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: 'Sup, y'all. Hope everyone is doing well! Shorter chapter today, but it's pretty important, even if you might not realize it at first. Chapter title comes from Cracklin' Rosie by Neil Diamond. Fair warning if you do decide to listen to it and haven't listened to it before: it will get stuck in your head, guaranteed. So don't say I didn't warn you. :P

As always, hope you enjoy. Until next week,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~primis, omega, superhero, genius~

~somebody to love~

~chapter 12: cracklin' rosie~

The answer was: not much.

Penny explored the rest of the apartment. There were two bedrooms, along with a small, private lab that already contained the chemicals she needed for her webs (she was surprised Stark was able to figure out what they were composed of, even if he didn't know the correct amounts) and some other things she figured the other superhero thought she would need. The guest bedroom contained a king-sized bed; the master had one even larger, although she had no idea why. She was only five-foot-two at best, dammit, and it wasn't like she would ever be bringing anybody here.

The muted color palette continued: there were lighter shades of blue, a light beige, cream, off-white. The master bed's comforter was a reddish-pink with gold stitching. She ran a hand along it, and noticed how soft it was, just like the carpet. "JARVIS?" she asked.

She wasn't sure if the AI would respond, but she needn't have worried. "Yes, Spider-Woman?" he questioned in return.

"How did Stark find fabric and carpet that are so darn...comfortable?" Not even Harry nor Norman had ever succeeded in that.

"He made the materials himself, Spider-Woman. He assumed you would have similar sensory issues as to Captain Rogers, who he originally made the material for. Was he correct?"

"Yes," she whispered. Louder: "Thank you, JARVIS."

"It is my pleasure."

There was another TV in the master bedroom. For now, she ignored it in favor of exploring the ensuite bathroom. It was easily as big as her studio: there was a walk-in shower and a corner bathtub that was the size of a hot tub and looked to be a jacuzzi. A quick peek in the cabinets revealed them to be mostly bare, but there were some things: cleaning products, a foot spa, and...bubble bath and epsom salts.

She took out the last two, examining them. The last time she had used either had to be before Harry's death. There were many nights when she had come back from patrol and he'd prepared a bath for her of both. He'd massaged her muscles as he'd lathered her up with soap, digging his fingers in deep, placing kisses on her skin. "You take care of the city," he'd used to say. "Now it's my turn to take care of you."

Suddenly wanting nothing more than to take a bath, she went over to the tub and turned it on. "JARVIS, you don't take any video in here, right?"

"I have no cameras in the bathrooms, and all cameras in your apartment are currently disabled. I have only audio feed."

Good, she thought.

As the water flowed, Penny went into the living room to open up her suitcase and get her towel, a set of pajamas, and her hair products, body wash, and loofah. Darting back into the bathroom, she closed the door behind her, locked it just in case, and stripped off her clothes. The temperature of the room was the perfect amount of warm, the floor heated beneath her feet; she didn't feel cold at all as she put liberal amounts of both bubble bath and epsom salts into the tub, watching them dissolve and cause bubbles to form.

Settling into the tub minutes later, she let out a sigh. Her muscles ached, but it was a delicious sort of pain. She'd been oblivious to all of the hurts in her body, but now they were getting the soak they needed. And what was more, with the way the jets of the tub worked, she could theoretically stay in it for hours without the water getting cold, relaxing – which she did. JARVIS played music after a while as if sensing she wouldn't be getting out for some time, some jazz, and she was too satisfied to correct him on the music taste.

When she finally came out of the bathroom, she felt like a new woman. Dressed in the pajamas, she climbed into the bed, pulling up the covers. Finding the remote, she turned on the TV. The one channel was playing House, as always.

Just as the episode began to play from where it was live, her stomach growled. Loudly.

"Would you like something to eat, Spider-Woman?" JARVIS suggested. "The other Avengers are eating biryani, chicken tikka masala, and samosas, homemade by Dr. Banner."

