Tadpole (Fanfiction; X-Men, Forge/Toad angsty drabbles)
A commission for my dear DeathStar510. Two drabbles, one fluffy, one angsty, and I kind of almost made myself cry with the second one. Haaa, I am such a dork.
Tried something a little different - the first fic is made of essentially nothing but dialogue, and the second has pretty much zero. I kind of like how both of them came out, actually. Diff'rent strokes, man.
Titles: Pretty Powers; Tadpole
Pairing: Forge/Toad. How I love 'em.
Rating: PG for one four-letter word. My Mort tends to swear like a truck driver when he feels comfortable.
Word Count: 1352 total
Warnings: Don't ever read or write Age of Apocalypse Fortimer if you feel like having a happy day afterwards. Or at least not without a box full of kittens close at hand.
Pretty Powers
“What's it like?”
“What?”
“Ah... if you don't mind me asking, I mean. You know, your tongue and spit bombs and everything.”
“Move over. It's like - okay, the tongue's just like an extra arm or something, 'cept without fingers. And it can taste. So that's cool. And imagine having the worst cold you ever had, except it doesn't make you sick. You can like, harness the power of the gross, and blast it at assholes, and watch 'em get all covered in gunk and... and have to take a shower really, really bad.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Oh yeah, what 12-year-old doesn't wish for super-loogies? 'Course, once you're not 12 anymore...”
A beat.
“Okay, so it's not so great. I didn't get one of the pretty powers, you know?”
“I dunno, green's my favorite color-”
“You know what I mean. I can't make a million pieces of diamond dust, or make storm clouds turn into a rainbow. Some guys, all they gotta do is put on a pair of sunglasses or gloves and poof, they're normal. But me... sometimes there's not a single thing I wouldn't change.”
“Mort...”
“Aw, it's not all bad. When I was a kid, I always wanted to fly. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, all that shit. And on a good day... I can come pretty close.”
Another beat of comfortable silence.
“How about you?”
“Mmm?”
“Makin' all the stuff you do. How do you wrap your mind around it? Sometimes I see your hands moving so fast and I'm like, damn, even you can't keep up with your brain.”
“I... it sounds weird, but sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can see it all, like I'm on top of a really tall hill looking down, and I have this clear picture in my mind of how it's all supposed to be and fit, and it's just a matter of putting the pieces together until it's real... but sometimes it's like - I don't know. The machines make themselves. Like they're already alive and real somewhere else, and they're just telling me how they want to be. Or there's... something else making them. I'm using the tools, but something else is working through me, and I'm just another tool."
“...You're just another tool, huh?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Sawright - yeah, I do. Somma this stuff, it's - it's just weird. But hey, I'd take freaky machines over big metal claws any day. Way more interesting than 'oooh, look at me, I can slice things into little tiny bits, I'm so cool!”
“And yet he'll be the one on the Wheaties box.”
“Ha! You know what? He can keep it.”
Another beat, this one warm and slow and lazy, as they hold each other close.
“Hey, Forge. I changed my mind.”
“Hmm?”
“I wouldn't change a thing.”
# # #
Tadpole
Mortimer got to be real good with those swords.
For the longest time, before the world went straight to Hell, when their lives weren't made of burned-out buildings and constantly looking over their shoulders, when they were kids - God, it seemed like a lifetime ago... back then, Mortimer never seemed right in his own green skin. The only place he knew how to operate and be graceful was underwater or flying in midair. Sometimes just walking on even ground was an alien concept; too-long webbed feet were easy to trip over, shoes were out of the question.
That changed after Forge came into his life. Slowly, but it did. He started gradually being okay with things, okay with himself. Because finally someone else was okay with him exactly as he was.
But it wasn't until everything went up in flames that he really came into his own. Crisis brought out the best and worst in people, and Mort was definitely the former. When the world began to end and Apocalypse came in more ways than one, and Armageddon rained down on their heads every day... Mortimer shined.
He'd always been forced to grow up fast, but maybe now it was because everyone was depending on him, trusting him like the Brotherhood - and hell, like the X-Men - never had. Maybe it was the way Forge looked at him now and said 'I need you here, I need you with me' - something about actually being needed for the first time made him open his eyes and rise to the occasion.
He stopped tripping over his feet. He could stare into death's face without blinking, and only let himself shake when there was nobody around to see, late at night, in Forge's arms. Maybe before, he was just a scared little tadpole - now he was losing the baby tail, and growing up into a whole, strong, fully-developed Toad.
