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: Once again, not much to say about this chapter. The title comes from Don't Panic by Coldplay.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~the spinneret saga~
~birth of a heroine~
~chapter 6: don't panic~
She and Ben didn't really talk until they got back to their apartment.
The energy for the rest of the night with Harley and MJ was noticeably subdued. Happy was considerate enough to drive them to an ice cream shop, but no matter how much her best friends tried to cheer her up while they were there, all Penny could do was swirl around her ice cream. She knew that she probably needed to be eating it, because along with all of the freaky powers the spider bite had given her, she was also pretty sure that it had given her a higher metabolism. She was definitely eating more at each meal than she had before, at least, though it wasn't as much so as to be suspicious, and unless the meal was protein-dense, she was still hungry after she finished off her food. She'd been supplementing for the past month or so with protein bars a few nights a week, the same nights that she snuck out to go to the abandoned warehouse and work out, but it still wasn't really enough. She was kind of surprised that she hadn't lost more weight than the ten or so pounds that she already had.
(And if Ben and her mom knew she'd lost that much weight, they'd definitely be concerned, but she'd been doing a good job at hiding it so far by wearing some of her baggier clothes. It helped that they were getting into the colder months now for that.)
But Penny couldn't eat the ice cream. Each spoonful tasted like ash in her mouth. Her intestines felt like they were twisting and turning themselves into knots. She knew what was going to happen when she and Ben got back home after Happy dropped MJ off and then them, that the only reason why it hadn't happened already was because Ben didn't want to embarrass her in front of her friends.
Sure enough, after they got out of the car and Happy drove away, she started to march towards the main entrance to their apartment building. But before she could get very far, Ben said, "Penny, wait."
She stopped walking. Pivoted on her left food. Turned around.
Ben was standing about six feet away from her. He looked upset, an equal mixture of anger that wasn't directed at her but sadness and disappointment that she knew definitely was. It made tears burn in her eyes, which was absolutely ridiculous. She didn't have a reason to cry. Logically, she knew this. It wasn't like she had been the one bullying other people.
But she hadn't wanted her uncle and mom to find out that she was being bullied, either.
"Oh, kid," her uncle sighed. He crossed the distance between them, pulling her into a hug. She breathed in his scent as she burrowed her head into his detective jacket gladly, inhaling his cologne and the smell of tobacco from the cigars that he smoked every once in a while, only when he was really stressed. He patted her hair, running his fingers through her curls. But he didn't stop himself from asking the obvious: "That Flash kid has been bullying you for a while, huh?"
Sniffling, she nodded, but didn't do anything more. She didn't want to say it herself.
"Ever since the start of the school year?"
Another nod.
"And you haven't said anything because...?"
Well, now she did have to say something.
"Because – " Penny pulled away from him when she realized her voice was getting muffled too much, wiping at her eyes as she did " – because I didn't want to get him in trouble."
Ben frowned. "Pen, no. You're not the one that is getting him into trouble. It's his actions that are getting him into trouble. It's on him, not you."
"I know," she whispered. "But he doesn't come from a good home life! I – I don't really know what goes on at home with him, but I know his dad's sick and his mom works all the time – " these were things that she'd only found out after she'd gotten her powers, but Ben didn't need to know that " – and I don't want to make things worse for him. And I know you told him that you were going to go to the school's administration about this, but please, you can't! I don't want him to get in trouble at home!"
Ben sighed again. "Penny, it's not that simple. You shouldn't be getting bullied. You deserve to be able to go to school and have fun there without having to worry about him."
"But I don't worry about him!" she cried. "Yeah, I don't like what he does, but it's not anything I can't handle! So you don't need to talk with the school!"
She watched as her uncle very noticeably stiffened at her words. But then, just when she thought that he was going to basically say the same thing he'd just said all over again, just with different verbiage, his eyes narrowed. "You're protesting this way too much than you normally would," he noted – and perhaps that was true. "Something else is going on, isn't there? You don't want me talking with the school because of that, don't you?"
"No!" Penny said. But her voice was weak and fragile, showing how much of a lie that was.
Because yes, she didn't want him talking with the school. Because if he did, he would find out that –
Ben breathed in sharply, before pinching the bridge of his nose. "Alright, Pen, I'm going to give you two options: either you tell me now what exactly it is you don't want me to know that the school does, and I promise you if it's not that bad, I'm not going to freak out that much right now, or I can find out from the school whatever it is, because I will find out, and then regardless of how severe it is, I'm probably going to be really mad that you kept it from me and your mom. So, your choice. Which path do you want to go down?"
Well, when he put it like that...
