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The Forge	By : IndigoMiko Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Iron Man (all) > Iron Man (all) Views: 1688 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man, X-Men, Avengers, or any other Marvel verse property. I also don't make any money from writing this. All I do is wile away my free time kicking things around inside my head. It's a mess up there.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man, The Chainsmokers, Dr. Doomsday, or bad driving wherever it may take place. No actual cars were harmed in the making of this chapter. Some Rum was harmed. But I prefer to think of it as having fulfilled it’s purpose.
Chapter 10: Happy Day
“I think I’m losing my mind now. It’s in my head, Darling I hope, that you’ll be here when I need you the most.” Don’t Let Me Down by The Chainsmokers
Sometimes Forge didn’t know why she bothered. It was her mother all over again. The kids in college hadn’t even known she was a mutant. It was enough for them she was young and freakishly smart. That had been easier to take. More normal. But her mother, her longest term lover, they knew what she could do and it scared them. Forge now knew for sure that she scared the shit out of Pepper Potts.
She’d apologized to Tony for making his life difficult once he got off the phone with Happy. He’d reached across the bar and actually grabbed her hand. It had startled the hell out of her. She had just casually mentioned how easily she could kill him at any time. What she had said was bound to freak anyone out.
Stark had rebounded quickly however. He had looked at her with those coffee colored eyes and that serious face he did, then told her it wasn‘t her fault. It kind of was though.
Happy had been a sport about picking her up right away. He probably thought she had slept with Stark, since apparently that was going around, and things had gone weird or something.
Forge bundled up under the covers she was shelling out over three hundred dollars a night to stay in. It was a good thing Stark was paying her well. She was spending a lot of money on this trip.
Happy was situated in the room next door for all the good he would do if she decided to go Dr. Doomsday on everyone. The only thing that would stop her was death, or an all plastic cell way down deep in the ground. Most days Forge could square with herself that she had that kind of power. Tonight was not a part of that.
The problem with being a mostly good person with that kind of power, is that it didn’t matter how nice you were. People just knowing you could do things made them think you might do them. You were a threat to them and they treated you like that. Stark didn’t think it of her, but Pepper Potts certainly did.
Normally one person’s opinion wouldn’t hurt her so badly, but Forge felt like her life was slowly slipping from her control. She was trying so hard to keep steady and dig her feet in to fight instead of run.
A few years ago an agent showing up out of nowhere would have made her do two things. One, she would have threatened him. If he hadn’t gone away then Forge would have went option two, which was to disappear. That wasn’t a long term solution though. Someone always found her in the end and the cycle started over.
The first time she ran Forge ended up hiding on the ranch of the nice older couple she was working for and drinking herself into oblivion every night. Forge had been at the bottom of a slope that had started with her mother’s alcoholism and fear of her, and kept going down through her Uncle’s death. Her nightmares and guilt had been waking her up three or four times a night when she wasn’t plastered, and Forge was just done with life. It was the woman, Judy, who’d given her a come to Jesus talk and convinced her to go back out in the world. Of course, that was when FOKUS had found her.
They had advertised themselves as a support group for mutants. It was a filthy lie though. Doctor Pittman had been, in retrospect, a dead ringer for a replacement Uncle Wall. They’d done their homework on her and knew who’d she’d open up to the most. Her Uncle had been the only one who’d known what she could do and still loved her.
Once he’d gotten enough information on her he’d stuck her in a box built especially for her. It was smaller than the office boxes at the Expo, but not by much, and it was made entirely of plastic right down to the screws. The smell had given her a headache. She’d been in there for three days before she managed to catch a guard being lax about the no metal rule.
It was the first time she’d fought with her powers. That kind of tooth and nail, if they catch you then you will never, ever, get out again, fighting was foreign to her. She’d been the most violent she’d ever been on her way out the door. The mutants who got out with her had been more so.
So yes, Forge had never killed anyone. Facilitated their murder by letting out people she knew would kill them though; that one she had done.
Friday night Forge thought about FOKUS, her younger self, and her Uncle Wall. She thought about her tiny living space in the garage in New York and a man with a southern accent who called her powers a life hack. Forge thought about Tony Stark’s insistence that what she could do was amazing, the way he saw it as a force for good. It took her a long time to fall asleep.
She dreamed that night, and it was of a memory.
Cliff went to the scrap yard to pick up more metal, so Georgia was on her own for the morning. She was using the belt grinder when Judy, Cliff’s wife, brought her a sandwich. The woman had a look on her face like she had something to say. So Georgia turned off the grinder and sat down on a stool to eat. These people had tolerated a lot from her after all.
Judy perched herself on the low desk Cliff had in his workshop. “You’re hung over every morning,” she started without preamble in her Texas accent, “And the mornings you don’t look it, or act it, I think you’re just so used to it you don’t show it anymore.”
