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When Tony asked her to look into his intern, Nat thought it would be a pretty quick and easy job. Despite what Pepper said about Penny Parker’s insistence her guardians weren’t hurting her, it was most likely her guardians. She would be far from the first kid to deny being abused.
However, when she runs a search on Penny Parker’s guardians (using completely illegal hacking), the Prescott’s records are surprisingly good. They have been foster parents for fifteen years, of multiple kids at once, and haven’t had any previous accusations of abuse. That didn’t rule them out, but it was surprising. So she arranged to bump into both of them at separate times in the shops, disguised of course. Her interactions with them were brief, but surprising. She didn’t read either of them as the type to abuse the kids under their care. She could be wrong, but she was rarely wrong about this kind of thing. She should have trusted Pepper’s reading of what Penny said.
She was tempted to go and knock on their door and ask to use their toilet or something similar, and see how they interacted with the kids, but she didn’t have time, she needed to get back to the Tower for Saturday afternoon training. Which was annoying, because they’d been talking about moving it to the evening, because Saturday afternoons was a bad time for everyone, but she’d forgotten about that when she told Spider Woman to join them on Saturday afternoons, so they were stuck for at least one more week.
Even more annoyingly, Spider Woman didn’t turn up, which meant she had to give up her evening as well to hang out on a rooftop until an untrained masked vigilante may or may not swing by. And she had to stop a worried Wanda from coming with her because Wanda witnessing her dressing down Spider Woman would probably be additionally upsetting for all involved. Why couldn’t Spider Woman have just done as she was told and come to training?
When Spider Woman did appear, she almost swung away again rather than join Nat on the rooftop. And Nat had had a long, frustrating day, and it was harder to read someone when they are dressed in baggy clothes and a mask, but that was still no excuse for not taking the time to analyse the vigilante before she started thoroughly scolding her, and she drastically miscalculated and Spider Woman burst into tears, which was on Nat. Not all of it, there was clearly more going on with Spider Woman than getting shouted at, but some of it. She was off her game, but all she could offer was an awkward apology and a bad attempt at comfort. She mentally shook herself, forced herself to put aside the problem of Tony’s intern for the moment, and focused properly on Spider Woman, who clearly needed better housemates. She said as much, but allowed Spider Woman to steer the conversation away, probably protecting her secret identity. Not that it was going to work. Natasha already had a mental file going and was constantly gathering information, and it was only a matter of time before she worked it out.
They worked out a new time for Spider Woman to come to training, which had the added advantage that they could shift group training to Saturday evenings without issue, and then she asked Spider Women to report. Alarmingly, Spider Woman seemed to have a similar definition of ‘nothing really happened’ to her and Clint, which included getting beaten up under that heading. Even more alarmingly, she seemed to have no idea about the dangers of broken ribs and punctured lungs. Luckily, she also seemed to have enhanced healing. Natasha investigated as best she could when the vigilante refused to let her look, impressed on her the necessity of learning first aid yesterday, and sent her on her way.
She added ‘enhanced healing’, and ‘college student’ to her mental file on Spider Woman. It joined ‘sixth sense for danger’, ‘enhanced strength’, ‘enhanced senses?’, ‘enhanced metabolism?’, ‘hero mentality’, ‘recent bereavement’, and ‘traumatic experience being pinned on back – most likely rape’. The note of panic in Spider Woman’s voice when she refused to take her hoodie off to let Natasha see her ribs made this last even more likely, although she’d been pretty certain of that already. There weren’t a lot of traumatic experiences of being pinned on your back that would make someone scream quite like Spider Woman had when she’d pinned her down to demonstrate she needed better training. She really needed to get back on her game with Spider Woman, tonight made the second time in as many meetings she’d made a serious mistake with Spider Woman.
She spent some of Sunday (after dealing with several other things because nothing ever happened at easily manageable rates) digging deeper into the Prescotts, and then doing basic checks on the teachers at Penny Parker’s school (the next most likely suspects), but came up frustratingly blank. There were no obvious suspects. If it wasn’t for the regularity that Tony said Penny turned up with bruises, or moving carefully enough to suggest she had hidden bruises, Natasha would probably conclude that she’d been telling the truth about getting into a fight. As it was, Nat was clearly missing something.
