Maniacally 'Fine'

[Molly Quincannon] A little over a week after getting the text from Ellie, Chuck gets an email from Molly - encrypted, obviously, but Chuck's got the means to decrypt it, as it's the encrypt she uses for SRS BZNS. It's not entirely SRS BZNS, to judge by the contents of the email, but the reason for the encryption is obvious from the .jpg attachment:

I'm okay. Address compromised, name not. I R SMRT. *g*
Face-to-face meet? Been awhile.
See attached .jpg for what I look like atm. Life magic rocks. Israel rocks harder.
Hope you're okay.

There's a date and time given, and a location - little spot by the riverbank, of all places, where Chuck may remember seeing a small boating shed on his rowing excursions. The .jpg is date- and time-stamped five minutes before the email hits his in-box, and while the facial structure and glasses are of the now, her hair's gone back to what Chuck has seen in Molly's old college photos, only wavier.

Assuming an affirmative to the meeting, he'll find Molly leaning against the little boathouse, watching the best points of approach and occasionally casting an eye at the little steel runabout boat docked nearby.

[Chuck Carmichael] Yes, there's an affirmative - amidst everything else he's doing (packing doesn't take long; frankly, he can fit everything he actually owns into his Fusion, quite possibly with room for a passenger if said passenger is small-ish, or at least not the gigantosaur he is, but there's a lot of other things to do, and to establish, and he doesn't have the benefit of appearance changing charms - what he does have is hair dye), he'd planned to meet up with Molly anyway. Whatever she (or Ellie) may think of him at this point, he has no intention of letting that go by.

So, at the appointed time, he arrives at the appointed place. He doesn't look nearly as different from his usual self as she does, but has lightened his hair significantly - not quite down to blond, but to a sandy, off-red sort of color that very dark hair gets when it's bleached. Other than that? Well, he's Chuck, and there's no mistaking that feel any more than there is mistaking his height or build, if one knows what one is looking for.

"Hey," he says easily as he draws even. "Nice. I like the hair."

[Molly Quincannon] The hair gets a raised eyebrow that's more thoughtful than anything else, and she gives him a small smile when he talks about the hair. "Said I'd never go back after Zoot passed," she says, "but shit happens, and there may be a bottle of hair dye in my future. C'mon in the runabout; cold out here."

Chuck will probably have to duck to get into the boat, but it was built by Atlas, predominantly for Atlas; while he's not as tall as Chuck, Atlas is tall and gangly, so inside is fairly comfortable even for the towering. It's also heated, which is a bonus, as well as, "...Bug-free, and we can take to the river for awhile if you want. I'm staying on the Lafette right now, mostly 'cos Atlas insisted and I think he's kind of lonely on that big ship all by himself. Henri left for pastures I-don't-even-know awhile back, so it's all quiet ... or it was until I hauled myself and my ferrets and my potted orchid on board."

Then she frowns a little - thoughtful again - and asks, "D'you want one of Israel's appearance-change charms? What you've done is all good, but it's what people'd expect from a bleach job on someone with hair your colour. You could have about a month with something completely different, and it works on skin tone and eye colour too. Doesn't work on big pattern stuff like height, but it'd grow your hair out the different colour past the bleach so we could cut that out. Might help."

Then she chuckles a little and says, "I should really ask how you are before I start yammering."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Thanks," he says about the offer, but waves it off. "You'll need it more than I do - this was just . . . a sort of paranoid whim, I guess. There's still no one watching me that I can track - not so much as a flag anywhere. Well, anywhere mundane, and with me, MO's always been start with the mundane channels. Cops, FBI."

This is wry; she's known who he really is for quite some time, now, and though he's never spoken of the first time he got busted outright, other than to say it happened, she knows the story well enough - a twelve year old boy's home invaded by serious business feds, and said boy brought in for interrogation (or similar, given that he was very much a minor at the time) and such. And the explanation is a way of saying no, he hasn't gone and hacked the Technocracy again.

"And I'm alright - keeping busy. I quit Best Buy - or rather, I'm taking an extended leave of absence. How're you doing?"

[Molly Quincannon] "Oh, you know, it goes." She sounds casual enough, though behind it is a certain amount of stress-aftermath that she's not bothering to hide. "Some variegated shit has gone down the last little while that doesn't have anything to do with this and that was unpleasant and I barely had time to wind down from that before brick-through-window-express let me know that I was about to get raided. Ashley's too, which tells me it's to do with that scry deal we did back in January. Either way, there's nothing connecting my name to the garage, very little they could actually bust me for in that place - though I guess they could make shit up - and I can still actually keep my job for now, though I'm siphoning money into safe places and have a couple of shell IDs set up in case that goes to the bad. So how I'm doing is ... busy, which is good because I'm pretty sure I'd have some kind of breakdown if I stopped and thought. It's a thing."

