Saturday night, Forge and Marius

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

While safely sequestered in a posh New York penthouse, Forge and Marius finally broach the difficult issue of being the ones always sitting on the sidelines.



Scan. Scan. Scan. Reread. Scan. Turn page. Scan. Reread. Reread.

The book slammed shut.

"You know, sod this," Marius said, pushing the text away in disgust. "When you can't remember what subject you've spent the lasty twenty minutes goin' over I'd say the study period can safely be counted a failure."

"Welcome to my entire experience with English Literature," Forge responded, placing another pair of dominoes across from each other. Satisfied with the arrangement, he tapped one, watching it tip into the other and begin a cascade of clicking ivory rectangles crawling across the lacquered-teak bar, winding around a stack of coasters until the last domino toppled, landing precisely on a red button that had once been part of a seltzer gun. In Forge's boredom, it had been reappropriated and overpressurized to complete his Rube Goldberg homage, propelling a can of soda like a mortar out from the minifridge behind the bar and right into his hand. "Luke Skywalker who?" he asked facetiously, cracking open the soda and taking a drink.

Marius jerked himself from the floor and began to pace, his steps short and sharp, oblivious to his friend's personal amusements. "Suppose we should count ourselves fortunate it didn't come over graduation. Kyle, however, will require Words. Twice in a bloody month. I'm going to tear the word 'moderation' out of the dictionary and nail it to his head. Should the healing factor not reject it straight off perhaps it will serve an effective reminder."

"Scott and Ororo have it in hand. And while no one's said as much, I get the feeling this is a full-on X-Men saving the day event. Just think, this is the stuff you're going to be training for." Forge began scooping the dominoes back onto their box, idly spinning a few on the bar surface. Marius's pacing wasn't even covering a third of the parlor's length, and with a wet bar, an attached balcony, three sofas, and a baby grand piano, this was apparently the small parlor.

"Yes. Indeed. But that is the future, an' this is now. Now happening to contain a number of missing classmates. You know, this puts me to mind of the old days. Seattle. You, me, Jen, riotin' in the street an' us stuck in a hotel whilst others handled the damage." Marius reached the end of the room and spun around. "Good times."

"I recall that being more of me stuck watching CNN while you and Jennie handled the minibar, actually," Forge pushed away from the bar and made his way to one of the couches, idly glancing out at the view of the New York skyline. "That was the beginning, wasn't it? First time you really saw that side of life?"

"First time out an' about in the States, let alone out of the mansion proper. If we're to pinpoint the exact moment reality took a sharp turn to the left it could technically place at seein' you and Lorna brought in from a terrorist kidnapping." Marius' hands flexed as he paced Ari's expensive hardwood floor. There was something infuriating about the older boy's calm. It was a unique experience. Their friendship had had its share of ups and downs, but Marius was quite sure the urge to strangle Forge had never been quite so insistent. Sadly, that option was on the low side of productive.

"Ah yes, your amazing days of spending most of your time flat on your back giving people hickeys with the handshake of bitey doom," Forge reminisced with a smile. "I'd say those were the days, but frankly they kind of sucked. Except for the ill-fated diversion into undergarment theft. One of your best and worst plans in one fell stroke."

"I took one for the team. Had you and Jay simply deigned to speak to one another I would not have needed to resort to such drastic steps." Marius gave careful consideration to Xavier's policy on a murdering a member of the staff while one was still technically a student.

Forge scoffed, turning to look at Marius. "Admit it, you were enjoying yourself. And not just the part where you were taped to the wall in Clarice's underwear. Now those were the days. When Marius Sammar Cartier Laverne remembered how to have fun, even if it involved burying my leg in the flower garden. I distinctly remember farming out your beating for that one to Catseye. Those were good times."

Marius shot Forge a dark look. "Right," he said, the word very carefully controlled. "My apologies that I have ceased to be as entertaining as you had grown accustomed to. Impervious though I may seem my mood is not quite so teflon as was previously hoped. You will understand if some things have fallen by the wayside."

"No, I really won't," Forge snapped back, jovial mood gone in an eyeblink. "I won't understand, because I really don't. And maybe it's a cardinal sin to contradict the son of Cartier St. Croix, but whoops, there I go. Yeah, we've got some missing classmates. And we've got people out getting them back. This shit happens. It sucks, but it happens. The only difference is that it's not happening to you, and doesn't that just piss you off?"

Marius stared at Forge. In their tenure together at Xavier's Forge had said many things Marius had been unable to believe, but this was the first time he had to give honest pause to the possibility his friend might actually have gone insane.

"I'm sorry," Marius said slowly to make sure this was correct, "was I honestly just accused of being upset because it's not me who's been abducted?" Implied was the question Have you developed a mental defect?

"Because you're feeling helpless," Forge clarified, his tone no less icy, "Just like Masque, all over again. You keep thinking that somehow, despite all reason to the contrary, you should be able to do something to fix it and make it better." He snorted once, then shook his head. "Knock it off. I'm the one with the God complex. I don't touch your fancy frou-frou hair care products, you keep your mitts off my messianic tendencies, isn't that how this works?"

Walking across the room, Forge leaned over the back of a chair, the expensive antique forming a makeshift wall between him and the taller Australian. "There's no productivity in impotent frustration. Take it from me, it'll only drive you insane."

