Scott and Forge, Thursday late morning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Forge has a proposal for Scott regarding a possible prothesis. Scott is uncertain, but willing to listen.


His mind was racing, going over and over the details of the operation that was steadily taking shape. Not a lot of room for error, Scott thought distantly, heading towards his office door. He hoped Lorna would be able to handle her part. If not, he...

His office door was open, just a little. Scott paused, frowned, but then continued on, pushing it open the rest of the way and hesitating again, his frown deepening as he saw who was sitting waiting for him.

"I really have to got to stop 'forgetting' to lock my door."

Forge took his feet off Mr. Summers' desk, spinning around in the chair and rising to his feet. "I assure you, it was open when I got here. Think I can grab, oh, about ten minutes of your time?"

Scott reminded himself that there wasn't actually anything he could do just now to further the situation in Hawaii. "Sure. Although I'll reserve judgement about the lock."

With a mischievous grin, Forge sat back down in one of the chairs, motioning to Scott's executive chair behind the desk. Holding one hand out palm-up, he waved his other hand over it, producing a small neon-colored rubber ball. "Humor me with an experiment?" he asked.

Scott's eye narrowed as he went over and sat down. "With the understanding that if you break anything, you deal with Cain, not me."

Forge made a small "psht" noice, bouncing the ball off Scott's desk. Cocking his head to focus on Scott's eyepatch, he nodded once. "Look to your right for me, please."

Scott, very warily, did as he was told. This was not particularly reassuring, he reflected. Maybe he should have turned Forge down? He didn't like being a guinea pig...

With a smile, Forge raised his hand, flicking the rubber ball forward to bounce off of Scott's left temple, knocking the eyepatch slightly askew. "Aha!" he exclaimed impishly. "You really don't have any peripheral sensation whatsoever, just like I thought."

Scott's eye went wide. "Did you just throw a ball at my head?"

Taken aback by the headmaster's tone, Forge nodded. "Had to surprise you. I figured after this time, you'd probably have started to adapt if I gave you warning. See, on the upside of the whole Seattle thing, looks like you have your eye lasers under control and stuff. Downside, you're completely blind on your left side."

Forge stuck his arm out, catching the still-ricocheting rubber ball in his metal hand, holding it up between he and Scott. "What would you say to fixing that?"

Scott's expression froze. He raised a hand, adjusting the eye patch back to where it should be. "I didn't think that was possible," he said in a neutral voice.

Forge frowned. "Technically, it's not. The tech required for a cybernetic eye replacement would necessitate a cooling system that would require removing a good chunk of your brain. And there's a few drawbacks to that, like loss of involuntary muscle control which can really ruin your bowling average. But-" Forge tilted the ball upwards, scribbling on it with a pen and turning it towards Scott to display a hastily drawn iris and pupil.

"Prosthetic replacement," he said, leaning his elbows on the desk. "Limited-band IR ping-and-respond system. Range of, say, a meter or so. Trigger it to a vibration relay, give you a buzz you can learn to respond to if something's on your left. I got the idea while studying Catseye's whiskers the other day."

Scott opened his mouth, then closed it again, telling himself to listen to what Forge was saying, rather than give in to the gut reaction. He didn't know why he was being twitchy about the idea of a prosthetic. Even Jean's occasional references to a non-functional one...

"It'd help with hand-to-hand," he said finally. "That's what's really been worrying me. The blasts are coming along..." Although he was still having the odd accident.

"Yeah, must be weird, having to learn all over again at your age," Forge remarked, tucking the ball into his pocket. "With your okay, I can get started on a design. I already have Dr. Grey and Dr. MacTaggart copied on some of the preliminary ideas, I just need your approval since, y'know, it's your head."

"Wouldn't help for fly--for driving a car, I suppose," Scott said, knowing Forge would probably catch the amendment.

Forge gave a sly nod. "All that would take is just relearning. People with visual impairments learn to drive - and operate... complex machinery all the time." He smiled, then reached across Scott's desk, picking up an old pair of his ruby quartz glasses. Sliding them on, he gave a grin and a thumbs-up at the headmaster. "Besides," he added, "you can go back to looking reasonably normal, instead of the Thirty-Year-Old Pirate Preppie."

"I'm nowhere near thirty, thank you," Scott protested a bit weakly, so that he didn't have to think too hard about what else Forge had said. "And I'm told the eyepatch is very dashing."

Forge snorted. "Dashing like a guitarist in a bad 80's New Wave band, maybe. Anyway," he said, removing the glasses and setting them back down on the desk, "Dr. Grey said you guys are heading up to Alaska for some holiday stuff. I'll get to work."

Standing up, he nodded towards the glasses. "You're a lot less creepy without them," Forge remarked, "even with the eyepatch. Easier to talk to you when you can actually see your eyes. Eye."

Scott smiled very faintly. "I didn't know you'd ever found me creepy." He picked up the glasses. "The whole world looks different, without them. I still sit and stare at the colors sometimes."

Forge paused at the door, nodding. "There's a little nook off the side of the sun room," he explained in a conspiratorial tone, "where you can just see the pond through the trees if the light hits right. In the snow, it's like a perfect prism across the back lawn. I recommend it."

Scott smiled suddenly, broadly. "I'll put it on the list. Thanks, Forge," he finished more quietly, and knew Forge would know he meant for more than just the suggestion.

"It's what I do," Forge said humbly, stepping through the door and surreptitiously pocketing the miniature magnet he'd left under the electronic lock. Sometimes the simple things worked, after all.