Morgan & Nate | Monday Morning

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Morgan goes down to the gym to find Nate beating the hell out of an innocent punching bag.

Morgan had developed a daily habit of working out. She basked in the luxury that she was actually able to do that. She could just decide to go running without bullets chasing her. Or she could go swimming with a bomb going of near her. Her restless energy today she'd figured she'd work out in the gym. Doing what in the gym she wasn't sure. If there was a speed bag she'd start there because boxing sounded like a good idea. So did weights. So did a lot of things, actually. Her mind was filtering through options, many of which came up short like rock climbing. Morgan was preoccupied enough that while she could hear someone in the gym she didn't bother to consider it until she walked through the door. She paused once he was in sight. "And he told me not to break anyone?" Alright, so Nate had meant that in an entirely different context. Morgan wondered if he was currently out to break himself the way he was going at that bag.

It was actually a form of meditation. If you pounded away at the bag until your muscles were screaming at you and you could hear your heart pounding in your ears, the whole tattered-shields thing became somewhat less pressing. Nathan did miss a beat as Morgan walked into the gym, though only for a moment. He breathed out, and went right back at it.

Morgan wandered up, staying far enough away that if for some reason he decided to swing at her she could dodge and to be sure she didn't end up with an elbow or fist in her ribs by accident. "As long as it's not my face being imagined on that bag I think I'm okay," she told him casually as if he wasn't using so much force that he very well may have taken a person's head clean off if he wanted to.

Six, seven, eight... Nathan backed away from the bag, breathing heavily, and gave her a brief, crooked grin. "Plenty of other faces," he said, and paused for a brief coughing fit. Where had he left that bottle of water... "Much more deserving than yours," he said, spotting it over on the bench.

"Good to know," she told him seriously. Morgan leaned against the wall with a hand on her hip and just watched Nathan. "Y'know, when you're all sweaty and pissed off like this you're damn hot." Her voice was playful to break the tension in the air that came off Nate in waves. "Rough week, there?"

Nathan sighed, eyes moving ceiling-ward for a moment as if just checking to make sure there weren't answers up there. "Week. Month. 2008." He retrieved his water bottle and sank down onto the bench, taking a long sip before he continued. "I started 2008 by getting shot in the back in Chechnya. It's gone downhill since then."

"This is what happens when you're only semi-retired." It was a strange thing for Morgan to interact with Nate as herself. Part of her saw him as an old rival who was out of the professional circuit. Part of her saw him as a guy who may very well still want to rip her into little pieces for kidnapping, holding hostage and impersonating Domino. Another part of her saw him as that paternal figure he'd been to Domino. The problem for her was the most time she'd ever spent around him was while she was in that mimic. "So," she continued sounding for all the world like they were old friends, "this semi-retired thing of yours have anything to do with the leather sorts I've heard about?"

Nathan eyed her for a moment, then nodded. "It was a switch," he said, somewhat guardedly, "but I've been at it for a few years now. I like to think I've acclimatized."

"Truth and justice instead of a paycheck as motivation? Yeah, I'd say it's a switch." She seemed to either be oblivious to his tone or completely disregard it. Morgan felt like playing nice, which meant playing friendly. It was better for all involved than the alternative. "From what little I've been told it sort of seems like there's not much to acclimate to." She added with a wry grin, "Aye, other than the fact it's likely not you callin' the shorts."

"To be honest, that part of it's a relief. I called the shots for long enough to know that more often than not, the shots call you."

She smiled because she hadn't ever been someone who envied the boss his position. "Aleister was that guy until he got killed. The boys sort of mostly do the cooperative thing but Eamon's got the real head for it. Aye, I just got where they want me to and do what I'm told. Youngest rung on the ladder and all. I don't envy being the person who might get everyone killed. Or worse, caught."

Nathan made a face. "Caught you can do something about," he muttered, running his hand through sweat-soaked hair. "Killed is kind of final." He rubbed at the claw-scars on his arm, the ones from Youra, without really thinking about what he was doing. "Strange orientation of priorities there."

Morgan shrugged, not at all thinking they were strange. "Consider this. Killed in this kind of work usually means what? Shot or exploded, yeah? It sucks, it might be painful, you might get stuck bleeding to death, but you know it's gotta end and your mind might put you into shock so you even stop feeling it. If you're lucky you go down quickly, before the pain and really register. Captured's entirely different. I'm talking really captured, not the sort where you get away before they get you anywhere. I'm talking in their POW camps or prisons or whatever little fun places they've got. Captured a lot of the time means pain. Not pain you know is going to end but pain that can stretch out endlessly into the days until they blur into weeks which blur into months until you can't keep track of sun up or sun down because all you can see is blinding pain. Even if someone liberates the whole area, you've got no rights because you're a 'foreign volunteer.' They can abuse you more than they can rightfully abuse anyone else, which makes you the perfect example to keep the other prisoners in line. No thanks, love, I'd rather be killed than captured."

