Who: Jack and Evie What: Discussions in a pillow fort. Where: Luke and Wren's place When: Valentines Day Warnings: This log includes discussions of Evie's childhood and past (including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of a child), but nothing graphic by any stretch of the imagination. And it includes sad things and happy things. And Evie turning into a cranky cat. So it has that going for it.
To say that the evening had been an adventure was the understatement of the century. Daisy had recently started crawling and on her own she kept Evie on her toes. Crawling, sitting up, getting into things, putting things into her mouth - Evie was always “on” when Daisy was awake. And having spent the evening with two other kids and Jack on top of Daisy’s normal shenanigans had turned out to be exactly the kind of thing she needed to keep negative thoughts at bay.
Luke had told her that Jack had been having a bit of trouble with his situation, and she understood that fully. She, of course, had been more than happy to oblige Jack joining the party - and if she was honest she wasn’t sure she would have survived the night without him. Granted she was sure she’d have made it work, but two sets of hands were better than one. Especially when Lia was more than fond of being carried. And Evie had been more than happy to oblige that desire, she was a baby after all, but it did make chasing Daisy a bit more acrobatic, and it hadn’t exactly left many hands free for chasing Gus around and doing all the things he wanted to do as well. She was glad for the company, and the help, and there had been an endless array of amusement for everyone.
So much that everyone under the age of 6 was now completely fed, bathed, tucked in, passed out, and quite happily in dreamland. Evie was checking on Lia and Daisy one last time before she was going to move back to the living room and sigh as loudly as possible without actually making a ruckus. A few last minute kisses, because she couldn’t help herself, and the briefest concern that she’d overdone and now they’d both wake up. Luck was on her side and she pulled herself away.
There was a pillow fort taking over most of the living room and Evie supposed they’d have to dismantle it before Wren and Luke got back in the morning (or afternoon - she certainly couldn’t blame them if they stayed two days!), but it was an architectural phenomenon and she was loathe to destroy it right off the bat. It covered most of the couch, part of the floor and was even hoisted up in the middle with an unplugged lamp stand (burning the place down wouldn’t be winning them any babysitting awards).
She tiptoed into the living room just in case the kids had supersonic hearing and her voice wasn’t as loud as it normally was when she peered around the pillows and blankets and smiled at Jack, “Do you want anything before I sit back down and refuse to move ever again? I’ve got secret cookies,” there had been the cookies she’d brought for the kids, and then the secret cookies that were still safely in her overnight bag. “I promise I didn’t bake these ones either, you’ll see the children are still breathing,” she said with a grin and waggling her brows a bit, because what was better than regular cookies? Secret cookies.
Jack felt that he had held his own against the tide of tiny people, helping carry and feed and give baths and juggle where necessary. Gus wanted his attention, much of the time, wanted to show him new toys and ride his horsey (Jack) around the room. He hadn't seen much of Daisy before, but she was as sweet as Jack would have expected any daughter of Evie's to be. Who knew how she would grow up, but if she stayed on the track her mom had set out for her, there was no doubt in his mind that she'd turn out very well.
Jack was just glad to be doing something, to be busy. It was hard sitting on his hands in the house for days. He could come and go as he pleased, but he tried to stay away from all the old places to avoid drawing attention. The last thing he needed was to be recognized under his new alibi. He'd traveled to the apartment mostly incognito, sticking to side streets and keeping his head down. Evie was good company, as were the kids, and hectic as it was, he appreciated the change of pace.
He was also glad to be there for Evie. Valentine's Day was hard. He remembered. It didn't sting now the way it had once, an old ache fading to a dull pain, but everything had to be fresh for her still. He hadn't known her partner well - in fact, he knew almost nothing about him, since they'd never met. But she would no doubt be missing him, and if she needed a distraction as well as a helping hand, he was more than happy to oblige.
When Evie came back into the living room, Jack had fetched a beer from the fridge along with a spare for Evie, in case she wanted it. He looked up at her smiling face peering over the edge of the pillow fort and smiled back at her. "I am not the kind of man who could possibly turn down secret cookies," he said, ushering her in. "Join me, there's plenty of room, and I can't quite bring myself to tear this thing down yet."
Evie, despite her fairy tales, romance novels, and flights of fancy, tried to be a practical person. She tried to solve problems rationally and calmly. It was what spending the first decade of your life trying to escape your own body did to a person she supposed. She didn’t see real troubles or problems, just little roadblocks that needed care and attention to get through, but nothing insurmountable. Never was anything too much for Evangeline to handle. She’d spent so much of her life relying on herself that taking care of Will during his using days was a pleasant distraction almost. Sure, it was awful, but it gave her something else to focus on other than what she was going to do if things got worse. It had been healing for her, and it was healing for her now being around to take care of babies, and visit with Jack who she worried about being too lonely all the time. And being there for Wren and Luke when they needed her as a friend. But more importantly, she’d also learned how it was important that she had people she could rely on. Really honestly rely on, to hold her hand when things became heavy. Evie had learned to ask for help. And that was huge.
