Revisiting

[Molly Quincannon] There's been nearly two months of healing and mental stabilisation; the flashbacks have all but stopped (at least under the normal circumstances under which she's lived) and the nightmares ... well, they're still there, but they're at least leaving her able to sleep well enough to function. Molly is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances.

Now, it's time to go back to the scenes of the incidents that left her so battered. Or at least, so say all the websites that talk about how to deal with stress disorders. So ... the bar, the art gallery. She has to go back, and more importantly, she feels she's capable of it now.

But ... well, she doesn't want to go alone. Nat and Chuck have both volunteered to go with her when the time comes, but at the end of the day, she chooses Chuck. Nat is comforting, loyal, stubborn and supportive, but so too is Chuck ... and, more to the point, he's better equipped to deal with things if she loses it entirely. So the message comes explaining the trips she plans to make, asks if he'd come with her and then promises "dinner someplace nice later, on me. We may need it."

[Chuck Carmichael] For this, despite the promise of dinner 'somewhere nice', Chuck comes in Chuck-wear - which is to say casual, jeans and a t-shirt that proclaims him a 'gamer'. He'd insisted on driving, just in case - it's hardly good to try to drive when one is in an extreme emotional place, regardless of what emotion it is that's extreme. Or so Chuck assumes; driving on an adrenaline high, he knows (from experience, even), isn't all that different from driving with a buzz, for instance. Other than that, though, this is for Molly and he's just there for support. She makes the calls.

He shows up at the appointed time and takes her to the place she wants to go first, relatively quiet in the car as they drive, sliding in and out of traffic with a skill and ease not unlike the way he plays racing games. It's not long at all before he pulls in where she suggests and puts his car into park.

"Ready?"

[Molly Quincannon] She suggests that he park a couple of blocks from the bar first off. "Might as well go chronologically, and while I know no one's investigating the shooting anymore, I'd rather keep your licence plate out of it. Plus a block or two of walk is awesome for clearing the head." She's dressed much like he is - distressed jeans and a black T-shirt reading "White text on a black shirt" ... in white, of course. Stompy boots, leather jacket ... apprehensive look.

When he asks if she's ready, she looks at him with a wry sort of smile and says, "...I don't know. I won't until I'm in it. So ... I guess we go find out." With that, she opens the car door and steps out, waiting for him to join her on the sidewalk. "Thanks, by the way. For coming with me. And sorry in advance if I go really wigged. I don't think I will, but ... well, just in case."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Hey, it's what I'm here for. Helping you not get wigged. Hugs if you do. It's all good."

Except not, really - trauma is a serious thing, as is the stress disorder that comes after it. But Chuck is Chuck, and as laid back as they come; even with what Molly knows for certain about him, the things she knows without a doubt he's been through, it's difficult to imagine him with much less of an even keel than he usually exhibits. Few people have seen him angry, or otherwise passionate, about much of anything, really. (Not counting yelling at video games - that never counts, for anyone.)

Regardless, yes, he parks a couple blocks away, and slides out to open her door for her - and thus, she's not so much waiting for him to join her on the sidewalk. An arm goes around her shoulders and he kisses the top of her head, and then he lets her walk on her own. It's her thing to process, after all; he's the support system.

[Molly Quincannon] There's a smile - nervy, but grateful - and a deep breath, and then she's off. She doesn't look over at him as they walk, but she knows he's there, and despite the tension in her shoulders at this point, it's helping. It at least keeps her walking in a fairly confident way.

The bar is actually quite nice, or at least it looks so from the window when they slow and stop outside the place. Clearly, she isn't looking to go inside. Her reasons become relatively clear when she says, almost to herself, "That Riveira ... he was so far gone. It was like he was dead inside, and only two things got so much as a spark from him. He scared the living shit out of the barman without any overt violence." She chuckles a little. "There wasn't any overt violence until he pulled the gun. He didn't look like he cared enough about anything to turn to violence." She shakes her head, arms wrapping around herself as if she's cold, though it's a warm enough night. "What the hell did they do to him?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "Are you looking for a real answer? Because there are ways of suppressing stimuli through sub-audible tones, through chemical means, all sorts of ways. I kind of dig the tones, personally, if I need to do that sort of thing. There's a program . . ." But he trails off, realizing a bit late that even if Molly is looking for an answer, she's probably not looking for that one, and that it's unlikely a Cultist would approve of that sort of theory, let alone its practice.

