A/N: Well look at that, two days in a row! I'm back, baby, lol. A few wtf's in this chapter. My first time through, I never thought that Chuck didn't tell Ellie about the Intersect specifically, not until the end of season 4 and I was like, oh, I guess he never specifically told Devon or Ellie. Just a plot ploy. I mean, how else would he have explained everything to Ellie then? How did Morgan deal with Alex's mother when he was getting her off grid? Weird. Chuck tells Sarah about getting the governor back...without ever officially telling her what it was or why. I have her deduce it, but it was a plot hole. Why was Casey getting Ellie when Shaw was still at large? Maybe to help Chuck... Anyway, the first episode of Season 4, though months later in real time, is supposed to be right after this and all the zigzagging on the map covers the months that we all missed. I ended this chapter before the explosion and the video message. The next chapter is an in-betweener, that explains getting Ellie up to speed, Sarah and Chuck on the same page, etc. So Chuck can start lying to her again. Ugh. Anyway...enjoy.
Once the vehicle started moving, it was deathly silent inside. The hazy sun filtering through the windshield was the only light, which created an eerie sense of foreboding. Casey was Casey, a fatalistic soldier, although more optimistic than usual. It warmed my aching heart that it was because of Chuck and how much Casey cared about him. It was the only positive thing I clung to as I felt the last few minutes of my life were ticking down.
Chuck was right. There wasn't anyone left to save us.
I'd never seen Chuck acting the way he was. I know he was in shock. It was like our circumstances didn't even register with him. He barely acknowledged me, he was so far inside himself, grief-stricken and guilt-ridden. I slid as close to him as I could, needing to feel the warmth of him against me, thinking it would be the last time I ever could.
I had been prepared for the end of my life since I'd started with the CIA. It was part of that life, a life I had given away in service to them. I had been willing to risk my life for Chuck, even sacrifice myself for him if necessary, both when it was my job and later, when I knew I loved him. This, though, was wrong. I had so much to live for now, a real life in my hands. It wasn't fair that someone as evil as Daniel Shaw would win, that he would take everything away from me, from us.
My thoughts started to wander morbidly. How would he do it? Definitely Casey first, because he was the strongest, the greatest threat. And Shaw would have taken great satisfaction from killing Chuck or me while the other watched. Who did he hate more, me or Chuck? Me, because I killed his wife. He would make me watch while he murdered Chuck and I would take that sight with me into the eternal darkness. I forced those thoughts away, not wanting to miss my opportunity to comfort Chuck now, when I still could.
"Look, I know that you're hurting, Chuck, but you have to know that there is nothing you could have done, ok? It's not your fault." I was hoping to get through to him.
"Yes, it is. I'm the one who downloaded the Intersect 2.0. I'm the one who chose to be a spy, and it's him who paid the price." I didn't want that to fill his thoughts at the end. It wasn't fair. Chuck did all of that because he was a good person, because he wanted to help people. Even his father knew that; Chuck was just not able to see it with his father's blood still wet on his clothes.
The vehicle rolled to a stop and we could hear the brakes squealing. My heart started pounding and my palms started sweating.
Shaw opened the back door, looking slick with his sunglasses on. Casey growled at the sight of him.
"Everybody good? Comfy?" he mocked.
If looks could kill, Chuck would have ended Shaw right there. His despair was turning to anger.
Shaw unlocked the cage door and slid the keys on the floor.
"Uncuff yourselves. It should look like you were trying to escape when I kill you." He pulled his gun out of his holster. He stood there with his gun on us, so we complied. Chuck was last. I held my breath.
What happened next happened so fast, I don't recall individual details. One minute I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded gun and the next I feel like I'm in the path of a speeding locomotive. I felt the vehicle rise up and then crash back down on its side. I bounced off of Chuck and Casey and we ended up in a pile, pressed against the dented cage. I may have blacked out for a few seconds because I know I bumped my head against the metal door.
When I could get my bearings, I called, "Chuck, are you ok?" I could feel his legs underneath me, but I couldn't see his face. The seconds it took him to respond were an eternity.
