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! Here's your main chapter for the week. Sorry again about the brief break; I am feeling much better now, but also have a bunch of writing to catch up on lol. Another bonus chapter for a week is probably in the future, but don't ask me when it'll be, I need to get other things done first.

Anyways, I recommend looking at the format style of the prologue and listening to the song Tiny Dancer by Elton John (chapter title) if you haven't heard it already before you read the chapter. Also might want to grab a box of tissues haha.

Hope you enjoy, and until next week,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~primis, omega, superhero, genius~

~somebody to love~

~chapter 22: tiny dancer~

Penny knew she was dreaming.

Sunlight was streaming into the room, lighting up her eyelids, even though that didn't make sense. She had work today, but even without having work she knew she would've woken up long before the sun had risen this high in the sky, unless some world-ending event had happened to make it seem like nine o'clock in the morning when it was probably only four at best. And if there was a world-ending event happening, she would've been warned about it by an alarm blaring, not by a hand stroking her hair.

A very familiar hand, one that she knew like the back of her own.

She heard the owner of that hand chuckle. "Hey, blue-jean baby," he said, singsonging the lyrics. "LA lady, seamstress for the band."

Like she said, she knew she was dreaming.

Because this...

This couldn't be possible.

This couldn't be real.

And even though it was a dream, a figment of her imagination, she didn't roll around or lift her head from her pillow to look at him. She couldn't. She was afraid to.

She, the Amazing Spider-Woman, Avenger, and all that jazz, was afraid.

"What, are you not gonna look at me?" he asked playfully.

Slowly, she shook her head.

"Not when I came all this way to see you?"

"You're not real, Harry," she mumbled into her pillow. "You can't be."

That made him, her husband, Harry freaking Osborn, chuckle again. "Aw, come on, don't be that way, Delilah. You have no idea how many strings I pulled in order to do this. I'm as real as I can be." When she still didn't look up at him, he hummed, not ceasing in his ministrations with her hair. "Nice name choice, by the way. Naming yourself after a song about a cat is quite...eye-catching."

She had to quell a snort to that.

Harry sighed. "Come on, Penny. Look at me, please. Please with a maraschino cherry on top?"

And he said it in that voice, the one he'd always used when he'd wanted to get her to do something. It wasn't an alpha voice, but it worked just the same.

Because just like always back then, she was unable to deny him.

Shifting around, Penny reluctantly opened her eyes narrowly to look at him, and there he was. Harry. Her husband. Her alpha. The love of her life. He looked as handsome as he always had, without so much as a blemish to indicate the horrible way he had died. He was wearing a white lace-up shirt and loose white pants that both looked to be made out of soft material. His feet were bare. There was a small, sad smile on his face as he continued to pet her hair, and his dark brown eyes were so, so full of love. "There you are," he crooned softly.

She felt her face crumple. "H – Harry."

"Hey, hey, it's alright," he said. He laid down next to her, interlocking one of his legs between hers seamlessly as he gently pushed her one shoulder so more of her face came into view. "'Cause if you start crying, I'm gonna start crying, capisce? And you haven't seen me in so long, I don't want this to be a sad moment for you. Let it be a happy one, Pen."

She sniffled as he used the pad of his thumb to wipe at her eyes. His touch was soft, but also so impossibly warm, like there was still blood pumping inside him. "Tha – that's an impossible ask, Harry."

"Fine. As happy as it can be, then," he amended. He wiped off his thumb on her pillowcase, which was kind of gross, but she didn't comment on it as he leaned in closer to look deep into her eyes. His breath was hot against her face. "How are you doing, ballerina?"

She snorted wetly. "How do you think?"

"Bad," he quipped. While she scoffed and rolled her eyes, he grinned. "Looks like I've still got my charm. But, yeah, Penny, you're not at your greatest. I doubt anybody who had themselves forgotten by the entire universe."

She closed her eyes. "Tao's spell...you know about that."

"Yes. I've been watching over your every moment, as creepy as it sounds."

"So the others, you know that...?"

"Natasha, Steve, Clint, and Tony are your scent matches? Uh, huh."

Just like that, she went back to sobbing, burying her head into his chest even though she knew she didn't deserve it. "I'm – I'm sorry, Harry!" she keened. "I'm so sorry!"

