Forge and Scott, Friday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Forge is a little confused about some of the things that have been going on around the mansion lately. He comes to Scott for advice. Scott endeavors to be objective and headmaster-ly. He is at the very least honest.


Incremental improvements, that was the name of the game. And getting the inevitable conversation with Bobby over with yesterday had been more of a relief than he was willing to admit. At least it was done. Scott gave the classroom a last measuring look to make sure he'd picked up everything and then stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind him. His engineering students had been quiet, unnaturally so. Quiet and deferential and vaguely worried-looking.

"Mr. Summers!" Forge called out, jogging slowly down the hallway. He'd heard about the rather heated conversation in the library, although none of the details, and an insatiable curiosity had stricken yet again. He'd been meaning to ask Bobby about it, but as long as the headmaster was around - just as good.

"If you've got a few moments..." Forge asked, slightly out of breath from his brisk jog up the stairs, "can we talk?"

"Sure, Forge. Was just heading back to my office to drop my quizzes off," Scott said quietly, letting the young man follow along beside him as he headed in that direction. The marking could wait for later in the weekend, he'd decided. "What can I do for you?"

"Yeah, uh..." Great. And now he had no idea how this conversation was supposed to go. "Um... how's the eye doing?"

Okay then. That had not been what Forge really wanted to ask him, Scott was almost positive of it. He'd been dealing with kids for long enough to smell 'temporary chickening out' in conversations like this. It could usually be teased out of them.

He just wasn't sure he had the energy for that.

"Fine," Scott said with a faint smile, stopping in front of the door to his office and unlocking it. "No complaints at all. You did a great job, as usual." He gestured for Forge to precede him into the office.

Forge walked in, sitting in one of the large chairs, hands folded in his lap. "That's good, because I'd been wondering about... y'know, um... headaches." Good one! "Because if the feedback was giving you any headaches, that would've probably explained the whole acting weird thing lately," Not good one, dork! "I mean... um..." Forge backtracked quickly, "It's not that acting weird is bad, I mean, we all do that here at times, everyone I mean..."

Scott stared at him. "Oh," he finally said. "So that's what this is about." He took a deep breath that was only slightly unsteady, and forced a faint, crooked smile. "I'm not acting weird because of any feedback from the prosthesis, Forge. It's the whole 'my wife left me' thing."

"Well, duh. I mean, taking a job away from the school's got to be rough. But you guys can travel and call and..." Only then did Forge realize the implications of Scott's statement. "Oh. Oh, you mean left you. I didn't... I mean, ah shit. Shoot. I'm sorry, I didn't know."

He would not laugh. Because really, it wasn't funny, and he'd probably traumatize the poor kid if he started laughing. "How were you supposed to know? I haven't precisely been publicizing it widely, have I? Although I'm slightly offended," Scott said, eyeing Forge somewhat dryly. "If you thought I was acting this 'weird' just because Jean took a job away from the school."

Forge shrugged self-consciously. "Well... yeah! I mean, she's your wife. Was. Is? Sorry," he waved his hand sheepishly. "You guys love each other, right? From what I've seen, that's usually the biggest motivator for people acting weird or crazy or dumb."

Oh dear God. Was the world really demanding that he counsel a teenager on what love was and how it made people behave? This week? He had done something terrible, he must have. This was cosmic punishment. His head just itched to be applied to the desk several times, hard. It really did.

"I'm possibly," he said, evenly, almost conversationally, "not the best person to be talking to about relationships and how to understand them this month. Suffice to say they're not always a reason for insanity." Really, Forge, they're not. If I tell you that over and over maybe I'll convince myself.

Forge pondered that for a moment. "Does that have anything to do with why you were yelling at Bobby? Because he and Terry have been having it rough lately?" Forge wasn't exactly sure of the details of that either, given that Marius was being notoriously closed-mouthed about the details of his date with Terry although Kyle had claimed to smell Terry "all over Marius, and in the good way".

Scott's jaw clenched almost spasmodically. Goddamn it, he knew he should have walked out of the library... "I don't... really think that's entirely relevant," he said. "But no, that wasn't why I was yelling at Bobby."

"Oh," Forge chirped up, his train of thought on the completely wrong track, "team stuff then? I know, need-to-know, no worries here. But still... I saw the pile of your stuff out in the backyard the other day. And I mean, I'm in no way trying to compare or say I understand, because I so don't - but I had to learn the hard way that this kind of thing, well, I got mad and stormed off and Lorna kidnapped me for Magneto. At least you can say you're not acting like a stupid teenager."

