xp_logs | Nathan and Forge, Thursday afternoon

Still reeling from the conversation with Amanda, Nathan holds Forge back for a few minutes after Humanities to talk to him about his post. Forge finds out that there was a lot more to what happened at Columbia than he knew, but sticks to his guns about making some good come of it. Nathan starts to realize just what's bothering him so much about it all (beyond the long-standing 'forty-six people are dead because of me' issue).

Not his best lecture ever, Nathan thought dully, watching his
Humanities students file out of class, some of them shooting him very
wary looks as they departed. Definitely not his best lecture, and he'd
had some bad ones. Losing his train of thought once or twice in an
hour was one thing. Losing it every second sentence was another.

He noticed Forge, towards the back of the group, and something nagged
at him. That post. That obviously sincere, very thoughtful, totally
off-base post. "Forge," Nathan called out, and the young man looked
around at him inquisitively. "Hang around for a minute or two, if you
don't have anywhere else you have to be?"

"No, sir," Forge answered, pausing to look out the door briefly.
"You're my last class of the day." Nervously, he put his hands flat on
the nearest desk to keep them from shaking. Two weeks, and already Mr.
Dayspring was going to single him out for something. At least it
wasn't in front of the entire class.

Nathan waited until the rest of the kids had left and gave the door a
telekinetic nudge - not all the way shut, given Forge's obvious
nervousness, but enough to give them something in the way of privacy.
"Relax," he said wearily, gesturing for Forge to come back up to the
front of the classroom and sit down. "You haven't done anything. I
just wanted to talk to you about... that post you made this morning."

Forge let out a long breath. "Oh, that," he sighed, relieved. "I know
it seems like, you know, not something I'd normally do, right? But
hey, I figure not everyone can just sit on their hands and watch stuff
on TV, right?"

"I don't know you well enough to make judgements about whether or not
this is characteristic for you," Nathan said, then managed a very
tight, strained smile. "It doesn't entirely surprise me, though, if
you want to take that as a compliment. I was curious, though." This
could class as self-torture, it really could. "To know why you think
what happened at Columbia can be a rallying point... given that it was
mutant on mutant violence, at the core of it. Everything else was just
collateral damage." Intentional collateral damage, a voice from the
back of his head reminded him sternly. No muddying the issue,
Dayspring.

"Well," Forge began, leaning forward on his elbows and steepling his
fingers in what had become a customary debating gesture for him. "I
suppose it's the publicity of it all. Yeah, you had mutants fighting
each other, but riots happen every day. It doesn't make news. What
made news was, what, sixteen people dead? I can't remember the figure.
Never seen the footage, actually. News stations won't show it
uncensored." Forge scowled at that bit of trivia. "What never made
news, though, is the other half of the story, that without some of
those mutants there, there'd have been a whole lot more people dead.
No one wants to concentrate on that."

"Forty-six." Forge looked at him, and Nathan stared right back at him,
his hands clenching into fists under the edge of his desk. "Forty-six
people dead. I could tell you their names, Forge, because every single
one of them is dead because of me."

That bit of news caught Forge completely off-guard, and he just sat
silent for a moment. "You're Charlie," he finally said, quietly.
"That's how they talked about it on the boards, second- and third-hand
stories from people that were there. Unidentified mutants Adam, Brown,
Charlie, David, you know? Were you..." He suddenly became acutely
aware of what Nathan had just admitted to him, and that they were in a
closed room. Alone.

"...did you do it on purpose?" he asked quietly, trying to subtly
shrink back in his seat.

On purpose. Nathan stared at him for a long moment, his mind gone
utterly still and cold, as close to Zen level as he'd ever found since
his conditioning had broken. "I was there to pick up Amanda," he said,
his voice coming out startlingly steady, almost conversational. "We
were going to... lunch, and a horse show. Just a Saturday afternoon
outing. I remember seeing her come out of her tutor's building, waving
at her to come over. When I hit the button to disengage the alarm on
the car, the car blew up."

"...wait, it was someone trying to kill YOU?" Forge's mind reeled. "Is
this because of the stuff you did before you came here? That secret
army stuff?"

"Not kill me. Capture me. Recondition me psionically and put me back
out to work for them." Nathan forced his hands to unclench. "The rest
of the killing was done for two reasons. One, to send a public
message. Two, to get me to surrender. Which I did."

Forge looked down at the desk, almost afraid to even glance at Nathan.
"I don't get it. If you surrendered, why aren't you, you know, back
the way you used to be? I mean-" Forge's voice cracked audibly. "I
saw you back in Scotland. What you did, what you can do. These
guys who started the massacre - those are the ones who you used to,
you know, for?"

