Nathan, Remy, and Domino, Thursday morning

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Remy stops in to tell Nathan he has to cut off contact with the Pack. Nathan takes exception to the idea. They growl at each other for a little while until a newly arrived Domino appears and tells them the problem's been looked after. Compromises are good things.


Remy walked into Nate and Moira's suite without bothering to knock. He never bothered to knock on telepath's doors, figuring that they should know he's coming in the first place. Even if Nate hadn't been passively scanning, the aura of barely controlled rage that had been seething from LeBeau since his return to the mansion and the discovery of Pete's betrayel could be picked up even in a deep sleep.

"Nate?" Remy said, closing the door behind him and tossing a thick set of filefolders on the sidetable. "You awake?"

Nathan emerged from the bedroom. Fully dressed, he'd obviously been up for a while, but he was moving very slowly, leaning heavily on the cane. Saying goodbye to the wheelchair had been cause for celebration, but walking hadn't suddenly gotten easy. If anything, getting rid of the wheelchair had actually cut down on his mobility.

"You know," he growled at Remy, pain making it come out a little more sharply than he'd intended, "if I lived here by myself, I wouldn't give a damn about your disdain for knocking. If you walk in on Moira at some point, though, you're on your own."

"Moira's in de lab. Remy can read a duty roster." Lebeau said with equal sharpness. Obviously he was shoveling around his foul mood. "Dere's some things dat we need to go over, as a results of dat salope's defection. 'specially his contacts."

Nathan took a deep breath and lowered himself into the nearest chair. "Sit down. What in particular?"

Remy tossed the folders beside him, dropping into the opposite chair with a boneless sprawl. "Thanks to Pete, more den sixty percent of our intelligence is compromised. De net is almost completely off-line, and if we lucky, we might save a tenth of dat." He let out a deep breath. "Dat means we have to assume dat what Pete knows, de Hellfire Club knows. Considering his jump right to power, Remy bet dat information was his buy in."

"It's what he has to trade," Nathan said a bit bleakly, looking at the folders. "Apart from his skills, and as good as he is, there are plenty of other places the Inner Circle could go for that."

"Tell you something, homme. Xavier's said that I can't plan a mission, but Remy catch Wisdom out of de club, in de field, and de homme dies." Remy's look was bleak, and utterly serious. Nate could almost taste the sense of betrayel in the other man, and the deadly earnest intentions behind the words. "Until den, I got to see what I can salvage out of dis clusterfuck."

"So," Nathan said, looking back at the folders. Deliberately not responding to Remy's first assertion there. He wasn't having that conversation. "Are you here looking for salvage help?"

"Non. Not exactly." Remy leaned forward. "Your old group, de Pack. Dey got ties wit' you and Pete. He knows dat it all linked. I need you to cut ties wit' dem."

Nathan stared at him for a moment. "Sorry," he finally said, "but no."

"Dere's seems to be a misunderstanding, Nate. I wasn't asking." Remy said, coming dangerously close to losing his temper. "Dey are a liability, and if Wisdom follows dere movements, he can figure out what we doing. Burned assets. Unless you feel like splitting dem up and pushing dem deep underground, they're out of the loop."

"Oh?" Nathan asked, his voice hard. "Precisely what relationship do you think there is between what the Pack does and us? We have never used them, Remy, not as a group. Pete had Domino off on a job for him once, and that was Mistra-related." He tried to moderate his tone a little as he went on. "I know something has to be done. Bridge, as far as I know, is assessing just how many shared contacts he has with Pete - the Pack's probably in the same boat as us when it comes to intel."

"Bein. Even more reason to cut the contact now. You want to exchange Christmas cards, dat's your call. But as of now, nothing about de mansion goes to de Pack. At all." Remy stood up, adjusting his jacket. "No junkets, no trips, no bonding sessions, nothing. Because you know dat he'll be watching dem as close as us."

"Let me educate you on something," Nathan said, his own temper starting to smoulder even though he knew that Remy had a point. A point, but he's not seeing it all... "You are not talking about my ex co-workers, Remy. These people are my family. We can talk about how to best manage the risk, but the quick and easy solution is out."

