Happy quarantine friends! Hope you are all keeping safe and healthy x

I sensed some sadness in the reviews for the last chapter and I apologise for doing this to you (and to Mikaela), but I just think that the way Infinity War and Endgame went was just so perfect and I didn't want to mess with it. Peter had to disappear so that Tony would agree to risk the life he made for himself to try get him back and I thought it would be really interesting to see what Mikaela would get up to and how the mutants would be affected in the five years between events.

Also I'm going through an angsty time in my life and need a way to get it all out of my system.. hope you enjoy! I set out with this story to focus on Mikaela as a person, not her romance with Peter (don't worry, by the way, I have plans), and that's why y'all have to endure these chapters without him after the two of them were getting so close x

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Year One

Mikaela sits at a table at the back of the marquee, a denim jacket on her shoulders to ward off the chilly air. For once, she actually looks somewhat presentable, in a nice dress, with her hair tied up out of the way - but the skin around her fingernails is clearly picked at and sore, and there are dark bags under her eyes.

There are six chairs at the table - Mikaela's, Natasha's to her right, then Thor's, Bruce, Steve, and the empty chair on Mikaela's left that, all those months ago, had been assigned to Peter. Thor had initially planned on coming to the wedding, but he and what's left of the Guardians had stumbled across someone called Valkyrie and the Asgardian survivors, and he's busy setting them up somewhere in Norway, dubbing the chosen location 'New Asgard'. Everyone understood that he couldn't be there - they were more than relieved when they heard that some of his people were still alive.

Rhodes smirks at them all as he saunters up to the table, and Mikaela takes a deep breath, sitting straighter in her chair, anticipating the lecture he's cooking.

"You guys gonna hide away all night or are you gonna join in on the dancing at some point?" he asks, leaning a hand on the back of Thor's chair.

They look from him to the front of the marquee, where Tony and Pepper are mingling with friends and family, enjoying the music, and positively glowing. Occasionally, Pepper gently runs her hand over her lower stomach, and Tony winks and kisses the side of her head.

It somehow breaks and mends Mikaela's heart all at the same time.

"He made me the ring-bearer," Mikaela replies, still staring down at the now-married couple. "I'm owed this."

"I'd taint the dancefloor," Natasha smirks, but there isn't much humour in it.

"There's only one person in the world I'd dance with and," Steve sighs, smiling sadly, "She's not here."

Bruce stumbles a little over the start of his sentence, and then settles on, "I'm a mess."

"You're all assholes," Rhodey chuckles, but then he gives them a more somber look, pats the back of the seat once, and returns to the crowd.

Mikaela tries her hardest not to turn and look at the empty seat on her left. It already feels like she's missing a limb.

"Any word of Clint yet?" Bruce asks Natasha, not looking as though he expects anything.

Natasha gives him a tight-lipped smile and her eyes water, and she shakes her head.

"We went by the farm a few months back," Steve offers, crossing his arms. "He hadn't been there in a while. We set up some cameras to keep an eye on the place in case he comes back but, so far, nothing."

Bruce nods. "He'll turn up."

They sip their drinks and watch the merriness at the other side of the marquee, each perfectly content with the distance.

"So, Mikaela, how's the training going?" Steve asks, smirking at her.

Mikaela gives him a flat look as Natasha chuckles next to her. "Ask my bruised ribs," she replies, tenderly touching them with her fingertips.

At his raised eyebrows, Natasha tells Steve, "We got a quick session in yesterday before all this kicked off."

"It's hard learning a new fighting style," Mikaela moans. "What Wade taught me was a bunch of nonsense with some effective moves thrown in. His fighting style is not having a style."

"It can be effective," Natasha allows, smirking at her. "I just think maybe he was better at it than you are."

"Of course he is," Mikaela retorts. "Takes a certain kind of mind to comprehend that chaos."

"I guess it's a good thing that you're not on the same wavelength as a mercenary who spends his life getting chopped into pieces," Steve grins.

"Thank you," Mikaela says pointedly, sending Natasha a small glare.

"How's the school?" Bruce asks, genuinely interested.

"Ugh," Mikaela grunts, kicking the toe of her trainer into the grass. "I dunno. The locals are stubborn, discriminating pricks, and they're not letting off. They've started putting posters up around town trying to organise a committee to get rid of us."

"That's a lot of effort," Natasha comments, rolling her eyes.

"If it doesn't work, I think we'll have a riot or something on our hands. At least they're trying to go about it somewhat properly at this point, but it can't last."

"What are you gonna do?" Steve frowns.

Mikaela sighs and leans her elbows on the table, propping her chin in her hands. "I've thought about moving the school somewhere else, somewhere more secluded."

"But?" Bruce prompts, sensing her reluctance.