"Someone stopped them from taking me. That part of the story's not
mine to tell." Nathan paused for a moment. "They got me back... two,
two and a half weeks later, and put me back the way I used to be.
Haven't you heard this story yet, Forge?" He smiled, no humor at all
in the expression. "How I showed up again to kill the Professor? Shows
you how eventful our fall was, I suppose."

"I... no," Forge resisted the overwhelming urge to run for the door.
"I, um... well, I guess you're better now and... why are you telling
me this?" He looked down at his hands, nervously clenching and
unclenching them. "I just want to do something good here. Make a
statement, you know? Help turn something horrible into something we
can use."

"Because I want you to understand what you're using to make a
statement," Nathan said, pain creeping into his voice suddenly. "The
mutants who killed all those innocent bystanders? They were like me,
Forge. Brainwashed, if you want to use that term. Being used as if
they were weapons, not people. They were not--" He stumbled to a stop,
taking a shaky breath. "They weren't evil mutants, damn it. They were
made into what you saw."

"I never saw it," Forge admitted. "I... I've heard it's horrible.
Can't really bring myself to. I mean, I know where you can find the
footage online - even the stuff the news media won't show. It's
just..." Now or never, John Henry, he thought.

"If we stay quiet about it, about who we are, what we are? There's
going to be worse down the line. People are blaming mutants for what
happened a year ago, Mr. Dayspring. ALL of us. This is how we're going
to show that we're not all like that, that we're not going to be used
as some kind of scapegoat." He swallowed, "Why am I going to be there
Monday? Where's the whole world going to be watching? If you're going
to make a statement, do it where everyone's going to see, right?"

"And what's that statement going to be, Forge?" Nathan asked, his eyes
dropping back to the desk in front of him. He wrestled with his
expression, trying to keep it level, to keep the anger and frustration
and grief - Grief? Who are you mourning, Nathan? - beneath the
surface. "It's going to be pointing at that day and saying 'We're not
like that. We're better'. And the damned thing is, anyone saying that
will be right. Absolutely right. Except that the murdering evil
mutants never had a choice in the matter. The xenophobes that point at
mutants and say we're not human are actually accurate, if they point
at M--at me, and the other people like me. Everything human in us was
burned out of us before we were fifteen years old."

"Then WHO'S going to listen?" Forge shouted, standing up behind the
desk. "You think I don't know there's people you just can't reach?
There's people who when you say the word 'German' immediately
associate it with 'Nazi'. And there's people who'll associate 'mutant'
with 'monster' for the rest of their lives. Unless we prove to them
different. So look at me and tell me I'm a stupid teenager for this,
sir, but I'm TIRED of being the one sitting on my ass letting
the world go by."

He pounded his prosthetic hand into the plastic desktop, not noticing
the dent. "Those who would make peaceful revolution impossible will
make violent revolution inevitable," he quoted, "So tell me I
can't do this, sir. Tell me I'm wasting my time. Go on."

Nathan looked at him levelly. "Are you under the impression that I'm
telling you this to try and talk you out of it? You'd be wrong. I
tried that with Amanda this morning, and I was wrong to do it. I
just--" He stopped, closing his eyes for a minute and running over a
meditation pattern in his mind. "Maybe I just wanted you to
understand," he went on more quietly, the energy draining out of his
voice. "You're like her. You want to see the good that can come out of
this, you have the will to see it."

There was a tightness in his chest that was getting almost painful. He
let his gaze roam over the classroom, looking anywhere but at Forge.
"It's selfish of me, I suppose," he said finally, dully. "It's as much
about me as about them. I'm sorry."

Forge stopped, confused by Mr. Dayspring's sudden defeatist attitude.
"Sir," he asked, "has Professor Xavier explained to you why I'm here?"

Nathan managed to shake his head. What was he doing? he thought
disjointedly, his focus straying, the Askani dying back to an agitated
buzz in the back of his mind.

"September 20th, 2003," Forge rattled off the date. "Homecoming rally
at my high school. Everyone was required to attend. Everyone was going
to be there. Now, I don't know if you've noticed, but even with all
the stock parts, I've never exactly been one to fit in." Forge took a
deep breath, steeling himself. "I wasn't kidnapped off the streets at
fifteen and turned into some kickass brainwashed super soldier. But
I'd been pushed around. Left out. Ridiculed when I wasn't totally
ignored or disregarded. Looked down on by everyone - from the jocks to
the geeks who thought I was below even THEM. And I got sick of it.