"Well, anyway. There are a few things they could have done, really, and not all of them need have been . . . you know, special. There are mundane ways of making sure someone doesn't care, too."

[Molly Quincannon] Molly blinks, turns and looks up at him. The look on her face when he says 'I kind of dig the tones' might well be the reason for his trailing off, particularly given that she takes a small step away from him at that. Her arms tighten around her midsection and she shudders, but she shakes her head. "I ... don't think so. It was rhetorical anyway. They corrupted him. Though ... I don't think they had very far to go with Riveira. He sure got his jollies out of causing people pain. Only time he looked alive was when he was shooting me."

She turns, then, and steps away from the bar, across the street at an angle towards an alleyway. "It wasn't just twice." She's quiet again, again more talking to herself than him. "Four times. Four shots. One grazed me across here." Her right hand, clutching her arm just above the elbow, moves up to just below her shoulder. "Another hit me here." The hand sneaks to her right shoulder blade. "My shield held for those two. Felt like someone punched me. Kind of helped my dive for cover. There." She doesn't point at the alley but she does glance that way. That's next, evidently, but there's a moment of steeling herself for it.

No one hoses down alleys to clean them, after all.

[Chuck Carmichael] And so Chuck falls quiet, the better to watch and listen. It's not quite true that no one hoses down alleys to clean them, though it is true that no one makes sure a good job is done. The clean enough to make sure the smell doesn't drive people away from the surrounding businesses and that the vermin don't get too bad, but that's about it. In any case, yes. Chuck is there, quiet company.

[Molly Quincannon] Deep breath, swallow, and then Molly steps into the alley mouth. She rummages in a pocket and pulls out the mini-Maglite she keeps hooked to her key ring, switches it on and takes a few steps into the alley, where she would (should, anyway, in an ideal and magic-free world) have been obscured from view by shadows. Then she crouches and runs her flashlight along the wall, tracing the mortar-filled spaces between the bricks of the wall with her fingertip. There are stains there still; hard to tell on brick and asphalt, and some of what was spilled on the ground has been hosed away, but it had the best part of a night to dry before that and there are still more than a few traces of her blood. From the brown splotches on the mortar, the spatter went a long way.

Molly doesn't precisely break, or even wig out particularly badly. What she does, after she's travelled a good three feet before finally reaching the end of the leftover evidence of splatter, is straighten up, wrap her arms around herself again, and back out of the alley, probably bumping into Chuck in the process. She's shaking, but she's holding together. "I ... think I came very, very close to dying in there," she says, partly to Chuck but mostly to reinforce it to herself. It's likely the first time she's actually admitted that.

[Chuck Carmichael] This is the sort of time that Chuck, who is very aware of physical boundaries (if not necessarily informational ones) and how he processes his own emotions, is uncertain of how to help someone else deal with theirs. Molly does, indeed, back into him but he's been watching - he'd only misjudged how long her steps would be by a bit, so it's a glancing blow during which one of his hands moves to her shoulder and gives a light, brief squeeze.

He remembers what it's like to almost die, though he doesn't talk about it. The wounds are older, and have left no obvious scars; there's no need to dwell, he figures, though he'll never forget.

There's nothing he can say, not really; this moment is as profound for her as ones he's had in places as resonant for him, for the same reason, even. It feels weak and empty, that squeeze, but it's there. He's there. It's the best he can do, really - the most he can offer. This time, he knows the comment is rhetorical and doesn't answer it . . . all he can do is hope it's enough.

[Molly Quincannon] When he squeezes her shoulder, she reaches up and takes his hand before he can pull away and gives it a similar sort of squeeze. It's a reminder, for her, that she didn't die in there. After all, she is a Cultist, and much as she can't abide the idea of having one's feelings and sensations muted or destroyed, she more than craves sensation; she quite literally needs it. In this case in particular, it's the little things that remind her she's alive - the touch of a caring hand, for example.

