A/N: Here's part two of The Ring. This is a fan-favorite episode and I agree. Only delving deep into Sarah warps this episode, making it so much more tragic than what we see. Needed to break here because it's way too long still. This is only roughly halfway through the episode. Not too many wtf, but still. Really, Chuck? A vacation? He couldn't think of something better to say? And why does she tell him she's leaving with Bryce?! She wanted to hurt him even more than she does? Although that "with Bryce" seems like ADR, as her mouth doesn't seem to move. Bryce thought one gun and barely any ammo would save the day? That was a really weak plan. But because show...you know. Sarah didn't hear that discussion between Bryce and Chuck in Castle, which is the essential love-hate Bryce moment. I have this addressed in the next chapter, all that that conversation implied. The next chapter ends at the Castle flashback we see in Pink Slip. There are at least two chapters covering the limbo between Season 2 and Season 3. Perhaps more once I get writing for real. Enjoy, for like Sarah says, our hopes are about to soar...and then crash.

I was late arriving at the church for Ellie's wedding. Her, uh, first wedding, as we call it now.

I struggled to get ready, thinking about Bryce, thinking about what I was going to say to Chuck. What I could say to Ellie.

The bridesmaid's dress was pale pink satin, long and fitted. I looked at it and remembered shopping with Ellie, being fitted for it with Ellie. Like I was really her friend. There was nothing I wanted more than what Ellie thought to be real. I remembered wondering what Chuck would think when he saw me in the dress, how innocently I had dreamed of that.

Now, it was all tarnished, ruined, all that false happiness gone, dissolved, under the harsh light of reality.

I was late because I was moving in slow motion, trying with all my strength to hold myself together when I felt like coming apart. I did tell myself I would wait, that I shouldn't tell him I was leaving until after the ceremony. There was no reason to tell him before. All it would do was prolong his misery. I wanted him to be able to be happy for his sister without being heartbroken over me.

Heartbroken. The word hit me like a fist. Leaving him would break his heart. Mine as well, but my heart was deeper inside me, protected. He wore his heart on his sleeve, always. Dangerous, it seemed, especially with people like me around.

I raced into the church and found the room where I knew Ellie was getting ready. Devon's mother, Honey, opened the door, apparently relieved that I had finally arrived.

I wasn't expecting Chuck to be in the room. He had his back to the door, standing in front of the mirror with Ellie. My legs almost gave out, but I recovered quickly, smiling politely while Honey fussed, handing me my flowers.

The look on Chuck's face when he turned around…I felt his eyes go through me like an arrow. I looked away, flouncing my hair, sure I was flushed and trying to disguise it. He asked if he could talk to me outside the room for a second.

I wanted to say no, but I couldn't.

He started to say something. I interrupted him by saying Ellie had tasked me with making sure Chuck had their wedding rings. He pulled them out of his pocket and showed them to me. Two beautiful bands of gold. I felt my eyes start to tear, afraid I was going to lose control of my emotions in front of him, exactly what I wanted not to do.

Standing that close to him, feeling the admiration for me in his gaze, the scent of him making me dizzy, I couldn't resist touching him. I reached for his lapel, smoothed it down, smoothing down his boutonniere.

I told him he looked like a real spy.

It probably wasn't the best thing to say, considering his feelings about all of that, but I was speaking with my heart and not my head. It was so complicated. I never once wanted Chuck to really be a spy, not like me, or like Bryce. He was too good, too pure for that. But in a twisted way, it was the only way I could ever have hoped that we could be together for real. It was an impossible dream, not founded in anything even possible.

But it would have saved me the pain that was hammering away inside my chest as I stood there.

"You look like a real bridesmaid." His voice was soft, but deep.

Two simple lines, but no two lines we ever said to each other summed it up quite like that. I could see him the way he wanted to be–and he could see me the way I wanted to be. What made us work, after everything was said and done, was not only that ability in us to see that in the other, but to draw it out, manifest its awakening with love and understanding. We became our best selves when we were together, living for and with each other.

Quite eloquent for an ex-spy like me, but that's me now, not me then. The Sarah , standing there in the church, aching for something she wanted but couldn't have, didn't have the words or the understanding to express that.

He just looked at me, blinking hard, like he was mustering his courage. He was going to say something. I was terrified of what that would be. I tried to stop him, asked him to wait, but he talked right over me, almost bursting and unable to contain it.

He started to talk about his future, that he wanted me in it. Oh, God, I felt like I was dying. I wanted the floor to just open up and swallow me. He wouldn't let me talk, and the more he said, the more I knew when I finally did say it, it would devastate him. I could feel my eyes burning with unshed tears.

