A/N: Shit title, I know, but I simply didn't know what else to name it.
Also, this story might appear to you like it's Tony!Bashing because of how he's viewed in the first chapter. It's not. I simply had to make the situation appear worse than in Spider-Man Homecoming for the sake of this story. I'm sorry Team Cap fans, but Spidey will still be Team Iron Man (even though the Accords and Civil War won't really be touched much in this story).
Penelope "Penny" Parker felt like a horrible failure. She was slowly walking up the stairs to the apartment she and her Aunt May shared, wearing horribly smelling clothes and wiping her damp cheeks. Her feet were in pain as a result of having walked from all the way down Manhattan to Queens. The walk took her hours, something her feet had taken the brunt off despite her enhancements. She would have swung her way home in a quarter of the time if she could. However, she wasn't able for one simple reason:
Tony Stark had taken back the Spider-Woman suit he had designed and built for her.
It was the reason why she was in such a state in the first place. Earlier that day, Penny had left school in the middle of a detention to stop a weapons deal scheduled to take place on the Staten Island Ferry. She only took her Spider-Woman suit with her, leaving everything else in her backpack, which she put in the care of her best friend Ned.
Unfortunately for her, the deal did not go as she had planned. On her way there, she had believed she would get the chance to arrest the Vulture and stop the deal. And, for a time, it seemed everything was going smoothly for her. That changed when the FBI arrived. Unbeknownst to her, Tony Stark sent them after the same target and both ended-up getting in the way of each other's attempt to catch the Vulture. The confusion was enough to give time to the Vulture to put on his exo-suit and attack them. Even worse, one of the alien weapons malfunctioned and split the ferry in two halves.
Penny was forced to let the Vulture away to save the ferry. Her attempt was unfortunately unsuccessful, ending in her being suspended in midair, holding both halves by herself. Fortunately, her mentor Iron Man swept in, using his armour to put the ferry back together, saving everyone's lives in the process. Unfortunately, said mentor went on to put the entire blame on her before taking the Spider-Woman suit back, giving her clothes he had found in the garbage and flying away. Left stranded in the south of Manhattan with no web shooter or mask to hide her identity, Penny was forced to walk her way home all while smelling and feeling horrible.
She eventually arrived to the highest floor and made her way to their apartment. She knocked on the door. Behind it, Penny heard a chair move and footsteps. Then, the door opened, revealing the face of her aunt. Penny had to stop herself from wincing at the look on her face. Without a word, she let her in. Penny closed the door behind her.
"Why didn't you answer your phone? I've been calling you all day!" she said, her voice trembling in both anxiety and anger. "Then this ferry thing happens... I've called five police stations – five! I called five of your friends and Ned's mother and none of them knew where you where!" she exclaimed, looking at her with angry tears.
Penny tried to apologize right then and there but a lump had formed in her throat, forcing her to stay quiet. May spoke again when her niece failed to do so. "I know you left detention. I know you left the hotel in Washington and missed the decathlon finale. I know you sneak out of this house every night and that's not fine!" she shouted. Penny looked away as tears of her own formed in her eyes. "Penny, you have to tell me what's going on! Just lay it out, please!"
Penny looked back at her aunt, thinking about what she could say. The guilt she felt was horrendous and Penny had to force herself not to burst in tears and become an incoherent mess. She felt guilty about many things, like what happened to the Staten Island Ferry. However, she felt even worse when she saw how scared her aunt was. Because, under her angry mask, Penny could see the fear and terror May had felt at the idea that her niece and only remaining family might be missing – or worse. She felt guilty because the reason why May felt that way was a result of Penny not telling her the truth about her activities. When she decide to hide her alter-ego as Spider-Woman to May, it was because she didn't want May to worry about her. But now, she could see her action – or lack thereof – had the opposite effect. So, in a split-second decision, Penny decided to admit everything.
"I'm Spider-Woman." she blurted.
May's eyes widened. "What?"
"I'm Spider-Woman." Penny repeated. "It's why I sneak out every night – why I left detention and why I missed the decathlon finale. I'm Spider-Woman."
May looked at her with sharp eyes – like she was trying to figure out if Penny was lying or mocking her. But doing either was the furthest thing from Penny's mind. She probably realized this as she closed her eyes and began taking deep breaths. For a moment, Penny feared her aunt would start shouting at her. She did none of that though. Instead, she calmly said "I'm going to make diner, and you're going to tell me everything. Go take a shower in the meantime,"
Penny nodded and did as her aunt said. She quickly went to her room before grabbing removing the dirty clothes she was wearing. Taking her bathrobe and a fresh set of clothing, Penny went to the bathroom and cleaned herself thoroughly. By the time she walked out thirty minutes later, her aunt had finished cooking a passable Fettuccine Alfredo.
