A/N: You bet I more than doubled the contents of the first and second chapters and readjusted for pacing purposes.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the main characters, they belong to the creators of Total Drama. I definitely don't own the original Cinderella tale, this is just my spin on it.

Thank you to the original reviewers of the chapter: smilingagged, Bloodylilcorpse, and DarkAngelofSorrowReturns. :)

Enjoy!

"Mike…I met someone," Kate announced after a routine trip into town for the monthly market. She was newly made up in a dress he had never seen her wear, standing in front of his seat in the living room. She'd been going out in more put together attire recently, now that he thought about it. "A couple months ago, in the village. I was going to tell you about him sooner but you've just been working so hard I never found the time-"

Mike looked up from the notepad he was using to sketch his own costume for the new production he was in. He wasn't sure if this was meant to be good news, because she sounded so nervous. "Do you… like him?" he asked before spotting a new piece of jewelry on her finger, a plain looking ring with a very small white gem in the middle.

Oh.

He looked at her more closely; his mother hadn't been this energetic in years. She was fiddling with her hair and tapping her foot periodically as she looked down at him.

This was really important to her, clearly. Maybe she'd finally gotten over everything that happened…

"Yes, I think he's just what we both need," Kate replied with a quick nod, sitting next to her son on the couch. "He's a businessman, so he says, very charming. He wanted to meet you before…anything serious happened between us." Her face was slightly pink, but again, it could have just been nerves.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "Are you… planning on marrying him?" he guessed quietly based on context clues, closing his notebook on the elderly man he was designing a wardrobe for.

Kate was silent, a bit surprised he figured it out so quickly, but nodded again. "Yes, I already agreed to it, I just…figured I'd wait to tell you that until you met him and his family." She made sure to look him in the eyes. "You don't mind, do you?"

Mike hesitated before shaking his head, smiling carefully. "As long as this makes you happy, then I'm happy," he promised, keeping his own inhibitions out of his voice.

"Oh, thank you for saying that, Michael!" Kate replied with an even bigger smile, hugging him. "He's coming over tomorrow, bringing his two sons as well. They're around your age; I think you'll get along just fine."

Mike hugged her back, but couldn't stop a single tear from escaping his eye.

In his mind she was replacing what could still be found. He'd go along with it, of course, and would keep an open mind to these new people.

It was still incredibly difficult to not think of the lost men of his family, especially after seeing their new potential replacements.

The marriage was an inevitability that they all knew would happen after he arrived at their home to her opening the door and beckoning him inside, nearly forgetting the two mildly annoyed teenagers flanking him. "Michael, this is my fiancée, Noah. Noah, this is my son-" she introduced them quickly.

Noah looked up slightly to meet Mike's eyes as Kate continued, since he was the shorter man. His skin was a similar warm shade to hers, his black hair hitting just above his shoulders. His eyes were cold, however…cold, dark, and clouded. Mike couldn't tell what he was thinking as they sized up one another and shook hands. "Kate told me you do the heavy lifting for the two of you," Noah said in a near-mumble, his voice low and monotone. "Maybe you could show those two a thing about hard work." For a man with the level of intelligence he had been described to have, as well as an apparently superhuman work ethic, it was no surprise that a look of disapproval was ready set on his face whenever he looked in the direction of his offspring.

His two sons, Scott and Vito, had clambered into the house with little fanfare but much physicality. They were indeed both around the same age as Mike, but were definitely not twins.

Vito looked like his father the most, sharing a skin tone and hair color, but inherited none of his stiff formality or shorter height. He slouched, his dress shirt untucked and his voice the most tough and confident sounding it could possibly be. His hair was long and slicked back out of his face, and he sneered in Mike's direction when he saw that his future step-brother was taller. "Ey yo, whatcha looking at, huh?" he asked after Noah had moved away to speak only to Kate.

"N-nothing-" Mike replied, feeling intimidated already and looking away. Vito appeared much more muscular than he was, he could probably snap him in half if he wanted to-

"So you gonna show us around or do we just have to sit and look at your ugly living room all day?" Scott asked rudely with a frown. His prickly short orange hair slanted back like it was petrified by the wind, his pale skin was dotted with equally orange freckles, and his gray-blue eyes pierced through Mike like knives, searching for his every weakness. In short, he looked nothing like his brother or father.