She tried another approach and dug into Penny herself, which revealed she’d had a seriously rough time, but nothing that ought to mean she had bruises now. The file the foster system had on her noted her uncle’s death, that Penny had been there when it happened, that Penny couldn’t talk, some stuff about her scholarship to Midtown, and information on the Prescotts she already had. There was also a police report from four and a half years ago which looked more useful, although it made her heart ache in sympathy. However, what had seemed initially promising as a line of investigation rapidly turned useless. The man who hurt her was in prison, and did not seem to be doing especially well there. He certainly did not have the kind of friends or resources he would need to send someone after Penny in some kind of twisted revenge. And even if he did, there still remained the questions of when and how.
It made no sense. She was missing something. She had to be. Which was embarrassing, and frustrating to say the least. And unfortunately, there wasn’t anything else she could do without gathering more information, which would be potentially invasive.
She reported in to Tony and Pepper on Sunday evening, telling them what she’d found (or rather, not found), and what she’d need to do to go further. Neither looked especially happy about it, but told her to go ahead. They were getting no where with the foster system (Natasha did offer to blackmail them, but that would probably backfire spectacularly in the long run, as would bribery), and Penny was clearly being frequently harmed, and her social worker, aside from doing a few surprise visits and talking to Penny, didn’t seem to be doing anything. So drastic measures it was.
She left Tony to arrange for Penny to stay over at the Tower tomorrow night, and went to get some sleep, knowing she wasn’t going to get much tomorrow night. Then she got up early, and went to infiltrate Midtown school for little nerds. Unfortunately, an entire day of watching Penny taught her nothing new that was helpful. She was being bullied, that much was clear, and she was understandably jumpy, and didn’t have many friends (Natasha counted one proper friend and one person she was friendly with, and she was only sure about the former because nobody goes to such lengths to ignore someone unless they have been very close and had a bad fight). However, none of that could leave Penny with the kind of bruises Tony and Pepper described. Flash Thompson was clearly a nasty piece of work, but he was not the type to leave that kind of damage. He was more the kind of person who wanted to see his victims weak without seeing physical evidence of the fact he was causing harm. He wanted to feel powerful, and the satisfaction of upsetting his victim, rather than leave clear marks that could be traced back to him.
Which left Natasha without any leads. Which was ridiculous. She was the Black Widow, working out who was hurting Tony’s intern should not be this difficult! Nor did she get anything useful from interacting with Penny over dinner, although she had to be careful not to pay obvious extra attention to the girl, especially as she was clearly already overwhelmed. All she really got from seeing her more closely and interacting with her were noting for herself the small signs that Penny was malnourished (she was hiding the desire to take more food well, but Nat still saw it, and despite her baggy clothes she could see the way her bones showed more than they should) and the way she moved carefully (but in a way that suggested it was instinctive, which suggested being in pain was normal, which was worrying). The only vaguely interesting thing of note was that she seemed more daunted by interacting with her and Wanda than the other Avengers. Natasha could understand Penny being scared of the Black Widow, but Wanda? It didn’t make sense.
Then again, nothing about Penny seemed to make sense. She was clearly in frequent pain, but she didn’t seem actively scared of a group of powerful strangers. She might be self harming, but that didn’t fit with the kinds of injuries she seemed to have, especially the finger shaped bruises. She was undeniably smart if she could keep up with Tony, but she was in her normal grade for her age at school, despite clearly not being in a great position socially. She was clearly excited to meet the Avengers, but was also alarmed by Wanda of all people. It made no sense!
And her weight! More than anything else that didn’t make sense. She was clearly underweight (to the trained eye), but there was nothing to suggest her guardians would starve her, and Natasha had seen her eat a big lunch at school, and she knew she ate big meals before working with Tony three days a week, and she knew Tony sent her home with food as well. And it was highly unlikely she had an eating disorder. She’d eaten dinner perfectly happily, and shown no sign of wanting to go to the bathroom to puke afterwards (and hadn’t done that at school either) which ruled out bulimia, and taking advantage of free food as often as possible ruled out anorexia as well. Nor did she seem to be sick. There was no explanation for why she should be underweight. If anything, given Tony had been actively sticking snacks in her bag and making sure she ate at least two meals each internship day, and given she got free school meals because of being a foster kid, and there was nothing to indicate her guardians weren’t feeding her, she ought to be eating more than enough. But she wasn’t.
