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Penny Parker was not a light sleeper. When she was a baby, her parents had been able to leave the door to her room wide open, even with guests over, during nap time without fear of her waking up prematurely. They could vacuum beneath the risers on her crib while she dozed, tossing slightly when the sound came directly under her head.
It didn’t change much as she grew. She had to set six alarms just to wake up in the morning and even after they all went off, May still had to come in and shake her shoulder every once in a while to make sure she was on time for school. After the bite, it was harder to sleep through things like that, but she still managed it often enough. That and sometimes, sleep feels so comforting it can be hard to leave it, which is why, when she woke up that morning with an aching back still tired , it didn’t really come as much of a surprise.
What did come as a surprise, though, was her sudden inability to move. Without opening her eyes, if she stayed completely still and didn’t fight it, she could have pretended it was sleep paralysis. Just another one of those very cool PTSD side effects she and her Stark-Mandated therapist talked about on the regular. But, Penny Parker was not inclined to sit still for any length of time anyway , and under normal circumstances, so that plan was shot down before she could even think it through all the way.
Something was pulling at her wrists, dragging them to her sides, arms tugged wide like a horrible parody of a crime scene chalk outline. Her ankles fared the same, each tied and brought out laterally. It was uncomfortable, as being shackled often is.
When she blinked her eyes open, finally beginning to piece together her situation, she found that she couldn't see anything anyway. Little by little, her senses acclimated to the environment that surrounded her-- a thick piece of rough cloth was tied around her head and there was something in her mouth that tasted bad in a way that she didn’t even have the words to describe. Taking stock, she noted that she may in fact be grateful for the blindfold, as the pounding in her head seemed to increase in ferocity with each heartbeat. She tested the restraints that held her to whatever she was laying on. A bed, maybe? It seemed really hard for a bed. Her bare shoulders felt the scratchy material of a wool blanket beneath her prone form, but bed still didn’t seem quite right. Maybe like a chunk of wood with a blanket over it. It was hard to tell without seeing or feeling it.
It was cold, too, and she tried to figure out what she was wearing based on where the cool air flitted over pale, bare skin. Definitely a sports bra, she could feel the worn edges of it digging into her ribs because the ones she liked were all in the wash. Fucking figures she would get kidnapped and undressed in the ratty bra she'd had to save her money for freshman year for gym class. It felt like she was wearing shorts, too. Maybe it was just her pajamas, minus the oversized t-shirt she had thrifted with Ned and MJ two weeks ago. Again, it was irritatingly difficult to tell.
She lay there for a while, as the cold settled into her bones, waiting and thinking and testing the strength of the restraints every few minutes to see if they were still too strong to break through.
The waiting lasted for an unintelligible amount of time before she heard muffled voices far off in the distance. She couldn't understand them and it was difficult to tell if they were actually speaking another language, or if she was just concussed. When the bile began to rise in her throat, she concluded it was the latter. She did her best to direct the liquid as it filled her mouth, but without being able to sit up, the best she could do was turn to the side, completely unable to stop it from running into her hair and down her arm.
She was choking then, trying not to breathe it in, but being largely incapable of preventing it. Suddenly there was a loud clanging noise, before hands were on her, manhandling her right arm out of it's restraint. They twisted her in on herself, pressing her cheek into the damp cloth she had been laying on. Someone pounded on her back between her shoulder blades hard enough to bruise, hard enough to free the tears she had been trying to keep at bay since she woke up.
“Jesus fuck , that's gross,” A gruff voice spoke above her as she gasped for breath. Before she could even react to that, to wonder who's hand print was the model for the already red splotches that now marred her spine, her hand was tied down again. The clanking sound rang out again and footsteps retreated, leaving her alone in the dark again.
Not a lot of things broke Penny down on the spot. She was more a “live through it and think about it later” kind of girl. Concussions are hard, though, and the not moving thing and the in the dark thing and the part where she smelled like the bile that had somehow managed to enter her ear had her heart beating faster and faster. Her breaths came in short gasps as she tried to get a grip, tried to figure out a way to at least sit up . The tears were flowing freely then, leaching out from under the blindfold as they ran down her grimy cheeks.
