xp_logs | Forge and Jubilee, Sunday morning (Reply)

Fed up with the silent treatment, Jubilee hunts down Forge in his lab, and a rather pointed conversation ensues.

Jubilee had never particularly liked visiting the Medlab - sick people were not her favourite thing in the world, after all. There was all that needing to be sympathetic and understanding when all she really wanted to do was make a 'are you really oozing?' icky face and run back upstairs. Moving quickly down the corridor she reached the door to what she'd been told was now Forge's lab.

It was with a grandiose flourish that she slammed open the door and stood, hands on hips in front of it.

"Right, you little pain in the ass. We are going to talk." she mock growled, giving him her fiercest 'I'll kick your ass' look.

Calmly, Forge turned from his work bench. He'd noticed Jubilee on the monitors minutes before she entered the lab, thanks to the mansion's security system. He reached over slowly and pressed a button on a nearby console, watching the door slide shut behind Jubilee. Walking slowly out from behind the bench, he folded his arms and leaned against an open locker, silently looking Jubilee up and down.

"So," he said after a moment, "talk."

"For someone who's been giving me the silent treatment since I got back, you're awfully calm." Jubilee noted, leaning back against the closed lab door.

"For someone who vanished for almost eighteen months, you seem to have this idea that I have something to say to you," Forge replied. "Some of us have been busy with important things. Obligations. Responsibilities. Commitments. I'm sorry, where've you been again? Oh, that's right. Gutters of the World tour."

"Nice one, Forge." Jubilee said, arms folding in unconscious reflection of his own stance. "Aren't you a little old to be trying to lay the guilt trip on someone?"

"Thought you didn't have anything to feel guilty about," Forge shot right back. "Moving forward with your life and all that. New job, new life. Even new co-workers. Including that guy Bishop. Ex-cop, if I understand it right. That's what we call irony."

"I wouldn't...God, you are such a dick. Where the hell do you get off judging me? When was the last time I even heard from you? Wasn't like I wasn't in the country for awhile after all." Jubilee bit out, her shoulders tensing.

"August 2006," Forge rattled off. "Not long after you'd gone back to LA to get your head together. Couple weeks went by. Couple months. Then you just vanished off the map, apparently. As for where I get off, well..."

Forge reached out and tapped in a few commands on a keyboard, multiple large plasma screens flickering to life behind him. Replays of news footage, ships and helicopters circling an empty spot of ocean where the island of Attilan had once stood. Another screen blinked on, showing the rubble and aftermath of the San Diego earthquake. Yet another displayed the marching in the streets and the chaos of the Smichov riots. A fourth showed dinosaurs in the streets of New York and panicked civilians running for cover.

"I've been working. Doing something to make a difference," he said, "That gives me the right."

Jubilee watched the images quickly flick by, swiping a hand through her hair, stance adjusting slightly. "So what? None of us who weren't off playing hero get a second chance, that about the size of it?"

Pondering that for a while, Forge tapped his fingers together under his chin, standing in silence for a minute before speaking. "Playing hero,: he repeated, turning towards the open locker. Casually, he removed a small black box, withdrawing a pair of enameled insignia and slapping them down on the metal workbench, the twin gold X markings on them shining in the fluorescent light.

"There's where you're mistaken, Jubilee. Some of us aren't playing anymore."

"You think those mean a damn thing to anyone but the people here?" Jubilee asked, giving him a look. "I've got a pair of my own, Forge. Left them back in L.A, although I suppose they might have sent them back by now. You really don't get it, do you? It's just a fucking symbol. Little gold X's, trench coats, fucking yellow raincoats. It's all just a fucking symbol. No one out there cares. No one. It's what's done that matters, actions. You just, you don't get it. How can you, when I don't?"

"Because it does matter!" Forge shot back, finally raising his voice and slamming his fist on the bench. "It matters because it's a symbol. It says you believe - I believe - in doing the right thing, and being willing to stand up for it, and stand in the way of those who'd do harm. It says that I believe in being part of something bigger than myself, bigger than my own personal agenda and my own wants. It means putting the greater good first. They may have given you a pair, but you turned your back on everything the team stands for when you chose to go it alone."

He swept his hand across the bench, scooping up the insignia into one clenched fist. "You're right in one thing: it's what you do that matters. Whether you're an X-Man, or a cop, or working from the shadows, or behind a desk, or just being one person standing up and saying this is wrong and it stops here and now - it matters, Jubilee. So think what you want about me, but don't you dare accuse me of playing hero."

"Soon as you stop accusing me of turning my back on everything, you self-righteous asshole. You think I didn't try? I tried. I tried for months to be what that 'symbol' told me I should be. I couldn't do it, okay? I wasn't fucking good enough. So I left, I did a runner, again, and I made mistakes, ones I can't take back even if I wanted to. But I learnt somethin' from them, and now I'm tryin' for a second chance...third chance, fuck. I'm doing that right thing, Forge. Whatever you think of me, I'm tryin' to do the right thing."

Jubilee gave him a look then, silent after her outburst, exhausted and slumped back against the door in a posture that could turn defiant in an instant, it all depended on him.

Forge opened his mouth to speak, and for a moment he wasn't looking at Jubilee, but at Marius laying in a hospital bed after being brought back from Monaco. He saw Nathan, and Jean, and Logan, and Pietro, and Angelo, and Amanda, and everyone who'd had blood on their hands or the fragments of a broken life shoved together and brought through those doors with nowhere else to go. He saw himself in a bloody mess in a scorched and blasted high school hallway, missing a hand and a leg and something even more important deep inside.

This is what redemption looks like.

"Then do the right thing," he finally said with a nod. "Earn it."