xp_logs | Log: Kitty and Forge, Thursday morning

Wandering around in the morning, Forge runs into Kitty. Some old grudges are brought up and resolved, and it's revealed that both are dealing with not-dissimilar traumas in their own ways.

Forge took a deep breath as he walked into the foyer, stretching his arms wide. Despite sounding like utter holistic foolishness, the layman's prescription of hot lemon tea had cleared up his sinuses where the antihistamines had failed. Breathing through one's nose was an unappreciated luxury, he thought.

Sauntering over to the stairs, he noticed a bit of movement in the sunroom. Most everyone else would be in classes, but that color of hair and - ah, Kitty. Of course she didn't have her college classes this early. With a shrug, Forge decided to stick his head in. Nothing wrong with being social.
"Hey," he said quietly to announce his presence. "Good to see you up and about."

Kitty pulled her gaze out of the middle distance and glanced over. Curled up in one of the armchairs, it looked remarkably as though she were trying to become as small as possible. "Hi," she said. "Thanks. You too, since, you know, I didn't say it before."

Waving his hand dismissively, Forge snorted dramatically. "Someone let me know hostage trauma was so last season. I think Illyana was disappointed that I came back with the same number of limbs. I'm hurt, I expected hugs and flowers." Pulling up a nearby chair, he swung it around backwards, sitting to face Kitty with the coffee table as a buffer between them despite the cordial tone of the conversation.

"Never got to tell you thanks, you know," he said after a small pause. "For the work on Mr. al-Rashid. You were - you are just... phenomenal. I've always been in awe of that, and to be honest, really jealous."

Huh. Well that was up there on the list of things she'd never expected to hear. "Are you kidding?" It came out a little more defensive than maybe she meant it. Or, well, it came out just as defensive as she meant it, she just hadn't meant to let on that that was how she felt.

Forge shook his head. "It's like - I know what I can do, okay? I might be able to make the most amazing piano in the world, build it out of toothpicks and glue. But you can play a sonata on it that'll make people forget the instrument. And the kicker? You come by it honestly. Me? Quirk of genetics."

"Are you insane?" Kitty straightened up in the chair, coming out of her little defensive curl to lean forward. "Firstly, mutation or normal genius or whatnot, it's still quirks of genetics. Just different quirks. And you went and found out you're still a genius and you still know all this stuff even without the power. Which just makes you still that much cleverer than me."

Holding up a hand to forestall Kitty's protests, Forge sighed. "You're sitting down right now. You know what it's like to dance, you know how good you are at it, you can envision all the steps - but you can't do it while you're sitting down. Now, imagine you're stuck in that chair and you can still remember what it was like to dance. That's what it was like for me." He breathed out through his teeth slowly. "Sorry," he finally said. "I'm still trying to deal with it. Seems like it should be easy, now that the worst is over, right?"

"You'd think that..." Kitty's eyes flashed towards the window, darkening slightly. "I just... God above, Forge, the idea of you being jealous of me seems ludicrous. You're brilliant. I'm good, but I lack... I don't know. I just lack."

"I am brilliant," he said without any trace of irony. "But you're not exactly Katherine the Mundane. You are also nice. You're kind. You have dancing, and college, and Jamie. Don't ever think you lack anything." The look on his face was almost like he'd been offended by her admission. "You don't lack a single thing."

Kitty wasn't sure why they were having this conversation, why she was telling him things she had trouble admitting to Samson, let alone any one other than Jamie. Maybe it was the guilt his words brought back. "I am not nice," she said, not looking back at him. "I'm just not."

"Then you're doing better than you think," Forge replied, "because I see nothing but people who love you and want to see you feel better and who stand by you even when you're apparently 'not nice'. And I suppose that puts you and me right in the same spot, regardless of who's more of a genius, as stupid as that sounds." He shrugged, laughing to himself. "Must be something in the water here, you can screw up and break down again and again, and your friends are still going to be here to pick you up."

He got up, hands in his pockets, looking out the window to where the piles of red-and-gold leaves marked the season's changing. "I had a lot of time to think about things, those weeks down there with them," he admitted, staring out at the backyard. "About people I was never going to see again, about how I left things unsaid, or let my ego get in the way. I envy people like you and Doug, you know. You've figured out how to balance having this amazing mind, and living a normal life as well. Someone to love, a life outside this school - I spent too much time thinking that made you somehow less than me, a kind of 'geek sellout' because you had other interests. I was wrong, and I'm sorry."

"We're maybe a lot more alike in some ways than we think," Kitty said, watching him in the corner of her eye. "I was just as much an outcast as you when I was in public schools - nobody wants to have somebody so much younger than them not only in their classes, but doing better than they are. I just... got out of it sooner. Came here and being smart became just another thing about me that was special. Got friends for the first time, ever. Then you came, and I kept comparing myself to you, and you were doing everything better and faster than I ever had. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to either of us, really."

"I think I understand," Forge said, turning around and leaning against the windowsill. "I came here, and I saw people like you and Doug who were not only smarter than the rest, but that intelligence didn't restrict them to being set apart. I envied that, because I couldn't figure out how that worked. In my mind you had to be one or the other. Think of yourself as smart, or think of yourself as social. Be popular or be brilliant." He took a deep breath and let a look of mild shame cross his face. "Be mutant or be human. I thought one had to preclude the other. And you told me I was wrong, and I should have gotten the clue earlier."

Kitty shrugged, but an actual, if small, smile crossed her face as she turned to look at him. "Yeah, but if you got it in the end, that's what matters."

Forge returned the smile right to her. "Even if I wasn't necessarily the smartest fish in the tank along the way," he said sagely. Walking past the chair, he put a hand casually on the back - not making any actual physical contact, but the gesture was there. "You going to be okay after the whole Attack of the Suck?"

"Yeah, I will be. Not saying I'm okay now, but I will be. Just figures I'd go off to college and get stalked by some crazy, killer mutant. Can't even do normal things normally."

A shrug was Forge's answer. "I was shopping for video games and I wound up playing Boy Hostage to the world's most feared mutant terrorists. Weird stuff happens to us, you've got to roll with it." He smiled, patting the back of the chair. "When you've got the time, I've got a new application for that fractal memory matrix that I want to run by you. Whenever you feel up to it."

"Work's a distraction," Kitty said, unfolding from the chair so she could stand up. "I'm always up for a distraction. Lead on, Boy Genius Extraordinare."