A/N: I'm pretty surprised I managed to get this written so quickly, but at least it means I don't get a mob after me for that cliff-hanger ending. I go back to university at the weekend, and I have no idea whether I'll be able to write much there, so this may be the last chapter for a month or so, unless I can get another one written quickly. Thanks to Sarah-fan at for doing the beta and stopping me from writing something stupid (it happens more often than you might think), and thanks to everyone that's reviewed this story up till now.

Sarah's world stopped spinning at the same moment Chuck stopped moving, and she barely made it to the table before she collapsed in shock into a chair. Cole whirled into action as soon as he had seen Chuck's final attempt to stand and Sarah's subsequent reaction. He may have failed in his ultimate goal to get into her pants, but he still viewed her as at the very least a comrade-in-arms, and he wouldn't fail her, or the other member of his new team. He grabbed the radio from the stunned agent guarding the door and barked into it.

"Somebody get a paramedic in there, now! Agent Pugh is down! I repeat, Agent Pugh is down!"

The next few seconds passed in a flurry of movement. Cole burst past the two agents guarding the door to the observation room and forced his way into the room, two paramedics hot on his heels, one carrying a stretcher, the other holding a bag full of medical supplies. Sarah, on the other hand, was still sitting at the table in shock. She hadn't moved since Chuck had himself stopped moving, and she stared at the wall, as if it would give her the answer to how she would go on without Chuck.

Just then, Cole returned to the observation deck, red faced and breathing heavily from his dash to Chuck's side and then his efforts in assisting the paramedics with the emergency first-aid. Sarah still hadn't moved, and she looked as if she was barely managing to hold herself together. Her lower lip was quivering as she kept her hands protectively around her abdomen, as if she needed to remind herself that she had something to make her happy.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," Cole muttered under his breath, before he continued in an effort to comfort the blonde woman in front of him. "Sarah, they've taken Chuck to the base hospital, we should leave as soon as possible to go see him."

"No! I don't want to have to identify his body!" shouted Sarah, before the fragile dam of her emotions broke in a torrent that obliterated every defence she had, and she collapsed in tears in the chair. Cole wasn't exactly experienced in comforting crying women, let alone hormonally-imbalanced crying women who could very easily impale him with a knife in less than a second, so he ended up putting his arms around Sarah in an awkward half-hug. Sarah then clung to him for dear life, nearly crushing the air from his lungs. He could feel his shirt beginning to get damp as Sarah mourned for her lost fiancé, which was when he finally listened properly to what Sarah had said.

"There isn't any body to identify, Sarah. He needs you," finished Cole, almost pleading. Sarah stopped wailing into his shirt long enough to look up at Cole's face, looking for any sign that he wasn't telling the truth before she would allow herself to believe that Chuck wasn't actually gone and this was all a cruel trick.

"But...I saw...he stopped moving," said Sarah uncertainly.

"He's conscious, but he can't move," began Cole, before launching into an explanation. "They think there was a bug in the Intersect programming. It was a piece of code left in from another experiment where they attempted to place skills into the Intersect."

"A bug? So one of the developers hurt Chuck?" asked Sarah, her anger already growing that someone had dared harm Chuck, even accidentally.

" Chuck must have flashed on something in the room that triggered a skill flash, but they don't know what yet. When he flashed, the Intersect took control of his motor functions, which was what the code left in was designed to do. Of course, there wasn't any more code to actually deliver the skill, so it left Chuck in limbo. The Intersect had control but it couldn't do anything with him, which is the state he's still stuck in until they can remove the faulty Intersect programming."

Sarah looked at Cole in wonder as he explained the science behind what had happened to Chuck. She didn't know how he knew that, and frankly, she didn't care. All that mattered was Chuck was still with her, and she had to go and see him as soon as she could. Her baby still had its dad, and Sarah would do anything in her power to keep it that way.

Cole, on the other hand, was glad that he had actually listened to the head scientist behind the British Intersect team, codenamed Aries. Sarah probably wouldn't have believed him if he had just burst in and told her Chuck was still alive, but the long-winded explanation that sounded like it could make sense had given her time to process the information without any pressure. Now she knew, and he could see the smile spread across her face, a mixture of happiness and relief as she looked down at the small bump in her stomach.

"Let's go see Chuck," Sarah said with a strength she wasn't sure she'd ever possess again after seeing Chuck fall and not get back up. Cole followed her out of the room, stopping only to grab the keys for the van he had seen parked just outside the door to the complex.

-------

The military hospital at the RAF base was nothing particularly special, but Sarah felt as though it was the best hospital on the planet at this point. Despite the fact they hadn't actually done a lot to aid Chuck's health save for monitoring his vitals and putting him in a bed, she was feeling incredibly grateful to everyone she saw that had played a part in his treatment.

