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 8

Bella was walking home from the market, a few bags of essentials in her hands that Josh had asked her to grab, and a smile plastered on her face.

She couldn't believe that things were going so well in her life. No one had tried to kill her in almost half a year, she had an incredible man by her side who loved her, even with her past, and she finally had a place to call home, even if home was a run-down bar and their tiny apartment upstairs in the middle of the desert…

After the events of the last few years, she never thought she'd find this sort of happiness again. And yet here he was. And he'd accepted her, disastrous baggage and all…

She made her way around the last bend in the desolate, dirt road, less than a half mile from the bar, and stopped dead in her tracks as her home came into view.

Even from this distance, she could plainly see the bar was engulfed in flames…

"Josh!" she screamed, dropping her groceries and running towards the inferno, praying that he was alive.

12 HOURS EARLIER

It was time. Molly had been staying in Texas with Josh for almost six months now. Way too long… If she had any hope of keeping ahead of Victoria it was long past time to move on from this place. Before finding Josh, she never would have risked staying anywhere near this long in one place, but her feelings for him made it so hard to leave, even though she knew in her gut it was those feelings that were likely to get them both killed.

So she needed to leave, before it was too late. But she wouldn't be leaving alone this time, if he could accept her that is. She was going to tell him everything, lay all her cards on the table and just pray that the growing love between them was enough.

"Josh, can we talk?" she asked him nervously as she made her way into the bar's back room, where he was already up and working on getting the place ready for the day.

"Sure darlin," he agreed easily enough, though she could tell he looked just as nervous as her, "What's going on?"

He tried to school his face into a mask of calm and ease as she led him to one of the tables in the main bar and took a seat, but inside he was chanting a constant stream of, 'Please don't leave me. She's breaking up with me, I just know it. God, please don't go darlin. I think I'd die without you. Please don't go.'

He was terrified; he'd never let himself fall in love like this before, and he certainly hadn't been planning on any of this when he'd offered her a place to stay all those months ago. He'd felt the pull, sure. It was like everything fell away the moment he saw her walk in, and he knew he just had to know her, had to have her. Josh knew the stories, and he wasn't a fool; he knew what she was to him, but he hadn't been thinking about any of that back then.

In all honesty, he'd just seen a drop-dead gorgeous gal and focused on seducing the hell out of her. Which had worked pretty damn well, but now he had accepted she was so much more than a pretty face and a nice rack. Molly was his whole world, and he couldn't bear the thought of losing her. Which in his lengthy experience with women, was the only thing that followed any variation of the phrase, 'can we talk?'.

"There's something you don't know about me," Molly began, wringing her hands in her lap, "Ok, there's a lot more than one something you don't know about me. My past is… I'm not… I need you to understand… Oh God, I have no idea how to explain this."

Josh reached across the table and grabbed her shaking hand in his, squeezing it reassuringly, before catching her chin in his other hand and turning it up so she was looking into his eyes, "Breathe Molls. Whatever this is, whatever you need to tell me, it won't change anything. I am right here and I'm not going anywhere, ok? Just breathe and start at the beginning."

"The beginning?" she parroted, laughing at the ridiculousness of that statement, "Ok. My name isn't Molly Andrews."

His eyes widened at that, but he held her hand firmly in his, "Alright darlin. I wasn't expecting that, but I suppose I can't really be all that surprised."

"What do you mean?" she demanded, suddenly suspicious and then immensely guilty for doubting him, even if just for a second.

"You were running from something when you found yourself in my bar that night Molls," he explained, "It didn't take a genius to see you were in a tight spot with something real bad in your past and nowhere to go. I guess it sort of makes sense that you'd have changed your name."

She just sat there stunned. She knew that Josh was far too observant for his own good most of the time, and that over the last six months he'd broken through a great many of her emotional walls, even if she'd never shared the whole truth with him about her past. But he just took the fact that she wasn't who she said she was completely in stride like it was an everyday topic of conversation…

Maybe there was a chance this conversation wouldn't scare him off after all.

"So what should I call you darlin?" he finally asked when her silence dragged on, a hint of teasing mixed with his real curiosity.

"Bella," she answered, still stunned, but also highly amused by his unexpected reaction, "My name is Isabella Marie Swan. But everyone called me Bella, or Bells."

"Bells," he decided simply, "My Molls is really Bells. That's easy enough. I like it," he added, smiling, "Now, are you going to tell me why you needed to become someone else Bells?"

"I guess it all started when I moved in with my father," she began her tale, committed to tell him everything, determined to ensure there were no more secrets between them. "His name was Charlie and he lived in a small town in Washington called Forks."

