A/N1: Final chapter. Takes a bit. Take a breath.

Ruin

Chapter Three: Princess of Tides

Sarah walked back to Chuck's door, struck by the out-of-nowhere, funny-not-funny thought that the path from his door to the parking lot was a trail of fresh tears, first Sarah's, second Taylor's.

Sarah feared she would trek it a third time in a moment, freshening it a final time.

As she walked, she tried to organize her thoughts, remember how the last 32 months of her life had gone, where they had gone.

Ellie was right - Sarah had pushed Chuck past even his limits. He was the epitome of the long-suffering man, Job with a pocket protector. Sarah took everything from him - and now she was here possibly to do it a second time. If he could not forgive her, he would never forgive himself for that. Maybe he was already there, already blaming himself for blaming her, and maybe that was feeding his rage, Chuck's unforgiveness two-edged, slicing deep into him even as it sliced deep into her.

She knew she had suffered for him too, during those early years in Burbank - but she had always had the advantage of knowledge, of the power of knowledge. She knew he loved her; he could only guess at her feelings. She never helped him. Marooned on Unrequited Island, all he could do was hope for a message in a bottle. But even her messages were oracles, riddles, hard to decipher, not plain speakings but ambiguous signs.

The scene of Chuck in her hospital room, humiliated by his modest bouquet in the face of Bryce's array of expensive bouquets, came back to her. Knowing how much he loved her, how much he wanted her, knowing how much everything with Bryce had hurt him, yet again undermined him, all she could manage was "Not always" in response to his comment about always losing to Bryce. For all Chuck knew, she could have been talking about the contest of bouquets, not the contest for her heart. All those years with her father and then all the years with Graham had forked her tongue - she could not be honest when she honestly wanted to. Every word she spoke was divided.

She had to be honest now. Stopping, she glanced back at the rental car. Charlie. Sarah loved her little girl so much. She knew that Chuck would love her too, just as much, no matter how he felt about Sarah.

For a moment, going back for Charlie seemed an appealing option. She decided against it. It was too much like using her daughter as a tiny human shield.

Shields. Walls. Deflections. Obscurements. Camouflage. The basic existential categories of Sarah's life. She needed to diagram a new sentence. If she could, then maybe she could also, Queen of Hearts, change Chuck's verdict.

Charlie. Yet again, Sarah had the knowledge and power. Her stupid decision to send the divorce papers - another display of knowledge and power. It hit her, hard and sudden, standing there, that this was why she hated surprises - because a surprise undid knowledge and power. The surprised person was vulnerable and ignorant, at least regarding the surprise. That was what it meant for it to be a surprise.

Too afraid to have him and too afraid to lose him.

For a time, early in Burbank, Sarah's refusal to speak or speak plainly were attempts to protect Chuck, to prevent him from being consigned to a bunker. But even then, her refusals were often so fierce, fierce out of all proportion to her need to protect Chuck, and that additional ferocity was her need to protect herself.

The awful truth was that Chuck had an endless, inexhaustible capacity to surprise Sarah, and she loved and adored that capacity and she feared it. It had been that capacity that she recognized after she lost her memory - after seeing her video log, after the mission with Chuck, after the story on the beach, after the kiss. Each of those things had surprised her in its way - and her love of the surprises and of the man who supplied them was matched by her terror of that man. The biggest surprise of all, the one that arched above all the others, was that he caused her to fall in love with him. She called him a gift in the wedding vows - and he was, a surprise gift.

Too afraid to have him and too afraid to lose him.

Sarah was so deep in thought she missed Chuck opening the door of the department. He had his car keys in his hand and was running for his car - and he ran right into Sarah as she stood, thinking.

Chuck sent Sarah sprawling backward, onto her backside, then her back. Chuck followed her fall backward with his own fall forward, and he ended up atop her, stretched along her body as if he were trying her on for size. His eyes were right above hers. Surprise.

She saw the shock in his eyes and then a flash of relief. He quickly rolled off her but she did not want him to. Feeling his weight on her brought nights of lovemaking to mind, slow and syrupy nights, long nights, sapping them both. She shook the pictures, M-rated, from her mind. They were a help when she was a prisoner but not now.

Chuck was now sitting up beside her. He reached for his car keys and Sarah grabbed them first. She saw the relief that flashed in his eyes replaced by a flame of anger.

She sheepishly held the keys out. "She just left a few minutes ago."

"She?" Chuck blinked his eyes.

"Taylor."

"Oh." Chuck turned an uncomfortable shade of red. "I know. I mean, I know she left just a few minutes ago. But I...I wasn't going after her."

Sarah felt her heart pound. "No?"

Chuck sniffed in a breath and looked at her - and she suddenly felt the tables turn. She did not understand how to read his expression. It looked like the facing surface of a sentence in a language she did not speak, clear symbols of unclear meaning. She spoke a lot of languages but not that one. She knew she was gaping at him.