So she holds his hand on her shoulder for a moment, still looking at the alley, while the slightly ragged edge her breathing had developed smooths out. Then she takes a breath, lets it out in a sigh, and turns to look up at him. "Well. That wasn't so bad. I ... guess it's the art gallery next. If that's okay." Then, as an afterthought as she glances back at the alley, "Blacking out - do you find it terrifying as well as painful and really inconvenient? Or is it just me?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "Depends on if I forget to breathe or not. If it's just a matter of glucose imbalance, that's one thing. So the short answer is no, I don't think it's just you. And yeah, it's okay - I said I'd see you through this if you wanted me to, and I will."

Of course he will - he's Chuck. To look up 'friend' in the dictionary is to find his picture. As long as she's holding onto his hand, he doesn't pull away; he gives her as long as she needs at the mouth of the alley, and opens the car door for her to get back in before crossing over to his own side once they've covered the few blocks distance.

"Art gallery, ho," he says, and pulls into traffic to head there.

[Molly Quincannon] [[Corr + Time - scrying to see what happened after she blacked out, and determine approximate route. Diff 5 -1 practised, -1 focus so diff 3]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 7 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Molly Quincannon] [[Extended, diff now 4. May as well be fair.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 4)

[Molly Quincannon] Molly pauses a moment longer, and her eyes close; her face takes on a look of utter concentration and there's that feeling of frantic energy around her, so she's probably looking back - it's one of the few things she can do that she doesn't necessarily need a piece of equipment for, given her memory and the infallible clock in her head. She shudders briefly, then open her eyes and nods, giving him a wan little smile. "Thanks," she says when he opens the car door for her, and then ... well, and then 'art gallery, ho' indeed.

All of Chicago knows where this place is by now. It was in the news in mid-late August, after all. Again, Molly insists on approaching on foot from a block or so away, for the same reasons as she had at the bar. Now, of course, it isn't an art gallery anymore. It isn't even a structure that they approach; it's been torn down to the foundations because the blackened shell that remained after Solomon put it to the torch was not remotely safe. The police tape is gone, at least, and now it's just a lot and a foundation, with flimsy perimeter fencing and a sign talking about how some company intends to rebuild the place by 2012. Not that it matters to Molly; she hadn't seen the building anyway. She just steps over to the flimsy perimeter fencing and looks it over as if trying to decide whether she wants to climb ... or the best way to do so.

[Chuck Carmichael] ".....do you really need to go in, or is the perimeter close enough?" He's not saying she shouldn't go in, mind, but that she should think about it first. And also, debating if he'll make it over, given that he hasn't climbed a fence since he was about twenty. Needless to say, he'll support her either way - that's why he's here. He's wary, though, about going into burned ruins in a way that makes his usual standing back look like anything but.

[Molly Quincannon] That gets some consideration - almost soul-searching, in fact. "I just..." She looks at the fence, and her platform boots, and shakes her head. "I'd rather know that I could go in. That it wouldn't be fear stopping me. But ... well, I don't think I could make it over anyway. I'm probably in some of the best physical condition of my life, not that that's saying much ... though matters are improving; I'll tell you a bit more about the classes I'm taking later ... but fact is that between boots and lack of upper body strength, I doubt I could get over the fence. So I guess the perimeter is going to have to do."

It certainly looks like it's enough, as that last sentence has her wrapping her arms around herself again. "It's not like there's anything left to see, anyway. I gather they'd have cleared ... everything ... by now. I just ... there's another way to face it, I guess." She bites her lip, closes her eyes; it's clear she's not looking forward to what she's about to do, and that probably tells Chuck what she intends to do before she actually speaks her intent.

"...I'm going to look back at it."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Alright." He doesn't argue that she shouldn't, doesn't need to, any such thing; this is her trauma to face as she sees fit. What he does is move to stand behind her, hands on her shoulders, and thus provide warmth and strength; he's very aware of boundaries, yes, which means sometimes (if not very often), he's aware of when they should be crossed. Now, it seems, is one of those times.

It's not that he's not tactile - he is, really. He likes touching, likes the feel of hair caught between his fingers, or skin against his. He's simply not a 'tear down the wall' kind of guy.

[Molly Quincannon] Molly seems fine with Chuck having his hands on her shoulders. She takes a breath, looks at the building, and then tilts her head up and back to look in Chuck's general direction. She feels he's there and sees that he's there, and that's important, but there's one more thing that she isn't sure whether she wants to ask or not.