Until I heard his strained voice, "Yeah…I think so…"
"Everyone ok?"
I jumped at the sound. It was Devon. Devon Woodcomb. What in the world?
"We're here to save you." He reached in his hand and I felt Casey push off my leg to see, amazed, before he fell back down.
Shaw was nowhere in sight as Devon slowly pulled us one by one out of the demolished vehicle. I saw Casey's Crown Vic and Morgan behind the wheel. Morgan!
"How did you know we–"
Devon interrupted Chuck. "Ellie." His voice was tight, anguished. "She…followed you into the subway when you didn't come back."
Chuck made a sound, deep in his chest, guttural anguish upon realizing what she would have seen, which made her enlist her husband and Morgan to do this.
I was rushing into the backseat while Casey grumbled to Morgan about using his missile launcher. Chuck wasn't right behind me like I thought he would be. Then I heard him groaning in pain. I turned to see him buckled over. I reached for his arm, concerned he was hurt worse than he had originally thought. I saw Shaw in the distance, on his feet, thrown a good distance away from the armored car. I pulled Chuck into the car and Casey drove away under a hail of gunfire.
"What's the matter?" I asked Chuck as I watched him pressing on his temples. "What happened?"
He still didn't tell me the truth. He just said it was nothing, that he was fine.
Devon called Ellie and told her we were all safe. She must have told him where she was, where to meet her, because Devon told Casey which way to drive. She was about ten minutes away on a mountain road.
She stopped her car right in front of us. Casey had barely put the car in park when Chuck flung the door open. I saw Ellie get out and start running. Her face was a mask of pain and anguish. Her entire world had been shaken upside down and destroyed…but she was fearless in a way I think I had always known she could be. Witnessing it firsthand like that left me awestruck.
She launched herself at Chuck, squeezing him tightly. I heard the cry she let out once his arms were around her, all her fear and worry dissolving into her remaining grief, shared with him at that moment, acknowledging what they had both witnessed. Chuck held onto her for a long time.
Casey, Devon, Morgan and I all got out of the car and stood by.
I was the first one to speak, reminding everyone that Shaw would be hot on our tail.
In all my life, I will never forget the way Ellie looked at me then. Like she was looking at a stranger, someone I thought of as my best friend.
But, no, I reminded myself. The woman she thought of as her friend wasn't real. I had been lying to Ellie for three years. Maybe the underlying emotion had been real, but it was covered in layers of other lies whose parsing apart didn't matter to someone like Ellie. I felt friendless again, worse so because I knew what it was like to be Ellie's friend and it felt good, warm. Now, it was all ruined.
Once I remembered this time, after I lost my memory, I broke down and cried, finally understanding what I had done to her when I'd threatened her life. How she must have felt during that awful encounter. More proof of my sister-in-law's fearlessness. The good kind—not the kind that comes with having nothing to lose, but the kind required to defend that which you love beyond reason. That is Ellie, all the way through.
Chuck brought up the idea of running. He mentioned his father, what his father would have done, something that had protected his father for a long time, something that only failed when that advice was disregarded. Casey agreed and mentioned new identities, dropping off the grid. Morgan was quick to second the idea.
Ellie freaked out. Devon tried to calm her down, telling her it was for the best. She argued adamantly against it. She didn't believe in giving up and disappearing. She yelled at Devon, bringing up the fact that her father had just been murdered. She wanted to call the police, still in denial of how, well, unnormal we all were. She just didn't understand yet.
Casey stepped in and took her phone, warning of being tracked. She wouldn't hear of it and was about to storm off when Chuck rushed to her car and jumped into the passenger seat, telling her to wait. I could hear her screaming at him to get out of the car. It's only looking back in retrospect that I see how ironic her word choice there actually was. At the time, I was too upset, trying to make sense of the scene as it evolved.
I rushed to Ellie's window. "What's happening?"
I spoke to Ellie the same way I always had. It was second nature. She was, after all, my family, thanks to Chuck. Or at least she used to be.
"Is my husband safe with you?" she snapped at me. Her eyes went through me. She had no idea who I was. It felt like a slap in the face.
