Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Castle was quiet. 

Casey sat alone next to a dim light, surrounded by an array of weapons that he was methodically moving through with his cleaning kit. He looked up as Chuck buzzed at the door, entering the space with a sigh and loosening his tie. 

“Bartowski.”

Chuck turned his way, waved, before moving in his direction.

“Oh, hey Casey, Sarah said you wanted me?”

Casey put down the slide and solvent-soaked rag, wiping his hands. “Beckman called.” He placed a Glock 19 in front of the kid. “She wants you to train ” His lip curled. “To learn how to maintain a firearm.”

Chuck laughed nervously. “Uh, why would I need to do that? I’m not allowed to carry a firearm, or were you all joking about me always staying in the car?”

Casey pushed a 9mm cleaning kit towards him. “I’m not paid to ask questions, Bartowski, I’m paid to listen to my superiors. Get sat and get listening.”

Chuck sat, gingerly poking at the gun. 

Casey held up his own Glock. “Ok kid, start by removing the magazine. Safety is number one when cleaning a firearm. And do not point the muzzle at me or yourself,” he growled. 

With a click the magazine slid out into Casey’s palm. “Now you.”

Chuck fumbled with the weapon, fingers skittering over the cold metal until he found the release. With a smooth  snick,    the p   a     r   T

                     S   l    

                              i       

                                 d

                                                              I

                                                             n   t

                                                                      o 

                                                                                             H

                                                                                           i                               

                                                                                                 S

                            W       a

                                                     i 

                                            T

                                            i

                                      N

                                g

                                     H

                                         A      n  

                                                             D

                                 Aaa   n  d                                                          //                        h      e

B    l i nk e d 

Aaa   n  d                                                                                                              h      e

                         B l i n   k e d                                                                     how cold.

Aa     a   n  d                                                                                                                                                                      i      t

          B    l i n   k e d 

a   n  d                                                                                                                            i           t

                                                                                                                                                                                           B    l i n   k e d 

                                                   Hhhh(i) ee(t)     b l iiii    \\

                                                                                        n k  ee dd and 

and 

and 

<and 

and 

and he

 it 

it >

                                   “

                    Bar        

                                  t

                                         Ow s

                                           K 

                                                  i ?

                                                      “      

                                                                                                              The metal was cold against its skin. 

                                              <Chilled wind swept past his parka hood fur>

   //           <The target fell to the ground in a pool of red, red blood.>

                                                                                                                                                The magazine dug, dug, into its palm.   

“Walker, get in here!”

                               <Smoke billowed from the canister, the room thrown into chaos.>

                                            W h     o     knew steel stayed cold

so long against body heat.

       ?    

                                “    C         h

                                                     A 

                                                  r l

                                                       e 

                                                  s       ..

                                                             .?

                                                                  “     

                                                                                                                                                     The floor was cool against its legs. 

                                                                                                             < The floor? >

It squeezed his hand harder.

<Flames licked against outstretched fingers.>

                                                      It has a distinctive smell, doesn’t it? 

<Ironsights, and a deep breath in.>

                                                                                                                        <And out.>

Warm fingers, prying at his grip. 

<  Who’s ‘ he’ ? >

Chuck, you’re hurting yourself. 

           Please, you’re hurting yourself. 

Please stop. 

C hu ck. 

C  hu   ck. 

C huck. 

<Chuck. 

Chuc     k. 

C  h uck. 

                                 Chuck. >

“Chuck!”

casey??// casey can you hear em

Me

Walker, a hand!

Casyeyhelp please casey 

What’s happening? 

It ownt stop it wont stop 

so much

i acnt let go i think im bleeding >

Oh my god, John. 

<The GLOCK 19 Gen5 FS pistol in 9 mm 

Luger is ideal for a more versatile role due 

to its reduced dimensions.>

John he’s seizing.

<The new frame design without finger 

grooves still allows to instantly customise its grip to accommodate any 

hand size by mounting the different back straps.> 

I’m timing it now.

