Chuck vs. the Background Check

Song Recommendation – Baby Come Back – Player

Disclaimer – Unfortunately, I don’t own Chuck.

Chapter 12 – What Remains?

Castle

Another late evening, Castle had finally grown quiet. Casey had disappeared into the armory to finish paperwork.

Sarah sat across the operations table reviewing the final mission reports from Fulcrum. Chuck leaned back in his chair, stretching after another long evening.

He glanced toward the clock. Nearly ten. “Long day.”

Sarah looked up from the report in front of her. “We’ve had longer.”

Chuck laughed. “True.”

For a while neither of them spoke. The silence felt comfortable. Almost familiar. Chuck noticed how different that felt from the old days, when silence around Sarah had seemed like something he needed to fill. Now he could sit beside her and enjoy knowing she was there.

Chuck realized something. Years ago, that silence would have made him nervous, and he would have talked to hear himself talk. Now, he found himself enjoying the quiet. He had spent so long trying to understand what Sarah thought of him that he had forgotten how natural their companionship had become.

Sarah finally closed her folder. “I think that’s the last report.”

Chuck smiled. “I’m glad I don’t have to do the paperwork for our missions.”

“You’re lucky. They can take more time than the actual mission.”

Another comfortable silence settled between them.

Chuck found himself watching her. She had pulled her hair back after training earlier that afternoon. A few loose strands had escaped.

She looked tired, but relaxed. Not Agent Walker. Just Sarah. That distinction mattered more to Chuck than he wanted to admit. He had known Agent Walker for years. But it was Sarah – the woman beneath the cover – that had always made him feel like he could be himself.

He caught himself staring at her. His eyes immediately dropped to the table.

Chuck thought to himself. “Seriously, Bartowski? Don’t do this. You just got your life back together.”

He quietly gathered another stack of reports. Anything to keep his hands busy. Anything to stop thinking.

It didn’t work.

The reports blurred together.

Chuck knew every mission on the pages, but he wasn’t thinking about missions anymore. He was thinking about the woman who had just left the room and somehow taken all the oxygen out of the room without even trying.

Chuck forced himself to focus on the paperwork, but every few seconds his eyes drifted back toward the empty chair Sarah had sat in moments earlier. “Why her?” he wondered. “Why now?”

He had spent months convincing himself his feelings for Sarah belonged in the past. That had been easier while Lou was part of his life. Now that relationship was finished, Chuck no longer had anywhere to hide from the feelings he had pushed aside. Maybe he was mistaking friendship for something deeper. That explanation sounded reasonable… yet somehow it didn’t feel true.

Unfortunately, his mind wasn’t cooperating. Every explanation he offered himself sounded logical for about five seconds before another memory of Sarah quietly dismantled it.

Chuck thought to himself, “She’s still the same Sarah. She still smiles every time I bring her coffee. She still teases me when I overthink things. She still trusts me on every mission. So why does it feel different now?”

He sighed inwardly. “Maybe because I’m different.”

Chuck’s brain started to spiral, as it usually did in this type of situation.

Long ago, his heart had belonged to someone else. Now that chapter had finally closed, leaving him with an uncomfortable realization.

There had once been someone else occupying a corner of his heart all along. Someone he had spent the entire time trying to convince himself he had moved on from.

“Please don’t tell me…” He laughed at himself and thought, “How am I having this conversation with myself again?”

Sarah looked over. “You okay?”

Chuck blinked. “Huh?”

“You’ve been staring at that folder for a couple of minutes.”

Chuck looked down. He hadn’t realized he was still holding it. He had been too busy thinking about her. “Oh. I was just thinking.”

Sarah smiled. “Dangerous hobby.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I’m heading upstairs.”

“I’ll lock up.”

“Don’t stay too late.”

“I won’t.”

She smiled softly. “I mean it.”

Chuck looked toward the stairs again. It wasn’t the building that felt empty. It was the absence of Sarah that he suddenly noticed.

Chuck walked over to the mission board. Photographs still covered one wall. Maps covered another.

Months ago, he would have stayed another three hours.

Tonight, he wasn’t interested.

His thoughts had wandered somewhere else. He leaned against the conference table.