She clenched her eyes shut and willed her lungs to inflate, fully and slowly.
Five things I can see. I can't see. That's okay, five things I can smell- I don't want to think about how it smells I don’t want to think about it. Okay, Parker, come on if you can’t get grounded you can’t get out, right? So how about we just take some deep breaths instead.
Her internal monologue was twisted and confusing even to her as she tried to untangle her current reality.
It felt as though an eternity had passed when the creaking sound returned, the door opened once more. This time, though, there were three sets of footsteps. Or was it two? Her brain was so foggy, and she was so cold and nothing at all made sense.
There were hands on her again, bringing one arm up at a time and securing them to what she assumed was the wall above her, stretching her upward and forcing her to sit with her back flat against the wall. Every ounce of her body felt heavy and sore and she couldn’t help the slight groan that escaped her lips as she was forced into the new position.
“She up?” A voice asked from somewhere far on the other side of the room.
“She’s fucking gross,” The voice closer to her whispered under his breath as he secured her wrists in the shackles again, tightening them until they bit at her skin.
“Is that what I asked?” The voice at the other end of the room responded cooly. He sounded authoritative in a boiling just under the surface kind of way. In an “I’d hate to piss you off” kind of way.
“Uh, no sir, I think she’s awake though,” he prodded against her face then, grimacing at the dried vomit that decorated her right side. She groaned involuntarily again. It was so hard to keep track of what was going on. Had she been more coherent, she probably would've settled for pretending to be unconscious. She wasn't coherent, thorough, was the problem.
“Okay good. Let's get the camera set up and then we can get started in good shape. Grab the tripod, would you?”
There was shuffling while they got things “set up”, their voices becoming muddled together, even with Penny's super hearing. Things changed when the man by the door began to speak clearly, obviously talking to someone on the other end of the camera.
“This is a message for Tony Stark,” He said, menacingly “I believe we have something of yours.”
How long had she been out? Was Tony even looking for her yet? She'd seen him last on Wednesday, on lab day. They'd been making more adjustments to her suit. The heater worked fine, but there needed to be a “cool down” option for the opposite scenario. They'd found that one out the hard way when she’d collapsed in an alleyway on patrol when it was eighty degrees out and she hadn't had enough water. That was Wednesday though. Was it Thursday, then?
If it was Thursday, someone from school would've called May and told her she hadn't come to class, right? And then May would've called Tony and Tony would have started looking for her, right? Tracked her suit or something?
The thought that she’d been there longer than a day or so was nauseating. Even more so, maybe than the pounding in her skull and the tearing skin at her wrists and ankles.
By the time the man at the door had finished his spiel about needing ransom money from SI and how Tony would have six hours to wire the cash to a secure offshore account before they'd start in on her
“You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your precious intern, now would you, Stark?” He'd said. Penny struggled to make sense of the words, but his tone sounded sticky and artificial, like he was exaggerating a frown.
“Say hello to your boss, Penny,” He added coyly.
She didn’t respond, to preoccupied with how fucking bad her head hurt. How had they knocked her out? Was it brute force or some kind of drug? It sort of felt like it might have been both. There was a sharper pain at the base of her skull that suggested she’d been hit, but the way her entire body felt like it'd been submerged in jell-o made her think of all the time's she’d been under Super Soldier anesthesia. It felt bad in a way that oozes and aches.
A hand slapped across her face, hard. She groaned in response, the burning in her face amplifying the nausea she felt rising in her throat again, threatening to overtake her.
“Had to let him know you were alive somehow,” The man standing next to her said, exasperated.
Penny couldn’t focus on any of the rest of their speech, hot tears pooled in her eyes as she willed them not to fall. She bit into her lip to keep from making any noise, doing her best not to give her captors any satisfaction.
Soon after the slap, they left the room again, leaving her in the cool, damp, darkness alone.
It was nearly twenty four hours later when Tony Stark, sitting alone at his laboratory work bench, received a frantic call from a panicking May Parker concerning the whereabouts of their friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
She explained through shallow breaths that the school had called her cell, but she had been at work and missed it, her floor so understaffed she’d had to forgo the break that would have allowed her to listen to the messages.
