Chapter Text
There are things that Mia knows about herself-really knows, deep down in her bones where aliases and bullets and lies can't penetrate.
She is forty years old and a fifth grade teacher. She has two children, Jack and Sloane, and a husband, Brian. Her husband is a mechanic. She has one sibling by blood, Dom, one by marriage, Letty, and several more in every way that counts. The love that she has for her family is blazing, fierce, and unapologetic. She lives on the outskirts of LA, with her husband, kids, and a spare bedroom that is in use more often than not. She can drive a car at 275mph. (She starts sweating a little around 255, but her hands have never slipped.)
There have not been aliases or bullets or lies for a long time now. Not since she was thirty three years old, pregnant with her daughter, and her husband came home for good. But still, Mia has learned to keep what matters locked within her, just in case.
"Mommy!" a voice shrieks, as she steps through the door one Friday afternoon in October.
"Hi baby!" Mia smiles, scooping her daughter up. "How was school today?"
"It was fun. We learned about sub-trac-shun."
"Subtraction is for babies," scoffs Jack, a whole year her senior. "We do multiplication tables in third grade."
Sloane sticks out her tongue.
"Did anyone ask Mom how her day at school was?" Brian asks, coming out of the bathroom.
"It was wonderful" she says stepping forwards to meet him for a kiss as she puts Sloane down. "We've been learning about fractions. How was the shop?"
"Slight hiccup with an engine rebuild, we only had a fraction of the parts we're going to end up needing." he replies with a wink.
Mia rolls her eyes.
"Don't kiss again." Jack hollers, and they both laugh.
The holidays are spent with Dom, Letty, and their daughter Alexa, who come over from the other side of LA and stay from December 23rd to January 2nd. It has become tradition, as has the Skype call she's pretty sure takes up a server all its own. In-person travel is just such a hassle this time of year, so smack in the middle, December 28th, they all wave and smile at each other through the screen. ("Hannukkah was two weeks ago," Giselle mumbles good naturedly.) After they hang up, the kids splash in the pool while the adults drink Coronas and laugh. They eat bbq for dinner.
That night when the kids are asleep, Brian slips a key to the latest Camaro in with the dishes they are washing while Dom and Letty watch a movie on the couch. Some things, she supposes, never change.
She raises her eyebrows.
"Christmas was three days ago."
"I like to be unpredictable. And don't act like you haven't been eyeing it."
They leave the other couple to babysit and Mia pushes the speedometer up so she can screech through the streets while Brian clings to the overhead handle with a smile that practically glows in the dark. She pulls into a Huntington beach parking lot, and Brian reaches into the car's tiny back seat. He comes up with a bottle of wine and a blanket. They make love under the stars. Mia feels like she is 19 and meeting him, 27 and letting him back in, 33 and he is home for good. 40 and he is here, right here. They are curled together, panting and she is giggling when an officer's voice yells "HEY, what do you kids think you're doing?".
She yanks on his shirt and he pulls up his shorts, they gather everything else as fast as they can and sprint to the car. She is no longer giggling, she is outright belly laughing, and so is he, and it is three days late but when they kiss their kids on the forehead between showering and finally going to bed, it has been the best Christmas of her life.
With a little help from Tej and Ramsey to get on the list, Mia and Brian's kids go to one of the finest schools in Los Angeles. The cafeteria food is good, the instruction excellent, the tuition mildly absurd. None of that matters to third graders.
"Mom, Chase says we don't really go to Paris for spring break. He says Paris is for grownups. When I told Mrs. Adams, she said for Chase to stop being mean, but I know she doesn't think we go to Paris either."
Mia has met Mrs. Adams several times, at professional conferences and now back-to-school nights. She made a deliberate choice never to work at her kids' school for precisely this reason. Mrs. Adams is the teacher who plays favorites, and Mia's anger levels are fine tuned for drug cartels and yakuza members, not third grade teachers. And it is difficult to explain how a fifth grade teacher and a mechanic afford annual trips to France. Or, for that matter, a top-notch private school and a Porsche Macan. Most of the parents here are investment bankers or entertainment lawyers.
"Family money," Mia says, with an abashed smile she has to clench her teeth to hold.
For the end-of-year family conference Mia shows up in Burberry with Givenchy pumps, and Brian wears a Rolex that costs about as much as Mrs. Adams makes in a year.
"How was Paris?" the woman in question asks.
Mia smiles and shows her the annual picture of the crew in front of the Eiffel tower.
Dom and Letty are the most frequent occupants of the spare room, followed by law enforcement family members who are in town for a job. Han and Gisele take it for some time every year, vagabonds that they are, and sometimes Suki or Sean will send someone from Miami or Dallas, respectively, ambassadors of sorts. The rest of the family shows up sporadically, but the door is open for whoever needs.
Now and again, a racing scene hopeful will stumble in, freshly arrived from Iowa or Montana or somewhere else in the middle of nowhere, come looking for the legendary Toretto clan, kings of the LA streets.
She feeds them three squares, makes sure they are good to Jack and Sloane, and sends them to the shop with Brian. The ones who they both like, she helps find crash pads and shop jobs, and introduces to Letty and Dom. The ones who they don't she sends home, and if they stay anyways then they don't stay long.
The aliases and bullets and lies may be gone, but racing was there long before any of that, and racing will remain.
On her forty-first birthday, Mia gets "Happy Birthday" sung to her once in the morning by her class, one in the staff room by her coworkers, and once by her husband and two children.
"Yes," she thinks, as the doorbell rings.
"Yes it is."
She blows out her candles, kisses her husband on the lips and each kid on the cheek, and goes to greet the year.