"I was coming after you."

"You thought you could find me?"

"Goddamn it, Sarah, it wasn't a spy game. It isn't a spy game. This is our life. This. Is. Our. Life."

He sounded as defeated as she suddenly felt, her flags at half-mast, unstirred by any breeze, white. No, snowbound white.

He stood. She sat on the sidewalk. He looked down at her. "I thought I might find you there again."

She stood quickly, brushing her backside. She saw him sneak a glance. A coquettish impulse grabbed her and she stifled it. 'Honeypot' was still in the air; seduction missions had made them both miserable and seasick in the past. She looked at him steadily instead. "At the beach? At...our...spot?"

He didn't speak but he finally nodded. "I thought maybe there was enough of Sarah Bartowski left" - he glanced at his watch - "that you'd go. If only to say goodbye."

She closed her eyes. His words seared the tender flesh of her heart. It took her a moment to gather herself after the pain. "I didn't leave, Chuck."

"Right. I gathered..."

Chuck looked at her. How could he be so angry with and so aflame with desire for the same woman? He had not slept with Taylor and he would not have slept with her - he knew that now. He hated what he had told Taylor, what he was forced to tell her, but he had to be fair, being fair late better than being unfair forever. Taylor's eyes had been Hannah's eyes. But he couldn't love someone when that love was constructed on the denial of his love for someone else.

Sarah.

All he wanted to do was to take Sarah's hand and run with her into his apartment, into the room where he kept his bed and make it their bedroom. The feeling of her body under his felt like home - if home could burn without being consumed, like that Mosaic bush in the Hebrew Bible. Chuck was burning, burning but not consumed. He made himself look away from her.

"I wanted to find you so that once - just once - I could ask and you would answer. I need to know. I've been in the dark," the white dark, snowbound, "for so goddamn long, Sarah."

She extended her ringless hand to him, waiting for him to take it. He didn't. She left it in the air between them. "Friends?" She asked the single-word question then went on after the briefest pause, "at least for long enough to talk. I came back to answer you, Chuck."

He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, her touch had the old, always new effect on him. It galvanized him, made him feel ten feet tall. He was sure she would cut him down to size soon enough.

They walked into the apartment, Chuck holding the door. Sarah stepped inside, then waited. Chuck passed Sarah and went into the kitchen. He sat in one of the two small, unforgiving chairs he kept at the little table. In his chair. His chair facing...her chair. The always empty one. The one he kept for her. She sat down in it.

He looked at her, at a loss for words now that she was in her appointed place. She glanced around, seemingly unsure what to say, how to begin. How a woman of such passion could live at such a remove from it puzzled him again, as it often had. She was...unhandy...unavailable to herself and so unavailable to anyone else, especially, maddeningly, to him.

But she surprised him. She started. "Let me start there, Chuck, on the beach. Or, better, just a little before that, so that you understand, as much as I do, anyway." She swallowed hard and continued. "Remember when I came to see you at dark, after that awful day, the day I threatened...Well, you remember."

"In the courtyard, near the fountain. You came to say goodbye."

She nodded once. "Yes, and no. I came…I don't know why. No, that's not right. I couldn't leave without seeing you, saying something to you. But what I told you wasn't true. I told you I didn't feel it...love...for you. I wasn't lying but I was confused.

"Later, when I came back to you, to the Buy More, I was looking for my husband more than I was looking for Quinn. But I still didn't understand that. I kept finding you when we chased Quinn together, but each time I found you I found a version of myself that surprised me, a version of me to which I could not...project forward to from what I knew about myself. And then on the beach, when you told me our story, I found you and found me again, and even though I still didn't know how to get from me to her, I felt that the me and the her were all one I."

She stopped and brushed a pretty shade of pink, looking at him with a hesitant playfulness. "God, I sound like a talky extra on Doctor Who."

Chuck smiled despite himself. He waited.

"Then you kissed me. And although my memories did not rush back, the feelings all did. I felt it and I knew what it was. I was in love with you, as a woman loves her husband. I felt a bond to you of a sort I thought I would only know by description, not by acquaintance. I felt it, Chuck, all of it, all at once, five years' worth of love and desire and unhappiness turned to happiness…"

She choked a bit and he got up and got her a bottle of water. He held it out to her and she took it, opened it, and drank. She nodded her thanks.

He sat back down, smile gone. He knew his eyes were hard, glinting and guarded, as if the refrigerator had chilled him and the water. "So," he spoke carefully, as if the words were thin ice over frigid water, "you felt it and you walked away from it."

Sarah started to respond then tasted facileness on her tongue. This was the moment Ellie had warned her about, she realized, when she could do what contributed to the mess she was in, fall back on her old habits, answer from the perspective of a handler in words meant to appease an asset. My husband, not my mission.

She took another drink of water and washed the initial words away. Plain confession. "Yes, that's what I did."