Penny didn't want to tell him. She didn't want to tell him that she had gone on the Oscorp field trip against his and her mom's (but mostly her mom's, she knew) wishes. Because she was going to be in so much trouble if she did, not to mention there was a chance that they would find out about her powers, and she didn't want that, the second part most of all for all of their safety. But he was right: he was most likely going to find out regardless if he called the school to deal with Flash bullying her, since that was the main incident that the teachers knew about and Flash had gotten suspended for it. She was truly caught between a rock and a hard place.
...Suddenly, an idea popped into her mind.
She bit her lip. "Alright," she agreed quietly. "But you can't tell Mom about it if I do! Not yet!"
Ben became even more resigned/irritated than he had been before. "Penny, kiddo, it doesn't work like that. I can't just nottell your mom – "
"But she's gonna be so mad at me when she finds out about it!" she wailed. "And you're already mad at me about not telling you guys about Flash and Ned, which means she's going to be mad at me for that, too! And I can't deal with her being really mad at me for two different things at once! I just can't! I promise, I'll – I'll tell her about it by the end of the month, but right now, I can't – "
Her uncle pulled her into another hug as she pretty much broke down into a sobbing mess. But to her surprise, he didn't just do that. "Alright," he also agreed quietly. "I'm not mad at you right now, kiddo, but I can see your point. I'll agree on holding off telling your mom, but only if you agree to tell her before Thanksgiving break, capisce? I get that you're stressed, but you really can't be keepin' secrets from me and your mom like this. Hell, I shouldn't be keepin' secrets from her like this."
A nervous giggle bursted from her lips. She felt like she was falling apart at the seams. "Capisco," she muttered into his jacket. She took in a few breaths to calm herself. In, out. In, out.
Then, she said:
"I forged Mom's signature so that I could go on the Oscorp field trip without you guys knowing. Flash bullied me when we were there, and he pushed me into the enclosure of one of the lab animals on exhibit. I wasn't hurt and he didn't cause any damage or anything, but he was suspended for three days and that's why I wasn't wanting you to call the school, because if you do they're definitely going to tell you about it."
She said it so fast without even pausing to take a breath, it basically all came out as one really long word. Ben stared at her as she said it, his eyebrows furrowing.
Finally, once his brain had figured out what she'd said:
Ben let out a laugh, which spooked her, making her jolt. "That's what you're worried about?" he asked. "Don't you remember what I told ya when I asked you if the school had sent out those permission slips yet back in September?"
Penny frowned. So much had happened since then, it was kind of hard for her to remember...
Ben picked up on this. "I said that I would've done something like that at your age," he said, a self-depreciating grin twisting at his lips. "And while I was proud of you for being responsible like your dad...I'm not gonna fault you for being more like me either, as long as this is the only stupid shit you're doing. That'd just be hypocritical. But you're right: your mom is definitely going to be upset when she finds out about that, so maybe we should let this whole Flash thing blow over first. I'll call the school and deal with it myself."
He'd already said that, but his reiteration of it made her perk up. "You will?"
"Yeah," he said, clapping her on the shoulder and turning her around. "Now, come on. Let's go upstairs and explain to your mom what's been going on with Flash and his friend, minus the Oscorp shebang."
Penny's mom, of course, was less than pleased to find out that her daughter had been bullied for the last few months and she hadn't said anything about it.
"I can't help you with problems like this if you don't tell me about them, baby," she said, which was one of the manythings that she had to say about the entire matter.
"I know," Penny said, looking at her lap rather than at her mom's face.
"Hey," her mom said, using two fingers under her chin to lift up her entire face and make her look her in her golden-green eyes. "I love you, baby, you know that, right? I just want you to be safe. I just want what's best for you."
"I know," Penny repeated. "I love you too, Mom."
Since Halloween was on a Saturday this year, her uncle had to wait until Monday to call Midtown. She knew that he was going to wait until after the school day had officially started to call them, and as such she was a mess of nerves walking to school and throughout all of Biology, waiting for the moment that she would most assuredly be called down to the office.
"It's for the best, you know," Harley informed her in a whisper as they worked on their worksheet of the day in Biology together. It was the only thing that he said, but obviously no additional context needed to be given.
"Yeah," Penny whispered back, even though she didn't feel like it was.
At last, in World History, her third period and the second class of the day that she shared with Flash, Mr. Dell received a phone call just after the bell had rung to signify the start of the period. Dread twisted inside of her as he accepted it, and she could tell that the same was true for Flash. He'd been subdued in Biology today, rarely speaking, something which wasn't like him, and now his face looked the same way that she knew hers had to.
When Mr. Dell hung up the phone, he immediately went for the collection of passes on his desk. "Penny, Flash," he said, barely looking up. "Both of you need to go down to the office. Take your things with you."
