Dislcaimer: Not mine in any fashion sadly. I'll take Sebastian Stan though!

A/N: So technically I posted this chapter last night but I realized it was kinda crappy, my writing was just ewww. So I decided to rewrite it today, I was going to have two chapters put up today but I ended up having to picky my niece up and then we ended up getting ice cream together and yeah, life happened. But hopefully tomorrow I will get the next chapter up. No promises though!

Read me: Also, a reviewer asked if I was going to have Wanda and Pietro's father be Magneto and the answer to that will be no. I'm keeping mostly with the Avenger storyline where they are from Sokovia and are not the children of Magneto and that they had been experimented on by Hydra. I mentioned their parents and the name of their parents in a previous chapter, I can't remember which one but I know I mentioned them to some extent. Sorry for those of you who were hoping for them to be Magneto's children but it's not happening, sorry.

Chapter twenty-three

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~ Niki : Minnesota ~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

For years – nearly seven years in fact – Niki has been doing all in her power to find her younger sister Norah who has been missing for almost eight years, she's searched and searched and then she searched some more but each and every single time Niki has come out empty handed and disappointed. There were so many times when Niki thought about throwing in the towel with finding her younger Mutant sister; it's not that she didn't love her sister or miss Norah because she did, she even missed the fights where they didn't talk for days on end, she missed the arguing over what show to watch on TV or what radio station to listen to on the radio but after so many years of searching without a single sliver of a sign as to where her sister might have gone, well, it took a toll on a person. The only lead that they had ever gotten had come to them about three or so months after Norah had run away in the middle of the night, their mother's spare car which Norah had used to get away, showed up being found in some random town in Indiana. At that point in time Niki had still sided with her mother for the most part when it came to Norah and them needing to take her to see a doctor so that she could be 'fixed' of her Mutant powers, but after a lot of self-evaluation and realization Niki knew without a doubt that herself and her mother had been wrong when it came to Mutants and wrong with how they dealt with Norah. Mutants were people too, this whole anti-Mutant stand that so many people seem more than willing to join was complete bullshit and was a form of racism but instead of it being blacks versus whites like it had been back in the 1960's it was now Mutant's versus non-Mutants. Sure, there definitely were Mutants who were a danger to people and society as a whole, who had dangerous powers that they could use to hurt and/or kill people without even all that much thought but humans weren't all that different either. There were regular humans out in the world who were incredibly dangerous and who would kill without a second thought, without even thinking about if it was right or wrong and would use any means necessary to kill if they felt like it. Both Mutants and Humans had dangerous people, and both Humans and Mutants had good people in their ranks as well.

That phone call from that really odd and eccentric sounding guy in New York that Norah seemed to know, telling her about Norah and the fact that she had been injured in battle while in Sokovia fighting against those robots that were all over the news, well as morbid and dark as it sounded Niki was more than happy to hear the news. Happy wasn't the right word but she was thankful to hear about Norah after nothing for nearly two weeks and she was happy to hear that Norah wasn't dying or dead and instead was just healing up from the gunshot wounds that she had received in Sokovia. Whoever that guy was had invited herself, her husband David, her daughter Aurora, her mother and her dad to fly out to New York City at his expense so that they could be reunited with Norah, well in David and Aurora's case they would be meeting Norah for the first time. All Niki had to do now was break the news to her mother about knowing where Norah was – David and Rora already knew about her and about the plan to fly out to New York.

"I found Norah." Niki blurted out suddenly to her mother who she was having coffee with at Starbucks, her mother complained about the overpriced drinks but Niki was in love with their caramel macchiato.

The moment Niki said those words, Cheri, Niki's mother slowly raised her eyes from the cup of black coffee that was in her hands and looked at her eldest daughter in confusion, uncertain if she had heard her correctly. "What?" she questioned her and blinked a few times, as if thinking that she was sleeping. "What did you just say?" she demanded.

Grasping her macchiato more tightly, Niki took a deep breath of stale air that seemed to circulate around the coffee shot and looked into her mother's dark brown eyes, eyes that her sister shared with her mother. "I…I found Norah, or well, she found me technically." She said with a small awkward laugh, a bit unsure of how she was supposed to go about this conversation or how to tell her mother how Norah got back into contact with her.