He glared at her and she let him, submitting to his anger and pain. And to her shame and pain - he could see them.

"I can't explain it to you, Chuck. I have no excuse. I've thought about that moment and relieved it so many times I am no longer sure if what's in my mind is recollection or imagination. All I know is that I walked away from you because I loved you. Because I couldn't trust the yes in my heart while my head was uncommitted, because you kept surprising me, and surprising me with me, because...well, there were a lot of becauses and they were all in play but they don't all make sense together now and didn't then. Later, I had time to think and I understood this much: I walked away because I didn't understand that my heart had converted my head before, and would again." Plain confession. No slant, no facility.

They sat there for a while. Chuck had the cap from her water bottle and he was rolling it across the table from one of his hands to the other. She watched him.

He closed one hand around the cap and glanced up at her. "So what was your plan?"

"What you said. Deep cover. I thought I could test my heart, see if what I felt was real and lasting, by choosing a situation where that would force me to stop thinking about myself and my aching heart and my empty memory. The new CIA head gave me an assignment. We thought it would only last a few weeks or a month. I intended to come back to Burbank when I finished and work things out...or end them...depending on how it went."

He couldn't seem to look at her but he nodded, showing that he heard. "But you never came back," he observed after a moment during which he worried the sealing ring off the blue cap.

"No, and now we get to the part of the story that's most…"

"Complicated." He offered the word as the finish to her sentence but without inflection.

She did not agree but she let the word stand.

"The mission got strange. The CIA had gotten wind of a small group of rogue spies - perhaps some splinter of the Ring. Someone in the Middle East was bankrolling them. They were working to create a technology that resembled the Intersect.

"They sent in me as a rogue CIA analyst, a turncoat, a linguistic specialist who would consult with the scientists working on creating uploadable linguistic skills. So, you can see that my plan to...distract myself from my real life was...um...less than successful."

"I was making some headway, insinuating myself into the group. They trusted me more and more. The team of scientists I was working with was almost all female. I worked to befriend them, to spend time with them outside of the compound where we were working. It was a place a lot like Volkoff's, the place your mom was."

Chuck looked at her. She went on. "The compound was a former military base. It was in Georgia - the country, not the state. I learned quite a lot but my full immersion in the life there meant that I couldn't have anything with me - no communicators, nothing. Their security technology was the best I have ever seen. I couldn't contact the CIA and, although I waited, no one from the CIA contacted me. Again, it was a little like the mess Mary found herself in."

Sarah stopped. "How is Mary, Chuck?"

He shrugged. "She only knows how to be a spy. She pretends to be a mother, and her heart is in it, but it's still a cover. She can't let go of that life, a little like…"

Sarah shifted in the small, uncomfortable chair. She did not otherwise respond. She continued the story.

"So, I was expecting the mission to end, to get word to get out. I was in the lab one day, working with one woman scientist. I got up to get some water and when I came back, I guess I got distracted —because I walked into the lab and did not notice the red light for No Admittance. I stepped into the lab and an Intersect-like program was running on the screen. I did not have time to close my eyes. I watched it part of it before they could stop it But when it was over, it seemed to have no effect on me. The scientists were relieved but I could also tell I puzzled them, troubled them.

"That night, the compound scrambled, bugged out. Everything loaded up onto trucks. Personnel herded into 'copters. I had no chance to tell anyone what was happening, no one to tell. Even worse, it became clear as the situation unfolded, that I had been reclassified from co-worker to prisoner. I got stabbed with a tranq dart and woke up, not in a room, but a cell. And not on land. My cell was, as best I could tell, in the belly of a converted oil tanker somewhere at sea."

Chuck stared at her. He was caught up in the story, the narrative, and their personal issues had fallen away. He knew they would come back. He motioned for her to go on.

She took a breath. "I need to backtrack, Chuck, because I told you all that and left out the most important thing. But I wanted you to have some context."

"I pushed for the mission and was prepped and sent fast. I didn't want to be poked and prodded, so I went through no pre-mission medical check." Chuck nodded, looking slightly puzzled. "It wasn't until I was undercover and in the compound that I realized I was pregnant."

Pregnant.

A Harvard lecture on James Joyce, from long ago, popped from into Sarah's mind.

The lecturer had been talking about Finnegans Wake, and about a passage where Joyce tries to write into the text the sound of thunder. The resulting word was massive, letter after letter, and it sounded at the moment of Adam and Eve's Fall in the Garden:

Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunnt-rovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk

Sarah had not known what to make of it in the classroom, but in Chuck's snowbound kitchen it reverberated around the room on the heels of 'pregnant'. Chuck looked like lightning struck him.

"Pregnant?"

"Pregnant?"

Sarah braced herself and nodded. "Yes, with your baby, our baby. They trapped me in a compound with no way out, no contact. I could hide it until I ended up a prisoner, then they figured it out."

