A/N: Please read and review!
My senior year went on normally. My classmates, and I were freaking out over what college we would go to, and what scholarships we would get. It was weird. We were so close to being in the real world, and it was very weird and unsettling.
Life was going on normally, but nothing was ever really the same. It was supposed to be a new era in the world, but nothing really felt like it should be different.
It was surreal.
You could hear in all of the halls in our school kids talking about the Avengers, which made sense. We were young. Of course we would always talk about superheroes fighting off aliens. But, these conversations could turn serious very quickly. Because the whole world saw people with special abilities save the world, would that be a good thing for Mutants? Stryker was still busy fixing his shattered reputation, and that attack on Obama seemed to only be an isolated incident. Was that even possible?
Maybe, maybe not.
It was very important for our three communities. There were more Mutants per capita in that middle of nowhere Iowa than probably other parts of the country. A lot of us didn't want to leave our small towns. The people we grew up with or around didn't care that we had these strange powers. It was still an after effect of the major beliefs that our communities had. These powers were given to us, so we could help people because of God's will. Demonize a Mutant, criticize God's will. That's what the God-fearing Lutherans believed that was happening.
We were curious.
Obama used New York and the scandal surrounding Stryker to create a new department for his Cabinet, and it was long over due. The Department of Mutant Affairs. His choice of the head for that department was both criticized and praised. Senator Robert Kelly automatically assumed that he would be chosen. Stryker wondered if he would be picked from his own experience, but Obama surprised everyone.
He chose a very high profile Mutant, someone who lived through the hate and fear and dealing with those powers, and he was one of the first X-Men from back in the sixties. You might recognize him as the Beast. His almost cat-like appearance and blue fur was pretty unmistakable.
It held the potential to create a better life for people like us. The world wasn't the same, and that could be for the better.
There were people who hated that new development. Anti-Mutant Protests spread across country. There were more older people, my youngest uncle's age and older, who hated the idea that freaks of nature were getting some rights. My planning became very different for my future, but I wasn't fully sure about that at first.
It was a big basketball game, determining who would be conference champs. That was a great year for us, probably one of the best in almost four years, and that night, we were playing another school who was also having a pretty good season. The game was going to be a good one, far too exciting.
That was also the one game Steve was able to attend. I smiled a little when I saw him walk into the gym with Clint like it was nothing to him. Lauren and another friend of mine, Maggie, gave me knowing smiles when they saw that. They knew.
It was the first game I was ever able to start for varsity. I surprised people with how much I had improved since freshman year. It probably had a lot to do with me and Billy trying to outdo each other in shooting three pointers and being jump crazy, and we always practiced on that. I sort of became the secret weapon. No one ever really expected what I could do.
I ran faster than I ever had, and I became just aggressive enough to get possession of the ball and keep it. My best game. I wasn't even self-conscious with Steve watching me from the crowd. It was like when he was teaching me. Since it was like he was my support system, I wasn't as meek and quiet that night as I normally would have been. I took charge when I needed to. The game ended, and we won. We were all crying because we were so happy, and the other team was so disappointed after believing the game would've been theirs.
I was about to go on the stage with a couple of my friends when I saw Steve, and he wanted to talk to me. Lauren made a small hand gesture to leave me alone to talk to him and save me a spot on the stage.
"Hey," I told him, wearing a small smile at him.
"Hey," he told me.
We were in the hallway close to the steps to the stage, and not a whole lot of people were around us.
"I didn't think you would come," I told him, and he shrugged.
"Not a whole lot was happening in S.H.I.E.L.D. for awhile," he told me.
"So you. . ." I was going to say, but I stopped myself from finishing that, shaking my head.
We were talking for that moment, and it was easier for me to talk to him than ever before.
My great-grandpa always looked forward to those visits by Steve. Many people of his generation were slowly going away, so maybe talking to Steve wasn't that bad.
I did learn a lot of different stories about my great-grandparents' time with the Invaders and the Howling Commandos, and I listened in rapt attention. I always loved to hear those types of stories, and a lot of them, apparently, were not told to us when we were growing up, especially proving how my great-grandma earned the name Spitfire. Whenever that name was spoken about, Steve would give me sideways looks like he thought they could be about me. I would always return a "what" look.
Why would he do that?
My great-grandpa's health was starting to fall fast. It was probably a good thing that Steve talked to him when he did. It was another sign that time marches on and waits for no one. An era was going to pass away, but he was stronger than most people realized. There were some things in this world that could shake even him, and the one steady thing, the bank that he helped build up during one of the darkest times in U.S. history go up in smoke and flames.