In short? Manically fine.

Then she looks over at him and says, "Extended leave of absence. Greener pastures beckon?" She could just be talking about employment opportunities. It's an invitation to elaborate, as well as screaming curiosity.

[Chuck Carmichael] "I heard about Ashley's place - haven't talked to her, though. And keeping busy isn't such a bad thing to do, really. Nor is keeping moving." The last is sort of half in answer to her question, and is followed by a sighing pause, and an absent rub of his forehead.

"Sort of. Or . . . well. I've been in Chicago longer than I've been anywhere, since Boston. So not so much greener pastures as itchy feet, you know?" Not just itchy feet, but that aforementioned paranoia as well - and he's asking for some sort of understanding, though he's not sure he'll get it - he's not sure she thinks he deserves it, given the way that things have gone between them (and Ellie's message, and . . .) "So I've got some stuff lined up, and Nico's coming with me. I probably should have talked to you about this before, but . . ."

She already mentioned the vast sea of shit she's been up to her neck, at least, in - it hadn't seemed right to add something else to the pile. So there's a shrug and, yes, he has the good grace to look at least a little apologetic. "Fairly consistent presence of a group of people I try to avoid seemed like a good - or bad, I guess, depending on how you look at it - sign that it was time to go."

[Molly Quincannon] There's a long, thoughful, heavy sort of pause after Chuck drops that one. It's not that she didn't expect it; it's something rather deeper. Then she nods and says, "...Yeah. I think I get that. And while I'm dying of curiosity, I'm not going to ask where you're going. It's safer for you if I don't know. Not that I think they're going to nab me? I'm good at what I do." (And I blend in better than you do is not spoken, but it doesn't have to be - she's got methods at her disposal to change her appearance and, more to the point, she's not six-foot-four. Plus no one has her resonance yet.) "But ... just in case."

It's clear she understands. She's sad on any number of levels that would probably take a bit of scrutiny to work out, but she understands. She doesn't necessarily think that Chuck's abandoning her - or doesn't take it personally if she does.

She does, however, ask, "Does Emily know?" It's perhaps less about Chuck than Nico, but Chuck and Emily were cabalmates for a long time.

[Chuck Carmichael] She also doesn't have the same sort of Uncanny as he does, which helps tremendously with the blending in, and no appearance altering charm will take that away, one imagines. But that's neither here nor there.

"Yeah." There's no elaboration there, as to whether Emily knows Chuck's leaving or that Nico's coming with him, or any of the rest - and obviously it's the last answered first, before touching on the rest. There's a bit of relief inherent in Molly's apparent lack of taking this leaving as abandonment (or at least not taking it personally, because maybe she is feeling abandoned and just not letting it show); despite the current meme, he is a nice guy. Making her sad is bad enough - he certainly hadn't wanted to add (more) hurt to the list. "I might send an email now and then, if you want. But not until I'm absolutely sure it'll be a bitch - if not impossible - to trace."

[Molly Quincannon] "That's up to you," she says, and she's resigned more than anything else. "I wouldn't mind. You know I get curious, and I never forget." She reaches out, then, touches his jacket just over where his heart is, and then draws her hand away and touches the spot on her jacket over her heart. Maybe it didn't work out. Maybe there's stuff that makes them impossible. But with that gesture, she says a thing: Whatever; I still care. (In fact, it's possible that she doesn't even know about Ellie's colour commentary in the warning text, from how she's acting now.) "But ... obviously when it's safe. Your end, anyhow. I did some awesome work on the Lafette's comms across the board. Nothing's getting traced into or out of there."

Then she sort of half-curls up, hugs one knee to her chest and contemplates the Sharpie doodles on her jeans leg (fractal trees, mostly). After a moment, she asks, "Anything you need?"

[Chuck Carmichael] Chuck answers that gesture by taking her hand and bringing it to his lips, briefly; he's held back from the start, of that she's been fairly sure, and he has his reasons for doing so; there are, indeed, things that make them impossible, at least here and now. Another time, another place, who knows? But this is what they have, and it's all they have. Trying to look into other 'what ifs' is a bitch slap waiting to happen.

"Of course, when it's safe. And it might be awhile, but . . . I may not remember everything. But I remember the important stuff." And then there's the question of anything he might need, and there's a wry smile as he lets go of her hand. "Wishes for good luck. Good thoughts every now and then. You to be . . . well, you, I guess. Anything else I might put there," here he shrugs, and is momentarily amused, "comes awfully close to asking you to be someone else, and I like you the way you are."

