ext_53586 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
x-forge.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xp_logs2007-09-17 03:09 pm
x-forge.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2007-09-17 03:09 pm
Forge & Jono - Matthew 5:44
When Jono finds himself suffering the consequences of overextending his power in Afghanistan, he must swallow his pride and go to the last person he would ever want to ask for help. Surprisingly, he gets it - but not in the form he expects.
The bass echoes of the music could be heard even through the glass-and-metal safety doors of the lab, echoing off the metal hallway walls in a lower register. The 300+ beats-per-minute double bass drumming and frenetic guitar shredding accompanied a dark and polyphonic chorus as the song reached a crescendo. Inside the lab, Forge was absently hammering the fingers of his left hand against the counter in a silent piano counterpoint while nodding his head in rhythm as he perused his latest test numbers.
Over the noise, he didn't hear the door open and close, but he noticed the other presence in the room almost immediately. Not so much visually, but he was suddenly struck by the overwhelming feeling that someone was staring at him. Casually, he reached down for his remote, tuning the music down to a more reasonable volume, one that could be talked over.
"Hello, Jono," he said, barely audible over the dying strains of the chorus.
Jono stood with his hands jammed into the pockets of his black leather jacket, wearing no shirt underneath save for the black wrappings of his containment bandages. "Suppose you're wondering why I'm here, after everything," he said mentally after a brief pause.
Forge just shook his head. "You need something," he concluded without looking at Jono. "And the fact that you're here means that it's something you either can't get from anyone else, it's something you can't go to someone else with, or it's something to do with me specifically. If it's the latter, and you're looking for a repeat of the incident on the dock, you can turn right around and walk yourself out of here. I'm not feeling very pugilistic today."
Jono shook his head, and would have made a noise of contempt if he'd had a jaw to form the sounds with. Forge's view of what had happened on the dock was probably one of martyred innocence, no use dredging it up again. "I need your help," he asked, "Please."
The "please" was what caught Forge's attention, as he reached down to turn the music off completely and face Jono. "Then what can I do?" he replied.
Jono just blinked in surprise. "What, no biting commentary? No scathing rebuke? I come in asking please and you're just Johnny Helpful all of a sudden?"
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Jono," Forge spat back. "You wouldn't come to me unless it was something legitimate. Regardless of what you might think of me, I've never turned away anyone who needed my help, not when they had a genuine need." He held up a hand to forestall Jono's inevitable protest. "What you wanted wasn't a need, and you weren't exactly asking. So yes, I decided to fuck with you to try and teach you some humility. Ironic, I know. And yes, there was quite a bit of personal vendetta in there as well. Cards on the table - I don't like you. I've never been given any reason to. But that's not enough reason for me to turn away someone in need. Now, what is it?"
"...right, then," Jono said, chastened by Forge's blunt honesty. With shaking hands, he doffed his jacket and loosened the bandages around his face and chest until they fell. What was visible of Jono's physical body surrounding the psionic fire was pale, without blemish or any real trace of body fat. Just a gaping hole from the bottom of his ribcage, widening up across his chest to his throat and ending just below his nose, with the blue-white coiling energy spitting and sparking within.
"I'm not holding together well," Jono admitted. Giving the psionic equivalent of a deep breath, he relaxed his control momentarily, watching the network of cracks spread across his chest and face, glowing and dimming with the pulse of the energy inside him. "In Afghanistan, I cut loose. I just... I saw this Jeep, and a man with a gun about to shoot, and I just lost control. And since then, it's been like this. I don't want to explode again, Forge. I need help."
Forge just stood quietly, one hand rubbing his unshaven chin. "Pretty massive blast, I'm assuming?" At Jono's nod, Forge approached, walking around the taller man. "Interesting - these don't appear to be wounds. Your skin isn't tearing so much as it's being constantly burned through and reforming. How does it feel?"
"How does it feel?" Jono repeated, taken aback. "What do you mean, how does it feel? I'm like a bloody ticking time bomb here, mate. How do you think I feel?"
"Not what I meant," Forge corrected. "Does it hurt? Change your sensations in any way? Are you any less able to focus, are you feeling dizzy? How does it feel?"
Jono pondered for a moment. "Doesn't hurt. It's just... panic. This is what it was like before the first time I... It's like I can't keep it together. Like anything can push me over the edge. If you have something, like... like a containment suit or something more than the bandages, then I... I need help, Forge. I'll beg if I have to. I don't want to lose this."
Forge shook his head. "Enough with the histrionics," he said, "I'll help. But I'm not a doctor, and I'm not the resident expert in psionics. So why me? Why not Jean or Amelia or the Professor? Or Paige, for that matter?"