"Uh…yeah, why?" I didn't know what else to say. Ellie had never used that tone with me, ever.
"Because I need to talk to Chuck," she insisted through gritted teeth and then screeched the car away from me. I had never felt more alone in my life.
Chuck and Ellie were in the car for about 20 minutes. Chuck told me later what he said, what he explained to her. About Bryce sending him the email and all that entailed, about Casey and me, and the history there about their father and his life as a spy. He also explained later that he didn't mention the Intersect, not as a specific thing that was inside his head. Devon hadn't known that either, only Morgan, courtesy of the talk Chuck had with him in the dojo when the Ring had taken them both prisoner.
Chuck convinced her that our team could go after Shaw, so we wouldn't have to disappear. Ellie made him promise that once he did that, he would quit the CIA. He agreed.
I wish he had talked to me before unilaterally agreeing to her demand, but I understand why he didn't. Her biggest concern was the promise she had made to her father that she would protect Chuck, and his spy life was just more than she could handle and keep that promise. Chuck was all she had, and the idea of him living his life in danger was too much. He knew how traumatized she had been, after what she'd witnessed, and I would be remiss in discounting the amount of pain that Chuck was in after experiencing his father dying in his arms.
I could have been angry at Ellie for asking him to give that up. I mean, that was who he was, what he wanted to do. He had chosen it. His father understood, why couldn't Ellie? But their father was dead because of it. Sometimes, the Ellie that came from deep inside her chest was still 12 years old, forced to grow up too fast, reacting as a half child, half woman might. I couldn't be angry at her for loving him the way she did. I only hoped at this point that someday, she could forgive me for lying to her all those years.
Devon got in the car with Ellie and we followed them in Casey's car. On the way, Casey tasked Morgan with going after Alex and helping her go off the grid to protect her. Morgan and Casey thought up a reasonable excuse that explained why to her mother, without revealing that Alex knew her father was alive. He dropped Morgan off and then he took us to Echo Park.
Chuck went inside with Ellie while I stayed outside and checked over Ellie's car, top to bottom, to make sure that it wasn't bugged. He explained everything to Ellie, that they needed to use cash and just run to a random place without telling any of us where. Chuck would reach out when everything was safe.
We assembled in Casey's apartment with the security perimeter in place. Chuck was able to hack into the security system for the location where they were holding Beckman. He was able to open a channel to her.
She was skeptical at first. I'll also never forget the way Beckman reacted when she knew it was Chuck.
"Chuck, thank God!"
How things had changed.
Chuck told her we were taking down the Ring, but we didn't know how. She explained that she had been in LA for a secret meeting of spies and that the Ring, with Shaw's help, was taking over the CIA and the NSA. She mentioned the location and the fact that the five Elders would be there. Saying that made Chuck flash.
Chuck did his best to hide it, but that time, I saw the flash cause him pain. I was worried, but he brushed it off, just saying it was a lot of data.
We needed to infiltrate the conference and take down Shaw and the Ring. I said we could do it, but it was a mission unlike any we had done before. And it would be just the four of us, with no back up, no help from anyone. But Chuck was right, we didn't have any choice but to succeed.
We spent a few hours getting ready. Casey and Morgan were securing gear and Chuck and I were working on our disguises. We were going in disguised as members of the Russian delegation. Chuck was elaborately disguised, to the point where I barely recognized him. My disguise was weaker, just a dark wig, but we were hoping to just blend in until we could sneak away.
We saw Shaw right after we'd checked in. Chuck let Casey and Morgan, who were breaking into the server room, know that we had seen him, and they were supposed to let him know when they had access to the database.
"Are you ready?" I asked him.
"I was born read–" He took a breath. "Well, no, actually, no, I wasn't born ready but I am ready now." He looked at me intensely, confidently. My Chuck. I winked at him, my affirmation.
Chuck was supposed to convince Shaw he was a stranger, bump into him, and plant a phone on him. Chuck did that expertly, though in the end, it wasn't enough to fool Shaw. What was important was the phone, and Shaw never detected it. I know now that nothing would have worked, because Chuck's performance was as good as it could have been. In the end, that mattered less.
