In the Broken Places Disclaimer: Cable, Domino, and other Characters mentioned herein are the property of Marvel Entertainment Group and are being used without permission. No profit is being made from this story, save for the inflation of ego caused by feedback. :) Continuity wise, assume this is the same universe as my TTaT stories, but not directly connected to them. Special thanks go out to Cosmic, Deadeye, and most especially Threnody, without whom I'd never get anything done. This one's for you, Thren.

In the Broken Places
by Timesprite

The world breaks everyone and afterward many
are strong at the broken places. But those that
will not break it kills. It kills the very good and
the very gentle and the very brave impartially.
If you are none of these you can be sure that it
will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
-Hemingway

Unmistakable. Even to a total novice, his path across the snow would have been hard to miss. A succession of thaws and refreezes had reduced it to the consistency of styrofoam, and though she was light enough to walk easily on top of it, he'd had to plow his way cumbersomely through the densely packed stuff.
This is not the way it was supposed to go, she thought bitterly as she drew her hood more tightly around her face. The wind was beginning to lash at her, cutting through even the warm insulation of her jacket. She wasn't sure when her feet had gone numb. Not good. With a sigh, she pressed onward.

The Pack had taken on a nice little job that promised to pay well without being too much trouble. Get information from two secret ops bases, one here in Siberia and the other in South America. The raids had to be fairly synchronized to keep one from contacting the other, so she and Cable had taken the supposedly easier target while Bridge, Grizzly, and Hammer had gone after the more fortified facility. It should have run neat as clockwork. Unfortunately, the arrangement had also left them without a backup means of escape.

In the midst of a firefight they hadn't expected, Cable had sent her off to retrieve the information they needed while he 'took care of things.' 'Find me later,' he'd said. Sure, no problem. At least the cold was distracting her from the pain lancing through her right arm.
She still wasn't sure how the guy had been able to sneak up on her like he had. She supposed it could be attributed to the noise and confusion--the less than well trained guards had managed to hit vital supply lines, basically setting half the base on fire, but the better part of her mind was cursing her inattention. She'd gotten the info they needed and was on her way out of the base to rendezvous with Cable when the goon had caught her. He'd grabbed her by the arm, hauling her up high enough that the toes of her boots barely skimmed the floor. Then of course, the bastard had snapped her forearm like a twig.

Somehow, through the pain, she'd managed a well-placed kick and gotten him to drop her, at which point she'd gotten clear of the base and located Cable's trail. That had been a good while now, and the storm was beginning to pick up. "Find me later. Stupid bastard. I'm gonna kick his ass if he hasn't frozen to death by now."

----

She traced his trail to one of the complex's outbuildings, nothing more than a long concrete shed, from the looks of it. "Great," she murmured. Not even a chance to warm up. And who knew if there was someone left alive back there to come after them? She scowled and pulled her gun, just in case she ran into any nasty surprises.
Opening the door on the far side of the structure, she looked in cautiously.

"Took you long enough."

With a sigh, she slipped into the room and leaned against the wall. "Well, some of us had to track down escapee partners," she snapped, seeing the expression on his face. "I got the info, anyway." She holstered her gun and retrieved the disk from her pocket, tossing it at him. "Now please tell me there's a first aid kit with the other supplies?" She stripped off her jacket carefully, looking at her arm in dismay. That really wasn't a healthy color for her skin to be turning.

He looked over at her and sighed. "Let me see that."

She sat down across from him on the floor as he started digging through the supplies. "Broken?"

She nodded. "I ran into a little trouble on the way out." She winced as he began feeling his way along the length of her arm.

"It's a clean break, anyway," he said, gathering supplies from the first aid kit. "This is going to hurt." She nodded and gritted her teeth as he carefully reset the bone, then began bandaging the arm. "Sloppy," he commented as he finished splinting her arm and repacked the first aid kit. "Aren't you too young to be getting careless already?"

"Well maybe if I'd had some backup, instead of a partner who ditched me half way through the mission! This is the last time I work a job with you. I never have this problem with Theo."

"You think I asked to play babysitter?" He snapped.

"Baby-sit?! You self-righteous bastard!" He caught her wrist an instant before her fist could contact his jaw.

"You've only go one good arm as it is," he grated. "Lets get out of here before they find us and we've got worse things to deal with than your hurt pride."

