A/N: Ah! This is the end of the misery. I was as happy as Sarah when she found out Casey killed the mole to finish this chapter lol! I'm sure we've not reached the end of the contention and debate. She is harsh, awful to him when he sees her again. Hypocrite you say? Not believing him you say? I tried to explain that as best I could. As well as the dinner banter that contradicts Living Dead.

A/N: Another age old question…was she leaving to go with Chuck or Shaw? The writers left it the way they did, so we will never know. There is more than enough proof to argue she was planning on leaving with Chuck. She says she doesn't believe him, but in the restaurant she already says if you didn't kill the mole who did, meaning he has planted a seed of doubt. His confession of love moves her. He says 7:00 at the train station. Shaw was still in the hospital, so why the hurry to pack? Chuck. Then, there is the old framed photo on the nightstand. She was not displaying that picture when she was with Shaw. Why is it there? She's packing it, whatever…Chuck. Chuck. Casey telling her that only made it easier, lifted the weight of her guilt from her.

A/N: What Casey says is paramount to understanding all of it. Chuck wasn't a killer. Not like they are. The guy she met, the guy she fell for. The guy WHO KNOWS SHE IS A KILLER AND LOVES HER ANYWAY, ALWAYS HAS. That is the instant where he saves her, from her past, from herself.

In the morning, I got a text message that Chuck was in DC being processed. Apparently Beckman had sent for him immediately after she had learned Chuck had passed all of his requirements.

I felt hungover, my head aching, my eyes burning, my mouth and throat pasty and dry.

As I rose to get ready, this uncomfortably unfamiliar…loose…feeling overwhelmed me. I didn't know what was next, what the plan would be now that Chuck was officially an agent. Questions filled my head.

Chuck called me, probably 30 times, after that incident, all the way until he returned. I never returned a single call. I didn't have the slightest idea how to talk to him, what to say.

Would Beckman send him directly to Rome from DC? What had Chuck decided to tell his sister? Would Shaw and I leave for DC right away? How long would we have to wrap up operations in Castle?

My whole life, I had never had any concern with anything beyond my current mission, the current hour. The hope I had found when I was with Chuck had started me thinking of the future, for the very first time. And now, though that chance and that hope was gone, I couldn't shut off that future-thinking. I told myself I would go back to the way I was, that everything would fall back into place. In the meantime, I would have to navigate this unfamiliar place.

I tried not to think about how the way I had been before had not been really living, merely existing. I just hadn't had anything else to compare my life to. Like thinking something is white when the background is black, then seeing what you hold is almost yellow compared to something truly, brilliantly white.

Maybe standing next to Chuck had made me think I was white, but I was yellowed, like an old wedding dress. And Chuck himself had yellowed, faded, after what he had now become. What I had turned him into.

Chuck just ended up coming back to Burbank, although that wasn't part of the plan. As I found out later, Beckman was ready to send him to Rome, but he was…uncertain. She gave him a week and a ticket to anywhere, so he could collect himself, figure things out. He could have gone anywhere in the world, but he came back to Burbank…because I was there.

I guess when he got back, he talked to Morgan, Devon, and Casey first. He was thinking about building his team, his new spy team that would accompany him to Rome and his new assignment. Casey and Morgan, though they were civilians, had hope that they could somehow become part of that, however unofficially. Chuck had one thought and one thought only–he was going to win me back.

It wasn't even accurate, since he had never had me to begin with, not like that. Oh, he had me, almost since the first moment I saw him, but we weren't together the way our feelings had kept telling us we should be. We had gone back and forth, round and round, crushing each other in the process.

Now, everything was different. Something inside me had shifted once I believed that Chuck had killed Perry. Everything inside me had imploded upon itself. I had never been so close to losing complete control of myself, and I didn't know how to bury all of that. It was almost too much to bury.

It's worth saying here, I seem hypocritical, don't I? I had killed so many people I had stopped counting, although I was thinking by this point, the number was in the 20s. Casey, who had been my friend, was 18 years older than me and his number was probably double that, easily. Shaw, Cole, Bryce, Sam…all of them had killed multiple people. In the line of duty. As part of our jobs, what that job required. What Chuck had been ordered to do, as an agent, was no different. He was following his orders when I believed he had killed Perry.

I'm sure you think, how dare I hold Chuck in such disdain for being just like me and everyone else I had ever even remotely cared about?