She and Flash didn't talk for the entire time it took them to walk down to the office. She thought that he would've had something to say to her due to the unwise decision on the school's part to have them go down to the office together at the same time, but besides his thunderously beating heart, he was eerily silent. His movements were very wooden or robotic; she wasn't sure of which definition to use.
Either way, she felt seriously bad for him.
Flash was called into their principal's, Mr. Morita's, office first. Penny sat down on one of the chairs in the secretary's office to wait for her turn. For once, she was irritated at her powers, because a normal person wouldn't have been able to hear Flash and Mr. Morita talking like they were right next to them, and yet she could. Mr. Morita was quickly getting to the topic at hand, saying, "Flash, I received a troubling phone call from Penny's uncle today..."
She didn't want to hear anything more than that. Even that was bad enough.
"Ms. Corcoran," she said, earning the secretary's attention. She held up her phone and corded earbuds. "Is it okay if I listen to some music while I wait and work on my homework?"
The secretary, an older woman, gave her a pitying look. Apparently, word traveled around fast in the school administration. That probably made sense, though; the same was true for the student body. "Sure, dear."
Putting her earbuds in and cranking the music up to a level that was mind-numbing – for her, because with her enhanced hearing, that basically just over half-volume – she drowned out the voices of Flash and Mr. Morita and set about working on her homework.
She was sitting there long enough that, by the time Flash and Mr. Morita were done talking, the class periods had already changed and they were well into fourth period. For her that was Art, and she was kind of sad about having to miss out on it, but not nearly as sad as she would've been for any of her other classes.
Penny was so focused on her work and ignoring the rest of the world, she didn't actually see Flash leave. She was only alerted that it was her turn to talk with Mr. Morita when she saw the principal's shoes in front of her. She startled, pausing her music and looking up. "Mr. Morita," she squeaked. "I'm sorry. Is it my turn now?"
"Yes, Penny," he said. He gestured with his head back towards his office. "Why don't we go talk there. Don't worry, you're not in any trouble."
And indeed, she wasn't. Compared to Flash's meeting with their principal, hers was much shorter, basically an assurance that neither Flash nor Ned (Mr. Morita would be talking to him after lunch) would be bothering her again (Flash wasn't being moved from any of her classes yet, but if he started to, he would be), and that if they did, she could come to him or any of her other teachers to talk with them about it. He seemed just as baffled as Ben and her mom that she hadn't already. She assured him, in turn, that she'd known that. But she didn't tell him the reasons for why she hadn't.
Once they were done, Mr. Morita sent her on her way, and Penny tried to ignore the guilt that was churning in her stomach. But while it wasn't as hard as she'd thought it would be for one crucial reason, it was still hard whenever she noticed Flash and/or Ned in the coming weeks, since both of them stuck true to their word for once and tried to avoid her as much as possible. As she found out from eavesdropping, not only did Flash receive detentions three times a week for the rest of the semester for his continued bullying her after having been suspended and Ned the same until Thanksgiving Break, and not only did both of them also receive several weeks' of grounding from their parents, but when Flash showed up to school the day after they'd been called down to Mr. Morita's office with a black eye...well, let's just say his father, in spite of how sickly he was, had had something to do with it.
But she couldn't do anything to help him with that. Though she and Ned were the only two students who knew in the entire school that Flash's dad had hit him for bullying her, she'd found out from eavesdropping with her enhancedhearing, and nobody was supposed to know about that. So she couldn't tell the teachers about it nor could she convince Ned to tell them because he'd promised Flash that he wouldn't, lest she draw suspicions to herself. And while she also thought about maybe placing an anonymous call from a payphone or something, there wasn't much in the world that was actually anonymous anymore, so that was out of the question, too. She couldn't help Flash, regardless of how much she really wanted to.
Sometimes, that saying of "with great power comes great responsibility" that her mom and uncle had really sucked.
But as for the reason why Penny didn't think as much about Flash and Ned as she could've, the answer was simple: she was, quite plainly, terrified about how she was going to break the news to her mom about how she'd gone to Oscorp without her permission.
Ben's Thanksgiving break deadline to do it was practically physically looming over her. Over the course of the next three weeks, it was all she could do to keep it together. She tried writing down and practicing speeches for how she wanted to break it to her mom, but none of them ever came out sounding right. And when she tried practicing them, every single time she inevitably strayed from the speech at the end and started to talk about how the radioactive spider had bitten her –
But, no. She couldn't do that. She couldn't tell anyone about her powers.
She tried asking her friends for some advice, of course carefully leaving out any mention of her powers, but unfortunately they weren't much help. "You weren't supposed to go to Oscorp in the first place, so it's better that your mom finds out that you did on your own terms rather than anybody else's – even if that person is your uncle, right?" MJ reasoned one day at lunch.
