Chapter Text
She had never even seen it coming. Even with her spidey-sense, even with her over-anxious mind, she had never imagined it could happen. Never let herself imagine it could happen. The worst was behind her . That’s what Tony kept telling her, what everyone kept telling her. It had been a little over a year since the blip and the world was too busy rebuilding itself to conjure up any universe-ending threats. She returned to being just a friendly neighborhood Spider-woman, webbing muggers to alley walls and making appearances at May and Tony’s various fundraisers. Tony was a regular fixture in her life, despite the Parker curse. Despite the ever-looming fear that her closeness to him was going to get him killed. Yet, a year later he was still here. Tony had her up to the cabin every other weekend and visited with Morgan as much as he could. She was applying to MIT with Ned and MJ in a few months. Things were good. Easy. And when they weren’t easy, May was there to hold her while she cried, order them takeout, and let Penny curl up on her lap.
But Penny had been too lucky for too long. She wasn’t meant for luck, she knew the other foot had to drop soon.
Penny was turning the corner of her block when every hair on her body stood on end, a sick grim feeling washing over her. And she knew, before she even took off running, she knew this was the universe evening the scales. This was the boot on her neck she had been waiting for. May. She had to save May. She wouldn’t freeze like she had with Ben, she wouldn’t be afraid… She broke into a full sprint and made it up three floors of her building before she heard the gun go off. Her vision had gone black then, her mind becoming an endless void in which she let herself float. When she came to, she was holding May to her chest, kneeling in a pool of blood she knew wasn’t hers. Two men with masks lay on the floor behind her, their faces disfigured and swollen. Her hands, her clothes, her face were covered in crimson blood but she didn’t care. She just kept sobbing and begging May to get up and pressing her shaking hands into her side as if that could somehow return the blood that kept slipping through her fingers. Beneath her, the pool of blood grew and grew until it stopped and May’s body turned cold in Penny’s arms.
It had only taken May three minutes to die. Penny had learned that after the paramedics came and ripped May out of her arms, even when she screamed at them not to touch her. After the police sent her a report and informed her the suspects had been detained, and they were sorry for her loss. Penny had been shocked, had even called the detective back to tell him the coroner must have been wrong, Penny must have been there for thirty, forty minutes screaming for help and holding her aunt. He told her that was often the case with traumatic events and to let the professionals do their jobs.
After Penny had talked to the police, the corner, answered the questions, and signed the forms, they led her into a tiny sterile white room with a single metal table where May lay under a thin white sheet. Penny kept her eyes trained on the outline of May’s face under the sheet as she heard one of the policemen ask what she wanted to do with her. Half an hour later, still covered in her aunt’s blood, she wandered out onto the city street, a cheap cardboard box containing her aunt in her numb arms. Come to think of it, everything had gone numb. Penny’s entire body was buzzing with a low vibration, a fuzzy shield blanketing her mind and leaving her feeling emptied out.
She wandered around New York City for the rest of the day in a haze, her oversized denim jacket luckily covering most of the blood that had dried on her skin. It was an unnaturally cold Autumn and at some point, Penny realized her fingers had started turning blue. Her lips, too. But she couldn’t bring herself to go back to her apartment, not without May. Not when going back meant she would have to see May’s coffee cup, half finished on the kitchen table. Or her dirty laundry thrown haphazardly around her room. Or the book she had been reading open on the couch, a folded corner of the page marking her place. She would have to see that pool of blood again. But she couldn’t bring herself to call Tony, either. Once she told Tony, it became real. May became actually, really dead . And if she did call, she didn’t know what she would say, how she would explain this to him. Things had been so good with them lately… he had a real family now. And yes, she knew he considered her a part of that. But she couldn’t do that to him, do that to Pepper, just throw herself on their life.