He continued an inner dialogue with himself. “What are you doing to yourself? You finally found closure with Lou. You promised yourself you weren’t going to fall for someone who might be in danger because of you and couldn’t feel the same way as you.”

He closed his eyes. The memories arrived anyway. The beach. The Wienerlicious. Sarah in that uniform made his heart skip a beat every time he saw her in it. Their first mission. The fake dates. The real conversations hidden inside the fake ones. Coffee. Smiles. Late nights. The way Sarah always believed he could solve the impossible.

He laughed quietly. “This is ridiculous. She’s your handler. She’s your friend. That’s enough.”

Except the words didn’t sound convincing anymore.

He remembered standing beside Sarah after Fulcrum had fallen. She had looked at him with unmistakable pride. Not because of the Intersect, but because of him. That look had stayed with him. Far longer than he cared to admit.

Chuck rubbed the back of his neck, and he continued to replay everything in his head. The old feelings couldn’t be doing this again, but I can’t help it; they were coming back. The realization wasn’t frightening. It was unexpected.

The real question, he wondered to himself, wasn’t whether he still had feelings for Sarah. That part was becoming impossible to deny. The frightening part was wondering whether he had any reason to believe she might feel the same way, or whether he was once again confusing the warmth of their partnership with something she could never give.

He picked up his jacket. “I’ve been wrong before.”

The lights shut off automatically as he walked toward the stairs. He hoped he wasn’t wrong this time.

Outside, the Burbank night was quiet. Chuck climbed into his ugly Tylenol capsule lookalike car and sat there for several seconds before starting the engine.

He had survived Fulcrum. He had survived heartbreak before. What he wasn’t sure he could survive was being wrong about Sarah again.

XXXX

Maison23

Sarah unlocked the apartment door and quietly stepped inside. The room was still. She slipped off her shoes, changed into comfortable clothes, and made herself a mug of tea.

The kettle had barely stopped whistling before she found herself standing at the window overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. The tea rested untouched on the table behind her.

Her thoughts had drifted somewhere else, but to someone else.

Chuck. Not the Intersect. Not the Asset who had helped dismantle Fulcrum.

Just Chuck.

She smiled without realizing it. Then caught herself. “When did that happen?”

She quietly shook her head. For months she’d told herself there was a simple explanation. The cover. They had pretended to be together because he was an Asset. They pretended to flirt, especially in front of Chuck’s family and friends. They pretended to care about each other.

It was supposed to be easy for her. That was her job. She was trained to it. How was Chuck able to pretend almost as well as she did? She was a trained spy. She had years of learning how. He hadn’t.

She tried to dismiss the thought the way she had countless times before. Spies became attached to partners; it had happened to her, briefly, with Bryce years ago. Covers blurred emotions. It happened. That was the explanation she had relied on for years.

Then why had no other partner ever affected her the way Chuck did? She knew the answer was buried somewhere beneath years of training, caution, and professional rules. She wasn’t ready to say it aloud yet, but Sarah had learned that ignoring a feeling didn’t make it disappear. It gave it more time to grow beneath the surface.

It would have been easy for anyone to become confused. She had accepted that explanation because it was safe. Professional. Comforting.

The admission surprised her. She had tried to stop loving Chuck when he started a real relationship with Lou. At the time, Sarah even confessed to General Beckman that she loved Chuck. She tried to bury her feelings for Chuck, which left her confused.

Sarah had spent years teaching herself to separate personal feelings from operational necessity. Chuck had always made that separation difficult. Now she was beginning to wonder whether it had ever truly existed.

Lou had come and gone long ago. Life had moved forward, and somehow Sarah’s feelings hadn’t disappeared. If anything, they seemed clearer.

She thought back to the final Fulcrum operation. Chuck was standing calmly in the middle of Castle, assembling hundreds of disconnected pieces into a single plan.

The confidence in his voice. The excitement in his eyes. The quiet smile afterward when he insisted to General Beckman that the victory belonged to all three of them, not just him.

She had never been prouder of him. Not because he had become a better spy; technically, he was still just an Asset, but through it all Chuck had remained Chuck. Kind. Selfless. Optimistic. The qualities that had first caught her attention when she first met him. Even after everything he had been through, he still remained the Chuck she had first met.