"When? How?" Cheri demanded of her eldest daughter as she tried her best to calm down and to stop the swirling thoughts that were going about in her mind at the moment, this was not the time. "She..she's alive? How did she know where you lived or what your phone number was? Is she okay?" she asked quickly and without pausing to breathe.

At that Niki gave a small smile, "Yes, Norah is fine. I don't know how she knew where I lived or what my phone number was and I don't really care, what matters is that she contacted me. After almost eight years I was able to hear her voice again, it…god mom." She said and shook her head, her emotions piling up in her already terribly emotional body. "She called me almost two weeks ago and told me that she was helping some friends of hers, she said that they were about to go and do something incredibly dangerous, something that she wasn't sure she would end up surviving. She said that they were doing this to save not just the human race but the world from extinction, that this…..thing wanted to kill all humans. Norah called me because she didn't want to have any regrets or something like that and wanted to reconcile and wanted to let me know that she missed me and hoped that if she was able to make it out alive that she'd be able to see me…us again one day." She explained to her mother who had raised the cup of coffee to her face and took a drink and try as she might Niki was unable to read what exactly her mother was feeling at the moment. "Yesterday was the first time that I got any news on her since she had called me almost two weeks ago, some random guy called me and told me that Norah had been injured in Sokovia – that country over in Eastern Europe that was all over the news – he said that she had been shot five times and had then been in a medically induced a coma for eleven days after that and had been awake for about two days or so when he called me. He said that she was fine and was mostly healed up and would only have a few scars to show for it."

"Norah." Cheri whispered unbelievably and closed her eyes for a moment, the fact that her daughter had been in danger and that she had been injured so badly that she had to be put into a medically induced a coma made Cheri want to cry and wish that she could have been there with her daughter to hope and pray and hug her and tell her that she loved her. "Wh…where is she?" she questioned, she needed to know where her youngest daughter was, she needed to see her daughter.

Niki gave an internal sigh of relief, this conversation was going much more smoothly than she had first anticipated and she was more than thankful for that. "She's been living in New York City. I don't really know much else other than that, just htat she was injured while trying to help out in Sokovia and that she ended up getting shot a few times and this guy whose name I don't even really know offered to pay for us to go to New York City…..to reunite with Norah." She said softly and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her dark red coat. "After seven long years of searching we finally found her mom, we finally found Norah. Well she found us I guess, but now we know that she didn't die or anything like that but that she was trying to good in the world and ended up on top and is alive. We'll be able to see her again mom."

Rather than answering Cheri instead covered her face with her hands and bowed her head a bit; this was something that she dreamed about happening one day, that she hoped and prayed for ever since Norah had ran away…..well when she ended up not returning after a few weeks that is. Cheri knew she made a mistake when she decided to not file a police report for her missing daughter and when the police had asked her why she didn't she didn't really know how to answer that but she managed some sad excuse but she could see them judging her, thinking her a bad parent. Cheri knew that she had reacted badly when finding out that Norah was a Mutant, she had said things and wanted to force her to do things that were unsavory…she had straight out said to Norah that she wanted to take her to a specialized doctor so that she could get 'fixed' of her Mutant powers. That was not something she should have said, Cheri should have thought about things and done more research on Mutants than the few articles she managed to find online and she should not have tried to act as if she was trying to take away her daughter's basic human rights. That was what she was insinuating too, Cheri wanted to force Norah to get a procedure done that would change who she was and change her DNA so that it was like a regular humans, that is something that would go against human rights activist very being – the ones that were pro-Mutants at least.

It was hard to talk about what happened with Norah and the revelation that she was a Mutant, something that was hard for her to admit to the rest of Cheri's family members and most of them were accepting about the fact that Norah was a Mutant and that makes Cheri regret what she said and did so much more and made her wish she could turn back time to keep herself from doing what she did to her youngest daughter. Cheri hoped, god did she hope that Norah would give her a chance to show how much she regretted what she did and what she said, hoped that Norah would find forgiveness in her heart and would be able to try and have a relationship with her once again…..to have a mother/daughter relationship once again. There was no doubt that it wasn't going to be easy, that it was going to be painful and hard and it would be a terribly messy process – rebuilding any broken relationship was like that – but Cheri was willing to suffer through the emotional pain and the messiness if it means she would be able to have a relationship with Norah once again. She'd do almost anything to regain that.

