xp_logs | Forge & Jennie: Sometimes They Come Back

Not everyone is overjoyed and exuberant to find Forge alive and returned.

Forge checked the kitchen before heading for the fridge. After several now-repetitive incidents of surprise and exuberance at his return, he was beginning to doubt if his sanity (or his ribs) could take one more in such a short span of time. Before meeting with Scott, and then pizza with Kyle, he'd stopped in for a few quick words with the Professor, although the consensus seemed to be that adjusting to the time differential between the Attilan isolation and the current state of things was not something that could just be telepathically nudged along. It felt like a sort of social jet lag, Forge assumed -being someone who never actually got jet lag. Everything he expected to have changed was the same as when he left, thankfully including the well-stocked refrigerator.

Behind him, a familiar voice said, "You came back." It wasn't a question, and the voice wasn't excited or disappointed or anything really. Just flat. Like stating the fact that the sky was blue and water was wet and Yvette was sharp.

"Yep," Forge replied matter-of-factly, not looking out of the fridge. "Although I was beginning to doubt it, were it not for the constant restating of the apparently-not-obvious, marked by the fact that I do indeed happen to physically be present once more." He turned with his arms full of bread, lunchmeat, and condiments before recognizing Jennie standing across the room. His exasperated expression vanished, replaced by an inscrutable mixture of relief and concern. "Oh thank god, it's you. Although if there's going to be tackling, can I put my lunch down first?"

The girl approached him slowly, expression never changing. She stood in front of him and squinted, tilted her head this way and that, before reaching and experimentally touching his arm. She looked back at him, "You came back." She said again. No elation, no joy, just flat and unemotional.

Setting his food down on the counter, Forge turned and gently put his hands on Jennie's shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I know that sounds stupid, since I didn't actually have any control over what happened, but I know you guys must have been scared. Believe me, I tried for months to figure out what had happened, and then once we had an idea, I kept trying to figure out how to fix it, how to contact the rest of the world... I just didn't know how. But... I'm back? Yay?" he offered with a small smile.

"You don't get to come back," Jennie said softly, in a voice that was barely above a whisper. She shrugged Forge's hands off her shoulders and began to pace around the kitchen island. "Believe me, you don't. When you go away, when you die, after your friends mourn you and start moving on and start well, not being okay but starting to at least go for a while without being sad, you don't get to come back." Jennie put her hands on the tile on the countertop and looked slowly into Forge's eyes. "When Yana came back, I was pretty pissed off at you."

Forge raised a finger. "Point of order: Jean did it first. And yeah, I know. This is weird for me, too. On the one hand, it's humbling to know I'd be missed. But on the other... kind of awkward. I mean, I'm still me, but I feel like a stranger. Like I'm watching an old TV show that I haven't seen in years and everyone's the same and I'm different and... gah." He grunted and slapped a hand down on the island, inadvertently flattening the loaf of wheat bread.

"I'm sorry," Jennie said automatically. She drew herself up from the countertop, looking down at Forge. He did look older, but she was still taller than him. Many in the mansion were elated to see him, elated that the Amaquelins were alive and well. But Jennie was... not. She had buried two people in the past two years. Wasn't it just over two years ago she sat on a runway, staring blearily out the airplane window, fingers still raw from the washings she'd done to get rid of the smell of blood? And some nights she would wake up still smelling the incense from that tiny church in Greece.

Why you? Why did you get to come back?

Forge just shrugged as he began trying to smooth out a few slices of bread, awkwardly arranging mayonnaise and roast beef and lettuce on them. "It was odd, you know?" he explained. "Having to realize that there was something happening that I had absolutely no control over. I tried and tried, but it was like arguing with the weather - pointless. I just sort of had to accept it and go with things as they happened. It was like a whole other life there."

"Can't be easy, to just have to walk away from it." Jennie said. She ran her fingers over the tiles of the countertop, letting their smoothness soothe her.

"I'm not," Forge said plainly, between bites of his sandwich. "Attilan's a home to me now. Part of me. I mean, I spent two and a half years working with people there, living with them, making friends and family... it's part of who I am now. But here's where I belong, where I can keep doing the most good."

"I'm sorry if I'm not tackling you," Jennie said. "It's weird for me. You remember. But people are glad-- I'm glad, that you came back. One day, though, people around here are going to have to realize that you are the exception, not the rule. Death is pretty permanent."

Forge just shrugged again. "The whole death thing was a reasonable assumption, if an incorrect one. I much rather prefer being the exception, all things considered."

"Yeah," Jennie said softly.

Forge nodded, then smiled. "So," he said, "since I'm alive, and you're alive, want to go make out?"

Jennie gave him a small smile, and then her fist lashed out, lightning quick, to punch him in the arm.

Laughing, Forge rubbed his arm. "See? Definitely alive. Although you couldn't have gone for the left arm? Ouch. You punch harder than you used to, been working out?"

"I'm on the team, silly boy. I haven't been sitting around moping in your absence." Jennie tossed her hair over her shoulder. It was still Forge, a Forge who was different, but it would be hard to imitate his inherent cluelessness. That made her feel slightly better. "Seriously though, I think Marius was right in the whole one-upmanship thing. I didn't think we could ever be topped. None of you boys are allowed to try and one-up each other anymore."

"Not to mention that I refuse to acknowledge you as any kind of pack alpha. Well, unless you wear the pink top," Forge said with a smile.

Oh yeah, it was Forge.

Jennie punched him in the arm again. "You're training again, aren't you? I guess I'll just have to start mopping the floor with you until you fully acknowledge how much better I am than you."

"Eventually I will be," Forge admitted, scooting out of Jennie's reach. "Giving it a few days to get reacclimated to everything. Then I can go back to having dodgeballs shot at my head and classes on how to more effectively pants a mutant supervillain."

He rubbed his arm, frowning at the likely bruise, and then smiling. "I missed this, you know."

"Good," Jennie said, leaning against the counter. "I believe you deserve many beatings anyway." One for every mile she walked when she was crazy, one for every time she had been sad, and one for every time she'd felt cheated. Her calendar was going to be full for a very, very long time.