A/N: This is my first PLL story. For some reason, I woke up this morning and remembered pieces of a Degrassi fic I'd read probably three or four years ago. It was about Jake and Clare in a sibling dynamic and how Jake would help Clare stay calm through thunderstorms or something like that. I can't remember what it was called or who wrote it or anything else about the story, but the brother/sister thunderstorm idea went rolling around in my brain and I thought that sort of scenario would make an interesting story with Aria and Mike. It's a very AU one-shot that is mainly an Aria/Mike story about their relationship as siblings, but there is a little hint of Ezria in there at the end as well. I don't even really know what this fic is, but I sat down, and this is what came out.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pretty Little Liars
Thunderstorms terrified her. They had for as long as she could remember.
When she was eight and Mike was seven, they were holed up in a fort in the living room that they'd made out of chairs and blankets and pillows. Their parents were upstairs as they chose to give their kids free range of the lower level of the house for the night. Mike and Aria decided that watching cartoons in a fort while eating pizza was the way to go.
When the thunder started, Aria froze. She felt paralyzed and very, very small.
"Aria," her brother said as he nudged her shoulder. "You okay?"
"I hate thunder. I really, really hate it. It's so scary and loud."
"I know. But it can't hurt you. We're inside. We're safe."
"I don't feel very safe," she told him as she started to cry.
He didn't know why, but he felt like he could stop the storm.
"Close your eyes," he told her. "I want you to think of something happy, the happiest memory you can remember. And I want you to count to fifty. That's a big number, but I know you can do it. When you're done, you can open your eyes and the thunder will be gone."
"Okay, Mike," Aria replied, not believing her brother for a second. It wasn't like he had the power to control the weather.
She thought about the time she and Mike and their parents went to Jolly Rogers. They rode rides and sang songs and ate way too much cotton candy. She felt free and happy and safe.
She reached the number thirty-five by the time she'd finished thinking of her favorite memory, so she opened her eyes a little early.
She saw her brother leaning out the window in the living room and instantly became very alarmed. She heard him talking though, so she didn't move.
"My sister is really afraid of you," she heard him say to the night sky. "I know you're not that scary and you have to make your presence known somehow, but I think you should go on to the next town now."
He started to close the window but rapidly pushed it back open to whisper-yell "Oh, this is Mike Montgomery, by the way."
By the time he'd closed the window and locked it, the sky was dead quiet.
Aria looked incredulously at her brother.
"How did you do that?" she asked him. "You made the thunder stop."
"It owed me one," was all he said. "Let's finish our pizza! We don't want it to get cold."
That was the day Aria Montgomery became convinced her brother was a warrior of the storms.
She's eleven when she has her first sleepover at her friend Lucy's house. Mike is ten and it's the first night they've ever spent apart.
A thunderstorm kicks up a little past dinner time and he wonders how she's doing.
He figures she's fine since she's at her friend's house but he's not that surprised when she calls the house phone at 7:30.
"This is the first time it's happened when I'm not at home," she tells him.
"I know."
"I'm trying to be brave," she whispers.
"You don't have to be," he tells her. "I'll take care of it."
He hangs up before she can say goodbye and by the time she presses the off button on Lucy's parent's phone, the noise outside has turned quiet.
She goes to sleep that night in an unfamiliar bed, certain that her brother has magical powers.
The next incident happens when she's thirteen and he's twelve. Their parents are out on a date so it's just the two of them in the house. Aria is doing her homework while Mike plays video games on the couch.
The first clap from the clouds nearly knocks her out of her chair and before she knows it, she's huddled in the corner, trying to even out her shaky breaths.
She hears Mike mutter something incoherent as he walks over to her.
"Aria," he says softly. "It can't hurt you."
"That's what's so scary," she tells him. "Everybody keeps telling me I don't need to be afraid, but I just can't shake this gut-wrenching feeling."
"It's okay to be afraid, Aria."
"I know," she whispers.
He doesn't believe her but he nods his head and starts to head back to the couch.
"Can you make it stop?" she asks him.
