A/N: For a while I've wanted to write a story where Bryce is a thoroughly good guy who looks out for his friend and has no ulterior motives. Well, here's that story.

I've been watching a lot of "Death in Paradise" recently. It's a British show where a British detective is assigned to help the local police with all the crimes on a small Caribbean island. There are so many deaths that it's surprising that anyone wants to live or take vacations there! Well, this isn't going to be full of deaths, but if you've watched the show, think of the café / diner here operating something like Catherine's Bar in the show, but with indoor seating.

This is set in 2012, and Chuck finished at Stanford six years earlier. So, five years later than in the show.

No betas involved, so it may be full of typos, Anglicisms and mistakes. If you spot any that are bad enough that you want me to correct them, drop me a PM.

This first chapter is basically a setup for the rest of the story. Many people seem to want all the background at the start rather than to discover facts as the story unfolds, so this is me giving most of that (most).

Caribbean Retreat

Chapter 1

Chuck occasionally sat on the beach after work and reminisced about the significant changes in his life. He'd had a few!

His mom leaving when he was nine was pretty significant. He'd thought it was his fault and it was only later that their dad finally told his children that she'd been a CIA operative and had gone on a mission and not returned. Once he had the skills, Chuck had hacked into the CIA systems and found that Mary Gunter had been killed on that mission. She wasn't ever coming back.

When his dad left them four years after his mom, it was partly because of Chuck and Ellie, because he went into hiding as the CIA wanted him, or rather his other persona, Orion, that had worked for the agency. He was protecting them by abandoning them! Pretty ironic. It felt like abandonment.

Meeting Bryce Larkin at college seemed low key compared to those events, but played a significant part in his future.

Looking back on Stanford, that had enabled Chuck to mature significantly. He thought that even now, six years after finishing there. He'd been so full of hope. So full of plans for the future, both for his career and with the girl he'd been with for two years.

He smiled ruefully about the romance plans. He wasn't upset about not getting to propose to Jill, but he was disappointed in her, just disappearing before he got to do that. He'd tracked her life from that point on. He expected her to become some high flying scientist in a major pharmaceutical company, but instead she'd become what he could only think of as a spy, but one who just took seduction missions. He often wondered if that was all he was, a mission. Or maybe she was just training on him for what she would do from then on.

He felt lucky to have avoided that bullet.

Of course, Bryce had also been a spy, and did that sort of mission, as well. Chuck often wondered why it seemed less repellent with his friend. Was it conditioning from spy movies and books, like James Bond?

Bryce was keen to point out that the spy life wasn't all like that and Chuck knew that there was a big difference between fiction and reality. His circumstance was a harsh reminder of that!

Losing Jill had felt bad at the time, but Chuck's life really changed shortly after graduation.

The CIA had been sent the results of a test that identified him as the perfect candidate for a new project. His dad reappeared and with Bryce's help got Chuck away from the CIA grasp, but Chuck had had to go into hiding. That initially was with his dad deep in a forest out of sight of everyone.

Now he was on this Caribbean island, mostly out of sight, but surely the CIA had stopped looking for him after six years, so he ventured out occasionally. Not often, but he did mix with the clientele and, like now, ventured to the beach when it was quiet.

He and his dad had set up the place he lived to have internet access, which enabled him to observe the world. He only communicated with his dad and his sister, but even that was via secure links, and only occasionally.

It wasn't the life he'd expected, but it was comfortable.

As he watched the sun setting over the ocean, he corrected that, though. It was idyllic.

This beach he sat on was better than the one he used to go to in California because it was just across the road from where he now lived.

Bryce Larkin lived above the place he worked with his friend. He often wondered about finding a separate house, but this worked for both of them, so he never did anything.

Now that Chuck ventured out in the evenings and on their days off, they weren't on top of each other all the time.

Chuck hadn't spent any time with women because of Jill Roberts. So, Bryce didn't need to remind Chuck of that by taking women to his room, so he traveled for that sort of companionship. To one woman, in fact.