She was doing alright, and she was hanging in there, and she was moving through her emotions as calmly as possible. As calm as she ever was, because getting worked up was only something you did when you had too much fun. She felt like she didn’t have a choice but to move forward and take care of her perfect (haha) child, and enjoy the beautiful gift Will had given her before he died. Evie and Will weren’t perfect, there was as much history there as there was love. There were hard times, and sometimes she found herself angry at him all over again for his sins of the past. But she knew that was no way to move on either. That was just a different kind of dwelling. So she looked forward as best she could, as often as she could. Even if that meant avoiding being left to her own devices and bottles of wine on Valentines Day. And practicality said to avoid that at all costs.
And so she had practically begged to watch the kids, and jumped at the chance to spend some time with Jack too. It was good for her. And it had been good. She didn’t even have to fake the smiles she’d been wearing all night. And she wasn’t faking the one she had on her face when came around the pillow corner with a box of chocolate chip heart shaped cookies with pink frosting on them. She handed the box to Jack before she flopped back quite happily against the overly comfortable pillow fort and looked over at Jack with a satisfied smile. They had survived! “Here’s to Beer and Secret Cookies. And architecture.” The pillow fort surroundings definitely made for better ambiance than anything she’d have come up with trying to navigate this holiday - that she was still trying to love as much as she always had - all on her own.
Jack watched Evie flop down with a genuine smile, and toasted beer with her, clinking his bottle against hers. "I'll drink to that," he said. He snapped the top off with the bottle opener he'd brought along with the beer and took a short sip, reaching over for one of the cookies. "So, do we think Wren and Luke actually managed to forget being worried about the kids and just have fun?" he asked, still smiling. He certainly hoped so. They deserved the break if anyone did.
It did Jack good to know that things seemed to finally be settling down for Wren and Luke and the kids. Even if his own life had been blown literally to smithereens, in the long game it felt like a blip. What had his life been, anyway? Working for the CIA, living each day as it came, praying that the death and the chaos stopped or slowed. Now that he was dead to the world life had gotten a lot quieter, even if he did have to take the long way to see his friends and be careful who he talked to. Wren and Luke seemed safe and happy, and Evie appeared to be healing. All things considered, life could definitely be worse.
He'd lived that life. He'd lived where every day was a tortured drag. He'd lived on the other side of sanity, and he never wanted to go back there if he could help it. If there was anything to complain about compared to the bad old days, it was the lack of direction in his life now, the lack of something distinct to drive toward or a passion to reach for. Maybe that would come in time. He could hope for that, and keep living meanwhile.
And if the idea of trying to someday explain to Evie what he'd done, who he'd been, what kind of a man he actually was, if that made his good mood dip and his insides go cold, he didn't show it. It could wait. All of it could wait.
Evie took a drink of the beer and let out a very refreshed, “Ah,” and smiled. She hadn’t had beer in a very long time. They didn’t keep it in the house when Will had been alive, and she’d been mostly trying the wines now that part of her life wasn’t as critical to keep clean. But she liked beer, it had just been so long, she’d forgotten the cold bite of it, and the reflex to let out the sound had been almost reflexive. She chuckled. “If times get rough I think I’ve got a future in beer commercials.” She said smiling and taking another drink. “It’s good, it’s been a while, but I think it tastes better than I remember,” she mused, but she didn’t care either way. It was a pretty good situation either way.
She pursed her lips for a moment thinking over his question, eventually she sighed and shrugged, “I sure hope so, I don’t think they can completely turn it off, and obviously we’re the best babysitters in the world. So verdict says, fussing over being away, but still having a good time. They so deserve it, putting up with the likes of us,” she teased and nudged his side with her elbow lightly.
It was fun having someone to talk to, and she continued to find herself actually enjoying herself. Just having someone who she thought could use the company as much as she could was helping. It didn’t feel so imposing when she thought someone might want to spend time with her as well. She had told Luke how worried she’d been that Jack would be lonely being dead, so even though she didn’t try and press, and she didn’t try to make him uncomfortable at all - she liked having him here. For more than just the extra pair of hands for the kids.
