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xp_logsBefore tonight's Winter Ball, two of the only adults to NOT wind up beaten and bruised from Boxing Night (on account of not having to take part) wind up drafted to set up the last bits of decorations for the dance.
"Okay," Jim said to Forge as he unfolded the twentieth chair, "I'm really starting to think they had boxing night last night just so half the staff would have an excuse not to get dragged in for set-up."
"Mhm," Forge mumbled through a mouthful of cords and wires, running his fingers along the sound board and reconnecting circuit boards and relays. "I kind of talked myself into this with Her Ladyship by mentioning spotlights." The last word echoed through the multiple small speakers along the wall, and Forge sat up from under the sound board with a smile that quickly turned into a frown. "Too much reverb, argh. So how was the barbaric violence therapy, anyway?"
"Given I'm a couple months out of physical condition, thankfully only for other people. I was warming the bench with Lorna. Who really needs to not be allowed a cellphone with a camera, since the last thing this place needs when she's texting West Coasters is the option of attached photographic evidence." And after what he'd heard of the last half of the night he thanked god on Scott's behalf for the fact she'd passed out and needed to be shuffled to bed in the middle of it.
Jim retrieved another chair from the cart. "Oh, well. It's the fate of all useful people to get drafted. Well, for you, anyway. The power makes you kind of an obvious choice. The qualifying standard for me right now is more like 'upright.'"
"Whohuhwhat?" Forge sat up quickly, smacking his forehead against the bottom of the sound console and flopping right back onto the floor. "They can't draft me, it'd be insane, I can't even run a lap around the gym, much less the Danger Room. Not to mention I'd be an absolute liability if I ever tried to do what they do, I'd freeze up. They can't do that, don't they realize I'd be utterly..." He glanced up at the strange expression on Haller's face. "Oh, you meant drafted for this... yeah, apparently that's what happens when you volunteer one good idea. They'll get you to talk yourself into more. And apparently I owe Medusa a dance, although I'm not sure how THAT one happened. Technically I think I even asked her. It'd be worth it just to see the look on her sister's face, I think."
The mention of Crystal brought to mind her suitemates, and Forge blanched. That meant Laurie would be there. Not only that, be there with Kyle. Oh God, there was going to be no end to the awkward.
Jim gave the boy a lopsided smile as he aligned the next chair. "Be gentle with Crystal's adjustment issues. She's had some rocky spots, but still, the dance involvement and everything's a pretty good indicator she is trying. That said, you shouldn't completely freeze your life because of what people might think, either." The telepath hesitated for a moment. Forge was in an odd grey-area between students and staff; intellectually Jim was well aware Forge was graduated, a coworker now. Yet making that switch in mentality didn't come easily -- and he doubted it was any easier for Forge.
Not a student any longer. Then again, should any excuse have been needed?
"Not to totally tank the mood," Jim said as he lined up the next chair, "but on the subject of getting drafted . . . you got tapped for that incident a couple weeks ago with that unknown mutant, too, didn't you."
Forge clenched his jaw momentarily, then relaxed. "Yeah. I'm not too happy about being blindsided like that. I mean, I help when I can... but having to work with Nathan Essex is like shaking hands with the devil, you know? I don't care what can or can't be proven, I know the rat bastard's as dirty as they come, and if there was a shred of evidence that could put him away..."
He stood up to pace back and forth, running both hands through his hair. "I don't want to be the guy who becomes okay with compromising what's right to get the job done. I know we saved a life, that's the noble end. I just... the means feel wrong, you know?"
"Yeah," Jim said softly, "I do." His mismatched eyes settled briefly on the scarred hand resting on the wooden frame of the chair. "Did you know Dr. Essex at all when he was here, or was that before your time?"
Forge shook his head. "Only by reputation. His work in genetics is brilliant. I mean, he's no MacTaggart, but he's ahead of his peers by light-years. And that's only his published work. To hear rumors, he's gone completely off the reservation with some of his research. We're talking making Josef Mengele look like a kid dissecting a worm in science class."
Shuddering, Forge drew himself up straight, walking the perimeter of the ballroom to make adjustments to the speakers. "I can understand being detached emotionally from your work. You can't let preconceived opinions guide you. But you can't just not care, either. To be that impassionate is just to be... inhuman."