[Molly Quincannon] [[WP, damnit.]]

[Molly Quincannon] She listens - talker though she is, she's also a very good listener. And if she keeps her eyes closed for a span longer than a blink when he kisses her hand, when he says about remembering the important stuff and liking her the way she is? Well, there's no need to get into that. It's a complicated thing, this whole business, and endings are always a little hard.

Then, with a small chuckle, she says, "Fifties dance lessons. Semi-impromptu fireworks. Laser tag. Retro video games. Bilbo's. Healthy eating. And that damn Wii." It's a list, clearly - things that will always remind her of him.

[Chuck Carmichael] "Hey, don't let that go to waste. It's a perfectly good gaming system." It's teasing, that, and followed by, "Movie nights at parks. More caffeine than I realized my body could handle," and that's saying a lot, given his sugar-free energy drink and diet Mountain Dew obsessions, "things that don't seem like they should be homes becoming so. The Muppet Show."

There's more, of course, but those are the most obvious - and there's no need to continue until one of them has an even more difficult time with this than they both already are. Chuck seems calm and collected, seems like he's got everything together, but . . . well, this is hardly the first time he's done this. And then, because it's right to ask, "Is there anything you need?"

[Molly Quincannon] "According to most people? Common sense." That's with a self-deprecating grin. "No, seriously, I've got everything I need. Up to and including knowing that someone's looking out for you. Not that I know Nico very well, but ... y'know. It gets lonely, the highways and byways of America. Lonely is bad. Therefore, company is good." Then she shakes her head. "Sorry. I have this issue where I find it almost impossible to focus on me. I've got my ducks in a row, and a good support network, and stuff. I'm good."

There's another moment of quiet - that's awkward, but this whole thing is awkward at best - so much that's not getting said, because ... well, why bother at this point, things being as they are? Then she sighs and says, "I guess ... no amount of random small talk is going to make this any easier. Plus I have to get groceries back to the Lafette. I'm chief cook and bottle-washer these days; earning my keep and everything. But ... be well, okay? Be happy. Be ... miraculous."

Then another thought hits her and she asks, "...Oh, hell; I should ask this now - if I get squished, do you want someone to tell you, or is it easier if your emails just don't get replies?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "That's quite a remove from not being able to cook, isn't it?" He's had her cooking since then, of course, knows how she's improved - it's teasing, an attempt at levity where there isn't much to be found. He always seems to do better with the light and fluffy, does Chuck; it's when things get serious that he falls apart a bit, despite being so seriously natured about a great many things himself. "I'll be the best I can, and we'll see how it goes. You . . . do the same, yeah? You're a firebird, I think."

This flight of fancy almost makes him blush, but then he realizes he can blame it on some video game or another and be done . . . and then there's that question. "Um." And the awkward (so much more so than things had already been that it's very nearly a tangible presence) that goes with it. "I . . . think I'd like to know. Better not to keep writing to a void, or something. Thanks for . . . you know, giving me a choice."

[Molly Quincannon] The bit about being a firebird? That probably does not get the expected reaction - it gets a chuckle that does something to dispel at least the first wave of awkward. "You and everyone else, I think. You saw the scarf Israel gave me for my birthday." The one, as it happens, with the embroidered phoenixes on them. So he doesn't have to worry about that flight of fancy being called out or something.

The other gets a smile - it's apologetic and supportive all at once. "Hey, it's the choice I'd want. Golden Rule, y'know? But it's not an email I think you'll be getting for a good long time. But then, I always think stuff like that. So ... yeah, someone'll let you know, if it comes to it."

With that, she ushers him out back onto the shore - better not to be parked too long, just in case. Then she hugs him - it's a platonic hug, a friend-hug ... a goodbye-hug. "You take care of yourself, you hear? And have fun or ... something, I dunno. You sure you don't want that appearance-change charm? I can do a lot with dye and coloured contact lenses, especially now that I've got more hairstyle options to play with, and it's harder for guys."

[Chuck Carmichael] The bit about the appearance changing charm gets that grin of his, followed by, ".....yeah, alright, if you're sure you've got enough for yourself."

Then, on shore, before she gets to hug, there's a friendly shoulder bump; the hug, when it comes, gets returned in kind, and paired with a quick kiss to the top of her head. "You take care, too. Be awesome. But more importantly, be happy, yeah?"

And then there's parting, during which Chuck doesn't look back. Moving on's always easiest if one looks straight ahead, and doesn't stop for anything.