"I could see it," Jack said, approving. "You do have a great satisfied beer drinker sound." He settled a little deeper into the pillows. The pillow fort had been for the kids, sure, but who could pass up a good excuse to hang out in a pillow fort as an adult? Everyone craved getting that feeling back on some level. It was warm under the blankets and pillows with Evie for company, and it almost made it feel like real winter, not the paltry version Vegas had to offer. One day he was going to move away from this place, and go somewhere there were winters again. Maybe not today, and maybe not any time soon, but some day.
He chuckled. "They do, at that." Wren and Luke went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to being good friends. Luke in particular had done more for Jack than he would ever be able to repay. He had a vested interest in seeing them stay together and stay happy, and it seemed for once that things were settling with them, too. It was almost eerie, this brief stretch of calm after the storm. "When did you meet them, anyway? I don't think I've ever asked you that."
“I am a woman of many talents, clearly,” she said with a rather proud, but amused, grin on her face. She was comfortable. As comfortable as she’d been in ages, she was going to have to seriously think about installing a permanent pillow fort at home. Then again, she might not ever leave it if that were the case. “They’re going to come home to find I’ve moved into the pillow fort permanently,” she said relaxing back and closing her eyes for a moment.
“It feels like I’ve known them for ages, I mean I have, but I just love the hell out of them, it feels like I’ve known them a lifetime,” she thought back to the individual circumstances under which she’d met both of them. They’d been different indeed, “Luke was my neighbor in Seattle. We were teenagers, Finch was a puppy, a young puppy,” she said shaking her head unable to really believe. “I met both of them separately before I even met Will,” she said sighing and trying to imagine being as young as she’d been again. “Luke and I played soccer in the apartment hallway and talked about girls. And Wren I met a little before that,” she furrowed her brow for a moment, “Or maybe it was right after. I’m not sure but it was pretty close. I’d gotten on a wrong bus, and gotten off at the wrong stop in the wrong part of town. I can’t say that we met under the most gracious of circumstances but I think we found more than a few things in common that night,” Evie, had she had any interest in scaring Jack away, would have regaled him with the tale of how she had actually pulled a knife on someone that night. And used it. It was a different time for her, she’d been younger, more afraid, more vulnerable and with a huge desire not to be a victim ever again. And she hadn’t been. And certainly not that night.
It had been a turning point for her in more ways than one. She knew she’d been strong, she knew she’d been able to hold her own and for a tiny blonde she knew she’d have been able to fight off whatever had been coming. But she also knew what kind of person she wanted to be, and as much as she’d have done the same thing again, for herself, for Wren, she knew that wasn’t going to be able to be her go-to answer. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, and she’d known what her personal limits were at that point. She’d worked hard to get to where she’d been at 18 when she’d met Luke and Wren, to be that girl who could function in society without the panic attacks. The girl who could meet a boy and fall in love with him. The girl who could make friends with people outside of the personal assistants her father hired to follow her around and make sure she was okay. She’d done that all by herself, and for her it had been huge. And it was after that moment that things started to move back into her own control. She knew she had the safety net of all the work she’d done to learn to fight, to be her own person, but the next thing she had to learn to control was herself. And once she’d learned that her life was officially hers to control, there had been no turning back.
It was what made losing the people close to her so hard. She knew, logically, that she couldn’t have done anything to stop what happened to Will. She knew she couldn’t have stopped any of it from happening. But it was damn hard to remember that it was her responsibility to come out of it on the other side okay. That was her decision to make. She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, she was doing well, it wasn’t a worrisome sigh by any means. And she felt almost bad as if she’d brought the pillow fort down with her own inner monologue. But somehow, she assumed, that if there was going to be anyone in the world who understood complicated situations and the sighs that sometimes went with them, it was going to be the man in the pillow fort with her.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said almost as if she had said it all out loud, but she was pretty sure there wasn’t much her dancing around words and long pauses were hiding from him. But stories ought to have a happy ending, and despite all the pain, this one kind of did. “It was one of the best things that has ever happened to me, meeting her, I don’t know what I’d do without her, without either of them really,” she said turning her head and looking over at Jack so sure of herself about that one fact that she would have defended that night and the actions two crazy teenage girls had taken until the end of time. “And you?” She asked, blue eyes looking up at him curiously.
Jack could remember what Wren and Luke had been like then. So many things had been different, but some remained the same. Whatever experiences lay between, Luke remained fundamentally good, even if he'd lost a large part of his old blind positivity and idealism. His inexperience had made him vulnerable, in the end, just the way no one would have hoped. And Wren had been somehow softer, yet now she seemed more even, more strong. It was hard to describe, the sort of thing you saw in the carriage of a person and couldn't explain.