Only now, her feelings for him were much stronger. The realization frightened her less than the thought of continuing to deny it. The real uncertainty was no longer what she felt. It was what Chuck felt.

Sarah wrapped both hands around the warm mug of tea. “Maybe…” The word escaped almost as a whisper. She looked out into the lights of the city. “…Maybe I’m getting tired of pretending those feelings aren’t real.”

Sarah looked down at the tea in her hands. She remembered every time Chuck had looked at her as though she were the safest person in the world. For years, she had told herself that trust was part of the cover. Tonight, she wasn’t sure she believed that anymore.

For the first time in years, she wasn’t asking herself whether the cover had been convincing. She was asking herself whether she’d hidden behind it. She didn’t have an answer. Not yet.

But for the first time she allowed herself to ask the question. And somehow, that felt like the beginning of something neither she nor Chuck fully understood.

XXXX

Casa Bartowski/Woodcomb

A week later, late evening; the house had settled into its familiar silence.

Down the hall, Chuck could hear the muffled sound of the television as Devon finished watching a late-night sports recap before heading to bed.

A moment later, the television clicked off, and footsteps crossed the hallway.

A bedroom door closed. Then silence.

Chuck lay on his bed, a paperback novel open in his lap. He’d read the same page three times. He couldn’t remember a single word. With a sigh, he closed the book and set it on his nightstand.

The room was dimly lit by a small bedside lamp. A framed photo of Ellie, Devon, and himself at the beach sat beside the alarm clock.

Chuck leaned back against the headboard. “What the hell is wrong with me? No, I already know.”

He stared up at the ceiling. Long ago, every thought had revolved around Lou, even more so than with Jill when they were at Stanford. Wondering what he had done wrong. Wondering whether he should have fought harder for the relationship. Wondering if he’d ever be able to move forward.

He had moved forward. Thanks to Ellie. Devon. Morgan. Even Casey, in his own uniquely terrifying way.

And then there was Sarah. His smile faded into quiet thought… Sarah… Her name alone seemed to change something inside him.

He closed his eyes. Without trying, memories surfaced. The way she’d smiled after the Fulcrum operation. The countless cups of coffee they’d shared before missions. Long hours at Castle. The easy conversations in the SUV and on missions while Casey pretended not to listen.

He remembered every time he’d convinced himself there might be something more between them. But every time he asked, Sarah told him he was just an Asset.

Even when he asked her, “If their relationship was ever going anywhere?” she told him, “No,” and she was on sodium pentothal at the time, so it had to be true.

Didn’t it?

Every time reality had reminded him that Sarah lived in a world far different from his own. Except, was it still different now?

He frowned, and the thought lingered. She wasn’t just his handler anymore. Not really. Even though Beckman still considered him an Asset and Sarah his handler. But he and Sarah planned together. Solved problems together and trusted each other without hesitation.

Somewhere along the way, the lines had blurred. Not because of a mission or a cover identity, but because thousands of ordinary moments had accumulated between them. Coffee. Conversations. Arguments. Trust. Laughter. The kind of things that didn’t belong in an intelligence report but somehow mattered more than anything in a report.

Chuck let out a slow breath. “These old feelings are back. Dammit.”

One memory became two. Then five. Then dozens.

Sarah laughing over coffee. Sarah trusting him when no one else would. Sarah believing in him long before he believed in himself. The realization didn’t arrive all at once. It settled quietly into place until there was nothing left to argue with. Chuck had spent years waiting for a moment when Sarah might suddenly become more than a co-worker to him.

Now he understood that his feelings had never depended on a perfect moment.

They had never really disappeared. They had been buried beneath everything else life had thrown at him.

He thought to himself, “I really picked the most impossible woman in Los Angeles to care about. But, then again, what if I’m wrong?”

That question had haunted him before. Maybe Sarah was just being Sarah. Kind. Protective. Encouraging.

She treated him with warmth because that was who she had become. Not because she felt anything more.

Chuck leaned over and switched off the bedside lamp. Darkness filled the room. Only the moonlight filtering through the curtains remained.

