xp_logs | Nathan and Forge, Tuesday afternoon (Reply)

Forge stops down to visit Nathan, who's admiring his new ceiling. They talk a little about how the psimitar performed on Youra and what happened, and Forge shares a new and very well-timed invention, based on the psimitar's technology. There are a few stumbles in the conversation, but it's becoming more obvious that Nathan is starting to come out of his funk.

Every time he opened his eyes and studied his transformed ceiling, something else caught his attention. He was counting coins, now - Lorna had brought in a handful of the play-coins they trained with, and a picture of them in the Danger Room doing it. Maybe once his TK was a little better Moira would let him have some of the coins, Nathan reflected dimly. That would be a way to keep his mind occupied.

Forge peered in the window cautiously. Mr. Dayspring seemed alert, and it had been more than a week since he'd been responsive, they'd said. From what he understood, that generally meant a good prognosis.

Cracking the door to the room slightly, Forge ducked his head inside. "Mr. Dayspring?" he called out quietly, "You got a few moments?"

Nathan blinked. New voice. "Come in, Forge," he called back a bit hoarsely, his thoughts sharpening a little as he heard the young man's footsteps approach. Now, this was someone he had wanted to talk to - well, for a couple of days, at least. "Like my ceiling?" he asked as Forge moved into his peripheral vision. "It was there when I woke up this morning."

Forge glanced up to the ceiling, smiling at the collage of photos, drawings, and knickknacks that had been attached above Nathan's bed. He noted the drawing Nathan had made of the psimitar, that he'd given to Hank to put up there. And beside it, the sketch Marie-Ange had made of Nathan holding the weapon and apparently taken great care to date three months prior. Hmph.

"It's almost a window," Forge quipped, pulling a stool over by the bed. "Only not. So..." he paused briefly, "this is kind of awkward. I feel like the theater owner - 'well, other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?'." With a laugh, he tapped his fingers on the rail of the bed. "Sorry, kind of the whole 'whistling past the graveyard' habit. I'm not the best with stressful situations, you might have noticed."

"Don't worry." Nathan took as deep a breath as he could and focused on Forge, managing a tired half-smile. "Although I appreciate the historical reference." He'd noted Forge's attention to the psimitar sketches. "You know... they had it standing in the corner of the room for most of last week. Apparently I keep waking up panicking, thinking I couldn't reach it..." Okay, maybe he hadn't actually needed to say that...

"You should be able to get it to respond to your telekinesis..." Forge mused, "unless they don't want you putting strain on your nervous system. I'm no doctor, but I do know a fair amount about what shock does to the nervous system, and from working on Mr. al-Rashid's interface, the effect on the deeper cerebral functions. How you trigger mutant powers, for instance. You stress your nervous system by exerting your telekinesis, and that'll only make your back heal slower."

Stopping, he smiled quickly. "I've been listening to Dr. MacTaggart talk about it. She's got a vested interest in getting you on your feet quickly, I gather."

"I'm supposed to be taking it easy, yeah. Well... that and my control's kind of shot anyway." He gazed up at Forge for a moment, managing the faint smile again. "It worked... really well. I don't know if anyone told you that. I wouldn't have been able to--" He stopped, swallowing, trying to keep his suddenly roiling emotions steady, out of his expresson. "It helped. A lot."

Beaming with pride, Forge settled on a businesslike nod before speaking. "I talked to Dr. McCoy after everyone got back, I understand it... it was bad. You and Mr. Guthrie caught the worst of it. Of those who survived, I mean." As soon as he said the words, Forge winced. And then there's a time to just shut UP, John Henry, he scolded himself.

Nathan's face fell, but he struggled for composure as he saw Forge wince. "It's... it wasn't what we expected," he said, his voice breaking a little. "Everyone... everyone did really well, though. Kept it together. Did the best they could." Did that include him? Whatever Jack said, he still had his doubts.

"But it worked, right?" Forge asked earnestly. "Got the bad guys, saved the day, made the world save for mankind, all that? Isn't that what it's about?"

"It's not that simple." He didn't think he had the energy to sort out how Hollywood was different from the real world for Forge. "The kids... the kids are okay, though," he said, stumbling over the words a little. "Means a lot. I was glad I could tell Kyle they were, too..."

"It meant a lot to Kyle," Forge agreed. Seeing Nathan's face, he sighed. "I know some people died. They had a funeral while I was away this weekend. Someone mentioned they were your friends. I'm sorry."

