Author's Note: I've always wanted to write one of these 'Five Times' fic. I've always enjoyed the ones I've read and I was reading some today (The Office, Harry Potter, read LOTR one there too) and thought, 'hey, why not do one for Michael Mia' since I haven't read one for them, so what the heck and here it is.
Don't ask me why I decided to make the whole fic based on the times Michael saw Mia cry, which are surprisingly few in the books if I remember correctly. I could only think of one big cry scene between them which was in book 8 (which I through in here), but if there are any more cry scenes between these two and you want to read them from Michael's POV. Just tell me what book and the page number and I'll throw it on here as a one-shot of sorts.
Anyway, please enjoy and comments or suggestions are much loved.
Disclaimer: You all know I don't own any of the characters or plots (except the ones that i made up and threw the characters into) and all texted, they all belong to Meg Cabot. So no sueing, I'm not a published author yet, so I can't afford to be sued.

Four Times Michael Saw Mia Cry

And The Time They Both Did

01

She was seven and he was ten and he found her in the hall closet sobbing over something that his sister had said to her.

When he asked her what was said, she sobbingly replied, "She said he didn't love me."

"Who doesn't?" he asked completely bewildered.

He can not understand girls or their obsession with love. He had always hoped with these two, his sister and her best friend, that he might be spare the whole 'he loves me, loves me not' game that he's been stuck having to listen to during class and lunch breaks.

"My dad." She sobbed. He felt his heart do a funny pull.

He crouched down in front of her in the closet.

"Why did she say your dad doesn't love you?"

"Because he and Mommy aren't married, so how can he love me?"

"But don't you spend every summer and Christmas with him? And doesn't he sometimes come over here to visit you? Like he did for your birthday and you both went to the Zoo and saw the penguins and the Polar Bear?" he knew all about that trip because Mia had told Lilly all about it in great deal while he had been getting himself a bowl of cereal.

She nodded her head slowly and said a soft 'yeah, I sup'ose."

"So, doesn't that suggest he loves you then?"

"I guess." She mumbled slowly.

"Listen Mia; don't always believe everything Lil says, ok. She thinks she's right about everything but a lot of times she isn't, but we'll keep that between us ok? You don't want her to kick me, do you?" she giggled and shook her head. Without really thinking what he was doing, he gently flicked a stray tear from her cheek with his finger.

"Do you want a cookie?" he asked, "I was just going to get one myself when I heard your howling."

"I wasn't howling." She grumbled at him, pouting as he pulled her by the hand out of the closet.

"Sure you weren't. I thought you were going to bring down the whole building with the noise you were making."

"Was not."

"Was too."

"Was not!"

She smiled up at him, all tears gone and he felt a strange sense of relief pass through his chest.

02

She was ten and he was thirteen and he thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw the angle of her arm.

She wasn't crying loudly; no the loud noise that was destroying his eardrums were his sister's own shrieks even though, and he was relieved by this, she wasn't hurt.

He came to crouch down by Mia, watching the steady flow of tears coursing their way down her pale, pale cheeks. She wasn't making any noise and she barely acknowledged his presence or the shrieking noise Lilly was still making.

"Lil, shut up!" he order his sister furiously. To his great surprise she did as he asked and fell immediately silent.

"Hey Mia, how's it going?" he asked in the soft, gentle voice he had learnt off his parents when they were dealing with a particularly upset patient of theirs.

"Hurts." She said in thick, choked up voice, more tears rolling down her face.

"Yeah, I bet. Where did you fall from?" he looked up at the big tree that Mia was currently leaning against. The big tree that his grandmother had been grumbling at his grandfather to cut down for years, for she feared someone in their front yard might get hurt by a falling branch or something like that.

Well, someone did get hurt by it, but it was from them climbing it rather than a branch falling on their head.

The further up the tree he looked; he saw a broken branch almost right at the top and gathered that was where Mia had fallen from. He whistled.

"Almost to the top. Way to go, Thermopolis." She mustered a half-hearted sort of smile for him, before grimaced in pain.

