xp_logs | Log: Forge and Jubilee, Wednesday morning

Jubilee stops by Forge's suite with cookies and some enforced social interaction. Some explanation is given as to why he's doubting his place, but in the end, no resolution is found.

Jubilee knocked on the door of Forge's suite, leaning back against the
doorframe as she waited for a request to enter. She wasn't sure what he
would look like, or if he'd be any different at all. What did someone who
had just come back from being kidnapped by an evil meglomaniac who happened
to be a former friend of Xavier look like anyhow?

Oh well, there was always the cookies. She'd stopped by the kitchen on her
way here and snagged some. Double chocolate chip cookies solved everything.

Leaning heavily on the cane, Forge shuffled across the common area of
his suite. Kyle and Jay were already off at morning classes, neither
having said a word to him since he'd returned to the room. Granted, he
hadn't exactly gone out of his way to talk to them either, so that
could have been a part of it.

Opening the door, he regarded Jubilee with a bit of relief, then
hunger upon noticing the cookies. "Wow. You're just trying to spoil my
breakfast, aren't you?"

Jubilee grinned and breezed past him, taking note of the cane he was using
but questions on that could wait till later. "Of course. I'm a cookie
instigator afterall. So, dare I ask how things are going?"

She put the plate of cookies down on a convient table and walked back over
to where Forge was standing to hand him one.

Taking the proffered cookie, Forge took a small bite, chewing
thoughtfully. "Well, aside from canceling out my own mutant gene, not
being able to feel my left leg, and being treated like I'm some
terrorist at large by most of my classmates - I slept like a baby last
night." Easing onto the couch, he rapped the cane against the metal
tubes and joints of his prosthetic leg. "Something's banged up with
the... with something in here. Not getting any feeling from it. It's
like trying to walk on a chunk of dead wood."

"Want some cheese to go with that whine?" Jubilee asked, rolling her eyes.
"Like anyone who is gonna treat you like you're a terrorist matters.
Although, seriously, dude. Blowing people up cause they're mean to you? So
been done before. Why didn't you just set yourself on fire to 'show all
those people who didn't care about you. Then they'd be sorry!'. Or is that
only teenage girls?"

She sat down on the other chair, munching on her cookie and widening her
eyes at Forge. Yes, she was being a brat but she was also hoping it'd make
him smile at least.

Forge's mouth hung open, the cookie forgotten. He'd expected the trite
sympathy everyone had seemed to be expressing, or some condemnation,
or ... anything but what appeared to be mockery.

"I..." he stuttered, trying to find the right words. "I didn't exactly
have the means to summon a demon and send it after folks that were
pissing me off now, did I? I was stupid. I know that, and a few of
them know that. Not that it matters, maybe." He closed his eyes,
leaning back over the couch to stretch his back out. "Going to call my
parents today, see what they think I should do. Professor tells me
it's my decision, but... I just don't know."

"Dude, you so much as think of leavin' just cause you ain't all powered up
and I'm so kicking your ass." Jubilee replied, expression suddenly fierce.
"This is your home, you big jerk. Whatever needs to be done to fix things,
this is the place that's best goin' to do it. It's what we do, right? Fix
things."

Okay, so not exactly subtle and she was almost positive that telling someone
recently traumatised that you would kick their ass for making a decision
that they might consider for the best was a bad thing to do. But just...grr!

"Oh, like you even know," Forge drawled back, an edge of bitterness to
his voice. "Home? A significant portion of people out there don't
trust me now, and with good reason. And the rest of them? Trite
platitudes of sympathy and badly-disguised pity. I can get enough of
that in the outside world."

He snorted, laughing slightly to himself. "The irony of it all? The
best person to figure out how to reverse-engineer what I did would be
me. But I cut myself off from being able to DO that. We've got the
smartest mind in the world when it comes to mutant powers working on
it, but even Dr. MacTaggart's said it's a crapshoot."

"Yes, home. My home because I choose to make it so no matter what anyone
else might say. Your home to, if you want it that way. Sure, some people
think you're dirt. But there's some that care too. I happen to be one of
them, in case you were wondering. S'just like the real world that way, ya
know?" she replied, biting into her cookie and chewing furiously for a
second before pointing the remains at him. "How many times has Nathan been
broken? They found a way to fix him. But if it doesn't work, so what? You
think we give a damn about you just cause you've got a shiny mutant power?
Can't say you think much of us then."

"And we're back to the old argument of 'what else do I have?'," Forge
replied. "Yes, I've got people who are going to be my friends. A few
less, now that I've decided to be honest about things, but hey - if
that's the price I pay, so be it. And yeah, I'm welcome here. But
should I be here? Would you just take in any regular human off
the streets? How soon do you think it'd take before it becomes any
more obvious how out of place I'd be?"

He ticked off points on his fingers. "Madelyn's a baseline human.
Moira's a baseline human. Both of them serve a position on the staff
as doctors, good ones. Me? I can't even wrap my brain around trying to
change an oil filter right now. Yeah, I'm still a smart guy. But those
are a dime a dozen. What made me valuable to more than just my
friends? Gone."

She sighed, leaning back a little. She didn't have any easy answers to that,
and she wasn't about to give him some sugared phrase about how it didn't
matter. Obviously to him it did, which was the point really. "Well, you
don't have to decide anything right now this instant at least. You wanna
blow it all off for awhile and play some video games with me?"

Forge pondered the idea. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "Yeah, we can do that."

Thinking could wait.