Eventually, she settles for, "I ... am probably going to talk about this. I've ... never actually told anyone the all of it. Israel has an idea, I think, and I've ... said a few pieces here and there, but ... never ... all of it. If you need me to stop talking, if hearing it's too much ... just shake me. Okay?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "I'm tougher than you think, and listening . . . well, I'll manage. More importantly, I'll help you manage. I hope, anyway." Which is to say he's fine with that, with her talking or whatever she needs to do. He'll take it in stride as he does so much else, and provide a safe and comforting wall for her to rest against even as it urges forward momentum. He is what he is, just as she is; in this particular case, he can only hope it's helpful.

[Molly Quincannon] [[Corr + Time in what I can only call Backward Glance. Diff 5 -1 practised, -1 focus = diff 3]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Molly Quincannon] [[And extending, diff 4]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 10 (Success x 1 at target 4)

[Molly Quincannon] "You underestimate how tough I think you are," she tells him. "You dealt with those burns, after all." She knows he's not underestimating what she went through. However, she also knows that it's very difficult to imagine some things ... particularly things that have happened to someone you care about. Then she nods, more to herself than to him, and closes her eyes.

It takes a minute, obviously; it was awhile ago that this happened. But her picture-perfect memory does always help with that kind of thing, and she takes in a little hitch of breath. "Great Google," she murmurs, with distant horror and something that's almost her being impressed. "I looked like shit."

[Chuck Carmichael] "I think that's kind of a given in the situation you were in," he murmurs softly, but leaves it at that; there's no attempt to tell her it couldn't have been that bad, because he knows - just from what he's heard - that it probably was. Through this, he's patient and kind. His hands don't leave her shoulders unless she pulls away, just squeezes gently.

[Molly Quincannon] [[Wits + Expression, just for kicks.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Molly Quincannon] [[Heh; try again, +1 diff]]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Molly Quincannon] The words stick for a moment; at first, all she can manage is, "They brought me down in chains." That's bad enough; someone like Molly, a Cultist, in chains. It's bad enough, even discounting the gunshot wounds.

Then she starts to talk. The first thing she says is how it began, the first half-hour. She played possum for awhile, hoping that they would say something, do something, that might give her something to bring back - or have picked out of her brain before someone performed a long-distance mercy killing. Then she asked questions, she says, and those questions got no answers. Just a calm whisper in her ear, from a boy no older than twelve: "You'll know all of it soon enough. For now, don't worry. All you have to think about for now is accepting us into your heart and become one of us." She shudders at that, and explains that it was a half-hour that she had to feel the gunshot wounds and ponder that before the pain of it began.

The first day - from what she says, the first day was pretty horrific. There are things that can be done with Qlippothic magic that just blaspheme the whole idea of being Awakened. The parasites came first, and just being infected with those was bad enough without the actual effects of them. They chewed her nerve endings, kept her on the border of consciousness and maintained a baseline of sickening, significant pain for the entire two days. And that was the basics. They had fun with her tattoos, she recalls in distant tones; they made her tattoos burn and freeze and crawl. Chuck knows how many of them she has, and where they are. That whole idea doesn't require much in the way of detail to get across the horror of it. That combined with the questions she asked that were never answered - she spent the best part of a day asking them, it appears, though it got more intermittent as she spent more time screaming until her voice finally gave out ... well, these Nephandi knew how to torture people, obviously, and in more ways than just the physical and magical.

Molly has a turn of phrase, a no-nonsense manner of speaking with well-chosen words that say the maximum with a minimum of actual faffing. She uses it now, sounding distant, using the words as a tether to remind herself that it's over, that she's speaking of the past. She ends that instalment with, "That's when I ... sort of ... heard from Israel. It wasn't much - I guess it couldn't be - but she was telling me to hold on. It ... it helped."

[Chuck Carmichael] "I'm glad she came through for you." This is utterly and totally sincere, and whatever everyone else thinks about it, Chuck had been working to similar ends in his own way. But here and now, all he can offer is that support and a listening ear, which he does. It's support, and help in processing, and progressing (one imagines). He doesn't need to picture all of it, though he can't help but to some extent even if he wanted to, as much as she needs to talk about it.