The facts just didn’t fit together.
And breaking into her group home and searching the place didn’t turn up any more answers. It only raised more. There were plenty of signs indicating neglect (which would be great for getting Penny away from them if it wasn’t for the fact that breaking in and searching the place was highly illegal), but none at all to indicate physical abuse. There was a small blood stain on Penny’s pillow that looked like it had once been bigger, but that told her nothing new. Tony had mentioned the first time he’d suspected Penny was being abused was when she turned up with a head injury. All searching her room got her was that Penny wasn’t hording the snacks Tony left her, but was either eating them or randomly feeding them to someone else and sticking the wrappers in her own rubbish bin. And there was every indication in the kitchen that the Prescotts were feeding the foster kids. So there was no reason for Penny to be underweight. Which made no sense.
Nothing made sense.
She watched the house for half the night, making sure there were no unusual night-time interactions between the foster kids or the foster parents, but there was nothing. She headed back to the tower in the morning empty handed, and had to admit to Tony that she had absolutely nothing, and she didn’t know what to do to stop her getting hurt again. It made her feel helpless, something she rarely felt nowadays and didn’t like at all. She didn’t know how to help Tony, and she didn’t know how to help Penny. She hated seeing both Tony and Pepper so desperate, and she hated that she didn’t know how to stop Penny getting hurt again. The girl squirmed in passed her defenses surprisingly quickly, even though Natasha had barely even interacted with her personally.
She spent the entire day, following night, and part of the next morning watching her, but got absolutely nothing useful. All she got was a confirmation of what she already knew. Penny wasn’t the kind of person to pick fights (despite the growing little signs of anger as the day wore on and Flash Thompson continued picking on her), and indeed actively avoided them. She was eating. Her guardians weren’t abusing her. She ought to be fine.
But she was undeniably underweight, and undeniably regularly in pain, and undeniably not fine.
It made no sense. At all.
And Natasha was rapidly running out of ideas. The next thing on the list to try was Spider Woman, given Tony said Penny knew her. But if Natasha couldn’t work it out who was hurting Penny, it was unlikely the untrained vigilante could, if she even knew. She would be more likely to be successful with a frontal approach than Natasha though. If she was friends with Penny then the teenager might confide in her in a way she was refusing to do with Tony or Pepper. The fact that they were probably only five or six years apart in age might also help.
She caught Tony up on her plan, realized too late that Wanda was around the corner awkwardly making a late breakfast and not wanting to interrupt, and mentally kicked herself. They’d already violated Penny’s privacy, and this just made it worse. Wanda really shouldn’t know about this. It was too late now though. She spent most of the day catching up on the sleep she hadn’t gotten the last two nights. She got ready to head to Queens in the evening and then went to check in with Tony about Penny given she’d had her internship today, only to find Tony huddled in a devastated heap on his sofa with a miserable looking Pepper.
It took a solid ten minutes to extract the story from Tony, and it was worrying to say the least. Penny didn’t generally seem to be angry, or confrontational. And while it was possibly a good sign that she trusted Tony enough (even if only subconsciously) to lash out, the level of anger expressed without any previous expression of anger at all was not a good sign. Nor was the fact that she’d run away afterwards. She reminded Tony that teenagers lashed out, and that what Penny said wasn’t true, and then left Tony to Pepper’s distinctly more capable hands and headed out to Queens with Wanda.
Talking to Spider Woman was a disaster.
To start with, Spider Woman swung right passed them and then away as fast as she could go, which given Wanda’s distinctly irritated reaction was something she hadn’t done since they first talked properly several weeks ago (and became close at the speed of two young adults finding another hero their age with similar experiences of recent bereavements). Natasha had to admit she wasn’t exactly fond of the game of chase that followed either, especially as it ended right back where they started.
And then Spider Woman told Wanda to ‘come back without her’ if you want to talk’ and jumped off the roof again. Luckily, Wanda didn’t let her get far this time, clearly not keen on the idea of another chase around Queens either. But that didn’t explain why, in the space of less than four days, Spider Woman had gone from intimidated and awed to outright hostile. There was no reason Natasha could think of for the abrupt change. So she asked. She played it off as slightly amused to hide the fact that she actually cared about the answer, but she still asked. Not that she got an actual answer, only speechless fury (which wasn’t a good sign, but Natasha had bigger problems right now – Penny was more important than Spider Woman’s inexplicable behavior). She told Spider Woman she could go and sulk if she wanted once she answered a question, and then went for a direct question. With the mood Spider Woman was clearly in an indirect question would probably be ignored even if she was thinking clearly enough to realize what she was asking.
