John Eames got up from his recliner when the front door opened and Maggie came bursting into the house. "Grampa!" She ran into his arms and hugged him tight. "I missed you!"

He kissed her. "I missed you, too, princess."

Goren set the baby down and pulled off his jacket. He hurried across the living room, calling "Gapa!"

With a laugh, John picked him up and kissed him. "How's my boy?"

Tommy giggled and hugged him again. Eames gave her father a kiss. "How are you feeling, Dad?"

"I'm doing great, sweetheart." He shook Goren's hand. "How are you feeling, Bobby?"

"I'm fine, John."

He took his wife's coat and his overcoat and hung them by the front door, while she hung the kids' jackets in the hall closet. Goren motioned to Maggie. "Mouse, come here."

She hurried to him. "Yes, Daddy?"

He picked her up and sat on the couch with her. Eames sat beside them. John sat in his recliner near the toybox and settled in to play with Tommy. The baby started the game by bringing his grandfather two blocks. He set them in his lap and announced, "Box!"

"Right. Blocks."

He hurried back to the toybox, returning with a red ball. "Ball!"

"Very good."

Goren sat back and looked at his little girl. "We want to talk to you about what you're feeling about the lady that hurt you."

He had deliberately avoided giving Wallace a name to Maggie. He knew she heard the name and recognized it, but he did not want to personalize her any more to his daughter, so he avoided using her name at all. Maggie's face became solemn and she pressed herself against his chest. That was the one place in all the world she felt safest, in her father's arms, nestled against his chest. Nothing bad could ever happen to her there, because Daddy would protect her. She reached out a hand to her mother, who would also always keep her safe. Eames slid closer and wrapped her hand around Maggie's. "There was no reason for you to say you were sorry, Maggie," she said softly.

"But my brain thinked bad things. I don' like that. I don' wanna think like that. And Daddy said it's not good to think bad things."

He had never realized how difficult it would be to teach right and wrong or good and bad to a child with a penchant for analyzing everything. The world wasn't black and white, and Maggie was still too young to comprehend shades of gray. He approached the issue from another direction. "It's not good to think bad things, but it's also not good to ignore how you feel."

"So what do I do?"

"You talk to us about it."

"But it makes you sad, Daddy."

He smiled at her. "That's okay, mouse. It's important to talk about what you feel. Don't keep it inside...that's where your nightmares come from. If something bothers you, come and talk to us. We'll always listen to what you have to say."

"I know. But I don' wanna make you sad."

"It would make me sad if you didn't talk to us. I don't like you having nightmares."

"You have 'em."

He was surprised at that, though he shouldn't have been. She didn't miss anything. "I'm not as good as I should be at talking to Mommy about what bothers me. Maybe if I were better at that, I wouldn't have so many nightmares. But that's something I don't want you to suffer with, Maggie. I want you to talk to us. Sometimes it will bother me, but it's not a bad kind of bother. I...I want to protect you from all the bad things in the world, but I can't. That's what makes me sad, not what you tell us. It's my shortcomings that bother me. And I really should be the one saying I'm sorry to you."

She looked confused, and Eames smiled to herself. That was the same look Bobby got when he was confused. She sighed softly, amazed, as always, at how much like her father she really was. "Why, Daddy? You didn' do somethin' to say sorry for."

"I did and I didn't. That mean lady hurt you because of me. She has been trying for a long time to hurt me, and she used to do it with words."

"How do you hurt somebody with words?"

How to explain to a four-year-old that words could wound, that a soul could bleed as readily as a body could... He looked at Eames, who shrugged. She had no idea what to say. He'd painted himself into this corner and she didn't have a bridge to help him out of it. Maggie had no frame of reference for this; she'd never been hurt by words. And the explanation wasn't simple either. She had no idea how his parents had been, how her late grandfather was skilled at inflicting pain on his youngest son with fist and voice, how her grandmother, in the throes of her illness, often did the same, though the intent was very different. William Goren intended to hurt him; Frances Goren was trying to save him. "Sometimes people say things that make you feel bad. She would...use your grandma's illness to..." To make me bleed inside...she wouldn't understand that reference. "...To make me feel bad...about some of the things I thought when I was little. She tried to use words...to make me feel bad...about other things...like loving Mommy."