"It means letting them win, giving in to these monsters, and uprooting the lives of all those poor kids who've already gone through enough as it is. Plus, anyone who sought refuge at the school before, now won't know how to find it, especially when we don't have Xavier to keep an eye out for them. And it was Xavier's home - I'm not sure if I can just leave it like that, empty."

"I can see why you're reluctant," Steve says. "I guess the fear is that it'll come down to a choice between uprooting the kids' lives, or letting them see the worst of humanity as it comes to break down their front door."

Mikaela lifts her eyebrows and lets them drop in lieu of physically nodding her head. "Exactly. I know what the best thing to do is, I just don't want to make them unhappy."

"They're lucky to have you watching out for them," Bruce smiles.

Mikaela smiles back, but her head is revisiting the time she let all those kids get captured from right under her nose. She'll never make up for that, but she can spend her life trying.

"Man, I'm happy for him," Steve says suddenly, looking down at Tony and Pepper. "And a kid on the way? I didn't think any of us would live long enough to achieve this."

Natasha chuckles and follows his gaze. "He's the only one of us who could get to this point, I think."

Bruce and Steve signal their agreement and almost simultaneously reach for the drinks sitting in front of them.

"Except Clint," Natasha smiles, and her voice breaks.

"Except Clint," Steve repeats.

They've all lost so much - and they started losing it before they'd even heard of Thanos. This life doesn't exactly allow for certain luxuries that normal people are allowed. It's a miracle that Tony feels like he can finally settle down and get a taste of that life - Mikaela just hopes that he'll be able to keep it.

As the guests start to filter out and the noise starts to die down, Tony, Pepper, and Rhodes pull seats up to their table. Tony wraps an arm around Pepper's shoulders and she tucks in close to him, visibly tired, but so content. Tony smiles at them all and gives Mikaela's shoulder a squeeze. It didn't pass her notice that no one sat in the chair that Peter would have sat in.

"Figured we'd catch up with the table of misfits before we turned in," Tony says.

"I hope this was okay, Tony," Steve says earnestly. "We wanted your friends and family to be closer to you both, thought we'd be better up the back, outta the way."

"It's fine," Pepper cuts in, lifting her head to give them a reassuring smile. "We're so glad that you all came. It wouldn't have felt right without you."

"It was an honour to be here," Natasha replies. "We're so happy for you guys."

"I know we promised no shop-talk, but how is everything?" Tony asks.

Steve smiles knowingly. "It's fine, Tony."

"How's the farm coming along?" Bruce asks.

"Perfectly," Tony replies quickly, lifting his chin.

"Perfectly, my ass," Rhodey scoffs, grinning. "He's insisting he does it all himself - actually, no, he's insisting that I do most of it, and he hands me a hammer every so often."

The table chuckles, and Pepper slaps Tony's arm. "You told me you were doing all the heavy lifting!" she accuses.

"Frankly, I don't think that it's my fault that you believed me - you should know better by now. That's on you," Tony retorts.

"You said you were making it with your bare hands for me and the kid. You said you wanted it to mean something!"

"It will mean something," he insists.

"Yeah, that I'm taken advantage of in this relationship," Rhodey cuts in.

"Hey, c'mon, I designed the whole thing didn't I? Drew out all the plans, made all those nice little cubby holes, secret passageways - the kid's gonna live in a playground," Tony says defensively.

"No, she's gonna live in a home," Pepper says.

The two of them smile fondly at each other and Tony kisses her cheek.

"So it's a girl, then?" Steve grins. "Congratulations."

"Have you thought of a name yet?" Natasha asks.

"Morgan," Tony replies instantly.

Pepper chats to them about where the name comes from, but Tony turns his head to look at Mikaela and reaches a hand out to her.

She takes it and squeezes gently, giving him a watery smile. "That kid is not prepared for the experience of having you as her dad," she says.

"No," he smiles, "but at least I'm prepared for having a daughter."

Mikaela cocks her head at him slightly.

"You and Pete," Tony elaborates, his voice quiet, eyes sincere, "You two are the reason I'm ready for this life. And I can never make it up to you and I cannot thank you enough."

Mikaela tries to swallow the lump in her throat. She looks down into her lap to hide the tears gathering in her eyes, but looking down makes them fall out.

"Mikaela," Tony says gently, and he removes his hand from hers to touch her chin, lifting her face. "You will always be my kid. Don't ever think differently. This house will be yours as much as ours. You've got a room, you've got a seat at the table, and it's there for you whenever you want, even if it's not that often."

She doesn't deserve this at all. Tony is one of the most loving people she knows, she doesn't understand what she's done all her shitty life to deserve his love.

"Hey, don't do that," he says, and he flicks her nose, smirking when she lets out an embarrassed laugh. "It didn't feel like it at the time, but you changed my life when you broke into my home, and I'm so, so glad you did."