Bryce had warned Chuck that Jill was bad news. He couldn't put his finger on what seemed wrong about her but there was something. When she just summarily dumped his friend and disappeared without trace, Bryce knew he'd been right, but never mentioned that to Chuck who was completely gutted. After that, Chuck shied away from talking to women.

Of course, that whole thing about the CIA wanting to recruit his friend had blown up shortly after which took both their minds off women. Getting Chuck away from Stanford and to his dad had been the first time Bryce had gone against the Company, but it was the right thing to do.

Of course, it started his doubts about working for the CIA. Leaving hadn't been his choice, but he didn't regret it. His disillusionment with the spy life had increased since that event. He wanted to do good, but didn't like how he was expected to behave. He also found other spies to be very different from his view of how they should be.

Near the end, he'd been paired up with a female agent his age, as a husband and wife team. She was beautiful and seemed to be an amazing actress, able to become any persona, but off mission she was cold as ice. No thawing was possible. She was also a deadly killer. To be honest, she scared him.

The third mission for the Andersons was a turning point for him. They'd retrieved what they came for and she was carrying it. Then they were caught by the guards in the Mexican street. Bryce was held, with the guard behind him, a gun to his head.

He still got a chill as he remembered her cooly lifting her gun and shooting the guard in the head. The bullet nicked his ear on the way past. They ran and she wasn't hit at all. However, Bryce took a bullet in his shoulder and one in his hip. She just stopped and shot each of the guards that shot him, and then he had to have assistance as they escaped.

That afternoon, she calmly removed the bullet from the muscle of his shoulder, wielding her knife with precision. The hip wound was deeper and into the bone, so she couldn't tackle that one.

All the time, she was focused more on getting the case back to DC. She seemed as cold as the ice that gave her the name she disliked so much.

Bryce spent time in the CIA hospital on their return, while she went solo. He never heard from her again, and, to be honest, he wasn't upset about that. He knew she was the reason he was still alive, but he was glad that he'd never see her again, and he was sure that she felt the same. He was a hindrance to her. When he thought about that escape, he wondered why she hadn't just abandoned him. Probably because he might talk under torture, and certainly not because he was a fellow human being, let alone someone she cared about.

His next mission was on his own, and although successful, his inability to run resulted in him being shot in his knee, shattering it. He managed to kill both men after him and got to the local hospital, but he knew this was the end of his spy career.

After spending time in recovery, he traveled to Langley and met with Director Graham who agreed that Bryce couldn't continue as an agent, so he retired at the age of twenty-eight.

During his convalescence he'd heard about the program to make super spies and he was glad to be out of it all. Omaha sounded like something out of science fiction. Stephen Bartowski got in touch with him telling him that the project was one Chuck had been targeted for. The older Bartowski thought his son should move again, further away. It seemed that the strong father / son bond was becoming strained. They were so alike and so strong-willed that Bryce could imagine the clashes.

The reminder about his friend made Bryce decide what he wanted to do as he was leaving the Company. They had joked at college about opening a café with Chuck creating the amazing meals that both he and his sister produced. Cakes, too. Chuck was always popular for that.

Now they've done just that. The only real difference from their plans was that Chuck rarely came out to mingle with the customers, preferring to hide in the kitchen or back office. So very different from the social animal he'd been at college.

Still, this life was better for him than being hidden away in a cabin deep in a forest arguing with his dad. Bryce also knew his time on the beach was special to Chuck.

Sarah Walker sat in one of the chairs facing the director's assistant. She knew the woman didn't like her. Very few in the Company did. Not that she did anything to endear herself to them, but the dislike, and sometimes fear, she engendered got her down more and more these days. She'd been able to ignore it in the past, but the toll the spy life had taken on her was becoming oppressive now, and everything seemed to get to her.

She knew the most recent mission had put her in this state. She'd just returned after saving a baby from her handler, and quite possibly the whole of the CIA, too. She should feel good about that, but she just felt upset.

