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: Hello, everyone! I know, I know, it's been...a hot minute lol. Life's been kind of weird the past several months, and I'm so incredibly sorry it's taken me long to post this chapter. Hoping to change that in the future.

Chapter title comes from A Head Full of Dreams by Coldplay. I know the album didn't come out until December 2015 and this takes place September 2015, but just pretend there's some multiverse shit at work. :P

As always, I hope you guys enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~the spinneret saga~

~birth of a heroine~

~chapter 1: a head full of dreams~


"Oh, I think I've landed, in a world I hadn't seen. When I'm feeling ordinary, when I don't know what I – "

With a groan, Penny slapped a hand on her alarm clock, turning off the song – the same song that woke her up every single morning ever since the album bearing the song's name had come out. Rubbing at her eyes, she sat up, stretched, and then got started on her morning routine. She went to the bathroom first, using the toilet and futilely trying to get a comb through her bob of curly dark brown hair – which looked like a mess, but would've looked like a mess anyways if she was the kind of person to take a shower in the mornings – before deciding it was a lost cause and set about brushing her teeth. Two minutes later, when her toothbrush buzzed and let her know that it was time to stop, she spat the foam into the sink, wiped off her mouth with a tissue, and then went back into her room. She changed into the clothes that she'd put out last night for today, grabbed her bag and slung it on her shoulder, wrapped the cord of her earbuds around her phone and stuffed both into her jeans' left pocket, and without further ado left her room and headed over to the kitchen.

As she'd expected, her mom and uncle Ben were already there, Ben wearing his reading glasses and doing his daily crossword puzzle from the newspaper and her mom sipping at her morning cup of coffee. "'Morning, baby," her mom greeted her, causing her uncle to look up.

"Hey, kiddo," he said.

"How are you this morning?" her mom continued afterwards.

"Good," Penny answered, heading directly over to one of the cabinets. Opening it up, she pulled out a bowl, filled it up with cereal from one of the containers that kept it nice and fresh, and headed over to the fridge next to get out the milk, grabbing a spoon from the appropriate drawer along the way.

"Did you sleep okay last night?"

"Yes."

"And you're ready for school?" Ben asked teasingly, in that way he always did, his Southern accent thick. "Ready to blow the minds of your classmates and all of your teachers?"

Penny rolled her eyes. "I don't blow the minds of all of my teachers, Uncle Ben."

He pointed the end of his pencil at her, absolutely grinning. "But you blow the minds of some of them, right? Plus your classmates?" When she refused to answer him, he laughed. "Ha! I got you to admit to it! I knew you had to be running circles around them, with how smart – "

"Alright, alright," her mom cut in, elbowing his shoulder. "She gets the point, Ben."

To add to her mom's, Penny stuck her tongue out at the man. He huffed.

"I'm just sayin', it's a good thing to be smarter than everybody else, even at a nerd school..."

"For the umpteenth time, Uncle Ben, Midtown's not a nerd school."

"But it is a STEM school. You gotta realize, for somebody like me, those things go hand in hand." As Penny rolled her eyes again, he finally relented. "Relax, I'm just teasing ya."

"I know."

"And I know you know. Now, come on, put a dent in that cereal." He pointed at her bowl. "I'm driving you to school today."

Penny perked up. "Really?"

"Yes. So, hurry up. I don't got all day."

Now it was her mom's turn for the eye-rolling procedure. "Ben..."

But Penny didn't care about her uncle's (usual) antics. She stuffed the cereal into her mouth hurriedly from where she was leaning against the kitchen counter, barely taking bites of each spoonful. It wasn't often that her uncle was able to take her to school, even with him having finally become a detective in the past couple of years. Usually, she just took the subway to school, and from it. She even had a well-worn path that she took between the subway station and school, consisting mostly of alleyways but also a walk past Mr. Delmar's shop, which had the best sandwiches in all of Queens. So, the fact that Ben was offering to take her to school now...

When she was done with her breakfast, she washed out the bowl before placing it in the right side of the sink. Then she went back over to her mom, hugging her and kissing the air right next to her cheek. "Love you, Mom!"