"Non. Dere's been a little too much disaster dumped on dis place in de name of 'family', Nate. You either get dem so deep dat Pete needs a excavator to find dem, or you cut dem off until Wisdom is dealt wit." Remy's face hardened.

"Let me guess. Your next stop after this is Amanda, to tell her she has to cut off contact with her adoptive mother because Romany is Pete's sister?" Nathan snapped. "I'm not cutting them off. As for taking them deep, are you under the impression that they're traipsing around Europe with no concern for security?"

"Dat's not the same thing, and you know it." Remy snapped back. "Dere's operating and going deep, and if dey need to keep working, den nothing goes between dem and de mansion. As for Romany, let's just say dat 'manda not going to make any trips to see her alone. Christ, Nate. Use your fuckin' head. Pete joined de damn Hellfire Club, which means dat he's got access to dere resources too."

"Don't fucking lecture me," Nathan flared. "You walk in here, knowing nothing about them, and start tossing around fucking ultimatums?"

"Right, because you're in de position to make an impartial judgement 'bout dere security." Remy said, not backing off an inch. He was getting tired of this crap, and was not about to see more shit go down because of some obstinate old man. "How 'bout dis? You want to play wit' your old friends while dey triapse 'round Europe? Fine. Den turn in your security access, so we can be sure you not telling dem what's in de works. You want to act all self-rightous 'bout you friends, when you know exactly dat dis is what needs to happen. What makes dem any different from de other allies we need to cut off?"

The door opened. "No, how about this?" came a light, mocking voice that Nathan had not expected to hear. He stared blankly at Domino, Domino who wasn't supposed to be here and who he hadn't sensed out in the hall, let alone sensed her arrive.

Damn, was he slipping.

She smiled blithely at him, giving him a little wave before she turned her attention to Remy. "Talk to the person who's spent the last week helping clean up that particular mess, instead?" she asked, coming in and closing the door behind her.

Nathan found his voice. "Dom, what--"

"Didn't you get my email? I suppose that teaches me something about internet kiosks in North African airports." She came over and flopped down in one of the other chairs, eyeing both of them. "Hey," she said, when no one said anything, "don't let me stop you. I mean, the two of you were working up to a nice explosion of testosterone there..."

"Remy going to guess dat dis is Domino." LeBeau said darkly, eyeing the young girl. She looked far too young to be an operative, closer to how Remy himself appeared in age. However, appearances could be deceiving.

She tossed off a sloppy salute, still wearing that little smile. "Domino, currently playing messenger girl, yes. And you must be LeBeau."

Oh, God... Nathan thought, and wondered if he was really that much of a coward, that fleeing the room seemed like such a good option right now. "Dom..." He stopped, took a deep breath, and went on as moderately as he could. "North Africa?"

"Tunisia." She pouted, deliberately. "GW expects me to live in a Muslim country, Nate. It's indecent. I think it's punishment."

"Why would you be going to Tunisia?" Remy couldn't help but asking. Tunisia was a smugglers haven and a crucial node in the black markets. But for a mercenary team, it offered little in the way of employment that wasn't genocide, and from Nate's descriptions, the Pack didn't hire out that way.

"Because it's quiet, because David has a few local contacts of his own there that helped us get set up with a nice new safehouse... and because we have never worked in Tunisia." Domino waved a hand. "Pfeh. Logic."

#Do not,# Nathan sent just to her, with perhaps a little bit more force than was absolutely necessary, #play the airhead with this man, all right?# He didn't feel like cleaning up the resulting mess.

But, Nate... Airhead-Dom is so much fun. Her mental voice, as opposed to her outward expression and demeanor, was wintry, positively icy. And he was fairly sure it wasn't directed at him. "It's a good thing GW's bald by choice," Domino chirped, "or he'd have torn all his hair out this week. Sayonara, Europe. It was fun while it lasted." The pout returned. "And now we're going to be stuck, if he lets us take any jobs in the next six months, doing boring shit in Africa and Southeast Asia. No fun at all."

"So, you've gone deep den." Remy said flatly, and turned to Nate. "Dey've done deep, Nate. 'course."

"Fancy that," Nathan said, and told himself not to glare at him. Problem solved, in any case.

"Very deep, seems." Remy shook his head.