“You know Penny Parker right? Who’s hurting her?” She wasn’t sure Spider Woman knew that Penny was getting hurt regularly (it was highly likely they only physically saw each other when absolutely necessary for maintenance of gear, and just texted the rest of the time), but she hoped it would communicate both the problem and the fact that Natasha was looking for the answer and trying to help. She hoped it would also snap Spider Woman out of whatever this was and get her to focus on the bigger problem. Unfortunately, it seemed to have the exact opposite effect.
“Where the fuck do you get off?”
“Excuse me?” Natasha said, injecting hard warning into her voice. She’d put up with Spider Woman being irrationally hostile, but there were limits to what she’d put up with, and that was over the line. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wanda’s jaw drop in shock, indicating that this was every bit as out of character as Natasha thought it was. Spider Woman seemed to notice neither her warning nor Wanda’s shock.
“You want to know when you became her? How about around the same time you started spying on Penny Parker!”
For a moment all Natasha could feel was shock, and then horror washed over her. “Does Penny know?” she demanded, but she already knew the answer. Penny’s sudden lashing out at Tony suddenly made perfect, terrible sense. And it was Nat’s fault. She had been the one to suggest (and point out the necessity) of tailing Penny. She had been the one who had clearly been careless while doing it because otherwise how could an untrained vigilante like Spider Woman have caught her at it? Although it also suggested the alarming fact that Spider Woman was also watching Penny fairly closely. And might have been doing so for a long time.
“What, worried your victim will call you on it?” Spider Woman snarled, rage filling every syllable, and Natasha had nothing she could say in response. Tailing people to gather intel was so much a part of her job that she hadn’t really focused on the ethical issues of tailing a 14 year old who was very much not a criminal. She had never expected Penny to find out about it. But Penny had found out. And she’d clearly made the connection between Natasha and Tony. No wonder she was so angry. Penny trusted Tony, and Natasha was realizing all at once how much of a violation being followed had to feel like, especially for someone with no part in the world of spies and secrets.
She had quite possibly, through her suggestions and carelessness, ruined Tony and Penny’s developing relationship forever. Even if Tony and Pepper somehow did get cleared to foster, Penny might very well not want to live with them. And if that happened, Tony would be devastated. Even more so than he already was. And it was her fault.
“Hey, calm down! Nat’s just trying to help. Someone’s been hurting Penny.”
Natasha noted in the part of her mind that wasn’t swearing at herself, that Wanda was trying to help. However, the fact that Wanda knew about this, which was again Natasha’s mistake, was only going to make things worse when it was inevitably passed on to Penny. Wanda shouldn’t know about this.
“Nobody is hurting Penny! She’s just clumsy.” Spider Woman spat, “Which you ought to know after spying on her for two days!”
The last sentence was directed at Natasha, with impressive levels of hostility, but she was too focused on the first sentence to care. Natasha may have clearly been off her game recently, but she was still the Black Widow, and she could still tell when someone was lying to her, even when all she had to go off was a voice. And Spider Woman was lying. And that meant she knew. More than that, she’d already known. A suspicion formed in her mind, an avenue she hadn’t even considered, and thought was highly unlikely, but ought to be investigated anyway. She picked her words carefully as replied, her tone sharp as she pressed for the truth.
“Penny is not clumsy, I didn’t need to watch her long to know that. And if you’ve noticed me watching her then you’ve been around enough to know that’s bullshit. You’re covering for someone; who?”
Spider Woman responded with wordless rage again (or was it rage? Could it be defensiveness?), and jumped off the roof. Wanda reached out with her power and caught her, and Spider Woman spun back round as soon as her feet hit the roof again and, with sudden speed, fired her webs at them. Natasha reacted without even thinking, twisting out of the way with years of ingrained instincts, but she internally swore when she realized Wanda had been pinned down. Not that that made Wanda’s powers that much less dangerous. Spider Woman’s running at her was distinctly less surprising after her first attack, and she pinned the woman to the rooftop, officially out of patience. She remembered a split second before Spider Woman went from furious to terrified that being pinned down was a trigger for her, and released her even as the woman started to panic. She swore internally, and backed off quickly as Spider Woman realized she wasn’t pinned anymore and jumped to her feet, returning to anger as soon as the panic passed.