"Love you too, baby," was her mom's reply. "Have fun at school – and stay safe!"

"I will!"

In the car, Ben put in the CD he'd burned specifically for her – so specifically, in fact, the CD case was labeled "Penny's Playlist." The tunes of all of her favorite songs began to filter in through the speakers. He tapped his fingertips along the steering wheel to the beat. "So, quick question," he said.

Penny turned her head to look at him. "What?"

"Your school hasn't sent out those permission slips for the Oscorp field trip yet, have they?"

"What? No!" she yelped. "Why? Do you and Mom think I'd keep it from you if they did?"

"No. Don't worry, your mom doesn't think that – and I don't either," he said. "I was just wondering. I know how much you were looking forwards to it."

She turned her head back away from him, staring out at the pedestrians on the sidewalk through the passenger window. "Yeah, well," she muttered. "You guys said I couldn't go."

"We did," Ben acknowledged. Then, he chuckled. "But, let's just say, when I was your age, I wouldn't have been nearly as accepting of it as you are..."

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "And Dad?"

"He would've been more accepting," Ben agreed to her implicit question. "Rich was always the better kid when it came to listening to our parents."

Penny took his word for it; as she'd said before, she didn't have a lot of memories about him, these days.

When they got to her school, the Midtown School of Science and Technology, she gave her uncle a quick hug and got out of the car. "See you later, kiddo," he said, giving a short ruffle of her hair.

It made her cry out. "Ben!"

He winked at her, completely unrepentant. "Have fun," he told her, repeating her mother's words, and then he pulled the passenger door shut and was driving off.

She stared after him for a moment, trying to flatten what he'd done as best as she could with a scowl, before turning around. There was a boy waiting for her on the steps that led up to their school. He was wearing a red beanie even though he couldn't continue to wear it inside, hiding his strange brown-and-blonde hair. When he saw her, his expression visibly brightened. "Penny!" he called out.

"Hey, Harley!" She bounded up the stairs to meet him. He held out his hand, and they did the handshake that they'd been practicing for the past week. It made her grin that they were able to do it so seamlessly now, as if they'd been doing it for their whole lives and not five days in a row, since today was Friday. "Have you seen MJ?"

"No. Wait – she's right there."

Sure enough, the other girl was walking up to them. She was tall, as tall as Harley even (which totally didn't make Penny feel like she was incredibly short at her five-foot-two height, but whatever), with curly brown hair that was a few shades lighter than Penny's and longer, pulled into a ponytail. "'Sup, losers," she said. She did the handshake just the same as them, despite the fact that she'd said earlier that "handshakes are for losers." She liked coming across as perplexing and standoffish, but now that Harley and Penny had gotten close to her over the past three weeks of school (and each other), they knew that was far from the case of who she actually was.

But, Penny wasn't going to fault her for putting on the show. "Hey, MJ," she said. She opened her mouth to say more, but was cut off by the other girl.

"We should probably get inside."

MJ wasn't looking at either her or Harley as she said this, but at two familiar boys as they walked towards the school, chatting – Flash Thompson and Ned Leeds. Penny swallowed. "Yeah, we probably should."

The three of them walked into the building. They chatted about this and that on their way to their classrooms, before MJ said goodbye to them – she didn't have the same first period as Penny and Harley did – and promised that they would meet up again at lunch. Harley and Penny walked to their first period classroom, Biology with Mr. Harrington, and sat across from each other at one of the black science tables as they had been assigned at the beginning of the school year. It was why they had become such good friends in the first place.

Penny could still remember how it had happened. She'd been so nervous in coming to Midtown – not because she hadn't gotten in on her own merits, because she more than had with the science project she'd made as part of her application, but because of the other students. She'd never really had friends before, as bad as that sounded. But then, on the first day of school, she'd walked in and realized that the Harley Keener, the adoptive son of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, was sitting across from her.

It'd taken all of her willpower to not freak out on the spot – she'd suspected that he wouldn't have appreciated that. So she'd sat down across from him as the notecards on the table had dictated, smiling sheepishly. "Hi, it's nice to meet you," she'd said, holding out her hand as he'd looked up from his phone. "I'm Penny Parker. What's your name?" It was what Ben had suggested she do in order to make friends.