The two Parkers sat down to eat after Penny had set the table. The younger woman was allowed to take a few bites before she began her tale.
"So, you're Spider-Woman?" May asked calmly. Penny nodded, not looking at her aunt. Said aunt took another deep breath. "Okay. Start from the beginning and tell me how you came to be."
So Penny said everything. She began by talking about the school trip to a local science exhibit and how she was bitten by a spider which was genetically modified. The spider bite made her really sick that evening but, when she woke up the following morning, she felt better than she ever had. She talked about how her vision had suddenly become perfect, how she was suddenly a lot stronger, how she had filled out at some places and how physical activity was no longer tiring. She also spoke of how she discovered she could stick to any surfaces and walk up walls as easily as she could the ground.
Penny then moved on to how scared she was of her new abilities and how she decided to pretend she didn't have them, not wanting to feel like a freak. She told May it worked well for a month until, one day, she and Ben were mugged while outside. In tears, Penny explained how she could easily have used her newfound strength to hit and incapacitate the burglar before he could harm a hair of them. However, she didn't and it was Ben who ended-up trying to do so, ending up getting murdered in the process.
She told of her quest of vengeance and how she lost herself trying to find the burglar to kill him. She eventually managed to do so but found she couldn't bring himself to end his life, realizing it was not something Ben would have wanted her to do.
She then told her aunt about how horrible she felt at the end, feeling guilty for not stopping the burglar before he killed Ben while knowing she could. She realized innocents like Ben died every day in New York and decided she would not let any other innocents die or go through what she had. Inspired by her idols the Avengers, Penny decided to use her powers to do good around Queens. She knew she could not let her identity be known for fear of reprisal for her actions – thus the mask.
By that point, Penny had finished her plate of pasta. She pushed it away before telling how she developed her own webbing at school, web-shooters from scrap materials and her first suit from old clothes of Ben's. She gave May a summary of her first six months as a super her and how the people began wrongly calling her "Spider-Man" when she helped them, prompting her to correct them to "Spider-Woman", a name she later decide to adopt.
Then, she told about her point of view on when Tony Stark visited two months earlier. She told her aunt that no, she had not applied for any grant or internship and that Tony Stark had definitely come here because of Spider-Woman. She told in details of the private conversation between them in her bedroom and how Tony had all but assumed she would come to Germany with him simply because he asked – despite her faint protests. Being too awestruck, Penny never outright declined to follow him, which led to her visit to Germany.
Penny told May about her trip to Germany, her first meeting with Happy Hogan who seemed more exasperated with her presence than anything else. She talked about the suit she was given which looked a lot more professional than her homemade super-hero suit. She gave a short description of the battle at the airport and her fight with the rogue Avengers. She spent the rest of her two weeks in Germany either in her hotel room or exploring the surroundings. She admitted barely seeing Mr. Stark after the fight at the airport, not truly engaging in another conversation until he and Happy drove her home on her return to the United-States.
She also admitted how she let the fact she had helped Iron Man get to her head, making her feel more important than she truly was – despite Mr. Stark's attempts at the contrary. She explained how she sent detailed reports to Mr. Stark every day and how he and Happy barely acknowledged her in return. She explained how she slowly became demoralized by their lack of communication, which slowly prompted her to stop sharing details to them.
By the point she reached the fight at the bank and her discovery of advanced weapons built with alien tech, the two Parkers had moved to the living room, where Penny continued to share her story. Still not looking at her in the eyes, she told May of how she reported these weapons to Mr. Stark and how Happy – who was the liaison between them – had all but scoffed at her words. Since she felt like Iron Man wouldn't do anything, Penny decided to take it in her own hands. She investigated with Ned – who had since found out the truth by accident – until they found more about the head of the operation, who they nicknamed the Vulture. By the time the decathlon finale took place, Penny was too invested in the investigation to care about school, which led to her leaving the school in the middle of detention that morning to catch the Vulture in the middle of a deal on the Staten Island Ferry.
Penny finished her story by explaining what exactly happened on the ferry and how Iron Man came in to fix her mistake. Despite the lump in her throat and the tears forming again, she also repeated the conversation she and Mr. Stark had before telling her how he took the Spider-Woman suit he had given her in Germany and left her alone in the south of Manhattan, forcing her to walk her way back home in stinking clothes.
At the end of her tale, Penny could no longer contain all the emotions she was feeling. She had shed a few tears on her way home but it was nothing compared to her current sobbing. The guilt she felt from the lives she had endangered, the shame of getting yelled at by the man she admired, the humiliation of walking home wearing clothes taken from the trash and the fear of how May was going to react all fuelled her tears.