He hadn't known Evie then, but he thought he could imagine what she might have been like, too. He didn't know the details of what lay in her past, but he knew she had risen out of something with the help of her father. Perhaps she was still on her way up, then. Perhaps she'd had that in common with Wren. It had taken him a very long time to shake the past loose, and there had been no other time where he'd been more in the grips of it than when he was in Seattle. It seemed like such an incredibly long time ago, and strange, still, how close it actually was. It made him feel older than he had any excuse feeling. Grateful, too.
Her long breath and careful avoidance of detail made him wonder how she'd met Wren in the first place. What had happened? Wren had still been cutting men, then, so that long breath could mean almost anything. There was no good way to bring it up except edge gently toward it. "She was different, then," he said. "So was Luke. We all were. Seattle changed everyone." And then some.
"I met Luke in Seattle, and Wren not long after," he said. "They weren't together then - you know that, obviously. There was all this flirtation and obvious interest, but he always seemed to be taken whenever she was there, just until the very end." The very tragic end. At least things had worked out when they met again in Vegas, for all the hardship in between.
Evie knew as well as so many of the people in her life how the past could latch on and never let go. But she’d spent so much of her young adult life trying to come to grips with a childhood that had to be endured rather enjoyed, and somewhere along the way to adulthood she hadn’t thought much about the choices that she’d made in her young adult life. None of them were great, even loving Will as much as she had, and sticking things out with him, of course it hadn’t been a good idea to get involved with someone with his history. The people she’d hurt, they were bad people, but she wasn’t someone who wanted to hurt anyone. The people she’d saved, the hugs she’d given, all of it - it was all part of this blur of her life that she couldn’t quite figure out.
“So was I,” she answered after a deep breath. “I was different too, I was trying,” she paused and cleared her throat, she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. She didn’t want to make him leave. She didn’t want him to think badly of her, and she looked over at him for a moment trying to decide on words. But in the end she trusted him, and that didn’t just mean trusting someone with the present. That wasn’t what you did to the people you wanted to keep in your life. So, Evie tilted her chin up a bit, and inhaled again puffing her chest out not unlike a kitten trying to look brave and big. She’d told the story before, she told it all the time when people at the crisis center asked her questions. She told her therapist, she told her friends. “The beginning, as horrifying as it is, isn’t the part that scares me,” she said giving him a warm smile. She took another drink of her beer and reached over and squeezed his hand tightly for a moment before she started to speak.
“I lived with my mother and father in Paris, where I was born, until I was three, when my mother left my father she took me against his will and spent the next 9 years trying to punish me for everything she thought he’d done. He wanted me, he wanted to raise me and take care of me, so she wanted to break me. And she, and her new husband, nearly did. We were living in Ukraine by then, under new names, with new documents, so my father couldn’t find us. Her new husband was in the business of trading and selling people, usually young girls, and while I wasn’t for sale, I was,” she sighed, “For rent.” She said looking down at the beer bottle in her hand and beginning to pick at the label for a bit. “But my father found me, eventually, and brought me to America, taught me English, which,” she smiled, “Was the fourth language I learned and it is by far one of my favorites. You’ve got words like awesometacular and hella,” she said fully aware that mentions of child abuse were a really quick way to bring the pillow fort vibe down. But if she was honest, she felt safe, and comfortable. She hoped that despite the subject matter she was still sounding confident, the hard part about life trauma is that people always started to worry once they found out you’d suffered. She didn’t want to be anyone’s worry.
“And I tell you that because I am okay, it wasn’t easy, but its a preface to the story of how I met Wren. And how different we all were, and how things can always change and while I don’t like to be a poster child for success - because I’m not - I do know how to overcome. And I was in the overcoming phase when I met Wren. But I had taken it to an extreme. As part of my healing process I learned how to fight. And how to use weapons. All of them, any of them, I would have taken lessons on how to drive a panzer if my father had let me. I wanted to feel powerful. Not just in control, but overpowering. I wanted to be the one that held the cards. And I absolutely over-reacted to everything that happened good or bad. I was overly happy or terribly sad. But I was methodical,” she said closing her eyes again and trying to think about the last seven years and all the growing she’d done. “I wanted to do it right, and I wanted to have steps to take if anything bad ever happened to me again. The night I met Wren, we fought with some men who were behaving very badly towards the both of us, threatening, being disgusting pig monsters - and maybe I took it a little too far, I don’t know what happened later, I don’t think I killed the man I hurt, I stabbed him,” she avoided mentioning where, men got a bit funny about things like that. “My father took care of it, took care of us, he fixed it, whatever it was, and that’s how I met Wren.” She looked at him half nervous that he’d leave her to her own devices. Half nervous that he’d think she was some kind of crazy person, but she kept reminding herself that she was technically in a pillow fort with a dead man. There was a story there too.
