xp_logs | Forge & Dani Powwow

Forge and Dani go to a nearby powwow! Dani gets into a fight and Forge thinks she is incredibly stupid for it, but they actually manage to come to an understanding on some things.

Dani had left the arena as soon as the dances were over to wander around the various booths selling food, clothing, jewelry, games, anything they could think of. She was in heaven and had already decided what other entertainment she was going to see later, although currently she was arguing over the price of a dream catcher with a lady in Cheyenne.

Forge looked over his shoulder at Dani, rolling his eyes slightly at the babbling. Cheyenne was a bizarre language, and he may as well have been deaf for all that he understood of it. Thankfully, enough tribes were around at the powwow that English was a common tongue.

"My god, it's like the grade school carnival from Hell," Forge breathed, hands shoved into the pockets of his vest. Glaring through his sunglasses, he perused a rack of jewelry before him. Remarkably good, if primitive, he thought.

"Bitch!" Dani yelled, her voice cutting through the cacophony of people. She was standing in the center of the wide walkway, hands crossed over her chest and glaring at another girl about the same age.

Forge just closed his eyes and sighed. "Crap," he breathed, turning around to see what Dani could possibly have gotten herself into. These were her people. If he could manage not to fight with them, what was her excuse?

"Forge?" she called, spying him in the crowd, "She," it was obvious who Dani meant, "says we're 'mentally deficient.'"

"She says we," Forge deadpanned, "she means you. He looked over at the other girl and cocked a thumb at Dani. "I have to apologize for my friend here. She's a bit moody. You know how pregnant women get."

The other girl looked at Forge slowly, "No. I meant Cheyenne," she spat the word, glaring, "And so far, you're both proving me right."

Slowly, Forge looked at Dani. Oh, she was mad all right. This was some kind of "my tribe, your tribe" thing, he could tell. Just as slowly, he turned back to face the other girl. "Cheyenne are mentally
deficient, then? Care to tell me how you came to that conclusion?"

"She's Pawnee," Dani explained, as if it were obvious. She kept the inhibitor on, there was no way she was taking it off, "They don't need a reason. They don't know how to think. Only bark like dogs. Too bad they aren't as loyal."

Forge whipped around to turn and look at Dani like she'd grown a second head. "What the fuck?" he demanded. "Jesus, Dani! Who the hell taught you shit like that? 'Pawnee are stupid', 'Cheyenne are stupid' - here, lemme read something," he pulled out one of the pamphlets the people at the booths had handed out. "This year," he quoted, "less Native Americans will leave their reservations for college. Unemployment on the reservations will rise faster than in the cities. In the past fifteen years, teen suicide on the reservations has increased by thirty percent. Thirty percent!" he proclaimed, waving the pamphlet in Dani's face. "This doesn't say Pawnee, this doesn't say Cheyenne, this doesn't say Arapaho, this
doesn't say Iroquois. To hell with this tribal rivalry shit, you're all in the same fucked-up Ignorance Canoe, headed right for Stupidity Falls." He glared around at the small crowd that had gathered. "The
lot of you," he intoned.

Dani glared at him, making a grab for the pamphlet, "John-Henry!" she swore, looming over him, "You don't know nothin' city boy. I tell you and tell you, but you ain't ever gonna listen! Tribe is forever. She," Dani pointed at the other girl, "Will always be Pawnee. She can turn green and smell like roses, she's still Pawnee. You say human or mutant matter, but it don't. Tribes matter," around her, many people were nodding.

"Tribes matter," Forge said bitterly, "It's just another name for you people to call yourself. Nothing more. You know what people have been calling me since we got here? O'xevé'ho'e," he spat. "Old man
explained it to me. Half-breed. It's the first thing they care about here, half of them it's the only thing they're going to see."

He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, displaying the shining metal prosthetic hand. "They don't see this, they don't see me as a mutant, they don't see me as the genius I am - 'half-breed' is enough for them. That girl's going to see you as just another Cheyenne, you're going to see her as just another Pawnee. Hundred years from now, you'll both be dead and your grandkids are going to do the same thing."