"September 20th," Forge continued, "I thought I'd do something to get
everyone's attention. To make them see that I wasn't going to take it
anymore, being shut out. Being not included. Not good enough." He
swallowed hard. "Ammonium tri-iodide, 600 grams, with a precipitated
nitrophosphorus booster charge. Aluminum and magnesium casing,
precision timing system, with a short-range infrared beam transmitter
initiator system. You're a professional, sir. Tell me what I made."

Nathan looked up at him, his gaze sharpening a little. "Hell of a way
to make a point," he said. "Building a bomb like that." It sounded
like Forge could have given Vasily a run for his money when it came to
explosives - which didn't particularly surprise Nathan, of course.

"Went off in my locker prematurely," Forge explained, holding up his
metal hand. "Shaped charge effect. Sheared my left arm at mid-ulna,
left leg eight inches down the femur, perforated my spleen, lower and
upper intestine, and they just barely saved my kidney." He looked out
the window, then back at Nathan, trying his best not to flinch or
break down crying. "No one showed me how to make it, no one taught me
how to do it - I just did it. My mutant power, go figure. And the
first time I do something big with it, I intentionally tried to kill
about five hundred people. Because I wanted to make a point."

Forge clenched his fists hard enough to hear the joints in his
prosthesis protest. "All because I couldn't stand being looked down on
for being different. Now I get a whole new label attached to that.
Mutant. They don't want to look down on us, sir. They want to put us
in camps, on lists, in cells. And someone's likely to want to make a
point of their own. I can't do what you can do, or Shiro, or Ms.
Blaire, or Mr. Marko. Hell - next to Ramsey, I've got probably the
least dangerous power in existence. And look," he stared at his left
hand, "look what I could have done."

He glanced back up at Nathan, resolve beginning to form. "So you want
to try and show me that my motivations aren't good enough? I was
almost a headline that would have made Columbine look like a fight
over lunch money, and you want to tell me that I'm not thinking things
through by taking a nonviolent route?" Forge scowled. "Thanks, sir.
You've sure opened my eyes."

Nathan took a deep breath. Then another. "You have," he said finally,
very quietly, "one of the most potentially dangerous, and most
potentially wondrous mutations I have ever seen. Don't ever dismiss
yourself like that. As many lives as you may have almost taken, you
will probably save many times that if you keep going the way you are
here and now."

He got up, moving stiffly to the window. "This was not about trying to
tell you that your motivations weren't good enough," he went on,
staring out at the snow. "I admire the hell out of Amanda, you, anyone
who thinks like you do. Who can put your money where your mouth is."

He looked back at Forge. "It just hurts," he said, managing to keep
his voice steady. "Even if Amanda gets up there and makes an impact,
changes some minds - and I really hope she does - it's going to come
at the cost of mutants who were turned into weapons, into
things, by 'normal' people. In a program that was supposedly
initiated to protect the interests of the same people whose better
natures Amanda's going to be appealing to." He gave a very small, very
bitter smile. "It's the irony, I suppose. The truth's never going to
come out - it can't - and so when people look back at Columbia, for
good or for bad, they're never going to see it all. I think I just
wanted you to know, Forge."

"Professor Xavier told me something," Forge said quietly, "he said
'you cannot unring the bell'. No matter how many people's lives my
inventions save, no matter now many new theories I can devise, no
matter how smart I am - nothing's going to change what I did to
myself. I can't pretend to know what it was like for you, or for those
people, and I'm sorry. But like you said, if she gets up there and
convinces ten people, then maybe one of those people will convince ten
other people - and we end up with a world where we don't have to be
feared, or hated, or used."

Amanda's words about not having told him because he was beaten already
came back to him, and Nathan sighed suddenly, rubbing at his temples.
"So," he said, a touch of wryness in the weary words. "Now that I've
acted on whim and tried to load you down with something that you don't
really need to be carrying..." He shook his head, looking back at
Forge with a faint smile. "Amanda has the right idea," he said more
softly. "So do you. Don't pay any attention to me. This many regrets
does not make for an objective viewpoint on the question of hope."

"We really could..." use you there? Forge left unsaid. Mr.
Dayspring had already BEEN there. "- use the support." Forge moved for
the door, talking over his shoulde. "I really think we can start
something Monday, sir. I can't say anything about your regrets, but I
know if I don't do this - I'll have another one of my own."

Nathan nodded, turning back to the window and letting the air in his
lungs out on a long breath, trying to let some of the tension go with
it. Not all that successfully. "I'm all for minimizing regrets, Forge.
Thank you," he added, his voice subdued. "For listening."

"Thank me Monday, sir," Forge said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a
speech to look over."