"I don't know about his science. I remember him from when I was a patient on Muir. Detached is a good word. I never came close to knowing him. But sometimes I thought there were moments I saw him. Just flashes, but I thought. I knew he was a father. And a widower. I was a kid. Maybe I just saw the things I wanted to see because they made him make sense." Jim studied the younger man's back as he busied himself with the equipment, eye tracking on the gleam of the prosthetic as it caught the light. "You've had a lot of reasons to think about just how easy it is to slip. What's worse, do you think? Having projected humanity that was never there, or it having been?"
Forge thought about that for a moment, adjusting the gain on one of the speakers. "I don't think there's any such thing as 'never there'," he finally said, balancing on his artificial foot to hang a nearly-invisible speaker wire behind the strips of crepe on the walls. "I don't believe anyone's born evil. Not even people like Sabretooth, and believe me, he'd make a saint doubt his faith. I think everyone has it in them to do what's right, no matter what else they've done in life. I think everyone's responsible for the choices they make, no matter how impassioned or inhumane. But I believe that as long as you're capable of making those choices, you can still choose to do what's right. I believe in that. I have to."
Jim's slight smile was without humor. "That's really my point. I don't think there's natural born evil, either. It's never that simple. The only thing there is is people, and the ripple effect when the reasoning attached to human motivations goes malignant. And I've already had that shoved in my face more than enough."
Somewhere behind it all Cyndi rolled her eyes. If this is how your idea of connecting with people on a level other than as patients maybe you should keep yourself on the opposite side of the room.
"Still," the older man said quielty, taking another chair from the stand, "the choice is there. Some people can get away with making the compromises. Or are willing to live with doing it, anyway. If you can do it without it twisting under you . . . that I do respect, because sometimes there really is no other way. Personally, I think it's a balancing act I just don't have it in me to pull off." The legs of another chair clicked against the ballroom floor, and the faint smile played across his lips again, this time without bitterness. "So, yeah. That's the long way of saying that I go with the selfish choice of limiting myself to stuff like setting up for a school dance. You know, except on special occasions when a city's in danger or something. That happens way more often than it should."
"How often should it happen?" Forge responded to the rhetorical phrase with an equally rhetorical question. "Doesn't matter. The world isn't the same world folks like the Professor or Mr. Marko or even Scott grew up in. There's one thing Erik was right on - mutants have caused a paradigm shift in the world, the simple fact of our existence changes things, so what was inconceivable ten years ago is possibly going to be commonplace in another five. I mean, who else graduated high school from a place that's been invaded three times, had students yanked to alternate dimensions, and employs a history teacher who leased out space in his brain to hot redhead ghosts from the future?" Forge shrugged. "You can run from it, or you can be a part of it. Change it, don't change it, that's a choice folks have to make. But you do have to live in it, you can't hide from it--"
He paused, a bundle of wires in his hand as he listened to the words coming out of his mouth. "Just because everything isn't always the comfortable stability we wish it could be doesn't mean we can just hide and pretend it'll solve itself." In slow realization, he smiled and looked over his shoulder at Haller. "Wow, does this happen to everyone who spends time around Professor Xavier? Are we all doomed to these moments of weird profound self-awareness?"
Jim snorted. "Yeah, do you think there's some way to chart just when the universe started to warp? I can't even blame it on Charles. Unless he's got some kind of trauma and profundity-field of several years into the past." He rubbed the mysterious black marks the chair had left on his hands against his jeans, shaking his head. "Okay, ghosts from the future are on the table. Maybe that's a speculation place we don't want to go."
"August seventh, 1988," Forge announced, walking over to test the sound board again. "That's my theory. I show up and the world has to bend itself out of shape to keep up with my awesomeness." The last syllable echoed perfectly through the speakers, and Forge gave a small fist-pump as he adjusted the dials and switches. "So with Lorna on vacation, I assume you'll just be chaperoning this thing tonight, huh?"
"Yeah, Lorna's presence doesn't really have any effect on being an eternal chaperone. I also haven't been bleeding internally, which is probably going to be a plus." Jim raised an eyebrow at the younger man. "You? Date or anything, or not even bothering?"
"I... think I'll show up," Forge said with a tone somewhere between resolve and trepidation. "Besides, I think if I stood Lady Medusa up for a dance, she could technically declare a fatwa on me or something."
"Yeah, don't poke the Amaquelins." And he didn't just mean Crystal this time, since he still had weird dreams about Medusa's hair crawling across the kitchen floor. Jim grinned. "Wow, that would be the appropriate end to 2006. Happy holidays from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Enjoy your international incident."
