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

13. Did You Fuck with the Timeline Again??

Indiana Stark, A.K.A. Tony Stark's little sister, became the deadliest woman known to man.

And there came a day unlike any other, when Earth's Mightiest Heroes found themselves united against a common threat. On that day, she joined the Avengers.

This is what she does now that they're gone.

What has Barry done this time??

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I spoke too soon.

I started to dream, which was weird – not only because it wasn't the usual memory gone wrong, but because it was one of those freaky premonition dreams. Like the ones I got about Loki before the Battle of New York.

I was sitting in Granite Peak National Park with Nora Allen. I was maybe 11 years old. It was a warm day in Central City, with a cool breeze blowing through the elm trees. We stopped at the pond to skip stones across the water. I managed three skips. My mum – Nora managed four. She always won. Neither of us cared. She would laugh and hug me and that was enough for me.

It's hard to describe her. To really understand Nora Allen, you had to meet her. She used to joke that her spirit animal was Tinker Bell from Peter Pan. If you could imagine Tinker Bell at age thirty-something, minus the wings, wearing flannel, denim and Doc Martens, you got a pretty good picture of my mum. She was a petite lady with delicate features, blond hair and sea blue eyes that sparkled with humour.

She radiated joy. That's the only way I can put it. She loved life. Her enthusiasm was infectious. She was kindest and most purely decent person I ever knew... until her death.

"When I was a little girl, Grandma taught me a prayer: Accept the things you cannot change," she told me. "Have the courage to change the things you can... and have the wisdom to know the difference."

The stepped out of the body of 11-year-old Barry Allen and the dream shifted. I found myself in London. Margaret Carter was known to most as the founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. But I just knew her as Aunt Peggy. She had a photograph in her office: Aunt Peggy standing next to JFK. As a kid that was pretty cool. But it was a lot to live up to, and I already had so much on my shoulders as the next Captain America.

Aunt Peggy pulled me close and kissed my forehead.

I asked her how she managed to master diplomacy and espionage at a time when no one wanted to see a woman succeed at either.

She said, "Compromise where you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, 'No, you move'."

The dream changed again. Suddenly I was standing in a World Between Worlds, a cold grey fog in Ginnungagap – the primordial void – below me. I stood on nothing outlined by a white path, I had a feeling if I stepped outside the lines, I would fall into the gap. I did not want to fall. Every now and then there was a doorway – a portal maybe. This place seemed to be the Central Station of time and space dimensional gateways.

Maybe this place was what allowed me to exist in the DC Universe with the help of Eternity.

I walked a little further. In the centre of this dimensional gateway hub, an old, twisted tree rose taller than the Statue of Liberty. Yggdrasil. The lowest of its skeletal branches were maybe a hundred feet up. Its canopy stretching to the glittering cosmos above. Its roots had crept over the path and hung down into the Gap.