"Lil," he turned to his sister. "Go to the shed and get Pop, ok. Tell him to come here and that Mia's hurt, ok." His sister nodded a little blankly. She wasn't even looking at him, simply staring wide eyed at Mia. Her face was even greener that Mia's, but she did as he asked after a moment, running off for the shed.

"Hurts." Mia said again, though he was sure it was more to herself than to him. She was looking at her oddly angle arm with vague fascination.

"Yeah, I know." He said, moving his body gently next to hers and wrapped a comforting around arm her trembling shoulders. "But on the bright side, you're going to be getting a cast for that."

She looked up at him with puzzlement.

"You can get people to sign it for you, telling you to get better and stuff." He explained.

"With different coloured pens?"

"With different coloured pens." He assured her.

"But no pink." They said as one, both grinning widely, as really only children can.

"Will you sign my cast?" she asked shyly, another tear leaked down from her silver-grey eyes.

"Of course I will." He said as he flicked the tear away from her cheek fondly.

03

She is fifteen and he is eighteen and he has come to the realisation that he'd happily kill anyone on Earth if it means that she will never have to cry again.

At the top of his list of who he must kill to do this is of course her grandmother followed by his wonderful sister.

He swears that those two sit in some secret room in Plaza plotting out their next scheme to make Mia's already more difficult than usual teenaged life just that bit more harder for her.

He knows it's them, he knows without a doubt that they must have done something because why else won't she tell him what's wrong? She usually always tells him when and why she is upset but today she's barely said a word.

No, that isn't true, she has said words, a lot of them, in an attempt (which failed) to make him believe that she was ok, which she wasn't because if she was then her grey eyes wouldn't be red and she wouldn't have dry tear stains running down her cheeks.

He sat her down on his bed in his dorm, thanking the gods, deities and The Force that Doo Pak is elsewhere and demands to know what was going on, to which she replied nothing, to which he replied bullshit, what's wrong and so a loop began.

"You're not going to tell me what's wrong are you?" he asked with a sigh of frustration. With each year after Mia's revealment of being a princess the more and more he began to notice how she would simply shut down on certain things. Even things she brought up herself, she'd suddenly shut down upon them, which was causing him more than a little bit of frustration not to mention countless cold showers. Though he was pretty sure that had nothing to do with Mia's current shutting down or the tears that were beginning to course down her face again.

"Mia, come on, you can tell me."

"You'll laugh and call me silly." She muttered, rubbing furiously at the tears coursing down her cheek.

"No, I won't. When have I ever laughed at you or called you silly?"

"Last week." Ok, so she did have him there but she was crying over the ending of Matrix: Revolution, a movie she had seen countless times before but still got choked up over the ending of it.

"Yeah, but you were crying over a movie. This," he wiped a tear from her cheek, "isn't you crying over a movie. Right?" she shook her head.

"Right, so we've covered that; I won't laugh or call you silly, now will you tell me what's wrong?"

"It's stupid."

"Well, clearly it isn't to you because you're crying over it."

"I'm stupid."

"What?" he asked feeling annoyance start to grow within him. Not at her, but towards whoever and there just might be two of them, who made her feel like this. "Mia, you are not stupid."

"No, I am. Seriously. I can't do anything right." She said, shaking her head as more tears fell.

"And who says that?" he growled feeling angry now. "Come on, who says."

"Well they don't, but they don't need to say it. I know because I can see it every time they look at me." she muttered.

He felt himself frown, what? This sounded like more than just her grandmother and his sister.

He thought for a moment, trying to remember why she was over at his dorm now, in the late afternoon and not earlier in the day, like they had originally planned. He then took note of her clothes, not her usual overalls and loose shirt but a pretty blue-green dress with a warm, white cardigan thrown over it.

"The lunch-thingy?" he asked softly. He noticed her lips briefly twitch into a small before they fell again as she nodded.

"Did it go badly?" a ragged sob broke free from her as she threw her arms around his neck as she sobbed out a rather amusing story, which probably would have made anyone else but some old, stuck-up diplomats and of course her grandmother, laugh.

"It wasn't your fault he's jacket sleeve caught fire. And how can they be mad at you when you were only trying to help him by putting his hand in the ice bucket. It put out the fire didn't it?" He chuckled.

She hiccupped against his neck, sniffing it as he continued to quietly laugh.