He wrings his hands a few times before saying yes.
When he opens the back door, she nearly screams at him. "Where on earth are you going!?"
"To stop the thunder," he says with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders.
She watches him walk into their backyard with his head held high. He puts his hands in the air like he's in a power stance and holds it for several seconds.
In the blink of an eye, he's on the ground like he's meditating and by the time he stands up, the thunder has stopped.
"I can't do this every time, you know," he tells her. "It takes a lot out of me."
"I still don't understand how you do that."
"You don't need to," he says.
Aria's learned a lot about science over the years and she knows that realistically, her brother cannot control the weather. But for now, she wants to believe he's a storm warrior.
She wants to believe she can feel safe.
She's fifteen when she's having a sleepover with her friends in Spencer Hasting's barn. A thunderstorm is raging outside and she wants to call her brother, but her friends are passing her red cups filled with questionable liquid and encouraging her to loosen up, so she downs it all and tries to erase the fear from her mind.
She tosses and turns all night and has tears running down her face, but she doesn't want her friends to make fun of her, so she does her best to ignore the overwhelming sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.
When she wakes up, she learns that Alison DiLaurentis went missing while everyone else was asleep in the barn.
She goes home in a trance and numbly walks through the front door.
Mike has never seen his sister like this. He's seen her cry and scream and raise her voice, but he's never seen her completely shut down.
She doesn't talk to anyone for three weeks straight and he's worried she's become selectively mute. He remembers reading about tragedy being able to bring something like that on.
He hears the clap of a thunderstorm outside his window and he wonders how she's doing. Her bedroom door is ajar and when he sticks his head inside, he's shocked to find her blank-faced, staring at the wall in front of her. She doesn't even acknowledge his presence.
A month later, their father tells them they're moving to Iceland for his sabbatical. Mike sees a flash of something he can't quite make out in his sister's eyes and he smiles, because at least she's showing some kind of sign that she's still there.
Reykjavík is cold and dark and it doesn't feel anything like home. He notices something is wrong with Aria a week into their time abroad.
She spends her days at school and the local coffee shop and as much time as she can away from the house.
She doesn't come home at all on nights when the thunder is blaring and he worries. He always tries to ask her where she slept when he sees her the next morning, but she never answers him.
He feels like his sister has become a shell of who she once was. She spends countless hours writing in a journal she keeps hidden under her pillow and he hopes that's a good thing. Maybe it's some kind of outlet for her.
He doesn't want to snoop on her, but she's spending more and more time away from home and for some reason, their parents don't seem to notice. He's becoming increasingly worried, so he tells himself he'll read a few pages of her journal to see if he needs to get Byron and Ella involved.
A thunderstorm picks up outside and he muses it must be the sixtieth one since they've been there. When he tiptoes into his sister's room, he's surprised to find her crying on her bed.
She looks up at him and very nearly falls apart. "Why didn't you stop it?!" she wails. It's the first time he's heard her speak in months.
"Stop what?" he asks, though he's certain he knows what she's referring to.
"The storms. I know you said you can't stop them all but I always believed you'd stop the ones that mattered. You didn't stop it when Alison went missing and now she's never coming back!"
He stares at his sister with a mix between guilt and compassion in his eyes. She's a year older than him, but in this moment, he almost can't believe that to be true.
He wants to tell her that he doesn't know if he can really control the storms and that the past seven years of him stopping thunder has likely been nothing but a lucky coincidence, that it was just something he made up to try and stop her from being so sad. He honestly doesn't know how he does what he does, but he won't tell her that. He doesn't want to make her heart break any more than it already has.
"I'm sorry," he tells her as he sits on the edge of her bed. "I just... I'm sorry."
When her resolve crumbles and she launches herself into his arms, he makes a promise to himself to never tell her the truth.
She needs something to hold onto.
When she's sixteen and he's fifteen, their family moves back to Rosewood. It's hard on her, he can tell.
Alison's body is found a few days after they return and he feels her entire world flip upside down.