He gave an attempt at a grin, suddenly cognizant of how utterly stupid it was of him trying to give any semblance of advice to a man over ten years his senior and probably more versed in relationships than Forge would ever be. Almost instantly, he dropped the grin and shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be glib or anything. It's just... you're a rock, sir. Lot of stuff's dropped on you since I've been here, and you've come back. I mean, you lost an eye for god's sake. Seeing you like this is... well, it's confusing."

Scott stared at him for a moment. "Even rocks wear down after a while," he said, and rested his chin on his hand for a moment, his gaze wandering over the office. This at least was the same. He was almost glad that he had trashed the suite, and not the office. "I'm sorry if it's confusing," he finally said, more quietly. "It's not any more clear from where I'm sitting. Not great role model behavior, I know, but sometimes it's just too hard..." He stopped, looking back at Forge. "You know," he said, "I was leading the X-Men by the time I was twenty-one, and was the headmaster here by the time I was twenty-four. The damned thing is, I was qualified for both those jobs when I took them up - it wasn't as if the Professor pushed me into them too early. So I packed all of the work and school and everything that was necessary into far too short a time for preparation, and then discovered that preparing wasn't the hard part. The job was the hard part. Both of them."

Forge gave a wide-eyed whistle at that. He paused, doing a quick calculation in his head. "You hadn't been headmaster long when Dr. Grey died, then. Wow. When she came back, people were talking about how amazing it was that you stuck with it. The team, the school - I know that throwing myself into work helps distract me from stuff. But it doesn't fix stuff. I get done, I go back to feeling the same way."

He slumped his shoulders. "I suppose you already know that, and I'm probably not helping much, huh? I mean, I'm seventeen. I don't know a damn thing about marriage or losing people or having to drive on through it. Hell, I've never even had a girlfriend. But this, I mean... this isn't something that breaks people, right? You're still going?"

He must have been a child molester in a past life or something. The only explanation, really. Scott gave Forge a long, level look.

"No." For a moment he almost left it at that, but then he couldn't. "Or yes, really, I suppose I am still going. But this is something that breaks people, Forge. I mean," he said, almost briskly, "the whole resurrection angle complicates things enormously. Imagine being linked mind-to-mind with someone and then losing them. Imagine grieving for them for two years, only to have them come back from the dead when you'd finally started to put your life back in order. Imagine," he went on, his voice still level, but getting increasingly tight, "getting through all the guilt and the shock and putting your life together back together, only to have her leave and tell you that she despises you and only stuck around as long as she did because she pitied you. That, unfortunately, is where I'm at just now."

"...well, shit." Forge breathed, completely taken aback. He frowned, then shook his head. "No. No, that's more than messed up. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like Lorna when she had that damn collar on. That isn't... that's just... normal people don't do that!" he exclaimed, voice cracking with the incredulity of it all. "There's got to be something else going on. There's got to be. Talk to the Professor, he can figure it out, that can't be Dr. Grey talking. I mean, didn't she have amnesia or something when she showed up here? Maybe she took a blow to the head or something..."

"Forge," Scott said as steadily as he could, "the possibility's been raised. It's... we can't always assume that it's going to be something like that, when these things happen." His voice wavered a little as he went on. "I know it's tempting, to want to think that it can't be real, that it can't be the person you know who's doing these things. The problem is that normal people do do things like this."

Shaking his head, Forge stood up, leaning heavily on the chair. "And people wonder why I don't bother with dating. Not worth it." He looked up at Scott, an odd mix of regret and confusion still on his face. "Don't break over this, sir. You're better than her. I know it." He swallowed, then glanced at the door. "I've, uh, I've got to call some people at the ESU admissions office. Better do that before they close for the evening."

Oh, he'd made a mess of this conversation. "You should do that," Scott said, and then sighed. "And Forge? Talk to the Professor, or Doctor Samson, about this stuff, all right? I'm not the best person to help you sort these things out right now."

Forge rolled his eyes and managed a smile. "Right. Like the Professor knows anything about women. I think the last time he went on a date, powdered wigs were probably still in fashion. But I'll be fine, sir. You..." he struggled to find something to say that wouldn't be a stupid platitude. "You just do what you have to."

"... right." He could have said something to Forge about not giving Charles enough credit, but... no. Let him make his dignified retreat, Scott told himself with an inward sigh, and then go for a drive. Or something. He felt badly in need of some fresh air.