Chuck had frozen. He was looking at her as if she were a hologram and he was interested in the wall he could see through her. She saw him mouth the words 'pregnant' and 'baby'.

"The pregnancy had a strange effect on me, Chuck. At night, I dreamt of you, our life together. But the dreams weren't dreams, they were memories," she looked, Chuck seemed focused on her again, the story, "my memories, of us. I would remember us in the night, and the first thing in the morning, but as the day wore on, the memories wore thin, tattered, fell apart. By bedtime, they were irretrievable.

"Each morning I woke up as your wife, as Sarah Bartowski, but I went back to bed Agent Walker. It was maddening. But my memory was otherwise fine. My spy skills were intact and my new memories were there, in good order...and in order, if you know what I mean. I swear it was like Charlie was remembering you for me…"

Chuck jerked in his chair, his eyes locking to hers. "Charlie? We had a son?"

"No, Charlie, our daughter. I named her after you." As Chuck sat, spinning in place, Sarah slid her phone from her pocket beneath the table. She texted Ellie.

Ten Minutes.

Chuck finally shook his head, shook it like a wet dog trying to dry itself. His curls - Sarah had not consciously noted, but they were back, his short spy cut gone - shook on his head. His gaze when he looked at her was so full of things in so mobile an array, she could identify none.

He spoke carefully. "So you were pregnant with our daughter while held prisoner in a converted oil tanker somewhere in some ocean?"

Sarah's voice shrank. "You don't believe me?"

For the first time, he smiled at her in almost his old way, albeit a bit crazily, his eyes wide and a trifle bulging. "No. I mean, yes, yes I believe you. This. Is. Our. Life." His smile lasted a few more seconds and then he sobered up. "Our pear-shaped pineapple of a life."

Sarah jumped back in, into the space of the smile. "The Intersect they were developing did not affect me and they did not understand that. They did not doubt my cover, but they were sure my brain held some secret they needed. Luckily, their tests and so on showed nothing. I could get enough mileage out of my prior friendships to ensure I was well-treated, my pregnancy tended to. A doctor was on board. I was a prisoner, but a prisoner with pregnancy vitamins."

Chuck clenched his brow. "How did you explain the pregnancy."

Sarah dropped her eyes. "An unlucky one-night stand - on a train."

He frowned. "Keep the lie close to the truth?"

Sarah risked a grin and a flirtatious tone. "The only lie there is the prefix 'un', Chuck. I remember..." He shifted in his chair.

Sarah went on before he could reply. "Nighttime memories and daytime amnesia went on for the entire pregnancy. The tide of memories came in; the tide went out; I could only wait. I was with Charlie when awake, Chuck and Charlie when asleep.

"They were still running tests on me when I had Charlie. The birth was textbook. But delivering her delivered my memories, Chuck. That night, after she was born, I dreamt of our life and I woke up with it in my possession, not the ghostly tendrils of a dream, but memories, technicolor, and full attending emotions.

"I knew then that I was and had always been Sarah Bartowski. Forgetting who I was didn't change that. I understood. The problem was that I was Sarah Bartowski again, mother of Charlie Bartowski, but I needed to be Agent Walker."

Sarah could tell that Chuck was desperately torn. He wanted to talk about Charlie, wanted to demand to talk about Charlie, but he wanted to know the story - in part because the story was about Charlie too. She pressed on.

"They began to lose interest in me. Partly that was because my immunity to their Intersect seemed inexplicable, and I certainly acted as though it was, partly because the group was feeling pressure to produce something for the men who were bankrolling them. I wasn't furthering the project.

"They worked around the clock and I spent time with Charlie. I regretted everything so much, and so much more because of Charlie. Things went on like that for months. I would get poked or prodded once in a while. Examined.

"Every few days, Charlie and I would get led up above deck for some fresh air but we were always on the water, no land in sight, no supply or refueling vessel to be seen when we were up there. I couldn't risk trying to escape or to contact anyone. I was terrified for Charlie's sake.

"But then Charlie saved us" Sarah smiled. "One of our guards fell for her. He started bringing her pieces of fruit that I could mash up and feed her. I slowly figured out the schedule of supply ships because of that.

"One day when I knew the ship was coming, I knocked out that guard," she frowned, shrugged, "and I got to the deck with Charlie. I had food and water, she was still nursing mostly. We were lucky. We slipped into an empty crate being moved from the tanker to the supply ship and we were put in the hold. I stretched out the food and water, but it was close. When the ship made port, we snuck off." She stopped. "It wasn't the first time I rescued a baby, but this time it was mine."

"I got in touch with the CIA and got us back to the States. There was a lot of confusion about Charlie, about me, about where I had been. The CIA did not know about the tanker. I had an idea about where it was because I overheard men on the supply ship. The tanker was taken, and the rogue spies captured.

Chuck leaned back in his chair. "So, my dad is a spy, my mom is a spy, my ex-wife-to-be is a spy, my sister spies on me and my daughter is a spy before she can walk and before I ever see her?"

