Headspace (So What Happens Now?)

Francine

The ride back to Amanda's house was silent in that eerie way that only people who have too much to say and no idea where to start can be silent. Francine briefly considered making a comment to Lee and Amanda about behaving under the comforter in the back seat, just to try to normalize the atmosphere. However, when she looked in the rearview mirror, Amanda was staring straight ahead, hands clasped in her lap, eyes vacant, understandably trapped in her own thoughts. Lee was leaning on the comforter between them, pretending to be asleep. Probably a good idea after that tackle.

She became increasingly aware of Oliver in the seat next to her, sneaking appreciative glances in her direction. He accidentally -ooooh, or maybe not?!- bumped her arm while stretching, and there was that wild electricity again.

I knew I should have done something more sophisticated with my hair, spritzed on some perfume, maybe slapped on a little lipstick. She ran her tongue over her unmoisturized lips, feeling strangely self-conscious. But...stressed and under-dressed or not, he was definitely checking her out and liking what he saw.

Which made one of them. It's a little hard to like yourself much when you're coming closer and closer to realizing your worst fears about something you've dedicated your life to.

She thought again that Lee must have somehow discovered something huge, or he'd have come in as soon as he could after the...incident. Or he would at least have made contact sooner. If not for his own sake, then for Amanda's. She wondered what could be critical enough to keep him away from the woman for whom he had more than once risked his life and career. And why couldn't he trust me with it, whatever it is? That train of thought did nothing to help her peace of mind.

And his reaction in the parking lot? Oh, she didn't need to ask him to know what he'd thought before he recognized Amanda. And that hurt. She understood the logic behind it, probably would have considered the possibility that he'd set her up if their roles had been reversed. But it still hurt. A lot. As unrivaled as she was at dishing it out, Francine was not used to being on the receiving end of that feeling.

Best to distract herself by sneaking glances back at Dr. Wells. Definitely not her type. Not even close. Average height. Ginger. Currently very shaggy; almost hippie-like (eeew). No trust fund or impressive connections outside of some prominent academic advisors. And again, the careful omission of any positive personal references. But...there was something about him. And let's not overlook the almost scandalous age difference. No, let's go ahead and overlook it. If it works for Madonna, it can work for me. It's not like we're getting serious or anything.

Amanda

In the back seat, Amanda was trying to figure out how she felt, other than very sore from Lee's tackle. At least that was a feeling she could understand and knew how to deal with. Some Tylenol should take care of that kind of pain.

Of course she was relieved that Lee was alive. But she was also ANGRY. Capslock-level angry. Over the course of thirty years, she'd been convinced he was dead about half a dozen times. Seven times, she mentally corrected herself. Eight, if she included this one. Every time there was this burning anger behind the relief when she found out she'd been deceived. And he'd never been dead -well, presumed dead- this long before.

The disaster had happened the Friday before Thanksgiving. For the first few weeks, she'd kept expecting THAT phone call. The one that told her he was alive and safe somewhere, and maybe why it had to be that way, and when she could expect him back. But most importantly, that he loved her and was sorry for putting her through this.

It had taken over a month for the grief to hit. The real grief. With the new year came the realization that maybe this time, that phone call was never going to come. The tiny spark of hope behind it took another few months to finally extinguish itself completely, bringing an unexpected third wave of anguish.

Of course, she'd always known that one of them being killed in the line of duty was a very real possibility. They both knew the risk and accepted it. They'd lost more than a few friends that way over the years, but for the most part they'd led a seemingly charmed life in terms of near misses and narrow escapes. Sure, they'd had their fair share of injuries along the way, some of them critical, but somehow they'd always pulled through, and grown closer together because of them.

They had their share of the other kind of injuries, too. The ones they never meant to inflict on eachother when life and work wound together too tightly. Her bouts of frustration and jealousy. His retreats into arrogance and indifference. It had all come down to fear, she'd realized at some point. Fear for eachother, and of losing eachother. Fear had always been the dark shadow of their love, but had somehow made it so much stronger.

Once that underlying fear had been realized, it was just...gone. But there was no relief, only something like a black hole where it had been, trying hard to pull her beyond its event horizon and rip her apart.

But what about the love it was so intimately intertwined with? She knew it was still there, would always be there. But the fire had gone out, and the ashes finally grown cold.

She looked at the shaggy, disheveled man pretending to be asleep on the seat beside her and felt...nothing. Nothing but that odd mix of relief and anger that was somehow detached from... him. She couldn't connect the person beside her with the man she had built a life with and had loved with every fiber of her being. He could just as well have been a total stranger sitting there, pressing the comforter against her side.

So yes, of course she was glad Lee was alive, but the part of Amanda that had died with him hadn't been miraculously resurrected.

Oliver

Lee wasn't sleeping. Looking in the mirror, Oliver Wells knew it. He didn't understand it, but after over a year off radar with the guy, he recognized when Lee was feigning sleep. No, he didn't get it, but at least he picked up that there were undercurrents here that he didn't understand. He considered that a big improvement over the man he'd been before that fateful night at the Energy Summit.

Now that was a bad, bad night. Even with a vocabulary in the high 99th percentile, that simple description was what he always came back to. He'd been in a small bathroom in the basement, rehearsing what he had to say to the Energy Secretary. He knew he would have perhaps a minute to make enough of a case to get his attention and warrant a further meeting. He also knew that he lacked the people skills to be compelling. He'd done the logical thing and read several books about making persuasive presentations, and a few on acting techniques. One suggested practicing your delivery in front of a mirror, so there he was, in the men's room, feeling vaguely ridiculous. Scratch that. Feeling acutely ridiculous.