“I don’t want to hurt people, I didn’t really want to hurt people then, I just wanted to know I could stop something from happening. Which wasn’t the right lesson to be teaching myself, but I was grasping for control. And I did slow down, and I did find it, and I met a man ten years older than me who wasn’t in control of his own life either,” talking about Will, “So I grew up a little bit. I learned to control me and for some reason took it upon myself to try and teach him how to control him. But yes, all that to say, that even though I was going through a very violent time in my life - I think Wren saved me that night more than anything else that happened. As weak as we may have looked, as scared as I should have been, as volatile as I learned I could be - her friendship meant everything in the end. It still does. I think she understands me on a level that not many people do. And while we didn’t meet in the most conventional ways, if we hadn’t then I wouldn’t have had anyone to get me through the scariest time of my life. Which, believe it or not, was the day I found out I was pregnant and I was terrified Will would find drugs again, and terrified I’d be a horrible mother because it must be hereditary, and just…” she sighed. “Wren got me through young adulthood. And now she’s holding my hand while I navigate adulthood too. I can’t ever repay that.”
Evie smiled then, wryly, and a bit whimsical, “I’d probably try and steal her away if I didn’t love Luke just as much. And honestly, I think by now we’ve all got an equal stake in Luke and Wren’s marriage so its in our best interest that I don’t steal her away,” She wasn’t serious, as much as she and Wren loved to think about their island in the sun with no drama and no pain, she knew it wasn’t reality. At all. But again she was trying to keep the mood lighter than she’d gone about making it already. She opened her mouth to apologize to Jack, he hadn’t asked for all of that information, but she was sure he was curious. Most people were, she didn’t explain herself every day, obviously, but she wasn’t ashamed. Maybe of bad things she’d actually done, but that was just one part of the story.
He’d asked questions before about her life, she’d alluded to things. Trying to test the water, just to see if it was a safe time and place to share, and they were in a cave surrounded by the most comfortable comfort items in the world. With beer and cookies. And she decided not to apologize after all. She had nothing really to be sorry for, her acts were hers, and she’d been trying to come to terms with them. Her childhood, that certainly wasn’t her fault, she’d stopped apologizing for that years ago. So she didn’t now. Instead she just took another drink of her beer, and looked over at him, concern for him showing all over her face, and she almost reached over to squeeze his hand one more time, just in case. But she pulled her hand back after thinking he might not appreciate that right away. Evie was affectionate, and it made her feel better, but she knew it didn’t always work that way. And she didn’t know how he was going to deal with some of the more violent parts of young adulthood in Seattle. For all she knew he was trying to exit and get as far away from her as possible. So she hesitated.
Some people needed to process, some people were sadly unsurprised, and others got angry about the whole thing. But Evie was ready and willing to be there no matter what the reaction turned out to be. She tried not to think about how she was probably ruining the poor man’s Valentines Day. Because if she thought too hard on that she might be the one to exit the pillow fort with extreme haste and bury her head in the sand.
Jack could tell Evie was winding up to something when she reached up and squeezed his hand. At that point, he settled in with his beer, and he listened.
He'd never known much more about Evie than snatches here and there, the allusions to a bad childhood and Wren and Luke's continuing affirmations of her goodness. You didn't even have to know her very well to see that. But the details had, until now, eluded him, and they did click in with what he knew of Wren and Luke and the people they'd all run with in Seattle.
It was a sad story, and a brutal story. He'd heard ones like it when he was in Seattle, so much more on the ground than he was now, in those occasions when he'd been able to linger with women out on the street and listen to them talk. Some of them he'd helped when they needed it most, and some of them simply found him lingering at the edge of an alley and knew him by reputation. They told him about bad pimps and Johns with knives, stories that not many people cared to listen to from a strung out girl with no home. And he'd heard stories like this one from friends, too. What he knew of Wren's, for instance, rang in harmony with Evie's. It formed a tapestry going back to watching his fiancee raped in front of him - men damaging and violating women for sport.
It wasn't all misery, though. He knew her father had rescued her, but he hadn't known what from until now, and it deepened his appreciation for a man he'd never met. It was hard for many people to wrap their mind around the cruelty of others, but he had done some cruelty of his own and seen what was in his reach to do, and seen so much brutality that it began to become almost normal. He could imagine her mother, and the man who had his girlfriend's nine year old repeatedly raped for profit. He had met those men. He had killed those men.