Sarah sat and replayed the long question in her head, caught on the phrase 'ex-wife-to-be'. There were still divorce papers to explain.

"Speaking of which," she offered up, "and before you ask any more questions, know that I Ellie was not spying on you. I got in contact with her - limited contact - about a year ago and made her promise not to tell you about me or Charlie, or I would vanish. I didn't give her a choice; I put her in an impossible position. Her 'spying' was little more than answering my questions about you, Chuck."

A knock on the door. Ellie and Charlie.

Sarah jumped up. "Let me answer it." Before Chuck could respond, Sarah rushed and opened the door. Ellie stood there, a still-sleeping Charlie in her arms. Ellie gave Sarah a quick, inspecting sweep, head to toe. "Well, no blood. That's a good sign," she breathed.

Sarah stepped aside and Ellie came in. Sarah closed the door and followed Ellie to the kitchen. Chuck stood up. He greeted Ellie and the little girl with an expression of disbelief. After a moment, he frowned at his sister. She winced slightly. Then she stepped toward him. The little girl was still asleep, her curls spinning this way and that on her head, her lips, Sarah's, pursed in a dreaming smile.

Chuck took her in his arms with exquisite care. Still sleeping, Charlie stuck her thumb in her mouth and began sucking on it. Chuck wept.

And so did Sarah and Ellie.

Charlie slept.

Ellie wiped her eyes, crossed the kitchen floor to her brother, and took Charlie. He gave her up reluctantly. Once Ellie had her, Chuck wiped his eyes with his forearm and turned to the sink. He threw up in it.

Without thinking, Sarah was at his side, her arm across his back, her hand on his opposite shoulder. She could hardly see him through her tears, but she made a comforting sound.

He pushed her away. But he looked...better.

"Don't," he commanded flatly, dropping his shoulder to make her remover her hand. "Just don't."

He grabbed a sheet of paper towel from a roll, wet it in the sink, and wiped his face. He ran water in the sink as he did, to wash the risen bile away.

He threw the wet paper towel away and got another sheet, drying his face with it. He threw it away and faced Sarah.

She had hurt him before, too many times: when she lied under the truth serum when she froze him out after their first kiss, when she chose Bryce after Barstow. Shaw. But the look he gave her then, the raw and utter pain of it, made her step back and catch her breath. He was not hiding any of the pain from her. Getting sick seemed to have steadied him, clarified him.

"So," Chuck said, his voice exact and intense, "let me see if I understand. You walked away from me on the beach for reasons you cannot fully explain, but because you loved me. You ran back to the CIA, back into deep cover because you didn't want to love me. You discovered you were pregnant and spent, what, almost two years, beginning to end, on that assignment. Gave birth, cared for...our daughter. You escaped. You and your memory. And Charlie." He glanced at the small beauty in his sister's arms.

"And that was a year ago or so. A year. You contacted my sister, but not me and kept up with me through her. But I hear nothing from you. Nothing. Nothing." His voice rose in intensity but not in volume, the low sound somehow worse than a shout. "Nothing - until I get the fucking divorce papers? Can you explain that to me?"

Before Sarah could answer, Ellie broke in. "Shit. That's where we are in the discussion? I will take the little one to the bedroom and put her down. I'll stay with her." Ellie was looking at Sarah but shifted to Chuck. "Keep your voices down. I'll come for my punishment later."

She left the kitchen, finding her own way to the bedroom.

When Sarah looked back at Chuck, his face twisted oddly, his eyes squeezed closed.

"Chuck, did you just flash?"

He gaped at her. "No. No. I haven't flashed...in a long time. I still have it," he held up his arm left arm, showing her the familiar watch, the governor. "It doesn't seem to damage me or help me. It just sits there, gathering dust. And, you've not had any more problems, even after your exposure undercover?"

She shook her head. "No, the CIA did some testing. All normal."

They stood silent. Chuck looked at the floor. Sarah gathered her courage. "If it wasn't a flash, what was it?"

He took a moment. "A realization."

"Of what?"

"Talian Law."

"Is that from Star Trek? I don't remember that."

He smiled sadly. "No, Sarah, but that's a good guess. Funny, that not-remembering does show that you remember."

Sarah blinked in half-understanding. Chuck went on. "No, it's from history. I won't bore you with the details, but you know the heart of it, everyone basically does. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Talian Law. When Ellie said 'punishment', it came to mind."

Sarah felt the moments of hope she had been trying to hold onto vanish, like fireflies on a dark summer night. She forced herself to look him in the face. "What is my punishment, Chuck?" A whisper. "If you want the divorce, I will work things out with Charlie. I can, I will move out here - there's nothing keeping me where I am - and we can raise her together, but apart."

She thought about her own childhood, the parental tug-of-war that stretched and tore her heart as a child; she did not want that for Charlie. But the thought of living near Chuck, of raising their daughter, together but not together, made her feel sick.

