My evergreen, you are always gonna be...

[m_pinocchio]

He's spent the night alone. It's taken some coaxing, Tom hadn't been especially willing, but gentle insistence and he'd given way. Yes, I'm fine. I'm sure I'm fine. You don't need to take the girls, I'm really fine. A night alone in this house, with his daughters, with his ghosts. He doesn't even know how many of them there are now. One more added

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[gotacigarette]

Familiar little girls and a flowering tree. Eden's hair's pulled back from her face, sweaty from running. She passes her hand across her forehead and watches Mike dig in the soil. It's an odd picture, but it makes a sort of sense.

Mack looks up and Eden gives her a little wave, her smile uncharacteristically soft.

"I didn't know they were yours."

[m_pinocchio]

He looks up and smiles slightly, a little hesitantly. He's aware how out of character this is for him, and he feels like maybe he should be embarrassed to be seen like this--only he doesn't.

"Not just mine," he says. "But yeah, they are. You've met them?"

[gotacigarette]

"We're acquainted."

Eden squats down in the grass and holds her hand out to Mack. She's surprised how pleased she is when the little girl hauls herself to her feet and toddles towards her, dirty hands and all.

"I met them when Neil was baby-sitting." Which means that Mike is the man who's woman is gone, the mother of his children. You're young, Marcus Kane had said. What have you ever lost.

Eden understands loss, but she doesn't say anything. Sometimes, it's hell to be reminded.

[m_pinocchio]

"Oh." He nods; Neil has them often enough these days. He smiles as Mack stumps over to her. Not afraid of anything or anyone. No one's ever taught them to be afraid.

"They're a handful." His smile fades just a bit, though it doesn't falter. "Especially now."

[gotacigarette]

It's amazing, truly, how easy it is to slip her hands under Mack's arms and lift her up onto her hip when she straightens.

"I heard," she says, dipping her head for his sorrow. "But they're brave. They'll be alright."

[m_pinocchio]

"Brave like their mother," he says, his smile warming again. He gets to his feet, dusting off his hands; the one vine is well-planted and now there's just the other one to do.

"Don't know what she'd say if she could see me now."

[gotacigarette]

"Good girls," says Eden Sinclair, who was also brave liker her mother. She tilts her head back and looks up at the flowering tree.

"She'd be glad you were going on."

[m_pinocchio]

"That's what I tell myself," he says, dropping into a crouch and lifting his head to follow her gaze, a smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. "She never had a lot of patience for wallowing."

[gotacigarette]

"A girl after my own heart."

Eden turns a little, with Mack still on her hip.

"You live here?"

[m_pinocchio]

"I do now." He gently unwraps the vine and settles the roots into the soil. "The way I figure it, someone has to. Might as well be me."

[gotacigarette]

Eden can understand that. If you build a wall around something, it's easier to forget, but forgetting doesn't necessarily make things go away.

"It's a good house."

Idly, she wonders if there are numbers painted on the front door of her mother's house. How many people waiting for rescue that never bothered showing up?

[m_pinocchio]

"I built it," he says, smiling up at her. "Well, not just me. Me and my friends." He turns his gaze towards it, to the thick truck rising up out of the roof. "The tree was something the Island gave her. There weren't any flowers until after she left, though."

[gotacigarette]

"It's like it misses her."

Eden looks down at the baby in her arms, her little chubby fingers wrapped in Eden's sweaty hair. She's a beautiful child, and Eden can see Mike in her, and an echo of what must be her mother, too.

[m_pinocchio]

"That," he says quietly, nodding. "And it's like she left something behind." Something beautiful and alive. Something with a bit of her. And not just in her daughters.

[gotacigarette]

"As opposed to just these two." Eden looks down dispassionately into Mack's face, her head tilting when Mack pulled on her head.

"I never had to be around kids."

[m_pinocchio]

"Neither did I." He watches Eden with Mack, how she is with her, and he thinks that maybe it's not as obvious as it should be. Flo toddle over to him and gropes at his arm and he pulls her closer. She looks up at Eden with big blue eyes.

"Never thought I'd have any, either. But that's life, I guess."