"What did I just say? No crying." He wrapped his arms loosely around her waist. "There's nothing you need to apologize for."

"But they're – they're – !" she wailed. She couldn't get herself to finish the sentence. "And you dying, it was all my fault!"

"No, it wasn't." His tone abruptly became serious. Not because he was mad at her, they had never really been upset with each other, because they'd just understood on each other on a fundamental level. But he was making it clear that he vehemently disagreed with her opinion – no, her statement of fact, without being angry at her. "You heard what Tao and Wong said: my death was an Absolute Point in time. There was nothing you or they could've done. I was going to die that night, no matter what."

"But – "

"No 'but's,'" he said softly. "You know I'm right. And I'm...okay with it. I mean, I wish I could've lived longer. I wish I could've at least given you an Emily May or a Ben before I had to go." She looked up at him at this, the reminder of the kids they'd wanted feeling like it was burning her from the inside out. But he kept on holding her, keeping her tethered to him, to this reality that didn't exist, to this dream that felt like her subconscious was betraying her completely and entirely. "But, I'd rather it be this way, me instead of you. It means you got to live. And it also means you got to meet your – "

She stopped him short. "Don't say it, Harry," she begged. "Please, don't say it."

"Your soulmates," he finished, saying it anyways. The one corner of his mouth twitched. "Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that Tony Stark and Captain America would be two of your soulmates. Natasha, probably, if I'd ever met her. She's just your type in women: feisty redhead. Clint, too. He fits with you together well. But, Tony and Steve? It makes sense now that I've seen it in action, but. Nope, never, not in a million years."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "You...you like them?"

"They're nice," he answered.

"But..." Penny trailed off, sitting up and pushing herself away from him. Again, she didn't feel like she deserved being near his presence. "I'm betraying you with them! And they're – they're not as good as – "

Harry surprised her by how he not only immediately sat up, but flicked her on the nose. It made her squawk. "Don't do that," he warned. "One, you're not betraying me, you shouldn't even be thinking that you are. Two, don't compare them to me. They could never live up to the expectation. You'll never be happy that way."

Her bottom lip trembled. "But what if I don't want to be happy, Harry? 'Cause I don't, not without you."

"You had me," he retorted. His hands wrapped around her wrists, feeling her pulse. "For five wonderful years, you had me, Penny, and those were the best years of my entire life, no matter how short it was. You made me feel alive. You made me feel like I was more than just some snotty-nosed rich kid, like I was an actual person. You taught me so many things. But ours wasn't meant to be a happy story, Omega."

"Omega." She hadn't heard that moniker in so long. Not just the name of her designation, but the title given by a partner to their chosen omega. The capital "O."

It felt so good, and yet made her feel so horrible at the same time. "And the one with my soulmates is?"

"Yes," Harry said. "Yes. I mean, I can't guarantee it won't have its ups and downs, because most relationships don't work like ours did. You know that; we meshed on a level that went past anything definable." He reached up to trace her cheek with a finger, ghosting it along her skin. She shivered. "But, they're your soulmates. Your scent matches. From the moment you were bitten by that radioactive spider and presented as an omega, if not from the moment you were born, you were meant to fall in love with them. That's the story of this universe. That's how it's supposed to go."

Stubbornly, Penny looked away from him, staring at one of the corners of her bed. "I don't want to."

"Too bad. It's gonna happen. It's already happening." Taking his finger away from her cheek to underneath her chin, he used it and another to tilt her face back towards his. Those eyes were like kryptonite. Even after all of this time, they still made her feel weak in the knees, even when she was sitting. "It's not gonna be today, or tomorrow – or probably for an entire year, actually, knowing you." He smirked as he said this last part, because the actual Harry or not, a conjuring up from her subconscious or not, he knew how she was. "But eventually, the truth is going to come out. And they're going to love you, Penny. It'd be impossible for them not to. Not because of destiny or anything like that, but because you're you.

"And I'm glad," he continued. "You're going to move on from me, Penny. I know you don't want to, but I do. I give you permission to. I want you to be loved in the way you deserve. Because it's true: you deserve it, you deserve happiness, and so much more."

"Harry – "

Abruptly, a startled look came over his face. He looked out towards the windows, and his expression became bittersweet. "We're running out of time," he murmured. He looked back at her. "I love you. You know that, right? I always have, and I always will. You're my Omega."