----

She was jolted awake as the all-terrain vehicle hit a rough patch of tundra. They'd been driving for hours, it seemed, though she couldn't be certain through the haze of painkillers Cable had given her. "Where exactly are we going?" She sat up a little straighter in her seat and glanced at Cable, whose eyes were fixed steadily on the featureless white ground before him. How he could know where he was driving was beyond her.

"Someplace safe," he replied, and made no move to elaborate. With a sigh, she leaned back on the seat and closed her eyes.

----

"We're here."

"And where's 'here'?" She asked, looking around. There was nothing as far as she could see. She was really getting tired of all his cryptic replies and hocus-pocus. In the almost two years she'd been working with the Wild Pack, she still hadn't been able to scratch more than the very surface of the man. It annoyed her to no end. She'd always been extremely good at reading people--she'd had to be to survive life in Madripoor, but this man was a total blank to her. And she had the sneaking suspicion she wasn't the only one on the team that felt this way.

"Stay here. I'll be back in a minute." He climbed out of the cab and went to the back of the truck, retrieving a shovel. Then he walked about fifty feet to the left of where they were parked, and started digging through the snow. After a few minutes, he reached down into the clearing he'd made and pulled back a metal hatch. Then he walked back to the truck. "Let's get inside."

An underground bunker. Oddly, she wasn't really all that surprised--Cable obviously had resources that extended far outside the realm of the Pack. It wasn't much, but it was at least warm. And well stocked, by the looks of things. She set her gear down on a table in the spartan kitchen.

"There's a shower down the hall to the left," he said, glancing at her as he started to fiddle with some communications equipment, no doubt to let the rest of the Pack know about the change in rendezvous points. She only hoped they'd hit this base fast enough to keep them from relaying back to the one in South America. Bad enough they'd screwed up their half of the mission.

"You have running water here?"

"A decent amount in the storage tanks, yes." He didn't look up again, so she ventured down the hall to get cleaned up.

----

She pulled at the snarls in her hair ineffectually, growing more and more frustrated until she tossed the comb on the floor in disgust. Showering with one hand had been hard enough, and she'd been utterly unable to do anything about her hair. Not to mention the fact that due to a lack of clean clothes, she was stuck wearing the bottom half of her uniform and a sweater Cable had retrieved for her, which was about a million sizes too big. The neck kept slipping off one shoulder or the other and even rolled up the sleeves were unmanageable. Her arm was throbbing, despite painkillers--basically, she was in a foul mood.

"Let me."

She blinked as she broke free from her private bitch-fest to see Cable standing there holding the comb she'd discarded. "I don't-"

"Need my help," he replied with a long-suffering sigh. 'Oath, she's a fiery one,' he thought wryly. So much fight for someone so young--it brought back unpleasant memories. "I know," he continued. "That doesn't mean you can't accept it, does it?"

"Um... I guess not." 'After all, it's not as if there's anyone else offering, is there?' she chided herself. 'Maybe he just wants to be nice.' She eyed Cable again as he pulled up another chair. 'Nice... right.'

He situated himself behind her chair began running the comb through her wet hair with slow, careful strokes, stopping when he hit a snag to unknot the strands with surprising delicacy. "That doesn't hurt, does it?"

"No. Um... you're pretty good at this, actually." 'Not that I'd know,' she thought morosely. She couldn't recall having anyone brush her hair for her before in her life. A dim memory tugged at the back of her mind but she shoved it away. "I should really just cut it," she said casually. "Not exactly practical."

"Don't do that," he replied with slightly more force than he intended. She turned her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye. His expression was almost... meek? "I mean, it's nice." He cleared his throat, wishing she'd point that gaze of hers in another direction. He continued brushing.

"For a college girl maybe," she quipped. "And I'm certainly not."

"You could be."

She jerked her head sideways again. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're not too old, that's all. Not too--entrenched. You don't have to do this."

Her eyebrows drew together in a puzzled expression for a moment. "I don't want to, though. That's not the kind of world I can live in. Why'd you pick this line of work?"

"Better not get into that," he murmured. "I'm almost done," he continued and turned her head gently forward again.

"Always the cryptic one," she smirked. He gave her a monosyllabic grunt and finished with her hair. She turned around and watched him carry the chair back to the table. "Thanks for um... this," she replied hesitantly. "Sure you haven't done that before?"

