Chuck's head pounded as he sat behind the Nerd Herd desk wondering how his life had come to this. True, he'd had some setbacks when his parents left, but he and Ellie had done well for themselves. Both earned scholarships to the schools of their choice, and he was one of the top students in his Engineering program at Stanford until his best friend and roommate framed him for cheating and then slept with his girlfriend. The same girlfriend Chuck had been planning to propose to, at least the jeweler had a 30-day return policy and he was able to get his money back on the ring.

His fall from grace had been instant and humiliating. He still remembered the sound of Ellie's voice when he called to tell her he was coming home, the sad but supportive face of his long-time best friend, Morgan, when he told him what had happened. What was worse was having to crawl back to the BuyMore and beg Big Mike for a job and seeing the look of disappointment on the older man's face after he had supported and encouraged Chuck's dreams of being an engineer back when he was still a green shirt in Encino.

To this day, Chuck still didn't understand what he could have possibly done to have had this much bad karma come his way. If it wasn't bad enough, the hits kept coming, 'his' birthday party the previous night was nothing more than a 'please someone hook up with my poor, sad brother' party, just as most of the social gatherings his sister had held in recent years had been. Then the most shocking, getting that email from Bryce who, somehow, had remembered his birthday. Between the beers he'd drank at the party, and Morgan spiking the punch, he must have passed out while reading Bryce's email, because he had woken up on the floor with the world's worst hangover. His head had never hurt this much, even after his heaviest drinking days in college, this headache of his was even causing auditory and visual hallucinations, was that even possible with a hangover?

It wasn't helping at all that Big Mike had him hunting down a new Prism Express for the store and BuyMore Corporate had him on hold. He had been thumbing through repair files trying to figure out which were the priority cases when he saw Morgan come and lean against the desk, looking for a distraction. Chuck, trying to not encourage this behavior, kept waiting for him to move along as he continued to look through the files on his desk.

"Stop the presses!" He heard his little buddy gasp, "Who's that? Vicky Vale!"

"Vicky Vale a-Vic-a Vicky Vale…" Chuck sang to himself until he caught sight of a gorgeous blond woman with eyes like he hadn't seen in much too long. His heart started to pound in his chest as he dropped his phone in shock.

"I hope I'm not interrupting something," The woman smiled up at him.

"Erm, it's from Batman…" He tried to explain while simultaneously trying to place her. There was just something so familiar about the woman in front of him.

"And that makes it better?" The woman teased, her eyes sparkling with good humor.

"Hi," Morgan smiled brightly at her as his eyes drifted up and down her body, causing Chuck's fists to clench at his side, his protective instincts flaring up as he tried to not punch his best friend for his behavior toward this mystery woman. "I'm Morgan, and this here is Chuck."

"Wow, I didn't know people named their kids Chuck anymore," She responded, the name fitting the tall man in front of her, but at the same time another, similar name kept springing to mind. She tamped down the urge and turned to the shorter of the two men, "Or Morgan for that matter."

"Yeah, well my parents were sadists," Chuck joked, "And his carnival freaks found him in a dumpster."

"But they raised me as one of their own," Morgan completed the joke by rote, it was clear the pair had done this routine before. It made her smile as their banter seemed very familiar to her, but she couldn't give it any more thought when she realized the taller man, Chuck was asking her something.

"So, what can I help you with…" He started.

"Sarah," She supplied, with a warm smile, as she slid a flip phone across the desk, "I just bought that thing and it keeps turning off on me randomly."

"Ah, yes, the Intelicell," Chuck picked up the device and popped the back off, using his mouth to hold on to it by the edge as he pulled out a screw driver and talked around the backing, "They have this little screw in the back that likes to come loose, all you gotta do is give it a few quick turns and…" He popped the back onto the phone again and handed it over as it powered up, "Good as new."

"Wow, you geeks are good," Sarah grinned up at him.

"Oh, well, uh, nerds, actually, we prefer nerds," Chuck stammered, echoed slightly by the shorter man, "You know, Nerd Herd and…" he pointed to the sign above his head. The wording bringing back a long-forgotten memory of a boy on a beach, breeze ruffling his too-long curls, his smile warming her to the tips of her toes. Before she could put too much thought into it, a frazzled man came running up to the desk, a little girl in a leotard in tow.

Chuck listened to the man's rambling, trying to calm him down as he attempted to diagnose the problem before him. Once the issue was found, he quickly went into action, making it right to preserve this moment in the little girl's life. He even encouraged her in that sweet way he had when the girl had doubts.