Just the thought of the others made her tense. "No, thank you." She still had some cereal, she could eat that. "Actually, I – "

"Takeout, then," the AI said over her. "I'm not familiar with your eating habits, but I do have almost every menu in the city in my database. What cuisine would you prefer? Pizza, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai – ?"

"JARVIS, that really isn't necessary," she protested, her face aflame.

He paused. "No, it is not," he agreed after some obvious deliberation. "Nevertheless, I would feel more comfortable about your wellbeing if you would eat something from a restaurant tonight, as much as I am able. Your health is important to me."

Was an AI seriously trying to guilt trip her?

What was more...was it seriously working?

God, she was such a pushover.

"Alright," she grumbled. "What can you find that's Italian and has a pork-free menu?" She wasn't really Jewish anymore, not in faith, but there were some habits which never truly went away.

An hour later, her takeout came up by itself in the elevator, sitting in a paper bag. She nearly gawked as she saw the restaurant it had come from, recognizing it as one of those high-end luxurious places, and did when she saw from the receipt it was not a simple dish of fettuccine with mushrooms, but truffles. "JARVIS, you didn't tell you were ordering something so expensive!"

"You do not need to worry about money here, Spider-Woman. Boss covers all expenses."

"It's the principle of the thing!" She didn't think the AI would understand it. It was one thing when it had been with Harry, because she'd accepted his "what's mine is yours" spiel. But she and Stark were not together, would never be together, and Aunt May hadn't raised her to accept such frivolous expenses. Penny held her head in her hands. "Gah!"

"Would you like me to order something else?"

Mortified, she looked up at the ceiling. "No, no, please don't!" The food was already here, she wasn't going to waste it. "Just...in the future, tell me where you're ordering from and what the prices are, okay?"

"Noted."

. . .

. . .

For what it was worth, the pasta was good. The best she had ever tasted.

That didn't stop the uneasiness from twisting in her stomach.

Two o'clock in the morning, Penny woke up screaming.

At first, she had no idea where she was. She was sitting in a bed, in a room which was almost wholly unfamiliar to her. Her eyes flitted about the room wildly, looking for any sign or indication of her location. Vaguely, she heard a male British voice in the background, repeating the same mantra over and over –

When it hit her, it did like a truck. Nausea overtaking her, she kicked the covers off of herself, running into the bathroom. She coughed up a mixture of the remnants of mostly digested pasta and bile as she retched, the haunting memories playing out behind her eyes like they did in her sleep.

(Harry's skull splattered on the pavement, his blood and brain matter on her hands. Her shrieks of agony, as hands pulled her back away from him. "Penelope," the voice of the Ancient One, Tao, was saying. "Penelope, listen to the sound of – ")

("Spider-Woman, listen to the sound of my voice. You are at the Avengers Tower. The date is February 18th, 2013. The time is 2:13 AM. Spider-Woman, listen to the sound of – ")

After several minutes, it was over. She rested her forehead on the toilet seat, gasping for air. For what felt like an eternity, she remained like that.

"...You can stop now, JARVIS," she mumbled eventually, to which he did. She was thankful.

Knowing that she of course wasn't going to get anymore sleep but not willing to venture out of her apartment and possibly face the others, Penny decided to unpack her things. She purposefully did it slowly, stretching out what would've taken otherwise an hour and a half to nearly double that.

At five, she tried out the espresso machine in her kitchen, making herself a latte with the milk she'd found in the fridge. There were only a couple of things in there, the bare essentials: butter, eggs, yogurt, and a small tin of blueberries. She made scrambled eggs with the former and a bowl of yogurt with the latter, and she couldn't help but note how filling it was. It was her first actual breakfast in over a year, after all. Cereal didn't really count.

At seven, she pulled on her coat, hat, scarf, and mittens and pressed the down button for the elevator. Once inside, she asked, "JARVIS, what is the best way to get out of the building undetected?"

"I believe the main lobby will suffice, Spider-Woman."