He ended up asking me to go on vacation with him.

It wasn't exactly what I thought he would say, but in a way, I was glad it was that tame. If he had just blurted out how he felt, I don't know what would have happened to me. It was strange, and it felt like a nicer, more romantic version of Cole Barker's invitation to me a few months back. The two men had the exact opposite intentions, but it compounded the unbearable pain in my chest.

"Chuck, I'm leaving in the morning." My voice almost broke. I saw his face fall, felt my heart crash down to the floor at the same time. "The details are classified, but I'm working on the new Intersect project with Bryce." Why, why, did I have to say it like that? It was only the truth, and I could hardly hold myself together. Carefully choosing my words stopped being an option once I saw the heartbreak in his eyes.

He heard Bryce's name and he rocked back on his heels, pulling away from me. "Bryce." He was trying to be neutral, I know that. But it stung, bitter like poison.

I tried to apologize, telling him I had planned on waiting until after the ceremony.

Of course, it was the same thing with Bryce it had always been with Chuck, and I made it a thousand times worse in that instant. He thought I chose Bryce instead of him. In some way, he never got over that feeling like he was competing with Bryce for me. Part of that was Bryce's fault–those stupid flowers, whatever it was he said to Chuck when he had been in Burbank last. I never once set the story straight, for all the reasons I have already explained. But that uncertainty in Chuck was always there.

Bryce had been, and was going to be again, my partner. We were never friends, just like I'd told Chuck, though he misinterpreted that comment and I let him think that way. We were lovers, stupid word because I never loved him. All that meant was I shared a bed with him. He cared about me. I know I cared about him.

But it was absolutely nothing in the face of what I felt for Chuck.

He pulled back, his eyes distant, as he thanked me for coming to the wedding, telling me it was good for the cover. Then he brushed past me without looking and hurried away.

I had been pretending that it all was real, but there was so much under the cover that I had been denying for so long. He walked away doubting all of it, everything I had ever said or done. It was all just me doing my job, like everything that had happened in the past two years wasn't real.

I couldn't even chase him. I had to let him go. In the end, he was right. I didn't try to fix his view, tell him he was wrong for believing that. I was leaving, after all, like it had meant nothing to me. Intentionally crushing the only heart that had probably ever loved me into a thousand pieces.

I turned around, sure I had never been in as much pain as I was at that moment. I had been beaten, tortured, stabbed…but nothing like this. I even remember thinking that the feeling, the physical sensation like a claw tearing into my chest, was what a broken heart felt like.

How had he lived for two years, constantly back and forth, feeling like this?

I know I had always believed he had substantial emotional strength. This proved it to me. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe. I had made him feel like this over and over again…and he stayed, always stayed, and took more and more pain. I was the one running away.

Was I running? I was doing my job, following orders. It still never occurred to me that I had a choice.

I was still standing there, blinking back tears, when Honey opened the door and pulled me back into the room with Ellie. Another girl was fixing Ellie's veil, so fortunately Ellie didn't see me. I know Honey gave me a strange look and asked me if everything was alright. I lied, smiling, putting on the greatest performance of my life.

Honey noticed the bridesmaid fixing Ellie's veil had a hole in her pantyhose. Honey sent me to find her husband, telling me to tell him she needed the backup hosiery. Dr. Woodcomb left to do as she'd asked, but Morgan was there, waiting. He told me Chuck forgot the rings.

It was a coded message, Chuck style, with his friend unsuspecting. Chuck knew that I knew he had the rings. But according to Morgan, Chuck had left.

Something was wrong.

Morgan was talking to himself in front of me, wondering how he was going to stall the wedding. I told him to do it, by any means necessary. I left to try and see what the problem was. I saw Ted Roark himself, along with a handful of his men, in the reception hall.

Beckman had reported he had been killed in the airstrike, but apparently, there hadn't been a body for confirmation. While I was looking in the door, I heard Chuck's father running up to me from behind, calling me. I shut the door and told Stephen about Roark. I asked him to go check on Ellie, after he asked me if I had a gun.

I didn't, of course. You don't bring a gun on a date. You don't bring a gun when you're standing up for the bride at her wedding. I wasn't here because of my job.

Strangely, I noticed Stephen not being quite as cool towards me as he had been the night before. Because he was appealing to the spy, not the girl. He was comfortable with me as Chuck's handler, his protector–just not his real girlfriend.

I didn't have a gun, but, I thought as I ran to the back entrance, there was a good chance I could find some knives, either in the kitchen, or on the gift table. It was a wedding, after all. Kitchen gifts made perfect sense.