Harley had looked at her speculatively. "You know who I am. I think literally everybody on the surface of this planet does."

"Oh, I do," she'd agreed, not wavering from holding out her hand even though she'd wanted to just at the tone of his voice. "But...I just thought you'd appreciate introducing yourself in the normal way?" She'd phrased it like a question, too anxious to do otherwise.

Harley had stared at her for a moment, but then he'd taken her hand and shaken it. "I'm Harley Keener. And you're right, I do," he'd said.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

The other students trickled in as they got closer and closer to the time that school would start, as did Mr. Harrington. When the bell rang, he stood near his computer. "Alright, settle down, guys, so I can do attendance," he instructed. He went through all of their names; there were no absences today.

When he was done, he picked up a stack of papers. Penny assumed that these were his daily worksheets; Mr. Harrington was a bit of a quirky teacher like that, as he always had some sort of worksheet for them to do in order to start the day. When he placed one of the pieces of paper in front of her, however, her heart sunk.

"As you guys know, every year the freshmen of Midtown go to a different science company in the city," Mr. Harrington began. "This year, as you also know, the science company is Oscorp. The field trip is three weeks from now. Remember, if you want to go to there, your parents must fill this permission slip out and you must get this slip turned in by next Wednesday. No exceptions. If you have any concerns about being unable to go for whatever reason but still want to, feel free to come have a talk with me about it during lunch or after school."

The last part, she knew without a doubt that he was directing at her, because she hadn't bothered to look at the permission slip. She'd simply folded it up and shoved it into her backpack.

Unfortunately for her, he wasn't the only one to have noticed. Because while she'd made friends at Midtown, Flash Thompson and his own friends – Ned Leeds included – were certainly not some of them. "Mr. Harrington, why would anyone not want to go to Oscorp?" the boy asked. Loudly. She could feel his eyes boring into her head, could practically hear the smirk in his voice.

"Flash, you're supposed to raise your hand and wait to be called upon before asking a question."

"Oh, sorry."

A few kids started to laugh. She presumed it was because Flash had decided to raise his hand, but she didn't know for sure. She wasn't looking at him, her eyes planted firmly on her lap.

"Yes, Flash?"

"Why would anyone not want to go to Oscorp?"

"Why is that any of your business?"

Just as soon as the laughter had arrived, it was gone.

Even though she knew she shouldn't have been, Penny was secretly relieved. She looked up at Harley, and her friend gave her a comforting smile, even as everyone else around them was silent.

"Oh, so you're not going then?" Flash asked him.

Harley shrugged. "I didn't say that. All I'm saying is, there's reasons not to want to go to Oscorp. They don't follow regulations, the pay is low compared to everywhere else, and most of the employees are overworked. So, I can't really blame somebody for not wanting to visit them."

"Oh, and you would know all about that, wouldn't you?" another kid said, one of Flash's cronies.

"Are you sure you're not biased because of your parents?" complained a third kid. "Your dads are Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, after all."

"Alright, alright, class, that's enough," Mr. Harrington said, stopping the argument before it could devolve further as Harley's face reddened. "Anyways, as I was saying..."


"Okay, seriously, though, why don't your mom and uncle want you to go?"

"I told you why," Penny said moodily as she picked at the contents of her lunch with her fork.

She was sitting with Harley, who had asked the question, and MJ at their usual table. Nobody else sat with them. Despite being the son of two of the Avengers and with a bionic leg as a result of osteosarcoma, Harley wasn't really one of the popular students at their school. None of them were. He had a sarcastic attitude that she thought contributed to this, because his brand of humor wasn't one that a lot of their classmates were used to, as well as his refusal to do stupid shit for the sake of popularity points, like getting people things signed by the Avengers or taking selfies with them. He always told the people who asked that he was here to learn, not to put up with their bullshit.

"Oscorp 'being more dangerous than you think' isn't really an answer," Harley huffed. "I mean, Steve and Tony basically told me the same thing when they were debating on whether they were going to allow me to go or not, but the difference is, they have insider information that I doubt your mom and uncle do."