And Forge watched the metamorphosis, sometimes just staying still and quiet and so proud he could barely stand it. They'd both been through so much hell, so many scars and lost friends, but sometimes, just watching him, Forge had the maybe-terrible thought that maybe somehow it was all worth it. How far they'd come, maybe the universe was unfolding as it should. Watching him, Forge could let himself hope.
When he watched Mortimer pick up those twin blades and go into a kind of dance, even just in practice, all alone with nothing on the line except discoveries and perfection... then the weedy, skittish Mort from years ago was superimposed on his mind's eye, and no matter how fond those memories are - the softest corner of his heart will always belong to those young, wide, golden eyes - he can't believe this is the same person who would curl up on the round and scream for the shooting to stop, this warrior with the easy grace and complete control and coiled muscles of a cat, not the too-long-limbed adolescent flails.
Just like he couldn't believe he could possibly love this strange, ever-growing, changing, evolving, beautiful being any more than he already did, but every day proved himself wrong.
Watching those swords flash, that dance, the smile in his eyes (Mortimer knew Forge liked to watch him, always knew he was there, could never resist putting on a little show and making him wait just a little longer for the kiss at the end), that's when Forge had the crazy, stupid feeling that everything was all right.
But it wasn't. Nothing was, anymore.
Now, standing here with those swords - God, they felt WRONG in his hands, it had taken him days to bring himself to touch them and it still felt wrong - there was no more hope, no more growth, just silence.
He didn't really know why he drove one of the bloody blades point-first into the ground at the head of the mound of earth. It just felt right to leave something here, with the stupid thought that it would watch over him, or. Or something. Leave something physical along with the part of himself that would always be standing here in front of this pile of dirt and stones.
Leave behind something more than an arm, more than a leg, never to be replaced.
He'd take the other sword with him. Didn't know what he'd do with it, he didn't have any idea how to use it, and just keeping it around to gather dust seemed somehow disrespectful. Maybe he'd figure a way to attach it to his mecha arm. He'd feel safer with it there than any other lethal attachment necessity demanded.
Keep it always with him. Weld it to his arm like sewing a patch onto an old jacket, wrap up inside it and breathe in the memories.
Holding the remaining sword like a sacred relic, Forge gave the place a last look.
Golden eyes...
And turned, walking slowly away from the grave.
Tried something a little different - the first fic is made of essentially nothing but dialogue, and the second has pretty much zero. I kind of like how both of them came out, actually. Diff'rent strokes, man.
Titles: Pretty Powers; Tadpole
Pairing: Forge/Toad. How I love 'em.
Rating: PG for one four-letter word. My Mort tends to swear like a truck driver when he feels comfortable.
Word Count: 1352 total
Warnings: Don't ever read or write Age of Apocalypse Fortimer if you feel like having a happy day afterwards. Or at least not without a box full of kittens close at hand.
Pretty Powers
“What's it like?”
“What?”
“Ah... if you don't mind me asking, I mean. You know, your tongue and spit bombs and everything.”
“Move over. It's like - okay, the tongue's just like an extra arm or something, 'cept without fingers. And it can taste. So that's cool. And imagine having the worst cold you ever had, except it doesn't make you sick. You can like, harness the power of the gross, and blast it at assholes, and watch 'em get all covered in gunk and... and have to take a shower really, really bad.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Oh yeah, what 12-year-old doesn't wish for super-loogies? 'Course, once you're not 12 anymore...”
A beat.
“Okay, so it's not so great. I didn't get one of the pretty powers, you know?”
“I dunno, green's my favorite color-”
“You know what I mean. I can't make a million pieces of diamond dust, or make storm clouds turn into a rainbow. Some guys, all they gotta do is put on a pair of sunglasses or gloves and poof, they're normal. But me... sometimes there's not a single thing I wouldn't change.”
“Mort...”
“Aw, it's not all bad. When I was a kid, I always wanted to fly. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, all that shit. And on a good day... I can come pretty close.”
Another beat of comfortable silence.
“How about you?”
“Mmm?”
“Makin' all the stuff you do. How do you wrap your mind around it? Sometimes I see your hands moving so fast and I'm like, damn, even you can't keep up with your brain.”
“I... it sounds weird, but sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can see it all, like I'm on top of a really tall hill looking down, and I have this clear picture in my mind of how it's all supposed to be and fit, and it's just a matter of putting the pieces together until it's real... but sometimes it's like - I don't know. The machines make themselves. Like they're already alive and real somewhere else, and they're just telling me how they want to be. Or there's... something else making them. I'm using the tools, but something else is working through me, and I'm just another tool."