He notices a lot of weird behaviors that Aria has developed in a matter of months. Like how she always tenses up when her phone goes off, or how she and her friends are always huddled and whispering in the corners of the hallways at school, or how the four girls who were closest to Alison always seem to get text messages at the same exact time. He wonders if she'll ever tell him what's going on.
The thunderstorms are particularly volatile that fall and he spends a lot of time on the floor of her room, telling her it's going to be okay.
She asks him to stop fifteen storms in September alone and he's not even surprised when every single one calms down as soon as he whispers a phrase or closes a window. He stopped being surprised at his ability to stop them a long time ago.
Stopping the storms is hard for him. It drains him of his energy and makes him feel like he can barely move a muscle. He actually likes the storms. They seem to recharge him and he feels weak if he goes too long without standing in one. But he knows that Aria needs him to stop them, so he does.
A few months go by and she's still jumpy around her phone and hostile toward their father and he wishes she'd tell him what's wrong. But he also notices that she's calmer. Her requests for him to stop the storms have started to decrease and she's conveniently at a friend's house whenever the weather's bad.
"You haven't asked me to stop a storm in a long time," he tells her. "Everything okay?"
"Yes," she says with a small smile. "I found somewhere that makes me feel less afraid."
In the spring, it comes out that Aria has been having a secret relationship with her English teacher, Mr. Fitz. Mike wants to hate the guy, but he sees the look of complete adoration in his sister's eyes and watches this man stand up to Byron and Ella by declaring his love for Aria, and he just can't.
He suddenly realizes that Aria was never really at a friend's house when the weather was bad. She was with him. And Mike realizes that this man is the one who makes his sister feel safe.
He punches Mr. Fitz in the face so Byron won't, but secretly, that punch is packed with a whole lot of gratitude. Because right around the time Aria said this relationship started is the time when she stopped crying herself to sleep every night. And even though it makes his heart hurt a little bit because his sister (who, let's be honest, is his best friend in the entire world) probably won't need him anymore, Mike has a feeling this guy will be good for Aria.
She's nearly seventeen when she tells her family that someone has been harassing her and her friends.
The extents of 'A' are almost enough to make him throw up. And when she tells him that Mona Vanderwaal (a girl from their school) was the one behind it, he punches a wall.
When Ezra is out of town during a thunderstorm, Aria has a panic attack. She runs into her brother's room and rocks herself back and forth on his floor.
"I can't sleep," she tells him. "Every time I close my eyes, I relive everything she did to me. And with this storm, it makes it all so much worse."
She's hysterical and sobbing and he can barely make out her words, but when she asks him to stop the storm for the first time in six months, he gets a little choked up.
She hears the lump get caught in his throat and she apologizes. She says she's sorry for making him do this and says she's being childish and annoying, but he stops her before she can continue berating herself.
"I don't mind, Aria," he tells her. "In a weird way, it's nice to hear you ask. I thought you didn't need me anymore."
"I'll always need you," she tells him. "You're my brother, but you're also my best friend. And I don't know what I'd do without you."
Mike opens the window in his bedroom and sticks his hand out into the open air. He doesn't say anything, just moves his hand back and forth in a slow, fluid motion. He almost laughs at himself because he never really knows what he's doing when he does this, but it always works.
As he pulls his hand back inside and latches the window closed, the thunder outside rolls to a stop.
Aria smiles and leans her head on his shoulder.
"I think you're a thunderstorm warrior," she tells him.
"I think you're right."
He's seventeen when the doctors discover a tumor on his brain. He's supposed to have the rest of his life ahead of him, but he's told he only has a few months left to live, maybe six if he's lucky.
But secretly, he's not at all shocked by the diagnosis. He doesn't tell anyone this, but he figured out that something was wrong with him once he stopped his fortieth storm in a row.
He realized it wasn't normal, that whatever ability he has wasn't God-given but probably some sort of manifestation of bad wiring in his brain. But he couldn't exactly talk about it, otherwise they'd color him crazy.
He doesn't tell Aria about the tumor. He begs and begs and begs his parents not to tell her either, says it's his dying wish, and they reluctantly agree. He doesn't want her to act differently around him.
