie had been completely alone as teenagers, when Chuck started his whitehat hacking. He had the skills then to steal, without impunity, using his hacking skills. But he didn't. He broke the law, but never to the detriment of another soul. I'm glad I didn't know that then. It would have made this entire episode worse.

I made one last plea for Chuck to leave, but he was still hunting for information. Heather mentioned San Diego. I couldn't read the expression on Chuck's face. Half teasing, half serious. I know if he had known what I was feeling, he wouldn't have done any of that. He had never imagined that the truth could be as bad as it really was.

Then Chuck called me Jenny. I'm pretty sure all the color drained from my face.

You have to understand, Chuck had no idea about anything here. He had no reason to believe that Jenny wasn't my real name. The truth was more complicated, but he didn't know that until he overheard me tell Daniel Shaw that my real name was Sam. Short for Samantha.

I was standing so close to Chuck I could smell his cologne when he reached for Mark Ratner's hand during their introduction. I saw him flash. He downplayed it as brain freeze from the frozen yogurt.

He was sitting on the counter. If he had been standing, I would have stomped on his foot. He asked about the four of us going to dinner that night. He would later use his flash as the excuse for that invitation; I know part of him just wanted more information about me and thought grilling the two of them was the way to get it.

They left and I pulled Chuck back down into Castle, waiting until we were downstairs before I laid into him for that dinner invitation. Casey defended Chuck for once, agreeing that Chuck was right to do what he did because of the flash. Casey had notified Beckman the moment he found out, and we were waiting for the conference call.

The information Beckman divulged at the meeting was serious. Ratner was an aeronautical engineer with Top Secret clearance. The plans for the next high tech bomber had been compromised. Beckman praised Chuck for his good instincts. I could feel him looking at me, maybe thinking I owed him an apology for acting the way I had. If he hadn't been snooping, I might have.

I can count on one hand in almost 20 years that I've been genuinely angry at Chuck. This was one of the first.

I tried to recuse myself, but Beckman wouldn't have it. She trusted me to keep cool and deal with the situation, which should have made me feel better—but it didn't.

Chuck went back to work while I fumed alone in Castle. He texted me that he would be at my hotel to pick me up around 7:30. He was early.

In terms of what we would call emotional intelligence, Chuck always scored very high, more than anyone I have ever met. It was even more significant when it came to me. The fact that I was so angry…and he just kept pushing…only made me angrier. And he seemed to not be able to tell, or not care. Like I said, he was maybe expecting awkward teenage whatever–not a life of crime and being recruited by the CIA as a way to escape prison.

I told him to stop…and he kept going. He said Jenny a million times, asking me if it stood for Jennifer. I got in his face and told him to back off. And he still didn't stop. I was shaking with rage when I grabbed the pencil out of his hand and drove it like a spear straight through the picture of us on my vanity table, the one from outside Roan's house. He made me so angry I was losing control…which was definitely not me. But I think that finally got through to him. At least for a little while.

We drove to the restaurant in complete silence. An uncomfortable, awkward silence that almost never happened with us. The unease carried over into the restaurant, when we sat with the Ratners. I knew how to pretend–pretend that I was interested, pretend that I cared about what I could ask them. Chuck had me all out of sorts. And, I was worried about what was going to come out.

Everyone I went to high school with knew that my father had been arrested when I was a senior. Of course, no one knew that after that incident, I went back to finish high school basically on loan from the CIA.

Chuck started the conversation, being his more extroverted self. Heather was downright rude to Mark, in front of us. Chuck and I didn't have our story straight, so we were off as well. Mark left the table...and Heather got downright bitchy, basically calling me an ugly duckling. Chuck was adequately offended for me, as I could see on his face, but he kept his head in the mission, something I was having trouble doing.

And then she asked about my father. I choked on my roll and then went searching for more wine, only to see Casey posing as the wine steward. I wasn't sure how much he'd heard either. I was hating every minute of this mission…all that angst and nothing learned at all.

Chuck started prying again…after he'd seen me react to her mentioning my father. I unceremoniously dumped my entire wine glass in his lap. It was twofold–get him to go check on Mark, since he seemed to be gone for a long time. The other was just me being angry…and trying anything to make him stop.