"Because their first thing will be to send me back to bloody Muir," Jono snapped back, the bitterness evident in his tone. "And not taking anything away from them there, but I want to beat this, not be poked at and prodded until I might get better."
"So why me?" Forge repeated.
"Because I know you won't bloody well lie to me!" Jono shouted, the flames in his chest shifting from a cool blue to a yellow-tinged red and flaring outwards. "You said it yourself, you help people, it's what you do. And it was your procedure that brought me back in the first place, when it worked..."
"...you tried it again, didn't you?" Forge asked, interpreting Jono's pause. "You and Paige tried to do it again on Muir. And you didn't have the focus to create a fully stable body. And now you're breaking up when your powers flare. Interesting." Ignoring Jono's look of irritation, Forge paced about the lab, tapping one finger against his chin. "Short of blowing you up again and hopefully having enough of you left to redo the procedure, that's not an option. As far as I understand it, your physical form was created from a gestalt of your psychic self-image and Paige's willpower and emotional construction of 'Jono' in her psyche. And something wavered this time, then. Made you unstable."
Jono made a conscious effort to rein in his anger at Forge's implications, forcing the flames to die down to a dull blue-white glow. "If you're trying to make me doubt Paige..." he growled.
Forge shook his head. "Never in a million years. Get it through your head, Jono. That girl will not leave you. Believe me, I've tried. And don't think I'm questioning your dedication to her either. You effectively came back from the dead for her. With quite a bit of help from me, admittedly, but even still. What we're left with, then, is the aphorism that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"You're saying that I didn't have enough what, willpower? Focus? Mental fortitude to give myself a stable body?" Jono was incredulous. "Mate, if there's anything I want more..."
"It's Paige," Forge cut him off. "Unless I'm wrong, and I am rarely wrong, your desire to be with her superseded your desire to have a normal corporeal form. You would accept this half-life, just to be with her. I'm not saying you didn't have enough willpower, I'm saying it was... clouded. Not focused enough."
"Because I love Paige?" Jono said with a psionic laugh. "Forge, only you would see that as a liability."
The silence that radiated from Forge was almost palpable. "Let me tell you something about love, Jono," he said in a voice that was struggling to remain casual. "Love is taking the wants, needs, and desires of another person above your own. Sometimes even above your own basic needs for health, sanity, and survival. It flies in the face of every instinct we have. It's not predictable, it's not... it's not logical. There's no rubric for love, no matrix by which you can quantify or qualify it. It doesn't have any rationale, there's no sense of merit, no matter how much things would seem to work on the surface intellectually, we're stuck at the whim of some biochemical 'spark', some accident of brain chemistry that acts as the necessary catalyst. It's random, uncontrollable, it's... it's an anathema to logical thinking." He took a long breath, then turned to glare at the British mutant. "Love is a mutation, Jono. It's a mutation of reason, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that not all mutations are beneficial ones."
Jono pondered that, and was torn between a sudden feeling of pity for Forge's world view, if indeed this was how he saw the world, and an odd sense of camaraderie. As much as he was physically a hollow, inhuman freak - Forge seemed to be the same way emotionally.
"You're saying, then, that if I was more selfish and thought of myself more than her, that I could have what, done it for myself?" Jono laughed again, this time bitterly. "Mate, if that's my choice, then I'll take this half-life. You don't understand, and with that attitude, you never will. I'm sorry if that's how you see things, I honestly am. But you don't see - being perfect without her or being flawed with her by my side? It's no choice at all, Forge."
With something that might have been a half-smile, Forge just cocked his head and pointed at Jono.
Jono arched an eyebrow, waiting for Forge to say something. "What? Have I left my fly undone?" He followed the line of Forge's finger to a mirror on the wall, and looked at himself. The glow of his psionic fire was still crackling inside him, but where his skin had before been cracked and shattered, it was whole. Not complete, but whole at least.
He turned to Forge, eyebrows raised. "How?" he asked.
Forge just shrugged. "I'm not the expert. But I'd call that step one. Give me twenty-four hours and I'll see what I can do about a better containment shirt, something other than the bandages. And Jono?" He paused, words forming in his throat, unable to be said.
Jono just nodded, the mental gist of Forge's unspoken words coming through as clearly as if he'd said them out loud. "I know, mate. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
At the nod of acknowledgment from Forge, Jono picked up his jacket and slid it over his shoulders as the young inventor turned his music back on and resumed his work. "Forge?" he said as he walked through the door back into the hallway. "You're wrong, you know. You'll see that someday."
As the doors irised closed behind Jono, Forge just shook his head. "You really think so?" he whispered to no one in particular, then raised his voice slightly. "Computer," he intoned, waiting for the answering beep, "Re-open file number six one five. Starsmore, Jonothan. Flag as priority. Run program."