"Mia, they're just stuck up, old men who can't find humour in anything. Don't take it so seriously." He tried to get her to smile, which she did but there was some distance to it and he could tell that there was more that she hadn't told him.

"What? What else happen?" He asked her gently. She looked away from him, more tears gathering in her eyes.

"Mia…"

"They called me a bastard." He felt his heart immediately sink for her the moment she said the derogatory term for her illegitimacy.

"They didn't." he said slowly but she just nodded, more tears rolling down her cheeks. So this had been the heart of the problem, the true cause for her tears.

He pulled her once more firmly against his chest, her head tucked under his chin as he whispered.

"They're the bastards, not you, you hear? It doesn't mean a thing what they think, whether your Mom and Dad were married or not. Want to know why?" he felt her nodded against his chin. "Because no one cares! No one in Genovia cares that you're illegitimate; all they see is your father's heir and their own love for you. They love you Mia and they don't give a damn that you're illegitimate, no one does, so you shouldn't."

"But..."

"No, Mai, listen to me. They come from a completely different age. This is the twenty-first century, for god's sake! No one truly cares about that sort of thing anymore, ok." He let his grip on her loosen just a little as he drew back a little to look her in the eye.

"And I don't care. Bastard or legitimate, I love you just the same. And you don't you ever forget that." she smiled a watery smile at him, reminding him of another thing he had forgotten that afternoon to do due to the sight of her tears.

"Have I kissed you hello yet?" he asked with a teasing smile, which caused her own smile to widen some as she shook her head.

He kissed her mouth warmly, pouring all his love and gratitude in that kiss to show her just how much she means to him and how much he really doesn't care that she is an illegitimate child.

"I love you Thermopolis." He mumbled and kissed the salty tears from her cheeks.

04

She was sixteen and he was nineteen and he was remembering once thinking that he'd happily kill any person who made her cry and started to wonder then if that meant he'd have to kill himself? Though he thought the punishment he was receiving already was in fact worse than death itself. In death there was still the possibility of seeing her, possibly. Being stuck in Japan, yeah little to no chance of that happening!

And she wasn't going to forgive him so easily for this then if he was dead, he was pretty sure. And also his laughing at her wasn't exactly helping the matter either.

He had to convince her that this was a good thing, not just for him but for them as well.

"This is a good thing, Mia," he said trying to explain to her the logic that he had seen when he saw the application form, filled it out and then discover after a couple of months of waiting that he was in, that he was going, that this was his chance to prove to everyone that he was worthy of this girl sobbing on the swing in front of him. "Not just for me, but for us. It's my chance to prove to your grandmother and all those people who think I'm a big nobody and not good enough for you that I actually am somebody, and might possibly be worthy of you someday."

"You're totally worthy of me." she sobbed which actually broke his resolve more than he'd like to admit. If she kept this up he might just toss the whole opportunity up, but he couldn't, he just couldn't and she needed to understand that, though he did make his heart warm a little to hear her still say that. But then dark thoughts came to him, reminding him of others who muttered and whispered things and he had to, he had to prove them wrong.

He had to, for both their sakes.

"A lot of people don't think so." he reminded her ever so gently, watching her pull a face. She knew that, she knew about the mutters and the whispers. Heck she spent every afternoon with one of the loudest objectors to their relationship.

"The fact is, Mia." He said forcing her to look him in the eye because he needed to make her understand, to realise that he wasn't doing this so much because he wanted to but because he had to. He had to prove himself; it was the only way their relationship could keep on going. "As much as you might pretend it isn't true, you're a princess." She opened her mouth to argue but said nothing, letting him continue, "You're going to be a princess forever. You're going to rule a country someday." he had to fight back a smirk as she pulled a face at that, "You already know what your destiny is. It's all laid out for you. I don't have that. I still have to figure out who I am and how I'm going to leave my mark on the world. and if I'm going to be with you, it's going to have to be a pretty big mark," He begins to feel the surge of panic and anxiousness, felt them twisting in his stomach, the same panic and angst that had been slowly building over the years that he and Mia had been together, but he forced it down as he forced himself to smile teasingly up at her, "because everyone thinks a guys has to be pretty special in order to be with a princess. I'm just trying to live up to everyone's expectations." She didn't like that, the moment he said it, he could see her beginning to look mad.