Once Chuck was gone, I tried to engage Heather in conversation. She brought up my father again, and asked me if Chuck knew about the situation. In front of Casey. I literally took the carving knife from him, telling him to go check on Chuck. Heather continued her bitchy comments about my life while I just had to smile and take it. Damn it, I hated it but I felt like I was 17 again. That girl was still inside me. She hadn't seen the light of day for a very long time.

Turns out Chuck and Mark had confronted the Russian mob in the men's room, but had escaped relatively unscathed with Casey's help.

The rest of the dinner was…strange. Mark was a basket case. Heather was even more bitchy. Chuck was quiet and anxious. I just wanted out. We ate very fast in silence, said our goodbyes, and left. Chuck explained what had happened in the car, informing me Casey had handled the gangsters, and that Casey's plan was to grab Ratner at work the next morning for interrogation. He left out the part where somehow Mark found out Chuck was working with the CIA.

I had the next day off from the Orange Orange, which was both good and bad. No yogurt serving was good, but it left me with a lot of time to think. I was still furious and trying to work it all out. I used the punching bag in my room to workout. I started to realize that, as annoying and insensitive as Chuck had been, the real root of my anger wasn't him, but the unresolved anger that was inside me, as I was forced to revisit that horrible time in my life…when, because of my father's mistakes, I was forced to trade my life and my future away.

A future that could have belonged to Chuck…if not for the hopelessness of our situation. That was all I really wanted. And I was angry at him because I felt like he was helping push us further apart than closer together. It wasn't true, but it felt that way. I should have had more faith in his feelings. I just thought there was an endpoint, a limit that was too much for him. It took me too long to realize there wasn't.

Chuck interrupted my workout by knocking on my door. He showed up dressed up, shirt and tie, despite the fact that he wasn't working at the Buy More that day. He had a box and said he had brought me a present. I tried to lighten the mood, telling him it wasn't my birthday.

He made a comment about not knowing my birthday either. He sounded more bitter this time, as opposed to the teasing he had done the night before. I wasn't sure what had shifted in his head.

He asked me to open the box. He bought me a dress. It was similar to another purple dress I owned, the one I had actually worn on our first real date. It was a little fancier. Chuck got my size exactly right too, which surprised me. He used it to soften the blow of telling me we had to go to my high school reunion that night, to finish the mission.

I tried to tell him that high school was a hard time for me. He tried to sympathize, only he tried like I was a normal girl. It wasn't about hormones and the future and trying to figure out who I was.

"It was more than that for me," I told him, partially hiding behind the punching bag, afraid he could see the vulnerability on my face. The way he looked at me, while he was sitting on my bed, melted me inside.

"Hey, it'll be ok. Trust me," he said gently, rising and moving to stand against the other side of the punching bag. His face was close to mine, his voice low as he tried to comfort me.

I did trust him, I told myself. I trusted him more than I had ever trusted another soul in my life. He told me it would be ok, and I believed him. He tapped my chin with his knuckle, then told me he would be back in two hours. We had a two hour drive to San Diego.

I finished my workout and showered.

I downplayed it when he gave it to me, but that dress was the only gift of clothing I had ever received from anyone, woman or man. Wardrobe changes in the CIA were common, so much that a lot of things I had worn I had only worn once, then recycled or switched for something else. I kept that purple dress with the sparkly straps. After I lost my memory, I saw that dress in the closet and remembered not the reunion, but Chuck and I eating a cheeseburger in my hotel room. I asked Chuck how he knew I liked extra pickles, retelling him the memory as it had returned. It was one of the first after I had agreed to stay.

The three of us drove to San Diego.

I felt cold, cramped, like the walls were closing in on me when I was back inside that building. I tried to tell myself to just live the lie. I was Jenny Burton, ugly duckling turned beautiful swan, there with my boyfriend. I think by that point Chuck finally understood how profound my unease was, because he stayed right by me and wouldn't let go. He told me I looked beautiful.

The faces in the room, including the women running the check in table, looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't remember anyone specifically, especially not by name. No one knew who I was, since I looked completely different, thanks to the CIA makeover I'd gotten. Then, no one could get over how I looked now.