Georgia didn‘t take her prying very well. “I’m not drunk on the job.”
The southern woman sighed, as if Georgia was being stubborn. “No you’re not sugar, but you’re just wasting away. You don‘t even eat unless I put it in your hand.” She gestured to the sandwich.
Georgia shrugged. She was. Whatever.
“I know you got some kind of pain in your past, but Hun, you embracing the south so much you turnin’ into a country song.” Judy shook her head. “I know that’s all that fool plays in this shop. Poor gal.”
“It grows on you,” Georgia mumbled.
Judy hummed. “Look, I ain’t going to lecture at you too hard. You going to do what you want, but sometime in your life somebody loved you. You too nice a girl not to have had that. That person, they gone or not, would not want you to be no sad ass country song.” The older woman caught Georgia’s gaze with her own. “The world gives us what we need to hold on,” she opined.
That was nice. That was a nice idea, Georgia thought sarcastically. “Oh yeah? Where the fuck is mine?”
Judy pinned her with a look Georgia had only seen southern women pull off. “Well sugar, only the very lucky get that thing to show up on they porch steps. You a long way out,” she teased. “How the world supposed to give you anything if you so determined to run from it?” She held her hand up, “And don‘t sass me. They different ways o runnin‘. You doing as many as you can at the same time. Ain‘t no prize for that, sugar.”
“So just stop running? That’s it?” Georgia asked skeptically.
“Stop running, Georgia. Be part of the world. Let it give you what you need.”
Saturday morning Forge thought about that memory and Tony’s last words to her. With a sigh she drug herself out of bed and into the shower. Whoops always whooped your ass. Georgia was not twenty one anymore. She was thirty six. This was not the first time she’d done something stupid. Although, letting the opinion of a pointy faced CEO in horrible shoes drive her down into the emotional quagmire that was her past, was a new twist on things.
So, it was Saturday. She was booked into the hotel until Monday, and she wanted to go for a drive. Sunlight and fresh air after all. Stark seemed to have good ideas, and didn’t that mean the world was coming to an end. Happy answered the door after her first set of knocks.
“Good morning, Happy.”
Happy was dressed and set to go wherever at eight in the morning. Bless him. “Good morning, Miss Four.”
Forge shook her head and took another step toward not running. She held out her hand for a handshake. “Your boss sucks at introductions. I’m Forge. It’s the name I actually prefer so, hi.”
He smiled and shook her hand. “I prefer Happy.”
She laughed. “Well he was bound to get one right.” Happy chuckled.
“Stark told you about what I can do, right?” Happy went shifty eyed and that was enough for her. “Okay. Are you alright with hanging out with me then?”
“Yes Miss. Forge.” He corrected himself. “It doesn’t bother me.” Check another person who didn’t seem terrified of her once they knew what she could do. She was up to three.
“Then are you up for a drive up the 101 to Santa Barbara? Strictly sight seeing. I’ve been in that house for about a solid two weeks and I’m feeling a little buggy.”
Happy smiled again at that. “Sure thing, Boss Lady. You’re calling the shots this weekend.”
“Great. Then how about we meet back in ten, jump in the car, swing by Burger King for breakfast, and then head up the coast.”
“Sounds good,” he disappeared back into his room and Forge went about making sure she had everything she wanted. She slipped her phone into her purse, put on her shoes and waited the extra eight minutes all the while reminding herself pity parties were one day only events.
………………………………...................................................................
They’d been in the car for going on three quarters of an hour, and were traveling over the Santa Clara River gap in Oxnard, when they were rammed from behind.
Happy had been driving in the outside lane. In the second before their car hit the rail and slipped off the side of the bridge, Forge could hear horns honking and Stark’s voice calling ‘Happy?’
“Shit. Shit.” Happy had his hands braced on the roof for free fall. The airbags had deployed with impact and were partially obscuring the front windshield. As the car nosed down, the view that was left over filled with the ground below them. Forge only had a few seconds to react.
It was easier for her to go with gravity on the big stuff. She could levitate them back to the bridge, but bad guy was still up there and she’d give herself a nosebleed doing it. Instead she slowed and leveled their decent to the bottom of the wash. Of course now she was pissed, and she could hear Stark gabbling into Happy’s phone.
“What the fuck was that?” Forge ranted focusing on bringing them down safely. Talk about shitty ass driving. The asshole could have killed them.
“You good Happy?” she asked.
“Y..yeah,” he replied.
From Happy’s phone she heard a faint, “Four? Would someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
“You want to answer him Happy?” Her voice was tight in concentration. “I’m busy.”
“Right,” he seemed to collect himself. “Got run off the bridge, boss. Big truck, a black diesel four by four. Should have some right front end damage. They smacked us out of no where.”
“Where are you?” Stark asked from Happy’s phone.