Romanoff eyed the woman carefully, “You need to calm down. Now.” she said, hiding her own anger and trying to defuse the situation. It didn’t work. Spider Woman ran at her again, and she had no choice but to pin her down again, although she pinned her on her front this time, and mercifully it didn’t seem to trigger her. Wanda watched her pin her friend down with an expression of panicked confusion, and Natasha knew this was going to have an impact on her. Spider Woman was her only friend her own age, and this blowing up was going to hit her hard. But she couldn’t deal with that right now, so she focused on Spider Woman “Calm down. Now.” she warned her, hoping to bring Spider Woman back to intimidated rather than hostile.
Spider Woman didn’t calm down. Instead, Natasha got a split-second of warning as Spider Woman tensed, and then she was hit hard in the back by her feet. She grunted in pain and twisted Spider Woman’s arms tighter, flooding her voice with threat “Do that again and you will regret it.” she promised. That had hurt; if she hadn’t already been sure Spider Woman had enhanced strength she certainly was now. And clearly she had above average flexibility as well. The fact that she had the capability to physically hurt someone like that also didn’t bode well. It made it a little less unimaginable that Spider Woman might be the one hurting Penny. And even if she wasn’t, she’d still done nothing to help a 14 year old she knew was being hurt.
Spider Woman finally went still, but Natasha was done playing nice. “Good, now let me make this very clear to you. Penny Parker is a 14 year old child. I don’t know what your relationship is with her, but you clearly do not know what’s best for her. Not given the bruises she apparently has.” Bruises Natasha was fairly sure, and really really hoped, Spider Woman hadn’t given her. Because if she had, then not only was Wanda going to be devastated, but Penny would almost certainly be entangled in a highly toxic and manipulative friendship. And on top of that, Spider Woman was a lot more dangerous than Natasha thought, because if she was capable of fooling Natasha that thoroughly, she was clearly far better trained than anyone thought. Which was actually a comforting thought, because Natasha was very, very hard to fool and she was pretty certain Spider Woman’s rage was real, and she wasn’t faking being easy to pin down. Still, she couldn’t be certain, and either way, she needed to know what Spider Woman knew and was doing nothing about. “Who. Is. Hurting. Her?” she demanded.
“Nobody.” Spider Woman snarled, starting to squirm again with worrying strength. She pressed harder, and used her superior leverage to keep Spider Woman down, but it cost her a few seconds to adjust her hold, and in that time, Wanda intervened again, her voice small and hurt.
“You’re lying. Even I can tell you’re lying. Is it you? Are you hurting her?”
Natasha internally groaned. It was an obvious conclusion, and she wasn’t surprised Wanda had thought of it as well, but Natasha was pretty sure it was wrong, and asking Spider Woman straight out was only going to antagonize her more, in an already out of control situation.
Spider Woman’s reaction was both better and so much worse than Natasha expected. Rather than getting angry, she went suddenly limp, abandoning any attempt to struggle. “I would never .” Spider Woman said, and the words sounded like they’d been ripped out of her, and rang with a devastated truth. It erased most remaining suspicion that Natasha held that Spider Woman had been the one to inflict those bruises, but it also told Natasha that they’d just completely alienated Spider Woman. A swift glance at Wanda’s horrified expression, clearly drawing the same conclusion as Natasha, told her that Wanda wasn’t going to be stopping Spider Woman from jumping off the roof again. Which meant that once she let Spider Woman go, they were unlikely to ever see her again. Which meant they’d never see their only lead on who was hurting Penny again.
And Natasha did feel bad at how quickly the evening had spun out of control, but that was more than balanced by the fact that Spider Woman knew someone (and most likely the who and how) was hurting Penny, and had done nothing at all to stop it, and was even refusing to give Natasha the information she needed to do it herself. Penny was a 14 year old kid, and Tony’s protege, and she was a much higher priority than Spider Woman’s temper tantrum and attachment to secrecy. Once she had a face, tracking down Spider Woman’s real identity would be easy. And she couldn’t afford to lose her only lead. She readjusted her grip on Spider Woman and hooked her fingers under the back of her mask, aiming to do it quickly before Spider Woman had the opportunity to react, but she wasn’t nearly quick enough, and Spider Woman was strong.
