Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Yes, I changed the chapter title again. I know, I know. I need to stop doing that. But I watched Highlander for the first time last weekend, so eh.
Chapter title comes from A Kind of Magic by Queen. For those of you that are here for the multiverse shenanigans, this song is v e r y important. I mean, it is my most favorite Queen song, but it's a lot more than that. You'll see what I mean. For those of you who are not here for the multiverse shit, feel free to skip those lines. You'll see what I'm talking about, dw, I've sectioned them off in parentheses. They won't be relevant again for you.
Anyways, hope you enjoy,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~primis, omega, superhero, genius~
~somebody to love~
~chapter 4: a kind of magic~
"One dream, one soul, one prize, one goal, one golden glance of what should be," Penny sang as she fell, flew, and glided with grace through the air. "One shaft of light that shows the way, no mortal man can win this day..."
Perhaps it was wrong for her to be singing, most of all singing this song, during a literal alien invasion. But, for the first in in six months, she actually felt like singing.
He had always found it funny, her tendency to sing whenever she could: under her breath while studying or shopping at the grocery store when the muzak was playing a song she recognized, out loud while cooking or on patrol, and practically screaming in the shower. He'd found it funny, because she was never really any good at it. She knew.
At the thought of him, and of the four alphas' scents that she could still almost smell no matter how much distance was in between them now, her voice faltered. She shook her head.
Whatever.
As she swung, she fired webs at the Chitauri chariots flying after her, uncaring if she sent them to their deaths. Unfortunately, one of those chariots was able to eventually get a hit on one of her webs at the worst moment. She fell towards the ground, only barely managing to roll herself into a landing position in time.
Scowling, she glared up at the alien craft as it flew away. "Assholes."
She was practically at the foot of Stark Tower, but that was only half of the problem. She still had to get to its rooftop; normally, this would entail her running up the side of a building with her webs as grapple, but that would leave her too open to be struck down. Not to mention, if it there were any civilians left in the building for some reason, they could potentially be killed.
Suddenly, an idea occurred to her.
Running down the opposite end of the street, she used an abandoned car as a springboard. Jumping up into the air, she flipped, then landed on one of the Chitauri chariots. The fighter on the back of it didn't even notice her at first; by the time the driver did, she'd already thrown its buddy off of the vehicle and immediately did the same to it as well.
The craft tottered dangerously, until she grabbed its handles. Thus proceeded her struggle of learning how to man an alien vehicle. It wasn't very good at turning, or going forwards. How useless.
The comms buzzed in her ear. "Spider-Woman, what the hell are you doing?"
Looking up, she saw Hawkeye staring at her. Huh. She hadn't thought she'd gotten out this far away from the Tower. "You know, you're the second person to ask me that today," she replied airily. "What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Doing a New Yorker's attempt at driving."
"Oh, fuck off."
Penny was able to figure out how to work the chariot. She spun it around so she was heading back towards the Tower. As she started off, she felt her spider sense tingle. Looking behind her shoulder, she saw another chariot coming after her, this one carrying Loki. "Hawkeye."
"Yeah, I see him."
She did not watch it, but she heard the explosion and felt her spider sense vanish in follow. Good riddance.
If there was one thing harder than getting the chariots to turn, it was getting them to go up. With clenched teeth, she pulled it up, up, up. It moved at a slow pace, but faster than she would've been able to move with only herself and her webs, as bad as that sounded. Plus, it provided her with a nice cover, as only one or two other chariots attacked her and she was able to dodge them easily.
Finally, she reached the top. Kicking herself away from the chariot so that it would careen the direction opposite of her, she landed on the rooftop and saw that she was not alone. Next to the machine powering the portal stood Dr. Selvig. Immediately, he turned around and stumbled back, his eyes a terrifying shade of blue. "Spider-Wo – "
She webbed his mouth shut before he could finish. And the rest of him to the rooftop for good measure.
Penny approached the machine, or rather the Tesseract, warily, her eyes flitting about. Even from her distance, the energy of the Cube felt familiarly ancient, like the Scepter or the Eye of Agamotto. It twisted and coiled past her, almost like a snake. If she thought about it, she could almost hear it whispering...something.
("It's as if you reached the unreachable, and you weren't ready for it."
"Webbing that I developed myself, I don't think you really want to know the details..."
"When you can do the things I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you."
"My name is Penny Parker. You killed my fathers. Prepare to die."
"Since when have you ever actually wanted to – ")
Thinking about the Scepter, she had a feeling if she used it, she would be able to pierce the invisible barrier around the machine. She simply needed to find it...
A glimmer of blue caught her eye. Looking down, she saw it on the landing pad beneath her.
Her fingers brushed up against her comms. "Guys, I think I know how to close the portal."
"Then do it!" responded Rogers.
"Yeah, Spidey. I'd rather not repeat the Jonah and the whale story more than necessary."
God, Stark was such a talker.
Penny leaped down to the lower rooftop. She grabbed the Scepter and darted back up, barely paying attention to how her spider sense twinged. Loki was coming after her again, but before he could get close the Hulk collided with him, smashing them both through the glass of the penthouse and inside it. Problem solved.
Clasping her hands around the handle of the Scepter, she started to push the pointy end of it through the invisible barrier, which promptly became the opposite, blue veins rippling into sight in a half-dome. The Tesseract flickered, as if sensing what she thought was the equivalent of its sibling so close. The energy the two were radiating intensified.
("We lost, too. I watched you die. And then – "
"I didn't want you to think you could – "
"It's the Ladybird. I go by the Ladybird."
"You won't...you won't let me leave again?"
"I may be a boy, but I am – "
"Not...Anansi. Peter."
"We've always been like this, ever since we were born. Two souls, one body...ish."
"I'm your nephew. Half-nephew? Son of your half-sister? Not the evil one, but – "
"Ты мудак! Ты оставил меня!"
"I didn't know what I was, at first. I thought I was – "
" – I can't ask you to do this."
"What are two souls in the grand scheme of the multiverse?")
"Don't worry about it," she muttered to herself, thinking of what else went along with "radiating." "You already got bitten by a radioactive spider. Things can't get any worse from here."
...Yeah, she definitely shouldn't have said that.
Abruptly, her spider sense returned. Except this time, it returned at ten times full force, practically screaming. She felt like she was underwater, everything sounding and moving in slow motion.
Gasping, she paused in trying to get the Scepter through the barrier, looking up towards the horizon. There was nothing there.
Yet.
She let go of the Scepter with her right hand to activate her comms again. "Fury, what the hell was that?" she breathed.
"Stark, Spider-Woman," he replied, and if her built-in warning signal hadn't already told her, that was when she would've known that something was seriously wrong. It sounded like the only reason why he was talking to her was because she'd asked him directly about the problem. "You have a missile headed straight for the city."
No.
"How long?" asked Stark.
No.
"Three minutes, max. Stay load can wipe out Midtown."
No.
Penny had no idea what she was saying "no" to in that moment. It could have easily been the fact that there was a nukecoming towards the city, because that would easily end her life and the ones of everyone else who was still in Manhattan. Hell, it would probably also end the lives of the majority of the city, or cause mutations like her own and Dr. Banner's. The world did not need more mutates than necessary on its hands.
But it could have just as easily been the fact that she knew what was going to happen next. The nuke needed to be stopped. There was only one person in the entire city who could stop it. Her mate.
(One of them, anyways.)
Unwillingly, her mind recalled memories from six months ago, the ones that came after the nightmare she lived again every single night. She remembered how his blood had felt as it had slipped through her hands, his skull but a memory on the pavement. How she had refused to shower or clean herself for hours afterwards, not willing to part with that blood, because it was all she'd had left of him. How the severing of the mate bond had sent her into throes even worse than withdrawal, making her tremble from head to toe as her feverish skin had become slick with cold sweat. How everyone had tried to comfort her, from Ned and Gwen and MJ to Wong and the Ancient One herself, but there was no comfort to be had. Because he was dead.
Harry was dead.
She felt her knees buckle. She felt herself fall down onto the rooftop, although her left hand still maintained the Scepter's position in the barrier.
No.
"Stark," she bit out. "Stark, you can't do this."
