A/N Wow, this thing has gone sideways, hasn't it? When I first thought of the Rough Draft concept, I was just thinking that the death of Shaw would lead Chuck to become unable to flash, to quit the CIA, and all that stuff in S5. There was no Agent Jones. Maybe there should have been. Now Chuck has killed Shaw in cooperation with Sarah, his muscle to her will, and I don't know how they'll deal with that, except that it will be together.

Here's part 6 of 6.

"Nobody. Move."

"I don't trust you."

"There's only our side."

"My name's not Eve!"

Chuck sat at the table in the hotel suite Beckman had arranged for them, typing on his computer. Missions end, enemies come and go, but paperwork is forever. Fortunately the driver had been able to handle the checking in part of the whole thing, since neither Sarah nor Jones was up to a public appearance.

Chuck had carried Sarah up to the rooms, but Jones had shuffled along for herself, unwilling to let anyone touch her. Chuck carried Sarah to the bed in one room while Jones just stood there. At his urging she went to the bed in the other room and toppled into it. Chuck hadn't even tried to take her shoes off, just pulled the covers over her and left the room, keeping up a soft running commentary the whole time. He was good at those.

He carefully left the door ajar, not so much that they could hear her as that she could hear them. Shaw had isolated Jones at the worst possible moment. They were going to need professional help to undo that damage, but for now they could only give her light contact, like the sound of their voices and other human sounds. Then he'd gone back to the first room, and found Sarah asleep, so, no voices. He paused for only a moment to admire the view of the Eiffel Tower at night, before returning to his duty.

His first communication with Beckman had been short and to the point. Jones vindicated, Shaw dead, at his and Sarah's joined hands. Chuck lifted his hand, remembering the feel of Sarah's hand under his own. Remembering the pressure of the trigger, as he'd pushed Sarah's finger down against it. She'd twitched her finger, hadn't she? He'd just been helping her, right?

He felt the gun buck in his hand. No. Not right. No Intersect this time. No reboots necessary.

No reboots possible. He returned to his typing, a fuller version of the report he'd just outlined. Happy now, Shaw?

A little later, half a world away…

Casey was taking his lunch break resting among his guns in the Castle armory when he heard the chime of an incoming communication. He lifted the tray and took it with him to the outer room. It's not like he couldn't clean and reassemble one of these things in his sleep. He touched the 'accept' key and picked up his chamois. "General."

"Colonel." She noted his rather frenetic polishing. "How's the interrogation going?"

"She's at the hospital, she said she had to work," said Casey. "I think it's a ploy. She's trying to get me to drop my guard."

"Hmm, I could use such natural talent," said Beckman. "Too bad it's so narrowly focused. Well. I have some news for you. How it will factor into your defense is unknown."

"You're not deploying me to Paris?" said Casey, disappointed.

Beckman sighed. "I'm afraid it's too late for that."

Back in Paris…

Sarah's breathing pattern changed, and Chuck stopped typing when he heard it. He looked over to the bed to see her blinking at him, otherwise unmoving. "Hey," he said gratefully, hurrying over to the bed, "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone who got stretched in every direction at once," said Sarah. She braced her arms and pushed herself up to a sitting position, not weak but very sore. "I think I'm going to get that poor secretary a 'sorry we paralyzed you' card when we get back. Something pretty, to brighten her cell."

Chuck smiled, feeling a little guilty for having shot the woman in the first place, enemy agent or no. "I'm sure she'll appreciate that."

Sarah indicated the door to the other room. "How's Jones?"

"I haven't heard anything," said Chuck, suddenly worried that he'd somehow failed some task. He stood up. "I can go and check if you–"

"I'll check, Chuck," said Sarah, flipping the covers back. "Until I'm sure she's capable, I'm responsible. Besides, for some reason she's just never warmed to you, and also I'm the only other person who's taken a Red Test."

Chuck nodded, giving her a hand out of the bed. "Gives you something in common."

"Unfortunately." Sarah hobbled across the room to the other door, closing it gently behind her as she went into the other bedroom.

Chuck went back to where he'd been, working on his report, the tapping of the keys almost as good as a ticker for keeping him from hearing what was being said, not that he could hear anything being said. When the message chime sounded he accepted right away. "General?"

"Agent Bartowski, what's the status of your team?"

Chuck considered rotating the computer, but there was nothing to see except an unmade bed. "I'm working on my report, Sarah's up and about, a bit sore but capable. She's in the other room with Agent Jones right now."

"And Agent Jones?" said Beckman when he stopped.

"She looked like a zombie going in, General," said Chuck. "But Sarah's been in there a while so hopefully that's a good sign."

"Yes, hopefully," said the General. "I just spoke with Colonel Casey, and we need you to return to LA ASAP."

"Not another mission…"

"You and Jones were virgins, Chuck," said the General. "Neither of you is going back out into the field without some serious couch-time."

General Beckman speaking like Colonel Casey shocked Chuck as few things could. "Yes, ma'am."

"The colonel needs you," continued Beckman. "He's as close to cracking as I've ever seen."

