It all began happily enough, American enough: the prototypical nuclear family. A father, a mother, a son and a daughter. As with most good things,  it did not end well. Faced with the unfortunate death of his infant sister to pneumonia, Dimitri watched as that nuclear stability cracked, crumbled, and failed. The divorce was finalized by the end of the year, following many months of close-lipped regrets and difficult conversations that were never voiced, little good though they would have done, and his father left, leaving his mother to raise him alone--and doing so, after a while, poorly, as Selena eventually fell into substance abuse to cope with the failure of her marriage and the loss of her daughter.
    What followed was several years of slow decline in living conditions, as the remnants of the Dane family moved to poorer and poorer parts of the city, culminating in an incident that finally resulted in Dimitri's grandparents being able to gain custody of their grandson, and move him out to their equestrian estate in northern California. The estate, simply known as Wrenegade, was once a thriving racing facility whilst his grandparents had been in their prime. As age slowed their lifestyles, they began to return the favor to the animals they'd built their career on, taking in race and sport horses from all walks of life who had reached the end of their careers so they could enjoy a comfortable and well-earned retirement. It was here that Dimitri found his love for the animals and learned to ride, and, with the passing of his grandparents in his mid-twenties, he sought to revitalize the estate with fresh competitive blood, remolding it for a new generation of English-focused sporthorses. 

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    The questions of "where do you come from?" "what's your family like?" and "what was it like growing up?" are ones that are met with a sardonic smile and evasive answers: "y'know, around," "the usual," "nothing special."  What little has been gleaned from him after many small, disguised interrogations is that he was born in Arizona, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in animal sciences, that he's moved around quite a lot during his life, and that he was once married, but it didn't suit him. He might, perhaps, be most recognizable as a modern-day gypsy, flitting from town to town, taking odd jobs to pay the rent but never staying overlong or leaving much trace of his passing, save for a miffed mistress or two--or, more often, ten, nevermind the broken hearts.
    It's a bit of a wonder, then, that he's stuck around at his current occupation with Wrenegade for as long as he has, though he offers no explanation for it, beyond a shrug and one of his typical twists of the mouth and a vague, "it's comfortable here." There always remains a subtle threat in his tone that, should it ever become even slightly less comfortable, he won't have many qualms about picking up and walking out all over again. 

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Learning the truth of this man's upbringing and life is akin to pulling the teeth from a snarling dog with your bare hands: a task requiring a degree of lunacy and more than likely to end with you being bitten and losing a few fingers. Instead, his history is told in subtler ways that usually don't involve suffering the abuse of his vulgar mouth: it is told in the wary glare of his eyes, in his lapses of temper and memory, the tremble in his hands, the scarred-over pockmarks that dapple the insides of his elbows. There is a story of screams crowded against the insides of his teeth in the way his jaw clenches and his lips tighten, catching sincere, soft words on his tongue to instead sharpen them, hone them into weapons meant to cut when he spits them out with damaging intent. An interrogation yields little other than the tell of arms folded tight and defensive against his chest, a bid to contain the truth as he rebuffs any and all inquiries with venomous threats and seething insults designed to tear another person apart faster than the real answers could break him down.

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    From behind the security of a bar top, Morgan has spent years deflecting all manner of invasive questions concerning his past--the answers are sparing on details, to say the least. He tells that which cannot be hidden: that he was born in Louisiana, though this fact is given away the first time he opens his mouth, and that he is, decidedly, no longer living in Louisiana, owing to the fact that he works at a bar in San Francisco.  The rest, he leaves out: the how, the why, the when, it's quite a ways to move, isn't it? Sure, he'll agree, with a shrug and a disarming smile, as he pours out another serving of alcohol, and he leaves it at that. There isn't much to tell, he'll bluff, though there's a flicker in his eyes that hints at the lie buried in the words. Something in the way he reaches for a plain, unassuming silver band upon one finger, and twists, the gesture carrying the ease of familiarity second only to the habit of breathing. But he smiles, as if he, himself, doesn't realize he's done it--perhaps he hasn't, and it's imagined in the haze of alcohol. 

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