She's been through so much with the reincarnation of A, being arrested and kidnapped, and a lot of other things he'd rather not drudge up. Her senior year is finally starting to calm down, her graduation is on the horizon, and he doesn't want to add any additional pain into her life.
She doesn't want to, but she breaks up with Ezra because she's going off to college soon and she can't stand the idea of having to count down their last days together. Because of this, her frequency of asking Mike to stop the storms has increased to nearly twice a week again. He knows that eventually, she'll have to stop asking, but for now, he wants her to be able to feel safe.
They spend a lot of time talking late at night after he stops the storms for her. She talks about wanting to become a photographer or a writer or an editor and he talks about lacrosse like he isn't dying.
"I've never told anyone, you know," she says. "About you and the storms."
He nods his head but gives her a questioning look. "Why not?"
"When I was a kid, I thought you were joking around. I thought it was some game you created for me. But as I got older, I realized it couldn't be a coincidence every single time and that this was really something you could do. And it's real, isn't it? It's always been real."
"Yeah. I thought it was just a game at first, too. Something I made up to help you feel happy again. But I realized that I was actually stopping the storms once I was fourteen or so. I didn't know how to explain it. I couldn't. But you knew, and you always believed in me."
"I wouldn't even know how to describe this to someone else," she tells him. "I mean, can you imagine? 'My brother stops thunderstorms by sticking his arm out the window or talking to the sky or meditating in the heart of the night.' I think I'd end up in Radley if I ever told anyone."
They both laugh, but inside, Mike feels overwhelmingly sad. Eventually, he'll never be able to talk to his sister again and he'll never be able to stop another storm for her and she'll be left to deal with them on her own.
But she isn't alone, he realizes. And he makes a new promise to himself. He promises to find her a replacement, someone to help her through the storms.
She's on a post-graduation trip with Spencer and Hanna and Emily in sunny California where the forecast estimates nothing but clear skies during her entire stay. Aria's decided on an art school in Philadelphia for college but she wanted to have one last hoorah with her friends before the summer is over.
Mike's been spending a lot of time at the hospital. He lies to Aria and says he's at lacrosse camp when she calls, but really, he's across town lying in a hospital bed.
Rosewood is experiencing one of its worst summer storms, but Mike isn't concerned with that. He's always felt at home with the storms. Even though it looks like a war is raging on all around him, he feels calm in the heart of it. And he's not sure how or why, but he knows that the storms will protect him. They always do.
He manages to convince his doctors to let him leave the hospital and spend the rest of his limited days at home.
When he's released, he doesn't go straight home. Instead, he goes to see the one person who can hopefully make things better for his sister.
When the door to apartment 3B opens, Ezra Fitz is extremely surprised to see Aria's younger brother standing on the other side of it.
"I have to tell you something," Mike says. "It's going to sound crazy, but I have proof."
"Okay..." Ezra says, clearly confused.
"I need you to open the doors to your balcony."
"In the middle of this storm? Are you crazy?!"
"Yes," Mike says with a smirk. "Now open the doors and whatever you do, don't look away from the clouds."
Mike starts telling Ezra the tales of his thunderstorm stopping and he hears Ezra snort and sees the look of 'My god, Aria's brother is literally insane' cross his face. Mike waves his hand around and does his power stance and starts to close the balcony doors when Ezra turns his head to look at the younger boy.
"Don't take your eyes off the clouds!" Mike yells.
"Alright," Ezra says as he shakes his head.
But when Mike closes the balcony doors and the thunder immediately stops rolling and the storm clouds instantly evaporate, Ezra looks at him with disbelief.
"How... how did you do that?" he asks, shocked etched upon his face.
"I don't know," Mike replies. "But for as long as I can remember, I've been stopping the storms for my sister. It's hard for me to stop them because they seem to be the only thing that keeps me alive, but she needs me to stop them. You've seen how she gets around storms, right?"
Ezra nods his head.