Nathan's smile was a bit odd. "You can survive being captured, too. Although I'll give you the rest of it. I have a personal resolution never to vacation in North Korea again." He shrugged, but not dismissively. More like he was trying to shrug off memories, and his eyes were distant for a moment until he pulled himself back to the here and now. "Regarding the whole dying being worse," he said, not quite briskly, "I'm speaking more from the point of view of someone who's lost a few too many friends over the years. Although I can't honestly say I'd prefer to have it over quickly, if I was in that position. I'd do North Korea again if it meant coming back to my wife and daughter." A smile slipped out, strained and slightly incredulous as he realized that he did in fact mean every word of that. It was so odd, sometimes, to stumble over just what marriage and fatherhood had done to his motivational structure.

"Speaking as someone who's only got the crew waiting for me? I'd rather have the dying than the possibly irreparable psychological damage. I'm sure you understand." With an inappropriately light hearted note she added, "Though I'd be a brilliant psychotic killer after that, wouldn't I?" She flashed a gleaming grin at him which was all for show. You only noticed if you could bear to look at the glowing red eyes close enough to notice that it didn't completely reach them. Most people, she'd found, didn't really look at her eyes that closely. "It's sweet, the willing torture for the wife and kid thought, I mean. Can't relate, but it's sweet."

Nathan did, but didn't say anything, just grinned back at her. "It's done alarming things to my brain. Fatherhood. Especially at this late age. Oh, you remember Mina and David, right? They've spawned, as well. Retirement is agreeing with them."

Yeah, she remembered them. Mina had been the maternal counterpart to Nathan's paternal figure. It wasn't that they were together, they just filled the slots for Dom who was clearly spoiled fucking rotten when she was in the Pack. Sure, Morgan didn't have it half bad with the guys but she didn't have it as good as Dom did with the Pack. "They doin' actual retirement or this only partial kind of thing that's all the rage with the kiddies these days?"

"They have new jobs, working for me," Nathan said, then smiled crookedly. "Nothing to do with the black leather, but in the same doing-good theme. We're all part of an NGO now. Oddly, it still involves getting shot at from time to time. I think it's probably just the places we choose to go."

"Maybe you just attract bullets," she joked sweetly. "What are you, a superhero adrenaline junkie? Never would've figured you for the type. Do you wear spandex and a cape?" Morgan waggled her eyebrows at him, red eyes flashing with mischief.

"I can't see me in spandex. And my ribs have been broken so often that I need to wear more body armor than God," Nathan said good-humoredly. "Or at least I did until our local specialist came up with a lighter version. The do-gooding is actually harder on the old body than working with the Pack or my previous career ever was." He paused for a moment, settling on phrasing. "The... restraint it demands sometimes means leaving yourself open to the hits that would never have gotten the chance to come at you, in the old days..."

Morgan visibly cringed at the very idea of having to take a shot because of restraint. She really enjoyed not getting injured as much as possible, thanks. "What kind of do-gooding gets you hurt instead of the bad guy? Really, what use are you if you end up half dead because you didn't kill the enemy and held back instead? How many get away because of that?" It seemed logical to her that unless they were seriously outnumbered whomever their opponents were that a fair number were going to escape with that sort of mentality.

"I told you I had to acclimatize. And that was the hardest thing." Nathan shrugged, again not at all dismissively. "Basically, we don't kill," he said quietly. "Non-lethal takedowns are always tricky. Jumping into a hornet's nest and fighting to incapacitate is tricky, too. I broke my back doing that, a few years ago."

His stories were more grizzly than the stuff she'd gone through on the job. "You have to use non-lethal force on someone who I'm sure is out to kill you all? That's fucking nuts, Nate. I know you're the 'good guys' and all, but really that's just not practical." Justice failed a lot, she knew that. If someone was bad enough to warrant mutants in leather who were organized then they were bad enough to warrant deadly force so far as she was concerned. "Add that to the reasons I'll never add heroing to my aspirations."

Nathan's smile was faint, and a bit sad. "Maybe I just figured I'd killed enough in my life. It's hard to explain, and yeah, I know it doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface from your perspective."

Morgan shrugged but it was just a gesture. It wasn't dismissive of his idea but it wasn't really considering of it either. "Some people can only take so much blood on their hands. Aleister used to say that if we didn't do it someone else would. It wasn't really about whether or not the people died because they were likely going to anyway. It was about how much blood we could live with being on our hands. Some people love it, could never do anything else. Some aren't bothered one way or another. The rest get to a point where they can't watch one more fourteen year old kid with an assault rifle get mowed down by themselves. He used to call it discovering your conscious and the moral compass you lost in the laundry basket." Morgan smiled, it was small and only curved one corner of her mouth upward but it was drastically more genuine than any full smile she ever wore. There was fondness in her expression.

