Departure.

"I miss her too, y'know."

Startled, he glanced up, screwdriver falling to the floor with a clang. Molly smiled down at him, beanie firmly in place.

She took a seat next to him, the only one of their group to not care that he hadn't showered in days. Chase hadn't been able to work up the strength to eat anyway, let alone shower since

she

had gone forever.

"Who?" he asked, already knowing the answer. Molly grinned, picking up the screwdriver, her tongue poking out as she tried to finish his worthless job.

"Gert," she mumbled, running her hands over her legs, before pulling her knees up to her chest. Sighing, she looked up at Chase, smiling slightly, and sadly.

"She would have been happy to see you happy," Molly told him, placing a small hand on Chase's larger, rougher and older hand, the skin of which had been wet by numerous tears over the last few days.

He had slept in Gert's room since her death, nestling his head into her pillow. The smell of dye still remained; a soft fragrant reminder of whom exactly she had been. Her plain, mousy-brown hair had been too much like her mother's for her, and on the eve of her fourteenth birthday, she had snuck out and purchased two bottles of purple hair dye, prodded by Nico's thirteenth birthday present of a purple scarf. She had turned up to the gathering the next year with striking purple hair, clashing horribly with her orange scarf and green pants. Chase had thought she looked horrible, but somehow, just somehow, she had managed to pull it off.

He missed her. This was the simplest way he could explain his heartache. Gert had filled a hole in her heart, and with her death, and torn it open again.

Oh God, why had she gone? If Molly hadn't been here, he would have broken down in tears. Why couldn't it have been him? Why was he left, left with the torture of trying to deal with his pain, left with the heartache that came with another person leaving him?

Gert had believed in him, and that was something he had never experience. His father hadn't, certainly, and his mother hadn't, torn between agreeing with her husband and comforting her son, the failure, the pot-head. In the end, she had been weak, and had left him alone, her music playing loud to hide her son's shouts and screams.

Alone.

Just like Gert had.

Molly snapped him from his thoughts, her soft voice asking him a question. "Why aren't you talking to Nico?" she asked, making him grimace. God, who wanted to? If she hadn't gone and run into Victor's open arms just after Gert had died, and sought comfort in the one forbidden taboo he and Gert had been yet to venture into. He had wanted to, to have something that bound them together for all eternity, but Gert had refused, something that he regretted to this day.

"I dunno," he answered Molly, tugging the girl's pink beanie off. Brown hair tumbled out, to her shoulders, covering her eyes as she leant forward and inspected Leapfrog.

"Do you think Leapfrog would be able to tell us where Gert is?" Molly enquired, hands running over the ship's exterior. She glanced up at Chase, who shook his head.

"He's not equipped for that, Molls."

"Why not? Why can't Gert just still be here? No-one understands me like she did. Nico doesn't care, and Karolina just doesn't listen. I've got no-one to talk to anymore!"

Chase gathered her shaking, sobbing form into his arms, the screwdriver forgotten on the floor.

"Hey," he said, wiping away her tears. "Hey, Molly, you got me. I'll always be here, I'll never leave. Whenever you need to talk, I'll listen. Gert would have liked that. "

"Really? You mean it?" Ecstatic, she winded her arms around Chase's neck, sobbing happily and quietly into his chest, her tears wetting the collar of his shirt. He smiled, resting his head on top of Molly's, his eyes gazing straight ahead, where the portrait of Gert, without a smile on her perfect face, hung, a reminder of what he had just lost.

But maybe, just maybe, Gert's departure could be good for something.

God, just started to read Runaways again, and was blow away by the sheer missage of it all. Gert and Chase have to be the best couple ever! :)