Chuck pulled me aside to tell me that he had my back, and not to worry. Truth was, to interact in the ordinary world, like a normal girl, I needed him as much as he needed my spy skills in the spy world. I had never felt it more than at that moment. I was a ball of nerves, but he put me at ease. He really did. It sounds stupid, but he was my trophy boyfriend. Complete opposite of how that's supposed to work, but it was true. I may have been what they considered a knockout, but I was there with someone who cared about me–me–not the knockout, or the ugly girl in the picture. Just me.

We mingled. I was a little clingy, making sure almost always that I was touching him, my arm tucked in his. I saw Dick Duffy, that insufferable asshole, eye me up and down like a piece of meat. He also apparently had no idea who I was. Heather was somehow still the center of attention of her little group of clique-y friends; I was amazed that after ten years, those girls were still willing to follow her around like groupies. Chuck asked me to dance, acting extra goofy to make me smile, as I'm sure he saw how uncomfortable I was.

I saw Dick Duffy approaching the table where Chuck and I were. I tensed visibly, so much that Chuck asked me if I was ok. Duffy completely disregarded the fact that I was obviously there with a date, Chuck, and made a lewd comment about me being the most attractive girl in the room and the woman who would be waking up next to him. If I weren't on a mission, I would have spit in his face.

Chuck looked at me in shock, his mouth open, probably waiting for me to kick his ass, which I would have loved to do, believe me. Chuck swooped right in, though, telling Dick he was my boyfriend. That was as confrontational as Chuck would get to defend my honor without intentionally causing a scene.

Once Duffy realized who I was, he exhibited the same disbelief as everyone else. But he brought up my father, in front of Chuck, making it abundantly clear that my father was in jail, and had been, for ten years. I saw Chuck react, genuine shock on his face, but he recovered quickly. I was dying inside, wishing the floor would just swallow me up. Chuck flashing interrupted that thought, although I was a little distracted, and he had to tell me he'd flashed.

He told me he thought Duffy was the contact. I told Chuck to get Ratner and I would go let Casey know what was going on. When I came back, I saw Chuck at a table with Mark. He just looked up at me, half smiling. I felt like I was the luckiest girl in the room, luckiest girl in the world. I know now Chuck and Mark were talking about them being nerds, how lucky they thought they were. It was the exact opposite for me–how did I ever get a guy like him to fall in love with me? All that stuff about my father that Chuck had to have heard–and he still looked at me like I was the only girl in the room–the only girl in the world. He's something else, my Chuck.

I went outside to work my CIA magic with Duffy, turning on the seduction charm. He was a textbook case of an easy mark. I just batted my eyelashes at him and he thought I was his. He did pinch my ass, hard, which infuriated me enough to slap him, just as hard. He was condescending; I kicked him across the face and knocked him out cold. Not my best moment, but my anger had been simmering all night and he took the full brunt of it. My rash actions inhibited the mission, since we had no way to know for sure if Duffy was the mark, now that he was out cold. What Casey and I found in his trunk led us to believe that Duffy was just a small time thug, not the real thing.

That meant Ratner was in danger–and he was with Chuck. Casey and I ran inside.

Chuck was at the DJ station, on the microphone. Casey and I were scanning the room, thinking something must have happened while we were outside. Chuck let us know, in a sort of code, that he had flashed on the bad guys, and found a way to let us know without attracting undue attention to himself in a non-reunion kind of way. Chuck was always thinking fast, problem solving at lightning speed. Something he really excelled at.

Chuck was moving the spotlight to the two goons, but as Mark moved to run out of the room, I saw Heather, looking blank and angry, leave to follow. She was part of it; I was certain. I followed her out.

I had my gun out and took off my shoes, as I heard them click on the floor as I moved into the locker room area. I asked her why she did it, why she turned on her husband. Full of herself as always, she answered me. She married him for the money, then betrayed him for more when Mark's income wasn't good enough. I was able to follow her voice to find her in the maze of lockers.

She was able to kick the gun out of my hand as she darted at me around a corner. The fight that continued was all hand to hand, fists and feet. I tried to talk sense into her, telling her I could help if she would tell me who she worked for. I didn't know for another two years, but she was working for Alexei Volkoff. He's another story for later, quite a long one, actually.