Frantically, she abandoned the mask and returned both hands to pinning her down, but it was already too late. Spider Woman tore free of her grip with a strength that suggested she would have managed it even if Natasha hadn’t let go with one hand, and the back of her head connected hard with Natasha’s before she could even attempt to regain the upper hand. The blow was hard enough to fling her head back, and shockingly painful for Spider Woman’s size, and it dazed her for long enough for Spider Woman to get out of her hold. She reacted instantly, lashing out with a brutal blow to the other woman’s solar plexus, ingrained skills making up for the way she was still reeling from the blow, but Spider Woman rolled away, and then up to her feet. Natasha was already on hers, but the distance Spider Woman had gained was not her friend. Webs were already flying at her, and Spider Woman had learned from her failure at this technique last time, and shot more than once. She dodged three shots, but the forth connected, pinning her leg to the rooftop and robbing her of 90% of her mobility, which was her most important asset in staying alive. Her fingers found the gun holstered on her other leg and released the safety before the rational part of her mind could check her panic. She lowered the gun, remembering Spider Woman was generally an ally, and the last thing she wanted to do was alienate her any further, but the woman was already gone.
It took twenty minutes to hack through the sticky fibers of Spider Woman’s webs with a knife, and by the time she was out Spider Woman was long gone and the extent of how wrong everything had gone had thoroughly sunk into her brain. Wanda had sunk to the rooftop and started to cry silently, not even attempting to free herself, and Natasha could barely absorb how quickly she’d lost complete control of the situation and how bad the consequences were going to be.
Worst of all, she still had no idea who was hurting Penny.
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Tony was still up when she got back. She wasn’t sure which hurt more, the emotions on Tony’s face as she told him Penny knew she’d tailed her, or the way Tony shouted at her when she explained how they’d lost their only lead. She can’t exactly fault him for blaming her. She blames herself.
She stood woodenly and let him shout until Pepper snapped at Tony to stop, and told her to go, and then she went to her floor and poured the entire story out to Clint. She wasn’t entirely convinced by Clint’s argument that it wasn’t her fault (she is the Black Widow, she is better that losing such total control of the situation), but she was at least comforted by the fact that Clint was as angry that Spider Woman knew and was doing nothing as she was. She let herself be prodded into eating something and then getting some sleep, and hoped she would miraculously wake up with some revelation about who was hurting Penny, and when and how they were managing it, and how she could stop it.
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She didn’t wake up with any such revelation, but Tony had calmed down to the extent of apologizing, and they spent an entirely unproductive but surprisingly lightening hour venting to each other about feeling helpless when it came to Penny and how unfair the universe was for picking the best people to be the cruelest to.
Clint went to talk to Wanda, and reported back that she was feeling a bit better, and then joined forces with Pepper to make both of them get some more sleep. Which was more than a little patronizing, but they were unfortunately right, neither of them had slept enough. She went back to bed.
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Natasha woke up on Friday morning feeling distinctly more hopeful. She was pretty sure that Penny was going to come to her internship no matter how angry she was with Tony. The fact that she continued to go to class despite clearly being bored out of her mind indicated that the things she was expected to do had a strong hold on her, if only to maintain an image of being fine. It would almost certainly not get them any closer to working out who was hurting her, but it would give Tony an opportunity to get some food into her and talk to her, and if they talked there was at least some chance they might make up.
So she woke up feeling more hopeful, and it lasted all the way up to lunchtime when Tony came charging onto their floor with an expression of utter panic and a phone still gripped, white knuckled, in one hand.
“Penny’s gone.” he said, the words slightly hysterical with panic.
Natasha shot to her feet with alarm, but then snapped into mission mindset. “When was she last seen, and what do we already know?” she demanded, her tone businesslike.
It seemed to help Tony because he calmed down a little, or at least focused his panic more “Yesterday, around 11am. She had a physical fight with another kid in school, beat him up, and then left the school. Nobody has seen her since. Her social worker only called to check she wasn’t here.”
