Amends: Yvette, Forge - Friday morning

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Forge notices Yvette's return, and pays a visit to right an old mistake.



Forge sat in his office, watching the monochrome monitor display its litany of diagnostics and reports in rapidly-scrolling numbers. Given the rather chaotic, albeit humorous, events of the last few days, he could at least find solace in the stability of numbers and data. Very little chance that someone would come along and turn the security system into a Labrador, for instance.

A line caught his eye - just a simple notation that one of the access codes had been used after a break of greater than five days, but wasn't security-flagged for any reason. It was policy that any time a student or staff member was unreachable for greater than forty-eight hours, the computer would automatically flag their phone use and entrance passcodes in the security log. So if it wasn't flagged, that meant an expected absence, which meant travel, which meant--

Reaching into his desk, Forge pulled out a small box and turned off the monitor as he left his office. He walked purposefully up the stairs and down the familiar hall to the room commonly referred to as the Teen Girl Suite. Ducking his head in the half-open door, he caught sight of dark red hair and the omnipresent black self-repairing fabric, and knocked on the edge of the doorframe. "Howdy, Yvette," he said jovially. "Got a moment?"

Yvette looked up from the mini-fridge in the suite's kitchen, where she'd been looking for something to snack on - the food on the plane had tasted like reheated cardboard. Her eyes flared briefly, signalling she'd been surprised, but she covered it with a small smile as she straightened and closed the fridge door. "Hello, Mr. Forge," she said. "Was there the security thing I am forgetting from being away?"

Forge shook his head, holding a small box between his hands. "No, not at all. In fact, I ought to congratulate you for having a trip that didn't involve any kidnapping, vanishing islands, or random shapeshifting." He inhaled a bit sharply after the last one, realizing that he was possibly treading close to the very thing that brought him here.

"Um," he said awkwardly, "Here's the thing. You know what it's like to be able to help people with what you can do, right? Using your powers to help with the Red-X missions?"

Yvette's trip might not have included any of those things, but it had included her mother, and that had been quite enough, even without the political unrest. She tilted her head slightly, coming out from the kitchenette into the common area proper. "Yes," she said simply. "It was feeling good, to be able to help. This is what I'm wanting to do, when I am finishing school, to be the Red X person full time."

That brought a quick smile to Forge's face. "Excellent!" he exclaimed. "Congratulations. And, well, it's a good feeling, right. But sometimes in trying to do the right thing, you wind up doing the wrong thing by accident and not thinking about it. What I mean is, a while back in the Boiler Beach... with the hologram." He paused for a moment, thinking back to when he'd shown Yvette what she would have grown to look like had her mutation not been a factor.

"I didn't think that it would bother you - because I didn't think," he apologized. "I'm sorry. I certainly didn't want to dredge up any bad memories or cause you to think that you'd have been better off... well, you know. Different."

He fidgeted with the box in his hands, and then held it out to Yvette. "I made these for you, as kind of a way to say I'm sorry."

"Oh." Yvette blinked, taken a bit by surprise. It wasn't so much she'd forgotten the incident, but so much had happened since, it had seemed a little... childish to dwell on it. She hadn't approached Forge, however, not knowing how to. "Thank you," she said gravely, reaching for the box with long, gloved fingers. "I know you did not mean the harm, Mr. Forge," she continued, prying at the lid with a fingertip. "It was the shock, to see myself so..." Then she trailled off, looking down at the headphones lying neatly coiled in the box. "But..." she began. Headphones were impossible for her to use, between her hair and her skin.

"I noticed that you sometimes read or study by yourself," Forge explained, "when things are loud, or you kind of just want to be alone in your own head. Well, maybe that's just me. But anyway, these-" he pointed to the headphones - "I took the memory fabric structure and adapted it into a closed-cell foam and thin-band kevlar insulation for the cables. Your skin and hair shouldn't shred them, so if you want to listen to music or books on tape or something - you can carry it around with you."

The responding glow of Yvette's eyes was bright enough to briefly illuminate the room. "Oh, Mr. Forge!" she exclaimed, beaming at him. It seemed she was about to hug him, but pulled herself up short. "This is the wonderful gift! Now I can be having the personal time without making to hide and have the people worry about me!" The happy smile became more of a grin. "And I am bringing much of the music from my home, to listen to. Thank you, very much."

Forge's grin threatened to split his face as he nodded. "You're very welcome, Evie," he said as he reached out with his metal hand to quickly tweak Yvette's nose in lieu of a hug. "And if you're looking for new music, I've picked up a few new albums. European, but not your area. I'm pretty sure it's Swedish... Finnish... could be Trollish, I'm not sure..."

She wrinkled the tweaked appendage at him, cradling the box to her front. "Is this the music I am hearing Laurie playing when she has borrowed from you?" she asked, teasing. "Because the growling is not the singing, Mr. Forge. Even if it is being the Troll music."

"Philistines," Forge sniffed in mock-offense. "Decibel level and beats-per-minute are a perfectly acceptable measure of quality. You might be surprised at how some people's tastes may not be what you expect, though." He gave a quick smile, then straightened up and adjusted his collar. "There's layers, you know. Like a multiple-level silicon substrate platform, polarized, obviously, that's been... um. Layers, like an onion. Or something."

The scientific terms were lost on Yvette, but she did know about layers. "Perhaps we can make the swap?" she suggested. "You to listen to my music, and I to listen to yours?"

"I'll make you a CD," Forge agreed, holding out a hand to shake. "It's a deal."

She took the offered hand without hesitation. "Yes, the deal," she echoed. There was a certain note in her voice that hadn't been there before she'd left - someone might even think she was confident. "Would you like to come to the kitchen for some food, Mr. Forge?" she asked. "I am hungry, and the fridge here is not so helpful. You can, how you say? Catch me up on the gossip?" It was her own version of an olive branch, to take the initiative.

"Gladly," Forge agreed, stepping out into the hall as Yvette followed behind "So there Kyle and I were, in New York, shopping for our girlfriends and he was totally panicked. And of course I had to save the day..."