<The reversible magazine 

Thirty seconds. 

catch 

and ambidextrous slide

 stop lever make 

it ideal for left and right-handed

 shooters.>

A minute.

<The rifling and th

e crown of the barrel 

were 

slightly modified for 

I think he’s coming out of it. 

increased precision.>

                                           “Chuck?”

< He [it] breathed. Slow and steady, and with the sharpest >

< focus he could direct towards the action. >

< He just breathed. >

< Collected himself. >

< Took stock of his body, on the floor? >

< Could feel Casey, Sarah, their warmth next to him. >

< A hand on his, a stinging pressure, pain. >

He opened his eyes. 

“There we are, Chuck, deep breaths for us, yeah?” 

“I-” He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think of what to say. 

Sarah moved into his field of vision. “Relax, Chuck. You had a seizure. Do you remember?”

Chuck nodded, a fraction of a movement. 

John, on his other side, shifted. Oh. He’s the one holding his hand, putting pressure on the stinging cut to his palm. The magazine…?

“We lost you for a sec there, Bartowski. You almost had me concerned.”

“Oh,” he whispered. 

He could feel his body now. A bruised knee from hitting the floor - hard. His hand, bleeding, slowed by John’s firm grip. Sarah, cradling his head. He swallowed loudly. 

“What- What happened?” 

“You flashed on the gun, kid, flashed hard .”

Chuck struggled to sit up, leaning listlessly against the table leg. He winced as he pressed his injured hand to the floor. “The gun? But- but I’ve seen it before, you use it practically every day.” 

Casey grimaced. “I don’t know what to say, kid. The Intersect was never meant to be in anyone’s head. Maybe it just got its wires crossed.”

“Well, It’s a Glock 19, right,” Sarah nodded. “One of the most popular and versatile guns around, and used by the NSA and CIA. I bet it appears in the Intersect more than a few times.”

“Well then why… why haven’t I flashed on it before now?”

“Like John said, the Intersect was never meant to be in anyone’s head.” Sarah took his free hand in hers, squeezed. “There’s no saying what kind of effect it could have.”

—

They helped him to his feet and back into a seat after that. Chuck dazedly watched as Casey patched up his hand properly. Sarah cleared up the guns and cleaning equipment, wiped the blood from the table and floor. 

He greyed out gradually, coming back to himself in increments as he was lifted into strong arms and moved up and up and out of the Castle. 

He opened its eyes a crack as it hit a soft surface. His bed. 

“It’s alright, Bartowski. Get some sleep. We can talk in the morning.”

“Goodnight Chuck.”

It felt a hand squeeze his, a blanket dragging over his back, and then he didn’t feel anything at all.

Chapter Text

The ‘talk’ in the morning culminated in the NSA and CIA deciding that they weren’t interested in doing anything about Chuck’s little problem. As long as the Intersect was still working, they were happy. The Intersect was the priority, Chuck was an… unfortunate side-effect. 

Which was great for the NSA-CIA amalgam, but less good for Chuck. 

With their marching orders, it was sort of easy to go on pretending that everything was normal again. They’d been sent on one mission since, and Chuck had flashed when he was supposed to  - with no surprise extra features. The Buy More was still standing, Morgan was his usual brand of weird. 

And yet, Chuck felt off . 

—

It’d been a week since his seizure. Nothing weird had happened. Casey had finally stopped looking at him like he was going to drop right then and there, and Sarah had stopped ‘discreetly’ testing his ability to do simple cognitive tasks.

Casey didn’t clean his guns around him anymore, though.

He was back at work after having taken the week off. He was fixing a laptop, brought in by an apologetic student who had visited the wrong kind of site trying to pirate textbooks. The software was fucked. He’d be lucky if he could get it to even open a search browser again. 

He sighed, settled in with a crack of his knuckles, and opened a source code editor. 

and- 

           -it-

<Blinked.>

“Chuck!”

