"That's because you use a burner phone as a phone," Marc told her. After all, all smart people used phones which they could leave in do not disturb mode 24/7.

"One you use when you're trying to fly under the radar," Marc explained. "Meant to be temporary."

Not that Marc knew from experience or anything.

"Or something, yeah," Marc said, giving her a dry look.

"You tell me," Marc said. "We could keep it general or start with s - things you've dealt with before."

Again, doing a great job on avoiding the swearing there, Marc.

Marc immediately held his hands up in front of him, much as he had when trying to reassure her back in her shop that he wasn't going to even come close. "I figured as much. It's not a formal class. We can take it however you like. That's what I'm asking. What do you want to learn first?"

And, just so it was clear, he added, "And we're not doing a freaking thing where I come at you. Not for a while. If we do any one on one all action would be you to me, got it? I'll be on defense, not you."

Frankly, depending on Nell's comfort level, Marc had a couple of people in mind to ask for help if Nell was more comfortable working with a woman for that practice. But they could cross that bridge when they came to it.

"Don't apologize," Marc said. Then even he realized how that could sound. "I mean you don't have to." Besides, Nell being okay with throwing up boundaries was good, but Marc didn't want to make her feel self-conscious about it by pointing that out.

Marc gestured towards the heavy bags. "How about we start by you learning how to throw a punch?"

"Anything gets to be too much you let me know, okay?" Marc said. He wanted to make sure that was understood. "Don't even need to give a reason. You don't want to do it, you want to stop, whatever. You're in charge, not me."

"I'll give you options to choose from," Marc said. "I know you like research so try looking up Wing Chung. It's a good one for people with smaller frames. We can go in that direction if you think it'll work for you. But that's for next time. Today we can do basics."

Please ignore the part where Marc had noticed a detail about somebody's preferences and bothered retaining that information for later. Again, this implies that he cared about people and everyone knows he does not do that.

Marc glanced over just to make sure Nell got the spelling right. After all one wrong vowel and she'd be watching videos about some of the greatest hits of the 80s. "There's other ones we can go with if you don't like it. But I figured try that first since you're like three inches tall."

As everyone knows, Marc doesn't make jokes either.

"Did you not hear me down there?" Marc asked. Nell might recognize the "so innocent butter wouldn't melt in their mouth" look from the version she'd used on him on Friday.

"I'll keep that in mind for next time," Marc said, dryly. "Okay, so now that you want to throw a punch, let's go over how. You wanna show me how you make a fist and I'll tell you if you need to change or should I go ahead and show you the right form?"

If it was anybody else Marc would've - well he wouldn't have been bothering to give the lessons in the first place. But if he was giving lessons he wouldn't have bothered to ask preferences on how they wanted to learn. But given Nell's history Marc figured the more she was given the opportunity to say how she wanted things to go, the better the odds of her feeling safe enough to keep going.

"You know how not to break your thumb," Marc said when he saw her. "Puts you ahead of a lot of people."

This was how Marc did compliments. Nell was certainly welcome to take a moment to bask in the poetry.

"You want more power going to the hit," Marc told her. He demonstrated on the bag in front of him, moving slowly so Nell could see what he was doing. He planned on doing side by side with Nell for the duration of the lesson, figuring that yeah while he could hold the heavy bag Nell was practicing on, it might still bring up bad memories if Nell was thinking about fighting with a guy standing right in front of her. Besides, it wasn't like the heavy bag needed holding for what they were doing anyway. "See here? Watch what I'm doing with the wrist. That's what channels the energy where you want it, which is into them."

"Exactly," Marc said as he watched her. "Feel the difference? That's why technique matters. You could have all the superpowers in the world but if you don't know how to use them you could be hurting yourself as much as anybody else."