Again she looked confused. "How can love be bad?"

"It's not. But she tried to twist it so that it could be."

"I don' unnderstan', Daddy."

"That's good. You shouldn't understand that. Love isn't a bad thing. But the lady doesn't know what it's like to love someone, or to be loved by someone."

"You mean she never had a mommy and a daddy?"

"Not like you do, no."

"That's sad. Ev'ybody should have a mommy and a daddy like you."

He laughed. "Thank you, mouse. Maybe that's true. But lots of kids don't have good parents."

"What about you and Mommy?"

Now what? She already knew his father had been cruel to him. How to explain about his mom, though... "Um, yes, Mommy certainly did."

"And you?"

He felt Eames' hand against his side...reassurance, connection, encouragement... "I..." He couldn't lie to her; he never had. "I...didn't, mouse."

"Gramma wasn't good to you?"

"She was, sometimes, when she wasn't sick."

"Her brain sickness?"

"Yes. It made her do things she would never have done if her brain wasn't sick."

"Did she hurt you like your daddy did?"

Nicole had been unable to hurt him with his past, but, in her innocence, Maggie did. But he couldn't let her know that. "Y-yes. She did."

Worse, sometimes...because it was his mom. Maggie climbed up onto her knees. She placed one small hand on either side of his face and gave him a gentle kiss. "There. I made the owies inside better." She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. "A kiss and a hug al'ays makes it better."

He closed his eyes, and Eames didn't miss the tear that traveled down his cheek as he held the little girl. Across the room, John stopped the game with Tommy to look at them, meeting his daughter's eyes. In many ways, John Eames had become a father to Goren. Always kind, always supportive, yet he had no way of knowing just how much their relationship meant to his daughter's husband. But she knew.

Tommy pounded on his grandfather's knee. "Gapa!" He pushed a teddy bear onto the small pile of toys that had accumulated in John's lap. "Bear!"

John smiled. "Yes, Tom. Bear."

Maggie pulled back from the hug as Eames reached up and slid her fingers into his hair. She saw in the set of his jaw and the twitch of his muscles the difficulty he was having. "Come here, Maggie," she said softly, before Maggie could intuit that her father was upset.

She climbed into her mother's lap, letting her father get up. He kissed her head to reassure, then walked around the couch to the sliding door near the kitchen and out onto the back deck. "What's wrong with Daddy?"

"He just needs to be alone for a little while."

That she understood about him. Sometimes Daddy just needed to be alone. "Is he sad?"

He was and he wasn't, and Eames did not want Maggie thinking she'd done anything to make him sad. "No, he's not sad. He just...needs to think for a little while. Sometimes he needs to think by himself about things that hurt him a long time ago."

"Like Gramma?"

"Yes. Like Gramma."

"She's always nice to me."

"I know she is. And she always will be, because the doctors are helping her now. When she's not feeling good, Daddy will never bring you to visit her. He's always going to protect you from the things that can hurt you. That's why he feels so bad about the mean lady, because he couldn't protect you from her."

"Why was she mean to me?"

"Because she knew that if she was mean to you, it would hurt Daddy and me. It's not easy to explain, Maggie, and it's not easy to understand. She's a very bad lady. Even Daddy doesn't fully understand the way she is. That's how she can hurt him, by doing bad things he didn't know she would do."

"Like taking Tommy and me."

"Exactly. Nothing could have hurt us more."

"So it's okay to think bad things sometimes?"

"Sometimes you can't help thinking bad things because of how you feel, and when someone is very mean and hurts you or someone you love, then it's hard not to think that way. All you can do is try to make yourself feel better and forget the bad feelings. It's not easy, but you just keep trying until you can do it."