He watched the data scroll across the screen, then gave a small smile. "And then again, maybe we're both wrong," he said cryptically to the empty lab.
The bass echoes of the music could be heard even through the glass-and-metal safety doors of the lab, echoing off the metal hallway walls in a lower register. The 300+ beats-per-minute double bass drumming and frenetic guitar shredding accompanied a dark and polyphonic chorus as the song reached a crescendo. Inside the lab, Forge was absently hammering the fingers of his left hand against the counter in a silent piano counterpoint while nodding his head in rhythm as he perused his latest test numbers.
Over the noise, he didn't hear the door open and close, but he noticed the other presence in the room almost immediately. Not so much visually, but he was suddenly struck by the overwhelming feeling that someone was staring at him. Casually, he reached down for his remote, tuning the music down to a more reasonable volume, one that could be talked over.
"Hello, Jono," he said, barely audible over the dying strains of the chorus.
Jono stood with his hands jammed into the pockets of his black leather jacket, wearing no shirt underneath save for the black wrappings of his containment bandages. "Suppose you're wondering why I'm here, after everything," he said mentally after a brief pause.
Forge just shook his head. "You need something," he concluded without looking at Jono. "And the fact that you're here means that it's something you either can't get from anyone else, it's something you can't go to someone else with, or it's something to do with me specifically. If it's the latter, and you're looking for a repeat of the incident on the dock, you can turn right around and walk yourself out of here. I'm not feeling very pugilistic today."
Jono shook his head, and would have made a noise of contempt if he'd had a jaw to form the sounds with. Forge's view of what had happened on the dock was probably one of martyred innocence, no use dredging it up again. "I need your help," he asked, "Please."
The "please" was what caught Forge's attention, as he reached down to turn the music off completely and face Jono. "Then what can I do?" he replied.
Jono just blinked in surprise. "What, no biting commentary? No scathing rebuke? I come in asking please and you're just Johnny Helpful all of a sudden?"
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Jono," Forge spat back. "You wouldn't come to me unless it was something legitimate. Regardless of what you might think of me, I've never turned away anyone who needed my help, not when they had a genuine need." He held up a hand to forestall Jono's inevitable protest. "What you wanted wasn't a need, and you weren't exactly asking. So yes, I decided to fuck with you to try and teach you some humility. Ironic, I know. And yes, there was quite a bit of personal vendetta in there as well. Cards on the table - I don't like you. I've never been given any reason to. But that's not enough reason for me to turn away someone in need. Now, what is it?"
"...right, then," Jono said, chastened by Forge's blunt honesty. With shaking hands, he doffed his jacket and loosened the bandages around his face and chest until they fell. What was visible of Jono's physical body surrounding the psionic fire was pale, without blemish or any real trace of body fat. Just a gaping hole from the bottom of his ribcage, widening up across his chest to his throat and ending just below his nose, with the blue-white coiling energy spitting and sparking within.
"I'm not holding together well," Jono admitted. Giving the psionic equivalent of a deep breath, he relaxed his control momentarily, watching the network of cracks spread across his chest and face, glowing and dimming with the pulse of the energy inside him. "In Afghanistan, I cut loose. I just... I saw this Jeep, and a man with a gun about to shoot, and I just lost control. And since then, it's been like this. I don't want to explode again, Forge. I need help."
Forge just stood quietly, one hand rubbing his unshaven chin. "Pretty massive blast, I'm assuming?" At Jono's nod, Forge approached, walking around the taller man. "Interesting - these don't appear to be wounds. Your skin isn't tearing so much as it's being constantly burned through and reforming. How does it feel?"
"How does it feel?" Jono repeated, taken aback. "What do you mean, how does it feel? I'm like a bloody ticking time bomb here, mate. How do you think I feel?"
"Not what I meant," Forge corrected. "Does it hurt? Change your sensations in any way? Are you any less able to focus, are you feeling dizzy? How does it feel?"
Jono pondered for a moment. "Doesn't hurt. It's just... panic. This is what it was like before the first time I... It's like I can't keep it together. Like anything can push me over the edge. If you have something, like... like a containment suit or something more than the bandages, then I... I need help, Forge. I'll beg if I have to. I don't want to lose this."
Forge shook his head. "Enough with the histrionics," he said, "I'll help. But I'm not a doctor, and I'm not the resident expert in psionics. So why me? Why not Jean or Amelia or the Professor? Or Paige, for that matter?"
"Because their first thing will be to send me back to bloody Muir," Jono snapped back, the bitterness evident in his tone. "And not taking anything away from them there, but I want to beat this, not be poked at and prodded until I might get better."
"So why me?" Forge repeated.
