Family Portrait: Laurie & Forge.

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Laurie gets back from Atlantic city but can't sleep. She goes looking for one of the people she knows will be awake at this hour.



Laurie knocked on the door to Forge and Angelo's suite, hoping she wasn't waking anyone up. She'd only been back at the mansion for a few hours but she'd realised sleep would be impossible well before that. Forge was one of the few people she knew who didn't particularly need a lot of sleep. She needed someone to sit up with her, so she didn't do anything stupid. Like catch a bus back to Atlantic City and give her father a punch in the nose, or much worse.

Forge looked up from his desk when he heard the sound of the knock. Pulling on a faded Star Wars t-shirt, he shuffled over to the door of the suite and opened it. Upon seeing Laurie standing in the hallway, he arched an eyebrow in surprise. "You're up late," he said quietly.

"I don't think I could sleep, even if I wanted to try." she replied simply, looking back down the hallway for a second, and reaching up for toward her neck as if to play with something that was no longer there. "I didn't disturb you, did I? I could, well, there's always TV to watch, even if it is horrible infomercials."

Forge just smiled and held up the book by von Clausewitz that he'd borrowed from Sam. "Just studying. Nothing important. Come on in," he said, gesturing towards the couch. "What's on your mind?"

"I just got back from seeing my Dad." Laurie said simply, taking a seat on the couch and pulling one of the cushions over to hug against her chest. "He didn't even seem to care that Mom was sick."

The sudden rush of information took Forge a while to parse. "Jean mentioned your dad to the staff a few days ago. That he... well, that he's got an ability like yours. And that he was a student here. But your mom and dad haven't seen each other for... what, sixteen years or so?" A short spike of worry pinged in his mind, and then was just as quickly quashed. If Laurie's power was dangerous, especially given her mother's condition, he medical staff would have her in the lab and isolated.

"Sort of, at least, I think so. He uses pheromones anyway, but not the same way I use them. He's more like that guy who used to go to the school...what was his name? Manuel something. I don't know. And, um, seventeen years ago actually. He ditched my Mom as soon as she told him she was pregnant. She said she got diagnosed with the cancer right after I was born but it's been going in and out of remission since. Every time they think they've got it, it'll go dormant for a couple of years and then bang, right back."

It was all coming out in a rush now, and it was like she couldn't stop herself from talking. Laurie clutched the cushion tighter against her stomach to stop the empty feeling from spreading. Her mother, she was going to lose her soon, and not at some distant time when she was seventy or so but right now. Where was the fairness in that? Why her mother?

"I don't know what to do, Forge. Please, is there anything, some machine you could make maybe? I don't want my Mom to die."

Forge winced. For all his confidence in his abilities, for all the things he knew without a doubt that he was capable of, what Laurie was asking for was completely beyond his purview. "I...I'm sorry, Laurie. This is something that's so far out of my frame of reference that I just... I'm not a doctor. My power's all about machines, not people. If I could, you know I would."

She'd known the answer even before she asked, but she'd had to ask anyhow, just in case. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the couch, trying to get some kind of grip on herself. Whatever time she and her mother had together, she'd make it be enough. It would have to be.

"I'm sorry; it wasn't really fair of me to ask."

"No, it's okay," Forge said, scooting over and putting an arm around Laurie's shoulders. "You want everything to be okay. That's normal. Did the doctors... I mean, did they think that somehow your dad could help?"

Laurie leaned into Forge's arm, taking comfort in the contact as she left her eyes closed. No need for him to see the tears that had been threatening all day since her father had refused to help.

"It's his power, you know? Something about it that's not in mine. They thought maybe if they had a good sample of his pheromones that they could match it up with mine and find out where things were different, maybe neutralise whatever it was. Only, they don't last long outside of contact with us, and he'd have to be here. He was such a...a rat, Forge. I can't believe that man is my father, I thought he'd be different but Mom was right."

"Bastard," Forge growled in agreement. It just didn't make sense to him, a complete contradiction of his worldview. If you can save a life, you do so, he thought. That's how it worked. Mentally, he filed away Laurie's father sight-unseen into the "hit over the head with a shovel and drop in a ditch" category.

"Look, I know it might not be any help," he added, "But Dr. Grey and Professor Xavier knows the best doctors around. If there's a solution, they'll find it."

"You're right. If anyone can find a solution, they'll do it." Laurie replied; trying to muster some of the old faith she'd had before all this started. They would find a way to save her mother, hadn't they found their way out of harder situations before? She yawned, noting that now she was sitting down with her eyes closed like this that she was a lot more exhausted then she'd originally thought.

Slowly, Forge reached over and grabbed a couch pillow, sliding it under Laurie's head. He gently reached out and brushed a lock of hair away from her face and nodded. "It'll be all right," he offered, as reassuring as he could be. "Get some sleep, maybe?"

"Uhha." Laurie replied, voice slurring sleepily at the end of the word as she burrowed into the pillow.

Forge just smiled and waited until Laurie fell asleep before picking his book back up and reading.