“So you haven’t seen her, then?” She asked, voice wavering.
When Tony confirmed the negative, she could no longer hold back the torrent of emotion, sobbing as she confessed to having already texted Ned to see if he’d heard from Penny.
He’d wanted to send Happy to pick her up, to bring her back to the tower so they could sort this out in person. She’d insisted on staying home, though. If Penny came stumbling into their shared apartment, she didn’t want to leave it vacant. So, he sent Happy anyway, if only to keep her from spiraling in the same way he would if it weren’t for Pepper and Rhodey. The two of them never left him alone for long, pledging to spend every waking moment with him looking for the kid.
Pepper was there when he received the video. Friday rang out into the living room, where the two were sitting, pouring over their respective laptops.
“You have an urgent message, sir,” She spoke, even toned as ever.
“Who’s it from?” He asked, hardly even glancing up from his screen.
“I am unable to determine the sender, sir. The message is a video. Would you like me to play it?”
That got his attention.
“Pull it up, Fri,” He said, voice barely above a whisper. His heart was beating so quickly he could feel it in his ears, the sound of it almost drowning out the voices that spoke at the start of what would likely be the most harrowing video he ever watched.
Penny was tied with her hands above her head, attached by thick metal chains to a hook in the ceiling. Her legs were likewise bound straight out in front of her. She looked pale, from what he could make out of her face, most of which was hidden behind a strip of dingy, brown fabric. She was covered in dirt and mud and there were scrapes across her face and bare stomach that made Tony nauseated, even if he knew they would heal overnight.
The rest of the video didn’t help to abate his nausea. The slap across her poor, scratched up face, had him springing to his feet, his hand coiled tight into a fist. Pepper was there in an instant, telling Friday to shut it off. She wrapped her long fingers around his, gently dislodging his blunt nails from the skin of his palm.
“We have to find her, Pep,” He whispered.
“I know, honey, we'll get her.”
Pepper and Rhodey ended up watching the video all the way through. It played over and over again across the screen in the living room as they combed over it for details that might help lead the way to their missing girl. Tony, on the other hand, locked the door to his lab and sat for a moment, head bowed. They’d taken so many precautions with Penny. They called her spider man instead of Spidergirl or Spiderwoman thinking it would lessen the chances of someone discovering her true identity. They kept her away from the press and when people asked questions, he claimed she was only an intern. They had worked so hard over the last four years to keep her safe.
The next step was to start compiling a list of potential suspects. Once he had that down, it wouldn’t be so hard to come up with motives, to come up with locations, right? This was one of those cork board, red string, thumbtack scenarios, right? He hadn’t recognized the build of the man in the video, though he’d been wearing a mask, so it was difficult to know for sure. The voices did not immediately stand out to him as familiar, but that didn’t rule anybody out, right? Because rich people never get their hands dirty themselves, they hire someone else to do it for them and then act like they never had a thing to do with it.
There was Toomes, who had been arrested just last year after the whole weapons debacle with Penny. Whether he’d figured out Penny’s identity was sort of up for debate, Penny herself insisting that things were fine. A quick search determined that Toomes himself was still incarcerated with limited outside contact, meaning that if he was in fact responsible, he would have to have had a network of people working under him. That kind of man power would have been tricky to control from inside the prison, but it was definitely a possibility.
There hadn’t been any new fixtures in the kid's life though, right? Tony hadn’t hired anyone new in the tower in ages, at least not anybody with high enough clearance to even know that SI hired high school interns. May hadn’t mentioned seeing anybody new, hadn’t reported any suspicious behavior, and neither had Penny. There weren’t any new teachers at the school, and Penny stuck to a relatively steady and practiced routine every day, which would have made it easy to spot someone who didn’t seem like they belonged.
Routine.
Maybe that was it? Was it possible that this was a stranger abduction? Possible that they didn’t know who she was?
The video had been addressed to him, though, so that was partly out of the question. They had to know she worked for him, then.
Just as Tony was readying himself to create a new list of suspects, Friday announced that Pepper and Rhodey had requested his presence upstairs again. She didn’t explain more after that and she didn’t have to. Tony sighed and set his pen down on his desk, hurrying up the stairs back to the main floor.