I didn't, not for a second. Truth is, I couldn't. I loved him, even when I told myself, and Shaw, that I didn't, that I couldn't. But I felt that all of the reasons, all of the traits he possessed that I loved about him, were gone now, tainted and polluted.

Looking at Chuck was like looking at the ghost of someone I had killed, an innocent being who had done nothing wrong except trust me, when I asked him to. I had been haunted by the faces of my victims, but never so closely, never with a walking, talking specter, the specter of the only person I had ever truly loved, and more importantly, the only man who had ever loved me.

How could he still feel the same way about me, now that he knew what I was? I had spent all the time in the past with him hiding the real me from him, the assassin, though he chose to look deeper and find the woman inside. He could no longer look past her, because he had stood in her shoes. We were all split down the middle now, even Chuck.

He came to find me in Castle. I was inexcusably cold to him, in a way I had never been before. More than just distant or professional. Cold, visibly bitter, even hostile. It was self-hatred, turned outward.

He reiterated what I already knew–he went to DC, got his badge, and was made an agent. He was being sent to Rome. I congratulated him without looking at him, walking around him like he was bothering me.

He seemed…oddly…buoyant, I guess is the word. I was already crumbling, remembering what had happened to me after my Red Test. I was a mess for weeks, months even…and I don't think I ever fully recovered. I changed into a different person and buried the old me. How could he be there, going on and on about his villa and his status…Why was he acting like it was nothing? Chuck, who was all emotion…now more callus than anyone I had encountered? Had he changed so much that it was nothing to him now? And worse, how had I just missed it all?

It helped to fuel my outrage and my hostility.

He had promised, not that long ago, that he would always be the guy that I met for the first time. He had broken that promise, it seemed, the one I had most wanted him to keep.

He asked me to go with him to Rome.

Had he also lost the ability to read me as well? It seemed so, that he thought that everything was ok.

I told him I couldn't.

He insisted Beckman said he could choose his own team, and that he wanted me.

I told him I was going to DC with Shaw.

I tried to ignore it, but I heard his breath halt when I said that.

"Wait a minute. Wasn't this the plan?" he asked as he came closer to me. I still wasn't making eye contact with him. "There's nothing stopping us from being together now. I passed my spy test."

He was thinking of the stake out, the kiss we had almost shared, the things he had said.

But now everything had changed. The pain inside me flared, screaming, and I covered it with cold, with ice.

"That's why I can't be with you, ok?" I said as I finally looked at him. All of that emotion was there in his eyes, the same I had seen on the stake out. "You're not the same guy that I fell for." I had to look away, grabbing paperwork that disguised how my hands were shaking.

It was true, but not in the way that I thought. Saying more than that would have required a level of vulnerability that I couldn't show him. He was the only one who had ever seen it like that from me, but now he was different, like everyone else, someone I needed to guard myself from. Acknowledging that hurt more than anything.

He didn't understand. He honestly didn't understand. That should have been a clue to me that something was not quite right. Had I not been lying broken at the bottom of an impossibly deep hole, I might have been able to use my spy senses to figure it out.

I mistook his innocence for callousness, a mistake I almost didn't live to regret.

I reeled on him. "You killed somebody, Chuck! I saw you kill the mole!"

I was waiting for his reply, his defense, something. He went pale, the deep crease between his eyebrows pronounced.

His voice was shaky. He told me he knew what I thought I saw, but that it was more complicated than what I believed. He told me he needed me to believe him.

"I don't."

Saying it now, all these years later, I still can't believe that I said that. All I can say is I was not thinking clearly, devastated with a consuming guilt. I believed what I thought I saw. It was Chuck, me, and Perry. I didn't shoot Perry, and Perry was dead. Any sane person would then conclude that Chuck had killed him.

I didn't stay around at the railyard while the cleaners took care of Perry's body. I didn't read the report.

What I know now, I should have believed him. I never saw Chuck shoot Perry, I only heard the shot from a distance away. It would have been easy to prove that Chuck was telling the truth. I heard two gunshots. However, Chuck's firearm, that I gave him at the restaurant, had only been fired once. The bullet in Perry's body didn't ballistically match Chuck's gun.

It matched Casey's government-issued firearm, missing from Castle at the same time.

Two minutes. That's all it would have taken me to prove Chuck was telling me the truth.

But the wall was up, my feelings frozen over, in the last-ditch attempt I had made at protecting myself.