"Nobody will notice me?"

"The Avengers Tower receives thousands in a mixture of employees and visitors a day, ma'am. I doubt that anyone will."

The AI was right. Nobody batted an eye at her as she got out of the elevator. Still, she hurried to one of the main entrances anyways, keeping her eyes peeled and spider sense at the forefront of her mind in the event anyone did.

Her plans for the day weren't much. She went to the grocery store, getting enough food to last her about two weeks before taking it back to the apartment. Then, she dared to venture out again. Since she didn't have to set aside any of her previous paycheck for rent, she had a good three or four hundred dollars to spare, and was determined to put it to a good use: decorating.

"Oh, if you could only see me now, Gwennie," she muttered to herself, walking through one of the many malls of Manhattan.

Undoubtedly, this was premature of her. She hadn't been living in the Tower for even one day, and here she was, shopping for decorations for her apartment. She didn't have any idea on if living there was actually going to work out or not.

But it had been so long since she'd last been in the headspace to do decorating, to do anything outside of her monotonous routine, and maybe she still wasn't in it. Oh, well. Who cared?

Since most of the shops weren't open when she got there, she walked around the mall until they were. The early time meant most of the building was empty, only employees, people looking for exercise, and families with small children within besides herself. A toddler with dirty blonde hair from one of the latter fell to the ground after running away from his mother. He let out a cry, and that made her omega and spider instincts activate, along with how much closer she was to the boy than his family.

"Hey there," she said gently, offering her hand. "You need some help?"

The boy accepted her hand, sniffling. When he looked up, her breath caught inside her chest.

His eyes were dark brown, almost exactly the same color as Harry's.

"Oh, Noah! Noah!" his mother said, rushing over. She was an omega by the scent of her, her hair a few shades lighter than her own. She paid her a brief glance as she picked him up. "Thank you. He's so clumsy."

"You're welcome," she whispered.

But the other woman was already walking away.

Penny took in a deep breath, shaking her head.

That was never going to be her life, now. She accepted that.

As all of the shops began to open, she perused them. Most of the things were too expensive for her to want to buy, but there were some things she did: picture frames for the photos she'd stuffed into Uncle Ben and Aunt May's records (probably the reason why she'd never unpacked them at the studio), a LEGO Star Wars kit that made her laugh shakily with packed emotions as she thought of Ned. She also got a cute, small basket to put on the coffee table in the living room for her keys and smaller things, two pillows and a throw blanket for the couch, and a tiny spider plant. She held the last one close up to her face as she walked along, smiling gently. It made her feel better.

"Us spiders, we gotta stick together, don't we?" she whispered.

Before she left, she went to the food court to get some beef teriyaki. There were more people in the mall by then, including several people her own age, college age. She watched them a heavy heart, and took more time than she perhaps should've in eating her food, stirring around the contents of her styrofoam box with her fork.

Taking the subway back to the Tower, she snuck in the same way she had after getting groceries: getting past security with the badge she'd found on the counter in her kitchen (left with explicit instructions that Happy, as the head of security, was a stickler about badges, but if she lost hers she could always get a new one), she took the elevator which went up to all of the floors. "Floor eighty-six please, JARVIS," she requested, since the numbers on the elevator only went up to the seventy-seventh. It was probably the easiest way of preventing unwanted intruders.

"Of course, Spider-Woman. Welcome back."

Her right eye twitched. "JARVIS?"

"Yes?"

"When it's just you and me, would you not call me that, please?" The name was her superhero pseudonym, but hearing it from the AI all the time was getting old, fast. "Can you call me something else?"

"What would you rather I call you?"

She thought about it. "Delilah," she decided, the song of the same name by Queen popping into her mind. "Call me Delilah."

"I've logged your preferences. When you are the only one present, I will call you Delilah from now on."

"Thank you."