"Will you go help Daddy feel better now?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I will play with Tommy and Grampa. That makes me feel better. And then you and Daddy can hug me before you go to work, and I will try to be all better."

Eames smiled. "Okay, Maggie." She kissed her. "Go and play."

All better...she wished it was that easy, to just kiss away the pain. She met her father's eyes again and went out onto the deck.

She slid the door closed behind her and looked at him. He had cleared away the snow and was leaning on the railing on the far side of the deck, looking out across the snow-covered yard. Over a foot of snow had fallen and none of it had melted yet. She watched the cloud of condensation billow from her nose as she exhaled a deep sigh. Stepping where he had, she crossed the deck to him. "Sh-She...got to me," he said.

"She always gets to you. She always has."

"Not...not like this."

"She doesn't know."

"I know. I don't ever want her to know what it was like for me. Thanks to Wallace, she knows they weren't good parents. She doesn't need to know any more."

"No, she doesn't."

She watched him wipe at his eyes impatiently. "We, uh, we need to get to work."

"In a minute. I wish everything was as easy as Maggie thinks it is. I wish I could just kiss away your pain."

"So do I. You have managed to chase away a lot of it, Alex. Most of it, in fact. But some wounds are just too deep to heal. Some have festered for far too long to ever close. I accept that. It's just...when someone sticks a hot poker into them, even unintentionally, I can't stop it from hurting." He sighed and she didn't miss the slight tremor in his breath. "She doesn't think she upset me, does she?"

"No. I explained you just need a few minutes alone. She does understand that about you. And she trusts me to make it better."

"I wish you could."

"So do I."

"Well, you may not be able to make it completely better, but you chase the pain away most of the time. Maybe it will go away for good someday. I don't expect that it will, but maybe."

She slid her arms around him and he wrapped her into a warm hug. Turning her face up toward his, she welcomed his kiss. Pressing his forehead to hers, he whispered, "Sometimes a kiss can chase the pain away."

The right kiss...from the right person... He kissed her again, and he felt everything slip away, until there was only her. Pulling back, he smiled, and she now saw warmth and love where pain had been moments ago. It wasn't gone for good, but she would take whatever she could get, and so would he.

They went back into the house and Maggie ran to him. "Did Mommy make it better, Daddy?"

He lifted her into his arms. "Yes. You both did."

"Do you gotta go to work?"

"Yes, we gotta."

"Will you be careful?"

"I'm always careful." He kissed her. "Help Grandpa with Tommy."

"I al'ays do. Take care-a Mommy."

He smiled. "I always do."

She leapt into her mother's arms and in the same innocent way entrusted her father to her care. "Take care-a Daddy."

Eames smiled at her little girl. "I always do, Maggie."

She kissed her and set her down, watching her run back to the living room. "Go tell Mommy and Daddy bye, Tommy."

Eames caught the baby as he ran at her, not slowing because he trusted his mother to catch him. He hugged her. "Mama!"

"Be a good boy, Tom."

He jumped from her to his father, trusting in the same way that Daddy would never let him fall. He squeezed his neck. "Dada!"

"See you tonight, tiger."

He set the baby down. Waving his hands, Tommy said, "Bye-bye!" as he ran back to Maggie and the toybox.

John met them at the front door. His eyes expressed genuine concern. "Are you okay, Bobby?"

"Yes, sir. I'm okay."

He watched his son-in-law help Alex into her coat, then take his from its hook. Alex kissed his cheek. "See you tonight, Dad."

"Be careful."

It was a dangerous world and they saw how bad it could get every day. He hated that the world's evil had ever touched these two children, but they were strong and they'd weathered the storm well. In some ways, Maggie had handled it better than her father had, with fewer residual scars. Heading back into the living room, he caught the ball Tommy threw at him, laughing when the baby fell over in his excitement. At the very least, all was right in their world now and everything was back to the way it should be in their eyes.

A/N: We still have the last of the trial and verdict to go...so there's a little bit more left...Don't go away...