She was so fucking tired of together-not-together. Call it whatever you want, dress it up as a distended romance or glacial foreplay - in the last analysis, it was not-together. Apart. Maybe she had liked it, a little, in those early days in Burbank. There had been an undeniable thrill in the uncertainties. The thrill of theft over honest toil. But it was childishness - a refusal to take on the adult obligations of the heart, an attempt to have a commitment without paying a commitment's price. Free lunch. Romantic cowardice parading itself as a love of romance. Cowardice.

Too afraid to have him and too afraid to lose him.

She had been a coward from the beginning until now, from the beginning to...the end. Now, it looked like the best she could hope for would be an everlasting together-not-together, an everlasting not-together.

Still facing him, she waited for him to speak. He did, at last. His words, oddly, rhyming with her own thoughts.

"Talian Law was better than earlier forms of justice. It at least tempers justice with proportion: an eye for an eye - not a life for an eye.

"But it's still a childish understanding of justice. Think about it: if you take my eye, then Talian Law says that justice demands that I take yours. If I can, but don't, I've done something wrong. Mercy is...impermissible. And that's crazy, morally crazy. At any rate, I don't endorse it, I won't live by such a brutal, stupid code. I never have." She saw him grow self-conscious. "Sorry, I didn't mean to…" He shook his head. "What I mean is that I will not punish anyone, not you, not Ellie. I don't know if I can forgive you, but to hell with an eye for an eye."

He went to the fridge and got a bottle of water for himself. He opened it, took a drink, swished it in his mouth, then spit it out in the sink, reached under the sink and got a spray bottle of cleaner, sprayed the sink, turned on the faucet and, with another paper towel, washed it out. Sarah watched, felt home settling over her.

Cleaning Chuck was a familiar sight, a memory she had often revisited in her time without him, after her memory returned. It had calmed her, located her. When she remembered it, she could find her feet.

He finished up and looked at her. "So, are you going to tell me the rest? Why you stayed away? Why you sent those papers with no explanation?"

She nodded. "Can we sit back down?"

They did. As she sat, Chuck caught her hand and gave it a quick squeeze. "She's so beautiful, Sarah. Thank you for her and for saving her. No matter what happens, my life just got inestimably better. I can't wait to meet her."

It was too much. The hand squeeze, all he had said, all the tensions of the day, the weeks, the years. Sarah collapsed into tears, unable to speak.

Chuck was struggling to hold himself together. He was a mass of conflicting impulses. He wanted to run to the bedroom and wake Charlie and interact with her. Or, maybe, just let her sleep but watch her. She was a miracle, dea ex machina, a tiny goddess craned into his life from the heavens.

He wanted to shout at his sister, to share his outrage with her. He wanted to take the love of his life - because, God help him, that is what Sarah was, tonight had proven it - into his arms and comfort her. And be comforted. He wanted to collapse onto the kitchen floor, curl up fetally, and forget his life, forget the Intersect, forget Sarah, forget it all, go back to pointless Buy More days and Xbox nights with Morgan, bad Subway faux-subs.

He hurt all over and he had been hurting for so long. Since that first date-not-date, when he discovered the beautiful blonde was not there for him but for his flashy new creepy reptilian brain of 1's and 0's, the goddamn Intersect. But it had never been about the Intersect for Chuck, or about saving Burbank or the country or the world - it had been about, been all about her. He meant it on the beach when, prefacing their story, he had noted that he got the Intersect and then that his life had really changed when he met a spy named Sarah. It was that change in his heart, not the Intersect's change in his head, that counted.

He really didn't want to punish her, no matter how appealing that seemed when he was in the grip of anger. He wasn't going to return harm for harm. He loved her, God, how he loved her. He would not punish her. But he wanted to understand - so much still made little sense. He got up and scooted his chair toward hers, and he took her in his arms. She tried feebly to resist, but then she allowed it, and then she sank into his embrace. She wept onto his shirt. The scent of her slowly surrounded him and he felt at home in his own apartment for the very first time. He noticed that the off-white walls were bare.

Sarah sat back, then reached out and straightened his shirt where she had leaned against it. She glanced up at him. Suddenly, they were kissing each other. It was like their first kiss, fueled by long-pent desire and need, but also fueled by so many other things, the pain of the past.

Chuck lost himself in the kiss. It went on and on and on. But then he felt her push him away. He gazed into her eyes. "You know what, I don't care. I just care that you are here, that Charlie is here…"

"I love you for that, Chuck, but I care. I mean that I have to tell you. I can't do what I always do, and just leave everything unexplained. I'm not sure I can explain, in fact, I'm sure I can't - but you need to know that. All I can do is tell you what I was thinking, not justify myself."

She sat back in her chair and took a breath. She touched her lips, then noticed him staring at her hands as she did. Chuck felt himself blush. She smiled at him...smiled that way at him, and he felt a tremble course through him.

