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Penny Parker was a genius, which was exactly why she knew how to bypass the Baby Monitor Protocol. It had taken three weeks of meticulous coding, but now, when she took a jagged blade to her side in a Queens alleyway, Karen didn’t chirp a word to Tony.
Penny pulled the knife out with a muffled gasp, clamped a web-bandage over the hole, and let her enhanced healing do the rest.
By morning, the skin had closed.
By Wednesday, it was just a pink scar.
By Friday, she was dying.
The air in the lab felt like soup, thick, hot, and impossible to breathe. Penny leaned her forehead against the cool metal of her workstation, her breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches.
Every time her heart beat, a white hot pulse of agony radiated from her side, blooming like a poisonous flower.
"Penny, if you drop that beaker, I’m charging it to your college fund," Tony quipped, his back turned as he tinkered with a stray repulsor. "You’re swaying. It’s distracting. Sit down before you pull a Gatsby and faint dramatically."
"I'm fine," Penny croaked, but the words felt like sandpaper in her throat. Her vision was swimming in oily, dark circles. "Just... stayed up late. Homework. Calculus is... a lot."
"Liar. You finished your calc homework on Tuesday. I saw the file, and your derivative work was frankly insulting to the curve," Tony finally turned around, his smirk dying instantly.
He dropped his tools, his eyes widening as he took in her grey, clammy skin and the way she was clutching the edge of the workbench like it was the only thing keeping her on the planet.
"Kid? You look like death warmed over. Seriously, you're shaking."
"I'm just... tired," Penny whispered. She tried to take a step toward him, but her legs turned to water. The room tilted violently to the left. The bright lab lights smeared into long, blinding streaks of white.
"Penny!"
She didn't even feel herself hit the ground. Tony was across the room with a speed that defied his age, catching her small frame just before her head cracked against the floor. Her head lolled back against his arm, her eyes rolling into the back of her head as she went completely limp.
"Friday! Alert Bruce! Get medbay prepped for a Level One emergency!" Tony roared, his voice cracking with a terror he hadn't felt in years. He scooped her up, and the heat coming off her was terrifying, it felt like holding a live coal.
"Penny? Penn, look at me! Stay with me, kid!"
Tony didn't wait for a stretcher. He ran, his boots thundering against the marble floor, shielding her body with his own as he tore through the halls. When he burst into Medbay, Bruce was already there, snapping on gloves with a grim expression.
"Set her down, Tony. Talk to me. What happened?"
"She just collapsed. She's burning up, Bruce, not a normal fever, I mean hot," Tony’s hands were shaking as he laid her on the stark white bed. He felt sick to his stomach, the sheer helplessness of the moment clawing at his throat.
“It’s radiating from her side,” Tony continued.
Bruce grabbed a pair of medical shears and sliced upward, the fabric of her Midtown High t-shirt falling away with a sickening snip. Tony’s breath hitched, a wave of nausea and profound guilt hitting him.
He looked at Penny, his kid, his sixteen-year-old intern, lying there pale and exposed, her ribs jumping with every shallow, pained breath she took. It felt wrong, seeing her like this, so small and broken on a medbay table while he stood there in a thousand-dollar suit, completely useless.
Bruce moved with clinical precision, pressing a digital thermometer to her ear. It beeped with a sharp, insistent trill. Bruce stared at the reading for a heartbeat, his face going pale.
"Tony, her temp is 107.4," Bruce said, his voice dropping into a low, urgent tone. "If she wasn't enhanced, she would already be dead. Her brain would be cooking. We need to get her core temperature down immediately."
"God, Bruce," Tony whispered, reaching out but stopping his hand inches away from her skin. "Look at her side."
The wound was a disaster. The surface had healed into a jagged, puckered line, but beneath the skin, a massive abscess had formed, hard and hot to the touch. The area was swollen, a bruised purple-red that looked ready to burst, and angry red streaks were snaking out from the center, crawling toward her chest.
"She got stabbed, and she let the surface heal with the bacteria trapped inside," Bruce muttered, reaching for a tray of sterile instruments. “Antibiotics alone won't be enough, Tony. I have to drain the abscess now to get the source of the infection out of her system."
Tony felt the world tilt as Bruce prepped a scalpel and a drainage tube. "You're going to... right now?"