“Tell me you've got something,” He started, holding his arms wide as he entered the room, looking at the two of them sitting across from one another at the kitchen table.
“We watched the video half a dozen times Tones,” Rhodey started, trying to keep his voice calm to help comfort his friend, “What we've got is in the background of the clip, alright, and I know you don’t want to watch it, but--”
“Pull it up Fri,” Tony interrupted.
It was just after the slap that it happened. The man's shirt sleeve rolled up just enough to reveal a tattoo, a name written in a rough cursive scrawl that was difficult to make out even with Friday's help enhancing the image.
“Okay so we know it’s a name, right? It's two words?” He asked impatiently.
“Tony this is a stretch, okay, this might not be anything,” Pepper started. She was standing then, reaching a hand out to wrap her fingers around his wrist. He shook her off, harder than he’d meant to, but he was agitated and it was hard to focus on anything unrelated to finding his kid. His kid? His kid.
“Honey, we're thinking the tattoo says Monika, with a K, followed by the roman numerals for twenty fifteen.”
She could practically see the cogs turning in his head. Monika. That didn’t mean anything on its own, right? Except that that’s a pretty common Eastern European name, and 2015, that was the year of that thing in Sokovia, wasn’t it?
“So you're thinking this guy,” He said, gesturing vaguely at the man frozen mid slap on the paused screen, lost someone in the explosion in Sokovia? That's his motive?”
“It's a possibility,” Rhodey answered, “It doesn't make sense for him to target Penny for that, though, she wasn’t even enhanced at that time, right? She definitely wasn’t there, she had nothing to do with that.”
“They knew to send the video to me. They knew to send it to me,”
“You're thinking, what? That they don’t know who she is?” Pepper asked, eyebrows raised in surprise.
“They don’t know she’s Spiderman.” Rhodey confirmed, letting out a deep breath. “That could be used to our advantage, right? They aren't gonna kill her, right?”
Tony shook his head.
“Not if I can help it.”
When she woke up again, her arms were numb. It was kind of nice, compared to the burning sensation she’d felt earlier. It was a bit disconcerting though, it always is when you aren’t fully aware of your own body.
She felt heavy, like whatever drug they’d given her had begun to wear off. If the pounding in her head and the nausea in her throat were anything to go off, though, her concussion hadn’t gotten any better. Her cheeks still stung and the skin on her stomach still burned. It wasn’t unusual for stress to impact her healing factor though, and it’s not like she was having a super relaxing time. She hadn’t eaten recently either and that could have something to do with it, metabolism and all.
When you have almost no control over anything in a given situation, it can be helpful to take stock of the things you know for sure. It’s one of those tools that your therapist gives you on your third meeting, when you’ve covered the fact that you definitely have control issues, but you haven’t unpacked why yet. Penny knew that. She had that tool in her mind when she began cataloging the aches that weighed her down by severity and sensation.
Her skin still burned, her arms and legs felt cloudy though, like the communications between them and her brain had been interrupted somehow. Her mouth still tasted bitter and bad and the first thing she was going to do when someone came to get her was brush her fucking teeth. She swore it right then and there.
It was still hard to focus, and she found herself going over the same topics over and over in her mind. Had there been one person in the room earlier, or had it been two? It was hard to remember without having seen their faces. Had she tried getting out of the restraints? She was pretty sure she had when she’d woken up the first time. It took all the energy she could muster to tug at the restraints that held her arms above her head. She was surprised to find though, that one of them had begun to come loose.
It wasn’t vibranium?
That brought a whole new dimension to an already extremely confusing set of circumstances. They weren’t holding her in chains built for people like her. Did they not know? If they didn’t know, then how had they gotten her in the first place? And why?
Things were very fuzzy, but she vaguely remembered someone filming a video. Had they been blackmailing someone? May didn’t have any money. The two of them were barely scraping by on their own, and that wasn’t exactly a secret. The holes she’d worn straight through the soles of her shoes and the second hand jacket with the name crossed out on the tag should have given it away. If they’d followed her home, the state of her apartment should have been another dead giveaway. The fact that she was at Midtown on a scholarship. The fact that she walked everywhere even when it would be faster and easier to take the subway or to hail a cab. There were so few signs pointing to wealth that it was almost unimaginable for someone to kidnap her for ransom.