There was much to celebrate, too. That had been one of the most difficult parts of climbing out of insanity and despair, recognizing that not everyone who was hurt was a victim, and not everything was lost in a series of traumas. There was no ruination. Letting yourself be ruined was just allowing them to wound you over and over. Easier said than done, though, and the fact that Evie could be so pulled together spoke volumes.
Then, as she started to talk about learning to fight, something clicked. Of course. Of course she had. That made perfect sense. It also made him sit up a little straighter when she mentioned it, as his mind jumped ahead, connecting the dots of the common experience of so many of the people he'd met in Seattle, trauma merging into anger and a will to fight.
She spoke of stabbing a man, possibly killing him, and he listened, very still, the beer in his hands all but forgotten. It was difficult to read just what his expression meant - often so open, it was, briefly, inscrutable. Not horrified, but the wheels were visibly turning. It said something that the idea of her possibly killing a man and getting away with it didn't seem to move him in any direction except thoughtfulness. Clearly the man had gotten what he deserved.
He was glad Evie had managed to find a ledge to grab as she fell, even if Will hadn't perhaps been the wisest or the safest man to be with. If he'd helped pull her back up, then he had more than done right while he was alive. He sank back down a little again, some of the anticipation fading. He had expected her story to wheel into one of vigilantism that would neatly connect up with Wren and Luke and himself, but it never did. He wondered if she knew what Wren had been doing in Seattle, or what Luke had done after.
"I feel much the same way about Luke," he said, when she told him she could never repay Wren for holding her hand. "He's been there for me more times than I can count. I owe him my life." Not an exaggeration, even if the threat had come from within more often than without.
He took a swig of his beer as she finished her story, coming alive again and shaking off the fog of thought. He had too many thoughts to put them all easily into words, but in the end, he nodded to her, and he smiled. "I think you might just be one of the toughest people I've met," he said.
Evie wasn’t sure what the reaction would be, she dreaded pity, she dreaded discomfort, it was the worst because it made her feel the worst. Bad things happened to good people, and she knew that. But she also had learned that when bad things happened to good people that it didn’t make the good people bad too. She wasn’t bad. She had never wanted to be bad, and while the urge to fight and the urge to stop things from happening to other people had bubbled up in her at one point, and she knew that it burned within her father as well (there were questions about her past, about her mother’s companions, that she had never asked. But she knew Benedict had taken care of them and they weren’t hurting anyone else after her). But she also knew that there were other ways to fight, and despite being willing to fight with her fists and her body, and her spirit, she decided to fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves.
She took people in, who were scared to be on the street. She hugged women and children in shelters. She sat with women in courtrooms. She cried with people who had lost everything. She taught people how to stand back up. That had been her mission in the end. She wanted to see bad people put away. She wanted to see bad people put down if there was no other way. But Evie refused to forget about the half dead pre-teen her father had carried out of that house the day he’d come. She refused to forget about her because she was important too. She had buried her under anger and hate. She’d been angry at herself and her own body for not protecting itself. But that little girl had needed to grow up into the Evie that was sitting there with Jack, just as much as Evie needed to remember to let that little girl be a kid, and give her a break once in a while. And forgive her, and be there in a way for other people the way Evie knew she could be. She was an advocate, and a shoulder to cry on, and someone to cuss with and argue with. Someone to holler at when things got too bad, and she was someone to holler back if things got simply ridiculous.
She nodded thoughtfully about Luke, she knew they were all lucky. There was no way any of them should be alive really. She didn’t know Jack’s story, she didn’t want to push, but he was faking his death. None of them were really safe all the time. Not even from themselves from time to time. But she knew, she knew they were lucky, and if they had everything they needed inside four walls, people to care about, people to love, people to dote on, then maybe at the end of it all it wouldn’t be such a scary world. “Well, I’m glad that Luke’s been around for you, because I understand about owing someone your life and I’m glad he’s been there for you because that means I got to meet you too, and even though I just met you under the more tragic circumstances of my life, I’m glad I did. I consider myself pretty lucky.” She wanted to ask him a million questions. She wanted to know why he had to pretend to be dead, she wanted to know if there was anything she, or her father could do to help. She wanted to know how she could do anything to make things easier for him, which was her way, she was always looking for solutions.
He called her tough, and she couldn’t help but smile and look down at the label on her beer bottle that she’d practically decimated, little white sticky pieces of it were stuck under her fingernail (of course it was), and she looked up at him. Her smile calm, and her expression about as relieved as they came, “That was the right answer, Jack. Thank you,” she said softly before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes again for a moment. Her shoulders relaxed and she opened her eyes and smiled at him and picked up one of the cookies. “Secret tough girl cookie?” She offered with a genuine smile. She wanted to barter it for asking him a question, but she thought she’d ease him into it, she opened her mouth to say something generally vague and only just a little bit leading.