"Okay," Jim said to Forge as he unfolded the twentieth chair, "I'm really starting to think they had boxing night last night just so half the staff would have an excuse not to get dragged in for set-up."
"Mhm," Forge mumbled through a mouthful of cords and wires, running his fingers along the sound board and reconnecting circuit boards and relays. "I kind of talked myself into this with Her Ladyship by mentioning spotlights." The last word echoed through the multiple small speakers along the wall, and Forge sat up from under the sound board with a smile that quickly turned into a frown. "Too much reverb, argh. So how was the barbaric violence therapy, anyway?"
"Given I'm a couple months out of physical condition, thankfully only for other people. I was warming the bench with Lorna. Who really needs to not be allowed a cellphone with a camera, since the last thing this place needs when she's texting West Coasters is the option of attached photographic evidence." And after what he'd heard of the last half of the night he thanked god on Scott's behalf for the fact she'd passed out and needed to be shuffled to bed in the middle of it.
Jim retrieved another chair from the cart. "Oh, well. It's the fate of all useful people to get drafted. Well, for you, anyway. The power makes you kind of an obvious choice. The qualifying standard for me right now is more like 'upright.'"
"Whohuhwhat?" Forge sat up quickly, smacking his forehead against the bottom of the sound console and flopping right back onto the floor. "They can't draft me, it'd be insane, I can't even run a lap around the gym, much less the Danger Room. Not to mention I'd be an absolute liability if I ever tried to do what they do, I'd freeze up. They can't do that, don't they realize I'd be utterly..." He glanced up at the strange expression on Haller's face. "Oh, you meant drafted for this... yeah, apparently that's what happens when you volunteer one good idea. They'll get you to talk yourself into more. And apparently I owe Medusa a dance, although I'm not sure how THAT one happened. Technically I think I even asked her. It'd be worth it just to see the look on her sister's face, I think."
The mention of Crystal brought to mind her suitemates, and Forge blanched. That meant Laurie would be there. Not only that, be there with Kyle. Oh God, there was going to be no end to the awkward.
Jim gave the boy a lopsided smile as he aligned the next chair. "Be gentle with Crystal's adjustment issues. She's had some rocky spots, but still, the dance involvement and everything's a pretty good indicator she is trying. That said, you shouldn't completely freeze your life because of what people might think, either." The telepath hesitated for a moment. Forge was in an odd grey-area between students and staff; intellectually Jim was well aware Forge was graduated, a coworker now. Yet making that switch in mentality didn't come easily -- and he doubted it was any easier for Forge.
Not a student any longer. Then again, should any excuse have been needed?
"Not to totally tank the mood," Jim said as he lined up the next chair, "but on the subject of getting drafted . . . you got tapped for that incident a couple weeks ago with that unknown mutant, too, didn't you."
Forge clenched his jaw momentarily, then relaxed. "Yeah. I'm not too happy about being blindsided like that. I mean, I help when I can... but having to work with Nathan Essex is like shaking hands with the devil, you know? I don't care what can or can't be proven, I know the rat bastard's as dirty as they come, and if there was a shred of evidence that could put him away..."
He stood up to pace back and forth, running both hands through his hair. "I don't want to be the guy who becomes okay with compromising what's right to get the job done. I know we saved a life, that's the noble end. I just... the means feel wrong, you know?"
"Yeah," Jim said softly, "I do." His mismatched eyes settled briefly on the scarred hand resting on the wooden frame of the chair. "Did you know Dr. Essex at all when he was here, or was that before your time?"
Forge shook his head. "Only by reputation. His work in genetics is brilliant. I mean, he's no MacTaggart, but he's ahead of his peers by light-years. And that's only his published work. To hear rumors, he's gone completely off the reservation with some of his research. We're talking making Josef Mengele look like a kid dissecting a worm in science class."
Shuddering, Forge drew himself up straight, walking the perimeter of the ballroom to make adjustments to the speakers. "I can understand being detached emotionally from your work. You can't let preconceived opinions guide you. But you can't just not care, either. To be that impassionate is just to be... inhuman."
"I don't know about his science. I remember him from when I was a patient on Muir. Detached is a good word. I never came close to knowing him. But sometimes I thought there were moments I saw him. Just flashes, but I thought. I knew he was a father. And a widower. I was a kid. Maybe I just saw the things I wanted to see because they made him make sense." Jim studied the younger man's back as he busied himself with the equipment, eye tracking on the gleam of the prosthetic as it caught the light. "You've had a lot of reasons to think about just how easy it is to slip. What's worse, do you think? Having projected humanity that was never there, or it having been?"