"From you an' the two blokes I see for the weekly therapy. But knowin' it in the head's not quite the same as feelin' it. As I would imagine you would know, as the trauma overlap is quite significant." Marius' defusion was slow but grudging. It would have been cathartic to rage at the other boy, but it was unlikely to accomplish anything. Except, perhaps, further creative punishment from his parents. Marius pushed his hair from his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Do you know," Marius continued, more calmly now, "I don't know what I find more intolerable. The fact that these events continue to happen, or the fact it feels I have lost all ability to either achieve or maintain level. Before I was all about level, effortless. Now it seems that on any given day fully half my energy is devoted to gettin' back to where I was. You know," Marius waved one scarred hand airily, searching for the appropriate description, "devoid of depth."

"While I often mock," Forge said seriously, "I don't believe that for a moment. The devoid of depth part. As much as you put on the shallow facade socially, it's not who you are. You're trying to force an equilibrium that no longer exists. We all want to hold onto this thin hope that our lives can someday be normal, if we do everything right. Talk the talk, walk the walk, listen to the Professor -but the truth is, Marius? It's bullshit."

Forge pushed away from the chair and started pacing in a parallel path to Marius'. "Erik told me, and this stuck with me ever since, that no matter how many coats of wool you put on a wolf, it'll never be a sheep. While I don't buy into his sheep versus wolves analogy, he's got a point. No matter how hard we try, we do not get to live these normal lives that people expect. So the most we can do is learn to deal with this one we've got."

Marius shook his head. "Ah, no doubt that's a part, but not quite the whole. I no longer strive to regain normal. It is not only relative, but an impossibility." Masque's skull caving under his first; rusted wirecutters sliding around the joint of his finger; his body warping beneath him a piece at a time; Yvette curled in filth and darkness; Manuel's crumpled form in the street; the fierce joy in Rory's eyes as they'd been taken away to the white rooms; the feel of Wipeout's flesh in his teeth as he tore. No. He couldn't look to normal. Not anymore.

Exhaling slowly, Marius linked his fingers behind his head and turned to the window. "You know when you emailed me after the Unfortunate Incident, tryin' to suss out what differentiated our responses to panic? The precise reason why I stood an' fought I still couldn't say, but I do know what it is I miss from the old life." From the glass the dark caves of his reflection's eyes stared back at him. "What I want, truly, is to go back to where I wasn't livin' afraid. An' that is a place running never gets you."

"You and me both," Forge admitted, his posture suddenly relaxing. He ceased pacing, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking past Marius at the window, seeing his own reflection distant and hazy behind that of his friend. "Jennie asked me how I got over the paranoia and the fear. Truth is, I haven't. I just... I just deal with it. Or try to, at least. That's why I asked to start training. Because I have to know."

One of Marius' heavy brows lifted as the reflection in the glass glanced sidelong at his friend. "Know what, then? Whether you've gotten over it, or whether such a thing is attainable?"

"Whether I can move past it," Forge explained with a shrug. "I have to be doing something, something more than just being a wrench monkey in a lab somewhere. I have to find out if I'm capable of more than just sitting on the sidelines, watching as other people take the risks. More than just sitting around waiting to hear about the next crisis." He shrugged again, then moved back to the bar and leaned heavily on the varnished wood. "I'm tired of watching other people risk themselves to make a better life for me - I owe it to them, to myself to take a part in it."

Marius nodded. "After the year spent quite literally leeching from the lives of others, I must say I find that understandable." Particularly since Forge had a history of displeasure at the insinuation that his only place was behind a workbench. Privately, Marius felt the world would have mourned the loss of Forge's brain far more than, say, Marius', but that wasn't for him to say. If Marius had believed in heeding natural suitability his natural reality might not have been much different than Rory's tampering. Marius was having none of "fate."

The taller boy dropped his hands and rolled his neck and shoulders restlessly. Still tense, though he finally cracked a smile. "Just do us the favour an' refrain from indulging your enthusiasm to the point you begin to volunteer for the position of diversionary cannon-fodder, eh? You're runnin' low on original bits as it is. That is what Kyle will be for."

"Are you kidding?" Forge said, returning the smile. "You think they're getting me anywhere NEAR a fight willingly? Not unless Scott okays that purchase order for the X-Tank."

"Right," Marius acknowledged with a nod. "When the time comes I shall make note to insist you be referred to in the field only as 'F'."

The taller boy sighed and crossed back to the leather couch and slid onto it bonelessly. With the tension gone there was only the tiredness, and that he was feeling in every muscle. "Fine musings for the future. I suppose for now, once again, we wait."

"We wait," Forge agreed, leaning over the bar to rummage in the minifridge. "Hey," he called out, most of his torso hidden from sight. "Are wine coolers any good?"

"Yes, indeed they are. If one is a sissy girl." Marius grinned and abandoned the couch with a faint rustle of leather to join his friend by the bar. He leaned in, one elbow resting on the polished wood. "Fortunately, it just so happens I can pass for one in a decent light an' just the right shade of purple. It sets off my eyes just so. But here, don't overdo. I want no accusations from Jen about how I took advantage of you in a vulnerable state in her father's penthouse." He paused, considering. "Although I can't imagine how anyone would."

"Of course not," Forge said, passing one of the brightly-colored bottles to his friend. "I do have standards. These days."

Marius tsked. "Now, now. I know this is a time of turbulent emotions, but there's no call to speak against Jay." Twisting the top off the winecooler, the younger boy held up the bottle. "Well. How many fruity drinks does it take to drink away a mass-kidnapping? I suppose we'll find out."