Something inexplicable flashed across his face, only half concealed. For a fleeting second she swore she saw--sorrow? -in his eyes. It was gone a moment later, replaced by the same blank look with which he always regarded her. She bit her lip. "I didn't mean to--I'm sorry."

"Sorry," he said slowly, and she shivered, as if he were looking through her, not seeing her at all. "Has no meaning."

She chewed her lip thoughtfully for a moment, nursing her arm carefully against her body. "Still. I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."

"Not--bad," he croaked, as if struggling to hold back emotion. Her eyes were riveted to his, though she wanted to look away suddenly. She'd never seen him look vulnerable before, though there was no mistaking that was what she saw now. "You should get some sleep," he continued, brusquely shoving aside the momentary slip in control. "The rest of the Pack will be here in the morning to pick us up."

"What about you?"

"I'll stay up and make sure no one's followed us." His tone, and the look he gave her, left no room for argument. Without a look glance, she headed down the short hallway to the small bedroom.

He listened as her light footsteps faded away down the hall, and the bedroom door closed with a soft 'click' before he leaned back in his armchair and sighed. It wasn't her fault, he told himself. She didn't have any way of knowing.

"Oath."

The single word reverberated through the room. Wiping the sting from his eyes, he got up and pulled on his coat, heading out the hatchway into the arctic air above. The wind whistled shrilly, blowing snow in waves across the ground, whipping at his face and clothes vengefully like an enraged poltergeist. He ignored it.
He stared up into the darkened sky, gazing at the stars that numbered in the millions in the clear air. Some of these same stars shown in his own time--others had since winked out, indeed some were already gone. Only their light remained, hurtling lost through the cosmos, unanchored--
His chest felt tight, suddenly. He was like those stars, unanchored and alone. How had this happened? He'd been careful to keep his distance from Domino. From the moment he saw her in action, he knew there was something about her that set off warnings in his head. 'Don't get too close to that one.'
He'd tried to heed his instincts, and he'd done a pretty good job, but G.W. had called him on the avoidance routine, pointing out that they all needed to be able to work together if they expected the Pack to function smoothly. So he'd compromised, agreed to take the girl--Domino, not a girl, his subconscious cautioned. There was nothing immature about the junior member of the team, that was for certain. He'd decided on this mission, because it wasn't meant to be difficult. It'd backfired, which was mostly his fault for being sloppy--they should have arrived earlier to afford more time for surveillance, and in his annoyance, he'd been far too harsh on his partner. Any one of them would have been hard pressed to come out of that situation without a scratch, certainly it couldn't have been expected of that mere slip of a woman, tough as nails though she may have been.
He didn't underestimate her capabilities. In the Clan, the women had been just as fierce as the men--if not more so. In this time, they were much more rare, and much abused, though he thought anyone who couldn't see a good resource for more than the external package was a fool.

He wasn't sure if that explained why he'd done what he had, picking up that comb, touching her, after he'd been so careful to keep his distance. And, sadistically, he'd enjoyed it. He wasn't blind, he knew she was beautiful, but Oath, he hadn't expected...

He felt guilty for the memories assailing him now, visions of sitting in their tent in the Clan Chosen encampment, the two of them--he and Jenskot. Slowly unplaiting the braids she wore in battle, the sound of her laugh as she turned to him, auburn hair glowing in the firelight--

Dom wasn't Aliya. There wasn't the same gentleness his wife had possessed in her--Domino's fire seemed to burn without pause.
Not the same at all.

----

She sighed and shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a position that put the least strain on her bad arm. Sleep was well outside her grasp. Her body ached and her brain was going a million miles a minute as she tried to sort through what had just happened.

