Going back to school after the whirlwind that Lena had been through felt strange in a new way, but she had reached a point where she had grown used to strange, new feelings. Compared to the open sea and the cage she had been held captured in, school felt mundane. Walking past regular students, disguising her exhaustion as her typical timid nature made her feel as if there was an invisible mask on her face.

"That's sort of what it is," Peter commented, squeezing her hand.

When she sat down for lunch, everything around her felt unreal and blurry, as if the lights were too bright and everything around her was unfocused. Her surroundings only felt real when MJ sat down and pushed her shoulder in what Lena supposed was a playful way. She took a long blinked and attempted to smile at the other girl.

"Peter said you were sick, feeling better?" MJ spoke in her usual diluted tone.

She chewed on the inside of her lip, "A little bit better."

"Good," MJ pulled a sandwich out of her sack. "Because I'm coming over to your house this weekend."

Lena blinked with surprise at the statement. It was not even a question, from what she had studied, the typical interaction of two people spending time together involved a question, especially when they were not too familiar with each other. Lena and MJ had never spent any exterior time with each other, so this was naturally a shock.

"You are?"

"I mean," the other girl took a bite and swallowed, "You'll have to ask your uncle, I'd assume, but yeah."

Lena was not sure how to answer, and with luck she was greeted by Ned and Peter sitting down across from them, one shoving each others shoulder, and a laugh following.

They discussed the upcoming test they had on Their Eyes Were Watching God, MJ destroying the two boys in a steady discussion on the motifs of speech and silence. Based on the way she spoke, and nothing else (MJ was a closed book), Lena could tell that this was MJ's favorite novel that their American Literature class had covered this school year. While Lena liked the novel, she had been having difficulty wrapping her head around the concept of a plot, which was not unusual. Most of the novels that they read in the class were written from the background of a human experience. There were countless questions that Lena had asked Peter about miniscule details about each writer's books. The analysis that the English teacher required them to do became easier than understanding the reason why a rich man would throw countless parties in an effort to get the attention of someone who was a long remnant of his past.

"Lena what are you up to on Friday?" Peter and her had a habit of hanging out on the weekends, but this weekend would be different.

"MJ is going to come over to my house," she said softly, looking at him with a short smile. She could feel the elevation of his mood increase, barely, but it was there. There was a part of Peter that had wanted them to be friends for a long time, and Lena had wanted the same. She needed more friendships than just that of Peter and the rest of her family.

On Thursday night, Lena had cleaned everything in her room until it was perfect, making sure that there was nothing out of place. Typically, she kept her room relatively tidy, but some sort of worry had washed over her and brought her to make sure that everything looked as it should.

Tony walked in about an hour later while she was sitting on her bed studying for the exam the next day. She had spaced out her night so that all her shorter assignments (like her math work and finishing her chemistry lab) were complete before cleaning and dedicating the rest of her time to the American Literature exam. She jumped a bit when he knocked and entered the room, and sat at the end of her bed with his hands crossed in his lap.

"You doing okay?"

She set her pen down on her open notebook, "Why do you ask?"

"Skipped dinner."

"I was not hungry"

"You're never hungry but usually you join us."

She hesitated, "Exam tomorrow."

Tony snickered, almost knowingly, "You're going to ace that exam. You probably don't even need to study."

She gave him a long, consequential look, "Okay."

"You're nervous about MJ coming over aren't you?"

Her eyes returned to her notebook, skimming over the loopy handwriting that so many people seemed to compliment her on. Apparently it looked pleasing to the eye, but she was not sure what made one set of letters more pleasing than another.

"It's okay to be nervous L," he sounded like he was trying to be reassuring, but she did not feel reassured.

"I do not want to mess up."

"Just be yourself. Minus the siren part, but not completely. Be a siren, just don't let her know.," he slapped her shoulder and pinched her cheek jokingly, and she watched as he left.

Lena had always known that Tony loved her, but he had never explicitly said it. She smiled to herself as she reburied herself into her studies.

…

After school, and after finishing an exam Lena knew she aced, she led MJ to the sleek black car that Happy picked her up in every day. A part of her felt self conscious about it all, knowing that she was one of the more privileged students at her school. She was just smart enough that she was not like Eugene Flash Thompson who flaunted his wealth in a sickening way. He was always trying to come up and flirt with her, using their minimal common factor to make the rest of her friends feel uncomfortable. He was an open book and she read him easily, and most of the time it disgusted her, despite the fact his habit of bragging was only used to mask his own insecurity. The way that Lena interpreted it, having insecurities was no excuse for being a mean person.

MJ found Happy amusing, and it took a lot for Lena not to laugh as MJ tried to get a quick rise out of him. It was not malicious, she just made comments about his name, about his stone cold silence.

"You and me, we aren't unalike you know. You work for Tony Stark and don't talk much, and my friend is Tony Stark's niece, and I don't talk much either. In fact, this is probably the most she's even heard me talk."

Lena giggled.

With every interaction, she tried to hide the fact that she had spent countless hours watching videos in her room of stereotypical sleepover movie scenes when she should have been asleep. She gave MJ a tour of the compound, excluding explicits parts about her training, taught her how to access F.R.I.D.A.Y. if she needed anything, and eventually they wound up in her bedroom. MJ sat on the soft queen bed while Lena lounged in her desk chair, spinning it aimlessly as they talked.

"Dude I can't believe you have a pool in your room, it's crazy. Plus, it's like, suspended in the air? Your uncle's a goddamn genius. Literally."

She had already said that the pool was off limits because it was undergoing maintenance. There was no way Lena was about to swim in front of MJ. Maybe one day. Secretly, she hoped that there would be a one day, but for now Lena was strictly human and nothing more. She was the niece of a billionaire and that was the only quality that was abnormal about her.

"Do you know who you're going to prom with yet?"

Lena felt herself blush, "Yeah. Peter."

The smile on MJ's face was palpable, "You guys are dating, right?"

Her face heatened some more. MJ's casual manner of conversation was a blessing. She didn't do what most of the girls they spent time around did when the mention of two people dating was brought up. There were never any squeals or jumping around or the strange hand flapping that some of them did. It was always just an inquiry, and then a simple smile in response.

"Yeah, dating."

"We always suspected it, but Ned and I were too afraid to ask."

MJ fell asleep watching a movie projected on the wall in front of her bed by PET. It was a horror movie that MJ claimed was one of her all time favorites. At one point she asked if Lena thought she would survive the movie, or if she would be the first to get murdered, and secretly, she wished she could reassure her friend that the murderer would be put into custody before reaching anyone, especially if she was surrounded by her friends. Instead she said,

"I would not be the first."

"Neither would I. Some people in these movies are so stupid I wonder how they aren't dead already."

Lena wanted everything to be normal, to fall asleep next to MJ like a regular teenager would, but sleep was still too strange, and the anxiety of waking up her friend from the routine screaming was not going to allow her to find slumber anyway. So, she watched the end of the movie, texted Peter until he was asleep, and soon found herself wandering the halls of the compound. Her mind was blank, and the aimless walking without purpose had a mending aspect to it, like she was massaging the ever-pulsing mania in her brain. She was not manic, but there were times where she felt like she was barely on the cusp.

She jumped when she felt another presence in the room. The lounging room, to be exact. When she turned to look, she expected it to be Tony, but to her own surprise it was Mr. Hogan standing a few feet away, staring out a window parallel to her.

"Mr. Hogan," she could sense why he was awake. Being head of security brought out some anxieties that prevented him from staying asleep through the night.

"Lena, how many times have I said to call me Happy?"

"Old habit."

Silence.

"How's the sleepover?"

"Tony told you?"

"He said you were nervous."

She shrugged, "I guess."

"And?"

"It is fun. Does not change my attitude towards the human way of recharging."

Happy snickered and shuffled his feet, "You know, if I didn't know your backstory, I definitely would have believed you were related to Tony."

It was a neutral statement, but she was flattered, "Peter says that too."

"Peter also has some of Tony's qualities. More of the skittish ones, but qualities nonetheless."

There was another spell of silence before Happy spoke again, "It's been really nice having you around, Lena. You've really made a difference in Tony's life."

"I have?" that was not something Lena had noticed, but then, she had never known what Tony was like before she arrived. A miniscule part of her felt sorry that she had to disrupt so much of his life when she begged them to not put her back in the ocean. She had been what some of her classmates might have called a "nutcase" before working out her issues with her sisters, and it could not have been simple to manage the ups and downs of her acclamation into her human life.

"He has a new sense of purpose, very similar to when he took on mentoring Peter, but slightly different. It's been good to see him so passionate."

…

Lena walked MJ to the car the next morning, slightly disappointed that their time together was over, but she was sure it would happen again.

They ran into Pepper on the way out, a strange feeling of nervousness falling into the pit of her stomach. Lena wanted MJ to meet her "aunt," but it was the same askew feeling that she felt whenever Tony caught her and Peter kissing, as if she had barged in on something that Lena didn't want her to see.

"Pepper-"

"Miss Potts it's so nice to meet you, thank you for having me!"

Pepper smiled, warmly, not the smile that she usually gave to cameras or to Tony when she was upset with him, "I hope you two had fun."

Lena was trying to usher MJ out the door, "Yeah! Thanks for staying, MJ."

"Promise me we'll hang out to get ready for prom, Lena?"

Oh, right. They had talked about that last night.

"Promise!"

Happy drove the car off, MJ slyly smiling and waving as the car drifted out of sight. When Lena turned to go back to her bedroom, Pepper was still smiling, as if an idea had come into her head. Lena knew that an idea had come to her, the excitement at the forefront, and was ready to burst into telling her what it was.

"Prom, huh? There's no way I'm not helping both of you getting ready."

She kissed the top of Lena's head and walked off, a lighter skip in her step than when she had first approached them.