“...You're just another tool, huh?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Sawright - yeah, I do. Somma this stuff, it's - it's just weird. But hey, I'd take freaky machines over big metal claws any day. Way more interesting than 'oooh, look at me, I can slice things into little tiny bits, I'm so cool!”
“And yet he'll be the one on the Wheaties box.”
“Ha! You know what? He can keep it.”
Another beat, this one warm and slow and lazy, as they hold each other close.
“Hey, Forge. I changed my mind.”
“Hmm?”
“I wouldn't change a thing.”
# # #
Tadpole
Mortimer got to be real good with those swords.
For the longest time, before the world went straight to Hell, when their lives weren't made of burned-out buildings and constantly looking over their shoulders, when they were kids - God, it seemed like a lifetime ago... back then, Mortimer never seemed right in his own green skin. The only place he knew how to operate and be graceful was underwater or flying in midair. Sometimes just walking on even ground was an alien concept; too-long webbed feet were easy to trip over, shoes were out of the question.
That changed after Forge came into his life. Slowly, but it did. He started gradually being okay with things, okay with himself. Because finally someone else was okay with him exactly as he was.
But it wasn't until everything went up in flames that he really came into his own. Crisis brought out the best and worst in people, and Mort was definitely the former. When the world began to end and Apocalypse came in more ways than one, and Armageddon rained down on their heads every day... Mortimer shined.
He'd always been forced to grow up fast, but maybe now it was because everyone was depending on him, trusting him like the Brotherhood - and hell, like the X-Men - never had. Maybe it was the way Forge looked at him now and said 'I need you here, I need you with me' - something about actually being needed for the first time made him open his eyes and rise to the occasion.
He stopped tripping over his feet. He could stare into death's face without blinking, and only let himself shake when there was nobody around to see, late at night, in Forge's arms. Maybe before, he was just a scared little tadpole - now he was losing the baby tail, and growing up into a whole, strong, fully-developed Toad.
And Forge watched the metamorphosis, sometimes just staying still and quiet and so proud he could barely stand it. They'd both been through so much hell, so many scars and lost friends, but sometimes, just watching him, Forge had the maybe-terrible thought that maybe somehow it was all worth it. How far they'd come, maybe the universe was unfolding as it should. Watching him, Forge could let himself hope.
When he watched Mortimer pick up those twin blades and go into a kind of dance, even just in practice, all alone with nothing on the line except discoveries and perfection... then the weedy, skittish Mort from years ago was superimposed on his mind's eye, and no matter how fond those memories are - the softest corner of his heart will always belong to those young, wide, golden eyes - he can't believe this is the same person who would curl up on the round and scream for the shooting to stop, this warrior with the easy grace and complete control and coiled muscles of a cat, not the too-long-limbed adolescent flails.
Just like he couldn't believe he could possibly love this strange, ever-growing, changing, evolving, beautiful being any more than he already did, but every day proved himself wrong.
Watching those swords flash, that dance, the smile in his eyes (Mortimer knew Forge liked to watch him, always knew he was there, could never resist putting on a little show and making him wait just a little longer for the kiss at the end), that's when Forge had the crazy, stupid feeling that everything was all right.
But it wasn't. Nothing was, anymore.
Now, standing here with those swords - God, they felt WRONG in his hands, it had taken him days to bring himself to touch them and it still felt wrong - there was no more hope, no more growth, just silence.
He didn't really know why he drove one of the bloody blades point-first into the ground at the head of the mound of earth. It just felt right to leave something here, with the stupid thought that it would watch over him, or. Or something. Leave something physical along with the part of himself that would always be standing here in front of this pile of dirt and stones.
Leave behind something more than an arm, more than a leg, never to be replaced.
He'd take the other sword with him. Didn't know what he'd do with it, he didn't have any idea how to use it, and just keeping it around to gather dust seemed somehow disrespectful. Maybe he'd figure a way to attach it to his mecha arm. He'd feel safer with it there than any other lethal attachment necessity demanded.
Keep it always with him. Weld it to his arm like sewing a patch onto an old jacket, wrap up inside it and breathe in the memories.
Holding the remaining sword like a sacred relic, Forge gave the place a last look.
Golden eyes...
And turned, walking slowly away from the grave.