The Last Avenger [What If...? x DCAMU Crossover]

30. We're Complicated

[Bruce Wayne]

Jane Wallace.

What could he say? The woman who he'd known for little under a year, with just some unspoken thing between them, had never really been Jane Wallace.

Bruce knew she'd been hiding something, but he never could've guessed the extent of it. She'd been the anomaly he hadn't been able to crack. Someone who'd seen more than her fair share of pain and suffering and pulled through. But he saw darkness there as well, there was a bloodlust and she fought like a cornered bear.

Part of Bruce that he had relied on for years told him to pull back, find out as much as he could on her in order to come up with a contingency plan, something to stop her, in case she went rogue, or if the programming HYDRA put in her head kicked in again, but he knew there was no possible way of finding out anything unless she told him. Even as that part raged, he pushed it down.

They were complicated.

The boys loved her. And Jason who'd not trusted many people in his life had found someone who was completely honest with him.

And Bruce not only recognised the guilt she carried, but the compassion too. So he allowed himself to embrace the part of him that he'd ignored for much of his life. The part that relied on people. On love.

He didn't want to lose Indiana Stark.

[Indiana Stark]

The cave was dark and damp, Bruce seriously needed to get some more airflow down here. The chill seeped through my spaghetti strap tank top and sweatpants. It was still cold, even though we had just come out of winter. I held a tray in one hand, it was Alfred's idea and he left me instructions on what to say when I got down there. I scratched the stitches in my shoulder with my other hand.

A lot had happened since Christmas, for one, Bruce and I were starting to get serious, and I was happy to say I had moved in, and the chaos level what you would expect from a household of vigilantes, like walking into the kitchen at night to find a, frankly, terrifying Tim, laptop screen bright against his pale skin, or Dick laying in the table, crying. He like to have his back rubbed, I found out when I took him to bed. Another time I saw Jason sitting in front of the fridge, just staring while holding a carton of milk. Once, I found Bruce in there after patrol, sitting on the counter with a single piece of bread. He swore me to secrecy.

Though, it was hardly the weirdest thing I'd ever seen during the night. Back on Earth-29929, Thor slept anywhere, and naked. This caused a few issues, but not as many as Clint caused. Clint slept with his eyes open. Sitting up. On the couch, or on top of the fridge, or on the stairs. Basically whatever affords the best place to scare the shit outta me at 3 in the morning.

Not that I could say I was doing much better; by day I was a private eye and had my own practice, Shield Investigations. It was a way to help the people of the city on a more personal level that didn't need me hide my identity. By night, I was down in the Batcave working on the Mark 6 Iron Man suit, listening to my ACDC mixtapes super loud with no regard for my future hearing, because I live in the now.

Bruce's back was still to me as I approached the batcomputer, and he was still to take his cowl off. I change my gate to match Alfred's, knowing Bruce could distinguish us by the way we walked.

"Not now Alfred," he said. Alfred called it.

I almost laughed, I didn't think it would actually work, so I layered on the British accent. "I'm shocked, sir. And here I went to all this trouble and prepared you a generous portion of nothing. Now it will all go to waste."