He lay back on the pillow, staring into the darkness, and quietly said to himself, and said. “Oh…” The quiet word escaped into the darkness. It wasn’t a sudden discovery. It wasn’t even new. It was the first time he had stopped arguing with himself long enough to admit the truth.

“…I still love Sarah; I never really stopped.” The words almost escaped before he could stop thinking about it.

He swallowed and thought. “What I don’t know is whether she could ever love me.”

Chuck turned onto his side and pulled the blanket closer. He knew better than to build an entire future around a possibility, but he also knew he couldn’t spend the rest of his life pretending the possibility didn’t exist.

The room remained silent. No answers came. Only one quiet realization.

For the first time, the possibility no longer frightened him, but it gave him hope. It was a fragile kind of hope, the sort he knew better than to trust too quickly. But it was still hope.

XXXX

Maison23

Across the city, Sarah sat curled into one corner of her sofa. The mug of tea she’d made earlier had long since gone cold. She had a radio station on that was playing jazz. Normally, music helped clear her thoughts.

Tonight, it wasn’t working.

Her eyes wandered to the bookshelf across the room. Among the carefully arranged books sat a small seashell. Most people would have thought nothing of it.

Sarah knew exactly where it had come from.

She smiled to herself. Chuck had picked it up during one of their cover outings months earlier. He’d handed it to her with a grin. “Evidence that today actually happened.”

She’d laughed, then slipped it into her pocket. For some reason, she had never thrown it away.

Sarah stood and picked it up. The shell rested lightly in her palm, and she thought to herself. “So why do I still have you?”

The answer came far too quickly … because Chuck had given it to her.

She sighed. “When did a seashell become enough?”

She carried the shell back to the sofa and turned it over between her fingers.

Chuck had changed. Not into someone else. Into a more confident version of the man she first met at the Buy More long ago. Sarah realized she had been watching that transformation piece by piece, often before Chuck himself noticed it.

He still apologized when things weren’t his fault. Still worried about everyone else before himself. Still believed there was good in people and the world. Now though, he’d learned to trust himself.

Sarah realized she’d been watching those changes almost every day. She’d smiled each time he solved another impossible problem. Felt proud every time he earned Casey’s respect. Felt relieved every time Chuck started laughing again after breaking up with Lou. That last realization made her stop.

She hadn’t just wanted Chuck to recover. She had needed him to recover because seeing him hurt had hurt her more than she would ever admit. That was the realization she could no longer explain away as professional concern.

She slowly sat back down. “Chuck is just an Asset. I thought those feelings belonged to the cover…”

She had been asking herself the wrong question. It was never whether she loved Chuck. That answer had been quietly growing from the day they met at the Buy More. The real question was why she had spent so many months hiding behind the safety of a cover identity instead of admitting what had become undeniable.

She looked toward the shell resting in her hand. “But they don’t.”

The words were almost startling in their honesty. No mission required them. No cover identities demanded them. Sarah had spent years saying exactly what circumstances required her to say. Tonight, alone in her apartment, there was no one to perform for.

There was no audience. No one to impress. Just Sarah. Alone.

She smiled softly and said. “I’ve been lying to myself. I’ve never stopped loving Chuck.”

Sarah looked toward the city lights beyond her window. Somewhere out there, Chuck was probably doing exactly what he always did after a long day. Reading. Watching a movie or TV. Talking with Ellie and Devon.

Completely unaware that he occupied nearly every one of her innermost thoughts tonight.

She smiled. “I wonder…”

The question hung in the quiet apartment. “…if you’ve ever wondered about us as much as I have.”

She had no answer. Not yet. But for the first time in years, she wanted to find out.

Sarah smiled faintly. For once, not having an answer didn’t feel like failure. It felt like possibility.

Sarah placed the seashell back on the shelf, this time leaving it where she could see it.

She turned off the lights and walked to her bed.

Before lying down, Sarah glanced once more toward the shelf. The seashell caught the faint city light.

She smiled. Tomorrow would be another day. For the first time, she was looking forward to finding out what it might bring.

As she did, one final thought crossed her mind.

Maybe… Just maybe… the best things in her life had never been part of the cover at all.

That thought just started there, as she drifted off to sleep.

XXXX

End Chapter 12