But Evie was never vague. And Evie didn’t know how to just be a little bit leading. When she made up her mind to say something, she tried to give it enough thought not to blurt it right out, but she felt almost too comfortable in the cooking kingdom pillow fort. “Why did you have to fake your death?” she felt bad having blurted it. But blurt it she had, and there was no real going back now. She was going to apologize, but she wasn’t really sorry for asking. All she knew was the bits and pieces of what she’d gotten. “I won’t tell anyone, I mean - my dad was missing and dead for over a year because of political issues all over the place. I mean I get it, my life hasn’t exactly been traditional,” she chuckled a little. “Not even after I came to live with my father. I’m pretty sure he’s secretly James Bond,” she said with a little nod and an amused sincerity behind her voice, because there was really no other way to describe the lack of information she desired or required about what her father did all day.
"I accept," Jack said with a small smile, taking the cookie from her. He didn't want Evie to feel as if he merely pitied her, and so was glad she took his reaction well. If anything, he empathized with her. He knew what it was to be helpless, and to never want to see something happen again, to yourself or anyone else.
When she finally asked the question she'd no doubt been wondering about for weeks, he couldn't help but smile. "You were really patient with that one," he said, canting his head to the side. "You have better restraint than I do. In your shoes, I'm sure I would have asked already."
He thought it over, briefly. He didn't want to tell Evie anything that could potentially endanger her, but she already knew the most significant piece of information, that while he might be dead on paper, he was very much alive. Everything else was window dressing, really, though the details of who was with him out in the desert or what they were planning would have to remain with him. He couldn't risk giving her something that someone would try to get from her, if the wrong people ever did come knocking. It wasn't a question of trust, but of her well being. "That wouldn't surprise me," he said. It was partially a joke, but her descriptions of her father reminded him of some of the people he'd worked with in the CIA. Imagining him in the ranks of espionage agents didn't seem like altogether too much of a stretch.
He folded his legs in cross-legged, leaning forward. "I've been working for the government for about six months," he said. He glanced up at her. "CIA. I don't want to say too much, because I would never want to put you in the position where you had to try to keep something from dangerous people on my behalf. But suffice to say that I and everyone I was working with was compromised, and the CIA decided that we were no longer worth protecting." He assumed she could fill in the blanks from there. The explosion at the school, the dead bodies, the vehement denunciations of terrorists on national television. The CIA had let it happen, all of it, right down to the thirty young dead they had sacrificed to shed their bad assets.
She smiled back at him and inhaled sharply with a nod, “You have no idea how difficult it’s been,” she admitted smiling sheepishly her cheeks turning just the tiniest bit pink. It was a bad habit she had, but she’d learned to embrace it. There was nothing she could do about being fair skinned with a proclivity for blushing. “But I didn’t want to press, sometimes I try and have boundaries with other people, and sometimes I just can’t help but get way too nosy.” She admitted with a smile to match his. And it was true. Most people found it worked for them, and she certainly wasn’t anyone would call shy, but she did admit that not everyone appreciated the Evie barrage of questions she could sometimes unload on an individual. Especially someone she cared about. But she was holding on pretty tightly to the few people in her life at the moment. So she was better behaved than normal. “You have a nice smile, Jack. I’ve seen it a lot tonight, and I hope you remember to do it even when you’re not in the relative safety of a pillow fort.”
She sat up a bit straighter, and kept her eyes on him, curiosity in her eyes and listening attentively. He didn’t tell her much, but she was able to fit the pieces together and it made her sad. She’d heard all about the explosions, her father had been significantly touched by it and things began to make a bit more sense. She didn’t like what she was hearing, she worried about all kinds of things from whether he was being well looked after to whether or not he was going to be forced way like her father had been. She wondered if he had someone to connect with, she wondered if it was even possible for him to envision something like that in his current predicament. “I think you’re worth protecting.” She knew that maybe it wasn’t much to say, but she was sincere. She understood, as he explained what had happened, that she wasn’t going to be able to know everything she maybe wanted to, and she wasn’t going to be able to fix it. She certainly wasn’t going to be so silly as to offer to try. But to be cast aside like he’d been, even if it had been a “job” she knew what that felt like. And maybe no one had said it, and maybe it felt good to hear it. That was something she could offer, she would always be able to offer, and something she did try to offer to the people in her life.