"Oh Charlie," Sarah murmured to herself, recognition washing over her as she watched him, memories from that weekend in San Diego coming back to her, "You wonderful, sweet man, you never changed." The moment the words came from her mouth she realized she couldn't go through with her mission, she was already compromised.

She knew she should just turn around and leave, but something in her wanted him to be able to find her. She had always regretted how things had ended between them, a few short months after they had met and went their separate ways, her father's crimes finally caught up to him resulting in his arrest. It was that same day that Director Graham offered her a job with the CIA, fast tracked her high school education and got her placed at Harvard in the linguistics program as he soon found she had a talent for languages. She just wished she could have called Charlie one last time to tell him what was going on or at least that she was going away, she could almost imagine how much it had hurt him to hear her number was disconnected. It was probably the same pain she felt for months and years after, to this day their brief two-day romance was the truest relationship she'd ever had.

Even her two-year long fling with Bryce had been nothing but convenience and sex. She smiled to herself remembering the moments she'd had to bite her tongue to keep from calling out Charlie's name in bed. Even though they had never been anywhere near taking that kind of step, she knew that if their relationship had been able to continue and they'd decided to go further, it would have been more than just sex. It was still him she fantasized about, even if his face had become fuzzy in her mind's eye over the years. Looking over at the man who stood, a broad smile on his face as he watched the young ballerina perform her routine, she knew she was not likely to forget his face ever again, even if this was the last time she would ever see him. It only took a split second for her to make the decision. She grabbed a pen and a business card from the desk, quickly jotting down her phone number and leaving it behind like a paper clad glass slipper before she turned and left the building, not turning back… more than twice… as she made her exit.

To say Chuck was disappointed when he turned back to the desk after helping the ballerina and her well-meaning but idiotic father to find Sarah gone, would be an understatement. There was just something about her that was so familiar to him. He hadn't seen beauty like hers in years, not even Jill, who he had once planned to marry, was as beautiful as Sarah. He rolled the name around in his mouth, but it still didn't seem right to him, sure it suited her as she looked like a princess straight out of the storybooks his mom used to read him as a kid, but there was this niggling feeling that it wasn't really her name.

"Dude!" Morgan called from where he was standing by the Nerd Herd desk, waiving a small bit of paper, "She left you her number!" Chuck rolled his eyes as he watched his friend smell the card before handing it to him when he'd returned to the desk. "So, are you gonna call her?"

"Not today, Morgan," Chuck shook his head, "I've been having a really weird day, my head is still pounding, and calling her a scant 10 minutes after she left her contact information screams 'desperate' louder than pretty much anything else. I'll call her tomorrow, give her a chance to realize what she's done and make her escape."

A few hours later, Chuck was heading home, Morgan in tow. Apparently in addition to crashing the display sample Prism Express at the store, his best friend had managed to crash his own computer with the porn virus that was circulating right now. Opening his front door, his day went from weird to worse when he walked in to find a figure, clad head to toe in black, carrying the tower for his computer. The thing had crashed, and he had been hoping to work on it that night to figure out what went wrong, he begged the person in black to take anything else, but to leave the computer tower. Morgan, however, went into attack mode right away, causing the figure to go into a fighting stance as Morgan began throwing things at the intruder. The items were quickly deflected, hitting Chuck in some rather sensitive places as Morgan encouraged him to fight back making Chuck give him stink eye as he tried to hobble into the room only to be kicked to the floor by the intruder followed close by Morgan being thrown on top of him tip to tail style. Before the intruder could go back for the tower, the shelf that it had been set on collapsed and fell to the floor obliterating the tower and the hard drive within.

The next day just added to the weirdness that had become his life. Chuck had gone over to Large Mart to replace the door locks for the apartment when he spotted a man, who he'd instantly recognized as a Serbian demolitions expert, despite never seeing the man before in his life. He tried to make a quick getaway and could have sworn the man was following him around the store, but by the time he could find an employee to report the siting to, the man was across the store, checking out and laughing with the cashier.

Sarah had once again changed her mind about whether or not to get involved in this mission. She knew that Chuck wasn't the kind of person to steal government secrets, there was no way he could have been in cahoots with Bryce. Even if she didn't know Charlie, or Chuck as he seemed to go by with his friends and coworkers, the lack of a backup drive or secondary hard drive proved that he had no prior knowledge of Bryce's plans and she told Graham as much. Graham promptly informed her that her mission was over and that the intersect was no longer her problem. The NSA was taking over and sending Major Casey to handle the case. She felt her protective instincts rise as she begged for more time to try to find a solution, Graham informed her that she had twelve hours but that she would be going in without any support or resources. Reluctantly, she accepted the terms and went into the BuyMore once more.