I made my way towards the gift table, ripping the bottom half of my dress off as its tightness was restricting my ability to move. I started opening the packages, hoping I would find some cutlery, crouched down behind the table where Roark couldn't see me.

Chuck burst through the door. He was arguing with Roark about the Intersect. Somehow, he must have threatened Ellie, demanding the cube that was under lock and key in Castle. Chuck must have left to go get it, needing Morgan to stall. So why was he here? Did he actually bring the cube?

Then I heard Bryce. Roark did think Bryce was the Intersect. Chuck must have run into him in Castle. Bryce offered himself in place of everyone, moving to stand in front of Chuck to shield him from Roark. Bryce, ever James Bond, was here to help, to save the day. Although, to be fair, he didn't bring an awful lot of firepower with him to do that, all things considered. I think he thought I might have been armed, for he too thought I was just pretending for all of this.

I went through my knives in no time, and not long after, he was out of bullets. We were all taken at gunpoint. The room was in absolute shambles. Dishes were broken, tables overturned, cake and decorations destroyed.

I was trying to think of a way out when the place exploded, literally. Apparently, Chuck had called Casey. He crashed through the skylights of the reception hall with his troop of marines. We ran for cover, under a hail of machine gun fire. I don't know how the crowd waiting for the wedding didn't hear it, other than the very loud "stalling" technique which was Jeffster and their very apt rendition of "Mr. Roboto."

Casey got the situation under control, despite the completely ruined reception. He ordered us to go back to the wedding, that he would call the cleaners. It was an elaborate clean up, and everything might not be perfect, but they could get it presentable again with the time the ceremony would take.

Chuck and I were running back to get Ellie. I tried to think of a plausible reason I could tell Ellie about my dress being torn. She was in the hallway when we caught up to her.

That was when the sprinklers went off. Jeffster included pyrotechnics in their show–not suitable for the venue.

We all stood there, getting drenched. It was like the water washed away Ellie's hopes and her dreams. Her composure crumbled and her face fell. Fighting tears, she said only two words.

"Wedding canceled."

Guests ran from the building and everything got wetter and wetter, all of Ellie's dreams drowned and water logged. We tried to say something, but Ellie was beyond talking. I had never seen her like this, completely devastated, to the point where she couldn't even look at us, let alone speak.

It was barely controlled chaos after that. Chuck's father started circulating, telling everyone the wedding was canceled for today. We circled back and let Casey know what was going on. He stayed with the cleaners, who had less of a time crunch to remove all the debris. He took control of the prisoners as well. Devon took his parents and his extended family back to their hotel.

Chuck and I offered to take Ellie back to Echo Park, but she walked away from Chuck without even answering. She ended up getting a ride back with Morgan's mother and Big Mike.

Ellie's organza dress was ruined. The rented wool jackets and pants for the tuxedos the men were wearing were ruined. Ellie's day was ruined.

Chuck was even further sunken into despair. He sat on his bed in his room, talking to his father when I came in.

I asked him if he was ok.

He looked like he was about to burst into tears.

"No, I'm not. I'm not ok. I don't want to have to save my sister using a Special Forces team. I just want to be a normal guy who helps his sister in normal ways."

He didn't mean it as a dig at me, I know that. But it felt that way, one more reason. It seemed to validate my thinking–that I wasn't normal, and I would never fit into his normal life, one that was still eluding him because me and my world were still around him.

He started to talk about what he would do for her, if he could. He got this far away look on his face, then hyper focused. He jumped up from the bed and reached for his desk drawer, in between Stephen and me. He pulled out his pay packet, the one he had mentioned when he was asking me to travel with him.

His face transformed, the hopeless despair slowly changing to a gentle smirk. He said he knew how to fix it. He handed me the check and asked me if I had time for one more mission. I couldn't help but smile, looking up at him, seeing the same expression I had always seen, despite how much pain I had caused him.

I had to remind him, "It's not what a normal guy would do."

When he talked about me, I always equated normal as something positive, something to aspire to be. For him, normal meant ordinary. And Chuck was not ordinary, not once, not ever, not since the moment I had met him. Chuck was extraordinary. One in a million, the best of the best when it came to men, human beings. I wanted him to know that was what I meant when I said that. The smile he gave me in return was sweet, quintessential Chuck.

We had a lot of work to do, but we could do it. Ellie deserved it, after her plans were shattered because of Chuck's spy life.

Ellie's day wouldn't be ruined after all.

Mine, on the other hand, was about to get worse. My hopes would soar to heights I had never dreamed of, and then crash, beyond all hope of repair, before the day was over.