She thought she'd had Cable figured out. He was a good soldier, an amazing strategist, probably had more years of combat experience than she'd been alive, and apparently got some sort of perverse pleasure out of being totally obtuse. Even G.W., who undoubtedly knew the man best out of any of them, lost his patience with him from time to time.
She'd also come to the conclusion that he didn't like her. At all. She'd been with the team for more than a year and a half now, and this was the first mission they'd ever run as a pair. She'd worked with him as part of the whole team, and in a trio, but never alone. And even someone as relatively 'new' to the business as she was knew that was bad tactics. In a team, everyone needed to be able to depend on everyone else, whether you liked them or not.
And she couldn't help but take it personally. Not that he was really very open with anyone, but he didn't go to the same lengths to avoid anyone else, either. It was aggravating, more than anything, since he seemed to respect her skills, and had never struck her as a sexist. So what the hell had she done wrong? It would probably been less irritating if she hadn't found herself so oddly fascinated with him, 'Fascinated, right. Try attracted,' she scolded herself. Fine. So he was attractive, and intriguing. The point was, she'd thought she'd at least gotten a grip on his personality, if nothing else. And nowhere in there had she made an allowance for what she'd seen that evening.

Somehow, she had a feeling that if she told the others about him offering to brush her hair for her, they'd put her in a straight jacket or something. Hell, even she wasn't wholly sure she hadn't been hallucinating... that at least would have explained it. And what's more, he'd been thoroughly enjoying himself--that sheepish look he'd given, telling her not to cut her hair... It'd all been rather cute, really. Cable. Cute. This really was getting too strange for words. Especially when she took into consideration how absolutely spooked he'd gotten afterwards. He'd looked at her as if she'd pulled a gun on him or something, and then practically ordered her out of the room. 'There's something more going on here,' she mused, then frowned. She'd never really stopped to consider there might be some other drive behind his actions. 'Reminding him of things?' "Not bad," was what he'd said when she'd apologized. 'Just painful.' The recognition hit her like a brick to the stomach. Of course, that would explain why he was being so squirrelly. She could hardly blame him for avoiding her if she was reminding him of something that had happened in that mysterious past of his. "Shit."

She hopped out of bed and poked her head out of the bedroom doorway. "Cable?" She didn't see him in the small sitting area adjacent to the kitchen. She walked out into the hallway. "Nathan?"

He wasn't there. And if he wasn't inside then there was only one place he could have gone.

----

He heard the hatch creek open behind him, and a mild curse from his partner as she emerged into the biting cold. "Shit, Nate. It's cold as hell. What are you doing out here?"

"Stars," he replied, making a gesture at the sky. "Easier to see out here."

She looked up into the black, star dotted sky for a moment. "Yeah. Wow, never realized there could be that many of 'em. Sort of humbling." She glanced over at him. "Look, I-" She paused, trying to gather her thoughts. "I'm sorry if I remind you of something--or someone that... bothers you. And don't give me that cryptic 'Sorry has no meaning' stuff again, it's not that sort of apology. I just don't... whatever it is, I don't want it to interfere with us working together, okay? And I shouldn't have accused you of ditching me back at the base, you did what you had to, I know that. And I'd probably do the same thing... but can you blame me? I mean, you haven't been exactly hospitable towards me."

"No," he agreed, and tipped his head to look at her for a moment. "That was a mistake."

"Well," she said, looking him in the eye and seeing an odd sort of caution there, "that's a start, I guess. Can we go inside? I'm freezing my ass off."

"You're a good soldier, Dom," he continued, turning away from her to look at the stars again. She had the odd impressing that he was looking for some sort of answer from them. "Very good. I've seen a lot of good soldiers die--" He looked over at her again, those mismatched eyes seeming to bore into hers with a desolate intensity. "Or worse. I've seen things no one should have to. I lived through them, a lot of other people weren't so fortunate. I don't want to see you get hurt."

He was pleading with her, she realized with a start. His voice might have been matter-of-fact, but he was trying to warn her away. She felt a tiny twinge in her chest as the full impact of what was being conveyed with those words struck her. A world of pain and loneliness that was more than a match for what was lurking around in the depths of her own soul--a shiver went through her, not entirely due to the cold. 'I lived through them.' Looking at him, she couldn't quite believe that. "I'm not innocent, Nate," she said finally. "I think you know that."

"Suspected," he nodded. "People don't chose this life."

"No, we don't," she agreed, knowing he was talking about something far greater than the life of a mercenary. "We don't have that luxury." She felt as if a weight had settled on her shoulders. If she had been playing tricks on his memory before, he was now doing the same to her. The full extent of her life seemed coiled around her shoulders, too heavy for such a short span of years. Without a conscious thought, she slipped her hand into his own, giving it a light squeeze. They were more similar than she ever would have guessed.

~fin~