AN: This is the last chapter. Thanks for reading, and especially to those who reviewed too. :)

It was considerably later that evening when Fi finally emerged from her room, long after Clu had gotten hungry and decided to go home. Jack also emerged, looking oddly refreshed, though his companions had also left earlier. They met wordlessly in the hallway and hobbled downstairs together, where they found Molly, sitting alone in the living room, staring at the empty fireplace. Jack presumed she was doing what she seemed to like most besides performing, which was pining for her dear departed husband, but Fi knew better.

Things had been rather strained between them since their return from the hospital. Fi was, of course, glad to see that her mother was physically fine after what had happened, but every time she began to think too fondly of her or be too grateful that she was still alive and well, what had been easy to forget under duress kept whispering its secrets into her ears and making it quite difficult to speak to Molly civilly at all. So she hadn't. She'd stayed in her room, discussing the events of the past couple of weeks with the only people she knew who weren't trying to convince her that it wasn't really what it really was, anonymous screen names in small boxes that littered her screen eagerly every time she lifted the lid of the laptop.

Jack limped into the living room and sat down ungracefully on one of the couches. Molly looked up, almost startled by their sudden presence in the room. Fi lingered by the door before stepping inside tentatively. Even then, she didn't sit. She stood by the fireplace with her back turned to the others. She wondered whether, if her father had survived, her life might be completely different at this particular moment.

Her mother, certainly, wouldn't be having an affair with the boy she had spent her childhood admiring silently. Her brother would probably also not be her new semi-boyfriend's ex-semi-boyfriend, either. Whether they would still have spent the last two weeks being hunted and hunting an invisible monster, however, was difficult to determine. To think about the whole thing in such plain terms made it all sound so silly and trashy, almost. Apparently all of them needed to get out of the house much more often. Well, regardless of how it might have been, this is how it was, and of course she was just going to have to live with that. The Jack thing didn't bother her nearly so much as the other, actually.

"So, Jack," said Molly, effectively breaking Fi's concentration. "How are Chelsea and Rhonda?"

"Oh, you know," he said noncommittally. "Fine. The usual."

"You've seen a lot more of them than usual lately," she noted.

"Yeah, you know how girls are."

Molly tried not to laugh. Jack seemed easily embarrassed by this line of rather soft questioning, and decided to limp into the kitchen and occupy himself otherwise. That left Fi alone with her, and she briefly considered simply walking away, going back into her room and locking the door, spending another night relating to strangers instead of facing her rather complicated real-life situation. It was an attractive solution to the problem that had suddenly presented itself, but she decided to take a cue from Clu and be braver than usual, so she sat down in the seat Jack had vacated.

"So," she said.

"So," agreed Molly.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better. So are you?"

"Yeah."

"Anything interesting on the web these days?"

"Oh, you know," she said noncommittally. "The usual."

Molly was too tired to continue being sensitive. "Is something bothering you?"

Well, there were only two answers Fi could possibly give to that question, one of which would be accurate and the other of which would be less so. But the former would lead to more conversation about an unappealing subject, whereas the latter would lead to a nice quiet evening. She deliberated too long.

"I take it that's a yes. What's wrong? I saw Clu leave earlier. I didn't even know he had come over. Is something going on between you?"

"Well, yeah," Fi answered, a little taken aback by the sudden barrage of assertions and questions. "But that's not--that isn't what's bothering me."

"Okay," Molly said slowly.

"I... you know, I, Carey and I had--we had a talk before." Since when did she have such a problem with forming coherent sentences?

"Oh," said Molly. Great. It had never been clear to her which might be worse, Irene and Ned finding out, or Fi and Jack finding out. They were both equally dreadful options. She asked carefully, "Does your brother know?"

"No, he's been a little busy with his own problems."

"Oh?" This was a surprise.

"Yeah, it's... it's all resolved now, and everything, though."

"Well, that's good, I guess." Long pause. "So... you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Good," she said, clearly relieved.

"This isn't something we can just tie up with a pretty little bow, you know," said Fi, going on the defense a bit prematurely.

"Of course."

"I don't like it."

"I didn't think you would."

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"Neither do I."

"I don't ever, ever, ever want to hear about it unless you're telling me that it's over between you."

"I understand."

"I don't even want to think about it."

"Okay."

"It's not going to last forever, you know."

"I know."

"Okay."

"Okay." Molly smiled at her. Fi shook her head and swallowed all the questions that were trying to force their way up from her throat, because she knew she'd never want to hear the answers. After a while, she smiled too, and decided to leave the laptop alone for the evening. Jack eventually returned and sat next to Fi. Molly decided not to ask him any more leading questions about his girlfriends. Fi decided not to tell him about Carey or Clu. There was, after all, a good reason why such things were referred to as one's private life. And so they spent a lovely unspoiled evening together in the living room, staring into the empty fireplace, avoiding touchy subjects, including romantic entanglements and the improbability of recent events being attributable to simple mass hysteria or a shared hallucination.

It occurred to Fi much later, after the others had dropped into sleep, while in her own drowsy haze, that although it was certainly possible that the Drac had retreated to wherever because it was missing its tail, perhaps it had more to do with certain people learning to let go of certain hang-ups, which would have made them less attractive to the monster seeking to punish those ruled by anger or fear like his own tormentors so long ago. She almost laughed at the absurdity of that idea, but then again, in this strange universe, it really wasn't impossible. At least she had some kind of semi-plausible explanation to offer her remaining fellow believers now...