"Well, Aria doesn't know this yet, but I'm dying. I've only got a few weeks left at this point. And when I'm gone, she's going to need someone. Not to take care of her because she's far too independent for that, but she will need someone to help her through the storms. And I know you don't have this weird ability that I do, but my sister loves you. And the only reason she broke up with you is because she's afraid. She's afraid of things changing when she goes to college. But I know that you love her more than life itself. Hell, you took a bullet for her."
Mike pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts before continuing. "I know that you would do anything for my sister, so now I'm going to ask you to do a few things for me. And keep in mind that going against a dying man's wishes has a heavy dose of karmic consequences. Tell my sister how you feel about her. Tell her that you'll fight for her. Tell her that you're not giving up. And sit with her through each and every thunderstorm. She needs you. And judging by the bags under your eyes and the amount of scotch you've been drinking lately, I'd say you need her too."
Mike turns to leave but stops himself before he reaches the door. "Don't tell her that I was here or that I asked you to do this. Just do it man, please."
"Aria always said you could command the storms, but I thought she was kidding," Ezra says. He hesitates for a moment before adding, "You really are a storm whisperer, aren't you?"
"Storm warrior, actually, but yes."
A week later, he passes out while walking down the stairs and is rushed to the hospital. His vital signs are incredibly low and he's told that he's nearing the end.
Aria stumbles into his room, hair wild and tears rushing down her face. "Why didn't you tell me?" she sobs.
"I didn't want you to be sad," he whispers.
"But you're dying, Mike. I'm losing my best friend and my only brother. I don't know how to be anything other than sad."
"You're strong, Aria. You're the strongest person I know."
"Then why do I feel so afraid all the time?" she whispers
"Because you're human," he tells her.
Aria looks at him with so much despair in her eyes that he starts crying.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I just... it sounds lame, but I thought it would be better if you didn't know. I thought I was protecting you."
"I would've been here, Mike. I would've been here everyday if I knew."
"I know," he whispers. "But I didn't want that for you. You've been through too much already."
He struggles to take a breath before adding, "I'm sorry I won't be able to stop the storms for you anymore, but I promise you, they're not that scary. In a weird way, the storms are kind of like my second family. They've always kept me safe."
"Mike..." she gets too choked up to continue.
He knows his time is coming. He feels his breathing start to become more and more shallow and he hears the monitor next to him start to go quiet. "I love you, Aria. Thank you for being my best friend. I've been so lucky to have you as a sister."
The machine flatlines and doctors and nurses are rushing in and forcing her out of the room. She's screaming her brother's name and her face is covered in tears and smeared mascara and she's never felt so broken.
The funeral makes her angry. All these people are telling her they're sorry for her loss and talking about Mike like they loved him when most of them didn't even know him.
A thunderstorm erupts as they're lowering his casket into the ground. She's crying, but she realizes that she isn't afraid. She finds herself smiling because she knows that this storm is a sign from her brother.
It's as if the roar of the thunder is Mike whispering, "I'm okay."
When a clap of lightning strikes out, she can almost visualize him doing his storm stopping routine.
"Aria!" Her mother calls, jolting her back into the present moment. "The storm is really picking up so everyone is heading home. Come on."
"No thanks," she says. "I think I'm going to stay here for awhile."
"But honey, I can't leave you here by yourself. You're terrified of storms."
"They're not that scary, Mom. In fact, they almost feel a little like family."
Ella gives Aria a strange look. She wants to make her daughter go home, and she's increasingly worried by how crazy her statements are, but she realizes that Aria has to grieve in her own way.
"Alright, Aria. Do you want me to wait for you?"
"That's okay, I can call a cab or something."
Her mother nods and hesitantly walks off with Byron. When everyone has cleared out, Aria plops onto the wet grass in front of her brother's grave.
His headstone reads: Mike Montgomery. Beloved Son, Brother, and Storm Warrior. 1996 to 2013.
She'd snuck the 'storm warrior' part on without her parents knowing. When they asked her why she added it, she said it was an inside joke between her and Mike. They didn't press her any further.
