Never Falter (Nolan/Olivia)

It never failed to amaze him what some of these kids were capable of.

Normally, Nolan would have avoided the Career Training Center, for multiple reasons. While he had nothing against parents wanting their children to be able to survive if they were chosen as Tribute (Brody had attended himself), he didn't much care for the 'win or nothing' mentality. He'd spent years trying to drill it into his son's head that there was room for sportsmanship in using his fists, his feet and --specifically in the O'Rourke family's case-- the sword and shield.

But now that Brody was a medal-winning Olympian (his chest swelled with pride at the thought) and the word had gotten out that his old man had been his teacher, it had become impossible to ignore the flood of requests for his presence at the training center. Nolan had agreed, only on the condition that it would be part time and on his own schedule. They had grumbled, and they had tried to negotiate, but had given in to his demands.

So here he was.

If he was being honest with himself, Nolan could admit that it was sort of fun falling back into the teacher role... Though it had been punctuated more than once by the occasional instructor who wanted to go toe-to-toe with the 'old guy'. Nolan had been swarmed by Careers in training when one such instructor, stung by Nolan's refusal, had insinuated doing something obscene to his son to get a rise out of him.

Nolan had KO'ed him with a swift one-two punch.

Now he was hiding from the overzealous future Careers wanting to learn to do the same down at the weapons mat where a very petite brunette girl was sparring using a staff against an instructor. She was exceptionally graceful with it, but when the weapon was still he could see that it was old and had taken a great deal of abuse; the match seemed prematurely over when it dropped from her hand, a large sliver of wood embedded in her hand. Nolan sighed, standing up from the sidelines and walking over to her.

"Let me see." He said gently, taking her hand in his to assess the damage.

The girl was tiny, barely more than half Nolan's size, and his hand practically enveloped hers; the sliver was embedded deep in her palm, but not so much that a steady hand and a first aid kit couldn't get it out.

"C'mon. Lets get you fixed up."

Nolan shot a look over his shoulder at the instructor the girl (Revenue, apparently) had been sparring with; the man was barely older than his son, and his attitude shriveled under the older man's gaze. They were Careers, certainly, but they were kids. They were allowed to take a break and worry about themselves every once and a while.

He turned his attention back to the girl, making no attempt to hold into her hand as she pulled it away from him.

"Are you some sort of medic or something? It's just a splinter."

"No," He admits, watching her go to retrieve her damaged staff "But I've been patching scrapes and the like for my son for longer than you've been alive, dear."

Longer, even, if his catalogue of scars was anything to go by; this was a sliver, in any case. She came back with the staff, absolutely dwarfed standing next to him; Nolan wouldn't guess her to be any taller than 5 foot.

"Got any good remedies from keeping this happening again?"

"A few."

Nolan took her to one of the benches where a handful of Careers were loitering around or resting between cycles, taking the first aid kit out from under it (they had them everywhere, thankfully) and popping it open, digging around for tweezers. Thankfully, even at his age Nolan's eyesight had remained intact; he took the girl's hand in his again, gently coaxing the sliver out of her hand with his thumb so he'd be able to pull it with the tweezers.

"Well, if you can't replace it, there should be some athletic tape that will hold it together until you can retire it."

Nolan apologized softly as he tried to work the sliver out of her hand; it was poking out from under the skin ever so slightly, but not enough that the decidedly blunt tweezers would be able to pull it out. Brody had come home with much worse; that boy had been fearless from an early age. Climbing trees, picking up his father's sword, and punching above his weight class getting into scraps with other older Careers. And now that he was a Peacekeeper, well... for his own sanity, he didn't really want to know what his son got up to dealing with the scum of humanity.

"If you have to, a pin or needle won't hurt to get it out since it isn't budging. Don't worry, I don't cry."

He smiled a little; Revenue (what was her first name, anyway?) was certainly a precocious young thing. She reminded him a little of his wife.

"Just bear with me." He replied patiently, "This isn't my first rodeo, dear."

He suspicions were thoroughly confirmed at her reaction to his suggestion of retiring her staff, as if the idea was so abhorrent she couldn't contemplate it.

"Retire it? What? My staff? Are you nuts? This thing is never being replaced unless fire turns it to ash or someone has the audacity to steal it. Neither of which is ever going to happen to it, I assure you on that one. I think Saba will just have to become nothing but a staff of athletic tape."

"Alright, no offense meant." Nolan said soothingly.

He didn't look up from tending to her hand, finally starting to coax the sliver out of the girl's palm.

"In my family," He explained, "Giving your weapon a name gives it a personality, a soul. It's no longer a tool; it's wielded like an extension of the self, but it becomes your friend, your comrade. And in exchange, it gives you its loyalty; rather than break your comrade down until it can no longer fight, you retire it with dignity."