[Molly Quincannon] Deep breath, and she moves on to day two. It was more of the same, except she couldn't ask questions any more and that gave them time for the 'snake in the garden' routine. For someone like Molly, hearing how very interesting - how terrifying and awe-inspiring and all the rest of it - that the Cauls are had to have been hell. The times she managed to croak something along the lines of a query as to why, if it's so awesome in the Cauls, they need to torture people into walking them, and why they end up with nothing but psychopaths ... well, the torture amped up. There was the nasty magically-induced case of osteoporosis and crippling arthritis - every keyboard-monkey's nightmare as well as unutterably painful - and then there was the particularly unfun period when they lowered the temperature of her vitreous humour to temperatures that threatened to freeze her eyes from the inside.

They'd been having fun randomly deteriorating various of her organ functions - not enough to kill her; just enough to hurt and terrify - when the noises came from upstairs. This next seems to be news to Molly; while most of what she'd said came as much from her own memory as anything else (though watching herself go through it can't have been easy), the actual rescue op is news to her. There's a moment in which she has to pull her focus on something magical just to see this all, and then she reaches forward to clutch the chain link of the fence as she explains the rescue - the fire-fight, the magic thrown on both sides, the wounds that Israel, Nathan and Solomon took before they finished it. The Guardians spared her the details, clearly, and looking at the look of horror and distress on Molly's face, it's clear why they did. But then, facing the consequences of her capture involves more than just what happened to her.

She finishes as simply as she started. "...I didn't even recognise them, when they came. Israel passed out healing charms before they came in and I thought ... I thought it was a trick, a way to finish breaking me. I ... should've guessed when a stranger came through, but I..." She shakes her head. "The things I said - or tried to say - before Israel put me out, finally..." Then, after another deep breath, she adds, "I ... think I thought they were killing me, when I blacked out. Or ... no. I didn't think. I just hoped." Slightly shaky sort of noise that might be trying to be a chuckle. "Given what they went through, hoping for death at that point seems ... really ungrateful, in retrospect."

[Chuck Carmichael] "You're human. Being able to manipulate things in ways that most people don't think of, or do things that other people can't, doesn't make you exempt from that. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't wish for death, after something like that." He shrugs, and now his hands move from her shoulders so his arms can wrap around her gently; even when she'd moved to hold onto the fence, he'd stayed with her.

"I'm sure they don't fault you for it, anyway."

[Molly Quincannon] "I don't think they know," she murmurs, bringing her arms up to go around his. She's still looking at the hole in the ground that is the art gallery, and the two of them could just be taken for mourners. People died down there, after all. And perhaps she is mourning - for a part of herself, maybe. "Still, I do. I should've known. I mean, why would they pull up a rescue by two trusted faces and one stranger? Unless they were going for that extra detail for veracity, I dunno. But if they hadn't come when they did ... when I could think at all, I was trying to come up with some way of ... of doing it myself. I mean, they mess with me enough, a bit of Entropy could probably ... make it overdo it? I dunno."

She sighs, shudders, and leans back against Chuck a bit. "I probably should have done that sooner. Just ... Israel did say ... it would've sucked for them to go through all that and find a corpse at the end of it."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Well, yes, it would have. And suicide isn't becoming of anyone, least of all someone with will like ours. There are always other ways," he says, and this thought applies to an awful lot for him, or so it would seem. And then, there's curiosity. "Does it . . . did it help, this?" Coming here, and to the alley, he means, but then there's little else he could.

[Molly Quincannon] She gives this some thought - all of it, not just the question. But it's the question she answers. "...Yeah. It ... reminds me that they're just ... places. I mean, I know intellectually that life goes on, that it's all over and everything. Sometimes it just needs reinforcement. So I can go to the alley, and I need to work to see the leftover blood. And one day, even basic air friction will get rid of that. It's not a place I nearly died ... well, it is, but that's not its primary function. It's ... an alley. I don't really know what the primary function of an alley is - I mean, besides giving a building more windows, but you wouldn't get a lot of light from a window looking out onto an alley, and the air flow would be ... erm, fragrant and I'm entirely off the subject. Anyway. The alley is serving its primary function as an alley, and the fact that I nearly died in it ... well, that's way secondary. As for here ... well, some company bought it. Odds are the company isn't run by Nephandi assholes, so it's now not a torture chamber and probably isn't going to be one. Structures are strong. So's geography. They survive - a little different, a little more weathered, and with a few marks for those who know how to look for them to puzzle over, but they survive, and go back to their primary functions. Same goes for me." Then she gives a soft, self-deprecating chuckle and comments, "A little pretentious, maybe, but it's about the best I can put it."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Mmm." This is musing acknowledgement then shaken off - a momentary (unexplained) consideration of something that has little to do with what they're actually about right now before he returns to this moment in full. "I'm glad we came, then. So long as you're alright and all."