The idiots that had forgotten to take out the skill trigger on the other hand, well they probably wouldn't leave the room in one piece if Sarah got a hold of them. Nobody dared to hurt her Chuck, and if they did, they had to answer to the fury of Sarah Walker. She turned into somewhat of a psycho where damage to Chuck was involved, although as Chuck had once said, she was his adorable psycho.

Right now, there was a team of scientists working to reprogram the Intersect to remove it from Chuck's head so they could try again, this time with the offending line of code being removed. A previous test had shown that the human brain could still retain subliminal images even while the body was unable to respond, so the scientists were in the midst of hooking Chuck up to the device that would remove the "test" Intersect from Chuck's brain when Sarah walked in.

"Get your hands off my fiancé," she said, her voice cold and dripping with menace as she stood in the doorway to Chuck's room. The technicians looked round, and after seeing the look on Sarah's face, decided that the best thing to do would be to bravely, as the locals put it, "leg it". Sarah stepped to the side as they moved past her, rage still etched on her face that they dared to touch Chuck again. She looked at the object of everything that mattered in her life and calmed almost immediately.

He looked so peaceful in that hospital bed, which was certainly better than the cries of pain that she knew would haunt her dreams for a long time to come. Of course, this peacefulness came at a cost. He was still barely conscious in that bed, and even her presence wasn't going to fix that. She still went and sat next to him, taking his hand tenderly as she laid a soft kiss to his unresponding lips. Sarah was content to sit there, watching the slight rise and fall of her man's chest as he breathed, and just holding his hand, but she was interrupted by Cole clearing his throat at the entrance to Chuck's room.

"They can help him, you know," he reassured her.

"But what if they just make him worse?" Sarah asked fearfully. "I can't do it without him."

"They know what they're doing, Sarah. He'll be fine, I promise," said Cole, again trying to comfort his new partner. "Now let them do their jobs so we can have Chuck back to his normal inelegant self."

"I'll have you know he's got a lot more graceful recently," said Sarah with mock anger.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the repeated nightly workouts, would it?" responded Cole jokingly, to which Sarah just blushed madly. This certainly threw Cole, the Sarah Walker he had, admittedly briefly, known wouldn't have reacted like that, and of that he was fairly sure. Must be another one of the effects Chuck has had on her. How did you pull that one off, you lucky devil? Cole asked himself, for what seemed to be the millionth time since that mission in L.A. all those months ago.

The scientists returned to the hospital room and began their work once more, most of them eyeing Sarah nervously, as though she were about to sprout knives and attack all of them. To be fair to them, it wasn't something that was beyond the realms of possibility if one of them so much as knocked a hair out of place on Chuck's head. Cole lead Sarah away, albeit with some reluctance on her part, as they left the scientists to commence removing the Intersect, complete with the offending line of code, from Chuck's head.

-----

To remove the Intersect, Aries had come up with a simple plan. They would prop Chuck up in his hospital bed while his eyes were held open in much the same manner as they had been in the Fulcrum facility under Meadow Branch. Then the reconfigured Intersect images would be projected onto the wall opposite Chuck, and in theory he should then be able to move again once the Intersect had been removed.

They were just about done with setting up the hospital room to remove the Intersect within a few minutes, and Sarah was beginning to panic again. She couldn't sit still in the hospital waiting room that Cole had taken her too, and repeatedly started to move back towards Chuck's room before Cole intercepted her, telling her that the Intersect technicians needed space to work. What he didn't add, for fear of his own safety, was that it would probably be a good idea to keep someone who didn't tend to take Chuck looking like he was in pain very well away from a room where scientists would be essentially messing around with Chuck's brain.

Sarah was pacing madly until she saw a series of flashing lights coming from Chuck's room. She knew this meant that the Intersect "slideshow" had begun, and she immediately became worried for Chuck again. Cole looked on from his seated position at her frantic pacing, as she occasionally ran her hand over her stomach and looked anxiously over towards Chuck's room.

Within a few minutes the flashing lights had stopped, signifying the end of what Sarah hoped was the Intersect removal and Chuck's forced paralysis. When the first technician left the room, still wearing his shades, she walked quickly to the door to Chuck's room, barely controlling the impulse to run to Chuck's side.

She pushed past the remaining scientists that were trying to leave Chuck's room after packing up the Intersect display and moved quickly to Chuck's side, grabbing hold of his hand once more. As one of the scientists left, he turned to her and opened his mouth to speak.

"He should be awake in about a minute. Just press that button next to his bed if there are still issues with his movement," he said, pointing to the small button that lay near Sarah's chair. Sarah didn't look to have paid any attention to him, however, as she kept holding Chuck's hand and stroking his hair back, letting her hand linger on his cheek.