He never understood why facts and data needed to be wrapped up in social niceties, especially when presented to someone who should have the inferential ability to quickly process them. It had occurred to him that perhaps as a political appointee, the Secretary may not have that ability, although he did have a solid background in public energy. At least he had finally consented to a brief meeting at the confrence after several months of cautiously worded e-mails. He would have preferred a venue where he was likely to have the Secretary's undivided attention, but hopefully that would come later if he could just find the right facial expressions to convey the urgency and critical nature of what he'd discovered about the Rapids Project.

The two-stall bathroom was far enough away from the main activities of the opening reception that he hadn't expected to be interrupted. He'd been trying for a full ten minutes to find the perfect combination of words and movents with which to introduce himself when the waiter walked in.

Less than fifteen seconds later, everything went to hell.

The waiter of course had been Lee Stetson. He eventually learned that Stetson was assigned to babysit him. Oliver supposed he should be flattered that he'd been persistent enough to land on such an elite watchlist, but not alarming enough to be prevented from meeting with the Secretary. It was a delicate balance, especially for a guy whose interpersonal skills were roughly equivalent to the proverbial bull in a china shop. It had probably saved his life, as his insecurity about making an appropriate first impression had likely saved Lee's. So, if Lee wanted to pretend to be sleeping in the back seat, Oliver was not going to be the one to blow his cover.

Especially not with the absolute goddess beside him returning his surreptitious glances.

Lee

Scarecrow had never been any good at finding his "off" switch. Nor could he ever be persuaded that he needed to get some sleep when there was work to be done. He knew his limits, mostly, and how far he could push them. Or at least he used to know them. The trek south from Moosonee had confirmed his suspicions that he might not be quite so young anymore. At least not in the knee and lower back regions. He'd hoped to get a few hours of sleep on the road back to Washington D.C., but Francine had not taken the roundabout in front of the laundromat to get on the expressway.

His senses were still stuck in fight, flight, or freeze mode from the unexpected encounter with Amanda in the parking lot. For now, he was going with freeze. Was it possible that Francine was using her to lull him into a false sense of-

Dammit Scarecrow! Stop jumping at shadows!

He'd seen Francine work her way into the confidence of everyone from Russian hit men to low-level courriers. He'd seen her abduct persons of interest. They didn't call it seduction or abduction, of course, but that's what it came down to. In all of those situations, there was an undercurrent of self-mastery that was simply missing here. He didn't know how to describe her ability to make a situation work for her, other than to contrast it with Amanda's ability to adapt to a situation. Whatever it was, she didn't have it here. And Amanda...

Amanda. What the hell is she doing here? Why isn't she home in Virginia? Obviously Francine roped her in. It was no coincidence that she was at the laundromat. But why? Not sentiment. Francine didn't operate on sentiment. For years he'd wondered if she had anything like sentiment to operate on in the first place. She did, however, operate on Need to Know, and he had been very, VERY clear about her coming alone.

No, he didn't understand Amanda's involvement at all. If it was involuntary, she could have escaped at the laundromat. If somehow Amanda was there to warn him about Francine, she wouldn't have grabbed his hand and run -okay, stumbled painfully- with him toward the waiting car. So, for some reason, Francine got Amanda involved. And she'd obviously told her he was alive. She hadn't been surprised to see him, but he'd sure as hell been surprised to see her.

It was far from the reunion he'd held images of in his head and heart for the past year and a half. Those images had helped him cling to some degree of sanity the more he learned about the Rapids Project and the level of Agency involvment in the Energy Summit disaster. Not the entire Agency. Just one very bad seed waiting to sprout. The rest of us will just be collateral damage if we can't neutralize him.

The reunion with Amanda wasn't supposed to happen until next week, after the Senate hearing to confirm Undersecretary Christopher Oldfield to the vacant Energy Secretary post. And it definitely wasn't supposed to happen until after he'd at least had a chance to sleep, shower, shave, and make himself generally presentable.

All things considered, pretending to sleep but keeping his ears open seemed to be the best option. Nobody was talking, though. Even Amanda, his irrepressibly chatty Amanda, was sitting next to him, silent as a statue. Not even a glance in his direction. He supposed he couldn't blame her. Hopefully he could get her to understand. And get her to forgive him. Again. Eventually.

The first step of the operation, getting back into the States from Canada, had come off without any of a hundred possible things going horribly wrong. He was tired. He was sore. He smelled bad. He probably would have broken at least a few of Amanda's ribs, or worse, with that tackle if the comforter hadn't absorbed part of the impact. He'd obviously still hurt her. Why not add a bit of guilt on top of everything else, right?

Oh, Amanda. His beloved Amanda. The North Star that could always guide Scarecrow home and make him Lee Stetson again, no matter how much of himself he'd had to lose on an assignment. How the hell did she get involved in all this?

She didn't seem happy to see him. Then again, she never was in situations when he had to play possum and couldn't tell her. He knew all too well that it was going to take time, explaining, and probably a lot of yelling and tears. In the past, though, he'd always been able to sense her relief when he could finally come home. It was always there, behind the angry tears. But other than shouting his name as he barreled toward her in the parking lot, she hadn't said a word, or even looked at him. Somehow that was exponentially more frightening than the sudden silence when the shockwave from the blast temporarily deafened him eighteen months ago.

Four people. Each lost in their own thoughts. All arriving at the same question: So what happens now?