She was sure that her mother would look after the little girl and give her the life that she'd always wanted. The problem was that she'd grown attached to the baby, and then had to leave her. Not only that, she'd just met her mom after twenty-two years and had to part with her, too.

That time, first with the baby and then with her mom showed her a life that she'd shut herself off from.

She couldn't be with them, but surely she'd done her duty for long enough now. Ten years work, after the years in the Farm, must be enough.

She now found herself completely disillusioned with the Company. She'd had enough of the blood on her hands and that last mission had soaked her in it. Why was she always the one to be sent to kill people? No, enough was enough. She was going to ask to retire.

The woman looked up and nodded for her to enter the director's office. No words, just a nod of the head. That summed up Sarah's verbal interaction with her perfectly.

Langston Graham was sitting at his desk looking unhappy. That didn't bode well for Sarah's request.

She sat opposite him, as always, and waited for him to speak.

"Where's the package?" he asked eventually, still looking done at the paper in his hand. It was probably the report she'd emailed in, so he already knew the answer she was going to give.

"Killed when Ryker shot at me. If I hadn't been holding her he would've succeeded in killing me."

He looked up. "But you killed him instead."

That was one good thing that she'd achieved while in Budapest. "Yes, sir."

He sighed. "Well, he's no great loss." He focused on her. "Are you ready for your next assignment?"

He never asked this, so he could obviously tell she wasn't. "Sir, I had to kill eighteen Hungarian Mafia men and one rogue CIA operative while out there. So much blood to add to what's already on my hands. I can't take it anymore."

He sat back, steepled his hands and stared at her for a minute.

"This pushed you too far," he stated rather than questioned. "Are you saying you want to leave the Company?"

She tensed up, but replied, "Yes, sir. I am. I've done everything asked of me for the last ten years, without question, but I can't continue like this."

Surprisingly, he didn't question that, nor did he just refuse. He sat and pondered for another minute or so.

"You're making a decision after a very painful assignment. Take a leave of absence for six months to think about this. I'll hold the job open for you. I don't want to lose such a valuable operative. If after that time, you still want to leave, then we'll process it."

She felt such a relief, but then he added, "Consider what you can do if you leave, though. You've never been a civilian or done a civilian's job."

She hadn't really thought about what she'd do, but now she had six months to do that.

She stood and thanked him. He nodded his dismissal and she walked out of his office.

She didn't give the woman at the desk outside any attention. She kept walking until she got to her car.

Sarah decided to take a vacation before thinking about her future. She'd never taken a vacation in her life.

Her dad thought his way of life was a vacation, but she'd learned that it definitely was not.

And then she'd joined the CIA and been determined to do good to make up for her past. However, she hated downtime, so went from assignment to assignment without a break. After her Red Test, all her assignments seemed to be assassinations and she certainly didn't want downtime to dwell on those!

She'd been injured a few times and ended up in the CIA hospital. God, that was awful! Not just the recovery time, but the thinking time too!

So, she decided to take some time in the sun. She didn't want to stay in America and have to mix with fellow Americans, so she chose a lesser known Caribbean island that wasn't an American tourist destination. It would take two flights and then a ferry ride to get there. It certainly felt remote. Perfect!

There was only one hotel on the island in the main town. She'd booked for three nights there. During that time, she planned to find some local rented accommodation. There must be some, just not displayed to foreigners.

However, before she could leave DC, she needed to go to the shopping mall. She wanted new clothes. Clothes that she had bought, to make a fresh start. She didn't want to be wearing CIA provided items. She certainly wasn't going to wear the skimpy bikinis they supplied. Too many bad memories of wandering hands on missions associated with those. She'd buy less-revealing ones for her vacation.

This fresh start would be free of all those associations. She hoped that nothing from her spy life intruded.

A/N: So, that's the set up chapter. More in a week's time.

Thoughts?