Plus, she realized with a jolt, she was eighteen now. An adult in the eyes of the federal government and social services. No one was coming to check up on her, she was on her own. And maybe that was better. Safer for the rest of the world. People she loved died, that was just a fact. And she was tired of watching it happen, she couldn’t lose anyone else, it would kill her. As she thought it, she realized it was true. She was worn out. She couldn’t do this again.
Especially not when Tony, Pepper, and Morgan were at stake. She could love them from a distance. A safe distance.
Since then, Penny had vanished. Packed a small duffel full of clothes, her suit, food, a blanket, and what little money she had, and set up camp on the roof of an apartment building in Brooklyn. She shivered through nights and starved through days. She stopped going to school, not able to face Ned and MJ… knowing she would never be able to hold it together in front of them. Convince them she was fine. This way, only Penny knew May was dead. And if Penny was the only one that knew, she could almost convince herself it wasn’t true.
Spider-woman still patrolled New York, still webbed up robbers with a witty one-liner. Still took a punch and got back up again with a smile. Because Spider-woman was strong and confident and unbeatable. Because Spider-woman’s aunt hadn’t been shot in her apartment. Penny’s had. So Penny disappeared. And Spider-woman took her place.
She’d left dozens of worried texts from Ned and MJ unanswered. And she had been dodging Tony’s phone calls. She knew she was probably giving him a heart attack, could see him spiraling with unchecked panic. She knew it was selfish and horrible, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t be Penny anymore. It was too exhausting.
Then a few days later, Avengers started popping up all over Manhattan. If people had paid close enough attention, they would have noticed that these Avengers had appeared within a mile of where Spider-Woman had last been seen. Sam cut a low path through tight city blocks as Spider-Woman dealt with a band of jewelry store robbers. Rhodey blended into the crowd that had gathered to watch Spider-Woman face off with a slightly mad scientist threatening to level Midtown. Even Bucky showed up, clinging to the shadows while Spider-Woman fought her way through a low-level drug ring. Each time she spotted them, she sent them on a wild goose chase, swinging complicated looping routes through the boroughs of NYC until she lost them, only then returning to her little nest on the roof. She didn’t want their help. And they shouldn’t want to give it.
As time passed, she had come to realize she didn’t really have a plan. The hurricane of grief inside her had subsided to a dense fog, filling her with hollow apathy. She watched herself starve, felt the temperatures steadily drop with each passing day, without any fear or dread. She indifferently noted the way exhaustion had already begun to slow her healing down, slow her entire body down. She had become sloppy, taking more punches than landing them. Some dark, smart corner of her mind understood what Penny was doing to herself. But when Penny discovered that dark corner, she found she didn’t really care.
Tony still hadn’t stopped calling. He only stopped leaving voicemails because he had filled her inbox. She listened to every one of them. At first, he had been worried, maybe slightly annoyed. He jokingly scolded her, then in a soft voice asked if she was okay. She listened day after day as they got more and more panicked. More desperate.
Penny, honey, please. Just tell me where you are, tell me what happened. I promise, whatever it is, I can fix it, okay, kid? Please just let me help.
Then fear began to mix with despair.
Please, please, kid, you just gotta let me know you’re okay… it’s okay if you don’t want to talk, just please… I need to know you’re okay. I need to know, Pen…
She could have sworn she heard him sniffle. It made her stomach flip. It made her hands shake. Still, she listened to them. Somedays it was just to hear his voice, others it was to punish herself. Remind her how she hurt people, how she damaged the things she loved, wore them down, until they were inevitably taken away from her. On the worst days, the days when the absence of May was suddenly everywhere and the guilt felt like it could make her heart stop instantaneously, she would listen to the voicemail Tony had left on November 30th. That night, Penny saw a glimpse of the Tony she had known… before Morgan. The Tony who had taken her suit from her after the ferry and left her texts unanswered for months. That night, his panic climaxed, turning to a clammy anger.
Kid, I’m done asking nicely. You need to tell me where you are. Now. I know you’re dodging the Avengers, I know you disabled your suit. I keep thinking, there must be a good reason. The Penny I know would never disappear, leaving me terrified, leaving Pepper and Mo terrified, without a good reason. And then I see you on TV, smiling and waving for the cameras wearing the suit I made for you.