"My expectations should be the only ones that matter." She muttered, looking angrily at everything but him, which hurt a little because he hated having her mad at him though his heart did a happy jump at her words.

"They're the ones that matter most." He assured her as he squeezed her hands tightly. "Mia, you know I'd never be happy just being your consort," the word still tastes funny as he says it but he can't imagine it not being attached to him in regards to her, "walking one step behind you all the time. And I know you'd never be happy if that's all I was either." More tears leaked down her face, even though he knew she was agreeing with him even if she wasn't saying anything or refusing to.

"It's not that I wouldn't be willing to do any of that stuff," he pressed on, "I'd be fine with it," she gave him a sceptical look through her tears, "if I knew that… well, that I'd accomplished something with my life too… not ruling a country, maybe. But something like… well, something like I have the opportunity to do now. Make a difference. The way you'll be making a difference some day." She pulled a face, but he could see that she was beginning to cave, to see his side of the matter.

"Listen," he said, squeezing her hands reassuringly. "You'd better stop crying. Lars looks like he's ready to come over."

She pulled another face, as she sniffed back more tears. "That's his job." She muttered somewhat grouchily, "He's suppose to protect me from… from… getting hurt!"

He couldn't help it, he laughs.

"It's not funny." She growled at him outrage through her tears.

"It sort of is," he chuckled, "I mean, you have to admit. We're a pretty pathetic pair." If he wasn't, he never have to leave her. This didn't subdue her however; in fact it seemed to make her more annoyed.

"I'll tell you what's pathetic," she muttered angrily, "you're going to go away to Japan and meet some geisha girl and forget all about me. That's what's pathetic." He felt like laughing again. She thought that he could just forget about her? Seriously?

"What would I want with geisha girl," he asked, leaning slight forward and up, so that their foreheads bumped gently together, "when I could have you?"

"Geisha girls," she growled, "have sex with you whenever you want. I know, I saw the movie." He looked momentarily at the heavens.

He had a feeling that he should have just left the whole sex element out of this, now, he was quite sure, she was probably going to think that his whole reason for leaving was due to their not having sex instead of all the reasons he gave just before.

Why did he suddenly have this nagging, sickening feeling that this was in someway going to come back and bite him, and badly?

He shook his head of the thought, she was expecting an answer and he couldn't deny her one so with a cheeky grin and he started saying.

"Well," he saw her eyes already starting to narrow as she sensed a teasing coming, "Actually, now that you mention it, a geisha girl might not be so bad." Definitely stop his need for all the cold showers he took now days. But in truth, he wanted her to be the one to stop them, not some geisha girl.

She hit him, as he had expected her to. Not hard, a simple but firm cuff over his head.

She still wasn't happy about this, it didn't take a genius to work that out but she was starting accept it, at least, even though he could still see sad, hurt tears in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

He lifted himself back up on his hunches, kissing her mouth gently as well as kissing away her tears.

They'd be ok. She would accept this, with time to get her head around it and then they'd be fine.

They'd be ok.

05

She was twenty-two and he had just turn twenty-six and she was sitting in a bed, crying, but the tears she cried were not sad, not in anyway sad. The tears she cried were tears of joy.

She wasn't much of a happy tears person, or not that he'd noticed and he was pretty sure that he would have noticed since it was sort of his job to make and keep her happy and this was, and he was pretty sure of this, the first time that he had seen her cry tears of happiness.

"You're going to drown him if you keep that up." Lilly said from where she was sitting at the edge of the bed.

Her voice was teasing, but she was grinning widely and this was, something else today that he was also pretty sure about, was also the first time he had ever seen his sister look genuinely happy about something that wasn't exactly a direct link to her.

"Oh shut up, Lil." He said half-heartedly because seriously he didn't think he could be mad, or mad ever again really. He felt too happy and content in that moment to even contemplate the next time he might get mad at his sister.

He heard something that sounded torn between a sob and a giggle, which he wasn't sure how that quite worked but somehow it did, since it was from her and she was extremely happy. And possibly high on pain-relief, but details.