"Her mom was a scientist or something like it," MJ pointed out in between bites of her carrots and hummus. "And her dad worked there years ago."

"But 'more dangerous than you think' implies something incredibly risky or dangerous. And while Oscorp is a shitty company, SHIELD – back when it still existed – and the Avengers haven't found anything that they're doing to be like that," Harley shot back. "And they've hacked into Oscorp before just to look for that stuff."

"Harley, you probably shouldn't be mentioning the Avengers committing crimes at the lunch table," Penny said. As he spluttered, she smirked, before the smile fell away from her face. "Believe me, if I could go, I would. But I had to agree not to go in order to even be allowed to go here. My mom said she wouldn't let me if I didn't."

She remembered that argument, back when she'd first wanted to sign up for the application this time last year. Midtown had always been her dream high school from the first time she'd heard about it – seriously, a school dedicated to STEM? What kind of nerdy (she could admit it to herself, but not to Ben) girl wouldn't want to go? But when she'd told her mom about how the yearly field trip had already been planned and it was to Oscorp, her mom's eyes had hardened. Her uncle Ben had had to interfere in order to get the two of them to calm down, which had been new for all of them, because she and her mom didn't really get into fights. Ever. Not until this.

"Either you go to Midtown and don't go on the field trip, or you don't go to Midtown at all," had been her mom's final words on the subject. "Capisce?"

"Capisco," Penny had replied with a mutter.

"Well, it sucks, but it is what it is," MJ cut in as a warning when Harley looked like he wasn't willing to let the subject go. "Let's talk about something else, yeah?"

"Like what?"

"Well..."

When Penny was finished with her food, she took her tray up to the drop-off area, threw out the trash, and put the tray on the conveyer belt where it belonged – a perk of going to a fancy STEM school. She started to make her way back over to her and her friends' table, which meant walking past one table that she really would've rather avoided, but it would've been obvious what she was doing if she tried an alternative path and she really didn't want to go through the hassle of that again.

Hurrying past the table, she didn't notice the foot that came out in front of her until it was too late. With a gasp, she flailed her arms, but that didn't do anything. She fell to the floor.

"Hey, sorry, Parker, didn't notice you there," Ned Leeds said, his voice sickeningly sweet. "Heard you're not coming to Oscorp. Sorry about that, too."

Gritting her teeth, Penny got back to her feet and walked away. She didn't say anything at all, refused to give him what he wanted.

But this wasn't exactly a good thing. As she sat back down at the table, MJ eyed her warily, now the more concerned friend of the two that she had. "You know, you really should go to Mr. Harrington or one of our other teachers about Flash, Ned, and the rest of their buddies. Maybe even Principal Morita."

Penny shook her head. "That wouldn't really do anything. Believe me, I know." She'd had her fair share of bullies over the years. Granted, they were usually girls, and girls could be even meaner than Flash and Ned were without even resorting to physical methods. "'Sides, the only reason why they bully me is because they probably have something going on in their home lives, and I don't want to make things worse for them. Because – "

"'With great power comes great responsibility,'" her two friends said in unison. "We know."

She smiled sheepishly in return.

"You really are a goody two-shoes, for better or worse," Harley sighed exasperatedly.

She raised an eyebrow. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "All I know is, if Steve and Tony had said they'd refuse to sign my permission slip, I still would've found a way to go somehow...even if it meant copying one of their signatures..."

Penny fought back a laugh. "Harley, that's forgery. That's literally a crime."

Like her uncle, he winked. "Sure, but that's only if you get caught. Copy the signature enough times, and I'm sure you would be able to fool Mr. Harrington."


That evening, after she got home from school via walking to the subway station through the alleyways and then from the subway station to her family's apartment, and after her uncle Ben had come home from work, they ordered pizza for dinner: the usual, jalapeños and olives.

"How was school, kiddo?" Uncle Ben asked.

"Fine," she answered. She didn't mention anything about Flash and Ned, because she hadn't told either her mom or her uncle about them (what was the point, when it only would've resulted in what she'd told Harley and MJ she was trying to avoid?), nor the Oscorp field trip permission slips having been handed out today. That was a particular can of worms she didn't want to deal with tonight, for multiple reasons. "We're starting a new book in my English class."