Forge thought about that for a moment, adjusting the gain on one of the speakers. "I don't think there's any such thing as 'never there'," he finally said, balancing on his artificial foot to hang a nearly-invisible speaker wire behind the strips of crepe on the walls. "I don't believe anyone's born evil. Not even people like Sabretooth, and believe me, he'd make a saint doubt his faith. I think everyone has it in them to do what's right, no matter what else they've done in life. I think everyone's responsible for the choices they make, no matter how impassioned or inhumane. But I believe that as long as you're capable of making those choices, you can still choose to do what's right. I believe in that. I have to."
Jim's slight smile was without humor. "That's really my point. I don't think there's natural born evil, either. It's never that simple. The only thing there is is people, and the ripple effect when the reasoning attached to human motivations goes malignant. And I've already had that shoved in my face more than enough."
Somewhere behind it all Cyndi rolled her eyes. If this is how your idea of connecting with people on a level other than as patients maybe you should keep yourself on the opposite side of the room.
"Still," the older man said quielty, taking another chair from the stand, "the choice is there. Some people can get away with making the compromises. Or are willing to live with doing it, anyway. If you can do it without it twisting under you . . . that I do respect, because sometimes there really is no other way. Personally, I think it's a balancing act I just don't have it in me to pull off." The legs of another chair clicked against the ballroom floor, and the faint smile played across his lips again, this time without bitterness. "So, yeah. That's the long way of saying that I go with the selfish choice of limiting myself to stuff like setting up for a school dance. You know, except on special occasions when a city's in danger or something. That happens way more often than it should."
"How often should it happen?" Forge responded to the rhetorical phrase with an equally rhetorical question. "Doesn't matter. The world isn't the same world folks like the Professor or Mr. Marko or even Scott grew up in. There's one thing Erik was right on - mutants have caused a paradigm shift in the world, the simple fact of our existence changes things, so what was inconceivable ten years ago is possibly going to be commonplace in another five. I mean, who else graduated high school from a place that's been invaded three times, had students yanked to alternate dimensions, and employs a history teacher who leased out space in his brain to hot redhead ghosts from the future?" Forge shrugged. "You can run from it, or you can be a part of it. Change it, don't change it, that's a choice folks have to make. But you do have to live in it, you can't hide from it--"
He paused, a bundle of wires in his hand as he listened to the words coming out of his mouth. "Just because everything isn't always the comfortable stability we wish it could be doesn't mean we can just hide and pretend it'll solve itself." In slow realization, he smiled and looked over his shoulder at Haller. "Wow, does this happen to everyone who spends time around Professor Xavier? Are we all doomed to these moments of weird profound self-awareness?"
Jim snorted. "Yeah, do you think there's some way to chart just when the universe started to warp? I can't even blame it on Charles. Unless he's got some kind of trauma and profundity-field of several years into the past." He rubbed the mysterious black marks the chair had left on his hands against his jeans, shaking his head. "Okay, ghosts from the future are on the table. Maybe that's a speculation place we don't want to go."
"August seventh, 1988," Forge announced, walking over to test the sound board again. "That's my theory. I show up and the world has to bend itself out of shape to keep up with my awesomeness." The last syllable echoed perfectly through the speakers, and Forge gave a small fist-pump as he adjusted the dials and switches. "So with Lorna on vacation, I assume you'll just be chaperoning this thing tonight, huh?"
"Yeah, Lorna's presence doesn't really have any effect on being an eternal chaperone. I also haven't been bleeding internally, which is probably going to be a plus." Jim raised an eyebrow at the younger man. "You? Date or anything, or not even bothering?"
"I... think I'll show up," Forge said with a tone somewhere between resolve and trepidation. "Besides, I think if I stood Lady Medusa up for a dance, she could technically declare a fatwa on me or something."
"Yeah, don't poke the Amaquelins." And he didn't just mean Crystal this time, since he still had weird dreams about Medusa's hair crawling across the kitchen floor. Jim grinned. "Wow, that would be the appropriate end to 2006. Happy holidays from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Enjoy your international incident."
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Date: 2006-12-22 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 02:24 pm (UTC)Oh don't over react...she'd just have Blackagar have a word with you. ;-)