With a nervous sigh, Chuck headed back across the plaza to the BuyMore, hoping that if he got his mind back on work, he could forget everything that had been happening lately. It didn't help that his mind was working on overdrive and still hurt like hell. He groaned and laid his head on his arms, which were crossed in front of him on the desk.

"I'm losing my mind!" He kept repeating as he lightly hit his head on his forearms. When he heard a ding from the service bell, he assumed it was Morgan, and reached over to quiet the ringing that was making his splitting headache even worse. "Not now Morgan," He groaned then realized the hand beneath his was too delicate and smooth to be that of his best friend. He looked up and saw the woman from before.

"Jenny!" He saw the woman's eyes widen before he caught the slip, "Erm, sorry, talk about blast from the past, I meant Sarah. Because Sarah is you, Sarah is your name…o"

"Chuck, is there someplace we can talk privately?" She asked, tilting her head to the side. "It's important."

"Yeah, um, sure," Chuck looked around and waved over Anna, one of the other nerd herders, to watch the desk. He remembered the day she had been hired; Morgan practically shit a brick when he realized it was the same Anna he had lusted after at that band competition their senior year of high school. "I'm not feeling too great, I'm gonna head home. You got the con."

"Aye, aye, Chuckles," Anna gave him a fingertip salute.

"Thanks," Chuck nodded and stepped out from behind the desk, joining Sarah by the entrance, "I know a place that's not too far away. Do you have a car? Because I can only take the herder out if I'm on call, which I'm not tonight."

"Sure, we can take my car," She hit the button on her remote, causing the alarm system on the Porsche to chirp twice as it disengaged.

"Holy shit," Chuck murmured, "I am in the wrong line of work, what is it that you do and how can I get in on it?"

"Get in the car, Chuck," Sarah ordered, opening the driver side door and waiting for him to get into the passenger seat before climbing in herself.

"Just head to the Malibu Pier," Chuck instructed, "There are a few quieter places off the beaten path down there that will probably serve our purposes."

"I should have known," Sarah muttered under her breath with a small chuckle as she put the car into gear and pealed out of the plaza and onto the highway, throwing Chuck back in his seat where he hung on for dear life. It didn't take long, at the breakneck speed Sarah enjoyed, to arrive at their destination. "Where to now?"

"Follow me," Chuck held out his hand to her, the gesture almost second nature to them both as she slid her hand into his. Both glanced up at each other as the familiar spark ran up both their arms at the contact. Chuck shook his head to clear it and began to guide her down a pathway which led to a small alcove that not many people knew of just beyond the pier.

They settled in the sand and watched the waves for a while before Sarah finally spoke. "Chuck, what was that you called me back at the store?"

"Jenny, I think," Chuck groaned, brushing his hand through his curls, nervously. "I looked up and I saw your eyes and you reminded me of someone I used to know. We shared a brief… thing, and I thought there was a real connection there, but like any good thing in my life she just… vanished. But you don't want to hear about that."

"Oh, Charlie," She shook her head, with a sad smile. Chuck's head shot up to look at her, eyes wide.

"Jenny?" He gasped, disbelievingly.

Sarah just nodded, "It wasn't my choice. I felt it too, but things went sideways, and I had to go. They wouldn't even let me call you to say goodbye. I am so, so, sorr…" Her words were cut off by Chuck lunging at her and kissing her until neither of them had any breath left.

"I've missed you," He whispered, pulling away slightly, his hands still on her cheeks, "God, I don't know how it is even possible, but you have gotten even more beautiful in the past 9 years."

"Yeah, well I lost the braces, learned how to style my hair," She joked.

"No, it's something more," He shook his head, "Like you finally found your purpose for being here, your true identity."

"How do you…" She started then shook her head to get back on track, "Chuck."

"Please, call me Charlie," Chuck pleaded with her, "Everyone else calls me Chuck, but with you, for you, I am Charlie."

"Alright, Charlie," She gave him a small smile, which he returned, "This is hard…" She sighed trying to find a way to do this, "How well do you know Bryce Larkin?"

Chuck's eyes narrowed at the name, and all joy faded from his face, "He was my roommate in college. How do you know Bryce?"