Back in the apartment, Penny changed back into her pajamas for the sake of it. She fished the photographs she had out of the records, putting them in the picture frames and hanging them up. She didn't have many, and none of herself, as she'd been erased from everything due to the Ancient One's spell. The ones she had were of her parents, Ben and May, her friends, and Harry. She reserved the latter only for her bedroom, and tried to keep the ones of Gwen, MJ, and Ned in inconspicuous locations, in the event anyone ever came into her apartment. She didn't want to give them more trouble than she already had, especially not when they didn't remember her and would have no idea why the Avengers would be looking into them.

While she did this, she took out one of the vinyls, Neil Diamond's Tap Root Manuscript, and put it in the record player. "Cracklin' Rose you're a store bought woman, but you make me sing like a guitar hummin'," she sang along to the first song. "So hang on to me, girl, our song keeps runnin' on..."

The record continued to play as she settled in front of the huge TV, turning it on to the news and putting it on mute. The LEGO set resting in front of her, she opened up its box and took out all of its pieces. There were 132 of them, which was only a percentage of the amount in the kits she and Ned had used to make together. Those had had over a thousand, and taken them days to make between school and whatnot. This, in comparison, she knew would only take the afternoon.

Assembling the pieces was mindless, easy work. She took a break after the album had finished, putting it back into its cover and making herself another latte. She stood at the counter while she drank it, staring out at the city. It was starting to snow again. Flurries fell from the clouds in the sky, settling down on the tops of the buildings and the ground and people below.

After having washed out her cup by hand and resumed her crisscrossed position on the floor, towards the end of putting together the LEGO set and when she was almost finished, she glanced up and saw that the news was beginning to air a segment about her – or, well, Spider-Woman. With some internal debate, she decided to unmute it for posterity's sake.

"It's been four days since Spider-Woman was injured during the Avengers' conflict with Dr. Michael Morbius," the news anchoress began. She was one of the ones that Penny generally liked; she tended to be favorable of Spider-Woman, although like the rest of the people in the media she did have her moments. "The heroine has not been seen since. A spokesperson for the Avengers has said that she is recovering from a torn vein in her neck and severe blood loss, which she received after giving herself up as a food source to Morbius in exchange for him releasing twenty hostages on Thursday."

"She was so cool," a college-looking guy who she somewhat recognized from the day in question said. "You know, I thought we were goners, but then she just came in like she owned the place and talked Morbius down. I've never seen somebody so brave before."

"She helped me get out of the building," added the omega with the sprained ankle in a second clip. "Stayed behind herself. She's always doing that, right? Sacrificing herself for us when she doesn't have to. Not like the rest of those Avengers."

"This is not the first time Spider-Woman has become gravely injured," the anchoress continued after them. "Ever since she first appeared in 2006, she's received numerous serious injuries, her fights with Dr. Curt Connors, otherwise known as the Lizard, and Dr. Olivia Octavius being prime examples. Still, New Yorkers have come out to show their support of the arachnid superhero who has won the hearts of the city..."

The anchoress kept on speaking, narrating the images which popped up on the screen. There were pictures of a small memorial with flowers placed around it, of a huge graffiti artwork of her on a building side done by a twelve-year-old kid named Miles Morales, of people wearing various Spider-Woman paraphernalia that she didn't get any money from (because doing so would require her to reveal her identity), and etcetera, etcetera. Even a clip from J. Jonah Jameson was shown, in which he admitted he hoped she got better.

"Well, for once I agree with Jameson. I hope Spider-Woman has a speedy recovery," said a male news anchor, another one she usually liked. He winked at the camera. "One thing's for sure: NYC wouldn't be the same without her."

"'With great power comes great responsibility,'" she murmured.

Turning off the TV, she brought the palms of her hands to her eyes and inhaled through her nose deeply. She then looked back down at the LEGO set. As she'd said, it was mostly finished. She could finish it later, because there was only one thought in her mind:

Back to work.

The grind never really stopped.

Word Count: 3,272

Next Chapter Title: material girl