"All packed?"

"Uh huh." Alya nodded as her father entered her room.

Natasha and Wanda had dedicated most of the morning to helping Alya pack everything she needed for her trip.

Tomorrow was the day that she and all the rest of the students were supposed to fly to Europe. It took a whole lot of convincing for Natasha not to join Alya on the flight over there. Yelena happened to be in Russia to visit Melina and Alexei for a while, so that helped ease Natasha's mind.

If anything happened, at least Yelena was in close proximity.

"Wanda's gonna miss me." Alya smiled cheekily at her sister.

"I am not." Wanda rolled her eyes. "I think the next two weeks are going to be very, very peaceful without you running around like a little gremlin. Why do you think I was so happy to help you pack?"

She and Alya watched 'The Gremlins' the night before and now she wouldn't stop calling her sister a gremlin.

It drove Alya crazy, but as long as she kept calling her 'Sissy, Wanda wasn't going to stop.

"I'm not a gremlin!" As predicted, Alya launched herself at her sister, knocking her down so that they both fell on her bed. "Take it back!"

"No!" Wanda laughed as the girl straddled her waist to keep her from going anywhere. "Get off of me!"

Alya was strong for someone who was so small! Wanda could definitely fling her off, but that would take some effort.

"Take it back or I'll lick you!"

"Don't you dare." Wanda immediately stopped laughing. "That's disgusting, Alya. Don't do that."

"You didn't take it back." Alya grinned, smelling Wanda's fear. As a response, she stuck her finger in her mouth and moved it towards the teen's ear. "Готовый?" (Ready?)

"Alyona." Wanda raised a brow, but from her position, she didn't look very threatening, so she went right to Plan B. "Mom!"

"She started it." Alya pointed with her free hand as Natasha took her arm and pulled her off of the bed.

It was probably for the best, because she had every intention of giving Wanda that Wet Willy.

"Well, I'm finishing it."

Alya had some real...tomboyish traits that she no doubt received as an influence from her father, who was always rough housing with her, despite Natasha's many, many requests not to.

It made her cringe to think about how Alya was actually going to stick her saliva-covered finger in Wanda's ear as revenge.

"That's not fair." The little one huffed before wiggling out of her mother's grip. "Daddy, Wanda keeps bullying me and Mama's letting her."

Bucky just laughed and ruffled her hair. "Stop bothering your sister and maybe they'll leave you alone."

He and Natasha were pretty much on the same page of letting Alya fight her own battles unless she really needed them to step in.

They knew that fighting was a part of normal sibling behavior and unless it got to the point where someone was going to get seriously injured, they tried to stay out of it.

"You're letting her, too!" Alya gasped, betrayal crossing her features. "I'm gonna run away."

She heard that on a tv show once and figured it would work for her.

"Oh yeah?" Bucky matched her energy, knowing every single trick in the book. "Go ahead, you're already packed."

Alya's jaw dropped and she was rendered speechless for a few seconds as she tried to figure out what to say. "I can go?"

Was he serious?

"Sure can." He picked up her suitcase and set it down at her feet. "Is this everything?"

Obviously, he had no intentions of letting Alya leave the house. If she did, she'd probably go upstairs to find Steve and have him spoil her the way he always did.

Bucky was waiting for the day where Steve's little princess pushed him too far. He would have to get his camera ready to mark down that day in history.

But he wasn't going to hold his breath.

"Won't you miss me?" Alya tilted her head.

"Of course I will, but you wanna go so badly, it would be wrong of me to stop you." He shrugged, glancing at Natasha, who was trying not to laugh.

"Fine!" Alya had no real intentions of leaving, but seeing how calm her father was about this, changed her mind. "Bye!"

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked with her head held high.

"Hold it, little girl." Bucky stopped her from walking out the door, lifting her up by the back of her dungarees.

She was so portable, he loved it.

Alya enjoyed it when he lifted her up like that. It made her giggle, but of course, she had to make like she was putting up a fight for the sake of the argument.

"Put me down!" She kicked her feet to really sell it.

"Sure thing."

Next thing Alya knew, she was flying across the room. A shrill shriek left her lips as she soared, opting to close her eyes so she wouldn't have to feel her stomach dropping as much.

"James!" She heard her mother's panicked voice just before she hit her mattress with a bounce.

"What?" He really didn't know what all the fuss was about.

It wasn't like he threw her out the window or at the wall. She landed safely on her bed.

Wasn't Natasha the one who jumped out of the sky with Alya on her back?

Was this the same woman who looked like she had just had the scare of her life from him lightly tossing their daughter onto her soft bed that was only a few feet from where he was standing?

"You tossed my child across the room, James." She glared.

"Look, she's fine." Bucky decided to give her peace of mind and lifted Alya back up again, flipping her upside down as she burst into a fit of giggles. "See?"

Alya squealed and tried to stop him from digging his fingers in her stomach. But her efforts were futile.

One day she would be big enough to get him back.

She hoped.

"Again! Again!"

But for now, she was going to enjoy it.

"So, your real name isn't 'Lainey'? And it isn't really 'Cassidy' either." Ned asked Alya as they walked down the aisle of the plane that would take them to their first stop.

Italy.

Alya never really intended on telling him anything. Old habits died hard and she liked to keep all of her cards close to her chest, so she never told anyone more than what she thought they needed to know.

Natasha had actually told her that she could go by her middle name at school to keep her identity safe and finally shed herself of her old cover name. She knew how much Alya wanted to cut ties with that part of her life, so she came up with a bit of a solution.

This way, she wouldn't really be lying anymore.

"Lainey' was just a cover name?"

Ned had heard Peter calling her by her given name and had gotten super confused by it all. He had way too many inquiries for Alya to just ignore, so she figured she'd tell him just a little bit to keep him from blabbing.

She didn't know how he was Peter's 'guy in the chair' because he really couldn't keep anything covert and he asked too many questions.

Then again, Peter wasn't any better.

It was a wonder that no one figured out that he was Spider-Man yet.

"Lainey' was just a cover name." She confirmed, sitting in between the two boys. Even if Ned managed to let that much slip, no one was going to believe him anyway. Most people couldn't imagine a child as a spy, much less an assassin, and Alya never actually told him that she was. They would just assume she had an overactive imagination. "Cassidy' is really my name, Ned."

"So where did 'Alya' come from?"

Alya gave Peter a look to fix the mess he made before he spoke up, clearing his throat. "Uh, it's a variation of 'Alayna', dude. No big deal."

"Nice."

Alya was pretty proud of how quickly he managed to think on his feet. It looked like it was enough to satisfy Ned's curiosity, so she would count that as a win.

She didn't really need anyone to know her identity. She didn't know if that was paranoia or not, but after having kept her personal life away from everyone, she found it easier to keep it that way.

Actually, Bucky and Natasha had the school staff sign NDA's just for that reason.

Just because she was the daughter of a couple Avengers didn't mean that she shouldn't get to live a somewhat normal life. She went out with them in public, so of course people had an idea of what she looked like, but that didn't mean they needed to know everything about her.

"Yo, Parker!" Some kid called from behind the curtain that separated coach from first-class. "This is called an airplane. It's like the buses you're used to, except it flies over the poor neighborhoods instead of driving through them."

"Who is that?" Alya wrinkled her nose at his poor attitude.

"Flash." Ned answered. "He's been giving Peter a hard time since...forever."

What kind of a name was 'Flash'?

"And you don't do anything?"

She could understand how her question could make her seem hypocritical, but she had actually hit Serena the first time and Yelena made her do it the second time around.

Peter kind of just…..took it.

"Well, yeah." Peter shrugged. "I couldn't do anything before all of this, so I shouldn't now."

Before the spider bite, he was just a normal kid who couldn't fight back. Now that he could, he didn't really want to. Anything could go wrong and Flash just wasn't worth it.

"Why?" Alya really didn't understand that line of thinking.

She was evidently the more aggressive of the two and it worked. Peter talked and Alya got things done.

"Because."

"Ma'am?" The twelve year old knew that was MJ, because she was exactly how Peter described her. Brown hair, brown eyes, tall, curly hair, and pretty. "He blipped, so technically, he's sixteen, not twenty-one."

The flight attendant she was speaking to, smiled and took the alcoholic drink that Flash was holding out of his hands before she walked away, right as MJ smiled at Peter.

"Didn't know you were friends with middle schoolers, Parker." She teased light-heartedly.

"S-She's my sister." Peter stammered, his face heating up to a flush.