Penny wilted. "Yeah, but – "
"It'd probably just be better to rip it off like a bandaid rather than spending all of this time worrying on it," the other girl continued. "Yeah, you'll probably be grounded for a long time, but it's unlikely that she'd do anything worse."
"Unlikely." That word was a good part of why Penny was so worried.
Because what if her mom got so mad that she decided she couldn't trust her to stay at Midtown anymore? What if she pulled her out of –
"I agree with MJ," Harley said, nudging her foot with his robotic one. "Besides, you have your uncle on your side. That has to count for something."
She did. Granted, he kept on reminding her every couple of days when they had a moment alone that she was on a deadline before he told her mom himself, but she did.
But in this, Penny, for all of her bravery, was a coward. She was scared, like a little kid all over again.
The three weeks passed by way too slowly and in the blink of an eye, all at once. Finally, the Monday before Thanksgiving break came around, and she was no more prepared to tell her mom than she had been when Ben had given her the ultimatum on Halloween. Penny went through her classes at school in a daze, and her teachers must've picked up on her anxiety along with Harley and MJ, because they didn't call upon her without her hand being raised once – and she never raised it once either, just for the record – and her friends basically talked around her rather than with her, which were both things that she was thankful for. She was sure that, if she still had the ability to sweat, her hands would've been slick with it throughout the entire day, but as it was they were almost painfully dry. When she instinctively brushed them off on her jeans, unable to break the habit even after so many months, the rough material caused friction with her hands, making her nerves even more oversensitive than they already were.
That night, after putting on her brave face to deal with her mom and Ben, she couldn't sleep, either. She tried very hard to, counting down from 100 in her mind and putting on white noise to try and focus on and everything, but nothing worked. She kept on tossing and turning in her bed, tossing and turning. When she at long last opened her eyes and checked the time, irritated at her own antics, she saw that the time was 12:06 AM. She'd been trying to fall asleep for over two hours now.
She didn't really realize what she was doing until she'd already put on her workout clothes and was taking her school things out of her backpack, pausing momentarily in her actions when she did. With the deadline hanging over her, she hadn't gone back to the abandoned warehouse as much this month as she had the month before, going there only once, maybe twice, a week instead of two or three times. For some reason, she also had a feeling that going out tonight...wouldn't be the best of ideas. Probably just because her anxiety was already so thoroughly worked up.
Whatever, Penny thought with a small shrug of her shoulders. She didn't really care what her anxiety was trying to convince her of right now. She was too focused on the one sure-fire way she knew to get it to shut up, which was to go work out at the abandoned warehouse.
She slipped out of the apartment through the fire escape connected to the one set of windows in her bedroom, as always making sure that she had her phone and wireless Stark Industries earbuds with her.
The walk to the subway, and then the walk from the subway to the abandoned warehouse, felt...different tonight. She couldn't really explain how. It was kind of like her spider sense was activated, as the hairs on the back of her neck were definitely on end, but it wasn't at the level that she was used to. It was almost like her spider sense was at half-force...did that make sense?
Whatever, she reiterated to herself. She would worry about it later.
She would worry about everything else later.
For now, she basically just wanted some time at the gym.
Like the second night that she'd come here, Penny turned on the video of the FitnessGram Pacer Test once she'd dropped off her stuff in the corner that she'd placed a tarp down on, to prevent her bag and things from getting filthy or ruined by the floor. She just wanted to do something simple tonight. Something that would take her mind off of everything so she could get some sleep once she got back home.
She lined up at her start, before starting to run when the guy told her to. As the laps progressed, she slowly lost herself in the running and the music from the video, just like she'd wanted to. Her vision tunneled down to just the wall in front of her as she made each lap, going back and forth, back and forth. Her heart steadily started to beat faster and faster in her chest, her breathing turning into pants at the same pace; eventually, she even began to taste blood in her mouth. The latter happened sooner than it had the past few times she'd done the pacer test, and the only reason why she could think that would be the case was because of how exhausted she was.
Indeed, with every lap she completed, it felt like exhaustion was seeping more and more into her bones, jut like she'd wanted.
But so focused on the simple act of running was she, that she didn't really notice the way that her spider sense momentarily peaked, pinpricking at her neck and spine in a more severe way than the near-constant, faint buzz that had started on her walk over here. In fact, it wasn't until she'd completed the test, her hands once again coming down to clap her knees, that she realized her very, very fatal mistake.
Because then, as she huffed and panted, she saw a very familiar head of greying-blonde hair out of the corner of her eye. And not a second later, as he stepped further into her line of sight, her uncle Ben said, "So, would you mind telling me about my borderline asthmatic niece was just able to run 200-some laps without a single fucking problem?"
. . .
. . .
Oh, shit.
Shit, shit, shit...
Word Count: 4,350
Next Chapter Title: waste