At this point, Penny’s heart had already constricted three sizes too small and sunk into her stomach. She let shame wrap itself around her, its familiar despair putting her at a strange sort of ease. She closed her eyes as Tony’s voice got softer.
I don’t know what to think, kid. After everything… Was it something I did? Why would you do this?
Then--she shut her eyes harder--like a switch flipped in Tony, the steely venom was back in his voice.
Every day I wake up terrified you’re dead somewhere, or kidnapped, or you’ve been mutilated or another insane deadly scenario. I call morgues in the middle of the night, waking up from nightmares where they tell me they found a body. And then there you are, on my television screen like nothing is wrong. Like you don’t understand--Like I’m not worth a fucking phone call. I’m disappointed, Penny. And if you want to get rid of me, then really get rid of me. I expect my suit back .
Then the startling beep signaled the end of the message. Penny knew it had been a lapse in judgment in Tony. An hour later, another message had appeared in her inbox, a flood of apologies and regrets and shame. Still, she heard the truth there. He was right. What she was doing was selfish. She knew that. But it was like anything else: a blanket of apathy prohibited her from doing anything about it. All she could do now was continue marching forward until her feet stopped moving and her heart stopped beating and her lungs stopped breathing.
It was better this way.
Then the fateful day came. A purse thief with a knife. Her body hadn’t been quick enough to dodge, although her mind knew the blow was coming. The thief was barely an adult. He looked shocked when he realized his knife was embedded in her side, crimson already mingling with the red spandex of her suit. She just slumped against the side of the building with an odd sense of relief while the boy bolted down the empty alleyway.
Adrenaline mixed with detachment as she slid down the wall, her legs suddenly turning to jelly. She willed herself to look down at the small switchblade sticking out of her, holding the blood inside of her.
She watched her hand weakly wrap around the hilt of the knife. She knew she was signing her death sentence. She knew she was making a choice, choosing a path, yet she still yanked the knife from her side with a pained yell. It clanked down the alley. Suddenly blood surged out of the wound, coating her side and pooling underneath her.
She watched the blood pool and fall and clot with a mild disinterest. Or maybe more of a pained fascination. She could feel the life leaving her body. With each beat of her heart, she felt her veins pushing blood from her body, her skin evacuating its warmth, and her lungs clawing for breath. But all she could do was stare at that growing pool of blood and wonder if this is how May felt before she went.
“--assistance. Please put pressure on the puncture wound while I call for help.” Slowly Penny raised her head in dull shock.
“Karen?” Her voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. She had disabled Karen the night her aunt died. She had almost forgotten she was still in there.
“Yes, Penny. It appears you are in need of serious medical assistance. Please put pressure on the puncture wound while I call for help.” Without realizing it, Penny pressed her hands to her wound, barely noting the stab of pain it caused. The blood began to pool beneath her palms and trickle through her fingers just like it had when her hands had been placed against May.
“Call for help? Tony?” The words came out weak and slightly slurred. And as the adrenaline began to wear off, the pain came in waves. Her eyelids fluttered as she attempted to fight it off.
“In the case of life-threatening injury, I have been instructed to inform Mr. Stark.” Through hooded eyes, Penny managed to notice Tony’s number pop up on the corner of the screen. She must have missed a protocol when she had turned Karen off. She silently cursed her carelessness.
“No, no, no, you don’t need to call him, Karen, I’m fine.” She wasn’t sure if she meant to convince the non-feeling AI Tony had built into her suit, but either way, her words came out small and pained. She had started to shake from the cold. And as quickly as the blood poured from her exhaustion replaced it. It had been so long since she slept. And as the alley and Karen and Tony’s terrified voice started to slip away from her, she was filled with the certainty that May would be waiting for her when she woke up. She took a final look at the smoggy New York sky and let her eyes close.