Shaw interrupted us. I had no idea how much of that interaction he heard. He pretended like he knew nothing, and quickly disappeared with Chuck to talk about Rome. The fact that I wondered if Shaw had heard me lamenting over Chuck's guilt should have made me suspicious.

Again, shutting down your emotions, as a way of protecting yourself, means it all goes away. Good, bad, indifferent. Until nothing is left at all. My own personal dose of laudanol.

Shaw seemed surprised to see him. I verbally dismissed him. I felt him looking back over his shoulder at me, this almost palpable look of pain on his face.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning up in Castle, tying up loose ends. Shaw and I were flying out together the next day. Shaw invited me out to dinner that night, as a sort of way to put a bow on our time in Burbank and start fresh in DC. At least that was how he phrased it.

I needed something to distract myself from it all. I remembered how it had been when we were in DC, how the distance had helped. I imagined more distance in the hopes that some of that pain would start to recede.

So I tried to put everything out of my mind, even for a little while. I was even laughing when Shaw told a stupid joke as we walked into the restaurant together. The restaurant was beautiful and romantic, and we had the perfect table. He ordered for both of us, like he had when we were in DC. He ordered a bottle of wine, just like he had in DC.

He apologized once the waiter walked away after pouring the wine. I asked him why he would be apologizing for something so amazing. He apologized for the fact that we hadn't done this sooner. Meaning, a real date, like a couple would go on. That was the distinction.

The kind of couple we were, of course, but that was par for the course.

He toasted leaving Burbank. We both wanted to leave, at that time, for different reasons.

Before the waiter brought the salads, Shaw got called away for a phone call. While I was waiting, Chuck appeared in the restaurant. He approached my table, asking if Shaw's seat was taken.

I asked him what he was doing there. He sat across from me. I remember looking around nervously, expecting Shaw to be back at any minute, anticipating an altercation in a public place.

"I'm here for you."

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to say that you'll come with me to Rome."

"Well, you know that I can't, and you know why." I tried to be firm.

"Look, Sarah, I don't want to have to make a scene in front of all these very nice people, but I will literally do anything to change your mind."

"Well, then tell me what really happened at the train tracks." His bizarre rejection of the facts that I had believed I had seen had been quietly nagging at me. Was I grasping at shadows? Perhaps. Maybe I just wanted to see how good a liar he had really turned into, if he would lie to my face. "If you didn't kill the mole, then who did?"

Knowing now why he wouldn't tell me twists at me like a knife.

"Look, I don't want there to be any secrets or lies between us, ever again. So, please, let me just have this one. And I promise I will never lie to you." He was so honest, so sincere…I had started to question.

What if he was telling the truth?

I had put up a wall, but Chuck had always found a way to get inside them, and he was doing it again.

"Listen, I know that you think I'm not that same guy that you met that first day at the Buy More. And you know what? You're right. Okay? You're right. The guy that I was back then hated himself for not knowing what he wanted to do with the rest of his life or who he wanted to spend it with, but now? Finally, now…I know. I want to be a spy. And I want to be with you."

The love I could see in his eyes seemed to reach out, like a hand, and touch me from across the table.

"What are you saying?" I asked breathlessly.

"Sarah, I'm saying…that I–"

He was going to tell me he loved me.

Only, he was interrupted by Shaw and Devon crashing through the window onto our table.

I was in complete shock, and then the situation quickly devolved into chaos. I heard Shaw tell Devon, "Next time, take out the guy with the gun."

In the chaos that ensued, the police were called. I know Shaw called for the CIA cleaners as well, only because Chuck was there, and he was technically an agent. But Devon, Morgan, and Casey (all outside helping Chuck quote unquote win me back) were arrested. Whatever Chuck was going to say was quickly forgotten in the melee, and my irritation at the seemingly childish ploy ended everything prematurely.

Shaw told me as he dropped me off at my hotel that originally it was Chuck and his friends interfering on our date, but that the actual Ring had also intervened. An operative, whom Devon had interrupted, had told Shaw the Ring Director wanted to speak with him. He was distracted, uneasy, and I didn't question why he just left without really saying goodbye or explaining anything.

I went to sleep thinking about what Chuck had said, trying to make sense of it. I was a sea of swirling emotions. Was I just wishful thinking, looking for something, some foolish hope?

The next morning, Shaw and I were in Castle when Beckman called. She explained that the Ring agent who had cornered Shaw the night before was the same man caught on surveillance video extracting a data drive from inside the body of the mole. She wanted Shaw to recover the data drive.