Unless-
Mr. Stark. Tony had a lot of money, right? Like a famously large amount of money. Maybe someone wanted that? But if it was a ransom situation, he would have already paid it by now, wouldn’t he have? He would have already wired them money and she would already be back at home or in the tower, a warm cup of cocoa in her hands as she waited to find the motivation to finish her chemistry assignment.
She allowed herself the solace of that space for a moment. It was easier to picture sitting on Tony's big expensive living room sofa than it was to try and figure out what was going on around her. It was more pleasant to believe she could smell one of Pepper's cinnamon candles than to reconcile the fact that the only real smell was coming from her own body and it was remarkably unpleasant.
Her daydreaming was cut short though, as the door to her room was flung open, and the two voices from earlier re-entered the space. It had been two, after all, she thought, absentmindedly, as they moved closer to her, the sound of their footsteps shaking the inside of her brain, leaving her seasick where she sat.
“I guess Stark didn’t get the message,” one of them said. He had some kind of an accent, but it was really hard to place. It sounded maybe like Russian. But then again, all her experience with Russian accents came directly from the three episodes of Star Trek Tony had forced her to watch when she’d lost a bet.
“Get back over there, make sure she’s awake for this one,” The other voice sounded further away, by the door.
If there were only two of them, she could take them right? And odds were, one of them was going to have a phone she could use to call Tony. Or May. Or Happy? Maybe? The idea of beating anyone in a physical altercation felt damn near impossible and then to remember a phone number on top of that? She wasn’t totally convinced she could do that.
But, the more she thought about it, the less appealing sitting tied to the wall, shirtless, covered in her own vomit sounded. The plan she formulated in that moment, though not foolproof, might just be crazy enough to work. She could wait until they started the video, it was streamed right? That would make the most sense. She could wait until they started the video and then pretend to be unconscious again. Accent guy would have to get close to her to wake her up again, and then she could snap out of her restraints and surprise him. Then it would only take a second to cross the room and take out the other one, right?
Hopefully they weren’t armed. Or if they were, hopefully they were a little rusty on their target practice and accuracy training.
The man at the door spoke again.
“Stark, your lack of response to our most recent video suggests that maybe you don’t care too much about your little intern. Maybe we weren’t clear. We have the skills and the tools to make her disappear. Forever. “
Disappear forever, huh? That seemed a little dramatic. Also what was the point? Why wasn’t he asking for money? Or weapons? Or literally anything? What was the goal for this whole thing?
“Get her up,” he ordered, and that’s when she made her move.
Just as the creep closest to her began manhandling her arms out of their restraints in an effort to reposition her, she snapped away, pulling back and delivering a powerful right hook directly to the nose of her captor.
She didn’t wait for him to react, instead opting to tear the blindfold from her eyes, yanking her feet toward her core with all the strength she could muster. The chains snapped and she was vertical again in seconds. She took advantage of the chaos she’d created, leaping across the room to deliver the same treatment to the esteemed videographer. She picked up the tripod and brought it crashing down on the man’s head, knocking him unconscious before she returned to the other one, who was still bleeding fairly profusely, clutching the fabric that she had been laying across only moments ago.
He had a mask on, like a cheesy ski mask that you see on movie criminals. It was crazy to think that people actually wore those. She couldn’t recall ever seeing one in a store before, she’d never seen someone buy one. After spending a quality second in awe of his fashion choices, she yanked the black wool fabric off his face, revealing an absolute mess of blood and angry red mottled skin. He grunted as she pulled on his hair, forcing his head back to look her in the eyes.
“Where are we?” She asked, in a way that she hoped sounded sturdy and strong. Her voice never really had carried a whole ton of authority though, even when she wasn’t concussed, confused, and thoroughly creeped out.
All she received in response was a whimper, as the man whose head she held up sputtered and coughed around the blood that was surely rushing into his mouth. She adjusted her grip on his hair and pulled a little harder, and the answer rushed out of his mouth along with a fresh dribble of crimson liquid. He shook violently when she questioned him about any additional accomplices, and once she had confirmed that they had indeed been the only two, she knocked him out cold with another knee to the face.