It was revealed to Mike later, after he'd asked Vito enough questions about them to receive a handful of bruises on his arm, that their physical differences were not due to weird genetic coincidence but a simple case of two different mothers. Apparently, while Noah's wife had been newly pregnant with Vito, Noah thought it a good idea to attend a party at a nearby manor to 'de-stress'. After he'd had a few too many drinks, one of the manor's security guards took a quick and overpowering liking to him. A few mistakes later, in one of the many broom closets of the estate, Scott was accidentally created.

Due to complications from keeping her pregnancy a secret for too long, Scott's mother died shortly after giving birth. Now stuck with two sons instead of just one while still young, Noah had to convince his wife to keep Scott since the guard had no other family to take him. She had agreed, reluctantly, still very much in love with Noah, but never treated Scott quite the same as she did her own son, Vito.

"You all will get to see the house eventually, but it'll be dinner time soon," Kate kindly reminded them. "Michael, could you set the table, please, dear?" She didn't look at him, still fixated on Noah.

Mike nodded and quickly moved over to the kitchen, away from those two idiots, who quickly began arguing over something again. He took a deep breath in and out and calmed his heartbeat down to normal again. Maybe they're not like this all the time? he hoped to himself while gathering silverware.

He was very much wrong about that, but would only come to realize it after the wedding bells had stopped ringing.

Kate very quickly welcomed Noah and sons into their home once she and Noah had wed, just a few weeks after they'd tied the knot. The boys took their suitcases straight upstairs to what appeared to be available bedrooms while Noah shut himself in the downstairs office like he'd been magnetically drawn to it.

"I'll take this one!" Scott announced, about to turn the knob to Mal's shut bedroom at the same time as Vito declared he would take Mike's bedroom next door.

The problem with this situation became apparent to the two when Mike had to yell, "Wait!" to keep them from barging into private space.

They whipped their heads around, both rolling their eyes. "What is it this time, Mike? This like, your dress-up room or something? Do you use it to practice your little 'characters?' What a loser!" He high-fived Vito, who smirked silently next to him.

Mike sighed in mild frustration. "No. First of all, you can't go in there," he replied, pointing to Mal's bedroom door. "That's reserved for someone else. If I catch you in there…" He loudly exhaled for emphasis, then left it at that and walked to his room. "This one is my room. If you want to use it, you could just ask. I'm a reasonable person." He was hoping they'd be repulsed by the thought and seek a different living arrangement.

"Fine. May I use your room, please?" asked Scott insincerely, earning a snicker from Vito.

Realizing that didn't work, Mike said defeatedly, "Sure, you can use it. I could sleep in…" Where else could he sleep?

"The attic! You have an attic in this dump of a house, right? Take your stuff and get the hell out!" Scott decided before he shoved Mike into the bedroom so he could pack all his things.

Mike caught himself and tightened his fists briefly, completely taken aback by this sudden upheaval in his life. He was at his wit's end, how could they just…but he knew that if he made a fuss then his mother would give him a look, that he would have to adjust to the new people in their home as he had adjusted to having it be just the two of them.

What does she see in him, anyway? he wondered as he stuffed his clothes into a bag. She must have given up on them coming home someday…but I haven't.

Because of those two idiots he was stuck moving out of his room, the room he'd lived in for his entire life. The room he and Mal had shared briefly while Mal's room was being done. The room he'd rehearsed his plays in, where he'd dreamed of performing for the nobility, of meeting a girl who'd take his breath away…

Mike collected his things as slowly as possible and left his room with his head towards the ground, earning a door slam behind him as soon as he did so. He started to walk towards the staircase leading up to the attic, but as he passed the door that led to Mal's room, he couldn't help but feel like he was leaving him behind.

Up in the attic, where Mike had never been in any of his sixteen years, it was drafty but spacious, with a large window in the ceiling and a smaller one in the wall facing the road. He walked up to it and gazed on the pathway leading to the house. He sighed.

At least the view isn't too bad… he thought as he moved away from the window and looked around the room before he set his things down. "Since I'm stuck up here I might as well make this place more like home," he decided for himself.

He began to shift things around, starting with pulling an old bed out from a pile of dusty boxes. He patted out the crusted dust and shifted it to the middle of the floor and up against the back wall facing the door. He then placed the items he'd brought from his room around it: a small table held the scripts from all the plays he'd done on the side of the bed, and he made use of a bookshelf on one wall for his sketchbooks, novels and a few other things.