He hasn't let her go, nor will he until she pulls away or asks him to; he's warmth around her, a human firewall. (There's little wonder, really, that so many think of him as the friend zone personified.)

"What now? I've never done this sort of thing before." Gone back to face things that happened, been this close to the one who needed the trip - it's a first in a lot of ways.

[Molly Quincannon] Molly thinks about that for a moment, then says, "I don't really know what now. I've never done this before either. The websites get as far as 'revisit the scene of the trauma'. I guess ... now ... moving on?"

One hand disengages from Chuck's wrist and rummages around in a jacket pocket as she says, "Just ... before we go?" She turns around, not disengaging from the hug but giving just a little bit of breathing room, and produces a parcel about the size of a rather thick hardcover book, wrapped in wrapping paper that looks like graph paper with equations written on it. "I know it's a weird place to be gift-giving, but ... I wanted to overwrite the bad, a little, by writing over this particular sector with something better. You smiling is ... one of those things."

Inside the wrapping paper is a box. Inside the box is a homebrew gaming console, with an old school joystick-and-button interface that looks like a scaled-down version of a classic arcade game station. "I programmed in all the classics," she tells him. "Took a bit of a recode, but ... anyway, it's got Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Q*Bert, Street Fighter ... all the classics. Very eight-bit, but relatively portable. It's only this size for the old-school interface." She gives him a little smirk-smile that's at once sheepish and mischievous. "Thinking of tokens of affection for you is hard."

[Chuck Carmichael] "This is awesome," Chuck says in a moment of unabashed delight; she wants to see his smile and she does, with no reservation despite the solemnity of their original errand. He has a lot of firewalls, it's true (maybe as many as his rig), but they're around information, not emotion. When he's happy, the world knows. When he's sad or frustrated or angry, it's the same. This is no exception - he's giddily excited to play with his new toy, though he does have the sense to wait until they're sitting comfortably somewhere, at least. "Thanks. Which ROM did you base it off of?"

There are a lot of questions he has about this, but they're ones that can wait, really. With the game still in hand, he leans in to kiss her forehead, to smile down at her - not that he hadn't already been. "We'll have to trade it back and forth, see who keeps high scores the longest."

[Molly Quincannon] Molly chuckles, delighted at his delight, and shakes her head. "Eh, MAME is the absolute core emulator, but I kitbashed a few interesting improvements out of it. And we will not have to swap it back and forth. Do you think I'd give you an alpha prototype? That's the tidy beta; mine's a lot more rough-looking." She points to a pair of USB ports set discreetly into the side. "There's a charger and a wireless dongle in the box, and our respective consoles can talk to each other and swap high scores. Plus there's the software to load any other classics I might have missed - there's still a good twenty gig of memory in that thing. I also wouldn't give you anything you couldn't improve."

Then she wrinkles her nose in thought and looks up at him, obviously about to ask a question of not massive seriousness. But it's always clear when Molly's going to ask a question ... or at least it's a safe bet that she will be, any time she opens her mouth. "So ... I promised you dinner. Did you have any preferences? I mean, I'm thinking someplace quiet, and I've got an idea or two for potential comfort food, but I dragged you out here so ... you should at least have a say in where we eat."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Depends on what kind of comfort food you're into. There's a place with great hot turkey and hot meatloaf sandwiches, or there's a curry place, or . . . well, there's pretty much everything not too far from here. And I don't mind being dragged, honestly. It's what I'd do for . . ."

He shrugs, trails off. The answer isn't 'anyone', but maybe 'important people' or . . . who knows. His lack of stated preference in food choice is not apathy or anything like - it's deference to her much more difficult time with the night's proceedings. Sure, she 'dragged him' out here, but it was something she needed to do. Any good friend - let alone boyfriend - would support her in it. "Anyway. Your carriage awaits, my lady, to take you where you would like to go. Shall we?"