Well, that was both good and bad. On the one hand, running away was definitely better than kidnapped, on the other hand, the trail was already a full day old. “I assume Friday is scanning whatever he can access for her face?” she asked.
Tony blinked at her, and then shook his head “Friday?”
“Starting now sir. I must inform you however that what I can legally access is limited.”
The expression on Tony’s face said volumes about just how little he cared about ‘legally’, and in any other situation Natasha might have laughed, but this wasn’t remotely funny. A 14 year old girl, almost certainly already hurt and definitely already underweight had gone missing over a day ago, and had most likely slept rough. And not just any 14 year old, Tony’s 14 year old. Not that this was completely about helping Tony anymore. It hadn’t been for a while. It’s difficult to dig into someone with the goal of protecting them without getting a little attached, and Penny had a way of getting to you. Natasha may not be nearly as compromised as Tony, but she wasn’t objective either. “Why don’t you get started on a less legal scan for her face and I’ll see what I can find out about the fight at school. It might offer some clues about where she might go.”
“OK” Tony said, seeming distinctly calmer now he had a goal and a plan “Tell me the moment you get anything.”
Natasha nodded, and shooed him away to work, and grabbed her own laptop and hacked into Midtown and looked for an incident report. The report offered little in the way of details but did indicate who was involved (Natasha wasn’t in the least surprised Flash Thompson was the other person involved), where it had happened, and when, so she hacked into the security footage. Luckily, the corridor the fight happened in did have security footage, although no audio. Natasha didn’t need it though, she had just good enough an angle to read Flash’s lips, and her blood ran cold.
‘What’s up Penis? Too good to talk to me? Learned not to spread your legs for anyone who asks have you? That’s why you stopped talking isn’t it? Slut.’
The cruelty in those words was stunning, as was the way Thompson seemed to revel in his power, too drunk on it to realize he’d stepped over his ‘don’t do anything bad enough or obvious enough to get traced back to me’ line. But there was something else that made Natasha freeze up. Something about that fourth sentence. ‘That’s why you stopped talking isn’t it?’
Natasha hadn’t really thought that hard about why Penny didn’t talk. She’d known that Penny had once been able to talk. She’d seen the hospital records showing there was nothing physically damaged in her throat. But she’d dismissed them as not being useful to working out who was hurting her now. Past trauma didn’t explain present bruises, not when she’d already ruled out self-harm. She hadn’t thought too hard about why she didn’t talk beyond that it was almost certainly an effect of trauma. But it felt strangely important now. Penny stopped talking. A psychological effect. No less real and overwhelming but, possibly, more localized than physical damage to her voice box. But why was that important? What was significant about Penny stopping....talking....after being...raped.... Oh.
Spider Woman was triggered by being pinned on her back.
Penny Parker had possibly situational mutism.
No.
Please no.
Natasha wanted to scream. She wanted to close her eyes and beg the universe to somehow make the pieces not fit together, but the universe had never listened to her, and it fit perfectly . Like puzzle pieces sliding into place as the missing link was added to the table. It explained everything.
How Penny was getting hurt so badly and so regularly even though Natasha couldn’t find any abuser. How an untrained vigilante had somehow caught the Black Widow tailing someone - because Spider Woman had a sixth sense dialed to 11 and enhanced senses and Natasha had reported back to Tony with her on the floor . Why Spider Woman had done nothing about Penny getting hurt despite it going completely against her MO. Penny being alarmed by Wanda of all people on Monday evening. Her weight! Of course she was underweight, Spider Woman had an enhanced metabolism that must surely burn through more calories than a normal teenager would eat.
Natasha wanted to be wrong. She wanted so badly to be wrong. She wanted it not to have been Penny behind that mask. Not be Tony’s 14 year old intern that had fallen off a roof and dislocated her shoulder because Natasha had triggered terrible memories. Not be lonely Penny who was bullied at school and who’d fought with her best friend who had been accused of abusing someone by possibly her last remaining friend. Not be gentle Penny that she’d blamed for letting a teenager be abused. Not be tiny, 14 year old Penny Parker she’d pinned down and tried to unmask, and then pulled a fucking gun on.
But everything lined up, and Natasha had never been one to hide in pleasant pretences. The truth was undeniable.
Penny Parker was Spider Woman.