Chuck and I were in the hallway removing our disguises when we met Justin and another armed Ring agent. Justin told Chuck Shaw said his accent needed work. I ducked against the wall before Justin saw me.
Chuck flashed in preparation to fight Justin, but something went horribly wrong. He groaned in pain and fell back against the wall.
I moved quickly, stepping in and taking both men out with a few knees and kicks. I immediately went to Chuck to find out what was going on. I could see on his face how much pain he was in, only I had no idea why.
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to tell you…" He could hardly speak, he was out of breath from pain.
"Please just tell me what is really going on." I was afraid, but I needed to know.
"The Intersect–the flashes are getting worse."
We hadn't had time to talk about everything that was going on. The awful fact that Chuck had been lying to me for a long time about his true condition, that was so terribly told to me by Shaw in front of the entire DNI. Chuck had been hiding the fact that his flashes were now causing him physical pain. I didn't know everything, and I knew we needed to talk about a lot of things. But I told Chuck we needed to abort the mission, that Shaw wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth risking Chuck's life or his health.
Chuck rambled quickly, telling me no, all he needed was to get the governor back from Shaw and he would be fine. In all the chaos and tragedy, Chuck had forgotten to tell me what exactly the governor was. We didn't have time for an explanation, but I was a spy after all, and I could put a few things together. I remembered the watch that Stephen had been working on in Castle, as well as the fact that Stephen had a functioning Intersect for over 20 years…so he would maybe have needed something to mitigate its effects. If Stephen had the watch, that was why Shaw had used Ellie to find him, to get the watch for himself, because he had one also.
I was hurt, and angry for being lied to, but I felt hope then. All the bad things that Shaw had said about what would happen to Chuck, all the things that Dr. Dreyfus had told Chuck that he kept from me…Stephen had found a way to cure Chuck. If we could get it back, everything with Chuck would be ok again. I clung to that hope. It was the only reason I agreed to leave Chuck in order to carry out the plan.
Chuck's plan was to go to Shaw's room and call the phone he had dropped into Shaw's pocket. Shaw would alert the Elders in the audience and Morgan, Casey and I would be ready to stop them. I met Casey and Morgan in the server room and we moved to the stairwell adjacent to the conference hall.
Right on cue, Morgan and Casey got in the way as Justin was attempting to escort them out. I came from above and cornered them. I let Chuck know we had them, to not give Shaw an inch. I left Casey and Morgan on my way to help Chuck.
Chuck's plan was to goad Shaw into confessing to killing Stephen and trying to take over the CIA on camera. And it worked.
But by the time I reached Shaw's room, Shaw was holding Chuck by his shirtfront, ready to drop him out the broken window. I could only imagine what had gone wrong.
I ordered Shaw to drop Chuck, which he did, but then he jumped out the window and grabbed the American flag that was within reach and swung through the glass on another floor. I didn't have time to look for Shaw because Chuck was in such a bad way.
I had to call Casey to help me get Chuck out of there. He couldn't walk, he couldn't even stand. Shaw was gone with the watch, which was the only thing that could help him.
Casey and I moved Chuck into Castle to give him what medical attention we could. The Buy More upstairs was in chaos, so Morgan got dressed in his uniform and said he would go try to figure out what was going on.
Chuck was uncomfortable, restless, and borderline feverish. I was worried, but I was trying to keep his spirits up. I told him Casey had gone to get Ellie and Devon. I was hoping Ellie might be able to help, not knowing Chuck hadn't told her about the program in his head yet.
That was when he told me he promised Ellie he would quit. I was shocked of course, but he followed it with talk about him dying and I couldn't listen to it. I couldn't lose him. I promised him I would find Shaw and get that back no matter where he was. I meant it. If Chuck's life was at stake, there was nowhere on this earth that Shaw could hide from me.
As it turns out, I didn't have to search at all. He came to the Buy More. He couldn't just run, not when he had the opportunity to kill us. He was obsessed with it, now more than ever.