He offered to do more. He offered himself as a human target, taking up the director on his wish to meet, so that his location could be determined and then Beckman could launch an airstrike.

I was horrified at what I was hearing. I thought he was being hasty, not assessing the risks. He was adamant, so Beckman agreed. I argued with him.

He told me he would trade his own life to take down the people who killed his wife.

It acted as a verbal shove, pushing me away from him. More of that animosity, rearing its head again. His face was twitching, like he could barely contain his emotions. This man, who had schooled Chuck on personal attachments, now so blinded by the need for revenge that he was sacrificing his life to finish them off, for what they took from him.

I don't think I ever felt like I really knew him, nor he me, but in that moment, he felt like a stranger to me. It chilled me to the core.

I tried to stop him, but he told me once more, that it wasn't about what I wanted. I watched him contact the Ring and offer himself for a meeting.

I told him he was being rash, not thinking. He told me to act like a spy. He had said that before, always as a way to belittle me when I was putting emotion ahead of the mission. But wasn't he doing that? Risking one of the most highly trained agents the CIA had on the Ring task force for a suicide mission? A mission that looked suspect from the outside? Was he really that dense to believe he could just lead them to their base and that would be it?

He wasn't acting like a spy. He was acting like a vengeful widower, but he didn't seem to see it. And he wouldn't listen to me. He said he was sorry, and then he kissed me. I kissed him back, desperate at that moment. Loss after loss…I couldn't take one more, even if it was him.

Chuck came in when we were kissing. I didn't notice until after I watched Shaw swallow the tracking device. He walked past me and said, "Take care of her, Chuck."

It turns out that was the third time someone had said that to Chuck, only this was the only one I witnessed. My father and Bryce had both, at separate times, asked him to do that.

Chuck told me that later, on the train. He said he knew what they meant, for I was the last person who needed physical defense, especially from Chuck before he was trained. But it was never about my body. It was about my heart. Each of them, in their own way, knew that Chuck was what I needed, what I wanted. My father and Bryce genuinely cared, in their own way. I remembered Bryce's spy will message to me. I think Shaw said it to Chuck with bravado, and less emotion. It didn't strike me as sincere.

Chuck approached me after Shaw left. His voice was so gentle when he asked me, "Where's he going?" He could see how shaken I was.

I told Chuck about Shaw's plans to sacrifice himself. I was determined to follow him, not let him do it. It was ironic, but that was something that Chuck would have done.

Chuck, being Chuck, saw what I was doing, and locked me in Castle. I got upset with him, but he told me he would go after Shaw. I didn't understand why, until he told me, it was because he knew how much I cared about Shaw.

My legs almost gave out. The night before he had interrupted our date to plead his own case, for why he wanted to be with me. But he was willing to risk his own life to save the man he thought I wanted more than him.

That was how much he loved me, selflessly. I always knew that, but I had let myself be blind to it when things got hard.

I was close to hysterical when I realized I couldn't break out of Castle. The situation had gotten drastically worse. Now, I could lose them both.

I saw Casey on the monitor and got an idea. I accessed the electrical box in Castle that was attached to the auto speaker case in the Buy More near where Casey was. I pulled out the wires and created an SOS display with the lights. It took Casey a while, but eventually he saw it and made his way to Castle. I opened the door and let him come in, bypassing security. Casey let me out and I told him what was happening.

I found the location on the monitor, then told Casey that he couldn't stay.

I drove like a madwoman through the traffic in LA. I don't even remember the trip, just the desperation of needing to get there as soon as possible.

I arrived at the location just as the bomber flew overhead. The building exploded in a fireball as I stood helplessly in the parking lot. I was too late. The compression of the blast knocked me to my feet and I covered my ears as more things exploded in a chain reaction.

I couldn't hear, couldn't think, couldn't feel…I couldn't even breathe…and then I saw Chuck, running away from the flaming building with Shaw slung over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

I had never cried tears of joy in my life before, but the sight of Chuck, ok, along with Shaw, overwhelmed me with relief like I have never known.

Chuck was incredible. As if I needed more proof of that.

Chuck called in the cleaners and waited for the medical transport for Shaw. Chuck told me he was unconscious only, tased he thought; that was how Chuck found him inside the base. No one else was there. It was a base of some kind, but not the main base. I couldn't help thinking that if Chuck hadn't gone after him, Shaw would have sacrificed himself for nothing. Chuck told me he would fill Beckman in if I wanted to go to the hospital with Shaw. I declined, realizing I was still angry at Shaw for his rashness, his disregard for me.

