A/N Back when I was writing nine2five season 3, I had the idea that canon S5 was originally meant to be the follow-up to S3. Chuck would kill Shaw in one episode, an act which would cripple the functioning of the Intersect in him, and lead us into Carmichael Industries and the spies that care. I called this version of the story the Rough Draft. When the audience rejected S3 so profoundly, I believe they quickly created the back 6 and all of S4, pushing the original follow-up season out to become S5.

This story will try to create the Rough Draft version, but it will do so in a way that also tries to make the story a worthy follow-up to S1 and S2. S1 and S2 were romantic comedies with a strong spy theme. S2 ended with Chuck downloading the new Intersect and gaining the skills to be a spy, so when they started S3 they had a choice, and I think they made a bad one. They tried to jettison the romance and still keep the humor, but they couldn't do that and still have Chuck as a spy. His humor was in his innocence and now he was no longer innocent, so they made him a spy fool, rather than the fish out of water he had been. In my version of the Rough Draft I'm going to go the other way, dropping a lot of the 'humor' in favor of the romance, and the dramatic tension it has with Chuck's development as a spy. Let the humor come from other fish realizing they're now swimming in his pond.

The henchman pulled the bag from Chuck's head, mussing up the curls. Chuck glanced his way, resolving to make him pay for that. Only Sarah would ever get to muss up his curls. The man was only an underling, though. Someone larger and fatter sat across from Chuck, someone he'd have to go through, before he could enforce her prerogatives.

Chuck knew quite a lot about him, his likes–torture and pierogies, more or less in that order–and his dislikes, such as peaceful negotiations. "Agent Charles," said Mr. Bigger-and-Fatter, a/k/a Yuri, underboss for this region.

Still there. That little hitch in his mind, whenever someone called him by a name that wasn't truly his. "Call me Charles." That was always better, his name, if not his nature. They always thought he was being friendly with the invitation, unaware that he was using the truth as a better class of lie. "You have something that belongs to my boss. That case," he said calmly, indicating the silver briefcase with a motion of his head. "I would like you to give it to me. Please." The 'please' was a good touch, he knew. Guys like this never took 'please' the right way at all.

"You show up with no gun," said the underboss, playing it up for his crowd of henchmen, "And 'please', and what? I am supposed to quiver in fear?"

That would be the smarter move. Only the strongest of predators has the luxury of saying 'please'. In this context 'please' was a threat. Yuri didn't strike Chuck as being very smart. He decided to be less subtle. "Give me the case, or else," he said, tilting his body forward.

Yuri had henchmen to impress. "Or else what?" he asked rhetorically, even though he couldn't spell 'rhetorically'. "Or else I do this?" He pulled his gun and took aim at the unarmed man across from him.

Chuck wasn't really unarmed, of course. It's just that none of the guns in the room were in his hands yet. His eyes flickered, left, right, left. "No," said Chuck. "I was thinking something like this." He lunged toward Yuri, grabbing the gun and twisting it out of line with his body. As tall as he was, he could easily push Yuri's hand against the bare bulb, and the hand holding the gun flinched open just enough for Chuck to pull it from his grasp.

"Cool, cool, cool," he shouted, Yuri's gun out and aimed before any of the bodyguards could react. "On the ground, nice and easy." They dropped their guns on the floor, and he looked at the boss. "Hand me the case. After that, it's pierogi time."

Underbosses don't stay underbosses very long by letting valuable property go. "No." Yuri knew that, even if Mr. Charles apparently didn't. "So do it," he said, moving forward. "Shoot me."

"Don't mess with me, Yuri."

Yuri was less than impressed. "Get him," he ordered, and the disarmed henchmen moved in.

Thirty seconds later Chuck was in the street, his face throbbing a bit from a lucky punch. He raised his transmitter to his mouth. "Where's my exit?"

"Chopper's inbound."

They couldn't have told me that while I was upstairs? He scanned the buildings around him for the highest roof, and ran to that building, mounting the outside railings with ears alert. He heard nothing inbound. "I could really use that chopper."

"The chopper's too far. There's a line on the roof that leads to the next building. Zipline across. We'll find you."

Great, now no chopper either? Probably an 'everything goes wrong' scenario, testing his improv skills. Chuck looked up to the roof. No convenient ladders, just semi-convenient stonework. "I got this."

"Terminate the simulation," said General Beckman. Lights flashed on, illuminating the nighttime scene as seemingly dozens of people appeared out of nowhere, undoing whatever he and the bad guys had done. "Chuck, what was that?"

Chuck lifted the strap to the silver case over his head, handing it off to whoever was in charge of the props. "That was me retrieving the case, General."