Josh's heart damn near stopped when he heard the name Forks. It couldn't be that she was really from that little rained-out hellhole of a town down the road a piece from the res?

Was it possible that they were meant to have met years ago, and he'd somehow messed with their fates by leaving when he did? What were the chances that she'd end up here of all places after all this time?

His mind was running a million miles a minute, trying to place the name she'd given him. Swan? Bella? Charlie? Charlie Swan?... Deputy Swan? Ah crap, his mate was the daughter of Billy Black's friend from the Forks PD…

"He and my mom, Renee, split up when I was really little and I'd been living with her in Phoenix pretty much my whole life," she continued completely unaware of the thoughts running rampant in his mind in that moment.

"So why'd you decide to move in with Charlie?" Josh decided it was safe to ask, trying to shake the thoughts of Billy Black and his former home. He was already completely into her story, but also concerned with the past tense she was using. What had happened to her police daddy?

"Renee got remarried when I was sixteen," Bella explained, "My step-dad's name was Phil. He was great, really, but he travelled a lot for work. He was a small-time ball player you see, and Renee missed him terribly when he was gone, but she couldn't travel with him because I was still in high school.

Just after my seventeenth birthday, Renee found out she was pregnant, and I decided it was time I stopped keeping my mom from being with Phil full time. They were having a baby together, and he was ready to give up his career to stay in Phoenix with her; I couldn't let him give up his dreams on my account, and I couldn't ask Renee to go through her pregnancy away from him, so I told Charlie I wanted to finish out high school in Washington."

He knew from the tone her voice took when she spoke their names, that they were all dead. Charlie. Renee. Phil. Her little brother or sister? It made his heart break, but he didn't ask her any of his questions, just allowing her to continue.

"Not long after I arrived in Forks, I got involved with a local boy from school. His name was Edward Cullen," she told him and for the second time in as many minutes, Josh felt his heart falter in his chest. Cullen? As in the animal-drinking Cold Ones of legend, Cullen? Crap, the Cold Ones had returned to Forks and he hadn't been there to help his people. Then Josh really thought about what she'd just told him and had to resist the urge to hit his head against a well… Ah double crap, his girl dated a vampire! Crap, crap, crap!

"I have to tell you something about Edward and his family, something I swore I'd never tell anyone. But you need to know, it's the only way… So I have to tell you, but you're going to think I'm insane," she whispered the last bit, her eyes falling to her lap again.

It became abundantly clear to Josh in that moment that Bella was trying to figure out how to tell him that she had been involved with vampires, and that she was terrified he would either think she was crazy, or he would actually believe her and make her leave. Rather than watch her tear herself apart trying to figure this out, he decided to throw her a lifeline; she wasn't the only one with secrets, and if she had really gotten deeply enough entrenched with the Cullens to justify running and changing her name, she would likely know about the treaty as well…

"Bells," he got her attention and smiled reassuringly, "Before you tell me the rest, I think you need to know something about me. My name isn't Josh Cramer; you're not the only one who has spent too long running from their past, and I think this is going to make the rest of your story a little easier," he paused, taking a deep breath before he finished, telling her the truth, "My real name is Joshua Levi Uley."

And it was her turn to sit back completely stunned. Uley? Ah crap, ah crap, ah crap… "Uley?" she whispered, "Joshua Uley? Oh my God… You're the Joshua Uley?... You're Quileute!" she accused, before she started laughing, her eyes alight with the discovery.

"Why am I not surprised you recognize the family name?" he laughed with her, "I'm guessing you had a fair number of dealings with my tribe given your history with the Cullens?"

"You know?" she was grinning from ear to ear, "You already know?!"

He took a long, deep breath before he said as calmly and with the straightest face he could muster, "If you mean I know that the Cullens were vampires, who had a long-standing peace treaty with the wolves of La Push, then yes, I already know."

"Well that certainly makes this a hell of a lot easier," she breathed, her relief evident in her voice as she continued to smile at him, "I have been trying to figure out for weeks how to tell you all of this, and you already know all the insane bits? It's official, I cannot be a normal, human woman. I have never in my whole life been involved with a single, normal, completely human man, and I thought you were the first, but nope, not so," she continued giggling a bit, "So is my man really a wolf shape-shifter?"

He could tell that her question was completely serious, and yet the answer would have absolutely zero baring on her feelings for him one way or the other, and so he simply smiled right back and told her the truth he'd never shared with anyone in his life, "Yes, I am a wolf warrior."