Beckman thanked me afterward, though I made sure to tell her it was all Chuck. She wished me luck in DC and then signed off.

"How's Shaw doing?" Chuck asked from behind.

I had checked with the hospital right before contacting Beckman. "He's still unconscious, but the doctors say he'll make a full recovery, thanks to you."

"Well, I mean, you know he would have done the same for me." Chuck actually believed that. In that second, all I could think of was how many times Shaw wouldn't have done something like that for Chuck. Shaw was a world class spy, but Chuck was a world class human being.

Even if I had polluted that goodness somehow, he could still let it shine.

"Look, I don't want to pester you, Sarah, or become some nuisance that you can't avoid. I've seen Morgan go down that road far too many times to count. And since I've already given the fancy, eloquent version of this speech before, right now I'm just gonna be blunt and honest."

He stood a little taller, set his face with determination, and said emphatically, "I love you."

Hearing him say it, finally, after all that time, almost knocked me off my feet. Turns out he had told his father, Morgan, and Ellie how he felt before then, just not me. My eyes started to burn with emotion, but he wasn't finished.

"One more time just because it feels really nice to say: I love you. I feel like I've been bottling this up forever. I love you."

"Chuck, you don't have–"

"I'm getting out of hand, but…look, you were right in Prague. You and I–we're perfect for each other, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you away from everyone else and away from this spy life."

"Chuck, I've made a commitment, and not just to Shaw."

"Don't go." He stepped towards me, determined. "Don't do it. Leave with me instead. Tonight at 7:00, Union Station, we go to Mexico and after that, anywhere that you want. I would however like to go and see the Eiffel Tower at some point if that's at all possible. Don't answer now. Don't say a word. I don't want to have to convince you. I just want you to show up. I'm gonna kiss you now…if that's ok."

My bones had turned to rubber, all Chuck's words spinning inside my head. He was apologizing for Prague, trying to set right the mistake he knew he now made. He asked me if it was ok. I couldn't help remembering the first time Shaw kissed me, in that room, when Chuck was listening…he didn't ask, he told me.

My heart was racing as he took my face in his hands and kissed me. I kissed him back, restrained, feeling like my emotions were like a bottle of soda, shaken, ready to explode, all jumbled together.

I hadn't kissed him since the train station…but he had been restrained then. God, was the last time really outside his sister's apartment the night of her rehearsal dinner? Remembering the way he tasted, how much I missed this, the time between felt like a different life.

Was it enough? That we would be together, damaged souls on both sides? I didn't know.

But he wasn't done.

"I'm gonna go home and pack, both summer and winter wear. I love you, Sarah Walker. I always have." He turned, the way he always did, his body first and then his head, and walked away.

I knew he didn't want me to say anything, but the truth is, after he said that, I couldn't have spoken anyway. He loved me. Me. The spy, the assassin…the girl, the woman.

How could I just walk away from him, from that?

I went back to my hotel room to pack. I told myself it didn't matter, nothing mattered but Chuck. We would figure everything else out later.

Casey knocked on my door in the midst of my task.

I was surprised, but I let him in. He told me he couldn't stay, that he was only here to tell me something about Chuck. I told Casey pleading his case wasn't necessary. I couldn't imagine what else it was that Casey was going to tell me.

He told me Chuck didn't know he was here. He told me he wanted to tell me something, in case it changed anything.

He told me Chuck didn't kill the mole; he did.

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

I will never forget what Casey said after that. He said Chuck wasn't a killer. That he just wasn't wired like we were–him and me.

No, Chuck was…Chuck. And all the time, he loved me. A killer. I had balked, believing I couldn't have truly loved him if I had destroyed him. All the while, he had seen the broken, destroyed woman inside me and loved her anyway, in spite of it, in order to save me from it.

In just one instant, everything that I carried, all the weight, the baggage, the misery of my life just fell away, like I had finally shed the irons around me all my life.

I thanked Casey, and he wished me a good life. I knew it would be, because I would be with Chuck.

I changed my clothes and got ready to meet Chuck at the train station. I took the photograph of us, the one Casey took outside Roan Montgomery's house, and tucked it inside my suitcase. I had put it away after Prague, but I found it when I was packing, and now, I wanted it with my things. I tossed the gun on the bed, one final gesture, in hope for our new life.

We were headed for a terrible detour, but at least, for the last time.

It was epic, however–a detour for the ages.