Nathan's own faint smile lingered. "I did it for... twenty-five years. I didn't realize how badly I needed to stop until I got here." He paused, the smile turning crooked and something more cheerful in his eyes, finally. "But you don't need to listen to an old man rambling about his late-life epiphany."

"Pffft," she made a dismissive motion with her hand. "Old guys, what can you learn from them? All that uphill in the snow both ways stuff. They don't know anything." Morgan laughed, the sound coming dangerously close to what could be called a giggle but not quite reaching that level.

"I like to play the wise old guy. It looks good on me. Goes well with the gray hair," Nathan said, putting a little deliberate pomposity into his voice and repressing the smile. "Sometimes the teenagers around here even buy it."

Morgan burst out laughing. "'Play' being the operative word there, innit? Silly teenagers falling for your old and wise act when you're just old and kind of cranky I bet."

"Cranky? No, no, I've mellowed with age." He paused, cocked an eyebrow. "I said that with a straight face, yes?"

Nodding, Morgan was left giggling behind a hand which unsuccessfully attempted to stifle the sound. "You did, actually. How does it feel to be admittedly old and mellow? Inquiring minds want to know."

"Dull. Very, very dull. They don't even let me play with explosives anymore," Nathan said, mustering up a wounded look. "Except on very special occasions."

"Aww, kitten. It'll be okay." Morgan gave him her best expression of sympathy bordering on pity. "Eventually they'll give you all the explosives you could ever want in hopes you'll blow up yourself! See? Something to look forward to!"

"I'll have to see if that's what my wife is planning to do to dispose of me once I hit the period of senility that's inevitable after all these concussions." Nathan's grin was sneaking out. "She loves me. She'd know I would want to go out with a bang."

Morgan's hand covered her eyes as she shook her head, shaking with silent laughter. "That's true love. It'd be very kind of her to do that for you. Hmm...I wonder if you get senile if you lose all the control over your mutation. You could be that guy who blurts out what other people are thinking at really inappropriate times."

"I don't need senility for that," Nathan said with a Buddha-esque look. "Just sufficient alcohol."

A wicked grin immediately cross onto her face. "Really?"

He shook his head at her. "uh-uh. Too many people around here know I know that. If I was to let down my hair to that extent, Jean would probably take me over her knee."

"What they don't know won't get you spanked," she tempted. "Though, note to self: my trainer's kinky. Good to know."

"You are kind of impossible, you know," Nathan said with a helpless laugh.

"You know it!" Morgan grinned, laughing happily. "It's all part of my disarming charm."

"That's one word for it. Charm."

She smiled broadly and sauntered up to Nathan so she could kiss his cheek. It was chaste, almost familial. With a wink she told him, "Don't be jealous. Just because you used to be charming and you're not anymore." Her voice trailed off into her quiet laughter as she inched away from him, fully expecting a swat or a hit from a towel.

"Now I'm just old and cranky," Nathan said peacefully. "It's fun, in a way. People pat me on the head and overlook all kinds of things."

"Like the fact that you're just old an cranky?" She tilted her head, watching his face, his posture, his body language. Normally a smile would have followed her comment but she was busy studying him and not bothering to hide it. "Life here really suits you, huh? Sort of hard to picture you old and cranky and here considering the only time I spent any time around you and all."

Nathan was silent for a moment. The question deserved a serious answer. "I have my moments," he said. "So does life here. I can't say that they've all been good. I mean, you didn't come down here and find me whaling on the punching bag because I'm in a state of bliss."

She shrugged, obviously he wasn't exactly thrilled if he was trying to put the bag through the wall, but everyone had their moments. "Didn't figure you were, but life's grey area, innit? The point is whether the good moments outweigh the bad ones and if the mediocre bits are endurable. Pros and cons and how they balance. That's all it is."

"True enough. And I suppose the answer to your question is yes, when it comes right down to it. Mostly because I don't feel I had most of a life, before here - I mean, I had people I cared about, but not much beyond that." Nathan offered her a crooked smile. "Now I have family, friends, co-workers, a couple of jobs I actually rather enjoy, and I like the man I see in the mirror every morning. There are much worse situations to be in."

His answer made Morgan smile. She didn't relate it to herself like many may had listening to him, she only related it to him because that's who she'd been asking about. The change in him from the man she'd once known as a rival to the man he was now was pretty obvious. She didn't know exactly what'd done it, and it probably didn't matter much either, but it was interesting all the same. "Then that's all that really matters, innit?"