"Because I know you won't bloody well lie to me!" Jono shouted, the flames in his chest shifting from a cool blue to a yellow-tinged red and flaring outwards. "You said it yourself, you help people, it's what you do. And it was your procedure that brought me back in the first place, when it worked..."
"...you tried it again, didn't you?" Forge asked, interpreting Jono's pause. "You and Paige tried to do it again on Muir. And you didn't have the focus to create a fully stable body. And now you're breaking up when your powers flare. Interesting." Ignoring Jono's look of irritation, Forge paced about the lab, tapping one finger against his chin. "Short of blowing you up again and hopefully having enough of you left to redo the procedure, that's not an option. As far as I understand it, your physical form was created from a gestalt of your psychic self-image and Paige's willpower and emotional construction of 'Jono' in her psyche. And something wavered this time, then. Made you unstable."
Jono made a conscious effort to rein in his anger at Forge's implications, forcing the flames to die down to a dull blue-white glow. "If you're trying to make me doubt Paige..." he growled.
Forge shook his head. "Never in a million years. Get it through your head, Jono. That girl will not leave you. Believe me, I've tried. And don't think I'm questioning your dedication to her either. You effectively came back from the dead for her. With quite a bit of help from me, admittedly, but even still. What we're left with, then, is the aphorism that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"You're saying that I didn't have enough what, willpower? Focus? Mental fortitude to give myself a stable body?" Jono was incredulous. "Mate, if there's anything I want more..."
"It's Paige," Forge cut him off. "Unless I'm wrong, and I am rarely wrong, your desire to be with her superseded your desire to have a normal corporeal form. You would accept this half-life, just to be with her. I'm not saying you didn't have enough willpower, I'm saying it was... clouded. Not focused enough."
"Because I love Paige?" Jono said with a psionic laugh. "Forge, only you would see that as a liability."
The silence that radiated from Forge was almost palpable. "Let me tell you something about love, Jono," he said in a voice that was struggling to remain casual. "Love is taking the wants, needs, and desires of another person above your own. Sometimes even above your own basic needs for health, sanity, and survival. It flies in the face of every instinct we have. It's not predictable, it's not... it's not logical. There's no rubric for love, no matrix by which you can quantify or qualify it. It doesn't have any rationale, there's no sense of merit, no matter how much things would seem to work on the surface intellectually, we're stuck at the whim of some biochemical 'spark', some accident of brain chemistry that acts as the necessary catalyst. It's random, uncontrollable, it's... it's an anathema to logical thinking." He took a long breath, then turned to glare at the British mutant. "Love is a mutation, Jono. It's a mutation of reason, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that not all mutations are beneficial ones."
Jono pondered that, and was torn between a sudden feeling of pity for Forge's world view, if indeed this was how he saw the world, and an odd sense of camaraderie. As much as he was physically a hollow, inhuman freak - Forge seemed to be the same way emotionally.
"You're saying, then, that if I was more selfish and thought of myself more than her, that I could have what, done it for myself?" Jono laughed again, this time bitterly. "Mate, if that's my choice, then I'll take this half-life. You don't understand, and with that attitude, you never will. I'm sorry if that's how you see things, I honestly am. But you don't see - being perfect without her or being flawed with her by my side? It's no choice at all, Forge."
With something that might have been a half-smile, Forge just cocked his head and pointed at Jono.
Jono arched an eyebrow, waiting for Forge to say something. "What? Have I left my fly undone?" He followed the line of Forge's finger to a mirror on the wall, and looked at himself. The glow of his psionic fire was still crackling inside him, but where his skin had before been cracked and shattered, it was whole. Not complete, but whole at least.
He turned to Forge, eyebrows raised. "How?" he asked.
Forge just shrugged. "I'm not the expert. But I'd call that step one. Give me twenty-four hours and I'll see what I can do about a better containment shirt, something other than the bandages. And Jono?" He paused, words forming in his throat, unable to be said.
Jono just nodded, the mental gist of Forge's unspoken words coming through as clearly as if he'd said them out loud. "I know, mate. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
At the nod of acknowledgment from Forge, Jono picked up his jacket and slid it over his shoulders as the young inventor turned his music back on and resumed his work. "Forge?" he said as he walked through the door back into the hallway. "You're wrong, you know. You'll see that someday."
As the doors irised closed behind Jono, Forge just shook his head. "You really think so?" he whispered to no one in particular, then raised his voice slightly. "Computer," he intoned, waiting for the answering beep, "Re-open file number six one five. Starsmore, Jonothan. Flag as priority. Run program."
He watched the data scroll across the screen, then gave a small smile. "And then again, maybe we're both wrong," he said cryptically to the empty lab.
no subject
no subject
I don't think I normally do that....
Anyway, yes, it was an excellent choice.