He spat on the ground between both girls, looking disgusted at the both of them. "You preach to me about opening my mind to new things," he accused Dani, "You haven't got a goddamn leg to stand on."

"I see you trying so hard," she accused, "Holed up in your lab all the time! You pushed me to apply to college, I did! You said I'm better than what I thought! You said I'm so great and wonderful and can do anything I try to, but you don't want to hear the stories of the buffalo or how we came to be. You think it's stupid! You don't care at all about that. The dances earlier didn't mean anything to you. Well, I'm tired of trying! You said you wanted to know about being Cheyenne, here! Study this in a lab!" Dani turned, stalking off through the crowd.

Forge just stared after Dani, jaw slack. Finally, he looked around at everyone still standing there. "The hell you all looking at?" he grumbled, stalking after his pregnant friend.

Dani was sitting at a picnic table set up a little ways away from most of the food stalls, her back to him. "What? Come to tell me that I should run back to Sheldon and beg forgiveness now?" the hurt in her voice obvious.

Rolling his eyes, Forge sat on the bench next to her. "No, I'm going to tell you that you were a bigoted asshole back there, and would have deserved it if someone had knocked you on your loudmouthed ass."

Dani muttered under her breath, "She started it."

"I don't give a damn if she started it," Forge scolded, "Jeez, at least be a little smarter if you're going to start shit. Insult her for her, not some group she belongs to. Seriously, someone calls me a
dirty mutie, I'm going to get pissed. Because they're judging me for being part of a group, assuming we're all the same. Now, if they call me a half-pint asshole... well, there's probably a more accurate assessment," he admitted. "But you see my point? Going off like that's no better than those guys you tangled with last week."

"I don't give a damn if she started it," Forge scolded, "Jeez, at least be a little smarter if you're going to start shit. Insult her for her, not some group she belongs to. Seriously, someone calls me a dirty mutie, I'm going to get pissed. Because they're judging me for being part of a group, assuming we're all the same. Now, if they call me a half-pint asshole... well, there's probably a more accurate assessment," he admitted. "But you see my point? Going off like that's no better than those guys you tangled with last week."

Dani sighed, she did not need a lecture right this minute, "Forge, you missed her calling me a 'Dirty Cheyenne squaw who didn't know anything except how to spread my legs' she said Cheyenne were too stupid for anything else. That's when I called her a bitch. Okay?" Dani stood up, pacing back and forth, "Every time we have tried to do anything with the Pawnee, they refused. Usually by killing the messenger asking their assistance. The only thing between us that has changed in over a hundred years is that they stopped killing Cheyenne. They still won't talk to us."

"So?" Forge replied calmly. "Hate the bitch because she's a bitch, not for what her dead ancestors did. Just because she's going to hold a stupid generational prejudice doesn't give you the right to oh my god
I sound like Professor Xavier shoot me now," he blurted, dropping his head to the table.

"Bang," Dani shot her finger towards Forge. "He's wise though, the Professor. Sounding like him, ain't a bad thing sometimes."

"Then you ought to listen to the stuff he's teaching," Forge said. "about not judging individuals because they belong to a certain group. If that were the case, I'd start thinking all humans were like those jackasses who burned down the coffee shop or the kids who picked on me all through school. It wouldn't be fair to judge Dr. Bartlet or Dr. MacTaggart by those standards, would it?"

Sitting back down again, Dani looked over at the food boothes. They looked good right about not. Distracting. Unfortunantly, they weren't distracting enough. "I ain't gonna kill her or nothing," Dani replied, "I was talking to Samson about last week and he said they probably don't know better, you know? I guess maybe, it's the same thing. They don't know better."