Mikaela smiles up at him, overwhelmed with love and gratitude. "Me too," she says.

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Mikaela walks into the store, the sliding doors parting to let her in. The checkout area is on her left, full of staff and customers, and they all notice her coming in. Their expressions are not friendly.

She pushes the trolley in front of her, staring back at them for a moment before concentrating on the list Storm gave her. The locals have obviously made sure they know all the humans in the town, so any unfamiliar person is to be assumed a mutant. Sometimes she wishes she could just overload and explode the assholes' phones in their pockets and send them all to hospital. But that wouldn't help things.

The imagery helps to calm her though.

Kitty had tried to insist that she come with Mikaela, but the kids need all the stable adults - or the closest thing they have to adults - they can get, and a crowd of racists don't scare Mikaela. It gets bigger every time she comes into town, and she worries about what it means for the kids, but she knows she could quite easily demolish them all if she wanted, as long as she didn't have someone with her to worry about.

She moves up and down the aisles, collecting groceries for the school. Luckily, Xavier has a very large sum of money in his bank, and had left ways for the school to access it in the event of his death, but Storm wants to use as little of it as possible, to make sure there is enough to keep the school running for a long time, and in case of emergencies.

When Mikaela finishes, she makes her way to an empty checkout, ignoring the fear on the staff member's face and the glares boring into her head from everyone else.

"Morning," she says to the girl at the checkout, attempting a friendly smile. She gets nothing back, but she wasn't expecting anything.

She starts piling her items up into the belt, and when they don't move, she sighs and stops. She can feel them closing in around her, not even needing to check the CCTV cameras.

"Do we really need to do this? You know we're all depressed and grieving too, right?" she asks, turning to face them.

There is a man at the front of the group, bigger than her, and thicker too, and his face is all anger.

"We don't want you here," he says darkly. "The girl doesn't want to serve you."

"She can make her own mind up," Mikaela retorts, "Although I'm not convinced you don't have her brainwashed."

"You're the ones who try to brainwash people into thinking you're friendly and safe," he spits. "You're the ones who lie to people about how dangerous you are."

"Fine, I won't lie," Mikaela snaps. "I'm powerful, I'm dangerous, and I'm in as much pain as you are about what went down. I lost people too and it fucking hurts, and maybe, yeah, maybe I'd enjoy threatening you and destroying things and hurting you, but I know that wouldn't be the right thing to do. So, here I am, just trying to buy some food and toiletries for the terrified kids who have been orphaned and abandoned and have no one else to rely on. Are you really going to stop me from providing for fucking children?"

"You people are the ones corrupting those kids and infecting them!" someone else shouts.

Mikaela takes a moment to move past her disbelief. "That's not how it works, idiot," she groans. "It's genetic, passed down through the father. Why don't you rage war on men instead of us?"

"There's something wrong with you all," the man at the front says. "If there are any kids in that place that feel trapped or at risk of corruption, they can come here and we will look after them."

"These kids have already been rejected by people like you," Mikaela says quietly, anger flowing through her veins. "They've been rejected by their own parents, by their communities, and you think that they'd be better here? Away from other people who have been shunned and attacked and abused for the same reasons? Away from people who understand them and protect them from judgemental, discriminatory, racist pricks like you? Are you trying to say that when they get to my age, you'll suddenly stop caring about them and cast them out all over again?"

"You know what?" another man says from behind the first. "I don't care about any of them. They're all unnatural and they need to be destroyed. Let's start with this one. I've had enough of committee debates. We need to take action."

The man at the front smirks, and Mikaela watches his hands curl into fists.

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"Hey, how was- oh my god, Mikaela, are you okay?"

Mikaela puts the shopping bags down on the table in the kitchen and smirks bitterly. The movement brings a little pain, but she doesn't notice.

Storm rushes over and explores Mikaela's face with her fingertips. She prods gently around Mikaela's eye and lip and nose, and then hurries to get a cloth, running it under warm water.

"What happened?" she asks, her voice clipped.

Mikaela watches her face as Storm gently rubs the wet cloth over Mikaela's lip and under her nose, red seeping into the white material.

"There was a group in the store," Mikaela shrugs. "They came at me."

"I thought you were training with Natasha?" Storm frowns. "I wouldn't have expected them to get many punches in."

"They were easy enough to handle."

Storm stops her wiping to stare at Mikaela, concerned. "You didn't let them do this to you, did you?"

Mikaela pushes the cloth out of her face and moves back to the shopping bags, starting to unpack them.

"Mikaela?" Storm says firmly.

"It's probably best not to humiliate them," Mikaela says. "We don't know what the last straw might be."

"You can not humiliate them and also not get beaten up at the same time," Storm snaps. "One bad punch and you could have been dead, Mikaela."