I was still sitting at Chuck's bedside when my cell phone rang. It was Morgan, or so I thought. When I answered, it was Shaw, telling me it wasn't about me. He told me he was in the store and that he'd wired it with explosives.
When I checked on the monitor, I saw him holding Morgan against his will, with the detonator in his hand. Shaw ordered me to send him Chuck.
I just agreed and got off the phone. Chuck was in no condition to do anything. I activated the silent alarm for the store in the hopes that Casey would get it in time. I went myself with the hope that I could at least get Morgan to safety and maybe get some of the innocent civilians out of the store.
I looked for Shaw inside the Buy More. Eventually, he appeared in front of me, asking where Chuck was. In the midst of our standoff, the fire alarm went off. The crowd of people in the store started rushing past us to get out, throwing me off balance and disorienting me. Shaw was able to grab me and pull me back into the store as everyone else was leaving.
Once the store was empty, Shaw handcuffed me to the foot rail at the Nerd Herd desk. He asked me where Chuck was. I told Shaw Chuck wasn't coming, that he couldn't.
However, Chuck saw Shaw grab me on the monitor and came anyway.
It had to have taken every last drop of strength Chuck had to walk into the store with the gun in his hand the way he did. I knew how bad he felt, how quickly he had deteriorated. I was terrified I was going to watch him die in front of me, or worse, that I was going to watch Shaw kill him.
Chuck convinced Shaw to throw down his gun, opting for an Intersect duel instead. I had an awful sense of foreboding when I heard Chuck tell Shaw he saved the best for last.
In the beginning, they were defensively matched, dancing around each other like prized fighters. Once Shaw got his hands on Chuck, the fight shifted. Shaw had the upper hand, Chuck only able to get in one punch. Shaw punched Chuck, kicked him, sending him sprawling through store debris and eventually crashing on the floor in front of me, unconscious.
I screamed for Shaw to stop, begged Chuck to wake up.
Unbeknownst to me, while Chuck was unconscious, his Intersect was rebooting, as he called it. Chuck told me about it afterward. He hadn't remembered until that moment, but when Chuck was nine, he had accidentally downloaded a beta version of the Intersect, one his father had been working on in their house, the basic architecture without the government data. At nine years old, Chuck had incorporated an Intersect into his brain.
Once I knew that, everything else made so much more sense. Whether Chuck's brain was just special, or if the exposure at a young age, while his brain was still developing, changed him, no one will ever know. Stephen might have, but if he did, he took the secret to his grave. Chuck's unusual abilities at Stanford that got him noticed by Fleming, then later saved by Bryce, were for the same reason. He could function as the human Intersect to the amazement of men like Jonas Zarnow and hold the Fulcrum Intersect in his head without going insane. Chuck was the Intersect, not by accident, but by design. He was special…the last words his father had spoken to him.
He was. And because of that, he was able to reset his failing Intersect all on his own.
I was busy trying to detach the piece of metal to which I was cuffed when Shaw came to finish Chuck.
To my amazement, Chuck sprung to his feet, alert and poised like I hadn't seen him in a while. Chuck was amazing and he fought Shaw expertly. Chuck ended up holding Shaw by his throat just as I finally freed myself.
I could see the rage on Chuck's face, the hatred he felt for the man who had taken his father from him and his sister. Shaw was urging him on, telling Chuck he had to do it, he had to kill him. That way, Shaw could still win, drag Chuck down to his level, turn Chuck into the killer that he was never meant to be.
But Chuck was Chuck. Better than Shaw in every way. Chuck refused, saying he had already done that.
"That's what makes you weak."
I clobbered Shaw over the back of the head with the pipe he had chained me to.
"No, that's what makes you great." I said that looking right at Chuck. He had to know that. That was why I loved him so much, why I was so lucky to be loved by him.
Thinking quickly, I reached down and pulled the watch from Shaw's wrist and put it back on Chuck. Immediately, his features relaxed. I hadn't really noticed before the pain he was disguising until I watched it dissolve. I was so thankful he was alright.
We had a lot to talk about, so much to digest, but for now, everything was alright.
He took me in his arms and held me. I never wanted him to let go.