"They died..." Nathan trailed off, wondering why he didn't just say it. They deserved to be remembered for what they'd done, not just for having died. "We were in front of the door to where the kids were. Trying to protect them. Just the four of us... there were too many, and Mick and Tim... their abilities didn't work very well in close quarters like that." He swallowed, his throat trying to close. "They died for something that meant a lot to them," he whispered, thinking about the letters. "Doesn't make it any easier. But they wouldn't have... not been there."

"Wow," Forge breathed. "I... I don't know what to say. I mean, I never had to go through the stuff like you did, or Kyle did, but it scares the hell out of me regardless. And you guys going out there and putting an end to it, well... I really wish I'd had the chance to thank them, you know?"

"Just... remember them. I have this..." Nathan trailed off again, losing his train of thought. "We all had this fear of being forgotten," he murmured. "They used to bury us in the desert, erase us from existence, if we died. There weren't any funerals at Mistra."

The thought ran a chill up Forge's spine. "I didn't know them, but I know I'll sleep easier at night because of what they did, if that's any help. If it'd have been you," he offered, "you know no one here would forget you. Heck, they'd name the entire wing of the medlab after you or something."

"The Dayspring Memorial Medlab Wing... his very favorite place in the world." Had he just made a joke? It wasn't much of a joke, but that had definitely sounded like a joke. Nathan smiled a bit wryly up at the ceiling. "Gotta say, it's rapidly paling on me... new ceiling decoration or not." Although the new ceiling decoration did make a difference. It was like this sprawling visual representation of the here-and-now, right above his head.

"Well, then you'll be looking forward to getting out of here," Forge said. "I know what it's like to be stuck in a bed for months on end, believe me. I can empathize."

Nathan found himself focusing on Forge again. "You do, don't you," he murmured, then mustered a slightly more wan smile. "Won't be months for me, thankfully. Couple more weeks, tops."

"Was actually thinking of something, wondering if there would be a way for Kyle to share his healing factor, if I could build something..." Forge let the phrase trail off, then looked over to Nathan. "But then I remembered what you'd said, that some things would end up hurting folks more than helping. And I thought of that poor kid back in Scotland in December, and what happened to him. So that wasn't a good idea. What I did come up with, however..."

Forge reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a small paperweight, roughly half-spherical in shape and formed from apparently three separate crystal types fused together.

"Took me a while to reverse-engineer it from the schematics you started," Forge explained, "but it works on the same principle as your psimitar's capacitor crystal. Only it's more like... well, a psionic Polaroid camera. Something that'll store a thought, or a memory, something you can keep around for your kid or something. When you're better, we'll test it out."

Nathan stared at it for a long moment, Askani humming in interest at the back of his mind. "I could... a memory of them, so that sh--so there'd be something concrete to remember them by." Uncle Tim and Uncle Mick. Nathan raised his eyes to meet Forge's. "Thank you," he said, his voice unsteady again. "For thinking of it. It's one of the things... they said they regretted, you know. In the letters they left. That they'd never get to see the baby."

"I don't know what you believe," Forge hesitatingly ventured, "about God and Heaven and anything like that, but the fact that you've got a whole tribe of ghosts in the back of your head ought to tell you that anything's possible. Who knows, sir? Maybe they will."

"Always been kind of... aggressively atheistic," Nathan said tiredly, his eyes wandering back to the ceiling. "I'm starting to see how believing something could be comforting, though..." To believe that it wasn't the end, that the people you lost weren't gone forever...

"It seems that the... Askani?" Forge tried to remember the name, "You've written down a lot about them. Their names, their deeds, the things their culture was about. They haven't even happened yet, but you're making sure they're not forgotten. Nothing says you can't do that for your friends."

"All these good ideas..." Nathan smiled weakly. Productive ideas, too. Maybe everyone was secretly in league with Jack. He sighed, though, the fatigue starting to catch up with him again. "Hard to... focus on that right now, Forge. Maybe I should be trying harder than I am, I don't know..."

"No, hey, man. Sleep," Forge insisted. "You go thinking too hard and then your brain's going to seep out your ears. So then Doctor Mactaggart's going to yell at me AND I'll be on brain-mopping duty." With a smile, he turned to head for the door. "And by the way," he called back, "Napoleonic Wars test? Aced it."