Mikaela closes her eyes and braces herself against the table. It had felt good, fighting the humans and proving she could defend herself and that she was dangerous before she even used her mutation - but it had also not felt bad getting hit a few times herself.

"Do I need to be worried about you?" Storm asks, and now her voice is gentle, but tired.

Mikaela opens her eyes and turns to face her again. "No, Storm," she assures her. "I'm not going to get myself killed. I'm sorry I upset you."

Storm walks over to give her a hug. "You need to take care of yourself. You're so important to us - to all of us."

Mikaela ends the hug and gets back to unpacking the groceries. "Any sign of Pyro and his people?"

She can feel Storm staring at the back of her head, but the woman doesn't make a comment, and instead joins Mikaela in putting the food away. "No. He's not made any contact, and there doesn't seem to have been any newsworthy incidents involving them in a while."

Mikaela clenches her jaw. "If they're just going to lay low, they might as well do it fucking here," she bites out. "Protect the kids like they said they would."

"Maybe they'll come back," Storm shrugs. "Right now, we don't need them anyway. The technology you and Tony installed around the estate is enough to keep the locals from snooping around or breaking in, and we'd see it if they tried."

"At some point, I'll need to start a deep-dive for mutants, see if there's anyone in the state who can come and provide extra support. They'll need us as much as we need them."

"We'll need to keep an eye out for kids, too," Storm reminds her. "Just because half the universe vanished, doesn't mean kids aren't still realising they're mutants. I don't think we can go out and offer them a place here like we used to, but I'm sure we can figure something out."

"See, this is where Pyro and his folk could come in handy, if he wasn't such a stubborn bollocks."

"Listen, Mikaela, everything's going to be okay," Storm says, giving her an earnest look. "We might still be adjusting to what's happened, and maybe things locally don't look very optimistic, but we'll figure it all out and we'll make sure these kids are okay. There's still hope."

Mikaela wants to feel hope. She really does. But she doesn't know if she feels much of anything anymore.

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Her boots trudge along the snow-covered pavement, her gloved hands securely in her jacket pockets, her beanie keeping her ears warm. Every other window has an attempt at Christmas decorations, but people's hearts don't really seem to be in the festive spirit this year, understandably. No one is caroling and there aren't any last-minute shoppers running around trying to find something to buy a loved one for Christmas. Even the snow is less sparkly and crisp.

The wreath hung on her wrist bounces against her thigh as she walks through the gates into the graveyard. When she reaches the grave, she retracts her hand from her pocket to place the wreath against the headstone.

"Hey, Ben," she says, quickly returning her hand to the warmth of her pocket. "It's been a few months. I've been busy. I'm sure you have too," she smirks. At some point, she had decided Ben might enjoy some dark humour. If you can't laugh about being dead, you'll cry, she supposes. "But, it's Christmas Eve, and I know Pete and May used to come see you on Christmas Eve, and I figured you'd be bummed if no one came, so, here I am."

She takes a moment to breathe and look around the graveyard, at the way the snow piles on top of headstones, the way it hides old flowers and footprints.

"At some point this year, I'll have turned," she pauses, humming to herself as she tries to work it out, "Eighteen? I think? Getting old, huh? Probably too old to still be avoiding processing grief."

She slides some snow around with her boot, feeling the cold air around her face.

"Every time I start to think about him being gone, my brain just kind of shuts it down and moves onto something else. I think I'm just protecting myself because it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me and I have no idea what to do about it," she continues, forcing chirpiness. "But, I do still think about him. I show Morgan videos of him swinging around Queens. I think she likes it, but it's hard to tell with babies, they're very enigmatic."

She manages a small smile at the memories, hearing Morgan's incoherent mumbles and watching her wide eyes follow Pete's movement on the screen, her small, chubby hands clapping lightly. Tony had walked in on the scene and barely reacted, just came and sat down next to them, watching the videos silently. Neither of them talk about it much. Sometimes just saying they miss him is enough.

"Tony's invited us all to his farm for Christmas, now that it's done. It's nice of him to think of us when it's their first Christmas as a family. But I guess we're also family. Still," she shrugs. "We're all going, anyway. Should be nice. I've had a couple of Christmases at the school before but I never really engaged properly. I think I'll try this year, see what it's like. Tony thinks I need to start celebrating things. He wants to make a day for my birthday too."

She holds out her hand when the snow starts to fall again.

"I don't know what I would have done if Tony had vanished too," she says quietly. "I think he might be the only thing keeping me going. Well, him and making sure the kids are safe, probably. It's already hard enough to try imagine celebrating anything when Peter's not here, can you imagine what it'd be like if Tony wasn't either?" She closes her eyes, clenches her fists, and tucks her chin into her chest. "Of course you know. Peter and May aren't here."

She opens her eyes again and listens to the silence, staring out into the empty space. She feels so lonely.