It was as she was about to withdraw her hand she saw Chuck's eyelids begin to slit, although they immediately closed as he tried to adjust to the unfamiliar light. Sarah's smile that was reserved only for Chuck bloomed in full force once she was finally able to gaze into his eyes again, something she had thought she would never do again less than an hour ago.

"Hey," she said softly, her hand still cradling his cheek as he turned towards her. He kissed the palm of her hand before lifting his hand to cradle Sarah's cheek.

"Hey yourself," he answered croakily. "You have no idea how bored I was, waiting for them to take the faulty Intersect out. The wait was worth it though," he finished, smiling up at her.

Sarah withdrew her hand from his cheek, and did something Chuck was never expecting. Just as Chuck craned his head upwards to get a proper "welcome back" kiss Sarah drew her fist back and punched him square on the shoulder. Chuck yelped in pain and looked at Sarah in shock.

"What the hell was that for?" he asked in surprise, nursing his surprisingly painful shoulder. Sarah really had put a lot into that punch.

"Never, never, do that to me again. Don't you dare try to die on me again," she said in a voice full of menace, yet Chuck could still detect the very real fear she had of losing him.

"Don't worry, I'll double my efforts to not die," said Chuck, the sarcasm dripping from every word, but he realised he had said the wrong thing when he could see the tears threatening to spill from Sarah's eyes.

"Hey, hey, hey," he continued, his voice much softer than before. "I'm not going anywhere. It'll take more than some lousy piece of code for you to get rid of me. Remember, I happen to be very much in love with you; I have something to fight for. Now can I get my kiss to remind me what I have to live for?" finished Chuck, smiling broadly with the last sentence.

"Well..." began Sarah, feigning uncertainty, "I suppose you have had a tough day."

"Tough's probably an understa-," answered Chuck, before Sarah cut him off by kissing him fiercely. Chuck's momentary surprise at her kiss gave way to a passionate response. Due to the fact Chuck was still too weak from his quite literal battle with the Intersect, Sarah was forced to climb onto the bed in order to get close enough to satisfy her need for Chuck.

Naturally, even being on the bed and pressed up against Chuck wasn't enough for her, and Chuck appeared to be thinking the same, if the way he was feverishly working the buttons of her blouse open was any indication. There wasn't much that could make them break this particular kiss save for the basic need for oxygen, and Sarah was seeing the benefits of the regular cardio training Chuck had undergone which had increased his lung volume, meaning he could hold his breath for longer and therefore Sarah could lose herself in him for longer.

However, all too soon her lips began to burn not from passion but through lack of air, and she reluctantly forced herself away from Chuck. Sarah took the time to look at the slightly dazed look on Chuck's face, and noted with a small amount of pride the difficulty he was still having in getting himself back under control. The fact she had thought not long ago that she wouldn't have been able to do that with him again, yet here he was struggling to catch his breath after a make-out session made her smile grow even bigger.

"Excuse me, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" came Cole's voice in his gravelly tone from the entrance to Chuck's room. It was perfectly obvious that he was, in fact, interrupting something, considering Sarah's blouse was hanging loosely off her shoulders and both of the two other occupants were breathing rather heavily.

"Cole?" Chuck asked in shock. "What are you doing here?"

"Sarah hasn't gotten round to telling you yet?" he responded, before continuing, "Although I suppose you two were a little busy."

Sarah's eyes narrowed in irritation, something Cole took as a sign to get to the point quickly, before he lost important parts of his anatomy.

"I'm the SIS part of the new Intersect team. I'd done some research on the Intersect when they sent me to get close to Perseus," Cole began, referring back to the mission that had brought him into contact with Team Bartowski. "I suppose that experience with how the Intersect works counted for something upstairs, and they wanted me on the new team. I wasn't expecting my team mates to be quite so experienced with the Intersect though. How did that happen anyway?"

"It's a long story," said Sarah evasively.

"I'm sure there'll be a boring mission at some point, you can explain it then. Oh, by the way, they should have the Intersect fixed and ready for upload within a couple of hours, and they want to keep Chuck in here to monitor him right up until he receives the upload, so find a way to occupy yourselves until then. And for Christ's sake, lock the door," finished Cole as he let himself out of the room, shutting the door behind him. This was going to be an...interesting assignment.

"Do you have any idea what we could do for these next few hours, Chuck?" asked Sarah playfully, settling next to Chuck on the hospital bed, not bothering to rebutton her blouse.

"I have a few," said Chuck as he resumed kissing her, the lack of buttons on Sarah's blouse certainly providing easier access for his wandering hands.

Suddenly they were both wearing way too many clothes.