"We worked together at the C.I.A.," Sarah explained.

"C.I.A.?" Chuck's eyes widened, "You're telling me that Bryce Larkin from Connecticut is a spy?"

"Yes, a rogue spy," Sarah acknowledged, "Has he tried to contact you at all in the past few days?"

"I haven't heard from Bryce since…" Chuck thought, "No, wait, he sent me an email on my birthday."

"Did you open it?" Sarah urged him to continue.

"Yeah, it was a line from a game we programmed in college…" Chuck stammered, "I had to type in the correct response to open it, when I did, I saw all these pictures…"

"Does your computer have a back-up?" She pressed, "Anything the file could be saved to?"

"No, it died last week, and I hadn't gotten around to repairing it," Chuck shook his head, "And someone broke into the house the other day and tried to steal my tower, but it fell and shattered beyond repair."

"I'm sorry about that," Sarah gave him a sympathetic look, "I really thought that shelf looked sturdier than it was."

"That was you?!" Chuck looked at her in amazement.

"Yeah," Sarah nodded, "Sorry about how I left you and Morgan, I'd had a really crappy day and I needed something to make me laugh."

"I'm so glad we could entertain you," Chuck replied dryly, "Why are you so interested in an email that some guy I knew from college sent me, Jenny?"

"Charlie, those pictures you saw were encoded with secrets," Sarah explained, "Government secrets, if you saw them then you know them."

"Secrets?" Chuck gasped, "But there were thousands of them. Wait, I've been getting these intuitive flashes the last couple days, things I shouldn't even know..."

Sarah watched as Chuck paled, "What? What is it?" Chuck's mouth opened and closed a few more times as if he was searching for words, "Charlie, talk to me."

"They're gonna kill him!" Chuck gasped then looked at Sarah, "Jenny, they're gonna kill him!"

"Kill who?" Sarah urged him on, "Whose gonna be killed?"

"Stanfield, you know the NATO guy," Chuck supplied, "It's all making sense now," He murmured as he began to break down all the information and analyze it, "There was a Serbian demolitions expert at Large Mart today, he was sent to interrupt the Security Conference that Stanfield is speaking at tonight at the Grand Seville. He's going to set off a bomb and kill everyone there."

"Oh my God," Sarah stood, "When is the bomb supposed to go off? Do we have time to stop it?"

"I, erm," Chuck looked at his watch, "We have an hour, two tops."

"Then let's go," Sarah grabbed his hand and dragged him back to the car.

"Jenny, what are you doing?" Chuck asked, a little panicked, "Where are we going?"

"We're going to go try to stop the bomb," She started pressing buttons on her console.

"Stop the… What?!" Chuck demanded, "Stop the bomb? Jenny are you crazy? Do you know how to stop a bomb, 'cause I don't!"

"We have to at least try, or hundreds if not thousands of people are gonna get hurt or worse," Sarah countered, hitting one last button. The sound of ringing came through the speakers.

"Graham," Came the male voice.

"This is Walker," Sarah reported, "Larkin sent the program by email to Mr. Bartowski, who opened it and accidentally downloaded the files into himself. There is no back up, but he is able to access the information. To that point, Mr. Bartowski just brought to my attention an assassination plot against General Stanfield that we are presently on our way to try to prevent. I don't have a way to get a hold of Casey right now, but if what you said earlier is true, his team might be in a better position to stop it."

"I will contact Beckman and have her redirect Casey's team," The man confirmed, "Graham out."

Sarah quickly whipped into the valet area of the swanky hotel and jumped out of the car, followed closely by Chuck who was quickly pushed to the ground by Casey who held a gun to his head. "Casey, what the hell are you doing?" Sarah demanded.

"Stay out of it, Walker, he belongs to the N.S.A." Casey ordered.

"No, C.I.A. gets him first." Sarah countered, "It was our guy who created this mess, we'll fix it, but right now we don't have time to get into this. According to the intel provided by the intersect download that is in Mr. Bartowski's brain, there is a bomb in the building. So, we can stay here and have our little turf war, or we can go in there and disarm the bomb, potentially saving the lives of everyone here."

"Fine, how do we get there?" Casey turned back to Chuck.

"The easiest way?" Chuck asked looking up at Sarah.

"No, the fastest," Sarah countered.

"Got ya," Chuck nodded, climbing to his feet and running through the lobby and directly through the fountain, Casey and Sarah hot on his heels. They tore down a hall and around a corner to the ballroom where the general was about to take the stage. Casey and Sarah didn't stop as they flashed their badges at the security detail as they flung the door open.