"You were told to zipline across to the other roof."

"I did."

"After doing what you did to Yuri. You know how he feels about high places."

Chuck wiped his hand on his jacket. "I do now."

"We'll be lucky if we can get him back after this." Beckman shook her head, and turned to walk away from the crowd. "Most people zipline with a belt."

"These pants are too big," said Chuck, reaching under his clothes to undo wires as he walked. "Not to mention that a cable that rough might have cut through a belt before I got across."

Good thinking, and even true, once or twice. "So you used his gun instead? Shoot him, no, slide across a cable, yes?"

"It worked, didn't it?"

"Chuck–" Beckman sounded remarkably like Casey to Chuck at that moment. Assuming Casey still sounded like that. It had been a while. "Did you flash even once during this exercise?"

He'd just handed off his telemetry sensors to a technician. She had to know the answer to that question. "No, General."

"We've spent millions getting you up and running as our new Intersect agent," said Beckman, with a sigh of defeat. "It's not working."

"My dad can help," said Chuck, "He built the computer."

"The problem is not with the computer." Beckman turned to face him squarely. "It's with you. The Intersect 2.0 was designed to go into a real spy, like Bryce Larkin. Someone in complete control of their feelings."

"I'm in control," said Chuck.

"No, Chuck, you're not. You can't control what you don't have, and according to our instruments you aren't spiking a single band, you're just…going through the motions. You flashed only as long as it took you to learn a skill, and then you stopped. You were already smarter and knew more than most of the instructors."

Chuck shrugged. "What can I say, Casey and Sarah were good role models."

Of course Beckman agreed, but she was on a roll. "If you were an ordinary agent I'd be thrilled, but as an Intersect agent you're a complete failure."

Chuck began to have an emotional response, but he controlled it. The Intersect was the only reason he was here. He could think of half a dozen things he'd rather be doing right now than this. "So what are you saying, General?"

Her voice was flat, final. "We're done here. Our Los Angeles field unit will keep an eye on you until a decision can be made regarding your status."

Chuck was stunned. This wasn't the way he'd expected this conversation to go at all. "Hold on a second, there. You're firing me?"

"Of course not, 'Agent Carmichael'. I'm just not throwing more good money after bad. You're a top-flight spy, Chuck, but until we can figure out how to make you use the Intersect properly you're worse than useless. Go home, sit on your bench. We'll call you."

In the air, on the way back home…

"Go home. Tell your sister you're going on a trip to Europe. Six weeks." Chuck snorted into his watered drink. It hadn't taken him more than five weeks to break this latest mold. He'd have to adjust his cover story, too. Of course Ellie wanted to know the who-what-where of this little 'trip to Europe', and now he had to scale it down, but in a good way.

"Where are we really going?" It never occurred to him to zip his lips in the presence of all the need-to-knows restocking the base, since they were keeping it open now. Casey and Sarah were good role models for keeping their mouths shut, but somehow he'd never picked up that trick.

Casey gave his question the answer it deserved. "A red-site training facility."

In hindsight Chuck saw all the worker bees take the hint. Not at the time, though. "Training for what?"

Casey waited until the last of the low-ranks cleared the room. "For you, moron. The new Intersect. They're gonna train you and turn you into a super-spy."

Except they weren't. They were going to try to train him to be a spy, assuming he already had the super built in, and they were less than thrilled to find out that wasn't the case.

Just like Sarah had been less than thrilled about the rest of it. At least she looked that way. It may have been the lighting in Castle, not at all flattering. "Did Casey tell you they're moving me to a facility? I'm gonna be a spy."

She looked happier when she was getting ready to leave with Bryce. "I know. I heard. Come on."

"What's the matter?"

"If you go, you're going to be a spy for the rest of your life. Every city is going to be a new mission, a new identity. You're not going to be the same person."

Not that he'd really liked the person she was used to, not then and especially not now. All girlish screams and 'stay in the car, Chuck'. "Yeah, that's a great thing." Over the course of the training, he realized he'd been contributing all along, so yeah, it had been a great thing, in a way.

"Chuck, listen. We could–"

"We could what?" He wondered now what she might have said, or never said, if he hadn't pushed her just then.

"We could run. Together, you and me. We could go now and never look back."

"Are you serious?" He closed his eyes at that memory, his ridiculously innocent question. How could she have been anything but serious, to offer so much? Risk so much.

"I have some money saved up." Chuck snorted again, at the understatement. It had to be more than 'some', if she'd taken the same classes he'd taken."I'd get us some new identities, create an escape route. Go to the training facility in Prague, meet me at the Nadrazi Street station in three weeks time at 7:00, and then I can figure the rest out later."