He forced himself to calm down, to focus, to integrate his conflicting impulses. Although the kiss had not calmed him down, it had focused him marvelously, pulled him together. His focus was both mental - and physical. He adjusted himself in his chair to hide his physical focus.

Sarah was flushed, he could see that. She seemed, like him, to be trying to recover from the kiss. She glanced at him, suddenly almost bashful. "That's the first time I have been kissed since the beach."

"I can't say the same," Chuck confessed after a moment. "I kissed Taylor. But we never...we…"

Sarah held up her hand. "It's okay, you don't have to tell me anything about that. I sent you the divorce papers. You weren't...cheating on me."

"But that's why I didn't…"

"Huh?"

"It felt like cheating any time I thought about it. I only want to sleep with my wife…"

Sarah's flush renewed. Chuck realized he had spoken in the present tense. Sarah smiled but then frowned. "Your ex-wife-to-be…"

"Tell me about the papers, Sarah."

"I'm not sure I can explain it, Chuck. I didn't come home once we were safe. And that's what I should have done. But so much had happened. And although some of it was, in a way, not my fault, in another way it all was. It all resulted from my stupid decision to walk away on the beach. I should have stayed. A brave woman would have stayed, and trusted her heart. I was right about one thing - in that state, memory-less, I did only know how to be a spy. So I ran from the light back into the shadows where I felt safe. Crazy, I know. I feel unsafe with you on a daylight beach and safe in deep cover among rogue spies. But Chuck, that changed when Charlie was born and my memory was reborn."

"How so?"

"I knew I was Sarah Bartowski - and I only wanted to be your wife. I did not want to be Agent Walker, but I had to be to get us out." She paused. "You know, Chuck, although I've been bad-to-worse at it, I have been your wife since I touched your hand at the altar of the Buy More."

"At the Nerd Herd desk?"

"The altar."

"So, why not come home to me and bring me our daughter? You were planning to come back when you went undercover, that's what you said, right?"

"Yes, and I was. But, as weird as this sounds," her chin dipped, "getting my memories back made my desire to come back and my fear of coming back both worse. Chuck, I finally not only felt, I understood what I had walked away from, and for a long time, I could not forgive myself for that, not even with my legitimate excuses, such as they were. You don't realize this, Chuck, and all your joking about running away from danger and about my ninja-likeness obscured it, but when it comes to you...I am a coward.

"Ellie said to me - out in the car - that I've been too afraid to have you and too afraid to lose you all at once. And she's right, that's the basic problem. I couldn't just woman up and love you, the amazing surprise gift that you are, and run the risks of loving you. So, I kept trying to claim the benefits and avoid the risks, and all I did was hurt us both. They only give benefits to the risk-taker. We try to make bargains with reality and cut corners. But all we end up with are knock-offs of the things we want."

Chuck grinned, a sneaky grin.

"What is it?"

"Knock-offs...or knocked-up."

She bumped his shoulder with hers. "Gah. Very funny, Mister. But I was afraid, and Charlie made it worse. There was so much to lose, so much I thought I had already lost. And I didn't want to seem like she was my Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. I got in touch with Ellie to find out what was going on with you. She told me you were outwardly okay but inwardly miserable. I kept telling myself I would come and bring Charlie and explain...try to explain. But I couldn't find the words. I just kept imagining versions of what happened when you found me in here, looking at the picture."

Chuck glanced toward the living room. "About that - Taylor shattered it on the coffee table, so…"

"I'm sorry for her, Chuck. I know how she feels."

"I'm sorry too. We seem to have the power to make our unhappiness spill over onto innocent victims," Chuck whispered, in self-recrimination. He glanced at the bedroom.

"Let's stop doing that, Chuck."

He didn't respond to that; he shifted topic. "So, the divorce papers?"

"A spy tactic, I'm ashamed to say. Ashamed. I can't offer an excuse for it either, no more than walking away. I had reasons but no excuses…

"Ellie did not seem to be able to decide on your feelings for Taylor. I had decided to come back, to bring Charlie, when Ellie told me about Taylor. I stalled. When it looked like it might be...a thing...I sent the papers.

"I didn't want to ruin your new happiness. But I hoped you'd refuse to sign and get furious...because of our prenup. I'm not blaming you, Chuck, but I couldn't understand why you just let me go. Not that I gave you any choice, but…That was another reason I was slow about coming back...But…you don't give up."

Chuck had dropped his head. "I lost faith, Sarah. I kept thinking you would come home. But you never did, day after miserable day. I started scoring it all, like an asshole, telling myself it was your move. I told you our story, kissed you as you asked. It now was...your turn."