"Oh, Penny..." said May softly. To Penny's surprise, she didn't sound angry, just sad. Her aunt took her in a hug and let her cry in her shoulder.
It took her a while to calm down. When she did, May continued with her soft questioning. "Why did you not tell me?"
"You already lost Ben. I didn't want you to worry even more." Penny then snorted. "Not that it did a lot of good."
"And you didn't want to be stopped." May added. It was not a question or an accusation – just a fact. Penny nodded. "Why? You're only fifteen-year-old, it shouldn't be your responsibility to fight criminals, but that of the police or the Avengers."
"Before he died, Ben told me that if one could do good things for someone, then they had the moral obligation to do those things." She sighed. "I wanted to live by his words – and make him proud."
"He's already proud of you, honey." May said. For the first time since she began her tale, Penny looked up at her Aunt.
"You're not angry?" she asked.
"Oh, I am. Mighty pissed off, in fact. The only reason I'm not grounding you right then and there is because I fear you won't tell me important things in the future if I punish you for doing so today." May answered, making her niece wince. "But it's not you who I'm most angry at. It's Stark."
"What?" Penny said, confused.
"From the sound of it, the Avengers were fighting over the Sokovia Accords and Stark believed he needed help so he called for you, a teenager? That's just not right! If it wasn't bad enough, once you came back here, he proceeded to completely ignore you. He also put the blame on what happened on the ferry on you and made you feel horrible even though he could easily have avoided it by simply telling you he sent the FBI after this Vulture man. And, the bastard made my niece walk across the entire city in dirty clothes when he could easily have spent five dollars at a local shop and bought some clean, second hands clothes."
"You make it sound worse than it really is..." Penny mumbled.
"No, I don't think it's you who's fully grasping the reality of the situation, Penny." said May sternly. "Tony Stark used you and got rid of you when it was convenient. That's not something I can accept. If he ever show his face here again, I'm going to hit him."
Penny's shoulders slumped. She couldn't disprove her points. After helping him in Germany, Mr. Stark began ignoring her, only entering in contact a few rare times when she had something he wanted – like information. Maybe May was right. Maybe she had been used and discarded like a broken toy.
She had always admired the Avengers, but Iron Man had been her idol since he saved her at the Stark Expo in 2011. Hell, he didn't even give her clean clothes to change into when he forced her to remove the suit! A month prior, she had spent some of her hard earned pocket money to buy a new shirt to a boy who she had saved from bullies (his shirt had been ripped) but, Tony Stark hadn't even bothered to do the same for her despite being the kind of person to throw money everywhere for no particular reason.
To be treated in such a way by the man she admired greatly brought tears back to her eyes. She began wondering if being a super-hero was worth it when a member of the Avengers treated her like that.
Penny shook her head. She could not think like that. She suddenly realized she had lost sight of why she became Spider-Woman in the first place. It was to help people and make her Uncle Ben proud, not to become an Avenger like she had dreamed of. She needed to find her roots back, become the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Woman once again.
"I'm not going to stop being Spider-Woman." she blurted, looking at her Aunt. "I'm Spider-Woman and nothing can change that."
"I had a feeling you would say that." said May with a dry chuckle. A few seconds later, she sighed. "Okay, I will let you continue. But, there are going to be some rules."
"Of course." said Penny. It was fair to have rules and she was more than happy to take them – having expected to be forced to stop.
"First, you will not leave school in the middle of the day any longer. And, you will work on your homework and make sure your grades climb back up to where they were before – because I did notice a drop ever since you became Spider-Woman." she said. Penny nodded.
"Second, you will have a curfew. You will be back home before eleven-o-clock at the latest or you will be grounded for a week.
"Third, if you are injured, you will either return home or go to the hospital. No taking care of your wounds by your own, okay?" Penny nodded again.
"Fourth, you will answer my calls when I call you. If you can't because you are occupied, then you will text me to explain why you can't answer now and you will call me when you are no longer occupied.
"Fifth, you will tell me everything important that goes on during your activities as Spider-Woman – and no sugar-coating!
"These are my rules. Can you follow them?"
It didn't take long for Penny to decide. "Yes, I can." she told May. She thought the rules were pretty fair, as a matter of fact – and it was much better than the alternative.
"Thank you." said May with a small smile. "Remember that you can tell me anything, okay?" Penny nodded. "Now, you must be tired so why don't you go to sleep?"
At her words, a wave of exhaustion crashed into Penny. She had not noticed but she was indeed tired. Nodding again, Penny raised on her feet and hugged her aunt. "Thank you." she said. Then she left, mumbling a tired "Good night."
She crashed down in her bed and fell asleep almost immediately.