I know it's kind of choppy, it's really more of a set-up chapter than anything. Hope you like it, please review.
"Mom? Dad?" Mallory called, opening the door to their house.
"Mallory? What are you doing here?" Peter asked, popping his head out of the dining room.
"Hello to you, too," she said with a smile. "I had some free time, so I thought I'd come see how the house is coming," she told him. There were sheets over all the furniture, and a ladder and some paint cans were in the hall. "Where are they?" she asked her brother, setting her phone and wallet on the table by the door.
"They're upstairs fighting over how they're gonna put the furniture when they're done painting," he said. Mallory chuckled and went upstairs and into her parents' room.
"I don't see what was wrong with the room before. We lived with it like that for twenty years and you never complained about it before," Darrin said.
"Nothing was wrong with it, I just want something different," Elaine replied.
"Hey," Mallory said, walking in.
"Oh, Mallory, good. Tell your dad that we need to change a few things up in here," Elaine ordered.
"No, tell your mom that it was fine before and there's no reason to change anything," Darrin said.
Mallory laughed. "I think I'm gonna stay out of this, actually. The house is looking good, though."
Darrin smiled. "Well, thanks. It's taking longer than we thought it would, though."
Mallory nodded and looked down the hall to where her old room, now Peter's, was. The hall going to his room was so full of furniture and supplies there wasn't room for anyone to get through. "Where's Peter been sleeping?" Mallory asked.
"Well, we put a cot in our room last night, but I don't know what he's going to do tonight. We don't have room for him in our room either."
"He can sleep on the couch downstairs," Darrin said.
"We can't do that, one of the walls is missing! Besides, the living room is pretty cluttered too," Elaine said. She turned to Mallory. "Could you bring him to the cave with you for a week or so?" she asked.
Mallory sighed. "I don't know, Mom. A lot could go wrong with that," she replied hesitantly.
"Oh, Mallory, you worry too much. It's a mountain full of superheroes. What could happen?" she asked.
Mallory didn't point out any of the many things that could happen to him in a mountain full of heroes.
"He can sleep in your room, and if you need to go somewhere you can bring him back here until you get back, or maybe see if Iris can watch him. The house just isn't a safe place for him right now with all the tools lying around and everything."
Mallory sighed. "Mom, I really don't think-" one look at her mom's face told her that she wasn't going to budge on this. She sighed. "All right. I'll help him pack some stuff, if we can get to his room, that is."
She went back downstairs and found Peter coloring at the dining room table. "Hey, Pete, come on," she said.
"Come on where?" he asked, not looking up.
"Come on and pack. Your gonna spend a few days at the cave until the house is somewhat put together again."
Peter jumped to his feet and started running up to his room. Mallory followed closely and they both stopped when they got to the furniture. "Um, let me see if I can find a way around this. If not we might need to come through the window." She tried to squeeze between the junk and the wall, then tried to climb over it. She gave up a moment later. "I'm gonna go through the window," she said, but Peter was no longer beside her.
"Hey, Pete, where'd you go?" she asked.
"I'm in here," he said from his room.
"How'd you get in there?"
"I went under everything," he called back.
Mallory chuckled and looked for where he'd been able to get through. It was too small for her, so she went outside and climbed a ladder to his window. "I'll take your suitcase out the window with me when we're done," she told him as she climbed through the window. Peter was standing in the closet pulling out toys to bring. Mallory pulled an extra suitcase out of the top of his closet and started packing his clothes while he piled toys and things on the bed beside it to be packed.
"Peter, you can't bring all this stuff," she told him when she turned to the pile to start packing the toys.
"But I need it all," her brother insisted.
Mallory sighed. "You won't even play with all this stuff," she told him.
"Yes I will," he whined.
"No, you won't. You can only bring three toys. Which ones do you want?"
Peter sighed dramatically and went through the mound of stuff he'd piled on the bed. He picked the toys he wanted and Mallory packed them.
"All right. Can you crawl back under the furniture?" she asked. He nodded and started doing just that. Mallory watched him disappear under the junk, then climbed back out the window, dragging the suitcase with her. She left the bag on the front porch and went back into the house, where Elaine and Darrin were telling Peter goodbye.
"Be good, and listen to your sister," Elaine told him. Peter nodded and skipped out the door. Mallory gave her parents a hug and followed her brother outside. He was trying to drag the suitcase off the porch, but it was too big for him. Mallory picked it up and they started walking to the zeta tube.
"Um, Peter, there are some people visiting the cave right now," Mallory said. "They like to tease, so if they say something crazy like they're from the future or they know about your future, don't worry about it, they're just joking," Mallory told him. She didn't think that they would tell him anything, but she didn't want Peter to find out they were from the future and pester them the whole week.
"Ok," Peter said happily. When the phone booth came into sight, he started sprinting towards it. Mallory hurried to keep up. She authorized Peter and went through herself. When she appeared in the cave, Zatanna was saying hello to Peter. She looked up and saw the suitcase and gave Mallory a questioning look.
"The house is a mess, so my parents asked me to keep him here for a week or so. I'm sorry," Mallory explained.