After rearranging everything, it started to feel like this attic was his room all along, sort of. Mike smiled to himself as he looked at his handiwork and dusted off his hands, breathing in the musty air with gusto. "Maybe this won't be too bad. At least up here, I can rehearse without those two interrupting for once," he realized, quickly reaching for his latest script.

He began to warm up his voice as he re-read his lines again for the tenth time, breathing the right way and pacing back and forth on the creaky floor. He got himself into character, a practice he had perfected in his five years of semi-professional acting.

This being as much a physical performance as a verbal one, he stood hunched over and with one eye shut as he ran the scene solo. "Now listen here, you little punks. I'm trying to take a nap! Kids these days… can't sit still. Kendra, can you tell them to pipe down?" he asked the imaginary girl in front of him, brandishing the script in one hand.

Quickly he switched voices to match the voice of one of his co-actors, Dakota. "Sorry, Grandpa, I was busy preparing to go hunting! You know the animals are going to hibernate soon," he replied to himself in a much more soft, feminine tone.

"Bah! Back in my day, girls didn't hunt. They stayed in, washing dishes and caring for all the insubordinate children. Speaking of which, where the devil is your brother?"

"Which one?"

As Mike continued to rehearse his part and hone the character, Scott and Vito were sneaking up to the attic entrance, prepared to run up the staircase like a couple of maniacs and scare him senseless. However, when they heard him talking to people in weird voices, they thought twice about progressing further.

"Ey yo, how many people are up there?" Vito wondered out loud, looking confusedly at the distant door.

Scott listened carefully. "One. Mike's the only one up here besides us," he confirmed with a raised eyebrow.

"We have a bro who talks to himself! Ha!" Vito laughed.

"He must be crazy," Scott figured, turning away from the door.

Vito nodded. "Yea, or stupid."

Scott lightly punched Vito's arm. "He's smarter than you," he pointed out with a smirk.

"Ey! That was uncalled for, bro," his brother remarked with a frown, rubbing where Scott punched him.

"No, it was," Scott said as he started laughing, running away as Vito chased him down the hallway.

Mike heard the whole thing from above and laughed to himself at their foolishness while trying not to let their words bother him. He then put his script down, sat himself on his bed, and wrote a new letter to Mal.

Hey, Mal.

How are you? Good? Bad? Still getting up to things you shouldn't be?

As he began to write about the new residents of the house, his handwriting grew shakier.

Things here are barely tolerable these days. We now have two irritating step-brothers and a step-dad who's never around and has barely said a word to me. At least when Father was home he wasn't a complete stranger…

Despite it being addressed to Mal, writing this letter made Mike feel closer to their long lost father, as he had been the one to teach Mike how to read and write as a young lad. Mal hadn't been as good at it but he did learn some things, enough for them to send letters when he was away.

He tried to steady his hand to continue writing.

Your room is still undisturbed. I kept Scott from laying claim to it. But now I'm stuck living in the attic with nothing but my thoughts and my dreams. And my memories of you, I guess. They keep me hopeful.

My acting is getting a lot better. I'm working on a show about a girl who lives with her cranky grandpa and her four half-brothers. Can you imagine? I'm playing the grandfather. I wish you were here to help me rehearse like you used to...

He took a deep breath in and out. The shaking didn't subside.

I miss you all of every day. Please come home soon.

Your brother and partner in crime,

Mike

As he signed his name with a wobbly smile, he let a few droplets from his eyes fall onto the paper and blur the ink.

Mike didn't care, because no one would ever read it.

He tore the letter out of the notebook, folded it into a perfect square, and placed it in a box he had for storing the previous letters he'd written to Mal, one of several in fact. There was a note for every day since Mal left on the trip.

Despite himself, Mike couldn't stop more tears from falling onto the bare mattress he sat on. The lonely aching in his chest was only growing stronger and more painful as time marched on, even with the new people living in his home.

Unfortunately for him, it was only going to get worse.

Yes, that scene gets all of chapter three to itself now. I hope to do y'all proud with it.

Please let me know any thoughts on this new revised version of…I guess this was originally part of chapter 1, um…yeah. That. :)

When you're done with that, we can move on to the final revised chapter, and all those that follow it!