She fished a cellphone from his coat pocket, disappointed, but not surprised to see that she had no service. The problem was easily remedied by exiting the room and finding her way upstairs to the ground floor of the old building. She stared at the unlocked phone in her hand for a moment, vision swimming as the adrenaline began to fade. She opened the phone app and dialed the only number she could think of.
“How did you get this number?” The man on the other end asked sharply in lieu of a greeting.
“H-Happy?” Her mouth felt dry, her lips trembling as she spoke. She wasn’t sure when the tears had started and she didn’t notice them until they collected against the edge of the phone she had pressed to her cheek.
“Kid?”
“C-Can, can you come get me? Please?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded weak and far away and echoey, like it was coming from a radio on the other side of the room.
“Where are you? Are you hurt?”
She gave him her best approximation of an address, she wasn’t familiar with this part of town, and she didn’t feel comfortable leaving the solitude of the cool tile floor and dilapidated brick walls. It was cold and she wrapped the arm that wasn’t holding the phone around her waist in an effort to keep whatever little heat she had close to her bare skin.
“We're on our way, kid, we’ll be there really soon, okay? Are you hurt?” He asked again, the sounds of other people shuffling around and talking to one another providing a backdrop for his question.
Was she hurt?
It was hard to think, for sure, and her head was spinning and her arms and legs burned with pins and needles. She shivered at the thought of it. Why did she feel so dirty?
“Pen, honey, are you hurt?”
That was a different voice. That one sounded warm and safe and wherever that voice was, that’s where she wanted to be. It caught her off guard, unexpectedly, like the sound of it had pulled the plug in a bathtub. She was a balloon, deflated. What came out of her mouth was a whimper.
“Okay, alright, I hear ya, kiddo, we’re four minutes out, okay? I'm coming, I'm coming.”
It took him three and a half, as it turned out, and when he came sprinting through the glass door at the entrance of the building, she was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. When the image of him became clear in her eyes, her arms drifted outward and upward, calling for him without making a sound.
“Jesus, kiddo,” he breathed, his shoulders slumping as he faced her, “Okay, it’s alright, I'm here, honey.”
And he was, and he took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders as she clung to him. He held her and carried her to the car, where Happy was waiting for them. He ignored his concerned glances in the rear view mirror and didn’t let go of her hand as he buckled her into the back seat, taking the middle one next to her and doing the same for himself. The entire drive back to the tower was filled with whispered nonsense and comforts and she let her heavy eyelids droop as she leaned her head into Tony's chest. He texted Rhodey to ensure that the bastards that still lay motionless in that forsaken basement would be taken care of properly.
When Penny woke up again, she was flat on her back, under a warm blanket. The bed under her was not soft, but it differed dramatically from the plank of plywood she’d been on before. It took a lot more work than made sense for her to peel her eyelids open, but when she did she was rewarded with Tony's smiling face, sitting in a chair to the left of her.
She picked her hand up, only slightly as it tugged against the IV in the back of her hand, in a wave.
“Hey,” her voice still didn’t sound like her own, but it was getting there.
“Hey yourself, kid,” He said, catching her hand in his own and bringing it down to the bed again.
“You tell May?”
The idea of worrying her aunt with her kidnapping was a little much to think about, but she was probably going to find out about it at some point, especially if the school had contacted her about an absence. Tony only nodded forward, gaze shifting to look behind her. When she turned her head, she was met with May, folded somewhat precariously on a similar plastic chair, face propped up on her elbow, sleeping.
She’d probably get an earful of it tomorrow, the questions would flood in and not stop until every detail was wrung out of her like dirty dishwater from a rag. It would be tiring and there were still gaps in her memory. It was going to take some serious work to chip away at that story until what came out was the closest version of the truth. The idea of it had her exhausted.
She blinked slowly.
“You can rest, honey, it’s alright,” Tony whispered, running a careful hand down from her forehead to her cheek.
She hummed her response and complied, allowing the thick darkness behind her eyelids to comfort her as she slept.