"Didn't you hear, Spidey? There's a nuke coming for the city. Somebody has to deal with it."
She could hear the pain in his voice, but also the rawness of acceptance. He had come to terms with the fact he was going to die, or as much as one could in a couple of minutes.
She let out a choked whimper. "Stark – "
"Keep the portal open for me, will you? I'd like to play out Independency Day here instead of the Manhattan Project."
"Stark – "
"Tony, you know that's going to be a one way trip," Romanoff cut in.
His comms shut off.
Unable to do anything else, Penny watched the skyline. Her heart burned with a hauntingly recognizable fire as she saw the missile approach and Stark intercept it. With difficulty, he was able to redirect it, the two of them flying upwards. They darted past her, past his Tower, and into the portal.
Just like that, they were gone, as not even she could see them past the event horizon.
Her hands gripping the Scepter so tight it was a wonder its handle didn't crumple into a million pieces under the strain, she waited. She had to. She had to. She had –
The seconds passed by agonizingly slow, an eternity in the face of oblivion.
Her comms buzzed in her ear. "Spider-Woman, you need to close that portal."
She didn't want to.
She couldn't lose another mate again.
But.
With the tears streaming down her face, she recalled what Uncle Ben had said to her the day he'd died. She hadn't told him and May what had happened to her, May hadn't found out until long after, but in a strange way, she thought he knew. There had been a glint of knowing in his blue eyes, the same as her own. "You know, your mom always had this saying,"he'd said, holding her arm and preventing her from running out of the car and up the steps of her school. "'With great power comes great responsibility.' A lot of people have power in this world, mimma, but they don't always accept the responsibility to do good with it."
At the time, he'd meant it about her internship with Dr. Connors, as well as Oscorp in general. But now the memory had new meaning, which shredded the edges of her soul. It threatened to take away all of the pieces of herself she had left.
With a cry, she stabbed the Scepter the rest of the way through the barrier, her force making her hit the machine in the process. The filtration mechanism that harnessed the power from the Tesseract was pierced, and then the light bursting out of it died. The portal began to close.
Come on, she begged silently. Come on...
At the last second, before the door to the other side of the universe was shut, she saw a figure of red and gold fall out of it.
"Son of a gun!" Rogers exclaimed.
She let out a loud, wet laugh, the Scepter dropping from her hands and falling onto the rooftop. Utter relief washed through her system.
Of course, Stark wasn't slowing down. But before she could move to grab him, the Hulk did. Dropping the Scepter, Penny followed the Green Giant down to the ground, the wind lashing past her as she urged gravity to move her as fast as she could possibly go.
When they landed, she saw Rogers, Romanoff, and Thor running towards them, but she couldn't care about that. She had eyes only for Stark as the Hulk gently deposited him on the ground. His arc reactor wasn't glowing. His heart wasn't beating. He wasn't breathing.
Her breath caught around something in her diaphragm.
"Stark," she whispered, collapsing next to him. Her fingers shakily pried off his mask. His eyes were closed. He almost looked as if he was sleeping. "Stark, come on. Star – "
The Hulk roared.
Suddenly, Stark's eyes flew open. He looked up at her, inhaling loudly, and then at the other four present Avengers, although he wasn't really seeing any of them as the blood began to flow through his veins once more. "Gah! What the hell?" he exclaimed. "What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me!"
Penny fell back onto her ass with a sigh, completely boneless.
He's alive, she thought, resisting the urge to take off her suit then and there so she could feel his warm skin without the hindrance of Spandex. So she could prove that there was no blood that would seep in between her fingers this time, no bond would be broken even though one hadn't been forged.
"We won," said Rogers.
"Alright. Hey, alright. Not bad, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day off," Stark rambled. "Have any of you guys tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."
"We're not finished yet," Thor stated darkly.
Stark looked upset, but not entirely surprised, at this information. "And then shawarma after?"
Loki crawled up the steps of Stark's ruined penthouse, pulling himself into a half-sitting position. Wiping at a splotch of blood around his mouth, he gazed up at them.