"Although I gather the night life in Tunis is not so bad," Domino said cheerfully. "This whole change of scenery might have unforeseen benefits. The weather's sure better than Berlin..."

"Oh, will you knock it off?" Nathan snapped at her, nettled.

She raised an eyebrow at him, and the frivolous expression slid right off her face. The smile stayed... although it changed. "Go take your pills, old man. Remy and I will just chat for a few minutes, here. Details to iron out and all."

Nathan stared at her for a long moment and then hauled himself painfully back to his feet, hobbling in the direction of the bedroom. It wasn't as if he couldn't get back out here if the conversation went sour.

"So," Domino said, her gaze moving to Remy and the smile vanishing completely. Her eyes were like chips of violet ice. "While he's doing that... details."

"'bout what? Flower arranging? Hindi soap operas?" Remy gathered up his files and tucked them under his arm. He didn't know what arrangements Nate had with Domino, and he didn't particularly care. Her abrupt appearance had deflated both he and Nate fairly effectively, and like most people, it was not a feeling that LeBeau enjoyed.

"As I was standing out in the hall for a little while, I overheard more than just the tail end of your conversation." Domino studied him, mentally filing away details. "Part of the reason for us retiring from the field is so that we don't have to cut all contact with him. Now, obviously, we're not going to be flying back and forth from fucking Tunisia with any kind of regularity, but provided that both sides keep operational details strictly out of what contacts we do have, are you going to give him a hard time about that?" Getting the man off Nate's back was the important thing here and now. Anything else could wait for later, or never.

"Non. As long as you're not operating on Wisdom's rader, or in tandem wit' Dayspring, den we're good." Remy said, tamping down his annoyance. He still bristled at the fact that Nate should have set this up the second Wisdom ducked, rather than waiting for someone else to. The old man was losing it, it seemed. "Obviously, dat means no borrowing people either. I know dat you and 'manda friends, but you going to have to stick wit' coffee 'stead of break and enters for a while."

"From what I understand, she's got her hands full enough with the bouncing new arrival that stealing her away for a little fun isn't going to be an option anyway." Domino tilted her head, summoning up a very tiny smile. "You look vexed. And here I flew some ungodly number of miles to reassure people here that we'd removed ourselves as an issue."

"Had an argument dat I didn't need to have." Remy said, the 'shouldn't have needed to have' hanging just behind it. "Dat tends to throw off my day. So, Remy going to do de responsible thing and make Jake do all my work while I find a bottle."

"Ah, Jake. I ought to steal him away for a while before I go back to the wilds of North Africa. Get my mind off the whole 'lover joining group of megalomaniacal costume-lovers' thing. That's thrown off my whole month."

Nathan emerged back into the living room just in time to hear the tail-end of that. He gave Domino a narrow-eyed look, but then turned his attention to Remy. "Look," he said, brusquely but not angrily. "I stopped giving the orders and making the plans for the Pack better than a year ago. If you hadn't come in here in a shit of a mood flinging around orders..." He lowered himself back into the chair, shaking his head. "You might brush off the pseudo-familial stuff as crap, Remy, but it's not. It makes things more complicated than they need to be and brings a lot of what you might see as unneccessary risks to the board, but it's real, and it has to be a consideration. You might want to keep that in mind before you talk to Amanda about Romany, if you haven't done that yet."

"Dere's risks and dere's risks." Remy said, with a great deal of finality. "As for 'manda, she's smart enough to know dat she's just become a target for de entire Black Court. As for de Pack, no offense chere, but I couldn't give a damn what dey do, only whether or not dat you talking to dem while dey do it. You can wrap dat up in family, or commune of souls all you want, but dat doesn't change a thing."

"Of course it doesn't change anything," Domino said. "If it changed something, that would imply there was more to life than the job, and we can't have that, can we?" She smiled amiably at Remy. "Why don't you run along and find your bottle? Nate and I have things to discuss."

"You know, it's times like dis I miss being young." Remy shook his head and tucked his files away. "Intel review at noon tomorrow, Nate. Enjoy de-" Remy paused on de way out the door. "-pleasant chat." He finished and walked out.

"He's grumpy, isn't he?" Remy heard Domino say merrily as he headed out the door. "So, you'll never believe what we found in the new safehouse in Tunis..."