"'They' includes 'you', you know," Forge shot right back. "You keep that mindset in your head and you're no better than her, or the rest of these primitives who can't look past their reservation, or the backwoods racists who burned down the coffee shop. If you can't open your mind past that, really, you're letting your gifts go to waste."

He motioned around him. "This is your heritage, sure. But it's the past. The future isn't just in our powers and what we can do with them, it's in opening our minds past their modes of thinking.
Stuff like back there, you got stuck in."

"So what then?" Dani asked, turning to face him at sitting back down, "You want me to say I was wrong? Fine. I was wrong. You're right. You're always so god-damn right!"

"Why's that piss you off so much?" Forge asked quietly. "You admit you made a mistake, you move on. You learn from it. That's what Doc Samson's been telling me for months now. And heck," he prodded her shoulder gently, "if I can change YOUR mind, then maybe the two of us can change two people, then the four of us can change four more people, and then we get a whole movement going. New consciousness and all that."

Dani sniffed, not wanting to cry. Not now and certainly not over this, but not quite able to stop, "My whole life, I know one thing, you know? And now, everything is different, everything. I mean, more than just being at Xavier's. Ain't nothing the way I knew it my whole life, and everyone just acts like I'm supposed to smile and be okay with it. It ain't like I just got a haircut or a new shirt. And I thought, this would be fun, a powwow, reconnect a little. And all I've done is feel alienated and get into fights."

Forge cocked his head, puzzled. "I don't get it," he said slowly. "You've got things better now. It's like, okay, if I had a clunky 286 computer ever since childhood, and then I got a brand new modern one -
I wouldn't be crying over the outdated machine when I have a newer, better one. Yeah, you were used to the old one, but the new one's better." He looked closely at Dani, honest befuddlement crossing his
features. "It's really not that easy for you?" he asked.

She sighed, wiping her nose with her t-shirt, "It's just a lot, you know? Yeah, you got that new computer, but you also got a digital camera and satellite TV and whatever new programs and a car and more. But to have all that, you gotta get rid of your old computer and all its files and they aren't going to give you any manuals on how to use anything and you've never seen anything like it before. Make sense?" she asked, not entirely certain she had explained it correctly. Computers were confusing.

"No," Forge said with a smile. "This is me, remember? I can't not know how to use that stuff. But I think I see your point. It's like what the Doc said to me - change hurts. You're fighting against inertia, and it's never easy. But if you just sit still and nothing changes and you're complacent with it, well," he tapped the pamphlet against the table. "Thirty percent," he quoted again.

"I didn't say it was bad change!" Dani replied, "Just that it was a lot. And so much at once. I mean, you're a computer genius and I can barely work the TV in the recroom. But the more things change...I changed. And now, looking around here, that pamphlet," she nodded at it in dismay, "it ain't me. Which is good, but if I change too much, what if I lose who I am? I mean, the tribe? Bad enough I lose myself in other people sometimes, now I gotta just abandon me too?"

"It's not abandoning," Forge explained, "more like... remaking. When you make frybread, are you abandoning the oil and flour? No, you're making them into something new. Think of it that way."

"And it gets eaten," Dani pointed out. He had to use a food analogy, didn't he?

Forge spread its hands, "That's its purpose. Sometimes you've got to go through some tough times to find yours." He rapped his knuckles against his leg for emphasis. "I did."

Giving in to temptation, Dani stood, holding a hand out to Forge, "You mentioned food. And right now, I'm just everyone's secretary, I think."

"Right now," Forge echoed, "you get to play native guide and find me an english-speaking food vendor and some loud music. We'll worry about the future later."

"They all speak english, silly," she informed him, "They just don't want to. Besides, I only speak Cheyenne, I don't know Iroquois or Navajo or anything. Different languages."

"Should've brought Ramsey," Forge deadpanned, "he'd love it here. Until they decided to string him up for the whole 'sins of the white man' thing. But enough about that. Point me to food, woman!"

OOC: I meant to invite other characters. I forgot - so if you want to mention others being there, cool. if not...it's all good.