She smiled a bit wryly then, “I’m surprised we didn’t meet earlier. I don’t think anyone of us were running around behaving ourselves in Seattle, and here you are a secret agent man, and my Papa - and Wren and Luke and everything else that goes along with it,” she finished off her beer and set the bottle aside. “I think birds of a feather flock together even if it doesn’t quite seem that way at a first glance.” Of course they’d all know each other. Of course they’d all be around each other, and find each other when things got wonky. Evie didn’t surround herself with easy or simple - because Evie wasn’t easy or simple. And it seemed that even when she picked and chose from friends of friends that she went with the innately familiar.
Evie took the news that Jack had been working for the CIA right in stride, which was impressive enough to merit a smile. Then she commented on his smile, too, and he laughed a little. "Thanks," he said. "I guess yours is pretty okay too," he added, with a grin. It had been a while since he'd felt like teasing anybody. Maybe that, in itself, was a good sign.
His expression turned a little more pensive when she suggested he was worth protecting. He didn't need anyone to protect him, and didn't want anyone to, either. When his time came, sooner or later, he wasn't going to let anybody else suffer from his sins. He'd made his own choices in life, and the road they'd been down had been of his own making. "Whatever comes out of the life I'm in is for me to worry about," he said, gently. He didn't want her to get an idea in her head that she could somehow help him by getting herself into trouble. That was the last thing he wanted.
"I think you're right," he said, a touch rueful. "It's a funny thing - every time I meet someone, it seems like we have something or another like that in common. I guess people like us all gravitate toward each other." He shook his head, briefly. "Violence is something you can't understand unless you've lived it."
She rolled her eyes a bit and chuckled, but smiled widely, “I use crest whitening strips,” she said in a way that wasn’t quite clear how she serious she actually was. It could have gone either way at that point. Either way it was good to get a chuckle.
She narrowed her eyes curiously and tilted her head to the left looking at him. Really looking at him once he said he was his own thing to worry about. She furrowed her brow, she took a good hard look at him and didn’t know how she wanted to begin her next words to him. She felt like spitting and hissing like a cat. And if there was ever really a personification of a cat with its hackles raised it could have been Evie at that point. She wasn’t angry, she was miffed, and typical of miffed Evie she sat back a little and fluffed her hair slightly after she’d appraised him thoroughly. Her arms folded against across her chest and while she was leaned back and theoretically more comfortable, she gnawed on the inside of her lip for a moment and looked back at him. “I can’t believe you just said that,” she said with a huff. “Honestly, the worst part is that you actually believe that, Jack,” She wanted to shift her leg just a bit to give him a little kick but she refrained.
She let out a long breath, “Don’t you get it at all? It isn’t just for you to worry about. You have people who worry about you whether you want it to be that way or not, Jack. I mean I know its a lot to handle having friends and loved ones, but even though your life is certainly yours to live - like it or not your life touches other lives. And those lives do worry about you. And they do think you’re worth protecting. Maybe we can’t do anything to help you, and that’s something that people have to sometimes accept about life. But the other thing is to remember that you don’t have to worry by yourself. Ever. About anything. You may choose to, but you don’t have to. You care about Luke and Wren and the kids, and you know they’re crazy about you right back. Jack it’s lonely and scary and stupid outside of this pillow fort, but to say that your life is yours to worry about all on your own, that’s just selfish. Don’t deny people the right to care about your silly ass, and to worry about you. You worry about them, it goes both ways. And it’s always going to no matter you do or how you think it should be. Life isn’t fair, ever, and sometimes having people care about you tips the balance in your favor a little.”
She had relaxed her stature a little by then, her hands had moved as she spoke, her words held weight in her mind and she knew that there were chances to argue with her, and cases to be made, hers wasn’t a mind worth changing. She’d gone it on her own, she’d tried to do all kinds of things on her own. She was the one who was needed, not the one who needed anything. That had been her life. Until Will had died and then everything changed for her. In that quick instant, the only thing she knew was that she needed so much more than she’d ever let herself admit. Even now it was a struggle, and it had been a hard lesson that she was still learning, but she wasn’t keen to let it go.
Jack hadn't been expecting quite the scolding that Evie laid out about whether his life was for him or others to concern themselves over. It was stubborn, and sweet, but it worried him. That was the sort of philosophy that would get her into trouble on his behalf down the road. True enough, perhaps she had every right to worry over him and care, if she really wanted to, though heaven knew why she would. There was truth to her words, but not one he could easily accept.
"The world isn't fair," he said, at last, in agreement, because it was well said at the very least. Life wasn't fair, and you couldn't stop people from caring about you, that was right. It just meant you had to be careful what they knew, so they couldn't try to sacrifice for you. He paused, and then he tipped his beer bottle toward her. "I'll drink to that," he added, with a small smile.