Even then he'd noticed something wrong, heard little alarm bells, too far off and too quiet to do much good at the time, but he patted himself on the back now. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want to be a real person again. With you. This is what you want, right? I mean, this is it, Chuck. Will you run away with me?"

He thought he smiled. She'd been smiling, so he must have been smiling too. "Yeah." God, he was such an idiot.

Going home wasn't as simple as just going home, of course. He'd completed the course, passed all the requirements to become an agent. "Congratulations, Agent Carmichael."

He wasn't active, though, and the complications in his paperwork (ID, but no gun, not that he wanted one) meant he caught up on his sleep. When he got off the plane in Burbank he was even alert, which was good, since it meant he wouldn't have to get a lift from Ellie. Not that he would have minded the lift but he could do without the interrogation he knew would come with it. He'd rather have signed up for the advanced Interrogation Resistance course than faced her. Although, now that he thought about it, they were practically the same thing.

He could escape from IR, though.

Since he was alone, he drove by the LA field office to check in, but there was no agent there to check in with. They were out, backstopping an op. He would have to go to Castle. At least it was on the way.

Castle was still situated under the Orange Orange and the Buy More, so he parked behind the former, to prevent the nebulous black magic of the latter from somehow spotting him and dragging him back behind the Nerd Herd desk. The building was closed, though. Was everybody on the op?

He pressed his hand against the ID plate by the rear entrance, but his biometrics hadn't been entered into the system. Again. Yet.

He went back in the car and called the number they'd given him in LA. "Agent Smith," said a woman's voice, sounding bored, angry, and overworked all at once.

"Hi, this is Agent Carmichael," said Chuck. "I'm supposed to check in at Castle, but there's no one here."

"There wouldn't be, would there," she snapped. "Agent Walker's swimming again. I'll mark you down, Carmichael, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you–"

She hung up on him.

Chuck went home. Ellie wasn't there, but she was stockpiling already, even though he wasn't supposed to return for another week. His room was just as he left it, so he put his case on the bed and went to get something to eat.

He was sitting in his favorite chair, body, heart, and mind stuffed to repletion with Ellie leftovers, when the front door rattled. He was subduing his reflex to move to an attack position when his sister and Devon came in together. "Chuck?" she said in shock.

Devon was tall enough to see over her head. "Yo, Chuckster," he boomed jovially. "We weren't expecting you until next week."

"Hey sis, Devon," said Chuck, making sure to use less than his full strength when hugging her or high-fiving him. "Guess who holds the new record for completing the training course."

"Awesome!" said Devon, but since he'd just high-fived his bro he didn't do it again.

"You are looking at the newest Systems Admin for the Tektel Corporation," said Chuck proudly.

Bright smiles faded. "Oh," said Ellie.

"What's the matter?" asked Chuck, looking and sounding flustered. He'd had to practice.

"Dude, it's been all over the news," said Devon. "Tektel got raided by the FBI, all their offices. The stock's cratered, the company's dead, bro."

"Oh," said Chuck, trying to sound surprised and shocked when he was neither. "But…what do I tell Sarah?" Ellie and Devon looked at each other hesitantly. "What?"

The blonde goddess in the skimpy white bikini cut through the clear water of the pool without once rising to the surface, disappointing the many male eyes from the LA field office, all there to make sure she was properly backed up on this op. Only Casey's optics, planted by him in the guise of a pool cleaner, were positioned to see her rise from the water, and he kept his eyes firmly on her hands, wringing water from her hair, rather than anything below the neck.

As she padded softly across the stones of the poolside, her phone, located near the man who owned the house and the pool, and thought he owned the person she was currently pretending to be, began to ring. He picked it up as if it belonged to him and held it out to her, as if she couldn't hear it for herself. "Your phone, my dear."

Somewhere far away, a young man sat in his sister's apartment, listening to his phone ring. "Pick up," he said, knowing his sister was listening, even if she was trying not to.

At poolside, the blonde goddess looked at the screen, saw the name and the picture of the man calling her.

The man sitting in his sister's apartment pulled the phone away from his ear at the harsh tone. The signal had terminated. With extreme prejudice.

Sarah stood at the water's edge, looking down at the phone. Watching the screen as it flickered and died. She turned back to the man, watching curiously from his recliner. "I will get you a new one. A friend of yours?" he asked mildly, only the slightest, sharpest, edge on the word 'friend'.

"No," she said, taking his hand as she seated herself for his viewing pleasure. "Just someone I thought I knew, once."

A/N2 Tektel Corporation, in case you didn't know it, is the cover company that Arnold Schwarzenegger's character pretends to work for, in True Lies.

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