He jumped. “Jesus, give a man some warning!” Chuck laughed, hand to his chest to settle his racing heart. His fingers hurt. 

“I’ve been saying your name for a hot minute, my guy.” Morgan craned his head to get a better view of Chuck’s face from where it’s ducked behind the laptop’s screen. “Woah, what the hell is that? Dude…”

Chuck rubs his eyes. It felt like he hadn’t blinked in a while. He can’t quite remember. “Uh, whatcha talking about?” 

“The computer.” Morgan frowned. “Are you OK man?”

He looked back at the laptop screen. It was as if he was looking at it for the first time. 

Reams and reams of code, thousands of lines. He kept scrolling. It kept going. Clean, efficient, a work of absolute perfection. In other words, far, far beyond what Chuck had ever produced. He jerked backwards, yanking his hands from the keyboard. 

Huh, his fingers were sore. 

“Sorry Morgan, I’m just gonna- pop out for a moment. Grab a bite!” He turned away from him, making for Castle. 

Morgan tried to catch his arm as he hurried off. “Hey, wait man, what’s up with you?”

“I’ll see you later!” He shook him off, and didn't look back. Morgan blinked and turned his attention to the laptop. The laptop that Chuck had… taken with him. Great. 

—

“-t happened again.” Chuck gasped for air as he launched himself down the stairs to Castle. 

“What.” Casey growled. Sarah looked up from where she was writing a report. 

“The- the thing that happened. The seizure, or fit, or whatever it was- it happened again.”

“You seized in the Buy More?” Sarah grabbed his arm and tugged him towards a chair, while Casey went for the field kit. 

Chuck shook his head. “That’s the thing, it was different, I don’t think I seized properly! Morgan was there and I think I checked out a bit, and he just seemed confused because I was writing… Well, I was writing code. ”

Casey clipped a probe around his finger -they hurt , what - and started taking his pulse. “Code?”

“Here, check it out.” He opened the laptop carefully around the probe, booting it up to show the text box and the code within. “I don’t remember writing any of it.”

Sarah frowned, glancing between him and Casey. “Chuck, this isn’t good. I know we hoped that the last time was a fluke, but if it is happening again, I think we need to be more worried.”

“I really hate to say it, but I agree with Sarah.” Casey said lowly. “We need to start looking into this ourselves if Beckman won’t help.”

“Wait, you’re both suggesting going behind Beckman, behind the CIA and NSA’s back? For me?”

“Yeah, for you, Chuck. I don’t think you’ve noticed, but you haven’t been looking well since the seizure. And, well…” Casey, in an episode of uncharacteristic restraint, hesitated. “Chuck, you’ve been slipping in your field reports. ‘It’ instead of ‘I’. Not always, but sometimes. 

“And you don’t do anything outside of work anymore, you just go home and sleep.” Sarah added. “You’re having nightmares.”

Chuck shook his head. “No, no, no, I’m not having nightmares. I don’t remember having any-”

Sarah put her hand on his arm gently. “Chuck, we have bugs in your apartment.”

“Oh.”

—

Casey packs up the field kit when they establish that Chuck is fine. Sarah pats him on the shoulder and goes back to her report. Chuck takes deep breaths. In. Out.

They don’t talk about it. 

—

Chuck received a text from Sarah.

S: is typing…

• S: Don’t use conditioner in the morning, and no gel. 
• S: also no energy drinks tonight or tomorrow. 

He figured it was for a mission he hadn’t been briefed on yet, shrugged, and texted back:

• C: sure, but why?

She didn't reply. He skipped his haircare routine. 

—

“Let’s talk about it.”

Casey dumped a mess of wires and circle pads on the table in front of Chuck, who jumped at the sudden crash. 

“This is an electroencephalogram machine. It measures electrical activity in the brain. I’m going to use it on you.” He looked serious - more serious than he normally would, as if that was even possible. 