"I have to. Her body is fighting a war it's losing." Bruce looked at Tony, his eyes steady. "Hold her shoulders. She's unconscious, but her body might react to the pain. Don't let her move."
Tony stepped up to the head of the bed, his hands trembling as he braced Penny's shoulders. He watched, stomach churning, as Bruce made a precise incision. A thick, dark fluid began to drain into the collection tube, and the smell of infection hit the air, sharp and metallic.
Tony squeezed his eyes shut for a second, whispering "I've got you, kid" over and over again like a mantra, his heart breaking with every second of the procedure.
"She’s septic," Bruce said, finally finishing the procedure. He then began taping a fresh, sterile bandage over the incision site and starting a high-dose IV.
“At least now the pressure is off. Tony, grab those cooling pads from the drawer behind you. We need to pack them around her neck and under her arms. We have to break this fever before her heart gives out."
Tony scrambled to the drawer, his movements frantic. He pulled out the pads and began carefully tucking them around Penny’s neck and arms, his fingers brushing her scorching skin. Each contact felt like a brand, a reminder of every second he hadn't noticed she was hurting.
Bruce looked up at Tony’s haggard face and softened his voice. "I'm going to get Nat in here to get her cleaned up and changed into a gown."
"I'm not leaving," Tony snapped, his voice tight and defensive, his fingers still hovering near Penny's hand. He felt like if he let go, she might slip away entirely.
Bruce placed a gentle, steadying hand on Tony’s arm. "Tony, she’s sixteen. She's going to wake up in a few hours and she’s going to realize that she’s in a medical gown. Let’s give her a little dignity, okay? Let Nat handle the change. It’ll only take a minute."
Tony looked down at Penny, then back at Bruce, the logic finally piercing through his panic. He let out a shaky, jagged breath. "Right. Yeah. Dignity. Okay."
He stepped out into the hallway just as Natasha arrived, leaning his back against the cold glass of the Medbay door. He paced the small stretch of tile like a caged animal, his heart hammering against his ribs until the door finally hissed open again.
The second he was cleared to enter, he was back at her bedside, pulling a chair as close as it could possibly go. He didn't leave her side for a single second after that, watching the 107-degree fire in her body slowly, mercifully, begin to fade.
It was nearly midnight when Penny finally blinked. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, but she eventually found Tony’s face.
"Tony?" she whispered, her voice tiny.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Nice of you to join the land of the living," Tony said. He looked like he’d aged ten years in five hours. He was leaning forward, his hand still firmly clutching hers.
Penny’s eyes darted around the room, the reality of the Medbay sinking in. Her hand flew to her side, feeling the thick bandages. The terror hit her all at once. "Are you... are you going to tell May?"
"You bet your ass we’re telling May," Tony snapped, though there was no heat in it, only a desperate, relieved exhaustion. "She’s already on her way. I had Happy pick her up twenty minutes ago."
The tears started then, hot and thick, spilling down Penny’s cheeks. "Please, Tony, don't take it away," she sobbed, her chest heaving as she gripped his hand with everything she had left. "I'm sorry I hid it. I just wanted to be a good hero. I don't want to stop being Spider-Girl. Please don't take the suit."
Tony’s heart shattered. He didn't hesitate; he leaned over and pulled her into a firm, grounding hug, mindful of her side. He tucked her head under his chin, letting her cry into his shoulder.
"Listen to me," he murmured into her hair, his voice thick with emotion. "When you get out of here, you are grounded. You are so grounded that you won't see a rooftop for a month. But it’s not forever, Penn. I didn't pick the suit, remember? I picked you."
He pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes, his thumb catching a tear. "The Baby Monitor is already back online. I’ve double-encrypted it so you can’t touch it again, you little genius. I don't care if you're a 'good hero' right now. I just want you to be a kid who's alive."
"I was so scared," she whispered.
"Me too, kid," Tony admitted, his voice cracking. "Me too. I love you, okay? So no more secrets. If you get a hangnail, I want a report. If you get stabbed? You come to me. Because I can't do this without you."
Penny nodded, leaning her weight back into the pillows, the fight finally leaving her. Tony stayed right there, hand on hers, holding the line until she drifted back into a safe, healing sleep.