"Oh, and what's that?"

"To Kill a Mockingbird."

Her uncle nodded approvingly. "I was never one for reading books when I was your age, but I remember that one. I liked it. You probably will, too."

That was relieving. She was more into books than she suspected many of her peers at Midtown were due to it being a STEM school, but there was still something to be said about how unappealing a book could be when you were forced to read it.

"Mm, I forgot to ask you earlier," her mom spoke up. "How's that Harley boy doing?"

Honestly, Penny didn't know what her mother's fascination with Harley was. She didn't ask nearly as many questions about MJ as she did him. Penny would've suspected it was because of, y'know...Harley being a boy, except she didn't like him like that at all and that never seemed to be the reason why her mom asked about him. "Fine," she said again. She hesitated briefly, before adding, "I was thinking about maybe inviting him and MJ over some time since we're such good friends now..."

"I don't see why that would be a – " her uncle began, but then stopped after looking at her mother.

Her mom was smiling, but her eyes were tight. As to be expected. "We can talk about it later," she said.

Besides the whole thing with Oscorp, that was another weird thing about her mom – and Ben, too, since he'd just stopped disagreeing with her. Although Penny had never had friends before to invite over, she'd never gotten the feeling that, if she had in the first place, her mom would've been willing to have them over. Her mom was a private person. Had always been.

After their dinner was over, they all went into the living room to watch a movie, as was their family's tradition. Because today was a Friday, Penny didn't work on her homework as they did, instead choosing to snuggle herself firmly in between her mom and her uncle. When that movie was over, they decided to watch another one, and Ben made a giant bowl of buttery popcorn for them to consume. He ruffled her hair again as he sat back down, but this time, since she was tired from her day at school and he was holding the bowl of the delicious snack in his other hand, she allowed it.

The second movie ended after ten o'clock, which meant that because her uncle and mom were kind of old (not that she would ever admit that to their faces), they were more than willing to call it a night. "'Night, Penny," her mom said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite," her uncle teased.

They retreated off to their respective bedrooms, and Penny went off to her own. But she didn't get ready for bed upon shutting the door behind her. Instead, pulling her bag onto her bed and opening it up, she searched through its contents. She soon found what she was looking for: another permission slip, this one for the reduced lunch program at Midtown. Her mom had mistakenly filled it out when she'd come home with it during the first week of the school year, having thought that they had to fill it out regardless of their income status. She'd told Penny to throw it out when she'd realized her mistaken, but in true Penny status, she'd forgotten to do that.

Penny didn't really care about what Flash and Ned thought about her not going on the Oscorp field trip. They were bullies, and the best thing you could do when it came to bullies was not give a shit about what they said. And she hadn't been bothered by Harley calling her a "goody two-shoes," either. It was true, that besides the argument when she'd first wanted to get into Midtown, she didn't really get into fights with her mom or her uncle. They'd never had to ground her before. The three of them were closer than three peas in a pod.

But maybe...maybe for once in her life, she didn't want to be a "goody two-shoes." Maybe she wanted to be like Ben instead of her fa – Richard. Maybe she wanted to do what Harley had said he would do if their situations were reversed. Because she did want to go to Oscorp, badly. It was where Richard had worked, after all, before he'd died. Was it really too much to ask for a chance to go to where he worked and see if she could feel closer to him? To get a better understanding of the man that had intended to raise her outside of the stories that her mom and Ben told her about him? She didn't think it was. Or, at least if it was, she didn't think it was something she couldn't be forgiven for.

Going over to her desk, she opened up one of the notebooks on it and ripped out a piece of paper, this one thinner and lighter than the signed permission slip she was holding in her right hand, and placed the former on top of the latter. Turning off all the other lights in her room, she brought the brightness on her phone up to its maximum setting and placed it underneath the two pieces of paper. As she saw that her mother's signature shone through both, she grinned to herself and took out a pen.


Word Count: 4,421

Next Chapter Title: call it what you want