“Wow, Casey, I didn’t know you could make such big words.” Sarah joked, but there was a determined set to her jaw as she started unpacking the wires and electrodes. 

Casey’s lip curled. “I read.”

Chuck laughed nervously, shuffling back from the organised movements of the agents, “Uh, guys? Is this really necessary? I haven’t had a proper seizure in like a month. And- you saw for yourself! I’m perfectly healthy-”

Casey pasted a sticky electrode to his temple with force. “There’s a computer in your head that was never supposed to be there, you haven’t been acting right, and you had two seizures.” He crouched to meet Chuck’s eyes. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, you idiot.”

“We’re going to measure your normal functioning, then move to trying to induce a flash. Just close your eyes and sit as still as you can.” Sarah stuck the last electrode down at his crown. 

“This will take about an hour. We’ll start with the baseline reading, so listen to Sarah and relax.”

It did not take an hour.

—

The initial readings were quick and came back completely normal. After which they decided to test his reaction to a variety of stimuli. They started with flashing lights,  excluding photo-sensitive epilepsy quickly. Then caffeine. After, they circled to… less standard methods. 

Dramatic readings of past mission reports, cypher cracking, puzzles, a who’s-who of crime scene photos. Nothing was causing a flash. Thankfully, they also weren’t causing a seizure either. Quite frankly Chuck just got bored.

“We’ve got a good amount of data here, Chuck, but with you not flashing, we really can’t use much of it,” Sarah sighed. Chuck looked nervously between the two agents. 

“So… we’re done here?”

Casey smirked. “Nope, just means we have to try something a bit different.” He stepped away, moving behind Chuck where he couldn’t see him around the EEG equipment tethering him to the table. He could hear movement, something clicking open and closed. 

Sarah jolted forward, aborted at the last second. “Casey, are you sure-”

Casey ignored her, still moving around behind him. “Alright, Chuck, let’s turn things up a notch. Stay calm- deep breaths, remember.”

And he pressed something cold and hard to the back of Chuck’s head. 

     <freeze>

d o n t               m o v e 

Oh-

It was a gun . 

Again.

How about that! 

“Chuck?”

                  <Yeah?>

 His voice sounded scratchy. staticky.

“You in there?”

I think something’s really wrong. 

Guys? 

< query>    can y o u   h e a   r     m      e     < query >

Ok, he’s flashing>

Or- or seizing>

Both?>

<Readings are off the charts-

Casey this is bad> 

<I know. 

Just got to wait for him to come out of it>

01100001 00100000 01100111 01110101 

01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 

01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 

00100000 01110111 01101000 01111001 

00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 

01101001 01110100 00100000 01100001 

01101100 01110111 01100001 01111001 

01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 

01100111 01110101 01101110 00100000 

01101001 00100000 01100010 01100101 

01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 

01110101 00100000 01100100 01101001 

01100100 01101110 01110100 00100000 

01100101 01110110 01100101 01101110 

00100000 01100011 01101111 01100011 

01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 

01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 

01100011 01101011 01100101 01110010 

00100000 01100101 01111001 00100000 

01100011 01100001 01110011 01100101 

01111001 00100000 01101101 01100001 

01101110 00100000 01101001 00100000 

01110111 01101001 01110011 01101000 

00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 

00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 

01101100 01100100 00100000 01101000 

01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 

01101101 01100101 00100000 01110010 

01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 

00100000 01101110 01101111 01110111 

00100000 01101001 01110100 01110011 

<00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 >

01111001 00100000 01110001 01110101 

01101001 01100101 01110100 00100000 

01101001 01101110 00100000 01101000 

01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 

01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 

01101001 01101101 00100000 01101110 

01101111 01110100 00100000 01100101 

01101110 01110100 01101001 01110010 

01100101 01101100 01111001 00100000 

01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 

00100000 01110111 01101000 01100101 

01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 

00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000

I wonder what he’s thinking>

____