"Are you laughing or are you crying?" Lilly asked, looking even more amused.

"Both! Leave me alone, I'm happy." She said

"Obviously." His sister snorted, causing Mia to send a half-hearted kick in her direction, which result with her wincing and soft grumbling noise from the bundle in her arms.

"Easy, you don't want to wake him do you?" Lilly asked. They both shot her looks.

"Hey! Well don't let me hear either of you in a couple of weeks complaining about the fact that he won't sleep more than two hours at night."

"You won't." they promised dutifully, though both of them were really far to occupied in the bundle in Mia's arms. He kissed the side of her forehead fondly.

"Barely more than three hours old and he's already got both of you wrapped around his little finger." He heard Lilly snort as he felt the bed shift slightly as she got up from it. "Well, I'm off. Let you two have some peace and quiet, before the horde comes back, to spend with the spawn."

"Don't call him 'spawn'" both of them growled protectively at her as she left the room, laughing.

"Are you still crying?" he asked after a moment, when he heard another soft sniff.

"Shut up. I'm emotional, it happens, you know. I just spent six hours getting him here, not to mention the eight and half months I spent carrying him around everywhere. Let me have my moment of waterworks." He kissed the side of her forehead again before saying. "I suppose then that this is bad time to discuss possible names for him, since as Lil pointed out the horde isn't here at the moment."

"I don't want to deal with that debate at the moment." She muttered.

"Well, we're going to have to deal with it eventually; you don't want your heir, not mention our kid going around with the name Squirt do you?"

"Work in Finding Nemo."

"He's not a turtle."

"No, he's an octopus. My sides still hurt from his kicking and moving about."

"I think that's known as labour too, sweetheart." She gave him a half-hearted thump in the shoulder with her head.

"That was six hours long." She reminded him.

"Would never have guessed." He teased, wiggling the fingers of his right hand experimentally. He had been pretty sure he had lost all use of it after those final pushes to get the little squirt out into the world. The little squirt who was just now blinking up at them with new, young, curious eyes.

"Hi there little guy, whatcha doing?" Mia asked almost immediately when she saw his eyes were opened.

He blinked up at them a few times, before looking around him curiously.

He was torn as to where to look, to look at the little life that he and Mia had created or to look at Mia as she looked at the little life they had created.

"Look at what we did." Mia said smiling widely up at him, her eyes filled with fresh tears of joy.

He grinned back at her and kissed her mouth soundly, before leaning his head against hers, as he waved a cautious finger near the little ones.

Almost immediately his finger was snapped up, a small hand closing tightly around his finger, holding it firm.

"I think he likes you." Mia said sounding quite content and possibly a little proud of herself, which in his mind she had all rights to feel. She did after all carry this little squirt around inside of her for eight and half months and spent six hours in labour to bring him into the world to meet everyone.

"That, or he doesn't like things being waved in his face." He knew she was rolling her eyes at him, but he couldn't take his eyes off the new little life before him, snuggled safe and sound in blankets in Mia's arms with a firm grip on his fingers.

This was his, all of it. Mia, this new little life, they were both his.

His wife, his son, this was his life. All of it was all his.

"Now, who's crying?" Mia teased softly as she kissed his cheek, her tongue teasingly licking a tear away.

"I'm happy." He told her calmly which caused her to simply grin all the more widely at him.

"Same." And then she laughed as tears started once more forming in her eyes. "Now we're matching," she giggled.

He chuckled with her as he used his free hand to lightly cup her tear streaked face so as to kiss her mouth, before they both kissed away each others tears of happiness.

Author's Note: 2 and 5 are my favourite in this fic. 4 made me feel sad writing because I knew how it was all going to end. And 3 to cover something that personally I think should have/could have been in the books, but wasn't even though in real life Mia being illegitimate would have caused some pretty big issues due to the fact that it takes some pretty extreme circumstances for an illegitimate child to be made an heir (most illegitimate children only gained thrones through conquest). Which Mia wouldn't have been since she has cousins and so on, but heck, it's fictions. 1 was simply pure fun.
*Bastard - the derogatory term for an illegitimate child, a child born to parents who aren't married.