FINDING HOME
SUMMARY – Renee Dwyer was Tony Stark's half-sister. When Renee is murdered in her home in Jacksonville, Tony knows something isn't right. He is distraught and needs answers. When his digging unearths several more related deaths and a niece he never knew existed, how will he react? Can Bella overcome the horrors of her past and make a new life with the only family she has left?
MARVEL'S AVENGERS X TWILIGHT CROSSOVER…
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER – All Avenger's characters belong to Marvel Comics, and all Twilight Saga characters belong to Stephanie Meyer. I own nothing, and no copyright infringement is intended.
CHAPTER 3
Molly was scrubbing blood and spilt beer off the floor of the tavern, again. It had been an insanely long night, and of course, some local drunk had started a mean bar brawl less than an hour before last call, making a real mess of the place for her to clean up.
Josh's little drinking hole wasn't much to see. In fact, if she was being honest about it, the place was a real dump. But she needed cash, food, and a place to stay, and Josh was more than happy to oblige so long as she worked hard for her keep, and kept his bed warm at night.
Three years ago, if someone had told her that she'd be working as an off the books bartender in some Podunk town in Texas, she'd have told them they were insane. If they'd then proceeded to inform her she would be sharing a bed with the bar's drunk, sarcastic ass of an owner, she would have slapped them, hard. And she hadn't been the violent type back then. So, there is absolutely no way in hell she would have believed them if they'd finished by telling her she would quickly find herself falling in love with him…
But then again, three years ago, she had been a heartbroken, innocent little virgin who never in a million years would have been attracted to someone like Josh in the first place.
Clearly things had changed quite a lot in the past few years…
And so here she was at six o'clock on a Monday morning, watching the sun rise over the desert through the front windows as she scrubbed blood out of the wood on her hands and knees.
And as she washed the last of the evidence of last night's fight away, Molly found her mind wandering, as it so often did.
Back to a time before this life of hers. Back before she was Molly, or Lizbeth, or Sarah, or Rose, or Charlotte. Back before all the running and hiding and fighting. Back to a time when her life was simple. It seemed like another life now, so long ago that it almost felt more like a dream than a memory.
Back then she had been Bella Swan, the clumsy, pale-skinned teenage daughter of the Chief of Police in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Back then she had been nobody, and she had hidden in the background while she silently prepared for her future. A future that she was never destined to live.
That girl no longer existed. Bella Swan died the night she found her father's mutilated body waiting for her in their home with Victoria's note nailed to his chest. The woman that walked out of that house that night was no longer Bella.
But over the last three years, she'd become someone stronger, someone willing to fight to survive.
And she had needed to, time and again. The scars which littered her body now were testament to that. No matter what name she went by, Bella Swan was a survivor.
"Molls, what ya thinkin bout so hard, darlin?" Josh drawled as he came up behind her, where she still knelt on the floor, bloody rag in hand.
She jumped when he spoke, startled out of her thoughts. She mentally chastised herself for being so recklessly inattentive. If one of Victoria's men had caught her so unaware, she'd be as good as dead right now.
Shaking off that thought, Molly stood silently, allowing Josh to approach her from behind and pull her securely into his arms before she answered him quietly, "My ghosts have just been real close to the surface this morning, that's all."
"Ah," he murmured his immediate understanding. She'd been plagued by nightmares and flashbacks when she first came to him nearly six months ago, and spending nearly every moment in each other's company over the past half a year, he'd pieced together a fair amount about her past, even if she hated to speak of it.
He knew that her family was dead, and that the circumstances of their deaths had been traumatic for her, though she never so much as uttered their names or told him anything about what had happened to them. Josh wasn't even sure who all 'her family' had once included, whether she'd had siblings or a husband or children, only that she was now very much alone in the world.
He also knew the moment he laid eyes on her scars that first night together that something terrible had happened to her, something that he wasn't sure he wanted to know anything about.
Burns. Knife wounds. Two clear bullet wounds. And the bite marks. Hundreds of bite scars that covered nearly every inch of her from her neck to her ankles. All of her scars were faint, almost a translucent off-white color, and he'd noticed fairly early on that they were slightly cold to the touch, and seemed to shimmer a bit in the sunlight.
He couldn't explain any of that, and he had a million questions, but he knew in his heart that whatever had happened to her, it had been horrific enough that she didn't want or need him pushing her to talk about it.
"You alright now darlin?" he asked her, holding her tightly to him as if to reassure himself that she was safe, even if he wasn't sure exactly what had upset her.
"Yeah," she sighed, turning in his arms so she could meet his worried gaze, "I'm alright. Better than alright now. I'm right where I belong," she whispered her last words as she laid her head against his broad chest.
To the rest of the world, Josh was an abrasive, disrespectful, smart ass, and it had taken months for Molly to chip away at that rugged exterior, but now that she'd seen this side of him, the man that wanted nothing more than to love and protect her, she knew she'd never be able to let him go. She just prayed that when the time inevitably came for him to learn the truth about who she really was and all she'd been through, that he would stand by her, because she truly couldn't bear the thought of losing him now.
And his next words worked to ease her fears for the time being as his lips brushed her ear and he whispered, "I'll always be here to chase away your ghosts. You're safe with me, darlin. I promise."
Her eyes met his, filling with tears of joy as she thanked whatever god was watching over her now that she had finally found a small piece of happiness after the hell of a life she'd endured thus far.
But as the couple held one another in the growing light of morning, neither was aware of the eyes trained on them in the distance.
A single set of furious, blood red eyes...