"Oh, well that's no problem," Zatanna assured her. She led Peter to the living area and started putting a movie on and Mallory went to her room to figure out where her brother was going to sleep. Normally she would have just given him the empty room next to hers, but Brek was in it now, and she didn't want her brother to be too far away. She sighed and started emptying a drawer and putting his clothes in it, then she went to medbay and brought a cot back to her room and laid it on the floor at the foot of her bed. When she finished setting the room up, she went to the living area to see Peter curled up on the floor with Wolf and Zatanna in the kitchen starting to fix lunch.
"Where is everyone?" she asked, picking up a knife to chop onions.
"Conner and Megan went on a date, Raquel had a test, Kaldur is in Atlantis for some reason that he told me but I forgot, and I haven't seen the others today."
Mallory dumped the chopped onions in a pan and Zatanna stirred them around. She muttered something, and the spoon started stirring by itself while she went on to fix the rest of the food.
"And the-" she glanced back at Peter to make sure he wasn't listening, "the Legion?"
"Sandy's been in your training room most of the day, I haven't seen the others, I guess they're in their rooms. I guess you haven't had a chance to tell Sandy that your brother's going to be here, huh?"
Mallory shook her head. "No, and I'm honestly a little worried about it. I mean, with the way she acts around me, I don't want her to freak Peter out or anything. Ugh, I know I should be used to it by now, but her fangirl routine still gets under my skin sometimes."
"You know, I can hear you wherever you are in the cave, right?" Kara asked from the doorway going towards the rooms.
Mallory turned to face the super. "Sorry, I guess," she said.
Kara walked over and sat down next to her. "Hey, I get it. I had a Legionaire that followed me around for the first six months I was in the thirtieth century, a real history geek. But it ran its course and now we're pretty good friends."
"Oh, yeah? Who was that?" Mallory asked.
Kara smiled. "Brainy," she replied, and the three girls laughed. "Seriously, though. I know Sandy can be a bit much, but you're her idol. She just wants you to be proud of her, and she wants to show you that your legacy is still going strong."
"But that's just it, I don't want to be anyone's idol. I'm not even that good. It makes me, I don't know, nervous, I guess. Hey, don't worry about it. I like her, I really do, it's just that I'm not always in the mood to deal with her."
"Oh, I can understand that," Kara assured her, and Mallory nodded in relief.
"Mallory, the movie's over," Peter called from the floor in front of the sofa.
"Well put another one on," she called back.
"I can't, Wolf's on top of me," he replied.
Mallory sighed and went to find the remote. "Oh, Kara, that's my brother, Peter. Peter, this is Kara, she's a friend of mine."
Peter stared at Kara. "Who are you?" he asked after a moment.
"I'm Kara," she said with a laugh.
"No, who else are you?" he asked.
"He means what superhero are you," Mallory explained.
"Oh, well, I was Supergirl, but I guess you could say that I'm retired for the time being."
Peter's eyes widened. "Wow, you're Supergirl? Why did you stop? You were so great!"
Mallory chuckled and finished putting another movie on. He would have been too young to remember Supergirl, but everyone had seen videos and read about her. She was one of the most thanked and missed heroes on National Heroes day, where people took the day to honor heroes, old, young, and fallen, who had been keeping them safe for so many years. It was consistently the lowest crime day of the year.
"I don't know, I just wanted to take a break and live a normal life for a while, then I just couldn't bring myself to go back."
"Are you ever going to go back to it?" he asked.
Kara smiled a little. "Who knows. Maybe sometime in the future I will."
Peter went back to watching TV and Kara and Mallory went to the kitchen with Zatanna.
A few hours later, the rest of the team started showing up for training. When they saw Peter, they all went and spent a few minutes with him. Robin and Wally were especially attentive to him, with Wally carrying Peter piggyback and Robin trying to catch them. Even Canary's face brightened when she appeared in the zeta tube and saw the six year old riding Wolf while the boys chased them.
"All right, team," she said, and the team started walking to the training room.
"Peter, why don't you go to my room?" Mallory suggested, hoping to get him out of the way.
"I want to watch," Peter said, sliding off Wolf's back.
Canary smiled. "He can watch, if he wants," she said, then she looked at Mallory and added, "I'll keep an eye on him."
Mallory nodded, satisfied that he wouldn't get kicked or anything, and followed Conner and the rest of the team to the arena. In the middle of her fight with Robin, she caught a glimpse of Canary showing Peter some basic moves, not even really paying attention to the fights that were going on in the arena. She smiled, and the distraction cost her the round, and a kick in the stomach.
When training was over, Canary left and the team gathered around the island to talk.
"Conner and I went to visit Marie and Garfield today," Megan said.
"Hey, how is Gar?" Wally asked.
"Great. He's loving the expansion of the sanctuary, and I've been helping him be able to control the shapeshifting."
Mallory nodded. She'd met the boy once when the team had had a mission out in Qurac and Megan insisted that they stop by the animal sanctuary to visit. He was green from the blood transfusion Megan had given him, and at that time the shapeshifting abilities had just been surfacing.
"Marie asked if he could stay with me for a week or two, just until the renovations are done."
Mallory tilted her head. "How old is he again?" she asked.
"He's eight," Megan replied.
"Well, that's great! Peter's staying her for the week while my parents get the house put together. They can hang out together and maybe that'll keep them out of the way."
"I can hear you!" Peter yelled from the living area.
"Well then, how does it sound? You want to be friends with a green guy?" she asked him.
"Yeah!" Peter replied.
"There you have it," Mallory told the Martian.
Megan smiled. "All right. I'll tell Marie that he can come tomorrow."