While Nolan was keeping his 'patient' preoccupied with his explanation, he gently pulled the sliver from her hand, setting aside the tweezers and offending piece of wood to press a piece of gauze damp with disinfectant to the bead of blood forming at the site.

"I'm curious where you got the name Saba from?"

The girl merely shrugs when he asks how she decided to name her staff, brushing it off as some childish decision made in some dark place; Nolan knew his own upbringing and the life he'd given Brody at home was better than most, but it was hard to imagine anyone wanting to hurt their children. It did sort of explain the strong will for someone so young; just fifteen, apparently.

"Got a bandaid in that thing?" She asked, poking through the first aid kit as Nolan got up to throw away the gauze wrapped around the sliver he'd just pulled from her hand, struggling to open it before handing it back with an almost sheepish look. "Would you mind, sir?"

"Not at all."

"Hey? Mind if I ask you what your name is?" She asked as he peeled open the bandage and smoothed it out over her palm, "You know, since you've not only pulled me away from Sir Never-take-a-break, but you've been kind enough to act like a medic for something as silly as a splinter."

"Nolan." He replied, letting go of the girl's hand and neatly putting away the first aid supplies and returning the kit to its place under the bench. "Or 'old man' according to some of your instructors."

To be fair, he had 10-15 years or more on most of his new 'coworkers', but even at 47 years old Nolan was no slouch; Brody still lost or tied the majority of their sparring matches, whether it was with fists and feet or swords and shields. Youth was an advantage, but there was no substitute for experience, something Nolan had in spades.

"What about you?" He asked conversationally, easily leaning against the back of the bench and regarding his new companion, "Unless you'd rather I just called you Miss Revenue?"

"You new around here? I've not seen you train around here?"

Nolan couldn't help it, he laughed a little imagining how he was going to explain why he was here. Any one of his friends and coworkers could say without hesitation that talking about his wife and son were his favorite subjects, and it was difficult not to brag when he was so very proud of both of them.

"Sort of," He started, looking out at the training center and watching some of the sparring matches going on at various places on the floor, "It's been a while since I've been here. But after my son mentioned in his Olympics interview that I trained him, the Training Center wouldn't leave me alone asking if I'd come in as an instructor."

He looked at the girl next to him.

"Fancy yourself a boxer or a swordswoman perhaps?"

Nolan rolled his eyes in jest that his new companion seemed to like the idea of calling him 'old man'; Brody only ever called him that when he was joking, but some of his fellow instructors had taken it to heart. Most of them meant well enough, though; he'd only been here for about a week, and already it had become a term of endearment. Well... most of the time. The instructor with the filthy mouth had been the exception, but then again he was the first person to even blatantly disrespect him.

"That's cute. I think I like that. Old man..."

He pretended to be hurt by her remark, laying a hand over his heart and putting on an exaggerated expression of offense.

"Why does everyone insist that I'm old? I'm forty-seven, just a young goddess." Nolan replied, fighting the urge to smile; he'd made that joke at McKenna when he'd turned forty, and she had laughed harder at that than he'd seen her laugh for a long time.

"Kidding. I have more respect for someone who treats me with respect, Nolan. At least you deserve to be called what your mother gave you."

Fair enough. Though Miss Revenue (Olivia) seemed much more insistent on her first name to fray away from any number of implications attached to her family name; Nolan could only imagine what would drive a daughter to want to distance herself from her family, especially at such a young age. It explained a lot though; she was fifteen, looked maybe thirteen, but her boldness and the way she carried herself weighed with many more years than she had.

"Your son was in the Olympics?" Olivia asked. Did Nolan detect a hint of excitement? "I don't pay attention to the names, but the faces I'd remember. What was his sport? I might have watched it unless it was something like swimming or dance or whatever it is that all those other girls do. Fencing? It had to be an exciting event..."

"Brody was in boxing and wrestling," He replied, "He just took home the silver medal in wrestling, tomorrow he's supposed to have his final boxing match for the bronze."

Nolan had seen the disappointment in his son's eyes when the young man from District 1 had been declared the gold medalist, but he'd been impossibly proud of Brody's taking it like a champ and shaking his opponent's hand at the end of the event. It would seem that all his years of trying to instill sportsmanship in his ferociously competitive son had finally paid off. He shifted his weight to pull his wallet from his back pocket, where he always kept a handful of pictures of his wife and son. He was sentimental, certainly, but after the cave-in that had caused him to meet McKenna, they had something of a shadow behind them; god forbid he were ever to be involved in another, or trapped inside the mountain, he wanted the reminder of what he had to live for.