Iron Man, Black Widow, and Hawkeye all had their weapons trained on the trickster god. Thor was holding his hammer, although he wasn't necessarily aiming it at his adoptive brother. Captain America was holding his shield. The Hulk was glaring down at him, while Spider-Woman had her arms crossed. If it wasn't for her mask, he would have been able to see the scowl on her face, clear as day.
"If it's all the same to you," he said, wincing. "I think I'll have that drink now."
In the aftermath, New York City was a wreck. Dead Chitauri – the ones that hadn't been killed had died after Stark had thrown the nuke at their mothership and the portal had closed – littered the streets, as did the Leviathans. Buildings were destroyed, cars were ruined. There were billions of dollars' worth of damage, at least. Probably trillions.
Penny surveyed all of this damage on the rooftop of Stark Tower, along with the other Avengers. Loki stood off to the side, his hands bound and muzzle placed over his mouth. The Scepter and the Tesseract had been put in containers to dampen their effects; she was pretty sure Thor would be taking the latter, but she wasn't too sure about where the former would be going. It technically wasn't her problem.
No, in the weeks to come, she knew her job would be to help out with the cleanup of the city. Alien technology would undoubtedly be a dangerous thing if placed in the hands of the wrong people. And although the diner she worked at had not been in the dome of fire, if something had happened to it or her coworkers, like Bridget and Aziz or her boss Jason...
She activated her web-shooters, moving to leave.
"Spidey, where you going?"
Surprised, she spun around.
Stark and the other Avengers, Banner included, were giving her...she didn't want to say confused, but certainly curious looks. Even the thunder god. The alphas' expressions made something inside her twinge, the wet feeling between her legs returning with a vengeance. Her slick smelled like a beta's, because that was all she could smell like while on the suppressants, but if the wind blew the right way they would all still be wondering why was producing it.
Against her baser desires, she took a step back.
Fuck.
"We're done here, right? The world is saved. Some of us have lives, families to get back to."
...Not that she did, but they didn't know that.
"It is," conceded Stark. "But there's also something called the afterparty."
"Indeed our actions here today are worthy of a mighty feast," Thor agreed.
Romanoff seemed reluctant to do the same, but that she did. "Fury's going to want a debriefing later. Individual reports on what happened here."
"Please, Spider-Woman," said Steve.
Penny was...she refused to call it tempted. But briefly, she did consider their offer. It had been so long since she had hung out with people outside of her job as a waitress. Even then, she didn't exactly have friends there. Coworkers and customers she was nice to, yes, but not friends.
...But they would not be friends, would they? Banner and Thor maybe had the potential to, but not them. Stark, Rogers, Romanoff, Barton. They were her mates. Soulmates.
She could not lose another mate again.
What was more, she didn't want one, much less four.
Banner did not seem like he was surprised at what she was about to do. He almost...expected it, one which could only come from being so many years on the run. Nor did Barton, as he turned his head away from her, or Loki, who she could see smirking behind his muzzle.
Well. She wouldn't want to disappoint them.
"I told Fury I was one and done. I'm one, I'm done," she announced. "Besides, he'll know better than to expect paperwork from me."
Then she was off. Firing her webs, she pulled herself down to the height of the low-rise buildings. She thwipped herself through the streets, and the damage up-close was even more astonishing than it had been from the Tower and without the heat of battle. She knew the people of New York could come back from a lot, 9/11 had proved that, but this...
When she got to her apartment building, which was mostly untouched, she crawled in through one of the windows, since she always left one open when she went out as Spider-Woman. Closing it shut firmly behind herself, she sagged against the wall, her body slowly lowering to the ground as she tugged off her mask.
As the shock and adrenaline from fighting literal gods and monsters began to wear off, and over the sounds of the people in her apartment building (the ones that hadn't evacuated, she figured, anyways), that was when the tears returned. Her shoulders shaking, she clamped a hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs. But it didn't work: they still came forth as muffled weeps, the sounds of an omega who had lost everything.
Because she had, and then she'd scent matched. Penny Parker, the twenty-one-year-old woman who had been forgotten by the universe, was the primis of her own pack, the soulmate of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Clint Barton.
But she didn't want it.
Oh God, she didn't want it.
Word Count: 3,433
Next Chapter Title: good old-fashioned lover boy