The car settled lightly onto it’s wheels in the dry river bed, but before Forge could sigh in relief she saw the group of men in front of them. She’d recognize what they were carrying even if she hadn’t been thinking of the organization that used them last night. Plastic dart guns, non-lethal, but they could knock her out, after which the coup de grace could be performed with a damned rock.
“Fuck!” Forge yelled.
“Who the hell is that?” Happy cried.
She realized right away the group wasn’t there to kill her. They were there to kidnap her. They were there to take her back to that plastic box and figure out how she worked. Forge felt that desperate animalistic terror shoot down her spine.
“Bad guys,” she breathed. “Stark,” Forge’s voice shook. “Santa Clara River bed, underneath the Ventura Freeway Bridge. Hurry up. Happy I’m really sorry about this but those are plastic.”
“You can’t stop them?” He had a gun in his hand now.
No. No she couldn’t. If just one of them hit her it was game over. They’d tie her down and chop her up.
“Not the darts, but let’s hope they’re stupid. This is going to be super uncomfortable for you, but if you can still shoot them, please do. Also just shoot a lot, bullets I can work with.” There was a ripping, sheering metal noise as Forge wrapped both her and Happy in metal from the car to protect them.
“Code gold,” Happy yelled toward the phone.
“Already on my way. Twelve minutes.”
Twelve minutes was a long time. Forge was on her own until he showed up, but she was not by herself. If she went down they would probably kill Happy before Stark could get there. Forge made the decision that was not going to happen. She was never going back to that box, and Happy was going to live. She’d deal with the consequences later.
A flick of her wrist and the engine shot out of the car straight at the center of the group. With a bit of concentration tiny washers and screws became deadly projectiles. She aimed for eyes, throats, groins. If they had body armor she wanted weak spots. Forge tried not to notice the blood. She tried to block out the screaming. The whole world smelled like Texas in the summer.
Happy had moved on to repeating the word “Fuck,” and yelling. To his credit he shot three of the bad guys, and then pumped four more bullets into the air that Forge hijacked to take out more of them. Out of a group of twelve there were now two. One high velocity exhaust pipe later there were none.
Forge felt that watery adrenaline feeling again but it was muffled under a pounding panic. That group was down but there could be others. She needed someone to tell her what to do.
“Happy!? Four!? What the fuck is going on?”
‘Tony,’ the thought was wobbly around the edges. Iron Man could tell her what to do. Tony was Iron Man. She blinked and shoved between the seats to grab the phone with her metal hand. It crunched a little but stayed connected.
“Tony?”
“Four. I’m on my way. Ten minutes.”
“Okay.” She glanced back out the windshield at the wreck of humanity she’d created. Was something on fire? “Okay. Fuck.” That was so very different than anything she’d ever done before. “Happy and I are okay.” They were okay, right? The little whistling rasp was coming from her? “There were guys here but,” she glanced out front again and felt very far away. “Well, they’re not a problem anymore. Should we move?”
“Can you see anyone else around you?” He asked.
“We’re still in the car.” She realized belatedly. Forge turned and shoved the door off it’s hinges. It wasn’t plastic.
“What the hell was that?” Tony cried.
“Me. Getting out of the car.” She looked up at the bridge but there was nothing there but a crowd of onlookers it looked like. “There are people on the bridge. I don’t know if its them.” Forge kept a wary eye on the group of people slumped on the ground. She didn’t know if they were dead, or just wounded. She knew they could still be a threat. “People on the ground. I don’t know how many are alive.” She could hear her voice wobbling up and down the scale. Being done running and killing twelve people were very different things to be okay about.
Her mind spun and the ground around her was dusty and tan. Happy said something that Forge missed. It drew her attention back to the present though.
“What?”
“Use the car against the bridge support to make a bunker.”
“Jesus Happy, that’s great. Okay.” Forge absently levitated him out of the car and over to the nearest bridge support. He yelped. “Sorry, Happy.”
“What are you doing?” Stark asked.
“Making a shield from the car against a bridge support. Out of sight of the people on the bridge.”
“Eight minutes out,” Stark assured.
“Happy can you talk for a minute? I just need to keep an eye out.”
Forge tuned out a bit after that. They were in California. She was counting down in sixties in her head and scanning for metal or people. It was day, not night. Nothing but the cars on the bridge, and the bridge itself. She was not alone. Ten sets of sixty later, she knew she was counting fast, Stark landed beside them in the Iron Man suit.
Forge gladly handed the reigns over to someone with more experience. She fell to her ass and started peeling the metal off her hands. Her heart beat was loud in her ears.
“Keep the metal on till I check on these guys.”
“Okay,” Forge breathed, closing her eyes, still seeing the men she had killed. In her memory someone snarled and a building exploded. “Okay.”
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The Forge