The thunder claps get louder and louder and she starts to feel slightly afraid, but then she thinks of Mike. She thinks of her brother and his fearlessness. She thinks of how he always put her needs before his. And she thinks about how he never complained about stopping the storms for her, despite the fact that he felt at home with them.
"I'm sorry," she says to the clouds.
She's sobbing and shaking and shivering and screaming, but she doesn't move from her place on the grass. She sits through the storm in the middle of the cemetery for two hours straight.
It's nearly dusk when she feels someone sit down next to her. She doesn't turn her head, but when he reaches out to grab her hand, she knows exactly who it is.
"Your mom told me I'd find you here," he says.
The storm is still raging on but she stares ahead blankly, dried tears and mascara spots all over her face.
"He told me, you know. About the storms. He showed me, too."
Her face crumples and she begins to cry. "He needed the storms, didn't he?" she asks. "That's why he was so weak. That's why he got so sick. God! I'm so selfish. I kept making him stop the storms for me and look what happened. He's dead because of me!"
"Aria," he starts. "That is not true. Mike loved you so much. He told me that he'd gladly stop storms for you as long as he could. You didn't kill him. The tumor on his brain did."
She's silent for a long time before she speaks up, her voice just above a whisper. "Are you afraid of the storms, Ezra?" she asks.
"Sometimes," he tells her, honestly.
"I don't want to be afraid anymore."
"You don't have to be," he tells her.
"But Mike is gone!" she nearly screams. "Things are never going to be okay again."
"I know I'm not Mike," he tells her. "And I know I don't have any special storm stopping abilities. But I love you, Aria. And I want to be with you. I don't care if we're holed up in my tiny apartment or sitting in the eye of the storm in the middle of a cemetery, I just want to be with you. Let me be there for you, please."
"Will you stay with me?" she asks. "Until it's over?"
"Yes," he says instantly.
"I know it's silly, but I feel like this storm is him. I'm not afraid of this one. I feel safe."
"You are safe," he tells her.
And for the first time in her life, she believes it.
She's twenty-eight and a successful editor-turned-writer. She's married to Ezra and they have a four-year-old son whose tenacious spirit reminds her of a certain storm warrior.
It's been ten years since Mike's passing but she can still vividly picture her younger brother walking into the eye of a storm with a smile on his face and his hands in the air.
She visits the cemetery often. On his birthday, on holidays, on the day he died. She'll even stop by on her way home from work sometimes. People in town call her morbid, but she pays them no mind.
A thunderstorm kicks up every time she visits his grave. If she has someone other than Ezra with her, they're always surprised, but she never is. She knows it's Mike's way of letting her know he's okay.
She's not afraid of thunderstorms anymore. In fact, she finds herself sitting on her back porch with a cup of tea and a book in her hands during some of the worst weather. She feels calm in the midst of the storms.
They roar outside her windows whenever she misses her brother, whenever she wants to talk to him, whenever she thinks about him. One minute she's remembering something he told her back when they were kids, the next minute there's a crack of thunder in the sky. She always smiles because she knows it's Mike.
When their son turns five, Aria and Ezra bring the little boy to the cemetery.
"Your Uncle Mike was my best friend," Aria tells him. "He was brave and kind and always knew how to make me happy when I was sad. And he loved storms. I always called him a storm warrior."
"Hey," the little boy says with a wide smile. "My name is Mike!"
"That's right! We named you after him."
A thunderstorm starts to pick up and the little boy's eyes widen. "Mommy," he whispers. "I'm scared!"
"It's not scary, sweetie," Aria tells him. "It's just..." she hesitates for a moment, not sure how to explain the phenomenon to her son. "It's family."
"Family?" the little boy asks.
"Yeah," Ezra adds. "Whenever you hear a storm, don't be afraid. It's just your Uncle Mike saying hello."
"Hello Uncle Mike," the little boy yells to the sky.
The thunder claps twice, almost as if it's sounding out the word 'hello.'
The little boy pauses for a moment, then turns to his parents. "He knows we're here, doesn't he?"
"Yes," Aria replies, looking up at the clouds with a small smile on her face. "He always knows."