"Damn it," Sarah breathed, "I did the same thing, even more unfairly, since you did not know where I was or what was going on and I still kept telling myself that the next move was yours. I used the divorce papers like a chess clock to force you to move. I interpreted your signing them as your signing the death certificate on us…"

She heard him inhale, and again she braced herself for anger again. Instead, he spoke so that she almost couldn't hear him. "I suppose I was. Fair or not, you didn't interpret it wrong. That was the day I finally stopped believing, even a little, in some corner of my heart, that you would come back. Ellie must have understood what you were doing. When I told her about the papers, she told me not to sign. To fight. Call the lawyer. Demand a face-to-face meeting. She'd been after me all along, but it got worse just before Taylor and I...understand that now. It was Ellie trying to tell me, or at least of getting me to try to save myself. I'm sorry, Sarah, I messed up."

She reached out to him, put her hand on his knee. "No! Don't apologize to me, Chuck. I'm the one who's sorry. But if we start to apologize now, we may never stop Just know that I, Sarah Bartowski, am sorry."

"At least you came back. Late, really late, but you did. You tried to save us."

Sarah laughed bitterly. "Like the woman who gave CPR to the man she had been drowning."

He laughed at that too, bitterly.

He looked at her, a wan smile on his face. "I can't do any more of this tonight, Sarah. My heart can't take it. Tomorrow?"

She smiled hesitantly, unsure what he was asking. "Sure, tomorrow, ...after we're divorced."

His face did not fall. In fact, the wan smile gained strength. "True. But we'll still be Chuck and Sarah."

Sarah then did a very brave thing, surprising herself. She stood and pulled the golden rings from her pocket and then held them out to Chuck in her open hand. He glanced up at her then took the rings. She held her breath.

He took the rings and held them in his closed hand as if weighing them. Then he used his other hand to take up her left hand, and he put the rings on her with the same care he used when he held Charlie for the first time.

Chuck and Sarah woke Ellie. He had fixed the couch for her to sleep on it. She saw them standing together, then she saw Sarah's rings. She suppressed an unsurprised smile. She got up slowly, so as not to wake Charlie. Chuck walked with her back to the living room.

"So, is everything okay?"

"No, but it's better - with a bullet."

"Chuck, it's you two. How about no firearms metaphors? You know, there's nothing you two can't do together, but you are nothing apart, shadows of yourselves, your substance in the other's heart."

"I know. We'll do better this time."

"I think so. No matter how angry you are, or how nick-of-time her timing, she came, Chuck. Even after you moronically signed the divorce papers she moronically sent you. Morons, both."

He nodded again. "I know."

Ellie covered herself with the blanket Chuck had put on the couch. "That little girl, she's an angel, Chuck. You're a lucky man. And if you say I know again, I'll get up and give your ass the kicking for which it's been begging for almost three years."

"I…"

Ellie's glare cut him off. He went back to the bedroom. Sarah was in bed next to Charlie. She was wearing one of Chuck's t-shirts. "I brought nothing to sleep in - I brought nothing at all."

"Figures." Chuck smiled at her. "You know, I was thinking about an eye for an eye again."

Sarah tensed, blinked. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. You know, part of what's wrong with it is that it is backward-looking. It sees today and tomorrow in terms of yesterday. But mercy, while it knows the past, is forward-looking, hoping for better tomorrow, that mercy itself will help to bring about that better tomorrow."

"What do you want to do tomorrow, Chuck?"

"I want to meet my daughter, so she can know me."

Sarah smiled. "She doesn't know your face, but she knows you. When my memories came back, I told them all to her. Our story has been her story from the beginning, Chuck. I've told her over and over. She knows we came on the plane to find her dada, the brave hero of my story, her story, our story."

Chuck's throat tightened and his eyes got wet. He looked down at his daughter. "I wish I had seen her when she was just a baby."

Sarah gave him a frowny smile. "That guard, the one that brought Charlie fruit, he smuggled in a film camera, an old one. I have lots of pictures Chuck - although the background is pretty much always the same. They're in my purse, but it's locked in the trunk of Ellie's car. It's not all that you should have had but it's something. Should I go get them?"

"Tomorrow. So, what do you want to do tomorrow, Sarah?"

"Get a marriage license, if you'll have me, Chuck Bartowski."

He grinned at her, his familiar, world-righting grin. "I'll see if you can talk me into it in the morning," he waggled his brows, "...and after?"

"Surprise me, Chuck."

Chuck got in bed on the other side. Charlie was between them.

But they were not together-not-together. They were all together.

"Thank you, Chuck," Sarah said as Chuck turned off the light.

"What for?"

"For mercy. For tomorrow."

"Thank you, Sarah."

"What for?"

"For giving me a life it was so hard to lose."

Chuck smiled in the dark, thinking about his own words. On the eve of his divorce, Chuck felt well and truly married.

A/N2: Fadeout.

Story Closing Theme: Hem, Idle (The Rabbit Song)

This was a tribute to the show but also to my favorite genre of movies, the comedy of remarriage. (The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve, etc.)