"You said that she's okay?" Cheri asked as she lowered her hands from her face and clenched her fists in front of her on top of the table and stared into Niki's murky blue colored eyes. "That she's alive and…and okay?"

"Yes," Niki said with a nod of her head. "At least that's what the guy told me." She responded, hoping against hope that the guy hadn't lied to her and that Norah is in fact lying in a bed dying or something just as bad as that. "He said that Norah was shot and that she was on the way to being mostly healed up from her wounds which he didn't really explain to me so I'm not sure what the extent is other than she was shot five times." She told her mother and gave an apologetic half smile to her, running her hands through her medium length wavy hair Niki began rapping her fingers against the table. "I already told David and Rora that we would be taking that guy up on his offer to bring us to New York, we're planning on leaving in the next day or so depending on you. I need to see her, I need to let her know all of the things I never took much time to tell her and I need to let her know that I don't care if she's a Mutant or not."

Cheri gave a smile at that and couldn't help but agree with Niki, she too, needed to see Norah with her own two eyes to know that she was okay and so that she could tell her everything that she should have told her and to tell her how sorry she was for reacting the way that she had when finding out about her being a Mutant.

"She's twenty-two now." Cheri said offhandedly, looking into her nearly empty coffee cup. "She'll be twenty-three in six months, in April." She said softly and wished that she hadn't of missed so many birthdays, holidays and life events that were important to Norah such as graduating high school.

"Yeah." Niki intoned sadly, not quite sure if she should say anything else in response to that comment, if she should comfort her mother or if she should just sit there and let her mother come to terms with everything that has been said thus far.

"I'm going." Cheri said after a few moments of silence between the two females and looked at her daughter in complete seriousness; nothing would be able to stop her from heading to New York to see her daughter who she hasn't seen in almost eight years. "I won't wait any longer to see my daughter." She said determinedly, a fierce look in her eyes at the thought of anyone attempting to stop her from going. "Is there a day picked out already for when we leave?" she questioned.

At that Niki shook her head, "No. Me and David chose two days from now to give us time to let his job know what was going on, to get homework from Rora's school and to see if you would be coming with." She told her.

Cheri was thankful that Niki would be going, as well as David and Rora who she hoped would act as buffers in case an argument or heated words were exchanged between Norah and Cheri, though she sincerely hoped it wouldn't come to that. But Cheri now knew that she would have to let Tom know about what was happening and that he deserved to come with and see his daughter as well and if he said no to going, well, let's just say he will end up changing his mind quickly. Tom was barely there for Cheri or their two girls, so the least he could do was come with them to New York which was being paid for by whoever Niki had talked to on the phone and see his daughter who he hasn't seen since the girl was fifteen.

"I'll call your father and talk to him about coming with us." Cheri said with a sigh, she would always love her ex-husband because of their girls but she didn't particularly like the person he was anymore especially once he got heavy into the drinking and drug dealing, maybe seeing Norah again will change him but she wasn't about to hold her breath.

All Cheri could hope for at the moment was that this reunion that they would be having in less than a week went smoothly, that no fights broke out in the first few minutes of seeing one and another again and that she would eventually have a mother/daughter relationship with Norah once again.

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~ Author's Note ~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

First of all thank you to everyone who has been reading this, so far I have about 400 followers which makes this my most followed story which is completely amazing, I never expected it to be such a big hit. I only started writing this becuase I was angry that Pietro got killed off and well, the story ended up writing itself and becoming much more amazing than I ever expected so thank you!

Secondly sorry that I rewrote this on you all, I just didn't like the first version.

Quote:

"I understood the life around me better, not from love, which everybody acknowledges to be a great teacher, but from estrangement, to which nobody has attributed the power of reinforcing insight

"exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile's life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement."