"Are you ready?"

Alya looked over at her sister, who was sitting right next to her at the island counter, slowly eating some oatmeal. "I'm a little nervous."

Today was her very first day of high school.

She had been excited when her principal told her that she was eligible to skip an entire grade, because that meant that she'd be with Peter, but now that the day finally arrived, she realized that she might not be ready to take such a big step.

"You shouldn't be nervous. It'll be fun."

"How would you know?" Alya giggled. "You're homeschooled."

"Well, I wouldn't know." Wanda smiled back. "But you like school and you're smart. You're gonna be fine."

"Thanks."

"Are you okay now? Because I don't have much sincerity left in me."

"Oh, shut up." Alya rolled her eyes and focused her attention back on her cereal.

"Be nice, Alya." Natasha scolded as she made her way down the stairs with Bucky following.

"You know better, Brat." Wanda teased. "Show some respect."

"Don't call your sister names." The redhead opened the fridge door and took out some milk for her coffee. "It isn't nice."

Alya poked her tongue out at her older sister who retaliated in kind.

"It's your first day of high school, Scamp." Bucky greeted both girls with a kiss on the cheek. "Are you excited?"

"Yeah." Alya nodded. "But what if I don't make any friends?"

There was no way anyone would want to be friends with a twelve year old kid. They were all going to be interested in different things and they were going to be a lot more mature than she was.

"You might not make friends on the first day." Natasha offered her a smile. "But that's okay. You will eventually."

"But what if I don't?"

"Then you'll still have Peter. I'm sure he won't have a problem spending some time with you."

And as if on cue, the doorbell rang. Being the only one who wasn't occupied, Bucky walked out of the house to answer the door and saw that Peter had stopped by. "Hey, kid."

"Good morning, Sergeant Barnes." Peter looked everywhere but the man's eyes. Bucky could tell even with the sunglasses he was wearing. It was probably a disguise to avoid paparazzi. "I-I uh…thought I'd stop by to take Alya to school, but I can just meet her there—"

"—Stop rambling and come inside. Don't you have a key?" Bucky stepped to the side to allow him in.

"I do, but I didn't think you guys would want me to use it after everything that happened."

"Give me a break." Bucky pushed him forward. "Get inside."

Peter knew that was Bucky's weird way of offering him some kind of affection and he almost smiled despite himself before he locked eyes with Natasha. Instinctively, he took the glasses off of his face and stared for a moment.

"G-Good morning, Miss Romanoff." He stuttered. "I just came by to ask Alya if she wanted to school with me— if that's okay with you."

"Peter, have you eaten anything this morning?" Natasha decided to put him out of his misery.

She knew he was nervous and he should be, but that didn't mean she had to be unyielding.

"N-No ma'am….I didn't have time. I wanted to stop by before it was too late."

"Sit down." She pointed at the vacant stool to Wanda's right.

"Oh, that's okay. You don't have to…" But he trailed off once he caught the stern look on the woman's face. "Okay."

He only came to pick Alya up. He never had any intentions of sticking around for fear of Bucky and Natasha chewing him out or worse.

But it looked like he didn't have choice in the matter.

Wanda had to hide her small giggles behind her hand, but Peter noticed and he didn't appreciate it.

"Finish eating, Alya." Natasha told the girl, pouring a bowl of cereal for Peter to eat. "You have a big day ahead of you."

"I'm full, Mama." Alya pouted, pushing her bowl away. "I can't eat anymore."

Her nerves were starting to get the better of her and she didn't want to eat anything else.

"Try to eat a little more." Bucky picked up the hairbrush that was sitting idly on the counter and began to drag it through Alya's hair so she wouldn't have to do it later. "You're going to get hungry later on."

That was true. Alya knew that much.

"Okay." She put another spoonful in her mouth, keeping her head still so he could do his job properly.

"Peter, I spoke with your aunt." Natasha looked at the teen, who froze once again. "You're spending the night here."

"Yay!" Alya cheered, though Peter didn't seem to be all that enthused about it. "I have a new Lego set we can play with. It has a lot of pieces. I'm gonna make a really big castle. Wanna help?"

"He can help you once we have a little talk." Natasha raised a knowing eyebrow that made the color drain from Peter's face.

Alya's eyes widened at her mother's tone of voice and shoved another spoonful of food in her mouth, deciding not to say anything more after that. Peter was in big trouble and she didn't want any part of it.

"Wow, that's a lot of people." Alya halted her movements once she saw the mob of reporters and 'fans' outside of the school building.

She managed to calm herself down on the train ride over. She and Peter met up with Ned and MJ halfway, and finished the journey together while talking about random things. Alya had been doing so well until she actually saw the building.

She'd seen it so many times before, but this time, it was different.

It looked bigger!

And these people weren't helping.

Peter noticed that she stopped walking and turned to face her, prompting Ned and MJ to do the same. "They're just gonna take some pictures. They're not coming inside with us."

"Are you sure?" Alya gave him a look of pure skepticism, squinting at all the flashes from the cameras.

"Positive." He assured her. "Here. Take these." He took off his sunglasses and put them over her eyes before taking her hand to lead her through the crowd, taking MJ's hand with his free one.

Alya could admit, the frames helped to dim out the flashing lights, but they did nothing for the anxiety she felt.

"MJ, MJ!" One man shouted. "We love you! Are you gonna have his spider-babies?!"

"Mysterio forever! Murderer!"

"Do a flip!"

The more these people shouted, the more Alya was beginning to think that this was a mistake. Wanda had the right idea by wanting to be homeschooled. She didn't have to get up early in the morning to go anywhere. All she had to do, was open her laptop and work on her assignments. Once she was finished with that, the rest of her day was free.

She was obviously the smart sibling.

Alya wondered if it was too late to change her mind about homeschooling.

"Back off!" Ned snapped at one of the men.

"Who are are you?"

"I'm Ned Leeds. I'm Spider-Man's— Peter Parker's—"

"—Best friend." Flash Thompson finished for him. "You come at my boy, you come at Flash Thompson. You wanna read about our inspiring friendship? You can now with my new book, 'Flashpoint'." The teen held up a book.

Ned didn't bother sticking around to hear the rest of the nonsense Flash was undoubtedly spewing out.

Alya bit her lip nervously as they were stopped by some police officers with metal detectors. She was glad she decided to leave her knives at home, because she definitely would've gotten into a whole lot of trouble if she brought them today.

Peter was the first one to go through. It was definitely a weird feeling to be searched like this before he actually entered the building, but this was the new normal for him. He waited for Alya to finish and he could see the bewildered look on her face.

"Come on." He couldn't even promise her that it would get better, because he had no clue what was waiting for them on the inside.

"Go! Go! Go!" MJ shouted to him.

"I'll meet you inside, okay?"

With that, Peter took Alya's hand once again and led her inside the building. There was a set of stairs they had to climb near a wall that was decorated with a painted mural. Alya recognized one of the men in the mural as Howard Stark. She'd have to tell Tony about this later.

She wondered how he was doing. She knew that Stark Industries was under investigation. Pepper called and told them as much, but Alya hadn't actually heard from Tony. He was probably busy. But she wanted to see him to make sure that he was okay.

"Keep watching Midtown News all year as we bring you up close and personal coverage of Peter fighting his biggest battle yet: college admissions." Betty Brant spoke on one of the tv's mounted up in the hallway.

Alya almost forgot that this was Peter's senior year of high school. He had to start working on college applications and stuff. Wanda was going through the same thing at home. She was making sure to get all her grades together and she was going to have to take some tests before she actually sent her college applications in, but she was well on her way.

She didn't want to go far. She wanted to commute to and from her classes, so she was looking into places like NYU and Columbia. They both were very good schools and she would be happy getting into either one of them. Alya wasn't really worried. Wanda was super smart and she could get into either of those schools without trying. She was also glad that her sister didn't want to go to a college far away. She didn't know what she'd do if she moved out.

Rebecca decided that she was going to get a degree after being out of school for so many years. Since she didn't have a high school diploma, she needed to get her GED, so she was taking night classes.

Alya's main concern was Peter. He wanted to go to M.I.T.

That was all the way in Boston.

She hoped that he'd get in, but at the same time, she hoped he wouldn't go. It would be so different with him not around. Calling and video chatting just wasn't the same. She wanted to be able to go to his house and hug him whenever she felt like it.

She guessed she would just have to enjoy the time she had now and wait.

"Hey, is it true that you're friends with Spider-Man?" Some random girl asked Alya as she put some books in her locker.

Alya gave her a strange look and shook her head. She knew that first days were always awkward and weird, but this was just too much. This had to be the 100th time someone had asked her that today. At this point, no one was interested in making new friends, they just wanted to know more about Peter and his vigilante activities.

"Really? I thought I saw you with him earlier."

"I'm not friends with Spider-Man." Alya answered monotonously, zipping up her book bag before taking her lunch out. "I'm friends with Peter Parker."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"No." Alya shut her locker. "Excuse me."

There was no way she was going into the cafeteria to eat. There was nowhere she could go without someone hounding her with questions.

Not even the bathroom.

She should know. She tried.

The only place she could think of that might be completely empty, was the roof. So, she slipped over to the stairwell and slinked up the steps, making sure that no one was following her.

When she finally did make up to the roof, she sighed in complete relief. None of the other students seemed to like hanging out up here. Maybe it was against school policy or something, but that didn't really matter to Alya.

She just needed to get away.

She smiled when she saw Ned, Peter, and MJ sitting together, talking about something amongst themselves.

"Hi." She waved shyly. The preteen didn't want to eat alone, but she also didn't want to intrude on their moment.

"Too many people downstairs?" MJ assumed.

"Yeah." Alya nodded quickly.

"Come on." MJ waved her over, as Ned made space for her to sit with them.

Peter smiled at his best friend and his girlfriend. Before school started, he sat down with them and asked them if it was okay if Alya hung out with them. He knew they'd be very kind to her, but he didn't want to impose his little sister into their friend group.

MJ and Ned had no issue with Alya joining them. Ned had always known Alya because of her and Peter's history. MJ got to know her a little bit during the trip to Europe and found that she really did like her.

It wasn't hard to hang out with her even if she was twelve.

"Do you guys always come up here?" Alya asked, sitting down in the place made for her. "It's really nice."

There was a cool autumn breeze blowing in the air and from the rooftop, they could see everything that was happening on the ground below. Alya bet that there were really nice sunsets up here.

"Nah." MJ shook her head. "I don't even think we're supposed to be up here. We just needed to get away from the crowd."

If there was one thing that MJ couldn't stand, it was crowds. Too many people in one place really served to freak her out and make her mad at the same time.

She didn't like being around too many people.

"How's your first day of high school?" Ned inquired.

Alya blew out a big breath as she thought of a way to describe how her day had been going so far. "Hectic."

Her teachers were more focused on the Spider-Man scandal than they were on actually teaching, the students were constantly hounding her with questions about Peter, and Alya just wanted the day to be over so she could go home.

The trio laughed at the description, making her feel more at ease, like she was fitting in with them.

"What're you guys looking at?" She asked, motioning to the laptop Ned was holding on his lap.

She noticed that it was a welcoming website. A bunch of students around the trio's age were smiling and tossing a frisbee on a big lawn.

"MIT." Peter answered.

"Did you talk to Uncle Tony about it?" Alya knew that Tony had a lot of pull at MIT and Peter wouldn't necessarily be into that, but maybe the man could help and give him tips or something.

"Not yet, but I will once I get my application results."

"So, I was thinking…." Ned started. "When we get into MIT, we should live together."

He liked the way things were between them right now and he didn't want anything to change. If they all got into MIT, then they could move in together and keep the friendship going.

"Yeah, for sure."

"Love that." MJ added monotonously.

"This is gonna be us." Ned pointed at the screen. "This is gonna be us."

"Yeah. Minus the frisbee." MJ cringed. "And the smiling."

"MIT's obviously the dream, but if we match up out backup schools, either way, we'll all be together in Boston. New school, new town. I can Spider-Man there. I mean, they have crime in Boston, right?"

"Yes. Yes, they do."

"Yeah, wicked crime." Ned joked.

"So it'll be like a fresh start."

"Hey, how was your first day of high school?" Natasha asked as Alya and Peter entered the house.

Alya didn't even bother responding to her. She just walked right over to the sofa and plopped down, face first.

Her nose smacked onto the cushion beneath her and she allowed her legs to fly up before gravity pulled them down. She didn't care, she had such a long day.

"That bad, huh?" Bucky chuckled at the sight of her.

"Everyone kept asking me all these questions." Alya huffed, sitting up as her parents made a move to sit on either side of her while Peter opted to sit on a stool at the island.

He wasn't looking forward to that talk that Natasha and Bucky wanted to have with him, but he couldn't avoid it. However, if he could push it off until the last minute, then he would.

"What kind of questions?" Bucky raised a brow.

Those teenagers better not have been asking his daughter any inappropriate questions. He had no problem marching over to that school to set the records straight.

"They wanted to know who I was, or how I knew Spider-Man…..or if I was friends with Spider-Man." Alya huffed. "And that wasn't even the worst of it."

"What happened?"

"There's sooo much to do." She groaned. "So many classes…It's nuts!...And it's really hard to make friends."

It would've been nice to have someone come up to her and ask about her not about Peter. Alya knew that she wasn't going to make friends on the first day of school, but if this continued, she was afraid that she'd never make any.

"You'll make friends eventually, sweet girl." Natasha cupped her chin in reassurance. "I'm sorry your first day wasn't very good. It'll get better, you'll see."

While Alya was at school, she and Bucky sat down to have a serious discussion. With everything that was going on, they decided that if this became too much for Alya to handle, then they'd pull her out of school and figure something else out. They couldn't be nonchalant with Alya again, not after what happened in Europe.

With Peter's identity being released, they needed to be on high alert.

"It wasn't all bad."

"Oh yeah?" Bucky smiled with a nudge.

"No, I got to have lunch with Peter and his friends. They even talked to me."

Even though the day hadn't been ideal, Alya was glad that she had Peter, Ned, and MJ. If it weren't for them, she didn't know if she'd even want to go back.

"Well, that was nice of them."

"I'm hungry. I'm gonna go get a snack." She suddenly changed the subject the way she always did when she didn't want to talk about something anymore.

"Actually, Alya." Bucky stopped her before she could get up. "Your mom and I need to talk to Peter, so we'd like it if you went upstairs to see Uncle Steve for a bit."

This was a private conversation that wasn't for Alya's ears. She didn't need to be involved.

"Can I see Tetushka?"

"She flew back home, Baby."

"But she didn't say goodbye." Alya pouted.

Yelena always said goodbye before she left to go somewhere.

"I know. She told me to tell you that she's sorry, but it was very last minute."

"Did Rebbie go with her?"

Lately, Rebecca and Yelena had become very good friends. Yelena was helping the younger girl adapt to the new century and Rebecca was helping Yelena adapt to the states. Natasha was happy that Yelena had found someone closer in age to be friends with and Bucky was glad that Rebecca had found someone she could hang out with.

Sometimes the house would get a little too crowded for Rebecca's liking, so when Yelena offered to take her to Russia, she got a little excited at the change of pace.

"She did." Bucky nodded. "And she promised she would bring something back for you to make it up to you."

"Okay." Alya sighed. "I hope it's korovka."

"You'll find out when she gets back, but for now, head on upstairs."

"Okay." Alya acquiesced and slid off of the couch. "I'll go see if Uncle Steve will make me some macaroni and cheese!"

Peter felt a bead of sweat drip down his face as Alya left him alone with her parents. He tried studying their faces to get a read on them, but they had excellent poker faces, though he didn't expect anything less from two of the world's greatest spies.

"Sit down." Bucky motioned to the coffee table in front of them, crossing his arms.

"O-Okay."

"How was school?" Natasha asked.

The question threw Peter for a loop, he hadn't been expecting that. He thought they were going to skip to the yelling part.

"It was— It was fine."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah….I'm okay."

"Good." Natasha smiled before her features made a complete 180. "How on earth did you manage to get yourself into this much trouble?"

There it was.

"Honestly, Peter. You know better." Natasha continued. "What were you thinking this summer?"

"I don't know….I was just trying to help." Peter shrugged. "Fury contacted me and he told me about this world ending threat and I didn't think I had a choice."

"And you didn't think to call?" Bucky raised a brow.

"I called May. She said it was alright."

Natasha fought not to roll her eyes out of respect for Peter. This was always going to be something she didn't agree with May on. She actively encouraged Peter to go out there and put his life at risk when he shouldn't be. She couldn't imagine encouraging Alya to sneak out in the middle of the night to fight crime and she was glad that Alya wanted no part of what happened in Europe.

"He meant, you didn't think to call any of us."

"No." Peter shook his head. "I thought I could handle it."

"Well, you couldn't." Leave it to Bucky to be blunt.

But it was something that Peter desperately needed to hear.

"Look, I'm sorry that Alya got hurt. I feel really bad about it and that's exactly why I didn't take her to London with me, which, worked out in the long run, I guess, because she didn't have to have her identity revealed. I don't think I'd be able to handle that kind of guilt and—"

"—Peter, stop." Natasha leveled him with a glare.

Peter gulped and clamped his mouth shut as soon as he processed her words.

"We weren't just worried about Alya. You put your life at risk several times and it was all unnecessary. You have to stop jumping into these situations without talking to someone with experience. You could've called me, you could've called James, or Steve, or Tony. Any one of us would've been willing to help you."

"I know." Peter nodded. "I'm sorry."

"This recklessness has to stop." Bucky's face never once gave any indication to how he was feeling. "If it were Alya, I'd tell her the same thing. You're not invincible. You're a kid. Let this experience be a lesson for you. Because you might not get off so easily next time."

Peter didn't know if Bucky meant that he might not get off easily with him and Natasha, or if he meant something else.

But either way, the sentiment sent a chill through his spine.