The fight spilled from the locker room and into the shower. She jumped me from behind. I pulled the plumbing apart to use a pipe as a weapon, causing an ice cold spray of water to soak us. She grabbed a pipe as well, as we were clashing pipes in the frigid water. She pulled the pipe I was holding through the main rafter, then twisted my arm and pinned me under my chin with the pipe, choking me. She was taunting me, telling me why would I have believed she could ever have married Mark. I head butted her and knocked her down. She tripped me and I went down hard.

I was cut, bleeding, bruised and aching all over, but I chased her out of the shower. We were back in the locker room and she was taunting me again. Because she stupidly kept talking, I located her. I saw she had found my discarded gun. I was still unarmed, at a disadvantage. I distracted her by tapping my foot against a locker door, then charged her and kicked her into the glass trophy case, the glass shattering all around her as she fell.

She still had the gun, pulling it forward slowly to aim it at me. I thought quickly, taking one of my knives out of the sheath and aiming it at the Cougar head above the trophy case. It fell, just as I had wanted, and hit her head, knocking her out cold.

Soaking wet with a bleeding lip and a black eye, shoeless, I staggered back into the gym. I guess I had just been announced as the reunion queen. The spotlight, and everyone's eyes in the room, were on me as I limped in. Someone ran to put a tiara on my head. All I could see was Chuck, on the DJ platform. He was ok…and smiling radiantly at me.

Understanding that I was quickly making a spectacle of myself, Chuck rushed me out of there. I told Casey about Heather in the locker room. The CIA sent a clean up team that acted as a water leakage mitigation crew. The story about a burst pipe in the shower explained the broken pipes and the shattered trophy case. Me, on the other hand–not so much.

Before I could even say anything, Chuck hurried me into the spy van, away from the crowd. He took his jacket off and wrapped it around me, telling me he wished he had a towel. He helped me clean the cuts on my face, so gently it almost made me cry. He made sure I was comfortable while Casey tied up the loose ends with the cleaners. I fell asleep, and didn't wake up until we were back in L.A., close to two in the morning.

I was beyond tired, my memory of that walk from the van to my hotel room still bleary. Chuck tucked me in. That was what I remembered. He promised to have my back, and he had.

I slept until almost noon the next day. Chuck called and told me he was coming over and bringing lunch. I got up, got dressed, and waited for him. My muscles were aching, my whole body sore from the fight the night before. Chuck actually brought a raw hamburger patty for me to put on my black eye, an old school ice pack of sorts. It did work well, ice cold without the pain of actual ice on my skin. He brought me a cheeseburger for lunch, with extra pickles. I tried to remember when he would have realized that was how I liked it, but I couldn't. He had made it his mission to find out as much about me as he possibly could. It was ok. I know it was because he loved me, even if I only very vaguely understood it then.

He told me he wished he knew what happened to change me from a regular high school student to a spy. It flashed through my mind again, meeting Graham in the woods. I guess I zoned out, because he was calling my name, pulling me back to the present.

I told him he could ask me one thing, any one thing. He had earned that, after everything. He made this face like he was thinking. But then he did something extraordinary.

He looked at the floor, then up at me, saying, "No, thanks," with his crooked grin. "I don't need to know more, not about who you were, 'cause as much as you don't think so, I know who you are."

I had such a painful lump in my throat I couldn't swallow. All the stupid, annoying things he'd said and done since the beginning of this faded away. He had found out more than I had wished he did, listening to Heather and Duffy and even Mark. Somewhere, he had understood my reluctance and my anger, where it was coming from. A part of me even thinks he understood that my biggest fear was showing him the darkness inside me, afraid he would shrink away from it. Those few lines set my mind at ease.

He smiled brightly at me…and I knew I was smiling back, just as brightly. My cheeks hurt, worse because of my bruises and cuts.

He cut it in half and we ate lunch.

He was trying to think of how we were going to explain my cuts and bruises.

"I did go to my high school reunion. Is that reason enough for me to look like this?" I joked.

"That might require a bit more explanation," he laughed.

We decided I should stay out of sight of his sister and Devon. That became the default, for the cuts and bruises continued.

And not just on the outside.