"You got us this far, Bartowski," Casey muttered, "Now where is it?"

Chuck's eyes surveyed the room until he spotted a serving cart that looked out of place and was unattended, "There, right there," He pointed following Casey and Sarah to the cart. They pulled open the lid and tore off the fabric covering the lower part of the cart to reveal a laptop computer and several bricks of C-4. There was a countdown showing on the screen as they debated the best way to disable the contraption.

Stanfield, thankfully noticed the commotion and initiated an evacuation, leaving Chuck, Sarah, Casey and a few of the security detail in the room. Casey and Sarah were struggling with finding the best solution when Chuck recognized the type of laptop it was, and an idea hit him. "Guys, I have an idea," He spoke up, nudging them out of the way as his hands flew to the computer keyboard.

"What do you think you are doing, Bartowski," Casey demanded, grabbing the younger man's arms, "That's not an x-box, and you are not an x-man."

"I know, Casey, this is a Prism Express, we have them at the BuyMore," Chuck explained as calmly as he could as he pulled his arms from Casey's grip and began to pull up the DOS override protocols, fingers flying over the keys as he spoke. "I can override the programming by using the DOS protocols to pull up the internet."

Sarah watched in fascination at how quickly Chuck was working, it brought her back to one of the first missions she'd had with Bryce, they were tasked with taking down a hacker, but all they could ever get was a copy of the attack after the fact. She had watched at how quickly and easily the hacker breached the system, what amazed her, though, was that he never stole any information. It was more like he poked around, fixed a few security gaps and got out, but not without sending an email from the internal server explaining what he'd done, and signing it with his handle, Piranha. She'd put in her report that she felt that it was a waste of resources to hunt him down as he wasn't actually doing anything illegal, aside from accessing government servers. It seemed like he didn't have any motivation but to help. There was just something about how the code flew across the screen at Chuck's prompting that brought her back to that time, but that was something she would deal with later as she saw an internet browser pop up.

"Are you really surfing porn right now?" Casey demanded incredulously as he watched Chuck call up the website for a Serbian porn star whose website had recently caused a rather aggressive virus to spread across the internet like wildfire.

"Just trust me on this," Chuck looked at the older man before turning back to Sarah, "You may want to close your eyes," He advised before hitting the key to load the website and activate the virus. They heard the starlet ask if she was sexy a few times before the hard drive began to smoke, shutting down the computer and stopping the count down. Chuck's eyes widened in surprise, "I did it! I actually stopped a bomb! …Oh my God, what if I had been wrong?"

"Don't puke on the C-4," Casey advised patting the younger man on the shoulder.

"Charlie, I am so proud of you," Sarah threw her arms around his neck, barely resisting the urge to kiss him silly right here in the middle of the ballroom floor under the watchful eye of the secret service and the N.S.A. team that Casey had brought with him.

"Thank you, Jenny." Chuck buried his head in her neck and held her tight until the nerves that had been coursing through his body subsided and he stopped shaking.

It took a few hours for the scene to be cleared for cleanup and the three of them were released, the clandestine agents to fill out their reports and Chuck to… well figure out what was to happen from here. He had stopped in the bathroom to clean the nervous sweat from his brow and neck before rejoining Casey and Sarah outside, only to hear the two of them arguing about whether or not to put him in a bunker. It was no surprise that Casey was for that option while Sarah was vehemently against it, knowing how vitally important Chuck's family, which included his closest friends, were to him.

Chuck had enough, "Hey, this is my damn life we're talking about," He interrupted, "I didn't ask for this to happen to me, but it's done. We don't even know how this stupid thing works," He gestured to his head, "Who's to say it will continue to work without any real-world stimuli? Until then, I have had a long day, I'm going home."

"You ain't going anywhere, Bartowski," Casey tried to stop him, only to have his hand slapped away by the frustrated computer nerd.

"You need me, not the other way around," Chuck reminded him, "I am going home, you can fight over territory all you want, but I refuse to leave my family, we've already lost too much. Also, wherever Sarah goes, I go. If I absolutely must have a handler, it will be her or the both of you, no other option, and I damned well better be compensated for this shit." With that he stormed off, hailing a taxi. The agents watching him with amused, shocked, and impressed looks on their faces.

"Good for you, Charlie," Sarah muttered before turning to Casey, "He's right, we don't know how it works, better to keep him topside until we know more. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some nerd watching to do."