"Oh." She stuck her hand out for Alya to shake. "Nice to meet you, I'm Michelle, but my friends call me 'MJ'."

"I'm Cassidy." Alya took her hand and watched as she moved to find her seat. "She's nice."

"Yeah." Ned scoffed. "That's one of the reasons why Peter's in love with her."

"Ned!" Peter hissed, watching as some guy helped MJ with her bag. "Did you know Brad was coming?"

"That's Brad?" Alya gaped. She knew Brad Davis. He was in the same grade as she was before the Blip, but now he was all grown up and she hardly even recognized him. "Whoa."

"It's so weird." Ned commented. "Like, one day, he's a kid who cried and got nosebleeds all the time, and suddenly, we blip back, and he's totally ripped and super nice…..and all these girls are after him."

"Not all the girls are after him." Peter weakly protested.

"Yeah, you're right, man. Cassidy's not after him." Ned rolled his eyes.

Alya's lip curled in disgust. She clearly remembered Brad's teary nosebleed days and she wasn't interested. Besides, she was only twelve. It would be a very, very long time before she ever started thinking about boys that way.

She was perfectly content in being a Daddy's girl. Whoever her boyfriend was going to be, would have to live up to not only her father's standards, but also her Uncle Steve and Uncle Clint's standards and then, Wanda, Rebecca, and her mother's.

If he could manage to get through all of that, there was no way he was passing by Yelena.

There was a lot of protection surrounding Alya.

"Anyway, on to more important things." Ned changed the subject. "It's a nine-hour flight. We can play 'Beast Slayers' the whole time. Are you excited?"

Alya was definitely not excited about that, but she was prepared, having brought her own little handheld Nintendo Switch and a pair of headphones so she could play without disturbing anyone.

"I need your help to sit next to MJ." Peter spoke suddenly, making her frown.

"Hey, you were supposed to sit with me the whole way." She pouted.

"Seriously?" Ned wasn't too happy about it either.

"Yes, seriously."

"What about our plan? American bachelors in Europe?"

Alya didn't know anything about that plan, but she did know that Peter was supposed to be spending some time with her during this trip.

"That's your plan. That's a solo plan. Come on, this is my plan. Please?"

If Peter would rather sit next to some girl, than with her, that was fine with Alya. Being the little sister had its perks, but right now, it was terrible.

It looked like she was going to have to get used to being dumped for pretty girls. There was no getting around it.

"Did you see Brad and MJ on the plane? They were watching movies and laughing the entire time."

Alya smirked at Peter's obvious chagrin.

His plan to sit with MJ failed and he ended up sitting next to his two teachers, while MJ sat with Brad, and Ned sat with Betty Brant.

Alya was stuck in between two guys she didn't know and it was a very awkward flight. She was really glad that they were now at the airport, but it was worth it to see Peter's plans go up in flames.

That's what he got for ditching her.

"Dude, don't worry, okay?" Ned was the kind of person to soothe him, while Alya silently made fun of him. "I'm sure it's nothing."

"Hey, babe." Betty walked over to Ned's side with a smile, handing him a small item that Alya couldn't really see and didn't really care to see. "Can you hold this?"

"Yeah, of course." Ned's eyes immediately gravitated towards hers before she pecked his cheek and skipped away, making Alya and Peter's eyebrows shoot up in unison. "Thanks."

If this was what high school was like, Alya was going to have a very interesting four years...

"What was that?" Peter was the first to recover.

"Well, we got to talking on the plane, and it turns out, we have a lot in common." He made like it was no big deal. "So, we're boyfriend and girlfriend now."

Was it really that easy? Alya was going to have to talk to her father when she got home. This stuff seemed a bit more complicated than that.

"Whatever happened to being an American bachelor in Europe?"

"Peter, those were the words of a boy. And that boy met a woman. A very strong and powerful woman. And now that boy's a man."

Alya didn't see any men around, but she didn't verbalize those thoughts.

"Babe?" Betty called from a distance.

"Coming, babe."

Alya was tickled pink when he walked away to be with his new girlfriend, leaving her alone with Peter.

Now she could tease him without a buffer.

"My, my, my." She grinned like a Cheshire Cat. "How the tables have turned. Poetic, don't you think?"

"Shut up, Alya."