"The Ring…?"

"Your sister."

Chuck began to sweat. "Uh, I'll have to check with Sarah on that, General. She and/or Agent Jones may not be fit to travel for a couple of days yet."

"Agent Bartowski! Your country, and more importantly your partner, needs you!"

Sigh. "Yes, General."

In the other room…

"Agent Jones?" said Sarah softly. The lights of the City of Light were the only illumination in the room. She could see a blanketed form here, the one she'd been afraid to see in LA.

"Right here," murmured Jones. "Going nowhere."

"That's not true," said Sarah. She walked around the bed to sit in the chair at the desk. "You have a career waiting for you back in DC, if you still want it."

"Will they still want me?" asked Jones, staring straight ahead. "A killer?" A fool?

"I'm not saying there won't be some therapy involved," said Sarah, looking at her hands. "I wish there had been some available in my day." She looked up at Jones, who had decided to look at her. "What? It's not like I was born this way. It's not like I want to be this way, either." She shuddered. "Anyway, most of it was Shaw's fault, and Chuck and I will make sure everyone knows it, who needs to know anything."

"Thank you," whispered Jones. "He was going to kill me, wasn't he?"

"Then? Maybe," said Sarah. "Sooner or later, I'm pretty sure. Whenever you caught on to what he was doing, decided not to play the role he wanted you to play. Lucky for you that happened while we were there."

"Because Agent Carmichael came to save you," said Jones bitterly.

"That's true," said Sarah. "He saved me. Again. But he, we, killed for you. Speaking of therapy. That was his finger pulling the trigger. I can barely move now."

Jones may have shrugged under the coverlet, Sarah couldn't tell. "He's killed before."

"No," said Sarah hollowly. "He hasn't." Then she added, for security's sake, "Not like that. And neither have I, not, um, in tandem. Whatever happens to him because of it, will be because of me."

"That'll be a weird one," said Jones. "Couples therapy for a shooting?"

"That's Chuck," said Sarah. "My Chuck. He's one of a kind."

Someone knocked on his door. "Come–" said Morgan Grimes, and the door slammed open as well as closed, with only the presence of John Casey in the room to indicate the difference. "–in."

"What do you want, Grimes?"

Morgan stood up, trying to reclaim some of the space in the small room for himself. "Well, uh, John, I just wanted to let you know that, due to a, uh, small purchasing error, we will be running a special sale on Beastmasters next week."

Casey studied his nominal superior, as Morgan did his best to appear Assistant Managerial. "Uh-huh. Well, that's certainly good to know in advance," he finally said. He took one step forward, looming over Morgan's desk. "It's also something you could have told me anywhere in the store, so why make a point of calling me into this pest-hole you call an office?"

Morgan ran a finger around his suddenly-tight collar. "Um…well…that is…" Someone tapped on the door. "Excuse me while I answer that," said Morgan, ducking around the corner of his desk as far from Casey as he could get.

Casey stood up, reducing his presence in the room as Morgan opened the door. "Alex, imagine seeing you here!"

"You asked me to come here, Morgan," said a high-pitched female voice, as Morgan backed into the room. A young brunette followed him, younger than Morgan but with more presence. The sense of her flowed into the room, balked only by the presence of a large man behind the door. "Oh."

"Alex, let me introduce my lieutenant assistant manager, John Casey," said Morgan, gesturing feebly between the hard place and the rock, feeling more than a little pinched. "John, this is my girlfriend, Alex McHugh."

"Mr. Casey," said Alex enthusiastically, shaking Casey's hand. Good, strong grip. "I'm so glad to meet you, Morgan talks about you all the time. I feel like I know you already."

Casey shook her hand, gently. He pulled a smile out of storage. "Likewise."

Somewhere, on a secured line…

"What's our status, A?"

"Currently stable, C," said A, "Although that could change at any moment, if the California team ever recognizes the value of what they have."

"Likelihood on that?" snapped C.

"Impossible to calculate, sir," said an underling. "The presence of Daniel Shaw in California has always been to our advantage. The longer he is absent the higher the odds against us could become."

"His absence is troubling," said A. "D's plan to make him one of us played to all his weaknesses, yet it failed. Efforts are underway to terminate D's aide. Her eventual betrayal is inevitable, but Shaw took some immediate action, cause unknown."

"I'll look into that," said C. "But our plans have never depended on him. We will have to take action against the California team sooner or later, so I say we initiate operations now."

"Agreed," said A. "Whether they do or do not discover what they have will be irrelevant at that point. Either will play into our hands."

"Exactly," said C. "Who knows? With a little ingenuity on our part, maybe we can even get this… Team Bartowski to do our work for us."

A/N2 Here ends this season, with some classic Chuck-style cliffhangerishness. No three-day sex romp on a train. My revision of S3 hasn't been the tragic thing they were aiming for but it is sadder and darker than what came before. The job of next season will be to pull up out of that, as best it can, without sacrificing the Hero's Journey the producers claimed Chuck to be taking. Please drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.