He pulled out one picture that he'd had to laminate from years of wear; the edges under the plastic were worn in the spots where he always held it in his hands, and there was a white smudge along the bottom half of the picture from the quarry dust that had coated Nolan's hands during the infamous cave-in a couple of years ago. He'd come away from the collapsed tunnel unscathed, but had spent the better part of two days helping dig out his friends and coworkers, pausing only to look at his wife and son's faces when he needed a second wind. It was a picture from Brody's graduation from the Peacekeeper Academy; they had many pictures of it, but this one had been an impromptu photo and had properly captured the O'Rourke family. Eighteen-year-old Brody was standing with his mother to his left, his father to his right, his golden hair cropped short in that signature military style and proudly wearing his badge on his chest. Nolan couldn't remember what he had said, but in the picture it showed McKenna with a smile on her face looking affectionately at Brody while his son ducked his head laughing helplessly, blue eyes lit up with mirth.

"Look familiar?" He asked, showing Olivia the picture, "It's a little old and his hair is longer, but otherwise he looks much the same."

"You guys look happy."

Nolan didn't miss the hint of unhappiness in Olivia's voice at seeing the picture. He repressed the urge to sigh, not knowing exactly what inspired such a response from her but knowing all he needed to; she was probably unused to the kind of closeness that tied the O'Rourke family together.

They were especially glowing in this photo. Brody's graduating the Academy had been one of the proudest days of Nolan's life; it was outdone only by when Brody had been born and when McKenna had agreed to marry him. He knew for his son, though, it was his first major milestone to becoming his own man.

He let her take the photo from his hands, watching her for a moment as she studied Brody's face. That kid had grown up so fast... in the picture, he was very obviously a teenager with his short hair and still-boyish good looks. The Peacekeepers had only had Brody for a few years, but lately he'd looked older than his twenty-one years; it worried Nolan, but Brody was still as vibrant and strong as he always was; he'd let it go, for now.

"Yup. That's him. Though, this picture makes him look sweet. On screen, he's a bad as... umm, he's one heck of a fighter."

Nolan laughed, taking the picture back as she handed it to him.

"Brody is sweet. Just don't tell him I told you that, he likes people to think he's a hardass."

Brody would never admit it aloud, but that boy had a kind heart; he'd seen it during the same cave-in that left the smudge on that photo. His son had worked bravely and tirelessly to help dig the buried workers out of the mountain and had refused to stop until Nolan had made him lie down and sleep before he collapsed.

"That'll be me in a few years, I'll tell you that. Couple more years of practice, and you'll be seeing me there."

"I'll be counting on it."

"You training anyone anymore?"

Nolan looked around; the handful of Careers that had been haranguing him to teach them the punch he'd used to KO that instructor had either found something else to do, or were hovering nearby hoping to catch him alone for one-on-one training.

"Not presently." He replied, "What say you then, boxing or swordsmanship?"

Nolan couldn't help himself but chuckle a little at Olivia's apparent eagerness to meet his son.

"I'll see what I can do. He'll be flattered that he has fans."

To be more honest, he wouldn't just be flattered; it would probably stoke Brody's ego to the point of making him cocky that his performance in the Olympic had won him the attention of fans. Oh well... he might need it, knowing how disappointed his son probably was that he didn't take home the gold medal.

"You are going to train me?"

Nolan smiled.

"You sound so surprised," He replied, "What, did some instructor put up a fight doing their job?"

But he wasn't about to go on that tangent; though it was apparent that Olivia was trying to keep up a cool facade talking to him, the excitement that he was willing to train him was definitely there.

"Well, considering you've trained your own son in boxing... might we start with that, good sir?"

"Very well."

Nolan stood up, beckoning for Olivia to follow him; some of the Careers loitering around followed them to the boxing ring, probably in the hope of a turn with the new instructors themselves. He opened up the locker, pulling out a pair of suitably-small boxing gloves for his new student and retrieving his own, helping Olivia lace up her gloves and catching a glance of the instructor he'd punched out earlier, just coming around where Nolan had left him sprawled out on one of the benches at the sideline. If he hadn't figured out not to insult Nolan's family after the first offense, his student and spectators were going to get a very different type of lesson.

"First and foremost," He started, "The most important part of boxing is the stance."

He shifted his weight up to the balls of his feet, fists coming up like a reflex; Nolan had been fighting longer than these kids had been alive, it was a nearly impossible habit to break.

"Keep your weight on the balls of your feet, knees bent," He coached, demonstrating with a few feinted punches and moving easily around to follow through with his fists. "Keep your balance in the center, don't favor one leg over the other."

Nolan lowered his fists slightly, still bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"The stance is the most important for several reasons. A flexible fighter is harder to throw off-balance, so don't forget to keep your knees bent; keeping your weight on the balls of your feet allows you to retreat, advance and dodge more quickly and effectively." He demonstrated another punch, this time in slow motion to emphasize how his entire body rotated into the punch. "It also allows you to draw kinetic energy from the ground to add power to your punches... when your form is correct."

He lowered his fists entirely, dropping back to let his weight rest on his full foot.

"Show me your stance."