Her eyes blurred. "And you're my Alpha."

"Mmm, one of them," he replied. Again, he leaned forwards, gazing at her lips. His tongue darted out for a brief moment, before he said, back in a murmur, "Can I?"

They kissed. And oh, if there was anything that could've made her doubt this was all just a dream, it was this. It was even better than she remembered. She practically melted into his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck as they fell back onto the bed with her on top of him. He dug his hands into her just like she'd always loved, tugging at her curls, making her scalp tingle with pleasure. Then, when she had to come up for air – because he, of course, didn't – he nipped at her mating gland, which still held his scar from their bonding even after all of these years, even without refreshers for the past year and a half, regardless of how faded it was.

Penny almost had an orgasm from it, right then and there. She gasped, her toes curling. It'd been too long since she'd felt something like that, since she'd been touched like this. She hadn't even gotten herself off since she didn't know when. "Harry."

"Glad to know I've still got this, too," he told her smugly. Experimentally, he reached his hand down past her shirt and into her pajama pants. He moved her underwear aside, reaching for her nether regions. And she was already wet, the slick beginning to coat her thighs, but even if she hadn't been, this was a dream. Effortlessly, he was able to slip a finger inside of her. It was swiftly followed by a second, which he used to scissor her. Then a third.

He used all of the tricks he'd used in real life, the ones that she loved. He slid his fingers in and out, crooking them inside her expertly.

It was over embarrassingly quick, because it didn't take much to send her over the edge after so long. She bunched up his shirt into her fists. "F – fuck!" she gasped, her body spasming. "Alpha!"

"Sorry," Harry said as she came down, resuming his petting of her hair with his other hand. "I couldn't resist." He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"...It's okay," she sighed breathily.

Except, the moment she finally utterly relaxed for the first time in ages, boneless, the light from the windows began to dim. She panicked at it, realizing what it could only possibly mean. "Harry..."

"It's okay," he parroted back to her. But his smile was even sadder than it had been earlier. "This wasn't meant to be a forever thing, Omega. You've got to go live your life. You've got to save the universe, the multiverse, and have a bunch of kids with those other alphas of yours. But, when the universe is ready to part with you, I'll be here waiting. And I'll love you then just as much as I do now. I love you, Penny Osborn."

She hiccoughed. She didn't want to leave him, but she had no choice. "Okay. Fine, then. I love you too, Harr..."

"You okay, Penny?"

Penny looked up from where she had been staring at the familiar pavement leading up to the backdoor. "Hm?" she said. It was Jason who had spoken, as almost always in the mornings. "Oh. Hey, Jason. Yeah, I'm fine."

He looked her up and down. "You sure about that?"

She followed his eyesight. She didn't look any different than she usually did, dressed in her waitress uniform with her purse slung over her shoulder. "Yeah. Why?"

"I don't know. You just seem...different." Then, whatever it was seemed to dawn on him. "I know what it is. You look like you actually got a good night's sleep for a change."

Startled, she was unable to offer him so much as a smile. "Oh. Yeah, I guess."

That was one way of putting it.

She'd woken up that morning at four o'clock, as she often did, if not earlier. And she knew that meant she'd only gotten four hours of sleep last night, but yet, she'd felt...rested. There had been slick coating her thighs, even though the suppressants made it practically impossible for her to produce slick unless around her soulmates. The memory of the dream had been fresh in her mind.

The dream.

Jason let her walk through the backdoor first, holding the door open for her. As she passed him, she opened her mouth, then closed it. He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

She blurted out her question without meaning to. "Do you believe in the afterlife, Jason?"

That was a little misleading. Penny knew there was an afterlife – or rather, afterlives. She might not fully believe in God ("I'm Jew-ish, not Jewish, you know what I mean?"), but you didn't spend any extended amount of time with Tao, her sorcerers, and Agatha Harkness and not know that life beyond death was a thing. Granted, not everyone went to the same place, hence the plural instead of the singular, and even the gods went to their own afterlives (hence why she didn't really believe in any single, one, all-powerful entity anymore), but –

Jason frowned. "Uh...I don't know," he admitted. "Not really something I've ever thought about."

"Really?"

He gave her a look. "I'm a punk in my mid-30's, what do you think? I'm still convinced I'm gonna live forever."

