Domino
39 years old probability manipulator
no nationality member of X-Force
unmarried
Go backI met Domino two years ago, while she and X-Force were on a layover in Westchester. It was earlier in the morning than I expected anyone besides Scott to be up, and in fact she wasn't, terribly. Just shuffled in, still wearing her pajamas, and started making coffee. I was struck first by her colouring (almost pigmentless, except for a startling birthmark around her left eye), and only after that by the handgun stuffed into the waistband of her pants. Others told me, later, that they'd never seen her unarmed, even at home.There wasn't much else I could learn about her from the X-Men. By common consensus, she comes from Madripoor, and worked with Cable (Nathan Summers) as a paid paramilitary operative for fifteen years before joining him as co-leader of X-Force. Most of those I talked to knew her only distantly.
X-Force was a little more helpful. My discussions with "the kids" suggested a woman whose adherence to military discipline is cut by an understanding that soldiers are also people. Who knows a vast number of dirty jokes and can tell them without destroying her own mystique. And who is always armed.
This photograph was taken away from home. Domino called me one evening, almost a year after I first met her, and asked me if I wanted to come to Chicago and take the pictures I'd been "bugging her about." I dropped everything and came. My flight came in at 2 a.m., and we talked in a restaurant near the airport until morning.
Sometime after that, I took this in her motel room. I was startled by her self-consciousness, and eventually retreated to the bathroom to let her find herself in the space. When I came out, she had stripped to her underwear, and the gun and shoulder holster she'd been wearing were behind her on the bed. The second firearm was in her hands. In the instant I took this picture, she bent and brushed her lips over it. Improbably(!), this was the only picture on the entire roll that turned out decently.
Domino: You spend your life trying to carve out something based on your abilities and not the fact that you're a woman, and you end up part of this pack of mutants where women get identified on the basis of who they're fucking.
Sinclair: Do you think so?
Domino: The next time you see a woman you don't recognize, ask somebody who she is, and see if they tell you she'd "so-and-so's girlfriend".
Sinclair: Have you ever said anything about it?
Domino: I make faces, but otherwise no. Most of them [the women] wouldn't appreciate the suggestion that they aren't capable of defending themselves. And it's not my job to protect them from the big, bad boys. They can do it themselves. But it isn't a way I'd want to be.
Sinclair: Nobody's ever called you "Nathan Summers' girlfriend"?
Domino: [laughs] Not twice. And no, not very often. There's a lot of distance between me and Nate. Partly because we fight when we spend too much time together, but partly because I've made it clear that I don't want to be the second half of Cable-and-Domino. Can we talk about something else?
Sinclair: X-Force? How do you wrap yourself around being a "den-mother"?
Domino: I try not to. I think sometimes that having me as a mother-figure is a lot more damaging than not having a mother at all. But there are times when it's unavoidable. Most of the kids were only in their mid-teens when they joined us, and they weren't really anywhere near ready not to have parents. But Nate does a lot of that -- he's better with kids than I am.
Sinclair: Do you ever worry about the morality of putting teenagers in combat?
Domino: [sighs] Sometimes. But we aren't active recruiters, and we aren't in the business of stealing people's kids. Everyone who's with us now would have been doing this whether we led them or not. We just try to keep them alive -- teach them how to use their mutations, and how to fight without them -- and give them something like a home. Would I be happier if they could all have had real homes? Probably. But it wasn't really an option. Parent problems, poverty, basic weirdness. And because they're mutants, the suburban world is pretty much closed to them.
Sinclair: Can I ask you a personal question?
Domino: What else have you been doing all night? . . . Ask.
Sinclair: Why do you do this? I mean, your mutation isn't obvious enough to keep you out of ordinary society, and I get the feeling that Charles Xavier's "Dream" isn't yours.
Domino: I don't know. I guess it feels like the right thing to do right now. I don't think I'm going to be doing this forever. You might have noticed that I'm not there now. But it gives me something to orbit around. And Nate's there, I suppose. But if I come home and they've changed the locks, I'll take the hint.