Summary: A... different take on what might have happened if Charah had happened earlier than canon. Completely unconnected to Chuck vs Plan D

Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck.

Chuck sat on his bed stunned at what Casey had told him. Sarah Walker, his beautiful Sarah, had been reassigned the moment Beckman had learned, through no action of the NSA Major's, that he and Sarah had become involved and that Casey himself was being reassigned as well, the pair's replacements would be there within a few days.

Slowly though, the shock wore off and instead it was replaced with anger, raw biting anger. How dare that bitch take away the best thing that had ever happened to him. How dare she break up their team... their family. She thought she could just replace them and expect him to keep playing along to her drum and fife? She thought wrong. He was a Bartowski and one of the things that meant is you never give up when something important to you is threatened. You don't back down, you don't surrender, and you don't play along.

It was time to teach Brigadier General Diane Beckman that she had fucked with the wrong nerd. Standing up he found an old duffel bag he and Elle had found when they were moving out of the old house and started filling it. Only what he really needed entered the bag; two changes of clothes, one formal, one rough; two pictures he could not bear to lose, one of him and Ellie smiling as they posed for a picture in their new apartment, one of him and Sarah at that Halloween party the year before; then he wrote a note to Elle apologizing for leaving without saying goodbye without saying when, if ever, he'd be back.

Note written he left through the Morgan-Door knowing that Elle was still in the living room with Awesome and he crossed quickly and silently to Casey's. Knocking on the door with a pattern of 'Oh Say Can You See' the door swung open only a scant second after his hand lowered. "Yea Chuck?" an obviously saddened NSA agent Major Casey responded.

"You once told me that a team is a family. My dad, before he left, taught me and Elle that family is everything, and you should do anything to save it," Chuck replied with extremely carefully measured words.

Casey's heart squeezed. He hated the situation too. Not only was Walker the best partner he'd ever had the distinct pleasure and honor to work with, but he could admit that Chuck... grew on people, broke through their carefully trained barriers and tore down their defenses like a Tomahawk Cruise Missile would to a medieval castle. Spies simply had no defense against the force of nature that was EF Five Tornado Chuck Bartowski, much less his Force Five Hurricane Ellenore of a sister. He opened his door though, and even while Chuck entered his apartment he started talking, "There's nothing I could do... Beckman wouldn't listen and orders are orders... even if we don't like them. That's part of being military and a spy."

"Then I guess it's a damn good thing I'm no spy..." Chuck replied, his voice dragging off, "Look Casey, I'd understand if you didn't want to help me, but I'm going after Sarah. I will find her whether or not the CIA wants me to. I will learn where she is, what she's doing, and I will find her. I'm not trained to fight, to spy, to withstand torture, to defuse bombs, or do anything I might need to do, but I don't care. I only have two questions for you."

Casey grunted, he could admire Chuck's refusal to back down against his enemy, Casey had no qualms that the NSA and CIA were very much enemies of Chuck Bartowski at this point. The only question was... did he want to align himself with his agency... or his family. Put that way, he wasn't sure why he hesitated. "They are?" He asked even while he continued to pack, no longer for his reassignment anymore.

Chuck sighed, he suspected he knew what Casey's answer, at least to one of his questions would be, "First, is there a weapon I can have that's nonlethal? Second... will you help me?"

Casey took a moment to regard Chuck. "Well, at least you're smart enough to admit that if you tried to use a gun you'd be more likely to blow your own foot off than hurt anyone with it," He paused when Chuck lowered his eyes, as if in shame, "Don't get like that moron. It's not a bad thing you don't want to kill people. I think it's one of the reasons Walker fell for you so bad, you're incapable of murder. As it so happens there are a number of weapons I could give you that would render a target unable to continue without killing them. Knives can be used non-lethally with some ease, staves, nunchaku, batons, etc. I'm not going to give you any of those."

"Then why-"

"Because you both find causing unneeded pain to be distasteful and because they need training to be useful against the kind of people you're going up against. Training you just don't have. There is however this," He paused, to reach into his rarely touched non-lethal armory and remove an Agency Tranq Gun from it. Tossing it to Chuck he resumed speaking, "This is an M5 Tranq Gun used primarily by the CIA and NSA as well as Fulcrum unfortunately. It fires a dart that is capable of knocking out it's target for multiple hours without lasting side effect. Perfectly non-lethal, unless you hit a person with around twenty or so darts, and just your speed."

"And the second question?"

Casey gave a grin, something he didn't do often, "Like you said Bartowski. We're a family. In this case, the family that spies together stays together."

"I don't think there's any outcome of this where we get reinstated. We're officially going rogue if we do this," Chuck warned, giving Casey one final chance to turn him down.

Casey nodded, moving toward his computer and opening a secure internet connection. "And we'll be hunted for the foreseeable future, I know. I was the hunter for most of my career in the NSA. Their best. Which is why I'm gonna drain any accounts I have, bounce them through at least twenty different cover accounts in as many countries as possible, before it lands in an account the NSA doesn't know about that we'll be able to get access to almost anywhere we go."

"Sarah's?"

Casey frowned, "I don't know all her accounts, much less her off-grid account. Every good spy has one and they stay off the grid because we know the tricks to hide them. Well enough that without the account code you can't find it at all. Meaning I could drain some of her accounts, but it wouldn't be all of them and it wouldn't be into her hidden account."

Chuck sighed, understanding the dilemma, "Don't touch hers then, we can't jump the gun on this... if they know what we're doing before we've done it then we won't even make it out of the country, much less to Sarah's location."

Casey finished draining his and after tossing some of his more favorite guns into a secondary duffle bag, as well as filling a backpack with ammo. "Luckily I know where Walker is, she told me before she left... shouldn't have but she did."

"Step one to go get her then?"

"Not quite. She's been sent on a mission too important for us to just interrupt, doing so would bring even more heat than a pair of escaped agents and an intersect would down on our heads. Step one is to use a small plane I have stored nearby to head up to Canada where a more long-range plane is waiting. That plane is piloted by a CIA pilot so we'll need to knock him out and get rid of him. Step two will be to take that CIA plane to a destination near Sarah after disabling every form of tracking on it we can. Step three will be to wait for an acceptable moment in her mission to swoop in, help her finish, then vanish using the CIA plane."

"You've thought this through..." Chuck spoke with a raised eyebrow.

Casey gave a shrug, picking up his duffel bags and one case full of a variety of spy gear. "You ready?"

Sliding the carrying strap of his own duffel over his shoulder so the strap went diagonally across his chest Chuck nodded and the pair left. It would take two days for the CIA and NSA replacement handlers to arrive, another twelve hours to discover that Chuck was missing, they'd gotten lost and Elle didn't want to talk with people she didn't know.