That made her laugh. "Okay, okay. Point taken."

He sensed she wasn't done yet. "But if I did?"

"But if you did," she agreed. "Would you believe that a dream you had about your loved one that seemed so vivid, so contrary to what your subconscious would say, was...real?"

She watched her manager's eyes nictate. "I don't see why not," he said. "If you believe in the afterlife, why shouldn't you believe that people from beyond the grave could visit the living every once in a while?"

"Hm," was all she said in reply. At least out loud.

But inside her mind, as she went through the usual motions of getting the restaurant ready for opening, her thoughts swirled. The dream had felt so real. Harry had felt so real. And then she'd woken up with slick gushing out of her, like she'd said. But it wasn't just that.

It was the fact that every single dream she'd had for the past year and a half had not been a dream, but the memory of that night. It was also how this was the second night in as many months that she'd gotten a "good night's sleep," as Jason had put it, and this too felt like it had been due to events beyond her control. And it was how half of her very much wanted the dream to not be a dream, because then it meant that Harry had been with her again for no matter how brief a time it had been, but then the other half wanted the entire thing to just be her subconscious turning into a traitor.

If it was real, then Harry had given her his permission to "move on" from him, although she doubted she would ever actually do that. Her heart belonged to him, heart and soul.

If it wasn't, then she was desecrating his memory to the highest degree.

And if she was being honest with herself, then she'd be forced to admit that she didn't know which one she would prefer.

Well, obviously, she wanted Harry to have been real. But his message?

Penny didn't want to move on from him. Fuck, she'd made the entire universe forget her just because she didn't want to. The only reason why she was alive now and not a rotting corpse somewhere was because she'd always known that that was not something Harry would've wanted, and because of her sense of duty and purpose.

She could not move on from him. She just couldn't.

But then, if the dream had been a dream, then why had she even thought she could?

Her entire shift, she kept on going back and forth between the two possibilities, as not even the busyness of the restaurant could prevent her from thinking about them. The only thing or person that could've fully distracted her was Bridget, but Bridget was gone. So she was left to her thoughts, no matter how terrifying they were.

At the end of her shift, she walked back to the Tower, like she always did now. But just as Jason had said there had seemed something different about her, there seemed to be something different to her about...the entire world as a whole. It was like the colors were more vibrant, the air fresher than it usually was in such a filthy city. When she looked up at the sky, the only clouds there were white and puffy, but they were few and far between. It seemed like the entire world was a miracle, not because she had been forgotten so seamlessly, but rather because of how everything just...existed.

Penny did the standard swiping of her badge that she always had to do in order to get into the Tower, before she made her way over to the elevator that went all the way up to the top of the building. She stared blankly ahead, knowing that JARVIS would bring down the elevator soon enough. She didn't react as somebody came up to her from behind, waiting just like her.

Not until he spoke, that is.

"Hey, Delilah," Steve said softly. He and the others had taken to calling her that now, ever since they'd gone to the restaurant. The nickname had stuck, as she probably should've expected it would from the time she'd told JARVIS to call it. "Did you just get back from work?"

Penny turned her head to the side to look at him. He was dressed up in what she could only describe as casual clothes, a baseball cap on his head. There wasn't even a thought in her mind about being mean to him. "Yeah."

He gestured his head towards the elevator. "Mind if I join you?" That really should've been what he'd said first, but again, no mean thoughts. She nodded. "Was your day...alright?"

She shrugged. "It's a waitressing job. As long as I don't get syrup thrown down my front or have any personal crises happen, it's a pretty good day."

He grinned crookedly. "I can understand that." The elevator doors opened and they both stepped inside. JARVIS closed the doors behind them and began to take them up. "Are you going to go out as Spider-Woman now?"

"Yes. Why?"

Of course, as soon as she'd spoken, she realized why. Natasha had told her last month before they'd gone to dinner at the restaurant that she'd needed to talk with Steve. Also of course, she hadn't.

But it seemed Steve was no longer patient enough to wait for her to initiate the conversation as he subtly tilted his head. "Would you mind if we...talked for a few minutes first? I promise it won't take long."

And the dream was still present in her mind, with everything that it could possibly mean. That was Penny's excuse for why she did what she did next.

"...Yeah, sure. Why not?"

Word Count: 3,638

Next Chapter Title: that's the way of the world